I want to discuss Tom Clark's response to a question I raised.
GG: We always find ourselves already thrown in a world of qualities, and never experience qualia which re-present that world. So Tom's claim qualia are representational is, I think, an inference, and I would like to know the basis of that inference, which is crucial to his account of qualia.
TC: We always find ourselves "thrown in a world of qualities" because experience creates (is) a subjective world, representing the external world and body, and consisting ultimately of not-further-decomposable, but relationally defined (on my view) qualities. We infer, properly, that qualia represent the world, and are not properties of what distally causes sensation, by noticing that our experience of the same objects under the same (external) conditions will vary depending on changes in internal processing, whether it be a bottom-up disruption of sensory input...or a top-down change in expectations...
Tom is quite sanguine with this line of thought: "That both brain states and qualia represent the world doesn t seem controversial or problematic to me." But his inference is by no means *proper,* for the following reasons.
Tom s ontology includes both a world and its qualitative re-presentation. [BTW, what justifies saying that what s out there is world-like, when all we have is our re-presentation of it? If all we have to go on are qualia, we can say nothing about that which is supposedly re-presented, certainly not that it is in any way world-like. Of course, it cannot be maintained that we *experience* both the world and its re-presentation, for then we would have two worlds!] For me what the brain does is hoist the world; there are no qualia. That is, sensory input comes in, the brain does its thing, and we find ourselves thrown amidst a world of ready-to-hand objects. If sensory input is disrupted or expectations change or part of the brain is injured, the brain just hoists a different world. So the core issue is what the brain is doing: Does the brain make qualia that re-present the world or does the brain make the world? That experience varies depending on changes in internal brain processing is entirely neutral with respect to this question. Tom Clark has not supported his inference to qualia.
But isn't my view that each brain actually "makes" a world wildly implausible? How does the brain accomplish such a fantastic feat? I think that quantum neurophysics points toward a possible answer, which I will sketch out very roughly.
Quantum physics says that reality is described by complex number valued wave functions. So *reality is not world-like* according to quantum physics. The Schroedinger equation describing the unitary evolution of the wave function does not come up with observables. This is why the measurement problem is so vexing--a complete measurement must end with observation of the measuring apparatus--and why there is such an effort to explain observables by a mechanism for wave function collapse (whether random or orchestrated). Quantum physics has a problem with the world too! Once we relocate the "hard problem" from mental qualia to world qualities, it converges with the measurement problem.
Now multiply a complex number by its conjugate and you get the modulus, which is a real number, or multiply quantum field operators by their Hermitean conjugates and the expectation values are real numbers. What is called for to get something observable, then, is not collapse of the wave function but interaction between reality and conjugate reality. That's what the brain does, I say: it sustains a wave interference between reality and conjugate reality, perhaps along the following lines.
The sensory input flux comes in and is thought to be re-presented as Froehlich condensates. So we have a re-presentation of quantum reality (which is not world-like) as Froehlich condensates (which are not world- like). At the same time, there is *quantum cognition*, a superposition of continually changing expectations (possibilities) perhaps associated with the microtubules and the nanolevel web of filamentous protein. Quantum cognition is also not world-like but is a conjugate reality. This is, I believe, an original conjecture, so I shall emphasize it: *Cognition is conjugate reality.* In the continual interference between the stream of Froehlich condensates and conjugate cognition, observables appear. So the brain sustains quantum field interactions between a re-presentation of reality and cognitive conjugate possibilities, and an observable world with its various qualities unfolds in the match.
Whereas for Tom Clark, the interaction between sensory input and cognitive expectations produces qualia that *re-present the world*, for me the interaction between sensory input and cognitive expectations is construed as the interference between a quantum reality and its conjugate reality, which *unfolds the world*. Re-presenting the world and actually hoisting it are starkly different alternatives.
So my claim is that the problem is world qualities, not mental qualia, and that world-thrownness is a brain achievement. Save for brains, there is a dark quantum reality, which is not world-like. Heidegger (despite himself) was right in saying that Dasein uniquely provides a clearing (*Lichtung*) in which human worlds are disclosed, so that there are scattered clearings surrounded by dark Earth. That's the human condition: to disclose worlds hoisted in the quantum field interactions between reality and conjugate reality (cognition). Brain biosubstrates are unique in supporting the emergence of interacting quantum fields from which the observable world unfolds.
What s not so cool about my account, it must be admitted, is that we relinquish the world in common and end up hoisting parallel worlds whose coherence can be maintained by similar inputs and expectations. Oi, the existential isolation, each of us a bubble of perception floating in a dark quantum reality, each on our own lonely journey to Ixtlan! What s really cool, though, is that we get to dump all of them delicate qualia and pull the chain on the dang hard problem.
Halloooo...?
Gordon Globus
Globey@usa.pipeline.com
jcs-online
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