My problem with Free Will

[BaalChatzaf]

I regard my life as its own end and I hold that I have a right to do as I please with my life and my property--without regard for how it may affect others.

You have no warrant or right to recklessly endanger others.

Do no harm.

Ba'al Chatzaf

So if I wish to build a skyscraper on a downtown lot I own, I may not do so if the new building blocks the view of the skyline from a neighboring building and causes the condominiums therein to decline in value? "Do no harm"?

So if I publish an investment newsletter, I may not recommend that my readers sell their stock in the Acme Long Playing Record Company when a new product called compact discs comes out on the market because to do so would impoverish Acme's majority shareholder? "Do no harm"?

So if I own a bar I must stop selling alcohol because the product may adversely affect the health of some of my patrons? "Do no harm"?

Blocking the sun is not harm. Driving a truck loaded with 50 tons of high explosives not properly fastened down, through a residential neighborhood at 20 miles over the speed limit, now that is reckless endangerment.

Please try to exercise a sense of proportion if you are able to.

In a society where we live cheek to jowl with others we have to make do allowances for interactions and draw the line at actual harm or probably reckless endangerment.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

"The free will argument" is pivotal. Free will presupposes and is conditional on the independent mind.

Maybe Rand's judgment was also "clouded" in her endless counsel that nothing is more important than mind independence, so that she would condemn altruism- not simply for its logical consequences in physical self-sacrifice - but primarily for its necessary precursor, mind sacrifice.

"The true opposite and enemy of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence".

That statement: "I was not self-determined" as a personal assessment, is not dissimilar to: "You didn't build that!" was as a political criticism.

They beg the questions - Why not? and Who did?

[BaalChatzaf]

So what is a "mind" where is it located and what is it made of.

[jts]

So what is a "mind" where is it located and what is it made of.

Mind is to brain as computer software is to computer hardware. You can disect brain and never find mind. You can disect a hard drive or a DVD or a flash drive and never find software. Should we reason therefore it doesn't exist? Did Microsoft make so much money making something that doesn't exist? Software is information. Mind is information. In a hard drive information is in magnetic form. In a DVD information is in optic form. In a brain information is in chemical or electrical or electrochemical or whatever form and it's probably more sophisticated to give us sights and sounds and tastes and smells and emotions.

[Francisco Ferrer]

I regard my life as its own end and I hold that I have a right to do as I please with my life and my property--without regard for how it may affect others.

You have no warrant or right to recklessly endanger others.

Do no harm.

Ba'al Chatzaf

So if I wish to build a skyscraper on a downtown lot I own, I may not do so if the new building blocks the view of the skyline from a neighboring building and causes the condominiums therein to decline in value? "Do no harm"?

So if I publish an investment newsletter, I may not recommend that my readers sell their stock in the Acme Long Playing Record Company when a new product called compact discs comes out on the market because to do so would impoverish Acme's majority shareholder? "Do no harm"?

So if I own a bar I must stop selling alcohol because the product may adversely affect the health of some of my patrons? "Do no harm"?

Blocking the sun is not harm. Driving a truck loaded with 50 tons of high explosives not properly fastened down, through a residential neighborhood at 20 miles over the speed limit, now that is reckless endangerment.

Please try to exercise a sense of proportion if you are able to.

In a society where we live cheek to jowl with others we have to make do allowances for interactions and draw the line at actual harm or probably reckless endangerment.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The examples I listed had a point: an individual can in fact cause loss of value to others, i.e. harm them, without trespassing on their rights. Entrepreneurs get financially harmed by unexpected changes in the market all the time. But In a laissez-faire society such harms are not actionable unless there is trespass on person or property.

The declaration I made earlier should be carefully read: "I regard my life as its own end and I hold that I have a right to do as I please with my life and my property--without regard for how it may affect others."

I have only stated what I may do with my own property. I have not made any claim to run roughshod over the person and property of others.

[Francisco Ferrer]

"The free will argument" is pivotal. Free will presupposes and is conditional on the independent mind.

