Do you ever wonder
what it might be like
to accept without breath
the no longer unknown?
What it might be like
to arrive at the end
and discover the world
where it was before,
where it always has been,
to know again
what we knew before,
what we always have known,
to be again
what we always were.
Before this interregnum
of seeming moment.
In 1974 philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, “What is it like to be a bat?”.[1] His question was meant to illustrate a point about consciousness, namely that a living thing is conscious only if there is something that it is like to be that living thing from the perspective of the thing itself. He said that humans cannot understand what it is like to be a bat because we can describe the bat externally, and we can imagine being a bat, but we can never describe the experience of a bat from the perspective of the bat. That is in large part what many philosophers call the “hard problem” of consciousness. In this view, consciousness is the subjective experience of “what it is like to be” something, whether a human or another living entity.[2] Consciousness requires a sense of self, something that creates a perspective on what it is like to be that particular thing. And that something—subjective experience—cannot be fully described from any external or objective perspective. Therefore, since humans cannot share the subjective experience of a bat, it is impossible to fully describe a bat’s consciousness.
Yet we have much in common with a bat. We are both carbon-based life forms that breathe air and consume organic material. We are both mammals. We both experience life and death as physical creatures seeking to survive, mate, and persist. More fundamentally, we are both composed of molecules, atoms, and smaller quantum particles or waves that emerge from quantum fields. Our momentary existence owes itself entirely to the ability of superpositioned quantum fields to generate discrete macroscopic events through a physical process known as quantum reduction. Humans, bats, and all the seemingly discrete things in the universe manifest temporarily as separate and distinct, but exist permanently as vibrations of infinitely connected and constantly interacting quantum fields. In other words, our objective physical existence is shared almost entirely with a bat. And the core of it is shared even with an electron.
We take pride, of course, in that sliver of identity that we consider distinctive. We relish being different, unique, or even superior to the rest of the universe. But is that veneer of difference the sole pillar of our consciousness? Should our understanding of consciousness be founded on subjective experience alone? Given the physical realities of existence and our profound connections to literally everything in the universe, is it realistic or even intellectually honest to suppose that consciousness is based solely on what separates us? Should we instead savor our temporary distinctiveness, without denying the reality that we are not truly separate, and the subjective experience we prize, our fragile sense of self, may be an illusion?
That is precisely what many of our most prominent philosophers and scientists believe. They disagree with Nagel that consciousness is ineffable and “hard”. They offer objective, physicalist explanations for our sense of self, explanations that directly link consciousness to the physical substrate from which we emerge. They argue that consciousness and self are illusions, useful illusions perhaps, but nonetheless illusions. All that really exists is what lies beneath the illusion—the objective physical substrate of existence. Our consciousness and sense of self equate to the completely physical biological factors that create brain states, perceptions, and ideas, i.e., neurons, neuronal networks, and all the neural behavior that has evolved in living things over millions of years of natural selection.
Yet despite disagreeing with Nagel about the ability to describe consciousness objectively, physicalists almost invariably accept subjective experience as a defining characteristic of consciousness. They assume that subjective experience, as illusory or delusional as it is, is an essential element of consciousness. So, if the subjective self is an illusion, then consciousness also is an illusion. Consciousness cannot be real or objective because it arises from a subjective illusion. The obvious corollary is that objective experience is not sufficient for consciousness. Natural selection operating on the physical substrate can give rise to the illusion of consciousness but cannot give rise to actual consciousness.
The conclusion that consciousness does not exist, however, both begs the question and is inconsistent with physical explanations for the evolution of consciousness. It relies on an assumption that subjective experience defines consciousness, but if consciousness equates to the physical and biological factors that create brain states, then those physical factors and brain states are consciousness. It is not the illusion of the subjective self that comprises consciousness, but the physical factors and processes engineered by natural selection.[3] Those natural processes drive organisms to become aware of their physical existence and the biological facts that inform that existence. Millions of years of evolution give organisms the empirical experience of self-awareness and self-directedness. A biological organism, therefore, has an objective experience of something like consciousness, whether or not it experiences the illusion of subjective self.
That natural objective experience of consciousness aligns well with the ideas of many religious philosophers.[4] We humans have a long history of understanding consciousness as something other than subjective experience alone. Religious philosophers often agree with physicalists that the subjective self is an illusion. They argue that reality lies beneath the subjective experience of thoughts and desires. But beneath the illusion they see more than the absence of self and the presence of physical factors creating brain states. They also see an awareness that is deeper than the self and subjective experience. They see what some call “pure consciousness”.
Both secular and religious philosophers talk about learning to live without the reification of subjective experience. They talk about life without illusion, the acceptance of who and what we are as physical beings. Is that the deeper experience described by religious philosophers? Is it a state of calm and acceptance in which random thoughts and desires are quieted in the brain? Or is it more? Does it encompass awareness not based on the subjective self, but on direct objective experience? Is that “pure consciousness”?
Natural selection has given even simple organisms an objective, physical experience of self-awareness and self-directedness, even without the illusion of a subjective self. Is it possible, therefore, to know what it is like to exist without subjective experience? Is human consciousness, which we attribute solely to subjective self, also based partly on objective, physical experience? Does our complex consciousness incorporate the rudimentary consciousness common to all forms of biological existence?
Perhaps more fundamentally, if the rudimentary experience of consciousness is shared by even the simplest organism, is it a biological version of something more essential still? At its most basic level, is the objective experience of consciousness simply the experience of being a physical thing?
We and all biological organisms are first and foremost physical things. We experience being a physical object every moment of our existence. It is what we are. It is all we ever are. If our consciousness incorporates the objective experience of consciousness shared by every organism, does it also incorporate the experience of being a physical object or mechanism? Does some part of us know what it is like to be a physical thing without subjective experience? Is it even possible for us not to know what it is like to be what we in fact are?
There are both secular and religious philosophers who believe that matter in its most basic form consists of consciousness. That even electrons, as part of the core fabric of existence, contain a germ of consciousness. Should we view a theory such as panpsychism as an acknowledgement and affirmation that we are physical beings? That our consciousness is the consciousness of physical things?
If what it is like to be a physical thing is objective consciousness, that experience would encompass being a collection atoms, cells, and neurons, whether or not they generate an illusion of subjective experience. It would encompass what it is like to be a mechanism or a robot, with or without subjective sentience. It would include what it is like to be a stone, a molecule, or an atom. It would encompass even what it is like to be an electron.
What if Thomas Nagel and so many others are wrong about subjective experience and consciousness? Perhaps consciousness is not unique to our subjective point of view but the experience of something physically universal. Maybe the pure consciousness lying beneath our subjective selves is the simple experience of what it is like to be.
[1] Nagel (1974).
[2] Nagel’s article assumes, without discussion, that only living things have subjective experience of “what it is like to be” something. From that perspective, there is nothing that “it is like to be” an electron, because an electron is not an organism and has no subjective experience of itself as a living thing. Other than animists, pantheists, and panpsychists, most philosophers and scientists today likely would agree that an electron, or any other non-living thing, does not have consciousness.
[3] What exactly has been happening over millions of years of natural selection, if not the evolution of some objective sense of consciousness with its basis in physical biological existence?
[4] Of course, many religious conclusions are dualist and supernatural in nature. But that is not the path that interests us here. And it is not the path taken by all our most prominent religious philosophers. See, e.g., the non-dualism of Advaita Vedanta.
In this blog we have theorized that consciousness and free agency connect to the fundamental process of quantum evolution. We also have theorized that quantum reduction, that phase of quantum evolution in which the microscopic quantum world meets the macroscopic classical world, is the physical process that creates macroscopic reality. If these things are true, what is the underlying meaning of quantum evolution? What is the function of that process in the mechanism of the universe?
As far as we know, the quantum and classical worlds represent two divergent realities, a connected microcosm of all things in superposition and a seemingly disconnected macrocosm of unique, localized events in spacetime. The divergent reality in which we live is the world of spacetime. Our world is linked to the microscopic quantum world through quantum reduction. It is through that process that the continuous wave function of the quantum world transforms into unique, discontinuous moments in spacetime, generating and regenerating a macro world that seems almost a holographic projection from quantum fields below.
The process that generates that projection is almost metaphysical in its materiality—involving infinite possibilities in microscopic superposition, weighted amplitudes determining probabilities, and random indeterminacy transforming probabilities into unique macroscopic events. The universe performs this recurring physical process through the evolution of the wave function—both the continuous evolution described by the Schrödinger equation and the discontinuous transformation of quantum reduction.
This process of quantum evolution is integral to the core engineering of the universe. It enables the universe to create its future constantly through random, indeterminate selection among infinite possibilities, subject only to the laws of deterministic probability. It is the mechanism that results in the two divergent planes that characterize the universe—the quantum plane in which anything is possible and the classical plane in which some things are more likely than others. Although an entirely mechanistic and physical process, it might best be described as what philosophers call a process of becoming.
