Fate & Philosophy by Jim Flynn

Author:Jim Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781877551437
Publisher: Awa Press
Published: 2012-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Compatibilists always tell me there is someone new I must read before I make up my mind. After being told to read Strawson, I gave up. I believe that either free will or determinism is true, that free will makes moral praise and blame appropriate, and that determinism makes them inappropriate.

what if both possibilities are open?

I realized that if everything depended on whether free will or determinism were true, the arguments for and against free will had to be taken seriously. But then I got a surprise: none of the arguments were decisive. Worse, we would be in doubt as to what was true for the foreseeable future. Therefore, we needed a substitute for the truth that we could use to live by.

My first task is to defend the assertion that none of the arguments for or against free will are decisive. As a sample, here are five arguments—three for and two against.

First argument against free will: Everything that occurs in consciousness is linked to a physiological state of affairs in the brain. The two interact, and if causal discontinuity occurred on the level of consciousness there would be a corresponding causal discontinuity in brain physiology, which is absurd.

Answer: What is absurd about it? This argument assumes that the brain operates like a clock, and if a capricious consciousness intervenes the machinery will be disrupted. But if the brain is a clock that operates best when left alone, any influence from consciousness may be disruptive. If a “decision” has been arrived at after being determined, why would it be less disruptive than a decision arrived at freely? If I take drugs, the drugs will affect my brain physiology, no matter whether the act was free or determined.

The whole picture of brain and consciousness as two alien entities is a throwback to René Descartes (1596–1650). The brain influences consciousness and consciousness influences the brain. Consciousness has free choice only when an underlying brain state allows for that, and after consciousness makes a free choice the brain reacts to it.

Second argument against free will: Brain physiology has already falsified free will. The British physiologist W. Grey Walter (1910–1977) reported an experiment he conducted in the early 1960s (although he never published his data, leading to speculation about why he was reluctant to do so). Electrodes were inserted in the motor areas of the brains of epilepsy patients. Walter ran wires from the electrodes to a slide carousel. Whenever a patient decided to move to the next slide, electrical activity in the brain beat them to it and changed the slides. The patients were astonished. They felt that just as they were about to push the button but had not yet quite decided to do so, their brains had made the decision for them.

Answer: The fact that the electrical impulse from the brain changed the slide is sheer showmanship. It could have just as easily lit up a light bulb, or simply been detected by a brain scan.

The significance of the fact that

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