Must the Physical Universe be Causally Closed, or not?

The question has equivalent forms:

• Is the physical universe is causally closed?  
• Does nothing that goes on in the brain violate the predictions of physical science?
• Does every physical event that has a cause have a physical cause?
• Does no natural change violate a prediction (or outcome) in physical formulas?

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.

He will be referring to "Premise 1", namely

1.     Nothing that goes on in the brain violates the predictions of physical science.

Hasker at http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-myth-of-an-afterlife-the-case-against-life-after-death/:

"The first point to be made is that, in spite of frequent assertions to the contrary, premise (1) is not known to be true. 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.

This leads to the second point: there is strong reason to think that premise (1) is false. 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. 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.

Now, here is the crucial point: If premise (1) is true, that is, if causal closure obtains, then evolutionary epistemology cannot be the explanation for human rationality. 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 prior mental events play no role in determining the state of a person's brain -- and therefore, they play no role in the organism's behavior. It follows, furthermore, that 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. 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.
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 only the physical characteristics of the event are causally effective. 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 no effect whatever 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 mental events that lead to evolutionarily successful outcomes generally coincide with those that involve an accurate representation of the world. 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.

Well put!

I have listed many other papers discussing this issue at http://www.newdualism.org/closure.htm .

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.

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.

Mental dispositions and desires

Psychology necessarily deals with dispositions and not just with what events actually occur. Even the behaviorists recognized that they should study tendencies to behavior and not merely the behavioral events themselves. Our question will concern the ontological status of these tendencies or dispositions.

Ryle (The Concept of Mind, 1949) takes the view that dispositional ascriptions “assert extra matters of fact” and claims that they are only “inference-tickets which license us to predict, retrodict, etc.” He quite explicitly denies that one should look for either causal or mechanistic explanations of the dispositions. This holds even in cases in physics and chemistry where there are explanations in terms of constituents and their propensities to attract and repel each other. His restriction against looking for explanations in terms of internal dynamics is, fortunately, largely disregarded in scientific practice.

We could interpret psychological dispositions in the same way that physics interprets potential energy. Bawden, for example, claimed in 1947 that “the role of the psychical in relation to the physical (in the living organism) is essentially the relation of the potential or incipient to kinetic or overt action.” I respond that potential energy is (again) a kind of disposition that must in some way exist, as a substance. 

In cognitive psychology it is a common starting point that mental activities consist of functions of information-processing modules, engaged, for example, in signal or symbol processing. This description refers only to the structural or formal aspects. Admittedly, structural changes are described, but no specific powers or dispositions for those processes are admitted. This is inadequate, however, from the point of view of any causal realism. Any account based on computation can only be realistic if it at least allows that the hardware implementations use objects with powers, as then physical symbol processing is consistently possible. Remember (from the previous post), that dispositions/causes remain absolute different in category from forms and information.

So, what is the actual nature of the dispositions that are operative in mental activities?  Are these just aggregations of physical dispositions, or are there ‘true mental dispositions’ that are distinct from the physical?  If the later were true, we would ask what impact the true human substances have on cognitive processing, since they will have their own characteristic powers and propensities not necessarily present in computers. The issue in psychology is thus whether the dispositions and powers that constitute the substance for mental objects and processing are related to the dispositions and powers manifest in the mind itself. I am thinking specifically of the emotional and motivational dispositions that make up the apparent life of mental feelings and intentions. These are powers that appear on first phenomenological analysis, so psychology should consider whether they could be the first ‘more fundamental’ underlying stuff of which cognitive and symbol processing is the activity.

According to Descartes, the soul (mind) is a substance and thought is the mode of its operation. This might explain what constitutes minds. However, Descartes does not offer a dynamical account to explain the operations of the soul. (On the contrary, he was pleased that the rational soul, as he conceived it, was completely outside the scope of the new empirical sciences and could be made subject to the edicts of ethics and religion.) In the end, Descartes never discusses reasons for the details of mental powers or capacities.  That is what we want really to discover!

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.

Religion is not just about meaning, though science may be about causes

One way of reconciling science and religion is to seem them as describing different aspects of reality.  Then, should we not know the difference between physical and spiritual things, we can still make distinctions. The differences can be described, even if they only concern 'perspective', rather than what exists.

