Update, 2007 Sept 24 -
Some misunderstandings have become apparent over the last 16 months -
(1) Not for neuroscientists. This explanation of free will is based on logic and not on biology. As detailed on this site, biological and other physicalist approaches to the free will problem face severe logical problems and are unlikely to be successful.
(2) Ontology. On this site, an object is real if it makes a contribution to the world's logic. For example, a statue about to be carved out of a block of stone is not real until the carving is carried out, even though the atoms of the finished statue are in their correct positions at the start. An uncarved statue does not impact on the world's logic. Similarly a gene is real even if its constituent parts are not adjacent on the same molecule. The reality of the gene is determined by its logical effects. Although this seems a commonsense viewpoint, it breaks with a tradition that treats an object as real if it exists in itself. In the scheme here, reality is not a question of whether an object exists in itself (because even God might do that) but is a question of whether an object impacts on the world's logic.
(3) External viewpoints. An external or 'God's eye' viewpoint is not permitted in fundamental physics, but would solve many problems if it could be. (For instance, it could select a particular world from the ensemble of Many Worlds.) On this site, an exterior viewpoint in the form of logic is recognised. (For instance, logic selects one of the Many Worlds to be 'our' world; i.e., there is a logical reason for our world.) The chief task on this site is to describe this logic. A logic that operates from an exterior platform cannot be seen from the inside - it does not have an objective 'handle' - but this does not prevent it from being visible in an 'obvious' sense. Godel showed that some truths could be determined by inspection though they could not be proved within the system.
(4) Determinism. The explanation of free will described on this site requires a fully deterministic world, something which potentially conflicts with the facts of atomic physics. In atomic physics, a result tinged with randomness appears whenever a measurement is made. The cause of the apparent randomness is taken here to be a determinism unknowable in principle. Something unknowable in principle would normally be considered in science as not existing. But again taking a cue from Godel, it is possible for causes to be obvious upon inspection, though not provable. 'Unknowable' just means that the determinism lacks objective proof.
(5) Randomness. In support of determinism, a significant part of this site is dedicated to showing that randomness is a questionable assumption as far as fundamental reality is concerned.
(6) Selection effects. This explanation of free will recognises an unconscious selection effect in our conventional approach to reality. When someone demonstrates something to the world, the audience agrees that what is being demonstrated does indeed exist i.e., is true. But the particular thing being demonstrated is a selection from all things that might be demonstrated. Thus we have truth-by-selection. This does not matter if reality consists of things existing in themselves, because in principle all self-existent things might eventually be demonstrated and the order in which this occurs does not particularly matter. But it is a problem if reality consists only of those things that make a contribution to the logic of the world. The thing that the person demonstrates enters the logical world of the audience (i.e., of the world) because it is demonstrated to them (or to the world). Thus the reality of the world depends on what the demonstrator unconsciously chooses to demonstrate.
(The demonstrator is often the scientific community, the demonstrated object being something that the scientists unconsciously believe pre-existed and which they have discovered. Since they believe they have stumbled upon pre-existing reality, the scientists do not see that a selection effect is taking place. That is why the selection is said to be unconscious.)
A similar unconscious selection effect occurs with the 'Anthropic Principle'.
(7) Axioms. Scientific research is conducted within axioms chosen by the scientific community. In the case of free will, this is problematic because our explanation of how we choose things will rest on an assumption, right at the start, that we already have an ability to choose things. How might we proceed? By continuing to have axioms and definitions, but letting their choice be made from a platform external to our world. The external platform is logic. In effect, there is a logical reason for the axioms and they are no longer our arbitrary choice.
(8) Plausibility. Scientific research depends on plausibility to eliminate unlikely hypotheses, to reject contrived explanations, to confirm truth, and so on. This reliance on plausibility to judge truth is a kind of logical element of our world. Recognising this element is a key reason for the success of the explanation of free will on this site.
(9) Word meanings. Scientists understand the meanings of words such as macroscopic, natural, emerge, well-confirmed, etc, but do not pretend that the meanings have an independent reality. These informal meanings have a deep influence on the reality judged to exist and must be accommodated in any theory of reality. Not doing this is a significant factor in the failure of other approaches to the free will problem.
