Free Will for People implies Free Will for Particles?

[selfAdjoint]

http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0604/0604079.pdf" the currently much discussed Free Will theorem, which deduces the implication in the name if this thread from three plausible axioms.

Based on an EPR type thought experiment, it makes the point that if we allow the experimenters to set up the experiment without being deterministically constrained, that is, by free will, then the subsequent behavior of the entangled particles will be free to exactly the same degree. Free will is than a consequence for particles generally.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The paper is just packed with goodies. I can't resist sharing this:

Every experimentalist knows that it is in fact extremely difficult to maintain coherence — it requires delicate experiments like those of Mach-Zehnder interferometry. Consideration of such experiments has led us to believe that the criterion that decides between wave-like and corpuscular behavior is what we may call the texture of the surroundings. Roughly speaking, only sufficiently “smooth” textures allow it to behave as a wave, while “rough” ones force it to
become a particle.

Exactly what this means depends on the circumstances in a way that we
do not pretend to understand. Thus in the interferometric context, the half-silvered beam-splitters permit wave-like behavior, so count as smooth, while detectors force the collapse to a particle, i.e., are rough.

However, the Free Will Theorem tells us something very important, namely
that although a “rough” texture forces some decision to be made, it does not actually choose which decision that is. We may regard such a texture as a tribunal that may require a particle to answer, but may not force it to make any particular answer. A future theory may reasonably be expected to describe more fully exactly which “textures” will cause reductions, but the Free Will Theorem shows that no such theory will correctly predict the results of these reductions:-

Textural tests may demand but not command.

 

[nrqed]

...if we allow the experimenters to set up the experiment without being deterministically constrained, that is, by free will, then the subsequent ...

This is not addressing directly the post (sorry) but I wanted to ask a question:
I don't see why "not being deterministically constrained" implies "by free will". I could see how this could have been argued before the advent of QM but I thought that this was precisely the most remarkable implication of the discovery of QM: that non-deterministic did *not* imply free will.

So, pre-QM I could see how one could argue that "non-deterministic" would have led to the existence of free will. But post-QM, it seems that this leap is not warranted.

So I would say that maybe someone's thoughts and actions are not deterministically determined, but that does not imply free will.

It seems that the very concept of free will would necessarily involve something *outside of physics*. I really don't see how a willed decision could suddenly arise out of nowhere. This is totally different from the collapse of wavefunction which involves randomness. Free will involves the very notion that one "decides" out of the blue something, which could never ever fit within any physical theory (probabilistic or not) I could imagine.

The closest to "decision making" that one could get would be to say something like "I am about to eat. My mind is in a state

0.5 |I will decide to eat pizza> + 0.866 |I will decide to eat chinese>

And then there is collapse and I end up deciding to have pizza. But of course, there is no free will at all here.

I just don't see how any physical theory could incorporate the very notion of free will.

Anyway, sorry for the babbling :-)

Pat

 

[selfAdjoint]

This is not addressing directly the post (sorry) but I wanted to ask a question:
I don't see why "not being deterministically constrained" implies "by free will". I could see how this could have been argued before the advent of QM but I thought that this was precisely the most remarkable implication of the discovery of QM: that non-deterministic did *not* imply free will.

Yes, this precise criticism has been made of their view. They make some attempt to reply/counter it in the paper, but I don't want to over-summarize their conclusions. As the saying goes, read the whole thing. Their precise definition of a change of an individual's state being "free" is "Not a determinate function of the information available in the individual's past light cone."

 

[Rader]

http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0604/0604079.pdf" the currently much discussed Free Will theorem, which deduces the implication in the name if this thread from three plausible axioms.

Based on an EPR type thought experiment, it makes the point that if we allow the experimenters to set up the experiment without being deterministically constrained, that is, by free will, then the subsequent behavior of the entangled particles will be free to exactly the same degree. Free will is than a consequence for particles generally.

Could you explain to me what this means, are they actually saying that a Janus model experimentally indicates that effects in one frame make causes in another? Now how is that? It seems to me that, that is only possible, if there are undiscovered laws.

