A local deterministic theory that violates Bell's inequaities

[nikman]

Thanks for speaking up on this, nikman. After I read your post, I decided to google "superdeterminism religion". I was not surprised to find that a lot of folks out there feel much the same as we do, but I was surprised at how many have expressed this in various posts and articles.

We shall overcome. Yes we can.

 

[kote]

Thanks for speaking up on this, nikman. After I read your post, I decided to google "superdeterminism religion". I was not surprised to find that a lot of folks out there feel much the same as we do, but I was surprised at how many have expressed this in various posts and articles.

Generally it's called metaphysics and not religion, though there are definitely similarities . Determinism as an assumption is one of the core foundational issues in (the philosophy of) science. To the Bohmian's and others here it seems that denying determinism is unscientifically religious (Bohr for Pope?). "QM is complete and reality is random" is just as metaphysical a claim as "everything has a cause." It's too bad that some questions are beyond the scope of scientific exploration. Luckily we have thousands of years of philosophical literature regarding causation/determinism/superdeterminism etc. I don't know of any good links focused on pure causation. I think more of the literature there is still copyrighted. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm has some great stuff on general determinism despite its focus on free will.

QM (unfortunately?) really hasn't done much to shed light on the issue except to show how one easy to understand mode of physical determinism isn't basic.

 

[DrChinese]

Generally it's called metaphysics and not religion, though there are definitely similarities . Determinism as an assumption is one of the core foundational issues in (the philosophy of) science. To the Bohmian's and others here it seems that denying determinism is unscientifically religious (Bohr for Pope?). "QM is complete and reality is random" is just as metaphysical a claim as "everything has a cause." It's too bad that some questions are beyond the scope of scientific exploration. Luckily we have thousands of years of philosophical literature regarding causation/determinism/superdeterminism etc. I don't know of any good links focused on pure causation. I think more of the literature there is still copyrighted. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm has some great stuff on general determinism despite its focus on free will.

Thanks for the link to this site, I bookmarked it.

And I am not against determinism, merely that other nasty thing that is either "metaphysical" or "religion-like" - depending on who you ask.

(By the way, google had more hits for superdeterminism & religion than it did for superdeterminism & metaphysics. )

 

[kote]

(By the way, google had more hits for superdeterminism & religion than it did for superdeterminism & metaphysics. )

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean. It's not a technical metaphysical term. The closest philosophical term I can think of is "supervenient causation," which may or may not be what is meant by superdeterminism in any particular case.

http://www.stanford.edu/~lmaguire/phil186/kim2.htm has a quick overview and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/ has more detail about general supervenience. Supervenience is also related to emergence (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/), and it's all related to micro-macro issues.

Not so surprisingly, the Niels Bohr Institute also has some publications on emergent causation: http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/p.emercau.html. The downward causation paper talks about different possible types of macro to micro causation.

 

[DrChinese]

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean.

Folks have been trying to locate hidden assumptions in Bell's Theorem for a long time. The idea is that one of these hypotheically hidden assumptions is actually false, thereby rendering the theorem itself false. I see this as sad desperation for the bygone pre-quantum era. (Of course, I don't actually know what drives it.)

So superdeterminism is ultimately an attempt to wrangle a concession that, gee, there are loopholes in Bell after all. Like any ad hoc theory, superdeterminism changes as needed to avoid any critique. In one version, the conspiracy extends to the weak force (since all forces are part of a greater strong-electroweak). In another, the initial conditions of the big bang holds the key to correlations we see in Bell tests. But it really isn't a theory at all, more of an idea for a theory, as ad hoc theories usually are.

 

[nikman]

Generally you can say that all religion has some metaphysical component (if only the basic belief that a spirit animates the body) but not all metaphysics is religious. Hume, for example, explored causality at length from a metaphysical standpoint (one not dissimilar to Bohr's) yet no more coherent atheist has ever graced a civilization.

