Table of Contents
Part A : Freedom
- Good News (published, May 29, 2019)
- The case for an indeterminate (free) future (June 2019)
- What does it mean to believe that the future is free ? (June 2019)
- Distinguishing what we really know from what we do not (published June 14, 2019)
Part B : Consciousness
- The miracle of consciousness (published June 26, 2019)
- the absence of consciousness (published July 5, 2019)
Good News
At the beginning of the last century, under the delayed effect of powerful arguments from Newton, Voltaire, Darwin, and Marx, human thought had come to a crisis point, where the universe was portrayed in the purely mechanical terms of mass and movement ; where it appeared that every future moment was mechanically determined by conditions in the past ; that the human creature was nothing but the result of chance emergence and chance survival ; that consciousness itself was but an “epi-phenomenon” arising (somehow) from the mechanical functions of the brain (but without the reality of these) — the mere illusion of a dream, passively mirroring reality and nothing more.
Above all : it was asserted that there can be no God, no Soul, no memory beyond death ; no meaning in perseverance or sacrifice ; no continuance.
Or, as Jack London would say (1913) that, “after we die (sic) we will be just as dead as the last mosquito that one of us has slapped”. And of course : that what is true of the individual is also true of the Universe ; that one day it, also, will disappear, without a trace or a memory, without joy or regret, as though it had never been.
For a very long time there was no adequate answer to the implications of Newtonian theory. But that circumstance is finally changing ; science is no longer the primitive creature of a hundred years ago. Recent discoveries, notably in quantum physics and the theory of chaotic complexity, have allowed us to re-open the deep questions of consciousness, choice and will, to re-establish the proper limits of science itself, and to reaffirm the intellectual legitimacy of free human speculation, beyond that which is known, and beyond even that which is knowable.
There is, perhaps, no road back to the pre-scientific certainty of received truth. But, as we shall see, some of the worst obstacles have now been removed from our road ahead.
I believe, then, that we can finally begin to formulate a rational antidote to nihilism and despair ; that words like “faith” and “purpose” can, indeed, be employed, once again, with confident sincerity, and not merely be derided as the figments of elaborate self-deception ; that we can, finally, allow ourselves to honestly interpret the world in humanly satisfying terms.
And radical as the assertion may seem : I believe that these propositions can now be demonstrated to the satisfaction of any reasonable person.
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The case for an indeterminate (free) future
Chaos theory tells us that complex systems are critically sensitive to initial conditions, and are therefore impossible to predict.
Simple systems (at least systems that appear simple to us) are not like that : A brick-laden cargo truck smashing into a stationary mobile home at 60 miles an hour will demolish that home. It doesn’t matter at all whether the truck is actually a brick or two short of a full load, the result will be the same. This dynamic is therefore NOT (critically) sensitive to initial conditions: there can be significant measurable differences in the weight of the truck and we can still “pretty much” tell what is going to happen.
On the other hand, a couple of weeks from now, a particular afternoon may be sunny or overcast, and there really is no way to predict which it will be. That is because changes to initial conditions that are actually too small to measure will create gross changes in outcome. Pushing even one particular atmospheric atom, just a trifle to the left or to the right on the first day of June (the mere stroke of a butterfly’s wing, to use that popular imagery), will not just mean that a sunny day on the Fourth of July will be “pretty much” the same, such a tiny change to starting conditions may result in a completely washed-out holiday.
Therefore, given the complexity of the system, prediction becomes impossible.
BUT (will object the typically determined Determinist), the inability to PREDICT a future event does NOT mean that the event is any less inevitable.
Well… yes, it does actually ! Because this is where Quantum Physics intervenes.
Quantum physics does not predict particular events ; quantum physics predicts only the PROBABILITY of a particular event occurring. In the real world, quantum physics is invaluable for predicting all sorts of simple things, because, as in the truck and trailer example, all we care about is the overall situation within a large margin of error.
For instance, if we know the average size and weight of a brick, and the volume capacity of the truck (knowing also the speed of said truck), we can confidently predict the damage (Newtonian force at impact) sustained by the mobile home.
