Science, Values,  and the Nature of the Human Person.
(May 21, 2001, Paris)

Science has improved our lives on many ways. It has lightened the 
load of tedious tasks and multiplied our physical powers, 
and thus contributed to a greater flowering of our creative capacities. 

But it has also contributed to a sense of malaise 
among those who sometimes stand back from the pursuit of material 
ends and seek to satisfy their yearning for a better understanding 
of how we fit into the scheme of things, and how we should conduct 
our lives. 

This problem stems from the fact that physical science has, until now, 
focussed on describing the behavior of matter. 

But the important and exciting news is that this study has revealed 
fundamental flaws in our earlier understanding of the nature of matter, 
and our new understanding impacts strongly on these human issues.

My intention is to introduce you to the vistas opened up by
this deeper understanding of the nature of matter, 

I believe that, in the end, the  greatest gift of science to humanity 
will be not its material benefits, but rather a shift in values 
generated by what it reveals about ourselves, and our connection 
to the rest of nature.  

To acquaint you with the impact of science on human values I shall 
first sketch out a bit of human intellectual history.  

I divide this history into five periods: 
traditional, modern, transitional, post-modern, and contemporary.

During the "traditional" era our understanding of ourselves and our relation
to nature was based on "ancient traditions" handed down from generation to
generation. "Tradition" was the chief source of wisdom about our connection 
to nature. 

The "modern" era began in the seventeeth century with the rise of what is 
called "modern science". That science was based on the ideas of 
Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Newton, and it provided a new source of 
knowledge, which came to be regarded by many thinkers as more reliable 
than tradition. 

The basic idea of the modern era was "materialism". This is the idea that 
the physical world is composed basically of  tiny particles of 
matter interacting with each other according to "laws of nature", and that
these laws completely determined the course of physical events for all time 
from the initial conditions. These laws did not acknowledge the existence of 
our conscious thoughts, ideas, feelings, and efforts, and even excluded 
the possibility that supernatural agencies, such as gods or spirits, 
could influence the course of physical events. Matter was asserted to be 
governed by matter alone, acting in accordance with impersonal, local,
mechanical laws.

This materialist conception of reality began to crumble at the beginning
of the twentieth century with Max Planck's discovery of the quantum of action.
Planck announced to his son that he had, on that day, made a discovery
as important as Newton's. That assessment was certainly correct: the 
ramification's of Planck's discovery were soon to cause Newton's materialist 
conception of physical reality to come crashing down. Planck's discovery
marks the beginning of the "transitional" period.
 
A second devastating soon followed: In 1905  Einstein announced
his special theory of relativity, which denied the validity our intuitive 
idea of the instant of time "now", and promulgated the thesis that even the 
most basic quantities of physics had no objective "true values", but were 
definite only"relative" to the observer's point of view.

Planck's discovery led by the mid twenties to a complete break-down, at the 
fundamental level, of the material conception of nature, The new basic 
physical theory was developed principally by Werner Heisenberg, 
Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Wax Born, and it  had a 
strong "idealist" flavor: physics was viewed as a HUMAN ENDEAVOUR 
designed to make predictions about how the results of human observations 
were correlated with each other. It involved a renunciation of all efforts
to describe or understand the physical reality that is the cause of these 
correlations between our observations. This approach is called
"Copenhagen quantum theory".

  
This overturning by science itself of the tenets of the objective 
materialist philosophy lent support to  Post-Modernism.
That view, which emerged during the second half of the twentieth century, 
promulgated, in essence, the idea that all truths were relative 
to one's point of view, and were mere artefacts of some particular 
social group's struggle for power over competing groups. Thus each social 
movement was entitled to its own truth, which was viewed simply as a 
socially created pawn in the power game.

The connection of Post-Modern thought to science is that both 
Copenhagen Quantum Theory and the Theory of Relativity had retreated 
from the idea of objective observer-independent truth. This apparent 
inability of the new sciences that had overthown the earlier materialism 
to provide an rationally coherent replacement meant that the whole idea 
of an objective scientific truth lying behind the vagaries of human 
experience was cast into doubt. This placed every competing 
idea of truth on a par with every other one: insofar as an idea
worked for a group it was true for the  group. 

The physicists were generally too interested in the practical
developments in their own field to get involved in these complex human 
issues. Thus they failed broadcast the fact that, already by 
mid-century, a development in physics had occurred that provides an effective 
antidote to both the `materialism' of the modern era, and the `relativism' and 
`social constructionism' of the post-modern period. That development
was the creation by John von Neumann, during the early thirties, of a 
rationally coherent objective Quantum Theory of Reality. This theory
was elevated by the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger, during the late forties,
to a form compatible with the physical requirements of the 
Theory of Relativity.

