Does Heisenberg's uncertainty principle imply no free will?

[ddjj77]

Yes, I understand that if we take it as always pre-determined what an individual "wants" to do, then it's of course compatible with free will for the individual to deterministically do what that pre-determined will says.

"pre-determined will"...that's a new one on me

 

[ddjj77]

Could you elaborate your stand?
Though I don't have any perfect evidence for it, it seems to me that results become more and more unpredictable as we move from particles to macroscopic objects, simply because no.of factors that are going to decide the end result have increased..

Intuitively it seems the way you suggested, especially because chaos theory tells us that even the smallest perturbation of the air by a butterfly in Africa could be the cause of a storm in Alaska, but when we use the term "deterministic", we mean what Michio Kaku described in the clip above: the universe is like a wound up clock, and there is only one future outcome of its unwinding mechanism at any time. But, he says, that doesn't hold true because of HUP.

 

[bhobba]

"pre-determined will"...that's a new one on me

I think it's simply the chaos argument. It may be deterministic but in practice determining it from current data can't be done - either we can't get the exact current data (and QM says that's impossible regardless of if its deterministic or not) and even if you could small errors in representing it computationally grow until what you get is utterly unreliable..

Either view really is simply philosophical quibbling - you either have free will or for all practical purposes free will - what's the beef?

Thanks
Bill

 

[PeterDonis]

I'm sure they've provided reams of explanations, but at the end, they're sure we have free will no matter what.

Have you read any of the "reams of explanations" by Dennett? If not, I would recommend doing do before forming opinions. I don't think you are correctly describing his position.

John Searle is sure he has free will because when he decides to raise his arm, his arm goes up.

Searle's position and Denett's position are very, very different. In fact Dennett criticizes Searle precisely because Searle treats free will like "magic", something that doesn't even need to be explained, instead of actually trying to explain how it works, as Dennett does.

 

[PeterDonis]

I understand that if we take it as always pre-determined what an individual "wants" to do, then it's of course compatible with free will for the individual to deterministically do what that pre-determined will says.

You are trading on a connotation of "pre-determined" that is not valid--basically you are taking it to connote "easily predictable", as if our wills were "pre-determined" the way the path of a ballistic object in Earth's gravitational field is "pre-determined". But that's obviously false; people's choices cannot be predicted the way the trajectories of ballistic objects can be predicted, because the causal factors involved are so much more complex. By the same token, there certainly are causal factors involved: people's choices are not just floating by themselves with no connection to the information they receive or the beliefs and goals they have. So if "free will" means being able to "choose" without regard to any other causal factors, that's obviously false as well. The point of a compatibilist view like Dennett's is to stop trying to push things to either of these extremes and look at human "free will" like any other highly complex process, and try to figure out how it actually works, without any metaphysical preconceptions about how it "must" work if it is going to count as "free will" by some philosophical standard.

 

[ddjj77]

Have you read any of the "reams of explanations" by Dennett? If not, I would recommend doing do before forming opinions. I don't think you are correctly describing his position.
Searle's position and Denett's position are very, very different. In fact Dennett criticizes Searle precisely because Searle treats free will like "magic", something that doesn't even need to be explained, instead of actually trying to explain how it works, as Dennett does.

I've read "Consciousness Explained" and after finishing it I understood less than I did before reading it. Dennett didn't explain anything about consciousness. When I read a part of Dennett's explanation of free will, and read his statement "In some deterministic worlds there are avoiders..." I quit reading. Dennett is a magician with words and he can con you without you even realizing it. His statement, put otherwise, would be "In some deterministic worlds, some things aren't deterministic." and that's a contradiction.
I'm not saying or implying anything is easily predictable. I'm saying that if the universe is deterministic, we don't have free will. That's all.

 

[bahamagreen]

Isn't spacetime supposed to be fixed, "it just is", not changing or evolving?
How would that not entail that all events are determined?
How does HUP exist if all events are determined?
Would changes of spacetime be undetectable?
Would a changing spacetime demonstrate the property of HUP?

 

[ddjj77]

Isn't spacetime supposed to be fixed, "it just is", not changing or evolving?
How would that not entail that all events are determined?
How does HUP exist if all events are determined?
Would changes of spacetime be undetectable?
Would a changing spacetime demonstrate the property of HUP?

