Ayn Rand Fan Club podcast

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As an added thought, the people in O-Land who misconstrue what one means in order to lash out do the same thing as social justice warriors do today with cancel culture.

Except the O-Land people were not indoctrinated from young by communists over years and years in the school system.

The O-Land people choose to be that way. And, in my experience, they play just as dirty from the shadows as the cancel culture people do.

Not all O-Land people are that way, of course. Probably not even that many. But the ones who are that way make it near impossible to use reason as the main means of communicating with them.

Michael

[Peter]

I searched through some old letters for the word, “cognitive.” I think this was around the time I joined a forum for the first time and I wasn’t very good at it, so ignore my letters if you wish. The spacing was bad back then but I tried to close it up a bit. Peter

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net> In his post of 8-8-2000, Peter Taylor quotes Kurt Keefner as follows: "Epistemology is philosophy and precedes the very possibility of science, therefore it has absolute priority over any possible conclusion of science."

Peter then goes on to defend Kurt's position against Dennis May, who wrote: "You say philosophy has nothing to say except that: your philosophy comes to final conclusions about what consciousness is or is not, that free will exists and it the locus of a process, and numerous other claims which can be and are being examined by the specialized sciences. Your philosophical claims do not fair very well under scientific scrutiny."

And: "The philosophy of Objectivism or any other philosophy is most logically viewed as a theoretical construct about the ways of the world and the place man occupies within it.  This construct may be tested as any other theory or belief system may be tested.  Ron Merrill observed that philosophy has been whittled away piece by piece and reduced to speaking more and more about less and less as scientific understanding has progressed."

In this controversy I must side with Kurt Keefner (and to some extent with Peter Taylor). I say this for the following reasons.

(1) Ron Merrill's observation ("that philosophy has been whittled away piece by piece and reduced to speaking more and more about less and less as scientific understanding has progressed") is true to some extent, but such statements (which are quite common) can also be misleading. Modern philosophy, as it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, was highly critical of traditional metaphysics, because it rested on speculation and shunned the empirical methods of verification that were being developed by modern science. What John Locke and other empiricists did was to shift the emphasis from metaphysics (which they saw, for the most part, as usurping the proper domain of natural science) to epistemology (although this latter term was not coined until the 19th century). When David Hume and other empiricists proposed "a science of man," they were guided by the insight that all knowledge claims must be processed by the human mind, and that no beliefs (whether "scientific" or not) can claim a special exemption from philosophical standards of verification.

(2) A major problem in any such discussion has to with the respective meanings of "science" and "philosophy." The term "science" traditionally referred to any organized and systematic body of knowledge, so it was common to speak of the "moral sciences" (which dealt with all facets of human behavior, including ethics)  alongside the "natural sciences.". More recently, however, it has become customary to speak of philosophy in contrast to science, but it has also become exceedingly difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between the two -- especially when we keep in mind that the "social sciences" cannot duplicate the methods of physics and other natural sciences, and that they typically contain more philosophy than their practitioners are willing to admit.

(3) As I see it, philosophy is the systematic analysis of common experience; it does not appeal to specialized experience (such as we find in laboratory experiments) or to technical methods of verification. This is why there are no "authorities" or "experts" in philosophy like we find in science. If a respected physicist tells me that he has verified X, I might have to take his word for it (assuming X has satisfied the criteria of peer review), since I am unable to duplicate his experiments for myself. But I would never similarly take the word of a philosopher who tells me that she has proven X, because I am capable of reasoning for myself.

(4) This brings up a crucial problem that is often overlooked. It is one thing to state a scientific finding, but it is another thing entirely to INTERPRET that finding and reach a philosophical conclusion. When the scientist takes off his scientist hat and dons the hat of the philosopher, then he can no longer appeal to his expertise, but must defend his conclusion by the same methods that are available to everyone else.

(5) It is in this sense that science never did, and never will, overthrow the conclusions of philosophy, because the findings of science must be extrapolated into the sphere of philosophy before they can even become relevant. Of course, this does not mean that science is irrelevant to philosophy; a new discovery in science may suggest a new problem or point the way to a new solution, which must then be expressed in philosophical terms. But it is never justified to say, "Science has refuted philosophy X." Every scientific conclusion is open to a variety of interpretations, and until and unless a scientific conclusion is given a philosophical identity, it doesn't prove anything one way or another, so far as philosophy is concerned.

(6) Suppose a scientist claims to have disproven the Law of Identity. What would the philosopher say? Would she feel the need to check the scientist's experiments for herself? Obviously not. Rather, she would simply point out that his conclusion is philosophical gibberish (for reasons that I needn't explain to this list), and that he erred, not necessarily in his experiments, but in the extrapolation of his experiments into the realm of philosophy.

(7) I realize this is a simplistic example. Other controversies, such as volition, are far more complex, since they appear to hinge on claims that are both philosophical and scientific. Even so, it is illegitimate to say (for example) that physiology has disproven volition, for the conclusions of this science, like every other, are open to conflicting philosophical interpretations.

(8) In short, we should always bear in mind the crucial difference between science per se and the philosophy of science. The latter is not itself a "scientific" discipline, but is a branch of philosophy. George H. Smith

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net> Peter Taylor, in the conclusion of his post, wrote: "The difference between Randian Objectivism (Rand's own words) and Objectivism (which includes Rand's own words and the philosophical words which will be written by others, about Objectivism, ON INTO THE FUTURE,) and asserting that all science was subsumed under philosophy and Objectivism

My fellow Atlanteans, am I stretching it a bit? Is this an end run? Scientific facts, at their most basic level are always consistent with Objectivism, but not strict Randian Objectivism which, though true within its context, cannot be infallibly true. If Objectivism is open, and to the greatest extent possible INFALLIBLE, AS IT IS PROVED, WITHIN A CONTEXT ON INTO INFINITY, then we will rarely be wrong. Am I making sense, or am I saying, "I can have my cake and eat it too?" $$$

I'm not sure if there are some words missing here or not (around "and asserting that all science was subsumed under philosophy and Objectivism"), so I may be missing something. But I will do my best to respond to Peter' comments as I understand them.

(1) I question the utility of the distinction drawn by Peter between Randian Objectivism (i.e., "Rand's own words") and Objectivism (i.e,. what others have written about Objectivism). In any case, I would never agree that "Objectivism," however defined, enjoys any innate superiority over other philosophical ideas, much less that it is in ANY sense "infallible."

(2) When we learn, memorize or repeat the ideas of another person, without having critically analyzed them for ourselves, then we know those ideas not as philosophy but as history, i.e, as the particular words and thoughts that someone else has articulated in the past. An authentic philosopher must rethink the ideas of another person for himself and base his convictions on his personal reasoning, rather than on what another person has said. This means that a philosophy is renewed every time it passes through the consciousness of another person, as he becomes convinced that it is fundamentally sound. During this process, however, it is almost inevitable (for reasons that I will not go into here) that some questions, doubts, and disagreements will occur to that person, so it is highly unlikely that the philosophy, as it emerges from his mind, will be identical in every detail to its original version.

(3) This is why I am highly suspicious of those "Objectivists" who profess total agreement with every philosophical idea that Ayn Rand ever expressed. For one thing, some aspects of Rand's theories (especially her epistemology) were quite sketchy -- which is why ITOE is called an "Introduction" -- and in many cases we simply don't know how she would have filled in the details or responded to potential criticisms; and in my judgment no philosophy should be accepted until it has weathered the test of criticism. I find it hard to believe that those Objectivists who assure us that Rand never erred, and that we should accept her philosophy as an integrated and coherent whole, since one part never conflicts with another, have actually gone through the laborious process of rethinking for themselves not only every step of her reasoning which she committed to paper, but also every step (both implicit and explicit) of which we have no direct knowledge, but can only surmise from inference and educated guesswork.  

(4) I am puzzled by Peter's claim that Objectivism (in contrast to Randian Objectivism) will "rarely be wrong" because it will be "to the greatest extent possible infallible, as it is proved, within a context on into infinity." For how do we know what future arguments and theories hold in store? Moreover, it is relatively easy to confirm or support a theory, if all one looks for is friendly evidence that seems to support it. I agree with Karl Popper that if we truly care about a theory, then we should do our best to falsify it, to bring it to the bar of contrary arguments and conflicting evidence in an honest effort to ascertain how well it holds up. This is another problem I have with (some) Objectivists, who seem allergic -- indeed, positively hostile -- to any serious criticism of Rand's ideas. Yet it is precisely this willingness to subject one's ideas to sustained criticism that separates a true philosophy from a religion.

(5) I don't recall that Rand had much if anything to say about the philosophy of science. The point of my earlier post was not to defend Objectivism per se, but the autonomy of philosophy itself. My ideas about the philosophy of science have been influenced by a number of writers, most notably Karl Popper (e.g., "Conjectures and Refutations") and Stephen Toulmin ("Human Understanding"). George H. Smith

From: "Peter Taylor" <solarwind47> Whew! I was off Atlantis and couldn't get on. It told me my original letter about Carefully Crafted Axioms was not sent so I had time to re-write it. Here is a better version. Ignore the first one.

Dennis wrote: "I accept the 3 primary axioms of Objectivism as long as Volition is left out of Consciousness. As George H. Smith has observed the validity of Volition hinges on both philosophical and scientific claims.  This removes it from axiom status.  I would include Causality in my list of Axioms because I don't believe a corollary status under Identity does it justice.

If Volition is not axiomatic, all assumptions derived from assuming volition as a valid model become suspect.  This is the heart of one of the great debates which Objectivism must deal with." End of Dennis's quote

How can we add Causality if we cannot point to it? How can we demonstrate, after the fact, that an act of a human raising his consciousness, has been caused. Please don't give me one of Bill Dwyer's

stale, circular linguistic arguments that, because I chose to do it, then I was "determined" to do it, by me.  Causality pertains to EVERYTHING in the universe except sentient, rational, volitionally conscious HUMANS. Any addendums to the short list of non-causal entities, composed only of humans, will await the emergence of a newly evolved, or genetically engineered species here on earth, or  a close encounter of the third kind. And, as people who have studied Objectivism know, we you said that, " . . . I don't believe . . ." you were not implying any mystical method of certainty, but only that the facts seems to have been demonstrated objectively to you. If I ever say the word "believe" I am sure all Objectivists will give me the benefit of the doubt. I don't see this as a great debate, and in fact, I do not wish to debate anyone. What I would like to do, is to speak to all Atlanteans. I may never be able to convince Dennis May, or Gayle Dean, or Bill Dwyer, or George H. Smith. However, I may be able to shed some light on the subject and convince some of those onlookers, Roger Bissell talks about. I can give intellectual ammunition to someone who may come to reason that my position may be the correct one. So, I quote Rand for them, not for the people who have read everything, insist that they have assimilated everything, and yet still do not agree with Rand. In their own thinking, they have gone beyond Objectivism.

On page 55 of "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," Ayn Rand writes that axiomatic concepts are:"The identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest." End of quote

So, in a sense, if someone disagrees with a proposed axiom and it requires further explanation, or you cannot point to it and say, "There it is," then it is not an axiom. It that sense, volition and causality MAY not be axioms, but could be corollaries.

Before I give demonstrations or examples for Causality and Volition, I want you to remember the Dictionary, the Randian, and Ellen Moore's definitions of Volition. Perhaps Dennis can supply us with a Scientific definition of Volition and always let us know if he is using it.

the dictionary definitions: "Volition: 1) an act of making a choice or decision, 2) the power of choosing or determining: Will."

Volition, in the most common Objectivist definition, as Barbara Branden recently said, means that we can raise or lower our level of  "conscious awareness," at will.

Ellen Moore provided this Objectivist definition: “Volition - a primary attribute of human consciousness given the power to initiate and sustain actions and operations regulating functions of awareness."

A demonstration for each position might be: Causality: A bright light shines and twinkles, and a tiny bell rings, just above a baby's crib, as a newly installed mobile revolves just within the babies reach. The baby watches the phenomena and is fascinated with the light and sound. Eventually the baby reaches up to touch it. The twinkling, ringing, revolving light causes the baby to be aware of the object.  The baby was caused to reach for the light during an act akin to that of somnambulism (an abnormal condition of sleep in which motor acts are performed.) When the agent causing the act of awareness and reaching, is removed from the baby's sight, the baby resumes a sleepy, twilight state of awareness. This is a basic stimulus / response seen everywhere in the animal kingdom.

Volition: A bright light shines and twinkles, and a tiny bell rings, just above a baby's crib, as a newly installed mobile revolves just within the babies reach. The baby watches the phenomena and is fascinated with the light and sound. Eventually the baby reaches up to touch it. The twinkling, ringing, revolving light causes the baby to be aware of the object, but now the baby is grasping at the light and sound and thinking about it. Thought is a Volitional activity. Now, perhaps two mobiles are presented to the baby, and the baby chooses one of the objects to focus on or grasp. Then, the baby has used the dictionary's definition of choosing between alternatives. What if both mobiles are now taken away from the baby, and the baby cries. You, the parent / scientist try to figure out what the baby wants. Eventually, through an "informed" trial and error (not hungry, not wet, does not want to be held) you realize the baby wants the mobiles placed above it again. When they are again placed above the baby, the baby stops crying. The baby has now Volitionally chosen a stimulus. The baby chooses and plays with one of the mobiles. It volitionally raises its consciousness and thinks about how this object is different from the other mobile and different from all the other objects it has seen.

"Thought is a volitional activity. The steps of its course are not forced on man by his nature or by external reality; they are chosen. Some choices are obviously better - more productive of cognitive success – than others. The point is that, whether right or wrong, the direction taken *is* a matter of choice, not of necessity.

The choices involved in performing a thought process are different in an important respect from the primary choice. These higher-level choices, as we may call them, are not irreducible. In their case it is legitimate to ask, in regard both to end and means: *why* did the individual choose as he did? What was the *cause* of his choice? Often, the cause involves several factors, including the individual's values and interests, his knowledge of a given subject, the new evidence available to him, and his knowledge of the proper methods of thinking.

The principle of causality does not apply to consciousness, however, in the same way that it applies to matter. In regard to matter, there is no issue of choice; to be caused is to be necessitated. In regard to the (higher level) actions of a volitional consciousness, however, "to be caused" does not mean "to be necessitated." OPAR

I propose a simple thought experiment, verifiable by any adult, who will perform two tasks in chronological order: 1)  Dennis, get a can of beer (Gayle can get a glass of [corked, not screw-top) wine if she prefers) and go sit in your lazy-boy lounger. Lay back and play Nathaniel Branden's tape, "Basic Relaxation and Ego Strengthening Device." "You are feeling very relaxed. Imagine you are floating on a cloud." Let your mind drift to the soothing words. Take a sip. Relax. Be happy.

2)   Before you fall asleep,  sit upright and pick up a technical book or article and begin reading it, striving for 100% reading comprehension.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you are SURE you are initiating the actions of your mind. But don't let me be the cause! Pick any task. Pick no task. Think. Don't think. Take another sip. Relax. Be happy!

Adding Causality as a corollary to Consciousness is not going to occur, because a multitude of free, non-causal acts of thinking can occur. I can point at my head and cause my mouth to say, "Right now, I am thinking volitionally about Volition. Ooops, a stray sexual fantasy involving {whatever turns you on) suddenly appeared, but now I am thinking about Volition again." It is obvious that Consciousness is Volitional and not Causal.

Adding Volition as an axiom, means I can point to myself thinking as an example of my volition, or I can view the effects of an act of volition, such as fluffing my pillow to my satisfaction, before I become non-volitional for a few hours.

Adding Volition as an axiom, or with adding it, with "emphasis and explanation" under Consciousness, is a task some Atlanteans are attempting. But who knows where it will go? Ellen Moore is encountering a lot of critical analysis, and even meeting a lot of resistance from Objectivists,

as she thinks out loud. We can see her modifying and changing what she writes, while retaining her original thoughts about Volition. She is trying to produce something new, and she is doing this in spite of, and with the help of Atlantis, with its occasional "Boo!" "Hiss!" emotionalism. For all this, I give her enormous credit. She is creating and producing, in a way respectful to the original inspiration given to her by Rand, and not tearing Objectivism down.  Ellen may end up with the same three axioms just as Rand wrote them. Or not. Peer review and time are the necessary ingredients.

I have always wondered about Ayn and those late night philosophical discussions she had with Nathan, Barbara, and others. Genius or not, she did not produce in a vacuum.  I am sure her books and philosophy would not be as good as they are, without the shared sense of psychological intimacy, and intellectual kinship she had with her inner circle of friends. I think we Atlanteans can add so much to our own lives, by being the friends we should be to each other. Of course being caustic and satiric are still allowed. Borg unit "DM 007," does humor compute as added spice?

Dennis, will you explain just how you would modify the axiom Consciousness as it pertains to humans (you know, those folks who settled a vast land and built a great nation, traveled to the moon, and wrote great novels like Atlas Shrugged, [I know, my examples are chauvinistic) and divorce Consciousness from Volition and add Causality? And please respond to this, WHEN YOU WANT TO, OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL without using your Conscious Volition? Peter Taylor

From: "George H. Smith" To: "Atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: ATL: Re: unpredictably determined Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 18:10:55 -0500 Dave Thomas wrote: "Consciousness arises from the brain.  The brain does this through complex interactions of chemicals and the structures of the brain. These interactions are so exceedingly complex so as to be utterly unpredictable due to limitations on our knowledge.  But if one understood every interactions and its significance, and understood every outside influence and its significance, and understood this for everybody and everything (basically, knew the present conditions of everything), then it could predict exact events into the future ad infinitum."

In his essay, "Of Clouds and Clocks," Sir Karl Popper points to some of the implications of this kind of physical (or "hard") determinism.

"[I]f physical determinism is right, then a physicist who is completely deaf and who has never heard any music could write all the symphonies and concertos written by Mozart or Beethoven, by the simple method of studying the precise physical states of their bodies and  predicting where they would put down black marks on their lined paper. And our deaf physicist could do even more: by studying Mozart's or Beethoven's bodies with sufficient care he could write scores which were never actually written by Mozart or Beethoven, but which they would have written had certain external circumstances of their lives been different: if they had eaten lamb, say, instead of chicken, or drunk tea, instead of coffee." (In "Objective Knowledge," Oxford University Press, 1979  p. 223.)

Popper concludes: "I believe all this is absurd; and its absurdity becomes even more obvious, I think, when we apply this method of physical prediction to a determinist."

Popper's chief argument against physical determinism is quite similar to that of Nathaniel Branden (which has been discussed previously on this last). In the conclusion of this argument Popper writes: "physical determinism is a theory which, if it is true, is not arguable, since it must explain all our reactions, including what appears to us as beliefs based on arguments, as due to *purely physical conditions.*" (p. 224)

I won't rehearse the details of this argument over again, but I would like to make some related points.

 

Suppose the determinist,  à la Popper, believes he has full access to all the physical facts he needs to tell us how a symphony by Mozart would have been written differently, if Mozart had suffered from a

headache on a particular night. So the physicist jots down the necessary black marks on paper and presents it to us as a fait accompli, while stating, "Here is how that hypothetical headache, by causing certain changes in Mozart's brain state, would have altered his  symphony."

"Fine, I say to the determinist, but how do you KNOW that this is what Mozart would have written? Your beliefs, after all, are determined not only by what you think you know about Mozart, but also by your own neural processes. So you must also have complete knowledge of your own brain states (those processes that compelled you to write this revised symphony) ; and this supposed knowledge, in turn, will be determined by the neural processes that were going on at the time that you studied your own brain; and any beliefs about those processes will, in turn, be determined by yet other neural processes  -- and so on, ad infinitum."

If the physical determinist is ever to escape this vicious regress, he must at some point render a JUDGMENT based on the available evidence. But all such judgments have normative implications, because they are based on a norm, or standard, of valid reasoning. To say, "All of the available evidence supports proposition X rather than Y." is implicitly to say, "We should therefore believe X  rather than Y" -- for it was with this purpose in mind that the investigation was launched in the first place. And there is simply no room for this kind of "should" or "ought" in a deterministic system.

Thus, we cannot incorporate epistemological judgments into a deterministic system, because knowledge claims require justification, and justification appeals to cognitive reasons rather than to physical causes. The determinist can insist to his heart's content that he has been determined to believe X by a host of physical causes, but these causes can never JUSTIFY his claim to know anything. For we justify propositions by rendering judgments, and the latter presupposes that we can assess arguments and evidence by their intrinsic merit, rather than being determined by physical conditions over which we have no control.

There is simply no escape from this dilemma, for the problem is at heart a logical one; it is a  matter of making sense, of uttering coherent propositions. If we cannot exercise normative judgments – assessments based on abstract standards of knowledge -- in an effort to decide which propositions are more reasonable than others, if we are determined to think as we must rather than to reason as we should, then concepts like "knowledge" and "truth" collapse into a sink of nonsense. George H. Smith

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro To: "Atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: ATL: The Status of Volition (was unpredictably determined) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 12:49:14 -0500

Dave Thomas wrote: "Right, determinism can't be scientifically proven for this reason (so far as I can see).  But I don't think free will can be proven in this way either for the same reason.  How can you say that an action or a thought wasn't predetermined without a complete knowledge of what may have predetermined that action or thought?  Explain to me how the notion of free will is falsifiable.  Otherwise, your argument doesn't say much."

Dave raises some fresh and important issues here, ones that I only hinted at in two earlier posts about the relationship between philosophy and science. ("Scientific Determinism, 8-8-00 and 8-10-00.) It is important to discuss what kinds of claims -- philosophical or scientific -- are being made in the dispute between determinism and volitionism, because only if we first know this can we hope to know what kinds of arguments and evidence will be relevant to those claims.

I will rest content with summarizing my views and then elaborate later, if necessary, depending on what kind of fire they draw.

(1) The case for volition is primarily philosophical,  not scientific. By this I mean that our subjective awareness of volition does not stem from specialized experience or technical experiments, but derives

instead from our common, everyday experience. We naturally believe that we have the capacity to make choices, because we know what it feels like to experience dissatisfaction (both mental and physical), consider various goals that may make us more satisfied, focus on a goal that we deem better then others, and then select from a number of alternatives a particular course of action (whether mental or physical) that we deem most likely to achieve that goal.

In other words, choice is implicit in our understanding of purposeful action, because we must select from various alternative in pursuit of goals.

(2) This is the subjective experience of choice. But what is the cognitive status of this experience? After all, people believe all kinds of things that are false and absurd, so why should this subjective experience of "free will" enjoy a status superior to any other?

(3) The problem here is that our experience of free will, of our power to choose among alternatives, is not an experience like any other. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is not a discrete experience at all, but is something that is implicit in many other experiences, and something on which our way of looking at the world has been grounded. This is particularly true of normative judgments that use "ought," "should," or some other prescriptive term. Many philosophers have pointed out that strict determinism wreaks havoc with ethics, since this discipline deals with normative judgments pertaining to "good" actions. What is less often realized, however, is that determinism also undercuts our COGNITIVE judgments, which are likewise prescriptive in character.  (I have already discussed this in an earlier post.)

(4) Conceptual knowledge depends on abstract standards, or norms, of judgment. Consider the Law of Non-Contradiction, which states that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. Now what is the import of this Law, if not to prescribe against accepting contradictory propositions? This law, in other words,  does not describe what cannot occur in reality; rather, it PRESCRIBES what should not occur in our minds. People hold contradictory beliefs all the time, so in this sense it is not true to say that contradictions cannot exist, for they can indeed "exist" (i.e., be accepted simultaneously) in the mind. Rather, the point is  that contradictory propositions (X versus Y) cannot both be TRUE,  so if one accepts X one SHOULD simultaneously reject Y (and vice versa), IF one wishes to acquire knowledge.

(5) Thus, according to the argument I present earlier, knowledge claims are inconsistent with strict determinism, because knowledge claims must be justified, this justification requires judgment, these cognitive judgments are normative in character, and determinism cannot accommodate any such notions of how we "ought to" or "should" believe. For if a leaf falls from a tree, can we say that it "should" have fallen otherwise? Of course not.  "Ought," as philosophers like to say, presupposes "can" -- i.e., the ability to choose. Thus, if all normative judgments are ruled out of court, the entire notion of attempting to justify a belief in the quest for knowledge becomes meaningless.

(6) This is why I believe that the case for volition is first and foremost philosophical rather than scientific. If, in the very quest for scientific verification, we must employ normative judgments of cognition, then all such investigations must presuppose our capacity to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable conclusions, to accept what is rational and reject what is irrational, whether in science or elsewhere. Thus, strictly speaking, volition is indeed non-falsifiable, for falsification presupposes the capacity to render cognitive judgments. (The problem here is similar to what Objectivists call "the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept," as when we attempt to "disprove" the laws of logic -- though I would not claim, as has one poster, that volition is "axiomatic." The case for volition is far from self-evident.)

(7) So where does this leave the case for determinism? The problem, of course, usually lies with the implacable reality and logic of causation. Since this post is already too long, I will only suggest that determinists read Arthur Koestler, Karl Popper, and other philosophers of science, who reject as artificial and unnecessary the dichotomy between mechanical "necessity" and "chance," and who defend instead some version of emergence theory (or what Popper calls "plastic control"). In any case, the determinist should at least consider the possibility that his problem is not with the subjective experience of volition, but with his unduly narrow conception of causation. This latter is one of the most complex and contested notions in the history of philosophy, so it simply won't do to invoke the word "causation" as if it automatically refutes the case for volition. George H. Smith

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro Why is it that, whenever I respond to Dennis May, I have flashbacks of riding a merry-go-round as a young boy? Oh well, at least Dennis was merciful in being brief, and for that I thank him.

Like Dennis, I shall be brief. And I shall also follow his lead in substituting pronouncements for arguments.

$$$

Dennis wrote (regarding the subjective experience of choice):

"This is what the subjective view from a neural network looks like."

So if I say, "I regret the choice I made," does this mean I am *really* saying, "I regret my neural network"? And, in telling us what our subjective view really is, exactly *how* did Dennis acquire this knowledge? (And I don't mean by reading books on physics or evolution.) Did he study the available evidence, evaluate the arguments pro and con, and then make what he regarded as a *reasonable judgment* on this issue? If so, then what does he mean by ...(oh, never mind. If I want another masochistic experience, I will find a dominatrix.)

$$$:

"Christians might argue that all "good" actions spring from a love of god."

And determinists might argue that all good judgments spring from neural networks.

$$$

"Working backwards from the answer you want to achieve to the assumptions you need to get there does not provide proof that your assumptions were the correct ones."

Scientists reason backwards all the time. They begin with a theory and then work backwards, via experiments and reasoning, in an effort to corroborate or falsify that conjecture. The validity of an argument has nothing whatever to do with the psychological process that suggested that argument.

 $$$

Dennis wrote (regarding my claim that determinism cannot account for prescriptive judgments):

"This is the leap of faith that allows the argument to continue.  A deterministic neural network gathers and processes information, feedback from the environment generates the "good" actions which sustain life.

Okay, so how can Dennis account for error and the vast diversity of beliefs among different individuals?We possess similar neural networks and we live in similar environments -- so why is it that people think in such dissimilar ways? Why do people hold radically different beliefs about the same fundamental issues? Yeah, I know, it has something to do with neural networks. Talk about a leap of faith.

$$$

Dennis wrote (regarding my statement that the Law of Identity is normative in character):

"A statement of elementary logic."

I was merely giving an example that would clarify my argument. Even so, it is far from being uncontroversial, for the normative character of logic has been a subject of debate among logicians for at least 150 years. (Why Peter even bothered to include this remark, I have no idea, unless his neural networks have a penchant for irrelevancies.)

$$$

"Your theory of knowledge determines your philosophy."

Finally, something we agree on. And I would hasten to add that a strict determinist can have no "theories" about anything, much less a theory of knowledge.

$$$:

"The feedback produces what we "ought to" or "should" believe in order to survive.  It also allows the tools of logical thought to further our survival."

Is there an echo in here? I would like to know how a deterministic feedback system can "allow" us to do anything. Plus, per my earlier query, I would like to know how a deterministic logic can account for error and different beliefs about fundamental matters, including matters of survival.  It seems that all of us are equally determined to have knowledge, but that some of us are more equally determined than others.

$$$

"Your suggestion is to take deterministic causation and turn it into indeterminism using the latest fad created by philosophers of science. This would be about the twentieth such fad which has come along.  There is emergence theory then there is it's bastardized version intended to give cover for the creation of indeterminism out of determinism.  It doesn't wash."

I said nothing about the indeterminism of quantum physics. Emergence theory has nothing to do with this. (Tell me, Dennis, have you read anything at all on emergence theory?) As for the statement, "It doesn't wash," does this mean that I SHOULD not accept emergence theory, BECAUSE it is unjustified? Christ, I was just becoming convinced that my fondness for emergence theory is determined by my neural networks -- unlike the neural networks in Dennis' brain, which seem to prefer a more mechanistic approach -- and then Dennis throws another "should" in my face. (Those neural networks appear to be contentious little devils who can't agree on much of anything.)

$$$

I eagerly await Dennis' next reply, so I can see if he will break his previous record for the number of times he mentions "neural networks."  (Actually, this is not a bad mantra. It has alliteration, rhythm -- and, if repeated endlessly, it has the power to clear the mind of all troublesome thoughts.) George H. Smith

 

From: "Jeff Olson" <jlolson Dennis,   I once predicted that you would stir up a "hornet's nest" here – and look what you've done!

 

  Here's my take on your "philosophy versus science" discussion.  In a (very cramped) nutshell: science provides us with information about the physical world, while philosophy evaluates and interprets this

information -- especially as it pertains to value and meaning.   The function of a electrical circuit would be an example of purely scientific information; in principle, anything to do with *how* the

circuit works, including theoretical assumptions concerning electron flow, quantum effects, etc., are scientific questions.

 

  If one asks, however, what this information *means* to us -- or even what the nature of a reasonable theory is -- then the answer is, in principle, philosophical.

 

  So, with this very condensed distinction in mind, is the question of determinism essentially philosophical or scientific?

 

  At base, the question of whether or not *everything* is caused is a scientific one.  The physical implications of this theory are also, in principle, scientific.  The way that we incorporate these implications or information into our self-perception and social theories is, in principle, philosophical.

 

  I'm led by the above to the rather tremulous conclusion that the question of whether or not determinism -- i.e, all things have physical causes -- is essentially a scientific one.  The problem at

issue is not *what* we should make of the claim that all things are caused, but rather whether the specific claim itself is valid.

  The claim that all things have physical causes is an induction from our observation that nothing seems to happen without something making it happen.  George's telling criticism, it seems to me, is not that

determinism isn't ultimately apprehensible through science – though it may not be -- but rather that one cannot "somehow observe and understand raw data without bringing theoretical presuppositions to

bear upon that data."

 

  This is, in my view, unquestionably true; yet though the statement itself is philosophical in nature, the "theoretical presuppositions" at hand are scientific.  Even if science proves incapable of proving

determinism, it is still a scientific question at heart (though how we'd interpret the lack of a decisive scientific demonstration for determinism would fall under the aegis of philosophy).

 

  In the end, I think, both philosophy and science are inextricably intertwined -- each informing the other.  As George put it, "...the bottom line is that there exists a symbiotic relationship between

empirical observations and theories used to interpret those observations."  On top of that, there are philosophical theories required to decide what would constitute a reasonable scientific theory....

 

  I don't know if it's the heat, but I'm feeling the sudden need for a beer.

 

Jeff

 

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

 

I think I deserve some kind of prize or something for generating the most discussion from a simple correction.

