No, a single particle event cannot set off a brain cascade of other effects in the brain any more than it can in a baseball. If anything it can do so to a lesser extent, as the brain, in that complexity of interactions, functions with many systems evolved specifically to deal with “noise” and therefore filters out and minimizes the effect of unexpected random variations, whether they be quantum or background environmental. A baseball cannot do that.
I’m not necessarily talking about ‘noise’.
That’s what random variations are. As opposed to “signal”.
I’m not necessarily talking about random variations. Quantum physics has more tricks up its sleeve than that.
Please explain what you do mean then. What tricks are up quantum physics sleeves that apply here?
I’m thinking of things like the collapse of probability/wave functions - the observer effect - except in this case, what is possibly significant is that the observer itself is an emergent property of the system it is observing.
I think I was almost arguing the point raised earlier on whether the universe was determinable or deterministic.
I think it’s quite obvious (thought experiment aside) that the universe is not determinable.
As a fallback position, I therefore offer, I have free will because I believe it is so and there are exactly zero ways to disprove that.
I offer, as a mystical solution, the long-held notion of a soul or conscience or will, something that can physically alter the course of, say, the particles in the brain to produce a certain result, and whose causes are by definition not predetermined. Silly, perhaps, but no more silly than positing the existence of God or positing that every particle has its course determined for all time at the beginning of the universe.
I offer, as a physics solution, Spatial Rift’s argument, which seems fairly conclusive to me, since no other physics grads have chimed in telling us he’s full of shit, and I’m somewhat (though certainly not expert in) some of the ideas of quantum physics, and it seems to jibe with my amateur readings
I have to second Mangetout again, and this time he raises a point which cuts to the very heart of the dilemma. I, the observer, am myself composed of quantum systems. Which means that any measurements I make are themselves just interactions between quantum systems. To the extent that those measurements do not cause an interaction with the rest of the Universe (which is a huge extent) it leaves every other system in an indetermined state, as far as “I” know.
There’s another theory with an objection to a completely determined Universe: Special Relativity. As an observer in that framework (which has been verified to umpity ump decimal places), I can’t observe anything outside of my “light cone,” which is the light that could reach me from any event within the time elapsed. Nor can anything observe me if it’s not included in the light cone I’m emitting. So in order for this hypothetical computer to scan and predict the entire Universe, it would have to be situated outside the Universe, and there is no such place by definition.
Physicists who are working on a unified theory are just now coming to terms with the fact that it will be a description dependent on what the observer can physically interact with, and it will never get the entire Universe in one blow.
Okay a little hubris here but I’ll have to take this position on. “Observation” cannot mean that nothing actually exists until we observe it. Such a position would mean that nothing else existed until we existed to observe its existence! It means instead that interaction of one coherent quantum entity with another sets its state. The brain is not a single coherent quantum system but only a conglomeration of infintessimal ones. Those interactions amount to background noise.
Ugh. Science is ruining philosophy.
I wonder if there’s any way to argue against determinism using only logic and layman’s empiricism. I.e. without quantum mechanics or special relativity. How would this argument sound if it were taking place 75-100 years ago? (No snark please.)
Randy you originally couched the discussion in scientific terms with your premises. Of course the thread is still in that vein.
If you wanted philisophical terms you shouldn’t have mentioned
both of these things are scientific premises, thus, the discussion is going to be in scientific terms. If you want a philisophical refutation; I cannot philisophically disprove or prove either position, therefore, sense I can’t debate the question in terms that will reach a conclusion, I can reach my own philisophical conclusion: my personal conclusion, if we cannot ever determine what the answer is, I will find the answer that makes me happiest: that is, I have free will.
Certainly I’m not arguing that things outside of ourselves only exist because we observe them, but we are in a position to observe our own minds and perhaps the act of observation collapses the quantum states composing our minds into something other than random noise. I say perhaps because I don’t want anyone to get the false impression that I am firmly convinced by any of the options that anyone has placed on the table in this discussion (including myself).
I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’ve been saying, but your conclusion is flawed - it’s not that bad. Nothing exists in the proper classical sense until it interacts with something else. The two systems are each a “potential” until they interact, at which point they take on real quantifiable characteristics. Now, you and I are composed of fantastically huge numbers of subatomic particles, and all of them are constantly interacting with one another.
The result of this is something physicists call “decoherence.” All the quantum rules still apply, but the very high frequency of interaction means that more or less the entire amalgamation tends to remain in a single quantum state. But we cannot reverse this argument to say that the electrons in the brain remain in a single state, or that it washes out as noise. Only when you consider the entire system do the quantum effects give way to classical existence. On the subatomic level, the individual electrons and atoms still exhibit all of their usual quantum weirdness.
As I understand it, the idea that “observing” in the sense of intelligent examination is somehow special to quantum mechanics is a common misconception. The collapsing effect is a subset of decoherence, and macroscopic “swamping out” effects, not observation with eyeballs in particular.
Again though, this is misleading. We can be BOTH compelled (in the sense that this is what we are designed to want) AND choose it ourselves freely. Sure you may been pre-formulated to want a particular thing, but the fact remains, that is you, and you DO want that particular thing.
Of course - I don’t think I’d dream of arguing that my eyeballs are responsible for observing my mind in any case. But yes, OK, not a macroscopic ‘observer’ that is me, but how about a whole collection of subatomic observers that happen to be composed of the same collection of systems they’re observing?
So my physics is good so far as it goes. Now we get into how the brain works and what counts as signal and what counts as noise. If when you claim that it is only at the level of the entire system that the quantum effects give way to classical existence you mean the entire brain as “the entire system” then you are stating something very false. A neuron has a classical existance. A synapse does. A single packet of neurotransmitter does. Get down to the level below a single molecule of a neurotransmitter and maybe you start to see some chance of quantum effects. And sure at the subatomic level. So perhaps an occassional molecule will experience some quantum weirdness. A whole packet of transmitters? Virtually never. But for the sake of the thought experiement let’s say that it occurs often. Then at random intervals a packet will not arrive that “should have” or the other way around. Maybe even often enough to occasionally produce an odd action potential, a spike.
“Noise” in an information system is just that sort of occassional variation that obscures what is “signal”. And once again the brain is extremely well equipped to deal with seperating noise from signal. A few action potentials here or there scattered around do not create a butterfly effect. The system may in a sense be a chaotic one, but it is a chaotic one with very deep attractor basins. The shapes of those attractor basins are remarkably stable and resiliant against noise even while adapting significantly to the external world and true signals.
How then, can it appear that we have free will? If it’s illusory, then why does it exist at all?
or if it is perfectly illusory, how can we arrive at a conclusion either way (hence the end of my post above: if nothing else the universe is perfectly indeterminable, thus, I might as well believe what makes me happy in philosphical terms, I’m directly influencing the future via free will)
I don’t think we actually know that a butterfly effect could not be produced, do we?
It seems to me that if a possibility exists for the random fluctuation at the micro level to influence the macro level such that our “prediction” is no longer accurate, then we can’t really say the universe is deterministic.
Additionally, we need to be concerned with external stimulus, not just the operation of the brain alone. What if random fluctuations inside the sun altered sun spot activity which in turn had an impact on a communications satellite, etc. etc. etc. ultimately influencing a humans actions. In that case, we would not have been able to determine in advance the state of the universe.