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Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

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Standard Equipment 55why should it be any different if <strong>the</strong> roulette wheel is inside his skull? Thesame problem arises for ano<strong>the</strong>r unpredictable cause that has been suggestedas <strong>the</strong> source of free will, chaos <strong>the</strong>ory, in which, according to <strong>the</strong>cliche, a butterfly's flutter can set off a cascade of events culminating in ahurricane. A fluttering in <strong>the</strong> brain that causes a hurricane of behavior, if itwere ever found, would still be a cause of behavior and would not fit <strong>the</strong>concept of uncaused free will that underlies moral responsibility. Tv^^C^f-tEi<strong>the</strong>r we dispense with all morality as an unscientific superstition,^^^^h^jror we find a way to reconcile causation (genetic or o<strong>the</strong>rwise) with ^ r^v^responsibility and free will. I doubt that our puzzlement will ever be "\ **"•*;completely assuaged, bu: we can surely reconcile <strong>the</strong>m in part. Like'^jv^j?many philosophers, I bel eve that science and ethics are two self-con- i itained systems played out among <strong>the</strong> same entitk s in <strong>the</strong> world, just as \J 'ipoker and bridge are difierent games played with <strong>the</strong> same fifty-two- . 'card deck. The science game treats people as material objects, and i t s ^rules are <strong>the</strong> physical processes that cause behavior through natural'""^'selection and neurophysiology. The ethics game treats people as equiva- *^ jlent, sentient, rational, free-willed agents, and its rules are <strong>the</strong> calculusthat assigns moral value to behavior through <strong>the</strong> behavior's inherentnature or its consequences.Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes <strong>the</strong> ethicsgame playable. Euclidean geometry requires idealizations like infinitestraight lines and perfect circles, and its deductions are sound and usefuleven though <strong>the</strong> world does not really have infinite straight lines or perfectcircles. The world is close enough to <strong>the</strong> idealization that <strong>the</strong> <strong>the</strong>oremscan usefully be applied. Similarly, ethical <strong>the</strong>ory requires idealizations likefree, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused,and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though <strong>the</strong> world, asseen by science, does not really have uncaused events. As long as <strong>the</strong>re isno outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, <strong>the</strong> world is closeenough to <strong>the</strong> idealization of free will that moral <strong>the</strong>ory can meaningfullybe applied to it.Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognizing<strong>the</strong>m as separate can we have <strong>the</strong>m both. If discrimination iswrong only if group averages are <strong>the</strong> same, if war and rape and greed arewrong only if people are never inclined toward <strong>the</strong>m, if people areresponsible for <strong>the</strong>ir actions only if <strong>the</strong> actions are mysterious, <strong>the</strong>nei<strong>the</strong>r scientists must be prepared to fudge <strong>the</strong>ir data or all of us must beprepared to give up our values. Scientific arguments would turn into <strong>the</strong>

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