by Paul Singh
Currently there is no sound evidence to suggest that the human brain (or any other natural and phenomenon) is or acts like a quantum computer. Roger Penrose’s “Orchestrated Objective Reduction Model” (published 1990) has made several false biological predictions, and is considered to be an extremely poor model of brain physiology by physicists, mathematicians, and neuroscientists. Max Tegmark cites contradictions in Penrose’s own writings as evidence of the weakness of his theory. He argues that because humans can construe false ideas to be factual, human mathematical understanding need not be consistent, and consciousness may easily have a deterministic basis.
Max Tegmark proposed that quantum states in the brain would decohere at sub-picosecond time-scales, before they reached a spatial or temporal scale at which they could be useful for neural processing. Quantum mechanics works at very low temperatures close to absolute zero, and therefore cannot work in the brain because the brain is too hot. At high temperatures atoms vibrate violently making interactions between waves very chaotic and scrambles up the relationship between waves.
Penrose’s view of consciousness has influenced many Western and Indian religious people, many of whom those have little understanding of how science works. Penrose’s attempts at understanding consciousness have taken many twists and turns in the hands of charlatans and woo meisters who dupe the public with such superstitious ideas as non-corporeal bodies and “quantum healing” and a host of other myths. Numerous gurus use the jargon of quantum mechanics to spread pseudoscientific ideas and metaphysical claims without having even a minimal understanding of quantum mechanics.
Both consciousness and quantum mechanics are remarkably complicated and not fully understood at this time. But the fact that both are somewhat mysterious (for different reasons) does not mean that they are somehow related. Many media savvy physicists and some superstitious Hindu physicists with an agenda to promote Hindu mysticism claim that consciousness and quantum mechanics are connected, but they never bother to provide any functional definition of consciousness. Some of these wu-meisters are now promoting Buddhist ideas to say that consciousness or the soul transmigrates from one body to another. But this is a complete misunderstanding of Buddhism. The core idea of all sorts of Buddhism is that one moment of consciousness “conditions” the arising of another moment of consciousness in a cause and effect fashion, but Buddhism rejects the notion of the soul as an independent entity. In fact, Buddhism teaches that there is no soul, and if there is no soul, there obviously can be no transmigration of the soul.
The fact that we can alter virtually every aspect of a person’s consciousness by affecting particular aspects of the brain with drugs, transmagnetic stimulation, and many other physical means makes it overwhelmingly evident that consciousness is generated by the brain, as does the fact that consciousness can be taken away with certain types of anesthesia. Researchers now explain how thoughts arise, and they can alter thoughts, manipulate thoughts and even stop thoughts. Given our current state of neurological knowledge, it makes about as much sense to say that consciousness is not generated by the brain as it does to say that soil is not generated by the microbes, organic materials, and minerals within it.
The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics does not rule out determinism. “Probabilistic” does not mean uncaused or freely caused. Currently there is no sound evidence to suggest that the human brain acts like a computer or a quantum computer for that matter. All neuroscientific and psychological investigations over the last several decades have confirmed that the human brain functions entirely through the process of pattern recognition.
The fact that the quantum theory and relativity seem to be irreconcilable means that there is something more fundamental to our physical laws that we still don’t understand. One foolish thing many scientists do is to declare that they have finally solved some intractable problem. One of the free-will media savvy physicists has a YouTube video entitled: “Why physics ends the free will debate.” But this is nonsense.
In a recent interview by a science journalist, Gerard ’t Hooft of Utrecht University reiterated his views that quantum mechanics is not the deepest level of reality. Most physicists, barring a very small minority, have not given up on the cause-and-effect relation that is the foundation of all science. Quantum physicists have not changed their minds about the foundational principles on which all science is built. Gerard ‘t Hooft said in his interview that quantum mechanics is a hazy glimpse of something deeper. He stated that the notorious randomness of the quantum world is just the front. Underneath, the world may obey perfectly sensible rules. The rules govern building blocks even more fundamental than particles. The Planck scale is the smallest meaningful distance in nature, and it is possible that ultimate rules are to be understood at that level. It is likely that at the Planck scale we deal with only Boolean variables and integers, because that is what the holographic principle of black holes seems to be telling us—that the information in the black hole horizon is actually finite.
To explain how Bell’s theorem does not rule out the classical model, ‘t Hoof says that atoms could be correlated to the atoms of the source, and that there are correlations all over the place, presumably because the entire universe started with the Big Bang. Gerard ‘t Hoof believes that the simple law should be a local law because otherwise it becomes very hard to understand laws of nature. He rejects superposition and calls it a mental construct. “The world is so complex,” ‘t Hooft says, “that nobody can predict what a person’s decision will be, but nevertheless, whatever the decision will be, that will be a consequence of laws of nature”— laws of nature which we still do not understand but which are more basic than the laws of quantum mechanics. Although ‘t Hooft’s claim is speculation, it does make a lot of sense in terms of what we know about the laws of nature.
