[Off-topic] Would quantum computers be able to get around this problem, since in a
sense they are doing calculations in innumerable universes at once?
[On-topic] Is the brain a quantum computer of sorts? I’ve heard that line of argument
from various pundits, tho I’m not sure I buy it myself.
Magic and chemistry are not opposites. But aside from that, the brain is electrochemical, and everything about electromagnetism is random. No cause is known for the collapse of an electron’s orbit.
I think a lot of people confuse the concepts of looking at an event and being able to discover its causes, and looking forward in time to predict if an event will happen.
Consider a craps game. After it is over, every payout is exactly determined, and the winner, and why she won, is clear. That doesn’t mean it is possible to predict the winner at the beginning of the game - even if, for simplicity, the players agree to and follow a certain betting strategy.
I see that some people have a hard time giving up on Newton’s clockwork universe. Perhaps a universe without randomness and where measurements can be made exactly would be a clockwork universe, but that is a very different universe from ours. I “believe” in free will since I think it is impossible to predict what I or anyone else will do.
All of which is basically what you said, but with dice.
…yet.
The fact that we don’t know a cause doesn’t mean there isn’t one. In fact - again, I’m not an expert but - hundreds of years of scientific reasoning would suggest that there IS a cause that we just don’t understand yet.
I don’t want to sound flippant, but I do want to be sure I understand your argument: You’re saying that we DO have free will because our brain is an electrochemical process instead of simply a chemical one? If you met an alien tomorrow whose brain worked on a purely chemical or, heck, mechanical basis, would you deny that he could have free will? (Of course, what chemical reaction can be considered NON-electrical in nature? But that’s pretty off-topic.)
On what do you base this statement? Being too complex for our current ability to model it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible to do so. Doctors have in fact found that certain brain functions can be predicted. We aren’t too far past the depiction in a Far Side cartoon where the doctor pokes the patient’s brain with his finger and watches what happens, but we are certainly far enough to understand that thoughts, feelings, and actions are controlled by physical structures in the brain in locations that we can study and map. I don’t see any inherent reason why every function of the brain couldn’t be understood.
I can imagine someone saying at some inderterminate time in the past: “There is no possible way to map the human genome”.
Complex is not equal to random. Just because a seizure isn’t what we consider “normal” brain activity doesn’t mean there’s no cause.
Hundreds of years of scientific reasoning suggested that there is an ether also - but there isn’t. I think you’re going to need a better argument when going against all of modern physics. To start, what would the cause of a particular atom of a radioactive material splitting at a certain time be?
I’m no expert either, but as far as i understand it, no; you’re wrong - it isn’t that we don’t understand the causes of some events; it’s that they are causeless - they just happen, and as far as I understand it, this isn’t just an ignorant hole in quantum physics, it’s a necessary conclusion if some of the other bits are to work properly.
Physics graduate student chiming in here. Mangetout is exactly right about quantum physics. On a macroscopic scale, we can calculate the trajectory of a baseball, such that if I see the baseball move in a certain way I can calculate where it came from and where it will land.
But all of that is an approximation to the underlying quantum reality, in which, physicists have discovered, particles have no such thing as a “trajectory,” or even a “location,” for that matter. There is a probability that a particle will be measured in a certain spot, but that particle did not have a location until I made the measurement.
What this means in the context of causation is that if I measure a particle to be at location X, nothing forced it to be exactly at X. Maybe a magnetic field caused the measurement to have a high probability of yielding a number within a range that contains X, but that’s all we can say. In contrast to the baseball, if I measure an electron at position X, I cannot say with any certainty where it was before I made the measurement. This extends to future predictions as well. If I set up the system, I can give you the probability that you will find the electron at X, but you might just as easily make the measurement and find the electron at position Y. Quantum mechanics is inherently non-deterministic.
Thanks for that.
To get back to the question of free will; is it possible then, that the universe has contrived to manufacture a device that is capable of exploiting the non-deterministic aspects of itself, in order to effect non-deterministic changes of event, somewhat in accordance with the property of that device expressing itself as ‘will’?
My original post appears at #47.
Randy (#49): The point of my list is that those are behaviors. One can speak of Shakespeare writing Hamlet or one can speak of it being produced by a bunch of determinants. I take the former view, because it comports with our ordinary understanding and seems to me a more useful way of talking about it. Which is not to suggest the writing was an act of raw creation. Various influences affected the process, e.g., the historical source for the story, conventions of Elizabethan theatre about how “good” plays were done and Will’s own writing style developed over a period of years. Still, when all is said and done, Will wrote the play, not the influences.
Der Trihs (#50): No, I’m not confusing volition with ignorance of the total universe of influences. I’m saying, as I just said to Randy, that the volitional model is a more useful way of describing behavior. It sounds like you agree, at least in part. Are you a compatibilist?
Diogenes (#55): If determinism negates morality, how would you construct a criminal justice system?
