This is a conversation between the first physicist who made the explicit link between quantum mechanics and consciousness, Sir Roger Penrose, and the inventor of the microprocessor, Federico Faggin, who is also a physicist and has just written a book about his own quantum theory of consciousness. Why should consciousness even exist if it has no causal power? That's my question. I would agree that clearly...
Okay. It does exist, and I think I agree with you there. The fact that it can have a causal effect is the only reason why beings have evolved with it.
Roger Penrose and Federico Fagin agree on one important point when it comes to consciousness. It cannot be computed. A computer, in the sense that we mean it, which is a computational system, will not ever be intelligent.
Understanding intelligence, consciousness are words that are often used interchangeably by Roger Penrose. Penrose. According to him, they involve quantum mechanics.
For more than two decades, he has been working on a theory about quantum effects in microtubuli in the human brain that recently seemed to be substantiated by empirical findings. Federico Faggin, in a sense, builds on Penrose's ideas, but not in the way you would think. According to Faggin, consciousness is not caused by wavefunction collapse, it's more fundamental. Quantum fields themselves are consciousness. Collapse, then, is just consciousness expressing itself.
Consciousness and free will must be postulates. It must be a postulate in the sense that consciousness and free will cannot be explained in any simpler ways than the fact that they exist. If you start with consciousness and free will existing, we can then explain why quantum physics has to have the crazy properties that he has. Here Penrose disagrees, mainly because he is dissatisfied with quantum theory altogether.
According to him it's not a complete theory because it leaves out an understanding of what wave function collapse actually is. Well as Einstein and Schrodinger said about it, it's an incomplete theory. I'm not as polite as they are. It's, they were saying it's incomplete. I would say it's actually not even quite correct.
And what has to go on in the brain, in the conscious being, what has to be something which is not just evolving according to current quantum mechanics, it's evolving according to that theory we don't yet have, which is the more complete theory in which the collapse of the wave function is part of that theory. As a philosopher moderator who understands quantum theory, we had Bernardo Kastrup join in, who stirred things up a bit. Federico and I, and I dare be with Federico on this one and not with Sir Roger, I don't think collapse really happens. I think if we eventually get to a deeper understanding of what's going on, I think we'll realize that there is no collapse. It's an epistemic, it's a transition from an epistemic idea to an ontological one.
Sir Roger is raising his hand to his forehead. I don't see how you can say it doesn't happen. I mean, you have to have something which looks more or less like the classical world.
And if you don't have the collapse of the wave function, the quantum evolution of the state does not look like the classical world. In this conversation between Penrose, Fagin and Castropoui hit on the mysterious divide between the quantum and the classical world and how it relates to consciousness. Penrose, perhaps the oldest and wisest, made a confession, namely that he once tried to close the quantum classical gap by believing in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
It's a good thing to have had in certain stage of your life to have believed in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. the better. I did go through such a stage myself, believing in the many worlds interpretation.
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First of all, a very warm welcome for Sir Roger Penrose, who's joining us from Oxford, known to be one of the greatest physicists of our time, a Nobel laureate, and someone who has made huge contributions outside of physics as well, studying consciousness and coming up with a testable theory about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness. Now we have... Federico Faggin, inventor of the first microprocessor, the touchpad technology and the touchscreen technology, and one of the founding fathers of neural networks, who now also has a theory about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness. And to me, sort of the catalyst in meeting both of you gentlemen has been this gentleman here sitting next to, across the table, Bernardo Kastrup. And Bernardo, it was through an episode.
I did unconscious AI that had you in it, Sir Roger, with your chessboard position. And Bernardo, you knew Federico, and now we are sitting here, and I just find that beautiful. And I want to really give the three of you time to get to know each other.
And I think it's good to first start with your theory, Sir Roger. And I previously interviewed you in... 2021 and then in 2022 I followed this news website that said that your colleague Larios Giosi had come up with experiments that made it very difficult to have your theory still be credible because you would say that quantum effects cannot be possible in microtubules but then two months ago I read in a journal paper coming out saying that these effects are now experimentally established. So I thought Sir Roger must now be triumphant that the experiments are now in favor. So I'm very curious where you now are with your theory.
Well, as far as experiments are concerned, I think one has to be a bit cautious about it all. So I'm not an expert on experiments, but I certainly have a colleague who, although the recent experiments you... refer to seem to be supportive of the point of view I'm putting forward. He was a bit skeptical, thinking it might be a bit wishful thinking, experiments. So I just have a neutral position on this.
I can't really judge the experiments and exactly how one might make observations, experimental observations to see whether the, well, the argument would have to be that one has quantum effects in microtubules. these little tiny parts of cells. And this has been the argument for quite a long time, ever since I had a communication from Stuart Hameroff.
I'd written my book, The Emperor's New Mind, which was trying to put forward my viewpoint with regard to consciousness. And at that time I had no idea how you could find anything in the brain which seemed to support what I was doing. and it was interesting to hear from Stuart Hameroff who read my book and his job was to do with consciousness, namely to turn it off in a reversible way because he's an anesthesiologist, he was at the time, he's now retired, at the University of Arizona and he introduced me to the notion of microtubules which of which I was completely ignorant previously. I'm not a biologist, I'm not a physiologist, I don't know the details of what's going on, so I have to trust other people when it comes to that.
But the arguments that I had originally came from mathematical logic. I had attended, as a graduate student, three courses that were nothing whatsoever to do with what I should have been doing, which had to do with pure mathematics, algebraic geometry at the time. And one of the lectures I went to was a lecture given by a man called Steen on mathematical logic.
And he explained how the Gödel theorem worked and what compute... The notion of computability I learned from him too as a definite thing in mathematics and that there are certain mathematical problems which don't have a computable solution. I mean, they have a solution of some sort, but they're not...
solutions that you can put on a computer. So I was aware that there were such things, and that what I found most striking about Steen's lectures was when he came to the Gerlach theorems, and I was a little bit disturbed by the idea of Gerlach theorems, because I'd heard about them before going to uni, the two graduate work, and I wasn't very happy with the idea that it seemed to show there were things in mathematics you couldn't prove. What I found reassuring was that the actual argument, the God argument, is to show if you have any system of proofs that you accept as acceptables, proofs, and you could in principle put them on a computer, then what Gerlach shows, how you construct a sentence in a very clever way, which you can see is not provable by those rules.
But what struck me as most remarkable and most reassuring in a way was that your understanding of why the rules work enabled you to transcend the use of the rules. So it's understanding why the rules work, which enables you to see why the Gödel theorem is true. You see that it's true, but not derivable by those rules. But it is derivable by your understanding why those rules are actually correct for the mathematical results.
This also leads, of course, to that chess position that you showed me then. which had to do with AI's halting problem is triggered, so to speak, and the human mind somehow, because it understands chess, can solve the puzzle, whereas AI will just start computing forever. Well, yes, but that particular example, probably the computers have grown in power since then, and it may well be that they could solve that particular problem. But any specific problem in chess is a computer problem.
I think nice because we have a founding father of the microprocessor sitting on the other side of the table. Federico, to share with Sir Roger your view about why consciousness cannot be computable. Well, my ideas start by saying that consciousness and free will must be postulates. It must be a postulate in the sense that consciousness and free will cannot be explained in any simpler ways than the fact that they exist. And we have the proof within ourselves.
It can be a subjective proof, but it is a proof within ourselves. So if for a second then we start there, and by the way, that postulate is self-evident. Because we all know that we are conscious, and we all know that we have a certain modicum of free will. So starting there, then together with the professor Giacomo Mauro Tariano, which you may know is an expert in information, quantum information, and he is the one that actually showed that if you start with six postulates, there are information or quantum information of base, you can derive quantum physics out of them.
So with D'Ariano, we came up with a way of thinking about consciousness that makes a lot of sense to me and that is that if you start with consciousness and free will existing, we can then explain why quantum physics has to have the crazy properties that it has. Specifically, we can explain why quantum information has to have the no-cloning theorem and Olivos theorem, which we can discuss a little later, and then why the collapse of the wave functions cannot really exist as such, but it is an expression of a free will decision of a field that is that has consciousness and free will. So consciousness and free will are then causing, in a sense, the physics, which is the informational aspect, not the meaning aspect, not the semantic aspect, but the informational, the semantic aspect of reality to manifest the way it does. So with this theory then, not only does it make sense to start with a consciousness and free will existing. existing and being true by definition and being fundamental properties of all the fields of quantum fields The elect you know the quantum field of electrons is conscious is Self-knowing is in within the consciousness itself and the symbols used to communicate which must be shareable existing in space-time are the Excited states of the fields which are what we call electrons, but the electrons then in this idea in this this way of understanding reality are just the symbolic aspects of reality, where the semantic aspects of reality are within the field itself.
So this theory seems to, you know, to then explain, to really show that... Our conscious experience is in particular qualia, that is the perceptual way in which we understand reality, we begin to understand reality, we have these sensations and feelings that allow us to understand reality, that perceptual qualia are represented by quantum information. Because quantum information is private, it cannot be reproduced, no cloning theorem, and also what we can say about or we can measure about that state, is only one bit per quantum bit. So, which is exactly what we do, because what I feel, when I transform what I feel in symbols, in outer symbols, shareable symbols, classical information, those symbols are in fact only a small portion of what I feel, the love that I feel within myself.
For a sun, for example, it's not a number. And it has dimensions that go way beyond any possible measurement. It's a dynamic form.
It has depth of perception that I need to understand within myself. So qualia can be represented by a quantum state, a pure quantum state. So anyway, so this is the essence of this theory. So, Roger, before I give you an opportunity to reflect on this, because this is, of course, a whole theory in ourselves.
I think, a hundred things to say about this proposal Federico is making. May I ask you, Bernardo, you have an understanding of Sir Roger's work and theory and an understanding of Federico's. Where do you see the main differences? And what do you think is the good question now for Sir Roger to reflect on hearing this new theory of consciousness? Yeah, I can't compare to these two giants, but I'm looking in from the outside and I try to make sense of what they have been saying.
Sir Roger in... The Emperor's New Mind, which I think is from 1988 or 89. 88, right? I think. Yes, I don't think so.
It's around about that. The key point I think he makes is that consciousness can jump out of the system. Consciousness is not a formal system.
In other words, a system of axioms and rules of derivation that you can produce theorems out of it. Consciousness can step out of that formal system. and acquire a form of insights that cannot be formalized that way. And that may have something to do with quantum mechanics, because quantum mechanics doesn't seem to match with Aristotelian logic.
So it gives us an opportunity or a way of thinking about how physical systems or how natural systems could not be just a formal system. So that's the link there. It's the jump outside of formal systems that is linked with...
quantum mechanics in some way. Federico comes at it perhaps from the other side and meets Sir Roger's ideas. Federico says, things as they are in themselves are conscious states. And our best model of these conscious states, of things as they are in themselves, is a quantum mechanical description of a quantum state in Hilbert space. So his interpretation is that a quantum mechanical descriptions of systems in a superposition are our models of things as they are in themselves.
And things as they are in themselves are experiential states. And what we call physical states or classical states after decoherence or after collapse, whatever happens actually there, they are symbols, synthetical representations of internal quantum states which contain much less information. than the internal quantum state, because a quantum state is a, you could say, it's an infinite superposition of possible states, while when you make a measurement of that you only get one bit per quantum bit, which is much less information in a certain way of interpreting information. So Federico makes the same link that it is the known classic, classicality, it is the known, the aspect of a system that isn't just captured in a formal set of rules of derivation and axioms.
that is linked with quantum mechanics and that touches on Sir Roger's idea as well. Sir Roger's comes from the opposite side and I think they may meet in the middle. Maybe it's a naive perspective but that's how I interpret them.
I think so, there is a lot in common. Sir Roger, I would give you, please give you the opportunity to reflect or maybe ask questions, if there are, there must be questions I think, hearing all of this. Well I think, I'm afraid I'm thinking that I have a very different view from the ones expressed by the other two.
I mean, my view certainly is not that it's quantum mechanics. Because quantum mechanics as we currently understand it is, well, as Einstein and Schrodinger said about it, it's an incomplete theory. I'm not as polite as they are.
They were saying it's incomplete. I would say it's actually not even quite correct. And it's not correct because quantum mechanics as it currently exists does not have a theory of the collapse of a wave function. You see, you have standard quantum mechanics. the description of the world according to a thing called the quantum state.
The quantum state evolves according to the Schrodinger equation, which is a deterministic equation, completely computable as well. However, it is not the way that the world evolves. As long as your system is small, in some technical sense of the word, small, then it does behave according to the Schrodinger equation. But when the system gets too big, and I could be more explicit about what I mean by big.
When it gets too big, then it doesn't follow the Schrodinger equation. You have this phenomenon of the collapse of the wave function. And my argument is that it's not just that quantum mechanics is important for consciousness. Quantum mechanics on its own is not, wouldn't give you consciousness.
It's how quantum mechanics has to be extended to a better theory. As it exists, it does not. would not explain consciousness.
Quantum mechanics follows the Schrodinger equation, and following the Schrodinger equation doesn't give you what I need. You need something which goes beyond that, which is not computable. And this, the argument is, has to be in the collapse of the wave function.
So I'm arguing it's worse than quantum mechanics, if you like. I'm saying what has to go on in the brain, in the conscious being, whatever its brain is like, that has to be something which... is not just evolving according to current quantum mechanics, it's evolving according to that theory we don't yet have, which is the more complete theory in which the collapse of the wave function is part of that theory. That needs to be there. And current quantum mechanics doesn't have a theory of the collapse of the wave function.
Yeah, you're dissatisfied with the theory. But please reply, Frederico. Yeah, no, I think...
Sir Roger is perfectly fine. In fact, I don't think that quantum physics is really complete, exactly because you cannot tell what causes the collapse of the wave function. We only know that the collapse of the wave function involves pure randomness, which is non-algorithmic, which is the only way that you can explain the behavior, you know, according to the Bell theorem. It's a long story, but, you know, that's the...
characteristics of the collapse of the wave function. And in my theory actually we solve that problem because by saying that a quantum field, first of all we don't start by trying to explain consciousness and free will by quantum physics because we believe that consciousness and free will are fundamental. Therefore they exist as a postulate.
