Can minds have effects in nature? How?

Some questions:

• If you have God and/or our minds acting in nature, as every basic purpose and volition demands in reality, do you think this is directly, or both directly and via intermediates?
• If there are intermediates, then there might be something specific and regular behaviors that science could connect with (at least from one side!).
• For telos and purpose and volition (etc) must have observable effects.
• Do you think that evidence and theories about the influence on the world of spiritual or mental things would help? Could they be intermediates here? 

By ‘intermediates’, I am thinking first of humans, and then all animals and plants as well as each living cell. These are all living creatures, and we presume that they all have at least some primitive kind of mental life: at least some will or motivation or telos, along with instinctual responses that reflect some implicit wisdom for good ways of responding to enhance and continue life.

There may well be spiritual beings of some sort as well, but they would be intermediates between all us living creatures and what is greater than us spiritually, so I should think: angels, saints and all who have lived who want to do what is good and useful (and maybe also those who want the opposite). Direct divine influence is possible as well, of course.

Because these things above are all intermediates, they are ‘riders’ or ‘modulators’ on the pathways of life from the Divine that the Lord uses to enliven and influence us in the world. All the good spiritual beings, for example, would be saying saying ‘not my will but thine’ when they do something.

For intermediates, I just refer to our abilities to feel, think and do things from feeling and thinking. That is, I assume we have minds that do these things, and hence have causal effects on body and world. This applies to all living creatures to varying degrees of fullness and detail. Any plausible account of the world has to take minds in some sense as essential part or being of mental lives. The substance of minds is love/desire, and their form is their thinking. This is just applying Aristotle’s common categories to some things very obvious. The substance gives the mode of its persistence through time, and the form gives its structure at present. Naturalism might want to call these esoteric and unbelievable, but they are really what we are all very close to, namely our minds.

Visible Effects!

I now insist that, in all our bodies, there must be influences from these intermediates that give results not as predicted by the laws of physics. They must be able to have some effect: able to make a difference to physics (otherwise, why bother?). The modulation from intermediates results in a kind of ‘final cause’ in physics, since it directs physical bodies towards some end or target or lure.

And now I think that these differences in physics ought be observable even to physicists. They are much larger than resolving quantum uncertainties or probabilities, since the effects of motivation and telos happen in every minute in our living bodies, and so cannot be just biasing some remote probability. I agree that it might be difficult, since this is to distinguish agency from chance. But it is only the chance of ignorance, not of quantum physics.

Some new ideas 

I even have a more specific idea for what these differences might be in physics, which I will explain more in the next few months when I work out a bit more detail. Sometimes, at least, the patterns should be repeated.

It maybe can be seen in protein folding, where there has been persistent ignorance of the causes of rapid in-vivo folding for the last 50 years?

I am beginning to see a way to change physics to allow final causes to have effects from causes originally in minds. I will explain (in more detail soon, somewhere) my idea for some of the ways ‘supporting efficient causes’ may assist final causes to operate in nature. The idea is some local modification of specific physical properties in order to reach some kind of target or lure or end from the final causes. If physical properties are changed, then something should be measurably different.

The physical variations needed to reach targets are much larger (by many orders of magnitude) than the range required by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum physics.  Given that, however, I want in reality to work on targeting with quantum fields. So the HUP will be still taken into account.  But in the meantime, Newtonian mechanics will be a very good approximation.

Is the physical world causally closed?

We are admittedly breaking the causal closure of the natural world, and breaking some conservation laws in some particular circumstances, so it’s a bit of a conjecture. Materialists may say that this makes it all impossible, since conservation laws are ‘known to be satisfied to high accuracy’. I reply: have you tested conservation laws where processes like this may well be occurring? That is, testing where we expect volition (etc) to be important?

If course, if you can already see the limits of naturalism, then the failure of the causal closure of the physical will not be a great surprise.

There might not be new energy or matter, but local fluctuations of (say) the unit of charge in specific regions. For the physicist: this amounts to local fluctuations of the permittivity of space in the region where molecular objects need to be guided.

Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 5/8: Mind and Physics as Levels Themselves?

