Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 1/8 of thoughts on a causal correspondence theory

Which way does causation proceed? The pattern in the material world seems to be upward: particles to molecules to organisms to brains to mental processes. In contrast, the principles of quantum mechanics allow us to see a pattern of downward causation. These new ideas describe sets of multiple levels in which each level influences the levels below it through generation and selection. Top-down causation makes exciting sense of the world: we can find analogies in psychology, in the formation of our minds, in locating the source of consciousness, and even in the possible logic of belief in God.

1. A quantum viewpoint

Over the last 100 years the study of quantum phenomena has shown that there is more than the material world of matter, force and motion. The experts have often speculated about a role for observers, even for consciousness, in an understanding of quantum measurements [1] [2]. More recently many [3] have speculated that quantum physics itself reveals consciousness. There are now many cottage industries seeking to develop ideas of ‘quantum consciousness’, even of ‘quantum spirituality’. It has become popular to say that ‘quantum theory shows that consciousness creates physical reality’, and that this fits into an advaita non-dualist framework where only the Godhead is real while everything else is a generation of consciousness.

For many, however, such a monism where all beings are numerically identical does not seem to be the ultimate answer. People generally consider unselfish love to be superior to selfish love. If all persons were identical in being, then unselfish love between distinct persons would be impossible. The reality of unselfishness disposes many of us to dualist views in which people are ontologically distinct and in which God and worlds are distinct [4, p. 18]. It is important for theorists to explore theories in which minds and god are distinct. If mind and matter are distinct then many philosophical problems with materialism may be resolved.

I here present some ideas to help interpret quantum mechanics, mind and theism in a non-reductive approach. These ideas describe a set of multiple levels which all exist simultaneously in their own manner. Rather than everything being a system of objects at one fundamental level, we can develop a theory of multiple levels, each with different kinds of objects existing in their own kinds of spaces. The first challenge is to see how quantum substances exist on a single level. A second challenge is to show how objects interact between levels.

[1]	E. Wigner, "Remarks on the Mind-Body Question," in The Scientist Speculates, N.Y., Basic Books, 1962, pp. 284-302.
[2]	H. Stapp, Mindful Universe, N.Y.: Springer, 2011.
[3]	E. Lazslo, "Quantum and Consciousness: In search of new paradigm," Zygon, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 533-541, 2006.
[4]	E. Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom (1763), West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2010.

Part 2 here.

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.

Arguing from 'God is Being Itself'

We want to know the basic principles that operate now, which govern all connections between God and the individual finite beings that are us. That is what useful knowledge -- science -- needs.

We will use one of the standard arguments of philosophical theism: the Argument from Being. We are arguing from 'God is Being Itself'. The argument uses Postulate 3 above, and proceeds as follows:

1. God is Being itself (Postulate 3)
2. We (as individuals) have being (as, we exist).
3. Therefore, our being either is, or depends on (derives from), God (Being itself). 

This argument uses the metaphysical principle that being can only come from being and not from non-being (which is nothing). It uses the empirical fact that individuals in the world do exist. At least I exist, Descartes would claim. That is, there are some objects that are being in existence, so that we say that they ‘have being’. Then, since God has just been defined as ‘being itself’, we say that God must have some role in our existence. Simply put, we say that “We are, because God is."

This argument establishes an ontological dependence of us individuals on God. We appear to be beings; God is Being itself; therefore we appear to depend on God. Some essence of our being (namely Being itself) is identical to God. A corollary of this argument is: we cannot have our existence separately from God or derived originally from anything other than God. If we had some other kind of being, then we would still have being itself, which is God. Postulate 3 establishes that just by existing, we are dependent on God.

Of course, this does not explain the manner in which we depend on God. I state an alternative formulation (‘derives from’) in the conclusion above but do not explain that. More details will come later.

Consequences

The Argument from Being does not establish that we are distinct from God at all. If we were somehow identical to God, then our being would be being itself, and our continued existing would be obvious. This argument, by itself, can lead to several non-theistic accounts of the manner in which we depend on God. For now, I only explain what these other accounts are. Only later will we have the logical means to discriminate between the other accounts and core theism.

The first non-theistic account says that all things of creation—all of us finite individuals—are in fact equal to God. This appears to solve the problem if all of us really are God (or Gods) though we simply never knew it. This is pantheism: that everything is God. An equivalent formulation is to say that “God is All That Is." Every smallest atom, every last bacterium, every planet, every galaxy, would then in fact be God. Religious life would then consist of learning (or remembering) this fact, which on the face of it is not obvious. It might be justified by Jesus saying that “the Kingdom of God is in you" (Luke 17:21) or Sankara saying that “everyone is in fact Divine." (The “I am Brahman" of Sankara (Sankaracharya).)  Certain mystical experiences, such as those arising in nature mysticism, certainly appear to show that the Divine is present in all of nature, and these can be used to support pantheism. Later I will dispute pantheistic belief. Here I only note that its simplicity seems attractive intellectually. However, most of us, on practical reflection concerning our state in the world, cannot bring ourselves to believe that we are identical with God. Our everyday world certainly seems to be far from God.

A second non-theistic account states that the everyday world is an illusion: a false appearance produced by imperfect perceptions. Reality—if only we realized it—is actually the Infinite glorious God and only that God. This account is called non-dualism, and asserts that our everyday world is maya, a veil or an illusion. There appears to be a duality between the Eternal Brahman and the world of finite creatures, but reality is actually non-dual. Only Brahman exists, and the religious task is to acknowledge that in our souls.

