Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Questions about Free Will and Morality

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

I am pretty new to Objectivism; I read Fountainhead, The Virtue Of Selfishness, and I'm starting Atlas Shrugged.

But here are some Questions I have with Objectivism.

1. I am sure Objectivists do not believe Humans have an Internal Soul. So without a Soul then how do Humans make the Concious choises that they make? 
2. Wouldn't the Law of Identity disprove the Idea of Free Will? Since the Universe works Mechanically, this includes our Neurons.
I hear Determinists bring this up on Twitter and Youtube.

3. Since there is No god, then how do we know if the Objective Morality of Objectivism is Objective?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, (MIKE) MichaleHansonBryan said:

I am pretty new to Objectivism; I read Fountainhead, The Virtue Of Selfishness, and I'm starting Atlas Shrugged.

But here are some Questions I have with Objectivism.

1. I am sure Objectivists do not believe Humans have an Internal Soul. So without a Soul then how do Humans make the Concious choises that they make? 
2. Wouldn't the Law of Identity disprove the Idea of Free Will? Since the Universe works Mechanically, this includes our Neurons.
I hear Determinists bring this up on Twitter and Youtube.

3. Since there is No god, then how do we know if the Objective Morality of Objectivism is Objective?

1. They believe in an Aristotelian conception of a soul as a natural faculty of biology. A soul or consciousness is a capacity of certain animals' neurological systems which gives it motor functions and awareness, as well as a selective focus and, in humans, the ability to abstract and form concepts and language.

2. A common argument of determinists is that since free will is conceived of in a Platonic or religious manner, in order for free will to be valid, it would have to be a magical or infinite. This is called libertarian free will. The law of identity certainly does refute this type, but not a naturalist version. Free will, like vision or hearing, being a biological function, is dependent on organs, is finite and limited.

3. Again, much like the same dichotomy, we can either have moral relativism on the one hand or a substantive, but mystical morality. But in an Aristotelian-Randian conception, morality isn't random emotiveness or appeals to the supernatural, it is common sense principles for achieving a good life and well being. Since man is a being with a specific nature, and that nature is governed by laws knowable by rational inquiry and investigation, just like say a tree or an elephant, humans are capable of investigating the conditions and principles necessary for survival, continued growth and success of living entities. It is, again, a naturalistic view of ethics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, (MIKE) MichaleHansonBryan said:

2. Wouldn't the Law of Identity disprove the Idea of Free Will?

Ayn Rand answered exactly your question in her course The Art of Non-fiction. The question was: "Doesn't free will contradict the idea that man has a specific identity?"

Quote

It's almost blindingly self-evident that the philosophical fundamental being ignored here is the Law of Identity. This is a good example of what questions you need not bother answering, since they contradict philosophical fundamentals. The guideline for anyone tempted to ask such a question is: Do not rewrite reality. On what grounds did someone decide that choice contradicts identity? That is an arbitrary construct of determinism.


I first encountered a similar issue in college. Some professor declared: "We must decide wether we're spiritualists or materialists, because the universe cannot contain opposite elements. So either everything is spirit or everything is matter." I was about sixteen, and thought: "Of course, I'm for matter." That seemed the rational answer. It took me a couple of years before I asked the following question: "On what grounds did he decide that reality must be one or the other?" Then I discovered the principle of rewriting reality, and that was very helpful. You'd be surprised how many errors consist of rewriting reality. Kant is the archetype. He does it more, and  more openly, than most philosophers. He decides (on a primitive, rationalistic basis, à la Heraclitus and Parmenides) what reality has to be, and if it doesn't correspond to his demands, then reality is wrong — not his demands.


You must ask on what grounds do we decide what reality has to be. You know that reality cannot contain contradictions, and you know that one of the first things you learn, after infancy, is that there are inanimate objects and conscious entities. You know yourself — that you have a body and consciousness. That is the empirical self-evident proof that there is both matter and consciousness in the universe. All of your knowledge of man's nature rests on these primaries — that existence exists and consciousness exists. If you drop either of these axioms, you'll encounter contradictions everywhere. And you'll be guilty of using a stolen concept if you claim that the universe is all consciousness or all matter. This is the attempt to prescribe what you think in logic should be the nature of reality. But you have no right to any concept of reality or logic unless the material of your concepts came from reality — from the evidence of your senses.