As far as I understand, space (and maybe time) is expanding like the surface of a balloon expands when you blow it up, and space has no boundaries.
Everything in the universe is evolving because nothing is static.
My understanding of HUP is that it's not possible to obtain exact information of both position and momentum of a particle. If position is known, momentum cannot be known, and vice versa. The question is, do all particles have definite positions and momenta at any time t?
Lately I've read that even the idea of position is a misnomer in QM. Boggles the mind.

 

[ddjj77]

I think it's simply the chaos argument. It may be deterministic but in practice determining it from current data can't be done - either we can't get the exact current data (and QM says that's impossible regardless of if its deterministic or not) and even if you could small errors in representing it computationally grow until what you get is utterly unreliable..
Either view really is simply philosophical quibbling - you either have free will or for all practical purposes free will - what's the beef?
Thanks
Bill

I think it's inadvisable to include humans ("we") or any intelligent agent into this argument.

 

[bhobba]

Isn't spacetime supposed to be fixed, "it just is", not changing or evolving?

Where you got that from beats me.

These days we know the core of GR - its simply this - no prior geometry (it's dynamical) which is the exact opposite of the above.

Thanks
Bill

 

[PeterDonis]

I've read "Consciousness Explained" and after finishing it I understood less than I did before reading it.

If that's the first Dennett book you have read, I can understand that. For free will, I would start with Elbow Room. For his view of consciousness in general, I would start with Brainstorms, a collection of his essays. His later work builds on his earlier work, so it's hard to really get where he's coming from if you start in the middle.

His statement, put otherwise, would be "In some deterministic worlds, some things aren't deterministic."

This is not a correct statement of Dennett's position. The problem is that you are using a definition of "free will" (and "avoid", etc.) that presupposes that these things are not possible in a deterministic universe. Part of what Dennett is doing is to find different definitions of those terms that are compatible with determinism. And part of doing that is giving arguments for why his definitions of those concepts are the ones you should care about--that the definition of "free will" which presupposes that you can't have free will in a deterministic universe is not the kind of "free will" people actually care about.

Bear in mind, please, that here I am not trying to convince you that Dennett is correct; I'm simply trying to give a more accurate summary of what his actual position is.

 

[ddjj77]

If that's the first Dennett book you have read, I can understand that. For free will, I would start with Elbow Room. For his view of consciousness in general, I would start with Brainstorms, a collection of his essays. His later work builds on his earlier work, so it's hard to really get where he's coming from if you start in the middle.
This is not a correct statement of Dennett's position. The problem is that you are using a definition of "free will" (and "avoid", etc.) that presupposes that these things are not possible in a deterministic universe. Part of what Dennett is doing is to find different definitions of those terms that are compatible with determinism. And part of doing that is giving arguments for why his definitions of those concepts are the ones you should care about--that the definition of "free will" which presupposes that you can't have free will in a deterministic universe is not the kind of "free will" people actually care about.
Bear in mind, please, that here I am not trying to convince you that Dennett is correct; I'm simply trying to give a more accurate summary of what his actual position is.

"...the definition of "free will" which presupposes that you can't have free will in a deterministic universe is not the kind of "free will" people actually care about."
That is true. Most people will believe anything except the stark truth. No one in their "right mind" would even contemplate the idea that we're machines - robots - Zombies. Or what Dennett calls Zimboes. He will not accept the stark truth, so he calls us Zimboes, i.e. not exactly, precisely, unequivocally machines as we know them. As I said before, Dennett is a magician with language.

 

[PeterDonis]

No one in their "right mind" would even contemplate the idea that we're machines - robots

Again, you use the word "machine" intending certain connotations; but those very connotations undermine your claim. We do not know that we are machines in the sense of not having any kind of free will we care about. But that is the claim you are implying. In other words, your definition of "machine" presupposes that if we are machines, we don't have the kind of free will we care about. But that's assuming what you're supposed to be proving.

 

[ddjj77]

Again, you use the word "machine" intending certain connotations; but those very connotations undermine your claim. We do not know that we are machines in the sense of not having any kind of free will we care about. But that is the claim you are implying. In other words, your definition of "machine" presupposes that if we are machines, we don't have the kind of free will we care about. But that's assuming what you're supposed to be proving.

