To what extent can the immaterial affect the material?

[QED]

In the topic titled When God knows a soul goes to hell..

Newtonian mechanics is an approximation to quantum mechanics. It's possible that the uncertainty principle can be more generalized with some yet undiscovered theory, however the uncertainty principle is a theorem in the theory of operators, a derivation of the Cramer-Rao inequality, derivation of the Fourier transform on general locally compact groups, formulation for Fourier integral operators on manifolds, along with other deep mathematical concepts. So, I would argue that the uncertainty principle points to some kind of platonic structure that has deep mathematical significance. Given its importance in explaining the virtual particles, Casimir effect, Hawking radiation, etc., I think we have good reason to believe that the immaterial affects the material.

I think this is a really tricky issue. For example, love can be considered to be immaterial and it can evidently affect material things through the actions of those in love. But then I'd argue that love is a signal riding on a material medium (the neural nets within our brains). I have often stated that wherever we look we find software to be supervenient on hardware. I am unaware of any evidence for pure Information that exists without a supporting material structure anywhere in the cosmos.

The question I wish to put here is how are we to know for sure that a platonic view is justified when all we might be doing is to default to this assumption simply because we lack a complete understanding of some phenomenon or other that we are studying. It seems to me that while Physics lacks a Grand Unification Theory we do not know if the laws we are observing represent restrictions of degrees of freedom imposed by some as yet undiscovered, underlying, material framework. The analogy that I like to use is the tracing-out of the image of a penny coin beneath a sheet of paper by rubbing over it with a pencil. If we never saw behind the paper, the impression might seem to comes to us from nowhere.

This topic covers the related issue of prescriptive vs descriptive laws and can serve to host debates that frequently go off-topic in other threads.

[Bugmaster]

I've been discussing just this topic with harvey 1 in another thread -- only we're looking at it from a different angle in there.

Should we merge these threads ? Move the discussion here ? Or what ? I'm awaiting the divine command, I mean, moderator's decision :-)

[QED]

I've been discussing just this topic with harvey 1 in another thread -- only we're looking at it from a different angle in there.

Should we merge these threads ? Move the discussion here ? Or what ? I'm awaiting the divine command, I mean, moderator's decision

Hi Bugmaster. The topic you mention is meant to be focussed on the nature of any "brute fact" that we might be compelled to postulate as a metaphysical "given". Seeing as this might be either material or immaterial in nature I would prefer to keep that debate separate although it inevitably will wander into the territory we're carving here.

[Cathar1950]

Good topic folks. This should be interesting. It seems like first you need decide if there is really a difference between immaterial and material. I know you have been over this a lot and I am not sure if any conclusion can be drawn. Dualism bothers me which is why I gravitated towards Whitehead. He tried to look at it as polarity. It sounds sometimes like Harvey's higher and lower nature of God. It seems if the immaterial affects the material wouldn't it be really material and part of the nature of mater? It seems that it is not how the immaterial affect the material but what would be immaterial and how would it be related to anything?
But of course maybe it is all immaterial and mater is the illusion.
Get to work and let me know how it turns out. Thanks.

[McCulloch]

Good topic folks. This should be interesting. It seems like first you need decide if there is really a difference between immaterial and material. I know you have been over this a lot and I am not sure if any conclusion can be drawn. Dualism bothers me which is why I gravitated towards Whitehead. He tried to look at it as polarity. It sounds sometimes like Harvey's higher and lower nature of God. It seems if the immaterial affects the material wouldn't it be really material and part of the nature of mater? It seems that it is not how the immaterial affect the material but what would be immaterial and how would it be related to anything?
But of course maybe it is all immaterial and mater is the illusion.
Get to work and let me know how it turns out. Thanks.

I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to the different schools of philosophical thought. I too am bothered by dualism. Can you point me to some resources about Whitehead's views? Thanks.

[Cathar1950]

Whitehead's Process and Reality.
Hartshorne's Whitehead's Philosophy:selected Essays, 1935-1970.
Heartshorn's The Divine Realitivity:A Social Conception of God
Heartshorne's Beyond Humanism
Wieman's Religious Experience and the Scientific Method
All I can think of right off hand.
Hope it helps.

[Bugmaster]

Seeing as this might be either material or immaterial in nature I would prefer to keep that debate separate although it inevitably will wander into the territory we're carving here.

Ah well in that case... behold my wrath, etc. etc.:

harvey1's argument is something like the following:

1). We use logic and mathematics to understand natural phenomena
2). Our understanding of natural phenomena appears to be pretty decent
3). Therefore, logic and mathematics have an existence independent of ourselves, otherwise (2) wouldn't be true

I know I'm caricaturizing his views, but I think the general idea is preserved. Essentially, harvey1 is saying that dualism must be true in order for logic and math to be true.

