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making room for a non-reductive determinism

This is not an anti-libertarian argument but merely a broadening of ontology so as to include living beings that are neither mechanisms nor free.

We may be able to predict the operations of these beings on the basis of our observation of lower-level states of affairs, but that prediction is not a simple deduction.  That is, it is not the case that what appear to be irreducibly higher-level operations are in fact complex sets of lower-level processes, which, once discovered and adequately described can be deduced from other, antecedent processes following the same laws.  Rather, the prediction is based on a correlation between higher level operations and lower-level conditions. This deduction requires a previous induction of the correlation between the higher and lower-levels and the subsequent formulation of a law of correlation-- a kind of translation law-- from which the higher-level operation can be deduced.  But there is no deduction of the correlation itself.

Inasmuch as there's a deduction from a law, there may be a corresponding necessity in nature.  One might say, for example, that given such-and-such lower-level conditions, such and such a higher-level operation occurs necessarily.  But this higher-level operation is not, strictly speaking, an effect of the lower-level.  At least it is not an effect in the way that a reductionist supposes (a reductionist supposes that what appears to be a higher-level operation is in fact a complex set of processes following upon and hence an effect of another set of lower-level processes).  For the higher-level operations involve a kind of initiative, endeavor, impetus, energy or the like that is not to be found at the lower-level--not even in a very complex version of lower-level operations.  Lower-level conditions merely help steer higher-level operations that cannot be done by lower-level initiative, while the higher-level provides something that cannot be provided by the lower-level.  Hence the higher-level is not adequately described as an effect, even if it follows invariably upon certain lower-level processes.  And the mere ability to point out a lawfulness in the operations of the higher-level vis-à-vis the lower does not suffice to establish reductionism.

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