Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Greg Davis's picture

Two things

These are two things that have crossed my mind since last time:

1.  There is philosophical stance known as "compatibilism", in which it is claimed that determinism and free will are not opposed and are in fact compatible.  Some philosophers in this camp have gone further and asserted that determinism is in fact a prerequisite for free will (Malebranche and David Hume are among these, but I'm sure there are many more).  On close inspection, however, my impression is that these philosophers ultimately tend to reinvent "free will" to be something very different from the common conception, often dispensing with the element of choice (which most of us take for granted as an aspect of "free will").  I'm not sure how I side on this debate, but I will say that I do find it a little ridiculous that some thinkers seem to grab hold of inherent stochasticity almost as if it IS free will.  Stochasity alone doesn't get us to free will, not by a long shot.  But I am still willing to entertain the possibility that it is a prerequisite or necessary condition.

2.  I was surprised to hear Paul say that was very skeptical of "natural ontological attitudes" and their ilk or, in the particular case of stochasticity, the claim that we (us humans) are simply "naturally" inclined to interpret the world in deterministic terms.  I would have thought that Paul (given his neurobiological and evolutionary perspective) would be sympathetic to the idea that we've evolved certain neurological inclinations (I'm avoiding the metaphor "hard-wired" but that's sort of where I'm going with this) to see the world in this causal-deterministic way simply because these sorts of inclinations ultimately enhanced reproductive success in the early evolution of mammals or primates.  This is of course different from making a claim about the way things actually are.  Perhaps if we'd evolved on the quantum level we would have ended up with very different inclinations.  (Paul: please correct me if I am misinterpreting you--the comment went by fast in the conversation and we didn't get a chance to return to it.)

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
4 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.