The Revised Principle of Alternate Possibilities and Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument

What follows is a work in progress, and I would greatly appreciate any constructive feedback pertaining to my argumentation and the strength of my reply to the RPAP. As stated in the body of the post, additional information on the two primary articles cited can be found in the endnotes at the end of this post.

 

Frankfurtian-style counterfactual intervener scenarios of all different stripes hold a special place in discussions of free will and moral responsibility. In some situations, they are a necessary evil with which one must contend, and in others they are an insurmountable obstacle for some theories. Many journal articles and full-length books on these topics dedicate large sections of text to attempting to reconcile Frankfurtian-style counterfactual intervener scenarios (CIS) against Frankfurt’s modification of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). I believe that, using Galen Strawson’s iteration of what he deems the “Basic Argument” for the impossibility of moral responsibility, I can at best obviate Frankfurt’s Revised Principle of Alternate Possibilities (RPAP) and at worst side-step the need for addressing the PAP/RPAP by way of positing a new principle based on Strawson’s Basic Argument, what I shall call the Principle of the Basic Argument (PBA).

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Wittgenstein

I found segments on youtube of Derek Jarman’s 1989 film “Wittgenstein.” The rest can be found on youtube. Enjoy!

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“The Intelligence of Beasts”

Some discussion … here.

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Troubled by “Spooky” Properties?

Trent Dougherty (Baylor) offers some advice:

I remember encountering as an undergrad the notion (Mackie?) that moral properties were “queer.” Then I remember reading some stuff in Phil Mind about “ectoplasm” and “spook stuff” with attributions of mental substance as “spooky.” I don’t know where this nonsense got started, but I was surprised “real” philosophers would play this kind of card. It is nothing less than a cop out. …

The appeal to “spookiness” and “weirdness” represents a failure of nerve and should be discouraged.

You can read the entire post here.

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Bayes’ Theorem … for Infants

Read the study, here: “Pure Reasoning in 12-Month-Old Infants as Probabilistic Inference” (HT: Aaron Kenna)

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The Biology of Ethics

… in The Chronicle of Higer Education:

I would read contemporary ethicists and just feel very unsatisfied. It was like I couldn’t see how to tether any of it to the hard and fast. I couldn’t see how it had anything to do with evolutionary biology, which it has to do, and I couldn’t see how to attach it to the brain.

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Eliminative Materialism, Bayesian Probability, Beliefs Gone Wild, and LSE Choice Group

Patricia Churchland discusses eliminative materialism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzT0jHJdq7Q

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“The Unity of Descartes’s Man”

… and other essays on Descartes,  by Paul Hoffman, all well worth reading.

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Libet Revisited: Reduction and Prediction in Neuroscience

In “Agent Causation” Timothy O’Connor makes a passing assertion that there are many unresolved questions for materialist agency as he posits it, and that many of these questions are empirical in nature and can only be resolved with “extensive advancements within neurobiological science.” [1] Two particularly salient questions are (1) “Precisely to what extent is an ordinary human’s behavior directly regulated by the agent himself, and to what extent is it controlled by microdeterministic processes?”[2] And (2) whether microdeterministic processes can be predicted or not. While O’Connor may believe that advances in neuroscience will reinforce rather than call into question his theory, this is not the case. Stretching from the 1980s to a recent study in 2008, neuroscience has demonstrated that predictive brain activity can be seen to occur prior to a test subject’s consciousness of making a decision. From Libet to present, these studies provide damaging replies to the questions which O’Connor’s theory leaves unanswered.

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“Pardon, Your Dualism is Showing”: Philosophy’s Dirty Word?

In another post, Paul pointed out an alleged bias on UNFSPB toward physicalism and against (presumably) dualism or other presuppositional positions here. This  struck me as particularly relevant given my current research into Libet for an essay I am writing when I ran across a reference to a journal article by C.C. Wood entitled, “Pardon, your dualism is showing.” Not coincidentally, in an unrelated portion of the article that cited Wood, the author was condemning Libet for attempting to find elbow room within his study in which Free Will might reside, and perhaps implicitly affirming a dualist position. And just the other day I had a vigorous discussion with a Presuppositional Apologetic  on charges similar to Paul’s, viz. that I unfairly presumed a physicalist world view that negated God in its very structure.

