Mervin,
The questions you asked in your post hit two of the very deepest
questions at the intersection of physics, biology, philosophy, and
religion.
> How does an EP explaining group selection origins for
> morality OR others using selfish-gene-selection "morality") escape
> Lewis' old criticism of materialism in which any so-called "evil" act
> could no more be criticized as such than we could admonish a rock for
> having rolled down a hill? Explaining how morality came to be (even
> successfully) is not the same as constructing an "ought to" for myself
> for the future, is it?
Most of the people who do evolutionary psychology of morality wrestle
with this question. Some philosophers who don't particularly care about
EP, but do care about the question of moral authority, also wrestle with
it.
While people who write about EP bring up the issue of moral relativism
in the context of evolution, it's pretty clear from their writings (and
many of the authors realize this, though not all of them) that the
_underlying_ issue is philosophical naturalism.
Philosophical naturalism denies the existence of the supernatural. Many
worldviews appeal to the supernatural as the source for objective moral
authority. Under philosophical naturalism, is moral relativism (or even
moral nihilism) an inevitable consequence, or is there another source or
authority which can provide at least some form of objective morality?
Philosophical naturalists split on this issue. Some in EP say that
relativism is a necessary consequence. (This is how I read R. Alexander,
S. Blackmore, L. Cronk, H. Cronin, R. Dawkins, and E.O. Wilson.) Others
in EP (e.g. A. O'Hear, J.R. Richards) try to see how much objective
authority for morality they can get out of Nature, Community, and Reason
(without invoking the supernatural).
I know there are a fair number of moral philosophers who don't address
EP who also tackle this question of moral authority under philosophical
naturalism, but I'm not familiar with that field of professional
philosophy so I can't give you any names or summaries of works. (I can
give you this one name: John Hare is a Christian moral philosopher who
studies and critiques work in this field. You could search out his work
as an entry into the field.)
> Lastly, how do you maintain methodological naturalism while still
> remaining committed to free-will?
METHODOLOGICAL naturalism isn't a problem. A scientist can just go
about investigating the brain, employing methodological naturalism as a
tool to figure out what those neurons _CAN_ do (can they store memories?
can they process information? can they do pattern regonition?), while
remaining agnostic on whether or not we will _ultimately_ be able to
explain free will purely in terms of neural activity.
PHILOSOPHICAL naturalism does pose a problem. Is free will possible
under philosophical naturalism? Again, philosophical naturalists are
split.
It is my impression that neuroscientists (theistic, atheistic, and
otherwise) would tend to say that the deepest problem confronting our
study of the brain is not "free will" per se, but rather consciousness.
We're beginning to understand how networks of neurons can convert
external stimuli into encoded electrical signals, how they can process
those signals, how they can store and retrive memories, how they can
perform comparisons between input stimuli and memories, how they can
control the body and receive feedback from the body, etc.
"Making choices," at its simplest level, involves taking some input,
comparing that input to a template of possibilities, and "selecting" an
outcome. Really simple computer programs and electronic circuits can do
that sort of choice-making.
"Making FREE choices" involves all of that, PLUS several other things,
including -- importantly -- consciousness and self-consciousness.
Most neuroscientists I know say that the biggest question confronting
the field is: Is it possible that we can understand consciousness
scientifically as a natural consequence of what the brain does.
I've met a fair number of amateur and professional philosophers who are
thoroughly convinced that there is simply no way, under philosophical
naturalism, to explain consciousness in terms the laws of nature acting
on matter -- no matter how complicated those neural circuits are.
Most of the neuroscientists I know (theist and atheistic alike) are a
bit more optimistic, or at least agnostic, on the issue. Some
neuroscientists even claim that we're starting to make progress on the
question of consciousness, although we've got a long way to go.
You can probably find lots on the web about "neuroscience and
consciousness," but if you go searching -- if you want to filter out the
vast amounts of wildly speculative articles by amateurs and concentrate on
the merely very speculative writings of actual scholars in the field -- I
recommend sticking to "google scholar" searches an concentrating on
authors who are professional neuroscientists or philosophers.
Loren Haarsma
Received on Wed May 3 21:59:32 2006
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