jeudi 20 janvier 2011

Why would they be that anyway? (Quantum Physics & mind debate)

by Hans G. Lundahl on Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 4:23pm

Here is what I found on top of a document:

It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity. More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle's response (to be pedantic-the universe's response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of the universe.


Source document

  1. Why would a particle be "determined by the entire previous history of the universe" anyway?
  2. What does that mean, even in determinism, as opposed to being determined by a strand of causation reaching back to the beginning of the universe?
  3. Why would a particle determined by free-will as opposed to being determined by the entire previous history of the universe be in itself free-willed? I smell a terminological error:

    • a) this supposes any behaviour of anything or any event is either determined by the entire previous history of the universe or free-willed.
    • b) what if beside the two there were behaviours and events determined by free-will?
    • c) what if there are not even any events determined by the entire previous history of the universe but only those that constitute acts of free-will and those that are determined by acts of free-will?


So far my challenge. To JR, known also from two debates on geocentrism (my stance) and heliocentrism (his).

1) ‎scripsi: Why would a particle be "determined by the entire previous history of the universe" anyway?

respondisti: "Cause and effect. In essence Conway and Kochen are pointing out that we couldn't have free will in a clockwork universe. If it's all dictated by Newton's laws of motion and so forth then everything proceeds along like billiard balls with no free will to do otherwise."

a) cause and effect implies that every physical cause has its effect unless hindered: it does not imply that every physical effect has only physical causes.

resp: No, but whether physical or unphysical it would still be "a clockwork universe" if there was no true indeterminacy in either physical or unphysical form.

b) (see 2) a clockwork is interconnected, but even on an atheist view we would not have one clockwork universe, but a clockworks universe: even with an original clockwork at big bang, we would have a branching out into different independent clockworks, like the galaxies, like the solar systems, like each planet, like different places on earth:

[resp: Well yes, but ultimately all of these clockworks in the big bang would originate at a first cause back at the singularity.]

a man cannot be seen to be affected by storms on Venus or CO2 freezing on Mars, nor can a man in France be seen to be affected by everything that goes on around the Gulf of Mexico, though he is affected by weather, which is affected by Gulf Stream. But the Gulf Stream originating is only one thing of the things that go on in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf Stream is only one thing which affects the weather in France, and the weather is only one thing that affects a man i France.

resp:No but theoretically in a clockwork universe if we go back far enough all of these things would be caused by the same thing.

c) NOTHING is dictated BY Newton's laws. The question is if all is dictated ACCORDING TO Newton's laws by previous only physical causes. That does not only contradict a speculation about free will, it contradicts the most elementary piece of introspection even or especially if it is just glancing introspection in an extrovert person doing an extrovert thing.

resp:Yes, exactly, IF everything is dictated by Newton's laws then free will is impossible. That was the essence of Conway and Kochen's theorem. Basically if there is free will we must conclude that there is more than just Newton's laws.

‎2) scripsi: What does that mean, even in determinism, as opposed to being determined by a strand of causation reaching back to the beginning of the universe?

"It's the same thing really."

Not so. Under 1 b I stated the difference. Shall I take the response as meaning you do not consider the naturalistic view a clockwork universe but a clockworks universe, and "determined by all the previous history of the ENTIRE universe" a piece of loose terminology?

Ok yes, see I would think that everything would have a singular starting point. But yes that may also be valid -clockwork(s). So even if all of the casual chains are unlinked in a Newtonian world we could figure out the position and velocity of every particle at any point in time and then compute out how everything will behave for all points in time going out to eternity. And hence since everything would be predetermined there would be no room for free will.

‎3 general, scripsi: Why would a particle determined by free-will as opposed to being determined by the entire previous history of the universe be in itself free-willed? I smell a terminological error:

respondisti: "In itself it's not, but the idea is that if we have indeterminism in particles we might be able as minds to exploit this indeterminism in a special way so as to tap into it and give us "willed indeterminism" (ie. we will something which can not be predetermined by someone else)"

In that case it would be determined by indeterminacy of particles. Or?

In a sense yes, though the trick is that the indeterminacy would have to be exploited in such a way that it could be exploited by the mind.

A good thing to remember here is that at the quantum level you are not dealing with "particles" so much as you are wave-functions or "wavicles." It's not like a particle gets "a mind of its own" and randomly bumps into a mind causing it to do something that it wouldn't ordinarily do.

In particular in Penrose's model the mind is a special kind of wave-function that behaves in a certain way unlike any other kinds of wave-functions. In this case it's the same indeterminacy that you would get in any other quantum system, but you can exploit it because it's internal to you -the self-collapsing wave-function that is identical with your mind.


I have the feeling from your response, a will in your philosophy is not a prime reality in and of itself, but a human will is a product of particles in the brain.

[resp:It's not particles remember. That's the catch. Everything at the bottom is indeterministic in nature and precise location in time and space also break down. Particles exist in precise places in space and time, and so it's a misconception to think that these are particles in the proper sense of the word.

In a way everything seems to behave "mentally" far enough down -I'm presuming the patterns in the wave-function are ultimately the thoughts in God's mind.(because of Universal Orch-OR -like in my video) And then our minds are subsets within that. Now granted I'm a neutral monist and I think it's all information at the bottom -and minds are just special kinds of information, but there is a distinctly "mental" component to the world when you dig far enough down into it.
]

Behind this I do smell a dichotomy that is stated as the terminology I attribute you under 3 a: this supposes any behaviour of anything or any event is either determined by the entire previous history of the universe or free-willed.

Well not free-willed per se. Obviously you can have subatomic particles behave in indeterministic fashions which are not willed. But the point is that things are either deterministic of indeterministic, and that if we have free will it would be because we've found a way to tap into the indeterministic part of it and use it somehow.

‎3 b) scripsi: what if beside the two there were behaviours and events determined by free-will?

respondisti: "It's not "free-will" as such as the particles aren't minds in and of themselves, but they do display indeterminacy in the quantum regime."
Thank you for saying the particles are not minds in and of themselves. But leaving particles aside: can there in your general view of philosophy be something neither indetermined as in free-willed nor determined as in physically caused by physical causes only but determined by free-will?

Well the definition of free will is that it is both determined by free-will yet "indetermined" as observed from the outside. Meaning you can determine exactly what you will do but I can not predict what you will do -even in theory- from the outside. Only you know.

scripsi 3 c) what if there are not even any events determined by the entire previous history of the universe but only those that constitute acts of free-will and those that are determined by acts of free-will?

"That would be interesting, and in fact if my Universal Orch-OR theory about God is right then it would follow that EVERYTHING at some level or another would be freely chosen into existence by God, which would mean not predetermined by mechanical causation. Though it appears that God freely chose to collapse a series of quantum states which gives us a decent approximation of deterministic laws at most levels."

My point can be made further precise by the questions:

d) could there be a God that is free-willed and NOT a wave function of the Universe? If not, why not?

Yes and no lol. I'm sure there might be some who subscribe to my Universal Orch-OR model that say it couldn't be any other way, but as for what I believe personally let me try to see if I can break this down. It might be a bit tricky.
Basically the totality of existence -including stuff outside the universe is ultimately Platonic in nature -rather than material -I know it's surreal but just follow. And the largest Platonic form which encompasses all others is ultimately God's Mind. Within that we have different modal realities:

Wiki: Modal Realism

and one of these modal realities happens to be our own which is defined by the Schrodinger equation. Now a mind in my philosophy is an "isomorphic information pattern." And you can have nesting isomorphisms all the way up and all the way down. The isomorphic structure we are in is defined by the Schrodinger equation, and hence any isomorphic information patterns we see will automatically have to be wave-functions collapsing by Orch-OR.

So in a sense yes God's mind (as viewed from our end) has to be a Universal Orch-OR, but that's because of how our universe is defined. However God's mind might appear differently to universe's defined by different sets of mathematics than ours.

In a sense I may have mislead a little bit by directly equating the Wave-function of the Universe with God's mind (but that is because the atheists will only accept what is immediate to them). Now to be sure it is God's mind, but it is the "lower bound" of God's mind -only the part we can observe from this end.


e) could in the universe there be other free wills than God's?

