To sum up so far: If we assume that mechanical interaction is sufficient to collapse the wave function, and that subsequent observation miraculously reaches back in time to change the actual already happened past, we find ourselves deep in temporal paradoxes of turning causes into their own effect, and of placing “after” before “before.” (If “before” becomes “after” what does it mean to say “ ‘after’ comes before ‘before’”?)

As we saw, however, these absurdities can be avoided in the standard quantum interpretation, where we assume that no event is actualized until the act of observation. Here, the present does not change the past because there was no preexisting past to be changed. Instead, what happens is that the act of observation in the present—the observer’s consciousness—creates the past out of whole cloth, as it were. This, of course, is a radical revision of how we normally regard the world and our relationship to it, and it raises many deep issues of its own. But it does not enmesh us in the logical absurdities of temporal reversal that snare us if we assume backward causation.

4. Simultaneous ‘Causality’

In this situation, we assume that there is no temporal difference between E3 and E4—the observer’s consciousness is instantaneously observing and willing the sequence exactly while it is happening. In other words, no time elapses between the appearance of the numbers on the screen and the observer’s perception and willing of them.

The consequences for causality are profound. Taking the “mechanical view” of simultaneity, if the collapse has already happened then we have a situation where the initial causal chain beginning with the random radioactive decay somehow results in a non-random sequence—without the benefit of the second “initial” cause of the observer’s consciousness. Similarly, taking the “consciousness view” of simultaneity, where there the possibilities continue to exist in potentia, we need to explain how an essentially random set of probabilities is replaced by a non-random sequence of events—again without the benefit of introducing the observer’s consciousness as a causal factor.

What is different, then, in the simultaneous scenario is the absence of the second causal chain, sourced in the observer which could either override the already existing information, or create an event by collapsing the wave function. For if E3 and E4 are simultaneous, there can be no causal relationship between them—at least in the sense that one causes the other ab initio. (They may, of course, mutually influence each other once in progress, as evident in the mutual co-causality of complex systems such as we find in the biosphere [Kaufman, 1993; Macy, 1991]).

It is interesting that Schmidt and Stapp suggest that the experimental data might “imply a non-causal mechanism in the sense that the effect . . . occurs before the cause.” However, the notion of “effect coming before its cause” is not “non-causal”—it is, as argued earlier, inherently absurd. And even if such a dynamic and time distortion were possible—if, somehow, an effect could cause its own cause—we would still have a causal relationship, albeit a reversed causal relationship. “Backward causation” would not be an absence of causality, it would be a form of causation that would imply or require time reversal. Furthermore, as I hope to show below, the notion of “non-causal mechanism” is an oxymoron: Without causality there could be no mechanism, and we would be obliged to search out some other explanatory or descriptive principle.

In Schmidt’s experiment, then, without a temporal gap between E3 and E4, the observer cannot cause or influence the behavior of the numbers on the screen. Causation, as we understand it in physics and information theory, involves an exchange of energy or information. And such an exchange requires the passage of a signal or energy quantum between separate entities. According to the laws of relativity, supported by empirical measurement, no signal can be communicated faster than the speed of light. In other words, energy/information exchanges—that is, causal events—must take some time. If two events are simultaneous, no light signal can pass between them. This is standard relativity theory, and the standard definition of what “simultaneous” means. Therefore, in Schmidt’s experiment, there can be no second casual chain beginning with the observation of the screen if we assume that E3 and E4 are simultaneous.

Without the second causal chain, however, there can be no mechanical (quantum or otherwise) explanation of how the first random causal chain (beginning with the radioactive decay) could produce a non-random sequence of numbers. Here, we must turn to an understanding of the situation that goes beyond mechanism and causality. If, as Schmidt’s data indicate, the observer’s intending a non-random result is efficacious, then we must assume that the observer’s consciousness introduces some patterned difference into the otherwise random (unpatterned) sequence. But we cannot legitimately use causal descriptions to explain this process.

Without causality, we have no mechanism to explain the results. How, then, are we to approach understanding the data? In the absence of mechanism and causality, we must turn to some other explanatory principle for simultaneous events that involve mutual-difference. This is the sort of conceptual difficulty that Carl Jung addressed when, along with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, he proposed “synchronicity” as an alternative mode of acausal relationship between events (Jung & Pauli, 1952). In synchronicity, two or more events coincident in time may be related through meaning. Synchronicity, then, implies mind or consciousness as an ingredient in the event-process.

Somehow, a meaningful—that is non-random—connection is established between the observer and the otherwise random sequence displayed in Schmidt’s experiment.

Meaning Beyond Mechanism

Although the grooves of our thinking and our habits of language seem to force us into causal descriptions, we have seen that if E3 and E4 are truly simultaneous, then we cannot legitimately resort to causal explanations for the event that involves both the observer’s intentionality and the random-number-generated display. As we’ve seen, we cannot invoke a mechanistic explanation for this “interaction.” Instead of mechanism—a third-person phenomenon and description—we find ourselves in the realm of meaning—and meaning requires a first-person perspective.

Without the benefit of a causal explanation, then, it seems we need to turn to hermeneutical rather than mechanistic descriptions whenever we are dealing with “interactions” or interrelationships of mind and matter (or consciousness and physical events). The mere presence of mind in-forms matter, it injects information into a system which previously lacked it—random becomes non-random. Mind in the presence of matter projects meaning; the very act of observation is itself an interpretation—it is a creative act.

Mind or consciousness being non-spatial, however, is not confined to the locality of the observer. It is non-local; it operates in a domain that transcends the causality or mechanism of signal exchanges. And this quality of synchronous non-locality is, as we now know from confirmations of the EPR experiment, a property of the quantum domain, too.

Jung spoke of the “psychoid” realm, a domain of being prior to the differentiation of matter and psyche. At this unmanifest level, psychoid “tendencies”—Jung called them “archetypes”—give form to specific manifestations of mind (images, ideas, emotions) and of matter (quantum particles). The archetypes give shape to events we consider mental and material. If we pursue this line of thinking, then, we may propose that in Schmidt’s experiments when the observer intends positive numbers to show up in the display, what is actually happening is that some archetype is activated which shows up both as the observer’s intention and the pattern of numbers on the screen. There is no causal effect between mind and matter. There is, we might say, an “archetypal expression”—what Jung called an acausal, “synchronistic” event.

But what about the recording on the magnetic disk? What about the original radioactive decay which caused it? These events are prior to the observation of the display. Unless we assume that consciousness collapses the wave function and creates its own past, then these events have already happened. And since the decay was random, the trace it left on the magnetic disk would also have been random. How, then, does the magnetic disk not produce random numbers on the screen—even in the presence of a pattern-creating intentional mind?

This, of course, is exactly the paradox posed by Schmidt’s experiments. If we assume Stapp’s interpretation, then the events had not already happened—until the observation. So, no temporal problem is raised—either in the mechanistic or the hermeneutical descriptions. In the hermeneutical case, the description would include the entire pattern of events from the radioactive decay to the appearance of numbers on the screen, and including the observer’s intentionality. The entire pattern would be a synchronistic expression of an archetype, a coming into being of a pattern that includes both material and psychic aspects.

If, on the other hand, the events had occurred prior to the observer, then we would have to account for the temporal disjunction between the prior random events and the non-random pattern seen by the observer. At what point did the whole pattern flip from random to non-random? On this line of inquiry, it seems we dig ourselves deep into temporal paradoxes, or into conceptual contradictions along the lines that the archetypal pattern is simultaneously both random and non-random.

A way out of this kind of apparent contradiction would be, following Arthur Young’s cosmology, to acknowledge two complementary epistemologies—third-person and first-person. From the “outside,” a quantum event appears wholly random and unconstrained; but, such action, from the “inside,” may be experienced as choice (Young, 1976a, 1976b). To an observer outside the quantum system, there is no discernible difference between unpredictable, random quantum decay, and unpredictable non-random choice—they are both intrinsically unpredictable and indeterminate. But to the entity making the choice, there is a world of difference. And this is the difference between third-person and first-person perspectives.

On the hermeneutical interpretation, when Schmidt’s observer saw the random-number-generated display, and intended a non-random outcome, he engaged with the entire quantum system at an archetypal level from a first-person perspective. His choice, his intentionality, was expressed as part of a meaningful pattern (which included the observer’s intentionality, and the entire sequence of quantum-initiated events). From a third-person perspective which excludes the agency of the first-person perspective, the sequence of events taken as a whole is paradoxical and inexplicable.

Conclusion

One way around this, suggested by Stapp, is to interpret quantum theory to imply that there is no event (and therefore no “past”) until there is an observation. In this case, consciousness creates its entire history, including the events that now appear as its causal past, at every instant. This, as Goswami has argued in Science Within Consciousness (1994), leads us into adopting an idealist metaphysic.

However, we can invoke a causal explanation—even an idealist one—only if we assume that there was a temporal difference between the penultimate event (E3) in the sequence (the display on the screen) and the intentional observation (E4) of that event. No temporal difference: no possibility of signal exchange, and therefore no informational or energetic causation. No possible mechanism.

If we assume the “non-simultaneous” scenario, then, we have three distinct causal options to explain the data from Schmidt’s experiments: (1) Mechanical view-A: The chain of events already happened, and the observer’s intentionality somehow reached back in time and changed the past; (2) Mechanical view-B: The observer’s intentionality overrode or overwrote the data recorded on the magnetic disk, in real time without any temporal displacement; (3) Consciousness view: The chain of events came into being only when the observer interacted with the experimental system. There was no pre-existing mechanical chain of events initiated by a random quantum mechanical event. The only causal chain was that initiated by the observer’s intentionality.

If we assume that the two events (E3 and E4) were simultaneous, then we must forego mechanistic/causal explanations and opt, instead, for a fourth alternative—something along the lines of Jung’s synchronicity, where meaning is what connects otherwise distinct events.

I have concluded that the paradoxes of the quantum domain which appear to involve consciousness are only paradoxes from a third-person perspective. From “inside” the system, from a first-person perspective, paradox is replaced by pattern. Non-local human intentionality merges with the archetypal, non-local intentionality inherent in the quantum system (and its macro derivatives).

Instead of interpreting Schmidt’s data as evidence for backward causation, it may be more meaningful to view them as cues for expanding our scientific methodology to include the first-person perspective, and to look for meaningful patterns to complement our conventional third-person perspectives of mechanism and causality.

Beyond causality and mechanism, science may have to include acausal synchronicity and meaning whenever we are confronted by the presence of mind or consciousness in nature. And, as Descartes vigorously demonstrated despite his dualism, the presence of mind is ontologically unavoidable.

References