To me, Free will is the ability to choose your own 'destiny'.

Free will just means you can do whatever you want, where you want, when you want, etc. But will you do it?
IMO the universe wasn't created, but rather, was "always here".

Well, in a philosophical sense, Chaos theory states that unless there exists some thing which can be affected by things that are not part of our definition of material, free will cannot exist. This is because if all matter and energy is quantifiable and measurable, then it is predictable and as such the fate of every particle in the universe is determined. This means that in a purely materialist sense, free will can't be explained. If we consider the allegory of the human who has every cell in his body replaced by a robot that performs exactly the same function, we see that we don't really know where the idea that we have free will comes from, or whether or not it is valid. Anyways, that's not really an argument, just some philosophical stuff. The two leading arguments (as you'd have learned in 2000) were:

One, we live in a materialist universe and everything is predetermined as consequences of the big bang, and thus there is no free will, since immaterial things couldn't possibly change the "fate" that is perscribed by the origin of the universe. The idea is that free will is an illusion caused by minor variations of heat in the form of stray photons. Anyways, this is generally criticized because of its inability to explain the observer, and is almost obsolete, since it suffers from science's recent upheaval over quantum theory.

The second theory is that free will is indeed free, to some extent, in the way that ideas such as the uncertainty principle, entanglement and quantum theory show us that there is actually a definite observer within a human, that is not tied to the molecules that make up our bodies. Call it a soul, consciousness, observer, life, whatever you like, but the fact remains that it exists and has an effect on things. Generally, this is taken in a philosophical sense to be confirmation that there is indeed a difference between mind and body, and that free will comes out of the things that cannot be predicted by science. Namely, there is enough uncertainty so that it is actually impossible to predict the future even if we are given all data, because the brain works on such a level as to be truly random, or free, if you will.

What this means is that as psychology states, humans are driven by physical or "animal" urges and instincts that help us survive, but that the presence of the observer and the inherent uncertainties mean that the possibility of a free will entity that does not exist in terms of energy and mass is very real, but has not been shown to exist or to not exist by any experimentation or logic. So, in order to avoid just spouting random things, I'll put some stuff in perspective.

If you as a human observe through some means a particle, it acts in a certain way, but when you look away, it can be shown to act in another way (electron double slit diffraction with or without a measurment device) That means that the electron knew it was being watched. The reason this relates to free will is because this experiment shows that a purely materialist (and by extention, anti-free will) perspective is no longer valid, and that we now accept that humans, for whatever reason, actually have the ability to change the material world by means that cannot be described by our definition of material. So in short, the idea that the big bang set everything in stone has been out the window for a year or so, though most people haven't noticed.

If free will exists, then the universe is not predictable, therefore, it is chaotic and random
If free will does not exist, the universe is predictable, therefore, it can be plotted and future events can be predicted with absolute certainty.

It's quantum mechanics versus chaos theory (or classical physics, what ever you want to choose).

If free will does not exist, the universe may still not be predictable. The quantum level may be of the order of the sun in comparison an atom, in comparision to some smaller scale upon which physical interactions occur that mankind does not know about, and possibly cannot predict or experiment upon. Even if we knew all the laws of the universe, we would still be troubled with the task of finding some initial state, inclusive to all particles, objects, little green men, or what else have you that the laws act upon. If the universe is infinite, this cannot be done, since no finite machine can store all this data. If the universe is finite I would venture to say it still cannot be done since the machine in question that is storing all of the data in the universe would need memory for not only the things outside of itself, but also within itself, since it is itself comprised of a part of the universe in question. To help illustrate this confusing sentence, take a computer with 1kb of memory. If this 1kb of memory is enough to store the data of all the other stuff in the universe, this machine is going to require a second kb of memory to keep track of the first kb, and some additional memory to do the computations necessary for predicting this stuff. A better illustration may be: if 1 byte can store the position of 1 particle, but it takes 10 particles to form the physical memory of a byte, then max the computer can store, if it took up the entire universe, is 1/10th of the data of itself. So either way really, the universe isn't perfectly predicatable.

I don't know if this makes sense: but if my brain is taken to be the universe in question, does that then mean that it can't predict itself? lol.

As for the universe necessarily being chaotic and random if free will does exist, perhaps not. If we have some event, and a mind is to make a decision using its free will based on that event, then there are clearly a number of choices. We may not be able to predict which choice the mind will make, but we probably can predict what will happen for each of the choices. In this way, we have a very huge number of different scenarios, which really aren't chaotic, just they're unknown. What it really boils down to is "If free will exists, then the universe is not [perfectly] predictable" without the rest of it.

