To me it makes sense to think of free will as a subset of determinism. Your most subtle moral choices are indeed determined by your past life, but that does not reduce their authenticity or importance as moral choices. So individuals or large groups can react back on their circumstances, and sometimes those acts decide the course of much wider events. This approach does not require the existence of anything beyond the material world.

This is a subject that people do struggle with, but it's not really all that difficult when you get your head around it.

It's all to do with what's called "emergence", which I'm sure everybody is to some extent familiar with. The classic example at school is the additive reinforcement of waves, such as waves in a spring, whereby small waves can suddenly produce an enormously larger one, seemingly from nowhere. A slightly more obscure example is the diffraction patterns created by light passing through a slit.

In each of these cases the actual behaviour of every single particle is deterministic, yet a new behaviour that is not readily predictable from observing any individual particle or group of particles emerges from the interaction of all of the particles.

Similarly, what we experience as our life of free-will is much more likely to be an emergent phenomenon from a whole bunch of deterministic interactions on all sorts of scales. Hameroff and Penrose have the view that our consciousness is a quantum phenomenon and it is clear that quantum behaviour is itself emergent from deterministic interactions, including interaction with an observer (an observer in this case includes anything that may be impinged on by the quantum system without being obviously connected to it causally).

If anyone is really interested, I'd strongly recommend some study on the topic of subjective probability. It's not all that difficult either...

Who is Christopher Hitchkens?

TonyS – you say that you believe that our moral choices are determined by our past life but you do not believe that reduces their authenticity or importance as moral choices.

But as Harris says "Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behaviour – but they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control", (p. 29). That chain of causes does not just extend over our lifetime but over the history of the universe. And ultimately what happens and why we think as we do has nothing to do with good reasons or intentions but is merely the outcome of the matter of the universe being acted upon by the laws of physics. "You will do whatever it is you do and it is meaningless to assert you could have done otherwise", (p. 43).

That being so, what can it mean to say that a moral “choice” is “authentic”?

Craig - The question remains,is Sam Harris correct in saying that we have no control over our minds?

That is the key point because if we do not then we are just generating meaningless noise or making meaningles marks (as with avalanches and clouds).

Nothing in your comment above gives any reason to believe that we are in control of our minds, hence your comment is meaningless, if determinism is true.

Bugsy - Christopher Hitchens was an outspoken author, journalist and antitheist who died in 2011.

JP, I know who Christopher Hitchens was.

But who is Christopher Hitchkens?

You will find that the majority of physicists believe, due to both theory and experiment derived fact, that the world is not-deterministic. Rather it is the exact opposite in that it is random.

This result/view derives from interpretations of the math of quantum phyiscs. However, according to some it is still possible that determinism is compatible with modern physics.

Regardless of the interpretations of the math, what is known is that the equations of quantum physics are the most tested and verified of all of physics. ie, there has never been a single observation performed under test conditions that deviates from results predicted from the equations and by now there has been gazillions of observations/measurements performed.

Personally, for myself, as a child I grew up believing that the world is *obviously* deterministic-- nearly everyone I talked to tried to convince me that I had a free will but I just couldn't see how it was possible. Then I went to uni and studied a bit of quantum physics (just a small amount- eg. finding solutions to the Schrödinger equation for simple systems such as the the standard fare particle in an infinite energy well extending to solutions of a single hydrogen atom- my understanding of physics ends at the developments made until about the 1930's. These physics studies persuaded me to believe that the world is at its base random.

I get the impression Graham Preston is over reacting to a philosophical discussion he doesn't quite fathom, and/or perhaps the topic is pushing a raw nerve for Graham. It also appears most of his objection was 'determined' by page 29. His mind was made up for the rest of the book which must have at least 62 pages, going by Graham's references.

Personally I'm of two minds and I feel it may be possible to have both determination and free will operating at the same time. Similar in a way a photon behaves as both a particle and a wave. Everything requires a witness in order to occur. Who is ultimately the witness? Is there a cosmic ocean of consciousness that is ever present and aware?

Without having read the book its hard to know what depth the author got into the subject, especially in the area of quantum physics. But in the article Graham quotes from the book: "The next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience did not bring into being."

