The Human Question

Strawson is a compatibilist. I am not; nevertheless, I believe that he has the most marvelous thesis about [what in his opinion merely "seem" to be] choices. It is based upon the distinction between first order and second order desires. First order are what I would call non-reflective: e.g., chocolate: yum! Second order are reflective: e.g., "I wish I didn't like chocolate so much." Free choice is, for Strawson, being able to try to act according to your second order desires. What seems to be freedom is at most the sucessful carrying out of the desires that you desire to have. Strawson sees these so-called choices as being at best the unfolding of our character. I propose the following: Let's assume, provisionally, that he is correct. I propose first of all that we have the kind of 2nd order desires mentioned by Strawson only because we have a more global desire for happiness or fulfillment. This desire involves not just the satisfaction of one privil...

... who might point out that things go on in the brain at the pre conscious level before we are aware of ourselves as "deciding" whether to have vanilla or chocolate, and do so in a manner that predicts with perfect accuracy the consequent expression of a decision. My reply(ies): 1. It may well be the case that such deliberations and choices are not free when no particular significance is attached to the two choices other than direct desire for a tastier flavor. 2. But what if one asks a person who is fasting from chocolate for religious reasons about their preference? Does the same neural process take place prior to the expression of a preference? 3. And what about deliberation about what Strawson calls second-order desires (i.e., which desires are desirable to have)? Isn't that more pertinent to what freedom is all about? What type of neural activity precedes these sorts of decisions? 4. If the mere fact that some preconscious activity predicts our conscious "c...

I am just getting a handle on this 'ism. It seems to me if mental activity is something other physical activity, then you have (in the opinion of a consistent materialist) dualism all over again. So epiphenomenalism (henceforth 'E') can't be that. Perhaps mental activity is, in the opinion of an E-ist, a kind of higher order material property. Like the hexagon formed by pressing a bunch of marbles together in a compact fashion. This sort of higher order would be an effect of the lower order, just as the hexagonal pattern is an effect of the many marbles. Or rather, the hex pattern is a kind of abstract summation of the particular order in which the many marbles are arranged. But this sort of higher order activity could not be a cause of the lower. Yup. That's precisely what E-ism maintains. So this version of E-ism is non-dualistic. Perhaps it's the only version that there is. Certainly the inconsistency of dualistic e-ism is pretty obvious.

The theist who takes the prima via (Thomas Aquinas's first way of demonstrating the existence of God) as being about movers that push other things (i.e., an approach that leaves final causality out consideration) is taking nature in mechanistic terms. One who thinks in this manner would be more than a little puzzled by the question, "But don't things just move without being pushed? After all, isn't that what electrons do? And isn't that what things do on their own once they have been pushed (i.e., momentum/inertia)?" One response would be to restrict the types of movement to which the prima via applies to acceleration/deceleration (perhaps one should rename it the "first Accelerator" argument!). This approach grants that physics since Galileo has marginalized the "all" in "all motion needs a physical cause" to "some" (i.e., to cases acceleration and deceleration). But then again it might not marginalize that claim...

Consider the following four postulates: 1. The affirmation of physicalism (if by this term we mean the thesis that every physical state corresponds to only one mental state), and 2. The denial of the converse of postulate 1 (i.e., the denial that every mental state corresponds to only one physical state) (to put this in other words, the same mental state can be instantiated by more than one physical state). 3. The affirmation of the claim that the relation between truths 1/2 vis-a-vis mental physical states is but an instance of a patter occurring in all cases between a lower order property and a higher one. 4. The affirmation of the claim that emergent properties can be sources of action rather than merely epiphenomenal (something discussed in an earlier post) If we grant the above four posulates, then there is room for freedom in human beings. Below: an elaboration on a couple of the postulates made above: (As I noted in an earlier post) I affirm with the physicalist that every phy...

This concerns the thing I wrote long, long agoabout structure and process. I now realize that what I wrote back then has to do with Aristotle's distinction between energeia and kinesis. Only the energeia here is the most basic one, what Aristotle would call the first energeia. It is the source of identity of a material being. In a living thing it is called the "soul," although it does not have to be spiritual at all (for Aristotle, all living things have souls, b/c "soul" means only "principle of life activities." But non-living things have a source of identity or form as wll. That in virtue of which it is one being. I have the hunch that the connection between structure/movement and energeia/kinesis is supported by the way relativity renders problematic our everyday notion of simultaneity. How? Well, if we take that critique of the common sense notion of our everyday notion of simultaneity very, very seriously, then we see that a problem--a pote...

Just for the record, here is Behe's defense against a recently published criticism of his irreducible complexity arguement as it pertains to bacterial flagella: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2

If an atheist can use natural selection as a story that establishes the materialistic understanding of human nature; then a theist can use the big-bang as a story to establish the creation of the universe in time. If! There's a way for the atheist to avoid the theist's argument: posit a multiverse or some other presently unprovable entity. Or say that the universe's origin is necessarily a mystery about which we can make no warranted claim (after all, says this neophyte mystery-monger, we can make such claims only about what a scientist can measure or observe). And there's a way out for the theist too: point out how humans beings are able use their minds. That is, we can know universal and necessary truths, such as the truths of logic, mathematics, metaphysics and of nature. These are truths encompass our universe, and some of them encompass even our multiverse (if there is one, of course). They transcend material limitations in a way that undercuts materialism. ...

If the organized complexity that we find in a watch makes it seem somewhat improbable that it would have arrived by chance, then how much greater the complexity and improbability of a machine that makes watches arriving by chance. And how much greater still the complexity and hence improbability of a machine that makes machines that make watches. And how much greater still the complexity and improbability of a machine that makes machines that make machines that make watches. Add to this, the following amazing feature: each of these machines would look and function like a simple watch (i.e., of a watch that does not make other watches). Talk of a mere watchmaker--blind or not--is simplistic. To do justice to the claim, one would have to speak of of a Maker of makers of watchmakers (or perhaps, if one does not get lost, a Maker of watches that are also makers of watches that are also watchmakers). Once we consider the mechanics involved, how much less plausible does it seem that this ...

He points out that an egg made of gold will fall down in water noticeably faster than one made of aluminum (okay, I'm adjusting things here). Why? not because they have noticeably different rates of acceleration (they don't, as Galileo pointed out). Rather because they have different terminal velocities. Tim: is that true? If so, we can try to rid the Aristotelians of the embarrassment caused by Galileo by claiming that Aristotle, in saying that a denser things falls faster, had terminal velocity in mind. Not entirely a joke, as he had in mind the relation between the push exerted by an object and the resistance of its environment. So maybe if there had been a tower as high as the Burj Dubai, the results might have been different. Oh, but the truth is that Aristotle was unaware of terminal velocity. He noted in three places (Twice in the Physics and once in On the Heavens) that things accelerated as they got closer to the earth, giving the impression that they would con...

If what we call "perception" is merely our shorthand for a complex chemical reaction, then it would seem at least at first glance that it can only be (generaically speaking) awareness of that which most immediately caused it. Or rather, one who maintains a reductionist position must explain how this special chemical reaction could be about something other than that which most immediately caused it. For other chemical reactions (in plants and non-living things) don't seem to be "about" anything. They are charcterized merely in terms of that with which they are immediately interacting with. So either one must posit some cosmic awareness (ala Dennett) posit an emergent property (which is as magical as the steady state theory) or admit the reductivist thesis is problematic. Let's expand on that problem: given the restriction of awareness to that which is immediately acting upon the brain, then there could not be two cognitions of the same object. No two pe...

If epiphenomenalism is true, then beliefs are always and only the result of bodily events. That is, they are never the cause of bodily events (put in other words, cognition is always an effect and never a cause of behavior). But if they are never the cause of such events, then they are irrelevant to whether a behavior is or is not adaptive. We could have a wrong belief but act adaptively. We could have a totally wrong belief each time and still act adaptively. That's one of Plantinga's points in his lecture on Evolution vs. Materialism, published by the Veritas Forum. But let's intensify his point in a manner not explored by him: An apparent human being could be a zombie (mindless robot) that behaves quite adaptively. Because belief doesn't cause behavior, which includes both adaptive and maladaptive behavior. One can reply that of course beliefs matter. To which the counter is that either epiphenomenalism is false or reductionism is false or (my favorite) both a...

It's Book 6, chapter 8. It's almost as if Ari's saying that when a thing is moving, it's not right to say that it's here or there... otherwise, one would be saying that this (moving thing) is at rest. Sorta like the scientific discovery that moving things have a certain indeterminacy re their location. I see a parallel...or the mirage of a parallel. Of course, the latter discovery may be thought to be more epistemic than ontological. That is, one may object to my spotting of a parallel by saying that modern science has shown something about the limits of a scientist's knowledge of motion rather than having gotten an insight into the nature of motion itself. Again, one may object that just because we can't determine exactly where a moving thing is, doesn't mean it doesn't have a definite "where." Something to look further into.

Some thoughts on the topic: 1. preliminary examples that serve as a prelude to my first point: 1a) Think of a machine consisting of many parts, each of which pushes another: No one "pusher" in this series can push itself. 1b) Think of devices we use: The bristles of a toothbrush cannot brush the bristles themselves. 1c) Think of our own organs: One's eyes cannot see one's eyes. The point of all of this: if we look at each of these examples as actions directed toward an object, in no case can the action be directed toward the very action itself as its object. You can't brush the brush with the very same brush, etc. To put it more simply: material actions, qua transitive, are non-reflexive. 2. If all human cognition is a machine-like material process (a claim that I am granting for the purpose of a reductio ad absurdam ), then it cannot be reflexive. That is, a cognition-process, to the degree that it is like other processes, would not be able to cognizant of i...