5. Mind and Physics as Levels Themselves?

I have argued that there are multiple generative levels within both the physical and mental realms. The next hypothesis is that the physical and psychological are themselves generative levels linked together, so that physical dispositions as a whole are derivative from mental dispositions within living and/or thinking organisms. We entertain [8] the view that the dualism of mind and body is not an ad hoc division, but one that logically follows from the kinds of causation that exists within a universe in which there are both minds and bodies as distinct ontological substances connected as generative levels.

To see whether this works in practice, we have to consider the detailed requirements of any theory of psychology. At the simplest level of generalization, minds must be able to

• implement intended functions by feeling and thinking, then using motor areas,
• establish permanent memories, presumably by means of permanent physiological changes,
• form perceptions using information from the visual and auditory (etc.) cortexes,
• follow ‘internal’ trains of thought/feeling/imagining without necessarily having any external effects.

One way that these requirements can be accomplished is by means of the ideas presented so far, formulated in the following three principles:

1. I. Some physical/physiological potentialities (both deterministic and indeterministic according to quantum physics) are derived dispositions from minds as their principal cause. That is, minds predispose the dynamical properties of some physical objects.
2. II. The dispositional capacities of the mind are consequentially restricted (and hence conditioned) by their actual physical effects, by means of occasional causation.
3. III. The pattern of I and II is repeated for individual stages of more complex processes.

These principles together give what has been called conditional forward causation, or ‘top-down causation’. Note that we do not have a fourth ‘bottom-up’ principle that neural events directly cause events to occur in the mind. We do not have general matter → mind causation, although something resembling this does arise, namely selection. This is not causation in the sense of principal causation as producing or generating the effect, but is occasional causation as being a necessary prerequisite.

A strong argument for these three principles is that they are already similar to what is known already to happen in physics. According to quantum field theory we saw how virtual events predispose the ordinary quantum wave function. These virtual events operate deterministically and describe the operation of the electric, magnetic, nuclear and gravitational forces. They are not the actual events of quantum mechanics, as those are the definite outcomes of events like observations. Rather, they are a ‘prior level’ of ‘implicit events’ whose operation is needed in order to derive or produce the potentialities for events like observations. The principle (I) states the analogical result that mental events themselves are a ‘prior level’ of ‘implicit events’ whose operation is needed in order to produce the potentialities for physical events.

The argument for the principle (II) is more general. This principle can be seen as the law according to which your future life is restricted and influenced by your past actions (by selection). Physical events are in this way the necessary foundations for permanent mental history and structure.

Principle (III) has an important corollary connected with the observations of the above section on correspondences:

4. IV. The mind predisposes the brain to carry out those functions which ‘mirror’ or ‘correspond to’ the mind’s own functions.

Mental functions involve intermediate steps, and these intermediate mental steps predispose suitable intermediate physical steps (by I), and are in turn conditioned or confirmed by them (by II). Thus, the sequence of physical steps follows the sequence of mental steps, and the overall function of the physical process is analogous (in some sense) to the overall function of the mental process.

[8] I. J. Thompson, "DiscreteDegrees Within and Between Nature and Mind," in Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach, A. Antonietti, Ed., Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008, pp. 99-125.

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Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels

The analysis of dispositions is used to consider cases where the effect of one disposition operating is the existence of another disposition. This may arise from rearrangements within aggregated structures of dispositional parts, or, it is argued, also as stages of derivative dispositions within a set of multiple generative levels. Inspection of examples in both classical and quantum physics suggests a general principle of `Conditional Forward Causation': that dispositions act 'forwards' in a way conditional on certain circumstances or occasions already existing at the `later' levels.

This is a previous article of mine, published in the book: M. Suárez (ed.), Probabilities, Causes, and Propensities in Physics, Synthese Library, Springer, 2011. [pdf]

1. Introduction

Recently, the much philosophical work has emphasized the importance of dispositions for realistic analyses of causal processes in both physics and psychology. This is partly because of the attractiveness of the thesis of dispositional essentialism, which holds that all existing things have irreducible causal powers, and such views are advocated by [many philosophers]. The thesis opposes the views of Ryle [1949] who sees dispositions as merely `inference tickets' or `promises', and Armstrong [1969] who sees them as derived from universal laws combined with nondispositional properties. Mumford [2005] articulates a common aspect of dispositional essentialism, to imagine how the concept of universal laws could be rather replaced by talk of specific objects and their dispositions.

