While I’ve been waiting and hoping for Dr. Coyne to respond to my questions about speciation theory, I’ve periodically scanned his blog Why Evolution is True to see if the opportunity has arisen for him to answer my questions.
I’m sure that Dr. Coyne is a very busy man, and he just hasn’t had time to respond thus far.
Of course, he had to travel and give a lecture at Appalachian State, take pictures to show off his spiffy new ostrich boots, make several gratuitous attacks on creationism and religion with cheesy cartoons, and time to post lots of cat pictures on his blog.
But no time for me yet.
I’m sure he’ll get around to my questions, eventually. Apparently, he does respond to email.
In the meantime, in one of the sixty-plus blogs posted since my letter, Dr. Coyne published a pop quiz on compatibilism.
I love a good challenge, so I’ve taken his quiz. Perhaps he’ll even grade my answers.
Thank goodness that Dr. Coyne helpfully defined compatibilism as “free will that accepts material determinism.” I must confess that I didn’t know the definition, and the closest dictionary didn’t offer me one.
Because I accept genetics, DNA, and the power of heredity, I can also accept the concept of material determinism, at least up to a point. However, I must reject the proposal that people can’t be held morally responsible for their actions.
In fact, I find that suggestion both appalling and absurd.
Is Ariel Castro, recently arrested in Cleveland for kidnapping three women and holding them captive for a decade, only guilty of committing egregious evil because the law said so? Or, was the act immoral in and of itself? Does everyone who commits a crime have a brain tumor or other serious mental defect?
I admit that I’m confused.
Dr. Coyne once wrote that atheists know how to be good without God.
However, in the context of this particular discussion, it seems that atheists of his ilk can’t even tell basic right from wrong.
The lack of moral authority has created a serious quandary in the mind of Coyne’s fellow atheist, physicist Dr. Lawrence Krauss. When simply asked if incest was wrong, Dr. Krauss couldn’t say.
Really?
Personally, I don’t need to check state law to see if incest is illegal. The idea of having sexual relations with my sister or mother is both extremely disgusting and morally wrong. I do love them, but not in that capacity.
Just for the record, incest is a felony in Georgia, with a minimum of ten years to serve if convicted of such a reprehensible crime.
Seriously, even the characters in Game of Thrones know that incest is about as repugnant as it gets.
Hopefully Dr. Coyne will correct me if I’m mistaken, but he seemed to be saying that people can and should be punished for behavior over which they have no impulse control.
There is only legal responsibility, not moral responsibility.
Presumably, in Dr. Coyne’s world, murder is not immoral unless society says that it is illegal.
No wonder Dr. Coyne professes to be a Marxist Socialist in his political philosophy. He doesn’t trust his fellow man to act on his natural impulse, his moral obligation to help those less fortunate by donating to charity or volunteering their time.
In the past I’ve referred to these absurd philosophical arguments, similar to the one Sam Harris made in his book about free will as “mental masturbation” because spending time thinking about them was a waste of energy and effort.
But speaking of wasting time, please allow me to address the four questions of Dr. Coyne without further ado.
After all, he asked nicely for participants to take his quiz. So, here goes nothing…
- http://fabcare.com/tag/research/ What is the definition of free will? The ability to make a moral choice between right and wrong.
- how to buy Lyrica online What is “free” about it? The fact that I was born with the ability to differentiate between right and wrong and freely choose between them makes this privilege a gift. Does everyone who commits murder have a brain tumor? Of course, the answer is no. Why did Leopold and Loeb kidnap and murder Bobby Franks? Were they both insane? Were they both suffering with brain tumors? No. They wanted to kill simply for the thrill of taking another human life.
- Do other species have free will? Do computers? I don’t know whether other animals have free will because I don’t have the gift of animal telepathy or the knowledge of God. However, I have seen enough evidence of animal altruism that crosses the species boundary to suspect it’s possible animals have free will. No, computers most certainly do not have free will. They are mere objects, not living organisms.
- Why is it important to have free will instead of “agency?” What new knowledge does your concept add beyond reassuring people that we have “free will?” Unfortunately, Dr. Coyne failed to say what he meant by the term agency, so I had to rely on the description provided by Neil Rickert, who calls himself the Heretical Philosopher. I agree with him that humans are not rational agents, and I rather liked his opportunistic agent of choice, given the limitations presented by his definition of free will.
But I’m really glad that you asked the question about what new knowledge adds to my concept of free will: I give you corroborated veridical NDE perceptions, also known as brain-free consciousness.
Probably the best example, most carefully monitored with scientific instruments and thoroughly documented cases was the NDE of Pam Reynolds, which occurred during a procedure called Operation Standstill.
In summary, there is quite strong scientific medical evidence that is still being collected and investigated by scientists, doctors and other medical professionals around the world. Pam’s story might be the best example, but it’s far from the only case presenting supernatural evidence. This evidence strongly suggests that the mind and brain are separable entities.
I talk about all of this and much more, in detail, in my book Counterargument for God.
And thanks for asking.
