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Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will?
An anonymous reader sends in a Science News article that begins: "Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably." Standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, of course, embrace unpredictability. But many physicists aren't comfortable with that, and are working to develop deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Conway and Kochen's proof argues that these efforts will be fruitless — unless one is willing to give up human free will, in a very strong sense. The article quotes Conway: "We can really prove that there's no algorithm, no way that the particle can give an answer that is unique and can be specified ahead of time. I'm still amazed that we can actually manage to prove that."
There's already considerable evidence that humans don't have free will, but that free will is (essentially) an illusion created by your brain.
So, no, particles do not have free will.
The article was from 2006. Here's a link to wikipedia for some details.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
Couldn't this conversely be just interactions below our precision of measurement? It seems like a dangerous conclusion to jump to that atoms must have "free will" just as it is to say "god did it". I think free will is an illusion of causal relationships that exist outside our precision of measurement, be it our five senses used as our input for stimuli which causes our responses, or the interactions of subatomic particles. Ideas like the article presents just reek of arrogance of our importance in the grand scheme of things.
...if you are willing (and able) to scientifically analyse what human will (free or otherwise) really is, and what are the boundaries of its freedom. If we hadn't have quantum mechanical phenomena, there would be no room for free will whatsoever, and we'd be all living a predetermined life.
When I try to discuss this topic with my friends, they are either not scientifically minded enough to follow through, or just can't accept the fact that, as physical beings, we would be absolutely determined in our behaviour and actions. And then, there's the concept of "soul" that, so far, has only helped to muddy the waters of reasoning in this topic. I'd really like to see a way that the concept of "soul" could be included in the discussion of free will in a physical world, I just don't know of any scientifically minded philosopher who had done it.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I've now fulfilled my destiny.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
If they indeed succeed, some other folks will start to search for underlying nondeterministic model, and so on...
Go watch Waking Life, that creepy rotoscope-styled movie. That's a big part of it.
The question of "Are we merely the random wavering of subatomic particles" is almost, verbatim, a line from the film.
Unpredictability has nothing to do with free will. I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely. Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Imagine an information universe with the processing going on at the quantum level and then being stored or written which we label the tangible or that having mass.
Atoms are controlled by the observer within the constraints of math and function.
From Chaos comes form.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
Algorithmic predictability leads to contradictions without involving QM or philosophy ('free will'). If some computer where capable of prediction it would be possible to create a simple Russel's Paradox. e.g. create a machine that turns on a light when the computer answers 'no' and turns off a light when the computer answers 'yes'. Then ask the computer to predict "will the light be on at time t?".
It's an argument that involves neither human beings/philosophy or QM theory, we are conflating things by even dragging those things into the conversation.
It is very much intuitive that human beings can't have free will unless the constituent particles themselves have free will. So, the formal proof of this is useful only for categorical and pedagogical purposes but not any practical purpose. The real question to be solved is whether human beings have any free will at all?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Two things :
a) Good luck with that
b) So free will is all about deterministic vs. random? As in, you can't have free will if the process of thinking is deterministic? Or does free will your ability to be random in your thinking?
Also, if I have no free will and that I'm a deterministic process whose actions are functions of prior events, does it mean I'm not responsible for my actions? (Sorry I'm new to the whole free will debate)
You just got troll'd!
A very good film. Here is an interesting monologue about the relationship between the free will and physics laws.
Subatomic particles do not have free will.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Think about a definition of Free Will for a while. Then answer this question:
If an exact copy of you were made (absolutely exact, right down to the quantum state of every particle); do you believe that given the exact same environment (a twinned universe?) your doppleganger would ever do anything different than yourself?
If you believe that you would not act, and think exactly the same then you believe Free Will is beyond quantum mechanics; otherwise Free Will is just the synergistic response to a complex organism that has the capability to think of itself.
depends on the DRM..
If physicists say so, then yes. If priests say so, then no.
I should add that when it comes to theoritical physics and expoloration, we should not limit ourselves strictly to materialistic or atheistic viewpoints, but also should explore possibilities that there is a metaphysical components to something. So if we have theories which point to the possibility of a metaphysical component, these should not be thrown out because they conflict with someones atheistic viewpoint. Until we have a clear answer and something that is provable with emperical evidence, we really should consider all possibilities regarding something, and even afterwards continue to test theories and laws, not assuming they are entirely correct. I do not believe, in a strict seperation of science and religion, religion can inspire science, but when it comes to established fact we should follow evidence. Science can also speculate about things which are presently undetermined and untested, and develop a hypothesis or theory, in which case all possibilities should be explored, regardless if they have an atheist or a religions aura about them. So especially with things hypothesis which conjectures in areas about might what be possible, i think it is important for all possibilities to be explored and seen as possible, and where there is evidence, the evidence should not be ignored because they conflict with religions or atheism.
That doesn't show a prediction algorithm doesn't exists, it shows either one of the following things
-the results of the algorithm can't be accessed or interpreted in this world
-the algorithm can't be limited to only yes-no answers
-The algorithm only exists on a meta level.
-There aren't enough particles in the world to implement a computer to compute the algorithm
I think scientists or the science-minded overcompensate from the obviously silly ideas of most religions and superstitions. What if a glimmer is actually true? What if we have the free will? What if there is reincarnation?
I am a little bit concerned, that scientists, due to their philosophical bent, might actually try ignore evidence that does not fit into the atheist viewpoints.
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
So this is where fate comes in. Since you are split and exist having taken the blue pill and the red pill by choosing to decide, the fact that you are in the universe that results from the red pill is simply fate. You are also in the universe that results from taking the blue pill.
The universe you are in is simply happenstance. You did not actually choose to take the red pill, both happen. If you want to end up in the perfect universe simply go with the flow and follow the natural impulse don't stop to make a decision.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
Quote: "John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably."
That is NOT what they claim. Rather, they claim that if subatomic particles (not atoms) behave in ways that are not deterministic (as they think they have shown). Another claim is then (unjustifiably) extrapolated: if they behaved deterministically, then we would not have free will. The claim in the original post is claiming the logical converse of this proposition, which does not follow at all. In fact the original post got it wrong two ways: not only did they reverse the claim, even if it were the claim it would probably be false.
I'm not even sure why. I guess I like the idea of living in an approximate, fuzzy universe. So much cozier.
Arrg. I accidentally replied to the wrong topic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:
Do not block the way of inquiry.
Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations, and to consider the economics of research, yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
Now my "spiritually minded" friends will be telling me that science has proved that subatomic particles think and feel. I know they mean well, but nothing is worse than a quantum mechanics lesson from people who can't even do algebra.
I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely.
No, you can't. If I can know right now every action you are going to take, from now until you die (ignoring the edge case where you die instantly), then you are not exercising free will. Why? Because your actions in the future are being completely determined by the state of things right now.
That's what distinguishes determinism from free will.
Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Not "random", but "unpredictable". There's a *huge* difference.
Human free will might be predictable for God, but not for other humans (this means that it's theoretically predictable, if you had access to the full starting state of the universe, but since no-one has & no-one ever will, it's not doable).