And then because of their existence we can explain why quantum physics must be the way it is, because it must reflect the existence of the comprehension, qualia and comprehension, and meaning that exist in consciousness, and the fact that there is free will, which accounts for the collapse of the wave function. But I think we touch here, though we touch, and please reflect on this Bernardo, so, Roger, when you you you you uh speak about your dissatisfaction it remembers when you in our previous interview you also told me um how schrodinger with his shirt in her cat didn't want to point to what the theory means you want to point to its absurdity um and you want to of course and but then when i write a reads sort of the early stuff and the philosophical thoughts that these founding fathers had you see of course the same discussion and what what I found interesting is that Schrodinger also started saying stuff that maybe consciousness is one in the end and there's a unitary field of consciousness, stuff like that. So we see, I was very curious to ask you that question.
Because this really feels as if you're hitting ontology here. Isn't quantum theory weird as long as we want to keep up a sort of an Einsteinian realist world view of which you are perhaps more in favor of? And then of course sitting here is our two gentlemen, perhaps a bit more in the other camp, but I want to let the three of you talk about this.
Before, there is one more thing that I want to say very quickly. No, no, very quickly. It is the point that the fact, if you start with consciousness and free will, the fact that the quantum information has...
the same characteristics of the lived, of the inner experience. That fact is It allows you to then say that the collapse of the wave function can be the result of a free will decision, because free will without consciousness would not make any sense. You see, it is exactly because you can explain consciousness that you can then explain the collapse of the wave function as a free will decision.
Yeah. Laci, very clear. That's very different from my point of view. Do you see, yeah, I'm curious on your thoughts, Roger.
Yes, well, you see, I would say the collapse of the wave function is a physical process, which is a long way away from explaining consciousness. And the physical process is something one can get towards. I have arguments, which I put forward quite a long time ago, to show that the There's two great theories of 20th century physics, or the two great contributions, revolutions in quantum physics, were A quantum mechanics, which came first, and B Einstein's general theory of relativity.
And what I'm saying is that those two theories have an incompatibility. Quantum mechanics is based on the theory of a basic principle of superposition. You can have a particle in one location, that's one quantum state, or it could be another location, that's another quantum state, and according to the basic principles of quantum mechanics, you can have states where it's there and there at the same time.
So you have all these superpositions between different alternatives, and that's very fundamental to the framework of quantum mechanics. And the fact that you don't see most of these superpositions is not explained by quantum mechanics. Now, On the other hand, general relativity has its basic principle, which is the famous Galileo-Einstein principle of equivalence.
Well, Galileo explained it very well. Imagine dropping a big rock and a little rock from the leaning tower of Pisa, and he knew that air resistance would make a difference, and the feather would drop more slowly. But if you had no air resistance, they would fall completely together. So as they fall… there is no effectively cancelled out gravity.
So gravity is the one force, if you can call it a force, which I'm a little bit dubious about, it's the one feature of physics which you can cancel by free fall. And that feature is incompatible with the principle of superposition. And you can make a little argument to show that they're inconsistent with each other, and to make them consistent with each other, you have to introduce this.
collapse of the wave function. It also gives you a measure of how much, when do you expect the collapse to take place? And it's not a complicated formula.
There's a formula I produced, which is actually not original with me, because Ayash Gyosi had already found this formula about two years earlier than I did. I wasn't aware of this work, but I had this particular argument to show that this estimation of... How long it takes for the wave function to collapse is in accordance with what my argument.
Actually, if I have an object, a big object, say like this magnifying glass of mine, and I put it in the superposition of here and here, that superposition would not last, well, it'd be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a second. If on the other hand it's a carbon atom or something, and here and here, well, it would probably, that superposition would last for longer than the age of the universe. So it's a... But there is a genuine formula, which you can write down, which tells you how long that superposition would be expected to last before it collapses to one or the other. And it has nothing at that level, nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness.
It's a physical formula. It's something which could be measured in an experiment. It has not yet been because experiments as they exist have not quite reached the level of sophistication in order to do this.
There are experiments. which are currently under being done. I mean, they're not there yet, but they're aimed at looking at this effect.
And my hope is that they will see this effect when they get a little bit more sophisticated than they are just yet. And it won't be too long. When I say not too long, probably within the next 10 years. And then to summarize you and then give you the opportunity to respond to this.
What I understand from this, Sir Roger, you have making a plea to, I've heard you say we should not quantize gravity, but we should gravitate the gravitation of quantum theory. So you see a much larger role to play for gravity there. And of course, this has to do with quantum gravity. So in finding a unifying theory, What Sir Roger is talking about, which different angles or approaches do we have and what do you see, what would your response be to this?
I'm an outside observer, but I think the difference that Sir Roger is highlighting between their positions is not so much about the wave function itself, but collapse being an objective phenomenon. Sir Roger holds the position of objective collapse, so he doesn't think that the collapse of the wave function... is the consequence of a free-willed choice. He sees this as a physically determined moment related to gravitational mass. If gravitational mass crosses a certain threshold, the superposition will collapse into itself, into a defined state.
So there is no free will there. It's a physical event. As a philosopher, the only conceptual, it's not a problem, but an issue to be discussed that I see there is, Can we speak of physical quantities or physical variables before a collapse? Can we speak of gravitational mass before collapse, before a measurement is done?
But I think that that is the key difference. It's not so much on the notion of what a wave function is a description of. There is very little doubt that the wave function has a deterministic evolution.
We know how to calculate that. It's linear. It's the non-linearity process. that we call collapse that is at stake here and the interpretation of it being an objective physical process or a free-willed choice of the interiority of a system. Federico and I, and I dare be with Federico on this one and not with Sir Roger, I don't think collapse really happens.
I think if we eventually get to a deeper understanding of what's going on, I think we'll realize that there is no collapse. It's an epistemic. It's a transition from an epistemic idea to an ontological one.
Sir Roger is raising his hand to his forehead. I don't see how you can say it doesn't happen. I mean, you have to have something which looks more or less like the classical world.
And if you don't have the collapse of the wave function, the quantum evolution of a state does not look like the classical world. It just doesn't. I mean, there are arguments which people use, which are sort of approaches to this, but you can look carefully.
these arguments and you see they don't do it. You have to have a development of quantum theory which has not yet been formulated as a complete theory. All I can do is say the level at which I expect the collapse to take place. I say the collapse, if you have a physical situation where the parameters are so and so, then I might expect the collapse to take place within 10 minutes, say. And that calculation could be done.
But it doesn't tell you when it does. exactly when it happens. It doesn't tell you which way the collapse happens. It doesn't give you a mechanism for collapse. It's just a formula which tells you how long a system can remain in superposition before it collapses to one or the other.
And the connection with consciousness, you see, in my view, is quite secondary. And it's very important. I think I would certainly agree with both of you.
It's very fundamental in the way the universe operates. Consciousness is playing a big role, but it's a subtle role, and it doesn't reveal itself until you have elaborate systems like living beings. I'm aware animals, maybe plant plants might possess it to some degree, but I don't see it in inanimate objects. They're not sophisticated enough somehow to take advantage of the collapse of the way it functions. For them, it's just a random process.