I'm using the term "machines" so that won't be any need to interpret what it means, or imply any connotation. It just means a physical assembly that operates automatically and, of course, without any will of its own. A philosopher/spiritualist by the name of Gurdjieff said "We are machines." Some thinkers have used the term "bio-chemical machines" trying to be more precise. It's the kind of description a lay person understands. That's why I suplemented it with "robot" and "Zombie" to make it even more descriptive.
I think your use of the phrase "kind of free will" tends to muddy the waters because I don't think there are kinds of free will, if any. There either is, or isn't.

 

[bahamagreen]

Where you got that from beats me.

These days we know the core of GR - its simply this - no prior geometry (it's dynamical) which is the exact opposite of the above.

Thanks
Bill

If the spacetime interval between any two events is an invariant, mustn't all spacetime intervals between all pairs of events in spacetime also be invariant? If all events' spacetime interval relationships are invariant, what remains to be dynamical?

 

[ddjj77]

If the spacetime interval between any two events is an invariant, mustn't all spacetime intervals between all pairs of events in spacetime also be invariant? If all events' spacetime interval relationships are invariant, what remains to be dynamical?

IMHO, there are no such things as events in the universe. The only "event" that ever was, was the big bang. From then on everything is a process. When an object A hits an object B, there is no time t at which the collision happened. It's like two rain puddles linking together. Even if we could detect the first molecule of water that was common to both puddles, molecules are huge, and we'd have to decide which part of which atom in the molecule was first, and its "turtles all the way down" from there.

 

[PeterDonis]

IMHO, there are no such things as events in the universe.

"Event" means "point in spacetime". That's how @bahamagreen was using the term.

Please review the PF rules on personal theory/speculation.

 

[PeterDonis]

I'm using the term "machines" so that won't be any need to interpret what it means, or imply any connotation. It just means a physical assembly that operates automatically and, of course, without any will of its own.

And right there you are implying a connotation--"without any will of its own" means a machine can't have free will. But, again, that's assuming what you are supposed to be proving.

Or, to put it another way, if that's your definition of "machine", then we are not machines, because we have free will, and by your definition, machines don't.

 

[PeterDonis]

Where you got that from beats me.

He got it from standard GR, which says that spacetime is a 4-dimensional geometry. It doesn't "evolve". It doesn't "change". It just is.

Of course, GR is a deterministic, classical theory, not a quantum theory.

These days we know the core of GR - its simply this - no prior geometry (it's dynamical) which is the exact opposite of the above.

No, it isn't. "No prior geometry" means the geometry depends on the distribution of stress-energy, via the Einstein Field Equation; there is no fixed geometry built into the laws of physics, the way there is in SR. It doesn't mean that the geometry "changes"; any given solution of the Einstein Field Equation describes a geometry, period; it doesn't describe one geometry "changing" into another.

 

[ddjj77]

"Event" means "point in spacetime". That's how @bahamagreen was using the term.

Please review the PF rules on personal theory/speculation.

I'm sorry, I should have worded that differently, perhaps in the form of a question.
What does a "point in spacetime" mean? A location?

 

[ddjj77]

And right there you are implying a connotation--"without any will of its own" means a machine can't have free will. But, again, that's assuming what you are supposed to be proving.
Or, to put it another way, if that's your definition of "machine", then we are not machines, because we have free will, and by your definition, machines don't.

I take back my use of the word "machine." I'll just say, an assembly of physical entities, all of which obey precise physical laws, cannot have free will.

 

[PeterDonis]

What does a "point in spacetime" mean?

Heuristically, a point in space at a particular instant of time. (Getting more rigorous probably takes us beyond the scope of a "B" level thread.)

 

[PeterDonis]

an assembly of physical entities, all of which obey precise physical laws, cannot have free will.

My response is still the same; you are assuming what you are supposed to be proving. Or else you are denying physicalism--that is, you are denying that human beings, who have free will, are "an assembly of physical entities, all of which obey precise physical laws". Dennett is a physicalist, so of course if you don't believe physicalism is correct you won't agree with him.

 

[DrClaude]

Closed pending moderation.

 

[fresh_42]

The thread has done its duty and the title itself (free will) is subject to a vast number of papers in philosophy and theology. Neither of which is a matter we could adequately discuss. The connection to HUP is certainly often made in pop science publications and even otherwise serious scientists are not immune to drop remarks about it. However, those contributions should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are regularly made by scientists in their role as human beings like you and me, and not in their role as scientists.

Therefore this thread will remain closed.