At least Thrasymachus https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/ made no pretense of being morally superior. 'Might makes right,' he told Socrates and left it at that. Preachy demagogues, aka liberal activists, betray a guilty conscience.  Just out with it: you intend to impose your axiology upon your traditionalist enemies, whether or not it can be squared with Reason, Natural Law and the Common Good.  Spare us the soteriological rhetoric- you sanction murder in the form of abortion and euthanasia.   

Reductionism and Scattered Objects

Reductionism and Scattered Objects

Heraclitus infamously said that “you cannot step into the same river twice.”  Nor, on his view, does anything else persist: exist at more than one time. New water is constantly entering a river's bed while that which is there departs.  Nothing else has parts that remain together for long.  Mereological scattering is the norm.  If a thing simply 'reduces' to its material parts, as Heraclitus supposed, then it cannot be identical at any time to that which subsequently bears its name.  For, if it just is the matter of which it is made at a given time, then at any other time, it could not be made of anything else: if a river is identical to all of that (someone pointing) water in a certain river bed, then any other quantity of water in that bed, say, less of it (say, due to evaporation or drainage) cannot be said river- a quantity cannot be diminished or increased without ceasing to be.  Reductionists, thus, must find the belief in diachronic identity problematic, hoping, I shall assume, to avoid Heraclitus’ view at all intellectual costs.  But that is not my main point here.  Rather I want to use this problem to show their position’s untenability.  Reductionism, I shall argue, must collapse into one of its rivals: Formalism or Eliminativism. 

The latter position simply denies the existence of composite beings, positing only simples, partless entities.  The former takes them to be more than the sum of their parts, the aggregate of which is unified by a Form in which it either “inheres” or “participates” (depending on which version of the theory one favors).  Why shouldn’t Reductionism be considered the sensible middle ground between these 2 extremes, one (putatively) profligate the other cramped?  To see why, let us press a putative Reductionist regarding his belief in rivers.  'Your rivers,' we could say, are short-lived, persisting, if they persist at all, for only a miniscule fraction of the time that rivers are commonly thought to last.  Such “soap bubble” like entities hardly seem like rivers at all.  You might just as well abandon your belief in them.  (As Cratylus, one of Heraclitus’ followers apparently did, maintaining that you cannot step into the same river (even) once.)  Part of what it means to be a river is long-lastingness; the ability to persist over considerable periods of time.  If you must treat them as ephemeral, then there is no reason for you resist becoming an Eliminativist, admirable for his rigor.' 

Now suppose he resists this entreaty, clinging, instead, to his belief in rivers; we might then make the following proposal.  Why not, then, treat rivers as like decks of cards or boxes of cookies- 'scatterable'  objects: entities that do not require their parts remaining connected in order to exist?  In that way, the moving of some of a river’s water out of its bed would not destroy it, a la the dealing of a deck of cards or the distributing of a box of cookies?  Heraclitus’ unorthodox dictum would be voided then: as long as one is able to step into some of the river’s water- no matter its location- one can step (again) into that river  (assuming that to step on/into a scatterable object requires only stepping on/into one of its parts).  That is to say, if one is willing to drop (what might be called) the “fixed location” requirement on being a river, one, as a Reductionist, can believe in persisting rivers rather than ephemeral ones. 

This possibility entails, however, a dilemma for the Reductionist.  If she balks at treating rivers as scatterable, then she shows the concern for unity associated with Formalism: why would one worry about the scattering of the rivers parts unless one thought that something important would thereby be lost?  And what else could that be but their unity or oneness?  But then is one not at least tacitly acknowledging that there is more to the river than those parts, viz., that which unifies them or their Form?  On the other hand, should the Reductionist go along with the scatterability proposal, he is again exposing himself to the charge that his view is really only Eliminativism with a conceptual twist.  Why should we take ‘deck of cards’ like rivers any more seriously than ‘soap bubble’ like ones?  Accepting the proposal is tantamount to denying the existence of rivers.  Why go on believing in them should they turn out (philosophically) to be so much different than commonly thought?

It seems, then, that, when challenged in the above manner, Reductionism collapses into one of it rivals.  What explanation is available to the Reductionist for his reluctance to accept the above proposal that does not entail an implicit commitment to substantial Forms?  How can he embrace scatterability without becoming an Eliminativist?  

Physicalism and Self-Control

According to Physicalism, one’s choices are the effects of proximate neural 'firings', themselves the outcomes of processes that began long before one’s birth.  Just like the rest of one's mental life, there is supposed to be a scientific explanation of their occurrence.  It doesn’t take much ratiocination to realize that if such an etiology is true, a man’s choices are not unavoidable, nor even brought about by him at all. Once the distant events of which they are merely the approximate effects occurred, they were inevitable. Moreover, one doesn’t really make one’s choices. They are made for one by said neural events in the guise of beliefs and desires, the motives to which they are ascribed by what physically deprecate as 'folk psychology.' That is to say, his choices are not dependent upon he himself as unmoved mover, but neuronal activity of which he is only the subject; along for the ride, so to speak. He is like a harried executive who not only has his subordinates make recommendations; but, abdicating his authority, allows their implementation sans vetting.

