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Wednesday
April 25, 2007

Free Will or Not? by Tibor R. Machan

Sure enough, some topics resurface quite naturally in the wake of certain types of events. The Virginia Tech massacre has brought out the gun control champions, as well as those who anticipate their histrionics and warn that banning guns can do more harm than good in just such circumstances. Also, the issue of whether perpetrators of such heinous acts are helpless or in fact possess free will and are therefore responsible for their actions has come up (notably in a recent missive by New York Times columnist David Brooks.) (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (112 messages)

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 5:03am

Of course, water can be of value to someone without his or her knowing it. But if one claims that the value of water is motivating someone to act in certain ways, given that actions are behavior guided by judgments (cognitions), without being aware of its (water's) value, such motivation--providing a reason for--wouldn't be possible. (Here is where some believe there are pre-conceptual drives, some kind of biological, physiological, or genetic impulses or compulsions causing people to behaver in certain ways, akin to how reflexes operate. But these do not produce actions.)

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 11:19am

An infant has the power of sensory-perception. If he's held by his mother after birth, he experiences that fact. He doesn't have to think "My mom is holding me, and this is good for me" in order for him to hold that as a value. He just feels it. And the action the value causes is his crying when he doesn't have it.

I think some Objectivists believe values *necessarily* are the result of a conceptual process. This isn't true. A person can hold something as a value without any conceptual identification/integration whatever. Such a value is one based on a purely emotional response to something one experiences. Some people do things that most people know are clearly destructive to human well-being, precisely because their values aren't the result of thinking.

AR's ethics acknowledges that people's values don't have to have a rational basis; that basis can be purely emotional (ie, based on whim). Moreover, she knew such values may contradict, on a metaphysical level, that which is in one's self-interest as a human being. That's why she termed her ethics rational egoism as opposed to just egoism.

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 12:50pm

Values are a kind of fact--they are facts about what will benefit something. So milk is a fact--there is milk--that is a value--it benefits babies. A fact such as that it is Sunday, however, is a period of time, not a value, not at least in and of itself. No one need to know about this for it to be so. Objectivists or anyone else can acknowledge that there are facts, some of them values, that simply are, whether anyone knows them or not. However, when the fact that it is Sunday becomes a reason for doing something, like having a picnic, that requires that the fact of Sunday be known. Or if the value of milk becomes a reason for shopping for it in a grocery store, then that value has to be known as a value. So when someone states that George did something because of the value of X, that implies that George became aware of the value of X and that became his reason for doing something. At that point, knowledge of the value became necessary.

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 1:01pm

In post #19 Jon Trager wrote:

> You don't need to hold a value conceptually for it to be a value to you. You only need to desire to
> gain or keep it. Being held by its mother is a value to an infant, and so is a clean diaper, edible
> food, etc. But those things are obviously not based on any conceptual convictions. They're just things
> infants want, evidenced by the fact they cry when they don't have such things and stop when they do.

Jon:

I believe that this distinction goes a long way to explaining the differences you and I have in this discussion on free-will. Here, you explicitly state that values are (or at least can be) non-conceptual in nature. I disagree and this leads me back to one of my original criticisms which is that holding this view makes it impossible to define what "values" are other than after the fact by referring back to some particular action. And without a solid metaphysical definition of what values are, we cannot have a cogent discussion about the nature of free-will and its relationship to those values.

Note that Rand's formulation that "A value is that which one acts to gain or keep" is also an empirical (or as Joe Roland's stated it: a descriptive) definition and this is precisely why I have been arguing that it is really only useful in an ethical context but inadequate in a metaphysical discussion about the nature of volition.

When a baby is hungry and cries you seem to be saying that it values food and therefore, in order to gain food, it acts in the only way open to it by crying. As Tibor points out in posts #15 and #20, I do not think this is a use of the terms "value" and "action" that are appropriate in a discussion of free-will. When hungry, the baby experiences discomfort. When this discomfort increases to a sufficient level, the baby responds by crying. But this chain of events, including the act of crying is a physiological response mechanism. This example is much like Rand's discussion of a sunflower being goal directed in tracking the sun's movement. Here, her use of the term "goal directed" is metaphorical only and says nothing about the nature of human goal formation. In the same way, describing a baby's crying as an action in service of a value might be OK in a metaphorical sense, but it tells us nothing about the nature of actual human values.

