How Spiritual Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics

At this meeting there is a presentation of our new ideas for the interface between the mental and the physical. More specifically: How Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics.

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.

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.

Spiritual Physics

Streamed live on May 11, 2015

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.

Discussion points:
--Meeting a Mind
--The Substance of Consciousness
--Energy and Distance
--Materialism Issues
--The Interaction of Planes

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.

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References and Downloads:
Check out "Starting Science From God: Rational Scientific Theories from Theism" by Ian J. Thompson

Four talks on Connecting Science and Theism: “Starting Science From God”

Connecting Science and Theism:

“Starting Science From God”

A series of four Public Talks and Discussions on Tuesdays in February, 2013

by nuclear physicist and Swedenborg scholar, Ian J. Thompson, Ph.D.

Location: Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church, 

1422 Navellier Street, El Cerrito, CA 94530.

In a series of four talks and discussions that start in the new year, Tuesdays at 7pm on February 5, 12, 19 and 26, 2013, Professor Ian Thompson shows how to rationally connect the ideas of science and theism, with the key being Emanuel Swedenborg’s concept of ‘discrete degrees’. With that concept, Dr Thompson presents theism as a scientific theory, explaining its basic postulates, consequences and predictions as simply as possible and without paradox. That is, he shows how following the core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of quantum materials which should appear in the universe.

The topics of the four talks are Feb 5: Connecting Science and Theism; Feb 12: Discrete Degrees; Feb 19: Explaining Theism; and Feb 26: Applications to Theistic Science. More details can be found at the website http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/talks.htm. Each talk will start at 7pm, last 45 minutes, and (after a break) will be followed by 45 minutes for discussions.

The book accompanying the series is “Starting Science From God”, by Ian J. Thompson: ISBN 0-9848-2280-1, published Nov 2011 by Eagle Pearl Press.

Dr Ian J. Thompson is currently employed as a Nuclear Physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, England, where until 2006 he was Professor of Physics. His personal website is http://www.ianthompson.org.

HOW Mental Purposes can be Powerful in the World

We want to believe that purpose is powerful in human lives and probably in nature, but many of us also believe in a science which knows nothing about purposes, and which leaves little elbow room for purposes to have any effect!  We want to believe that purposes are powerful, but we do not really see how this can be so. What is really going on when purposes influence the world? What is the truth here?

We have deep problems as we try to form our sciences. We believe and intend that purposes are effective, but we do not really know how to connect this insight with our theoretical and empirical knowledge in the sciences. We may have a good idea how purpose makes its mark in the religious, social and psychological realms, but as yet we have no good idea how purpose can be effective in biology and physics. These two sciences are concerned with detail, and our details so far are missing. Here I seek first to justify this summary of our current predicament, and then to convey a new vision of how purposes may be powerful, and become real causes, in both the human and the natural worlds.

What does not exist cannot have any power. So, if a purpose is to have power, it must exist, or it must be related to a causal aspect of what does exist. Otherwise it would be a powerless epiphenomenon. Let us consider the preliminary possibility that only natural things exist, so that powerful purposes might be discoverable as aspects of natural causes.

Does nature itself act with a purpose? To form a precise question, consider nature according to accepted physical laws. Some physical laws portray something like ‘purpose’. There are laws of conservation of energy, laws of thermodynamics, and variational principles. All these laws appear to describe the reasons for the actual operation of nature.  Physicists say that ‘entropy must never decrease’, and that ‘nature seeks the least action’, because of laws like these. However, physicists have looked at the above laws, such as the variational principle, and emphasize that it is not the case that nature explores possibilities like humans do when thinking. In all cases, to ask for the power of purpose according to the physical sciences is a tall order, since physics knows little or nothing of those purposes we hold dear.

In another approach, many people believe that modern physics leaves small gaps through which purposes may yet creep in, by means of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the indeterminism of quantum physics. Physicists from Eugene Wigner¹ to Henry Stapp² have suggested that mind can influence nature at the point of measurement, by means of choosing some preferred outcome. Others, such as John Polkinghorne³, suggest that indeterminism inherent in chaotic systems allows a similar process.

However, while quantum physics may be indeterministic about the detailed outcomes for some classes of microscopic events, namely decoherent measurements, it is not completely arbitrary. Rather, it makes very precise predictions for the probabilities of those outcomes, and, furthermore, the time evolution of these probabilities is completely deterministic. Purposes might allegedly choose when decohering measurements occur (as Stapp suggests), or perhaps change the probabilities of different outcomes. In the first case, the scope of influence is extremely limited, and hardly plausible as a means of expressing powerful purposes. In the second case, purposes would change the probability rules of quantum physics, in just the same way that they would have to change Newton's laws of motion if they were to influence classical systems. The long-term conservation of energy and momentum remains just as constraining as before. Modern quantum physics by itself, therefore, leaves only miniscule and insufficient gaps through which purposes may be effective.

So let us for a while suspend science’s natural cautiousness and its ‘methodological naturalism’, and consider the possibility of a new ‘science of purposes’: a new programme of research that includes and builds on modern science, though without its monist prejudices. We should not be timid or ashamed about this, or feel that we lose the ground we stand on. Perhaps scientists might worry that ‘anything goes’ if we do not stick with the foundations we know, so we will need an extended view with definite structural principles, and these should include (something like) current physics as a limiting case. We seek an account that allows purposes to be causes, while agreeing with the structures, events and processes that make up physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology. There may possibly be disagreement only about the underlying causes.

This is of course, to start with, an intellectual exercise, but such an exercise has its uses. Many of us have seen evidence for powerful purposes: in ourselves, and elsewhere. But evidence for what, exactly? We need a detailed theory here, one that could be verified or refuted like other scientific theories, and fail or prevail. A theory would link disparate pieces of evidence together, and then we think we begin to properly understand. Parapsychology, for example, has stagnated from the lack of such a theory. A new theory would make predictions. In fact, many experiments only suggest themselves after a theory is under scrutiny. What is shameful is that we do not yet have even a possible such theory. This portrays a serious lack of imagination on the part of us theorists!  Let me tell you, therefore, what my vision suggests for such a theory. Then let us, like good scientists, judge by the results.

☼

 This new account is based on several principles taken to be universal, some of which exist already in today’s science. Since I must be brief, consider the following points:

1. Particular objects in the world exist, and all are composed of some substance in some form. Pure forms without substance cannot exist, whether they be information, mathematics or functions.
2. All existing things have irreducible causal powers: probabilistic dispositions or propensities are an essential part of the nature of everything existing.
3. For simplicity, take the substance of a thing not as something unknowable, but as the underlying disposition or propensity from which, according local structures, all its other dispositions and causal properties may be derived.
4. Every microscopic operation consists of generative ‘discrete degrees’ (read à as ‘gives’):
    propensity itself à propensity in a distributed form à event.
5. Each stage or degree is like a ‘part,’ and exists in its own manner.

The above principles are arguably the foundation of a realist interpretation of quantum physics, as discussed further below. The essential dispositions of an elementary particle are the propensities characterised by the charges, masses and other quantum numbers that determine its capacities and probabilities for interaction. Now for what is new:

6. Each stage of a generative triple is itself composed of parts with this three-fold structure. Thus we have a recursive structure of embedded details like a fractal. The next level of detail, for example, would be an ennead of nine sub-degrees.
7. Physics and nature as we know them are not the whole picture, but are in fact ‘merely’ the ‘event stage’ of a bigger picture operating with the same structural principles.
8. The ‘big picture’ has a triple that is more commonly known as:
   ‘soul’ (propensity itself) à ‘mind’ (propensity in a form) à ‘body’ (visible events).
9. At this global level, the ‘propensity’ should, if you are happy with this terminology, be more accurately termed ‘spirit’ or ‘love’, and only the ‘body’ stage regarded as ‘natural’ and visible to physics.

Perhaps scientists imagine that there is no need for this kind of scheme, but we are already suffering from a lack of precisely such universal ideas from philosophy. This so far is a relatively simple vision that, like a fractal, points to expanding vistas of complexity on closer examination. Unlike a fractal, this scheme points to expanding ranges of quality within. Let us see some details.

All stages are individually objects composed of some propensity (substance) in some form. This applies to ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ as well as to the natural world. Each is a really existing object (by principle 5) with causal powers (by principles 1 and 2), at one of the following stages:

• The soul itself (by principle 6) has itself three ‘heavenly’ sub-degrees:
  ‘spiritual love’ à ‘wisdom’ à ‘faithfulness in action’.
• The mind itself (similarly) has three ‘mental’ sub-degrees:
  ‘interior mind’ à ‘scientific discursive mind’ à sensorimotor mind.
  • Each of these has three parts, very probably as Jean Piaget⁴ and Erik Eriksson⁵ have begun to describe in their stages of cognitive and affective development.
• The natural body itself has three ‘physical’ sub-degrees:
  pre-geometric processes à virtual processes à actual processes.
  • ‘Pre-geometric processes’ have themselves three parts:
    but as yet only speculation, in for example loop theories of quantum gravity.
  • ‘Virtual processes’ have themselves three parts:
    Lagrangian variational à virtual fields à coherent virtual events.
  • ‘Actual processes’ have themselves three parts:
    Energy operator (Hamiltonian) à wave function à decoherent actual events.

