The Retroactive Universe
Avi Rabinowitz
copyright 1993
...........................................
Table of Contents
Preface.
Part I: The Significance and Nature of Free Will
Exploring the nature of the type of free will which makes human moral responsibility outsider-relevant, and which allows human life to have meaning and purpose from the outsider perspective. The creation and Eden accounts from this perspective.
Chapter 2: The Outsider Perspective
Chapter 3: Meaning, Purpose, and Moral Responsibility:
The centrality of free will to the concepts of moral responsibility meaning and purpose.
Chapter 4 Quantum Puppets and Autonomous Brains: Are we all puppets of the laws of nature, and of randomness - can the type of free will which allows meaning, purpose and moral responsibility exist? What does quantum theory say, and what about Chaos?
Chapter 5: Designer Universes, and Purposive Creation: What type of universe can be considered purposive and what nature of being can be considered to be living a life which is meaningful? Does our universe qualify? Do we? Would a transcendent being with an 'outsider's' perspective agree with our assessment? Under what conditions would we be held responsible for our actions from the 'outsider' perspective of a being who created our universe and its laws of nature? Analysis of the creation and Eden account from this perspective.
Appendix Quantum Cosmology and Designer Universes: Modern cosmology is investigating the physics of the emergence of a physical universe, and even the possibility of human creation of physical universes 'in the laboratory'. What would such a universe look like to us from our 'outsider's' perspective?
Part II: Context
Chapter 6: An examination of the cultural context of biblical text and the type of meaning we attribute to the creation and Eden accounts in our discussions.
Part III: Chapter 7: The Ineffability of Free Will: Free Will and Self-Causation
Chapter 7b: Additional Material Not Yet Inserted
Part IV: The Cosmological Effect of Free Will
Entering the realm of cosmology (the study of the entire universe as a system), we discover that the nature of free will is such as to grant it unique abilities and roles in the cosmological context. We also find some interesting parallels from cosmology to the creation and Eden accounts, the kaballah, and other realms, via the connecting link of free-willed consciousness.
Chapter 8: The Retroactive Universe: Quantum Reality and the Emergence of Consciousness
Chapter 9: Quantum Reality and Moral Beings
Appendix to Chapter 8: Quantum Reality and the Emergence of Consciousness:
Appendix to Chapter 9: Quantum Reality and Free Will:
Chapter 10: Existence, Free Will, and Self Causation:
Chapter 11: Cosmology and Kabbalah: Symmetry Breaking and Shvirat Hakelim. .
Chapter 12: The Anthropic Principle:
Chapter 13: Complexity and Entropy: Human Creativity vs. The Heat Death of the Universe.
Chapter 14: Free Will and Infinitude:
Chapter 15: Computability and Free Will:
Part V: The Philosophical Implications of the Existence of Free Will:
The Mind-Body Problem, and the Universe as a Thought of God
There are two types of phenomena known to science - the physical and the mental. What is their relationship, and which is more fundamental? What is the fundamental nature of the universe? We explore the role of free will in this matter, and the relevance to the interpretation of the creation and Eden accounts.
Chapter 16: The Nature of Consciousness:
Chapter 17: Godel, Human Transcendance and Free Will :
(Chapter 8: Godel and Undecidability: Human Transcendence and Free Will)
Chapter 18: Godel and the Sephirot: Transcendent Truths and Transcendent Realms:
Chapter 19: The Evolution of Free-Willed Consciousness:
Chapter 20: Idealism and Free Will:
Part VIa: The Universe as a Thought in the Mind of God
Does science state unequivocally that there exists a physical universe 'outside' our minds? Can science make definite statements about the past states of this 'physical universe'? What parts of our general scientific belief system is actually metaphysics as opposed to science?
Chapter 21: Solipsism, Existence and Occam's Razor:
Chapter 22: Dreams of Existence: The Universe as Thought:
Part VI: Metaphysical and Religious Implications of the Existence of Free Will for the Creation and Eden accounts: the Emergence and Significance of the Universe and of Humanity
As a result of scientific findings, when understood as a cosmogony (a history of the origin and development of the cosmos) the creation and Eden accounts give rise to questions related to the age of the universe, the emergence of life and the evolution of humanity, as well as to speculations regarding the significance of humanity, and its role in the general scheme of things. We will find that free-willed consciousness is an important key to these issues.
Chapter 23: Quantum Randomness and Teleology:
Chapter 24: Human Significance:
Chapter 25: The First Moral Beings on Earth:
Chapter 26: The Evolution of Adam:
Chapter 27: Adam as a Race of Beings:
Chapter 28: The Age of the Universe:
Chapter 29: God As Quantum Observer:
Chapter 30: The Anthropic Principle and the Maximization of Existence: .
Chapter 30b: The Emergence of the Universe from the Big Bang to Eden:
Chapter 30c: The Evolution of Life from Amoeba to Adam
Part VII: Ramifications of the Existence of Free Will for Jewish
Philosophy: Traditional Themes
Free-willed moral consciousness and the Biblical perspective on the purpose behind the creation of the universe, the method of its creation, the meaning of life and the role of humans in the development of Biblical law.
Chapter 31: Divine Creation: A Perplexing Contradiction in Maimonides:
Chapter 32: Kohelet, Cosmic Pessimism and Free Will:
Chapter 33: Time Travel, Free Will and the Development of Jewish Law:
Part VIII: Conclusions
Chapter 34: A Philosopher in Eden
Chapter 35: Epilogue
Bibliography
Preface
This book was completed in 1991, and has circulated in manuscript form since then, with some of the ideas being presented in lectures and other forums. It evolved from a manuscript entitled “The Instant Universe” written by the author early in his graduate studies. "The Instant Universe" manuscript circulated widely since then and will soon be available in book form. That work is referred to in several of the author’s publications from that period which discuss ideas similar to those discussed in this book [“Geocentrism” in B’Or Ha’Torah 5E (1986), “Free Will” in B’Or Ha’Torah 6E (1987) and “The Role of the Observer in Halakhah and Quantum Physics” in Science in the Light of the Torah (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994.]
To comment on this article or others written by the author, and to order this or others of his books, write to avirab@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
……….
See
Quantum Kabbalah and the Instant Universe
"And God Said, 'Let there have been a Big Bang' ”
Avi Rabinowitz http://www.pages.nyu.edu/~air1/scirelig.htm
…………….
Part I: The Significance and Nature of Free Will
Capter I: Introduction
Chapter 2: Free Will: The Outsider Perspective
Chapter 3: Meaning, Purpose, and Moral Responsibility:
Chapter 4 : Quantum Puppets and Autonomous Brains:
Appendix: Free Will and Quantum Field Theory
Chapter 5: Designer Universes, and Purposive Creation:
Appendix :Quantum Cosmology and Designer Universes:
Chapter 1: Einstein, Purposive Creation and Morality:
Einstein, moral responsibility, and Genesis: 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?"
As Einstein stated, 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. 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.
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 - they are very complex mechanisms. Einstein felt that although much is not yet known about our brains, nevertheless if there is a God, our actions are the inevitable result of God’s laws of nature[1][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][2].... the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary as the past…. [3][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."
Einstein, atheism, materialism and free will: Einstein makes a statement about his psychological reaction to the success of science: "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". Although Einstein was not an atheist, this is the type of statement that atheism is often founded on – the idea that not only does science provide naturalistic explanations, but that there are no non-naturalistic events at all, for example no 'miracles' or other divine intervention. Speaking in the context of the workings of the human mind, he makes another reflection of his psychology: he is a "man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation". Though he was not a materialist, this is an assumption which underlies materialism, the idea that even human thought is governed totally by cause and effect, and thus there is no true free will.
Traditionalists 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'. [4][4]
Physics, Free Will and Intuition: True free will is necessarily built upon an interaction "transcending" both the determinism of classical physics and the probabilistically-determined randomness (PDR) of quantum physics. Unless there would be some experimental proof that true free will exists, physics would rightly exclude it[5][5]. Our deepest intuitions however point to its existence. And of course most religious beliefs assume it does exist, and base the concept of moral responsibility on the assumption that our free will is real.
Free will in the biblical conception: What type of free will is inherent in the Bible? We can perhaps deduce what Einstein thought about this. He did not believe in the existence of free will, and 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). Clearly Einstein felt that the God of the Bible was omnipotent and also held humans accountable for their actions. Indeed the creation and Eden accounts present the type of free will and moral responsibility which would be meaningful to a transcendent being.
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'. [4][4]
Are we in control of our own personal destiny or is all fate? Does our existence have “meaning”, a purpose? [Is there more to us than just our bodies - and if so does some aspect of our selves survive death?] 🡪
Clearly without free will we would be mere puppets, and so would not bear moral responsibility for the actions our bodies execute. However there is difficulty in defining the concept of free will in accordance with known scientific and philosophical principles. As a result philosophers reject the conception of human freedom, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose; consequently the meaning assigned to these fundamental metaphysical concepts by philosophers is not quite the same as our intuitive understanding of them. Their definitions are tailored by scientists and philosophers to fit the laws of nature and the rigor of ordinary logic, and in the process lose what to our intuitive understanding may be their very essence.
In this book we travel the reverse road. Rather than trying to fit these concepts into the frame of the accepted laws of nature and logic, we first define the type of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which we feel is reflective of our deepest intuitions. We then determine what must be true about the nature of reality in order for these concepts to be valid as we intuit them, and attempt to extrapolate to discover what are the ramifications of this reality to physics, cosmology and philosophy.
Generations of thinkers have struggled with such questions and have devoted lifetimes to investigating enigmas such as the origin of the universe, the origins and nature of humanity, the basis of moral obligation, the meaning of life and the purpose of existence. Various cultures and individuals have over the millennia explored different approaches to these issues, and often the paths taken seem mutually incompatible.
Our own cultural heritage on these issues and concepts includes perspectives as diverse as those of science and of metaphysics, of the Bible and of philosophy, of mysticism and of mathematics. However these disciplines deal so differently with these issues that accepting their relevance, and certainly integrating them into a coherent world-view, is often difficult or even declared to be impossible.
In this work we shall endeavor to fashion a partial integration of some of these approaches. We will especially explore the idea of free willed consciousness and its ramifications, finding it to be a pivotal factor for many key concepts and a unifying theme underlying the various perspectives on these issues.
The earliest surviving treatment of these themes is perhaps found in the Bible. The creation and Eden accounts - the opening chapters of Genesis (the first book of the Bible) - deal with the origin of the universe, humanity, free will and moral obligation. These accounts have contributed greatly to our cultural conceptions and beliefs on these matters and shall play a prominent role in our discussions.
Although these issues are treated rather differently by science and by Genesis, we shall attempt the development of a perspective from which the scientific origin theory and the creation account are complementary rather than contradictory.
Understanding the creation and Eden accounts in the context of our discussions on free will and universal purpose can aid us in appreciating the meaning of these accounts, and in discerning a logic behind the juxtaposition of two such very different accounts. These connections will also help motivate the otherwise perplexing implications in Genesis that the universe was created not so long ago and that the first human being lived only thousands rather than hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of years ago.
Besides the various insights and speculations on philosophy metaphysics and Genesis, a number of original ideas are presented regarding the nature of free will and its relevance to various fundamental issues in physics, philosophy and metaphysics.
Note: There are several interrelated themes in the book; the reader with particular interests can focus on specific sections and leave others out.
Parts I, III, IV, V: the heart of the book: Free-willed consciousness: Discussions involving physics, cosmology, quantum metaphysics, philosophy.
Part II (only one chapter) is about the context of Biblical narratives.
The rest of the book applies the concept developed in Parts I-V to an understanding of:
Part VI: Genesis in the context of the big bang and evolutionary theories. (Insert ref to Inst Un and Edens books).
Part VII religious/Jewish theology:
Part VIII moral and religious philosophy
Chapter 2: The Outsider Perspective
"What is the meaning of human life, or for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make sense then to pose this question. I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life."
Albert Einstein.
Introduction
For many of us, running very deep at the core of our beings is the feeling that we are morally responsible for our actions, that there is meaning in our lives, that there is a purpose to existence (MRMP). Occasionally the conviction is shaken or even disappears; usually however the conviction returns anew.
Yet although this feeling (of MRMP) is almost universal, there are great differences between the various conceptions we may hold of what is meaningful, what is the purpose of existence, what is moral. There are also philosophical and scientific differences of opinion as to whether humans are really free agents, truly responsible for their actions, whether there can be any meaning to existence other than the meaning we ourselves create, whether the mental realm in which concepts such as meaning and purpose reside can grant them any measure of reality .
Our most fundamental intuitions are that we exist and are conscious, the universe exists, and we are autonomous beings, capable of free willed choice. However from the scientific perspective, the nature of consciousness is enigmatic, while the phenomenon of free will is scientifically not merely elusive but actually quite paradoxical.
Consciousness seems to be an element of a different realm than that of the material universe, so much so in fact that it seems impossible that it interact with the physical realm. Nevertheless consciousness is an undeniable fact of existence, since the very belief that we are conscious is a state of consciousness. As a result the existence of consciousness presents a challenge to all fundamental theories of reality which do not encompass its existence. Indeed, it has been proposed by some physicists that consciousness plays a role in the very fashioning of physical reality, and in the origin of existence.
On the other hand, the existence of free will is not undeniable. In contradistinction to the case with consciousness, the belief that we have a free will does not in itself indicate that we do indeed have it. Indeed as we discuss in a later chapter ("The Mind Body Problem") not only is there no direct scientific evidence that free will exists, but moreso free willed action is not encompassable within the known laws of nature: by definition it postulates an interaction between the mental realm and the physical realm. Consequently, the existence of free will is disputed by many.
Nevertheless, although free will is not a provable fact of existence, and indeed runs counter to some scientific theories, it has always been the basis for various moral and religious philosophies; the nature of free will has a direct bearing on the definition of right and wrong and of religious and moral obligation, and therefore on the meaning various philosophies attribute to existence.
The 'Outsider' Perspective
The simplest way to portray the concepts of moral responsibility, meaning and purpose as intuitively felt by most people is to assume the existence of an 'outsider' to the universe - such as for example a creator - and then determine the scenarios in which these concepts would have meaning from the 'outsider perspective'.
We shall often turn to this 'outsider perspective' in our discussions, however it will be as a 'pedagogical device', without the intent of implying the actual existence of an outsider. It remains a question though whether the very need of the device of an 'outsider' to construct this implies that the concepts are actually not definable.
It is interesting that 'outsider-relevant' moral responsibility, meaning and purpose is possible only if there exists in the universe a certain type of free will; by a "true free will" in this book we mean one which makes for moral responsibility and purpose possible from the outsider/divine perspective.
[Not only do we define true free will as that which allows for the existence of moral responsibility and purpose, but the reverse is also true: understanding free will can aid us in defining the concepts of moral responsibility, meaning and purpose as we intuit them.]
Of course Genesis presents itself as being written from an outsider perspective, that of the creator. The free will spoken of in the Eden account is of the type which is capable of having meaning to this creator, and it is therefore of the outsider-relevant type we explored. Our understanding of this concept of an outsider-relevant free will can therefore help shed some light on the creation and Eden accounts, and on some of the major issues in religious and Jewish philosophy related to these accounts.
Defining such a free will is however difficult.
Many have written of the connection between the existence of free will and the ideas of quantum physics, or of chaos theory, however, as we shall indicate, the type of free will they discuss is perhaps too shallow for the actions generated by such a free will to be outsider-relevant. We shall indicate why we feel that the type of moral responsibility, meaning and free will they ascribe to human existence is not representative of these concepts as most people intuit them.
We are therefore interested in the following double-edged question: If the universe is only as rich in its theoretical substrate (its underlying basis) as present scientific theory allows, can it support the type of free will which makes human moral choice outsider-relevant, which gives human life and the existence of the universe meaning and purpose from the outsider perspective? Conversely, if the universe does indeed posses such a free will, so that it is meaningful and purposive from the outsider perspective, and for human activity to posses a dimension of moral responsibility from this vantage point, what implications are there for physics, for cosmology, for mathematics and philosophy - is the universe as a result necessarily richer, deeper, than as implied by present day scientific models?
We will see that free will must be have a meta-causal or "acauasal" nature - in order for it to be of the outsider-relevant type, and that it is as a result of this that our type of free will is not describable within the ordinary confines of science and logic.
Furthermore, we will see that if such an acausal phenomenon as is the basis of this type of free will exists in the universe, in particular in the workings of the human consciousness, there can be significant ramifications to other areas of scientific interest - particularly to physics and cosmology - and to philosophy as well.
Chapter 3: Meaning, Purpose and Moral Responsibility
Murderers are not responsible for their actions.
There is no basis for the assumption that humans are more significant than bacteria. Humans are purely physical beings. Human consciousness is irrelevant to the universe- the universe arose by chance and is uncaring. There is no meaning to life and no purpose to the existence of the universe. There is no true creativity, and all will eventually be doable by computers. Humans are simply a member of the animal kingdom rather than being unique.
As the universe arose by chance, humans evolved by chance. The universe began in a big bang and will end in a big crunch, or will dissipate in a heat death.
So sayeth science, and science knoweth all.
The above litany can almost be considered the creed of an atheistic religion. The statements themselves are not necessarily wrong, what is however wrong is that they are opinions or beliefs masquerading as facts. And, perhaps the one statement which is actually false is the last one: "So sayeth science, and science knoweth all." Actually, science says no such thing, as we shall see, and science itself is too careful and aware of its limitations to make the claim that it knows all. We shall see why these are statements of a form of atheistic belief rather than statements of science.
We shall find that at the root of many of these issues is the question of whether human beings possess a 'true free will' - a term we shall define better in later chapters.
Various Universes, Various Perspectives
Are we deluded when we consider our life to have meaning, the universe to have a purpose? Or perhaps the sensation of 'meaning' is a type of human emotion and if we feel that our lives are meaningful then it is true by definition.
On the one hand many of us possess a strong intuitive feeling that there is meaning and purpose, and an intuitive understanding of these concepts. However on the other hand it is often difficult to really pin these concepts down - in particular, to explain them in such a fashion that it is clear to someone who doesn't believe in meaning and purpose.
We will clarify these concepts as we feel they are intuitively understood by trying to isolate the elements which are crucial to the existence of meaning and purpose.
Moral Responsibility and Free Will
"The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation ...a God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him 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."
A Einstein.
Are we responsible for our actions or can we blame our genes and environment for all our misdeeds? Perhaps we are simply conscious robots falsely believing ourselves to have moral responsibility for our actions and thoughts? In what type of universe could one conclude that we are free, that we are indeed responsible for our actions?
The most sophisticated machine cannot be blamed for its actions even if these bring about the harm of a person, since these action were built into its design - if there is blame, it can only be placed on those who brought about its existence.
Even an animal is not generally held to be blameworthy for its actions. Instead, it is trained to refrain from certain actions, not to teach it morality, but to condition its behaviour. Objects and animals are not considered to be morally aware, and are not considered to be morally responsible for their actions.
This is not solely a question of consciousness and deliberate action. A baby is conscious but is not responsible for its actions, a mentally retarded or severely deranged person may consciously plan an action designed to hurt someone and yet not be morally responsible since their brain is not wired to comprehend moral responsibility, or abstractions such as the pain of another. If one could imagine a machine imbued with a consciousness, a machine which is programmed and built to perform a very specific task, and to be conscious of its actions, no one would imagine to hold this conscious machine responsible for it actions since it was designed to commit those actions.
The crucial element in moral responsibility is therefore not only the consciousness of one's actions, but in addition two other elements: the understanding of moral right and wrong - that is, the possession of a moral intuition - and the ability to choose one's actions - that is, the possession of free will.
For example, if a machine is built to rotate a blade and move about, it will probably kill people. No one would think to blame or punish a clock for having its specially-designed razor-tipped hands rotate about, even if it killed someone. The clock had no choice, rotate its hands is what it must do - not because of an 'obligation' to do so, but rather because the laws of nature allow nothing else - someone used knowledge of the laws of nature to design the clock in such a way that this is what it will inevitably do. Certainly those who brought about its existence etc. are responsible for the deaths, not the machine itself.
Even if the machine is conscious of every action it commits, if it is powerless to change the actions it has been built to do, it would not be considered to have done a moral wrong. If the conscious machine were to believe that it can control matters, it might feel guilty for every transgression. The builders on the other hand would discount the guilt feelings of the machine, since they would be aware that the machine could not choose to do other than what it did.
However, even if the machine was capable of freely choosing its actions, if it had not been programmed to understand the difference between good and evil, although itis indeed responsible for its actions, it is not morally responsible for them. It is perhaps dangerous, and deliberately so, and one can argue that it is morally defensible to terminate it if necessary to save lives, but it is not evil. This case would be similar to that of a baby who doesn't comprehend that hitting its parent is bad, or to the case of different cultural norms clashing - only if there is both a moral intuition and free will can there be moral responsibility.
Now let us apply what we have discussed to the issue of human moral responsibility.
Humans are conscious, and understand moral wrong and right. However, could it be that humans are conscious robots, no more capable of determining their own behavior than does a clock. Were they perhaps designed by a creator or by evolutionary forces to act in certain ways, and furthermore, designed to be conscious of their actions and thoughts? Were they perhaps even designed to feel that they are responsible for their actions, despite the fact that they are not at all responsible for them? If so, then the feeling that we humans are in control of our decisions and are morally responsible for our actions is a delusion, a delusion programmed into us by the forces which caused us to exist.
The crux of the matter is the question of the existence of free will - whether our brains are machines programmed in a certain predetermined way, or are they capable of true free-willed choice - and this is an issue we shall discuss at length in the next chapter.
Meaning and purpose: We shall now leave the topic of moral responsibility and its dependence on free will to investigate the concepts of meaning and purpose, and we shall find that the issue of free will is central to these concepts as well.
Introduction
The meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the meaning and purpose of the universe as a whole are issues which are outside the purview of science. Science deals with events, and patterns of events - particularly repeatable events; science does not deal with interpretations of the events, nor with interpretations of the patterns of their occurrence.
All scientific observers can agree on the fact that some people feel that life is meaningful. Science can therefore discuss measurable and objective issues such as the neural patterns that form when people think the thought "life has meaning", science can deal with the question of why such thoughts arise in human minds - the causes for this objective phenomena - and why they arise in these people's brains and not in others' brains. However it is not within the purview of science to make declarations as to whether or not there is indeed meaning to life. Generally, dealing with these issues plunges one into the realm of metaphysics and religion rather than of science.
The Bible is written against a background of the deliberate creation of a universe, a universe with purpose, within which life has meaning, and so we can better understand the Biblical account after we have clarified the issue of the meaning of life and the purpose of existence as seen from the perspective of the Bible.
Does the Universe Have a Purpose?
The universe is a collection of objects, not an object in itself - and therefore according to some conceptions of the philosophy of science the concept 'the universe as a whole' is undefined. As a result, in these conceptions it is not appropriate to consider whether the universe as a whole has a purpose for conscious beings.
However, if there exists a perspective from 'outside' the universe, then the question can be discussed whether or not from this outsider's perspective the universe considered as an entity in itself has a purpose. (Entities or events within the universe can be meaningful etc to beings within it, however as a whole, as an entity in itself, the universe can have meaning or purpose only as considered from the perspective of an 'outsider'.)
Does Human Life Have Meaning?
A conscious being can feel meaning or purpose. We therefore define the words 'meaning' and 'purpose' here so that objects cannot in themselves 'have meaning', or 'a purpose' - rather, an object can have meaning for a conscious being, and a conscious being can have a purpose for an object.
If we consider the universe as an entity which is not in itself conscious, then it cannot be meaningful or have a purpose in itself, only in respect to some conscious being.
Similarly, the universe cannot be 'uncaring' because only a conscious being can be uncaring (or caring). Instead one could say that a feeling is induced in some people that they express through the words "the universe is uncaring". What is referred to by this is an emotion, not an actual state of 'uncaring' by the inanimate universe. In the same way, it is meaningless to say that life is meaningless - 'life' is a concept and not a conscious being. Instead one could say that some people have an emotion - similar to despair perhaps - which they express using the image-laden expression "life is meaningless".
However, just as life cannot be meaningless, life' cannot have meaning. The question can only properly be asked in reference to a conscious being - whether the life of some individual or of some species has meaning to that same or other conscious being.
Certainly humans are conscious and many feel that their lives are meaningful. What is however of interest in considering the Biblical perspective on the issue of meaning and purpose is the question of whether the fact that a being feels its life to have meaning implies by definition that its life is meaningful. Similarly, whether the feeling or conviction of moral responsibility for one's actions is all that is necessary in order to consider that one is indeed morally responsible for them.
Conscious Robots
A tape recorder can be prepared to say "I am a tape recorder but one with a consciousness, I experience a meaning to my life, ...etc". Were we to see the operation of such a machine which was designed to repeat the words "I have a purpose in life, my life has meaning", we would not be convinced that it did indeed have a purpose or experience meaning just from the fact that it said it did.
Imagine now that the tape recorder were in fact conscious and could communicate with us, and it would say that it is playing the tape we had inserted into it because it chose to do so, and that it did so chose because it felt it was morally obligated to follow our desires since we were its builders.
However, of course it is a machine and all its actions were designed into it and it operates only according to our instructions, and was actually playing the tape because we had pressed the appropriate button - it had no choice in the matter. We would not hesitate to state that although we recognized the reality of its feeling of choice and of moral responsibility, it was nevertheless clearly deluded in thinking that it had chosen to play the tape, and we would state that moral responsibility is an inappropriate concept in this connection.
If it now claimed that it experienced the feeling of having purpose, of its existence having meaning, we might feel that this was delusionary as well, since it had no control over its actions. We might well feel that it could have a purpose only to us - to play our tapes - but relative to itself it was inappropriate to use the terms 'meaning' and 'purpose', that it was deluded in imagining that its existence had a true purpose in itself, had meaning in itself.
Imagine now that the tape player was designed by us not only to have a consciousness but also to feel a moral obligation to play a tape when we pressed the 'play' button. Further, it was designed to feel that it had chosen to play the tape because of its sense of moral obligation, and was designed to experience feelings of meaning and purpose when we pressed its buttons. It is also designed to voice these feelings of moral obligation, choice, and meaning and purpose whenever it played a tape. Then, when we would press the button to play a tape we would hear the tape-machine state that it itself was choosing to play the tape because it felt morally obligated to do so, and that it felt its existence had meaning and purpose because of its successful grappling with moral dilemmas and choices - such as its decisions to play the tape in conformance with our command to do so despite its option of deciding not to comply with our command.
We would of course know that it was merely following the program we had designed for it, but we would not deny that it did really feel the feelings it was claiming to feel. Nevertheless we could only conclude that the feelings of moral obligation and choice were delusions. Also, we would feel that the machine's sentiments of meaning and purpose as a result of the playing of the tape - however real they were to the tape-machine itself - were inappropriate at our level of understanding.
That is, an entity's experience of free will and moral responsibility may be dismissed as delusion when there exists a perspective other than that of the entity itself, or where there exists a 'higher level', at which the entity is seen to operate according to a pre-set program without its own volition coming into play.
This is particularly the case where the actions of that entity were determined by the design of the higher-level 'outsider'- in such a case not only are the feeling of choice delusion, and of moral responsibility misguided, but also the feelings of meaning and purpose may be considered inappropriate.
Free Will and Science
Imagine now the following scenario: In a universe without free will, a friend tells us "I have no free will, but my life has meaning" or "this art object (or event) has meaning to me". We know that this friend has no free will, and therefore we know that he was programmed to say this, to feel this. We may acknowledge that to him his life has meaning in the deepest sense, but nevertheless to us his feeling of meaning may not be very meaningful, since we know that his statement is actually the preprogrammed exclamation of a conscious mechanical device.
Similarly, relative to the perspective of a being which had designed us to be conscious, and designed us to experience feelings of moral obligation, choice, meaning and purpose, we are perhaps conscious machines, deluding ourselves no less than the tape-machines in the previous example.
Although human beings claim that they have moral obligations, that their lives have meaning, that their actions are the catalysts of some purpose, one cannot simply assume that humans possess the type of will which validates all this - one which is free from an outsider perspective.
Segue to the next chapter:
There are scientific considerations which militate against the existence of this type of free will; we will discuss this at length in the next chapter.
As was the case with moral obligation, so too here with respect to the concepts of meaning and purpose: the central issue of interest to us is whether humans have a true free will. We shall now turn to physics to see what it has to say about this question.
Chapter 4: Quantum Puppets
and Autonomous Brains:
Determinism, Randomness, Chaos and Free Will
The great mathematician-physicist Laplace, based partly on work done by Newton, presented to the King of France what was then considered to be a complete account of a mechanical universe, operating completely according to fixed 'Laws of Nature'. He was also not without a sense of the theatrical. When asked by the King where God fit into his purely-mechanical model of the cosmos Laplace's immortal reply was "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis".
Introduction
Scientists from the time of Newton and on may well have felt that we may not be in control of our actions and thoughts, that we are indeed deluded conscious machines, puppets of fate, not morally responsible for our actions.
However, quantum physics introduced about seventy years ago, chaos theory and the mathematical notion of incomputability developed more recently, have significantly revised the Newtonian view of nature, and some have proposed that they open the way to the existence of free will.
We intend however to burst that bubble.
We will see that just as free will can be defined as existing when it is felt that it exists, but this is not the type of free will we are interested in this book, so too we will show that the type of free will allowed by quantum physics, chaos and incomputability are not the type of free will which interests us. We are interested only in a free will which would allow an 'outsider' viewing our universe to ascribe purpose and meaning to our existence, and quantum physics and all the rest do not suffice to provide this. Therefore, rather than being based on these, free will of the type we are interested in will have to be based on more radical phenomena.
In some sense, the much-touted shining knight of quantum physics and all the other developments turn out not to be a rescuer but rather a croaking frog; we are left with the fear that when we feel that there is moral responsibility and our actions and lives have meaning, these may be just the delusions of a conscious machine.
Determinism
The workings of the human brain were considered to be machine-like according to the old Newtonian model of nature. According to the world-view prevailing at the time, the state of any physical system at any given moment totally determines the next state of the system - given what the situation is, the entire exhaustive description of all the relevant details, things can happen in only one way. In the same way, at the largest scale, where the entire universe is the system under scrutiny, the state of the universe at any given moment totally determines the next state of the universe.
Following this logic, one can conclude that since each state of the universe is determined totally by the state of the universe at the preceding instant, a chain of cause and effect can be constructed back to the initial instant, so that the state of the universe at any time is actually totally determined by the initial state of the universe. In this sense, everything that occurs anywhere was inherent in the big bang.
This means that all right and wrong actions committed by people and perhaps all thoughts as well, are actually inherent in the big bang, that humanity cannot control its thoughts or actions - they are all written in to the big bang.
Since there is no unequivocal scientifically accepted evidence that human brains operate outside the realm of physical laws (i.e. under laws different than those governing the rest of the universe) indeed all human actions and thoughts are the result of natural law rather than human choice.
Einstein: Despite his great sensitivity to ethics, Einstein strongly believed in determinism:
"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."
"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 scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary as the past." "everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." A. Einstein
...........................
Determinism and the Human Brain
[To avoid this slightly technical section, skip to page....]
To understand how human brain states can be considered as determined, let us consider an analogy with a billiard table operating in a deterministic (non-quantum) universe. Imagine striking a ball, and watching it careen about striking others which then collide with yet others, forming a pattern of chain reaction collisions. The entire activity is totally described by the laws of nature - once the first ball is hit, the speed and direction imparted to it totally determine which balls will be hit, to what degree, where they will end up, what chain reaction will be caused. Different initial speeds and directions will result in different overall patterns of chain reaction.
Imagine now that the balls are electrified and glow, with a constantly increasing brightness. Photos are taken of the activity, with not quite fast enough exposure, and then the frames are laid down side by side. Each photo shows a pattern of billiard balls, each ball somewhat fuzzy because the exposure was not quite fast enough. From the photo we can tell where each ball is and from the fuzziness and the fact that the fuzziness is brighter at one end than at the other (the light in the ball was getting brighter all the time), we can tell in what direction the ball is traveling. Each photo therefore captures a particular state of the billiard balls, and the collection of photos captures the development of the states from one to another. The laws of nature totally determine which state shall follow from a given state - the balls have no choice in how to act. Each pattern of balls determines the following pattern unequivocally.
Picture these balls now as parts of the electronic components in a computer, and that each pattern of balls corresponds to a particular pattern of electric activity in the components. Each pattern of electric activity then determines the next pattern unequivocally, forming a chain of patterns. Given any pattern, the next pattern following that in the computer is totally determined. It is not the computer which decides what to do, but rather the components of the computer are forced by the laws of nature and the structure of the computer along a certain pattern. The computer is designed in such a way that the laws of nature will move it along patterns which correspond to logical activity, so that the output is for example a mathematical calculation. Given a particular program and data, and a particular structure for the computer's electronics, every input will have a specific output, and this is because every state of the electronics in the computer can have only one next-pattern, and so on down the chain, so that given the input, there is a unique first-state that leads eventually to a unique last-state, which is the unique result.
Determinism of Human Brain States
We now associate to each pattern of balls a particular thought, so that the changing pattern of the balls corresponds to a chain of thought. If the billiard balls together collectively have a mind, the thought in that mind at any given moment will be that one corresponding to the physical pattern of the balls. The mind of the billiard balls would then be thinking a chain of thoughts, without knowing that the chain of thoughts was determined by the laws of mechanics governing the interactions of billiard balls.
What about the human brain?
The thoughts in a person's mind are affected by the events in the world about them, by memories they have, by other thoughts they have had. According to materialist approaches to the human brain, all these thoughts correspond directly to patterns of electrically active neurons in the brain. The universe including the brain is like the billiard table - imagine that these balls are neurons in the brain, and that each pattern of balls corresponds to a particular pattern of electrically-active neurons. Given a pattern of events in the physical universe including the pattern of electrical activity in the brain, there is only one next-pattern for the brain, just as there is only one next-pattern for the billiard balls. Each pattern of neurons determines the next pattern unequivocally, forming a chain of patterns of neurons.
Therefore if brains operate according to the known laws of nature thoughts are something like patterns of electrically active neurons, and therefore given any thought, the next thought following that in the brain is totally determined. It is not 'the mind' which decides what to think, but rather the brain is forced by the laws of nature along a certain pattern of neurons, and the mind then thinks the corresponding thoughts. One of the thoughts it is made to think is the familiar one that goes something like "I am deciding this of my own free will".....
Every thought in the brain is determined by the prior state of the universe (including the prior state of the brain), and each state of the universe is determined by the prior state of the universe. Therefore the first state of the universe - the big bang - determines all the next states of the universe, and therefore it determines also all the eventual brain states of all the beings who arise in the universe.
Some have maintained that ours is indeed such a universe, but that nevertheless humans have a free will and moral responsibility for their actions:
insert quotes
However, we do not here mean by free will what these writers mean. The type of free will they speak of is not such that an outsider would consider it free, and is not sufficient to support moral responsibility, meaning and purpose from the outsider viewpoint.
In a universe in which brains operate according deterministic laws of nature, all the human actions ever perpetrated, good or bad, all the decisions as to how to act, were not the result of a choice by the perpetrator, but rather they are merely elements in the path of history inherent in the initial state of the universe.
People may of course have an illusion that they possess a free will, and that somehow they have acted in a manner which was not solely the result of natural law. In fact, the complexity of interactions in the brain involved in producing a thought may well preclude any possible method of even computer-aided prediction of a future thought or act, so that this illusion might never be disproven. In such a universe in which thoughts cannot be predicted, we can say that humans have a 'calculationally-free' will; further, if people feel they possesses a free will, we can say that they have a 'psychologically free' will. However in such a universe, there is no 'inherently-free' will: regardless of whether or not thoughts are predictable, or whether or not humans 'feel' free, in actuality humans have no say over what they will think or do - they only think they do.
Quantum Physics and Human Brains
Introduction: The branch of physics which deals with the most fundamental particles and fields known in the universe is quantum physics, and the basic postulates of quantum physics have ramifications to the issue at hand.
Quantum physics, introduced near the beginning of the 20th century, brought with it a drastic change in this deterministic viewpoint (that every event in the universe occurred as an inevitable and necessary result of previous events). Each event was now understood to be able to occur in a number of ways, with the actual way that it does occur left to 'chance'. Despite the fact that chance ruled each individual event, however, when numerous similar events occur, the pattern which emerges resembles the results one would expect from pre-quantum physics.
What of events in the brain, the events which underlie our thoughts and decisions? Of course a full theory of the human brain and of the processes in it is only a distant goal, and neither physics nor physiology can state categorically that free willed processes in the brain are physically possible or impossible. However (many) physicists dealing with quantum physics (have in the past often) assumed that eventually this theory will be able to describe even the human brain, leading them to assume that eventually science may be able to prove that free will does not exist. The fact that humans believe that they have free will, that they feel that they are exercising a free will in their decisions is generally not considered sufficient indication to postulate that there are processes which are not random in the quantum mechanical sense.
Probabilistic Determinism
In order to understand the basic concepts of quantum physics required here, we shall explore as an example the quantum theory of light.
It is a fact of nature that when a beam of light is shone through a slit, it spreads out on the other side of the slit, making a well-defined pattern on a screen placed behind the slit.
It is also a fact of nature that if the light is turned lower and lower (less and less light) there is not a continuous decrease of light, but a decrease in jumps - which means that the light is discrete 'pieces of light'. One can even reduce the beam so low that only one 'piece' of light comes through.
It is also a fact that various pieces of light aimed at the center of the slit, after passing the slit, often lands at different angles away from the center, rather than all hitting the center of the screen, and rather than all hitting at the same angle. There is no way to predict where an individual piece of light will impact. Nevertheless, when sufficient pieces are sent through, the expected pattern begins to assert itself.
Each individual event, though occurring 'at random', nevertheless contributes somehow to a pattern, in the aggregate, which can be exactly determined beforehand. This combination of random and determined behavior is termed here "probabilistically determined randomness" (PDR) or "probabilistic determinism". However, this 'random' aspect seemed at first to be contrary to the 'spirit of physics'. Much inquiry was directed to the question of whether or not the chance aspect was only apparent, because of our lack of sufficient scientific knowledge and adequate instrumentation, or if it was an actual physical requirement. It was shown that indeed the nature of the physical universe is such that intrinsically, at the most fundamental level, events are probabilistic and not deterministic.
How do the individual pieces conspire to make the pattern? According to the understanding of science, the path of an individual piece of light, or any other fundamental particle, is not describable in ordinary concepts - only the aggregate is describable. Each microscopic particle travels along a randomly chosen path, and science can predict only the pattern made by many particles, not the path of an individual particle. When there are sufficient paths involved for a statistical statement to be relevant, science can make exact predictions regarding the patterns which will develop.
In the same way that in the case discussed above the individual event is random but the overall pattern is determined, quantum physics teaches that all sub-microscopic events occur as a combination of determined and random effects (PDR) - and that any such event can occur in a number of possible ways. According to the theory of quantum physics, there is no way to determine the exact outcome of quantum events; what can be determined is only the overall pattern, the relative probabilities of the various possible outcomes.
....................
PROBABILISTIC DETERMINISM
Prior to the advent of quantum physics, science believed that every event in the universe occurred as an inevitable and necessary result of previous events. The state of the universe at any one instant was believed to be totally determined by the states of the universe in the past, and in turn the present state totally determined what all future states of the universe would be.
Quantum physics, introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century, brought with it a drastic change in this viewpoint. Each event was now understood to be able to occur in a number of ways, with the actual way that it does occur left to “chance.” Despite the fact that chance “ruled” each individual event, however, when numerous similar events occurred, the pattern that emerged resembled the results one would have expected using pre-quantum physics.
That is, each individual event, though occurring “at random,” nevertheless contributes somehow to a pattern, in the aggregate, which can be determined beforehand. This combination of random and determined behavior is called here probabilistic determinism or probabilistically determined randomness.
Physicists were troubled since this “random” aspect seemed to be contrary to the “spirit of physics.”
Much inquiry was directed to the question of whether the chance aspect was only apparent—i.e. due to our lack of sufficient scientific knowledge and adequate instrumentation—or if it was an actual physical requirement. With the accumulation of more experimental evidence it was shown that, indeed, the nature of the physical universe appears to be such that intrinsically, at the most fundamental level, events are probabilistic and not deterministic.
........................
Free Will, Quantum Physics, and Causality
Some writers have claimed that in the same way that determinism seemed to put to rest the idea of free will, quantum physics resurrects it.
Insert quotes
However, although quantum physics posits a new type of causal relationship of events, it is not sufficiently radical an innovation in causality to allow for the operation of free will of the type we are interested in.
According to quantum physics, events occur in a probabilistically determined random manner. If underlying every physical process there are random events, then the result of these events can also be judged to be inherently random.
In terms of the relevance to free will, although it is true that quantum physics reduces the determinism of the earlier physics, what it introduces is randomness instead, and not a freedom of the type suitable as a basis for free willed choice.
If all events at the most basic level of interaction are random in nature there is no room for freedom even in brain events ( AR: Duplication?: If indeed all of nature obeys this type of quantum physics at its most fundamental levels, then free will would be impossible). Therefore if free will does exist, this type of quantum physics cannot be valid as a prescriptive formalism at the most fundamental levels of natural processes.
In order for a true free will to exist, there must not only be more than one alternative available at each free-willed decision point, there must also be a choice of alternative which is made "freely". Although according to quantum physics the first condition is possible, the second condition is not - rather than being made by choice, the choice of alternative is not freely willed but rather is random at its most fundamental level. Since a random choice is not a "free" choice, quantum physics of this type is not compatible with free will. That is, if everything including thought is actually governed by quantum physics, by PDR, then true free will is impossible.
MESH
,. To encompass free will there must therefore exist some interaction which has a level of acausality yet more radical than that of quantum physics.
