Eise

Are you sure? Say you have a dummy book (a book with empty pages) and a real book with text. Physically they are almost the same thing. But in the dummy is missing exactly that which it makes a real book. Even better, this essence is conserved if you convert into a completely different physical form, e.g. an ebook. The same with free will. Speaking of free will makes only sense in the context of other concepts, like motivations, actions, coercion, responsibility, culpability etc etc. Looking for free will on the level of chemical reactions, is looking at the wrong place. All these concepts describe higher order phenomena, which essence does not lie in its physical substrate. I think it is very easy to understand what it is: it is the capability to act according your own wishes and beliefs. What you probably mean is that it is almost impossible to understand how the brain can give rise to such phenomena. There I would agree with you. The inevitability of chemical reactions has nothing to do with inevitability of events, when consciousness and will are involved. Remember the example of the stone, the rock and the cat I gave before. Well, yes and no. If you equal our free will with chemical reactions, then every chemical reaction has free will? That makes no sense of course. It is an extremely special configuration, and in the light of above one can say that it is only the configuration that is really important. Every physical substrate that can implement such configuration might be said to have free will. Therefore we cannot exclude the possibility of conscious machines, with free will. (In fact they already exist: we are such machines). Again, you are looking at the wrong place. For free will we need a more or less deterministic physical substrate, no magical influence on chemicals. But 'ownership' is not enough. I already gave the example of mentally retarded people. Exactly. From this article: I fully agree with them. The article is not about free will at all. It is about how the brain functions. It only disproves naive dualism, in which our thoughts, motivations, and beliefs have no causal history.

What the hell would be 'overriding your underlying neural chemistry to execute it'? Are mentally disabled responsible for their actions? I know of no scientific evidence that such a thing exist. It is like God, the celestial teapot, or the flying spaghetti monster.

Hi Delboy, This depends on what you think free will is. If you think it must be some soul that can interfere with the (practically) causal universe, then of course it does not exist. However, if you think the 'soul' is nothing else then the functioning brain, you have another problem. Saying you are your brain implies that you cannot say that you are forced by your brain in acting in certain ways: something cannot force itself. So whatever free will is, you are not forced to do anything by your brain processes. You must realise that actions are higher order phenomena. And the same holds for inevitability. Say, you throw a stone perfectly to a rock: then in a certain sense, it is inevitable that you will hit the rock. But try the same with a cat: it can run away, and so it is 'evitable' for the cat to be hit. Everything in evolution is about reducing inevitability: move to places where is more light, more food, or (top of the top), avoid to sit in a cold house by ordering burning oil timely (anticipation of the future). It is in these higher orders that you must look for a correct concept of free will: namely the ability to act according to your wishes and beliefs (hopefully justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge). In this sense we surely have free will. I just had a glance at your website: it is interesting that you name your newest blog entry 'Our Unique Responsibility'. What is responsibility without free will?

Yep: These are computers:

I nearly never post youtube links, but this one is worth it:

I think John Baez should add another line to his crackpot index: Using dots..... to suggest deep thinking.... You normally see it only used by ....... crackpots. +10 points People using ..... in every post ...... hide how incoherent their thinking .... is. I am pretty sure SamCogar is not able to write a good argumentative piece of text.

You are putting the cart before the horse. It is obvious that consciousness developed first. Consciousness must have some evolutionary advantage. Even my cat shows what this advantage is: he knows that when he scratches the door I will let him in. So he knows what the consequences of his behaviour is. It makes no sense to ask why we are not robots: we are further developments of conscious animals. Maybe there are none. Where are the building blocks for text processing in your PC? The capability for certain behaviour does not mean that the behaviour itself lies in the genes. Reducing? I am not aware of that. And what evidence do you want? If some trait of an animal exists now, there must at least have been some evolutionary advantage for it. So consciousness must have been such an advantageous trait. I know it is more complicated than this, but at least conscious animals exist for such a long time, that it must have some advantage. Maybe because it helped humans survive, in groups? Why do you have such a problem with the history of evolution just as it occurred? I am not aware of dismissing anything. I only assume that there must have been an evolutionary advantage for them. Or do you think that consciousness and language arose in spite of evolution? You are asking for reason, for a rationale of not being a robot. Your original formulation: So I introduced Mother Nature as exaggeration of your 'why' question. Newton: Newton explained according to which laws of nature works. Not why it works as it does.

