Free will theorem and human exceptionalism


Kallikanzarid

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Michael, what *did* I do? Also, your forum is called Objectivist Living, and it has Ayn Rand on the logo, and this is a section called Objectivist Philosophy, so forgive me for calling you people Objectivists, I bet you can see how it could've been an honest mistake.

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K.,

On the substance of your question, once again, I can't speak for Objectivism. Lots of Objectivists claim that lower life forms do not have volition whereas I believe they do.

I'm not even comfortable with the presupposition that volitional consciousness "ascends."

I have my own metaphysical view which I call "top-down" and "bottom-up." I think that to imagine the universe has a bottom from which things emerge and no top which draws things up to be purely speculative. As for speculation qua speculation, I prefer to think the universe has both top and bottom. (I'm not talking about God.)

I usually frame this by analogy, asking where is the start-point on a circle. Wherever it is, it will also be the end point. I see the top and bottom of the universe like that, like a circle, not like a straight line.

So does determinism exist? Yes. Volition? Yes.

One does not negate the other in some kind of contest.

I find it inconceivable that subparticles would randomly join together over eons and produce the same kinds of forms by accident over and over. At the very minimum, that would mean that the larger forms are implicit in them in the same manner that leaves are implicit in an acorn. I'm speaking of forms like holons, and another form I don't have a term for, but it is basically a control hub with a body around it. This can be a solar system with the sun being the hub or it can be a human being with the brain hub. You have the smaller part controlling the larger, which is also made up of discrete parts. This form is all over the place in both animate and inanimate things.

There's a lot more in this direction.

None of it is Objectivist, though. I got there starting from Objectivism, but I don't consider it an extension of Objectivism. It's just stuff I have observed, ideas I have encountered, and conclusions I have arrived at using the best thinking I can muster.

Michael

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Michael, what *did* I do? Also, your forum is called Objectivist Living, and it has Ayn Rand on the logo, and this is a section called Objectivist Philosophy, so forgive me for calling you people Objectivists, I bet you can see how it could've been an honest mistake.

K.,

We're cool.

I just want to be clear about the nature of this approach to Objectivism.

Michael

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Thank you for your answer, Michael. Although I certainly disagree, I see where you're coming from.

I'll be leaving now, because like I stated in my first post, my purpose for asking these questions is tied to hardcore Objectivism. Thank you for sharing your views.

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Although I certainly disagree, I see where you're coming from...

K.,

Just to be absolutely clear, there are lots of folks around here who disagree with me.

When I said there is no party-line, I literally mean it.

Agreement with me is not a condition here. Nor is my agreement with anyone else. (There are limits, but they are things like bigotry or spam or porn and stuff like that.)

This is a site for individual thinkers--ones who have a shared interest in Objectivism and how it interacts, nourishes, or disagrees with their own thinking--not ones who use a formal body of ideas called Objectivism as the grounds to build a collective around, didactic or otherwise.

I do like Rand's ideas to be represented correctly when she is discussed. So I don't encourage "Rand was right" and "Rand was wrong" polemics (which tend to fudge and rationalize her meanings). I don't even like to control the situation when people say this because, in truth, she was both right and wrong about a lot.

But I have found if I let the "debunk Rand" or "prove Rand" subtext run without saying anything when it starts to grow, that is if I don't clarify the purpose here early on, some of the nastiest people eventually show up and start yelling at each other and spoiling the forum.

You are welcome to be here or move on. You seem to be a good person. My policy for years has been whatever people find good for them in this respect is good for OL.

Your life. Your choice.

I wish you well either way.

Michael

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Roger, I'm not sure I follow. If at any given point we *have* to pursue that which we value most, then it looks like our actions are completely determined by our values, where is non-determinism in that? Also, how do you answers the questions I posed in the OP?

My view of free will does ~not~ involve non-determinism. As I stated before, it is ~value-determinism~, the idea that, in a given situation, you ~must~ pursue that which you value most. Also, it is ~conditional~ free will, the idea that, absent constraints or disability, you could have done differently than you did in a given situation, ~if~ you had valued doing so more than what you actually did. (As such, it's a variant of Compatibilism, the idea that free will is compatible with determinism.)

Most (if not all) Objectivists do ~not~ agree with this. They instead prefer absolute or ~categorical~ free will, the idea that you could have done differently than you did in a given situation, ~even if you had NOT~ valued doing so more than what you actually did.

In my opinion, the orthodox Objectivist view is contradictory and implies indeterminism (aka "whim").

It is contradictory, because it flies in the face of Rand's definition of "value," which she says is "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." Notice, not what you ~wish~ you would have done instead of the perplexing or horrifying or embarrassing or "anti-life" thing you actually do, not what you ~intended~ to do, not what you "most deeply" profess and avow--but what you actually ~do.~ Rand defined "value" in this way very deliberately. For her, actions speak louder than words...or aspirations, or wistful longings, or heroically affirmed intentions.

Suppose you tried to get around this. Suppose you most value vanilla ice cream, so you choose that. Then I say: that proves my theory. Then you want to disprove it and you say: OK, I'm going to have chocolate, which I value less than vanilla. Then I say: enjoy your chocolate, if you can, but you did not disprove my theory. Instead of most valuing vanilla, you chose to most value trying to disprove my theory by choosing a flavor you didn't like as well. You acted to gain and/or keep a refutation of my theory. You were unsuccessful, but that's what you valued/pursued most--which is a shame, considering you gave up your preferred flavor in a vain attempt to prove that you don't ~have to~ pursue what you value most.

It is indeterminism/whim, at least in the way that Peikoff develops it in OPAR, because there is literally (according to Peikoff) nothing that makes you focus rather than not focus in a given situation. You either focus or you don't, period. To Peikoff and many orthodox Objectivists, if you focus because you preferred doing that rather than not focusing, you still ~could have~ chosen not to focus, ~even if~ you preferred not focusing less than focusing. To them, this idea is liberating, and it is how they understand "free will." To me, this is indistinguishable from whim. You are "free" to arbitrarily do x rather than y. Even if you want to do x more than y, you can do y anyway. (I'd like to see how they would handle the chocolate-vanilla scenario.)

Many (if not all) Objectivists find the idea of their choices and actions being determined by their values to be perplexing if not horrifying. They seem to believe that having to do what you most value doing somehow robs their autonomy, that it somehow robs them of self-direction. They seem to have forgotten that Rand also defined the "soul" as: "the mind and its values." To be an autonomous self or soul ~means~ that one's actions are determined and directed by one's mind and values.

What is the problem with this? I don't find it troubling at all. I can't imagine what else than my values I would want my actions determined by--certainly not by random impulses to do something other than what I most value doing at a given point in time. I am a self-correcting being. If my current values lead me to make a mistake and do something harmful or hurtful, and I more prefer not to do that again than to suffer the physical or psychic pain again, I am able to take responsibility for the consequences of my value-choices and to change course. (Sometimes it takes more than one bump on the head or relationship disaster to get it right, but it's usually a learning process, not a reflex.)

Now, here is a mind-bender to consider, but it also puts the discussion in a broader context.

I also believe that causality in general is not absolute or categorical, but ~conditional~. (Free will, on the Objectivist view, being a category of causality, would also be conditional, as I have argued that it is.) For an example, think of the laws of motion. One of them says that an object continues in its state of rest or motion ~if~ it is not acted upon by an outside force. Notice, it doesn't say the object continues moving or resting, period, in any context whatever, but only ~dependent~ or ~conditional~ upon its not being acted on by some other object/force. Causality is contextual, conditional.

This view of causality is consistent with my view of free will. Objectivism regards free will as a subcategory of causality. If causality is conditional (as I argue), then free will must be conditional (as I argue) as well. In the case of free will, the "law of motion" would be expressed along the lines of: a person will continue pursuing a particular thing, unless he more values pursuing something else.

OK, you asked a couple of questions earlier, and I'll take a stab at them...

  1. What is the difference between simple indeterminism and free will?
  2. What human ancestors had free will? By which process had free will evolved?

In regard to 1: since I distinguish between Objectivist/Libertarian/categorical free will and Compatibilist/conditional free will, I would first say that ~my~ view of free will (the latter) is ~very~ different from indeterminism. Secondly, I would say that orthodox Objectivist free will is badly in need of rethinking, because (at least as Peikoff formulates it) it is just a disguished form of indeterminism aka "whim." In fact, in one respect, it's ~worse~ than whim. As I understand it, acting by whim is choosing what you want to do in the moment, rather than what you think you "should" do. You are not guided by thought and principle, but just emotion and impulse. At least you are choosing what you most value at the time, even if it's not in your long-range, best interest. But orthodox Objectivist free will is choosing for ~no~ reason, you can do x rather than y, or y rather than x, and nothing makes you do it. Do you want your actions to be at the mercy of this kind of random, causeless swerving from pro-life to anti-life action?

The orthodox Objectivist view of free will is way too Kantian for me. He advocated categorical imperatives in morality. He said you ~should~ do x rather than y, not for any benefit you get out of it, but ~just because~. (By contrast, Rand got it right, advocating conditional imperatives: "If you want such and such, then you should do x rather than y.") Orthodox objectivists say you ~can~ do x rather than y, not because it is what you more highly value, but ~just because~. Part of the rethinking Objectivist needs to do in regard to free will is to realize that the Kantian categorical virus has invaded their system of ideas and needs to be rooted out in regard to free will as in regard to morality.

In regard to 2: I really don't know when free will as I understand it developed. But I suspect that it pretty closely tracked the development of conceptual ability. Most (if not all) animals are limited in their awareness to the here and now, being "concrete-bound" in Randian terms. As such, they are not capable of projecting future alternatives. They are present-bound. In this important, secondary sense, they are less free than humans. But in the primary sense, I think that animals are just as capable of acting (i.e., free to act) according to what they most value at a given point of time as are humans--and like humans, they are also open to additional inputs that influence their values up to the point of action. They are self-directing beings, value-determined beings, and conditionally free--though more constrained in the alternatives open to them by their lack of conceptual awareness and introspection.

However, putting this broad commonality aside, if we want to reserve the concept of "will" (like "mind") for self-aware beings, who think in terms of "what I want to do is x," then humans have (conditionally) free will, and animals do not. So, free will evolved at some point between the non-conceptual apes and modern human beings. I think we have evidence that this capacity was in place as far back as 20-30,000 years. Beyond that, I can't say.

REB

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Michael, thanks! I think I'll stick around to just discuss things, without insisting on getting answers to my questions. I asked those in OO.net where I'm more likely to get hardcore Objectivist answers.

Roger, thank you for typing in a lengthy reply. I mostly agree with you! However, I think that the concept of conditional causality needs further elucidation, right now I don't understand what you mean by it, exactly.

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Because determinism applied from A to Z is psychologically abhorrent to me, I start with free will as a given respecting choices I and others can make which is expansive because of wealth and freedom and conceptual consciousness. The determinists can have the rest of it. I consider this to be semantical--you can have yours and I'll have mine, but I'll make sure your label's not put on me. I won't have it. Determinism is like slavery from the inside out. There's nothing like being filleted while trying to fight for freedom. This may be overly simplistic for these sophisticated discussions, but I am not philosophically sophisticated which I think is a bunch of wheels going around and around but going nowhere. I'm naive, of course.

As far as mind-soul-value, you can create values too, which is a value in itself. And a lot of choices we make while young help determine the choices we make today or free will helps determine human determinism. Yep, to some extent we are determined, and not only by a determined universe, but some extent isn't the whole extent of human extensiveness or we be dogs and cats and birds and ants.

--Brant

beware the psychological-philosophical divide: it came from Germany in the 19th C. aong with the rest of "higher" education, so I read, somewhere

"meow, weow!"--the cat chose me

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Brant, determinism doesn't mean disrespect for choices. In no practical sense does it matter if your choice could in theory be precomputed ten years ago, it's still something *you* decided to do. And I don't think that fear and disgust should stop us from a pursuit of truth.

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K, I'm not talking about truth so much as semantics. Free will can be defined into and out of existence, but as such does represent something. Failure to acknowledge that and leave that label on that automatically raises the question of what a determinist is all about in the search of a "truth" with no apparent utility except implicit if not explicit denigration of those "choice" making abilities. You will also get arguments and caveats coming like ripe tomatoes from members of the audience like me--e.g., any discussion about epistemology is worthless unless it leads to better understanding and reasoning respecting things that are not in themselves atomistically germane to that branch of philosophy. My view of philosophy is very simple: reality and reason and so much for metaphysics and epistemology. (I don't even think much of ITOE: concepts are in our heads, got it!) Of course that's after I've studied these subjects somewhat over a lot of time and living. I'm not a 19 yo college student getting ripped off on his education with a philosophy major and English lit. and feminist studies minors that will take me 5 years to complete before I go to graduate school and do my PhD on Francis Bacon. This all spills over into morality and ethics--the heart of Objectivism--a place you don't seem inclined to go to any more than I'm inclined to go to epistemology, but it's all related, so there you go and here I come. Go ahead, talk about determinism and ethics and find out why determinism is incompatible with ethics and philosophy generally--i.e., you'll find it harder to make an argument when you so expose your flanks to broadsides and boarders. Deterministic "choices" won't crowd me out for those aren't the only choices and a lot of choices were "determined" by previous choices that weren't. In fact you can chicken and egg a lot of it back to babyhood. Then we hit biological determinism, the physical development of the brain and the role of a thinking consciousness in de-determination of sundry influences that might be de-determinable. I will be a criminal. No, I won't be a criminal. I will think. No, "Don't bother me, don't bother me don't bother me!" Etc. Ayn Rand didn't write a book called Human Action but she wrote about the subject incessantly. Why? Was she deluded?

--Brant

"truth" will make you ...?

____________

determinism is like global warming: it can be "precomputed" by going back in time and looking forward, by modelling, to the present, but after that it's about as good a forecaster as the weatherman and for about as long--it's actually looking in the rear-view mirror and saying it couldn't have been different for it's impossible that Hitler could have been run over by a horse-cart and killed when he was a baby (Nathaniel Branden's comment, on Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels, but not on determinism--on the power of philosophy over-represented by Peikoff therein) for he wasn't!

so much for "could"?

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Brant, could you please express yourself clearer? I find it hard to understand what you're writing.

> Free will can be defined into and out of existence, but as such does represent something.

I don't understand this sentence.

> Failure to acknowledge that and leave that label on that automatically raises the question of what a determinist is all about in the search of a "truth" with no apparent utility except implicit if not explicit denigration of those "choice" making abilities.

This is a completely unfounded assertion.

> This all spills over into morality and ethics--the heart of Objectivism--a place you don't seem inclined to go to any more than I'm inclined to go to epistemology, but it's all related, so there you go and here I come.

Didn't Rand say she's primarily an advocate not of egoism, but of reason?

> Go ahead, talk about determinism and ethics and find out why determinism is incompatible with ethics and philosophy generally--i.e., you'll find it harder to make an argument when you so expose your flanks to broadsides and boarders.

The first part requires elaboration, the second part I didn't understand.

> Deterministic "choices" won't crowd me out for those aren't the only choices and a lot of choices were "determined" by previous choices that weren't. In fact you can chicken and egg a lot of it back to babyhood. Then we hit biological determinism, the physical development of the brain and the role of a thinking consciousness in de-determination of sundry influences that might be de-determinable. I will be a criminal. No, I won't be a criminal. I will think. No, "Don't bother me, don't bother me don't bother me!" Etc. Ayn Rand didn't write a book called Human Action but she wrote about the subject incessantly. Why? Was she deluded?

This and what comes after that is completely unintelligible to me.

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Brant, could you please express yourself clearer? I find it hard to understand what you're writing.

> Free will can be defined into and out of existence, but as such does represent something.

I don't understand this sentence.

> Failure to acknowledge that and leave that label on that automatically raises the question of what a determinist is all about in the search of a "truth" with no apparent utility except implicit if not explicit denigration of those "choice" making abilities.

This is a completely unfounded assertion.

> This all spills over into morality and ethics--the heart of Objectivism--a place you don't seem inclined to go to any more than I'm inclined to go to epistemology, but it's all related, so there you go and here I come.

Didn't Rand say she's primarily an advocate not of egoism, but of reason?

> Go ahead, talk about determinism and ethics and find out why determinism is incompatible with ethics and philosophy generally--i.e., you'll find it harder to make an argument when you so expose your flanks to broadsides and boarders.

The first part requires elaboration, the second part I didn't understand.

> Deterministic "choices" won't crowd me out for those aren't the only choices and a lot of choices were "determined" by previous choices that weren't. In fact you can chicken and egg a lot of it back to babyhood. Then we hit biological determinism, the physical development of the brain and the role of a thinking consciousness in de-determination of sundry influences that might be de-determinable. I will be a criminal. No, I won't be a criminal. I will think. No, "Don't bother me, don't bother me don't bother me!" Etc. Ayn Rand didn't write a book called Human Action but she wrote about the subject incessantly. Why? Was she deluded?

