Volition in Animals

[dianahsieh]

I think play behavior in adult dogs, primates and some birds demonstrates some perceptual level volition. Also, see the example I provided about my dog.

I do think that such behavior is "voluntary" -- as I said in my original post -- and like Ayn Rand, I'd hesitatingly describe it as a "primitive kind of volition."

However, the voluntary action of animals should not be classified as "volitional," nor thought of as equivalent to human volition. Whatever happens in animal minds when selecting between perceptual-level alternatives is quite different from choosing to activate one's conceptual, rational mind by an uncaused act of will. You're capable of experiencing that yourself by introspection: it's a very different thing to focus your eyes on some distant sight -- or look one way rather than another -- than to rouse the mental effort required to think abstractly. To lump them all under the category "volition" renders you unable to study or discuss the latter in any meaningful way. It's an integration of concepts beyond necessity.

As I said in my original post, Aristotle offers us the conceptual framework required to discuss these matters sensibly. That seems like a better option than making a hash of some very important and distinctive Objectivist concepts.

[phibetakappa]

To lump them all under the category "volition" renders you unable to study or discuss the latter in any meaningful way. It's an integration of concepts beyond necessity.

This is very mistaken. We are not lumping anything together. You loose nothing or hamper yourself in anyway, because we are observing what actually is the case. There is nothing remarkably different from what you are arbitrarily designating as "voluntary," in the case of non-human animals, and what is observed in adult humans.

In fact you are stealing the concept "voluntary."

That seems like a better option than making a hash of some very important and distinctive Objectivist concepts.

I am not making a hash out of very important and distinctive Objectivist concepts, if anything I'm attempting to keep the most fundamental concepts on which O'ist rest, safe from your mistaken assertions.

Edited February 17, 2010 by phibetakappa

[brian0918]

I have not confused anything. I'm not sure why it is even relevant in this context to try to bring in a distinction between the process of reasoning and when we speak of the "faculty" or "capacity" to reason.

Reading this discussion as an outsider, I have to agree that you are confusing the two, however I wouldn't blame you - I was as well. Diana's main point is that "volition" becomes a non-sensical, meaningless term if divorced from the faculty of reason. One must have a faculty of reason in order for one to either choose to focus and access that faculty, or not choose to focus and not access that faculty.

However, as you say, one cannot reason until one has chosen to focus. That need not contradict the statement Diana is making.

Here is what Ayn Rand has to say both about the "faculty" of reason

Actually, only the first two sentences in that quote are about the faculty of reason. The next 4 sentences, including the ones in bold, are about an actual instance of thinking rationally.

[dianahsieh]

This is very mistaken. We are not lumping anything together. You loose nothing or hamper yourself in anyway, because we are observing what actually is the case. There is nothing remarkably different from what you are arbitrarily designating as "voluntary," in the case of non-human animals, and what is observed in adult humans.

In fact you are stealing the concept "voluntary."

!!!

(1) If you don't grasp the enormous difference between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think, then you don't understand the Objectivist view of volition.

(2) My use of the term "voluntary" is straight from Aristotle, as I explained in my post. Go gripe to him -- or his translators, if you please. But perhaps you might attempt to understand his views of such matters before rejecting them out of hand.

I'm done here, as I'm just interested in tolerating any more incivility.

[phibetakappa]

(1) If you don't grasp the enormous difference between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think, then you don't understand the Objectivist view of volition.

Where does Objectivism make a distinction between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think?

Why couldn't you be focusing your eyes, ears, etc, etc as part of the process of thinking, in the act of gathering more evidence. Infants go through a stage of not having concepts, i.e., not having reason, and they so obviously have volition. Animals can be observed with volition.

I am willing to bet based on your comments that I am far better versed in this topic than you are.

So far you haven't supported your view with any citations from prominent Objectivists who you contend support your point of view. Further you have not addressed the citations I have provided which clearly refute your arbitrary assertions.

You have not provided any evidence to support your view at all.

So don't try to act as if you are speaking for "Objectivism". If you believe you are putting forth a view that is consonant with O'ism then support it with references.

I recommend you get Harry Binswanger's lectures on the topic of freewill. and/or I recommend you ask him yourself. and/or You sign up for the review of his latest book which covers the subject of freewill here: "How do we know"

[phibetakappa]

(2) My use of the term "voluntary" is straight from Aristotle, as I explained in my post. Go gripe to him -- or his translators, if you please. But perhaps you might attempt to understand his views of such matters before rejecting them out of hand.