But do you think that if we would reach a deeper theory that maybe goes beyond quantum theory, would we find out that consciousness is truly epiphenomenal at the end of the chain, so to speak, in our universe? Or could such a theory point to the fundamentality of consciousness? Where would you put your chips? Oh, yeah, I think it could be. I mean, if we understand...
Well, we need to understand the physics better, but I would regard that as a small step. We don't have the theory yet. But I would think within the next 50 years we will have such a theory. I think that tells us we will understand consciousness in that time.
It's a much more sophisticated concept. But what I am saying is the other way around. Whatever consciousness is, it's something which depends on that phenomenon.
So we're not going to have a physical understanding of what things in the universe are conscious. I mean, even things like... You see, when I mentioned Stuart Hameroff earlier, I think I mentioned him, but anyway, the connection with the microtubules was something I learned from him, and his job is an anesthetist or an anesthesiologist.
His job was to put people to sleep, except he doesn't call it sleep, it's a different phenomenon. General anesthetics are particular substances, and they have a very curious... relationship to each other, for example, xenon, which is an inert gas, doesn't seem to have much in the way of chemical interactions, nevertheless, is a general anesthetic. And what is the connection between these different substances which act as general anesthetics?
As far as the chemistry is concerned, absolutely nothing. It doesn't seem to be they are chemically connected. Nevertheless, there is some physical connection, and the view is that they do his view.
And I think he's probably right. His view is that these general anaesthetics do affect microtubules and it's the microtubular activity which probably does involve the collapse of wave function in their function is something which general anaesthetics affect. Because that's a subject which is active at the moment and needs to be a lot of work to find out what's going on.
But it's a long way from understanding consciousness. I think that's a much more difficult problem. Okay.
Federico, please reply to Soroccia. Yeah, I have two main points. The first is that I feel that consciousness without free will is not useful.
It's not useful in the sense that if you cannot, you know, if you are conscious, you probably should know your intentions and you probably should know what... what the reality in which you exist is, so that you can decide how to, you know, how to proceed in your conscious living. But if you don't have free will, consciousness is really not useful.
And so I don't see any reason why it should exist. So that's one. And the two things that I start, I don't want quantum physics to explain consciousness. I start by assuming that consciousness and free will exist.
And I arrive at describing why quantum physics must have the crazy properties it has to justify the existence of consciousnesses in free will that I've taken as a postulate. So here we really hit on an ontology also, right? In your interpretation of quantum theory. Of course, the ontology is not in the quantum state. The ontology is in the meaning that the quantum state produces within the consciousness of the field which is assumed to have consciousness and free will.
Yes. So, yeah, it's basically a phenomenological approach. You say, I see phenomenology of consciousness with a private inner state that is non-clonable, which can hold sort of a free will that manifests in a certain action. And then you say that resembles very much what we know about quantum theory. So why not investigate?
Correct. And that it could be that... And that also explains why we have apparently two physics.
We have quantum physics and classical physics connected by the collapse of the wave function. So the quantum physics describes the interiority of nature. And the classical theory describes the esteriority of nature.
One is described within, you know, in the realm of the Hilbert space, the other in space and time. The shareable information, the bits. Derived from the collapse of the wave function according to the current theory But in my theory they derive from a free will decision of the quantum field They wants to pursue his own self knowing his own process of you know of understanding about reality So Roger, I'm just very curious.
I know this is not your ontological position, but I'm just curious in trying to solve the quantum conundrum, if you think it could be fruitful to pursue this route of saying maybe on an ontological level, we have to say the quantum fields are conscious and out of that consciousness, the classical world sort of comes to us. As some of the founding fathers themselves seem to suggest, I mean, Max Planck saying consciousness is fundamental. derivative matter is derivative of consciousness what are your thoughts here well i think i mean i think these things are very different i think france there's one confusion here which i think i'd like to get rid of in a way see in the early days of quantum mechanics people worried about the collapse of the wave function but not thinking of it as a physical process i mean many people including particularly Wigner, because I talked to him quite a lot when I was in Princeton. I had conversations with Wigner, which were very interesting.
And he had the view, as many others did, that somehow the collapse of the wave function was an effect of consciousness. That is to say, the terminology in quantum theory is very much suggestive of that, because it says you make an observation. And this observation... induces the collapse of the wave function.
Now that you see, it's rather suggesting that the collapse doesn't take place unless a conscious being comes along and looks at it. Then that measurement that the conscious being makes by looking at it, if you like, collapses the wave function. So it's as though it's the consciousness which causes the collapse of the wave function.
That's very different from my view, it's almost the opposite. In my view, it's saying, It's not that consciousness causes the collapse. The collapse would take place quite independently whether they're conscious beings or not.
I like to think of a particular example, just a sort of thought experiment, if you like. I imagine that there's a very distant planet somewhere which has very, very much like the Earth. It just happens that no life, no conscious beings ever came about on that planet. It is. otherwise like the Earth.
Now the weather on the Earth is supposed to be very delicately dependent upon very small effects. So people talk about the butterfly effect. If the butterfly's wing flaps one way, then the weather goes one way.
And if it flaps a different way, then the weather might have a completely different effect. So it's a thing which means that the behavior of the system depends very, very delicately on the initial state. Okay. Now this planet that I'm imagining has no life on it, no butterflies. Nevertheless, you have weather on this planet.
But since there is no conscious being or no beings which collapse the wave function, according to that view, collapse of the wave function doesn't take place. Therefore, you have weather, which is a superposition of all different weathers. And you have a space probe which gone to this planet. and takes a photograph of the weather on the planet. Now that weather, it hasn't, there's no being, no conscious being on the space probe, it just takes a photograph.
Now as it returns to the Earth, it transmits this photograph, which is now of a superposition of different weathers, and somebody on a screen looks at the signal on the Earth, and as soon as that being looks, that human being looks at the picture on the screen, suddenly, collapse. Wave function happens because only then does the conscious being become part of the system and then the weather becomes one weather. To me, this is completely ridiculous.
The weather is going to be one weather whether there's a being on it or not. It's not because of living beings on the planet. It's not because of consciousness on the planet. It's because the collapse of a wave function is a physical process which takes place when things become large enough to... positions become large enough in a way which i could be very explicit about if necessary what i mean by large enough and it would collapse the wave function quite independently of conscious beings yeah i think that's a clear clear position and it also sort of me reminds me of einstein right i like to think of the moon existing if i look look or not so i think you're in a very good good company with this position bernardo bernardo please respond to this thought experiment of sir oh no not not a direct response it's just just an observation i think we may be limiting ourselves to a dichotomy that maybe we don't need to limit ourselves to.
The dichotomy I sense is, is it consciousness that causes collapse or is it collapse that leads to a moment of consciousness? There is a dichotomy there. But the dichotomy presupposes the wave function to be ontically real. In other words, it presupposes that the world out there is actually in a superposition of states, a physical superposition of states.
If that's what we start from, then of course, as Sir Roger mentioned earlier, then of course there has to be collapse, because when we look around, we see a world in a definite state. I think where Federico is coming from, I may be wrong about this, but that's what I think, and certainly that's where I am coming from, is I don't think the wave function is ontically real. I think the wave function is a model of the best of our knowledge about the world. In other words, the superposition of states is our own gambling strategy about what we are likely to see next. It doesn't mean that the world is an actual superposition.
And if the world is not in that actual superposition, in that sense, then there is no collapse. Collapse is an epistemic transition. It's the transition from what we anticipate to see and the probabilities we lay out about what we are likely to see next, and an observation of what is actually.
Next and you see what I mean, so maybe we don't need to limit ourselves to that to that dichotomy Just a clarification point. That's all I'm trying to do Federico yeah, well I have just a very simple point to add in my theory the Ontic state is not the wave in the pure quantum state is actually the experience Or the pure quantum state which is in within consciousness And that's the one that then could cause the collapse of the wave function, which is not a collapse of the wave, a decision of the field to decide what to manifest in space and time. So the ontic aspect of reality is not, quantum physics is epistemic.
In fact, it can only tell us what we can know about reality. It doesn't tell us what reality is. So the actual reality is determining if you start the game with consciousness and free will, by those two properties that you have postulated from the beginning. Interesting. So, Roger, where are you on these epistemic versus ontic interpretations of the wave function?
Well, you see, there is a very important development in my thinking, which I don't quite know when I first saw it. Within the last five years, certainly. I think the first thing I ever talked about, it was a conference in Arizona, I think. the idea, but it got developed since then, that you can't talk about reality quite like that.
There are two kinds of reality. There's quantum reality and classical reality, and they are not quite the same. And quantum reality behaves in a way which is quite strange.
The notion of quantum reality actually comes from Einstein in a certain sense. He talked about a quantum state. He said, is the quantum state real or not? And a good example is the spin of a spin half particle. I take an electron.
Now, the spin of an electron, the different possible spin states are spin right-handed about all possible directions. So I can move my thumb about the axis, and it spins right-handed about that axis. Now, all those different possible states, those are the possible spin states of an electron. Now, what you can't do... is ask the electron what your spin state is, or you can try, but it doesn't give you any answer, because that's a quantum reality.
However, if you do have a theory which says by now, the electron ought to be spinning, say, about that particular direction, and it has all about the same amount, that's an electron, it's always the same amount, about that direction. Now, what I can do is I can confirm it, and this is the Einstein's criterion. I can say to the electron, I'm going to measure the electron spin in that direction.
And if I have it right, it will say, yes, you got it right with 100% certainty. And it will not disturb the system. You can measure it again and again and again. Then each time it says yes.
If I measure it in a different direction, it will give you a probabilistic answer. It will maybe say no, maybe yes. It depends on you doing the experiment many, many times. It will give you different answers. Now, the quantum state is something you can confirm, in a sense, but you cannot ascertain.
You have to make a distinction between confirming and ascertaining. Ascertaining would be something you say, hello state, which way are you spinning? It doesn't answer questions like that.
But you can explain these rather puzzling things, which is what Einstein was worried about in fact. These things called Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiments, where you can have a spin state which is shared by two observers, or two people let's call them, widely separated. And you know what the total spin, each one has a spin half particle, which has come from a spin zero initial state, and so they have to be opposite each other.
Now, if one of the individuals measured the spin in some direction, that instantly makes it the opposite, actually worse than instantly. It goes backwards in time along the past light curve, and the other one is fixed by the measurement made by the one. And the other one, if that other one could ascertain what the state was, You would then have a contradiction.
You could send signals faster than light. But you can't send signals faster than light. It would lead you into contradiction with relativity. However, what you could do is confirm that state.
If the other person knew what the measurement, the first one they made, then that measurement could be confirmed. But it cannot be ascertained. And if you could ascertain it, you could send signals faster than light, which would lead you into real trouble. Relativity would be work, it would be real trouble.
However, you can make this, the quantum reality of that state is projected backwards along the path like light current, so it goes not just simultaneously but even back in time. But since that's only quantum reality, you cannot ascertain what that state is. So you have to make a distinction between the quantum reality, which cannot be ascertained, but it can be confirmed. Classical reality can be ascertained.
So you can ask the state what it is and it tells you what it is. So that distinction is something which has to be made in order to talk about reality. So reality, when you talk about quantum mechanics, the notion of reality, you've got to be careful about it. It's not like classical reality where there is any one notion of it.
I fully, that distinction is very clear to me. And you're talking about Bell's inequality theorem, right? And the loophole-free Bell tests that have been performed, I think, by now. And then a common thing I hear physicists say, we either have to let go of realism, reality, or we have to let go of locality. Is that true?
But I'm curious. Well, you see, it's not reality. Quantum reality is not reality in the sense... You see, that's the trouble. I'm worried.
reality, then you lead to a confusion like this. But if you look at the sort of more hardcore, so to speak, ontic interpretations, would you agree that those end up with like many worlds interpretations because you want the wave function to be ontic? And what's your take on that? Not many worlds.
No, I'm dead against it. Well, I have to be careful about this. I have a point of view.
This has to be taken in the right spirit. My point of view is that is that it's a good thing to have had in certain stages of your life to have believed in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The shorter the period, the better. The shorter the better. I did go through such a stage myself, believing in the many worlds interpretation.
But I hope, I can't remember how long it was. whether it was as long as a year, I'm not sure. And then one goes to a more adult position of an epistemic interpretation?
Well, you say, no, the theory is not really complete, or you have to understand that these notions of reality are more subtle. And without having the quantum mechanical picture, you say, I don't think philosophers could argue with each other endlessly without Realising this way, strange way in which quantum states behave. And I think spin is a good example.
And well, this is the Bohm version of the EPR, Einstein-Podolsky. But I think Einstein wanted to do it that way originally, but I think Podolsky took it the wrong way. So, Tim, I... Sir, I lend your beautiful mind on a question that's been sort of stuck with me ever since we met and I've discussed things with you.
Yesterday, we had an evening and we talked about semantics versus syntax and we referred to Searle's Chinese room experiment, right? Can you get from pure syntax to semantics, which is a deep problem? What do you think there?
To me, it seems impossible. Well, there... The two seem two different categories, and that's why it feels as if I have to pick my ontology.
Is our universe, in the end, physical material, or is it conscious and has to do with meaning? That's how it feels to me, but I'm curious here. What do you think about an experiment? Can we get from syntax to semantics? You're talking about the reality of the world in some sense.
Can we talk about the reality of the world? in an objective way is that the sort of question you mean yes but it also has to do with what philosophers call qualia the the if i have a taste of something can we ever have a complete mathematical description of what i've experienced which would make it clonable uh copyable uh to another and and then of course it would i don't see any objections that then we can have conscious ais because then you could have my conscious experience league completely described copied into a computer, but I sense that we have a fundamental problem there. Well, I think there are some subtle differences here.
You see, okay, philosophers and physicists worry about different things. Well, I'm not quite sure. Let me not say that.
But you see, the computability issue is a separate question. I mean, that's a mathematical problem, whether you can compute the thing from your physical theory or not. Actually, also, when you talk about qualia, I mean, we don't know. I mean, is the sensation of blueness common to different people? If I see a blue entity that creates a certain impression on me, and somebody else looks at the blue thing, and does that person have anything that you could say is the same as my experience?
