Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[The Grand Nudger]

Ok I didn't mean that all probabilities are 50/50, that wouldn't make sense.

Then even "QM free will" isn't -free-. There are mechanics.

I disagree though that this probabilistic nature of small scale stuff becomes irrelevant at macroscopic scales as it averages out. Chaotic systems blow up arbitrarily small perturbations exponentially until the whole thing goes in a completely different direction.

Except that it doesn't go in a completely different direction. Things at our level of interaction appear to go in predictable and reproduceable directions, regardless of what may be happening down at QM. Assume that the "apparent randomness" is "true randomness" just for arguments sake and with full acknowledgement that it would be impossible to establish this empirically. Will it change anything we observe up here? Will things just stop happening the way they have been? No. Thats one of the more quixotic elements of QM, imo. There are some interesting explanations as to why that might be (as there always are) but it;s enough, in a discussion of free will and human beings, to simply acknowledge that QM doesn't model interaction -at our level- as well as deterministic models. If you hit a rock with your face going 400mph there isn't any "range of probability" involved in the final state of that situation. That's all I'm trying to get across. I can tell you, in advance...with certainty, what's going to happen to your face. It's my opinion that "free will" whatever it is, also has to be addressed from the position of this level of interaction..at least in our case - because whatever it is..it's happening in our heads. Perhaps theres some creature with "free will" tiny enough to escape the situation we find ourselves in. I wouldn't know. I just know that we aren't that creature.

[Roxy904]

I think the important thing to remember is that no one really knows. You can't be entirely sure.
You can argue and think and research but there will always be unanswerable questions. In the end, we are probably only a single strand of the possibility of a universe. And what we see is only the smallest bit of what there is or might be.
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."-Edgar Allen Poe

[Alex K]

Good job: It's hard to tell where the Poe ends and the Poe begins...

[bennyboy]

Not that many people are actually addressing the OP. We've talked often about whether free will is possible with determinism. The idea I'm trying to introduce is that determinism, if true, introduces a kind of paradox-- since all objects and events are linked to each other through gravity and "time," I can equally say that all the events in the universe are a kind of fine-tuning arriving necessarily at me here now, or that the entire universe's outcome is dependent on me here now. It seems to me that resolving this paradox into a single choice (we definitely have free will / we definitely do not have free will) is like insisting on the reality of yin without yang.

[Mudhammam]

This thread is interesting but I think a bit confused. I liked your idea of free will, benny, as it reminded me to some degree of Schopenhauer's philosophy, but in the end I don't quite find justification or meaning in your smuggling in of "free" with "will." I disagree with Alex that the universe isn't determined --- in fact physicists like Brian Greene seem to disagree as well, and I take him to be a pretty reliable popularizer of the field; but I'm not a scientist so instead I'll go the route of philosophy and say that determinism is the only tenable position so long as we speak of change, and things in the Universe certainly change as a result of preceding conditions, even in QM as far as I understand it (not a lot).

Benny, you also basically state, if I understand you right, that "things couldn't have been any other way since the initial determinants were set in place," say, at "the beginning of time." That sounds profound, and no doubt it is, but all you seem to really mean is that there is one future, just like there is one present, and currently you are in it... Just like you can only be doing some one thing, as it happened yesterday or whenever you decided to type out that post. And whatever you're doing now is traceable to instances in between those two points in time in such a way that we can intelligently rule out any "free," or rather spontaneous---as in uncaused---breaks in that chain of infinitely complex changes.

[bennyboy]

Benny, you also basically state, if I understand you right, that "things couldn't have been any other way since the initial determinants were set in place," say, at "the beginning of time." That sounds profound, and no doubt it is, but all you seem to really mean is that there is one future, just like there is one present, and currently you are in it... Just like you can only be doing some one thing, as it happened yesterday or whenever you decided to type out that post. And whatever you're doing now is traceable to instances in between those two points in time in such a way that we can intelligently rule out any "free," or rather spontaneous---as in uncaused---breaks in that chain of infinitely complex changes.