I've thought about this. To sum up my feelings succinctly, according to the various natural laws, don't our brains operate, down to the smallest particles, in such a way as to be sufficiently explained with the laws of physics? If electrical impulses and chemicals and relative locations are all taken into consideration, won't our brains automatically think one thing or another? If you took my brain and essentially copied it atom for atom and had the chemical levels and electricity all set up exactly the same, that brain would operate in exactly the same fashion. Free will does exist in that our brains are allowed to function unobstructed or uncontrolled by outside commands, but our "free will" is dictated from one moment to the next by its current physical makeup and whatever outside influences are acting upon it. I think regardless of the concept of free will, the universe must absolutely be predictable due to what laws we've already and not yet discovered. If the elements are truly chaotic, then that impairs our ability to make free choices. It would be like saying, "I want to turn this light switch on," flicking the light switch, and perhaps having it turn on the ceiling fan instead of the light. If the universe is predictable, if we can say look at one set of conditions and say with clarity and conviction (and be right) that something will absolutely come from those conditions, well then free will is really just an illusion at the most minute level. However! The concept is very gratifying and provides us with a blanket of safety, and if free will is ultimately just an illusion, it is an illusion so fine in detail that for all intents and purposes we can just gloss over it and feel as if we are exercising free will. In the scope with which we view the world, this is like looking at a wall and seeing a solid, uniform surface instead of billions of atoms with a great deal of blank space in between.

Chaos != randomness. Chaos theory simply states that something perfectly rational and ordered can seem random because the events that determine how it behaves are so vast, they are unrecognisable at a glance.

There's no certainty in quantum mechanics.

Also, my thoughts on people bugging out about free will: If we had no free will, we'd know, because there wouldn't be any exoteric nutjobs.

This is where quantum mechanics comes in. Two brains of identical physical makeup will not necessarily act in the same way, because the uncertainty principle states that it is actually impossible to dublicate something perfectly, because there is an absolute uncertainty as to the position of any given particle in motion. That means that two identical people in identical circumstances would actually have different thoughts. Essentially since quantum behavior makes it impossible to predict the actions of one brain, they are not necessarily the same as the other.

The reason the universe is unpredictable may be in part because free will exists. Ie, if people can make absolute choices that are not fated, then it is impossible to predict outcomes until all affecting choices are taken in to account. The second idea in quantum mechanics is the fact that observing a particle means that it ceases to be random and becomes absolute. This unexplained effect links physics to the idea that somehow human observers turn a series of probabilities in to absolute reality. By that regard, something exists that is able to force absolutes on the random universe, and that the only time we have observed this is when humans have observed particles to certain degrees of precision. The extention of this can be taken to be that humans are capable of changing the course of reality, and as such, fit at least one important part in the definition of free will.

Another argument I'd bring up is the argument of pragmatism, namely that unless there was an observer that could change the course of things, things wouldn't exist. This argument, interestingly, was around before quantum theory was, which is why I chose to mention it. It might just be me and my confirmation bias, but I'm starting to find that the more new physics I read about, the more I get convinced that we really know pretty much nothing about how things work, considering that we will probably never know much about this dualist side of things that seems to keep on popping up unexpectedly.

Why?

If you're suggesting this because there do appear to be laws of nature, the distinction becomes that things must act a certain way, according to the premises of the law. However, we certainly do not have all the premises. It may seem like mankind has progressed quite far in the realm of physics, but we don't know everything yet. The universe is a big place, and I'm willing to bet that there is more undiscovered out there than discovered.

Secondly, be careful with your wording. When you say "must absolutely be predictable", you should read over the post prior to yours. If you only meant that things "must absolutely become a certain way" well, perhaps.

The uncertainty principle gives us that we cannot know precisely the state of things, which doesn't necessarily indicate that it's impossible to duplicate something perfectly. It simply means that we as humans cannot know this. However, if something were perfectly duplicated, it still follows that that object/brain/whatever would act in the same way. When it comes to perfect duplication, consider that the quantum level may not be the smallest level of physical interaction. Even if we could calculate perfectly all the data of all the things we know about, there could yet be something sub-quantum that is not perfectly replicated that we simply don't know about, but we think we've perfectly replicated our situation and have come to the wrong conclusion.
To help illustrate this, let us take an electron inside a room with only 3 possible positions, to simplify it, positions X Y and Z. Now, if the probabilities are .1X, .7Y, and .2Z, then we really can't know where the electron is, but the electron does still have some state, even though we don't know what it is. The actual state may be something like .05X, .3Y, .65Z, just we don't know that that is the actual state because we can only determine the probabilities. Since there is still an actual state, if the same actual state was replicated perfectly by some magical machine that knew everything (or God perhaps), it still follows that the brain in question would reach the same decision.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 6:39 am by Vrael.

