Mark Pine

Galen Strawson, a philosophy professor at Reading University, penned an opinion column in the NY Times last week making an argument that we are not morally responsible for our actions, because we are not truly free to choose.

The argument asserts that all our decisions are grounded in our nature, and our nature is determined, ultimately, by factors over which we have no control. His view seems to be a kind of fuzzy determinism, although he never says whether he accepts full-fledged determinism, which he defines as “the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before.” Whatever he believes, he presents an argument which rules out free will and abrogates moral responsibility.

Galen seems to believe that determinism is either true or false. He writes, “Current science gives us no more reason to think that determinism is false than that determinism is true.”

In fact quantum mechanics – the fundamental, well-verified theory of the nature of reality – indicates that determinism is true to some extent AND the opposite, freedom or free will, is also true to some extent. The bottom line: There is ENOUGH freedom in the universe for us to be responsible for what we do.

At the heart of the argument Galen presents against free will and moral responsibility and in favor of determinism of some kind is this proposition:

“(ii) When one acts for a reason, what one does is a function of how one is, mentally speaking. (It’s also a function of one’s height, one’s strength, one’s place and time, and so on….”

So consider this simple example: I am free to choose to jump up or not. I can jump up 2 inches or 2 feet. But I cannot jump up 10 feet high or minus 10 feet below the floor. I am free to choose to jump within a range of freedom. The range is limited, as Galen points out, by my physical body, my mental state, my time and place. But within that range, I AM free, and nothing in my past determines beforehand my actual choice, which I make spontaneously in the instant that I choose.

Quantum mechanics indicates that this is true. Freedom exists within a range and determinism exists by placing limits on the range of freedom. Events in the universe occur as the outcome of the evolution of a wave function (state vector). The evolution of the wave function of an event and the range it specifies for the outcome of the event are completely deterministic. But the actual occurrence of the event at some point within the range is probabilistic and free.

The wave function assigns probabilities to the points at which the event can take place. But there is nothing that determines in advance at which point exactly the event will happen.

Since we humans exist in the universe and our decisions are made within it, the same circumstances apply to us. We are constrained by determinism to choose within ranges of outcomes that are not so improbable that that they are impossible. But within those limits, nothing determines in advance what we choose.

Galen’s argument fails in assuming the truth of this phrase:

“…what one does is a function of how one is…”

Although this assertion seems self-evident, it is false. And QM says it cannot be true. Nothing determines in advance the actual, particular outcome in reality of the evolution of the wave function of an event like a decision.

How we are places limits on what we choose, constraining our choices to a particular set of possibilites. But nothing determines in advance our actual decisions. They are made completely spontaneously in the instant they are made.

That’s the question asked in the headline of an article in last month’s Scientific American. The author, Craig Callender, is a philosophy professor at UCSD, and it’s a question only a philosopher or a physicist could ask.

Most of us mortals know time exists. Is it real that my skin wrinkles and my hair turns gray? Is it an illusion that my muscles lose mass and my stature loses height? I wish those things were just figments of imagination. (The question whether time really exists reminds me of the question scientists sometimes ask whether consciousness really exists.)

But the question about time arises in cosmological circles primarily because of Einstein and his Theory of Relativity, which undermined the concept of a clockwork universe envisioned by Newton. Einstein turned time into a kind of space by describing a four-dimensional spacetime—a network spanning the universe, which can fold, stretch, twist and tie itself in knots. In such a universe, the future shifts with respect to the past and the concept of the time when something happens becomes…well…relative.

But in contrast to relativity theory, Callender says, time is real and robust in quantum mechanics. He writes:

The full description of an object is given by a mathematical function called the quantum state. This state evolves continuously in time. Using it, physicists are able to calculate probabilities of any experimental outcome at any time.

For QM to make sense, there must be a past in which the quantum state evolves and a future for it to predict.

Physicists have been trying to bridge the contradictions between relativity and quantum mechanics for decades, and one of the main issues is the concept of time, Callender says. One thing, however, that does not seem different in the two theories’ notions of time is the idea that events occur in an order.

