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Chapter 14. Why
Both Causality and Randomness Make
Free Will Impossible
Our belief in free will forms the
premise for why we do much of what
we do, and how we decide much of
what we decide. It serves as a
principle foundation for our
civilization, for our society, and
for our personal lives. In order to
create a more understanding and
intelligent world that is in line
with the way things are, and isn’t
based on a misconception, we need to
explore this matter, and overcome
this illusion of free will. While it
may take several decades, the
purpose of this book is to help
create a better world for everyone
by helping us overcome this
illusion. What do we mean when we
say free will? Basically, we mean
that our decisions are completely up
to us, and that nothing that is not
in our control is influencing, or
compelling, us to make a decision.
But, we all have an unconscious, and
that our unconscious is where we
store all of our data, memories, and
thought processes. Every decision we
make is based on words, concepts,
memories and processes stored in
this unconscious. The unconscious is
not in our control. It’s completely
unconscious. That’s why we call it
the unconscious. If that part of our
brain is actually making these
decisions for us, we can’t correctly
claim we have a free will. Something
that we’re not in control of is
making these decisions. Obviously,
what we have is a causal will,
meaning that it is caused.
Everything has a cause. Nothing
happens without a cause. Causality
is the fundamental universal
process. In order to have a free
will, we would have to somehow
circumvent causality, but we can’t
do that. Any decision we make has to
have a cause, because we are making
it for a reason. The problem is that
if we have a decision that has a
cause, and that cause has a cause,
and that cause has a cause, and
you’re going back in time in a
causal regression that ultimately
leads to before our birth, before
the Planet was created, and to the
time of the Big Bang, free will must
be impossible.
In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton
created what we now refer to as
Newtonian, or classical, physics.
This theory is completely causal. We
can measure the position and
momentum – meaning direction and
velocity – of objects, whether they
are planets or objects here on
Earth, and with that information, we
can calculate their future. We can
predict exactly where they would be
moments, our years, later. When we
track a comet through the sky, or
track the other planets, we know
exactly where they are going to be
at any moment thousands of years
into the future because these
objects obey strict causal law. The
obvious conclusion from this
classical, Newtonian, physics is
that free will is impossible
because, again, everything has to
have a cause. It was during the
early 20th century that
Warner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and a
few other physicists developed what
is known as quantum mechanics.
Heisenberg published a paper in 1927
that described what we now refer to
as the uncertainty principle. At the
macro level, let’s say we’re
measuring a basketball. We can fire
photons at it, and, with enough
precision for prediction, measure
its position and momentum. Light
particles do not substantially
affect the movement of the
basketball because the basketball is
so large relative to the photon.
But, when we get to the quantum
level of sub-atomic particles, this
is not the case. When we fire one
particle at another to obtain that
measurement of position and
momentum, the measuring particle
knocks into the target particle, and
thereby moves it into a different
trajectory. The crux of the
uncertainty principle is that we
can’t simultaneously measure the
position and momentum of a particle.
To the extent that we get the
position more precisely, we lose
information about its momentum. To
the extent that we get its momentum
more precisely, we lose information
about its position. We can’t any
longer use classical mechanics to
make predictions at the quantum
level because of the uncertainty
principle, so we rely on
probabilities. We understand the
behavior of groups of particles, and
then develop probabilities for them.
At the quantum level, measurement
changes from being a completely
physical, direct, and clearly causal
process to a statistical process,
derived from probabilities for
individual particles based on their
causal behavior within groups. The
problem for the proper understanding
of human will came when those
physicists then interpreted what it
meant that you couldn’t
simultaneously measure the position
and momentum of a particle. Bohr,
Heisenberg, and a few others, came
up with what came to be known as the
Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum
mechanics. What they claimed – and
we can see the absurdity of it from
the onset – is that since we can’t
simultaneously measure the position
and momentum of a particle,
particles don’t simultaneously have
a position and momentum.
