Is there currently an interpretation of it in use in QM?Demystifier said:As long as free will exists, it's necessary to make it compatible with QM. But whether free will exists or not depends on what exactly one means by "free will".
Interpretation of what?Lynch101 said:Is there currently an interpretation of it in use in QM?
Demystifier said:As long as free will exists, it's necessary to make it compatible with QM. But whether free will exists or not depends on what exactly one means by "free will".
You said that if Free Will exists then it needs to be accounted for in QM. I'm wondering if there is an interpretation of Free Will in use in QM?Demystifier said:Interpretation of what?
Is the freedom of the mind the fundamental assumption in QM then and in what sense would you say that "the mind" is free?Lord Jestocost said:"Despite their claim that they are better equipped than scientists to make conceptual distinctions and evaluate the cogency of arguments, professional philosophers have mistakenly conflated the concepts of "free" and "will." They (con)fuse them with the muddled term "free will," despite clear warnings from John Locke that this would lead to confusion.
Locke said very clearly, as had some ancients like Lucretius, it is not the will that is free (in the sense of undetermined), it is the mind." [bold by LJ]
From: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/free_will.html
Lynch101 said:Is the freedom of the mind the fundamental assumption in QM...
See e.g. my http://de.arxiv.org/abs/1006.0338Lynch101 said:You said that if Free Will exists then it needs to be accounted for in QM. I'm wondering if there is an interpretation of Free Will in use in QM?
Thanks Demystifier, the abstract sounds very intersting. I'll give a run through itDemystifier said:See e.g. my http://de.arxiv.org/abs/1006.0338
I guess that's partially what I'm trying to find out. I've heard from various sources that Bell's Theorem implies that one of either realism, locality, local realism, or free will must be given up because they are fundamental assumptions of Bell's theorem and the violation of the inequalities implies one or more of the 4 must be jettisoned.Lord Jestocost said:Is there a fundamental assumption in QM?
No. Free only means that it is determined by nothing else than the person whose free will is under discussion, not that it is not determined at all!Demystifier said:If the behavior is deterministic then it's not free
With that definition of "free", a human is not more free than a robot. I don't think it is what most people mean by "free".A. Neumaier said:No. Free only means that it is determined by nothing else than the person whose free will is under discussion, not that it is not determined at all!
This is the position that Sam Harris outlines in his book titled "Free Will". He makes some reference to Heisenberg (I think it was Heisenberg, I must re-read it) and other "compatbilists". It's one of the reasons I'm interested to find out what role - if any - free will plays in QM. It's an interesting topic!Demystifier said:Neither deterministic nor probabilistic fundamental laws are compatible with a true free will. If the behavior is deterministic that it's not free, if the behavior is probabilistic then it's not controlled by a will.
Compatibilism is an attitude that I never understood.Lynch101 said:He makes some reference to Heisenberg (I think it was Heisenberg, I must re-read it) and other "compatbilists".
A. Neumaier said:No. Free only means that it is determined by nothing else than the person whose free will is under discussion, not that it is not determined at all!
I can't remember the details of it now, I need to go back over itDemystifier said:Compatibilism is an attitude that I never understood.
This is indeed the philosophical position of strong AI.Demystifier said:With that definition of "free", a human is not more free than a robot.
But it is consistent with what most people mean by "free". Most people have reasonable motives for their free decisions; the motives together with the external constraints determine the decisions. The minority for which this is not the case are considered to be whimsical or psychotic by their surrounding.Demystifier said:I don't think it is what most people mean by "free".
A. Neumaier said:No. Free only means that it is determined by nothing else than the person whose free will is under discussion, not that it is not determined at all!
Really? Many of those are atheists who believe that everything is purely the result of the natural laws encoded into quantum mechanics. We don't have interpretations of quantum mechanics other than either stochastic or deterministic.mattt said:Most people that believe in Free Will, will reject the explanation that everything they do is the result of a deterministic or stochastic process.
I know, but that's the way they feel, and that's what they say they believe.A. Neumaier said:Really? Many of those are atheists who believe that everything is purely the result of the natural laws encoded into quantum mechanics. We don't have interpretations of quantum mechanics other than either stochastic or deterministic.
