Future Visions Conference Position Paper. (Henry Stapp) Societal ramifications of the new scientific conception of human beings. ------------------------------------------------------------- A revolution occurred during the twentieth century in our scientific understanding of the nature of the physical world. This change is enormously important to religion, for it eliminates a basic conflict between science and the core religious belief. Prior to this change, our scientific beliefs were based on an approach that was initiated in the seventeeth century by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, and was completed early in the twentieth century Einstein. The basic conclusion from that 250 years of science was simple: we live in a mechanical universe, and we, ourselves, are just complex machines. Science proclaimed that every motion of every part of the physical world is completely fixed by mechanical contact between adjacent tiny parts, and that our human bodies and brains are included in this mechanical world order. This scientific notion that man is a purely mechanical system contradicts what is probably the core religious belief, namely the idea that mind-like or spirit-like factors can make a difference in human behaviour: the religious outlook assumes, I believe, that a human being, acting on basis of conscious choices, is NOT causally equivalent to a mechanical automaton whose every action is completely determined by direct interaction between tiny neighboring bits of matter. The question of whether man is, or or not, just a complex mechanical device is not just an idle academic issue. Differences in beliefs about this matter lead directly to divergent rules of conduct. Are we just machines created by genes to promote their own survival? Or are we integral parts of a deeper world order. Accepting the first alternative leads rationally to the treatment of other human beings as Pavlovian dogs to be conditioned to serve one's own desires: accepting the second alternative can lead to a more caring behaviour. The key point for religion is this: Twentieth century science has shown the earlier mechanical conception of physical reality to be incompatible with the empirical facts. To cope with this failure of the earlier ideas physicists made a truly revolutionary change. Physical theory was converted from a theory about the physical world itself into a theory of WHAT COULD BE KNOWN about the physical world: information was introduced into the theory, and was made fundamental. The initial formulation of this new approach was called the Copenhagen interpretation. It had a serious drawback: it brought human knowledge into physical theory, but at the very stiff price of renouncing the possibility of understanding the underlying physical reality. However, the eminent mathematician John von Neumann and nobel laureate Eugene Wigner were able to reincorporate physical reality by casting the new physics into a theory of the interaction between our thoughts or feelings and our physical brains. The von Neumann-Wigner theory of mental-physical reality was formulated in the early thirties. It encompassed all of the valid results of the earlier physical theories, and it rationally incorporated also our conscious thoughts into the basic dynamics. However, this theory was far ahead of its time: physicists were not yet ready to think seriously about the problem of the interaction between our thoughts and our brains. Moreover, the available data was then insufficient to make pursuit of the theory scientifically feasible. Now, however, there is a huge and rapidly growing fund of experimental data on this question of the connection between minds and brains, and this data supports the von Neuman-Wigner theory in many significant ways. Consequently, the serious exploitation and development of the von Neuman-Wigner formulation of quantum theory has now begun in earnest. This shift in science is important to religion in at least four ways. First, it removes the basic contradiction between the older scientific claim that human beings are essentially mechanical robots and the religious idea that men are not ruled by matter alone. Second, quantum physics, both in its original and von Neumann-Wigner forms, dynamically entangles our conscious thoughts with the quantum physicist's mathematical representation of the physical world. Third, the von Neumann-Wigner formulation provides the basic logical principles that govern the interaction between thoughts (or, more generally, feelings) and brains. Fourth, the new physics presents prima facie evidence that thoughts and feelings are linked to nature by nonlocal connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of "bits of information". This profound shift in what science says about the nature of physical reality , and of human beings, has not yet sunk into our culture. Thus one important thing that could be done to reduce the perceived disparity between the scientific and religious outlooks would be to promote the infusion into public awareness of an understanding of the radical shift wrought by quantum theory in our understanding of both nature, and the nature of man. This initiative would involve, for example, encouraging the introduction into curricula, at all levels, of an emphasis, not on creationist ideas that run counter to scientific belief, but rather on the twentieth-century conception of nature in terms of information. False mechanistic ideas inculcated into tender minds at an early age are hard to dislodge later. If our