They also claimed that because we
can’t see what is happening after a
measurement, (once we measure the
target particle, its position and
momentum have changed because of the
impact of the measuring particle)
the particle’s behavior was somehow
uncaused. They claimed that particle
behavior at the sub-atomic level had
no cause. I read some writings by
Heisenberg and Bohr, and of some of
the other physicists who championed
this interpretation, and learned
that these guys were quite into
philosophy. My hunch is that what
they were trying to do with the
Copenhagen Interpretation was to
revive the idea that humans have a
free will. They made these claims,
but the best they could do with them
was to assert that particle behavior
at the quantum level is uncaused, or
random. They claimed that these
quantum level events happen for no
reason at all – for no cause. The
problem for the human will question
is that if something is happening
for absolutely no cause at all, it
can’t be caused by a human will,
free or otherwise. If it’s happening
arbitrarily, or at random, obviously
we are not causing it. For some
phenomena, like this simultaneous
particle position and momentum
measurement, we don’t know
everything that’s going on. With
radio-active decay, for example, we
can know the half-life, or rate at
which a group of particles will
decay, but for any given particle,
we can’t precisely predict when that
radio-active isotope will decay, or
transform, into something else.
Because of that example, and because
of the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle, physicists and
philosophers began to absurdly claim
that this radioactive decay must be
uncaused.
We’ve gone over how causality makes
free will impossible. Let’s go
through it again, and then we’ll go
through why randomness also makes
free will impossible in a bit more
detail, so that we more clearly
understand. We make a decision.
Let’s say our decision has a cause,
and is not random in the absurd
sense of uncaused. There is a reason
for why we make a decision, for why
we chose what we chose. Remember
that everything has a cause. Nothing
happens that is not caused. There
was a religious argument about this
many centuries ago about the Latin
phrase “causa sui,” meaning the
cause of itself. They would ask
themselves “if God created the
universe – the world – then who
created God?” Their answer was that
God created Her/Himself. Let’s say
we accept that God, or the universe
– the logic-transcending very
beginning – caused itself. After
that first cause, everything has a
cause. The best way to understand
this, as I’ve explained before, is
to consider the entire universe at
the state of the Big Bang, 13.7
billion years ago. The state of the
universe at the very next moment in
time was the exact and complete
result of that first moment. What we
have is particles moving
sequentially through space in time.
By bringing that state-by-state
evolution of the universe causally
up to the present, we can understand
that everything that is happening
now is a direct and complete result
of the state-of-the-universe
evolution. We can also understand
this in terms of decisions. We make
a decision. There is a reason for
it. That reason is a cause. And
there is a cause for that cause, and
a cause for that cause, and a cause
for that cause, each cause spanning
further and further back in time. We
see causality regressing into the
past. Everything has to have a
cause, and a cause must precede its
effect. By definition, a cause
cannot come after its effect. The
cause is happening a moment before
its effect, and the cause of that
cause is happening the moment before
that. If we follow that chain of
moment-by-moment causes and effects,
we can understand that whatever
we’re doing right now is the direct
result of a causal chain that spans
back to before planet Earth was
created. There is obviously no room
for a free will to emerge from
within this causal chain.
Now let’s address randomness.
Randomness sometimes gets confused
because it’s given various different
meanings. Here’s one that makes
sense. I have a deck of cards, and
ask you to pick one out at random.
What we understand that to mean is
that you’re going to pick one out
without giving it any thought.
You’re not going to count from the
beginning of the deck to the one you
want, or use any other system or
plan for your choice. It will be
arbitrary. That’s the conventional,
colloquial sense of randomness that
we tend to use. In physics, however,
there is a more precise technical
meaning of randomness. Some
physicists define randomness as
something that is unpredictable.
That’s a mistake. Sure, randomness
is unpredictable, but so is
causality, to a completely accurate
degree. Some physicists will say
that unpredictable means
unpredictable in theory, but not in
practice. But, as human beings, with
our subjective perspective on
whatever it is we’re trying to
predict, we can’t know all of the
information necessary. We’d have to
know the exact position and momentum
of every particle in the universe to
make a completely accurate
prediction of whatever. Secondly,
because of the uncertainty
principle, we can’t directly make
those predictions. What is
interesting is that our quantum
probabilities would not work if the
particle behavior being measured was
not inherently causal. A single
particle acting randomly, in the
sense of unpredictably, and
uncaused, cannot suddenly become
causal when it joins other particles
within a group. Some physicists say
that randomness means
unpredictability, but when we ask
them “what does unpredictable mean?”
they say that the particle’s
behavior is not being caused. Again,
such an assertion is completely
absurd, and based on neither logic,
nor scientific method, nor empirical
observation. There is no such thing
as true randomness. There are random
events generators that will generate
“random” numbers, but they are not
completely random because
computations are completely causal
processes.