Maybe Rand's judgment was also "clouded" in her endless counsel that nothing is more important than mind independence, so that she would condemn altruism- not simply for its logical consequences in physical self-sacrifice - but primarily for its necessary precursor, mind sacrifice.

"The true opposite and enemy of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence".

That statement: "I was not self-determined" as a personal assessment, is not dissimilar to: "You didn't build that!" was as a political criticism.

They beg the questions - Why not? and Who did?

Unfortunately, this is where the metaphysical-epistemological edges into ethical-political territory.

Rest assured that no one on this forum is apathetic about the importance of the individual's right to think and choose without the threat of coercion. No one here supports "mind-sacrifice."

The determinist position that I have outlined is simply the recognition that all human action is contingent ultimately on prior, external forces that were set in motion millions of years before our births.

As for the Obama quotation, the best answer is, "The government sure as hell didn't build it, so keep your bloody hands off!" The rationale for approaching the social sciences in terms of the individual rather than the collective is discussed at length by Mises in Human Action.

[deanwins]

Well said jts.

[tmj]

If a specific area, or certain fold of brain tissue was discovered and recognized as the "thing" from which free will springs, would this be inside or outside of nature? That free will seems to not be demonstrated by other beings does not disqualify it from being an attribute of human consciousness. Things unique to mankind are a part of nature, yes ? Uniqueness of a thing does not disqualify it validity. I do not mean to suggest that a "proof" of free will could be demonstrated by pointing to or finding a node of tissue or any such structure. Just as the experience of sight and it's validity are not called into question because sight can't be bottled.

[anthony]

"The free will argument" is pivotal. Free will presupposes and is conditional on the independent mind.

Maybe Rand's judgment was also "clouded" in her endless counsel that nothing is more important than mind independence, so that she would condemn altruism- not simply for its logical consequences in physical self-sacrifice - but primarily for its necessary precursor, mind sacrifice.

"The true opposite and enemy of altruism is not selfishness, it is independence".

That statement: "I was not self-determined" as a personal assessment, is not dissimilar to: "You didn't build that!" was as a political criticism.

They beg the questions - Why not? and Who did?

Unfortunately, this is where the metaphysical-epistemological edges into ethical-political territory.

Rest assured that no one on this forum is apathetic about the importance of the individual's right to think and choose without the threat of coercion. No one here supports "mind-sacrifice."

The determinist position that I have outlined is simply the recognition that all human action is contingent ultimately on prior, external forces that were set in motion millions of years before our births.

As for the Obama quotation, the best answer is, "The government sure as hell didn't build it, so keep your bloody hands off!" The rationale for approaching the social sciences in terms of the individual rather than the collective is discussed at length by Mises in Human Action.

"Edges into..."? "Unfortunately"?

From where does the justification for the ethical-political derive, if not the metaphysical-epistemological??

That's what I meant earlier by the free market as "floating abstraction". It is not so, but that's how it is mostly treated and viewed by its opponents and proponents, alike - its foundations are largely ignored or dismissed. But if we don't know (or don't choose to know)the metaphysical-epistomological-ethical how's and why's of the free market, it will be lost to us.

"Millions of years before our births..." events unfolded that eventuated in man. A conscious and self-aware man. Therefore one who can select and direct his thought.

For once and all, I re-iterate there is no false alternative i.e.: all determined - or - all self-determined. I have not argued this.

What I have argued reminds me of someone telling me once that men are 99% animal and one per-cent intelligent beings. Just for the moment accepting his arbitrary assertion, I responded - yeah, but look at what men or a single man can do with one per cent! Same for free-will. That small distinction is a defining charcteristic of man..

SELF-sacrifice is willing, voluntary and volitional self-abnegation of one's independent mind to prevailing morality(ies). This is very distinct from FORCED sacrifice. As an over-lap, self-sacrifice might well be accompanied by (psychological) coercion, I suspect.

Mises' earlier quote you posted has caused me to question his determinist purview. I'm astonished, since on the admittedly little I knew of him, I thought of him anything but.

[anthony]

It boils down to ... one is as 'determined' as one chooses to be.

An immense contradiction in terms!

