Reductive-reductionist distinction and Churchland's freewill

by JLS
for the GC

Grice lists "Mechanism" as a bete noire in "Reply to Richards". Browsing through Fodor's extensive work on the philosophy of mind, it is all about the Churchlands. So this may interest:

Patricia Churchland (b. 1943). Neurophilosopher. From http://www.naturalism.org/roundup.htm. She writes:

"As neuroscience uncovers [the]…mechanisms regulating choices and social behaviour, we cannot help but wonder whether anyone truly chooses anything ... As a result, profound questions about responsibility are inescapable, not just regarding criminal justice, but in the day-to-day business of life. Given that, I suggest that free will, as traditionally understood, needs modification."

Churchland’s proposal is to abandon the fruitless and illogical quest to find an uncaused causer, and instead take self-control as the basis for responsibility. This might give us, as she puts it, “a working concept of responsibility” that helps to maintain an orderly society. Healthy adults have neurologically-based capacities for self-control that allow them to be responsive to social norms, and it’s this that justifies holding them responsible. They exhibit “the neurobiological profile of a brain that has normal levels of control.” If this profile is significantly compromised by brain damage or disease, then we’re not dealing with a morally responsible agent. Note that there’s no causally free self that exerts control or is “in charge” in this picture – the person’s will isn’t free to choose itself. In fact, the will is reliably subject to control by social norms via reliable mechanisms in the brain."