This site-page's URL is: https://sites.google.com/a/nyu.edu/avi-rabinowitz/science-and-religion/einstein-biblical-free-will-moral-responsibility-quantum-physics but in theory this should be a subpage of https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/free-will/home
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for FW article
just like only people with c can understand what is meant by it, so too maybe only people with FW can understand what is meant by true free will, or perhaps also morality that is objective because it is based on truee fw.
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MESH below
In the Far East, the conceptions of free will and of its necessity in underpinning moral responsibility may be different than it is in Western civilization, and so it is not really possible to speak of what is "intuitive" or "logical" in general as applied to human brains but rather only to discuss what seems reasonable or logical or intuitive to peeple steeped in certian cultural matrices.
In the Biblically-based civilizations, eg " the West", many people in the past considered plausible or reasonable the Biblical scenario of a God creating free willed humans and holding them responsible for their actions, and for many still now there remains to a large degree - even after belief in the Bible has waned - an intuitive feeling of human moral responsibility similar to or based on or as an echo of, that Biblical scenario. However concommitant with that is the need for the existence of a certain type of free will.
it is clear to the modern person - especially to non-materialists - that a brain making choices based fully on its programming due to genetic and environmental influence, affected only by determined and quantum random processes in the brain, would not be considered by us to be any more 'morally responsible' for their actions than would be a clock moving its arms, and we would consider deranged a God creator who held either of them. responsible for their actions. As Einstein - who believed in full deterrminism - put it: " ".
However to modern non-materialists who feel the God of the Biblical scenario is not insane for holding humans responsible for their actions, there is assumed the existence of a 'free will'. And given the many Biblical believers, it seems the scenario in Genesis was suited to provide the feeling in its readers that it is reasonable for the God mentioned there to hold its created beings responsible for their actions, given this free will.
Without taking a stand whether there is or is not a God, creator, whether the Bible is inspired or not, whether humans do or do not have a free will etc - and in full awareness that in 'Eastern religions' there is a different conception of moral obligation - here we wish to investigate the cosmological implications, and implications for physics in general, of the existence of such a free will.
More specifically we wish to investigate what we could learnr about the physical universe - especially about causality - if we postulate that there does indeed exist this type of free will, even though it conflicts with reason, logic,and physics.
Since we are not defining this free will or even enumerating its parameters and rather instead using the intuition resulting from the Biblical context in lieu of defintion, we'll wish to make the scenairo clearer via the following rephrasing of Genesis' creation and Eden accounts: ...image of God... etc
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Inability to predict is insuffiicient etc, chaos, levels, self-reference, etc all is not sufficient to grant to for the example the author of this paper the feeling that a God who held its crated beings resposible for its acitons. would be acting reasonably.... However if there was a truly free type of prcoess in himan brains, ths could make sense.
What would be the ramificaiotns of the existenc eof such a truly free prcess in the unverse? Or given its eistence, so that we know it is not impossible and we may suspect it exists in contexxs ot her than only the human brain.// Or where else might we detect the operaiotn of an acasal phenomena or process of this type?
Einstein’s reflections about the Biblical model of moral obligation - a paradigm of an 'objective morality' requiring an acausal free will, anathema in a mechanistic philosophy
Table of Contents
· A clash of perspectives: mechanistic vs biblical
· Einstein, Moral Responsibility, and Genesis
· Biblical concepts, and the relevance of the creation and Eden accounts:
· The sources of objective and subjective moral obligation in various universe-scenarios:
· The belief of many religious people that atheism is incompatible with morality [My comment to the New York Times 'opinionator'] . ……………..
Contrasting the notion of free will in three metaphysical scenarios:
Mechanistic materialism, Einsteinian metaphysics, Biblical religion
A clash of perspectives: mechanistic vs biblical: On the one hand, Einstein believed in a metaphysic far-removed from the usual athaistic mechanistic one, earning him the designaiton 'mystic' to many, but on the other hand seemed to firlmly beieve in determinism- to many people these two seemed ratheri ncompatible.
