Questions and comments regarding the sciences of freedom

Thanks for the comments. I am very happy to receive any kind of comments about my books.
First, about your opening paragraph. Randomness also exists only at the microscopic level. On large scales, there is decoherence that erases or spreads the quantum properties (except for liquids or conductors, and even that is not at our temperatures). Therefore, quantum cannot help even without the distinction between randomness and choice. I explained this in the book in the chapter on quantum.
Now I will refer to your numbering.

1. As I explained in the book, there is a non-physical interaction here between the will and the brain. The will creates a field or moves an electron. When you ask how this happens, you actually expect a scientific or physical answer, but it is a non-physical process. I have no way to describe it (and I think no one has such a way. Incidentally, even the most rigid materialist does not even have the language to describe how the mental emerges from the material. This is not an interaction, because according to his method the mental is a property of the material whole and no longer a substance, and there is still a causal relationship here that he has no scientific way to describe). I commented in the book that what is broken are the laws of mechanics, but energy can be conserved in this process, and this is if we see the will as an intermediary between the energy we accumulate in food and sleep and the energy we expend in actions. I do not know anything more concrete to say about it.
In any case, if you are not a determinist, there is no choice but to assume the possibility of such an interaction.

2. The sentences here are not clear to me. I don’t really understand what it means to be part of God. Isn’t my soul something separate from Him when it is in the body? So if so, what happens after that? Does God undergo a change? I also don’t feel obligated to any particular Orthodox view. None of us have any idea what happens to the soul after death, if anything at all. In my opinion, the sages and sages of all generations had no idea about this, and their words are speculation that is about as good as my speculations.
[By the way, I prefer to write God with וא”ו, since it is not the name of God. Following my book on evolution, which in Israel is called “God Plays Dice,” I received quite a bit of scorn for using the name of God, from various righteous people who did not understand that the name with וא”ו is not a name. But when you write without וא”ו as you did here, it is the name of God, and then there is a problem with deleting it.]

3. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such experiment. In the chapter on the Libet experiments, I tried to explain why I don’t see how they will be able to do this in the future either. I have some contact with neurocomputationalists from Jerusalem, and one of them told me that they are working on a Libet experiment that will test the RP before an action involving a real dilemma (as I explained in the book). But as I argued there, even if they succeed (and it’s not easy at all), it won’t be evidence. If they succeed with the Deep Blue project, which is to build a complete and complete human brain that can do a real simulation of a human brain, it might be possible to test whether, given a certain nervous state of a person, the computer will behave from now on exactly like the person whose nervous state it is. But there is also noise and averages, and in my opinion, there is no real possibility on the horizon to test this empirically.

4. This question is identical to the previous one. If there were a formulation that would confirm or refute determinism, it would also refute or confirm libertarianism.

5. The halting problem is related to the Church Turing hypothesis, namely the question of whether the human brain is Gedlian (built as a Turing machine). But this is a stronger question than the question of determinism, since in principle it is possible to have a deterministic machine that is not a Turing machine (such as a system of axioms that is not equivalent to number theory, i.e. stronger than it, for which Gödel’s theorem does not apply). This is a machine that will not encounter the halting problem, but is still deterministic.

6. Theoretically, this could happen, but it’s hard to pin one incomprehensible thing on another incomprehensible thing. Similarly, we can also talk about an assembly line for fairies or demons. Sometimes there are psychokinetic phenomena that have even been tested somewhat scientifically (there are serious arguments about this), and they reflect an interaction between one person’s spirit and another’s spirit and, through it, of course, also the other person’s body. Perhaps there is room to say that our ability to feel that someone is looking at us or passing behind us is related to this, although I’m really not sure that there isn’t some normal physical effect here. And if you want, you can link here the recognition of loss through eye prints (not through signs). This is essentially the recognition of shapes or objects. Although there too I tend to think that it is a combination of a set of small and ambiguous signs, but it is still a simple vision and not a mystical connection as people tend to think.

