DETERMINISM, INDETERMINISM, AND EXPLANATORY BIAS

Authors
Citation
M. Targett, DETERMINISM, INDETERMINISM, AND EXPLANATORY BIAS, Progress in neurobiology, 53(5), 1997, pp. 533-545
Citations number
56
Categorie Soggetti
Neurosciences
Journal title
ISSN journal
03010082
Volume
53
Issue
5
Year of publication
1997
Pages
533 - 545
Database
ISI
SICI code
0301-0082(1997)53:5<533:DIAEB>2.0.ZU;2-T
Abstract
Actions are a subclass of human behaviours which are distinguished, on a modest view, by certain antecedent mental and neural processes and events, including desires and beliefs. Libertarian philosophies have t aken a less modest view, according to which some actions come under th e influence of individual persons in a way distinct from being the nec essary effect of a sequence of psychoneural events. Determinism claims necessary connections between sequences of events and conditions, inc luding those sequences that involve desires and beliefs and subsequent actions. Even if a certain interpretation of modern physics shows det erminism to be false, the sense of personal influence over action whic h libertarians have remains obscure. It is not enlightened by the phys icist's idea of inexplicable fluctuations between courses of events wi th greater or lesser probabilities. If libertarianism remains obscure, so do the grounds for an approach to explaining behaviour which might be called ''explanatory individualism''. According to the latter stan ce, the local outcomes of actions and larger social tendencies are onl y properly explained in terms of the choices of individuals, rather th an, for example, their neural or environmental antecedents. Again, bar e indeterminism will not help to supply the required grounds. A more j ustifiable stance is ''explanatory pluralism'', a doctrine which denie s the intrinsic priority of individualistic modes of explanation over those which focus on psychoneural, environmental, social or genetic co nditions. It is stressed that on a sensible pluralism, any determinism which correctly describes the history of actions would be no more ''g enetic'', than indeterminism could be ''individualistic''. (C) 1997 El sevier Science Ltd.