The A Priori Case for the Paranormal? [Resources]

But as I'll get into in my next post there are a variety of ways of looking at QM that are friendly to the possibility of Survival and/or Psi.

So we already have thread on how the quantum fathers themselves actually influenced a lot of supposed "New Age" ideas linking QM to Consciousness, but I figure a few select quotes from physicists might be of value here:

"Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter..."
  -James Jean

“The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind… To put the conclusion crudely – the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by ‘mind’ I do not exactly mean mind and by ‘stuff’ I do not at all mean stuff. Still this is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness… It is the physical aspects of the world that we have to explain.”

– Sir Arthur Eddington

“The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognises both sides of reality – the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical – as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously. It would be most satisfactory of all if physis [physical nature] and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

– Wolfgang Pauli

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”


– Max Planck

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

– Erwin Schrödinger

"Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the ma- terialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.”


– Richard Conn Henry

“It is not matter that creates an illusion of consciousness, but consciousness that creates an illusion of matter.”

– Bernard Haisch

“Thought and matter have a great similarity of order. In a way, nature is alive, as Whitehead would say, all the way to the depths. And intelligent. Thus it is both mental and material, as we are.”

– David Bohm

=-=--=

GM: In a sense, do we create that particle?

BH: That’s a very interesting question. Do we create what we see? Maybe we do. I know people say, “Oh, it’s all subjective.” But there are only certain things you can do with it. You can’t magic things up. You can reorder things. You can rearrange things when you are making your reality. We’re rearranging the processes. We are part of the process.

GM: Because you shouldn’t think of it in terms of a mechanistic motion of particles?

BH: Yes, it’s nothing like that. It’s not mechanism. It organicism. It’s organic. Nature is more organic than we think it is. And then you can understand why life arose, because if nature is organic, it has the possibility of life in it.

 
- Interview with Basil Hiley

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Note that our approach represents a generalization of von Neumann’s idea to formulate QM as a theory of evolving objective universe interacting with human consciousness, see [9]. In theories with global time, the conflict with relativity can be a voided if one postulates that the label is not the same as a clock reading and that a clock reading depends on the clock trajectory. On the other hand, it is clear that is related to the age of the universe. Since always increases, then the time travel will be impossible within our framework.

 - Aleksandar Mikovic , Temporal Platonic Metaphysics

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Another important aspect of QM is it forced scientists and philosophers to confront the possibility that even the aspects of reality measurable by physics may be indeterministic. This then raises up the question of Causality, which I'll get into in the next post.

Another important aspect of QM is it forced scientists and philosophers to confront the possibility that even the aspects of reality measurable by physics may be indeterministic. This then raises up the question of Causality, which I'll get into in the next post.

We've previously gone over the idea of Laws of Nature, and how the idea they restrict the behavior of Nature is rather problematic. As such, it's not a good argument to say the Laws of Physics would prevent any paranormal event from occurring.

But there's another side to this, which is the question of how causation works at all and whether we should think of all causation as mental causation. Of course if all causation is mental, then this would greatly support Psi and arguably Survival as well.

The first thing to consider, however, is why causation is a problem? ->

In his 1739 book A Treatise of Human Nature (Book I, Part III, Section VI) Hume argued that all we can observe in nature is a series of events. One thing happens and then another, and then another, and so on. The problem when we start wondering about whether any of those events are causally connected is that the supposed causal connection is not itself part of our experience. A match is struck, for instance, and then almost immediately that same match lights. But what we cannot see is that the striking of the match caused it to light, at least according to Hume’s account. How much simpler would it be to make causal claims if it was just a matter of seeing the causal connection tying the two events together, like a rope? Instead, all we see are the two events, the striking of the match and its lighting. The causal connection itself seems unobservable. It hides away and we have to infer its presence from other factors of the situation. This is why we often struggle to pin down causal connections. To a large extent it is a vast scientific endeavour to figure out what causes what and even when we think causation has been established there is no guarantee that we are right. In the case of the rats, for instance, it was a matter of looking to the wider context of the situation to see if something else could have caused the epidemic. There is always the possibility that the real cause has not yet been discovered.