The very concept of free will seems to be undefineable and even self-contradictory. In order for free will to be conceptualized in a non-self-contradictory manner, in addition to modifying quantum theory to account for free will, one would possibly have to modify the concept of causality itself - the idea underlying all of science that one event causes another according to some law.
………….
Inherent Randomness and Free Will: Uncertainty as a Limit on Physical Theories
It may however be that quantum physics does not actually conflict with free will as it does not truly require that events are PDR. Quantum theory is perhaps more an expression of limits on what can be known rather than a description of what occurs. This theory states that overall the pattern emerging from large amounts of microscopic events will be identical to that of a random distribution, and that we cannot determine the result of individual events, but it does not describe the individual events themselves. One can claim that according to quantum physics individual microscopic events need not occur in any specific manner - for example 'randomly' - as long as they add up in the end, in the aggregate (the totality), to a random distribution.
In this interpretation, scientific theories can deal only with large numbers of events rather than with individual events. About an individual microscopic event nothing at all can be said, not even that it occurs at random. Rather, one can only say that however it is that these events occur, large amounts of events will in the aggregate form according to a probabilistic distribution.
Rather than accepting quantum theory as a statement that all events occur randomly according to a determined probability distribution, one can see it as a statement of the limits of scientific theories.
This would mean that it is not impossible that the individual events can occur in accordance with a free willed decision - there is simply no way science can tell us anything about the individual event and so the speculation or belief that the event occurs in accordance with the choice of a free will can be neither scientifically supported nor refuted.
Although quantum physics can really only make statements about ensembles, if one could extrapolate these to the individual occurrences also, then this 'strong quantum physics' would postulate that all individual events are random, rather than just the aggregate being PDR. If all of nature obeys the strong form of quantum physics at its most fundamental levels, then free will would be impossible. However this version of quantum physics is not currently believed to be valid, and so the question remains open as to the nature of individual events, especially of allegedly-free mental decisions.
We are left nevertheless with an uncomfortable feeling: even though individual events can occur even in a free willed manner quantum physics can still somehow describes statistical distributions of such free willed choices. Although individual decisions are free willed, nevertheless the statistical distribution of results - the number of positive and negative choices etc - is totally predetermined. If all choices are free, how can they possibly conspire together to fit the predetermined pattern?
Insurance Statistics and Free Will
Human activity does seem to follow statistical patterns, with crime and accident statistics being roughly constant. Insurance companies know how many people will die of each disease each year, how many people will be killed in accidents, how many fires there will be; if these events are random, it is interesting that they fall into such clear statistical patterns, but that is the same as quantum physics - random at he individual level, predictable in the aggregate. However, police also know approximately how many murders to expect in a given year. If each of these the events occur in accordance with a free willed choice, it would be rather strange that a large amount of such free choices lead in the aggregate to a determined probabilistic distribution. After all, if the choices are free, what is there to cause them always to form these determined patterns in the aggregate?
Marriages, the taking of vacations, committing murder or other crimes would all seem to be freely willed. In fact if crime is not freely willed, there can be no true responsibility for the crime. On the other hand, it has been observed that the number of murders committed in any one city remains roughly constant, or changes at a certain well defined rate. And the same for marriages, vacationers and so on. If these events are not the result of free willed choice, then nothing probably is, and free will does not exist. On the other hand if they are the result of free willed choice, how is it that in the aggregate free willed choices are so predictable?
This situation is quite mystifying to the proponent of free will, but there are possible answers, such as that the types of people and their situations are distributed in a probabilistic manner, and this is reflected in the results. However, this merely takes the question one step further.
[It may also be that not all actions that we presume are free-willed, but only some of these are: some choices are truly free, and the rest arrange themselves to complete the requisite pattern imposed by quantum statistics. Or that for some reason the statistics of quantum physics are not an accurate reflection of free willed moral decisions, are not valid for free willed events.]
In any event, if one can accept that statistics tell us about the aggregate of criminal decisions and yet these individual criminals are responsible for their individual decisions, ie these were freely taken, then the existence of an overall determinism is not felt by us to be a refutation of the freedom at the individual level - if so, then quantum physics provides an exact analogy to this, describing the overall pattern without dealing with the nature of the individual event.
However strange this combination of freedom and determinism is, we can see that quantum uncertainty and PDR mirror exactly the expected results of free willed behavior as observed in the actual world. Nevertheless as a theory only of the limits of what we can know, and of the overall patterns in the aggregate, quantum physics in this interpretation tells us nothing about individual events and therefore nothing about free will itself other than its overall aggregate behavior.
Quantum physics does not deny the possibility of free will however it in no way provides a theory of how individual decisions are made in a free-willed manner.
The Interaction Underlying Free-Willed Phenomena
What is the mechanism whereby individual free decisions are in fact made? Since quantum theory cannot answer this in this respect it is insufficient as a complete description of nature.
Even if there is true free will even of a statistically limited type so that somehow quantum statistics are not violated, so that quantum physics correctly describes the limit of possible scientific knowledge about the free-willed system, quantum physics is not describing at all the operation of free will, the means whereby free willed choices are made: the very existence of some truly free willed choices requires the existence of interactions far more subtle and basic than those postulated and dealt with by quantum physics.
If this is the case, then ordinary quantum physics could be considered as having validity limited to non-mental events, or to events in arenas of lesser complexity than the human brain, or as being an approximation to a more fundamental theory just as classical physics is an approximation of quantum physics, or as a theory which tells of the limits beyond which physics cannot enter - limits beyond which lie mental phenomena.
In the early-mid 20th century Bohr proposed that the mental events involved in producing a thought are quantum-level events and so it would be impossible to physically trace mental events with any instrument without interfering with the mental events being traced. If such were the case physics could not hope to describe mental events, and this quantum nature of interactions in the brain would preclude any possible method of prediction of a future thought or act. Consequently an illusion of free will might never be disproved and thus physics could not rule out the existence of free will.
Indeed, it has been proposed that somehow the existence of the illusion may be due to the very phenomenon which ensures that the events in the brain are unpredictable.
However, many disagree because they feel that the processes underlying a thought are too complex to depend on single quantum events and a thought itself is too ordered to depend on a single quantum event, and therefore these processes would be sufficiently macroscopic to resist the disturbance created by a minimally-disturbing measurement. Thus they conclude that physics could eventually describe human thought processes. Indeed scientists are now perhaps succeeding in tracing individual brain events.
However the interaction underlying free-willed choice may be so subtle that perhaps it is not scientifically describable. Indeed, a scientifically describable free will would probably mean a scientifically predictable free will, which would likely mean that it is not free at all. True free will may by definition be beyond scientific analysis, or 'non-modelable'.
It would therefore seem that if true free will exists, it is necessarily based on interactions fundamentally other than those underlying anything else known to science today, including quantum physics.
Quantum Determinism and the 'Universal History Video Library'
Introduction
According to present scientific understanding, based on the ideas of quantum physics, the state of the universe at any given time determines not the actual state of the universe at the next instant, but rather determines what the possible next states might be, and also determines the relative probability of each such possible outcome. The actual next-state of the universe is 'chosen' randomly by nature from among the possible next-states. Therefore, the first state of the universe - namely the conditions obtaining at the initial singularity or the big bang - determines the entire range of quantumly possible future states of the universe.
Would it be possible to predict the future? If all the laws of nature were known, then it might be possible to predict the future development of any physical system to some degree. For example, given the conditions at the big bang, all the possible future states of the universe could be known. However, due to the randomness inherent in physical processess, as described by quantum physics, the actual future state is chosen at random from the possible future ones, and it cannot be known in advance which one will be chosen.
One could therefore say that if a sufficiently powerful computer is given the design for the big bang, all the minute details of all its possible future histories can be known - however the one actual history which would result from among all the possible ones would be unknown.
[There is the possibility however that the computations would prove to be so complex that for a computer to be powerful enough to perform the calculations it would have to be larger than the whole universe. In such a case, one could say that prediction is quantitatively impossible, and such a quantitative limitation could also be interpreted as a qualitative limitation. If instead of prediction before the fact one demands only knowability, so that a computation which takes longer than the real time development qualifies, .....So it may be that only an outsider computation can be qualified even to retrodict. However there is no way of knowing if the concept of an outsider is meaningful at all.]
Actualization of A Particular Universe-History
Let us assume that for a particular big bang there are for example 100100100 possible future histories differing significantly from each other, and that all the details of all these histories are recorded in the computer and labeled from one to 100100100.
If such a big bang were to be created, its future history would be identical to one of the recorded and labeled histories, however it would not be known which one of these it will act out. Since the big bang would develop according to the laws of quantum randomness, the choice of which history would appear would be decided randomly, as though by the toss of a die. Indeed, one toss of a die with 100100100 sides, or choosing one number from 1 to 100100100, is the same as the combination of random choices produced by the quantum randomness of the developing universe. The development of the universe from a big bang to its final conclusion is essentially the same as if the big bang had tossed a die and chosen its entire future history.
The import of this is different when it is realized that there are ramifications to the question of whether humans are the playthings of fate, or are masters of their own fate. If brains operate under laws no different than those governing the rest of the universe, then every decision in any brain, every thought, is simply a pattern of electrically-active neurons - or more fundamentally, a particular combination of elementary particles. According to quantum physics, each thought - each pattern of electrically active neurons - has various possible next-states rather than only one, however these states are those decided by the laws of nature rather than by the mind of the person whose brain is being considered, and the decision as to which of these states is activated is left to chance. Thus, for each thought or sensory input in the brain, there are various possible next-thoughts, and one of these is actualized, 'chosen at random by nature'. In other words, every time that a person decides to carry out a certain action, the decision to do so is simply one of the possible such decisions that nature chose at random from among all the possible decisions. The mind has control neither over the range of possible decisions, nor over the choice as to which decision is chosen
We could then say that whichever future is realized from among the quantumly-possible ones inherent in the initial universe state, all the human actions, thoughts and decisions contained in that history are the result of natural law rather than human choice, elements in the path of history that nature chose at random from among all the possible history paths that were inherent in the initial state of the universe.
The illusion of possessing a free will which transcends natural law and quantum randomness in some measure might never be disproved, especially since only probabilities can be predicted.
In a universe governed by the laws of physics as we know them, as soon as the big bang exists, all future quantumly-possible histories are written therein - any conscious being in such a universe is but a puppet acting out the particular history randomly chosen by nature from among all the possibilities. All events which occur in such a universe, all actions seemingly initiated by the conscious beings, are in actuality attributable to the initial state of the universe, the laws of nature, and randomness.
If humanity exists in a universe without free will, then even if humans are convinced that they bear moral responsibility for their actions, they are puppets who falsely believes they pull their own strings - people can no more decide whether to be 'good' or 'evil' than they can decide whether or not to be born. All their actions are written into the fabric of the universe and its laws, and they are not responsible for their actions or thoughts.
