@Rajat.

I don't know to which point of the debate the queer thoughts of your first paragraph are meant to be a contribution.

For science it is not a problem to be faced with empirical facts for which an explanation is presently out of reach. During most part of the ninetenth century astronomers knew that no chemical reaction could deliver the radiative power that was observed to originate in stars. One had to wait till the discovery of atomic nuclei and a preliminary understanding of their internal workings before the radiation of stars could be explained. If there are clear facts science will find an explanation, perhaps only after a few hundred years. 

Pseudoscience is characterized by the missing of clear facts. Pseudoscientists have enough knowledge of science that they can impress uncritical people but are unable to arange experiments and observations in a manner that repetition by independent groups reproduces the original findings. 

Dear Rajat,

I found this paper:

Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments

Dean Radin,1,a) Leena Michel, Karla Galdamez,Paul Wendland,2 Robert Rickenbach,3 and Arnaud Delorme4

http://deanradin.com/evidence/Radin2012doubleslit.pdf

Not being an expert , it is difficult for me to judge if any of these results are really surprising from a strickly scientific point of view.  In general, establishing an empirical correlation that is statistically significant between two phenomena whose link are totally scientifically not related, such as astrological linkages might be something important to focus our attention in order to try to find some kind of scientific explanation but it is not necessary possible to  create such explanation and it may not be productive even to search for it.  

There is always two separate issues in such cases:

1.  Is it a clear case of influence of mind over matter or is it a clear case of irrefutable statistically significant influence of what people think without any other links and experimental results?

2. Assuming the answers to 1 is Yes then is it productive to try to explain these results?  There are many things that are not understood and that it is not scientifically worth trying to explain.  It is not close mindness just pragmatic allocation of one attention to what should be most fruitfull.  What do you think in this specific case?

This question must be split in two:

1.  Can the observer influence what he/she observes?

The answer is trivial YES, as demonstrated by the following Gedanken-experiment (GE): "Close your eyes, and you'll see nothing at all."

2. Does this influence require a new scientific paradigm?

The answer, as illustrated by the above GE, is NOT NECESSARILY. The subtle point, as the same GE illustrates, is where you put the boundary between the observer and the observed. Generally, you need a new paradigm ONLY IF YOU HAVE SHOWN THAT YOUR EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS CONTRADICT QUANTUM FIELD THEORY EVEN IF THE OBSERVER AND ITS INTERACTION WITH THE OBSERVED QUANTUM SYSTEM ARE ACCOUNTED FOR.

Having not read the quoted papers, I cannot say whether this criterion has been fulfilled.

I read the paper to which Louis gave a link. I found nothing convincing in it. Although much detail is given concerning things of peripheral importance, the measured quantities are not fully defined and  thus provide no evidence. A non-technical observation may be of interest: The authors begin with Feynman's well-known statement concerning the role of the double-slit experiment as an embodyment of all the mysteries of quantum mechanics. Here he always speaks of the situation that the particles (electrons or photons) pass the slits with low enough frequency that there individual detection is possible. Feynman certainly would not have found a quantum mystery in the diffraction image of a double-slit illuminated by a laser beam (as in the reported experiment). If the authors would have reproduced one camera raw-image of the diffraction image with and without mental influence one would have the evidence (probably that the claimed effect is simply noise).

Thanks Ulrich,

The wikipedia page on Dean Radin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin

includes many serious critics of Radin.  I notice that Radin is not a physicist but has a Bachelor and a Master in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in  Educational Psychology.

Dear Loius and other dear respondents,

it seems that we are still seriously thinking in the same old trained manner that if at all any mind-matter interaction effect, howsoever feeble, is reported we will take shelter under possible statistical effects. In this context M. Sassoli de Bianchi also wrote a note in the same journal:

M. S. de Bianchi, Physics Essays, 26, 1, 15 (2013).

You can also see:

F. pallikari, arXiv.org/quant-ph/1210.0432 (2012).

These are traditional escape routes for us all when something surprising and something that is not in keeping with accepted and acceptable scientific understanding comes up. It of course helps us in a big way. The first thing this kind of vehemence does is to protect what is accepted in a more secure manner. But in the process we may be stifling a lot of ground-breaking thought.

Can we ever have an experiment that is completely free from possible statistical influences? The random influences will always be there. So what if this experiment also has some statistical effects. The issue is that every time they had people focusing on a particular slit for the photons to move through, there was a definite change in a particular quantity. when the observers relaxed there attention, there was no such effect. And they were repeated over and over again with the same results.

I honestly think there is something very deeply fundamental involved here which we cannot so easily disregard. Although, I am not so comfortable with the fourth experiment in the 2012 paper and the internet experiment in the 2013 paper .

I think it will be the best thing if other laboratories carried out the same experiment to check the veracity of their findings.

There are so many laboratories and so many people working on mind-matter interactions. More experiments of similar kind will surely lift the curtain from any possible statistical effects.

Rajat,

I am naturally incline to like discoveries of unexplained phenomena.  But not being an expert, I am asking to experts if in thes specific cases we have clear evidences. 

I am not interested in magic show, card tricks, rabbit coming out of had. I know there is a trick.  So I am not even surprise nor interested to know the trick.  We can be trick visually so easily.  Not being an expert in Quantum Mechanic I can be tricked even more easily so I am asking the experts.

Dear Ulrich Mutze,

I would like to request you to go through the two papers thoroughly and convince yourself that they have a quantity R that they measure for attention toward and attention away epochs and they find a difference in the relative (log)spectral densities.

There is no doubt that the experiments reported something novel. The effect is not a noise also, as you suppose.

That is very nice and sincere of you dear Louis to so candidly say such things.

But your remark that Radin is not  a physicist surprised me a bit. Louis de Broglie was student of History but made a Nobel-winning discovery.  So radin's not being a physicist is not a problem. We should look at the physics objectively, not at who is saying that subjectively.

Rajat,

I agree that it is not a problem that Radin does not a a diploma in physic. We can learn anything without enrolling in official programs especially when you already went through a Ph.D.   If someone has no diploma in physics and publish a paper in physics and that other scientists reproduces its results and he is recognized by his peers as having done something valuable then it is alright.  But if someone has no diploma in physics and publish a paper in physics whose results are not replicated and other physicists disputes the methodology and the results  then it is a bit of a problem.  I think it is necessary for these results to be replicated by independent groups.  Big claims requires big evidences and evidences from more than one source.  

Just recently a large  team of first rank scientists at the Cern had experimental results that seem to indicated that some particles moves faster than lights.  They never claim that relativity was invalidated, 99% of physicists including them thought that these results were caused by some errors.  Effectively these errors were found.  The point is here is that when you get very surprising results, the first thing to suspect is conceptual and experimental errors and a lot of efforts has to be made in order to check that but most importantly the results have to be replicated by other teams.

Are you aware of independent replication of these experiments?

 There is nothing special about the effect of Mind over Matter.  My mind controls my body and there is nothing surprising about such control.  We now even have mechanical prosthesis that are mind's controled.  

Those are usual mind over matter control.  These experiments are investigating mind's effects over measurement results of an optical system without any apparent involment of the home body.  Mind over Matter Outside Body for short.  

Quantum measurements are physical processes. Comment on "Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments," By Dean Radin et al. [Physics Essays 25, 2 (2012)]

Review by: Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi

https://www.academia.edu/1784552/Quantum_measurements_are_physical_processes._Comment_on_Consciousness_and_the_double-slit_interference_pattern_Six_experiments_By_Dean_Radin_et_al._Physics_Essays_25_2_2012_

So, contrary to statement of Radin et al.

