Quantum Theory And Free Will

Author : Antoine Suarez
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1461452120
Total Pages : 477 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Is Science Compatible with Free Will? written by Antoine Suarez and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-22 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who claims the right ‘to choose how to live their life’ excludes any purely deterministic description of their brain in terms of genes, chemicals or environmental influences. For example, when an author of a text expresses his thoughts, he assumes that, in typing the text, he governs the firing of the neurons in his brain and the movement of his fingers through the exercise of his own free will: what he writes is not completely pre-determined at the beginning of the universe. Yet in the field of neuroscience today, determinism dominates. There is a conflict between the daily life conviction that a human being has free will, and deterministic neuroscience. When faced with this conflict two alternative positions are possible: Either human freedom is an illusion, or deterministic neuroscience is not the last word on the brain and will eventually be superseded by a neuroscience that admits processes not completely determined by the past. This book investigates whether it is possible to have a science in which there is room for human freedom. The book generally concludes that the world and the brain are governed to some extent by non-material agencies, and limited consciousness does not abolish free will and responsibility. The authors present perspectives coming from different disciplines (Neuroscience, Quantumphysics and Philosophy) and range from those focusing on the scientific background, to those highlighting rather more a philosophical analysis. However, all chapters share a common characteristic: they take current scientific observations and data as a basis from which to draw philosophical implications. It is these features that make this volume unique, an exceptional interdisciplinary approach combining scientific strength and philosophical profundity. We are convinced that it will strongly stimulate the debate and contribute to new insights in the mind-brain relationship. ​

Author : Fabio Scardigli
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030055051
Total Pages : 119 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Determinism and Free Will written by Fabio Scardigli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this small book, theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft (Nobel prize 1999), philosopher Emanuele Severino (Lincei Academician), and theologian Piero Coda (Pontifical Lateran University) confront one another on a topic that lies at the roots of quantum mechanics and at the origin of Western thought: Determinism and Free Will. "God does not play dice" said Einstein, a tenacious determinist. Quantum Mechanics and its clash with General Relativity have reanimated ancient dilemmas about chance and necessity: Is Nature deterministic? Is Man free? The “free-will theorem” by Conway and Kochen, and the deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by 't Hooft, revive such philosophical questions in modern Physics. Is Becoming real? Is the Elementary Event a product of the Case? The cyclopean clash between Heraclitus and Parmenides has entered a new episode, as evidenced by the essays in this volume.

Author : Henry P. Stapp
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 3662087650
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics written by Henry P. Stapp and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature appears to be composed of two completely different kinds of things: rocklike things and idealike things. The first is epitomized by an enduring rock, the second by a fleeting thought. A rock can be experienced by many of us together, while a thought seems to belong to one of us alone. Thoughts and rocks are intertwined in the unfolding of nature, as Michelangelo's David so eloquently attests. Yet is it possible to under stand rationally how two completely different kinds of things can interact with each other? Logic says no, and history confirms that verdict. To form a rational comprehension of the interplay between the matterlike and mind like parts of nature these two components ought to be understood as aspects of some single primal stuff. But what is the nature of a primal stuff that can have mind and matter as two of its aspects? An answer to this age-old question has now been forced upon us. Physi cists, probing ever deeper into the nature of matter, found that they were forced to bring into their theory the human observers and their thoughts. Moreover, the mathematical structure of the theory combines in a marvelous way the features of nature that go with the concepts of mind and matter. Although it is possible, in the face of this linkage, to try to maintain the tra ditionallogical nonrelatedness of these two aspects of nature, that endeavor leads to great puzzles and mysteries.

Author : Valia Allori
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030996425
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality written by Valia Allori and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection provides new perspectives on some metaphysical questions arising in quantum mechanics. These questions have been long-standing and are of continued interest to researchers and graduate students working in physics, philosophy of physics, and metaphysics. It features contributions from a diverse set of researchers, ranging from senior scholars to junior academics, working in varied fields, from physics to philosophy of physics and metaphysics. The contributors reflect on issues about fundamentality (is quantum theory fundamental? If so, what is its fundamental ontology?), ontological dependence (how do ordinary objects exist even if they are not fundamental?), realism (what kind of realism is compatible with quantum theory?), indeterminacy (can the world itself exhibit ontological indeterminacy?). The book contains contributions from both physicists (including Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft), science communicators and philosophers.

Author : Bruce Rosenblum
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019979295X
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quantum Enigma written by Bruce Rosenblum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is heatedly controversial. But every interpretation of quantum physics involves consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum mechanics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing. Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer the only sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves. In the few decades since the Bell's theorem experiments established the existence of entanglement (Einstein's "spooky action"), interest in the foundations, and the mysteries, of quantum mechanics has accelerated. In recent years, physicists, philosophers, computer engineers, and even biologists have expanded our realization of the significance of quantum phenomena. This second edition includes such advances. The authors have also drawn on many responses from readers and instructors to improve the clarity of the book's explanations.

Author : John Horgan
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465050859
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End Of Science written by John Horgan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

Author : Peter J. Lewis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190618795
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quantum Ontology written by Peter J. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.

Author : Gerard 't Hooft
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 331941285X
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics written by Gerard 't Hooft and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the deterministic view of quantum mechanics developed by Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft. Dissatisfied with the uncomfortable gaps in the way conventional quantum mechanics meshes with the classical world, 't Hooft has revived the old hidden variable ideas, but now in a much more systematic way than usual. In this, quantum mechanics is viewed as a tool rather than a theory. The author gives examples of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and argues that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, might be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analysing a system that could be classical at its core. He shows how this approach, even though it is based on hidden variables, can be plausibly reconciled with Bell's theorem, and how the usual objections voiced against the idea of ‘superdeterminism' can be overcome, at least in principle. This framework elegantly explains - and automatically cures - the problems of the wave function collapse and the measurement problem. Even the existence of an “arrow of time" can perhaps be explained in a more elegant way than usual. As well as reviewing the author’s earlier work in the field, the book also contains many new observations and calculations. It provides stimulating reading for all physicists working on the foundations of quantum theory.

Author : Klaas Landsman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781013278365
Total Pages : 880 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Foundations of Quantum Theory written by Klaas Landsman and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the foundations of quantum theory through its relationship to classical physics. This idea goes back to the Copenhagen Interpretation (in the original version due to Bohr and Heisenberg), which the author relates to the mathematical formalism of operator algebras originally created by von Neumann. The book therefore includes comprehensive appendices on functional analysis and C*-algebras, as well as a briefer one on logic, category theory, and topos theory. Matters of foundational as well as mathematical interest that are covered in detail include symmetry (and its "spontaneous" breaking), the measurement problem, the Kochen-Specker, Free Will, and Bell Theorems, the Kadison-Singer conjecture, quantization, indistinguishable particles, the quantum theory of large systems, and quantum logic, the latter in connection with the topos approach to quantum theory. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author : Christian D. Schade
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030035832
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse written by Christian D. Schade and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is hard to interpret quantum mechanics. The most surprising, but also most parsimonious, interpretation is the many-worlds, or quantum-multiverse interpretation, implying a permanent coexistence of parallel realities. Could this perhaps be the appropriate interpretation of quantum mechanics? This book collects evidence for this interpretation, both from physics and from other fields, and proposes a subjectivist version of it, the clustered-minds multiverse. The author explores its implications through the lens of decision making and derives consequences for free will and consciousness. For example, free will can be implemented in the form of vectorial choices, as introduced in the book. He furthermore derives consequences for research in the social sciences, especially in psychology and economics.