That process of becoming is what makes our world. The universe is built on constant change and evolution through which macrocosmic events congeal and emerge from an ocean of quantum possibilities. Despite Einstein’s objections, the universe is engineered to “roll the dice” in its own probabilistic evolution. The function of quantum evolution in the mechanism of the universe may be to enable that probabilistic process of change and becoming.
In our own small corner of the universe consciousness and free agency may play a role in that probabilistic evolution. Consciousness may be a local instantiation of the universal process of resolving probabilities into outcomes. Free agency may be how we select indeterminate outcomes from possibilities shaped by deterministic probability. Both consciousness and free agency may contribute to the probabilistic evolution of the universe by enabling localized moments of choice in a universal process of becoming.
When physicists and philosophers talk about the universe, which they do a lot, they often talk about what is fundamental and what is not. What Is not fundamental is described as emergent, meaning that it emerges from what is fundamental. In the world of physics what is fundamental are the elementary particles and forces of which all other things are comprised. Everything else is emergent. That includes all combinations of fundamental things, starting with the atomic elements, the molecules, materials and substances, objects in space—planets, stars, and galaxies—and of course, all the organisms and entities that exist on objects in space, such as bacteria, plants, animals, and humans. All these things are described as systems created from components of fundamental particles and forces.
So far, so good.
The story gets more complicated when physicists and philosophers talk about causation and agency. There is a view among many that what is fundamental is more real than what is not. Emergent things are either not real or at least somewhat less real than what is fundamental. And even if admitted to be real, emergent things such as systems have less power—less causative power—than what is fundamental. Under this common view, all things and events in the universe result from the movements and interactions of fundamental particles and forces. The actions and interactions of emergent things and systems result from and are caused by fundamental particles and forces. Exclusively. Causation moves in only one direction, from what is fundamental to what is not. There is no reverse causation or feedback loop from emergent things to fundamental things.
Downward causation refers to the power of things that are not fundamental, i.e., all emergent things and systems, to exercise causation or agency. Such top-down causation is often described as supernatural and a violation of physical laws. Physicist Sean Carroll talks about focusing on one atom in a finger of his hand and predicting its behavior based on “the laws of nature and some specification of the conditions in its surroundings—the other atoms, the electric and magnetic fields, the force due to gravity, and so on.” Such a prediction does not require “understanding something about the bigger person-system.”[1] It goes without saying that the action of moving his hand is not relevant to predicting the motion of the atom.
Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder calls it a “common misunderstanding” that a computer algorithm written by a programmer controls electrons by switching transistors on and off or that a particle accelerator operated by a scientist causes the collision of two protons to produce a Higgs boson. In both cases it is the deeper fundamental physical composition, i.e., the neutrons, protons, and electrons, that explain the events; it is simply useful to describe the behaviors of the systems (the computer, the accelerator, the programmer, the scientist) in practical system-level terms.
[W]e find explanations for one level’s functions by going to a deeper level, not the other way around…. [A]ccording to the best current evidence, the world is reductionist: the behavior of large composite objects derives from the behavior of their constituents….[2]
These assertions are not entirely uncontroversial. First, there is no universal agreement that the behavior of higher-level things can always be explained by looking at lower-level things and the behavior of constituents.[3] Systems admittedly are combinations of fundamental things, but those combinations result in properties and behaviors that don’t occur at lower levels. Many of the properties relevant to the behavior of emergent systems don’t even exist at the level of fundamental particles and forces. Trying to explain all emergent system behavior by describing the behavior of fundamental particles is somewhat like trying to explain a computer game by describing the opening and closing of logic gates on integrated circuits.[4] You might learn what’s occurring in the computer hardware, but you wouldn’t be able to play the game.
There also seems to be an assumption that “explained by” is equivalent to “caused by”. If you can describe the properties and behavior of a system in terms of particles and forces, then the behavior of the system is caused by those particles and forces. The ability to describe a system in terms of fundamental particles and forces seems relatively established, i.e., when an arm moves, that movement also constitutes the movement of many billions of tiny particles under the influence of fundamental forces. That much is uncontroversial. But whether those particles and forces also can decide to move the arm does not follow quite so logically or incontrovertibly.
That last step requires another key assumption—that the behavior of systems is completely determined by the behavior of fundamental particles and forces. It requires a conclusion that “using the laws of physics to move my arm” is equivalent to “having my arm moved by the laws of physics.” In other words, it assumes complete determinism, which means the behavior of the universe can be analogized to a long chain of dominoes stretching back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, all falling in a deterministic pattern. Your arm, my arm, and any decision to raise any arm are all dominoes in that chain.
On the face of it, a long chain of dominoes seems a simplistic and brittle design architecture for 13.8 billion years of history. But putting aside the fragility of the design, there is a more fundamental problem with a picture of the universe based on a chain of dominoes—our deepest theory of physical reality says that what is fundamental is not wholly deterministic. Quantum evolution is not deterministic but probabilistic. It integrates uncertainty, probability and indeterminacy into what is fundamental. Determinism relies on an unbroken chain of events and causes. Quantum mechanics breaks the causative chain at a very deep level—the level of fundamental particles and forces.
The story does not end there, however. Because quantum indeterminacy does not run rampant through the macroscopic world. Nor does it not cause quantum mechanics to produce nonsensical, random, or chaotic results. No, in fact, despite breaking the causative chain of determinism, quantum mechanics produces extremely accurate predictions and is one of the most successful tools ever created by physics; it is the foundation of much of our advanced technology. Microscopic quantum indeterminacy simply does not result in ubiquitous macroscopic indeterminacy.
The reason is that the seemingly random indeterminacy of quantum state reduction, i.e., what we might call quantum jumps, occurs within the probability distribution of the quantum wave function. As a result many, many microscopic quantum jumps average out to produce aggregate results predicted by the wave function. The laws of probability cause those many, many trillions of tiny quantum interactions to produce a macroscopic world that looks like the world predicted by the wave function and by classical physics. The macrocosm does not look like the quantum world; it looks like Newton’s classical world.
So have we come full circle? Does quantum indeterminacy break the causative chain of determinism and then fail to affect the macroscopic world at all? Does it average out so completely that it becomes irrelevant to emergent systems?
We don’t know the full answer—yet. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that something as fundamental as quantum indeterminacy plays no role in the macroscopic world.
It is true that portions of the macroscopic world seem to act in a largely understandable way consistent with a more determinist view of physical behavior. And yet we know that if we drill down deep enough into the behavior of macroscopic systems, we will find beneath the surface both practical and theoretical uncertainty limiting what we can measure and know about quantum behavior.
We also know that there is a difference between predicting the probability of something happening and predicting what actually happens. There is a tension between those things, a dynamic that makes a difference, even in the emergent world. Probabilities are predicted distributions over many occurrences. In any one occurrence, the particular result is not predictable. So even if the broad-scale average behavior of emergent systems were predictable, the behavior of each system in each event is not. Nature presents us with an average, not an absolute, picture of the macroscopic world; classical physics works as an approximation of quantum physics only because of averages and scale.
Unpredictable variation, in fact, is a requirement for application of the laws of probability. Probability results in a meaningful representation of behavior only if there exists a large number of different events whose outcomes average into a distribution. That requires the occurrence of events which are not individually predictable. In other words, for the aggregate behavior of systems to converge on a meaningful probability, individual systems must have the ability to do something improbable. That must be true for any system whose actions are not predictable with 100% probability. Anything short of 100% requires that the system must on occasion do something less than 100% probable—something improbable or unlikely or even random.
That, of course, is exactly what many emergent systems do. From tumbling bacteria[5] to complex weather patterns to human beings, complex emergent systems on any given day do not conform to the average. Instead, they engage in deeply unpredictable behavior which fits a model of the universe based on probabilistic evolution, at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels.
Natural selection may teach biological systems to do exactly that. Neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell theorizes that complex biological systems take advantage of the chance introduced by quantum indeterminacy to exert causal influence.
[T]he really crucial point is that the introduction of chance undercuts necessity’s monopoly on causation. The low-level physical details and forces ae not causally comprehensive; they are not sufficient to determine how a system will evolve from state to state. This opens the door for higher-level features to have some causal influence in determining which way the physical system will evolve. This influence is exerted by establishing contextual constraints: in other words, the way the system is organized can also do some causal work. In the brain, that organization embodies knowledge, beliefs, goals, and motivations—our reasons for doing things. This means some things are driven neither by necessity nor by chance; instead, they are up to us.[6]
Emergent systems evolve a design architecture that leverages indeterminacy without breaking the laws of physics.
