Moderator’s Note:
If anyone wishes to positively argue against the existence of volition, he should do so in the Debate Forum, since that is an idea contrary to Objectivism.
While this is probably a slight digression from the original topic, I don’t believe it’s necessary to agree with or understand Rand’s views on Free Will to agree with Objectivism’s general tenets. In fact, I believe the importance of Free Will is severely overstated in general.
Consider the hypothetical case of a man stealing an apple. If we suppose that there’s no such thing as Free Will, the man can correctly claim that his stealing the apple was merely the result of an unfortunate chain of causation. However, what does that mean in practice?
Very little. When we hold people responsible for the consequences of their actions (such as stealing apples), the actions we’re holding them responsible for are always inevitable, since they’ve already been carried out and are in the past, whether they were inevitable at the time (determinism) or not (Free Will). When we respond to such actions, for instance by punishing the man who stole an apple, the response is meant not to alter the past, but to alter the likelyhood of similar actions being carried out in the future. Whether we actually have a free will or are just acting out a chain of events that’s completely pre-determined, our response can still be observed to have an effect upon the future course of the man’s life.
What about the difference between people who willingly commit crimes, and people who commit crimes due to insanity or other circumstances beyond their control? Under a deterministic worldview, all circumstances could be considered to be beyond our control, but this doesn’t change the fact that different types of causes require a different type of response. The people most likely to be dissuaded from criminal behaviour by punishment would still be eligible for punishment, whereas those most likely to respond favourably to psychiatric treatment would be eligible for that kind of response.
In short, the practical differences between non-deterministic and deterministic worldviews aren’t applicable to actual situations. The idea of the universe as a fully deterministic system is interesting as a thought experiment, but in actual fact it doesn’t free anyone from the ownership of and responsibility for his own life.
I don’t believe it’s necessary to agree with or understand Rand’s views on Free Will to agree with Objectivism’s general tenets. In fact, I believe the importance of Free Will is severely overstated in general.
Nope, sorry, if you don’t accept that man possesses free will, that pretty much shoots down the whole thing. You’d be denying our true nature as volitional beings – metaphysics. No volition = no knowledge – epistemology. Morality is only applicable if one can choose what to do, morality does not apply to animals – ethics. How can you punish someone if they had no choice in the matter, they had to do it, it was inevitable? – politics. Why paint if you can’t choose to show what you value? – esthetics.
In short, the practical differences between non-deterministic and deterministic worldviews aren’t applicable to actual situations. The idea of the universe as a fully deterministic system is interesting as a thought experiment, but in actual fact it doesn’t free anyone from the ownership of and responsibility for his own life.
Don’t you care about what is true and what is false? Especially something which is available to your direct perception? To deny free will is to evade reality and deny your true nature – which is your choice.
… I believe the importance of Free Will is severely overstated in general.
Consider the hypothetical case of a man stealing an apple…
Well and good; but, now, look inward. Consider the hypothetical case of whether you should steal an apple.
Whether you accept Islam, Christianity or Objectivism, there’s a some answer to that question: “should I steal an apple?” The answer may depend on context etc., but each ethical theory provides some methodology – some way to figure out the right action. If one truly accepts determinism in the sense of having no control over whether or not to steal the apple, what relevance does Christianity, or Objectivism, or any other ethical theory have to such a question? If you accept determinism in the sense that studying some such theory is not going to change your behavior, then the theory is moot. In that sense, the theory only makes sense if one accepts that one has at least some type of choice.
Every ethical theory – every theory that says “do this” or “don’t do that” – comes with the assumption that you can actually follow the mandates, at least to some extent. Christianity has to accept free-will in some sense, otherwise the injunction not to sin is meaningless.
That’s the way that ethics depends on free-will of some type. If you look at the details of epistemology, it’s the same thing, but with an “is” focus rather than an “ought” focus. Any theory that helps one to think better and understand the world better, assumes that you have a choice to think one way or another.
Every ethical theory – every theory that says “do this” or “don’t do that” – comes with the assumption that you can actually follow the mandates, at least to some extent. Christianity has to accept free-will in some sense, otherwise the injunction not to sin is meaningless.
