Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order

284 Pages·2007·1.921 MB·English

by  Paavo T. I. Pylkkänen (auth.)

t h e f r o n t i e r s c o l l e c t i o n
t h e f r o n t i e r s c o l l e c t i o n
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Thebooksinthiscollectionaredevotedtochallengingandopenproblemsattheforefront
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InformationandItsRoleinNature Mind,MatterandQuantumMechanics
ByJ.G.Roederer ByH.Stapp
RelativityandtheNatureofSpacetime QuantumMechanicsandGravity
ByV.Petkov ByM.Sachs
ExtremeEventsinNatureandSociety
QuoVadisQuantumMechanics?
EditedbyS.Albeverio,V.Jentsch,
EditedbyA.C.Elitzur,S.Dolev,
H.Kantz
N.Kolenda
TheThermodynamic
Life–AsaMatterofFat
MachineryofLife
TheEmergingScienceofLipidomics
ByM.Kurzynski
ByO.G.Mouritsen
TheEmergingPhysics
Quantum–ClassicalAnalogies
ofConsciousness
ByD.DragomanandM.Dragoman
EditedbyJ.A.Tuszynski
KnowledgeandtheWorld WeakLinks
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EditedbyM.Carrier,J.Roggenhofer, fromProteinstoSocialNetworks
G.Küppers,P.Blanchard ByP.Csermely
Quantum–ClassicalCorrespondence Mind,MatterandtheImplicateOrder
ByA.O.Bolivar ByP.T.I.Pylkkänen
Paavo T.I. Pylkkänen
MIND, MATTER
AND THE
IMPLICATE
ORDER
With8Figures
123
PaavoT.I.Pylkkänen
UniversityofSkövde
ConsciousnessStudiesProgramme
SchoolofHumanitiesandInformatics
Box408
54128Skövde,Sweden
e-mail:[e-mail]
SeriesEditors:
AvshalomC.Elitzur RüdigerVaas
Bar-IlanUniversity, UniversityofGießen,
UnitofInterdisciplinaryStudies, CenterforPhilosophyandFoundationsofScience
52900Ramat-Gan,Israel 35394Gießen,Germany
email:[e-mail] email:[e-mail]
MarkP.Silverman H.DieterZeh
DepartmentofPhysics,TrinityCollege, UniversityofHeidelberg,
Hartford,CT06106,USA InstituteofTheoreticalPhysics,
email:[e-mail] Philosophenweg19,
69120Heidelberg,Germany
JackTuszynski email:[e-mail]
UniversityofAlberta,
DepartmentofPhysics,Edmonton,AB,
T6G2J1,Canada
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To Elina, Kasper, and Ester, my implicate, explicate orders
Preface
I have been planning to write a book ever since I finished my PhD
dissertation Mind, Matter and Active Information: The Relevance of
David Bohm’s Interpretation of Quantum Theory to Cognitive Science,
in 1992. For various reasons it has taken me a long time to do this.
I started writing notes in February 2000. The project became more
concrete when in March 2003 I talked with Jack Tuczynski and the
opportunity arose to offer a book for inclusion in Springer’s new Fron-
tiers Collection. It has now been more than two years since the more
concrete plan for the book emerged. That time has not just been spent
“writing up” ideas that I already had. It has additionally meant re-
thinking many of the problems and ideas. I have also read a great deal,
including re-reading most of Bohm’s philosophical contributions – 25
yearsafterIfirstreadsomeofthem.Rethinkingandre-readingisexcit-
ing but also potentially frustrating because it often makes you realize
how complex and fascinating the problems are in themselves and how
far we actually are from solving them!
This book deals with topics that have been variously neglected and
even “forbidden” in academic circles during much of the 20th century.
Onesuchissueisconsciousexperience,thestudyofwhichwasfamously
suppressed in behaviorist psychology and even in traditional cognitive
science, and has only relatively recently become the focus of intense
research in a number of fields.
Another neglected and suppressed area is metaphysics, often de-
fined as the study of the most basic and general features of reality and
our place in it. While metaphysics had over many centuries – indeed
millennia–beenacentralareaofphilosophy, therewasastronglyanti-
metaphysicalattitudeinmuchof20th-centuryphilosophy,insuchdom-
inant philosophical trends as logical positivism and ordinary-language
VIII Preface
philosophy, while in, say, Heideggerian phenomenology there was a
strongurgetorenewtraditionalmetaphysics.Therehas,however,been
a comeback of metaphysics during the past decades, especially within
the so-called analytical philosophical tradition.
Yet another traditionally “forbidden” topic to be discussed in this
book connects with physics and has to do with the interpretation of
quantum theory, the theory that deals with atomic phenomena. To
some extent, the suppression of discussion about the meaning of quan-
tumtheoryisconnectedwiththeabove-mentionedsuppressionofmeta-
physics in general, for quantum theory was initially interpreted in the
1920s in the strongly anti-metaphysical climate of logical positivism.
As a result, much emphasis was placed on how the theory predicts
the results of experiments, while it was thought to be meaningless to
speculate about the nature of quantum reality over and above the ex-
perimental phenomena. Now, the history of science shows that it has
frequently been fruitful to make hypotheses about currently unobserv-
able phenomena; but those who tried to do this in the early days of
quantum physics met with, at times, dogmatic opposition. Whereas
philosophers fairly soon began to realize the limits of positivism, it
exerted a strong influence upon quantum physics until fairly recently,
making it “forbidden” to try to sketch the nature of reality at the
quantum level.
Thus, during the 20th century, speculating about the nature of con-
scious experience, the nature of matter, and the fundamental nature of
realitywasoftenofflimits.Onemightwonderwhatitwasthatonewas
allowed to speculate about! What this book tries to do is to study the
interrelations of these traditionally forbidden topics. My first concern
is with how modern quantum and relativity physics, and theories that
build upon them, might influence our more general concept of reality;
I then consider whether conscious experience and its relationship with
matter could be understood in a new way in the context of such a
