Two Ways of Looking at Time, Cogito 1 (Jan 1987) 4-6,
pdf, html.
The Nature of Substance, Cogito, 2 (1988) 17-19,
pdf,
html. Modern physics has cast doubt on Newton's idea
of particles with definite properties. Do we have to go back to Aristotle
for a new understanding of the ultimate nature of substance?
Swedenborg and Modern Science, Network, 36 (1988) 3-8,
pdf,
html. This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth
of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772). Although he worked in the eighteenth
century, his investigations into the nature of physical, physiological and
spiritual processes are still relevant today, although they are not as
widely known as they deserve. In this article, I will briefly describe the
stages in Swedenborg's life, and outline his mature teachings with
particular relevance to what is relevant to the concerns of contemporary
science, and to the concerns of those wishing to extend that science.
Real Dispositions in the Physical World, British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, 39
(1988) 67-79,
jstor, pdf and
html. The role of dispositions in the physical world
is considered. It is shown that not only can classical physics be reasonably
construed as the discovery of real dispositions, but also quantum physics.
This approach moreover allows a realistic understanding of quantum
processes.
The Consistency Of Physical Law With Divine Immanence, Science &
Christian Belief 5 (1993) 19-36,
html,
pdf. A model is presented to show how the existence
of physical law could be a reasonable consequence of Divine Immanence in the
world of natural phenomena. Divine Immanence is seen as the continual
production of the principal causes or dispositions which enable created
things to act and change. It is argued that this model is physically
consistent, philosophically coherent, and theologically sound.
Are Quantum Physics and Spirituality related?, New Philosophy,
107 (2002) 333-355,
html,
pdf. Discussing questions concerning quantum physics
and spirituality together is particularly valuable in order to see the
connection between them from a New Church standpoint. An urgent reason for
discussing this link is that some people want to identify these things. The
feeling is widespread that somehow they are connected, but some "new age"
people want to say that quantum physics tells us about spirituality. We know
from Swedenborg that the connection is not quite so simple, so we need to
understand in more detail what is going on.
Discrete Degrees Within and Between Nature and Mind, 2008,
html,
pdf (a
book
chapter;
google books)
Examining the role of dispositions (potentials and propensities) in
both physics and psychology reveals that they are commonly derivative
dispositions, so called because they derive from other dispositions.
Furthermore, when they act, they produce further propensities. Together,
therefore, they appear to form discrete degrees within a structure of
multiple generative levels. It is then constructively hypothesized that
minds and physical nature are themselves discrete degrees within some more
universal structure. This gives rise to an effective dualism of mind and
nature, but one according to which they are still constantly related by
causal connections. I suggest a few of the unified principles of operation
of this more complicated but universal structure.
Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels, 2011, in
M. Su?ez (ed.),
Probabilities, Causes, and Propensities in Physics, Synthese
Library, Springer,
html,
pdf.
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.
Quantum mechanics and consciousness: Thoughts on a causal
correspondence theory, 2017, in S. Gosh et al (eds),
Quantum Physics &
Consciousness - Thoughts of Founding Fathers of Quantum Physics and other
Renowned Scholars", Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata,
html,
pdf. Which way does causation proceed? The pattern
in the material world seems to be upward: particles to molecules to
organisms to brains to mental processes. In contrast, the principles of
quantum mechanics allow us to see a pattern of downward causation. These new
ideas describe sets of multiple levels in which each level influences the
levels below it through generation and selection. Top-down causation makes
exciting sense of the world: we can find analogies in psychology, in the
formation of our minds, in locating the source of consciousness, and even in
the possible logic of belief in God.
How Influx into the Natural Shows Itself in Physics: A Hypothesis,
New Philosophy,
121 (2018) 284-294,
pdf.
In order to link fine-tuning in physics with spiritual influx, I propose
that the highest degree in physics is where ?ends? are received in physics.
By ends, I refer to what it is that determines the means or causes in
physics, and what it is that manages or influences to basis parameters
(masses and charge values) of the quantum fields. This is fine-tuning, in
the sense that it occurs not just for the whole universe (in the Big Bang,
for example), but locally. That is, this fine-tuning is different at each
time, and in point in space. Thus this influx can be specific to living
organisms, and can occur at all the needed scales and levels in psychology
and biology, namely every day and every micros-second of our lives.