Pábitel (#58): I like that formulation a lot. It articulates nicely the premise of another argument I like in favor of the volitional model. Although most brains work as you describe, some work less well, e.g., those of folks with ADD or OCD. We say such folks have an impaired ability to direct their own behavior. This implies that the norm is that we do have such an ability.
You miss the point. It isn’t just “not normal” it is a chaotic system and as such is indeterminable. Regardless of how many decimal points you use prediction fails in a chaotic system. You would have to have infinite decimal places to acurately predict a chaotic system. This is not possible. Therefore systems subject to chaotic processes are not determinisitc. The human brain is capable of chaotic processes, QED.
The same as we do now. What does morality have to do with criminal justice? A criminal justice system is about maintaining the stability and security of a community, not about punishing immorality.
And, of course, we are “compelled” to create a justice system whether we want to or not. . . .
I just wanted to pop in to thank the OP for a concise statement of the conclusion I came to several years ago. Johnny Carson used to say, “If you buy the premise, you’ll buy the bit.” If the universe really does operate on what someone called “a closed nexus of cause and effect”, then the only possible conclusion is cosmic determinism.
A nitpick about the computer: theoretically a computer up to the task could predict everything. My practical objection is that one must first program the computer (and probably put in some data as a starting point). We will never know enought to write the program. Blame Heisenberg for noticing that we can never get a precise fix on things.
Someone brought up the old First Cause objection. I regard that as I do the Argument from Design. If there is a First Cause one may ask, “Who caused Him?” (let’s call him Cecil). To say, “Well, Cecil didn’t need to be caused; He is self-sufficient” doesn’t cut it, for one may respond with, “Why can’t Nature be self-sufficient, and do away with the Middleman?”
The brain is not just chemical, as has been noted but electrical as well. There are, without doubt, processes in the brain that are random. The brain is also a chatotic system whose state is highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). That means that a small random event in the brain can have profound effect over time. Given those two premises, the human brain is not a deterministic system.
I’m surprised nobody came up with this extension to the original thought experiment.
Suppose, for a moment, that one were to fire up this hypothetical computer (or ask the demon). The question we’re now rooted with is, GIVEN the output of the computer (whatever it may be) and thus the hypothetical knowledge of the future, could i change my actions to not be what was contained in that output
Deterministically, no, because the computer would naturally have accounted for my receiving that printout of my future actions, but wait, now that I’ve got a copy that deterministically states that I’ll attempt to NOT do what I would have done had I NOT gotten the printout, the future is therefore mutable based on my knowledge of future events: even if I attempt to change my actions based on my new knowledge, the computer will predict that at the same time, except… I can change my actions…
What I’m saying is that the logical is inherently flawed because I can ad infinitum change my actions based on input I receive, only, I can’t, except, how can I NOT be able to change a prediction of my current actions based on prior knowledge that I’m supposed to complete that action. The computer will instantly snarl on the smallest prediction of human action because of my ability to CHOOSE based on information I have received, and continue to choose infinitely different courses of actions prior to that action actually taking place.
I would argue that this is possible because of nature of the randomness of subatomic particles which makes up my brain…linking back to pabital’s statement
sorry that should
"I receive, only, I can’t if a deterministic argument holds
I’m pretty sure this is not correct. A chaotic system is determinate. Well, anyway, the wikipedia article on Chaos Theory bears this out, and it jives with what I thought I knew about it in the first place.
Are there here any mathematicians, physicists, or others who know about this?
It looks more to me like the computer or demon or whatever has been given conflicting instructions. To illustrate, ask your omniscient calculator this question: “If I were to ask you a question about the future with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, and your response to me either way would become a self-fullfilling prophecy, what would be your response?”
I think that’s sort of my point. It’s an impossible question because it loops infinitely, even the smallest of human actions, say, will I eat 1 hamburger or 2 at dinner loops infinitely if I intend to do the opposite of what the output suggests. (and saying the computer will simply tell me “i will tell you that you will eat one and you won’t” isn’t a satisfactorily determinant answer)
As a more pressing example; I get a printout saying I’ll kill somebody at a bar tonight, but knowing this, I don’t go to ANY bar tonight, hence, I won’t kill somebody, but the computer has to take in to account that I will actively try to avoid killing somebody in a bar, and thus the future changes based on my knowledge of my supposed future actions, which produces a new output, which I can then choose to change, which creates another output … my point is exactly that it’s been given an impossibly infinite recursion problem
The computer has been given an impossible task. But a third computer, looking at both you and the computer you described, has no such task. It knows exactly what the computer will do, and exactly what you will do. (Assuming determinism, which is okay as you do assume determinism in your argument for the purpose of something like a reductio ad absurdum.)
So the fact that the computer can’t make the prediction does not lead correctly to a conclusion that your behavior in that instance is unpredictable and so indeterminate.
-FrL-