Free Will

 

 

Free will does exist. It also doesn't. Free will is incredibly subtle and shows up in more unexpected places, and not the way we think it would. How much volition and agency do we actually possess? I would say the circumstances of ones birth and surrounding environment certainly influence the direction ones life goes to a large extent, there are so many forces out of ones control including their brain chemistry that influences their emotions and decision making apparatus. However, I would argue that despite all this at some point there is agency and volition that exists in a very real sense, but not after also looking at how the entire universe has influenced each agent.

One significant finding of modern studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them.Volition, voluntary actions, seem to already be decided before we've made them. With contemporary brain scanning technology, scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether 12 subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice. 

This scenario involves another interesting thought experiment. Say in the future at some point we are able to 100% predict the outcome of a decision, say you will use your left or right hand to press a button, and we show the person in the experiment what the outcome is, which we know with absolute accuracy that they will follow through with. I'm interested in this example with what actually happens, because now presented with new information, the person undergoing the experiment can decide to just do the exact opposite, or just go along with it. Take it one step further and we have the predictive model also take into account what happens when it also accounts for what would happen when new information is presented as well. 

If we have constructed a 100% accurate and deterministic model for predicting the outcome of when the new information is presented, then the person who is testing will always go with the outcome that's been presented. From a subjective perspective, what actually happens in this experiment?  Maybe its the case that 100% accuracy is never achievable and so that's why the logic of this thought experiment is plausible. It just seems like that tiny shred of inaccuracy would always allow for non-deterministic results. We know from the postulates of quantum mechanics that there is always some uncertainty in measurements, we can make probabilistic guesses but never absolutely accurate predictions at certain scales. Does free will somehow emerge from this? I don't know but I am speculating.  

Maybe there is some intrinsic quantum mechanical phenomena occurring within the brain that fundamentally relates to consciousness and might somehow be responsible for free will in some strange abstract sense. We can only guess and speculate since there really isn't any evidence for this in a real sense. How much does internal quantum mechanical phenomena actually influence our neurochemical processes? The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of some New Age guru. Realistically however, the book isn't entirely closed on the concept. 

 Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer at some level. In other words, its quite possible that quantum information is fundamentally tied into the mechanics of how our brains function. 

Fisher’s hypothesis faces a daunting obstacle: a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. To build an operating quantum computer, you need to connect qubits - quantum bits of information - in a process called entanglement. But entangled qubits exist in a fragile state. They must be carefully shielded from any noise in the surrounding environment. Just one photon bumping into your qubit would be enough to make the entire system “decohere,” destroying the entanglement and wiping out the quantum properties of the system. It’s challenging enough to do quantum processing in a carefully controlled laboratory environment, never mind the warm, wet, complicated mess that is human biology, where maintaining coherence for sufficiently long periods of time is well nigh impossible.

 Fisher has identified just one credible candidate for storing quantum information in the brain: phosphorus atoms, which are the only common biological element other than hydrogen with a spin of one-half, a low number that makes possible longer coherence times. Phosphorus can’t make a stable qubit on its own, but its coherence time can be extended further, according to Fisher, if you bind phosphorus with calcium ions to form clusters. 

In 1975, Aaron Posner, a Cornell University scientist, noticed an odd clustering of calcium and phosphorous atoms in his X-rays of bone. He made drawings of the structure of those clusters: nine calcium atoms and six phosphorous atoms, later called “Posner molecules” in his honor. The clusters popped up again in the 2000s, when scientists simulating bone growth in artificial fluid noticed them floating in the fluid. Subsequent experiments found evidence of the clusters in the body. Fisher thinks that Posner molecules could serve as a natural qubit in the brain as well.

 

The process starts in the cell with a chemical compound called pyrophosphate. It is made of two phosphates bonded together — each composed of a phosphorus atom surrounded by multiple oxygen atoms with zero spin. The interaction between the spins of the phosphates causes them to become entangled. They can pair up in four different ways: Three of the configurations add up to a total spin of one (a “triplet” state that is only weakly entangled), but the fourth possibility produces a zero spin, or “singlet” state of maximum entanglement, which is crucial for quantum computing.

Next, enzymes break apart the entangled phosphates into two free phosphate ions. Crucially, these remain entangled even as they move apart. This process happens much more quickly, Fisher argues, with the singlet state. These ions can then combine in turn with calcium ions and oxygen atoms to become Posner molecules. Neither the calcium nor the oxygen atoms have a nuclear spin, preserving the one-half total spin crucial for lengthening coherence times. So those clusters protect the entangled pairs from outside interference so that they can maintain coherence for much longer periods of time — Fisher roughly estimates it might last for hours, days or even weeks.

In this way, the entanglement can be distributed over fairly long distances in the brain, influencing the release of neurotransmitters and the firing of synapses between neurons — spooky action at work in the brain.

At a physical level it seems there is potentially some room to allow for some non-determinism to be at play in the processes that are responsible for consciousness and subjective experience. This could also all just be bunk, philosophically speaking though how much these examples influence decision making is unclear and lacking in terms of constructed models. Nothing exists in a vacuum, we are all interconnected pieces in a global sea of culture and individual intentions and behaviors. 

So on one level, there is individual identity and on another level there is network identity. We are all nodes in connected social and physical networks we are a part of, but each node itself does possess its own agency that exists independently of the rest of the network. 

Each of our neurons firing is unaware of what a neuron is, but all of them together connected firing can understand the concept of what a neuron is.  Maybe each neuron itself is more conscious than we might initially assume, we don't actually know this. 

I'll leave this piece with a strange thought on termites and architects. 

 

 

This is a termite mound. It was constructed by millions of termites all incentivized by their own circumstances to create this structure, each of them working independently and eventually contributing to the final whole structure. It was not the mind of one termite that constructed this, and yet each individual termite had a role in its design.  

This is La Sagrada Familia, its a massive work of architecture designed by the mind of one person. The person composed of millions of neurons, which went into eventually designing this whole structure. It was the mind of one man, yet this persons mind was composed of millions of neurons and processes and was influenced by many other human minds both past and present.

Both these structures, one built by insect another by man, both share a similar design in some ways and besides scale follow similar design principles. Each individual is subject to so many forces outside of their control, and yet control exists, it remains. How much power we have to move our own destiny is perhaps greater than we might think, but does it matter? One termite might think so, it really depends on the termite. Though one must also not lose track that without the whole hive the lone termite could not build the hive, and without each individual termite the hive would not exist.

Free will does exist, but it is subtle and largely unseen.