Objectivism's view on Free Will, Closest to whom?

Questions about Objectivism
1

I find it hard to get a real understanding from objectivist’s writing so far, as to where does it stand on the question of free will.

I just read an article by sam harris, which says among other things:

“Dan and I agree on several fundamental points: The conventional (libertarian) idea of free will makes no sense and cannot be brought into register with our scientific picture of the world. We also agree that determinism need not imply fatalism and that indeterminism would give us no more freedom than we would have in a deterministic universe.”

Now if I look at Libertarian Metaphysics; I see that it’s “take” on free will is:

In particular, libertarianism, which is an incompatibilist position,[2][3] argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe and that agents have free will, and that therefore determinism is false.[4]

Which he says does not fit to “our scientific picture of the world” (do you agree with that by the way? I’d like to hear an explanation)

On the "other side, there’s hard determinism, the claim that determinism is true and thus that free will does not exist.

Now that I know for sure, Objectivism doesn’t accept.

Objectivism wiki about the definition of free will, a.k.a volition:

Volition is the act or state of focusing one’s thoughts on a subject – to form concepts; to induct general propositions; and to deduce conclusions about specific situations from them.

Actions are volitional if they are chosen so in the absence of coercion.

Wikipedia says:

Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints.

Is there a fundemental diffrenence between the two? I just find it really hard to understand the Objectivist definition. It woul’d help me, I think, to differenciate between all these approaches.

Is Objectivism a compatibilist or an incompatibilist approach? Is it close to Harris’s and Dennet’s definition? if not, whats the fundemental differences? it’s all so blurry.

I’d really appreciate a clear straight forward answer, to help straighten my head about these issues.

Thanks in advance,

Happy liberty holiday (passover) :slight_smile:

2

Many compatibilists taken free will to be identical with our powers for rational deliberation and consideration. This can include things such as Rand’s theory of concept formation, along with more typical modes of thinking such as counterfactual reasoning, which seems to give us a view of the future no other animal has.

There’s no specific philosopher around who will agree with the Objectivist position 100%, as it is much more rationalistic than most nowadays enjoy, but I enjoyed Searle’s work on free will in “On Rationality”. Eddy Nahmias has done a lot of research on people’s intuitions of what free will constitutes and determines that most are compatibilists rather than libertarians.

3

Is there a fundemental diffrenence between the two? I just find it really hard to understand the Objectivist definition. It woul’d help me, I think, to differenciate between all these approaches.

Is Objectivism a compatibilist or an incompatibilist approach? Is it close to Harris’s and Dennet’s definition? if not, whats the fundemental differences? it’s all so blurry.

One difference is what counts as ‘coercion’ or ‘constraint’. Determinism in general counts your very identity down to the material of which you are composed as a kind of ‘constraint’, but the only way not to be constrained by identity is to have no identity, to be indefinite or infinite. If one accepts this premise of constraint, then either one is led to hard determinism or to a mystical version of free will. A common false premise behind those two sides of a debate is what is described as a false dichotomy. They claim that their two alternatives are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive but in fact they are not.

Objectivism has a normative theory for the proper formation of concepts, and by that method identity does not count as a constraint.

4

So bascially you are saying Objectivism’s “take” on that is rather closer to the compatibilist approach rather than the incompatibilist (libertarian) approach?

Can you identify with Harris’s criticism (the line I quoted) about liberterian metaphysics in regards to “free will”, and it not being compatible with our current understanding of the human mind?

If I understand correctly, you emphasized the differences between objectivism and incompatiblism, but what about the various opinions in the compatibilist “realm” of thought?

Is harris’s and dennet’s approach, going through neuro-sciense, is something you guys advocate, for exploring the “nature” of free will?

5

So bascially you are saying Objectivism’s “take” on that is rather closer to the compatibilist approach rather than the incompatibilist (libertarian) approach? Can you identify with Harris’s criticism (the line I quoted) about liberterian metaphysics in regards to “free will”, and it not being compatible with our current understanding of the human mind? If I understand correctly, you emphasized the differences between objectivism and incompatiblism, but what about the various opinions in the compatibilist “realm” of thought? Is harris’s and dennet’s approach, going through neuro-sciense, is something you guys advocate, for exploring the “nature” of free will?

‘Libertarian metaphysics’ is dualism, meaning that there is the natural stuff that makes up the world studied by science and then there is the mystery of free will which is evidence of some super-natural dimension. Objectivism rejects dualism and so does Harris (and many others), so there is that similarity. There is also a critique (not a part of Objectivism) to be made of ‘determinist metaphysics’. Because Objectivist metaphysics is not the determinist metaphysics it does not make sense to classify Objectivism as compatibilist, as compatibilism (and incompatibilism too) requires accepting the premise of determinist metaphysics.

The determinist metaphysics is that there exists some basic particulars out of which everything is made and that only the existence of those basic particulars is real, and everything made up of parts is in an important sense unreal (are ‘epiphenomenon’). This is the idea of hierarchy applied to metaphysics. Objectivism rejects metaphysical hierarchy. Sound philosophizing beyond Objectivism which is more fully informed in modern physics would reject the premise of basic particulars.

You might find the short thread “Weak vs. Strong Emergence” interesting, and at the end I linked to the article PHYSICALISM, EMERGENCE AND DOWNWARD CAUSATION which is an example of sound philosophizing which is not Objectivism.

6

Objectivism has a normative theory for the proper formation of concepts, and by that method identity does not count as a constraint.

Why wouldn’t it make sense to call identity constraint, though? There are limitations to what any entity can do, to be sure, but wouldn’t limitation be synonymous with constraint?

(I’m also going to split the thread with the tangent going on)

7

The word constraint is used as a variation on the concept of coercion. Internal constraints and externally imposed constraints (i.e. coercion) should not be commingled into a common category including all constraints. This is because volition is an attribute of an individual person, but commingling internal and external constraints obliterates the boundary defining the individual. The freedom in ‘free will’ is freedom from external constraints only.

One can free oneself from a single thought by replacing it with another thought, but can’t be free from all thoughts or thought as such. A person’s identity is essentially (not completely, essentially) the totality of one’s thoughts. If thoughts (and body) could be subtracted away there would be no self remaining that could enjoy a hypothetical freedom.