1957 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 30

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DONALD M. MACKAY

such a way as to make human decisions unpredictable even from a complete description of the physical state of the brain just beforehand. In the second group there are even more varieties of opinion. Some robustly deny that there are any morally valid choices. They agree with the first group that a choice could not be valid unless it falsified or went beyond what was indicated beforehand by the state of the brain; but they just don't believe that human choices do so. Others again maintain that questions of moral validity are ,meaningless'; and so forth. SOME BASIC QUESTIONS I am not concerned here to come down on one side or other of this traditional fence. My purpose is rather to undercut the discussion with a group of prior questions, which I think ought to have been asked before sides were picked on the traditional ground. First of all, would it help my choice to be morally valid if the accompanying changes in my brain were shown tot contradict or go beyond the physical indications preceding them? Is it of the essence of a ,free' choice, that it is in some way logically disconnected from the state of the brain leading up to it? I think not, if we accept the reasonable view that the activity of my brain leading up to a rational choice indicates (reflects, mediates) what I am thinking. Indeed on the contrary, if there were no logical connection between the states of the relevant parts of my brain before and after choosing, one might be inclined to describe the choice as irrational and to regard its moral status, far from being enhanced, as rather lowered, if not altogether annulled. One could escape from this conclusion, of course by making the ad hoc hypothesis that any logical gap between the two brain-states (before and after choosing) is filled by a rational sequence of thought in some other world, whose activity is not indicated by corresponding changes in the brain. But for such a hypothesis there is no evidence; such little evidence as we have points the other way. I hope to show, moreover, that the moral values designed to be saved by such a hypothesis can be still more adequately safeguarded without it. ,But', you may object, ,surely a choice which is uniquely indicated beforehand by the state of the brain cannot be called a „free" choice? If you could in principle predict how I shall choose before I make my choice, surely my choosing has no moral validity?' Here we come to our second basic question. What kind of predictability would upset the validity of a choice? Under what conditions

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