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If you have any such evidence, then what is it? 1. What makes it false for humans? 2. What makes it false for animals? 3. What is your supposedly true presumption for humans? 4. What is your supposedly true presumption for animals?

Stephen, I don't believe I understand your first two questions well enough to give a good answer. If you reword them, I might be more willing to try answering them. The subject of ITOE is epistemology -- what one can know and how. More specifically, the subject of ITOE is concept formation. Supposedly that includes concepts ranging from rudimentary to very complex, from little or no scientific content to a lot, and from acquired by ordinary experience to acquired by specialized experience. I agree, but I didn't say Kelley used sleight-of-hand, which implies intentional deception. I said subtly transformed -- his explanation of differences among the things subsumed by a universal as qualitative on page 14 but quantitative starting on page 17. Maybe switched without explanation would have been better than subtly transformed. Somewhat. I don't always have Aristotle's categories in the forefront of my awareness when thinking, but I do like to keep quality and quantity distinct. For example, green is a quality. 550 nanometers is a quantity that corresponds to green on the visible light spectrum. I do not mean quality and quantity are totally unrelated. A quantity often pertains to a quality or substance (Aristotle's meaning). I say "often" to allow an exception for pure numbers, e.g. 2 as opposed to 2X or 2 of anything else.

In other words, you dismally failed the challenge. In other words, you admit you mangled what they said. What you concocted and claimed they said is wrong. You are wrong, not them. Mangled? Yes. You pounced on one confusing sentence in the abstract to concoct a mangled conclusion. I believe a better sentence would have been: The answer to the title question is, in a word, movement. Volition is means, not a goal or purpose.

I partly agree with the highlighted sentence in your post. What an animal or human perceives via its sensory nerves is nonvolitional. However, not everything about sensory nerves applies to motor nerves. So your by extension argument doesn't work. Also, the quote from FTNI says nothing about using the results of perception for bodily movements absent a conceptual consciousness. Ayn Rand many years later in The Romantic Manifesto reformulated her view of volition: “The faculty of volition operates in regard to the two fundamental aspects of life: consciousness and existence, i.e. his psychological action and his existential action, i.e., the formation of his own character and the course of action he pursues in the physical world.” First, consciousness is not merely conceptual. Attention and perception are part of consciousness. Second, her existential action component of volition is absent from FTNI and VoS. Animals perform existential actions, too. They are not prohibited from doing so simply because they lack a conceptual faculty. Explaining an animal's or human's actions in the physical world needs the help of physiology, including the nervous system, and affordances. These concepts are missing from both her descriptions of volition. Are you suggesting that selective perceptual attention and physical actions are irrelevant to volition? Are you suggesting that volition is only about the choice to think or not? I don't buy either suggestion and again refer you to Scope of Volition. Rand said in FTNI after the excerpt you quoted: "An animal's consciousness functions automatically." That's merely a bold assertion that it does so, somehow. How? She gave no answer. She gave no evidence from animal ethology, physiology or neurophysiology that even tries to explain how.

Prima facie you even mangle and misrepresent Objectivism. I looked at the pages for consciousness, free will, purpose, and volition in The Ayn Rand Lexicon. I found nothing even remotely similar to your "The purpose of volition is - consciousness." I decided to spend no more time looking for something which Ayn Rand supposedly said but really didn't. I challenge you to quote Ayn Rand where she said such a thing. I don't mean your interpretation of what she said. I mean her words verbatim without you misquoting her. If you reply, I am only one of numerous people who will be able to see your reply and judge its worthiness.

LOL. Putting many of whYNOT's premises into the form of a syllogism lead to absurd conclusions.

