High-powered mathematicians take on free will

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S23/75/58A30/index.xml?section=featured

by nickb • 17 years ago

62 37 17 years ago

jwilliams2• 17 years ago

Their thesis is that if Humans have free will so do elementary particles (in a defined respect).

Anyone know much more on this? -- Does this relate to the theory that everything was predefined at the big bang - e.g. a big random number was generated and everything since then has simply been cause and effect? Or is it on another tack?

Ardit202• 17 years ago

doesn't the cause and effect theory you mention and the big bang contradict each other?

jwilliams2• 17 years ago

Surely that's the crux of any "we don't have free will, it's all predetermined" argument - it has to be set in motion in some respect?

jerf• 17 years ago

Based on this article, there isn't enough information to answer your question. The authors are clearly aware of quantum theory and you'd have to dig in deeper.

It is generally accepted that quantum events are "truly random", so the random number generation is ongoing. The standard proof of this is Bell's theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_Theorem ), but I feel a deeper understanding of the theorem shows rather that it constrains what hidden variables could exist and that the conventional understanding is impossible, not that hidden variables in all senses are completely impossible. (Still, the hidden variables people were "hoping" for are impossible; if there are hidden variables they will be undeniably "quantum".)

DaniFong2• 17 years ago

"I feel a deeper understanding of the theorem shows rather that it constrains what hidden variables could exist and that the conventional understanding is impossible, not that hidden variables in all senses are completely impossible."

That was my conclusion too: I've been meaning to write about it, but time constraints keep getting in the way.

The thing I like about the Free Will theorem is that it highlights the importance of the experimenter's choice, as opposed to in Bell's theorem, where demonstrations mostly take this as given. There's room for 'hidden variables' of a certain type in the decision making process of the experimenter and the state and process of the measurement apparatus. Having blind faith that important state is located there is perhaps unwise, and certainly it is hard to demonstrate, but assuming that the experimenters are entirely un-entangled and uninfluenced causally, that there's no interesting modified state in the experimenters or measurement apparatus at all, would, to my mind, also be a mistake.

pygy• 17 years ago

Although I'm not a particle physicist, if I remember well what I read about it, this very demonstration proves that there is no predetermined hidden variable revealed by observation.

Kochen spent a significant part of his life on the topic (see the first result here : http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=author:simon-k... , 784 citations :-)

To quote the last version of the demonstration (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0807/0807.3286v1.pdf)

"More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic – the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of the universe."

ams6110• 17 years ago

"if a human experimenter can make decisions independently of past events, then the particle can also make a free choice"

The article does not make clear how "free choice" is different from "random chance" -- at least not to me.

frig• 17 years ago

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jas/one/freewill-theorem.html

  When the floor was opened for questions, one member of the 
  audience questioned Dr Conway's use of the term "Free 
  Will". She asked whether Dr Conway was "confusing 
  randomness and free will".

  In a passionate reply, Dr Conway said that what he
  had shown, with mathematical precision, that if a  
  given property was exhibited by an experimenter than 
  that same property was exhibited by particles. He had 
  been careful when constructing his theorem to use the same 
  term "free will" in the antecedent and consequent of his
  theorem. He said he did not really care what people chose
  to call it. Some people choose to call it "free will" only
  when there is some judgment involved. He said he felt that
  "free will" was freer if it was unhampered by judgment - 
  that it was almost a whim. "If you don't like the term Free 
  Will, call it Free Whim - this is the Free Whim Theorem".

coglethorpe• 17 years ago

If they prove we don't have free will and somebody gets upset, they can always say "Hey, it wasn't like we choice in what we studied. It just happened that way."

erlanger• 17 years ago

And they certainly didn't have a choice.

DaniFong2• 17 years ago

It might have been predetermined, but there's still an act of choosing, a weighing of possibilities, a judgment between them, and action. And those judging them later will too be able to judge their judgment, their character, and make decisions based on that.

The existence of free will in a strong sense, has, as far as I can tell, no logically valid implications in practical terms, though it does do something profound to our psychologies: it certainly injects fatalism.

eru4• 17 years ago

Shouldn't the absence of free will inject fatalism?

dgordon• 17 years ago

"It might have been predetermined, but there's still an act of choosing, a weighing of possibilities, a judgment between them, and action. And those judging them later will too be able to judge their judgment, their character, and make decisions based on that."

And that would all be predetermined too.

Someone came up with this before me: you should believe in free will because if it exists you're right and if not you couldn't have done otherwise anyway. It's like Pascal's Wager, except not stupid and wrong.

enoqu• 17 years ago

Here's the link to John Conway's lecture videos. It includes links to the Free Will Lectures, although it isn't currently working for me.

http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/

apmee• 17 years ago

It's working fine for me, at the moment. Thanks.

peregrine• 17 years ago

Can we get a youtube of that? Or something with better load times.

Thanks for the link though.

andreyf• 17 years ago

They have packaged their arguments in an airtight mathematical theorem that rests on what they say are three unassailable axioms which happen to rhyme -- spin, fin and twin.

Aside from most discussions of "free will" arising from semantic confusion, I think pretty clearly points toward this being a bit of a joke...

dfranke• 17 years ago

If you'd ever been to a Conway lecture you'd know that this is entirely par for the course for him.

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Knowing Conway as I do, this is not only par for the course, it is actively to be expected. If there weren't comments like this then it would be a spoof.

And there is no semantic confusion about "Free Will". The naming of the theorem is stated in those terms, but the work itself is independent of the precise meaning. That's why this is such an interesting result. The care taken to make it independent of the semantics attached to that term is, again, entirely to be expected, and makes the result compelling.

xenophanes2• 17 years ago

Why do experts in one field (like math) often think they must be brilliant at other fields (like philosophy)?

They are trying to prove stuff about free will, but have no expertise on the question of what free will is.

If you disagree, please post a comment saying why. I'd like to hear it.

wynand• 17 years ago

Their lack of (supposed: I don't know how well read either mathematician is in philosophy) philosophical credentials might justifiably invite scepticism.

But surely we can only dismiss this if their argument has a flaw. And the burden of disproof is on us, not them.

xenophanes2• 17 years ago

They seem to think free will is a part of physics, not philosophy, and reductionist physics at that. They didn't address any actual problems in the field. They missed the point. That is a flaw in their non-argument.

The burden is on them to say what is a problem in the field they want to address, to know something about the history of the problem, other candidate solutions to it, and how their solution differs, and then say what the answer is. They simply haven't done that.

dinkumthinkum• 17 years ago

They've missed one very important point; one that Hobbes, Hume, and others realized long ago. The utterance "free will" is literally meaningless. What would that even mean and why would you even want that?

narag2• 17 years ago

That's a big surprise for me. I've defended that freedom and determinism are not mutually exclusive in many discussions for a very long time... and been told that I'm alone in that. I had no idea that it's a position hold by classic philosophers like those. Could you cite some concrete works from them?

timb• 17 years ago

Check out http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

kamens• 17 years ago

I always knew that Whitehead was a pretty smart guy. Process philosophers must love this.

shader• 17 years ago

I think this article explains the idea much better: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_su...

koningrobot• 17 years ago

I agree. Actually I find the idea (if not the proof) kind of obvious: our thoughts are as deterministic as the processes that effect them. Whether they are deterministic is another story.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

free will is what optimizing a decision tree feels like when you're the evaluation function.

eru4• 17 years ago

Perhaps. Only --- most evaluating functions don't pass the Turing test.

High-powered mathematicians take on free will

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