Josephson, Kafatos on M-Theory and Consciousness

On Jun 26, 2013, at 4:33 PM, "Kafatos, Menas" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:

I agree with Brian. And as far as M-theory is concerned, it is offered as the complete theory of everything, in my view to avoid the problem of consciousness.

I have yet to watch all the Stanford Susskind videos on string and M-theory to see if there is any "there" there?

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Josephson [mailto:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 12:33 PM
To: Ruth Kastner

Subject: Re: Reality of Possibility


On 25 Jun 2013, at 15:45, Ruth Kastner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:

Thanks Brian, I will look at this, but first let me clarify something.

By 'complete' in the book, what I'm really getting at is that the theory doesn't need either

(1) the addition of beables a la Bohm

Bohm's idea which is very natural actually starts with Bohr, but goes beyond it.

In my own formulation for the masses:

The EM 2-form F = dA is the REAL IT beable. It has a BIT super-Q as described by Basil Hiley. All pointer reading of all experiment on all matter fields in the final analysis ends up with F. I think Geoffrey Chew first emphasized this at the Berkeley meetings described by David Kaiser in "How the Hippies Saved Physics."

The classical world corresponds to Q negligible - with the exception of spontaneous broken ground state symmetries giving emergent  over-complete distinguishably non-orthogonal Glauber coherent states of both real and virtual quanta. That's a lot of exceptions including crystals (both space and time), superfluids, lasers, ferromagnets, ferroelectrics, nematics, superconductors, and finally life and consciousness itself. See P.W. Anderson's "More is different."

(2) ad hoc modifications such as 'spontaneous collapse' theories


The point has to be made though that unless there is a theory of everything QM cannot be considered complete.  QM is no use unless it has a Hamiltonian to work with, and all we have at present is approximations that work only in a limited domain, or theories such as M-theory that are a kind of 'vapourware', having no existence in the form of written text.  This is independent of any considerations relating to life.


Brian

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Brian D. Josephson
Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge Director, Mind-Matter Unification Project
WWW: http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10
Tel. +44(0)1223 337260/337254