 

GHS

 

 

 >Dave Thomas wrote:  A small comment.... I hope that most determinists live as if free will

 > > existed.  To live life as if determinism were true would make for a very  dreary existence.

 

Jimbo responds

 

 >This is a very good example of how impossible it is to escape from the reality of volition.  You have explicitly or implicitly relied on several concepts here which are firmly grounded in volition.

Explicitly yes I have.  But that's the point of what I said.  We all think like we have free will, but that doesn't mean that we do.

 >Determinists just love to commit the stolen concept fallacy, and variants on it.  The want to keep using concepts that depend upon the oppositve of their theory.

 Right.  And why not?  If we only processed information and acted on it (in the very determined way that we do) without the idea of free will being part of the equation, humanity wouldn't survive very long.  Therefore, when evolution was working out the kinks of rational thought, an assumption

Of free will was necessarily part of the equation to make a viable species. So I'm as much a victim of my limited mind as you are.  But you should at least admit that it's possible that the assumption of free will, upon which the human mind operates, is really an incorrect though practical assumption.

 

I apologized for using "free-willer" terms there, but it sounds quite ridiculous to write without them.... damn that very practical but very fallible hard-wiring of mine. Dave

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro Bill Dwyer wrote: "As you can tell, I'm not a Popperian.  I don't believe that in order for an idea to have content, one must be able to conceive of a situation in which it could be false.  In fact, Popper's falsibility criterion turns out, upon examination, to be self-refuting.  Can one conceive of a sitution in which Popper's principle could itself be falsified?

Evidently, not according to Popper, in which case, by virtue of its own content, the principle is itself tautological and, therefore, devoid of content."

 

This is a misrepresentation of Karl Popper, who uses the principle of falsification to distinguish between science and philosophy (or "metaphysics," as he often calls it). And Popper concedes that this

"line of demarcation" is philosophical rather than scientific.

Popper was often misrepresented (e.g., by Brand Blanshard in "Reason and Analysis") as a kind of logical positivist in reverse, i.e., as one who claimed that falsification rather than verification is a necessary condition of  meaningfulness. But Popper, who was actually a stern critic of positivism, never said this; he never claimed that non-falsifiable propositions are meaningless or "devoid of content."

In any case, I don't think this misunderstanding is especially germane to the dispute between Bill and Ross Levatter. I took Ross' challenge -- What in principle could disprove soft determinism? --  not as a defense of the entire Popperian agenda (some of which I disagree with as well), but as an attempt to clarify the kind of claim that is being made by the soft determinist.

Bill wrote:

"At this point, I don't see how [soft determinism] could be proven false, just as I don't see how free will could be proven true (short of recreating the identical situation and observing a different choice), but then I don't see how the law of identity could be proven false either.  Does that make the law of identity tautological, i.e., does it deprive it of philosophical content?  I don't think so.  Same with the

law of causality.  What would prove the law of causality false?  A chaotic state of affairs?  No, because we could still ask, "What is *causing* the chaos?"

 

I'm not sure what Bill means by "the law of causality" (i.e., I'm not sure exactly how he would formulate it). I'm certain that he would not insist that existence itself must have a cause, since this would be to commit the infamous "fallacy of the stolen concept." (Causality presupposes existence, not vice versa). Perhaps Bill would say that every event must have a cause. But this formulation does not specify what the nature of that "cause" must be. It does not say, for example, that every event must be caused by a preceding *event,* but leaves open the possibility that an event can be caused by an volitional agent instead. And this agency theory of causation is an essential ingredient of the Objectivist theory of volition.

Bill wrote: "I regard reasons as *final* causes, al la Aristotle.  We can say that we did it, beCAUSE of reason X -- because we believed it was the right thing to do or because we wanted to do it, and had no reason not to.  Granted, reasons are not *efficient* causes in Aristotle's sense of physical causation -- I'm not a reductionist or an epiphenomenalist -- but they are a form of causation nonetheless."

I find it curious that Bill would invoke the name of Aristotle, since it is primarily Aristotelians who have defended volition by appealing to an agency theory of causation. It should also be noted that Aristotle's "final cause" is not a "cause" in the same sense that most people think of that term today; rather, it is akin to what we now call an "explanation." Of Aristotle's four causes -- final, formal, material, and efficient -- only the latter corresponds to a cause in the modern sense. (Few people today would say, as did Aristotle, that a block of marble is the "material cause" of a sculpture, but they would agree that the marble is relevant to a complete explanation of how that sculpture was made.)

If Bill's soft determinism is predicated on final causes -- i.e., human purposes -- then to say that all human action is  "determined" (by reasons, motives, or whatever) is merely to say that all human action is purposeful. I think this is what Ross was getting at in suggesting that soft determinism is tautological, for the idea of "purpose" is essential to the very meaning of "human action" itself.

If all that Bill means to say is that we can *explain* human actions in terms of reasons and motives, then I do not disagree in the least. But why this qualifies a type of determinism, whether "soft" or otherwise, is something that I have never been able to understand.  I realize that a good deal more needs to be said about this. George

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro Bill Dwyer, in a reply to Brant Gaede ("Free Will, Determinism, and Atheism"), wrote: "Do you mean, are determinism and free will mutually exclusive?  In the sense in which *I've* defined "free will", yes absolutely. Compatibilists consider determinism and free will to be compatible (duh!), but they are using a different definition of "free will" than I am.  The definition that I am using is one that is characteristic of Objectivism.  Objectivism holds that we are indeed capable of choosing either of two alternatives simultaneously -- that under one and the same set of conditions, we are capable of choosing either to think or not to think."

And, in his recent reply to Ross Levatter, Bill wrote: [M]y view of soft determinism differs from free will in that "free will", at least according to  Objectivism, maintains that you could have done otherwise, whereas soft determines denies that possibility."

This is a difficult problem to get a handle on, so let me see if I can break it down.

Suppose that, at time T, I am deliberating whether I should continue working in an effort to meet a writing deadline (D) or go to a movie (M) instead. And suppose I decide that the writing can wait a few more hours, so I choose the movie.

In this situation we would normally say that I have made a choice. Confronted with two alternatives, D and M, I deliberated and then decided on M..  "But wait," says the soft determinist, "this was not really a free choice at all." Why not? "Because you had a *reason* for choosing M;  and, given that reason, you  could not help but to choose M. And your reason, in turn, was determined by some other reason, etc, etc.; so, given this soft chain of motivational 'causes,'  you  could not help but to act as you did."

I agree that if we could once again replicate the identical conditions that were present at time T, then I would indeed go to the movie as before. But among those conditions was my *decision* to choose M instead of D. It was not enough that I valued M, for I also valued D. It was not enough that I had reasons to choose M, for I also had reasons to choose D. It was not enough that I had a motive for M, for I also had a motive for D. So what in fact made the crucial difference between these two options was my *choice* of M over D.

Thus, if in "the same set of conditions," we include my *choice* to pursue option M, then it obviously follows that, given those same conditions, I would once again pursue M -- for it was precisely that choice that finally *motivated* me to pursue M rather than D.

"But wait," the soft determinist will again say, "what was it that *motivated* you to make that particular choice?" Well, I was *already* motivated to pursue M, as I was similarly motivated to pursue D (i.e., I had reasons to do either.) Indeed, had I not been so motivated to pursue both options, there would have been no need to decide between them. As for the specific motivation that led me to choose M over D, this was influenced by my deliberation and, ultimately, by my conclusion that my writing could wait a few more hours.

"Aha!" the soft determinist retorts. "It was your reasoning that ultimately determined your decision, so given that same reasoning, you would necessarily make the same decision."  No, not necessarily. I could have easily reasoned in the same way -- i.e., I could have decided that the deadline was not urgent -- while deciding to pass on the movie and write anyway.

"Not at all," says the soft determinist, "for you had reasons for choosing M originally, and if those same reasons were again present, you would necessarily be motivated to choose M again." This doesn't follow at all, unless we include my choice (my decision to pursue M) as one of those reasons. Only in this case does it follow that I would once again pursue M, because that choice was the deciding motivational factor that "caused" me to act as I did.

We thus see that the argument of the soft determinist doesn't hold water, unless we exclude choice from the motivational complex that "caused" my action. But to exclude the element of choice beforehand from "the same set of conditions" is to gerrymander those conditions in such a way that the soft determinist must always emerge victorious, by definition. George H.Smith

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro Bill wrote: "My position is that our *choices* are motivated, not that our choices motivate our actions.  I suppose you could say that our choices "cause" our actions, in a sense, but I wouldn't say that they "motivate" our actions.  My position is that in the face of conflicting motives, the strongest ones will out."

And:   "I would say that not only was your choice *influenced* by both your deliberation and your conclusion but also that it was *caused* by them. Again, the *strength* of your motivation is relevant.  If your desire to attend the movie were less compelling than your desire to finish the writing, then you would have finished the writing, notwithstanding that it would wait a few more hours.  I don't deny that

we can have conflicting motives, but there has to be a reason why we choose one rather than the other, and obviously, it can't be the choice itself."

 

Suppose I am deliberating between working on a deadline (D) and going to a movie (M). "I really need to write," I tell myself in an internal dialogue, "but maybe a few hours more won't matter. -- But it will

matter, since I can get a lot done in two or three hours.--  But that's assuming that I will actually work during that time, which may not be the case, so I would at least be better off getting away from the

pressure for a while, so I can relax. -- But that sounds like another one of your phony baloney excuses to keep from writing. -- Well, maybe it is to some extent, but there's also an element of truth to it. --

There you go rationalizing again, when what you really need to do is bite the bullet and ...Oh, the hell with it; I'll go to the movie.

This dialogue, as any writer can attest, is a realistic example of the deliberative process. And notice how this internal dialogue ends, namely, with the *choice* simply to stop thinking about the matter and go with M, which at the time seemed preferable.

 

There is a therefore a sense in which Bill is right when he says that our choices do not motivate our actions. I was motivated to see the movie prior to the deliberation (or I would not have deliberated in the first place). I chose M because I already had a desire for M; I did not suddenly acquire the desire (the motive) for M after choosing it.  (I said that Bill is right "in a sense," because there are cases where our choices do function as motives, as when we say, "I chose to do this so I'll stick with it, by God, no matter what it takes.")

My specific choice of M over D is expressed in the words, "Oh, the hell with it; I'll go to the movie." In other words, I decided not to *think* about the matter further and simply went with my strongest inclination at the time. But Bill is not right is saying that my "strongest motive" determined me to *choose* M.  Rather, this was the strongest motive *because* I decided (chose) to stop the deliberation at a particular point in time. Had I deliberated a bit longer, or a bit differently (e.g., had I chosen to focus on other features of these options), then I might have chosen D instead.

Bill, of course, won't be satisfied with this. He will demand to know what caused my decision to stop deliberating. Well, to this I would say that I, a volitional agent, was the cause of my decision. I decided not to think about the matter further, and that was that.

 

But surely this choice "not to think" was motivated by something. Yes, it may have been motivated by frustration, fatigue, or perhaps by my conviction that further deliberation was pointless. In any case,

although these may have been contributory factors that influenced my choice, they were not the *cause* of my choice to stop thinking. It was I, a volitional agent, who was the cause of that choice.

 

Let's assume that it was a feeling of frustration that exercised the strongest influence on my decision to stop deliberating. In Bill's terminology, this motive of frustration would then constitute the *cause* of that decision. But surely this frustration must have been caused by something else. Yes -- if we adopt Bill's causal terminology (which I think is misleading) we might say that this frustration was caused by my conviction that further deliberation would be pointless. So what caused this conviction? Well, it was most likely my sense of frustration that caused me to believe this. In other words, my frustration fed off my conviction, which in turn increased my frustration, which in turn strengthened my conviction, etc. etc.

Note what is going on here. The deliberative process involves a kind of feedback loop among conflicting motives and reasons (or excuses, in the case of writers). Motives do not extend backwards in a linear temporal chain, but feed off of one another during the dynamic and interactive process of deliberation.  This is why the search for a temporal "first cause" of  my decision (to chose M) is a futile endeavor -- and this is why any causal terminology that suggests this kind of  temporal chain can prove so misleading. Reasons that contribute to the deliberative process do not function like physical causes. (It makes no sense, for example, to speak of "contradictory causes," but it makes perfect sense to speak of "contradictory reasons.")

 

To summarize thus far: There was indeed a reason why I chose M over D, namely, my decision to stop thinking about the matter and go with my strongest inclination at the time.  And there were also contributory reasons (e.g., my conviction)and motives (e.g., my frustration)  that influenced my decision not to deliberate further. But, strictly speaking, the *cause* of that choice was the volitional agent commonly known as George Smith, who has the power to initiate, suspend, or terminate a process of thought. My choice may have been influenced by many reasons and motives, but I was still the cause of that choice.

Again, Bill will not be happy with this explanation. He will insist that my choice not to deliberate further must have been caused by some prior motive. And I, on the other hand, will insist that Bill is confusing reasons and motives with sufficient causes. When I am confronted with alternatives over which I can exercise control, I can choose to think (or not) about those alternatives, deliberate (or not) for a certain period of time, and focus (or not) on selective features of those alternatives.

 

Bill wrote:

 

"The problem with free will is that it says we can choose either of two conflicting motives  simultaneously, with no reason, purpose or motive *for making the choice*.  Admittedly, free will does not deny that one can be motivated to choose either alternative; what it denies is that one can be motivated to choose *between* them (i.e., to *favor* either alternative). In other words, what it maintains is that one can make that choice for no preferential purpose whatsoever.  This is completely

antithetical to the concept of living organisms as goal-directed entities.  Free will eliminates purpose as the basis for choice and introduces an element of arbitrariness into human action."

 

I have already explained why I do not think this is a fair representation of the volitionist position. And, as Ross Levatter has also suggested, I think this problem is mainly owing to Bill's failure to distinguish clearly between cognitive reasons and psychological motives, on the one hand, and necessary causes, on the other hand. To speak of  "necessary causes" brings to mind a temporal chain that extends indefinitely into the past, but this physicalistic model is highly misleading when applied to (cognitive) reasons and (psychological) motives.

 

It is simply untrue to claim that  "free will eliminates purpose as the basis for choice and introduces an element of arbitrariness into human action." On the contrary, as Aristotle pointed out, "a man is the origin of his actions, and deliberation is concerned with those which it is within the power of the deliberator to perform." (Ethics, 1112B32-34). In other words, if we did not believe that it is within our power to choose among different means in pursuit of a goal, we would never deliberate in the first place.

George H. Smith

 

From: DXIMGR@aol.com

Dear list members,

 

Bill Dwyer wrote, responding to (what I see as devastating critiques by) George Smith:

 

[George] > When I am confronted with alternatives over which I can  exercise control, I can choose to think (or not) about those  alternatives, deliberate (or not) for a certain period of time,  and focus (or not) on selective features of those alternatives. [Bill]

 

Yes, you have that ability, but you don't exercise it arbitrarily.

It seems that, in Bill's world view the concept of arbitrary choice is a contradiction in terms. Choice, by definition in his view, is never arbitrary. What is not arbitrary has some precedent cause. Therefore, all

actions, which by their nature precede from choices, are determined. Determinism rules the day.

 

Ironically, for Dennis May, there is no such thing as choice, since what appears to us as choice is a result of our neural networks, which are deterministic. Again, determinism rules the day.

 

It seems unfair. If we have choice, determinism wins. If we don't have choice, determinism wins. Free will wins only on the condition of utter arbitrariness. Does this really account for our common notions of choice?

 

Ignoring Dennis for the moment (I'm at my 3 satiric attacks per week against any individual poster), let's ask Bill if it is CONCEIVABLE to him that arbitrary choices can be made:

 

1) My wife wants to go out to eat, and I agree. She offers two suggestions, both of which I like. I tell her I'll prefer whichever she chooses. Now her choice may be deterministic to *her*, but surely from my vantage point it is not deterministic to me. Yet, I speak truly when I say I'll prefer whichever

she chooses. She chooses Wellington's, a delightful upscale restaurant here in Green Bay. I prefer it. However, had she chosen Black & Tan, a delightful upscale restaurant here in Green Bay, I would have preferred that. Can he seriously say my preferences determined my choice when, per hypothesis,

someone else's choice determined my preferences?

 

2) What if I said, "Flip a coin; heads it's Wellingtons, tails it's Black & Tan"? Assuming a fair coin and a fair toss, it's unpredictable and in a strict sense random what my preference and choice will be.  Would Bill say it is nonetheless determined?

 

3) What if I decided to devote my life to proving Bill Dwyer wrong (which, contrary to what some list-members think, is not actually the case)? I therefore began to act in a completely arbitrary fashion. I would shine my shoes with mud, use my belt for a tie and vice-versa, put cream in my coffee when I really like it black, etc. While it is true that I have a reason for my OVERALL course of action ("to prove Bill Dwyer wrong") it is NOT true that I have that reason for performing each of my actions. My reason for performing each individual action is "to act in an arbitrary way," but that does not "explain" my action, for had I chosen to use sugar rather than cream, it would have equally been explainable with the same rationale. The only way to explain my SPECIFIC choices related to my GENERAL program of acting arbitrarily is to say I simply CHOOSE them without reasons. Bill seems committed to claiming NO ONE can EVER act arbitrarily. Since Objectivists spend so much time attacking people for acting arbitrarily and without commitment to reason, this seem strange.

4) I'm in Las Vegas at the roulette table. I put my money on red. No reason. I'm quite aware that there is an equal chance it will come up black. I want to play and have to choose either red or black, so I choose one. They are equally far from me. I subjectively "like" both colors equally. The words "red" and "black" are equally mellifluent to my ears. I just choose one. Is Bill REALLY willing to say what I've just described is INCONCEIVABLE to him.

5) I'm an amnesiac, unaware of what my prior short-term thoughts were. Such people have been described in the neurology literature, with brain lesions such that you can have a perfectly normal conversation with them, but 10 minutes later they don't remember ever having met or conversed with you. They live in a "perpetual now". Obviously, we don't want to grant much to such examples in developing our view of epistemology, any more than we want to use lifeboat situations to develop ethics. But if we grant such people are still human and conscious (and they are talking with us), surely it's reasonable to ask if they, at least, have free will, or whether they, like everyone else in Bill's view, succumb to soft determinism. They make a choice to do something, A, when they could have done B. They get distracted for a few minutes (doing neither A nor B) and remember nothing of their prior deliberations. For them, nothing has changed, except they no longer remember their prior deliberations. They deliberate again (I say "again", for in reality that is the case, though subjectively it would be more accurate to say they deliberate anew for what to them is the first time). Now they choose B, when they could (again) have chosen A.

Isn't that what Bill considers a counterexample to determinism? Is Bill to say that free will exists for those suffering brain lesions, but for healthy people, soft determinism must be true? What kind of choice is that?  :-) Ross

From: "Gayle Dean" <gwdean Ross Levatter wrote in reply to Bill Dwyer:  > I don't, in fact, satirize all positions with which I disagree. I satirize  positions that are easily satirized because they so wildly fly in the face of  common sense; and I satirize positions whose proponents, despite repeated attempts to deal with them using the standard methods of philosophic dialog,  seem determined (so to speak) to repeat themselvesrather than grappling with  substance.

And George Smith wrote:  >I made an honest and reasonable attempt to deal with the objections of soft determinism, but I was met with a recitation of a definitional catechism, along with the absurd charge that I am defending choices that are supposedly unmotivated and arbitrary. I wish Bill  would consider the possibility that he is not dealing with a moron who would commit the obvious blunders that he attributes to me.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I must agree with Ross, George and Ellen.  I have written twenty long ATL posts from every angle imaginable, trying to get Bill to address a SINGLE point regarding his inconsistent application of ONE principle, and regardless of how plain I word it or how many times I reformulate it and repeat it, he manages to either sidestep it, switch contexts, answer a question not asked or repeat stock mantras that are irrelevant. I have finally given up.

That said, I will still defend Bill's argument for determinism-- against Ross' brain-tumor patient example:

I've read all of Oliver Sacks popular works and he does indeed make the case Ross mentions about the brain tumor patient who--in essence-- appears to be capable of making different decisions under the same circumstances. But  Sack's book -- "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" was published in 1985 --over fifteen years ago and in the field of neuroscience --fifteen years ago might just as well be the dark ages.  In fact, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, in his new book "The Feeling of What Happens" relates his experiments with this same problem of short-term memory loss in his patients who have brain damage or tumor. With the help of the latest technology (MRI Imaging, etc.) , and case studies, Damasio's studies with patients with damaged brains show a completely different picture of the foundations and workings of consciousness.   And Damasio's conclusions in these studies form part of the base of his overall thesis on consciousness.

While Ross' example might be a good case against determinism, if it were true -- I believe Damasio's work disproves Sack's conclusions.  I can't find my book to quote from, but Damasio's patient David [?] has brain-damage and NO long-term memory and cannot remember anything beyond the first five minutes, just like Sack's patient).   But Damasio has found that core consciousness (which records long-term memory) remains intact on the core-conscious level, and the records of long past experiences and emotions are still available -- to assist David --albeit without his conscious knowledge --

in his present five-minute, short-term world.  In other words, David's core consciousness is still operative even while his higher level, short-term consciousness is damaged or destroyed. David still remembers (on a subconscious level) many of his previous experiences and emotional reactions to things -- and those stored memories are drawn from and used on a conscious level in David's current decision-making. So David makes decisions using past experience as a guide, and what appears to be "different decisions under the same circumstances" is in fact, not.  David does not understand why he feels or thinks the way he does...he cannot remember his reasons for his present reactions to people and events, but Damasio has shown that David's "subconscious" core consciousness has recorded and saved his experiences and they are utilized by David,without his awareness.

 

Ross says that Sacks' patient demonstrates that one is capable of making arbitrary decisions, decisions that might indicate  that a person is indeed capable of "choosing otherwise" i.e., choosing a different course of action under the exact same circumstances...thus evidence against determinism. If Sacks'

speculations were true this might be the case, but  modern neuro-science and Damasio's work, in particular refutes Sack's conclusions in this regard, as far as I could tell.

 

Gayle Dean

 

From: DXIMGR@aol.com Dear list-members, I thought a fellow list-member was being perhaps a little harsh when s/he said, in a personal note to me about Bill Dwyer I've been allowed to quote from:

----

I often have the impression, when I read [Bill Dwyer's] replies to posts, that he starts replying before he's even finished reading, that he answers paragraph by paragraph as he goes along, with no attempt to grasp the over-all message, and still less attempt to understand nuances.

One image which I have of Bill's mind is that it's like a rolidex (sp?) with set answers to issues A - Z.

It seems that certain phrases trigger pre-packaged responses -- responses which he's repeated time and

time again with little variation.

...

I think he *is* serious about philosophical subjects, but that there's something wrong with the way he processes such that he keeps going round and round the same grooves and doesn't truly *register* anything that might push him out of the grooves.

He's frustrating.

-----

While fully willing to grant this fellow-poster's point about the level of frustration Bill elicits, I thought the point that "he starts replying before he's even finished reading, that he answers paragraph by paragraph as he goes along, with no attempt to grasp the over-all message, and still less attempt to understand nuances" was a little much. Then I read Bill's response to my satire "Stop me before I choose again", cleverly titled "Re: Stop me before I choose again".

 

Bill writes:

[quoting my character]  >> Killer: "You ask that as if I had a choice. I was determined to do it. Given the circumstances, I couldn't have done otherwise."

[Bill responding]

 >First of all, soft determinism does not deny that we make choices.

Yet later, in responding to another argument, Bill writes, quite clearly I'd say:

 >Central to the doctrine of soft determinism, as to any form of determinism, is the view that that actor could *not* have chosen differently. Now, Bill, I'm going to ask you to do something for all the people following along online. Explain why it is wrong to say "Given the circumstances, I couldn't have done otherwise" when it is right to say "Central to the doctrine of soft determinism...is the view that that actor could *not* have chosen differently." And explain to the readers why you think it is correct

to describe an action as a choice even though you agree that "GIVEN the circumstance, [the actor] couldn't have done otherwise".

But Bill has more problems than just explaining the above to you readers. For example, Bill quotes my satire:

 

 >> Cop: "You mean to say you CHOSE to do this, and for THAT very reason  you were DETERMINED to do this."

 >>Killer: "Exactly, once I had made my choice, THAT is what determined what  I'd do."

 >> Cop: "But could you have chosen otherwise?"

Killer: "Yes and no. I could have so chosen; but then THAT decision would  have DETERMINED what I did. It's not like I have free will about these things, of course; it's merely that I could have chosen differently."

Bill responds:

 >What??  This is nonsense.  No soft determinist would say anything like this. Central to the doctrine of soft determinism, as to any form of determinism, is the view that that actor could *not* have chosen differently.

Now in this and previous posts, Bill has stated that (part of) what determines one's action is one's choices. How is this to be interpreted? Are choices independent variables that contribute to the action, or dependent epiphenomena that are themselves explained by more fundamental causal factors (such as Dennis May's neural networks)? If the latter, we find ourselves on the road to hard determinism. If the former, what is the point of Bill's strong objection ("This is nonsense.")? I very clearly stated that if the killer had chosen differently whatever action he chose would have been determined. This is Bill's position, whether he now wishes to acknowledge it or not. Bill, to be frank, it's one thing if people simply think you're foolishly wrong on a position. It's another when they think you're constantly shifting your foolishly wrong position to desperately win an argument, as if there's some prize given out on ATL, and not even for correct reasoning, but simply for duration of argument.

I'm sorry to keep dumping on Bill here, but what do those committed to honest philosophical debate, where some effort to understand and not distort one's opponent's position is taken as a measure of rectitude and civility, think of the following?

[Bill, quoting my satire]

 >>Cop: "Your position is that you killed all these people, chose to do so  for reasons of your own, methodically planned and carried out your plan, but that you couldn't have done otherwise because you were determined (by outside causes) to do this."

 >>Killer: "I usually don't find police so philosophically astute. That's it exactly."

 

[and Bill jumps in}

 

 >No soft determinist would say that his choices are determined by *outside* causes.  He would say that his values and motives -- his internal psychological state -- determines them.

 

Now here is the entirety of what I said in that passage:

 

 >>Cop: "Your position is that you killed all these people, chose to do so for reasons of your own, methodically planned and carried out your plan, but that you couldn't have done otherwise because you were determined (by outside causes) to do this."

 >>

 >>Killer: "I usually don't find police so philosophically astute. That's it exactly."

 >>

 >>Cop: "And one of the "outside" causes is your CHOICE  (YOUR choice) to so act."

 >>

 >>Killer: "With reasons, yes. I mean, it's not as if I come up with reasons, preferences, or motives arbitrarily. It's not as if human beings are capable of generating reasons ex nihilo. It's not as if we can spontaneously emit self-generated preferences. Everything has to observe causal law. Everything is therefore determined."

 

Again, I have to ask Bill why he thinks I'm distorting his position (rather than simply showing his actual position to be humorously far-fetched) when I say one can't do otherwise than what one did because actions are determined by causes that include one's choices, reasons, preferences, and motives. Does Bill NOT agree with my killer/philosopher when he says that human beings are not capable of generating reasons ex nihilo (out of nothing), that we can't emit self-generated preferences (preferences which are not themselves the result of some at root external influence)? Surely Bill MUST agree with the killer on this, else he's be dangerously close to being an advocate of free will.

 

Bill, please estimate for the readers if your rejoinder "No soft determinist would say that his choices are determined by *outside* causes.  He would say that his values and motives -- his internal psychological state – determines them" would have been as effective had you chosen to add the very next line in the satire: "Cop: "And one of the "outside" causes is your CHOICE  (YOUR choice) to so act." Killer: "With reasons, yes."?

Bill goes into a lengthy discussion of how soft determinism doesn't lead to a rejection of ethical or legal responsibility. I am aware of that. Perhaps that is why Bill will be unable to quote any passage of my satire that suggests otherwise. My arguments were entirely epistemological, not ethical or legal. The mere fact I chose a killer and cop as my philosophical protagonists in a fictional dialog does not imply my arguments dealt with legal issues (I didn't even seriously discuss the insanity plea, Bill; that

was a laugh line.)

Then we come to a section that I think really shows Bill's confusion on this issue:

 

 >> Killer: "I decided that if a coin flip led to heads coming up, I'd spray  the crowd with bullets from my high-powered automatic weapon."

 >>

 >> Cop: "Isn't that sort of arbitrary?"

 >>

 >> Killer: "Well, the coin flip, yes. The decision, no. Whimsical, perhaps, but certainly not arbitrary. It functioned as a reason to perform an action; actions are not causeless.

 

[Bill responds}

 

 >Normally, when someone flips a coin, he does so because he needs to make a decision between two alternatives, both of which are equally acceptable, so he flips a coin as a means of deciding.  In this case, it's rather implausible to think that a killer would operate in this manner, although I suppose its conceivable.  In any case, it says nothing against soft determinism, as far as I can see.  I've already granted Ross's point about arbitrary choices, which I thought was a good one.

----

That's it? "It's rather implausible to think that a killer would operate in this manner." I think Bill underestimates the value of fiction for making philosophic points. Rand would be disappointed.

 

A coin flip is a tool, a literary tool in this case, but also a tool for decision making. Bill's point is that our preferences are reasons, and therefore our actions taken because of our preferences are determined (by our reasons). What if one has no preferences? In a perverse interpretation of Austrian economics, which says we reveal our preferences in our actions, Bill argues that whatever we choose reveals our preferences and therefore was determined by our preferences, and THEREFORE we couldn't have done differently. So obviously, he has to deal with how people handle choice in the face of indifference (a wide area of study in economics).

Bill seems to think it's an answer to say that if you were choosing between A and B, you can toss a coin and decide that if heads comes up you do A, if tails you do B; then if it comes up heads, that means you are determined to do A because of the coin toss (your reason, which determines matters for

you).

 

But that doesn't take serious account of the fact the coin toss is just a tool. You could have done B using the same coin and the same result as well as a rule that is formally identical to the one above: If heads comes up you do B, if tails comes up you do A. The fact with which Bill refuses to grapple

is that if you could do A or B depending on an (arbitrary) toss of a coin, that is just another way of saying you could do A or B, whichever you choose. Which is another way of saying we have free will. Which motivated me to write a fictional story of a killer who obviously has chosen on his own to gun

people down, and humorously explain it by saying he was determined by the fact the coin came up heads. Humor doesn't work when explained, but philosophy does.

 

Bill concludes:

 

 >Ross, it's not that I object to satires per se.  It's just that this one strikes me as glib and irresponsible, in that you haven't taken the time to understand the position that you're satirizing.

 

Gee, professor Dwyer, I'm awful sorry sir. Do I have to stay after class?

 

Now, THAT was an example of glib and irresponsible satire. My original effort, however, was both more clever and philosophically sound. I should mention to Bill, if he's ever in a mood for introspection, that I've had several offlist personal emails from listmembers, one of which captured the general tenor of the messages; it was titled (based, I suspect, on Bill's quoted statement above) "The pot and the kettle". The respondent added, to clear up any confusions: "Meanwhile, defending Ross' honor against possible implications of the title:  insofar as I'd noticed, Ross DID take the time to understand Bill's position.  He understood it perfectly." I think that poster is correct, but, ultimately these things have to be decided by each individual for him or herself. Bill probably agrees. We both think you should let reason be your guide. Bill thinks that means you'll be determined to reach only one answer. In this case, there is a sense in which I agree. Ross Levatter

 

 

 

 

 

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro >

  To my question, "If determinism does not deny that we make choices, then what on  God's Green Earth *does* it deny?" Bill replied: "It denies that our choices could have been otherwise, but it does not deny that we make them."

