Maybe, hypothetically, it picks up this information from a source we cannot detect.
Free Will
- Thread starter Souron
- Start date
Not if the information cannot travel faster than the light. In fact the information would have to be sent instantaniously. And from every point in the univerce at once! (because every point would have to demonstrate if it is a quantum experiment or not). But even then the particle seems to follow all the posibilities that it did not rule out!
What makes quantum mechanics more weird, is that dispite claiming that there is no free will (because it does not assume a soul.), it does give special meaning to what it means to be a person, namely an observer. An observer is what determines what actually happen. Will a particle interphere or not? -- it depends on the presence of an observer.
It would be a leap in logic to say that therefore humans have free will, however.
I'm just throwing out wild theories here anyways.
But if this proves that determinism on a small scale doesn't exist, how does that work on a large scale? Do we still have minds reasonably independent of our influences?
But if this proves that determinism on a small scale doesn't exist, how does that work on a large scale? Do we still have minds reasonably independent of our influences?
Define "random". Depending on the definition, free will decisions could be seen as random, in that they can't be determined, but that doesn't really matter. It could be that there are two types of random - those influenced by free will, and those which aren't.
Or it could perhaps be that all "random" events are free will - that consciousness is what happens when you have random quantum events.
But you would say that, if there wasn't free will, wouldn't you
Seriously, I don't see that one is more likely than the other. And until we can test the difference, I'm not sure we should worry.
Incorrect. Classically, it is absolutely a wave. In reality, light, as well as all particles, are both particles and waves. The double slit experiment can be easily done with electrons, for example. However, in general a particle-wave can exhibit only one type of behavior (particle-like or wave-like) at a time.
It averages out, basically.
As elegant as it may seem at first glance, the dimensions of brain activity are too large for quantum effects to be significant.
Yeah, but isn't the consciousness mostly a product of the brain, not things outside of it. It's I think therefore I am, not I am therefore I think. Right?
Ok sure. It's a ball and a wave a the same time. Or you could say it's neither a ball nor a wave. The second is more true because waves and balls are mutually exclusive.
By particle I do not mean the classic immage of electorns -- balls moving around like planets. Rather I mean that it is something entirely different: a fuzzy thing that sometimes has something resembling position and mommentum. In effect, what your saying.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Forgive my ignorance in the subject. I hear those terms tossed around in debates all the time, but I am not sure what they mean exactly. What is Quantum Mechanics in the proverbial nutshell, and what does it have to do with our free will?
angeleyes
mood indigo
That's the most lame notion of free will i've ever heard. Choosing which sock you put on in the morning .......
The sock your eye felt on first; the sock closest to your right hand; the sock that attracts you most don't mind for what reason: when still no decision made you look in despair to the Lord and back to your socks and you will see one sock seems to be a bit closer to your right hand and you pick it up. This kind of things goes without thinking, how could you ever connect this with the notion free will. Appaerently you denie free will in murder cases etc, not in picking your socks ....?????
That's essencially what I'm trying to explain. Knowledge of the univerce would constitute non-locality.
Humans usually. And any tools humans can use to measure the position, mommentum or related properties of a particle. The ability of a tool to make a measurement depends not on the tool itself, but the ability of humans to extract usefull informatation about a particle (such as it's position). Noteably the only the ability to get the information that is important, not the actual observation.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Quantum Mechanics is basically what replaced Newtonian mechanics. What scientists were discovering about the way the universe works around the end of the 19th century was that they were continually running into problems with their theories. Thermodynamics had the ultraviolet catastraphe for example, and no-one could explain the photoelectric effect. The trouble was that classical theory saw energy as being infinitely variable, that if you looked at energy arriving from a source you could arbitrarily divide it up into smaller and smaller 'rays' without finding an indivisible portion.
Quantum mechanics was started by Max Planck when he solved the problem of the ultraviolet catastrophe. He found he could make the equations work out simply by arbitrarily deciding that energy only ever existed in discrete packets (quanta) of fixed value. This idea was seized upon by other scientists and explained the Photoelectric effect (Einstein got his Nobel for that), radioactivity, the structure of the atom, atomic spectra and pretty much every other unsolvable problem in just a few years.
The downside is that QM doesn't make sense - from a human perspective. Newton's mechanics makes perfect sense to us because that's the way the macroscopic world works. Quantum effects don't affect objects on the scale we work with every day, but go down to the particle level and things are very strange. For example: Computers are based on a device called a transistor, which works on the principle that electrons on one side of a 'p-n junction' might actually be on the other side. In fact they are frequently on the other side, as attested to by the fact your PC works. Electrons and other particles in QM aren't really in a fixed position, they are described by a probabalistic equation (Schrodinger equation) that tells you where it might be. Stranger still Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle tells you that if you try really hard to find out exactly where that rascally electron is, you lose all possibility of finding out what it is doing.
