At Mind Matters News: John Horgan at Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will?

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 16, 2022

Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics}

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Physicists take sides: Sabine Hossenfelder thinks superdeterminism enables quantum mechanics to kill free will; George Ellis disagrees:

One of the most interesting science writers of our era is John Horgan, who has managed to infuriate so many of the right people (to infuriate) while giving the rest of us something to ponder. In a recent column in Scientific American he takes on the question of whether quantum mechanics (quantum physics) rules out free will.
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Einstein’s suggestion that the moon “would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord” doesn’t really resolve anything because the moon isn’t thinking anything at all. For that matter, few ponder whether particles, viruses, or termites have free will. The problem is making arguments against free will coincide with human experience. Nor can we simply say, “People just want to believe they have free will”. Sometimes we want to believe that. But other times (when we are looking for excuses).

We don’t want to believe that.

Horgan sides, somewhat tentatively, with free will. He notes that humans are more than just heaps of particles. Higher levels of complexity enable genuinely new qualities. What humans can do is not merely a more complex version of what amoebas can do — in turn, a more complex version of what electrons can do. Greater complexity can involve genuinely new qualities. A philosopher would say that he is not a reductionist.
But that also means that mental phenomena are a reality. Materialists won’t stay comfortable with that for long. We haven’t heard the last of this debate.
News, “At Scientific American: Does quantum mechanics kill free will” at Mind Matters News (March 16, 2022)

Takehome: Horgan’s arguments against superdeterminism work quite well but they require a world in which the human mind really exists. Is he prepared to go there?

Mind Matters News offers a number of articles on free will by neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor including

Can physics prove there is no free will? No, but it can make physicists incoherent when they write about free will. It’s hilarious. Sabine Hossenfelder misses the irony that she insists that people “change their minds” by accepting her assertion that they… can’t change their minds.

Does “alien hand syndrome” show that we don’t really have free will? One woman’s left hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Did it? Alien hand syndrome doesn’t mean that free will is not real. In fact, it clarifies exactly what free will is and what it isn’t.

But is determinism true? Does science show that we fated to want whatever we want? Modern science—both theoretical and experimental—strongly supports the reality of free will.

