Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...
2 comments
Read more