Free will is about ultimately having control. If your decisions are randomly determined by quantum mechanics, you aren't any freer than if your decisions are the result of a deterministic process.
I don't even know what free will is supposed to be. Either all our decisions are deterministic, or they're due to random quantum phenomena, at some level. Which of those is the good scenario?
Free will is an entirely different issue. Consciousness is about subjective experience, and why any physical system would have it. Determinism is completely irrelevant.
I view this the same way. Determinism vs randomness says nothing about free will.
I think the problem with arguments regarding free will is that it's very hard to define (like consciousness for that matter). I am my brain. My brain controls what I do. Therefore, I control what I do. Only if we lift up our consciousness or free will as something higher than our brain does this become a problem.
The fact that my free will is deterministic, that is, a consequence of how the brain is structured and how the environment looks, does not change the fact that I, that is, my brain, controls what my body does. If anything, randomness makes this worse - then it is not my brain controlling my body, but some random result of a wave function collapse.
Assuming that the universe functions like a deterministic/stochastic machine, and that our understanding of said universe is 100% correct and complete. Except, we know for certain that our understanding of the universe isn’t 100% correct and complete. Our math and physics (which assume that the universe is a deterministic/stochastic machine) work fantastically well up to a point, then fail. Our two primary theories for physics are incompatible, so clearly there is a gap in our understanding.
Free will seems to me to be intimately tied to consciousness. Without free will, consciousness is pointless. Why be conscious if you have no choices? Yet we are conscious. Lots of things are conscious. Making conscious choices must provide evolutionary fitness value. It seems to be extremely important. And the view of the universe as a deterministic/stochastic machine has absolutely no explanation for consciousness, and it doesn’t seem like we’re getting any closer to a theory using that framework.
There are a few scientists who actually think that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe. Apparently, Max Planck and some early quantum theorists thought it was. I’m not convinced yet, but I think it’s an interesting perspective, and I think it’s worth considering. But I’m definitely not convinced that there’s no free will.
I don't believe in free will at all. I never really did from a physics perspective, but after many years of meditating, I don't believe it at the highest levels of abstraction now either.
I don't understand how that is supposed to change anything at all about how an individual interacts with the world though?
The followup argument is usually something along the lines of quantum mechanics is just probabilistic as far as we know.
Quantum physics doesn't allow for free will in an otherwise deterministic universe, any more than hooking up a RNG to a computer allows for the computer to have free will.
Yep, I don't see free will in a completely random universe OR a completely deterministic universe. In either case, something you have no control over is governing your behavior.
The idea that randomness gives rise to free will is ludicrous. If my brain randomly chooses to eat an apple on Monday and randomly chooses to eat a Pear on Tuesday how is that giving me more free will than if my brain was predetermined to choose an Apple then a Pear.
There is no way to even conceive of what free will could be, determined or not. Either the activity of your brain is causally determined by previous brain states and interactions with the environment plus or minus randomness, neither option gives you the intuitive notion of free will.
Edit: also the Nobel winner Gerard t’Hooft argues that even these quasar experiments don’t rule out determinism. He argues that any closed deterministic system will have correlations across any distance in spacetime.
I don't see how any kind of scientific experiment could possibly support the concept of free will. If the universe is deterministic, then obviously there is no free will - since humans are part of the universe. If it is non-deterministic then all we can say about events we identify as non-deterministic is that we don't understand them.
Many would say you can't have free will in a deterministic world because free will is about selecting one option from many. If there is no alternative option -- because the universe is completely determined -- how can you have any choice? You were always going to do exactly what it was previously determined you were always going to do.
You’re trying to apply logic to an untestable philosophical debate. If you believe free will doesn’t exist, you can’t design an experiment that would invalidate that belief. And if your theory is untestable and unfalsifiable, then what good is it other than a creative exercise?
However, we do know from Quantum Mechanics that the universe is probabilistic and not deterministic:
So, we do know that the universe is not pre-determined and cannot be calculated in advance, but if you want to believe in humans as fully deterministic (or some other definition of no free will) inside of a non-deterministic environment, I haven’t heard anyone propose an experiment that could test that, at which point the debate of “free will” is relegated to the realm of thought experiments rather than science.
So, perhaps the better question is: Does it serve you better to believe there is free will or no free will? And leave it at that.
The only argument against free will that’s needed is that consciousness emerges from physical processes in the universe. There’s nowhere for free will to “come from,” even if there are non-deterministic effects in the brain.
I'm not sure how free will would work, even in theory. If the universe is completely deterministic then of course there isn't freedom of will in that. If it is random, then that still wouldn't be freedom because it would still be out of our control.
I can't think of a way that it could work without invoking the metaphysical.
"The original motivation in the early 20th century for relating quantum theory to consciousness was essentially philosophical. It is fairly plausible that conscious free decisions (“free will”) are problematic in a perfectly deterministic world,[2] so quantum randomness might indeed open up novel possibilities for free will. (On the other hand, randomness is problematic for volition!)"
This is an aspect of this debate that utterly fascinates me. Many people reading this have probably heard the argument that free will does not exist because the human brain is just a molecular computer. If we could measure it's state perfectly at a given moment, have knowledge of future inputs, and possess adequate classical computational power, we could perfectly predict the future decisions made by your brain. Hence, you are a deterministic creature with no free will.
Quantum processes underlie all classical processes, not unlike how the physics of individual water molecules underlie the behaviour of a river. While individual molecules or even drops of water can do bizarre things, the course of a river is easy to predict. A coin toss or weather patterns may seem random, but they're classical systems that would be utterly predictable if we had a perfect measurement of their current state, knowledge of input from outside the system in question, and the computational resources to work out their future evolution. As with a river, the weather, or a coin toss, quantum weirdness should average out on the scale of a human brain, leaving only classical predictability behind.
Or does it?
One aspect of this quantum weirdness I'm referring to is truly random behaviour. Single quanta (e.g. photons or atoms) can be manipulated to produce measurements with truly random results that are, according to quantum theory and every experiment conducted to date, impossible to predict, even with perfect knowledge of the system, knowledge of all inputs, and infinite computational resources. Free will and being unpredictable are intrinsically linked. If your brain is just a classical machine behaving according to the laws of chemistry and physics, you are predictable and have no free will. If your brain amplifies the results of quantum outcomes to a macroscopic level, your brain may be inherently unpredictable and thus you may possess free will.
Give me proof of the existence of true randomness without referencing wavefunction realization.
I think free will is the ability to make conscious choices. These choices are guided by a chaotic, but ultimately deterministic preference function, which itself can be modified by conscious choice. You could argue that the deterministic preference function is a negation of free will, but I think the separation in the causal chain between condition and response is significant. There are lots of cases where there is no experience of choice mediating the transition from condition to response, so I think that feeling is indicative of something meaningful.
How is a world where your will is decided by quarks randomly zagging instead of zigging any more open to free will than a deterministic world?
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