RoR: Forum

Do we have the capacity to choose among different means to our ends -- or don't we have this capacity?

THAT is the question. We either do, or we don't. If we do have the capacity to choose among available means, then we've got free will. If we don't have the capacity to choose among available means -- but are, instead, pre-ordained to "select" certain means over others without any possibility of reflection and rational comparison -- then we don't have free will.

It's one or the other.

Ed

Post 61

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 11:34am

Bill wrote:

> Yes, your choice to reply was up to you, insofar as you
> decided to do it based on your values. No one else made
> the decision for you. The point I am making is that you
> cannot choose irrespective of your values. Every choice
> presupposes a value for the sake of which the choice is
> made.

Bill, you seem to be taking values as a primary and I strongly disagree with this. Values are an integration resulting from thoughtful awareness and reflection about our relationship to the world. A value is really just a convenient principal which unitizes the large amount of critical thinking and analysis we have previously done in a subject area. Just as the number 24,376 allows us to conceptualize an enormous amount of data that is too large to hold perceptually in our awareness, a value is just a simple shorthand that allows us to conceptualize a vast amount of prior thinking about the "goodness" or "badness" of something in relation to ourselves. But we are in control of this process and we can choose to make it as explicit or implicit as we like. A value is just the end result of a mental process that we control - not a primary attribute of or human nature that controls us. So, when I say, for example, that I value "focused intellectual discourse", this is just a short-hand way of acknowledging that I have reviewed and analyzed what "focused intellectual discourse" requires of me as well as what it has to offer, and I have determined that in certain specific situations, it is something that offers a net benefit.

I am no slave to the concept 24,376, At any time I can "unwind" the conceptual meaning of the number and I can easily reduce it back to its perceptual origins simply by counting the entities to which it happens to refer. In the same way, I am no slave to my values. I can "unwind" then as well and mentally revisit any component part of the value concept, making changes or correcting errors as I see fit. In this way, I can "reprogram" my values at any time. I'm in charge. I choose my values.

Are we motivated by our values? Of course! That's the whole point of having them. A concise set of value principles help us make decisions in real time about what is good or bad for us without having to constantly revisit the long chain of reasoning that lies behind the value. But here I am using the term "motivated" to mean "influenced" and not "necessitated" as you would describe it. At any point I can review the values in play, and I know that I can act in accordance with them or I can do the opposite if I choose. The course of action I take ultimately depends upon the goal I select. Of course, you will probably answer that the goal selected was "necessitated" by some deeper set of "values" that ineluctably force me to act in that particular way. Well, I would ask where did those values come from and what is stopping me from revisiting them as well? It seems that heading down this path takes the perfectly reasonable and understandable concept of "value" and perverts it into some sort of mystical force that drives us. I don't see any facts of reality that support this view while there is a wealth of personal daily experience that I draw upon informing me that I am making free choices in all aspects of my life.

It seems to me that the view of "necessitating values" is simply asserted in order to justify a belief that everything, including human choice, is determined, rather than starting from a provable observation that values are indeed necessitating, and then arriving at the conclusion of determinism.

Regards,
--
Jeff
(Edited by C. Jeffery Small
on 3/12, 12:04pm)

Post 62

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 6:30pm

Tibor, again, where are you getting the idea that I deny that volition is a type of causation, and thus is an ontological concept? I also find that it is a fascinating topic, one which I don't find anyone has fully and rigorously described in the way that Darwin concepualized evolution or Newton did force. I have my own ontological theories which I can't present in this limited forum. I don't claim to have a full theory, and I don't think anyone has gotten there yet.

At this point, even though we don't have a way to explain how the will can be free, we still know it must - and we know that this is of ethical import, whether we ever explain how the will is free or not.

What am I saying that is controversial?

Ted

In post 60 Ed is saying exactly what I am. Free will is of importance in the choice of means - an ethical subject. I doubt that he denies that volition itself is ontologically interesting, or "incredible" as Tibor asks.