John Polkinghorne, a physicist turn theologian, gives a talk in which he says:

Science and religion look at different domains of encounter with reality. Sciences deals with an objective dimension, in which things can be manipulated and events repeated, thereby affording it access to the great weapon of experimental verifiability. 

The gift that religion has to offer to science is not to answer its questions – for we have every reason to expect that scientific questions will receive scientific answers – but to take science’s insights and set them within a broader and deeper context of intelligibility. 

The difference in domains means that science and religion ask different questions of reality: in the former case how things happen; in the latter whether there is meaning, purpose and value in what is happening – issues that science tends to rule out of its discourse. Science and religion, therefore, complement each other, rather than being rivals on the same turf. 

Alister McGrath, another theologian with some background in science, writes:

... science takes things apart to see how they work. But religion puts them back together again to see what they mean. 

If science is about explanation, religion is thus about meaning. Science helps us to appreciate the wonder of individual aspects of the universe; religion to see, however dimly, the "big picture" of which they are part.

This approach was also popularized by biologist Stephen Gould, who in 1997 advocated seeing science and religion as  ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA). Here science is concerned with ‘what is’, and religion is concerned with ‘what should be’ (morality, ethics, and metaphysics beyond observations).

These ideas are initially plausible, but all have a fatal defect: they relegate spiritual and religious processes to a ghetto where they can have no effects in nature!! If religion is only about meaning and not about causes, then (as it is not a cause) it can have no effects at all! Any spiritual God would be impotent. That is not what religious thinkers have in mind.

Scientists like Polkinghorne and McGrath prefer this view, as it keeps the 'causal closure of the universe', as I have discussed before. But if mental, spiritual and divine things are to have any practical reality, then they must be able to have effects. At least, they must be able to have effects on us, as otherwise we could never observe or talk about them because of their isolation from the physical. Quite unacceptable.

Better ideas are given by those with some actual experience of mental and spiritual processes! David Benner, for example, talks in a recent interview about those with spiritual experience:

The mystics offer us a number of valuable gifts that I think are tremendously important to contemporary Christians.  Among the most valuable of them is .... their understanding of the fact that all of life is returning to God.  Life, as they point out, is the continuous outflow of the very life of God - a flow that if we follow it, returns us to our Source, the Ground of our Being.  All human becoming involves, therefore, a fuller engagement with this outflowing life of God.

Here, we see our role as humans to engage with the life that comes from God: to receive, act on and return it in some way. That would be completely impossible of that life were only about meaning, and not about causes!

A similar view is presented by Vincent Torley when he discusses what consequences theism must have for the evolutionary process that has produced all the life on earth:

 ... we live in a cosmos which is made to be manipulated: it’s an inherently incomplete, open system, and the “gaps” are a vital part of Nature, just as the holes are a vital feature of Swiss cheese. I see no reason to believe in the existence of hidden, information-rich laws of the cosmos, especially when all the laws we know are low in information content; moreover, as Dr. Stephen Meyer has pointed out in his book, Signature in the Cell, all the scientific evidence we have points against the idea of “biochemical predestination”: simple chemicals do not naturally arrange themselves into complex information-bearing molecules such as DNA.

...  information can[not] just appear in the cosmos wherever God wants it to appear, without God having to perform any specific act that generates it. 

Here, we see one important role for the causal influence of the life that outflows from God. If God were only to relate to the physical world by 'giving it meaning', that would be too distant to be of any practical use. It certainly would not help during biological evolution, especially for most of its duration where there were not yet rational minds to even imagine that meaning.

In conclusion, we find that mental, spiritual and divine things can not be confined in their influences to be only effective among themselves. They must also have effects in the physical world. Theistic science is the attempt to frame theories which explain in more detail how this happens.

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/ 

Can we conceive of mind-body dualism?

In trying to understand the nature of the connections between mind and body, or between ordinary and spiritual minds, many different ideas have been proposed to explain how they are different. Only if we have a serious scientific proposal for this can we give proper evidence for the fact of a difference, as (almost always in science) new kinds of evidence need a related theory in order to justify taking them seriously.
Many people have realized that there are some differences here, but are reluctant to call that a 'dualism', and so produce many analogies for understanding those differences.  Let us, nevertheless, call the relation between minds and body 'a dualism', and then simply seek to understand its nature.

