In post 54, Ellen Stuttle commented on my post 49:
...I don't think that the thesis you're presenting is "determinism" at all. It's a theory of causation, but not a theory of determinism. You wrote at the end of your P.S.: "As I have said previously, I my view as being compatible with agent-causation, and this seems to be a clearer explanation of how that is so than I have given previously." I hope you recall our (off list) exchange this fall in which I asked you what it is you consider your views "compatible" with. I thought you'd come to the conclusion by the end of that that you aren't proposing "the doctrine that there's only one physically possible future" (Von Inwagen's succinct definition of "determinism," which Dennett picks up as his operative definition in *Freedom Evolves*). To support agent causation is to acknowledge the reality of choice -- and unless I very much misread you, you do believe that people in fact make choices, that choosing is a real phenomenon, that it is not an illusion. Why then you'd want to call yourself a "determinist" I can't fathom. What "pay off" is it that you see in using that term instead of just straightforwardly calling yourself an agent causationist? First, I don't see any reason that I need to choose one term over the other. They both name distinct aspects of the phenomenon of human action. Nor do I see any conflict in straightforwardly calling myself both an agent-causationist and a value determinist. I have been doing so for several years now.
As an agent-causationist, I do indeed support the reality of choice, but as a value-determinist, I see choice as being free not in any absolute sense, but only in a conditional sense, and in the following two ways:
Epistemologically, one is aware of the prospect of a choice, because one faces an alternative about which one has not yet decided. At any given point in the decision process, one is aware of the fact that one may end up deciding differently than one thinks one is going to. Epistemologically, the situation is experienced as being free, as not being a foregone conclusion, as being an open alternative. And it's not foregone, since one doesn't know what other factors may intervene and result in a change in the constellation of one's conflicting desires/values before the choice is made. As I wrote in post 12 of this thread,
...in a situation that is not yet clearly determinate to me as a valuer and actor, and in which I have not finished considering the options before me, something that I find myself desiring most strongly at one point in time is something that I may later, at the point of decision, find myself no longer desiring most strongly. I have evidence that I may end up choosing that thing, but I don’t yet know that I will. So, epistemologically speaking, I have reason to believe it is possible that I will choose it; I may choose it [if at the point of choice I desire it most strongly]. Metaphysically, I think that there is a form of determinism at work in human choice and action, but not the Laplacean, clockwork, mechanistic determinism you and I discussed this fall. Similarly to Branden's view that "causality" (the relation between an entity and its actions) is a very broad abstraction, I think that "determinism" is a very broad abstraction and that it means, in most general terms, that what an entity does is in any situation is determined by antecedent conditions. More specifically, in value-determinism, the antecedent condition that determines any and every action of a conscious being is a prior state of valuing or desiring in that being. As I wrote in post 12 [emphasis added]:
I think that there are levels of determinism in the universe, and that living organisms (let alone conscious ones) have a different form of determinism governing their actions than do inanimate objects. What living organisms are governed by is not efficient causation, but final causation, their need to seek values, which is experienced by conscious living organisms as desiring or wanting to pursue certain things.
In conscious beings, the specific way that final causation operates deterministically is to constrain them to pursue that which, in a given situation, they most want to pursue. And, as Locke and others have pointed out, conscious beings are free to pursue that which they most want to pursue, if nothing (such as coercion or disease or the Law of Gravity) prevents them from doing so. (Locke thought it was nonsense to speak of "freedom of the will." It is human beings that are free to do that which they most want, or not free to do so, depending on the conditions of their environments and bodies.) Again, the antecedent condition that governs or determines every one of a conscious being's choices and actions is that which, at the time of choice and/or action, it most wants or values. Ellen, you have rejected my viewpoint of value-determinism, on the grounds that it relies on an implied metaphor of desires or values "pushing" one toward a certain action, and that this smacks of mechanistic causation, of physical forces causing our actions. You say that some other form of causation (teleological) is operating, and I agree. However, your suggestion of a substitute viewpoint, of values "pulling" us toward them, isn't really an improvement, because "pulling" is just as physical as "pushing"! Personally, I'm OK with either description as long as it is treated simply as a metaphor that helps to clarify the phenomenon of motivation, the fact that our desires or values move us in certain ways. You might want to suggest that deterministic causation operates via antecedent conditions, and that human action operates via "consequent" conditions (what an organism wants to have attained by acting), and thus that human action is not deterministically caused. I am saying that since the teleological, "consequent" factors governing human action are what an organism wants or values most, then that organism's actions are just as surely determined as are a rock's actions being governed by mechanistic, antecedent factors. (I used quote marks above, because I think it's clear that so-called consequent conditions, being projections of a desired future state and not really something existing in the future and acting backward causally, are thus actually antecedent to any actions governed by those factors.)