Of course people could always define themselves as 'free' if they feel free. Whether this is only a subjective perspective, or can be considered objective is discussed in the next chapter.
Chaos, Unpedictability and Freedom
Many writers have intimated that the results of chaos theory are relevant to the question of free will, just as others before them had claimed that quantum physics is significant in that respect.
Insert quotes
In this chapter we will analyze those aspects of chaos theory of relevance to this question, and show that it is actually of no relevance to free will as defined by us.
Chaos and Instability
In some situations, a large effect can result from a small cause - for example if a train is balanced on the edge of a precipice, a relatively small push might tumble it down. In this way, due to an inherent instability in the situation, the effect of the small cause can be 'multiplied' far beyond what it would achieve otherwise.
Weather conditions are very sensitive to small causes. A sneeze creates a tiny breeze which can divert a section of air which then causes.....etc etc until a thousand miles away the resulting chain of events is sufficient to nudge a wind pattern into a cyclone formation, which then destroys a town.
The situation is chaotic in the sense that every instant new small causes join the fray, multiplying up and constantly changing the pattern. On the other hand, when a small nudge gives the final twist to a strong wind changing it into a cyclone, the small cause has given rise to a very ordered effect - changing an unordered wind into a circular pattern with a life of its own.
Prediction and Free Will
As long as it is impossible to predict who will sneeze when, and all other such small causes, it is impossible to completely predict the weather. The weather is 'unstable' in the sense that it is very sensitive to small causes. Similarly, many physical systems are sensitive to small causes, and due to the 'multiplication' of small causes in these systems, and the many possible small causes which can affect them, it is almost impossible to predict what will happen to these systems. Chaos theory studies systems in which there is a multiplication of small causes, and also the emergence of ordered patterns from unordered ones via small causes.
In some systems, even if it is known exactly which small causes are present, and how they affect the system, it is still practically impossible to predict the result since the calculations are so difficult - it would require a supercomputer to compute, and even then, the computation would likely take so long that the result would arrive after the event occured, giving a 'prediction' only after the fact.
In some instances, it may be that even if in order to study a certain event the rest of the universe were utilized to construct a universal computer, the 'prediction' could not be made faster than the occurrence of the event being studied. In such a case the event is quantitatively unpredictable. Perhaps one could even consider it to be unpredictable in principle, a more qualitative statement.
Would we say that such a system exhibits 'free will' because it is unpredictable? Certainly in the sense that we will define free will, this will not qualify, since the fact that the 'prediction' can be made at all means that the system developed according to well-defined patterns and laws rather than being free. The fact that no prediction could be made, even if this is so in principle, does not affect this judgment.
Quantum Chaos
We now add in quantum physics to the picture. As we saw, according to quantum physics microscopic events occur at random in inherently unpredictable ways. In unstable systems, these random microscopic events are multiplied up into large scale events, so that there is an added element of unpredictability in such situations - on the one hand it is in principle impossible to predict the small causes if they are quantum random, and on the other hand - due to chaotic instability - it may be in principle impossible to predict the multiplied effect of these small causes.
Are such events 'free-willed'?
In our definition they are not, since they are fundamentally no different than other random quantum events - except that these random microscopic effects are multiplied into large scale random events. They are not free, they are merely unpredictable - their unpredictability derives from a combination of randomness and calculational complexity rather than from an inherent 'freedom'.
If producing a thought involves (quantum) chaos, so that no prediction of a thought or act will be possible, the illusion of a transcendent free will might never be disproved; we could say that humans have a 'calculationally-free' and a 'psychologically free' will without this implying the existence of an 'inherently-free' will.
Thus chaos whether of the deterministic or quantum variety does not give rise to freedom, only to unpredictability and the illusion of free will, which is irrelevant to moral responsibility will, and therefore it has no fundamental relevance to our discussion in this book.
Incomputability
In mathematical theory, there is a concept called 'incomputability' which has some relevance to the issue of free will. It has been found that.......
INSERT DESCRIPTION OF INCOMPUTABILITY
There have been speculations that incomputability may not be merely a mathematical curiosity, but that incomputable physical processes might exist as well. (See Komar, Pour-El etc.) Recently, Roger Penrose has written books with the speculation that quantum gravity may turn out to be such an incomputable physical process, and he has further speculated that this will provide a basis for free will. However, we can see that for the type of free will which is of interest to us here, incomputability in not sufficient.
Incomputability by itself is not sufficiently radical to support an inherent free will. Instead, one can see that free will must of course be based on an incomputable process, however incomputability alone guarantees only non-predictability, but is not sufficient to provide the freedom of a true inherently-free will. It is interesting nevertheless to see how novel ideas in mathematics stretch out conceptions of what is possible in the physical universe, and even if they are not sufficient to found on them a theory of free will, they do pave some of the stones along the path.
Inherently Free Will, Morality, Purpose and Meaning
If all brain processes are PDR human actions would be determined/random at the same level as the irruption of a volcano or the sting of a bee, and as the rising and setting of the sun. Because volcanoes do not have a choice as to how to act, we do not consider the volcano to have moral responsibility to prevent danger from its lave flows, nor do we describe it as evil if it causes death and destruction. We do not feel that the sun is good or bad, rather that its effects on us are sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful.
If human brain processes are PDR, humans have no choice in the decision as to which actions their brains will have the illusion that it is 'choosing' to do, and so neither the worst and most murderous dictators nor the best and most generous and religious saints are responsible for their actions, and therefore they cannot truly be described as 'evil' or 'holy'. In such circumstances, most people would feel that the concept 'moral responsibility' would lose most of its meaning. If humans are puppets of PDR, most people would agree that there is no true meaning to their lives, and if all follows from the big bang and the laws of nature, and from randomness, most would feel that there is no deep purpose to the existence of the universe.
However, even for a PDR universe a being can argue that if it feels it is morally responsible for its actions then it is so by definition. Whether this can be considered an objective definition or not is discussed in the next chapter. In any case, the type of moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which can be defined in a PDR universe is not the type which most people intuitively mean in our universe.
All this changes if there is true free will. Free will is radically other than all other interactions, and if humans possess free will, then a radical difference exists between the actions of man and that of the rest of the universe. If humans possess an 'inherently free' will they can decide on their activity and thoughts in a partially autonomous manner; using free will a human can free themselves from the deterministic/random universe and initiate activity (partially) independently of the prior state of the universe.
Even if all else operates in accordance with the ordinary laws of physics, free-willed decisions by definition do not. The brain processes involved in making decisions between moral alternatives of right and wrong are in this view unique and significant in that they are autonomous, and are perhaps the only non random/deterministic processes in the universe. In a universe with free will, human actions can be attributed to the perpetrator of the action, and not to the universe, nor to a creator. Therefore, in such a universe, it is not meaningless to claim that man may have a moral responsibility to choose the good over the evil. In a universe with free will, there is the potential for meaning and purpose.
The Creation and Eden Account
It is the creation of this type of universe and with this type of free will which is presented in Genesis.
To understand the creation and Eden accounts, one must understand the perspective from which they are presented - that of the creator of the universe. Thus, we must understand what relevance human free will would have to the issues of moral responsibility, meaning and purpose as considered from the perspective of the creator of a universe. We shall consider this idea in the next chapter.
Conclusion
If as postulated by science all physical systems including the brain operate according to the known laws of nature - quantum chaos, entropy increase and so on - then we are indeed conscious robots, with no control over our actions and thoughts, only the illusion of control. We may be satisfied with this illusion, and with the sense of moral responsibility, and of meaning and purpose, afforded us by this illusion, some may find it satisfying even if they realize that it is an illusion, and define free will as existing as long as they feel they are free.
There is after all no contradiction to natural law involved in a creature finding satisfaction in a known illusion - indeed if most people are in this category then one can see in this mass satisfaction with illusion the operation of a law of human psychology.
In the next chapter we shall investigate what subjective or objective criteria can be put forward in various scenarios for judging whether beings can have moral responsibility, whether their life can have meaning, whether a universe can have a purpose - and what type of free will would be necessary for such definitions to be valid.
Appendix 1: Quantum Field Theory and the Human Brain
Ten subjects answered an ad of a pschologist - the typical student-lure of "earn $20 by participating in a one hour experiment". They are milling about in the room while the psychologist peers at them through a one-way mirror. The experiment is meant to analyze 20 emotion-categories of interest. If each person will display only one emotion during that hour, then only 10 emotions maximum will be observed. In fat, it may be that some of the participants will have the same emotion and so only 8 or fewer of the 20 emotions will be on display. Scratch that experiment.
Clearly to study an ensemble (an aggregate) one needs at the very least as many participants as there are states. And since some may be duplicates, likely are, one needs perhaps twice the amount of participants as there are states. And if one wishes to study several examples of the same state in order to find patterns, then one need have many times the amount of participants as there are states.
Similarly in physics. Quantum physics can make statements only about aggregates of particles rather than individual particles, and the same for complicated systems of interacting particles; quantum physics can deal only with aggregates of systems of interacting particles rather than an individual system of interacting particles. Since quantum field theories can only consider large amounts of similar systems rather than individual systems, for there to be a quantum field theory of a specific type of system, there must exist large amount of such systems (an 'ensemble' of such systems).
What does 'large amounts' mean in this context? Imagine a system with ten million possible different states. Having two systems or one hundred such systems is not sufficient. For the ensemble to give an adequate representation, and be useful for the purposes of quantum field theory, there must be many more than ten million such systems. There must be enough systems in the ensemble so that one can assume that each possible state is represented a few times. That is, there must be many more systems in the aggregate of systems than there are states in each individual system.
A bunch of non-interacting entities, no matter how many, can be considered individually, and the theory of the bunch of them can be obtained as a simple result of the theory of an individual one. For example, a theory of a gas of particles can often deal with the component particles as non-interacting, and the result is that the system is very simply described, even if it has trillions upon trillions of component particles.
The brain is highly complex, however this is not because it has many neurons, but rather due to the fact that - as distinct from the case of an aggregate composed of non-interacting parts as in the case of the gas described above - the brain has very many interconnections between its component neurons.
It may be that a thought involves billions of interconnecting neurons, and that to form a scientific theory of thought, one has to study systems of billions of interconnected neurons. These interconnections can form in many different ways, giving rise to different brain states, each brain state corresponding to one particular configuration of interaction between the billions of interconnected neurons.