In the universe, events occur in sequence. Some events occur before others and others occur afterward. Some things happen earlier and others happen later. Indeed, both theories use sequences of earlier events to predict later ones.

It doesn’t seem to be required by either theory that the amount of time or interval of spacetime between events necessarily be the same for all observers. Events can move faster or slower depending on the situation of the observer (that sort of thing happens to me all the time). But the order in which things happen does not change.

This is where the Second Law of Thermodynamics—entropy—enters the picture, a topic that Callender did not discuss. For the universe as a whole, the sequence of events must be ordered so that the entropy of the universe increases. Only certain sequences are allowed by the Second Law.

I wonder about this: In QM, the complete descriptions of the universe and its various parts are given by quantum states, which evolve in time. According to the classical Copenhagen interpretation of QM, at moments in time, the quantum states are realized in actual material reality, through a process called “collapse” in which the probabilities of the states are transformed briefly into certainties. In other versions of QM, also, transformations of quantum states and their probabilities into actual realities must also somehow occur, if the notion of reality is to mean anything. The sequences of transformations of quantum states into actual reality is what creates the real universe and all its real parts.

These sequences of transformations implied in QM seem naturally to give an order to events that could structure time and satisfy the requirements of that theory. The Second Law of Thermodynamics would allow only some sequences and not others. And the amount of time between transformations (or the interval of spacetime between them) would be determined by light (photons) traveling from one to the next, which would satisfy the requirements of the Theory of Relativity.

I think it’s true. I’m about to turn 65. In fact, I just received my Medicare card yesterday. And with the possible exception of some dimly remembered years when I was very young, I think I’ve never been happier.

In 2008, researchers at Stony Brook University, Columbia and Princeton surveyed more than 300,000 Americans by telephone. The survey questions asked the respondents about their overall appraisals of their lives and their current emotional state. The scientists found that the attitudes and feelings of those surveyed were most positive among those who were old: From the start of adulthood at age 18, positive attitudes and feelings declined, reaching a low point around age 50. But after that positive attitudes rose and were highest among those in their 80s. Negative attitudes followed a different pattern: Anger declined steadily after the 20s. Feelings of worry stayed high from the beginning of adulthood until middle age and then declined. Sadness remained constant through life.

The researchers said the results of their survey, which were published last month, confirmed the findings of several other studies.

Reporting on the research on Monday, the NY Times described the methodology of the survey. Each person was asked to grade his or her overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale. To determine their current emotional state, the respondents were asked six yes-or-no questions about their feelings on the previous day. The responses were encouraging for those who worry about growing old. Enjoyment and happiness rises steadily from age 50 to 85, and it declines only a little thereafter.

Although the explanation for the increase of happiness with age is not known, the article reported speculation about the possible effects of age-related changes in environmental circumstances, hormones, or brain chemistry.

I’ve noticed my own happiness rising steadily for several years. It’s been a bit like watching a favorite bush in my garden grow larger and larger and start to bloom. Sometimes I have trouble believing my good fortune, and I’ve even felt a little guilty. So it’s reassuring to know that gladness growing with age is a common thing, in America anyway. And although I can’t explain it as a general phenomenon, I have some definite ideas about why it’s so for me.

One thing that has changed as I age is that the pressure of time has diminished. Retirement is a main reason. I left the federal government about 8 years ago, and although I continued self-employment as a consultant until this year, I’ve not had schedules and deadlines to deal with on a daily basis. I’ve always felt the pressure of time as a huge burden, and before I retired, that was a major cause of my unhappiness. I still stay busy with schedules to follow and lots of things to do, but it’s all of my own choosing and very little of it is obligatory.

Another big difference is that I no longer feel the need to prove myself or accomplish big things. It seems to me that the time for that has passed. I’ve had my education, my career, and my family. I still try for accomplishments. I blog, for instance, because I think I have something to contribute to the great human conversation—but I don’t fret about making a mark.

