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How do you reject Physics Determinism?

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Amaroq

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Let’s examine each of these claims.

You have refuted yourself. Who do you think you are kidding when you claim any version of determinism and then ask people to think critically? Who is capable of responding to that request?

Acts of introspection do yield self-evident truth, by the same principles that lead to the necessary validity of all the senses. And emotions are in fact beyond the control of volition, try reading that part again. The locus of actual freedom that volition has is small.

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Hi Zac D.

According to Objectivism, free will is “axiomatic,” which means (1) it’s “self-evident,” “fundamentally given and directly perceived”; and (2) the denial of free will is self-refuting. Let’s examine each of these claims.

Are you sure free will is axiomatic according to objectivism? I specifically recall Ayn Rand saying that her philosophy only rests on one axiom, the law of identity. I haven't read everything by her so I could be unaware of something else she said. Did you arrive at this position because people claiming themselves as objectivists said it's an axiom? Or did Ayn Rand herself?

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On page 70 of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff writes:

The concept of "volition" is one of the roots of the concept of "validation" (and of its subdivisions, such as "proof"). A validation of ideas is necessary and possible only because man's consciousness is volitional. This applies to any idea, including the advocacy of free will: to ask for its proof is to presuppose the reality of free will.

Peikoff later elaborates on volition as a philosophic axiom stating:

Volition, accordingly, is not an independent philosophic principle, but a corollary of the axiom of consciousness. Not every consciousness has the faculty of volition. Every fallible, conceptual consciousness, however, does have it.

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Here's a couple simple question to pose to someone who believes that the determinism that exists in non-volitional things somehow causes volitional beings to act determinately-- Why are we having this conversation and why are you trying to convince me that your view on determinism is correct if we are both "determined" ahead of time to come to various conclusions on the subject anyway? If every choice was predetermined what would be the point of debating or doing anything? To live out some predetermined play of pointless events?

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Hi Zac D.

Are you sure free will is axiomatic according to [O]bjectivism? I specifically recall Ayn Rand saying that her philosophy only rests on one axiom, the law of identity. I haven't read everything by her so I could be unaware of something else she said. Did you arrive at this position because people claiming themselves as objectivists said it's an axiom? Or did Ayn Rand herself?

I'm not Zac but I'll tackle this. Consciousness is corollary of the axiom that existence exists. Volition becomes self-evident when you realize that is true. I'll give a series of quotes from the Ayn Rand Lexicon to prove my assertion.

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.

Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 155.

Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 124.

Bold mine.

Consciousness is the faculty of awareness—the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

Awareness is not a passive state, but an active process. On the lower levels of awareness, a complex neurological process is required to enable man to experience a sensation and to integrate sensations into percepts; that process is automatic and non-volitional: man is aware of its results, but not of the process itself. On the higher, conceptual level, the process is psychological, conscious and volitional. In either case, awareness is achieved and maintained by continuous action.

Directly or indirectly, every phenomenon of consciousness is derived from one’s awareness of the external world. Some object, i.e., some content, is involved in every state of awareness. Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward—a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world. Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated. Awareness is awareness of something. A content-less state of consciousness is a contradiction in terms.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 37

Bold mine.

Volition: see Free Will From the Ayn Rand Lexicon glossary

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 127.

Bold mine.

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call “human nature,” the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 120.

Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 29

The formation of introspective concepts follows the same principles as the formation of extrospective concepts. A concept pertaining to consciousness is a mental integration of two or more instances of a psychological process possessing the same distinguishing characteristics, with the particular contents and the measurements of the action’s intensity omitted—on the principle that these omitted measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity (i.e., a given psychological process must possess some content and some degree of intensity, but may possess any content or degree of the appropriate category).

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 31–32.

I could go on but this is getting lengthy enough already. The point is volition is a self-evident attribute of man that one validates via introspection by realizing that he possesses a consciousness and that consciousness is an axiom.

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By the way, I just realized why this and topics like this annoy me so bad. Actual determinism in regards to a human life would destroy all purpose, all morality, and everything that would make a human life worth living. It's Nihilism at it's worst but wrapped in a pseudo-scientific package.

Why would it matter if you worked hard and earned a good living if that was your predetermined outcome anyway? What joy would you receive out of getting something that you had no choice in not achieving to begin with?

How could one judge men like Adolf Hitler or Osama bin Laden as evil if they had no choice in the actions they took?

If you're a determinist and someone murders your parents how or why would you care? They had no choice, and it was predetermined to happen since "the beginning of time".

You invent something new that makes the world a better place for every human from now on? What satisfaction is there in doing the only thing you could do? Remember, you couldn't have chosen otherwise.

Make a great new work of art? What enjoyment do you receive from it if you could never have done otherwise and were "forced" to do it by the random deflection of an electron ten billion years ago?

