“The most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.”
— Wolfgang Pauli
There is a widespread presumption among Western secular thinkers that science is the only means of establishing truths about the nature of the world. The contents of the cosmos are exclusively physical, objects and the forces that affect them, stuff that can be quantified. Qualitative phenomena are secondary, entirely derivative of physical processes. In this view, notions of mind, spirit, and sentience are just the human-felt effects of those physical processes, nothing more than electrochemical reactions in our brains. There has also been a similarly widespread belief that those physical processes were exclusively the result of preceding or previously existing conditions or causes. In this deterministic view, the phenomena of consciousness– cognition, sentience, behaviors– are entirely the result of previous events and conditions (largely through genetics). We have no control over what we do; free will is a fiction of human imagination– which is itself just another derivative of neurological processes.
Quantum physics and chaos theory, however, have shown that the world does not behave in an exclusively deterministic manner. Probabilities and randomness are part of the fundamental nature of matter. And although we have no idea how it works or what it means, we do know that the predictions of quantum mechanics are batting 1,000. It is clear enough that quantum mechanics provides a fundamental description of matter that will be unchanged 10,000 years from now, as will Newton’s laws of motion for larger objects (modified by Einstein’s relativity for high-velocity objects). At the atomic and sub-atomic level, what we think of as discrete objects dissipate into a froth of quantum fields. There are no objects at the bottom of the chain of matter, only fields of energy. Just how those fields resolve into penguins and tables is a mystery that, somehow, appears to involve consciousness.
Modern physics has revealed
Among the bizarre findings about the behavior of matter at a quantum level is the fact that what we have long thought of as particles– electrons, protons, even atoms– can also act as waves (or, more accurately, wave functions). Indeed, in laboratory experiments “particles” are only seen as discrete objects under an extremely narrow range of conditions; in all other cases, what we call “particles” appear as waves.1 Although the term “wave” is technically inaccurate in the context of quantum stuff, it is a commonly used abbreviation– e.g., Wikipedia’s entry for “wave-particle duality. In order to “see” electrons as discrete objects, the experimental setup has to be intentionally configured to look for electrons. This phenomenon has led to claims that quantum mechanics proves that “consciousness creates reality,” or something to that effect. Althought that assertion is not as incredible as it first appears (see an expansion of this in this project’s section “Encephalization”), it has led to considerable mischief in “new age” narratives.2 See “Beyond the quantum woo-niverse: getting to grips with the fundamentals of quantum mechanics” by Philip Moriarty in Physics World
actually exist in an indeterminate state of
There is far more to the cosmos than science can reveal. Scientism, the idea that science alone can provide truth about the nature of the world, is an impediment to deeper and broader understanding. Physicalism, the idea that the cosmos consists entirely and exclusively of physical stuff, is inherently assumed in scientism and explicitly believed by many if not most contemporary scientists and philosophers. Naturalism and scientism have become synonymous in today’s common usage. Natural processes are presumed to be exclusively physical. Quantum physics has demonstrated that there are no “rock-bottom” objects, that at its most basic level matter is an indeterminate mix of probabilities.
We have a choice about how we view the world.
There is no single “reality out there.” The word “reality” has lost much of its meaning with the advent of quantum mechanics.
Magical thinking is widely regarded today as a consequence of ignorance and superstition, the result of imagination uncontrolled or unfiltered by facts and scientific explanations. But it is only delusional if it is not tested against the process of science.
Can we understand the full breadth and depth of the cosmos, of reality, exclusively through modern sciences?3 I use the term “cosmos” for “harmonius and orderly universe”, in the sense it was used by Pythagorus in the 6th century BCE. Is everything that exists necessarily physical, including cognition and sentience, a sense of purpose and meaning, and all other subjective phenomena? Or could the universe have fundamental, qualitative properties such as mind or spirit, something that is real even if it cannot be measured or otherwise accounted for through the tools of science? Question such as these have vexed philosophers and theologians (particularly in Western traditions) since the early 19th century, when what was then known as “natural philosophy” began evolving into what became the various and compartmentalized subjects of modern science.4 Astronomy, biology, and physics at first. See Wikipedia entry on Natural Philosophy for a good introduction.