For religion you need a symbol, a totem, a defined supernatural entity with a name (even if you're not supposed to speak it) to invest belief in. That's why Shirley MacLaine, for example, can claim she's "spiritual" (because she's been reincarnated n times) but not religious, because she doesn't believe in any specific deity. She also calls her belief system "my metaphysics" which is guaranteed to make professional philosophers feel unwell, but just try to stop her.

The picture is complicated by the fact that metaphysical beliefs can achieve an intensity comparable to religious ones, which happens if the believer attains an emotional state in which the need to establish a conjecture based on subjective perception as something objectively true threatens to overwhelm scientific caution. Genuine professionals seem to know how to spot the dynamic in themselves and sit on it so you never can tell for sure if they're in danger of overstepping the line.

Unless of course the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences employs hit persons to deal with the nuttiness problem forthrightly yet undetectably whenever it manifests in Nobel laureates, as used to be the policy, we're told, in the case of the Curia and Renaissance popes in their decline.

 

[kote]

Generally you can say that all religion has some metaphysical component (if only the basic belief that a spirit animates the body) but not all metaphysics is religious.

I wouldn't even say that a spirit is required. Spinoza had Deus sive Natura, God or (better yet) Nature. Leibniz' metaphysics was based on God, as was Berkeley's empirical idealism. Descartes included God in his metaphysics, although I guess he was also all for the immaterial spirit.

 

[Count Iblis]

Anyway 't Hooft is a particle physicist, not a quantum mechanic.

That's not really true. 't Hooft is not really a typical "particle physicist". He is a theoretical physicists with an extraordinary physics/mathematical insight.

The dispute about superdeterminism is, as I wrote earlier, one has to dismiss it using proper mathematical arguments. Of course, one then has to make aditional assumptions and then one can debate those assumptions. But as long as there is no bona fide no-go theorem against local deterministic models, one cannot blame 't Hooft for exploring these theories.

You can compare a no-go theorem by John von Neumann a long time ago, which was later shown to be faulty. But the point he made was later shown to be correct. So, I'm not saying that 't Hooft is correct, rather that one has to argue on the basis of more mathematically rigorous arguments.

 

[DrChinese]

The dispute about superdeterminism is, as I wrote earlier, one has to dismiss it using proper mathematical arguments. Of course, one then has to make aditional assumptions and then one can debate those assumptions. But as long as there is no bona fide no-go theorem against local deterministic models, one cannot blame 't Hooft for exploring these theories.

Argue on rigorous mathematical terms? You have it backwards, as 't Hooft is not rigorous but Brukner is.

No one is questioning whether 't Hooft can write a computer program that DOES NOT model Bell's Inequality, per his paper. When 't Hooft comes up with a program that CAN express relevant entanglement, then there will be something to discuss - and not before. There is nothing of his to disprove at this point! As he concedes, this program is not even rotationally invariant which is no small issue in considering spin statistics.

Yet on the other hand, Brukner et al have clearly provided a specific no-go and who is disputing that? They prove that any superdeterminisitic theory grows in complexity at an exponential rate and without bound.

And Bell is already one of a number of no-gos for local determinism, joined by GHZ and others. (Of course, I suppose the superdeterministic "argument" somehow applies to those too. )

 

[nikman]

I wouldn't even say that a spirit is required. Spinoza had Deus sive Natura, God or (better yet) Nature. Leibniz' metaphysics was based on God, as was Berkeley's empirical idealism. Descartes included God in his metaphysics, although I guess he was also all for the immaterial spirit.

I was trying to say that you can have metaphysics without any deist, theist, animist, "spiritual" or whatever assumptions. De Rerum Natura might be Exhibit "A" (the gods are metaphors for human aspiration, not anything literal). But the common belief that when a person dies "something leaves" the physical body is metaphysics too: it's an attempt to explain an observed phenomenon (death) by positing an existent (spirit) which is not, however, subject to experimental verification. You don't need to subscribe to any religious system to believe that, or something not entirely unlike that. I imagine vitalism had its share of atheists and agnostics.