Some change has occurred in my biology, too, as I’ve aged. I’m less worried, and perhaps that’s because my waning brain has less capacity to generate anxiety, as it seems to have less capacity in other ways. If so, then perhaps there’s a silver lining to cognitive decline.

I’m blessed by having raised two wonderful children, both of whom seem to have gotten themselves going and are making lives of their own. I speak and get together with them often enough, and I look forward to having grandchildren some day.

Do I worry about death? Not much, although I think about it frequently. I don’t believe in the afterlife in the usual sense, but neither do I believe that biological death means the end of consciousness, although personal identity may cease at that point. The prospect of death seems mostly the coming of peace and rest. I hope that’s true.

It doesn’t qualify as a dildo or vibrator, but the NY Times reports this morning that male chimpanzees of a simian tribe in Tanzania will use a leaf to make a noise to rouse a female to have sex. Use of sexual implements was imagined to be exclusively a human invention.

As explained by William McGrew, a Cambridge University primatologist who has written a book titled “The Cultured Chimpanzee,”

Males basically have to attract and maintain the attention of females. One way to do this is leaf clipping. It makes a rasping sound. Imagine tearing a piece of paper that’s brittle or dry. The sound is nothing spectacular, but it’s distinctive. The male will pluck a leaf, or a set of leaves, and sit so the female can see him. He spreads his legs so the female sees the erection, and he tears the leaf bit by bit down the midvein of the leaf, dropping the pieces as he detaches them. Sometimes he’ll do half a dozen leaves until she notices.

The article is another report in an increasingly noisy field of science on the mental, emotional and cultural life of higher mammals. Last week ScienceDaily reported on a study of mourning among chimpanzees. Mothers may sometimes cling to and carry the body of a deceased infant for weeks.

Even more remarkable, perhaps, is how a group of chimps dealt with the dying of one of them. Her companions attended, comforted and caressed her, while maintaining calmness and quietude in her presence, in contrast to their usual rowdy, noisy activity.

In March, Scientific American ran a story on Chimpanzee gestural language. It noted that animals at the Yerkes Primate Research Center “predominantly used their right hand when communicating with one another—for example, when greeting another chimp by extending an arm.” The chimps didn’t display such one-sidedness in other arm motions. The researchers speculated that the preference may reflect the same left-hemispheric lateralization of language as found in human brains. (Each brain hemisphere controls the contralateral side of the body.)

Last December Science reported research at the University of Rennes in France on another primate, Campbell’s monkeys, describing a kind of grammar in their vocalizations. Different warning sounds are used as calls to refer to different predator animals. “Krak” for leopard; “hok” for eagle. But by attaching the sound “oo” to such a call, as in “krak-oo,” the monkeys are able to generalize to form a call indicating almost any disturbance of their environment.

In a similar vein, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, scientists have investigated the cognitive and communicative abilities of dogs.

The significance of all this, in my view, is that it contradicts the notion that humans’ higher mental functions, such as language and communication, have evolved only in human beings. Scientists are learning that in regard to communication, humans have developed the most advanced forms of it, but other species of mammals evolved similar capabilities. The evolution of human cognitive and linguistic abilities is part of a continuum with that of lower animals, as is the case for other aspects of our biology.

Moreover, in my view, the same continuum exists in regard to consciousness, which includes the subjective side of experiences and capabilities. Human consciousness is extremely complex and intelligent, but lower animals, I believe, possess consciousness and thoughtfulness. I suspect that as highly complex human language and behavior is to the simpler calls and behaviors of apes, monkeys, and dogs, so is highly complex human consciousness is to the simpler consciousnesses of those animals.

Yesterday Scientific American online posted an interview with Eliezer Sternberg, a medical student at Tufts, who has written a book on the findings of neuroscience and the traditional notions of moral responsibility.

Sternberg describes research that has cast doubt on the existence of free will among some in the scientific community, particularly investigations done by the late Benjamin Libet, a UCSF physiologist. In a 1999 article (pdf) in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Libet wrote about his experiments. Subjects were asked to decide to perform simple acts while undergoing EEG monitoring. They reported awareness of making decisions to act about half a second after the onset brain waves (called “readiness potentials”) that correlated with and predicted their decisions.