  -Mumford, Stephen; Lill Anjum, Rani. Causation: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (pp. 9-10). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

I will suggest that a serious, perhaps the central, problem presented by SDA is that of understanding a local event being brought about by an agency or force that is, by definition, absolutely general.

The commonly expressed worry that SDA requires of God that he should violate His own laws reflects only the most obvious manifestation of what is a deeper difficulty; namely, finding an adequate explanation of the local, and actual, in the general. The scientific endeavour to make the universe entirely intelligible - culminating in a putative Theory of Everything – encounters similar problems. I shall examine the Principle of Precedence in its various guises (inertia, laws of nature, probability) and different approaches to causation. They all prove profoundly unsatisfactory for different reasons. The difficulty common to various naturalistic responses to ‘Why’ is that of establishing an adequate connection between the explanandum and the explanation given that the former inevitably sets out general possibilities and the latter is composed of singular actualities.

The goal, or regulative idea, of science – namely finding a sufficient reason for singular events in the general properties of the universe to which they belong - is analogous to the theological aim of making sense of SDA by connecting and reconciling such action with fundamental characteristics of God. I shall argue that theists and atheists both need to look critically at the very idea that things happen because they are made to happen, typically by what has preceded it characterised in most general terms; at the notion of ‘becausation’.

In the final, and most speculative and least-developed, part of the paper, I shall ask whether the search for an explanation of events in something that makes them happen is prompted by a felt need to reconnect items of an intrinsically seamless universe pulled apart into distinct elements by the irruption of self-consciousness into Being. This last idea is offered up tentatively for dissection.

So we can see there is something to be explained in Causation, as the connection between events in a temporal chain does not provide the "oomph" - as Tallis calls it - for how one state enables subsequent states. Additionally, for everything that *might* happen, why does a particular and limited set of states actually end up as the effect?

The only causation we at least seem to be acquainted with is our own mental causation, where I can will my hand to rise or choose to shift my body in other ways. So as a conscious agent I at least seem to be a possibility selector.

As noted in WJ Mander's The Volitional Theory of Causation:

Pre-reflective common sense supposes that a cause brings about or produces its effect. It makes it happen. But this aspect of what philosophers term ‘efficient causation’ is puzzling, for as David Hume notes, if we pay careful attention to precisely what is given in immediate sense experience, it would seem that we are presented with one event followed by another, but not with anything which might be characterized as the one generating or putting forth the other. The ‘creation’ or ‘power’ or ‘necessary connection’ which, on the face of it, seems a quite manifest aspect of the phenomena, on closer inspection, eludes us. The volitional theory of causation recognizes this analysis, but argues that the case is quite otherwise if we look instead to our experience of ourselves. In reflexive awareness, it maintains, we feel ourselves to bring about or produce our own actions, choices, and thoughts. They do not simply appear before us, still less are they done to us; rather they are performed by us. They are willed or voluntary. It is here, argues the volitional theory, that we find genuinely efficient causation. We feel or experience ourselves to be effective causal agents.

What we find in our own case, we may reasonably judge takes place also in our fellow creatures. Although we do not experience their actions in the same way as we do our own, we nonetheless infer that they are agents just as we are. Moreover, the theory continues, taking a considerably bolder step, that same inference may be extended to the external world at large also. For if causation is a matter of generation or force or power, and such influence is felt directly in our own case, may we not conclude that something analogous takes place whenever one thing influences or brings about another? May we not conclude that the nature of the productive activity which lies behind all causation is something disclosed to us in the case of our own volitional agency? Looked at from the external or third-person point of view, everywhere in the world causation is ‘dark’ to us, but (goes the argument), grasped in introspection with respect to our own first-person agency, we catch it at work, and this happy insight encourages us to suppose that what we observe here is in fact the basis of all causality.

Another way of thinking about consciousness as being required for causality is discussed in Gregg Rosenberg's book A Place for Consciousness in Nature: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. The link above goes to a Gateway to the book that includes PDF links to a few chapters but the basic gist has been broken down by Stephen Esser. From the book itself:

1. Distinguishing the effective properties as properties that give individuals the inherent potential to place constraints on one another.