The universe is not deterministic, and as a consequence, the low-level laws of physics do not exhaustively encompass all types of causation. The laws themselves are not violated, of course—there’s nothing in the way living systems work that contravenes them nor any reason to think they need to be modified when atoms or molecules find themselves in a living organism. It’s just that they are not sufficient either to determine or explain the behavior of the system.[7]
In particular, he describes how organisms use indeterminacy, embodied in “an inherent unreliability and randomness in neural activity,”[8] to exercise causative power in an extraordinary way: “[O]rganisms can sometimes choose to do something random.”[9]
Is it possible that the universe can construct autonomous, self-governing, decision-making systems? Can fundamental particles and forces create causation engines that are constrained by the laws of physics and probability but not fully determined by the particles and forces that build them?
Philosopher of physics Jennan Ismael argues that determinism does not rule out the existence of autonomous systems “with robust capabilities for self-governance.”[10] Self-governing systems can have the “felt ability to act spontaneously in the world, to do what [they] choose in the here and now, by whim or fancy, free of any felt constraints.”[11] These emergent systems cannot violate the laws of physics, but they can use them to their own advantage. They can choose without any other local force or subsystem compelling them to do so; they even can engage in capricious or random behavior in defiance of any attempt to predict their actions.
The catch is that this relatively unconstrained freedom exists only for subsystems of the universe where local laws and states are subject to exogenous interventions and no other subsystem can exercise complete control. The big picture is still governed by the global laws of the universe, where there can be no exogenous interventions (because the universe includes everything). Determinism still rules, operating with global laws at the global level. But at the local level, there is freedom for self-governing systems to influence each other and exercise autonomy.
Ismael rejects the notion that quantum indeterminacy changes this picture. And yet her compatibilist description of reality, and her distinction between local freedom and global determinism, looks and feels almost like the universe described by Mitchell—a universe in which the door is open for systems to evolve causative power. Ismael describes the development of the self with autonomous and self-governing capabilities in a way that is very like how Mitchell describes the evolution of free agency through natural selection.[12] In the universe described by both Ismael and Mitchell, fundamental particles and forces enable the existence of emergent systems that exercise agency even to the point of choosing random behavior.
What if the picture Ismael offers is almost entirely correct, except that quantum indeterminacy and probability govern at the global level? Such a world would look and feel like the world she describes, but it would not assume a global principle of absolute determinism. It would be governed by probability at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. Instead of circumscribed local freedom, self-governing systems would have the relative free agency described by Mitchell, allowing and encouraging them to exercise causative power to do things for reasons and even to do unexpected things.
It is a truism that ideas can be powerful. Yet it is difficult to describe an idea in the language of fundamental particles and forces. The Pythagorean Theorem has influenced the history of mathematics, but what would the theorem look like represented only by fundamental particles and forces? Perhaps the brain of Pythagoras could be represented as a system constructed from fundamental things, but how exactly would particles and forces represent the mathematical concepts employed by Pythagoras—concepts which undoubtedly have exercised causal influence on other mathematicians, engineers, and scientists? The same question can be asked about the concepts of quantum mechanics. Fermions and bosons may behave quantum mechanically, but could they conceptualize quantum mechanics?
Unless we conclude that concepts have no causative influence—even the concepts of quantum mechanics—emergent systems must be able to exercise some causal power, including through the creation of ideas and concepts.
The inference seems inescapable that the universe and the fundamental particles and forces that comprise it can construct emergent systems with causal power—systems that can’t move the atoms of a finger by breaking the laws of physics, but can choose to move a hand.
Emergent, not dead.
[1] Carroll (2016), p. 109.
[2] Hossenfelder (2022), pp. 88-89. She does acknowledge that there are unanswered questions about the connections between the layers. “Why is it that the details from short distances do not matter over long distances? Why doesn’t the behavior of protons and neutrons inside atoms matter for the orbits of planets? How come what quarks and gluons do inside protons doesn’t affect the efficiency of drugs? Physicists have a name for this disconnect—the decoupling of scales—but no explanation. Maybe there isn’t one. The world has to be some way and not another, and so we will always be left with unanswered why questions. Or maybe this particular why question tells us we’re missing an overarching principle that connects the different layers.” Ibid., p. 89 (emphasis in original).
[3] See e.g., Anderson (1972), Ellis (2020).
[4] Analogy suggested by a passage in Ismael (2016), p. 217.
[5] Biologist Martin Heisenberg describes the ability of certain bacteria to initiate random tumbles in a search for food and a favorable environment. Heisenberg (2009).
[6] Mitchell (2023), pp. 163-164 (emphasis in original).
[7] Mitchell (2023), pp. 168-169.
[8] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).
[9] Mitchell (2023), p. 175.
[10] Ismael (2016), p. xi.
[11] Ismael (2016), p. 228.
[12] And also similar to the picture developed by Daniel Dennett. Mitchell (2023), p. 151. Dennett (2017).
“Einstein could not bring himself to believe that ‘God plays dice with the world,’ but perhaps we could reconcile him to the idea that ‘God lets the world run free’.” – John Conway & Simon Kochen, “The Free Will Theorem”[1]
Are fundamental particles the source of free will in the universe? More specifically, does the unpredictable quantum behavior of electrons and other micro particles enable macro-level free choice?
Philosophers have puzzled over questions like these since Democritus and Epicurus.[2] The free will theorem of mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen addresses the quantum version of the question, famously asserting that if humans have free will, then electrons also have free will.[3] The theorem proves mathematically that the universe cannot be deterministic because the quantum behavior of particles is not determined by the past history of the particles or the past history of the entire universe. Quantum behavior is non-deterministic, therefore “[n]ature itself is non-deterministic.”[4]
Physicists have long observed that particles behave in a curious and unpredictable way during quantum evolution. In the initial phase of evolution, particles and their wave functions evolve over time according to the Schrödinger equation, with predictions of particle behavior changing in an expected and deterministic way. In this phase the future direction and behavior of a particle and its wave function is determined by its prior direction and behavior. In a later phase of quantum evolution, however, when the predicted behavior of a particle is tested with a measurement, something different happens. Instead of behaving in a predicted and determined way, the wave function seems to collapse, and the particle jumps to a specific measured state which cannot be predicted with specificity.[5] Physicists cannot say why or how the specific result occurs in that instance. It is in the range of possible results predicted by the Schrödinger equation, but the mechanism by which the particular result is chosen remains unclear.
Theorists have attempted to explain this behavior by suggesting the existence of unknown or hidden factors which determine the result. The theories assume that the relevant variable simply has not been discovered yet, but its discovery will explain the particular path taken by the particle and its wave function to reach the particular result in each instance. These are called hidden-variable theories.
Conway and Kochen analyzed mathematically whether it is possible for hidden variables to determine the outcome of quantum reduction. Relying on non-controversial facts of quantum mechanics, they showed that if an experimenter is free to choose the experiment conducted on a particle, then it can be proven mathematically that the particle is “free” to choose the particular measurement result.[6] In other words, if the experimenter’s choice of how to conduct the experiment is not predetermined by an unknown factor, then it is impossible for the particle’s choice to be predetermined by an unknown factor.[7] The particle is as “free” as the experimenter, and the measurement result chosen by the particle can never be predicted by any preexisting event, variable, or information in the prior history of the universe.
The established view among many physicists and philosophers of science is “no”. Fundamental physics is said to offer only two choices—strict determinism or pure randomness—neither of which leaves any room for human judgment or free will.[8]
In contrast, Conway and Kochen argue that the choices made by electrons are not purely “random” or “stochastic” but are more accurately described as “free” or “semi-free”. They believe that a form of “free” choice built into the quantum foundation of the universe may offer a basis for human “free” choice and will.[9]
Quantum reduction does have some features not fully consistent with pure randomness. The seemingly “random” results of measurement are not arbitrary but fall within the range of possible results predicted by the Schrödinger equation. Over repeated measurements, the results also average out and approximate the results predicted by both the Schrödinger equation and deterministic principles of classical physics. Perhaps most significantly, particles in a state of superposition produce correlated measurement results. When one entangled particle is measured, with an unpredictable result, a measurement performed on a second twinned particle, entangled with the first, is correlated to the result of the first measurement and therefore more predictable. The twinned, entangled particles do not behave in a completely random way.[10]
Some believe that the alternative to determinism is randomness, and go on to say that “allowing randomness into the world does not really help in understanding free will.” However, this objection does not apply to the free responses of the particles that we have described. It may well be true that classically stochastic processes such as tossing a (true) coin do not help in explaining free will, but … randomness also does not explain the quantum mechanical effects described in our theorem. It is precisely the ‘semi-free’ nature of twinned particles, and more generally of entanglement, that shows that something very different from classical stochasticism is at play here.[11]
Conway and Kochen wrote as mathematicians, not neuroscientists, so offered no empirical evidence or theories to explain how the quantum behavior of particles might influence macroscopic entities such as ourselves.[12] But they had a strong belief that it was possible.[13]
Even if quantum behavior were random, is there reason to believe that random action at the quantum level gives rise to non-random evolution, or something like choice, at the macroscopic level?
