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Our civilization,
and mindset, and personal lives are
all founded on this notion that we
human beings can freely choose
whatever we want – that we have a
free will. The problem is that we
don’t, and apart from our seeing
reality completely contrary to the
way it is, our belief in free will
causes problems both in our personal
lives and societally. Hopefully by
our understanding that our wills are
causal, and not free, we can create
a world that is more compassionate
toward each other and ourselves.
Before I get into
our topic, I just want to go a bit
more into what we mean when we say
we have a free will. Basically we
mean that our thoughts are
completely up to us – there is
nothing compelling us to decide what
we do. We mean that what we do,
what we eat, what we say, what kind
of work we do – everything – is
completely up to us.
Naturally, we
have an unconscious that is always
active, and makes free will
impossible. But, the more basic
reason why we don’t have a free will
is the process of cause and effect.
This show will be about the fact
that everything that happens in the
world, including our decisions, has
a cause. If everything has a cause,
then whatever causes us to make a
decision will have a cause. And
there will be a cause of that cause,
and a cause of that cause, etc.
Note that a cause
will always precede its effect. A
cause can never come after its
effect. When we consider this chain
of cause and effect that leads back
further and further into the past,
we can see how the causes that
ultimately led up to any kind of
decision we might make were made
long before we were born, and long
before the planet was created.
The idea that we
don’t have a free will leads us some
of us to believe that we’re
“robots,” or “puppets,” and in a
certain sense, we are. But we don’t
have to see ourselves that way. We
can hold the understanding that God,
or nature, is in control of
everything. God created the world.
God is omnipotent, and omniscient,
and omnipresent, and so we can see
ourselves as instruments of God.
We’re expressing, in a physical way,
what God is and what God does. That
self-identity is a lot more
palatable to many of us than to
think of ourselves as robots.
Some of us will
say that because we have a free
will, we’re zombies. I didn’t know
what a zombie was until about three
weeks ago. Apparently, a zombie is
someone who arises from the dead and
walks the Earth doing stuff. That’s
a completely different idea than
being an instrument of God. We’re
like computers that have been
programmed to behave in certain
pre-described ways. Or, we’re
actors.
Let’s get to the
topic. The first fact of existence
-- and this is undeniable, a priori,
and axiomatic – is that the universe
exists. Everything exists; we are
here. The second a priori fact is
that the basic process of the
universe is change. Think about
that. If the universe didn’t
change, everything would be
completely frozen. I wouldn’t be
doing this show. You wouldn’t be
reading this book. Planets like our
Earth would not be rotating around
their axis, and revolving around
stars like our Sun. If there were
no change, nothing would move.
There would not be a world, as we
know it.
Again, we have a
priori knowledge that the universe
exists, and a priori knowledge that
the fundamental process of the
universe is change. What is
change? Change is something moving
from one state to another. Change
is a particle being at one point at
one moment, and then at another
point the next moment. That is what
change is. It is matter moving
through space in time. At one
moment, you’ll have a particle or
something at a certain point, and
then at the next moment, because of
change, it will be at a different
point. That’s change.
Again, two
axiomatic facts - reality exists,
and reality changes. What pulls
this all together, and what makes
free will impossible, is the idea
that in order for change to take
place, there has to be causality.
In fact, causality is the process
that allows for change. No change
could ever happen without
causality. There is a statement to
the effect that “nothing can be
causa sui,” meaning that nothing can
be the cause of itself (unless we
want to perhaps consider that God,
as the first cause, is the cause of
Her/Himself. But after that, every
other cause has to have a prior
cause). It’s not necessary to know
the first cause, if it exists, to
understand the process of causality
that operates thereafter.
If you have
causality – cause and effect – as
the process that is required for any
change to take place in the
universe, you can understand how
causality is as axiomatic as the
fact that there is a universe, and
the fact that the universe changes.
I say this to clarify a confusion
that has arisen in physics since
1927 when Werner Heisenberg
published his Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle. I’m not going to get
into this too much now because I’m
going to do a separate show on it,
but basically it’s a mathematical
equation that demonstrates that you
can’t at the same time measure the
position and the momentum of a
quantum particle with the precision
required for successful prediction
using classical mechanics. If you
measure the particle’s position,
then it’s momentum becomes less
clear. If you measure the
particle’s momentum, then it’s
position becomes less clear.
That’s the basic
Uncertainty Principle, and it
applies to other conjugate variables
like particle spin, particle charge
and particle phase. For some
reason that doesn’t really make
sense, this discovery led some
physicists – led by Neils Bohr and
Werner Heisenberg, who formed what
came to be known as the Copenhagen
Interpretation of quantum mechanics,
to conclude that since we can’t
measure simultaneously position and
momentum, (or two of other conjugate
variables, somehow these processes
are uncaused.
It is important
to see that if the universe exists
as an axiomatic fact, and change is
axiomatic, causality must also be
axiomatic. Again, otherwise
everything would be frozen. If
causality is necessary, and
describes change, obviously
causality is as fundamental a fact
of nature. In other words, this
explanation of causality is at a
much more fundamental level than
interpreting the results of the
Heisenberg and stronger, more
recent, uncertainty relations.
There is more to it. It has never
been shown in any way that something
could be uncaused. Think about it.
Change requires causality. This can
be demonstrated through certain laws
of physics. For example, there is a
Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy.
This law has never been violated.
When one particle interacts with
another particle, there is an
exchange of mass-energy. One
particle will gain mass-energy, and
the other will lose mass-energy.
Again, that conservation law has
never been violated. If one
particle gains mass-energy, then the
cause of that gain has to be the
interaction with the other
particle. It’s clear as day.
A problem with
that conservation law may arise when
you consider matter in terms of
either mass or energy. Mass-Energy
is what Einstein explained the
universe as in his theory of Special
Relativity. It’s the idea that mass
and energy are actually one.
E=mc² where E means
energy, m means mass and
c² means the speed of light
squared. That gets a little
confusing because apparently there
have been some seeming violations of
conservation of mass, and some
seeming violations of conservation
of energy that make this law appear
less ironclad.
But, there is
another conservation law in physics,
which came out of Newton’s Laws of
Motion. This is the Law of
Conservation of Momentum. When a
particle is moving through space, it
has momentum. Momentum means
velocity and direction. So, when a
particle is at one point, its
momentum at that point will
determine its position at the second
point. You can never lose
momentum. If one particle interacts
with another, momentum is always
conserved. That we have this law of
conservation of momentum that
requires causality is another proof
at the most fundamental level of
physics that causality is the
process for change – is the
basic process by which how things
happen.
Another law of
physics that I think is obvious to
us all is that matter moves through
space in time. Time is what allows
for change. If there was no time,
there could be no change. So, you
have a particle at one point at a
certain moment in time, and since
everything is moving, it will be at
another point the next moment in
time. This movement applies to
every particle on Earth. The
universe is expanding. So, our
whole solar system and Milky Way
galaxy are expanding outward. The
Galaxy is expanding toward a region
of the universe called
The Great
Attractor Anomaly. And, our solar
system is moving in time as it
revolves around the Milky Way
Galaxy. There are various kinds of
motions that are always happening,
that include every particle, and
every part of the Earth. This
motion all requires time. Time is
what allows change. It’s what
allows causality to happen.
Another axiom in
physics is that there is an arrow of
time, in the sense that time will
always go from past to present to
future. It will never go from
future to present to past. The
reason I say that’s axiomatic is
because there has never been a known
violation, and because it is so
obvious. In physics, there are
certain kinds of theories and
equations that are deemed
symmetrical, in the sense that they
allow, mathematically, for time to
travel backward. But, when you
think of these kinds of equations
and theories, you have to remember
that mathematics is a measuring
tool. It is not a descriptor of the
nature of reality. It helps
physicists come up with measurements
of reality to then reach their
conclusions. With mathematics, you
can subtract two from one and get a
negative one, but that doesn’t mean
that you can subtract two apples
from one apple and get as a physical
entity a “negative apple.” Negative
apples do not exist in reality.
That is why I say that although
there are equations that allow for
time to go backwards, it’s just the
math. It has never been
demonstrated, and is clearly
impossible.
One of the claims
for free will is that our mind is
not physical, and so our thoughts
are not physical. Some say that if
our thoughts are not physical, then
that means that maybe they are not
caused, and maybe they are the
result of a free will. The problem
with that assertion is the existence
of time. Let’s say we make a
decision, and we call it
“spiritual.” We say it doesn’t have
a physical presence, however that
decision would have to take place
within a moment in time. It has a
precise position in this timeline
that goes from past, to present, to
future. Naturally, if it has a
precise moment in our timeline, it
is completely subject to the
causality that governs everything
else in the universe.
