response to P F Strawson

Below is my response to P F Strawson (I summarized him in a prior post).

PF Strawson argues that one who believes in determinism will continue to engage in interpersonal relationships in a manner that shows concern about morality; therefore, the libertarian argument against determinism is undermined, for it claims that determinism is at odds with morality.

I will argue (or rather, in this blog post I will sketch an argument to the effect) that while a vague belief in determinism may be able to coexist with moral convictions, neither desire, moral convictions nor positive freedom (that is, freedom as defined in Strawson's essay) could come into existence if a specific form of determinism were true. Key to this argument is the claim that there is not just one kind of determinism but many, which vary according to the various ways in which one might attempt to justify this claim. A theist who is committed to determinism, for example, might give metaphysical reasons for thinking that the operation of the human will is predetermined by a provident Deity; a neo-Platonic determinist might argue that human volition originates from a higher immaterial being whose existence and operation is itself the result of an emanation from a still higher being, etc., all of which ultimately emanates necessarily from a non-provident Deity; a non-reductive materialist who is committed to determinism might argue that human volition results in a lawlike manner from the interaction of a human being with its environment; and a reductive determinist (i.e., a reductive materialist who is committed to determinism) would argue that the operation of the will is predetermined by antecedent material conditions.

Although there are many kinds of determinism, my argument focuses only on how determinism cannot rely upon a reductively materialist justification, because the reductive materialist account of desire, free will, and moral convictions is false. I leave untouched the question of whether some other form of determinism may be compatible with positive freedom. In this way, my argument's central conclusion does not so much contradict PF Strawson's conclusion as marginalize it. It concedes that one who comes to believe in determinism will find it natural to continue adhering to moral convictions and that determinism generaliter may be consistent with belief in a positive free will (as defined by Strawson). But reductive determinism, precisely because it is reductive, is not compatible with free will inasmuch as no such will could exist.

One question not yet addressed is whether some version of non-reductive materialism could both avoid the reductionism's incoherence and provide a justification either for determinism or for its contrary. Instead of arguing that determinism is true or false, I will argue that the correct answer hinges upon a more adequate definition of freedom than Strawson's "positive freedom." A phenomenology of practical reasoning shows that we have reasons for our choices, but those reasons do not determine which choice we make. Determinism seems less plausible to the degree that one takes this indetermination in our reasons as an indetermination in re; determinism seems more plausible inasmuch as one regards this indetermination as a surface phenomenon, with determining factors being at work under the surface.

Digression: I love how Strawson rightly avoids justifying the truth of moral convictions. It is clear that for him, the meaningfulness as well as truth of such convictions is to be found only by one who is concerned about the attitude of others, and that this concern arises as a result of one's interactions with others. He calls this concern a "participatory" attitude, for one who takes on this attitude participates in community life. This anti-foundationalist approach seems right on target. I would suggest, however, that moral convictions arising from interpersonal interactions lead us to expect to find other rational agents who have already arrived at the same conclusion, so that to adopt such convictions is inseparable from identifying oneself as a member of the community of rational agents, a community whose membership is open-ended and may even extend beyond humanity itself.

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

Daniel Dennett, disqualifying qualia, softening up the hard problem, fullness of vacuity, dysfunctional functionalism

Around track 2 of disc 9 of Intuition Pumps , Dennett offers what I would call an argument from vacuity. He argues that David Chalmers unwittingly plays a magic trick on himself and others by placing a set of issues under the one umbrella called the "hard problem of consciousness." None of these issues is really , in Dennett's opinion, a hard problem. But in naming them thus, Chalmers (says Dennett) is like a magician who seems to be playing the same card trick over and over again, but is really playing several different ones. In this analogy, expert magicians watch what they think is the same trick played over and over again. They find it unusually difficult to determine which trick he is playing because they take these performances as iterations of the same trick when each is in fact different from the one that came before. Furthermore, each of the tricks that he plays is actually an easy one, so it is precisely because they are looki...

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