God, Matter, and Information: What is Ultimate

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God, Matter, and InformationWhat is Ultimate?

• What is God?
• What is Matter?
• What is Information?
• What does Ultimate mean?

2
What does God mean?

• Suppose God means the creator of all of the
  physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of
  reality, and of all the relationships between
  them.
• Such a God, if existing, must be in some sense
  ultimate.

3
What does God mean?

• 2. Suppose God means the totality of nature
  the totality of all the physical, mental, and
  spiritual aspects of reality, and of all
  relationships between these aspects.
• Such a God is in some sense ultimate, because
  nothing else exists!

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But what if God is less?

• But what if God is less than the one described
  in points 1 or 2. Then some clarification of the
  meaning of the term God ---and also of the
  meaning of ultimate--- must be provided before
  any answer can be given to the question we are
  being asked to address.
• Moreover, what matter and what is information
  must be clarified.
• I, as a physicist, will discuss Matter

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What is Matter?

• Ernan McMullin has given here a brief account of
  the history in philosophy and in physics of the
  meaning of matter
• 1.Aristotle used it in connection with the notion
  of materials for making, such as timber.
• 2. The Neo-Platonists used it in contrast to the
  spiritual aspects of reality.
• 3. In the 17th ,18th, 19th centuries it became
  used to denote the carrier of the small set of
  properties that, according to the then-ascendant
  mechanical philosophy, were the only properties
  that were needed to account for all changes in
  the visible world. These properties, called
  physical properties were considered to be
  objective, in contrast to the subjective
  properties, which are dependent in one way or
  another on the perceiver.

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Classically Conceived Matter Cannot be Ultimate!

• Even if, as claimed by the 17th, 18th, and 19th
  century classical physics, the (physical)
  properties of matter of could explain all of the
  changes in visible properties, that would not
  make it ultimate.
• What fixes the initial conditions?
• What fixes the physical laws that matter obeys?
• How do our subjective experiences of the visible
  properties emerge from the causally and
  conceptually self-sufficient material/physical
  aspect of reality?

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The properties of actual (quantum mechanical)
matter Are they counterintuitive?

• McMullin calls the quantum conception of matter
  problematic and counter-intuitive.
• Seth Lloyd calls the quantum mechanical
  properties of matter counter-intuitive and
  weird.
• Actually, it is the classical properties that are
  counter-intuitive, problematic, and weird.
• The quantum properties are the natural and
  intuitive ones.
• They appear weird only when viewed from the
  problematic classical standpoint

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The Classical-Physics Conception of Matter is
Counter-intuitive and Problematic

• The deepest human intuition is that ones own
  conscious subjective efforts can influence ones
  own bodily actions.
• Any conception of nature that claims this deep
  intuition to be an illusion is counter-intuitive.
• Any conception of reality that cannot naturally
  explain how our bodily actions are caused, at
  least in part, by our conscious thoughts, ideas,
  and feelings is problematic.

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The Classical-Physics Idea of the Nature of the
Physical World is not Innately Intuitive to
Minds Untutored in Classical Physics

• McMullins account of the two millennia of
  wonderings by philosophers from Thales to Newton
  confirm this.
• School children need to be taught that the
  solid-looking table is really mostly empty
  space, in which tiny particles are buzzing
  around.
• The tight causal connectedness of mind and matter
  is deeply intuitive hence
• The classical-physics conception of matter is a
  counter-intuitive theoretical construct.

10
The Rehabilitation of Intuition by Quantum
Mechanics.

• The original Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
  theory was pragmatic and epistemological it
  eschewed ontology it avoided commitments about
  what really exists!
• Von Neumanns formulation (called orthodox by
  Wigner) prepared the way for an imbedding
  ontology.
• The quantum conception of reality is built around
  events.
• Each such event has a physically described aspect
  and a psychologically described aspect.

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Quantum psycho-physical events are the building
blocks of reality

• Heisenberg The probability function does not in
  itself represent a course of events in time. It
  represents a tendency for events and our
  knowledge of events. (1958. p.46)
• The observation enforces the description in
  space and time but breaks the determined
  continuity by changing our knowledge.
• (ibid, p. 49-50)

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Quantum psycho-physical events are the building
blocks of reality, cont.

• The observation itselfselects of all possible
  events the actual one that has taken place. Since
  through the observation our knowledge of the
  system has changed discontinuously its
  mathematical representation has undergone a
  discontinuous change and we speak of a quantum
  jump. (ibid. p. 54)

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Psycho-physical events are the building blocks of
reality, cont.

• The transition from the possible to the
  actual takes place during the act of
  observation. If we want to describe what happens
  we have to realize that the word happens can
  apply only to the observation, not to the state
  of affairs between two observations. (ibid, p.
  54)

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Reality is built of psycho-physical events and
objective tendencies(potentia) for such events
to occur.

• The probability function combines objective and
  subjective elements. It contains statements about
  possibilities or better tendencies (potentia in
  Aristotelian philosopy), and these statements are
  completely objective, they do not depend on any
  observer and it contain statements about our
  knowledge of the system, which of course are
  subjective, in so far as they may be different
  for different observers.

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Human Beings as Players

• As Bohr put itin the drama of existence we
  ourselves are both players and spectators. our
  own activity becomes very important (ibid, p.
  58)
• The probability function can be connected to
  reality only if one essential condition is
  fulfilled if a new measurement is made to
  determine a certain property of the system.
  (ibid, p. 48, my italics)

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Human Beings as Players

• Bohr The freedom of experimentation
  corresponds to the free choice of experimental
  arrangement for which the mathematical structure
  of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the
  appropriate latitude. (Bohr, 1958, p.73)
• This choice on the part of the observer is
  represented in the mathematical formalism by von
  Neumanns process 1 intervention (von Neumann,
  1932/1952, p. 351, 418)

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How freely chosen conscious intent can naturally
cause the appropriate brain/bodily action to
occur.

• The neural correlate of the conscious intent is a
  template for action.
• A template for action is a macroscopic (brain
  sized) pattern of neural activity that if held in
  place long enough will tend to cause the intended
  action to occur.

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How freely chosen conscious intent can naturally
cause the appropriate brain/bodily action to
occur. Cont.

• The timing of when a particular process 1 occurs
  is not specified by the orthodox quantum
  mathematical formalism it is part of the
  observers free choice.
• Effortful intention intensifies the experience.
  So I conjecture that application of effort
  increases the rapidity of the associated process
  1 events.

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The quantum Zeno effect.

• If the rapidity of the process 1 events
  associated with a given intent is great enough
  then the neural correlate of that intent will
  become almost frozen in place by the orthodox
  laws of physics.
• Hence the associated template for action will be
  held in place.
• Hence the brain/body action associated with that
  intent will tend to occur.

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The Whitehead/Quantum ontology is rationally
coherent, not-counter-intuitive, not-weird, and
not-problematic.

• Whitehead deals with the anthropocentric
  character of the Copenhagen epistemological
  position by making the human-brain based quantum
  events into special cases of a non-anthropocentric
  general ontology, without violating the
  pragmatic success of the Copenhagen-von Neumann
  epistemology.

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Not-counter-intuitivitive, continued.

• McMullin says Their properties were entangled
  with one another in ways quite counter-intuitive.
  
• Only if one starts from the false classical
  conception of particles, as tiny versions of
  visible rocks and stones.
• Once one recognizes that reality is built out of
  psycho-physical events, an idea that is in close
  accord with our intuition that the events in our
  streams of consciousness are counterparts of
  events in the physical world, and out of
  objective tendencies for these events to occur,
  there is no conflict with intuition.

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Entanglement in not counter-intuitive.

• The objective tendency for a quantum of energy to
  appear in one place naturally vanishes when that
  energy turns up in another place.
• And quantum theory shows that correlations in
  objective tendencies can have logical
  consequences that go beyond what can be achieved
  with correlations among realities.

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Entanglement in not weird or problematic.

• The faster-than-the-speed-of-light transmissions
  of information that orthodox quantum mechanics
  allows, and indeed entails, is not problematic
  it permits no signal (controllable message) to be
  sent faster than the speed of light.
• Entanglement is weird only insofar as one tries
  to impose, unjustifiably, a classical-physics
  ontology on invisible things.

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Time

• .

Open Future
Open Future
Fixed Past