What happens is paradoxical, but the Janus models, even though we don’t believe them, show that it is perfectly possible; and experiments that have actually been performed confirm it. So we must just learn to accept it, as we accepted the earlier paradoxes of relativity theory.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Could you explain to me what this means, are they actually saying that a Janus model experimentally indicates that effects in one frame make causes in another? Now how is that? It seems to me that, that is only possible, if there are undiscovered laws.

What happens is paradoxical, but the Janus models, even though we don’t believe them, show that it is perfectly possible; and experiments that have actually been performed confirm it. So we must just learn to accept it, as we accepted the earlier paradoxes of relativity theory.

No, the Janus model is only true in reference to a frame, so you could prove QM is true for Alice using Bohm's model (which is their prime illustration of a Janus model), AND you can prove QM is true for Bob using the Bohm model, but because Bohm's model is not invariant under Lorentz transformations, you can't use it over the spacetime range that includes both Alice and Bob at once. But C and K say, "That's OK, as long as all we ask Bohm to do is verify the QM model with the projection postulate". Those are local things. If they are true for Alice and Bob separately that's all we need to know.

The Janus models are not factual in the broader context in the same way that a flat map is not true on the scale of the Earth's curvature; but the Janus models suffice to prove the quantum model is factual just as a flat map showing that Main Street intersects Elm Street can be verified locally, and you can use it to verify a globe there by showing the globe and the map agree on the intersection..

 

[moving finger]

if indeed there exist any experimenters with a modicum of free will, then elementary particles must have their own share of this valuable commodity

Is this the “elan vital” equivalent for free will?

(Out of respect, I shall resist the temptation to roll on the floor laughing)

How should an elementary particle exhibit its free will, except by behaving indeterministically?

Are we to conclude that human free will arises from the indeterministic behaviour of elementary particles?

MF

 

[moving finger]

It seems that the very concept of free will would necessarily involve something *outside of physics*.

This is a polite way of saying that the concept of free will is incoherent and irrational.
It seems to me that the concept of free will not only requires something "outside of physics", but also something "outside of logic".

MF

 

[selfAdjoint]

No there is no elan vital or additional ghost in their approach. Nor does it turn on human feelings as in compatibilism. It is just a logical deduction; if you assume that human experimenters have the freedom to set up their equipment in an unpredetermined way, then it follows that the particles have just as much freedom in how they will interact.

So it is perfectly possible to assert the contrapositive: If particles are not free then nor are human beings. But that is an assertion, you haven't demonstrated particles are unfree (in the special sense of the term they used, which as nrqed remarked other people just call quantum indeterminism).

 

[moving finger]

No there is no elan vital or additional ghost in their approach. Nor does it turn on human feelings as in compatibilism. It is just a logical deduction; if you assume that human experimenters have the freedom to set up their equipment in an unpredetermined way, then it follows that the particles have just as much freedom in how they will interact.

So it is perfectly possible to assert the contrapositive: If particles are not free then nor are human beings. But that is an assertion, you haven't demonstrated particles are unfree (in the special sense of the term they used, which as nrqed remarked other people just call quantum indeterminism).

As a staunch determinist, I have no problem equating the human notion of "free will" with "indeterminism" - but I think a libertarian free will supporter would reject the idea.

The HUP clearly shows us that we cannot "demonstrate" unequivocally that "particles are unfree" in the sense of being indeterministic. The HUP is a fundamental limit to our epistemology which means we can neither prove nor disprove determinism nor indeterminism (contrary to the claims of many QM interpretations).

I can, however, demonstrate quantum determinacy in particular cases. If I take a spin 1/2 particle (eg electron) and "prepare it" so that it is "spin up", then when I measure its spin in the vertical direction it will be "up". QM tells us that if we do nothing to the electron and at a later time measure the spin again in the vertical direction, there is a probability of unity (ie certainty) that we will again measure "spin up". If this is not quantum determinism, then what is it?

Best Regards

MF

 

[selfAdjoint]

I can, however, demonstrate quantum determinacy in particular cases. If I take a spin 1/2 particle (eg electron) and "prepare it" so that it is "spin up", then when I measure its spin in the vertical direction it will be "up". QM tells us that if we do nothing to the electron and at a later time measure the spin again in the vertical direction, there is a probability of unity (ie certainty) that we will again measure "spin up". If this is not quantum determinism, then what is it?

