Inspired by this thread, I wonder, is there really only one possible course of action our lives can take? If I’m not mistaken (and I might be as my knowledge of quantum physics is fairly limited), there is no randomness in the universe. The Earth revolving around the sun isn’t happenstance, laws of physics mandate that it does so. Everything will persist perfectly forever. The Earth’s orbit cannot do anything other than what it does. Am I explaining this poorly? Aggh, this is what happens when English majors try to explain physics. I think what I’m trying to say is every single action in the universe is controlled by strict laws of physics… or something like that. The ex says since everything is ruled by universal physical laws, every single occurence is predetermined.
So I said, not so fast. Is this still true of human interactions? The Earth continues to revolve around the sun because it has no brain. It can’t say, “Hey sun, it’s been great, but my relationship with you has been going around in circles. I’m moving on to another star who treats me better.” Does this really pertain to me though? Yes, I am somewhat governed by laws of physics in that if I were to jump off the Empire State Building, I’d plummet into the cement and die. But I only fell to the ground because of my choice to jump over. The question now is who/what made the decision to take the plunge; me or the universe? According to him, the universe. If there is truly no randomness, everything is determined by laws of quantum physics, including brain waves and thought patterns. According to me, umm… I don’t know. I really don’t see how natural laws can control what we think.
It’s not at all clear if it’s of any “use” when considering questions like free will vs. fate, but actually quantum physics is usually understood as mandating a certain fundamental indeterminacy at the most basic level of existence. Whether or not a particular particle spontaneously decays or not at a particular instant seems fundamentally random.
1/ Fate - you and you brain are made of matter, and everything you do is determined by the state of that matter, including the physical state of the chemicals and physical structures in your brain which hold your memory, and the software which determines your reactions to the world, which has been built up over millions of years of evolution. Inside your head is the most complex interacting set of systems that anyone knows about (-yet), however it can only react in one way to the universe - the way which is the result of the interaction of all influences, current and historical. So in that way we are subject to ‘fate’.
2/ Free Will - if everything we do is determined by the physical environment (including the internal states of our brain molecules)
can we be said to have free will?
Oh yes. To test this, try to behave as if you didn’t have free will. It can’t be done. On our level, the way that our internal states dictate our actions can be usefully labelled ‘free will’ and accepted.
3/ Predetemination. Thanks to Quantum mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle nothing can be predicted with any accuracy about the future. To test this, imagine a magically created universe, with every boson, lepton and photon in exactly the same state and position relative to each other as our own, so that it would be instantaneously identical with our universe.
Now let both universes evolve over time. Because of the Uncertainty Principle the two universes would begin to diverge from each other in detail- after a few million years the two universes would be very different places.
God, you see, does play dice with the universe.
Some argue that the non-deterministic nature of quantum physics gives us free will back. I don’t think it does; it just takes away the deterministic counter-argument and allows the possibility of free will.
Maybe there can still be “hidden variables” that make it deterministic; I read an article a few months ago, I think in ‘New Scientist’, that the proof that people thought disproved hidden variable didn’t take into account a certain class of hidden variables, that they now consider possible. No better cite, sorry.
I am just about finished an excellent book by Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, called “Finding Darwin’s God.”
One of the things he discusses is the difference between randomness and indeterminacy. Random, in the truest sense of the word, suggests that events all have equal odds of occuring while indeterminate suggests that there are a limited number of possibilities, each with a different chance of occuring. Quantum physics operates on the notion of indeterminacy, not randomness, so they are controlled somewhat by the laws of physics and are not truly random. Miller goes on to suggest that this is one possible argument in favour of a God who is, in fact, directing the development of the universe.
Re: the OP, my interpretation would be that, within the indeterminate framework of our everyday life, we have free will, but to a limited extent. There are only a certain number of paths before us which we can choose or reject based on the already-existing makeup of our brains and environment.
Then again, I’m also an english major and could be completely missing the point…
Your ex has it backwards: quantum mechanics destroys the notion of scientific determinism, which was a popular philosophical idea a century ago.
Scientific determinism is the idea that, if we know the exact state of the universe, and all the laws of physics, and how that state changes through time, then we can know the state at any other time than the present–i.e., perfect knowledge of the past and the future, because it’s all predertimined.
Quantum mechanics mandates, in various ways, that we cannot have perfect knowledge of the state of the universe. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, among other things. Therefore, it’s impossible to know the future perfectly. Therefore, talking about how the universe is perfectly determined requires talking about things that we can’t, in principle, know. The idea of the laws of physics perfectly determining everything involves a god-like wildcard operating under the surface of what we can know. It no longer makes sense to talk about perfect determination.
Note that this argument doesn’t restore free will. It really just points out that we can’t tell the difference, ultimately, between randomness and physical predetermination.
Of course, there’s also the existentialist answer to the question, which is that it doesn’t matter whether or not we actually have free will; what matters is that we have it from our limited perspective, and how we live in light of that.
To make my first argument clearer: to hold that everything is determined by the laws of physics is to hold that even those parts of the universe that we can’t know (e.g., sub-sub-sub-sub-atomic particles, etc.) are determined by the laws of the physics. Since we can’t know exactly about those parts, we’re not justified in asserting that they’re bound by the laws of physics.
Of course, like every philosophical argument, there are two sides to it. Just thought I’d throw in one of them there. (There’s another, better proof of quantum determinism somewhere, but I can’t think where it is right now)
Oh, and also, “blah blah William James blah blah Pascale’s Wager blah blah the sensible course is to believe in maximum self determination blah blah.”
There’s another thread with a much more detailed analysis somewhere (although that’s pretty much the gist right there).
Yeah, perhaps the universe is deterministic, but because of quantum mechanics, it is not predictable- it might be that even God doesn’t know what is going to happen next.
But perhaps this unpredictable chain of events is nevertheless inevitable…
just a thought.
Can anyone conceive of how the mechanics of freewill could possibly work? No matter what your paradigm is, from a universe that obides by scientific laws to god’s planet complete with souls, free will remains quite impossible as far as my logic tells me.
One the other hand, you talk about the sun’s seemingly mechanical relationship to other things…but maybe your looking at things from the wrong point of view. What if the sun only exists because we look at it? A communal hallucination if you will. Perhaps there are no physical laws at all, but rather just the combined will of humanity to believe.
Anyone have a take on this?