The Task of Theological Humanism
138
ciousness can assume various “masks,” as it were. One need not believe that hthat an inexplicable gulf exists between conscious and non-conscious What other kinds of material systems exhibit opting behavior? Cons-uman beings, or even higher animals, are the only conscious beings or
beings. Here we extend the barest property of spontaneous opting to itselfmate constituents of matter itself – and the spontaneous life of immediate consciousness in human beings share the fundamental property. In each. Amazingly, the quantum behavior of elementary particles – the ulti-matter
case, one finds the capacity to opt among alternatives in ways that are indi-vidually inscrutable because they are neither random nor determined. Admittedly, it is a gigantic stretch from embodied human freedom to the behavior of subatomic particles. The implication is nonetheless staggering:
could elementary matter reveal some kind of proto-consciousness? If so, an interesting line of inquiry opens up beyond emergentism: instead of pulling rabbits rabbits all the way down.(consciousness) out of a hat (non-conscious matter), it may be
among given alternatives in immediate consciousness, they choose delib-erately among interconnected layers of goods in reflective consciousness, and in reflexive consciousness they exercise freedom in contemplating a We have already considered the human side of the analogy. Humans opt
variety of possibilities for integrating basic, social, and reflective goods in the unity of a coherent life with and for others. On the side of elementary physical particles, we see opting at a primitive or proto-conscious level, with none of the complicated material systems that support human con-
sciousness, such as an organic body with a nervous system and brain. Nonetheless, in the famous two-slit experiment, among others, elementary particles display the fundamental structure of opting among alternatives. All quantum behavior is of this kind. Quantum theory makes astoundingly
accurate predictions in terms of the probabilities of how particles will behave in the aggregate, but it cannot predict the outcomes of individual events. The quantum behavior of elementary particles is neither random nor determined.
of material systems can embody consciousness, or some kind of proto- consciousness. As such, we are open to the possibility that consciousness is not a unique property of human life, nor even that of higher mammals, but The model of consciousness as embodied freedom leaves open what kinds
is potentially present in matter in a primitive form from the beginning. The model postulates a scale of matter, starting with fundamental constituents such as electrons and nuclei, passing through atoms such as the hydrogen