The reductionist naturally regards the concept of agency as a pre-scientific misunderstanding. That is because a materialist of this stripe believes that human activities such as wishing, thinking, and moving are nothing but processes going on in the brain. These processes are in principle identifiable through scientific observation: that is, a scientist can correlate different aspects of experience (perception, emotion, thought, etc.) reported by a subject with different processes occurring in different parts of that subject's brain. But the unified way in which those features occur in the subject is not to be found through any such observation. For example, at this moment I am sitting, typing on a keyboard, sub-vocalizing what I am writing, focusing on my computer screen while being peripherally aware of the rest of my office, and starting to feel hungry. Each of these aspects of my experience may be correlated with different physical processes going on in different parts of my brain at the same time or thereabouts. Those different physical processes may be interacting with each other as well, but those interactions are many and intermittent while my experience is one and continuous. The self as an enduring focal point of diverse aspects of experience is not to be found in any brain scan, and this transparency of the self to scientific observation seems to reductionists to indicate that the self doesn't really exist. We are, in their opinion, selfless.
An initial challenge to the notion of human selflessness is the tendency, even of reductionists, to relapse back into selfish, as it were, ways of thinking and speaking. The reductionist can explain why this happens: the ever-so-slight changes occurring from moment to moment seem to us like no change at all and thereby fool one into imagining that one possesses a stable core to one's being. In fact, it is arguably advantageous to be so deceived: perhaps one could not survive without acting so as to promote the well-being of this unreal core. Nevertheless, scientific observation shows that belief in the self has no reality. It is an illusion, albeit a useful one, says the reductionist.
There are other problems that the reductionist does not recognize. For if selfhood is an illusion, then so is human agency. Agency is the notion that we are able to hold onto goals, pursue, and attain them through our own initiative. If there is no self (or at least no stable self), then the notion that we initiate our actions and direct them continuously toward the same goal becomes empty. For in that case there is no enduring self to direct actions and cogitations while adhering to a goal. Instead of sustained practical reasoning and action by someone, there would be a stream of closely linked events that are both neural and mental.
This denial of agency leads, if followed to its logical conclusion, to a denial of our knowledge of causality in the world. That is because the knowledge we have of our environment originates with our interactions with other individuals. If our experience of own initiative in these interactions is illusory, then our perception of other individuals' actions upon us would seem to be equally, if not more, illusory. And if both of these are illusory, then our observation of more remote interactions between individuals would be illusory as well.
This inability to recognize sources of change as such has implications for science. For science's grasp of how the world works has its origin in our firsthand experience of causality. If that experience is unreliable, then it is hard to see how science's claim to universal knowledge, with its origin in firsthand observation, could fare any better. With reductionism, all apparent causality dissolves into the correlation of events.
Nor does it seem, if reductionism is true, that we could know the sorts of universal truths that help make science possible. Let us take my thought that 3+7=10 as an example. If reductionism is true, then this thought occurs mechanistically: this is, the thought that it is true is determined by the events that immediately preceded it. But if each grasping of a mathematical proposition is entirely determined by a physical process occurring at a particular place and time, then the fact that different processes occurring at different places and times produce the same understanding in many individuals would seem to need an explanation. That explanation may be that these processes immediately preceding these like thoughts all follow the same pattern. While that might explain how many different individuals at different places and times think the same way, it would not explain why judgment that 3+7=10 seems to be objectively true to those who think it. The reductionist can give no account for the apparently objective nature of mathematical knowledge and is forced to grant that this objectivity might likewise be illusory. It follows that in an unusual but not impossible situation antecedent conditions may result in someone's being just as convinced that 3+7=11 as others are that 3+7=10. All of the mathematical propositions that we regard as necessarily true could likewise seem to someone else to be obviously false, given the right antecedent conditions. Instead of possessing objective knowledge of mathematics, we possess at most seemingly plausible opinions about relations obtaining among our ideas.
Reductionism's deflation of mathematical knowledge to opinion does not make it useless. On the contrary, math and like disciplines are of great value: they help us both to survive and to thrive. In the absence of an objective basis for knowledge claims, we can take the fact that we have survived is the best evidence of veracity of our beliefs that we could hope for. And we can argue that if a mathematical opinion seems false to us, that is because it is false and hence detrimental to survival. The lack of anyone seriously proposing that 3+7=11 is a partial confirmation of its truth. Any apparent objectivity that mathematical truths seem to have is, like the apparent stability of the self, a useful illusion, for the desire for objective truth motivates mathematicians and other scholars to find beliefs that are more and more useful. The reductionist who has thought this position through, however, regards the mathematician's claim to objectivity as the sign of a very active imagination rather than a "God's eye" view of the world.
An adaptive, instrumentalist view of all human knowledge should not be written off but rather deserves serious consideration. But even instrumentalism is undermined by reductionism. That is because instrumentalism can be true only if opinions guide actions, but opinions could not even exist, let alone guide actions, if reductionism is true. For in order to be guided by one's opinion, one must at least adhere to the same judgment for a period of time. But there is no such stability in the numerous neurons firing many times each second: reductionism replaces every every apparently continuous cognitive operation with many very short-lived processes. It dissolves even the apparent fixity opinion in a flux of firing neurons.
