| | Regarding Rand's statement that "One's act [of will] may be motivated by an outside reason, but the choice of that reason is our free will," I wrote, "Here she says that the reason for the choice is itself something one freely chooses, which is not my view at all."
Merlin replied, Firstly, what do you mean by "freely"? "Anything goes" or there are alternatives? Just that you were psychologically free to have made an alternative choice -- that you didn't have to make that choice. In the above and your following comments you seem to glide over her including "motivation". And surely at least hunger, for example, is not something one chooses. That's a good point. So, according to her, it isn't the case that one must choose one's reason for eating, i.e., hunger; only the reason for other, more abstract choices. But why only the reason for other, more abstract choices? If hunger is a sufficient reason for eating, then why, for example, can't curiosity be a sufficient reason for learning; understanding, a sufficient reason for belief; love, a sufficient reason for marriage, etc.? In any case, a reason for a choice is not something one chooses. Choosing it doesn't make it a reason, if it wasn't already one. And if it was already a reason, then choosing it isn't necessary.
I wrote, "Choice presupposes a reason (in the form of an end or goal); a reason doesn't presuppose a choice." I don't think it's always that simple. Suppose you decide to remodel your house. You think about it and make some choices about how more exactly you want it done. This may generate some different or more specific goals. Call them instrumental ones to contrast them with the original goal or "final cause" in Aristotle's terminology. In this case instrumental goals are the "reason", or motivation, and they presuppose a choice. I meant that a reason doesn't presuppose a choice in the sense that it presupposes choosing your motivation for making the choice. Obviously, some reasons can be generated by prior choices, but that's not the sense in which I understood Rand's statement. I believe that the meaning of her statement is best expressed by Peikoff in OPAR: Man's actions do have causes; he does choose a course of behavior for a reason -- but this does not make the course determined or the choice unreal. It does not, because man himself decides what are to be the governing reasons. Man chooses the causes that shape his actions.
"To say that a higher-level choice was caused is to say: there was a reason behind it, but other reasons were possible under the circumstances, and the individual himself made the selection among them. (p. 65)
This doesn't make any sense to me -- that one freely selects ones reasons for choosing a course of action. Either one has a reason for choosing a particular action over the alternatives, or one doesn't. If one does, then no choice is necessary; if one doesn't, then none is possible.
But there's a further wrinkle in the Objectivist theory of volition. In an earlier section of the same chapter, Peikoff writes: There can be no intellectual factor which makes a man decide to become aware or which even partly explains such a decision: to grasp such a factor, he must already be aware. For the same reason, there can be no motive or value judgment which precedes consciousness and which induces a man to become conscious. The decision to perceive reality must precede value judgments. Otherwise, values have no source in one's cognition of reality and thus become delusions. Values do not lead to consciousness; consciousness is what leads to values.
In short, it is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such "why." There is only the fact that a man chose. He chose the effort of consciousness, or he chose non-effort and unconsciousness. (pp. 59, 60)
Compare Peikoff's statement with the one by Rand that I quoted in Post #17 of this thread: "Why does [an infant] learn to focus [his eyes]? Because he's trying to see -- to perceive. Similarly, an infant or young child learns to focus his mind in the form of wanting to know something -- to understand clearly." (Ayn Rand Answers, p. 154) So much for Peikoff's claim that "it is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus?"
What makes Peikoff's claim all the more surprising (besides the fact that it directly contradicts Rand's) is that if his claim were true, "the decision to perceive reality" could not be judged as a moral imperative, in which case, one could not be held morally responsible for it. Prior to consciousness or value judgments, there is no way for a person to know that he ought to perceive reality. Nor could such an act even be viewed as a "choice" or "decision," since that would imply an awareness of alternatives and a prior evaluation of their relative merits.
I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that the Objectivist case for volition is incoherent. Even the most plausible expression of it -- that one's choices (including the choice to focus) are motivated by a reason -- is inadequate, because the motivation is itself regarded as something one chooses.
- Bill
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