A Turing test for free will
Before Alan Turing made his crucial contributions to the theory of
computation, he studied the question of whether quantum mechanics could throw
light on the nature of free will. This article investigates the roles of
quantum mechanics and computation in free will. Although quantum mechanics
implies that events are intrinsically unpredictable, the pure stochasticity'
of quantum mechanics adds only randomness to decision making processes, not
freedom. By contrast, the theory of computation implies that even when our
decisions arise from a completely deterministic decision-making process, the
outcomes of that process can be intrinsically unpredictable, even to --
especially to -- ourselves. I argue that this intrinsic computational
unpredictability of the decision making process is what give rise to our
impression that we possess free will. Finally, I propose a Turing test' for
free will: a decision maker who passes this test will tend to believe that he,
she, or it possesses free will, whether the world is deterministic or not.
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