Ancient Vedic knowledge discusses the existence of Atma, our true Self, witnessing our limited sense of self go through our daily dramas. Knowing the Self is to see the whole universe and indeed all that there is from a oneness with it all perspective. This is essentially the state of Enlightenment, Nirvana, or even Christ Consciousness.

If the past, present and future are in fact happening simultaneously, as some suggest, then determinism is not completely farfetched. After all, at any given moment you are where you are, doing what you are doing, thinking what you think as a result of the sum total of every single thing that you've done in your life previously. Change one minute event in the past and everything else changes that follows.

And we haven't even started to included multiple universes and planes of existence.

JP, what is "meaning"?

Bugger, wasted a post.

thinkabit, I'm afraid you don't understand QM. There is nothing non-deterministic about it, it is just that the scale makes it hard for us to observe the transactions between the particles or other components of the quantum system that determine what happens.

Moreover, we are very coarse observers, for the most part and we have a tendency to interact strongly with the systems we observe, "collapsing" them into states which we call "real". We are slowly learning how to interact less strongly and with such "weak" measurements of quantum systems we are coming to realise that Heisenberg's ideas were as limited in their own way as Newton's were.

Well Harris could have been channeling a higher entity? Or maybe he just smoked to much dope?

I prefer the Ghost in the machine theory; and a future not yet determined, but rather as a very malleable plastic shadow of what might be, thanks to the decisions we make regarding it, and what we might settle for instead.

Interestingly, Quantum Mechanics seems to postulate that if we can get enough people to believe something is real or has happened, then it will manifest as our future!?

The power of belief!

And that same power apparently allows some of us who have mastered the concept, to reportedly walk on glowing embers, without burning our feet?

Or die within days, by dint of having a bone pointed at us?

That being so, could we just stop believing in war as inevitable, or that some of us have to live in dire poverty and disadvantage; or even enduring penury.

I just need a circle of like minded thinkers, it would seem, to be able to change the world for the better.

Many minds working for the same end, can create it, if empowered with implacable belief, so saith quantum mechanics?

We also need to focus exclusively on those outcomes we want, rather than those we fear might happen!

We need to listen to guys who cured themselves of incurable cancer etc, and just by focusing their minds on that repeatedly visualized outcome!

Not all efficacious medicine comes in a bottle or from a doctor's hands.

I mean, how often does what we fear might happen, happen, almost as if our very fear bid it to manifest!?

And really, we really do need to spend some time focusing on our own happiness, given that almost guarantees we have made at lest one person happy!

And we don't need to take anything from anybody else to achieve that!
Rhrosty.

When Sam Harris claims that "you are not in control of your mind", maybe he is correct, maybe not, but in any case he is more profound than the author is willing to admit.

YOU may or may not be in control of your mind - while most agree that you receive some input from the mind, the question whether you can also output and influence it remains open. Alternately, even that which you experience as "will" and "desires" could merely be another form of input from the mind, akin to sensory input over which you have no influence.

The author on the other hand, misses the whole point by asking whether humans are free or whether humans have a non-physical element. His question, "So why do people like Harris deny human free?" is completely off the mark, indicating that he completely misunderstood Harris. The author believes that "denying human free will flies in the face of life as we know it", yet we never actually experience "human free will" - we only experience that WE have a will.

It is most likely that humans are not free but just mechanistic/deterministic animals. It is also likely that the mind is nothing but a function of the human brain, hence it isn't free either. However, even if our mind is completely deterministic and uninfluencable, we still have the freedom whether to associate with it, whether to identify with it, whether to listen to it, whether to have anything to do with it.

In other words, even if the mind is determined to commit a murder and we cannot stop it, we still have the option of disassociating from it: the murder would still be committed, but we would then not be the murderers nor would we suffer the inevitable punishment for that murder.

Craig Minns: normally I avoid any talk about quantum mechanics mainly because there are a lot of people out there who have read some pop-culture science/philosophy book and they think they know all about it when in fact they have don't have a sufficient backgrounding in mathematics and physics to be able to talk about it nor understand it. (eg: a perfect example is Rhrosty on this forum, it is obvious that he doesn't have much of a clue)

However, the wording you've used in your post shows that you may have a deeper understanding than most. So I'm curious: you've actually studied maths and physics at uni and are qualified to comment? To me it appears that you are.