Most if not all religions expand and build on the basic metaphysical concept of "spirit". They'd be pretty much dead in the water without it. Anyway if you were living in a preliterate culture and someone close to you died it'd seem like common sense. Clearly Grandmother's very different now from what she was like a minute ago. Something's definitely missing that used to be there.

 

[ueit]

I did notice the same thing . I've actually had a hard time finding what exactly superdeterminism is even supposed to mean. It's not a technical metaphysical term. The closest philosophical term I can think of is "supervenient causation," which may or may not be what is meant by superdeterminism in any particular case.

Superdeterminism (SD) is a particular case of determinism. Just like determinism, SD means that the future state of a system is determined entirely by its past state. The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

Bell's theorem is based on the assumption that the various experimental parts evolve independently of one another (freedom assumption). This might be or might not be true, depending on the mathematical formulation of the theory. For a theory like Newtonian mechanics of the rigid body, the freedom assumption holds because distant bodies do not interact. For a theory like general relativity (in a system described completely by it) the freedom assumption does not hold because the trajectory of each massive body is determined by all massive bodies in the universe, regardless of the distance. Both theories are deterministic but GR is also superdeterministic.

DrChinese's claims about superdeterministic theories being unscientific are therefore ridiculous, as a theory like GR, if found to be fundamental, should be rejected as religious crap.

 

[DrChinese]

Superdeterminism (SD) is a particular case of determinism. Just like determinism, SD means that the future state of a system is determined entirely by its past state. The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

Bell's theorem is based on the assumption that the various experimental parts evolve independently of one another (freedom assumption). This might be or might not be true, depending on the mathematical formulation of the theory. For a theory like Newtonian mechanics of the rigid body, the freedom assumption holds because distant bodies do not interact. For a theory like general relativity (in a system described completely by it) the freedom assumption does not hold because the trajectory of each massive body is determined by all massive bodies in the universe, regardless of the distance. Both theories are deterministic but GR is also superdeterministic.

DrChinese's claims about superdeterministic theories being unscientific are therefore ridiculous, as a theory like GR, if found to be fundamental, should be rejected as religious crap.

Superdeterminism is NOT determinism, and has nothing whatsoever to do with GR. GR, being deterministic, postulates that initial conditions control the effect of gravity. This was a refinement on Newtonian gravity, and made testable predictions (as scientific theories usually do). GR is the essence of a great scientific theory.

Superdeterminism is certainly not an actual theory. It is an ad hoc hypothesis that is equivalent to saying "God did it". Discussing it is like nailing jelly to a wall. The *only* purpose of the hypothesis is to overcome Bell's Theorem. It has no other purpose, as superdeterminism is elsewhere invisible. Superdeterminism predicts nothing and explains nothing. Superdeterminism is as scientific as voodoo.

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism? Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

 

[ThomasT]

The particularity consists in the fact that SD does not allow one to separate a larger system into independent parts.

How might the assumption of locality be modeled then, because this is the problem: how do you formally represent locality in a way that doesn't include statistical independence?

 

[ThomasT]

I agree with Dr. Chinese and others who say that Bell's (and others') analyses of the formal requirements of entangled states have effectively ruled out lhv models of entangled states. This seems to be the generally accepted position, despite the confusion surrounding the physical meaning of violations of Bell inequalities.

It doesn't seem that t'Hooft has solved the problem.

As for superdeterminism, I'm with those who say that they still don't know what that term is supposed to refer to.

 

[Count Iblis]

't Hooft has not (yet) solved the problem, but he has pointed out a flaw in the argument that lhv is ruled out, by arguing that superdeterminism cannot be dismissed as it is usually done. If lhv is still ruled out, then the usual proof found in textbooks is still wrong.

It is similar to the usual textbook "proof" that entropy can only increase based on Boltzmann's H-theorem being wrong. This doesn't mean that the Second Law is false, just that it doesn't follow from the flawed reasoning presented in most textbooks.

