Megascopic Quantum Phenomena
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conscious shooting-down (judgement) process that is central to the issue of originality, rather than the unconscious putting-up process; but I am aware that many others
might hold to a contrary view.”
A similar description of the two-stage model was also promoted by Compton
[57]: “A set of known physical conditions is not adequate to specify precisely what
a forthcoming event will be. These conditions, insofar as they can be known, define
instead a range of possible events from among which some particular event will occur.
When one exercises freedom, by his act of choice he is himself adding a factor not
supplied by the [random] physical conditions and is thus himself determining what
will occur.” Compton was the first physicist, who discussed openly the relationship
between free will and the quantum indeterminism and the randomness on the first
stage of the two-stage model, i.e. what Penrose calls the ‘putting-up’ process. On the
other hand, he was very pessimistic about the scientific explanation of the second
stage—the act of choice, or Penrose’s ‘shooting-down’ process.
It is notable that present-day quantum physics is still incomplete and unable to
create a paradigmatic background for the justification of the second stage of free
will [57]: “Let me then summarize how a physicist now views man’s freedom. It is
not from scientific observation that we know man is free. Science is incapable of
telling whether a person’s acts are free or not. Freedom is not something that one
can touch or measure. We know it through our own innermost feelings. The first
essential of freedom is the desire to attain something that one considers good. But
desire lies outside the realm of science—at least outside of physics. You can’t locate
desire as somewhere in space. Similarly our recognition that within limits we can
do what we try to do is not a matter of measurement or of external observation. It
is a matter of immediate awareness. There is nothing in such awareness of freedom
that is inconsistent with science. Freedom does, however, involve the additional
determining factor of choice, about which science tells us nothing.”
The citation above means that quantum theory, based on standard interpretations
such as the orthodox Copenhagen view, forms only a necessary, but not a sufficient
foundation for the explanation of the free will. This circumstance is clearly confirmed
by Flanagan [58]: “Free actions, if there are any, are not deterministically caused
nor are they caused by random processes of the sort countenanced by quantum
physicists or complexity theorists. Free actions need to be caused by me, in a nondetermined and non-random manner… I am open to there being genuine ontological
indeterminacy at both the quantum level and the level of neural processing. But the
attempt to gain free will from indeterminacy at the quantum level or at the level of
global brain processes is a bad idea. The last thing anyone wants is for free will to
be the result of random causal processes.”
It is fetching to learn that Flanagan’s representation of “non-determinism and
non-randomness” as the main characteristics of free actions, appears under the name
“adequate determinism” in Doyle’s Cogito model [53]: “Free will is a combination
of microscopic randomness and macroscopic adequate determinism, in a temporal
sequence—first chance, then choice. Creative thoughts come to us freely. But our
actions come from our adequately determined wills. Randomness is the “free” in free
will. Adequate determinism explains the “will” in free will.” One can understand
307
conscious shooting-down (judgement) process that is central to the issue of originality, rather than the unconscious putting-up process; but I am aware that many others
might hold to a contrary view.”
A similar description of the two-stage model was also promoted by Compton
[57]: “A set of known physical conditions is not adequate to specify precisely what
a forthcoming event will be. These conditions, insofar as they can be known, define
instead a range of possible events from among which some particular event will occur.
When one exercises freedom, by his act of choice he is himself adding a factor not
supplied by the [random] physical conditions and is thus himself determining what
will occur.” Compton was the first physicist, who discussed openly the relationship
between free will and the quantum indeterminism and the randomness on the first
stage of the two-stage model, i.e. what Penrose calls the ‘putting-up’ process. On the
other hand, he was very pessimistic about the scientific explanation of the second
stage—the act of choice, or Penrose’s ‘shooting-down’ process.
It is notable that present-day quantum physics is still incomplete and unable to
create a paradigmatic background for the justification of the second stage of free
will [57]: “Let me then summarize how a physicist now views man’s freedom. It is
not from scientific observation that we know man is free. Science is incapable of
telling whether a person’s acts are free or not. Freedom is not something that one
can touch or measure. We know it through our own innermost feelings. The first
essential of freedom is the desire to attain something that one considers good. But
desire lies outside the realm of science—at least outside of physics. You can’t locate
desire as somewhere in space. Similarly our recognition that within limits we can
do what we try to do is not a matter of measurement or of external observation. It
is a matter of immediate awareness. There is nothing in such awareness of freedom
that is inconsistent with science. Freedom does, however, involve the additional
determining factor of choice, about which science tells us nothing.”
The citation above means that quantum theory, based on standard interpretations
such as the orthodox Copenhagen view, forms only a necessary, but not a sufficient
foundation for the explanation of the free will. This circumstance is clearly confirmed
by Flanagan [58]: “Free actions, if there are any, are not deterministically caused
nor are they caused by random processes of the sort countenanced by quantum
physicists or complexity theorists. Free actions need to be caused by me, in a nondetermined and non-random manner… I am open to there being genuine ontological
indeterminacy at both the quantum level and the level of neural processing. But the
attempt to gain free will from indeterminacy at the quantum level or at the level of
global brain processes is a bad idea. The last thing anyone wants is for free will to
be the result of random causal processes.”
It is fetching to learn that Flanagan’s representation of “non-determinism and
non-randomness” as the main characteristics of free actions, appears under the name
“adequate determinism” in Doyle’s Cogito model [53]: “Free will is a combination
of microscopic randomness and macroscopic adequate determinism, in a temporal
sequence—first chance, then choice. Creative thoughts come to us freely. But our
actions come from our adequately determined wills. Randomness is the “free” in free
will. Adequate determinism explains the “will” in free will.” One can understand