Future Visions Conference Paper (State of the World Summit, NYC, Sept. 2000) Societal ramifications of the new scientific conception of human beings. Henry Stapp A major revolution occurred in science during the twentieth century, and this change provides the foundation for a complete transformation of the scientific conception of man from one that contradicts the core religious belief to one that can buttress it. I am going to explain, here, this tectonic shift in science, and its profound relevance to our conception of ourselves and our relationships to things beyond self. I shall begin by listing three huge turnabouts in science that occurred during the past four centuries, and will then describe how each of them radically transformed our scientific understanding of human beings. I will then spotlight the moral, social, and philosophical significance of these developments, and will conclude by describing practical measures for promoting a beneficial rapprochement of science and religion. The first of these three big shifts was the creation of what is called "classical physics". This development was initiated during the seventeenth century by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, and was completed early in the twentieth century by the inclusion of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity. The second major shift was the creation of quantum theory. This revision began at the outset of the twentieth century with Max Planck's discovery of the quantum of action, and was completed in the years 1925 to 1927, principally by Heisenberg, Bohr, Dirac, Schroedinger, and Max Born. The third crucial shift was the integration of the mental and physical aspects of nature. It was begun in the early 1930's by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner, and has developed rapidly during the past decade. Each of these three development has a main theme. The main theme of classical physics is that we live in a clocklike universe, and that even our bodies and brains are mechanical systems: the theory asserts that nature has a "material" part that consists of tiny localized bits of matter, and that every motion of each of these minute material elements is COMPLETELY DETERMINED by contact interactions between adjacent elements. This material part of nature includes our bodies and our brains. The theory posits also a second part of nature, consisting of our human thoughts, ideas, feelings, and sensations. But these experiential aspects of nature are passive bystanders: according to the theory they cannot CAUSE any material motion, because every such action is already completely determined by purely mechanical forces. An obvious immediate difficulty with classical physics is this: the asserted passive character of all experience contradicts, for example, your direct experience that you can, by your willful effort, cause your hand to rise. Any such causal effect of mind on matter is forbidden by classical physics. This difficulty has been, of course, the topic of intense philosophical interest. A second problem is how to understand the close coordination between brain process and conscious process in the context of the evolution of our brains, if there is no causal feed-back from conscious process to brain process. During the twentieth century this classical theory of nature was found to be incompatible also with the emerging empirical data on the properties matter. It was found that the physical world simply cannot be what classical physics assumed it to be. A new approach, called quantum theory, was then devised. It was able to explain all the empirical facts that had formerly been explained by classical physics, plus all of the new experimental data as well. The new theory differed profoundly from its predecessor. Classical physics was a deterministic theory about imaginary bits of localized matter, whereas quantum theory is a probabilistic theory about real bits of information. This great achievement was bought at a heavy price: scientists had to renounce in principle their traditional goal of seeking the "truth" about what was going on in the physical world, and were forced to accept, instead, a set of rules that merely allowed them to make statistical predictions about connections between their observations. This essentially subjective approach to physical theory was devised and promulgated by Niels Bohr, and the physicists that he gathered about him in Copenhagen, and it is known as the "Copenhagen Interpretation". It works exceedingly well in actual practice. In spite of this practical success, some scientist have been unwilling to abandon the effort to find a rationally coherent idea of the reality that lies behind our experiences. The only successful effort in this direction, in my opinion, is the one initiated by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner. It accepts as real the subjective elements of experience that are the basic elements of Copenhagen quantum theory, and connects them to an equally real objective physical universe. Under the impetuous of the rapidly growing scientific interest in the connection between the objective and subjective aspects of nature the von Neuman-Wigner approach has been developed over the past decade into a post-Copenhagen quantum theory that explains a great deal of the detailed structure of the emerging data in this field. This development elevates quantum theory from a set of mysterious practical rules, to a rationally coherent conception of man and nature. The basic message of both Copenhagen and post-Copenhagen quantum theory is that the physical world must be understood in terms of INFORMATION: the "bits of matter" that classical physics had assumed the world to be built out of are transmuted into diffused spread-out nonmaterial structures that combine to form a new kind of physical reality that functions as an objective carrier of a growing collection of `bits of information'. Each subjective experience injects one bit of information into this objective store of information, which then specifies, via known mathematical laws, the relative probabilities for various possible future subjective experiences to occur. The physical world thus becomes an evolving structure of information and propensities, rather than an evolving material structure. A key consequence of post-Copenhagen quantum theory concerns the power of our thoughts: the theory explains how our thoughts are able to influence our brains in a way that makes our bodies act in accordance with our intentions. Thus the new theory, unlike classical physics, is concordant with the experienced fact that our thoughts can influence our actions. Another key property of the new theory concerns "nonlocality. Classical dynamics is "local" in the sense that all causation is via contact interaction between neighboring bits of matter. But the interaction of subjective experiences with the physical world turns out to be "nonlocal": what a person decides to do in one place can instantly influence what is true in distant places. However, the theory is exquisitely constructed so that all of the EMPIRICALLY TESTABLE consequences of the theory of relativity are preserved. What are the moral, social, and philosophical implications of these profound transformations of our scientific understanding of nature. There has been a long-standing conflict between classical physics and the core religious belief: classical physics asserts that each man is a machine ruled by matter alone, whereas religions hold, essentially by definition, that thought-like or spirit-like elements can make a difference. Quantum