In a truly deterministic world there would be no "if". If we had the freedom to do nothing, the particle was also free. Suppose we believed we had done nothing and measured the particle agin and found its spin along our chosen axis to be down, would we conclude
a) The particle just decided to change
b) Some other local interaction disturbed the particle
c) The particle was, unknown to us, entangled, and some remote interaction occurred.
?

We could always save the appearances, which doesn't make the example a very good proof of an ontological certainty.

 

[Tsunami]

I'm reluctant to read this, as I don't see how this ever makes sense.

I think it's ridiculous to equate the free will of a system of particles (ie. people) with particles themselves.

First off, I don't see how the particles that are determining the experimenters free will can ever be incorporated in this explanation: unless you believe there is some kind of Experimenter determining the experimenters.

I'm willing to grant them the possibility that free will of the experimenters implies free will for the particles they experiment with; however, this is a wholly different free will than that most philosophers discuss about ie. free will of a system to decide about itself.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I'm reluctant to read this, as I don't see how this ever makes sense.

Well if you won't read it, I don't see how you feel justified in commenting on it. Don't depend on my posts for its content because I have just highlighted my own conclusions. There is not one mystical thread in the whole paper, it is just logical developments from three plausible axioms describing the entanglement of quantum systems.

 

[moving finger]

In a truly deterministic world there would be no "if".

But there indeed would be! The conditional "If" simply reflects our epistemic ignorance (the determinability of the world), it does NOT necessarily reflect any ontic indeterminism. One can have a 100% completely (ontically) deterministic world which would still be (epistemically) indeterminable from the perspective of the agents operating within that world. In such a case, these agents are quite right to use conditional expressions including the word "if", because they are simply reflecting their own ignorance of the fine details of how their world works. But their ignorance of the details does not mean their world is indeterministic.

Suppose we believed we had done nothing and measured the particle agin and found its spin along our chosen axis to be down, would we conclude
a) The particle just decided to change
b) Some other local interaction disturbed the particle
c) The particle was, unknown to us, entangled, and some remote interaction occurred.

We can perform the relevant experiments, and we can attempt to investigate (b) and (c) because both of these should be amenable to experiment.

(Indeed, (c) is already ruled out because we have already measured the spin as being up, in the "preparation" part of the experiment, thus eliminating any entanglement).

If we rule out (b) and (c), and find that the spin is still "down" then we might be willing to agree that (a) is a possible plausible explanation.

My point is that the conventional understanding of QM says that in absence of (b) and (c), the spin will be up. If we perform the experiment and find the spin down then we have demonstrated a violation of the predictions of conventional QM.

I don't think there is anything in the Conway & Kochen paper which suggests they believe the predictions of conventional QM is violated.

MF

 

[moving finger]

Well if you won't read it, I don't see how you feel justified in commenting on it. Don't depend on my posts for its content because I have just highlighted my own conclusions. There is not one mystical thread in the whole paper, it is just logical developments from three plausible axioms describing the entanglement of quantum systems.

After reading the Conway & Kochen paper again, I couldn't stop laughing.

Then I realized their paper is dated March 31st. If they had waited just one more day then I could have understood what the paper was all about.

Let me quote some choice phrases from their paper :

we use only a miniscule amount of human free will to deduce free will

Is this human free will supposed to be something like the Philosopher's stone which converts lead to gold?

Then they try to suggest that whether quantum objects behave like waves or particles depends on the "roughness" of their environment!

Exactly what this means ... we do not pretend to understand

At least they are honest! This is not science, it's a joke!

the responses of the particles are equally not functions of the information accessible to them

What else could they be suggesting, except plain and simple indeterminism? (What else IS indeterminism if it is not absence of ontic correlation with past information?). Oh but no, they claim (without any supporting argument) that this is something different, it is not simply indeterminism, it is instead this magical "free will".

experimenters ... choose the settings ... in a way that is not determined by past history

Again, for Conway and Kochen, this is not indeterminism, this is instead some kind of magical "free will". What is the difference? Do they explain?

we find ourselves unable to give an operational definition of either "free" or "random"

No wonder they avoid giving an operational definition, because there is no difference in the definitions! Random means (to my mind) "absence of ontic correlation with past information". What does "free" mean for Conway and Kochen? In their own words it means :

experimenters ... choose the settings ... in a way that is not determined by past history

How does this differ from random? D'uh!