By what reasoning does anyone claim that identity means only material identity, and that human consciousness contradicts the Law of Identity because it operates by choice? Free will is self-evident through observation. Further, it can be demonstrated by as many arguments as you care to muster. Everything you observe about human consciousness tells you that it operates by choice: not only your introspection, but also your observation of other people. So you put yourself in this position: You observe that matter exists and that consciousness exists, and that consciousness operates by choice. Is it a contradiction to hold that we have firm identities and the capacity of choice? Ask yourself: "Choice about what?" We don't have a choice about our own nature — its identity is firm — but about our action. There are no grounds in reality for claiming that freedom of action contradicts the Law of Identity.


This is what I mean by reducing questions to see whether they correspond to or contradict basic axioms. For practice, I recommend Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Read it and observe how often Kant rewrites reality.


Unless he identifies this issue, a conscientious person might feel it's up to him to answer impossible questions. The unstated assumption behind this attitude is that nobody could be as dishonest and irrationnal as some of these philosophers are: "If a philosopher like Kant spent his life creating a huge body of knowledge, he probably had some legitimate reasons, which I don't see. Surely he isn't a total fraud." If you proceed on that premise, you're lost ; the result will be skepticism, unearned guilt, and self-doubt. The more you study Kant, for example, the more helpless you'll feel: "Oh, what's the use? Man knows nothing — at least I can't know, and I am too tired to pursue the quest. There is something wrong with philosophy, there's something wrong with Kant, but I am unable to untangle it, and therefore logic is impotent, reason is impotent, and Kant is right for him, and I am right for me, only I don't know what's right." That is the ultimate result of granting this kind of benefit of the doubt.


Don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt if your first impression is that he's irrationnal. Don't discard him on an impression; you may be wrong. Be patient enough to see the first admission of mysticism or the first non sequitur. When you get it in his own language (which is the fairest procedure) you can forget all about him. You need not to study all of his evils. If you are a philosophy teacher, you might have to help your pupils untangle the particular evils; but for your own information — for the clarity of your own convictions — once you arrive at the conclusion that someone is a mystic (that some part of his philosophy, by his own statement, is not subject to reason or is beyond reason), then he has saved you the trouble of considering anything else that he says.

 

 

Edited by gio
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

Since there is No god, then how do we know if the Objective Morality of Objectivism is Objective?

By the same way we know anything is objective. And I don't get how you can even consider the idea that belief in God would determine what is objective: the exact opposite is true. You have to exclude the very idea of God or any faith before you can enter in the process of objectivity.

 

Edited by gio
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, (MIKE) MichaleHansonBryan said:

I am pretty new to Objectivism; I read Fountainhead, The Virtue Of Selfishness, and I'm starting Atlas Shrugged.

But here are some Questions I have with Objectivism.

1. I am sure Objectivists do not believe Humans have an Internal Soul. So without a Soul then how do Humans make the Concious choises that they make? 
2. Wouldn't the Law of Identity disprove the Idea of Free Will? Since the Universe works Mechanically, this includes our Neurons.
I hear Determinists bring this up on Twitter and Youtube.

3. Since there is No god, then how do we know if the Objective Morality of Objectivism is Objective?

One thing to keep in mind when asking these questions is whether or not you are engaged in a form of begging the question, presuming the answer prior to engaging in the thought at reaching a valid conclusions, or whether you are using invalid concepts which presume the irrational or a falsity.

Consider your question under 1 for example.  You essentially ask how can it be that you naturally are what you are and that you act naturally as you act.  The implication is that it can't be possible or even sensible that you are and you act in accordance with nature and that a supernature is required for one to understand or explain that which is.  What is most astounding is that there is no basis whatever in evidence for the supernatural nor any need in reason for its invocation.  Only observe that ignorance begets fiction and unquestioned culture and religion is imposed upon children prior to their ability to think for themselves and in many cases preventing them from doing so for the rest of third lives.  How can things be what they are?  If you have any sense of disbelief or suspicions that things ought not be as they are that is the first sign that your mind has been twisted away from all the evidence there is of everything which is .. which can only ever come from those things which are.  It is sheer insanity to invoke the supernatural or anything other than that which may be integrated and deduced from the evidence of the facts of reality.  It's an insanity we have inherited but nonetheless  insane.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also here's an interview with an ARI scholar about free will, it's got some good stuff that deals with a lot of misunderstandings with what objectivists actually think.

A lot of times I find that Rand's position gets mistaken by Sam Harris-ites and the "skeptics" and new atheists types, for libertarian or platonic free will, which they then proceed to knock down as not compatible with modern science. Rand would of course agree that physical determinism is true and libertarian free will is false, just that consciousness is a type of naturally occurring causation in some living entities. This view is closer to the Aquinas-Hobbes-Hume view of broad compatibilism, minus their God-stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, 2046 said:

A lot of times I find that Rand's position gets mistaken by Sam Harris-ites and the "skeptics" and new atheists types, for libertarian or platonic free will, which they then proceed to knock down as not compatible with modern science. Rand would of course agree that physical determinism is true and libertarian free will is false, just that consciousness is a type of naturally occurring causation in some living entities. This view is closer to the Aquinas-Hobbes-Hume view of broad compatibilism, minus their God-stuff.

2

 

Here is Rand's key passage on determinism, from Galt's speech:

"The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature,' the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs, or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.'"

This is a statement of libertarian free will. Rand explicitly states that thinking is not a mechanical (i.e., deterministic) process and contrasts it with biological processes that are deterministic, like those of the stomach, lungs, or heart.

Similarly, from Peikoff's article on the analytic - synthetic dichotomy, which Rand approved:

"Because man has free will, no human choice—and no phenomenon which is a product of human choice—is metaphysically necessary. In regard to any man-made fact, it is valid to claim that man has chosen thus, but it was not inherent in the nature of existence for him to have done so: he could have chosen otherwise."

This is an even more explicit assertion of libertarianism. Peikoff makes a metaphysical distinction between human choice and other forms of causality.

There are many similar passages collected here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/free_will.html

Where is the evidence that Rand thought "that physical determinism is true and libertarian free will is false?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it were explicit, it would actually so, I'm not sure you are quite using "explicit" correctly. Anyways, until you define your terms it's all meaningless.

It seems like you are associating physical determinism with mechanism and reductionism, and indeed this is a typical package deal of determinists. But there is a different type of causality, namely Aristotelian agent-causality, which Rand and Peikoff both go through pains to argue for. So clearly she believes in the law of causality, but not a mechanistic one.

Secondly, metaphysical libertarians believe free will is incompatible with physical causality, and that a mind or will of some kind overrides physical causality. Adherents include philosophers from the idealist tradition, like Descartes, Berkeley, Kant. Clearly Rand does not believe this. For her, the volition that characterizes consciousness is finite, limited, and depends on a naturalistic functioning of its dependent organs, and fully abides by the laws of causality.

She does not classify the lungs as deterministic and the nervous system as indeterminate. That would just be odd. There are just non- or sub-conscious systems that operate vegetatively or involuntarily, and clearly parts of consciousness that have active focus and control. Both are causally determined to operate according to their natures.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, 2046 said:

If it were explicit, it would actually so, I'm not sure you are quite using "explicit" correctly. Anyways, until you define your terms it's all meaningless.

It seems like you are associating physical determinism with mechanism and reductionism, and indeed this is a typical package deal of determinists. But there is a different type of causality, namely Aristotelian agent-causality, which Rand and Peikoff both go through pains to argue for. So clearly she believes in the law of causality, but not a mechanistic one.

Secondly, metaphysical libertarians believe free will is incompatible with physical causality, and that a mind or will of some kind overrides physical causality. Adherents include philosophers from the idealist tradition, like Descartes, Berkeley, Kant. Clearly Rand does not believe this. For her, the volition that characterizes consciousness is finite, limited, and depends on a naturalistic functioning of its dependent organs, and fully abides by the laws of causality.