 

[WaveJumper]

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism? Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

 

[Count Iblis]

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

A similar problem also arises when you try to be rigorous about causality. What seems to be a rather trivial matter is not so simple at all, again due to determinism, see e.g. here:

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0107091

 

[ueit]

Superdeterminism is NOT determinism, and has nothing whatsoever to do with GR.

This tells me that you didn't understand what SD means and you are fighting a straw-man. I have explained in my previous post what a SD theory is (a particular case of deterministic theory where a separation of a large system into independent subsystems is not possible). This is the SD I defend here.

GR, being deterministic, postulates that initial conditions control the effect of gravity. This was a refinement on Newtonian gravity, and made testable predictions (as scientific theories usually do). GR is the essence of a great scientific theory.

And GR is also SD because it does not allow the separation of a large system into independent subsystems.

Superdeterminism is certainly not an actual theory.

Sure it's not, just like "locality" or "realism" is not a theory. It is a property a theory might or might not have.

It is an ad hoc hypothesis that is equivalent to saying "God did it".

It is not a hypothesis either. As I said above, it is a property of a theory that can be evaluated from its mathematical structure.

Newtonian mechanics is a local, non-SD theory.
Newtonian gravity is a non-local, SD theory.
GR is a local, SD theory
Classical electrodynamics is a local, SD theory, and so on.

Discussing it is like nailing jelly to a wall...

This is because you clearly have a wrong idea of what SD means. I will happily join you in killing that straw-man.

P.S. ueit: Are you actually a believer in superdeterminism?

I am not a believer of anything. I only think that local-realistic theories are the most "scientific" type of theories and this path should not be dismissed so easily, based on misconceptions and philosophically bankrupt ideas.

Or do you push this to further your local realistic agenda?

I have no agenda. I do not make money from this field. I like to ponder these things as a hobby.

 

[ueit]

How might the assumption of locality be modeled then, because this is the problem: how do you formally represent locality in a way that doesn't include statistical independence?

Locality means that the evolution of a system only depends on the physical variables in its proximity. Earth's trajectory only depends on the local space curvature. This does not mean that Earth's motion and Pluto's motion are independent. They are not, because the two objects are also part of the same star system so they evolve around its center. SD has nothing to do with locality or the lack of it.

 

[ueit]

If we don't have free will, how are we to ascertain that the universe is really local realistic? Superdeterminism is such a dead-end that it ruins itself on the spot. All consequences and outcomes ascribed to it, fall apart due its inability to ascertain anything that has a hint of truth value. "Nature is how it is, because no other way was possible" does not reveal what nature is, does it? Sure, we can try to infer that the universe is local and realistic, but with no free will, the validity of that inference is severly undermined by the the lack of reliable ways to know anything about anything in a superdeterministic universe.

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified. Whatever the consequences, we have to live with them.

 

[DrChinese]

This tells me that you didn't understand what SD means and you are fighting a straw-man. I have explained in my previous post what a SD theory is (a particular case of deterministic theory where a separation of a large system into independent subsystems is not possible). This is the SD I defend here.

And GR is also SD because it does not allow the separation of a large system into independent subsystems.

Sure it's not, just like "locality" or "realism" is not a theory. It is a property a theory might or might not have.

It is not a hypothesis either. As I said above, it is a property of a theory that can be evaluated from its mathematical structure.

Newtonian mechanics is a local, non-SD theory.
Newtonian gravity is a non-local, SD theory.
GR is a local, SD theory
Classical electrodynamics is a local, SD theory, and so on.

This is because you clearly have a wrong idea of what SD means. I will happily join you in killing that straw-man.

Fair enough. I see we in fact have different definitions of SD.