There are further accounts which develop some kind of monism about what exists. In Idealism, God is taken as some kind of thought (or thinker) that includes all our individual ideas that appear to make us separate. There is even a way to bring in materialism, if we take energy as eternally existing and therefore divine. In that case, God (as being itself) is identified with energy, and then, according to our Argument from Being, is the being itself of everything that exists. We see that it is sometimes strangely difficult to distinguish pantheism from materialism.

Finally, a claimant such as myself has still, with assertions like these, the responsibility of showing that God identified in such a way is identical with the traditional God of the theistic religions. From the religious point of view, it would be a failure if God turned out to be identical to eternal and immutable atoms!  Strictly speaking, logically if not theologically, that would be consistent with what has been asserted so far. In that case we could still define God in the manner of this chapter, even though God would not be a single being, and God would be distributed around all the individual atoms that somehow ‘participate’ in being itself. Individual atoms would have, say, instances of ‘being itself’ within themselves and hence be part of God. Further assertions may discount this possibility, but that will have to be the subject of discussion. Any ‘proof of God’, therefore, is not complete until we are satisfied that it is ‘our’ God who we are talking about and not other things such as microscopic atom(s). This is usually the non-trivial part of the argument. It will have to contain a demonstration of how God can be a One and yet multiple objects exist in the world.

Adapted from chapter 8 of Starting Science From God.

What is mind: Information or Substance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"God is Not Dead": is this proved in Amit Goswami's book?

This again an ambitious book, trying to use quantum mechanics to prove that God is not dead. Does he succeed? Yes: if you accept his very limited definition of God. But No: if you acknowledge rather that God is transcendent & immmanent Person.

Goswami starts with quantum mechanics, but soon stretches it beyond recognition. He does take quantum non-locality seriously, but he wants 'quantum correlations' to enable communications between all sorts of things between which we have trouble seeing the connections. In this way, he postulates connections between our four bodies that are physical, vital, mental, and the supramental soul. (Having of course postulated that all four exist!). These 'quantum correlations' are instances of 'downward causation', and give rise to 'wave function collapses'.

There are many difficulties with his views, both from the physical and theistic points of view.

From physics, he realises (p217) that Eberhard's theorem says that no information transfer can occur by means of quantum correlations. This would appear to cripple his whole scheme, but he states that "I have repeatedly pointed out that for information transfers between brains and minds, in which consciousness collapses the synchronistic events that constitute the transfer of information, Eberhard's theorem does not apply". The apparent reason for it not applying is that Eberhard refers to physics correlations, whereas Goswami is referring to 'correlations through consciousness', and 'For such correlation, there is no reason why Eberhard's theorem should apply, and therefore, message transfer may be possible.' This is hardly a positive statement of what can actually happen!

From a theistic viewpoint, he makes some very strange claims. Some of these stem from his attempting to make a non-dualist theory (p46), but, despite his claims, his theory is never really monistic at all. That is because he has 4 kinds of bodies not reducible to each other, or to God.

Some of his strange claims are:

1. 'God is the agent of downward causation'. One reading of this is true in theism, but Goswami turns it around. According to him, every instance of downward causation is God(!). So any experiment which demonstrates non-local correlations is therefore a proof of God. That is not God was we know him! We certainly do not believe his claim to have thereby 'rediscovered God within science'!
2. He has a 'body of mental archetypes' (the soul), alongside the other 3 physical, vital and mental bodies. To avoid the 'dreaded dualism' like the plague, he refuses to order these four bodies in any sense of being more spiritual or more material. It is never clear why 'archetypes' in one of our bodies have control over all the others. Similarly, there is no sense of the mind eg 'encompassing' the physical body, so it is not clear whether his final monism is idealistic or materialistic.
3. He does not want the 'superhuman' God of popular Christianity. Instead, he equates God with Brahman, with quantum vacuum, with 'quantum consciousness', and with the 'akashic field'. These last 3 are not transcendent in the religious sense.
4. His idea of God is of consciousness but not of love; of an agent but not a will; not a person; and not someone to love or worship. Later though (pp233ff) he does talk about 'Love of God', but does not explain it, and in the end has no real sense of spirituality of love.
5. He postulates consciousness only when we are deciding. So when we are processing information without deciding, we are not consciousness. This would imply erroneously that intellectual thought is not conscious!
6. So God is not conscious (p109)! Nevertheless, God works by making plans 'in potentia'. God must do this unconsciously!
7. The aim of evolution is 'play, purposive play, play of expression, the expression of all that is possible to express' (p129). There is no sense here of choosing (or even advocating) what is good to express, rather than the opposite.
8. He says (p142) that 'dualism is untenable because of experimental data that establish the law of conservation of energy', and then goes on to talk about theories of 'vital energy' (pp149-152). In reply, we note that if vital energy exists, then physical energy cannot be all there is, so it is unlikely to be conserved by itself. And then we note that there have been no experiments to test conservation of energy within living/thinking systems, which is just where we need to know if it is true or not.
9. He thinks that all altruism is just helping ourselves, because, by virtue of non-locality, we are all one within a monism. That is, he says we are all just selfish even when we help others! See my earlier post about monism/non-dualism.
10. I pass over his comments on Jesus.