Physics and Free Will

Check out this article in the London Times by Brian Appleyard (thanks for visiting, Brian!). 

I think the article illustrates a point I like to press:  that what the physicists ultimately say about whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic simply will not impact people's view of themselves as free and responsible, even if the philosophers chime in with a consensus view (like that's gonna happen!).  My prediction is that if the physicists said the universe is deterministic and the philosophers said incompatibilism is true, not much would change about the way people think or act. 

If the physicists and philosophers agreed about, say, the physical nature of consciousness (and that was reported in the press), well that might have more of an impact (but it wouldn't matter whether the physicists said the physical laws were indeterministic).  But the relevant sciences to most people are psychology and neurobiology (and maybe genetics)--these are the ones whose findings the press reports (and misreports) and people read to suggest that we have less free will and responsibility than we thought.  Whether the science is right (or the way it's reported is misleading) or whether any conclusions about free will and responsibility are the right ones to draw, well, there's some good philosophy to be done there.

Comments

[Fritz]

Gardeners unfamiliar with Barry Loewer's work on this issue would do well to find the relevant papers. Though I don't agree with all of Barry's conclusions, one taking up these issues would certainly do well to engage with Barry's work.

[jake]

Here's a link to the Conway/Kochen paper:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079

I'm sure the math is impeccable, but the philosophy sounds like that of a clever (but naive) undergrad:

"We have defined 'free will' to be the opposite of 'determinism' despite the fact that since Hume some philosophers have tried to reconcile the two notions -- a position called _compatibilism_. In our view this position arose only because all the physics known in Hume's day was deterministic, and it has now been outmoded for almost a century by the development of quantum mechanics."

[Rob]

A NYT article about, among other things, how people utilize, accommodate, or resist the notion of genetic determinism:

"That Wild Streak? Maybe It Runs in the Family"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/health/15gene.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=153258345db3e57e&hp&ex=1150344000&partner=homepage

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