Determinism concerns the relationship between cause and effect, between natural law and universal single specific phenomenon. In nature, given a cause or a law, it can occur only a certain effect or a particular phenomenon, and nothing else. So there is no space, in the Universe, for a spontaneous variation, nor for the pursuit of goals freely chosen.
If determinism is true we would not be free. If indeterminism is true, our actions would be random and our will would fail to control to be anyway morally responsible.
A key part of the debate "free will versus determinism" is the problem of ‘ causa prima’. Some believe that determinism and free will are mutually exclusive and that the consequence of determinism would be that free will is an illusion; others, however, called compatibilists, believe that the two ideas can coexist. Compatibilism (also known as soft determinism) admits that the existence of free will is well-suited with the fact that the universe is deterministic, while to the opposite, incompatibilism denies this possibility.
Much of the disputes stems from the fact that the definition of free will is not unique.
Some argue that it is referring to the metaphysical truth of acting independently, while others define it as the perception of being an actor that humans have when they act. For example, David Hume argued that it is possible that humans can form freely (regardless of context) their desires and beliefs, but the only "freedom" should be connected with the possibility of translating desires and beliefs into voluntary actions.
So, from a common point of view, free will would clash with determinism, namely the idea that all things that happen in the present and in the future are a necessary consequence caused by previous events. ‘Strong’ determinism which is a version of incompatibilism says that everything is determined, even actions and human wills. Libertarianism is consistent with the strong determinism only in rejecting compatibilism; but libertarians accept the existence of a free will together with the idea that there are some indeterminate things.
Now, at what extension the causal interpretation of reality holds? Each of us perceives himself as an individual, free - within certain limits - of self-determination. If all the world follows the laws of purely causality, assuming to know the rules that govern the time evolution of the world and the conditions at a given time we will be able to predict the future of the world ... including ourselves. This made someone think that our self-determination is in reality only apparent and illusory, contrary to what we seem to perceive.
The deterministic approach has undergone in the first half of the twentieth century a major blow with the loss of control of the column on which it was based, namely the principle of causality. This principle was in fact literally unbalanced as a result of a fundamental scientific discovery that took place in the twenties of the twentieth century in the field of quantum mechanics: the Heisenberg principle of indeterminacy. In fact, if one could imagine the universe as a system that is consequential, foreseeable, after the discovery of the uncertainty principle, epistemologically it cannot take it for granted, as you should be aware that the basic phenomena of reality can be described only in probabilistic terms.
A further and even more serious blow to determinism derived from the discovery of chaos theory in the second half of the twentieth century.
With the emergence of the ‘butterfly effect’, necessarily the classical determinism is having to be replaced by a conception in which the state of many phenomena in nature can only be expressed in probabilistic terms, keeping in many cases, but not always, a certain degree of regularity. This raises the concept of deterministic chaos, so it is still possible to maintain a certain degree of forecasting in physical models, but it becomes impossible to turn prediction into certainty.
The uncertainty principle of Heisenberg rises ‘wonderfully’ our self-determination: consider a system that contains a conscious subject. If we were able to predict the evolution of a deterministic system that the subject would not be self-determining, with an obvious absurdity. It is for this reason that studies on the awareness and the functioning of the mind connect the characteristics of the conscious subject to quantum indeterminacy.
For the Heisenberg indeterminacy it is not a special phenomenon of physical reality, but rather a universal and fundamental law of nature. As he writes, with the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics "the non-validity of the law of causality is established definitively." Because "in the formulation of the law of causality clear if we know exactly the present-day, we can calculate the future" is false not the conclusion, but the premise. "We can not in principle know the present in every determining element
There is, in principle, no way to define unequivocally determinism or probabilism of physical phenomena.
Maybe we can say that the absence of free will would correspond to a scenario where some Entity ruling the universe could have everything pre-determined and figured out, by following a plan from prediction. But like you have mentioned, Quantum mechanics and Chaotic systems preclude that possibility.
Just to give an illustrative example of this I quote from the famous physicist and theologan John Polkinghorne (1990), available in http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/action.html
"when we have systems of some complexity, they rapidly acquire and exquisite sensitivity to circumstance. A very simple example is the air in this room. It consists of lots of molecules moving around. They are not like billiard balls, but they behave in many ways as if they were. Let's take that model, for it's not too misleading. The molecules are whizzing around and colliding with each other. In a period of (ten to the minus ten) seconds (that's one ten thousand millionth of a second, a pretty short time!) each of these molecules has had about fifty collisions with its neighbors. I then ask myself the following question: how accurately do I have to know how things were moving at the beginning in order to be able to calculate with tolerable accuracy how they will be moving at the end of that period, (ten to the minus ten) seconds? Each billiard ball collision is a perfectly determined event, but the way the billiard balls separate depends extremely sensitively on the exact angle at which they hit each other. If anyone here has ever played snooker or pool, they will be well aware of that fact! In the course of successive collisions, the uncertainties mount up (they exponentiate, as the mathematically minded say). It turns out that my calculation of how these billiard ball molecules would be moving will be badly out if I have neglected to take into account the presence of an extra electron (the smallest particle of matter) on the other side of the observable universe (about as far away as you can get) interacting with the molecules through its gravitational force (the weakest of the intrinsic forces of nature). In other words, such a system is unpredictable -- for I can't know about that electron on the other side of the universe -- and it is intrinsically un-isolable. So you see, systems of some degree of complexity really are exquisitely sensitive to circumstance...What are we to make of this? What we've learned is the complex systems are exquisitely sensitive and therefore intrinsically unpredictable. "Aha," you say, "but that is simply epistemology. It simply means we can't know what is happening; nevertheless, they may be running along perfectly rigid lines." Well, they might be, but we don't have to buy that. My instincts as a scientist are that what we can know and what is the case are very closely related to each other. That's why scientists are realists. A realist believes that what you can know and what is the case are closely connected."