Yes — If you wanted to, you could restate my previous post as saying that determinism doesn’t disprove Free Will, because even if our behaviour was completely deterministic and could theoretically be predicted in advance by an omniscient observer, the world is still be experienced by us in a manner that appears to us to be non-deterministic, and we should thus behave accordingly. Whether one looks upon choice as a purely deterministic process involving input and output or as a non-deterministic process involving several possible outcomes has no significance beyond the realm of theory, because even an ardent determinist has to recognise that choices exist and that how one chooses will affect the future.
Rounin: good posts, you have a good grasp of the problem. The point is that determinism isn’t incompatible with what we call “free will”. The possibility of deliberating and making choices does not imply that these choices are not determined.
… no significance beyond the realm of theory, because even an ardent determinist has to recognise that choices exist and that how one chooses will affect the future.
Yes, that is true in terms of the explicit intellectual, theoretical tracing. (Isn’t that because the ardent determinist is maintaining an explicit position that is either unintelligible, or contradictory, or intellectually irrelevant to the rest of what he says?)
On the other hand, in practice , there are lots of people who hold such an explicit position at least part of the time, and it actually affects their lives. There are countries where a significant number of people have an explicitly fatalistic view of life, acting as if their fate has been ordained and they must just play it out. Even if accept it only part of the time, and not in all spheres of life, this type of metaphysical view has a deep impact on people’s attitudes. Reduce volition and you reduce motivation, willingness to try new things, risk taking, experimentation, desire for change.
I don’t think it is an accident that so many of the American founders were deists whose metaphysics had reduced God’s role as a day-to-day player in man’s life.
I think the question here is “If Free Will can be predicated, is it still Free Will?”. If yes, then there’s no problem. If not, then consider the following case:
For example, the man stealing apple case. Let’s say there’s an advanced aliens species out there with a super computer that can scan every particle and their motion/reaction on earth and is capable of using that semi-omnipotent information to predicate what’s going to happen two days ahead. Then would not such a machine have a 99.999% (since it’s only earth, sunlight change..etc. is not calculated, so there might be room for error) accuracy in predicating that the man will be stealing that apple within 2 days?
Free Will is a capacity man possess, it allow man to choose as he wishes when facing a choice. But would not the outcome of his choice be like everything else? If one was to know all the inputs and processes, one can accurately predicate the output. If a man with a certain physiology/biology/psychology..etc. state facing a certain choice in a certain environment, he will make a certain decision. If hypothetically you run that same scenario over a thousand times, would he not make the same decision each time? He has Free Will, he can decide differently, but he won’t.
I’d like to take a moment here to dispell a common error that I see in these discussions of free will. Simply because one rejects free will does not cause him to then lose all interest in the world and cease productive life. The early Muslims did not believe in free will, and yet they were the most formidible force in the world. They swept across borders like wind, often conquering some of the most powerful cities in the world. My history professor said, plausible enough to me, that they fought so fiercely in part because they did not believe in free will, and believed that they were fated to dominate the world. They fought without fear of death, and with certainty of their success. The same was true of the intensely industrious early Protestants. I, myself, am not convinced that there is free will, and yet I run six miles each day. That is nearly my limit, and sometimes come close to losing consciousness and my lunch. Even if there is no free will, it is still my identity–chosen or not–that I will strive relentlessly toward my goals.
…Simply because one rejects free will does not cause him to then lose all interest in the world and cease productive life. The early Muslims did not believe in free will, and yet they were the most formidible force in the world. They swept across borders like wind, often conquering some of the most powerful cities in the world…
I have to ask: What exactly were those early Muslims producing while they were conquering some of the most powerful cities in the world?
I, myself, am not convinced that there is free will, and yet I run six miles each day. That is nearly my limit, and sometimes come close to losing consciousness and my lunch. Even if there is no free will, it is still my identity–chosen or not–that I will strive relentlessly toward my goals.
You’re lucky your identity doesn’t cause you to run only one mile every six days and become weak/fat, or cause you to run sixty miles one day and die. It sounds like you’re taking a pragmatic approach to free will, like some people do towards Christianity. You don’t believe in it, but you’re going to act in accordance with it, just in case it’s true.
Edit: typo
I have to ask: What exactly were those early Muslims producing while they were conquering some of the most powerful cities in the world?
My point is that they were exerting an incredible effort.
You’re lucky your identity doesn’t cause you to run only one mile every six days and become weak/fat, or cause you to run sixty miles one day and die. It sounds like you’re taking a pragmatic approach to free will, like some people do towards Christianity. You don’t believe in it, but you’re going to act in accordance with it, just in case it’s true.
