I've been reading a lot on determinism from a quantum mechanics perspective in order to reach a conclusion about freewill and determinism. So far, it seems that quantum interpretations (Copenhagen, Bohmian, Everett, etc) are simply interpretations, not testable. The question to whether our world is blurry/indeterminate/probabilistic or concrete/casually deterministic depends on which interpretation you like.
But the problem of freewill makes no sense whichever way you look, and I know I am stretching the theories now, but let's assume that quantum interpretations do have impacts on human behavior:
I use 'free' to mean an element of an action that is independent of all causes. But whether our actions are probabilistic or deterministic, neither are truly ‘free’, they are merely statistical probabilities, not arising out of free choice, but out of causal events. This is true whichever quantum interpretation you go with, it simply means your choice is either fixed or a probability.
The only answer I can come up with is this:
There are many causes to your actions, maybe some deterministic, some probabilistic, but there is an element that arises independently from anything before it, like the Big Bang, and only you have control over it arising. It cannot arise spontaneously, that is not freewill either, that is just chaos. It must arise out of a will. It has a 'cause' in the sense that a thought triggers a set of particles or atoms inside your brain to do something, and it leads to (the conditions for) the spontaneous creation of a particle or a spontaneous action, which has just come into existence without a prior physical cause, and begins to affect the things around you. It just appears, like the Big Bang. Some of its characteristics might be determined when it comes into being.
That would be my only explanation. Didn't Hawkings write that atoms can just pop into existence and out again? What about energy conservation? Could this atom (or set of atoms, or set of atom-activities) pop into existence through an intangible, non-physical force? I know this sounds like telekinesis magic, but quantum entanglement is pretty weird too. I've run out of options. I would like to know if this idea is theoretically possible. Physics or philosophically.
There are many causes to your actions, maybe some deterministic, some probabilistic... It cannot arise spontaneously, that is not freewill either, that is just chaos.
This is my feelings on the matter, but you propose that the way around it is some mystical substance calledmind
orthought
orwill
that can get around this. I propose that whatever this mystical substance is that you speak of, that it is bound by the same logic above. Either thiswill
you speak of exists in a place that is governed by laws, like physics, and deterministic, or it is governed by chaos.