1. I don't consider GR to be superdeterministic. It would take a theory of everything (TOE) to contain superdeterminism, by definition. (Because there are unexplained variables acting that are not part of GR.)2. A TOE *could* be deterministic. That would assume that a complete specification of the system is possible. (Otherwise a TOE would be maximally complete.) 3. Assuming the DOE is deterministic, you might say that the initial conditions of the universe (ICU) plus the TOE determines what happens for all time. One of those LaPlacian devil kind of things. But that is still just determinism, not superdeterminism.4. To get superdeterminism, you need to add 2 more things (and I think at least the first will be present in all definitions):

a) Each local volume must have access to sufficient information such that any possible experiment "there" will have results that can be predicted "here".

b) Experimental settings are constrained - despite the appearance of free will - to such settings that experiments "here" and experiments "there" yield results that might otherwise appear to violate the TOE itself.

The a) part is the "super" part of superdeterminism. The b) part is the part that leads to the hypothetical "loophole" in Bell's Theorem. In that argument, the TOE must be local as well. The b) part is where the "conspiracy" part comes in. That is the part I object to as non-scientific and bordering on the religious. That is strictly what is intended by 't Hooft's paper - superdeterministic - and local - entanglement.

The a) part borders on science, but requires an actual theory to allow it to be falsified. Clearly, there are plenty of requirements in that alone. In 't Hooft's paper, this is part of the hypothesis but he skips over that to focus on b).We wouldn't be having this discussion if it were not for the idea that superdeterminism allows a violation of the Bell Inequality. There would be no reason to suppose superdetermism over garden-variety determinism otherwise. So you must have both a) and b) above as part of superdeterminism. Determinism is not equal to superdeterminism, and superdeterminism is not an inevitable result from a good TOE.

 

[WaveJumper]

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified. Whatever the consequences, we have to live with them.

Physical theories do not address consciouness. When you throw a dead bird into the air, it falls down to the ground according to Newton's laws in a predictable fashion.. Throw a live bird, and it will take off wherever it sees fit. I would not bet more than 50 cents that scientists will ever be able to calculate where the bird will head off, the next second of its flight. I think the gentic makeup and the neurogical states of the bird influence its behaviour, but do not determine it. I say that because we are actually often opposing certain heredetary predespositions, so the "I" must be real as an emergent phenomenon.

I think most people here are opposing SD on esthetic grounds, because SD is the 'darkest' possible model of a universe like ours(though it's impossible reject the idea as a real possibility). I think people would rather give up both locality and realism but hold on to free will(I know I do - in fact we don't have anything else besides the "I"). I think i know the name of a non-local deterministic universe.

 

[WaveJumper]

The a) part is the "super" part of superdeterminism. The b) part is the part that leads to the hypothetical "loophole" in Bell's Theorem. In that argument, the TOE must be local as well. The b) part is where the "conspiracy" part comes in. That is the part I object to as non-scientific and bordering on the religious. That is strictly what is intended by 't Hooft's paper - superdeterministic - and local - entanglement.

God is having a laugh by trying to confuse us. That's what i make of the theory of SD. This is not science but philosophy, a simple model of how the universe might work that does no better job at explaining entanglement than solipsism.

 

[DrChinese]

The hypothesis of free will is incompatible with all physical theories and has also been experimentally falsified.

It is NOT generally agreed that free will is incompatible with all physical theories. And it certainly has not been falsified. Do you have a reference? (Please tell me it's not Kochen's Free Will Theorem.)

 

[Demystifier]

It is NOT generally agreed that free will is incompatible with all physical theories.

DrChinese, I think it would be really interesting if you could outline a concrete proposal explaining how known physical theories might be compatible with free will. Of course, I do not ask you to say how free will really works (nobody knows that), but how it MIGHT work. It may be a pure speculation, but it should be compatible with the physical laws we know. I am not saying that it is not possible, I'm sure it is, but I'm just curious to see how YOU imagine that free will might work.

 

[WaveJumper]

The principal mode of action of emergent properties is AFAIK something that we might consider to be 'magic'. They are not explainable, but they do exist. They might also be a signal of ignorance of the underlying process, but i don't believe everything is explainable by human reasoning.

 

[ueit]

It is NOT generally agreed that free will is incompatible with all physical theories.