I may be lucky, or it may be will. I do what I think is right–whether that’s a matter of will is questionable. I’m not sure that I, in the strict language of volition, choose to act in accordance with free will.
Hmm interesting. I’ve been reading a few past threads about this topic. Apparently volition is a First Cause.
Hmm interesting. I’ve been reading a few past threads about this topic. Apparently volition is a First Cause.
It depends on what you mean by a first cause.
Free will is not something that happens by no means; the means is that you are human and therefore have the capability of deciding what to do with your conscious mind. But even though Objectivism maintains that consciousness exists and is axiomatic, that does not imply that consciousness exists apart from your body. You are what you are and have the capabilities that you have because you were born human. You have the capability of deciding what to think about, and the capability of deciding to think or not to think – which is what Objectivism refers to as free will – and that is a first cause in the sense that the decision is entirely yours and yours alone. But it is not as if consciousness or even free will exists out there as a type of substance that somehow gets implanted in a human body shortly after birth.
Just as bats have sonar because they are bats, and just as sharks can detect electrical waves because they are sharks, so, too, humans have free will because they are human.
Free will is a first cause in the sense that there are no antecedent actions that lead you to think the way you do; you have direct control over your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is self-directed, so it is a first cause in that sense.
I, myself, am not convinced that there is free will . . .
If there’s no free will, how could you ever become “convinced” of anything?
My point is that they were exerting an incredible effort.
But that is not what you said. What you said was:
Simply because one rejects free will does not cause him to then lose all interest in the world and cease productive life.
“Productive life” means something around here, rape and murder are not productive activities no matter how much effort you expend on them. Productive activities support your life. When you loot and leach and kill you are living off of the productive effort of others. Who cares how much effort Hitler put into exterminating the Jews. He most certainly was not productive – look at the condition of Germany after he was done.
Seriously, that entire post about the Muslims was an act of evasion. You are saying that the Muslims chose not to accept free will and instead chose to practice murder and rape? Or are you positing that indeed the Muslims had no free will and that God actually made them do it?
I may be lucky, or it may be will. I do what I think is right–whether that’s a matter of will is questionable. I’m not sure that I, in the strict language of volition, choose to act in accordance with free will.
This entire post is pure argumentation and it seems to contradict what you have said in the other thread on free will:
No, actions–not even actions that I think about and then do–demonstrate my will.
At least here you take a stand, ill advised as it is. If not by your thoughts and actions how do you propose we demonstrate your will? And if you are going to make such a definitive statement about free will, something that is available directly to your perception, then you must have something else in mind. What is it, determinism? This fallacy has been dispelled in previous threads on the subject.
In the other thread, though wrong, you seemed sincere. Now, combining the two threads, it seems as though you are just playing some game of cat and mouse. I advise against argument for argument’s sake as this is a sure way to get yourself banned or at least confined to the debate forum.
It depends on what you mean by a first cause.
Free will is not something that happens by no means; the means is that you are human and therefore have the capability of deciding what to do with your conscious mind. But even though Objectivism maintains that consciousness exists and is axiomatic, that does not imply that consciousness exists apart from your body. You are what you are and have the capabilities that you have because you were born human. You have the capability of deciding what to think about, and the capability of deciding to think or not to think – which is what Objectivism refers to as free will – and that is a first cause in the sense that the decision is entirely yours and yours alone. But it is not as if consciousness or even free will exists out there as a type of substance that somehow gets implanted in a human body shortly after birth.
Just as bats have sonar because they are bats, and just as sharks can detect electrical waves because they are sharks, so, too, humans have free will because they are human.
Free will is a first cause in the sense that there are no antecedent actions that lead you to think the way you do; you have direct control over your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is self-directed, so it is a first cause in that sense.
Here’s the question. Apparently all the explanations concerning volition/freewill ends at “you”. What exactly is this “you”?
And just like you said, freewill is not some sort of foreign substance that somehow gets implanted in a human body shortly after birth, nor anything supernatural. This faculty of human consciousness like all other faculty of human consciousness is built out of solid physical matter.
When faced with a choice, a man can either chose or evade, focus or unfocus..etc. So the question is, what makes him chose or evade, focus or unfocus? All the answers I’ve seen ends at “you”. And correct me if I’m wrong here, but for a chain of events, it can either to causal, or random, nothing else. Since nothing can be random/by chance, everything is casual, and voliation, the “you” is not a metaphysical first cause, then what causes IT?
