Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics, 2006 (; backlinks; similar):
In Good and Real, a tour-de-force of metaphysical naturalism, computer scientist Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our subjective impressions of our own existence.
Many scientists suspect that the universe can ultimately be described by a simple (perhaps even deterministic) formalism; all that is real unfolds mechanically according to that formalism. But how, then, is it possible for us to be conscious, or to make genuine choices? And how can there be an ethical dimension to such choices? Drescher sketches computational models of consciousness, choice, and subjunctive reasoning—what would happen if this or that were to occur?—to show how such phenomena are compatible with a mechanical, even deterministic universe.
Analyses of Newcomb’s Problem (a paradox about choice) and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (a paradox about self-interest vs altruism, arguably reducible to Newcomb’s Problem) help bring the problems and proposed solutions into focus. Regarding quantum mechanics, Drescher builds on Everett’s relative-state formulation—but presenting a simplified formalism, accessible to laypersons—to argue that, contrary to some popular impressions, quantum mechanics is compatible with an objective, deterministic physical reality, and that there is no special connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness.
In each of several disparate but intertwined topics ranging from physics to ethics, Drescher argues that a missing technical linchpin can make the quest for objectivity seem impossible, until the elusive technical fix is at hand.:
Chapter 2 explores how inanimate, mechanical matter could be conscious, just by virtue of being organized to perform the right kind of computation.
Chapter 3 explains why conscious beings would experience an apparent inexorable forward flow of time, even in a universe who physical principles are time-symmetric and have no such flow, with everything sitting statically in spacetime.
Chapter 4, following [Hugh] Everett, looks closely at the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, showing how some theorists came to conclude—mistakenly, I argue—that consciousness is part of the story of quantum phenomena, or vice versa. Chapter 4 also shows how quantum phenomena are consistent with determinism (even though so-called hidden-variable theories of quantum determinism are provably wrong).
Chapter 5 examines in detail how it can be that we make genuine choices in in a mechanical, deterministic universe.
Chapter 6 analyzes Newcomb’s Problem, a startling paradox that elicits some counterintuitive conclusions about choice and causality.
Chapter 7 considers how our choices can have a moral component—that is, how even a mechanical, deterministic universe can provide a basis for distinguishing right from wrong.
Chapter 8 wraps up the presentation and touches briefly on some concluding metaphysical questions.