Free Will and the Purpose of Moral Evaluation


Mand0s

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First off, I should say that I'm uncertain of where to put this topic, as it seems to fall within the realm of several of the forums. Thus, I defer to whatever judgement the moderators may pass as to its proper placement. I should also apologize in advance if this specific question has been raised already.

With that out of the way, my question is this: if a person has free will and thus each choice made by that person is a 'primary cause', why do we evaluate the person rather than merely the choice?

To make my thinking and the motivation for the question a little more clear, I'll say a bit here about what my response would be and you all can hopefully tell me whether I'm on the right or wrong track--particularly as terms such as 'free will', 'choice', etc. were used by Rand and are used by Objectivists. So, my response to the question would be the following.

Though it is true that a person is free to choose whatever that person wills in any particular circumstance, the particular choice must be in accordance with that person's specific nature. Thus, though both a 'good person' and a 'bad person' *can* make the same choices, the 'good person' *will* make 'good choices' and the 'bad person' *will* make 'bad choices', to put the matter simply. Thus, moral evaluation of the person is important because it tells us something about the choices that will be made by the person in the future.

I've tried to be concise, which may have caused me to be unclear, but I hope the above is both concise and clear. If I have failed in my objective, I am more than happy to elaborate in order to clarify what I've written.

Many thanks.

- Mand0s

PS Tolkien fans among you may recognize the appropriateness of my username. It was chosen in part to match this, my first topic, post, and introduction to this board.

Edited by Mand0s
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Mand0s,

Welcome to OL.

You can regard free will and "good person" and "bad person" as buttons to push for automation if you wish. I have a messier view of life.

For me the good thing about the past is that it's over. The good thing about the present is that I'm in it. And the good thing about the future is that I get to decide a good portion of it.

Free will is just that--free. There are no guarantees that you won't slip up sometimes and make very poor choices the go against your long-term values. The good part is that you also get to choose what to do about it.

In my experience, people of good character (in all philosophies and religions, by the way) tend to make good choices, and clean up the messes from their slips at an even higher percentage. People of poor character tend to be really erratic, sometimes choosing good and sometimes being real scumbags. I don't recall ever meeting a person I would consider as truly evil in the Hitler sense of the term. I have met a lot of dangerous semi-psychopaths, though. (Ones that kill people for real.)

As a personal evaluation, I don't like people of poor character, even when they are died-in-the-wool Objectivists. As an indication of what I mean by "poor character," the most benign form is a control freak.

On the other hand, I consider the live-and-let live person as having good character.

People can go much further in these two directions, too. But that's my basic starting standard.

(I refer to adults, not to relationships between adults and children or adults and people needing care. Often you have to control their lives until they are developed enough or strong enough to care for themselves.)

Now, here's another point from my experience and thinking. Most people are mixed. And they are mixed even more at different times. So I try to appeal as much as possible to the good part in them when I interact with them. I have my limits, of course, but I try to give a hand up if I see an opportunity. (I also like to look up to people I admire.)

You will not find this reflected 100% in the manner I just said in Rand's works, but on a fundamental level, it's there. She emphasizes reason, though, to the point of setting this character stuff aside at times. Reason is great. But I've been hurt in life by using that as my sole standard in human affairs. Now it's an important standard, but good character and bad character in my particular meaning of trying to control others are also on the table.

As you get to know me better (and this forum and the other posters--and presuming you stick around), you will find I am a mushier person, not a moral avenger type (although I do that when pushed hard enough). I value free will so much, I hold redemption as one of mankind's most precious capacities. A person of poor character can choose to turn his focus around--and he can choose to seek help if he wants to and finds it really tough to change.

I like to encourage that when I see it.

In other words, in dealing with other people and judging them, I prefer to encourage good choices for the future instead of keeping my focus on condemning their past. It's not always possible, but my bent is in that direction.

Free will-wise, you are the master of the direction of your own choices. It's your life and no one else's. I suggest you seek wisdom and choose wisely.

(Wow, did I write a lot for a first message! :) )

Michael

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Michael,

Thank you for your response. There is one statement you made which I don't think I've understood and in light of which I would like to elaborate a little on my own position.

You can regard free will and "good person" and "bad person" as buttons to push for automation if you wish. I have a messier view of life.

My misunderstanding comes from your use of the word 'automation'. I'm uncertain of what you mean by that and clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Regarding my own position, I do not hold that 'good person' and 'bad person' are the only alternatives nor that they are alternatives one is likely to find. I presented them here as idealizations in an attempt to be as clear as possible. By 'good person' I mean a person who always makes a morally correct choice in the context of their knowledge at any particular moment and by a 'bad person' I mean a person who never makes a morally correct choice.

I also think that redemption is possible, but my present position entails that no change can be made to the nature of a person's particular volitional faculty. Rather, I would say, approximately, that redemption changes a person's premises and thus that person's course of action without changing their particular volitional faculty's nature.

-Mand0s

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> For me the good thing about the past is that it's over. The good thing about the present is that I'm in it. And the good thing about the future is that I get to decide a good portion of it. [MSK]

Well-written and cleverly stated.

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> For me the good thing about the past is that it's over. The good thing about the present is that I'm in it. And the good thing about the future is that I get to decide a good portion of it. [MSK]

Well-written and cleverly stated.

Here, here!

:rolleyes:

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Free Will is just as necessary to the Blame Game as a catcher's mitt is to baseball.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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My misunderstanding comes from your use of the word 'automation'. I'm uncertain of what you mean by that and clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Mand0s,

I meant nothing more than a person using oversimplifications to instantly pigeonhole others.