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/12, 6:35pm)

Post 63

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 7:19pm

So, "even though we don't have a way to explain how the will can be free, we still know it must - and we know that this is of ethical import, whether we ever explain how the will is free or not...."
I am not sure that "we" are in this fix--you and I may be (but maybe not me). I think John Searle is correct that there is no very successful, complete account of the mechanism or biology of free will in the literature but I also think that we, human beings, with the kind of brain we have (a la Roger W. Sperry) can produce what Sperry calls downward causation, the sort that is involved in, say, resisting one's inclination to act based on one's emotions (I resist the desire to hurt someone in response to an insult, which involves a part of my consciousness controlling another--indeed, those who don't, say radical Muslims, aren't civilized).

Post 64

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 8:19pm

Tibor,

Unless I missed it, your article did not present a theory of the mechanism of the will. So if you "maybe" do understand it, please - out with it! We are all dying to know, and I say this with no sarcasm intended.

My understanding of your article, whose own title address the fact of the mysteriousness of the nature of the will, is that you acknowledge the will based on introspective and moral grounds. You use the words and phrases: "responsible, alter their conduct, resist a temptation, battle, bad habit, criminal, law, Politics, blaming and praising, capacity to choose how act, what’s right, & ought." These are all essentially moral concepts, not ontological ones.

Then you pick on me for saying that whatever its metaphysical nature (which is indeed mysterious - in your words, "incredible?") the notion must be accepted as morally axiomatic. Well, I am not familiar with Roger Sperry. If you are recommending some work by him I am interested in knowing. And if you have already written on the subject of a mechanism, I would also like to read that. And I am mystified by the continuing misinterpretation of my words as anything other than interest in the topic from an orthodox standpoint. I have indeed written much elsewhere that is not orthodoxly objectivist, and welcome criticism anywhere. But I don't understand why I am being treated as a foil here.

Ted Keer

Post 65

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 10:39pm

I think the problem here in this debate is that maybe we're mixing up two things here; free will itself with the results of free will. Or maybe the confusion lies at what we define the status of free will. Namely, is free will a quantity of an entity or the sum of some quantities of an entity? I think that maybe where we need to restart this conversation, back to the basics, so we can best address our own views on this.

-- Bridget

Post 66

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 11:08pm

In responding to Tibor, I wrote, "Yes, your choice to reply was up to you, insofar as you decided to do it based on your values. No one else made the decision for you. The point I am making is that you cannot choose irrespective of your values. Every choice presupposes a value for the sake of which the choice is made. This is true of the choice to focus, just as well as for any other choice. You could have chosen differently only if your values were different. Granted, the choices you make are up to you, insofar as you must weigh the relevant alternatives, and decide which you value most. But having made your evaluation, you are not then free to choose a less valuable alternative. Choices are made for the sake of an end or goal that the moral agent desires to achieve. It is that end or goal that motivates the choice." Steve Wofer replied,

It is a little more complex than that. Take a look at your sentence where you say, "...insofar as you decided to do it based on your values." I maintain that one can decide not to adhere to one's highest values in a context (e.g., I 'decide' to ignore my diet and have a piece of cake). You might respond that by'choosing' to eat cake instead of dieting is just valuing the pleasure of the cake higher than the getting to the diet's goal faster.
Correct.
I might not like the cake that much, but be feeling a little depressed and be having a subconscious urge to 'seek comfort' which many people do with some foods. So, in this example, haven't I just substituted among values I already have? Aren't I still choosing among values I have? What if I come up with another value - create one on the spot? What about rationalization, denial, repression, avoidance?

I would say that you're weighing two incompatible goals or desires, and deciding which one is the more valuable. I don't deny that there is such a thing as rationalization, denial, repression and avoidance, but I would argue that they too reflect an individual's highest values at the time he chooses them. Learning to recognize and avoid these kinds of disfunctional coping strategies is an important part of psychotherapy. To the extent that a person understands why they're disfunctional, he is less likely to engage in them. The point I am making, which seems to be lost on a good many of the respondents, is that, fundamentally, one does not choose one's ends or goals; one chooses for the sake of an end or goal. You seem to be arguing that one can actually choose the ends themselves through a sheer act of will. I don't see how that's possible. It would mean that one is literally choosing an alternative in the absence of any motivating value -- that one is choosing simply for the sake of choosing, with nothing motivating the choice. It won't do to reply that a motive is not a cause, not a necessitating factor. If it weren't, it wouldn't be a motive for choosing one alternative over another. One cannot be motivated to choose X over Y, and simultaneously motivated to choose Y over X. A motive is preferential and, therefore, decisive.

