Holbach (1723-1789) (minor figure in the canon of philosophy)
One of the French Materialists: No immaterial substances: souls, spirits, God
Everything composed of matter-subject to, constrained by physical laws.
(Opposite view: Idealism: mind over matter--Descartes, Berkeley, Malebranche)
Holbach very influenced by Newton: laws of motion-deterministic laws.
We read an excerpt from The System of Nature, 1795
Noteworthy: written in 1770, published in 1795 after Holbach's death.
He looks at the non-materialists:
Say the soul is distinguished from the body
The soul draws its ideas from its own peculiar source
Acts by its own energies, without the aid of an exterior object
Acts independently of physical laws.
15, 2 "The Soul is mistress of its own conduct"
Conclude, therefore, 16, 1 "man is a free agent"
Holbach rejects this view.
For Holbach, more than a determinist: a materialist: the soul is part of the body-the hidden part perhaps, but intimately tied to the body's functions and states.
The soul would be inert and dead without the body.
The soul thus subject to physical laws.
Question: what is the connection between the body and the mind?
Holbach: Intellectual faculties and moral qualities are to be explained ""in a manner purely physical and natural" 16,1
Question: Do you see what Holbach's view amounts to?
16,1
Thus man is a being purely physical; in whatever manner he is considered, he is connected to universal nature, and submitted to the necessary and immutable laws that she imposes on all the beings she contains, according to their peculiar essences or to the respective properties with which, without consulting them, she endows each particular species.
Question: what does that mean?
Continues
16,1
Man's life is in a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his organization does not depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue to his way of thinking and determine his manner of acting.
This is Holbach's view: determinism.
He seeks to argue against the other view: free will, which he regards as:
an error
human vanity.
We mistakenly think we are separate from the physical world
Question: what is THE WILL?
For Holbach, the will is a product of the brain" 16,2.
The will motivated by "impulses" received (16,2) either from the motive, from the object, or from the idea, which has modified his brain or disposed his will.
Question: what is necessity?
Holbach taking a view similar to modern Behaviorism in Psychology:
The mind a series of inputs and outputs.
Outputs are a response to stimulus inputs-that's all human or animal behavior is.
Responds to objections: 16, 2- 17,1
What if someone has a "violent thirst"?
He sees a well, but learns that it is poisoned.
If he abstains from drinking from the well, does that prove he is a "free agent"?
Holbach says no: merely what happens is the persons desire for his own "conservation" overrules his thirst.
He merely responds to the more powerful motive.
A later example: pg. 20, 1
Someone asks, "Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?"
No, either your faculty of self-preservation keeps you from defenestrating yourself, or you're mad, in which case other causes are determining your actions.
Question: what could convince Holbach that we have free will?
Compares us to a bowl that's driven forward in a straight line, then deflected.
It's still determined.
Problem for Morality
17, 1 Holbach says:
The motives that determine the voluptuary and the debauchee to risk their health are as powerful, and their actions are as necessary, as those, which decide the wise man to manage his.
Question: what's the problem for morality?-We are not responsible!
Objection: What about if you deliberate over an action?
Doesn't that give evidence of free will?
Holbach says no.
In this case the mind is merely being pulled in different directions by the thought of the consequences of different courses of action.
Eventually the person acts out of what they perceive is their best advantage.
But they don't arrive at that conclusion freely.
Holbach gives a lot of attention to the mechanism of thought.
Very influential on later psychologists.
His point: 18,2 Having choice also does not prove free agency.
What happens when you choose something?
Something-physical laws, etc. causes you to choose one way or the other.
You choose in a way to goes to your own advantage.
What about being able to check your unruly desires?
Is that evidence for free will.
Holbach claims: 19, 1 Man's mode of thinking is necessarily determined by his manner of being;
From this, we are obliged to conclude, that his thoughts, his reflections, his manner of viewing things, of feeling, of judging, of combining ideas, is neither voluntary nor free.
Philosophers make an error when they regard the will as the primum mobile-the prime mover.
Holbach rejects the compatibilist point of view: regarding freedom as the absence of constraint.
20, 2
Man believes he acts as a free agent, every time he does not see any thing that places obstacles to his actions; he does not perceive that the motive which causes him to will, is always necessary and independent of himself.
Continues:
Man may, therefore, cease to be restrained, without, for that reason, becoming a free agent: in whatever manner he acts, he will act necessarily, according to motives by which he shall be determined.
Kind of like a heavy body that's stopped in its fall. Is it really free not to fall.
Holbach mentions Socrates. He didn't act as a free agent--given his principles, he could only make the choice he did.
Holbach closes:
Even though man is not a free agent, that doesn't mean man is simple.
Like a rock rolling off a table more or less.
We are more complex than that, nonetheless, determined in our actions.
Human complexity only makes us think we are free agents.
Sometimes what's causing our actions is so hidden that it would be very difficult to bring them all to light.
However:
21, 2
If, for a short time, each man was willing to examine his own peculiar actions, search out their true motives to discover their concatenation, he would remain convinced that the sentiment he has of his natural free agency, is a chimera that must speedily be destroyed by experience.
Question: How do we find these causes?
Holbach--just because they're difficult to find, doesn't mean they're not there.
He talks about philosophers who have made "the romance rather than the history of the human heart" (22, 2) in trying to figure out these causes.
The have posited fictitious causes.
Example of these complex causes: On paper, the Rams should have beaten the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Probabilities in football are very complex--but causal laws: if you could know everything, would you have known the Patriots would win on Sunday--or were chance events involved?
Question: do you accept Holbach's thesis?
What could possibly prove Holbach wrong?
Do changes to Newtonian physics-e.g. the uncertainty principle of Quantum Mechanics make a Newtonian type determinism obsolete?-from textbook question 2, pg. 22
Can psychologist ever hope to fully explain human behavior?