The above is a structure of recursively embedded discrete degrees that could be expanded upon in much more detail. Consider some degrees as examples.

The final triple for ‘actual processes’ shows the operation of the Schrödinger equation and decoherence, the most basic dynamism of quantum physics. Physical energy is active, so is represented as a mathematical operator which generates the space and time distribution of the wave function as constrained by initial conditions. This distributed wave function, after some finite time, produces actual events as the selection of one outcome among many ‘decoherent alternatives,’ as constrained by previous selections. The precise nature of these selection events is so far only known in rather extreme cases involving medium and large objects, so there is new physics to be discovered here. 

The overall structure of the ‘physical degree’ is currently much debated among physicists. There is general agreement that the energy and wave functions appearing in the ‘actual process’ degree are not simple, because kinetic energy from mass and potential energy from interactions are both dynamically generated by the virtual processes of quantum field theories. However, there is no good agreement about the most fundamental stage of what gives rise to these virtual processes, and, especially, what gives rise to the space-time background for virtual events. I mention loop quantum gravity, as one attempt to explain how space-time areas and volumes might be produced. There are many speculations about quantum gravity, and how space-time might be dynamically generated, but there is little agreement even about what such a theory should look like. I hope that my present scheme would enable some general principles to be elucidated that might guide theory formation, and enable eventually a realistic interpretation to be found.

The triple for ‘mental sub-degrees’ shows the steps by which deep motivational principles in the interior mind – purposes – lead to action. These purposes come to fruition by means of discursive investigation of ideas, plans and alternatives in the more exterior ‘scientific discursive mind’, as constrained by existing intellectual abilities. The actions by the sensorimotor mind select one outcome among many, as constrained by bodily conditions. Moreover, psychologists who have investigated perceptive and executive processes within the sensorimotor stage realise that these are far from simple. What we see, for example, is very much influenced by our expectations and desires, as well as being constrained, of course, by what is in front of our eyes. They would agree that there are subsidiary degrees of expectation, presentation of alternatives and resolution even during ‘simple’ sensations.
In order to encompass the above examples of operation in both physics and psychology, let me postulate the following dynamical principle to apply universally at all levels.  The basic principle could be called ‘conditional generative causation’, according to which:

10. Changed propensities in each degree are generated by prior propensities that act according to what is already actual in both the current and subsequent degrees.

Each degree is therefore activated by ‘influx’ from prior stages, while the present range of actualities constrains what influx is possible, and also how propensities change at those prior degrees. The new science of purposes sees, therefore, a whole multi-level structure linked everywhere together asymmetrically: by influx from ‘above’, and by constraints from ‘below’. The propensities (loves) of the very first degree are constant. The final degree of actual selections in nature has no potentialities for changes to itself, so it is the cumulative ‘bottom line’ that is fixed and permanent as history, and therefore acts as kind of ultimate container to all previous degrees.

Note that there are detailed constituent events in both of any pair of prior and produced degrees. Because of all these microscopic events, there will be successive influx from the prior degree reciprocating with sequential constraints by the produced degree, and this alternation will repeat itself longest if the patterns of the constituent events are most similar in the two degrees, and they do not get out of step. By a sort of survival of the fittest, this in the long term gives rise tocorrespondences of function between adjacent degrees. We may conversely say that the functions in distinct degrees sustain each other in a kind of resonance when they are most similar in the patterns of their constituent events. Our minds and brains sustain each other by influx and constraint, for example, when psychological and neural processes are most nearly isomorphic to each other in their functional description. There is much detail here to be learned by derivation and observation, not just in mind-brain functioning but throughout living organisms. Discrete degrees are not of a continuous substance with each other, but, we see, have functional relations that make them ‘contiguously intertwined’ at all stages, and at all levels of detail at each stage.

How, in this vision, do we link with the physical degrees, and how do purposes work in the apparent face of physical laws? Here, they do not squeeze through any gaps in our explanations, but work through the normal processes by means of which physical propensities are all originally generated from prior loves. They follow this flow of influx, modifying it as allowed by the constraints of what is already fixed at each stage.

