`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

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Free Will


Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills - Arthur Schopenhauer


Index


What is Free Will?


Everything we choose is an exercise of Free Will, if nobody [nothing] forces us.


Is free will a good thing? Is no will the same a free will? What is will anyway?


Why Free Will Matters


Free Will matters because it is the one property of life that prevents us from being mere puppets, slaves to some otherness, and that gives us any purpose of our own - any worthwhile meaning - and responsibility for our actions. Without Free Will not only do we have no choice in anything, but nothing we do, think, or are, actually matters, because without Free Will nothing could have been different from the way it turned out to be. Without Free Will we are entirely the victims, or beneficiaries, of Fate, but with Free Will we at least have a shot at becoming the masters of our own destiny. Free Will makes it worthwhile bothering.


Why Free Will Is A Problem


Free Will is a problem because it is very difficult to decide whether it is a real thing, or not. There are voices on both sides of the argument, but as I will be making my own argument for some modicum of Free Will being an actuality, here are the two main arguments against:


  1. We inhabit a material universe in which, theoretically, from the positions of all matter at any moment, the subsequent positions of all matter are determined, i.e. nothing happens without a cause, and all the causes are whatever they happen to be. This is a variation on the theme of Albert Einstein's Block Universe, a block-headed theory that takes no account of Quantum Mechanics, which, ironically, Einstein was instrumental in getting off the ground, although he famously did not believe in a dice-playing God. The problem for this idea is that the Universe behaves in a quantum manner, so from a purely material perspective, the future is not pre-determined. Yes, it is causally determined, but there is plenty of room for manoeuvre.

  2. The second argument against Free Will could be called anthropological. It runs along the lines of us being the products of our environment, from genetics to development and society, and that the conditioning that this engenders imposes such limitations on who we are that in any situation our choices are already made. There is even some support for this idea from neuroscience, where observed brain readiness seems to occur before consequent actions. This all makes it a seductive argument against the notion of Free Will, but although the constraints undoubtedly do exist to a very great extent, they exist at a macro-level, way beyond the tiny quantum events that take place within the active brain. That only leaves the red-herring of brain state readiness: To grasp why this is a red-herring, we have to understand the way in which the brain works to produce conscious awareness. In short, the brain is a guessing machine, one that continuously modifies the modelling that it is doing, to produce a useful, emergent awareness of whatever is currently important to it. To be guessing all the time - is it a man or a dog, safe or dangerous, blue dress or gold - the active brain necessarily has to pre-empt each and every thought, and so each and every choice. This means that most of the time we can run on auto-pilot, and only pay attention to the peak things that really need it. It is not that neuroscience is wrong, only that the neuroscientists have drawn incorrect conclusions.

  3. We could also consider Elisabeth's questioning of Rene Descartes' Dualism

For any individual there is an internal stucture, i.e. mind, and a set of relationships to the external/objective universe, of which the body is a part. The will, whatever it may be, cannot directly change the body to simply anything, but can direct it to do whatever is possible for it to do. It seems reasonable to suggest that the will is the totality of the individual, from autonomic nervous system to imagination and memories, even possessions under control, perhaps.


Let's consider an individual; call her Isabel. Isabel has a will to breathe that originates from her body, it may also give her a will to feed, fuck, and fight/flee - all beyond her complete mental control, but also limited by her wealth, beauty, and fitness. Her mind gives her other possibilities, and shapes her desires, but her mind is both limited and enabled by what she can remember, or imagine, or perceive.


The body gives Isabel her classical being, augmented by her material circumstances, but her mind's progress through life is driven by a series of wave functions that are constrained and enabled by all of the above.


It seems reasonable to conclude that Isabel's will is her wave function, and for it to be free is for it to have some element of self-direction that allows it to explore, consider, and decide, and then act.


  1. Your wave function must interact with all others, especially those nearby.

  2. If you have no value, then you will be blown hither and thither by circumstances.

  3. If you have too much value, then you will be inflexible to circumstances.

  4. Either of these has no freedom, they are 100% pre-determined - classical.

  5. To have freedom is to have options, and to have the potential to choose between options in ways that themselves are not fixed.

