Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head
Intentional Agency
The overall argument of the book centers on the notion of ‘intentionality’. This is a philosophical jargon term that doesn’t mean what people normally mean by ‘intention’. We can understand intentionality as the ‘aboutness’ of a mental state: so, for example, my desire to have a cat as a pet shows intentionality in being about a cat, or my perception of the cup on the table is about that particular physical object. Intentionality requires a subject or agent, as these thoughts about something are for someone.
But what does this really resolve? How do we connect the dots between intentionality as a "philosophical jargon term" and how "for all practical purposes" we should understand our own existential, day-to-day intentions?
And then the part where it is our own material brain itself that is used to define the meaning of "agency". After all, what is it "about" the human brain as matter that evolved biologically from brainless/lifeless matter here on planet Earth that enabled it
to invent a word like "agency"?
Really, how is it all that different from a "soul"? Can philosophers or scientists or theologians pinpoint where in the brain the soul or the agent can be found?
After all, an object itself can represent something else without the ‘aboutness’ of intentionality, such as the way a painting can on its own represent a landscape. But it only becomes about a landscape when it’s observed.
But then this part:
What percentage of DNA do humans share with other animals:
Chimps: 98.8
Gorillas: 98.4
Pig: 98
Orangutan: 96.9
Cat: 90
Mouse: 85
Dog: 84
They observe a landscape just as we do. But how we observe it is [or can be] very, very different. And certainly in part because what we observe includes the "is/ought" world. There's the way a landscape [or a set of circumstances] appears to us, and all of our different reactions regarding whether, instead, it should appear some other way.
The "soul" or the "agent" then. And, in particular, from my frame of mind -- click -- in a No God world.
Tallis argues that intentionality allows for genuine agency. Intentionality allows us to engage in forms of action that are best understood as “a kind of interruption in the otherwise uninterrupted flow of events in the material world”. Being able to think about other things (that is, have intentionality) opens up a reflective space or “virtual or non-spatial outside” for us which separates us and our thoughts in some way from the constraining laws of nature and allows us to have genuine alternatives for action.
In "some way" we have acquired the capacity to opt for alternative behaviors.
But, really, beyond him taking the same leap we all do here -- "I just know deep down inside that this is true" -- how exactly does he go about demonstrating this?
There's a big part of me that believes the same. But then I keep coming back around to the human brain being just more matter and matter interacting with other matter in accordance with the laws of matter...physics, chemistry, mathematics.
Or:
"There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force."
So, where does the human brain fit in here?
Or is
biological matter the key to it. Living matter. With or without a God, the God?
Instead, it's straight back up into the realm of philosophical
arguments --
philosophical arguments -- here:
Intentionality therefore demonstrates the potential for an agency that is not simply plugged into a physical causal framework that slavishly follows the laws of nature.
And, here, of course, all one need do is to believe it.
With or without a "condition".
