Fleeting thoughts: Physical action, but cognitive and informational responsibility

Prehistory and background: Quantum mechanics arose when a quite new fundamental physical constant had revealed, the Plank constant equating the physical quantity of action to some dimensionless quantity allowing of different interpretations. One of the first among them was that of Luis de Broglie (1924) equating energy to the frequency of a hypothetical wave attachable to any microscopic particle, the action of which is commensurable with the Plank constant. Nowadays wave-particle duality is established as one of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. A relative interpretation almost identical to Broglie’s equites action to the quantity of information in discrete portions such as bits. Then the sense of the Plank constant would be that physical action causable by one of those portions of information equate or multiple to one bit.

The magnitude of the Plank constant is too, too small (of the exponent of −34) in comparison with the actions caused by the visible macroscopic bodies, though. One can suggest that our computers processing information therefore generate some physical action. However, the quantity of that action would be а negligible quantity lost in the noise compared with that physical action caused by the common mass and electromagnetic energy of the computer. Consequently, the physical action immediately generated for processing information is both insignificant and untestable by means of the contemporary measuring methods and devices.

Anyway that possible direct link between physical action and information allows a different viewpoint to human activity: Human activity might be seen as a simile to the natural transformation from information to action revealed by quantum mechanics according to the interpretation as above. Indeed, any human being embodies mental figures into series of relevant activity and thus into physical action. Thus, everyone can be thought as a “device” especially designated for transforming information into physical action in a way much, much effective or successful than any natural process.

Anyway, this seems to be not more than a metaphor, for the barrier between “mind” and “body” is yet conserved in the manner of dualism: Information in that “mind” only manages the way of changing some physical actions into others according to conservation laws in physics, and first of all: energy conservation. However, the direct transformation from something ideal, or at least nonmaterial as information into physical action being properly material is absolutely forbidden just for that energy conservation particularly.

The reverse transition (from mass, energy, and action into information) seems to be even more “scandalous”: It contains the possibility or option of “I-bomb”: i.e. “informational bomb” literally just as A-bomb or H-bomb, but much, much more powerful since the coefficient of transforming mass into information (being commensurable with the reciprocal value of the Planck constant) should be monstrously more immense than the analogical coefficient about mass and energy (the famous Einstein “E=mc^2”).

The concept of responsibility is traditionally linked to agency understood only as physical agency. Thus physical action is reliably separated from both any mental action and information. The human being just because of the human being’s free will is who possesses both monopoly and responsibility for the way for using that unique monopoly distinguishing all humans from the other creatures or entities in the world. Even more, even a human being accepted as deprived from free will because of some mental illness or analogical cause is deliberated from responsibility for her or his physical actions and their consequences.

Thesis:

The option of the direct transformation between information (in the range of the “ideal”) and action (in the area of the “material” or “physical”) generates another and absolutely new dimension of responsibility concerning the direct influence between information and physical systems (1). This forces the certain relevant redefinition of responsibility.

Comments of the thesis:

The concept of responsibility is linked to human free will, which is granted as the only known and even admissible mediator between mentality and information, on the one hand, and agency default as physical agency, on the other hand. However, the contemporary human knowledge has already reached the boundary and links between the material and ideal, and free will particularly is not yet considered as the human being’s monopoly, but shared even with quantum entities such as electrons according to the “free will theorems” (2) and all corpus of quantum mechanics. Many other sciences such as neuroscience, cognitive science, zoopsychology, etc. have followed quantum mechanics in rejecting human free will’s monopoly. That state of affairs and art requires the relevant redefinition of responsibility in a way, which should not rely only on free will’s responsibility for the transformation between the ideal and material. Furthermore, the human being’s free will should be charged by a fundamentally new kind of responsibility referring to the direct physical consequences for cognition and information.

Only a few main arguments in favour of the thesis:

Responsibility has been understood as the ability of response following the literal sense of “responsibility”, in other words, as reaction, re-action to some action. Thus the gap between action and responsibility has been postulated in advance though implicitly and reflected in philosophical dualism.

The contemporary science, e.g. quantum mechanics has turned out to find bridges between physical action and information in theory of quantum information.

The immediate unity of the ideal and material does not allow for reducing responsibility only to the capability or “bandwidth” of free will: One can say both that all the physical is gifted by “free will” and that responsibility cannot be more limited to “free will”.

Footnotes:

1 Human being is situated in both “realms” and the relation between them is one of the most fundamental problems for philosophy.

2 Conway, J., Kochen, S. (2006) "The Free Will Theorem," Foundations of Physics, 36(10): 1441–1473.
Conway, J., Kochen, S. (2009) “The Strong Free Will Theorem,” Notices of the AMS, 56(2): 226-232.
Einstein, A., M. Born (1969) Albert Einstein Max Born Briefwechsel 1916 ‒ 1955 (kommentiert von Max Born). München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung.