| Popis: |
Questionnaires consistently show that, across cultures, people have the sense that they are ultimately in control of their own voluntary behavior. That is, when people make a choice they have the sense that before they decide, multiple option are open to them. The notion that humans freely choose their voluntary behavior contrasts with determinism, i.e. the view that all events – including human voluntary behavior – inevitably follow from preceding events, ultimately going back to the Big Bang. Whether humans really have free will, or if the feeling of free will is an illusion, can have far reaching implications regarding our view of ourselves and others. Given our current knowledge of physics there seems to be little room for free will. Classical physics is entirely deterministic. Moreover, outside of the ‘measurement problem’ quantum physics is entirely deterministic as well. The only place where determinism may be absent is during the ‘collapse of the wavefunction’, which occurs at a quantum level every time a measurement is performed. In the current manuscript we argue that this collapse of the wavefunction may indeed underpin libertarian free will, but only if it meets some very specific requirements. Moreover, these specific requirements have empirical implications that we can currently test. Here we outline these empirical tests. In our view, these tests will either support the existence of libertarian free will, or provide strong evidence against the possibility of libertarian free will – given our current knowledge of physics. |