It doesn't matter if it is "generally agreed" or not. It follows logically from the application of relevant physical theories (this means QM) to the human brain.

And it certainly has not been falsified. Do you have a reference?

Please check this transcript (page 9):

http://www.google.ro/url?sa=t&sourc...UmrEV&usg=AFQjCNGbm30a54BNnsMISm5vpDYfbPugSg"

(Please tell me it's not Kochen's Free Will Theorem.)

I wouldn't reference such a paper as I consider it one of the worst examples of bad logic.

 

[kote]

It doesn't matter if it is "generally agreed" or not. It follows logically from the application of relevant physical theories (this means QM) to the human brain.

Whether or not it follows logically has been studied by professional logicians and philosophers for thousands of years. Wikipedia's intro to compatibilism: "Compatibilism, as championed by the ancient Greek Stoics, Hobbes, Hume and many contemporary philosophers, is a theory that argues that free will and determinism exist and are in fact compatible.[3] Determinists argue that all acts that take place are predetermined by prior causes, including human actions."

To sum up the problem... determinism is the idea that there is a cause/reason/explanation for everything that happens. Surely humans have a rational basis for doing the things they do. Is an arbitrary (uncaused/unreasoned/unexplainable) action any more "free" than a rational decision based on antecedent factors?

One way to reconcile free will with the causal closure of the physical realm is through the concept of identity. My rational actions are determined by who I am and the events that take place around me. Given the same situations, I will always make the same choices. "Who I am" evolves with time and depends on my mood etc, but given the exact same situation, it doesn't seem unbelievable to me that as a person with a consistent identity, I will make the same choices. Denying this seems to conflict with the concept that there is anything that makes you you or makes you capable of reason.

The who you are may very well be reducible to or supervenient on purely physical configurations. If you believe that two exact physical copies of a person in two exactly similar physical situations will have the same thoughts, then you believe this.

BTW the view above is not the general compatibilist view (there isn't one), but it is a way to get at least as far as establishing moral responsibility and some level of self-determination in a determined world. I have yet to hear an explanation of free choice that truly overcomes the "arbitrary or determined" divide. Definitions of free will not satisfied by the above explanation are generally not satisfied by any description and are simply incoherent in any type of world, determined or not.

 

[DrChinese]

1. It doesn't matter if it is "generally agreed" or not. It follows logically from the application of relevant physical theories (this means QM) to the human brain.

2. Please check this transcript (page 9):

http://www.google.ro/url?sa=t&sourc...UmrEV&usg=AFQjCNGbm30a54BNnsMISm5vpDYfbPugSg"

3. I wouldn't reference such a paper as I consider it one of the worst examples of bad logic.

1. Well of course it matters here. Making statements as fact for things which are actually speculative personal theories is not allowed generally.

2. You surprise me on this one, not much of any kind of argument about Free Will being proven. It's more of a stimulus-response argument. So again I would ask that you retract your statement and replace it with an appropriate qualification.

3. I likely wouldn't quote it either. I don't think it really means anything.

 

[DrChinese]

DrChinese, I think it would be really interesting if you could outline a concrete proposal explaining how known physical theories might be compatible with free will. Of course, I do not ask you to say how free will really works (nobody knows that), but how it MIGHT work. It may be a pure speculation, but it should be compatible with the physical laws we know. I am not saying that it is not possible, I'm sure it is, but I'm just curious to see how YOU imagine that free will might work.

That's a great question. I'm not sure I am up to the task.

First, I cannot say for an absolute fact that free will exists. We certainly believe we have freedom of choice, but do we? I have struggled for years to try to define consciousness, without much success. Certainly, our conscious thought convinces us of our own free will. But clearly that wouldn't count as evidence if the cells in our brain are actually operating as deterministic machines at some very low level. But generally, I would make the "unscientific" argument that my consciousness implies my free will.

