Michio Kaku: Why Physics Ends the Free Will Debate

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Physics can explain many things. But I don’t think that it has reached the point where it can explain everything.
 
Dunno about the future, but I can tell you that several months ago, he missed his haircut appointment.

Sounds to me as though he alleges that he can predict the future, but only in the future.

Thus, nonsense.
 
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Well, he’s right about the light taking time to get to the mirror and back. When you look at anything, you’re looking back in time. If you are looking through a telescope at a galaxy that’s 12 billion light years distant, you are seeing it as it was 12 billion years ago.

Free will is different. It is a faculty of the soul, and the soul is spiritual, not material. It doesn’t involve materiality or the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
 
It’s certainly an interesting proposition, that we could know every single event that could and/or would take place in the future, if only we knew the exact data and spin and charge and so on for every molecule, atom, subatomic particle, etc. But we can’t. Not only is that not how it works, according more than just Mr. Heisenberg and Mr. Kaku, but we don’t have that kind of processing power!
Anyway, this is another case of scientists doing poor philosophy. He came to the (mostly) correct conclusion—we have some sort of free will, even if we don’t understand it—but I don’t know he took the right route that would validly get him there
 
I personally don’t think this line of argument works. If you’ve ever seen Dr. Eben Alexander He is a neurosurgeon who had a near death experience, he talks about many scientists’ tendency to believe in “reductionist materialism”. This is generally the idea that humans can be reduced to their parts. Ie we are a synergistic conglomeration of physical components. If a part of the brain, for example, ceased to function, this would explain all behavior, etc. I think this misses the impact of the soul. I was always taught that the soul is the essence of who we are, and we have free will given by God. I have a BS in a science, and have a lot of love for science and the scientific methodology. However I often see scientists attempt to explain theology with science. I don’t think this is advisable. It would be like me trying to explain a sunset with a camera and scientific analysis. I could see the sunset, but saying it had x intensity, with y chromatic charactics, and n diameter, doesn’t capture the beauty, the moment, emotions, or the meaning of watching a sunset with a loved one for example.
 
AHA! I saw Michio Kaku, on a science panel discussing God and science. After the death of Stephan Hawkings, who evolved into an Atheist worshipping SCIENCE. “Before Science, we needed religion to answer the questions where Science hadn’t, yet, found the answers.” I can’t recall all names in panel. Michio stated, we are born w. a God gene. It is what causes Gods creation to seek Him! That was cool. DNA has been found now that says we come from one Mother strand and one Father strand. Not Adam & Eve actually. Adam & Eve weren’t actual. But, nevertheless our original parents. The Genesis story is an allegory telling the story that there was a God who created us. There was more than one Adam & Eve! Thank God b/c Mary would have been very busy as the only woman till daughter’s were born.
Atheists should kerpbtheir eyes on Science, as it will affirm God, one day.
 
AdoroTeDevote said:
Does this seem like nonsense to you?
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No. His physics arguments concerning material determinism vs. indeterminism are reasonable and may be right. However, he is making an assumption that our understanding of physics is complete.

He is correct that Newtonian physics was missing something. He is correct that quantum physics is an improvement (and relativity is another improvement), but the study of physics is not done. We do not yet understand all the principles that govern the physical world, and so there may be a subtle error in Prof. Kaku’s argument which will become apparent when someone makes the next big breakthrough in physics.

However, a subtle error doesn’t make his argument nonsense. Newtonian physics is wrong, but it is an important step toward understanding. Similarly, Prof. Kaku’s argument in favor of material indeterminism may be wrong, but that doesn’t make it nonsense.
 
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Neil deGrasse Tyson had a one-page article in of all places, the Auto Club magazine for California. He asserted that science can fix any problem, even if it caused the problem in the first place.

I avoid his secularist rants such as this. They are following the early 19th century idea that the scientists are the new secular high priests and the rest of us should blindly follow what they deign to tell us, indeed order us to to believe and do.

There’s science and there’s dark science – the science that is hidden from view, with questionable ethics and dubious goals, such as the one announced today, that the Japanese have found a way to create human eggs from stem cells.
 
StephenBales said:
It’s certainly an interesting proposition, that we could know every single event that could and/or would take place in the future, if only we knew the exact data and spin and charge and so on for every molecule, atom, subatomic particle, etc. But we can’t. Not only is that not how it works, according more than just Mr. Heisenberg and Mr. Kaku, but we don’t have that kind of processing power!
Anyway, this is another case of scientists doing poor philosophy. He came to the (mostly) correct conclusion—we have some sort of free will, even if we don’t understand it—but I don’t know he took the right route that would validly get him there
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All I can see is him confirming that the universe is not determinate. Well, we’ve known that for quite a long time. If it WAS determinate then, yes, there would be no free will. But the corollary isn’t that if the universe ISN’T determinate then therefore we have it.

It’s a point in its favour but no more.
 
As I posted in the math thread: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Could be the title of a new book, “The Physics of John Calvin: Regardless of whether God exists, you’re still going to hell. Or not.”
 
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oldnskeptical said:
Actually, you don’t seem to understand what he’s saying in the video. He isn’t saying that there’s no such thing as free will, he’s saying that there IS such a thing as free will. According to the old Newtonian physics free will didn’t exist, but quantum physics with its uncertainty principal means that at least in some sense, free will does exist. In Newtonian physics the state of a system now would dictate the state of the system at every point in the future. In quantum physics however, the state of the system now isn’t fixed, so the state of the future isn’t fixed either.

The video is saying that physics ends the free will debate, and free will wins.
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Indeed, the observer can change the outcome.
 
He states the case for uncertainty regarding the position of an electron and then makes the leap that that uncertainty, “…means, in some sense, that we do have free will. No one can determine your future events.”

This works if free will is a material object like an electron, or if free will is made up of electrons.
 
I agree. Free will seems like something bigger than random electrons.
 
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Nice summary.

But I was thinking of something else just yesterday about matter and consciousness. So energy can be in both material as well as non-material states. And I guess even unmanifest in some non-spacial involuted domain. Maybe we could correlate it with the spiritual realm. I do not know. But in the process of becoming material, becoming a packet of energy or particle, that energy )and maybe consciousness) becomes discrete or individualized, no longer part of some unified field. And as a result it no longer is part of that unified consciousness but experiences a darkness separate from it rather than a conscious connection with it.

And so in this life do not recognize our direct connection with the spiritual realm. we do not see it. Rather we are focused on the material distinctions and can only yearn for that unity. But we can also live as if we are part of that unity by the kindness and love we show to each other.

Just thinking on paper here.
 
I have no doubt that he came to his conclusions using his own intellect and his own free will.
 
What is it about physicists that makes them think they are theologians?

I don’t see other scientific disciplines running around pronouncing about theology in the way physicists seem to love to do.
 
I think the best physicists are also philosophers. That’s why they think they are theologians.
 
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Perhaps it’s a bit of ontological revenge for all those theologians who seem to think they are physicists.
 
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