Just about everyone in the modern scientific program, and many contemporary philosophers, are committed to the idea that the sciences can indeed provide a full accounting of the cosmos, at least in principle. At the core of this committment is the inseperably related belief that reality is exclusively physical, that nothing exists other than matter and the forces that affect it. Perhaps it is true that fundamental reality consists exclusively of quantifiable stuff, things that can be measured (at least in principle).But what it is not? Does the fact that something cannot be measured mean that it cannot be real? And at a fundamental level, not derivative (such as pain stemming from the activation of specific nerve cells). What if there are fundamental, qualitative properties inherently outside the domain of scientific investigation? What if what we currently refer to as mind or spirit are as basic as mass or charge?
These are not questions that can be answered through the sciences. They reflect two very different systems of belief, neither of which can be confirmed or denied through the tools of science. But although science cannot explicitly refute a belief system (such as a supernatural creation of the universe), it can offer an overwhelming array of evidence that supports an alternative– as it does with natural selection. The question of whether the universe is purely physical (as opposed to the existence of fundamental mind or similar) does not have an array of evidence anything like natural selection or the geologic timescale; indeed, it doesn’t seem to have much evidence at all. Belief in a purely physical cosmos appears to have emerged as empiricism and the mechanical model of the universe began to replace theistic narratives in the 17th century. Although various forms of fundamental-mind narratives were prominent through the 19th century,5 Including realism, phenomenology, various panpsychist views, and esoteric narratives such as Theosophy spiritualismm. See XYZ for a brief summary of these and related schools of thought. they were pushed out of the sciences and into philosophy– largely because the reductive, mechanical worldview– which science came to be definde by– had neither a need nor a place for non-material narratives.
But the idea that qualitative properties are part and parcel of the fabric of the cosmos has been gaining support among more than a few physicsts and philosophers.
That support is for now more along the lines of explaining why a new paradigm is needed, usually offering some generaliies but few specifics about what such a new framework might look like or include. This is as it should be for academic philosophers, given the very early stage we’re at in considering such a wide-ranging reconsideration of how we look at the world.
But I am neither a philsopher nor an academic– just an ordinary person who believes we should be focusing much more on things that we can change and much less on abstractions that seem to have no application. So I’m willing to speculate on specifics of a possible framewok that appear to be both true and actionable– things that can be applied in one’s life. I’m also ok with the provisional use of contentious terms when they seem to fit the current need and there doesn’t appear to be a better choice. “Mind,” “spirit, and”magic” are some of those terms. They are words that are useful when flexibly considered in their intended context (which may or may not be sufficiently clear), but are loaded with baggage from their use in other settings. In my view, some forms of magical thinking are compatible with modern science persd and extremely helpful if not essential for understanding the extraordinary breadth and depth of fundamental mind.
Modern physics has revealed that what was long taken for granted as essentially immutable matter is, at bottom, a formless froth of energetic interactions. The subatomic particles that make up atoms— and, by both theory and experiment, larger objects— only appear as discrete objects when an experiment is explicitly set up to look for particles.6 Subatomic objects (e.g., electrons) exist with the potential to be “seen” in the form of either particles or waves (or, more accurately, waveforms). The form is determined by the type of experiment: look for particles, you’ll see particles. Moreover, under most detection experiments, electrons are observed as waves; they only appear as particles under a specific and narrow set of conditions. There is no theoretical boundary for this phenomenon, no point at which an object is too large to exhibit quantum effects of manifesting as a particle or a wave. The largest objects observed as waves to date are 60C atoms, or “Buckyballs.” See XXX for more on this. Otherwise, quantum level matter appears to be a formless sea of waveforms and energy. We nonetheless have planets, penguins and all else, even if how matter forms from that sea of energy remains a mystery— as does how it all arose from the Big Bang and eventually settled into the extraordinarily narrow conditions that allowed life to form and evolve.7 The universe appears to be “finely tuned” for life, as argued with the Anthropic Principle
But the behaviors of matter at a quantum level are basic and non-controversial findings of science, truths about the world that are beyond serious question. But it does not necessarily follow that the the world is therefore composed exclusively of matter and that mind and all qualitative phenomena are just derivatives of physical processes— as most contemporary scientists and philosophers believe. Quantum physics has shown that consciousness is somehow inextricably connected to what we perceive as matter. There appears to be scientific support for— or at the very least not a refutation of— the idea that mind (spirit, non-material aspects, or similar term) is fundamental to all that is. There is good reason to believe that mind is as fundamental as mass or charge, and perhaps even more important.