, that their “results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem,” it is in fact the opposite which is true: Their results, if correct,would actually disprove such an interpretation, as the consciousness collapse interpretation does not contemplate the possibility for the consciousness to alter the probabilities predicted by the projection postulate, but just to actualizetheir potentiality during an experiment, in accordance withthe statistical predictions of the theory. In other terms, the results of Radinet al. speak of something different than quantum mechanics: Of a possible radical addition to the laws governing our physical reality

…

The main point of my note is that all these models are in any case to be considered unfounded, because the psycho-physical interpretation is

per se baseless. And even if it would not be so, they nevertheless require additional mind-matter interaction mechanisms, beyond the known laws of quantum physics. In that respect, I would like to recall that quantum probabilities are derived in quantum physics from the wavefunction, and that the wave function is a description of the

state of a quantum system and the way it reacts when certainexperimental actions are performed on it, in a given experimental context. Therefore, to be able to alter the probabilities associated with a quantum measurement one needs either to alter the system itself, or to alter the characteristics of the ex-perimental context (or these two things together). In other terms, to alter the quantum probabilities one needs to changesomething in a very substantial sense, either in the system or in the measuring apparatus, and this of course, until proven tothe contrary, requires energy. And such a process of energy transfer, however subtle it might be, certainly cannot be described by means of the mere collapse of the wave function.

…

In conclusion, in the present note I tried to explain that the venerable measurement problem of quantum mechanics has been solved some decades ago by the Belgian physicistsDiederik Aerts, in his hidden-measurement approach

, so that quantum mechanics does not need any consciousness-based observer effect, but only an instrument-based observer effect.

Therefore, in the same way as physics does not need to call for such a psychophysical effect to explain the quantum measurement (nor to the highly improbable existence of parallel worlds or others more or less exotic enti-ties), neither parapsychology should appeal to the latter as a possible foundation to the still controversial PK-effect. This more mature stance will help, I believe, not only to demystify the purely physical quantum measurement process but also to possibly shed more light (both in theoretical and experimental terms) on the still controversial PK-effect, which certainly needs a more intense and systematic investigation,beyond the many cultural and philosophical prejudices.

Just like, Gravitation is just a theory, and we still do believe in gravity, without exactly understanding how it is mediated. Similarly, effect of mind over matter is a theory - some trained minds and others naturally gifted practitioners, can  seemingly control external matter or even another human/animal mind, by merely looking at it. Physics too is speculating about property-less 'dark matter', which may permeate everywhere in the universe and everything in the universe is LINKED - call it Higg's boson (CERN) or ATMA (Ancient Wisdom).

@Rajat:They don't even tell typical values they found for S and D. Their diagram of a (typical?) power spectrum cuts the curve so that we dont know whether their D is one percent or one promille of S and they dont give the essential information concerning the with of their frequency bands on which they base their computation of D and S. In their further considerations they employ statistical normalizations (R_z) which are meaningless for wildly scattered original data. If a work is so careless in presenting the nature of their primary data it is not worth the time to hypothesize what else could have gone wrong downstream. A combination of wishful thinking and bad understanding of physics and statistics is an unexhaustible source for  unexpected 'results'. I completely agree with you that the experiments would show something novel and important (actually extremely important) if they would not be illusions.

Dear MOHAMED EL NASCHIE,

The experiments in question point to something more deeper than space-time structure topological or otherwise. It (the paranormal) may very much be part of nature, if you like to define nature that way. The wonder is that there is a change in a particular quantity when attention is focused on one of the slits with the intention that the photons pass through that slit, and not the other one. can your topological space-time description account for such a phenomenon assuming that it is true?

@Louis Brassard--

Mind affecting matter is  very special phenomenon to be investigated. How does the mind direct bodily functions? Through the brain and the nervous system? How is the unphysical mind able to act upon physical brain and CNS? If it can attach itself by some unknown mechanism with these physical apparata, then there is no reason why it cannot do so in a physical system like the double slit apparata.

In regard to other independent verifications of their claims, who is to do such verification when almost all physicists without exception are allergic to even talk of the mind let alone going for an experimental test on its impact on a double slit pattern. they may talk glibly of the mind and all that but when it comes to serious experiments, they will fly away in fear of losing their reputation for having chosen some non-sense to work upon. Otherwise by now some people must have come forward to refute the claims of Radin et al.

Or else, if as you say, mind affecting matter is a normal thing of daily life, then they should have come forward with some theoretical justification for the results. In fact some physicists way back in 1970s e.g. R.D. Mattuck, E. H. Walker and H. Schmidt etc tried to explain such phenomena using QM. But their work received cold response.

@Ulrich Mutze

It is not necessary to specify every single quantity in an experiment when the quantity of interest is a ratio or a difference as is the case here. And of course, the intensities etc, that you demand can be had by anyone having the same apparatus as specified in the papers. That is easy. The consistency is there in the value of R_z coming out negative in all experiments. This is an experimental finding to be explained by some kind of theoretical model.

@Rakesh Yashroy,

You are right. But the question is how to scientifically experiment upon and explain such phenomena.

There aren't any effects of mind/consciousness on (the time evolution of) matter! However, the acquisition of information on some physical system by a conscious observer affects this observer's expectations of future events in that particular system and, hence, changes his/her predictions of the future. (However, just to repeat this point, it is nonsense to imagine that the mere presence of a brain - conscious or unconscious - that, for all practical purposes, does not interact with a certain physical system will affect the latter's evolution in time. Permit me to say that I find it somewhat discouraging how much nonsense is being circulated about these things. People ought to study the literature more seriously and critically!)

DEAR JURG,

Just today i saw a programme on a TV ( discovery) channel that was hosting a live show where males and females were competing to drive a toy car just on the basis of their level of continued focus upon the car crossing the rope. There were gadgets fixed on their heads with which the toy cars were being driven by amplifying the cortical signals. You also must have heard about smart cars that can take turns and do similar tasks just by taking a signal from the driver's thoughts generated in his head.

Of course lots of amplification is needed in these processes. But mind can affect matter nevertheless: This much is sure.

Radin et al also get very feeble impact on the double slit pattern when attention is focused on a particular slit.

Why should we be so closed as to brand it as non-sense! It is utterly unscientific and borders on religious enthusiasm to decry anything that goes against the accepted.

We may be on the brink of a new turn around in science! Just ponder over it!

@Rajat: Of course a serious work needs not to specify every single quantity in an experiment. But certainly it has to specify the most important and significant ones. Who is unable to identify the significant part of his procedure qualifies as an adherent of pseudoscience and in pseudoscience everything is possible. Whoever had the opportunity to observe pseudoscience and pseudoscientists at work will be puzzled by the question how it can be that fictitious results arise although it looks very probable that no element of conscious fraud is in the game. My personal attitude to this kind of experience is to acknowledge that I experience myself unable to discover even elementary tricks of professional illusionists and thus would waste my time in trying to uncover the trick in all instances of pseudoscience that I face.

"We may be on the brink of a new turn around in science! Just ponder over "

Mind is an unexplored realm and we have to be fully aware of our deep ignorance about it, everybody. I think it is more naive the one who tries to deny any other kind of interaction that the one who think it is possible.

The experiment of Aharanov- Bohm is quite significative on how the vector potential can affect the two slit experiment being absent any filed in the proximity of the screen. This phenomenon banally translated in a biological realm would easily explain such actions at a distance.

It is very obvious to think that the electromagnetic processes going on in our brain may affect something external, the point is how exactly??... That such phenomena are not yet scientifically recognized depend much on the scientific method itself which presents limitations in its application. Though it's been very powerful for most of our discoveries..

@Ulrich Mutze: You are right to a large extent. But what is called pseudoscience after all---hat which present day science cannot explain? Very elementary reasoning shows that science is extremely limited at any point of time and therefore, there will always be things that science of a time cannot explain. It does not mean that those phenomena don't exist or that they belong to pseudoscience. We have to be very careful here and we have to learn to learn from past mistakes. Science is not a closed field at any point of time; it improves, changes often overturns itself. We must learn from the Galileo episode, the Aharonov-Bohm effect (see Feynman's lectures), from the initial vehement opposition that Einstein had to face in regard to relativity and also from what happened to QM in its formative stage. Even the same thing goes with the Bohmian mechanics which was disregarded for a long time out of bias, the bias of following what is accepted by scientists (big ones) of a time.

In fact you will probably agree with me on how much of junk is written in the name of science in peer-reviewed journals every year. In fact this is real pseudoscience, not that which aims to investigate what is beyond science and by that tries to push the frontiers of science itself beyond.

