WELCOME BACK, FREEDOM

Freedom is the first blessing of our nature.

Neuromania and Darwinitis leave little or no room for human freedom. If we are identical with our brains, and our brains are evolved organs, how can we do anything other than act out a preordained evolutionary script? How can we “do” at all? Aren't our actions just happenings? The philosophical doctrine of determinism, that our actions are determined by forces outside ourselves and so are not initiated by us at all, starts to look like a scientifically respectable theory. After all, hasn't it been shown that we are subject to all sorts of influences of which we are unaware: that the reasons we give for doing things sometimes have little relation to the reasons why they happen? And even if we accept the difference between ourselves and our brains, is it not the brain that is calling the shots?

The obvious objection that if we travel like a pinball through the world, shaped by stray influences, and if the reasons we gave for our actions were always incorrect, and our brains were always calling the shots, then ordinary, shared, communal life would be impossible does not cut any ice with many biologizers.