Philip Clayton - Whats with Free Will?: Ethics and Religion after Neuroscience

A s Mark Ard points out in his contribution to this volume, Albert Camus focused on suicide in his novel, The Myth of Sisyphus. He contended that this is our fundamental question every day: whether to commit suicide. He even purportedly said that every morning we have the choice of committing suicide or having a cup of coffee. It is evident from their contributions to this excellent collection that the authors would prefer coffee, even if causal or theological determinism were to hold. Appropriately enough, Jim Walters (a co-editor along with Philip Clayton) points out that the book project was conceived when the co-editors met for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, Walters driving and Clayton riding his bike.

The papers in this anthology are all rigorous, thoughtful, well-informed by the relevant scientific, philosophical, and theological literature, and bold. No decaf here! The authors take on some of the most fascinating and pressing problems related to free will, science, and religion. What does contemporary physics show about free will? One of the most important intellectual contributions of the authors in this book is to refute the common and oft-repeated view that (somehoweither via determinism or indeterminism) science shows that there is no free will. This view is associated with Sam Harris, as well as neuroscientists such as Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner. Various authors argue persuasively that we should reject this superficial interpretation of contemporary brain science.

Indeed, some offer important and original explanations of free will, even in a causally deterministic world. The most attractive framework of this sort is presented by Philip Clayton, and is referred to as nonreductive physicalism. This is a kind of compatibilism about causal determinism and human freedom (and, more broadly, meaning in life). On this view, although physical causation is present and works its way through the mind and our deliberation, the scientific level of analysis is not the only or hegemonic level. Just as materialism does not imply the ontological reduction or elimination of mental states from our conceptualization of the phenomena, so physical determinism does not imply the lack of freedom and meaning in life. Freedom emerges from complex physical systems. I highly commend the arguments against reductionism found in this book, and the compelling and attractive non-reductionist models of freedom.

How can we have the freedom required to love our neighbor and to accept Gods grace in a deterministic world? How can we have meaning in life and be morally accountable for our behavior? Of course, these are ancient concerns with respect to theological determinism, and modern puzzles for causal determinism. The authors develop strategies for addressing these questions within frameworks informed by contemporary science, from physics to psychiatry.

As with any good book, it addresses some important questions, and thereby reveals and clarifies others, thus inviting and opening the door for further explorations. Perhaps coincidentally (or should we say, fatefully?), one of the co-editors, Philip Clayton, has invited me to meet him at a local Starbucks soon.... Hell be riding his bike.

John Martin Fischer