new “quantum metaphysics”. Of course, it is no longer forbidden to
study consciousness, or the nature of reality, or the meaning of quan-
tum theory, although raising these issues might still set some eyebrows
in motion. However, it is still relatively rare to consider these topics
together. One potential advantage is that doing this might give rise to
a new “big picture”, which in turn might have a profound effect upon
our more detailed efforts. That is why I am concerned with the big
picture.
Istherereallyaneedforsuchasyntheticapproach?,onemightwon-
der.Toseewhyitisnecessary,consider,forexample,metaphysics.Pro-
Preface IX
fessional philosophers are again busy exploring such traditional meta-
physicalissuesassubstance,identity,universalsandparticulars,modal-
ities (possibility, necessity, contingency), and so on. However, much of
this research does not take into account developments in modern nat-
ural science, especially in physics. But surely the natural sciences can
contribute to a better understanding of the topics central to meta-
physics? In turn, I think that an understanding of traditional meta-
physics, and philosophy more generally, can be of great help when try-
ingtomakesenseofthepuzzlingfeaturesof,say,quantumphenomena.
The idea is that philosophy and physics can mutually constrain, criti-
cize, and inspire each other as we move toward a better theory.
How about the mind and conscious experience, then? Is it really
necessary to consider metaphysics or physics when theorizing about
them? Isn’t it enough to focus on those subjects which more directly
and obviously study the mind, such as psychology, philosophy of mind,
cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and so
on? The key point here is that the philosophical problem of conscious-
ness in our materialistic age is typically raised by first taking it for
granted that there is a physical world and then asking whether we can
locate or find a place for consciousness in such a physical world. But
whatdoes“physical”mean?Clearly,contemporaryphysicscanatleast
prima facie have something important to say about this. It seems to
me that many of the “mind sciences” presuppose a late 19th-century
view of the physical world and formulate the philosophical problems of
consciousness in relation to such a view. But it is plainly part of the
scientific attitude to revise our basic notions, including our notion of
the “physical”, if experimental and theoretical developments call for
this. Thus physics may after all play a key role when we are trying to
understand the place of consciousness in nature.
Of course, the approach adopted in this book is very ambitious. Ar-
eassuchasmetaphysics,quantumtheory,andconsciousnessarealready
difficult when considered separately. When such difficult areas are con-
sidered together, there is obviously a risk of confusion. One thus needs
toproceedverycarefullyandrelyonexpertiseinthedifferentdomains.
Itisalsoimportanttopayattentiontoprevioussimilareffortsandtheir
successes and shortcomings. This is partly why I have chosen in this
book to focus so strongly upon David Bohm’s views. For it seems to
me that Bohm was one of the few 20th-century thinkers who had a
good grasp of not only quantum physics (which was his original field of
expertise and which he indeed helped to develop) but also the natural
sciences more generally, as well as philosophy and consciousness. He
X Preface
saw the importance of trying to understand the connections between
these areas and was indeed developing a new “big picture”, based on
his research in quantum and relativity physics, as well as on his own
philosophical explorations. In my view, Bohm’s efforts deserve a much
more careful study than they have hitherto been given.
Given the vastness of the Bohmian programme, this book is neces-
sarily only a small step toward a better understanding and evaluation.
Attheveryleast,Ihopethatitwillhelpotherstojudgebetterwhether
thisprogrammeprovidesfruitfultoolsfortacklingthefascinatingprob-
lems concerning matter and consciousness that are at issue. I believe
that scientific and philosophical theories are primarily ways of looking,
tools that help us to see, to understand. In the course of writing and
reading and discussing when preparing this book, I certainly have had
manyexcitingmoments.Weare,inasense,prisonersoftime,butthere
is nothing like a new notion of time to help to see our existence from
anotherviewpoint.Anunexpectedsenseoffreedomcancomewithsuch
a shift of perspective.
Acknowledgements
This book, like so many other things in life, both good and bad, was
initiated in a bar over a glass of cold beer. It was April 2003 in Tuc-
son, Arizona, and the second “Quantum Mind” conference, excellently
organized by Stuart Hameroff, had just finished. Some of us were at
the lobby bar of Hotel Congress. I chatted with the physicist Jack
Tuszynski, whom I had got to know through Stuart and who is one of
the leading experts on the biophysics of microtubules. I was enroute
to Stanford University for a couple of months’ research visit, with an
ambition to start writing a book. Jack had recently become editor of
Springer’s Frontiers Collection. There was a book project in search of
a publisher, and an editor in search of books. I am very grateful to
Jack for encouraging me to submit this book for consideration to the
Frontiers Collection and would also like to give my warmest thanks
to the editorial staff at Springer, especially Dr. Angela Lahee and my
copy editor Mark Seymour.
I am also extremely grateful to Stuart for his tremendous help and
friendship over the years. He has been a major force behind the emerg-
ing field of “consciousness studies”, having a key role in organizing the
biannualTucson“TowardaScienceofConsciousness”conferencessince
1994and many otherrelated activities, not least thosedealingwiththe
relevance of quantum theory to consciousness studies. In other words,
he has done much to create the very conditions and atmosphere that