From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Okay, but what of the “structure of molecules” when the brain configures into mind configures into “I”? What of these molecules when, as most intrigues me, one “I” comes into contact with another “I” and fierce conflicts erupt over which set of behaviors will be either rewarded or punished?
What of DNA and proteins and messenger molecules then? Where does nature’s code end and our own autonomous free will begin when, say, the conflict becomes entangled in politics such that attempts are made to encode human behaviors through the law? Behaviors actually able to be enforced.
Here’s how remarkably mechanical it gets on the biological level:
And it all unfolds such that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the biological “players” here have the slightest inkling as to why they do this instead of that? How then are the dots connected here between biological imperatives and any one particular “I” using these laws of nature to “instruct” the body – their own – to choose one thing over another?
Yep, here we go again. Making an attempt at an explanation by noting the manner in which material interactions on the quantum level are often indeterminant. Surreal even. At least in terms of pinning down definitively why and how relationships unfold as they do – as they must – “down there”. What of cause and effect when the “viewers” themselves somehow determine the outcome? We can only imagine that consciousness itself is explainable in regard to all of the pieces still missing when biologists and physicists either agree or disagree with respect to what is actually happening in a brain derived from DNA derived from matter containing who knows what combinations of these guys: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle
And that’s before we get to how all of this fits into a definitive understanding of dark matter and dark energy.
What of “I” there?