 

This part of the debate seems to revolve around a definitional quibble. There are two major meanings of "choose." The first is "to select freely and after consideration," and the second is "to have a preference for" ("Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary"). Soft determinism is obviously incompatible with choosing in the first sense, but not in the second, since the determinist does not deny that we have preferences.  Nevertheless, I would submit that to speak of "determined choice" is (in most cases) highly misleading. Moreover, if the determinist is using "choice" with a different meaning than the volitionist, then they are talking at cross purposes, and their discussion is beset with a fatal ambiguity.

 

Bill wrote (in response to quotations from Aristotle): "The theory of volition to which Objectivism adheres does not limit freedom of choice to what we aim at *after* deliberation."

 

Neither did Aristotle. If Bill re-reads the passages from Aristotle, he will see that Aristotle distinguishes between "an object of choice [that] is something within our power at which we aim after deliberation" and choice per se, which is "a deliberate appetition of things that lie within our power.".

 

Bill wrote: "Indeed, [Objectivism] holds that one's only fundamental choice is to choose to think.  According to its theory of volition, one cannot deliberate until after one has made that initial choice."

 

I am not especially concerned with defending the Objectivist theory of volition per se, since I think it is unduly narrow. (I would argue that our choices extend beyond the power to think or not to think.)

Nevertheless, this contention is compatible with the Aristotelian tradition, such as we find in Aquinas (who speaks of the fundamental choice "to consider or not to consider") and John Locke (who speaks of the choice "to think or not to think").

 

Bill wrote: "Now George may reply that this is not what Aristotle meant -- that what he meant is simply that we choose what we've decided is best after thinking about it.  But in that case, Aristotle's concept of choice is not, strictly speaking, an expression of free will (understood as the ability to have chosen otherwise), but is in fact compatible with soft determinism."

 

I highly recommend that people read Aristotle's discussion of deliberation and choice in Book III of "The Nicomachean Ethics," since he draws a number of important distinctions. He differentiates, for

example, between voluntary actions and those that result from choice. ("Obviously what is chosen is voluntary, but not everything that is voluntary is chosen....{W}e call actions done on the spur of the moment voluntary, but not the result of choice'). He also makes it clear that we deliberate only about alternatives that "lie in our power." ("Thus the field of deliberation is 'that which happens for the most part,' where the result is obscure and the right course not clearly defined.")

 

This latter observation is pertinent to the follow statement by Bill: "All right.  Let's stop and think for a moment.  Let's imagine that I am taking a multiple choice test and that I recognize that answer a) is correct, and that b), c) and d) are incorrect.  So I choose answer a).*Could* I have chosen b), c) or d).  No, because I had no motive or reason to do so.  My purpose in choosing a particular answer was to select the right one.  Given that as my purpose, I was psychologically incapable of choosing an answer that I considered wrong.  Yet we wouldn't say that I did not, therefore, "choose" answer a)."

Actually, this is the kind of case that Aristotle expressly excludes from the realm of deliberation and choice. We deliberate, according to Aristotle, only in those cases where the outcome is not predetermined by rigid rules that define a correct answer. We do not deliberate about whether 2+2=4, so we do not "choose" this answer in any meaningful sense. Deliberation, for Aristotle, is a matter of practical rather than theoretical reason; it is concerned with choosing among various means in pursuit of an end, when we must weigh the pros and cons of the various means that lie within our power. This is important because matters pertaining to logic, mathematics, and other rule-governed disciplines have a natural terminus, or stopping point. When you add 2 and 2, the thinking process comes to a halt after you arrive at the correct answer of 4.  This is not the case with many of our practical deliberations, however, which could continue indefinitely if a choice did not intervene to stop the process. If I am considering whether to go to a movie or to work on a pressing deadline, I could deliberate indefinitely (as I alternately weigh the pros and cons of each option), if I did not at some point make a choice to stop the deliberation and go with the option that appeared preferable to me

at that time.

 

As I have said before, this choice is clearly motivated. (E.g., it may be influenced by the fact that I am getting tired of thinking about this issue.) But I emphatically deny that to say a choice is motivated is to say that it is "determined."

 

Does this mean that I could have chosen differently under the same conditions? Yes, that is exactly what it  means. If I think back to many similar decisions in my life, it appears obvious to me that I could have chosen differently. But Bill will have none of this, because he thinks it somehow violates the law of casualty. Yet if I am indeed the cause of my primary choices, then my position entails no such problem. (In an earlier post I suggested that Bill should define what he means by the law of causality, since this would help to clarify what we are arguing about. Until and unless I know what the law of causality means for Bill, I cannot say whether my theory of volition is consistent with that law or not.)

 

Bill wrote: "I don't know whether it makes nonsense of a good deal of philosophy over the past 2300 years, but suppose it does.  Would that be an argument against it? No more so than the statement that atheism makes nonsense out of people's cultural beliefs over the past 2300 years.  Needless to say, this appeal

to tradition is not a valid form of argument.  E.g., people (or philosophers) have always believed such and such; therefore, it must be true."

 

This is scarcely a sympathetic interpretation of the point I was making. Does Bill seriously believe that I would maintain that we should accept a doctrine merely because of its philosophical provenance? Of course not. My remarks drew attention to the fact that an agency theory of volition constitutes one of the most important and persistent theories in this field, so it at least deserves serious consideration, rather than a frivolous dismissal like, "I don't think so." If you are going to engage in serious a philosophical debate, then you need to take seriously the most important arguments that have been presented historically as part of that debate.

 

Bill wrote: "Nor is "common sense" a valid criterion.  If we're going to invoke "common sense" to settle this issue, then there's not much else to discuss.  If the common sense says we have free will, well then, by God,

we have it. End of controversy.  No, I don't think that will do. Philosophy requires, and deserves, more than invocations to common sense.  After all, "common sense" also says that we must have a

government; that God exists, etc. etc."

 

Bill's "soft determinism" also goes by another name --viz., "psychological determinism" -- that I think is far more descriptive. A psychological determinist, in contrast to a physical determinist, holds

that our choices are causally determined by psychological motives rather than by physical brain states. Fine, but if you wish to argue this way, then you cannot avoid the fact that we learn about "motives," "purposes" (and the like)  primarily from *introspection" rather than from observation of the external world. Thus, if you wish to appeal to motives and other psychological concepts, then you cannot summarily dismiss our common introspective experiences as irrelevant, for it is from this selfsame introspection that the psychological determinist must derive his data.

 

What Bill wishes to do, in my judgment, is to begin with psychological motives (knowledge of which is gained via introspection) and then interpret these motives in terms of physical causation -- as if our

external experiences should automatically enjoy a cognitive priority over our internal experiences. I agree entirely that we should not accept any conclusions, including those of "common sense," without

critical reflection, but I do not agree that our introspective observations are intrinsically less reliable than our extrospective observations. (It is this scientistic prejudice that has led to the absurdities of behaviorism and positivism.) Thus, when I reflect on a past decision and realize that I could have chosen differently, this insight should not be *summarily* dismissed as illusory or unreliable --

for if the soft determinist were to dismiss all such appeals to introspection, he could not even begin to argue for his own position, which must also appeal to psychological observations.

 

We need to clear up some these methodological problems before we can ever hope to resolve the problems raised by soft determinism.

[To be continued]

George H. Smith

 

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

 

A problem I have with soft (or psychological) determinism has to do with its causal conception of a temporal chain of motives.

 

Suppose I choose to focus on a particular problem. The soft determinist will claim that this choice was causally determined by a motive, M1. Okay, but then there must have been a cause (M2) for that motive, another cause (M3) for that motive, yet another cause (M4) for that motive, and so on, in a causal chain that extends indefinitely into the past.

 

These causes, for the soft determinist, are values, desires, purposes, reasons and other motives. Thus, when the soft determinist tracks M1 to M2 to M3 to M4, etc., he cannot eventually appeal to a physical brain state as the underlying cause - a sort of contextual first cause, in effect, that kicked off a given causal sequence of motives - or else his soft determinism would really be a variation of hard (physical)

determinism. I therefore ask Bill to provide an example of what his indefinite psychological chain of motives would look like. Let me return to my earlier example of deciding whether I should go to a movie (M) or work on a writing deadline (D). I already have motives to pursue either action or else I would not deliberate in the first place. Thus, according to my conception of volition, at some point I choose to stop the deliberative process and choose M over D. Now I do not deny that this decision was motivated (i.e., I had reasons for it) but I do deny that my reasons were deterministic causes. Not so for Bill, however, for whom a motive (a reason to act) functions like a physical cause and leaves me no other choice.

 

Okay, given Bill's position that my decision to stop deliberating was caused by a previous motive (M1), then what was M2 (the motive that caused that M), M3 (the motive that caused M2), and so forth?

 

I previously argued that the causal sequence model is clearly inadequate when dealing with psychological phenomena, because these phenomena interact and feed off of one another. Thus my decision to choose M instead of D may have been influenced by the fact that I got tired of deliberating and simply went with my feelings at a given point in time. It may have also have been influenced by the fact that I did not regard the decision as important enough to merit further deliberation and by the fact that the movie was starting in 30 minutes, so I had to decide quickly. Although any number of similar motives may have influenced my choice of M over D, it was ultimately my *choice* of M that "determined" that I would do M, and this choice was "free" in the sense that it cannot adequately be explained in terms of prior motives. In other words, *I* made the choice; the choice was not made for me by psychological "causes" beyond my control.

 

Now, according to Bill's position, each of the possible motives I mentioned (we should always bear in mind that many decisions are influenced not by a single motive but by a confluence of such motives)

must have had a psychological cause of its own, which in turn had another psychological cause, etc. - and so on indefinitely into the familiar causal regress. So what does this mean? - that my choice of M

was somehow determined by motives that were made in my early childhood? Did the fact that I chose to play sick so I could skip school on that fateful day in 1963 somehow determine (or play a significant causal role) in my decision to go to a movie in the year 2000?

 

This kind of reasoning, which appears to be implied by Bill's causal theory of motives, strikes me as highly implausible, to say the least. Perhaps, like some soft determinists, he will appeal at some point to one's "character" (i.e., general dispositions) as a substitute for specific motives - but, if so, that would raise another set of similar problems that must be explained as well. (The same person with the same dispositions will sometimes behave "out of character," thereby calling for another explanation via the same causal regress.)

I suspect (though this may not be true in Bill's case) that the soft determinist will ultimately rely on some variant of hard, physical determinism. That is to say, he will attempt to avoid the problem of a

"first motive" by appealing to a physical brain state that started the process going.

 

Thus, what I am looking for from Bill are some examples, hypothetical or otherwise, of how we might trace a causal chain of motives indefinitely into the past, without breaking that chain at some point by appealing (a) to a free choice or (b) to a physical brain state. GHS

 

From: "Morganis Chamlo" <phyrm_x@hotmail.com>

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

 

>From: BBfromM@aol.com

Matter is not aware of consciousness, but consciousness is aware of the physical world; that fact alone should make one conclude that the differences between them is sufficient to justify the conviction that

 

[This separation of your above statements from the following is my way of Emphasizing the worth of your next clause...]

 

they are not subject to identical laws of  nature.

>Barbara

 

Extremely well put in a simple, cogent, and precise, statement. In my awkward way, that's all I'd (note past tense; no more on this subject for me...other than kudos like this) ever tried to get across.

 

The idea of 'free will' is not a 'magical'-oriented notion, any more than the abstractions of a neural network or a person's beliefs are. In their own ways, all are causally affective and have certain material requirements, yet none are empirical *objects* in the ordinary sense of the word.

 

The idea of (STRESS: *Known...so far*) 'laws of nature' is not as absolutistic, or, as all-encompassing of existence's totality as some might wish to believe. There is more than 1 'law of nature'; we have not yet discovered them all. Those yet to be discovered, I have no doubt are not restricted to only the likes of the dynamics of quantum physics...or to the abstractions of neural networking

 

. From: "Morganis Chamlo" >From: Ellen Lewit <elewit@mindspring.com>

>I suspect that volition like so many other things exists on a  continuum. I wonder if Ayn Rand treated her cats like stupid dumb creatures, if she did, I suspect they got even. ;-)  I don't think this is a major or important notion.>Ellen

 

Rand expressed a refinement of her meaning of 'free will' as a 'function of rationality', which implies:

1) her meaning of free-will as applicable ONLY in the conceptual area (which allows awareness of the simultaneity of more-than-1 alternative), ...and...

2) given *rationality* as a continuum, ergo, f-w also must be.

 

From: "William Dwyer" <wdwyer@california.net>

 

Bill Dwyer wrote, concerning Nathaniel Branden's argument for volition, "If, as he says, neither our beliefs nor our thinking ~processes~ are in our volitional control, then how can we claim to know that those processes and the beliefs that follow from them are any more trustworthy than they would be under strict determinism?"

 

Barbara answered:

 

"I think you have made an error about Nathaniel's view. It is precisely the thinking process -- although not the convictions which result from it -- which are under our control, in that at every step of that process we are able to raise or lower the level of our focus or to shut down our minds."

 

Well, here is what Nathaniel says in his book, _The Psychology of Self-Esteem_, "[Free will] is not an issue ~of the degree of man's intelligence or knowledge~.  Nor is it an issue ~of the productiveness

or success of any particular thinking process~." (p. 39) (My emphasis) "The choice to think (not the ~process~ of thinking, but the ~choice~ to think) and the process of focusing his mind are an indivisible action of which man is the causal agent." (HIS emphasis) (p. 41)

 

But if man is not the causal agent of his ~thinking processes~ -- if he does not have volitional control over the soundness or success of those processes -- then how can he consider them a reliable guide to

knowledge?  Doesn't the Objectivist view of free will succumb to the very criticism that it levies against determinism?  And if not, then how can determinism be said to succumb to it?

 

Bill

From: Ellen Lewit <elewit@mindspring.com>

 

At 01:07 PM 01/18/2001, James Koontz wrote:

 >Morganis Chamlo:

 >>A belief in 'Determinism' is a belief that all one does is a Destiny of a forced-path, which one, on their own, cannot escape.

 >>

 >>For some, I have no doubt, this is quite true...given their beliefs. Now this could be an interesting thread...Is it actually possible for one to believe in Determinism so strongly/completely that they really do become, now and forevermore, determined (once the choice to accept Determinism is made)? That is, can one make a free will choice so pervasive in their mind that they actually cease to have free will?

 >

 >My gut reaction is no. But, let me sleep on it.... Any other thoughts?

 >

 >James

 >

 

Yes,  it is not that they become determined once and for all, but rather that they institute habits of thought and behavior that appear to be determined.  Note that such people are rarely the ones with a great and glorious destiny but rather those that are not able to break out of mediocrity because it takes intense work over time to do so, and if you do not believe you can succeed you will rarely have the motivation and habits to do so.

 

It is not to say that change is impossible only very rare and difficult.

 

It has been said that whether you believe you can or cannot achieve what you want you are probably right.  It is because your believe has a feedback effect with your actions.

 

By the way, I've enjoyed your recent posts and am glad others took over the argument.  I was getting too verbous and running out of steam at the same time. ;-)   The "your" can include both of you and others.

 

Ellen L.

 

 

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

Gayle Dean:

>Morganis disagreed and replied that debating determinism in an Objectivist forum was pointless and inappropriate to discuss"WITHIN the confines of a particular philosophy called *Objectivism*."

> 

>He/she said:

> >Hmmmmm...that logic would imply that *rational* consideration of the worth of Hinduism, Scientology, (or, any theism), [is appropriate...]

> 

>No, it implies that in the confines of Hinduism, (or any theism)assuming the existence of a god would be a foundational point that needs to be proven, before one can logically discuss why cows are "sacred.".

> 

Sigh.... One more time- A foundational point, AKA an axiom, CANNOT be PROVEN.

 

Determinism and Volition require different axioms. Different axioms result in wholly different concepts of reality.

 

Logical discussions between two people who do not share the same axioms is impossible. As well demonstrated on Atlantis, it's little more intellectual than, Did Not! .... Did TOO! .... I know you are but what am I? .... I'm rubber you're glue.....

 

As Morganis correctly stated, it is pointless.

 

> > There are Belief-Systems, and then there are  'Belief-Systems'-forums. One is 'cats'; the other is 'animals'. One doesn't talk much about plants in  either; one doesn't mix the subjects of one with the other...either.

> 

>If proving the existence of cats or animals is dependent on proving the existence of plants, then before one could even discuss cats and other animals, one must prove that plants exist.

 

Perhaps it would be more blatantly obvious if Morganis said, "there are Objectivist forums, there are determinist forums, and there are general philosophy forums." It is pointless to debate unprovable axioms concerning volition in both the Objectivist and Determinist forums. It would be more appropriate to the general philosophy forums. The prevous two already assume a basic axiomatic structure. They may be willing to debate the different implications of alternate axioms, but there's no logical basis for debating the "truth" of the axioms themselves.

 

Alternately, if you don't know whether you accept volition or determinism, take it to a general forum where you can find like (un)minded people or people who do have firm axiomatic beliefs but are into masochistic pounding of their heads against a wall trying to "prove" their axioms to each other.

 

>I don't understand what you are saying.  What do you think we are trying to do, except "develop ideas within O'ism?"  But, it doesn't do any good to proceed beyond the premises if the premises need to be corrected, first.

 

You are most certainly NOT trying to develop ideas within Objectivism. You are trying to argue against one of its fundamental axioms. To use the example above, demanding Hindus prove the existence of God [now and for all time to every believer of every other system of thought existant on Earth] before they can discuss the sacredness of cows within their system- is hardly developing Hindu thought.

> 

>Well, simply put -- it's implications, imply the need for  alternatives!

> 

OK, Gayle- we've spent a lot of our time in circular argument trying to validate volition as best is possible and have failed miserably in your eyes- So, let's now turn to your alternative....

 

Please conclusively prove determinism.

 

James

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

Looking for critiques to help me clarify my own thought/logic here- a trial balloon, a clay pigeon, call it what you will...

 

Gayle Dean:

>If there are two opposing theories, one of determinism and one of indeterminism, and the indeterminist theory entails flawed concepts (focus, which must be chosen while one is unfocused, or which just springs forth when lightning strikes, or evasion,  which identification requires mindreading, etc), and the opposing theory does not --then the least "wrong" theory is the better one to try and prove.

 

 

OK, let's look at what metaphysical statements both volition and determinism must accept as true:

 

1) Existence of a non-mind-dependent physical reality (things can exist in reality without existing in the mind- e.g., the atom existed before it was conceived of).

 

2) Existence of a non-physical reality-dependent mind (things can exist in the mind without existing in physical reality- e.g., unicorns)

 

3) Physical causality is a line of "truth." That is, physical causality is a string of true conditions causing additional true conditions without alternative.

 

4) Therefore, there must be some type of break in the line of physical causality when it comes to mental events. Under both systems, a "false" is created which is uniquely related to mental events...

 

Under volition, there is an "input" break- an uncaused causal agent- the ability of the consciousness to choose between mutually exclusive, but metaphysically possible alternatives. The physical causality line remains a line of truth, with the false state existing only in the mind. (If can choose to do/cause A, B, or C- each has a unknown value before the choice is made. If I choose act B, A and C become false in my mind, B becomes a true input into the physical causality line. A and C are false, but outside the

line of causality. The "magic" here is how a volition ever emerges from a physically determined process (development of the brain in utero). [Note to Gayle: this would be a more productive argument for you than focus.]

 

Under determinism, there is an "output" break- a set of true physical causes result in a false effect. The "magic" here is that if mental activity is subject to the exact same physical causality line as the rest of the world, it should never be able to create something that has no possible referent in reality. The supposedly false "unicorn" may simply be a combination of truths contained in horses, birds, and rhinos. However, if free will does not exist, there is no possible arrangement of truths in reality which could be combined to result in it existing in the mind as a truth.

 

So, under Objectivism we are faced with a flaw that occurs once in each person's life (magical  development of volition during a determined process), but which keeps physical causality intact.

 

Under determinism we are faced with a flaw that reappears over and over countless times each day in our lives and which also requires a defect in physical causality.

 

Which would then be the greater flaw?

 

(I do admit that I sense a problem in here somewhere, but haven't figured it out yet. I welcome your critiques in the same spirit of honest consideration in which this post is intended.) Thanks, James

 

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism>

 

James Koontz wrote: <OK, let's look at what metaphysical statements both volition and determinism must accept as true: <1) Existence of a non-mind-dependent physical reality (things can exist in reality without existing in the mind- e.g., the atom existed before it was conceived of).

 

"things can exist" needs to be replaced by a stronger statement of physical existence independent of the

human mind.

 

<2) Existence of a non-physical reality-dependent mind (things can exist in the mind without existing in physical reality- e.g., unicorns)

 

"things can exist in the mind without existing in physical reality".  This statement begins the slippery slope whereby the subjective processes of the human mind "create" objective reality.  From the deterministic point of view the determined mechanical mind processes information and does an amazing job of internal management of vast quantities of information.  The volitionist and determinist cannot agree on statement (2) because the volitionist has separated the mind intothe non-physical during this step.  The creation of internal concepts (with or without real world referents) is no more significant than a computer program which creates its own new variables as needed or rewrites it's own internal programming based on the needs of the problem (some large codes do both).

 

<3) Physical causality is a line of "truth." That is, physical causality is a string of true conditions causing additional true conditions without alternative.

 

Agreed.

 

<4) Therefore, there must be some type of break in the line of physical causality when it comes to mental events. Under both systems, a "false" is created which is uniquely related to mental events...

 

The break occurred at assumption (2) where you removed the mind from physical reality.

 

<The "magic" here is how a volition ever emerges from a physically determined process.

 

Yes if volition existed it would be "magic".

 

<The "magic" here is that if mental activity is subject to the exact same physical causality line as the rest of the world, it should never be able to create something that has no possible referent in reality. The supposedly false "unicorn" may simply be a combination of truths contained in horses, birds, and rhinos. However, if free will does not exist, there is no possible arrangement of truths in reality which could be combined to result in it existing in the mind as a truth.

 

A determined computer program can take many approximations of partially known things and come up with any number of mixed results not corresponding exactly to reality.  A non-flying unicorn can in fact be created genetically. Unicorn goats have been for sale for years (a horn bud) is transplanted into the goats forehead while they are young.  On "Ripley's Believe it or Not" they have mentioned a woman who lived a some hundred to few hundred years ago who did grow a unicorn tumor.  Extrapolation from various incomplete data is not to be seen as creating volitional "magic".  Errors in judgment do not move the mind outside of reality.

 

<(I do admit that I sense a problem in here somewhere, but haven't figured it out yet. I welcome your critiques in the same spirit of honest consideration in which this post is intended.)

 

I am often accused of not expressing honest consideration. I can assure you these accusations are misplaced.

Moving mental processes outside of physical reality allows misinterpretation of what is implied by the

processing.  Everything the mind does is the result of a physical process.  Subjective evaluation of this

process by the mind itself without reference to it's own physical reality creates the "ghost in the machine" perspective.

 

I wouldn't recommend trying it but it would be interesting if a brain surgeon were to work on his own

brain and mentally experience the changes his mind makes while he watches himself make the changes

mechanically.  A prod here, a poke there, a shock, a cut, a tug and the surgeon literally changes his own mind on the macroscopic scale.

 

The fictional characters Dr. Who and Mr. Spock were both known for an exceptional knowledge of the workings of their own minds.  I often wonder if there is a breakdown between the determinists and volitionists somehow along the lines of understanding how their own minds work.  I have noticed that Mr. Spock is a figure ridiculed by many objectivists.  I am not entirely sure this ridicule is directed for good reasons.

I once attempted to begin a thread on OWL about the psychology leading to volitionist belief.  The thread was rejected and that ended my use of OWL.

 

Eventually psychological implications of volitionist belief will be discussed at length in some Objectivist forum.  OWL will not allow it, I'm not sure ATL can sustain it for any length of time as it will degenerate into name calling almost immediately.

 

I see "volition" as a needy cry for those who miss some aspect of "magic" in their lives.  The abject knee-jerk horror determinism invokes in some people is something generally reserved for atheists among true believers. The parallels are amazing.

Dennis May

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_ >

Me: ><The "magic" here is that if mental activity is subject to the exact same physical causality line as the rest of the world, it should never be able to create something that has no possible referent in reality. The supposedly false "unicorn" may simply be a combination of truths contained in horses, birds, and rhinos. However, if free will does not exist, there is no possible arrangement of truths in reality which could be combined to result in it existing in the mind as a truth.

> 

Dennis May: >A determined computer program can take many approximations of partially known things and come up with any number of mixed results not corresponding exactly to reality.  A non-flying unicorn can in fact be created genetically. Unicorn goats have been for sale for years (a horn bud) is transplanted into the goats forehead while they are young.  On "Ripley's Believe it or Not" they have mentioned

>a woman who lived a some hundred to few hundred years ago who did grow a unicorn tumor.  Extrapolation from various incomplete data is not to be seen as creating volitional "magic".  Errors in judgment do not move the mind outside of reality.

> 

 

There still seems to be a problem with the conception of volition under determinism.

 

Regardless of whether or not a flying unicorn could ever be created in reality, I do not deny that under determinism it could be conceived of as a rearrangement of existing truths.

 

The problem with volition however, is that it cannot be derived this way. The nature of volition is such that if does not exist, there is no possible truth or set of truths in physical reality that can be recombined, approximated, or extrapolated from that would ever deterministically result in the mind's belief in its truth. Under determinism- given that the vast majority of people believe they have free will (though even one person would be enough)- the mind must have the ability to overcome the truth of the physical causality line to create a false. James

 

PS- While I don't think my acceptance of volition is a "needy cry" for "magic" in my life- I do thank you for what would certainly qualify in my book as an honestly considered, thoughtful response!

 

From: hardy@ To: atlantis@wetheliving.com  Dennis May wrote: I see "volition" as a needy cry for those who miss some aspect of "magic" in their lives.  The abject knee-jerk horror determinism invokes in some people is something generally reserved for atheists among true believers. The parallels are amazing.

 

         Dennis, on any position you disagree with, you can always say that its advocates take their position only because of some deep subconscious need to be irrational.  It doesn't prove anything. You're capable of writing intelligently on _other_ subjects.

 

         You have repeatedly asserted that the problem of the human mind has long been solved, but you have never told us anything about the nature of the solution or where it is found in the scientific

literature or who the scientists were who solved the problem.  But you have mentioned "neural nets", in tones that seemed to suggest was your answer to these questions.  I mentioned having run this idea

past a scientist whose field of research is the neural basis of the mind, and he said he found it "clueless".  You then accused me of fallaciously arguing from appeal to authority.  I think it's good enough until you actually say who those researcher are and what they did.  After that recent exchange, I got two off-list e-mails from others who have spoken with scientists in that field, both in agreement with what I said.  So now I arguing from authority without citing the _names_ of the authorities -- in other words, just what

you do when you tell us the problem is solved while withholding the specifics.

 

         One reason for not believing you know whereof you speak is your inability to understand even the simplest points about this subject.  Once you said something to the effect that rejecting reductionism is the same as believing in non-deterministic volition. So I pointed out that some strict determinists hold that consciousness is irreducible.  You responded by adding a new item to your list of positions on the subject of free will and determinism:  That of anti- reductionists who are determinists.  Talk about missing the point!

What I was telling you about was not in any sense a position on the question of free will and determinism.  Most people on this list who reject determinism would probably hold that frogs are conscious _and_ that the consciousness of frogs is deterministic (being non-rational), and that, as consciousness, it is irreducible.  In other words, determinism clearly does not entail reducibility, and to say that is _not_ to take a position on the subject of free will and determinism.

 

         Then you proposed that the problem of how the human mind arises is solved by saying "neural networks."  So I pointed out that that does not explain why some neural networks function without

consciousness.  Saying "neural networks" cannot be an explanation of how consciousness comes about if most instances of neural networks do not result in consciousness.  Something different about the particular neural networks that give rise to consciousness must be mentioned in order to explain the phenomenon.  So you replied that some parts of the brain have different functions from others, as if that were an answer to that objection.

 

         Your postings make it appear that you have no understanding at all of what the questions are on this subject, let alone the answers.

         Mike Hardy

 

--

Michael Hardy

From: "Gayle Dean" <gwdean@bellsouth.net>

 

Jason Alexander wrote:

> James Koontz identification "things can exist in the mind without existing in  physical reality" attacked by Dennis May is in fact very perceptive.

 

Dennis May was not attacking the idea that "things can exist in the mind without existing in physical reality" per se.  He was simply saying that that idea leads to the problem of magical volition.  He was saying that the creation of a mental entity has a physical cause, that it is not the result of some leap of magic... as James seemed to imply.   Unless I misunderstood Dennis.

 

 > James Koontz wrote: 2) Existence of a non-physical reality-dependent mind (things can exist in the mind without existing in physical reality- e.g., unicorns)

 

Dennis May replied:

"things can exist in the mind without existing in physical  reality".  This statement begins the slippery slope  whereby the subjective processes of the human mind "create"  objective reality.  From the deterministic point of view the  determined mechanical mind processes information and does an amazing job of internal management of vast quantities of  information.  The volitionist and determinist cannot agree  on statement (2) because the volitionist has separated the mind into the non-physical during this step.  The creation  of internal concepts (with or without real world referents)  is no more significant than a computer program which creates  its own new variables as needed or rewrites it's own internal  programming based on the needs of the problem (some large codes do both).

 

From: BBfromM@aol.com

 

Morganis wrote, <<I believe that some, regardless of whether or not they possess a 'belief' in Determinism, are definitely *destined*, in a quite *Deterministic* way, to have whatever their life-path experiences give them, to the degree that they Allow their environment (emotional, as well as physically-situational) to

influence their 'feelings' of what they 'feel like' making a *feeling-based* Choice about...and, make their *choices* on that basis. I say *to the degree*; no one can be 100% *determined*, once the capability of volition occurs at whatever threshold for it exists in perception-conception.>>

 

Interesting idea, and very relevant to a concept I have been considering for a number of years -- which is, metaphorically speaking, that one creates one's own metaphysics and epistemology.  That is, if one believes firmly that life is basically malevolent, one will act in such a way to make that belief come true in one's own life, one will not notice occasions for happiness, one will not pursue paths to success, and one's life will ultimately be a failure -- just as one believed it must be. And the reverse is true if one believes, in Ayn Rand's definition of the concept, that the world is basically benevolent. Or, if one is convinced that knowledge is impossible, one will not act to gain knowledge, one will not seek out arguments that disprove one's view -- because, after all, such arguments will be based on the conviction that knowledge IS possible. Here again, the reverse is true: if one thinks that knowledge is possible, one will try to learn as much as possible that is consistent with one's interests, needs, and goals. Or, if one believes that other human beings are basically worthless (it is impossible to leave oneself out of this belief), one will have a low self esteem, will not seek out honorable and intelligent people, and will not attempt any self-improvement. But the person who believes that man has the potential to live an honorable and moral life, that he has the capacity for greatness, will have a higher self-esteem (other things being equal), will seek to find other people who live honorable and moral lives, and will seek ways to improve himself. And so on and so on with other metaphysical and

epistemological convictions, for good and for bad.