Now, when I was at uni (over 20 years ago) I did some of QM physics. I was taught that the most common interpretation of the wave equation was the Copenhagen Interpretation. A specific part of this interpretation is that wave function fully represents the state of the system. Any measurement results in the wave collapsing, where the state that it collapses to is randomly determined with the probability distribution given by the wave's modulus squared. Although I'm aware there are many other interpretations such as pilot-wave (which is deterministic), many world, conscious causes collapse, etc..

So are you saying that this is no longer the consensus thinking? If so, then what is the current thinking?

Incase you're wondering: what do I know about physics? Well I have a solid understanding of physics up to the 1930's
ie: For classical physics my knowledge is very solid- Newtonian and its reformulations of Langrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, Maxwell's equations, classical thermo, etc.
For modern physics my knowledge runs upto the early 1930's - eg., special relativity and some general relativity-- although my knowledge of tensors is not enough to do much general relativity. Also I know some QM: Specifically, Schrondinger's wave equation. I'm aware of the other formulations such as Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and Freynman's path intergals, although never studied them in depth.

Correct Craig Minns,...thinkabit..try readingabit.

To the Author you clearly don't understand Sam's point, or maybe you just really want to believe you have free will. Here is a test for you flap your arms and fly like a bird...I bet you can't. The fact you can't has nothing to do with your wish is achieve it.

How about rolling a single standard die and getting a seven. What if I said to you if you new all of the variables that went into your throw you could determine exact what number you would get? Sam is extending that the whole of matter works with rules, and if that's true they all things are determined by those rules.

So if you know all the rules and know all the current states of matter then you can determine the future of the universe.

no room for free will there. But you need to understand that even though there is not actual randomness to the loto numbers it doesn't follow that I getting rich tonight.

thinkabit, my background is in science and engineering (among other things) and I'm currently back at uni to study a degree in electronic engineering. When it comes to physics, I'm no more than an amateur, although with sufficient maths, science and philosophy (which is very much a vital component of the picture) to be able to make some sense of things.

I'm afraid there's no strong consensus in fundamental physics at the moment. The 'many interacting worlds' model is my personal favourite, but I also like supersymmetry, for different reasons which are not really amenable to a brief discussion here.

In all, there are at least 6 - some argue 10 - mutually incompatible models of QM extant at present, each of which has some passionate adherents.

I'd not like to try to make a strong argument for any of them, but it seems to me to be vanishingly improbable that any solution which discounts some form of determinism is going to be successful.

If you'd like to have something to think about, try Schrodinger's cat.

What if the observer in Schrodinger's famous gedankenexperiment was also part of a system which was itself being observed and so on?

Where does the determinism stop and how would we know?

Cobber the Hound - to you and everyone else who accepts determinism and thus believe that you have no control over your minds, all I can say is good luck for living in the seriously weird world you believe you live in.

From JP - - to you and everyone else who accepts determinism and thus believe that you have no control over your minds, all I can say is good luck for living in the seriously weird world you believe you live in.

What is that supposed to mean exactly?

Whether you believe in determination or not, and for everyone else who hasn't even heard the term, its all the same. Everyone continues to live their lives, doing what they choose to do, nothing really changes.

So, good luck to you too JP.

As a test to see if you are in control of your mind or not, try to stop thinking. Go on, empty your head of all thoughts for more than 30 seconds.

Thinkabit: I have tertiary qualifications in several disciplines.

And I have read something about Quantum Mechanics, which I don't pretend to understand as well as the Authors.

However, if want want to bag someone with your vastly superior knowledge on the subject, suggest you bag them and the comprehensive studies that seem to back their claims.

And no I won't supply names and or links, given I would prefer that a man of your knowledge and experience do his own more conclusive research! Some of which seems to be missing? Too lazy perhaps?