It may well be that concepts of more sophisticated kinds of dispositions allow us to make headway in understanding the above complications within the framework of dispositional essentialism. I therefore continue the analysis of kinds of dispositions, to consider the possibility of derivative dispositions, and later consider whether these together may form a structure of multiple generative levels. This paper therefore consists of proposals for what those concepts might mean, and of analyses of examples in physics and psychology that appear to need such concepts for their understanding. We need to distinguish the cases whereby new dispositions come about from rearrangement of parts, from possible cases where they are `derived' or `generated' in some more original way.

2 Beyond simple dispositions

2.1 Changing dispositions

Most examples of dispositions in philosophical discussions are those, like fragility, solubility, radioactive instability, whose effects (if manifested) are events. If a glass exercises its fragility, it breaks. If salt shows its solubility, it dissolves, and the manifestation of radioactive instability would be a decay event detected say with a geiger counter. However, physicists want to know not merely that these eventsoccur, but also how the dispositions themselves may change after the manifestation event. In the cases here, the fragility of the parts or the stability of the nuclei may change as results of the manifestation events, and it is still part of physics to describe the new (changed) dispositions as accurately as possible. Such descriptions are part of dynamical accounts, as distinct from descriptive accounts events.

Sometimes, new dispositions may be ascribable after an event which could not be done so before an event. The fragments of a broken glass may be able to refract light in a way that the intact glass could not, for example. The dissolved salt may be to pass through a membrane, in contrast to the dispositions of the initial salt crystals. The fragments of nuclear decay may possibly decay by emitting electrons in a way the parent nucleus could not.

In general, it appears often that new dispositions may be truthfully ascribed as the result of the operation of a prior disposition. If the ascription of dispositions is attributed to the existence properties of some object, then it appears that, in the above examples, new dispositions come into existence as the manifestation of previous dispositions. Since now one disposition leads to another, some philosophical analysis is called for.

2.2 Rearrangement dispositions

The existence of some of these new dispositions may perhaps be successfully explained as the rearrangement of the internal structures of the objects under discussion, which are then presumably composite objects. The refraction by pieces of broken glass, in contrast to the original smooth glass, has obvious explanations in terms of the shapes of the new fragments. Salt's diffusion through a membrane, once dissolved, is presumably because of the greater mobility of salt ions in solution compared with the crystal form.

Science is largely successful in explaining such dynamical evolutions of empirical dispositions of natural objects. It bases the explanations in terms of changes in their structural shapes and arrangements of their parts, along with the fixed underlying dispositions or propensities of these parts. It is from the dispositions of these parts that, according the structure, all their observed dispositions and causal properties may be explained.

The existence of new dispositions by rearrangement of the parts of an object, I take to be non-controversial within existing philosophical frameworks. It appears that typical philosophical analyses need only slight modifications to take into account the way the derivative dispositions of an aggregate are explained in terms of recombinations of the dispositions of its parts.

2.3 Derivative dispositions

However, it also appears that not all dynamical changes of dispositions occur by rearrangements of parts, and these are what in this paper I want to call derivative dispositions. There are some cases, to be listed below, where new dispositions come into existence, without there being any visible parts whose rearrangement could explain the changes. The next section gives some examples of what appear to be such derivative dispositions, and this is followed by a more general analysis of how these might work.

If there turns out to be a sequence of derivative dispositions, then the combined structure may be said to be that of `multiple generative levels'. We will see some examples below.

3 Examples of derivative dispositions

3.1 Energy and Force

If we look at physics, and at what physics regards as part of its central understanding, one extremely important idea is energy. Physics talks about kinetic energy as energy to do with motion, and potential energy as to do with what would happen if the circumstances were right. More specifically, if we look at definitions of force and energy which are commonly used to introduce these concepts, we find definitions like

• force: the tendency F to accelerate a mass m with acceleration F/m.
• energy: the capacity E to do work, which is the action of a force F over a distance d,
• potential energy field: the field potential V(x) to exert a force F = -dV/dx if a test particle is present.

As Cartwright [1989] points out, force is not identical to the product ma, because it is only the net forceat a point which is important. An individual force is only by itself a tendency which may or may not be manifested. It is a disposition, as is energy generically, as well as potential energy. Furthermore, we may see a pattern here:

• potential energy field: the disposition to generate a force, and
• force: the disposition to accelerate a mass, and
• acceleration: the final result.

I take this to be an example of two successive derivative dispositions, where the effect of one disposition operating is the generation of another. An electrostatic field potential is a disposition, for example, the manifestation of which is not itself motion, but which is the presence now of a derivative disposition, namely a force. The manifestation of a force may or may not occur as motion, as it depends on what other forces are also operating on the mass. The production of a force by a field potential does not appear to be something that occurs by means of the rearrangements of microscopic parts, but appears to be more fundamental, and almost sui generis. It is clearly in need of philosophical inspection, as it appears that field potentials, force and action form a set of multiple generative levels.

Admittedly, many physicists and philosophers often manifest here a tendency to say that only potential energy is `real', or conversely perhaps that `only forces are real', or even that `only motion is real', and that in each case the other physical quantities are only `calculational devices' for predicting whichever is declared to be real. Please for a while apply a contrary tendency to resist this conclusion, at least to the end of the paper. In §5 I will be explicitly evaluating such `reductionist strategies, along with the comparative roles of mathematical laws and dispositional properties within a possible dispositional essentialism.
 ............

Whole article here.

Identifying 'Substance' as 'Propensity'

Here is a summary of my argument as applied to physics.
Discussing the basic categories, and how there is seen to be a connection between them that was previously missed.

Three categories of terms in physics:

• existential terms
  • about what exists
• formal terms
  • about the structure & static properties of what exists
• dynamical terms
• about what would happen, in new and/or hypothetical conditions
• only by hypothesizing dynamics, can we deduce the future.

Examples of Formal Terms

• shape, number, form, relation, configuration, symmetry
• function, field, oscillation, wave, flow,
• point, length, area, volume, amplitude,
• vector, matrix, operator, Hilbert space, bra, ket,
• ratios, relative frequency, probability, ...
DESCRIBED BY MATHEMATICS

Examples of Existential Terms particle, material, matter, corpuscle, body, fluid, ether, substance, actuality, reality, event, interaction, outcome,person, experience, observation, sensation, thought, feeling, ... (we know we exist!) world, universe, ... DESCRIBED BY ONTOLOGY Examples of Dynamical Terms cause, propensity, disposition, power, capability, potentiality, energy (kinetic and potential), mass, charge, field coupling, force, pressure, momentum, impetus, elasticity/rigidity, (for people: intention, disposition, motivation, skill, desire, intelligence, …) DESCRIBED BY LAWS (PHYSICAL or mental)  Remember: Dynamical properties say what would happen, even if it does not:  A force says what acceleration would be caused if a mass was acted on. Electric fields generates a force if and when a charge is present. Quantum propensities give probabilities if a measurement is performed. New idea: ‘Dynamic substance’ Derive ‘existence’ from ‘dynamics’ This happens already in physics. Many examples: ‘electromagnetic force field’, ‘potential energy field’ ‘matter is a form of energy’ wave function is a ‘propensity field’ propensity to interact, or propensity to choose actual outcome Propensity (of some kind) is substance So form is never substance: only propensities (etc) can ever be substantial. There is no need to describe 'substance' any more in obscure terms! All that is needed are propensities that intrinsically endure for finite times. We identify 'the substance of things' with 'some enduring propensity'. This summary is taken from a talk I gave in 2000 to my physics department at Surrey University. A complete set of slides is online here. I will in later posts argue that the same conclusion applies to mental as well as physical dispositions.

