Hank, you are absolutely driving me crazy. For mostly I agree with most of your analyses. Yet at the end of the day, I just can’t help but feel that something vastly important has been left out. Frequently in your posts you refer to the “nature” a particular entity has. Every entity has a nature. Yet it seems to me that nowhere do you define what “nature” is, or from whence it derives. I cannot find at the level of “entity” any way to fully specify what is meant by the concept “nature.” Arguably, entity – a material effect – is not the cause of nature – an immaterial cause. These are two categorically different things.
js1138, recently on another thread you demanded to know how a non-material cause could produce a material effect. I wasn’t able to give you a satisfactory answer. I seem to have the most difficulty finding the language to express those things that are most obvious to me. It turns out that this question is quite germane to the subject of this thread, What Is Man? So it’s good to revisit it here.
On your point, js1138, I’d like to offer the following reflections from a first-rate thinker -- profound and gracious in my view:
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[From: “The Fundamental Principles of Existence and the Origin of Physical Laws,” Grandpierre, Attila, Konkoly Observatory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest; in Ultimate Reality and Meaning, 25(2):127-147; 2002 June.]
3.3 Matter or principle? Is materialism physical or spiritual?
The fundamental principle of materialism, or “physicalism,” or the physical world concept [i.e., the worldview of scientific materialism], is the principle of inert matter. The science of physics derives all its results due to this “inert material principle.” This principle made it possible to recognize the real connections between seemingly discrete phenomena, and this principle made it possible to represent and describe the physical phenomena in a mathematical and logical form.
There is a significant difference between talking of the atom with the knowledge of the laws and principles of physics and, generally, with logic in mind on the one hand, and talking of the atom without such knowledge on the other. Without a comprehensive and inevitably spiritually organizing factor, physics would have no laws, nor would logic – and thus we would simply to unable to conceive of something as sterile and abstract as the notion of the atom.
Without the factor of an organizing principle, materialist nuclear physics would never get further than the sterile concept of the atom. Materialism, being “matter-principled,” is founded on corporeal/material and inevitably on principal/spiritual grounds at the same time. Materialism builds up on a material and spiritual factor; on atoms and on physical laws. There are no atoms without physical laws, and this fundamental fact shows that there is no materialism without spiritualism.
Sheer materiality, the concept suggested by materialism, is essentially a self-contradicting concept, denying its own generating factor, the principle behind which the concept generates itself. It is easy to see that a sheer materialistic view, one that would deny all reality to spirituality, would be like the perfect embodiment of closedness and readiness: it would be an eternally inert, inanimate world without laws and understanding. Therefore, we have to keep it in mind that actually materialism essentially represents a kind of obscure spirituality, but that in fact this spirituality has declared the denial of its own spiritual nature as its basis.
3.4 Are interactions material?
Important conclusions can be drawn here. According to the materialist view, apples fall to the ground because the Earth attracts them. But how is the Earth able to exert attractive force? By what device? Does it emit an attractive effect? What is the nature of that effect – is it material or spiritual? How can the attractive effect exert this attraction? Does it let out some kind of matter from itself, for example gravitons in the case of gravitation?
But if this would be so, the amount of gravitation of bodies should decrease over time. Similarly, electric charges could not remain strictly static at a constant charge, because they would have to emit electromagnetic energy permanently, and thus the force field of the charges would have to diminish.
Even if one would acknowledge the fact of energy and mass emission from gravitational and electrical charges, one could speculate that they could get back the same amount of energy-mass from the quantum-vacuum field of the universe.
Even in this case it would be necessary that a principle should exist [that] would continuously regulate all the charges of the universe so that the energy-mass exchange input and output would be balanced. In this case, we again would reach a picture in which a principle regulates the mass and energy flows of the universe.
But how can a spiritual principle exert a material effect?
Another example would be the fact that contemporary science regards the value of electric charges as a universal and unchangeable constant, although there are some theories about gravitation diminishing over time.
If we disregard the hypothetical universal balancing mechanism, then we have no other choice but to admit that the influences, be they electromagnetic or gravitational, that bodies emit are not of a material nature, since all matter has energy and a corresponding amount of mass. Now since a nascent charge has a material influence, it should emit a material influence, therefore produce energy from itself, and so its charge should decrease, which is not the case.
From this we can deduce that we are dealing here with effects that can be described with mathematical exactness, but which are not material effects. In both of these cases, the question arises: Where does the ability of matter to exert influences come from if its material substance remains constant?
Clever matter?
How do atoms know the laws of physics? How does the wind know which way to blow under any given circumstance? It knows this because the power arising from the differential pressure drives it towards areas where pressure is lower. But why does matter migrate to places with a lower pressure?
The standard response is because the laws of physics prescribe this. Eventually, this comes down to the principle of least action.
But then again, how can a principle cause a physical effect? How can a spiritual factor be able to move matter?
And the ultimate question of physics is why there are physical laws at all. How can any body follow the principle of least action? The answer to this question is similar to the explanation given to the path that light follows.
Light travels between two points along the shortest possible route, even if there is a mirror in its way somewhere along its course. How is light able to select the shortest route?
When Feynman introduced the path-integral principle, he pointed out that to be able to follow the principle of least action, light (or any other quantum process) must “virtually” go over all the possible routes, over all the possible histories, and then these add up to the “actual” shortest route.
The precondition of such an adding up is that in the course of surveying the possible routes, light virtually has to travel over all the routes at a speed much larger than the velocity of light, so that by the time it comes to the adding up, the traveling speed of light on the actual route should be equal to the velocity of light.
Feynman has put all this into a mathematical formula – but how is it possible that a lifeless and sterile atom can do all that? How can a perfectly abstract atom perceive a principle and behave according to it? Is there such a spiritual factor that is capable of exerting physical effects?
These questions raise the problem of the origins of physical laws. In the contemporary physical world concept, apparently this problem cannot be accounted for on a scientific basis.
But excluding the question of the origin of the physical laws from the scope of science is a refutation of the original aim of science, namely to understand nature. Science cannot declare that it is a scientific taboo to examine the laws of these levels of Nature than are deeper than the physical level. If present-day science does so, we can be sure that that is an unscientific and anticognitive attitude….
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Probably some readers will have stubbed their toe on Grandpierre’s use of the word “spiritual.” What he means by this has nothing to do with religion or theology. It is simply his way of referring to real yet non-physical, intangible principles or laws, and the realm of consciousness generally. Must leave the question there for now.
Except to note the following in anticipation of “materialist” outcry to the immediately foregoing – also from Grandpierre, who rebuts a commonly prevailing attitude, stated thus:
“There are no physical laws in the Universe: the apparent lawfulness is a result of an extremely rare ultimate coincidence of random events….”
To which Grandpierre replies:
“I do not think that we can be satisfied with such a description, which does not reach the causes and remains in the realm of phenomena only. The term chance expresses in that context only that the cause of the phenomenon studied is not known. Therefore, chance cannot explain any phenomena since “explain” implies setting up a relation, which explains the yet-unknown with a known. So we do not think that the interpretation of the origin of physical laws as being the result of a mere chance would explain anything.”