Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World III: Thoughts and Forms

In this series of posts, Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences has been shown to have interesting applications for helping us to better understand the quantum world.

In part I, we learned that our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals and that they consist of desire, or love, acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects. We in turn came to see the correspondential relationship between these mental events and such physical events that occur on a quantum level: in both cases, there will be time gaps between the events leading up to the physical outcome. So since we find that physical events occur in finite steps rather than continuously, we are led to expect a quantum world rather than a world described by classical physics.

In part II, we saw that the main similarity between desire (mental) and energy (physical) is that they both persist between events, which means that they are substances and therefore have the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction within the time gaps between those events.

Now we come to the question of how it is that these substances persist during the intervals between events. The events are the actual selection of what happens, so after the causing event and before the resultant effect, what occurs is the exploring of “possibilities for what might happen.” With regard to our mental processes, this exploration of possibilities is what we recognize as thinking. Swedenborg explains in detail how this very process of thinking is the way love gets ready to do things (rather than love being a byproduct of the thinking process, as Descartes would require):

Everyone sees that discernment is the vessel of wisdom, but not many see that volition is the vessel of love. This is because our volition does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment. It first branches off into a desire and vanishes in doing so, and a desire is noticeable only through a kind of unconscious pleasure in thinking, talking, and acting. We can still see that love is the source because we all intend what we love and do not intend what we do not love. (Divine Love and Wisdom §364)

When we realize we want something, the next step is to work out how to do it. We first think of the specific objective and then of all the intermediate steps to be taken in order to achieve it. We may also think about alternative steps and the pros and cons of following those different routes. In short, thinking is the exploration of “possibilities for action.” As all of this thinking speaks very clearly to the specific objective at hand, it can be seen as supporting our motivating love, which is one of the primary functions of thought. A focused thinking process such as this can be seen, simplified, in many kinds of animal activities.

With humans, however, thinking goes beyond that tight role of supporting love and develops a scope of its own. Not only do our thoughts explore possibilities for action, but they also explore the more abstract “possibilities for those possibilities.” Not only do we think about how to get a drink, but we also, for example, think about the size of the container, how much liquid it contains, and how far it is from where we are at that moment! When we get into such details as volume and distance, we discover that mathematics is the exploration of “possibilities of all kinds,” whether they are possibilities for action or not. So taken as a whole, thought is the exploration of all the many possibilities in the world, whether or not they are for action and even whether or not they are for actual things.

For physical things (material objects), this exploration of possibilities is spreading over the possible places and times for interactions or selections. Here, quantum physics has done a whole lot of work already. Physicists have discovered that the possibilities for physical interactions are best described by the wave function of quantum mechanics. The wave function describes all the events that are possible, as well as all the propensities and probabilities for those events to happen. According to German physicist Max Born, the probability of an event in a particular region can be determined by an integral property of the wave function over that region. Energy is the substance that persists between physical events, and all physical processes are driven by energy. In quantum mechanics, this energy is what is responsible for making the wave function change through time, as formulated by the Schrödinger equation, which is the fundamental equation of quantum physics.[1]

Returning now to Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences, we recognize that the something physical like thoughts in the mind are the shapes of wave functions in quantum physics. In Swedenborg’s own words:

When I have been thinking, the material ideas in my thought have presented themselves so to speak in the middle of a wave-like motion. I have noticed that the wave was made up of nothing other than such ideas as had become attached to the particular matter in my memory that I was thinking about, and that a person’s entire thought is seen by spirits in this way. But nothing else enters that person’s awareness then apart from what is in the middle which has presented itself as a material idea. I have likened that wave round about to spiritual wings which serve to raise the particular matter the person is thinking about up out of his memory. And in this way the person becomes aware of that matter. The surrounding material in which the wave-like motion takes place contained countless things that harmonized with the matter I was thinking about. (Arcana Coelestia §6200)[2]

Many people who have tried to understand the significance of quantum physics have noted that the wave function could be described as behaving like a non-spatial realm of consciousness. Some of these people have even wanted to say that the quantum wave function is a realm of consciousness, that physics has revealed the role of consciousness in the world, or that physics has discovered quantum consciousness.[3] 

However, using Swedenborg’s ideas to guide us, we can see that the wave function in physics corresponds to the thoughts in our consciousness. They have similar roles in the making of events: both thoughts and wave functions explore the “possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for action.” They are not the same, but they instead follow similar patterns and have similar functions within their respective realms. Thoughts are the way that desire explores the possibilities for the making of intentions and their related physical outcomes, and wave functions are the way that energy explores the possibilities for the making of physical events on a quantum level.

