Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[Alex K]

I've googled Greene and determinism and found this interview (don't have his books)

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-...s-universe

I find him to agree with me, don't you think? But he says something interesting about free will I didn't really think about: since QM still determines the probabilities of outcomes, he says, this constraint does not allow for free will. Then he goes on to say something vague about the measurement problem which I don't get what the difference to the previous statement is supposed to be.

In Newtonian terms, it is very clear, there is no free will. The quantum mechanics comes along and people think that maybe that is where there is free will because, now, there is a fuzziness, there are many possible outcomes. Maybe free will enters there, but it does not, because, in the Quantum equation, there is still absolute determinism of what will happen in a probabilistic sense: the equations say, with absolute certainty, there is a 30 per cent of this, a 20 per cent chance of that, 50 per cent chance of that . . . Nowhere does free will come in into those equations either.

The only place where free will may still have a last fighting chance to emerge, is in something which we do not yet understand: how, in Quantum physics, do we go from this many possible outcomes to the one definite outcome that we observe. In that so-called Quantum measurement problem, which is still a puzzle, you could imagine that, maybe, free will emerge. I doubt it, but the standard free-willer could say that is where it will happen. In the many worlds approach to this world which I describe in this book, certainly there is no free will happening, as I can see it.

Every individual, when faced with five different choices, if each are allowed by the laws of physics, in quantum physics, each of those outcomes would happen. The individual would make all five choices, one per universe. And it would not be that the individual has had the choice to make one choice more real than the other, all of the choices would be as real as the others, they would take place in the different universes. There would not be any volitional choice involved in what happens.

I don't completely see yet how determining probabilities precludes free will though.