100 Introduction to Philosophy 

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PHIL 100/220 Week 2

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The human being 'as a subject for science'

'Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't.'

Dr Johnson

Examples of the scientific perspective being applied to the human being and human groups:

• Behaviourism (see reading)
• Psychoanalysis (see reading)
• Cognitive Science
• Social 'evolutionism'

Cognitive science

- the brain as an information-processing device.

A test for machines: The Turing Test

Could autonomy 'emerge'? - Could what starts as a mechanism turn into something with autonomy?

Two possibilities perhaps:

• True autonomy turns out to be a myth as highly complex mechanisms mimic it successfully.
• True autonomy 'emerges' from high fully determined complexity.

Social 'Evolutionism'

• Herbert Spencer
• Auguste Compte
• Plato
• Marx

Popper's criticism of 'historicism': change sometimes depends on the acquisition of new knowledge which necessarily cannot be predicted.

Does Marxism leave room for a degree of human autonomy, at work within a constraining framework?

Fatalism

is to be distinguished from causal determinism.

It is the thesis that 'there are at least some events which could never have been otherwise, regardless of what else happened.' Determinism is just one form of fatalism.

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