Pseudoscience is that which parades as science, and this definition applies equally well to the large volume of irrelevant junk being churned out week after week in reputed journals, which contribute very little to the progress of science.

Of course not all journals are like this and not all articles are junk. But a large chunk is.

@Rajat: To deal with things that present day sience cannot explain does not constitute pseudoscience. If somebody could reduce solar radiation by 3% in synchrony with his mental activities this would be fully fall into the realm of science. If someone whould be able to make a large community of uncritical people believe that he can modulate the radiation of the sun by his thoughts this would be pseudoscience. I can't agree with your view of junk production by scientific journals. Of course, being peer-reviewed is not a guarantee for high scientific standards. In our pluralistic society we have to live with the fact that there are many voices and only a small part of them are trustworthy. Unfortuately, this also applies to academia. There is a saying that there is no absurdity for which you can't find a German professor as a crown-witness. But true scientists know which journals are high-level and they will find very few cases of junk or semi-junk in such journals.

Very nice Ulrich,

It is of course good to leave it to the conscience of each researcher to make a frank assessment of what percentage of his/her work would be pseudoscience i.e. junk publication, even if published in very high quality journals. Self-assessment is the best thing in this matter.

Now let's come back to the original question.

Supposing such a possibility as you propose is realized by somebody. How would you go about explaining such a mind-matter interaction using physical sciences?

I believe that part of the reason why we tend to reject outright any mind-matter interaction related experiments as pseudoscience is because we don't know how to deal with such a situation using the tools of our materialistic sciences.

Do you have any idea how such issues can possibly be addressed in Physics?

If not, then that is part of the reason why we call it pseudoscience. Simply because we cannot explain it if it is proved to exist experimentally.

@Stefano Quatrini,

I appreciate your very clear statements on the matter.

You are really thinking deeply, unlike trained minds steeped in so-called scientific orthodoxy.

@Rajat.

I don't know to which point of the debate the queer thoughts of your first paragraph are meant to be a contribution.

For science it is not a problem to be faced with empirical facts for which an explanation is presently out of reach. During most part of the ninetenth century astronomers knew that no chemical reaction could deliver the radiative power that was observed to originate in stars. One had to wait till the discovery of atomic nuclei and a preliminary understanding of their internal workings before the radiation of stars could be explained. If there are clear facts science will find an explanation, perhaps only after a few hundred years. 

Pseudoscience is characterized by the missing of clear facts. Pseudoscientists have enough knowledge of science that they can impress uncritical people but are unable to arange experiments and observations in a manner that repetition by independent groups reproduces the original findings. 

@U Mutze

I would also add that the stronger the deviation from the paradigm, the larger the "critical mass" of new experimental facts becomes. This is what keeps science coherent. 

As to the initial question, any influence of mind over matter that does not reduce to post-selection under the conditions of quantum statistics requires a radical amendment of quantum field theory. Those who do not understand this are simply illiterate, no matter how loudly they scream about "trained minds steeped in so-called scientific orthodoxy".

Dear Ulrich,

It was a general remark on the new definition of pseudoscience that i referred to in the previous post. It was not targeted at any individual. In fact even very big scientists do not have all their publications of equal impact. So some of them may fall in the junk category in future. We see it happen so often in science when an idea is accepted temporarily and then is forgotten beyond any possible resurrection. One can find hundreds and thousands of such publications by lesser scientists that have contributed to the junk which i refer to as pseudoscience.

But that was beside the point.

The main debate concerns what should be our attitude to the findings of Radin et al's experiments?

(a) Reject them outright as pseudoscience and hence scientifically unacceptable?

(SIMPLE: Give it a bad name and hang! And this is the easiest route which most of us want to take, following our "training in scientific orthodoxy").

(b) Try to verify them by re-performing the same experiments in different laboratories the world over?

(c) Try to find out theoretical models that could explain such effects as reported assuming that they have some truth in them?

I think very few have the patience for (b) and most of us are impatient enough to choose (a) and forget it all.

While I believe some people should at least sit down and rack their heads about "What if these expts. have some truth in them?" and thus try for (c).

@Plimak

"...any influence of mind over matter that does not reduce to post-selection under the conditions of quantum statistics requires a radical amendment of quantum field theory. Those who do not understand this are simply illiterate, no matter how loudly they scream about "trained minds steeped in so-called scientific orthodoxy".

How do we represent the mind in physics so that its interactions with matter will reduce to post-selection effects in quantum statistics? Any idea?

What is the mind after all? A piece of matter? A field? What is it and how are we going to have its interaction represented in a physical theory?

My illiteracy may kindly be excused.

Here is a little piece of advice: If you like to philosophize rather than discuss physics you should say so! It is not bad to debate philosophical questions. But to mix up everything with everything else makes me feel dizzy.

Rajat,

I think that we are not really at stage a) and nor ready to do stage b).  I think we are at the stage of evaluating if their work is serious, well done, at evaluating if something is this work gives us a reasonable doubt that a mind-matter effects is effectively observed, serious enough to go to stage b) and if not stage a) because automatically effective.  Stage c) is totally premature right now.

@Rajat

1. IMHO, "mind" is a concept of philosophy. It does not belong to physics, but to rules of applying physics. As a physicist, I am only allowed to talk about "brain", which is a macroscopic body, subject to laws of QED.

2. "Mind" will start existing in physics the moment someone formulates equations of motion of mind, including its coupling to other kinds of matter. For a physicist, these equations will BE mind. Before that, any discussion of mind is, at best, an over-lunch talk. 

@Rajat.

Your points (a) and (c) show that you did learn nothing from the debate so far.

(a) Is not an option and was not proposed by anybody here. My statement was that an analysis of the work to which Louis provided a link clearly shows its pseudoscientific character in a typical manner, namely by saying nothing about how the claimed effect shows up in the primary obtained data. So the pseudoscientific nature is infered from the methodology of the work not from the nature of the claimed results. All your writing leaves me with only little hope that you understand the difference between this attitude and your point (a).

(c) This would be the worst thing that could happen at this point. This point comes onto the agenda if the phenomena under consideration are reasonably validated. Validating the phenomena is the responsibility of the authors. Finding scientific explanations is than (i.e. after sufficient validation) a challenge for all scientists.

PS. I just become aware of Louis contribution on (a),(b),(c). We seem to have no dissent here.

Indeed, mind has drastic effects on matter inside earthly laboratories, in the sense that experiments in physics are planned by intelligent human beings, with the experimental equipment arranged in clever ways so as to affect the dynamics of a physical system we wish to observe to enable an experimentalist to measure or observe certain physical quantities of interest. HOWEVER, once the experiment has been designed (by an intelligent human being), the presence or absence of some brains in the laboratory, during the time the experiment is running, has no effect on the outcome of the experiment and is absolutely irrelevant! (Things such as postselection belong to the design of the experiment and can be automatized.)

It is well known that Quantum Mechanics is NOT a strictly deterministic theory. As we understand things now, our best physical theory does NOT enable us to predict most future events with certainty. We can only predict the likelihood of some event to happen in the future. Of course, this leaves the possibility open that Nature is deterministic. It is merely our ability to predict the behavior of Nature that is inadequate to predict all events with certainty. The question formulated by Charles Francis is an old and well known one and belongs to the realm of philosophy (and theology), not physics. For the time being, it does not have a conclusive answer. (You may choose an answer according to your emotional preferences.) But feel free to debate it anyway!

Jürg,

it should not have escaped your attention that the debate here is about a work that claims that 'the presence of some brains in the laboratory, during the time the experiment was running, had an effect on the outcome of the experiment' (to use your words with modifications). Do you think that simply stating that such things don't happen is an appropriate reaction to a publication as the one under consideration here?

I love the way U Mutze put it: 'the presence of some brains in the laboratory, during the time the experiment was running, had an effect on the outcome of the experiment'. It emphasizes how badly our topic is actually defined. Imagine an electroencephalogram is taken. From the point of view of a physicist, this is nothing but yet another experiment within the QED paradigm. While not just the presence of the brain but its exact positioning are of critical importance for the outcome.

