Does free will contradict Objectivist causality?

[Tenure]

That every entity always acts in accordance with its nature tells us nothing about how it will in fact act, including whether or not there is more than one possible way for it to act.

There is only one way for a thing to act, given a certain set of conditions, and those conditions in themselves will only effect the thing in one way (usually as a combination of those conditions acting together or against each other). Thus, the law of identity does tell us how things will act - it tells us the will act in a non-contradictory manner, and that if we were to recreate the exact same conditions, we would get the exact same result. The practical consequence, as Bob rightly points out, is that although we cannot get a complete knowledge of all conditions, we can get a very good average, and say, "This is the usual rate of decay of element x" and then apply that to future experiments with element x.I

It does not, for instance, rule out the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics: all one needs to say is that it is in an electron's nature (for example) to behave unpredictably

By standard, this man means the Copenhagen Interpretation? Then yes, the law of identity rules it out completely, by virtue of its meaning - that something cannot act and not act in a certain way. Element X will not both decay and not decay at the same time. Hell, a lot of the 'spookiness' of QM came early on (and is still caused in popular culture today) by people missing the fact that at the quantum level, it is our tools of observation, not observation itself, that causes those weird results (because we have to physically move the particles, by firing other particles at them).

Nor would it be contradicted by a helium-filled balloon that fell. If a balloon ever acted this way, then that would merely show that such behavior is part of its nature. Or, in other words, no matter how anything acts, it is by definition acting in accordance with its nature.

If full helium balloons fell straight down, in Earth's normal gravity, it would be in its nature to do that. But they don't - and they never will. What is so hard about this?

[Robert J. Kolker]

If full helium balloons fell straight down, in Earth's normal gravity, it would be in its nature to do that. But they don't - and they never will. What is so hard about this?

A helium filled balloon in a vacuum column would fall. There is no surrounding air to buoy it up.

Helium filled balloons don't just float. That float in an atmosphere that is heavier per unit volume than helium.

Bob Kolker

[Capitalism Forever]

Thus, the law of identity cannot be used to infer where to draw the line between determinsim and differsim.

Your continued terminological confusion makes it very difficult for me to understand what you are saying, but it has occured to me that you might be meaning this:

1. You think Dr. Peikoff thinks that determinism is true for some entities but not for others.

2. You think that Dr. Peikoff seeks to identify which entities determinism is true for and which it isn't true for (what you call "drawing the line").

3. You think that the quotes under discussion in this thread are part of Dr. Peikoff's attempt to "draw the line."

4. You think that Dr. Peikoff eventually draws that line between the metaphysically given and the man-made, with the former being subject to determinism and the latter not.

5. You think that Dr. Peikoff's above supposed conclusion is based solely on the law of identity.

Would that be about a correct interpretation of what you are saying?

[Tenure]

A helium filled balloon in a vacuum column would fall. There is no surrounding air to buoy it up.

Helium filled balloons don't just float. That float in an atmosphere that is heavier per unit volume than helium.

Bob Kolker

Sometimes I think your identity is 'to make annoying, unhelpful comments'.

My point is that a helium balloon would float in normal, Earth conditions. I didn't think it was really neccessary to identify every single constant, just like I don't when I say, "Breathing in the air around you is neccessary for man's survival" -- it's really not reasonable to assume I mean, "even when it's filled with deadly neuro-toxins!"

[Freddy]

1. You think Dr. Peikoff thinks that determinism is true for some entities but not for others.

Yes. The metaphysically given.

2. You think that Dr. Peikoff seeks to identify which entities determinism is true for and which it isn't true for (what you call "drawing the line").

It is somewhat subtle because in the analytic synthetic dichotomy he draws the line by saying "omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment" and then he goes on to prove why things act in a deterministic manner. I think Tenure post 51 is a bery nice restatement of what Peikoff intends to say.

3. You think that the quotes under discussion in this thread are part of Dr. Peikoff's attempt to "draw the line."

The line is implicit, the point is that Peikoffs argument to the effect that things behave in a determinsitic fashion, for example: "In any given set of circumstances, therefore, there is only one action possible to an entity, the action expressive of its identity", undermines his account of free will.

4. You think that Dr. Peikoff eventually draws that line between the metaphysically given and the man-made, with the former being subject to determinism and the latter not.

