The paper, Volition and physical laws, by Jean E. Burns states that free will implies that physics theories need to be radically upgraded. The term she used is radical emergence. It is a very detailed paper worth reading twice. I then found a podcast of interview of Jean Burns from skeptiko. Skeptiko has a lot of podcasts challenging strict materialism. Eliminative materialism only has two types of causation – random and determined – both insufficient for volitional entities.

David Chalmers is the one who came up with zombie thought experiments. Chalmers is mostly concerned with consciousness and doesn’t seem to write too much about volition or tying it into physics. But he is good for countering zombies like Dennett and Churchland. The reason I am more concerned right now with volition rather than consciousness is precisely because I want to tie it into physics and he is right-it is the hardest problem – volition is easier to test. You can apply numbers to the power of volition or will power and you are not hiding the fact that you believe in free will and that the theories of physics must change. Searle criticizes Chalmers that assuming zombies can do everything that volitional beings do just gives the impression that he believes consciousness has no power (epiphenomenalism) and is superfluous. Chalmers claims that his position is not epiphenomenalism but he doesn’t try to change physics or affirm volition enough for me to get really interested.

John Searle is the one that came up with the Chinese Room argument which is good for countering strong AI. Searle believes it is the way the brain is physically put together that is responsible for consciousness but doesn’t go into biology or physics. He does believe that free will is probably true because if it wasn’t then evolution would have evolved something with no purpose – consciousness – which is highly unlikely — a very good point. But again, he did not go into physics because he is a philosopher unlike Roger Penrose, who is a physicist, and a good topic for my next blog.

The first objection to trying to create a scientific testable theory of real conscious volition is that it is kind of postulating a little god, soul or homunculus in every functioning brain and that is not taken seriously because of the current theories of physics. But, as I typed earlier, the goal of this blog is to come up with new theories of physics that are compatible with conscious volitional quantum identities that will fit into brains. These quantum identities must be like little gods or souls which brings up another set of objections.

Atheism is the most common philosophy of top scientists, which means it is against their philosophy to believe in any sort of acausal conscious volition be they infinite, finite, big or small. I think it is possible to have a volitional theory of physics and it is testable because there are so many brains and personalities to look at and test.

But if there are little gods capable of running brains are there big gods capable of running universes? I think so. With a theory of physics you could perhaps calculate the capabilities needed for a volition to run this universe or others. The theory might imply some things that are really testable with experiments. I disagree with the idea that theistic theories are never testable and therefore not scientific especially when I assume the big gods have many of the characteristics of the little gods which can be tested.

Evolution has been going on for billions of years but if the laws of physics don’t allow for conscious volition, no length of time will bring it about.

I tried to think of a place to start. What I came up with is that real free will implies  some wholes must be able to control their parts. For example, the space of the entire finite universe may act as a unified conscious volition that has power over all the particles in its domain.  The particles themselves would be much smaller consciousnesses and control the space within themselves.  I guess this would be a form of panpsychism.  The idea is that all fundamental stuff is volitional by the whole controlling it parts, the opposite of machines where parts control the whole.

In the brain I suppose many molecules quantum entangle in the center of the brain and form a small unified volitional consciousness
that at times is capable of running the entire brain.

If the universe is conscious, God is growing fast because the universe is expanding at accelerating rates.

Does anybody out there know any theories of physics that might be compatible with real acausal conscious volition?