Yes, Dr. Mutze, indeed, I feel my reaction is entirely appropriate! I think I understand quantum mechanics reasonably well and take full responsibility for what I claim. (Incidentally, much of my work on the foundations of quantum mechanics can be found on 'arXiv'.) -- Forgive me if I comment on the last entry of Charles Francis. A statement such as: "It is well established that quantum mechanics excludes the possibility that nature is deterministic" indicates a lack of understanding of what kind of certainties natural science can or cannot provide! Nature is Nature, and Quantum Mechanics is a mental picture of Nature. It is not a picture that enables us to make deterministic predictions about events happening in the future. This does NOT imply that "quantum mechanics excludes the possibility that nature is deterministic"! And, moreover, I pledge for a division of labor and responsibilities: Physics and philosophy are two distinct disciplines addressing rather different kinds of questions and issues! I am convinced that both physics and philosophy have a bright future and will remain important. They will fertilize one another. A debate between physicists and philosophers is welcome and useful and refreshing. But, in the end, they have different jobs to carry out - both useful ones.-- Well, let me leave it at that for the moment!

Jurg,

That philosophy, biology, psychology and physics are separate subjects/branches and should be kept separate as water-tight compartments is itself a philosophy that you are propounding. And it does us no good. As Charles has already pointed out and as you also know pretty well that science began its journey as natural philosophy. And many of the founding fathers of QM kept publishing in the "Philosophical magazine" in the first quarter of the last century. Divorcing philosophy from any field of knowledge is an impossibility of the first kind, and is thus "AN UNNATURAL PHILOSOPHY". Any field of knowledge, requires a philosophy first and foremost. So please bear with philosophical content.

Unification of physics (forces) alone has proved an uphill task for us. And, no wonder it is very difficult for us to even think of unifying so many apparently diverse fields of human knowledge. But whether we like it or not, all knowledge finally has to be unified into one whole and that is highest conception of complete knowledge that human beings can ever aspire for.

It is with this attitude that I have brought up this thread so that we discuss on how we can possible find a common meeting ground for physics and psychology, may be via neurology or physics of the brain.

The brain is a physical system and so it can interact with other physical systems including double slit apparata. the interactions may be feeble and Radin et al's experiments may require more refinement in future. See we didn't get to the exact value of speed of light in one experiment of Fizeau. It took us centuries to measure accurately such a big number as the speed of light. So these experiments may well be the first indications of some mind-matter interaction to be verified in more accurate future experiments.

All I can do, at this point, is to recommend to all of you to read more closely what I wrote, before you attempt to prove me wrong! For example, I have just emphasized how valuable philosophy and debates between philosophers and physicists are, and that philosophy is likely to continue to flourish in the future. However, experiments on quantum systems and theoretical interpretations of the data they bring forward are NOT a subject for philosophers, but for physicists!

"I know of at least eight proofs that the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics is not compatible with determinism in nature." Well, that sounds very impressive! But the statement is patently meaningless. A correct statement is that quantum mechanics does not give a deterministic (but a PROBABILISTIC) account of histories of events observed in Nature. Nobody can exclude that, deep down, the evolution of Nature is determined by mechanisms (or superior beings) that we don't have any access to or knowledge of.

Incidentally, there are no theorems about Nature, nor can there be any proofs of such "theorems". There are only theorems about statements within a theory. But the relation of a theory to what happens in Nature is outside the scope of theorems. I believe Popper would have agreed with me.

And let's not forget the warning of Wittgenstein that we ought to remain silent about things we cannot talk about.

There is [possibly, if the experiments were made carefully, of course] no something surprising in the experiments outcomes that are presented in the Radin’s paper – including, first of all, that impacts of non-material consciousness on material structures is evident in everyday human’s practice – more then 7 billions of humans well govern by their material bodies as that their non-material thoughts dictate. Though till now it is unknown – what are those forces, which a thought uses when, say, forces a human’s hand to push on a key. 

As well as this fact has practically no relations to the famouse priblem of poore Shredinger cat – the QM uncertainty is principally necessary for material objects to exist as something changing;  it existed.and exists always without any relations to – there is an “observer” or not.

Though one cannot exclude that some “participants” indeed created some refraction conditions between light source and the slits, what cause the observed patternts shifts. But to observe the impact on a distance there is no necessity to build so complex instrument. For that enough, for example, to hang a torsion pendulum, which is made from a pensil and a filament, and to try to rotate the pendulum by thought. Seems 20-30% of people can turn the pendulum on a 30-90 degrees angle without problems…

Cheers

Professor Fröhlich,

my point has nothing to do with your understanding of quantum mechanics (I read some of your many, many papers with admiration for their depth and elegance). Instead I critizised that you simply state

"HOWEVER, once the experiment has been designed (by an intelligent human being), the presence or absence of some brains in the laboratory, during the time the experiment is running, has no effect on the outcome of the experiment and is absolutely irrelevant!"

in a context where we are discussing what may be wrong with a published work that claims to have proven the contrary. Please read your own words again:

'Incidentally, there are no theorems about Nature, nor can there be any proofs of such "theorems". There are only theorems about statements within a theory. But the relation of a theory to what happens in Nature is outside the scope of theorems.'

I couldn't agree more. Of course I'm personally also absolutely sure ("Ich würde einen Besen fressen...") that also your statement 'However, once ...' is correct. But I feel that science should not treat this as a dogma. Physics is strong enough to find the flaws in claims as those under consideration here and it should demonstrate this.

In my view, the discourse about the "effect of mind on matter" should first try to clarify what is mind and what is matter. In my view, mind is only "the noise of the engine" and it does not and cannot have any effect on matter. Everything happens at the physical level; the rest is "noise". This is basically epiphenomenalism, which nobody accepts, but I consider it the only "serious" approach to the body-mind issue.

@Mario

Did you think before actually writing? Then it is a unique case of noise fully deciding the dynamics of the system (since mind is noise and you thought using your mind/noise! ).

Mario,

“In my view, the discourse about the "effect of mind on matter" should first try to clarify what is mind and what is matter”

– you are true, of course; just because of the notions  “mind” (more correct “Consciousness”) and “Matter” aren’t defined in this thread, it is so long, when some posts have practically zero relation to the thread’s topic. You didn’t clarify these points also, and so only wrote some ungrounded claims, though.

As well as the notions aren’t defined in my previous post, so:

(1) -  the notions   “Matter” and “Consciousness” are Meta-physical and Meta-mainstream-philosophical and so can be properly defined only in the “The Information as Absolute” conception – see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute

(2) – the conception contains a rigorous proof that all/every what exist is/are some informational patterns, there is/are nothing besides the informational objects/systems that are elements of absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set; including the systems “Matter” and “Consciousness” are some sub-Sets, they are some informational systems and so don’t principally [in depth] differ.

 Thus, though these sub-Sets are different because of they are organized on different basic logical bonds/ conditions, they can interact – and interact indeed. First of all just because of some informational interactions the system/program “Consciousness” resides stably tens of years on the totally material chemical structure “the brain” and govern the also totally material structure “human’s body”.

(3) Other cases of the interaction “a consciousness – a material object” that can be observed – see, for example the Radin et al paper, and, again

  (i) – there can be (and are) done other experiments, where non-material consciousness, operating by non-material thoughts, changes material objects states, for example – changes their spatial position or orientation, and

-(ii) – such effects have practically no relations to QM uncertainty problem, to the “hidden variables”, etc.

More – see the link above.

Cheers   

Article the Information as Absolute

Whenever I say something logically consistent and reasonable, everybody protests, give me negative points, and so forth. I may end up poisoned, like Socrates. I am definitely not a good entertainer.

Anyway, scientific discourse is *closed in the space of the physical reality*. Discourse about the impact of the conscious mental states on the physical world is a pure mysticism. Because it is not clear (conceptually!) how anything non-physical could have any impact on something physical.

Conscious mental states are a *manifestation* of what is going on at the *physical* (neural) level: mental is an "emergent property" of the brain. This has been shown experimentally some fifty years ago. Let me quote a piece of text that I wrote long ago:

Benjamin Libet has shown something that has been considered very strange, but which seems very normal to me. Libet's experiments have shown that the *neural activities* in the brain, which lead to a specific action, begin almost a second *before* the subject believes he has *consciously* taken the decision to perform that action. In the context of this fact, if you believe that "consciousness is something which *does* something, then you are presented with almost a paradox", says Roger Penrose (The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, p. 135).

