General
Do The Laws of Physics Prevent Us From Having Genuine Free Will?
Are we free or are our actions determined by the laws of physics? And how much free will do we actually want? These questions have troubled philosophers for millennia – and there are still no perfect answers.
But it turns out that a character from a children’s TV series can provide a clue. Thomas the Tank Engine, despite being a locomotive, behaves like a human. He makes decisions and choices. And he is morally responsible: when he does something wrong, he gets punished.
But look deeper and things become complicated. He is an engine. His movements are determined by the shape of the tracks, the workings of his engine and the employees of the railway. So is his free will just an illusion?
Laws of physics explain how a past event results in a future one. For example, if I put a kettle on the hob, the laws of thermodynamics determine that it will boil at a nearby point in the future. If I don’t interfere with the kettle or the hob, there is only one outcome possible: the water will start boiling.
A powerful philosophical argument against free will states that since we cannot change the past and since we cannot change the laws of physics, we cannot change the future either. This is because the future is just a consequence of the past, and the laws of physics dictate that the past will result in the future. The future is not open to alternatives.
This also applies to us: our bodies are physical objects made of atoms and molecules governed by laws of physics. But every decision and action we take can ultimately be traced back to some initial conditions at the beginning of the universe.
We might feel like we have free will, but that is just an illusion. And the same is the case for Thomas: it might seem to him like he is free, but his actions are decided by the layout of the tracks and the timetable of the railway. What he does is not open to alternatives. He is, after all, a steam engine governed by the laws of thermodynamics.
Moral responsibility
But if Thomas’ actions are not open to alternatives, why is he told off when he gets things wrong? If he were no more than a machine, would it make much sense to think he is morally responsible? After all, it would be odd to say that my kettle deserves praise for boiling the water, if it really could not have done otherwise.
The US philosopher Harry Frankfurt has developed an ingenious thought experiment to show that the future does not have to be open to alternatives for us to be morally responsible.
Imagine two agents, let’s call them Killer and Controller. Controller has electrodes connected to the brain of Killer. If Killer doesn’t do as Controller wants, he switches on the electrodes – forcing Killer to obey.
Now, Controller really wants someone, let’s call them Victim, to die. So he thinks of directing Killer to kill Victim. But it turns out that Killer actually wants Victim to die as well, so she kills Victim without Controller needing to intervene at all. The electrodes remain switched off.
What’s the moral of the story? Although Killer’s actions were not open to alternatives (if she decided not to kill, Controller would have forced her to do so anyway), she is still responsible and punished as a murderer.
It looks like Thomas is in the same situation: when he does things within the rules of the railway, he is left to do them of his own volition. When he does not, someone intervenes: the driver, the conductor or the ominous Fat Controller.
But he is still reprimanded when things go wrong. The fact that his actions are not open to alternatives does not change anything about that.
How much free will is desirable?
So how about a universe where Thomas’ future is not determined? Would he be free there?
Although we are uncomfortable about the fact that our actions might be determined, the alternative isn’t much better. A universe where the future is completely undetermined, where it is too open to alternatives, is just too chaotic.
I need to know that when I put the kettle on the hob, it will boil. A universe where the water spontaneously turns into frozen orange juice isn’t one where most of us would want to live.
And the same is true of Thomas. If Thomas was allowed to leave the tracks, fly off into the air, or if his steam engine did not follow the laws of thermodynamics, his universe would not function.
His character captures our intuitions about free will. We need choice and moral responsibility, but we do not want our actions to be completely undetermined. We want our free will to be somewhere between full determinism and complete randomness.
Matyas Moravec, Gifford Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, University of St Andrews
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A British woman purchased a portrait of a young girl from a charity shop and now asserts that the picture is cursed, reports mirror.co.uk.
Zoe
Elliot-Brown, aged 36, spotted an artwork by an unfamiliar artist at
the Hastings Advice Representation Center in St Leonards-on-Sea, East
Sussex, a month ago.
Simultaneously, the seller cautioned Zoe
about the painting possibly being cursed, revealing that a prior
purchaser of the same artwork had returned it to the store with the
statement “it ruined my life.”
Out of curiosity, Zoe captured an
image of the painting on her smartphone and shared the photo with her
68-year-old mother, Jane Elliot-Brown. Her mother seemed to be entranced
by the painting.
Instantly,
she began urging Zoe to acquire the painting. Yielding to her mother’s
persuasion, Zoe paid £20 for the artwork. However, as soon as she
introduced it into her home, strange occurrences commenced taking place.
As
Zoe entered her home and positioned the painting in the living room,
their dog named Cilla leaped up and started growling at the artwork.