"He's a good person," means--to some people--I don't have to pay too much attention to what he says and does and intends. I already automatically know the future with him. I don't, but that's what I think if I use that premise. Run this thinking the other way around for, "he's a bad person," Unfortunately you find this kind of mind-numbing attitude quite a lot in our subculture.

They usually say "evil" or "immoral" person for the bad guy.

They are also quick to change a person's category for the worse if he doesn't stay in their pigeonhole. If they think a person is a good person and he does something wrong, he immeditatly turns into an evil person in their treatment of him.

In fact, part of the root is hinted at in something you said below:

By 'good person' I mean a person who always makes a morally correct choice in the context of their knowledge at any particular moment and by a 'bad person' I mean a person who never makes a morally correct choice.

I have real difficulty with this term "morally correct choice," since I've seen it so often used to justify boneheaded, and sometimes outright mean, behavior by sanctimonious jerks (i.e., a species of control freak).

Morality is a standard. In Objectivism, all standards are definitions of measurement. Rand based her whole theory of concept formation on algebra.

So what would it mean to say "a correct choice measurement-wise"? Believe it or not, if you are talking only about ethics, it means the same thing conceptually as "a morally correct choice." But it doesn't have a sting, does it? You can't use it as a whip to control other people.

Now, here's a curve-ball for you. If you are building a house, is there only one correct measurement for, say, girders? Of course there isn't. There are many correct measurements. Countless, in fact. And there are just as many incorrect measurements. The only point that is critical to the standard is the tipping point where the girder sustains its load or breaks. So that even means that a girder holding a lighter load can have a "correct" measurement that is totally "incorrect" for a heavier load.

Control freaks don't like that much. They think it violates "A is A" and turns into some kind of subjectivism or moral relativism. But can you think of any better--or more correct--application of "A is A" in that context than finding the point where the house won't fall down on your head and using that as your general guide for making other measurements?

Mostly, when I see people in the Objectivist subculture using the term "morally correct choice," they usually end up meaning "a choice that would have pleased Ayn Rand." Since she's dead, in practice, it means "a choice that pleases someone who claims to speak for Ayn Rand (or Objectivism)." A lot of blah blah blah is usually given in terms of rationalizing this, but, from what I have seen, the fundamental part usually boils down to that.

Does this mean there is no good and evil? Of course not.

But if you have to ask someone what is good and what is evil, I think you better stop asking (for approval actually) and start thinking for yourself. You can get seriously hurt following what others say without challenging it enough to think it through. There are some exceptions, like orders in military organizations, but life is not like the military, which has very limited and defined goals. Life is messy.

Good thing, too. Look at all the cool stuff we can do in life precisely because it is messy. We can make our own dreams, we don't have to follow the dreams of others, or, hell, we can do that, too, if we wish.

I also think that redemption is possible, but my present position entails that no change can be made to the nature of a person's particular volitional faculty. Rather, I would say, approximately, that redemption changes a person's premises and thus that person's course of action without changing their particular volitional faculty's nature.

If I understand you correctly, we agree. You have to choose whether you want to or not. Just like you have to eat. You can't say, "I want to be a life form that does not need nutrition to continue existing" and have it happen. Even if you choose not to choose, that in itself is a choice.

You can choose the standard (i.e., the measurements) you use in order to choose whatever it is you are focusing on. Redemption to me means that you changed an important standard like that. But that only affects certain specific types of choices.

Since life's really messy, you get to choose a lot.

How cool is that?

:)

Michael

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  • 3 weeks later...

First off, I should say that I'm uncertain of where to put this topic, as it seems to fall within the realm of several of the forums. Thus, I defer to whatever judgment the moderators may pass as to its proper placement. I should also apologize in advance if this specific question has been raised already.

With that out of the way, my question is this: if a person has free will and thus each choice made by that person is a 'primary cause', why do we evaluate the person rather than merely the choice?

To make my thinking and the motivation for the question a little more clear, I'll say a bit here about what my response would be and you all can hopefully tell me whether I'm on the right or wrong track--particularly as terms such as 'free will', 'choice', etc. were used by Rand and are used by Objectivists. So, my response to the question would be the following.

Though it is true that a person is free to choose whatever that person wills in any particular circumstance, the particular choice must be in accordance with that person's specific nature. Thus, though both a 'good person' and a 'bad person' *can* make the same choices, the 'good person' *will* make 'good choices' and the 'bad person' *will* make 'bad choices', to put the matter simply. Thus, moral evaluation of the person is important because it tells us something about the choices that will be made by the person in the future.

I've tried to be concise, which may have caused me to be unclear, but I hope the above is both concise and clear. If I have failed in my objective, I am more than happy to elaborate in order to clarify what I've written.

Many thanks.

- Mand0s

PS Tolkien fans among you may recognize the appropriateness of my username. It was chosen in part to match this, my first topic, post, and introduction to this board.

Suppose Jill does something that we evaluate as "dishonest." This does not necessarily mean that we would regard Jill as a dishonest person. Only if we believe that dishonesty is a character trait -- i.e., something that Jill does habitually -- would we call her a dishonest person.

This is the classical way -- one that goes back to the ancient Greeks (and to Aristotle in particular) -- of distinguishing between moral judgments that apply to actions versus moral judgments that apply to people. A fundamentally honest person may do dishonest things from time to time; in such cases we would call the particular actions "dishonest," but we would not extend this judgment to the person himself. Only if we conclude that dishonest behavior occurs frequently enough to qualify as a vice would we conclude that the person himself, and not merely some of his isolated actions, is "dishonest."

To say that a person is dishonest is to attribute a character trait to that person. It is to say that he has a disposition to be dishonest. This does not mean that he will behave dishonestly in each and every situation.

Much more is involved in this distinction that I have stated here, but this covers the basics.

Ghs

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