At least the people that believe in karma and it's like think in some sense your actions influence your destiny. It's wrong because you have no "destiny" and there is nothing supernatural in the universe, but the determinists of the world say no, nothing you do or could ever do will affect your life. It is what it is and you are just an actor playing some pointless part in a script that was written by the laws of nature for no purpose whatsoever.

If this deterministic version of reality where nothing mattered actually existed life would be worse then pointless-- it would almost be evil. A moral man would be better off killing himself than living in such a universe where no values could ever exist by definition.

A universe where Man was deterministic would quite literally be Hell, in my opinion.

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Wow, this started up an old thread. I have to say, that after another year of physics courses, how little we actually know and can predict is humbling. Stars and galaxies are big enough to be kind of easy (though if you want to get detailed the mathematics can get messy, and really impossible to solve analytically). Really tiny things, atomic scale, we have a handle on, but then again there are a lot of things that can't be solved analytically. And then the meso-scale, where things are small enough that quantum effects important, but are huge by comparison, are simply too complicated for us to do much with at the moment (working on it though). Regardless, physics is not capable of predicting things in detail except in idealized situations, small sets of particles or things so large that any small deviations are swamped out.

And, also, in retrospect, the arguments from the first page of this thread, particularly those about the laws of physics being laws describing reality not laws laid down on reality is much more hard-hitting. Physics really is about explaining how things work in the universe. It isn't so much about predicting things, except that prediction is just sort of advance explanation of a kind. If we find some new phenomena tomorrow on some scale, well we'll have to go back to the drawing board, rather than deny its existence (and that really does show you that physics is about explanation at its core, not giving commands to the universe about how it must behave).

As for volition, you can sense it directly, without it you cannot know if your thought process is correct (and have no way to determine if it is), and free will is compatible with "deterministic" physics because physics is explanatory, and does not command your brain to work the way it does, and the two concern different things (the workings of your mind and the workings of particles, for one thing).

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(2) Determinism is self-refuting. Again Peikoff provides the argument:

...

This argument gratuitously assumes that the individual must be able to control his own mind in order to know anything. Yet what is the rationale for such an assumption? Why can’t the mind, operating on its own principles, gather in data from external existence, analyze it, and reach conclusions? There is nothing logically inconsistent in such a notion. That it seems a trifle strange does not constitute a self-refutation. It won’t do to confuse the strange or the paradoxical with the illogical. Computers, which are deterministic systems through and through, with no volition of their own, can reach conclusions from data fed to them. Why couldn’t the mind of the determinist behave in a similar fashion?

I believe you are incorrect in this particular argument. I certainly agree that there are many varied forms of determinism with particular nuances, but I believe that the rejection of determinism presented in the Objectivist literature goes straight to the root of the problem and cuts through much of this philosophical infighting about what particular kinds of determinism make sense or not.

The comparison to a computer, I think, is especially helpful. Of course it is possible for a computer (program) to take in data and reach valid conclusions. However, it is equally possible for a computer program to take in data and reach invalid conclusions. Furthermore, there is nothing about the computer, external to the particular program, that enables it to tell valid from invalid. I could certainly write a computer program that was self-correcting in some respects, when it reached false conclusions, but I would have to write the self-correcting mechanism directly into the program. This is the difference between the capacity we claim for people and the capacity we know that computers have: people are able to volitionally accept conclusions that are valid and reject conclusions that are invalid, while a computer program is limited to the code written into it. It is this extra element which, if you deny, you forgo the possibility of achieving true, genuine, independently verifiable knowledge. The statement "determinism is true," claims to be exactly this sort of knowledge. Determinism as a statement about the world doesn't say, "People come to the conclusion of determinism because that's what's in their programming." It says, "determinism is true, because this, that, and the other fact about the external world lead inexorably to the conclusion that determinism is true." But how can we possibly verify this logical process, whereby we reach the conclusion of determinism, if we are limited in the same way that a computer is?

In short, although I think that in OPAR Peikoff states his case quite strongly, with no charitable interpretations to the determinism side whatsoever, he is ultimately correct in his argument about the contradiction of determinists who claim that the doctrine of determinism is true and independently verifiable.

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Wow, I posted this a looong time ago. I'd say I'm better equipped to handle determinists now than I was back then.

The major way to undercut determinism is to not allow them to drop the context and assume omniscience. They have no way of knowing or proving that we're determined. In order to try to "prove" determinism to you, they have to construct elaborate thought experiments such as rewinding and replaying time or making an exact duplicate of you and seeing if it does the same things you do. The contextual nature of knowledge does not allow such thought experiments to be valid sources of knowledge.

You can introspect and directly observe your own volition. You cannot observe any evidence of your being determined. Therefore, 100% of the evidence you have points to the conclusion that you are free-willed. You have no reason to ever doubt this. The onus of proof is on the determinist, because he's trying to refute something that you (and him) already have solid, overwhelming evidence for. He's never going to be able to produce valid evidence of determinism, so you can most likely just reject everything he says.

