Fleeting thoughts: A conceptual equation for the perception at a distance

Perception at a distance
on the cross of both physical action at a distance and phenomenological “epoché”

Prehistory and background:

Perception at a distance as clairvoyance (1) is a suggestion which is often called “para-scientific”, “quasi-scientific”, or “religious”. In other words, science refutes it rather, and its confirmations are available mainly in the scope of religious experience or parapsychology. This generates also the problem of how it might be transformed into a scientific hypothesis, which would admit as corroboration as rejection experimentally or theoretically.

The intention is to elucidate a possible approach to that transformation grounded on a few scientific and philosophic premises:

1 Perception at a distance should be grounded by some physical mechanism more or less acceptable for the contemporary science. Fortunately, perception at a distance has a historical counterpart in physics, namely “action at a distance” rejected by relativity, but restored by quantum mechanics.

2 Perception at a distance should be grounded on some philosophical viewpoint “bracketing” reality, such as Husserl’s phenomenology or phenomenology as a philosophical school. Indeed, if the facts of perception at a distance exist at all, they are inseparable from wrong confirmations and the problem about their reality should be delayed initially or even in principle.

3 The transformation of perception at a distance into a scientific hypothesis seems to need some relevant interdisciplinary approach for no certain scientific area has managed standalone to define it within its range. Particularly, this might suppose some “conceptual equation” for outlining the bridge of synthesis between some theory explaining how that perception would be possible physically and some philosophical approach meaning its uncertain or insure reality at least until now.

4 That transformation should be framed within the context of mind-body problem, and the above equation, in the much more general equation of both mind and body.

Thesis:

1 One can formulate explicitly that conceptual equation, namely between the quantum action of a distance and a kind of philosophical and psychological apperception as the perception of “eidos” or “phenomenon” of a thing or a fact in the sense of philosophical phenomenology:

2 The concept of information or its generalization as quantum information is one “nontrivial” solving of that conceptual equation therefore allowing of formulating “perception at a distance” according to the requirements for a scientific hypothesis.

3 That hypothesis might be expressed as follows: Perception at a distance is the apperception corresponding to the probability distribution for a thing or a fact to be perceived at a distance, being due to the physical phenomena of entanglement.

A few main arguments for the thesis:

1 The theory of quantum information reinterpreted and reformulated quantum mechanics absolutely in terms of information: The complex Hilbert space underlying quantum mechanics can be represented as the free variable of quantum information, i.e. as a series of qubits, infinite in general. Any wave function, i.e. a certain state of a given quantum system is a value of quantum information. Furthermore, quantum information is interpretable as that generalization of Minkowski space-time, which allows of physical interactions out of or beyond it, namely the phenomena of entanglement. Entanglement is particularly expressed in the direct (i.e. independent of space-time) interaction of probabilities (and thus of information) for an event to take place according to quantum mechanics. Indeed, those interactions in classical mechanics are absent since the corresponding probabilities are either 0 or 1 (binary information), but any value in [0,1] (quantum information) according to quantum mechanics.

2 A problem is that entanglement refers only to the scale of action commensurable with the Plank constant, which is much less than the physical actions perceivable by human beings. Anyway, exceptionally fast or jump-like changes in action, commensurable with the Plank constant would generate energy enough to be registered by a human brain by entanglement, though those changes may occur anywhere in the universe.

3 The apperception in a phenomenological sense is interpretable as both direct perception of a “eidos” or a “phenomenon” and attention selecting that reality corresponding to the eidos or phenomenon at issue. Even more, the concepts of phenomenon and phenomenological reduction unlike their eidetic counterparts suppose the instant, jump-like reduction (formally similar to that after measurement in quantum mechanics) from the real thing or fact to the “phenomenon”.

4 Peirs’s understanding of information allows of reinterpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology in terms of information, which in turn is generalizable as the physical quantum information.

Footnote:
1 This is meant bellow for “perception at a distance”.