Objectivist Free Will and Reason

(Bridget)It doesn't have to be accounted for in the law of identity. The law of identity is about how entities are, not how they come about. Causality deals with that part. BTW, Aristotle did suggest categories can and do change, so this really makes your argument on that front totally pointless and without merit.

(Nick)No, Bridget, causality is not a separate axiom, according to Objectivism. Rand says that the law of causality is merely “the law of identity applied to action. She is wrong because the law of identity is a law of formal logic, dealing with the relationship among variables in statements, causality is a law of empirical logic, dealing with actual entities in the physical world. If categories can and do change in the physical world, then A is A has to account for that change. It doesn’t. Discourse about reality is not exactly the same as objective reality.

(Ed) In order for there to even be change in the world, there must first be entities with identity that undergo that change. An entity's identity delimits its capacity for change. Part of the identity of a tadpole, is its capacity to develop into a frog. It is still the same entity, only in a different life-stage.

(Nick)True, entities change within generalizable parameters which do not change. Otherwise, identifying them would be like trying to step in the same river twice, something Heraclites said we couldn’t do. Still, the law of identity does not tell us the extent to which entities change and that man changes differently than other entities change. It does not prove that man has free will. Existentialism distinguishes between the entities with fixed natures, the “in-itself,” and man, the “for-itself.” This allows for a more complete discussion of free will in humans than does Objectivism, which identifies humans no differently than it does frogs, both are simply what they are.

Bis bald,

Nick

(John)Why does it need to be proven?

(Nick)In a philosophy that claims reality is objective, independent and uncreated by man, and that here is casualty and natures of man, “free will” seems inconsistent. To declare that it, never-the-less, exists within such a context and need not be proven is very much like saying God exists and need not be proven. It is an article of faith, not reason. There is no need for science if such truths can be so established.    

(John)What does it mean to our lives if we decide man has no free will? If we say it is not provable, does it imply as scientists do with things that are unproven, that we reject the notion of free will?

(Nick)Many people do reject the notion of free will. They behave, however, not much differently than those who do not reject the notion. They still make the best decisions they can in given situations and try to discipline themselves. In some ways, it relieves them from guilt when they fail at something. They think it was not in their control. They think scientifically about things, that they have causes. And they continue to search for those causes. Still, they punish criminals because they are conditioned to do so. Also, if something is unproven, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It also doesn’t mean it does. The burden of proof rests with those who make a knowledge claim that something does or does not exist. Since Objectivists claim free will exists as knowledge, not just belief, they have a burden to prove it, not just declare it self evidently true by edict.   

(John)What kind of proof do you need? What would it take to prove something like Free Will? What would you accept as proof? Empirical? Rational?

(Nick)I would like an explanation that allows for it. I can see changes in the environment of some humans which isn’t there among other animals. Humans, in some cultures, have gone through industrial revolutions. This is empirical evidence of creativity in humans. An explanation of that creativity is evident in the study of human language, the closest we can get to the study of human conceptual thinking. Animals do not manipulate symbols in a structured form. And there is Chomsky’s creativity principle which shows how humans can create meaningful thoughts, sentences, which were never before constructed. Then, there does have to be a first cause argument which doesn’t conflict with universal casualty. Existentialism does this by distinguishing humans, the subjects, from animals and objects with fixed natures. It allows that man is not an entity with a fixed nature. Consciousness is still in a process of becoming and participates in the creation of it’s own identity. In NickOtani’sNeo-Objectivism, it does this within objective parameters. I do still believe there is a humanness, a nature of man which existed when man first evolved and is the same in Asia as well as Spokane.

   
(John)Do you believe in Free Will, and where is your proof? Why do you believe it?

(Nick)See above.

(John)Did you freely ask the question what is Free Will? Or are your actions predetermined? If they are predetermined, does that not make any absurd implications about man?

(Nick)There are behaviorists and determinists who adopt the mechanistic model and think “free will” is absurd, mystical, and wishful thinking. They may admit that there are gaps in our knowledge, but they don’t fill them with things arbitrarily.

(John)Was inventing the space shuttle a predetermined action? Was building nuclear power plants, just a predetermined action?

(Nick)Determinists who accept the mechanistic model would say that causality can explain such projects easier than the apparent magic of first cause free will.

I am not one of these determinists, but I take them seriously. They have not yet proven complete causality and disproved Chomsky’s creativity principle, but they have points that cannot simply be disregarded. Objectivism seems to adopt he casuality of the mechanistic model everywhere except with the free will of humans.  I think that is a problem.

Bis bald,

Nick

(Bill)For Objectivism, as for the Greeks, the law of identity is ontological, not merely epistemological. It asserts that a thing is what it is, which is a statement about reality.

 

(Nick)Some philosophers will disagree that this is what Aristotle had in mind when he formalized the law of identity.

 

(Bill)Are you sure that Aristotle formalized the law of identity? If so, would you mind pointing out where he did so. It is my understanding that the law of identity was not stated formally by Aristotle, although it was implicit in his writings on logic. As far as I am aware, the formalized statement of the law of identity arose sometime after the 13th century, or at least after Aquinas died (in 1274), since there was no mention of it in Aquinas' writings either. The law became well known after the 17th century, so it probably originated in the late Middle Ages, after Aristotle's writings became part of the philosophy curriculum. But I am not aware of any formalized version of it in Aristotle's writings. I do believe, however, that given his recognition of the law of (non)contradiction Aristotle understood the law of identity implicitly and that his implicit understanding of it was that it was a law of reality and not simply a law of thought.

