I tentatively conclude that if Strawson can discuss the link between determinism and moral responsibility without evoking free will, then it should be possible to discuss the link between determinism and free will without evoking moral responsibility.

I just typed in ‘free will’ on the site where the Strawson paper is hosted, and got 169 hits.

Apparently heavily weighted towards the classics, but also Alan Turing (next to Anselm of Canterbury) and Tom Wolfe (between Hegel and Plato).

The site owner himself seems to have his own views…. and based on a first glance I really wouldn’t want to go there. Ah well, as long as he’s a good librarian.

Many thanks for digging this out.

It is considerably longer and more complex than the piece in my philosophy reader. The abridged version I have formed part of an on-line philosophy course I undertook some while ago.

I think his view can be summarised thus:

‘Belief in determinism can have little or no effect on our moral attitudes for these are bound up with our irreducible nature which, therefore, cannot be eradicated no matter how powerful the intellectual argument.’

This was my instinctive position before reading the piece, so I suppose it reinforces an existing prejudice.

Which particular ‘Lads’ do you follow? My team is obvious and plays tomorrow.

Happy New Year to One and All.

The jury on solipsism is still out : the lads just managed a draw.

Regarding the discipline itself (I’d say it’s bonafide, but genuine practitioners and their results tend to be ignored and belittled; a case in point is the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research group, recently defunct — a search on the name within the New York Times archives will bring up a very interesting article), I long felt much the same way.

Then, recently, I came across and read the delightful _Ghost Hunters_ by Deborah Blum, the science writer. References to this (and an on-line interview) are found in the small “Psychical Research” section on my Resources page at RealityTest . com /resources . htm (I’m avoiding putting the links in as Edublog doesn’t like links — see the clickable links on the upper left of that page.)

Ms. Blum’s book describes the activities of Frederic Myers, Henry and Nora Sidgwick, William James, and others that I’ve been referring to here and on CiF recently.

The beginnings of parapsychology in Victorian times seem pure, in a way; fresh. (Modern psychology itself was just beginning, then, not that long after Darwin, while Freud and his disciples had yet to gain prominence.)

Boltonian’s remark re: accumulating scientific knowledge is totally on the mark, in my opinion, but I doubt any of us here would care to approach anything even slightly “What the Bleep?”-like in our discussions.

I note, too, that a form of Neo-Idealism is slowly gaining favor with some of the philosophers of consciousness studies.

I lack the time at the moment to discourse on various forms of dualism; although familiar with a number of these, I am more or less in agreement with the remarks you and Boltonian have made, while the topic of time itself is of great interest to me (this is obvious if you view my small website).

The consensus I posited suggests, again, the possibility of a cross-discipline convergence encompassing a broad swatch of areas, from the mainstream scientific to what is still frequently considered preposterous, from antique philosophies and sects to the experiential.

This is exciting, but even though I write of this (as do many others), I know that it is next to impossible to do so at the moment without becoming associated with those who may be a bit too wild and exuberant in their enthusiastic expression, turning off all who prefer a somewhat more serious approach.

(The folks of the Noetics Society, for example, don’t particularly impress me.)

Being overly serious also seems to miss the mark.

As a result, my own web-page writing has a certain degree of humor mixed in with attempts to be quite serious, but then most attempts to approach this must cope with a genuine sense of absurdity.

Bill

Re-dualism, I am not convinced that the world is material in any objective sense thus obviating the need for two substances. We create categories to make sense of the world but they do not necessarily accord with reality (if such a thing exists). The world is only material because we make it so.

Eeyore:

Your objections to any form of dualism so far proposed are spot on.

It really is better to read the original Strawson essay called, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ but I only have it (an extract) in hard copy and it would take me some time to transcribe it into electronic format. I might have a trawl around the internet to see if exists on a website somewhere.

You touch on time, as in Dennett’s proposition that we can have some influence over events in the future by our actions in the present. This presupposes that time, as we commonly understand it, exists. The arrow of time supposedly flows from the past, through the present and towards the future.

The past is dependent on memory – experience, and the ability to interpret those experiences accurately and meaningfully. We might experience the same event but would disagree about what actually occurred and what it means. So, the past really does not exist in any objective sense, only as a collection of subjective data, almost all of which will be flawed.

The future has not occurred and so lies outside our experience and exists as potentiality only. We can never gather sufficient information to accurately and confidently predict what will happen with any certainty. The future does not, therefore, exist either. The present presupposes that there is an instant which is neither past nor future, which there isn’t. Therefore, does time really exist?

I wasn’t really advocating solipsism, although it is impossible to refute, I agree. I was simply putting a counter-argument against materialism and in favour of idealism. I have no strong views here but tend towards idealism in that our entire knowledge of the world is mental, i.e. non-material.

Also, the more scientific knowledge we accumulate the less material the world appears.

Looking at Strawson’s extended arguments on ‘reactiveness’ from the Encyclopaedia article, a couple of comments :
- reactiveness is clearly compatible with determinism : one’s emotional reactions are all part of the grand causal chain
- it’s less clear how that observation adds much in the area of moral responsibility : reactive attitudes exist, they are caused, they have proved successful in ev. psych. terms, so what ?

Strawson, elsewhere, has referred to Libertarianism as ‘an obscure and panicky metaphysics’. I infer that he’s not a fan of the Absolute Agent or the Unmoved Mover. It’s still not clear to me what moral responsibility means for him, however, unless it be that with Dennett he believes that in ‘holding s/o responsible’ or ‘claiming responsibility’ we are engaging in a positive act of constructing the present, with implications for the future, rather than in ultimately meaningless speculation about a ‘might have been’.