Comments

DD, this is the thread I see as active as my internet came back up. I respond here. KFkairosfocus_{March 17, 2022
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KF, did you perhaps post your last comment to the wrong thread? Do you have any input on Strawson's "Basic Argument" against free will?dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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Sev, no self-referentially incoherent argument can ever be compelling, see below. DD, computationalism fails as a model of mind that is sufficiently rational, responsible and credible to freely reason and know; computers are rationally blind but programmed by the rational. I have repeatedly pointed to the Smith two tier controller model for how that can work, see https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/reference-the-smith-model-an-architecture-for-cybernetics-and-mind-body-free-will-determinism-compatibilism-analysis/ As for oh my abilities expressed in my rational, responsible, conscience guided nature are a gift from my originator so I am not free, that is ill thought through. The issue is going concern and ability to go one way as another as opposed to mere stochastic dynamic process. Without which we cannot even be rational. BTW, there is a suggestion that quantum influence can and does allow for in effect fifth dimension influence on the brain body cyberloop, which is computational. REFER, Haldane:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For
if [p:] my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain [–> taking in DNA, epigenetics and matters of computer organisation, programming and dynamic-stochastic processes; notice, "my brain," i.e. self referential] ______________________________ [ THEN] [q:] I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. [--> indeed, blindly mechanical computation is not in itself a rational process, the only rationality is the canned rationality of the programmer, where survival-filtered lucky noise is not a credible programmer, note the funcionally specific, highly complex organised information rich code and algorithms in D/RNA, i.e. language and goal directed stepwise process . . . an observationally validated adequate source for such is _____ ?] [Corollary 1:] They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence [Corollary 2:] I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. [--> grand, self-referential delusion, utterly absurd self-falsifying incoherence]
In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. Cf. here on (and esp here) on the self-refutation by self-falsifying self referential incoherence and on linked amorality.]
KFkairosfocus_{March 17, 2022
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Perhaps an example would make this argument more clear. Imagine I am deciding whether or not to cheat on my income taxes. I might think about how much I desire to have more money for myself, or ponder what I believe to be the chances of getting caught, or my belief that cheating is immoral and my desire to be moral, and so on. If I simply made my choice without deliberating about any reasons - like a mental coin flip - then I would not be making the sort of choice that we value as being free. But if my choice is the result of such a deliberation, then it is dependent upon those aspects of my nature that I did not myself choose.dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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BA77, I don't believe you have engaged the argument. Which of the numbered statements do you take issue with? Is it that you don't believe that our deliberative choices must be reason-responsive?dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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"I think it is a serious argument," I do not.bornagain77_{March 17, 2022
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BA77,
Well saying that, “An agent’s nature consists of their beliefs, desires, intentions, commitments, values, priorities, hopes, fears…” pretty much completely removes the argument from being an argument for purely physical determinism,
Correct - this argument has nothing to do with physical determinism.
The argument, since it is not an truly argument for physical determinism, is very much similar to trying to fallaciously argue that God does not really have free will since it is against His ‘spiritual’ nature to do evil, and He does not do evil, and therefore He has no free will.
This argument has nothing to do with the "spiritual", or "evil", or "God" either.
In short, the argument is too broad in its definition of ‘nature’ to be taken seriously as a valid argument against the reality of free will.
I think it is a serious argument, and clear about what deliberative choices must be based upon.dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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"Can anyone spot a flaw in this argument?" Well saying that, "An agent’s nature consists of their beliefs, desires, intentions, commitments, values, priorities, hopes, fears…" pretty much completely removes the argument from being an argument for purely physical determinism, and against free will in the traditional sense, since all those 'natural' attributes can be readily classified as 'spiritual' rather than physical attributes. The argument, since it is not truly an argument for physical determinism, is very much similar to trying to fallaciously argue that God does not really have free will since it is against His 'spiritual' nature to do evil, and since He does not do evil, therefore He has no free will. The argument is basically assuming its conclusion. Though one's 'spiritual' nature may very well constrain what types of choices one may be likely to make in any given situation, one's 'spiritual' nature certainly does not dictate what specific free will choices one will make in every given instance. In short, the argument is too broad in its definition of 'nature' to be taken seriously as a valid argument against the reality of free will.bornagain77_{March 17, 2022
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Seversky, My argument does not assume determinism, nor does it attack libertarianism; it makes no claims about causality at all. Rather, it argues that the sort of free choices worth wanting are reason-responsive, and that the reasons we have for choosing ultimately cannot themselves be of our own choosing. As for why we believe our reasons are self-chosen: we are wrong about all sorts of things until we think about them carefully.dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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The arguments against libertarian free will are compelling but my question would be the old one, if we are wholly determined, why do we have the sense or experience - which we all do - of exercising free will? If the cosmos is deterministic, why was that experience determined to be thus? What purpose does it serve?Seversky_{March 17, 2022
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I'm curious to see what the response here is to Galen Strawson's "basic argument" against free will (or, at least, the sort of free will that confers moral responsibility). Here is my own version of that argument; I would like to see what counter-arguments there are: 1) This argument uses "free will" to mean something that is not physically determined, nor random. The type of choices we're interested in are those made deliberately by a rational agent, not choices that are made for no reason. 2) Deliberative, free choices depend on the agent's nature, or the way the agent is at the time of the choice. An agent's nature consists of their beliefs, desires, intentions, commitments, values, priorities, hopes, fears... in other words any mental aspect of the agent that can contribute to their decisions. 3) In order for one's choice to be free, therefore, one must have freely chosen one's own nature. 4) One cannot choose one's own nature, in the same way one cannot lift oneself up by their own bootstraps (the idea is known as causa sui -self-causing - a logical contradiction). In order to choose one's own desires, for example, one would already need to have the desires that supported that choice, and so on, ad infinitum. 5) Since we cannot freely choose our natures, and our deliberative choices depend on our natures, we do not have free will. Can someone explain a flaw in this argument?dogdoc_{March 17, 2022
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First off, the denial of free will by Atheistic materialists is, (and to use Hossenfelder's own words denying free will against her), “logically incoherent nonsense.”
,,, "Hossenfelder calls free will “logically incoherent nonsense.” - John Horgan, Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?" Scientific American (Match 10, 2022)
First off, logic is itself immaterial. As Dr. Egnor points out, “logic — is neither material nor natural.,,, logic,, is outside of any naturalistic frame.”
Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: The hallmarks of the mind — intentionality, qualia, restricted access, the generation of propositions and logic, etc., have nothing whatsoever to do with matter. Matter, as understood by physics, isn’t intentional — it isn’t about anything. Matter is not inherently subjective, it doesn’t generate propositions or logic, etc.,,, Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. - per Evolution News
Secondly, since logic itself is immaterial, then the claim from atheistic materialists that all their thoughts are determined (solely) by the prior material/chemical states of their brain undermines any claim that they are making, (and/or that they are even capable of making), logically coherent arguments in the first place. As Martin Cothran explains, “By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself.”
Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. - per Evolution News
And as George Ellis succinctly put it, "If they (physicists) don’t (have free will), then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say."
Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will - July 27, 2014 Excerpt: And free will?: Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will? Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options. I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-george-ellis-on-the-importance-of-philosophy-and-free-will/
As a shining example of just how logically incoherent the atheist’s denial of free will actually is, the following statement by militant atheist Jerry Coyne should literally be the number one example of a logically self-refuting argument that is given in philosophy 101 classes.
“Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it.,,,” – Jerry Coyne – The Illusion of Free Will – Sam Harris – 2012
As should be needless to point out to Jerry Coyne, and to other atheistic materialists, Coyne's claim that free will is an illusion precludes the very possibility that people are free to choose to believe, or not believe, that we have free will. To repeat Cothran, it is "a freedom denied by the claim itself." Moreover, besides the denial of free will being self-refuting 'logically incoherent nonsense', neuroscience itself clearly supports the reality of free will. Specifically, the research of Benjamin Libet and others, (directly contrary to what atheists try to claim), unequivocally points to freedom of the will.
How Libet's Free Will Research is Misrepresented (by atheists) - March 2020 https://mindmatters.ai/2020/03/how-libets-free-will-research-is-misrepresented/
Besides neuroscience, the empirical findings of quantum mechanics now also support the reality of free will. Specifically, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence”, and/or the “freedom of choice”, loophole.
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that the experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: This experiment pushes back to at least approx. 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality, and or the 'Divine Will', of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned),,,,
“Newton’s Rejection of the “Newtonian World View”: The Role of Divine Will in Newton’s Natural Philosophy – (Davis, 1991) Abstract Excerpt: Finally, Newton held that, since the world is a product of divine freedom rather than necessity, the laws of nature must be inferred from the phenomena of nature, not deduced from metaphysical axioms — as both Descartes and Leibniz were wont to do. http://home.messiah.edu/~tdavis/newton.htm “That (contingency) was a huge concept (that was important for the founding of modern science). The historians of science call that ‘contingency’. The idea that nature has an order that is built into it. But it is an order that is contingent upon the will of the Creator. It could have been otherwise. Just as there are many ways to make a timepiece, or a clock,,, there are many different ways God could have ordered the universe. And it is up to us not to deduce that order from first principles, or from some intuitions that we have about how nature ought to be, but rather it is important to go out and see how nature actually is.” – Stephen Meyer – 5:00 minute mark – Andrew Klavan and Stephen Meyer Talk God and Science https://idthefuture.com/1530/
,,, when we rightly allow the Agent causality, and or the 'Divine Will', of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned), (and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
December 2021 - When scrutinizing some of the many fascinating details of the Shroud of Turin, we find that both General Relativity, i.e. gravity, and Quantum Mechanics were both dealt with in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/in-time-for-american-thanksgiving-stephen-meyer-on-the-frailty-of-scientific-atheism/#comment-741600 Jesus Christ’s Resurrection from the Dead as the correct "Theory of Everything" - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpn2Vu8--eE
Verse:
Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
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