However, in spite of Libet's experiments, most people insist that mental states play an essential "causal role", although it is not clear what role they could play and *how* could they do this (since the neural comes *before* the conscious). I argue that mental states are not produced ("inspired") by each other, nor do mental states produce anything. Mental states are products of the *physical states* from which they emerge. *Physical states* are causally related and *they* cause each other, and with this they produce *a chain of mental states*. But mental states do not do anything: they are only the noise that the physical system produces.

In the case you do not trust Libet, let me mention one "experiment" that happened to me. When I met my new neighbour, I was overwhelmed by the eroticism of this female soul. This happened in a nanosecond or so, and this was surely not a matter of my conscious decision. I did not decide anything: it simply happened. Do not worry: I will survive this experiment, but I have strong reasons to believe that consciousness comes the last and causes nothing. We function at the physical level: we only happen to be conscious of what we do, or what has been happening to us.

I almost forgot the initial question "whether I think before I write". I do not know. Thoughts happen to me, and I write them down. Thoughts and feelings happen to me: I do not produce them out of nothing, by some "free will", or similar mystic force. I am "a small whirl" in a big river of existence, and plenty of things happen to me. This is not a fatalism, because my "I" *is* "a force among forces", but this is another story.

Although I personally have never believed in paranormal claims, I agree we should always carefully look at a sound experiment. This particular experiment seems to have some problems:

1) the quantity it measures is not very clearly defined.

2) The way in which the author arrives to the conclusion that the presence of meditators has a significant effect is not made clear. The author essentially states that the result is statistically significant, giving no way for the reader to form his opinion, nor data whuch would allow a statistician to confirm this conclusion. Surely, the fact that the experimental curve on Figure 4 more or less follows the alternation between attention and lack of attention is surprising. But first, it is not true (check, for example, near time 400-500). It would be nice to take the product of the experimental curve with a +1 for attention and a -1 for lack of attention. This product should be predominantly positive (or perhaps negative). It would have been good to plot this, but was not done. Similarly, it is fundamental to know how the quantity measured behaves in the absence of humans in the immediate vicinity of the apparatus. Again, no quantitative information on this seems to be given.

In Sagan's words ``extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence''. I would like to see a far more complete discussion of the effects involved in this particular experiment before I will consider the (indeed mind-boggling) possibility of a paranormal influence of mind on interference patterns.

The effect of mind over matter is question similar to 'effect of observer on observation'. The basic point is that there is no difference between the observer and the observation in the truest sense ("Yatha pindey, tathha Brahmandey or Like body like universe", as per Ancient Wisdom.) Accordingly, the observer sees himself in the observation, without realizing this. Experiments with 'dhyan yoga/meditation' may bring this fact to light, as also endorsed by Gita @ Verse/shloka 35 which says "O seeker/Arjuna, through knowledge, you will first start seeing yourself in all beings/things; thereafter, you will see Me/Absolute Truth in all beings/things".

Mario,

For the purpose pertaining of this thread, it is not important to know what Mind is.  All that we need to discuss is whether or not the experiments of Radin et al. demonstrate an influence of the attention of some humans on the results of the experiments.  We do not need to know what attention is.  

Your phenomenal description of your ''I'' is familiar to my ''I''.  Although you do not know the deep reasons why you come to some of your decisions, you still hold them to be yours and so you have free will or at least you do not have the impression of being forced to do what you do.  You have some moral principle, there are things you would not do to other humans and you do your best to behave appropriatly.  This sound free to me. And you seem to know what is going on; this sound conscious enough.

@Mario,

I think Louis has already addressed your case. You cannot deny agency or your own free will. You know that you are(exist), and you know that you know that you are(exist).

This is fundamental to your own existence and you can never deny it. You cannot say I do not exist or that you do not know whether you exist or not. You can doubt everything but cannot doubt your own existence.

Apropos your suicidal thoughts:

"Whenever I say something logically consistent and reasonable, everybody protests, give me negative points, and so forth. I may end up poisoned, like Socrates. I am definitely not a good entertainer."

Please give up this kind desperation. You have mentioned your position perfectly well and it is also a widely accepted and very strongly favored position in the scientific community. So it is not that we do not understand you and give you negative marks/comments. Do not mind a downvote from an unknown someone. You are most welcome and you enjoy all the freedom on earth to express your thoughts freely more so in a scientific discussion forum like this thread.

Your position is very well taken.

Cheers. Be happy.

@F. Alvarez,

Thank you very much for your very pertinent comments. I have the following to add in regard to your two points:

(1) The quantity it measures is not very clearly defined:

I think they measure a well-defined quantity: R = D/S.

(2) The way in which the author arrives to the conclusion that the presence of meditators has a significant effect is not made clear. The author essentially states that the result is statistically significant, giving no way for the reader to form his opinion, nor data which would allow a statistician to confirm this conclusion.

I think this point also is addressed well in their work.

The quantity \delta R = Rtoward -Raway

I let to myself to add some comments to the last Rajat post, though that would be some offtopic here – in certain extent.

So – relating to the “free will” etc. All/everything in the “Information” Set (the link see above) have happened and is happening – for dynamic systems, including, for example every human’s life – always, or forever or “in a absolutely infinitely long time”. Besides every what is happening/evolving/developing executes that in full accordance with always existent scenario; as well as everything – every human’s body atom’s state, every interaction with the external, every human’s thought are in the consistence with every human’s scenario.

So in depth there is no “free will” – as well as there is no such a thing as “objective probability” – even for QM objects. But the subjective probability remains, and humans chouse the variants   of behavior in concrete situations with random outcomes, as they would be indeed random.

But taking into account at least that any choused variant, if happened, existed and exist already and always, and that every states of human existed and exists already and always also as a pictures in an always existent and moving film,  in the reality a human lives mainly attempting to guess – what (e.g., - good/bad, fortunate/non-fortunate boy/girl) role (s)he plays. 

Though from the development of the living beings on Earth “from chemical elements to the human”, i.e. “more and more out Matter [into other regions in the Set]” it seems reasonable to suggest that choosing variants that develop humans, first of all – [eternal] humans’ consciousness, in this direction would be utmost consistent with the scenario of this [the beings’] development.

So it seems rather probable that sometimes humans’ consciousness will be capable to travel in the Set and impact on material objects, if necessary; not only refracting photons at some two slit experiments…

Cheers

Luis and Rajat,

I am very busy with my attempt to gather all my wisdom and ignorance about "time & mind" in one text on which I have been working. This is the reason I cannot participate much in this debate.

Anyway, let me answer to some remarks.

"For the purpose pertaining of this thread, it is not important to know what Mind is.  ... We do not need to know what attention is. " - Well, I do not share such view. It is important to clarify the meaning of concepts ... I consider important to differentiate three basic classes of entities: (1) physical, (2) mental, and (3) abstract. A stone (or a neuron), a desire, and number 5 are very different kinds of things. I cannot say more about this now, but I will put my text (mentioned above) on RG, when I finish it.

Regarding "suicidal thoughts" and "desperation", do not worry. I am in an almost perfect shape & mood. I wanted to entertain the audience with my lamentation about "negative points" I get. However, it is the fact that when I write something that I consider good, people do usually not like it. And when I write something trivial, I get positive points. But this does not mean much to me, indeed. I usually vote up those who criticize me.

Anyway, the participation in such debates is a relax for me. But I often do not have much time for relaxation.

Thank God you were joking Mario. It is a big relief for me since I took it seriously.  I see that you are a serious and deep thinker. I also want that mind and attention etc. should be defined properly first as pointed out by Sergey Shevchenko. But Louis is right to an extent in this context. We may just do with common sense definitions of mind and attention as is understood in daily usage.

On mind and time, time is mode of the mind that registers change. The mind where no change is there there is no time.

Finally, on the three categories, the abstract and the mental are one and the same.  In fact you may include the intermediate between physical and mental the metaphysical as a third category, But the abstract is thoroughly mental.