Also yes and no lol! They would exist but in a sense would be part of God's will as well. This seems like it might contradict a first, but it has to do with my "nesting isomorphisms" thing. Basically our minds are contained in God's mind the same way that nesting Russian dolls contain others. And so God's free will would ultimately be the only free will, but in a sense we would share it as God's free will would overlap or perhaps "superpose" our own.

‎4 ) I think I will cut the strands here and give a general short answer. Leading up, if you like to new strands:

a) A "non-physical" cause would still be a cause. But it may well be a free-willed cause.

Well let's suppose you have that. So you have material causes as well as supernatural causes -and both with their rules. From those rules we can pre...dict what would happen -it doesn't matter if the causes are physical or not. If that is the case then we can not have free-will, because the whole idea is that you can't predict what someone will do with free-will.

The free wills need not follow deterministic rules.

The results from spiritual causes, including free-willed ones would, which would make the results predictable for anyone having beforehand access to the free decisions, i e to God omniscient.

To us the results would not be globally predictable.

You may predict what result a certain squeeze of thumb and index and a certain turn will do to the writing, but that does not mean you can predict what someone else will write.

Even a clockworks universe or a clockwork universe will be unpredictable since you simply do not have access to all interlocking strands of physical unfree causation.

b) Free will implies indeterminacy as to something. Not indeterminacy as to everything. A man deciding whether to look or not look at a woman is not deciding whether he is virile and what effects that look might have on him.

But the point that Kochen and Conway are getting at is that if we have free-will that can not be predicted, then we have to get that unpredictable element from somewhere. A clockwork universe does not give us an unpredictable element. A universe in which we have free will thus therefore have an unpredictable element somewhere buried in it.

The classical Christian answer is that the universe contains unpredictable elements, where God, angels, and human minds figure. Unpredictable not as in totally haphazard like exact chaos pattern of falling paint drops, but unpredictable as in indetermined. We experience that ourselves.

Why should the source of free wills be other than a free will?

c) A particle determined by free will is determined. Not by the "entire history of the universe" nor by a partial clockwork leading back to one original cause, but by a decision taking place within the history. Still counts as determined. The decision itself being indetermined.

Ok, scrap "determined." Replace it with predictable. Free-will would then be something which is not predictable yet determined.

Determined and predictable are not interchangeable.

A dancer is not determined by any clockworks to take p...art in the dance, he is thus indetermined, yet, if skillful, predictable. Which is my geocentric take on why stars and planets even if guided by angels follow predictable patterns of movement.

His feet are determined by his will. Not by an outside cause making the will obsolete. They are predictable insofar as the dance is.

The feet of a man walking are also determined and also by a free will, but very much less predictable.

And where each drop will fall if you drop a bucket of paint is entirely due to physical causes, or so it seems, but still unpredictable.

Free-will is an unpredictable thing, indetermined by outer causes except those that define the choice. Its results - moving hands - moving instruments - moving objects are determined by it. And sometimes calculable, sometimes not.

d) God is not determined by his creatures except insofar as he choses to be: and we are not free against God except insofar as he lets us. Still we have true own minds, true free wills.

Yes, like I said our free-will is overlapped or "superposed" by God's.

Neither overlapped nor superposed. Defined insofar as our creator defines what kind of free will we have and what kind of choices we have.

e) God has created only one world, though he could have created possible other worlds. (as against Giordano Bruno)

Hmm, No. As for this universe who knows, however there are definitely parallel worlds with versions of us playing out different histories in those universes. Quantum mechanics tells us this and the existence of parallel universes has even been exploited to produce quantum computers.

If you want further proof I have something to show you if you'd like in private. Though I would prefer if you not show anyone else.


I saw that proof, they are not really proof of parallel universes.

I do not know what a quantum computer is, but if you attribute its observed behaviour to "parallel universes" I think you are as far off the mark as an ordinary computer being looked at as "good at mathematics" or a translating programme being looked at as linguistically competent. I Smell a terminological or logical very red herring here.

on to second part of debate ...

12 commentaires:

  1. He answers pretty much in detail. I answer then only a few things, that clearly state his philosophy behind the rest.

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  2. "According to Freud and Jung."

    Freud tends to be wrong, but I've been doing some studying and from that and personal experience I'm pretty sure Jung is right.

