Determinism seems...silly.

[Eiuol]

There is no such thing as a "non-material entity" and Objectivism only deals with one type of materialism, the kind that denies consciousness, in it's literature

Clarification: when I said "non-material entities exist insofar...", it was probably better to say "in a sense, we could say they non-material entities exist [for the reasons I gave], but non-material existent makes more sense if we want to talk about abstractions". Entities are supposed to be concrete and directly perceived. You can't directly perceive your own consciousness unless somehow there is a consciousness outside you have access to.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Eiuol

[Harrison Danneskjold]

After reading your post, I have no idea what you are saying or what your argument is.

 

I'm not laying out any argument.  The more I think about it, the less I feel prepared for such a thing.  Earlier in this thread though I found it difficult to clearly and precisely articulate what my opinions actually were; I was rectifying that.  The only factual point I wanted to convey was that, regardless of whether it corresponds to reality or not (there remain loose ends therein, for me), my initial beliefs weren't comparable to the generalized "determinism" that Rand and Binswanger discussed.

 

Epistemologically, free will and consciousness are irreducible, but metaphysically, they are not separate "things" of a special type different than concretes or matter even.

 

Peikoff's analysis of the Uncertainty Principle, quoted earlier in this thread, comes to mind.

[Plasmatic]

I reccomend Diana Hsieh's paper Mind in Objectivism on this topic:

http://www.philosophyinaction.com/docs/mio.pdf

Edited September 13, 2014 by Plasmatic