I have a theoretical degree in nuclear physics, and it seems to me that sub-atomic scale events like quantum tunneling suggest that reality is neither fully determined nor fully chaotic, but something in between: probabilistic. Whether we can consciously affect the probabilities of our own actions remains an open question, but we can at least say that causality is not the whole picture.
Do you have a degree in theoretical physics, or do you theoretical have a degree. ;)
I'm a theoretical theoretical physicist. That's double the theory.
I am Melllvar. Reader of the books! Knower of the theories!
Go back to work, Fantastic, you have a power plant to run.
One argument that might be made is that inconsistencies at the quantum level create an element of randomness that, while miniscule, could create massive cascading butterfly effects over the course of a large enough timespan. Whether those inconsistencies are enough to make more than a minimal difference in a single given lifespan is debatable at best, and the entire idea could be debunked if quantum physics was proven to be deterministic.
However, as it stands, we don't have accurate methods of predicting quantum behavior.
While quantum mechanics certainly gives random jumps, by no means is anything in control of those random processes (otherwise, they wouldn't be random)
So, even though the universe may not be fundamentally deterministic, that doesn't mean free will exists
Free will can be defined as:
A state of existence in which one’s decisions are a predictor of one’s actions.
I don’t see where that conflicts with determinism, honestly. It’s two different levels of analysis.
If you define free will as, by definition, something that breaks the laws of physics, then free will, by definition, does not exist.
Kinda like when someone defines “magic” the same way. If “magic” is by definition something impossible, then by definition it doesn’t exist.
The questions get a lot more interesting when you define these things in a way that doesn’t make them, by definition, non-existent.
Maybe this type of reasoning should be called Trivial Dismissal.
Another example. If you define God as a man in the sky who controls everything, you’re not really an intellectual tour de force if you conclude he doesn’t exist. It’s the more interesting definitions of God that lead to more interesting discussion of whether God exists.
That seems to me like an entirely inadequate description of free will, because the interesting question isn't how decisions lead to actions, but where the decisions themselves come from, i.e. whether the decisions are made freely. Unfortunately I've yet to see any definition of free will that doesn't rely on hand-waving the definition of words like "free" or "could". We have intuition about what those words mean, but they don't appear to have any rigorous definition that applies in the context of defining free will.
Free will is tricky, but there's interpretations of quantum mechanics that aren't deterministic. (Although multiple worlds QM is deterministic!)
That's it. Everything else in physics supports determinism. The fundamental physics so far even conserves information/can be traced (CP-inverted) backwards.
CP symmetry has been experimentally measured to be violated. What we still believe is that our world is invariant under CPT symmetry.
Yes. As I understand it, to preserve CPT during a T violation, you have to invert (break) CP, but it can be done.
So, you could theoretically make a kaon plasma with weird unidirectional (and so T-violating) non-thermodynamic behavior if you had a strong enough box, but in the process it would inevitably accumulate handedness and electric charge in a way that preserves information.
Yeah, when writing this I sort of had the notion that any argument against hard determinism using quantum mechanics would instead 1) actually prove multiverse theory, and 2) therefore still prove in favor of determinism.
Quantum Mechanics' hard indeterminism doesn't prove the multiverse interpretation, it's just one of several potential explanations for the randomness we see.
This is the best thing I’ve seen on Lemmy so far. Physics based philosophy, hell yes.
Also not very educated on this, but just throwing out what i thought was the outline here:
If this means that we might have free will i cant say, but if the world is wholly deterministic, the above at least underlines our lack of ability to predict it.
Regarding god of the gaps, annoyingly, the claim here is actually that we ”know” that we cant know:
”Thus, the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology.”
Of course, only until falsified - field is always changing: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/common-interpretation-of-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-is-proven-false/
carefully leaves his philosophical hard determinism at the door.
Well, I'd better learn a thing or two
One of the highest-level, most abstracted arguments against the idea of humans as deterministic goes like this:
When you treat people as if they’re automatons, they really don’t like it. And societies that don’t model people as having free will tend not to do so well.
That's a good argument. It reminds me of the idea of free will as a necessary illusion. Something that us fundamentally not true, but without which societies can't operate.
A functional truth, demonstrated by the success of its adopters, rather than by its intact logical proof.
I'm trying to patch together my conception of free will and determinism to sum it up here in answer, but it's full of holes. Basically it goes like this. Determinism is the rule of nature and, of course, mankind. Free will doesn't exist. Some measure of freedom and emancipation, on the other hand, do exist. It's hard to sum it up. Basically, very close to a spinozist stance, just with more holes and gaps. But I'll stop here since the OP specifically asked to leave philosophical perspectives at the door.
All I know is that this post makes me want to watch Devs again. OP, if you haven't seen it, check it out - one season miniseries about exactly this
Ohh thank you! Is missed this one - looking forward to it
I'll have to check it out
Thanks for this recommendation. I'm going to have to watch it.
Slightly off topic, but the god-of-the-gaps has plenty of space in maths alone. The Incompleteness theorem by Goedel shows that in any mathematical system there will be unprovable truths.
I have no idea how to map that onto free will.
Yeah, I've thought about this a little bit but again my math isn't so strong.
I guess approaching this more from computer science (something I'm more familiar with) you could compare with stuff like the NP Hard class of problems. And thus I offer that unproveable does not mean "wrong". We generally "know" that P=NP is wrong but we cannot prove it only because we lack omniscience. Us lacking the information (in the physics sense of the word i.e. Hawking radiation) doesn't mean the information isn't there to be quantified.
I'm far from knowledgeable about this, but the only thing I'm aware of that might disrupt determinism is quantum mechanics. Something about particles at that level not having set values until they are observed, making them truly random. I have no clue how that could lead to free will. We still have no control over it. It's more like they are the base that everything else is determined off of.
It controls us, so the randomness has free will, and since the randomness is a part of us, we have free will
We know cause and effect exist in the universe. We can use this to gain control of a lot of things in our world: for instance, when I push the letter “A” on my touchscreen, the letter “A” appears on my screen due to these cause/effect systems we have set up.
However, we know that the universe is not entirely describable via cause and effect. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle precludes us from fully observing all aspects of a quantum system, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem shows that our knowledge of the universe will always be incomplete, and Schrödinger's Cat shows us the absurdity of trying to make concrete claims about observed phenomena using probabilistic models.
If the universe was purely deterministic and we were theoretically able to gain all knowledge of it, there would not be free will. But this is not the universe we live in. The universe we live in is one where:
If events in the universe were fully deterministic, then free will would be an illusion, because everything could be traced to an earlier set of causes, and decisions would not actually exist. If events in the universe were random, free will would have no meaning, because decisions would be arbitrary.
But we live in a universe where things are not immutable, but things are not equally likely. I can roll a fair set of dice for randomness, or I can weight them to create an uneven probability, or I can select a number to eliminate probability altogether. And we all make decisions with limited observations using incomplete knowledge that will only have a partial effect to affect the probabilities of future events. And that means we shape events without controlling them, so all of our decisions have meaning. We can also tell objectively based on observations that some decisions are better than others, while at the same time conceding that no decision is 100% objectively right or wrong.
And that, my friend, is free will.
The very concept of the Self, presumably the director of free will, in context, is under threat. Eastern philosophies has held this position for centuries - now science seems like the idea :
https://bigthink.com/the-well/eastern-philosophy-neuroscience-no-self/
I don’t suppose any of you meditate by any chance ?
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