Category Archives: What is real

Emergent, not dead

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.

Does downward causation break the laws of physics?

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]

The assumption of determinism

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.

The problem with dominoes

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 problem with indeterminacy

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?

Probabilities are not dominoes

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.

Emergent systems learn to do random things

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]

Self-governing systems constrained by probability

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.

What if that is who we are?

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).

Electrons R Us

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“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]

Why do particles behave in unexplained ways?

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.

Electrons make “free” choices

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.

Does the unpredictability of fundamental particles help explain human free will?

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]

Free or random

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]

Can random occurrences in the microcosm enable non-random evolution in the macroscopic world?

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]

Uncertainty leads to interpretation, prediction, and the creation of meaning

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.

Indeterminacy means organisms can choose to behave randomly

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]

We choose like electrons

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).

What about the “delay”?

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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 famous Libet “delay”

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]

Does the “delay” disprove free will? No.

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.

The Libet experiments are not about meaningful decisions

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 findings rely on faulty assumptions about how and when the brain decides to act

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.

The ”delay” is an artifact of the design of the experiment

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 experiments are premised on a dualist model of decision-making and consciousness

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 processes

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]

“We” are the entire process

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.

Lack of total control does not equate to zero freedom

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]

We are imperfect and constrained decision-makers, but we choose nonetheless

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).

The universe is us

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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 not only us, but it is us

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.

Nothing human is alien to the cosmos

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?

Does the universe care about what we contribute?

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.

Is the universe as neutral and unaware as we think it is?

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.”

Is spacetime real?

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Spacetime is the stage where the great illusion unfolds. It is the fabric of the macrocosmic universe, the matrix underlying the holodeck.

But how real is it?

Certainly it is real in the sense of scientifically verifiable. Experiments confirm how space and time interact in the four-dimensional spacetime field. The empirical reality of spacetime is not subject to reasonable doubt.

So is spacetime the underlying reality beneath the great macrocosmic illusion? Is it fundamental? Is it real in that sense?

Probably not.

Spacetime began, and if it can begin, it can end

Physics says that spacetime began early in the history of the universe and that without the Big Bang spacetime might not exist.

We don’t know what, if anything, was before spacetime; we don’t know what, if anything, could follow spacetime. Before the Big Bang the entire universe could have been subsumed in a singularity without time or spatial dimension. There could have been nothing at all, just a vacuum of “nothingness” with random quantum fluctuations.[1]

The future of the universe also could be a singularity. Or perhaps with all free energy spent and entropy at its maximum, there could be nothing remaining but the seeming stillness of quantum interactions in a state of universal thermodynamic equilibrium.

Whatever the universe was, or will be, there is something more fundamental than spacetime. Spacetime began.

What is beneath spacetime?

We think of the universe as spacetime and a collection of galaxies and stars and planets, comprised of microscopic particles and fundamental forces that shape all things and events. But is the universe composed of core components at all? Or is what we conceive as the underlying microscopic reality of the universe also an illusion? Is there something more fundamental than either the macroscopic world of galaxies and stars or the microscopic world of electrons and atoms?

We know that the objects that curve and bend spacetime are not themselves solid as they appear. They have massive gravitational fields but are little more than empty space containing orbiting or vibrating wave-like semi-particles held together by forces more fundamental than their own gravitational mass. The tiniest semi-particles in the universe are knots of energy interacting in patterns constantly, and every physical “thing” is at its deepest level a process or interaction. Beneath the hood reality is not a collection of irreducible substances, but interactions and processes and events that give rise to the illusion of substances.[2]

We know that time is not absolute and unchanging, that the processes, events, and interactions that drive the universe are not arranged in lockstep chronological order. At the most fundamental level of known reality, the arrow of time does not drive a chronological history of distinct events. Instead, at the quantum level, there are no distinct events, but only a stream of wave functions describing the probability amplitudes of an almost infinite spectrum of possibilities. Instead of driving events, entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics may only influence the shape of those microcosmic wave functions. It is only above the level of the microcosm, in the great illusion of the macrocosmic universe, that wave function amplitudes become actual probabilities resolving into unique outcomes and the distinct events of history.