The findings seemed to indicate that the subjects’ perceptions of making decisions by free will were illusions. Rather, their decisions were predetermined by brain processes occurring a fraction of a second earlier.

If unconscious brain processes precede and predict decisions to act, then that raises questions about the existence of free will and whether people can be held morally responsible for their actions. But discussing Libet’s work in the interview, Sternberg said:

That argument is based on the idea of a “readiness potential” that appears 350 milliseconds before the conscious decision of an action is declared. But my argument would be that there’s really no way of knowing that this potential — which is just a brainwave, actually — is the brain beginning to take the action. It’s an assumption made, but for all we know, it could be associated with thousands of different processes.

Sternberg believes that free will is “an emergent property of the mechanism of the brain”—a real thing created by the complex operations of brain activity. Nevertheless, he expects that the progress of neuroscience research, in elucidating the mechanisms of the brain, will continue to convince many people that free will doesn’t exist. In the future, lawyers and criminal defendants may put forward defenses based on this research. If that happens, “That would mean that our concept of morality doesn’t make any sense and there seems to be no way to hold people responsible for anything,” he says.

In a previous post, I’ve also discussed this research. Libet’s results and similar findings by others all rely on experiments that require the subjects to report the moment that they make a conscious decision. But such reporting requires—in addition to making the decision—the operations of processes involving the self-assessment that a decision has been made, the short-term memory of the decision, and the expression of the decision by vocalization or other motor activity—all of which take time. Thus, the occurrence of a time gap of a fraction of a second between making a decision and reporting it does not contradict the existence of free will.

Moreover, criminal law has traditionally judged the issue of moral responsibility by criteria that do not depend on the existence of an intention to act, free or not, but on the presence or absence of a “guilty mind” (mens rea, in legal terminology), which is knowledge of the wrongfulness of the deed.

Arising out of British Common Law, the McNaughton rule was the basis for determining criminal responsibility in both British and American courts for more than a century. To be judged not criminally responsible, the defense had to show that the defendant lacked the knowledge of “the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.”

Certain American courts, such as in the District of Columbia, have at times assessed criminal responsibility on the basis of whether the defendant suffered from “irresistible impulses” (Durham rule). In those courts, defenses based on neuroscientific research concerning free will might have relevance and weight. But most often American jurisdictions, including the federal courts, have used criteria similar to the McNaughton rule based on the defendant’s knowledge of right and wrong and not on his will to act.

Depending on knowledge rather than will, the legal concept of mens rea seems able to withstand neuroscientific discoveries about free will.

Overriding such considerations, however, Sternberg doubts that neuroscience will succeed in completely explaining behavior. Between “mind and mechanism,” he says, “there’s a fundamental gap that none of that [neuroscience research] will breach.”

I think Sternberg and I agree. It’s worth noting that the most fundamental description of the nature of reality in physics—quantum mechanics—does not support the concept of determinism. In QM, events in the physical world can never be completely predetermined. The most that can be determined in advance is a set of probabilities associated with all the possible events that may occur. Since both the brain and human actions occur in physical reality, it would seem that the impossibility of determinism must apply to the brain and human activity, as well.

I suspect that free will and quantum mechanics are connected at a fundamental level. In QM when an event happens in physical reality, it occurs through a process called “collapse of the wave function.” The wave function specifies the set of probabilities associated with all the possible events that may occur. As one of the events comes actually to pass, the set of probabilities of the wave function collapses—the probability of the actual event goes to 1.

This suggests to me that making a free will decision involves a collapse of the wave function of the brain.

Two articles last month describe the relationship between inner mental worlds and the activity of specific neurons in the region of the brain called the hippocampus. But one article reports an experiment with rats and the other with humans.

The first piece in the Journal Neuron was reported in ScienceDaily. Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School recorded the brain activity in the hippocampus—where memories are formed—of rats trained on a maze to learn to follow two routes, designated A and B, to obtain food.

