An interesting subject came up in the "Does science ask and answer "why" questions?" thread:
In
Message 3491.6180339 writes:
Straggler writes:
All the evidence indicates that the entire notion of us consciously making non-deterministic choices is simply false rather than something that demands a mysterious explanation.
It is determined up to a point. The brain activity propagates before consciousness dictates a choice. However who's not to say some quantum entanglement is not going on? That there is indeed some spontaneous collapse of the wave form once a "observation is made" and a choice is made. It is still deterministic, but novel and spontaneous as well. Rather than completely dependent on prior conditions, the choice is chosen by the thinker/observer/subject/person/dude/conscious mind.
So even though it looks on the surface like the choice precedes consciousness, it is in fact spook action at a distance and the apparent time lag is simply our biological hard ware trying to catch up.
In
Message 350straggler writes:
Whatever you need to believe to get you through the day with your subjective notions intact I guess.....
Numbers writes:
However who's not to say some quantum entanglement is not going on?
Why would anyone say that is going on?
Straggler writes:
Do you think quantum computers will have free will?
Cool!!! I feel a new thread coming on.....
If neither of them have done so, yet, I'd like to propose a thread that can address this.
I'd like to see more on how the Illusion (or a non-illusory manifestation of it as alluded to in 1.6180339's quantum entanglement) of Free Will may also help in understanding things like self-awareness.
Would computers never be able to have anything more than the illusion they had free will, if somehow we had something a little less negative in connotation than "illusion", perhaps along the way of disentanglement? How would we know the difference? What would it matter anyway?
Thank you.
- xongsmith, 5.7d