7. As far as I remember, he doesn’t quote it. But when I meet him (we know each other a little. At the Weizmann Institute we sat in adjacent rooms) I will scold him.

8. I completely accept the comment, and in general I am truly and sincerely happy about every comment. The problem is that this “module” is a person, namely an editor. I can’t find anyone to do a high-level edit on my books (i.e., an edit that takes into account the structure of the book). I have already written about thirty books, some of which were not edited at all, others were edited to a point that was not worth much. There was actually a good editor at Yedioth Sfarim that I was pleased with, but she didn’t make any substantial changes either, even though I asked her a lot. This is apparently very hard work and ordinary editors don’t really do it (at least not the ones I’ve met and with the budgets allocated for the matter). My books are quite difficult for the ordinary reader, and editors who deal with language mainly do linguistic editing. The best of them comment locally on wording or even on argument (this happens very rarely). No one does a really high-level edit. Apparently they don’t feel confident enough to deal with the content in a significant way. And to put together a team of editors is beyond my abilities.

Thanks again for the comments and see you later,
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Asks:
Hello Mickey,
Thanks again for the detailed response,
I would like to focus on the areas of Section 1, ask some questions, and share two directions I have been thinking about in recent days:

1. How can free choice arise from deterministic evolution?
Both for the fetus, who clearly has no choice (you were created out of necessity) and when he gains it
And in an evolutionary view of the human species, when in the early stages of life it is clear
There was no choice. (And by the way, the two perspectives are connected by the claim that the embryo goes through the stages of evolution.)

2. Continuing from the previous section – Is choice something binary or perhaps something continuous?
If continuous, can it somehow be defined as a size?
Does a fool have free choice? A small one? A smart chimpanzee?

3. When we look at light as reality, it is legitimate to describe it as both a wave and a particle, even though these are descriptions
Clearly contradictory. Can’t something similar be applied to human reality and say that its physical part is deterministic?
And the mental part has a choice?

And now for thoughts:
1. We tend to attribute our consciousness to ourselves as separate entities,
Some people in the world manage to reach a consciousness in which they are united to one degree or another with those around them,
This happens to gurus, sometimes under the influence of drugs, sometimes under the influence of meditation. I believe it exists in Hasidic areas.
In the experience of the expansion of physicality / the abolition of the self.
In the book, you are not willing to cast serious doubt on our experiences (the philosopher Moore with his two hands), and I am in favor,
But if so, there may be room to expand the concept of consciousness to include more than just the individual person.
In other words, I would say that the spectrum of our states of consciousness also includes the consciousness that goes beyond
From the boundaries of the self.
Attached is something I wrote quite a while ago about multi-state consciousness, where I argue that consciousness can be composed from a superposition.
Of basic states of consciousness:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7IeFNTVlFMR0x5T1k
If we accept this extension, what effect, if any, will the state of consciousness that goes beyond the boundaries of the ego have on choice?
The free self that is “attached” to the limited self.

2. I want to start with an image, N people are traveling on trains with a well-defined track,
Unable to move from one train to another, as they are chained to their seats with a lock.
Somehow, one of them manages to break free and thus allows himself to move from train to train,
Thus allowing other people to be released from their lockdown so that they too can jump from train to train,
and have free choice.
Is it possible, following on from question 1 above about the fetus, that somehow we gain the freedom to choose through
Someone/something outside of us?
(I don’t remember where in the book you talk about 3 components of free choice, it may be related to one of them).
If we go in this direction, then we can describe the choice as a singular event – similar to the Big Bang that happened
Once, with someone, and from there he reincarnated and allowed many creatures from the beginning, also free choice.

In general, I feel like I don’t have enough knowledge and concepts on the subject, and these reflections may not be worth much…

And by the way, one last thing, in the experiment with the optical crossover and the man with a twitch/smile in his mouth,
I tried looking at it with just my right eye and still the right image looked happier.
(One could argue that even when we see with only the right eye, there is “inspiration” through complementary imagination.)
to reality so that even the closed left eye is arousing).
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Rabbi:
I change the order to make it logical.

