© 2000 Ken Glasziou
© 2000 The Brotherhood of Man Library
The purpose of this article is to provide a brief discussion about why “classical” concepts of the mind are considered to have failed, and how new work invoking quantum theory may eventually provide a viable alternative. These new ideas are compared with what the Urantia Papers state about mind and personality.
Scientific research has provided new insights into the mind and its functioning that cannot be reconciled with older interpretations. In the past, a view accepted by most researchers considered the material world to be the reality which the mind interprets via its sensory inputs after processing the inputs through some kind of computational procedure.
However the actual input from our sensory organs is very far from what we imagine to be our reality. For example, if we walk into a hotel dining room we may see a rectangular table. If we walk around the table to get to where the breakfast items are laid out, any occasional glances at the rectangular table are unlikely to consciously register changes to its shape.
If we had the equipment to photograph the retinal images at the back of our eyeballs, we would get an entirely different picture. At no time would the image of the table be rectangular, it would be trapezoid. That trapezoid figure would also keep changing shape depending on the angle of perception.
Remarkably, if our entrance to the dining room had been down a set of stairs we may have viewed a number of different tables, some rectangular, some square, some round, and some of markedly different size. All of this, we could take in at a glance, and all of our impressions would be approximately correct if we later checked them through measurement. Again the photographic record of what we really “saw” in our retinal images would quite amaze us.
The scene gets much more complicated if we compared our retinal images with what we think we see when viewing a landscape having different sized objects at varying distances, perhaps with some moving relative to the others.
Our cursory glance provides us with the impression of a three dimensional scene in which our mental impression of the different size objects at different distances has their shape and size appropriately adjusted and even their relative speeds of movement appropriate to the distances at which we deem them to be. However the images on our retina are only two dimensional and have their shapes distorted by being projected onto the curved surface at the back of our eyeballs. So, regardless of the detail of how our minds sort the scene, the fact is that the information we gather through our senses is abstract, and our view of what is reality appears to have been derived only after some kind of computation.
If abstract computation is going on in the brain, the concrete and reliable look of the world has no obvious explanation. We might also ask ourselves who or what does the computing and who could have written the exceedingly complex mathematical program that would be needed to transform the input data? In the absence of sensible answers being forthcoming from materialist philosophy and classical physics, many have sought for possible mechanisms in the strange world of quantum physics.
From its inception, quantum physics has proposed, then proved, the unbelievable. And even after fifty or more years since the unbelievable has been demonstrated as true, people continue to devise more experiments just to make sure it really is so. Some of these curiosities are the superpositioning of states when a particle has the potential to be in more than a single state–particle or wave for example. The particle appears to remain “undecided” about what it is and so remains in a “suspended” state until an observer decides to look. Then the particle obliges by being a particle if the observer looks for a particle, or being a wave if he/she looks for a wave. Perhaps that would not seem so extraordinary if it were not for the fact that the object in superposition appears to be able to make the correct decision before it actually “knows” what the observer wants from it. How does the mind of the observer get into this scene?
Then there is “non-locality” such as is seen when twin photons are travelling in opposite directions and we place a polarizer in the path of each such that there is only a fifty percent chance of getting through. We then find that if one gets through its polarizer, its twin does the same. Worse is to come. This holds good even if the photons are separated by a distance at which no signal travelling at the speed of light could pass between them. Called non-locality, it will hold even if the photons are at opposite ends of the universe. Initially demonstrated in the laboratory, this phenomenon is now the subject of competition for “the greatest distance of separation” and is already extended to many kilometers.
It is the strangeness of quantum phenomena that has induced researchers to wonder whether equally strange brain phenomena are the result of having root in the world of the quantum. Work is still mostly theoretical–taking a lead from quantum physics in which proposals and their demonstration sometimes were separated by much more than fifty years. For example, Bose-Einstein condensates (comprising a large number of molecules forming what is virtually a super atom in superposition) have only recently been demonstrated, though they were first proposed more than seventy years ago.
Initially this quantum approach received a boost when it was put forward to help explain what was being called the “hard problem,”meaning the difficult task of accounting for the existence of consciousness and self-consciousness in the material world. Those convicted of materialist philosophy dismiss consciousness as a figment of the imagination and seek to explain all mental phenomena in terms of cause-effect relationships. Logically, this approach must culminate in the dismissal of choice and free will, and make all events the linear consequence of preceding events. Thus nobody is really responsible for their actions–we all do what we do because we cannot do otherwise. So what is justice or righteousness?
Those who take the “hard problem” seriously include many of our ablest physicists as well as those trained in the neurosciences. In fact it is now becoming essential to have substantial comprehension of quantum physics and its basic mathematics in order to work in the field of neurophysiology.