Hello again Mr. Leonard,
I find myself with naught but about 10ish minutes to kill and felt reading this post might be a good way to do so. And found the need to make a comment – partly because this topic treads on my own field of medicine. (So apologies if it is a bit disjointed, but hopefully you can grok my meaning). You say:
“Is Ariel Castro, recently arrested in Cleveland for kidnapping three women and holding them captive for a decade, only guilty of committing egregious evil because the law said so? Or, was the act immoral in and of itself? Does everyone who commits a crime have a brain tumor or other serious mental defect?”
The better question is – at what point do you say there is a “tumor” or “serious mental defect?” How do you define that? A tumor is simple enough – we can generally image those, sample them, and demonstrate the pressure affects that they produce on parts of the brain.
Serious mental defect is harder. We can pick up the extremes rather easily – florid mania, psychosis, and grave depression are things most people could identify even if they couldn’t class as a psychiatrist would. Psychopathy (formerly known as sociopathy) is a bit trickier. However, I would venture to guess that you agree psychopathy is indeed a mental aberration – one which leads to an inability for the psychopath to feel emotions of sadness, empathy, and sympathy. This is quite well documented and demonstrated. They are not insane – they have no changes in formal thought or executive function. They are often narcissistic. But they do lack the ability to feel empathy or care for other human beings and, depending on how pervasive it is as well as the particular circumstances of their upbringing this manifests in different ways. In some cases they are the greedy corporate leaders using pure avarice to get ahead economically (you can google it to read about the topic – http://bit.ly/12koViG). In others they are the the likes of Ariel Castro or mass murderers, torturers, rapists, etc.
But where is the lesion in these people? Can you detect it empirically? Is there a scan that can show it?
Yes and no. Mostly no. We have some fMRI data that shows differential activation of certain parts of the limbic system and the periaqueductal gray matter but this is very preliminary and rudimentary.
Yet you wouldn’t deny that such individuals have *something* that is just not quite right in their brain which produces this particular psychopathology. So at what point do YOU determine that a “severe mental illness” is the cause for an action or actions vs “free will?”
The reality is that such descriptions and distinctions don’t have any basis except for what the individual/culture/society deems it to be at the time. In other words it is a cultural construct rather than a scientifically valid premise. As the resolution of our imaging technology and our understanding grows so will our ability to further elucidate precisely what it is that is going “wrong” in such cases.
But the point is that there is no such thing as an “absolute” moral right or wrong. That makes no sense in the concept of what we know from science. We must derive ethical codes and actions based on a philosophical structure – the most logical and reasonable of which is based in value ethics.
There were times when slavery was considered perfectly reasonable and in fact required – most notably with the Christian bible as justification and even not so far into our own history. You raise the question of incest – you find it repugnant. Why? Is there some particular absolute and objective reason why? From a gene pool perspective we know it decreases the heterozygote advantage and so would *tend* to be selected against, but there are advantages and plenty of animals engage in it and have little compunction about it. From a value-ethics standpoint in modern society we recognize the ways in which it can and does harm growing children and so we can say that we would be generally against it on that principle. But there are also examples and reasonable arguments for why two consenting adults who are first degree relatives can have sexual relations and not harm each other. All we have left is that we “feel” it is “icky.” Which I would agree with – but from a purely rational standpoint cannot say it is somehow INHERENTLY wrong – which is what Dr Krauss was saying. If I can point to some way in which it causes HARM then I can say THAT INSTANCE of incest is wrong. But in the same way I cannot say that two homosexuals marrying and living happily together causes harm to anyone, I cannot say that incest A PRIORI and NECESSARILY causes harm. And that is the sort of nuance that someone who thinks beyond mere feelings of “ickiness” such as Dr. Krauss and myself explore when such questions are posed to us.
So to try and loop things back, it does not make sense that something can be MORALLY wrong. You seem to agree that a person whose genes and environment produce a tumor or severe mentall illness cannot be held MORALLY culpable for his/her actions. Well, the neural cytoarchitecture and neurotransmitter balance that makes ANYONE somebody is also a product of genes and environment and thus can’t reasonably be held MORALLY culpable either.
Yet we must function in a society with each other and so some sort of ethics and law must come into play such that while we don’t hold such offenders MORALLY culpable we do hold them ETHICALLY and LEGALLY culpable. The easy parts are things like murder. Harder questions need more thought.
But the key is that reframing the concept means we address the problem differently. And when we realize that it is the systems of culture, environment, oppression, privilege, access, etc that form the neurocytoarchitecture of people and that leads to actions, thus discarding the antiquated notion of “free will” we find that the best way to improve society and reduce crime is NOT through punitive and retributive actions at an individual level, but by attempts to restructure society in such manners as to create systems that are more likely to engender and produce conscientious and caring people and thus decrease crime.
In any event, I apologize for the rambling and hope it was at least moderately coherent. I don’t have the time to touch on NDE’s and why they are not evidence of anything except the function of the brain in producing consciousness but you can read the works of Sam Harris and Steven Novella on the topics for further elucidation (in particular their critique of Eben Alexander’s execrable book).