Comments on: Final Thoughts of a Disenchanted Naturalist

By: Charels T. Wolverton

Charels T. Wolverton — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:42:14 +0000

The essence of Frank Williams’ Popper quote seems to be that determinism implies that decision making is an illusion. To which I can only reply “doh!”. For a somewhat more sophisticated critique of the full passage from which the quote is taken, see:

http://www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/meehlp/100Determinism-freedomMind-body.pdf

And while I agree with Williams that we can’t tell if our “reasoning” – ie, any particular argument for determinism – is correct, neither can we tell if any argument for any position is correct. But one must nevertheless argue on – or not.

There are obvious possibly disconcerting consequences to strict determinism, but that doesn’t negate it. Feigl and Meehl suggest that Popper’s fear of “the nightmare of determinism” may rest on a confusion with strict predictability. But absent predictability, there’s really nothing to fear – the illusion works just fine.

By: Charels T. Wolverton

Charels T. Wolverton — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:04:44 +0000

I agree with Tom Clark that human behavior can be described in different vocabularies for different purposes – some scientific, others “human-level”. But I don’t see Prof Rosenberg as disagreeing with that. He specifically addresses “knowledge”, which requires that a description pass muster within an appropriate peer group (Rorty’s Sellarsian “truth is what your peers let you get away with saying”), and observes that as the scientific aspects of human behavior are better understood, the peer group for assessing the knowledge-worthiness of descriptions in the human-level vocabularies will increasingly include those who have relevant scientific knowledge, and therefore will require that the descriptions be scientifically sound if they are to be accepted as “knowledge” (in the above sense). Of course, even descriptions that fail that test may be praised on other grounds, eg, aesthetic. If I’m right, then Prof Rosenberg’s claim seems no more than – if he’ll pardon the expression – common sense.

By: Frank Williams

Frank Williams — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:32:08 +0000

Rosenberg has implied, and elsewhere stated, that freewill is an illusion, and that human action and behavior is caused and pre-determined by brain-states as being explained (or confidence – faith? – that they will soon to be explained) by neuroscience. I have two misgivings. One, he seems to neglect the claims by some very competent neuroscientists and philosophers about the limitations of neuroscience: Tallis, Gazzaniga, Pigliucci, et al. Second, he seems unaware of a significant objection to determinism.
First. When neuroscientists, by examining my brain-states, using fMRIs or some more advanced techniques, can correctly describe what I was thinking or seeing or saying (and in what language I was saying it) when the brain-scan was taken (WITHOUT being told what I was doing when the scan was taken) . . . well, until they can do that, I’ll remain skeptical that it CAN be done. I’m an empiricist –just claiming that something can or one day will be done, or that research seems to be moving in that direction is little more than hopeful hand-waving! It moves too quickly from correlations to causes, from necessary to sufficient conditions, and from small studies to sweeping generalizations. For comments about the latter, see publications by John Ioannidis.
Second, and in my opinion more significant. Karl Popper wrote:
“For according to determinism, any theories-such as, say, determinism – are held because of a certain physical structure of the holder (perhaps of his brain). Accordingly we are deceiving ourselves (and are physically so determined as to deceive ourselves) whenever we believe that there are such things as arguments or reasons which make us accept determinism. Or in other words, physical determinism is a theory which, if it is true, is not arguable, since it must explain all our reactions, including what appear to us as beliefs based on arguments, as due to purely physical conditions.” [Objective Knowledge, 223-24]
A typical determinist philosophers’ response to this is that determinism does NOT imply that we do not reason or argue; rather it implies that all our reasoning is caused by antecedent conditions, and that does not at all mean that all our reasoning is incorrect. Well, true enough; but it also does not mean that any of our reasoning is correct, which raises the question, “How can we tell when it is or isn’t correct?” The answer, seems to me, is that if determinism is true then we can’t tell.
Consider an illustration. (I do not claim that determinists think the brain is just a very complex computer. However, a computer is a useful example of a completely deterministic system.) Suppose a computer so constructed that for some calculations it always gives the wrong answers and for others it always provides the right answers. Is there any way that computer could double-check (OK, a little anthropomorphism here) it’s own calculations and correct the mistaken ones? No, because it always “thinks” that its calculations are correct; it will always calculate the way it was predetermined to calculate by its hardware and software. Likewise, if determinism is true then, as Popper noted, whatever we think is what we are predetermined to think by antecedent conditions. This doesn’t imply that determinism is false, but only that if it is true then we cannot have any adequate basis for thinking that ANY of our reasoning is trustworthy. If we provide reasons for view X, we do so merely because we were predetermined to do so; and those who offer reasons against view X do so merely because that’s what they were predetermined to do. Whether any of the reasons offered are good or trustworthy is irrelevant. This approach was spelled out in detail by J.N.Jordan [“Determinism’s Dilemma,” Review of Metaphysics, Sept. 1969].
David Barash puts the upshot of all this nicely: “It seems clear that human beings are the most flexible and adaptable creatures on earth, capable of choosing their own destiny. At the same time, it is also clear that there is a definite genetic influence on many aspects of our behavior, especially when it comes to sex, violence, parenting, even tendencies for altruism and selfishness. The more we understand that influence, the more free we are to chart our own course.” http://faculty.washington.edu/dpbarash/faq.html The humanities provide needed help in charting our course.
So, do we ever have good, trustworthy (but admittedly never infallible) reasons for believing some things? I think we do, and I suspect that you do too. Thus a closing apparent paradox:
If determinism is true, then we can’t have good, trustworthy reasons for believing anything (including for believing that determinism is true); but we do have some (at least fairly) good reasons for believing that determinism (and lots of other stuff) is true. Therefore (by modus tollens) determinism is false.