For physics, this means that the ‘deepest principles’, such as the Lagrangian subject to variations, and presumably the even deeper theories of quantum gravity, will have certain parameters that depend on prior discrete degrees in the rational and sensory minds.  This is a new result in our science of purposes. Does it break physical laws? First note that, on the realist position here of objects being composed of all their propensities, physical laws are identical with the description of how these propensities in fact operate. Quantum electrodynamics, for example, describes how electrons of certain masses and charges interact with each other and with photons. We need another law to say how the propensities may themselves vary, or not vary. The details are part of the general theory, still to be found, of pre-geometric processes. Do we know for sure that the electron charge is constant? Physicists have in fact imagined slow variations of this (the fine structure constant), but are we allowed to speculate about local more rapid variations on neurological time scales? The meaning of the laws of conservation of energy and momentum would have to be reconsidered in such a situation. Presumably, physicists would conclude that the system in question could not be considered sufficiently isolated.

A good new theory must allow a natural world that is not an illusion, nor just the product of human minds. It should also be consonant with our best accounts of psychology and theology. The power of purpose is not omnipotent, as in some New Age stories, for in fact there is often resistance to the elaboration of purposes. A good theory must explain the phenomenon of ‘contrary tendencies’: of limitations as well as of empowerments, and of bitterness as well as love.

Purposes, in this vision, are produced by particular forms of love – particular affections – as these generate the next stage of thought, and begin to be worked out in particular forms or ideas in the mind.  We would thus distinguish the loves of good things from the purpose or intention that works towards achieving them.

Purposes therefore become powerful by working through, and modifying, the normal routes by which loves and thoughts work through all of the pre-geometric and virtual stages towards actual effects. Depending on what has already actually happened in ourselves and in nature, purposes generate thoughts and plans, and then also physical potentialities for the desired actual outcomes. Sometimes historical actualities facilitate purposes by providing the materials for the accomplishment of the end. At other times, they may slightly (or sharply) limit the range of possible actions, and thwart the working out of prior purposes. Such frustrating situations must be worked around, or limited cooperation sought, since history cannot be abolished. That is the deepest challenge for those being led by good purposes.
A theistic theory may possibly be based on the above scheme. This would take all of the above, but now, as activated by an ‘influx of propensities’ from the Divine Source in a manner similar to the way that discrete degrees sustain each other. This would also explain how to sustain inanimate nature apart from living creatures. The whole soul/mind/nature ‘created structure’ would not be self-sustaining, but all its processes and sub-processes would come themselves to have eventually a functional form that is an image and likeness of the details of the Source. The Divine would presumably be a unity that has infinite and perfect details. It (He) would again not be of a continuous substance with creation, but of a distinct discrete degree that is yet intertwined and ultimately sustaining at all stages of every particular finite object, “rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds”⁶. He “sends rain on the just and on the unjust”⁷, and we only vary in our reception depending on how our historical actions give present constraints. This may be already known to many of us – the challenge is to enable connections with the rest of our knowledge about nature as well as about people.

☼

 Maybe it is too soon for these kinds of ideas to be accepted in science, since not all the simpler options have been examined and found wanting.  My aim here, therefore, is to demonstrate in a sort of existence proof that it is possible to have a scientific theory of mind and purposes which is coherent with good physics and good psychology, while also being spiritually plausible. This is not a mathematical theory, but is more an elucidation of what general ideas could replace those of ‘particle’, ‘wave’ and ‘field’ to describe the substances by means of which we interpret our equations, and what kinds of structural and dynamical relations the new substances should have.

Where do we have to search in history for a vision along these lines? Antonio Damasio⁸ recently found fruitful similarities with the works of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) for his vision of unified mind and body. I do not need to go back that far, as I find the essentials of the above ideas already in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). With Swedenborg⁹, the ideas are firmly embedded in a radical reworking of Christian theology, philosophy and psychology, and we need now at least similar concepts to help form new scientific theories.

The ideas discussed here should not just remain in books long ago published, in our imaginations, or in short essays of today, but must be expanded and examined for explanatory and predictive power, to enable the development of a new science of purposes. Empirical testing then becomes practicable. Then, and only then, will we have demonstrated how purpose in a vision has power in a life, to struggle against (and with) the limitations of what already exists and who we already are. Then, to the benefit of all society, we will know for sure how purposes in our lives have power within both our human and our natural worlds.

