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Re: Social Science, Science, and Empirical Study by E. Prugovecki 10 July 2002 17:59 UTC |
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As a quantum physicist interested in social science, I read with interest today's (July 10, 2002) account of the debate between "Mike" and "Luke," and especially the following part: >"For example, suppose an exact (nonlinear) law describing human thought was >discovered that covered the basic synapse to synapse neural process behind >thought. Suppose what we are consciously aware of as a thought is the result >of dozens of such basic processes. Then, even though the basic law describing >thought is known, the product of that process (after dozens of repetitions) >would be unknowable, just as the position of the billiard ball is unknowable >after 10-30 ricochets. In other words, people still have free will because >you can't predict what they will decide, even though you understand exactly, >at the fundamental level, what their brains do while they are making their >decision." The last sentence touches upon the ancient mind-body question, and it deals with matters which can't be solved in quite that facile a manner. Moreover, the considered theory of "chaos" is actually still classical physics: the "chaos" is only apparent, since the underlying laws are still deterministic. Hence in the above considered "model" of "human thought" there would be no actual "free will." "Mike" is actually confusing "unknowable" with "unpredictable from a practical point of view." In contrast, the Heisenberg principle postulates that the simultaneous values of certain "incompatible" observables are literally "unknowable." In fact, Heisenberg, Born and others had gone further than that, and considered the possibility of a "fundamental length" in nature. Carrying out this idea to its ultimate conclusion leads to a purely quantum formulation of spacetime itself - as I described in my monograph PRINCIPLES OF QUANTUM GENERAL RELATIVITY (World Scientific, 1995). As for the related mind-body question, I reproduce below a fictional debate, presented in my recent book DAWN OF THE NEW MAN: A FUTURISTIC NOVEL OF SOCIAL CHANGE (Xlibris, 2002). It takes place between Leonardo (one of the artificial "new men"), Liu (a computer scientist in a futuristic society representing a new type of "world system") and Philip (a contemporary quantum cosmologist). Excerpt from DAWN OF THE NEW MAN, pp. 68 - 69: "Why do you say 'biologically structured humans'?" I [Philip] asked a bit annoyed. "After all, a human is, by definition, biologically structured, and not some kind of automaton." "You're forgetting your basic readings in philosophy, Philip," interposed Liu. "René Descartes was already speculating about 'animal automatism' in the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth century some Cartesians were talking of Man as a Machine. Furthermore, by the end of the Old Era surgeons were already capable of replacing most organs in a human being with artificial counterparts. By now we can do that with literally every organ, except the brain. Does that make the end product any less human?" "Ah! But that's exactly the point," I exclaimed triumphantly. "The brain!" "You again forget your readings in philosophy, Philip," Liu remarked with uncharacteristic gentleness, since he could be a very ferocious debater. "It's the mind, and not the brain that makes a human being what he is. Some other transcendentalist schools are working on the project of transferring the entire mind of a biological human being to an artificial brain and body, and are making some progress in that direction. If they succeed, would that render such human beings any less human?" "I think that what Liu as driving at is the old mind-body philosophical question," intervened Leonardo. "How does the mind interact with the body? And what is free will?" I wasn't quite prepared for a philosophical discussion, and especially not one with an advanced "machine" like Leonardo, but I quickly rose to the challenge. "I know," I said, raising my left arm into the air by way of a demonstration. "Right now I just raised my arm of my free will. But how did I do it? Even in the Old Era scientists could explain everything about the electrical impulses leading from the muscles to the brain, and within the brain itself they had figured out how the neurons fired the impulses that resulted in such actions as my raising my arm. But what caused those neurons to act as they did? One could, of course, trace their functioning to that of constituent atoms and molecules, and then even deeper to constituent elementary particles, and so on. However, whatever fundamental level of matter we reach, we are still left with the open question: what had caused that conglomeration of matter to act as it did, so that that action eventually resulted in a macroscopically observable manifestation of my free will?" "Bravo! Bravo!" exclaimed Liu and Leonardo in unison. "Of course one possible answer is that there is no free will, and that everything is strictly predetermined from the instant the Universe was created," said Leonardo. "But in that case, we are all automata, aren't we? You as well as I." "But that point of view, with which some philosophers struggled for centuries, was empirically refuted with the advent of quantum mechanics," I said, feeling at last in my element as a quantum cosmologist. "There is a fundamental indeterminacy in Nature!" It is this "fundamental indeterminacy" that distinguishes the ideas of chaos theory from those of quantum theory (although some physicists are considering the possibility of "quantum chaos.") I hope these observations will stimulate additional debate about fundamental issues, and maybe eventually connect this debate with social science, as suggested by the stipulated subject matter under discussion. Eduard Prugovecki Professor Emeritus University of Toronto
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