Dawkins and Determinism

At CADRE Comments you'll find a fascinating riff by Richard Dawkins on free will and determinism. Here's the nub of it: Dawkins hasn't thought deeply on the topic, doesn't write about, hasn't worried it through. He believes in free will at least to this extent:

"What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, 'Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules.'"

Which is an entirely sensible position to take.

But from there, in response to a clarifying question, he goes a curious direction:

Question: "But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?"

Dawkins: "I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with, otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion--it is an entirely separate issue."

For a man who claims to have gotten religion's number, who claims to have scientifically and logically disproved it, this is astonishingly uninformed. The free will issue cannot help but be relevant to science and religion. Dawkins's own view of nature and science is highly reductionist--witness The Selfish Gene. Reductionistic science leads inexorably toward a conclusion that free will is an illusion. The question BK opened this blog entry with is entirely fitting for a reductionist: "Do you really think that, or did you have to say that?"

The free will problem, for reductionists, is similar to the questions of ethics and of rationality. It's a problem of explanation. It's not that atheistic reductionists cannot hold moral principles or be good persons; it's not that they cannot employ reasoning; and it's not that they can't act according to principles of free will. The existence of moral principles, human reasoning, and free decision-making are basic experiences for all of us. They are data, not conclusions of arguments. (The proper form and content of moral principles may be subject to argument, but the fact that there are moral principles is universally experienced.) The problem for reductionists is to explain how these things fit into a worldview where blind, unthinking, uncaring law and chance--which certainly seem contrary to free will, reasoning, and morality--govern all.

Some atheists think they've solved those problems. No writing, speaking, publishing atheist, however, should brush them aside as irrelevant. In fact it's hard to see how any thinking atheist could brush them aside as irrelevant. (It's hard to understand lots of things about Dawkins [see also here].)

Posted: Thu - September 6, 2007 at 04:55 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Dawkins and Determinism

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson