A Quantum impact on the Free Will- Determinism debate (First part, incomplete version 1)

For four centuries prior to 20th, the Free Will-Determinism debate (FW-DD) was seemingly headed for a resolution on the side of Determinism. The primary impetus for this solution was the materialistic philosophies that derived from and were supported by physicists’ explanations of the world. This “Classical” view experienced a great upheaval in the beginning of the 20th century with the advent of Quantum Mechanics and Theories. The seemingly intrinsic indeterminacy of Quantum Mechanics has lead to a review, if not a toppling of power, in the FW-DD.

I propose to give a brief overview of the Classical Mechanics/Determinism dynamic, the main Quantum theories, their implications for FW-DD, and present a middle approach to viewing this problem.

The Classical Mechanics/Determinism dynamic has examples par exemplar in the relationship between Newtonian Mechanics and Laplacian Determinism. This relationship is best explained by the “Laplacian Daemon”:

An intelligence knowing at any given instant of time, all forces acting in nature, as well as the momentary positions of all things of which the universe consists, would be able to comprehend the motions of the largest bodies of the world and those of the smallest atoms in one single formula, provided it were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, both future and past would be present before its eyes.
(O’Murchu 2004, 26)

The Laplacian daemon by his ability to predict future states and extrapolate past states illustrates epistemological determinism, generally the best metaphysical explanation of which is metaphysical determinism. And with the extraordinary success of Newtonian Mechanics (a mathematically deterministic system) to predict the movement from the smallest terrestrial to the greatest celestial objects it was expected that the development of finer and finer mathematical formulae would end in the ability to show that epistemological determinism was the case. Leading to the Laplacian determinism supposition that the world is metaphysically determined.

If the world is metaphysical determinism and epistemological determinism then it seems that there can not be any free will in the common sense (senses of free will are discussed later). This is the case as in such a world one would have no other choice but to perform all actions in certain orders and ways; actions which epistemological determinism says can be predicted. This view is a boon to materialists, as they can show the world is best explained as causally closed, if the classical view is the case. No soul would be needed to explain human actions and mind/body cause/effect.

Two arguments against the classical view are the self-predictability problem and Chaos theory. MacKay argued that even if a Laplacian daemon existed, it could not tell someone about their future actions without affecting the person’s behaviour and future actions, thus the daemon could not inform the person if it wished to maintain predictability/epistemological determination. So the person still maintains the illusion of free will (Davies 1983, 136). Chaos theory suggests that infinitesimally small differences in the starting conditions of some classical mathematically deterministic systems could produce drastic variations in their outcomes. This leads some to question the epistemological deterministic element of the classical view. Both of these objections seem weak, and half-hearted. The illusion of free will is not free will, and a mathematically deterministic is still mathematically deterministic regardless of its outcomes.

So we are forced to accept the materialist’s soulless body and freedomless world. Or are we? In the 1920s a scientific revolution occurred, opening the doors once again to free will and dualism. Quantum Mechanics was started by Schrödinger and Heisenberg, and Quantum Theories began to be formed.