The quantum domain prefigures life’s capacity for self-determination

CharcoalMosquito

Deterministic interpretations of the quantum domain render biological agency and human freedom a grand illusion. This essay defends a realist view where life’s self-determination is grounded in stochastic, non-Markovian processes. Genuine causality requires 1) spontaneous change, 2) a privileged present, and 3) historical contingency. By evolving over extended timescales, life recursively accumulates causal power to make a difference to how things unfold, leading to the concentrated causality of biological agency. This proposal restores explanatory power to science and yields testable predictions (structured noise, indivisible processes, non-Markovian quantum biology). Life’s ability to make a difference reflects the quantum-enabled capacity of the universe to make itself.

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EmeraldBeetle

CharcoalMosquito

Hi CM,

thank you for this essay presenting a realist view of life's agency and self-determination contrasting deterministic interpretations (DI) with a proposed self-determination (SD) framework. I think it's an innovative approach to reconciling agency with physical laws which encourages discussion at the intersection of quantum biology and philosophy ... which is my preferred place to be!

However, I do have a bit of a problem with the way you set up your definition of determinism in opposition to “self-determination”. For me, determinism just doesn’t imply the “illusion” of free will/self-determination, and in that sense I think your first sentence risks a straw man argument:

“If life is nothing but atoms obeying deterministic laws, then all the observable changes it produces, whether due to natural selection, biological agency, or human freedom, are only a grand illusion.”

That is, IF we assume a naive reductionism in which the quantum microphysical level exhausts explanation all the way to our macroscopic world, THEN it might look like SD must be an “illusion” and the argument against DI follows. But on compatibilist and interventionist accounts (e.g., Dennett or Pearl and Woodward), agency is an operational, higher-level causal notion fully compatible with deterministic microphysics (including Everettian). Microphysics sets the constraints within which we make choices, but what we actually track to make those self-determinations are emergent, human-scale regularities such as relations with others, empathy, reasons, norms, 'facts of life' and so on. You can, in principle, map macro patterns to micro details but replacing the former with the latter is not necessarily helpful in an explanatory sense, in fact it's usually quite the opposite. Dennett’s “real patterns” point is that macroscopic regularities are real when they support reliable prediction and control, and that’s precisely where macroscopic causality resides.

I also find Everett’s relative-state interpretation helpful here. The universal state \Psi evolves unitarily in a very high or possibly infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. Environmental decoherence effectively yields a branching tree of quasi-classical histories/worlds each with well-defined, branch-relative facts. After 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang – through the formation of our solar system, the evolution of life on Earth culminating in the planetary plague species Homo sapiens and on down to me this morning choosing which jacket to wear (it’s a bit chill but not too chilly!) – my decision will be one of a set of possible branch-relative outcomes. The universal correlation structure is unitary and “deterministic” but that doesn't erase the decoherent macroscopic branch-relative causal relations. Within any given decohered branch, interventions on my intentions and policies change downstream macroscopic outcomes (as in which jacket ends up on my body), and that is enough for agency to be causally real in the interventionist sense. From the first-person perspective, there is uncertainty about which branch I’ll be on, and different outcomes are realized across branches, but within each relative state observer branch there is a single, definite outcome where ordinary agentic causation holds. On the Everettian view all branch-relative outcomes occur, but for me-in-this-branch only one outcome is actual (I chose my North Face jacket).

From this compatibilist/interventionist view, microphysical determinism (including Everettian QM) does not entail that macroscopic agency is an illusion, due to the fact that agency lives at the level of stable, macro-scale 'intervention–outcome' relations. It's at this human-scale of our phenomenal world that we live, freely deliberate and act on our deliberations. So in this sense, you can keep your microphysical determinism cake and eat your macroscopic self-determination as well – because they are two different realms of explanation. Does this make sense?

Apologies for my philosophical pedantry, but I think if you explicitly engage with compatibilist causal emergence and then clarify what “real” means operationally at the macroscopic level, rather than making realism hinge on indeterminism vs a straw man determinism, then your core project linking agency to testable signatures and quantum/non-Markovian processes could just pretty much stand on its own.

EmeraldBeetle

Hi Lorraine Ford, can you give a clear, logically structured argument showing just how quantum microphysics – either via an indeterministic collapse postulate or deterministic universal wave function or any other QM interpretation you favour – prevents you from freely choosing which garments you wear when you get up in the morning?

This argument has nothing to do with 'consciousness' or a faith in a god or gods – just show us a bridge from the microphysics to macro-level agency. It should address environmental decoherence and 'coarse-graining' in the transition from the micro to macroscopic world, and also map the neurochemistry to your own cognitive and affective functions to do with reasoning, moral responsibility and everyday sense and meaning. If you can do that in any well reasoned sense you should definitely publish asap!

The problem here is that no one has been able to give a fully reductive account of how the deterministic physics determines everyday causality, which is what our erstwhile author CharcoalMosquito is investigating. This explanatory gap between talking about microphysical determinism and free will is a few centuries old now, and the emerging consensus (say of the last 40 years or so) is that the arch skeptic eliminativist physicalist Dan Dennett (RIP) actually has a decent explanation for the everyday fact that we freely make everyday choices every day.

Compatibilism isn't a denial of determinism! It just claims that in our macroscopic world the human organism has evolved the ability to navigate its world by way of reason and moral norms, within the constraints of that human world and its (in)deterministic quantum microphysical external reality.

Funnily enough, I think dogmatic physicalists have a lot in common with dogmatic theists where a dogmatic belief leads to aporia – in this case, the seemingly 'obvious' denial of ordinary everyday free will and human agency.

EmeraldBeetle

Hi Steve Dufourny, I'm not particularly interested in your apparently proprietary metaphysics to do with a 0D Spinozan eternal consciousness unless you can link it to specific arguments in the CharcoalMosquito essay in question. This is an essay competition thread and we're here to discuss how 'The quantum domain prefigures life’s capacity for self-determination'.

My query to the author was in regards to setting up a straw man argument vs determinism without addressing compatibilism. What's your take on the essay?

Ulla Mattfolk

CharcoalMosquito Deterministic interpretations of the quantum domain render biological agency and human freedom a grand illusion.

Why talk of deterministic interpretation in a question about quantumness of life? Is chaos theory better, more explainable?

EmeraldBeetle

Lorraine Ford Because you originally mentioned compatibilism, all I'm wanting to say is that compatibilism is a very badly argued fallacy.

Yes I understand that's what you're stating, but in what actual sense is Dennett's argument fallacious? Your argument appears to be that "free will" defined as "the necessary result of a logical situation" cannot exist "if one believes that the world can be fully represented by equations alone", which is apparently how you define a belief in determinism as being "the necessary result of an equation situation". I think your definitions are rather idiosyncratic and probably reflect a proprietary metaphysics that renders you incapable of actually engaging with Dennett's argument in any sense he might have understood.

Luckily, to symbolically represent a viable moving mathematical system requires both logical symbols, as well as symbols for equations, categories and numbers.

Yes, and for me that's just a very general statement of what empirical science is, it's not pure mathematics but rather maths logically applied to physical systems. The CharcoalMosquito essay also uses logical symbols to argue against determinism and for free will in an indeterministic world. What's your take on their argument?

EmeraldBeetle

Lorraine Ford I'd say the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals along with a subset of mathematical and logical symbols are sufficient to combine into "word and sentence symbols" in order to articulate one's own understanding of the term 'world'. My own articulation of 'world' in terms of 'How Quantum is Life?' is here.

And I will patiently await your interpretation of CharcoalMosquito essay once you've actually read it.

Lorraine Ford

EmeraldBeetle
Compatibilism is where wordy philosophical argument (i.e. spaghetti-argument) is used to convince people that something is in fact its opposite, e.g. that black is in fact white, or in this case, that deterministic outcomes can in fact be free will outcomes.

It is not surprising that many people are susceptible to this type of wordy nonsense, after all many people believe that there is a man who lives in the sky, and he is coming to raise them from the dead (after they die).

Steve Dufourny

EmeraldBeetle?
Hi,
It is indeed a complex philosophical puzzle concerning determinism and self determinism. It touches about philosophy, physics and informations. The philosophical approach implies a kind of description of the reality but we have deep limitations.
Can we epistemologically determine the causal structure and assert the informational level or choose the ontological level . It is mainly about the causalities and how the systems process information. The issue concerns the causality, how the levels act and if they are all under the same logics.
So the quantum level, the microlevel, the macrolevel .and the cosmological level , do we loose the determinism due to informational organization.

Deterninism may allow a kind of continuity of processes. How should we consider the consciousness and life and changes. How sould we rank the negentropy and entropy even, how should we consider the evolution, the free will and the encodings of informations and the adaptations.
The quantum interactions, , the living systems, the cognitive parameters are all under codes. But can we assert to know the mecanisms.
Lorraine warns that compatibilism can disguise conceptual opposites , it seems important about the free will, freedom as opposed to a kind of fatalism of the superdeterminism.

The informations, matters , energy, this evolution converge as aspects of our reality but the levels due to entropy and negentropy and the rankings of properties imply a relative determinism.
So both are important, the determinism like the free will,freedom but the true key may lie in the informational causality and the philosophical origin of the universe, the fundamental objects, the cause of the life and the consciousness.

Regards

CharcoalMosquito

EmeraldBeetle

Dear EB,

Many thanks for your thoughtful engagement with my essay. I've been trying to think of a more intuitive way with which to explain my disagreement with Dennett-style compatibilism.

First a point of clarification: I think Dennett's project is only about explaining why we have the experience of acting in accordance with our will; he is not aiming to explaining how we can, in fact, act in accordance with our will. This phenomenological distinction enables him to make effective use of an argument from ignorance: assuming that our access to reality is limited, and that hence we cannot experience all the factors determining our behavior, we can have the experience of freedom even if determinism were true. But notice that there could also be another reason why we have the experience of freedom, namely for exactly the reasons as they appear to us: our future is not yet completely pre-specified by factors outside of our control.

Now a more subtle clarification: I want to go a step further and argue that compatibilism is in fact incoherent, even if it only aims at the level of the phenomenology of appearances rather than making claims of ontology. Essentially, determinism means that everything that appears at any point in time is merely a projection of an initial state through some set of entailing laws. There is no room for intervention; intervention would just be another mere appearance contained in a larger deterministic system. In practice, this means that under determinism none of the macroscopic regularities can have any causal powers of their own. These regularities may be real patterns, in the sense that they pick out a subset of actual states, but again those states are only ephemeral transients horizontally projected across time via entailing laws from an initial state.

Accordingly, if determinism were true, we could not rationally rely on these real patterns to make predictions, given that they hold no intrinsic causal power. The patterns could vanish into thin air at any moment without violating any causal mechanism. However, we do not experience the world to be a transient, fragile, ephemeral shape-shifting kind of place. This puts pressure on determinism, which ultimately becomes a kind of superdeterminism in which all of macroscopic appearance must be explained in terms of an unbelievably improbable super-fine-tuned initial condition of the universe. Rather than supporting natural science, determinism ultimately undermines scientific explanation.

I therefore propose that we are justified in believing that macroscopic patterns do make a difference - they do precisely what they appear to do, namely to constrain an open-ended space of possibilities, such that robust and stable patterns arise and persist as a moment-to-moment achievement.

Thank you for your question and for giving me the opportunity to elaborate this important point. In the essay, I focused more on the scientifically testable consequences of genuine agency, but I fully agree that it is important to first properly set the stage by pinpointing where compatibilism runs into trouble.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
A logical situation, representable in terms of logical connectives (i.e. ANDs and ORs and IS TRUEs), can potentially be logically simplified, but a logical situation has no necessary IF-THEN outcome to the situation. So, any outcome of this situation is a free will outcome.

But a mathematical situation, representable by a mathematical equation, has the necessary outcome included at the other side of the equals sign. So, the outcome of this situation is a deterministic outcome.

Compatibilism is a fallacy, that seems to arise from another fallacy: the fallacy that a viable moving real-world mathematical system can be represented in terms of mathematical equations alone.

But in fact, both logical connectives and mathematical relationships are required to represent a viable moving real-world mathematical system.

Steve Dufourny

Lorraine Ford Hi Lorraine, I like your reasonings, I agree in general in adding physical structures, these 3d spheres.

It is relevant here to consider the relationships among logic, mathematics, causation, determinism, and free will.
I would also add the importance of the physical necessary structures that correlate with this 0D level of knowledge and information.

