Emphasis mine
Lewontin et al. argue that our “free will” is derived from our own innate power to significantly manipulate our own environment. And, of course, 3.8 billion years of evolution has endowed us with such prowess.
Why emphasis the 3.8 billion years? Are you saying that evolution is an ascendant process of which we are the current pinnacle result? Dawkins would bite you.
The quoted material seems to me to be self contradictory. The author starts with the above quote indicating that if our actions are part of a chain of natural causation, then we can’t really be free. Yet he ends by saying that our biology makes us free. A deterministic causal series leads to a non-deterministic end? It makes no sense. I still maintain that if matter and energy are all that exist, then determinism is inescapable.
Lewontin et al. defines free will as our “power” to manipulate our environment so we could set up our own discrete milieu. When this is restricted, we do not have free will. We are not marionettes controlled by our genes or our environment entirely; in fact, humanity is indeed unique because we can control our environment significantly. For example, the Neolithic revolution increased human carrying capacity dramatically with the invention of agriculture.
I do not argue that Homo sapiens are the apotheosis of life on Earth. We have to acknowledge the consanguineous nature of life on Earth; we are all descended from a common ancestor that formed from a rather enigmatic process on the early Earth.
Many other animals besides humans have the power to manipulate their environment, and do so routinely. So I would say that manipulation of the environment is not unique to humans. But only humans get accused of crimes and misdemeanors.
I don’t think Gould would be alone in this assessment. The moment evolution is considered in a teleological light, people get edgy. If there was an ascent (If there is a ‘better than before’) in the process, some important philosophical precepts come crashing down. Daniel Dennett has been firm on that much - seeing him have that deep of a disagreement with Dawkins would be a surprise to say the least.
Let’s see if a complex series of biological causes really makes us free. I propose a thought experiment. Suppose that we examine a single act of a human being, say taking a bite of green beans at the dinner table. Further suppose that for that single act we are able to identify all of the hundreds, thousands, millions, etc. biological causes (and all other material causes) that resulted in the act of that person taking a bite of green beans. If material causes are all that are at play here, would you now say that “biology makes us free”?
I first read Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” many years ago when it was first published in a science fiction magazine. Now that was a nice exposition of evolutionary teleology. And it proposes a God that perhaps even Dawkins could accept. (But not me.)
He can you be free if our actions are solely a product of causation? How does my will say to break from the chain reaction? It may be the most complex web of reactions, but if it is purely biological then the outcome is 100% determined already. There is no such thing as free will. Your actions 10 years from now could be predicted with 100% accuracy if there was a strong enough computer to take in all the data.
What is the mechanism that allows this? Where in physics, Biology and Chemistry does it allow for one of the reactants to make a choice of what the product will be? It is all predetermined how the reaction will turn out. How is it possible for the mind to subvert chemical reactions and put new chemical reactions into progress?
This sums it all up. If your will is determined by some material(your brain in a purely biological understanding) then it is completely determined. You can’t say that your brain somehow overrides the chemical reactions that act upon it and cause it to be as it is(I would like to see the mechanism that allows this).
I also thought of Asimov while reading this thread, specifically the Foundation series where science finally allows us to evaluate all causes and potential causes through a process called psychohistory. The end result is that the future can be predicted to a certain degree of accuracy using this method. Those were great books. I need to read them again.
Somewhere in that original trilogy Asimov somewhat backs off of a sort of “thought reading,” as a mechanism, making it clear that the psychohistorians were really reading—and affecting–emotions. Which has more plausibility.