Not only human opinion, but its correlate in other animals would be impossible if reductionism is true. Suppose that animals form estimations of how they are to act in their situations in a manner similar to how we form opinions about we are to act in ours and that these estimations give rise to feelings of hope and desire, fear and aversion that in turn motivate self-movement. In order to be able to guide actions, these estimations would have to continue throughout the process of pursuit or avoidance. But in a reductionist scenario there is no continuous cognitive activity--only the discontinuous firing of neurons. Furthermore, each of these firings is not really one action but a string of processes. In a reductionist world, there is no continuous state of belief or anything analogous thereto that would guide the actions of animals.
One may object that the terms "opinion" and "estimation" need not signify a continuous activity but instead signify a string of activities performed by many individual neurons. Just as a school of fish or flock of birds might travel together, so too a cluster of neurons work in sync. In such a case, however, it would be more accurate to say that opinion and desire do not really exist: only neural processes do. Reductionism, when taken this far, eliminates opinion, knowledge, desire, and human endeavor, leaving us only with clusters of neural processes. The only problem with this position is that it is undermined by the very act of speaking on its behalf. "I believe that beliefs don't exist"; "Sentences have no stable meaning"; "I want you to accept my arguments that demonstrate the unreality of human desires": the act of uttering such statements seems to offer evidence of the falsity of the statement being made. The only way in which an eliminativist can avoid producing such counter-evidence is by remaining silent--a tactic that I am confident criticis of eliminativism would find most welcome.
Reductive materialism starts with great confidence in the scientific method but ends up undermining science itself. Its adherents first note that scientists, when engaged in their proper fields of study, grant credence only to explanations that can be tested through observation and measurement. Thereupon they decide not only to employ this method upon human beings, but also to deny that any other method of studying humans could be legitimate. Reductionism is what one ends up with after having excluded all other methods of study from our study of our humanity. But if the scientific method does give us a window to truth, then this exclusion must be mistaken, for it ends up, as we have just seen, undermining the scientific method itself.
The other method might available to us as we seek to understand our own humanity is our reflection upon our own engagement with the world. We might call this a first-person perspective on our actions. It is from this vantage that we recognize the unity of human experience and action. No doubt, there are scientific tests that can problematize that unity, but those tests are meaningful only because the scientist who performs them is an agent engaged in a special type of practical reasoning that we call the scientific method. And agency requires some sort of unity to the human person that cannot be demonstrated by any special scientific experiment. But what is that unity? I will argue in the chapters that follow that it is not a kind of spirit-thing that interacts with our bodies, nor is it a special vital force placed alongside the other, mechanical forces operating in our body. It is neither of these, but before saying what it is, I will attempt to draw a lesson from an examination of the origin, benefits and shortcomings of a mechanistic view of human nature.
An initial challenge to the notion of human selflessness is the tendency, even of reductionists, to relapse back into selfish, as it were, ways of thinking and speaking. The reductionist can explain why this happens: the ever-so-slight changes occurring from moment to moment seem to us like no change at all and thereby fool one into imagining that one possesses a stable core to one's being. In fact, it is arguably advantageous to be so deceived: perhaps one could not survive without acting so as to promote the well-being of this unreal core. Nevertheless, scientific observation shows that belief in the self has no reality. It is an illusion, albeit a useful one, says the reductionist.
There are other problems that the reductionist does not recognize. For if selfhood is an illusion, then so is human agency. Agency is the notion that we are able to hold onto goals, pursue, and attain them through our own initiative. If there is no self (or at least no stable self), then the notion that we initiate our actions and direct them continuously toward the same goal becomes empty. For in that case there is no enduring self to direct actions and cogitations while adhering to a goal. Instead of sustained practical reasoning and action by someone, there would be a stream of closely linked events that are both neural and mental.
This denial of agency leads, if followed to its logical conclusion, to a denial of our knowledge of causality in the world. That is because the knowledge we have of our environment originates with our interactions with other individuals. If our experience of own initiative in these interactions is illusory, then our perception of other individuals' actions upon us would seem to be equally, if not more, illusory. And if both of these are illusory, then our observation of more remote interactions between individuals would be illusory as well.
This inability to recognize sources of change as such has implications for science. For science's grasp of how the world works has its origin in our firsthand experience of causality. If that experience is unreliable, then it is hard to see how science's claim to universal knowledge, with its origin in firsthand observation, could fare any better. With reductionism, all apparent causality dissolves into the correlation of events.
