The Exo-Endo-Perspective of Non-locality in Psycho-Physical Systems

According to Hans Primas many epistemological questions of the so-called measurement problem of quantum physics can be solved by the distinction of the exo- and endo-perspective of a physical system. Pascual Jordan - one of the founding fathers of quantum theory - formulated already in 1947 the idea that the subconscious level in psychology may be equivalent to - what is now called - the endo-level in quantum physics.

The model of pragmatic information (MPI), which is a candidate for a non-classical model of psychology, predicts that the behavior of a non-classical system depends on the conditions of its observation. The exchanged pragmatic information (meaningful information) ties the "observer" (e.g. a person) and the "observed" (e.g. a machine) together and creates an "organizational closed system". It is assumed that this process produces non-local correlations between the observer and the observed. The "observer effect" can be regarded as a special phenomenon of psycho-physical systems.

As a target to demonstrate this "observer effect", a quantum physical random event generator(REG) was used which was observed by human subjects who had the instruction to "influence mentally" the outcome of the observed REG.

The "observers" are characterized by a set of psychological variables which were measured by questionnaires before the observation-experiment. The "observed" is characterized by a set of statistical variables describing the observed random process. An "observer effect" should show up in correlations between these two sets of variables.

The results support the assumptions of the MPI that a human observer (or other selforganizing systems?) may select certain noise fluctuations from a seemingly separated system via non-local correlations if a feedback-loop generates "meaning" of the process to the observer. The process can be adequately described by the concept of"pragmatic information". It is shown that the concept of "pragmatic information" is a much better descriptor of the observation process than any other "Shannon-type" measure of information. The correlations between psychological and physical variables reflect the pragmatic information of the display and the instruction given to the subjects.

The result of the experiment further show that external attribution of meaning is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the observer effect. It is argued that "observer effects" are no "signals" but "only" (non-local) correlations or "pseudo-signals" which do not allow to "identify" situations without resources from the environment- or to use a technical example - do not allow to built "faster-than-light-telegraphs".

From this point of view, the distinction between the "internal" and the "external" pragmatic information of an observer experiment gives a criterion for the replication of the non-local correlations. The seemingly "internal" meaning exists only "post hoc" as correlation. It is a feature of the "organizational closure" of the system which is created by the external attribution of meaning to the system. If the "internal" pragmatic information about the system available to the experimenter from a previous experiment could be "used" to code a real extemal signal, the non-local correlations change or disappear, leading to a result completely different from the previous experiment. From this viewpoint the well-known replication problem of psychological experiments appears in a new light.