I would just say we don't know. It could well be that there is something in detail which is the same. We don't, certainly don't know enough about that. I find very curious things like, what, synesthesia, where you have parts of the brain, and if they get mixed up, then one sensation gets sort of confused with another sensation.
It does seem to be that there is something different between one kind of sensation and another kind of sensation, which may be a universal thing. It may be that different people, you might say philosophically, how can you ever know? Well, maybe someday you will be able to know.
And maybe... There is something about blueness, redness, or greenness, or something, which is universal. And if you have synesthesia of some kind, maybe some people would see the blueness as green and so on. Possibly. I have no idea.
I can't see anything against that, but it seems quite possible that these sensei qualia, if you like, are things which have some objective physical basis. I don't know. I'm not trying to claim that that's the case or not. I certainly think that as a pleasant level of understanding we're a long way from that and we can talk about it in a more philosophical way, so no okay this is one person who has a certain sensation of so and so and that individual to that being and it's meaningless to say it's the same as what somebody else feels.
I don't know the answer to that. I think they're clearly... Yeah it's a clear position. Federico you can respond or what? Yeah, to me qualia, qualia can be represented by a pure quantum state, but a representation of qualia is not the sensations of qualia.
A theory of reality is not reality, right? I mean, so the quantum state, pure quantum state, is the map of a territory which can only be known from within consciousness. So consciousness is what allows you To understand, to know and understand what you feel, which is qualia.
And mathematics can only go to that point of saying the representation of qualia has to be a quantum field because it has the same characteristic. It's private and you can only know a small part. or what you can know from within. Yeah, so what Sir Roger was saying, the blueness of blue, and that we cannot know for sure. That is beyond what you can test, beyond what is testable.
And I guess this, because when you say the mathematics is the map and it cannot give us the territory, Here, of course, Sir Roger, you have sometimes said that you do grant mathematics an antique status, right? That there somehow is a mathematic realm of mathematics. Please correct me if I'm misrepresenting your view.
I have a question. Oh, sorry. I was talking about your ontology, Nian.
I think you have sometimes said that you think... mathematics has some ontic status in our universe, that there is a realm of mathematics, and that would say that it isn't only a map of reality, but it just like truly exists. Oh, I see. That's a slightly different question. Yes, I would say it has an existence, an objective existence.
Well, sure, if somebody proves the theorem. I mean, Andrew Wiles proved that there were no X to the N. You can have a sum of two squares which is another square, but there's no other power which the sum of two that powers gives you another thing which has the same power. I mean that's a mathematical statement and that would be true whether the universe had different physical laws.
I mean it's completely independent. It's a mathematical statement which is objectively true. How we come across to understand why it's true may be a very difficult question.
few people really understand and how many people have gone through Andrew Wells's proof for example I mean not many but uh I mean I've never been through it for example but I still think he's right that that's uh the Fairmount theorem that he established is objectively true and if you had a different universe well they're not even a different universe I'm not sure what that means but I could imagine the universe with physical laws which are not the same as ours and they contemplate the possibility of conscious beings in their universe possibly. We don't know enough about physics to know how unique these physical laws are and could you change the parameters which we have in our physical laws to some other numbers and have another perfectly good laws of physics where the physical properties would be different possibly we don't know but the mathematical laws will be the same. So things like whether or not we have a sum of two powers which are the same for example, that's going to be the true whichever universe you're in.
I think that's the thing you're referring to. Whether the mathematical world is an objective world independent of us. it has its existence. Yeah, that is my question.
And so you are saying that in some sense, it is like in a platonic realm of forms, it has a place, you say? Yes, yes. Bernardo, how do you listen to this as a philosopher? Well, clearly, The theorems of mathematics or the axioms of mathematics that are in logic, that are self-evident to us, have an application to the world because we create these descriptions in mathematics and they are incredibly predictive. So stuff that is merely self-evident to us, because we are just primates, why would stuff that is self-evident to our cognitive system hold for the world at large, right?
There was a paper written by Eugene Wigner in which he talks about this miracle. He uses the word miracle 12 times, a 1960 paper. So I think this substantiates the point Sir Roger is making, that the mathematics is not arbitrary. It seems to have an existence independent of the minds that consider those axioms self-evident.
To me, but that's just my philosophical position, I'm aligned with Federico in this sense, I think the only ontological primitive is a field of subjectivity. And since to be is to have properties, things that are, are what they are, and not something else they conceivably could be. So to be is to have properties.
And it so happens that this field of subjectivity, which is... Mental, therefore, has archetypal patterns that are built in. It has a preferential way of mentation, so to say, certain things that it considers self-evident because it is what it is instead of being something else. And because we are segments of this field, and so is the rest of the world, what we consider self-evident turns out to be applicable to the world.
But we can account for this without another realm. We only need that whatever the ontological primitive is, whatever nature actually is at the bottom level, is the same for us and the world, and that we have subjective access to it. And then we can account for it without anything beyond nature.
I have a strange suggestion, but tell me if you're up for it, Roger. I'd like to have a bit more of a poetic approach, almost. If we read John Wheeler's notion of the participatory universe, which...
It seems as if somehow the universe is writing itself. I mean, that's the classical world we perceive, right? And whatever the universe is, the world we perceive as observers is this classical universe. And we know quantum theory to be correct. So somehow it is as if the universe is writing itself.
And we had a conference a while back with Lee Smolin, who you must know. And also seeing a phrase that really stuck with me, that universe is nothing but a collection of... partial views of itself.
Also sort of this Wheeler notion. And I'm just so curious, what do you think? Is this all physicists talking poetry?
Maybe. I don't know. Of course I knew Wheeler quite well. But he was a hard person to understand.
I always found it rather difficult. He was always very... I found that if you talk to him, you have a question, and his reply would be about 37.5 degrees away from your question.
I'm not making that figure, but it was always angled away from what you thought, and it was quite strange in some ways. Interesting, but yeah. and but but that that whole idea of of the the people saying the universe wanting to know itself the universe looking back at itself that all those stuff he pondered about or because he did in the end also did he could not give the clear answer right but what are your thoughts there is it something that sort of also i don't know i got lost after a while he kept talking about it from bits and things like that and i think i lost at that stage um I guess it got too philosophical.
I have to say I don't know. I just find it difficult to... I think quantum mechanics confuses people too much, that's the trouble. And I think the problem that confuses people is not quite for the reasons people think. I mean, it's partly because you have these two kinds of reality.
You can't really ask of a quantum state. You can't measure what the quantum state is. And it's the same thing I said before, you can't ascertain the state, you can only confirm it. So if you think you know what it ought to be by now, then you can do an experiment, very very precisely test whether you got it right or not.
But if you don't have any concept of what the quantum state is, well it may be that you can't ascertain it, like with these Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen types of experiments. You have to... I'm taking the view that you have to take this more... With quantum mechanics there is a notion of reality which doesn't come about until you think about quantum mechanics.
I don't think pure philosophy would give it. It's not a notion which comes from philosophical thinking. It's a notion which comes from physics.
And it's interesting and different from what we tend to think before. The reality is something you might imagine. I've expressed myself on that before. Yeah, it's very clear. I think it would be nice to, because Sir Roger, I think we did not discuss an end time or we have already crossed it.