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

Chapter Synopsis of the new book "Starting Science From God"

 Brief outline of the structure of the book and its arguments:

Preface

The status of theism, and current debates
Acknowledgements

I. Preliminaries

1. Introduction
General discussion about the possibility of scientific theism today.


2. History
Brief(!) discussions of historical philosophical treatments of theism, and of theories of connection between God and the world, and between mind and nature.


3. A Way Forward
Describing the 'minor' changes necessary for science for science and for religion, in order to form together a way forward.

II. Ontology

4. Power and Substance
We must distinguish between form, substance and potentiality (like Aristotle), in order to make a realist ontology based on process logic. I give a general introduction to the realist ontology that will be used throughout this book. The ontology of form and substance, united in nature and distinguishable only by the mind, is one that dates from Aristotle and was still held by Descartes and Leibniz.


5. Multiple Generative Levels
Exposition concerning multiple generative levels, based on the asymmetric processes of generation from cause to effect, and selection from previous effects to future causes. Simple examples from classical & quantum physics and psychology.


6. A Dynamic Ontology
Summary of philosophical viewpoint of Part II, where substances are defined in terms of underlying dispositions, and also exist and operate within a generative structure of levels.

III. A Scientific Theism

7. Plan of Approach
Start from specific postulates of theism (just as physics theories start from their own a-theistic postulates), and see what can be deduced concerning minds and nature that is consistent with those postulates, as listed within Chapters 8-19.


8. The ‘I am’
That God exists, and that God is One, are the basic starting postulates of any theism.


9. God is Not Us
Nor are we part of God. To be loved, we must be other from God. The most distinctive feature of theism is that God is distinct from the world, in particular that there is something essential to humans that is distinct from God. The reason for this is that God’s love is unselfish, and unselfish love cannot love itself.


10. Images of God
In the Genesis story, man was made ‘in his image, according to his likeness’. The creation story leading up to this suggests that plants and animals were partial contributions to this making, and from biology we know that there are a great many internal similarities of plants and animals with humans. Although somewhat controversial, this implies that plants and animals are also in the image and likeness of God, but to a lesser extent.


11. God is Love
That God is love, as asserted by most traditional and modern theisms, has rarely been understood properly from the philosophical point of view. The nature of love is to want and then to achieve more than what is already obtained. God as Love wants to share its own with all of creation for the longest time possible, so all objects in creation are given the capacity to make something different in their future. Since God is Love, according to theism, divine love is the substance or being of which God is formed. Then, because created objects are a kind of image of God, we can conclude that something like love is the substance of all things in the world.


12. God is Life Itself
All our life is provided by God, and there is no life apart from God. If we could use the principle that ‘one is at least where one acts’, God would be immanent in His creation. Being eternal Life Itself, He is also transcendent of His creation.


13. God is both Simple and Complex
God is a unity in which there is no limit to the infinity of what may be intellectually distinguished, but what is not in fact separated.


14. God is Wisdom, and Action
That God is also Wisdom itself, and proceeding Action, so we have triad within God. This wisdom is the source of our own wisdom, understanding & knowledge.


15. God is Transcendent and Immanent
The distinction between the transcendent God and the finite creation depends on the distinction between the actual forms of created things and their received life. Thus we have neither pantheism nor deism, but what is a thorough-going theism: ‘God in everything, but distinct from everything’. Note that the ‘in’ here is not that of constitution, but of being hidden from the outside.


16. We Act Sequentially
That, in us, love and wisdom choose when to act. God may have foreknowledge of our free decisions, but time exists for us, and we still must will our own actions according to our understanding: with our own freedom.


17. We are Composite, as Spiritual, Mental and Physical
That God is Love, is Wisdom, and is also Life or Action in himself are what we can intellectually distinguish. Because what is unified and continuous in God is imaged in creation with what are distributed discretely, and these distributions function similarly by images of the God-world relation, we conclude that creation must have three realms, the first a reduced and distributed image of divine love, the second a reduced and distributed image of divine wisdom, and the third a reduced and distributed image of divine power and action.
The spiritual realm contains the separate loves in creation, including desires, loves, affections, motivations, purposes, dispositions, etc. The mental realm contains the separate carriers of wisdom, namely thoughts, ideas, understandings, rationality, plans, ideologies, beliefs, etc. The physical realm deals with all the separate final actions and effects, including the entire sets of things we know from external observations and physics.