You are dropping context. Aristotle is not a spokes person for O'ism. The context Aristole had 2500 years ago on the subject of "volition" is very different from the context we have today. Further Aristotle's use of the term "voluntary" in his context, does not excuse you from stealing the term in a modern context.

Again, if you are going to act as if you are putting for a view consonant with O'ism, then provide references which support your claim, and/or provide first-hand evidence to support it.

Edited February 18, 2010 by phibetakappa

[phibetakappa]

I'm done here, as I'm just interested in tolerating any more incivility.

I don't think I have been uncivil by any means. I have put forth claims, have disputed yours and have supported myself using the O'ist literature.

If stating you have stolen the concept "voluntary" in this thread, I think based on your statement that you have been getting your ques as to how to use the term from how Aristotle has been translated to use it 2500 years ago, should raise a question in your mind as to just what your trying to do with the term.

It is great to study Aristotle, but Aristotle's context and our modern context are very different.

[phibetakappa]

Reading this discussion as an outsider, I have to agree that you are confusing the two, however I wouldn't blame you - I was as well. Diana's main point is that "volition" becomes a non-sensical, meaningless term if divorced from the faculty of reason. One must have a faculty of reason in order for one to either choose to focus and access that faculty, or not choose to focus and not access that faculty.

Why would the term "volition" become nonsensical and meaningless if divorced from the faculty of reason? In what basis of fact do you have for claiming this?

One must have a faculty of reason in order for one to either choose to focus and access that faculty, or not choose to focus and not access that faculty.

How are you coming to this conclusion? Based on what? Why, does one have to have the faculty of reason in order to focus there mind?

What do you mean by the faculty of reason? What does it mean to have "access that faculty"?

[JMeganSnow]

(1) If you don't grasp the enormous difference between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think, then you don't understand the Objectivist view of volition.

I'm not sure I understand the difference in the sense that you mean--when I introspect, I apprehend both as requiring a mental switch, a mental effort (also a physical effort with the eyes). The primary difference seems to be that focusing to think requires me to continuously maintain the effort, whereas once I've focused my eyes on something, I don't really have to keep on focusing in order to maintain it.

I think that we very definitely need good terminology that adequately describes the difference between what non-conceptual animals do when they, er, operate and what humans do when they think. It's not really possible for us to project the operations of a non-conceptual consciousness, which is what leads to all of this anthropomorphizing of animal activities as being volitional. (Heck, if they're being lazy, people even do this with computers, weather, and just about everything else that "acts", regardless.)

One of the major flaws of these studies of animals using sign language or (sheesh) "money" are that they neglect the fact that animals (humans included) are terrific imitators and what might be described as "fiddlers". So, yeah, if you introduce something new to animals, they're going to imitate the researchers and fiddle around with it. I do this myself--when I'm, say, trying to figure out how to open a difficult package, I'm not thinking in any conceptual way. I'm not saying to myself, "hmm, let's try this corner, oh, there's a tab here, I wonder what it does . . .", I'm just running it around in my fingers and feeling for a gap in the shrink-wrap. The higher animals seem quite capable of this level of functioning.

However, if I were to attempt to design a shrink-wrap package that would be easy to open, THAT would require conceptual level thinking. I couldn't just start with a pile of shrink wrap and start fiddling around with it and hope to arrive at any useful conclusion. Animals lack this ability to "run ahead" of perceptual data (or anticipate it or whatever you want to call it). If you ever watch animals in their "fiddling", this lack is apparent. When a human is focused, their actions are all very purposeful and direct, very economical. (You can tell when someone is mentally preoccupied or distracted, too, because they start displaying a lot of aimless body language.)

Animals almost always display this aimless body language. (I won't say always, but from watching animals I can't recall times when I haven't seen it.) They pause, hesitate, restart a task, put it down, wander away, come back, start it up again, and they're never thorough. Even when they're doing something that you'd think ought to require a directed strategy (like killing prey), they're likely to decide to, say, change their grip at an inopportune moment and lose it. It always cracks me up when people, say, describe lions or sharks as "killing machines", when if you actually watch them they don't seem very machine-like at all, more like a committee of concerned neighbors trying to approach a difficult person about the homeowner's association rules.

