Does Free Will allow Randomness?

I did read some of it.

I have so many comments and concerns that I decided it wouldn't be worth bringing them up. I'd be better off just writing a book.

In the OP of that thread it is stated:

"Some think nature's indeterminism only exists at the level of quarks and electrons. But Searle says this is wrong. Indeterminism goes all the way from quarks to baseballs."

Personally I see no need for indeterminism to exist on the macro level. It simply isn't required. Creation begins at the quantum level, not the macro level.

This is especially true with respect to human thinking. Our brains don't operate on a macro scale. We may think of brains as being macro objects, but they don't operate on a macro level. They operate on a quantum level via electrical activity, and other quantum phenomena

Therefore what a baseball might do after it is hit by a bat is totally irrelevant to the topic of "free will". What's relavent to free will is the conscious process of the entity who swung the bat.

The indeterminism of the universe arises from the quantum level, and that would include the cerebral processes of all beings that have organic neural nets. But it would also include other natural processes that gave rise to the very evolution and existence of bilogical neural nets.

To now look at a baseball and ask if it's behavior is 'indeterminant' is to entirely miss the point, IMHO.

Indeterminism is the basis of creation, and the thinking process of biological neural nets. In fact, this would also be true of manmade neural nets as well. When mankind prefects the construction of "artificial" or manmade neural nets (which they are already building), they very well may create a conscious sentient mind that has it's own free will.

I expect that they most certainly will do this. I only hope that they recognize the free will sentience of the being they create.

But they probably won't. Mankind as a whole tends to be quite arrogant about things like that, unfortunately.

I already have a very solid working understanding of QM as well as the macro world. I'm totally comforable with how free will and conscious sentience can exist in this world.

I try to share my understanding with other people, but all they want to do is argue about it. I have no desire to argue about it. I'm quite content with my own understanding of things. It makes perfect sense to me. I have no fear of randomness. From my point of view it's the greatest gift we could have ever been bestowed with. Why people find it so repugnant is beyond me.

Qauntum indeterminism is not acausal, therefore not truly random.

It is the description required for the probability of a well known range of outcomes stemming from well known causes.

Pure randomness, uncaused effects, do not exist.

If I poured water from a glass and it suddenly began to boil in mid-air while simultaneuosly taking a path towards another, then I could not be held responsible for the outcome. There was no way to know about that outcome, which would be purely random.



Pure randomness does not support free will any more than strict determinism.

Good post wux!

Excellent earlier link Jeremy!



On page 5 myself... good stuff, and well spoken!

You're just denying the accepted formal meanings of these words.

Quantum indeterminism is indeed acausal. Just as the outcome of a toss of dice is acausal.

The fact that the dice have 'form' does not equate to the 'cause' of any particular roll.

Tossing dice is considered to be a "truly random' act mathematically speaking. In fact, the probability curves of tossing dice over many rolls can be predicted only because it's a truly random act. If it wasn't truly random the probability formulas wouldn't work.

If you want to say that the over-all probability distributes are restricted, then no one would argue with that. This is indeed the case. Yet that has absolutly nothing to do with the fact that each individual quantum event is indeed truly random.

You're must mincing words in ways that don't fit the formal definitions of those words as they are used within the sciences and mathematics.

It's simply incorrect to say that quantum events aren't 'truly random'. That's simply not true based on what these words mean within the formalism.

You must have a phobia to 'randomness' to go to such extremes as to deny the very meanings of these formal terms.

You're probably confusing it with complete chaos. In fact, I'm sure you are based on what you say,...



That wouldn't merely be "random", that would be random "chaos"

If you drop a coin and it can only land in one of two positions but you can't predetermine which of those two positions it's going to land in, then that coin toss is 'truly random'.

It wouldn't need to do something absurd like trun into a butterfly and fly away in order to be considered to be 'truly random'.

If all it ever does is land heads or tails, and nothing else, but those two states are unpredicable, then it's 'truly random'.

You're insistence that other possibilities must be present for somethign to be 'truly random' is simply incorrect by the formal accepted meaning of 'randomness'.

You're demanding definitions for 'randomness' that simply don't exist. You're making up your own semantics.

I think this is the problem that a lot of people have with Quantum Mechanics.

They have their own informal ideas of what words like 'randomness' might mean, and so when Quantum Mechanics says that something is 'random' they think it means whatever intuitive idea they have concerning that word.

But Quantum Mechanics is using the term in a mathmatical sense only.

Quantum Mechanics is saying that quantum events are truly random in a mathematical sense. Not necessarily in someone's personal intuitive idea of what they think 'random' should mean.

Quantum Mechanics is a mathematical theory and it holds within those formal definitions.

Whether it holds with respect to the whims of how certain individuals might personally think of specific concepts in terms of their own intuition is anyone's guess because Quantum Mechanics says nothing about people's personal intuition.

It's a mathematical theory and it stands true based on the formal mathematical meanings of the terms it uses.

Is this wrong?

wux's point:

Is it possible that randomness and free will are different 'wavelengths' of the same condition.

Or the crest and trough of the wavelength of another event?
(I am having trouble translating this thought to english)

Obviously, I used an incorrect example, i.e. an Opened Set...
But in a Closed Set -- with limited number of possibilities -- it might very well work. For instance,
One of the water's three states is
Not hard (i.e. ice),
Not gas (i.e vapor).
--- That leaves the only other possibility of what something IS -- liquid...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Creative: Jeremy:

IF A RANDOM CHOICE IS NO MORE FREE THaN A PRE-DETERMINED ONE, then I wouldn't be responsible in either case:
-- If I accidentally spill my drink in somebody's face, OR
-- If I purposely threw my drink in somebody's face???

Yes, different wavelengths or "density levels"


There are seven levels of "Densities" that exist for all.The highest level is 7 where the spirit or soul is in concert with the Creator.Humans on earth exist at this point in time at the 3rd level with lower entities such as rocks at level 1 and animals at level 2.The 5th, 6th and 7th levels or densities are only where spirits or souls exist without physical bodies or forms.

Ever have the phenomena of not being able to "get that song out of your head"; ie, you hear a song with a melody, and you keep singing it in your mind, but you dont want to? Do I have "free will" in keeping that song from playing in my mind? How much "free will" do I have when I am dreaming? How much free will do I have over my autonomic nervous system reflexes?

I personally do not feel like I have free will to control the chemical reactions going on in my own body; these reactions appear to be totally random and not under my control. Do these so-called "random chemical reactions" that allow thinking to occur give me free will? My answer is no. Free will is an illusion, in my opinion.

If I do not have "free will" to control the chemical reactions and quantum events occuring in my brain, I do not feel that I have free will. This is why I believe in pre-determinism. Chemical reactions and quantum events happen for a reason, based upon the previous event that ocurred, and other events in the environment...and snow-balling on to the next, and next and next.

In the case of rolling the dice, we say there is a probability of getting such and such. But, if you looked at each milli, milli, milli second from the time the dice is thrown, and analyzed each individual unit of time down to approaching zero time, based upon the trajectory, velocity, wind conditions construction of the dice, you could determine what number was going to land in my opinion. It is an illusion that you cannot determine what the number will be, you can if you know all the conditions affecting each subsequent milli, milli milli second.


Maybe I do not understand the question, I dunno.

Dear grrrrrr, you seem to be trying to argue from the ignorance point of view:
"I don't know something -- therefore it doesn't exist!"

I suggest you learn the Self-Hupnosis, or YOGA, both of which allow you control your bodily functions and/or your dreams. . .

By all means, as you prefer. I would just like to submit a fine-tuning to your proposal: Let's change the term of "degrees of free will" to "impressions of free will happening" or "sentient evidence of free will" or "psycho-experiential evidence of free will". With that change in place I could really go along.

Would you agree to this change in your proposal?

I think you understand the question all right. The dice problem lies in the fact that the dice roll is determined, and it can be known what number comes up before the die leaves the hand. But the factors involved are very complex, they are incalculable by the human mind even when computers are brought in to help the mind. The fact that they can be theoretically calculated and predicted is not something that can be put to practice. The trajectory, the bounce, the turn, the internal vibration of the die, the momentary changes in the slipperiness of the edge of the die due to heating of its surface due to the energy transfer created by the impact, the variable air resistance, these all render the calculations incomprehensibly complex and undoable. HOWEVER: The resulting sequence of face values of the die that turn up is what humans believe is a truly random sequence. Unfortunately there is no math to prove randomness, and there is no math to prove a sequence is not random. We, humans, had to decide on something, and we said, random is what we experience seeing as a sequence of the values painted on die surfaces as they come up in repeated throws of a die.

I should add: This is a definition. This is not a theoretical principle. There is no theoretical principle of randomness that can be rigorously translated to tpractice. That is the reason that humans (that's you, guys) needed a defintion to define "random sequnce of numbers". The die thing is as good as it gets, and since it is simple, easy to comprehend, easy to manufacture the pieces for, easy to carry out, it has been chosen as the absolute empirical definition on how to produce a random sequence of numbers.

In some lottery draws they use random number generation by computation; but the true term for that actually is "pseudo-random number generation" since it has not been performed by throwing a die and reading the faces that come up in chronological sequence. Also, there are mechanical random number generations, like putting identical bouncy balls with the numbers painted on them from 1 to 49, and letting the balls drop out of a mill; this could yield even more randomness than the dice, but it is still branded "pseudo-random number generating" because technically it does not use a six-sided die and throwing it repeatedly. Which is the definition, so it CAN only be the absolutely true one, nothing else will suffice.

Hypnosis is another example that supports my belief in pre-determinism. If someone is hypnotized, they are "seeing" things that are not there, doing things they were programmed to do, etc. How much free will does someone have under hypnosis? Are they able to "snap out" of a hypnotic event?

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I so enjoyed reading this.... And I do understand... My focus on a subject is scattered! I am trying have rational thinking as intelligent would be but being with children every day for the last 27yrs. I have found that I have no adult skills, so I attempted to walk were I do not belong but to give it a effort!

As a mother seeing the world in a child's eyes, not in adult eyes! I think, speak and act as a child. NOT a adult.

thank you for being so honest and showing me were I if anything need to look at and try again..Thank you very much for not shagging me..... the the wall..... I am grateful to you all... I gave it my best effort....

We are not allowed to know future events, so we come up with these "probability equations" to figure the odds. In the case of rolling the dice, theoretically, if I were to examine each of the events that caused the rolling of the dice to occur, to the actual throwing, landing, turning, and settling, each and every milli milli milli second would be determined by the previous milli milli milli second. The settling of the dice would be "determined" from all previous events. Just because I am unaware of the circumstances that caused me to want to throw the dice in the first place, and just because I am unaware of all the environmental, physical, energy components involved in the turn and twist and landing of the dice, and just because I cannot slow down time to a milli milli milli second, does not mean that the rolling and the landing of the dice is random. It was pre-determined that I wanted to roll that dice for some reason, and it was pre-determined that the dice would land that way based upon the conditions at those exact moments in time.

I know i am interrupting and I am sorry but I am so fascinated with the words..

Because you explained it in a way that I personally could relate to this subject. I can also start to understand! Please bare with me on this site, I so want to understand the though proses so if anything, I can change my oneself!

I only ask for you all to teach me and help me a simple women understand in a different light.

Books, theory, anything to help me start from the beginning so i can catch up and see my own personal growth. That is all i ask!

Thank you!