(2021) Quantum retrocausality may give us free will
This means a person could actually make a choice that causes their past - or so to speak 'change causality of the past'.
There is no reason to believe that the past is actually fixed and the future is not. It may be just as likely that they are both unfixed as fixed and that the past that we remember in our brains, books, computers, and so on is more of a set of information that is continually being updated in time. This means that causality is not true in time.
https://medium.com/the-infinite-univers ... ed9530509c
Why would retrocausality be possible?
My own theory indicates that value in the world requires 'a priori meaning'. Value would be assigned meaning. That meaning must be explained (have an origin) and that what fundamentally precedes value (as origin) is necessarily a priori. The logic would be simple.
A priori meaning as origin of value would not allow for the concept 'true randomness' because value (e.g. a pattern) would break the purity of the randomness.
A priori meaning would also imply that determinism is not possible.
Philosopher William James - the "father of American psychology" - had the following perspective on free will.
William James developed his two-stage model of free will. In his model, he tries to explain how it is people come to the making of a decision and what factors are involved in it. He firstly defines our basic ability to choose as free will. Then he specifies our two factors as chance and choice. "James's two-stage model effectively separates chance (the in-deterministic free element) from choice (an arguably determinate decision that follows causally from one's character, values, and especially feelings and desires at the moment of decision)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James#Free_will
His perspective would imply that a 'choice' can be considered pseudo-predetermined from a explanative psychology perspective, however, the potential for thought would involve a factor of which it cannot be said that it is deterministic which would add the quality free will to a choice. That 'factor' would be a priori meaning.
A priori meaning as ground for value in the world implies that it cannot be said that the world is predetermined 'in time'. The indicated time would not be empirical time that can be observed by looking out into the cosmos but actual in-the-moment time experience that allows for change.
A priori meaning would perform as origin of signification for the cosmos and consciousness would be a direct manifestation of that 'pure meaning' that seeks itself (its own origin) which is 'meaning' in the form of truth, beauty, value, good etc.
Consciousness would be a performance on behalf of signification which means that consciousness signifies the world into reality in the form of a experience. That world itself performs in the same way on a fundamental level and each part of the cosmos signifies itself into Nature - from the inside-out - through signification.
French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas - an icon of Western philosophy that is researched by dedicated scholars today - says the following:
"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/
"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)
It would be nonsensical for parts in the cosmos to stand independent and separate to then interact with 'the world' deterministically. It would require some sort of magical 'outside-in' intelligence or Being to construct the parts of the world together using fixed 'laws'.
Determinism and religion
Determinism is closer to compatibility with religions then the idea of 'pure meaning' as true ∞ Infinite origin of the cosmos. That this is true might be evident from the 2022 book Reality+ by philosopher David Chalmers.
The book is essentially a display that determinism necessarily results in deism - a belief in God or something similar such as 'simulation theory'.
From Dualism to Deism
In this latest offering, Chalmers seems to have come full circle, articulating what he describes as an entirely naturalistic account of God—i.e., a god not exempt from natural laws. That is why the book could mark a turning point in educated opinion. It may be that Chalmers will do for deism what he was able to do for consciousness: make the idea respectable again.
Science, 4 February, 2022 issue
With a priori meaning, relevance of each empirical part in the cosmos must originate from within and that 'within' is ultimately an area of 'pure meaning' that precedes (or lays 'beyond') space and time. In physics that area is currently referred to as 'non-locality' with 'non' being a descriptor of what the human can 'see' in it.
Albert Einstein shared the following prophecy about non-locality:
“Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space."
It involves a meaning 'beyond' space and time (i.e. that 'precedes' it from a fundamental philosophical perspective). It is a reference to 'a priori' meaning from the perspective of value (anything empirical).
“Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things. "
What precedes a subjective perspective fundamentally is the only possible ground for significance within that subjective perspective. Therefore the origin of a subjective perspective lays beyond it from within that perspective.
Signification is primary - a priori. A 'ground for significance' would refer to a philosophical plausible ground. Nothing else than the origin of a subjective perspective - of existence and of Being - can lay beyond a subjective perspective. This explains why 'beyond' and 'precede' refer to the same.
A priori meaning would perform as origin of signification for the cosmos and consciousness would be a direct manifestation of that 'pure meaning' that seeks itself (its own origin) which is 'meaning' in the form of truth, beauty, value, good etc.
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Questions:
- what do you think of the idea 'a priori meaning' as origin of the cosmos and consciousness? Do you believe that the idea is wrong? If so, why?
- do you think that the concept quantum retrocausality is valid? If so, does it prove that determinism is invalid?