I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and let me state right away this is 100% speculative and completely unproven.

For theoretical purposes, let’s say we could take away 100% of all sensory experiences from a person, and 100% of all their genetic behavioral traits. There would be no consciousness as we know it, but what would be left? Even in this completely zen like state there would still be ‘life’. Even a single cell organism with no self-awareness is alive. Carl Sagan famously talked about mixing all the ingredients of life together in a vat and presto: no life. So there is an obvious yet thus far undetectable ‘life force’ animating all living beings. It doesn’t require a brain or any sensory organs.

But it is also clear whatever the ‘life force’ is, it needs the physical structures of our bodies to maintain it. There is nothing we can measure to indicate it survives the death of our physical bodies (I’ll get to that more in a minute), thus by all indications ‘life’ must be physical in nature also. But if there is indeed physics of life, as it would seem to be since it cannot exist without the contrivances of our physical bodies, shouldn’t the laws of physics require that it ultimately be deterministic?

Not necessarily. The quantum world is non deterministic, so if this physical property that is the ‘life force’ exists at the quantum level (or even sub-quantum level!) it would not need to obey the laws of physics which govern the non-quantum world. Thus it need not necessarily be deterministic.

Now since we can’t detect the “life force’ we certainly can’t discover if it exists in the quantum realm or IF and how it may interact with higher consciousness functions of the brain which neurological science clearly shows is in the non quantum physical realm. But if all other physical matter also exists at a quantum level why would the undetected physical matter of ‘life’ not be the same? And in the quantum realm exists the possibility of Free Will.

Which brings me to my next point of mind-body dualism. The quantum world is fascinating, and the amazing aspect of non-locality is one of its defining characteristics. There may be no such thing as place and no such thing as distance. Physics experiments can bind the fate of two quantum particles together so that they behave like a pair of magic coins. If you flip them, each will land on heads or tails—but always on the same side as its partner. They act in a coordinated way even though no detectable force passes through the space between them. Those particles could be on opposite sides of the universe and still they act in unison. The particles violate locality—they transcend space.

Non locality has implications for the idea of dualism. Someone could make a religion out of this. If the physics of life exists on the quantum level, could not that life also exhibit non locality? In other words, at a quantum level could non-locality offer the possibility of mind-body dualism? It’s purely speculative but nonetheless intriguing.

Mind-body dualism aside, at the very least I think that what we know about the non-deterministic quantum world should give someone who declares the issue of free will to be resolved reason to pause.