Eligo, ergo sum: The quest for the physics of free will
Are you free to choose which way to go? Common sense and experience say yes. Classical physics says no. Contemporary physics seems to say perhaps. And what about God?
In “Humanity in a Creative Universe” (2016), polymath biologist and complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman notes that the deterministic universe of classical physics is incompatible with free will: In a classical universe consciousness, whatever that is, could only observe the deterministic unfolding of the world with a delusion of free agency.
That’s not what experience and common sense tell me. They tell me that I am constrained by circumstances, temperament, memories, emotions and all that, but I have at least some control over my own choices.
Of course common sense could be just wrong in this case. But without free agency, it’s difficult to take anything seriously.
It can be argued that freedom to choose is a necessary condition for existence. “[Not] in the cogito (I think) but in the eligo (I choose) lies the guarantee of existence, so that the Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) of Descartes becomes an Eligo, ergo sum (I choose, therefore I am),” noted Kurt F. Reinhardt in “The Existentialist Revolt.”
Following the existentialists, I’m assuming that free will exists, and wondering about physical models compatible with free will. I’m willing to consider free will as a solid experimental fact. If we accept this premise, we can rule out the models of physical reality that are not compatible with free will. For example we can rule out: Deterministic models (e.g. classical physics); Non-deterministic models entirely driven by pure randomness (e.g. random quantum collapse); Models entirely driven by an external entity (e.g. God makes all decisions).
Perhaps classical (non-quantum) chaos physics offers a way out: If the future is unpredictable in-practice, it could be argued that the future is undetermined in-principle, leaving room for free will. This is an interesting topic, but I’m unable to see entry points for free will in classical chaos.
Quantum physics seems non-deterministic: A quantum system can “freely” choose to settle in one of many possible states. When and how the choice is made isn’t clear. According to many quantum physicists, quantum states “collapse” randomly into one of many possible outcomes upon observation, but what observation is and who/what observes is unclear. The collapse seems entirely random.
So quantum physics offers a combination of determinism and randomness, which is hardly more appealing than determinism alone: In neither case we have free agency.
But perhaps quantum randomness is not random. An encrypted or optimally compressed message looks like random noise, but isn’t really random and can be decoded with appropriate algorithms.
Kauffman argues that the biosphere, and perhaps even aspects of the abiotic universe, evolve in ways that are clearly non-deterministic, and some kind of free will could be part of the very fabric of reality. The Free Will Theorem proposed by John Conway and Simon Kochen proves that, if we have free will in the sense that our choices are not determined by the past history of the universe, then quantum particles must have their own “free will” as well.
“[Our] theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own.”
Kauffman proposes to consider quantum possibles as real: Not just aspects of our (lack of) knowledge, but “things” that have ontological reality beyond the actual space-time we perceive. This is the old concept of “potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy, described by Werner Heisenberg (in “Physics and Philosophy”) as “standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.” Kauffman says:
“The universe is observing what is happening and also able to ‘act’ nonrandomly and perhaps with intent to change or choose what happens… Mind acausally mediates measurement that converts Possibles to Actuals. Thus: Actuals, Possibles, Mind.”
Recently Kaufmann wrote a paper titled “Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously” with physicists Ruth Kastner and Michael Epperson, both of whom have proposed quantum interpretations compatible with the ontological reality of quantum possibles. Kastner’s interpretation is a variant of John Cramer’s “Transactional Interpretation.”
Ergo Deus est
According to Fred Hoyle, the apparent randomness of quantum events is really non-random and driven by a cosmic Intelligence, and complex arrangements of matter can decode messages encoded in quantum randomness. In particular, life — a very complex and organized form of matter — can decode and execute these messages.
Interestingly, both Hoyle and Kastner use “advanced waves” that propagate backward in time. Hoyle’s cosmic Intelligence acts in the infinitely far future.
In the last chapter of “What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell” (1943), Erwin Schrödinger noted that freedom of choice is compatible with physical laws only if all free agents are aspects of a Cosmic Mind that does the choosing.
Many other scientists including Ervin László, Mani Bhaumik, Roger Penrose, and Stuart Hameroff, have speculated on a Cosmic Mind embedded in the fabric of fundamental reality. Kauffman says:
“[Aspects] of the entire universe know and nonrandomly act at each measurement among independent or entangled quantum variables. If this arises among entangled quantum variables, they may ‘jointly know and decide.’ We do not know if there is some whispering form of Cosmic Mind playing a role in the becoming of the universe…”
In a Scientific American interview, Kauffman said that science and religion could be compatible in some sense, and speculated on “a wildly panpsychist participatory universe.”
“In such a view, measurement anywhere is associated with consciousness and responsible will, and for entangled particles a coordinated version of the above, a kind of ‘mind of God,’ but not an omnipotent, omniscient, kind God in monotheistic sense at all.”
Many scientists entertain similar ideas, but take a distance from traditional religion and consider the Cosmic Mind as an abstract, non-personal consciousness. But to me it seems very likely that the mentality of a cosmic ultimate Intelligence would contain our own mentality and be, in the words of Olaf Stapledon, “in some sense personal, or at least not less than personal… probably infinitely more than personal.”
In his masterpiece “Star Maker,” Stapledon suggests that the Star Maker — God — learns from his creations. Perhaps the “wholly other” impersonal consciousness embedded in the fabric of reality learns from intelligent life and becomes also a personal, caring God.
In “Cosmic Mind?” (2016) Kauffman speculates on “a possible panpsychism in which something like cosmic mind or plural minds among entangled quantum variables may be possible.”
“Far more remotely, something like souls — partly quantum aspects of the living, where quantum biology is now flowering — may persist after death.”
In “Life After Death? An Improbable Essay” (2017), Kauffman adds:
“[If] at death, quantum entangled variables reflecting the living state in some way can escape the now dead classical body, perhaps souls can exist and can in some remotely conceivable manner, reincarnate.”
It’s interesting to note how Kauffman tries to take distance from the implications of his ideas. He begins with “I believe nothing of what I shall write. Yet I think that, scientifically, what I shall say is remotely possible,” and concludes with “These are very remote possibilities, but not, I think, ruled out scientifically.”
In a lesser scientist, this would indicate fear of career-killing ostracism for getting too close to, God forbid, religion. But Kauffman is a top scientist, an 800-pound scientific gorilla who has earned the right to sit wherever he wants. Therefore, I interpret Kauffman’s caution as an effort not to alienate those who feel a strong emotional need to reject everything that sounds like religion.
Kauffman himself is wiser. “I wrote ‘Reinventing the Sacred’ [2008] as one voice to say, of a natural but emergent biosphere beyond entailing law, here is one sense of God enough for me,” he says. “But yet more if the universe is conscious and choosing and we with it. How dare we say no in our arrogance?”