2. I think the concept of choice is essentially binary. Either you have it or you don’t. This is because I define a creature as having a choice when it has the principle possibility of going beyond the influence of circumstances and the outcome they dictate. Even if it doesn’t always use it, and even if it never does, it still has a choice. As for a fool, I suppose it depends on which fool. Maybe there is a fool who has lost the ability to choose like any other organic or mental defect, but simply put, a fool is a person with a choice, except that his choices are wrong or irresponsible. He has the ability to go beyond circumstances (he is not an animal), but he does so in the wrong directions.
1. This implies that there is no evolutionary development of the will (because there are no intermediate stages). At some point in the process, this ability to choose enters a person. The Sages describe that the good instinct enters us at the age of 13, and perhaps that is what is meant. But I tend to think that it has always been in us, except that as a baby I am a complete fool who cannot make use of the ability to choose, and as a child it is already better (like a fool), and as an adult it reaches full development and shaping. But the development is in the mind (from a fool to a responsible and thoughtful person) and not in the ability to choose, which is a binary trait and therefore probably inherent in us.
3. I think that without any connection to quantum theory, it is clear that if at all then only our mental part is the chooser, while the physical part is deterministic like all of reality. The question is what is the connection between these two. If the mental affects the physical, then indirectly it has a non-physical effect on it. And again, I don’t see how quantum theory will help us understand this. The body and the mind are not two alternative “images” (like the image of momentum and position between orthogonal quantities), but two aspects that exist in us simultaneously (like position and energy, or time and momentum).
As a general rule, I must say that there is no logical contradiction in quantum theory, nor in any other physical theory. If there were, a fundamental logical law states that any conclusion could be derived from it (as from any system of axioms that contains a contradiction), that is, it would be devoid of empirical content. But quantum theory has predications, that is, it predicts certain physical behaviors and rules out others. Hence, there is no contradiction in it.
For our purposes, light (as well as the electron, there is no difference) is not “both a particle and a wave” but “neither this nor that”. It is a wave function, which sometimes has uncertainty in location (and then it behaves like what we call a wave) and sometimes in momentum (and then it is what we call a particle). Everything and particles are not entities but properties or descriptions of entities. The entities are the wave functions. Now you will see that in quantum theory there is no logical contradiction or unity of opposites and other empty expressions. There are surprising phenomena in quantum theory, of course, but in no way contradictions.

Regarding thoughts:
1. I didn’t understand the first sentence. What is separate from what? In light of what follows, it seems that I am separate from the environment. Is that what is meant? If so, then there is no need to resort to mystical experiences. In philosophy too, one can ask the question of what creates the individuation of beings? (At a conference I attended yesterday, I had an argument with someone about whether Siamese twins are one person with two heads or two people, and what will determine the answer to this question). Thus, one can ask whether a “people” is a type of entity or a fiction that actually consists of a collection of individuals and nothing more (suddenly a person wakes up in the morning and feels that he is a people. I have an article by that name on the website that touches on this point from a non-philosophical angle)? Also, regarding an individual person, one can ask whether he is a collection of cells or a person? And of course, a cell is also a collection of molecules, each of which is a collection of particles, and so on up to quarks and beyond. This is the problem of the ship of Theseus (if you don’t know, see Wikipedia). This is a philosophical question that has no simple answer except for the initial intuitive understanding we have that a person is an individual entity and not a collection of cells. But this is ontology as a cognition and not an experience.
On the other hand, as far as I understand, the question of “union” (with the other or the surrounding or with God) is a question of subjective experience and not an ontological-metaphysical question (i.e. the definition of beings. What exists in reality and what does not). Even if I have an experience of union with all my surroundings, like any self-respecting Zen sage who has reached Nirvana, this does not mean that I am not a separate individual person. It is an experience and does not necessarily reflect reality.
This Hasidic talk (starting with the reduction, not the literal one, from which everything comes) sounds empty to me, and I attribute most of it to confusion stemming from a lack of systematic and clear definition of the concepts. Alternatively, they deal with experience and not with reality itself, and I don’t argue about experiences. Each to his own, but that’s precisely why I think experiences don’t mean much on a philosophical level.
And here it is important to comment on another of your comments. In my book I am not prepared to question our knowledge (such as that we have hands), but I do question our experiences (such as association, etc.). This is a very important difference. Experiences are a subjective matter that does not necessarily say anything about the world, and therefore doubting them is irrelevant. Our knowledge, on the other hand, of course deals with claims about the world. Skepticism is directed towards them, and I (like Moore) am not a skeptic.
This reminds me of an article by Adi Tzemach, in Marcelo Daskal’s collection, on the just and the unjust, where he tries to base the moral obligation to others on the fact that caring for oneself in the next moment is also caring for some “other.” In my opinion, this is empty chatter (beyond the logical-ethical problems it contains: after all, caring for oneself is not an obligation but an instinct. And the fact is that I have no instinct to care for others).