Alvin Goldman, defending Physicalism in A Theory of Human Action, says that beliefs and desires as motives don’t “compete” with an agent. True enough, since, if that philosophy is true, they have no empowered agent to compete with in the first place!  He has been reduced to being a spectator of his own volitional doings.

Free will demands an agent who chooses on the basis of his beliefs and desires, rather than having them doing all the work. Further, he must be capable of nullifying even the strongest urges.  Our dignity as creatures depends upon such power.  If at the end of deliberation, one is merely left to seek the object of the strongest conatus neurally asserting itself, we are utterly devoid of respectability.

Compatibilism and Self-Control

Compatibilistic control- deterministic, event causation of one’s choices by one’s beliefs and desires- is obviously greater than the volitional power accorded to an agent by Indeterminism, which is nil.  The latter simply cannot succeed in meeting the Mind objection: the outcome of deliberation, given only a probabilistic connection between it and preceding events, seems lucky or accidental. (http://www.informationphilosopher.com/afterwords/glossary/#Mind_Argument)  Yes, evaluation of  one's propositional attitudes is necessary to foster (the making of a) choice, but it must prove indecisive or there would be a deterministic connection between it and the latter.  Thus, there is nothing about a person that is responsible for how he ends up volitionally; there is no explanation for it at all- it just happens, beneficently or detrimentally depending upon his interests and concerns.   At least with Compatibilism we can cite beliefs and desires belonging to a person as the proximate causes of his choices.  He must be acknowledged as the experiential subject of what brings about his volitions; along for the ride, so to speak, if nothing else.  Indeterminism, on the other hand, not only eliminates the executive element in decision making, found only in Agent Causalism, but renders us the victims of luck or chance as we go about trying to do the right thing by ourselves and others.  Probabilistic relations between mental events could not amount to responsibility entailing causation.  Choices are rendered random, hence, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy, if deliberation proceeds in such a manner.  Bottom line: if I can’t be an Aristotelian hand mover, I’d rather be a clockwork orange than a roulette wheel.

Reasons and Choices

We are not responsible for being responsible.  God bestowed free will upon us, in creating Man in his own image and likeness.  We are only praiseworthy or blameworthy for the products of (exercises of) that faculty, viz., choices.  No particular choice emanates of necessity from the will, or any other source.  As Aristotle intimates in Metaphysics Bk.6 Ch.4, our 'motive power' is the source of the undeniable contingency in Nature: not everything can happen of necessity unless there is no efficient causation at all, an absurdity.  A choice will have been determined by the will itself, in opposition to a real alternative, another choice that could have been made.  These alternatives are made possible by the will's two innate desires: for happiness and justice.  This Aristotelian cum Anselmian understanding of volition refutes the following skeptical argument:

1. A free choice would be supported by reasons.
2. The reasons for a free choice would have been themselves freely chosen prior to that choice having been made.
3. Choices of a finite being could not satisfy 1 and 2: the atempt to justify them either terminates irrationally (~1) or with "impositions," that is, innate desires or the remnants of one's upbringing (~2).
4. Finite beings cannot make free choices.

For premise 2, it shows, is false: should one exercise the above power on a state of mind consisting of innate desires one would yet choose freely, since they would not be the resulting choice's efficient cause, only its material principle.  Further, the duality of this conatus provides genuine axiological alternatives to prioritize in moral deliberation: two different types of value, both available on demand, one to reject, the other to select.  The will itself determines itself to be such willingness by reducing either the desire for happiness or justice- volitional potential- to act as choice.  Further, a choice justifying reason is part of the very choice it justifies, freely chosen as its reason by the very same act of will by which it is made. If I freely choose the object of a certain desire in preference to that of a 'competitor', I am ipso facto attaching greater significance to it- choosing it as the more compelling concern or value.  Along the same lines, Bl. Duns Scotus sees our freedom appearing most clearly in the way in which we shift our attention from one concern to another.  (Ditto, much more recently, E.J. Lowe, Personal Agency, p. 189.)

The human will is a self-moving, rational power, capable of bringing about opposite effects as the terminus of deliberation: more than one choice, supported by reasons supplied by the intellect.  Those beliefs and desires it also chooses, validating them as it decides upon the various courses of action rationalized, even if not justified, thereby.  Thus, free will advocates may to respond to Galen Strawson's charge that 'if the nature of the agent-self is a matter of grace, it cannot be a causa sui in such a way as to be ultimately responsible.'  (Oxford Handbook of Free Will, p. 457.  See also: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-galen-strawson/)  The basic idea is that while the above power does not originate with us, we initiate its exercises, commencing novel, morally significant causal sequences.  God bestows freedom upon us; we then use it to create good or evil contingencies.  Our desires for happiness and justice are divinely instilled, but their development as vices and virtues is wholly up us.  Thus, the human person is a causa sui in the sense that he has been given the ability to, as Gregory of Nyssa put it, become, morally speaking, 'the parent of himself.'  (De vita Moysis, II, 2-3; cited in Veritatis splendor, no. 71)  We should not think less of such a wonderful attribute for it being a gift.