How the Non-Physical Influences Physics and Physiology: a proposal,
Dualism Review 3 (2021) 1-13,
html,
pdf. The causal closure of the physical world is
assumed everywhere in physics but has little empirical support within living
organisms. For the spiritual to have effects in nature, and make a
difference there, the laws of physical nature would have to be modified or
extended. I propose that the renormalized parameters of quantum field theory
(masses and charges) are available to be varied locally in order to achieve
ends in nature. This is not adding extra forces to nature but rescaling the
forces which already exist. We separate metric time in 4 dimensions from
process time as the order of actualization of potentialities. This is to
allow iterative forward and reverse steps in metric time to influence
intermediate variations in the vacuum permittivities to move charged bodies
towards achieve specific targets at a later time. Then mental or spiritual
influx could have effects in nature, and these should be measurable in
biophysics experiments. With this proposal, we see after some centuries how
?final causes? could once again be seen active in nature.
Conference Presentations
How the Non-Physical Influences Physics and
Physiology: a proposal, 2021, talk on July 24 at SSE-PA Connections
2021: A combined meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration and the
Parapsychological Association,
video,
slides,
pdf. The causal closure of the physical world is
assumed everywhere in physics but has little empirical support within living
organisms. For the spiritual to have effects in nature, and make a
difference there, the laws of physical nature would have to be modified or
extended. I propose that the renormalized parameters of quantum field theory
(masses and charges) are available to be varied locally in order to achieve
ends in nature. This is not adding extra forces to nature but rescaling the
forces which already exist. We separate metric time in 4 dimensions from
process time as the order of actualization of potentialities. This is to
allow iterative forward and reverse steps in metric time to influence
intermediate variations in the vacuum permittivities to move charged bodies
towards achieve specific targets at a later time. Then mental or spiritual
influx could have effects in nature, and these should be measurable in
biophysics experiments. With this proposal, we see after some centuries how
'final causes' could once again be seen active in nature.
Getting Quantum Measurements to do something
Useful in Cognitive Psychology: Design of a Quantum-Like Epistemic Engine
for Fast Object Observations. 2022, talk on April 19 at
TSC2022: The Science of
Consciousness, Tuscon, AZ.
slides, pdf,
practice video. For the invariant recognition of external
objects, predictive processing is increasingly accepted as a plausible
account of how an organism uses prior knowledge of the world to make
hypotheses checked and corrected by incoming sensory information.
Implementation in the brain, however, is difficult because of the need to
store the large number of prior correlations as well as the probability
distributions used by the preferred Bayesian methods (whether direct or
Monte Carlo). It is also puzzling how these biological processes appear so
fast, given typical neural activation rates.
If a specialized kind of quantum system could function somehow adjoined to
the neural cortex, much progress can be made. There could then be a
measurement-based analog quantum system which can represent credences
naturally by wave-function magnitudes. Its initial states, time evolution
and measurement (selection) events could be as follows. The very large
number of stored correlations about objects in the world would be built into
the initial quantum system, each correlation as an entangled set of object
credences. The possible spatial translations, rotations (etc) needed to
generate sensory hypotheses would be implemented by Hamiltonian evolution of
the system generating further representative superpositions. Finally, a
particular measurement on the system would be determined by the sensory
input itself. Objects would be observed according to the sensory data from
the observation by the biological senses.
Combining these features, the quantum system becomes one of Paul
Churchland's "epistemic engines", but with predictive processing
capabilities. The function of the visual cortex is to collate the sensory
inputs to generate a quantum measurement on the internal epistemic engine.
That measurement would determine the existence (or otherwise) of the
component of the epistemic engine's quantum state with sensory data and the
objects causing that data.
This quantum epistemic engine proposal works (at least in theory) because
quantum states can store very many correlations, and because wave functions
ideally represent the credences needed for Bayesian inference. The
projection operators according to sensory content could follow Chalmers and
McQueen (2021) whereby whatever describes sensory states in the brain is
taken as super-position resistant and influencing the Lindblad evolution of
the density matrix. We still have the speed issue, since the probability of
a measurement on the epistemic engine matching the required sensory
component would be extremely small, and thus needs to be repeated until
successful.
Because of the current lack of knowledge concerning how measurement
selection events actually occur in physics, I speculate a little. I add to
the Chalmers model a new physics kind of asymmetric joint operator to
project simultaneously on the brain and on the epistemic engine, but with
all its probabilities determined on the neural side. in a kind of
epiphenomenalism. This would quickly transmit sensory information from one
side to the other. The speed speculation is why I call the epistemic engine
quantum-like. If the resulting predictions about object recognition were
experimentally verified in nature, that would be evidence for new quantum
systems and joint measurement events.
An Interface between Quantum Physics and Human Consciousness can be
found in the Sensory Level of the mind, talk on April 23 at
ISS2022: Swedenborg's Prism: Applications of Swedenborgian Spirituality
at Bryn Athyn, PA. slides,
pdf,
practice video.
Quantum physics is often boasted
as a return to mentality and idealism in the sciences, since measurement
processes are needed in quantum mechanics to achieve some definite outcome
when, as occurs very often, there are predicted superpositions of multiple
different outcomes. For is not measurement really an observation by a
person, and is not such observations really the operation of consciousness?