Some of the oldest cultures on earth have (fire-walking) knowledge that we just don't posses or simply scoff at as being impossible, like health restoring acupuncture or meditation.

When you understand what the dark matter between the stars is, and the power it has to create or grant properly prepared and put wishes, by a number of minds all making the same request! (ancient Aboriginal knowledge) Then perhaps we could continue this discussion?

In the interim, neither I nor anybody posting here, is any further informed by what you don't know or choose to disbelieve! Even so, maybe you'd and everybody posting here, cares to participate in an experiment in future molding quantum mechanics.

Simply suspend your credulity, and every day at midday, EST, spend ten minutes in quiet contemplation, that states in very positive terms, that Rhrosty is not only completely well with his robust health restored but has his other two fondest wishes granted as well.

And continue the same wishful thinking on my behalf for the next thirty days!
That's not too much to ask, is it?

I promise to report any positive changes in my health status or circumstances.
Thanks one and all, Rhrosty.

If I remember correctly Graham Preston is a Christian nutter. As such he hasnt even begun to understand the paradoxical nature of the quantum universe in which we are all essentially unconsciously entangled. Or the nature of the pattern patterning that patterns everything that happens at both the individual and collective level.

We are essentially sleep-walkers completely oblivious to almost everything.

Put in another way, our normal "waking" state is akin to that of a tiny stick figure running around on the tip of a gigantic iceberg pretending that the tiny fragment that he/she can see is the totality of existence. Whereas there is an enormous immensity below the surface. THAT immensity is what "controls" or patterns everything.

Again, our normal "waking" state is like that of Humpty Dumpty's broken shell. We "view" the immensity of existence from the point-of-view of a tiny fragment of Humpty's broken shell, and thus pretend that we have accounted for everything. But of course all the king's horses and all the king's men can never ever put Humpty back together again (or even begin to account for the totality of the quantum universe)

Cobber the Hound - just because we may not have complete control of our minds does not mean that we have no control. The very fact that we can carry on a reasonably intelligent discussion should be very good evidence that we are actually controlling our thoughts.

If however as Harris says, “unconscious neural events determine our thoughts and actions and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware,” (p. 16), then we cannot possibly have any control over our minds.

It is an incredible claim to make that we have no control over our minds and has massive implications. For a start, should it be true then all such discussions as this are completely pointless, as would be everything else.

JP, you haven't thought this through, but I'll agree that your repetition of the same thing is pointless UNLESS the universe is entirely deterministic. Now, it's up to you whether you want to have a think about that...

You still haven't had a go at my question. Was it a bit tough for your free will to get itself around? Here it is again: what is meaning?

Rhrosty, I wasn't aware of the Aboriginal belief in consensus reality that you describe, do you have any references where I might find out more?

Craig – “meaning” in the context of this discussion is something that is transmitted that contains comprehensible information. An avalanche transmits something by sound but the sound is just noise and has no meaning. Even if the noise sounds like, Kill Jack, we know the sound is meaningless because there is nothing controlling the sound. (I presume you would not think the mountain/avalanche was talking to you if you heard a noise that sounded just like, Kill Jack?)

The SETI researchers hear plenty of noise coming from space but they recognise that everything they have heard so far is uncontrolled noise and so they believe that it does not contain information – it is meaningless. Thus they do not believe they have found any evidence yet of intelligent life beyond earth.

In contrast, our communication with each other is not just noise or just marks on the screen. The marks we read on the screen do contain information and thus have meaning for the reader. The difference to the noise of volcanoes or letters formed in the clouds is that we are largely in control of our minds and can deliberately choose what marks appear on the screen. We are transmitting meaningful information

Nice work, JP, but it doesn't really go far enough, which is not surprising, it's a far from intuitive idea. Your own intuitive response is what most people would give as their reasoned opinion.

You claimed that determinism means that there can be no "meaning", but that is not at all true.

"Meaning" is a property of organised information. It defines whether or not the information encodes data which can interact with the system or other information to create some new form of information that did not exist before the interaction took place.

Therefore, an entirely deterministic model may still have "meaning" encoded within some forms of organised information. What we refer to as the world of things is self-organised information systems, in which simple particles have interacted to form more complex forms, from quarks all the way up to planets and biological systems. Including us.

The concept of self-organisation is critical to understanding how every aspect of the physical world operates and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the same is true for consciousness.

In your definition of meaning, you are assigning to consciousness a role in organising information. Have a think about the implications of that, especially in the context of Rhrosty's comment about the Aboriginal view of consensual reality (or Hameroff's and Penrose's view of quantum consciousness).

Where it gets really, really freaky is when you start to try to think about the nature of time.

Since when has the Universe been deterministic, between cusps, quantum and that damned butterfly I would suggest exactly the opposite.

Craig:

References?

All I can offer is oral history and my unusually reliable memory!

Such oral history as I learned and remembered was learned at my Granny's knee.

Aboriginal belief, is ostensibly, the oldest spiritualist belief system on earth?

Perhaps if you Goggle, Aboriginal beliefs, and have a decade or two to troll through it, you may be able to find out what Aboriginals believe?

It would be a useful activity, and possibly earn a PHD!?

It's time someone as clever as you did something of that order as opposed to relying on aging memory and oral history.

Which is where we learned of acupuncture, meditation and some efficacious herbal medicine; i.e., we got aspirin from willow bark and native american herbal remedies.

And ibuprofen comes from the monkey puzzle vine. In fact most medicine comes from similar older sources/native remedies/older knowledge?

In any event, are you willing to engage in my experiment/spare 10 minutes a day for thirty days?

In my experience those who quite deliberately send their healing thoughts from an exclusively focused mind to others, may be the ones that receive the greatest feel good benefit!

Find a quiet spot, sit upright in a chair; and then just focus your mind on seeing an elderly man, with most of his hair and a long full gray beard, you know as Rhrosty, getting completely well and having a couple of his dreams manifest as reality.

Not for nothing is it writ large what we wish for others, (good or bad) is what all too often becomes our own reality; so there could be a personal payoff!? And my heartfelt wish for you; and all other participants!

NASA seems to have come up with a new version of creation of the universe, which is described as a projection of dark matter and that projection becoming the known universe.

It certainly seems a little more realistic than something from nothing?
Cheers, Rhrosty.

Hi McCackie,
A bulk system may contain so many interactions that it is effectively impossible to ANALYSE discretely, so we have developed probabilistic methods to do so, such as Bayes theorem, Hamilton's models of energetics and so on. However, every single part of that system is not acting according to a probability, or driven by the Hamiltonian, it is acting entirely according to the effects of its own interactions with other parts of the system.

Think of it this way - a crowd of people can be expected to behave in certain ways as a crowd and sometimes, the expectation breaks down and the crowd starts to behave like a mob for no reason apparent to the outside observer. That's your buttefly effect in action; the system of humans that form that crowd goes from being relatively stable to being chaotic in a very brief period. The thing is, that there was some form of trigger event that affected individual people within that crowd. They experienced the events deterministically and if some of them happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, then perhaps the outcome for them was pretty bad. Whether they get trampled depends on whether they trip, which depends on whether they manage to lift their feet over the kerb, which depends on whether they see it, whether they have enough room to lift their legs and so on.

Chaos theory is just a bulk analysis technique for systems in which there are a large number of factors that interact to produce emergent outcomes, it is not describing an empirical reality at the reductionist level. Quantum mechanics has been somewhat similar, but is now moving toward a more comprehensive approach and determinism is part of that.

Just had a look at the Quantum Mechanics article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
and it appears that I'm right. According to that article atleast the Copenhagen Interpretation is still the most widely accepted among physicts (see under the section: Philosophical implications - second paragraph). Same as it was taught to me over twenty years ago.

In otherwords, it is still the prevalent view of physics that the world is fundamentally non-deterministic (ie:what may happens, happens by chance).

By-the-way, I remember there being some school of philosphical thought who argue that it is the indeterministic nature of QM that allows free will. If I remember the argument, loosely they say that free-will requires two parts: the free part and the will part. The free part is the options to choose from, supplied the QM randomness while the will part is the mind "choosing" one of the options. When I read about this idea, at the time many years ago, I wasn't really impressed by it-- but still maybe there is something in it :)

Graham Preston seems on the right track but with a tired old argument that achieves little. In reality, classical determinism seems based on euclidean geometry and school level algebra. "Thinkabit" notwithstanding, modern developments in mathematics have completely destroyed this determinism without the need for recourse to quantum theory. Try Melanie Mitchell: "Complexity".

