Re: Whitehead on Deduction

[Ted Winslow <winslow@xxxxxxxx>]

John Legge wrote:

>
> I am not aware of any
> non-crank who disputes the genetic basis of biological evolution.

It depends what you mean by "genetic".  If you mean the notion which, as in
E.O. Wilson, attempts to reduce explanation of biological evolution not
merely to a genetic basis but to that basis interpreted in terms of
scientific materialism, then you can find a non-crank (by which I take it
you mean "reasonable") disputation of it in Whitehead's little book The
Function of Reason.

Among other things, you can't obtain a logically coherent conception of
freedom if you make this your starting point.  Wilson, in On Human Nature,
defines free behaviour as unpredictable behaviour.  It is assumed that no
behaviour is free in the sense of self-determined.  The process of
determination, however, can be more or less complex.  Complete knowledge (as
would be possessed by Laplace's demon) would lead to perfect and complete
prediction.  Our actual knowledge, however, is more or less incomplete
depending on the complexity of the process of determination involved, e.g.
more complete in the case of a coin toss that in the case of the flight of a
bee and more complete in the case of the bee's flight than in the case of
human behaviour.  This he claims is the "fundamental sense" in which we are
free.

"the paradox of determinism and free will appears not only resolvable in
theory, it might even be reduced in status to an empirical problem in
physics and biology.  We note that even if the basis of mind is truly
mechanistic, it is very unlikely that any intelligence could exist with the
power to predict the precise actions of an individual human being, as we
might to a limited degree chart the path of a coin or the flight of a
honeybee.  The mind is too complicated a structure, and human social
relations affect its decisions in too intricate and variable a manner, for
the detailed histories of individual human beings to be predicted in advance
by the individuals affected or by other human beings.  You and I are
consequently free and responsible persons in this fundamental sense." On
Human Nature p. 77

Apart from the fact that this implicitly assumes that the observer's beliefs
stand outside the process that determines everything else, it rules out any
role for choice in the determination of behaviour and any possibility of
influencing what will occur.  It would, for instance, not be possible, on
the basis of such knowledge, to win the lottery since part of what you would
know would be who who was going to win.

Yet throughout the book Wilson assumes that we do have choices and that his
kind of biology will provide the knowledge (including the ethical knowledge)
on which rationally to base choice and control destiny.  In Chap. 1 (p. 7),
for example, he says:

"At some time in the future we will have to decide how human we wish to
remain - in this ultimate, biological sense - because we must consciously
choose among the alternative emotional guides we have inherited.  To chart
our destiny means that we must shift from automatic control based on our
biological properties to precise steering based on biological knowledge."

In the next paragraph he says:

"Although human progress can be achieved by intuition and force of will,
only hard-won empirical knowledge of our biological nature will allow us to
make optimum choices among the competing criteria of progress."

The last sentence involves the additional inconsistency of implicitly
assuming there are objective criteria on which to base "optimal choices".
One of the premises of scientific materialism is that such criteria do not
exist.

"'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to
the scratching of my finger.  'Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose
my total ruin to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person
totally unknown to me ... Reason is and ought to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.'"

Best,

Ted
--
Ted Winslow                            E-MAIL: WINSLOW@xxxxxxxx
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