Josh Strawn weighs in on morality and determinism

Josh Strawn, whom I engaged in conversation following his commentary on the debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens, has continued the dialog in the commentary thread to a subsequent post by me on the subject of free will and determinism.

I'll engage the conversation with a fresh post, since I see no need to relegate the issue to a commentary thread.

Bryan, free will can only have meaning in a deterministic framework. What good is the choice to jump or to set a bucket on the ground if one cannot be assured of the deterministic laws of the universe?

Quite true, Josh, but that point offers no help for the argument since libertarian free will is fully compatible with any amount of determinism short of total causal determinism (the decision of the will is the only thing that needs to be free of absolute causal determination).

Put simply, the argument doesn't follow if "deterministic framework" means an assumption of absolute causal determinism. Though I'd certainly welcome arguments to that effect.

Those laws will assure him or her that they will return to the ground after jumping or that the bucket they've put down will stay put, do they not? In order for choice to function, we must be able to depend to some degree on certain outcomes even if there are also a great many elements we can't predict or depend upon.

Right, but that situation should not be confused with absolute causal determinism. If causal determinism were absolute then the assurance you talk about is a non-issue. You'll either come down after jumping or you won't. Either way (if determinism were true) the expectation itself is absolutely a product of preceding states of matter. With luck it matches reality; that is all.

"(C)ausal determinism" is customarily taken as the proposition that all events are the result of casual chains, perhaps allowing one exception at creation. A fallacy of equivocation may easily result if that customary meaning were to drift.

stillnotking is correct, the evidence is uncontroversial and these debates well-trodden; blog comments are not the space to familiarize the unfamiliar with the findings of scientists like Libet or Walter. If you take issue with what is being said, I'd invite you to read the original scientific literature (Libet's papers are not beyond comprehension of the layman).

I argued that experiments such as Libet's are not relevant to prescriptive morality. Mr. Strawn appears to be avoiding that issue in favor of getting embroiled in the details of the experimentation. Science cannot prove or disprove causation. Strawn and King will have to live with that, if either is even willing to address the issue.

In short, the argument that causal determinism is true is no substitute for the argument that a coherent account of prescriptive morality stems therefrom. It is a distraction. A red herring.

Suffice to say, morality does not dissipate once one takes a naturalistic view of the universe, nor does accountability. To suggest this is to suggest by corollary that morality is dependent on an unsupportable fantastical hypothesis anyway, so what have you of the soul's free will then? Hardly more...

Mr. Strawn has some of King's gift for the unsupported assertion.

If morality does not dissipate once on takes on a naturalistic view of the universe, then I have reason to expect a coherent account of it within the parameters of that world view. No number of appeals to Libet will achieve that until Libet crosses over into philosophy and makes an argument to that effect--even then the argument is subject to debate.

One you realize that God and the soul do not have the meanings you once took for granted, you then are faced with the more difficult (and more fascinating) task of understanding the whats and whys of morality on the basis of rational and/or scientific investigation.

What meanings for God and the soul do I take for granted, I wonder?

I expected better from Mr. Strawn. He offers no naturalistic account of moral responsibility--but he appears perfectly willing to refer me to other authorities. If I likewise refer my arguments to Kane then where does that leave us?

Just because those who engage you in conversation don't feel the need to rehash arguments from Leibniz to Dostoyevsky, Locke to Strawson, or Spinoza to Searle hardly means they've failed the argument.

Indeed. It does, however, mean that those who engage me in conversation have offered no argument of their own. I think that's significant. I suspect it is the case that naturalists do not understand the arguments they invoke (nor frequently those they attack), though I'm prepared to abandon the suspicion if a professed naturalist/physicalist demonstrates an understanding of the arguments without passing the buck.

Apparently Josh Strawn has removed himself from the pool of persons willing to demonstrate such an understanding.

Given the appearance that Mr. Strawn was prepared to confuse the truth of causal determinism as a metaphysical framework with the partial truth of causal determinism, I have reason to suspect that Strawn was among those who do not understand the arguments.


Apologies to Mr. Strawn for my commission of a typo in the headline. I omitted the "r" but that has since been remedied.

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