Is the microcosmic core of the universe nothing more than a timeless lake of entangled possibilities arranged in order of probability by the physical laws of the quantum wave function? Or beneath even that, is it a vacuum of nothingness comprised only of random bursts of quantum fluctuation? Is this the underlying reality from which the great illusion has sprung in some way that we do not understand?

Spacetime is not fundamental reality

The great illusion may not be the macrocosmic universe as we know it, the world of countless galaxies with trillions of stars and planets, the world of mountains and oceans. Perhaps the ultimate illusion is the world of spacetime itself and the laws of physics that govern the interactions of what we perceive as objects in spacetime. Entropy and the laws of physics and the reality of local time and relative time may not underlie the illusion; they may be the illusion, the very things that comprise the holodeck and our reality.

Beneath it all may be only the quantum wave function itself—ceaseless interactions, entanglements, and superpositioned possibilities—somehow resolving into a stage where all probabilities play out. Perhaps everything else is imagined and illusory, a way of talking about reality, but no more real than mountains and oceans and waves crashing on the shore.[3]

So no, spacetime is probably not real in the sense of the fundamental basis of the universe. It is a constructed stage. Constructed out of the many possibilities inherent in the quantum universe—for us and all other things and entities that exist in the universe. It is our stage, but it is not the bottom of what is real.

[1] Keen (2013).

[2] “The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.” Rovelli (2017), p. 98.

[3] “Not only does the deepest layer of reality not consist of things like “oceans” and “mountains”; it doesn’t even consist of things like “electrons” and “photons.” It’s just the quantum wave function. Everything else is a convenient way of talking.” Carroll (2017), p. 171.

Is self an illusion?

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If consciousness is part of the physical universe, and if connected consciousness is real, to what extent is individual consciousness, our sense of self, an illusion?

The simple answer is “yes.” The complicated answer is also “yes.”

A recurring theme in human spirituality is the experience of some form of connected consciousness outside the self. Mystics speak of the self as an illusion, and the study of spirituality and consciousness often leads to a conclusion that the self is an illusory construct of the mind.[1] Meditation is said to bring an experience of “pure consciousness” different from the experience of self—an empirical cognitive awareness that need not be religious in nature. Even a committed atheist can experience a connection to pure consciousness within one’s own mind.[2]

Some scientists and philosophers also speak of consciousness as an illusion, nothing more than an incorrect perception of reality or a temporary accident of neuroscience.[3] Others believe that all intangible things that exist only in subjective perceptions are not real in the objective sense. Some argue the opposite view that objective reality is an illusion because humans cannot experience anything other than our own subjective reality.

So who is correct? Is pure consciousness the true underlying reality? Is individual consciousness a temporary accident? Is everything intangible an illusion? Or is the entire vision of objective reality an illusion?

The answer to all these questions is “yes.”

The self is an illusion because it is impermanent

Consciousness exists and is part of the physical world, but it is likely that the self is characteristic of only one phase of physical existence. To the best of our knowledge, we experience the self only while the components of consciousness that comprise our existence are part of a living individual. During our lifetimes we may glimpse pure consciousness, but our primary experience is one of individual consciousness as a distinct component of the all.

That primary experience is temporary. If death does not destroy consciousness, surely it means the loss of self and a return to pure, undifferentiated existence. The illusion ends and we lose ourselves in the lake of matter and energy and connected consciousness from which we came.

The self is an illusion because the macrocosmic universe is an illusion

All of “reality” also is in some sense an illusion. That includes both the objective reality of traditional physical scientists and the subjective perceptual reality in which we humans live.

We commonly perceive the universe as comprised of solid objects and quantifiable forces that cause interactions between objects in space and time. When we look into the sky, we see an enormous collection of stars, planets, and galaxies whirling through the vastness of empty space.