The philosophers of physics have been puzzled for a long time about the substance of physical things,[4] especially that of things in the quantum realm. From our discussion here, we see that energy (or propensity) is also the substance of physical things in the quantum realm and that the wave function, then, is the form that such a quantum substance takes. The wave function describes the shape of energy (or propensity) in space and time. We can recognize, as Aristotle first did, that a substantial change has occurred when a substance comes into existence by virtue of the matter of that substance acquiring some form.[5] That still applies to quantum mechanics, we now find, even though many philosophers have been desperately constructing more extreme ideas to try to understand quantum objects, such as relationalism[6] or the many-worlds interpretation.[7]

So what, then, is this matter of energy (desire, or love)? Is it from the Divine? Swedenborg would say as much:

It is because the very essence of the Divine is love and wisdom that we have two abilities of life. From the one we get our discernment, and from the other volition. Our discernment is supplied entirely by an inflow of wisdom from God, while our volition is supplied entirely by an inflow of love from God. Our failures to be appropriately wise and appropriately loving do not take these abilities away from us. They only close them off; and as long as they do, while we may call our discernment “discernment” and our volition “volition,” essentially they are not. So if these abilities really were taken away from us, everything human about us would be destroyed—our thinking and the speech that results from thought, and our purposing and the actions that result from purpose. We can see from this that the divine nature within us dwells in these two abilities, in our ability to be wise and our ability to love. (Divine Love and Wisdom §30)

When seeing things as made from substance—from the energy (or desire) that endures between events and thereby creates further events—we note that people will tend to speculate about “pure love” or “pure energy”: a love or energy without form that has no particular objective but can be used for anything. But this cannot be. In physics, there never exists any such pure energy but only energy in specific forms, such as the quantum particles described by a wave function. Any existing physical energy must be the propensity for specific kinds of interactions, since it must exist in some form. Similarly, there never exists a thing called “pure love.” The expression “pure love” makes sense only with respect to the idea of innocent, or undefiled, love, not to love without an object. Remember that “our volition [which is the vessel of love] does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment.”

[1] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation.
[2] Secrets of Heaven is the New Century Edition translation of Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia.
[3] See, for example, http://quantum-mind.co.uk.
[4] Howard Robinson, “Substance,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance.
[5] Thomas Ainsworth, “Form vs. Matter,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/.
[6] Michael Epperson, “Quantum Mechanics and Relational Realism: Logical Causality and Wave Function Collapse,” Process Studies 38.2 (2009): 339–366.
[7] J. A. Barrett, “Quantum Worlds,” Principia 20.1 (2016): 45–60.

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

In the previous post of this series, we saw how Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences could help us to better understand the physical world from a quantum perspective. If our mental processes consist of desire acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects, then these physical actions should manifest themselves according to a corresponding pattern. More specifically, if the components of our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals, so too should the expected physical events.

According to many thinkers throughout history, mental and physical are not identical but instead are two different kinds of substances that relate with each other. Swedenborg describes the mental (spiritual) and physical (natural) as distinct but says that they interact by discrete degrees:

A knowledge of degrees is like a key to lay open the causes of things, and to give entrance into them. . . . For things exterior advance to things interior and through these to things inmost, by means of degrees; not by continuous degrees but by discrete degrees. “Continuous degrees” is a term applied to the gradual lessenings or decreasings from grosser to finer . . . or . . . to growths and increasings from finer to grosser . . . precisely like the gradations of light to shade, or of heat to cold. But discrete degrees are entirely different: they are like things prior, subsequent and final; or like end, cause, and effect. These degrees are called discrete, because the prior is by itself; the subsequent by itself; and the final by itself; and yet taken together they make one. (Divine Love and Wisdom §184)

The mental can never be continuously transformed into something physical, nor can the physical be continuously transformed into something mental. They are connected, however, by virtue of their causal relationship: all physical processes are produced, or generated, by something mental. As described in my previous post, this relationship is what gives rise to our correspondences in the first place.

Most of us can realize that the mental and the physical are distinct, even though this may be denied by materialists (for whom the mental is merely an emerging product of the physical) and also by monistic idealists (for whom the physical universe is merely a representation in the mind). The latter view is common in many New Age circles today, and it is even thought to be implied by quantum physics. In this series of posts, by contrast, I want to show how Swedenborg’s ideas give us a new understanding of how mental and physical things can both exist in fully-fledged ways and with serious connections between them that are not deflating or reductionist.

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

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

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

That love and wisdom from the Lord is life can be seen also from this, that man grows torpid as love recedes from him, and stupid as wisdom recedes from him, and that were they to recede altogether he would become extinct. There are many things pertaining to love which have received other names because they are derivatives, such as affections, desires, appetites, and their pleasures and enjoyments. (Divine Love and Wisdom §363)

For desire and energy to correspond to each other in the sense that Swedenborg describes, the function of desire as a cause must be similar to the function of energy as a cause. That is, the way in which desire causes mental processes must be similar to the way in which energy causes physical processes. This is not to say that desire is the same as energy but only that desire’s pattern of operation is similar to that of energy. The common pattern is that desire (energy) persists between events, then explores multiple possibilities for those events by means of thoughts (fields of energy), and finally becomes manifest in the physical events produced.

