I may be completely off base hopping in on a question of science (something I haven't studied in several years), but as I understand the history of science, there was a time when people were trying to do exactly what Everyman describes--gather enough information so we knew the exact physical state of the universe at one moment, and then once we knew that, we could easily work backwards and forwards according to the laws of physics.
A possible escape route from this deterministic scenario, at least in my mind, actually comes from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Basically, the idea is to know the speed and position of a particle, you have to observe it, or in practical terms, hit it with a ray of light. Unfortunately, that means contributing energy to the particle. The more precise you want to be on the location, the more energy (smaller wavelength) the light must be--and the more energy you add to the particle (which is to say the less you know its velocity). If you use a lower-energy ray of light, there's less change to the velocity, but you're more unsure about the position. When you work out the implications of this observation in real-world terms, there's a constant, h, that expresses the minimum amount of uncertainty we will have about any given particle. So, there's a limit to what's knowable about any system, so even if everything is already determined, we'd never be able to know where we were headed exactly.
I've also been thinking about Schrödinger's equation. This equation will tell you the position of an electron around an atom. It only has a solution for a Hydrogen (1 proton) atom. The rest of the equations are too complicated to solve. Instead, you get probability clouds--the electron is most likely in certain places. I think this probability also gives us a way out. Lots of things are predictable, because statistically, say, in 99 atoms out of one hundred, the electrons are located in certain places that makes them interact with other atoms and electrons in predictable ways. If you have a bunch of Na+ and Cl- ions in a mixture, almost all of them will form ionic bonds with each other and make table salt. There's a huge relative difference between atomic size and our bodies--so any variations are statistically insignificant. But if you're thinking about bonds and reactions that don't happen so strongly and immediately, and reactions that happen inside our body (where scale no longer makes variations negligible), then you're ready to play the probability game. In most cases, when DNA replicates, the types of molecules that are working fill in the double strand correctly, pairing nucleic acids in the pairs that are most likely to fill in for every occasion. But sometimes, based on the unpredictable and statistically un-probable location of an electron, a wrong pairing will be made. Most of our DNA is redundant, so this change probably won't matter--but occasionally it will be in the middle of a sequence that codes for an important protein--and the change will cause the protein not to fold properly, which will cause some sort of illness to the body.
I'm not sure these suggestions give you free will, exactly, because what they imply (if I remember my biology classes, and there wasn't something that contradicts all this in the second half of organic chem, after I dropped it...) is that while on the scale of classical physics, Newtonian interactions hold, at the quantum level, there's always a degree of uncertainty. Also, it's not like any of us have any conscious control over our electrons, but it's comforting to me, at least, to think that there will always be probability and chance involved in the world, no matter how much technology we develop.
P.S. The light stuff plays out in really neat ways. There's a classic experiment where a single photon is fired at a screen through a screen with two slits. When the screen (photo-sensitive, obviously) is examined, it's clear from interference that the photon went through
both slits. None of this quantum stuff is terribly straightforward. Schrödinger demonstrated its absurdity with his cat thought experiment. (Cat in a box, it dies if a subatomic particle is in a certain state, no way of telling which state the particle is in till you observe it, thus cat is both dead and alive till you open the box).
Poppy_Adams wrote:
Everyman wrote:
Fascinating question, free will!
Given that as far as we know the actions of the brain, and therefore of our thinking and deciding processes, are purely a matter of electrical and chemical reactions within and between our brain cells, every input must have a deterministic output. That is, whatever inputs enter our brain through our senses or in any other way, it will necessarily produce one and only one series of brain interactions. If we had sufficient knowledge of the paths, patterns, and chemical and electrical impulses of the brain, we could accurately predict exactly how any given person would react to any given stimulus. Of course we lack that knowledge, and I hope will never get it, but the principle is fixed. There can be no free will; everything is deterministic.
I certainly don't like this conclusion; I want to believe in free will. And I'm not persuaded by it. But equally I'm not sure that I'm willing to accept the principles of randomness of input and output which are necessary to create an environment in which free will can exist.
Dear Everyman
This is the point. Thank-you. This is the level on which I am trying to get people to think about free will. How can there be free will when our every thought and action can be reduced to electrical impulses and chemical reactions? There is nothing 'free' about it. Were we slightly different people, (or in a biological sense, had a slightly different chemical or celluar make-up, we would necessarily react differently to every situation.) Had Maude been made of a different set of genetically-coded cells, proteins, chemicals, then, no, she would not have turned to alcohol, but would have responded in a different way. On this 'cellular' level she is not determining her response, it's not her decision to turn to drink.
RIGHT, NOW I NEED TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THIS IS NOT HOW I FEEL PERSONALLY, so I don't want to be quoted out of context. This is the conclusion that Ginny comes to, and the hypothesis I'm putting forward in the book for people to think about. For the record, I also know many biological scientists who really do feel this way, and I felt it was a fascinating idea to try to get across in a work of fiction. I would find it most depressing to believe we had no free will, but I understand the way the argument is laid out. You do too, obviously, Everyman. I wish you'd enjoyed my book, even a little.
Poppy
so we ahve to be able to control/understand our interpretations.