 

One of these days, I plan to write an article on this subject, perhaps even use it as the theme of a novel. I tend to observe people from this viewpoint, and I find it everywhere confirmed. I welcome comments and observations.  Barbara

 

From: BBfromM@aol.com James Koontz wrote that volition (and determinism) are dependent on the metaphysical statement there exists <<a non-physical reality-dependent mind.>>

 

I understand what you're getting at, James, but this is a misstatement. Mind initially arose from physical       reality -- that is, the "things that swam in the ocean," assuming we are descended from them, did not possess consciousness; at some unknown point, consciousness arose from the physical. And consciousness is dependent on the physical brain through which it operates.

 

Nevertheless, I agree that awareness is something different from the physical.

 

Disagreeing that consciousness and the material word are different, Dennis May wrote, <<Therefore, there must be some type of break in the line of physical causality when it comes to mental events. . . . The break occurred where you removed the mind from physical reality. The "magic" here is how a volition ever emerges from a physically determined process. . . . Everything the mind does is the result of a physical process.  Subjective evaluation of this process by the mind itself without reference to it's own physical reality creates the "ghost in the machine" perspective.>>

 

In my view, the "magic" consists of denying everything known by introspection: that is, that consciousness and the material world are not identical. And it lies in the assumption that "everything the mind does is the result of a physical process." How do you know this, Dennis? What is your proof? You keep repeating it as holy writ, and I know that it is the view of many, but certainly not all, reputable scientists. But I'm still waiting for proof that it is so.

 

Dennis further wrote, <<I see "volition" as a needy cry for those who miss some aspect of "magic" in their lives.  The abject knee-jerk horror determinism invokes in some people is something generally reserved for atheists among true believers. The parallels are amazing.>>

 

I don't react with horror to the idea of determinism, I merely think it mistaken. And I don't like ad hominem arguments. Neither I, nor any other advocate of volition, has ascribed a lack of mental health to those who accept determinism. Hmmm. . . Barbara

 

From: "George H. Smith Barbara Branden wrote: "How do you know this, Dennis? What is your proof? You keep repeating it as holy writ, and I know that it is the view of many, but certainly not all, reputable scientists. But I'm still waiting for proof that it is so."

 

In my many exchanges with Dennis May on the determinism some months ago, I was mostly told that hard determinists are scientific, whereas volitionists are magical, mystical, religious, and the like.  I wish

Barbara good luck in her effort to elicit something more substantive. And she should prepare herself to hear the mantra of "neural networks" over and over again.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend a book by Henri Bergson, *Time and Free Will* (French ed., 1889; English ed., 1910) which Jeff Riggenbach (who has been prodding me to read Bergson since the seventies) was kind enough to send me a while back.. Bergson has extremely interesting critiques of both "physical" (or hard) determinism and "psychological" (or soft) determinism. Especially brilliant is Bergson's analysis of what it means to say that the "same inner causes will produce the same effects," which is "to assume that the same cause can appear a second time on the stage of consciousness."

Bergson is a marvelously lucid writer (he won the Nobel prize for literature), and, as Jeff has been stressing for years, he is able to discuss subjective states of consciousness -- as we experience them

immediately as "intensity" and "duration" --in a manner that has never been equaled by any other philosopher. I don't necessarily agree with everything that Bergson has to say -- though I should mention that he is not the "irrationalist" that he is sometime portrayed to be -- but he has provided me with more material for thought, and better arguments for volition, than I have encountered in many years. Ghs

 

From: hardy@math. I have this habit of putting new subject lines on some postings, and I wonder if some people consequently miss some of them.  So just in case, I'm re-posting this with the _old_ subject line.  It makes some of the same points Barbara Branden recently made, but at greater length, and also has a couple of paragraphs exasperatedly condemning Dennis May for Heresy........  -- Mike Hardy

 

         Dennis May wrote:  > I see "volition" as a needy cry for those who miss some aspect of "magic" in their lives.  The abject knee-jerk horror determinism invokes in some people is something  generally reserved for atheists among true believers.  The parallels are amazing.

 

         Dennis, on any position you disagree with, you can always say that its advocates take their position only because of some deep subconscious need to be irrational.  It doesn't prove anything. You're capable of writing intelligently on _other_ subjects.

         You have repeatedly asserted that the problem of the human mind has long been solved, but you have never told us anything about the nature of the solution or where it is found in the scientific

literature or who the scientists were who solved the problem.  But you have mentioned "neural nets", in tones that seemed to suggest was your answer to these questions.  I mentioned having run this idea

past a scientist whose field of research is the neural basis of the mind, and he said he found it "clueless".  You then accused me of fallaciously arguing from appeal to authority.  I think it's good enough until you actually say who those researcher are and what they did.  After that recent exchange, I got two off-list e-mails from others who have spoken with scientists in that field, both in agreement with what I said.  So now I arguing from authority without citing the _names_ of the authorities -- in other words, just what

you do when you tell us the problem is solved while withholding the specifics.

 

         One reason for not believing you know whereof you speak is your inability to understand even the simplest points about this subject.  Once you said something to the effect that rejecting reductionism is the same as believing in non-deterministic volition. So I pointed out that some strict determinists hold that consciousness is irreducible.  You responded by adding a new item to your list of positions on the subject of free will and determinism:  That of anti-reductionists who are determinists.  Talk about missing the point!

What I was telling you about was not in any sense a position on the question of free will and determinism.  Most people on this list who reject determinism would probably hold that frogs are conscious _and_ that the consciousness of frogs is deterministic (being non-rational), and that, as consciousness, it is irreducible.  In other words, determinism clearly does not entail reducibility, and to say that is _not_ to take a position on the subject of free will and determinism.

 

         Then you proposed that the problem of how the human mind arises is solved by saying "neural networks."  So I pointed out that that does not explain why some neural networks function without

consciousness.  Saying "neural networks" cannot be an explanation of how consciousness comes about if most instances of neural networks do not result in consciousness.  Something different about the particular neural networks that give rise to consciousness must be mentioned in order to explain the phenomenon.  So you replied that some parts of the brain have different functions from others, as if that were an answer to that objection.

 

         Your postings make it appear that you have no understanding at all of what the questions are on this subject, let alone the answers.          Mike Hardy

 

From: Sitnalta@aol.com

 

I wish everyone would let up on Dennis May. It's a matter of context. We know about him because he entered a rational list in which cause and effect was given acknowledgment. He is a gentleman of the old school with all that means. Back when many of the people on this list were in diapers, he was fighting the fight.

 

Dennis May neither wants, nor will like what I am saying here. He is an applied scientist who has not only made things work, but worried about why they do, and worried about why those who don't so worry, don't. He was born and educated into an establishment in which cause and effect was so

discredited it couldn't get peer review in scientific journals. And you thought Rand had it tough with subjectivism and relativity in the black art of modern philosophy. Imagine an engineer who couldn't find a fundamental modern scientist, not under the influence of the Copenhagen syndrome. Here at least was a man who could tell his Bohr from his Bohm.

Dennis May, like Rand, was a rebel in an age in which such could have been herded into any middle-sized American City. It is Ayn Rand's glory that such weren't.  It is to Dennis May's credit that he wasn't.  Dennis May could give lessons to the Libertarians George Smith or Doris Gordon. His military, local government, USPO anecdotes are always to the point.

 

It is only on his megalomanic determinism that he goes awry, and surprisingly I argue, that should not be to his discredit. Dennis May is a dinosaur; but a useful and important dinosaur. For Dennis, determinism is an article of faith. Nothing will shake him. His very identity is built around defending

cause and effect. That's who he is, and that's who he will remain. Debbie doesn't hold to her tenant any more firmly than Dennis to his. Debbie doesn't have neural networks with which to camouflage her faith, but if it comes to Newton or Christ, I'll take Newton.

 

Quit picking fights with Dennis May; he's not going to change. He's on your side, really. By his lights, Dennis is a champion of Reality. Thus far every thing I've said is discernible from the publications on ATL. It is because of George Snith's instanter advice to Barbara Branden, that I add what follows.

 

In private communication with Dennis May by virtue of his dedication to the reality of reality I invited his participation in a study of what makes us special and different. I presented him with a rationale and he rejected it. No problem, I still respect and honor his dedication to reality in an age

that didn't.

Dennis May doesn't understand that something new and different came into the world with human...being, and never will, because of his dedication to determinism, which as a scientist and engineer is a different order of determinism then that of philosophers. The former affirms reality; the latter denies it.

 

I had hope that Dennis May's dedication to cause and effect AND presence on a Rand forum indicated an openness to the idea that, not that the something new and different was a "miracle," but because something can't come from nothing, that such something was there in the beginning. Which is a statement about initial conditions and a piece of scientific exploration of retrodictive explanation.

 

This must be left to others, perhaps James Koontz, but the point is leave Dennis May alone; he's a good guy, and on our side. Stop giving him grief; he can't do other than respond as he does; and when those who can, do they will owe such primarily to Ayn Rand and secondarily to Dennis May and his

coconspirator intransigent lovers of cause and effect.

 

Jason Alexander

 

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism@hotmail.com>

 

Barbara Branden wrote:

<I don't react with horror to the idea of determinism, I merely think it mistaken. And I don't like ad hominem arguments.  Neither I, nor any other advocate of volition, as ascribed a lack of mental health to those who accept determinism. Hmmm. . .

 

I found this web site interesting:

 

http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/chris.holt/home.informal /lounge/arguments/ad.hominem.html

 

Snippets from the site:

 

<But the point is: there are cases in which the best possible argument is, in fact, ad hominem. In such cases, it is silly to deny ourselves the use of the method. With a little care, we can apply it effectively. And having done so, if, for the sake of intellectual honesty, we wish to acknowledge that a premise we have used is specific to someone, there is a sense in which we can use the term "ad hominem" to

<so acknowledge. This sense of the term is not inherently derogatory. It is the sense discussed

<by Locke, who drew it from the work of his predecessors.

 

  |  Ad hominem arguments are not just a way of winning a dispute: a logically sound ad hominem argument does a service, even if an unwelcome one, to its victim -- it shows him that his present position is untenable and must be modified.  Of course people often do not like to be disturbed in their comfortable inconsistencies -- that is [probably] why ad hominem arguments have such a bad name.

 

<I guess it's obvious why I like this last quoted discussion. For me, convincing someone to re-examine a  claim is not an insignificant rhetorical result. What's more, it's entirely in keeping with the Socratic pretensions of the academy: why "prove" someone wrong when you can corner them into thinking about it for themselves?

 

<On the other hand, I must admit: it's easy to tell others that they must deal with their inconsistencies ... but it's not always easy to explain why they must!

 

To Barbara and others:

  My criticisms of volition did not originate with my philosophical disagreements with certain aspects of

Objectivism.  They came instead from tracing the history of quantum mechanics and trying to understand why certain people have affected the course of its further development.  Several Objectivists have written on the subjectivism present in quantum mechanics and come to the same conclusions I have. Quantum mechanics was driven by bad philosophy from it’s inception.  I have taken this a step further and concluded that the intentional preservation of a place for volition was the primary goal leading to the non-objective versions of quantum mechanics. An objective alternative understanding of quantum mechanics has existed since almost the beginning. The first version of quantum mechanics came out in 1925.  The second and third versions in 1926, all three have been shown to be equivalent.  In 1927 De Broglie came out with his deterministic alternative.

This was expanded in 1952 by Bohm and is now known as the de Broglie – Bohm (deBB) theory.  The deBB theory produces the same predictions as the in-deterministic alternatives.

 

It has also been shown that exact formulation of the deBB theory is only one of many deterministic

theories which produce the same results as in-deterministic quantum mechanics.  There is

almost no chance you will hear any of the above in a university classroom outside of the three

or four universities in the world where the deBB theory is actively researched.

 

I’ve talked about some of the above several times before.  As far as the role of volition in the

development of quantum mechanics, some of the most vocal supporters of subjective quantum mechanics were Bohr, von Neumann, and Feynman.  It is very clear to me that these three men worked very hard to keep deterministic quantum mechanics out of the classroom and were very interested in preserving quantum mechanics as the place where the mind could remain a mystery.  Bohr was the most vocal in his support.  He was known to go into rages if presented with deterministic alternatives to

any aspect of quantum mechanics.  von Neumann was the most successful in de-railing deterministic theories from being researched or taught.  His work dismissing deterministic quantum mechanics was subsequently dis-proven but not until two generations of physicists had been taught otherwise.  He was adamant about a special place for the human mind in events quantum (a form of consciousness created reality).  Feynman came up with his own version of in-deterministic quantum mechanics, equivalent to the others.  He worked hard to de-rail deterministic theories within quantum mechanics and any alternative theories which might provide a physical mechanism for gravity.

His proofs concerning physical models of gravity are misleading at best, his quantum work useful

in practice but born of in-deterministic roots. The leftist media in this country idolize him

as a near savior scientist.  His method of teaching introductory quantum theory “Feynman’s Double Slit Experiment” as proving in-determinism is the source of their joy.  As an undergraduate I had a true believer attempt to feed me Feynman’s crap.  I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now.

 

Is “ad hominem” valid within this context? There is no doubt in my mind that quantum mechanics

has been corrupted by psychological ills and bad philosophy.  I have personally witnessed what can

only be described as scientific fraud when the question comes down to determinism and indeterminism.

The only motive I can ascertain in this battle is the protection of philosophies involving volition.

Is everyone aware of this, of course not.  Most physicists are unaware of any alternatives, so

their objections are of an innocent nature.  I do not believe men like Bohr, von Neumann, or Feynman

suffered from naiveté.  Their support of in-determinism was a direct result of a philosophical dis-like of the alternatives.  They saw where the two paths lead before they took them. They chose the path of subjectivism and did everything in their power to get others to follow. Reason alone did not lead to in-deterministic quantum mechanics.  We should not be afraid to discuss individual motives, psychological ills, bad philosophy, or anything else which gets us closer to the truth.

 

In this same vein it’s nothing personal while discussing the psychology leading to a philosophical belief in volition.  Like the physicist who has never been taught the alternatives, most people are innocent on this question.  Others have seen the two routes and have chosen based not on reason but dis-likes.  I chose not to live in a world of “comfortable inconsistencies”.  I see no place for volition without the creation of inconsistencies.

 

There has been much discussion of this topic within the context of axioms.  This was the topic

of a post on OWL today.  The Objectivist and the brand of Determinism I support both embrace

consistency as a test of their logic and axiomatic structure.  Theories of knowledge consistent with

the known real world is the primary issue at hand.

I view Objectivists who support volition as mostly uninformed as to the nature and negative consequences of what they are supporting, not vicious in attempting to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.  Perhaps improvements in the technical areas of an Objectivist theory of knowledge,in accordance with the sciences, can close some of the gap which fuels this debate endlessly.

 

Dennis May

 

From: PinkCrash7@aol.com

 

Dennis May wrote:

< I chose not to live in a world of “comfortable iconsistencies”.  I see no place for volition without the creation of inconsistencies.>

From: PinkCrash7@aol.com

I wrote:

 

< Is not making the very process of making this choice an example of exercising volition?

If not, then what, precisely, do you define as "volition?" >

 

That was supposed to be:  Is not the very process of making this choice an example of exercising volition?..

 

Is not making the very process of making this choice an example of exercising volition?

If not, then what, precisely, do you define as "volition?"

 

Debbie

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

>From: "Dennis May" Is “ad hominem” valid within this context? There is no doubt in my mind that quantum mechanics has been corrupted by psychological ills and bad philosophy.  I have personally witnessed what can only be described as scientific fraud when the question comes down to determinism and indeterminism. The only motive I can ascertain in this battle is the protection of philosophies involving volition. Is everyone aware of this, of course not.  Most physicists are unaware of any alternatives, so their objections are of an innocent nature.  I do not believe men like Bohr, von Neumann, or Feynman suffered from naiveté.  Their support of in-determinism was a direct result of a philosophical dis-like of the alternatives.

 

Sure, your ad hominem attack is about as valid as my argument that De Broglie was so disgusted by his own immoral private life that he attempted to rewrite quantum mechanics to pacify his own guilt; and Bohm was an intellectual second-hander, who likewise was so guilt-stricken by the shocking manifestations of his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality, that he couldn't accept in-determinism.

 

 

You do seem very fond of ad hominem attacks. In your previous posts, you have mostly just asserted weak points in others' arguments, without much actual fuel behind the fire. I myself have agreed with some (the origin of volition out of a determined process remains a mystery). But, you spend much more time trying to paint people who hold these views as pathologically needy, generally ignorant, or both, than you do in logical debate. You also don't seem to want to debate the inconsistencies in your own views with much rigor. For example, I have yet to see an explanation (from you or any of the other determinists) for why the very existence of the concept of "volition" does not cause a contradiction with strict determinism; and, why this systemic contradiction isn't much more intractable than volition's.

 

Ad hominem attacks may occasionally have a place. However, when you only attack through assertion, over and over- then resort to using phrases like "needy" or claims they have abandoned reason in favor of likes & dislikes- and never expressing much willingness to discuss the "flaws" in your own system... well, it really sounds like projecting.

 

I hope this didn't sound too harsh. You do seem to be one of the more thoughtful determinists here. I just wanted to let you know how this appears to me. I'm very sure you do not intend your ad hominem attacks to substitute for intellectual thought. In the limited forum of e-mail, it's often difficult to be very intellectually rigorous. Just letting you know that it keeps appearing to be a one-way street here. James

 

From: "George H. Smith" Some time ago I noted that the Bill, Gayle, and others who defend one view of rights typically embrace soft determinism, whereas another view is defended by myself, Ellen, Barbara, and others who defend volition. (There are apparent exceptions to this, however, such as Jeff Olson, so I don't wish to press the point too far.)

 

Here is how I think this plays a role in Bill's problem with "conflicting obligations."

 

Our actions, according to Bill, are *determined* by our value judgments (and other mental states), including our moral principles  Thus, if I accept that I am in some sense "obligated" by the rights of others, then in Bill's scheme this should *determine* my course of action.

 

I maintain, on the other hand, that we may be confronted with various kinds of obligations, from which we must ultimately *choose* one over others. Obligations are not a kind of push-pull mechanism that determine how we must act.

 

Even if the split over determinism cannot account for every disagreement in this debate, it nonetheless appear to play a very important part.  Ghs

 

From: hardy@math Barbara Branden wrote: <I don't react with horror to the idea of determinism, I merely think it mistaken. And I don't like ad hominem arguments.  Neither I, nor any other advocate of volition, has ascribed a lack of mental health to those who accept determinism. Hmmm. . .

 

         Dennis May answered that ad hominem is _sometimes_ a good thing, and that his reason for rejecting volition is that he rejects a certain philosophical interpretation of quantum physics.

 

         So I shall subject Dennis May to some of what he considers "ad hominem".  But first, a clarification: Neither Barbara Branden, nor I, nor anyone on this list, AFAIK, has based any theory of volition on, of all things, quantum mechanics.  We have based it on our observations of how our minds work.  To cast us as advocates of a certain philosophy of quantum physics is to attack a straw man.

Barbara Branden and I have both  said that we do NOT have a scientific understanding of how consciousness comes about.  Therefore, it is an error to attribute to us any theory of consciousness-via-quanta. Now for the ad hominem: It seems to me that you can't bear to think about the fact that so important a thing as the human mind is not yet scientifically understood, and you're in denial about this. Otherwise, why do you keep asserting that scientific understanding of how consciousness arises has long since been attained, without providing any specific content to that alleged understanding?          Mike Hardy

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism Dave Thomas wrote: <I don't see why anyone would be biased to believe in indeterminism over determinism. The two seem to be quite equivalent with regard to their levels of intellectual/emotional/spiritual comfort.

 

Indeterminism is the minimal requirement for the existence of volition.  Volition requires indeterminism plus a unknown mechanism independent of known causal factors.  Hence the interest in "The Quantum Mind", alternate dimensions, many world theories, time travel, etc. Once you open the can of worms any

unknown mechanism can be molded to fit the bill.  The mechanism must remain unknown or volition fails.

Dennis May

 

From: "Dave Thomas" <davethomasdavethomas Dennis May: >Indeterminism is the minimal requirement for the existence of volition.  Volition requires indeterminism plus a unknown mechanism independent of known causal factors.  Hence the interest in "The Quantum Mind", alternate dimensions, many world theories, time travel, etc. Once you open the can of worms any unknown mechanism can be molded to fit the bill.  The mechanism must remain unknown or volition fails.

 

That hadn't occurred to me.  But what you're saying still doesn't make sense to me.  I thought that indeterminism means that consciousness and "choice" and every other physical phenomenon are under the influence of purely physical and *random* forces.  Volition is a separate matter isn't it? Volition would entail a purposeful element rather than the random element derived from indeterminism.

 

Dennis, am I wrong to think that the only relevant connection between indeterminism and volition is that both are not understood even to the point that we know whether or not they exist?  Other than this unknown (or mystical from your perspective) quality, I understand indeterminism and volition to be contradictory theories.  I don't understand why indeterminism is a "minimal requirement for the existence of volition". Dave

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james >Indeterminism is the minimal requirement for the existence of volition.  Volition requires indeterminism plus a unknown mechanism independent of known causal factors.

 

Not true. Volition is requiores a causality model wholly separate from both indeterminism (100% random causality) and determinism (100% physically determined causality). Volition can't exist under either.

 

>The mechanism must remain unknown or volition fails.

> 

 

Again, not true. You are presuming a physically determined mechanism.

James

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism@hotmail.com>

 

Dave Thomas wrote:

<Volition would entail a purposeful element rather than the random element derived from indeterminism.

 

Indeterminism means <NOT> determinism. Things included under <NOT> determinism: freewill and random processes as noted in the dictionary under the word indeterminism, coined in (1874).

 

Dave Thomas wrote:

<I understand indeterminism and volition to be contradictory theories.  I don't understand why indeterminism is a "minimal requirement for the existence of volition".

 

It depends on if your definition of free will includes volition.

 

Pinning down the definitions of free will, volition, random processes, and indeterminism is a task in

itself.  Volition and random processes not generally equated.  The distinction becomes uncertain whenever people like von Neumann and a host of physicists have claimed that the existence of a human mind affects the outcome of what are otherwise described as random processes.  Some would claim there is no reality as described in the quantum world until a volitional mind makes it so.  It is best to consider volition as one of many things <NOT> determinism.

 

I wrote:

>Indeterminism is the minimal requirement for the existence of volition.  Volition requires indeterminism plus a unknown mechanism independent of known causal factors.

 

James Koontz wrote:

<Not true. Volition requires a causality model wholly separate from both indeterminism (100% random causality) and determinism (100% physically determined causality). Volition can't exist under either.

 

The definition of indeterminism includes free will (see above).  I agree that whatever people

mean by volition is not 100% random or determined. I have never heard it argued that the world is

100% random.

I wrote:

>The mechanism must remain unknown or volition fails.

 

James Koontz wrote:

<Again, not true. You are presuming a physically determined mechanism.

 

If volition is determined it is not volition. If volition is random it is not volition. If the mechanism is not random and is not determined it is unknown.  If it is a known mechanism it can be described.  The cause of volition must remain unknown by definition. Hence some people insist it is axiomatic while hard determinists see it as a subjective experience based in an entirely physical system obeying common causality.

 

Quoting James Koontz again:

<Again, not true. You are presuming a physically determined mechanism.

 

As opposed to a non-physical mechanism or no mechanism at all?  How did evolution suddenly create non-physical mechanisms or things which happen without physical causation?  Bottle it and I will sell it.

 

Dennis May

 

From: Ellen Stuttle <egould@MAIL.HARTFORD.EDU>

Dennis May wrote:

 > The cause of volition must remain unknown by definition.

 

Not true.  To say that the cause of something isn't yet known isn't to say it "must remain unknown by definition."  There are things we don't yet understand about this universe we live in.  (I know, Dennis, you think the basic answer to the mechanisms of consciousness lies in "neural nets," but I'm one who remains unconvinced that the issues have quite been settled.)

 

Ellen S.

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism@hotmail.com>

 

I wrote:

>The cause of volition must remain unknown by definition.

 

Ellen Stuttle wrote:

<Not true.  To say that the cause of something isn't yet known isn't to say it "must remain unknown by definition."  There are things we don't yet understand about this universe we live in.  (I know, Dennis, you think the basic answer to the mechanisms of consciousness lies in "neural nets," but I'm one who remains unconvinced that the issues have quite been settled.)

 

I attempted several ways of saying "The cause of volition must remain unknown by definition" but I

wasn't really satisfied with how it came out.  I intended to mean that if Ellen or someone else can

provide a cause, it becomes a topic for causality. Several people have then included the caveat that

volition has it's own causality particular to it's identity.  This causality does not apply to normal causality.  We then step back into the can of worms of interacting causalities.  It would be impossible

to separate the forms of causality because they act on the same real matter in the universe.  Support

for volition is tantamount to placing the mind in the position to create at least some aspects of physical reality.  If in part why not in whole? The ability to create physical reality (affect causality and all that implies) is a truly remarkable claim.  That is precisely why subjectivist quantum mechanics has drawn believers in the occult and psychic powers like flies to fresh dung.

 

I really believe that clarification of what is meant by the issue of determinism versus volition will lead to more progress than debating the details of people's individual recollections of motivations as seems to be the normal mode of debate.  From my point of view volition is a misunderstanding born of context.  Supporters of volition and determinism both view things from the subjectivity of the human mind.  The difference is that I understand the objective processes which allow a subjective mind to function.  There is no shame or horror in understanding your mind as a piecework.

 

There will always be more things to learn in the information sciences.  The task is known by theory

to be endless.  I know many people will never be satisfied with the answers already known.  If in

five years time intelligent androids walked the Earth in abundance it would not change some people's perspective on volition.  I am not trying to change everyone's mind.  I am simply informing those who are interested that the issue is not closed in volition's favor by any means regardless of the good it seems to do for philosophy.  It's place within the natural sciences is akin to witchcraft.  There is a very long way to go in convincing the hard sciences that philosophy has anything interesting to say on the subject of new forms of causality.

 

Dennis May'll have to find a new warm and fuzzy way of discussing science and neural nets without

causing automatic reflexes to activate.  There are many issues in sciences which to not translate

well into philosophy.  There are often very different underlying assumptions.

 

From: "Jens Hube" <jens.p.hube@verizon.net>

Dennis May wrote:

"The distinction becomes uncertain whenever people like von Neumann and a host of physicists

have claimed that the existence of a human mind affects the outcome of what are otherwise described

as random processes.  Some would claim there is no reality as described in the quantum world until

a volitional mind makes it so."

 

It is true that von Neumann helped develop the mathematical framework on which the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is founded - which is derived from the positivist Copenhagen interpretation. It is even true that there are some that would claim that consciousness plays an essential role in quantum causation; but those that believe this seriously are almost as rare as Bohmian mechanics supporters. The more active research (among the few that actually do work on the foundations of quantum mechanics) involves a process called decoherence, which allows for multiple quantum

possibilities to naturally decay, such that on some scale a classical description applies.

 

The large majority of physicists assume the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics without any deeper analysis because it works. Indeed out of it, after unifying it with special relativity, grew the Standard Model (which describes the three forces besides gravity), the most successful (i.e., experimentally verified to record precision)  theory in history. No one believes that the Standard Model is a final theory - but will be replaced (e.g., String theory), and its replacement will have a more

satisfying (and better motivated) description of the quantum regime.

Dennis:

"How did evolution suddenly create non-physical mechanisms or things which happen without physical

causation?  Bottle it an I will sell it."

 

I'll take two.

From: Ellen Stuttle <egould@MAIL.HARTFORD.EDU>

Dennis,

I've included your whole post below.  I'm quite interested by your reply; it seems that you're really trying to communicate here, and I'm desirous of trying to achieve a mutual language.

 

A couple points on which I already agree:

(1)  "I intended to mean that if Ellen or someone else can provide a cause, it becomes a topic for causality."  Yes, it does.

 

(2)  "...subjectivist quantum mechanics has drawn believers in the occult and psychic powers like flies to fresh dung."

Oh, yes; true  -- I could probably tell you even more on that score than you already know, since I move in circles where "believers in the occult and psychic powers" abound, and you can be sure that *The Tao of Physics* and such like books proliferate on these people's bookshelves.

 

But before I can go further, I'd like to reask a couple questions -- I recall your having been asked these questions before but I don't well remember what you answered:

 

(1)  Just what do you mean by "physical reality"?  I often get the impression when you talk about "the subjective mind" that you yourself think the mind *isn't* part of the natural world, that you think it's an illusion -- but isn't even an illusion part of the natural world?  I'm not clear on what you're saying "the subjective mind" is, how it fits in "physical reality."

 

(2)  Do you think that consciousness has causal efficacy? Let me give an example:  at the moment I'm feeling thirst, and I'll go get a drink of water after I send this e-mail; does my feeling of thirst have anything to do with my proceeding to take action?  Was the feeling, the conscious experience, required in the causal sequence?

Ellen S.

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james Dennis May:

>Indeterminism means <NOT> determinism. Things included under <NOT> determinism: freewill and random processes as noted in the dictionary under the word indeterminism, coined in (1874).

> 

 

While indeterminism is often used to mean <not> determinism, to be philosophically precise- "<not> determinisim" is simply "not determinism," or if you prefer, "undeterminsim." Formally, indeterminism does have a very specific meaning referring to a specific view of causality. <formal> Indeterminism does not include voliton.

 

In a debate about volition vs. determinism, it's probably wise for all of us to be sure we use these precisely- or at least consistently- you can't argue voilition requires indeterminism (informal) and indeterminism (formal) has problem X, so voliton has problem X.

 

This is precisely what you appear to be starting when you write:

 

>Indeterminism is the minimal requirement for the existence of volition. Volition requires indeterminism plus a unknown mechanism independent  of known causal factors.

 

If indeterminism is "not determinism" and volition is one "not determinism," what exaclty does this mean when you say volition requires indeterminism? That volition is not determinism?

 

 

Let's take your next argument (why the "how" of volition cannot be known) point by point...

 

Dennis:

>If volition is determined it is not volition.

 

Agreed.

 

>If volition is random it is not volition.

 

Agreed.

(The 2 above items are why volition is neither deterministic nor indeterministic)

 

>If the mechanism is not random and is not determined it is unknown.

 

You lose me here. I can only assume that you are mixing determined (philosophy) with determined ("figured out"). Understanding how volition is able to operate (determined- "figured out") only means it is determined (philosophy) if the mechanism turns out to be something that was totally caused and only appeared to be partially uncaused. If we come to understand the mechanism by which our mind gets its ability to become its own causal agent, it would be determined ("figured out") and undetermined (philosophy).

 

>If it is a known mechanism it can be described.

 

Agreed.

 

>The cause of volition must remain unknown by definition.

 

By what definition of what word?

 

>Hence some people insist it is axiomatic while hard determinists see it as a subjective experience based in an entirely physical system obeying common causality.

 

I would still like to see your explanation of why this subjective (and supposedly 100% false) experience

is possible under determinism. James

 

From: hardy@math.Dennis May wrote: > I understand the objective processes which allow a subjective mind to function.

 

         If you really understand this, publish it.  The foremost scientists in that field all say that _don't_ understand how subjective states of mind arise from the activity of neurons, and they would consider it a MAJOR breakthrough.          Mike Hardy

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism Jens Hube wrote: <The more active research (among the few that actually do work on the foundations of quantum mechanics) involves a process called decoherence, which allows for multiple quantum possibilities to naturally decay, such that on some scale a classical description applies.

 

There are Bohmian mechanics approaches to decoherence as well.  The entire approach remains deterministic so the classical description applies all along.  It is not obvious that he concept of a "natural decay" within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics gains you anything.  Bohm's description of enfoldment within quantum mechanics clearly demonstrates that unless information content is actually lost the system remains quantum no matter how random or classical it appears to be.  This is an

exact analogy to those who misunderstand deterministic chaotic processes to imply a loss of information.  No matter how much you stir the ingredients if the process is deterministic you cannot assign a statistically based function to be exactly equivalent to the resultant process.  To do so destroys information content.

 

Ellen Stuttle wrote: <(1)  Just what do you mean by "physical reality"?

 

Everything there is, ever was, or ever will be.

 

<I often get the impression when you talk about "the subjective mind" that you yourself think the mind *isn't* part of the natural world, that you think it's an illusion -- but isn't even an illusion part of the natural world? I'm not clear on what you're saying "the subjective mind" is, how it fits in "physical reality."

 

The mind is very much a part of the natural world.  The brain is the mechanism, the mind

is the process of a brain in action.

 

<(2)  Do you think that consciousness has causal efficacy?  Let me give an example:  at the moment I'm feeling thirst, and I'll go get a drink of water after I send this e-mail; does my feeling of thirst have anything to do with my proceeding to take action?  Was the feeling, the conscious experience, required in the causal sequence?

 

Feedback from your body told your mind it is time to be thirsty.  This works at the lowest rungs of the animal kingdom.  Conscious experience forms a continuum of complexity from the low level to those who might compose and sing a song about their love of water while on the way to the faucet.  The feedback works and you live to see another day.

 

James Koontz wrote:

<While indeterminism is often used to mean <not> determinism, to be philosophically precise- "<not> determinisim" is simply "not determinism," or if you prefer, "undeterminsim." Formally, indeterminism does have a very specific meaning referring to a specific view of causality. <formal> Indeterminism does not include voliton.

 

Apparently the current formal definition is the exact opposite of the word's meaning as it was originally created and intended (as explained in the dictionary).  If philosophers wish to use precise terminology why assign a meaning opposed to the dictionary meaning and the historical reason for the creation of the

term?  My first introduction to "Hard Determinism" was reading about the history and philosophy of science.  The term indetermism was created to encompass "Free Will" during the debates over determinism which ran for many years starting in the late 1700's, reaching a peak in the 1860's - 1890's time frame.  If you will provide a formal definition in contrast to the dictionary definition I would be greatful.  I would be even more greatful for a definition of volition. I have yet to see a definition which more than a handful of people agree on.

 

I wrote:

>I understand the objective processes which allow a subjective mind to function.

 

Mike Hardy wrote:

 

<If you really understand this, publish it. The foremost scientists in that field all say that _don't_ understand how subjective states of mind arise from the activity of neurons, and they would consider it a MAJOR breakthrough.

 

As you know there is no agreement on what would constitute "understanding" the subjective mind.  With no agreement on what constitutes a correct answer there remains several schools of thought which cannot agree on fundamentals. I have stated my position several times that the answer is the process of neural networks.

This does nothing for those who want more to the answer than a process.

 

That having been said I do have a very specific physical embodiment of an AI system which I wish to build at some point in my life unless someone else beats me to it.  No new theory involved, just application and engineering. It should none-the-less be patentable in some respects.

 

Dave Thomas wrote:

<All that's needed is a sufficiently complex brain.

 

Exactly.  150 billion neurons with some connecting to hundreds of other neurons is indeed a complex

powerhouse of information processing.

Dave Thomas wrote:

 

<ps - James, I like what you said about the definitions of determinism and indeterminism. It's important that we all are consistent with these definitions and I've been confused by Dennis' use of the term "indeterminism". Hopefully he'll clear all this up now.

 

I doubt there will ever be clarity in the definitions.  I would be happy to use whatever one half of the Atlantis members could agree on. That is why I occasionally drag out my definition of "Strict 8-Ball Determinism" as I have in several other posts.  Perhaps others should start dragging their definitions from post to post to reduce errors in understanding.  Someone adventurous might create a single post with all the relevant definitions which can be referred back to as needed.

 

Dennis May

 

From: Ellen Stuttle <egould@MAIL.HARTFORD.EDU>

Responding at the moment just to the chunk of Dennis'post addressed to my comments (I won't have time for further response until Saturday):

>Ellen Stuttle wrote:(1)  Just what do you mean by "physical reality"? Everthing there is, ever was, or ever will be.

 

Then why not just say "reality"?  What's the pay-off of "physical"?

 

 ><I often get the impression when you talk about "the subjective mind" that you yourself think the mind *isn't* part of the natural world, that you think it's an illusion -- but isn't even an illusion part of the natural world?

 ><I'm not clear on what you're saying "the subjective mind" is, how it fits in "physical reality."

 >

 >The mind is very much a part of the natural world.  The brain is the mechanism, the mind

 >is the process of a brain in action.

 

 ><(2)  Do you think that consciousness has causal efficacy?  Let me give an example:  at the moment I'm feeling thirst, and I'll go get a drink of water after I send this e-mail; does my feeling of thirst have anything to do with my proceeding to take action?  Was the feeling, the conscious experience, required in the causal sequence?

 >

 >Feedback from your body told your mind it is time to be thirsty.  This works at the lowest rungs of the animal kingdom.  Conscious experience forms a continuum of complexity from the low level to those who might compose and sing a song about their love of water while on the way to the faucet.  The feedback works and you live to see another day.

 

You haven't answered my question as to whether or not the conscious experience *is required and

is efficacious* in the causal sequence.

Ellen S.

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

>James Koontz: I would still like to see your explanation of why this subjective (and supposedly 100% false) experience is possible under determinism.

> 

Dave Thomas:

>I don't understand why this is a challenging question for determinists. All sorts of feelings and attitudes and thoughts and imaginings are possible under determinism.  All that's needed is a sufficiently complex brain.

 

The problem is, physical causality is "100% true." A sufficiently complex brain, under determinism can rearrange a set of "truths" (e.g., the wings of a bird, the body of a horse, and a rhino's horn) into things which do not exist in reality (e.g., a flying unicorn).

 

If determinism is correct, however, there is no way to explain why our brains conceive of volition. There are no "partial truths" that can be rearranged to result in volition if determinism is correct.

 

Therefore, for determinism to be true, our brains must be able to create things that fall wholly outside the line of physical causality.

This is exactly the "magic" they fault volitionists for.

Note also that under determinism, this physically inexplicable creative event occurs numerous times each day in the life of every individual person. Under volition, this "magic" that lifts the brain

above physical causality only has to occur once during the formation of the brain, and is thereafter a constant "truth" in reality.

Which view then has a greater basis in magic?

James

 

From: AchillesRB@aol.com

 

James Koontz wrote:

> The problem is, physical causality is "100% true." A sufficiently complex brain, under determinism can rearrange a set of "truths"  (e.g., the wings of a bird, the body of a horse, and a rhino's horn) into things which do not exist in reality (e.g., a flying unicorn).  If determinism is correct, however, there is no way to explain why our brains conceive of volition. There are no "partial truths" that can be rearranged to result in volition if determinism is correct.  Therefore, for determinism to be true, our brains must be able to create things that fall wholly outside the line of physical causality.  This is exactly the "magic" they fault volitionists for.  Note also that under determinism, this physically inexplicable

 > creative event occurs numerous times each day in the life of every  individual person. Under volition, this "magic" that lifts the brain above physical causality only has to occur once during the formation of the brain, and is thereafter a constant "truth" in reality.

 >

 >

 

Nice try, James, but no cigar, magical or otherwise. :-)

For the partial truths that can be re-arranged to come up with the "magical" or indeterminist view of volition, read the relevant passage in Arthur Koestler's ~The Act of Creation~, which everyone should read anyway (IMO), for the richness of ideas on human awareness, creativity, etc. (If James or anyone is

unable to locate the passage mentioned, I will try to dig up the quote and post it.) But even off the top of my head, I am incredulous that James would try to make this argument. It is prima facie obvious to me that the human mind can, quite well by its own creative devices, re-arrange any old set of ideas and come up with a plausible sounding error, such as the indeterminist (could have done otherwise than I did) model of volition.

 

Best 2 all,

Roger Bissell

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

Roger Bissell:

>Nice try, James, but no cigar, magical or otherwise. :-)

>For the partial truths that can be re-arranged to come up with the "magical" or indeterminist view of volition, read the relevant passage in Arthur Koestler's ~The Act of Creation~, which everyone should read anyway (IMO), for the richness of ideas on human awareness, creativity, etc. (If James or anyone is

>unable to locate the passage mentioned, I will try to dig up the quote and post it.) But even off the top of my head, I am incredulous that James would try to make this argument. It is prima facie obvious to me that the human mind can, quite well by its own creative devices, re-arrange any old set of ideas and come up with a plausible sounding error, such as the indeterminist (could have done otherwise than I did) model of volition.

> 

 

Again, the problem here is that if determinism is true, there is NO "old set of ideas" from whence volition came. If volition does not exist, what possible referent in physical reality can be rearranged to produce the "false" concept of volition.

 

I have not read the referenced book, but if there is anything there that describes how a determined mind can, not just rearrange, but create 100%, a new idea with absolutely NO REFERENT IN REALITY, I'd very much like to hear how this is done.

 

It may seem incredulous to you, but I have yet to see ANY determinist theory of the mind that can account for the 100% wholesale creation of a concept with no relation in any way shape or form to something that exists in reality.

 

If it is so "prima facie obvious," I wish someone would stoop down for a moment and let someone as oblivious as me in on the secret.

 

From: AchillesRB Ellen Moore wrote: > If my memory is accurate, I recall that Jeff implied an essential differentiation between Roger Bissell's view versus mine by stating that Roger viewed volition and reason as "inseparable" while I viewed volition as "axiomatic".

 

In the sense that volition is the human power of cognitive self- regulation and reason is the human form of cognition, yes, I do regard them as inseparable. Also, for reasons I have given at length previously here and on OWL, I do not regard either reason or volition as axiomatic. Ellen Moore, herself, not too long ago, analyzed the controversy over whether volition is an axiom or a corollary (Peikoff says both in his Objectivism book), and she concluded that it was neither. (At that time, she chided me for the shallowness of my own analysis, which was merely concerned with trying to establish that volition could not be an axiom, and was AT MOST a corollary of consciousness and causality, the latter itself a corollary of identity. If anyone, included Ellen, doubts the accuracy of this report, I will be happy (sort of) to dredge up the post in question and quote its relevant portions.)

 

Yes, I do view volition as "axiomatic" because  it is the attribute of actions by a consciousness, as a state of  awareness; an axiom of human nature only.  The identity and causality of  human consciousness is that its actions volitionally initiate and direct its levels of awareness.

 

If consciousness is an axiom and volition is an attribute of the actions of a certain kind of consciousness, then it cannot be an axiom (a primary), but instead (at most) a corollary. If Ellen Moore wants to argue that volition is an axiom in the sense that the parallel line postulate is an axiom of Euclidean geometry,

fine, but that is a far different sense than the primary philosophical axioms that the controversy concerns. (I note also that this is a reversal from Ellen Moore's previous position, noted above.)

 

 >    I do regard volition and reason as "inseparable" - that term does not constitute an essential  difference between Roger's and my view.  Our  epistemological disagreement is about the nature of reason.  If I understood Roger's view, he believes that reason is an innate, primary metaphysical attribute (i.e., "axiomatic" as is volition).  Rand explicitly stated (ITOE) that reason is not "axiomatic", but complex and derivative.  Objectivism maintains that reason is the human

 >

 

Ellen Moore confuses "axiomatic" as a philosophical primary with fundamental in the sense of "innate, primary metaphysical attribute." The defining characteristic of human beings is reason, but that does

not make it axiomatic, any more than the defining characteristics of tables are axiomatic. They are just (contextually) fundamental. Even if you want to substitute volition for reason as the primary or

fundamental attribute of human beings, the point remains that our defining attribute is NOT an axiom, NOR a corollary, but simply an attribute of our awareness, a primary, fundamental attribute.

 

To repeat: I do not regard either reason or volition as axioms or as "axiomatic." I do regard them as inseparable, for the reasons given above. I think that reason is primary, for in order to be cognitively

self-regulating (volitional) on the human (rational) level, you have to already have something on the human cognitive level to regulate! (Namely, reason.) All 4 now, Roger Bissell

 

James

From: "Dave Thomas" <davethomasdavethomas Dennis May: >I doubt there will ever be clarity in the definitions.  I would be happy to use whatever one half of the Atlantis members could agree on. That is why I occasionally drag out my definition of "Strict 8-Ball Determinism" as I have in several other posts.  Perhaps others should start dragging their definitions from post to post to reduce errors in understanding.  Someone adventurous might create a single post with all the relevant definitions which can be referred back to as needed.

 

Don't be so doubtful that we can come to a consensus.  I think that everyone involved in this discussion except for you considers "indeterminism" to basically mean determinism with a random and unpredictable element added. Meaning that under indeterminism there is no free-will/volition. Indeterminism would say that, given a system with no mind at work, even if you know all of the relevant variables, you still won't be able to accurately predict the future of the system because of purely random variations.  Indeterminism also would predict the same thing for a system where a mind is at work for the same reasons (the mind is not outside normal physical causation). I think that the term "nondeterminism" would work well for "anything that's not determinism", although I don't know where soft determinism fits into that.

 

I looked up the term "indeterminism" in my dictionary and it seems that you (Dennis) are correct in your use of the word.  But I think the terms I suggested will better allow precise communication, especially since James and I seem to have independently arrived at this same definition.  Or, if someone can suggest a better term for what I defined to be indeterminism above, that's fine with me. Dave

 

From: "Dennis May" <determinism Ellen Stuttle wrote: <You haven't answered my question as to whether or not the conscious experience *is required and is efficacious* in the causal sequence.

 

The bigger the brain the more it needs to and is able to monitor itself in order to stay out of trouble.  There are adaptive dangers/advantages to having a big brain.  A small brain may do very well in many circumstances.  Poor internal monitoring in a big brain can be less adaptive than a smaller brain which works well.  Consciousness (awareness of self and internal contemplation) can be very advantageous for the owner.  A sense of self and an understanding of self in relationship to the external environment has allowed humans to excel in environments where human physiology is poorly adapted. In the causal sequence, the conscious mind is efficacious.  Self monitoring (consciousness) is required for a big brain to take advantage of it's big size, otherwise the high costs of having a big brain would not pay off.

 

You could have a big brain which is composed of a huge array of reflexive responses without

consciousness.  This would require a huge DNA which would be prone to more problems than an

adaptive system such as the conscious mind born of a simpler DNA.  Adaptivity with limited

hardwiring describes the conscious mind.  Intensive hardwiring with limited adaptivity would be the

big brain without consciousness.  Hence the problems with some approaches to AI.

 

My view of what consciousness is comes from my understanding of what the human brain is.  I

wouldn't expect those who view consciousness as existing apart from the plumbing to share

this view.  Discussion of the nature of the plumbing is where many of us part company.

 

I only see plumbing in action, others see plumbing and have decided a plumber made it (god),

and yet others see the plumbing but have decided what the plumbing does cannot be the results of

the plumbing alone.

 

I can only suggest you do the math.  The plumbing is complex enough to do everything it appears to

do and a great deal more.  The human mind is only partially interconnected and does astronomical

information gathering and processing.  If every one of our neurons were interconnected with every

other one, the complexity would be staggering well beyond the amazing amount it is now.  Evolution has seen fit to provide a mix of hardwiring, adaptability, interconnectedness, and storage.  A brain built for the real world by the real world. Dennis May

 

Subject: Re: ATL: Re: The Greater Flaw (Determinism .vs. Volition)

Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 12:44:07 -0700

James Koontz: >he problem is, physical causality is "100% true." A sufficiently vomplex brain, under determinism can rearrange a set of "truths" e.g., the wings of a bird, the body of a horse, and a rhino's horn) into things which do not exist in reality (e.g., a flying unicorn).

>If determinism is correct, however, there is no way to explain why our brains conceive of volition. There are no "partial truths" that can be rearranged to result in volition if determinism is correct.

 

Earlier I stated that I didn't see the logic behind this line of argument. I've thought of an example that gives good reason to reject James' argument here (IMO).

 

First, James, do you believe that life evolved by means of a determined or a volition process?  Is it safe to assume you believe that it was a determined process and no creator's volition was involved?  If so, do you also believe that life was something unique and new that wasn't based merely on a

conglomeration of older truths or realities?  How about intelligent life? How about a wing or a foot or a heart or a lung or a kidney?  Evolution is a process that builds on its own creations, but it is also a creative process in that novel creatures have been brought to life.

 

To reiterate:  A purely determined process has created all the forms of life on earth (not to mention all the novelty of the non-living universe), so why is it hard to believe that determined human thought can be creative as well?

 

There's one more thing I think I need to mention.  The idea of volition isn't absolutely novel to a determined mind in that it is merely a creation in the currency of thoughts, much like a computer isn't novel in respect to the fact that it's merely a creation in the currency of matter.

 

Dave

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

Dave Thomas:

>First, James, do you believe that life evolved by means of a determined or a volition process?

 

Determined.

 

>Is it safe to assume you believe that it was a determined process and no creator's volition was involved?

 

Very safe.

 

>If so, do you also believe that life was something unique and new that wasn't based merely on a conglomeration of older truths or realities? How about intelligent life? How about a wing or a foot or a heart or a lung or a kidney? 

> >Evolution is a process that builds on its own creations, but it is also a  creative process in that novel creatures have been brought to life.

> 

 

Well, this depends (to a degree) on the form of evolution you accept. Under classical/Darwinist evolution, combined with what we now know of the fossil record, I would have to agree that deterministic evolution would be capable of some rather amazing creative events.

 

However, Darwinism no longer is considered totally valid. There are many new theories of evolution that can account for the dramatic "leaps" we had to accept under Darwinism once our knowledge of the fossil record became more complete. The theory I currently like best comes from Dr. Senepathy's "Independent Birth of Organisms." If you're not familiar with it, a good starting point is:  http://www.mattox.com/genome/synopsis.html

 

Under this view of evolution, there isn't a whole heck of a lot of creating going on (even precious little variation!) in this determined process. And this concurs with what we have been able to learn from the fossil record- there is really very little genetic variation within an evolutionary line even over long periods of time.

 

Nevertheless, it is my understanding of most evolutionary theories (that sound plausible to me) that your "creative" process is a "mutative" process. In those species that combine DNA from two individual members of that species, most of the mutation occurs simply in the recombination of genetic "truths"

in new (and in complex enough creatures- unique) ways. That is not wholesale "creation."

 

Now, how that first strand of DNA ever appeared, that is a issue that all non-theists have to deal with. (Though NASA and the Santa Fe Institute actually have some interesting studies underway that look like they may be able to explain this- or least least demonstrate the plausibility of certain scenarios. Another "if you want more info" link-

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Bulletins/bulletin-summer97/turning.html.

 

 

>To reiterate:  A purely determined process has created all the forms of life on earth (not to mention all the novelty of the non-living universe), so why is it hard to believe that determined human thought can be creative as well?

> 

I would still disagree that evolution is in any way a wholly creative process. It is a rearrangement.

 

So, why can't a determined process be truly creative? It's the nature of physical causality. To be truly creative (create something with no possible referent or set of referents in reality), when every effect requires a physical world cause, is impossible.

New concepts can build on old ones, by rearranging the old, adding additional factors into the mix, etc. But, under determinism you can't create something out of nothing (the some is true of the physical world under volition).

 

It's still a pick your poison issue. Either a determined process created a human mind with volition as a constant attribute, or the determined human mind can create the concept of volition without any possible referent in reality.

Under determinism, if you had enough knowledge you could follow the line of causality back in time and know everything that has ever happened back to the First Cause, or forward in time and know everything that ever will happen into infinity or some Final Effect. There is NO ALTERNATIVE. Wholesale creation without a physical cause is impossible.

 

>There's one more thing I think I need to mention.  The idea of  volition isn't absolutely novel to a determined mind in that it is merely a creation in the currency of thoughts, much like a computer isn't novel in respect to the fact that it's merely a creation in the currency of matter.

> 

Again, a computer is a rearrangement, a building of/recombination of truths in reality- not a wholesale creation. If determinism is correct, then volition must be a wholesale creation. Wholesale creation without any possible referent or cause in reality is impossible under determinism.

 

James

From: "Jens Hube" <jens_hube@yahoo.com>

 

James Koontz wrote:

"Wholesale creation without any possible referent or cause in reality is impossible under determinism."

 

James, I believe you need to explain your notion of creation! I think the process of creativity involves a new application or extrapolation of an idea in a novel context. "Creation without a physical cause" is meaningless; that is to say, I have no idea what it means! Please provide an example(s) of an act of creation.

 

James also wrote:

"Under determinism, if you had enough knowledge you could follow the line of causality back in time and know everything that has ever happened back to the First Cause, or forward in time and know

everything that ever will happen into infinity or some Final Effect."

 

But this is not possible since there is never a clean split between observer and observed - it is never possible to have "enough" knowledge. The best you could do is the following cosmological Gedanken experiment: isolate yourself and a computer with enough memory to capture the state of the rest of the

universe (i.e., the universe minus you and your computer (and your lab)) - you could then "follow

the line of causality" and make predictions. The isolation of your lab from the rest of the universe is the biggest problem with this thought experiment. But the point is that even given this experiment you cannot know _everything_ since you haven't modeled yourself! Add back in the interaction between yourself and the rest of the universe, and then it is clear that it is impossible to know everything.

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

>James Koontz wrote:

>"Wholesale creation without any possible referent or cause in reality is impossible under determinism."

> 

 

Jens Hube:

>James, I believe you need to explain your notion of creation! I think the process of creativity involves a new application or extrapolation of an idea in a novel context. "Creation without a physical cause" is meaningless; that is to say, I have no idea what it means! Please provide an example(s) of an act of creation.

 

First, there is a big difference between creativity and creation. That said, however, note that I am differentiating between creation as "assembling something new from existing building blocks" from wholesale/total creation- the creation of something new without pre-existing building blocks (or a combination of existing building blocks and something additional).

 

Computers never existed before the first one was invented (created, if you prefer)- but it was not a "wholesale creation," it was a reworking of basic physical building blocks. This is clearly possible under volition, and I would also agree with the determinists here that it is possible under determinism as well.

 

However, if volition didn't exist, my argument is that there are no physical world building blocks from which the concept itself could be developed. There is no cause or set of causes that could produce this effect.

 

The point is, under both volition and determinism, the mind must be able to create effects that do not have a direct cause (or set of causes) in physical causality alone. The difference is, determinists have to believe that this is the only instance of the mind having this capability. (Otherwise, volition would not just be a concept, but a truth in reality).

 

> 

>James also wrote:

>"Under determinism, if you had enough knowledge you could follow the line of causality back in time and know everythin From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Re: The Greater Flaw (Determinism .vs. Volition)

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 21:49:49

 

First, my fault for not being very clear on "creation," "wholesale creation," and the like. Let me try it this way... I'll use the various types of "creation" as follows:

 

"Integrative Creation"- development of something new through the recombination or reapplication of existing components of reality. "Pure Creation"- development of something new without existing building blocks/components of reality.

 

I'll also correct my own quotes below.

 

Dave Thomas:

>So, in that primordial ooze, life began out of non-life.... isn't  this an example of a determined process

>creating something new that hadn't existed before? >

 

Yes, but Integrative Creation, rather than Pure Creation. As I stated, how the first bits of DNA (or some predecessor) came about is a question for determinists and volitionists alike. The second link I referred you to has some examples of how this might have happened. For example, oceanic volcanic activity appears to be able to reconfigure existing compounds into the precursors of DNA strands. Just because we don't yet fully know the answer, doesn't mean life came about by magic.

 

That is, a determined process is responsible for Integrative Creation resulting in the formation of life.

 

(By the way, I think it is to your/determinists' advantage to be able to demonstrate the origin of life was Integrative Creation. If it was Pure Creation, this would be a problem for physical causality- unless one accepts a theistic view of creation along with determinism)

 

>James Koontz:

>>Nevertheless, it is my understanding of most evolutionary theories (that sound plausible to me) that your "creative" process is a "mutative" process. In those species that combine DNA from two individual members of that species, most of the mutation occurs simply in the recombination of genetic "truths" in new (and in complex enough creatures- unique) ways. That is not wholesale "creation." [PURE CREATION]

> 

Dave Thomas:

>Maybe that's not always "wholesale creation", but there is some creation involved in that process and there is "wholesale creation" involved in the birth of life.

 

How so? It is very possible (and for both volitionists and determinists, *necessary* to avoid a contradiction in physical causality) for life to have originated through a recombination of existing components of reality [Integrative Creation].

 

Dave Thomas:

>If it [first strand of DNA] was formed by natural processes, then it was a wholesale creation regardless of the details right?

 

No. Again, my fault for being unclear on "wholesale creation." If the details are that volcanic activity was responsible for reconfiguring basic compounds into something that became DNA, then this is Integrative Creation, not Pure Creation.

 

>James Koontz:

>>So, why can't a determined process be truly creative [PURE CREATION]? It's the nature of physical causality. To be truly creative (create something with no possible referent or set of referents in reality) [PURE CREATION], when every effect requires a physical world cause, is impossible.

> 

Dave Thomas:

>Maybe you're wrong and maybe you're right.  You might be right if you give an extremely strict definition to this "wholesale creation".

 

That's what I meant to do. Hopefully, I've now cleared up the confusion.

 

Dave Thomas:

>If you restrict that definition to eliminate things like the rearrangement of inorganic molecules into life, or a biological developmental rearrangement to allow intelligent life, or a rearrangement of thoughts and words and concepts to create a concept  with no corollary in nature (volition, God, ESP).... if you define "wholesale creation" to not include these sorts of things, then sure, "To be truly creative when every effect requires a physical world cause, is impossible".

> 

 

Dave, all I am doing is applying the laws of causality as expressed by determinism. If you have some objection to stating that every effect must have a physical cause, then you are not arguing for determinism.

 

[I should also note that it is probably possible for a determined mind to conceive of God and ESP. Off the top of my head I think I can come up with some aspects of reality that could possibly be recombined result in these being conceived of by the mind.]

 

OK. So then the job of the determinists should be very easy. Simply show that there is some physical cause or set of causal factors that can be recombined to result in the mind deterministically conceiving of volition and I shall be thoroughly disgraced.

 

>James Koontz:

>>It's still a pick your poison issue. Either a determined process created a human mind with volition as a constant attribute, or the determined human mind can create the concept of volition without any possible referent in reality.

> 

Dave Thomas:

>The contradiction here is eliminated under determinism (or under free will, so long as you drop your argument's basic premise).  You want to argue that a determined process (the human mind) could not create the concept of volition.  You also want to argue that a determined process (evolution) did in fact create the physical reality of volition when it created the human mind.   You either need a volitional creator or you need to drop the assertion that a determined process couldn't make volition a reality.

> 

 

What I am arguing is that both determinism and volition "seem" to require Pure Creation. Given the nature of physical causality both systems accept, this CANNOT be or both have a fundamental flaw.

 

With volition we may eventually learn the process by which the mind is able to make a choice between two or more alternatives. Like volcanoes (possibly) creating life from non-life along a purely deterministic process, all volition requires is that something in the development of the human brain

gives it this potential. We simply lack the knowledge to define what it is.

 

Under determinism, however, we have a more difficult problem  As far as I can tell, the only way the conception of volition can come about under determinism is if there is something in reality involving some grain of "choice" or even "alternative."

Something must exist in reality that we have not yet identified that acts as a cause for the effect of the appearance of volition. Something out there must be able to be recombined with something else to produce this perception, and somewhere along the line, one of those somethings must, in at least the

most minuscule way, contradict physical causality to allow it to be falsely extrapolated in the human mind as volition.

This is where another aspect of the "greater flaw" comes in. Volition keeps physical causality fully intact as a "line of truth." Determinism, a view totally based on physical causality, actually depends on, at least, the smallest imaginable break in physical causality.

 

 

>James Koontz:

>>Again, a computer is a rearrangement, a building of/recombination of truths in reality- not a wholesale creation [Integrative, rather than Pure Creation]. If determinism is correct, then volition must be a wholesale creation [Pure Creation].

> 

 

Dave Thomas:

>There's a hole in your argument here.  Do you really think that the concept of volition is so special that it's not formed from other thoughts and beliefs and concepts?

 

What would those thoughts and beliefs and concepts be, and where would they come from in a deterministic system? I am not making volition out to be "special." If it can be deterministically created

(Integrative Creation), then there is no difference between it and any other product of the mind. The problem is, it can't.

 

Dave Thomas:

>Would you believe in volition if you didn't have words to express the idea?  My point is that the concept of volition is based on thoughts and beliefs like a computer is built of matter.   Volition

>is a creation of thoughts, and that makes it hardly unique.

 

Fine Dave, all you have to do to refute my entire argument is to show that it is in any way possible for volition to be an integration of thoughts and beliefs that are deterministically caused. I don't even care if it is the right answer for how the conception actually emerges. If there is even one possible mechanism for the formation of volition as a concept without conflicting with physical causality, I will be more than

happy to recant my intellectual sins.

 

>But more than that the concept of volition is based on human experience.  To a determinist, the idea of volition is enticing to people because it does in fact seem to be something that we experience.  Much like the concept of God, it is an incorrect assumption regarding the nature of the world based on a reality which seems to support the belief.  I believe that I make choices... there's your reference to reality upon which  the concept of volition is based.  If determinism is right, then this is an illusion.... an illusion

>upon which a mistaken concept is based (a corollary to reality if  you want).

> 

 

Mmmmm.... well, I'd like to say "nice try," but you're not even approaching the heart of the matter. How is it possible to experience choice if there is no choice? What deterministic cause or set of causal factors could ever recombine to give the illusion of choice when choice exists NOWHERE in the world.

 

ANY answer that doesn't conflict with physical causality is fine. It should be the easiest thing in the world......

>James Koontz:

>>Wholesale creation without any possible referent or cause in  reality is impossible under determinism.

> 

Dave Thomas:

>Ok.  Now I've provided you with a possible referent or cause in  reality.

 

No you haven't. You've just identified the symptom, not the cause.

 

Dave Thomas:

>I've also tried to explain why such is unnecessary.

> 

 

It is only unnecessary if you aren't really a determinist. Every effect must have a cause. Pretty much the meat and potatoes of determinism, wouldn't you think? Just name that cause and you win the big grand prize!

James

 

 

g that has ever happened back to the First Cause, or forward in time and know everything that ever will happen into infinity or some Final Effect."

> 

>Jens:

>But this is not possible since there is never a clean split between observer and observed - it is never possible to have "enough" knowledge.

 

I would agree that even if determinism were true, no one could ever amass this much knowledge. The point is to illustrate the "truth line" or "no-alternative" nature of deterministic causality. A few "determinists" here occasionally forget this. James

 

 

From: AchillesRB@  [apparently the server doesn't like my sending the entire essay in one email, so I have split it up into two; please excuse the inconvenience]

 

Dear Atlanteans: Is human freedom compatible with determinism? Is morality compatible with determinism? Is  rationality compatible with determinism? George Smith and others have posed these questions in recent days, and I will offer my responses to them (along with some personal reflections) in the following essay.

 

Rationality, Morality, Human Freedom, and Determinism by Roger E. Bissell

 

In the past sometimes I've been rational and sometimes I've been irrational, but as an opponent of Randian free will, am I committed to saying that in neither case could I "help it"? I know pretty well what is meant by "rational" and "irrational," but I'm not at all clear by what is meant by "could I help it."

 

It's probably most helpful to start by separating the instances of irrationality that involve knowingly failing to raise one's focus of awareness when one suspects one should, from those that involve knowingly doing something that is not in one's rational self-interest. As for "helping it," to me it is an issue of "weakness of will." I have definitely done things I felt/knew were bad and failed to do things I felt/knew were good -- and I experienced them as being things I was simply not strong enough to do or refrain from doing (i.e., I was too "weak-willed" to do them). There are other things that I was successful in handling, more "strong-willed," so I was able to do the right thing or avoid doing the wrong thing. There are also things that I was able to deliberate about, to weigh in my mind the pro's and con's before acting. However, in ~none~ of those cases did I actually experience myself as truly having a "free option." In all of them, I experienced myself as doing what I "had to do," for better or worse. My growing or shrinking level of mental/moral health and "will power" (though not "free will", as I experienced it) was heavily influenced by the fears and desires that I was experiencing at the time.

 

For instance, certain fears kept me locked into a bad marriage for a number of years. At some point, the fear

of losing the marriage completely led me into a recovery program that helped me see how to become stronger and overcome fears. I ~learned~ how to deal with fear, which is something I did not know how to do previously (the kind of loss of relationship fear, I mean; many other kinds of fear were no problem, such as performing in public). This knowledge then ~acted~ in my psyche to strengthen my will to the point that I was able to work toward a more rational, healthy kind of relationship (with another woman) and not be blocked or crippled by fear of losing the severely dysfunctional relationship.

 

Now, does this mean I deserve no moral "credit" for doing pro-life things, on such a view? Well, if by credit you simply mean ~encouragement~ and ~approval~ (i.e., reinforcement), I think that credit is ~exactly~ what I "deserve" -- i.e., should be given by others, if they want me to continue on a more life-serving path. (Note the conditional form of the should: if wanting me to continue on a more life-serving path has a higher motivational force to them than various other values they hold, then it is the thing they ought to do in order to

(try to) bring about that outcome.) And I think this is true ~even if~ I truly "couldn't help" doing what I did, at each step along the way. (That is how I see praise and blame functioning -- as spurs to improvement or change, not as "moral justice". It ~is~ the right thing to do, morally, to use praise and blame

to prod people in the right (pro-life, healthy) direction and away from self-and-other-destructive avenues. But I see us all as being engaged in boot-strapping in a very socially-interactive and mutually-beneficial way. Humans are rational AND social, and suffer when they abandon either aspect. So, I hope that is enough of an answer -- even if not a simple "yes" or "no" -- to clarify how I look at the issue of free will and morality/rationality.

But what about moral accountability? Well, I definitely ~do~ see a role for holding people accountable for their actions, ~even if~ they "can't help" doing what they do, i.e., even if they "couldn't have done otherwise." Here is my argument, in the context of my fuller views of human freedom of choice:

I know that there is a great and legitimate concern that if we do not have the power to "have done otherwise than we chose to do," then moral accountability or responsibility are out the window. And though I have a different view of the ~reasons~ why it is still reasonable to hold people responsible for their actions, even if they could not have acted otherwise, I think that the forms or ~ways~ in which they are best held accountable

would be much the same as under a regime of kinder-but-gentler Objectivism. I will try to sketch out my explanation of this claim below. But first, I want to make it clear that I am ~not~ saying that human action "just happens." Quite the opposite.

 

If it were not our values and knowledge that ultimately determine what we do, then ~that~ would be a situation in which our actions "just happen." For I truly do not understand how a person can say "I could have done otherwise" and ~really~ mean it. If values and knowledge do ~not~ determine our actions, then all that is left is ~bare choice~. And if it is one's bare choice that determines one's actions, rather than one's cognitively and normatively informed choice, then what is being described is not free will but, as Rand calls it, ~whim~. (Actually, it's worse than whim, since even whim has some subconscious preference driving it, as against the

conscious factors that have led to a choice the whim opposes.) Now, I ~know~ that no Objectivist in his right mind would ever advocate whim. But that is what the typical Objectivist arguments for free will seem to lead to, once they're fully understood.

Let me give an example that might help to clarify my position. Suppose I have considered a number of factors involved in a choice I must make. ("Must," in order to avoid certain undesirable consequences of failure to choose.) I arrive at my decision. But before I can execute it, some yet-unconsidered factor nags at me from my subconscious, perhaps generating a sense of foreboding about my projected action. I wonder about this feeling and, before long, it occurs to me I have not factored in the effects on my need for regular generous amounts of solitude. (Or whatever.) I now have another conceptual-level, future-directed consideration that renders my decision even less bound by concrete, here-and-now considerations--and, in that Sperryian (referring to Roger Sperry, the Nobel neuroscientist who did the split-brain research) sense, more free.

 

And that ~is~ the only sense in which Sperry speaks of human freedom--freedom from being bound by the concrete, here-and- now, as animals are. This is clearly a human, conceptual kind of freedom--though it is equally clearly not the freedom to have done other than what one did. If this latter, Randian sense of

freedom is somehow compatible with Sperry's sense of freedom, I have yet to see ~how~. For Sperry sees animals ~and~ humans as acting in ways that are determined by information, including information about what is for or against one, and the kind of information available to us humans as that which gives us not only

self-direction/autonomy but also freedom from the limitations of the perceptual level of awareness.

 

Given his context of knowledge and values, and the situation in which he found himself, and his reflective expectations of the consequences of acting one way or the other, he acted (as living organisms do when they are not subject to overwhelming pressures from environmental or physiological factors) as an autonomous,

self-directed agent to obtain the envisioned goal. This is not free will in the Randian sense of "could have done otherwise," only in the sense of "was aware of how one might act otherwise," in the sense of Sperry's freedom from limitations of awareness only of range-of-moment, concrete possibilities. When an animal acts so as to avoid pain in the here and now, that is not free will, but it ~is~ autonomous, self-directed action to achieve

envisioned value (or to avoid envisioned dis-value), on the concrete, perceptual level. The same kind of value-seeking or avoidance is available to human beings, but freed from the limitations of present-bound consciousness. Like animals, people can see alternatives and can act in the awareness of those alternatives, but that does ~not~ mean that are were ~free~ to choose among those alternatives, any more than animals are.

People, like animals, are not "free to do otherwise," but ~are~ autonomous and able to act as self-directed agents in pursuit of their chosen values. They are free to do what they ~must~ do, given the sum total of their values and knowledge—barring overwhelming effects of attack, injury, or disease. Unlike animals, people have a future-envisioning conceptual faculty and thus have the additional freedom from limitations on their

knowledge imposed by perception-only.

Why, then, do we experience situations in which we think or feel that we "could have done otherwise"? When does such a consideration even ~arise~?? If, as I am claiming, all of our choices are the product of the (usually largely subconscious) working out of our stored knowledge and values as they are brought to bear in a given situation, then as one or another item of knowledge or value pops into awareness in a way that nudges the choice to one alternative or another (or perhaps even suggests another alternative), we are aware that ~if~

we act on the basis of that item, we will pursue one of the alternatives or the other. And we are aware, once we have experienced enough conflict situations, that it is ~always~ on the basis of some overriding value that we act, whether or not we are fully aware of that value, but that one or another value might be sufficiently strong to override others only if it is given conscious attention, and that there may be several such values that override each other in turn as they are given attention, so that one is (sometimes painfully) aware that there is more than one direction that would be good (in some respect or other) for one to go. But there is an ambiguity in the term "could." And in the model I am describing, it does not mean ~really can~, but instead ~might or might not~, more along the lines of, "On a day like today, it could (might or might not) rain," rather than "On a day like today, it could (really can) rain." As I think it applies to human choice, the openness to alternative actions is a product of our ignorance of some of the factors that will be brought to bear, autonomously, by a person prior to his autonomous selection of an action. But autonomy does not mean ~without a context~. In being the self-directed chooser of an action, you cannot jump outside of your knowledge and values--not even in choosing whether to focus or not. Your knowledge and values are the part of you that you use in determining your actions.

There is NOTHING ELSE to base your choices on, so there can be no random, indeterministic, "could have done otherwise" kind of action, in the literally free sense. And that, I submit, is incompatible with the bill of goods that some Objectivists have sold us.

 

There is one other instance in which the thought that I "could do (or could have done) otherwise" might arise.

Suppose I am ready to make a decision (undertake some action), based on certain values and knowledge that I have considered, and I tell a friend what my decision is. At that point, I maintain, I am determined (self-determined) to take a certain action, and I ~could not~ have determined otherwise, ceterus parabus. But

suppose my friend asks, "Are you bound and determined to do this, or could you do X instead?" I would answer, "Yes, I am bound and determined to do this, because this is what I want (most) to do, but if I wanted to do X more, I could and would do X instead." Even listening to and considering this person's question, because I have autonomously, self-directedly chosen to give it my attention and thought, is doing other that I had initially determined to do. But this choice, too, I maintain, is determined (self-determined), not "free" in the sense that I could actually have done otherwise, given the knowledge and values that fed into my decision to make the choice to engage with my friend. The same would apply to additional thoughts, emotions, etc.,

that announce themselves after I have made my initial decision. Whatever I decide to do about them, though I (like all healthy animals in a normal setting) will do it ~autonomously~, nonetheless, I am also (self-)determined to do, by my values and knowledge; and again, this does not match up with (my own understanding of) Rand's model of free will. There is only one other possible objection I can think of to this perspective I am describing. Suppose I am in a situation where there is no clear-cut best choice, but I must make ~some~ choice or face detriments worse that if I choose one or the other alternative. Suppose further that I wallow around for a while in this no-man's-land of indecision, deciding first to do X, then a minute later to do Y, then Z, then W, vacillating over and over, but coming to no ~firm~ decision. At each step, I ask myself, "Can I do otherwise, or am I locked into this?" And I answer, "I can do W instead of X if it seems to be a better choice, and in a certain respect it is better, so I will do W instead of X." Again, even when one is

caught up in a loop of indecision, one is not truly capable of "doing otherwise," but merely being

determined to act autonomously to achieve that fits best with one's values and knowledge. The fact that the values and knowledge are being brought to bear in a more haphazard, unorganized manner may impede one's arriving at a truly good choice, but it does not make one's choice a bit more "free" (in any meaningful, positive sense) than the other, more orderly processes described above.

 

(continued in part 2)

From: AchillesRB Rationality, Morality, Human Freedom, and Determinism--part 2

by Roger E. Bissell

I have repeatedly stressed the fact that humans have conceptual, future-oriented, possibility-oriented awareness of alternatives. And the fact that humans (sometimes!) reflect on the projected outcomes of those

alternatives is a large part of what I take to be human judgment, considering "what is to be done?" But it should be noted that not just humans, but many of the higher mammals can be seen to engage not just in impulsive, reactive behavior, but considered, deliberative action, though with a more restricted (concrete, present-bound) range of envisionable possibilities. Though it is not conceptual or propositional in an explicit form, their process does amount to judgment in this broader sense.

The chief relevant differences I see between us and animals are: (1) our "adaptive control structure" benefits

by our unique possession of a conceptual faculty, which allows the human ACD to process information that is not bound to the concrete, here-and-now, and thus "frees" us from the relative limitations imposed on creatures who possess only a perceptual faculty, and (2) our ACD benefits by our unique ability to introspect, i.e., to monitor the functioning of our conscious brains, which adds another layer of organismic self-regulation to that which animals possess. Just as conceptualization arose to help humans cope with the information overload on the perceptual level, so introspection arose to help us cope  with the information overload on the conceptual level.

Since I regard the will as the form in which we are introspectively aware of our (brain's) capacity to

regulate the conscious actions of our brains and our bodies, I do not think of other animals as having a will.

It is a specifically human phenomenon. All animals (and plants) engage in self-direction and are thus (relatively) autonomous centers of biological activity. But while this is an important kind of freedom (freedom from domination by external forces), animals with their consciousness and locomotion have an additional kind of freedom (freedom from "blindness" and immobility), and humans are freest of all with our conceptual faculty which gives us freedom from the limitations of the perceptual level. But beyond this, I cannot yet--perhaps never--go, to regard our choices as free from determination by our thoughts and values. I literally do not know how to get free of my thoughts and values, and I don't think anyone else does either!

 

Where I have doubts is whether the Randian "choice to think" is a "first cause," undetermined by the thinking and valuing one has already done. I don't think there is such a thing. The choice to think or not is like every other choice. Sometimes it's easy to choose to think, sometimes difficult or impossible. Some people habitually choose to think, so that each new choice is usually easy--unless they are under some very great stress that influences them to avoid thinking. Then there is a real battle over which choice one will decide is in

one's best interests--a moral crisis, as it were. Other people vacillate between thinking and avoidance of thinking, so the conflicts are not experienced as nearly so intense; one has not so far to fall, so to speak. Others habitually evade, until and unless they "hit bottom" and reach a point where the alternative to thinking becomes "unthinkable." (Some people never reach that point, sadly.) And some people decide one way, some the other. All of this is true for thinking vs. not thinking no more or less than for any other major choice one might make. And in none of that do I find a significant ~difference~ from one's other choices.

Consider a situation in which one decides, based on certain values and knowledge that one has considered, to undertake some action. In the course of this decision process, there may be several values that clash with and override each other in turn as they are given attention. Such factors may be experienced as "popping" into one's awareness. (A particular issue or concern ~might~ "pop into awareness" (i.e., unbidden from one's sub-conscious), or one deliberately may "go looking for it." The idea of deliberately "looking for it" may, in turn, pop into one's awareness, or one may deliberately ask oneself "What issues or concerns haven't I dealt with yet?" All along the cognitive chain, one can become spontaneously aware of something that needs one's attention, or deliberately go looking for it. And neither of these options answers the crucial question: could you have done otherwise, in the precise context, than what you did? You may indeed have been in control of deciding to do what you did--as opposed to being controlled by overwhelming fear or coercion or disability

or whatever. But these are ~not~ the same "freedom of the will." They are distinct, and it does much mischief to confuse them. )

 

But I do ~not~ mean to imply that this is my model for how people always think and act. I just mean to refer to the fact that ~not all~ awareness of one's relevant values and knowledge arises in an orderly, directed manner, even if one is engaging in such a process! Sometimes the subconscious simply has its say--and allowing it to is ~not~ unreasonable! But once one has finished one's process of deliberation and one acts on the basis of one's knowledge and values, one's action is ~determined~. It does not causelessly "just happen." It happens inexorably as the result of the thinking and valuing that one has done. How else do you want your actions to be determined??

 

Thus, it makes no sense to me to say that you "could have chosen otherwise." Why or how? By considering a new factor or a previous factor further, which results in a new weighting of the factors, presumably. (How else?) But this is counterfactual to being able to choose otherwise based on precisely the thinking that one did prior to the choice one ~did~ make. In other words, the ~context has changed~. I maintain that a given context of considered knowledge and values necessitates one and only one action--and that if the context changes before one takes the action one has selected, all bets are off! One may take the same action, or one may take a different action, but whichever action is taken in the new context is determined by the ~new~ context.

And again, one is not acting differently than one "could have," but ~as one must, given that context~. Which provides a great rationale for (caring, non-coercive) intervention to help another change his context! Which brings me to a major concern, how to reconcile...how morality is possible without Randian free will.

 

If a group of people decide that certain rules of conduct are in everyone's best interest, then it is not unreasonable for them to also devise consequences that will be applied to both the ignorant and the knowledgeable, as well as some that will be applied differentially. But I realize that we may have different standards of how wrongdoers should be treated. If one is behaving in an untrustworthy manner, for instance, it is not unjust for others to keep a wide berth of one, perhaps not even to deal with one at all, even though one simply did not know that being untrustworthy is bad. More likely, though, such a person will have any number of generous souls who are willing to preach, admonish, and otherwise pressure him into behaving better. And unless he is pathologically disabled in some way (there are such folks who were severely abused or neglected in childhood), he will come around. (Or leave society, I suppose.) Why would one need an ~excuse~?  resumably, because a person who ~knows~ better but chooses otherwise is ~unhealthier~ (mentally, morally, emotionally) and thus more of a risk to others than a person who does ~not~ know better. And

as we tend more to quarantine those who have graver physical contagions--for the ~protection of others~, not the punishment of the sick person--we tend more to ostracize those who have graver cognitive/normative deficits, as evidenced by "knowing better but choosing otherwise. This amounts to a rationale for excusing or being more lenient toward those who do ~not~ know better, since their cognitive/normative health is not as

compromised; they are more likely to heal and to be less harm to others in the future.

 

There is ~so~ much more that needs to be said about this. One point I have repeatedly realized in my years of parenting and relating to dysfunctional relatives (and myself in the mirror!) is that of ~all~ the forms of influence one might have over others in getting them to change their ways, the only one that does not

violate the other's autonomy in some way is the one that consists in (1) modeling the right behavior, (2) taking responsibility for one's feelings and not blaming the other (e.g., using "I-messages" rather than "you-messages," as in "When you told everyone I was too fat, I felt humiliated" vs. "You're a cruel bastard for

telling everyone I was too fat."); and (3) drawing one's boundaries so that the other person realizes the  consequences of continuing to mistreat others. ("You don't have to treat me with respect, but I deserve and want respect, and from now on I am only going to associate with those who are respectful toward me, and I will avoid anyone who isn't, whether it's you or whoever." Contrast these with Ayn Rand's cursing Nathaniel

to 25 years of impotence for lying to her about Patrecia!

 

Before I close, I just want to point out that ~none~ of this requires us to have Randian free will. I can prescribe it to you for your own egoistic good, with plenty of evidence to back up its efficacy to enhance your well-being, simply by saying, "If you want to accomplish X (e.g., effectively influencing others to change their behavior for the better), then you should (i.e., need to) do Y. If you don't do Y, then your chances of achieving

your desired X are not so great." These are in the form of Randian "conditional imperatives," which I find much more palatable than the curses and threats and admonitions of the old-line Randian moralists. (Present company excepted!)

[I think that ~temperament~, which is inborn, is a much better candidate for explaining human behavior than is free will. I'm not saying it's the ~total~ explanation, because each person is raised in a unique environment to which they respond in a unique way, so the total set of causal factors involved is ~very~ complex.

 

And to a very large extent, we are autonomous, self-directing creatures, even if we ~don't~ have the Objectivist variety of free will. We choose things according to our nature, which includes conceptualizing and introspective awareness, so we can add all kinds of projection of possible good and bad outcomes to the mix of things that all go together to determine what we end up choosing. To the extent that we are not

incapacitated or crippled by brain defects or extremely bad upbringing, and not coercively restrained by our family or social or political environment, we ~can~ make autonomous choices. And even if we start out making mostly unhealthy ones, once we get away from home, we (often, not always) are like the tree that was severely bent by wind when young, but managed to correct its path and grow back straight again. I have done so, and I know many others who have, too. It was not as a result of indoctrinating myself better with Objectivist morality and the theory of volitional consciousness than was my understanding at age 20 or 30. Nor was it the result of blind chance. It was the result of healthy choices I made at a critical point in my life. There came a point when the consequences of bad choices became so apparent and inescapable, and the means and likelihood of remedying (enough of) those consequences clear enough, that "the best in me" (my "life force," whatever you want to call it) finally saw clearly what was really most deeply in my best interest. The worst of my accumulated defenses and self-delusions were finally pierced and the impetus to keep shoring them up dwindled away. In its place was an urge to go a new, healthier direction. I grew up. Finally. Make

of that what you like, but to me the analogy to the tree straightening up from the wind damage is one that suggests that free will is not needed to explain my developmental path.]

 

I have already offered my analysis of what is going on when a person says he "could have done otherwise," so I hope it is clear that I do not think there is literally such a thing as free will in the sense claimed by Objectivists. And that I instead adopt the view that we are, in a very important respect, freer than the animals from being determined solely by a combination of wired-in responses and concrete-level awareness, and the

view that we and the animals are all "free" in the sense of being relatively autonomous centers of self-directed action (which "freedom" breaks down when we are the victim of sufficiently severe injury or disease and we become, as it were, ~incapacitated~, whether temporarily or permanently). We do indeed see everywhere various kinds of things that people ~call~ "free will," but ~none~ of them is properly understood as true freedom to do "otherwise than one did." Just because one experiences a series or menu of alternative actions that one ~might~ take does ~not~ mean that one ~could~ take any one of them. Instead, it can only mean that one ~will~ take one of them, the one chosen, and that that choice is not free in the sense of being undetermined by anything (including one's values and knowledge), but only in the quite different sense of being less determined by present-bound considerations than is true for animals, and in the other quite different sense of being autonomous, i.e., relatively less determined by environmental and physiological pressures than by the various weights of ones values and knowledge.

 

And isn't that really the kind of "free will" we want to have: our actions being determined ~by us~ as conceptual, autonomous beings--i.e., as rational individuals?? Rather than the spooky kind of free will that allows us to choose whatever random direction we want to turn on the spur of the moment, without any

determination by our ~personal~ values and knowledge??

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

>James Koontz:

>>The problem is, all aspects ascribed to God are superlatives of actors that do exist in reality (omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, creator of all, etc.). Even though I am not a determinist, I would have to admit a determined mind could conceive of God.

 

Dave Thomas:

>All aspects acribed to volition are derived from factors that seem to exist in reality (choice, free will, options, unpredictability).  Do you agree that, if determinism is correct, these things could still seem to exist even though they don't?

 

Have you actually read my posts??????????????????????

 

No, I do not agree. That has been the fundamental point of every single one of my posts in response to you.

 

I will try one more time, very succinctly:

1) Under determinism, every effect (both mental and physical, though under determinism, these are the same thing) has a physical Cause (which may be a set of causal factors).

2) There is never, in causality, an alternative.

3) Therefore, there is nothing in reality related to choice that could be extrapolated to, reduced from, combined with, or whatever to result in the effect of volition being conceived of in the mind.

 

Like I said- all you have to do is show how non-choice can ever, however erroneously, add up to choice. Then you have proven me wrong.

 

Dave Thomas:

>Do you agree that even a determined mind is capable of logic?

 

Independent logical thought? No. No determinist should accept this either. Your brain must be wired a certain way that things "appear" to have a logical basis. Under determinism, the human brain is no more independently logical than a sophisticated computer system. The determined brain is wholly dependent on its programming and inputs. If it has garbage programming logic it spits out garbage. If it has valid programming logic, it spits out logical results from each input.

 

Actually, if determinism were correct, I would think humans would be a lot more "logical" that we are. Causality is a very precise. Physical reality is very precise. Being purely a product of causality and physical reality, you'd think our minds should be fairly precise as well.

 

Dave Thomas:

>Do you agree that, using logic, a determined mind could take the above observations of reality and arrive at the concept that people make choices?

 

Again, I still fail to see how the appearance of choice can ever emerge from a causally determined system.

 

Dave Thomas:

>Do you believe that, using logic, a determined mind could expand this concept of choices into the theory of volition?

 

Faulty premises.

 

James

 

From: "Dave Thomas" <davethomasdavethomas@hotmail.com>

James Koontz:

>I will try one more time, very succinctly: 1) Under determinism, every effect (both mental and physical, though under determinism, these are the same thing) has a physical Cause (which may be a set of causal factors). 2) There is never, in causality, an alternative.

 

Those two are fine.  Except that there is a distinction between mental and physical even in determinism - mental effects and causes are a subset of physical effects and causes.  But that's beside the point.  And there may be an alternative in causality under indeterminism (which I define as determinism plus a random unpredictable factor).  Again, that's beside the point.

 

>3) Therefore, there is nothing in reality related to choice that could be extrapolated to, reduced from, combined with, or whatever to result in the effect of volition being conceived of in the mind.

 

And this one is wrong.

 

Ever played chess with a computer?  A computer's deterministic isn't it? But if you didn't understand computer programming so well, you'd swear that the computer was making non-deterministic choices.  For a certain move, the computer may move its queen or it may move its pawn.  In a deterministic sense, it has a choice.  It does *seem* to be making choices despite the fact that it is not.  And you know that the computer will not always follow the same course of action even if you make exactly the same moves.  The computer can even play against itself hundreds of times and play hundreds of different games.  There you go, apparent volition arising from a determined computer.

 

Now take the example of the human mind and it just becomes much more complex.  There are so many variables interacting at any instant that different choices will be made in situations which appear to be exactly

similar to an outside observer or even upon introspection.  It would seem to someone who didn't understand physiology and the internal workings of the brain that it was making non-deterministic choices even though it wasn't.  A sufficiently complex deterministic system will seem to make choices.

 

James Koontz:

>Like I said- all you have to do is show how non-choice can ever, however erroneously, add up to choice. Then you have proven me wrong.

 

First of all you're simply asking me to prove a contradiction in terms.  You want me to prove that a non-choice can add up to a choice. I never claimed that it could.  I claimed that a non-choice can be misunderstood to be a

choice.

Aside from the above example, consider the concept of God's wrath. Throughout history people have believed that, in certain instances, God was punishing them.  This can take the form of a natural disaster. People have

believed that these deterministic (you'd say such things are deterministic correct?) events must be the work of some volitional entity they call God. They think that God had a choice.  They see volition where there is, in

fact, no volition.

 

>Dave Thomas:

>>Do you agree that even a determined mind is capable of logic? Independent logical thought? No.

>No determinist should accept this either. Your brain must be wired a certain way that things "appear" to have a logical basis. Under determinism, the human brain is no more independently logical than a sophisticated computer system. The determined brain is wholly dependent on its programming and inputs. If it has garbage programming logic it spits out garbage. If it has valid programming logic, it spits out logical results from each input.

 

Computers can perform logical calculations.  I don't know how you're defining the term "logic", but my definition includes determined computer logic.  And that's all a human being would need to come up with a concept... like volition.  Sure it still needs some input to base this logic on, but that's what I described above.

 

James Koontz:

>Actually, if determinism were correct, I would think humans would be a lot more "logical" that we are. Causality is a very precise.

 

Biochemistry works better when it is not so precise as a computer.  But this is beside the point.

 

Dave

From: hardy@math.mit.edu

James Koontz wrote:

> Actually, if determinism were correct, I would think humans would be a lot more "logical" that we are.

 

         Given that apparently deterministic animals, e.g. cats, do exist, would you then say that cats are "logical"?

 

Dave Thomas answered: Ever played chess with a computer?  A computer's deterministic isn't it?  But if you didn't understand computer programming so well, you'd swear that the computer was making non-deterministic choices.

   [ snip ]

 > There you go, apparent volition arising from a determined computer.

 

 

         I don't think this is a valid counterexample to what James Koontz was talking about.  He said there could not *appear* to be free will if there were not actually free will.  I agree.  When the computer *appears* to be making choices, it is only because the computer *appears* to be doing the same thing that *you* do when you

play chess.  If you didn't actually make volitional choices when playing chess, but instead you were accustomed to receiving instructions from some deterministic chess chip embedded in your brain, then it would *appear* to you that anyone playing chess was receiving such instructions rather than rationally thinking and making choices.

 

            Sometimes when I see a book on a shelf leaning against another book rather than standing straight up, it looks to me as if the book is uncomfortable.  Obviously this is an illusion.  So you may conclude that an appearance of discomfort could exist even though actual discomfort does not, just as occurs with the book on the shelf.  But that illusion could not possibly occur if there were no physical positions in which I would be uncomfortable.  There can be no illusory appearance of discomfort if actual discomfort does not exist.

Similarly with volition.

         Mike Hardy

 

From: AchillesRB@aol.com

Mike Hardy elucidated upon

 >  what James   Koontz was talking about.  He said there could not *appear* to be free will if there were not actually free will.  I agree.

 

I do, too, but not in the sense that James and Michael mean. There ~is~ a will, in the sense of our capacity to regulate the mental processes of our brains and our physical actions. All life is self-directed activity (not a definition, just a description), and all life is relatively autonomous from the environment in that respect, being the locus of incoming energy and matter used for information, nutrition, etc., which is then transformed

into the means of survival (metabolism, locomotion, and awareness). The organizational apex of each organism's hierarchy of structures and functions exercises guiding causation, and the lower levels (infrastructure) exercise supportive causation. The apex, which is where the information and various motivations are sorted out, is our mind and will, ie., our capacity to conceptually grasp reality and our capacity to consciously direct our actions.

 

As living beings, we are relatively free from being determined by our environment, and more or less guided by our wired-in needs and capacities. As conscious beings, we are relatively free from having to have physico-chemical contact with other objects prior to acting to gain or avoid them And as conceptual beings, we are relatively free from having to act on the basis of perception of concrete, here-and-now phenomena.

 

As human beings, then, we are free in ~all~ of these ways to take actions in the world. And our wills, as an aspect of the apex of our beings, are thus free in all of these ways, too. Our capacity for self-regulation, our will, is unconstrained in all of these various ways.

 

But what some Objectivists insist on adding to this already considerable freedom is something that amounts to ~whim~, as I have explained in my yet-uncommented-upon posts of yesterday (and as Bill Dwyer and Gayle Dean and others have said previously). And that is the notion that human freedom depends on our having been able to have done something other than what we did, in any given situation. "Could have done (or been) otherwise" is the idea that they attach to the will in order for it to have the kind of freedom that they think we possess. But I disagree, of course. As I have argued previously, and will give further support below, I think that this add-on kind of freedom amounts to ~whim~.

 

Now James Koontz has argued that there is no way to get the idea of even an ~appearance~ of free will without there being real free will. In terms of my own distinction between a free-autonomous but motivationally determined will vs. a free-could-have-done-otherwise-than-my-strongest-motivation

will, I have already explained how the former ~is~ real. But what about the latter? Some Objectivists (not me!) claim that they really ~could~ have done otherwise than act according to their strongest motivation. OK, is ~this~ an illusion? (Yes! Or at least, an error.) And if so, where does this illusion (or error) come from?

 

First, we ~do~ have a will, and it ~is~ free, in the way that I explained, but ~not~ free willy-nilly to do other than we actually did in any given situation. So please retain that...

 

OK, the idea of "could have done otherwise" is a ~conditional~ idea, like imperatives in ethics. Objectivism espouses not the categorical "You should X" imperatives of traditional morality, but the conditional "If you want Y, you should X" imperatives. It's duty vs. causality, as Rand explained. Similarly, human freedom to have done otherwise than one did is not categorical, as a free-floating ability to do whatever one wishes, apart from the controlling influence of whatever one's strongest operative motive is -- but instead the ability to have done otherwise than one did, ~if~ a different motive had been stronger than the one that did in fact redominate in one's will. In parallel to the above, it's whim vs. causality!

 

In other words, just as moral imperatives are governed by causality rather than duty, free will is governed by causality rather than whim. If this makes me a volitionist, so be it -- but please think of me as an Objectivist causal volitionist, not a Randian whim-volitionist. :-)  Make no mistake about it: categorical free will -- free will divorced from one's strongest operative motivation/value -- ~is~ whim, and as such cannot be any part of Objectivism, any more than categorical imperatives can. Not if you want your models of ethics and human freedom to be consistent with causality -- and reality. :-)

 

So, to answer James Koontz's question: the illusion that there is categorical could-have-done-otherwise (no if) free will is formed as an error, by the combination of the idea of the real ~conditional~ free will that we ~do~ have, which is also a form of motivational determinism I call "hierarchical macrodeterminism," in contrast to atomistic reductive determinism) -- with the idea of the ~absence~ of any condition (if) for one's having made an alternate choice. In other words, the idea of Randian whim-volition is a ~misinterpretation~ of a very real phenomenon, which does ~not~ include any ability of humans to make free-floating choices.