Does not then consciousness produce definite actual outcomes in the physical
world?
Looking at
the details, however, we see that quantum uncertainties within
superpositions are almost always on a very small scale, and only within
nuclei, atoms and small molecules. Discovery of larger-scale superpositions
is reported in newspapers, but those unusual configurations only occur in
the laboratory, not in the outside world. In most reality, quantum physics
is nearly the outmost physical degree and not composed of
consciousness. It may therefore be like the sensory mind, which
is the outermost mental degree as described by Emanuel Swedenborg. Quantum
processes are therefore not themselves mental, as many New Agers would
speculate.
The sensory
mind and quantum processes may nevertheless correspond to each other, in the
sense of Swedenborg as having similar structures and functions in their
details, even though they are made of discretely-different substances.
By now physicists have discovered a lot about quantum physics, but we still
know rather little about what goes on inside the sensory mind. We will
describe how we can learn about sensory processes by thinking from quantum
physics according to correspondences. We can propose, for example, how
vision can so quickly recognize objects whatever their distance,
orientation, occlusion and illumination. Computer vision takes many more
steps to do this systematically, as compared with the possible number of
neural steps in the brain in the time we take to recognize objects. We are
going to suggest that the sensory mind uses something like quantum
wave functions to represent degrees of credence, by correspondence to
physics using wave functions to represent degrees of probabilities.
Online only
Process Theory and the Concept of Substance, 1990,
html. Since the failure of both pure corpuscular and
pure wave philosophies of nature, process theories assume that only events
need to exist in order to have a physics. Starting from an ontology of
actual events, a dispositional analysis is shown here to lead to a new idea
of substance, that of a `distribution of potentiality or propensity'. This
begins to provide a useful foundation for quantum physics. A model is
presented to show how the existence of physical substances could be a
reasonable consequence of a theory of processes.
Layered Cognitive Networks, 1990,
html. An architecture is proposed in which
connectionist links and pattern-directed rules are combined in a unified
framework, involving the combination of distinct networks in layers.
Piaget's developmental psychology is used to suggest specific semantic
contents for the individual layers.
Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness: A Causal Correspondence Theory,
1990, html. We may suspect that quantum mechanics and
consciousness are related, but the details are not at all clear. In this
paper, I suggest how the mind and brain might fit together intimately while
still maintaining distinct identities. The connection is based on the
correspondence of similar functions in both the mind and the
quantum-mechanical brain.
Dualism in Descartes and Swedenborg, 2004, draft
html. Swedenborg used Descartes as a symbol of his
desired resolution of the mind-body problem in favour of ?spiritual influx?,
but we see that Descartes? position was substantially different in a number
of ways. We consider a number of modern objections and puzzles about
dualism, and how Descartes and Swedenborg each might respond.
Pragmatic Ontology: Identifying Propensity as Substance, 2004,
draft
html. In a pragmatic approach to ontology, what is
necessary and sufficient for the dispositional causation of events is
interpreted realistically, and postulated to exist. This leads to a general
concept of `substance', Aristotle's underlying `matter', as being
constituted by dispositions, and not just being the 'bare subject' for those
dispositions. If we describe the forms of objects according their
spatiotemporal range, then this form is best viewed as a field, and
substances themselves are best conceived as `fields of propensity'. With the
help of such a concepts, we can try to understand some of the more
mysterious quantum features of nature, such as the nature of 'measurements'
and the reasonableness of `non-localities', not to mention the duality of
wave and particle descriptions.
Power and Substance, 2009, draft
html An ontological extension of dispositional
essentialism is proposed, whereby what is necessary and sufficient for the
dispositional causation of events is interpreted realistically, and
postulated to exist. This ?generative realism? leads to a general concept of
?substance? as constituted by its more fundamental powers or propensities
appearing in the form of some structure or field. This neo-Aristotlean view
is reviewed historically, and in respect to quantum physics.
Books
Philosophy of Nature and Quantum Reality, 1993,
html;
Buy. The development a first-principles ontology
for processes with only one generative level, and hence very simple compared
with the multilevel structures here. It does, however, include a detailed
description of the relations between potentiality and actuality,
extensiveness and space, and how `being' remains constant during changes.
Starting Science From God, 2011.
Website for the book. Many of us these days 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? In this well-argued book, physicist Ian Thompson makes a case for
a 'scientific theism'. He 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. These predictions
constitute a kind of 'theistic science'. It meshes 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 serious
look at a promising new rational structure encompassing theology, psychology
and physics.
Disclaimer: This website is not affiliated with any of the organizations or
institutions at which Dr Thompson is employed and/or with which he is
affiliated.