I'm also not so sure about this co-extensive thing. I could see saying that reason and volition are co-extensive IN HUMANS, and since we haven't run across any other species with either there's absolutely no reason to say that they aren't generally co-extensive, but doesn't Dr. Peikoff use an example of a hypothetical race of angels who reason automatically and without volition in OPAR? (I think when he's talking about how rights are derivative of the way reason operates in humans.) Now, I realize that the purpose of this hypothetical lay in talking about rights, but is there an established causal connection between reason and volition or is that, also, hypothetical at this point? I'm not sure it's appropriate to say that reason *requires* volition, period, until we know more about the causal connection there.

[Grames]

Diana Hsieh's remark that volition is coextensive with reason can be understood as follows:

The fundamental volitional act, the primary choice, is to focus. Focus only applies to conceptual consciousness.

Lexicon entry: focus

To "focus" one's mind means to raise one's degree of awareness. In essence, it consists of shaking off mental lethargy and deciding to use one's intelligence. The state of being "in focus"—in full focus—means the decision to use one's intelligence fully.

The actions of consciousness required on the sensory-perceptual level are automatic. On the conceptual level, however, they are not automatic. This is the key to the locus of volition. Man's basic freedom of choice, according to Objectivism, is: to exercise his distinctively human cognitive machinery or not; i.e., to set his conceptual faculty in motion or not.

So if focusing is movement along a line, then an animal with no rational faculty has no where to go beyond being perceptually alert. But this is still a bad analogy, because focus does not apply to the movement from sleeping to waking. An animal does not focus not merely because he has no where to go, but there is no place to start from.

Ayn Rand and Dr. Peikoff both resort to the analogy of mind as vision but those are only analogies. Focus as the primary volitional act is about the mind, not the senses.

Edit for completeness: Since animals cannot perform the primary volitional act they do not have volition.

Edited February 18, 2010 by Grames

[phibetakappa]

I recommend you get Harry Binswanger's lectures on the topic of freewill. and/or I recommend you ask him yourself. and/or You sign up for the review of his latest book which covers the subject of freewill here: "How do we know"

I just finished reviewing Harry Binswanger's 1999 lecture entitle "Freewill," in hopes to find a more precise reference instead of just saying review the whole course.

(Sorry I only have the cassette tape version)

On Tape 1, side B, during the Q&A the last question HB takes is on the topic of animals and volition.

The man asks I have a dog and I trained him to wait to eat his favorite biscuit. Something like "I put the biscuit on his nose and he as to wait until he is given the command to eat it, and the dog sits there as salivates, and visibly struggles and strains every muscle to keep from eating the biscuit. Does that show that the dog has some form of volition because it is seemingly using 'effort' to not eat the biscuit."

Binswanger gives a good answer. He states he is sympathetic to the view that some animals do display what can be characterized as (volitional) "effort," in some contexts, because he has witnessed these kinds of instances too. He gives a great contrasts and states cats just cannot be seen to ever be place in the type of "conflict" provided in the dog/biscuit example.

More importantly he explicitly states it is not part of Objectivism that no animal cannot have some form of volition/freewill. He states there is no reason to be dogmatic about stating that no animal cannot have some form freewill, under highly delimited circumstances.

I believe far and way the more important thing is understanding man's form of volition because understanding it is life and death for us/joy vs suffering. But that is not the topic of this post. The post is above "Volition in Animals."

Again I recommend Binswanger's lecture because he approaches it inductively, examining what facts introspectively can be viewed related to volition.

[phibetakappa]

The fundamental volitional act, the primary choice, is to focus. Focus only applies to conceptual consciousness.

The act of focusing requires volition. You have to will your mind into focus. The faculty of volition exists prior to bringing our mind into focus. We use volition to bring our mind into focus, then we can use it to form our first acts of abstraction which lead to concept formation.

Grasping similarities as opposed to differences is a volitional process, and is the essence of having a conceptual level consciousness. Grasping similarity as opposed to differences requires the mind to be in focus. It is in this manor that our minds attains it attribute of being potentially conceptual.

If the person never chooses to volitionally observe similarities and differences and form his first concepts, it would be wrong to say he had a "conceptual consciousness." But you could still say he has a volitional consciousness.

My infant son for over a year and a half has not known a single word, has not shown any sign of having formed his first concept. But he can be seen exerting mental and physical effort in goal-directed ways, he can me observed making choices at the perceptual level.

In other words he is entirely perceptual and exerts choice all over the place. He does not possess a conceptual consciousness. Having a conceptual consciousness is a matter of choice.

It is not as if we are just born with a conceptual faculty and it just starts up one day, and we just start form concepts. Our volitional consciousness has to be willed to work in a conceptual way. If we never will it to operate in a manor to produce concept, it is not and will never be a conceptual consciousness.