A caveat: I've never argued that the universe is deterministic. This thread is an "if" thread.

If determinism is true, then there's actually no such thing as causality: all points along the "time" line are preset and immalleable. Well, if causality is an illusion, then whatever you choose to do is whatever you must have chosen to do.

But here comes the paradox-- if causality is an illusion, then by what processes can we be said to be caused to "make" a particular choice? Let's say I'm choosing between a Mars Bar and a Snickers Bar. The determinist argument is that the flow of events from time t0, presumably the Big Bang, or from any other time previous to my choice, tn, inevitably arrives at whatever choice I make-- let's say the Snickers Bar. But in a single timeline, this "cause" is no such thing-- the future has already been set, and so those influences which seem causal can equally be seen as filling in a causal vacuum-- the causes HAD to happen, because future event t(n+. . . ) is already a reality.

It is only due to how we experience time that we say state tn causes state t(n+1). However, in an immalleable timeline, which determinism necessitates, all events, things and points are related in an unchanging way. So time itself is the illusion-- it is not in fact a framework in which change happens, but rather a sentient being's flowing perspective through in immalleable reality.

Okay so why then free will? Because determinism breaks temporal causality. There cannot be anything which causes me to act in a particular manner-- and yet I act. That act, free of causality, is therefore free.

[Mudhammam]

If determinism is true, then there's actually no such thing as causality: all points along the "time" line are preset and immalleable.

Say what? Determinism is *only* true if causality exists, and causality exists in so far as there is change, and change is just motion---hence, space and time. "All points along the 'time' line" are not present; the past and future, namely, or those instances in which change has occurred or is yet to occur, are not present except as they exist potentially or actually in that a body has changed and is changing. Since the past is immalleable and determines the present, the present is immalleable in so far as it must be as it presently is, and the future will proceed likewise.

Well, if causality is an illusion, then whatever you choose to do is whatever you must have chosen to do.

But here comes the paradox-- if causality is an illusion, then by what processes can we be said to be caused to "make" a particular choice? Let's say I'm choosing between a Mars Bar and a Snickers Bar. The determinist argument is that the flow of events from time t0, presumably the Big Bang, or from any other time previous to my choice, tn, inevitably arrives at whatever choice I make-- let's say the Snickers Bar. But in a single timeline, this "cause" is no such thing-- the future has already been set, and so those influences which seem causal can equally be seen as filling in a causal vacuum-- the causes HAD to happen, because future even t(n+. . . ) is already a reality.

It's not a reality, presently, but it's one that can be predicted in so far as the present conditions and their subsequent interactions can be hypothetically determined with precision. Maybe I missed something in your other posts but on what basis are you defining time---or motion---out of real existence? Of course the results will be absurd because the notion of everything existing in total stasis is not the world we experience.

It is only how we experience time that we say state tn causes state t(n+1). However, in an immalleable timeline, which determinism necessitates, all events, things and points are related in an unchanging way.

I couldn't disagree more. They are related by the very nature of change itself.

So time itself is the illusion-- it is not in fact a framework in which change happens, but rather a flowing perspective through in immalleable reality.

I agree that time is not "a framework in which change happens"---time IS both non-spatial and spatial change, its measurement depending on the relative velocities of observer and observed.

Okay so why then free will? Because determinism breaks temporal causality. There cannot be anything which causes me to act in a particular manner-- and yet I act. That act, free of causality, is therefore free.

Maybe I'm missing some crucial piece to your dialectic?

[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.

[Mudhammam]

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.

Well, Greene appears to me to say that at the quantum scale, probabilities are determined in much the same way that Newtonian events are. On the one hand we have more room for variance but the outcome is still determined within a window that is always more or less opened given the states preceding it. Whereas you said:

there currently aren't good reasons to think the universe is deterministic

[Alex K]

By deterministic I mean that the state of the universe follows uniquely from its state immediately preceeding it. If only probabilities of events are uniquely determined by what came before, but the individual outcome is not, the world is not deterministic in this sense. I'd find it perverse to call such a universe deterministic...