A Wrinkle in Time?

Psi, ‘Backward Causation,’ & Synchronicity

Introduction

At first glance, the data seem to suggest that an observer’s intentionality can change both the outcome and the initial conditions of a rigorously controlled experiment. Such a result indicating “backward causation” not only flatly contradicts common-sense notions of the nature of time and causality, but also challenges classical laws of physics and the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless the anomalous data are there and require explanation. Stapp has proposed a new mathematical formalism for quantum mechanics that, he believes, accounts for the apparent “time reversal” exhibited in Schmidt’s results.

This paper proposes that Schmidt’s data are open to a variety of interpretations, and that the notion of “backward causation” is by no means the most coherent. Four explanatory approaches are presented and analyzed, and—depending on certain assumptions regarding simultaneity—I propose that psi effects may call for non-causal, non-mechanistic descriptions: what Carl Jung referred to as synchronicity. In short, psi may be more a matter of meaning than mechanism, and a cue for science to open more to heuristic and first-person methodologies.

Apparent Evidence for ‘Backward Causation’

Now, according to the standard view of quantum theory, nature is essentially random at the quantum level, and therefore quantum events are inherently unpredictable. It is, as Schmidt says, an “axiom that quantum processes cannot be predicted exactly.” In earlier experiments, Schmidt tested the hypothesis that it is possible for some individuals to score consistently above chance when predicting the outcome of random quantum events. His data, over many experiments, confirmed that indeed some individuals do demonstrate this ability—thus contradicting the “quantum axiom” of intrinsic unpredictability (Schmidt, 1969; 1971).

What is interesting about Schmidt’s latest series of experiments is that the focus is not so much on testing the reality of PK as such, but on whether it is possible to use PK to influence the past. Even more intriguing is that in these recent experiments Schmidt was joined by theoretical physicist Henry Stapp as an independent observer, and that Stapp was sufficiently provoked by the results to propose a new approach to quantum theory.

In a joint paper, Schmidt and Stapp (1995) describe the experimental situation and state that

“The results of PK experiments with pre-recorded random events appear most interesting and most puzzling because the subject’s mental effort is made long after the random events to be affected have occurred. One tentative viewpoint (Schmidt 1978, Walker 1970) is that the subject’s mental effort could act backward to the time when the random events were generated and recorded. This would imply a non-causal mechanism in the sense that the effect (the biasing of the random events) occurs before the cause (the mental effort). It might be this element of non-causality that makes psychic phenomena so intuitively implausible and at odds with the known principles of physics” (Schmidt & Stapp, 1995). [Emphasis added.]

In this short paragraph, the key elements and implications of Schmidt’s experiments are highlighted; they form the focus of this present paper. First of all, there are data confirming the efficacy of PK on pre-recorded events—in other words, PK influence occurred after the target event. Thus the second element, as Schmidt and Walker suggest: a tentative explanation would be backward causation—that “the subject’s mental effort could act backward to the time when the random events were generated and recorded.” And third, according to Schmidt and Stapp, this implies a “non-causal mechanism” where the effect comes before the cause.

In this paper, I will outline the essential details of Schmidt’s experiments, discuss the interpretation offered by Stapp, and attempt to show that not only is this just one possible way to approach Schmidt’s data, but that of the various alternatives, the notion of “backward causation” is the least convincing. I will make a case that we may indeed need to investigate the possibility of some “non-causal,” or acausal, description for phenomena where mind and matter appear to interact; but that the nature of such acausal phenomena is very different from Schmidt and Stapp’s suggested “non-causal mechanism.” Furthermore, I will argue that Schmidt and Stapp’s “non-causal mechanism” is actually not “non-casual,” but simply an attempt to describe reversed or “backward causation,” and that the notion of “backward causation” is itself inherently meaningless.

An Experiment With Time

• 1) A number of vials were filled with radioactive material which is known to decay randomly (i.e., it emits quantum particles such as electrons completely unpredictably).
  
  
• (2) The emitted particles struck a radioactive decay detector (Geiger counter), and the information of these “strikes” or emissions was recorded on a computer’s magnetic floppy disk. The recorded information was not made available to anyone at that time.
  
  
• (3) At a later time, this computer-recorded information was used to generate a random sequence of positive and negative numbers.
  
  
• (4) The random sequence of numbers was displayed to trained observers who attempted to influence the sequence in favor of more positive numbers.
  
  
• (5) Theory predicts that since the original event (radioactive decay) was random, the events it caused (generation of numbers) would also be random. That is, that the sequence of positive and negative numbers would be random, averaging 50 percent each.
  
  
• (6) According to Schmidt, when the number sequence was observed by trained observers who “willed” or “intended” positive numbers, statistical analysis revealed that more positive than negative numbers did, in fact, show up. The observed sequence was non-random.
  