I think its conceptual axis is skepticism-determinism-collectivism, as opposed to the objectivity-free will-independence-rational egoism axis.

How much might one avoid his ultimate, personal responsibility for his thoughts and actions, in the determinist credo? How little credit (and therefore, self-esteem) may one accept to oneself, if character, conviction, virtue and philosophy has all been pre-determined?

[dldelancey]

So what is a "mind" where is it located and what is it made of.

Mind is to brain as computer software is to computer hardware. You can disect brain and never find mind. You can disect a hard drive or a DVD or a flash drive and never find software. Should we reason therefore it doesn't exist? Did Microsoft make so much money making something that doesn't exist? Software is information. Mind is information. In a hard drive information is in magnetic form. In a DVD information is in optic form. In a brain information is in chemical or electrical or electrochemical or whatever form and it's probably more sophisticated to give us sights and sounds and tastes and smells and emotions.

I see the point you're making, but I don't think the analogy fits. No, you can't find software by cutting open a hard drive with a scalpel. However, you can access the hard drive and find where the code lives. Just because not everyone fully understands how computers work doesn't mean that no one fully understands how computers work. Hardware and software are designed and built by humans using predictable and known materials and mechanisms. Not so of the brain. There is no one on the planet who fully understands how the human brain works.

[Brant Gaede]

The human brain works by fear.

--Brant

for full understanding merely change your perspective

(master of semantics)

[Darrell Hougen]

So what is a "mind" where is it located and what is it made of.

Mind is to brain as computer software is to computer hardware. You can disect brain and never find mind. You can disect a hard drive or a DVD or a flash drive and never find software. Should we reason therefore it doesn't exist? Did Microsoft make so much money making something that doesn't exist? Software is information. Mind is information. In a hard drive information is in magnetic form. In a DVD information is in optic form. In a brain information is in chemical or electrical or electrochemical or whatever form and it's probably more sophisticated to give us sights and sounds and tastes and smells and emotions.

I see the point you're making, but I don't think the analogy fits. No, you can't find software by cutting open a hard drive with a scalpel. However, you can access the hard drive and find where the code lives. Just because not everyone fully understands how computers work doesn't mean that no one fully understands how computers work. Hardware and software are designed and built by humans using predictable and known materials and mechanisms. Not so of the brain. There is no one on the planet who fully understands how the human brain works.

Hi Deanna,

If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

We're learning more about how the brain works all the time. See this post. Eventually, I suspect that we will fully understand how the brain works. Does the fact that we don't fully understand it right now affect the validity of the analogy?

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

The determinist position that I have outlined is simply the recognition that all human action is contingent ultimately on prior, external forces that were set in motion millions of years before our births.

Indeed. But, if physical determinism is not valid, then human/mental determinism is impossible.

Also, I have read all of your posts and the justifications for your view tend to follow a particular pattern as exemplified by post #94. You said:

How did the hiker get to the North Namid Desert? Well, perhaps he's a stockbroker and saved up for the plane ticket and Land Rover rental. How did he get to be a stockbroker? Well, he studied hard, made good grades and attended the Wharton School. Why was he motivated to work hard? His parents instilled in him the values of productivity and worldly success.

But wait, what if he had been the son of lifelong welfare recipients whose highest value is to get through life with the least effort possible? Well, of course, a child does not have to follow the example of his parents. He can be a rebel against a culture of laziness and parasitism.

But what if what the child has to escape is not simply an attitude but a slave state? What if barbwire fences and guard towers with machine guns make his citizenship a life sentence?

In short, the ability to pick up a particular small rock among thousands in the North Namib Desert is made possible by a boundless series of events that are not subject to one individual's choice.

The problem is that in any particular example it is impossible to distinguish between influences and causes. The fact that our fictional character had enough money to travel to Namibia may have influenced him to travel to Namibia, but it didn't cause him to do so. The fact that he studied hard might have enabled/influenced him to become a stock broker, but it didn't cause him to become one. The fact that his parents attempted to instill in him the values of productivity might have influenced him to get good grades, but it didn't cause him to get good grades. The same kinds of comments could be made about the child born to welfare recipients.