If true, the idea of fundamental mind would (or should) affect just about every aspect of human life. It would be be as revolutionary as any idea throughout history, if not more. But it is not an idea that can be tested through conventional scientific means, as was the idea that the Earth moved and revolved around the sun. The notion of fundamental mind is, in the end, a matter of belief— no more nor less than the idea of that the universe is a strictly physical place.
Most contemporary scientists and Western philosophers believe that the universe consists completely and exclusively of physical objects and forces that affect them, and, by extension, that the laws of physics can at least in principle explain everything. There are no supernatural entities, no spooks, souls or fundamental, immaterial properties. The world and all it contains is accidental, strictly physical, and fundamentally independent of any awareness of it.
Most educated persons in western society accept the physicalist narrative and its wide range of consequent beliefs. In this view, life and consciousness are strictly the result of evolutionary adaptations to random genetic variations. Evolution has neither direction nor purpose; complex forms of life are as accidental as the simpler forms that preceded them. Consciousness is a derivative phenomenon, an individual’s perception of electrochemical reactions in a brain— and an extraordinarily rare occurrence in an otherwise cold and sterile universe.8 That is, of course, a simplistic summary of a wide range of related ideas— but I believe it’s a reasonable, partial representation of the overall physicalist conception. is taken as a given for this discussion. Also, some thoughtful and well-educated persons accept the findings of science but hold that a supernatural agent is somehow behind it all. Although we can and often do imagine ourselves to be free agents, all thoughts, actions or events in our lives— indeed, every event in the universe— is determined not through anything we control but by the laws of physics and a set of initial conditions that preceded it. We may believe we are in charge of some part of our destiny, but by the physicalist view we ultimately have no more control over any given event than does a baseball moving towards home plate. Notions of free will, spirit, and meaning are all fictions– useful fictions, perhaps, but ultimately nothing more than stories we create to explain phenomena that have yet to be adequately described through physical sciences.9 In a purely physical world, all scientific disciplines derive from physics. See “Physicalism” in this projedt for an expanded discussion and references.
A further presumption of the physicalist paradigm is that there is a single “reality” that exists independently of any awareness of it but that we can observe and measure. As Hillary Putnam put it:10 Hillary Putnam, from Reason, Truth, and History p. 49, about the “externalist” perspective— quoted in The Mind Matters, p. 14. In fairness to the complexities of academic philosophy: Putnam would likely disavow the label of “physicalist,” as he believe the term has a much narrower meaning than is used here.
“…the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one true and complete description of ‘the way the world is’. Truth involves some sort of correspondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things.”
The conception of a purely physical world has strengthened over time (particularly during the 20th century) and has now morphed into scientism– the idea that the sciences are the only source of truth about the nature of reality, including consciousness.
But the idea that science will someday fully account for the enormous complexities of sentiece and cognition– not to mention inherently subjective abstractions such as morality, values, meaning and purpose– is simply too incredible to accept. It appears that scientism dominates the metaphysical landscape more from lack of a credible alternative than from evidence, theory, or logic. Belief in an exclusive standard of truth through the sciences is simply a belief, as there is no conceivable experiment that could demonstrate that such a conception is true. that the sciences can fully account for all that is.
falls short for those of us who fully subscribe to the demonstrable power of science but who also believe– often very deeply– that mind or spirit are fundamental aspects of reality. Caught between the orthodoxy of mainstream science and our intuitive sense,11 Advocates of the scientistic view point out the dangers of relying on one’s intuition, pointing out that opponents of the heliocentrism argued that a stationary earth was common sense and intuitively true– that if the earth really was moving then one would feel the motion, and unattached objects would be flung off the surface. Although an intuitive sense for matters of sentience is fundamentally different from matters of physics, these sorts of criticisms should be thoughtfully considered: see XXX for an expanded discussion of the difficulties and complexities of considering a fundamentally different paradigm of the world. many of us end up with a partial (and uncomfortable) dualism: fully believing in the explanatory power of science but also believing that the sciences alone cannot sufficiently account for the extraordinary breadth and depth of what we percieve and experience. Just where to draw the line between the two is, of course, an open and sigificant question.