Yes, and the antelope needs to look -- use its selective attention -- in order to find grass suitable to chew on. It uses controlled bodily movements to eat any grass that it does. I earlier said that a hummingbird doesn't control what it sees, but it does control where it looks. Apparently figuratively speaking, that went in one of your ears and immediately out the other. Suppose an antelope sees a large adult lion and nearby its very small cub at the same time. Very probably the antelope will focus its eyes on the adult rather than the cub. The adult is a threat; the cub is not. For the adult lion to be in the center of its visual field and not the cub, the antelope uses its selective attention and bodily movement. A drop of water qualifies as water by the same criteria as an ocean of water qualifies as water. Get it? A simple and delimited volition is still volition. Your ability to misunderstand, misquote, mangle, and misrepresent is astounding. What Pierson and Trout actually said was the "purpose of consciousness is to manage volitional motor movement." That is very different from your mangled "the purpose of consciousness is volition". The purpose they state is controlled motor movement. Volition is the means. The purpose you state is volition. Your mangled misrepresentation makes volition the goal.

You "explained" and "corrected" it even less precisely. In her footnote in VoS Ayn Rand attributed automatic functions to all living organisms. She said nothing about non-automatic functions and thus nothing about volition. So she did not sloppily attribute volition to plants. You did.

I read the article by David Kelley. On page 14 it seemed he had forgotten or abandoned Ayn Rand's concept of measurement omission. "A concept like cat, in other words, is abstract as well as universal. It is universal because it subsumes an open-ended range of numerically distinct things. It is abstract because it subsumes a range of qualitatively distinct things: things that are similar but differ qualitatively." Here he used qualitatively, not quantitatively or measurably. In Aristotle's ten categories quantity and quality are separate categories. By page 17 it became clear that he had merely temporarily forgotten when he gets to the color green. On Rand's theory, "the ontological basis of a concept like green is the fact that certain colored things -- the leaves of my plants, to use that example -- differ quantitatively in color. Each leaf is what it is, with the specific color it has. There is nothing abstract in that identity. But there are relations of similarity and difference among colored things -- relations that are themselves concrete and determine -- such as the similarity between the different shades of green in my plants." Most people can distinguish between different shades of green, even if they know nothing about light wave frequencies or wavelengths. The different green shades are concretely different. They are qualitatively different. The different shades being due to different light wave frequencies or wavelengths is a very abstract, quantitative identification. The visible spectrum. So in Kelley's article the concrete, qualitatively different shades of green are subtly transformed into abstract, quantitative differences (due to light wave frequencies or wavelengths).

You say no philosophic payoff is yet to be tendered here. Do you also hold that Ayn Rand got no philosophic payoff from using volitional? Do you see no philosophic payoff in What is consciousness for? I don't see your "or" as exclusive. Philosophers can learn from neuroscientists and vice-versa. I suspect the philosophers can learn much more from neuroscientists than vice-versa.

Anybody curious about the connection between deception and warfare beyond Sun Tzu should visit the International Spy Museum in Washington DC and read these: Military deception and Operation Fortitude.

Wrong. You wrote: "'Physical' volition, we (men and all life forms) possess" (link). Any reader, except maybe you, can see plainly that you did. You even sloppily included plants ("all life forms").

Yes, that's why I introduced the nervous system to the discussion (link). What it sees is a precondition of what it can do using what it sees. That's why I introduced the concept of affordance to the discussion (link).

Correct. Consider a hummingbird foraging for nectar. It actively uses its eyes to find flowers with the goal of finding nectar inside. It doesn't control what it sees, but it does control where it looks. Some flowers afford the opportunity for nectar. Others don't. The hummingbird actively seeks the ones that do. Then it actively controls and uses its beak and tongue to drink the nectar. If a hummingbird's finding and drinking nectar aren't enough to convince you that the hummingbird's perceiving its surroundings is active and takes effort, then consider the hummingbird's wings. A typical hummingbird bird flaps its wings 20-30 times per second, and it flaps them in various ways in order to control the positioning of its body in the air and consequently the position of its beak and tongue.

