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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: A New Theory of Free Will -- continuation of an Open Letter to Professor Penrose
Message-ID: <DMq5GK.9Lz@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <NNYXSI.96Feb1182620@swap31-220> <4f86a6$fe5@news.cc.ucf.edu> <0m7LTDArkoGxEwJ0@sherlock.demon.co.uk> <4fmd20$i3l@news.cc.ucf.edu>
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:19:32 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.physics:171017 comp.ai:37001 comp.ai.philosophy:37706 sci.philosophy.meta:24666

In article <4fmd20$i3l@news.cc.ucf.edu>,
Thomas Clarke <clarke@acme.ucf.edu> wrote:
..............
>OK.  Tell me what determines exactly where the spot of light
>will occur on the screen beyond the two slits when the slits in
>a double slit experiment are exposed to a hot tungsten filament
>in a vacuum?  
>
>Physics eschews a causal explanation for the location, other than
>in a statistical sense.  I see no reason why similar lack of causation
>may not obtain in complicated neural systems.
>
You are of course right, QM does seem to indicate that there are random
(undetermined) phenomena, even if some people still refuse to accept this.
It is also true that one cannot categorically deny a possibility, at the
present time, that QM randomness plays a role in the brain functioning.
However, just as well, there are no clear indications that it does. After
all a CRAY T3D computer, with its bundle of gallium arsenide based processors
have a plenty of QM effects happening inside but the QM randomness does not
play a role in its functioning, does it?
Situations where QM randomness produces macroscopic events only happen in 
very specific circumstances. There are no widely accepted indications that 
such circumstances happen in the brain, at least as far as I know.

>Tom Clarke
>
Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
pindor@breeze.hprc.utoronto.ca                      Huang Po