2. I didn’t fully understand the proposal. As a rule, once there is an influence on my choices, they are not free. If my freedom is nourished by others (=he chooses for me) then I am not free (and perhaps do not exist as an individual, and therefore the discussion is emptied of meaning). And certainly if it is a “big bang”, then we have no choice in the present. So what is our responsibility for our actions that were not yet born and were not planned when we “chose”?

Regarding the article and the song.

First of all, I really liked the song.

Secondly, as for the actual things you wrote (and the poem), I repeat my distinction between experience and cognition. The question is whether the superposition you are talking about is an experience or a cognition. You refer to it as a cognition and I am not sure it is not an experience. As mentioned, I am very suspicious of drawing ontological and metaphysical conclusions from experiences.

And third, just another technical note. Fourier decomposition is not a superposition. Long before quantum theory and regardless of it, we knew that any function could be represented as a sum of functions in an entire space (such as sine and cosine or delta functions (in the representation of space) and so on), that is, that a particle could be described as a collection of waves. The concept of superposition is an interpretation of this composition of waves, and this interpretation was given only after the birth of quantum theory. This interpretation sees the particle as a collection of waves that it can collapse into any of (with a probability determined by the wave function). That is, that it is actually composed of these options and not just a different form of its presentation. Only after this interpretation does Fourier decomposition describe a superposition. In other words: in quantum theory, the different waves in the Fourier decomposition are seen as alternative states of the particle and not merely as its formal mathematical composition.
Think about the Fourier decomposition of light, not of an electron. There is a beam of light that is also composed in some spectral form. If it passes through two slits classically (this is Young’s experiment, which was done on light) it is not a superposition, but a classical diffraction phenomenon. It became a superposition only when they did the experiment on electrons and found interference of an electron with itself.
You certainly don’t mean to say that every filter that filters frequencies of any light source operates within the framework of a decomposition of quantum theory. There are no quantum phenomena there. This is a completely classical optical phenomenon and should not be seen as a superposition phenomenon, but simply a Fourier decomposition of the light wave.
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Asks:
Good week,
I will address some of your comments,
It’s starting to get a little difficult to manage because the conversation is becoming branched and branched.

First, a consideration of free choice as a binary or continuous quantity:
I tend to think along the lines of the platform – your presentation of things makes it quite mystical,
That at the age of 13, something jumps out and enters a person, reminiscent of the Jewish virtue of the Khuzaris,
And this is also your reference to the previous question of how the choice works.
When you try to describe energies and the like, and in fact it’s again something without explanation,
I tried it with my tongue.
Continuous size could be something that, following the description of the topographic map in the book (based on genetics, environment, and psychology), could theoretically be defined according to a person’s ability to climb up a mountain,
Just like mountain climbers can be ranked based on whether they can climb Everest, or Mount Hermon, or just climb a chair…
I prefer this perspective, because then there are no discontinuous transitions.
And by the way, Hofsteder, in his book I Am a Strange Loop, describes it in a similar way (as a continuous size)
Our mental component.