Or it might be the case that it's infeasible to predict the evolution of the universe faster than real-time. Even if you knew the starting state of the universe, that information would not help you predict anything unless you had a computer that could simulate more than 1s of "universe evolution" in 1s. This is an unsolved problem, since that computer would have to simulate itself, faster than it can run. (ie. 100% certain predictions of the future are by themselves paradoxes, since they'd have to incorporate themselves.
Say, for example "global warming's going to kill us all !" were a prediction, we take heed, and prevent it. That act, obviously, makes the prediction wrong, since the prediction caused a reaction that prevented it from coming true. Any 100% certain prediction has that problem.
The randomness in quantum mechanics (which is an assumption of the theory, not a proven fact) *might* prevent that problem from occuring in quantum mechanics, but it might not, it's not proven either way. It is also not proven that to aviod paradoxes you require fundamental unpredictability either, so lots of avenues still open (you'd have to prove that human beings, or at least something (God ?) is "rational" in some way to prove that rational unpredictability is required, it might just as well be the case that humans will not prevent certain calamities, no matter how well informed we are about them, in fact it's happened lots of times in history, for example there is every indication that the Inuit are perfectly aware what is happening to them, yet it does not seem to slow down their demise, but the same could be said about quite a few people that don't exist anymore, like the Inca's or the Mayans, they knew perfectly well what was happening to them, and they knew what was needed to prevent it from killing them, they had the opportunity to prevent their own demise ... and they didn't).
However that prediction-paradox is only a problem for people with their heads extremely high up in the clouds ("philosophers", and other idiots) since anything resembling the minimum required technology does not currently exist, nor does it seem possible to create a technology like that (except to said airheads).
Even if newtonian mechanics were 100% true, it would not today be feasible to predict the actions of a single human. We're slowly getting close to predicting, (using less than even newtonian-style physics, just using gravity-less balls and valency electrons, so by this measurement that would be, what "really inaccurate" ?), the actions of a single bacterium, but we're not quite there yet. And even if we were there, that ability is useless until we can do it faster than real-time (ie simulate more than 1s in 1s "real time"), except for study of general principles of course.
Humans, with 100 billion brain cells, have a few hundred years even if Moore's law is upheld for its entire duration, and there would be no fundamental unpredictability *AND* there would be a way to make, in a single instant, every measurement conceivable (that last one is a requirement for making even newtonian predictions)
You have basically three choices here:
-Humans/animals/subatomic particles have free will somehow; as in, they can make arbitrary decisions and cause action that is unpredictable by any model of physics.
-Humans et al. do not have free will and their actions are dictated by laws of physics; said laws are natural and immutable and will lead to a predictable model of the universe.
-Humans et al. do not have free will and their actions are dictated by the whims of a god or other conscious entity. This scenario, much like creation theories, really just moves the determination of free will to another actor: If we are merely cogs in god's plan, does god have free will? This scenario, even if true, would not provide us with any useful information.
As an atheist I cannot fathom option 3. Of the remaining scenarios, the only one I can rationally support is number two (no free will thanks to physics). As it hurts my ego to claim that I have no free will, I believe that the concept of free will ought to be divided into distinct categories: mathematically-derived actions of matter and energy and sentient actions (which would not cover particles unless they were shown to be conscious). I think they ought to be treated as separate fields.
Or maybe individuals have free will, but the species does not. If you can predict birthrate, accident rate, crime rate, etc with a high degree of accuracy, is free will threatened? If you can predict with great accuracy that 1.2% of RV owners will experience a collision while driving their RV, do RV owners still retain free will?
I need more caffeine.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
First of all, quantum mechanics has absolutely nothing to do with free will. Free will, if understood properly, is a moral property of human agents. And whether someone is responsible for his actions has nothing to do with our final understanding of subatomic physics.
Secondly, the physics is questionable. There are several assumptions underlying Bell's inequalities. One of which is that incoming (that is, earlier in time) influences are independent. However, the fundamental laws are, for the most part, time symmetric. (The exceptions are the neutral kaon which has questionable significance and entropy, which is a supervenient law that needs to be explained by cosmic boundary conditions.)
The point is that we should not expect incoming influences to be independent. We should expect variable dependence going both ways in time. "Agency" and "observer" being primitive theoretical entities was always a metaphysical abomination. Happily, it's not necessary once the symmetry of time is fully appreciated.
I'm not saying anything new. Huw Price is the principle proponent of this view and he's not the one who came up with it either. To my knowledge there has been no serious reply to Price's proposal. So his work sits largely ignored, while media attention goes to crazy interpretations that give free will to subatomic particles, and various other metaphysical abominations.
Experiments have shown that a type of subatomic particle called a âoespin 1 particleâ
Bad wording. There is no particle named 'spin 1 particle' He should just have said that it is about a spin 1 particle.
Spin is one of those properties physicists canâ(TM)t predict in advance
If you measure spin in one direction and then measure it in the same direction again you can predict the second outcome in advance. (The operators commute.) If you measure it in other directions he is right.
If there is an unpredictability and free will, which seems to imply something metaphysical...
Why do unpredictability and free will imply something metaphysical? Define your terms please.
I go by the rule that someone has free will as long as they don't understand the factors that influence their choices. The child at recess believes he is free to choose the slide over the swingset, but the parent knows that the child is deathly afraid of heights and will choose the swings every time.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
You hear that sort of thing a lot, but most scientists would MUCH rather become famous as "that guy who proved that everything we thought we knew was wrong" than advance some particular theological or philosophical agenda.
No - in Asimov's world humans can have free will in exactly the same manner as quantum mechanical particles can have "free will" and yet Newtonian mechanics (which is deterministic) can accurately describe the physics of things a lot larger than an atom. There is a probability for each human/particle to make different choices and, when statistically sampled on a large enough scale, those probabilities lead to something that appear deterministic.
This is exactly how quantum mechanics work. Each particle has a probability distribution for what it will do so that, at the large scale because of the huge numbers involved we know that roughly 40% will do X, 20% will do Y and 40% will do Z.
While I don't know for certain that Asimov based psycho-history on QM I've often suspected as much. As a PhD chemist he should have had a reasonably good understanding of QM at least.
Sub-Atomic particles in America are given ID cards under the patriot act, and in fact are quite limited to their allowance of free will of movement. Not to mention when sub atomic particles go through airports- they are subject to some serious screening.
Random. Free Will, Act of God. in essence they are all the same. The danger is when they find something that is Random, Act of God, or Free Will is stop and say thats it, science cannot go further because it can't be measured. As it is unpredictable, wants to deceive us, or is controlled by an omniscient being. Science is not religion I doubt it will ever prove there is or isn't a God(s). That isn't the point of science is understand how the universe Macro and Micro works, and find ways to represent it. So if one believes in God, the question is why God made it that way will lead you to study further. If you are an atheist you need to go why is it random. Believing in God or Not doesn't make you a better science. In general we will do the same things and for some they will find something and they will try to put a cap on it, just because they are tired looking more into it. So they will say God plans it, Or it is to Random to tell. Both are equally destructive to science, if you have people following it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Metaphysics has no place in science. Read some Karl Popper for Christ's sake.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The original poster writes that this hypothesis is a threat to "human free will, in a very strong sense". I'm not sure what he means by a very strong sense, but it becomes clear after doing a little research that none of these people are talking about human free will in the sense that most people perceive it.
