Alina Mansurova, 27.30 – 33.14

There is an argument that says this has nothing to do with free will and for a long time I used to believe in this argument: it goes as follows. What quantum mechanics gives you is randomness, but randomness is no help with a free will problem because we don’t want the result that all well, of course, my voting for the democratic candidate wasn’t determined, it was absolutely random, this is one of damn things that happened. I mean, that there’s no explanation at all. We don’t want that conclusion as well. However, strictly speaking, that is a fallacy to infer from the fact that phenomenon at the lowest, at the lower level is responsible for phenomenon at the higher level, that therefore, the predicates, true at the lower level must be true at the higher level. Let’s call it a fallacy of the composition. If there’s no answer firing at 40 hurts, let’s suppose, all no answers are firing at 40 hurts, it doesn’t follow that the brain is firing at 40 hurts because the firing is, at the rate of firing is a tribute at synoptic and neuronal level, not at the level of the whole system. Now, similarly, from the fact that the system is random at the micro level it doesn’t follow that it would be random at the macro level, it would be random at this level or rather random at the level of the whole system. So, it’s at least possible, on hypothesis 2, let’s make the following assumption. Make the assumption that the only part of the Universe we know is that indeterministicis quantum mechanics. But, of course, that means the whole Universe is indeterministicbecause the quantum indeterminism goes all the way up it’s just for practical purposes, for purposes of baseballs andproject out, the indeterminists cancel themselves out. But as soon then, that’s the only part of the Nature that we know for a fact is indeterminate but that does go all the way up. Then, we would have to assume on hypothesis two that the explanation of consciousness must be quantum mechanical, that there must be the quantum mechanical explanation of consciousness. And the consciousness of free rational decision making inherits the indeterminism of the quantum level without inheriting the randomness. I’ve to say I wanna throw up when I hear myself say that ‘cause it sounds so preposterous. But now we are trying to do something, is he trying to follow out to the absolute limit to see where the argument leads. Now, the argument for hypothesis one that everything is deterministic. That’s easy to do. That’s classical mechanics, and actually it is classical artificial intelligence you might even put some randomizing element in the algorithm to give the poor beasty allusion, that his behavior is unpredictable, even though we know it is totally determined. But, unfortunately, though, at the end, if that may be the conclusion what come up with we can’t literally live without conclusion because we have to continue to add on the presupposition of freedom. So we have to take hypothesis 2 seriously. Hypothesis 2 says, well, if there is really any indeterminacy in the Universe, then we would have to use that element of indeterminacy to explain the apparent indeterminacy of free rational decision making. The only indeterminacy we can find is indeterminacy at the quantum level, and we would have to assume that the quantum level would give us an explanation of consciousness and that would also give us an explanation for why certain forms of consciousness manifest freedom in the sense that it’s possible for the agent to act own decisions where the decisions are rational without being the case that the decisions are forced by causal sufficient antecedent conditions, or the decisions themselves set causal sufficient conditions for the subsequent actions. So, that’s hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2. If we had to choose today, we have to show our hands, most of us would probably vote for hypothesis 1, and we would exercise our presupposed free will to argue that there’s no such thing as free will. Hypothesis 2 is the best I can do to try to come up with a plausible explanation for why it might be the case that Nature has not played a nasty trick on us giving us the allusion of free will. Is there any independent argument for hypothesis two, any argument against hypothesis one? Well, the only argument I can think of is this. If hypothesis one is true that everything is completely determined, that we are conscious robots but everything we do was laid down in the book of history 15 billions years ago, at the time of the Big Bang. It was at that point determined that it’s since if I raise my right arm and it’s since if I would raise my left arm. Everything is written in the book of history, what’s the argument against that? Well, the only argument I can think of is this one: that it’s unlike evolution, it’s just unlike anything we know on evolution, for us to have such an expensive phenotype as free rational decision making, as what we think of us, free rational decision making, if it plays no role, if it is totally epiphenomenal (epiphenomenal is another fancy philosophers’ word, just means it rises along on the surface, it’s like a froth on the wave, it doesn’t make any difference)

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 616