tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37668205544949781062024-03-14T02:01:13.570-07:00Beginning Theistic ScienceExploring the connections of theism (from philosophy and religion) with physics and psychology (of science).Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-77615302672062557122021-08-28T17:51:00.007-07:002021-08-29T18:25:52.230-07:00How the Non-Physical Influences Physics and Physiology: a proposal<p></p><div style="text-align: center;">Expanded from talk on July 24 at SSE-PA Connections 2021:</div><div style="text-align: center;">A combined meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration and the Parapsychological Association. </div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">Prerecorded video at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA5ssfmzn90">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA5ssfmzn90</a> </p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14px;">The causal closure of the physical world is assumed everywhere in physics but has little empirical support within living organisms. For the spiritual to have effects in nature, and make a difference there, the laws of physical nature would have to be modified or extended. I propose that the renormalized parameters of quantum field theory (masses and charges) are available to be varied locally in order to achieve ends in nature. This is not adding extra forces to nature but rescaling the forces which already exist. We separate metric time in 4 dimensions from process time as the order of actualization of potentialities. This is to allow iterative forward and reverse steps in metric time to influence intermediate variations in the vacuum permittivities to move charged bodies towards achieve specific targets at a later time. Then mental or spiritual influx could have effects in nature, and these should be measurable in biophysics experiments. With this proposal, we see after some centuries how ‘final causes’ could once again be seen active in nature.</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><div class="row" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-md-12 pp-label" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; float: left; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 5px; min-height: 1px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 815.141px;">PhilPapers <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/THOHTN-3" target="_blank">link</a></div></div><div class="row" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px;"><div class="col-md-12 pp-label" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #555555; float: left; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 5px; min-height: 1px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 815.141px;">At <a class="outLink" href="http://www.ianthompson.org/papers/NonPhysical-to-Physical-2021.pdf" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #074ba9; font-size: 14px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="">ianthompson.org</a></div><div class="col-md-12 entry-tbl-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; min-height: 1px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px; position: relative; width: 815.141px;"><ul class="externalLinks" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li></li></ul></div></div>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-69641559197407469202019-12-01T19:28:00.003-08:002019-12-01T19:35:40.439-08:00Details of How Spiritual Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A group of us gave a talk on this subject at Bryn Athyn College on Oct 12.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All the talks together can be seen at <a href="http://www.theisticscience.com/talks.htm">www.theisticscience.com/talks.htm</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My two talks, which focused on how the spiritual and mental can affect nature, are:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Expanding the idea of Discrete Degrees</b></span></div>
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Slides: <a href="http://www.theisticscience.com/Slides/Enneads-v7.pptx" style="color: #45201e; text-decoration-line: none;">powerpoint</a> and <a href="http://www.theisticscience.com/Slides/Enneads-v7.pdf" style="color: #45201e; text-decoration-line: none;">pdf</a>.<br /></div>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kE4MOIY_TII" width="560"></iframe></div>
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and:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A mechanism for spiritual influx into the physical</b></span><br />
Slides: <a href="http://www.theisticscience.com/Slides/Backpropagation-v8.pptx" style="color: #45201e; text-decoration-line: none;">powerpoint</a> (including movies), and <a href="http://www.theisticscience.com/Slides/Backpropagation-v8.pdf" style="color: #45201e; text-decoration-line: none;">pdf</a> (no movies).<br /></div>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wyMuWwefncU" width="560"></iframe></div>
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A longer article is being written to appear next year.</div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-25552568287515966632019-09-25T20:32:00.002-07:002019-09-25T20:32:37.266-07:00How Spiritual Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics<div style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
At this meeting there is a presentation of our new ideas for the interface between the mental and the physical. More specifically: <b>How Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics</b>.</div>
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These are new ideas based on inspiration from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, who seems of all history to have the best lead-in to these issues.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6RB5sakxoQCLSskC59E8ep7TtciHSMW1kV-knzO9szuDjA5KV6nWqhFReJUGRytr8cKLGAoLExzy-vpnPEDN12acH6vYC5rSt59zexPx2NeBo_88agH491becFI13gPThkPQPN-R0GoY/s1600/SSA_Symposium_11x17_Sep19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="How Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics." border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6RB5sakxoQCLSskC59E8ep7TtciHSMW1kV-knzO9szuDjA5KV6nWqhFReJUGRytr8cKLGAoLExzy-vpnPEDN12acH6vYC5rSt59zexPx2NeBo_88agH491becFI13gPThkPQPN-R0GoY/s640/SSA_Symposium_11x17_Sep19.png" title="Breaking the Shell" width="90%" /></a></div>
<br />Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-68935478362825465162019-08-13T21:29:00.001-07:002019-08-13T22:27:43.319-07:00Breaking The Shell: Connecting the Spiritual Cascade to the Physical with New Church Science<h2 style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
There will be a Theistic Science Symposium, Oct. 12, 2019 at the Bryn Athyn college, PA.</h2>
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The Swedenborg Scientific Association (SSA) and the Theistic Science Group (TSG) are pleased to extend an invitation to the Theistic Science Symposium, Oct. 12, 2019 at the Bryn Athyn college. This event is free for everyone. Sure to be a very fascinating day, please see the agenda for details. Registration requested at <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="async" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theisticscience.com%2FBreakingTheShell.htm%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3rz3T0oGB6LqertgQO8WhJ4qcLpPqBdyS75Zhc928bOfLgZ0bAwqvdOys&h=AT2lKarn4ERnZQnBY8HaY8P2Qua8L_b0c9iU5vcgFmpgBKBqdPZSlo-X561ISIrLn_8XU3KCdQbFtmgN7PcPQcJk33r-4jkq44Kq54HlzgyaXGuRI30ax4U4HmihIywEIzfzLmy8LiMa4vaFDIg-4XnuVlZKDpbjOnHWbSSI-jUEt1FUWyqu37xVXg7aZNJvCjHTY0o-sADJxMt06ek87d5x2AmZpcMmgcVRUqKwHmaWH2TSQxSMlMVgIqoNq2BnaKWSTjSaTS0A9QiZSmDMx5o-enbMcmHetBaE_DA8EDQG5B7OEcw93FlN7wAVuGJRfvzJDVMRSNITdWuSDTV-gjDwxjcj5CSkeAh7Ccja-xFzNOyn6sggNqzcsJf5QoibF7GY3L0JstcKbDRWfuziRv1Z8lKYbdmWXBlKxDHu_iL6kjgDhtFaif9lWIgBjuPhKLbo1S91muq98fovlG52TfSP832vw8GptzlSKI-4igznqvt3hKIkA-0bspi1dTCSEMjUapxJgEqvLfrFMJpqjcP5BIfsyTEYrvpgVyoTPShzawur659kDHF7KixEScgAXLylqbjXhD5U3vHI8dvlRpbxvTYoV2Qn7WcBWUu330H8g5niDRhvJU2h1E3Dup8uAhpgnPTwiQ" href="http://www.theisticscience.com/BreakingTheShell.htm?fbclid=IwAR3rz3T0oGB6LqertgQO8WhJ4qcLpPqBdyS75Zhc928bOfLgZ0bAwqvdOys" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://www.theisticscience.com/BreakingTheShell.htm</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCaSU0ynhFYtVPFqXhwL9rYzF-wfitzENU-g9fxzdM7RwEGqQK3GqzH847-Qv24BFshL5XpLisubTzDfRWfyfbJ3urUPQAAQizXfC_PA18P3BLDuhhSD4sKDIgIWKSoC1Evobz1soqpFE/s1600/Breaking+the+Shell+title.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCaSU0ynhFYtVPFqXhwL9rYzF-wfitzENU-g9fxzdM7RwEGqQK3GqzH847-Qv24BFshL5XpLisubTzDfRWfyfbJ3urUPQAAQizXfC_PA18P3BLDuhhSD4sKDIgIWKSoC1Evobz1soqpFE/s320/Breaking+the+Shell+title.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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For me this will be very important. It will be an opportunity to explain in more details my idea for <a href="https://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2019/01/can-minds-have-effects-in-nature-how.html" target="_blank">Can minds have effects in nature? How?</a> as described in the previous posting.</div>
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The first part of the day will be taken my talks from my colleagues to lay the groundwork, so we can understand how spiritual influx into the natural can and must make sense even within science. We are discussing our ideas every week in a group Skype call, and we will coordinate the details of our talks to make them easier to follow.</div>
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So many people think that materialism is inadequate to understand how minds and spirits might exist and live in relation to the world, but have no good ideas how this might take place. Some think that revealing the quantum physics is important for physical measurements and/or biological operations is the important step to going beyond materialism. In a sense that is true, but the effects of quantum physics are either absolutely essential for even ordinary processes (e.g. in sub-atomic and nuclear physics - my day job), or make only extremely small differences compared with classical physics.</div>
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So now I want to show how <i>electric</i> processes of attraction and repulsion could themselves be modified and managed by influx coming from outside the physical. These effects are much larger than quantum effects, and could well be very important for producing the detailed molecular reactions that occur in cells -- or at least the timing of the molecular processes that need to be managed for the successful life of a cell.</div>
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So my talk, and the end of the day, will give more details of what I have in mind for how spiritual and mental things can influence the physical. And do so in a way that minimizes the number of laws of physics that have to be changed to allow this to occur. If you come, you will see!</div>
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The event will be live streamed and later available on youtube. Details of that to come.</div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-58098308101526007512019-01-23T19:51:00.002-08:002019-01-23T19:55:26.894-08:00Can minds have effects in nature? How?<h3>
Some questions:</h3>
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<li>If you have God and/or our minds acting in nature, as every basic purpose and volition demands in reality, do you think this is directly, or both directly and via intermediates?</li>
<li>If there are intermediates, then there might be something specific and regular behaviors that science could connect with (at least from one side!).</li>
<li>For telos and purpose and volition (etc) must have observable effects.</li>
<li>Do you think that evidence and theories about the influence on the world of spiritual or mental things would help? Could they be intermediates here? </li>
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By ‘intermediates’, I am thinking first of humans, and then all animals and plants as well as each living cell. These are all living creatures, and we presume that they all have at least some primitive kind of mental life: at least some will or motivation or telos, along with instinctual responses that reflect some implicit wisdom for good ways of responding to enhance and continue life.<br />
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There may well be spiritual beings of some sort as well, but they would be intermediates between all us living creatures and what is greater than us spiritually, so I should think: angels, saints and all who have lived who want to do what is good and useful (and maybe also those who want the opposite). Direct divine influence is possible as well, of course.<br />
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Because these things above are all intermediates, they are ‘riders’ or ‘modulators’ on the pathways of life from the Divine that the Lord uses to enliven and influence us in the world. All the good spiritual beings, for example, would be saying saying ‘not my will but thine’ when they do something.<br />
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For intermediates, I just refer to our abilities to feel, think and do things from feeling and thinking. That is, I assume we have minds that do these things, and hence have causal effects on body and world. This applies to all living creatures to varying degrees of fullness and detail. Any plausible account of the world has to take minds in some sense as essential part or being of mental lives. The substance of minds is love/desire, and their form is their thinking. This is just applying Aristotle’s common categories to some things very obvious. The substance gives the mode of its persistence through time, and the form gives its structure at present. Naturalism might want to call these esoteric and unbelievable, but they are really what we are all very close to, namely our minds.<br />
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Visible Effects!</h3>
I now insist that, in all our bodies, there must be influences from these intermediates that give results not as predicted by the laws of physics. They must be able to have some effect: able to make a difference to physics (otherwise, why bother?). The modulation from intermediates results in a kind of ‘final cause’ in physics, since it directs physical bodies towards some end or target or lure.<br />
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And now I think that these differences in physics ought be observable even to physicists. They are much larger than resolving quantum uncertainties or probabilities, since the effects of motivation and telos happen in every minute in our living bodies, and so cannot be just biasing some remote probability. I agree that it might be difficult, since this is to distinguish agency from chance. But it is only the chance of ignorance, not of quantum physics.<br />