Some of the brain states will be essentially similar, but many of them will be significantly different from each other. There are possibly many trillions of different possible brain states or thoughts - or at least thoughts differing from each other in significant ways. Thus, one needs to study systems (of billions of interconnected neurons) which can have many trillions of different states. However, to study a system which has trillions of different states, one needs an ensemble of many trillions of systems.
According to physicist D. Christodoulou, since there are more brain states in one brain than there are brains in the world, no ensemble of brains can be used to construct a field theory of brain interactions. As a result, standard physical theory may prove inadequate to the task of ever formulating a scientific theory of brains and therefore of thoughts. Therefore, standard physical theories will never be proven to apply to the brain, and there will remain the logical possibility that there may exist phenomenon in the brain - such as free willed interactions - which exist nowhere else.
deleted from previous ch bec of ref to outsider. Should these be reimserted somewhere?
We do so by constructing different cosmic scenarios - universes with or without free will, with or without a creator - and seeing if our intuition can point up which types of universes would or would not have meaning and purpose to an 'insider' and to an 'outsider'.
there can be meaning to human life from an outsider's perspective, for example the perspective of the creator of the universe, especially one who has brought about the existence of the universe for some purpose.
We shall first analyze scenarios where humans play the part of 'outsider', and then adapt the discussions to the case where the humans are the subjects and the perspective is that of an 'outsider' to the physical universe, in particular the perspective of the creator of the universe.
What however would be the perspective of the creator on this charade? Would a PDR universe seem purposive to its creator, would human activity have meaning, would the creator consider humans to be morally responsible for their actions and thoughts?
What if humans in fact possess a free will in an otherwise PDR universe, how would this change matters?
Chapter 5:
Designer Universes, and Purposeful Existence
Albert Einstein:
"[T]he idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficient personal God....[has] decisive weaknesses...
[I]f 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"
Introduction
We have seen that without free will, there can be no intuitively unambiguous moral responsibility, meaning and purpose. We then saw that science seems to negate the possibility of the existence of a truly independent free will. Instead there is raised the possibility that we only feel that we have free will. Indeed, as a result of science's seeming 'nay', some - including perhaps Einstein - have defined free will in this way.
In spite of this, we will try to define a free will which is in consonance with our intuitive understanding of what a free will is.
It turns out that the particular type of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which we intend here is most easily illustrated by appeal to a particular model: assuming the existence of an entity 'outside' our universe and then finding what conditions have to be filled in order that humans have moral responsibility, and the universe have a purpose, from the perspective of this 'outsider'.
We will then claim that whether or not such an outsider exists, only the existence of these conditions give true meaning to these concepts, the meaning we intuit for them.
A second motivation for considering an outsider perspective is that we are concerned with the creation and Eden accounts, and of course the Bible in its traditional understanding presents itself as having been transmitted from a being "outside" the physical universe, and refers to the transmitting entity as the creator of the universe itself. Therefore when analyzing the issues of moral responsibility, the meaning of existence and the purpose of the universe as seen from the Biblical perspective, we must consider this "outsider's" perspective.
The Outsider's Perspective
What would an 'outsider' mean in our scenario? What would it mean in the Biblical context?
If by definition the word 'universe' includes all that physically exists, it is meaningless to speak of the existence of more than one universe, and therefore one could not meaningfully refer to a being inhabiting 'another' universe. Similarly, if 'universe' includes all, it would be meaningless to posit the existence of a being who inhabits a realm physically 'outside' of the universe. In addition even if 'universe' only includes our physical existence and there is a being who is 'outside' this universe, if it is truly an 'outsider' it could not interact with the universe and therefore could not perceive events within it, so that the term 'outsider's perspective' is self-contradictory.
One could of course speak intuitively of such an 'outsider perspective', but because of the inherent self-contradiction, there is no guarantee that the conclusions reached are not nonsense. Attempts can be made to define the 'outside' in mental or spiritual terms, however any being existing in a non-physical realm would perhaps be unable to interact with the beings in a physical realm.
The Biblical Perspective
From the Biblical perspective the creator does not exist in physical space, inside or 'outside' the universe, and so is an outsider with respect to the physical space-time of the universe, but is at the same time aware of all that occurs within the universe (and indeed intervenes in the occurrence of events within it).
Whatever the problems with defining 'an outsider's perspective', the Bible represents itself as being presented from such a perspective, and therefore to understand it as it was meant, it is best considered from within such a perspective. Whether or not such a perspective can be rigorously defined is not important in this context - what is relevant is to consider what might be the intent of the Biblical accounts. In our interpretation, the Bible is saying in effect "use your intuition to imagine the perspective of an outsider, and then look at the Bible as presented from such a perspective."
Designer Big Bangs
Perhaps we can develop some intuition regarding what would be the outsider perspective of a creator of our universe, by analyzing the outsider perspective of humans in a similar relational situation - that of a creator of a universe.
Some of the recent articles in professional physics journals have titles like 'can a universe be created in the lab?': future technologies are already being discussed which will produce sufficient energy concentrations to cause space-time to develop bumps which could break off to form other universe.
Humanity might yet one day find itself in the role of creator, designing big bangs, and might then find itself as the 'outsider' relative to this new universe. We can attempt to develop some intuition regarding the outsider perspective of the creator of our universe by speculating as to what would be the outsider perspective of humans relative to a universe they had created.
A Quantum-Determined Universe: The Human Outsider Perspective
To illustrate our conception of the concepts of free will meaning and purpose we will assume here a scenario in which humans with a super computer can arrange for the production of conditions such that a big bang emerges.
Given the design for the laboratory-induced big bang, all its possible future histories can be computed on the super-computer; however, choosing the history to appear would need to be decided randomly.
Essentially then, from the perspective of the humans forming the big bang once the design of the big bang is known all the possible future histories can be computed. The only unknown is which one of the possibilities will emerge. Instead of actually creating the big bang and allowing it to develop for billions of years, the same informational effect can be obtained by simply throwing a suitable die, saving all the bother of actually creating the big bang, and waiting about to see how it would develop to the end. Indeed one can consider the entire unfolding of the universe's history from a big bang to its final conclusion as completely equivalent to one individual throw of a die - as if 'Nature' had tossed a die and chosen its entire future history.
Effectively, once it is decided on what should be the design of the big bang, all is known except the outcome of the one die-toss. If humanity ever gets to this stage, where not only can universes be created, but all their potential outcomes be completely specified, then creating universes and watching their development would be no more interesting than rolling dice. It would be far more reasonable to roll dice for this purpose than to create a big bang and wait about for its inevitable though random development.
Free Will, Meaning and Purpose: A Creator's Perspective
One can imagine that quantumly determined universe can be designed to eventually produce conscious beings, all according to the natural law operating in that universe.
If such a universe were to be created, then from the creator's perspective there would be no greater meaning to the actions of conscious beings in that universe than to the motion of a stone or an atom, since all of these would simply be results of the same natural law.
We will consider here a scenario which is fundamentally different than that of the outsider scenario considered previously. Here we consider a creator who is not merely an outsider, and is not only the fashioner of the universe from preexistent laws of nature, but rather is the very source of the natural law and the initial conditions of the universe. In this scenario creation is a result of the creator's free willed decision to create, and the laws and initial conditions are chosen.
In such a case all actions of the created conscious beings and all other events in the universe follow from these created laws of nature and initial conditions, and are directly attributable to the creator rather than to the created entities. If there is a being which bears moral responsibility for the events in the universe, for the actions perpetrated by one being on another, it would be the creator, and not the beings themselves.
If the beings which inhabit a universe do not possess an 'inherently free' will, then all acts and thoughts in that universe derive solely from the creator's own initial act of creation of the universe and its laws of nature, and from the randomness of quantum events. Their unfolding may be predictable, or just random, and therefore of little interest to the creator.
That is, in a universe without free will, the actions of conscious beings are no more meaningful to the creator of the universe than the motions of a mote of dust and there is no inherent moral activity. For an omniscient creator who can predict all possible paths of universe development, watching the actual history unfold is informationally equivalent to rolling dice.
Free Will, Meaning and Purpose in a Quantumly Determined Universe:
The "Insider's Perspective"
Scenario: A being feels that its life is meaningful, but from the outsider perspective it is not in control of its destiny, and events proceed as they do according to the dictates of natural law and randomness, rather than as a result of free willed decisions. Despite living in a PDR universe as a conscious robot created by a deity the being has the illusion that it possesses a free will, and feels that its actions are meaningful, that it is morally responsible for its actions.
Ironically, although the deity has no particular purpose in creating this universe and for the existence and actions of this being, nevertheless the being believes deeply that its actions are contributing to the achievement of some purpose related to the moral choices of humanity or to a course of history affected by human freely willed choices. Is it true by definition that its life is in fact meaningful since it feels it to be so - or is it necessary that there be something else besides the feeling of meaning?
We might regard with pathos the feeling this being has of moral responsibility and meaningful existence, of a great purpose behind the pattern of event; from our outsider perspective in considering such a universe, we might feel that it was somehow deluded.
We would agree that although the events in that universe were automatic, they can seem meaningful to the beings within the universe, the "insiders". However since to hypothetical 'outside observers' their universe is not meaningful, perhaps the meaning of their universe is in some sense subjective rather than objective.
A Created Universe With Free Will : The Outsider's Perspective
Since a morally-relevant free will operates neither according to randomness nor according to deterministic law, it is not the same as the operation of a machine, nor equivalent to the toss of a die. Thus moral activity resulting from free willed choices cannot be predicted, and cannot be simulated, and therefore it has the potential to be inherently interesting.
That is, a universe which evolves beings possessing brains of a complexity such that they can support a phenomenon as unique as free-willed consciousness can have a history which is of interest even to the designer of the big bang from which the universe evolved, since the moral activity is autonomous, deriving from the moral beings themselves, rather than from the design of the big bang.
Only while the universe is a 'moral universe' with freedom of development - as opposed to a random/determined universe - is it likely to be of interest to a purposive creator. Therefore the development of the big bang from its initial state until the emergence of moral beings would be no more interesting than that of the big bangs which would not produce moral beings. The interesting action of a universe would begin with the first free-willed intelligent choice in it, and true history would begin then. Indeed, in a universe designed to produce moral beings, the prior events involving determined and random interactions of physical and biological systems would be irrelevant.
Moral Beings and Purposive Activity
Moral activity could begin only upon the emergence of the first true 'moral being' - a being possessing sufficient intelligence and foresight to understand the consequences of its actions, equipped with a moral sense to know the difference between good and evil actions, and endowed with the free will to choose between the two. Clearly also there can be no moral choice in a being lacking consciousness and self-consciousness.
