A new meaning for the word "incompatibilism"

 

The word "incompatibilism" has a distinctive meaning to many students of, and scholars in ,philosophy. 

It arises in debates about determinism and moral responsibility.  

The key question, as I understand the debate, is this: is the notion of strict behavioral determinism consistent with our ordinary and strongly held intuitions about moral responsibility? 

There are some who say "no, the two are not compatible, and the moral intuitions are worth keeping: fortunately we CAN keep them, because strict behavioral determinism is wrong." 

There are others who say, "no, the two are not compatible -- and strict behavioral determinism is right, so we'll have to say goodbye to the moral intuitions and learn to live without them."

Both of those are incompatibilists, however much they quarrel with one another.   

There are still others who say, "Yes, strict determinisms is compatible with those intuitions,  so it need not at all disturb us to recognize that strict determinism is right."

I have discussed that argument here many times. [And, by way of reminder, continue to side with incompatibilist determinism.] I only bring it up now, though, to say that the philosophers Jonas Christensen and Umut Baysan have proposed using the same term, incompatibilism, in a different context. Here is a link to their essay: https://www.academia.edu/32558289/Why_Incompatibilism_about_Mental_Causation_is_Incompatible_with_Non_Reductive_Physicalism_Inquiry_forthcoming_?email_work_card=interaction-paper

If their terminology spreads, future philosophy textbooks may have to carefully distinguish the two uses of the term, because they involve related questions. 

The question Christenson and Baysan look at is: do mental events cause physical events? Does the fact of my hunger (interpreted as a mental and so in some sense an intangible event) cause a physical event as my arm stretches out to pluck an apple from the tree branch? 

Related to this is the matter of compatibilism. Is a fully physicalist account of why my arm stretched out COMPATIBLE with the view that (a) there is such a thing as an intangible MENTAL feeling of hunger, or perhaps an intangible decision to reach for the apple and (b) THAT intangible thing also counts -- along with any physicalist account one might produce -- as a cause of the plucking of the apple. 

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental states exist but they don't CAUSE anything physical. 

Mind-body interactionist dualism contends that mental states do exist and through our bodies (perhaps through the pineal gland) they interact with the physical world.  There exists a complicated range of other possible beliefs about the mind-body issue. If we could decide whether and to what extent physical and mental causation of "voluntary" acts are compatible, we would have gone a long way to defining our positions on that.

Christenson and Baysan make the case that what is called "non-reductionist physicalism" about mind-body relations requires compatibilism about mental causation. That requires some additional explanation. 

Physicalism maintains that there are physical explanations for any physical fact. A human being reaches for an apple in the same way that a spider reaches for the trapped fly, and the explanation is fully physical in each case.

Reductive physicalism argues that there are no mental properties. Whatever exists, is physical. What we think of as mental can be reduced to the physical.

Non-reductive physicalism allows for there to be mental properties, and for the possibility that these cannot be fully reduced in physical terms. So our authors are saying that IF you want to hold to that view, you really ought to conceded that the mental and physical causative chains are mutually compatible. 

I think I may be an incompatibilist in this new sense, too, though, which means non-reductive physicalism as these authors understand it may not be quite my cup of tea.