文档介绍：July 26, 2004 LBNL-55887
Quantum Leaps in Philosophy of Mind:
Reply to Bourget’s Critique
Henry P. Stapp
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
Abstract. David Bourget has raised some conceptual and technical objections to
my development of von Neumann’s treatment of the Copenhagen idea that the
purely physical process described by the Schrödinger equation must be
supplemented by a psychophysical process called the choice of the experiment
by Bohr and Process 1 by von Neumann. I answer here each of Bourget’s
objections.
I answer Bourget’s objections in the order he presents them.
Bourget’s first objection involves juxtaposing a quote from Stapp (1997) and a
quote from Stapp (1993). The first of these asserts that the uncertainties in the
process of exocytosis arising from the quantum uncertainties in the motions of
calcium ions inside nerve terminals entail that ”the brain must evolve into an
amorphous superposition of states corresponding to a continuum of different
macroscopic behaviours.” Then from my 1993 book he extracts the time 200µs
for the transit time of calcium ions inside nerve terminals from an ion channel to a
trigger site for the release of the contents of a vesicle of neurotransmitter.
Bourget suggests that I equate this 200µs transit time