The real argument here is about whether the future is fixed. If the universe is purely mechanistic, then no agency -- human or otherwise -- can change the course of future events. But what does that mean for a human being?
Not much, it turns out. So you can't change the future, but thanks to the laws of thermodynamics you don't know what the future is going to be like anyhow. There's still nothing to prevent you from shaping (as opposed to changing) the future with your decisions.
But wait! Aren't those decisions also pre-determined? In a strictly physical sense, yes, they are. But again, what does that mean for us? Not much. A human being is a vastly complex and chaotic system interacting with a vastly complex and chaotic environment. We're driven by chaos theory and the laws of thermodynamics, not by quantum randomness. (Would you really want to be guided by quantum randomness? I mean seriously. . . What kind of "free will" would you get out of that?)
Any argument against free will -- in the way that most ordinary people regard it -- is easily brushed aside. For thousands of years we've been designing and creating things, making plans and then carrying them out. That's free will. To argue against it is like trying to prove that black is white (and then getting yourself killed at the next zebra crossing).
Religion? Whatever man.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Do subatomic particles dream of elementary sheep?
I've been following this kind of thing for some time. Don't worry, there's no shortage of scientists that no matter their belief, are adamant in wanting to think that there's something magic about the human mind.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Rush "Freewill" Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson album: "Permanent Waves" There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance, A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance. A planet of playthings, We dance on the strings Of powers we cannot perceive "The stars aren't aligned, Or the gods are malign..." Blame is better to give than receive. [Chorus] You can choose a ready guide In some celestial voice If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice You can choose from phantom fears And kindness that can kill I will choose a path that's clear I will choose free will
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
If you mean "guy on the street who just thought about this five minutes ago", probably, but free will has been a serious topic of philosophical discussion for centuries now. As you might expect, various people have written various things on the subject that you might not think of in a college-dorm philosophy session, which seems to be the extent of philosophical thinking the scientists who are the subject of this article have done.
In particular, a major position on the subject, held by both philosophers (from Hume on down) and scientists-turned-philosophers (notably Daniel Dennett), termed "compatibilism", is that free will and determinism are perfectly compatible. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a reasonably good summary.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If I had free will, I'd be eating cake. No lie. But I don't have any cake. So I don't have free will. I have a limited set of options from which to choose, and a number of factors which influence my choice of what to do, from the various chemical and physiologic state of my body, to the actions of that bastard that stole my cake from the fridge.
Free will is the ability to do what you want, AND the ability to do otherwise.
rewriting history since 2109
Weather seem to have free will, if we just limit our "predictions" to very local influences, but if you take in account everything (even a butterfly moving in the other side of the world) could be deterministic. Of course, taking that much factors into account is not practical.
The same could happen with humans (something that happened as child could determine a future choice) and subatomic particles (with spooky action, even something happening in the other side of the universe could have influence here, at the same moment)
"John Conway and Simon Kochen claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably ... "
While it is fine to start at the atomic level, what is relevant to human thought is at a macro scale. I believe most neuroscientists agrees that human decisions occur at a fairly high level of the brain, i.e. are affected by many atoms. So, to have true unpredictability, many atoms would have to act unpredictably *in unison*. By the time we get to a macro scale, the unpredictability of quantum mechanics averages out to something essentially predictable.
Anyway, why equate unpredictably with free will? What we consider free will is entirely predictable to us.
You're missing one significant scenario here:
-Humans/animals have free will as a strongly emergent characteristic, that particles do not have.
And it seems the scientists from TFA are missing it too.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
He said evidence. If there is evidence of such beings (hypothetical), it would be wrong of scientists to ignore it just because they're atheist, right?
Good point about importance of evidence, but I think metaphysics/god and science are orthogonal by definition - metaphysics/god cannot even be defined in a meaningful scientific manner, and hence the impossibility of empirical evidence pointing to metaphysics/god.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
All things "quantum" are portrayed as bizarre, but they aren't; they aren't even that difficult to understand, if presented properly. There's just a whole lot of bad "information" out there.
Bohm's idea has never been debunked, and is perfectly logical. Remember, the movement of the planets was also once "unpredictable", and then "mostly predictable but with errors" before we understood the hidden variables. Just because something is currently unpredictable, doesn't make it random.
Anyway.
There are a number of statements in this article that lead me to believe that either: A) Conway and Kochen are loony, or B) crappy "science" journalism strikes again. Hopefully it's the latter and something was just lost in the translation from actual-science to journalism-ese. However, the fact that the two of them have been hawking this idea for four years tends toward A.
Repeated throughout the article is the idea that the particle CHOOSES its spin. This is an insane idea. The whole presentation is nuts. Do subatomic particles have free will? What? Does a glass of water have free will? Can you define free will first so that a meaningful discussion can follow?
This article portrays it as a new choice, either determinism or free will. It has always been one or the other, they're mutually exclusive (for certain values of "free will").
But anyway.
WTF. Again with the lunacy. You don't have to send Alice to Mars to prevent information passing between them. First of all, information isn't going to pass between them, that's not what entangled particles are about (despite massive popular [but factually wrong] ideas to the contrary). Second of all, putting Alice on the other side of Earth gets her out of Bob's immediate light cone.
ANYWAY.
The point of the thought experiment is to "prove" that there's no way to predict the axis of spin of the particle, even with an identically entangled particle, if you "poke" it differently, because no perfect pre-poke state exists.
Because "poking" it changes its spin. NO SHIT. You change the outcome by measuring it. Oh my science! Alert the media! So their idea is that the spin is not predetermined, and therefore determinism is false and we have "free will". Except it STILL doesn't disprove Bohm's conjecture (see start of rant) that there are unknown rules in play.
So, their idea basically adds nothing to the debate. It "proves" nothing. It tells us nothing. Why is this on /.?
This article is dumb. I'm dumber for having read it. I award the author no points, and may science have mercy on his inevitably destined animating force.
Don't put advice in your sig.
Doesn't this interpretation also apply to two entangled particles separated by a great distance? Couldn't they just be responding to measurements according to the same pre-determined algorithm in their basic nature, without there being any implication for the free will of the observers?
That's fine, as long as the metaphysical component can be empirically verified. Oh wait, then it wouldn't be metaphysical, it would be physical. Nevermind. What do you mean by "metaphysical" anyway?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
For many scientists, a bit of philosophical drive is almost necessary. When you're studying the nature of the universe, it's understandable to get a little existential more than just once in a while.
A philisophical drive may complicate the practice of math or science, but I would be of the opinion that it does more good than bad. A scientist that puts his/her own viewpoints before the evidence is just a lazy scientist. A strong scientist would either be able explain away the evidence without hiding it, or reconsider their own position.
Laws of Science, like religion/existential philosophy, are sets of rules and ideas meant to convey abstract concepts and proofs without doing your homework. It would be very difficult to completely seperate the two.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Provide a rigorous definition of what it means to have (and not have) free will anyway, and then we can start to talk. For starters read and understand Daniel Dennett's Elbow room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting . I read it, but didn't understand it all. But for starters: physicists have been trying to convince themselves that quantum indeterminacy can in some way explain free will. Dennett suggests that this idea is silly. How, he asks, can random resolutions of quantum-level events provide people with any control over their behavior?"
