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Can Quantum Analogies Help Us to Understand the Process of Thought? by Paavo Pylkkänen

”It has indeed been proposed…that such analogies exist, and this paper first focuses at some length on David Bohm’s formulation of them from 1951.”

https://philpapers.org/archive/PYLCQA.pdf

The naive idea is that such [quantum] analogies would help us to see mental processes and conscious experience in a new way. —Paavo Pylkkänen

I am interested in the question of whether the consideration of quantum physics can change our view of what there is to be explained about the mind in the first place... —Paavo Pylkkänen

…people who hold the classical, mechanistic worldview as the only relevant truth might well tend to see and emphasize only the classical and mechanistic aspects of conscious experience and mental processes… —Paavo Pylkkänen

…people equipped with classical as well as quantum intuitions might see broader aspects. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…physicists have in fact proposed that there are strong resemblances between quantum processes and our inner experiences and thought processes. Such analogies were proposed to exist early on by the founding figures of quantum theory, for example by Niels Bohr… —Paavo Pylkkänen

In this paper I will focus upon a fairly detailed early discussion of analogies between quantum and thought processes put forward by the physicist-philosopher David Bohm… —Paavo Pylkkänen, Can Quantum Analogies Help Us to Understand the Process of Thought?

In this paper my aim is…to explore whether quantum intuitions can help us to understand conscious experience and mental processes in a new and better way… —Paavo Pylkkänen, Can Quantum Analogies Help Us to Understand the Process of Thought?

A particularly clear early statement about certain close resemblances between quantum processes and thought processes, influenced by Bohr’s ideas, can…be
found in Bohm’s acclaimed 1951 textbook Quantum Theory. —Paavo Pylkkänen

I have included fairly long quotations and added explanatory comments in order to make the paper more accessible to those without a strong background in quantum physics. Also, I let Bohm himself speak on the physics issues whenever this seems reasonable. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…Wittgenstein gave up…an atomistic view of meaning and emphasized, for example, that to determine the meaning of a term we ought to consider how the term is used. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…Bohm…did not think that the structure of thought and language is atomistic. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Elements of our thought process and language do not have their meanings autonomously, but they originate in the connections with other elements. And...these connections are both indivisible and incompletely controllable. —Paavo Pylkkänen

For him [David Bohm] this implies that it is not possible to analyze language beyond a certain stage and expect to find elements with well-defined significance. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm…suggests that thought processes and quantum systems have in common a certain ontological holism… This is so…because an analysis beyond a certain point changes the “intrinsic nature” of the element in question. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Elements can have certain characteristic properties..., but they have such properties partly in virtue of the relations they have with other elements. Change those relations, and you may profoundly change the characteristic properties. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm implies that the context-dependence of properties is no anomaly in a quantum universe. On the contrary, the context-dependence of properties seems to be a very fundamental feature of our physical universe. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm suggests that the relation between the logical process to the most general type of thought process is analogous to the relation between the classical limit and the most general quantum process. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm implies that there is a general type of thought process in which wholeness prevails. The component ideas are not separately existing elements with well-defined meanings. These ideas do not necessarily transform according to the rules of logic… —Paavo Pylkkänen

...just as the physical world has a classically describable domain, so the process of thought includes the domain of logical thought process. —Paavo Pylkkänen, Can Quantum Analogies Help Us to Understand the Process of Thought?

...logical thinking is fundamental for the enterprise of science, and for thought in general. —Paavo Pylkkänen

But his [Bohm’s] approach implies that it would be a mistake to assume that logical thinking is the most general essence of the thought process, just as it would be a mistake to assume that classical physics reflects the essential nature of the physical world. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm...implies that the basic thinking process is “non-logical”. Logical thinking emerges out of such a process under certain conditions, analogously to the way causal physical processes emerge out of the general quantum process at the classical limit. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…he [Bohm] suggests that the production of new ideas involves quantum-like thought procesess that essentially involve indivisible, non-logical steps. —Paavo Pylkkänen

...he [Bohm] implies that the discovery of new ideas may typically require a quantum-like, general, even non-logical thinking process, while their justification has to take place in the “classical limit of thought” and make use of the logical thinking process. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Our customary ways of making sense of phenomena presuppose…analyzability… …when we apply analytical tools to phenomena that are strictly speaking unanalyzable, the result may be a somewhat artificial and unintelligible concept, such as that of a quantum jump. —Paavo Pylkkänen

The…proposal that comes out of Bohm’s analogies is…the idea that our thought process has a “quantum-like” aspect… …making one aspect of the [thought] process definite inevitably changes other equally significant aspects. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…the suggestion is that the way the general thought process changes from moment to moment is…quantum-like… The component ideas in such a process are not separate but flow steadily and indivisibly. —Paavo Pylkkänen

…the basic thinking process seems to have a “classical limit”, namely thinking in terms of well-defined concepts, including the logical thinking process. —Paavo Pylkkänen, Can Quantum Analogies Help Us to Understand the Process of Thought?

...unlike contemporary cognitive neuroscientists who tend to assume that all neural mechanisms relevant to understanding cognition and consciousness are classically describable, Bohm…looks for a significant role for quantum processes in neural functioning... —Paavo Pylkkänen

We are to envision two different levels of physical activity in the brain, one of them classically describable, while the other one needs to be described in a quantum theoretical way. …Bohm implies that…a typical state of mind includes both of them. —Paavo Pylkkänen

It is…interesting to speculate that different types of states of mind could correspond to physiological states that differ with respect to the relative contribution made by “classical” and “quantum” neural processes. —Paavo Pylkkänen

Bohm argues that the general thinking process is holistic and uncontrollable by its nature, and thus difficult to describe in terms of our usual scientific language that is organized in terms of separate concepts and logical arguments. —Paavo Pylkkänen