10.17.08
Kant, naturalism, and the evolution of freedom
For once I find myself in partial agreement with Larry Arnhart defending himself from a critic: The Emergent Freedom of the Mind in the Brain: A Reply to Stephen Craig Dilley, this despite the fact that I adopt a stance not dissimilar to the demand for a clarification theory on the ‘causality/morality’ question. The standard Kantian challenge appears, as Arnhart well knows. This challenge puts the naturalist’s back to the wall. But the reverse is true, perhaps, and the Kantian proposes what at first seems preposterous. But the Kantian approach is robust, and as it happens, armed with the data of the eonic effect, we can produce an actual evolutionary example of the evolution of freedom. This is a huge subject, all we can do is agree with Arnhart that we don’t have the facts and marshall the two perspectives, naturalistic, (naturalistic) Kantian, and wait on some data.
I will quote the first paragraph, and then refer to subsequent paragraphs by number:
In the 2008 issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Stephen Craig Dilley–a philosopher at St. Edward’s University–has an article on “Enlightenment Science and Globalization.” He attacks my Darwinian conservatism because of its “Enlightenment claim that the laws of nature and material causes are sufficient to produce ‘emergent’ human minds capable of the kind of free will consistent with moral responsibility.” The problem, he warns, is that this “implies determinism of the mind and the disintegration of morality.”
I have not read this article, which presumably advances some sort of ‘religious’ traditionalist critique of Darwinized ethical evolution. It seems vague: is this a critique of natural selection?
What is the Enlightenment? To identify the Enlightenment with a particular view, here Newtonian deterministic physics, is a frequenct mistake, but in reality the Enlightenment is a complex constellation of many enlightenments, among them the German Enlightenment with its tremendous surge in philosophy. Thus it is not necessary to appeal to anti-modernist traditionalism to answer to the issue of naturalistic ethical theories. Kant, a premier Enlightenment figure, will do quite nicely.
Paragraph 2: the claims for emergent complexity as an evolutionary hypothesis is potentially a Darwin breaker, and might invoke ‘naturalistic’ laws we are unaware of. But OK, wave of the hand, emergent systems are a good start, but the claims for them are a bit vague. Invoking this concept isn’t really an explanation, yet. We might aspire to an emergentist version of Kantian ethical evolution (???)
I wouldn’t use the term ‘soul’ in this context, rather, the ‘human totality’. What do we mean by nature? Here a Kantian framework might remind us that what we think ‘spiritual’ is merely the noumenal aspect of a phenomenal appearance. That’s not the boundary of ‘nature’, necessarily. The human totality is part phenomenon, with a noumenal aspect. Since the latter appears to invoke something just at the threshold beyond of space and time (transcendental unity of apperception) we have to decide what we really mean by nature, and not get railroaded by religionists into supernaturalism. Does ‘nature’ stop at the limits of space and time? Beware how we answer since this will also poke our noses into quantum mechanical issues where a like problem is evident.
Paragraph 2, and 3 Arnhart is absolutely right. We don’t know here, and so all we can do is poise the naturalistic against a Kantian (naturalistic?) framework.
Kant is complicated enough, to ask how something could have evolved into the ethical creature proposed by Kant is going to get rough. However, Kant’s full system offers ample hints at how to proceed.
But an immediate question arises, what does it mean for a Kantian to say that some creature evolved from no free will to free will? That’s a tough one. In fact, there are any number of solutions, but what are the facts.
Here again the eonic effect suggests an answer: ‘free will’ has a carrier function in the degree of ‘self-consciousness’ which mimics that act of will. In general we have to resolve the issue of will, and how it evolved.
Paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7
The Kantian approach isn’t the same as a traditionalist one, and answers the ‘uncaused cause’ issue with the framework of transcendental idealism. We don’t need to be cosmological here. All we need in a difference of levels where the ‘uncaused cause’ appears in the act of decision.
Paragraphs to the end, and comments
I disagree with Arnhart, of course. Causality and freedom are hard opposites. And furthermore the Kantian system can have its cake and eat it too: Kant is not so simplistic as here described. He has complex distinctions between transcendental and practical freedom, and between intelligible and empirical character. These distinctions, some of the most difficult areas of Kantian philosophy, nonethelss show ample potential for an evolutionary theory here, maybe, if we can resolve the phenomenal/noumenal issue in evolutionary terms. The Eonic Effect does just that in another context! In general, we can make us of both cases, freedom and causality as opposites, or freedom and causality in degrees of overlap. Kant’s actual system does this, and much more.
Arnhart’s remarks are more Kantain than he realizes, Kant has to wrestle with all these issues. The Kantian system isn’t about some miraculous version of the ‘uncaused cause’, but a complex discourse where that idea stands in the background to discussions of empirical and intelligible character.
We haven’t resolved these question, and can only hold down the fort in a general research program here.
I would say that the eonic effect, and I will do another post on this, shows an actual example of a macroevolutionary factor in the ‘evolution of freedom’ in a special sense referring to the evolution of civilization. We can see how the ‘uncaused cause’ is expressed in nature itself.
That’s a big plus for the Kantian perspective.
Update: the example suggested is described in next post:
http://darwiniana.com/2008/10/17/evolving-freedom-the-discrete-freedom-sequence/