Quantum propensities and free will

Details: Category: News; Published on Thursday, 03 February 2022 22:00; Written by Danko Georgiev; Hits: 1095

Capacity of conscious agents to perform genuine choices among future alternatives is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Determinism that pervades classical physics, however, forbids free will and undermines ethics. To resolve that impasse, we use the indeterminism of quantum physics to derive a measure for the amount of free will manifested by the brain cortex. The interaction between the nervous system and the environment performs a quantum measurement upon the neural constituents, which actualize a single measurement outcome from the available choices.

In our new article published in Biosystems, we show that inherent biases in the quantum propensities for alternative physical outcomes provide varying amounts of free will, which can be quantified with the expected information gain from learning the actual course of action chosen by the nervous system. For example, neuronal electric spikes evoke deterministic synaptic vesicle release in the synapses of sensory or somatomotor pathways, with no free will manifested. In cortical synapses, however, vesicle release is triggered indeterministically with probability of 0.35 per spike. This grants the brain cortex, with its over 100 trillion synapses, an amount of free will exceeding 96 terabytes per second. Although reliable deterministic transmission of sensory or somatomotor information ensures robust adaptation of animals to their physical environment, unpredictability of behavioral responses initiated by decisions made by the brain cortex is evolutionary advantageous for avoiding predators. Thus, free will may have a survival value and could be optimized through natural selection.