I just don't see how it follows. There's a reasonable alternative: that logic and math are our inventions, and exist only in our heads, and that we use these tools to understand the real world around us. I believe this materialistic view to be a lot more parsimonious, since it doesn't require one to posit additional dualistic entities.

I think this may be an ontology/epistemology confusion on harvey1's part. Just because we can understand the world through math, does not mean that the world is made out of math.

Something else is puzzling me about harvey1's views. He seems to say that quantum physics in general, and wave functions specifically, are dualistic in nature:

Well, conversely, you can go to smaller and smaller scales and see quantum processes at work which can only be explained using wave functions. So, for me in my quantum-cosmological perspective, microbes are also described by wave functions...
You cry foul everytime I mention it, but I'll remind you. We have an uncertainty principle that is the cause of virtual particles. In fact, without the uncertainty principle we cannot explain virtual particles. Of course, you don't like the implications of this...
However, as I said before, a quantum theory of gravity requires a platonic view of the world (thank you for that article by Quentin Smith that made that claim explicit, btw!)...
Quantum laws are not material regularities, they are platonic structures that exist "out there" that determine what is possible/probable and what is not possible/probable.

I don't think this is true. I can't speak about the quantum theory of gravity, which AFAIK does not fully exist yet, but I see nothing inherently mystical, or Platonic, about wave functions. In fact, wave functions describe elementary particles of which all matter is formed; this is a strong indication that wave functions are, in fact, material in nature. I agree that the quantum view of the world is a lot less intuitive than the usual picture we're used to seeing -- solid rocks bumping into things and such -- but I don't think it automatically follows that wave functions are Platonic in nature.

I think QED put it best when he said:

The quantum world is just as predictable and reliable in it's own sweet way. Who cares if certainty is replaced by statistical probability, monality with duality? What if the world is constructed from vibrating strings that oscillate in unseen dimensions? I cannot see any supernatural goings-on in the world that require us to point towards the limits of scientific understanding.

To go one step further, I don't believe that our consciousness is Platonic in nature; neither do I believe that quantum phenomena are absolutely necessary for describing it (if someone here disagrees, I can expand on my reasoning for this). I agree that, ultimately, quantum physics is more accurate than pretty much anything else we have, and that everything can be explained in terms of it; however, I just don't see why it's necessary. The probability of my desk tunneling through the wall is so tiny that we can safely discard it, and think of the desk in terms of Newtonian mechanics; I don't see why bodily processes, such as breathing, blood circulation, or thought, are any different.

Furthermore, I think I missed harvey1's defence of the following:

Of course I know people will believe what they want, but there's no more reason to believe in material causation as there is with 2+3=6.

Firstly, what do you mean by "material causation" ? Secondly, why do you think it's self-contradictory ?

[harvey1]

I have often stated that wherever we look we find software to be supervenient on hardware. I am unaware of any evidence for pure Information that exists without a supporting material structure anywhere in the cosmos.

Well, let me enlighten you on some of the views being batted around. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and it may well become a scientific theory with predictions and the like.

The question I wish to put here is how are we to know for sure that a platonic view is justified when all we might be doing is to default to this assumption simply because we lack a complete understanding of some phenomenon or other that we are studying.

We already have good reason to think that the uncertainty principle "exists" since we have no other reasonable explanation for the Casimir effect other than the existence of virtual particles that pop in and out of reality. If there are other solutions, then where are they? The QED predictions are very accurate using current theory to predict the Casimir forces (see Fig.4 and let me know if you see a difference between experiment and theory).

It seems to me that while Physics lacks a Grand Unification Theory we do not know if the laws we are observing represent restrictions of degrees of freedom imposed by some as yet undiscovered, underlying, material framework.

Are you talking about hidden variables? In any case, it is always possible to cite our lack of information for any scientific conclusion. However, the data shows that we are as justified in postulating the existence of virtual particles as we are any other scientific postulated particle of particle physics. Sure, it might turn out that electrons do not exist, but is that wild possibility really something that requires us to take an agnostic stance on the subject? Currently all the quantum gravity theories continue to require pair creation (e.g., strings), as necessary in their theories.

The analogy that I like to use is the tracing-out of the image of a penny coin beneath a sheet of paper by rubbing over it with a pencil. If we never saw behind the paper, the impression might seem to comes to us from nowhere.

Of course, we can always construct a scientific explanation where quarks don't exist, but those explanations don't continue near the parsimony that current theories do. My suggestion is to stick with current theories until better ones become available. In the meantime, we are justified in believing in quarks, vp's, and the uncertainty principle.

