| Abstract: | ...I want to argue that the Human Genome Project itself poses no special problem for human freedom, understood in relation to the philosophical issue of free will versus determinism. It seems to pose a problem only if one muddles the interpretation of the issue or of the project that is supposed to bear on it. There is a need for conceptual clarification to point this out, perhaps, but I see no need for "research" in the sense that implies original investigation. However, I also want to probe a bit deeper to identify a distinct set of philosophical worries about freedom that seem to have been misplaced onto the standard issue, the issue of freedom versus determinism, in this discussion and elsewhere. After arguing that the genome project has no real bearing on free will versus determinism, I shall attempt to identify the threat it poses to freedom partly by detaching it from this standard version of the free will question. I shall argue that the worrisome forms of genetic influence that the project might uncover do not really presuppose determinism. But what they do presuppose -- some form of internal or psychological constraint on behavior -- suggests an alternative version of the free will question as the source of popular fears about scientific explanation of human behavior. What is under threat on this version of the question is the Aristotelian notion of character formation and self-control. |