And how finally do human brains make use of this "particulate free will" which appears in the guise of randomness (but in most cases simply cancels itself out on the macroscopic scale)?

The authors strongly believe... our brains prevent some of this cancellation, so allowing us to integrate what remains and producing our own free will

Metaphysical mumbo-jumbo! Where is the proposed mechanism which conjures up any kind of meaningful and consciously controlled "free will" from "random behaviour"? Conway & Kochen are completely silent on this.

With all due respect to a couple of Princeton mathematicians, this is not a "theorem of free will", it is a vain and desperate attempt to grasp at straws.

Finally :

we cannot prove our Free Will assumption - determinism...is logically possible"

One of the few sane and rational judgements in the entire paper.

All in all, a good April Fool's joke, but submitted just one day early!

MF

Humans put constraints on what they can achieve more often by their limited imaginations than by any limitations in the laws of physics (Alex Christie)

 

[Tsunami]

Well if you won't read it, I don't see how you feel justified in commenting on it. Don't depend on my posts for its content because I have just highlighted my own conclusions. There is not one mystical thread in the whole paper, it is just logical developments from three plausible axioms describing the entanglement of quantum systems.

If I don't agree with the premises, then I'm justified in asserting its falsity according to my opinion.

Now if one could show my disagreement to be unjustified, I might consider reading the argument.

 

[selfAdjoint]

If I don't agree with the premises, then I'm justified in asserting its falsity according to my opinion.

Now if one could show my disagreement to be unjustified, I might consider reading the argument.

The premises of the theorem are three statements which they call the SPIN axiom, The TWIN axiom, and the FIN axiom. Read the paper to find out what those are.

 

[selfAdjoint]

All in all, a good April Fool's joke, but submitted just one day early!

Well I think the connection between quantum indeterminancy of observers and particles is non-trivial, even if the authors somewhat naively identify that with free will! We often get this identification of QI and FW in even more naive form on these boards, and it helps to have a coherent statement to clarify what quantum indeterminancy entails.

 

[Tsunami]

The premises of the theorem are three statements which they call the SPIN axiom, The TWIN axiom, and the FIN axiom. Read the paper to find out what those are.

I do not agree with the premise that the free will of particles is implied by the free will for people. This means that proving there is no free will for particles, implies that there is no free will for people; which is of course false, as free will for people can be deterministically defined.

Of course, I can imagine we are talking about a wholly different definition of free will here; but to be honest, I don't see why I should care. The free will of particles is only interesting insofar as it proves the free will for people, and I don't see how this approach can ever do that.

 

[Lars Laborious]

I think the problem is how we define "free will". We (entangled particles as well as larger particle systems) all make decisions, but they are most likely a result of something allready determined. If not, they are random and of course that has nothing to do with decision making/free will - unless that's our definition of free will.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I do not agree with the premise that the free will of particles is implied by the free will for people. This means that proving there is no free will for particles, implies that there is no free will for people; which is of course false, as free will for people can be deterministically defined.

This is not the premise but the conclusion. The premise is the three axioms I named, and which are defined in the paper. That and the definition of "free will" as coextensive with quantum indeterminism, which is certainly not determined (it is not fixed by any available previous information), and yet neither is it truly random (it is a selection within a predetermined class of alternatives).

 

[moving finger]

Well I think the connection between quantum indeterminancy of observers and particles is non-trivial, even if the authors somewhat naively identify that with free will! We often get this identification of QI and FW in even more naive form on these boards, and it helps to have a coherent statement to clarify what quantum indeterminancy entails.

If "free will" = "random behaviour" then what happens to moral responsibility for our freely willed acts? It vanishes. The idea that free will can be simply equated with randomness is irrational (it leads to a meaningless form of free will).

