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Consciousness: Nonlocal or Nonlocated?

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Submitted by: Christian de Quincey

Submit Date: 2004-06-17

Consciousness: Nonlocal or Nonlocated?

By Christian de Quincey

Does distant healing using the intentionality of prayer indicate nonlocal consciousness at work? Elisabeth Targ and her colleagues have experimentally documented an effect, but deliberately make no attempt to explain any mechanism. One suggestion often made about such "action-at-a-distance" is that we are dealing with the phenomenon of "field consciousness"—but this may well turn out to be a confusion of metaphors.

We have to be extra careful with attempts to explain consciousness by means of metaphors derived from physics—for example, the idea of "field consciousness" or consciousness as energy. The core difficulty is that the notion of "field" (and "energy") implies something extended in space, and this is in direct contrast to what we actually know about consciousness.

Experientially, consciousness does not occupy any particular region of space—though we certainly do associate it with the region of space that coincides with our body, specifically our head. Anything that occupies space has size, so what size could a mind be? Is it something to be measured in inches or feet, or miles or light-years? Empirically, no one has ever measured consciousness, and no one has proposed even how we might ever measure it. (Though, of course, we have many kinds of measurements of correlates of consciousness—for example, activities in the brain, especially at the level of neurons and synapses.)

So, if consciousness does not occupy space, are we justified in calling it "nonlocal"? Certainly, we may say it is "nonspatial," but this is not quite the same as saying it is "nonlocal" in the sense used in quantum physics. In quantum physics, nonlocality refers to a measurement of correlated behavior of two quantum events separated in space in such a way that there is no possibility of a light signal passing between them. Therefore there cannot be any energetic causal connection between them, even though the behavior of one event is experimentally demonstrated to be clearly associated with the behavior of the other.

"Nonlocality" in quantum physics refers to an effect separated in space from a correlated event which seems to act as cause. But since such correlations cannot be accounted for by any exchange of energy or information, the coupling of the "effect" with the "cause" confronts us with the conundrum of "action-at-a-distance." How can something "here" affect another thing over "there" if there is no possible medium connecting them? Physicists call this phenomenon "nonlocality" because the effect takes place in a region of space energetically and informationally separated from the apparent cause. Of course, both the "effect" and the "cause" are "local" to their own respective spacetime regions. Both are located in space—but in energetically isolated regions of space. Thus, "nonlocal" means isolated regions of spacetime. It does not mean "nonspatial."

This is very different from the kind of "nonlocality" some researchers attribute to consciousness. Consciousness does not occur in any region of spacetime isolated from any other spacetime region. It is not merely nonlocal in the physical sense, it is nonlocated—it is not located anywhere in space at all. It is nonspatial.

However, if we still choose to talk of "nonlocal" (rather than "nonlocated") consciousness or intelligence, it would be inconsistent to then speak of consciousness "permeating space and time." How can something that is either nonlocal or nonspatial "permeate space"? It is not that consciousness permeates space like a field, but, as just noted, that it is not located anywhere in space at all. This is why the metaphor of "field" may be misleading when applied to mind or consciousness.

Yet it is experimentally true (according to experiments described, for example, by Dean Radin in The Conscious Universe; see IONS Review, number 46) that consciousness associated with matter located at one region of space appears to affect matter located at some distant location in space, and that consciousness associated with groups of people spread out in space appears to affect the behavior of matter some distance away. This certainly looks like "consciousness spread out in space" or "field consciousness." But actually all the data reveal is that the (inferred) state of mind of a group of people in one (or multiple) locations is correlated with the behavior of distant or "nonlocal" matter (in this case, random number generators). It is a leap of faith or imagination to assume that the nonlocal effect is "caused" by consciousness rippling through space like undulations in a field.

That there is an effect-at-a-distance is clearly suggested by the data; and since similar effects are accounted for in physics by, for example, electromagnetic or gravitational fields, we may be tempted to assume that the at-a-distance effects correlated between consciousness at one location and some physically unconnected, distant location must also be a "field." But this would imply that consciousness spreads itself out in space—which is incompatible with phenomenological and empirical data. Perhaps the most we can do is use "field" as a metaphor and talk of "field-like" effects of consciousness—but not of literal "consciousness fields."