Without conceptual awareness of what hunger is and an understanding of the relationship between hunger and food, there is no knowledge. Consequently, there is no value, no possibility of a choice, and therefore no issue of free-will - which is ultimately what we are discussing here. Until we come to an agreement on a better definition of "value", I believe these disagreements will continue.

In post #20 Tibor wrote:

> Here is where some believe there are pre-conceptual drives, some kind of biological, physiological,
> or genetic impulses or compulsions causing people to behaver in certain ways, akin to how reflexes
> operate. But these do not produce actions.

Tibor, I'm confused by your last sentence. What do you mean when you say that physiological processes do not produce actions? Clearly, there are many biological processes (heart beat, etc.) that are actions outside of conceptual control. I suggest that a baby crying is also an automatic physiological response. This is so elemental that I figure I must not be getting your point, so could you please elaborate.

With regard to the issue of initial choices, it seems to me that there are many capabilities that function automatically when we are first born, over which we later learn to exercise voluntary control. Tibor already mentioned the "sucking reflex" which is later replaced by the ability to decide whether and when to suck. I believe the same is true for the focusing of our eyes as well as our ability to raise or lower our level of mental focus. When a baby is born, they soon are able to focus on objects in their environment. I do not believe that at this stage a baby has "learned" to focus in any meaningful sense of the term. Objects move into and out of the field of awareness and the focusing of them is initially a physiological/perceptual process just like what occurs in any other animal. Over time, as our minds move from tabula rasa to be filled with content, a human gradually transitions to the state of being able to consciously focus one's eyes at will. This only happens because the mind has acquired sufficient conceptual content to formulate knowledge about the relationship between the focusing of one's eyes and the resulting ability to see more clearly. I would be very surprised to hear that non-conceptual animals such as my dog have the ability to actively control the defocusing of their eyes. I think that for them, the process of focusing remains automatic.

I think the same thing is true about our ability to focus our mental awareness. When born, we have the ability of awareness automatically functioning at a nominal state. It is because of this that, as with other animals, we are able to begin to acquire perceptual mental content as we interact with our environment. This is how a dog learns to walk down stairs without falling or not run into the glass patio door. The focusing/defocusing mechanism operates automatically for a newborn. It ratchets down when the baby is tired and it jumps back to it's nominal level when the baby becomes active. In humans, as perceptual content is acquired it is also being further processed by the conceptual mechanism of our brain and conceptual content is formed. As this process continues we eventually reach some threshold level of knowledge which results in the ability to formulate rudimentary values and goals. As this happens we begin to exercise willful control over certain biological processes including the ability to direct, raise and lower our mental focus.

Clearly, actions we do not choose, such as our heart beating, are not motivated - they just occur as part of our biological nature. I suggest that the same thing is true regarding our conceptual faculties, and our actions. When born, human babies act by crying when uncomfortable, laugh when tickled, focus their eyes when something comes into the field of view, and process perceptual and conceptual mental content - all automatically, free from any meaningful choices. These actions are motivated by physiological responses to internal pleasure/pain stimuli or in response to external environmental factors, but are NOT motivated by anything that could reasonably be called a "value", as there is no question of choice in play. As we acquire conceptual knowledge, we begin to formulate the concepts of "good" and "bad". From here we are able to develop higher level concepts known a "values" which embody this more rudimentary knowledge of good and bad insofar as it relates to our well-being. We then construct a higher class of concepts called "goals" which codify how values can be achieved through specific actions. These goals motivate us to learn how to manipulate aspects of reality including our own capabilities. This is what leads to the effort to learn to consciously focus one's eyes as well as one's awareness. These new found abilities are so powerful and useful that most of us learn to practice them rigorously until they become second-nature. Eventually, we lose sight of the fact that these faculties were once automatic.

Through considerable practice, certain people have learned to willfully control the speed of their heart beat. However, I have never heard of anyone being able to stop their heart altogether or will it to fribulate. That is because this is a biological process which ultimately remains under control of the body. We can influence these physiological processes but cannot bypass them altogether. The same is true of our mental focus. We can willfully influence it up or down and point it is a particular direction, but we can't shut it off altogether. It is just another biological aspect of our being. Therefore, I do not see the issue of "initial choice" as any sort of problem. There is no need to postulate a magic moment when value-motivated action is jump-started, because it doesn't happen. We simply transition gradually from a state of automated actions to one where we exercise willful control as our conceptual content accumulates.

Regards,
--
Jeff

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 2:59pm

The term "value" can be used in different senses, but on an Objectivist list, it is well to bear in mind Rand's concept of value. For Rand, all living entities, not just human beings, have values. As she notes in her essay, "The Objectivist Ethics,"

Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism's life.... In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts or reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. (VOS, pp. 16, 17)

Or, as Nathaniel Branden puts it in his book Who Is Ayn Rand, "A value is an object of an action." (p. 21)

- Bill

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 3:49pm

I'd like to revisit the determinism-is-self-defeating argument in order to address what I think may be the reason for the argument's appeal. I used to subscribe to the argument myself, until I spotted its fallacy.

What I think is behind its appeal is the idea that if one is determined, then something other than one's own judgment is determining the content of one's ideas, which is why the argument stresses the importance of "independence" from antecedent causes in the formation of one's beliefs and conclusions. Obviously, if something other than one's own judgment is responsible for one's conclusions, then one cannot know whether those conclusions are true or false, since one's own judgment was not the source of their acceptance. One "had" to adopt the ideas one did; one wasn't "free" to evaluate them on one's own and to accept or reject them based upon that evaluation.

But observe that if one accepts an idea as true based on one's own judgment, it is because one believes that the idea corresponds to reality. In so believing, one is not free to reject the idea in favor of an alternative view that one believes is at variance with reality. The process of accepting or rejecting an idea is thus not free, in any case, but is determined by one's understanding (or misunderstanding) of the idea's relationship to reality.

To be sure, one can evade the evidence for a particular idea, but if one's capacity for evasion impugns the trustworthiness of one's conclusions, it does so whether the evasion is determined or freely chosen. How does a person know that his conclusions are not due to evasion or intellectual dishonesty? The only way he can know it is by honest introspection. If such introspection is sufficient to confirm his intellectual honesty when he is free, it is sufficient to confirm it when he is determined.

In short, whether a person is determined or free has no bearing on the reliability of his conclusions, so long as those conclusions result from a sound, unbiased evaluation of the evidence.

- Bill

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 7:47pm

The so called refutation of the argument for free will that's based on determinism's self-refutation is flawed in part because it mixes concepts that presuppose free will--"honesty," "judgment," and so forth--with concepts that do not--e.g., "belief." This mixture disguises the fact that conclusions cannot be reached if one is determined to "reach" them. Whether reality is being tracked by one's judgment depends on whether one is free to divorce oneself from determinants that push one to reach a conclusion rather than others (exactly as we resist conclusions based on prejudices). There just is no way out of one's having to reach the conclusion one embraces. If so, then the conclusion is on the same footing as others so reached and there is no way to establish which tracks reality, which doesn't--that too must be embraced because of the forces that work on one's mind. It seems this is escaped because the fallacy of the stolen concept is committed by invoking concepts that presuppose mental freedom but are used to reject such freedom.

Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 8:00pm

In Post 24 Bill writes:

> Or, as Nathaniel Branden puts it in his book Who Is Ayn Rand, "A value is an object of an action."

Bill:

A value may be an object of an action (I think that that is imprecise, but ultimately true) but that statement is not a definition of "value". Once again, you bolster the criticism I make above. You cannot define a value after the fact by observing and then referring to some specific action. An action may help in identifying a related value, but it does not define the nature of what a value is! And this is something you have consistently failed to do.

Referring back to your Rand quote, consider a plant which is a living organism. In general, a plant does engage in a process of self-sustaining action. But does the plant value its life? Does it choose its actions? Of course not. Without conceptual consciousness there can be no concept of anything including "life" and there is no faculty to do the "valuing". The plant's actions are not motivated by anything that can properly be called a value. The plant simply responds in an automatic way to stimuli. If it responds in a useful way it will survive; if not, it perishes. It is only a human mind, viewing the nature of the plant's continuing existence within it's environment, that can ascribe the concept of "value" to the plant's life and evaluate the relationship of its actions to its survival. To say, as Rand does, that a plant's actions are goal directed towards a value, is to speak very metaphorically. In a way, it anthropomorphizes the plant.

Values are an ethical concept and apply only where choices of action resulting from an evaluation are possible. Since a plant is incapable of choosing between alternative courses of actions, then values cannot apply to it. However, your belief that humans really do not have a free choice when faced with alternatives actually reduces us, in a way, to the state of a plant. You seem to be asserting that just like the plant, at a given point in time, we are necessitated to act in one particular way in response to stimuli and any apparent "choices" we make are just an illusion since those "choices" were determined as well. The fact that some of that stimuli happens to be the content of our mind (our knowledge and values) is only a technical detail. Do you agree with this characterization or am I misrepresenting you here? Maybe you could tie this back to my question from post #14. I am very curious to hear you analysis of the four minute decision making process I describe in my example.

Regards,
--
Jeff
(Edited by C. Jeffery Small
on 4/29, 8:05pm)

Monday, April 30, 2007 - 11:40pm

The so called refutation of the argument for free will that's based on determinism's self-refutation is flawed in part because it mixes concepts that presuppose free will--"honesty," "judgment," and so forth--with concepts that do not--e.g., "belief."

Honesty presuppose free will? Why can't one's adherence to the virtue of honesty be determined by one's appreciation of its value? Judgment presupposes free will? Why can't one's judgment be determined by one's understanding of the evidence? Ask yourself whether or not you're free to believe in socialism if you're convinced that capitalism is superior, or free to believe in God if you're convinced that atheism is true, or free to believe in determinism if you're convinced that man has free will? I think you'll find that such freedom is impossible. If you're convinced that an idea is true, you can't freely choose to believe that it's false.

This mixture disguises the fact that conclusions cannot be reached if one is determined to "reach" them.

On the contrary, one's conclusions are indeed determined; they're determined by one's judgment -- by one's understanding of the evidence.

Whether reality is being tracked by one's judgment depends on whether one is free to divorce oneself from determinants that push one to reach a conclusion rather than others (exactly as we resist conclusions based on prejudices).

First of all, it is not at all clear that people who hold prejudiced conclusions are aware of it. More than likely, they're not, for if they were, they'd regard them as unreliable and wouldn't hold them as bona fide conclusions.

But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that it is possible to arrive at conclusions that one knows are biased or prejudiced. Even so, whether or not "reality is being tracked by one's judgment" depends not on whether or not one is free to resist biased conclusions, but on whether or not one actually does resist them. If one is free to resist them, then one is also free to indulge them; therefore, such freedom by itself is insufficient to guarantee the objectivity and reliability of one's conclusions. What would matter for the reliability of one's conclusions is whether or not one does in fact resist such bias, not simply whether or not one is free to resist it. And if one can know introspectively that one has resisted it, then it matters not whether such resistance was freely chosen or determined. In either case, one's conclusions can be recognized objective and reliable.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 5/01, 12:57am)

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - 12:51am

Jeff,

To say that a value is an object of an action is simply to say that if an organism acts for the sake of a goal, the organism can be said to value it. The goal is the object of its action, and is valued by the organism for that very reason. As Rand uses the term "value," it is a very broad abstraction that is intended to apply to all living organisms. Recall her statement that "the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life." You write,

Referring back to your Rand quote, consider a plant which is a living organism. In general, a plant does engage in a process of self-sustaining action. But does the plant value its life?
According to Objectivism, it does, because it acts "to gain and keep it."
Does it choose its actions? Of course not. Without conceptual consciousness there can be no concept of anything including "life" and there is no faculty to do the "valuing". The plant's actions are not motivated by anything that can properly be called a value. The plant simply responds in an automatic way to stimuli. If it responds in a useful way it will survive; if not, it perishes. It is only a human mind, viewing the nature of the plant's continuing existence within it's environment, that can ascribe the concept of "value" to the plant's life and evaluate the relationship of its actions to its survival. To say, as Rand does, that a plant's actions are goal directed towards a value, is to speak very metaphorically. In a way, it anthropomorphizes the plant.

Rand is not speaking metaphorically or anthropormorphizing a plant. She makes a distinction between "goal" and "purpose." She would agree that plants don't act for what can properly be called a "purpose." The latter concept pertains only to a consciousness. But she does apply the concept of a "goal" to the actions of plants. She explains, "I use the term 'goal-directed,' in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism's life." (VOS, p. 16)

Referring to a plant, you write, "Does it choose its actions? Of course not. Without conceptual consciousness there can be no concept of anything including 'life' and there is no faculty to do the 'valuing'." Without a conceptual consciousness, there is no concept of value, but that doesn't mean that there is no value. At the very least, you ought to recognize that the lower animals act for the sake of values. My cat values her food when she is hungry; she values being petted when she purrs. Animals are goal directed, just like human beings, and have some of the same values. Of course, they don't conceptualize them, but that doesn't mean that they don't have them.

Values are an ethical concept and apply only where choices of action resulting from an evaluation are possible.

Ethics are a code of values accepted by choice, but values are not restricted to ethics. There are non-ethical values as well. In fact, ethical values ultimately depend on non-ethical ones, because ethics is simply a means to an end -- a means to an ultimate value. It only makes sense to say that one "ought" to do X, if one wants to achieve Y. There is no such thing as a legitimate categorical imperative. All imperatives are conditional.

However, your belief that humans really do not have a free choice when faced with alternatives actually reduces us, in a way, to the state of a plant. You seem to be asserting that just like the plant, at a given point in time, we are necessitated to act in one particular way in response to stimuli and any apparent "choices" we make are just an illusion since those "choices" were determined as well.

A choice that is necessitated by a person's values is not an illusion. It's a real choice. It doesn't follow that if I couldn't have chosen to vote for the socialist candidate (because I disagreed with his politics), I therefore didn't "choose" to vote for the capitalist. When I cast my vote for the capitalist candidate, I made a real choice (not an illusory one), even though I could not, under the circumstances, have voted differently. We call it a "choice," because I could have voted differently if I had wanted to. Nothing or no one would have stopped me. But my voting for the capitalist candidate was not simply a response to stimuli; it's an action that was determined by my conceptual values.

The fact that some of that stimuli happens to be the content of our mind (our knowledge and values) is only a technical detail. Do you agree with this characterization or am I misrepresenting you here?

Yes, I disagree with it. This is not a correct use of the term "stimuli." You complain about my use of the term "value" being too broad, but your use of the term "stimuli" is itself unduly broad.

Maybe you could tie this back to my question from post #14. I am very curious to hear you analysis of the four minute decision making process I describe in my example.

We can often vacillate in our decision-making process as we come to consider more information, but that doesn't mean that we aren't weighing the relative values of the alternatives confronting us. It doesn't mean that our decision isn't determined, in the final analysis, by our evaluation of their respective merits, nor that the decision is ultimately arbitrary -- i.e., not decisively motivated by that evaluation.

- Bill

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - 2:08pm

Jeff: "I believe that this distinction goes a long way to explaining the differences you [Jon] and I have in this discussion on free-will. Here, you explicitly state that values are (or at least can be) non-conceptual in nature."

Bill addresses this when he writes: "Without a conceptual consciousness, there is no concept of value, but that doesn't mean that there is no value. At the very least, you ought to recognize that the lower animals act for the sake of values....Of course, they don't conceptualize them, but that doesn't mean that they don't have them."

I agree with this statement. An animal or an infant can't think "I value X," but an animal or an infant can value X. Values don't exist only among conceptual beings; they exist only among living beings.

The difference, of course, is that an animal's values are already programmed at birth. A human's values aren't. That's why humans need an explicit code of values (ethics) to guide their actions. It's also why each man should check his values conceptually to see whether they correspond to reality (including one's own nature as a man).

Friday, May 4, 2007 - 5:37am

Bill,

Why can't one's adherence to the virtue of honesty be determined by one's appreciation of its value?

The more accurate descriptive here is to speak of one's chosen adherence to the virtue of honesty (because of one's choosing to value it, after evaluating it among its alternatives). In short, Bill, you beg big questions.

Judgment presupposes free will? Why can't one's judgment be determined by one's understanding of the evidence?

It can, but that doesn't bolster your point. Again, there's big question begging in that.

Ask yourself whether or not you're free to believe in socialism if you're convinced that capitalism is superior, or free to believe in God if you're convinced that atheism is true, or free to believe in determinism if you're convinced that man has free will?