That vision of the macrocosmic universe is an illusion. Objects are not solid in the way that we perceive. They consist of tiny particles of interchangeable matter and energy orbiting other tiny particles at relative distances that are almost unimaginable on the macroscopic scale. An atom is almost entirely empty space in which particles orbit and interact across vast stretches. We perceive objects as solid because the extreme velocity of the tiny particles (in the very small atoms that comprise slightly less small molecules) creates the illusion of solid objects in space.[4]

The tiny particles themselves are not solid in any traditional sense. They may be waves or particles depending on how they are perceived. They may exist in multiple places at once and may have no definite location or velocity until we attempt to observe and measure them.

Atoms with their tiny particles or waves interact in patterns constantly, forming a vast fabric of pulsating energy that is the underlying substance of the microscopic universe. What we perceive as objects may be nothing more than concentrations of energy morphed into knots of matter that can morph back into energy again.

Time may not exist in any ordinary sense for this microcosmic quantum reality that forms the underlying fabric of the universe. There are no definite events; there is no progress of history. All possibilities exist side by side with each assigned an amplitude of something like probability. An entangled universe evolves with waves of interlocking superpositions that make all things possible and nothing definite or real as we know it. There is only a vast field of pulsating energy that forms all things and subverts all things. Nothing is permanent but that one massive field of throbbing energy, constantly changing and therefore possibly never changing.[5]

Objective reality and subjective reality are both part of the same illusion

If the microscopic quantum world reveals objective macroscopic reality as a superficial illusion, subjective reality is nothing more than our human perception of that illusion. The self and all things tangible and intangible may be little more than temporary concentrations of energy in the fabric of the universe, part of a macroscopic illusion that can change in an instant.

So yes, self is an illusion, but perhaps no more than our sun, our galaxy, or the macrocosmic universe itself.

What matters is the significance of the illusion

The interesting question is not whether self and consciousness are illusions, or even whether objective and subjective reality are illusions. The truly interesting question is not whether we live in an illusion, but why. What is the significance of this illusory reality? What does it mean that the universe is a pulsating energy field that inexplicably creates a constant stream of illusory experience? What does it mean that we are here to observe it, or at least that the illusion of observation is created inside this pulsating energy field? Why should we or any of these illusions exist at all?

These are fundamentally abstract questions. They suggest others only slightly less abstract:

Does time exist in any form for this microcosmic quantum reality? What is time and is it real? Is time part of the illusion?
Why does the illusion of spacetime exist? Is spacetime real? What causes macrocosmic reality to seem to exist at all?
Why does the universe generate an illusion of consciousness and self? What purpose does it serve in the mechanics of the universe and the illusion of macrocosmic reality?
What does it mean that the universe is expanding continually at an increasing velocity? Is some core change happening in the universe at a macro or micro level? Does the universe have a trajectory or is it never-changing and timeless? Is the seeming trajectory of the expanding universe just another illusion?

These abstract questions are precisely big and foolish enough to fit squarely within the theme of this collection of essays. In attempting to address them going forward, I will rely on scientific investigation where accessible to an amateur investigator. But if you are reading this, I hope you have a taste for logical conjecture and even imaginative philosophical speculation, because some foolish questions are not amenable to definitive empirical resolution. We will ask them anyway, of course.

[1] For a striking comparison, see Dennett (1991), pp. 426-427. “A self, according to my theory, is … an abstraction defined by the myriads of attributions and interpretations (including self-attributions and self-interpretations) that have composed the biography of the living body whose Center of Narrative Gravity it is.”

[2] Harris (2014).

[3] Perhaps even a “controlled hallucination.” Seth (2021).

[4] “These high velocities make the atom appear as a rigid sphere, just as a fast rotating propeller appears as a disc.” Capra (1975), p. 70.

[5] And based on the little we know, even that may be impermanent.

Is connected consciousness real?

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If consciousness is an attribute of material reality, and all material reality is connected, must all consciousness also be connected? The logical answer is yes, a conclusion which we have accepted as a consequence of the connections between matter and energy in space and the existence of consciousness as part of the material universe.

The physical connections are obvious. Space is not empty but instead inhabited by forces and fields that surround objects throughout the universe, shaping even the progress of light and time. “Objects” are not themselves unique and separable, but intimately intertwined at the quantum level.[1] All material reality is connected. Once we accept that consciousness is a core component of material reality, the fact of connected consciousness is as obvious as the bending of light around large objects in spacetime. All consciousness is connected because all matter and energy are connected.