    ""Information does not exist unless the wave-function collapses." That is what I deny precisely."

    Well that automatically follows from the Bekenstein bound. The holographic principle demonstrates that all information that exists in collapsed form. Think of it like this: When Bishop Berkeley's God is not dreaming of something it does not exist.

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  3. "It does not prove information as percieved or known is the same thing as a wave function or collapse of such."

    Well this conclusion follows from two things. First the limit on the amount of information we can extract from something before it turns into a black hole, and secondly the relationship between the surface of the event horizon of a black hole and it's information content. As it turns out these two things are equal. The conclusion from this is that information only exists in what is collapsed. If something isn't collapsed it exists as the space between a set of outlines. (an interesting side-note to this is that it reduces the physical world to non-material structure.

    As it turns out this result is important anyway if one believes that God's omniscience is possible. Watch this video from 2:15 - 4:15:
    video

    "I deleted that letter, and it does not prove that mind is quantum mechanical as opposed to not mechanical at all in nature."

    It's not proving it per se, just saying that IF we have free will THEN our minds must be quantum mechanical -and we have free will.

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  4. ‎"The free wills need not follow deterministic rules."

    That's why we are looking for indeterministic rules.

    "The results from spiritual causes, including free-willed ones would, which would make the results predictable for anyone having beforehand access to the free decisions, i e to God omniscient."

    Um, God does indeed know these things, but that is not how God knows these things. God knows these things not because they aren't unpredictable, but because God is outside of time and therefore need not predict them in the first place.

    "You may predict what result a certain squeeze of thumb and index and a certain turn will do to the writing, but that does not mean you can predict what someone else will write."

    Exactly. If I had all of the data written down about how every particle in the universe is moving at a certain point, and the laws of physics were completely determinate though I could. Since we can't it means the laws of physics can't be entirely determinate.

    "Even a clockworks universe or a clockwork universe will be unpredictable since you simply do not have access to all interlocking strands of physical unfree causation."

    Oh yes, but we are talking about in theory. To have free will would mean that we could not predict what someone would do even if we had the sum total of information about everything in the universe at a given point in time.

    "The classical Christian answer is that the universe contains unpredictable elements, where God, angels, and human minds figure."

    Exactly! However we also have to square that with the a priori philosophic knowledge that reality is made of one substance. Hence why it is secretly my opinion that the interface between the natural and the supernatural occurs at the quantum scale.

    "Unpredictable not as in totally haphazard like exact chaos pattern of falling paint drops, but unpredictable as in indetermined. We experience that ourselves."

    Oh no, obviously indeterminism used for free will, will not exactly mirror the random indeterminism of ordinary wave-functions. What I'm saying though is that they still do share indeterminism in common -just manifested in different ways. One appears controlled the other appears purely stochastic, but it stems from the same source.

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  5. "Why should the source of free wills be other than a free will?"

    Who says it isn't? Remember since we are stuck due to our human limitations looking at this only from a physical point of view it is entirely possible, that our explanation is merely an explanation of the phenomenon only terms of our empirical categories. It may be possible that it has other explanations in terms of other "noumenal" categories.

    In other words we are explaining it through the "lens" available to us. And while valid and perhaps fundamental insofar as that lens is concerned it may not be fundamental on the grand scale. Or it may turn out that these two explanations may in reality be equivalent when viewed in the right way. It might be like the story of the blind man and the elephant in a way.

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  6. "Determined and predictable are not interchangeable."

    That's why I'm saying to scrap determined. Predictable may be a better way to explain what I am driving at.

    "And where each drop will fall if you drop a bucket of paint is entirely due to physical causes, or so it seems, but still unpredictable."

    Well if we lived in Newton's universe it would be predictable in theory -though not as a practical matter. However we've since learned that Newton wasn't right at all scales, and tiny amounts of indeterminism at one level can "bleed upwards" into changes at another level.

    "Free-will is an unpredictable thing, indetermined by outer causes except those that define the choice. Its results - moving hands - moving instruments - moving objects are determined by it. And sometimes calculable, sometimes not."

    Yes, exactly. I'm just trying to find the very peculiar mechanism for that phenomenon.