So I don't want to, I want to respect your time and energy. So if the two of you have a final question for Sir Roger. Maybe, and I have a question to all three of you to wrap this conversation up. My question would be simply that if consciousness existed without free will, what do you think, what good would it do? I mean, I frankly cannot get my head around that.
Well, you see, I think it's not, I mean, it's an interesting question because it doesn't seem to me necessary that consciousness is causing in some sense. I can imagine somebody being paralyzed completely. I mean, you get this, this happens. People are completely paralyzed and nobody can tell whether that person is actually conscious or not. And later on you find that person may wake up in some sense.
And you find they were conscious all the time. They knew what was going on, it's just they couldn't influence anything. In some sense, this notion of being, we'd be having free will in the sense of affecting things, is not so obviously a necessity from what I mean by conscious.
I can imagine one can have that subjective experience without being able to use that to affect in a way. It seems to be something a little different. To be able to use one's consciousness in an effective way is a little bit different from actually having consciousness. I'm not sure I would want to identify them, perhaps as strongly as I think Nidhi was suggesting.
Because to me, consciousness without free will would have no causal power, so it would do no good to any entity. Exactly, it's not causal power, because if you have this person who is in the state of I forget the technical term for it, but who is simply aware of what's going on, but has no control over emotions and things like that, that person is still conscious. Yeah, yeah, but what would be the point of being conscious if you cannot do anything about it?
You see what I mean? No, that's right. You can't do anything with it, but that's a different question.
Well, yeah, but why should consciousness even exist if it has no causal power? That's my question. I would agree that clearly it does exist, and I think I agree with you there. The fact that it can have a causal effect is the only reason why beings have evolved with it. As you said, there would be no point in beings evolved who had consciousness if it had no effective influence on the world.
So sure, I think that's absolutely essential. But it doesn't seem to me it's quite the same thing as being away. Have your views on free will shifted in the last decade? I mean, you have opened the door. I think here you say that the door is open for you to free will.
Where are you now? Do you have free will? Is that a question to me? Yes, sorry, to you.
Yes. Well, you see, I have thought a little bit more about free will. I've often thought I don't really know what it means.
But I think I would like to say that I have a better idea of what I think it might mean. And it depends on, you see, you could say, sometimes people think free will is, oh, you can have a will to do anything. Can you be random or something like this? I keep being reminded when I was growing up with my little brother, who was two years younger than I was, and he could beat me at pretty well any game.
But the thing that disturbed me the most, he could beat me at paper, stones and scissors, you see. Now, I thought that game is a pure game of chance. How can he beat me at that game? So I went away and I got hold of a table of logarithms out of my father's study, and I made a little table, you know, three means this and so on.
And so I'd make a long strip, and I would follow this strip and simply do what the strip said, and then I broke even. So I got relieved, you see, it's not that he was magic, it's just that he noticed patterns when I was trying to be random, you see. So free will is different from randomness, sometimes people suggest that. free will means you can do what you like and therefore there's a randomness in it.
I think that's the wrong way of looking at it. I don't mean that, by the way. I'm not saying this is your point of view. I am saying that if you like, the free will is to you.
If I think action A is preferable to action B, and I have used my consciousness to work it all out, and I say, oh, I believe, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to quit all. I think no action A is probably the better thing to do. And then when the moment comes, then I do action A.
I'm doing the action A because I had the free will that was involved in my understanding of which is better to do. It's not like when you touch the stove and it's hot and you put your hand away and things like that, which are clearly not free will actions. It's something where you're using your consciousness in a way which involves your understanding of what's the right thing to do.
It's more like that. It's not a complete answer to the question. I dare, by the way, disagree when both of you say there would be no point in no free will and consciousness because say we have a movie theater.
I can enjoy a beautiful movie without being able to influence any of the scenes. The thing has been recorded and it's playing out. I could still enjoy it, which would be a conscious experience. Okay, there, Bernardo.
Yeah, I think this one is also hits on what when you as a philosopher think about free will versus consciousness and you don't see the necessity. I don't deny free will. I just think the concept is not precise.
So people mean different things. Like we think that if something is determined, then there cannot be free will. But that's not what we mean when you talk about our free will. It's like my choices are not random.
They are determined by me, my tastes, my preferences, my inclinations. So it's not like free will is dichotomous with determinism. It's about what is determined in it and what we identify with.
If we identify with the causal factors that make the determination, we say, oh, free will. But if we don't, we say, oh, we don't have free will. Well, you see, it's not a dichotomy. It's not contradictory. But I am with you that I think there is still...
Well, I think the search for truth should not depend on what makes us feel good or not. The truth is the truth. Of course.
But even if the truth turns out to be that the universe is determined, I would still see... room for what we colloquially refer to as free will, because then the factors that are making the determination are those factors that I identify with. I am making those determinations.
Now, never mind that I can't be other than I am, so my choices will always be determined by that which I am. I can't will my will, like Schopenhauer said. I can only act according to my will.
But I can't will myself to will differently. So at the end, does it matter? But I understand how you use the word, Federico. You talk about free will as an impetus that leads to changes of states. Absolutely.
That's exactly right. Yeah. So I could call that determination too, and it would still have the same effect. Yeah, but it is a determination that has origin on an inner state.
as opposed to a objective collapse of the wave function, for example. An inner state that you identify with. That I identify with, which I have control over.
Which I have control over. I can choose where to look or I can choose what to say or what I feel. Those are the bottom choices, the only choices of what do I communicate, what I choose to... observing what I choose to communicate, which is something which is within me.
So those are the only choices that are considered free will because the rest of it is just, it confuses the idea of what free will is. So I'm quite in agreement with both of you when you consider free will, I can do whatever I want. That's absolutely silly.
Okay, yeah. And one, if we're all okay still, the In your book, Federico talks about the fact, Sir Roger, that we are quantum classical machines, so to speak. The body.
The body. Our physical body is quantum classical. Now, if this evidence is right, that has just come out and there's now a branch, a discipline called quantum biology, that thinks these phenomena are much broader, we see them in nature, these quantum classical aspects.
Would that mean good? that mean that consciousness is not restricted to brains? I mean, if in biology we see quantum classical phenomena on cellular level, what are your thoughts there, Sir Roger?
Do you think consciousness could, could a bacterium be conscious, for instance? The thing is, I don't know. You see, I think consciousness is certainly not restricted just to humans. But how far down, if I can use the word down? In the animal and being plant, how far does it go?
You see, I think, I think, uh, if people are dog owners, they're very convinced that their dogs are conscious, and I believe that is correct. I have no reason to disbelieve that. I think that dogs are conscious, I think that elephants are conscious.
Octopuses are conscious. They don't have to be mammalian at all. But whether an ant is conscious or not, I won't worry more about.
Maybe, maybe not. Whether a honey bee is conscious, maybe a better chance, I think. They do complicated things. They seem to be able to even do simple arithmetic apparently.
So, how far down, if I can use the word down, in the animal kingdom? It goes, I have no idea. I think it probably goes pretty far, though.
Whether a bacterium could be considered to be conscious, I would be much more dubious about it. But I'm only guessing. Yeah, yeah.
