Position Paper for Future Visions Conference (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 ------------------------------------------------------ Talk at Future Visions Conference, Sept 5, 2000, NYC -------------------------------------------------------- A major revolution occurred in science during the twentieth century, and this change completely transformed the scientific conception of man from one that contradicts the core religious belief to one that supports it. I am going to explain, here, this tectonic shift in science, and its profound relevance to religion. ---------------------------------------------- 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 explain 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 organisms or systems) 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. 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. Future Visions Talk [NYC, Sept 5, 2000] (revised) ----------------------------------------- Science has acquired tremendous power to change the world. But how that power is used depends on what people value. It is often claimed that science can tell us how to achieve what we value, but cannot determine values. That claim is quite wrong: science can determine values. For science has the power to change what people believe: What they believe about themselves. What they believe about nature. What they believe about their connection to nature. And a person's beliefs about WHAT he is and HOW he is connected to the rest of nature is the source of his core values. These beliefs can generate motives even stronger than his will to survive, Holy wars and religious martyrs illustrate this point. --------------------------------------------------- \newpage But what does science actually say about these basic question concerning the nature of human beings and their connection to the rest of reality? Today most people, and even most scientists, tend to think that what science says about these basic matters is what `classical physics' says. But that is not true. Classical physics says that the physical world is built out of tiny bits of matter, and that every motion of every part is caused by, and completely determined by, contact interactions between neighboring parts. It says that the physical universe is basically a giant machine, and that our bodies and our brains are just parts of that machine. ---------------------------------------------------------- \newpage This mechanical view of nature creates a problem that has confounded philosophers for more than three centuries. This problem stems from the following fact: The postulates of classical physics do not demand the existence of the ``psychological'' properties that characterize our conscious experiences. These experiential properties could be left out without disturbing the space-time classical laws that do however entail ---in conjunction with the initial conditions--- the complete causal microscopic structure that fixes every motion of every bit of matter. But this means that the experiential properties/realities are not part of the causal chain of events that determines all physical motions. That conclusion contradicts everyone's direct personal experience that our thoughts DO influence our actions: that I can, for example, by wilfull effort, cause my arm to rise. ------------------------------------------ \newpage The fact that philosophers have wrestled with this problem for more than three hundred years without reaching agreement, suggests that assumptions that underlie classical premises might be wrong. That is actually the case: the precepts of classical physicsis are now known to be irreconcilable with the empirical facts. Classical physics has been replaced by quantum theory, at the fundamental level. ------------------------------------------------------- \newpage This failure of the mechanical idea of nature leads naturally to the following question: If the mechanical idea is wrong, then what idea is right, or at least possibly right? To answer this question one must speak about objective reality. Speaking about such things is strongly discouraged by orthodox quantum thinking, which enjoins us focus on relations between experiences, and not worry about1 the objective reality that lies behind these experiences. This tunnel-vision focussing on experience alone was perhaps a necessary `mind-clearing' phase in the development of physics. But we are now in the third millenium, and the time has come to shed our blinders, and get on with the task of describing BOTH the subjective and the objective aspects of nature, AND the connection between them. ----------------------------------------------------- \newpage In my opinion, the only successful completion of quantum theory , at least to date, is the one initiated in the 1930's by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner. This approach accepts the basic premise of Copenhagen quantum theory: it recognizes our subjective human experiences to be the basic realities of human science. But, unlike Copenhagen, it imbeds these realities in a putatively real objective physical universe. This approach been developed over the past decade into a comprehensive theory of mind and brain that explains a lot of formerly unexplained empirical data. This development elevates quantum theory from a set of mysterious rules about connections between experiences to a rationally coherent conception of man within an enveloping objectively existing nature. ---------------------------------------------------- \newpage The BASIC MESSAGE of both this new quantum theory of nature, and of the earlier Copenhagen quantum theory, is that the physical world must be understood in terms of INFORMATION: The "tiny bits of matter" postulated by classical physics are transmuted into diffused spread-out nonmaterial structures that combine to form a new kind of