  
• (7) Conclusion: (a) Intentional human observation influenced the generation of random numbers in a chosen direction; (b) since the number sequence was determined by a prior random event (radioactive decay), somehow the observation of the numbers induced a change in the otherwise random initial event. In short, the initial unobserved random event (E1) at time (T1) was overridden or changed by the subsequent non-random observational event (E2) at time (T2). In other words, the present (T2) changed the past (T1)! And this contradicts the accepted “law” of causality, which states that the cause always comes before the effect.

Working with Schmidt, Stapp (1994) has proposed a new interpretation of quantum mechanics which replaces the usual linear equations (mathematical models for describing standard one-way causal relations) with non-linear terms. The non-linear equations allow for a system of causation in which the temporal relations between “causes” and “effects” need not follow the familiar one-way track of cause to effect, or of past to present. Stapp, in other words, appears to have provided a mathematical formalism for a coherent quantum mechanical interpretation of the results obtained by Schmidt in his experiments.

But, of course, nothing is ever quite that simple.

An Aside on the Nature of Time

In relativity theory, such difficulties are overcome only by the device of spatializing time—which means, in effect, that time is detemporalized. In relativity, time is denatured of all its truly temporal and durational qualities by turning it into a fourth dimension of space. In other words, relativity theory can allow for dislocations in temporal sequence because its mathematical formalism turns time into another spatial parameter. True time, durational time, or time as we actually experience it, has no place in relativity physics. I do not fully understand the mathematics of Stapp’s new formalism for quantum mechanics, but I suspect that his mathematical maneuvers for temporal reordering work only to the extent to which they also spatialize time.

Before proceeding with an analysis of Schmidt’s experiment and Stapp’s interpretation, I feel I should make clear my own perspective on the nature of time, and why I intuitively (as well as logically) doubt the notion of “backward causation.” I mentioned that relativity and quantum physics deal with time by objectifying and spatializing it. This, I have suggested, following Bergson’s philosophy of duration, or dureé,effectively detemporalizes time (Bergson, 1910; 1911; 1986).

I have so far identified two objections to the idea of time reversal: (1) If it were possible, our descriptions of it would be meaningless, and therefore the notion itself is absurd (which is not to say it is impossible, just inconceivable). (2) As Bergson, and others such as Bjelland (1986), have pointed out, physics—or any intellectual understanding of time—necessarily denudes time of its intrinsic durational quality, of its dureé. Intellectual disciplines such as physics effectively turn time into another dimension of space.

(3) A third reason for questioning the validity of objectifying and spatializing time is provided in the process philosophy of mathematician Arthur M. Young (1976a, 1976b, 1980). Young points out that, unlike space, which has at least two dimensions (height and width), time has only a single dimension. Constrained to a single dimension, there is no “room” to “turn around” in time. Time, as we all know and experience it, flows from past through present to future. It is like a one-way track or line without width or height. Time has no horizontal or vertical dimensions equivalent to width and height in space. Therefore, we cannot shift to the right or left, or up or down, in order to reorient our position in time. We always face in the one direction—along the axis of the inexorable arrow of time.

The most we can do is analyze or section time into its three stages: past, present, future. However, even this exercise is an artifice because time is always now. We never experience the past or future; all we ever experience is the ever-changing procession of “now.” The past is confined to memory, and memory is “remembered” in the now. The future is confined to anticipation, and anticipation, likewise, is experienced in the present. And since there can only be a “now” if there is an experience of “now,” that instant and its duration to the next instant, inevitably requires the presence of an experiencing subject. Time, therefore, is inescapably associated with consciousness and subjectivity. We lose all this as soon as we attempt to objectify and spatialize time.

I suspect that the absurdities we encounter when we try to talk about “backward causation” or time reversal are related to the kinds of paradoxes we confront when we try to use consciousness to explore consciousness objectively. According to Young’s “theory of process” model, time and space exist on different ontological levels, and attempts to explain phenomena belonging to one level in terms of data belonging to another level (e.g. talking about time in spatial terms) amounts to confusing categories. Similarly, if we attempt to objectify consciousness, we commit the misplaced-category error of talking about a first-person perspective in terms of a third-person perspective (Nagel, 1986). I will return to the issue of first- and third-person perspectives later when proposing an alternative to Schmidt and Stapp’s “backward causation” hypothesis.

This aside on the problem of redefining the “structure” or process of time, is intended mainly to draw attention to the conceptual quagmire that awaits us if we engage in experiments with time. Nevertheless, given this warning, we may proceed carefully with a further reexamination of Schmidt’s experiment.

Different Scenarios and Implications

• • Event 1 (E1) occurs at time 1 (T1): Random radioactive emission. This event is unobserved.
  
