Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 4/8: Generative Levels in Psychology

4. Generative Levels in Psychology

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

[7] C. Broad, Mind and Its Place in Nature, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925. 

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Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World II: Desire and Energy

In the previous post 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.

According to many thinkers throughout history, mental and physical 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 discrete degrees:

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. (Divine Love and Wisdom §184)

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.

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 both exist in fully-fledged ways and with serious connections between them that are not deflating or reductionist.

Mental and physical things can both be substances but, they have very different characteristics:

• Mental things are conscious, whereas physical things are unconscious.
• Mental beings can think and make deductions using reason, whereas physical beings can only make logical deductions if they are designed that way.
• 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.
• Mental processes are motivated by purposes and intentions, whereas physical processes are determined by physical causes that supposedly exclude purposes and intentions.
• Mental processes tend to produce results according to some conception of what is good, whereas physical processes have no need for any such concept.

As already discussed in the previous post, desire is a component of all mental processes, and we recognize “something physical like desire” as energy or propensity. Swedenborg sees desire, or affection, as a specific kind of love:

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. (Divine Love and Wisdom §363)

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 not 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.

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, substance 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 common pattern described above, we can arrive at the idea of a created substance that persists, or endures, as a thing at least for some finite time between events. And such a substance would be the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction in that time interval.

This relates to the idea of “dispositional essentialism” that has been put forth by philosophers in recent years.[1] Dispositional essentialism is the notion that some kind of power or disposition (such as a cause or energy) must be an essential part of something. Some philosophers take this idea even further, saying that disposition must be the individual essence of something. In much the same way, I am saying that disposition is what constitutes the substance of something.[2] So if the main similarity between desire and energy is that they both persist between events, then both desire and energy are substances.

By using ideas from Swedenborg to understand the world, we have a new way of grasping the mental and physical and perhaps of understanding quantum physics. Either one of these results would be very useful; to have both is to be extremely fortunate.

In the next post of this series, I will discuss how and in what form both desire and energy persist between events.

[1] B. Ellis and C. Lierse, “Dispositional Essentialism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (72, 1994): 27–45.

[2] See Ian J. Thompson, “Power and Substance,” http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/pas.htm.

First posted here.

Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World I: Events

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.

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.

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 correspondences between the physical and the mental—that they have similar structures and functions, even though mind and matter are quite distinct.

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 . . . (Heaven and Hell §89)

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.

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.

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. (Divine Providence §108)

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. 

Here is the pattern:

      Spiritual                                                                   Natural
Desire + Thought => Mental Action (Intention)    >>    Physical Action, or Event, in the World

Swedenborg summarizes the relationship between these elements as follows:

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. (Conjugial Love §400:1–2)

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 similar pattern between that physical effect and each of the three elements common to all mental processes. We would expect something physical like desire, then something physical like thought, and finally something physical like mental action. Do we recognize these patterns in physics? And if so, do we recognize them better in classical physics or in quantum physics?

I claim we do recognize them in physics:

• We recognize the “something physical like desire” as energy or propensity. These are what persist physically and produce the result, just like desire does in the mind. They are in both classical and quantum physics.
• We recognize the “something physical like thought” as the wave function in quantum physics. This describes all the possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for physical events, just like thought does in the mind.
• We recognize the “something physical like 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 quantum physics, the product of energy or propensity and the wave function, just like the product of desire and thought is the mental action.

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?

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 we who decide when to act, we feel that we act in some freedom. It feels better.

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 corresponding time gaps 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 expect that physical events should not be continuous; that is, we should expect a quantum world rather than a classical world.

First appeared here.

What is Mental Substance?

There has been a debate, seemingly forever, about the nature of the mind, and what it is made of. We know that it must exist, have causal powers, have or produce consciousness, and be intimately interlinked with brain function at least most of the time.

There are very many arguments that tell us that the substance of the mind cannot be material. Mental function cannot be derived from physical causality and still depend on rationality and teleology, because physical processes are formulated not to depend on reasons or purposes. Minds must therefore be non-physical, if they are indeed to depend on rationality and purpose. But 'non-material' and 'non-physical' are negative characterizations, and do not tell us what minds actually are!