You could argue that there were also a lot of unseen causes, but you can't prove that or even show convincing evidence of that, even in real world cases. The "ability to pick up a particular small rock among thousands in the North Namib Desert" may have been "made possible by a boundless series of events that are not subject to one individual's choice," but it can't be convincingly argued that all of those influences actually made that person's choice for him.

I would argue that there is more than nature and nurture. There is also choice. But, my argument does not hinge on examining an endless series of individual cases. Instead, I would argue that there is ample indirect evidence of choice. Start by looking at all of the new products that are created every year that never existed before. It is hard for a determinist to account for the increasing complexity of civilization.

There is also other, indirect evidence. Why is it useful for people to communicate with each other? Because, people might know things that other people don't. In fact, they might have thought of things that no one has ever thought of before. In fact, the entire notion of utility depends upon the notion of contingency. Numerous times you have used words and concepts that depend, genetically, on the idea that choice matters. Yet, you continue to deny that volition exists.

Many of the same comments apply to Dean's arguments, above.

Darrell

[Brant Gaede]

Antecedent causes have nothing to do with choice making per se. The choice maker is here and in action. Determinism merely says you have no choosing ability, no free will. This, of course, means no morality for if free will is a chimera then so is morality and philosophy generally and we are all blowing smoke.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

"Edges into..."? "Unfortunately"?

From where does the justification for the ethical-political derive, if not the metaphysical-epistemological??

You may derive ethics from metaphysics, but you have no basis for declaring that the determinist must be an altruist. If he must be, you must account for why I am not one.

That's what I meant earlier by the free market as "floating abstraction". It is not so, but that's how it is mostly treated and viewed by its opponents and proponents, alike - its foundations are largely ignored or dismissed. But if we don't know (or don't choose to know)the metaphysical-epistomological-ethical how's and why's of the free market, it will be lost to us.

Earlier you wrote, "In essence the skeptic switches his deity, from god to--whatever: the authority of collectivism or State, or even Science, or perhaps the floating abstraction of the free market." Since nothing in that statement describes me or anyone else participating in this discussion, it is altogether irrelevant.

I have no doubt about what the free market is, including its metaphysical-epistemological-ethical foundations. And since I haven't wavered in my support of laissez-faire for fifty years, there's scarcely a chance that the ideal will be lost to me.

"Millions of years before our births..." events unfolded that eventuated in man. A conscious and self-aware man. Therefore one who can select and direct his thought.

For once and all, I re-iterate there is no false alternative i.e.: all determined - or - all self-determined. I have not argued this.

No one said you had argued that a person's choices must be all "determined - or - all self-determined." I am simply juxtaposing to the free will argument my position: that all acts of wanting, favoring, deciding, selecting, and preferring are 100% dependent on prior environmental and/or biological forces.

You may say that the number is slightly or considerably less than 100%. But the essential point is that you think that some brain activity occurs without being determined. And it is just there that we disagree.

What I have argued reminds me of someone telling me once that men are 99% animal and one per-cent intelligent beings. Just for the moment accepting his arbitrary assertion, I responded - yeah, but look at what men or a single man can do with one per cent! Same for free-will. That small distinction is a defining charcteristic of man..

Actually, we don't need free will to define man. We can do that entirely by comparing human DNA samples with those of other animals.

SELF-sacrifice is willing, voluntary and volitional self-abnegation of one's independent mind to prevailing morality(ies). This is very distinct from FORCED sacrifice. As an over-lap, self-sacrifice might well be accompanied by (psychological) coercion, I suspect.

Good, we can both take a stance once and for all against forced sacrifice.

It boils down to ... one is as 'determined' as one chooses to be.

An immense contradiction in terms!

Once again, my position is that all brain activity is the result of biological-environmental context. A human can choose to move a chess piece on a board. So can a computer.

The computer does not need "free will" to select a rook ♜ and direct it to a particular square.

Neither does a human.

I think its conceptual axis is skepticism-determinism-collectivism, as opposed to the objectivity-free will-independence-rational egoism axis.