This just means that they don't care about (or are confused about) the consistency of their beliefs. Most people are inconsistent in their beliefs. Rationality is exercised only where convenient.mattt said:I know, but that's the way they feel, and that's what they say they believe.
That's what they say, I have had hundreds of conversations along these lines with all kinds of people that believe that they have Free Will, no matter if they are scientist or not, religious or not.
A. Neumaier said:This just means that they don't care about (or are confused about) the consistency of their beliefs. Most people are inconsistent in their beliefs. Rationality is exercised only where convenient.
Loosely speaking, yes, I do think that. I think my free will is just an a posteriori interpretation of my acts, emerging from my inability to pinpoint to the exact reason why have I chosen this rather than that.A. Neumaier said:Do you really think that a child is not free in its decisions just because we can predict that it will say yes when it is asked whether it likes to have ice cream?
Ah, so according to you, the freedom of will is not in the actions (which may well be perfectly determined by Nature) but how you interpret them a posteriori. This is of course also a resolution of the problem!?Demystifier said:I think my free will is just an a posteriori interpretation of my acts, emerging from my inability to pinpoint to the exact reason why have I chosen this rather than that.
In my opinion, yes.A. Neumaier said:Ah, so according to you, the freedom of will is not in the actions (which may well be perfectly determined by Nature) but how you interpret them a posteriori. This is of course also a resolution of the problem!?
Demystifier said:I think my free will is just an a posteriori interpretation of my acts, emerging from my inability to pinpoint to the exact reason why have I chosen this rather than that.
A. Neumaier said:so according to you, the freedom of will is not in the actions (which may well be perfectly determined by Nature) but how you interpret them a posteriori. This is of course also a resolution of the problem!?
Is your a posteriori interpretation of your acts a mental activity in the Platonic worlds of ideas, independent of quantum physical laws?Demystifier said:In my opinion, yes.
At the fundamental level it isn't, but at the emergent level it may look so.A. Neumaier said:Is your a posteriori interpretation of your acts a mental activity in the Platonic worlds of ideas, independent of quantum physical laws?
So at the fundamental level, there is no free will in your sense?Demystifier said:At the fundamental level it isn't, but at the emergent level it may look so.
That's right. But of course, there is "free will" in the sense of post #2.A. Neumaier said:So at the fundamental level, there is no free will in your sense?
Demystifier said:Compatibilism is an attitude that I never understood.
Demystifier said:I think my free will is just an a posteriori interpretation of my acts, emerging from my inability to pinpoint to the exact reason why have I chosen this rather than that.
Exactly. I would even go that far to say that Copehagen interpretation is not a stochastic interpretation. Truly stochastic interpretations are GRW interpretation and Nelson interpretation.DarMM said:Just to say quantum theory taken as a probability theory is more than just stochastic. A quantum system constitutes a stochastic process only when provided with another system to define the space of outcomes. With no second system a given quantum system isn't even random, there are no events in the formalism under such a scenario.
Could it be interpreted by saying that free will is an emergent higher level phenomenon, like e.g. a tiger? At the fundamental microscopic level there is no free will and there are no tigers, but at the higher level of organization of matter there are structures that can be interpreted as free wills or as tigers. If that's what compatibilism means, then I'm OK with it.PeterDonis said:One way of looking at it is that it is just recognizing what the terms "I" or "you" and "free will" actually refer to. You are not some abstract disembodied essence with magical powers. You are a physical thing, made of physical parts, that obey physical laws. So of course any interpretation of "free will" is going to have to be compatible with those facts, and any valid referent of the term "free will" is going to have to be some physical process going on in the physical system that is "you".
And compatibilism is simply the view that if your acts can be validly given such an interpretation, then they are acts of free will. You don't have to have magical non-physical powers to have free will.
Another way of putting it would be to say that the kind of "free will" I have just described, while it might not be what many people thought they meant by "free will", is still sufficient, because it gives us all the capability we need in practice to have the things that "free will" is supposed to give us.