By: Tom Clark

Tom Clark — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:25:03 +0000

Rosenberg thinks that science and “explanation by interpretation” are incompatible and mutually exclusive, so we must choose between them. Merely physical systems such as ourselves can’t really refer to external goings-on, so higher level (e.g., historical) accounts of human action involving motivations, meanings, intentions, purposes, desires, etc. are mere simulacra of knowledge. But microphysical and neural explanations don’t compete with human-level explanations; rather they elucidate the mechanisms subserving reference and cognition involving abstract concepts, including those Rosenberg himself deploys. Understanding these mechanisms constitutes a philo-scientific research agenda; that there may be no canonical physicalist account of reference doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Indeed, his debunking of non-scientific explanations, here and in his book, makes use of a higher-level referential vocabulary that, according to his own thesis, doesn’t convey knowledge. That we understand his thesis strongly suggests it’s false. Unless, of course, we’re all under the *illusion* of understanding, in which case so is Rosenberg.

We can and must have both a physicalist story about the production of speech and behavior and an intentionalist, purposive, human-level psychological story. That the latter is sometimes misleading doesn’t impugn its overall utility in explaining human action. And it’s the utility, the predictive power of explanations, both in the hard sciences and the humanities, that gives us knowledge and that certifies their elements (fermions and bosons, beliefs and desires) as real. These two ontologies are not in competition or mutually exclusive. The humanities and the human sciences, irreplaceable in their explanations, have nothing to fear from physicalism or naturalism.

By: David Duffy

David Duffy — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:55:33 +0000

Non-overlapping magisteria of knowledge and pleasure ;)

I have a couple of quibbles:

Biology would not accept the gene as real until it was shown to have a physical structure: is as untrue as similar statements about chemistry and atoms.

Must science write off interpretation the way it wrote off phlogiston theory—a nice try but wrong?: I won’t address history, but in the case of personality and temperament, one of the main tools is asking individuals how they would characterise themselves eg “I often avoid meeting strangers because I lack confidence with people I do not know”. Responses to a number of such questions can be mathematically analysed to extract underlying consistent features that psychologists believe to correspond to characteristics of the individual brain physiology. And these stable personality traits can be correlated with measured behaviour, mental illness, structure, physiology and genotype (well, to some extent). Famously, the first two higher order factors (“Harm Avoidance/Neuroticism”, “Novelty Seeking/Extraversion”) correspond to the Greek humours. So introspective interpretations (or perhaps observation and recollection of one’s own behaviour) that cohere with scientific understanding are alive and well, at least in this corner of psychology: personality, psychometrics, behaviour genetics.