Mind and Matter: Aspects of the Implicate Order Described Through : Algebra

Paavo Pylkkänen

F. A. M. Frescura, Basil J. Hiley

F. A. M. Frescura, Basil J. Hiley

Basil J. Hiley

It is argued that in order to address the mind/matter relationship, we will have to radically change the conceptual structure normally assumed in physics. Rather than fields and/or particles-in-interaction described in the traditional Cartesian order based a local evolution in spacetime, we need to introduce a more general notion of process described by a non-commutative algebra. This will have radical implications for both for physical processes and for geometry. By showing how the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics can be understood within a non-commutative structure, we can give a much clearer meaning to the implicate order introduced by Bohm. It is through this implicate order that mind and matter can be seen as different aspects of the same general process.

Harald Atmanspacher A, Dean P. Rickles

This chapter focuses on the work of David Bohm carried out together and then pursued and amplified by his collaborator Basil Hiley. Like the case studies in the other chapters, quantum physics played a key role in this approach too, especially the notion of non-local order. Bohm distinguishes between “implicate order” and “explicate order,” with the former constituting the psychophysically neutral realm similar to Pauli and Jung’s Unus Mundus from which both the mental and the physical emerge as explications. In this view, meaning is involved at the deep, implicate level through the notion of “active information”. When the implicate order (an undivided whole) is explicated into a multiplicity, this does naturally imply correlations that constitute the mind-matter connection. We also explore Hiley’s algebraic accounts linking back to Eddington’s ideas, as well as some of Bohm’s views of the relation between perception, language, and reality.

Tadashi Okamura