However, in a complex situation like weather, EVERY detail counts. It is not enough to know what the probability of a butterfly flapping its wings is (and hence how many butterflies, overall, will be flapping at any given time), to predict the weather you would have to know exactly WHICH butterflies are flapping and which are not. To be perfectly clear : two butterflies can be sitting side by side, and if butterfly ‘A’ flaps her wings, then you had better board up your store fronts on a pacific island thousands of miles away ; but, if butterfly ‘B’ flaps, you will be able to go out collecting clams on a perfectly calm day ; and unfortunately, quantum physics cannot tell us which (if any) particular butterfly, of this pair, will flap.
With reference to the truck, this would be like saying that if two bricks have a trivial difference in weight between them, and if the positions of those two bricks were to be reversed on the truck bed, the trailer would be destroyed in one case, but unharmed in the other (with, even worse, no way of knowing whether such a reversal might actually occur en route). THAT is the difference between a system that is “simple” and a system which is “complex”, under the sway of quantum probability.
So, obviously, we will agree that a complex system, which is critically sensitive to initial conditions that depend on particular quantum events, will indeed be unpredictable. But quantum theory does not simply say that a specific quantum event is unpredictable. The dominant interpretation of these facts now states that there is no explanation for why such an event HAS occurred. In other words, as far as we know, there is no reason for the event to have happened. To the best of our knowledge, nothing CAUSED that event.
Of course that is where our deep prejudices come into play, because everything has a cause, right ? Well… no, not as far as we can tell, (and as you may easily imagine, a great deal of work has been done trying to find some sort of “hidden” causes for quantum events — and this for the better part of a century — without any success at all).
To take a simple example, radioactive atoms such as Uranium, decompose ; which is to say : their nuclei split into smaller parts which become the core of new and different (smaller) atoms.
Quantum physics tells us the probability of any particular Uranium atom decomposing, and it tells us with great precision exactly what proportion of a larger Uranium sample will decompose in a particular time span. We possess no means, however, of either predicting which specific atoms will decay, or what is more, explaining why any particular atom DID decay. Again, as far as we know, there is no reason — no cause – for any particular decay.
In fact, the whole idea of an “atom” is that it is absolutely identical to all other atoms of the same element. So there would seem to be nothing setting one off from another. And as for the atoms in a sample, so also for all the uranium atoms in the world (or in the universe) : We know that a certain number will decay, but we don’t know which ones (and to pose an obvious question that we will consider in another place : how do THEY know whether they should decay or not ? How CAN atoms on opposite sides of the universe know whether the over all probability curve will be respected if they decay, or if they do not ?)
In any case, the point is simple : with each individual quantum butterfly making up the universe, there is no reason or cause for why, or why not, she will beat her wings. This means, that for any complex system like the weather (or the neural interactions in the brain, or the behavior of people in a group), outcomes are critically sensitive to initial conditions which are tied to events which have NO CAUSE. Which is the same thing as saying that the weather (not to mention human thought and behavior) have NO CAUSE that can be found in mechanical interactions of the sort described by Newton.
There are, to be fair, three possibilities : 1) there may be physical reasons for quantum events that have yet to be discovered (the likelihood of this becomes less with the passage of time and ever more detailed observations) 2) the future may be strictly determined by forces that are not open to physical examination (many religious people, such as Calvinists and Muslims, believe this to be true, and more will be said on this subject elsewhere) 3) it may be true (and this is indeed the inevitable empirical conclusion of the scientific facts cited) that the future is open and free.
The articulation of this simple argument on behalf of an indeterminate future, relying on the interaction of Quantum Physics and Complexity Theory, represents a large part of the significance of the present work. I first arrived at this reasoning in, or around, 1997. I have never seen this idea advanced elsewhere. I have discussed this theory with several people possessing the relevant scientific experience and none has even attempted to argue seriously against it. I would be most grateful to anyone who might demonstrate an error therein. But in the absence of such demonstration, I must conclude that this proof is valid, and of the greatest importance to many of the foremost controversies in contemporary human thought.