Chapter 13.                                          (continued) 

We gain a better understanding of how profoundly different this worldview is when we contrast it with the old Newtonian one. Philosophers who understood the old Newtonian worldview believed that natural laws like Newton’s laws of motion would eventually explain phenomena in the realms of Physics, then Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, and History. In this model, every event and every action performed by animals or humans is seen as being governed by rigorous natural laws that in each case must lead to only one outcome. Thus, only one history for the entire universe is possible. Human intuitions about the extent of our own freedom are illusions.

This view is called determinism: it says there is no such thing as free will because the future is already set, even if no human being will ever be able to know all of the natural laws and the positions and momenta of all of the particles. In principle, under the Newtonian view, there is no free will for humans or anything else in this universe because the future is already fixed. The quantum view, by contrast, opens up the possibility that living things can learn to spot patterns in the sense data they detect in the world around them, recognize the ones that tell of hazards and opportunities, and act to alter the probabilities of future events so that their chances of survival improve.

That picture resonates with our habitual and intuitive view of ourselves. We are, to a degree that varies from situation to situation, free. We can shape future events.

                                

                                                                               Albert Einstein

It is important to reiterate here that quantum theory is not talking about the uncertainty of events at the macro level, a kind of uncertainty that we say we are forced to accept because of practical limits on our measuring abilities. Under the Newtonian view, one may believe that we humans see events that look unpredictable, from our limited human level, but still also think that the universe is a deterministic place. But quantum theory says that the processes taking place at the subatomic level are always occurring in ways that appear to us to be uncaused—what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” (he hated the idea of it). Furthermore, the point for my goal of trying to find a basis in physical reality for a moral code is not affected by these distinctions. Probability, quantum and non-quantum, as an overriding quality of reality, is ubiquitous and eternal. We must live with a probabilistic reality and adapt to it as a fact of life.

Physicists are unclear about how or even whether quantum uncertainty and non-quantum uncertainty enhance each other. The huge range of outcomes in complex systems may be influenced by both quantum and non-quantum forces. 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 the level of reality at which our choices are made and our actions are measured, we experience reality as being made of probabilistic events. And in those chains of events, informed, 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 the probabilistic quality of reality as being one of the crucial and basic facts that we humans must deal with. When I speak of uncertainty, I will be referring to the total uncertainty of reality, quantum and non-quantum, that we must face and deal with.