2. Developing a theory of shared receptivity to provide a context in which the effective properties can be realized and do their work, thus forming the basis of the connectivity between individuals.

3. Proposing that the effective and receptive causal dispositions must be carried by fundamental intrinsic properties. It is through understanding these carriers that we can understand why consciousness exists.

After developing this model, I argue that physics describes only spatiotemporal patterns in the appearances and values of effective properties. I argue that a realist account of the causal nexus goes beyond this physical aspect because physical theory leaves out information about receptive connectivity and the intrinsic carriers. It follows that a complete theory of the causal nexus needs to go
beyond physical theory.

Finally, yet another way of explaining causation as mental invokes the argument that God has to be the ultimate author and continual determiner of cause-effect relations:

The dictum that what is first in the order of intention is last in the order of execution8 means, not that the end exists in extramental reality before it is caused by the efficient cause, but rather that the end exists as intellectually known before the agency of the efficient cause can take place. Paradoxically expressed, “the end must exist before it exists.”

But “existence” must be understood in two senses: (1) in extramental reality, and (2) in intramental reality, that is, as known by an intellect. It is in the latter sense that the end is the first of all causes, the cause of all causes.
Thus, the proper meaning of “the end exists before it exists” is that the end must exist intramentally before it can exist extramentally.

As will be shown below, this explanation applies even to non-knowing natural bodies...

This is one Proof of God, and I'll briefly touch on some others in the next post.

This is one Proof of God, and I'll briefly touch on some others in the next post.

So it's important to note that one can be convinced of God's existence without being convinced of Survival. This was the case with Anthony Flew, who before his passing converted from atheism to theism but nonetheless did not become convinced there was an afterlife.

Nevertheless I think it's worth briefly touching on arguments for God's existence because it implies there is an immaterial mind that is over and above all that is "physical" which at least opens up the possibility for other minds like ours to also be immaterial.

For myself, the following felt worth mentioning ->

1. The argument from Universals, from Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God ->

Like Aristotelian realism, Scholastic realism affirms that universals exist only either in the things that instantiate them, or in intellects which entertain them. It agrees that there is no Platonic “third realm” independent both of the material world and of all intellects. However, the Scholastic realist agrees with the Platonist that there must be some realm distinct both from the material world and from human and other finite intellects. In particular—and endorsing a thesis famously associated with Saint Augustine—it holds that universals, propositions, mathematical and logical truths, and necessities and possibilities exist in an infinite, eternal, divine intellect. If some form of realism must be true, then, but Platonic realism and Aristotelian realism are in various ways inadequate, then the only remaining version, Scholastic realism, must be correct. And since Scholastic realism entails that there is an infinite divine intellect, then there really must be such an intellect. In other words, God exists.

Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God (pp. 102-103). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

2. The argument from Psycho-Physical Harmony. Worth going through the thread dedicated to this argument, but the basic gist is that we're fortunate there are structures in this universe that allow correlation between positive qualia and those actions that keep us alive.

It was this argument that converted Goff from an atheist to a theist, albeit of a Limited Pantheist/Pandeist God that he identifies with the Universe itself.

Of course Theism is not the only metaphysical picture that is friendly to Survival and Psi evidence. One can be an atheist Dualist who has other reasons besides belief in God for holding that position. Even some Buddhists would suggest what we see in NDEs and OOBEs is made of "subtle matter". There could even be an atheist Idealism, where either the Ground of Consciousness is not self-reflexive or even aware, but merely holds the potential for higher consciousness. Alternatively, there could be Many immaterial minds collectively making up reality rather than One whose Mind sets reality for the Many.

There are a variety of arguments for picking a metaphysical position for reasons that are not related - or at least not directly related - to parapsychology. However I think we've covered the major philosophical points already, at least in the sense of providing an introduction to further reading.

Might post some more things at a later time, but I think this thread as it stands is a decent primer on why one cannot dismiss Psi or Survival on the grounds that everything is "physical" or that the "physical" has "causal closure".