Abstract
This discussion is an attempt to reconcile our ideas of physical time with those of psychological time. Based on accepted arguments from relativity and on a much less accepted interpretation of quantum phenomena I am adopting a picture of physical time which accords equal and full reality status to all moments in time. This seems to be in sharp conflict with our intuitive outlook, according to which the future has no reality yet and is open to the decisions of our free will. I will show that this conflict is due to a flawed concept of free will and its relationship to determinism.
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Notes
- 1.
This idea of changing the future by a local act of will, by a free decision, would re-introduce the concept of a distinguished moment: the branching point were the decision happened. But this version would not create a conflict with relativity and Einstein causality as my decisions are localized not only in time but also in space and all consequences are confined to the interior of the future light cone.
- 2.
The neurophysiologist John Eccles saw in quantum chance the instrument through which an immaterial mind could purposefully influence the mechanistic brain, seen as “the mind’s computer.” However, this would not solve the dilemma but simply shift it to another domain, the mind as distinct from the brain, whatever that could be.
- 3.
This is just like in the external perspective, where we see a situation unfold in a predictable way and intervene with our own decisions to alter the course of action, the external situation corresponding to the lower tier, our presence and influence to the upper.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Carver Mead for sharing his ideas and deep insights with me in a number of intensely delightful and memorable discussions, discussions that were instrumental in precipitating the views on the nature of quantum phenomena that I am expressing here.
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von der Malsburg, C. (2014). Physics and Our Intuitive Outlook on Time. In: Albeverio, S., Blanchard, P. (eds) Direction of Time. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02798-2_5
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