markfiend

I was wondering if anyone else has come across the idea that the decision-making process known as "free-will" could come about through uncertainty in quantum systems within the brain?

I will leave aside the argument from this thread, because those who hypothesise a spiritual, dualistic nature of mind will probably find my argument irrelevant at best.

I must point out that I cannot recall where I first read about this idea, but basically one could define "mind" as the combined quantum wave-function for the entire brain, and so perhaps decision making is actually a "collapse of the wave-form".

I must admit that my memory of quantum physics is a little shaky, so perhaps this makes no sense whatsoever

On a related note, if a quantum event requires an observer in order to "decide" what happened, does this provide support for the anthropic principle? What I mean is that by necessity only universes which will contain observers can exist?

Godless Wonder

Roger Penrose in "The Emperor's New Mind" makes this suggestion, at least that's what I've read. (haven't read that book yet, it's sitting on my shelf though.) There are "microtubules" in neurons (don't know what they do) but their size is such that quantum effects could be involved. I don't think anybody really knows yet though. Talking about this kind of stuff generally leads nowhere definitive. Empirical results are what is needed. (not easy to come by those though.)

spacer1

I doubt the existence of a universe is dependant upon any mind(s). I would, however, agree that only universes which contain observers can be known to exist.

eh

Observer does not necessarily mean conscious being, in spite of what New Age authors claim.

spacer1

Could you describe how one could be an observer and not be conscious?

Demosthenes

the usage of "observer" in quantum mechanics mean anything that detects events. So a telescope, a microscope, a photon feeling the pull of gravity, or even an electron being influenced by an infrared photon. It's the interaction between matter that does the "observation" no consciousness needed. Though that particular interpretation has an infinite regression problem like, if a telescope observe an event, then a person is needed to observe that telescope to gain information, and the person plus telescope has to be in turn observed by somebody else and so on ad infinitum.

mac_philo

This idea is argued for by Robert Kane (I forget the book title) and recently argued against in Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves." I would recommend reading Dennett's book for a physicalist, scientific argument that quantum mechanics could never ground free will.

Kat_Somm_Faen

How can randomness give rise to free will?

It is just like saying you roll dice to make up your mind.

Spin the weel for todays decision on XYZ!

I personally dont see that as connecting to free will.

Peter Soderqvist

Soderqvist1: The past and present, and the future are simply already there in Einstein's deterministic theory of relativity! Quantum physics is governed by indeterminacy in the sense that the present, or the future is not caused by the past, because a quantum object is not real, unless and until when it is observed, before and after measurement, the electron spreads out as a wave of probability, this wave of probability has no well defined trajectory like football has, nor does it jibe with ordinary waves. It is a wave of information about where the probability is as highest to find the electron, there distortion, or amplitude is as highest, there is the highest probability to find the electron too, it is analogous to a crime wave in say; in New York, there the distortion is as highest, there is the highest probability for a felony too!

Because the future is not determined, according to quantum cosmology, it follows from that, that the future state of your brain, is not yet determined either , therefore free will is a possibility! The Volitional Brain Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will Edited by Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman and Keith Sutherland is listed in the bibliography of Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves!

Soderqvist1: however, there is a similarity of function between human mind and quantum objects!

Amit Goswami professor of physics at Oregon University
is there evidence of the quantum nature of the mind? Yes, there is. The physicist David Bohm noted long ago that we cannot simultaneously follow both the content of a thought and the direction the thought takes. This is like the quantum uncertainty principle — you cannot simultaneously ascertain both the position and the momentum of a material object (or thought).
http://www.swcp.com/~hswift/swc/Spri...01goswami.html

Soderqvist1: I will give you some examples so you get a feeling for what Bohm mean! An inexperienced car driver has lot of attention on the car's details and knows less where the car is going! Schoolboys at oral exam can suffer from tongue-tied-ness when they think too much about the content of what to say, and because of that lose their ability to talk (momentum). You lose your ability to write if you have too much attention on spellings, since an experienced writer's hands, write precisely as they are doing it by themselves, just as we walk without any attention what our legs are doing, and vice versa!

excreationist

I think this just means you can't analyse in depth more than one thing at a time. Perhaps this is partly due to the limited amount of short term memory (aka working memory) we have. So you can't *simultaneously* analyse in depth the possible things you could wear tomorrow and the newspaper. I don't think it is evidence that quantum physics is a crucial part of our thought processes.

This involves analysing what you want to write (according to your big plan for the document) and simultaneously trying to analyse the spelling of the individual words.