Words&Dirt

“It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bells rings, but to me that’s just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I supposed I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real.”

––The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 460-1

“According to my picture, neuroscience and philosophy could be mutually constraining, in a synergistic way. Our philosophical story, or alternative competing stories, could help provide the functional descriptions of systems that neuroscience could seek to investigate, while neuroscience may contribute to philosophy by helping to identify the realizers of those roles specified by the philosophical analysis. It would be particularly encouraging if these realizers lined up in some recognizable fashion with our understanding of functional neuroanatomy and judgments of comparative neurobiology; we can think of these as empirical constraints on our neuroscientific theorizing.

On this picture, each discipline provides a foothold for the other. What would progress look like if we assumed that we are mechanisms of a sort? The work of both science and philosophy would be in elucidating what sort that is. On this view, what would make the difference between freedom and its lack is not whether the explanations of action include an indeterministic element, or whether or not there is some nonphysical force or agent contributing to the behavior. Freedom would depend upon the nature and interrelations of the component mechanisms, the control structures that govern them, and the information to which they are sensitive. Delineating the actual mechanisms in properly functioning humans can help put flesh on philosophical bones and help extend our theories. For instance, it could provide a baseline against which other cases may be measured. Taking into account both functional and neuroscientific considerations might provide insight into the range of situations in which the realizers are compromised. It is not the suggestion of mechanism alone that should undermine moral responsibility, nor mere deviation of the operation of a mechanism from the norm. However, we may be able to gain insight into when responsibility is mitigated by understanding in better detail the particular ways in which component mechanisms could fail to perform their functions in the larger system. This synergistic project between philosophy and neuroscience is no small task, and I do not pretend that it doesn’t have its own philosophical difficulties. However, I think it is the best way forward.”

–– “Can Neuroscience Resolve Issues about Free Will?” by Adina L. Roskies, Moral Psychology, Vol. 4, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, pg. 122-3