How do you define these categories? Hope you put the article up on RG soon. It would be interesting.

@Ulrich Mutze,

Pseudoscience is characterized by the missing of clear facts. Pseudoscientists have enough knowledge of science that they can impress uncritical people but are unable to a range experiments and observations in a manner that repetition by independent groups reproduces the original findings.

Who can be the potential groups who would do the experiments to either validate or refute them? Do you know of any group that can possibly do such experiments? These are not simple experiments. The physicists must know psychology and research methods employed in psychological research to get appropriate objective estimation of quantities involved. It should be a combined group of physicists and psychologists who can redo the experiments. I do not know who these guys would be and whether they will ever be available.

I don't think that in this particular case clear facts are missing. A quantity \delta R = Rtoward -- Raway comes out negative in all those experiments beyond any statistical doubts or uncertainties.

do you know people who can do these kind of experiments? Does anybody on this thread know such people who can do that?

Rajat,

I made a mistake when I entered into a discourse about the paper I have not read. Mistakes happen, and I am pretty experienced in living with them.

The remarks from your answer are interesting; let me comment briefly on a couple of them.

I hold that the "mental (subjective) states" and the "abstract entities" should be considered ontologically different. My mental states are *mine and only mine*; abstract entities are *universal* and they are available to everybody (in principle).

When I go to sleep, my mental states are "switched off"; on the other hand, a theory and a symphony do not depend on any specific person (mental state). Theories and symphonies *are* creations of specific minds (mental states), but they have been expressed in a *universally accessible form*, so that they now "exist by themselves" and are available to everybody.

Regarding metaphysics, I consider it a part of the class of abstract entities. Time, space, numbers, causality, ... are all essentially metaphysical & abstract entities. They are *the means* by which we speak about our perception and understanding of physical reality, rather than a part of that reality. ... Such approach is called "descriptive ontology" (metaphysic). I know that the general theory of relativity (or some relativists) speak about space and time in a different way, but this is my view.

Anyway, I must stay away from the RG now, because otherwise I will never finish my "masterpiece" about time & mind.

Mario,

You may be interested in the ideas of Michel Mizony. His interpretation of the role of time and space as interpretative artefact or reality but not part of reality (this is a modern transcendalist position) do support your position as I interpret it from your last post. I only found text, paper and book written in French.  He is a high ranking mathematical physicist, specialist of relativity.  He elaborate a great deal on the mathematical pluralism of Poincarre and the Kantian notion of the apriori of space time.  He demostrate that any theory expressed into one geometrical framework can be translated into another geometrical framework.  He translated General Relativity in Euclidean Geometry.  

@Rajat

I'm sure that if I had the raw data from the line camera, a few frames in mentally uninfluenced condition and a few in strong influnced condition I would see that all is humbug. A good publication would show such a selection together with the output of the spectral power algorithm working on these samples. Than it could continue with arguing in terms of the R's; to consider these simply as measured data is naive.

From my experience with many evaluations of patents, product ideas, ... in industry I tell you that even strong imaginative power can't foresee how proudly presented claims can evaporate if it comes to inspection of the primary data. My experience also teaches me that typically an obscure mixture of credulity, poor knowledge, lack of experience, poor judgement, and - in rare cases - explicit fraud is at work.   

@Rajat

``I don't think that in this particular case clear facts are missing. A quantity \delta R = Rtoward -- Raway comes out negative in all those experiments beyond any statistical doubts or uncertainties.''

Where did you see that in the paper? I did not find any data that showed this with any degree of certainty. In particular, I failed to see how the statistical estimates are derived, which is truly fundamental. You were right to say that we should not reject sound conclusions because they have noise. Butt the analysis of noise is well understood, and it should be performed in detail if anyone is to believe the research is sound. I have not been able to understand what kind of statistical analysis was performed, for example, to reach the conclusion that the probability of the effect's being due to chance is 4*10^{-6}.

These may seem technical issues, but for important questions, technique is basic. Without a sound statistical foundation, such work will remain irrelevant. If the effect is real, though, I do not doubt that the author should be able to publish a convincing statistical analysis. My real fear, however, is that, as has happened so often before, this effect is indeed a fluke and will disappear with a detailed  statistical analysis. 

Thank you very much Ulrich and Leyvraz for your responses.

The specific result that I found is on page-161 column-2 of the 2012 paper and is inferred from the concavity of the graphs in fig-5 on that page.

They have reported the same kind of effects in their 2013 paper (see the reference given in the question above) also.In this paper are also given pictures of the intensity distribution from the camera frames as demanded by Ulrich.

Regards,

Rajat

Dear All,

My question still remains unanswered:

Where can we find experimenters to verify or falsify the claims made in these papers?

So many researchers are there on RG. Can we not get another group to debunk these results and call their bluff, if they are fraudulent?

If not, the we should stop calling it pseudoscience and putting the onus of proving themselves right again on their own shoulders. They have reproduced their results in 2013 already. Now it is for other people to check if their claims are well-founded.

Instead I think we should set out to find a Quantum theoretical justification for the effects, if possible. Any ideas?

Dear Rajat,

since the validity of these experiments would change physics fundamentally and would finally make the originators of such a change famous people, they have motivation enough to keep things going. If they simply move on to other topics this would prove that they lost confidence in the reality of their findings. Than it is not our task to reanimate the case. That you insist in your desire to see a theoretical justifications for dubious phenomena surprises me.

PS: Now I found the 2013 article. It is much more complicated but not more convincing. All camera-related curves that are shown are averages over thousends of samples so that one can't see what the effect of the now much more complicated and artificial data preprocessing will be.  They write nothing about vibration damping means which would absolutely mandatory if 3 m away of the optical device a person may intentionally change its musle tonus and thus may cause elastic vibrations. Also the radio sound can have effects. A heavy optical table would be the usual measure against such an interaction path. It is obvious that a slight shift of the laser beam would change the diffraction image significantly. If one would widen the laser beam to a parallel bundle one would get rid of this sensitivity.

Thank you very much Bernd for your impartial observations.

I am also pained to see so much of dogmatism in science parading as a real scientific attitude that precludes anything beyond what is accepted up to a particular instant in science.

And I don't see this can be remedied, given the kind of intolerant attitude we develop in the course of training in science very much as part and parcel of the training itself. Unless one has openness of a fine category one will simply brush aside any new finding as poppycock, till that finding itself labours its way up steadily step by step.

Of course, it is always good and commendable to scrutinize everything thoroughly, but to brand it as pseudoscience just because it does not fall within the accepted precincts of the science of today, is I think a serious case of scientific dogmatism.

The experiments in question are extremely painstaking and requires expertise in both the experimental physics and psychology and also computational and statistical acumen.

In my humble opinion we should try to find groups of researchers who can re-perform these experiments to the satisfaction of the scientific community and then if the results are found unworthy we should forget it all as a hoax. But never before that, howsoever strong our arguments against the experiments may be, for the simple reason that they are experimental results. And only experiments can refute experiments perfectly. theoretical arguments can validate them or raise a suspicion against them. but can never invalidate them.

WE NEED EXPERIMENTS BY OTHER GROUPS. WHERE ARE THOSE GROUPS?

It seems as worthwhile to repeat here a few points.

 Before considering any interaction “consciousness – material object” is necessary to have some understanding – what is Matter?  what is “Consciousness”. Since both notions are Meta-physical, they can be understandable enough [for this case also] only in the “The Information as Absolute” conception – see the link in the SS post on 6-th page here.

So Matter and Consciousness: on the one hand, both are some informational systems and so principally can interact; on another hand they are based on different logical (and “illogical somewhere in Consciousness”) rules and alphabets, so are essentially different informational systems.

For example it is possible to point out a couple of distinctions between Matter and Consciousness.

First of all – Matter is rigorous logical system of material objects, where every interaction between objects happens only by using true information; so a human can decode in some cases (and on certain level) these interactions and at that can use very efficient tool – mathematics, which is mainly [abstract] Consciousness’s product [though, of course, which independently exists in the “Information” Set].