I like this idea that what we can know and what is the case are connected. Since it seems we will never be able to know certain things, than maybe neither any of us nor any Entity could ever be able to carry out a plan for the universe that prevented free will.
So in this scenario maybe we could speak of the possibility of cause - effect connections at our macroscopic level (where quantum uncertainties tend to average up, according to John Polkinghorne) and therefore 'some' determinism and free will at this level, but within the context of a fundamentally unpredictable universe, that keeps that determinism from becoming absolute and prevent free will.
Though this makes some sense to me, this is just a scenario, among several possible ones.
Good luck.
You, Maestro appear to be a miner in search of nuggets. To this end it appears that you are prevaricating the meaning of will. The definition of a free will exerted does not necessitate clarity of conception sufficient to predict outcomes; this would be a free will well accomplished (a dubious proposition). This engages ideas of history. I cannot talk about Hegel having not read him sufficiently. His massive undertaking however appears to have launched many ships on the apparently bottomless sea of philosophy.
Similarly, complexity is based on an assumption of systemic interaction. This brings me to a different question that I hear in your text that interests me. A careful recognition a kind of conception native to your text involving differences and similarities inherent in objects of thought is necessary. To this end you appear to defer to Hume's objectivity in which objects and the relations between objects are distinct. From this perspective, an event is a relation of things. Perception is a relation of a thing to an event. (Light strikes an object and ends in an eye). perceptual recognition (Kant) is paradigmatic. This paradigmatic application among other things divides the known world into systems. These systems may be coincidental to the observer (he who may intervene). Your billiard ball simile has this problem inherent. An event (Balls clicking) is the beginning of an eventual time stream that may continue or not. Successive events may, like a familial tree, proliferate. This is a systemic relation albeit linear. The systems to which you refer are, if I understand you correctly, not linear, like the "Live" effects in Conway's game. You refer to causal loops, or to self replicating phenomena. Causal loops may interact, as might self replicating phenomena. It is here that we reach complexity.
These interactions are the primary arena of will given the vagaries of interior paradigmatic conception. Since this arena is described wholly in relational terms (a term is a relation Wittgenstein might say) The relation known as free will (being an interior relation to perceptions) engages apparent systems, intervening according to interior conceptions, on Kant's noumenal world.
The "Meaning" of will at this level is more of effect that the "physical" intervention if we assume the understanding to be subject to the standards mentioned above. Thus we arrive back at the point (my beginning of this little maze) at which it is possible to assume that a free will is a will well accomplished.
In this conceptual loop is a sign that suggests to me an intuition. This intuition is that the idea of free will is true within a coherent conception of the world in which we seem as a body to exist. It is as if our brains are collectively predicated on a means of navigating the world that is necessarily objective and relational and that language is the name of that navigation.
If I may use a story from the book of Genesis as analog; once God parades the animals past Adam its all over. We are stuck in a linguistic phenomenal existence within which the action of will is not only a possibility but inherent in the most granular of conceptions. This does not mean that will exists, only that in the realm of meaning, will must exist for the whole thing to come off. Will is in this way like the number zero, a placeholder that speaks of the possibility of infinity. Thus we have God. If examined closely, the book of Genesis makes this strange linguistic relation as clear as is possible. God creates, man intervenes, free will is born.
Dear Leonard and Fernando Lobo,
I have appreciated your contribution full of ideas for thoughtful reflections. For the moment I’d remark that we are not able to pre-determine the events: to do so we should know precisely the state of all the particles of the universe at a given instant and all the laws that govern it. Moreover, assuming that this is possible, the observer that measures these states with the same act of measurement would affect the measure, because it is itself part of the system. So there is, in principle, no way to determine unequivocally the determinism of physical phenomena or probabilism.
As known, the deterministic approach has undergone in the first half of the twentieth century a major blow with the loss of firmness of the pillar on which it was based, namely the principle of causality. This principle was in fact literally unhinged as a result of the fundamental scientific discovery in the field of quantum mechanics: the Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty which removed the same theoretical assumption of causality. In fact, if one could imagine the universe as a consequential system, causative, unique and therefore predictable, after the discovery of the uncertainty principle it would be no longer possible epistemologically to take it for granted, but he should be aware that the basic phenomena of reality can be described only in probabilistic terms, and not so much for an objective and insurmountable difficulties in the calculation, but for an intrinsic impossibility of knowing, accurately and simultaneously, both the amount of motion and the position of a given sub-atomic particle. Given that the entire universe is composed of such particles and therefore all the events and phenomena are affected, the uncertainty principle is projected over the entire range of human knowledge with strong consequences on the philosophical and theoretical levels.
Thank you and have my best regards, Gianrocco
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