Download at the STI Experts Meeting - The Information Philosopher

The Two-Stage Solution to the
Problem of Free Will
Reconciling Freedom With a Limited Indeterminism
and a Limited, but Adequate, Determinism
Bob Doyle
Information Philosopher
Department of Astronomy
Harvard University
Information Philosopher
Social Trends Institute
1950's
When I went to Harvard to study astrophysics in
1958, the Big Bang theory said the universe began
in a state of equilibrium 10 or 20 billion years ago.
Given the second law of thermodynamics, I asked,
why isn't it still in equilibrium?.
Why do we have a cosmos, rather than chaos?
Why something, rather than nothing?
Information Philosopher
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1960's
My Ph.D thesis was on the interaction of two
(entangled)hydrogen atoms with radiation (photons). I found
the universe to be discrete, not continuous, quantum rather
than classical, digital, rather than analog.
I read Arthur Stanley Eddington, who said that quantum
mechanics shows that pre-determinism is not true.
Like Eddington, I connected quantum physics to free will.
Quantum randomness generates new possibilities for the
universe, I thought, like the evolution of biological species.
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1970's – Dennett
In 1978, Dan Dennett described a two-stage model for free
will – a production stage with a random element and a
subsequent choice stage.
But he thought only deterministic pseudo-random numbers
were needed to generate the alternative possibilities.
At the time, I thought Libertarians would soon accept his
two-stage model, but of course with indeterministic
quantum randomness to break the deterministic causal
chain back to the origin of the universe.
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1980's – Kane
Today's leading Libertarian, Bob Kane, has always accepted
quantum randomness. But he locates indeterminism in the
"plural rational control" decisions needed for self-forming
actions (SFAs) and "ultimate responsibility" (UR).
He said that Dennett's model was "a significant piece in the
overall puzzle," suitable for practical reasoning if not moral,
but given the randomly generated possibilities, an agent
would be determined to choose the best available option.
Perhaps, but the agent would not be pre-determined,
even from moments just before deliberations began.
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1990's – Mele
Al Mele argued for a "modest libertarianism" that is
essentially the Dennett decision-making model. But he
remains agnostic on the role of quantum mechanics – for
him determinism might still be true. He says,
"It might be worth exploring the possibility of combining a compatibilist
conception of the later parts of a process…with an incompatibilist
conception of the earlier parts…Compatibilists may, in principle be
willing to accept an account of causation that accommodates both
deterministic and probabilistic instances." (Autonomous Agents, pp.212-13)
I agree. I hope Mele is right about compatibilists agreeing.
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2000's – Heisenberg
In the May 14, 2009 issue of Nature, Martin Heisenberg
argued for behavioral freedom in lower animals, based on a
two-stage process of randomness followed by lawful
behavior. He felt it could be the basis for free will in humans.
I wrote Nature to say that a two-stage model had been first
suggested by William James in 1884. Since James, it was also
discussed by Henri Poincaré, Arthur Holly Compton, Karl
Popper, Henry Margenau, John Martin Fischer, Stephen
Kosslyn, and, of course, Dennett, Kane, Mele, and myself.
It is now the most practical and plausible model for free will.
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My Two-Stage Model for Free Will
Stage 1) Alternative possibilities generated by chance, in part by
quantum events that break the causal chain of pre-determinism.
Stage 2) An adequately determined evaluation of those
alternatives, resulting in a willed decision.
First chance, then choice.
First spontaneous variation, then selection (Darwin analogy).
First possibilities, then actuality.
Thoughts come to us freely. Actions go from us willfully.
First “free,” then “will.”
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Dennett's Objection
"Isn't it the case that the new improved proposed model for human
deliberation can do as well with a random-but-deterministic
generation process as with a causally undetermined process? "
(Brainstorms, p.298)
My reply: Quantum randomness is needed to
break the causal chain of determinism.
It expands the range of creative alternative possibilities.
5/24/2017
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9
Kane's Objection
"[The agent] does not have complete control over what chance
images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his
deliberation. They simply come as they please...What happens from
then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he
already has. " (A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, p.64-5)
My reply: Determination by reasons is not pre-determined, as
R.E.Hobart pointed out in 1934.
Libertarianism need not require that the will itself be free and
undetermined by reasons, in the sense of quantum randomness.
5/24/2017
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10
Mele's Objection
Mele argues that true randomness makes options a matter of luck and
luck might compromise the control needed for moral responsibility.
"When luck (good or bad) is problematic, that is because it seems
significantly to impede agents' control over themselves." (Free Will
and Luck, p.7)
My reply: Luck is the simple consequence of real chance in the
universe. As long as our evaluation and selection of options are
adequately determined by our reasons, motives, and desires, we
are responsible, however the options were generated.
5/24/2017
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11
Martin Heisenberg's Behavioral Freedom
Selection methods get us from Heisenberg’s behavioral
freedom in lower animals to my free will in humans.
Whether in biological evolution or in generating
possibilities for our two-stage model, the source for
spontaneous variations, is always the same –
indeterminism, objective chance, quantum randomness.
It is the method of selection that makes the difference.
In biological evolution, nature selects.
In behavioral freedom. the organism itself
“purposely” and "intentionally" selects.
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Four Levels of Selection
Instinctive selection - selection criteria are transmitted
genetically, shaped only by ancestors' experiences.
Learned selection - for animals whose past experiences guide
current choices. Selection criteria are acquired through
experience, including instruction by parents and peers.
Predictive selection - using imagination and foresight to
estimate the future consequences of choices.
Reflective (normative) selection – conscious deliberation about
community values influences the choice of behaviors.
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Comparing My Two-Stage Model
My model is Dennett's model, plus genuine quantum
randomness in the generation of alternative possibilities.
Kane has long held that quantum randomness is needed. But
my model puts chance in the early stage, not in the decision.
I agree with Mele's views, except that determinism is false.
Today I will provide a second reason why it is false.
None of these thinkers locates the time and place of the
sources of quantum randomness as I do.
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What's Better About My Two-Stage Model?
Previous thinkers could not amplify a single quantum event in
the brain and synchronize it to make a decision free
(uncaused), yet provide agent control and responsibility.
My model does not rely on a single quantum event for each
willed decision. That would make the decision random.
The source of randomness in my model is the ever-present
quantal and thermal noise that affects the creation, storage,
maintenance, and retrieval of information in any informationprocessing system.
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Noise In All Information Processing
The source of a break in the causal deterministic chain need
not happen in the mind itself. It could be external.
And it need not happen during deliberation. It just needs to
be considered during deliberation.
It could result from a mistaken perception, or an error during
consolidation of memory, or noise in memory retrieval.
Creating information always involves quantum indeterminacy.
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The Origin of Information
To return to the original question, given the second law of
thermodynamics, why isn't the universe still in equilibrium?
How can we be having this conversation and exchanging new
information? Because we, and the universe, are creative.
We humans create new information, using the same steps as
what I call the cosmic information creation process.
It involves the interaction of quantum physics (with its
indeterminacy) and thermodynamics (with its irreversibility).
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The Cosmic Creation Process
Information creation requires two things – a microscopic
quantum event that lowers the entropy locally,
and energy and entropy transfer away from the new
information structure, needed to increase entropy globally.
Quantum processes produce all bound states of matter –
fundamental particles, atoms, molecules, DNA, etc.
But binding energy, and thermodynamic entropy, must be
carried away from any new information structure for it to be
stable. Otherwise, it will be unstable and disappear.
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The Cosmic Creation Process
Let's form a hydrogen atom from a proton and an electron.
p+ + e- -> H + ν
The binding energy is released from the hydrogen atom as a
photon (ν), which is radiated away.
If that energy and the associated thermodynamic entropy is
not carried away from the hydrogen atom, it will separate
back into a proton and electron (absorbing a photon).
We can reduce the entropy locally, if we increase it globally.
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Time and Information Creation
Whether it is a new particle like a hydrogen atom,
or a bit set or reset in a digital computer,
whether it is the next nucleotide attaching to a DNA strand,
or a new idea for an alternative possibility in your mind,
two irreversible things must happen…
An undetermined and irreversible quantum event.
The irreversible transfer of entropy away from the new
information structure.
Irreversibility in information creation is the arrow of time.
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Entropy and Information
Leo Szilard in 1939 showed that Maxwell's Demon must
gather information to decrease the entropy.
Gunter Ludwig in 1953 showed that in the measurement
process, for every bit of information acquired, at least one
bit of entropy is carried away by the measuring apparatus.
Rolf Landauer (1961) showed that the change of one bit of
computer data requires the computer system to absorb one
(usually many more) bits of positive entropy.
But how can information (good negative entropy) possibly
increase at the same time that (bad) entropy increases?
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Information in Classical Physics
information a constant of nature
information
Laplace's Demon (1814)
A Laplace Demon has all the information - forces, positions, velocities for all the particles in the universe.
All times, past and future, are present to the Laplace Demon,
as to the eyes of God. In a deterministic universe, information is constant.
Mathematical physicists, like Laplace, believe that the conservation of information
is as much a conservation law as those of matter and energy.
There is no chance. The randomness we see is simply epistemic, a consequence
of human ignorance about physical details that a demon and God can know.
(Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 1814)
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time
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entropy/information
Entropy As Lost Information
entropy
Lord Kelvin’s Heat Death (1852)
Following the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics,
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) claimed that the universe would
“run down,” all the energy ultimately dissipated into thermal motions,
which Herman Helmholtz called a “heat death.”
Mathematicians would say the information lost to entropy is still
available microscopically, and recoverable if time was reversed.
information
(William Thomson, "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy")
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entropy / information
Making Room for Information
As the universe expands, the number of
phase space cells and the maximum
possible entropy expand much faster than
the matter and energy can re-equilibrate
(reach thermal equilibrium), leaving room
for negative entropy, and for stable
information structures to form and grow.
negative entropy
information
maximum possible entropy
actual entropy
David Layzer, The Arrow of Time, Scientific American, 1975
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time
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Now Two Reasons To Reject Determinism
Old reason: information creation requires quantum events,
which are inherently indeterministic. The future is only
probabilistic, though it may be "adequately determined."
My new reason: there is not enough information in the past
(none at all in the early universe) to determine the present.
The "fixed past" and the "laws of nature" pre-determine
nothing, despite recent philosophical arguments.
Similarly, information at the present time does not
determine the future. The future is open. We must create it.
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Resolving Two Paradoxes
Ludwig Boltzmann's ideas on the increase of entropy with time
were attacked using classical mechanical ideas which now fail.
The first was Loschmidt's paradox. If the velocities of particles
could be turned exactly around, it would be as if time had reversed
and the entropy would go back to its initial value.
The second was Zermelo's paradox. Given enough time, any given
distribution of particles among all the phase space cells would be
exactly repeated. Again, entropy should decrease at that time.
Quantum mechanics and information creation resolve these paradoxes.
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No Macroscopic Recurrence
The ancient idea of a great year or eternal return is impossible
in a universe with increasing information content.
Max Planck's student Ernst Zermelo (who later developed axiomatic
set theory) argued that given a long enough time, the particles of any gas
would return to a distribution in "phase space" (a 6n dimensional
space of possible velocities and positions) that would be
indistinguishable from the original low entropy distribution.
This is true in a closed chemical "universe." But in the open astronomical
universe, information increases. Later times can thus never be
"exactly the same circumstances."
Compare our human memory of past circumstances.
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No Microscopic Reversibility
A careful quantum analysis shows that reversibility fails
even in the simplest conditions - the case of two particles in collision.
When they collide, they should not be treated as individual particles
with single-particle wave functions, but as a single system with a
two-particle wave function, because they are now entangled.
Molecular (not atomic) wave functions should be used.
Quantum transitions between closely spaced rotational and vibrational
energy levels in the "quasi-molecule" introduces uncertainty.
Transitions could be different for a hypothetical reversed path.
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The Problem of Measurement Solved
In the deterministic evolution of the Schrödinger equation,
information is conserved, just as in classical physics.
Unless there is an indeterministic “collapse” of the wave function,
unless at least one bit of information is acquired,
and unless at least one (and generally many more) bits of entropy
are carried away by the measuring apparatus,
there can be nothing for a “conscious observer” to observe.
The Heisenberg/Von Neumann “cut,” John Bell’s “shifty split,”
happens at the moment that stable information enters the world.
Knowing this can help us solve the puzzle of Schrödinger's Cat.
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John Bell’s “Shifty Split”
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John Bell’s “Shifty Split” Located
The spots on the
photographic plate
are irreversible
new information
in the universe.
Without them, there
is nothing for a
“conscious observer”
to observe.
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How Quantum Underlies Classical
The Correspondence Principle ensures that the laws of quantum
physics asymptotically approach the laws of classical physics in the
limit of large quantum numbers.
Similarly, the Law of Large Numbers of statistical events ensures that,
normally, microscopic quantum events average out for manyparticle systems to produce regular, though statistical, laws.
The world thus shows us an "adequate determinism" for large objects
that in no way denies the fundamental and irreducible
indeterminacy at the quantum level.
Macroscopic systems such as biological organisms and computers can
reliably suppress quantum indeterminism, if they want to.
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Dennett's Challenge
Dan Dennett challenged me to give reasons why quantum
indeterminacy is better than computer pseudo-randomness.
Dennett does not deny quantum indeterminacy. He just
doubts quantum randomness is necessary for free will.
First, quantum randomness has been available to evolving
species for billions of years before pseudo-randomness.
Second, I proposed four cases where quantum chance is
critically important and better than pseudo-randomness.
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Laplace Demon?
As we saw earlier, we now know that a Laplace Demon
cannot exist in the real universe.
There is not enough information in the past to determine the
present, let alone completely determine the future.
Creating future information requires quantum events, which
are inherently indeterministic. The future is only probable,
though it may be "adequately determined."
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Intelligent Designer?
Suppose determinism is true, and that the chance driving
spontaneous variation of the gene pool is merely
epistemic, in actuality the result of Dennett's computer
generated pseudo-random number generator.
An intelligent designer with an even bigger computer might
reverse engineer and alter the algorithm behind the
pseudo-randomness driving evolution.
But cosmic rays, which are inherently indeterministic
quantum events, damage the DNA to produce mutations.
No intelligent designer could control such evolution.
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Frankfurt Controllers
For the last few decades, compatibilists have used Frankfurt
Cases to show that free will does not require alternative
possibilities.
But, as Bob Kane first showed in 1985, if a choice is
undetermined, the Frankfurt controller cannot tell until the
choice is made whether the agent will do A or do otherwise.
Because chance (quantum randomness) helps generate the
alternate possibilities, information about the choice does not
come into the universe until the choice has been made.
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Dennett's Eavesdropper
I call this Dennett's Eavesdropper, because in a discussion of
quantum cryptography, Dennett agreed there is a strong
reason to prefer quantum randomness to pseudorandomness for encrypting secure messages.
He sees that if a pseudo-random number sequence were
used, a clever eavesdropper might discover the algorithm
behind it and thus be able to decode the message.
I am a visitor in Dennett's Free Will Seminar at Tufts this Fall.
With luck, he will soon accept more indeterminism in the
early generation stage of his model.
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Why Information Philosopher?
Information is neither Matter nor Energy.
But it needs Matter for Embodiment.
And it needs Energy for Communication.
I think of information as immaterial, a spirit…
Information is the mind in the body.
Information is the ghost in the machine.
Information is the soul in the flesh.
When we die, it’s our information that is lost.
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So Is Science Compatible With Freedom?
Free Will is Incompatible with Pre-determinism and with
Indeterminism in the Choice itself
(excepting Bob Kane’s "torn decisions") .
Free Will is Compatible with Limited Indeterminism and with
Limited, but Adequate, Determinism
(i.e., determination by reasons, values, and desires).
David Hume reconciled freedom with determinism. I hope to
be remembered as reconciling free will with indeterminism
Thank you.
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• The following slides are for discussions.
5/24/2017
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40
What If Decisions Had Just One Stage?
Determinist philosophers say an action could not have been
otherwise, given the “laws of nature” and the “fixed past,” the
exact circumstances immediately preceding the decision.
This is because, for them, the decision is a single point in time.
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We Need Time To “Do Otherwise”
In our two-stage model, the decision is a process
with a temporal sequence, first “free,” then “will.”
Our thoughts come to us freely (generated).
Our actions go from us willfully (evaluated).
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We Can Even Have “Second Thoughts”
Our decisions are not necessarily determined once
we generate the alternative possibilities.
If our evaluation finds the alternative possibilities
unacceptable, and if time permits, we can always
generate more creative ideas.
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Multiple Causes in the Global Workspace
Bernard Baars’ audience in his Theater of Consciousness ≈
Dan Dennett’s functional homunculi with their causal chains
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Multiple Causes in the Global Workspace
Bob Kane’s Self-Forming Actions add their own new causal chains
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Multiple Causes in the Global Workspace
My Two-Stage Model adds new alternative possibilities,
- after the Circumstance and before the Decision
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Giving Compatibilists What They Need
Given a logical choice between determinism and indeterminism,
compatibilists understandably choose determinism,
so that their decisions are "determined" by evaluations of their
reasons, motive, and desires, in short, by their character.
The Two-Stage Model provides all the "determination" of the will
compatibilists want and need, but not the "pre-determinism"
that threatens agent control and responsibility.
Might compatibilists accept the limited indeterminism that we
have in quantum physics and the real world?
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Random Quantum Events in the Brain?
Molecular biologists are skeptical about any quantum
indeterminacy in the brain-mind. Neurons are macroscopic
objects with the order of 1020 atoms. How could one atom
affect anything?, they ask.
Apart from the fact that there are trillions of quantum events
in the brain every second, we can also note that biological
systems have evolved to the quantum limit. An eye can detect
a single photon. A nose can smell a single molecule.
I argue that the brain has found an evolutionary advantage in
quantum indeterminacy and thermal noise.
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Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
Please note that quantum mechanics contributes more than
just indeterminacy to the two-stage model of free will.
Critically, it also provides the stable information structures that
the will uses to recruit and manage the indeterminacy.
The stability of information in DNA over cosmic time scales is a
direct consequence of quantum discreteness.
Without quantum mechanics, electrons would spiral into the
nucleus. Matter as we know it would disappear in an instant.
Protons and electrons would become neutrons, not atoms.
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Creativity and Free Will
Normally random noise is the enemy of information, but it
can be the friend of freedom and creativity.
Alternative possibilities are the source of human creativity.
They make us the authors of our lives.
We normally suppress the creative noise.
We are perhaps most free when we dream,
when we are imaginative, when we are creative.
And when we create, we are co-creators of our universe.
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Comprehensive Compatibilism?
For compatibilists, the two-stage model is a
Comprehensive Compatibilism
because it is Compatible with both…
the Adequate Determinism we need for
determination by reasons, values, and desires
- which compatibilists want,
and the Limited Indeterminism we need to
generate alternative possibilities.
- which compatibilists might accept.
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David Hume and Immanuel Kant
Hume's Compatibilism reconciled freedom with the
rational causal determinism of his age, the physical
determinism of Newtonian classical mechanics.
Kant's great Critiques put limits on such reason, to
make room for freedom, God, and immortality. He
invented a transcendental noumenal world beyond
the deterministic physics of the phenomenal world.
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Reason and Free Will
Logically, Either Determinism is True or Indeterminism is True.
If Determinism is True, We Are Not Free.
If Indeterminism is True, our Will is Random, and we cannot be
responsible for our actions.
Logic and Reason find Free Will incompatible with both
Determinism and Indeterminism.
This is the Standard Argument against Free Will.
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Locke, Hegel, Darwin, and James
John Locke analyzed the complex concept of "free will" and
found it unintelligible. "I think the question is not proper,
whether the will be free, but whether a man be free."
G. W. F. Hegel synthesized indeterminism and determinism in
the third step of his dialectical "Aufhebung" of free will.
Charles Darwin combined objective chance and lawful
selection to explain biological evolution.
William James adapted Darwin in his two-stage model of
"mental evolution."
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Reconciling Indeterminism
David Hume reconciled freedom with the determinism of
classical Newtonian physics . He found "no medium betwixt
chance and necessity."
Arthur Eddington understood indeterminism and quantum
physics , but he could find "no halfway house between
randomness and correlated behavior."
I believe I can reconcile free will with the indeterminism of
Heisenberg, by putting Kantian limits on it, and finding a
Hegelian "third thing," one that combines indeterminism and
determinism, while limiting and transcending both.
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Aristotle, Epicurus, and a Third Thing
For Aristotle, human agency was beyond chance (τυχή) and
necessity (ἀνάγκη). He called it "up to us" (ἐφ' ἡμῖν) and "in us" (ἐν
ἡμῖν). It was a "third thing," a tertium quid.
Epicurus, known for the "swerve" of the atoms that breaks the
deterministic causal chain, agreed there was a third thing…
"...some things happen of necessity (ἀνάγκη), others by chance
(τύχη), others through our own agency (παρ’ ἡμᾶς).
"...necessity destroys responsibility and chance is uncertain; whereas
our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and
blame naturally attach. " (Letter to Menoeceus, §133)
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Ontology of Alternative Possibilities
Alternative Possibilities may never be acted upon, and the idea of
Actualism (only what actually happens is real) denies that they exist.
But alternative possibilities, once they are generated in the first
stage of the two-stage process of first "free," then "will,"
become real - as information structures in the mind of the agent.
Barring memory loss, the information remains in the agent's mind,
as "roads not taken," and as alternative possibilities when faced with
similar circumstances in the future.
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Information Flows
Negative Entropy
Noise
Entropy
Chaos
Disorder
Boltzmann Entropy
Information
Negentropy
Complexity
Order
Shannon Entropy
David Layzer showed how entropy and information can increase at the
same time in the expanding universe. There are two info/entropy flows…
In any process, the positive entropy increase is always at least equal to,
and generally orders of magnitude larger than, the negative entropy in
any created information structures, to satisfy the second law.
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Info Flows in Cosmology
Negative Entropy
Cosmic Background
Dust and Gas?
Dark Matter?
Dark Energy?
Boltzmann Entropy
Particles
Quarks, Baryons
Nuclei, Electrons
Atoms, Molecules
Galaxies
Stars
Planets
Shannon Entropy
Note that the stable quantum mechanical systems and self-gravitating
systems have extremely long lifetimes, thanks to quantum stability.
Although quantum processes break the illusion of a chain of causation
and pre-determinism, the most important contribution of quantum
mechanics is to provide stability against quantum and thermal noise.
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Sun-Earth Info Flows
Negative Entropy
Space
Boltzmann Entropy
Replicating Molecules
RNA-life
DNA-life
Shannon Entropy
Most of the negative entropy flow from the sun is wasted, passing the
earth and lost to outer space.
A tiny fraction is captured by the earth, keeping us at a temperature
comfortable for life forms to evolve.
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Info Flows in Biology
Negative Entropy
Environment
Night Sky
Boltzmann Entropy
Protozoans
Plants
Animals
Humans
Shannon Entropy
Every biological structure is a quantum mechanical structure.
DNA has maintained its stable information structure over
billions of years in the constant presence of noise.
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Info Flows in Humans
Negative Entropy
100W Heat Loss
Cell death
Excrement
Human Deaths
Culture Loss
Boltzmann Entropy
Body Maintenance
And Growth
Mind - Learning
Knowledge Transfer
Publications
Human Artifacts
Shannon Entropy
The stable information content of a human being survives many changes
in the material content of the body. Only with death does human
information (spirit, soul) dissipate - unless it is saved somewhere.
The total mental information in humans is orders of magnitude less than
the information content and information processing rate of the body.
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Information Creation in RBCs
Hemoglobin protein
100 million red blood
cells die each second
x
300 million hemoglobin
proteins in each RBC
x
100s of amino acids in
each hemoglobin
=
100,000 terabytes of
information per second
Information Philosopher
Every time a tRNA adds a
new amino acid to the
growing polypeptide chain
it is a quantum event!
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Standard Argument against Free Will
To understand Kane's work, consider this argument.
Logically, Either Determinism is True or Indeterminism is True.
If Determinism is True, We Are Not Free.
If Indeterminism is True, our Will is Random,
and we cannot be responsible for our actions.
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Kane's Responsibility Either Way
Kane' Plural Rational Control cleverly develops cases where the
agent is responsible, even if a decision is made at random.
In these cases the agent is agonizing over "torn decisions," and
has excellent reasons for doing more than one thing.
This partially overcomes the problem of luck and the standard
argument that indeterminism undermines responsibility.
But more is needed.
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Chance Is Not Merely Epistemic
For centuries, the existence of regular statistical laws –
the normal distribution of errors, etc. – suggested to many
philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians that chance has
an underlying determinism, that chance is only the result of
human ignorance. This is a serious mistake.
Quantum statistics underlie regularities in classical statistics.
Quantum indeterminacy is the source of real ontological
chance in the universe. Not surprisingly, the statistical
distribution of quantum events matches that of the classical
normal distributions (like the bell curve).
Information Philosopher
Social Trends Institute