Bill, what you are talking about is a will that is somehow free from reality -- a will that can choose anything, regardless of anything. This concept -- of a will without any nature -- is absurd. In attacking this concept -- of wills that can choose anything, no matter what -- you bring down a straw man (but do NOT make a dent in the actual free will argument -- the one which involves identity and causality).

I think you'll find that such freedom is impossible. If you're convinced that an idea is true, you can't freely choose to believe that it's false.

Big deal (see above).

Ed

Friday, May 4, 2007 - 5:56am

Bill,

But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that it is possible to arrive at conclusions that one knows are biased or prejudiced.

But that's actually a counter-factual (and, therefore, inappropriate to this discussion of what's factually true about man). One never, objectively, arrives at biased conclusions.

Even so, whether or not "reality is being tracked by one's judgment" depends not on whether or not one is free to resist biased conclusions, but on whether or not one actually does resist them.

And another way to use this same logic is to say that whether the chicken crosses the road depends not on whether or not the chicken is free to cross the road, but on whether or not the chicken crosses the road. Which might sound like an argument (for something) but it isn't.

If one is free to resist them, then one is also free to indulge them; therefore, such freedom by itself is insufficient to guarantee the objectivity and reliability of one's conclusions. What would matter for the reliability of one's conclusions is whether or not one does in fact resist such bias, not simply whether or not one is free to resist it.

The question is of what matters for the reliability of one's conclusions. Now, there's 2 opposing ways to view human nature, pre-determined or adapting. In the pre-determined view, folks are going to do what they are going to do (no matter what). In the adapting view (the one that adopts free will), folks learn to do things better than they did before. And the inescapable reason that these folks change their behavior (for the better) -- is because they were free to; based on personal evaluation of new evidence (rather than being pre-determined to "choose" one way, regardless of said evidence).

Incidentally, when they choose better ways to do things, we hail them (as we ought). And when they refrain from choosing better ways to do things (even when better ways are known), we deride them for choosing that substandard behavior. We're free to choose among ways to do things, but we're not free to choose what the consequences of our behavior will be -- and that has absolutely no bearing on the issue of free will.

Ed

Friday, May 4, 2007 - 9:45am

Ed wrote:

> Bill, what you are talking about is a will that is somehow free from reality -- a will that
> can choose anything, regardless of anything. This concept -- of a will without any nature --
> is absurd. In attacking this concept -- of wills that can choose anything, no matter what --
> you bring down a straw man (but do NOT make a dent in the actual free will argument --
> the one which involves identity and causality).

Excellent observation Ed. I do not know why it took me so long to truly understand Bill's position, but it finally became clear to me in his post #29 that he equates free will with the ability to act in a completely arbitrary manner, and all of his arguments are based upon this foundation. If there is some influencing factor - any influence at all - then he labels the choice as determined by that influence. But so far as I can see, he is debating with himself on this point as no one else is arguing that free-will is equivalent to arbitrary decision making - something that would be a contradiction in its own terms, since the term "decision" itself implies a mental process based upon some deciding factor.

Bill, when you write:

> When I cast my vote for the capitalist candidate, I made a real choice (not an illusory one),
> even though I could not, under the circumstances,have voted differently.

I have no idea what you mean by the phrase "real choice" in your statement. What is a choice when there are no alternatives?
--
Jeff

Saturday, May 5, 2007 - 8:50am

Alasdair MacIntyre once said that you successfully supercede a philosophical error when you can, through the premises held by your opponent, show how it is that they must arrive at the erroneous conclusion they did. I'm going to try that method here.

One of the more useful definitions of the "Will" is "intellectual appetite." It originated with either Aristotle or Aquinas (I think it was Aquinas, actually) and was propagated by Mortimer Adler. Bill's notion of Will seems to be pure appetite (pure want, desire, or whim), something akin to what Freud called the Id. Notice how he repeats phrases akin to "whatever you do, you do it because you had first wanted, or valued, to do it").

And, in keeping with this notion of what the Will must be, any influence on it (such as the influence of intellectual deliberation), makes that Will unfree. As Bill argues, once you've intellectually identified the superiority of Capitalism for your well-being, you seem to have lost a "freedom" somewhere (in choosing Socialism, Communism, Fascism, or outright and explicit Dictatorship -- at the next voting polls).