What Conway and Kochen have failed to do in their paper is to show how their notion of "free will" (whatever it means, and even they admit to being unable to define it) differs in any functional way from purely random or stochastic behaviour. As I said, their paper is not so much a "theorem of free will" but an attempt to show that there can be no physical origin of free will except by linking it mysteriously to random (or better said stochastic) quantum behaviour!

If this work is NOT an April Fools joke, and instead represents the "quality" of serious output from Princeton mathematicians, then I clearly missed my vocation in life!

Lord help us

Best Regards

MF

 

[moving finger]

I think the problem is how we define "free will". We (entangled particles as well as larger particle systems) all make decisions, but they are most likely a result of something allready determined. If not, they are random and of course that has nothing to do with decision making/free will - unless that's our definition of free will.

Quite right, it does depend on how we define free will.

But read the Conway & Kochen paper carefully - they clearly reject a deterministic account of an agent's willed behaviour, they clearly support some notion of "libertarian free will", and they pin their hopes on some hocus-pocus unexplained link between conscious free will decisions and quantum stochastic behaviour... these two guys would be better off practising magic tricks to hone up their skills with gobbledigook, smoke and mirrors!

MF

 

[octelcogopod]

Free will is a weakly emergent system of a deterministic particle system imo.

The thing that is missing is that we do not know what consciousness is, therefore we apply a magical value that may or may not be there.
We make choices that we are unable to foresee until the options are laid out before us.
It's not in our nature to make a choice completely without stimuli to do so, we must have some sort of internal or external impulse that gives us the will to want to make a choice and do something.

And lastly, I do not think that an indeterministic quantum world system could in any way cater for any emergent free will.
In fact I propose that such an indeterministic system would indeed destroy any free will we might have had.

If we are just machines reacting to external and internal stimuli, and everything is deterministic, then the obvious choice would be that all the events that lead up to us making a choice is WAY above our heads, and that the underlying physics are way too complex.

Maybe ignorance is bliss.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Quite right, it does depend on how we define free will.

But read the Conway & Kochen paper carefully - they clearly reject a deterministic account of an agent's willed behaviour, they clearly support some notion of "libertarian free will", and they pin their hopes on some hocus-pocus unexplained link between conscious free will decisions and quantum stochastic behaviour... these two guys would be better off practising magic tricks to hone up their skills with gobbledigook, smoke and mirrors!

MF

They don't reject anything. They show that strict determinism is inconsistent with quantum determinancy. Not a very deep result, perhaps, but they should get props for removing the demonstration from the details of particular quantum systems to a clear axiomatic basis.

 

[Lars Laborious]

I find it difficult to understand how Bassi and Ghirardi differ "free" from "random". What do they mean when they say that "free behavior can be twinned, while random behavior cannot (a remark that might also interest some philosphers of free will)"?

 

[selfAdjoint]

I find it difficult to understand how Bassi and Ghirardi differ "free" from "random". What do they mean when they say that "free behavior can be twinned, while random behavior cannot (a remark that might also interest some philosphers of free will)"?

From the paper:

It is possible to produce two distantly separated spin 1 particles that are “twinned,” meaning that they give the same answers to corresponding questions2. A symmetrical form of the TWIN axiom would say that if the same triple x, y, z were measured for each particle, possibly in different orders, then the two particles’ responses to the experiments in individual directions would be the same. For instance, if measurements in the order x, y, z for one particle produced x → 1, y → 0, z → 1, then measurements in the order y, z, x for the second particle would produce y → 0, z → 1, x → 1.

and

The TWIN axiom:. For twinned spin 1 particles, if the first xperimenter A performs a triple experiment for the frame (x, y, z), producing the result x → j, y → k, z → l while the second experimenter B measures a single spin in direction w, then if w is one of x, y, z, its result is that w → j, k, or l, respectively.

So Twinned Behavior essentially means Entangled Behavior. Quantum indeterminancy is consistent with this, but a completely random behavior would not show any such thing.

 

[moving finger]

If we are just machines reacting to external and internal stimuli, and everything is deterministic, then the obvious choice would be that all the events that lead up to us making a choice is WAY above our heads, and that the underlying physics are way too complex.

