QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

ontological-epistemological model does not imply Materialism any more than it implies
Idealism. It would be better to call it ”Realism based on metaphors”. A more-accurate portrayal
of the relationship between the aspects of reality that are termed mind and matter requires us to
have more accurate knowledge than is currently available about, in particular, the development
of mental structures. As will be proposed in more detail in the following sections dealing with
humanity, quantum mechanics can offer new tools for the handling of mental states and the
psycho-physical problem.
Development of our physical world-view appears, in the light of what has been said here, to be
moving in a direction anticipated by process philosophers at the beginning of the 1900s when
they proposed that a process-ontology is a more suitable way of depicting reality than the
traditional ontology of things. For example, A. N. Whitehead rejected Materialism, Idealism and
Dualism by criticising the presuppositions of classical physics. 800 He viewed change or process
as a fundamental factor in nature. In his opinion, physical nature or life cannot be understood
without their being fused together in all the beings that exist. 801 In the light of what has already
been said here, the wave-function of quantum mechanics demonstrates the limitations of the
traditional space-time portrayal. From an ontological point of view, reality is better thought of as
a hierarchically-structured holistic unity, in which the possibilities of events being manifested at
different levels are limited by physical laws and symmetries. In a developing system, limitations
on nature’s conformity to laws do however have many degrees of freedom, which humans can
also exploit for good or less-good purposes.
5.3. The Human Being as an Evolutionary Agent
The Greeks felt uneasy when they encountered reasons to doubt the togetherness of the body and
the soul. At the turn of the modern era, all of the subjective mental content linked to the soul was
however clearly separated from natural processes. Classical physics focused on revealing the
natural laws in the material world, but the basic problem of how is it possible for mind to have a
genuine causal effect in the physical domain is still one of the basic problems in modern
philosophy of the mind and in cognitive science.
800 Bohr also considered that quantum mechanics exceeded the earlier dualistic starting point and did not imply
materialism any more than idealism. The phenomena we describe using the concepts of mind and matter belong to
the same reality. We need both concepts, but reality does not need to be reducible to either one of them.
801 Whitehead 1934, Nature and life.
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