Descartes postulated that minds were 'essentially rational': that rationality was the essence of mind. Just as spatial extension was the essence of matter. However, this still does not tell us the substance of mind, or what the causal powers of minds are specifically. There obviously are causal connections between mind and body, but Descartes' characterization of 'minds as rationality' does not tell us what these are.

But now we can use the basis of ideas described in my recent posts "Mental dispositions and desires" and "Are propensities the substance of things". In the first-mentioned post, mental activity was taken to consist of the operation of persistent dispositions or desires or propensities. In the second-mentioned post, persistent propensities were taken to be the substance of which a thing would be formed.

Combining these, we conclude:

mental activity is the operation of mental substances such as the persistent mental dispositions.

This is in exact analogy to the way physical things are formed of physical propensities (like gravity, electromagnetism, etc), which makes them to be physical substances. Minds are made of persistent mental dispositions. Those dispositions are the underlying motivations, loves and desires which make the person behave the way they tend to do. This claim may be summarized as:

The mental substance is Love

More precisely: mental substances are the underlying persistent loves which cause mental activities. By 'persistent', I mean at least lasting in time from one event to the next event after some discrete non-zero time interval. Maybe persistent loves last longer, such as for a whole lifetime: that remains to be investigated.

In this account, we may take consciousness to be a feature of the operation of loves and dispositions, and not that minds is made out of consciousness as if it were a substance. I argue that consciousness cannot itself be substance, on the basis of the Aristotelean ‘metaphysical grammar’ we are following. Only something dispositional like love or power can be a substance.

There is much talk in 'consciousness studies' about how the appearances of things, qualia, are missing from current physical theories. Consciousness is then claimed to necessarily exist in addition to the physical. This last step, I suggest, is a category mistake. 'Consciousness' is an operation, not a substance. It does not 'exist' in the way substances exist, as William James long ago realized.

Love has causal powers, and can make changes in physical things (as we all know!). Love always motivates from some purpose. In humans, we think it ought to be possible to link love with rationality and foresight, in such way that purposes and reasons come to have causal powers in both the mental and then in the physical realms. But exactly how these things occur has yet to investigated. 

Note finally that, though I have following an Aristotelean logic, I have arrived a position almost of the opposite of that formulated by Thomas Aquinas. Above, I take minds to be essentially some mental substances, in some forms or structure. Aquinas, however, takes minds to be the forms of things that is conjoined with potency: material potency in the case of embodied creatures. So, is mind the substance, or is it the form? 

The resolution of this conflict will be explained later in more detail, and will depend on realizing that Aquinas, by the term 'form', refers to much more than shape or structure. In fact, he takes 'form' to refer to the general/deep causal principles that makes a thing what it is: its 'substantial form'. This, in my opinion, stretches the meaning of 'form' much too far, but is what he must do without the concept of substance I have been recently describing.

Does desire generate thought, or thought generate desire?

We need to consider the relation, within the mind, between desires and thought. That relation should be the same as that between willing and understanding, since we generally think that willing is in accordance with our desires and with our loves and motivations: we will by means of desires. We also generally think that our understanding is in accordance with our thought: we understand by means of our thoughts and ideas.

But does desire generate thought, or thought generate desire, or neither?  There is room for debate on this, but there are psychological, philosophical and theological arguments to lead to the conclusion that it is desire which generates thought, rather than the opposite.

The psychological evidence stems from the fact that persons tend to think about what they want: their desires lead their dreaming, thinking, planning and eventually acting to get what they want. This suggests that desires generate the streams of thought that occur in the understanding, rather than that our thinking dictates what we want, love, or desire. Thought may influence what we desire but only by selection. Our thoughts select which desires can be feasibly brought nearer satisfaction.

Some will disagree, saying that it is primarily thought that makes our desire, and that we tend to desire things that we have thought up. This is true, but what is the causal determiner of what we think up?  Thoughts seem to pop into our heads, and thoughts about what we desire are much more likely to do so!  We interfere at this point sometimes and reject thoughts as unsuitable, but that rejection itself also requires motivation or desire. We do not clearly see our desires in our consciousness, but only our thoughts and actions, so we tend to forget about the essential role of dispositions and desires. How many times have we seen people, seeming to themselves to be rational, being driven by desires which they hardly acknowledge existing?