Up until now, the idea of substance has been rather obscure in both physics and philosophy, and it has not been developed significantly. From an ontological perspective, substance is that which endures between events. It is what individuates and bears the intrinsic properties of those events. We are not necessarily talking about a substance that endures forever or about a substance that exists independently of everything else. Based on the common pattern described above, we can arrive at the idea of a created substance that persists, or endures, as a thing at least for some finite time between events. And such a substance would be the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction in that time interval.

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

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

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

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

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

First posted here.

Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World I: Events

For the last hundred years, physicists have been using the quantum theory about the universe, but they still do not properly understand of what the quantum world is made.

The previous physics (referred to as “classical” and started by Isaac Newton) used ideas of “waves” and “particles” to picture what makes up the physical world. But now we find that every object in the quantum world sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes behaves as a wave! Which is it? In quantum physics, objects behave most of the time like waves spreading out as they travel along, but sometimes measurements show objects to be particles with a definite location: not spread out at all. Why is that? It is as though their size and location suddenly change in measurement events. This is quite unlike classical physics, where particles exist continuously with the same fixed shape. In quantum physics, by contrast, objects have fixed locations only intermittently, such as when they are observed.  So they only offer us a discrete series of events that can be measured, not a continuous trajectory. Quantum objects, then, are alternately continuous and discontinuous.

Why would we ever expect such a fickle world? Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) has some ideas that might help us. He describes how all physical processes are produced by something mental, or spiritual, and this can be confirmed by reason of the similarity in patterns between the physical processes and their mental causes. In Swedenborg’s words, there are correspondences between the physical and the mental—that they have similar structures and functions, even though mind and matter are quite distinct.

I need to state what correspondence is. The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world—the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called “something that corresponds.” It needs to be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world . . . (Heaven and Hell §89)

Although these ideas are not part of present-day science, I still hope to show below that they may have some implications for how science could usefully develop.

Swedenborg’s theory of mind is easy to begin to understand. He talks about how all mental processes have three common elements: desire, thought, and action. The desire is what persists and motivates what will happen. The thought is the exploration of possibilities for actions and the making of an intention. The action is the determined intention, the product of desire and thought that results in an actual physical event.

The [actions] themselves are in the mind’s enjoyments and their thoughts when the delights are of the will and the thoughts are of the understanding therefrom, thus when there is complete agreement in the mind. The [actions] then belong to the spirit, and even if they do not enter into bodily act still they are as if in the act when there is agreement. (Divine Providence §108)

All of the three spiritual elements are essential. Without desire (love), or ends, nothing would be motivated to occur. Without thought, that love would be blind and mostly fail to cause what it wants. Without determined intention, both the love and thought would be frustrated and fruitless, with no effect achieved at all. In everyday life, this intention is commonly called will, but it is always produced by some desire driving everything that happens. 

Here is the pattern:

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

Swedenborg summarizes the relationship between these elements as follows:

All activities in the universe proceed from ends through causes into effects. These three elements are in themselves indivisible, although they appear as distinct in idea and thought. Still, even then, unless the effect that is intended is seen at the same time, the end is not anything; nor is either of these anything without a cause to sustain, foster and conjoin them. Such a sequence is engraved on every person, in general and in every particular, just as will, intellect, and action is. Every end there has to do with the will, every cause with the intellect, and every effect with action. (Conjugial Love §400:1–2)

Now consider Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences mentioned above. He says that there is a similar pattern between the details of the effects and the details of the causes. ”As above, so below,” others have said. So if mental action produces some effect in the physical world, then, by correspondence, we would expect a similar pattern between that physical effect and each of the three elements common to all mental processes. We would expect something physical like desire, then something physical like thought, and finally something physical like mental action. Do we recognize these patterns in physics? And if so, do we recognize them better in classical physics or in quantum physics?

I claim we do recognize them in physics:

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

We will discuss energy and wave functions in later posts, focusing here on the final step of mental actions and physical events. According to Swedenborg’s ideas, the structure of mental processes and the structure of physical events should be similar. So, too, the function of mental processes and the function of physical events should be similar. Can we tell from this whether we should expect a classical world or a quantum world?

One feature of thought and mental action with which we should be familiar is time. That is, we always need time to think! Without any time gap between desiring and intending, we would be acting instinctively and impulsively. Sometimes that works but not always (at least in my experience!). Most often, there has to be some delay, even some procrastination, between having a desire and fulfilling it. That delay gives us time to deliberate and decide on the best action to select. And, most importantly, if it is we who decide when to act, we feel that we act in some freedom. It feels better.