He is certainly of the opinion that human action could have been otherwise, but the actions of an electron could not. His support for the latter seems to rest on no more than the law of idenity.

5. You think that Dr. Peikoff's above supposed conclusion is based solely on the law of identity.

Yes, I think Peikoff employs a similar argument to the one Tenure makes in post 51:

There is only one way for a thing to act, given a certain set of conditions, and those conditions in themselves will only effect the thing in one way (usually as a combination of those conditions acting together or against each other). Thus, the law of identity does tell us how things will act - it tells us the will act in a non-contradictory manner, and that if we were to recreate the exact same conditions, we would get the exact same result.

Edited November 7, 2007 by Freddy

[Freddy]

There is only one way for a thing to act, given a certain set of conditions, and those conditions in themselves will only effect the thing in one way (usually as a combination of those conditions acting together or against each other). Thus, the law of identity does tell us how things will act - it tells us the will act in a non-contradictory manner, and that if we were to recreate the exact same conditions, we would get the exact same result.

This is determinism plain and simple and if the law of identity alone tells you this, then it must be a universal law and must subsume humans as well.

[Tenure]

The law of causality subsumes humans as well. The one which I have just described and which you've quoted me as stating. What it means for humans though, because we have free will, is that humans supply their own conditions. In addition to all the other conditions present, a human can choose to add another condition - he can focus on his emotional assessment of a situation, and then act on it; he can focus on his rational value for one thing over another, and then act on it; he can even choose to evade the the effort of focusing on the situation at hand, and get drunk to blur his ability to focus.

What this means, is that if we recreated the conditions perfectly, and the human acted in the exact same way, we'd get the same result. So, if we kept repeating the conditions of Roark discovering his bastardised buildings, and if he chose to act in a rational manner (which it is very probably he would, considering his past circumstances [but remember, due to free-will, there is no metaphysically determined guarantee of that]) he would blow up the buildings every single time (this is assuming that when we recreated the conditions, of course, we removed his memory of the last time he did this - the memory is an extra condition that wasn't included beforehand).

Determinism probably is true, for most things, but it's useless to say 'the universe is deterministic' because evidently, humans aren't pre-determined, since we have free will. Also, saying one action will lead to another action tells us nothing about the nature of the actor. The Law of Causality is about finding principles, about saying, "all these components mean that this entity 'X' will act in manner 'Y' whenever met with conditions 'Z'". And, as Bob points out, determinism is kind of a useless theory, because it has no practical application - it depends on trying to grab every single condition, whereas we just need a high degree of accuracy. The men who seek to understand their worlds deterministically, universally end up neurotic.

Edited November 7, 2007 by Tenure

[Freddy]

I quoted this:

That every entity always acts in accordance with its nature tells us nothing about how it will in fact act, including whether or not there is more than one possible way for it to act.

And you responded with this, which happens to be a perfectly valid restatement of determinsm, and your only premise is the law of idenity:

Thus, the law of identity does tell us how things will act - it tells us the will act in a non-contradictory manner, and that if we were to recreate the exact same conditions, we would get the exact same result.

Now you say this:

Determinism probably is true, for most things, but it's useless to say 'the universe is deterministic' because evidently, humans aren't pre-determined, since we have free will.

It obvious that this is consonant with the quote from Franz Kiekeben and stands in contradiction with your own quote.

[Capitalism Forever]

The line is implicit, the point is that Peikoffs argument to the effect that things behave in a determinsitic fashion, for example: "In any given set of circumstances, therefore, there is only one action possible to an entity, the action expressive of its identity", undermines his account of free will.

Oh, so is this the essential point you've been trying to make? Well, if I ever blame you for anything, it won't be for stating your point too directly. I never liked that line in OPAR myself; all too many people will all too easily misread it to say that no entity will ever get to make a choice because it can only ever act in one specific way. If I were to re-write OPAR, I would say instead something along the lines of: "All actions are determined by the nature of the entity that acts."

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I think there is a lot of confusion regarding Dr. Peikoff's account of causation in OPAR (and elsewhere) because he uses phrases at times that seem consistent with determinism, then people assume determinism, then they say how can he say that about human beings. The assumption that he is saying determinism is wrong, and that's what some of us are trying to say regarding the Objectivist understanding of causation.