She does not classify the lungs as deterministic and the nervous system as indeterminate. That would just be odd. There are just non- or sub-conscious systems that operate vegetatively or involuntarily, and clearly parts of consciousness that have active focus and control. Both are causally determined to operate according to their natures.

2046 surely you must see the problem William O has with your characterization of Rand position as "physical determinism", as it is linguistically very similar to the term "determinism", which, if I am not mistaken, is most often associated with a sort of classical determinism which leaves no room whatever for any sort of free will.

Although you allege a distinction, the substance of what you have described here has not in fact distinguished Rand's "physical determinism" from "mechanism" and "reductionism".  You state that she believes the law of causality but not a "mechanistic one", but you do not distinguish between "unmechanistic" causality and "mechanistic" causality or illustrate how what Rand believed is one but not the other.  

The reader is left unsure of just what you think Rand thinks free will IS.

I would suggest that you clearly define what you think "free will" is according to Rand, i.e. what makes it "free" rather than simply "will".  I am not asking you to explain why or how it exists, merely that you identify with precision the WHAT whose existence is at issue, and which presupposes any rational conversation whatever about IT.  

Only then could we see why metaphysical libertarians were wrong to believe "free will" is incompatible with physical causality, in particular, only once we see that "free will" (as it is defined and identified) IS compatible with physical causality, and only then will we see HOW it is different from mechanistic determinism.

 

Your answer has made claims about what Rand's theory is not.  I ask that you  explain what it IS, thereby SHOWING what it is not. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, 2046 said:

If it were explicit, it would actually so, I'm not sure you are quite using "explicit" correctly. Anyways, until you define your terms it's all meaningless.

 

Libertarianism is the thesis that "the actual world is not deterministic and that at least some of the agents in the actual world have free will." Determinism is the thesis that "the past and the laws of nature entail what states of affairs will obtain in the future, and that only those states of affairs entailed by the past and the laws will in fact obtain." Finally, compatibilism is the thesis that "the existence of free will in a possible world is compatible with that world being deterministic."

My source for these definitions is the IEP, an academic encyclopedia: http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/

What you said was that Rand was a physical determinist, a compatibilist like Hobbes, and rejected libertarian free will. That is incorrect on the standard academic definitions of those three terms, as the quotes I provided in my previous post show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mmm hmm. Sounds fine to me. Seems like you two are scared of a word, determinism. Whereas you defined it above, the idea that states of affairs will obtain according to causal laws, and that entities have specific natures that entail specific, limited actions. Rand clearly does not believe that some entities are exempt from this law, and yet she does believe in the volitional nature of consciousness. I'm pretty comfortable in my classification as a naturalist compatibilist.

Take Rand's insistence on identity as axiomatic, and of causality explained in terms of identity. Then take Peikoff's billiard ball example, these are clearly to me expositions of Aristotelian agent-causality, causality is a central law in Rand's metaphysics, rooted squarely in identity of a thing's nature, not in the event-causality of mechanism.

And yet, for her the most basic act of volition is to bring the mind into focus or not, to drift passively or to have selective awareness. This, she says is our immediately perceptive sense of agency and control. It would be "rewriting reality" to say it must be a mind or some kind of essence overriding physical causality, something from the noumenal world impressing itself onto matter not subject to physical laws. Nor can the minds selective awareness suddenly act in ways other than its hardwired nature allow. Its functions are finite and delimited. The mind is a thing with a definite nature too, an identity. It would be a straw man to construct this theory otherwise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll definite it as a self-regulating cognitive process of purposive behaviour. Briefly, it manifests in 5 basic levels, each with its own degree of awareness:

1. Sense of agency and sense of ownership (implicit in self-awareness of fine motor skills)

2. Ability to focus awareness vs passive drift (meta choice)

3. Ability to focus on this vs that (choose between alternatives)

4. Ability to abstract from particulars to generalities (concept formation, language)

5. Ability to process conceptual data (thinking, planning, problem solving)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, 2046 said:

