Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Billiard causation from outside the system

Post 45. 07/08/2018 continued . . .

Natural versus Supernatural Teleology

    Local versus Global Causation

For Cosmologists, human Reason connects the dots of evidence to see where the arrow of causation is heading. In the short term it seems to be organizing & complexifying, yet in the long view it is expanding & diffusing toward an undefined end. But for Theologians, a mechanical model is not enough; they are looking for meaning. What was God's motive for making a world, and what destination has he planned for us9? They find clues in ancient myths of a seven day evolution, resulting in the perpetual processes of Nature. But the original primitive myths merely implied that the motivation for creation of a physical world was something like Love for the creatures themselves, especially the ones most like the designer, standing on two legs and making things with their hands. So Theologians again applied their limited reasoning abilities to flesh-out the cause & effect stories with human-like emotions for all acts of God. Even pragmatic Aristotle, was forced to use the metaphor of Love to describe the mystery of gravity, and other action-at-a-distance attractive forces. Yet, holistic human emotions are not as simple & mechanical as step-by-step physical forces10.

Most Cosmologists and Theologians today are convinced that the universe is evolving from simple stuff toward greater complexity over time. But is that progression goal-directed or aimless? The improved survival rates of each generation of creatures is supposed to be the result of adaptive changes. But did those changes occur randomly or due to some internal drive or teleological attraction? Is Now pushed by the Past in mechanical fashion, or pulled by attraction to a future end state? Only an omniscient creator could foresee the outcome of a multi-billion year process. Pragmatic scientists typically don't bother with such far-out notions. Yet the operating logic of Nature is assumed to follow the same rational "if-then" rules as human intention11. Otherwise, science couldn't predict future states from current patterns. Stars & brains are organized by the same mathematical structures of values, vectors, and ratios. So it seems that numerical relationships can & do add-up to mental meanings & reasons12.

Cause & effect is a process of local interactions, like billiard balls scattering at the break. One thing bumps into another thing and transfers some energy to it, imparting both direction and momentum. But Teleology is a non-local13 event, in which information from one time & place is transmitted to a different space-time without any intervening steps. This sounds like magic, but that's how things work in the quantum realm of reality. So, it should be no surprise that “spooky action-at-a-distance”14 is also found on the macro scale. For example, Enformy15 works like a form of energy that motivates living things, not just to move like a pool ball, but to organize as-if attracted to other things. Each new effect inherits momentum – a basic pattern, form, shape – from its causal history. But all parts of a holistic organism share information about their place in the whole interlocking pattern, like a jig-saw puzzle. We experience those non-local effects as design or organization. Other names for natural teleological forces are Gravity, Vital Force, Morpho-genetic Field, and Enformation. But the First Cause & motivator of all subsequent natural causes – like a cue stick striking the ball stack – necessarily came from outside the affected system, hence must be super-natural. 

End of Post 45

9. Divine Purpose : What did God want or need, that prompted construction of a system to evolve creatures with reasons & emotions of their own? Was it an act of cosmic selfless Love, or for something more worldly, like a race of semi-autonomous robot slaves to serve the Lord with ego-boosting sycophantic praise, and sacrifices of the finest foods and delicacies. The Old Testament seems to imply both. I’m guessing that it was more like Necessity due to the creative nature of G*D.

 10. Goals & wholes : Goals are defined only in terms of wholes, not the parts, by the ends, not by intermediate steps. Each step in a process seems to obey inherited rules blindly, like a billiard ball. Holons have their own purposes, unknown to their parts. And each higher level holon has limited rules & goals. Only the First Cause knows the end game.

11. Causal Logic :
Reasoning is a form of teleological thinking, because we can't understand a physical or biological process until we know “what it's for”, its purpose in the grand scheme of things. But scientists prefer to think locally & mechanically in terms of cause & effect, while theologians think globally & mentally in terms of motives & goals (i.e. teleology : far-sighted logic).

12. Mind is Math :
On the quantum scale, all things have only mathematical properties, such as probabilities and ratios. But those immaterial values somehow add-up to physical properties on the macro scale, and in turn matter is able to engender mental qualities. My explanation for such creative mutability is to assume that ultimately reality consists of various forms & stages of generic EnFormAction, the power to enform, to create.

13. Non-local :
Like a pool player imagin-ing the paths of the balls before he even strikes the stack.

14. Spooky Action :
Einstein’s incredulous critique of quantum leaps, before he was compelled to accept the paradoxical nature of nature’s dark dungeon of absurdities.

15. Enformy :
The evolutionary process of Enformation – from within – appears to be a morpho-genetic field because it functions holistically. Metaphorically, It works like a mould, in which a liquid conforms to the shape of the container. But on closer examination, the bottom-up process is a combination of internal “striving” and external constraints : each new thing “wants” to reproduce, but the environment decides, by natural selection, who moves on to the next stage of evolution.