To understand the complexity of that small instant in time, just imagine a situation where 'will power' is needed. That situation dramatizes for us the struggle of how to focus. It makes the choosing mechanism more conscious - more 'visible'. Do I make my focus one of clarity or let it go fuzzy?

"Will power" is simply another name for the strength of one's resolve in the face of adversity. A person with strong will power simply values the goal enough to persevere against conflicting interests and desires.

Usually that is the real question - the one underlying the question of do I choose to pay the price reality asks or do I pretend that there is no price?
Or do I consider the price too high?
Or, do I change the priority of my two conflicting goals? Am I making a valid exception to my 'no cake' rule or giving in to a subconscious urge? These are the things that are behind that instant's decision of "cake or lose weight?"

Well, if one succumbed to a "subconscious urge," then one presumably considered satisfying the urge more desirable than staying on the diet, in which case, one will have judged the price to be paid for staying on the diet as simply too high and not worth the trouble.

This complexity tells us two things. One is that, yes, choosing involves our values, but that doesn't help explain this issue because we hold an almost infinite number of values - especially when we have the capacity to create new ones on the fly, modify old ones, change prioroities between them, create exceptions, mediate with feeling states and subconscious urges, and engage in a number of volitional shift in the kind and intensity of focus.
And all without doing so for the sake of any value. ;-)
Two, the complexity just makes it clear that an active agency is at work - controlling the values as much as being controlled by them. Saying that our values drive decisions does nothing to nail down determinism in this area since we created, ordered, accepted or rejected and focused (or not) on the values. Whatever that active, choosing agent is, it is a first cause of that cake being eaten or not eaten.

You're simply not "focusing" on the fact that all of these actions are done for the sake of an end or goal, which is their final cause.

I see it like a computer program that automatically responds to each call for a choice by automatically creating the choice that corresponds to the existing value structure - totally determined. BUT, before that choice is acted on it is examined and there is a tiny moment where the choice is evaluated and where the focus can be changed.

You say, "where the choice is evaluated," which means considered in light of your already existing values.

Most of the problems in accepting a concept of free will has to do with imagining a first agent. Things like billard balls don't get to initiate movement. It appears that there are no other first agents in the universe.

Well, according to Objectivism, all living organisms initiate their own movement, even the ones that don't possess free will. As I pointed out previously, a lion initiates the chase of a zebra, although it couldn't have done otherwise under the circumstances.

Added this with 'Edit': Going back and re-reading earlier posts I can see that Tibor addressed the first agent more eloquently,
"...the crucial difference between event-to-event causation and agent causation, namely, the former is supposedly but a daisy chain (or series) of events ineluctably moving ahead in time, while the latter depend on what the agent's capacities are."

As I stated earlier, determinism does not imply that causation is simply an ineluctable series of events divorced from the nature of the acting entities, even if the latter concept implies determinism. Event-to-event causation (if it means anything other than agent causation) is nonsensical. Agent causation is the only legitimate kind. An entity's action is determined by its nature -- by the kind of entity it is. As Rand observes, "Living organisms possess the power of self-initiated motion, which inanimate matter does not possess." They operate on a different principle of causation than inanimate matter does, because they have a different nature. But that doesn't mean that the action of living organisms is not necessary; it doesn't mean that a living organism could have acted differently under the same conditions. Agent causation and causal necessity are perfectly compatible concepts, as are self-initiated motion and causal necessity.

- Bill

Post 67

Monday, March 12, 2007 - 11:15pm

Thanks Bridget, good suggestion.

I would begin with this, what is the will? Not what is free will, but what is volition itself?