One way to answer the question of dualism is if we have a clear idea about what have been called 'discrete degrees'. Emanuel Swedenborg wrote in his 1763 book Divine Love and Wisdom that this concept is central to answering many questions:

"Without a concept of discrete degrees ... one can know nothing of the difference between the interior faculties in people which are those of the mind, thus nothing of their state in regard to reformation and regeneration; ... and nothing at all of the difference between something spiritual and something natural." [1]

In everyday life, we have formed our own ideas about these discrete degrees, by means of which we attempt to understand what Swedenborg is suggesting here, especially about what is mental, or spiritual, in comparison with what is natural. However, many people have rather individual ideas about the nature of discrete degrees, and some have ideas that are not in fact dual or discrete.
My purpose here is to look at some common suggestions, to challenge various motives that favour some particular misconceptions, and to try to demonstrate some more realistic (and fruitful) ways of thinking about discrete degrees. This should give us a clearer formulation about how to conceive dualism. In the process we will compare and contrast them with continuous degrees of various kinds, such as occur within a monistic framework.
Our need to think in discrete or continuous degrees touches on some broader desires for certain kinds of explanation. We are much more satisfied, for example, by an integrated view of all the natural and spiritual worlds, compared, say, with a fragmented account. Similarly, scientists and philosophers are much happier with a unified theory which sees everything as part of some continuous whole, compared, say, with a theory with unexplained gaps. We might favor an integrated ‘nondual’ world view compared with an account with dual substances whose relation is more hierarchical and somehow less ‘democratic’.
Our initial desires and kinds of knowledge we can accept are typically based on ideas that we can obtain from our senses, and from logical reasoning from sensual ideas. Contemporary science is a rather full development starting from this approach. However, from our senses and logic, it is rather difficult to have a proper idea of discrete degrees. This is our problem! Most of our starting ideas are based on images obtained from sensations of space and time, and Swedenborg tries to persuade us how our these spatial and temporal images ‘attach’ themselves to many of our attempts to think about discrete degrees. One aim here is to help see how spatial ideas attach themselves to our ideas of discrete degrees, and hence of our ideas of what is (or should be) dual. We will see how spatial images (may) correspond, or be analogous, to discrete degrees, but are not identical with them.
Let us look at some ideas that have been used to describe discrete degrees, and examine each in turn to see whether it is discrete or continuous, and whether it is a means for understanding any dualism about what is mental or spiritual:

Space

1. We may imagine as discrete degrees those natural things with discrete units, such as a ladder, as a multi-storied house, even as earth + plants/animals + the heavens, etc. Religious and spiritual literature often uses such images. We may use the body, with head+neck+body+legs +feet to represent different discrete degrees, but from looking at human bodies, as from biology alone, we do not thereby understand what are mental or spiritual degrees.
2. Similarly, the whole and its parts may be imagined as discrete degrees and in a relation of duality. The cells, nerves, muscles, skin and whole body of a person may be called discrete degrees. However, the whole body, however it may be controlled by a mental degree, is itself an aggregation of its parts. It is therefore not itself of a different degree to its parts.
3. We may think of discrete degrees as another dimension, even the fourth (or fifth) dimension of space and time. It is true that dimensions can be counted, and so are discrete in some sense, but they can still be continuously transformed into each other, for example by rotations. It is clear that rotating or expanding does not, by that fact, take you to a new spiritual discrete degree.
4. Infinite space, or Space Itself. Spinoza, for example, saw matter and space as the twin aspects of an infinite divinity, from which matter and space are themselves infinite in their details and in their extents. However, space is not mental, but is in a discrete degree distinct from all mental and spiritual degrees.
   Time
5. We may think of discrete degrees as new frequencies of vibration. Entering the mental realm has been called, for example,  ‘entering a new vibrational level’. However, frequencies can also be continuously transformed into each other, since time in nature is on a continuous numerical scale. It is clear that vibrating faster does not, by that fact, take us to a new discrete degree, and does not describe a dualist ontology.
6. Some natural objects have discrete harmonic modes of operation. A guitar or cello string, for example, has fundamental and harmonic vibrational modes, and these resonate among themselves. Electrons in atoms have discrete levels of different energies. However, if we look in detail, we see that all intermediate vibrations and energies are still possible, but just do not last very long. I have above mentioned the possible roles of different frequencies, and in physics, vibrational energy is proportional to frequency.
7. Series of successive processes, such as waterfalls or other emanations, or the stages of a person's life, are often used to represent ‘successive discrete degrees’. We may often represent discrete degrees as ‘successive’, but we should be aware that this is another representation using ‘time’. Discrete degrees (such as mental/spiritual and natural) are still ‘simultaneous’ in many important senses!
8. Infinite time, or the denial of time, as being eternity. Encompassing all time is sometimes seen as a degree above all us ‘time bound’ individuals. However, any mind or spirit is presumed to be the source of life and activity, and certainly not the freezing of time. We may imagine that Divine Wisdom does see all time together (past, present and future) in an eternity, but note that the accomplishment of Divine Love still requires enacting that time successively.
Natural States