 

Best to all, Roger Bissell

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 20:32:34 EST

In a message dated 2/7/01 3:43:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, BB from M writes:

 > I'll try once more, and not again. >

 >  Roger Bissell wrote: If it were not our values and knowledge that ultimately determine what we do, then ~that~ would be a situation in which our actions "just happen." For I truly do not understand how a person can say "I could have done otherwise" and ~really~ mean it. If values and knowledge do ~not~ determine our actions, then all that is left is ~bare choice~. And if it is one's bare choice that determines one's actions, rather than one's cognitively and normatively informed choice, then what is being described is not free will but, as Rand calls it, ~whim~. (Actually, it's worse than whim, since even whim has some subconscious preference driving it, as against the conscious factors that have led to a choice the whim opposes.) Now, I ~know~ that no Objectivist in his right mind would ever advocate whim. But that is what the typical Objectivist arguments for free will seem to lead to, once they're fully understood.>>

 >

 >  I agree. It is not "bare choice" in the sense of whims, that determines our *  actions, * it is our values and knowledge. I underscore "actions," because these are not the subject or the meaning of volition. Although Roger makes  passing reference to the choice to raise or lower our level of consciousness, he, like other determinists, does not give it the centrality that Ayn Rand's concept of volition insists upon. It is this choice and only this choice wherein volition resides. It is here and only here that "I could have done otherwise" is relevant.

 

Yes, I understand, but I don't think "could have done otherwise" pertains to think/not-think ~either~, because ~all~ choices, whether to engage in physical actions, or in psychological processes in general, or specifically in thinking are and must be ~motivated~. No choices, including whether to think, are uncaused or unmotivated. We, including our operative motivation in any given situation, are the cause of our choices, including the choice to think or not. But as I said earlier today, it is not we ~apart from~ that operative

motivation. It is not ~whim~, free-floating choice, that we have in regard to thinking, any more than in regard

to any other action we might take. All choices are motivated.

 

 >  Determinists have endlessly been discussing whether our actions are volitional or determined. I give up telling them that this is not, not, not the issue.

 

Well, don't just jump all over the determinists (actually, I'm a causal-volitionist rather than a whim-volitionist :-), because anti-determinists talk about actions as volitional, too, and the rest of us get sucked in by it. (We can't help ourselves. :-)

 

I hope we can focus (heh-heh) on the issue of causality vs. whim as the basis of human freedom -- in other words, whether free will (such as we have) is unconstrained, value-based choice (including to think or not) or free- floating, arbitrary whim -- in other words, whether free will is derivable from Objectivism's view of identity and causality or from Rand's attempt to preserve a last bastion for causeless choice.

 

Best to all, Roger Bissell

 

From: Ellen Stuttle <egould> Since I'm known to have strong interest in the volition issue, I think I should make a public statement about what I think of Roger Bissell's recent posts on this.

 

I agree with at least 90% of what he's said.  Where I have questions is on details, not on the basic thrust.

 

In particular, I question the exact way he draws the human/other-animals divide.  And I question what it means to say that all human behavior is motivated.  A simple example there:  Is the eye-blink reflex motivated? A very complex question:  How exactly do "reasons for doing something" compare/contrast to "motives for doing something"?  This is another of those what-does-a-word-mean issues.

 

A caveat to my 90%-or-upwards agreement with Roger: There's a particular book I've never read and am wishing I had read and am intending to read as soon as I can (please, God, let that be soon).  The book is Bergson's *Time and Free-Will*.  It's possible that this book could give me a whole new slant on the way I think of determinism/volition issues.  (Stay tuned.)

 

Meanwhile, thanks to Roger for his well-thought-out and detailed presentations.  I myself tend toward the

telegraphic style of posting, and I'm appreciative of Roger's having expended the effort on a thorough

presentation.  And also thanks to Roger for the terms "causal volitionist" versus "whim volitionist."

I like that distinction very much.

Ellen S.

P.S. -- I am sending this response to the list, even though it arrived as a private response, because Barbara did not address me personally but instead said "Roger Bissell wrote." If she considers this a breach of privacy, I am sorry, because I don't consider it a personal email. Also, it didn't say "off list" or any other such indication that it was intended to be private.

 

From: BBfromM@aol.com To: atlantis@wetheliving.com I had intended sending this post to the list, but instead sent it to Roger. So here it is: I'll try once more, and not again.

 

Roger Bissell wrote: <<If it were not our values and knowledge that ultimately determine what we do, then ~that~ would be a situation in which our actions "just happen." For I truly do not understand how a person can say "I could have done otherwise" and ~really~ mean it. If values and knowledge do ~not~ determine our actions, then all that is left is ~bare choice~. And if it is one's bare choice that determines one's actions, rather than one's cognitively and normatively informed choice, then what is being described is not free will but, as Rand calls it, ~whim~. (Actually, it's worse than whim, since even whim has some subconscious preference driving it, as against the conscious factors that have led to a choice the whim opposes.) Now, I ~know~ that no Objectivist in his right mind would ever advocate whim. But that is what the typical Objectivist arguments for free will seem to lead to, once they're fully understood.>>

 

I agree. It is not "bare choice" in the sense of whims, that determines our * actions, * it is our values and knowledge. I underscore "actions," because these are not the subject or the meaning of volition. Although Roger makes a passing reference to the choice to raise or lower our level of consciousness, he, like other determinists, does not give it the centrality that Ayn Rand's concept of volition insists upon. It is this choice and only this choice wherein volition resides. It is here and only here that "I could have done otherwise" is relevant.

 

Determinists have endlessly been discussing whether our actions are volitional or determined. I give up telling them that this is not, not, not the issue. Barbara

Roger's response -- to which I shall respond -- has been posted.

 

From: Ellen Moore <ellen_moore@mb.sympatico.ca>

I respond to Roger Bissell's posts only in order to keep things honest:

This is what I wrote, "I wish Roger would state clearly if he believes that 'reason is an innate metaphysical attribute in the nature of human beings.'  "

 

Roger's response was to attack me personally, and he dared me to admit making an error - I did admit it.  He evaded the main issue I posed. When I pointed this out, Roger responded with more personal attacks

against me, and he refused to state or deal with his belief about the fundamental nature of reason.

     He claimed I "brazenly" and "cluelessly" misstate the truth, whimfully adding such pejorative adjectives of 'confused, awkward, murky, faulty writing style' - giving  no evidence to prove instances of these malicious assertions.  He concluded his second lengthy rant with his "assessment" of me, "you are not worth it" - still refusing to state his belief whether reason is metaphysical.

     This is classic argumentum ad hominem; attack the person in order to evade dealing with idea.

 

Roger has written many posts on the topics of volition and reason, and hides his position behind equivocation, unclear, and contradictory language, but within its content is the consistent implication that he believes that reason is metaphysical - the meaning of this term is not a "murky" concept.

 

As usual, Barbara Branden supported and sanctioned Roger in "bowing out of a discussion" with me.  Listen up, I did not invite Roger into a discussion with me; I wished him to state clearly his belief so that his

readers would understand him explicitly.  I long ago stopped discussing anything directly with Roger.  So much for BB's and Roger's failure to apply reason and logic - or truth!

 

After reading Roger's uncensored, stream of consciousness, self-exposure in his two-part post, Tues, Feb. 6, I was struck silent in dismay by the dire absence of any clear, clean, fresh insight of conceptual rationality. This post is typical of Roger's style of thinking and writing, and it is the most pitiable piece of confused rationalization I have seen on Atlantis.  It was completely irrelevant because it offered no criticism to the Objectivist theory of volitional consciousness, or to rationality, or morality, or freedom.

 

Wouldn't you know it? - Barbara Branden and Ellen Stuttle with her 90% agreement responded to that ridiculous piece of garbled, deterministic junk.  It was worthless.   There is absolutely no justification for

describing Rand's premise as "whim volition".  Volition is neither whim, nor random, nor arbitrary, nor determined by any prior cause.  Volition is itself primary and causal - a human consciousness in action.

 

Here is a point to consider:  In the past 36 years, I have never heard any criticism of Rand, or of Objectivism, which was not based on a misunderstanding or a distortion of the meaning of the ideas Rand wrote or said.

 

The issue I began with, that is, according to Objectivism reason is not metaphysical, is an important, fundamental philosophical innovation among Rand's ideas.  I would be interested to know if any members here have yet considered this fact that I have identified.  And if not, why not?

 

Ellen Moore

 

 

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james@hotmail.com>

 

>James Koontz:

>>In the argument I was getting sucked into for far too long, I was demonstrating why a determined mind could conceive of an omnipotent  God, by combining "power" and "all."

 

Dave Thomas:

>All you need to do is take the notion of choice and add the idea that humans are above nature, and you may very well get a concept of volition.

 

Sure, Dave. Only problem is, choice doesn't exist in the deterministic world. You're still not even close to the point...

Dave Thomas: >Ok, let's get down to the basic flaws in your assertion that the concept of volition could not have arisen in a deterministic world. The primary flaw is that "wholesale creation" *can* occur in a  purely deterministic world.  You've made the assertion that it can't, but I've never seen you defend it in any meaningful way.

 

No, you just seem to not actually read my posts.

 

Dave, either you accept 100% physical causality, or you don't. At least be willing to have the courage of your convictions.

 

>I also don't understand why "wholesale creation" is possible under volition but not under determinism.

 

It isn't. I never said it was (all I said was that the concept of volition would be "wholesale creation"/"pure creation" if determinism were true). Again, a little more reading and thinking about other people's posts would be wise before you reply. I do this for your posts, but don't seem to get the same in return. That's why I'm giving up.

 

>It also bothers me that nothing in the natural world constitutes "wholesale creation" (not the creation of life,  not the multitudes of life that exist, not even the volitional mind) but somehow the *idea* of volition does.

 

Well, it's pretty simple why..... DETERMINISM IS TRUE...... except for that little thing called volition. Outside of the mind, volitionists and determinists have the exact same view of the natural world. We have the exact same view of physical causality.

So, if volition is correct- everything in determinism is correct- except for volition itself!

 

>The next flaw arose during our discussion of this issue.  We began by discussing whether the concept of volition could arise in a deterministic world.  So all I had to prove was that, in the world that we live in, the

>concept of volition may be reached by a deterministic mind.  Later, you fell back on claiming that the apparently volitional world that exists couldn't be a deterministic world.

 

I'm not sure where this "fall back" position comes from. I'm not even sure what it means, so I highly doubt I've argued it. Actually, I've been quite consistent throughout. My whole point is that if determinism is true, the very laws of physical causality on which determinism is based mean that it should be impossible to conceive of volition. While I may have tried various angles to get you to see this point, that has been the point of each and every one of my replies to you.

 

>I never set out to prove that determinism is true; only that, given the world that we live in, the concept of

>volition may have arisen from a deterministic mind.

 

And I would still love to see you do so. But, if you're not going to give it an honest, thoughtful attempt, I'm not going to keep wasting my time.

 

>Also, I can't get past a certain logical contradiction in your position. You claim that a volitional mind can arise from a deterministic natural world (evolution) but you claim that a deterministic mind is incapable of even conceiving of the idea of volition.  This makes no sense.

> 

 

Dave, look at the topic of this post. I'm the one who put it there (what seems like ages ago). From the very outset I have said there are flaws in both systems. I am not comfortable with this, but I admit it. I am perfectly willing to admit the problems on which my philosophy depends. I keep these problems in mind, keep looking for answers, and if I turn out to be wrong, I will change my views. I am after truth, not convenience.

 

I have repeated ad nauseum the point that volition's "flaw" comes from the seeming impossibility of volition emerging from a determined process. I'm the first to acknowledge this weakness in my views.

 

Determinism, however, doesn't have a "seeming" impossibility. Unless someone can make an honest attempt to demonstrate otherwise, it's pretty obvious to me that determinism has an inescapable impossibility. Total adherence to physical causality results in the "volition problem," and I don't see where any additional knowledge will ever overcome the contradiction.

 

Perhaps volition can be understood given additional knowledge. But, if you really understand what 100% physical causality entails, there doesn't seem to be any way additional knowledge can resolve determinism's flaw- the greater flaw. James

 

From: AchillesRB@ Greetings, Atlanteans...Roger Bissell here....

I just received the 2001 philosophy catalog from MIT Press, and I saw a book that I definitely am going to send for, and I thought some of you might want to know about it, too, since it is very much in the vein of our current discussion. Here's the info and blurb:

==============================================

Neurophilosophy of Free Will: From Libertarian

Illusions to a Concept of Natural Autonomy

by Henrik Walter, translated by Cynthia Klohr

 

Neuroscientists routinely investigate such classical philosophical topics as consciousness, thought,

language, meaning, aesthetics, and death. According to Henrik Walter, philosophers should in turn embrace

the wealth of research findings and ideas provided by neuroscience. In this book Walter applies the

methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilo-sophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning.

 

Walter's answer to whether there is free will is, It depends. The basic questions concerning free will

are (1) whether we are able to choose other than what we actually do. (2) whether our choices are

made intelligibly, and (3) whether we are really the originators of our choices. According to Walter, freedom of will is an illusion if we mean by it that under identical conditions we would be able to do or decide otherwise, while simultaneously acting only for reasons and being the true originators of our actions. In

place of this scientifically untenable strong version of free will, Walter offers what he calls ~natural autonomy~ -- self-determination unaided by supernatural powers that could exist even in an entirely determined universe. Although natural autonomy can support neither our traditional concept of guilt nor

certain cherished illusions about ourselves, it does not imply the abandonment of all concepts of responsibility. For we are not mere marionettes, with no influence over our thoughts or actions.

 

A Bradford Book, May 2001--420 pp.

-- 7 illus -- $42.00/L28.95

0-262-23214-6

===========================================

In closing, I continue to invite focused, responsible, intellectual commentary on my recent posts (not including the gratuitous retaliatory swipes at Ellen Moore, which I have vowed to forgo forthwith and henceforth). (And for the record, it is not my style to use sarcasm and derision against ~anyone~ who has not first made heinous, unfounded accusations against me, such as that I have engaged in "evasion." From this point on, I am

honor bound not to respond harshly even to those who do, or continue to do so. It's a little harder typing with one hand behind my back, but it saves a lot of time. :-)

 

George Smith: what about whim-volition (Rand's model for the choice to think) vs. causality-volition, which is essentially the organismic autonomy model applied to conceptually conscious beings? If all of our other choices are caused by our reasons and/or motivations, as even Barbara Branden and Leonard Peikoff concede, then why isn't the choice to think ~also~ caused by some reason or other? If we ~want~ to focus more than we want ~not~ to focus, isn't ~that~ the cause of our focusing, and not the pure, free-floating choice per se?

 

James Koontz: what about the source of the concept of Rand's model of free will, as a determinist would explain it, being the ~conditional~ could have done otherwise, ~if~ one had chosen otherwise ~MINUS~ the conditional? Isn't this plausible? A determinist could easily embrace Rand's idea of moral imperatives being conditional (if you want X, you should do Y), rather than categorical (you should do Y, period), and yet still understand the idea of the latter, even though it is an error. Why cannot the same mental subtraction to form an erroneous concept also take place for whim-volition (which is causal-volition minus the conditional factor)?

 

Except for Ellen Stuttle's forthright post, agreeing with 90% of my views on fw/determinism and Barbara

Branden's promise to reply to my challenge to the whim basis of the uncaused choice to think (and the

dismissive comments of one of the other Ellens), the silence has been ominous. George and James issued

some pretty stiff challenges to Bill, Gayle, Dave, and me -- and now they have fallen mute. Are you still

there, guys? Best to all, Roger Bissell

 

From: "James Koontz" <koontz_james To: atlantis@wetheliving.com Subject: Re: ATL: Responses, and then to Reason Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:47:01

 

Roger Bissell: >Did George Smith and James Koontz put Ellen Moore up to this, so they could get out of dealing with my most recent posts?  :-)  Isn't  it interesting that people who agree with me found them eloquent and persuasive, while those who disagree have either nothing to say, or nothing but empty insults?

 

First allow me to respond with your own words..."By the way, you forgetful old biddy, I do NOT appreciate being accused of EVASION, just because I am not willing and eager to jump when you say 'frog.'"

 

Some of us (the imperial "we," though I would guess others agree) have been slow to respond to your "essay" for several reasons:

1) It was extremely long.

2) Many of your points were circular, you changed definitions of concepts throughout, and your lines of reasoning weren't totally apparent. Combine that with #1 and the obvious problem is that if you want a serious answer- you have to give us some time.

3) I don't think you have a solid understanding of either Objectivism or determinism. Responding to an attack on one with the other is extremely difficult when you have to correct both sides of the argument simultaneously.

 

I have gone over your essay a couple times, and have some thoughts, but I still have two questions I'll need you to answer if you'd like me to respond intelligently (more or less)...

 

1) The answer on this should be clear, but in your essay it's not- Where do your values come from?

 

2) Can a determined mind make a "whim" decision? You talked around this in your "no-man's-land of indecision" paragraph- but I never saw an answer.

 

For example, earlier today I wanted an afternoon snack. I had an orange and banana. I didn't care which one I ate, but wanted to eat one of them. I wanted to have the other to eat tomorrow, and no way to store leftovers, so I couldn't eat half of each today. I also knew I probably wouldn't care which one I had left when tomorrow

came. Oranges are harder to peel than bananas, but being the forward looking human I am, I knew I'd have to peel the orange one of these days, so that wouldn't provide me with the right answer....

Anyway, I made a pure whim decision and ate the banana. How does a determined mind make this decision without being able to make the "whim" decision your essay frees us from?

 

I'll give you a more substantive critique of your essay once I have these answers to clear up several related points of confusion.... James

 

From: "George H. Smith" To: "*Atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: ATL: Re: Buridan's ass (was "Are mind and will an illusion?") Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:33:05 -0600

Bill Dwyer quoted Murray Rothbard as follows: "If a man were really indifferent between two alternatives, he could not make any choice between them, and therefore the choice could not be revealed in action....  Any action demonstrates choice based on preference:  preference for one alternative over others." [_Man, Economy, and State_, HB, p. 65]"

 

Bill then concluded: "In fact, what free will would require is precisely the kind of indifference that Rothbard rejects.  For if we are not indifferent to which alternative we choose, then only one choice is possible, namely, the one that we prefer.  To be sure, there are times that we can and do act against our emotional inclinations, but only because we have a reason to -- only because we perceive a greater, long-range value in choosing the alternative."

 

Rothbard's discussion of revealed preference is irrelevant to the issue under consideration, for the praxeological meaning of "preference" differs from its psychological meaning. Praxeology, unlike psychology, does not take into account *why* a man chooses such and such; rather, it deals "with any given ends and with the formal implications of the fact that men have ends and employ means to attain them."  This is why "all explanations of the law of marginal utility on psychological or physiological grounds [e.g., the law of satiation of wants] are erroneous." (Murray Rothbard, *Man, Economy, and State,* p. 63.)

 

It should also be remembered that Rothbard was himself a vigorous defender of free will. As he wrote in "The Mantle of Science":

"At the very best, the application of determinism to man is just an agenda for the future. After several centuries of arrogant proclamations, no determinist has come up with anything like a theory determining all of men's actions. Surely the burden of proof must rest on the one advancing a theory, particularly when the theory contradicts man's primary impressions. Surely we can, at the very least, tell the determinists to keep quiet until they can offer their determinations -- including, of course, their advance determinations of each of our reactions to their determining theory. But there is far more that can be said. For determinism, as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will. If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist, is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since man's mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try

to convince Y or anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject his ideas." (*Scientism and Values," ed. Schoeck and Wiggins, p. 161.)

 

Bill wrote: "But, in order for that choice to be truly free, we must be indifferent to which alternative we choose, in which case, our choice is arbitrary -- not just seemingly arbitrary but ~really~ arbitrary, i.e., no more valuable to us than the alternative.  But in that case, why did we choose it instead of the alternative?  What motivated our choice? ~Nothing did~, according to the doctrine of free will."

 

Why must we be "indifferent" to an alternative in order for our choice to be "truly free"? This position doesn't become more cogent merely because Bill has stated it repeatedly. I have never said that free choices are unmotivated. Nor have I said they are "arbitrary" in Bill's sense of the word. What I have said is that motives and reasons do not function like mechanistic causes, that a rational mind must evaluate and assess various reasons and causes, and that in this process of decision-making there are a number of choices it can make.

 

Bill argues, in effect, that our preferences -- a vague catch-all word which he has never clearly defined -- somehow "determine" our choices. But he has not given any argument against the volitionist position that

our choices can play a pivotal role in deciding what those preferences are. We can choose among various preferences; and if Bill wants to say that a choice, once it manifests itself in action, exhibits (or "demonstrates") a preference for the object of our action, then this is true (in a praxeological sense) by definition. For praxeologists, such as Rothbard and Mises, *define* human action as goal-directed behavior,

as the attempt to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs with one that is more satisfactory, so the goal of a given action is necessarily that for which we have a preference. Bill does not seem to understand the purely formalistic nature of the Misesian praxeology which Rothbard employed.

 

I wrote: "When a normal person wishes to express the notion that he could not have acted differently than he did, he will usually say something like, 'I had no choice in the matter.'  But not so the soft determinist. When he wants to say that he could not have acted differently, he will say something like, 'I had a choice in the matter, but I was determined to choose as I did'."

 

And Bill replied: "We have to be careful here to specify exactly what is meant by someone's saying, "I had no choice in the matter."  If a man wants to marry his fiancée more than anything in the world (and sees no reason not to), he will not say that he has "no choice in the matter", but there is a sense in which he doesn't.  Given his values, he has no reason to choose otherwise.  In that case, the alternative of not marrying her is not ~psychologically~ open to him."

I would never use this kind of language -- i.e., I would never say that I have "no choice" but to marry someone (unless perhaps it is literally a shotgun wedding) -- and I don't recall ever meeting someone who thinks

like this.  Moreover, to say that a person has "no reason to choose otherwise" in no way implies that his choice is causally determined -- unless, of course, we fail to understand the nature of "reasons" and insist on treating them like mechanistic causes.

 

Bill wrote: "However, one can still say that he has "a choice in the matter", if only in the sense that no one is forcing him to marry her -- that he could choose not to marry her if he ~preferred~ not to.  This is the soft determinist's sense of "having a choice in the matter".

This is an old dodge, one that goes back at least to Thomas Hobbes. And it is a perfect example of what I mean when I accuse soft determinists of engaging in word play. When the ordinary person says he chose (say)

to go to a movie, he is manifestly *not* saying that his choice was not made under the threat of coercion. Rather, he means that he made a choice between that alternative and others.

 

The soft determinist want to substitute the *interpersonal* concept of a *voluntary,* non-coerced choice with the *intrapersonal* concept of a *free* choice. This merely bypasses the problem by cashing in on various

meanings of "free." If you make a choice without a gun at your head (or some equivalent), then the determinist will say you had a "choice." Fine, but this is not the meaning of "choice" that is involved in the debate over free-will.

 

Lord Acton once estimated that the word "freedom" has been defined in 200 different ways. Although this rich vein of definitions may provide a good deal of wiggle room for the determinist, the practice of hopping from one definition to another doesn't solve any philosophical problems.

 

  I wrote: "The soft determinist may have great faith in the power of this verbal legerdemain to solve complex philosophical problems. But I don't share this interest in word magic, so I will let the matter rest here and move on to more serious issues."

 

And Bill replied: "This sarcastic remark is completely unwarranted.  There is no verbal legerdemain here, no word magic, only a careful analysis of the issue in terms of customary parlance and the observed facts of human psychology."

 

I stand by my original statement. What Bill regards as "careful analysis," I see as definition-hopping.

 

In the final analysis, to say that a person acts on the basis of his preferences doesn't tell us anything at all about the free-will problem -- for it doesn't say *how* those preferences are formed; and it doesn't explain how, from a welter of conflicting preferences, one is eventually chosen over others. A theory should have at least some explanatory value, but soft determinism explains nothing at all. It is an article of faith based on the erroneous assumption that "reasons"  in the inner world of consciousness function exactly like "causes" in the

external world of physical objects.

 

As I said before, I prefer to confront the phenomena of consciousness on their own terms, rather than resort to a pseudo-explanation that, in the final analysis, explains nothing at all. When the soft determinist is able to postulate a causal law of consciousness that will enable us to predict our future thoughts and actions, then I will be impressed. Until then, I will continue to regard soft determinism as a circular method of "explanation" that derives from a inappropriate analogy with physical causation.

 

As it stands now, the only prediction the soft determinist can make is that a person will ultimately act on the basis of his "strongest" preference. Never mind that he cannot specify what this preference is until *after* the choice is made. Never mind that this "prediction" is foolproof, because it can only be made *after* the fact. Never mind all this -- for the soft determinist has convinced himself that he is uttering a profound truth, even though it is little more than a tautology and one which most volitionists (including myself) would not

dispute. Ghs

 

From: "Gayle Dean" <gwdean To: "Atlantis" <Atlantis@wetheliving.com> Subject: ATL: Long interview FYI Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 19:22:08 -0500

 

Determinism and Punishment

An Interview with Ted Honderich

Stangroom: What is determinism? And what is its philosophical significance?

 

Honderich: Determinism as I understand it is the doctrine that each of our mental or conscious events or episodes, including every decision, choice and action, is the effect of a certain kind of causal sequence.

The sequences goes back a long way in time before the decision, choice or action. Also, the sequence is one of standard causation. Each event in it is a real effect - a necessary event, so to speak. Such an effect is not an event merely made probable by antecedents. It is something that had to happen given the antecedents as they were. Determinism, so defined, isn't itself the doctrine that we are not free - that question is not touched on in this definition.

Stangroom: Why does it not assert that we are not free?

 

Honderich: Well it's been thought to be an open question whether or not freedom is inconsistent with such a doctrine of determinism. There are philosophers - at one time they seemed to be a majority in philosophy in

the English language - who have taken the view that determinism and freedom are logically consistent, that determinism can be true and yet we can still be perfectly and entirely free. So it's a good idea - anyway convenient - to leave anything about freedom out of a definition of determinism.

 

Stangroom: This is the Compatibilist position?

 

Honderich: It is indeed.

 

Stangroom: In this respect, the distinction between origination and voluntariness is significant. What is this distinction?

 

Honderich: Compatibilist philosophers, as already remarked, have defined freedom in such a way that it is logically compatible with determinism. This freedom, what I call freedom as voluntariness, essentially amounts to this: a free action is one that flows from the desires, personality and character of the agent, rather than somehow being against those things. The agent is not in jail, not subject to a man with a gun, not

subject to a compulsion internal to him. He is acting in such a way that his actions in a clear sense flow from himself. A free action by this definition is indeed logically consistent with determinism. Determinism

doesn't say that there are no actions that flow from the agent. It just says that there is some causal background that fixes the outcome. A free action on the Compatibilist account is just is one that has a certain kind of causal background -- internal to the agent, so to speak, rather than external.

 

As for origination, it comes from the opposing tradition in philosophy that maintains that a free action is inadequately defined by the Compatibilists. Kant asserts that Hume, in taking up the Compatibilist

definition of a free action, is merely playing around with words, merely on the surface of things. For Kant and the Incompatibilists, a free action is a voluntary one but also much more than that. It is one that has a certain genesis, a certain inception, rather difficult to define. In one sense, we know what Incompatibilists take origination to be. It's the agent coming to a decision, choice or action in such a way that determinism is not true of this, and yet the decision, choice or action remains within the control or devising of the agent. Above all, origination is a beginning of a decision or choice that makes the agent responsible for it - morally responsible for it in a strong sense. Free actions, if they are both voluntary and originated, are certainly

inconsistent with determinism. If determinism is true, there aren't any of these free actions.

 

Stangroom: Are theories of originated action coherent? Is it possible to specify what an originated action might be? It seems quite hard to imagine such a thing.

 

Honderich: Many philosophers have said there is the greatest difficulty about arriving at a clear conception of origination. Part of the difficulty is that an originated decision, if there are any, is one that could have been different at the very moment it is made. If I decide to shoot Thatcher, I can at that moment decide to act differently. What this means is that the past could have been exactly as it was up until that moment and I can nonetheless decide differently. That story contains within it a pretty alarming proposition, or it seems

to --namely that there is no explanation of the decision I in fact make. You have to look for such a thing look in the present and past circumstances. But in both of these places, as we've been hearing, everything could have been the same and I could have decided differently. So in one clear sense, it appears, there is no possibility of any explanation whatever of this decision that was made.

But that isn't to say that no sense can be made of origination. After all, I can define it as the giving rise to a decision in such a way that the decision is not determined, and yet is within the control of the agent, and moreover in such a way that he is really responsible for it. I haven't said nothing when I've said that. I haven't said something incoherent. I haven't explained how there can be such decisions, but I have said something that appears to make sense. Indeed, what we have here is an idea or conception in common usage. People sometimes think after someone has behaved very badly, maybe viciously, that the person could at the moment have stopped doing the thing, given things just as they were. So the idea of origination, even if it does contain a mystery, does exist. Sense can be given to it, and it seems to be entrenched in ordinary culture - anyway Western culture as we know it.

 

Stangroom: So in this conception, how is it imagined that the agent escapes the network of causality which seems to exist with respect to all other material - and indeed, non-material - phenomena.

 

Honderich: I have to admit again being unable to give a good answer to that. But that doesn't commit me to thinking there doesn't exist any conception of origination. There can be conceptions that are partly

mysterious. There are lots of them. Of course, I don't think there really are things of which the conception of origination is true. What is true is determinism. It seems you agree with that, but we are in a minority. Most people are inclined to think that determinism is false. They talk of Free Will and have in mind something like the origination we've been talking about - anyway a kind of image along those lines. Also, there are a lot of more informed characters about who have heard of Quantum Theory, the physics of this century. They think it refutes determinism.

 

Stangroom: I've never really understood that argument. I've always thought it something of a red herring. Is that your view?

Honderich: In my view it is pretty hard to make into a real argument. My own resistance to this idea that Quantum Theory falsifies determinism has got at least two parts.

 

Firstly, if there really is indeterminism - uncaused events, events that aren't effects - then they are of course at a micro-level, well below the level, for example, of brain events that go with choices and decisions. More important, they don't translate upwards to the macro-level. That is our experience. We don't see miraculous little events, chance events, like spoons levitating. We ought to have this evidence if the miraculous micro-events come up to the top. So a first resistance to the Quantum Theory stuff is that if determinism is true,

it's irrelevant.

 

My second resistance is to their actually being any of the events in question, down at the micro-level. All the popular books about Quantum Theory, some of them by distinguished physicists, say one thing. It is that you can't carry over old assumptions from classical physics into contemporary and recent physics. One of the things that you can't carry over is a conception of the nature of the things that before Quantum Theory used to be said to be caused or determined. For example, it is said that if the term "particle" is used in an interpretation of Quantum Theory, you are not to suppose a particle is a small bit of matter in the Newtonian way. It is very uncertain in the end, and indeed this is admitted by most exponents of Quantum Theory, what the things are that are said not to be effects. Sometimes they are taken to be probabilities or possibilities or indeed propositions.

 

The essential point here is that it looks like the things that we are told are not effects are things that the determinist never said were effects. No sensible determinist has said that numbers - say the numbers

4 and 5 - are effects, or that propositions are effects. These are thought to be abstract objects and no one has supposed that the determinist is committed to saying that these are effects. No one supposes that a determinist is committed to saying that a space-time point - for example, the space-time point at the end of my finger - is

an effect, and the determinist doesn't say that it is. Determinism, plainly, is only about events, or a certain class of events. In short, to repeat, it's very possible that the things that are asserted in Quantum Mechanics not to be effects are in fact not events at all, and are therefore not relevant to determinism.

 

Stangroom: You believe that both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are inadequate. Why?