All of these elements lead me to wonder if dualism has become a dirty word among philosophers, theologians, or the educated in general. I am inclined to say it has, though I am interested to see whether (1) others believe this to be the case, and (2) if so, is this due to a progressive and positive development toward the elimination of antiquated worldviews, or is it merely a dogmatic assertion of a currently prevailing paradigm that unfairly presupposes its own truth?

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Experimental Philosophy of Free Will: Bootcamp and Workshop

Yale will be hosting a bootcamp and workshop on Experimental Philosophy of Free Will for graduate students and faculty:

The Experimental Philosophy of Free Will Workshop and Boot Camp is an opportunity for philosophers to gain the skills they need to conduct cutting-edge research in the experimental philosophy of free will.

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Virgil’s Lesson For Mariology: A Response to Dennett’s Physicalist Account of Mary’s First Experience of Color

This is a paper that I will be presenting soon. I would appreciate any constructive criticisms you all might have to offer.

The “‘she’ll be surprised damnit!’ intuition” is the appellation that Daniel Dennett gives to the intuitive expectation of what will happen when Mary, an neurologically omniscient scientist, has her first experience of color.[1] Dennett disparages the aforementioned intuitive response because he believes that the intuition results from a thought experiment that “encourages us to misunderstand its premises.”[2] He proceeds to “elucidate” these misunderstandings by “turning the knobs” in the thought experiment, i.e., by altering the circumstances of the thought experiment to show the folly of the intuitive response to Mary’s first experience of color.

What follows is a more precise representation of Jackson’s attempt to argue for the spurious nature of physicalism, a critical examination of Dennett’s supposed exposure of the sophistry of Jackson’s argument (via “turning the knobs” in the thought experiment), and an altered version of Mary’s first experience that shows that Dennett’s “Mariology” (a term coined to describe theoretical study of Mary’s first encounter with color) is in need of revision. Specifically, this altered Mary-esque thought experiment shows that the cause of Mary’s epistemological limitation of experience is physiological in nature. I will argue that it is physically impossible for Dennett to be correct in saying that Mary will not learn something new when she has her first experience of color. Finally, I will briefly respond to, what seems to be, a plausible objection to my argument, and conclude with some remarks on the broader philosophical significance of the argument.

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Moral Responsibility vs. Moral Judgement

Aaron requested a more full-blooded iteration of my stance on morality for consideration and I thought I would oblige, as it is something on which I would certainly like feedback. In what follows I would like to first address why I do not believe human beings are morally responsible for their behavior in the manner commonly thought necessary, and second posit that the moral responsibility of human beings is not necessary for possessing judgements as to what actions are right or wrong.

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Wolves In The Trees: A Moral Myth

Morality is a problem. The concept of morality now creates greater harm than good. Whereas it was once a useful transparent drive—something we are not aware of—now it has become  harmfully deceptive. It masquerades as something that is real aside from our instincts and gives the appearance of fact that is not there. It forcibly asserts its own truth and commands its realness apart from the person—when in fact it is nothing more than the person’s constitution moving the person and that person’s feelings.

Morality requires free-will. If you don’t require free-will, then what you call morality is simply a mistake of action no different from turning on the wrong road. For instance, If I kill my neighbor because he was standing in the road and I didn’t see him, I haven’t done anything immoral.  However, if I walk into his front door and kill him by shooting him after planning the assault for days, most people would say I have done something immoral.

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Neurotheology

For those interested in philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion, this recent piece on NPR should be of interest. Here’s an excerpt from the opening lines:

For thousands of years, religion has posed some unanswerable questions: Who are we? What’s the meaning of life? What does it mean to be religious?