For example, when he says there is only one action possible to an entity, that action which is consistent with it's identity, he is not saying nor implying that a given man can do one and only one thing given a particular circumstance. He is saying that a man can only do what is possible to him given that he is a man, as opposed to being something else. In other words, a man can choose to think about the circumstance using logic and then deciding what to do to the best of his rationality; though he has a choice to act on this or not; and that doesn't necessarily mean there is only one action possible to a given man -- i.e. had Howard Roark discovered his buildings being mangled and wanted to put a stop to it, it was not necessitated by his nature to blow up the mangled buildings (Cortlandt); for he could have chosen to make his point in some other manner, which would be consistent with his ideals. Having a rational philosophy does not limit that fact that you still have choices even within a rational determination of the facts and what to do about them.

And as someone else has already pointed out, the issue of determinism is not just that an entity will act one and only one way, but rather that everything -- most definitely including man -- acts according to circumstances in a pre-determined manner. The Objectivist position focuses more on the entity qua entity -- that an entity acts according to its nature (with the circumstances being more secondary). This focus is what makes it possible to say that even man acts in a causal manner, without invoking determinism for man. A man can make choices, that is the root of his nature qua entity.

[Freddy]

For example, when he says there is only one action possible to an entity, that action which is consistent with it's identity, he is not saying nor implying that a given man can do one and only one thing given a particular circumstance. He is saying that a man can only do what is possible to him given that he is a man, as opposed to being something else.

So he could have said: there are only one set of actions possible to an enity at any given instant, the set consistent with the entitiy's nature. This set might contain one action or many.?

If I were to re-write OPAR, I would say instead something along the lines of: "All actions are determined by the nature of the entity that acts."

Then you agree that the law of idenity doesn't preclude that facts involving an electron (but no humans) could have been otherwise? Then, how does Peikoff support the following:

As far as metaphysical reality is concerned[...], there are no 'facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise'

[Tenure]

As far as that quote is concerned, deliberately omitting the vital clause from the sentence, there is no way you could have ever been wrong or for your argument to consist of anything otherwise.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

So he could have said: there are only one set of actions possible to an entity at any given instant, the set consistent with the entity's nature. This set might contain one action or many.?

Not as phrased, no, because if the entity has no choice in the matter, one and only one action will occur. For example, if you drop an egg from your counter to the floor in your kitchen, the egg will break -- it doesn't have the option of doing anything else. If you drop a cat from your counter top, it will try to re-arrange it's orientation so as to land on its feet; but this is a reflexive action on the part of the cat, and not an action done by choice. If you drop a rubber ball from the counter top, it will bounce when it hits the floor. The man running these experiments can either continue or not, or he can decide to do something else; i.e. the circumstance of being in his kitchen does not pre-determine that he will run experiments.

Notice in these examples that the circumstance is the same in each case -- i.e. it is taking place in a kitchen with everything else being equal. What is different? The difference is what is being dropped, and what it does after being dropped. In other words, this is an application of the Objectivist epistemology, whereas something is differentiated from the background and then similarities are integrated into a concept or into a principle.

The way I phrased my entities and actions is an abstraction. I didn't specify this egg or this cat or this rubber ball or this man; but rather phrased it in the abstract: an egg qua egg will break; a cat qua cat will try to regain it's balance; a rubber ball qua ball will bounce; a man qua man will decide what to do; etc. Each of the items acts according to its nature, and the circumstance does not dictate this, but rather what the entity is will dictate what it will do in that circumstance.

For a rational man, what he will do is determined by his nature, but his nature qua character is his to make by choice -- i.e. man is self made. So Howard Roark could have done many things to protest against his intellectual property being stolen from him. In the context of the novel, blowing up Cortlandt was a great dramatic climax (or the beginning of the climax), and the climax was concluded by the court ruling. In Atlas Shrugged, the rational men went on strike, and only used retaliatory force when absolutely necessary (when the "Gift Certificate" was being utilized and Hank Rearden's metal was being stolen from him). In real life, one has many options within the range of applying a principle.

[Capitalism Forever]

Let me just comment very briefly on one or two of your points for now; I'll get back to write more when I have more time (I'm writing this in Oslo, Norway, between two lectures given by Yaron Brook! ) ...

Then you agree that the law of idenity doesn't preclude that facts involving an electron (but no humans) could have been otherwise?

There is an electron (n-illions of electrons, even!) in my laptop, but the fact that the laptop is mine could definitely have been otherwise: it took a choice on my part to buy it. And, of course, just the fact that the laptop exists qua laptop could have been otherwise. My laptop, along with all the electrons and nuclei that make it up, is as much a man-made thing as can be. The mere existence of the particles is metaphysically given, as is their nature--but the fact that they are there where they are, to contribute to the existence a laptop and to its nature, is man-made.

[Freddy]

Not as phrased, no, because if the entity has no choice in the matter, one and only one action will occur. For example, if you drop an egg from your counter to the floor in your kitchen, the egg will break -- it doesn't have the option of doing anything else.

Isn't this just an empirical claim like: "As far as we know, voilition is the only exception to determinsm". Is there any reason why volition is the only mechanism consitent with different outcomes given identical initial conditions?

I have no problem with someone making an empirical claim about what entities are subsumed under determinism. But Objectivists claim that philosphy is the base of science, and if your claim that determinism is a philosophical must at the level of electrons, then we can rule out certain scientific theories on those grounds. But I have seen no philosphical argument for why determinsm must be the case at all levels except humans and if you want to rule out scientific theories then you would need a rather powerful argument. Your post amount to an assertion where you pick some entities and based on your acquaintance with their natures you claim that they obey determinsm, and then you extend the claim to all entities except humans. That is not an argument poweful enough to rule out scientific theories who claim indeterminism on grounds of observations as well.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Your post amount to an assertion where you pick some entities and based on your acquaintance with their natures you claim that they obey determinism, and then you extend the claim to all entities except humans. That is not an argument powerful enough to rule out scientific theories who claim indeterminism on grounds of observations as well.

No, Freddy, I went through a great deal of effort to show why Objectivism rejects determinism because of it's focus on the circumstance instead of the focus on the entity acting. So, I'm not saying they obey determinism, I'm saying they are what they are and act accordingly. In other words, it's causation (Objectivism) versus determinism.

However, you are right that one must base one's conclusions on observation, and not try to pre-prescribe what something must be or must do based on prior conclusions a priori. It is observation that tells you what something is and what it does in a circumstance; and it is our observation that nothing other than humans have free will in the complete sense of the term. I think some higher level animals who have a consciousness exhibit traits similar In a sense to free will -- i.e. cats and dogs are certainly curious about the world, and I don't think that can be explained simply in terms of bio-mechanics -- but this is still not free will in the human total sense of being in control of what one does by choice.

But, there are no observations leading to the conclusion that sub-atomic particles are indeterminant. What we do observe is that it can be very difficult to be able to detect the minuscule in such a way as to not disturb what it is doing, which is the real basis for the uncertainty principle. In no way is this taken to mean that the nature of a sub-atomic particle is indeterminant in the sense of not being something specific. So, no, we have never observed something not being something specific.

[lex_aver]

Thank everyone for helping me to resolve my confusion. Now I finally got it right: every action is determined by the entity's nature, if it happens. Volition consists not of randomness, but of ability to initiate action or not. Man's actions are not determined by external forces, but by his own nature. Hope I got it right, no?

[KendallJ]

Thank everyone for helping me to resolve my confusion. Now I finally got it right: every action is determined by the entity's nature, if it happens. Volition consists not of randomness, but of ability to initiate action or not. Man's actions are not determined by external forces, but by his own nature. Hope I got it right, no?

Damn, lex, I'd say that's pretty good statement. Can you do it standing on one leg?

[lex_aver]

Another thing. I'm excited to find exact workings of volition. If my memory does not decieve me, we had a thread about Libet earlier, but nevertheless...

From Wikipedia:

A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick her wrist while he measured the associated activity in her brain (in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential). Although it was well known that the readiness potential preceded the physical action, Libet asked whether the readiness potential corresponded to the felt intention to move. To determine when the subject felt the intention to move, he asked her to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position when she felt that she had the conscious will to move.[64]

Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick his or her wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that she had decided to move.[64][65] Libet's findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision", and that the subject's belief that it occurred at the behest of her will was only due to her retrospective perspective on the event.

...