Although there have been challenges to strict physicalism from a number off contemporary academics, most philosophers of mind remain committed to the conventional orthodoxy of a purely physical universe wherein all subjective phenomena are derivatives of or indistinguishable from electrochemical processes. Philosophy of mind has become something of a minor industry in technical papers and conferences, all too often with mind-numbing complexity and jargon. Reduced to basics, however, a broad theme of physicalism tends to dominate the discussions.
During last several decades, however, challenges to the scientistic conception have re-emerged from the physics community. Almost a century ago, the founders of quantum mechanics understood that the discoveries of quantum behavior of matter undermined if not collapsed the conception of a deterministic universe, and by extension, the classical belief that the universe could at least in principle be fully understood by examining it’s smallest parts. Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr and other who introduced the quantum nature of matter realized that the classical physics of Isaac Newton’s legacy was only an approximation of a far more complex, probabilistic reality. Some of their reflections were downright mystical. But early expressions of the potentially mystical aspects of quantum discoveries faded away in the post-war frenzy of technogical appliations. Far worse, the post-war academic physics community in the U.S. outright banished consideration of metaphysical or philosophical questions about quantum mechanics.12 See What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, when John Stewart Bell introduced his now-famous theorem on quantum inequality Bell’s Theorem, that pursuing questions about the “meaning” of quantum mechanics became respectable.13 See What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker
Those questions, no longer considered taboo by the physics community, are now widely explored under the emerging discipline: foundations of physics. For some of us, the most significant of them are questions related to philosophy of mind and, even more broadly, the fundamental nature of reality. Quantum foundations has opened the door to serious discussions about whether, and to what extent, the discoveries of modern physics support a broadly-inclusive worldview that can accomodate (or at the very least not refute) substantive and longstanding ideas about mind from religious, esoteric and mystical traditions. Although far from being widely accepted by the scientific community, there is sufficient evidence available to conclude that
along with the findings of modern physics.
and, more significantly, appear to show that consciousness (or mind) is fundamental to all that is. These findings, and the consequent realization that physics itself was no longer on the solid foundation it had been so revered for, are what led Wolfgang Pauli to conclude that we need “a new idea of reality.” 14 For example, see Henry P. Stapp “Clarifications & Specifications In Conversation with Harald Atmanspacher”. January 2006, Journal of Consciousness Studies 13(9)Attmanspacher
The basic premise is simple enough: the universe, reality, includes both physical and non-physical stuff. Science has all but exhaustively cataloged the physical stuff, so not much more needs to be said about that. Questions about the non-physical stuff, many as there obviously are, will be addressed along with related questions and ideas. Good starting points include panpsychism and the matter-psyche continuum in some versions of neutral monism. and a fundamentally different conception of reality is needed for anything approaching a complete picture of the world.15 No one can seriously claim that such a complete picture could emerge soon; it may be forever fuzzy.
I accept the premise of fundamental mind. In this view, the scientific paradigm of a purely physical universe is incomplete– not wrong, just incomplete– because it does not include non-material properties as fundamental.
There is no serious question that our contemporary knowledge of physics could someday be overturned in a manner similar to the 17th century collapse of the Aristotelian worldview— it will not. Newton’s equations of motion will never be shown to be false.16 Newton’s laws of motion are the same as they were in the 18th century, although they were modified over a century ago for very high-velocity objects by Einstein’s theory of relativity. But that does not mean that a scientistic worldview– a conception of the world based on reductive physicalism– is or could someday be complete, even in principle. Although most of the scientific community remains committed to the basic idea that science is the final arbiter of truth about the nature of the world, challenges to scientism have been steadily increasing over the past few decades.
Any worldview worth adopting must readily accommodate the subjective, experiential aspects of life– the stuff that is far more important than a grand theory of everything.
Although there are many critics of scientism and increasing challenges to the worldview of reductive materialism, there seems to be relatively little in terms of just what to replace it with.