 For more detail, see my book introduced at www.beginningtheisticscience.com

1. E. Wigner, “Remarks on the Mind-Body Question,” pp. 284-302 in The Scientist Speculates, I.J. Good (ed) Basic Books, 1962.
2. H. Stapp, Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag, 1993.
3. J. Polkinghorne,  “Chaos Theory and Divine Action,” In Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue, ed. W. M. Richardson and W. J. Wildman, Routledge, 1996
4. J. Piaget. The Language and Thought of the Child, Harcourt, Brace & World. 1926;
   J. Piaget, Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood, Norton, 1962.
5. E. Erikson. Childhood and Society, Norton, 1963.
6. Jeremiah 32:19
7. Matthew 5:45
8. A. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harvest Books, 2003.
9. E. Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763: Swedenborg Foundation, 2003

Mind-body dualism

How mind and body are distinct but intertwined. 

See www.newDualism.org for reviews and articles about all kinds of theories.

Preliminary articles concerning mind-body dualism:

Discrete Degrees Within and Between Nature and Mind
Examining the role of dispositions  (potentials and propensities) in both physics and psychology reveals that they are commonly derivative dispositions, so called because they derive from other dispositions. Furthermore, when they act, they produce further propensities. Together, therefore, they appear to form discrete degrees within a structure of multiple generative levels. It is then constructively hypothesized that minds and physical nature are themselves discrete degrees within some more universal structure. This gives rise to an effective dualism of mind and nature, but one according to which they are still constantly related by causal connections. I suggest a few of the unified principles of operation of this more complicated but universal structure.

Ten Principles

A new account of the role of mind in nature is based on several principles taken to be universal, some of which exist already in today’s science.

Dualism in Descartes and Swedenborg

Swedenborg used Descartes as a symbol of his desired resolution of the mind-body problem in favour of ‘spiritual influx’, but we see that Descartes’ position was substantially different in a number of ways. We consider a number of modern objections and puzzles about dualism, and how Descartes and Swedenborg each might respond.

Dualism: a Causal Correspondence Theory

A suggestion is made how the mind and brain might fit together intimately while still maintaining distinct identities. The connection is based on the correspondence of similar functions in both the mind and the quantum-mechanical brain.

Are Quantum Physics and Spirituality related?

It is particularly valuable to discuss questions concerning quantum physics and spirituality together, in order to see the connection between them. There is an urgent reason for discussing this link, because there are people who want to identify these things, giving a monism rather than (at least) a dualism. There is a widespread feeling that somehow that they are connected, but some ‘new age’ people want to say that quantum physics tells us about spirituality. We have read in Swedenborg that any such connection could  not be quite so simple, so we need to understand in more detail what is going on.


Full details at www.beginningtheisticscience.com/ 

Law and Divine Intervention

It is assumed by many people that religion should become accommodated to modern science, and that the best that can be hoped for from theology is that we have evidence that God created the world, and that the governing constants of the physical world are ‘fine tuned’ to make life probable. On this basis, we hope that thereby we can come to know that ‘we are wanted’, and that there exists a ‘plan for our lives’. In such a theology, divine intervention into the world is not strictly necessary, and may indeed be said to be ‘poor management’: as if God could not have set up the world to behave properly in the first place. Such ‘modern believers’ may yet admit that miracles were ‘once’ necessary, for example at the beginning of their religion in order to convince by means of miracles, but that now ‘we are mature adults’ and so miracles are no longer necessary. Divine intervention does not occur ‘in modern times, so they can follow with a clear conscience the principles and findings of those sciences which specify the causal closure of the physical world. This amounts in practice to deism, as distinct from theism.

Such a view misses the point of creation. We are not made for God either to ‘intervene’ or ‘not intervene’ in the world, but for God to reside in the world. The physical world provides the overall framework in which God can place his life, in order to infill and enliven us with the life (spiritual and mental) that comes only from God. It is like asking a resident: are you going to intervene in your house, or not intervene? Or asking a person, are you going to intervene in the world around you, or not intervene. In theism, it is not a question of intervention, but of presence and residence. And what is residence and presence, but constant contact; and how can there be constant contact except by persistence and bilateral causal connections. The purpose of the world, in theism by comparison with deism, is not just that we are in God’s plan (which is a thought), but that we are present and enlivened by God’s love (which, we have seen, means a substantial presence, and reciprocal causation). Presence in reality, rather than only in thought, is an essential part of our whole dynamic ontology, where, as proposed on Chapter 3, we follow the Eleatic Principle: that existence should only be given to that which has causal power. We lose nothing by applying this also to the Divine. We only have to then to reconsider science at the same time as theology, as science (especially empirical science) is concerned with whatever has effects in the world.