It should be noted that even though Gerard ‘t Hooft’s belief that free will is an illusion is consistent with research in the brain over the last three decades, he does not refer to any of the brain related research because he believes that analyzing laws of physics will tell us whether we have free will or not. I believe, however, that it is a mistake to believe that all phenomena related to the brain or human biology will be answered by physics. Biology, chemistry, and other sciences are also needed to explain how the brain produces the illusion of free will. The reason brain activity seems so complex to us is because the modules in the brain do not work by a simple cause and effect manner that can explain the game of billiard balls. The brain actively engages in conflict resolution and decision making through reciprocal transactions with its internal and external environment every nanosecond of our existence. This transactional process is incompatible with the brain’s exercising any kind of freedom of will. It is more accurate to say that the brain works by generating tens of millions of electro-chemical reactions in each second before deciding on the final output of the generation and implementation of a thought. Evolutionary history is the product of selection pressure from the environment on all living things and our brains and bodies are no exception to that process. The reciprocal transactions among biology, environment, and culture are what makes it so difficult to control and single out variables from our biological and mathematica l models and scientific experiments. Limitations on what kind of experiments we can ethically do with the human brain add to the difficulty of understanding our brains. Our environment, genes, culture, bodies, and minds are inseparable causes of what we experience as free will. Free will is nothing but a complex final outcome that emerges out of a very complex series of linear and parallel processes of causes and effects resulting in one inevitable final output.
Stephen Hawking, a physicist who pays close to the biological sciences, is a complete determinist who believes that free will is just an illusion. “Recent experiments in neuroscience support, he says, “the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions and not some agency that exists outside those laws.�
� “So it seems,” he continues, “that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010)
Nature is deterministic although it may appear to be probabilistic at the surface. But even if we assume for a moment that nature is probabilistic as some claim based on quantum mechanics, it does not follow that indeterminism is true because probabilities approach certainty as we approach very large numbers. Toss a coin four times and the probability of getting half heads and half tails is 0.25. Now toss the coin 100 times and the probability is 0.56. If you tossed the coin 1000 times, it approaches 0.510 and if you tossed it 10,000 times the probability would approach even closer to .50 (0.4988.) Imagine you tossed this coin a billion or trillion times, there will be essentially no difference between determinism and probability. One could theoretically toss a coin an infinite number of times and get a number approaching exactly .50. This is no different from Newton’s idea of approaching limits in calculus. Very few religious physicists, who are believers in free will, make a distinction between “random” and “probabilistic,” but these terms do not mean the same thing. “Randomness” implies unpredictability while probability distribution implies predictability. At very large numbers predictability approaches certainty. “Random” really means our lack of knowing the interplay of causes and effects. It does not mean that object occur outside of a series of cause and effect. Randomness certainly does not imply “free will” in any sense of the word and “random” does not mean uncaused in any sense of the word.
Thus, those who claim that determinism is an either-or proposition and that they cannot be fully satisfied with probabilities are mistaken. To say that we don’t fully understand some aspects of nature does not justify our jumping to conclusions that are diametrically opposed to what we observe in natural laws. The toss-of-coin experiment shows that the future may be uncertain at the level of a single particle, but it becomes more and more certain and predictable as the number of particles accounted for become very large.
When we are dealing with the brain and its mental processes what is important is that the neurons can be explained in terms of chemical and biological reactions; there is no need to invoke the world of quantum mechanics. So even though it is true that at the level of quantum reality, indeterminism is a fact, when it comes to the neuronal structure of the brain determinism still holds. Moreover, even if we consider quantum effects there is still no room for free will, because quantum effects imply randomness and what we mean by free will is not randomness. If your choice is completely random you have not acted freely; your choice is just as much determined by randomness as it is determined by non-random processes. Stephen Hawking’s explanation of indeterminism is completely consistent with the view that I have been arguing for in this book, namely, that free will is an illusion because in the final analysis all mental processes are determined by brain processes:
According to quantum physics, no matter how much information we obtain or how powerful our computing abilities, the outcome of physical processes cannot be predicted with certainty because they are not determined with certainty. Instead given the initial state of the system, nature determines its future state through a process that is fundamentally uncertain. In other words, nature does not dictate the outcome of any process or experiment, even in the simplest of situations. Hawking and Milodinow 2010 p72.
