RoR: Forum

Bill,

You (over-)define free will as ...
"the ability to choose differently under the same conditions"

And the reason that this is an over-definition (rather than a more accurate one), is because when you say "same conditions" -- your intended scope of conditions is all-encompassing; including the agent's very "intellectuality." A "will" is basically an intellectual appetite. While it's true that "appetite" is determinable, that's not true of intellect. Here's Henri Bergson on this wrong way of thinking about about choice and will:

"For each of our acts we shall easily find antecendents of which it may in some sort be said to be the mechanical resultant. And it may equally well be said that each action is the realization of an intention. ... But if our action be one that involves the whole of our person and is truly ours, it could not have been foreseen, even though its antecedents explain it when once it has been accomplished. ... Mechanism and finalism are therefore, here, only external views of our conduct. They extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips between them and extends much further." --Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, p. 49

Think back to my example of the best psychological explanation of human choice:

1. thought
2. (thought-dependent) feelings
3. (feeling-provoked) action

I believe it is called Rational-Emotive Theory, or something like that. But what is important is the precise and outlined train of events (thought-feeling-action). Using an actual train as an analogy then, "thought" is the engine car, "feelings" are the box-cars that follow thoughts, and "action" is the cabooze (which follows feelings). You can trace the engine car from the cabooze after the fact (because "actions" mechanically follow "feelings", and "feelings" mechanically follow "thoughts") -- but this retroactive tracing does not afford any behavioral foresight; it's a one-way only phenomenon.

And the reason that there's no afforded behavioral foresight from retroactively tracing behavior to back to thought -- is that thought is "original" and does not depend on feeling and action in the same way that feeling and (subsequent) action depend on thought.

Summary:

-Free will is not accurately defined as "the ability to choose differently under the same conditions" (when "the same conditions" includes the agent's intellectuality) -- because intellect is not pre-determined.
-Mechanism, finalism (intention), AND intellectuality are all involved in human choice-making (not just mechanism and finalism)
-Feelings stem from thoughts
-Actions stem from feelings
-Actions can be traced back to a thought, but not necessarily to one and the same thought (alternative thoughts will either afford the same or a different action -- which effectively prevents behavioral foresight)
-A determinism that fails to afford behavioral foresight is an indeterminate determinism (i.e., a contradiction)

Ed

Post 81

Monday, December 31, 2007 - 10:29pm

Ed:

"[All] actions stem [are caused by{?}] from feelings [desires/wants/preferences]." --- I take it that you mean PHYSICAL actions, and not mental 'actions' such as focusing in on a perceived need and the consequential need for decision-making about performing (or not) a PHYSICAL action regarding it? If so, I find Rand's 'scenario' of the astronaut (in her West Point address) quite apropos here; interestingly, one which is never alluded to given all the other scenarios brought up.

"...thought...does not depend on feeling and action in the same way that [the latter depend on it]." Is there some other way it does?

LLAP
J:D

Post 82

Monday, December 31, 2007 - 11:37pm

John,

"[All] actions stem [are caused by{?}] from feelings [desires/wants/preferences]." --- I take it that you mean PHYSICAL actions, and not mental 'actions' such as focusing in on a perceived need and the consequential need for decision-making about performing (or not) a PHYSICAL action regarding it?

When you say: "mental actions such as focusing in on a perceived need" -- then you are describing thought (because thought just is: "mental action such as focusing").

"...thought...does not depend on feeling and action in the same way that [the latter depend on it]." Is there some other way it does?

Let's go back to the train analogy. A given thought (engine car) on a given track (in a context) will "drive" given feelings (box-cars); which, themselves, drive a certain action (cabooze). An observer witnessing the action (cabooze) can guess which kind of feelings entail it; and which kind of a thought would entail those very feelings.

But here is the rub: there's unaccounted-for interplay between thought, agent, and context. For example, the very same "observed-where-it's-now-at" cabooze could be being pulled by the very same engine on a very different, "diverted" track (or by a different engine on the very same track). This is what I meant when I said that the analogy only works one-way (and, therefore, affords no behavioral foresight).

Different thoughts (things which, by the way, "work" through inducing emotions which motivate action) don't necessarily lead to different actions; sometimes they lead to the very same action -- there may even be dozens of different thoughts that lead to the very same action. And also, the very same thoughts, in different contexts (possibly several dozens of different contexts), don't necessarily lead to the very same actions.

This is what Henri Bergson meant when he said that "[f]or each of our acts we shall easily find antecendents of which it may in some sort be said to be the mechanical resultant." We can retroactively-explain (i.e., rationalize) the "lead-up" to a performed action -- but we cannot, from the "external views of our conduct," attain behavioral foresight; because these external views, which Bergson calls "mechanism" and "finalism," fail to account for our intellectuality, which is something inextricably intertwined with our wills.

We can -- after the fact -- think of kinds of thoughts that would've invoked kinds of emotions that would've, themselves, invoked the kind of action that we had taken (going from the end to the beginning); but we cannot start at the beginning and get to the end. This is true because each beginning is "original" in its own right -- that's just the very nature of intellectuality, it is not an unoriginal (pre-determined) existent.

If it were, it would have to be called something else besides intellectuality -- something like "instinct" or "programmed mental action" or "operational code" or something like that. Something that would be similar for everyone -- i.e., something without any originality to it.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/01, 12:26am)

Post 83

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:34am

     To try to pin things down here, re my concern on this whole subject, does the decision to focus/think/increase-attention-to-a-perceived-need ITSELF actually require a desire/want/preference as a 'value'-judgement about it, to do so? Ie, is there a need for the latter to do the decisioning?

    If so, all 'choices' boil down to the programmed competing wants, and that's it.

     What this implies about a moral/ethical system worth having, and any 'objectivity' of handling...subjectively-disliked...behaviors is anyone's guess.