I would define will as the ability to act when one's actions are not determined or constrained. Volition is the capacity for underdetermined action. Let us say that we wish to cross a chasm, and there is only one practical means of crossing, a rope bridge. As we cross the bridge we have no choice as to whether to use it or not, so long as we take the act of crossing the bridge itself as given. But what if there are two paths, equally attractive. Will we sit and ponder each and find ourselves unable to act because while before there was only one solution, now there are two?

Buridan's proverbial ass starved to death, standing equidistant between to bales of hay, each equally enticing, and thus crippling his ability to chose from which to feed.

Volition is the ability to act when circumstances underdetermine our actions. Higher animals have volition, they are not the mindless puppets of external phenomena, because the eternal phenomena of the moment alone are not enough to guide action or to force action along one path rather than another. Bacteria avoid toxins, move toward food, attack or flee from enemies, hibernate or spore when certain conditions are met. These action are set responses to external phenomena. Bacteria are at the mercy of the weather. But if you fall into the gorilla cage, you may get mauled, or you may be lovingly protected and be carried to the zookeeper for your own protection by the silverback. Or maybe you will be ignored altogether. The Gorilla will chose what to do.

The crotchety New Englander croaks "Ya can't get theah from heah." Well, without volition, he's right.

Ted Keer

[edited for italic emphasis]

(Edited by Ted Keer on 3/13, 12:54pm)

Post 68

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 12:19am

Actually having free will, being self-determined, does mean that one could act differently in the very same circumstance. One could drive carefully or carelessly--it is up to the individual agent which he or she will do. That is what free will means. That is how human beings are different from, say, dogs or rocks. This is what the nature of their sort of consciousness makes possible and why there are so many different human ways to be, to act. All that variety of religious, political, and other type of belief cannot be explained if we must think just one way, if our thinking isn't free to start up or to remain idle, depending entirely on us (with some complexities entering when it comes to habit formation, etc.). But I am done with this now, since I have said much of it in my book, Initiative--Human Agency and Society (2000) and in the follow up discussions responding to reviewers and others. And this forum, while stimulating, does not really allow for definitive treatments.

Post 69

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 2:18am

Machan,

All that variety of religious, political, and other type of belief cannot be explained if we must think just one way, if our thinking isn't free to start up or to remain idle, depending entirely on us (with some complexities entering when it comes to habit formation, etc.).

"Just one way" is a switch of definitions. In the meaning of determinism, given a starting state, there can only be one next state. Taken another way, you could mean "we can only think one thing" such as that the sun revolves around the earth but not that the earth spins. A simple practically random number generator can come up with new information/ideas continually, and this is a deterministic process. I'm not claiming that we are as simple as practically random number generators. But if you see my point you will see that such a variety does not disprove determinism.

I would still like for you to provide an example where one does or thinks anything that is not determined by what one is and what one's surroundings are. Some kind of action that you perform, a decision made that you actually could have made differently at any point in time if replayed. It simply doesn't make sense to me. Why would you do something different the second time? What would cause the difference, if the starting states were the same? Is it some kind of random process? The reliance on the existence of random processes seems like the only possible way to explain the difference. Yet how does the existence of random events make your "free will" any more desirable or preferable?

Free will assumes people initiate some of what they do, are the first cause of such conduct, so they could have done otherwise without qualification

What is this process that determines whether they would perform such conduct or the otherwise? Is it a perfectly random selection? Or is it a logical process? Is not one's logical process a deterministic one? Deterministic, or random, are these not the only options? And how can random be considered more preferable to deterministic? Or even if somehow preferable, should we not be more considered about what is the Truth than what is preferable?

Post 70

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 7:29am

Dean,

Couldn't our deliberative decision processes be partly deterministic and partly random?

Say I become hungry and decide I want some ice cream, but can't decide whether I want chocolate or strawberry. I pull a quarter from my pocket and toss it, "heads-chocolate, tails-strawberry." I get heads, and my decision is made.

