A truly terrifying thought!

Open Forum in English
61

That’s a really difficult discussion for my poor English skills but really it is very interesting and quite related to my actual interests so I’ll attempt a few words.

I have a quite strong scientific (biotech and pharma, that was my first degree and ongoing profession) background myself and during my studies I became more and more sure about the incabability of science to understand the real nature of the mind.
What does it really mean "the experiment was set up such that they could detect the neurological, unconscious decision was before the subject felt he or she made that decision. The person’s perceived free will was in fact an illusion. "? Who determined that the way they did the experiment was such undisputable and related to free will?
How can they understand and be sure that the neurological decision was before the subject made the decision? Which signs did they use to understand the unconscious decision was made? You know that everything in science is about the set enviroment and what we decide is a result.
But more important, as Aineko says, the experiments I heard about are all dealing with motoric tasks. And it is scientific predictable that the body goes on alert everytime an ipotetic movement is about to be decided. Like the times you think at food and your mouth salivates, even if you haven’t decided yet to go and eat that pizza.
How this is related to my free will I don’t understand.
Anyway this branch of scientist, usually called sociobiologists, was in great shape some years ago but now their reductionistic theories are put in discussion through several theories (epigenetics for example).
We are determined by our dna and by our environment and by our decisions. How can you explain the fate of twins? two identical DNAs but usually two different personalities, even if they have often similar medical history.
And how do you deal with experiments that prove an effect on the observed object with the changing of the observer?
And what about Oscar Pistorious, born with a malformation and maybe not the best match to became an olympic runner? What was his DNA saying to his free will…run or be quiet? Well maybe I’m a bit out of topic here but was it not his free will to overcame his DNA and biological pattern?

I would quote Aineko again
“Human brain is a biological machine, but one so complex that reductionism didn’t work very good so far in attempts to explain it.”.

And I may add, to explain what a man you can became.

And Einstein wasn’t a full determinist. He believed that oriental religions like Buddhism were quite interesting in their world view. And Buddhism put a great focus on free will. He was a determinist about phisics and the law of nature but not about our free will and our mind and feelings.

Great topic of discussion anyway :slight_smile:

62

I accept that
“we are made of atoms and molecules, these atoms and molecules don’t have free will, they only follow the laws of physics. Molecules of liquid water don’t decide to form solid ice below 0°, they simply behave according to the laws of physics. All our body functions including our cognitive functions are merely chemical processes which simply follow the rules of physics.”

Yet I happily exercise my free will every waking moment. The fact that what I choose to do is determined by my DNA, environment, and other objective factors, does not bother me one whit. Now I am going to exercise my free will and go have a cup of coffee with my wife.

63

Friedemann,
from the wave equation does not follow any determinism, let alone from the uncertainty principle. Quantum mecanics (if I informed correctly) calculates only probabilities and nothing more. Why do you know that behind uncertainty hides determinism? If you know, share with us.

The second issue is much more serious. How do you sort out the arguments for and contra of God’s existence? You can’t explore God, can you? Or you already can? Can a tail wag the dog? If God don’t unswer you prayer it doesn’t mean that he does not exist.

64

If you can’t measure, why so global conclusions? What obscure forces convey the knoledge to you?

65

With regard to some comments (not of Steve) . Neither Rohr-Friedemann, nor any sane person suggested to use physics or biology " to decide on moral issues". Rohr has drawn our attention to a very interesting contradiction between determinism of the laws of nature, and the free will as perceived by all us. Though, I agree with Doo, the title of the thread reflects the personal feelings. But this contradiction was not formulated by Rohr, but years ago by the philosophers and scientists after Newton.

Still less then a century ago, there seemed to be more room to escape this philosophical contradiction. Science knew little about life. Many people believed that mice could spontaneously originate from dirt. Nobody knew what the fundamental nature of a chemical reaction was, not to mention the fact that biochemistry controled life. Scientists and philosophers understood incompatibility of the certain of fundamental principles (namely thermodynamics, which predicted the spontaneously raising chaos) with life (namely with its self-organization). All this, together with realization of only a partial understanding of the world, gave hope that the contradiction will be solved in the future.

We still have a partial understanding only, and there is still a hope. But in a way the hope is currently smaller. Modern science strikes with examples of an extremely successful reductionism. The quantum mechanics (which are the fundamental laws of nature, newly discovered and changed after Newton) fully explain, in principle, everything about chemistry, including biochemistry. I stress in principle. The fact that we cannot exactly compute, using the quantum mechanics methods, somewhat more complex chemistry, does not mean that the chemistry is not explained, in principle and in a sence fully, by the quantum physics.

A similar trend happened with thermodynamics. We now understand much better how and why thermodynamics does not contradict but even describes self-organization. Not only science understands life much better than before, but it knows the things that has nothing to do with life: the size, the mass, and the age of the whole Universe, and suggests a lot about its origin. (Not everything is understood, there may be mistakes, but it is a plenty of real information about the world). And, to my knowledge, never had been found and then not resolved a contradiction between the working of a fundamental law in a simple situation, (where the law can be thoroughly checked and tested) and its working in a more complex situation (which you cannot fully compute and thus “predict”). The NMR methods were first developed and tested for the isolated nucleus in magnetic fields. Now it is the most trusted method of the brain research.

66

@ victor, who wrote about the uncertainty in quantum mechanics. “Why do you know that behind uncertainty hides determinism? If you know, share with us.”

As you may know, Max Born, the inventor of the probablistic interpretation of the wave function, was exploring this way in a hope to find “relieved” determinism and, may be, escape for the free will. He was a great physicists who always stressed that philosophical side of science interests him more than science as such. Born and the others have not succeded. The current understanding, as to my knowledge, is of a ‘probabilistic determinism’

Namely, any real, whatever complex system, is a quantum system. It is FULLY described and FULLY pre-determined by its wave function. There is no way for the quantum system to effect on itself, to excercise a free will, so to say.

Yes, the wave function describes the probabilities of the evolution of the system in time. It is, whatever starnge it sounds, the full description of the world, to the current stage of our knowledge.

Wether we like this, indeed a strange description, is another story. Einstein did not. Experiment did.

67

How can any experiment that tests for general physical laws that fully predetermine existence account for the fact that someone is observing?

68

Well, I guess that what I don’t understand is the equation: we know (or we will know) the law of nature and phisics so we know that the man is a purely biological being determined by phisical law in his feeling, actions and thoughts. ie: religions and spirituality are fakes.
I can’t see how you can assume this equation.

We all know we have a biological life…but one of the questions is if our feeling are a consequence of chemicals in my body or if my body is somehow affected by our feeling. Some branch of medicine would choose the second choice.

The question about free will can’t be resolved even if we understand the low of phisics. And we can’t assume that something will be resolved becouse we understand now quite well many thing, but absolutely not everything and certainly not about feelings and thoughts we can feel and think.

How can a process related to motor neurons such as in the majority of experiments, affects out understanding of free will?

Western medicine in particular is limited by this view, that we are a body and that’s all. There’s much more that is left at bay from our scientist. The problem is that western scientists fixed a way to conduct experiments and everything that contrasts with that is false. Medical trials are sadly an exemple of this trend.
What you can’t see then it doesn’t exist, but you forgot do remember you fix you rules. But how can’t you exclude different rules are better than yours to understand certain objects.

You can discuss of all the phisics of this world but the truth is, nobody has already understand anything about the mind and the hearts of the man, aside from a anatomical understanding. Drugs that should heal psicological problems are like a kid playing with something bigger than him. If the problem is just a chemical unbalance why chemicals don’t cure unhappiness and depression? And they don’t cure it, be assured, I have extensive professional experience about this.

My unrequested advice is, find the law of phisics and you have so much more to understand yet, but don’t make equations that are not directly related to that. And free will isn’t, just like the reason of our existence in this world.

Ps. dooo,
recents axperiments attested that the physical observer can change the results of the experiment (not everytime obviously but it was attested in some cases). I don’t have time to search for references now but I found references about this some time ago when looking for articles about a project.

69

"How can any experiment that tests for general physical laws that fully predetermine [existence] account for the fact that someone is observing? "

Thank you Edward, though I have not understood one word in your question (which I put in the brackets) - the question has shown me my mistake in my wording of the last post.

The wave function of any isolated quantum system, whatever complex, according to the current state of the knowledge, describes that system fully. It also describes the probabilities of what happens if the system comes under observation of a macroscopic tool. Observation is the experiment. Upon the observation the system is disturbed, influenced, ceased to be isolated. The system’s wave function becomes different after the experiment. Still, the probability of any result of the experiment, (as well as the probability of what will be the system’s wave function after the experiment) --are all fully contained in the function before the experiment.

Though I used to work as a professional physicist for nearly 20 years, I never worked with quantum mechanics. Friedemann may know it better. Quantum physics is indeed the most unbelievable and not easy to understand, but it is even harder to accept. Richard Feynman, one of its most successful practitioners, admitted that, in a way, nobody understands quantum mechanics like scientists were used to understand things in the past. Still - no free will seems to be hidden in its intricacies.

70

So, chiaguglie, we have to look for the free will in your area, and I must shut up :wink:

71

Not quite Ilya,

my area is not better than yours in this matter, nobody has found a solution yet…

Maybe we should understand then what is the difference in our DNA the makes us think different? But I don’t think we’ll find a gene for materialistic-world view anywhere;-)

Anyway, I really love phisics and science all, that’s my background, hard sciences. But I just think many things there are in this world that this science can’t understand yet.

But if you wanna look for answers and tell us what you find it’s just great!..many answers many knowledge, just I think this kind of answers aren’t the only answers;-)

72

“But I just think many things there are in this world that this science can’t understand yet.”

Do you like poetry, chiaguglie?. I do not know the exact English words and the spelling, but " There are so many things on Earthe and Heaven, Horatio, that were dreamed off in your philosophy!" ;- Hey, the English, please correct me, I had read it in Russian only -:wink:

73

umm, well I’m much more into modern prose to say the truth…I now recognize the quote, Shakespeare, isn’t it?
But we sometimes tell something like that in Italian too in everyday language, like a proverb, I don’t know if it comes from Shakespeare or from something Italian.
Well, actually I didn’t thought at that while writing, they’re real my feelings about the topic:-)

By the way, my name’s Chiara;-)

74

@"The argument is this: we are made of atoms and molecules, these atoms and molecules don’t have free will, they only follow the laws of physics. Molecules of liquid water don’t decide to form solid ice below 0°, they simply behave according to the laws of physics. All our body functions including our cognitive functions are merely chemical processes which simply follow the rules of physics. Now, if our molecules have no choice to to this or that, how can our brain as a whole be non deterministic, how can free will exist? "

seems like I mentioned synergy for nothing. Rohr, physical chemistry was part of my education and I’m far from ignorant when it comes to physics and chemistry, simply because I need to know them to the certain extent for my own work (or at least my uni syllabus thought that I need to know them) . I’m now tempted to say that you do not understand a lot about genetics and neuroscience, or at least you do not have a full idea about their complexity (again, think synergy).

I do have questions about the experiments you mentioned:

  1. is there any evidence that our consciousness is not affecting our subconsciousness ? that is to say, that our consciousness of a decision we’ve made is not affecting our future decisions, regardless of the fact who is the first to make the decision, my consciousness or my subconsciousness. I seriously doubt that there is such evidence and believe that it is in this interaction between consciousness and subconsciousness that you will find your free will.

  2. about the experiments: from what you wrote, I understand that the experiments were done around one decision at the time. what would happen if I cheat at the experiment, if instead of making my conscious decision one at a time, I make a decision for the, say, next six moves (if we are talking about exp. where subject is asked to decide which finger to move) but only tell the decision about the next move. would it still be possible to predict from brain activity all six moves at the time I decided what they are going to be? was there such control in these experiments?

and to go back to what you said at the part I quoted: I think that your first mistake is to look at the human free will as a scientific question only, while I think that it is a philosophical and metaphysical question as well. go back to my response to Ilya where I said that none of my decisions is free of the three factors. so, we cannot look at the free will as something absolutely free, something that, like soul, is coming from somewhere else, totally unrelated to our genes, environment and experience.

and as for your concern for the moral decisions, I already said, civilisation proves you wrong - yes, we can influence people by the feeling of guilt.

75

just in case I have to further explain the synergy thing: take genes for example - in many cases, although you know exactly what the outcome of the presence of certain genes is, by this knowledge (and the knowledge of laws of physics) you still cannot predict what would the outcome for the organism be if you have all of these genes together. add the environment into the equation and you have even a bigger problem. I can easily see that the same could be the truth for the brain modules and processes.

76

It doesn’t matter whether we have free will or not. We are just very lucky, we can preserve our entropy in order to exist.

77

Interpretation assumes free will. Evidence requires an interpreter. All scientific evidence used to answer a question about the extent of free will is question beggary… and so it goes.

78

dooo, you’ve put it short what I’m trying to explain to rohr in too many words :slight_smile: - that if we are talking about human free will, we can only talk about human perception of our own decisions, not some abstract phenomenon noninfluenced by human perception. And that is why his concerns about moral decisions are unfounded - as long as it doesn’t come to “the voices in my head (or god himself) made me do it” we can use this perception of our decisions, that we call free will, to sustain an organized society.

79

Steve,

if my conjecture is correct, a complex series of chemical processes, governed by the deterministic nature of the laws of physics led to you having a cup of coffee with your wife. It also created a subjective sensation of a conscious decision in your brain. However, our subjective perception is no good guide if we want to unravel the true nature of things.

80

Aineko,

you are right, I do not know a lot about neuroscience. But what I know is that neuroscience is ultimately based on chemical and pysical processes, albeit complex ones. Complexity doesn’t mean though that we can escape the deterministic laws of physics governing the chemical processes underpinning neurological phenomena.

I also think Ilya made an excellent point: God and metaphysics has been on a constant retreat for the last several hundreds of years because of the advance of modern science. The escape options for free will become fewer and fewer.

To Victor2:

Quantum mechanics lets you make extremely accurate predictions about countless quantum mechanical phenomena such as the structure of molecules, their electronic structure and their radiative properties. Uncertainty relations apply to some phenoma, that does not mean that the evolution of the wavefunction in time is not deterministic.