I'll definite it as a self-regulating cognitive process of purposive behaviour. Briefly, it manifests in 5 basic levels, each with its own degree of awareness:

1. Sense of agency and sense of ownership (implicit in self-awareness of fine motor skills)

2. Ability to focus awareness vs passive drift (meta choice)

3. Ability to focus on this vs that (choose between alternatives)

4. Ability to abstract from particulars to generalities (concept formation, language)

5. Ability to process conceptual data (thinking, planning, problem solving)

This Thing seems perfectly easy to find in a purely mechanistic universe.  Please elaborate more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

perfectly easy to find in a purely mechanistic universe

Why are they mechanistic? I don't understand what else volition could even consist of. 3 on its own is already non-mechanical as far as I see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

This Thing seems perfectly easy to find in a purely mechanistic universe.  Please elaborate more.

Yeah I'm confused. Mechanistic would imply no choice possibilities and no self-determination of cognitive events. All cognitive events would be other-determined (environment-determined, genetic-determined, etc.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, 2046 said:

Mmm hmm. Sounds fine to me. Seems like you two are scared of a word, determinism. Whereas you defined it above, the idea that states of affairs will obtain according to causal laws, and that entities have specific natures that entail specific, limited actions. Rand clearly does not believe that some entities are exempt from this law, and yet she does believe in the volitional nature of consciousness. I'm pretty comfortable in my classification as a naturalist compatibilist.

 

No, Rand is not a compatibilist, because she is not a determinist. If determinism is true, it was in principle completely predictable that you and I would have this exact conversation 1,000,000 years ago, before either of us were born. That is what the proposition "the past and the laws of nature entail what states of affairs will obtain in the future" means in standard academic parlance. The quotes I provided above show that Objectivism denies determinism, and therefore compatibilism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, William O said:

No, Rand is not a compatibilist, because she is not a determinist. If determinism is true, it was in principle completely predictable that you and I would have this exact conversation 1,000,000 years ago, before either of us were born. That is what the proposition "the past and the laws of nature entail what states of affairs will obtain in the future" means in standard academic parlance. The quotes I provided above show that Objectivism denies determinism, and therefore compatibilism.

You are mistaking predestination with determinism. Determinism = causality and identity. Not necessarily correlated with the idea that all events are determined in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, 2046 said:

You are mistaking predestination with determinism. Determinism = causality and identity. Not necessarily correlated with the idea that all events are determined in advance.

Determinism is precisely the idea that all events are determined in advance (by the past and the laws of nature), as the academic definition I quoted shows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Why are they mechanistic? I don't understand what else volition could even consist of. 3 on its own is already non-mechanical as far as I see.

I didn't say they ARE mechanistic.  Read the words and think just a little bit about what they mean.. and try not to butcher the meaning with your "reinterpretations" (which for some odd reason are often way off the mark when it comes to something I say). 

e.g. Suppose you see a thing walk and you say this constitutes proof of something which is not mechanistic.  I say "That Thing walking seems perfectly easy to find in a purely mechanistic universe".  Have I said WALKING IS mechanistic?  No. I am pointing out the obvious fact that seeing something walking does not prove the Thing is restricted to something which is not mechanistic. ( I don't have to condescend or insult your intelligence to explain and give the example that wind up toys walk and are mechanistic)

10 hours ago, 2046 said:

Yeah I'm confused. Mechanistic would imply no choice possibilities and no self-determination of cognitive events. All cognitive events would be other-determined (environment-determined, genetic-determined, etc.)

Your definition, although it might be consistent with a view which rejects a mechanistic "free will", is not sufficient to illustrate that it actually does reject mechanistic "free will", as William O points out there are many theories which explicitly state the entire universe is mechanistic, and that universe (as we all know) includes everything you speak of.

1. Sense of agency and sense of ownership (implicit in self-awareness of fine motor skills)

You have replaced an undefined term "free-will" with further undefined terms "sense of" or "agency", as if the mere existence of these somehow refutes a mechanistic view.  Superficial mention of these simply do not, unless there were undeniable empirical evidence that it is impossible for a mechanistic system to have a "sense of" agency or ownership (whatever having a "sense of" means).  This is precisely what science has not (as of yet) undeniably proven.

