Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Rediscovering the Mind 38Before in scientific history, to my knowledge, had all theleading contributors produced books and papers expounding thephilosophical and humanistic meaning of their results.Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of the new physics,became deeply involved in the issues of philosophy and humanism.In Philosophical Problems of Quantum Physics, he wrote ofphysicists having to renounce thoughts of an objective timescale common to all observers, and of events in time and spacethat are independent of our ability to observe them. Heisenbergstressed that the laws of nature are no longer dealt withelementary particles, but with our knowledge of these particles– that is, with the contents of our minds. Erwin Schrödinger,the man who formulated the fundamental equation of quantummathematics, wrote an extraordinary little book in 1958 calledMind and Matter. In this series of essays, he moved from theresults of the new physics to a rather mystical view of theuniverse that he identified with the “perennial philosophy” ofAldous Huxley. Schrödinger was the first of the quantumtheoreticians to express sympathy with the Upanishads andeastern philosophical thought. A growing body of literature nowembodies this perspective, including two popular works, The Taoof Physics by Fritjof Capra and the Dancing Wu Li masters byGary Zukav.The problem faced by quantum theorists can best be seen inthe famous paradox. “Who killed Schrödinger’s cat?” In ahypothetical formulation, a kitten is put in a closed box with ajar of poison and a triphammer poised to smash the jar. Thehammer is activated by a counter that records random events,such as radioactive decay. The experiment lasts just long enoughfor there to be a probability of one-half that the hammer willbe released. Quantum mechanics represents the systemmathematically by the sum of a live-cat and a dead-cat function,each with a probability of one-half. The question is whether theact of looking (the measurement) kills or saves the cat, sincebefore the experimenter looks in the box both solutions areequally likely.This lighthearted example reflects a deep conceptualdifficulty. In more formal terms, a complex system can only bedescribed by using a probability distribution that relates thepossible outcomes of an experiment. In order to decide among thevarious alternatives, a measurement is required. Thismeasurement is what constitutes an event, as distinguished fromthe probability which is a mathematical abstraction. However,the only simple and consistent description physicists were ableto assign to a measurement involved an observer’s becoming awareof the result. Thus the physical event and the content of thehuman mind were inseparable. This linkage forced manyresearchers to seriously consider consciousness as an integralpart of the structure of physics. Such inter-