30
some crucial nonphysical component to a human being, everyone admits
31
that the particles are part of who we are. If you want to say there is some-
32
thing else, you have to explain how that something else interacts with the
33
particles. How, in other words, the Core Theory is incomplete, and has to
34
change.
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To address this issue seriously, we wouldn’t necessarily need to have a
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“Soul Theory” that is as rigorous and well developed as the Core Theory of
02
physics. We would, however, need to be specific and quantitative about how
03
the Core Theory could possibly be changed. There needs to be a way that
04
“soul stuff” interacts with the fields of which we are made— with electrons,
05
or photons, or something. Do those interactions satisfy conservation of en-
06
ergy, momentum, and electric charge? Does matter interact back on the
07
soul, or is the principle of action and reaction violated? Is there “virtual soul
08
stuff” as well as “real soul stuff,” and do quantum fluctuations of soul stuff
09
affect the measurable properties of ordinary particles? Or does the soul
10
stuff not interact directly with particles, and merely affect the quantum
11
probabilities associated with measurement outcomes? Is the soul a kind of
12
“hidden variable” playing an important role in quantum ontology?
13
If you want to be a dualist and believe in an immaterial soul that plays
14
any role whatsoever in who we are as human beings, these questions are not
15
optional. We’re not rigging the game by demanding a full- blown mathe-
16
matical theory of the soul itself; we’re simply asking how the soul is sup-
17
posed to affect the mathematical theory of the quantum fields that we
18
already have.
19
•
20
21
Put aside for the moment the possibility of an immaterial soul, or other
22
nonphysical effects that could influence our lives here on Earth. Let’s con-
23
sider the most straightforward construal of our present state of knowledge:
24
the Core Theory underlies everything we witness in our everyday lives, in-
25
cluding ourselves. What are the consequences of that picture for our hu-
26
man capacities, as well as for how we think about our place in the cosmos?
27
We’ve already alluded to the most obvious repercussion of the Core
28
Theory: you can’t bend spoons with your mind. Actually you can, but only
29
by the traditional method: sending signals from your brain, down your
30
arms, to your hands, which then pick up the spoon and bend it.
31
The argument is simple. Your body, including your brain, is made up of
32
only a few particles (electrons, up quarks, and down quarks), interacting
33
through a few forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak
34
nuclear forces). If you’re not going to reach out and touch the spoon with
35S
your hands, any influence you have on it is going to have to come through
36N
one of the four forces. It won’t be through one of the nuclear forces, since
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those reach only over microscopically small distances. And it won’t be
01
through gravity, since gravity is far too weak. (If you didn’t know about the
02
Core Theory, you might think you could imagine simply increasing the
03
strength of gravity, or otherwise manipulating it. In the real world, that
04
won’t work. A collection of particles, such as your brain, creates a very pre-
05
dictable gravitational field, determined by its total energy. We don’t live in
06
a science- fiction movie.)
07
We’re left with electromagnetism. Unlike gravity, the potential electro-
08
magnetic force from your body actually is strong enough to bend spoons—
09
indeed, that’s what happens when you use your hands. All of chemistry is
10
essentially due to electromagnetic forces acting on electrons and ions (at-
11
oms that are charged by having more or fewer electrons than protons). To
12
greatly simplify a complex biological process, muscle contraction occurs
13
when calcium ions provoke one kind of protein (myosin) into pulling on
14
another kind of protein (actin), using energy stored in adenosine triphos-
15
phate (ATP) molecules. It’s an interplay between a relatively modest collec-
16
tion of electrons, ions, and electromagnetic fields, but it’s enough to provide
17
the necessary oomph to bend a spoon as you will.
18
We might imagine that a brain could be able to somehow focus electro-
19
magnetic energy in such a way as to create forces on distant objects without
20
actually touching them. While the brain is chock- full of charged particles,
21
for the most part the electric field associated with them cancels out because
22
there are an equal number of positively charged protons and negatively
23
charged electrons. Conceivably, those particles could move about and ar-
24
range themselves in the right way to create an electric or magnetic field that
25
could bend a spoon. (Charged particles at rest are surrounded by electric
26
fields, while charged particles in motion generate magnetic fields in addi-
27
tion.) Something like that, after all, happens with radio transmitters and
28
receivers: signals are sent when charged particles in motion create electro-
29
magnetic waves, which then start charges moving inside the receivers.
30
Having the brain function as a kind of electromagnetic tractor beam
31
would not violate the laws of physics, but it doesn’t work for more mundane
32
reasons. The brain itself is subtle and complicated, so we could imagine
33
generating a large electromagnetic field. But once generated, that field
34
would be a blunt instrument. Spoons are not subtle and complicated; they
S35
are just inert pieces of metal. Not only would any brain- produced
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electromagnetic field have no special reason to home in on a spoon in the
02
desired way; it would be incredibly easy to notice for other reasons. Every
03
metallic object in the vicinity would go flying around in response to this
04
force field, and it would be straightforward to measure it using conven-
05
tional methods. Needless to say, no such field has ever been detected, while
06
quite a few illusions that give the impression of magical spoon bending have
07
been unmasked.
08
The same goes for phenomena such as astrology. The only fields that
09
could possibly reach from another planet to Earth are gravity and electro-
10
magnetism. Gravity, again, is simply too weak to have any effect; the gravi-
11
tational force caused by Mars on objects on Earth is comparable to that of
12
a single person standing nearby. For electromagnetism the situation is even
13
clearer; any electromagnetic signals from other planets are swamped by
14
more mundane sources.
