Neuroscience and free will

More rubbish...

"They are correlated before measurement"

"I think it's entirely fair to say that the entangled particles are correlated"

How can the measurement be correlated if the states are not correlated before that?

~~ Paul

How can the measurement be correlated if the states are not correlated before that?

~~ Paul

Correlated means "interdependent". And yes, the states are interdependent prior to measurement (e.g. https://www.nature.com/news/entangled-di...her-1.9532).

Linda

Ah, no comment, now that I’ve quoted you writing the exact rubbish you claimed you never wrote. What a nutter...

“They are correlated before measurement"

"I think it's entirely fair to say that the entangled particles are correlated"


I answered your question in the last para of my last but one post.

You mean this?

"Nature is not bothered if you don't like it that the particles state, between it's careful preparation, and it's measurement, is undetermined. Nature is under no obligation to give up it's secrets, or make things easy for us."

The states of the two particles are undetermined but correlated.

If the particles' quantum states were not correlated by their interaction, there would be no way for the measurements to be correlated later. You would just have two non-entangled particles.

~~ Paul

Oh, I'm quite sure there are some random events whose cause we will eventually discover. But I very much doubt that, say, alpha decay will one of them. And even if we find a cause for every random event, I still need a description of how some of those could be free decisions on the part of some agent.

I haven't even heard anyone venture a description. But I remain alert.

Then why would I decide to believe in free will? See quote below.



As random event is one with no causal precursors. Thus it is arbitrary, perhaps with some nonuniform outcome probabilities. As fls noted, we have decades of study of random processes, even using them for such things are selecting lottery numbers. We have not found any hints that alpha decay, for example, is nonrandom.

~~ Paul

Sorry Paul, I never meant to some how correlate random and free decisions as one being evidence for the other.  I've simply been trying to piece together why a description of how a free choice might logically be constructed/made is so confounding and yet you readily accept the notion of a fully arbitrary random event which seems equally abstract.

At the risk of flaunting my own ignorance (which I really don't mind doing), is there a scientific proof for "random"?  For example, just because we haven't found any hints that alpha decay may be nonrandom is not the same thing as saying we've proven it to be "random".

Just seems to me you should be wrestling with both concepts (random and free will) since while they may or may not be related, neither seems to have a satisfying, rational explanation.  (To me at least.)

Note that I said "almost perfect." I think you are overestimating the number of errors that occur. Meanwhile, they are repaired in an entirely deterministic manner. And why does this matter? They are random errors.

~~ Paul

Fair enough, there are almost noiseless channels.  But, when you say that error-correction programs repair the "message" in a determined manner, you reinforce my primary point that it is logically arranged structures that are determined in an informational space where they operate.  Not in real world physical signal transmission. 

"Random" and "determined"; as said before - are not physical properties - as an implicit truth in all these arguments.  They are merely subjective judgments by agents.  Randomness is not a juice that is mixed into an event to give it freedom.  Determination is not fundamental force flowing from event to event like electromagnetism.

My definition of random will be different from those folks here are looking at it from math and physics points of view.  It's simple "numbers".  The "qubit crazy" Austrians have revealed the simple truth.

When a photon is measured as a single particle - you can't get 2 bits of data (energy & location) from the measurement of a 1 bit cell source.  It's so straightforward.  The wave function is active in reality before measurement, carrying multiple possibilities for the photon.  Only a one bit "fixed present" can be exported at a time.

 A bit cell is the length of tape, the area of disc surface, or the part of an integrated circuit in which a single bit is recorded.