To non-materialists with an intuitive conception of a free will, mechanism implies total lack of meaningful freedom, and therefore a concommitant impossibility for meaningful moral responsibility. Of course mechanists will disagree, however non-materialists will not be perturnbed by their protestation since mechanistic assumptions are not only unproven but are also logically incompatible with those beliefs which many of us are most sure of, such as the intuition many people have of some sort ofan "Absolute Morality". These mechanistic assumptions are not science but rather are part of a philosophy. Also of course the existence of an intuition regarding something does not necessarily imply that it exists - only the intuition about is certainly existent.
The Biblical creation and Eden accounts present a philosophy with a view diametrically opposite to the mechanistic one: a created universe in which humans possess a true free will, so free that they can be held responsible for their actions even by the creator of the laws of nature, the Designer of the universe; so free that they give meaning to the universe even from the creator's perspective.
Neither perspective can be 'scientifically proven': on the one hand the mechanistic perspective does not assume the existence of processes beyond what science can prove, on the other hand it is counter to some of our deepest intuitions; the religious perspective on free will assumes the existence of processes for which there is no physical experimental evidence, and is counter to logic, but is in tune with some of our deepest intuitions.
Einstein, Moral Responsibility, and Genesis
The "true moral responsibility" we intuit derives its absoluteness via the transcendent ‘objective’ existence of good and evil. The Biblical conception – in which an all-powerful creator holds humans responsible for their actions - is a good source-example of what this might mean..
Of course to the atheist materialist or science-only believer (who is perhaps a ‘mindless materialist’) the model is faulty in that it is to them completely absurd and implausible. However, to us consciously-aware entities who know that science is not capable of encompassing all of reality, we can at least intuit the meaning of this model, and can do so without having to decide whether or not we actually believe in its truth.
Einstein embraced the Spinozan view of the existence of a transcendent realm but did not believe in true free will. And as Einstein pointed out, created beings cannot be held meaningfully responsible for their actions by the creator of the universe and the laws of nature if their actions follow fully from the operation of these laws. Indeed in his conception, human, animal, vegetable and mineral follow identical physical law, and human mental activity is no exception - just as a stone rolling down-hill does not choose to do so, neither can a person choose their thoughts and decisions – we can only 'feel' that we so choose. Einstein wrote:
…the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficient personal God....[has] decisive weaknesses... …if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishments and rewards he would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?
According to the view, a person’s actions are the result of ‘nature and nurture’, or ‘genes and environment’. Since the genes are from nature, if God created nature then they are from God. Similarly, nurture is the environment created by other people, but the actions of these other people are the result of their own nature and nurture, and so on backwards to the first people. In this sense ‘nurture’ is also indirectly ‘nature’. The fact that people are not simple mechanisms does not mean that they are not mechanisms, just that they are very complex mechanisms. Einstein felt that although much is not yet known about their brains, nevertheless if there is a God, their actions are the inevitable result of God’s laws of nature[1], just as is the case for much simpler mechanisms. He wrote:
We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough to nevertheless sense at least the rule of fixed necessity....
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature.
[2].... the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary as the past.
[3][For t]he man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation......a God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable......for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external or internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes.
Clearly, Einstein did not believe in the existence of 'true free will', and thus felt that if there is a God, this God could not be so capricious as to hold people responsible for actions that they could not prevent, and therefore he could not believe in the Biblical God (and the Biblical stories).
Believers in the Bible can agree with Einstein that in the Biblical conception, the type of choices possible to humans could not be the results of determined or random processes if the created beings are to be held meaningfully responsible for their actions by the creator of the universe and the laws of nature. Whether or not one accepts the truth of the Biblical accounts, clearly the implication that human actions are of interest to God, and humans bear responsibility for their actions in God's eyes make sense only from within the perspective that humans posses a 'true free will'.
Einstein clearly believed in morality, and stated clearly many times his belief in a transcendent Mind, even that one’s own mind could sometimes in some way sense the edges of the Mind. Einstein however felt that philosophy mandated against creation from nothing – and believed instead in an eternal universe co-existing with the Mind, and also felt that science showed a rigid determinism which precludes free will. Einstein did not feel that it would be reasonable for a transcendent Mind to hold deterministic humans responsible for their actions. One could argue that it is likely that Einstein would agree that if there is indeed a God, creator of all from nothingness, and there is indeed true free will – then this God, having imbued the humans created in its image with true free will could hold humans responsible for their actions. That is, in this view Einstein is not claiming that the Biblical model is inconsistent, but rather that it isn’t true, given the philosophical reasons supporting the eternity of the universe, and given his belief in the non-existence of a ‘personal’ God possessing a Will and who is interested in human affairs, and given the scientific indications of full determinism.
Of course eventually Einstein accepted the Big Bang theory and its rejection of the eternity of the universe, and his acceptance of the validity of quantum physics and its rejection of strict determinism.
The creation and Eden accounts present the type of free will and moral responsibility which would be meaningful to a transcendent being creator of all (see [elsewhere on this site] a discussion of the "Outside perspective" ) . Thus whether or not the biblical claims are true or not, and whatever one thinks of Einstein’s model and beliefs, the biblical conception is a useful model for what we would mean by the existence of a true Morality, true free will, and true moral responsibility.
As a young boy Einstein read the creation and Eden accounts and other Biblical stories earnestly, but eventually rejected their veracity.
Biblical concepts: According to Jewish teachings, there is a fundamental aspect of our existence which transcends cause-effect – free-willed choice. According to biblical Judaism the Designer and Creator of the universe, of space and time and the laws of nature, holds humans accountable for their actions, and does so because when we do something ‘bad’, we could in fact somehow have chosen to act differently than we actually did. What is radical about this teaching is that however much the laws of nature and the circumstances of our situation brought us to those actions, and despite the fact that all this is the product of the design and influence of the creator, there is nevertheless some element of real choice involved in our decision so that the creator/designer is not the source of these actions, we are. (We are the ultimate cause of some non-zero element of our decision, however miniscule it may be compared to the determined and random components of the brain-processes associated to the making of that choice). As is apparent from the Jewish Traditional understanding of the various biblical accounts, biblical religion is based on the principle that – however impossible it is to define free will and morality scientifically, logically or even philosophically – there is an ‘absolute morality’, and since we do indeed have some element of freedom in our will, the designer of the laws and circumstances can hold us morally responsible for whatever element of our choice is truly free.
The creation and Eden accounts: We can see a reflection of these ideas in the juxtaposition of the first two accounts of Genesis: within the perspective granting that there is indeed a true free will - as implied in the Biblical Garden of Eden account - our minds operate according to an acausal principle qualitatively analogous to that which underlies the emergence into existence of the universe - the topic of the Biblical Creation Account.
Furthermore, as implied by the juxtaposition of the creation and eden accounts, and as proposed by Wheleer’s delayed choice and diagram of quantum collapse by a late-emerging observer, there is a retroactive and therefore acausal interplay between the design of the universe, the laws of nature according to which is operates, and the path of history it follows as a result of our choices.
The juxtaposition of the Biblical creation account about the emergence of the universe into existence, and the Garden of Eden account which describes the emergence of free choice and moral responsibility, is discussed in the above context in my article: Quantum Kabbalistic Cosmology and the Biblical creation and Eden accounts.
Biblically – and as symbolized by the Sabbath, which is seemingly paradoxically both a commemoration of creation and its purpose – for this Willed creation by the Mind, ‘sof ma’asehbemachshavah t’chilah’, “the end result is – in Design - the first step”, so that for example the brain which emerges after a long physical process of seeming random-determined events, the organ which somehow supports our mind, is in fact the template upon which the big bang is designed.
Our minds, far from being an epi-phenomenon arising by chance, is an essential element of existence, and the specifications of the organ supporting it is a fundamental aspect of the design of the big bang.
In the Jewish Biblical conception, the Mind which originated as an acausal act of Will the design and creation of something from nothing has a reflection in the physical universe – a mind created in its ‘image’ in the Biblical idiom.[4]
In the context of an atheistic vs biblical approach one can imagine for example these three scenarios:
A : “Mechanism: The universe arose by itself, via chance. Life emerged from non-life and humans evolved from ‘lower’ life forms. Qualitatively human, animal, vegetable and mineral follow identical physical law, and human mental activity is no exception.
All events including mental events occur in a way that is probabilistically-determined random ("PDR"), and thus free will is physically impossible. In addition, causality is valid, and so free will is logically impossible. Therefore, humans have no control over their actions and thoughts and cannot logically be held responsible for them. Of course many people are neurologically wired to feel that they are responsible for their actions, and have invented the words "moral responsibility" to describe this emotion.
Our feeling that we have free will is real - it is a real feeling - but free will itself does not exist. Free will is a chimera, and our belief in moral responsibility is erroneous, arising from our neuro-wiring rather than being a reflection of a transcendent truth.
B: Einsteinain ver"Deistic (PDR) mechanism": God created the universe and instituted a system of "natural law" to run it. All events occur in accordance with this natural law, except when God intervenes in nature. Quantum physics describes the universe, and its states at any time follow in a probabilistically determined random way from the initial created state of the universe. Therefore, everything that occurs does so as a direct result of some combination of God's choice of initial state, God's choice of system of natural laws, and randomness. Clearly, a rational and compassionate creator cannot expect humans to act differently than they do since all follows determinedly from the initial creation, and so humanity cannot be held responsible (by its creator) for its actions.
Those who do not realize that they really do not have free will and believe that they can be logically held responsible by God are wrong. [However, it would be God who caused this feeling, due to the neurological wiring which evolved according to God's design].
C: Biblical Free Will: God created the universe in such a way that except for consciousness it follows the PDR laws of quantum physics. Humans are conscious and have free will and are responsible for their actions. Quantum physics (PDR) does not hold in the realm of human mental processes, and a causality-defying process allows one to freely choose actions in a rational way without this choice being determined due to its rationale] As a result humans are responsible for their actions, even from the perspective of the creator.
Evolutionary socio-biology can provide reasons for the emergence of moral impulses, and if mind just parallels brain as Descartes wrote, then the existence of moral impulses is not an indication that there truly is an objective good and evil. However if there is true free will, ie a realm of cause and effect outside of natural law, then it is not inconceivable that the origin of moral impulses and an innate sense of good/evil lie outside physical causes.
The source of our mind and free will may be a “Free-willed Mind’, perhaps one which originated physical existence. If so, it is not unreasonable for us to understand the emergence of the universe into existence as a free-willed creation to achieve some purpose, however inscrutable.
It is not inconceivable that there is communication between the Mind and we who are in our essence its reflection…perhaps our lives are part of the Purpose, perhaps the physical universe was designed to produce us. If there were communications relating to all this, it could be the source of the experiences recorded in various religious traditions. The realm dealing with this type of interaction is usually termed ‘spiritual’ and ascribed to ‘the soul’, though there need not a-priori be a distinction between mind and soul, or mental and spiritual nor between ‘Mind’ and ‘God’
The sources of objective and subjective moral obligation (moral imperatives)
Many philosophical discussions revolve around the difference between an objective and a subjective morality. Although objectivists claim that without the existence of God, or perhaps without a belief in the existence of God, there can be no philosophical or logical basis for morality, subjectivists sharply contest this claim.
The moral obligation to follow a certain code of behavior does not derive from law itself. Clearly, the very existence of a law is not in itself sufficient to cause compliance with it, nor is simple awareness of the law sufficient. Compliance follows from a desire to obey the law, whether because of fear of possible punishment, or from a sense of duty, or due to any other motivation.
The same holds true for divine law. Even were a person to recognize the existence of God, acknowledge that God is the creator of all, and believe that God has commanded certain laws, this would not in itself suffice to guarantee that the person will feel that they must obey these laws. Rather, the person must somehow feel that laws made by God are binding on them, or that punishment follows lack of compliance, and only then will they obey.
For some people, the belief that God has commanded them will in itself suffice to induce in them the feeling that this command obligates them. However, this is not necessarily the case with all people. Neither the laws of mathematical logic nor of neurophysiology require that the belief in God and in God's commands necessarily causes the existence of a feeling of moral obligation to follow the commands.
That is to say, there can exist in a brain a belief in God and a belief that God commanded a certain action without there necessarily existing in that brain a feeling of obligation to carry out the wish of this commanding God. There is no impossibility involved in this - no mathematical, physical, logical, biological, physiological or even psychological paradox is involved
In the final analysis, there cannot be any external source of obligation. When a person states that they are obligated to act because God commanded it, in actuality the motivating force is the inner sense of obligation rather the command of God itself.
The belief in a command of God may be the catalyst for the sense of obligation, however there may be other catalysts as well. Indeed, many people feel a sense of obligation to moral activity even though they do not believe in the existence of a God or creator, or in divinely revealed moral laws.
The moral atheist and the moral religionist both have moral codes which they feel to be binding. The sense of obligation may be equally strong in both, but each will have different psychological factors determining their sense of obligation, and each will offer different logical or metaphysical reasons to jutify their moral code.
The moral atheist may state that Hillel's 'golden rule' - that which you do not wish done to you, do not do unto others" - guides their conduct, and some even claim that this rule and Kant's categorical imperative provide an objective source for morality.
Experience teaches that in basic things - not wanting pain, death, starvation etc, wanting pleasure, basic material possesions, food, shelter etc - people are alike. As a result, it is reasonable regarding basic things to make the assumption that what is very undesireable to you is also very undesireable to others and vice versa. This realization in itself is of course not sufficient to cause everyone to follow the golden rule - there are some who decide that they want what the other has, and they are aware that the other does not wish to part with it, but this is not a reason for them to desist from taking it by force. The golden rule is simply a guideline for those who have already made the decision that they wish to to that which is good, that which is considered desireable to others. If someone wishes to act in this way for whatever motivation - fear of punishment, social acceptance, or an inner moral obligation - then the golden rule and its converse serve as useful criteria for determining what actions to do or not to do to another. The basis for this person's morality is not an objective criterion, but rather personal benefit or an inner feeling of moral obligation.
The religionist will feel perhaps that the moral code of the atheist is subjective - even though it may be identical to his own moral code - since it derives from an inner feeling of moral obligation rather than from the absolute objective morality of the creator, a creator who is outside the physical universe and beyond subjective physicality. The atheist may feel that since there is no God there is no such thing as an objective absolute morality such as that believed in by the religionist, and further, that anything which is beyond the physical universe is by definition beyond our perception or knowledge, so that indeed the terms "absolute" and "objective" have no meaning. And even if there is an objective morality rooted in a transcendent realm, why should that obligate us and why do we need to adapt our sense of good and evil to that?
In the end however, both the religionist and the moral atheist really derive their morality from the same source - the sense of obligation within them - even though they may attribute this feeling to different causes, attach different physical or metaphysical significance to it, or provide varying justifications for the validity of their moral code. Thus at the most basic level there is no essential philosophical difference between a 'subjective relative morality' and an 'absolute objective morality'.
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The belief of many religious people that atheism is incompatible with morality.
Many non-religious philosophers deeply misunderstand the arguments and positions of philosophically-oriented and scientifically-trained biblical religionists (as opposed to simple religious people, untrained in science). Such 'educated Biblical religionsits' do not deny of course that animal behavior, including altruism etc, can be determined via genetics which is itself a result of evolutionary processes. And certainly in a universe without God, evolutionary processes can produce beings with altruistic behavior and mental states which feel that altruistic action is 'good' and murder is 'evil'.