In keeping the Intellect outside of the Will (instead of integrating them as they are in the more refined definition above), Bill arrives at his conclusions because he has arbitrarily pit the Intellect against the Will -- but that's using a stolen concept (Bill's Will is a floating abstraction, severed from its conceptual roots and then re-utilized during an otherwise-logical discourse).

If you think the way Bill does about Will, then you MUST come to his conclusions (to avoid contradiction after that initial conceptual severing of the Will from the Intellect).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/05, 11:46am)

Saturday, May 5, 2007 - 12:12pm

In order to turbo-charge the efficacy of this debate, I am going to give Bill -- and every other interested party -- exactly 2 multiple choice questions (I'm a teacher, by nature, so please bear with me) ...

1) The "freedom" in the Free Will Problem debate is properly ascribed to

A) the will
B) the agent
C) actions
D) choices
E) deliberations

2) The essential characteristic (the conceptual common denominator) of freedom in this debate is that it always involves

A) indifference (an initial indifference between alternative courses of action)
B) spontaneity (doing "what you felt like doing" -- at the time)
C) control (ability to perform or refrain from an act, based on one's underlying intentions)
D) autonomy (a kind of self-determination influenced by built character, higher values, informed reason, etc)
E) arbitrariness (basically: "chance" -- i.e., a complete severance from reality)

[Adapted from Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, free will problem, p326-7]

It may even be possible to answer these answers for others in this thread (because their lines of reasoning preclude various alternative answers to these questions) ...

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/05, 12:16pm)

Sunday, May 6, 2007 - 10:53am

Here's a question. Why is it that "the dispute [over free will] has been around for ages", as Dr Machan points out? Why is the whole issue so bloody hard? It does seem to be even more intractable than most other traditional philosophical debates - when discussing the existence of God, or ethics, people may frequently be as stubborn as the least accommodating mules, but at least they seem to understand each other and to be reasonably clear on what they're trying to say. Wheras, most of the time, I admit that I have little idea what any given person (especially professional philosophers) means when they assert that they believe, or do not believe, in "free will". I understand all of the various meanings of the terms used in the debate and I've grasped all of the major positions that people have taken, it's just that most of the time, faced with any given person, it's very unclear which sense of the words they are using, or even that they recognise that they are ambiguous at all. What is it about free will that makes us tie ourselves in knots?

Sunday, May 6, 2007 - 10:59am

It's very simple and straightforward for some of us - it's the rest of them that have the problem.....;-)

Monday, May 7, 2007 - 7:50am

Maybe to answer this question one needs to know who is asking it. I don't have the same problem with free will--seems a no-brainer at a certain level; Mozart makes music, I make books on politics, ethics and such, the folks at GM make cars, and everyone makes something or another. Thus people, normally, are productive, and creative--make and do very complex things, on their own initiative. Now some others insist that all these things occur not because people do things on their own initiative but because of certain impersonal forces in the world that impel them to behave in certain ways that are then followed by certain results. These results had to come about, given these forces (which themselves are naturally necessary), so there is no choice or initiative involved. Which is to say, no one could do other than he or she does, all things being equal. Why do some think this? I am sure they will tell you. My take is that, to use a nifty Wittgensteinian phrase, "a picture holds them captive," namely, the picture of a daisy-chain of events moving through history ineluctably, kind of like a train moves atop the tracks with none of the cars able to break free to do anything on their own. This mechanistic conception of how reality operates is very widely embraced and those who embrace it seem to me to believe that giving up this picture amounts to giving up on any understanding of how the world works, to embracing irrationalism or mysterious, spooky elements in nature. Of course, the debate about free will versus determinism--itself a characterization that can mislead, since many who think free will exists believe in self-determinism--isn't all that different from the other seemingly intractable debates about, for example, (a) other minds, (b) consciousness, (c) knowledge, (d) political-economic liberty versus equality, (e) God (and if there is anything I don't get is this one!), etc., etc.
(Edited by Machan on 5/07, 7:52am)

Monday, May 7, 2007 - 8:33am

I find it interesting that -- though this is now the second time that I've asked these 2 very simple questions -- that no one who was brave enough to enter into the Free Will Problem debate was also brave enough to attempt an answer to these 2 simple and fundamental questions about it.

Who do you all think you are, anyway (above philosophical reproach?)?

Ed
[put your money where your mouth is (or shut up about it)]

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/07, 8:34am)