In an effort to address those questions, Dr. Andrew Newberg has scanned the brains of praying nuns, chanting Sikhs and meditating Buddhists. He studies the relationship between the brain and religious experience, a field called neurotheology. And he’s written a book, Principles of Neurotheology, that tries to lay the groundwork for a new kind of scientific and theological dialogue.

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Ethical Autonomous Machines?

Is this “an ordinary act of ethical decision making”? (HT: Mitch Haney)

 

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Explore Consciousness Science at Home!

An invitation from the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies. Classes start next week. (HT: Bert Koegler)

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Brain-Computer Interfacing

From The Futurist

A group of undergraduates at Northeastern University demonstrated in June that they could steer a robot via thought. The subject in the experiment watched a computer screen and selected commands using his retina, causing electrical activity in the brain’s visual cortex ranging from 4 to 100 hertz. The signals were then translated to a small robot, similar to the Roomba vacuum cleaner. …

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“Teary-Eyed Evolution”

… an interesting piece at NPR.

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Reading Your Mind with fMRI

Researchers say they can now trace your memories and tell which memory is being recalled through fMRI:

FORMATION of a memory is widely believed to leave a ‘trace’ in the brain – a fleeting pattern of electrical activity which strengthens the connections within a widely distributed network of neurons, and which re-emerges when the memory is recalled. The concept of the memory trace was first proposed nearly a century ago, but the nature of the trace, its precise location in the brain and the underlying neural mechanisms all remain elusive. Researchers from University College London now report that functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) can be used to decode individual memory traces and to predict which of three recently encoded memories is being recalled.

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Abstracts of Papers, Part 3

Here are the last of the abstracts for the conference’s concurrent sessions. Abstracts of the plenary sessions will follow next week.

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Cognitive Science Study Abroad in Budapest

This is an undergraduate program in the Fall of 2009 for students majoring in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, biology, linguistics, computer science, or artificial intelligence.

The deadline to apply is April 15th.

For more information contact : bscs@makog.hu or jhegedus@kzoo.edu or visit the SA website.

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The Dust Hypothesis

Fascinating argument and discussion at the Splintered Mind.

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Conference Papers

Congratulations to the students whose papers have been accepted for presentation at the 12th Annual Northeast Florida Student Philosophy Conference at UNF on February 7th:

“How to Motivate the Maxim that ‘Ought Implies Can’ to Defend the Principle of Alternate Possibilities”
Sean Armil (University of Florida)

“On the Limitations of Formal Methods”
Wataru Asanuma (Florida State University)

“A Defense of Lewisian Contextualism”
Yael Benjamin (University of Massachusettes at Dartmouth)

“The Impact of Chalmers’ Theory of Consciousness on the Theistic Argument from Consciousness”
Andrew Brenner (University of North Florida)

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Stimulating the Cerebral Cortex

Stimulating points on the cerebral cortex with the tip of an electrode can make a subject experience various sensations. A patient may move an arm and experience this movement as external, i.e., not originating from the subject, experienced as a reflex. Some have taken this to show there is part of the mind (higher order cognition, perhaps) immune to physical manipulation because such stimulation does not manipulate the intentions of the subject. Neuroskeptic explains why it isn’t surprising that stimulating points on the cerebral cortex doesn’t affect the intentions of the subject:

[T]o take this as evidence for some kind of a dualism between a form of conciousness which can be manipulated via the brain and another, non-material level of conciousness which can’t (the “soul” in other words), is like saying that because hammering away at one key of a piano produces nothing but an annoying noise, there must be something magical going on when a pianist plays a Mozart concerto. Stimulating a single small part of the brain is about the crudest manipulation imaginable; all we can conclude from the results of point-stimulation experiments is that some kinds of mental processes are not controlled by single points on the cortex. This should not be surprising, since the brain is a network of 100 billion cells; what’s interesting, in fact, is that stimulating a few million of these cells with the tip of an electrode can do anything.

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