Regarding thoughts:
1. (The experience of unity), I did not fully understand the distinction you make between experience and recognition,
If there is a person who experiences the consciousness of unity most of the time, why do you think this is a more satisfying experience than our experience of the self as separate entities?

2. I think you didn’t quite understand me, but before I explain my meaning further, I’ll quote
Your sentence in response:
“

“If my freedom is nourished by others (=he chooses for me) then I am not free.”
And if so, our freedom is nourished by God (thanks for that comment), does that mean we don’t have freedom? Isn’t this another version of the fool’s loop with which you refute determinism?

And now I will explain what I meant:
On page 40 of the book (“The Science of Freedom”) you talk about 3 components of choice:
– 2 options exist
– They are realizable
– Without any external forcing factor
(By the way, on page 47 above you refer to the 3 components and I think that is by mistake.)
You are talking about not meeting the first requirement, when in fact you should be talking about the second requirement.)

I focus on the second requirement for the possibility of realizing the choice and build a scenario in which the opening of the second requirement is carried out by someone from the outside.
The people who travel locked in trains are devoid of the second requirement.
It only takes once in history somewhere for someone to release someone else from the lockdown and thus
It will allow him free choice, as the second requirement is met, and hence, in a process of chain reaction, the choice is made possible for all those released from the trains.
In this thought experiment, there was a whole world of people without choice,
And it was enough for one person once, to enable the choice from now on,
Hence my association with the Big Bang.
It seems to me that we can think of similar scenarios for the first and third requirements,
I hope the idea is explained better this time,
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Rabbi:
Have a good week.
I didn’t write that at age 13 one begins to choose. I wrote the opposite, that a person has the ability to choose from the moment they are born (it is in their nature), but at age 13 one begins to be responsible and understands the consequences and meaning, and only then does the choice take on meaning. I suggested this image precisely because of the difficulty you raised.
I simply don’t understand the continuous thing. Either there is a choice or there isn’t. As I said – the principled ability to choose exists or it doesn’t. The degree of its realization is of course continuous, but that’s not very significant.

1. An experience is a kind of feeling or sensation. When I see something, I don’t define it as an experience. It is a recognition. Of course, this recognition occurs within me, but in my opinion it is not correct to call it an experience.
2. Our freedom was implanted in us by God, for He created us with the ability to choose. It is not said that someone is exercising my freedom. The choices are mine and mine alone. Perhaps I did not understand what you mean by someone else creating freedom in me. If he is only removing obstacles as you have just explained, I do not see what that solves.

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Asks:
Thought experiment:
Does an egg have a soul?
And a sperm cell?
Let’s say we created a copy of an egg and a sperm cell in a laboratory, fertilized it, and a human developed,
Does he have a soul and free will?
Have a good week.
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Rabbi:

This is completely parallel to the question of when in the process of evolution a soul and choice entered man. At some point it happens. I assume the same is true here.
If I may add a hypothesis, it happens from the beginning, but in the following way: When the egg is fertilized, a creature is created that, when it develops, will have a choice and a soul. That is, the potential for this is present from the beginning, and at some point it is realized. This is what the Sages say: at the age of 13, the good instinct enters a person, and the author of the Tanya writes that the divine soul enters him (and not the good instinct), meaning that from birth he has both instincts and he is acted upon by them. From the age of commandment, the ability to act and decide independently of the instincts (to choose) enters him. This is in contrast to an animal soul that acts according to the instincts.
To further clarify this, let’s look at an example. I think we all, materialists and libertarians, would agree that a fertilized egg has no consciousness or emotions. But at a later stage they appear (emerge). What would the materialist explain? That it develops from the potential that was there from the beginning. So this is what happens to our ability to choose. We see that children are influenced by their environment, and as they grow older they learn to resist, some more and some less.
According to the explanation I proposed, the question of continuity is resolved.
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Asks:

1. Again, there is a hocus pocus here of something coming from nothing, similar to the miracle I mentioned in the existence of free choice that allows for change in the material world.

