Tom on "Quantum Enlightenment"

[Balder]

For anyone interested --

Tom, a former member of IPS, has posted an interesting -- and lengthy! -- blog on Integral Life.

 

Quantum Enlightenment 

[Joel Morrison]

Ahh, OK, so he's essentially saying that he can't define it or explain it, and he gives it the nice sounding term "wholeness".  But in fact, all our encounters with "wholeness" at every other level than the quantum are indeed amenable with concept, as it is founded in percept.  What makes the quantum level special?  Why is it that at the limits of empiricism suddenly we encounter this aconceptual version of "wholeness"?  It's because Quantum Science, and science in general is still operating on the pre-rational and indeed medieval foundationalism which Philosophy has long shown to be problematic.  Again look into the problem with substance and bundle views of substance.  I give the solution and overview in my book on Sorce Theory for which I gave you the link to the pdf earlier.

[Joel Morrison]

Sure, but what do you mean by "composed of"?  I don't see an answer to that question.

 

It simply means that however deep we look there is no end to the structure.  What do we see in fractals?  It's the same thing.  This is a true axis and infinity.  There is no end.  

[Balder]

Tom, early in our discussion, you had said that the quantum a-causal view you were espousing actually still retained a kind of causality, reconceived from a higher stage of development (e.g., that a-causal was 'causal' in its own way).  I will need to look for that quote.  Do you recall that, and if so, what did you mean by that?

[Joel Morrison]

It means rather more than no-temporal-beginning, Joel.  It also means there is no space-privileged "cause" or "set of causes," to use a mathematical formulation.  There being no privileged cause or set of causes---no spatially finite or determinable cause or set-less-than-infinite---there is no cause.

 

I agree as well, but isn't your quantum a "privileged cause", it being the only frame that is not possessed of deeper frames?  This is a foundationalism and deeply problematic as the old debates in Philosophy show.  Again the only resolution is a nondual one which integrates them both, and this is essentially the holonic/corpuscular view, not the atomic one.

[Joel Morrison]

What are those deeper frames, Joel?  What is "composed of"?

My view is consistent with the Hermetic law of analogy, Thomas, and with the Tao.  There is no end to dimension on any true axis.  As above, so below.  What are frames at any level?  Lenses onto infinite reality.  There is no end to these possible lenses, nor end to the forms which give rise to them.  The quantum is no absolute foundation.

[Joel Morrison]

"composed of" is the regressive view.  You can replace it with "emergent from" if it trips you up, in a pre-integrated frame of reference.

[Joel Morrison]

Thomas said:

I said non-causality is negative causation.  It is to cause what nothing is to thing.

Can you unpack this for us?

[Joel Morrison]

Kindly express that amenability, in other words, give me a conceptual definition of wholeness.  I suspect the best you can do is to say something like infinite-cause, which is not a conceptuality I understand.

 

Wholeness is explainable in many ways.  The easiest is by analogy and observation.  It underlies our very notion of organism and emergence.  The sum is greater than the parts.  And inversely, what happens when you cut a human in two?  It ceases to be a human.  Something is lost in the division, and this is expressible in terms of flux.  Complexity science does a great job of expressing it in terms of dissipative structures, attractors and the like.  Fuller called it "pattern integrity", Spinoza called it "essence", Leibniz called it "substance", etc, etc. There are indeed many ways of understanding wholeness at the level of everyday experience...as there are at the quantum once the medieval foundationalist mindset is transcended.

[Joel Morrison]

Again, not in the linear and pre-rational sense of that term, which you seem hung up on.  Not to be rude, but if we can't get beyond that antiquated definition of the term "cause", then let's by all means abandon it.

Thomas said:

By "emergent from," do you mean "caused"?

[Joel Morrison]

The experience of quantum physicists is that in attempting to find ever deeper composition or structure, they meet with the reality that such attempts create new particulate manifestations. 

 

Indeed, because there is no end to the immanent/transcendent "dimension", i.e. it's fundamentally continuous, and only quantized as a thresholding effect, as per Planck's original and favored understanding of his quantum.

 

Thus in attempting to divide, they create new wholes.  More importantly, the notion of infinite divisibility or structure is contradicted by the requirement of infinite energy.

 Again only in the regressive (pre-rational) or temporal sense, not in the sense outside of time.  There is no necessity of a beginning to this process whatsoever, and thus there is no need to create the infinity, nor obviously any possibility.  It simply always existed, and necessarily so.

 

There's no cause in quantum, privileged or not.  This is a very practical perspective.  How does one causally explain newness?  It can't, per Nagarjuna, be done.

You are aware of complexity science?  They explain newness easily, just not absolutely, and simply because we are dealing with immanent infinity (continuity) and description is a temporal process.  It's emergence.  And it arises BECAUSE of continuity, not in spite of it.  That's the very reason that it can't be explained fully, because again, explanation is a temporal process and continuity is infinity.

[Balder]

Ah, yes, I see you did say it!  Because you just said it again.  In a non-temporal frame, 'cause' is retained as undetermined choice (God-as-Prime-Mover democratized?).

Thomas said:

Joel: Can you unpack this for us?

 

It's a view of causation from a non-temporal frame.  A better word for "cause" in this frame is choice.  Creation works also.  Choice and creation both imply freedom, which is what quantum wholeness implies.  Wholeness (implied freedom) is the source of quantum indeterminacy.

[Joel Morrison]

I say there is no "sum" in wholeness, Joel. 

Then please define "sum" and how it differs from "whole". 

 

Yes, wholeness underlies our notion of organism, of self, of thing, of quantum, of reality, of truth, etc.  But do explain to me what is lost---describe the wholeness lost---when a human is cut in two.  What is that wholeness that is lost?  Give it to me conceptually.

I already did that, and in many ways.  First please tell me why you found them inadequate and we'll deal with the difference between reality and description, or the ontic and epistemic.