But, and, yeah, sorry, just one, because I'm so curious what your thoughts are in people who have, like, panpsychist ideas when they think, let's say, a cell is conscious and then they have what's called the combination problem, because how then... Does, do I feel like one consciousness hunts and not sort of a sort of weird sensation of being trillion cells at the same time? Are these stuff that you think about or have thoughts on? Well, it's got to be something. So I do think it's got something to do with quantum state.
And since I argue it to be to do with the collapse of wave function, then you've got to have a wave function to collapse. And big wave functions collapse more than little wave functions. sense.
So according to such a view you would have to have quite a big coherent object. You see it's wrong probably to think of individual cells, it's probably a collective effect. I mean many quantum effects are like that when you talk about superconductivity, there are many quantum effects which are quite big in a certain sense of extensive quantum fluidity and things like that.
Sure, so it's not just thinking of individual atoms, how much does each atom have, and add it up. That's not the answer. It's got to be some much more collective definition. And I have one final question for the three of you, maybe Federico.
Nice, if you can start. We've discussed... the dangers and the threats of AI, especially as things are now progressing so fast.
And especially, and here also, Sir Roger, I remember you saying it's not, we don't have to fear computers being intelligent. What we have to fear is that we start believing they are truly intelligent. So I remember you saying that.
And what if I asked the three of you, What defines the human? And could we say that the era of computation points back at us that we are much more? And so, what are better, sort of, meaning, purpose level?
What are your thoughts here, Federico? What defines the human? A human is defined by having a consciousness that is not actually in the physical body, is in the field that controls the physical body.
And so the sensations and feelings and free will are properties of the field. It's a quantum field. There's an existing space and time.
So if you believe that, then a lot of our intelligence, our real intelligence, what distinguishes us from artificial intelligence is the semantics, is the fact that you have an experience. can comprehend what you are experiencing. You will get the meaning of it.
And that of course is the ontology, as I said earlier. So symbols follow the ontology of the meaning. So the symbols are in fact in service of the fact that these fields want to communicate with each other and they need classical symbols, which are shareable symbols, like bits that can be copied to communicate.
They cannot, they cannot. transfer what they feel directly, because that's a quantum state that cannot be duplicated. So it's impossible to communicate what you feel to any other field, but you can communicate by translating some of what you feel into shareable feelings.
And that also accounts for why there has to be a classical world. Classical world has to exist for two reasons. One, to communicate. field to field to communicate their meaning with classical symbols, with shareable symbols, and the other one to store the experience because the actual experience, the quantum experience, can only last a very short amount of time. So it's actually in the present.
So you need to store that experience in classical, with classical symbols that you can then retrieve in the present in order to make sense of what you, of your life. Thank you. And Bernardo, how would you like to close that?
What defines the human, and especially in relation to the era of computation? What defines us is our inner life. Whatever it comes from, what defines us is what it is like to be us, right?
Not how we present ourselves to external observation, but what it is like to be us. I don't think there will ever be anything that is like to be a silicon computer in and of itself. I think assuming that there can be is mistaking a simulation for the thing simulated. It's like thinking that if you simulate a black hole in your computer, which you can do very accurately, it will be sucked into your computer because your simulation is accurate. And I think the same thing with AI, that it simulates the patterns of how we associate tokens, words, word segments.
The fact that it can simulate that well. because it has been trained on text written by human, doesn't at all mean that what it is like to be it while it is processing tokens is anywhere near what it is like to be us when we are speaking. As a matter of fact, I don't think there is anything it is like to be it in and of itself. A large language model is just a computer that applies geometrical transformations to tokens.
It's manipulation of symbols like in Searle's Chinese room experiment. And I think it is a great danger that because those symbol manipulations now can be done at such a large scale, that LLMs come across to us as things like us. The illusion is now becoming so compelling that we will start thinking that we are mechanisms. Or in Sir Roger's words, that we will start thinking that we are formal systems. Because those LLMs are formal systems and they seem to behave like us.
Now... Where does the illusion come from? Well, it's obvious.
It seems to behave like us because it was trained on our output. It was trained on human text. So it quacks like a duck because it was made to imitate the duck.
So the fact that it quacks like a duck doesn't mean at all that it is a duck any more than because a shop window mannequin that was made to look like a human, that similarity doesn't mean that it is human. It was constructed to look. like a human.
By humans. By humans. An LLM was constructed to talk like humans.
By humans. Trained on human text. So that it quacks like us doesn't mean that it is anywhere near us. But the illusion is so compelling that we may start believing this kind of grotesque nonsense.
So Roger, would you agree to this? Are your views on AI still the same even with the last developments? I don't think that my view has changed. The trouble is that you can get devices...
See, I think that without being conscious, these devices will not actually... Well, put it the other way around. Well, they won't be intelligent. And I think AI is a misnomer. See, it means artificial intelligence.
And in fact, when one calls it AI... is rather suggestive, well, dis-suggestive, that you just have your powerful enough computer and then it will become actually intelligent. Now, you see, for me, this goes against the initial argument which I was trying to make at the beginning of this discussion.
It came from the lectures given by Steen, which I formulated my viewpoint there. What he showed is that your understanding really is not a comfort. computation. So you can put in as much in the way of computational power, you can make the thing play chess as well as you can, or you can make it play Go, so that it would play these moves better than any human being might.
That's quite possible. But does it understand what it's doing? Well, it would have to be conscious to understand what it's doing.
Of course, it's hard to formulate this, because what does it mean to say it understands something if I perform in such a way that looks as though it does? And the trouble is that I can imagine that the technology will get to such a degree that it's very hard to tell whether or not it's conscious. It doesn't mean that it is conscious, and I certainly would argue that a computational system, in other words, computer, let me use the word computer, that's what we mean after all, a computer in the sense that we mean it, which is a computational system. will not ever be intelligent. doesn't mean that it couldn't simulate the intelligence to a degree that you might be fooled by i mean it's it's a it's a difficult question but i i would say that ai i mean it's it has its dangers the dangers are not that it will take over and become more intelligent than us the dangers are it would be misused in ways which could fool us well that's what it's all Thank you so much, Roger.
And I find it very special that you took time for us. And I also find it just very special. I contact your assistant and that you are still up for this, sitting down with us.
And I see a bookshelf full of books. Are your days still spent? Are you still every day reading, thinking? How does that go on your age?
I still have my books because I don't want to throw them out. But I have a difficulty that I can barely read because my eyesight. I have macular degeneration, which means I have to magnify it up hugely in order to see it. I should probably have one of these reading devices on my computer, which can read to me. I haven't done that yet.
But your days are still spent thinking over all these deep problems. You are, in that sense, still working. I am, yes. It gets me.
It's more difficult as I get older, I think, yes. I get older more easily. Thank you so much.
And I cannot do more than thank you very much, Sir Roger, because this has been a very, very good discussion. Thank you. I've enjoyed it too.
Yes. I'm very grateful as well. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sir Roger. We'll let you and your assistant know when this video comes online. And I wish you all the best and both of you in finding answers to these deep questions. And it's also beautiful to just discuss and ponder about these questions of life.
Thank you very much for watching. And we will let you know when next videos come up around all of these topics. Thanks so much.