Luke Mohan’s Reviews > The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes > Status Update

The beliefs or disbeliefs of the learned eventually filter down and exert an influence upon the lives and conduct of their fellow men... the image that we hold of man cannot fail to affect attitudes that influence our behavior in the world of action, and beliefs that determine our commitments in the world of thought.

For those who understand free choice in terms of an immaterial mode of causality, the falsification of the immaterialist hypothesis about man must lead to the denial that man has the power of free choice.

[For those Catholics and Protestants,] who are fideists. The falsification of the immaterialist hypothesis would have little effect on them. For the Catholics "who not only are orthodox in their dogmatic commitments but who also try to be philosophical in their understanding of dogmas that they hold by religious faith." such a falsification would be devastating.

"How is it possible for us to withhold satisfaction from an instinct? What power in us enables us to do so?" - even Freud says its the intellect, and an immaterial one at that.

More than the power of conceptual thought is thus involved in the pursuit of happiness. Freedom of choice is also involved, and with it, a radical difference in kind between men and other animals that have no moral problems, no moral rights, and no moral responsibility.

the affirmation of free choice presupposes the truth of the immaterialist hypothesis, which posits in man the operation of a non-physical factor, needed not only to explain his power of conceptual thought, but also to explain his contra-causal freedom of choice.

If man only differs superficially in kind -> no free will -> (according to Kant) no moral rights and responsibilities

Combining this fact with the policy that men have pursued in their treatment of animals, we can discern the normative principle underlying the action. It is that an inferior kind ought to be ordered to a superior kind as a means to an end.

causa cognoscendi -> causes something to be known to be the case
causa essendi -> causes something to be the case

"With animals," Dewey writes, "an experience perishes at it happens, and each new doing or suffering stands alone."