children are taught the false doctrine that the actions of human beings are necessarily completely controlled by contact interactions between tiny mechanical parts then both science and religion are damaged. The progress of science is inhibited by imbuing young minds with a false idea of the nature of nature, and religious views are falsely maligned by teaching as scientific fact something that science has in fact proved false. One might think that the ideas of quantum physics are too counterintuitive for young minds to grasp. Yet students have no trouble comprehending the even more counterintuitive classical idea that the solid chairs upon which they sit are mostly empty space. Children and students who, through their computers, deal all the time with the physical world conceived of as a repository and transmitter of information should grasp more easily the the quantum concept of the physical world as a store of information than the classical concept of the physical world as a horde of unseen particles that can somehow be, or control, human experience. A thoroughly rational concept into which one's own experiences fit neatly should be easier to comprehend than a mechanical scheme that has no natural place for one's efficacious thoughts, and which has confounded philosophers from the day it was invented, and which has now pushed some philosophers to the point of trying to convince us that consciousness, as we intuitively understand it, does not exist, or is an illusion, and other philosophers to the point of making truth a social construct. The fact that philosophers find themselves forced to such extremities suggests that they have been building on false premises. That suggestion is now validated by the downfall, at the fundamental level, of the mechanistic science from which they started. One problem stands in the way of pursuing this updating of the curricula. Most quantum physicists are interested more in applications of quantum theory than in its deep implications. Hence they normally endorse the `Copenhagen' philosophy of renouncing the quest to understand reality, and settling, instead, for practical rules that work. This desertion by physicist of their traditional goal of trying to understand the physical world means that there is now no official statement as to the nature of reality, or of the place of man within it. Still, I believe that there will be general agreement among quantum physicists that, to the extent that a rationally coherent conception of physical reality is possible, this reality will be informational in character, not material. For the whole language of the quantum physicist, when he is dealing with the meaning of his symbols, is in terms of information, which one may or may not choose to acquire, and in terms of Yes-or-No answers that constitute BITS OF INFORMATION. And I believe that most quantum physicist will also agree that our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science, and that when properly understood our thoughts will be seen to DO something: they will be efficacious. Having been burned once---by the downfall of the seemingly secure classical conception of the physical world--- physicists are understandably reluctant to be drawn into speculation about the nature of reality. The vacuum thus created has undoubtedly been a major obstacle to the introduction of the new ideas into our curricula. However, silence is not a satisfactory alternative, for this leaves the field in the possession of those who promulgate the certainly false mechanistic conceptions, and those who, noting the desertion of the scientist from the search for the truth about nature, reject to whole concept that there is any real truth about anything, except the truth that there is no other truth. This opens the way to a descent into moral relativism. Given the importance of bringing ideas from contemporary science into play I think certain ontological claims are warranted, and are generally in line with what quantum physicists believe; 1. The ``physical world'', as understood in quantum theory, is a store of information, and this information is NOT imbedded in hordes of tiny particles, as they were conceived of in classical physical theory. The information is stored in a mathematically described structure that specifies also propensities for certain events to occur. These events include, paradigmatically, the acquisition of information by human agents. 2. Conscious events should eventually be understood in science, and these events should be efficacious: they should have real effects on our actions. Not many scientists yet realize how beautifully and naturally the von Neumann-Wigner formulation of quantum theory achieves these ends. But this is just a matter of dissemination of information about a topic that has never been seriously broached in science, not because it was considered unimportant, but because it was deemed too difficult, and because the pertinent data seemed insufficiently restrictive. But these problems have now been overcome by fifty years of diligent experimentation by psychologists, and by a great deal of development on the theoretical side. [Refs. 1, 2, 3] --------------------------------------------------- 1. http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html "From quantum nonlocality to mind-brain interaction" 2. http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html "Importance of decoherence in brain process"" 3. Numerous published papers, references to, and copies of which, can be found at the website cited above