We know that random variation in nature can result in non-random evolution. An obvious example is quantum reduction itself, which is governed by the laws of probability. Those laws cause seemingly random results to average out and produce the appearance and reality of non-random macroscopic evolution. Natural selection is also an obvious example; it is based on the principle that random changes and genetic variations drive non-random evolution of species over time.
A less obvious example is the role that randomness and indeterminacy may play in the evolution of reason-based decision-making and free agency. In his book Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell challenges the position that “indeterminacy or randomness doesn’t get you free will.”[14] He argues instead for a direct connection between indeterminacy and the development through natural selection of reasoned judgment and meaning.
The idea is not that some events are predetermined and others are random, with neither providing agential control. It’s that a pervasive degree of indefiniteness loosens the bonds of fate and creates some room for agents to decide which way things go. The low-level details of physical systems plus the equations governing the evolution of quantum fields do not completely determine the evolution of the whole system. They are not causally comprehensive: other factors—such as constraints imposed by the higher-order organization of the system—can play a causal role in settling how things go.
In living organisms, the higher-order organization reflects the cumulative effects of natural selection, imparting true functionality relative to the purpose of persisting…. The essential purposiveness of living things leads to a situation where meaning drives the mechanisms. Acting for a reason is what living systems are physically set up to do.[15]
Mitchell maintains that “indeterminacy at the lowest levels can indeed introduce indeterminacy at higher levels.”[16] If that is true, and indeterminacy is ubiquitous at both microscopic and macroscopic levels, the process of resolving that indeterminacy becomes a fundamental feature of physical existence.
For living systems, resolving indeterminacy means confronting uncertainty. Organisms, as a matter of biological necessity, must deal with a level of unreliability and randomness in the environment. It is built in. There is no escape from it.
With incomplete knowledge about expected occurrences in the environment, organisms learn to interpret events and predict what will happen in order to adapt behavior to threats or opportunities. Organisms that do this well tend to persist better than organisms that predict less well.
For organisms with neural systems such as ours, interpretation of events further leads to the imposition of meaning on the world in order to act and persist within it. The meaning given to events becomes important to survival, and acting in ways that are consistent with that meaning becomes crucial.[17] Creating meaning and acting for reasons helps us survive in an environment of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Natural selection therefore results in organic systems that specialize in interpretation and meaning and choice.
Living systems also learn to use randomness to their benefit. Mitchell describes how the neural structures of our brains have evolved to reflect and take advantage of the uncertainty around us.
There is an inherent unreliability and randomness in neural activity that is a feature in the system, not a bug. The noisiness of neural components is a crucial factor in enabling an organism to flexibly adapt to its changing environment—both on the fly and over time.[18]
The system succeeds, not just despite uncertainty and randomness, but also because of it.
[O]rganisms have developed numerous mechanisms to directly harness the underlying randomness in neural activity. It can be drawn on to resolve an impasse in decision making, to increase exploratory behavior, or to allow novel ideas to be considered when planning the next action. These phenomena illustrate the reality of noisy processes in the nervous system and highlight a surprising but very important fact: organisms can sometimes choose to do something random.[19]
The ability to harness randomness enables the creativity that characterizes brains like ours and enhances our ability to survive and grow and persist. Mitchell cites the two-stage model of free will proposed by William James as a model for how organisms use randomness and indeterminacy to broaden the options available for decision-making.[20] Ideas spring to mind in a seemingly, or actually, random way, but then the organism applies judgment and decision-making to choose the option that suits the requirements of the system in that moment.
In humans, we recognize this capacity as creativity—in this case, creative problem solving. When we are frustrated in achieving our current goals or when none of the conceived options presents an adequate solution to the current problem, we can broaden our search beyond the obvious to consider new ideas. These do not spring from nowhere but often arise as cognitive permutations: by combining knowledge in new ways, by drawing abstract analogies with previously encountered problems in different domains, or by recognizing and questioning current assumptions that may be limiting the options that occur to us. In this way, humans become truly creative agents, using the freedom conferred by the underlying neural indeterminacy to generate genuinely original thoughts and ideas, which we then scrutinize to find the ones that actually solve the problem. Creative thoughts can thus be seen as acts of free will, facilitated by chance but filtered by choice.[21]
Similar to how new biological variations appear randomly in nature, but then are selected or eliminated through natural selection, humans rely on inherent randomness for creative inspiration, while implementing the constraints and systems of meaning that determine how we persist and why.
This model thus powerfully breaks the bonds of determinism, incorporating true randomness into our cognitive processes while protecting the causal role of the agent itself in deciding what to do.[22]
Quantum evolution and natural selection have given us the ability to resolve the indeterminacy at the heart of the universe by confronting uncertainty and harnessing it to the service of creativity, decision-making, and meaning. That is our superpower.[23]
So if Mitchell is correct that quantum indeterminacy permeates the universe and enables the evolution of choice and free agency, are Conway and Kochen also correct? Are we like electrons in a truly fundamental way?
Electrons make something like free choices through the process of quantum reduction. In that process the universe around the electron undergoes a deep transformation. Before the process the electron exists in an unrecognizable quantum world of infinite superpositioned possibilities; after the process the electron becomes part of a recognizable reality of finite events and things. The process transforms possibilities into mathematical probabilities which resolve into one unique occurrence in spacetime. The electron therefore has a superpower, too—it can resolve probabilities into unique outcomes.
Our superpower is very much like that. We are made of fundamental particles like electrons and we are creatures like electrons. The universe we inhabit is constructed through the process of quantum reduction. Second by second, the quantum world of possibilities transforms itself into the concrete world of spacetime. Our world is fundamentally about uncertain possibilities and probabilities resolving into the certainty of actual events.
That ubiquitous uncertainty is reflected in the structure and operation of our brains. By making decisions amidst uncertainty, we participate in the universal process of transforming possibilities into unique, concrete events. Natural selection has taught us to use the randomness that is foundational to that process; we use it for creative inspiration and to generate options for decision-making. We sometimes make random choices—intentionally.
The ability to make random choices—just as an electron does—may be crucial to the ability to make non-random, reasoned choices. John Conway perhaps had this in mind when he said that the free will theorem also could be called the “free whim theorem”.[24] Without the freedom to make random choices, making reasoned choices through judgment and logic may amount to nothing but determinism. True free will necessitates freedom to choose, and the “free whim” of the electron may be exactly what gives us that freedom.
Electrons R us.
[1] Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 27.
[2] Democritus argued that all action in the universe is determined by the movements of atoms. Epicurus, one of his followers, theorized that atoms swerve periodically in a way that breaks the chain of deterministic causation and preserves a conceptual basis for human freedom of action.
[3] In a follow-up article Kochen broadened the proof to demonstrate that the free behavior of particles is not dependent on the free behavior of humans. Kochen (2022).
[4] Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.
[5] This unexplained behavior is called the “collapse of the wave function”, also quantum state vector reduction, quantum state reduction, or simply quantum reduction.
[6] “[O]ur assertion that ‘the particles make a free decision’ is merely a shorthand form of the more precise statement that ‘the Universe makes this free decision in the neighborhood of the particles’.” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 15.
[7] Conway and Kochen did not give credence to the proposition that experimenters are not free to choose their own experiments. “It is hard to take science seriously in a universe that in fact controls all the choices experimenters think they make. Nature could be in an insidious conspiracy to ‘confirm’ laws by denying us the freedom to make the tests that would refute them. Physical induction, the primary tool of science, disappears if we are denied access to random samples. It is also hard to take seriously the arguments of those who according to their own beliefs are deterministic automata!” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 24.
[8] See e.g., Hossenfelder (2022).
[9] “Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom [of particles] is the ultimate explanation of our own.” Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.
[10] “Although we find ourselves unable to give an operational definition of either ‘free’ or ‘random,’ we have managed to distinguish between them in our context, because free behavior can be twinned, while random behavior cannot (a remark that might also interest some philosophers of free will).” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 25.
[11] Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.
[12] “In the present state of knowledge, it is certainly beyond our capabilities to understand the connection between the free decisions of particles and humans, but the free will of neither of these is accounted for by mere randomness.” Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.
[13] “The world [the free will theorem] presents us with is a fascinating one, in which fundamental particles are continually making their own decisions. No theory can predict exactly what these particles will do in the future for the very good reason that they may not yet have decided what this will be! Most of their decisions, of course, will not greatly affect things — we can describe them as mere ineffectual flutterings, which on a large scale almost cancel each other out, and so can be ignored. The authors strongly believe, however, that there is a way our brains prevent some of this cancellation, so allowing us to integrate what remains and producing our own free will.” Conway and Kochen (2006), pp. 26-27.
[14] Mitchell (2023), p. 280.
[15] Mitchell (2023), pp. 280-281.
[16] Mitchell (2023), p. 159.
