Self and Free Will 253“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity- Thanks to Prof. Laird Addis who pointed out to me the futility of defining
freedom objectively. - The affirmation of self through free will was strongly stressed by Sartre in
his existential philosophy, when he said that a man “is what he wills.” See:
Sartre J-P: Existentialism and Humanism. Lecture given in 1945, published
in French in 1946; translated into English by Mairet P, published in 1948
by Methuen & Co. London; quoted from p. 28 of the 1968 printing. - Here, the reader is reminded that, under the democratic principle, a per-
son is free to act in so far as the act does not infringe on other persons’ free-
dom, and that a certain degree of freedom is to be sacrificed in exchange
for social cohesion. - Newtonian physics is applicable to objects of the scale commensurable with
the human world. Objects smaller than an atom follow quantum mech-
anical principles, which are inherently unpredictable (in terms of position
and momentum) because of their wave function. However, quantum
uncertainty does not concern our everyday life. - Lorenz EN. (1963) Deterministic nonperiodic flow. J Atmospheric Sci
20: 130–141. - Zeeman EC. (April 1976) Catastrophe theory. Scientific Am 234: 65–83.
- Dennett DC. (1984) Elbow Room. MIT Press/Bradford Books,
Cambridge, MA. - Russell B. (1975) The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford Univ. Press, London,
Chap. VI, On Induction. Some authors prefer a slightly modified version
in which a turkey was fed starting from the day after Thanksgiving and was
led to think that it would be fed forever until it was slaughtered on the next
Thanksgiving Day. - The statistical principle of Boltzmann should not be confused with the
uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. Boltzmann’s principle applies
to molecules whose individual motions are predictable in isolation but
become unpredictable en masse. By contrast, quantum uncertainty is the
inherent unpredictability of matter at the subatomic scale. - Even a simple neural network is a nonlinear, vastly stochastic system that is
vulnerable to deterministic chaos to a high degree. - Glimcher PW. (2003) Decisions, uncertainty, and the brain. MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA.