HUMAN NATURE

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Topic 3

• HUMAN NATURE

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personhood

• A person is an autonomous being
• Can determine the shape of their lives through
  reasoned free choices
• But there is an argument to the conclusion that
  autonomy is illusory

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The Problem of determinism

• Freedom would seem to be incompatible with
  determinism
• I am not free to act or think because my actions
  and thoughts are determined by the laws of nature

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compatibilism

• Actions can be free and determined
• Soft determinism
• How?!
• a few intelligible definitions would immediately
  have put an end to the whole controversy (Hume,
  Enquiry)
• We just need to get clear on what necessity and
  freedom mean

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Shaping ones life

• one essential difference between persons and
  other creatures is to be found in the structure
  of a persons will
• Persons have 2nd order volitions
• Freedom amounts to the possession of second order
  volitions
• Freedom contrasted with constraint rather than
  with determinism
• One can be constrained by chains, addictions or
  ones 1st order desires

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• Scientific / biological account of 1st order
  desires
• Brain states / computational states
• Perhaps teleological account of the intentional
  content of desires
• Desire for water
• The flux of such brain states is determined by
  laws of cognition (laws of nature)

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• 2nd order desires could also be given such a
  description
• Theyre also controlled by the laws of nature
• My actions are therefore determined, and yet I am
  free

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Problems

• 1. Does Frankfurts account fit our concept of a
  person?
• Can we think of people without 2nd order
  volitions, or those who are capable of 2nd order
  volitions, but who we would not call people?

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• 1. Nihilists / buddhists
• Desire to lose their 1st order desires
• Thats what makes them a person!
• Paradoxical?

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• 2. people who are happy in their skin
• Like their desires just the way they are

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2. Alternative possibilities

• Freedom entails that I could have done something
  else in any given situation
• alternative courses of action open to me
• not so if one is a determinist
• And thus not so if one is a compatibilist

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• "An Intelligence knowing all the forces acting in
  nature at a given instant, as well as the
  momentary positions of all things in the
  universe, would be able to comprehend in one
  single formula the motions of the largest bodies
  as well as the lightest atoms in the world,
  provided that its intellect were sufficiently
  powerful to subject all data to analysis to it
  nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as
  the past would be present to its eyes." Laplace

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• Humes strategy is a wretched subterfuge with
  which some persons allow themselves to be put
  off, and so think that they have solved, with a
  petty word jugglery, a problem at the solution of
  which centuries have laboured in vain. (Kant,
  1788 189-90)

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But is it so easy to reject compatibilism?

• We must be clear on the radical nature of both
  incompatibilist positions
• If neither of these are acceptable, then perhaps
  we have to accept the compatibilist notion of
  freedom

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1. Libertarianism

• Most of those who have written about the
  emotions and human conduct seem to be dealing not
  with natural phenomena that follow the common law
  of Nature but with phenomena outside of Nature.
  They appear to go so far as to conceive man in
  Nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. They
  believe that he disturbs rather than follows
  Natures order. (Spinoza, Ethics)

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• In effect it would be very singular that all
  nature, all the planets, should obey eternal
  laws, and that there should be a little animal
  five foot high, who, in contempt of these laws,
  could act as he pleases, solely according to his
  caprice. (Voltaire, The Ignorant Philosopher)

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• Our will has a causal effect on our bodies, but
  the will itself is uncaused
• From outside of nature we are able to divert
  material objects our body, for one -- from
  their natural paths
• (i) Can we conceive of events that do not have a
  cause?
• (ii) how does the will, something outside of
  nature, come to have a causal effect on natural
  bodies?

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Hard determinism

• Free will is an illusion
• Problems
• 1. someones only responsible for their actions
  if they perform them freely
• Can only praise or blame someone if their actions
  are free
• Morality depends on freedom

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• 2. we are incapable of believing that we are not
  free
• No-one can therefore actually be a hard
  determinist

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But perhaps nature isnt deterministic

• Quantum mechanics claims that nature is at its
  core indeterminate
• The behaviour of sub-atomic particles is not
  deterministic
• Perhaps these are involved in neuronal activity
  in the brain
• The flux of our brain states would therefore not
  be deterministic and thus there is no clash with
  free will

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responses

• 1. quantum mechanics is controversial
• Einstein God does not play dice
• 2. such an account would make the flux of our
  brain states prey to chance
• Our actions would not therefore be the result of
  our free choice
• They would be random