Can we make physical sense of the idea that I could have made another decision by getting tails? I have one suggestion. We should always specify how much predeterminism is meant in any elements of determinism we are considering in a putative situation of free will. I suggest that acts in which certain of the characteristic predeterminiation durations of the constituent deterministic physical processes become sufficiently close to zero, it becomes sensible to say that in the same situation, a different decision could have been made. In other words, if "same situation" is not a zero-duration time slice, but say, a time swath of 70 milliseconds, we might have "same situations" in which one could have decided otherwise even if the entry conditions at the beginning of the 70 milliseconds (which is only an instant to our consciousness) were perfectly identical.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is some elaboration of the idea of characteristic durations of predeterminisms in physical processes. This is from my essay "Volitional Synapses" in Objectivity V2N4 (1997). [The programers tell me the Objectivity Archives site will go live in three weeks; the journal will then be freely readable on line.]

“Let us paint a more realistic determinism, successively for inanimate objects, for living things, and for biological neural networks. . . .

“Every physical system—from elementary particle to dust particle to rock or river—has its own natural time scales at various levels of system. A fairly familiar characteristic time in fluids is typical time between molecular collisions, the mean free time, say. This time scale is called the kinetic scale. At atmospheric pressure, kinetic time for a hydrogen gas, for example, would be on the order of 10^-9 seconds. Well below that scale, at around 10^-12 seconds, in the same system, would be the characteristic time over which a collision occurs; the time from the initial molecule-molecule contact at the beginning of a collision to their final contact at the end of that collision. Far above the kinetic scale, at 10^-4 seconds, is the hydrodynamic time scale; the order of magnitude over which macroscopic changes in the thermodynamic characteristics of the gas occur. These time scales are not human impositions. They are not from any of our requirements for observation, measurement, or calculation. They are not cases of man being the measure(s) of things. Rather, these scales are simply there in the physical process.

“Particular collisions are occurring at some time t₀ in a hydrogen gas. At a time later by the amount of the hydrodynamic time interval, nearly all information, all trace, all ‘memory’, of those particular collisions at t₀ is gone. It is not that we are simply unable to find the traces. They have been truly rubbed out.

“So it is not the case, even in classical regimes, that the past is entirely specifiable from the present, and this circumstance is not at bottom a result of our ignorance nor a result of the finitude of our cognitions. . . . Yes, we may be assured that the present grew out of the past. . . . [Moreover,] the present is pregnant with the future [as Leibniz liked to put it]. Though the present contains the future, that does not—should not—mean that the future, to arbitrary extent, is in every way specifiable out of the present any more than the present is [in every way] specifiable out of the past arbitrarily far back.

“In what way is physical determinism here softened? By the denial of arbitrarily remote predeterminism. Nature has its own time limits beyond which a given predeterminism does not extend."

Post 71

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 10:05am

Stephen Boydstun,

Just because we cannot perfectly predict the future, nor perfectly decipher what the past was like, it does not follow that things are not deterministic. I think what the author is trying to show is that no real intelligent being can predict or determine the future such as the bible says, which I completely agree with. Why? Because lets say you tried to make a machine that attempted to predict the future. It would have to know everything about the current state of Reality (all sub-atomic particle positions, velocities, etc), and then go through an algorithm that matched what reality did. It would have to use parts of Reality to store the current state of Reality. How could it store all of Reality's information? How could it measure all of Reality's information? Impossible, impossible.

I agree that there very well may be random processes, and random processes in our mental process. If not, there are surely practically random processes. I was wrong earlier when I suggested that a logical mental process was a deterministic one, surely it could include random selections of data and random logical operations.

Post 72

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 10:33am

Try this:
Snap the fingers of your left hand, and then those of your right, then choose either to:

1) continue snapping both
2) continue snapping one
3) alternatively snap them evenly
4) alternatively snap them unevenly
5) make up a tune with your snaps
6) get up and tap dance to your 'tune of snaps'
7) stop this snapping business altogether

Change what you do at will.

Animals can't do that. And the reason that they can't, isn't just because of physical differences (because of lacking manual dexterity, for instance). The reason that they can't engage in this kind of experiment -- is because they aren't "free" to follow such underdetermined directions (involving moment-to-moment choice-making). Sometimes animals engage in seemingly-sporadic behavior, but they don't consciously "will" themselves to do that -- they're just getting distracted. Humans can "will" sporadic behavior from themselves -- and they can "choose" to become intentionally distracted as part of an experiment.

