Two columns ago I wrote about a study conducted in Toronto by Dr. Freedman and colleagues in which people were able to change the output of a random event generator by mental will alone (the column is here) (Dr. Freedman's paper is here). This work follows on decades of previous studies that demonstrated similar events that should not, by all the laws of physics, be happening. That recent study was of interest because it demonstrated that the strange outcome was associated with alterations in brain function, specifically frontal lobe activity.
This column is on strange outcomes and the efforts to understand them.
There is a detailed and very readable account of these lines of research in physics by George Musser in his two books, Spooky Action at a Distance (2016) (the book can be found here) and Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation (2023) (the book can be found here). Spooky Action describes the attempts of physicists to understand phenomena that fall outside the parameters of the branch of physics known as quantum mechanics. Entanglement is one example of apparent information transfer at a distance by no discernible means. It happens without time lag or loss of signal strength over distance. Einstein famously called entanglement, ‘spooky action at a distance’ because it defies the assumption of locality which is fundamental to quantum physics.
Locality, to be simplistic, is the principle that all things move because they are acted on by something else. The ball rolls because the cue stick struck it. Information is transmitted because wires or electromagnetic waves carried it from sender to receiver. Locality means there are verifiable links between an action and a result. Non locality is the general name for anything that defies this basic tenet of physics. For example, non locality describes changing the output of a random event generator by thought alone. There are no discernible means by which thought can change a mechanical device. Yet, the studies replicating this effect go back decades. It is also an ongoing head scratcher for physicists.
In his next book, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, Musser describes the efforts of physicists to understand the interaction between the human mind and the physical world. Again, there is a lengthy history of well reproduced results demonstrating non local phenomena linked to human involvement. Perhaps, some of the current thinking in physics goes, the answer might be to consider another non quantifiable phenomenon, human consciousness.
Humans have this odd quality of consciousness. I have been wondering how it works for decades while working as a clinical neuropsychologist. The mathematics of that field are limited to statistics, and do not have the conceptual breadth and elegance of physics. The field of neuropsychology does, however, take on the task of measuring some aspects of the great complexity of mind. The clinical work is never boring; each client brings new histories, new profiles. The individual is unique. The large range of factors coming into play in the individual profile means that each person cannot be completely quantified. It is by blending individual cases into groups that we uncover overall patterns.
This is not unlike the process that physicists bring to bear. By using the lens of a discipline, it is possible to snap a hazy landscape into focus. Sharp edges appear and shapes become distinct entities. A version of reality, artificially constrained by the method of observation, comes into view. Physics has rules. Philosophy has logic. Neuropsychology has statistics. All disciplines have their lenses that bring focus in one fashion or another.
Despite all this, consciousness does not come clearly into focus. Yes, elements of what happens in awareness are well defined in neuropsychology. We measure intelligence and memory and such. This is the sharp picture we can see using our lens. But there remains a wider, hazy, poorly defined aspect of consciousness where spooky things happen.
Physics has the same focus problem. There is a territory beyond the rules that is out of reach of the lens. This territory has evaded conceptualization, let alone measurement. This is where time and space do not operate normally and random event generators are perturbed. It is also where other non local activities occur. The interested reader is referred, for example, to the decades of research from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory: (the website is here).
The conscious mind insists that all of reality is subject to conscious inspection. Yet the conscious mind is still confounded, trying to understand the reality of consciousness. There are tantalizing steps forward, and a difficult challenge does not mean giving up. Fair enough. My concern is that I see a huge gap between concept driven hypotheses and the people I worked to understand as a clinician. I as yet do not see the human being in the models.
Musser quotes the psychologist Hoffman (2023, p.236) who argued that understanding the functions of the mind is important to understanding consciousness. We did not evolve, goes the argument, as impeccably elegant physics experiments or mathematical constructs. We evolved to solve the problems of survival. The field of physics is not an accurate representation of the human mind.
Not being a physicist, and having been trained in psychology, I find this approach makes sense. It fits my frame of reference. Which approach has the more accurate grasp, I do not know. Still, I want to expand on the idea of why I think psychology has a point.
When I think of human consciousness, I begin with what we do with our minds when conscious. We take sensory information and learn, remember, investigate, analyze, plan and organize with it. I can measure someone’s abilities to do all these things, and I can measure their level of attention and awareness, but I can not accurately quantify consciousness itself, the state of mind in which these things occur. I do not know even understand what consciousness is.
Is consciousness a field like gravity? A new form of physics, like non locality? A spiritual, non human endowment that somehow infuses us with consciousness like a divine spark? How did we come to have this thing, this quality, this skill that we simply can not articulate? And how can we know if the right answer is on offer? How can a model of consciousness be tested?
There are different ways of knowing. There is verifiable proof in the external world, the kind of validation upon which we can all agree. Then there are the things that feel so impeccably real that no external verification is needed. Indeed, none may be sought. It was as real to me as the hand on the end of my arm, and no one can tell me different. Is this the sort of category into which consciousness falls? Some innate knowledge that simply can not be independently verified? Some understanding of reality that can not be captured by any means other than experience?
