Abstract Advancements in neuroscience make the question of free will more pressing. Between physicalist positions, which largely deny free will, and libertarian views, which reject determinism, quantum mechanics initially appeared to offer a middle ground. Even though it was thought to depict a probabilistic reality allowing some degree of freedom in choices, quantum mechanics remains deterministic, albeit with stochastic results. This paper proposes an alternative where quantum mechanics still supports free will as the possibility to do otherwise within a physicalist framework. Through the manyworlds interpretation, I show how the principle of alternative possibilities can be maintained, even when both our decision-making processes and the external world follow physical laws.
Abstract Advancements in neuroscience make the question of free will more pressing. Between physicalist positions, which largely deny free will, and libertarian views, which reject determinism, quantum mechanics initially appeared to offer a middle ground. Even though it was thought to depict a probabilistic reality allowing some degree of freedom in choices, quantum mechanics remains deterministic, albeit with stochastic results. This paper proposes an alternative where quantum mechanics still supports free will as the possibility to do otherwise within a physicalist framework. Through the manyworlds interpretation, I show how the principle of alternative possibilities can be maintained, even when both our decision-making processes and the external world follow physical laws.
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other, the leading models that allow a role for quantum effects are noncommittal regarding how conscious agents are supposed to translate indeterminacy into self-formed choice. Recent developments, however, not only imply that self-formed decisions are possible, but actually suggest how they might come about. The cornerstone appears to be causality superposition rather than quantum-state entanglement, as is usually assumed, and the natural arena for applying these developments is (perhaps ironically) a framework that was built without any consideration for quantum effects.
According to the widely accepted opinion, classical (statistical) physics does not support objective indeterminism, since the statistical laws of classical physics allow a deterministic hidden background, while --- as Arthur Fine writes polemizing with Grünbaum --- "{\sl the antilibertarian position finds little room to breathe in a statistical world if we take laws of the quantum theory as exemplars of the statistical laws in such a world. So, it appears that, contrary to what Grünbaum claims, the libertarians' 'could have done otherwise' does indeed find support from indeterminism if we take the indeterministic laws to be of the sort found in the quantum theory.}" In this paper I will show that, quite the contrary, quantum mechanics does not save free will. For instance, the EPR experiments are compatible with a deterministic world. They admit a deterministic local hidden parameter description if the deterministic model is 'allowed' to describe not only the measurement outcomes, but also the outcomes of the 'decisions' whether this or that measurement will be performed. So, the derivation of the freedom of the will from quantum mechanics is a tautology: from the assumption that the world is indeterministic it is derived that the world cannot be deterministic.
Classical science and in fact Post-Newtonian science up till the early twentieth century were mired in a deterministic interpretation of realities. The deterministic hypothesis in science holds that everything in nature has a cause and if one could know the antecedent causes, he could predict the future with certainty. But quantum mechanics holds that sub-atomic particles, though the ultimate materials from which all the complexity of existence in the universe emerges, do not obey deterministic laws, hence, their activities are causally indeterminate and could only be understood with probability. This paper argues that quantum mechanics can not totally be free from determinism, for it has subtly conceded to determinism in holding that the sub-atomic particles are the building blocks of the macro world, and that there is interconnection between entities in the universe, even at the nonmanifest level. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics only betray our human limitation of the knowledge of nature, which, I believe still have lots of tricks in our sleeves over mankind. Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005:72-79 Keywords: Keywords:
Since quantum mechanics (QM) was formulated, many voices have claimed this to be the basis of free will in the human beings. Basically, they argue that free will is possible because there is an ontological indeterminism in the natural laws, and that the mind is responsible for the wave function collapse of matter, which leads to a choice among the different possibilities for the body. However, I defend the opposite thesis, that free will cannot be defended in terms of QM. First, because indeterminism does not imply free will, it is merely a necessary condition but not enough to defend it. Second, because all considerations about an autonomous mind sending orders to the body is against our scientific knowledge about human beings; in particular, neither neurological nor evolutionary theory can admit dualism. The quantum theory of measurement can be interpreted without the intervention of human minds, but other fields of science cannot contemplate the mentalist scenario, so it is concluded that QM has nothing to say about the mind or free will, and its scientific explanation is more related to biology than to physics. A fatalistic or materialist view, which denies the possibility of a free will, makes much more sense in scientific terms.
A compatibilistic model of free choice for a fundamental particle is built within a general framework that explores the possibility that quantum mechanics be the emergent result of generalised Darwinian evolution acting on the abstract landscape of possible physical theories. The central element in this approach is a probabilistic classical Turing machine –basically an information processor plus a randomiser– methodologically associated with every fundamental particle. In this scheme every system acts not under a general law, but as a consequence of the command of a particular, evolved algorithm. This evolved programme enables the particle to algorithmically anticipate possible future world configurations in information space, and as a consequence, without altering the natural forward causal order in physical space, to incorporate elements to the decision making procedure that are neither purely random nor strictly in the past, but in a possible future.
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.