I am posting an excerpt from a doctoral dissertation by Christoph Lameter that applies to the theme of the last several posts on my blog. It is a quotation included in Chapter Five of The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story:

If God can act in reality through coordinating large amounts of quantum events for a purpose at a higher level then it is possible to assume that the same can be done with the human brain. God can effectively communicate with humans by direct stimulation of neurons in the human brain generating images and memories. God is able to communicate with humans in a direct way. May this be an explanation for the working of the Holy Spirit? Visions and other religious experiences could be understood through this process.

Visions, memories and other experiences alluded to by Lameter would be interpreted as Eccles’ “percepts” within linguistic neural codes by the immaterial mind of Man. The percepts would be products by the "working of the Holy Spirit.”

Dembski has posed the question to traditional theism of how God, who is immaterial and Spirit, can interact with the material world, imparting information into it without applying material energy. Quantum mechanics gives nondeterminism to the universe which characterizes it as being informationally open and accommodating free will, as Alvin Plantinga has pointed out. I am posting a quote from Dembski in Chapter Five of The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, that elaborates on this question:

“. . . in a nondeterministic universe, divine action could impart information into matter without violating any physical laws by which matter operates. . . . A deity capable of co-opting randomness would impart information by arranging outcomes [with small probabilities and specification], but do so by channeling the material energy in ways that violate no principle governing matter. If divine action takes this form, the problem of finding the missing material energy by which God introduces novel information into the world simply does not arise . . . . information is then being transferred without any transfer of material energy . . . . Quantum mechanics . . . offers such a picture of the universe, allowing God free play at the quantum level . . . . In a world of irreducibly chance or random events, as some interpretations of quantum theory allow, God can channel such events toward preordained ends.”

In Part Two of “Waves in Our Brains” we see how the specified, encoded frequencies and amplitudes of wave forms generated by the immaterial mind become synchronized with the wave frequencies and amplitudes of selected cerebral modules generated by lifelong learning and archived in memory. The synchronized wave forms in turn stimulate the synaptic transmission through coherent neural networks of the encoded meaning, purpose and intended action of the cognitive mind.

It is important to consider the relationship between information and energy and how information is transmitted through synaptic networks. I am citing the important work of Dr. William A. Dembski, whom I am blessed to consider a friend and from whom I have learned much.

Dembski has stated that information is dynamic, passing in, through and out of matter. Matter itself can be reduced to the information instantiated within its design, construction and function. “Anything that exhibits information needed at some point to be imparted with information. What causes information to undergo such dynamic transformation? . . . Energy.” Energy is always inferred from information and is the “causal glue” that connects items of information in an informational universe. Material energy is a form of energy but not the whole of energy as stated by Dembski. He asked if there are information transfers that transcend material media and take a nonmaterial form of energy for transmission. The question applies in the context of quantum tunneling which depends upon the material media of synaptic networks for transmission of information encoded with meaning and purpose within spike trains of impulses but cannot be reduced to the synaptic networks themselves. If the energy of an information relationship actualized within wave functions cannot be justified as being material then it must be nonmaterial.

At this time I will post a “take away” from all that has been presented to this point about the tremendous complexity of dualist interactionism. Along the way I have endeavored to make the posts as understandable as possible, but neurophysiology and quantum mechanics are . . . complex!

Dualist interaction involves a nonmaterial mind with the capacity to cause a probabilistic, directed transmission of synchronous action potentials through coherent synaptic networks of the physical brain. It occurs by quantum tunneling which induces conformational changes in the protein scaffolds, vesicles, vesicular pores and ionic channels of the components of synaptic networks. By this process neural transmitters are released from vesicular pores into synaptic clefts. The transmitters stimulate linguistically encoded spike trains of action potentials that are conducted through a network of postsynaptic downstream neurons. Synaptic transmission of specified (meaningful) information occurs by this process and is interpreted by a mind through a lifetime of learning. When the intention, attention or will of one’s mind generates encoded neural impulses the mind interprets the codes as Eccles’ “percepts” in real time so that one knows what one is thinking and intending. The linguistic code generated is by an immaterial energy of the mind considered in detail by the blog, “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two..

Plantinga finds that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics offers less of a problem for divine action than classical science. “…special divine action…is by no means incompatible with quantum mechanics…because…quantum mechanics doesn’t determine a specific outcome for a given set of initial conditions, but instead merely assigns probabilities to the possible outcomes.” Special divine action is not restrained. It is free to select via a nonmaterial energy (wave functions interacting via quantum tunneling in the case of synaptic transmission) certain outcomes according to what has been termed “small probabilities” by William A. Dembski, giving definition to specificity [which is meaning for the information we receive as recipients from the Mind of God].

Alvin Plantinga addresses the workings of natural laws in a closed versus an open universe. He points out that the conservation laws derived from Newton’s laws are stated for closed or isolated systems. In closed systems there would be nothing to prevent God from changing the velocity or direction of a (quasi)particle, but if he did so energy would not be conserved. Moreover, it would not be a truly closed system, and the law of conservation of energy would not apply. He states that classical science does not claim that the universe is causally closed. His statement is entirely consistent with special divine action in the world. Just as God, who is immaterial and Spirit, can act in the physical universe, so too can the immaterial minds of human beings. There is no objection to special divine action or for human free action, dualistically conceived.

In Chapter Five of The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, the frame of reference for addressing the neural correlates of cognition, a function of the cerebral cortex, is identified as quantum mechanics. Basil Hiley and Paavo Pylkkanen are cited as proposing this relationship. The process would enable the Self to control its brain without violating the energy conservation law, a focus of much discussion by neuroscientists. These workers believed that there was a coherent way to explain mental activity involving nonclassical physical mechanisms that can act causally on traditional classical neural activity. Alvin Plantinga speaks to this issue in this chapter, and his perspective will be addressed in the next blog.

It was Sir John C. Eccles who first understood the importance of quantum mechanics for resolving the mind-brain problem. He proposed that mental events can cause brain events. I cite Danko D. Georgiev who said, “Indeed if one considers the wave function of a quantum particle as a non-observable mental state of pre-probabilities and the actualized position in space and time as an observable mental state, then the dualistic interactionism proposed by Sir John Eccles is consistent with the modern vision of what the physical world is.” Perhaps the afore mentioned “non-classical energy” of the mind conforms to the “non-observable mental state” and the spike trains of encoded action potentials to the “actualized position in space and time as an observable mental state.” I quote Rene Descartes who 400 years ago said, “Cartesian dualism postulates that the immaterial mind and the material brain, while being ontologically distinct substances, causally interact.”

The question must be asked, what is it that the mind generates to trigger quantum tunneling? Does the mind generate a nonclassical energy? Does this apply to the Mind of God who is Spirit? “Waves in Our Brains,” Part Two, discusses the nonclassical energy in terms of wave functions having frequencies, amplitudes and shapes that are in synchrony so that encoded information is transmitted through selected neural networks with meaning, purpose and intended action.

I offer an explanation of “quantum probabilities” taken from my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story.

The neural model based on Eccles’ and Beck’s work introduced into the cerebral cortex a quantum probabilistic aspect giving expression to intentional choices that would increase probability amplitudes across synaptic networks selected for functional outcomes from memory archives. Mental intention would become effective by momentarily increasing the probabilities for exocytosis by quantum tunneling in specified neural networks. Large numbers of small probability amplitudes within cerebral modules sufficient collectively to generate action potentials as spike trains with synchronized frequencies would be coordinated to produce a coherent, linguistically encoded transmission of specified information. The information would be sent or received by an immaterial mind, including the Mind of God. Part Two of my blog, “Waves in Our Brains,” addresses this activity.