Cilla deliberately kept her distance, refraining from approaching the
picture. Subsequently, Zoe’s mother’s health took a sharp decline. She
began experiencing alternating spells of fever and chills, requiring her
to wear four sweaters to keep warm.
Concurrently, Zoe’s mother
seemed to be captivated by the painting. She continuously gazed at it
and even caressed the painted girl’s cheek. During the night, she heard
peculiar knocks emanating from the room where the picture hung, despite
the room being unoccupied.
Zoe managed to persuade her mother that
the painting held negative energy and was cursed. However, Jane
staunchly defended the painting, reluctant to part with it.
“I’ve
never seen my mother yearn for something so intensely. She was
entranced by it, but not in a positive manner. She guarded it. She
frequently gazed at it. She ran her fingers over the painted girl’s
cheeks and polished the surface, although the painting didn’t require
polishing.”
“Each time I mentioned disposing of the painting, she
became exceedingly irritable. It transformed into a sort of family
heirloom for her, something she began cherishing.”
“My mother
flatly refused to get rid of the painting. I think it’s a bit like the
magic power of the Lord of the Rings ring. It definitely works in an
attractive and charming way, it seems to pull you towards it.
“My mother became a bit like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings,” says Zoe.
Jane
herself says that it seems to her that the painted girl is very unhappy
and she stroked her to comfort her. She also does not attribute the
deterioration of her health to the purchase of the painting.
At
the same time, she admits that there were several cases when someone
seemed to knock on the door, and when she opened it, there was no one on
the threshold.
One day, Jane became so ill that she fainted right
in the bathroom. Zoe called 911, but her mother refused to go to the
hospital and was eventually left at home.
One morning, Zoe entered
the living room and saw her mother standing and stroking the painted
girl on her cheeks. And the mother could not remember how she ended up
in the living room and what she did at night.
“It
was strange behavior, especially for my mom. She couldn’t remember
anything from what happened last night. My mom is still very weird and
distracted and doesn’t want to discuss it.”
And then something
even more frightening happened. Zoe and her friend Ben went for a walk
on a hill during a thunderstorm and suddenly saw a “creepy black figure”
that suddenly appeared in front of them.
They do not know if this
is related to the painting, but they immediately ran back in fear.
Deciding to get rid of the cursed painting, Zoey eventually took it and
took it to the same shop where she bought it.
And when she drove
up to the store, she saw that in one of the tires of the car, brand new,
someone stuck a screw. She gave the painting to the seller, but then
changed her mind and took it back.
She
didn’t want someone else to buy the painting and get hurt because of
it. Now Zoe wants to give the picture only to someone who understands
damn things.
Now the painting is kept in Zoya’s house in a box filled with sage (it is believed that sage helps against evil spirits).
She also hung sage in every corner of the house, although Zoya’s mother was very unhappy with this.
“I
thought knowing my luck some idiot will go and get it and try and burn
it and I don’t really want to be left with the remainder of whatever the
hell has been going on. Technically I was the last owner. [I want it]
dealt with properly. […]”
A mysterious wild man, nicknamed by the locals “the wolf man”, was
photographed in the forested mountains of the Harz, in the center of
Germany. The man was completely naked and held a spear in his hand.
The
savage was accidentally noticed by two tourists who were walking
through the forest, not far from the city of Blankenburg in
Saxony-Anhalt, and examined the ruins of an old castle.
“When we
reached the caves in the sands, we saw this wolf-man. He stood high in
one of the caves and held in his hand a long wooden stick that looked
like a spear.
“He didn’t take his eyes off us, but he didn’t say
anything. He looked dirty and looked like a prehistoric man from the
Stone Age, like pictures in a history book,” Gina Weiss, 31, told Bild
newspaper.
According
to Weiss and her friend Toby, they observed this man for about ten
minutes. The naked man appeared to be in his forties and reportedly
these tourists were not the first to have seen him in the area.
It is assumed that he has been living in the forests near Blankenburg for about five years.
Authorities say they have received numerous reports of a person wearing a wolf’s skin or wolf costume over the past five years.
In
March 2023, a frightened eyewitness even called the police because he
thought that a wolfman running next to him wanted to attack him. In
other cases, people have seen how a savage is trying to make a fire or
building a hut out of branches for himself.
At the same time, it
is quite cold in this area in winter and it is not clear how this person
managed to survive here for several years.
According to Alexander
Beck, head of the local fire brigade, this savage clearly has the
skills to live in the wild and adapt to the changing seasons of the
year.
Where this man came from is unknown. There are many theories, from the hermit to more mystical versions such as time portals.
However, there are those who believe that all this is just some kind of prank to scare tourists or some other purpose.
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