Nor does it seem, if reductionism is true, that we could know the sorts of universal truths that help make science possible. Let us take my thought that 3+7=10 as an example. If reductionism is true, then this thought occurs mechanistically: this is, the thought that it is true is determined by the events that immediately preceded it. But if each grasping of a mathematical proposition is entirely determined by a physical process occurring at a particular place and time, then the fact that different processes occurring at different places and times produce the same understanding in many individuals would seem to need an explanation. That explanation may be that these processes immediately preceding these like thoughts all follow the same pattern. While that might explain how many different individuals at different places and times think the same way, it would not explain why judgment that 3+7=10 seems to be objectively true to those who think it. The reductionist can give no account for the apparently objective nature of mathematical knowledge and is forced to grant that this objectivity might likewise be illusory. It follows that in an unusual but not impossible situation antecedent conditions may result in someone's being just as convinced that 3+7=11 as others are that 3+7=10. All of the mathematical propositions that we regard as necessarily true could likewise seem to someone else to be obviously false, given the right antecedent conditions. Instead of possessing objective knowledge of mathematics, we possess at most seemingly plausible opinions about relations obtaining among our ideas.
Reductionism's deflation of mathematical knowledge to opinion does not make it useless. On the contrary, math and like disciplines are of great value: they help us both to survive and to thrive. In the absence of an objective basis for knowledge claims, we can take the fact that we have survived is the best evidence of veracity of our beliefs that we could hope for. And we can argue that if a mathematical opinion seems false to us, that is because it is false and hence detrimental to survival. The lack of anyone seriously proposing that 3+7=11 is a partial confirmation of its truth. Any apparent objectivity that mathematical truths seem to have is, like the apparent stability of the self, a useful illusion, for the desire for objective truth motivates mathematicians and other scholars to find beliefs that are more and more useful. The reductionist who has thought this position through, however, regards the mathematician's claim to objectivity as the sign of a very active imagination rather than a "God's eye" view of the world.
An adaptive, instrumentalist view of all human knowledge should not be written off but rather deserves serious consideration. But even instrumentalism is undermined by reductionism. That is because instrumentalism can be true only if opinions guide actions, but opinions could not even exist, let alone guide actions, if reductionism is true. For in order to be guided by one's opinion, one must at least adhere to the same judgment for a period of time. But there is no such stability in the numerous neurons firing many times each second: reductionism replaces every every apparently continuous cognitive operation with many very short-lived processes. It dissolves even the apparent fixity opinion in a flux of firing neurons.
Not only human opinion, but its correlate in other animals would be impossible if reductionism is true. Suppose that animals form estimations of how they are to act in their situations in a manner similar to how we form opinions about we are to act in ours and that these estimations give rise to feelings of hope and desire, fear and aversion that in turn motivate self-movement. In order to be able to guide actions, these estimations would have to continue throughout the process of pursuit or avoidance. But in a reductionist scenario there is no continuous cognitive activity--only the discontinuous firing of neurons. Furthermore, each of these firings is not really one action but a string of processes. In a reductionist world, there is no continuous state of belief or anything analogous thereto that would guide the actions of animals.
One may object that the terms "opinion" and "estimation" need not signify a continuous activity but instead signify a string of activities performed by many individual neurons. Just as a school of fish or flock of birds might travel together, so too a cluster of neurons work in sync. In such a case, however, it would be more accurate to say that opinion and desire do not really exist: only neural processes do. Reductionism, when taken this far, eliminates opinion, knowledge, desire, and human endeavor, leaving us only with clusters of neural processes. The only problem with this position is that it is undermined by the very act of speaking on its behalf. "I believe that beliefs don't exist"; "Sentences have no stable meaning"; "I want you to accept my arguments that demonstrate the unreality of human desires": the act of uttering such statements seems to offer evidence of the falsity of the statement being made. The only way in which an eliminativist can avoid producing such counter-evidence is by remaining silent--a tactic that I am confident criticis of eliminativism would find most welcome.
Reductive materialism starts with great confidence in the scientific method but ends up undermining science itself. Its adherents first note that scientists, when engaged in their proper fields of study, grant credence only to explanations that can be tested through observation and measurement. Thereupon they decide not only to employ this method upon human beings, but also to deny that any other method of studying humans could be legitimate. Reductionism is what one ends up with after having excluded all other methods of study from our study of our humanity. But if the scientific method does give us a window to truth, then this exclusion must be mistaken, for it ends up, as we have just seen, undermining the scientific method itself.
The other method might available to us as we seek to understand our own humanity is our reflection upon our own engagement with the world. We might call this a first-person perspective on our actions. It is from this vantage that we recognize the unity of human experience and action. No doubt, there are scientific tests that can problematize that unity, but those tests are meaningful only because the scientist who performs them is an agent engaged in a special type of practical reasoning that we call the scientific method. And agency requires some sort of unity to the human person that cannot be demonstrated by any special scientific experiment. But what is that unity? I will argue in the chapters that follow that it is not a kind of spirit-thing that interacts with our bodies, nor is it a special vital force placed alongside the other, mechanical forces operating in our body. It is neither of these, but before saying what it is, I will attempt to draw a lesson from an examination of the origin, benefits and shortcomings of a mechanistic view of human nature.
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