If the physical world corresponds to those mental processes, according to Swedenborg, what hypothesis do we reach about physics? It is that there will be corresponding time gaps between the beginning of some persisting energy or propensity and the selection of physical outcome. Remember that quantum objects are selected and definite only intermittently—when measured, or observed—while classical objects are continuously definite with no gaps. All this leads us to expect that physical events should not be continuous; that is, we should expect a quantum world rather than a classical world.

First appeared here.

Aristotle's and Aquinas' ideas about Substance and Form.

Something about Aristotelean-Thomist (A-T) metaphysics bothers me, and Jon Garvey reminds me of it again in a recent post.
He says above “substance” has to do (in A-T thought) with form.

To me, this is an abuse of language and of all metaphysical intuition!
Normally, we say thing is 'substance in a form', or a thing is made out of some substance and is arranged in some form. So 'substance' and 'form' are combined (metaphysically) to make a particular thing. A substance can be arranged in many possible forms, and a given form may be made out of many possible substances. But, if we specify substance and form, then we specify a thing.

But, as Jon points out, this natural way of speaking is completely up-ended in A-T language. There 'substance' and 'form' are practically identified! They are of course completely allowed to define words how they like. But, if I were starting a new metaphysics suitable for science, that is NOT how I would proceed. It is completely bizarre!

In fact, Aristotle bears some responsibility for this. He talks of things made of matter, and then 'form' as 'everything else that makes a thing what it is'. But that leave unclear how causal powers of thing are supposed to exist: since they are not matter they must be form. This conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' as structure and 'form as causal power'.

Then Aquinas bears further responsibility. He sees the above problem. He wants to attribute causal powers to substance (a good idea, I say). But, rather than fixing Aristotle's definition of 'form', he then conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' and 'substance'. He has no option left. But that results in the idea of a 'substantial form'. That might be ok, except (as I point out just above), any clean new metaphysics would distinguish 'substance' and 'form'. A-T is not clean in that respect.

Essence is that which makes something what it is.
Substance is that out of which something is made.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=812386

The format of Thomistic metaphysics then takes a somewhat dyadic structure of descending generality: (i) essence and existence, (ii) substance and accident, (iii) matter and form.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-meta/ (much good Thomist presentation!)

In general, we can (must!) diverge from materialism. We can be guided by Aquinas’ insights, not to mention more general Christian insights. But that does not mean necessarily following the A-T system in all its glorious details. Instead, see my previous post for what a new kind of metaphysics could be that talks properly about substance and form.

Physical and Mental Substances: what are the stuffs of nature?

Here is a potted summary of a non-reductive 'propensity account' of physical and mental substances:

Quantum theory must deal with substance, but just not substance of the classical material or atomistic kind.  Rather, something that perseveres through time without existing in a actualized form at every moment. The substance would be something like the 'potentiality' or 'propensity' for acting, and that acting occurs with non-zero time steps, not continuously. This is the 'propensity interpretation' of quantum mechanics, initiated by Heisenberg and Popper. Because of the finite time steps, propensities exist and persist from one event to another actualization. Between events, therefore, they are the substances of quantum things.

We talk about mental information, and ask "what property of substance, makes it amenable to human cognition". You (like many others) are asking, 'what is the stuff of mind?'. My answer is an extrapolation of what I said above for quantum physics. It is 'potentiality' or 'propensity' but now of mental kinds. What is that, you ask? Do I know it? Yes: I say. It is the 'love' or 'desire' that make a person. For loves and desires are what in us persons that does persist. Again we make actualizing decisions intermittently. Between those decisions it is our love which persist. Love is our mental/personal substance. Just (certainly not!) material substance!

Quantum objects are propensity-substances in various forms. Those forms are the wave functions of quantum theory.
Mental objects are love-substances in various forms. Those forms are the information of mental kind, a.k.a thoughts and perceptions. The actions of love (a.k.a. decisions) have physical effects.

These ideas are based on the ideas of the kind Aristotle might have had without much effort, though in fact he did not. Just remember that there are two kinds of substances (at least), and the kinds are not reduced to another, or aggregates of other kinds. It is the job of physicists and psychologists to determine how the two kinds of substances actually cause things, and hence what they actually do.

There are functional correspondences between the way physical and mental things exist and operate, even though the substances involved are completely different and can never be transformed one into another.

Spiritual Physics

Streamed live on May 11, 2015

Is there a connection between spirituality and physics? What is the nature of the mind? In this episode, host Curtis Childs from the Swedenborg Foundation and featured guest and physicist Dr. Ian J. Thompson explore the answers to these questions from spiritual and scientific perspectives.

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

Special thanks to our featured guest Dr. Ian J. Thompson. Dr. Thompson is a nuclear physicist in the Nuclear Theory and Modeling Group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA, having until 2006 been a professor of physics at the University of Surrey, UK. His research deals with the coupled-channels and few-body models for nuclear structure and reactions, especially concerning halo nuclei. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics.