  6. To choose is to exercise will.

  7. To change your mind is to have free will.

Monty Hall


They say that for a Monty Hall choice, always change your mind, because the later situation has better odds than the earlier. But does it actually make any difference? Because re-choosing your first choice seems to have a 50:50 of being correct, just like changing your mind does, there are only two possible outcomes, so it maybe makes no difference, i.e. the third door is an illusion that makes no difference to the final outcome, a choice between two doors. Or does the second goat door retain the 66% chance of being correct, previously enjoyed by both goat doors together?


Where is the goat door's probability?


The answer is that the probability rests with the picker, and their knowledge, not with the doors.


Ignoring the earlier choice resets the picker's odds to 50:50.


Otherwise, remembering it allows the 33:66 odds to remain.


Free Will Again


In terms of free will, the individual's wave function has to be able to forget earlier odds, and to reset the probabilities of a choice such that the influences are not inflexible.


However, does this risk the person being a victim of external circumstance, rather than internal circumstance [as David Hume suggested]?


If Freedom is to be worth anything, it must enable more choices, and the ability to choose - what? Better? Wisely? According to some pre-held belief?


Why should being first be the determinant of what is best? An unwise marriage may lead to divorce and a new partner, which may be better than continuing to live in misery.


An unwise choice may require a similar change of mind, so maybe free will is only possible once the outcome is known. Even then, was the matching of desire and outcome actually beneficial?


Sometimes people make bad choices ... because they want to.


It seems that the greatest benefit to an individual, the freedom worth having, is the ability to predict outcomes accurately, and to know what the individual wants, lacks, and is prepared to forego. Only then can a fully informed choice be made. That is freedom. You could also call it wisdom.


Freedom Restated For USA Election Day 2024


The discussion of Free Will is the discussion of Freedom; these are one and the same. But do either exist. Well, they have to exist in order to be the same. But there are strong cases for the deniers, these basically boil down to constraints, the constraints of the past, the constraints of the present, and these are the constraints of both our environment and our self - the objective and the subjective 'what is'. What is [and what was] are the facts of our matter, and although we can not act out of accord with these facts, the facts that make us and our opportunity may leave wriggle room. If they do, then within our contortions we have some modicum of freedom.


Is there wriggle room?


The material world, our external and internal reality is by nature complete. It is 100% of the physical Universe, and we have zero freedom to be other than where, when, or what we happen to be - in any moment. This is the pre-deterministic scenario, the mechanical universe that Laplace's demon could know down to the smallest iota.


That much is obviously true, as far as it goes. But is there more to us?


Well, we also have our consciousness, which is more about truth than about reality - consciousness of personal truth and of objective truth. Objective truth, being the universal facts applicable to all things, material and immaterial, is as obdurate as objective reality, but personal truth is necessarily incomplete, being limited to the subjective self; a self that most certainly is not everything, except in the sense of being unitary, i.e. whole, and singular.


Our subjective reality is limited to those things that our brains and minds are capable of creating in the form of icons; some icons are brighter and so more detailed than others.


Our subjective truth is the sum of the facts of our self, forming the whole that is also our heart. It is also necessarily limited to the sum of our subjective icons of mind, but crucially, by dint of being incomplete, has gaps. It is these gaps, and their abstract shapes, that confer freedom. Yes, we are limited in our freedoms, but the more definition we possess in those gaps, the greater the detail, together with a greater defined space, the greater our opportunity for freedom. It is within those spaces in our being that we can exercise imagination, and imagination enables us to choose other than mechanistically. This is because from within the non-existent emptiness can potentially emerge any possibility that fits, and it is our ability to generate and attach to any of those possibilities that gives us the potential for freedom.


Whether or not we can act as we choose, based on imagination, naturally is constrained by the objective facts, because the objective facts govern objective reality. But, the big point here, and where Robert Sapolsky is incorrect to some extent, is that our imagination contributes to our personal quantum wave function - remember, we inhabit a quantum universe, not a classical universe - as such the Universe itself, or to be more expansive, Existence itself, gives us the gift of alternatives - not always, these are always governed [limited] by possibility and probability, but we would have to have no cracks within us, nowhere to let the light in, for us to have no room for freedom to make itself known.