(10) People. People are defined on this site like everything else - in terms of their logical impact on the world. (Their logical impact is of a unique sort, however.) This definition in terms of logic contrasts with the scientific definition of people in terms of hardware (i.e., a person's physical characteristics). A significant part of this site is dedicated to showing the logical problems of the hardware approach. This includes criticism of the logic of evolution theory (which is not in any way motivated by religious convictions).
---//---
Earlier version of this site:
An earlier version of this site built on the idea from fundamental physics that forces are inventions to preserve certain symmetries. ("Explanation of Free Will as a Local Gauge Symmetry") The basic idea is repeated here:
"As a 'force' causing changes to the world, free will is similar to gravity, electromagnetism, and the other forces of physics which derive from 'gauge symmetries' that exist in the world. The relevant symmetry in the case of free will is that the world does not change to suit observers. It stays the same thing 'in itself', notwithstanding that it appears differently to different observers (i.e., enters the logical world of each observer differently.)
The discrepancy between 'reality' and an observer's logical world can be eliminated by the observer making an adjustment to reality. (The adjustment is made to reality, not to his own view. He assumes his own view to be accurate.)
The adjustment that the observer makes is to see reality containing a 'force' possessed by other observers - a force that makes reality 'different from what it would be naturally'. This force is free will."
---//---
It is the question of why the world's things should be divided into 'natural' objects, such as a flower, and 'man-made' objects, such as a watch. A physicist concerned with fundamental reality has no need for two categories. All objects are created equally by the same laws, and there is no fundamental distinction between natural and man-made objects. The free will problem is how to avoid this natural/manmade distinction between the objects of science.
This particular formulation of the free will problem focuses on objects existing in the world rather than on man 'doing' things.
That's how philosophers put it but it is not a scientific way of stating the problem. A formulation along those lines already assumes the existence of an ability to 'do' things. If we start with that assumption, it is not possible to derive it. The formulation here focuses on objects rather than on actions. Objects are the stuff of scientific study.
Not to the satisfaction of physicists. There have been demonstrations of how free will is compatible with determinism, and of how quantum randomness might allow free will, etc, but there is something missing about our understanding of free will itself.
Neuroscientists study brain processes and find out what happens when we alter the brain in various ways, but the resultant scientific explanations are empirical and not driven by an overarching theory. Neuroscientists are lacking a guiding principle similar to that which inspired Einstein when he was working on gravity. Einstein was guided by the idea that the force of gravity can be eliminated if we look at the world the right way (which in his case was to take the point of view of a person in free fall). Neuroscientists need a similar principle to guide their studies into the 'force' of free will.
No. It involves an unconventional approach to reality, and this is seen as unacceptable to most professionals working in the field.
As a child I came across a book on algebra which stated that 'x' was unknown. I thought the book was wrong because I knew the 'real' value of 'x' was 24, its position in the English alphabet. The mistake I was making was to demand that 'x' conform to a pre-existing idea of reality instead of letting 'x' acquire reality within the context that I was considering. I should not have forced it into some imagined 'absolute' context.
To solve the free will problem we need to let the things of the world acquire reality in the logical context we set up. Objects will obtain their characteristics (their 'reality') in the context of the questions asked of them.
The world can be likened to an 'equation' which we are trying to solve with our scientific effort. The values we obtain for the variables in the equation - the characteristics of reality - will depend on what equation we set up. The variables do not have pre-ordained values anymore than 'x' has the pre-ordained value of 24. Instead, the values of the world's variables will arise in the context of the equation we have unconsciously set up for solution. The equation selected for solution is called by us 'the real world', but it is just one world that we could choose out of all possible worlds. The things that we discover when we undertake our scientific effort will depend on which possible world our attention is focused on (i.e., on which possible world we consider to be the 'real' one).
(I have used words such as choose, select, focus on, and this seems to assume what I am trying to explain. Please bear with me - it should all become clear.)
Resolving the free will problem is a matter of recognising that we make a choice of worlds before applying our scientific effort. Most importantly, we make this choice unconsciously. Scientists don't consider all possible worlds and then choose one for their scientific study. No, they get on with studying a single world that they unconsciously believe to be the real one. They tend to think that the reality they uncover is absolutely real, but actually it is relative to the world they have unconsciously chosen. The reason they think it is absolutely real is that they don't notice their unconscious choosing of it. As I will explain, it is a matter of logical necessity that our choice of world be unconscious.
Thus the solution to the free will problem to be presented here requires that we recognise reality as being relative to the context in which we unconsciously choose to study it. This is a significant departure from the way we traditionally conduct science. Traditionally we assume that reality is what it is and that it is entirely independent of the questions we choose to ask of it. Or if not entirely independent, at least any dependence is knowable and can be discounted. Here, we recognise that some of our prejudices cannot be discounted because they are unconscious, and therefore cannot be proved to exist. However, just because something cannot be proved to exist, doesn't mean that it doesn't.
Godel was forced to acknowledge the existence of unprovable reality when he found mathematical truths that were unprovable within the system. There are other aspects of science that cannot be proved, for instance, the axioms of science. The axioms are starting assumptions chosen by us. Neither can our definitions be proved, nor the meanings of words. All these aspects of science are of fundamental importance but they fall outside the formal system.
There are many similar examples in science where science needs to accommodate intangibles. In the case of free will (and also in fundamental physics), the intangible that science needs to accommodate is our unconscious choice of world. This shows up most clearly with the Anthropic Principle, where our mere existence unconsciously sets the initial conditions of the world.
The theory of free will to be presented here concerns how our world is selected from the ensemble of possible worlds that can logically exist. The logical principle that does this selecting must be uncaused because it is responsible for the existence of the world and its objects. It could not have responsibility for the world's objects if it were itself determined by the world's objects.
The need for this new principle of logic to be unconscious might appear to be a serious flaw for a scientific theory. But it does not prevent the principle from appearing as a variable in a physics' equation. Being uncaused just means that the variable is not set by an underlying reality.
No, there is a third option. Reality is a matter of logic. The mix of objects existing in the world at any moment is not an accident of the big bang, nor is it the outworking of brain cells. It is a matter of logic.
Solid objects are composed mainly of quarks, and these are identical. (Actually, they come in two types, 'up' and 'down'). Being identical means that the quarks have no internal structure to encode their individuality. They cannot store information. When you look out your window, what you see in front of you is a sea of featureless quarks. You only get sensible objects like cars and trees by partitioning the quarks into sets. The quarks are unable to do this partitioning themselves because there is nothing internal to a quark telling it to which object it shall belong. It doesn't know whether to be part of the car, say, or of the road that the car rests upon, or of some more distributed object, such as the atmosphere adjacent to both the car and the road. The partitioning of the quarks into sets must be imposed from outside them. But what is there outside the world? On this site I make the case that logic is an agent outside the world. Logic sets what objects a world shall contain from moment to moment.
The world's solid objects are composed of dumb particles. There is an outside logic specifying how the particles shall be organised into the sets we call objects. The logic controls worlds rather than being a product of them. For instance, there is a logic which forbids a world from having the same object simultaneously existing and not existing. This particular prohibition applies to all worlds and thus lies outside all worlds. In the case of the quarks outside your bedroom window, there is a logic that divides the set of quarks into the subsets we call meaningful objects. This logic lies outside the quarks, and indeed, outside the world. ('Lies outside' means imposed from a platform outside.)
Some people say that people, or observers, do the partitioning of the quarks into objects; logic is not involved. But that would mean the partitioning algorithm resided in people's heads. Unfortunately, people's heads are objects like the rest of the world's objects. We would get into the logical tangle of people's heads being the origin of people's heads. But logic doesn't have a problem like that. Logic can lie outside everything. It is the ideal platform to specify 'everything', including people's heads.
There is a problem with the 'self' implied by the words 'them' and 'themselves'. What exactly are we referring to when we use the word 'self'? What do we mean by an object existing 'in itself'?
The layman might assume that the object itself knows the answer... The scientist might seek to replace 'self' with stuff, substance, entity, essence, or 'that which makes this equation valid'. Some of these substitutes are an improvement in that they remove the idea of personhood from self. But none is entirely satisfactory. Whatever word replaces 'self' is equivalent to 'self' and we might as well use 'self'. Scientists do that in practice.
It is no use defining the selfhood of an object. Definitions are imposed from the outside and require an outside platform for their imposition. In addition, imposing a definition on an object implies that the object already exists to receive the definition. The object already has selfhood and all we're doing is refining it.
Scientists sometimes solve the selfhood-of-objects problem by pointing at specific objects - this thing that they are holding, that thing over there, and so on. A philosopher once kicked a rock so forcefully that his foot rebounded sharply. 'That one's real' he said to his friend. But both of them knew he proved nothing. The philosopher didn't kick at random - he kicked at the object. Thus the object already had selfhood before the philosopher set about proving it. We need to avoid reference to humans (and to their pointing and kicking antics) if we want to identify the essence of objects in themselves.