Any field of study demands you begin by asking good questions. As a neuropsychologist, I can ask the question, what is anyone conscious of?
People are conscious of sensory percepts, of their own conscious cognitive and emotional processes, and the end result of unconscious processes that comes to conscious mind. People are also aware of these things. That awareness can be described and measured.
Neuropsychology, as does neurology, differentiates between consciousness and awareness. Conscious is a more general term for awake and alert. It can be measured. We can demonstrate consciousness by opening our eyes, following commands and answering questions. Awareness can only be reported, by answering the question, What are you aware of? (For the interested reader, I cover the topics of awareness and agnosia in greater detail in my book, Mind Phases: Consciousness and the Information Processing Cycle, 2022) (the book can be found here ).
Awareness can also be affected by brain damage. In neuropsychology, there is an extensive literature on disorders of awareness. These are the agnosias, or the loss of normal awareness of a cognitive function. In the case of visual agnosia, awareness of what you can see is lost. The eyes and visual system still work, but the afflicted person is no longer aware they can see. They report themselves as blind. Using indirect testing methods, it can be demonstrated that visual information received in the brain can still influence the person’s actions. Agnosias have been documented in other functions as well: memory, touch, face recognition, amongst many.
Agnosias demonstrate that many mental activities keep on working with or without conscious awareness. The sense of consciousness that we usually enjoy is an extra overlay of mental activity. This insight allows us to ask a question, what is going on in awareness that is specific to the aware state, and lost in agnosia?
What is lost when awareness is absent is twofold: directed attention and wilful intent. Once attention is focussed on something like an internal memory or an external sight of something new, we become conscious of it and can do something with the information beyond simple reaction. People with visual agnosia can not act deliberately and with intent on something they do not know they can see. They can only react.
Intentional activity all happens in the small range and span of attention. Whatever is in that focus can be inspected, analyzed, or used in a plan for future action. Awareness is the starting point for intention. We can act deliberately on things in awareness, but we can only react to things not in awareness. Conscious awareness is a state that permits intention, deliberate activity and planning to occur.
Attention is a very powerful state of cognitive activity. Information held there can be acted upon. Which is all well and good, but the rest of the machinery of mind still goes on, automatically and relentlessly, outside of the limited focus of conscious awareness. That machinery remains in the background, portions of it awaiting the focus of attention to bring them forward again.
Here is what is interesting and strange. Some things change when brought into, or set aside from, the focus of attention. Information can be transmitted by no discernible means. Photons stop acting like waves and act like particles. Locality, a tenet of physics, seems to go into abeyance.
There is a common thread in the studies out of the PEAR laboratory, the work published by Freedman and colleagues, and the paradox of the wave/particle nature of photons. That thread is conscious human attention. The frontal lobes are involved in attention and intent to act, the region temporarily altered in Freedman’s studies. The wave function of photons in light is collapsed to particle activity when observers attempt to measure it. The PEAR laboratory found that increasing analysis of experimental data led to decreased accuracy of results. Dean Radin (Entangled Minds, 2006) (the book can be found here ) characterizes this mental aspect as ‘hyperanalytical’. Paying close attention to some things can have a distinct and measurable effect on their properties.
What happens if focussed attention and intention are distracted or even temporarily suppressed? This alteration can be achieved in a variety of ways: the suppressing effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation, as in Freedman’s study, or the intention not to focus on analysis, but information, as at the PEAR laboratory. The same effect can be seen in cases of localized frontal lobe damage.
Altering attention and intention experimentally can result in the emergence of non local properties, such as changing the output of random event generators. As also demonstrated at the PEAR laboratory’s remote viewing experiments, it becomes possible to not only alter the output of random event generators, but to access information outside of the local constraints of time and space.
There is a territory outside the focal field of the lens of the conscious mind that evades analysis by the usual methods. There are several decades of serious scientific research into this, but a comprehensive model to account for non local events so far is evasive. As Musser has pointed out, unanswered questions like this are like catnip to the curious. The search goes on to understand the nature of things that are both spooky and real.
How can we extend the scope of the credible without falling into the bottomless pit of credulity? Those suffering from mental illness sometimes make spooky assumptions and claims that they can influence things, animals and people. So do spiritualists, magicians, charlatan, grifters ... and fantasy novelists. While speculative fiction is a delightful place to visit, when we forsake empiricism, disaster follows. Gamblers who believe they can predict or control the cards learn the hard way that in the end, the house wins. And yet ... and yet ... when Physics has made it respectable to talk about temporal anomalies and entanglement, it's seductive to wonder if indeed "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The Ghostbuster movies excepted, we haven't devised a box in which to keep spooks, whether they are the traditional Marley's Ghost variety or the increasingly weird stuff thought to be going on inside atoms. Perhaps the current questioning of other elements of Physics for which there is no empirical evidence -- Dark Matter, for example -- may lead to a fresh paradigm that brings the worlds of physics and magic closer together. Oddly, perhaps Ockham's Razer may be the tool to cut through through to a understanding of how the universe and the insides of our heads work, because right now, the complex arguments about both inner and outer reality are beginning to look a bit like the debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.