Free will a nebulous and nigh-indefinable subject, and basing a debate on it without setting out your terms of reference is as pointless as arguing about the shapes of clouds.
Maybe the concept of free will is one of those things wired into human conciousness that don't actually mean anything at all.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
He said evidence. If there is evidence of such beings (hypothetical), it would be wrong of scientists to ignore it just because they're atheist, right?
If there is such evidence, it wouldn't be supernatural, and hence scientists' religious beliefs (or lack thereof) would be irrelevant.
Science teaches high standards for evidence, more than most faiths in gods or UFOs ask for.
Bottom line: if there's real evidence, then it's science not religion.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If your life is pre-determined, how can you make a decision? Just because you don't know what you will do doesn't mean you're making a decision.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
As soon as you follow a set of rules or are in any way affected by anything, then you no longer have free will. Since having a free will would mean that outside influences can't affect you. Yet even in this means that if you have a change in your life, eg. you get fired or mood swings or emotions for that matter, you no longer have free will.
On the flip side, if you where random and unaffected by outside influences, you would have no control and would no longer have a will of any sort.
I think the idea of free will is a paradox in itself.
Talk about misusing words. Free will is a feeling we get that we are in charge of our own decisions. Even when given the choice between compliance and death, we still feel we are making a choice. Free will is about having a mind. Particles, however, do not have minds and cannot make decisions. They follow deterministic rules. Even if there is an actual random element where there is no possible way to predict the outcome, which I find unlikely, then the particles still do not have free will. There is just some uncertainty in their action. You need a mind to have free will. Believing otherwise is panpsychist (everything has a mind - google it) bull patty.
I've heard this line of reasoning before, but the problem is that free will normally means that your actions are self-determined or self-caused, rather than the universe at large. It goes against the ideas of causality that there are effects that go un-caused. Strictly speaking, you are correct. But only for a universe that is not causal. And to suggest otherwise requires non-causal explanations of the universe (which of course undermines that whole "science" thing...)
What's the value of information that you don't know?
... there is no spoon.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The argument in the article is clever, but it really says nothing about free will. It's an argument about interpretation of quantum mechanics. In fact, it says that quantum measurements can imply a hidden variable theory if humans do not have the freedom to chose axes arbitrarily. This has little or nothing to do with particles having free will.
Doesn't have much to do with humans having free will, either, since few physicists see any need for hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Random. Free Will, Act of God. in essence they are all the same.
In many religions, God is quite deterministic. And in some, Free Will is the characteristic which distinguishes Humans from God's mindless automatons.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Bullshit. I have free will. I think. Independently. I happen to think that conscious thought is a sense, too - like smell and taste and hearing and both others. It's a means of perception.
And free will exists. How can anyone think he has no free will?
The first two stages of finding out you might not have free will are denial and anger. You seem to have blurred those together nicely. Candidly, I have to warn you that bargaining and depression are a bitch. But get back to us when you're in the acceptance stage.
I think the best way to convince yourself of free will is the notion of creativity. I refer to creativity of many forms: be it in art, in design, in science, in discussion; take your pick. If someone gives me a set of design requirements, I use rules and laws to achieve the desired goal. There's very little free will involved, and if it is, it's mostly hidden or non-obvious. However, take something without a set goal in mind, say a hobby or a past-time (or in my case, my doctorate). There's no clear cut methodology used to reach whatever loosely defined goal (if any) that has been set. It's a case of the ride being far more enjoyable than the destination. The entire process is one of creativity because there are no pressures to perform. Perhaps by analogy one can think of it as the observer effect: until someone is on your back, telling you what to do, you're in a superposition of states. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if in 50 years we find out that a lot of the brains' processes are QM in nature, especially the creative aspects.
I did read the article, thank you very much, but that is not what they showed at all. The only thing that they showed beyond any (currently available) argument, is that the particle spin in not deterministic. Their explanation as to why is purely speculative, a mere thought experiment with no proof at all. It does not deserve to be given the status of a simple mathematical equation, as you have done.
Come on, really. They may be physicists but their foray into thoughts about metaphysics is weak indeed. Their reverse-logic has so many holes than any real logician would have to laugh at its lack of rigor.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There is an extra "if". It should have read:
..."
"... they claim that subatomic particles (not atoms) behave in ways that are not deterministic
But that is ALL they really showed. The rest is mere speculation on their part. There is no evidence, much less proof, that this one property of a subatomic particle has any direct effect on "free will", and there is even less evidence on the converse: that free will affects the deterministicity of a particle. True, the presence of an observer does seem to have an effect in some experiments, but a leap from observation to free will is just that: a leap.
... I do not dispute that free will and determinism in regard to particle spin are related. But to claim that they have "demonstrated" this is an exaggeration to the point of plain falsehood. They have not adequately connected the two with evidence, nor, more to the point, have they shown that one is the cause and the other, effect.
If quantum particles have free will, does that mean we do as well? Wouldn't that still imply that we don't have control over our thoughts but instead are irresistibly forced to think as the quantum particles in our brains dictate?
This is what is known as the homunculus problem, trying to explain subjective experiences by imagining an small, possibly quantum "thing" (hint: soul) having these experiences and relaying a response back into our "larger" self. Which completely evades the question of what really is subjective experience.
On the topic of free will, I subscribe to utilitarian interpretations of language, because language has proven to be able to express abstract concepts that are not related to reality.
Humans have free will because for the most part, we can't make them think what we want them to think. Sure they respond to some stimulus predictably like a web server responds to GET and POST methods predictably but that is far from running arbitrary code in the remote host.
The real problem is that people tend to think of their brain and the chemicals inside as an extension of themselves rather than them themselves. In other words
If my brain and the chemicals inside of it control my will
Then my will is controlled by something else than me
Ergo I don't have free will.
But if "I" == "My brain and the chemicals inside of it"
Then "I" control my will
Ergo I have free will.
But... the future refused to change.
That the anger and denial phases last longer than I thought. :)
"Free will" and religion have nothing to do with each other.
Read about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler followed in WeizsÃcker's footsteps when he wrote "it is not unreasonable to imagine that information sits at the core of physics, just as it sits at the core of a computer". David Chalmers of the Australian National University summarised his views as: "Wheeler (1990) has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. According to this "it from bit" doctrine, the laws of physics can be cast in terms of information, postulating different states that give rise to different effects without actually saying what those states are. It is only their position in an information space that counts. If so, then information is a natural candidate to also play a role in a fundamental theory of consciousness. We are led to a conception of the world on which information is truly fundamental, and on which it has two basic aspects, corresponding to the physical and the phenomenal features of the world".
(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics )
I'm not very interested anymore in whether people have free will. And, it's silly to ask whether particles do.
I'm not sure that particles even exist.
Consider that the univese could be a computer (sort of like The Matrix but without Keanu Reeves). In that case the univese has to chug along calculating and recording the position, velocity, and other characteristics of eveything in it at each point in time.
But does it? For one thing, ray tracing would show it photon paths that might never interact, so skip those.