9. Solids, liquids and gases are discrete phases of many substances in nature. Ice, water and steam are discrete manifestations of the one chemical H₂O. However, these multiple phases of water can be continuously transformed one into another, and back again, so not describe dualities in a sense from which we can learn about mind and nature.
10. A related suggestion is to use the classic quartet of earth, water, air and fire, especially to identify a mental or spiritual degree as fire.
11. Sometimes we imagine mind or spirit as a fine or subtle substance that pervades and influences ‘coarse matter’. This may be true, but unless we have an independent idea of the mental or spiritual degrees, we cannot properly describe it merely from the idea of ‘fineness’ or ‘subtlety’.
12. Various polarities in nature, such as positive and negative electric charge, or male and female in biology. Opposite electric charges, such as of electrons and its antiparticle the positron, however, are exact mirror images at exactly the same natural level. Male and female organisms, by contrast, have internal complexities that are very similar, differing in particular in the way some of these are ordered. Furthermore, we cannot say that only positive charges, or only females, are connected to (or are) a dual degree.
    Inside and Outside
13. We may think of discrete degrees as the internal and the external of bodies, or of persons. The  words inmost, inner, and outer may be often used to describe discrete degrees in practice, and many of us use these adjectives to contrast spiritual with natural things. However, if we examine the specific meanings of these words, we see that they are essentially spatial images that must be interpreted metaphorically if they are to indicate spiritual and natural as distinct discrete degrees.
14. Connected with the previous suggestion, sometimes the mental or spiritual degree is seen as the ‘first person’ inside view of nature, so physical matter is the ‘outside’ or ‘third person’ view. This is a popular belief among those trying to reconcile science and spirituality, but it does not help, for example, in trying to understand the possibility of life after separation from the physical body. How can there be a life from a coherent inside view if the outside view is of matter broken into pieces?
15. A recent suggestion is based on chaos theory, where we see self-similarity: a similarity of behavior patterns when we compare the whole and the parts. But the whole and the parts, again, are not ontologically dual.

Many of the above distinctions have been adopted in popular culture as sufficient for defining the distinctness of degrees that lead to the mental or spiritual, and there is some satisfaction, for example, with imagining the spiritual as 'higher resonant states in higher dimensions' of reality as yet undiscovered by physics. However, all the above classifications are continuous, not discrete or dual. The desires for continuous spiritual degrees, though widespread in many contemporary and Eastern philosophies today, are what we should call ‘natural’ or even ‘sensual’.
We need to separate our understanding, in some way, from natural and sensual images. This separation may never be complete on earth, but let us at least be aware of the way we presently think.
But let us try to form some more positive accounts. My immediate problem here is that you may be most happy if I produce a new picture which I claim shows discrete degrees most accurately. However, we have just seen that all pictures are based on spatial and temporal images, and by that fact should be called into question! What can we do?
This is a problem that modern quantum physics has faced for much of the last century. Modern physicists have realized that pictures based on ‘particles’, or on ‘waves’, are no longer satisfactory, but have nothing satisfactory to replace them with. Some among them have (wisely) said that ‘we can no longer rely on naive pictorial thinking’. Thus, for minds as well as for physics, we have to rely on some different kind of thinking. Quantum physics can use its mathematical equations, but what can we use?
To understand in a specific way discrete degrees, and the possibility of a real dualism, we can either

1. build on and extrapolate whatever discrete degrees physics and philosophy have discovered, or
2. rely on our own intuitive understandings of causes and effects in ourselves.

