Matter vs. Soul vs. Spirit

Humunculus dualism

I was recently asked the following question by a Christian: 

What are your thoughts, or have you written anything, on whether we are spirit? I think that we have the Holy Spirit enter into us when we become a Christian, but what’s your understanding of whether we humans are spirit as well as flesh and bone?

As this is such a frequent and pivotal question I thought I would publish my answer here for future reference:

I've long since given up any dualist  "ghost in the machine" concept:

Early man probably noticed the difference between beings capable of cognitive action (animals and humans) and non-cognitive action (like falling rocks and even complex clock work and chains of events). The difference is that on the one hand we have reactive complex adaptive systems (animals and humans) and on the other hand passive systems incapable of a reactive adaptive response.  We now have to add another ingredient: Consciousness: Most people instinctively empathetically construct other people as centres of the first person experience of conscious cognition and don't just see them as unconscious calculating machines.

These two ingredients of a) adaptive reactive cognition and b) and the instinctive empathetic construction of the first person perspective that takes place between normal people were presumably both noted by early man and may respectively account for the  two terns "soul" and "spirit"; Viz: "soul" being recognised as adaptive behaviour and spirit being recognised as the presence of a conscious first person perspective at least in the case of human adaptive behaviour. (And in my opinion, also in the "higher" animals).

But whether or not this is the  Biblical origin behind the words  "Soul" and "Spirit" (that would need a Biblical theme study on these words), I would want to express my current opinion that matter, being Created, Sustained and Managed by an Omnipower is likely to be "miraculous" in its properties. Therefore I have no qualms in proposing that both cognition and the first person perspective are "natural" phenomena of "matter"; but only if its Divinely ordained vitalities are correctly exploited; we are still learning about that one! On this proposal there is no "ghost in the machine": Conscious cognition is matter through and through, but not "matter" of the naive "gritty" or dualistic "billiard ball" sense that most people in the West habitually think of t; rather, matter is haunted and enchanted by God's presence.

I've written a lot on this subject and continue to do so. I am coming to the view that conscious cognition relates to the question of the nature of that enigmatic process of "quantum state reduction". That's what I'm working on at the moment.

See here for my writings to date: 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/search/label/Consciousness

I certainly don't follow the absurd opinion offered up by some subliminal dualists that "consciousness" is somehow an "illusion" in contrast to "matter" which is somehow "real". For me conscious cognition is the cornerstone of empiricism. Without a grounding in experience and conscious cognition the theoretical constructs of science are unintelligible and meaningless.  It is science, the child of conscious cognition, that underwrites the reality of the constructs that provide the means by which conscious cognition can understand itself in terms of so-called "matter". Matter is a rational  and metaphorical construction of conscious cognition: In fact it may even be justified in calling matter a mythical construct, a way of joining the dots of experience. That this intellectual construction activity can be carried in such a systematic way and generate such highly coherent conceptual objects which harmonise our experience, is a testament to the Divinely ordained order of the Creation. 

Signalled Diffusion Book I - Foundations

I'm bringing out a series of short books on the subject signalled diffusion.The first book can be found here. Below I have reproduced the introduction.  I hope that this introduction will explain why I call it Signalled Diffusion and where I hope this project is taking me. 

Introduction

The one-dimensional elementary diffusion equation can be written as:

1.0

…where Y is the “diffusing” quantity, a quantity which is a function of time t and spatial coordinate x and where D is the diffusion constant.

In terms of modelling real situations this equation can be used to represent a statistical description for the transport of particulate matter, where chaotic interactions ensure that each particle of matter is, to all intents and purposes, subject to random walk. If we are dealing with large numbers of randomly walking particles then Y is a statistical quantity which gives a measure of the density of matter at a point in space and time. However, if we are talking about a small number of randomly walking particles Y breaks down as a density value and must then be used as a measure of the probability of finding a particle at a particular point in space and time. In this latter case Y is no longer a literal physical variable since for lone particles it corresponds to no measurable quantity; rather it encapsulates the level of information we as observers have about a particle’s movements. When interpreted as a probability Y is not just about the ontology of the world beyond, but also about the observer and his relation to the world via the information he holds about it.

When used as a probability envelope Y is a cognitive projection onto reality: For if a particle moves around according to random walk there is no literal curve Y to be observed out there; rather it is more akin to a shadowy background influence which has the potential to be used to predict statistical outcomes of a large aggregate of particles. Therefore if Y is a probability it is less a direct ontological reality than it is an epistemic device facilitating the calculation of statistics.

In this series of books, however, I will be exploring what happens if we treat the envelopes in Y as ontologically real and particles as the cognitive projection. To this end I envisage diffusion not as the statistical outcome of the literal stepping of randomly walking particles but rather a result of signals being sent between the points in space and those points accumulating the values received in such a way as to give us a quantity Y which replicates the diffusion equation. I believe that by using this approach it becomes possible to make sense of quantum mechanics as a form of signalled random walk. How this works out in practice I hope will become clearer as I proceed.

This series of books explores the foundations of signalled diffusion and supplements my book Gravity and Quantum Non-Linearity and its more concise version Gravity from Quantum Non-linearity. In both works the emphasis was to arrive at an explanation of gravity. In this series of short books, however, I hope to explore the fundamentals of the subject more thoroughly and remedy some of the faults and short falls in my first book. But whether any of this is going to lead me onto anything significant as the series develops remains to be seen.