Despite these findings, Libet himself does not interpret his experiment as evidence of the inefficacy of conscious free will—he points out that although the tendency to press a button may be building up for 500 milliseconds, the conscious will retains a right to veto that action in the last few milliseconds.[73] According to this model, unconscious impulses to perform a volitional act are open to suppression by the conscious efforts of the subject (sometimes referred to as "free won't"). A comparison is made with a golfer, who may swing a club several times before striking the ball. The action simply gets a rubber stamp of approval at the last millisecond.

The last part is the most interesting. At first, I thought that volition consists in initiating action: you decide to act, and then your nature decides how However, this approach is unsound (I don't remember allowing me to do something which then turned out to be murder ) and Libet's theory is much more rational: you act according to your nature, but can volitionally refrain from acting. Now, as a collorary observation, how's vetoing a thought (a kind of action) called? Evasion. Another punch in multiculturalists abdomenen

Edited November 11, 2007 by lex_aver

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

The last part is the most interesting. At first, I thought that volition consists in initiating action: you decide to act, and then your nature decides how However, this approach is unsound (I don't remember allowing me to do something which then turned out to be murder ) and Libet's theory is much more rational: you act according to your nature, but can volitionally refrain from acting. Now, as a corollary observation, how's vetoing a thought (a kind of action) called? Evasion. Another punch in multiculturalists abdomen

Actually, you are still making the same mistake, except you have transferred the impulse from external conditions denying free will to internal impulses denying free will. In other words, free won't is only one aspect of free will -- the ability to act on a thought or an impulse or not -- but free will in the primary sense is what you thought it meant in the first part of your reply. Free will is to initiate an action via consciousness by the deliberate choice to do so; and not just suppressing an impulse that happens to pop up.

Besides, suppressing an impulse is not an act of evasion. Evasion does not mean taking control of what you choose to act on; evasion means disregarding knowledge that you already have but are unwilling to consider. A very good example is near the beginning of Atlas Shrugged where James Taggart is refusing to make a decision regarding a section of his railroad that needs to be refurbished. He knows it needs to be refurbished, but he is unwilling to take the appropriate action to refurbish it, which is why Dagny needs to take over and make the decision as the Vice President in Charge of Operations.

In other words, if you have an impulse, you may not want to act on it until you know it is the right choice to make.

To put it another way, it was not free won't that led me to write this essay. I wrote it of my own free will and I initiated the will to do so and kept control throughout (grammar, theme, and whatnot). Free won't might have come in as I suppressed my desire to curse out those fools who messed up this entire issue philosophically.

[lex_aver]

Actually, you are still making the same mistake, except you have transferred the impulse from external conditions denying free will to internal impulses denying free will. In other words, free won't is only one aspect of free will -- the ability to act on a thought or an impulse or not -- but free will in the primary sense is what you thought it meant in the first part of your reply. Free will is to initiate an action via consciousness by the deliberate choice to do so; and not just suppressing an impulse that happens to pop up.

Yes, now I understand that if Liben was correct, man wouldn't be able to awake from comatosed state, which is untrue: man has full control on his level of focus, given that his brain is not sedated or otherwise harmed. Moreover, my comment on me not deciding to do something that turns out to be a murder was an error implicitly relying on the assumption that my decisions are not defined by my nature, but are random, which is also a mistake. So, nevermind Liben.

Besides, suppressing an impulse is not an act of evasion. Evasion does not mean taking control of what you choose to act on; evasion means disregarding knowledge that you already have but are unwilling to consider. A very good example is near the beginning of Atlas Shrugged where James Taggart is refusing to make a decision regarding a section of his railroad that needs to be refurbished. He knows it needs to be refurbished, but he is unwilling to take the appropriate action to refurbish it, which is why Dagny needs to take over and make the decision as the Vice President in Charge of Operations.

Evasion is refusal to think based on the assumption that A is not A until you call it so. Ayn Rand describes evasion as "blanking out", suppressing your conceptual faculty, refusal to think. There is simply no other way of ignoring your knowledge.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Evasion is refusal to think based on the assumption that A is not A until you call it so. Ayn Rand describes evasion as "blanking out", suppressing your conceptual faculty, refusal to think. There is simply no other way of ignoring your knowledge.

Suppression and re-direction of some thoughts are an aspect of having free will, and there are times when one must do this in order to stay in focus, so it is not evasion to do this.

For example, let's say you had a big fight with your girlfriend one night, and this bothers you while you are at work. Putting those thoughts aside to deal with them later so that you can get back to thinking about your job is a virtue, not a vice (i.e. evasion).