These religionists do not claim that the belief in the existence of God makes for moral people, nor that a brain in which there is no belief in God cannot be wired (via evolution) to want to do that which we call 'good'. It is something quite different that they mean, something that makes sense only in the context of metaphysics, not science or logic, and therefore is often misunderstood by many philosophers and scientists.
The issue for religionists is this: if there is a God beyond physicality and beyond ('higher than', creator of) the mental realm, then there is a 'real' good and evil, strongly mirrored by the feeling of good and evil in human brains, and it is 'wrong' to do evil. If there is no God then the belief in a person's brain 'this is good' or 'this is evil' or 'it is wrong to do evil' is simply a mental state of a physical brain. The existence of such a mental state does not by itself confer the status of 'true' good or evil on such an action – only the existence of 'God', a being beyond the constraints of cause effect and physicality, who creates the concept of Good and Evil, could do so.
To the biblical religionist, feelings of good and evil originating via evolutionary processes in a godless universe do not 'morally obligate' the people who feel them - but they would (obligate) if these feelings are reflections of the 'true' or 'objective' morality of the biblical God, who transcends cause-effect, physicality and subjectivity. People may feel a moral obligation wired into them via evolutionary processes, but from the metaphysical standpoint they are not 'actually' obligated - there is in fact no such thing as moral obligation in such a universe, only the mental feeling that there is something called moral obligation, a mental feeling which itself is wired into the brain via evolutionary processes.
Obviously there are flaws in this religionist argument, but it is this reasoning which underlies the feeling of religious people that although atheists can certainly act morally, nevertheless if the universe were as atheists posit, there could be no 'true' morality.
The issue of 'true morality' for biblical religionists, as opposed for example to Einstein who held an interesting middle ground (he considered himself religious), hinges on the concept of a 'true free will' as implied in the Biblical concept of a God, creator of the universe, who though designer of humanity and creator of the laws of nature can nevertheless legitimately hold humanity responsible for its choices.
It is 'true free will' of the biblical type which allows for the concept of 'true morality' for biblical religionists, but science and philosophy do not recognize the possibility of such free will, and without this one cannot understand the biblical religionists' ideas about atheism and morality. One can sum it up by saying that many biblical religionists believe not that 'atheists cannot be moral', but rather that 'if the universe were as atheists posit, there is NO true free will, no objective standard of good and evil and (therefore) no 'True morality'.
The section immediately above appeared as my comment (Avirab, #204) to the New York Times 'opinionator' blog:re: "Morals without God"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/
[Thanks to various people for reprinting this article [eg it was here & here.]
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4 [1]p47 bottom,p48 top, "Ideas & Opinions"; p28 "Out of My Later Years"
5. [2] "My Worldview", (on p40 of "Ideas & Opinions").
6. [3]Essay: "Religion and Science". p39, line 5:
[4] See the author's article "The Instant Universe" which develops an understanding of the creation and Eden accounts and their relation to the big bang and evolution theory based on this perspective.
[5] Not that physics would necessarily assume it does not or cannot exist, just that within physics, 'intuition' is not sufficient reason to assume its existence until there is some sort of experimental evidence for it.
9. [6] All this is from the 'incompatibilist' perspective which sees mind and matter as essentially different from each other..
[7] Indeed, there is perhaps a very close connection between the onset of free-willed consciousness and the origin of the universe. See Wheeler. See also my article “And God Said: ‘Let There Have Been a Big Bang’ ” and “Halacha and Quantum Physics”.
11. [8] Of course there are others than these three, but these represent clear & distinct scenarios pertinent to the discussion here.
Partial Bibliography
Burtt, E.A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (revised edition). N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954, See especially pp. 64-67, 75, 94,
d'Espagnat, Bernard. "Quantum Theory and Reality," Scientific American, Nov, 1979, pp. 128-140.
Wheeler, J.A. "Beyond the Black Hole," Some Strangeness In the Proportion. N.Y.: Addison-Wesley, 1980.