Determinism does work in small local areas ie structural design of bridges etc. but fades away as one expands the study area - either inwardly or outwardly. Perhaps the greatest deterministic fallacy in science has been the railway engineer, Herbert Spencer's "Survival of the Fittest". Darwin's theory of evolution is not SoF, it is the non-deterministic "Natural Selection". Its nice to see that modern biologists are moving away from SoF but still can't completely rid themselves of using the ill-defined determinist idea of "fitness". E.O. Wilson in his recent "The Social Conquest of the Earth" starts out without recourse to SoF but later starts to slip back occasionally into using "fitness".

Thanks Thinkabit. And looking at the interaction of energy and matter, leads one to Einstein's unified field theory, where he postulates that everything in the known universe is merely transformed energy, given energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed.

Thus we get gold from hydrogen via repeated transformations inside a series of born again stars, and possibly in as many steps as the periodic table.

Given we are also part of this unified field of energy, and have waves of energy traveling between one synapse and another, whenever we think a thought.

Could it be when enough of us tune in to a particular wave pattern or thought form at a particular time; we can change or alter reality, just by applying enough focused energy to a part of it, i.e., Rhrosty's state of health?

To my knowledge aboriginals have long believed they could sing (will) a person back to good health.

Others like Ian Gawler believe they can do the same with deep practiced meditation and very focused visualization, that seems to defy reality.

Australian Ian Gawler, a vet with a Doctor wife, is grounded in conventional medicine and traditional science.

And when left with nothing to lose, months to live and no remedy from conventional western medicine, when diagnosed with very advanced and deadly cancer; gave meditation a try.

And as far as I'm aware, is still in remission and touring quarter of a century later; and explaining the powerful medical benefits of mediation stripped of all religious dogma, along with positive repetitive visualization; plus the benefits of a vegan diet.

This and many other unexplained spontaneous remissions tell me, there is no such thing as a predetermined future, and even where we think the outcome is known, (terminally ill) can still alter it to our liking.

Which supports the saying, what the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve!

And thanks folks, some of you must have sent some healing thoughts, given I'm feeling a little better and seem to have more energy.

Keep up the good work!
Rhrosty.

Hi Amanzi, "determinism" simply refers to the idea that every effect has some cause. It's not a complex idea but the implications are profound.

thinkabit, the Copenhagen interpretation was and remains a convenient way to avoid the problem of observation that Schrodinger shows up so clearly with his famous cat.

"Weak" measurements of quantum phenomena are showing that there is a real problem with the idea of indeterminacy as expressed within the Copenhagen interpretation.

Personally I subscribe to the view that the world is not deterministic primarily because of feedback, if the result can influence the input then it seems to imply that the result is not predetermined.

I wondered if one can consider freewill as an example of feedback. The brain provides the feedback by predicting, what is likely to happen based on previous examples, and thus suggests a course of action, for example we have a choice when we step off the curb as to timing, and we know from previous experience (feedback) that stepping in front of a car is not desirable. Looking at the question from this point of view the brain is simply providing the best feedback it can, to insure ones survival whether it is avoiding being knocked over by a car or finding the best source of food.

warmair, determinism doesn't imply predetermination, merely that causes and effects are linked by some set of necessary and ultimately understandable rules of behaviour. A system with feedback is entirely analysable in deterministic terms - that is the whole basis of digital circuit design, which relies on op amps with feedback. However, that analysis becomes very difficult in highly complex systems

I've previously mentioned the work that Deutsch and Marletto are doing on constructor theory. That is an attempt to produce a coherent theoretical basis for science, starting at fundamental physics which is of course where everything starts, to replace the somewhat ad hoc empiricism that has driven most of our scientific endeavour to date. The fundamental basis for that model is determinism.

http://constructortheory.org/