Let me give you a quick idea of what von Neumann did.

The earlier Copenhagen approach applied the principles of 
quantum theory only to relatively small systems, and used classical 
concepts to describe the rest of nature. This tearing apart of nature
worked beautifully at the practical level, but it introduced severe logical
difficulties. These logical difficulties were basically ignored in the 
Copenhagen approach. However, von Neumann demanded logical coherence, and 
this meant treating our brains quantum mechanically, and connecting
a person's conscious thoughts to activities in his brain in accordance
with laws provided by the theory itself.

This quantum idea of the human person is superior to the 
materialist conception on at least three counts. 

First, it is based on a contemporary scientific conception 
of matter, rather than one that is demonstrably false. 

Second, it automatically produces a bona fide, rather than 
illusory, free will that can exert a causal influence on the body/brain.  

Third,  it provides for a step-by-step co-evolution of mind and 
brain from primitive beginnings to their present complex human forms.
  
These three virtues provide the basis for a rationally coherent conception 
of the human person that contrasts sharply to the caricature that arose from 
materialism.

To explain how these three features arise I must do three things;

1) Explain the quantum conception of matter. 

2) Show how efficacious free will arises and functions.

3) Describe how mind and brain co-evolved
 
My first task is to explain the quantum idea of "matter".

The relativistic quantum theory of von Neumann, Tomonaga, and Schwinger
gives a conception of the physical, or "material", aspect of nature that
is radically different from the idea of matter postulated by the
physics of Newton and his successors. The properties of this quantum matter 
are a mixture of those of classical matter and classical mind: 
quantum matter lies "mid-way" between classical matter and classical mind. 

But how can that can possibly be? It seems at first inconceivable that 
anything could lie between between classically conceived mind and classically 
conceived matter: the two seem too utterly different to be combined. Indeed, 
it was only with great difficulty that this new idea of matter was hammered 
into the minds of physicists by the incessant beating of the empirical data.

The answer is this. The classical-matter aspect arises from the
fact that the quantum universe can be described as a cloud of "virtual" 
classical universes that evolves "almost always" in accordance
with the Schroedinger equation. This equation is the quantum  analog
of the classical equations of motion. Thus many features of the 
classical  universe are transferred to the quantum 
universe by the fact the latter is a cloud of "virtual" copies of the former.

The mind-like features enter through the cracks opened up by the 
words "virtual" and "almost always".

The word "virtual" signifies that the copies are not fully real:
they are real only as "potentialities".

Potentialities for what?

Potentialities for an "Event"  to occur!

What kind of Event? 

A Psycho-Physical Event!

What is that?

It is the occurrence of a  "Mental Event" that grasps a whole unit of 
structural information, and injects it into the quantum state of the universe.

This injection is  called "the reduction of the wave-packet,"
or "the collapse of the wave function."  It reduces the prior
physical world of potentialities to a new form that incorporates 
the newly grasped structural information.

This thumb-nail description is enough to reveal the radical difference
between the quantum and classical descriptions of the universe:
the classical description was in terms of LOCALIZED BITS OF SUBSTANCE, 
whereas the quantum description is in terms of NONLOCALIZED BITS
OF INFORMATION that are mentally grasped, and physically represented
in an evolving cloud of virtual classical universes.

Von Neumann's work associates each Psycho-Physical event with the
mind/brain of an observer/participant, and it effectively  
demonstrates that this objective form of quantum theory can account 
for all the known empirical data, including everything that is 
adequately described by classical physics:  quantum physics
encompasses the valid predictions of classical physics.

To tie this deeper understanding of the human person to moral issues
I turn now the second question listed above: 
the existence and causal efficacy of "free will". 

It is sometimes suggested that the statistical aspect  of quantum
theory could justify the idea of "free will". However, the injection
of a statistical or random  element into the dynamics makes the situation
worse: it makes it even more difficult for our mental resolves to
control our physical actions. The intrusion of true randomness, which is what
quantum theory demands, tends to decreases the effectiveness of mind, 
rather that increasing it. 

Causally efficacious free will arises in a very different way.

Orthodox quantum theory is similar to the parlor game
"twenty questions". In the quantum case the game is played between 
an observer/participant and Nature. The observer/participant first 
devises, and then "puts to nature", a specific question that can be answered 
"Yes" or "No", where the "Yes" must correspond to a Psycho-Physical
event of the kind mentioned before, and "No" is its complement. Nature 
then returns an answer. The  rules of quantum theory specify the relative 
probabilities of the two possible answers, "Yes" and "No".