'Consider an apple about to fall from a tree'. In a case like this, the object is asserted - but proof by assertion has never been valid in science. We remain in the dark as to what constitutes the selfhood of an object in itself. Nevertheless, it is essential that we solve the problem of object selfhood if we are to make progress on the free will question.
It causes problems. The evolutionary writer Richard Dawkins provides an unwitting example in his 1976 best-seller, The Selfish Gene, where he explains evolution by the use of metaphor. His metaphor is deliberately explicit so that no-one can accuse him of a lapse of scientific rigour. Dawkins insists that the metaphor is for illustration purposes only. His 'selfish genes' are not selfish in reality - they only act as if they are.
But here is the problem. Dawkins is not talking metaphorically when he refers to the genes as having 'selves'. Nor is he talking metaphorically when he says the genes have the ability to 'act'. The genes are real objects in themselves. Like any other object that exists in itself, they cause things to happen - to make the host body have blue eyes, for instance. The ability for an object to act as the cause of things is a characteristic of a thing existing in itself. Thus Dawkins is assuming selfhood in the genes. It is this assumption that causes the problems.
Some might say that an object needs to have a 'self' so that we can refer to it as a thing-in-itself and call it 'it'. That is a metaphysical point of historical significance, and something that has not been settled. But the only way to solve the free will problem (and lots of others in the foundations of mathematics and physics) is to face up squarely to what it is that puts the 'self' into a self-existing object.
In the case of evolutionary theory, it might seem at first sight that Dawkins' assumption of selfhood in his selfish genes does not cause too great a problem; the theory is still valid. But the presumption of selfhood prevents Dawkins from obtaining a full explanation of man. Dawkins starts with the assumption that genes are inanimate molecules with few pre-assigned features other than that they have selfhood. He then carefully nurtures them through a plausible evolutionary scenario and eventually presents them as human beings at the end.
But if we start with a molecule having selfhood and an ability to influence the world, we might expect advanced selfhood and an enhanced ability to influence the world to appear at the end. That is to say, when inanimate molecules have selfhood and the ability to act, advanced aggregations of the molecules should have advanced selfhood and an advanced ability to act i.e., free will.
Free will remains elusive because evolutionary theory builds it into the selfhood of the first self-reproducing molecule. Selfhood is a kind of axiom of the system. It is of course not possible to explain an axiom by deduction from it.
That is the right path. Relying on a 'shared idea' is a very economical way of solving the problem, and is what scientists do in practice. Scientists don't bother ascertaining the ontological status of tables and chairs, they just use them. But 'shared idea' is too vague as it stands. We need to put the notion on a formal footing. We also need to incorporate 'shared idea' in the logic of the world rather than in people's heads. As before, we must avoid people's heads specifying the objects known as people's heads.
Adopting a solution based on 'shared idea' is a significant break from scientific tradition. Objects no longer have 'selves' caused by meticulous specification of the initial conditions of the world. Instead, they are determined (sic) by a 'shared idea' that resides not in people's heads but in the logic of the world.
The experimental results of Libet and others on the timing of free will actions achieve a natural explanation under this theory. The theory also solves many theoretical problems in physics and philosophy. It provides a simple explanation of quantum physics (the measurement problem) and the Schrodinger Cat experiment in particular. We also obtain an insight into the nature of time and the setting of the initial conditions of the universe. In philosophy, the logical manipulation of objects becomes augmented by a process that supplies the objects to be manipulated. This has the potential to solve many long-standing philosophical problems.
Shortly I will move on to solving the problem of free will with the ideas outlined here. Before this, however, let us consider the following curious aspect of free will. (It seems to be under-recognised in the literature):
The following argument requires two particular assumptions: (1) that we look at free will from a physicist's perspective; and (2) that free will is irrational. Taking a physicist's point of view is probably the purest approach we can make scientifically. The second assumption - that free will is irrational - can be considered part of the definition of free will. If free will were rational i.e., determined, it would not be free.
The argument employing these two assumptions leads to the conclusion that the irrationality involved in free will existed before the world. The reasoning goes as follows. A rational person cannot decide to become an irrational person. The decision would be irrational and could not be made by a rational person. With this impossibility in mind, let us consider the world starting off rationally and evolving rationally over billions of years, and finally producing man. Man has the irrationality of free will and can bend the world to his whim. But a rational agent (the world evolving rationally) cannot cannot give away control to an irrational agent. That would be an irrational thing to do.