The probabalistic nature of QM is a big problem for a lot of people. It denies the possibility of understanding why things happen at a particle level, effectively the question 'why' does not make sense. The answer is 'just because'. There is no known underlying mechanism to explain a number of effects and yes people have looked for them. In fact there are theoretical proofs that describe what we would expect to find if 'hidden variables' existed that caused the results we observe, however we haven't found any evidence that these conditions have been met. QM still holds.
I suspect that for a long time to come, additional experiments/observations on the brain will find more evidences that free will doesn't seem to exist. More and more, it seems that 'thoughts and actions' are determined by ordered firings of neurons that are susceptible to environmental inputs and quantum events (meaning that a few electrons make all the difference in whether neuron X or Y fires first).
That said, we don't have a neuronal formula for the 'feeling' of free will. So, in a much longer time frame (if ever*) we'll have a much better idea about the concept of free will.
*I don't know if a theory of human consciousness can be held by a human brain. It seems to me that an augmented brain would be required. A theory of consciousness would require an understanding of all the factors involved, but we cannot be conscious of all the factors leading to our consciousness - it takes more memory to describe a system than it requires to run a system. Only when we're 'super-conscious' will we be able to understand mere human consciousness.
As a society, though, we can collect all the information about consciousness and have access to it; but I don't think any individual will be able to understand it fully
I'm agnostic on the idea of whether humans can augment human intelligence above a certain (undefined) threshold. That waits to be seen, the best we can do as individuals is make it more likely to occur.
That said, we don't have a neuronal formula for the 'feeling' of free will. So, in a much longer time frame (if ever*) we'll have a much better idea about the concept of free will.
*I don't know if a theory of human consciousness can be held by a human brain. It seems to me that an augmented brain would be required. A theory of consciousness would require an understanding of all the factors involved, but we cannot be conscious of all the factors leading to our consciousness - it takes more memory to describe a system than it requires to run a system. Only when we're 'super-conscious' will we be able to understand mere human consciousness.
As a society, though, we can collect all the information about consciousness and have access to it; but I don't think any individual will be able to understand it fully
I'm agnostic on the idea of whether humans can augment human intelligence above a certain (undefined) threshold. That waits to be seen, the best we can do as individuals is make it more likely to occur.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Any chaotic or fractal system can be 'described' with an extraordinarily small amount of information and yet be infinitely complex.
Yeah, I see what you're saying, so I hope you understand what I mean. It's harder to 'understand' a system than it is to 'run' a system. It's easier to calculate what 2+2 is, than to understand why addition works and all its implications.
In analogy: it's easier to understand why a lever works than it is to understand how a car works - it takes more brain power for the latter. The more complex the 'engine' is, the tougher it is to understand fully. I don't know if we can fully understand the 'engine' required to supply consciousness/free will using only the engine we currently have access to.
I recognise that we have more brain function than is required to maintain free will/consciousness, I just don't think it's enough. We have a hard enough of a time being conscious of about 7 things at once; never mind the (theoretical) thousands/million/billions of processes required to supply consciousness. At least as individuals.
In analogy: it's easier to understand why a lever works than it is to understand how a car works - it takes more brain power for the latter. The more complex the 'engine' is, the tougher it is to understand fully. I don't know if we can fully understand the 'engine' required to supply consciousness/free will using only the engine we currently have access to.
I recognise that we have more brain function than is required to maintain free will/consciousness, I just don't think it's enough. We have a hard enough of a time being conscious of about 7 things at once; never mind the (theoretical) thousands/million/billions of processes required to supply consciousness. At least as individuals.
Stolen Rutters
Deity
-Free will is being able to pick a choice that is not ideal based on the state of the world.
-I guess that means that the necessary conditions for a free world is one that is not ideal.
-Free will exists. I choose, therefore it exists. (a la "Cogito ergo sum".)
-Of course free will can exist in a hypothetical world. Just hypothesize the world that we appear to live in instead of the three hypothetically ideal worlds you put forward. A hypothetical world is simply a model that is constructed in your mind to test a hypothesis away from RL. RL is where everything is impacting everything else in a way that makes it sometimes difficult to separate various causes from the effect you see.
Creating a hypothetical world is like using a signal filter when you are trying to identify and damp out the source of a noisy part in a machine. The result doesn't capture everything that is going on, but you can usually isolate the source and take steps to control the noise based on the data you are able to pull out of the filtered input signal. But still, eliminating noise from a machine does not mean that noise as a concept does not exist.
To me, that would seem that your deterministic and indeterministic worlds are simply designed to damp the possibility of free will out of the hypothetical systems you set up. At least, that's how an engineer would see it.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
That could be free will.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Entanglement does not demonstrate non-locality.
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
Not in and of itself, no.
