Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

relationship of matter in cause and effect suggests a very deterministic view of reality. If matter were indeed to be related in this way then it would suggest that all our actions would be strictly determined by the behaviour of physical matter. There would thus be no room for free will.

So determinism is the theory that all our mental states and acts, and all our choices and decisions, are effects determined by preceding causes. As we’ve seen above, this is usually as a result of a reductive materialism, meaning just that it was the arrangement of matter at the start of the universe that determined all future events.

Quantum theory, in some respects, undermines the strict cause and effect relationship between events in the universe. Famously, of course, quantum physics has introduced a substantial element of uncertainty into the universe. There’s a suggestion — under the older interpretations of quantum theory — that it is our observations, as conscious subjects, that cause probabilities to collapse into actualities — such as, actual positions of particles. So the very act of observing may have an effect on the material world. Quantum theory at least suggests that the universe is not deterministic, although it does not prove this to be the case, beyond all doubt. So, if we were hoping quantum theory could get us out of the fix that determinism places us under, then think again!

Quantum indeterminacy has suggested to some that our decision-making has the power to affect the state of the universe. But this is a very

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