{"id":2390,"date":"2012-03-19T08:04:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T15:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2012-03-19T08:04:55","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T15:04:55","slug":"two-articles-on-neuroscience-and-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2012\/03\/19\/two-articles-on-neuroscience-and-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Articles on Neuroscience and Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal’s today featured a review<\/a> of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind.\u00a0 Haidt, the reviewer says, suggests that humans “are selfish primates who long to be part of something larger and nobler than ourselves. We are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.”\u00a0 The Chronicle of Higher Education features several columns on neuroscience and free will<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Haidt’s perspective seems to offer a helpful corrective to some reductionistic accounts of morality in which all “moral” actions are revealed as merely selfish.\u00a0 The Chronicle columns offer some standard reductionstic physicalist fare, such as Jerry Coyne’s entry<\/a>.\u00a0 Coyne argues that “free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics. Your brain and body, the vehicles that make “choices,” are composed of molecules, and the arrangement of those molecules is entirely determined by your genes and your environment.”<\/em><\/p>\n

This, of course, assumes that the “laws of physics” are the full and final composition of reality — an assumption that is metaphysical and not within the purview of empirical science.<\/p>\n

In contrast, philosopher Alfred Mele correctly observes that the empirical evidence for brain-state determinism is flimsy at best<\/a>.\u00a0 Yet even Mele assumes the metaphysical starting point of physicalism.\u00a0 He just isn’t willing to accept reductive<\/em> physicalism on empirical grounds.<\/p>\n

Michael Gazzinga agrees<\/a> that free will is an illusion, but argues that we should act as if it were real.\u00a0 Gazzinga states that, notwithstanding brain determinism,<\/p>\n

Holding people responsible for their actions remains untouched and intact since that is a value granted by society. We all learn and obey rules, both personal and social. Following social rules, as they say, is part of our DNA. Virtually every human can follow rules no matter what mental state he or she is in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gazzinga is one of the more subtle thinkers on the relation of law, ethics and neuroscience.\u00a0 In my doctoral research, I’ll spend some time addressing his arguments.\u00a0 In short, what he is saying here seems to me to be literally non-sensical.\u00a0 To use terms like “value” and “granted” is to slip into the language of metaphysics and agency.\u00a0 In a deterministic universe, there are no “values” — stuff just happens.\u00a0 And nothing is “granted,” for that implies a decision<\/em> whether to give or withhold consent<\/em> — again, in a deterministic universe, stuff just happens.<\/p>\n

The best Chronicle entry is by philosopher Hilary Bok<\/a>, who correctly argues that “free will” is a philosophical rather than strictly scientific-empirical question.\u00a0 Bok offers a compatibilist framework for “free will” in a physicalist universe.\u00a0 Here, I think, Bok’s approach (and all “compatibilist” approaches drawn from analytic philosophy) is grossly inadequate.\u00a0 She assumes, as do Gazzinga and Coyne, a materialist metaphysic.\u00a0 She should recognize that whether materialism is true also <\/em>is not properly a scientific-empirical question.<\/p>\n

This is a place at which theology and “science” are indeed in conflict, at least insofar as “science” purports to circumscribe metaphysical questions.\u00a0 Theology unabashedly asserts that the physical universe is not all there is.\u00a0 We might debate the nature and existence of the “soul” (I believe in the “soul,” though with some careful qualifications against pseudo-Cartesian dualisms), but by definition “theology” implies God and not just physics.<\/p>\n

But really, there shouldn’t be a conflict at this point.\u00a0 “Science” should recognize its limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal’s today featured a review of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind.\u00a0 Haidt, the reviewer says, suggests that humans “are selfish primates who long to be part of something larger and nobler than ourselves. We are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.”\u00a0 The Chronicle of Higher Education features several columns on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmos","category-science-and-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Cy","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}