Don Mikulecky sticks his neck out:
http://views.vcu.edu/~mikuleck/
Ok. I'll be arrogant enough to try to apply Rosen's Relational approach
to the issue of free will. We begin by asking the question "Why free
will?" and then try to find the answers in the four Aristotelian
"becauses":
1. Material cause: the organism in question (or machine in question for
some of you).
2. Efficient cause: the workings of human minds which came up with this
idea as an attribute of their own being (This HAS to be
self-referential, doesn't it?)
3.Formal cause: The philosophical and cultural framework in which this
notion arose.
4. Final cause: To lend survival value, to add to the repertoire of
behaviors the organism has at its disposal, to enrich the universe of
discourse, and many more.
Now, what has this gained us? Quite a lot from my view, incomplete as
it is. We see that the context dependence of the original question
makes it rest on a hieracrchy of other, yet unanswered, questions. Thus
the idea of isolating this question and dealing with it in a
reductionsist manner is out of the question, UNLESS, we totally reject
this approach (as most of you must to be true to your religion) and
reformulate the question in another way which avoids all the issues
raised by this approach. I suspect that the latter alternative will
lead nowhere, but will be very popular!
Respectfully,
Don Mikulecky
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