You can lump together any group of ideas and call them an "axis." Someone with equal validity could talk about the fascist-Zionist-vegetarian-anti-inflation axis.

Ayn Rand had some interesting thoughts about package-dealing.

How much might one avoid his ultimate, personal responsibility for his thoughts and actions, in the determinist credo? How little credit (and therefore, self-esteem) may one accept to oneself, if character, conviction, virtue and philosophy has all been pre-determined?

In a free society with a rational legal code, each individual is held responsible for his own actions. If you throw a brick through a shop window, it should not make any difference under the law whether you do it because the owner was a member of a hated ethnic group or because you like the sound of glass tinkling.

Understanding motives does not excuse actions.

[Francisco Ferrer]

The determinist position that I have outlined is simply the recognition that all human action is contingent ultimately on prior, external forces that were set in motion millions of years before our births.

Indeed. But, if physical determinism is not valid, then human/mental determinism is impossible.

Yes, once we dispense with the insignificant forces of environment and genetics, free will is just about all we have left.

Also, I have read all of your posts and the justifications for your view tend to follow a particular pattern as exemplified by post #94. You said:

How did the hiker get to the North Namid Desert? Well, perhaps he's a stockbroker and saved up for the plane ticket and Land Rover rental. How did he get to be a stockbroker? Well, he studied hard, made good grades and attended the Wharton School. Why was he motivated to work hard? His parents instilled in him the values of productivity and worldly success.

But wait, what if he had been the son of lifelong welfare recipients whose highest value is to get through life with the least effort possible? Well, of course, a child does not have to follow the example of his parents. He can be a rebel against a culture of laziness and parasitism.

But what if what the child has to escape is not simply an attitude but a slave state? What if barbwire fences and guard towers with machine guns make his citizenship a life sentence?

In short, the ability to pick up a particular small rock among thousands in the North Namib Desert is made possible by a boundless series of events that are not subject to one individual's choice.

The problem is that in any particular example it is impossible to distinguish between influences and causes. The fact that our fictional character had enough money to travel to Namibia may have influenced him to travel to Namibia, but it didn't cause him to do so. The fact that he studied hard might have enabled/influenced him to become a stock broker, but it didn't cause him to become one. The fact that his parents attempted to instill in him the values of productivity might have influenced him to get good grades, but it didn't cause him to get good grades. The same kinds of comments could be made about the child born to welfare recipients.

I did not claim that the hiker went to Namibia simply because he had enough money to do so. My point was that he could not have been in the position to make a choice about which rock to pick up in that desert without the existence of prior conditions. I acknowledge that those conditions are necessary but not sufficient to account for his picking up Rock #903,864.

But more to the point, I discussed other factors--mental state and bodily needs--that may have been directly at play in the selection of one particular rock. In short, we do not need free will to explain choosing one item out of a million.

You could argue that there were also a lot of unseen causes, but you can't prove that or even show convincing evidence of that, even in real world cases. The "ability to pick up a particular small rock among thousands in the North Namib Desert" may have been "made possible by a boundless series of events that are not subject to one individual's choice," but it can't be convincingly argued that all of those influences actually made that person's choice for him.

I wasn't attempting to prove that the particular set of causative factors that I listed must have been the only causative factors in this hypothetical case. My point was to show that free will is not the only satisfactory explanation for human thought and action.

Why must we suppose that some spirit independent of physical context and prior history has to be the decisive force? Rock #903,864 was chosen instead #903,863 or #903,865--arbitrarily it would seem. All I have to do is suggest that certain particulars about #903,864 and the hiker's prior history and his present biological condition combined to make the rock the inevitable choice. There is in fact a reasonable alternative to free will to account for a human's selection of one item out of thousands.

I would argue that there is more than nature and nurture. There is also choice. But, my argument does not hinge on examining an endless series of individual cases. Instead, I would argue that there is ample indirect evidence of choice. Start by looking at all of the new products that are created every year that never existed before. It is hard for a determinist to account for the increasing complexity of civilization.