Stop with the straw men. Nobody has said that. That's a great example of begging the question. I assume those are your criteria for the volition of a normal human adult. What are your criteria for a human before it obtains a "will" to your satisfaction? Where in your criteria are attention, action, and any goals other than possibly self-destruction? What are your criteria for animal volition, which you have both affirmed and denied? "The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too." -- Galt's speech. Me: "Dealing with Tony's [whYNOT's] prolific use of non sequiturs, faulty a priori assumptions, and ambiguities takes too much time" (link). I kindly omitted contradictions, begging the question, straw men, and package-dealing. Eiuol replied: "Resist the urge" (link). Good advice. I almost resisted this time. Thankfully, I wasted only a few minutes.

In Virtue of Selfishness (p. 19 in my Signet paperback) there is a paragraph about higher organisms capable of perception. An animal "is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further. It is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation. ... But so long as it lives an animal acts on its knowledge with automatic safety and no power of choice." There are some obvious problems with this. Animals can acquire skills and knowledge in the course of their lives not necessarily taught by their parents. They can also make choices. A cat can decide to play with the toy it sees or ignore it. An antelope can spot a lion and then decide if the lion is a threat or not. The lion may be eyeing another antelope or not even looking for prey. James J. Gibson's theory of affordances offers much to overcome these problems. Gibson's theory was first published in 1977, late in Ayn Rand's life. It reappeared in Gibson's The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception in 1979 (Wikipedia - James J. Gibson). This article is about Gibson's theory. (It can be read in full with a free JSTOR account.) The "See" in the title is an obvious extension of "see" in its strictly visual, perceptual sense. For example, a bee or other nectar-eating animal sees a flower. It also "sees" what the flower affords -- an opportunity to eat nectar. The bee or other animal may then use its power to initiate and then control its bodily movements in order to eat the nectar. On the other hand, it may discover there is not enough nectar there to make it worthwhile and move on to another flower.

What did she say about animals that in your view would need to be altered?

Its importance to its consciousness/awareness and to its bodily movements. Consciousness is a biological adaptation that has many uses/functions. They include for humans awareness of the external world and inner and outer body states, perception, concept-formation, controlling actions, learning, remembering, language, setting priorities, problem solving, decision making, imagining, and planning. That's a very complicated list. To get a better understanding of consciousness, we can focus attention on a small part of the list and/or try to grasp the essential functions of the consciousness of creatures with a much simpler kind of consciousness. Think outside the box, especially the one that Ayn Rand made. I believe the authors of What is consciousness for? did that. I believe Pierson and Trout doing so led them to some great insights. - Consciousness and volition are integral: consciousness evolved as the platform for the volitional control of movement. - Volition is the sole causal efficacy of consciousness. - Volition directs attention which in turn directs movement. Attention to the movements of humans opens the door to a vast variety of bodily movements, especially those of the hands and fingers (using tools and machines, making things, writing, typing, etc.) and the mouth, tongue, and vocal chords (all involved in speaking). None of these things could happen without controlled bodily movements. In footnote 3 Pierson and Trout say: "By 'motor movements' we are referring to all movements of an organism, not just locomotion. Other examples would include eating, mating, speaking, freezing in place, and moving the tongue, eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, arms, head, torso, etc. Obviously, volitional movements require extensive neurophysiology in addition to consciousness." Yes, they implicitly include hands and fingers for humans. Yet greater attention to hands and fingers should help highlight the huge significance of bodily movements to human life. If an image of a human body is distorted in size to represent the brain's dedication to various body parts, then the hands, fingers, and mouth would be far larger proportionally than the rest of the body. It would be something like this. Cortical homunculus. That's subjective, pessimistic, and a non sequitur. I was not aware that upholding animal volition in this tiny community could have such a destructive global effect on humanity. Having been involved in it for its short existence, I now hold a very contrary opinion. Consider the efficacy of animal volition versus that of human volition. Compare the efficacy of homo sapiens with its intelligence and hands to the efficacy of another species with its intelligence and hands or forepaws. Homo sapiens wins hands down. Compare what homo sapiens can do with its mouth speaking a language with what another species can do with its mouth making sounds. Homo sapiens wins again. The differences are huge and widen the gap.