Second, should indeterminism exist as a necessary requirement for true free will? Possibly, and again I do not think this can be demonstrated as an actual requirement for free will. But let's suppose it is. Is nature indeterministic in some respects? We know about some important physical laws which appear indeterministic - such as QM. But as you know, it may be possible to connect the apparent randomness with unknown initial conditions. Those initial conditions, plus deterministic laws, could actually be a prescription for absolute cause and effect - and then we wouldn't really have free will. I personally choose to believe that the randomness in nature is without prior cause. But again I would not call this a scientific argument.

Thirdly, do animals have free will? Does my dog? Is my dog conscious? I think so, but can I be sure? And if so, at what level of creature - going down the chain - does free will disappear? It certainly gets messy as you move down that slope.

And yet with those arguments made - and they are certainly not very strong ones - I am not sure I am any closer to answering your main question: how would free will work? Perhaps our brain acts like a quantum magnifier. Somehow, a small quantum fluctuation is amplified within our neurons and that gives an unpredictable element to our actions. We call that free will. But even in that case, would it be? Or would a random external stimulus be the culprit, and we are back to being "robots" that act in a knee-jerk reaction to the stimuli we are presented with.

Sticky problem to be sure. I see consciousness and indeterminism as somehow important to the notion of free will, but I can't make get very far without resorting to questionable reasoning - reasoning which involves belief more than knowledge. I certainly don't expect anyone to be persuaded by this.

 

[WaveJumper]

So where should 't Hooft's Noble Prize, he got in 1999, go? To the initial conditions? Or to the creator of the Matrix?

Does SD attempt to explain quantum fluctuations? I think Einstein went too far with his "God doesn't play dice". It might be the most quoted statement in modern physics but its over-exposure doesn't lend it any more credibility than a personal preference for how reality ought to be.

 

[Demystifier]

DrChinese, thanks for the honnest answer! Perhaps it will surprise you, but I am satisfied with it.

 

[ueit]

DrChinese and kote,

Maybe I wasn't clear but I am only interested in free will in the context of our present discussion about QM, Bell tests and such. The only relevant form of free-will is the one that claims that a human action is some sort of "first cause". This type of free-will is in direct contradiction with the fact that a human (or animal or whatever) has shown no measurable properties that other non-conscious objects do not have. There is no evidence that the electrons and quarks in a human brain should be treated differently than those in a quartz crystal. But if the human brain is describable by QM it follows that it cannot qualify as a "first cause" of anything, its evolution being predictable (even if only in probabilistic terms).

I see no reason to even discuss the possibility of free-will in the absence of any evidence for it (I do not count our feelings as being evidence), especially given the fact that such evidence should be easy to get.

If you claim that there is no agreement on that, I'd like to see a reference to a physics experiment that contradicts what I have said above.

 

[kote]

If you claim that there is no agreement on that, I'd like to see a reference to a physics experiment that contradicts what I have said above.

The "first cause" idea of free will may very well be incoherent, and we don't need physics to tell us that. Choices without reasons (causes) are arbitrary and undermine rational thought. Free will must be something else then.

Not everything can be described by physics, and physics uses assumptions about more basic principles. Physics requires math, but math is a priori. It requires induction, another logical principle. Physics also, for the most part, requires determinism. It requires that there are actually reasons that we observe what we do and that we can describe those reasons.

All of these topics are foundational to physics. Physics can't decide the issue in regard to any of them, but all physics experiments and theories depend on them. Asking for an experiment to show evidence for them is circular.

I'll save a discussion about the value of feelings as evidence for another thread, but Cartesian doubt and cogito ergo sum come to mind .

 

[Halcyon-on]

The problem in quantum mechanics, as long as physicists are concerned, is not the free-will. This rather a philosophy. In physics one should speech about the variational principle. This is the free will counterpart in physics. Thus the question is whether it is possible to describe fundamental physics in agreement with the variational principle as in deterministic theory or not, relaxing the variational principle as in QM. Deterministic models are showing that quantum mechanics could be not a fundamental theory, but a statistical approximation of underlying determinist dynamics.