For Consciousness this rule isn’t obligatory, She can operate with false and uncertain information, it seems just therefore concrete [at least humans’] consciousnesses are unstable and to operate stably are forced to use stable material bases – humans’ brains and seems as power supplies – the rest in the bodies.

A next difference – in Matter a lot of limitations acts, first of all – the conservations laws. When for consciousness the limitations are weaker; an example – if somebody has 20 l of benzine, he can run in a car, say, on 200 km; if he gives 10 l to a fellow, he can run on 100 km. But if somebody has an information and gives it to the fellow, he doesn’t loss anything; etc.

But, again, since material and conscious objects in depth “are the same”, they can interact and they evidently interact  - just therefore on Earth there exist living beings up to the humans.

Thus there is no surprising when a consciousness impact on a material object, here for an observer only one problem appears – how interpret some observed interaction. This problem for the recent human, having rather limited capabilities,  indeed isn’t simple, but has practically no relation to the recent physics, which studies exclusively Matter – because here one can find indeed stable bonds, laws, etc. The experiments in the Radin at el paper have no relations to recent physics also, including no relations to the “psi-function collapse”, “hidden variables”, other QM problems.

Though these problems are indeed utmost fundamental and it isn’t impossible that extremely précised experiments with two and more slits photons diffraction could result in some important data, when an [including - unperceived] impact of some experimentalists can be a rather undesirable noise. But that’s all, what relats to physics.

The existent “paranormal” events should be studied also, and that isn’t by any means principally a “pseudoscience”; but seems in a near future a corresponding science only will use physical methods and instruments to gather experimental data enough to formulate its basic postulates/suggestions.

Cheers

Sergey,

How do you say these experiments have no relation to recent physics and other problems of QM like psi collapse?

If they are proved correct by further experiments and a quantum theoretical justification for such mind-matter interaction is  found out, then they will first of all decide the one acceptable interpretation of QM amongst the many that have been proposed so far. These experiments imply a role of the observer in the collapse.

Rajat,

the experiments in question – as well possible others, where somebody attempts to seek for some relations between forces that are produced by a consciousness and “physical” , i.e. those that act between purely material objects, forces,  relate to physics as to the science of material objects and processes only qualitatively - “an effect is/not”. But attempts to find some quantitative formalized relations rather probably will be in vain.

For example, if some human will change some state, say – a momentum of a particle, here is inevitably some uncertainty of something, since some uncertainty is inevitable at any change because of logical inconsistence of the notion “a change”. But it will be nothing surprising if this uncertainty will not be as Delta(X)*Delta(P); and,  even if that will be so, that this uncertainty will be near h-bar/2; the effects of the human action on different objects that differ in “inessential physically” properties can be essentially different, etc.

Besides – all QM processes, including “psi-function collapses” constantly happen in Matter, without any relation -  there is some “observer”, or not; and, e.g. diffraction patterns appear equally on a diffraction grating, which is made by a human, and on huge number of gratings that were made by Natire; etc.

Cheers

I respect all of you as human beings! But I feel utterly discouraged by most of the opinions contributed to this blog. I can distinguish between respect for a human being and disrespect for misleading and wrong opinions uttered by human beings -- and you, dear contributors, should be able to make this distinction, too. I fear debates like this one are a symptom that there is something wrong with the postmodern way of debating and disseminating "science". ResearchGate is doing its best to do the scientific community a big disservice by promoting pseudo-scientific debates and distorting well tested scientific quality standards. I don't like this!

Welcome back Jurg.

What is wrong with this debate, to be precise? You are also part of it now, Aren't you?

I am also not in favor of diluting the well-tested scientific standards, nor in favor of pseudo-scientific debates. A pair of published papers in a peer-reviewed journal surely merits a debate, you will agree.

Now the quality of the debate depends on the quality of the participants which we have very little freedom to filter. Let all kinds of arguments come, the discerning ones will filter out the trash and take only what is meaningful like a the proverbial SWAN does.

Should we not have further experiments done to prove/disprove the reported findings ?

Should we not go for theoretical justification/falsification of the findings till other experiments are done?

Then what has gone wrong and where?

Well all arguments cannot be equally strong, nor can all proponents of such arguments be all equally well-versed in the art of arguing out things.

We can bear with such things for sure, as you mentioned, we have respect for human beings.

A human being also includes his/her thoughts, arguments, prejudices, biases, follies and foibles and what not. And we respect all that "full-bag" called the human being, not just on paper but in our deepest level of feelings where we don't want to hurt another just because he/she is a little less in knowledge and achievement compared to us.

Please bear with such things and contribute your worthwhile thoughts which will dispel some darkness in some corner of some unenlightened minds.

Rajat,

it seems you take too much attention to some posts here. Indeed now there exist a lot of people  that indeed think that all, what cannot be explained in framework of textbooks, is “pseudoscience”, which should not be discussed in the RG or even anywhere.

For example, relating to this thread topic, such people seems even don’t suspect that, e.g., the problem “why a human’s hand moves as the human’s thought forces?” really exists,  that it is evidently objective and that it is outside mainstream physics.

At that they indeed believe that all published in the a huge number of official physical journals papers are indeed “scientific”, though, for example, if some physicist would have gone to sleep in a sopor in 1975 and wake up in 2015, he could find practically nothing new in the mainstream physics.

And they till now indeed believe that, for example, the Matter’s spacetime is Minkowski space, that the space can be “contracted” and  the time can be “dilated” by anybody, who called himself “the observer” and synchronized a few clocks establishing some magic “reference frame”. Though that isn’t even a “pseudoscience”.

As to the thread’s topic – I cannot  add something new to my posts above: the impacts of non-material  human’s consciousness (as well as of some rudimentary “consciousnesses” of other living beings) on material objects really and objectively exist, but that hasn’t direct relation to the mainstream QM problems.

Cheers

Would someone please explain me what this discussion is about. IMHO, mind is not a physical concept. It is metaphysics. In physics, "mind" equals "experimental design". So, again IMHO, the discussion is about whether experimental design may influence results of the experiment. (!?)

What do I miss?

Mr. Plimak,

why educated physicists sometimes are unable to see the obvious?

The discussion is about two publications which claim that the diffrection image generated by a laser beam and a double-slit grating and  recorded by an electronic line camera could be changed in strict correlation to a supposed cause. This supposed cause was the mental concentration of people on the task to achieve such a change. As it was pointed out in this discussion already it is unimportant of what kind the concept of  'mind' is. Since, as the publications report, a subgroup of the tested participants was particularly successful in changing the diffraction image it is anyway only the question what these people did.

The serious question underlying the discussion is the following: Is science allowed to ignore such published 'findings' since, based on extended experience with similar cases one foresees  that they will evaporate under scrutiny, or should we take them seriously as any serious experimental work and should try to find theoretical (mainly quantum physical) equations for the experimental findings. 

The most obvious thing you are missing is the experience from  reading the publications under consideration. Not reading the stuff is probably a wise decision but it may not come as a surprise to you that it is a prerequisite for writing a meaningful contribution here.                         

"Not reading the stuff is probably a wise decision but it may not come as a surprise to you that it is a prerequisite for writing a meaningful contribution here."

Well, no, I don't agree with this point of view! For example, one can contribute the opinion that, in the presence of lots of fascinating, concrete physics problems, it is a shame to spend one's time on phenomena that look marginal and are most probably fake.

@Rajat ``If they are proved correct by further experiments and a quantum theoretical justification for such mind-matter interaction is found out, then they will first of all decide the one acceptable interpretation of QM amongst the many that have been proposed so far. These experiments imply a role of the observer in the collapse.''

I beg to differ. These experiments are not, to the best of my knowledge, consistent with any accepted interpretation of QM, far less are the experimental results a consequence of any reasonable theory. The results stated involve mental influence on a large number of photons, since the phenomenon observed is macroscopic. There is no obvious theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. This absence of explanation and the extremely weird nature of what is being observed makes many of us; I among others, doubt the results' validity. It does not, however, diminish their importance, if true.

