Free Will – What it Means and Why it Matters

Free will: do we have the ability to make our own choices, or are we merely acting out the course that was set for us in advance? This question may seem straightforward, but it has a whole bunch of unspoken assumptions and associations packed into it. When we ask about free will, we are not simply curious about a bit of scientific knowledge, like how birds fly or why planets are round. We feel deeply that the difference between having and not having free will has a huge impact on how we perceive ourselves and live our lives. In order to explore the question thoroughly and satisfactorily, we have to chip away at all of its layers until we find what we really care about.

Surreal Rings of Mystery, by PhoenixArisen on Deviantart

To start, let’s talk about determinism. Suppose there were a being who knew all the physical details of all the particles in the universe with infinite precision. If the universe is deterministic, that being could accurately deduce the past back to the big bang, and predict the future all the way until the end of time. This being is called Laplace’s Demon, because credit always goes to famous people.

Most people would say, if our actions are governed by determinism, then we do not have free will. If we take free will in its literal sense, it would mean the ability to defy the motions of the particles in our brains, and make new threads of causation spring into existence. This version of free will is called libertarian free will (not to be confused with the political orientation).

For most of the history of science, we thought the universe was deterministic. It was all particles and fields bouncing around, exchanging energy and momentum and stuff like that. However, a hundred years ago, the discovery of quantum physics opened the door to probabilism, the idea that the actions of subatomic particles are governed by probabilities, not pre-determined outcomes. We can set up an experiment where there is a 10% chance of one possibility, and a 90% chance of another, and there is no possible way to know for certain what the outcome will be ahead of time, even for Laplace’s Demon.

We might think probabilism would open the door for free will, by letting us influence the probabilities of the neurons firing in our brains. However, that is not the case, because of the law of large numbers. Although it is impossible to know whether individual probabilistic events will turn out to be this or that, the more events that happen, the closer the total results will match the probabilities. This is how the probabilistic world of quantum physics gives rise to the essentially deterministic world of classical physics.

The double-slit experiment, done with thousands of individual photons. As you can see, each photon seems to hit the screen randomly, but once enough of them do, the pattern emerges.

If libertarian free will were true, if we could influence the probabilities of quantum physics, it would create systematic deviations, meaning the results of the experiments would not fit the probabilities as well as they should. This may sound familiar, as it is the experiment we proposed in order to test dualism, the idea that the mind/soul/spirit is a substance different from everything else in physical reality. If neither determinism nor probabilism allows for libertarian free will, does dualism?

At first, it may seem so. After all, if the soul causes new interactions with the brain through choices, then that’s free will, right? Not so fast. By what process does the soul make its choices? What laws of physics—or laws of psychics, if you will—describe the mechanics of soul stuff? If soul stuff behaves deterministically or probabilistically, then dualism does not change anything.

So what would allow for libertarian free will? The only way I can think of is if the mind is an inherent mystery. Not simply that we do not understand it with our knowledge today, but that it cannot be understood, because it does not have an answer. If the mind is a black box, then when we peek into the box, we don’t see anything, because it is mysteries all the way down. This is a view I call quasi-realism, the idea that there are some parts of reality where the answers are inherently fuzzy, and cannot be understood because there is no explanation. I have previously argued against quasi-realism in the nature of reality series, particularly The Nature of Natures, claiming a thing cannot exist without a well-defined way-that-it-is, a nature, and thus, it can be understood. Therefore, the mind, whether dual or physical, has a well-defined, comprehensible nature, and does not supply a loophole for libertarian free will.

But is libertarian free will really what we are interested in? I don’t think so. To see why, let’s take a deeper look at these things we call “choices.” There are two types, at least that I can think of:

1. The exertion of effort. There are times throughout every day when we want to do something, and exert effort to do it; or we know we are on track to do something, and exert effort to avoid doing it.

2. Envisioning possible futures. We don’t know what we are going to do, so we imagine the benefits and downsides of each possibility, and the results play a part in determining what we do.