That's not how the uncertainty principle works, and it also shows why it's a difficult one to understand. It proves that on top of it being impossible for humans to know things to full precision, it is actually impossible for anything to have that information, since the information literally does not exist until the particle is observed. This uncertainty is absolute uncertainty, which is different than experimental uncertainty, and is illustrated by the fact that particles act as waves when not observed. Essentially, the wave represents the fact that the particle is in all of the places that it could be in at once. Essentially, the moment we observe something, we lock it in to place. It is not the case of finding out which outcome the particle took, but of forcing the particle in to one of the outcomes in its area of uncertainty.

To simplify it, a particle may be in X, Y or Z. When unobserved, the particle behaves as if it was in all of these places at once, and when observed, it is in a random and unpredictable place, behaving as if it was always there, despite the fact that it literally did not have an absolute position before it is observed. This differs from your understanding of the random item in a box, because in quantum mechanics, you don't discover the positions of things by observing, you simple force them to take a position. Quite simply, this statement is false:

I never said predictable by humans. Predictable in the sense that if we were capable of scanning, analyzing, and replicating perfectly any set of conditions, then the various particles and whatnot would allow us to do just that. Now granted, I don't know as much about physics as you guys have taught yourselves (physics II was it for me in college), but regardless, even if our brains are set to follow predictable thought processes due to physics or if they are subjected to chaotic, unpredictable forces, then free will cannot exist. It is like when a "random" number is picked by a computer chip. It appears random to us, but it certainly is not random to the computer chip.

For a real life example, a person is in a bit of a hurry. He asks himself, "Do I want to speed, or do I want to play it safe?" Certainly, all of the outside factors play an important role: how much time he has, how important his destination is, even busy he knows the cops are on that road. If those factors were different, he might very well make a different decision. But under a specific set of conditions, when his mood is a certain way, and when it is raining or sunny or windy, he will make up his mind in one particular manner.


Perhaps you meant to write a slightly different response, but this answer appears flawed at second glance. To say that the information does not exist until the particle is observed brings up that old "clever" question: if nobody is in the forest when a tree falls, does it still make a sound? While that information is blocked to us, just because we haven't observed it doesn't mean it does not exist. If that information does not exist, then the particle does not exist.


If this theory proves true, then we still don't have free will because our brains are subject to a certain amount of chaos. However, we all know that the particle can only be in one location at a given time. Even if it would appear in all of those locations at once, it would have to be an illusion. If a particle is in three different locations concurrently, then there are effectively three particles.


If you force it into a position, then you know where it is. If you know where it is, then it is safe to say that it does have a predictable location. If, after putting it there, it does not have a predictable location for any amount of time, then you haven't forced the particle to go anywhere. I do hate to require you to explain these things in further detail, but it is the way of discussion, yes?

I looked up on wikipedia the uncertainty principle quickly:

That's just one of the examples I looked at, and it talks about what we can and can't observe.


How can it be said that simply because we will forever remain uncertain at the smallest levels that it means that those tiny, tiny levels are themselves uncertain? And if, this article goes on to point out, physics advancement has never really been precise - instead, the theories advance because they become successively more accurate. Perhaps the uncertainty principle will hold up, or perhaps it will turn out to be false. Perhaps physicists will make that uncertainty arbitrarily small one day.

Then again, perhaps the uncertainty principle works on so tiny a level, relative to the scope of our brains, as to have no impact whatsoever on its function. Perhaps, when I lift a book, I don't know to the most precise measurement how much weight I am lifting or how much strain such an action puts on my arm muscles, however slight. For all intents and purposes, I know that the book is light and the strain is not great, and it is an approximation that I do not lose any sleep over. I know that our brains are incredibly more complex than that little example, but they must still operate under some set of laws. If chaos does exist, I feel that it must be on so small a level as to have a negligible impact on our thinking. After all, psychology exists, and while greatly incomplete, it does a pretty good job at explaining how many different things work in the brain.

My point remains though, that if we were capable of perfectly reproducing a brain and all of the conditions about it, if we were to clone the entire universe from this point, then looking from one universe into another would be akin to looking in a mirror. Even if it is chaotic to us, for all intents and purposes, it does not mean that that chaos is not set to follow a particular path. While that might seem to go against conventional wisdom...