Oh no, not again. This 'manifesto' was already discussed here.

To the title of your thread: we are robots. We are also bodies that behave exactly the same when forces act on us: e.g. we fall just the same as stones. So what? But we are very complex robots. It turns out that this complexity leads to phenomena like consciousness, language, science, and free will. The 'why-question' is silly. It obviously once was evolutionary advantageous to develop consciousness and the capability to anticipate the consequences of ones actions. The rest is history. Why do you think evolution would lead to a rational 'end product'? We developed from 'lower' animals, and evolution has to work with the material it has. Mother nature is not just sitting and thinking what the best design for a survival machine would be. So our ancestors already had consciousness (they can picture their environment, see their place in it, and anticipate the consequences of their actions), and so we have. We added just language and culture to it. The 'why question' is not a scientific one. (So this topic should be moved to philosophy.) The 'how question' would be, but I am wondering if you are interested in that question?

Exactly. And the opposite of free will, or better of a free action, is a coerced action. There is no contradiction between free will and determinism: just as there is none between red and tall. It is astonishing how many people just take for granted that determinism and free will contradict each other. To begin with, they should explicate what kind of free will contradicts determinism. The one you really experience on a daily basis? Or the one you are ideologically filled with? On the question of the OP (yes, I know, it is 4 years old): one can seriously discuss if some higher animals like cats, rats, black birds etc have free will. To discuss if they are are conscious seems pointless to me. To say it differently: it seems that consciousness evolutionary appeared before the capabilities that we today subsume under the concept of 'free will'. Sorry I have not more time at the moment to expand on that.

mccollw, 't Hooft gives you the best start I can imagine: How to become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist Just remember: there is no short cut.

'Decoherence' might be a solution. Or not... From here: (Bold by me) On the other side, in the first link: Maybe this helps.

It seems you are seriously running out of arguments. dimreepr is right. I have to buy a new irony meter, with at least 10 times max value. I suppose following statements are true: You do not know that Bell's theorem is a simple mathematical truth of set theory. Only its application to EPR situations makes Bell's theorem revolutionary. You do not understand how science progresses, and do not understand the difference between speculation and hypotheses at one side, and 'best scientific theory we have' on the other. You just fantasised that 'Einstein created a hidden variable theory but he did not publish it'. You cannot provide us with reliable references. You do not understand the articles of 't Hooft, i.e. the holographic principle. You choose to believe the holographic principle is true, because it would support your belief that quantum events are determined. If you think my suspicions are wrong, then please prove it, by delivering the references, justifications or arguments. Otherwise the case is clear.

Bell's theorem is a simple mathematical proof. It will not go away. The idea that the nature of the universe is indeterministic is definitely not an unscientific belief. It could turn out to be wrong, but it is based on empirical proof. There might be an underlying theory that shows some form of determinism we do not know yet, but that is pure speculation. You present us speculation as truth, and scientific theories as belief. I do not believe 't Hooft was the first. Whatever. Really? He was convinced that there must be hidden variables, that is his famous EPR-paper. But I do not know anything about a theory. Do you have references please? Or do you mean with 'theory' again just an 'idea'? Bell's theorem, as said, will not go away. But maybe one day in some other scientific theory it will turn out not to be relevant. But that is something different. Not much, because I cannot really understand it. As you cannot. Or can you explain to me why the idea of cellular automata leads to a deterministic holographic theory? (Not just throwing words and citations, explaining. I bet you can't.) I think you just feel attracted to these ideas, without really understanding them. They fit to your beliefs. Really? And this is proven science? Or is it still speculative?

You are making a real mess, MattMVS7. Your wording is so inprecise that your text as nearly worthless. First: the brain does not produce experience. Some of the brain processes are experience: there is no causal relationship between brain processes and experience. A relationship of supervenience is not a causal relationship, but an ontological one. Second: there is no experiencer in the brain. Brain processes somehow are the experiencer. Third: we have no experience of our neurons. We experience ourselves as thoughts, feelings, observations etc. But never we are aware of the neurons that form the physical condition for our experience. Fourth: it is clear for everybody that experience goes together with awareness. But it explains nothing. So to be short. You did not explain anything at all. You just presented us with some 'surrogate understanding'.

How Entanglement Could Be Deterministic I think it is never wise to build your world view on hypotheses that do not find much support in physicist's community, and of which it is totally unclear how they could be empirically tested.

It is difficult if you do not know where to start. Easiest start. Next step.

Oh, sorry for the collateral damage: I only wanted to blow Randolpin's mind. Maybe it did, because he did not return to this thread...

Well, even in a deterministic world, the future is not certain. The world, and we are just too complicated to make real life predictions. But it is important that causality 'runs through us': our motivations, intentions and believes, are part of the causal fabric of the universe. Even if they are implemented in material structures, like brains. So there is no difference to ask for: the future is uncertain anyway.

Reality is the way it is, because otherwise it would be different.

That is very vague again. Please be more precise, and use technical terms correctly. I already said that there is no causal relationship between two entangled particles, so how should I be able to that? Instead of understanding and dealing with my arguments, you ask a question of which you should already know that it is a meaningless question for me. Then can you tell me where the error in Bell's theorem is, and why the experiments show that local hidden variables are ruled out? What is 'governed by spacetime'? Bell's theorem, together with the proven correctness of the predictions of QM, indeed prove that local (meaning local in space) variables cannot explain the outcome of Bell-like experiments. If they are local in some other, mathematically defined space, is a complete other story. And still another story is if this mathematically defined space is somehow physically real, or even more fundamental, then spacetime in which we live. I don't think it is very useful to link to a bunch of articles that you do not even understand yourself. Even if it turns out that 't Hooft and co are up to something, I do not think that they can make their theory operational in a way that would help to support your viewpoint: I assume that such a theory will not be able to predict where at the screen in the two-split experiment the next photon will be measured. I wonder what the scientific status of a theory is that at one side says that the world is determined, but does not allow experimental verification for that fact.

Itoero, I explicitly accentuated 'local' here: But your answer only contains 'hidden variables'. So it is not much help. My idea is the following (maybe its yours too): on this 2 dimensional surface with the same informational content as our normal 3 dimensional space, 2 detectors of entangled particles might be 'local', i.e. at the same 'place'. (So one must not equate this 2 dimensional surface with just a spacial surface somehow wrapped around the detectors). This would fit the fact that 2 entangled particles are described by one state function, and not by 2 independent ones, as in the case of two non-entangled particles. But this is very speculative from my side. So it would be nice if a real physicist chimes in here and can answer above question! I don't know what 'real space' means. At least when we talk about Bell-like experiments, when we talk about the impossibility of local hidden variables, this 'local' definitely relates to our normal 3 dimensional space. To repeat: I never ruled out the possible existence of non-local variables. But nowhere did you even accept that the non-existence of local hidden variables (in our normal 3-d space!) is empirically proven. No, there is no causal relationship between the 2 measurements of 2 entangled particles. In the first place, Bob has no way of knowing that the particle he measures is entangled, unless he compares them with Alice's measurements. Just having his own measurements he cannot find out anything about the question if Alice did measure anything at all. So causally, for Bob nothing changes because of Alice's measurement. Secondly, because the correlation between Alice's and Bob's measurement is faster than light (I even assume it is instantaneous), the events of Alice's measurement and Bob's measurement are not in each other's light cone. This means that, according to special relativity, there can be an inertial frame in which Bob's measurement takes place before Alice's measurement, and there can be another inertial frame in which Alice's measurement takes place before Bob's measurement. So causality is not preserved. However special relativity preserves causality. A causes B is true for every possible inertial frame. So there can be no causal relationship between Alice's and Bob's measurements.

Is there a contradiction between the holographic principle and the non-existence of local hidden variables?

Yep. Exactly the point.