My introspection tells me the exact same thing as most of you, that I am the chooser of my begin, that I can act without any reason at all, that I can act just because I wills it. And I want to believe that. However, the present amount of knowledge I have about the physical universe tells my logical mind otherwise, and I can’t ignore my reason.
edit: wait a min, you are saying it’s not a First Cause in the sense that previous something made our mind/consciousness what it is. But once it’s made, it then upon it’s completion possess the ability to be a first cause. If that’s the case, then it starts to make sense.
edit: wait a min, you are saying it’s not a First Cause in the sense that previous something made our mind/consciousness what it is. But once it’s made, it then upon it’s completion possess the ability to be a first cause. If that’s the case, then it starts to make sense.
I see two philosophical roots to this debate regarding free will: 1) many people do not know how to make observations, their thinking is logical in the sense that they have explicit premises and follow those logically to a conclusion, but if their conclusion contradicts an observation, then they say the observation is out or is impossible because it is against logic. The exact opposite is true, that there is no logic without the facts, and it is a fact that we have free will in the sense that we have control over our conscious mind; 2) Your view of causality is wrong. Objectivism rejects the idea that an entity acts according to what has acted on it antecedently. In Objectivism, the entity is the cause and the action it does is the effect. An entity acts according to its nature. In other words, an individual man has the capacity to direct his own consciousness, he wills the direction of his own mind; that is, the man qua entity is the cause (the entity) and thinking is the effect (the action). So, when you ask, “What causes free will” the Objectivist answer is that he is a man.
As for the question what is the “you” in phrases such as “you have free will”, well look in a mirror and introspect. The you is the entity that stares back at you in the mirror and is the entity that can observe what is going on in his own mind. One of the mistakes compounding your confusion about free will is that you consider the atoms and other subatomic particles to be the entity, and therefore cannot find the “you.” You are not a collection of atoms, you are a man; and qua man you have the capacity to decide what to think about and how to think about it, or you can decide not to think at all. What makes that possible? Why, you do 
If there’s no free will, how could you ever become “convinced” of anything?
By finding a series of facts or hearing a series of arguments which I then think about and find to be consistent and probable.
But that is not what you said. What you said was:
I think you’re being a bit argumentative now, since I suspect you know what I meant–but fine, to go into the details, I said that not believing in free will does not make you lose interest in the world, which the Muslims clearly did not. In fact, while their conquest was murderous, they did establish a network of communication, organized hierarchy, studied literature, planned battles, and many other things that required creativity and intelligence. I also said that to deny free will does not make you cease productive activity, which the Protestants clearly did not. In fact, it was Protestantism that made the Industrial Revolution possible. More specifically, it was the Protestant work ethic that made the Industrial Revolution possible, which sprung from Lutheran, deterministic philosophy. Case in point, rejecting free will doesn’t make you plop on the ground and passively accept whatever the external world does.
Seriously, that entire post about the Muslims was an act of evasion.
This “evasion” charge is getting stale and, after so many failed attempts, simply annoying. It also makes you look as though you have no argument to offer, and so you must resort to shrill, emotionally charged accusations.
If not by your thoughts and actions how do you propose we demonstrate your will?
I don’t propose that you do it at all. I don’t concede that there necessarily is a will, and so I don’t concede that there is a way for you to demonstrate its existence. My actions only demonstrate that I act; my thoughts, that I think. Neither demonstrates that they were commanded by a will. If one is to prove the existence of free will, it will have to be by some other means than these–or by some greater argument, which I cannot conceive, that these are indeed sufficient evidence.
And if you are going to make such a definitive statement about free will, something that is available directly to your perception,
I deny that it is available directly to my perception.
What is it, determinism? This fallacy has been dispelled in previous threads on the subject.
Not necessarily. Perhaps indeterminism. Or perhaps, since your arguments about determinism hinge on the capacity to determine the future, some alternative for which I have no name. Whatever name you choose, it would involve the thesis that future events can only be one thing and only that thing, rather than one of several possibilities. The future will not be subject to the choice of a will. Call that thesis what you want, though it says nothing about a determining process.
I advise against argument for argument’s sake as this is a sure way to get yourself banned or at least confined to the debate forum.
Agreed.