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Some new ideas </h3>
I even have a more specific idea for what these differences might be in physics, which I will explain more in the next few months when I work out a bit more detail. Sometimes, at least, the patterns should be repeated.<br />
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It maybe can be seen in protein folding, where there has been persistent ignorance of the causes of rapid in-vivo folding for the last 50 years?<br />
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I am beginning to see a way to change physics to allow final causes to have effects from causes originally in minds. I will explain (in more detail soon, somewhere) my idea for some of the ways ‘supporting efficient causes’ may assist final causes to operate in nature. The idea is some local modification of specific physical properties in order to reach some kind of target or lure or end from the final causes. If physical properties are changed, then something should be measurably different.<br />
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The physical variations needed to reach targets are much larger (by many orders of magnitude) than the range required by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum physics. Given that, however, I want in reality to work on targeting with quantum fields. So the HUP will be still taken into account. But in the meantime, Newtonian mechanics will be a very good approximation.<br />
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Is the physical world causally closed?</h3>
We are admittedly breaking the causal closure of the natural world, and breaking some conservation laws in some particular circumstances, so it’s a bit of a conjecture. Materialists may say that this makes it all impossible, since conservation laws are ‘known to be satisfied to high accuracy’. I reply: have you tested conservation laws where processes like this may well be occurring? That is, testing where we expect volition (etc) to be important?<br />
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If course, if you can already see the limits of naturalism, then the failure of the causal closure of the physical will not be a great surprise.<br />
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There might not be new energy or matter, but local fluctuations of (say) the unit of charge in specific regions. For the physicist: this amounts to local fluctuations of the permittivity of space in the region where molecular objects need to be guided.<br />
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<br />Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-23335359974446455212017-10-01T20:24:00.000-07:002017-10-01T20:24:15.719-07:00Must the Physical Universe be Causally Closed, or not?The question has equivalent forms:<br />
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<li>Is the physical universe is causally closed? </li>
<li>Does nothing that goes on in the brain violate the predictions of physical science?</li>
<li>Does every physical event that has a cause have a physical cause?</li>
<li>Does no natural change violate a prediction (or outcome) in physical formulas?</li>
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William Hasker, in a recent book review, discuss why the answer must be 'No' to all these questions, despite what modern scientists (and, more frequently) philosophers claim.<br />
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He will be referring to "Premise 1", namely<br />
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1. Nothing that goes on in the brain violates the predictions of physical science.</div>
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Hasker at <a href="http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-myth-of-an-afterlife-the-case-against-life-after-death/">http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-myth-of-an-afterlife-the-case-against-life-after-death/</a>:</div>
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"The first point to be made is that, in spite of frequent assertions to the contrary, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">premise (1) is not known to be true</em>. What is in question is whether an immaterial mind may be exerting a causal influence on what happens in the brain at a micro-level. Influence on this scale is far below the limits of our present capacity to detect. Furthermore, we have only the vaguest notion of what it is we would be trying to detect because we know little about how the brain actually works at this level. I am tempted to say that we don't know the "machine code" for the brain, but this understates the case. We don't even know how the basic hardware (rather, wetware) functions with regard to giving rise to particular kinds of conscious experience. We don't know, in spite of many proposals, the neural correlate of consciousness, the minimum neural functioning that is required for any kind of conscious experience to occur. We are roughly in the position of a member of a primitive society who, confronted with a transistor radio, reasons that since there is no human being speaking in the vicinity, the radio must be speaking to him on its own. He simply lacks the equipment that would be required to detect the electromagnetic waves that are carrying the signal to the radio, as well as the knowledge to appreciate their significance. Under these circumstances, the claim that we have experimental verification of premise (1) can't be made out. One might, to be sure, affirm (1) as a plausible extrapolation from the scientific knowledge we do have, in the light of one's own overall (probably naturalistic) worldview. Understood in this way, however, the argument no longer has any compelling force against mind-body dualism. Furthermore there is an important objection to (1) even taken in this non-dogmatic way.</blockquote>
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This leads to the second point: <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">there is strong reason to think that premise (1) is false.</em> Here's the argument. We humans are able to engage in conscious rational thought, resulting in a reasonably accurate apprehension of the world in which we live. This can be taken as a datum; clearly, anti-survivalists cannot afford to challenge it, relying as they do on scientific knowledge of many different kinds. This datum, however, is a fact which requires explanation. There is, furthermore, one particular sort of explanation which will be accepted by most readers of this review, probably including all anti-survivalists. That explanation is found in evolutionary epistemology<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</em> The basic idea is familiar: the sorts of mental functioning which lead to a generally accurate apprehension of the world lead thereby to behavior which is conducive to survival and reproduction, and so those sorts of mental functioning tend to prevail over others in the course of evolution. This may or may not be the complete explanation for human rational capabilities (I doubt that it is), but it does seem to be an important part of the explanation.</blockquote>
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Now, here is the crucial point: <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If premise (1) is true, that is, if causal closure obtains, then evolutionary epistemology cannot be the explanation for human rationality.</em> The reasoning is simple and compelling. If causal closure is true, then everything that happens in the brain has its complete explanation in prior physical events, no doubt mainly earlier brain-events. But this means that <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">prior mental events play no role in determining the state of a person's brain</em> -- and therefore, they play no role in the organism's behavior. It follows, furthermore, that <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mental events and processes are irrelevant to behavior and are thus invisible to natural selection, which can only operate on physical structures and physical behavior.</em> So natural selection cannot select for superior mental processes, nor can it play any role in explaining the effectiveness of the mental processes we actually employ in getting to know the world. This enormously important fact -- that we are able to reason about the world and gain knowledge of it -- is left completely unexplained. I predict, furthermore, that within the generally naturalistic framework that is presupposed in this discussion, it will not be possible to find a promising alternative explanation.<br />It is sometimes thought that this problem can be surmounted by adopting mind-body identity theory. If the physical brain-event is also a mental event, then the mental event is after all causally relevant to behavior, and natural selection can operate to select superior mental processes. This however is a mistake. We have, it is proposed, a single event, which has both physical characteristics and mental characteristics. Notice, however, that <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">only the physical characteristics of the event are causally effective.</em> The causal consequences of that event will be those, and only those, that flow from it as determined by physical forces, as recognized by the true laws of physics. The mental characteristics of the event, whatever they may be, have <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">no effect whatever</em> in determining the subsequent behavior. Once again, natural selection is unable either to select for superior mental function or to explain the efficacy of the mental processes we actually employ. We are left completely without any explanation for the fact, if it is a fact, that <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mental events that lead to evolutionarily successful outcomes generally coincide with those that involve an accurate representation of the world.</em> The general effectiveness of our reasoning processes is still entirely unexplained. I submit that any view of the mind and the self that has this consequence is at a severe disadvantage. The price for accepting premise (1) of the argument is extremely high.</blockquote>
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Well put!</div>
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I have listed many other papers discussing this issue at <a href="http://www.newdualism.org/closure.htm">http://www.newdualism.org/closure.htm</a> .</div>
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<br />Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-88480138001107142002017-06-09T13:56:00.000-07:002017-06-09T13:56:40.088-07:00Full text online for "Starting Science from God"<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "san francisco" , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px;">The full text of this book is now online, at </span><a href="http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/book/index.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: white; color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: "San Francisco", -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/book/index.html</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "san francisco" , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "san francisco" , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px;">Enjoy!</span>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-23729381864288586382017-04-30T21:35:00.004-07:002017-04-30T21:35:57.429-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 8/8: Origin of these ideas <h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8. Origin of these ideas</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have presented these ideas as worth of consideration on their own, but they really have a long history in a variety of contexts. The basic idea that causation only truly works from the mind into the brain (and not vice versa) is not a popular one today. However, it can be traced back to ‘non-standard’ insights of people such as Plotinus (b. 205), Boehme (b. 1575), Swedenborg (b. 1688) and some other traditions. Swedenborg was well educated as a physicist and then physiologist, so I find his accounts the most detailed and useful. Of course, he knew nothing of quantum mechanics (only Newtonian mechanics), so I have had to ‘re-apply’ his principles in the light of what we now know about the physical world. He has the clearest presentation of the idea of ‘conditional forward causation’ (he calls it ‘influx into uses’), and he gives the most complete account of the ‘correspondences’ that exist between mental and bodily things. For a brief summary of his ideas, see [15]. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My References</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[8] I. J. Thompson, "<a href="http://www.generativescience.org/ps-papers/Thompson-ddnamin2f.htm" target="_blank">Discrete Degrees Within and Between Nature and Mind</a>," in Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach, A. Antonietti, Ed., Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008, pp. 99-125.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">[13] I. J. Thompson, "<i><a href="http://www.newtheism.com/papers/I.Thompson/pldi.html" style="color: #6ea1bb; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">The Consistency of Physical Law with Divine Immanence</a></i>," Science & Christian Belief, vol. 5, pp. 19-36, 1993. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">[14] I. J. Thompson, <a href="http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/" style="color: #6ea1bb; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><i>Starting Science from God</i>,</a> Pleasanton, CA: Eagle Pearl Press, 2011. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[15] I. J. Thompson, "<a href="http://www.theisticscience.org/papers/smn3b.html" target="_blank">Swedenborg and Modern Science</a>," Scientific and Medical Network Newsletter, vol. 26, pp. 3-8, 1989. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Previous post <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/04/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_29.