Similarly, there are times when one is trying to integrate a new idea, say the Objectivist conception of causation and how it applies to free will, and yet every time you try to think about it the old version of causation as determinism keeps popping up to ruin your train of thought. It would not be a vice (i.e. evasion) to put your thoughts about determinism aside until you better understood the Objectivist understanding of causation.

It would only be evasion in these two examples if you put the impinging thoughts aside and never went back to them; when you have the time and the ability to focus more clearly on them.

Similarly, if you have been thinking about a problem and just can't resolve it, it is not evasion to put the issue aside until you know better how to deal with it.

Evasion is more about the refusal to think rather than directing one's thoughts. Directing one's thoughts, and developing a good rapport with one's subconscious to bring things up when appropriate but not otherwise, is the essence of free will. Though one has to be careful not to get into repression instead of suppression. Repression is holding certain thoughts (usually unpleasant ones) down so often that it become automatized. It's still not evasion, but it can clog up one's subconscious in certain areas, which is not healthy in the long run.

Edited November 13, 2007 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[dream_weaver]

I've found this article on the Web: http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/rand.html

What makes it stick out of other criticisms of Objectivism is that it is by far the soundest one. I would really appreciate thourough explanation where the guy is wrong.

Rand is, in a sense, a determinist because of what she says regarding the relationship between causation and the laws of logic. Rand has the unusual view that the law of causation is a corollary of the law of identity. Thus, for her, it is necessarily true that everything has a cause. Leonard Peikoff explains the point as follows: "Every entity has a nature; ... it has certain attributes and no others. Such an entity must act in accordance with its nature. The only alternatives would be for an entity to act apart from its nature or against it; both of those are impossible. ... In any given set of circumstances, therefore, there is only one action possible to an entity, the action expressive of its identity. This is the action it will take, the action that is caused and necessitated by its nature." (Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 14.)

Miss Rand has stated that the law of causality is a corollary of the law of identity. She also clarifies this with the law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. Thus, for her, it is necessarily true that everything has a cause ignores Mr. Peikoff’s elaboration on this point when he pens:

“Now let me reiterate that the causal link relates an entity and its action. The law of causality does not state that every entity has a cause. Some of the things commonly referred to as "entities" do not come into being or pass away, but are eternal—e.g., the universe as a whole.”

Now, some Objectivists believe that Peikoff sometimes misrepresents Rand's views in this book (which was written after Rand's death), but they cannot reasonably claim such a thing regarding the above, for Peikoff made essentially the same point in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", an article that was personally approved by Rand:

"As far as metaphysical reality is concerned (omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment), there are no 'facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise'... Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific identity, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance. The nature of an entity determines what it can do and, in any given set of circumstances, dictates what it will do." (The Ayn Rand Lexicon, 333.)

The only important difference between the two passages is that in the latter Peikoff specifically points out that this does not apply to human actions. We will return to this below. Apart from human actions, however, Rand believed that every event was determined in the sense that, at any given moment, only one outcome was possible — nothing that happens could have happened otherwise. Peikoff uses the example of a helium-filled balloon to clarify the issue: if, under the same set of circumstances, it were possible for a balloon to act in more than one way — if it could rise or fall — then the law of identity would be violated. "Such incompatible outcomes would have to derive from incompatible (contradictory) aspects of the entity's nature. But there are no contradictory aspects. A is A." (Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 14-15.) Objectivists often make this point in arguing against the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, which states that there are truly random events in the physical world.

This is little more than an appeal to authority. An incorrect interpretation of observations do not alter the metaphysically given.

According to Rand, then, the law of identity implies that everything has a cause, and this in turn implies that, at any given moment, there is only one way that anything can act — only one outcome that is possible. This is causal determinism. A rather bizarre type of causal determinism, since it is based on nothing more than the law of identity, but causal determinism nonetheless.

Failure to grasp that the law of causality is applied to actions, which presupposes that which acts, has Mr. Kiekeben restating his earlier error.

But Rand also believes in freedom of the will, and believes that it is incompatible with determinism. In other words, she is a libertarian. Again, in Peikoff's Rand-approved words: "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 done otherwise." (The Ayn Rand Lexicon, 180.) So when it comes to any man-made fact, it might not have been. Something else might have been instead. But this obviously contradicts what Peikoff said above regarding there being "in any given set of circumstances... only one action possible to an entity".

