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Free will & physics
this topic, as probably a few others i'll make in the future, is inspired/based on the movie waking life.
quote from the movie:
In a way, in our conemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting these things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the questions, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the questions keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible , you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the questions keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We thing we're special. We think we have som kind of special dignity, but that now comes under thread. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's Loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if your look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. Its just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse, I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails, not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choices and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
end quote. (didnt use the quote tags cause they make the text smaller, and a bit more annoying to read)
now, i cant claim to know much about physics, but under the assumptions that the premises given here are correct, do we have free will?
i assume the first step in determining that, is defining free will.
| quote: | free will
n.
1. The ability or discretion to choose; free choice: chose to remain behind of my own free will.
2. The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.
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now, this definition does not encompass the ideas suggested in waking life (unless we treat physics as the equivalant of divine will ), but it still deserves a responce.
for the first definition, i can say that i believe i have the ability to make choices, but can i prove it? not to a satisfying extent.
example:
i'm making this thread just now with an aspiration for more knowledge, amongst other reasons, but i could just as easliy click back and forget about it. but i can't empirically prove that it's a free choice.
for the second definition, i am very constrained in my choices - by circumstances and external factors. (i'm pretty sure this does not require further elaboration, but if i'm wrong let me know)
is fate constraining my choices? hard to take seriously. but assuming fate exists, i don't see why it would constrain my choices, if i'll make the same decisions regardless.
and i'll just ignore the concept of divine will here as to not turn this into a religious debate.
hmm, this probably looks and feels incomplete, but that's as far as i can get without interaction, so please contribute and hopefully we'll make a philosophical breakthrough here 
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) I think the notion of "free will" has been a solid defense of Christianity against intellectuals throughout time. 
