Abstract
A plethora of possibilities of making experiences exist, and consciousness decides on how much emphasis to put on which realities (see Chap. 4). Chapter 6 therefore argues that consciousness is indeed executing free will, albeit in a special form. Traditionally, there has been considerable ‘dispute’ over the question of free will, and different philosophical positions continue to coexist. Chapter 6 builds upon chaps. 2–5 and argues that under the conditions of the clustered-minds multiverse, some of those ‘disputes’ disappear: Whereas the world (as a total) is deterministic (indeed, the Schrödinger equation is!), people have an impact on how much consciousness will reside in which reality. This has consequences for the traditional classifications into libertarians, compatibilists, incompatibilists etc. Chapter 6 also contains three boxes discussing whether quantum brain biology offers an alternative possibility to ‘save free will,’ whether special forms of free will may also arise from top-down decoherence and subjective selection of the preferred basis, and whether as well as how reallocations of consciousness across realities might take place from time to time.
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Notes
- 1.
There are several classifications out there of the many different positions taken in the free-will debate that, however, mostly use the terms “compatibilism,” “incompatibilism,” “libertarianism,” “determinism” and “indeterminism.” Exploring all logically possible combinations between those terms (or, alternatively, reporting at least on all those that have been explored by authors in philosophy) is not possible here. The labels used for positions (c) and (d) are not precisely identical with those mostly used in the literature.
- 2.
Quantum indeterminism is mostly associated with the Copenhagen interpretation (and other collapse versions including modifications) of quantum mechanics because of the apparent randomness implied here by the Born (1926) rule. It can, however, also be routed in the Heisenberg (1927) uncertainty principle that is compatible, however, with the Copenhagen interpretation. But I personally do not see how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle per se would give rise to different possibilities in the brain.
- 3.
For a debate with respect to the definition of important terms relevant for the compatibilist position see the papers by Fischer and Ravizza (1992) and van Inwagen (1994).
- 4.
This picture uses the basic idea of the torchlight, the simplified one without the possibility of high degrees of consciousness in ‘outer regions’ (see Chap. 4), and it merges it with the idea of different ‘movies.’ Note that the almost omniscient individual assumed here, in principle having access to all parallel movies, is a fiction but might not be impossible within the multiverse framework—its actual existence depends on how consciousness is organized (the idea is similar to Mensky’s ideas of superconsciousness and postcorrection, but without any recurrence on ‘subjective probabilities;’ see Mensky 2007b). Within dualistic idealism, experiences are limited by the possibilities provided within the wave equation. Without assuming strong psychophysical parallelism (see Chap. 5) such abilities of consciousness are conceivable; and my thoughts are definitely not inconsistent with quantum mechanics.
- 5.
Again, the Schrödinger equation is deterministic, the Born rule is only an auxiliary equation with a special purpose, and Kane’s concept of indeterminism in the brain is somewhat vague, as has already been stated.
- 6.
The indeterminism of the Heisenberg (1927) uncertainty principle means something different. Partially, this is also a problem of the translation of a German term to English. The German term for the Heisenberg principle is “Unschärferelation.” A direct and certainly awkward translation of this term to English would be something like a “non-sharpness relation.”
- 7.
See, for a preliminary analysis, Schade 2015, 351–352.
- 8.
As has already become clear within the last chapters and will be become even clearer within the next section of this chapter, talking about ‘choices’ is an extreme simplification.
- 9.
In most cases, such a view of reality is implicit. And I certainly do not want to argue that all philosophers talking about free will are non-idealists.
- 10.
In psychology, anyhow, perception and choice are traditionally treated as different processes (see, e.g., the textbooks by Hayes 1994; Lefton 1994).
- 11.
If Julia were risk averse, her utility function would be concave, if she were risk taking it would be convex (see Chap. 8).
- 12.
Using the word ‘cumbersome,’ I want to make the reader aware of the fact that one would either have to somehow integrate a multidimensional-utility perspective (see Chap. 9); an integration with the expected utility framework, however, is not trivial. Or one would have to use a utility function that takes the potential tradeoffs between those attributes into account (the latter would be consistent with a unidimensional utility function where the solution of such complexities is just assumed).
- 13.
One might see some similarities here with Mensky’s (2007b) concept of postcorrection. However, it is actually hard to tell how similar the basic ideas are because Mensky does not discriminate between perception and choice. Also, a major difference between the two concepts is that Mensky supposes observation probabilities to be changed—an idea that was dismissed in Chap. 4 for a lack of theoretical consistency with the basic Schrödinger equation and ontological implausibility—, whereas here it is assumed that consciousness is putting different emphasis on different realities.
- 14.
This is not to indirectly re-introduce the notion of a flow of time. The same basic idea pursued within the rest of this book: ‘times as special cases of other universes,’ is supposed to hold here. But subjectively, and that is the major issue dealt with in this box, versions of individuals experience themselves being in a specific ‘history,’ and the dilution of consciousness would be a subjective experience over subjective time.
- 15.
This is not meant to resemble Mensky’s (2007b) idea of postcorrection; although, looking at my proposal only superficially, there seem to be some similarities with this idea. The reasons as to why there are differences between the two concepts might get clearer within the next footnote.
- 16.
One might ask as to why such corrections are even necessary—except for the dilution of consciousness problem. According to Mensky’s idea of superconsciousness and postcorrection, individuals have access to the entire quantum reality and are able to optimize, taking all that knowledge into account. So, in a narrow sense, they should not even get to the point where they are directly facing a very negative development, unavoidably, say, with a highly conscious version of theirs. This makes only sense with (partially) myopic decision makers. Specifically, even though I do think that partial foresight is possible, mainly via the body (revisit Chap. 3 for the considerations on physiological anticipation), I do not, however, assume perfect foresight of an individual into all possible developments.
- 17.
I have assumed (in Chap. 4) that marginal consciousness remains with each reality.
- 18.
As in previous chapters, I am not able to say how exactly consciousness is organized and how the individual might be able to do that. Again, those thoughts might sound speculative, but they are not in contradiction with quantum mechanics. On a more practical note, I do not think that it will normally work this way; consciousness might not just be reduced from a high level to a marginal level within split seconds but smoothly allocated away from a certain version of the individual over ‘time,’ and only to a certain extent.
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Schade, C.D. (2018). A Special Form of Free Will: Parallel Watching of Different ‘Movies,’ but with Different Levels of Awareness. In: Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_6
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