I recently listened to a TED talk by a neuroscientist who claims that there is “nothing but biology” and “no free will.”’ He seems to think the only alternative to reductionism is Calvinism.
Putting that aside, if “everything is biology” then he’s caused to think his theory in a way that completely invalidates it. Given other utterly contingent biological causes, he might be caused to think another theory. So much for reason.
It’s not about “free will,” which overemphasizes the factor of choice. This is clear in the rhetoric around abortion: no one “chooses” to have an abortion, as an elective matter. You make decisions in situations where the alternatives all carry harm.
This neuroscientist doesn’t understand what Nietzsche and Heidegger call the necessity of appropriation: Whatever the cause, it is appropriated by the individual. It is taken up in a particular history in a particular way. That’s why poverty or abuse or any other factor, doesn’t predict an individual outcome, whatever the statistical generalizations.
Can we not rid ourselves of this 21st century phrenology, that confuses self-consciousness with a thing?
Cf. Alisdair MacIntyre’s article, “Hegel on Faces and Skulls,” which defeats any attempt to physicalize self-consciousness.