Today I heard David Berlinski (yes, I’m a glutton for punishment) say something similar, that either there is free will, or everything that happens was set to happen from the instant of the big bang. Of course, that’s a false dichotomy, not taking into account the uncertainty principle.
Our brains I think are deterministic, and any effect on macro processes from quantum uncertainty is probably pretty damn small. But over time, these effects accumulate chaotically, so that we can be pretty much deterministic and not have the universe’s fine details predetermined at the outset.
Yes; randomity may happen, but the existence of randomity doesn’t really help anyone’s position in a philosophical way. The better response to the complaint “the fate and outcome of the universe was sealed a long time ago.” is, why is this bad? It’s like being unhappy that 1+1 will always equal 2, sheerly due to the lack of uncertainty in the outcome.
Personally I suspect that any random quantum effects in our brains are filtered out by our cognitive processes as a matter of course, just the way we do it with electronic circuitry. (Mostly you just make the difference between “on” and “off” bigger than any anticipable quantum variation.) I would think that evolution would select against critters with brains with tendencies to malfunction randomly all the time at every level.
