Free Will

The admirable philosophical blog "Rationally Speaking" has taken on the issue of free will.

Jerry Coyne's recent op-ed piece for USA Today was the catalyst. Coyne said that although there is "no way to rewind the tape of our lives to see if we can really make different choices in completely identical circumstances," he considers the claim that we can, very dubious. Further, there is "not much downside to abandoning the notion of free will."

Massimo Pigliucci argues, in "Rationally Speaking," that Coyne is confused. He is working fromn a definition of free will (the possibility of inconsistent choices given identical circumstances) that by his own admission -- see the quote above -- can never be tested. Since (Pigliucci tells us) science is "about empirically testable hypotheses," science can not be about free will in the sense Coyne is discussing. So Coyne isn't entitled to draw upon arguments from neurobiology to try to make his case. That case is metaphysical, not neurological.

Pigliucci's column on the subject has in turn draw abundant comment from readers. One reader, Tom, cites a paper called, "The Pointsman: Maxwell's Demon, Victorian Free Will, and the Boundaries of Science" from the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Pigliucci's reply to his readers is largely concerned with those readers who have accused him of being a "crypto-dualist." The impression amongst much of the consuming public for philosophical arguments is that free will only makes sense if we first believe in a sort of Cartesian ghost in the machine.

To this Pigliucci replies, "that line of argument is somewhat question-begging: we are trying to find out how chunks of matter can behave in such drastically different ways from other chunks of matter, so to point out the obvious (that they are all chunks of matter) hardly helps move the debate forward."

Bodily resurrection

I encountered recently in my internet surfing an expression of the idea that "substance dualism" is dead among neuroscientists and philosophers alike. Nobody with any relevant training and intellectual focus any longer believes that the soul is a thing that could survive and remain conscious separate from the body.

This author continued: "This is indeed a CRUSHING blow to religion in general, specifically Christianity, because the idea of an immortal soul is central to most religions."

Allow me just to respond to that. The disappearance of substance dualism might not be as crushing a blow as he would think, even if it were complete. After all, Christianity incorporates the idea of bodily immortality. The new testament insists that Jesus was no ghost after his death, that he returned in body, and in time ascended to heaven to the right hand of the father still in his earthly clay.

Millions of Christians believe that there will be a general resurrection of the saved. So to say that the soul will be immortal doesn't imply that it is something essentially separate from the body.

Augustine said that no dogma of the church is "more opposed" to the ways of the world than this. In his environment, filled with strict mind/body dualisms, the idea that the soul, having escaped the body, would willingly and gladly put it back on at the end of days was the most shocking aspect of Christianity to the pagans.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12792a.htm

If we 'awake' onjudgment day to find ourselves in a reconstituted body, will we feel continuous with our present selves? Will it matter how much time will have lapsed? Will it feel like waking from a good night's sleep?