  
• Event 2 (E2) occurs at time 2 (T2): Information of random emissions is recorded on magnetic disk.
  
  
• Event 3 (E3) occurs at time 3 (T3): Generation of random number sequence (on screen). This event is observed (and recorded).
  
  
• Event 4 (E4) occurs at time 3 (T3): Observer “wills” or “influences” the observation of a non-random sequence.

In the above analysis, we see there were four events, but that two of these, E3 and E4, occurred at the same time (T3). We could call this the “simultaneity” scenario.

Alternatively, we may decide to take a more rigorous analysis of the situation and say that E3 and E4 occurred at infinitesimally distinct times T3 and T4. We would base this on the fact that it takes time for the information of the numbers displayed on the screen to reach the eyes and brain of the observer. The light from the screen obeys the relativistic speed limit—it is not instantaneous. In other words, there is a slight temporal gap between the display of numbers and the observer’s perception of them. Given time, also, for this information to be neurally processed, and for the observer to “will” a positive number to be displayed next, we may legitimately speak of E4 occurring at T4. Therefore, E3 (random number display) and E4 (observation and willing of numbers) would not occur simultaneously. We can call this the “non-simultaneous” scenario.

Now, E3 and E4 are either simultaneous or non-simultaneous. Depending on which scenario we take to be a more accurate representation of the sequence of events, we can propose different analyses of Schmidt’s experiments.

If, for example, we assume the “non-simultaneous” scenario, then we have the following situation:

• (1) The initial event (E1) at T1 (the radioactive decay) caused the imprint of information on the magnetic disk (E2). That is, E1 at T1 caused E2 at T2. No problem so far; this is standard linear causality and mechanism. However, from a quantum perspective it is important to note that although a record of the information has been made, no observation has yet been made.
  
  
• (2) At a later time (T3), E2 (the magnetic record) causes a random sequence of numbers to be generated (E3). Again, standard linear cause and effect.
  
  
• (3) However, E3 (the number sequence) is observed (E4) at T4. And now the problem begins: For the observed number sequence is not random, even though it was ostensibly caused by the recording of random emissions stored on the disk.

There are two problems here. One is the apparent psychokinetic effect of the observer’s mental activity influencing or causing a difference in physical events. This engages us in the thorny issue of action-at-a-distance, and of mind acting on matter. However, it is the second problem that is the focus of Schmidt’s experiment, and the one most conceptually troubling. If the sequence of numbers was already determined by the record of random radioactive emissions, how—even allowing for the possibility of mental influence—could the observed display show a non-random sequence?

One interpretation—the one offered by Schmidt and Stapp—is that the act of observation at T4 determined the initial event at T1. This amounts to causation backward in time! And, as we have seen, this is conceptually meaningless. Nevertheless, meaningless, paradoxical, or absurd, the data require explanation, and, on the face of it, backward causation seems to fit.

The following are four alternative ways of interpreting Schmidt’s data.

1. Creating the Past

Thus, it is theoretically inaccurate to speak of the “initial event” in Schmidt’s experiment as having already occurred prior to the observation. The observer did not change the past because there was no specific past to be changed. What Schmidt’s experimental results indicate, instead, is that the observer’s influence on the display of random numbers selected a past from the multiple alternatives that were available as superpositions until the moment of observation.

According to standard quantum theory, there is no causal or deterministic sequence of events prior to the radiation of a particle in radioactive decay. That is what is meant by saying the event is “random.” It just spontaneously happens. However, strictly speaking, quantum theory tells us, both the timing of the decay and the specific emission-particle are held in abeyance or superposition of probabilities until an observation is made. Thus, we have the strange situation where we are asked to think of the entire sequence of events—E1 (radioactive emission) to E2 (magnetic recording) to E3 (number generation and display)—as existing only in some virtual reality, or domain of probabilities, where any of the alternatives is just as likely to happen, until E4 (the intentional observation) is made. At that instant (T4)—and only then—are the other events “collapsed” into actuality. And this includes the timing and sequenceof the events. Thus, E4 at T4 creates or “selects” its own past by establishing the times at which its own “prior” chain of events occurred.

The revolutionary implication of these data is not that the present changes the past, but that in some very real sense the present act of observation creates the past. In other words, consciousness acting in the present, moment-by-moment, creates both its own present and its own past (Goswami, 1994).

This point of view turns on its head our normal way of looking at the causal relations in the world. Instead of the past existing as some “already actual” chain of causes and effects which determine the present (and future) state of affairs, we would say that the causal arrow points the other way. The “now,” through the act of consciousness, causes the entire past to emerge at every present instant. Consciousness, which is always now, creates its own entire history instant-by-instant. This, then, is the radical news behind Schmidt’s experiment and Stapp’s quantum interpretation.

But do the data force us to such a radical conclusion?