I think I'm done musing now. I have some actual work to get done with today.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 5:01 pm by Sael.

How do we know is was in all those places at once before we observed it? Wouldn't we have to observe something like that to know?

That's a terrible analogy.

And why is that a terrible analogy? A particle might appear random to us, but it is not necessarily so. A number might appear random to us... you get the idea.

Well usually the 'chip' doesn't pick a random number, the programmer writes the code to pick the number.. Usually by seeding the system time, then using the rand() function to create the random number (it will always be the same number if you don't seed the random number generator) so it will always be different because of the different times the random number generator gets seeded.. I don't think its that way with particles to be honest..

Right, the number gets picked because of a number of factors. It's not random in the sense that we can predict what it will be if we were given the conditions. If we were to replicate all of the conditions of a particle, we could expect it to function the same every time. Of course, we hardly have the capabilities to do that.

What I'm asking is if it is truly random or if it merely has the appearance of being random because we lack the necessary math and equipment to observe and analyze such particles.

And, if I might add, perhaps it might be wise to explore this thread elsewhere. For the sake of getting this thread back on track, I accept your answer, for now, about the uncertainty principle. So, if it is theoretically possible to predict how the brain operates or if it has an element of chaos in it, neither scenario provides absolute free will. It's an idealistic fantasy of a concept.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 8:14 pm by Sael.

Quantum physics is not by any stretch of the imagination a complete or well defined area of physics. While what you've said about the interpretation of the theory is correct, it would be absurd to believe that in truth. That is to say, the uncertainty principle may be a useful tool for calculation, but it hardly can express reality. Take schrödinger's cat, for example. Besides, the implications of the uncertainty principle are immense, if applied to the universe. First, you must classify the observer class: is it limited to humans? Are there aliens who could be observers? Can a star or some other inanimate object act as an observer, can schrödinger's cat in the death-box be an observer? If the observer class is limited than it implies the universe outside of our range of observation has no state, but will suddenly change into galaxies and stars and planets as soon as we fly out there in a spaceship. And to be able to change into stars and galaxies and planets, by this uncertainty principle, they must already be there to be able to collapse into one of their linear combinations of states, so it is clear to see that they have some state already if they are to collapse into one of them. Likewise, if everybody leaves a building during a fire, then there is similarly no state inside the building. Empirically we can see that if we leave a building for a fire, it will still burn down. There IS some state even if we don't observe it, and while this is contradictory to the uncertainty principle, I would err on the side of reality until we can better define quantum physics. Kinda boils down to that old question "If a tree falls in a forest, and no one's around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" (Whoops, just like Sael said )

As for the random number analogy, I think what you were trying to show is this parallel:
Random Number --> Actually not random => Illusion
Free Will ------------> Actually predetermined => Illusion

Sael seems to be an incompatabilist, which is to say that if everything is determined, then free will cannot exist. What if everything isn't determined, Sael?
Would you accept free will then? And the odd case, which may be impossible to prove because it would simply be circular, is what if everything isn't predetermined because we have free will?

And at your suggestion, here is a very thorough, well constructed article on free will: http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/freewill.htm

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 8:34 pm by Vrael.

This statement is false, as I will show in the following description of what I've been taught about Quantum Theory. The key is that the universe is not what we would rationally expect it to be.

This is the quickest explanation I can give, and these are facts and corollary, not personal arguments. First, we have that light diffracts through double slits, because light acts as a wave most of the time. But then we see that the photoelectric effect proves that light is made of particles. Oh no, photons are both waves and particles at the same time... and they have momentum but no mass. This turns physics on its head, until it's found that particles act as particles or waves depending on their situation, and that every given particle has a specific wavelength determined by its momentum. Anyways, that leads to some experimentation with diffraction. First experiment, they shoot light at a double slit, it diffracts, that's cool, because photons aren't really particles in the sense that electrons are. Then we shoot tennis balls at two five in slits in a wall, and we notice that they don't diffract. Good, because one ball goes through one slit with one trajectory. Then we decide to do it with electrons and... oh crap, they diffract just like waves, but they're particles. So, physicists, being smart fellows, decide to shoot electrons at the pair of slits one at a time, to stop them from colliding with eachother. They still diffract. So somehow a single electron acts like a whole load of electrons, and somehow it passes through both slits at the same time, which is logically impossible.