2. My main question is around the ability to create free choice in a person’s hands,
Both the egg and the sperm in the thought experiment were created by humans,
Can a person create an object with a soul and free choice?
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Rabbi:

Man cannot create anything from nothing. He can use the laws of nature and try to achieve results through them. After all, you can also ask the materialists: Can man create man? not. He can fertilize an egg and rely on the laws of nature to produce a human being. The laws of nature are that a fertilized human egg creates a human being. The question is what is a human being. If you are a libertarian then you believe that a human being is a being who has freedom of choice. Hence what is created from a fertilized egg is an entity that has the potential for free choice. Can a human being produce a plant from a seed? not. He can plant it in the ground and a plant will grow because of the laws of nature.
In short, I do not see this as a greater miracle than the very creation of man (knowledge, consciousness, emotions, etc.), nor as a greater problem for the libertine than for the materialist.

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Asks:

I have no questions about the materialist because for him things are deterministic.
My question is about the dualistic approach.
It is not clear to me how a person, through his actions and through the laws of nature, can create
Something that goes beyond the laws of nature and grants free choice.

And I will take my question a step further – whether man, through the laws of nature,
can create a being with free will, why can’t he do
Is this also using silicon crystals??

I have a bit of an impression that we are speaking on different frequencies, and that happens too…

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Rabbi:
I disagree.
The laws of nature state that what comes out of a fertilized egg has (or enters) a soul with free will. This is part of the laws of nature. The fact that free will itself is not explained in a physical framework (because it is part of the soul) does not contradict this. The laws of nature only say that a soul connects to the body in this way. The soul in itself is not physics.
For example, non-reductionists do not put biology above physics. Now they have to explain how a biological being emerges from the physics of molecules? The laws of nature say that if you put molecules together in a way that creates a living cell, it will have vital properties, even though, according to the non-reductionist assumption, the living cell is not explained in terms of physics. This does not contradict the fact that the laws of nature state that biology emerges from the assembly of physical parts.
I didn’t understand why he could do this with silicone? The laws of nature do not allow for the creation of a creature with choice from silicone. It is what I said, that man operates within the limitations of the laws of nature.

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Asks:
How can you talk about natural laws while using concepts of choice and soul that go beyond nature?
It sounds like a mixture of sex and gender, and why can’t I claim, according to your theory, that there are laws of nature that would allow a soul to be produced on the silicon wafers of a supercomputer? A decree of Scripture?
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Rabbi:
Eli, we are probably really on a different frequency 🙂

I argue that there is a law of nature that when a person is created, a potential for choice enters into him that is realized. This is a property of this creature, and in this sense it is a law of nature (although not a law of physics). Just as a seed sown in the ground has a potential for growth that is realized. This does not necessarily mean that the soul that enters into it is part of physics, just as biology is not necessarily part of physics. What is the problem with this picture?
I asked if you can explain to me how consciousness or emotions are created from a fertilized egg (i.e. from biology)? Do you also deny their existence because you do not understand the process of creation? The fact that I do not know how X was created from Y does not mean that I have to deny the fact that it was indeed created. If there is a fact that I observe, I accept it. Then I can try and look for an explanation for it. I see that from a fertilized egg a person is created who has free will (as well as emotions and consciousness). Therefore, for me, it is a law of nature. I do not know how it happens, but we also do not know how it happens with emotions and consciousness. So therefore it does not exist?

If you manage to create a soul from silicon wafers, then we will find out that there is another law of nature that silicon wafers also absorb a soul from somewhere. Who said that it is not possible? So far, it is not happening. In other words, it may be possible but not true. Not everything that is possible is also true. But we know very well that a person is created from an egg. Therefore, the creation of a person is a law of nature, and the creation of a person from silicon is not.