But more importantly, calculating a position or spin or whatever, to infinite precision would, of course, require an infinite amount of time. So just approximate when necessesary to keep up appearances, but don't waste computational resources.
But then some pesky physicist comes along and wants an exact number. Fine, make one up. Pull one out of the universal butt.
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
Only evangelizing atheists and certain 17th-century clerics think that a scientist who believes in a supreme being will somehow have to resort to "angels pushing planets" kind of proof.
Newton, Bayes, and many other famous scientists were believers and that did not stop them from applying scientific methods. And many never-heard-of-them scientists today also believe as well, but you'll see no footnotes in their papers referencing this.
You make the basic mistake of assuming that those who stand inside of mainstream science and don't have Bible-referencing footnotes, have no faith. Not very scientific or rigorous. (Or correct.)
If nothing actually exists unless it is observed, that implies that the observer has some indeterminate property that is affected by the observation. Otherwise, it would not be an observation. Either everything we see is created like a instant virtual reality for us (which I doubt) or everything in the universe is at some level able to observe and react. Seems to me that animals are simply an incredibly efficient machine for coordinating these observations and producing a coordinated reaction. In other words, I think the universe can't exist unless there is free will.
When will this tired B.S. come to rest?
Our will is just as free as the results of thrown dice are random.
There is no such thing as metaphysical evidence. There is the large possibility of evidence that is not seen or understood, but if it is evidence, the meta goes away.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Something that is truly random cannot also be controlled. So while we may perform actions that could truly be random without a cause, those actions are not due to our will. The action is free from causation, but it isn't a result of our will, either.
I argue that there is no such thing as free will, and I argue this because we can't even define what free will is without arguing about it. How can we choose our actions freely? We're created by a collaboration of our genes and environment. The fact that both our genes and environment influence behavior probably means that they create it. There isn't an individual that grew up in a particular environment has happens to have genes, individuals are the products of its genes and environment, period.
Isn't this what they said, though? It sounds to me as though they claimed that free will can only exist in a nondeterministic environment, without necessarily making a finding on whether or not the environment actually is deterministic or not.
I love how everyone jumps on the free will hating bandwagon instantly. It seems there are alot of people here who are in love with the concept of being meat machines that were determined from their own creation to play out a life without choice. Seems like a pretty sad existence to me, but that's beside the point. I pose this question: If you did not choose to murder that man, but instead it was determined for you, where is accountability? How can someone be prosecuted for a murder they didn't choose to commit, but rather were deterministically forced to do?
It is fate that I respond to your post...
Don't mod me down... I couldn't help it!
There are 2 definitions that I can think of for Free Will.
A) Free Will is the assertion that our are actions are not deterministic and not random but something else.
B) Free Will is the experience of knowing that some other agent (like another person) has goals and will make choices and actions to meet those goals that may or may not be predictable to us.
Regarding A, I've never heard of this "some other thing" described in any meaningful way. I've also heard arguments that make anything other than determinism sound impossible.
As for B, (which is probably better termed the concept of Self Agency) I think it's a critically important part of getting what you want from the world.
A wonderful example of delusion :-)
I think therefore I am
I think I have free will therefore I do
What about I think I have free will but in actuality all things are preordained.
Or I think I have freewill but my senses are far too limited for me to grasp the reality.
Maybe, I think I have free will but in fact reality is created by my thoughts and therefore I am contained by my own thoughts.
Lastly, do not think about pink elephants.
What are you thinking about?
Face it your consciousness is very thin veneer on millenia of natural selection. You cannot even control your own thoughts/reactions let alone use your senses to determine anything but your immediate surroundings.
As an aside, those damn Buddhists seem to have already come up with idea of free will within a deterministic system. Smug, self satisfied bastards :-)
Not all the axioms are set in stone. It's possible that special relativity could be violated. That's pretty outlandish, but maybe even a small violation would break the theorem. So if some future theory is only approximately Lorentz covariant this theorem may not apply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_invariance#Lorentz_violation Also, entanglement only lasts for one wave collapse, but it seems their thought experiment involves multiple collapses. I haven't finished reading the paper yet so I'm not sure if this affects the conclusion.
The article (yes I read it), cites Gerard t'Hooft at the end. According to the wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics] he's a proponent of digital physics. In that case the spookiness of quantum physics could be explained away by an ultimate determinism in the way a computer program is deterministic. Randomness would be 'pseudo-random'. The universe might have started from a very simple initial state and grown complex by emergent behavior, as seen in cellular automata, (mentioned with links in the digital physics article from the wikipedia cited above.)
Personally, I'm an agnostic. For all I know, I'm living in a virtual reality with false memories of the past, and when someone starts pursuing abstract concepts like "free will", "God", and so on to their ultimate meaning, they always seem to break down.
There has been an ongoing religious debate about free will, the Calvinists maintaining that God must know everything in advance. You get a hint of this in "Moby Dick" where Captain Ahab talks about how they rehearsed their lines a thousand years before the seas began to roll or something like that. But that could be like kicking off a cellular automaton of the rule 30 type [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30].
I have to admit though, that even I find it hard to believe that Bob and Alice's decision are pre-determined by some rule 30 kind of cascaded development so that they'll always be tied to the 'decisions' of the particles spins.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Nice. Parlor games to guide science.
Let's say once you discover the energy from nowhere, someone else comes along behind and finds the source. That source now becomes part of reality and not supernatural anymore.
You say he cannot discover the source? I say he can. Parlor games.
Well, you're just using different definitions of the same word. Such a discovery would just mean "nature" (in the sense of the word that scientists use) is bigger than we thought it was.
If I fire up a virtual machine, I may think of it and describe as being "my machine" or "a process running on my machine" depending on the context.
You got it all wrong. The existence or non-existence of a god is irrelevant. There are logically two possibilities here:
1. God does not exist and thus there is no evidence whatsoever to support a claim that it does exist.
2. God does exist, but the game is designed -- by the one who created this reality no less -- that evidence can not be found through rational means. The whole reward/punishment system is based on accepting the premises without evidence.
Besides, why does this even matter to you? If you're religious, don't you already have all the evidence you need?
see a Text Widget
I suppose you could be right as long as you redefine "free will" as "the illusion of free will".
But determinism absolutely precludes true free will. This is so patently obvious that I'm always shocked to see people like yourself attempting to argue against it.
Words have meanings. So unless you live in a world where "logical consistency" is an illusion as well, please don't redefine terms in order to support your preconceived notions.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Schrodinger's cat about this?
Sig this!
Oh, yeah. The guy who said "coherent light can't exist" just before someone lit the first ever laser in front of him.
The guy who disagreed with Einstein (who was right) and had gotten everything wrong, because he wanted so much his system to be right, without waiting for new(er) theories to refine what actually made sense.
I see where the idea that "free will doesn't exist" comes from, then : the same craphole that ultimately caused bullshit like String Theories to be spawned.
Enjoy!
Why do people look to randomness for "free will"?
There is simply no meaningful concept of free will you would actually want to have.
Is the idea of a random event being the source of your "will" a concept that makes you think, "Hey! That action was MINE!"?
As that somewhat unusal combinaton of geek and Christian (formerly quite conservative, mellowed quite a bit in my old age and no longer churched) I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this. If humans have free will, then the only way for that to happen is for God to relinquish control over a small portion of the universe, that portion would be the locus in which resides the "soul with free will". That way, since God doesn't control that portion of the universe, he can't be held responsible for the sins that happen in there. It also implies that it's moral for us to relinquish control over something, even if we know that it might result in evil happening in the region where we relinquish control. Those who wish to control various aspects of our lives might want to consider that... now you see why I couldn't remain a church-going conservative Christian for very long...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Compatibilism and incompatibilism There's two basic philosophies of free will. Incompatibilism says that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. Compatibilism says they are not. This is based more on the incompatibilist philosophy. From what the Wikipedia article says (Free will theorem it was linked to above), it seems to actually be defining free will as randomness.
If I'm not mistaken, all the proof really shows is that souls, if they exist, are not the sole source of randomness.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course it is entirely possible, and common (as in more often the case than not) for completely well defined, well described deterministic systems to be utterly unpredictable. Its called chaos. Even with sufficient information you cannot always make predictions about the future state of certain nonlinear dynamical systems.
This is simply a consequence of the fact that if the universe is deterministic at the lowest level, then people are too. That's hardly a surprising thing. The only thing surprising to me is that there were physicists who believed there could be free will at higher levels of abstraction but determinism at the low levels, as if free will could somehow be an emergent behavior.
Fortunately for free will, nobody has managed to find a hidden variable theory which works.
I'm surprised by the number of people who are 'determinists' -- in other words, the universe is like a movie playing out -- all the frames have been shot (determined). This doesn't seem compatible with, evolution, for example. Why would consciousness evolve if it can't change anything? Even intelligence in say a lion is so that it can make decisions ( non-deterministic ) and improve its odds of survival. If it was all pre-determined, why provide an adaptive mechanism like intelligence, that is expensive ( althought that does not matter, I guess, in a deterministic universe) when it doesn't actually increase the odds of survival -- it just makes it appear as though it does. Your odds of survival are 100% until your thoroughly pre-determined death.
So -- if 'free will' - which is way too anthropomoriphic of a phrase exists anywhere ( i.e., you can make a decision that is not predetermined that affects the future )then it makes sense that it is part of the fabric of the universe ( sub-atomic particles ). My impression of the article is that it proves either their is 'free will' ( the universe is not deterministic ), or that it is. You can't have it both ways. My thought is that a deterministic universe is not really compatible with either our experience, or with many other observable phenomenon. That said, I guess you cant' rule it out completely, but hey, according to post-modernism you can't know anything at all with any certainty.
Please quit writing papers about it.
As in cellular automata. This is not just some complete nobody.
Materialism can never arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must of necessity begin with man's forming thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism, therefore, takes its start from thoughts about matter or material processes. In doing so, it straightway confronts two different kinds of facts, namely, the material world and the thoughts about it.
The materialist tries to understand thoughts by regarding them as a purely material process. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he ascribes to matter mechanical and organic effects, so he also attributes to matter, in certain circumstances, the ability to think.
He forgets that in doing this he has merely shifted the problem to another place. Instead of to himself, he ascribes to matter the ability to think.
And thus he is back again at his starting-point. How does matter come to reflect about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and with its existence?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, from our own I, and has arrived at a vague, indefinite image. And here again, the same problem comes to meet him.
The materialistic view is unable to solve the problem; it only transfers it to another place.
(from: The Philosophy of Freedom)
DISCLAIMER: I know jack about quantum physics, and I absolutely suck about physics in general, so I will just stick to what TFA says.
They didn't say that determinism is false, just that if it is true then we don't have free will, for the specific definition of free will that they're using (is that free as in freedom or is it free as in beer? ;).
And they don't say it is false because they don't suppose that we actually have free will (as they defined, though).
In other words, the bit about free will was a corollary to the hypothesis of the universe being deterministic, not a lemma in an argument against it.
Lets for argument's sake say that the universe is deterministic even if it is not. This still would not imply a lack of free-will. If you look at a person from the outside, they are just a bunch of living meat - particles of matter that react the same as anything else to physical laws. Things get interesting when you look from the inside. Your experience of consciousness - pain, color, reasoning, etc, are just the subjective experience of physical processes. That feeling of "you" are the actual processes playing out in realtime. When you are making a "choice", a process has hit a point where it could go one way or another, and to an external observer it appears that the conditions of the system would deterministically only allow one path to be taken. But subjectively, you actually make this decision, and in a sense are actually creating reality. Let me explain. For a deterministic system to be predicted exactly, you must know all the important initial conditions. But the subjective experiencer can NEVER know all conditions. It's like biting your own teeth or seeing your own eyes. When you make a decision you are actually causing a certain set of initial conditions to unfurl and have been there all along, hence "creating reality". From a quantum perspective this could be looked at as the coherence of a specific state, and you never went back in time to change the initial conditions, but actually selected a specific universe out of multiple universes depending on which interpretation of quantum theory you believe.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I'm not convinced that this has anything to do with free will in the sense that we mean it when we speak about humans having it, but... Give up determinism, or give up free will. What if we give up reductivist materialism?
Your problem here is that you've taken physics, which provides nothing more than a really good description of many aspects of the world, and surreptitiously promoted it to a metaphysics, i.e., something that is expected to provide the one true description of the world.
Let's assume that it is true that if all we are is physical beings, then we would be absolutely determined in our behavior and actions. Well, one answer to that argument is that we're not just physical beings. Which leads us to:
The argument that we're not just physical beings doesn't need to rely on a vague sense of the term "soul." We can frame such an argument in terms of knowledge. For the sakes of the present argument, we don't need to define knowledge any better than saying that it is justified true belief, a kind of relation between a knowing subject and an object of knowledge.
So, suppose somebody, let's call him Joe, claims to know that people are nothing more than physical objects. Now the problem is that by claiming to know that, Joe must commit himself to the claim that knowlegde is a physical relation between physical objects, justified by appeal to theories of physics. But what justifies those theories of physics? Physics itself? That would be circular.
In short, the claim that people are just physical beings is epistemologically self-defeating because to possess the knowledge of physics, we must have non-physical grounds that justify our belief in that knowledge. So, we don't have to appeal to a soul to shoot down the claim--we just have to ask how it is possible to know such a thing for the claim to fall down to pieces. (Note that the argument doesn't support any particular notion of "soul" either; all it really assumes is that people can know stuff like physics.)
Are you adequate?
I'm sorry, but disproving every alternative is still not proving anything.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If we found free will, how would we identify it? How would we tell it apart from action according to a vast number of variables, following very complex rules?
Everything is subjective.
Not sure why people are modding Goaway up. He's expressing a fallacy.
If we live in a deterministic universe our actions are indeed predetermined, whether we know what we are predetermined to do or not. The ability to predict them isn't required.
Determinism and free will are mutually exclusive by definition. The article is stating that we do NOT live in a deterministic universe which preserves free will.
:wq
Free will means different things to different philosophers and in different contexts. Generally, though, philosophers don't take the notion of free will seriously.
The article in particular points out that determinism and free will can't coexists, which is really only true if you are talking about about a Cartesian "radical" sense of free will, which actually isn't a very good notion of free will to begin with.