Brushing aside the attempt imply a negative label at this point Mr. Kiekeben proceeds to yet another error.

Shifting the context from the nature of consciousness to the nature of existents Mr. Kiekeben attempts to equivocate the description given by Mr. Peikoff for non-conscious entities to the later developed distinction drawn when the introduction of consciousness is addressed later in the book.

Now, as already pointed out, in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", Peikoff explicitly leaves human action out of this determinist picture. It might therefore seem that there is no contradiction: the deterministic view applies only to non-human reality. But this will not do — unless Peikoff means that the law of identity does not apply to human beings. Remember that the whole point is that determinism (that is, that only one outcome is possible at any given time) is supposed to be entailed by that law of logic. On Rand's view, then, if a human being is free to either do A or not do A in a given situation, then the human being must not have a specific nature.

Of course, we all know that Rand did not really believe such a thing. She obviously believed that the law of identity applied to human beings as much as to anything else. But that's not my point. My point is that, if we accept what she says about the relationship between identity and causality, and also what she says about human volition, then we should conclude that human beings are exempt from the law of identity. And that is obviously ridiculous.

“Every existent is bound by the laws of identity and causality. This applies not only to the physical world, but also to consciousness. Consciousness—any consciousness, of any species—is what it is. It is limited, finite, lawful. It is a faculty with a nature, . . .”

“Ayn Rand rejects all these errors, because she rejects their root: she begins not by bewailing the nature of human consciousness, but by insisting on it. The fact that man's cognitive faculties have a nature does not invalidate them; it is what makes them possible. Identity is not the disqualifier of consciousness, but its precondition.”

But this changes things. Now it no longer is the case that "acting in accordance with a specific nature" implies that there is only one possible way of acting. According to Rand, human beings act in accordance with their nature, and thus in accordance with the law of identity, and yet they are able to choose from among more than one possible course of action. So the law of identity does not, in fact, mean that only one outcome is possible for an entity at any given time.

Mr. Kiekeben gets it right finally, after getting it wrong again, but, as we will see, for the wrong reason.

And in fact, that is exactly right: the original claim was simply wrong. Determinism (whether of human or non-human entities) simply does not follow from the law of identity. To suppose that it does, whether for human beings or for any other entity, is an obvious confusion. But now Rand's view of causation can be seen for what it really is: it means absolutely nothing. All Rand's "law of causation" tells us is that entities act in accordance with their nature. But that tells us nothing about how any given entity must act. It merely says that they act the way that they act.

Mr. Kiekeben is obviously confused. It does mean something. It is a foundational guiding principle and metaphysical identification, not an exhaustive list of all the permutations.

To sum up: Rand's view that the law of identity implies determinism contradicts her view that human beings have free will. Furthermore, it is simply false that determinism follows from the law of identity.

Mr. Kiekeben’s failure to discriminate the crucial differences between the nature of existents and the nature of consciousness illustrates the necessity for a method for authenticating and validating the contents of ones mind. The law of causality: the law of identity applied to action - provides to conceptual based consciousness what non-conscious entities have not: choice.

[Leonid]

Ooh, I like this. I keep coming back to the idea of some sort of iterative cycle that has a "tipping point" which is what comprises volition. The Binswanger idea is similar as well. I have to believe based on what I know of biology and the layers of animal behavior as well as my own introspection that such a mechanism is possible.

Life cannot be explained in the terms of non-life. That would be contradiction in terms. The metaphysical essence of life is not the chemical composition of the living entity. The dead plant is made out from exactly the same chemicals as the living one. The life's essence is the structural self-organization of the matter with emergent properties which allows self-generated action aimed to sustain this stucture. For the obvious reason such an action cannot be determined by antecedent cause originated outside of the organism. In man the tool of such an action is mind and free will.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Leonid

[itsjames]

Life cannot be explained in the terms of non-life. That would be contradiction in terms.

Why not? Life is not an axiom. It's a concept which can be reduced to perceptual data, ie. explained in terms of simpler "non-life" components. Ayn Rand had a famous quote saying something like, "Existence can't be explained in terms of non-existence" and "Consciousness can't be explained in terms of unconsciousness." But that's because these are axioms. I don't see how you can say the same thing for something like "life."