For those who choose to try it out, this 2-minute experiment is an exercise of your free will.

Ed

Post 73

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 12:52pm

Will, Free Will, and the Volition of Higher Animals

Tibor, I can understand if you are tired ofthis debate, especially because the concepts involved are used so equivocally by other parties. I do intend to put your book on my future reading list.

I must disagree that simply stating that (1) "One could do X or could do ~X or could do Y." in itself is a valid argument without a lot of other work (which you may have done) but which I am not aware of anyone having done.

I would raise three points:

(a) We cannot replay the past, so proposition (1) above may be correct, but we cannot test it. So some other proof is necessary. (The only proofs I know are epistemological/ethical.) I hope that a physical or ontological explanation of volition is possible, but I am not yet aware of one that is accepted in the way Newton and Darwin's discoveries are. I would say that we are at the pre-pre-scientific level in this matter.

(b) "Will" and "Free Will" are separate matters. Higher animals do have will, or volition - they do act in ways that are not strictly determined by their circumstances. That is, a dog can stay lying on the couch, can go look for its master, or can scratch at the door to be left out, none of which is absolutely determined by anything external to the dog (other than his awareness of the master, the door, etc). The dog does not use higher-level concepts to deliberate about the options, but the option chosen is caused internally by the dog - unlike, again, the tropisms of plants and bacteria where no volition is involved, only responses to external stimuli. Hence, higher animals, as the cause of their own optional actions, are volitional beings. They have will, but not free will.

(c) Humans, and only humans, have free will. Our will is free in the sense that we consciously chose whether to deliberate or not to deliberate before we act, and our actions are again not constrained except by force. If I sign a contract without duress, it is an act of free will. If someone holds a gun to my head, I still use volition to move my hand, but we do not say that I signed the contract then of my free will, we say that it was coerced. Voluntary muscles were used, but the act was not a free act. Freedom is a moral concept. Volition is an ontological form of causation.

Again, I repeat my disappointment that while I have been criticized as someone who makes category mistakes and have been criticized for arguments I have not made, I have not been addressed personally with valid criticisms, and my restatements have not been acknowledged. You quote my words and I explain. I quote your words, you argue ex silentio and withdraw. If my posts are beneath contempt, a brief personal email would suffice to notify me not to waste my time. It is my habit to address the posts of others directed to me at length or at least in private, and while I do not demand it, I do desire the same courtesy.

Ted Keer

Post 74

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 10:21pm

Everybody is chiming in here -- but there doesn't seem to be any clear discussion going on.

The signal-to-noise ratio seems too low. It kind of reminds me of a Monty Python movie or something -- where everyone's talking AT each other instead of WITH each other; being sure to be heard, even if not understood. Of course, I'm as guilty of this as anyone in the thread, if not more so.

Heck, I mean, I was just about to chime in again with the snide retort to Bill that "value," by its very definition (a thing that we act for!), adds nothing to the discussion of the freedom (or determined-ness) of the human will.

For instance, it doesn't speak to an analysis of the extent that environment "determines" behavior in a life-form, whether that extent predominates (as it does in lower life forms), or whether non-environmental factors (genetic, philosophical, psychological) predominate over environmental factors, either wholly or merely in part -- in determining a given being's behavior. It just says that there are these things (values) that we act for, and that we will characteristically act for them.

Oh geez [noticing own post], I ended up doing what it was that I started-off railing against! Oh well, at least I can always claim -- to the opposition, at least -- that my behavior was "determined" to come out that way!

Determinism is never having to say you're sorry.

;-)

Ed

Post 75

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 10:45pm

In Post 53, Ted wrote,

If you deny free will, then why complain if I punch you?

I can complain that you shouldn't have done it, even if you thought you were justified. Let's say that you thought I was the guy who raped your sister (even if I wasn't), and that you thought I had it coming. Given your outrage and the fact that you thought I deserved it, could you have refrained from hitting me? Let's say you couldn't, because you were so incensed, you didn't give it a second's thought. I can still complain, on the grounds that you shouldn't have taken justice into your own hands, even if you thought you were justified.

