First I would like to accept your resignation in this “debate”.
It seems that DrBaltar is willing to take you up on that. Would the two of you like to give it a shot?
That is fine with me. If EC agrees then we will discuss the ground-rules via PMs.
I originally wanted a debate to sharpen my skills in defending free will from irrational attacks. But I have since realized something. First any debate, discussion, conversation, etc. presupposes the existence of free will. It’s not that I didn’t know this before, but I thought I might be able to become better at countering all the attack’s. The thing is I now realize that that is NOT needed because by the attacker engaging in the attack, debate, etc., he is already implicitly accepting the existence of his own free will.
Any argument that I then make afterwords then is just an explicitation of the self-evident fact of free will that he is just choosing to evade reality because he has chosen to rationalize his ideas starting from floating abstraction based premises.
By choosing to debate or not, DrBaltar has made a choice. Whether he choose’s to evade that fact or not I can not change.
So I will close the debate with a few quotes from Dr. Peikoff from OPAR.
The similarity between the physical and mental realms is clear. In action as in thought, each step a man takes has a cause, which explains it. The indeterminist notion that freedom means a blind, senseless lurch—a so-called “Epicurean swerve”—is without justification. But this does not imply determinism. In regard to action, also, man is a sovereign entity, a self-mover. His inviolable freedom lies in the issue: what kind of cause moves him—long-range purpose or out-of-context promptings? Once again, what underlies such an alternative is a single root choice: to be conscious or not.
There is one further question to consider before we turn to the validation of volition. How does the law of causality apply to the primary choice itself? Since one cannot ask for the cause of a man’s choice to focus, does it follow that, on this level, there is a conflict between freedom and causality?
Even in regard to the primary choice, Ayn Rand replies, the law of causality operates without breach. The form of its operation in this context, however, is in certain respects unique.
The law of causality affirms a necessary connection between entities and their actions. It does not, however, specify any particular kind of entity or of action. The law does not say that only mechanistic relationships can occur, the kind that apply when one billiard ball strikes another; this is one common form of causation, but it does not preempt the field. Similarly, the law does not say that only choices governed by ideas and values are possible; this, too, is merely a form of causation; it is common but not universal within the realm of consciousness. The law of causality does not inventory the universe; it does not tell us what kinds of entities or actions are possible. It tells us only that whatever entities there are, they act in accordance with their nature, and whatever actions there are, they are performed and determined by the entity which acts.
The law of causality by itself, therefore, does not affirm or deny the reality of an irreducible choice. It says only this <opar_69> much: if such a choice does exist, then it, too, as a form of action, is performed and necessitated by an entity of a specific nature.
The content of one’s choice could always have gone in the opposite direction; the choice to focus could have been the choice not to focus, and vice versa. But the action itself, the fact of choosing as such, in one direction or the other, is unavoidable. Since man is an entity of a certain kind, since his brain and consciousness possess a certain identity, he must act in a certain way. He must continuously choose between focus and nonfocus. Given a certain kind of cause, in other words, a certain kind of effect must follow. This is not a violation of the law of causality, but an instance of it.
On the primary level, to sum up, man chooses to activate his consciousness or not; this is the first cause in a lengthy chain—and the inescapability of such choice expresses his essential nature. Then, on this basis, he forms the mental content and selects the reasons that will govern all his other choices. Nothing in the law of causality casts doubt on such a description.
If man does have free will, his actions are free and caused—even, properly understood, on the primary level itself.
The principle of volition is a philosophic axiom, with all the features this involves. It is a primary—a starting point of conceptual cognition and of the subject of epistemology; to direct one’s consciousness, one must be free and one must know, at least implicitly, that one is. It is a fundamental: every item of conceptual knowledge requires some form of validation, the need of which rests on the fact of volition. It is self-evident. And it is inescapable. Even its enemies have to accept <opar_71> and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let us see why.
When the determinist claims that man is determined, this applies to all man’s ideas also, including his own advocacy of determinism. Given the factors operating on him, he believes, he had to become a determinist, just as his opponents had no alternative but to oppose him. How then can he know that his viewpoint is true? Are the factors that shape his brain infallible? Does he automatically follow reason and logic? Clearly not; if he did, error would be impossible to him.
The principle of volition is a philosophic axiom, with all the features this involves. It is a primary—a starting point of conceptual cognition and of the subject of epistemology; to direct one’s consciousness, one must be free and one must know, at least implicitly, that one is. It is a fundamental: every item of conceptual knowledge requires some form of validation, the need of which rests on the fact of volition. It is self-evident. And it is inescapable. Even its enemies have to accept <opar_71> and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let us see why.
When the determinist claims that man is determined, this applies to all man’s ideas also, including his own advocacy of determinism. Given the factors operating on him, he believes, he had to become a determinist, just as his opponents had no alternative but to oppose him. How then can he know that his viewpoint is true? Are the factors that shape his brain infallible? Does he automatically follow reason and logic? Clearly not; if he did, error would be impossible to him.
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.
If a determinist tried to assess his viewpoint as knowledge, <opar_72> he would have to say, in effect: “I am in control of my mind. I do have the power to decide to focus on reality. I do not merely submit spinelessly to whatever distortions happen to be decreed by some chain of forces stretching back to infinity. I am free, free to be objective, free to conclude—that I am not free.”