[17] “[T]he higher-order features that guide behavior revolve around purpose, function, and meaning. The patterns of neural activity in the brain have meaning that derives from past experience, is grounded by the interactions of the organism with its environment, and reflects the past causal influences of learning and natural selection. The physical structure of the nervous system captures those causal influences and embodies them as criteria to inform future action. What emerges is a structure that actively filters and selects patterns of neural activity based on higher-order functionalities and constraints. The conclusion—the correct way to think of the brain (or, perhaps better, the whole organism) is as a cognitive system, with an architecture that functionally operates on representations of things like beliefs, desires, goals, and intentions.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 194-195.
[18] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).
[19] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).
[20] Mitchell (2023), pp. 187-192, citing Doyle (2010).
[21] Mitchell (2023), p. 191 (emphasis in original).
[22] Mitchell (2023), p. 188.
[23] “This capacity to generate and then select among truly novel actions is clearly highly adaptive in a world that refuses to remain 100 percent predictable.” Mitchell (2023), p. 191.
[24] As reported by Jasvir Nagra in notes on a talk given by Conway in 2004. “He said he did not really care what people chose to call it. Some people choose to call it ‘free will’ only when there is some judgment involved. He said he felt that ‘free will’ was freer if it was unhampered by judgment—that it was almost a whim. ‘If you don’t like the term Free Will, call it Free Whim—this is the Free Whim Theorem.’” Nagra (2020).
To take the measured
pulse of universe and know
it is me -- is light.
Who are we really? Are we active agents making decisions and choices? Or are we passive observers of our actions with decisions made for us by autonomic or deterministic processes that allow us no real capacity for conscious decision?
Some contend that we are exactly those passive observers. Free will skeptics argue that forces far outside our control determine our actions and identities. The physical traits and capabilities that define us as humans do not originate with us as individuals, but with our ancestors long before we were born. They acquired those traits through natural selection in a process that played out over millennia, determining how our brains work and how we make decisions. The language that shapes how we think was invented 200,000 years ago and taught to us by prior generations. We are born into families, cultures, and civilizations—all of which define us before we take our first breath. Geography, climate, and environment give us certain opportunities, but deny us others. All these forces and events are themselves constrained by the movements of molecular and atomic and subatomic particles and fields that specify the range of possibilities available to every entity in the universe. In truth, there is much to support the view that we have little or no control over our actions, that free will and self-control are useful illusions.
The proof often cited to support this view is the data generated by neuroscientists such as Benjamin Libet.[1] Libet conducted a series of famous experiments in which he took EEG readings of subjects asked to make random hand movements and record the time of their conscious decision to make each movement. The EEG readings showed a build-up of brain activity beginning before the subject was aware of the conscious decision to move. On average the readings showed electrical activity as much as half a second before the conscious decision, a build-up described as the “Readiness Potential”. Libet and others pointed to the onset of the Readiness Potential as the moment when the brain makes the decision to act, in this case by flicking a hand.
The experiments have been interpreted as showing a measurable delay between the beginning of the chosen action (assumed to be the onset of the Readiness Potential) and the conscious decision to take the action. In other words, the action seems initiated by a process other than the conscious decision itself. Apparently, our actions are determined by a physical process other than conscious decision-making. Conscious awareness seems to record the process after the fact, not initiate the process.
Free will skeptics cite these experiments as evidence that we do not have the agency we imagine we do. Our conscious decisions do not cause actions. We are instead passive observers of decisions driven by processes over which we have no control.[2]
The Libet findings and their progeny have been much discussed and debated over the decades since. The “delay” has become almost an accepted phenomenon in scientific and popular circles.
That broadly accepted view, however, is apparently wrong. The findings have been brought into doubt, even debunked,[3] by more recent neuroscientific research. They appear now to be artifacts of Libet’s analytical model rather than objective evidence of decision-making processes in the brain.[4] Contrary to the popular view, the “delay” data does not negate free will nor prove that conscious decision-making occurs after the fact.[5] New research interprets the data quite differently and offers a more robust explanation of the processes that govern decision-making in the brain.
Libet acknowledged that his findings do not apply to actions involving conscious deliberation,[6] the most common type of decision-making associated with free will or conscious awareness. His experiments focus on spontaneous decisions that are consequence-free for all practical purposes. Subjects are asked to flick a hand at a random time chosen by them on a whim without prior planning and without meaning attached to the movement. The experiments examine what occurs in the brain just prior to a movement made in the spur of the moment without deliberation.
Humans and other organisms make many kinds of decisions. There are decisions with grave consequences. There are decisions with almost no consequences, such as random choices about immaterial things. And there are decisions with many degrees of consequence in between. The choice to make a random, consequence-free hand movement is close to one extreme, almost an autonomic action relying on reflexive muscle movement more than thought or planning. The brain process for making such hand movements may be very different from the process for making decisions with consequences, which may require consideration over a period of time. For example, a decision to migrate from one region to another in search of food. Or a decision to take revenge on a murderous uncle, so elaborately over-thought that an entire dramatic production may be built around one lonely prince’s lengthy process of decision-making.[7]
Consequently, even if the “delay” were objective evidence of unconscious decision-making, it would be impossible to extrapolate from the data to a general model of decision-making for humans or other organisms.
The brain is a living soup of electrical and chemical activity, with neurons firing constantly as they receive and respond to bits of information feeding into many parallel decision processes. The continual firing of neurons causes our brains to pulsate with electrical waves, which may help produce the state of watchfulness and preparation for action that the brain is designed to achieve.[8] Organisms must be ready to respond immediately to a threat or opportunity in the environment. Recurrent electrical waves with repeated peaks and troughs allow the organism to rely on the natural build-up of energy as a rapidly recurring launching point for action, helping the organism move faster in response to stimulus.[9]
Not every stimulus requires an immediate response, however, nor does every electrical wave result in action. Most electrical activity in the brain does not trigger awareness or response at all. The waves dissipate because they do not accumulate enough information or intensity to cross a threshold for action.[10] It is the waves that reach a certain point, perhaps in conjunction with waves or firings from multiple sources in the brain, that surpass a minimum threshold of attention and result in action. The brain decides to act, and the action starts to occur, when the threshold is crossed. Prior to that point, the wave is simply one of many recurring bursts of electrical activity that happen constantly without resulting in action.
Libet’s experiments by design focus only on electrical waves that precede spontaneous action. They measure the wave from onset to action, including the point prior to action when the subject becomes aware of an intent to act. The experimenters assume that the entire wave from trough to peak involves preparation for the spontaneous action and that the onset of the wave is when the brain decides to act. They overlook the possibility that what is identified as the Readiness Potential is not preparation for a specific action, but a general state of readiness which may or may not result in action. The action occurs in the experiments because they look only at waves that precede a spontaneous decision to act.
In fact, waves similar to the Readiness Potential can precede even actions that are not spontaneous, but prompted by the experimenter.[11] When subjects in Libet-style experiments are interrupted with a random click that cues them to initiate a hand movement immediately, faster responses tend to occur in conjunction with electrical waves similar to a Readiness Potential, even when the electrical wave began before the click cued the subject to act.[12] In other words, the movement by the subject, which could not have begun prior to the click, seemingly takes advantage of a pre-existing wave, as though hitching a ride to respond faster to the cue.
The same piggybacking may occur in the Libet experiments. A random hand movement may be just the sort of action to rely naturally on a recurring build-up of electrical activity in the brain. Asked to perform a voluntary movement with no particular reason to choose one time or another, the subject may rely on ongoing fluctuations in brain waves as a cue, in effect allowing the electrical waves to guide the choice of when to make the movement.[13] The result is that the movement happens near a natural peak of brain activity. It then appears to the experimenter as though the decision to move occurred at the trough of the wave rather than when the subject decided to act.
What ultimately causes action is whatever results in the wave increasing in intensity until it passes the threshold for action. That does not happen at the onset of the wave. It is more likely that the threshold is crossed when the conscious decision to take an action is made.[14] That may be exactly what pushes the wave over the threshold and results in action.[15] In other words, there may be no “delay” at all, because the time when the subject becomes aware of the intention to move may correspond with the time when the threshold for action is crossed.[16]
The Libet experiments make the classic mistake of building unchallenged assumptions into the structure of the analysis. The observed “delay” is likely a result of the assumptions underlying the experiment and an artifact of the data analysis, not something that occurs in the brain itself.
The concept of the “delay” is also founded on historical assumptions about the separation of “mind” and “body” that do not reflect biological processes of decision-making in the brain.
The experimenters assume a single point in time when decisions occur in the brain. They interpret the data as showing that the single point is not when we thought it was—at the time the subject becomes aware of an intention to act. Instead, they argue that the decision point is earlier—at the onset of the electrical wave which they identify as the Readiness Potential. The “delay” is then measured as the difference between the two points—the time between the unconscious decision and the later conscious awareness of the decision.