It is true that there is no evidence that any animal is conceptual. It may be true that their brains do not even possess the physical potential to become conceptual, and the the average human brain does possess that potential. But, it is possible for a human being, despite having the potentiality of choosing to be conceptual, never does make that choice, and/or never sustains the choice to operate at the conceptual level for very long. For long stretches such a man can drift mentally, and can and does exert freewill and volition.

Having a conceptual consciousness presupposes having volition. But having volition does not presuppose having conceptual consciousness.

Forming concepts requires effort. A child has to choose to make his consciousness conceptual.

This presupposes his volitional faculty is already working and he is making choices, and directing his perceptual consciousness for many many months before he ever makes the choice to sustain the effort of gathering up the bunches and bunches of perceptual observations of similarities and differences of objects, which he will eventual use to form his first concept.

All these pre-conceptual activities are volitional. The faculty of volition exists prior to having a conceptual consciousness, and the faculty of volition exists and can be active when and if a man choose not to operate at the conceptual level, i.e., when he chooses not to have a conceptual consciousness.

Edited February 18, 2010 by phibetakappa

[Grames]

The act of focusing requires volition. You have to will your mind into focus. The faculty of volition exists prior to bringing our mind into focus. We use volition to bring our mind into focus, then we can use it to form our first acts of abstraction which lead to concept formation.

This is reifying volition, as if it were a Prime Mover acting as an original cause. The act of focusing is volition, as are other choices. There is not a separate faculty of volition apart from the various modes of acting.

Grasping similarities as opposed to differences is a volitional process, and is the essence of having a conceptual level consciousness. Grasping similarity as opposed to differences requires the mind to be in focus. It is in this manor that our minds attains it attribute of being potentially conceptual.

At the risk of a giant digression, what is the justification for this distinction? Similarities and differences are both given perceptually, utilizing either in forming a concept requires some degree of focus.

If the person never chooses to volitionally observe similarities and differences and form his first concepts, it would be wrong to say he had a "conceptual consciousness." But you could still say he has a volitional consciousness.

If a person does not have a conceptual consciousness, then the choice to form concepts would not be available to him. A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty. Without it there would be no possibility of being volitional in any respect.

Your infant son is growing his conceptual faulty organically and incrementally. He does not have a choice about expressing what is genetic to his human nature. He will someday have a conceptual consciousness whether he wills it or not. Whether he uses it or not will be his fundamental choice. With use it will become more capable and with neglect less capable but it is always there so long as he remains whole and healthy.

Choosing not to choose is itself a choice, but only so long as the alternative exists.

[JMeganSnow]

Diana Hsieh's remark that volition is coextensive with reason can be understood as follows:

I get that part, what I'm wondering is, could you theoretically have reason without volition?

It's an arbitrary assertion in any case since we've never seen it (and probably never will), I'm just wondering if there might be something that I don't know about in that area.

[Grames]

I get that part, what I'm wondering is, could you theoretically have reason without volition?

If reason were to be automatic as perception is, then it would need to be regarded as infallible in the way perception is. If there was a being with no alternative but to follow the single correct method of thinking then it would be infallible, but it would also be a machine. If it were man-made, the product of some human cognition, it cannot be infallible. As a material object, it cannot be indestructible and if damaged then it could malfunction. If it has and needs error detection and correction routines then it is not infallible, there can be no perfect algorithm for that which avoids invoking an actual infinity. So I say no, you cannot have reason without volition.

[phibetakappa]

This is reifying volition, as if it were a Prime Mover acting as an original cause. The act of focusing is volition, as are other choices. There is not a separate faculty of volition apart from the various modes of acting.

At the risk of a giant digression, what is the justification for this distinction? Similarities and differences are both given perceptually, utilizing either in forming a concept requires some degree of focus.

If a person does not have a conceptual consciousness, then the choice to form concepts would not be available to him. A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty. Without it there would be no possibility of being volitional in any respect.

Your infant son is growing his conceptual faulty organically and incrementally. He does not have a choice about expressing what is genetic to his human nature. He will someday have a conceptual consciousness whether he wills it or not. Whether he uses it or not will be his fundamental choice. With use it will become more capable and with neglect less capable but it is always there so long as he remains whole and healthy.

Choosing not to choose is itself a choice, but only so long as the alternative exists.

One's mind just doesn't come into focus by accident and then suddenly they have volition. Focusing one's mind is a choice, that presupposes the capacity to make choices. As you stated the act of focusing is volitional, i.e., presupposing a capacity of volition.

