[MD] Dennett & James' "Free will"

[david buchanan]

Ian said:
The good thing about that exchange dmb & Steve, is that it's on topic. Causation.

dmb says:
Causation is a very key concept. No doubt about it. It's the premise behind the majority view and the premise that Pirsig rejects and replaces. The problem is that Steve is trying to understand Pirsig by way of that rejected majority view. Steve is reading the MOQ's reformulation in terms of the very thing it rejects. 

"In the past the logic has been that if chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the laws of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too. But this logic can be applied in a reverse direction. ..If chemistry professors exercise choice, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that atoms must exercise choice too. The difference between these two points of view is philosophic, not scientific. The question of whether and electron does a certain thing because it has to or because it wants to is completely irrelevant to the data of what the electron does."

The behavior itself is not in dispute. The action taken is just the empirical fact to be explained. The question, quite simply, asks if one HAD to act according to laws or not. But we have to be careful about how we use the word "cause". If I say that I was the cause of my action, I'm denying that the action was a result of the laws of causality. Causality and causation is the relationship between cause and effect. It refers to a mechanistic, law-like chain of events and the causal determinist claims that these are the laws that determine our actions. That is the basis on which the CAUSAL determinist denies that we can make choices, exercise free will or human agency. There are other forms of determinism but whatever reason is given - metaphysical, theological or common sensical - the determinist says our actions are determined by something other than us. Causal determinism is just the most likely form these days because it fits with the prevailing metaphysics of substance and scientific objectivity. 


"If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary. If 'everything' is included in the class of 'substance and its properties,' and if 'substance and properties' is included in the class of 'things that always follow laws,' and if 'people' are included int class 'everything', then it is an air-tight logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of substance. ...All the social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bedrock metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human behavior exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the world. ...In the MOQ this dilemma doesn't come up."

I'd bet big bucks that the metaphysics of substance has everything to do with the fact that Dennett's compatibilism, which represents the majority view, is different from the MOQ's compatibilist reformulation and from James's "comprehensive compatibilism". 

I'd definitely recommend the Doyle lecture to anyone who's interested in this topic.