theory, unlike classical physics, allows a person's thoughts to make a difference in how his body behaves: it allows a person's mind to move his body. The point is this: Quantum theory dynamics is like "twenty questions". First some definite question with a Yes 0r No answer is chosen. Then nature delivers an answer, Yes or No. The relative probalities of the two possible answers, Yes and No, are specified by the theory, and are therefore not controllable by human beings. But both Copenhagen and Post-Copenhagen quantum theory allow "persons's" (and, in principle, other organisms or systems) to make choices that determine which QUESTION will be asked. These choices are, in general, not specified by any known laws of physics. Yet these choices can, in quantum theory, influence the person's (or organism's or system's) physical behavior, and, more critically, the average values of observable physical quantities. These choices on the part of the person (or system) might be determined by some nonlocal physical dynamics that has yet to be discovered. On the other hand, it is logically possible, within the constraints imposed by contemporary science, that these "free" choices are determined by some yet-to-be understood "spirit-like" aspect of nature. Hence quantum theory at least ALLOWS for the possible truth of the core religious belief that human beings are not completely controlled by local mechanical laws: they need not be mechanical robots. The nature of the extra needed dynamics has yet to be discovered. This conclusion has far-reaching social ramifications. One cannot rationally hold a classical-type machine responsible for its actions. Consequently, the whole notion of personal responsibility becomes nonsensical in a world where classical physics reigns. This problem is not just some airy philosophical abstraction. The philosophical dilemma has trickled down into the workings of our society. The Australian supreme court justice, David Hodgson, has written a book, "Mind Matters", that documents the pervasive and pernicious effect that the idea that `Mind Does Not Matter' is having upon our legal system. An example occurred in San Francisco: Dan White walked into the office of Mayor George Moscone and shot him dead, and then walk down the hall and shot dead Supervisor Harvey Milk. White got off with five years, on the basis of the infamous "Twinkie Defense" that he was not responsible for his actions, due to derangement caused by junk foods. One of the most influential philosophers of the present time, Daniel Dennett, argues in his book "Conscious Explained", and elsewhere, that our conscious thoughts, as we normally understand them, do not exist, and ought to be drummed out of our scientific understanding of human beings. He explained his basic motivation: "...a brain is always going to do what it is caused to do by local mechanical disturbances." If this claim were indeed true then Dennett's conclusions might be valid. But the clear message of the quantum theory is that Dennett's assumption is not valid: what a person's brain does can, according to the quantum theory of the mind-brain interaction, be strongly influenced by the person's conscious choices and mental efforts. Consciousness can play the influential role in the determination of our actions that we intuitively feel that it plays, and that religions have normally assumed that it plays. Thus this underlying conflict between religion and science evaporates when one goes over to quantum theory, which makes our minds co-authors of our actions. A central moral issue concerns "values". What a person values depends, basically, on what he believes himself to be. If he believes that he is an isolated chunk of matter, struggling to survive in a hostile world, or essentially a physical system constructed by genes to promote their own survival, then his values will tend to be very different from those of a person who regards himself as a being with a mind-like or spirit-like aspect that makes him an integral part of the global process that creates the unfolding of the universe. The NONLOCAL aspect of quantum theory mentioned above makes man a much more integral part of nature's process than materialist ideas suggest. If person understands himself to be an agent whose choices can instantly affect the unfolding of far-flung parts of the universe, then the "self" of his `self interest' tends to be broadened. This expansion moves self image away from the mechanical classical-physics idea of man, and toward the religious idea. Post-modernism denies the relationship between discourse and reality, and claims that `what we think we know' is just `what we have been discursively disciplined to believe'. This abandonment of the idea of objective truth leads directly to moral relativism. It draws support both from theory of relativity, which proclaims that what is true about nature depends upon the observer, and from the Copenhagen philosophy that renounces, even in science, the search for objective truth. But post-Copenhagen quantum theory views the Copenhagen rejection of of all inquiry about the nature of reality as merely a phase of the transition to a more unified conception of reality that has significant explanatory power. This profound shift in what science says about the nature of physical reality , and of human beings, has not yet sunk into the general consciousness. One thing that needs to be done to dispel the general impression that scientific knowledge contradicts core religious beliefs is to infuse into the public mind an awareness of the radical shift wrought by quantum theory in our understanding of man and nature. This initiative would involve the introduction into curricula, at all levels, of not, for example, creationist ideas that run counter to scientific opinion, but rather the contemporary 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 that the world is a machine built out of tiny material parts then both science and religion are damaged. The progress of science is inhibited by imbuing young minds with an incorrect idea of the nature of reality, and the religious view that man is not ruled by matter alone is unfairly maligned by teaching as scientific truth a mechanical conception of nature that is incompatible with the empirical facts. 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 far more easily the the quantum concept of the physical world as a store of information than the classical concept of the physical reality 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 rigid mechanical scheme that has no natural place for one's own efficacious thoughts, and which has therefore confounded philosophers from the day it was invented, and which has now pushed some philosophers to the extremity 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. In order to free men and women from the false materialist mind-set that still infects the world of rational discourse, a serious effort is needed to move people's understanding of what science says out the seventeenth century and into the twenty-first, 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 often endorse the `Copenhagen' philosophy of renouncing the quest to understand reality, and settling, instead, for practical rules that work. This forsaking 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 man's the place within it. Still, I believe that there will be near-unanimous 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. Just getting that ONE IDEA out could make a significant inroad into the corruptive outdated materialist mentality that still retains its hold on so many minds.