Mind

New Book by Richard Swinburne

Mind, Brain, and Free Will presents a powerful new case for substance dualism (the idea that humans consist of two parts–body and soul) and for libertarian free will (that humans have some freedom to choose between alternatives, independently of the causes which influence them). Richard Swinburne argues that answers to questions about mind, body, and free will depend crucially on the answers to more general philosophical questions. He begins by analyzing the criteria for one event being the same as another, one substance being the same as another, and a state of affairs being metaphysically possible; and then goes on to analyze the criteria for a belief about these issues being justified. Pure mental events (including conscious events) are distinct from physical events and interact with them. Swinburne claims that no result from neuroscience or any other science could show that interaction does not take place; and illustrates this claim by showing that recent scientific work (such as Libet’s experiments) has no tendency whatever to show that our intentions do not cause brain events. He goes on to argue for agent causation, and claims that–to speak precisely–it is we, and not our intentions, that cause our brain events. It is metaphysically possible that each of us could acquire a new brain or continue to exist without a brain; and so we are essentially souls. Brain events and conscious events are so different from each other that it would not be possible to establish a scientific theory which would predict what each of us would do in situations of moral conflict. Hence given a crucial epistemological principle (the Principle of Credulity) we should believe that things are as they seem to be: that we make choices independently of the causes which influence us. According to Swinburne’s lucid and ambitious account, it follows that we are morally responsible for our actions.

The Transcendental Analytic Revisited

Following the publishing of The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments, Mijuskovic writes “The General Conclusion of the Argument of the Transcendental Analytic” to continue what he addresses in his earlier work “The Premise of the Transcendental Analytic.” The first edition Transcendental Analytic and Paralogisms were edited substantially in the second edition, which begs many questions, including whether Kant operates under different presuppositions between these two. Mijuskovic contends the first edition is premised upon time consciousness – in agreement with N. Kemp Smith’s Commentary. From this Kant moves to demonstrate the unity of consciousness as he progresses through the Transcendental Deduction. Kant’s arguments for the unity of consciousness would be incoherent without this priority of the temporal nature of cause and effect prior to unification of these same events. In the order of logic, continuity must precede unity otherwise consciousness would cease.

Additionally, Mijuskovic explains a key dichotomy which will appear later in the simplicity argument’s history: Thus we know a priori (universally and necessarily) that all experience will have constitutive elements of both quantifiable extensity and qualitative intensity and that all possible experience must conform to these conditions in order to be manifested as human awareness.[1] A dichotomy of quantity and quality directly correlates to extension (physicality) and inextension (immateriality). Properties of consciousness should be classified by qualitative properties. All other properties will have a quantitative extension or physicality. This distinction is fundamental to the premise of the immateriality of thought which grounds the simplicity of consciousness. Physical/material properties cannot account for the nature of consciousness because they were never intended to do so. Only inextended, qualitative properties can logically apply to consciousness. Mijuskovic following Kant makes it clear the two must be made distinct since they apply to completely different categories of experience.

In sum, Mijuskovic concludes: First, we begin with the indubitabilty of our temporal consciousness; and then we proceed through a “deduction” showing that such an awareness depends upon a complicated interworking of transcendental activities of the productive imagination (A99-104), which finally, results in mutually conditioning ‘effects’ (both transcendental and empirical) of an awareness of a temporal unity and continuity of one consciousness and one spacetime continuum, the latter as apprehended in our representation of one unified system of nature.[2]