I wouldn't ask such a stupid question. If I have an itch, its location is obvious. Deliberation is unnecessary for knowing its location. No. Absolutely no. One definition of "automatic" is "without volition or conscious control" (link). I may scratch it, which requires I voluntarily -- nonautomatically -- initiate and control bodily movements, usually of a hand and fingers. I may ignore it. I may not scratch it because something else is more important at the time.

Definitions of deliberate. I used "deliberate" as a verb, not an adjective. While that has several definitions, context matters. I used it to mean evaluate alternatives before selecting the most preferred one. Maybe there is a better term (consider?). I have used "deliberate" much like Aristotle did in Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapters 2 & 3 regarding choice and deliberation. It's about man deliberating and choosing, so obviously there is a lot of guessing how it pertains to animals. Like Peikoff said in the video, he can't experience or know what it's like to have the consciousness of a different species.

A concept missing from this thread until now is habits. Do animals have habits? It seems they do. I am not seeking any extended discussion of animal habits. Anyway, habits are a kind of behavior besides instinct and volition.

Good question. I had not thought of it that way, so my reply is provisional. Regarding self-awareness by humans I include metacognition. Regarding self-awareness by nonhuman animals, I assume it doesn't apply. My impression is more like the animal deliberates and chooses without having the concept I or me. See the dog with an itch example in my prior post. I agree with your final paragraph.

Others here have acknowledged instincts, and nobody here has denied that animals have instincts. It's more like Tony (whYNOT) mistakes a warthog for a rhino and fails or refuses to see the elephant in the room. The "elephant" in this case is the idea that animals sometimes use selective attention, deliberate and choose, i.e. have some level of volition. Tony writes: "attributing animals with human volition and other human characteristics is the next erroneous, anthropomorphic step" (link). I have attributed some level of volition to animals, much less than humans. Also, not all animal behavior is instinctual and automatic. An animal's deliberation time may be very brief, making the behavior seem automatic, especially when one option is much more desirable than the others, but that does not imply the behavior is automatic. Swing a toy on a string in front of a pet cat. Sometimes the cat will reach for the toy with a paw (which paw?) or try to use its claws on the toy. The cat doesn't at other times, merely observing the swinging toy with acute selective attention. The cat repeatedly deliberates and chooses whether it does or does not reach for the toy. In contrast, watch a cat (at least 6 weeks old) fall to the ground from several feet in the air. No matter its body position when starting to fall, it will always try to land on all four paws. That behavior is instinctual, a reflex, and automatic (link). Hunger, thirst, fear, pleasure, pain, and an itch are not instincts. So Tony begins his answer with a category error! Some animal behavior, but not all, is instinctual. Learned behavior is not. If it were, learning would be unnecessary. The cat's behavior with the toy is not instinctual. Some does not imply all, despite Tony's numerous uses of the fallacy. Humans eat, drink, sleep, have sex, laugh, cry, argue, and more -- repeating the same behaviors generation after generation. So those behaviors must be "instinctual" per Tony's premise. Selective attention/awareness is not instinctual. There is no selecting in instinctual behavior. This is another instance of Tony's ambiguity-creating scare quotes. My earlier use of "focusing" was not mistaken. Focusing is multi-faceted. It can be perceptual, conceptual, and more, e.g. focusing binoculars. My use of "selective attention" was to refer to both perceptual and conceptual focusing. It was not to posit that animals focus conceptually. Perceptual focusing is still focusing and it isn't entirely automatic. There is plentiful evidence that some animals use selective attention, deliberate, and choose. Tony's posts remind me of a saying. If the only tool you have is a hammer, treat everything as if it were a nail. Regarding animal behavior, his "hammer" is the survival instinct on automatic. A cat playing with a toy is a "nail." When the cat loses interest in the toy and walks away, that's a "nail." A cat licking itself or another cat is a "nail." A dog scratching an itch or not scratching an itch is a "nail." A squirrel jumping from one tree branch to another is a "nail." The squirrel pausing to select jumping to a different branch and what spot on it is a "nail." A cow starting or ceasing to moo is a "nail." Of course, I assume these animals do these things not being aware they face the alternative of life or death or because they have a survival instinct. Some -- not all -- of the things they do are conducive to its continued survival, but the animal doesn't know that. The animal can have some purpose/goal in mind, e.g. quenching its thirst or relieving an itch. When Ayn Rand wrote the footnote in VoS distinguishing between goal-directed and purposive action, she referred to the automatic functions of an organism. That does not address non-automatic functions. She also attributed "purposive" to "a consciousness", not "only a human consciousness." Tony wrote: "In short, purposive = volitional. Non-purposive = non-volitional. An animal does all that it does instinctively, ... NOT, with self-preservation as its purposeful intention and goal" (ibid.) Why can't an animal have an intention or purpose short of self-preservation, like quenching its thirst or scratching an itch? It can't according to Tony, since for him "purposive = volitional," and an animal having any volition at all is taboo. Similarly, I do not claim that an animal deliberating and choosing is self-aware that it is deliberating and choosing. The dog deliberates between scratching the itch, ignoring it, or doing something else more desirable at the time, then selects one of them. I don't assume the dog deliberates between I (meaning the dog itself) scratch the itch, I ignore it, or I do something else more desirable at the time. The second and third options are both instances of not scratching. The alternative is to scratch or not to scratch, not life or death. Dealing with Tony's prolific use of non sequiturs, faulty a priori assumptions, and ambiguities takes too much time. So I will stop now.