Bill :
“If so, you _could_ make a dualistic division, but who is to say that the division wouldn’t actually be artificial, that matter and mind (and brain and whatever exists after death) aren’t part of some greater unity?”

I feel that the direction of your thinking here is very similar to that which I’ve been through. Dualism breaks down, I think, on the point that any way a dualistic mind could interact with matter would make it ipso facto part of the material domain. If anyone knows of any convincing contrary arguments, I’d be glad to hear them.

On parapsychology, I feel it’s such a minefield that it would require more personal investment than I’m capable of to get to an informed opinion either way…

Boltonian,

on absolute solipcism, I don’t see how it could be refuted. You can just observe :
a) that way lies madness (or if you prefer, breakdown of the internal coherence of the solipsistic mind, through failure to deal adequately with the outside world)
b) the world can always surprise you
c) if solipcism is true, and the world is a construction internal to my mind, I’d construct it so that my football team was just a little further from the relegation zone….

With a few word changes here and there, this is not so very different from my present stance, although I would add other regions of self beyond “individual” and “universal.” (”Universal” is so vast.)

“Now, if the mind-body question can be resolved on purely materialistic lines, perhaps the whole edifice falls down…… Except of course for my personal experiences of such serendipity.”

I don’t believe this can ever be resolved on such lines, owing to the nature of both mind and matter, but as always I can only point to techniques for experiencing, not the same as “proving.”

Would you care to post of your serendipitous experiences?

Boltonian: “Dualism, I agree, does not really stand up to scrutiny. It has serious problems to address, such as how the two entities relate to each other and what is the other if the one is material etc.”

Depending on how the word is defined, there are a number of solutions, some quite intriguing, some quite arcane.

The work of early and highly intelligent and persistent “psychical researchers” is of interest in this regard, although it never seemed to get anywhere after they died (and interesting story in itself, as each apparently endeavored to communicate with the surviving researchers after death, those communications themselves becoming the focus of highly skeptical examination).

Although many of them were highly respected scientists, their work never commanded the respect it deserved, the whole area of study gradually drifting into nearly complete disrespect, something no reputable scientist would dare touch. (There are a few exceptions.)

Nevertheless, in some ways what they achieved shed more light on mind-body questions (still unanswered, over one hundred years later) than anything anyone did afterwards.

(This strays ever further from determinism and free will. My apologies.)

“Idealism, however, cannot really be refuted. One might not agree with it but that is not quite the same thing. Everything we experience comes to us through the senses and is mediated in the brain – how, then, can we know that there is a material world, let alone an objective reality, out there?”

James, Myers, and company were never completely convinced that communications allegedly from the dead necessarily originated from those now clearly lacking physical brains and senses; they allowed that other possibilities for mediums knowing details they could not have known existed, including telepathy.

All they could truly say was that a certain percentage of that which they encountered defied scientific analysis (about 5% of years and years of research).

If, however, someone could find a way to show that indeed, there is a part of mind that transcends physical life (among other features of physical reality), then surely that part of mind could not be physical.

If so, you _could_ make a dualistic division, but who is to say that the division wouldn’t actually be artificial, that matter and mind (and brain and whatever exists after death) aren’t part of some greater unity?

Many of the unofficial (and largely unacceptable and often “occult”) explanations suggest the existence of various graduated continuua, “planes,” “energies,” and so on, or that, perhaps, what we call matter is really a kind of congealed thought, our physical senses and nervous systems key to not just perceiving it but also literally “creating” it, with the physical universe being but one particular domain of many.

I believe one key to knowing — not the same as proving — requires techniques such as meditation, but it may be that we shall find ourselves dead, knowing, and still completely unable to prove any of this to anyone.

Certainly those who meditate can share their experiences, although of course these vary all over the place, and only a very small percentage of meditators choose to actively explore those regions of the “unconscious” wherein, apparently, various species of “non-material” personalities (including non-material regions of self) are accessible, while meditating.

I often wonder whether it’s possible that some kind of consensus might actually arise, someday, despite the extreme difficulties; that is, widespread agreement in theory. technique, and experience, which cuts across not just various scientific disciplines but also certain philosophies.

Might this happen before the question of free will/determinism is firmly resolved? Maybe; certainly there would no shortage of time.

Bill

Dualism, I agree, does not really stand up to scrutiny. It has serious problems to address, such as how the two entities relate to each other and what is the other if the one is material etc.

Idealism, however, cannot really be refuted. One might not agree with it but that is not quite the same thing. Everything we experience comes to us through the senses and is mediated in the brain – how, then, can we know that there is a material world, let alone an objective reality, out there?

My beliefs arose from looking for an answer to the mind-body question. I am ignorant of any formal philosophy of Idealism, never read Plato. Paul Brunton was a major influence, as was the Gita. Spirit subtends matter, matter is a manifestation of spirit. Individual consciousness is a cloud which masks a deeper spirit, which can be discovered through meditation. The universal spirit has direction, a word I prefer to ‘purpose’, and this direction can irrupt very pragmatically and spectacularly in our lives, particularly through serendipity of a staggeringly improbable nature.

Now, if the mind-body question can be resolved on purely materialistic lines, perhaps the whole edifice falls down…… Except of course for my personal experiences of such serendipity.