----------------------------------------­----------------------------------------­----------

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

Book Expo at Bryn Athyn College on Saturday April 11

Bryn Athyn College

Book Expo 2015
Science and Spirituality throughout History

April 11, 2015
9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Brickman Center, 2945 College Drive,
Bryn Athyn, PA 19009

Join us for a day of books and talks.
Browse, read, discuss, and take some home!

• Follow spirituality weaving through early history, sciences, philosophy,
  medicine, abolition of slavery, child labor rights, and more
  
• Learn new spiritual paradigms and envision the afterlife
  
• Learn the why of two Testaments and even a third
  
• Join authors for short talks, followed by Q & A
  

Enjoy a great variety of books!

A sampling of book titles publishers

• Osteopathy and Swedenborg
  
• Starting Science From God
  
• Religion and Science: Big Bang and Chaotic Dynamics
  
• Swedenborg’s Hidden Influence on Kant
  
• Swedenborg, Fourier and the America of the 1840’s
  
• The Triune Word
  
• Swedenborg’s Scientific Works
  

• Bryn Athyn College Press,
• Swedenborg Scientific Association
• Fountain Publishing
• Swedenborg Foundation
• General Church of the New Jerusalem Publications 
• Ian Thompson

Organizer: Lisa Childs: ncapbooks@gmail.com 

More details at www.swedenborgstudy.com/bookexpo.htm 

Starting Science From God: An Evening Talk in Chicago on June 6.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 7-9 PM

STARTING SCIENCE FROM GOD

with physicist Ian Thompson

Many of us sense there is something real beyond the scope of naturalistic science. But what? Must mental and religious lives always remain a mystery and never become part of scientific knowledge? Can theism ever be connected with science?

Professor Ian Thompson will explain a new rational approach to combining science and theism. He presents theism as a scientific theory, explaining its basic postulates, consequences and predictions as simply as possible and without paradox. Dr. Thompson shows how a following of core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of materials which should appear in the universe. 

We will see if those predictions agree with the world as we observe it, both externally in nature and internally in our minds. In fact, they mesh surprisingly well with the structure of reality already revealed by modern quantum field theory and by theories of developmental stages in human minds. 

The result is a promising new rational theory encompassing theology, psychology and physics. 

Dr. Ian Thompson is a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey in England, where until 2006 he was Professor of Physics. For more information see his website, Ian Thompson

LOCATION: 77 W. Washington St., 17th floor,

                 Chicago, Illinois.

DATE:         Friday, June 6, 2014

TIME:         7-9 PM; refreshments 6-7 PM.

FEE:           $10. 

Many of us sense there is something real beyond the scope of naturalistic science. But what? Must mental and religious lives always remain a mystery and never become part of scientific knowledge? Can theism ever be connected with science?

Professor Ian Thompson will explain a new rational approach to combining science and theism. He presents theism as a scientific theory, explaining its basic postulates, consequences and predictions as simply as possible and without paradox. Dr. Thompson shows how a following of core postulates of theism leads to novel and useful predictions about the psychology of minds and the physics of materials which should appear in the universe. 

We will see if those predictions agree with the world as we observe it, both externally in nature and internally in our minds. In fact, they mesh surprisingly well with the structure of reality already revealed by modern quantum field theory and by theories of developmental stages in human minds. 

The result is a promising new rational theory encompassing theology, psychology and physics. 

Dr. Ian Thompson is a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey in England, where until 2006 he was Professor of Physics. For more information see his website, Ian Thompson

LOCATION: 77 W. Washington St., 17th floor,

                 Chicago, Illinois.

DATE:         Friday, June 6, 2014

TIME:         7-9 PM; refreshments 6-7 PM.

FEE:           $10. 

Hold a seat at: http://www.loopions.org/programsandclasses.html 

CANCELED

Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Theistic Science

One common alternative to the theory of natural selection is the theory of intelligent design. The intelligent design theory, however, is deliberately limited, as it does not attempt a causal explanation. It tries to develop techniques to examine physical organisms and then to determine whether or not that examination provides evidence for the existence of an intelligence in the coming to be (or design) of those organisms. Strictly, it is neutral on whether the intelligence is God or whether it might be previously-existing extra-terrestrial beings who have (say) genetically-engineered the organism. Because intelligent design theory does not produce causal accounts, it is often criticized as lacking in predictive power. It does make general ‘structural’ predictions about the forms expected to occur within living organisms, but it will never, it seems, yield the detailed prior and conditional probabilities necessary to form Bayesian arguments of the kind that many scientists use to assess the likelihoods of the hypotheses they are considering.

Intelligent design theory has generated an extraordinary amount of animosity from mainstream (naturalistic) scientists. They often accuse it of being false. Then they simultaneously accuse it of being non-scientific because non-falsifiable!  