One more point in response to you, Ellen: I realize that the internal process unfolding when we choose between competing desires/values is not as simplistic as weighing 15 ergs of desire for vanilla against 10 ergs of desire for chocolate! I hope you'll give me more credit than that! At the same time, I think it should be recognized that there is a conscious awareness of a different intensity level of desire or valuing involved when one potential goal is preferred over another, and that this awareness is thus a kind of comparative measuring, even though it is not at all the same kind of units of measurement as are used in comparative measurement of physical quantities. That concludes what I wanted to say in response to your post. However, while I'm borrowing from post 12, I may as well include most of the rest of it here, since I didn't really get much of a response to it the first time around. Maybe enough further context has been added that you or someone else will be able to reconsider it and make a thoughtful (i.e., non-dismissive) response this time.
So, by "may decide," I do mean "is free to decide." But I do not mean you are categorically free to choose anything other than what you actually choose, as in, "I could have chosen x rather than y, period," but conditionally, as in, "I could have chosen x rather than y, if I had wanted x more than I wanted y." The former is how Peikoff and other Objectivists present the idea of free will: you could have done otherwise than you did, presumably even if you hadn’t wanted to, whereas I am arguing that you could have done otherwise only if you had wanted to more than what you did.
For instance, you may decide to have vanilla ice cream, if you are (existentially) free to do so, and if it turns out that you want to have vanilla ice cream more than you want anything else that conflicts with it. In other words, if you are not under coercion, and if vanilla ice cream is your strongest desire, vanilla ice cream is what you will have.
It may seem that this is just a tautology, and that I am defining "strongest desire" in terms of what you end up choosing. However, I think that we are in the presence of an axiom of human action. If as Branden said in "Isn't Everyone Selfish?," it is a "truism" that all behavior is motivated, and we always in some sense "want" to do what we do, I don't see how you can escape the conclusion that what you did is what you most wanted to do -- not what you "would like to have done, if things had been different," but what you did want to do, given the way things were.
Let me expand on the ice cream example just a bit more to show the axiomatic nature of action being based on one’s strongest desire. Suppose I offer Michael a choice of vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Normally, he might just blurt out, vanilla (which, let’s say, is his favorite). But to make it interesting, let's consider the case where I've just told him that, by my theory of human choice and action, he has to pick vanilla, because that is what he most prefers. Michael, not liking my value-determinism notions one little bit (!), decides to be contrary and instead select chocolate, just to show me that I don't know a whole lot about free will. :-)
I then point out to him that he is still choosing what he most strongly prefers, but now, instead of choosing vanilla rather than chocolate, he most prefers choosing to choose against his flavor preference rather to choose in accordance with his flavor preference. It's on a meta-level of choice, but it is still what he most wants to do in this situation. Upon reflection, I realize that I was too specific in what I told him that choosing vanilla was what he "had to" do, because the situation changed, once the option of flouting my value determinism theory reared its ugly head. Michael still did what he "had to" do, but it was on the higher level of his choice preference, rather than his flavor preference.
So, in each case—and I maintain, in any case you can dream up (and yes, that is a challenge!) -- the antecedent condition that determines human choice is the strongest operative desire, whether it is in fact rational and life-serving or not. Barring coercion, incapacitating disease, etc., you can and will choose the thing you most desire, unless conditions change and you then desire something else more strongly -- such as choosing less-preferred chocolate ice cream out of an overriding desire for "variety" or "defying Roger’s value-determinist claims." :-)
This is the way I interpret my experience of having free will, as being conditional, rather than categorical. I hesitate to call this a "volitionist" view, because so many volitionists are of the categorical variety. They think that unless you could have done otherwise than you did, even if you didn't want to, you are not free. I think this is nonsense. It makes much more sense to me that I could only have done otherwise than I did, if I had wanted to. (This is the compatibilist view of choice and free will.) Why else would you need to be able to do other than what you did? But Ellen, if you or someone else wants to dub me a "conditional volitionist", I would be perfectly happy with that label. Then I might even be able to qualify for my Official Objectivist De-coder Ring. :-)
REB
(Edited by Roger Bissell on 12/12, 8:04pm)
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