Thomas Nagel is a strong and articulate critic of both theism and reductive materialism whose arguments I find strongly persuasive. His ideas, and my interpretations and extensions of them, are woven throughout this project. Nagel holds that there must be a middle-ground between theism and physicalism, a territory that he labels a “tertium quid.” But Nagel stops short of offering much in the way of specifics on just what that tertium quid might look like or include. Indeed, Nagel believes that we may not presently have the stuff necessary to form a coherent alternative,17 See Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos in this project for a brief introduction to his critique. a position that reflects an understandable sentiment of professional philosophers to avoid speculating on matters they cannot fully defend. But that leaves a very large gap in an important conversation. In considering possible paths through unexplored territory, some of the early suggestions usually turn out to be impracticably difficult or impassable. But much can be learned from understanding why they would not work.
This project is my attempt to work through my own interpretations and thoughts about what such an alternative might include, to outline the framework of a story that seems to account for as much as possible about what we can reasonably say we know about the world. Modern physics has severely challenged the notion of a single “reality” out there that we can in principle fully describe. It could very well be that there are as many “realities” as there are brains, broadly overlapping as they most certainly do.
proceeds from the premise that nature of the universe is far deeper and more complex than we currently believe, and that the scientistic worldview that has come to dominate much of contemporary Western thought needs to be replaced. Just what to replace it with, however, is a wide-open question that, as the premise here goes, must hold the subjective to be as real as the objective. Reality (if that is even a meaningful term in the singular) is not only what science tells us but that also everything we experience. It includes the subjective, matters of mind or spirit, as well as the measurable phenomena we are currently obsessed with.
We have reason to believe that our present knowledge of the physical universe closely aligns with the ultimate truth of physical stuff, that our scientific understanding of matter and the forces that affect it is not greatly different today than it will be 10,000 years from now (in contrast to the difference between modern physics and the physics of Newton’s day— although a similar claim has been made before and turned out to be wrong). What we have yet to explore, however— or, for many contemporary thinkers, to even consider— is the notion that reality inherently and substantively includes the subjective as well as the objective, that mind (or spirit, equivalent terms for now) is as fundamental as mass or charge— and at least as significant. Such conceptions of the Universe (capitalized to emphasize far broader realities) can only be roughly outlined now— much like the the three-dimensional world when first encountered by the bewildered denizens of Edwin Abbot’s Flatland.
My goal here is two-fold: 1) to help work through some of the complex ideas things that a mind-centric worldview might include (particularly in regard to individual attitudes and behaviors), and 2) explore what appear to me to be elements of an emerging framework or worldview that accommodates non-material phenomena as fundamental. connections and correspondences between ideas emerging from several disciplines potential alternative frameworks or for alternative that could eventually become something of a worldview. and and may overlap or converge in a common story, obviously incomplete and provisional, about the nature of part of the world.
that together begin to reveal at least a small part of an immensely greater Universe. That science has revealed fundamental truths about the universe is taken for granted: if a robust scientific description is available, no further explanation need be considered (the chemical properties of matter, for example). A major premise here, however, is that the limits of scientific description are rather quickly reached, and most certainly so for most matters related to consciousness. What is missing, some of us believe, is a framework that can accommodate both science proper and matters of mind, being, and experience— a worldview that readily accommodates all we know about the physical world along with what we know, somehow and deep down, about how we fit into it.
Starting points include 1) the philosophical and psychological aspects of modern physics that have emerged over the last century, such as the conjecture on dual-aspect monism proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, 2) select (admittedly perhaps, cherry-picked) elements from esoteric traditions and philosophies, and 3) evidence, insights and speculations from the study of non-human, large-brained animals,
It has, after all, been the dominant paradigm of Western thought for hundreds of years. It freed us from superstitious explanations of natural phenomena and co to understand how (according to science) the world really works– not to mention the incredible improvements in human comfort and amusement that science-born technologies have produced. Atoms really do exist, and we can manipulate them with an extraordinary level of control.18 The underlying reality is far more complex and less certain. See Quantum Realities for a brief introduction to the complexities and uncertainties of what we now know about the nature of matter. There can be no serious question but that our fundamental sciences describe realities of the universe.
(David CKen Wilbur, Thomas Nagel, for example),19 See Thomas Nagel’s (future) Tertium Quid.