That's not true. We don't need free will to account for man's ability to look at the world around him and generate new products. The brain is a complex organ which is able to process the evidence of the senses, categorize it and re-categorize it in countless ways and store it for a lifetime. Inventions, new products and artistic creations do credit to an individual's power to make new connections that others did not previously consider. Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation discusses "bisociation" – bringing together components from two or more previously unrelated sources into a new configuration.

For example, on another forum, someone misspelled "clever" as "cleaver" and someone else responded with "meat new people." It was a good joke. But it does not require a spirit independent of physical cause and effect to draw the connections between "cleaver," "meet" and "meat."

Motion pictures, the airplane and the radio are all products that were the result of assembling previously discovered elements in a new way. To explain them we do not need to posit a magic genie operating outside causality.

There is also other, indirect evidence. Why is it useful for people to communicate with each other? Because, people might know things that other people don't. In fact, they might have thought of things that no one has ever thought of before. In fact, the entire notion of utility depends upon the notion of contingency. Numerous times you have used words and concepts that depend, genetically, on the idea that choice matters. Yet, you continue to deny that volition exists.

Many of the same comments apply to Dean's arguments, above.

Darrell

I deny the existence of free will because there are very reasonable alternative explanations for man's actions. We don't need a ghost in the machine.

[deanwins]

Antecedent causes have nothing to do with choice making per se. The choice maker is here and in action. Determinism merely says you have no choosing ability, no free will. This, of course, means no morality for if free will is a chimera then so is morality and philosophy generally and we are all blowing smoke.

--Brant

I deny that "morality does not exist or make sense or whatever in the case of determinism". I deny that determinism says one has no "choosing ablility". We perform the information processing action of comparing actions, and select the action that we predict will result in the greatest predicted goal attainment. That it is inevitable that we would eventually make a particular decision at a particular point in spacetime does not mean that we do not "choose". To choose is to select to be performed one action from a set of potential actions. Even computers do this.

Each of us have goals that we act to gain or keep. Morality is a qualitative measure of impact on a goal. A moral system is a vast collection of ideas all related in the purpose of achieving a collection of goals. All of these definitions work even in a deterministic system.

[dldelancey]

So what is a "mind" where is it located and what is it made of.

Mind is to brain as computer software is to computer hardware. You can disect brain and never find mind. You can disect a hard drive or a DVD or a flash drive and never find software. Should we reason therefore it doesn't exist? Did Microsoft make so much money making something that doesn't exist? Software is information. Mind is information. In a hard drive information is in magnetic form. In a DVD information is in optic form. In a brain information is in chemical or electrical or electrochemical or whatever form and it's probably more sophisticated to give us sights and sounds and tastes and smells and emotions.

I see the point you're making, but I don't think the analogy fits. No, you can't find software by cutting open a hard drive with a scalpel. However, you can access the hard drive and find where the code lives. Just because not everyone fully understands how computers work doesn't mean that no one fully understands how computers work. Hardware and software are designed and built by humans using predictable and known materials and mechanisms. Not so of the brain. There is no one on the planet who fully understands how the human brain works.

Hi Deanna,

If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

We're learning more about how the brain works all the time. See this post. Eventually, I suspect that we will fully understand how the brain works. Does the fact that we don't fully understand it right now affect the validity of the analogy?

Darrell

The validity of the analogy breaks when you imply that we don't know where to look to find physical evidence of software. We know exactly where it is and exactly what it looks like.

[Brant Gaede]

Antecedent causes have nothing to do with choice making per se. The choice maker is here and in action. Determinism merely says you have no choosing ability, no free will. This, of course, means no morality for if free will is a chimera then so is morality and philosophy generally and we are all blowing smoke.

--Brant

I deny that "morality does not exist or make sense or whatever in the case of determinism". I deny that determinism says one has no "choosing ablility". We perform the information processing action of comparing actions, and select the action that we predict will result in the greatest predicted goal attainment. That it is inevitable that we would eventually make a particular decision at a particular point in spacetime does not mean that we do not "choose". To choose is to select to be performed one action from a set of potential actions. Even computers do this.