15
There’s nothing wrong with doing elaborate double- blind studies to
16
look for parapsychological or astrological effects, but the fact that such ef-
17
fects are incompatible with the known laws of physics means that you
18
would be testing hypotheses that are so extremely unlikely as to render it
19
hardly worth the effort.
20
•
21
22
There is a much more profound implication of accepting the Core Theory
23
as underlying the world of our everyday experience. Namely: there is no life
24
after death. We each have a finite time as living creatures, and when it’s over,
25
it’s over.
26
The reasoning behind such a sweeping claim is even more straightfor-
27
ward than the argument against telekinesis or astrology. If the particles and
28
forces of the Core Theory are what constitute each living being, without
29
any immaterial soul, then the information that makes up “you” is contained
30
in the arrangement of atoms that makes up your body, including your
31
brain. There is no place for that information to go, or any way for it to be
32
preserved, outside your body. There are no particles or fields that could store
33
it and take it away.
34
This perspective can seem strange, because on the surface there appears
35S
to be some kind of “energy” or “force” associated with being alive. It cer-
36N
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present. Where, it seems natural to ask, does the energy associated with life
01
go when we die?
02
The trick is to think of life as a process rather than a substance. When a
03
candle is burning, there is a flame that clearly carries energy. When we put
04
the candle out, the energy doesn’t “go” anywhere. The candle still contains
05
energy in its atoms and molecules. What happens, instead, is that the pro-
06
cess of combustion has ceased. Life is like that: it’s not “stuff”; it’s a set of
07
things happening. When that process stops, life ends.
08
Life is a way of talking about a particular sequence of events taking place
09
among atoms and molecules arranged in the right way. That wasn’t always
10
so obvious; the nineteenth century saw the flowering of a doctrine known
11
as vitalism, according to which life is associated with a certain kind of spark 12
or energy, labeled by French philosopher Henri Bergson as élan vital (life
13
force). This idea has since gone the way of other similar nineteenth- century
14
doctrines that posited new substances that we now recognize as simply ways
15
of talking about the motions of ordinary matter. “Phlogiston,” for example,
16
was supposed to be a kind of element that was contained within flammable
17
bodies, and released during the process of combustion. Today we know that
18
combustion is simply a rapid chemical reaction in which molecules com-
19
bine with oxygen. Similarly, “caloric” was a hypothetical fluid that repre-
20
sented the heat contained in a body, which would flow from hotter objects
21
to colder ones. Now we understand heat as a measure of the energy con-
22
tained in the random thermal motions of atoms and molecules.
23
Over and over, something that we once thought of as a distinct kind of
24
substance has been revealed to be a particular property of ordinary matter
25
in motion. Life is no different.
26
27
•
28
People have put forward direct evidence for life after death, in the form of
29
near- death experiences or even cases of reincarnation. Often it is claimed
30
that patients near death saw things that they couldn’t possibly have seen, or
31
that young children remember events from past lives that they couldn’t
32
have known about. Upon closer inspection, the large majority of such tes-
33
timony proves to be less dramatic than originally suggested. One famous
34
case is that of Alex Malarkey (his actual name, honest), who wrote the book
S35
The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven with his father, Kevin. After
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reaching bestseller status and being made into a TV movie, Alex admitted
02
that his tale of visiting heaven and meeting Jesus during a near- death expe-
03
rience was a thorough fabrication.
04
No cases of claimed afterlife experiences have been subject to careful
05
scientific protocols. People have tried; several studies have been conducted
06
trying to find evidence for out-of-body experiences in patients who have
07
near- death encounters. Researchers will visit hospital rooms and, without
08
specific knowledge on the part of patients or medical staff, hide some kind
09
>
of visual stimulus in a place where the patient would have to be floating
10
freely of their own body to see it. To date, there has been no case where such
11
a stimulus has been clearly seen.
12
When judging the veracity of such claims, we need to weigh them
13
against the scientific knowledge we have acquired in much more controlled
14
conditions. It’s possible that the known laws of physics are dramatically
15
wrong in such a way as to allow human consciousness to persist after the
16
death of the physical body; however, it is also possible that people under the
17
extreme conditions of nearly dying are likely to hallucinate, and that re-
18
ports of prior lives are exaggerated or faked. Each of us must choose our
19
priors and update our credences the best we can.
20
•
21
22
It might seem wrongheaded to draw such sweeping conclusions about hu-
23
man capacities and limitations from something as narrow and esoteric as
24
quantum field theory. Quantum fields, however, are indisputably part of
25
who we are. If they are all of who we are, we should have no problem draw-
26
ing implications of that fact for our lives. If there is something in addition
27
to the quantum fields, it is reasonable to seek an understanding of (and
28
evidence for) that something that is just as precise and rigorous and repro-
29
ducible as the one we have for field theory.
30
If we are collections of interacting quantum fields, the implications are
31
enormous. It’s not just that we can’t bend spoons, and not even that our
32
lives truly end when we die. The laws of physics governing those fields are
33
resolutely impersonal and non- teleological. Our status as parts of the phys-
34
ical universe implies that there is no overarching purpose to human lives, at
35S
least not any inherent in the universe beyond ourselves. The very notion of
36N
a “person” is ultimately a way of talking about certain aspects of the
22 0
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underlying reality. It’s a good way of talking, and we have good reason to
01
take seriously all of the ramifications of that description, including the fact
02
that human beings have individual purposes and can make decisions for
03
themselves. It’s when we start imagining powers or behaviors that contra-
The Big Picture Page 38