Philosophically, we could argue from the Aristotelian view that thought is the entertaining of the forms of things. Then, since forms themselves have no causal power, we could say that all the power must belong to whatever is doing the thinking and not to the thoughts themselves. This implies that thoughts themselves are not dispositions. The honor of being dispositions belongs to desires or loves. Desires are more similar to dispositions than are thoughts. It is dispositions (rather than forms) which are causally efficacious. 

This agrees in general with the analysis of Gilbert Ryle's 1949 book "The Concept of Mind". He argues that minds as a whole are akin to dispositions, and hence the actions of a person are the effects of those dispositions. He took this to imply materialism, but we will see later that other conclusions are possible, even preferable.

What is mind: Information or Substance?

Some philosophers, including Kenneth Sayre, David Chalmers & others, think that the existence of mind can be explained if only we could allow 'information' to exist in reality as a property alongside physical attributes such as mass, charge etc. This is taken then within  'neutral monism', whereby physical and mental are just two different ways of looking at what actually exists. They just consider different properties if some single (monistic) substantial reality.  This was advocated by Bertrand Russell, etc., and is increasingly popular today. It allows for 'property dualism', but not 'substantial dualism'.

In fact, such neutral monism has features that make it strange as a fundamental theory. I agree that it at first sounds good to have 'information' is the fundamental basis for both physical and mental realities. However, information is essentially mathematical and formal. That is what information essentially means. And anything mathematical cannot change! And one thing we know about the physical and mental worlds, is that there are causes and changes there. Furthermore, mathematics is necessary -- it cannot be otherwise -- but the world we live in is contingent -- it could be otherwise. This holds whether or not we believe in free will. To say that reality is made out of information is like going back to Pythagoras, whose follows took the world to be made out of triangles. That is all form and no substance. There is no actuality. Clearly not the best choice for theory of reality!

I insist, instead, that in order to understand the existence of physical and mental things, we need to treat them as actually existing. They cannot be merely concepts, hypotheses, forms, or information. We may describe some of them by mathematics but actual things are not constituted by mathematics. This amounts to taking an Aristotelian view of reality, wherein every real thing is some kind of substance and has powers for change. This can immediately be contrasted with an extreme Platonic view, wherein only ideal forms are real, and things in our world are merely some kind of image or shadow of those ideal forms.

Following Aristotle, we can analyze the nature of individual things. We see how they all have some form and are all composed of some matter (Greek hyle). I am going to say that objects all have some form, and that form is a form of some underlying substance or stuff. By the term ‘form’, I refer not just to the external shape of an object, but to all the internal structure and descriptive details necessary to make a full account of what actually exists at a given moment. Spatial structures are forms, and so also are any other structures needed, whether they are spatial or not. This use of the term ‘form’ refers only to static or categorical properties that can be attributed at any one time. It therefore excludes causal principles since these describe what might happen at later times. The form and substance of each thing can be intellectually distinguished, but they never exist apart in reality. It is never the case that the form of a thing is here and the substance of it is over there.

This is to adopt a realism that takes seriously the need for substance and also for changes and processes involving substantial objects. Each object cannot merely exist self-sufficiently but must be closely linked to others by causes and/or effects. We therefore need a serious account of how causes exist and operate and how the causal powers of objects are related to their substantial nature. Because science is continually discovering new kinds of causes and new ways of causation, the realism here is not a naive realism wherein we take as real just what appears to our senses. There are enormously many things and causes that science postulates that are not apparent to our senses but are inferred from empirical or theoretical considerations.

The present realism, because it stresses the leading role of causes and powers in generating new processes, is going to be called ‘generative realism.’ If we want a slogan, we could say

“No process without structure, no structure without substance, no substance without power, no power without process."

