The other day before I had to go for medical scans for a couple of days, it was claimed, erroneously, that Bell’s theorem said nothing about free will. I know it does say we have free will, and free will means we are not pre-determined by physics to set up our experiments in a particular way. It also means our consciousness is something that is not subject to the determinism of physics. I thought I would first point out that even Newtonian physics requires that the scientist have free will. Physicists, Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan wrote a wonderful book Doubt and Certainty where they talk about free will in Classical physics. If scientists lack free will, experimental science is meaningless. They say:
“Finally, we might agree with Hamlet: “Find out the cause of this effect / Or rather, say, the cause of this defect.” What the Dane had in mind was the paradox of the Newtonian universe: in a strictly causal world, the existence of causality cannot be established. If every event is determined by every preceding event, then the concept of free will is meaningless, as is the notion of running an experiment, which presupposes that conditions can be varied. Yet, if the experimenter’s very actions are predetermined, then nothing has been varied and no “experiment” has been carried out. To put it another way, one needs a defect in causality to verify causality. That is to say. . .”
“Apparently, Newtonian physics did not clarify all issues.” Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty, (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), p. 74
Consciousness is the defect in causality. We are not deterministic beings.
Now to Bell’s Theorem. Below are well qualified physicists all saying that Bell’s Theorem assumes free will, contra to the earlier claim:
"Our box-pair demonstration of the encounter with consciousness rests on the assumption that we could have chosen to do an experiment other than the one we actually did, that we have free will . The same is true for our Bell-type experiments demonstrating Einstein’s "spooky actions." The existence of a quantum enigma depends crucially on free will. So let’s talk about free will ." Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 172-173
The first is free will. Bell’s analysis only produces his inequality if the two experimenters have genuine freedom to choose how they set their detectors. In an experiment with spins, that means being able to make measurements along axes that they can choose independently. But maybe that isn’t possible. “The idea is that everything could be somehow determined at the beginning,” says Gisin. Perhaps the creation of the particle pairs and the experimenters’ choices are fixed by a vast web of cause and effect set up long ago, in which case the “choices” would be predetermined and beyond anyone’s control. Some fundamental law might mean that these choices always lead to a violation of Bell’s inequalities.
Unsurprisingly, not many physicists go for this idea. So what of the other assumption behind the inequality? ." Buchanan, Mark, 2005. "Double Jeopardy," New Scientist, June 18.p.34
Why don’t they go for it? Because it would mean no experiment means anything at all and we learn nothing about nature with an experiment. If the results are predetermined from the big bang and the experimenter’s action is determined from the big bang, then the very basis of science is undermined because experiments only tell us about what was determined, not what is. Further, the universe must conspire to predestine the violation of Bell’s inequality to make it look like we have free will when we don’t. That is why so many articles talk about superdeterminism requiring a conspiratorial universe. If you want to evade free will, this is the universe you will get, a meaningless one where no science can be conducted–just like in Newtonian physics above. If one choses this option, then why debate its truth or falsity? This view means we take the intellectual positions we do because it was predestined, not because it is a good idea. We don’t have the freedom to know what a good idea is under this superdeterministic view.
The proof of Bell’s inequality is based on the assumption that distant observers can freely and independently choose their experiments. As Bell’s inequality is experimentally violated, it appears that distant physical systems may behave as a single, nonlocal, indivisible entity. This apparent contradiction is resolved. It is shown that the "free will" assumption is, under usual circumstances, an excellent approximation. Asher Peres, "Existence of "Free Will" as a Problem of Physics" Foundations of Physics, VoL 16, No. 6, 1986, p.573
In order to be more specific about the errors in their results, we will first present our own proof of Bell’s theorem and discuss its assumptions, emphasizing aspects of freedom and control, and then turn to a refutation of the arguments of Hess and Philipp." R.D. Gill, et al, Comment on “Exclusion of time in the theorem of Bell” by K. Hess and W. Philipp." Europhysics Preprint p. 3 https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/33227435/0204169v1.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1558742264&Signature=VwRfDAaGH8uJbZdUOsG8GSBd2mQ%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DComment_on_Exclusion_of_time_in_the_theo.pdf
"To be sure, the criterion in question acquires its whole significance from the implicit assumption that our free will is something real." B d’Espagnat, The concepts of Influences and of Attributes as seen in Connection with the Bell Theorem, p. 14 http://cds.cern.ch/record/124059/files/lpth-80-17_001.pdf
One may not want to accept that our conscious beings are something special, not subject to the deterministic laws of physics, that is certainly a choice one can make, but just know, physical determinism is the death knell of science, both classical and quantum. Bell’s theorem is widely recognized for showing that we have free will.