Suppose a Christian votes to outlaw gay marriage, because he sincerely believes that it's wrong and a violation of God's laws. Given his religious convictions, he could not have voted otherwise. but you can still object to his action -- you can still judge it as immoral and a violation of your rights. Determinism is not incompatible with moral offense.

- Bill

Post 76

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 11:34pm

In post #75 Bill writes:

> Suppose a Christian votes to outlaw gay marriage, because he
> sincerely believes that it's wrong and a violation of God's
> laws. Given his religious convictions, he could not have
> voted otherwise.

Bill, you keep asserting this, but where do you prove it or even provide some hint as to why this view might be plausible in the face of overwhelming daily experience to the contrary? I suggest that the Christian's religious convictions have no control over his or her actions. One's convictions on a particular subject (for example one's beliefs about the appropriateness of gay marriage) are just passive thoughts inside ones head. Do you disagree? Do you think that just having these thought automatically compels one's body into action? And if so, which action? To pull the lever on a voting machine? To publically denounce gay people where ever they may be found? To beat someone if they are discovered to be gay? And if so, how do you account for the different types of behavior exhibited by people who share the same basic set of convictions? I argue that it takes another independent set of decisions to propel someone into action, even in service of what may be deeply held convictions. This is the reason that we do not jail people for their beliefs, but only for their actions. But this would make no sense if one's actions were an automatic response to one's beliefs.

> but you can still object to his action -- you can still
> judge it as immoral and a violation of your rights.
> Determinism is not incompatible with moral offense.

Yes, you can object, but how can you meaningfully object? What does a judgment of "immoral" mean in this context? What are "rights" in this context? Honestly, I am completely at a loss to understand this statement of yours given the presumption of determinism as you describe it.

Bill, I'm not trying to be insulting. I have great respect for your intellect and agree with your viewpoint on many topics. But on the issue of free will vs. determinism I find myself unable to comprehend any cogent form of argument being presented here.

Regards,
--
Jeff
(Edited by C. Jeffery Small
on 3/14, 12:46am)

Post 77

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - 5:49am

Ted, you wrote in #12:

“The freedom of the will, while perplexing, is only of philosophical importance because we are ethical creatures.”

Don’t you think it is also of philosophic importance because we are knowledge-seeking creatures? In trying to solve a problem or improve our beliefs, our free creative choices as to which avenues to investigate would seem to be deeply important.

Ronald Merrill argued in Axioms: The Eightfold Way that free will is an epistemological axiom. Do you think that is correct? If it were an epistemological axiom, would it also need to be introduced a second time as an ethical axiom, perhaps with a different, but related meaning?

Ron’s essay was first published in Objectivity (1995). My abstract for the essay is below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ABSTRACT

“Axioms: The Eightfold Way” by Ronald E. Merrill

Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 1–15

Merrill proposes a new organization of Ayn Rand’s philosophical axioms, which were three: Existence, Consciousness, and Identity. In the new organization, there are eight axioms. There are three logical axioms, which identify the rules of reasoning; three metaphysical axioms, which root our knowledge of reality; and two epistemological axioms, which are presumed when we assert anything to be known.

Merrill’s logical axioms are (i) the law of excluded middle, (ii) the law of non-contradiction, and (iii) the law of truth preservation by double negation. His metaphysical axioms are (iv) existence exists, (v) existence is subject to the laws of logic, and (vi) change is subject to the laws of logic. His epistemological axioms are that (vii) we have consciousness of existence and (viii) we have free will.

Rand’s axiom of Existence is in (iv), her axiom of Identity is in (v), and her axiom of Consciousness is in (vii). Merrill’s axiom (vi) is Rand’s law of causality. Merrill stresses the importance of expressing Rand’s three axiomatic concepts in propositions, his axiomatic propositions. He criticizes the treatment of the law of causality and the reality of human free will as “corollaries” of Rand’s axioms.

Post 78

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - 6:25am

Here's the full article......

http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2/RonMerrillArchive/Articles/AxiomsTheEightfoldWay.htm

Post 79

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - 4:15pm