| | Ed,
Talk about Argument by Proxy! ;-P
I know Tibor Machan's work when I see it. Initiative: Agency and Human Society was a painful book for me to read. Machan always knows his conclusion in advance, so you wonder what the point of the arguments are(sadly, you remind me of him in that regard, Ed). His rhetoric is great, but his arguments preach to the choir.
Now, there is no reason to regard the mechanistic interactions of physical matter as the only possible manifestation of causation in nature. One of the problems with Machan's writing is that he rarely ever tries to develop his opponent's positions to arrive at a comprehensive view of the issue being discussed. Though this is excerpted from an online article, his book did no better. There are a variety of positions on the mind-body problem as it relates to the free will problem, and this statement doesn't apply to the best ones.
That aside, there is a very good reason to do what Machan clams that there is no reason to do, even if the reason is only tentative and not conclusive in Popperian scheme. It is that the greatest advances in the biological sciences have been achieved by applying the atomic theory to living things. You would never learn that from Machan, because Machan is not trying to present a fair argument.
I quote Richard Feynman from Six Easy Pieces:
"Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understod from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the law of physics. This was not known in the beginning: it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful theory for producing new ideas in the field of biology." (Emphasis in original)
Now, I find it hard to believe that there is no reason to accept the theory that has been the most useful for producing new ideas in the field of biology as true. What would motivate a philosopher who respected science to write such?
The observable, final actions of a living organism originate within that organism; but it would be an unwarranted leap beyond the evidence to assume that they are merely the end result of the interactions of the physical materials involved. So the causative entity in the case of living things must be regarded as the creature itself. This is especially clear when we are talking about the higher animals, who obviously act according to their awareness of the world. "Unwarranted leap" - notice the nature of the rhetoric. The claim I seem to get from all this is that awareness is beyond physical explanation, or has no physical causes. I think that the world's leading neuroscientists would find it hard to agree.If you desire an argument, I will not provide one. There is no point in arguing with people who are willing to describe the scientific approach to human nature that has yielded the most progress in such terms.
Speaking of awareness, it constitutes another reason why physical interactions cannot be seen as the only valid pattern of causation. For example, something causes us to be aware of the world, and the experience of consciousness is wholly outside the realm of physical interactions as man has conceptualized them thus far. And just as we have no reason to bring in the mechanistic idea from the realm of matter into the realm of consciousness, we have no reason to bring in the idea of determinism either.
"No reason". Given all the good work that has been done on mood enhancing drugs based on addressing chemical imbalances in the brain, or the work done on brain damaged patients or parents with brain tumors, or even the discovery of DNA which is only compatible with a materialist theory of human nature, I cannot politely address such a statement so I will not address it.
At least, the motivation is becoming more explicit. It is the fear of determinism.
As far as we know, non-human forms of awareness do not include the ability to control mental operations. So, at this point, it makes sense to look upon the actions of lower animals as “predetermined.” But in the case of man, both every person’s awareness of his own responsibility to think and the fact that anything else leads to logical contradictions forbid us, in the name of science, to apply the idea of determinism to the actions of human beings. Again, "paradox" vs. "contradiction". However, I will not discuss this, partly because it is the kind of philosophy I dislike, but mostly because the evidence from research is not tackled head on. Just general references to philosophical contradictions.
As Spinoza said, our feelings of freedom are fully compatible with the fact that we do not know what causes our behavior. Therefore, we are free, for reasons both good and bad, to postulate ourselves as first causes. However, there is some good evidence that we are not as exempt from causation as many of us think we are.
The non-deterministic nature of man, when combined with the “butterfly effect” theory that every small motion has far-reaching consequences across the universe, might even be grounds to conclude that determinism does not now exist anywhere at all! That is, no event anywhere at all is preordained, since man exists in the universe. This is the best part of the quote (combined with the last paragraph). Not because it makes any good arguments, but because it makes explicit the point of all this writing, which is the need for indeterminists to exempt human beings from deterministic causation with intellectual arguments.
Why expend all the ink when you really don't need an argument at all (because you know the conclusion before you start the argument)? Because you need to counter determinists. That is what drives the need to write this kind of stuff.
Well, if you need it, good for you. I will not deny anyone the convictions that he needs to comfort himself.
Cheers, and unless scientific evidence of some kind is presented, I'm signing out of this.
Laj.
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