John Lucas (philosopher) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

John Lucas was educated at Winchester College

Winchester College

Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...

and Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, where he studied first mathematics, then Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History), obtaining first class honors, and proceeding to an MA in Philosophy in 1954. He spent the 1957-58 academic year at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, deepening his understanding of mathematics and logic. For 36 years, until his 1996 retirement, he was a Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford

Merton College, Oxford

Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...

, and he remains an emeritus member of the University Faculty of Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

. He is a Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

.

Lucas is perhaps best known for his paper "Minds, Machines and Gödel

Minds, Machines and Gödel

Minds, Machines and Gödel is J. R. Lucas's 1959 philosophical paper in which he argues that a human mathematician cannot be accurately represented by an algorithmic automaton...

," arguing that an automaton

Turing machine

A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a...

cannot represent a human mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, essentially refuting computationalism.

A prolific author with unusually diverse teaching and research interests, Lucas has written on the philosophy of mathematics

Philosophy of mathematics

The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of...

, especially the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, the philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

, free will and determinism, the philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

including two books on physics coauthored with Peter E. Hodgson

Peter E. Hodgson

Peter E. Hodgson was a British physicist, who also wrote about the philosophy of physics and social issues, and was an active Roman Catholic....

, causality

Causality

Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....

, political philosophy

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

, ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

and business ethics

Business ethics

Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.Business...

, and the philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...

.

The son of a Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

clergyman, and an Anglican himself, Lucas describes himself as "a dyed-in-the-wool traditional Englishman." He and Morar Portal have four children, among them Edward Lucas

Edward Lucas (journalist)

Edward Lucas is a British journalist.Lucas is International Editor of The Economist, the London-based global newsweekly and also oversees the paper’s political coverage of Central and Eastern Europe. He has been covering eastern Europe since 1986, and was the Moscow bureau chief from 1998-2002,...

, International Editor of The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

. Sartorially independent, he had the cool-weather habit of wearing a tie over his sweater and under a jacket.

In addition to his philosophical career, Lucas has a practical interest in business ethics

Business ethics

. He helped found the Oxford Consumers' Group, and was its first Chairman in 1961-3, serving again in 1965.

Free will

Lucas (1961)

Minds, Machines and Gödel

Minds, Machines and Gödel is J. R. Lucas's 1959 philosophical paper in which he argues that a human mathematician cannot be accurately represented by an algorithmic automaton...

began a lengthy and heated debate over the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of...

for the anthropic mechanism thesis, by arguing that:

Determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...

↔ For any human h there exists at least one (deterministic) logical system L(h) which reliably predicts hs actions in all circumstances.

For any logical system L a sufficiently skilled mathematical logic
Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

ian (equipped with a sufficiently powerful computer if necessary) can construct some statements T(L) which are true but unprovable in L. (This follows from Gödel's first theorem.)

If a human m is a sufficiently skillful mathematical logician (equipped with a sufficiently powerful computer if necessary) then if m is given L(m), he or she can construct T(L(m)) and

Determine that they are true--which L(m) cannot do.

Hence L(m) does not reliably predict ms actions in all circumstances.
Hence m has free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...

.
It is implausible that the qualitative difference between mathematical logicians and the rest of the population is such that the former have free will and the latter do not.

His argument was strengthened by the discovery by Hava Siegelmann

Hava Siegelmann

Hava Siegelmann is a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts and director of the school's Biologically Inspired Neural and Dynamical Systems Lab. In the early 1990s she proposed a new computational model, the Artificial Recurrent Neural Network , and proved that it could perform...

in the 1990s that sufficiently complex analog recurrent neural networks were not Turing Machine

Turing machine

Space, time and causality

Lucas wrote several books on the philosophy of science and space-time (see below). In A treatise on time and space he introduced a transcendental derivation of the Lorenz Transformations based on Red and Blue exchanging messages (in Russian and Greek respectively) from their respective frames of reference which demonstrates how these can be derived from a minimal set of philosophical assumptions.

In The Future Lucas gives a detailed analysis of tenses and time, arguing that "the Block universe

Block time

Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally "real", as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real...

gives a deeply inadequate view of time. It fails to account for the passage of time, the pre-eminence of the present, the directedness of time and the difference between the future and the past" and in favour of a tree structure in which there is only one past or present (at any given point in spacetime) but a large number of possible futures. "We are by our own decisions in the face of other men's actions and chance circumstances weaving the web of history on the loom of natural necessity"

Career highlights

1942-7. Scholar of Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
1947-51. Attended Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

on a scholarship.
1951. BA with 1st Class Honours, Greats.
1951-3. Harmsworth Senior Scholar, Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...

.
1952. John Locke Scholarship, Oxford University.
1953-6. Junior Research Fellow, Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...

.
1956-9. Fellow and Assistant Tutor, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is notable as the only college founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary...

.
1957-8. Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

.
1959-60. Leverhulme Research Fellow, the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

.
1960-96. Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...

.
1988. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

.
1990-6. Reader in Philosophy, Oxford University.
1991-3. President, British Society for the Philosophy of Science
British Society for the Philosophy of Science
The British Society for the Philosophy of Science is a philosophical society based in England whose purpose is to promote the study of philosophy of science....

.

Books

1966. Principles of Politics (edited). ISBN 0-19-824774-5
1970. The Concept of Probability. ISBN 0-19-824340-5
1970. The Freedom of the Will. ISBN 0-19-824343-X
1972. The Nature of Mind. (with A. J. P. Kenny, H. C. Longuet-Higgins
H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins
Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins FRS was both a theoretical chemist and a cognitive scientist. He was born on April 11, 1923 in Kent, England and died on March 27, 2004....

, and C. H. Waddington; 1972 Gifford Lectures
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...

) ISBN 0-85224-235-2
1973. The Development of Mind. (with A. J. P. Kenny, H.C.Longet-Higgins, and C.H.Waddington; 1973 Gifford Lectures
Gifford Lectures
The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...

) ISBN 0-85224-263-8
1973. A Treatise on Time and Space. ISBN 0-416-75070-2
1976. Essays on Freedom and Grace. ISBN 0-281-02932-6
1976. Democracy and Participation. ISBN 0-14-021882-3
1978. Butler's Philosophy of Religion Vindicated. ISBN 0-907078-06-0
1980. On Justice. ISBN 0-19-824598-X
1985. Space, Time and Causality (with Peter E. Hodgson
Peter E. Hodgson
Peter E. Hodgson was a British physicist, who also wrote about the philosophy of physics and social issues, and was an active Roman Catholic....

). ISBN 0-19-875057-9
1989. The Future. ISBN 0-631-16659-9
1990. Spacetime and Electromagnetism (with P. E. Hodgson). ISBN 0-19-852038-7
1993. Responsibility. ISBN 0-19-823578-X
1997. Ethical Economics (with M. R. Griffiths). ISBN 0-312-16398-3
1999. Conceptual Roots of Mathematics. ISBN 0-415-20738-X
2003. An Engagement with Plato's Republic (with B.G. Mitchell). ISBN 0-7546-3366-7
2006. Reason and Reality, freely available as a series of .pdf files on Lucas's website (below).

External links

Lucas, John R., 2002, "The Godelian Argument," The Truth Journal.
Home page of J. R. Lucas, with much online material.
"A Strange Piece of Work:" John Lucas on Complexities of Mind, Machines and Gödel
Quantum-Mind

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