Here is late paper by David Bohm that I've just come across and post because it can add, in its clarity, to our discussions of a wide range of theories of consciousness we have discussed these last four years.
A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter
DAVID BOHM
[Reprinted From: PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO. 2, 1990, pp. 271-286.] |
Department of Theoretical Physics, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet St, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom |
ABSTRACT: The relationship of mind and matter is approached in a new way in this article. This approach is based on the causal interpretation of the quantum theory, in which an electron, for example, is regarded as an inseparable union of a particle and afield. This field has, however, some new properties that can be seen to be the main sources of the differences between the quantum theory and the classical (Newtonian) theory. These new properties suggest that the field may be regarded as containing objective and active information, and that the activity of this information is similar in certain key ways to the activity of information in our ordinary subjective experience. The analogy between mind and matter is thus fairly close. This analogy leads to the proposal of the general outlines of a new theory of mind, matter, and their relationship, in which the basic notion is participation rather than interaction. Although the theory, can be developed mathematically in more detail the main emphasis here is to show qualitatively how it provides a way of thinking that does not divide mind from matter, and thus leads to a more coherent understanding of such questions than is possible in the common dualistic and reductionistic approaches. These ideas may be relevant to connectionist theories and might perhaps suggest new directions for their development.
"1 Introduction
This article discusses some ideas aimed at bringing together the physical and mental sides of reality. It is concerned mainly with giving the general outlines of a new way of thinking, consistent with modern physics, which does not divide mind from matter, the observer from the observed, the subject from the object. What is described here is, however, only the beginning of such a way of thinking which, it is hoped, can be developed a great deal further.
The problem of the relationship of mental and physical sides of reality has long been a key one, especially in Western philosophy. Descartes gave a particularly clear formulation of the essential difficulties when he considered matter as extended substance (i.e. as occupying space) while mind was regarded as thinking substance (which clearly does not occupy space). He pointed out that in mind, there can be clear and distinct thoughts that correspond in content to distinct objects that are separated in space. But these thoughts are not in themselves actually located in separate regions of space, nor do they seem to be anything like separate material objects in other ways. It appears that the natures of mind and matter are so different that one can see no basis for a relationship between them. This point was put very clearly by Descartes (see Cottingham, 1986) when he said that there is nothing included in the concept of body that belongs to mind, and nothing in that of mind that belongs to body. Yet, experience shows that they are closely related.
Descartes solved the problem by assuming that God, who created both mind and matter is able to relate them by putting into the minds of human beings the clear and distinct thoughts that are needed to deal with matter as extended substance. It was of course also implied by Descartes that the aims contained in thoughts had somehow to be carried out by the body, even though he asserted that thought and the body had no domain in common. It would seem (as was indeed suggested at the time by Malebranche) that nothing is left but to appeal to God to arrange the desired action somehow. However, since that time, such an appeal to the action of God has generally ceased to be accepted as a valid philosophical argument. But this leaves us with no explanation of how mind and matter are related.
This article aims at the development of a different approach to this question, which permits of an intelligible relationship between mind and matter without reducing one to nothing but a function or aspect of the other (such reduction commonly takes the forms of materialism which reduces mind, for example, to an 'epiphenomenon' having no real effect on matter, and of idealism, which reduces matter to some kind of thought, for example, in the mind of God).
The new approach described in this article is made possible from the side of matter by the quantum theory, which is currently the most basic theory of the nature of matter that we have. Certain philosophers of mind (see, e.g. Haugeland, 1981, ch. 1) would criticize bringing physics into the study of mind. In this way, because they assume mind to be of such a different (and perhaps emergent) quality that physics is not relevant to it (even though they also assume that mind has a material base in the brain). Such criticisms are inspired, in large part, by the belief that physics is restricted to a classical Newtonian form, which in essence ultimately reduces everything to a mechanism of some kind. However, as will be explained in more detail later, the quantum theory, which is now basic, implies that the particles of physics have certain primitive mind-like qualities which are not possible in terms of Newtonian concepts (though, of course, they do not have consciousness). This means that on the basis of modern physics even inanimate matter cannot be fully understood in terms of Descartes' notion that it is nothing but a substance occupying space and constituted of separate objects. Vice versa, It will be argued that mind can be seen to have always a physical aspect, though this may be very subtle. Thus, we are led to the possibility of a real relationship between the two, because they never have the absolute distinction of basic qualities, that was assumed by Descartes and by others, such as the emergent materialists.
The way is thus now opened to see the possible relevance of physics in this context. This is because the quantum theory denies the mechanistic (Newtonian) conceptual framework which has thus far implicitly justified the notion that mind is of such a nature that it can have absolutely nothing to do with the laws of matter. Moreover, though those new qualities of matter have been established at the fundamental level of particle physics, we shall indicate in a later section how it may be possible for them to become operative at higher levels of organization such as that of brain and nervous system.
2 The implicate order and the quantum theory . . . ."
http://www.peterdebruin.net/BOHM/BOHM.htm
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