The vagaries of life are so probabilistic, in our quantum universe, that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune crack us open as if we were just so many eggshells, and thanks to this we repeatedly through life are given the opportunity to exercise freedom. Sometimes that is collectively, such as when we vote, at other times it is when we vote with our feet.


Free Will and Quantum Mechanics


Quantum Mechanics is important to Free Will, because the Bell Test proves that the Universe we inhabit is indeterministic, and that is important because it negates many of the arguments against Free Will, because they are predicated on a deterministic view of Reality. Quantum Mechanics, though, has a difficult time in deciding what an observer is, and observers are thought to be necessary for the collapse of quantum wave functions. Since Bell's Inequality was created there have been many, ever more complex variations, seeming to lead to paradoxical situations, but the question really revolves around the nature of Wigner's Friend., a thought experiment where a friend replaces Schroedinger's Cat, and acts as an observer.


Possible the clue is that in any such experiment the apparatus sets the facts of the situation, so if we take a simple case, where individual particles in a Young's test interfere, what we are truly seeing is the behaviour of the apparatus, not so much the particles.


If I am generally correct [in Virtualism], then the particles do not actually take any path between emission and observation, so where does observation occur?


It all still comes down to interpretation of the facts.


I think we can say that observation is the moment that any quantum event becomes classical.


The beam splitters used in the experiments are classical [real] objects, and so can be considered the same as stars causing gravitational lensing, they are real objects altering the facts for the quantum process, which itself is factual rather than real.


Not only are there no hidden variables, and/or no locality [as proven by Bell et al, and assuming logic is consistent], there are no particles, only emission and reception.


Wigner interprets everything as involving consciousness, which has to be nonsense, because the Universe definitely existed before consciousnesses, unless one takes a very strange view of what consciousness is.


What does that hint at?

Our consciousness consists of facts, rather than realities.


Before we were around, the Universe still had facts, in fact every whole thing is a factual thing, rather than a real thing - parts are real, while wholes are facts.


Reality is performed by parts, reality is classical.


Facts form quantum processes, wave functions, and alter realities in a process called observation. Facts are mathematical truths.


Facts are eternal, timeless [in the sense of not being subject to change], yet time becomes a fact as it emerges.


Importantly facts alter reality, as facts are added to. You could say, as we learn, but it is not just us conscious beings.


This is a strictly dualistic picture that is emerging.


Consciousness is composed of facts, so has power to change reality to some extent, by joining with other facts in the wave function. But wave functions can happily go their own way without conscious facts.


Implications For Free Will

Free will is a very ill-defined concept, but we could rename it as choice. Do we have choice when we make decisions? As the Universe is proven to not be deterministic, the answer is yes we do. But only if we have wisdom, which is the ability to see choices clearly.


Galen Strawson objects, arguing that Free Will implies an infinite regress.


According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. - Wikipedia


Responsibility is then tied to an ability to choose other than one's current nature, which is kind of what Locke was saying. But the problem with most opinions is that the opiners take an all or nothing view. Yes, we have our starting point in life, and that, with subsequent events, forms a constraint on who we can be. But it is a mistake to view the development of the person as deterministic, as Strawson does, at any moment we can choose to act out of character, and history is full of such stories.


Indeterminism applies as much to the individual as to the particle. Yes it is constrained, but the constraints are always changing. In amongst that swirling there are conscious beings, and their consciousness is itself a constraint on outcomes.


The question really boils down to what is a person? Can a person be unfettered by their own self as it has been previously.


If we take an example, say John is a bastard, and always treats people badly, his nature is a constraint on his freedom, but if he turns over a new leaf, then he changes himself. So free will is the ability to choose who one wants to be, to reinvent oneself, a la David Bowie, perhaps. A leopard may not change his spots, but we are not leopards.


The skill to develop to enhance Free Will is mindfulness, without which there is no hope of acting on other than autopilot, and so no hope of utilising wisdom and exercising Free Will.




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