With regards to our universe, inasmuch as is known to us, life exists here on earth, where as the eminent evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky writes, self awareness is quite possibly unique to human beings:
"Self-awareness is, then, one of the fundamental, possibly the most fundamental characteristic of the human species. This characteristic is an evolutionary novelty: the biological species from which humanity has descended had only rudiments of self-awareness, or perhaps lacked it altogether."
Self-awareness has seemingly arisen only in humans, and although not everyone might agree on definitions of intelligence, consciousness, morality, and so on, and on how much these may be present in a rudimentary form in 'the species from which humanity has descended', certainly no-one would consider any animal - even the highest ape - as morally responsible for its actions . No species other than man seems to posses the requisite combination of free will, intelligence, and analytic ability which can allow us to consider their actions as freely chosen, and thus the feeling that moral consciousness seems to have arisen only in the human species.
According to Darwin - in agreement with earlier writers:
"of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important."
The emergence of moral consciousness was a turning point in the evolutionary process itself and biologically speaking, due to it humans can be classified as a completely new phenomenon qualitatively different than any evolutionary forebears.
Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Meaning and Purpose
From our discussions it emerges that the type of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which is intuited by most people is of the type which would exist in a created universe with true free will. In this type of universe, these concepts have meaning not only from the insider perspective but from the outsider perspective as well. When we will refer throughout this book to free will, we will mean it to be of this type - irrespective of whether there does or does not actually exist any 'outsiders' to our universe.
The Creation and Eden Accounts
The type of moral responsibility meaning and purpose which is closest to the author's intuition - and perhaps closest to that intuited by most people - is exactly that which would exist if there was a creator, with these concepts defined according to this creator's outsider perspective. Thus the metaphysical scenario which is implied by what are for many of us the most basic human intuitive concepts actually conforms to the scenario presented in the Bible - namely the existence of a creator who designed the universe to fulfill some purpose.
We are therefore interested in the Biblical perspective on these concepts, and on how the form and content of the accounts reflect this perspective.
The Bible presents itself as having been communicated by a being 'outside' - in this case that of the creator of our universe - and for the creation and Eden accounts to be comprehended as they are presented in the context of the rest of the Bible, it is necessary to view them from this perspective.
We have seen that until the emergence of humans there was no moral activity on earth, no free willed choice. Therefore from the Biblical perspective of the creator of a purposive universe, until the emergence of free-willed conscious beings capable of moral choice there was no true purpose to the existence of the universe. Creation of a universe would not take place if moral beings would not be part of it, indeed creation is designed so as to produce moral beings. Therefore, from the Biblical perspective, the creation of the universe is directly related to the emergence within it of a moral being
This relationship between creation and the emergence of moral beings is reflected in the literary structure of the opening accounts in Genesis. The creation account describes the creation of the universe and the Eden account relates of the emergence of moral humanity: while from most perspectives these are two very different and not directly-related subjects, from the Biblical perspective as understood here these two accounts in the Bible are intimately related, and this interdependence can explain why the two accounts are juxtaposed.
In the Biblical perspective, the universe was designed specifically to produce moral beings, and this explains the preoccupation of Genesis with the moral activity of humans after the Eden account - for example with the stories of Noah, Abraham, Joseph and so on. The universe was created for a purpose, and events within it can have objective meaning because a non-random, non-deterministic element involving intelligent activity - free will - was injected into the universe.
The universal history of interest to the creator commences with the emergence of the first moral beings - the events referred to in the Eden account - and thus the beginning of Genesis serves as an introduction to the history of humanity, rather than as a history of the formation of the sun, or of the dinosaurs, or even of pre- moral humanity.
As to the creation account, the formation of galaxies or of atoms or mountains and of other beings, whether dinosaurs or apes or Neanderthalers, are not of relevance to the moral perspective. Only moral beings are relevant and therefore only they are of direct interest to the Biblical perspective, and therefore only they are of necessary inclusion in the Biblical creation and Eden accounts. These accounts describe in general the overall aspects of creation, the emergence of various species of fish, land animals, birds, the formation of the sun, moon and stars, as background to the most important event from the perspective of the creation account, the emergence of moral beings.
We are not chauvinists, and do not insist that we are the most significant entities in the cosmos (see discussion later in the book re alien civilizations, and Rambam's views on the significance of other intelligences), however from the perspective of the creation account directed towards humanity it is humanity which takes central stage. We are dust, star dust, but our potential for conscious moral activity makes us more significant - even from the outsider perspective - than all the stars in the universe.
Appendix I: Quantum Cosmology and The "Outsider's Perspective".
We are interested in the question of how a physical being who is in some sense 'outside' the physical universe we inhabit might consider the question of the purpose of our existence and of the universe as a whole. We will explore the limits of science and logic in this respect to obtain a feeling for what might be the perspective of a partial outsider, and when these reach their limits we will use intuition to develop this idea further to obtain an intuitive picture of a 'full outsider's' perspective.
To obtain the closest thing to an 'outsider's' perspective in science we turn to modern cosmology. This area of physics explores - among other topics - scenarios of non-interacting universes and superspaces of many universes, constructs which arise from some of the implications of quantum physics as applied to the laws of general relativity. It is not clear what it means that there is another universe outside our own. However, if indeed there is meaning to statements about 'other universes', then there may be meaning to statements regarding the meaning or purpose of our universe as seen from the perspective of a being 'outside' our universe.
We will here explore the concepts of meaning and purpose as seen by beings inside and outside some universe, and apply these insights to a consideration of the creation and Eden accounts as related from such an outsider perspective.
General Relativity and Space-Time Curvature
The theory of special relativity teaches that space and time are intermingled, as are matter and energy. Furthermore, the general theory of relativity shows that matter-energy causes space-time to 'bend'. Indeed, all that we observe as the operation of 'the law of gravity' is actually a manifestation of the curvature of space-time in the presence of matter-energy. For example, when we let go of an object it falls to the ground, and we say that this is due to the force of gravity. In actuality though, the motion is due to the curvature of space-time caused by the presence of the Earth, by its matter-energy.
Indeed, in considering the physical universe as a whole, all its matter-energy and all its space-time, there is a relationship between the overall curvature of space-time and the total universal content of matter-energy. If there is more than a certain density of matter-energy, the entire space-time of the universe can be so affected that it curves in on itself so tightly that it forms a ball - closing in on itself. In such a case, travelling in any direction eventually leads back to the starting point, and the universe becomes a finite entity even though it has no boundaries or ends.
This is vastly different than the similar-sounding statement that travelling on the earth in any direction brings one eventually back to one's starting point - the earth is curved, and it is evident to anyone who sees the horizon and understands its implication, or who is watching from space, that this is what would happen. However, there is no vantage point from which space-time could be seen to be a ball - we are all part of the universe, and could never go 'outside' of it to see that it is curved.
Cosmology
If one considers the entire matter-energy-space-time of the universe as a unit, the equations of general relativity show that the space-time is dynamic - that is, the size and curvature of space as a whole changes. From observation - together with extrapolations based on certain assumptions - it seems that the universe is expanding, and indeed the theory of general relativity predicts that this should be the case. If so, then long ago it was far smaller than it is now, and at some point the entire univere was the size of an electron, and even smaller.
Cosmology is the study of the entire universe as a system, and of how this system developped over time, and perhaps of its origin as well.
Quantum Cosmology
According to the laws of quantum physics, at the smallest scale of existence - for example that of the electrons and protons of which all atoms are composed - the ordinary concept of defining a location or a state of motion is meaningless. It is simply incorrect to say that a particular electron has a particular location and particular state of motion - or state of rest - at a particular time. Predictions based on calculations which assume that they do, will always turn out to be incorrect when compared to experimental results. Instead one must apply the quantum theory, which then provides exactly correct predictions.
An interesting application of quantum physics results when one considers the initial state of the universe, at the time of the big bang, when the universe was very small. At such a scale, the ordinary concepts of location and state of motion are inapplicable as quantum physics teaches, but also due to the fact that the system contains so much matter-energy - indeed it is the system containing all existent matter-energy - the considerations of general relativity theory are indispensable as well. Theories which apply quantum physics to the universe as a whole are called quantum cosmologies.
Although there is as yet no successful theory of quantum cosmology, many very interesting partial results have been obtained. For example, it is clear that the very concept of space-time must be revised when dealing with the universe in its initial stages, and space-time could have developed all sorts of strange bumps an holes in those stages. One of the possible implications of this is that the initially existent space-time split into various pieces - creating 'baby universes' - and perhaps these did the same. Thus, there may be some sense in which there are different separate universes, which are inaccessible to each other now, but which derive from a common source.
Possibly, these universes can be accessible to each other at some level beyond that of ordinary space-time, for example via the mental realm of thought or intuition, the level on which reside such mental concepts as meaning and purpose.
Appendix II: An Outsider's Perspective
It is not clear whether universes which separated from each other can ever interact, whether a being existent in one such universe can communicate with another in a different universe, or can even obtain information about the existence of any othr universe. If not, then the concept of 'other universe' is meaningless. However if physics implies that these are existent, then by definition there is information about these other universes, and the possibility arises that perhaps more information can also be available.
Perhaps there is a realm beyond that of space-time in which there can be communication, or knowledge of one another. In such a case one can speak of beings 'outside' a particular universe, and of their knowledge of 'other' universes. Indeed, cosmology today speaks of the possibility that there are other universes, and that some of these may have laws of physics which are different than those of our own universe.
For example, it may therefore be that although in our universe free willed phenomena are possible, they not be possible in other universes, and vice versa.
Objective and Subjective Perspectives
In considering such a universe, even though we are aware that from the perspective of the inhabitants of this universe there is indeed meaning and purpose to their existence, we might nevertheless feel that it would be rather empty of meaning and purpose.
On the other hand, the subjective can be objective in a sense: If one defines 'universe' as 'all that exists', then there can be no perspective from 'outside' the universe, since there is nothing other than the universe. As a result, it may be that the feeling of meaning and purpose of a being in a universe is actually an objective statement in the sense that no other perspective exists.
Nevertheless, there is some possibility of defining space-times which although they do interact, are so different that they are justifiably termed different universes. In such an instance it may be that one can define 'the perspective from outside the universe'. Furthermore, possibly statements from this 'outsider' perspective about the other universe can perhaps legitimately be considered as 'objective' when compared to statements made about a universe made from 'within' that universe.
This is especially the case when referring to the mental realm of thought and concept - the realm in which meaning and purpose arise - for this realm is beyond that of space-time-matter-energy, and therefore possibly provides for interconnections between universes which are distinct at the purely physical level.
In any case, as we stated previously, whether or not such a perspective can be rigorously defined is not important in this context. What is relevant is to consider what is our intuitive understanding of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose in this context, to compare this to the outsider's perspective, and to investigate what might be the intent of the Biblical accounts in this context.