God, Matter, and Information:

What is Ultimate?

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

What does God mean?

1. 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.

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!

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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 solidlooking 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.

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.

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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 nonanthropocentric general ontology, without
violating the pragmatic success of the
Copenhagen-von Neumann epistemology.

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.

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.

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.

Time

.
Open Future

Open Future

Fixed Past