My slogan can indeed be interpreted physically. But it is not confined to what is physical, since I want to apply it to mental and spiritual things too, and also consider applying to what is divine (God). All I am doing here is to avoid purely formal accounts of these things as being complete descriptions: as well as form, we also need process, substance, power, etc. I want to avoid purely abstract descriptions of mind, or accounts which are purely mathematical! Certainly a mathematical theory of communication can exists as a description of the forms of things, but things are not themselves purely mathematical. Because I apply the slogan also to mental, spiritual and divine things, I do not follow a purely neutral monism. I see all physical, mental, spiritual and divine things as existing substances with powers, process and form each. These are not 'distinct levels of abstraction' of some single monist substance.

Many past descriptions have been more poetic than literal. So much so, that we wonder if true statements can be accurately made about what is 'mind' and 'spirit'. So I have been seeking to form a non-metaphorical account of the way God starts the process, and how it is carried on through spiritual and mental worlds to the physical realm. 

I admit that there are still questions concerning whether units of measure are even possible for these things. I am more inclined that science has to develop more towards a theory of dispositions (affordances) and qualities, even if there are no numbers to go with them. Think even now how cognitive modeling works in psychology: they examine structures and processing, even without the 'units of measure'.

The objects in minds certainly carry information, but they are much more than only information! For example, to describe something only by information tells you nothing about the propensities it has for various effects. This is the 'further' that you mention: objects can and should be characterized also by capability, productivity, potential actions, dispositions, etc. And that the specific actions depend on the form (in-form-ation) of the object. This is not impossibly difficult. Psychologists interested in preferences and motives do it all the time.

In order to understand more, we have to get a better idea of all the different kinds of desires and affections. I claim that all mental propensities / affordances / dispositions are in fact various desires and affections: that is what their substance really is. And every kind of thought and concept and information-in-the-mind has to be caused by some appropriate kind of desire: in particular, the desire for knowing that particular thing, and then for using it to produce the wanted effects. That is, each kind of concept stage of Piaget (etc) must be linked to an individual kind of desire and affection. That is were Erikson comes in: he examined the stages and levels of emotional (psychosocial) development. He did this independently, but I report in my book that his levels agree surprisingly well with Piaget's levels. (This agreement was first shown by John Gowan.)   Mental propensities are the true substance of the mind, not information.

In part, this is extracted from a forum at Skeptiko
that discusses my book "Starting Science From God"

How can we distinguish between divine and human actions in the world?

Let me give a short answer presupposing the ontological framework of theistic science described in my book: it does not stand alone. I will also try to answer the question without using the word 'good' (though, if I could, the answer would be a little simpler). I will take the question as referring mainly to our own actions: trying to separate what is from ourselves from what comes from God.


There are 4 kinds of actions that should be distinguished here:

1. actions by God directly, such as creating, visiting, etc
2. actions done by God, by means of us.
3. actions done by us, with concurrence by God.
4. actions done by us, with permission from God but not initiation.

One purpose of my book is to show how the kind 4 can exist: we can redirect loves and dispositions from God to our own purposes quite distinct from his.
The challenge is to distinguish kinds 2 and 3. In general we only begin to distinguish them after the fact. That is because, during their operation, we tend to interfere if we see what is really happening.


The kind 2 requires no interference: we have to be almost distracted or looking the other way; at least with no self-consciousness. We still feel the delights soon afterwards, though. If we interpose our own ego, then actions get contaminated to some extent. For this kind, we will have to have previously 'cleaned the inside of the cup' by avoiding temptations and the later the desire for what was tempting.


Kind 3 is when our egos are still partially involved. That is the case for most of us on the path. In this case we ask for grace, and try to make way for it when it arrives. The actions will still be ego-connected, but, we pray, not too much.


This is necessarily a very brief summary of some different kinds of spiritual development, as we learn to turn away from selfishness. Some people, of course, would deny the very existence of these things. That is why my book deals mostly with ontology--what exists--rather than what we should be doing. In practice, of course, there are in us many desires pointing in various directions, and many partial insights that inform us of some of these directions. When it comes to actions by other people, it is more difficult again to tell.


As we all realize, distinguishing these aspects should be part of ongoing reflection about our own lives. For both theoretical and practical reasons.