This and what comes after that is completely unintelligible to me.

What Rand said and what Rand did and advocated aren't necessarily the same things. She advocated reason but hardly wrote about it, not even in ITOE, but was one step up on "Reason" magazine which in the over 35 years I subscribed never had one article on the subject. If you don't understand anything I've written, I apologize. I assumed you had more hooks to hang my words on than you apparently do, that's all. That "Don't bother me" quote came from a character in AS, for instance. As for egoism, she never mixed that up with "rugged individualism" or much true individualism at all. She effectively headed a cult.

Anyway, I've shot my wad and out of courtesy will now leave epistemological discussions on this thread to the interested epistemologists. I Admire your brainpower and hope you post on other subjects here apropos to the philosophy.

--Brant

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  • 1 year later...

A Metaphysics for Freedom

Helen Steward (Oxford 2012)

From the publisher:

A Metaphysics for Freedom argues that agency itself---and not merely the special, distinctively human variety of it---is incompatible with determinism. For determinism is threatened just as surely by the existence of powers which can be unproblematically accorded to many sorts of animals, as by the distinctively human powers on which the free will debate has tended to focus. Helen Steward suggests that a tendency to approach the question of free will solely through the issue of moral responsibility has obscured the fact that there is a quite different route to incompatibilism, based on the idea that animal agents above a certain level of complexity possess a range of distinctive 'two-way' powers, not found in simpler substances.

Determinism is not a doctrine of physics, but of metaphysics; and the idea that it is physics which will tell us whether our world is deterministic or not presupposes what must not be taken for granted–that is, that physics settles everything else, and that we are already in a position to say that there could be no irreducibly top-down forms of causal influence. Steward considers questions concerning supervenience, laws, and levels of explanation, and explores an outline of a variety of top-down causation which might sustain the idea that an animal itself, rather than merely events and states going on in its parts, might be able to bring something about. The resulting position permits certain important concessions to compatibilism to be made; and a convincing response is also offered to the charge that even if it is agreed that determinism is incompatible with agency, indeterminism can be of no possible help. The whole is an argument for a distinctive and resolutely non-dualistic, naturalistically respectable version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.

Unlike other animals, however, human beings have free will. We have the capacity to think about the range of possible actions that are open to us at a given moment, and to choose which action to take. And so, unlike other animals, we are not entirely creatures of our genes and our environment when we act in pursuit of goals. We are not instinctively committed to the pursuit of any particular goal, not even to that most basic goal of all, our own self-preservation. Human beings can act in systematically self-destructive ways, and even seek death directly.

Because we have free will, we need moral standards to guide our choices. A dog does not need morality because it does not make voluntary choices.

I can't say I agree with this. I can observe animals making choices all the time, like a cat deciding whether to attack or not. If this is what is called "free will" then I don't see how he can say animals don't have it. I can see maybe like life forms without a nervous system, like bacteria, maybe but not higher life-forms.

Thomas,

You might like to give this one a read: “Ascent to Volitional Consciousness” by John Enright (1990).
http://www.objectivity-archive.com/volume1_number2.html#47

ABSTRACT

Enright assembles our best understanding of the degrees of conscious control in higher animals. By comparison with these capabilities, the nature of human volitional consciousness is brought into richer relief.

The following theses are defended: Animals have a kind of awareness, which guides their actions, particularly their locomotion. An animal’s actions are limited by its range of awareness. Higher animals contemplate possibilities. The conceptual faculty of humans opens a vast set of possibilities for them. Humans are far more self-aware than any other animal. One’s understanding of one’s own habits allows one to control them and hence control the development of one’s own character. The choice to think has enormous ramifications in human existence.
. . .

. . .

To be not uniquely determined by antecedent conditions is a larger class than making a choice that is not determined by antecedent conditions. Choice requires consciousness, a type of control system in higher animals, and consciousness is a culmination of certain brain activities. I think it is correct to infer that if some of our choices are not determined by antecedent conditions, then some of our brain processes are not determined by antecedent conditions. Real physiological processes of the brain as control system cannot violate any physical laws. I have argued that that condition is satisfied for indeterministic brain processes even within classical physics in Volitional Synapses. That is, the required indeterminism is the case at the level of classical physical system behaviors in which quantum indeterminacy has already vanished.

. . .

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