[harvey1]

Furthermore, I think I missed harvey1's defence of the following:

Of course I know people will believe what they want, but there's no more reason to believe in material causation as there is with 2+3=6.

Firstly, what do you mean by "material causation" ? Secondly, why do you think it's self-contradictory ?

I might suggest that you read this thread since this is what I was referring to.

Just because we can understand the world through math, does not mean that the world is made out of math.

Well, perhaps we better find a way to avoid duplicating what we say here versus what we say here where we are having a very similar debate. How about in our brute fact thread we specifically discuss whether there are real logico-mathematical facts (i.e., the nature of a real brute fact) that exist, and in this thread we talk specifically on whether the immaterial can affect the material? This is a very fine distinction, so in this thread I'll be more focused (with you) on the evidence for the influence of immaterial on material (although we already discussed this somewhat on the other thread when we talked about the Eightfold way. Since that subject is important, I'll readdress that evidence here).

Something else is puzzling me about harvey1's views. He seems to say that quantum physics in general, and wave functions specifically, are dualistic in nature:... I don't think this is true. I can't speak about the quantum theory of gravity, which AFAIK does not fully exist yet, but I see nothing inherently mystical, or Platonic, about wave functions. In fact, wave functions describe elementary particles of which all matter is formed; this is a strong indication that wave functions are, in fact, material in nature. I agree that the quantum view of the world is a lot less intuitive than the usual picture we're used to seeing -- solid rocks bumping into things and such -- but I don't think it automatically follows that wave functions are Platonic in nature.

There are a number of purely epistemic and ontological interpretations of the wave function. However, the interpretation that I wish to center on is the Hartle-Hawking wave function interpretation as Quentin Smith presents it as (much obliged to QED for pointing out this article to me...):

...the probability follows only from the mathematical properties of possible universes. The probability of S is conditional only upon certain abstract objects, numbers, operations, functions, matrices, and other mathematical entities, that comprise the wave-function equation. This gives us a probabilistic explanation of the universe's existence that is based solely on laws of nature, specifically the functional law of nature called "the wave function of the universe." ...the configuration space and state space of quantum gravity cosmology are timeless abstract objects ("mathematical spaces") rather than physical existents.

Remember, I'm not trying to use the wave function argument (i.e., as souls) to say that we must interpret the wave function this way. I'm merely saying that there is good reason to believe that souls can exist if interpreted as wave functions in some kind of abstract platonic space of possible individuals that can exist.

To go one step further, I don't believe that our consciousness is Platonic in nature; neither do I believe that quantum phenomena are absolutely necessary for describing it (if someone here disagrees, I can expand on my reasoning for this).

Necessary? No. Is it reasonable to say that it is? I think so.

I don't see why bodily processes, such as breathing, blood circulation, or thought, are any different.

These processes can be thought of under classical terms, however I'm talking about the real nature behind these things. That's why I'm referring to the wave function as a reasonable approach to consider that there is something behind their reality other than a material structure.

[Bugmaster]

Well, perhaps we better find a way to avoid duplicating what we say here versus what we say here where we are having a very similar debate. How about in our brute fact thread we specifically discuss whether there are real logico-mathematical facts (i.e., the nature of a real brute fact) that exist, and in this thread we talk specifically on whether the immaterial can affect the material?

Acknowledged.

...the probability follows only from the mathematical properties of possible universes. The probability of S is conditional only upon certain abstract objects, numbers, operations, functions, matrices, and other mathematical entities, that comprise the wave-function equation.

I'm not sure I'm understanding this properly, because, once again, this sounds like "the wave function can be described in math, therefore it's made out of math".

I'm merely saying that there is good reason to believe that souls can exist if interpreted as wave functions in some kind of abstract platonic space of possible individuals that can exist.

I agree that it's possible for such souls to exist, assuming this abstract platonic space of yours is more than a mere mathematical... well... abstraction. However, the wave functions I know and love (heh) exist in our own physical space, not in a Platonic realm, and thus I don't think they automatically justify belief in souls.

Note that your Platonic wave functions still don't solve the main problem of dualism: how does the immaterial affect the material ?

To go one step further, I don't believe that our consciousness is Platonic in nature; neither do I believe that quantum phenomena are absolutely necessary for describing it (if someone here disagrees, I can expand on my reasoning for this).

Necessary? No. Is it reasonable to say that it is? I think so....
These processes can be thought of under classical terms, however I'm talking about the real nature behind these things.

Ok, can you explain why you believe that breathing can be described in terms of classical mechanics and chemistry, but consciousness cannot ?

You posit the "real nature" behind all these processes; by the principle of parsimony, it's up to you to provide the evidence for this nature.