2. Reaching Back in Time?

If we pursue this line of thinking, then we have a situation along the following lines. The initial random event (E1 at T1) is recorded on disk (E2 at T2). Then, at T3, the recorded random information is used to generate a sequence of random numbers (E3). In this scenario, the past has already happened, as common-sense would lead us to believe. The information, though random, is there in actuality on the disk, available for inspection once it is translated into numbers displayed on a screen. Now—still avoiding the problem of accounting for mind influencing matter—the observer succeeds in willing a non-random sequence. What has happened?

Well, we could say that, magically, the observer’s consciousness somehow reached back in time and changed the information stored on the disk before it triggered the display of numbers on the screen. This would lead us into a hornet’s nest of temporal and causal paradoxes and absurdities, as we have seen. This hypothesis could be empirically tested. For if the observation did in fact change the information on the disk from random to non-random, then any subsequent experiment using that disk would produce a non-random sequence.

However, instead of reaching back in time and rewriting the information on the disk before the information was displayed (i.e., E4 at T4 would change E2 at T2 and E3 at T3), we could say that E4 at T4 simply (!) rewrote the information on the disk at the moment of observation (T4), after it had been laid down randomly at T2. Thus, although we would have a significant psychokinetic problem to explain in how the observer’s mind managed to rewrite the magnetic disk, we would have avoided the temporal paradox of an event at T4 changing an event at a prior time (T2 or T3).

3. Intersecting Causal Chains

For example, according to the “consciousness view,” not only is the actual emission of the radioactive particle random or uncaused, the entire “chain of events” up to the moment of observation is likewise without causal interaction. These “events” are waiting in the wings in some probabilistic “virtual reality” where everything is suspended in a kind of frozen time or “pre-time.” Nothing happens there; nothing is actualized, and so no thing can causeany other thing to happen. Quantum reality is, so to speak, pregnant with possibilities, probabilities bursting to emerge into actuality—but the actualized event happens only when an observer steps into the system.

Since there is no cause determining which electron will be emitted, or when, or in which direction, and since until the observer inspects the system nothing happens, we cannot legitimately speak of a “causal chain of events” leading up to the moment of observation. In other words, the decisive causal factor is the observer’s consciousness. That is, the arrow of causation points in the direction opposite to our normal understanding of causality: Instead of the initial cause being the random emission of the radioactive particle setting in motion the subsequent chain of effects, causation begins with the observer. The observer’s consciousness is causal, focused “backwards” on the causal chain. Consciousness is the initial, and only, cause—everything in actuality is “effects” generated by consciousness causally collapsing the wave function.
This differs from our usual, dualistic common-sense way of looking at things—which we have inherited from Descartes. We assume that there are two kinds of causality operating in the world: the chains of mechanical events (presumably, originating with the big bang), and events set in motion by our acts of volition or intentionality. We assume, pre-theoretically, that our choices make a difference in the world, and, therefore, that the causality of consciousness somehow interacts with or intersects the chain of mechanical, physical events.

Thus, we may summarize the causal implications from Schmidt’s data, in light of quantum theory, as follows: (1) The common-sense view: There are two intersecting causal chains—mechanical events and consciousness; (2)The consciousness view: There is only one initial cause, and that is consciousness. All mechanical events are effects created by the act of consciousness collapsing the wave function. (3) The mechanical view: This is a variation of the “common-sense view.” It assumes that the mechanical act of the quantum event (radioactive decay) interacting with laboratory instruments (e.g. Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse the wave function. No observer, and, therefore, no consciousness is required. In this case, the chain of events beginning with the random quantum emission leading up to the generation of displayed numbers, would have already happenedindependently of any observer seeing the effects.

What we need to keep in mind is that we are dealing with two ostensibly causal and intersecting chains of events. (1) Those events or effects caused by the initial random radioactive decay, and (2) those events or effects caused by the observer’s intentionality. As long as we assume that one chain of events comes into effect after the other, we avoid the temporal paradox of an effect coming before its cause. We simply need to recognize that the second “initial” cause (the observer’s act) starts later, and operates on effects already in process from the first “initial” cause (the radioactive decay). In this scenario, the second cause overrides the effects of the first cause; in Schmidt’s experiment, the non-random intentionality of the observer overrides (or overwrites) the random effects of the radioactive decay and magnetic recording of that event.

In principle, it is similar to leaving an unattended tape recorder in an aviary to pick up random birdsong, and then later having someone listen to the tape and hearing a Mozart concerto. No-one magically slipped back in time and erased the birdsong. The birdsong was erased in real time when someone recorded over it with music from a Mozart concert. To fully complete the analogy, of course, we would have to assume that the Mozart recording was achieved psychokinetically, without the benefit of any mechanical interference—but that is a completely different problem.

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

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