The reciprocal causation in theism, I have explained, is not equal on both sides. Rather, it follows the generation + selection pattern described in my book: on the side of God, it is generation; and on our side, it is selection. The result of this asymmetric conjunction is yet to render a workable whole, and yields an effective bilateral cooperation between God and the world. In this bilateral cooperation, both sides have important roles to play. God’s role is to produce and govern all the loves and life that comes from him. Our role is to select by our actions those loves and life that we wish to see become permanent within our own persons. There are many intermediate stages in this process, as will be explored in the next Part IV.

In the meantime, we might reflect on the role of physical laws in describing the processes that occur in the physical world, and whether the actions of God in that world might not after all be described as ‘divine intervention’. Do occasional interventions ‘suspend’ or even ‘violate’ those laws of physics? Think, for example, of conservation of energy and momentum in closed systems. Are those conservation laws in fact broken by God when there occur what some would call miracles?

To answer this question, we have to note that the true law that governs the world of theism is one that describes the multiple generative levels that start from God, and eventually end up with the definite physical actions that beings perform in the world. Any so-called miracle that actually occurred or occurs must follow that true law. Anything that appears to be ‘inexplicably miraculous’ means that we do not understand the true laws of the universe, or the true intentions of the persons (including God) who may be acting within the structure of those laws. Even given that understanding, however, what we still might not understand would be the occasion or speed of operation of those laws.

The other remaining paradox, however, is that many people today believe in physical laws (such as the conservation of energy), since they appear to be held without exception. Much of modern science is built in the assumption that these laws hold universally and without exception, but, according to theism, this is not correct. Rather, these (apparently universal) laws are held only locally within those physical systems whose purpose within theism is to provide an overall container or enduring structure that can persistently select a rather complicated set of internal dispositions. In theism, therefore, we should expect that there are complex organic bodies with a large amount of ‘physical autonomy’. The bodies are never entirely autonomous within theism - only to a large part - but have the purpose of sustaining (by corresponding generation + selection relations) equally-complex internal mental and spiritual bodies. The existence and dynamics of these internal bodies will be discussed in Part IV. Each kind of body (physical, mental or spiritual) is nearly autonomous, and purely-physical laws are nearly but not completely universal: that is the pattern that should be expected within a theistic universe.


Slightly edited from Section 20.5 of my book Starting Science From God

Does Nondualism allow us to Love Others?

We know from theism  that the Divine is the source of all being (indeed Being itself), is also that from which every thing else proceeds. However, this does not imply that He is All There Is, just that he continually sustains the being of all creatures derived from him. This is necessary for the Lord loving us, since he cannot love himself:

"It is the essential of love not to love self, but to love others, and to be conjoined with others by love. " and "Love consists in this, that its own should be another's; to feel the joy of another as joy in oneself, that is loving.But to feel one's own joy in another and not the other's joy in oneself is not loving; for this is loving self, while the former is loving the neighbour. These two kinds of love are diametrically opposed ..", as Swedenborg reminds us in DLW 47.

It would appear that if the Lord is all there is, then when He loves us, He is loving part of Himself. Don't you see that this is the love which He cannot have? There must be something in creation which is distinct from the Lord, although created and sustained by Him.

We read of the many (wonderful!) experiences of unity of the One Life that all mystics (and many others!) have had over the millenia. That is the way the world is!

I suspect that the desire to say that the Lord is 'all there is', comes from wanting to interpret the experiences of the One Life as 'non-dualism', following the advaita approach. You also want unity with that approach too.

However, a common meaning of 'dual' (which should be opposed) is one of a very fragmented world. We all know that this cannot be true! (i.e. should know!). Therefore often we need to replace everywhere 'non-dual' by 'non-fragmented', and 'dual' by 'fragmented'. This conveys the common meaning much more precisely, as often the explanation of 'duality' is fragmentation.

Then, we are able to find that in creation which is distinct from the Lord, which (whom) he can love without being selfish, and in whose joy he can delight. All of the wonderful mystical words describe these delights, and it would be a great shame for any presentation, if 'non-dual' were taken as the 'non-Distinct' nature of the Life from creation! The One Life is the lifeof creation, but is not equal to creation.

This is the reason for there being a creation, that all the delights of spiritual live and love become possible! This requires a supreme doctrine of 'non-fragmentation'  (sometimes confusingly called 'non-dualism'), along with an equally-supreme doctrine of 'Distinctness': what we call Discrete Degrees.

More details in the book at Starting Science From God, especially chapter 9.