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  7. ‎4 d) "Yes, like I said our free-will is overlapped or "superposed" by God's."
    "Neither overlapped nor superposed. Defined insofar as our creator defines what kind of free will we have and what kind of choices we have."

    That's actually compatible with what I was saying. It's like nesting Russian dolls in a sense. God is the biggest Russian doll and defines the parameters of all of the other Russian dolls beneath. We are the Russian dolls which exist somewhere down a ways. That is why I was saying that our free-will was "superposed" (and therefore defined by) by God's.

    ‎"I saw that proof, they are not really proof of parallel universes."

    Well where was the information regarding the keys coming from? It certainly wasn't this universe -I hadn't even touched the keyhole in this universe yet.

    "I do not know what a quantum computer is, but if you attribute its observed behaviour to "parallel universes"

    Parallel universes were the entire basis upon which quantum computers were engineered. Here are some good links on quantum computing and parallel universes to provide context here: link 1 & link 2

    Now as it turns out there is in fact an entirely a priori argument for the existence of other universes (though these may not all be of the quantum mechanical variety).

    First of all everything in existence is made of information or "Platonic stuff." This should be a rigorous proof of this:
    youtube link

    Now this being the case we are lead to the somewhat surreal conclusion that we are living in an abstraction but don't realize it as such as we are inside of it rather than imagining it. If this is the case then all possible abstractions correspond to their own worlds via modal realism:
    Modal realism, wiki (again)

    If Platonic monism (or informationalism) holds then it also follows that all possible worlds that could exist do in fact exist in their own modal reality. Our world is then one of these possible worlds.

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  8. Ending his answer:

    More later, but for now (and this is somewhat off topic) check this out: link

    It is interesting to note that this guy became a famous physicist before he came to this conclusion -for his work deriving the famous "Tipler cylinder" time travel mechanism from Einstein's field equations.

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  9. Here come my answers to selected points:

    "Remember since we are stuck due to our human limitations looking at this only from a physical point of view it is entirely possible, that our explanation is merely an explanation of the phenomenon only terms of our empirical categories."

    Human does not equal physical only. And reason does not equal empirical only. And empirical categories do not equal either materialism or monism or berkeleyanism.

    "However we also have to square that with the a priori philosophic knowledge that reality is made of one substance."

    A priori, yes, but that does not make it either philosophic or knowledge.
    So, where do you get that from?
    "Hence why it is secretly my opinion that the interface between the natural and the supernatural occurs at the quantum scale."

    Because of this mania for explaining will and body correlation in mechanistic terms.
    Your answers convince me of one thing: when physicists say they are convinced of Einstein or of Quantum Physics, they are not deriving that from empiric fact, but from prejudice of a bad philosophy. Spinoza, Kant, at best Berkely.

    And when you deny the possibility of angels conducting planets around a sun itself conducted around earth each day and lagging behind the zodiak one full circle each year, or when you demand what wave function of other condition of brain corresponds to mind, or when you ask by what mechanism will gets around to body: you show only that you are a bad philosopher. A Monist.

    I have heard this is not all too uncommon among Jews. Thankfully, it is not a Catholic thing. If a Catholic comes to agree with all that, he counts as an apostate. And if he agrees not with that but with your scientific results, it may be because he counts on your deriving them strictly from empiric evidence and good logic, when in fact you derive them from Monist Philosophy.

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  10. Here is part of JR's description on FB (saw it when unfriending him):

    Religious views: Christian - Protestant with some neoplatonism mixed in (think C.S. Lewis)

    After above comments I think it is about reverse proportions as far as views are involved. But that does not per se necessarily mean he does not regard Jesus as his saviour and so ... but he got Miracles by CSL a bit wrong.

    Here is his politics:

    Political Views : Straussian Neoconservative

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  11. For one remark on that latter end, I did take the opportunity to unfriend him.

    Not that I am a leftist, but I consider that the wrong kind of rightist.

    I also consider Monism a hideous thing for a Christian to embrace, and it took 6 + 5 days of debate last year plus 15 days on and off this year before he admitted what I suspected: his take on mind and matter is viscerally unflinching Monism taken so for granted.

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