The Physical and the Metaphysical - science and religion

Lent 2020 - Day 27

For my brother, Marek

Last  Lent (or was it two Lents ago), Marek took me to task for using the word 'spiritual' too loosely, so I started using 'metaphysical' instead, to mean much the same thing. So I should define these terms then.

'Soul' or 'spirit' - the words sound archaic; unscientific. So I have taken to using 'consciousness' or 'awareness' - philosopher Richard Swinburne uses them interchangeably with 'soul' and 'spirit'. And so we move to the link between the world of religion and the word of science, and it is the notion of consciousness. Or spirit.

Consciousness - is it a field, or is it granular, and if so, what's its smallest unit of measurement (Planck length, Planck time*) asks Marek... Indeed - can one ever measure consciousness?

Damn good question! I would posit that consciousness would be analogous to gravity and mass; the more massive an object is, the more gravitational force is has. How that gravity works - science cannot yet tell us. At the macro level yes, but at the subatomic level, at Planck length, theories of gravity break down. General relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible. Science cannot (yet?) tell us how the two interact, yet interact they must - otherwise there'd be no universe.

As to consciousness - we're even further away from cracking that one. Consciousness over time is an interesting concept; we are acutely aware of how time can either be subjectively seem to drag or fly depending on what we're doing. My *PAFF* moment qualia flashbacks are always brief; evaporating like snowflakes on the palm of my hand. Are their length a measurable unit of consciousness over time? The function t must feature in any equation describing consciousness...

It's somewhere out there on the horizon

Suffice to say, the more advanced the life form, the higher its level of consciousness. We are unable to know one another's subjective experience (qualia); how can we do any more than guess what an elephant, whale, chimp or cat is subjectively experiencing at any given moment. Yet we are sure they are sentient. I recall Dorota Sumińska on TokFM talking about her days in veterinary school where she was asked to milk a cow on a farm. When the cow turned around to see an unfamiliar person approach, the look of surprise on its face persuaded her that cows are just as conscious as we are - except they cannot communicate it very well. Rats, mice, birds certainly possess sentience too. Fish? Prawns? Toads? I don't know.

[I am not a vegetarian but don't eat meat at Lent - I could quite easily come off meat for good, but cheese and fish I would find hard to abandon. Eating less meat is something we should all do for our planet's - and our species' future.]

Marek recently questioned my (over) use of the phrase 'subjective experience', and yet that's at the heart of my quest to reconcile the religious with the scientific. It stands at the very intersection of the two worlds. If I were to build my own religion, its reconciliation with science would be a key feature.

*'Planck time' (5.39 x 10^-44 second) is the shortest unit of time in the universe, the time it takes light to travel one Planck length (1.616 x 10^-35 second, the shortest unit of distance in the universe) in a vacuum. Both being discrete units, there is no thing as half a Planck time or a third of a Planck length; they are absolutes. What would the equivalent unit of consciousness be?

This time last year:
Marchin'

This time three years ago:
A leader for our times

This time four years ago:
Social justice - the Church and inequality

This time five years ago:
Google Street View comes to Poland