There's a lot of dirty tricks they can try to pull out to "refute" free will. Such as the effects of drugs or surgical probing on a person's thoughts or actions. Don't be fooled into thinking you have to defend yourself against the mind-body integration or the laws of identity or causality in order to save free will. The mind-body integration does not refute free will. Nor does the law of identity; free will is part of your identity. Nor does the law of causality; not being able to act in contradiction to your nature does not mean that you are determined.

There are no actions apart from entities. It is only entities that act. And you are an entity whose range of possible actions includes free choices. A chain of disembodied actions did not cause the actions you took. You caused the actions you took.

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you could choose to do something else. but why would you? where did that thought or idea come from, and why did you choose that over another? because you spent time thinking bout it? how come you did that and some other person in the same situation didnt? because youre smarter? well what caused that? genetics?

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you could choose to do something else. but why would you? where did that thought or idea come from, and why did you choose that over another? because you spent time thinking bout it? how come you did that and some other person in the same situation didnt? because youre smarter? well what caused that? genetics?

And what causes folks to construct long chains of rationalizations disconnected from reality? Bad philosophy?

Edited by brian0918
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If you make a good decision it's because of what? Your brain? Well you didnt create your brain, your intelligence, your upbringing, your genetics etc so no thanks to you.

If you make a bad decision it's because of what? Your brain? Well you didn't create your brain, your lack of intelligence isnt your fault, your upbringing you had no say in and neither genetics so no shame on you.

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If you make a good decision it's because of what? Your brain? Well you didnt create your brain, your intelligence, your upbringing, your genetics etc so no thanks to you.

If you make a bad decision it's because of what? Your brain? Well you didn't create your brain, your lack of intelligence isnt your fault, your upbringing you had no say in and neither genetics so no shame on you.

What do you think the world would be like if this line of "reasoning" were taken to its logical conclusion?

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If you make a good decision

If I made a decision, then I had a choice between two or more alternatives. Thus volition.

The fact that something - such as a decision - can be considered "good" as you say, implies that values are involved, which implies an individual facing an alternative, which implies choice. Thus volition.

You can play these word games all day, but you can't get around the fact that volition is assumed in any statement you make. Your very act of making a statement, and affirming it as a claim to knowledge communicable to other individuals (as opposed to random gibberish), assumes volition.

Edited by brian0918
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If I made a decision, then I had a choice between two or more alternatives. Thus volition.

The fact that something - such as a decision - can be considered "good" as you say, implies that values are involved, which implies an individual facing an alternative, which implies choice. Thus volition.

Yes but the question is WHY and HOW you end up making the decision you're making. And in examining the WHY and the HOW maybe we discover that it's not really volition in it's true sense of the word after all.

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And in examining the WHY and the HOW maybe we discover that it's not really volition in it's true sense of the word after all.

Then the word refers to nothing in existence, and so is an invalid concept. More likely though, you are using the word to refer to something that it does not. This is evidenced by the fact that you affirm choice/decision-making, but deny volition. So I will ask you to 1) define volition, and 2) point to its referents (i.e. examples of it in reality).

Edited by brian0918
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I can think of numerous examples of situations where it seems people have a choice to pick and choose but in reality they really don't. I'm sure you can too.

How come one pick a food over another? Even though the food he rejects might even be healthier for him and lead to a longer life. It seems to me millions of americans constantly make the wrong choices, even against their will.

How come one pick a brunette over a blonde? Did you really come to the objective conclusion that the brunette was the 'better' choice?

How come a drug addict pick the drug 10 times outta 10 no matter how much he "choose to think".

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If we take into account things like addiction, personalities, heritage, preference, inherited intelligence, environment and numerous other things that we at no time picked and at no time choosed, we'll find out that whatever choice we end up making was already being made before we were presented with the alternatives.

Thus, there really is no choice, there is no volition.

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I can think of numerous examples of situations where it seems people have a choice to pick and choose but in reality they really don't. I'm sure you can too.

Then you are using the word "choice" to refer to two different things. Can you give examples where people do have choice, and examples where people don't have choice, but think they do?

How come one pick a food over another? Even though the food he rejects might even be healthier for him and lead to a longer life. It seems to me millions of americans constantly make the wrong choices, even against their will.

Then you are using the word "will" to refer to two different things. If people are making choices, then they have volition, regardless of whether the choices are rational or irrational.

The fact that drugs skew one's value system is merely an acknowledgement that there is no dichotomy between mind and body. "I" am not just my mind, but also my body. If I choose to ignore the way in which drugs alter my value system, then I am acting irrationally, of my free will. Acknowledging that drugs alter one's value system does not simply involve saying, "yes, these drugs are affecting me" - it also involves physical treatment and therapy.

Edited by brian0918
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