 

(Nick)Aristotle is given credit for being the father of logic because he wrote about it first in his work, Organon, 350BCE. Yes, he only talked about propositional form and categorical syllogisms, but as you say, the law of identity and non-contradiction are implicit in his writings. Ayn Rand and other Objectivists credit Aristotle with this principle, and it is commonly referred to as Aristotle’s principle of identity.  (I shouldn’t have to cite page numbers in Objectivist literature but can if I must.)

(Nick)They would say it is only to preserve definitions of terms used in arguments. If we say [(A->B) ^ A] it wouldn’t follow that B is the inescapable conclusion if the second A in the statement is not defined exactly the same as the first A. He did not mean that a term is a thing or that all things in reality have fixed natures which cannot ever become something else.

 

(Bill)Of course, he did not believe that a term is a thing, but he did believe that a term refers to a thing, and that things have fixed natures which enable them to undergo a process of change.

 

(Nick)The difference between the change undergone by trees and non-human living things is that their processes are repeated over and over again. Their actions are determined by their natures. They do not invent new technologies which allow them to change their lifestyles. The natures of humans must be described differently than the natures of non-human things. To simply say that the natures of humans enable them to invent new technologies which change their lives is to beg the question, to say that whatever humans do is enabled by their nature.

(Nick)The very reason Aristotle felt the need to phrase the law of identity is because things in reality are malleable and there is a need to preserve coherence in discourse, but there is a difference between discourse and reality.

 

(Bill)Yes, there is a difference between discourse and reality, but as H.W.B. Joseph, an Aristotelian logician observes, "We cannot think contradictory propositions, because we see that a thing cannot have at once and not have the same character; and the so-called necessity of thought is really the apprehension of a necessity in the being of things. This we may see if we ask what would follow, were it a necessity of thought only; for then, while e.g. I could not think at once that this page is and is not white, the page itself might at once be white and not be white. But to admit this is to admit that I can think the page to have and not have the same character, in the very act of saying that I cannot think it; and this is self-contradictory. The Law of Contradiction then is metaphysical or ontological. So also is the Law of Identity. It is because what is must be determinately what it is, that I must so think. This is why we find a difficulty in admitting the reality of absolute change, change when nothing remains the same; for then we cannot say what it is which changes; 'only the permanent', said Kant, 'can change'. [As for the law of excluded middle], to deny that this page need either be or not be white is to deny that it need be anything definite; determinateness involves the mutual exclusiveness of determinate characters, which is the ground of negation; and that is a statement about things. In other words, unless the primary Laws of Thought were Laws of Things, our thought would be doomed by its very nature to misapprehend the nature of things." (An Introduction to Logic, Oxford University Press, p. 13)

(Nick)Yes, well, philosopher John Heron Randall indicates in his excellent study of Aristotle’s philosophy, “logic” in the true Aristotelian sense refers basically to the art of discourse, the use of language, and “we can be said to “know” a thing only when we can state in precise language what that thing is, and why it is.”

Aristotle presents the syllogism as an implication, not as an inference. It takes the form: if A and B, then , “necessarily” C; not the form: A and B are, “therefore” C is…. Aristotle defines a proposition…as “a statement affirming or denying something of something.” Its elements he calls “terms”…the “limits” or “boundaries”…of the statements. He avoids all psychological or metaphysical overtones, all words like “motion,””concept,” in their Greek equivalents.   

--John Herman Randall, Jr, Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press 1960) p. 116

(Nick)Also, saying that a thing is what it is does not tell us what it is. It does not prove that humans have free will. It does not even prove causality. There is no logical rule of inference which gets A->B from A^A.

 

(Bill)Of course, the law of identity does not tell us what a thing is. For that, we must engage in a process of identification; we must observe reality and identify what exists.

(Nick)I do write about this in one of my other threads, the one on a Theory of Value.

(Nick)Finally, giving man a fixed nature but also “free will” is arbitrary and a bit contradictory. If man has a fixed nature, like a rock or tree, it doesn’t have the freedom to change. If it does have the freedom to change, then it is not bound by a fixed nature. This is accounted for in Existentialism, where man is a “for-itself,” still in the process of becoming, but not in Objectivism, which seems to be an essentialist philosophy.

 

(Bill)But a tree changes in the process of growing and losing its leaves, doesn't it?

 

(Nick)I responded to this above when I said non-human things repeat processes enabled by their natures. They do not change in creative ways as humans seem to do.

(Bill)Besides, as we already saw, change cannot occur without a fixed identity. In order for something to change it must in some sense remain the same; otherwise, we could not say that it has changed. If something changes, something must change; otherwise, what you have is not change but replacement, which was Aristotle's answer to Heraclitus' claim that you can't step into the same river twice.

(Nick)Actually, Zeno had an argument against motion that can also be used against change. He said, if something is to change, it must change from what it is to what it is not. However, a thing can never change from what it is and can never be what it is not. Therefore, it can’t change. How do you refute that?

(Bill)If free will exists, then it is no less a part of man's identity than the process of growing and dying is part of the identity of a living organism.

(Nick)No, free will is more complex than usual things occurring in nature.

(Bill)But if everything requires a cause, then so does God, in which case, you're right back in the very infinite regress that the positing of a God was intended to solve.

(Nick)But if everything requires a cause, then so does man. It’s not far to use casualty for everything but dispense with it when we get to man, just so we can have free will.

(Bill)Actually, it does present an argument. Nathaniel Branden's article, "The Contradiction of Determinism," argues that determinism commits an epistemological contradiction, and that free will is the only rational alternative.

(Nick)In Branden’s article, he asks how determinists acquire their knowledge. He claims they commit a fallacy of self-exclusion. He states that the concept of logic is possible only to a volitional consciousness, an automatic consciousness would have no need of it. However, psychological determinists do use science to validate their conclusions. They use pragmatic experimentalism and invest in functional probability. So, it is not self-exclusive.

Bis bald,

Nick