If situations imply truths through the logic being used, we can relate them logically,but that does not determine which outcome must actually occur. It depends on how the combinations and their consistencies exist in reality. If I understand correctly, this is not about prediction.
Truth and logical necessity are therefore different. That is why we need more than mathematical equations to describe concrete, viable systems. Relationships are one thing; truth is another. This distinction becomes relevant for understanding free will.

Logic itself does not imply a single outcome but allows several possible ones. That is where it differs from a mathematical equation, which includes only one necessary outcome.
However, we also need to consider the physical structures that integrate with both. This is where entropy, negentropy, and evolutionary processes become important for understanding consciousness and life.

A mathematical equation is deterministic and yields one necessary result; logic permits multiple possible results; and physical structures use both. Therefore, we need a hierarchy or ranking of informationfrom the 0D infinite and eternal consciousness, to the informational communications, and finally to the physical structures. This is why entropy and negentropy are essential concepts, and why the spherical volumes in the 3 main primary series (as I mentioned before) are so important.

So yes, Lorraine, the categories matter greatly. We must not confuse the mathematical equation with the logical structure, and I would add that we must also connect both with the physical structures.
Here, philosophy becomes essential, and we must move beyond the limited framework of general relativity as a “primary essence” to explore deeper possibilities regarding life and consciousness,especially involving 0D, but also dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM)superimposed onto these physical structures probably.

These physical structures are the key: they unite mathematical determinism with logical variability and reveal how entropy and negentropy govern the stability, change, and evolution of systems. The primary spherical volumes are therefore crucial, in my opinion.
Indeed, Lorraine, free will and determinism must be clearly understood, because we cannot make a category mistake. The world is not purely mathematical, nor purely logical it is primarily physical, integrating both within its structures.

Physical structures use logical connectives and mathematical relationships, and therefore they are not entirely deterministic,it depends on the category involved. We must combine all three,physical, logical, and mathematical, starting from the physical structure and the 0D as the primary essence. From there, the mathematical and logical systems emerge, explaining consciousness, free will, life, and determinism in terms of entropy, negentropy, and the proper ranking of categories.
Regards

EmeraldBeetle

Lorraine Ford you state:

Lorraine Ford Compatibilism is a fallacy, that seems to arise from another fallacy: the fallacy that a viable moving real-world mathematical system can be represented in terms of mathematical equations alone.

I think you're arguing FOR compatibilism here? In the sense that 'real world' systems (and human agency) can't be reduced to the mathematical formulae of quantum physics.

But in fact, both logical connectives and mathematical relationships are required to represent a viable moving real-world mathematical system.

Logical connectives to the 'real world' such as decoherence theory and compatibilist arguments for said human agency? But then you say Dennett's argument is fallacious ... in some reductivist sense?

Is this somewhat generalised formulation in relation to the essay's argument? I'm not sure what you're wanting to say.

Lorraine Ford

Steve Dufourny
Hi Steve,
There is the world, and there are our symbolic representations of the world: either in words and sentences (which are both just symbols), or with mathematical and/or logical symbols, including symbols for categories and numbers and relationships/ equations.

So, there is 1) the world, and 2) our symbolic representations of the world, mediated by our consciousness and agency.

The "physical structures", that you mention, are not separate aspects of the world, but are the parts that are symbolically represented.

Lorraine Ford

EmeraldBeetle
Hi EmeraldBeetle,

Please see my second comment, made an hour ago.

Steve Dufourny

EmeraldBeetle Hi,
I believe that dogmatic physicalists and dogmatic theists are too convinced in their own views. In my opinion, we must cultivate doubt and consider philosophical possibilities, trying to respect a kind of rationalism without asserting assumptions.

Dogmatic physicalists claim that everything is determined by physics and that there is no real free will. Dogmatic theists claim that everything is controlled by God. However, if we consider a possible infinite, eternal consciousness,in 0D,a God of Spinoza, as Einstein suggested,we open the possibility of having physical structures, logic, and mathematical equations, and therefore free will. This is a form of free will that neither dogmatic physicalists nor dogmatic theists seem to accept.

This is why Lorraine’s emphasis on categories and knowledge seems correct. The category mistake she highlights is important, and I agree with her reasoning. The God of Spinoza cannot be compared with the gods of religions or human inventions. Spinoza’s God is not a personal deity but rather Nature itself and its laws. Freedom and free will, in Spinoza’s philosophy, are simply parts of the natural order.