Let’s say we make
a decision. We define it as
spiritual, but it happens in the
present moment. We should realize
that the present moment – anything
that happens in the present moment –
is the complete result of the state
of the universe at the previous
moment. Naturally, if we have a
spiritual decision taking place at a
set point in time, and then being
caused by the state of the universe
at the prior moment, and that state
of the universe is caused by the
state of the universe before that,
you now have a causal regression
that leads back presumably to the
Big Bang, and who knows what
happened before that. Defining
decisions as not being physical does
not allow for a free will because
any decision we make, and any
thought we have, occupies a specific
point in time, and time is causal.
I want to now
consider randomness, or
indeterminism, defined as
acausality. It’s greatly perplexing
how otherwise brilliant people have
proposed this hypothesis. My guess
is that physicists like Bohr and
Heisenberg were more than “shut up
and calculate” researchers; they
were also interested in the
fundamental nature of reality. It’s
likely they had an interest in the
question of whether our human will
is free or not. My guess is that it
was this philosophical interest,
which to some physicists meant
finding a way to preserve the notion
of a free will, which led them to
reach incoherent, internally
inconsistent, conclusions, like the
idea of acausality, that basically
make no sense.
Sometimes we
understand randomness in the sense
of having a deck of cards, and
picking one “at random.” This is
more accurately described as
“apparent randomness.” What some
physicists mean, however -- and
what’s actually taught in many
college level physics courses -- is
the Copenhagen
Interpretation of
quantum mechanics that considers
elementary particle behavior as
random in the strong sense of not
having been caused. Think about
the concept of randomness in that
sense of something happening that is
not caused. It doesn’t make sense.
There is a cause to everything.
Things do not just happen for no
reason, and without cause.
Let’s say
something was to “just happen.”
Let’s say a particle could just come
into existence out of nowhere. A
particle is somewhere, when a moment
earlier it was nowhere. That too
would be a causal process, and you
cannot rationally consider the
coming into existence of the
particle as random. Sometimes
physicists will say to themselves,
“I know everything that is happening
in this system.” For example, with
radioactive decay, for isotopes that
have a half-life, meaning they will
decay at a certain rate and within a
specific window of time – physicists
cannot predict exactly when a single
isotope will undergo this decay.
So, for many years some have claimed
that since we can’t predict its
behavior, it can’t have a cause, and
that it must be random in the strong
sense meaning acausal. I trust you
understand the illogic of that
conclusion.
There is no true
randomness, in the sense of things
happening without a cause.
Everything has to be caused.
Another reason some physicists,
philosophers, and psychologists
became confused regarding this
matter involves a statement by
Pierre-Simon Laplace, who was a
famous French mathematician and
physicist. He penned what came to
be understood as the classic
statement describing determinism, or causality. He
essentially said that if we
knew the position of every particle
in the universe, and every force
acting upon every particle, and
if we could compute that data,
we could know both the past and the
future. Nothing would be hidden
from us. In his own words:
We may regard the
present state of the universe as the
effect of its past and the cause of
its future. An intellect which at a
certain moment would know all forces
that set nature in motion, and all
positions of all items of which
nature is composed, if this
intellect were also vast enough to
submit these data to analysis, it
would embrace in a single formula
the movements of the greatest bodies
of the universe and those of the
tiniest atom; for such an intellect
nothing would be uncertain and the
future just like the past would be
present before its eyes.
What confused
some is that because we can’t
simultaneously measure the position
and momentum of a particle, and
therefore can’t know the position
and force acting upon every
particle, (and more generally,
because we can’t know everything in
the universe) we can’t make such
predictions using either classical
or quantum mechanics. Somehow, that
realization led some physicists to
believe there was such a thing as
indeterminism, defined as
randomness, or acausality.
Whichever term you want to use,
these physicists are claiming that
some things are simply uncaused.
Sometimes physicists will define
randomness as unpredictability, but
that is a slight-of-hand assertion
because when they are asked what
they mean by unpredictable, they
ultimately equate it with
acausality.
Bringing all of
this back to the question of human
will, if the universe exists
axiomatically, and if change is the
fundamental process of the universe,
without which nothing can happen,
and if causality is necessary to all
change, then causality is the
fundamental process in nature. If
everything has a cause, that means
that every one of our decisions has
a cause, and that cause has a cause,
and that cause has a cause. That
is a very good way to understand why
free will is impossible.
I hope you now
understand that everything has a
cause, and that causality is
fundamental to nature. We cannot
escape this truth, and that’s why we
don’t have a free will.
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