By comparison, the theistic science that I advocate on this blog is advocating a much stronger theory than intelligent design since it cannot be neutral about ‘the nature of the designer’. We start from the assumption that God exists, as being itself and life itself, and argue that causal explanations of evolution cannot be purely natural.

Another common alternative to natural selection is creationism, where different species are created individually and specifically by God according to the first chapter of Genesis that culminates in the creation of man (and woman). These acts of creation, with apparently whole new populations of plants or animals coming into existence, would have been rather spectacular to watch!  Are such special creations possible according to theistic science?  The answer, I have argued, is no.

Evolution within Theism: a Summary of the Main Options

1. God cannot create self-sustaining organisms immediately: nothing else is life itself.

2. God cannot create robust theistically-sustained organisms immediately:

•  God cannot create permanent beings that are fully formed, except insofar as there are prior physical events that form the foundation and outer framework for the dispositions of the new being. What God can immediately create are physical events themselves. Everything else takes longer. There are no instant adults.
• To create permanent and robust individuals, they must be developed so that, at every stage of their life, they have a substantial history of physical actions in the past and mental and spiritual lives built on that.
• Since not even God can create history afterwards, this means that a longer and slower process of creation is needed if a race of people is to be developed who have fully-developed and long-lasting characters to be loved and to love God in return.
• Hence some process of ‘descent by modification’.

When spiritual or mental ideas are produced immediately, they do not ‘have a life of their own’. Rather, they disappear again when the attention goes elsewhere, unless some physical effect has been produced. (Our memory must involve such effects.)

Hence, for biological evolution, the main theistic options are:

Theistically-filtered evolution:

• The very fact of discrete degrees means that plants and animals must receive specific cognitive and affective dispositions, according to their biological form.
• Even if God took no active involvement in the history of our earth’s species (as Darwin wanted), beings will still be favored if their forms well receive mental life.
• This gives a tendency of evolution to make beings approach full mental reception.
• We hope that this is a tendency toward the human form. I think so.

Theistically-driven evolution:

• If God took active involvement in biological history, then he could specifically change the genetic structure of species, so that new species were born. And do this widely, to make a new population. This is driving the production of new species.

Thus we have three competing theories:

1. neo-Darwinian theory: random mutations, genetic drift and recombination, natural selection (no influence from God, except perhaps through physical laws),
2. theistically-filtered evolution: random mutations, drift and re-combination, so there is both natural and theistic selection (God gives influx by laws of discrete degrees)
3. theistically-driven evolution: preselected and random mutations, genetic drift and recombination, along with both natural and theistic selection.

To be decided between by comparing the observed evidence with the various predictions of the several theories.

Note that these theories 2 and 3 go beyond the avowed scope of Intelligent Design theorists. They want 'merely' to first establish that intelligence was involved in the production of biological species. Here, in 'theistic science', we want to go further, and investigate the causes that produced the species (whether divine and/or spiritual and/or physical).

More discussion in a previous blog post.
And see also discussions by Jon Garvey on Theoretical Preferences and related posts.

Points from Chapter 26: Evolution of the book Starting Science From God.

Thinkers or Lovers? Anthropology for Persons

R.J. Snell, here, asks in the blog of the Society for Christian Psychology:

Is “love” enough around which to re-habilitate the necessary edifice of human self-understanding and normativity with any level of exactness and perspicacity?

I’d suggest yes, if, and only if, an exploration of love reveals something (1) intelligible, (2) normative, (3) structural, (4) self-referentially consistent, and (5) defining of our anthropology. To put it another way, I’m not suggesting we examine love abstractly, but that we examine our own concrete selves and subjectivity as the access point, and in so doing will discover human nature and human norms, but in a way less guilty of reifying our identity into “thinkers,” and without the tendency to force our own selves into correspondence with any theory about human nature. At the same time, it seems right to me that the basic impulse of the Western tradition—which is to identify a basic isomorphism between the way we are (our natures) and the way we ought to be (teleology)—is valuable and true. Ethics not rooted in the way we actually are is either groundless or ideological or both; politics out of keeping with our nature is either false or violent or both; accounts of flourishing unmoored from human nature tend to be unserious or oppressive or both.

The task, then, is to discover human nature as it actually is, and as it actually is in our own concrete empirical selves, and to rehabilitate normative accounts of our well-being and flourishing. And to do so by an analysis of love, but an analysis which is concrete, intelligible, and differentiated.

Something of a steep task, I suspect.

I have begun to describe work on this task:

• Does desire generate thought, or thought generate desire?
• What is mental substance?
• Trying to understand Spiritual Identity
• What is mind: Information or Substance?
• Can we conceive of mind-body dualism?
• Does Nondualism allow us to Love Others?