Reify means "to regard as a concrete thing"

That is precisely what you are doing with the concepts of "consciousness", "faculty", "conceptual", "conceptual consciousness" and "faculty of reason"

You state:

If a person does not have a conceptual consciousness, then the choice to form concepts would not be available to him. A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty. Without it there would be no possibility of being volitional in any respect.

"A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty" This is the definition of reify.

Here in the next section you do it again:

Your infant son is growing his conceptual faculty organically and incrementally. He does not have a choice about expressing what is genetic to his human nature. He will someday have a conceptual consciousness whether he wills it or not. .

A conceptual consciousness is not a physical faculty. It is a spiritual faculty, i.e, non-material. One has to choose to have a conceptual faculty, and if one is to keep it one has to continually choose to keep one's mind in focus and to management one's mind via a constant volitional effort.

If one never does choose to focus, never chooses to maintain the continuous effort the conceptual level of consciousness requires, one still has volition, but one does not have a conceptual consciousness. One has a perceptual consciousness, with the potential of being activated, utilized and/or sustained via a continuous volitional effort.

Again I recommend Harry Binswanger's Freewill lectures, and if you can spend the money and get an early copy of his new book which has an entire chapter on freewill.

Over and out.

[Grames]

Reify means "to regard as a concrete thing"

..

A conceptual consciousness is not a physical faculty. It is a spiritual faculty, i.e, non-material. One has to choose to have a conceptual faculty, and if one is to keep it one has to continually choose to keep one's mind in focus and to management one's mind via a constant volitional effort.

Again I recommend Harry Binswanger's Freewill lectures, and if you can spend the money and get an early copy of his new book which has an entire chapter on freewill.

This is why I do not trust Binswanger's philosophizing (although perhaps you misrepresent him, he has argued himself into loopy conclusions on other occasions). Stating that the proposition "A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty" meets the definition of reify is consistent with metaphysical dualism between matter and consciousness. Only under that scheme is a spiritual faculty non-material. The primacy of existence principle states that consciousness is derivative of existence and wholly within in, not apart from it. Existence is material and our spiritual faculties are material.

[phibetakappa]

This is why I do not trust Binswanger's philosophizing (although perhaps you misrepresent him, he has argued himself into loopy conclusions on other occasions).

I have not been representing any of Binswanger's views here. I suggested people, especially you, study Binswanger's lectures because he properly approaches subjects inductively. Whereas you are at best dogmatic and rationalistic in nearly every one of your statements. You don't think, you snatch parts of conclusions from Objectivism (seemingly) at random, then jigger them around and/or make rationalistic deductions from them.

Any views I've represented of Binswanger I have provided references to them above. The only view of his on the subject which I'm presenting here is that there is no reason to be dogmatic when it comes to thinking about animals and volition. I.e., there's no reason other animals can not possess volition, i.e., there is nothing in the nature of being an non-human animal which precludes it from having volition.

Stating that the proposition "A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty" meets the definition of reify is consistent with metaphysical dualism between matter and consciousness.

Yes, I know it does. And a "metaphysical dualism between matter and consciousness" is not an Objectivist view, i.e., it is not a view supported by any Objectivist literature. Given the use of the term "dualist," it sounds like your own attempt to jigger modern philosophic ideas, and cram them into Objectivism, which seems par for the course for you.

Only under that scheme is a spiritual faculty non-material. The primacy of existence principle states that consciousness is derivative of existence and wholly within in, not apart from it. Existence is material and our spiritual faculties are material.

Prime example of your rationalistic deductive epistemology. "The primacy of existence principle states..." You just grab something like a definition and start making deductions with it.

The primacy of existence is not some out of context premise to be plucked out of thin air to start making deductions from. Furthermore, the "primacy of existence" is not even a principle. It does not state that "consciousness is derivative of existence."

Edited March 8, 2010 by phibetakappa

[Jake]

Followed by:

The effort to bring one's mind into focus is chosen, i.e., it is volitional.

Reason can not get off the ground until the mind is volitionally brought into focus. This is a pre-rational condition needed to think.

You found that OPAR quote significant enough to make it bold, so my question is:

If focus is the readiness to think, how can any creature be ready to think (focused), if it is not capable of thinking (i.e., having a rational faculty?)

Edit: While the choice to focus is prior to rational activity, it is not prior to rational capacity. Diana clarified her use of the term "rational mind" as "rational faculty" on the first page of the thread.

Edited March 8, 2010 by Jake