 

Honderich: I actually believe I've proved both are false. Is any philosopher allowed one moment of pomposity? I'll use mine up here. I can't say Compatibilism has gone away. I heard a lecture on it the other

month at the Royal Institute of Philosophy that sent all persons present sound asleep. But it should have gone away, like Incompatibilism.

 

What my stuff comes to can be put in terms of life-hopes, certain attitudes to the future. We all have them. These are large hopes about the working out of our lives. They have to do with our future actions

and what will flow from those actions. What is most important, however, is that these particular attitudes come in two kinds. You can discover the two kinds in yourself.

 

I can feel about the future in a way that makes it bright. The essential point is that I can have an attitude to it as something in which I will get what I want, where I'll be doing what I want. I'll end up with the right person, or with money, or just healthy, or whatever. I won't be alone or in jail or bed-ridden and so on. Things will turn out in accord with my personality and nature. If I'm in this mode of feeling, furthermore, I can feel that determinism can turn out to be true, and it won't matter much. All of us have this kind of hope, or at the very

least can get into it.

 

On the other hand, almost all of us have or can get into a very different sort of hope. It's to the effect that we're going to be able to rise up over our pasts, rise over our characters, rise over our weaknesses, and defeat the things which have kept us back - anyway to some extent. Our futures aren't written down waiting to be read, fixed already. This is a hope, further, that is wrecked if we think of determinism as true.

 

That we have or can have both these attitudes shows that we have both the conception of free actions as just voluntary and the conception of free actions as both voluntary and originated. The first conception, plainly, is in the first sort of hope, and the second conception in the second sort. Both these ideas are within us. If that is true, then both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are false. They are both false because they agree in one thing - that each of us has one single conception of a free action. The Compatibilists say that it is voluntariness and the Incompatibilists that it is voluntariness plus origination. They're both up the spout.

 

By the way this isn't just asserting that `free' is ambiguous between the Compatibilist and the Incompatibilist definitions. We can show that we have two different sorts of attitudes, different in their contained feelings. In fact they are connected to some extent with different behaviour. The two sorts of attitudes encapsulate the two ideas. One is of actions as only voluntary, and one is of actions as both voluntary and originated. The existence of the attitudes makes for something like a proof of a behavioural kind that people have an idea.

 

If Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are both false in this way, the real problem of determinism of course isn't what our single shared idea of freedom is - we've got two. The real problem of determinism is living

with and somehow emerging from the situation where we've got two conceptions of freedom and they enter into important attitudes that we have - our life-hopes and a good deal more.

 

Stangroom: What about an Incompatibilist who is also a determinist? Such a person allows that voluntariness is compatible with determinism, but maintains it has nothing to do with freedom or anyway isn't all of

freedom. So the short story is that we're not free and responsible.

 

Honderich: Well, a determinist can say that determinism is compatible with voluntariness, and voluntariness is freedom, and so everything is okay. Or, as you imagine, a determinist can say that origination is needed for freedom, and so since determinism is true, there isn't any freedom. My line is that each of us, if we come to believe determinism, are in something like both of those positions. As for the second one, we are now all inclined to feel that if someone does us a tremendous benefit, in adverse circumstances, they could have done otherwise in a real sense. That is why we're grateful. If we get converted to determinism, we'll have a problem.

 

Stangroom: We don't feel grateful to machines. Determinism if it's true turns us into biological machines, doesn't it? What room is there for any kind of gratitude at all there?

 

Honderich: I agree that we don't have certain desires in connection with machines. When they benefit us, we don't have certain desires somehow to do well by them in return, if only by saying thanks. We don't have the

counterparts of the retributive desires we may have if a person wounds us. But it seems to me that there is another kind of feeling we can have in connection with a machine that benefits us, a good feeling. There is

a relation of that feeling to a larger thing - something we could still have to people if we took determinism to be true.

 

Stangroom: You talk about dismay, intransigence and affirmation, as responses to determinism in this connection. What are these things?

Honderich: Dismay is a response to determinism that may have to do with life-hopes, claims or feelings of knowledge, personal feelings, moral approval and disapproval and so on. Dismay is the response that if

determinism is true, these things are wrecked. My life-hopes must collapse, and so on. I can't be confident in what I used to call my knowledge. I can't engage in gratitude or resentment. I can't hold people responsible.

 

Intransigence is the response that if determinism is true I can still soldier on -- with my life-hopes, personal feelings and so on.

These two responses, which people demonstrably have, also entail that they the conception of freedom as voluntariness together with origination, which is inconsistent with determinism, and also the conception of freedom as just voluntariness.

Being inclined to both these responses is no happy thing. You're in a kind of conflict situation for a start.

 

What is needed is to make the response of affirmation, which you might think boils down to getting rid of desires that cannot be satisfied if determinism is true and being as fulfilled as possible in the fact that

other desires still can still be satisfied. Something better can be said along those lines. Affirmation can be the response that life can be great and fulfilling. As for the giving up on the other desires, the best way to succeed in it is to come to believe in determinism.

Stangroom: Moving on to punishment, what is it?

 

Honderich: Well, an infliction of a penalty on an offender by an authority. An imposition of something undesired on someone who has broken a rule, and an imposition by someone or something who is

empowered to do it by another rule. What is left out of that definition, something that traditionally is put in, is "for an offence". If you put that in, then from the beginning you beg the question as to what punishment is for -- what the rationale or justification of punishment is. Therefore it's a good idea to leave that out.

 

Stangroom: What is a "justification", philosophically speaking?

 

Honderich: I take it that justification is a good reason - maybe a sufficient reason - for thinking that something is right. There seem to be three large questions in morality and moral philosophy. One is the question of right actions, what actions or practices are right -- particular actions or classes of actions. The second question is what persons are okay or estimable or human -- the question of good agents.

It's about people over stretches of time, or with respect to their whole lives. The third is the question of moral responsibility – appraising and feeling about persons with respect to particular actions. The problem of the justification of punishment is a problem in the first category and asks you to give a sufficient reason for the rightness of the practice of punishment by the state.

 

Stangroom: Are there any criteria for an adequate justification of punishment?

 

Honderich: Well for a start anyhing offered as its justification has to be conceptually adequate -- it has to be decently clear.

 

What is offered in the Retribution Theory is to the effect that punishment is justified because it is deserved. What does it mean? There have been many attempts to make sense of the claim that punishments are

deserved and most of them are failures. Judges persist in saying or seeming to imply that there is some kind of factual equivalence between the distress of a certain penalty, say ten years in prison, and the culpability in the offence, where the culpability is the amount of harm caused and the degree of responsibility. But of course there is no serious possibility of quantifying the distress of the penalty and the amount of harm and the degree of responsibility. And very certainly there are no common-units for the quantification of these three things.

So it makes no sense to talk about equivalence between penalty and culpability in this way.

 

What I say in the end is that the Retribution Theory does make sense in another way. To speak of a penalty as equivalent to an offence is to say that a certain penalty will do no less than, and do no more than, satisfy the grievance raised up by the offence. The grievance is a desire, a desire for the distress of another person. Not as a means to something else, but just for itself. It is the low desire that someone else should be distressed.

 

Stangroom: Whatever else is to be said of that, doesn't it raise an "Is/Ought" problem?

 

Honderich: May I first say a couple of other things? One is that it's obvious that the Retribution Theory doesn't work. I don't think for a moment that it does. If all you can say for putting a man in jail for ten years is that this satisfies a grievance-desire on the part of the victim or the family of his victim, that doesn't seem to be enough. A second thing has to do with the idea that the existence of such a low desire is no reason at all for doing anything. Some philosophers say that sort of thing. I'm inclined to think, on the contrary, that the very existence of any desire is a reason for satisfying it. The reason may well be entirely outweighed by something else, of course, as in the case of putting the man in jail for ten years.

 

Stangroom: But why ought we to do what satisfies desires? How can the second thing entail the first? How do you get an `ought' from an `is'?

 

Honderich: I agree there's no logical entailment. But it's also true, maybe, that there can't be any greater reason for an action than that it does satisfy a desire - say the desire to be relieved of pain and suffering or victimization or injustice or whatever.

Stangroom: So you would be prepared to say that, for example, in Nazi Germany, the existence of the desire for the distress of Jewish people was a reason for its satisfaction?

 

Honderich: Yes, that is exactly the position that I'm committed to -- and, needless to say, I rush to add that it was a desire that couldn't have begun to justify what happened, since what was done was something whose frustration of other desires was overwhelming, appallingly so.

As for `is' and `ought', you say I'm arguing from the first to the second. Indeed I am - and I suppose that puts me in the company of virtually all persons who engage in moral judgements. That an "ought" cannot be deduced from an "is", which is plainly true, certainly doesn't give us the conclusion that factual reasons are impossible for moral conclusions. Suppose we're now faced by a suffering child. I say we've got to do something, and you say we've got to do something. If we suddenly have the idea that the fact that it is suffering doesn't entail that we've got to do something, we're not going to just go for a walk instead. We've got an excellent reason for doing something, even though the excellent reason doesn't entail the evaluative conclusion.

 

Stangroom: But you've got no way of demonstrating to someone who claims that the suffering child should continue suffering that their position is incorrect.

 

Honderich: Well it seems to me that we can reflect pretty conclusively on that subject. Here's an old example of mine, the two-button box. It's like a telephone kiosk. People who go into the box face two buttons. One

is a pain button, one is a pleasure button. Or say one is the contentment-and-fulfilment button and the other is the distress-and-deprivation button. The important thing about the box is that the persons in the box are also in a state of epistemological deprivation. They don't know anything about the effects of pushing the buttons, except that pushing the pleasure-button will cause pleasure to someone and pushing the pain-button will cause pain. They don't know anything else. They haven't any idea, for example, whether pressing the pain button, although this causes some pain, is the way to prevent a lot more pain in the future. And they don't know anything about the pleasure button except that pushing it will cause pleasure. They don't know anything about the person who will get either the pain or the pleasure, and so on.

 

Now consider someone who in that situation understands all this and knowingly presses the pain button. What is to be said of him?

Stangroom: Well, we'd say that he was mad.

Honderich: Yes, I agree. Or you might say he wasn't human.

In this situation we don't seem to be ready to say that morality is a matter of taste, that it is just a matter of attitudes, that it is all in the eye of the beholder, or any of that kind of thing. In this clarified situation, for someone actually to choose pain and degradation over pleasure and fulfilment wou ld count, as you were the first to say, as mad. Where to go from there I'm not quite sure. But it does give one a kind of handle on a stroppy undergraduate who says it's all a matter of attitude - or indeed someone who says, truly, that you can't

demonstrate moral conclusions. You can think they have a kind of foundation in our sanity and humanity.

> 

 

[anthony]

"[Seen on] both sides of the aisle" (Ben Bayer at 42m) Hmm.

Here's where I find ARI people not trustworthy, lately. For four years I've seen they have touted arguments of moral equivalence on "both sides", the conservatives and leftists. And here with Bayer's "religious tribal mentality" it's as though C-C is upheld and enforced by both. They and Brook have kept up this party line even until today, when the evidence is overwhelming. If they can't see that the anti-reason, anti-individual, power lust, immoral scale is heavily weighted to the Left, by now...

I was wondering how Yaron was going to save intellectual face to back himself out of the "vote Biden" corner, he painted himself into. The other guys apparently are still loyally running interference for his glaring blunder.

[Peter]

On 5/7/2021 at 12:59 PM, anthony said:

I was wondering how Yaron was going to save intellectual face to back himself out of the "vote Biden" corner, he painted himself into. The other guys apparently are still loyally running interference for his glaring blunder.

Guess who's on "Saturday Night Live" tonight? South African Elon Musk and sexpot Miley Cyrus! Let's see if she can make him get a boner. 

[william.scherk]

This looks intriguing ... an "animated discussion" being perhaps euphemism.

 

[MisterSwig]

Scott and I had James Valliant on the podcast. We interviewed him for over three hours about several topics. The content is divided into three parts. I hope you listen and subscribe to our channel.

In Part 1 Valliant explains how he learned about Objectivism, then he and Scott have a lively disagreement about the Brandens.

In Part 2 we talk about Valliant's history in the Objectivist movement, and then at 33:17 we discuss Rand's history with conservatives.

Finally, Part 3 goes into immigration (0:00), memory (9:01), the Derek Chauvin Trial (24:20), and Valliant's book Creating Christ (30:54).

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Good God!

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Scott and I had James Valliant on the podcast.

MisterSwig,

I tried. I really tried.

But I couldn't do it.

My favorite adjective for Valliant back in the day was "boneheaded." That opinion has not improved with age.

This dork openly stated that Nathaniel Branden raped Ayn Rand for years and she, poor thing, kept coming back for more. She, being blinded by true love and all,  just didn't have the capacity to discern that he had the "soul of a rapist."

I'm not exaggerating, either. That rape thing was the climax of his book. Go read it if you don't believe me. It's there in all its glory and emphasized openly--with Valliant instructing everyone on how he can say that because he's an expert on rapists, having been a public prosecutor and all.

There is nothing more boneheaded that I have come across in O-Land, and I have some across some pretty boneheaded things in our subculture.

All the rest is parsing words. I'm sure someone will say somewhere about my comment that he meant "intellectually raped Ayn Rand for years," as if that is somehow better for an intellectual giant. Good God. Her image as a victim of NB's oppression... SJW anyone? Just switch racist for rapist and you get the same goddam epistemology.

But it got worse. After the book came out, Valliant and a few others tried to spread the news all over the Internet with sockpuppet accounts, pretending they were many people. Man, were the sockpuppets in overdrive, too, for a while. They were so prolific they wore many people out. They even got thrown off Wikipedia for that.

Anyway, have at it, hoss. I probably won't participate much in that discussion.

If you are interested, it's all over this forum, anyway. That was back during the time the book came out.

 

On another note, I saw your video with Scott on cancel culture. I have a few observations, but not right now. As usual, my gist runs in parallel through other lenses in relation to what you guys discussed. Look for a post, though.

Michael

[anthony]

If you've experienced the quirks of human nature** it is quite probable for someone (Rand) though not normally being overly physically affectionate, but on some occasion feel deeply enough to touch a friend's (BB's) hand in sympathy, as BB reported. Not "self-contradictory". The normal behavior only accentuates the significance of the warm action. I hear above that James Valliant has what he thinks is valid material against the Brandens but this single rationale for her supposed deceitfulness is insubstantial, grasping at straws, almost.

True, in altercations one party can be entirely in the wrong while the other is completely innocent, but I have misgivings on any total whitewash of Rand (in that affair context) and the absolute tarring of the Brandens. Not that I've read any of the biographies, and don't care enough to sift through the shesaid/hesaid, but my impression was BB and NB from moral considerations didn't publish them until she'd died - largely out of respect for Rand. One could read that the other way, perhaps cynically. 

**or is it that Rand is believed by some to have been flawlessly "superhuman"? There's intrinsicist perfectionism in that error. As if the deepest contents of someone's mind is openly revealed to you. The very fact that she could produce such extraordinary volumes of work, live a highly active life, one woman influencing untold numbers, and be no less, 'human', makes her the more remarkable, I think.

[Neil Parille]

I listened to the interviews with Valliant.

1. Valliant was more aggressive than normal.  It doesn't appear that our hosts knew that there have been two biographies of the Brandens that have more or less confirmed the Branden accounts.  Since Valliant constantly called called the Brandens "liars" it would have been good for our hosts to ask him if he thinks Burns and Heller are liars as well.

2. Valliant claimed all the bad stuff in the 60s was due to Branden and Rand didn't know about it.  Is this believable?

3. Valliant brought up Hessen.  Hessen said Barbara went to easy on Rand.

4. Our guests didn't ask Valliant why he approves of the ARI's re writing of Rand's posthumously published material.

5. No hard questions on Valliant's nutty Creating Christ.

I'm listening now to the first episode ("I don't care if I'm an Objectivist, I'm a fan") and I think there is promise to the show.

[Neil Parille]

If anyone wants the PDF of my critique of Creating Christ, just email me at neil.parille@aol.com

Valliant said in the interview that he's been "overwhelmed" by the support has has received for the book.  He then mentions all of two people with relevant degrees in the field (Robert Price and Robert Eisenman).  The book, best I can tell, hasn't been reviewed in any journal of religion, history or theology.

Valliant once claimed that he sent drafts of the book to "all the experts in the relevant fields."  Serioursly, all 9000 members of the Society for Biblical Literature?  None of the experts I've contacted ever heard of the book.  

Valliant boasted of his supposedly great memory.  

As I may have mentioned, when I was working on my critique of PARC, it occurred to me that Valliant wrote the quotes from memory and then later inserted the page numbers without checking them.

Take for example Valliant's claim that Barbara insinuates that Rand's amphetamine use interfered with her mental state. That's something that you could easily misremember. In fact when I read Valliant's book I thought "yeah that wasn't fair of Barbara."

Here is Jim's mangling of what Barbara said:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/2877

[MisterSwig]

In episode four Scott and I discuss the momentum of religious and philosophical ideas throughout history and the problem of moral equivalence related to judging political sides. We also talk about  Scott's view of life extension and making it the unifying purpose of the liberty movement.

 

[MisterSwig]

On 5/6/2021 at 6:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

As an added thought, the people in O-Land who misconstrue what one means in order to lash out do the same thing as social justice warriors do today with cancel culture.

I think it's a deeply psychological problem in most cases. These types treat their mind as sacrosanct, because it's their "reality," their "truth." Thus, anything that pops into their mind has the force of a "fact," including their misinterpretations of what you say, which often result from the influence of triggered emotions. Sometimes they notice that their belief clashes with another "fact," and then they have to try to think or evade. But they are generally oriented toward a subjective world view, because they failed to automatize objectivism, despite claiming to uphold it. Subjectivism remains as a vestige from their prior, overt beliefs. It governs their cognitive perspective. Perhaps they don't realize it, or perhaps they do, can't do anything about it and try to hide the problem by using distractions such as lashing out at others. Better to be considered an asshole than a subjectivist.

[MisterSwig]

On 5/20/2021 at 3:17 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This dork openly stated that Nathaniel Branden raped Ayn Rand for years and she, poor thing, kept coming back for more. She, being blinded by true love and all,  just didn't have the capacity to discern that he had the "soul of a rapist."

I addressed part of this issue with a question at 22:25 in part one. I asked why he thinks Rand failed to see that Branden was manipulating her. And Valliant started answering by saying that he thought Branden sincerely loved Rand in the beginning. But then, he says, Branden began using psychotherapy to manipulate people.

[caroljane]

4 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I think it's a deeply psychological problem in most cases. These types treat their mind as sacrosanct, because it's their "reality," their "truth." Thus, anything that pops into their mind has the force of a "fact," including their misinterpretations of what you say, which often result from the influence of triggered emotions. Sometimes they notice that their belief clashes with another "fact," and then they have to try to think or evade. But they are generally oriented toward a subjective world view, because they failed to automatize objectivism, despite claiming to uphold it. Subjectivism remains as a vestige from their prior, overt beliefs. It governs their cognitive perspective. Perhaps they don't realize it, or perhaps they do, can't do anything about it and try to hide the problem by using distractions such as lashing out at others. Better to be considered an asshole than a subjectivist.

Even Ayn Rand herself was not immune from this kind of instinctive subjectivism, as when iIn the hospital (as I recall the anecdote) she insisted that a telephone pole outside the window was in fact a tree. I don't recall if she lashed out but she did insist that the evidence of her senses was paramount over anyone else's' senses. Your analysis of this phenomenon is very interesting.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I addressed part of this issue with a question at 22:25 in part one. I asked why he thinks Rand failed to see that Branden was manipulating her. And Valliant started answering by saying that he thought Branden sincerely loved Rand in the beginning. But then, he says, Branden began using psychotherapy to manipulate people.

MisterSwig,

I don't want to rewatch that interview, not even part, but I don't recall the word "rape."

Did I miss it?

Or did the word "rape" never come up?

 

As to NB manipulating Rand, look at it from the other angle, too. Did she manipulate him (and Barbara and Frank for that matter)?

I don't think in terms of NB being Snidely Whiplash, anyway. The idea that he "grew" into Snidely does not correspond with human nature when I look at his life as a whole. I think he was enormously conflicted, trapped and couldn't find a way out.

Until he finally did. Like all humans who find themselves in a complicated and painful situation, one day he ripped the bandaid off and all involved went, "Ouch, that hurt!"

As an unintended consequence, the entire Objectivist movement also went, "Ouch, that hurt!" but they had no idea that a bandaid even existed, much less got ripped off. Then years later they found out about it and O-Land has not been the same since.

But the beat goes on... And the beat goes on...

People will believe what they will believe and cognitive dissonance will reign supreme among many.

Just for the record, my own view is that all involved in that mess--all parties--fucked up big time. It happens...  

As to not rewatching the Valliant interview, I wrote about this before, but I can't find the post. So I will paraphrase from memory and apply it to the current context.

I don't rewatch it for safety reasons.

I found that listening to Valliant drone on is great for inducing sleep. Ditto for reading him. I even started using it for slumber during a time and I slept like a baby.

But then I noticed my sex drive was diminishing. So I stopped. After a few days my sex drive went back to normal. Hmmm... I tested this a few times and always got the same results.

So, nowadays, I limit the number of times in close succession I listen to him or read him. I fear that too much too soon will lead to impotence and not even male enhancement medication will undo it.

My advice to you is: be careful... 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

To be fair, Valliant's comments on memory--especially the unreliability details--surprised me.

They correspond to what I have studied and lived. Woah... I like it.  

But I also believe this is due, in part, to there not being much about memory in the Objectivist canon. So he had to get his information on memory elsewhere--like from his professional experiences in court. That shows he has a good brain when he uses it.

As far as the religious thing goes, he's carving out a niche like many have done in Christianity and other religions (both for and against). I don't expect this to amount to much (differing from his predictions of grandeur for his theory eventually slaying Christianity, without using those terms, of course), but I don't expect it to go away.

A niche is born... Nothing more and nothing less.

Michael

[caroljane]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

MisterSwig,

I don't want to rewatch that interview, not even part, but I don't recall the word "rape."

Did I miss it?

Or did the word "rape" never come up?

 

 

 Didn't he have an engraved invitation?

[william.scherk]

On 6/2/2021 at 8:32 AM, MisterSwig said:

On 5/6/2021 at 6:56 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

the people in O-Land who misconstrue what one means in order to lash out do the same thing as social justice warriors do today with cancel culture.

I think it's a deeply psychological problem in most cases. These types treat their mind as sacrosanct, because it's their "reality," their "truth." Thus, anything that pops into their mind has the force of a "fact," including their misinterpretations of what you say, which often result from the influence of triggered emotions. Sometimes they notice that their belief clashes with another "fact," and then they have to try to think or evade. But they are generally oriented toward a subjective world view, because they failed to automatize objectivism, despite claiming to uphold it.

Misconstrual is sometimes error and sometimes malice, to my mind. A psychological problem of "these types" can be illustrated by examples of the "lashing out" and "lashing back." In the absence of formal physical contests between Objectivist blocs or institutes, a general lashing-about is O-land's most popular sport.

On 6/2/2021 at 7:56 AM, MisterSwig said:

In episode four Scott and I discuss the momentum of religious and philosophical ideas throughout history and the problem of moral equivalence related to judging political sides. We also talk about  Scott's view of life extension and making it the unifying purpose of the liberty movement.

It's a tricky area, moral equivalence. As an operating assumption -- Both Sides R Bad² -- it's far afield from an operating assumption that Both Sides/All Sides should be heard from, depending on the dispute, case or issue under discussion, or milepost on the road to Judgement.

An extended judicial metaphor might be handy, but I don't have a good one in mind. The podcast is well worth a second listen.

Frankly, if I had but two minutres to choose Us or Them, I'd come down hard on the side of Us.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/2/2021 at 8:45 PM, caroljane said:

 Didn't he have an engraved invitation?

Carol,

I would give this a smile if it had not been used to death back then.

To people who lived through that PARC thing, this quip comes off as a joke told too many times to be funny.

I mean, it's a good quip. Don't get me wrong.

Just like why the chicken crossed the road was a funny joke when it first came out.

Unsolicited advice: do better.

 

Michael

[MisterSwig]

On 6/2/2021 at 2:21 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I don't want to rewatch that interview, not even part, but I don't recall the word "rape."

Did I miss it?

Or did the word "rape" never come up?

It didn't come up, but I'm familiar with that part of his book, having reread portions before the interview. 

For the record, I'm not sold on the "soul of a rapist" charge. (pp. 382-3) It's a rather strong claim. I see some evidence pointing to maybe a low-level "rapey" mentality. But then Rand did create Howard Roark, so perhaps that's what she liked in a man, only without the lying part. Also, if Branden's "need to control" was that pathological, I doubt he would have ended the sexual relationship. He probably would have continued satisfying Rand and continued trying to control her. But then I'm not a rapist, so I don't know how much age or looks factors into it. I do think, however, that there's more to the "soul of a rapist" than an unhealthy desire to control people. And it doesn't seem fair to say someone has the "soul of a rapist" yet agree that he wasn't an actual rapist. It reminds me of the soul-body dichotomy.

[Neil Parille]

PARC was a nasty attack when it came out.  I imagine one of the reasons Valliant hates me is that it hasn't stood the test of time.  In 2009, two biographies came out and pretty much confirmed Barbara's book.  The 100 Voices (an ARI Archive project) came out    It doesn't support Valliant on any of the issues he made a big deal out of (the typewriter, etc).  I can't imagine Milgram's biography, if it is every published, siding with Valliant.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

17 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

For the record, I'm not sold on the "soul of a rapist" charge.

MS,

That's a good thing. 

But then again, in context, nobody is sold on that boneheaded idea except some O-Land fundies.

Even if you only consider it hyperbole, it did not convince anyone of anything. People who hated the Brandens loved it. Nobody else agreed. The end.

Look at what has transpired over the years and prove me wrong.  

btw - Valliant's soul of a rapist bullshit was not hyperbole. He was serious and this was the climax of his case. In lawyerly language, it was his closing argument. 

For an example of hyperbole, my thing above about becoming impotent from contact with his presentation is hyperbolic humor. I certainly did not tout my professional qualifications before presenting that. I sprang it out of nowhere. 

17 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

It's a rather strong claim.

 

17 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

And it doesn't seem fair to say someone has the "soul of a rapist" yet agree that he wasn't an actual rapist. It reminds me of the soul-body dichotomy.

I get it that you like Valliant. After all, you just interviewed him and called him a legend. And I get it you are going through this with your own eyes (which, by the way, I admire--I live seeing independent minds in action). So you have to think through the thing on your own.

But consider this, also. in the quotes I just gave, aren't you overthinking it?

Suppose Valliant said in public--and meant--that someone you love has the "soul of a rapist." And he went on a crusade about it.

Would you say he was making a "strong claim" that "doesn't seem fair"?

Or would you pop him in the nose real hard? 

 

I, myself, prefer Occom's razor in characterizing his statement. The term "sleaze" works just fine for me.

 

btw - I want to throw out another bone to chew on. I only mention this because I see this problem in O-Land constantly.

Let's identify something first, though. NB was promiscuous. He liked him some womens... He was young, handsome and successful, so he had no difficulty getting them. Life itself threw them at him and he did not resist. And, as he grew, he liked keeping it that way. It was a lifelong habit. (I know this from knowing the people around him.) So terms like player or womanizer suit him and I am in full agreement with that.

But in O-Land, people want to talk about control and rape and immoral (as in immoral person in general, not just immoral womanizer) and stuff like that with him. If one is going to judge the whole person that way, but only look at one situation in his life, they are using their minds wrong. If one is going to paint NB as a narcissistic control freak, one has to look at the rest of his life as context. 

Doesn't that make sense?

But they don't do it.

(There are many issues where they don't do it, also. A great example is the role of religion in human history for a wide scale issue and, on a smaller scale, too many issues to mention. But for a colorful case, there was one lady, Diana Hsieh, who, during her ARI friendly days, tried to teach people how to live an Objectivist life with Q&As and community organizing and everything. Issues like "Is it moral to eat cheese?" and shit like that would come up. But all that is beyond the scope right here. My focus is on the thinking habit itself--specifically people ignoring context by misidentifying what they are looking at.)

Back to NB. Where are the signs of control-freakness in his life? Maybe in the early days with those idiot trials in Rand's living room (where Rand also participated) and things like that, which he, himself, repudiated. But certainly not in his professional life. Also, to my knowledge, not one of his women complained about him controlling them. Etc. etc. etc. In fact, he ended up as close friends with two exes (Barbara and Devers). What control freak does that?

Here in O-Land, people like to replace reality with stories that fit their own prejudices. Guess what? That happens everywhere there are humans. Objectivism has not been a cure for that. I mean, if people can't learn to use their minds to reason correctly with Objectivism, if they can't get their judgments to align with reality, if they can't correctly identify what they are looking at, it might be a good idea for them to withhold judgment, at least a bit, until they can.

But they don't.

Rand said, "Judge and prepare to be judged."

OK.

They judge. So I judge them.

I've not only got the chops to do it, I've earned them.

And I say, the problem with the Brandens in O-Land is not the Brandens. It's the epistemology of the Branden haters. They distort the Objectivist philosophy in practice. They are lousy models for how to implement the philosophy re reasoning. They do it wrong--and I'm not talking about their judgment, but their system of arriving at their judgment.

And I say more. There are plenty of people who manage to train their minds to reason better than before using Rand's ideas. So the problem is not Rand's ideas, either. 

So when looking at O-Land people and who to listen to (meaning, me personally), I take all that into consideration.

Anyway, that's what I say.

You, of course, must come to your own conclusions. 

Michael

[anthony]

Several aspects of jealousy, mainly physical, material, creative, intellectual, sexual. Not meant of anyone in particular, but can anyone say for sure there wasn't any or every kind of jealousy generally aimed at Brandon re: his special relations with Rand?

[MisterSwig]

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I get it that you like Valliant. After all, you just interviewed him and called him a legend.

Haha, I didn't call him a legend, Scott did. I do like Valliant, though, and his books, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything he says or writes, just like I don't agree with everything Rand said or wrote. Hell, I don't even agree with everything I have said or written over the years. I've changed my mind on a few things.

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But consider this, also. in the quotes I just gave, aren't you overthinking it?

Suppose Valliant said in public--and meant--that someone you love has the "soul of a rapist." And he went on a crusade about it.

Would you say he was making a "strong claim" that "doesn't seem fair"?

Or would you pop him in the nose real hard? 

Is that more exaggeration? I'm not going to hit someone for speculating about a deceptive womanizer's psychology or motive, even if for some reason I cared about the deceptive womanizer. I might try to defend him rhetorically against questionable accusations. But in the case of Branden, I don't care much for him, and so I'm not that interested in defending him.

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But in O-Land, people want to talk about control and rape and immoral (as in immoral person in general, not just immoral womanizer) and stuff like that with him. If one is going to judge the whole person that way, but only look at one situation in his life, they are using their minds wrong. If one is going to paint NB as a narcissistic control freak, one has to look at the rest of his life as context. 

Doesn't that make sense?

Which relevant parts of Branden's life did Valliant fail to consider? You can only look at the parts that are revealed, and of those you only need to consider the ones that are relevant to your thesis. The "soul of a rapist" charge pertains to his sexual relationships. I think Valliant addressed these in relation to his conclusion. Though I'm not sure his conclusion is correct, because I think the evidence supports reasonable doubt. Namely, someone with the soul of a rapist should be an actual rapist. So why didn't his women report him as a rapist? Did they enjoy being raped? Or was Branden something less than a rapist?