Maybe ignorance is bliss.

Agreed. This corresponds to Metzinger's "Inner Darkness" (see the Metzinger thread), one of his proposed conditions for conscious awareness.

The only reason some of us continue to believe the free will illusion is because the deterministic source of our decisions is hidden from us.

Best Regards

MF

 

[moving finger]

They don't reject anything. They show that strict determinism is inconsistent with quantum determinancy. Not a very deep result, perhaps, but they should get props for removing the demonstration from the details of particular quantum systems to a clear axiomatic basis.

I assume here that you meant to type "quantum indeterminacy".

In their own words :

we cannot prove our Free Will assumption - determinism...is logically possible

Best Regards

MF

 

[moving finger]

So Twinned Behavior essentially means Entangled Behavior. Quantum indeterminancy is consistent with this, but a completely random behavior would not show any such thing.

And we all know that the results of QM are NOT always indeterministic (in either an ontic or epistemic sense). They show that though quantum behaviour may sometimes be epistemically stochastic, QM nevertheless obeys some very well defined and deterministic rules, including the rules of entanglement. Conway & Kochen are not suggesting that "free will" can break these rules. Hence, their "free will" is indistinguishable from the epistemically stochastic results of QM.

Best Regards

MF

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

well, the next thing to do is postulate that particles do have free will and investigate the implications. Perhaps consciousness has something to do with a characteristic of matter, and hence, must also be accounted for. Check out the book "Entagled Minds", it will come out in September. I think it's going to be very interesting.

 

[moving finger]

well, the next thing to do is postulate that particles do have free will and investigate the implications. Perhaps consciousness has something to do with a characteristic of matter, and hence, must also be accounted for. Check out the book "Entagled Minds", it will come out in September. I think it's going to be very interesting.

What does it mean to say that particles have free will?

Does this mean that particles have conscious desires, intentions, plans, volitions, needs, wants, and they behave accordingly?

Or does it mean that particles simply act stochastically or randomly (but have no conscious desires, intentions, plans, volitions, needs, wants)?

Which postulate would you suggest?

Best Regards

MF

 

[selfAdjoint]

What does it mean to say that particles have free will?

Does this mean that particles have conscious desires, intentions, plans, volitions, needs, wants, and they behave accordingly?

Or does it mean that particles simply act stochastically or randomly (but have no conscious desires, intentions, plans, volitions, needs, wants)?

Which postulate would you suggest?

Best Regards

MF

Well, to the authors of the paper it means particles' behavior is not predictable from past information, and is "twinnable", i.e; capable of entangled correlation. They claim that random behavior meets the first of these but not the second, so this behavior is distinguished from random.

They make NO assertions about consciousness, etc., for particles, but are very strong that the behavior they are talking about is a different thing from randomeness.

 

[moving finger]

Well, to the authors of the paper it means particles' behavior is not predictable from past information, and is "twinnable", i.e; capable of entangled correlation. They claim that random behavior meets the first of these but not the second, so this behavior is distinguished from random.

Quantum behaviour is in fact not random (not even epistemically). In some cases it is deterministic (the wave function evolves entirely deterministically, and we can make deterministic measurements like the example I gave about measuring the vertical spin of an electron which we have already previously measured to be in a "spin-up" state; another example is the "twin" behaviour of entangled states), and in other cases it is apparently (epistemically) stochastic. But (as far as I know) never random.

But what does this have to do with free will? Are the authors then equating free will with the sometimes-observed stochastic behaviour of quantum events?

How does stochasticity engender human free will?
(It would simply make our actions stochastically unpredictable, like rolling a die, that's all - is that the way we want to believe we make free will decisions?)

Best Regards

MF

 

[selfAdjoint]

I don't think this discussion is productive any more mf. The paper has its definition of free will which you disagree with. The authors note that their definition is "free" (not determined by previous information) and not random (because it's twinnable). But of course that has, deliberately, none of the richness we associate with consciuousness. It is precisely their point that this freedom of performance without reference to "will" is of the same character for particles as observers.

I keep stating this in one form or another and you keep saying it doesn't agree with your conscousness based ideas of free will. It's like Groundhog Day