To what extent do physicists allow their preconceived philosophical assumptions to get in the way of their theorising?
Famously, when Einstein produced his theory of general relativity, and found that it pointed to a universe which should collapse, he introduced a “cosmological constant” into his equation — a force which sustained the static, unchanging universe against collapsing in on itself. Because the universe was, of course, static. Obviously it was static. It had to be.
Except, it wasn’t. It isn’t. It’s expanding. And when this fact was discovered, Einstein removed the constant, calling it his “biggest blunder”.
Today, in quantum mechanics, there is a problem of probability. It seems that chance governs the world of the very small, and that one solution — that there are “hidden variables” we are yet to discover which determine the properties of quantum objects, rather than chance — was conclusively disproven by John Stewart Bell in 1964.
But, Bell had made a philosophical assumption too. Bell’s theorem rules out the possibility of such hidden variables… unless the choice of measurement settings by the scientist is itself correlated with these hidden variables. Then the problem goes away.
But, if that were the case, then the very behaviour of the scientist would itself be governed by deterministic variables. Their decisions would be governed by factors outside of their control, making human action deterministic. But humans, of course, have free will. Obviously they have free will. We have to have it.
But this philosophical assumption is perhaps not only faulty, but also irrelevant. As Sabine Hossenfelder argues in this episode, believing in “superdeterminism” (the name for this solution to Bell’s Theorem), does lead us to the conclusion that there is no free will, because there was no free will anyway to begin with.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Is There Free Will in Physics?
2:53 – Physics and Consciousness
19:25 – Physics and Philosophy
22:14 – What is Superdeterminism?
45:38 – Is Panpsychism Bad Philosophy?
51:42 – Can Science Explain Anything?