physical reality. This reality acts as a carrier of a growing collection of `BITS OF INFORMATION''. Each subjective experience injects one bit of information into this objective storehouse of information. This evolving COMPENDIUM OF INFORMATION has an active side: it determines via known mathematical laws, the ``propensities'', or (objective) probabilities, for new subjective experiences to occur. Thus the ``objective physical world'' of classical physics been converted from `an evolving structure of matter' into an evolving structure of information, and propensities for new information to arise. -------------------------------------------------- \newpage A key consequence of this quantum theory of nature concerns the power of our thoughts. The theory explains in some detail 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 actually explains how our thoughts influence our actions. --------------------------------------------- This feature has important moral ramifications. One cannot rationally hold a machine responsible for its actions. Hence the whole notion of personal responsibility makes no sense in a world where classical physics reigns. Quantum theory resolves this moral dilemma by allowing our conscious efforts to influence our physical actions. --------------------------------------------- Quantum theory has an important NONLOCAL aspect that I have no time to discuss here, except to say that it makes man a much more integral part of nature than classical physics permits. ---------------------------------------- \newpage Quantum theory is important for religion for the following reasons. According to classical physics, all motion of matter is determined by matter alone, and hence `spirit', can make no difference in any human act: Thus `Spirit' ,if it exists at all, is irrelevant to human life. Quantum theory, on the other hand, is built upon what Dirac called "choices on the part of nature", and it allows also what Bohr called the "free choice on the part of the experimenter". The theory imposes statistical conditions on the first of these choices, but the other choice depends on mental factors. These choices are extremely important, because they DETERMINE WHAT ACTUALLY happens in the world. But their origins are shrouded in mystery, from the perspective of science. These "choices" provide a natural opening for a conception of human beings that is closer to our intuitive understanding that what classical physics seemed to mandate. ---------------------------------- \newpage A rational social and moral philosophy needs a rationally coherent foundation. Neither the mechanical philosophy that omits subjective mind, nor the Copenhagen philosophy that omits objective truth, provides a rationally coherent understanding of human beings, and their relationship to the rest of nature. In order to confront, and rise above, both the `narrowness' of the materialist mind set and the `looseness' entailed by the "abandonment of truth" our best weapon is possession of a concrete alternative that puts the two sick parts together to make a healthy whole. ---------------------------------------------------- \newpage Our purpose at this meeting is to make concrete proposals that will promote a life-enhancing future. Nothing is more important for the achievement of this end than opening up, on a large scale, the human understanding of human beings. This means piercing the veil of darkness ---formed by mistaking parts for wholes--- by illuminating the public mind with an awareness of the profound shift in the understanding of man and nature wrought by quantum theory. Achieving this can open the door to a rational approach to moral issues and social agendas that rests on a scientific conception of human beings that is both concordant with the concept of personal responsibility, and consonant with the possibility of a spiritual dimension. ---------------------------------------------------------- \newpage 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 quantum theoretical 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 a false idea of nature, 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. --------------------------------------------- \newpage 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 quantum concept that the physical world is a store of information than the classical concept that physical reality is a horde of unseen particles that can somehow become a human experience. ------------------------------------------------ \newpage 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 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 know it, does not exist, or is an illusion, and other philosophers to the point of making truth a social construct. In order to provide a rational and universal foundation for dealing with the moral, social, and philosophical problems of the third millenium, a serious effort is now needed to move everyone's understanding of what science says out of the seventeenth century and into the twenty-first. \newpage The point, here, is that in today's world that is dominated by democratic states and massive information transfer, the power REALLY IS shifting to the people, who are therefore beset on all sides by conflicting exhortations arising from disparate premises. Only science has the universality and neutrality needed to provide a common ground for rational dialog. But science has heretofore either proclained a false mechanistic conception of man and nature, or has declared its own incompetence in these matters. Yet it is able to do more! By providing a more coherent understanding of human beings that allows a person's thoughts to make difference in his behavior, and that explains in more detail his deep connection to the rest of nature, science can provide the conceptual foundation needed for the commencement of a rational discourse about the future of man.