Among some in this field, the so-called “hard problem” has taken a quantum leap plus a reversal in that the “I” at the heart of the problem is taken for granted and the explanation of how “I” can know anything about the “world out there” takes up the honor of being the “hard problem.” Some in this group break consciousness down into self or subject denoted by “I”; cognition; awareness of the world; and qualia (subjective experience accompanying, say–the smell of coffee; the fear of heights; etc.)
“I” is all important, it is not local in the sense that it can be found anywhere, it is not a thing that has extension, but at the same time it is “infinitely near.” This infinitely near yet unlocatable “self” has agency. Its function is control. But though unlocatable it has an address, being somehow associated with our bodies and brains.
Coupled with this view there are proposed mechanisms in which the brain has a system of neural units about 50 microns in diameter which exhibit behavior somewhat like a Bose-Einstein condensate operating as a superposed unit in a non-local manner (instantaneous). Normally in a kind of ground state, these units may undergo symmetry breaking which signals some kind of event. A quasi-crystalline form of water that forms dipolar units, along with the microtubules that form a continuous system to link together the cells of living organisms, are envisaged as forming a quantum electro-chemical mechanism that takes control instructions from “I” to the “not-I” components of self. All this is speculation designed to provide some physical support mechanism allowing “I” to do his/her thing in the world.
Whereas the logical path for the materialist view of self led to a body and brain that does what it does because it cannot do otherwise, the view that gives this central role to “I” makes it into a non-local control center for which “I’s” meanings and values become its control variables.
How does “I” function in the world. Pushed to the limits, “I” am a monad surrounded by a quantum domain that is unseeable and unfathomable. My world is my own; your world is your own. Yet I somehow make sense out of it and do connect with the outside world–your world when appropriate. How “I” does this is now the hard problem. One suggestion is that the brain generates quantum fields that represent a library of superposed possibilities. Sensory inputs, rather than undergoing some kind of information processing, simply interact with a page in the library composed of appropriate superposed possibilities. “I’s” meanings and values are then the control variables that operate to select among the pages of possibilities to provide a match by which the world is perceived. This is a non-linear system with a high degree of spontaneity. As such it corresponds much more closely to what most of us believe is reality than the dismal view taken by the materialist-mechanists.
What do the Urantia Papers say about mind and consciousness? In actuality there is so much that we can only hope to cover a few of the salient features. What neurophysiologists are calling “I” appears to roughly correspond to a combined personality, mind, and soul as used in the Papers. Personality is a gift from the Universal Father, mind is directly from the Universe Mother Spirit and indirectly from the Infinite Spirit and the Seven Master Spirits. Soul is in the hands of the indwelling Father-Spirit who preserves all that is of spiritual value to be taken forward into our morontia life.
Personality is distinguished by two self-manifesting phenomena, self-consciousness and relative free will, both of which are properties of the “I” of the neurophysiologist. It is our personality that gives us the prerogative of choice.
We need to be aware that the Urantia Papers use the term, personality, in a markedly different way to its common usage. In common usage, personality is something that develops, changes, evolves, and grows. Personality, as used in the Urantia Papers, is a pattern of potentials that can be called into action. However that pattern is individual, unique, and unchanging. It is unifying and confers identity but is not in itself our identity. Personality enables us to respond to three basic mind realities, the mathematical or logical recognition of physical causation, the reasoned recognition of the obligation of moral conduct, and the faith-grasp of fellowship worship of Deity associated with the loving service of humanity.
Importantly, it is our personality that responds to other-personality presence.
Mind is complementary to personality and comes tailored to the specific needs of the creature. Unlike our personality which is permanently ours, our mind is not permanent. We get a new and different mind on the mansion worlds, and minds suited to our advancing status as we progress towards Paradise.
The human type mind is endowed with the capacity to reason, to distinguish relative right and wrong, and to recognize spiritual values. Personality has the capacity to activate potentials inherent in the mind, especially the three major classes of attributes deriving from Cosmic Mind and classified as causation, duty, and worship.
The “I” of the quantum neurophysiologist appears to be on track to be identified as a very limited combination of personality and mind as they are described in great detail in the Urantia Papers–certainly there is a degree of convergence between the two. In contrast, there is almost nothing in common to be found in the concepts expounded in the Urantia Papers and those views advanced by any materialist-mechanist interpretation of mind.
It appears to be unlikely that any scientific methodology could ever be developed that could verify or even throw light upon the detailed revelations in the Papers concerning personality and mind. The Papers say little about mind-brain interaction, the nearest thing being, “Human consciousness rests gently upon the electrochemical mechanism below and delicately touches the spirit-morontia energy system above.” The Papers do declare that personality is a universe mystery, and mind is certainly a mystery to us Urantians. This is the stuff of revelation–and some things have to be accepted in faith.
Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe…The universe is a whole; no thing or being exists or lives in isolation. (UB 56:10.14)