Comparing physical determinism to religious determinism may work as a metaphor, but it ignores the subtlety of Spinoza’s naturalistic God. Spinoza does not impose a will over humans; instead, he shows that understanding necessity leads to true freedom, which is very different from dogmatic religions.

Regards

Lorraine Ford

EmeraldBeetle
Because you originally mentioned compatibilism, all I'm wanting to say is that compatibilism is a very badly argued fallacy.

I defined what I meant by the words "free will" (it's the necessary result of a logical situation), and I defined what I meant by the word "determinism" (it's the necessary result of an equation situation).

Clearly, one can't conclude that free will exists if one believes that the world can be fully represented by equations alone.

Luckily, to symbolically represent a viable moving mathematical system requires both logical symbols, as well as symbols for equations, categories and numbers.

Steve Dufourny

Lorraine Ford
Yes, I see it this way too, when considering the physical structures and this 0D level as the primary essence. This is not easy, however, due to the philosophical limitations regarding the origin of the universe and the question of what it originates from. The fundamental physical structures themselves are also difficult to assert with certainty even if I think strongly these 3d spherical volumes are the key.This shape is different and permit all shapes with deformations and morphisms, the poincarre conjecture proved by perelman is relevant.

That is why I believe that Wheeler’s geometrodynamics, the points in 1D, or strings in 1D at the Planck scale, connected with 1D cosmic fields in general relativity, seem somewhat like a philosophical prison. Today, these ideas are always considered within the framework of geometrical algebras such as Lie, Clifford, and Hopf algebras, The thinkers forget to think beyond this GR. It is also philosophical the problem, they all think that light is the primary essence alone , theists or physicalists.

Steve Dufourny

EmeraldBeetle I am not interested to develop more with you to be frank,but I tell it with respect , having read your posts,you speak about physicalists and theists, and the dogmatism and after you don t want to discuss about these things, I don t find so your posts interesting for my evolution and reasonings, I beleive that you utilise beautiful words to impress or to show a kind of game of vanity, I am not here for this , I wish you that said all the best in the life and in your future incredible discussions on the essay contest, lets ignore each others it is better, for this essay you told, it is a good one ,but nothing of innovative or special, take care thinker,spherically yours and universally yours and altrusitically yours.

Lorraine Ford

I apologise for intruding on CharcoalMosquito's page. But compatibilism should never be mentioned, because it is just a load of badly argued nonsense.

Steve Dufourny

Lorraine Ford Yes me too I apologise for intruding but we can critic and develop ideas , it is the aim of the essay contest also, to discuss and develop about points of vue

CharcoalMosquito

Lorraine Ford

Thank you for trying to clarify why compatibilism is an incoherent position. I have now tried to spell out my own concerns with that position in more detail in my reply to EB above. Let me know if you agree with that exposition or if you think further clarification is needed.

Ulla Mattfolk

words are also symbolic. It is very important to remember. Von Neumann ignored this.

CharcoalMosquito

Ulla Mattfolk

Dear Ulla,

Thank you for your question. I agree that it the majority of researchers do not cast quantum phenomena in deterministic terms, but some prominent voices insist on the possibility of maintaining determinism even at the quantum scale. We have take these ideas seriously and to disarm them properly in order to make progress.

Appeals to chaos are somewhat tangential to this debate, as you can have both deterministic and indeterministic chaos. Nevertheless, I do see chaos playing a role in life: assuming that agency manifests as a source of intrinsic indeterminacy, such as small-scale irruptions into its physiological dynamics, then life's chaos provides it with a potential scaling mechanism: sensitivity to small differences in initial conditions could amplify irruptions to the scale of physiological regulation and organism-environment interaction.

Lorraine Ford

EmeraldBeetle
I haven't yet read the essay, though I hope to get round to reading it; apologies to CharcoalMosquito.

If we are talking about the world then we need to use symbols, including word and sentence symbols. But even at its most basic level, the world can't be described in terms of equation (and category and number) symbols alone. Because the world is a moving system, and a viable moving system also needs logical symbols in order to describe it. These logical symbols are not just human artefacts: these logical symbols represent a necessary aspect of the world.

So what set of symbols do you say are needed to represent the world?