How, after all, if your will free if it occurs merely through chance? How can *you* be said to move your hand, if your hand wasn't determined to move by the atoms that make up your body, but merely through random happenstance?
Spinoza would say that something is free that is necessitated by it's own nature.
Modern philosophers have even more sophisticated approaches to the subject.
The article has an interesting scientific point, but it would only really be relevant to a discussion of free will if this were the 18th century.
First answer me the question: do subatomic particles have a *will*?
If the answer is no, then I think we can dispense with any further questions along this line.
But while we are investigating the choices made by subatomic particles, I just want to know: do they prefer vi or emacs?
I am anarch of all I survey.
I have long asserted that conscious minds-in-general must accept as first principle the existince of free will as the indisputable result of the world's easiest thought experiment. This is not epistemological chicanery; it is ontological honesty. Given such a first principle, one should then view quantum uncertainty as a categorical imperative of reality. I am confident that when we begin simulating living, evolving virtual realities from the "ground up", we will find that the uncertainty principle and the observer's paradox are more fundamental to our "intelligent designs" than any constant or formula. In fact, they are necessary to the computing substrate on which these designs execute. In essence, we live inside a self-improving, tail-recursive algorithm. SITRA for short.
Because it is quite a good assumption that works in all aspects of live.
On a third person perspective, the free will does not exist. There are numerous arguments that support this. For example, where does the "free will" occur? It has to be something which is not governed by deterministic laws.
Lets backtrace an action, like the movement of your hand. Your hand is moved by muscles which are signaled by some nerves, which are in turn signaled by some neurons in your head, which are formed according your genetics and environmental influence. If there's something "free" in that process, it has to be some not yet discovered non-deterministic physics, and quantum noise is not the answer. (As it only would lead to "random" will, not "free" will)
There's another argument: The free will proponents assume that there is a difference between the future and the past. In their views, the future can be changed whereas the past is fixed. This can't be true, given that your (undetermined) future might be the (fixed) past for another observer.
But don't worry, that's not the end of the free will from a first persons perspective!
From a first persons perspective, I can never acquire all information necessary to fully predict my own actions, because acquiring these informations would change me and thus the outcome of my prediction.
You see, I safely can assume that my own will is perfectly free, whereas there is no free will of the rest of the world.
The word "will" implies a process of logical thinking leading to a decision. Free will exists both in predictable and unpredictable cases: the subject of free will makes an effort to decide which route to take, so from his/her/its point of view he/she/it has free will. But the result choice could be predictable or not predictable, and that's irrelevant to free will.
You assume the source can be found. That's not given.
The source might never be part of our reality, our nature, it would be outside and beyond our reality and thus it would be supernatural.
Well, you're just using different definitions of the same word. Such a discovery would just mean "nature" (in the sense of the word that scientists use) is bigger than we thought it was.
If supernatural should have any meaning, I would allow to apply it to something that acts on our reality, but has no explanaition in our reality.
Yes it would "just" mean that there is something outside our reality. Something over and above, something super to our reality, something supernatural.
If you observe spontanous energy and just say, "hey, that breaks the fundamental laws of physics, but since I've observed it it's natural", then you're denying the fact that this is something very different from everything else in nature that can (or probably can) be described through known mechanisms of our known reality.
The fact that we evolve was set billions of years ago. All life has faithfully followed that system ever since and always will. Obviously, on the large scale we are determined, just like atoms, but we have free will on the small scale, just like quantum particles. Similarly, universe evolution cannot be stopped on the large scale. All universes must eventually be recycled by initiating a "big bang" event such as the one upcoming at the Large Hadron Collider. While we are waiting, many posts can discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Free will is not a scientific concept, it is a philosophical one. Everyone arguing about this should hence substitute "humans have free will" with "humans behave non-deterministically" and the same for atoms.
I feel that, regardless of the existence of determinism in atomic behavior, the human brain captures the non-determinism to the highest degree possible in the universe due to the high complexity of its interactions. Just the fact that our neurotransmitters are carried in turbulent liquid gives rise to infinite complexity. A truer form of randomness does not exist unless it is quantum or similar. Either pure randomness exists and it is in the human brain, or 'true' randomness - immeasurable, unpredictable, infinite-computer-power using randomness even if it is in fact impure and deterministic.
~nog_lorp
That's a crazy argument. Any insistence on reality-based methods is *based* on the observable. It's the opposite of blind.
see a Text Widget
It doesn't matter if atoms or subatomic particles behave predictably or not. Free will is the notion that something outside the laws of nature controls our actions. If will is the result of a set of rules, it is not free. If the portion of unpredictability in these rules are truly random, it doesn't affect the freedom of will.
That's horrible,if all the subatomic particles compose my body have free will,then they must be subjected to my rule without any form of democracy,how tragic.
Wow. I can't remember such a bunch of fuzzy assertions, counter-assertions, etc. on Slashdot before! These kind of discussions are the reason I avoided philosophy discussions, classes, and books after reading my first few "classics". To me, it seems to be a bunch of lines of thought chasing their own tales(sic).
Free Will is a difficult subject to discuss since different people put different meanings into the concept itself (and since tricky metaphysical issues often arise).
Basically there are two basic kinds of definitions of the concept, one that implies incompatibilism (that is, that Free Will and determinism are incompatible) and one that implies compatibilism.
The first one is concerned with the person's relation to the world around him and somehow demands that the person in all his actions introduce a new "cause" into the world, something that simply isn't a result of all the little forces working on him or her. Given this definition, if determinism is true there can be no Free Will. Some argue that quantum mechanics may give room for this kind of Free Will, while others (myself included) don't think that that will work either.
The second is concerned with the person's experience of the world and his own actions, and demands that the person's actions are in accordance with his decisions. Given this definition, it doesn't matter at all if the world is deterministic or not. Unless you, as percieved by yourself, perform actions that doesn't conform to your decisions, you have Free Will.
(Personally I've never understood why so many people think that the first kind of Free Will is important. How can it be, if I can't even tell if I have it or not? Clearly I have the second kind, and that's what important to me as a sentient being.)
There are mistaken hidden assumptions in this "thought" process. First, they are assuming that subatomic particles are solely what we are made of. If this is true, then the reasoning is not too illogical. But if subatomic particles are only one part, one view of what we are made up of, then particles' free will or the lack thereof, does not extend up to us. Many people believe in spirits, souls, gods, demons, and other things not made of subatomic particles. Some (foolish) scientists believe in dark matter and other undetectable things, not made up of subatomic particles. So what if subatomic particles havee no free will? IF the other stuff has free will, then so can we. THe real problem here is there is no meaningful, logical definition of free will which can be used in a logical discussion. So all this is just philosophical babbling.
wake up and hold your nose
That rings a bell...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Your last argument about creativity is more an argument of increased complexity but not for or against free will.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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"Free Will" and "Deterministic" are both linguistic constructions that have no meaning beyond what they are given. Their utility in arguments depends on their having the same meaning on all sides of the arguments. Many, but not all philosophers define "Free Will" and "Deterministic" in such a way as to make them logically mutually exclusive. The argument that this article is relevant to makes that assumption. Arguing otherwise is not adding to the argument, it is just an emotional or political attempt to change the definitions of the words, while you take one side of the argument or another. (You are taking the hard deterministic argument, and changing the meaning of "Free Will".)