2. Ability to focus awareness vs passive drift (meta choice)

"Focus" and "awareness" also are not sufficiently defined to refute the possibility that what you believe is fully compatible with a purely mechanistic view.

3. Ability to focus on this vs that (choose between alternatives)

See above, and note that the reference to "choose between alternatives" is a restatement of "free will" without a definition of "ability to choose"... some definitions of what choice is, include what mechanistic computers already do.

4. Ability to abstract from particulars to generalities (concept formation, language)

see above

5. Ability to process conceptual data (thinking, planning, problem solving)

see above

 

Your definition. although consistent with what "free will" is, misses the essence of what makes it special and unique, what makes it what it is.

 

Plato having once defined Man as a "featherless biped" missed entirely what makes Man what he is.  Without offense or praise, your error here is the same.

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/animals/miscellany/plato-and-diogenes-debate-featherless-bipeds

BTW Man is defined in essentials by his Rationality.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Read the words and think just a little bit about what they mean

You said that such a definition of free will could exist in a mechanistic universe. If they could, then this would mean they are mechanistic and you are looking for a non-mechanistic part of free will. But 2046 provided just that in point 3 at the least. Point 3 could not exist in a mechanistic universe.

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Have I said WALKING IS mechanistic?  No. I am pointing out the obvious fact that seeing something walking does not prove the Thing is restricted to something which is not mechanistic.

Actually, you would be saying what I suggested above: you would be looking for aspects of walking that are non-mechanistic such as intention, proprioception, goal seeking, and so on. That takes us straight back to the same issue in the OP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

You said that such a definition of free will could exist in a mechanistic universe. If they could, then this would mean they are mechanistic and you are looking for a non-mechanistic part of free will. But 2046 provided just that in point 3 at the least. Point 3 could not exist in a mechanistic universe.

Actually, you would be saying what I suggested above: you would be looking for aspects of walking that are non-mechanistic such as intention, proprioception, goal seeking, and so on. That takes us straight back to the same issue in the OP.

That you could read what I wrote and still not get it is astonishing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

That you could read what I wrote and still not get it is astonishing.

It would seem your points are not as profound as you want them to be.

Gee golly, Rationality (with a capital R, because lower case just isn't good enough) is man's essential characteristic, why thanks, I've never heard that one before. So elucidating. Next you'll be telling me, why mate, didn't you know Reason is Man's means of survival qua Man?? Gotta throw that qua in there.

You strike me as someone that's just discovered objectivism and philosophy and every thought is of great insight. Much as I love a good pissing match, this ceases to interest me.

If you are interested in, for example, what is sense of agency (SA) in cognitive psychology, as it is the base level of self-awareness. There's some good papers out there to read. A lot of the recent cognitive psychology research is fascinating when it comes to explaining free will, "how it works."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12798261/

Abstract

Recognizing oneself as the owner of a body and the agent of actions requires specific mechanisms which have been elucidated only recently. One of these mechanisms is the monitoring of signals arising from bodily movements, i.e. the central signals which contribute to the generation of the movements and the sensory signals which arise from their execution. The congruence between these two sets of signals is a strong index for determining the experiences of ownership and agency, which are the main constituents of the experience of being an independent self.

Edited by 2046
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

That you could read what I wrote and still not get it is astonishing.

No need to get frustrated, you might just need to explain it in a different way.

 

8 hours ago, William O said:

The quotes I provided above show that Objectivism denies determinism, and therefore compatibilism.

My position, probably similar to 2046, is that the word determinism is pretty loaded. I would rather throw out the term entirely then try to qualify if Objectivism accepts or denies determinism. Certainly, it would reject "hard" determinism that you mentioned. Past that, the determinist/non-determinist dichotomy doesn't really work. Rand essentially argues that the world has a definite causal structure which we can understand in its entirety. Volition, too, follows a definite causal structure (i.e. it has a nature), but by virtue of not being reductionist, Objectivism is fine with discussing mental states and mental control.

Edited by Eiuol
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...