NoDeity:
Tenderfoot:
All
my discussions of randomness have been to support the plausibility of
the "non-deterministic" portion of this definition. I think all the
other portions are generally accepted.
I think it would be helpful if you could show how wave-particle duality makes self-causal freewill plausible.
The
fundamentally unpredictable nature of individual atoms makes it
plausible that non-deterministic (i.e. random) events occur in the
brain. In fact, it makes it certain, since the brain is constructed of
atoms.
Computers are also constructed of atoms, of course, so
random events occur within them as well, but the computer's circuits do
not pay attention to individual events, only to large numbers of such
events. The behaviours of large numbers of objects (e.g. electrons)
are statistically predictable. Therefore the random behaviour of each
individual electron within a computer chip does not matter.
As
computer chips are miniaturized, these random behaviours will become
more and more important, eventually reaching a point where they cannot
be ignored. At that point, future miniaturization will become
impossible. A Cal Tech article on this topic says:
...in
the next few decades, our ability to miniaturize circuits in silicon
will hit bottom. “Information technologies for the most part treat
electrons and photons like they were basketballs,” says Preskill. “You
bat electrons around in a circuit, or send photons down a fiber and
count them.” But we’re approaching the size where classical physics
falters and quantum effects take over."
Brain
components (e.g. the cellular components within each neuron) are much
smaller than the components within a computer chip. It therefore
seems plausible that random quantum effects manifest themselves, at
least occasionally, in ways that affect events within the brain.
Extremely
tiny events in a complex system can have profound effects on the
outcome. The popular illustration of this phenomenon involves a
butterfly flapping its wings in China, thereby causing a hurricane to
hit Florida. Solid mathematics stand behind this.
If a
random, quantum event occurs within a single neuron, causing it to fire
a fraction of a millisecond sooner or later than it otherwise would,
this can plausibly have a profound effect on brain function. Millions
of neurons are always firing simultaneously in chain reactions. It is
probably very important whether the impulses from one group of neurons
reach a particular brain area slightly sooner or slightly later than
impulses from a different group. Random quantum events that affect
this timing could therefore be profoundly important.
When a
brain needs to come up with a solution to a problem, it searches its
storehouse of memories for patterns and recollections that might be
relevant and useful. It tries to piece together disparate items of
information in order to invent new solutions to its current problem.
The choice of the memories it selects during this process would
obviously be crucial. The process of accessing memories involves
firing neurons in sequence. If the sequential order is disturbed by
random quantum events, different memories will be accessed. This
means the brain has access to randomly-generated sets of information
from which different potential answers can be extrapolated. It allows
the brain to engage in stochastic simulations (which require true
randomness in order to be useful).
The random, entirely
unpredictable quantum events I have described occur entirely within the
brain. Nothing outside the brain causes the events to be random, or
can prevent them from being random. Therefore, they can only be
described as self-causal.
Putting these pieces together, we have
a fairly plausible (albeit speculative) description of self-causal,
non-deterministic brain activities. This is only one portion of my
definition of free will, but it's a crucial one.