These definitions do not contain the words “choose,” “option,” “decision,” or anything like that. In fact, these definitions are compatible with determinism and probabilism. Some would say these aren’t really choices, because they are completely determined by the physical processes in our brains, which are determined by a large number of things, like our senses, our knowledge, our skill at accurately predicting outcomes, our self-control, our moment-to-moment body chemistry, the values we learned as children, our habits, our genes, and our cultural influences, which were in turn determined by other things, and so on back to the big bang. Others say, who cares? These definitions accurately describe choices, and that’s good enough to say we have free will. This view, that free will is compatible with deterministic definitions of choices, is called compatibilism.

In situations like this, we are forced to do one thing or another. However, it still feels like a choice is being made.

Is that it? Does the question of free will ultimately come down to semantics? Surely something that feels so profound and significant for our lives must have more to it.

To go further, we need to realize that we are not interested in metaphysics, not really. Determinism, probabilism, dualism, none of that is relevant. What we really care about when talking about free will is the following moral questions:

• Does considering our actions and their consequences matter, or should we just give up and stop caring?
• Is it reasonable to treat people as responsible for their actions or give them credit for their creations and good deeds?
• What is the responsibility of governments and institutions to people who are poor?
• Do we have control over our own actions, or are we being controlled by the manipulations of others or by some kind of Fate?
• Should the criminal justice system focus on punishing people for their actions, or on rehabilitating them?
• Do manipulative agents, such as governments and advertisers, have the right to treat people as means to further their own goals, rather than with respect?

The deep reason people argue for or against free will is because they have a stance on one or more of these questions, or are afraid people who argue against them on free will hold the opposite view on the questions. For instance, some people (like myself) argue free will exists, because they desperately need to believe their efforts make a difference. Others argue that free will does not exist, because they are sick of politicians using free will as an excuse not to help the poor. After all, the rationalization goes, if poor people are poor because of their own bad choices, then the government shouldn’t be responsible to help them.

Rather than arguing at the abstract level of free will, it would be more productive to discuss these issues directly. They are all much more complicated than a simple yes or no, and they are not connected to one another nearly well enough to be put under the umbrella term of “free will.” It is perfectly reasonable, for instance, to believe both that our efforts are tremendously significant, and also that the government should provide a strong safety net; two beliefs traditionally placed on opposite sides of free will.

Based on what we have said today, libertarian free will, the idea that we exist outside the processes of the universe and create new threads of causation, does not exist. Compatibilist free will, the idea that our thoughts and efforts play a role from within the deterministic or probabilistic processes of the universe, does. But at the end of the day, what matters is not the metaphysics, but the moral questions of responsibility and how we should live.

The Best Argument Against the Quantum Multiverse

Recommended Pre-Reading:
The Quantum Multiverse

Some time ago, I argued in favor of the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, explaining how I had misunderstood it before, and why I changed my mind. I recommend reading that post for the full story, but the short version is, the Many-Worlds interpretation (or more accurately, the Universal Wave Function interpretation) is the straightforward interpretation of quantum physics, explaining the weird paradoxes without adding any extra assumptions to the theory. All other interpretations require adding something; either a collapse condition, where a measurement causes the wave function to immediately change shape all at once, ignoring the speed of light, or some kind of hidden variables we can’t measure. The Many-Worlds interpretation says the wave function described by the Schrodinger equation is correct, and that is all. Everything else, the multiple universes and such, are deduced from that single statement.

However, there is one thing that bugs me, one loose end Many-Worlds doesn’t explain. That is why today, I am going to continue the Best Arguments Against series, and put forth my best argument against the quantum multiverse.

Most people who argue against Many-Worlds don’t understand it. Some dismiss it out of hand as too weird. Others get Occam’s Razor backward and think Many-Worlds has branching universes as a postulate, rather than a deduction. These are not good arguments.

The best argument has to do with probabilities. If we look only at the math, it makes sense that the wave function can split into two worlds, one with an amplitude three times stronger than the other. Think of a pile of sand. Someone splits it into two, one of which is three times bigger than the other. Where there was one pile, there are now two of differing heights. That’s an apt analogy for the splitting of universes, and it’s quite easy to visualize. Nothing confusing or difficult to believe there.

However, when we do an experiment, the outcome with the higher amplitude has a 90% chance of happening, and the outcome with the lower amplitude has a 10% chance of happening. If the universe splits into two equally real branches, as Many-Worlds claims, where does this probability come from? Many-Worlds says there will be two universes, each of which will have an equally real version of us. Thus, before the experiment, it would be natural to think there would be a 50% chance of finding ourselves in each universe after the measurement. But it’s not; it’s 90-10. This is a contradiction, and a currently unresolved paradox in the Many-Worlds theory.

This is important, because we rely on quantum probabilities all the time. The nuclear fusion that powers the sun and gives the Earth energy uses quantum probability. The half-lives of unstable elements, used in various technologies and geological dating methods, rely on quantum probability. And most conspicuous of all, quantum computers work by minimizing the quantum probabilities of the wrong answers and maximizing the quantum probability of the right answer. If there were simply one universe for each possible outcome, our intuition says none of these should work!

There is one way to resolve this conceptually. Suppose instead of two worlds, there are a large number of them, and 90% of them go in the direction of higher amplitude, and 10% of them go in the direction of lower amplitude. Those 90% are completely identical to each other, as are the 10%. This would square off the probabilities. Instead of there being two of you, one in the low amplitude world and one in the high amplitude world, there would be many of you, split between the worlds 90-10.

However, this takes away the straightforward purity of Many-Worlds. The math does not say there will be lots of identical universes, it says there will only be one for each possibility. Resolving this conflict by proposing large numbers of identical universes adds extra fluff to the theory, taking away its advantage over the other interpretations!

This could mean Many-Worlds is the wrong interpretation of quantum physics. Or it could be that we just don’t understand quantum probability yet, and we will find a satisfactory resolution to the paradox. Many-Worlds is still the tidiest interpretation so far, since it explains all the other phenomena of quantum physics, like entanglement and the measurement problem, so neatly. For now, I still rank it as the most plausible, leaving the door open for something else to come in and explain it all.

I don’t like the quantum multiverse. I want there to be only one course of history. It feels cheap if everything that is physically possible happens in one timeline or another. But, as mentioned at the beginning of the post, the fact that it is weird is not valid evidence. I hope Many-Worlds is wrong, but as a truth seeker, I cannot let that hope influence what I believe. The truth is the truth, whatever it turns out to be. Maybe there are a near-infinite number of universes splitting off from one another every moment, or maybe there is just this one. All we can do is follow the logic and evidence where it leads us.

Our Obsession with Giving Credit

When we talk about scientific and philosophical ideas, we tend to attach the names of people who have gotten historical recognition for working on them. This is especially noticeable in physics and mathematics, where it seems like every modern concept is named after someone. Keplerian orbits, Maxwell equations, Riemann tensors, Coulomb force, and it goes on and on. Sometimes, it gets ridiculous, as more and more names are attached to the idea. Just look at the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method for solving differential equations! On the one hand, it makes sense to recognize the work people contribute to human knowledge, but it can get tiresome when, for example, an old physicist interrupts his train of thought to talk about the individual who did research on the subject, along with details about their life. When discussing how stars explode, I am not interested in which university Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar did his research!

On this blog, I talk about all kinds of philosophy, from the nature of reality to morality to consciousness to philosophy of science. These musings are not simply regurgitations of the ideas of famous names from history, but my own thoughts on each matter. Sometimes I discover that my ideas have been said by famous thinkers, like David Hume, G. E. Moore, or Stuart Russell. But other times, it legitimately seems that I am going into unexplored territory. Yet, unless I somehow publish a bestselling nonfiction book or an academic paper that gets a lot of attention, the credit for my ideas will go to someone else. In order to be recognized, it is not enough to be smart and original, you also have to play the competitive institutional game, and I am simply not interested in that.

Just as my ideas have been said before or will be said in the future by others remembered by history, most, if not all, of the great ideas of history have been said by many others throughout the world and across time. Take for instance the above-mentioned WKB method. If you go to its Wikipedia page, you will find the names of three people who used it a hundred years before Wentzel, Kramers, and Brillouin.

The popular version of this is the one-liner quote. A famous person once said, “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” Such a wise quote. We can learn so much by being curious and exploring, and the formal education system can stifle that instinct within us. Do you know who said it? You can google it if you want the name of the historical figure it’s attributed to, but I can guarantee it has also been said by thousands upon thousands of others, many of whom have never heard of that person. Being wise does not get you into the memory of history. Being famous causes the wise things you say to be remembered by history. Thus, quotes are revealed for what they are: memes, granted longevity by being institutionalized into the narrative of history. Instead of using the quotes of others to supplement my discussions, I prefer to explain and argue them in my own words from my own understanding.

Ideas about nature and philosophy do not belong to any one person. The space of thought and reality belongs to everyone. If you’re writing a professional academic paper or book, it is important to cite all of the current research into the topics you’re talking about, so that your readers know you understand your field of study and aren’t making things up. But people can and do think about ideas without becoming experts in the formal structure of their history. Most people aren’t trained, or don’t have the skills, or time, or interest, to engage with the academic institution that way. We should all be able to discuss the Hard Problem of consciousness without having to constantly refer to David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, and Rene Descartes.

When so many academic subjects have term after term named after people, it makes them hard to learn. It would be so much easier if that jargon were replaced with descriptive names. Keplerian orbits could be called classical gravity orbits. Maxwell equations could be (and sometimes are) called electromagnetic field equations. The WKB method could be called the shallow rising potential approximation. In addition to making the subjects easier to learn, it would make writing science fiction easier. As a writer, I keep running into problems when the concepts I am trying to use are named after historical figures from Earth, whereas my characters have no connection to our planet.

Finally, seeing someone’s name attached to an idea can turn people off from the idea before they even know what it is. For instance, Richard Dawkins is a prominent evolutionary biologist, contributing lots of groundbreaking ideas to the field. But he is also a prominent atheist, and not very polite about it. So if I want to talk about something biological, like extended phenotypes, and I mention that they were put forth by Dawkins, a certain number of people are going to tune out right then and there.

These are the reasons why, when I talk about scientific or philosophical ideas, I focus on the ideas themselves, and rarely mention the historical figures associated with them. Sometimes I do, if it makes it easy to look up, or if describing it would cause more confusion than simply using the name. For instance, it is much easier to say, “Dunning-Kruger effect” than, “the cognitive bias where people confidently make a claim, not realizing they know next-to-nothing about the subject they are talking about.” Still, any time I do shorthand like this, I will take time to explain what it means first.

Works of art and creativity are an exception, of course. People who work hard on and pour passion into novels and music and cinema and theater and sculpting and painting deserve recognition for their contributions to exploring the human spirit. I will happily talk about Brandon Sanderson, Isaac Arthur, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lena Raine, and multitudes of other creators whose unique works I think are phenomenal and worth recognizing. The only times I won’t mention creators are when their works are embarrassingly bad.

There are other reasons not to mention people associated with ideas. When I find myself arguing against something especially ignorant or silly, I avoid using people’s names in order to spare them from embarrassment and loss of reputation, or, if they are historical, out of respect for the dead. For instance, if someone sticks to the argument that biological evolution is disproved by entropy or irreducible complexity, they show only that they don’t understand evolution and thermodynamics nearly as well as other people do. We all believe some amount of strange and unreasonable things, and it is kinder to view the positive in each other, rather than the negative.

I also avoid using names for petty crimes and bad behaviors, because one of the reasons people do shocking and criminal things is because it is a way to be seen. If we don’t give them personalized attention, that is one less incentive to commit these acts. The exception is for powerful symbols of evil, like Hitler and Stalin, from whom the lessons of history do much more to prevent repetition than ignoring them would.

These are the reasons behind when I do and don’t mention people’s names on this blog. Of course, I’m not perfect, and I’ve been known to break all of these rules. Nevertheless, I do my best to focus on the ideas rather than the names associated with them, and to save face for people associated with embarrassing ideas or creations.

How do We Know if Something is Conscious?

Consciousness:
The Hard Problem
Dualism
Physicalism
Idealism
Identifying Consciousness

Vast Minds

Identity, Self, and Other

The Question of Meaning

I know I’m conscious, and you know you’re conscious. But how does each of us know the other is conscious? We have daily interactions with family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We assume they are conscious just like us. But how do we know? How does any of us know that other people aren’t just p-zombies, robots programmed to behave in such a way as to deceive us into thinking they are conscious? And beyond humans, how can we know whether animals, insects, plants, or AI programs are conscious?

There is a famous thought experiment called the Turing test, put forth by one of the great pioneering minds of computer science, Alan Turing. The Turing test says if a machine is able to fool people into believing it is a human, that machine is conscious. But this idea has not aged well. The first glaring problem is that one person being conscious does not depend on other people believing they are conscious. Whether or not you are conscious is a fact within reality. Secondly, we have programs today that pass the Turing test, but clearly aren’t conscious. For instance, if an internet chatbot writes a comment on a video or conversation thread with a few key words and some profanity, there is a chance that some people will be fooled into believing it is a human. Yet if you know how these bots are programmed, the idea that they are conscious is laughable. The Turing test was a genius visualization of the future, and extremely important to the history of computer science, but it has not turned out to be a useful tool for determining whether someone or something is conscious.

For this discussion, we will draw heavily on what has been discussed in the first three entries of the consciousness series, so if you haven’t read those, you may want to do so before continuing. We will assume Realism rather than Idealism, because answers in Idealism could go a million different ways, and as I have argued many a time, I think it is far more reasonable to believe Realism is true.

If Dualism is true, the answer is simple: develop technology that can precisely measure the processes going on in the brain. If energy and momentum are not conserved, appearing and disappearing in ways that correlate with the person’s choices, it is evidence that a soul is interfering with the brain. If energy and momentum are conserved, then that person has no soul, and, according to Dualism, is not conscious. This is a way Dualism can be tested; you know you are conscious, so if you turn this machine on yourself and find no violation of conservation of momentum or energy, then Dualism is false.

In order to shine light on how we know anybody else is conscious, we should first ask how we know we ourselves are conscious. This is referred to in philosophy as the meta-problem of consciousness. Each of us can say, “I’m conscious, and I know I am conscious, and I know I am not wrong.” It is not an assumption. It is an observation, something that is directly experienced, and requires explanation.

As far as we can tell, the brain follows the laws of physics, without any interference from dualistic soul stuff. This means all knowledge corresponds to patterns of neurons and electricity in our brains. This leads to the illusionist view mentioned above: the brain is aware of its own awareness. It has a neuro-electrical pattern corresponding with the way its own neuro-electrical patterns work. When translating those patterns into language, the brain makes the mouth call it “consciousness.” Thus, consciousness is something made-up by the brain to describe the neuro-electrical patterns that represent neuro-electrical patterns.

If you understood that, and if you’re like me, that explanation is not satisfying. According to the illusionist, we are p-zombies who think we are conscious, but we are wrong. But that cannot be true. You know you are conscious; that is an indisputable fact. If consciousness is an illusion, then we must ask how is it possible for the illusion to exist. It does not solve the problem, it merely changes the word describing the thing we’re trying to explain.

I have a hypothesis. As of writing this, I do not know if any professional philosopher has explicitly put forth the suggestion I am about to make. If the reason we have a concept of consciousness is because of a neuro-electrical pattern of information within our brains, and that is the end of the physical description of what is going on, explaining our outward behavior completely with no holes, then that pattern of information not only correlates with the concept of consciousness, it is consciousness.

More precisely, that pattern is a quale, a piece of conscious experience. In particular, it is the quale of self-awareness. Other qualia include things like colors, tastes, thoughts, concepts, and elements of imagination. If my hypothesis is correct, then the correlation between qualia and their corresponding patterns of information are not correlations at all; they are equivalent descriptions of exactly the same thing! This would be true no matter what material or substrate the patterns exist in.

If this is true, it answers both the hard problem and the meta-problem. How is it possible for consciousness to exist? Consciousness is patterns of referential information acted out by processes within physical reality. How can we know about consciousness, and ask the hard problem? Because knowing about consciousness is one of many things that are consciousness. And finally, we have discovered a way to know from the outside whether someone or something is conscious. The trick is to look at their information processing structure, be it a brain or a microchip, and see if it has conscious patterns.

Of course, this is merely a hypothesis. It answers all the questions and leaves no logical loose threads, at least as far as I can tell, and it doesn’t require postulating any new elusive features to our theories of physics. Speaking of which, it doesn’t even mention the q-word. Still, it is a hypothesis nonetheless. In order to build a theory incorporating it, we will need instruments that can read individual neurons in conscious human subjects, and build catalogs of qualia and their corresponding neuro-electrical patterns. This will stimulate a cycle of hypotheses and experiments, and the science of consciousness will reach maturity. Then, we may feel as comfortable saying we understand consciousness as we do saying we understand electricity, or sound waves, or the rainbow.