Self-initiated motion alone is not enough to explain volition. Two more things are needed -- goal-directedness and selective attention. A goal directs the motion. Selective attention is the precondition of initiating. Indeed, selective attention is more basic than self-initiated motion because it precedes pursuing any goal with self-initiated motion. The combination of the three is volition. My use of "selective attention" is similar to the way Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff used "focus" and "choice to focus." Ayn Rand: "The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional." Peikoff: "“Focus” designates a quality of one’s mental state, a quality of active alertness. “Focus” means the state of a goal-directed mind committed to attaining full awareness of reality. It’s the state of a mind committed to seeing, to grasping, to understanding, to knowing." ... "The process of focus is not the same as the process of thought; it is the precondition of thought." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/focus.html These statements don't mention animal consciousness, but consider how they also apply to animal consciousness with some modification. Does a nonhuman animal ever focus its consciousness or awareness? I think there is plenty of evidence for it. And selective attention is the pre-condition of self-initiated motion and goal-directed action. In turn, selective attention is preconditioned by some desire or need. Readers can judge for themselves, but I think the combination of selective attention, self-initiated motion, and goal-directedness capture human volition very well, too. In no way does this equate human volition and animal volition. Said combination only describes the fundamentals they have in common.

Thanks. Of course, Peikoff undercut that later during the Q&A when he said he didn't know whether or not nonhuman animals make any choices or have any volition and that some animals appear to make some choices, at least regarding their attention. His saying that volition doesn't become manifest to a human child until well after birth and after becoming aware of its own consciousness suggests to me the following question. An animal or human making a choice and being self-aware that it is making a choice are different things. So couldn't an animal make a choice w/o it being self-aware that it has this ability? After all, any vertebrate has a nervous system (and other internal organs) whether or not it knows it has a nervous system (and other internal organs). Similarly, is a human child capable of choosing before it is conceptually self-aware that it can choose? Couldn't an infant push away a bottle of milk because it is no longer hungry without being conceptually self-aware that it is exercising its volition? So an alternative to "volition is always conceptual" is "awareness of volition is always conceptual."