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-10729964328741429922017-04-29T19:59:00.001-07:002017-04-29T19:59:40.803-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 7/8: Connections to Theism<h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7. Connections to Theism</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In theology, there has long been a tension between the transcendence and the immanence of God. To avoid a deism which has only transcendence, to avoid pantheism which has only immanence, and thus to see how theism may be a coherent belief, it is necessary to give some rational account of how God may be both transcendent of and immanent in the world. One common account [12] has been to see God as the ‘Author, Sustainer, and Finisher’ of all natural processes. For thinkers ranging from Aquinas to Descartes “the action of divine conservation is construed to be an ‘extension’ of the action of divine creation”, but the means of this conservation is rarely explained further. Such accounts leave uncertain the question of exactly how, in an effective as well as in an abstract sense, the Divine is immanent in nature. They do not describe the actual relationship between the immanent Divine and the causal powers determined by physical investigation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suggest [13] that even the Divine and creation together can be considered two generative levels, by analogy to all the other kinds of generative levels we have seen to exist within physics, within psychology, and between physics and psychology. The Divine would be the ‘A’, the first in the sequence, as the ‘deepest underlying principle’, ‘source’, or ‘power’ that is fixed through all the subsequent changes to in created beings. This is in agreement with the fundamental concept of theism, where the Divine is the source of changes, but in itself is constant in essence. This essence or underlying power would thus be the Divine Love, and could reasonably be called the Substance of the Divine. Consciousness is therefore not the divine source itself, but an essential aspect of operations from that source. More details are in [14].</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The existence, powers and changes in all finite beings follow the rule that the dispositions of an object are those generated derivatives of Divine Power that accord with what is actual about those beings. Consider two analogies. God provides life as the sun shines on the earth. The sun shining on the earth is constant, but the energy received by the earth varies by days and seasons. We know, however, that this variation is according to the earth’s distance and orientation: according to something actual about the earth, not because of variations in the sun. A second analogy is that God provides life as we are provided with food. Consider the way animals consume food in order to live. What an animal is capable of doing after eating depends on its digestive system and how it has assimilated the food. Different species will respond quite differently to the same food, according to how they are constituted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[12] J. Newman, <i>Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent </i>(1870), London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[13] I. J. Thompson, "<i><a href="http://www.newtheism.com/papers/I.Thompson/pldi.html" target="_blank">The Consistency of Physical Law with Divine Immanence</a></i>," Science & Christian Belief, vol. 5, pp. 19-36, 1993. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[14] I. J. Thompson, <a href="http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/" target="_blank"><i>Starting Science from God</i>,</a> Pleasanton, CA: Eagle Pearl Press, 2011. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Previous post <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/04/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_26.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<br /></div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-76870546797531887892017-04-26T21:55:00.001-07:002017-04-26T21:55:38.889-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 6/8: Conservation laws and closure<h2>
6. Conservation laws and closure</h2>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One purported strong indication against mind-body or mental-physical dualism is that the physical world appears to be causally closed. The total of energy and total momentum appear to be conserved whenever they have been measured in modern physics. There does not seem to be any room for minds to make a difference to evolution of the physical world. We should first note, with Meixner [9], that there is little or no experimental evidence to prove this within living bodies and especially within brains. The universal application of conservation laws is an <i>assumption</i> of the physical sciences, <i>not</i> a <i>result</i> as it is commonly presented. Arguments for causal closure have turned out to depend on some assumption that is almost identical to the result to be proved [10] [11].</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Suppose that physicists found that energy and momentum were not conserved in some instances. How would they react? First, they would note that the laws apply only to <i>isolated</i> systems, so they would examine whether the object really was isolated or not, and whether they should look for something further (like a hidden planet) that was producing the effects. Secondly, they would generalize the conservation laws so the new law was satisfied but not the old one. It used to be thought, for example, that total mass and total energy were separately conserved, but, after many subatomic experiments showing the annihilation and creation of massive particles, those separate laws were quietly dropped in favor of a general law of conservation of mass-energy in combination. If, therefore, the non-conservation of energy and/or momentum were found in certain biological or psychological processes, science as we know it would not collapse. Either the influence from other kinds of beings would be ascertained, or a further generalization of the conservation laws would be sought. The only novelty in the proposals here, is that these ‘other kinds of beings’ would not be ‘physical’ in the traditional way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[9] U. Meixner, "<a href="http://www.newdualism.org/review/vol1/DR1-1-U.Meixner.htm" target="_blank">Physicalism, Dualism and Intellectual Honesty</a>," Dualism Review, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-20, 2005.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[10] U. Mohrhoff, "<a href="http://www.newdualism.org/papers/U.Mohrhoff/Mohrhoff_JCS.htm" target="_blank">The Physics of Interactionism</a>," J. Consciousness Studies, vol. 6, pp. 165-184, 1999.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[11] W. Hasker, "<a href="http://www.newdualism.org/papers/W.Hasker/Hasker_NonReductivism_103103.pdf" target="_blank">How Not to be Reductivist,</a>" PCID, vol. 2.3.5, pp. 1-16, 2003.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/04/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_19.html" target="_blank">Previous part 5</a><br />
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</span>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-50735724502747404822017-04-19T06:54:00.000-07:002017-04-26T21:56:11.870-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 5/8: Mind and Physics as Levels Themselves?<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mind and Physics as Levels Themselves?</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I have argued that there are multiple generative levels within both the physical and mental realms. The next hypothesis is that the physical and psychological are themselves generative levels linked together, so that physical dispositions as a whole are derivative from mental dispositions within living and/or thinking organisms. We entertain [8] the view that the dualism of mind and body is not an ad hoc division, but one that logically follows from the kinds of causation that exists within a universe in which there are both minds and bodies as distinct ontological substances connected as generative levels.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To see whether this works in practice, we have to consider the detailed requirements of any theory of psychology. At the simplest level of generalization, minds must be able to</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">implement intended functions by feeling and thinking, then using motor areas,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">establish permanent memories, presumably by means of permanent physiological changes,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">form perceptions using information from the visual and auditory (etc.) cortexes,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">follow ‘internal’ trains of thought/feeling/imagining without necessarily having any external effects.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One way that these requirements can be accomplished is by means of the ideas presented so far, formulated in the following three principles:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Some physical/physiological potentialities (both deterministic and indeterministic according to quantum physics) are derived dispositions from minds as their principal cause. That is, minds predispose the dynamical properties of some physical objects.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">II.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The dispositional capacities of the mind are consequentially restricted (and hence conditioned) by their actual physical effects, by means of occasional causation.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">III.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The pattern of I and II is repeated for individual stages of more complex processes.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These principles together give what has been called conditional forward causation, or ‘top-down causation’. Note that we do not have a fourth ‘bottom-up’ principle that neural events directly cause events to occur in the mind. We do not have general matter → mind causation, although something resembling this does arise, namely selection. This is not causation in the sense of principal causation as producing or generating the effect, but is occasional causation as being a necessary prerequisite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A strong argument for these three principles is that they are already similar to what is known already to happen in physics. According to quantum field theory we saw how virtual events predispose the ordinary quantum wave function. These virtual events operate deterministically and describe the operation of the electric, magnetic, nuclear and gravitational forces. They are not the actual events of quantum mechanics, as those are the definite outcomes of events like observations. Rather, they are a ‘prior level’ of ‘implicit events’ whose operation is needed in order to derive or produce the potentialities for events like observations. The principle (I) states the analogical result that mental events themselves are a ‘prior level’ of ‘implicit events’ whose operation is needed in order to produce the potentialities for physical events.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The argument for the principle (II) is more general. This principle can be seen as the law according to which your future life is restricted and influenced by your past actions (by selection). Physical events are in this way the necessary foundations for permanent mental history and structure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Principle (III) has an important corollary connected with the observations of the above section on correspondences:</span><br />
<ol start="4">
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">IV.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The mind predisposes the brain to carry out those functions which ‘mirror’ or ‘correspond to’ the mind’s own functions.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental functions involve intermediate steps, and these intermediate mental steps predispose suitable intermediate physical steps (by I), and are in turn conditioned or confirmed by them (by II). Thus, the sequence of physical steps follows the sequence of mental steps, and the overall function of the physical process is analogous (in some sense) to the overall function of the mental process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[8] I.<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> J. Thompson, "<a href="http://www.generativescience.org/ps-papers/Thompson-ddnamin2f.htm" target="_blank">DiscreteDegrees Within and Between Nature and Mind</a>," in </span><i style="font-size: 10pt;">Psycho-Physical Dualism
Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach</i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, A. Antonietti, Ed., Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2008, pp. 99-125.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/04/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness.html" target="_blank">Previous post 4/6</a></div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-31735149467135994062017-04-16T05:16:00.000-07:002017-04-26T21:56:19.931-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 4/8: Generative Levels in Psychology<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Generative Levels in Psychology</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is easier to understand this downward causation pattern within psychology. There are many examples of derivative dispositions in everyday life, in psychology, in particular in cognitive processes. The accomplishment of a given disposition requires the operation of successive steps of kinds different from the overall step. The original disposition on its operation generates the “derived dispositions” for the intermediate steps, which are means to the original end. An original “disposition to learn”, for example, can generate the derived “disposition to read books”, which can generate further “dispositions to search for books”. These dispositions can then generate dispositions to move one’s body, which in turn lead to one’s limbs having (physical) dispositions to move. These successively generated dispositions are all derived from the original disposition to learn, according to the specific situations. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another example of sequential and derivative dispositions is the ability to learn. To say that someone is easy to teach, or that they are musical, for example, does not mean that there is any specific action that they are capable of doing. Rather, it means that they are disposed to learn new skills (whether of a musical or general kind), and that it is these new skills that are the dispositions that lead to specific actions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In this I follow Broad [7]: that there are “levels” of causal influence. Particular dispositions or intentions are not the most fundamental causes, but rather “intermediate stages” in the operation of more persistent “desires” and “motivations”. The intention to find a book could be the product or derivative of a more persistent “desire for reading”, and need only be produced in the appropriate circumstances. Broad would say that the derived dispositions were the realization of the underlying dispositions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The pattern of “underlying propensity / distribution / result” for “mental sub-degrees” shows the steps by which deep motivational principles (purposes) in an “interior mind” lead to action. These purposes come to fruition by means of discursive investigation of ideas, plans and alternatives in what can be called a more exterior “scientific discursive mind”, as constrained by existing intellectual abilities. The actions of the sensorimotor mind select one outcome among many, as constrained by bodily conditions. Psychologists who have investigated perceptive and executive processes within the sensorimotor stage realize that these are far from simple. What we see is very much influenced by our expectations and desires, as well as by being constrained by what is in front of our eyes. There are subsidiary degrees of expectation, presentation of alternatives and resolution even during “simple” sensations. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consciousness enters into this picture whenever actions occur. All actions of desire or love are conscious actions, and part of the conscious awareness of at least some personality or person. Consciousness is therefore not a mental source itself, but an essential aspect of operations from mental sources.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[7] C. Broad, Mind and Its Place in Nature, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/03/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_30.html" target="_blank">Previous part 3/6</a></span></div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-34100323691127499862017-03-30T22:56:00.000-07:002017-04-26T21:56:27.418-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 3/8: Conditional Forward Causation<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>3. Conditional Forward Causation</b></span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From our examples, we may generalize that all the principal causation is ‘down’ the sequence of multiple generative levels {A ➝ B ➝ ... }, and that the only effect back up the sequence is the way principal causes depend on previous events or occasions to select their range of operation. Let us adopt as universal this asymmetric relationship between multiple generative levels: <i>that dispositions act forwards in a way conditional on certain things already existing at the later levels</i>. This as a simple initial hypothesis. We will see whether all dispositions seen as existing in nature can be interpreted with this pattern of <i>generation and selection</i>.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We may surmise that A, the first in the sequence, is the ‘deepest underlying principle’, ‘source’, or ‘power’ that is fixed through all the subsequent changes to B, C, etc. Conditional forward causation is the principle we saw from physics. It implies that changes to B, for example, come from <i>subsequent</i> operations of A, and not from C, D,.. acting in ‘reverse’ up the chain. We surmise, rather, that the <i>subsequent</i> operations of A are now conditioned on the results in B, C, D, etc. The operations of A are therefore the <i>principal</i> causes, whereas the dependence of those operations on the previous state of B is via <i>instrumental</i> causation, and the dependence on the results in C, D,... is via <i>occasional</i> causation. I suggest that this is a universal pattern for the operation of a class of dispositions in nature, namely those that do not follow from the rearrangement of parts of an aggregate object.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/03/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_26.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a></span>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-82383083818194235522017-03-26T15:19:00.001-07:002017-04-26T21:56:33.857-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 2/8: Substances and Multiple Levels in Quantum Mechanics<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Substances and Multiple Levels in Quantum Mechanics</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A substance is defined as what exists over the finite duration between measurement events. The problem in quantum mechanics of understanding how substances exist has been long-standing. Some like Everett have suggested it is the wave function which exists continuously, but wave functions are mathematical entities and not physical. Others like Bohr have said that only events are real and hence denied that there anything which could be a continuous substance. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My proposal is use the idea of propensities [5]. These are the underlying dispositions or causes which give rise to events when the conditions are appropriate. The event production may be deterministic or probabilistic. The important feature of propensities is that they are present continuously between events, at least according to the Born Law of quantum mechanics. Propensities, therefore, can be identified as the substance of which quantum particles are made. The wave function is then the form of those substances, in particular their form as spread out in space and time. Quantum objects are thus substances that manifest themselves in some kind of form. The form of something tells us what its present structure is, and the substance of something tells us how it would behave in all future hypothetical circumstances (even if only by probabilities).</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We can develop a theory of multiple levels, each with different kinds of objects and each existing in their own kinds of spaces. We can show how objects interact between levels [6]. We can begin to understand this using the principles of quantum mechanics. Consider, for example, how the Schroedinger equation makes predictions for the wave function, which in turn predicts the probabilities of future events. The Schroedinger equation uses a combination of kinetic energy and potentiality that acts to evolve the wave function through time, based on the initial conditions. The wave function then acts to produce further discrete selection events based on previous selections. In each case, objects of kind of A are producing further objects of kind B(n) based on previous objects B(n-1). The produced B(n) outcomes select what kind of outcomes are next possible. Furthermore, this same pattern is repeated on multiple levels {A ➝ B </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> C}. Quantum physics has the levels {energy </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> propensity forms </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> actual selections}. Such patterns are familiar, since in classical physics we have a similar structure with the levels {potential energy </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> forces </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> acceleration}. The pattern is also familiar to us from psychology in the sequence {desire </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> thinking </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> action}, as will be discussed later. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When we start digging into quantum physics, we discover even more levels. The potential energy and kinetic energy that we started with in the Schroedinger equation are not themselves fundamental, but are generated by the virtual processes of quantum field theory. Potential energy is produced by the exchange of gauge bosons: of photons of electromagnetic energy, of gluons for nuclear energy, etc. And kinetic energy comes from mass, which is mostly not ‘bare mass’ but is the collection of the energies of virtual substances in a cloud around a given center. This means that we have an even longer chain of multiple generative levels in quantum physics, something like {variational Lagrangian </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> virtual fields </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> virtual events</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> potential and kinetic energies in the Hamiltonian </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> propensity fields described by wave functions </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">➝</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> selection events for actual outcomes}. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These kinds of levels are generally acknowledged to exist within quantum field theory, but with differing opinions about their significance. Many physicists and philosophers of physics want to assert the particular ‘reality’ of one of the levels and say that the prior levels are ‘merely calculational devices’ for the behaviour of their chosen real level. The question of simplicity, to be answered in order to apply Occam’s razor, is whether it is simpler to have multiple kinds of objects existing (even within multiple generative levels) each with simple dispositions, or simpler to have fewer kinds of existing objects, but with more complicated laws governing their operation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Allowing the multiple generative levels all to exist in ‘their own way’ has fruitful consequences for generalizing quantum physics to include new kinds of causation. Admittedly this is going beyond standard quantum mechanics, but at least this is yielding predictions for possible new science which can be confirmed or falsified as all science should be examined.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[5] I. Thompson, "<a href="http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/pd1.html" target="_blank">Real Dispositions in the Physical World</a>," Brit. Jnl Phil. Science, vol. 39, pp. 67-79, 1988.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[6] I. J. Thompson, "<a href="http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/mgl0f.html" target="_blank">Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels</a>," in Probabilities, Causes and Propensities in Physics, Dordrecht, Springer, 2008, pp. 245-257.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/03/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness.html" target="_blank">Part 1 here</a>.</span></div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-51516905937292453872017-03-19T16:06:00.000-07:002017-04-26T21:56:42.995-07:00Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 1/8 of thoughts on a causal correspondence theory<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which way does causation proceed? The pattern in the material world seems to be upward: particles to molecules to organisms to brains to mental processes. In contrast, the principles of quantum mechanics allow us to see a pattern of downward causation. These new ideas describe sets of multiple levels in which each level influences the levels below it through generation and selection. Top-down causation makes exciting sense of the world: we can find analogies in psychology, in the formation of our minds, in locating the source of consciousness, and even in the possible logic of belief in God.</span></blockquote>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. A quantum viewpoint</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Over the last 100 years the study of quantum phenomena has shown that there is more than the material world of matter, force and motion. The experts have often speculated about a role for observers, even for consciousness, in an understanding of quantum measurements [1] [2]. More recently many [3] have speculated that quantum physics itself reveals consciousness. There are now many cottage industries seeking to develop ideas of ‘quantum consciousness’, even of ‘quantum spirituality’. It has become popular to say that ‘quantum theory shows that consciousness creates physical reality’, and that this fits into an <i>advaita</i> non-dualist framework where only the Godhead is real while everything else is a generation of consciousness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For many, however, such a monism where all beings are numerically identical does not seem to be the ultimate answer. People generally consider unselfish love to be superior to selfish love. If all persons were identical in being, then unselfish love between distinct persons would be impossible. The reality of unselfishness disposes many of us to dualist views in which people are ontologically distinct and in which God and worlds are distinct [4, p. 18]. It is important for theorists to explore theories in which minds and god are distinct. If mind and matter are distinct then many philosophical problems with materialism may be resolved.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I here present some ideas to help interpret quantum mechanics, mind and theism in a non-reductive approach. These ideas describe a set of multiple levels which all exist simultaneously in their own manner. Rather than everything being a system of objects at one fundamental level, we can develop a theory of multiple levels, each with different kinds of objects existing in their own kinds of spaces. The first challenge is to see how quantum substances exist on a single level. A second challenge is to show how objects interact between levels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">[1] </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-no-proof: yes;">E. Wigner, "<a href="http://www.newdualism.org/papers/E.Wigner/Wigner-mindbody-1962.pdf" target="_blank">Remarks on the Mind-Body Question</a>," in <i>The Scientist Speculates</i>, N.Y., Basic Books, 1962, pp. 284-302.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-no-proof: yes;">H. Stapp, Mindful Universe, N.Y.: Springer, 2011. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-no-proof: yes;">E. Lazslo, "Quantum and Consciousness: In search of new paradigm," <i>Zygon, </i>vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 533-541, 2006. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; mso-no-proof: yes;">[4] <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">E. Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom (1763), West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2010. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/03/quantum-mechanics-and-consciousness_26.html" target="_blank">Part 2 here</a>.Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-6352536250004876832017-03-11T14:09:00.006-08:002017-03-12T22:43:24.564-07:00Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World III: Thoughts and Forms<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In this series of posts, Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences has been shown to have interesting applications for helping us to better understand the quantum world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/01/p.html" target="_blank">part I</a><span id="goog_1548320006"></span><span id="goog_1548320007"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>, we learned that our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals and that they consist of desire, or love, acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects. We in turn came to see the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">correspondential</em> relationship between these mental events and such physical events that occur on a quantum level: in both cases, there will be time gaps between the events leading up to the physical outcome. So since we find that physical events occur in finite steps rather than continuously, we are led to expect a quantum world rather than a world described by classical physics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/03/using-swedenborg-to-understand-quantum.html" target="_blank">part II</a><span id="goog_1548320015"></span><span id="goog_1548320016"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>, we saw that the main similarity between desire (mental) and energy (physical) is that they both persist between events, which means that they are substances and therefore have the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction within the time gaps between those events.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now we come to the question of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how</em> it is that these substances persist during the intervals between events. The events are the actual selection of what happens, so <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">after</em> the causing event and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">before</em> the resultant effect, what occurs is the exploring of “possibilities for what <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">might</em> happen.” With regard to our mental processes, this exploration of possibilities is what we recognize as <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thinking</em>. Swedenborg explains in detail how this very process of thinking is the way love gets ready to do things (rather than love being a byproduct of the thinking process, as Descartes would require):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Everyone sees that discernment is the vessel of wisdom, but not many see that volition is the vessel of love. This is because our volition does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment. It first branches off into a desire and vanishes in doing so, and a desire is noticeable only through a kind of unconscious pleasure in thinking, talking, and acting. We can still see that love is the source because we all intend what we love and do not intend what we do not love. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/divine-love-wisdom-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Divine Love and Wisdom</em></a> §364)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When we realize we want something, the next step is to work out <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how</em> to do it. We first think of the specific objective and then of all the intermediate steps to be taken in order to achieve it. We may also think about alternative steps and the pros and cons of following those different routes. In short, thinking is the exploration of “possibilities for action.” As all of this thinking speaks very clearly to the specific objective at hand, it can be seen as supporting our motivating love, which is one of the primary functions of thought. A focused thinking process such as this can be seen, simplified, in many kinds of animal activities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With humans, however, thinking goes beyond that tight role of supporting love and develops a scope of its own. Not only do our thoughts explore possibilities for action, but they also explore the more abstract “possibilities for those possibilities.” Not only do we think about how to get a drink, but we also, for example, think about the size of the container, how much liquid it contains, and how far it is from where we are at that moment! When we get into such details as volume and distance, we discover that mathematics is the exploration of “possibilities of all kinds,” whether they are possibilities for action or not. So taken as a whole, thought is the exploration of all the many possibilities in the world, whether or not they are for action and even whether or not they are for actual things.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For physical things (material objects), this exploration of possibilities is spreading over the possible places and times for interactions or selections. Here, quantum physics has done a whole lot of work already. Physicists have discovered that the possibilities for physical interactions are best described by the wave function of quantum mechanics. The wave function describes all the events that are possible, as well as all the propensities and probabilities for those events to happen. According to German physicist Max Born, the probability of an event in a particular region can be determined by an integral property of the wave function over that region. Energy is the substance that persists between physical events, and all physical processes are driven by energy. In quantum mechanics, this energy is what is responsible for making the wave function change through time, as formulated by the Schrödinger equation, which is the fundamental equation of quantum physics.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#1" name="b1" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Returning now to Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences, we recognize that the something physical <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">like</em> thoughts in the mind are the shapes of wave functions in quantum physics. In Swedenborg’s own words:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I have been thinking, the material ideas in my thought have presented themselves so to speak in the middle of a wave-like motion. I have noticed that the wave was made up of nothing other than such ideas as had become attached to the particular matter in my memory that I was thinking about, and that a person’s entire thought is seen by spirits in this way. But nothing else enters that person’s awareness then apart from what is in the middle which has presented itself as a material idea. I have likened that wave round about to spiritual wings which serve to raise the particular matter the person is thinking about up out of his memory. And in this way the person becomes aware of that matter. The surrounding material in which the wave-like motion takes place contained countless things that harmonized with the matter I was thinking about. (<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-1-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Arcana Coelestia</a> </em>§6200)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#2" name="b2" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Many people who have tried to understand the significance of quantum physics have noted that the wave function could be described as behaving like a non-spatial realm of consciousness. Some of these people have even wanted to say that the quantum wave function <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</em> a realm of consciousness, that physics has revealed the role of consciousness in the world, or that physics has discovered quantum consciousness.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#3" name="b3" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[3]</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, using Swedenborg’s ideas to guide us, we can see that the wave function in physics <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">corresponds</em> to the thoughts in our consciousness. They have similar roles in the making of events: both thoughts and wave functions explore the “possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for action.” They are not the same, but they instead follow similar patterns and have similar functions within their respective realms. Thoughts are the way that desire explores the possibilities for the making of intentions and their related physical outcomes, and wave functions are the way that energy explores the possibilities for the making of physical events on a quantum level.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The philosophers of physics have been puzzled for a long time about the substance of physical things,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#4" name="b4" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[4]</a> especially that of things in the quantum realm. From our discussion here, we see that energy (or propensity) is also the substance of physical things in the quantum realm and that the wave function, then, is the form that such a quantum substance takes. The wave function describes the shape of energy (or propensity) in space and time. We can recognize, as Aristotle first did, that a substantial change has occurred when a substance comes into existence by virtue of the matter of that substance acquiring some form.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#5" name="b5" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[5]</a> That still applies to quantum mechanics, we now find, even though many philosophers have been desperately constructing more extreme ideas to try to understand quantum objects, such as relationalism<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#6" name="b6" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[6]</a> or the many-worlds interpretation.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#7" name="b7" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[7]</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So what, then, is this matter of energy (desire, or love)? Is it from the Divine? Swedenborg would say as much:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is because the very essence of the Divine is love and wisdom that we have two abilities of life. From the one we get our discernment, and from the other volition. Our discernment is supplied entirely by an inflow of wisdom from God, while our volition is supplied entirely by an inflow of love from God. Our failures to be appropriately wise and appropriately loving do not take these abilities away from us. They only close them off; and as long as they do, while we may call our discernment “discernment” and our volition “volition,” essentially they are not. So if these abilities really were taken away from us, everything human about us would be destroyed—our thinking and the speech that results from thought, and our purposing and the actions that result from purpose. We can see from this that the divine nature within us dwells in these two abilities, in our ability to be wise and our ability to love. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/divine-love-wisdom-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Divine Love and Wisdom</em></a> §30)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When seeing things as made from substance—from the energy (or desire) that endures between events and thereby creates further events—we note that people will tend to speculate about “pure love” or “pure energy”: a love or energy without form that has no particular objective but can be used for anything. But this cannot be. In physics, there never exists any such pure energy but <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">only</em> energy in specific forms, such as the quantum particles described by a wave function. Any existing physical energy must be the propensity for specific <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kinds</em> of interactions, since it must exist in some form. Similarly, there never exists a thing called “pure love.” The expression “pure love” makes sense only with respect to the idea of innocent, or undefiled, love, not to love without an object. Remember that “our volition [which is the vessel of love] does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b1" name="1" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</a> Wikipedia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b2" name="2" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</a> <a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-1-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Secrets of Heaven</em></a> is the New Century Edition translation of Swedenborg’s <a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/arcana-coelestia-vol-1-redesigned-standard-edition/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Arcana Coelestia</em></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b3" name="3" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[3]</a> See, for example, <a href="http://quantum-mind.co.uk/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">http://quantum-mind.co.uk</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b4" name="4" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[4]</a> Howard Robinson, “Substance,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b5" name="5" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[5]</a> Thomas Ainsworth, “Form vs. Matter,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b6" name="6" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[6]</a> Michael Epperson, “Quantum Mechanics and Relational Realism: Logical Causality and Wave Function Collapse,” <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Process Studies </em>38.2 (2009): 339–366.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3766820554494978106#b7" name="7" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[7]</a> J. A. Barrett, “Quantum Worlds,” <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Principia </em>20.1 (2016): 45–60.