The rats wore electrode hats while they learned the maze. The scientists pinned down which hippocampal neurons, called “place cells,” fired in association with locations along each route. And they determined the firing sequences of the place cells for each route.

They got a surprise when the place cells firing while the rats were moving along one route weren’t necessarily the ones associated with that route. The following is from the ScienceDaily report:

The researchers found that the animals would replay sequence B more often, even when they spent most of their time running sequence A. In other words, the researchers found that the rats were most likely to replay the path they had experienced less often. … [Also, they] were able to observe the animal making connections between paths that it had never physically traveled before. For example, if the animal had physically traveled from point A to point B, and from point B to point C, but never from point A to point C, they observed the single sequence A to B to C during the replay process, implying that the rat’s brain was able to make the connection between points A and C on its internal map.

Neuroscientists at University College London performed the human experiment, which was published in Cell Biology and reported in Science online. They obtained fMRIs of the subjects hippocampuses rather than use electrodes. These real time, high resolution fMRIs recorded regional blood flow, which is assumed to reflect neuronal activity.

The researchers showed the volunteers three 7-second movies of an actress doing simple things, such as dropping a letter in a mailbox. The subjects were asked to memorize what they saw. They recorded the fMRIs of each subject while this was happening. Later the subjects were asked to choose one of the movies and recall it, while also undergoing fMRIs.

A computer, programmed with an algorithm to analyze the fMRIs, was able to determine which movies the subjects were remembering. In other words, using the algorithm, the computer had correctly picked out which neurons fired in association with which internal scene.

In my view, the two studies—in two different species of mammals—found approximately the same thing. Both studies provided evidence of the creatures’ mental worlds. And both support the notion that the mental projection of internal representations is associated with the activities of hippocampal neurons, a region of the brain known to work with memories.

For some of us humans, the most astonishing aspect might be the evidence provided that rats have mental worlds just as humans do.

There is for me also another, deeper significance in the results of these two research efforts. They both support the existence of non-material mental worlds.
Both the rats and the humans experienced internal mental representations. The initial inputs for the representations originated externally to the organisms, and the recalled ones originated internally to the organisms. In the case of the rats, the external inputs came from the maze where the animals trained, and the internal ones came from their hippocampuses. In the human case, the external inputs came from the movies they watched, and the internal ones came also from their hippocampuses.

I find it fascinating to consider what may be common and what may be different in regard to the two types of source—the external sources and the internal ones. In a previous post, I wrote about one thing they have in common: The information from both sources, the external and the internal, is carried by photons.

Photons carry the electromagnetic waves of light, and they also are the vectors of the electromagnetic force. The external-source photons were those of the light waves striking the retinas of the animals. The internal-source photons were those of the electrical impulses of the activity of the hippocampal neurons in the brain.

I’ve suggested that the existence of non-material, mental (conscious) representations can be considered within science, specifically within quantum mechanics. Non-material, conscious experiences exist, I believe, as the wave functions (state vectors) of the photons involved. Wave functions are non-material things just as mental experiences are. That’s one main reason for my suggestion that this is the case.

Neuroscientists have demonstrated that the focusing of attention in consciousness is associated with specific frequencies of neuronal activity in the brain, and anticipation of an event requiring attention is associated with other specific frequencies.

The researchers, at the University of Chicago, Baylor College of Medicine, and Rush University, showed that one person’s conscious attention to instructions displayed on a computer screen was signaled by the onset of beta oscillations (12-30 Hz) of local field potentials in his motor cortex. They also demonstrated that delta oscillations (0.5-1.5 Hz) in the same region indicated the subject’s enhanced readiness to focus attention on an anticipated instruction.

The research was reported last Thursday in the journal Neuron. An article on the findings appeared in ScienceDaily the next day.

The subject of the experiment was a quadriplegic person, whose brain had been implanted with a computer chip holding an array of 100 electrodes. The device allows paralyzed individuals to control the motion of a computer cursor with their brain. However, the chip also permits recording of local field potentials similar to brain waves on an EEG.