Hawking is right; nature does not dictate the outcome of any process or experiment, including the processes of our so-called “free” decisions. But that is not to say that our choices are freely chosen—they are the result of random quantum effects and the determinism at the level of biological and chemical processes. Hawking never intended his defense of quantum indeterminism to suggest that free will exists. As Hawking says, “nature determines its future state through a process that is fundamentally uncertain.” Hawking is very clear that determinism is compatible with “a process that is fundamentally uncertain.” Quantum indeterminacy, in other words, is built into the determinism that determines the way nature is—including the way our brain is, and thus the way our mind is. There is no need to choose between quantum indeterminism and scientific determinism.
Physicists who believe in “free will” and “quantum consciousness” fail to recognize that we may not have yet discovered the fundamental reality which could be at the level of the Planck scale or something completely different from what we can even imagine. So why reject known laws of cause and effect for pure speculation. Even if it is remotely possible that our current understanding of quantum mechanics turns out to be wrong a hundred years from now, scientists should stick with what they know rather than indulge in philosophical speculation.
Some have invoked chaos theory to demonstrate that the universe indeterministic. Once again, this argument does not make sense. Just because things are practically unpredictable because of the complexity of variables does not make the world indeterministic. If each state of the universe is fully determined by the previous state, then the entire universe is on rails from start to finish, not in a simplistic manner but in a series of enormously complex innumerable events. When an entity is complicated enough to become conscious, then its behavior can be considered, for all practical purposes, to be free because it can internally model possible future states and act to bring about that state.
Nobody claims that we can predict what a person will do in a year or a day or even in the next hour, but rest assured, whatever a person does is determined by physical causes. There is no place for any type of free will that escapes the laws of nature. Regardless of whether you like to invoke sub-atomic physics or determinism, it is important to understand that you are a product of these conditions.
Sometimes the problem arises from debaters on both sides of the isle not clarifying what they mean by “free will.” They plunge into debate without first defining what they mean. If free will means that we make choices, then yes we have free will. If it means we make choices that are uncaused, then they are talking nonsense. If it means we are determined to make certain choices even though we don’t fully understand the mechanism, then that is absolutely true.
Some physicists have invoked the idea of the mathematical theory of parallel universes to reconcile quantum mechanics with free will, in that all possible decisions reflect a specific possible universe in which that particular decision is made. This idea does resolve the conflict between determinism and quantum effects but this theory is purely mathematical, most likely not testable, and is too speculative at this stage of our understanding. I am not suggesting that untestable mathematical theories should not be considered, but drawing scientific inferences from such theories is unwise.
Our current model of quantum physics is an abstract representation of something we can’t yet see. The best we have come up with so far is that determinism is true as far as we can tell.
In 1960, John Bell devised an experiment and developed a theorem that ruled out the classical model. Gerard ‘t Hooft overcomes this issue by suggesting that there are correlations all over the place because the universe started with the Big Bang. And since we all came from the Big Bang, everything is correlated. The photons emitted by one quasar are correlated with photons emitted by another quasar. It is therefore not true that these quasars are independent. Every atom in the universe is correlated with the atoms produced by the Big Bang. What appears to be free will to us is embedded in the complexity of our brains. The world is so complex that no one can predict someone’s behavior, but whatever the final decisions are, they are consequences of the laws of nature. Thus Gerard ‘t Hooft takes super-determnism seriously. He believes that quantum mechanics may emerge from a deeper reality, the one we do not yet understand.
It is quite possible,‘t Hooft believes, that the universe can be accurately modeled by cellular automata and that the model allows quantum mechanics and in particular the spooky action at a distance known as entanglement to be deterministic. The idea that quantum mechanics is fundament
ally deterministic is known as the hidden variable theory but has been widely discounted by physicists because numerous experiments show its experiments to be wrong. But ’t Hooft calls his model a new class of hidden variable theory that falls outside the range of previous tests. However, he readily admits that his new model has serious shortcomings, and he is currently working on modifications that will make the model more realistic.
I think ‘t Hooft’s approach via minimalistic cellular automata, although speculative, is promising. Quantum mechanics has equally expressive deterministic and non-deterministic formulations, and an exploration of the limits of deterministic formal systems given the current empirical evidence is essential. As ‘t Hooft’ says, “It is often claimed that the collapse of the wave function and Born’s rule to interpret the square of the norm as a probability, have to be introduced as separate axioms in quantum mechanics besides the Schrödinger equation. Here we show that this is not true in certain models where quantum behavior can be attributed to underlying deterministic equations. It is argued that indeed the apparent spontaneous collapse of wave functions and Born’s rule are features that strongly point towards determinism underlying quantum mechanics.” December 8, 2011; last revision July 20, 2012.
