It has been claimed that quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, allows for free will. In this paper I articulate that claim and explain how a complex physical system possessing fractal-like self similarity could exhibit both self consciousness and self determination. I use complexity theory to show how quantum mechanical indeterminacies at the neural level (as postulated by Eccles and Penrose) could "percolate up" to the levels of scale within the brain at which sensory-motor information transformations occur. Finally, I explain how macro level indeterminacy could be coupled with self determination to provide a physical system with the capacity for radically free willing.
It has been claimed that quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, allows for free will. In this paper I articulate that claim and explain how a complex physical system possessing fractal-like self similarity could exhibit both self consciousness and self determination. I use complexity theory to show how quantum mechanical indeterminacies at the neural level (as postulated by Eccles and Penrose) could "percolate up" to the levels of scale within the brain at which sensory-motor information transformations occur. Finally, I explain how macro level indeterminacy could be coupled with self determination to provide a physical system with the capacity for radically free willing.
In previous papers, we demonstrated that an ontology of quantum mechanics, described in terms of states and events with internal phenomenal aspects (a form of panprotopsychism), is well suited to explain consciousness. We showed that the combination problems of qualities, structures and subjects in panpsychism and panprotopsychism stem from implicit hypotheses based on classical physics regarding supervenience, which are not applicable at the quantum level. Within this view, consciousness arises in entangled quantum systems coupled to the neural network of the brain. In entangled systems, the properties of individual parts disappear, giving rise to an exponential number of emergent properties and states. Here, we analyze self-consciousness as the capacity to view oneself as a subject of experience. The causal openness of quantum systems provides self-conscious beings the ability to make independent choices and decisions, reflecting a sense of self-governance and autonomy. In this context, the issue of personal identity takes a new form free from the problems of the simple view or the reductive approaches.
Abstract It is often claimed that quantum mechanics entails that there is indeterminacy in the world, in the sense that physical systems can lack a precise value for a property. Indeed, a radical form of indeterminacy, in which systems have almost none of the properties we normally attribute to them, can be shown to follow from a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics—the bare theory. However, the bare theory is shown to be incoherent. Still, a more limited form of indeterminacy can be located in spontaneous collapse, hidden variables, and many-worlds theories. This indeterminacy is unlike that which arises classically, having nothing to do with ordinary forms of vagueness or the composition of large objects out of smaller parts. Indeterminacy in quantum mechanics can perhaps be avoided, but there seems little reason to do so.
Despite a general, if often provisional, acceptance of quantum indeterminacy, and a now orthodox physicalism on which macroscopic states are held to depend in some sense on microscopic states, many philosophers of mind and of science continue to work under the assumption that macro states, such as brain states, evolve deterministically from prior macro states. Frequently this presumption is implicit and undefended, or explicit but given minimal defense. 1 In neither case is the tension between quantum indeterminacy, macro-micro dependence and macro determinism given full recognition. Sometimes the tension is recognized, but it is held that there is at least a legitimate hope that quantum indeterminism need not percolate up to the macro level. 2 Finally, some philosophers of mind address the issue and defend the view that, for one reason or another, quantum indeterminacy not only need not, but in fact does not, percolate to the macro level. 3 In this paper we demonstrate that micro indeterminism leads to macro indeterminism unless macro states are effectively independent from micro states. We show this is so whether the relationship between realizing and realized states is, in orthodox fashion, deterministic, or, in unorthodox fashion, indeterministic. The price of macroscopic determinism is that one must give up the dependence of the macro on the micro, a dependence upon which physicalism rests. A puzzle about the very idea of macroscopic determinism must be addressed at the outset. Macro determinism is an example of what is sometimes called partial determinism (Earman, 1986). We call a system partially deterministic with respect to a class of its properties just in case the state of the system at any particular time with regard