My own guess is that if there is any relationship at all between nonlocal quantum events and nonlocated consciousness events, and the notion of "quantum field potential" and "field consciousness," it has far more to do with the nature of time and probabilities than with space. So-called quantum fields are not actually fields in any spatial sense. They are abstract mathematical descriptions of matrices of probabilities (of tendencies for certain events to occur). It is only the representations of such probabilities that take on the characteristics of fields. Probabilistic events, as tendencies of events to occur, are temporal—perhaps even psychological. In the end, statements of probability are statements about psychological expectations.

As a temporal, and not a spatial, phenomenon, consciousness may, perhaps, in some highly mysterious way, affect the probabilities of some physical events—and, therefore, of their actual occurrence. The key phrase, as far as theory and explanation go, is the throwaway "in some highly mysterious way"—how this mind-matter interaction could occur is at the heart of the perennial mind-body problem in philosophy. All we have are anomalous data; we have no coherent theory to account for them—unless, following A. N. Whitehead, we take the radical step of shifting from "space-talk" to "time-talk," that is, recognizing that both the ontological nature and relationship between consciousness and matter grow out of process rather than substance (see C. de Quincey, "Past Matter, Present Mind," Journal of Consciousness Studies, volume 6, 1999).
	IONS editor Christian de Quincey is proessor of consciousness studies at John F. Kennedy University.

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Link: http://www.noetic.org/publications/review/issue49/r49_deQuincey.html

It was refreshing to read such a lucid exposition of the tendency in various consciousness studies to confuse the metaphorical use of such concepts as field, entanglement and non-locality from quantum physics with what they empirically and mathematically denote in quantum theory itself. Furthermore the question as to whether a correspondence exists between putative mind fields or consciousness fields and quantum fields is an empirical one as is the possibility proposed by Penrose (2004) and others that quantum gravity might be involved in the collapse of the wave function hypothesised to be related to conscious intentions. As for the role of time to which the author refers in relation to the mind-matter problem in philosophy, Primas (2004) attempted solution in terms of a proposed time entanglement between mind and matter appears promising. In Primas proposal, the symmetry of a timeless primordial reality is broken in such a way that two domains are yielded, one tensed, the other tenseless. The tensed domain includes tensed time, non-material processes and mental events. The tenseless domain alludes to matter and physical energy. According to Primas, his concept while eschewing Cartesian reductionism upholds a notion of complementarity between mind and matter, not unlike that proposed previously by such physicists as Pauli and Bohm. Another heuristically valuable perspective which seems to avoid the confounding of metaphor with empirical reality, is that of Hiley et al (2005) in a paper provocatively entitled, Can Mind Affect Matter Via Active Information? Based on the notions of active information and quantum potential energy, the authors propose a way of understanding how mental processes can act on traditional classically describable neural processes without violating the energy conservation law - a criticism which had been applied to Eccles proposition that a putative mind-field could alter quantum transition probabilities during the process of exocytosis at the synaptic cleft. Without providing an elaborate argument here, I would simply suggest that the notion of Bohm and Hiley in his (2005) paper that the quantum level can be considered to have, via active information a primitive mind-like quality, though obviously without the imputation of consciousness (which is an evolutionary emergent) is a significant contribution as Hiley himself conveys, to mind-matter research. Clearly, it avoids the obfuscation caused by the excessively and unacknowledged metaphorical use of terms from Quantum Physics as well as the perhaps unwitting elevation of certain consciousness studies to a higher scientific status occurring as a result of such illicit metaphor. At worst, such metaphors can result in a plunge into panpsychism. The further clarification of the applications, legitimate and otherwise of terms from quantum physics, can only serve to facilitate research not only into consciousness but also more widely into diseases such as cancer and HIV/AIDS where in holistic or multifactorial theoretical and explanatory frameworks, mental factors and processes have been shown to be relevant to disease onset and outcome. Unfortunately, poor operational definition and the loose use of technical concepts does not contribute, as de Quinceys paper does, to the efficacy of transdisciplinary research into either consciousness or disease. The illegitimate use of terms from quantum physics creates only an illusion of scientific sophistication to consciousness studies even if such terms covertly aggrandize the authors. Finally, a perhaps legitimate metaphor could be that of the figurative quantum entanglement between the developed and developing worlds with respect to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. by: Peter B. Todd
by: pto49976@bigpond.net.au

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