Quantum mechanics doesn’t give us the ‘wiggle room’ we need for freedom. That’s a bad idea. In science, either something is determined, or its random – and neither is what freedom is. Freedom is causation but not according to scientific law.

This is misleading. Quantum mechanics doesn’t say it can’t be done, it just says that the model will not be perfect. Some element of chance will remain. The existence of some randomness does not solve the puzzle.

Potentially, the fact that observation changes quantum outcomes might be more useful for creating free will wiggle room.

I have no problem accepting that if I was physically identical to Tristan, I would do as Tristan does. This may be deterministic in theory, but it doesn’t seem to conflict with freedom in practice; I could never be physically identical to Tristan, because Tristan is Tristan and I am myself. The thought experiment is all too Newtonian; could I really be perfectly modeled? Quantum mechanics says no, it can’t be done. So am I not, effectively, free? Free by my definition, I suppose. Free of prediction and therefore determinism. Deterministic, sure, maybe; determined, never.

It is not my attempt here to prove freedom exists. I think this is a very misguided project – in fact, I’m trying to show why it’s misguided. I bring up Kant mostly because he’s the first to take really seriously that what we mean by “existence” is not that something has human-experience-independant-subsistence. Rather, it means something is an object of knowledge for us, that we have a concept of it and that we can cognize it. Now, I’m not a Kantian, and I don’t think that’s what existence is, but I think it’s a hell of a lot closer than “materiality”, whatever that means.

You don’t prove the “existence” of t-objects. T-objects don’t exist, at best you know them as necessary posits, but this is a different kind of knowing than the sense in which we know the cat is on the mat.

But getting away from Kant, it’s silly to think you’d prove the existence of “freedom” like you’d prove the existence of your cell phone or the computer. If you we submit them both to rigorous epistemic critique, we may find that we don’t “know” basically anything, let alone whether we are free or not. This is boring – this is bad philosophy. Not even the ancient skeptics denied that things existed, they simply reserved judgment on matters that exceeded their own cognition. So, to the question, “how do I know I’m not a robot”, they’d probably reply, “well, It seems I’m not a robot, but I suppose I can’t be entirely sure”.

Why do we want this absolute certainty anyway? Science doesn’t offer it, and it’s a mistake of universalizing some particular scientific description which puts freedom into question, so why do we demand absolute certainty in our freedom?

The better question to ask is: What does it mean to say you are free. No one seems to want to ask that anymore, even though the answers do seriously differ.

There is the metaphysics. There is an transcendental object that we are aware exists, but cannot be aware of its true form, and there is appearance. Appearance is knowable, because it given shape by the faculties of the mind. [Notes: (1) I am using mind generally, and not positing a substance dualism. (2) You have granted as much, but to try to give some textual reference for my very general interpretation, the only faculties I can remember are the faculties of apperception. (3) When we talk about the appearances being knowable, we are still talking about ontology, rather than epistemology, because we have not begun to explain how we come to know rules within our experiences yet.)

Then, there is the epistemology. This explains how we might come to know the rules that govern our experiences. Science is a good model. However, we must not that we are already talking about appearances. Our experiences are of appearances (in this ontological scheme) and the rules/laws/theories/predictions (whatever you want to call them) are how we come to know things as they appear in terms of our experiences.

So, when you say, “It would appear that since the laws “ain’t in the head”, they must be out there in the world”, you are Kant don’t have the same meaning of head. We can’t access the transcendental object. The world that you are talking about, in which the laws are out there, is already the world of appearances. It is perfectly consistent to claim that the laws are out there in the world of our experience, because we can come up with many examples where entirely in your head experience can conflict with entirely in your head rules. For example, every time you make an incorrect prediction based on a preicieved pattern. To use an overwrought example, the experience of seeing a bent stick in water. The rules are meant to serve as measure of ordering or experiences and have to be learned through science, the systematic study of our experience. They never penetrate to the nomenal level.

The confusion also happens because you shift between ontology and epistemology. One second we are talking about the ontological difference of the transcendental and appear and the next you are talking about an process that servers as an epistemological justification of laws of experiences.

Some random notes:
(1) The problem of freedom (at least concerning determinism) happens beyond the level of Kant’s ontological distinction. It is between our experience of the world as particles and the illusion of freedom. Here illusion is not refering to appearance in the sense of Kant’s ontology. (A) Before you object, Kant sees this problem as going beyond appearance, but he only does so, because he needs to cheat to be able to preserve it. Essentially he backdoors freedom and god from the transcendental.

(2) If this sense is preserved, science wouldn’t deny the existence of your ghost riders. I mean, if it could reveal another source, say you took drugs every day before you saw them, or they were projections as part of an elaborate hoax, then science should (it is hoped) begin to trend towards the correct explaination. I’m not just not sure why, if we think of science as providing rules that make sense out of our experiences, that you think science would deny the existence of your ghost riders in this scenario? Additionally, this doesn’t make sense because the scenario is backwards – see 3(a).

(3) You say that illusions usually disappear when revealed as illusions. (A) You then give an example of things that are real, which science should deny, because they are usually and probably initially dismissed as illusions. This is the reverse of the example you outlined. You have to start with an illusion (something which isn’t really there) to show how it dissolves and isn’t experienced as such, after it is revealed to be an illusion. Instead you start with something that is real, and then ??? (Try to prove it is real? Try to prove it will be originally mistaken as illusion?) (B) This claim isn’t true. The sense of illusion you are alluding to, isn’t pure appearance. I know the stick is really straight, but it will still appear bent in the water. I know about various optical illusions, and yet they will still appear that way. I might be aware that I am seeing a mirage, and yet see it anyways. This doesn’t posit the appearance (of the stick straight or bent) as the “real” world in the Kantian transcendental sense. The way in which the law of refraction is out there in the world (in terms of Kant’s ontology) is still the world of appearance. The law is a way to organize/predict our experiences (i.e., reaching into the water) and these require tuning. That is why the need for scientists to revise the rules does not necessarily have to be inconsistent with Kant’s ontology.

(4) The general argument for freewill is extremely problematic. Once we take out the confusion about science somehow penetrating the transcendental in Kant’s ontology, we know of a whole host of illusions that aren’t true. I refer you to the bent stick. The ‘I appear free, so I am free’ is a very powerful motivational factor in the debate. Just like, I watched the ball fall, so the ball fell. It looks like a straightforward experience. However, the problem is that we have other experiences that look as if they might conflict with it.

If the former were always in doubt, then freedom could not become a problem. Freedom is a problem insofar as we insist on taking particular things out of doubt, and saying “they really are this way”. Science must do this, but there is no need for scientists or anyone else, the practice is not the same as the people who practice it or do not practice it. It is the practice of science that must assume the truth of its way of looking at things, while the scientists practicing it can recognize the contingency of the very practice which from its own view appears as necessary.

Science isn’t a set of things you see, it is a way of looking: one based on hypothesis formation and testing. You are appealing to scientific values when you say “I can call them on my cell phone, they are always there or at least at this and this time.”

People often mistake “the set of things we have learned through science” with “the practice of science.” The former is always in doubt, given how looking at the world scientifically can add nuance – or completely rewrite – some of the provisional conclusions we reached earlier.

A thought experiment on free will
March 20th, 2008