</span></div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-48376672947545155462017-03-11T10:48:00.005-08:002017-03-11T11:17:00.156-08:00Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World II: Desire and Energy<h2>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2017/01/p.html" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">previous post</a> of this series, we saw how Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences could help us to better understand the physical world from a quantum perspective. If our mental processes consist of desire acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects, then these physical actions should manifest themselves according to a corresponding pattern. More specifically, if the components of our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals, so too should the expected physical events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to many thinkers throughout history, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mental </em>and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">physical </em>are not identical but instead are two different kinds of substances that relate with each other. Swedenborg describes the mental (spiritual) and physical (natural) as distinct but says that they interact by <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">discrete degrees</em>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A knowledge of degrees is like a key to lay open the causes of things, and to give entrance into them. . . . For things exterior advance to things interior and through these to things inmost, by means of degrees; not by continuous degrees but by discrete degrees. “Continuous degrees” is a term applied to the gradual lessenings or decreasings from grosser to finer . . . or . . . to growths and increasings from finer to grosser . . . precisely like the gradations of light to shade, or of heat to cold. But discrete degrees are entirely different: they are like things prior, subsequent and final; or like end, cause, and effect. These degrees are called discrete, because the prior is by itself; the subsequent by itself; and the final by itself; and yet taken together they make one. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/divine-love-wisdom-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Divine Love and Wisdom</em></a> §184)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The mental can never be continuously transformed into something physical, nor can the physical be continuously transformed into something mental. They are connected, however, by virtue of their causal relationship: all physical processes are produced, or generated, by something mental. As described in my previous post, this relationship is what gives rise to our correspondences in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Most of us can realize that the mental and the physical are distinct, even though this may be denied by materialists (for whom the mental is merely an emerging product of the physical) and also by monistic idealists (for whom the physical universe is merely a representation in the mind). The latter view is common in many New Age circles today, and it is even thought to be implied by quantum physics. In this series of posts, by contrast, I want to show how Swedenborg’s ideas give us a new understanding of how mental and physical things can <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">both </em>exist in fully-fledged ways and with serious connections between them that are not deflating or reductionist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental and physical things can both be substances but, they have very different characteristics:</span></div>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental things are conscious, whereas physical things are unconscious.</span></li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 8px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental beings can think and make deductions using reason, whereas physical beings can only make logical deductions if they are designed that way.</span></li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 8px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental beings can use symbols and language to refer to objects and ideas outside themselves, whereas physical beings have no intrinsic ability to refer to anything.</span></li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 8px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental processes are motivated by purposes and intentions, whereas physical processes are determined by physical causes that supposedly exclude purposes and intentions.</span></li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 8px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mental processes tend to produce results according to some conception of what is good, whereas physical processes have no need for any such concept.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As already discussed in the previous post, desire is a component of all mental processes, and we recognize “something physical <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">like </em>desire” as energy or propensity. Swedenborg sees desire, or affection, as a specific kind of love:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That love and wisdom from the Lord is life can be seen also from this, that man grows torpid as love recedes from him, and stupid as wisdom recedes from him, and that were they to recede altogether he would become extinct. There are many things pertaining to love which have received other names because they are derivatives, such as affections, desires, appetites, and their pleasures and enjoyments. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/divine-love-wisdom-nce/" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Divine Love and Wisdom</em></a> §363)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For desire and energy to correspond to each other in the sense that Swedenborg describes, the function of desire as a cause must be similar to the function of energy as a cause. That is, the way in which desire causes mental processes must be similar to the way in which energy causes physical processes. This is <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not </em>to say that desire is the same as energy but only that desire’s pattern of operation is similar to that of energy. The common pattern is that desire (energy) persists between events, then explores multiple possibilities for those events by means of thoughts (fields of energy), and finally becomes manifest in the physical events produced.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Up until now, the idea of substance has been rather obscure in both physics and philosophy, and it has not been developed significantly. From an ontological perspective, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">substance </em>is that which endures between events. It is what individuates and bears the intrinsic properties of those events. We are not necessarily talking about a substance that endures forever or about a substance that exists independently of everything else. Based on the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">common pattern </em>described above, we can arrive at the idea of a created substance that persists, or endures, as a thing <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">at least</em> for some finite time between events. And such a substance would be the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction in that time interval.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This relates to the idea of “dispositional essentialism” that has been put forth by philosophers in recent years.<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world-2/#1" name="b1" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</a> Dispositional essentialism is the notion that some kind of power or disposition (such as a cause or energy) must be an <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">essential </em>part of something. Some philosophers take this idea even further, saying that disposition must be the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">individual essence </em>of something. In much the same way, I am saying that disposition is what constitutes the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">substance </em>of something.<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world-2/#2" name="b2" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</a> So if the main similarity between desire and energy is that they both persist between events, then both desire and energy are substances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By using ideas from Swedenborg to understand the world, we have a new way of grasping the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mental </em>and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">physical </em>and perhaps of understanding quantum physics. Either one of these results would be very useful; to have both is to be extremely fortunate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the next post of this series, I will discuss how and in what form both desire and energy persist between events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world-2/#b1" name="1" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</a> B. Ellis and C. Lierse, “Dispositional Essentialism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (72, 1994): 27–45.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world-2/#b2" name="2" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</a> See Ian J. Thompson, “Power and Substance,” <a href="http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/pas.htm" style="background: transparent; color: #e7592f; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/pas.htm</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">First posted <a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world-2/">here</a>.</span></div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-2153140684522133322017-01-22T19:18:00.000-08:002017-01-22T19:20:19.299-08:00<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World I: Events</h2>
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<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">For the last hundred years, physicists have been using the quantum theory about the universe, but they still do not properly understand of what the quantum world is made.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The previous physics (referred to as “classical” and started by Isaac Newton) used ideas of “waves” and “particles” to picture what makes up the physical world. But now we find that every object in the quantum world sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes behaves as a wave! Which is it? In quantum physics, objects behave most of the time like waves spreading out as they travel along, but sometimes measurements show objects to be particles with a definite location: not spread out at all. Why is that? It is as though their size and location suddenly change in measurement events. This is quite unlike classical physics, where particles exist continuously with the same fixed shape. In quantum physics, by contrast, objects have fixed locations only intermittently, such as when they are observed. So they only offer us a discrete series of events that can be measured, not a continuous trajectory. Quantum objects, then, are alternately continuous and discontinuous.</span></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Why would we ever expect such a fickle world? Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) has some ideas that might help us. He describes how all physical processes are produced by something mental, or spiritual, and this can be confirmed by reason of the similarity in patterns between the physical processes and their mental causes. In Swedenborg’s words, there are <i>correspondences</i> between the physical and the mental—that they have similar structures and functions, even though mind and matter are quite distinct.</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s2">I need to state what correspondence is. The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world—the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called “something that corresponds.” It needs to be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world . . . (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/heaven-hell-nce/"><span class="s3"><i>Heaven and Hell</i></span></a> §89)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Although these ideas are not part of present-day science, I still hope to show below that they may have some implications for how science could usefully develop.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Swedenborg’s theory of mind is easy to begin to understand. He talks about how all mental processes have three common elements: desire, thought, and action. The desire is what persists and motivates what will happen. The thought is the exploration of possibilities for actions and the making of an intention. The action is the determined intention, the product of desire and thought that results in an actual physical event.</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s2">The [actions] themselves are in the mind’s enjoyments and their thoughts when the delights are of the will and the thoughts are of the understanding therefrom, thus when there is complete agreement in the mind. The [actions] then belong to the spirit, and even if they do not enter into bodily act still they are as if in the act when there is agreement. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/divine-providence-nce/"><span class="s3"><i>Divine Providence</i></span></a> §108)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">All of the three spiritual elements are essential. Without desire (love), or ends, nothing would be motivated to occur. Without thought, that love would be blind and mostly fail to cause what it wants. Without determined intention, both the love and thought would be frustrated and fruitless, with no effect achieved at all. In everyday life, this intention is commonly called will, but it is always produced by some desire driving everything that happens. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Here is the pattern:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s2"><i> </i><b><i>Spiritual</i></b> <b><i>Natural</i></b></span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">Desire + Thought => Mental Action (Intention) >> Physical Action, or Event, in the World</span></span></div>