When some scientists claim that
something is random, it seems they
don’t understand exactly what they
are claiming. They are claiming that
some events that happen do not have
a cause – that they happen uncaused.
Unfortunately, in physics, this is
not something they like to explore
very much. Most college-level
introductory physics textbooks will
not even have an entry on causality
or randomness. They might have one
on the uncertainty principle. They
consider the matter theoretical,
whereas most of physics today
focuses on practical applications.
But, the theoretical understanding
of what is happening at both the
macro and quantum level is very
important as it relates to this
question of human will. There is no
such thing as randomness in the
sense of something happening
uncaused. Everything must have a
cause. There has to be a reason why
something has happened. Again, the
best way to understand this is to
consider that if anything is
happening at this moment in time, it
is completely dependent on, or
caused by, the state of the
universe, as the most complete
description, at the previous moment.
Let’s say there was such a thing as
randomness in the sense of uncaused.
The notion of free will involves
accountability. With a moral
decision, a free will believer will
say “we decided something because of
some moral principle or principles.”
But, once we make that decision, and
describe it as a moral decision,
that’s our cause. In other words, we
made the decision because of some
moral principle or precept. Or, we
made the decision because we “wanted
to.” But, that want is a desire, and
that desire is a cause.
In physics, the Copenhagen
Interpretation of quantum mechanics
is actually what you will find in
most high school and college
textbooks, because most standard
physics textbooks are written by
physicists who have never delved
much into this matter of causality
vs. randomness. Most leading
physicists understand that physics
is completely causal, and that
quantum behavior is completely
causal, but this understanding has
curiously not made its way through
to many rank and file physicists.
This embarrassment to the field
likely has something to do with the
question of free will. Some
physicists clearly believe in free
will. To acknowledge that nothing
can be uncaused would be to admit
that we have no free will. Since the
Copenhagen Interpretation in the mid
1920s, philosophers have been saying
that particle behavior at the
sub-atomic level is indeterminate.
It’s random, so that leaves an
opening for free will. It’s a
completely irrational conclusion,
but that is what they conclude in
order to preserve their belief in
free will. Heisenberg, and
especially Bohr, pushed the idea of
randomness and acausality on
physicists when quantum mechanics
was entirely new, and nobody really
understood it. Actually, nobody
really understands it today.
Admittedly, there are amazingly
counter-intuitive phenomena
happening at that level. Many
physicists back then, with little or
no investigation of the question,
simply concluded that if Heisenberg
and Bohr said that quantum behavior
is uncaused, it must be uncaused.
Einstein and several other
physicists attempted to clarify the
matter, but they went about it in a
misguided way. They didn’t focus on
the causality of the matter; they
focused on particle measurement.
Einstein and his colleagues wanted
to demonstrate that although you
can’t simultaneously measure the
position and momentum of a particle
directly, such measurement could be
accomplished by proxy. That effort
led to some experimentation, and it
turned out that a proxy measurement
will not work as a proof for
causality.
They didn’t take the right approach
on this back then, but since the
1980s, physicists have, more and
more, come to reject the Copenhagen
Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
They understand that everything has
a cause. This Copenhagen
interpretation has actually been
replaced to a great extent by an
interpretation of reality that to my
mind doesn’t make much sense, but at
least it’s deterministic. It’s
called the Many Worlds
Interpretation, and it says that any
time we make a decision, there are
an infinite number of possibilities
that can arise from that decision.
Each of those possibilities
supposedly takes place in a
different universe. There is no
credible evidence, of course, for
that conclusion. The main point here
is that various other
interpretations are now more in
vogue, and more accepted than,
Copenhagen. There have actually been
several polls conducted on this. In
one, the Many Worlds Interpretation
had over fifty percent of
respondents agreeing that it was the
dominant theory of nature. In
physics, the field-wide transition
from indeterministic to
deterministic interpretations of
quantum mechanics is already
happening. The fact that we human
beings do not have a free will
challenges the very foundation of
our understanding of who we are.
We’re living an amazing delusion.
The irony here is that nature
herself – the causal past, or God –
has compelled us to have this
illusion. It’s like when we see what
we think is water on the horizon
while driving down a long straight
road in the sun. It’s an illusion.
Hopefully within a couple of decades
or sooner we’ll all generally
understand that our wills are
completely causal, that there is no
such thing as true randomness, and
that if there were, that would also
leave no room for a free will.
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