A work that was formative and influential in developing my thinking on science and spirituality was Stuart A. Kauffman's Humanity in a Creative Universe. A present from my brother, it served as the basis of my series of Lenten blog posts for 2018.
Kauffman's central idea is that the rejection of Newtonian certainties and their replacement with quantum possibilities has allowed magic back into our lives. Mechanistic physics, in which everything is determined by laws of motion and thermodynamics, is good at explaining reality at the meso-level that we perceive; but what goes on at the micro- and macro-levels of the sub-atomic and pan-galactic is not to be explained in Newtonian terms.
Fundamental to the Newtonian paradigm is the notion that the possibilities constituting reality are always definable and therefore fixed ahead of time. Yet we now know that at the sub-atomic level, the notion of particles/waves existing in superposition (exemplified by Schrodinger's cat, alive and dead at the same time until a conscious observer looks) breaks down that paradigm. Instead, we have, as Kauffman calls them, 'possibles' and 'actuals'. When a particle is in superposition, it is a 'possible'. Only after we have measured it, witnessing the collapse of the wave function, does the 'possible' becomes an 'actual'. Zero and one becomes either zero or one.
Without the presence of the conscious observer, the particle remains in superposition, and we just don't know what the outcome will be. And here I'll briefly jump back to the 18th century, and the Anglo-Irish philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who argued against Newton back in the day. Two hundred years before the birth of quantum mechanics, Bishop Berkeley stated that a conscious observer was necessary to observe the Universe – in effect the mind of God was needed to hear the sound of a tree falling in the forest if no one was there. Consciousness is essential for the existence of matter. There was no scientific evidence to back up this line of argument, no experiments with a photon gun or a Geiger counter, only intuition. Yet our understanding of the subatomic realm today suggests that Bishop Berkeley's subjective idealism may indeed be an accurate description of reality.
The key question within this new paradigm is the extent to which we can will possibles to become actuals. Kauffman has recently written a paper with Dean Radin (he that sceptics love to scorn), entitled Is the Brain-Mind Quantum? A Theoretical Proposal with Supporting Evidence. The paper's long list of scientific citations includes an article by Etzel Cardeña which I wrote about last year, a peer-reviewed study of psychic abilities, The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review, published in 2018. As with Prof Cardeña's article, Kauffman and Radin are clear about the results – the effect is weak, but it's clearly there, above chance, experimentally demonstrable and not random. Whilst Prof Cardeña says that something's going on, but we don't know what it is, Kauffman and Radin attribute it to quantum effects within the mind.
They conclude: "Today, with growing evidence for quantum biological effects, the plausibility that some aspects of brain function are quantum is increasing... it is time to take the evidence for quantum mind, and thus psi, more seriously." The paper examines experiments in which participants try to alter the outcome of a randomly generated event, by willing it to happen. Here's the discussion:
For the first time since Newton, psi experiments in general and psychokinetic studies in particular could scientifically allow for a “responsible free will.” In these experiments, participants “try” to alter the probability of truly random events, or to alter the fringes in an optical interference pattern. “Try” is another word for “Will”. In our normal lives, we believe that we convert intended Possibles to Actuals all the time by choosing and doing, where counterfactually we could have chosen and done otherwise.
The core question is this: Can such a free will be responsible? In Quantum Mechanics, the outcome of measurement is ontologically indeterminate, breaking the causal closure of classical physics.
If the psychokinetic studies are valid, then a human can not only “try” to alter the outcome of a physical system by intentionally altering the probabilities of the outcomes of measurement, but their will can actually accomplish their desire. Thus, Mind trying and doing can alter the outcome of “actualization” to behave non-randomly. A responsible free will is not ruled out. The proposal that mind mediates actualization of potentials contains a deep difficulty: Before, e.g, human minds, measurements nevertheless occurred. How? One answer is a form of panpsychism where interacting quantum variables measure one another. This view of Quantum Mechanics is consistent with the Strong Free Will Theorem that says that electrons “freely decide” to become Up or Down upon measurement.
Wow. I think Bishop Berkeley, were he around today, could hold such a view quite freely.
I have written before about the possibility of the human body being a receiver of universal consciousness; but can it also serve as a transmitter? A transmitter of consciousness with the power to alter future outcomes? If so, it is extremely weak, though demonstrably present. But present in everyone? I doubt it. Something that we can strengthen through exercise? Possibly.
So – summarising my own thinking on free will; we have far less material free will than we'd like to think we have. It is the world that pushes us around, not us that push the world around. But I do believe that there's a deeper free will, at the metaphysical level, where what we will can be made manifest, although this must align itself with the Cosmic Purpose (i.e., there's an ethical dimension to this).
God the Father (the Past – what has happened). God the Son (the Present – what is happening, current environmental factors); God the Holy Spirit (the Future – willing positive outcomes).
Underpinning all this is gratitude; it is the energy source that powers your will.
"If you will it Dude, it is no dream" (Leb. 7:19)
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