18. We are Sustained by Influx From God, Directly and Indirectly
The traditional view of God creating the world is by fiat, taking literally the commands ‘fiat lux: let there be light’ and so on. The creation of substantial objects, still, involves God giving them their being (since he is being itself). Furthermore, in process logic, there is no power without substance. Or without (some kind) of presence.


19. God is Equally Present in All Subparts
Thus God must be immanent in every part of creation, and in every part of that part. And in every realm that influences each part and each sub-part. God must therefore be imaged (in some way) in each thing of love, and each thing of thought, and each physical thing, as well as in the interior realms of all of these.


20. The Theistic Universe
Taking an overall view of the universe from the above theistic principles.　

IV. Theistic Science

21. Methods
The previous Part III outlined an abstract structure of degrees and sub-degrees. Now in Part IV is the time to work out what these are in terms of the language and sciences that we already know, if possible. I call this the process of ‘identification.’ This is now longer deduction from theistic premises, not the least because now I call on meanings in ordinary languages and in the sciences, and these will have historical and contemporary overtones that certainly cannot be called deductive conclusions!


22. Discrete Degrees in the Mind
Discuss generic operation of sub-degrees in the mind, namely thought of loves, thought about thoughts, and thought about sensations & actions. These are identified as ‘higher rational’, ‘scientific rational’ and ‘external mind’ respectively. The sub-sub-degrees within these, and relation to the levels of cognition and affection discussed by Piaget, Gowan and Erikson.


23. Spiritual Discrete Degrees
When identifying the three main degrees of spiritual, mental and physical, I deliberately placed a spiritual degree above that of our normal mental life. That is because I read a great many reports of ‘peak experiences’, including those called visionary, mystical, out-of-body, near-death and spiritual, and I am convinced that there does indeed exist a realm about which we are normally unaware. I claim that this is the spiritual realm, and I have therefore identified this as ‘love’, the principal degree 1 of the three degrees. These must constitute some kind of heavenly states. An extensive discussion of misconceptions concerning the nature of the spiritual.


24. Discrete Degrees in Nature
The divine source does not produce all physical effects directly, but it produces via spiritual and natural stages what we see as natural dispositions or natural propensities. It is these dispositions or propensities, also known as causes, forces, potentials, quantum propensities) which lead to the ultimate physical interactions and events. The physical dispositions are a very limited ‘remnant' of Divine Power, and they operate in a way which corresponds to the characteristic operation of the Divine.
The stages and substages are directly related to problems in pregeometric gravity, quantum field theory, and in ordinary quantum mechanics. Prediction that there exists some actual selection processes in nature, in order to solve the (generalized) measurement problem.


25. Mind-body Connections
We derive a theory of mind and brain connection that establishes in intimate relation between them. It is not a relation of identity, or a relation of aspects or points of view. It is more a relation of inner and outer, or cause and effect: propensities in the brain are the causal product of mental actions. The mind and brain fit together by approximate analogy with hand and glove, or, better, with tissue and skin. The analogy is most precisely with thefunctions of tissue & skin, and not so much with their material shape. The mind provides all the directed activity of the brain, just as the tissue of the hand provides all the directed activity of the skin of the hand.
There are continual relations between minds generating brain dispositions, and brain events selecting which mental powers can act. This reciprocity means that the longest-lasting psychophysical structures have similar functional patterns in the mind and they body, and these similar functions we call 'correspondences’.

V. Applications

26. Evolution
That God cannot create self-sustaining organisms immediately, and neither can God instantaneously create robust receivers of divine love, since they need a history of their own actions in order to live as if from themselves. This implies that God needs evolution: descent by modification. Argue that this essentially the same as for mental and for spiritual (re)generation. That is, God has to manage external and internal changes in a gradualist manner: ab initio creationism is impossible. There is ‘theistic selection’ in addition to Darwinist natural selection.


