Can Reasons and Values Influence Action: How Might Intentional Agency Work Physiologically?
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Can Reasons and Values Influence Action: How Might Intentional Agency Work Physiologically? Raymond Noble1 · Denis Noble2 Accepted: 18 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In this paper, we demonstrate (1) how harnessing stochasticity can be the basis of creative agency; (2) that such harnessing can resolve the apparent conflict between reductionist (micro-level) accounts of behaviour and behaviour as the outcome of rational and value-driven (macro-level) decisions; (3) how neurophysiological processes can instantiate such behaviour; (4) The processes involved depend on three features of living organisms: (a) they are necessarily open systems; (b) micro-level systems therefore nest within higher-level systems; (c) causal interactions must occur across all the boundaries between the levels of organization. The higher levels constrain the dynamics of lower levels. The experimental evidence and theoretical arguments are shown to be consistent with previous research on the neuronal mechanisms of conscious choice, and with the interconnected multi-level processes by which organisms harness stochasticity, whether conscious or unconscious. Keywords Harnessing stochasticity · Free choice · Free will · Intentionality · Agency · Micro-level causation · Macro-level causation · Reductionism · Holism
1 Introduction In recent articles (Noble 2017; Noble and Noble 2018; Noble and Noble 2017), we have shown how organisms can harness stochasticity in ways that serve functional needs. Organisms are not merely passive recipients of random variations at molecular and other levels. They can use stochasticity both to guide their behaviour creatively and to influence the directions in which they evolve. We have also shown that harnessing stochasticity can be the basis on which organisms make creative choices (Noble and Noble 2018). In that article, we drew attention to close parallels with the work of Karl Popper on evolution and free choice (Niemann 2014; Popper 1945; 1972; 1973; Popper and Eccles 1977). * Denis Noble [email protected] Raymond Noble [email protected] 1
Institute for Women’s Health, University College London, London WC1E 6AU, UK
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Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PT, UK
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R. Noble, D. Noble
In this paper, we will explore whether harnessing stochasticity could be the basis of resolving a long-standing philosophical problem: the tension between what are thought to be standard empirical (usually mechanistic) scientific accounts of organism behaviour and views of life that regard behaviour as the outcome of rational and value-driven decisions. We will refer to the first as micro-level and the second as macro-level explanations. On the macro-level view, organisms can act rationally in the sense that we can give (in the case of humans) or we can see (in the case of other organisms) good social reasons why they chose to act in the way they do. The micro-level view is often taken by empirical scientists to be that those reasons we
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