Categories or Degrees of Existence (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Sunday, March 07, 2010, 22:35 (5374 days ago) @ David Turell

David has referred us to an article by Anthony Cashmore, Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, who argues that:
 
"a belief in free will is akin to religious beliefs, since neither complies with the laws of the physical world. One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws."-And as far as he's concerned, for the rest of the article that's it! He assumes that because he considers physical explanation to be one of the basic premises of his subject, there can't be any other explanation. Presumably, then, there can be no such person as a religious or agnostic biologist or biochemist. I see no difference between this level of argumentation and the claim that because no answer has yet been found to the mystery of consciousness, we must all have souls.-Professor Cashmore's reflections on the justice system remind me of discussions in my schooldays about the degree to which humans can be held responsible for their actions. We argued then, as we argue now, that our characters are formed by heredity, environment and chance events, and even if we have free will, it's impossible to measure the extent to which our decisions are influenced by these factors, which are all outside our control. Long before the advances of neuroscience, I remember arguing that the purpose of the justice system should not be retribution but the protection of society (I agree with his opposition to the death penalty). The question of whether consciousness ... and by extension the will ... is or is not engendered by the "bag of chemicals" makes little difference to this overall argument, while Cashmore's assumption that science will eventually confirm his prejudgement tells us quite a lot about him and absolutely nothing about these unexplained phenomena.