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Quantum physics and free will

Kuro5hin: Quantum physics and free will.

Philosophers, ever in the habit of asking difficult questions, have come up with a number of possible scenarios describing humans, our relationship to time, and how this affects the concept of free will. The most difficult of these situations to address logically, without resorting to metaphysical premises, is that of determinism.

This author is very confused. I couldn't believe what I was reading as I read it.

First, this guy is clearly not a philosopher, yet he's discussing philosophy, and it's embarrassing. He wants to discuss free will "without resorting to metaphysical premises". Sorry, the assumptions that the universe displays determinism, that our senses can come in contact with it, and that we're rational beings and can understand what we observe are all metaphysical premises. Furthermore, the rationality he assumes in his readers while making his argument itself presupposes that his readers have free will. It's like he's debating whether air exists all the while he's talking.

His argument is basically this:

The universe is deterministic. If we knew everything about the universe we could predict the location of every particle at any point in the future.
Thus, since man (including our brains) is made up of matter (particles), man is also subject to this determinism, therefore free will seems to be an illusion.
However, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that we can't know both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time with arbitrary precision. Furthermore, Schrodinger's Equation tells us that we can describe a particle as a wave-function, and "the wavefunction is the set of probabilities of the particle occupying any particular point in space, with any particular momentum".
This means that "the position and momentum values of a particle are indeterminate", and therefore "particle interactions must necessarily be statistical in nature--not deterministic".
But on a large scale these things add up to be deterministic, so our brains and thoughts are still deterministic.

Then he states that the probability of our existence, and that of the Milky Way, etc. was about nil after the big bang. So this means that while "determinism holds some truth, it is essentially a vast exaggeration of the actual situation", and it may be possible to formulate an argument for free will based on chaos theory.

Wow. This is so awful, I'm not totally sure where to start.

First, Heisenberg's principle doesn't mean that things in the universe are "indeterminate" using the word to mean "random" somehow. All it says is that we can't measure both the position and momentum of a small particle accurately simply because our measurements themselves affect the momentum and position of a particle. And just because it's a useful abstraction to deal with a particle as a wave function, that doesn't mean that somehow the particle exists at all points in the wave function at once. This is just an abstraction. A particle doesn't somehow "decay" into a particular position once we measure it, whereas somehow before we measured it it was "everywhere at once".

Next, chaos theory is the same type of thing. Chaos theory states that in some cases, given certain inputs, it is hard to predict the outcome of some series of events. Not that the events are somehow random - but that the underlying system is such that a small change in inputs can potentially cause a large change in outputs. That's why it's hard to actually make predictions about a chaotic system, but chaotic systems are deterministic, not random.

He also never defines how "statistical" is different than "deterministic" and why that's important to his argument.

The author wants to bring in some more randomness with "the spontaneous and random generation of virtual particle pairings". "This alone," he writes, "as a random occurrence, automatically refutes the possibility of the universe as deterministic; but it's merely one symptom of a larger system where randomness and indeterminacy are fundamental principles." So which is it, is the universe random or deterministic? I love how people think that somehow bringing in randomness to their universe saves free will. Both randomness and determinism destroy the possibility of free will. Furthermore, I get annoyed at the scientific arrogance of people who say things like "the particle exists in two places at once", and that particles are "spontaneously created and destroyed". They make claims about the causal nature of particles that they can't substantiate unless they know everything. How do they know that it's not moving so fast that it just appears to be in two places at once? It shows a lot more humility to say things like "it looks like" rather than "it is", especially when you're making such outlandish claims about the nature of reality such as that something can exist at two places at once.

I don't know why people continue to think that somehow the principles of quantum mechanics make room for free will. Many people confuse our own abstractions as if they say actual things about reality, and I've shown how the author did that with Heisenberg's principle, chaos theory, and for quantum mechanics in general.

Finally, it's funny when people think they're talking about science (without making metaphysical claims) when in fact most of what they do is make metaphysical claims about reality.

Permalink | 6 Comments | Tags: Science | id 2715

10:06 (utc-4)

Hi Jen. That's a lot of questions! I'll just try to go in order:

are you saying that this discussion about reality is really metaphysics paraded as science?

Basically. He starts his argument by saying that he won't "[resort] to metaphysical premises", but he shows his philosophical ignorance because he's clearly unaware of all his unjustified metaphysical presuppositions. In other words, it's like he's saying "Ok, I'll assume all of these many metaphysical premises to start with, and then pick this arbitrary point and try not to talk about metaphysics beyond that" Then he brings up scientific stuff that he doesn't understand, and uses them incorrectly in support of his argument. It's kind of silly.

to you, it appears that freewill discussions and science are bad bedfellows?

Not quite sure how to answer that. I'll say this: The common scientific mindset of a deterministic universe precludes free will. On atheistic grounds, I don't believe there is a way to support free will. You can clearly see the philosophical tension in this guy's confused writing. He wavers back and forth between wanting to support a deterministic universe and a random one. He's like: "Blah blah, determinism, blah blah, randomness, blah blah, uncertainty, blah... and we might have free will". It fits right along with what I believe is one of the strongest criticisms against evolution as a philosophical system. It requires both elements of randomness and elements of determinism in it and seems to have this internal tension that makes it self-contradictory.

As a Christian, it's fun for me to watch all of these people squirm trying to deal with problems they have no answers to.

what about all the open theist guys, the theologians of hope, whitehead, teihard and all those guys? hogwash?

I'm honestly not all that familiar with "open theology". It always seemed to be based on premises I knew I'd never agree with, so I never learned that much about it. My understanding is that it says that God is sort of developing and evolving along with mankind. Rather than being the Creator of the universe and self-sufficient, it seems to rob God of his divinity, and makes him dependent on man. I suppose the connection with free will you're making is that open theology would preclude predestination -- even God wouldn't know the future, so it leaves open the possibility for free will. I don't even want to justify that view with a full rebuttal, and that's been done elsewhere anyway. I'll just say that it completely dumps the Christian view of God so that open theologians can feel better and not have to believe that God is holy while bringing him down to the level of humanity. They can feel justified in ignoring the parts of the Bible they don't want to believe, such as it testifying that God knows the future, and that he has predestined some to salvation and some to judgement, and on and on.

i understand that it's impossible to divorce these discussions from metaphysical constructs, but does that mean that one cannot inform the other?

People make false distinctions all the time between "religion" and "science", etc. Worldviews are completely integrated systems. Your beliefs in one area will determine what you believe in others. Some beliefs are more basic than others, however. So, for instance, if you don't have a worldview that can support scientific inquiry, in principle you can't even start to do science. If you don't have a worldview that can support free will then in principle all these discussions are meaningless, since we're not actually reasoning but really just spewing out what our brain is determined to say based on our chemistry.

Belief in Christianity, which is the only worldview I believe can support all these things, is the only worldview that doesn't reduce all of our experience to absurdity.

Hmm, did I answer your questions?

Tuesday, September 3, 2002

Quantum physics and free will

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