Chapter 12       Part C 

This is a good point at which to insert a few further remarks on the roots of the uncertainty that we observe at the human level of experience. I have focused on the uncertainty that originates at the quantum level of reality, the level of photons, hadrons, electrons, and photons because the actions of hadrons, electrons, and photons form the base for the actions of all particles larger than themselves.

But there are also other sources of uncertainty. The molecular level, according to our best current models, is also probabilistic and uncertain - at least to us. Strictly speaking, the molecular level of reality does, in fact, contain determined sequences of events because the forces that act on particles at this level are ruled by classical physics and are, therefore, in principle - if quantum events do not intervene - determined. Under this view, if we could measure and process all of the data for all of the particles involved in a given initial state, we could accurately predict how that state would evolve over the next minute or millennium. The weather is a good example.

But tiny differences in the initial states of such systems can lead to radically different outcomes. In other words, practically speaking, for us at the macro level of resolution, these systems are only comprehensible by statistical models. At the everyday human level, there is simply far too much measuring and calculating to ever do in any practical way. The bottom line for us in the human scale is that many classically determined real systems in the world present the same problems of having as huge a range of possible outcomes as the quantum level does. We navigate through both by building probabilistic models and then calculating probabilities, minute by minute, year by year, from sense data.

It is important to note also that the possibility is always there that some event at the quantum level will break through to influence events at the higher levels of resolution. This is the "Butterfly Effect" and no science, in dealing with real situations, can ever rule it out. And the import of all of these models, as far as we are concerned, is that life is ruled by probabilities.

It is important to re-iterate here that quantum theory is not talking about this molecular kind of variability, which is an approximation that we are forced to when dealing with systems like the weather by practical limits on our measuring abilities. Such systems are, in principle, deterministic. On the other hand, quantum theory says that the processes going on at the sub-atomic level are always popping in what appear to us to be strange, uncaused ways. What Einstein called "spooky action at a distance". (He did not like the very idea of it.) But the point for my purposes in trying to find a basis in physical reality for a moral code is not affected by these distinctions. Probability, as an overriding quality of reality, is ubiquitous and, as far as we can tell, eternal. We must live with uncertainty and adapt to it as a fact of life.

Physicists are unclear about how or even whether quantum uncertainty and non-quantum uncertainty interact and enhance one another. The huge range of outcomes in complex systems may be influenced by both non-quantum and quantum events. Currently, we just don't know. The exact nature of what is going on down there is still being debated.

However, our moral models are not affected by these distinctions. In daily life, where most of our choices are made and our actions are measured, we experience reality as being made of events that are probabilistic. And in those chains of events, guided, chosen human actions can effectively intervene and alter the likelihoods of at least some outcomes. This is all that really matters for moral philosophy.

Therefore, in all that follows, I will speak of quantum uncertainy as being one of the crucial and basic characteristics that we humans - via our moral codes and the behaviors that they imply - must deal with. When I speak of "quantum uncertainty", I will be referring to the total uncertainty of reality that human beings have to learn to accommodate and react effectively to.

 

   Charles S. Peirce 

Quantum theory breaks the backbone of classical determinism. At the tiniest level that we have so far been able to study, events are not connected by single paths of direct cause and effect. They are connected by forces that do not obey exact laws of cause and effect, but instead can only be described by laws of probability. The consequence for humans at the human level is that life is made of uncertainty, or to be exact, probabilities. Reality is a stochastic system. Most of the time we know with a high degree of probability what is going to happen next, and with a fair degree of reliability, how we can influence what is going to happen next; but we never know for certain what is going to happen about anything. This view was anticipated by Peirce in the 1890's and has been further developed by many thinkers right into the twenty-first century. (4.) (5.)

We can act, and we do act, in bold, informed, calculated, and skilful ways, and our actions alter the probabilities of the various events that may happen in the next few seconds or decades, but it is also true that we can't ever act so intelligently or skillfully that we can be one hundred percent sure of any outcome, good or bad. The elements of surprise and risk are built into reality.           

If the true picture of reality and our place in it is that uncertain, or to put it more accurately, that probabilistic, one begins to wonder how we manage to get anything done. What mental models can guide us to effective action in such an environment? The answer lies in viewing the human mind itself in a way that is consistent with quantum theory. 

No one would really engage in everyday life as if she or he were not free. In my ordinary dealings in everyday life, of course I believe in free will. I get out of the way of oncoming buses or landslides, I go to work to earn my pay, and I hold people responsible for their actions. I expect other rational adults to do the same. I applaud decent actions and reprimand mean ones. I calculate odds on the material "rightness" and moral "rightness" of nearly everything I do.  

  

The Bayesian model of the human mind is an appropriate one to fit inside of the quantum model of the universe because it portrays the human mind in a way that is consistent with quantum uncertainty. A sense-data-processing, probability-calculating, action-planning program - designed by trial and error through centuries of cultural evolution - is going to be more likely to enable the organism that runs by it to survive than any other program for surviving that we could propose.

At least so far in human history, the mind-software that runs on the brain hardware is defying all of the computer simulations and other models that we have devised to try to imitate it or explain it. In other words, the details of the programs that run on the brain's protoplasmic hardware are even more of a mystery than the enormously complex neuron-hardware itself. The mind, which is only an evolved variation of the larger phenomenon of life itself, spots patterns in sense data, sometimes only over generations. 

But finding and exploiting patterns in the flows of matter and energy, and calculating ways to exploit them, is what minds, especially human minds, do. Exactly how they do this, so far, we have not been able to pin down. But, in spite of our difficulties with comprehending what we are doing when we are comprehending, the Bayesian model of the mind is still useful and workable. With it, we can do some serious reasoning. 

The point as far as this book is concerned is that we have now integrated the Bayesian model of the human mind with the socio-cultural model of human evolution and the quantum model of the physical universe. We are ready to draw some really powerful conclusions.

Notes 

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Robert_Kane

5.http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/

  necessity/necessity.html