Ulrich claims we should dismiss the claims on the basis of previous history. While I have a great deal of  sympathy for this attitude, I do not think it can be defended: we must always look at experiments when well made and clearly explained. However, the lack of clear statistics (no error bars on figure 5, figure 4 allows only to say very little about what happens, no presentation is given of the unperturbed system, no details of the statistical analysis are presented) allows me to state that the authors need first to clean up their experiment until they can hope for other people to start repeating it.

Plimak,

it is about concentrated attention altering the intensity distribution in a double slit experiment. Please go through the publications referred to in the question.

Regarding mind equaling experimental design, you are right to a certain extent. But here the mind is an active element even during the experiments and alters the distribution that was expected if it were not active.

And, those having greater ability to concentrate have more impact and are able to generate more change in the distribution pattern, towards making it just a single slit pattern.

The concentration of attention is to force the light beam to pass through a particular slit by such attention, not through both slits although both are equally probable paths.

Hope this clarifies your doubts.

I have always been an admirer of Charles Francis for his very frank expressions and deep understanding of issues at hand, and my admiration grows day by day. He has put it very clearly that the uneasiness we feel at such an experiment is precisely because we don't have a reasonable theory for such things that involve consciousness.

Thus to call it pseudoscience is just to give it a bad name. It does not serve any worthwhile purpose. We have to be serious about it.

We know that mind affects matter and vice versa and we know that we don't have a theory for such interactions. So it now depends on whether we restrict physics only to the domains so far investigated or we extend it beyond.

As far as the experiment is concerned it is a double slit experiment and if the proposed effects are really there, then for being able to perform ordinary double slit experiments properly in the physical sense we must study this aspect also in physics, since it (mind) may be a potential source of disturbance of the pattern that we are trying to generate for the study of physics itself and we must eliminate all such extraneous sources of disturbance (like the nearby minds) in order to make even a physically acceptable study of the pattern in relation to measurement of wave-length or fringe width etc.

I have invited Radin himself to join the discussion and if he does he may clarify issues himself firsthand.

Jurg,the phenomenon under consideration, 'looks marginal' if and only if one assumes that it is illusionary. If it would turn out to be 'real', it would be a scientific revolution. In my oppinion the latter is sufficiently improbable that it is perfectly reasonable to ignore it. On the basis of such a deliberate ignorance why should one give advice to people who decided to look, at least temporarily, closer into the matter?

Heaps thanks to everyone who answered my previous post.

The thing I am really after if it makes sense to spend time on reading the papers in question. For instance, there is no point whatsoever in wasting time on "demonstrations" of superluminal propagation, so far as the results concerned are discussed within Maxwell's electrodynamics. The author is either illiterate or a quack. Similarly, there is absolutely no point in looking at any paper that would claim explanation of the black-body radiation strictly within classical mechanics and probability theory.  And so on. You may add your own examples where inconsistency of the claim is evident without looking into details.

To resolve my dilemma, I would be ever so grateful if someone who did read the said papers could tell me if any of them contains something even remotely reminiscent of the following sentence: "Since 'mind' as a physical concept is not present in the standard formulation of quantum mechanics, we have to start the discussion of our experiment from amending the conventional quantum equations of motion."

Tons of thanks in advance. A simple 'yes' or 'no' will do.

@Christian Baumgarten

"I am astonished about the amounts of people that claim that it is not even worth looking at something prior to personal judgement"

Nothing to be astonished about. Logical consistency is sine qua non for any development. One cannot both shift the paradigm and stay within it. If one does, he is a quack.

Now, let us consider your example. Understanding that Earth is not center of the Universe took development of Newtonian and stellar mechanics. That is, of a completely new mathematics. This was a hell of a lot of work done by geniuses. One cannot shift the paradigm at lesser cost. People outside science may not see this work, but those in this audience MUST.

The special relativity theory is evidently inconsistent (more correctly – the theory predicts logically absurd results). Though it was a hell of a lot of work done by a hell of a lot of people, which are called [mainstream] “physicists”. And what?

Cheers

Dear L.I. Plimak,

''Understanding that Earth is not center of the Universe took development of Newtonian and stellar mechanics.''

Copernicus did not need such development for understanding that Earth is not center of the Universe.  That was understood first and open the way after for Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

@Leyvraz

These experiments are not, to the best of my knowledge, consistent with any accepted interpretation of QM, far less are the experimental results a consequence of any reasonable theory. The results stated involve mental influence on a large number of photons, since the phenomenon observed is macroscopic. There is no obvious theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. This absence of explanation and the extremely weird nature of what is being observed makes many of us; I among others, doubt the results' validity. It does not, however, diminish their importance, if true.

Firstly, There is no accepted interpretation of QM so far, though many have been proposed in the literature and each one has a grain of truth in it for sure. Interpretation of QM has turned out to be more like the proverbial blind men's understanding the elephant's features! The Copenhagen (text book) interpretation suffers from serious drawbacks. It is to address these drawbacks that all other interpretations have been proposed.

Secondly, The reasonable theory we have to develop. Sometimes theory precedes experiments and sometimes it is the other way around, as you know pretty well. So absence of a reasonable theory is no ground for discarding an experimental observation.

So you are right finally that none of your observations or apprehensions in any way diminishes the importance of the experimental results.

@ L. I. Plimak,

You, for sure must be knowing What GTR tells us regarding your observation on earth not being the center. GTR tells us that any point (including where you are sitting right now) can be the center of the universe. The calculations may be simpler from certain frames, but that does not in any way take away the freedom of taking any point as the coordinate origin for description of phenomena.

So initially earth was considered the center. Then they realized it was a mistake and thus on the basis of further experimental observations they said, "no, earth is not the center." Then after some more observations and more involved mathematical formulations they realized that they were wrong again, and that the earth can be taken as the center just as any other point like the location of the sun can be.

So the initial geocentrists were not wrong, so to say.

This is how science, as we know it, advances.

@ Sergey,

At that they indeed believe that all published in the a huge number of official physical journals papers are indeed “scientific”, though, for example, if some physicist would have gone to sleep in a sopor in 1975 and wake up in 2015, he could find practically nothing new in the mainstream physics.

This very original comment of yours made me laugh heartily. You are a wonderful thinker. Never mind the downvotes to your posts.

Though it is not entirely true that there has been no development in physics between 1975 to 2015, there has indeed been much development especially in high energy physics( Higgs mechanism and discovery of the vector bosons experimentally validating the standard model and on the theoretical side we have String theory which includes all else) and also condensed matter physics(nanoscience and technology and smart materials etc) .

But in a certain sense, you are also right, since we have had no fundamental change in the basic approach and what has been discovered is more or less predictatble given the initial conditions in 1975 on the state of phyiscal theories and of experiments. No new paradigm has been introduced as it happened at the dawn of the 20th century.

Sergey,

You are correct.  I do not understand the person that down voted you but they are not thinking things though if they think you are wrong.  The fact that we have spent more than one hundred years trying to make the two theories of the last century match each other and not been able to do this should indicate that you are correct.  Unless someone thinks that there is some magic that will after one hundred years make it happen. 

Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are either both wrong or one of them is wrong.  The kicker is that Albert Einstein started both of them and he thought that the statistical approach which he like at first and then disliked with his entire being was wrong.  The problem is that statistics are not wrong but can be misleading.  This would mean that the wrong theory was Relativity.  Sure it is a great approximation of the force of gravity in space and over vast distances but it has limits.  Why is it that no one will come out and just say it is wrong?  It must be because every time someone does they are labeled as not very smart and scorned by others in the scientific community.

Why can we not just say that it is a great approximation and move beyond the 19th century thinking that got us to the 21st century without a resolution.

What do all these comments have to do with the question originally posed by Rajat Pradhan? Apparently, most of you just enjoy the activity of discussing something in a blog.

"The special relativity theory is evidently inconsistent (more correctly – the theory predicts logically absurd results). Though it was a hell of a lot of work done by a hell of a lot of people, which are called [mainstream] “physicists”. And what?"

What is the purpose of disseminating such outrageous opinions? Please, explain!

Jurg,

The theory of Relativity is why the discussion of this question will not be seen as valid by the main stream science community.  They see anything that is not in perfect line with the old theories as not real science.  

This is also why it is so vital to discus these issues where ever and when ever you can.