The nature of subjective conscious experience, and its consequences in intentionality, remain the central unsolved problem in science and one of critical importance to humanity’s future as sentient observers and autonomous participants in a world history we are coming to have ever more pivotal influence upon. Each of us who read this paper are subjective conscious observers, making an autonomous decision to carry out a volitional action. All our knowledge of the physical universe is gained through the immediate conduit of our subjective experience and our intentionality in turn has major impacts on the physical world around us. To understand how the subjective aspect arises requires both a radical investigation down to the foundations of physics and an understanding of how subjective awareness, as opposed to mere computational capacity, may have become elaborated by Darwinian natural selection. We thus have to find reasons why subjectivity itself, rather than computation alone, is of pivotal importance in organismic survival. The answer lies in its capacity to anticipate situations crucial to survival. For this to be possible, the foundations of physics must contain a principle of space-time anticipation not covered by any mechanism of computation alone, or subjectivity would become superfluous and would have never been selected for in evolution. This paper sets out to demonstrate how quantum transactions universal to all quantum phenomena my fulfil this pivotal role. The role of dynamical chaos and bifurcation in neurodynamics has been the subject of an increasing volume of theoretical and experimental research in which transition from chaos to order may form a key process in perception and cognition. There has also been a continuing interest in the possible link between quantum non-locality and consciousness. This paper presents a two-part theory in which: (a) a fractal link between neurodynamical chaos and quantum non-locality; and (b) a complex system theory of the sub-quantum world; together provide a physical solution to the mind-brain paradoxes of subjective consciousness and free-will. The fractal link between dynamical chaos and quantum uncertainty is proposed to be made through overlapping non-linearities capable of chaos, running from the neurosystems level down through the neuron, synapse, to the ion channel. Chaotic systems possess sensitive dependence, and brain states also contain features of self-organized criticality. In a critically poised brain state representing uncertainty of outcome, it is proposed that sensitive dependence opens the brain to quantum processes. In the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, future states form part of the boundary condition of reduction of the wave packet. Transactional supercausality may allow a form of prediction in the excitable cell which bypasses and complements formal computation. The selective advantage of such a process would explain the emergence of consciousness in organismic evolution.
As generally accepted, consciousness or mind and material brain are closely related to each other; but how? Quantum mechanics is a new pathway to understand the hard problem of consciousness and its relation to the brain. Consciousness has specific properties such as unity, irreducibility, non-locality, etc. The completely different features of classical physics (locality, reducibility, determinacy, etc.) hindered the success of scientists to study consciousness. But quantum mechanics with its features (non-locality, irreducibility, indeterminacy, etc.) gave scientists hope to study consciousness. Several quantum approaches to consciousness have been proposed in recent decades; the most important point about these approaches is that each one has used its own philosophy to determine its viewpoint about the mind’s nature and even its quantum approach. In general, all scientific theories are based on some metaphysical principles which come from the worldview of scientists. In this article four contemporary approaches are discussed: The Eccles-Beck, Stapp, Penrose-Hameroff, and Avicenna-Bohm theories; philosophical and scientific points are highlighted for each of them. Finally, the theory of Top-Down Causation is discussed because we think it can provide a fertile philosophical ground for theories of “mind-brain relation” and “quantum consciousness”.
If the concept of “free will” is reduced to that of “choice” all physical world share the latter quality. Anyway the “free will” can be distinguished from the “choice”: The “free will” involves implicitly certain preliminary goal, and the choice is only the mean, by which it can be achieved or not by the one who determines the goal. Thus, for example, an electron has always a choice but not free will unlike a human possessing both. Consequently, and paradoxically, the determinism of classical physics is more subjective and more anthropomorphic than the indeterminism of quantum mechanics for the former presupposes certain deterministic goal implicitly following the model of human freewill behavior.The choice is usually linked to very complicated systems such as human brain or society and even often associated with consciousness. In its background, the material world is deterministic and absolutely devoid of choice. However, quantum mechanics introduces the choice in the fundament of physical world, in the only way, in which it can exist: All exists in the “phase transition” of the present between the uncertain future and the well-ordered past. Thus the present is forced to choose in order to be able to transform the coherent state of future into the well-ordering of past. The concept of choice as if suggests that there is one who chooses. However quantum mechanics involves a generalized case of choice, which can be called “subjectless”: There is certain choice, which originates from the transition of the future into the past. Thus that kind of choice is shared of all existing and does not need any subject: It can be considered as a low of nature.There are a few theorems in quantum mechanics directly relevant to the topic: two of them are called “free will theorems” by their authors, Conway and Kochen, and according to them: “Do we really have free will, or, as a few determined folk maintain, is it all an illusion? We don’t know, but will prove in this paper that if indeed there exist any experimenters with a modicum of free will, then elementary particles must have their own share of this valuable commodity” “The import of the free will theorem is that it is not only current quantum theory, but the world itself that is non-deterministic, so that no future theory can return us to a clockwork universe”.Those theorems can be considered as a continuation of the so-called theorems about the absence of “hidden variables” in quantum mechanics.