The assumption of a single decision point echoes the Cartesian notion of a central control room where “mind” resides and where decisions are made that control the “body”.[17] We imagine ourselves as having a center of consciousness in our brains where all decision-making occurs. The control room takes in data gathered by the senses, interprets the data, and makes decisions about how to respond. Libet-style experimenters accept this underlying notion that decisions occur instantaneously in the brain. They simply dispute that conscious awareness is where the decision occurs. Instead, they move the decision forward and calculate the “delay” between that presumed decision point and the point of conscious awareness.
Free will skeptics go further and argue that because awareness is “after the fact”, consciousness does not control decisions and free will is an illusion. They assume that a conscious and free human decision can be made only at an instantaneous time and place in something like a center of conscious awareness, the imaginary central control room.[18] If the decision or any part of the decision is made elsewhere, or made unconsciously or as an autonomic response of the body and brain, then the decision is not an act of free will. It is not controlled by “us” because “we” sit only in the central control room.
The straw man premise underlying the “delay”—and the free will arguments relying on it—is the magical central control room of mind-body dualism.[19] In fact, we know that humans and other organisms do not make decisions in that way.[20]
Decisions are iterative processes.[21] They do not happen instantaneously in one single place inside the brain. Some decision processes are fast, resulting in action within milliseconds. Some decision processes are slow, extending over a great many cycles of electrical activity.
Sensory information comes into different areas of the brain that process sight, sound, smell, touch, etc. Neurons fire in multiple areas. More information comes in. More neurons fire and signal other parts of the brain. Waves of electrical and chemical activity build and die out. Sometimes waves cross thresholds for action. More neurons fire.
All of this activity takes time. Time for information to flow around the brain. Time for information to be processed. Time for neurons to fire and communicate with other neurons. Time for thresholds of decision to be crossed and time for signals to travel to cells to trigger movement.[22]
Every one of these decision processes involves some autonomic or unconscious activity. Some processes are entirely unconscious. Some are partially autonomic or rely on a combination of autonomic and conscious processes. Some are deliberative and highly conscious. But even very deliberative decisions rely on biological and sensory processes that happen beneath the surface of our awareness.[23]
Our cells and neurons, our tissues, our organs are what we are, but we have no ordinary conscious control over what they do.[24] The role of conscious awareness is not to manage autonomic or unconscious processes in the body, but to glean meaning from incoming information, to deliberate, to interpret external or internal events in ways that require conscious consideration.[25] When pre-programmed unconscious decision-making is insufficient to address a threat or an opportunity, that is when information comes to conscious awareness.
Free will skeptics therefore are correct that conscious awareness does not drive all aspects of our decision processes. They are also correct that much of what we are as humans has been influenced or determined by forces and events far outside our individual control. We have neither total awareness nor total control.
But it does not follow logically that all our actions are autonomic and outside conscious control. We do not have zero control.[26]
Like other organisms, we exist in a state of uncertainty. Our knowledge of the external environment is filtered by sensory processes that have evolved through natural selection, but are imperfect. Conscious awareness of our own internal processes is limited. The “self” that we rely on for day-to-day survival is sometimes nebulous and even more uncertain than the external world. In fact, if Sam Harris and many spiritual mystics are correct, the entire concept of “self” is something of an illusion.[27]
We are not built for complete awareness of ourselves or our environment; we are built for uncertainty. Our senses and our conscious awareness have been tuned at a rudimentary level to distinguish between “us” and “not us”.[28] We use that limited knowledge of “self” to make decisions that have guided the development of our species over millennia. We take in sensory data, process it, and respond to the best of our capacities as organisms evolved to decide and act.
Both internally and externally our knowledge, our capacity, and our behavior are constrained. Yet those constraints make us who we are. They make us human instead of not human. They guide our behavior. As neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell has put it, “Selfhood … entails constraint. It is only constraint. The freedom to be you involves constraining the elements that make you up from becoming not you.”[29]
Despite every constraint and every uncertainty, we are designed by natural selection to be decision-making machines. That is who we really are.
[1] Libet (1983).
[2] Harris (2012), pp. 8-9.
[3] Gholipour (2019).
[4] “The RP [Readiness Potential] is generated by sampling only epochs that culminate in movement. In Libet-like tasks we never observe what happens when movement is not triggered. This raises the possibility that the RP is due to biased sampling, an artifact of the analysis process.” Schurger (2021), p. 562. “[T]he readiness potential is not in fact a signal of the intention to move that occurs long before subjective awareness but rather is an artifact of the way the data are analyzed.” Mitchell (2023), p. 185.
[5] Neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell describes the Libet experiments as “one of the most widely misinterpreted set of findings in human neuroscience….” “[T]he implications of these findings have since been widely extrapolated, way beyond the bounds of the actual experiment, to suggest that we never really make decisions at all, that our brains just do the deciding for us, and that we later make up stories to ourselves to rationalize our actions in some kind of post-hoc narrative. Indeed, these experiments are often cited as conclusive evidence that neuroscience has shown free will to be an illusion. This is, to put it mildly, a drastic overinterpretation.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 181, 183.
[6] “In those voluntary actions that are not ‘spontaneous’ and quickly performed, that is, in those in which conscious deliberation (of whether to act or of what alternative choice of action to take) precedes the act, the possibilities for conscious initiation and control would not be excluded by the present evidence.” Libet (1983), p. 641.
[7] Imagine the unconscious “readiness potential” that might appear in EEG readings of Hamlet’s brain over the course of his many days of doubt and indecision.
[8] See Mitchell (2023), Dennett (2003), and Dennett (1991) for general descriptions of brain behavior evolved through natural selection.
[9] Imagine a tiger crouching in the jungle, body and brain alert, muscles contracted and ready to respond to any sign of opportunity or threat, before it finally accumulates enough sensory information to cause it to spring, or alternatively, to relax its guard and move away.
[10] “[]he signal clearly fluctuates noisily up and down all the time. Sometimes it goes back down again, and the person does not move; other times it happens to reach a threshold, and then a movement is initiated.” Mitchell (2023), p. 184.
[11] “Indeed, simulations show that when the model is interrupted at random times and forced to produce a speeded response …, the fastest responses are preceded by a slow amplitude deflection (in the direction of the threshold) that long precedes the interruption itself, whereas the slower responses are not. Hence, even sensory-cued responses can be preceded by a readiness potential.” Schurger (2012), p. 2.
[12] “Presumably the increased (negative) electrical potential preceding faster responses cannot reflect preparatory neural activity, because the clicks [cues] were unpredictable.” Schurger (2012), p. 4.
[13] Mitchell (2023), p. 184.
[14] To return to the tiger analogy, the leap does not begin from the moment when the tiger’s muscles tense for action. Muscle contraction may occur over and over again before the leap. The leap occurs when the tiger has enough information to determine the time is ripe for the attack. That is when the tiger decides to move.
[15] “Indeed, if the decision to move is marked by the time of threshold crossing, then awareness of conscious intention to move coincides with the decision point, as common sense would suggest.” Schurger (2021), p. 566 (emphasis in original).
[16] “We propose that the neural decision to move coincides in time with average subjective estimates of the time of awareness of intention to move… and that the brain produces a reasonably accurate estimate of the time of its movement-causing decision events.” Schurger (2012), p. 7.
[17] See Dennett (2003), pp. 227-242.
[18] Dennett (2003), p. 242. “[T]here no such place in the brain. As I never tire of pointing out, all the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater has to be broken up and distributed in space and time in the brain.” Dennett (2003), p. 237-238 (emphasis in original). (The “imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theatre” is, of course, the magical central control room.)
[19] Dennett, after reading the 2019 article in the The Atlantic titled “A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked”, tweeted “The Libet results on free will and their many descendants are crumbling now, and there is more to come. A nice case of science exposing hidden dualist assumptions in neuroscience.” Tweet dated September 12, 2019, https://x.com/danieldennett/status/1172159910286680064.
[20] “In reality, mind and brain cannot be separated like this. A more accurate conception of the mind is as an interlocking system of cognitive activities that are necessarily mediated by the functions of the brain. In humans, some of these cognitive activities are associated with conscious mental experience, but they don’t all have to be to be effective.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 208-209.
[21] See Dennett (1991), pp. 134-135, for a description of what he calls a “multiple drafts” model of brain processing.
[22] “The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes.” Dennett (2003), p. 238.
[23] “We don’t experience the firing of our neurons or the flux of ions or the release and detection of neurotransmitters. What we do experience is what patterns of neural activity mean, at the level that is most relevant and useful and actionable for the organism as a whole.” Mitchell (2023), p. 209 (emphasis in original).
[24] And as Daniel Dennett reminded us, they are not even aware of our existence. “Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.” Dennett (2003), p. 2.
[25] “We do not need or want complete information for optimal oversight: what we want is the right information, at the right level. The key to control is precisely the selectivity of conscious awareness. We are configured so that most of our cognitive processes operate subconsciously, with only certain types of information bubbling up to consciousness on a need-to-know basis.” Mitchell (2023), p. 262.
[26] “Even if we can sometimes be primed by external factors, this does not mean that we never make our own conscious decisions for our own reasons.” Mitchell (2023), p. 251.
[27] Harris (2014).
[28] Mitchell (2023), p. 75.
[29] Mitchell (2023), pp. 247, 279 (emphasis in original).
Physicists talk about conservation of information. It is a fundamental law of classical physics—information cannot be lost or destroyed. Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind calls it the zero-minus law because it comes before all other laws—before the first laws and even before the zeroth laws.[1]
It means that each moment in time includes information about the state of the universe in that moment and every moment leading up to that moment. The location and momentum of every microscopic particle in a system, together with the forces and fields interacting with those particles, comprise the complete specification of the system in that moment. From that complete information, it is possible to determine exactly the state of the system in the immediately prior moment. And with that information comes the information about the state of the system prior to that. The entire prior history of a system, including the universe, is time reversible from the information contained in any one moment.
The result is that information about every prior moment is never lost. It cannot be lost. It exists in the full specification of every subsequent moment and the operation of the laws of physics on the particles, forces, and fields interacting in the system.
The information in that moment includes everything about the system that could possibly be known. It is not limited to information that we have the practical means of discovering or knowing, but includes all the information, whether we know it or not. Theoretically, the complete specification of the system includes information about every element of physical existence in the universe at that moment.[2] That means the state of every planet, star, and galaxy, every molecule, atom and subatomic particle, and every entity of any kind. That includes information about all of biological existence, every cell and neuron in the brain of every entity. Even our thoughts and desires, which at some level arise from our physical existence, are included in the record of that moment.[3]
Einstein believed in what is called a “block universe”. He believed that conservation of information and the principle of relativity demonstrate that the flow of time is an illusion created by our perceptions. In the reality beneath our perceptions, time is not absolute, and the past and the future are as real as the present. If that view is correct, then the record kept by the universe may reflect more than a trail of time-reversible moments; it may reveal a universe in which every moment lives forever, in which moments actually do not die. We may exist even after we seem to die, as do those who came before us, and those that come after. We all exist because all moments exist at once in the block universe.
Physicists debate what forever really means. Black holes exist throughout the universe, and nothing, not even light, escapes a black hole. Stephen Hawking posited the possibility of radiation escaping from the event horizon of black holes as they dissipate over time. But we do not know if the physical information in so-called “Hawking radiation” is time-reversible in any meaningful way. If not, then the information about any particle that falls into a black hole is not conserved, but lost forever.
There is also the possibility that the universe will end its existence in a state of maximum entropy or “heat death”, with all information seeped away in a great expanse of dissipated nothingness. If that is the future universe, then all memory of our existence may be lost in that final state of maximum entropy, without any possibility of time-reversible recreation of the moments leading up to that state. But physicists have also theorized that our universe is one in a cycle of universes, that our universe will not die in a state of information-free nothingness, but rather will evolve to an end-state which could serve as the foundation of a new universe. Information about our universe could influence the wave function of the next universe, which then could influence another, on and on.[4]
It is a comforting thought to imagine that we and all our loved ones exist forever in a physically possible block universe. But is it wishful thinking? Do physicists theorize about information recovery simply as a form of consolation?[5] Do we imagine that the universe will remember us to feel better about the inevitable loss of all that we and other humans are? Will Shakespeare and all his creations—and everything ever thought or created by any human—cease to exist without any record whatsoever? We want to believe that the universe keeps a record of our existence that cannot be erased, that exists for all time.
But time may not be what Einstein believed it to be. Time may pass. And not come back.
Conservation of information is based on the premise that both the past and the future can be calculated from the present. There must be one arrow in from the past and one arrow out to the future.[6] But quantum mechanics tells us that the arrow in may not tell the full story of the past and the arrow out may be only one of many possible futures. Conservation of information may not be absolute.
Evolution of particles and waves in the subatomic quantum world is governed by the quantum wave function described in the Schrödinger equation. Continuous evolution under the Schrodinger equation is time symmetric, even time-reversible, meaning the equations can be solved backward or forward, predicting the future or describing the past. The wave function produces weighted amplitudes that predict with great accuracy the evolving probabilities of a range of outcomes in the future. But the Schrödinger equation predicts only probabilities; it cannot predict the specific outcome of any one event. Specific outcomes are governed by a second phase of the quantum wave function, called quantum state reduction, in which the continuous evolution of the wave function devolves or reduces into discontinuous evolution and the probabilities resolve themselves into specific unique occurrences in the macroscopic world. Effectively, the dice are thrown, and the range of probabilities described by the equation is replaced by a single outcome—a unique event in time. There is no way to know in advance what that unique event will be. The equations predict the likelihoods of different events, but the actual unique outcome in each instance is a random result that occurs somewhere within the range of probabilities.
That means there is more than one possible arrow out to the future. The block universe may be less settled (or blockish) than we once thought.
Perhaps even more significantly, the arrow in from the past cannot be reconstructed in its complete form based on information about the present. After the second phase of the wave function results in a specific random outcome, it is not possible to determine the shape of the wave function that preceded it. The weighted amplitudes of the Schrödinger equation, as well as the probabilities predicted by those amplitudes, cannot be recalculated from the outcome of the quantum reduction process. We can observe the result of the process, but we can no longer calculate the range of probabilities that produced that result. One possibility occurs, and all others are forgotten.
We are left with a situation in which the future is probabilistic in general, but unpredictable in a specific instance; the future always has an element of randomness. The past also cannot be recreated fully from the present. We can find the specific event that preceded the present moment and track the string of present moments that resulted from the evolution of the wave function, but we cannot recreate the range of possibilities and probabilities that generated that string of moments. The logical conclusion is that the future is never completely known, and the possibilities of the past are lost forever.
So yes, there is a record kept. But the record is incomplete and likely impermanent. Moments are created in time, and time may not be eternal. Even if it were, time records only moments that actually occur in the macrocosmic world. Time is not a record of the manifold possibilities inherent in the microcosmic quantum world. In that world, there may be no record at all. Moments as we know them may not exist in that world. Moments come into being when the dice are thrown, when a unique outcome results from the second phase in the evolution of the wave function. It is that moment that is recorded in the temporal history of the universe. All other possible moments are lost to the macrocosmic world. They continue to exist, if at all, only in the great lake of quantum interaction from which all possibilities spring.
[1] “We could call it the first law, but unfortunately there are already two first laws—Newton’s and the first law of thermodynamics. There is even a zeroth law of thermodynamics. So we have to go back to a minus first law to gain priority for what is undoubtedly the most fundamental of all physical laws—the conservation of information.” Susskind (2013), p. 9 (emphasis in original).
[2] “[C]onservation of information implies that each moment contains precisely the right amount of information to determine every other moment.” Carroll (2016), p. 34. Information is here defined as “the ‘microscopic’ information: the complete specification of the state of the system, everything you could possibly know about it. When speaking of information being conserved, we mean literally all of it.” P. 34.
[3] “[T]he universe keeps a faithful record of the information about all you have ever said, thought, and done.” Hossenfelder (2022), p.14.
[4] Penrose (2010).
[5] Horgan (2020).
[6] “The conservation of information is simply the rule that every state has one arrow in and one arrow out.” Susskind (2013), pp. 9-10.
The universe surrounds us. It is something we observe, analyze, and explore. It is out there. Always. So much so that we may forget a key empirical fact—we are part of the universe, not detached from it.
That is why the universe is us. As much as black holes and galaxies and spacetime, we are part of the physical reality of the universe. It is us, and we are it.
I do not mean that the universe is like us or that humans are the purpose of the universe. I do not mean to imply species pride or anything else anthropocentric or anthropomorphic. I mean something more prosaic—that we are not separate from the universe, but included in it. We are participants, not external observers.
The universe is bigger than us, of course, but it encompasses us. Whatever we have, the universe has. That includes the physical structures that comprise the subatomic and cellular components of our tangible matter, but it also includes the qualitative and intangible properties associated with conscious matter, such as knowledge, ideas and desires, creative impulses and output. The universe has all these things—because it has conscious entities within it.
Our theories of reality must comprehend all that is part of the universe, both tangible and intangible. So when we explore the microcosmic world or the vast reaches of space, looking to answer questions about the universe, we should remember that to know the universe, we must search ourselves, too.
It is an empirical reality that the universe contains all that we have, a fact that suggests answers to some recurring human questions.
Is the universe alive? Yes, the universe is alive because it generates life within it. Viewed as a complete system, it is a system that produces life, so it is a living system.
