[extropy-chat] The omniscience of God and the free will of Man

[Dirk Bruere]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "scerir" <scerir at libero.it>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The omniscience of God and the free will of Man


> From: "Anders Sandberg"
>
> > My personal view is that it is a red herring altogether to worry about
the
> > microphysics when discussing free will. Free will is something we
observe
> > on the macroscale as people make free choices, and even if all quantum
> > randomness came from a deterministic look-up table we would not see a
> > difference. Besides, indeterminacy is no real friend of freedom either.
>
> As far as I know the only possible connection between free will and micro-
> physics is via "entanglement", in the sense that, in principle, you can
> suppose something in the brain to be entangled with something outside,
> very far too. But Asher Peres made a very detailed analysis of all that
> (Foundations of Physics, many years ago - I can find the exact
> reference if somebody needs it) and showed the inconsistency of this
> issue.


The problem is that there is no place for free will in a deterministic
universe, and free will is also supposed to be more than flipping a quantum
coin for a bit of randomness.

IMO the only way free will can exist is if we have (at least some) conscious
apprehension of the future of the choice we make ie more than a simple
extrapolation - more an observation.

Things like Cramer's Transactional Interpretation are suggestive, but that
in turn implies (if such is used) that consciousness must be tied up to some
extent with a quantum computational structure.

Which brings us back to Hammeroff et al.

Dirk

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