In the experiment the subject watched a rhythmic sequence of five instructions to move the cursor, as they appeared on the computer screen. But the person was told to carry out only the second and fourth instructions. The recording from the electrode showed that the amplitude of beta frequency brain waves increased as the subject waited for the relevant instructions to appear, and the beta amplitude peaked just before they did. The beta amplitude subsided between the relevant instructions, when the subject was ignoring the other instructions not performed.

The electrode recordings also showed that the amplitude of delta frequency waves entrained to a periodicity that followed to the timing of the appearance of the instructions. The scientists inferred that the delta waves play a role in enhancing a readiness to pay attention, so that maximum beta activity would coincide with the appearance of the anticipated input.

The relationship of the two frequencies is like the melody and bass of a tune, one scientist explained. “The slow rhythm is kind of like the rhythm section, and you anticipate notes at particular moments in time based on that slower rhythm,” he said.

The researchers hope that the ability to track a person’s attention could help people to improve their concentration. In the case of paralyzed people connecting with computers, attention monitoring might help to improve their control of the computer.

The discovery also clarifies an important issue regarding the nature consciousness. Brain scientists sometimes fail to distinguish between consciousness, an inclusive concept, and attention, a specific function of consciousness. For example, we sometimes say that we become conscious of a particular feeling or thought. We don’t mean that we are not already conscious, but rather a feeling or thought comes to our attention—we notice it.

An article touching on this issue appeared last December in Scientific American. Daniel Bor, a neuroscientist and author of the report, wrote in a comment: “Some researchers suggest that attention and consciousness are one and the same, in fact. A very interesting question.”

The new research points to the answer by demonstrating that particular brain waves in the beta frequencies are associated with the function of attention. Yet the contemporaneous occurrence of delta waves also shows that consciousness is present, whether or not the function of attention is engaged. (Of course, the fact that the subject was alert and responsive (conscious) during beta amplitude troughs also shows that consciousness is distinct from attention.)

This difference was graphically illustrated in the first episode of the Charlie Rose’s remarkable series of programs on brain research. One of the brain scientists, Tony Movshon, used the Necker cube to demostrate that the brain can synthesize two alternative perceptions of one diagram of a cube. In experiencing this familiar but striking optical illusion, we discover that as we shift our function of attention, we see one version of the cube, then the other. But our function of consciousness remains with us all the time, and the two perceptions occur within our one consciousness.

At the Unitarian-Universalist church I attend, the subject of the sermon yesterday was change. The senior minister is leaving after serving the congregation for twelve years. As is his wont, he began considering the subject from the largest perspective. He spoke of the universality of change, the paradox of change as the only constant, and of the value-neutrality of change, which in itself, is neither good nor bad.

His perspective narrowed as he went on, focusing on the intricacies of his personal transformation and that of the congregation and the church. But my mind remained with the large subject and a problem I have wondered about for years: What is the nature of time—that which makes change possible and brings it about? Surprisingly, I arrived at a new insight, one that took a major step toward clarifying the mystery for me. I put it out here on the web, for what it’s worth.

One part of the puzzle of time comes from the most fundamental ontological theories of physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. Both theories take time as a given, using time as parameter like space, and do not explain it. They are silent about time’s ceaseless progression from moment to moment and its unidirectional flow from past to future.

Both relativity and QM are symmetrical with respect to time. Their laws hold whether time moves forward or backward—or whether it doesn’t move at all, just rests as an infinite expanse where the events of the universe play out.

Only thermodynamics—also a fundamental theory, but not an ontological one—clarifies the nature of time by describing change quantitatively and specifying a direction. The second law requires that events move in sequence from states of fewer possibilities to states of more possibilities.

Thus, if salt and pepper are layered one above the other in a shaker, then shaking will mix the substances irreversibly. Underlying this change is the reality that that the number of different ways separated layers can occur is much less than the number of ways the mixture can occur. Because the probability of a state increases with the number of ways it may occur, it is almost impossible to shake the salt and pepper mixture back to separation.

But while thermodynamics deals with change quantitatively and probabilistically, it doesn’t account for the two things to my mind most characteristic and problematic of time—the specialness of present instant and its relentless forward march.

Indeed, none of the three theories explains why the present moment exists. Their laws do not change in the present moment and confer uniqueness upon it. For all three, the present is not different from any other moment.

As I wondered about time, listening to the minister, I suddenly came upon an idea that blended concepts from each of the three theories. This is that thought, as well as I can express it:

Relatively teaches that although time seems to move continuously, there is no one speed at which time moves. Time is like a train traveling from station to station, but the train can move at any speed (less than or equal to that of light). We perceive time only because the stations change from one moment to the next. Time is the sequence of events (the stations we pass through), not their rate of progression.

QM teaches that this sequence of events, which constitutes time, is a sucession of moments of observation. It describes the universe as a continuous expanse, consisting of the probabilities of all the events that can possibly occur: It is a probability function—the so-called “wave function of the universe”—which extends throughout the expanse of space and time. Time arises as material reality is observed at each instant, from one moment of time to the next. In the language of the theory, the universal wave function “collapses” to one actual universe at each moment of the present. By an act of observation in the present moment, from all the universes possible, the one actual reality comes to pass.*

Thermodynamics appears to join with QM and relativity in requiring that the probability function (wave function) of the universe be constrained so that the number of possible states of the universe (the number of possible universes) increases with each moment of time. Thus, thermodynamics specifies an order to the sequence of events that relativity and QM describe. In the past, the number of possible universes was less than at present. In the future, the number will be greater than now.

We human beings are participants in the process of observation, which determines which of the greater number of universes is actualized. By being among the observers, we experience from one moment to the next the sequence of observations of actual reality as they appear to us. We define the present moment (our present, at any rate) through our participation in the universal process of observation. We contribute to the actualization of the universe by adding our observations of it.

In that sense, time is a sequence of tasks that we take on and carry out, from one moment to the next.

*This idea makes use of the traditional Copenhagen Interpretation of Neils Bohr, one of the originators and formulators of QM. It ignores, the multiverse interpretation, according to which all possible universes exist simultaneously in any instant of time.

Explanatory note: Last weekend, I attended a one-day seminar at the Smithsonian on the influences of Christianity and philosophy upon one another. The religious studies professor from a nearby university discussed Neoplatonism, Thomas Aquinas, and Kant, among others. And she concluded with Friedrich Schleiermacher, a post-Enlightenment philosopher and theologian, who was among the first religious thinkers to grapple with Kantian philosophy and scientific ideas. Fascinated by her lectures, I sent her an email expressing some thoughts I had the next day.

Dear Professor,

Thanks so much for your talk yesterday. Amazingly, you covered two millennia in two halves of one day, and you did a credible and enlightening job of it. I’m particularly pleased to have learned about Schleiermacher, of whom I had never heard. And you provided remarkably clear insight into the religious philosophies of Aquinas and Kant, of whom I had.

My greatest religious interest is the intersection of religion and science, while Schleiermacher’s was religion and philosophy. But back then science was essentially natural philosophy. In starting the section on him, you suggested Schleiermacher was mightily influenced by the scientific vision of reality, particularly electromagnetism—in contrast to the more deterministic Newtonian mechanics—with the former’s confluence of forces originating throughout the universe and influencing each individual.

I couldn’t help but think that were Schleiermacher alive today, he would actually be most entranced by quantum mechanics, not electromagnetism, which is every bit as deterministic as Newtonian mechanics.

As you probably know, just as there is a duality at the heart of religion, matter and spirit, there is a duality at the core of QM, particle and wave. In the case of the physics theory, the duality consists of alternative descriptions of reality: one is a universe of bouncing particles made of matter; the other is a universe of interfering wave functions.

The particle description is similar to Newtonian mechanics, except that in contrast to Newtonian billiard balls, QM particles are fuzzy and less precisely located. But it is the wave description that I think Schleiermacher would be entranced by.