Each of us have goals that we act to gain or keep. Morality is a qualitative measure of impact on a goal. A moral system is a vast collection of ideas all related in the purpose of achieving a collection of goals. All of these definitions work even in a deterministic system.

If you aren't abjuring free will just say so. As far as existential reality x human's work and human being, the present case is it all was determined one thing from another. Touting determinism implicitly if not explicitly touts rendering out of people what makes them people--conceptual consciousness--simply because there is nothing about determinism x people that is controversial. Water is wet. So why are you talking about determinism at all? It's worthless on the face of it and destructive dumped on people. Maybe it's good for science but science is only built on reason and reality and the search for truth. Cut that out and its philosophical base crashes as does philosophy generally. I'm accusing you of bad intellectual manners on this. Oh, yes, a lot of what we are and become is determined, but you can't cut a man in half and call what's left a man.

--Brant

[anthony]

Hey, no difference really, but I was the "fictional character in Namibia"...;)

"Fictional" does bring up another critical angle.

I think science - or, really the fault of one modern offshoot of science, skeptical philosophy - has let us down in regard to determinism and free will.

Who knows of any scientist who has bluntly rejected all claims that there exists any connection between 'human' determinism and the law of causality? I don't recall, but there must have been, surely? To anyone with imagination, it's self-obvious that emotions, feelings and thoughts have always powerfully influenced men's behavior. How can anyone assert that his parents were 'meant' (to not just meet), but to mutually react, emotionally, in that unpredictable manner called love? Then to pursue it to the point that a child was born? How many other near-infinite permutations of people and emotions didn't come to pass?

Then imagine backwards to their parents' parents - etc.etc.? Try to 'determine' all that.

It takes the artist, particularly novelists and poets, to come closest to revealing the way of an individual's deepest emotions, mind and character. They show that little always goes to plan, where the human heart and mind are involved... until it does. As the result of his conviction, passion,perseverance and ambition..

'Pre-determine' that combination!

Nothing 'had to be' (as far as man, or one man goes), it simply was and is.

As artist and philosopher, Rand premised Romanticism on man's volition. It seems her artist influenced her intellectual, and the intellectual informed the artist - in order to arrive at her fundamental truths. I think her finest writing on volitional consciousness is in TRM, of all places.

A constrained imagination then, is another consequence of a belief in determinism. It must be a mechanist and robotic world that a determinist inhabits . Except I think he's saved by this one fact, that determinism (like altruism) can't possibly be practised consistently; it can only by theorized. The hardest determinist still constantly 'chooses' -- contrary to his credo.

imo:

a) The causal chain has been increasingly weakened since man came on the scene. Whether he chooses to accept it or not, plainly each man is largely his own cause and effect, where it counts.

b) along with "order", it was man's consciousness which first introduced "randomness" to his world.

[Brant Gaede]

What is behind self determination but thousands of choices of thoughts into actions as a person builds his life and character brick by brick? That is not any argument for determinism as the end all and begin all and do all for that kind of determinism isn't foundational. The other kind is but isn't there a chaotic randomness involved when one of 50 million sperm manages to win its way into the egg?

--Brant

[deanwins]

Brant, I'm genuinely honestly not sure what you mean by "free will". Can you give me your definition?

If by "free will", you mean that we preform the function of "choosing", as I define below... then we can agree. But maybe we disagree on what "choosing" means?

We perform the information processing action of choosing: Comparing action's predicted results, and select the action that we predict will result in the greatest predicted goal attainment.

To "choose" is to select to be performed one action from a set of potential actions.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, I'm genuinely honestly not sure what you mean by "free will". Can you give me your definition?

If by "free will", you mean that we preform the function of "choosing", as I define below... then we can agree. But maybe we disagree on what "choosing" means?

We perform the information processing action of choosing: Comparing action's predicted results, and select the action that we predict will result in the greatest predicted goal attainment.

To "choose" is to select to be performed one action from a set of potential actions.

Free will means free to choose as in making choices or to choose to focus your mind on this or that. It is the natural adjunct to political freedom.

--Brant

[deanwins]

Brant, And what does it mean to "choose" or to be "making choices"?