Rishon Rishon

Contrary to popular belief, the Schrodinger equation is deterministic. Whether the laws of the universe are fundamentally deterministic or just probabilistic is an unanswered question, and quite likely unanswerable.

But, George Weinberg, what about jinn particles and entanglement?

George: As I understand it, the Schrodinger equation calculates the probability density of a quantum-mechanical system. Doesn't this imply that the system is non-deterministic, except, of course, statistically?

This is a nice summary of the various "problems" with quantum mechanics. It seems you can't get away from weirdness.

The supposed weirdness of QM, including the bugbears of non-determinism and action-at-a-distance, is resolved by the Everett interpretation - the multiverse.

For further information, please read "The Fabric of Reality", by David Deutsch.

Lol, I love weirdness! Tom Robinson, the multiverse is a theory. There are many. :)
Sure, I believe in the eventuality of the Holy Unification Theorem, but isn't this all a grand adventure getting there?

I don't think science precludes the existance of god, just maybe a fixed definition.

Science assumes causation as a universal constant. "Probabilism" doesn't remove determinism, it just adds a random element; there is no freedom in the system, there is only unpredictability. The whole reason we have to deal with probabilities in the first place is because of limits in our ability to observe things at the subatomic level; when you observe by bouncing particles off of things, your act of observation affects what you observe rather a lot once you're observing something small enough.

The issue in reconciling the scientific view of man with the humanitarian view is not determinism vs. probabilism, for both of these admit that human action is the result of prior causes. The issue is whether or not there can be human action *which does not depend on efficient causes*, for only such action as this could be called "willed", and a man can only be held accountable for willed action (for it is nonsense to blame someone for action which was not their choice).

Science works wonderfully when discussing mechanics, though. Most of the time, there's no objection to treating all objects in space as "dead matter" acted upon by forces, and we can model those sorts of movements very nicely. Once you get to things like human behaviour, though, freedom of a will becomes impossible, since such a thing is by nature unobservable (for to witness something which does not appear as part of a causal sequence would require that causation not be universal, which is unavoidably part of all our perceptions).

Jinnderella,

Darwin's theory of evolution is, likewise, just a theory. When it was first proposed it no doubt seemed quite weird to the Victorian public.

But if it *persisted* in its weirdness after 150 years, that would give cause for concern. It would indicate that something was wrong with the theory. Scientific and public understanding move on. There is room for mystery within *science as a whole*, but not within a single theory.

The Everett interpretation is the *only* rationally-tenable form of QM. It has been adopted by the majority of working physicists, see

http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#believes

Daniel: My intent was to point out that whereas free will is impossible in a Newtonian universe, it becomes possible in a quantum mechanical one. All that would be necessary is for God to arrange for the statistics to work out on the quantum level.

the irony is that newton was fixated on alchemy & hermetuetical exegis. j.m. keynes said that newton was the 'last of the sumerians,' that is, though he ushered in the modern world, he was the last of the pre-moderns....

Razib: It makes sense to me! Why should he be less of the world he came from than the world he brought us to? Like Moses.

And, glad to have you stop by!

A little clarification:
You've got this thing called the wave function. The Schrodinger equation tells how the wave function evolves over time. The Schrodinger equation itself is deterministic.

The usual (Copenhagen) interpretation is that the wave function represents the probability density of obtaining a given result when you make a measurement. But there's no precise definition of what it means to make a measurement. In general it involves the system interacting with something outside the system. But there is no fundamental reason why a system boundary has to be drawn at any particular place, or even at all.

In principle (maybe) there's such a thing as the wave function for the entire universe, and (maybe) the evolution of that wave function in time is deterministic.

As far as the implications for free will go, I don't think there are any. If it's impossible in practice to predict the future, I'm not sure whether it matters much whether it's possible in principle or not, and if it's impossible in principle to predict the future, then I don't think it matters much whether the future is in principle fully determined by the present or not. I certainly have a sense of having free will, but I can't precisely define what 'free will' means, I don't think it can be done. But without knowing precisely what free will means, how can one definitively state whether it exists or not?

George: Thank you. My point was that in a Newtonian universe, there are no "maybe"s or "not sure"s.

David: "For God to arrange for the statistics to work out"? That sounds an awful lot like Liebniz's "watchmaker" solution to Cartesian dualism....

George: Freedom of the will is the notion that there is human action which is attributable to no root cause beyond itself; i.e., it is uncaused action.

David again: Even in a "QM universe" there are no "maybe"s or "not sure"s, there are only "can't know"s. Some things are too small to be observable, but the method we have for predicting their action within a certain realm of probability *is* deterministic; their action will, over time, conform to the probabilities we were able to assign. Any particular instance can only be guessed at, but even then the probability will give us an accurate description for how likely various outcomes are. There is no *freedom*, there is only *chance*; the die does not cause its own rolls, it merely rolls according to laws that we cannot observe closely enough to accurately predict any particular output.

Does anyone get my point that unlike Newtonian Physics, Quantum Mechanics can't be used to prove that free will doesn't exist?

Newtonian physics couldn't do it, either; it took universal causation as a premise, it didn't reach it as a conclusion. Newtonian mechanics asserts that mechanics consists of "dead matter" acted upon by forces; it doesn't start from some other point and reach this conclusion, it starts from this point and reaches the ability to predict motion.

Tom Robinson, thank you for the link. :)
I am still learning.

David, I get it! The Einsteinian Universe is far richer; the possibilities of time travel, free will, entanglement, faster-than-light space travel, all sorts of wonders. :)

David:
You say that ultimately, God is unknowable. Could it be possible that when we think he arranges the forces of the nature at the right time and place for what could be construed as a miracle (ie Red Sea), he is actually putting a halt to science and the world as we know it, or that the opposite occurs?

You speak of "truths not even God can change." Well, how can we know that God can't change anything? How do we know that truth was something invented by God? Or not? I think we know enough to know that we don't know. We know that certain animals have senses we don't have. We can't respond to stimuli in the same way we do, but by induction we somehow know they can sense things we don't.

Are there things in the universe that we can't sense, or deduct via any method, that nevertheless affect us? Take cave fish for example. They cannot see light, but nevertheless light affects them in that, it stimulates light reactions in plants, which produce oxygens, which is dissolved into water which the cave fish breathe. How would you explain this to a cave fish? Does God work in the same fashion? Is he cognizant of what we are not?

As someone who has done industrial blacksmithing the the tongs with which tongs are made speaks strongly to me. We bought many of ours from tool suppliers, but I know the steps involved in forming a tong from a length of bar and it isn't intuitive the way a hammer and anvil are.

The Watchmaker of the Deists needed a very specialized lathe and dividing engine.