And Section 20.4 (Persons and their Identity) of my book (Starting Science From God):

The system of discrete degrees that comes from an analysis of theism suggests a possible solution to the problem of continued personal identity. In Section 6.5 we saw that, within an ontology of multiple generative levels, there was a sense in which the continued identity of a person could be attributed to some prior degree, especially if this prior degree were relatively unchanging. So, if the prior degree were strictly unchanging during a person’s lifetime, then we would have a means of identifying our personal identity both during our growth and changes in this life and possibly also after the death of our physical bodies. There would then be a core in us that would be the basis of our continued existence, and that could said to be our ‘true self’.

This core, according to our basic theism, is our most fundamental love. For God this core is the divine love. That is clearly his core and the basis of his continued divine identity. For us, it is the love that is the most prior generative degree that can be said to be ‘us’ rather than ‘someone else’. That love is the most constant underlying disposition in our life. It is like Plato’s ‘self-moving soul.’ Let us call this most constant underlying disposition our principal love. Because the principal love produces our life, it is recognizable by its effect of producing a ‘theme of our life’. We agree with Hume that this identity is not immediately apparent to our introspection, but that does not make it any less real. Along with dispositions in general, our principal love can be tested by examining skills, character, and performances when there are few or no external constraints, by examining affections in action and in the voice, and so on. Just as physicists test dispositions by experiments and not by mere inspection, so our own identities could be inferred by examining all our characteristic actions more easily than by introspection.

This concept of personal identity as principal love would be most useful to psychology and theology if that love were completely unchanged during our lifetime: from birth to death and even after bodily death. This would require it to keep all the same intrinsic properties even though its effects and relations may vary. Its relation to us will certainly vary as we grow up and later die. It would also be most useful if we could assume that no two people had the same principal love. Then we could be sure not to confuse any two people. Theistic religions claim that we have some kind of continued identity that survives bodily death. I offer the concept of principal love as a candidate for the needed kind of identity.

Charles Tart, on "Toward a Post-Materialistic Science"

Charles Tart has a recent post "Toward a Post-Materialistic Science – Materialism and Science", discussing a recent "small, working conference" he went to, and the ideas there for trying to improve science.

He reminds us

that Promissory Materialism is not a scientific theory, because scientific theories are generally required to be capable of falsification, and there is no way you can falsify the belief that anything will be explained in material terms someday.

So, in am important sense, the description in "post-materialist science” is redundant! He thinks science, by its 'true' nature, can deal with the new topics needed. Though, of course, there might still be "denial [that] can reach the level of the unethical and/or pathological". He gives a good example.

Is Naturalism a Conclusion from Science, or was it Presumed at the beginning?

David Tyler has been been commenting on a paper by Massimo Pigliucci about issues in the theory of evolution.

We should pay attention to Tyler's conclusions:

A science that presumes naturalism MUST necessarily end up as an atheistic science. It fails as science because this approach presumes what it then claims science has confirmed. This means that naturalistic science is not objective and is not able to follow the evidence wherever it leads. For example, this is why the advocates of abiogenesis focus their efforts on chemical evolution, as this is the only avenue that naturalistic science permits researchers to follow. Consequently, the information characteristics of life are underplayed and they hope for information to arise by currently unknown emergent processes. The evidence however, points to complex specified information being fundamental to life, which naturalistic science cannot concede. By contrast, theistic science does not prescribe or predetermine outcomes, but it can handle natural processes as well as recognise intelligent agency. We will make progress when multiple working hypotheses can be tested without prescribing philosophical presuppositions for science. This is where education should be heading, not enforcing naturalism as the essence of science.

In particular, we do need 'multiple working hypotheses': some based on naturalism, and some based on theism. This is to include the theistic science I have already suggested.

Evolution by Natural or Theistic Selection?

I have previously discussed how biological evolution can occur within a theistic framework, in my post Theistically Filtered Evolution and Theistically Driven Evolution.

I now recommend that you read a very useful discussion about the adequacy of natural selection (Darwinism) as the sole means of evolution (after mutations, drift, and other natural processes). This is from The OFloinn, who often takes a refreshing view of old issues.  (See, for example, his detailed history of the astronomies of Ptolemy and Galileo: "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown")

Is God Simple?

The question of whether God is 'simple' is recently being discussed, again.

We all agree that 'God is One', and has an essential unity. The issue is whether there is any kind of internal structure to God.

The discussion started with David Bentley Hart's recent book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.  One reviewer summarizes Hart's view as

First, there was a consensus among ancient philosophers and theologians regarding the simplicity of God. Divine simplicity can be stated in many ways, but it basically means that God has no parts. Or you could just say that God is immaterial (since anything material can be divided). Second, this consensus was shared by nearly all the world’s oldest religions. Third, this consensus is crucial for the Christian faith. It is, in fact, the only way to make sense of God, and thus it is fundamental for everything that Christians believe and say about the divine.