It is simple logic, but still an abstract theoretical conclusion. What does it mean practically? How do we experience connected consciousness?

Consciousness may be shared as matter and energy are shared

Consciousness is a component of physical reality and is built on a shared physical foundation. Atomic and subatomic particles of matter are the same across the universe. It does not matter what system the particles comprise; particles of matter, physical forces, and energy are the same elements regardless of the system. They share characteristics and are part of the same reserve of matter and energy that forms all material reality.

Logically, instances of consciousness may exist in different forms in different systems, but still must share some characteristics because they spring from the same reserve of matter and energy and the same entangled quantum microcosm that comprises physical reality. It may seem obvious, but consciousness does not appear to be unique to each conscious entity or each instance of consciousness; rather consciousness as an experience is shared in different forms among all conscious entities, with the primal desire “not to die” as perhaps the most fundamental shared feature of all consciousness.

Certainly human consciousness is not unique to each human being. At times it may seem vaguely plausible to imagine that each person experiences consciousness differently from others, but the proposition is nonsensical when weighed against the vast physical and mental similarities that allow humans to create overwhelmingly shared experiences such as language, culture, and civilization. Looking at the history and volume of shared experience and shared consciousness among our species, individual consciousness seems more a temporary loan from the group mind than an unshared, unique experience.

We know little about how other known species experience consciousness, but even apart from the desire not to die, we observe various forms of awareness and intelligence that seem both shared within the species and of a general nature that is not completely alien to our own sense of consciousness. We know even less about conscious entities elsewhere in the universe. But given the shared characteristics of matter and energy across the universe, and the assumption of consciousness as an attribute of material reality, it is not unreasonable to conclude that consciousness has some shared characteristics across all conscious entities in the universe.

To put it metaphorically, just as there is a lake of connected matter and energy that is shared across the universe and comprises all physical reality, there very likely may be a lake of connected consciousness that is shared across the universe as well.

Consciousness affects other consciousness

Consciousness has the ability to affect other consciousness. The actions and decisions of conscious entities have an impact on other conscious entities and material reality. Those effects cannot be removed or destroyed or assumed away. Consciousness is connected in that way, just as matter is connected to other matter.

Consciousness seeks and creates connection with other consciousness

We often think of connected consciousness as a form of mystical oneness. But at an empirical level, there are many ordinary, non-mystical ways that conscious beings create connected consciousness.

Conscious entities are known to communicate and form connections through communication, even to create language specifically for the purpose of connection. Conscious entities mate and reproduce, form simple and more complex societies, and create culture, all premised on some form of innate or constructed connected consciousness among a group. Desire for connection among conscious humans is so great that we have created a global hive-mind in which we share the minutest details of our lives with every other conscious being of our species. The connections between conscious humans are intense and pervasive.

Consciousness has the ability to experience intense connectedness

While the internet provides recent evidence of global connected consciousness, our species has more longstanding and fundamental means of experiencing intensely connected consciousness. Either due to natural selection or the core properties of physical existence, our species has experiences such as desire, empathy, and love—empirically verifiable experiences that connect conscious beings in deeply intense ways.

The existence and intensity of these experiences may be evidence of a capacity for connected consciousness that exists both in our species and in the universe. The experience of love may be premised on the ability of consciousness to connect with other consciousness—in other words, on the underlying reality of connected consciousness. Alternatively, even if love is nothing more than an illusion promoted through natural selection as a means of propagating the species, it is a shared illusion of intense connectedness. And a shared illusion itself may be a form of connected consciousness, possible only because all consciousness is connected just as all matter and energy are connected.

Is connected consciousness a daily reality as well as a mystical experience?

If consciousness is a core component of the physical universe, do we prove the existence of connected consciousness simply by communicating with other conscious beings? Does connecting with other consciousness through our intentional acts offer sufficient observed, empirical proof that all consciousness is connected? In fact, is interaction among a universe of conscious components the true definition of connected consciousness?