27. Consciousness
In this framework, we are conscious of our actions when love and wisdom come together to make those actions. We are not directly conscious of our loves, and we are conscious of our thoughts only by reflective awareness at some upstream level.


28. Spiritual Growth
That we want permanent spiritual growth, and that this does not come quickly, but by cumulative joint actions of our own loves and wisdom. Not from one by itself, or from suffering alone, or from ‘elevated consciousness’. Look at stages of spiritual growth that starts in our higher rational, and continues in with our spiritual loves, especially in relation the sequence described in Genesis chap. 1.


29. Errors and Evils
What can we say about the problem of evil? Only some preliminaries: that Divine omnipotence is not absolute (since persons have love as their being, so cannot be arbitrarily remade): love always overrules omnipotence. That God can indeed create a stone he cannot (in practice) lift: that stone is us! Preliminary discussion of the real questions concerning freedom and evil.

VI. Discussion

30. Metaphysics
Responses, in the light of this book, to the philosophers and their queries as discussed in Chapter 2. Discussing in particular relations to ideas of Aquinas, Descartes and Whitehead (the leading ontologists who include mind and God in their theories).


31. Formal Modeling
The possibility of formal modeling of physical structures, and of limited modeling of mental structures. Dispositions can be partially modeled as procedures or functions, but not every aspect of them.


32. Possible Objections
Collection of frequently asked objections, and my responses.


33. Conclusions
Brief summary.


A. Theistic Postulates
A convenient summary


B. Further Resources
  Some relevant websites.

Bibliography
Index

Karl Birjukov and Inertia in science

Karl Birjukov has been writing recently on the need to the sciences to be revised, in order to conform better with theism. Here are links to four of his articles.

Most of what Karl writes is of interest, and directly relevant to our task of finding a new account of our universe that includes what is true from theism as well as from modern science. We both recognize that there are many deficiencies with how science is normally taken to understand the world, and how its common understanding appears to block connections to spiritual or theistic matters.

Karl's focus is on one particular deficiency: on how, since Kant, the natural world has been taken to consist of objects governed by the 'law of inertia'. By this, he appears to mean that all things are inert objects acted on by external forces. He says that "it is necessary in the first place to strip out the inertial view, and only then to consider the situation anew." Birjukov examines the details of Einstein's relativity theory in its foundations, trying to find how concepts of mass and inertia may possibly be reworked in that context.

I reply that it is true that the standard concept of objects (since Kant especially) has been to take them as inert and lifeless: with inertia, and with no internal source of activity. However, when I examine modern quantum field theories that try to predict the masses of subatomic particles, I find that 'inertia' by itself is hardly used. Rather, the masses of objects are constructed dynamically from the rapid internal exchanges of particles that have themselves no rest mass, but only energy. These internal particles are photons in the case of electromagnetic interactions, and gluons in the case of interactions between quarks to make up nucleons.

What is needed, therefore, is a theory of science that takes into account how in these ways mass and inertia are not given as 'inert' qualities, but as the result of interior and active processes. I have outline a general framework for this in my paper Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels.

My general experience of the development of ideas in the sciences is that the defects of old ideas are only clearly admitted when there is a new theory proposed that at least begins to replace the previous explanations. I differ from Birjukov, therefore, in his insistence on removing the old ideas that might be incorrect, but before there are new theories to replace them. He recognizes this in part, as he tries to formulate a new basis for relativity theory, but that is only the very smallest part of the problem. In fact, I argue that new theories of science can only be properly compatible with theism when they are consistently and diligently derived from theism. This means that our work should begin at the beginning (with Theos) rather than in nature (with Physis), as in some kind of 'theistic science', as only then can we constructed a unified cosmology.

Does Plotinus tell us about theistic science? A review of Nature Loves to Hide by Shimon Malin

This is an ambitious book, that starts from quantum physics, incorporates Whitehead's process philosophy, and then suggests that some theistic ideas from Plotinus are relevant to an overall understanding of nature, mind and God. This is certainly a worthy aim, and if achieved would have important consequences for theistic science, but, while the details are initially extensive, the later chapters are more suggestive sketches.

