Determinism and inevitability

In Freedom Evolves, Dan Dennett embarks on his second book-length attempt to lay to rest the deep metaphysical concerns that many philosophers have expressed about the possibility of human freedom.One of his main objectives in the earlier chapters of the book is to make determinism appear less threatening to our prospects for free agency than it has sometimes seemed, by attempting to show that a deterministic universe would not necessarily be a universe of which it could truly be said that everything that occurs in it is inevitable. In this paper, I want to consider Dennett’s striking argument for this conclusion in some detail. I shall begin by suggesting that on its most natural interpretation, the argument is vulnerable to a serious objection. I shall then develop a second interpretation which is more promising than the first, but will argue that without placing more weight on etymological considerations than they can really bear, it can deliver, at best, only a significantly qualified version of the conclusion that Dennett is seeking. However, although I shall be arguing that his central argument fails, it is also part of the purpose of this paper to build on what I regard as some rather insightful and suggestive material which is developed by Dennett in the course of elaborating his views. His own development of these ideas is hampered, so I shall argue, by a framework for thinking about possibility that is too crude to accommodate the immense subtlety and complexity which is exhibited by the workings of the modal verb ‘can’ and its past tense form, ‘could’; and also, I believe, by the mistaken conviction, on Dennett’s part, that any naturalistically respectable solution to the problem of free will would have to be of a compatibilist stripe. I shall attempt, in the second half of the paper, to explain what seems to me to be wrong with the framework, and to make some points about the functioning of ‘can’ and ‘could’, which I believe any adequate replacement for Dennett’s framework must respect. Ironically, though, I shall argue that it is the rejection of Dennett’s own framework which holds the key to understanding how to defend the spirit (if not the letter) of his thoughts about the invulnerability of our ordinary modal thinking to alleged threats from determinism

Personal and sub-personal: a defence of Dennett's early distinction

Since 1969, when Dennett introduced a distinction between personal and sub‐personal levels of explanation, many philosophers have used ‘sub‐personal’ very loosely, and Dennett himself has abandoned a view of the personal level as genuinely autonomous. I recommend a position in which Dennett's original distinction is crucial, by arguing that the phenomenon called mental causation is on view only at the properly personal level. If one retains the commit‐’ ments incurred by Dennett's early distinction, then one has a satisfactory anti‐physicalistic, anti‐dualist philosophy of mind. It neither interferes with the projects of sub‐personal psychology, nor encourages ; instrumentalism at the personal level. People lose sight of Dennett’s personal/sub-personal distinction because they free it from its philosophical moorings. A distinction that serves a philosophical purpose is typically rooted in doctrine; it cannot be lifted out of context and continue to do its work. So I shall start from Dennett’s distinction as I read it in its original context. And when I speak of ‘the distinction’, I mean to point not only towards the terms that Dennett first used to define it but also towards the philosophical setting within which its work was cut out

The evolution of misbelief

From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in the normal functioning of the belief formation system (e.g., delusions) and those arising in the normal course of that system's operations (e.g., beliefs based on incomplete or inaccurate information). The former are instances of biological dysfunction or pathology, reflecting "culpable” limitations of evolutionary design. Although the latter category includes undesirable (but tolerable) by-products of "forgivably” limited design, our quarry is a contentious subclass of this category: misbeliefs best conceived as design features. Such misbeliefs, unlike occasional lucky falsehoods, would have been systematically adaptive in the evolutionary past. Such misbeliefs, furthermore, would not be reducible to judicious - but doxastically1 noncommittal - action policies. Finally, such misbeliefs would have been adaptive in themselves, constituting more than mere by-products of adaptively biased misbelief-producing systems. We explore a range of potential candidates for evolved misbelief, and conclude that, of those surveyed, only positive illusions meet our criteri

Can biological quantum networks solve NP-hard problems?

There is a widespread view that the human brain is so complex that it cannot be efficiently simulated by universal Turing machines. During the last decades the question has therefore been raised whether we need to consider quantum effects to explain the imagined cognitive power of a conscious mind. This paper presents a personal view of several fields of philosophy and computational neurobiology in an attempt to suggest a realistic picture of how the brain might work as a basis for perception, consciousness and cognition. The purpose is to be able to identify and evaluate instances where quantum effects might play a significant role in cognitive processes. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is that quantum-enhanced cognition and intelligence are very unlikely to be found in biological brains. Quantum effects may certainly influence the functionality of various components and signalling pathways at the molecular level in the brain network, like ion ports, synapses, sensors, and enzymes. This might evidently influence the functionality of some nodes and perhaps even the overall intelligence of the brain network, but hardly give it any dramatically enhanced functionality. So, the conclusion is that biological quantum networks can only approximately solve small instances of NP-hard problems. On the other hand, artificial intelligence and machine learning implemented in complex dynamical systems based on genuine quantum networks can certainly be expected to show enhanced performance and quantum advantage compared with classical networks. Nevertheless, even quantum networks can only be expected to efficiently solve NP-hard problems approximately. In the end it is a question of precision - Nature is approximate.Comment: 38 page

Collaboration between Science and Religious Education teachers in Scottish Secondary schools

The article reports on quantitative research that examines: (1) the current practice in collaboration; and (2) potential for collaboration between Science and Religious Education teachers in a large sample of Scottish secondary schools. The authors adopt and adapt three models (conflict; concordat and consonance) to interrogate the relationship between science and religion (and the perceived relation between these two subjects in schools) (Astley and Francis 2010). The findings indicate that there is evidence of limited collaboration and, in a few cases, a dismissive attitude towards collaboration (conflict and concordat and very weak consonance). There is, however, evidence of a genuine aspiration for greater collaboration among many teachers (moving towards a more robust consonance model). The article concludes by discussing a number of key factors that must be realised for this greater collaboration to be enacted

Higher-order thoughts in action : Consciousness as an unconscious re-description process

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Conceptual design study for heat exhaust management in the ARC fusion pilot plant

The ARC pilot plant conceptual design study has been extended beyond its initial scope [B. N. Sorbom et al., FED 100 (2015) 378] to explore options for managing ~525 MW of fusion power generated in a compact, high field (B_0 = 9.2 T) tokamak that is approximately the size of JET (R_0 = 3.3 m). Taking advantage of ARC's novel design - demountable high temperature superconductor toroidal field (TF) magnets, poloidal magnetic field coils located inside the TF, and vacuum vessel (VV) immersed in molten salt FLiBe blanket - this follow-on study has identified innovative and potentially robust power exhaust management solutions.Comment: Accepted by Fusion Engineering and Desig

Untangling the Conceptual Isssues Raised in Reydon and Scholz’s Critique of Organizational Ecology and Darwinian Populations

Reydon and Scholz raise doubts about the Darwinian status of organizational ecology by arguing that Darwinian principles are not applicable to organizational populations. Although their critique of organizational ecology’s typological essentialism is correct, they go on to reject the Darwinian status of organizational populations. This paper claims that the distinction between replicators and interactors, raised in modern philosophy of biology but not discussed by Reydon and Scholz, points the way forward for organizational ecologists. It is possible to conceptualise evolving Darwinian populations providing the inheritance mechanism is appropriately specified. By this approach, adaptation and selection are no longer dichotomised, and the evolutionary significance of knowledge transmission is highlightedPeer reviewe