So then physicists decide to look and see exactly what that electron does, and they set up measuring devices to find out just which slit it goes through, and the results of the lab change. When we observed the electrons they started acting like tennis balls again, no diffraction. The conclusion was that until the electron was observed, it had to be in many places at once to diffract, but when we observed it, it suddenly and randomly took one one of the possibilities. By that regard, the information, if it existed, would have caused the electrons to do the same thing both times. The only remaining conclusion is that information as to the particle's location did not exist until it was observed. This is something that you can interpret however you like, but it is currently the best explanation for physical phenomena that we observe, and it's quantum theory.

Quite literally, the uncertainty principle is an uncertainty in reality, and one that makes replication impossible by the laws of physics and not by human limitations. Until observed, particles do exist in more than one place, and there is only a range of data that can describe their position. The electron, when unobserved, literally became a series of probabilities, and passed through both slits at the same time, and diffracted, ending by hitting a random place on the collection screen, that eventually, after millions of electrons were fired, showed a perfect interference pattern, literally showing that the electron's different probabilities interfered with eachother both constructively and destructively to determing the final probability of the place where it would hit the screen. What this means is that reality does not exist in concrete form until it is observed, and it is as inescapable as trying to prove that things exist when you can't see them. You can't do it, no matter how hard you try to. But if you experience something, you can be certain that you did experience it and that the experience existed in some form while you did so. But, you can't prove that it persists until you experience it again.

In terms of argument, it is known that electrons and photons are affected by uncertainty, and that energy and charge affect the way neurons fire in our brains. By that regard, the thoughts in our brain are series of probabilities until they are observed. That's where it gets tricky. This shows that the brain cannot be duplicated, even theoretically, but it doesn't explain the observer. We do know that as observers, we observe our thoughts, but we don't know if they originate from the brain or elsewhere, since the actual method of selecting probabilities is unknown (though it is known that it selects fairly, and that it doesn't start until observed) At this point, all we really know is that somehow, we are observers, yet there is no physical evidence of that other than the fact that as soon as people start watching things, they start being determined and absolute. To say that reality exists because it is observed was an idea created 2500 years ago or more, and interestingly, it is pretty much exactly what we've learned in the past few years. If the tree falls in the woods and no one was there to hear it, it didn't fall, it didn't make a sound and it didn't even exist, and the only thing we'll be able to see is the fact that all probabilities led to it falling, and that when we observe it, it chooses one of them. Like the building analogy, the uncertainties in the fire are too small to stop the building from burning down, and since we observe the outside of the structure, its collapse is inevitable, though the photons coming from the fire do act by the uncertainty principle until they strike other objects and people.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2009, 8:59 pm by JaBoK.

Let me modify my building analogy then. Lets say at some point in the future we invent the warp drive from star trek so we can travel at many times past light speed. So, we build a giant bubble and fill it with oxygen, some dirt, and a wooden building, place it on our space ship and fly it a gazillion light years away from earth, further than any telescope or measuring device can ever see. We press a button and a tiny fire starts inside the building, then we hurry up and jump in our warp-capable spaceship and fly back to earth. Everyone on earth has miraculously agreed not to look for this bubble in space (since of course, other folks might have warp capable spaceships) so now it's isolated, floating around up there. What is going to happen to our building flying around in space? Certainly if we were to go back in a hundred years and find it, we would find the rubble of the building in our bubble?

Let us make an even more precise experiment to put in our bubble. Let us have a single atom isolated inside some photon counter, akin to schrödinger's cat, and a super-radiation-photon-shield on the outside of our bubble to protect against stray energy from outerspace, and we press the button to start the machine, which conveniently has a clock to tell us when it detects the photon. We fly away and come back a few years later. Naturally, the machine is going to tell us that a bit after we left it detected the photon, and that the photon was not in limbo until we got there to see it. If this is the case, the atom clearly had some definite state, and further, it tells us that it is not necessary for a human to be an observer; essentially that there is no difference between a person and a machine when it comes to observing, and since both are comprised presumably of the same materials, atoms, quarks, electrons, ect, then the universe is populated with observers all over the place, and the uncertainty principle becomes merely that we cannot know where an electron is until we observe it, which makes perfect sense!

I don't see how you can go any further in your argument vrael until you refute the double split experiment. Because basically what you are saying is things don't happen as they did in the experiment.

CAFG, I'm not saying I know what the all the laws of physics really are, I'm saying the uncertainty principle isn't valid. Or if it is, it needs a big-time overhaul, some kind of explanation for how it affects the macro-world and the actual existence of things. I'm not refuting that the experiment happened the way it did, I'm refuting that the explaination for the way it happened is wrong in some respect.