This kind of view, Vincent Torley reminds us, is a theological consensus. Torley quotes the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser:

As I have indicated in earlier posts, the doctrine of divine simplicity is absolutely central to classical theism. To say that God is simple is to say that He is in no way composed of parts – neither material parts, nor metaphysical parts like form and matter, substance and accidents, or essence and existence. Divine simplicity is affirmed by such Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, and Averroes. It is central to the theology of pagan thinkers like Plotinus. It is the de fide teaching of the Catholic Church, affirmed at the fourth Lateran council and the first Vatican council, and the denial of which amounts to heresy. (Classical theism, September 30, 2010.)

It should be noted that not only Christians, but Jews and Muslims, have traditionally affirmed the doctrine of God’s simplicity. According to the article on Divine Simplicity in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “the roots of [the doctrine of God's] simplicity go back to the Ancient Greeks, well before its formal defense by representative thinkers of the three great monotheistic religions— Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” It adds:

…representative thinkers of all three great monotheistic traditions recognize the doctrine of divine simplicity to be central to any credible account of a creator God’s ontological situation. Avicenna (980–1037), Averroes (1126–98), Anselm of Canterbury, Philo of Alexandria, and Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) all go out of their way to affirm the doctrine’s indispensability and systematic potential.

I [Torley] might add that the doctrine of Divine simplicity isn’t an invention of medieval theologians. It actually predates Christianity:

Christianity is in its infancy when the Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria (c. 30 B.C.E.– 50 C.E.) observes that it is already commonly accepted to think of God as Being itself and utterly simple. Philo is drawing on philosophical accounts of a supreme unity in describing God as uncomposite and eternal.

However, is it true?

Let me quote from George Porteous's book Emanuel Swedenborg: As a Philosopher, Metaphysician, and Theologian (text here), written in 1874:

Metaphysicians, since the sixth century, have all agreed that the Divine Being "is without body, parts, or passions," that He is a divine simplicity, divine essence or unity. The assertion that God is without parts, passions, and a form, amounts to the bold and blank declaration that "there is no God." It is this doctrine of the metaphysicians that is the basis of all that extreme imbecility exhibited and generated by the school-men and book-men respecting the nature of God and the faculties of man. The only hopeless mystics have been these metaphysicians. Though they lost the play of wisdom and insight, they endeavored to retain its gravity. They clutched at the reputation of being wise on the subject of Deity, and still they profess to know nothing of Deity! They built upon denials and assertions; and, in the words of the incomparable Droll—

     ^"They knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly."

To every human note of inquiry they answered—"Mum!" To the painful utterances of struggling souls—to the voice wailing after God, "O that I might find Him," these cold men of the schools replied, "The substance of all our knowledge concerning God is the knowing what he is not, rather than what he is," and more modernly expressed by Bishop Beverage, "We cannot so well apprehend what God is, as what he is not."

God is represented on the one hand as a "pure idea," and on the other as a pure divine simplicity; now, as a "luminous abyss, without bottom, without shore, without bank, without height, without depth, without laying hold of, or attaching itself to anything—pure infinity then as a "formative appetency," a "metaphysical ens," an "infinite point," "the great ether of the universe." And solemnly let us repeat it, the framers of these definitions maintain that we cannot do better, when thinking (?) of God, than to think of Him after the fashion indicated above! Think of a luminous abyss, of a bottomless, fathomless, shoreless, bankless, depthless being! Truly this is mockery to the thought.

In striking contrast to this medley of absurdities, Swedenborg comes as a liberating angel, giving us, if not the absolutely true or final views, at least such views of God as redeem the nature of the Divine from the misapprehensions of a dull, scholastic theology, and an imbecile metaphysics, and show how God in himself exists, and what attitude He maintains to man. He clearly demonstrates that a being without body, parts, or passions, is not a being at all. His reasoning on this point, though more profound and less rationalistic and materialistic than John Locke's, is substantially the same. This great and gifted English philosopher has stated that whatever "has no form and parts has no extension, and having no extension, has no duration, and thus no existence." This is the severe logic of material reasoning: but it contains a spiritual application. Apply this reasoning to the doctrines currently taught about God. If God is without body, parts, or passions, He has no existence; for, as before observed, that which has no form, extension, and no duration, has no existence—no being—is not. When we say, " Our Father who art in heaven," we are, according to the stem logic of the preceding argument, addressing a nonentity. Do not mistake us. We are not insinuating for a moment that God has material parts or passions; all we are bent on advocating is, that God is a personality—is the infinite Divine Substance—is the only real substantial Being, with parts, and affections, and form, in ever hallowed and sublime activity. And this is Swedenborg's doctrine; yet without a knowledge of his doctrine of discrete degrees, and the nature of life, influx, and form, it is impossible, in the brief space allotted to a lecture, to give you anything approaching a clear and candid view of his position. Sufficient, however, has been advanced on the nature of God, as stated by Swedenborg, to quicken thought, and suggest volumes for your meditation.