Free Will and the Laws of Physics Reconciled

The fears expressed by some moral philosophers that the advance of the natural sciences diminishes the field within which the moral virtues can be exercised rests on the assumption that there is some contradiction in saying that one and the same occurrence is governed both by mechanical laws and by moral principles, an assumption as baseless as the assumption that a golfer cannot at once conform to the law of ballistics and obey the rules of golf and play with elegance and skill. Not only is there plenty of room for purpose where everything is governed by mechanical laws, but there would be no place for purpose if things were not so governed. Predictability is a necessary condition of planning....

Physicists may one day have found the answers to all physical questions, but not all questions are physical questions....

The discoveries of the physical sciences no more rule out life, sentience, purpose or intelligence from presence in the world than do the rules of grammar extrude style or logic from prose.

--Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949)

Comments

  1. JoeJune 19, 2020 at 9:36 PM

    If you want to hear the current take on free will from a theoretical physicist, you may want to listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEBXFEQyPuw from about 40:33.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sheldon RichmanJune 20, 2020 at 5:21 AM

    I'm sure I'll watch at some point, but why would I consult a physicist on the matter?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 20, 2020 at 4:37 PM

    Hi Sheldon,

    When I first saw Joe's reference to a theoretical physicist, and thought that he was going to link to Sabine Hossenfelder. Here is one of her blog postings regarding free will:

    http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/01/free-will-is-dead-lets-bury-it.html

    Brief excerpt:

    "There are only two types of fundamental laws that appear in contemporary theories. One type is deterministic, which means that the past entirely predicts the future. There is no free will in such a fundamental law because there is no freedom. The other type of law we know appears in quantum mechanics and has an indeterministic component which is random. This randomness cannot be influenced by anything, and in particular it cannot be influenced by you, whatever you think “you” are. There is no free will in such a fundamental law because there is no “will” – there is just some randomness sprinkled over the determinism.

    "In neither case do you have free will in any meaningful way.

    "These are the only two options, and all other elaborations on the matter are just verbose distractions. It doesn’t matter if you start talking about chaos (which is deterministic), top-down causation (which doesn’t exist), or insist that we don’t know how consciousness really works (true but irrelevant). It doesn’t change a thing about this very basic observation: there isn’t any known law of nature that lets you meaningfully speak of 'free will'."

    Richard G.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sheldon RichmanJune 20, 2020 at 4:59 PM

      Richard, all I can say is that it takes an extraordinary mind to ignore what is right in front of all of us. I'm reminded of Chico Marx's famous question: who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

      Delete

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