Does the universe learn? Yes, for the same reason. We are part of the system that is the universe, so everything we learn the universe also learns. The same is true for every other organism or entity in the universe with the capacity to learn. The universe is a knowledge ecosystem.[1]
Can the universe imagine? Whatever we imagine, the universe imagines. We imagine for the universe, because we are part of it. Therefore imagination is a property of the universe.
Does the universe have meaning? The universe has a search for meaning, because we search for meaning. Whether we or any part of the universe finds meaning is a different question. But if conscious entities search for meaning, and even create meaning, then the universe has whatever meaning we give it. It has the meaning that any part of the universe finds or creates.
Am I imputing human experience to an otherwise unaware and mechanistic universe? Perhaps, but even the question assumes an external reference point—that it is possible to observe the universe from the outside and impute qualities to it that it does not possess. It assumes that a mechanistic universe does not possess the qualities of the mechanisms within it. How can either of these things be true? It is indisputable that we are inside the universe, not outside of it, i.e., that we are organic mechanisms created within and as part of a mechanistic universe. So how is it possible to impute to the universe qualities that it does not have, when it has all that we have and more?
We know that part of the universe cares—our part. But what does that mean? What does it mean that the universe as a system produces us and therefore produces and cares about intangible things such as life, consciousness, love, art, concepts? Does it mean that the universe as a whole cares about these things and is structured in some way to produce them?
Alternatively, have we come to exist randomly and accidentally, unique as the only part of the universe that cares about random intangibles? Perhaps everything the universe knows of life and consciousness results solely from a one-off coincidence on one planet in one solar system among billions of galaxies.
If so, perhaps we truly are uniquely enshrined as spectators of the universe, removed from meaningful participation, self-appointed observers at the center of a new pre-Copernican universe revolving around our observations, our senses, our awareness of the universe as the only entities even conscious of its existence. Such a conception is almost solipsistically anthropocentric, based on an assumption that the cosmos can have no meaning and no knowledge of itself except by virtue of our observation.
Whether the mechanistic universe “cares” or not, if the earth and everything human were to disappear tomorrow, we would exist in the experience of the universe. It would continue to contain the specific information necessary to determine our existence. The universe could create life again. Life is something the universe can do. Is it something that the universe does?
Perhaps the universe is not so unaware and passive as we imagine. Some part of it may always care about us, if only the part that is us. The same may be true for every other living or conscious entity. Perhaps our existence, our thoughts, our desires, our wish to live—all belong in the universe. Perhaps we are integral components in ways that we do not comprehend.
Does the cosmos have some engineering and biological selection process that tends to produce life and consciousness? Are evolution and natural selection inherent in its physical structure, whether organic or inorganic? Are there other places where the cosmos nurtures subsystems like ours, experiencing itself through these many worlds according to some deep evolutionary structure inherent in the physics of the universe?
Is that what it means that the universe is a system that produces life and consciousness? Does the universe—as a system generating conscious entities as appendages of itself—have some built-in preference for existence over non-existence?
[1] This is true, perhaps more so, if we think of “information” in the technical sense that physicists often describe it. See Rovelli (2020), pp. 100-102; Carroll (2016), p. 34, “…each moment contains precisely the right amount of information to determine every other moment.”
“Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.”[1]
Panpsychism asserts that mind, i.e., mentality and consciousness, is a fundamental property of all physical existence. It holds that all physical entities, even rocks and atoms, have some level of micro-mentality. It does not hold that all physical entities have human-like consciousness, but it “entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe.”[2]
Panpsychism does not explain how physical entities acquire consciousness, but rather posits that mentality is an inherent quality of matter itself. At its essence, panpsychism overcomes the problem of mind-body dualism by unifying mind and body in one physical substance and asserting that some level of mentality is a fundamental property of physical existence. Consequently, rather than a rare occurrence among advanced species, consciousness is ubiquitous and exists everywhere in the universe where matter exists.
We have hypothesized that consciousness is associated with quantum state reduction rather than with matter itself. If that is so, then consciousness is associated with a physical process, not directly with physical entities themselves. It is not an inherent quality of all matter, but instead arises when matter undergoes a specific physical process. That physical process is the common constituent element and foundation of consciousness.
Quantum state reduction (aka wave function collapse or state vector reduction) is the process of transforming the complex-number-weighted amplitudes of quantum wave functions at the micro level into real-number probabilities and unique outcomes in the macro level classical world. The process occurs in response to interaction between the macrocosmic classical world and the microcosmic quantum world, resulting in the multiple superposed possibilities of the quantum state resolving into one outcome from a range of alternatives with different probabilities.
Quantum reduction occurs constantly—in every nanosecond of existence—everywhere in the material universe. As a process for resolving probabilities into unique outcomes in the macrocosmic world, it is fundamental and ubiquitous and has been going on since at least the Big Bang. Without quantum reduction, there is no macrocosm; there is only the microcosm of quantum superposition where all possibilities remain open and where there are no unique outcomes, no unique moments in history, and therefore no time as we experience it.
We have hypothesized that the quantum process of resolving probabilities into outcomes is the physical origin of consciousness in the universe. That suggests a form of panpsychism in which consciousness and mentality remain fundamental and ubiquitous, but not in the sense of being an attribute of all matter. Instead, consciousness arises from a process that is fundamental and ubiquitous, a process underlying all macrocosmic reality.
First, this variation on panpsychism explains “how” consciousness is associated with micro-level events and entities. As usually presented, panpsychism asserts that mentality is associated with all matter, but does not assert a mechanism for explaining the association. By contrast, quantum state reduction explains how consciousness arises in macrocosmic entities based on fundamental quantum dynamics. In other words, it provides not only a theory of consciousness as an intrinsic quality of matter, but also a specific mechanism for how matter acquires consciousness.
Second, quantum state reduction gives panpsychism a physical foundation with profound philosophical meaning. At a purely physical level quantum reduction is the process of resolving quantum probabilities into unique outcomes. It is a physical mechanism enabling a single choice among a range of quantum alternatives. It transforms reality from an abstract calculation of all possibilities into a tangible world in which only one possibility occurs. The resulting string of selected alternatives becomes time and reality as we know it. It is difficult to imagine a physically richer soil for cultivation of philosophies of time, free will, and consciousness.
Third, the theory matches our intuitive understanding of consciousness as an abstraction, not a thing. Life is temporary, a phenomenon which we experience for a while before we die. Consciousness is how we experience it. We do not think of consciousness as a material thing. Even when we believe that consciousness is eternal, as in spirit or soul, we conceive of that eternal “thing” as separate from our physical existence, something spiritual or intangible. Thinking of consciousness as founded on a process is closer to that intuitive conception. Even if we recognize that all substance is built on process and interaction, consciousness still seems more process than substance, not permanent even in the way that matter is seemingly permanent.
Finally, panpsychism based on quantum reduction aligns with current theories on quantum consciousness and the search for quantum interaction in the brain. There is a developing body of research around the possibility of quantum interactions in biological structures such as neurons and brain cells. The Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory of Penrose and Hameroff suggests that the process of quantum state reduction results in events of proto-consciousness that are the rudimentary components of more advanced forms of consciousness ultimately orchestrated through the evolution of complex brain function.[3] These events of proto-consciousness are both fundamental and ubiquitous in the macrocosmic world. The theory is consistent with a form of panpsychism based on quantum state reduction. It is also consistent with the view that we should not expect to find consciousness based on quantum interaction only in neurons or brain cells. Consciousness is more basic than that. In at least a rudimentary form, it is fundamental to the core process of quantum state reduction that occurs constantly in the macrocosmic universe; it is everything everywhere all at once.[4] It may be true that complex neural interactions occur as a result of additional quantum interactions in the brain, which may explain the level of orchestrated complexity found in human consciousness. But quantum interactions in brain cells are not a requirement for the existence of raw consciousness in the universe.
Since at least the Greeks and likely long before, humans have sought to reconcile the extreme diversity of existence with the concept of unity in the universe. We look for the one reality that underlies the divergent world. We search for the single theory, the single entity, the universal consciousness. Is it possible that this search finds its roots in the reality of quantum existence?
We and all other physical things exist in a reality founded on a quantum world of superpositioned possibilities, a world that somehow transforms into a macrocosm of unique moments in time. It is a macrocosm of one outcome founded on a microcosm of many, one possibility arising from all possibilities in superposition. Beneath the surface of the world of one lies the world of the many, where all possibilities still exist.
Or is reality just the opposite? Is the entangled world of superpositioned possibilities the true world of universal unity, the single world without distinction and differentiation? Is our world of infinite unique outcomes the world of diversity, where the many overwhelms and obscures the one, the divided world from which we search for the ultimate unity, the ultimate theory, the ultimate single universal consciousness?
[1] Goff, Seager, and Allen-Hermanson (2022), Introduction.
[2] Goff, Seager, and Allen-Hermanson (2022), Section 2.1.
[3] See Hameroff and Penrose (2014).
[4] With apologies and attribution to the 2023 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
What Might Be True 