Shimon Malin is a physicist who has been thinking long about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and has excellent explanations of the problems in the way of achieving a ‘sensible’ interpretation. He starts by explaining the influence of Ernst Mach’s positivism on Einstein's formulation of relativity. Mach also influenced Heisenberg's construction of quantum mechanics in 1924, but by then Einstein’s position had changed. "Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning," Einstein told Heisenberg, "but it is nonsense all the same ... on principle it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe."
In this book Malin follows Heisenberg’s ‘potentiality’ view, to see quantum objects as ‘fields of potentiality’. This goes some way to describing how physicists think in practice, and gives, I agree, the best realistic account of the quantum world. Malin, however, still want to marry this view with Bohr's account of quantum states as ‘what we can know’ rather than ‘what is’. He reconciles this by claiming that the ‘quantum state of a quantum system is understood as representing the epistemic available or potential knowledge about the system’, and holds that this is necessary in view of the apparent faster-than-light correlations in non-local quantum systems. The long-standing measurement problem is solved by using some ideas worked out after talking to Dirac (a difficult process, as he amusingly explains), whereby ‘nature makes a choice’ when there is no longer any possibility of interference.
All these ideas are then linked to Whitehead’s process philosophy, where reality does not consist of continuous substances, but intermittent throbs of experiences that give actual occasions of selection events. The experiences themselves, he surmises, are the ‘acts of looking’ (as in Bohr’s interpretation of quantum physics) that ‘create their subject just as they create themselves’.

Malin furthermore tries to link his potentiality fields to Whitehead, but here, I believe, he is on shakier ground. He claims that ‘the transition from potentiality to actuality is a central element in Whitehead’, but in fact there is no ‘potentiality’ in Whitehead's mature philosophy (1927), only some suggestions, not adopted, in earlier work. Whitehead does not have any sense of ‘efficacious potentiality’ in his Process and Reality, only a ‘potency’ that is more like an abstract ‘possibility’. Malin’s view of potentialities, as partly epistemic, also plays down their causal role compared with Heisenberg or Popper, and furthermore leads to the curious position that potentialities are ‘eternal’ and ‘unchanging’. There is a persistent confusion in the book between the real potentialities in the physical (and biological and mental) worlds, and the abstract eternal objects which are the possible forms of such realities. The former have causal powers to actually do something, the latter do not. This difference is deliberately blurred in Malin’s book, because he tends to believe the mathematical physicists such as Schrödinger when they want to say that nature is really ‘form’ rather than ‘substance’: nothing but ‘pure shape’.

The next and most adventurous step in this book is to link all the above ideas with the ‘many levels of being’ ideas of Plotinus that stem from Plotinus' view of creation as an 'overflowing from God'. Malin is particularly struck by Plotinus’ view that each level of being is produced by the one above it through ‘contemplation, which is not different from mere presence’. No effort is required, apparently: merely looking is sufficient to create multiple levels, eventually leading to the physical world. The similarity of this view to the production of actual events in quantum mechanics by (mere) ‘acts of looking’ convinces Malin that there is a deeper connection between Plotinus and quantum physics, and we might think of a foundation for theistic science.

Again, I believe, both Malin and Plotinus suffer through only considering contemplation, as sight in the understanding, rather than whatever power, love or energy there may be in the will. Malin mentions the possibility of love being efficacious, but only as a throw-away remark in reference to Empedocles. The absence of this second aspect has produced a world view in which everything is thought / form / looking / awareness, and nothing is efficacious / substantial / love / energy. Any scientific theism must tell us about love, and about substance, but Malin's view does neither.

We might hope that Malin goes on to discover the ideas of thinkers after Plotinus, such as Swedenborg, who has certainly advanced from Plotinus’ position. Swedenborg's views do explain how love and being (substance) are related to power and energy, and thus develops a view of humanity that allows us hearts as well as heads, and hence life as well as looking.

Now doubt we will be discussing this further!