Review of David Hodgson's last book Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will
Hodgson is concerned to show that his views about plausible reasoning and the role of consciousness in belief formation and action production are consistent with what science tells us about the world and in particular about the workings of the human brain. He acknowledges that there are laws of nature that constrain what can exist and what can happen. However, he rejects a deterministic picture according to which laws of nature together with past events and states of affairs precisely determine every outcome. In his opinion, although laws of nature constrain what can happen, they typically leave open a spectrum of possible outcomes, and which outcome results is not something that is always fixed in advance. He claims support for indeterminism of this sort from quantum mechanics. Of course, it is possible that indeterminism of the sort that may be operative at the quantum level does not occur in the human brain and that the production of beliefs and intentional actions is entirely deterministic. However, Hodgson argues that it has not been shown that the operations of the brain cannot be affected by quantum indeterminism. He concludes that current scientific theory is consistent with his picture of human freedom and responsibility. According to Hodgson, his account of how plausible reasoning and consciousness contribute to decision-making supports:
"the view that human beings make decisions as to what to believe and what to do that are not pre-determined by prior conditions and laws of nature, yet are not random but are apposite responses to circumstances facing them; so that these decisions can be both indeterministic and rational"
Such decisions, he claims, are genuine exercises of free will and thus are things for which we can legitimately be held morally accountable. Moreover, he contends that free decisions do not require any special sort of agent-causation distinct from causation by events involving the agent, nor are they uncaused. The resulting view is thus a brand of event-causal libertarianism. According to event-causal libertarians, free actions are indeterministically caused by prior states and events and in particular by mental states and events such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and, in Hodgson's opinion, agents' conscious grasp of feature-rich gestalts.
Hodgson is concerned to show that his views about plausible reasoning and the role of consciousness in belief formation and action production are consistent with what science tells us about the world and in particular about the workings of the human brain. He acknowledges that there are laws of nature that constrain what can exist and what can happen. However, he rejects a deterministic picture according to which laws of nature together with past events and states of affairs precisely determine every outcome. In his opinion, although laws of nature constrain what can happen, they typically leave open a spectrum of possible outcomes, and which outcome results is not something that is always fixed in advance. He claims support for indeterminism of this sort from quantum mechanics. Of course, it is possible that indeterminism of the sort that may be operative at the quantum level does not occur in the human brain and that the production of beliefs and intentional actions is entirely deterministic. However, Hodgson argues that it has not been shown that the operations of the brain cannot be affected by quantum indeterminism. He concludes that current scientific theory is consistent with his picture of human freedom and responsibility. According to Hodgson, his account of how plausible reasoning and consciousness contribute to decision-making supports:
"the view that human beings make decisions as to what to believe and what to do that are not pre-determined by prior conditions and laws of nature, yet are not random but are apposite responses to circumstances facing them; so that these decisions can be both indeterministic and rational"
Such decisions, he claims, are genuine exercises of free will and thus are things for which we can legitimately be held morally accountable. Moreover, he contends that free decisions do not require any special sort of agent-causation distinct from causation by events involving the agent, nor are they uncaused. The resulting view is thus a brand of event-causal libertarianism. According to event-causal libertarians, free actions are indeterministically caused by prior states and events and in particular by mental states and events such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and, in Hodgson's opinion, agents' conscious grasp of feature-rich gestalts.
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