Since in the latter description everything is a wave, including individual humans, each of us is a spreading circle of ripples. And each of us in turn is the focus of ripples originating throughout the universe and impinging on us. Indeed there is in QM the concept of the universal wave function. The universe is like an ocean, with waves moving every which way and making all sorts of changing patterns. Each human is a sort of individual wave generator bobbing up and down and making waves that contribute to and respond to the whole thing.

Is that like the picture Scheiermacher had in mind?

Moreover, the universal wave function is an ocean of probabilities, not deterministic outcomes. QM’s picture of reality allows for uncertainty and alternatives, and in my view, it makes room within physics for the exercise of free will. I thought that he might really like that part of the picture.

(The professor made the point that Schleiermacher was interested in electromagnetism, a science in its infancy when he lived, because it contrasted with the deterministic clockwork universe envisioned by Newton. Schleiermacher saw electromagnetism, through the operation of its long range attractive and repulsive forces, as allowing each individual to be influenced by universe and to influence the universe in response. As I understood her point, this picture provided some scientific basis for Schleiermacher’s concepts of the connection between the person and God and for the possibility that humans can influence God, as well as vice versa. Thinking about it the next day, it seemed to me that his ideas are closer to modern quantum mechanics than to electromagnetism.)

On January 18 in the NY Times, Stanley Fish, a columnist at the newspaper, wrote a column on Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s book on science and religion, Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion. This week the author responded. My post today addresses one aspect of the issues raised by Herrnstein Smith and Fish:

Might it be said that science and religion not only can coexist but be consistent, even reinforcing? I think it might. This assertion concerns the ontological question that science and religion address, their dispute about the fundamental ground of existence.

Scientists (when they are doing science) understand the world as composed of material things: atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, etc. Science involves observations and experiments in the material world, and it develops theories about how that world works.

In contrast, religions reject the concept of the material world as the fundamental reality in favor of nonmaterial existence—usually called spirit, God, or Nirvana. In the religious context, material reality is understood as a more or less illusory and transient form of existence.

This divergence, in my view, constitutes the core ontological conflict between science and religion. The conflict cannot be eliminated by viewpoints that see science and religion as valid each in their own spheres or both as the products of the human intellect, as I think Fish and Herrnstein Smith hold.

But the conflict does cease (or is greatly reduced) if both science and religion can be shown to allow for both material and nonmaterial existence.

Religion already does this, since no religion denies the reality of material existence, even if it is considered an illusory reality, as in Buddhism. But science also supports both concepts of reality in quantum mechanics, which is the scientific explanation that most directly addresses the fundamental nature of existence.

The core principle of quantum mechanics is called duality, and it asserts that everything that exists can be described equally well in two alternative forms: as a particle or as a wave function. Both descriptions are equally valid, the theory asserts, but if you choose to use one of them, you cannot contaminate the description with concepts from the other one. They are both true but also mutually exclusive.

The particle description applies to material things. Its concepts refer to mass, energy, charge, location in space and moment in time. When using the particle description, one asserts that reality consists of particles.

The wave function description, in contrast, refers to ideas: mathematic relationships, probabilities, and operations. Indeed, quantum mechanics holds that the wave function, which is a mathematical relationship, actually exists. When using the wave function description, one asserts that reality consists of mathematical relationships, which are nonmaterial things that exist in the realm of ideas.

In my view, since this fundamental physical theory permits descriptions of the universe in both material and nonmaterial terms, the conflict between science and religion regarding the nature of existence is abrogated.

In describing the universe as made of wave functions, one uses language appropriate to conceptual things. Wave functions can combine, overlap, and apply to disparate and widely separated things. Wave functions do not exist within space and time but span them and therefore transcend them.

In quantum mechanics there is even the concept of the wave function of the whole universe, which specifies all the possible forms that the universe may assume. Moreover the universal wave function assigns to all possible forms of existence probabilities that determine which forms the universe actually assumes. That sounds remarkably like the religious concept of God, at least to me.