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The Basic Questions
What is the fundamental nature of the world?
How do we fit into It?
Our Basic Beliefs Shape Our Values
Our Values Shape Our Actions
Conflicting Basic Beliefs Generate Conflicting Actions!
Why are These Questions Important?
My Topic
What does basic physics say about:
The Nature of the World
Our Connection To It
The Preliminary Main Points
Contemporary basic physics is Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is fundamentally different from the classical mechanics of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
Quantum mechanics gives answers to our questions that are profoundly different from those given by classical mechanics.
The Classical-Physics Answer: Materialism
The Precepts of Classical Physics Say:
There exists a material universe consisting of tiny localized bits of matter that interact only with their close neighbors.
These interactions are governed by mathematical laws.
These laws entail that the material future is determined by the material past ALONE.
“ALONE” means
There is no reference to human thoughts, choices, or efforts.
This view is called “The Principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical”
Contrary to intuition, but intuition is claimed to be overruled by science!
Science Ideology and Dogma
An Inconsistency? One cannot rationally act
to achieve a physical effect while truly believing that
one’s conscious choices can have no physical effects.
What Does Contemporary Physics Say?
Quantum Mechanics Rescinds the Dogma of the Causal Closure of the Physical!
Yet the ideology continues to infect the thinking of many scientists and philosophers!
Classical Precepts Versus Quantum Precepts:“Quantum Uncertainty”
A Conflict Between the Empirical and Theoretical Aspects of Scientific Practice Quantum uncertainties at the atomic scale
if left unchecked, would bubble up, irrepressibly, to the macroscopic scale.
That would conflict with empirical observation!
“The moon would cover the whole night sky”
“Brain state would correspond to a smear of ideas”
Mind-Matter Parallelism-->Mind-Matter Interaction.
The Quantum Process of Measurement/Observationcreates a firewall that protects the Empirical Realm from unfettered intrusion of quantum uncertainties from the Theoretical Realm
This process specifies a highly nontrivial interface between the empirical and the theoretical aspects of scientific practice!
It specifies an intricate connection between Mind and Matter!
Von Neumann/Heisenberg Theory of Measurement/Observation
Each experience occurs in conjunction with an ACTION!
This action poses a Yes-or-No question.
Nature’s response, “Yes” or “No”, is registered in the realm of experience/mind.
Heisenberg: “a mathematics that represents…our knowledge…”
The “Action” Part of the Process of Observation/Measurement
The “Response” Part of the Process of Observation/Measurement
Process 1 Has No Known Sufficient Cause
Von Neumann calls the physical/theoretical aspect of the action part by the name “Process 1”.
It enters importantly into the physical dynamics!
But, it is not controlled or specified by any known rule or law: A Causal Gap!
Thus, Quantum Mechanics does not entail the Causal Closure of the Physical!
Process 3 and the Entry of Randomness
The answers to the questions posed by the Process 1 action are, according to quantum theory, random: they conform only to statistical regularities!
Dirac calls the choice of answer
“a choice on the part of nature”.
Randomness enters only into the answeranswer; not into the action that poses the question.
Process 1 and the Freedom of Action
Heisenberg call the choice of action,
“a choice on the part of the ‘observer’ constructing the measuring instruments and reading their recordings.”
Bohr says:
“The freedom of experimentation…corresponds to the free choice of experimental arrangements for which the quantum mathematical formalism offers the appropriate latitude.”
The Entry of Mind?
This choice of the action is “free”, in the specific sense that it is not specified by any known law.
But our choices of actions appear to be influenced by reasons!
There is no logical basis for rejecting the possibility that mind-based reason supplies the missing cause.
Indeed, allowing mind to fill this causal gap gives our experiential aspects a functional role to play in the unfolding of reality!
The Mind-Matter Connection
It is these choices of actions, not controlled by any known physical law, statistical or otherwise, but seemingly influenced by value-based reasons, that, in conjunction with the statistical Process 3 choices of feedbacks, controls what passes through the firewall.
This filtering process constitutes a highly nontrivial connection of mind to matter.
Conclusion 1
Quantum Mechanics rescinds the materialistic conception of human beings foisted upon us by the failed precepts of classical physics.
Conclusion 2
Quantum mechanics elevates our science-based image of ourselves from material automata to agents able to act rationally on the basis of values erected upon this science-based image of ourselves.
Conclusion 3
This self-image casts us as partial creators of an unfolding universe that is NOT controlled exclusively by the material aspects of reality alone.
Additionally
Quantum mechanics entails also a deep interconnectedness of spatially separate responses that is incompatible with the causal precepts of classical materialistic physics.
Summary
Physics has shifted from classical materialist physics to a quantum psycho-physics of the mind-matter universe.
Fundamental questions are thus opened up that are not necessarily completely resolvable within science itself.
That opens the door to meaningful dialogs with proponents of other approaches.
