Peter Ruest wrote:
> George Murphy wrote:
> > >
> > > I find such a proposal vaguely troubling, though I can't easily
> > > put my finger on the difficulty. If
> > > some wave packet collapses are "left to chance" then we've dropped the
> > > principle of sufficient
> > > reason. Perhaps we need to. But then to say that God determines the
> > > results of some of these
> > > collapses means that there is a sufficient reason for the results of
> > > those measurements. Thus God
> > > could provide a reason for all the other measurements, but doesn't.
> >
> > PR: Again, the principle of sufficient reason is a philosophical
> > supposition, not a requirement of logic. But even if it were true, it
> > wouldn't follow that God would have to "provide a reason" for _all_
> > measurements. If we look at it from a theological viewpoint, God may
> > decree that a certain mutation happens, in a second case he may decree a
> > spectrum of possible mutations, and in a third case he may just do
> > nothing, having decreed the mutation mechanisms with their stochastic
> > properties at the beginning of life.
>
> GLM: Again, you're focussing on biological issues but the problem
> is
> broader than that. It involves every case of an electron being observed
> in
> one place rather than another. I agree that we aren't required to
> accept the
> principle of sufficient reason but it seems to me, as I said,
> "troubling," to
> have to drop it and say that some things happen for no reason at all. &
> this
> is especially so because we would not be saying simply that there is no
> natural cause that it happens that way. We would be saying that God is
> not
> even the cause of that event.
>
> PR: OK, let me try a hand at "collapsing wave packets"! What would it
> mean if God didn't collapse certain wave packets individually, namely
> those he doesn't care about, because any result of their collapsing
> would not make any difference in his plans? Instead, they could collapse
> in a genuinely random manner, God having specified, at the big bang, a
> global "hidden variable" describing the pattern to which their
> collapsing has to conform (or would that not even be a hidden variable,
> but the known probability distribution?). So, these really random events
> would not "happen for no reason at all". God would truly be the Author
> of the results specified individually at any given time in the history
> of the universe, as well as the Author of those specified collectively,
> as a Gaussian or other distribution, at the big bang.
>
> If such a scheme could be acceptable in physics, maybe an analogous
> distinction of individual vs. collective specifications could be applied
> to biological mutations. God would be the Author of all elementary
> events having usual probabilities, as well as the Author of
> transastronomically improbable ones, which he would specify individually
> and purposefully, thus introducing additional information into the
> system at specific places and times.
A lot of attempts have been made to introduce hidden variables into QM but
very severe constraints have been placed on such theories. If a vialble hidden
variable theory could be constructed then at a fundamental level we'd being
dealing with a deterministic physics again - although perhaps quite different
from the classical variety, with non-local interactions &c. Theologically one
would think of God concurring with the processes described by the hidden
variables, & then in your scenario we'd have to ask what God does differently
in a few biologically significant events. It seems to me that we'd have to
fall back to an interventionist or "miraculous" explanation for them - i.e.,
for some events the laws that normally describe the hidden variables would be
violated.
It probably seems that all I'm doing here is pointing out problems.
Exactly! I think that getting a coherent view of how God acts (or doesn't act)
at the quantum level is a significant theological puzzle, connected with the
fact that we don't have an adequate understanding of the measurement problem in
QM as a problem of physics.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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