The biology and physics of free will
Reductionism is the belief that every phenomenon can be broken down to the fundamental laws of physics that govern the smallest constituents of matter: these laws then cause everything from the bottom up and make the future predictable, as embodied in Pierre-Simon Laplace’s ‘demon’. But in the brain, learning changes macroscopic structure, and affects the microscopic details of the brain in a top-down fashion, argues physicist George Ellis in this essay. And this has implications for free will — without which ethics do not exist, he thinks. “If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings.”
Aeon | 17 min read
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