Although semantic arguments sound reasonable. And often are well thought out. They add nothing to the debate, and even often cloud the waters of established debates, as sometimes the meaning shifts go unnoticed on first reading. When involved in a Philosophical argument, try to first find out what definitions for words are being used then use those definitions yourself, even when they differ from how you usually use them.
It might sound odd at first, that you can be asked to completely change definitions you use in every-day life when talking in a specific field, but every field does something similar. Just think of the following words that mean very different things to a programmer than a non-programmer: arguments, objects, languages, environment, variables, functions, etc.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
If we we have no free will, we can't be held responsible for our decisions. Ergo there would be no such thing as a good or evil person, since we had no choice, we are innocent.
If we do have free will then all sorts of religious possibilities open up about morality and salvation.
Now - if other objects, like my car has free will, should I punish it when it fails to start ? I can see a Fawlty towers episode in the making here...
What would be a good punishment for a bad fermion, should Pauli exclude it ?
Nullius in verba
Even if we don't have free will, the simulation is pretty good... If the universe is deterministic (and let's be frank, someone will probably discover the rules that govern QM at some point) then we are arguably simulations ourselves. If us as simulations have simulated free will, then isn't that enough?
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both reality and theory. There are actually multiple points or levels to this.
1. On what "determinism" is.
Apparently for some people "determinism" is possibility to make an absolutely precise prediction of the outcome of any process (as measured by us) based of perfect knowledge of starting conditions (assumed to be possible also in the form that can be measured). This is our intuitive understanding of the Universe that has neither random processes nor some nebulous supernatural forces that mess with everything without being perceivable or predictable. With this definition of "determinism", it's easy to conclude that based on our observations Universe is not "ituitively deterministic".
The problem is, this answer says nothing about what it really is, and apparently some people make the conclusion that there is "something" that contains information describing everything precisely but hides this information from all possible observers or arbitrarily affects it. This is not a reasonable assumption -- a much more simple explanation is that there is true randomness in the world, so an observer, no matter how thorough, can not predict all outcomes in any way other than as a set of probabilities. "Hidden" information does not have to exist -- not unless something completely extraneous has to be present in the picture such as "intuitively omniscient" god(s), "destiny", ability of simple objects to exhibit consciousness in the same form as our complex brains do, etc.
Better yet, it turns out that as long as we change the definition of "determinism" to being able to precisely predict probabilities, we can see that in this definition "deterministic" view is actually cosistent with observations, and therefore can be used as a foundation of a scientific theory. The other possibility is, of course, some massive supernatural system manipulating reality behind the scenes, however this is unnecesarily complex, and contributes nothing to our understanding of the world, being yet another instance of "God did this!" explanation.
2. On probability in quantum mechanics.
When quantum mechanics describes everything in reality through functions that determine probabilities, it makes a claim so fundamental, it does not have to derive it from our intuitively familiar "understanding" of nature. Our "intuitive understanding" is less fundamental, and therefore all that is matter is theory's predictions' consistency with reality.
There is nothing unreasonable about this idea: we can take any system/part of the universe, describe it probablistically, and get correct probablistic description of outcome of any process in it as long as we know the starting conditions (or distribution of their probabilities), yet whenever we need to describe a larger system, to be absolutely precise we have to expand the original probablistic model to a larger system (that includes any equipment used for measurement and observation). It sounds weird, however it's not too difficult to understand that as long as we are dealing with large systems that produce few very likely outcomes, we can make valid "intuitive" approximation of only taking into account those likely outcomes.
It does fly in the face of seeing "intuitive" view of Universe as something that can be described in a non-probablistic manner, however counterintuitive is not the same as wrong -- it only means that our intuitive understanding of nature was formed based on things that don't look probablistic. What we already know, is correct because this is how things look at macroscopic scale. Had anyone thought, what would it take to perform a valid Schroedinger's cat experiment in reality -- that is, to make a box so opaque or isolated from everything, that it would be truly impossible (not merely technically infeasible) to determine what happened inside by passive observation without opening it? This is how much would be required to produce a truly counterintuitive macroscopic outcome.
3. On free will.
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Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Unpredictability has nothing to do with free will. I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely. Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Right. Regardless of the answer to the question, we have to treat everybody as if they do have free will.
I think what's most interesting about the whole thing is that even if we assume you're predictable we can't predict what you will do into the future without modeling the universe because society is made up of so many complex beings and develops emergent patterns, plus there are external influences such that even modeling the entire society isn't sufficient.
So acknowledging predictability doesn't get us anywhere, and we wind up back at Square One if we try.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I sometimes think that there is this element of humanism (insert correct ism here), that somehow we are special and significant - and we look for things to make ourselves feel somehow special in the universe, we may just be a symptom of it, insignificant.
Shouldn't this be obvious? Not only do subatomic particles have free will, but they choose to do experiments -- ON US, as in "OK, what will the humans do to try to understand our wave-particle duality THIS TIME?"
The whole argument of "Ah, but the scientist himself has determined actions!", while very appealingly Zen sounding, makes no sense.
If a particle's state is undeterminable before observation, it makes it impossible to predict with 100% accuracy.
How, then, exactly, is this thing we call a "scientist", who himself (or herself) is nothing more than the current product of these same particles interacting with some non-zero level of unpredictability over roughly 13.73 billion years, predictable??
If a particle is granted to have an un-predeterminable state, then some sort of effective free will is possible. If it isn't, then it isn't.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Your Honor: One of two possibilities exist, and can be proven at the sub-atomic level as shown by these squiggly graphs and equations with lots of numbers and funny symbols on them:
Either all of nature is essentially random, or all of nature is entirely predestined.
In the first case, the fact that I committed that crime cannot be my fault since it resulted from something that at its root had no more "cause" than the rolling of a pair of dice. It just happened. My subatomic particles did it. It was an accident.
In the second case, the fact that I commited that crime cannot be my fault since it was going to happen no matter what. I had no control over the cause or outcome. My subatomic particles, and every subatomic particle that interacted with them, and indeed even the victim's subatomic particles had been predestined to be in that place at that time and perform those particular actions, all of which was unavoidable. It was destiny.
In neither case can I be held responsible for my actions. They were either random or predestined.
Furthermore, to imply that I had some sort of "free will" or spiritual influence on the outcome either random or predestined is a violation of my civil rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Specifically, it violates the Establishment clause. Imposing any sort of punishment on me is obviously an application of your religious beliefs in an "Animus" or "Atman" or other spiritual driving force that influences the interactions of sub-atomic particles. As an avowed atheist, I have no such beliefs and would be irreparably harmed if you attemed to impose your personal religious framework on my actions.
Either the universe is deterministic, and so people don't have free will ( since they are goverened by the deterministic processes of the universe )
OR, the universe is not deterministic ( subatomic particles do some truely random things in people's brains ) and so, people do not have free will since they are governed by actions of random activities of the subatomic particles in their brains )
Since free will is clearly a falsity, any proof starting from that premise is meaningless.
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