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Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will
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Product Description
If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will, moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be in jeopardy. Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown here defend a non-reductive version of physicalism whereby humans are (sometimes) the authors of their own thoughts and actions.
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? brings together insights from both philosophy and the cognitive neurosciences to defeat neurobiological reductionism. One resource is a "post-Cartesian" account of mind as essentially embodied and constituted by action-feedback-evaluation-action loops in the environment, and "scaffolded" by cultural resources. Another is a non-mysterious account of downward (mental) causation explained in terms of a complex, higher-order system exercising constraints on lower-level causal processes. These resources are intrinsically related: the embeddedness of brain events in action-feedback loops is the key to their mentality, and those broader systems have causal effects on the brain itself.
With these resources Murphy and Brown take on two problems in philosophy of mind: a response to the charges that physicalists cannot account for the meaningfulness of language nor the causal efficacy of the mental qua mental. Solutions to these problems are a prerequisite to addressing the central problem of the book: how can biological organisms be free and morally responsible? The authors argue that the free-will problem is badly framed if it is put in terms of neurobiological determinism; the real issue is neurobiological reductionism. If it is indeed possible to make sense of the notion of downward causation, then the relevant question is whether humans exert downward causation over some of their own parts and processes. If all organisms do this to some extent, what needs to be added to this animalian flexibility to constitute free and responsible action? The keys are sophisticated language and hierarchically ordered cognitive processes allowing (mature) humans to evaluate their own actions, motives, goals, and rational and moral principles.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1055117 in Books
- Published on: 2007-08-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 236 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A nicely written, engaging book that makes a genuine contribution to the growing literature on mental causation."--Science
"A nicely written, engaging book that makes a genuine contribution to the growing literature on mental causation."--Science
"Murphy and Brown's arguments are complex, sophisticated and witty, drawing from theology, moral philosophy, neurobiology, and computational theory."--Brain
About the Author
Nancey Murphey is at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena California. Warren S. Brown is at Fuller Graduate School.
Customer Reviews
Difficult but rewarding read
"Did My Neurons Make Me Do It" isn't an easy read, especially if you're not conversant in philosophical terminology and concepts. That said, if you are interested in the question of free will in the age of neurobiology then the book is well worth the effort. Murphy and Brown make a compelling argument that, even when embracing a physicalist view of the brain, i.e., no non-material mind, a degree of downward causation by a moral actor is possible by way of higher order processes that emerge in the brain providing a framework for chemical brain events, and which engage the outer environment in action-feedback-evaluation-action loops. Highly recommended.
A Brilliant Resource
As part of a solid and well thought through academic review, Murphy and Brown suggest that popularizations of recent developments in neuroscience and philosophy have begun to stimulate public discussion. However, they suggest that many popularizers are not only physicalists but also ardent reductionists. Essentially the main theme of their argument seems to be to counter the position that all physicalist accounts of the human condition need necessarily be reductive.
On this basis, they move toward the development of a theory that avoids the hangovers of Cartesian materialism and causal reductionism by viewing the human condition as part of a self directed, self causing system. They achieve this by drawing on the seminal work of leading thinkers likes Juarrero, Deacon, Ellis, Sperry, Van Gulick, Dennett and Damasio (to name but a few). Of central importance to Murphy and Brown's argument appear to be concepts like emergence, supervenience and downward causation, all of which enable the possibility of higher and lower ordering principles, interlevel causality and dynamic processes.
Even if you don't agree with the final conclusions or ultimate positions of these authors; the book is a brilliant resource for anyone wanting to understand more about current scientific and philisophical debates underpinning contemporary neuroscientific research. Highly recommended!
Pure drivel.
Murphy and Brown's central thesis is that free will exists because reductionism is invalid for complex systems due to the imposition of higher-order system rules upon the base elements of the system. An example they provide is that DNA sequences do not specify themselves, but rather must take into account the interplay of higher levels of organization, such as the environment in which the organism finds itself, which determines the fitness of the organism, which therefore, in a manner of speaking, is "downward causation" (meaning, the environment is actually specifying the DNA sequence, so information/control is moving from the higher level to lower level, not vice versa as one might intuit).
They use arguments such as this as "evidence" that atoms are not in control of everything, but rather systems and their associated rules must be accounted for as well.
I don't think anyone would dispute that in a complex system there are multiple levels of organization, and that the interplay of systems at different levels all have a bearing on the final outcome. However, the authors seem to think that the existence of systems with emergent properties somehow refutes the reductionist assumption that the laws of physics are all that is necessary (in theory -- of course we cannot do such simulations) to completely understand a complex system.
How the authors make the jump from multiple heirarchies within a complex system, and their assertion that this shows "first principles" to be inadequate for understanding these systems, to the existence of fee will is somewhat of a mystery. Presumably they are conflating downward causation (which certainly exists is some forms, depending on how you define it) with something of an actual escape from determinism and the basic laws of physics (that is not the way they put it -- they wisely avoid actually stating their argument in those terms, but that is what it amounts to).
Their "logic" is patronizing in places, especially where they admonish the reader not to dismiss their arguments due to being stuck in the rut of a reductionist worldview -- essentially arguing that if you do not agree with them, you just can't think outside the box.
I think the authors have actually convinced themselves of the validity of their arguments through questionable logic, red herring or straw man arguments, and just general boulderdash. This book is a complete waste of time.