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</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Swedenborg summarizes the relationship between these elements as follows:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s2">All activities in the universe proceed from ends through causes into effects. These three elements are in themselves indivisible, although they appear as distinct in idea and thought. Still, even then, unless the effect that is intended is seen at the same time, the end is not anything; nor is either of these anything without a cause to sustain, foster and conjoin them. Such a sequence is engraved on every person, in general and in every particular, just as will, intellect, and action is. Every end there has to do with the will, every cause with the intellect, and every effect with action. (<a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/product/conjugial-love/"><span class="s3"><i>Conjugial Love</i></span></a> §400:1–2)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Now consider Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences mentioned above. He says that there is a similar pattern between the details of the effects and the details of the causes. ”As above, so below,” others have said. So if mental action produces some effect in the physical world, then, by correspondence, we would expect a <i>similar</i> pattern between that physical effect and each of the three elements common to all mental processes. We would expect something physical <i>like</i> desire, then something physical <i>like</i> thought, and finally something physical <i>like</i> mental action. Do we recognize these patterns in physics? And if so, do we recognize them better in classical physics or in quantum physics?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I claim we do recognize them in physics:</span></span></div>
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<li class="li7"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s4"></span><span class="s2">We recognize the “something physical <i>like</i> desire” as energy<i> </i>or<i> </i>propensity. These are what persist physically and produce the result, just like desire does in the mind. They are in both <b>classical and quantum physics</b>.</span></span></li>
<li class="li7"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s4"></span><span class="s2">We recognize the “something physical <i>like</i> thought” as the wave function in <b>quantum physics</b>. This describes all the possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for physical events, just like thought does in the mind.</span></span></li>
<li class="li7"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s4"></span><span class="s2">We recognize the “something physical <i>like</i> mental action” as the actual specific physical outcome, a selection of just one of the possibilities to be made actual. This is a measurement event in <b>quantum physics</b>, the product of energy or propensity and the wave function, just like the product of desire and thought is the mental action.</span></span></li>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">We will discuss energy and wave functions in later posts, focusing here on the final step of mental actions and physical events. According to Swedenborg’s ideas, the structure of mental processes and the structure of physical events should be similar. So, too, the function of mental processes and the function of physical events should be similar. Can we tell from this whether we should expect a classical world or a quantum world?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">One feature of thought and mental action with which we should be familiar is time. That is, we always need time to think! Without any time gap between desiring and intending, we would be acting instinctively and impulsively. Sometimes that works but not always (at least in my experience!). Most often, there has to be some delay, even some procrastination, between having a desire and fulfilling it. That delay gives us time to deliberate and decide on the best action to select. And, most importantly, if it is <i>we</i> who decide <i>when</i> to act, we feel that we act in some freedom. It feels better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">If the physical world corresponds to those mental processes, according to Swedenborg, what hypothesis do we reach about physics? It is that there will be <i>corresponding time gaps</i> between the beginning of some persisting energy or propensity and the selection of physical outcome. Remember that quantum objects are selected and definite only intermittently—when measured, or observed—while classical objects are continuously definite with no gaps. All this leads us to <i>expect</i> that physical events should not be continuous; that is, we should expect a quantum world rather than a classical world.</span></span></div>
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First appeared <a href="http://www.swedenborg.com/scholars-using-swedenborg-to-understand-the-quantum-world/" target="_blank">here</a>.Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-51317314383174925662016-07-20T08:37:00.000-07:002016-07-20T08:37:19.906-07:00Aristotle's and Aquinas' ideas about Substance and Form.Something about Aristotelean-Thomist (A-T) metaphysics bothers me, and <a href="http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2016/07/17/methodological-theology-naturally/" target="_blank">Jon Garvey</a> reminds me of it again in a recent post.<br />
He says above <i>“substance” has to do (in A-T thought) with form</i>.<br />
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To me, this is an abuse of language and of all metaphysical intuition!<br />
Normally, we say thing is 'substance in a form', or a thing is made out of some substance and is arranged in some form. So 'substance' and 'form' are combined (metaphysically) to make a particular thing. A substance can be arranged in many possible forms, and a given form may be made out of many possible substances. But, if we specify substance <i>and</i> form, then we specify a thing.<br />
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But, as Jon points out, this natural way of speaking is completely up-ended in A-T language. There 'substance' and 'form' are practically identified! They are of course completely allowed to define words how they like. But, if I were starting a new metaphysics suitable for science, that is NOT how I would proceed. It is completely bizarre! <br />
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In fact, Aristotle bears some responsibility for this. He talks of things made of matter, and then 'form' as 'everything else that makes a thing what it is'. But that leave unclear how causal powers of thing are supposed to exist: since they are not matter they must be form. This conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' as structure and 'form as causal power'.<br />
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Then Aquinas bears further responsibility. He sees the above problem. He wants to attribute causal powers to substance (a good idea, I say). But, rather than fixing Aristotle's definition of 'form', he then conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' and 'substance'. He has no option left. But that results in the idea of a 'substantial form'. That might be ok, except (as I point out just above), any clean new metaphysics would distinguish 'substance' and 'form'. A-T is not clean in that respect. <br />
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Essence is that which makes something what it is.<br />
Substance is that out of which something is made.<br />
<a href="http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=812386">http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=812386</a><br />
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The format of Thomistic metaphysics then takes a somewhat dyadic structure of descending generality: (i) essence and existence, (ii) substance and accident, (iii) matter and form.<br />
<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-meta/">http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-meta/</a> (much good Thomist presentation!)<br />
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In general, we can (must!) diverge from materialism. We can be guided by Aquinas’ insights, not to mention more general Christian insights. But that does not mean necessarily following the A-T system in all its glorious details. Instead, see my<a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2016/07/physical-and-mental-substances-what-are.html" target="_blank"> previous post </a>for what a new kind of metaphysics could be that talks properly about substance and form.<br />
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<br />Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-65591641647603616502016-07-19T21:26:00.000-07:002016-07-19T21:26:21.730-07:00Physical and Mental Substances: what are the stuffs of nature?Here is a potted summary of a non-reductive 'propensity account' of physical and mental substances:<br />
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Quantum theory must deal with substance, but just not substance of the classical material or atomistic kind. Rather, something that perseveres through time without existing in a actualized form at every moment. The substance would be something like the 'potentiality' or 'propensity' for acting, and that acting occurs with non-zero time steps, not continuously. This is the 'propensity interpretation' of quantum mechanics, initiated by Heisenberg and Popper. Because of the finite time steps, propensities exist and persist from one event to another actualization. Between events, therefore, they are the substances of quantum things.<br />
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We talk about <i>mental information</i>, and ask "what property of substance, makes it amenable to human cognition". You (like many others) are asking, 'what is the stuff of mind?'. My answer is an extrapolation of what I said above for quantum physics. It is 'potentiality' or 'propensity' but now of <i>mental</i> kinds. What is that, you ask? Do I know it? Yes: I say. It is the 'love' or 'desire' that make a person. For loves and desires are what in us persons that <i>does persist</i>. Again we make actualizing decisions intermittently. Between those decisions it is our love which persist. Love is our mental/personal substance. Just (certainly not!) material substance!<br />
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<b>Quantum objects</b> are propensity-substances in various forms. Those forms are the wave functions of quantum theory.<br />
<b>Mental objects </b>are love-substances in various forms. Those forms are the in<u>form</u>ation of mental kind, a.k.a thoughts and perceptions. The actions of love (a.k.a. decisions) have physical effects.<br />
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These ideas are based on the ideas of the kind Aristotle might have had without much effort, though in fact he did not. Just remember that there are two kinds of substances (at least), and the kinds are not reduced to another, or aggregates of other kinds. It is the job of physicists and psychologists to determine how the two kinds of substances actually cause things, and hence what they actually do.<br />
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There are functional correspondences between the way physical and mental things exist and operate, even though the substances involved are completely different and can never be transformed one into another.Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-90932690326080564872015-05-11T21:27:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:28:39.201-07:00Spiritual Physics<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="420" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ndTtR9qKsH0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<div id="watch-uploader-info" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong class="watch-time-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;">Streamed live on May 11, 2015</strong></div><div class="" id="watch-description-text" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div id="eow-description" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; padding: 0px;">Is there a connection between spirituality and physics? What is the nature of the mind? In this episode, host Curtis Childs from the Swedenborg Foundation and featured guest and physicist Dr. Ian J. Thompson explore the answers to these questions from spiritual and scientific perspectives.<br />
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Discussion points:<br />
--Meeting a Mind<br />
--The Substance of Consciousness<br />
--Energy and Distance<br />
--Materialism Issues<br />
--The Interaction of Planes<br />
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Special thanks to our featured guest Dr. Ian J. Thompson. Dr. Thompson is a nuclear physicist in the Nuclear Theory and Modeling Group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA, having until 2006 been a professor of physics at the University of Surrey, UK. His research deals with the coupled-channels and few-body models for nuclear structure and reactions, especially concerning halo nuclei. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics.<br />
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References and Downloads:<br />
Check out "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984822801?ie=UTF8&tag=stascifrogod-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=0984822801" target="_blank">Starting Science From God: Rational Scientific Theories from Theism</a>" by Ian J. Thompson</div></div>Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-51020398914100669032015-03-17T21:39:00.000-07:002015-03-17T22:48:10.597-07:00Book Expo at Bryn Athyn College on Saturday April 11<br />
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<span style="font-family: TrajanPro; font-size: 28pt;">Bryn Athyn College
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<span style="color: white; font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-weight: 800;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Book Expo 2015
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<span style="color: rgb(100.000000%, 90.300000%, 0.000000%); font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 30.000000pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Science and Spirituality throughout History
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<span style="color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%); font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 28.000000pt; font-weight: 800;">April 11, 2015<br />9:00 am – 4:00 pm
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<span style="color: white; font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 18pt;">Brickman Center, 2945 College Drive, <br />Bryn Athyn, PA 19009
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<span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 21pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><span style="color: blue;">Join us for a day of books and talks.
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: 700;">Browse, read, discuss, and take some home</span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: 700;">!
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<span style="font-size: 15pt;">Follow spirituality weaving through early history, sciences, philosophy,
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<span style="font-size: 15pt;">medicine, abolition of slavery, child labor rights, and more
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<span style="font-size: 15pt;">Learn new spiritual paradigms and envision the afterlife
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<span style="font-size: 15pt;">Learn the why of two Testaments and even a third
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<span style="font-size: 15pt;">Join authors for short talks, followed by Q & A
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<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #598543; font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: 600;">Enjoy a great
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<span style="color: rgb(34.900000%, 52.100000%, 26.400000%); font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 15.000000pt; font-weight: 800;">A sampling of book titles publishers
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Osteopathy and Swedenborg
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Starting Science From God
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Religion and Science: Big Bang and Chaotic Dynamics
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Swedenborg’s Hidden Influence on Kant
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Swedenborg, Fourier and the America of the 1840’s
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The Triune Word
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Swedenborg’s Scientific Works
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<span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">Bryn Athyn College Press,<br />
</span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">Swedenborg Scientific Association<br />
</span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">Fountain Publishing<br />
</span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">Swedenborg Foundation<br />
</span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">General Church of the New Jerusalem Publications </span><br />
<span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">• </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 11pt;">Ian Thompson
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<span style="color: #598543; font-family: WhitneyHTF; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Organizer: Lisa Childs: </span><span style="font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 13.000000pt; font-weight: 700;">ncapbooks@gmail.com </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 13.000000pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: 'WhitneyHTF'; font-size: 13.000000pt; font-weight: 700;">More details at </span><span style="font-family: WhitneyHTF;"><span style="font-size: 17.3333339691162px;"><b><a href="http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/bookexpo.htm">www.swedenborgstudy.com/bookexpo.htm</a> </b></span></span></div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-78966015582390281602014-05-21T21:59:00.000-07:002014-06-28T23:05:02.986-07:00Starting Science From God: An Evening Talk in Chicago on June 6.<div class="wb_element TitleTAILTR" contains_script="false" id="wb_element_text_prebblk_TAILTR__1400533843929_81_01" issample="" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 5px; width: 560.625px;">
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<span style="color: #333399; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b id="ext-gen8140" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 7-9 PM</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333399; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">STARTING SCIENCE FROM GOD</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333399; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">with physicist Ian Thompson</b></span></div>
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Many of us sense there is something real beyond the scope of naturalistic science. But what? Must mental and religious lives always remain a mystery and never become part of scientific knowledge? Can theism ever be connected with science?</div>
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Professor Ian Thompson will explain a new rational approach to combining science and theism. He presents theism as a scientific theory, explaining its basic postulates, consequences and predictions as simply as possible and without paradox. Dr. Thompson shows how a following of core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of materials which should appear in the universe. </div>
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We will see if those predictions agree with the world as we observe it, both externally in nature and internally in our minds. In fact, they mesh surprisingly well with the structure of reality already revealed by modern quantum field theory and by theories of developmental stages in human minds. </div>
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The result is a promising new rational theory encompassing theology, psychology and physics. </div>
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Dr. Ian Thompson is a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey in England, where until 2006 he was Professor of Physics. For more information see his website, Ian Thompson</div>
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LOCATION: 77 W. Washington St., 17th floor,</div>
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Chicago, Illinois.</div>
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DATE: Friday, June 6, 2014</div>
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TIME: 7-9 PM; refreshments 6-7 PM.</div>
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<span id="ext-gen8163" style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Many of us sense there is something real beyond the scope of naturalistic science. But what? Must mental and religious lives always remain a mystery and never become part of scientific knowledge? Can theism ever be connected with science?</span></div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: tahoma, 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span id="ext-gen8135" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Professor Ian Thompson will explain a new rational approach to combining science and theism. He presents theism as a scientific theory, explaining its basic postulates, consequences and predictions as simply as possible and without paradox. Dr. Thompson shows how a following of core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of materials which should appear in the universe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">We will see if those predictions agree with the world as we observe it, both externally in nature and internally in our minds. In fact, they mesh surprisingly well with the structure of reality already revealed by modern quantum field theory and by theories of developmental stages in human minds. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: tahoma, 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The result is a promising new rational theory encompassing theology, psychology and physics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><i id="ext-gen8177" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dr. Ian Thompson is a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey in England, where until 2006 he was Professor of Physics. For more information see his website, <a href="http://www.ianthompson.org/" id="ext-gen7895" style="color: #2760ad; font-family: tahoma, 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_self">Ian Thompson</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">LOCATION: 77 W. Washington St., 17th floor,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Chicago, Illinois.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">DATE: Friday, June 6, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">TIME: 7-9 PM; refreshments 6-7 PM.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #545454; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Hold a seat at: </span><span style="color: #545454; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.loopions.org/programsandclasses.html">http://www.loopions.org/programsandclasses.html</a> </span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">CANCELED</span></div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-8741062361409522652014-03-26T23:15:00.000-07:002014-03-26T23:15:08.751-07:00Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Theistic ScienceOne common alternative to the theory of natural selection is the theory of i<b>ntelligent design</b>. The intelligent design theory, however, is deliberately limited, as it does not attempt a causal explanation. It tries to develop techniques to examine physical organisms and then to determine whether or not that examination provides evidence for the existence of an intelligence in the coming to be (or design) of those organisms. Strictly, it is neutral on whether the intelligence is God or whether it might be previously-existing extra-terrestrial beings who have (say) genetically-engineered the organism. Because intelligent design theory does not produce causal accounts, it is often criticized as lacking in predictive power. It does make general ‘structural’ predictions about the forms expected to occur within living organisms, but it will never, it seems, yield the detailed prior and conditional probabilities necessary to form Bayesian arguments of the kind that many scientists use to assess the likelihoods of the hypotheses they are considering.<br />
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Intelligent design theory has generated an extraordinary amount of animosity from mainstream (naturalistic) scientists. They often accuse it of being false. Then they simultaneously accuse it of being non-scientific because non-falsifiable! </div>
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By comparison, the theistic science that I advocate on this blog is advocating a much stronger theory than intelligent design since it cannot be neutral about ‘the nature of the designer’. We start from the assumption that God exists, as being itself and life itself, and argue that <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2012/02/causal-explanations-of-evolution-cannot.html" target="_blank">causal explanations of evolution cannot be purely natural</a>.</div>
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Another common alternative to natural selection is <b>creationism</b>, where different species are created individually and specifically by God according to the first chapter of Genesis that culminates in the creation of man (and woman). These acts of creation, with apparently whole new populations of plants or animals coming into existence, would have been rather spectacular to watch! Are such special creations possible according to theistic science? The answer, <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2012/02/no-instant-adults-in-theistically.html" target="_blank">I have argued</a>, is <u>no</u>.</div>
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Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3766820554494978106.post-30549258961584546922014-03-23T17:42:00.002-07:002014-03-23T18:07:03.699-07:00Evolution within Theism: a Summary of the Main Options 1. God cannot create self-sustaining organisms immediately: nothing else is life itself.<br />
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2. God cannot create robust theistically-sustained organisms immediately:<br />
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<li> God cannot create permanent beings that are fully formed, except insofar as there are prior physical events that form the foundation and outer framework for the dispositions of the new being. What God can immediately create are physical events themselves. Everything else takes longer. There are <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2012/02/no-instant-adults-in-theistically.html">no instant adults</a>.</li>
<li>To create permanent and robust individuals, they must be developed so that, at every stage of their life, they have a substantial history of physical actions in the past and mental and spiritual lives built on that.</li>
<li>Since not even God can create history afterwards, this means that a longer and slower process of creation is needed if a race of people is to be developed who have fully-developed and long-lasting characters to be loved and to love God in return.</li>
<li>Hence some process of ‘descent by modification’.</li>
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When spiritual or mental ideas are produced immediately, they do not ‘have a life of their own’. Rather, they disappear again when the attention goes elsewhere, <i>unless</i> some physical effect has been produced. (Our memory must involve such effects.)<br />
<br />
Hence, for biological evolution, the main theistic options are:<br />
<br />
<b>Theistically-filtered evolution:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>The very fact of discrete degrees means that plants and animals must receive specific cognitive and affective dispositions, according to their biological form.</li>
<li>Even if God took <i>no</i> active involvement in the history of our earth’s species (as Darwin wanted), beings will still be favored if their forms well receive mental life.</li>
<li>This gives a tendency of evolution to make beings approach full mental reception.</li>
<li>We hope that this is a tendency toward the human form. I think so.</li>
</ul>
<b>Theistically-driven evolution:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>If God took <i>active</i> involvement in biological history, then he could specifically change the genetic structure of species, so that new species were born. And do this widely, to make a new population. This is <i>driving</i> the production of new species.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Thus we have three competing theories:<br />
<ol>
<li><b>neo-Darwinian theory</b>: random mutations, genetic drift and recombination, natural selection (no influence from God, except perhaps through physical laws),</li>
<li><b>theistically-filtered evolution</b>: random mutations, drift and re-combination, so there is <i>both</i> natural and <i>theistic selection</i> (God gives influx by laws of discrete degrees)</li>
<li><b>theistically-driven evolution</b>: <i>preselected</i> <u>and</u> random mutations, genetic drift and recombination, along with <i>both</i> natural and theistic selection.</li>
</ol>
To be decided between by comparing the observed evidence with the various predictions of the several theories.<br />
<br />
Note that these theories 2 and 3 go beyond the avowed scope of Intelligent Design theorists. They want 'merely' to first establish that <i>intelligence</i> was involved in the production of biological species. Here, in 'theistic science', we want to go further, and investigate the <i>causes</i> that produced the species (whether divine and/or spiritual and/or physical).<br />
<br />
More discussion in a <a href="http://blog.beginningtheisticscience.com/2012/02/theistically-filtered-evolution-and.html">previous blog post</a>.<br />
And see also discussions by Jon Garvey on <a href="http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2014/03/22/theoretical-preferences/">Theoretical Preferences</a> and related posts.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
Points from Chapter 26: <b>Evolution</b> of the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006FMG3PI?ie=UTF8&tag=stascifrogod-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B006FMG3PI">Starting Science From God</a>.</div>
</div>
Ian Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13225626428359340605noreply@blogger.com0