What do we conclude from this reasoning? We conclude that the irrationality involved in man's free will must pre-date the world. (Actually, the irrationality just needs to pre-date man's evolution rather than the world as a whole, but it is reasonable to take the beginning of man's evolution as the beginning of the world.) It would appear that the irrationality of man's free will has its roots in something that existed before the world.
The existence of this logical constraint on the world is significant for anyone trying to develop a 'theory of everything' (or engaging in science generally). I have discovered that biologists tend not to like the argument, for several reasons. First, biologists are fond of the idea that man's free will 'emerges' when a certain level of complexity is reached. Thus, according to them, there are no metaphysical issues concerning free will's appearance. Second, they object to the world being treated as an 'agent' when it is just an object. Finally, they believe themselves to be on the verge of locating exactly where in the brain the illusion of free will is caused.
But a physicist would be suspicious of the biologists' position. One problem is that the biologists use subjective terms. To say that something 'emerges when a certain level of complexity is reached' is to make a loaded subjective statement. Such subjectivity must be avoided in science, particularly when trying to explain subjectivity.
The physicist would also object that if everything in the world is physical, as the biologists believe, then it is just as valid to treat the world as an 'agent' as it is to treat man or any other collection of molecules as an agent. Physicists also tend to be sceptical about identifying a brain structure with free will when various logical problems have not been addressed.
Assuming the physicist's point of view, this 'curious aspect' of free will leads to the idea that something irrational about the world existed before the world came into being. But the only thing that existed before the world was logic. (I am ignoring deities and other possibilities.) On this site, the irrationality is taken to be logic's outside viewpoint. This is irrational because it is 'outside'. (Irrational does not mean crazy, of course.)
There are some intriguing similarities between the logical explanation of free will on this site and the scientific explanation of physical forces. The heuristic explanation of free will is as follows. The 'fictitious force' we call free will results from a hitherto unrecognised 'gauge symmetry' in the world. In physics, a symmetry is something that remains unchanged when an operation is performed, and is often associated with a force. For instance, the symmetry represented by the laws of dynamics staying unchanged when viewed by different observers in relative acceleration is associated with the force of gravity. The other forces of physics are explained in a similar way - as compensations to maintain a symmetry that gets destroyed when notional observers take different viewpoints.
What symmetry might be responsible for the perceived force of free will? We need to look for something that appears different to different observers, yet does not change 'in itself' (and which has not already been associated with a physical force). A suitable candidate is reality. Reality appears different to different people, yet does not change 'in itself'. The explanation of free will that results can be seen as a generalisation of Einstein's work on gravity. Einstein required just one aspect of reality to stay the same, namely the laws of dynamics. Here we are considering all aspects of reality staying the same. In particular, the mix of objects in the world at a given time does not change notwithstanding that different observers see different mixes.
Each of us unconsciously believes that reality is whatever we unconsciously see it to be. Although it might not seem so at first, each of us insisting that our view of reality is the correct one is the same as insisting that the world is independent of us all. We insist that there exists a self-existent 'reality', not set by people, that each of us is secretly privy to. The result of each of us (unconsciously) demanding that our local viewpoint be the one and only 'correct' viewpoint is that we are obliged to invent a 'force' to explain the discrepancies. This force, called free will, is ascribed to other people and explains why the world is not the ideal place that my own viewpoint would have it.
So the heuristic explanation of free will is this. The 'force' of free will is something we invent to explain an invariance possessed by the world and its objects. The particular invariance is that an object (which could be the world as a whole) remains the same thing in itself when it appears differently to different people. We invent a 'force' - the force of free will - to explain why different people react differently to what is supposedly the same reality surrounding us all.
Thus free will results from the invariance of object 'selfhood'. An object is a thing-in-itself. It doesn't change in spite of it entering the logical world of different people in different ways. To put it another way, there is a freedom in the way that an object enters a person's logical viewpoint. It is like the freedom, in the case of gravity, to choose the origin of distance and bearing measurements. There, it resulted in the force of gravity. Here, it results in the fictitious force of free will. [Ref. 0.5]
(Paul Davies' Superforce, Chapter 7, gives more than the usual passing reference to invariances as the origin of physical forces.)