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Core Concepts
Adequate Determinism Agent-Causality Alternative Possibilities Causa Sui Causality Certainty Chance Chance Not Direct Cause The Cogito Model Compatibilism Conceptual Analysis Control Could Do Otherwise Creativity De-liberation Determination Determination Fallacy Determinism Disambiguation Either Way Ethical Fallacy Extreme Libertarianism Event Has Many Causes "Free Will" Free Will in Antiquity Free Will Mechanisms Free Will Requirements Future Contingency Hard Incompatibilism Illusion of Determinism Illusionism Impossibilism Incompatibilism Indeterminacy Indeterminism Libertarianism Liberty of Indifference Luck Modest Libertarianism Moral Responsibility Moral Sentiments Naturalism Necessity Noise Non-Causality Pre-determinism Predictability Probability Pseudo-Problem Random When?/Where? Rational Fallacy Responsibility Same Circumstances Science Advance Fallacy Second Thoughts Semicompatibilism Soft Causality Standard Argument Temporal Sequence Tertium Quid Torn Decision Two-Stage Models Ultimate Responsibility Uncertainty Up To Us Philosophers Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine A.J.Ayer Mark Balaguer William Belsham Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume William James Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus C.I.Lewis David Lewis John Locke John R. Lucas Lucretius Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin G.H. von Wright R. Jay Wallace Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Margaret Boden Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Max Born Stephen Brush Arthur Holly Compton Abraham de Moivre John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Richard Feynman A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Erwin Schrödinger Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg |
The Biology of Free Will
Molecular biologists have assured neuroscientists for years that the molecular structures involved in neurons are too large to be affected significantly by quantum phenomena.
They know that while most biological structures are remarkably stable, and thus adequately determined, quantum effects drive the mutations that provide variation in the gene pool. So our question is how the typical structures of the brain have evolved to deal with microscopic, atomic level, noise. Can they ignore it because they are adequately determined large objects, or might they have remained sensitive to the noise?
We can expect that if quantum noise, or even ordinary thermal noise, offered beneficial advantages, there would have been evolutionary pressure to take advantage of noise.
Proof that our sensory organs have evolved until they are working at or near quantum limits is evidenced by the eye's ability to detect a single photon (a quantum of light energy), and the nose's ability to smell a single molecule.
Biology provides many examples of ergodic creative processes following a trial and error model. They harness chance as a possibility generator, followed by an adequately determined selection mechanism with implicit information-value criteria.
Darwinian evolution is the first and greatest example of a two-stage creative process, random variation followed by critical selection, but we will consider briefly two other such processes. Both are analogous to our two-stage Cogito model for the mind. One is at the heart of the immune system, the other provides quality control in protein/enzyme factories.
Creativity in the Immune System
Consider the great problem faced by the immune system. It stands by ready to develop antibodies to attack an invading antigen at any moment, with no advance knowledge of what the antigen may be. In information terms, it needs to discover some part of the antigen that is unique. Its method is not unlike Poincaré's two-stage method of solving a mathematical problem. First put together lots of random combinations, then subject them to tests.
Biological information is stored in the the "genetic code," the sequence of genes along a chromosome in our DNA. "Sequencing" the DNA refers to establishing the exact arrangement of nucleotides that code for specific proteins/enzymes. All the advances in molecular genetics are based on this sequencing ability.
The white blood cells have evolved a powerful strategy to discover unique information in the antigen. What they have done is evolve a "re-sequencing" capability. Using the same gene splicing techniques that biologists have now developed to insert characteristics from one organism into another, the white blood cells have a very-high-speed process that shuffles genes around at random. They cut genes out of one location and splice them at random in other locations. This combinatorial diversity provides a variation in the gene pool like the Darwinian mutations that drive species evolution.
But the marvelous immune system gets even more random. It has a lower-level diversity generator that randomly scrambles the individual nucleotides at the junctions between genes. The splicing of genes is randomly done with errors that add or subtract nucleotides, creating what is called junctional diversity.
Rapid Eye Motions
Free Flight and Crowd Navigation
"Free flight" in birds might resemble the way humans navigate crowds by random small variations in their walking paths followed by rapid feedback corrections to avoid bumping others?
Enzyme Chaperones - An Error Detection and Correction System
Errors in protein synthesis are arguably quantal. If errors prevent proper folding, the chaperone functions as an information error detection and correction system. If it succeeds in helping the protein to fold, the protein is released, otherwise destroyed.
Neurotransmitter Release
Since information flows across the synapses, randomness of release times for transmitter quanta may be a source of information noise in memory storage and recall. [Neurotransmitter "quanta" are of course huge compared to atomic-level quantum processes - maybe thousands of molecules).
Bacterial chemotaxis
The smallest organisms are equipped with sensors and motion capability that let them make two-stage decisions about which way to go. They must move in the direction of nutrients and away from toxic chemicals. They do this with tiny flagella that rotate in two directions. Flagella rotating clockwise cause the bacterium to tumble and face random new directions. Receptors on the bacterium surface detect gradients of chemicals. When the gradient indicates “food ahead” or “danger behind” the bacterium reverses the flagella rotation direction, which makes the bacterium move straight ahead.
Single photons can be seen and a single molecule can be smelled
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