Orthodox quantum theory gives each observer/participant the freedom 
to choose  which question he will put to  nature: which experimental 
apparatus he will set in place. However, the mind of the 
observer/participant who makes this choice lies  outside the physical 
system described by the known quantum rules: this choice is thus a 
"free" variable, insofar as the known laws of quantum theory are concerned.

This element of freedom allows "the questions", which are necessary
parts of the game, to "bootstrap" themselves into being: whatever laws 
control the selection of the questions can be completely compatible 
with all the known laws of quantum theory, both statistical and otherwise, 
yet not be entailed by these laws. The quantum theory provide in this way
a dynamical element of "free will".
 
The next question is whether exercising this free will
can affect the behavior of the observed system, which in this case is 
the body/brain of the observer/participant.

This is a technical question, and the answer is YES: By exercising
his  "free will" an observer/participant CAN influence the behavior 
of his body/brain. 

To summarize: in von Neumann-Tomonaga-Schwinger objective quantum theory 
certain choices made by the observer/participant are:
1) DEMANDED BY THE THEORY ITSELF,
2) Not determined by the known  laws of quantum physics, and 
3) Able to influence that person's behaviour.

I shall not attempt to give a detailed account of the co-evolution
of mind and brain, but will merely emphasize that causal actions
of the mind back on the brain are a necessary prerequisite for such an 
evolutionary co-development. Once the possibility for a two-way
causal connection is in place the stage is  set for an evolutionary
co-development of the two causally connected parts.

I have given the bare-bones of a rationally coherent quantum mechanical 
description of the human person. The key step in fleshing  it out
is to identify the quantum process of "picking a question" with the 
psychological process of "paying attention". 

I haven't the time to pursue that technical development here.  
I return instead  to the moral issues raised earlier.

The first main point is that "Materialism" of "modern physics"
is strictly incompatible with the empirical evidence. 

The second main point is that contemporary quantum physics naturally produces 
a causally efficacious free-will whose properties cannot be explained in terms 
of the concepts of pre-quantum physics. 

The third main point is that any support that post-modern thought might
try to draw from the breakdown of the idea of objective truth within science
can be countered by noting that the difficulties that that arose
during the transitionary period are overcome by the  
von Neumann-Tomonaga-Schwinger objective formulation of relativistic 
quantum field theory. 

Of course, all scientific theories are, by nature, provisional, 
and unprovable: all that science  can offer is the description of a 
neat, parsimonious, rationally coherent, and pragmatically useful
theory that fits all the data. 

We now possess such a theory. It 
1) reinstates the concept of objective truth, 
2) yields causally efficacious free will,  and
3) entwines the human person in a complex way with the rest of nature.

These resurrected ideas are the foundations of traditional moral philosophies. 

Point 3 concerns nonlocality, and it needs elaboration.

The thing that drove the final nail into the coffin of materialism 
was the debate between Einstein and Bohr, and the subsequent contribution 
of John Bell. 

Einstein, and two colleagues, Podolsky and Rosen, came up with a 
tight argument that proved, on the basis of an assumption that nature 
allowed no causal influence to travel faster-than-light, 
that quantum theory could not be complete. 

Bohr was hard  pressed to rebut this argument.
He was finally forced to assert that although "mechanical" influences
could not propagate faster than light, certain other more subtle kinds of 
influences pertaining to information  could. 

This way of evading Einstein's conclusion was taken by many critics 
to be tantamount to admission that Einstein was right!

However, Bell proved conclusively that no theory that conforms to the
local realism that Einstein espoused, could possible fit 
certain predictions of  quantum theory. 

The empirical validity of these predictions have by now been essentially
confirmed by many experiments.

Hence Einstein's position has been proved wrong.

This buttresses Bohr's opposing position. 

The subtle faster-than-light influences whose existence Bohr 
acknowledged are explicitly present in von Neuman-Tomonaga-Schwinger 
objective quantum theory. These influences entail that our human experiences 
are entangled with faraway events in ways that are totally incompatible 
with the tenets of materialism. Thus according to this objective
quantum theory, the human person is much more deeply entangled with 
nature than the local materialistic ideas of pre-quantum physics 
could ever allow. 

This quantum conception of the human person, with its causally efficacious
free will, and its profound nonlocal intertwining of man and nature, can 
when infused into our culture, provide the foundation for a significant 
shift in values away from the shallow ones generated by the materialist 
conception of the human person as a local mechanical automaton whose 
every act was pre-ordained before he was born.