Like any rejection of a philosophic axiom, determinism is self-refuting. Just as one must accept existence or consciousness in order to deny it, so one must accept volition in order to deny it. A philosophic axiom cannot be proved, because it is one of the bases of proof. But for the same reason it cannot be escaped, either. By its nature, it is impregnable.
Most of the traditional opponents of determinism have regarded free will as mystical, as an attribute of an otherworldly soul that is antithetical to science and to man’s this-worldly reason. The classic expression of this viewpoint is the disastrous Kantian slogan, “God, freedom, and immortality,” which has had the effect of making “freedom” laughable by equating it with two bromides of supernaturalism. What reputable thinker cares to uphold volition if it is offered under the banner, “ghosts, choice, and the Pearly Gates”?
By identifying the locus of man’s will as his conceptual faculty, Ayn Rand aborts such mysticism at the root. Will, in her view, is not something opposed or even added to reason. The faculty of reason is the faculty of volition. This theory makes it possible for the first time to validate the principle of volition objectively. It removes the principle once and for all from the clutches of religion.
After Ayn Rand, the fact of choice can no longer serve as ammunition for irrationalists. It becomes instead a testament to the power and the glory of man’s mind.
Man’s senses are valid. His mind is free. Now how should he use his mind?
At last we can leave the anteroom of epistemology and enter the great hall of its mansion.
The three axioms I have been discussing have a built-in protection against all attacks: they must be used and accepted by everyone, including those who attack them and those who attack the concept of the self-evident. Let me illustrate this point by considering a typical charge leveled by opponents of philosophic axioms.
“People disagree about axioms,” we often hear. “What is self-evident to one may not be self-evident to another. How then can a man know that his axioms are objectively true? How can he ever be sure he is right?”
This argument starts by accepting the concept of “disagreement,” which it uses to challenge the objectivity of any axioms, including existence, consciousness, and identity. The following condensed dialogue suggests one strategy by which to reveal the argument’s contradictions. The strategy begins with A, the defender of axioms, purporting to reject outright the concept of “disagreement.”
A. “Your objection to the self-evident has no validity. <opar_10> There is no such thing as disagreement. People agree about everything.”
B. “That’s absurd. People disagree constantly, about all kinds of things.”
A. “How can they? There’s nothing to disagree about, no subject matter. After all, nothing exists.”
B. “Nonsense. All kinds of things exist. You know that as well as I do.”
A. “That’s one. You must accept the existence axiom even to utter the term ‘disagreement.’ But, to continue, I still claim that disagreement is unreal. How can people disagree, since they are unconscious beings who are unable to hold ideas at all?”
B. “Of course people hold ideas. They are conscious beings—you know that.”
A. “There’s another axiom. But even so, why is disagreement about ideas a problem? Why should it suggest that one or more of the parties is mistaken? Perhaps all of the people who disagree about the very same point are equally, objectively right.”
B. “That’s impossible. If two ideas contradict each other, they can’t both be right. Contradictions can’t exist in reality. After all, things are what they are. A is A.”
Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept, including that of “disagreement.” (They are presupposed even by invalid concepts, such as “ghost” or “analytic” truth.) In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular content of his challenge. The axioms are invulnerable.
The opponents of these axioms pose as defenders of truth, but it is only a pose. Their attack on the self-evident amounts to the charge: “Your belief in an idea doesn’t necessarily make it true; you must prove it, because facts are what they are independent of your beliefs.” Every element of this charge relies on the very axioms that these people are questioning and supposedly setting aside. I quote Ayn Rand:
“You cannot prove that you exist or that you’re conscious,” they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof pre-supposes <opar_11> existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved.
When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-existence—when he declares that your consciousness must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness—he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both—he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero.
When he declares that an axiom is a matter of arbitrary choice and he doesn’t choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only way to reject it is to shut one’s mouth, expound no theories and die.
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.(10)
The foregoing is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is a proof that they are axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable. This proof itself, however, relies on the axioms. Even in showing that no opponent can escape them, Ayn Rand too has to make use of them. All argument presupposes these axioms, including the argument that all argument presupposes them.
If so, one might ask, how does one answer an opponent who says: “You’ve demonstrated that I must accept your axioms if I am to be consistent. But that demonstration rests on your axioms, which I don’t choose to accept. Tell me why I should. Why can’t I contradict myself?”
There is only one answer to this: stop the discussion. Axioms are self-evident; no argument can coerce a person who chooses to evade them. You can show a man that identity is <opar_12> inescapable, but only by first accepting the fact that A is A. You can show that existence is inescapable, but only by accepting and referring to existence. You can show that consciousness is inescapable, but only by accepting and using your consciousness. Relying on these three axioms, you can establish their position as the foundation of all knowledge. But you cannot convince another person of this or anything until he accepts the axioms himself, on the basis of his own perception of reality. If he denies them, it is a mistake to argue about or even discuss the issue with him.
No one can think or perceive for another man. If reality, without your help, does not convince a person of the self-evident, he has abdicated reason and cannot be dealt with any further.
Bold Mine.
I thought it would be better to post these quotes then create a long “debate” attempting to restate what is eloquently argued by Peikoff in OPAR.
Case closed. QED.