Perhaps the mystics are correct that conscious humans experience oneness through meditation by glimpsing a form of connected consciousness within the universe. Perhaps we also experience oneness directly—with more than a glimpse—simply by connecting with other conscious beings.

[1] Even more than we can imagine or explain. Quantum entanglement, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” although not yet fully explained, exists empirically and plays a more and more important role in quantum theory and mechanics.

Foundations of what is real

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Materialism as a practical fact of life

What does it mean that humans no longer need supernatural explanations for things we do not understand?

It means that for most of us materialism is not a dogma, but simply a daily experience. We live in a world that has been transformed by our increasingly profound understanding of the material universe. Our scientists have identified many of the forces, particles, and relationships that comprise atomic and subatomic elements and events, and also form the underlying fabric of energy from which space and time seemingly emerge. The macro relationships between matter and energy have been mapped out and calculated in ways that enable us to build massive destructive devices that change the course of our history. We use our scientific understanding of the physical world to create tools and toys that amaze and befuddle the entire race of humans. And we are barely beginning.

None of these things rely on supernatural forces, but on our knowledge of the particles, forces, relationships, and quantum mechanics that make up the universe.

Are intangible things comprised of tangible elements? Can material things explain who we are?

Material things are part of what some scientists describe as objective reality, i.e., things that exist independently of our perception of them. Much of what we have learned about the universe focuses on our understanding of that objective reality.[1]

But we humans also live in a world of subjective reality created by our perceptions. Constantly aware of our own consciousness and thoughts and feelings, we live in a universe comprised of more than the objective reality of physics.

Cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are working to increase our understanding of subjective reality just as physicists are increasing our understanding of objective reality. Yet there is still much to learn about the intangible aspects of the universe, about how brains and perceptions work, about the biology and evolution of consciousness, about what our existence means in the universe.

Do we need the ghost in the machine or some kind of mind/body dualism to explain our existence?

How long must we wait for a scientific theory of the subjective world that adequately comprehends the deep intellectuality and even spirituality of human existence, much less the existence of the universe itself? Can materialist theories of reality ever truly explain the intangible world that exists in our perceptions and intellectual life?

If not, do we need after all some kind of supernatural explanation of these intangible things? Do we need to posit the existence of a non-material mind that inhabits our bodies and brings us to life? Or even inhabits the entire physical world? Do we need God?

Alternatively, should we conclude that intangible things are not real, but merely incorrect perceptions of the world? Can we assume that they do not require explanation because they are temporary illusions and not objective reality?[2]

There is a simpler explanation

In science and most other pursuits of life, the simplest explanation is often the best and most correct.

Fear, hunger, passion, and pain are all intangible things that can be experienced in the physical world, as can even more intangible things such as thoughts, concepts, ideas, even imagined things. All of these can be experienced and are real in that sense.

It is unnecessarily complex to assume that these things are entirely different from material things and excluded from the material foundations of the universe. It is simpler and just as logical to conclude that buried inside the components and fabric of the physical world are the components and fabric of whatever is real. If intangible things exist and can be experienced, they are composed of the same components and fabric of energy that make up all that exists. The all can be composed only of the elements of the all. So even if we do not yet understand how intangible things are constructed from tangible elements, clearly they are constructed or they would not exist in the tangible universe at all.

The tangible universe includes the components of all that is real

What is required is a comprehensive view of what is real in the physical world around us—an acceptance that the components of what we perceive as intangible things exist in the components and fabric of the tangible universe. If the elements of the universe are particles, forces, and quantum relationships, then inherent in those particles, forces, and relationships are all the elements necessary to form the natural world that surrounds us and the intellectual world in which we live. An intellectual world could not exist or be experienced if the particles, forces, and quantum relationships that make up the universe did not include elements that comprise and enable the intellectual world.

[1] Quantum theory has explicated “objective reality” to such an extent that it undermines its very existence. The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics maintains that some aspects of “reality” do not exist prior to being observed in some way, i.e., that the act of observation determines the material reality.

[2] Or as some philosophers and neuroscientists have argued, should we turn the paradigm on its head and assume that subjective reality is the only reality and that “objective reality” is an illusion?