Can free will emerge from determinism in quantum theory?

Abstract

Quantum Mechanics is generally considered to be the ultimate theory capable of explaining the emergence of randomness by virtue of the quantum measurement process. Therefore, Quantum Mechanics can be thought of as God's wonderfully imaginative solution to the problem of providing His creatures with Free Will in an otherwise well-ordered Universe. Indeed, how could we dream of free will in the purely deterministic Universe envisioned by Laplace if everything ever to happen is predetermined by (and in principle calculable from) the actual conditions or even those existing at the time of the Big Bang? In this essay, we share our view that Quantum Mechanics is in fact deterministic, local and realistic, in complete contradiction with most people's perception of Bell's theorem, thanks to our new theory of parallel lives. Accordingly, what we perceive as the so-called "collapse of the wavefunction" is but an illusion. Then we ask the fundamental question: Can a purely deterministic Quantum Theory give rise to the illusion of nondeterminism, randomness, probabilities, and ultimately can free will emerge from such a theory?Comment: 22 pages. This paper will appear in "Is science compatible with free will? Exploring free will and consciousness in light of quantum physics and neuroscience", A. Suarez and P. Adams (Eds.), Springer, New York, 2012, Chapter 4. Most of the paper explains well-known ideas to a general public. We encourage the expert to skip directly to Section 7, in which we present our theory of "Parallel Lives