But Born got in 1954 the Nobel prize ''for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction''!Demystifier said:I would even go that far to say that Copenhagen interpretation is not a stochastic interpretation.
statistical ##\neq## stochasticA. Neumaier said:But Born got in 1954 the Nobel prize ''for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction''!
The former is based on the latter:Demystifier said:statistical ##\neq## stochastic
Well, it's a matter of semantics. When I say "stochastic", what I have in mind is a stochastic process, meaning something akin to Wiener process, Brownian motion, Ito calculus, etc.A. Neumaier said:The former is based on the latter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_model
''in a statistical model specified via mathematical equations, some of the variables do not have specific values, but instead have probability distributions; i.e. some of the variables are stochastic.''
One has that also in a sequence of quantum measurements...Demystifier said:Well, it's a matter of semantics. When I say "stochastic", what I have in mind is a stochastic process, meaning something akin to Wiener process, Brownian motion, Ito calculus, etc.
Yes, but not in the meantime between the two measurements. In the meantime the system is in an undefined state (according to Copenhagen interpretation), which cannot be said for stochastic processes in the usual sense.A. Neumaier said:One has that also in a sequence of quantum measurements...
There are also discrete stochastic processes. They are much used in practical time series analysis, where one only has access to a discrete series of measurements. Continuous stochastic processes arise in the quantum mechanics of continuous measurements.Demystifier said:Yes, but not in the meantime between the two measurements. In the meantime the system is in an undefined state (according to Copenhagen interpretation), which cannot be said for stochastic processes in the usual sense.
Repeated application of Born's rule with collapse, as usually stated since Heisenberg and Dirac, already provides a well defined (though too idealized) statistical model involving a discrete stochastic process.DarMM said:To be completely clear this is part of the formalism. Another system constitutes the POVM selected for the system under study. Only a POVM provides a well defined statistical model, the full algebra of projectors does not.
Of course, that's (in general) a sequence of POVMs. What distinction are you pointing out?A. Neumaier said:Repeated application of Born's rule with collapse, as usually stated since Heisenberg and Dirac, already provides a well defined (though too idealized) statistical model involving a discrete stochastic process.
Not quite. A POVM neither specifies the observed value nor the posterior state. To have a well-defined and realistic discrete stochastic process, one needs more than a POVM, namely a quantum instrument.DarMM said:Of course, that's (in general) a sequence of POVMs.
The main point was that no POVMs are needed to have stochastic processes in a quantum setting. Note that POVMs for quantum measurement were introduced in 1968, long after Born obtained his Nobel prize.DarMM said:What distinction are you pointing out?
Of course true. I was only referring to the need for an external system to define an outcome space. That system being represented by a choice of POVM. I wasn't saying you only need a POVM, you of course need the state as well, etc. Rather it is that only after the selection of a POVM is the statistical model defined, unlike the classical case where no such selection is needed on the algebra of random variables.A. Neumaier said:Not quite. A POVM neither specifies the observed value nor the posterior state. To have a well-defined and realistic discrete stochastic process, one needs more than a POVM, namely a quantum instrument.
Again of course. My point was more so that one needs something to select an outcome space for the system in order to have a well defined statistical model, unlike in the classical probabilistic case where events are defined without such a choice of an auxiliary system.A. Neumaier said:The main point was that no POVMs are needed to have stochastic processes in a quantum setting. Note that POVMs for quantum measurement were introduced in 1968, long after Born obtained his Nobel prize.
Unlike only in simplistic classical models.DarMM said:My point was more so that one needs something to select an outcome space for the system in order to have a well defined statistical model, unlike in the classical probabilistic case where events are defined without such a choice of an auxiliary system.
I don't think so. Since one simply has a Boolean algebra of propositions the events can be considered to occur independent of the device, with the device simply recording them with some small disturbance to both. All observables "mesh" correctly to be considered random variables on one sample space of outcomes.A. Neumaier said:Unlike only in simplistic classical models.
Events are also not defined in a Laplacian classical universe without such a choice of an auxiliary system.
