31 Jul '08 11:02>2 edits
Originally posted by bbarrQuantum mechanics applied to neuroscience does not show anything at all about the will or attention or consciousness.
Where did you get the idea that Planck's length delimits the physical domain? If anything, it merely delimits the classical or classically measurable (i.e., observable in principle) domain, but quantum effects are still physical effects.
(1) That brain processes instantiate conscious states does not entail that conscious states require brain proces l domain is not causally closed, and hence that the law of conservation of energy is false.
Are you asserting this based upon the assumption that quantum physics makes no claim to ontological completeness? That is, quantum physics treats an agent's “free choices” as the input variables of experimental protocols, rather than mechanically determined consequences of brain action - doing so for pragmatic reasons - and therefore quantum physics says nothing intrinsic about the will or attention or consciousness?
If so, consider the following:
"...if in the von Neumann formulation one does seek to determine the cause of the “free choice” within the representation of the physical brain of the chooser, one finds that one is systematically blocked from determining the cause of the choice by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which asserts that the locations and velocities of, say, the calcium ions, are simultaneous unknowable to the precision needed to determine what the choice will be. Thus one is faced not merely with a practical unknowability of the causal origin of the “free choices,” but with an unknowability in principle that stems from the uncertainty principle itself, which lies at the base of quantum mechanics."
http://www.newdualism.org/papers/H.Stapp/Stapp-PTB6.htm#_Toc73278107
__________
It would seem that treating an agent's “free choices” as the input variables of experimental protocols isn't simply a matter of pragmatism, but a fundamental assertion about reality itself, e.g., "...one is faced not merely with a practical unknowability of the causal origin of the “free choices,” but with an unknowability in principle that stems from the uncertainty principle itself, which lies at the base of quantum mechanics." Wouldn't it be true to say, then, that quantum mechanics does show something intrinsic about the will? Especially considering that the will is therein considered separate from the mechanical functioning of the brain and fundamentally non-physical?
Or are such conclusions examples of the over-extension of quantum theory to phenomena it wasn't meant to describe?