Quantum mechanics provides a probability distribution for the outcomes of measurements, not before measurements, or to provide information on the state of the system between preparation and measurement (when the particle is entangled). Taking a measurement changes the particles state, and that new state is what we measure, the previous state, and all the unfulfilled possibilities fall away and are lost, gone for good, and cannot be recovered. As the particle was carefully prepared to become entangled, at that point we don’t know the system state anymore, until one takes a measurement. It is measurements of the entangled pair particles that shows whether the particles are correlated, or not.  It’s not possible for you to know information about these undetermined particles before you take your measurement, whilst they are in their entangled state. QM provides us with a way of predicting measurements, it doesn’t tell you what is going on between preparation and your measurement. Feel free to make assumptions. But you can’t find out, not even in principle. Stating that you know information about these particles after they are entangled, but before they are measured is nonsense.

You don't appear to want to distinguish:

The particles' quantum states are correlated.

from

We know something specific about the particles' quantum states (before measurement).

Again, let me ask: If the particles' quantum states are not correlated, how can future measurements of the particles be correlated?

Is there any chance you could answer that question? We may find that we disagree only on terminology.

~~ Paul

My definition of random will be different from those folks here are looking at it from math and physics points of view.  It's simple "numbers".  The "qubit crazy" Austrians have revealed the simple truth.

When a photon is measured as a single particle - you can't get 2 bits of data (energy & location) from the measurement of a 1 bit cell source.  It's so straightforward.  The wave function is active in reality before measurement, carrying multiple possibilities for the photon.  Only a one bit "fixed present" can be exported at a time.

Could you elaborate on who these Austrians are and what truth they've revealed?

Also, what is your definition of random - it might help me understand where you are coming from re: Two-Stage Models...I can see "first stage" of efficient causality that brings to mind the necessity of selecting between potentials (possibly including the "do nothing" potential) to be actualized (Whitehead's prehension), and the "second stage" of final causation that makes use of intentionality to bring us to new total state when a particular potential state is selected/actualized (Whitehead's concrescence).

And I do think, based on his own writing of indeterminism, William James intended to include Final Causes (see my bolding):

Chance is a purely negative and relative term, giving us no information about that of which it is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else—not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence. What I say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be in itself to call it “chance.” All you mean by calling it “chance” is that this is not guaranteed, that it may also fall out otherwise. For the system of other things has no positive hold on the chance-thing. Its origin is in a certain fashion negative: it escapes, and says, Hands off! coming, when it comes, as a free gift, or not at all.

This negativeness, however, and this opacity of the chance-thing when thus considered ab extra, or from the point of view of previous things or distant things, do not preclude its having any amount of positiveness and luminosity from within, and at its own place and moment. All that its chance-character asserts about it is that there is something in it really of its own, something that is not the unconditional property of the whole. If the whole wants this property, the whole must wait till it can get it, if it be a matter of chance. That the universe may actually be a sort of joint-stock society of this sort, in which the sharers have both limited liabilities and limited powers, is of course a simple and conceivable notion.
  —William James, Dilemma of Determinism 1884 Harvard lecture

See also Chris Fuch's - the physicist who "invented" the QBism interpretation - On Participatory Realism

In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, " 'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place, .... But they are connected with names. ... [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words." This statement expresses the dominant way of thinking in physics: Physics is about the impersonal laws of nature; the "I" never makes an appearance in it. Since the advent of quantum theory, however, there has always been a nagging pressure to insert a first-person perspective into the heart of physics.

In incarnations of lesser or greater strength, one may consider the "Copenhagen" views of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli, the observer-participator view of John Wheeler, the informational interpretation of Anton Zeilinger and Caslav Brukner, the relational interpretation of Carlo Rovelli, and, most radically, the QBism of N. David Mermin, Ruediger Schack, and the present author, as acceding to the pressure.

These views have lately been termed "participatory realism" to emphasize that rather than relinquishing the idea of reality (as they are often accused of), they are saying that reality is more than any third-person perspective can capture. Thus, far from instances of instrumentalism or antirealism, these views of quantum theory should be regarded as attempts to make a deep statement about the nature of reality. This paper explicates the idea for the case of QBism.

As well, it highlights the influence of John Wheeler's "law without law" on QBism's formulation.