| | I asked Jeff, "Are you seriously suggesting that, despite his political values (i.e., the Objectivist politics), the voter in my example could have chosen to vote for the socialist rather than for the capitalist whose candidacy he favored -- that his political values did not affect his decision?" He replied, Yes I am. As I have explained in great detail elsewhere, He can do otherwise by making a free choice between different goals based upon the same or possibly different values. Leonard Peikoff might vote for the socialist candidate if the capitalist one was a supporter of the religious right. You will say that he therefore must value something more than having a capitalist politician in the position. Well, I can agree that, in some high-level sense, that is true. But we only know what he values more highly in that context after he makes his choice. Unlike you, I do not find it so easy to predict a persons actions regardless of how much I know about their professed values. It's not a question of predicting a person's actions from their "professed" values! I am not saying that you can always predict what a person is going to do from what he has said in the past. I am saying that if he values the capitalist candidate above the socialist one, then he will necessarily choose to vote for him. I was assuming in my example that the capitalist candidate was not a member of the religious right -- that he was someone that an Objectivist would favor. Do I have to spell everything out in exhaustive detail in order for you to get the point of my examples?? In any case, I specified that the capitalist candidate was someone the voter favored.
You continue to misread and misrepresent me. You did so in your previous post by misstating what I had written. Here, in your latest reply, you've done it again. The fact that values play a role in making decisions does not invalidate the component of free-will involved in the process. We can consider various alternative strategies and choose between them. In the course of doing the thinking about the various alternatives we can rearrange our priorities on the fly and thereby make rapid-fire changes to the courses of action we pursue. If you want to say that this means we have changed our value hierarchy in the process, that's OK with me. But how did the priority of the values get changed? You say that this complex process of analysis and reevaluation is all mechanistically determined by the current content of our mind. I don't know what you mean by "mechanistically" determined. I believe that our choices are determined by our values -- by what we want to achieve. I have never used the word "mechanistic" in describing my position. On the contrary, I have taken pains to deny that I am talking about mechanistic causation. You say that a value motivates an action when it "provide[s] a sufficient reason to choose the action." But you are just asserting, not proving, that a value is sufficient to determine a choice. I counter-assert that once a choice has been made, it will always be possible to trace it back to some influence that can then be classified as a "value" (using Rand's formulation), but the act of making the choice requires more than just the presence of the value. So are you saying that you can choose an action that you don't value over one that you do, or an action that you value less over one that you value more? Are you saying that how much you value one alternative in relation to another doesn't affect your decision? The choice to think (i.e., focus our awareness on an issue for analysis) is certainly our most basic free choice, but it is not the only thing that is free. The act of choosing between various alternatives is free. It is not an impossible choice between A over B and B over A at the same time, it is just a simple choice of A over B. Again, where did I say that it was an impossible choice between A over B and B over A at the same time? I'm not even sure what that means. In any case, if you are going to attribute a position to me, either quote me directly or make sure to paraphrase me accurately. Again, what I said is that you cannot be motivated to choose A over B and simultaneously motivated to choose B over A. You cannot have contradictory motivations. Do you disagree? And there is no "value" content in our mind that forces us to to choose either A or B. Where did I say that the value content "forces" us to choose either A or B? In fact, I said just the opposite -- that to say an action is necessitated is not to say that it's compelled or forced. Do you still not understand the difference between motivated and forced? We are forced to act against our values; we are motivated to act for our values! Our values (which can be in an active state of flux) are one thing we consider while formulating a goal. The external circumstances of our life is another consideration. Well, of course, you consider the external circumstances, since these involve whatever opportunities you have to achieve your values. I am certainly not denying that, but I was assuming that the opportunities for making the choices are already present; if they aren't, then there is no choice to begin with. But none of this is sufficient to explain how the final choice is extracted from the thinking process. Finally, the decision to act is another free choice. You skip over this issue entirely. We can consider alternatives and decide upon a course of action, but do not have to act at any particular point. Despite wanting to finish this post and get back to work, I am now sitting at the keyboard and allowing my hand to hover over the k key. What value determines just how long I wait to press (or not press) the key? I offered a definition of "motivate" that included a component of "impelling" action. You reject that and counter with a definition that has no action component leaving us to, in your words, "choose the action". So what is this process of "choosing" which you separate out from the "motivating" value? You say "the choice is the effect; the value, the cause.". This certainly sounds like you are saying that the value possesses a power to impel a choice. How? You choose an action, because you want to achieve a value by virtue of the action. The action is a means to getting what you want. What you appear to be saying is that your desires or values are irrelevant -- that you simply choose without doing so for the sake of any value. But a choice is made for the sake of an end or goal. If the goal that you desire to achieve is A rather than B, then why would you choose B rather than A?
Merlin wrote, Suppose Bill is hungry. He is motivated to eat. He values food highly. But exactly what is he motivated to eat? Suppose it's not easy to decide. So he thinks about what the alternatives are. In the process of deliberating he may even creatively add to the alternatives that readily come to mind. Clearly that takes thought. He chooses to eliminate some of the alternatives. He values them less. He is identifying more exactly what his motivation is. Finally he narrows the alternatives down to one. He values that one the most. He finally chooses. Then he acts on his decision, exercising his will.
What he ends up valuing in the end - the specific food to eat - is not a given at the start. You can say the hunger and desire to eat are pre-determined, but not the specific food. It took time and thought to reach that point. Of course, it took time and thought to reach that point, but I valued the time and the thought, didn't I? And because I valued them, I engaged in the thinking that led me to my final decision, even though I wasn't aware of what that decision would be prior to completing the evaluation.
- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 5/18, 11:24pm)
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