A description of those discrete degrees that physics has discovered is given separately, so I will merely mention some of the more obvious discoveries here. Let me first describe some of the discrete degrees and dualities that Swedenborg has described: two from general philosophy, and one from simple physics:
Degrees in Philosophy and Simple Physics

16. Form and substance are a pair of discrete degrees. For a given thing, such as this chair, the form is its position, orientation and shape. And not just the overall shape, but also the shapes and arrangements of all its constituent parts. The substance of the chair is that of which the constituent parts are forms of, are made of. This physics can give us some idea of, namely some kind of energy or propensity to interact. Form and substance cannot be continuously transformed into each other.  Yet they are not ontological dual, in the sense of independently existing.
17. End, cause and effect are a triplet of discrete degrees. The end is the original principle according to which a process starts, the cause is the formulation of means that is poised to act, and the effect is the resulting action. End, cause and effect produce each other in sequence, but cannot be reversibly transformed.
18. Heat and Light, strictly, are radiation in the same electromagnetic spectrum: making them a pair of continuous rather discrete degrees. However, ‘heat’ has a more general meaning: that of energy in general, and light has a more specific meaning: as a form of radiation that can be encoded with very much information. Energy and information do form a discrete pair of degrees, but similar therefore to 'form and substance' above. Thus ‘light’ is a particular form of energy, so light is like form and heat is like substance.
    Other discrete degrees, even within nature, have been discovered by science:
    Degrees in Modern Physics
19. Force and motion are discrete degrees. This was in fact realised in the 18th century by Boscovich and by Kant, Forces may be present even if no movement of matter occurs.
20. Potential energy and force are discrete degrees. This was made clear with the discovery of electromagnetic fields by Faraday and Maxwell. Electric energy fields, for example, only produce forces if a charged particle is present within the field. Similarly, the gravitational fields of the earth and sun are not themselves forces, but only produce forces on planets and satellites should these be present. Physicists often conflate potential energy and force, by saying that forces are simply a description of the gradient of the potential energy surface, but the 'force' here is the force actually operating, not that of a 'force field' that is still waiting to have any effect.
21. Waves and particles, or (better) waves and events are discrete degrees. This is the best way of understanding quantum physics: waves are a description of causes, and specific particle positions (or events) are the actual effects of those causes.
22. Virtual and actual processes are discrete degrees. Electric fields, for example, are generated by a prior degree of virtual photons. I discuss this a little more separately.These dualisms within physics are described elsewhere in more detail.
    Other discrete degrees are seen by our intuitive understanding of causes and effects, for example within ourselves, within our own minds.
    Degrees as suggested by Swedenborg
23. End, cause and effect are a triplet of discrete degrees. The end is the original impetus which motivates us, the cause is that motivation when it has formulated the means and is poised to act, and the effect is the resulting action. End, cause and effect produce each other in sequence, but cannot be reversibly transformed.
24. Affection, understanding and action are discrete degrees. These are analogous to the previous set, but generalised os as to be applicable to processes also of the mind.
25. Soul, mind and nature, are the three discrete degrees, according to Swedenborg [1], describing the production of creation via affections and thoughts to nature.
26. Love, Wisdom and Use are, according to Swedenborg [1], again analogous to discrete degrees, and are applicable even to the Divine.

The classifications 19-22 do describe discrete degrees, but only in nature. By themselves they do not indicate any spirituality, but nevertheless they reflect the true spiritual discrete degrees (23-26) more accurately than the continuous degrees (1-15) since they are themselves discrete and not continuous.
Trying to understand any kind of discrete degree is a useful education toward understanding dualism, and hence to begin to understand what is mind, and what is spiritual.

References
[1] Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763. (online)