LLAP
J:D

Post 84

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:55am

John, here's Mortimer Adler (Ten Philosophical Mistakes, p 148-9) on the matter:

... not that their denial of freedom of choice is a demonstrable mistake, but rather that they do not correctly understand what they have denied--the premises upon which an affirmation of freedom of choice rests. ...

... While it is true that a free choice and a chance event are both unpredictable with certitude and precision, it is not true that both are uncaused. ... science added statistical laws or probabilistic formulations to causal laws, and in doing so introduced aspects of indeterminacy into the realm of natural phenomena.

Such indeterminacy, however, does not reduce to the causelessness of chance. ... The causal indeterminacy involved in certain scientific formulations ... simply bears no resemblance to the causal indeterminacy involved in freedom of choice.

What the determinists who deny freedom of choice ... fail to understand is that the exponents of free choice place the action of the will outside the domain of the physical phenomena studied by science. If their theory of freedom of choice conceived it as a physical event in the same way that the action of our senses and the motion of our passions are physical events, then they would have to accept the arguments of the determinists as adequate grounds for denying free choice.

But that is not the case. The will, as they conceive it, is an intellectual, not a sensuous, appetite or faculty of desire and decision. In their view, the human mind, consisting of both intellect and will, is to be sharply distinguished from ... the passions. The latter may operate according to the same principles and laws that govern all the other phenomena of the physical world, but the intellect and the will, being immaterial, ... are governed by laws of their own.

Recap:

Passions ---> (somewhat) physical
Intellect ---> (totally) non-physical -- i.e., totally immaterial

Determinism ---> a kind (all kinds?) of physicalism
Non-Determinism ---> integrates the (non-physical) intellect into the equation

Ed

Post 85

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 1:14am

John,

... does the decision to focus/think/increase-attention-to-a-perceived-need ITSELF actually require a desire/want/preference as a 'value'-judgement about it, to do so?

The affirmative would be the stock-in-trade answer from either Roger or Bill on this matter. On the train analogy, Roger and Bill would say that the engine car is our desires/wants/preferences -- that it "runs" the show. What they fail to integrate is that -- besides several, instinctual life-preserving reactions (e.g., pulling your hand off of a hot burner, etc) -- human desires/wants/preferences stem from a certain way of thinking about things.

We desire to have a million dollars -- because we have used our intellect to envision what kind of life we would have if we did. The list goes on endlessly. Over 99% of human feelings come directly from thoughts (i.e., from acts of the intellect). Thoughts originate our decision-making; not feelings (feelings are mere "box-cars" connecting our thoughts to our action).

A hyper-focus on feelings (a focus so strong that it down-plays the pivotal role of the intellect) is the precise thinking mistake made by Roger and Bill -- in their championing of "value-determinism."

Ed

Post 86

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 4:46am

Reply to post 84.

Mr. Thompson,

Do you believe we have a ghost in our attic. Do you think the mind is non-physical? If so, do you have any empirical evidence to back up that assumption?

Bob Kolker

Post 87

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:01pm

Bob,

A "ghost" is a consciousness detached from any and all matter. I do not believe in ghosts. In other words, I reject Cartesian Dualism in favor of a different kind of mitigated dualism (where any and all consciousness is always and only related to matter).

Ed

Post 88

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:13pm

In other words, a consequental manifestation of biomatter....

Post 89

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 2:12pm

Right, Rev'.

I mean, it's like you took the words right out of my mouth ...

:-O

;-)

Ed

p.s. Mr. Kolker, do you believe in consciousness (the individual power to identify internal, external, and intentional reality)?

Post 90

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 9:55pm

Ed, you wrote,

You (over-)define free will as ..."the ability to choose differently under the same conditions"

And the reason that this is an over-definition (rather than a more accurate one), is because when you say "same conditions" -- your intended scope of conditions is all-encompassing; including the agent's very "intellectuality." A "will" is basically an intellectual appetite. While it's true that "appetite" is determinable, that's not true of intellect.

By "the same conditions," I meant the conditions immediately preceding the choice. Free will is the ability to choose either of two alternatives under those precise conditions, which therefore do not include the choice.

Here's Henri Bergson on this wrong way of thinking about about choice and will:

"For each of our acts we shall easily find antecendents of which it may in some sort be said to be the mechanical resultant. And it may equally well be said that each action is the realization of an intention. ... But if our action be one that involves the whole of our person and is truly ours, it could not have been foreseen, even though its antecedents explain it when once it has been accomplished. ... Mechanism and finalism are therefore, here, only external views of our conduct. They extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips between them and extends much further." --Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, p. 49

To say that people's chosen actions are determined does not mean that they are foreseeable, for man is not omniscient; it simply means that their actions are necessitated by antecedent causes.

Using an actual train as an analogy . . . "thought" is the engine car, "feelings" are the box-cars that follow thoughts, and "action" is the cabooze (which follows feelings). You can trace the engine car from the cabooze after the fact (because "actions" mechanically follow "feelings", and "feelings" mechanically follow "thoughts") -- but this retroactive tracing does not afford any behavioral foresight; it's a one-way only phenomenon.

And the reason that there's no afforded behavioral foresight from retroactively tracing behavior to back to thought -- is that thought is "original" and does not depend on feeling and action in the same way that feeling and (subsequent) action depend on thought.

The act of thinking -- of raising one's level of awareness -- depends on the moral agent's evaluating it as worth choosing. Otherwise, there would be no reason or purpose for his making the choice. That doesn't meant that he has to "feel" like making it, but it does mean that he has to value it over the alternative. If the choice to think were not valued over the alternative, then there would be no point in making it, in which case, one could not be held morally responsible for that choice or for any of the actions that follow from it. Values determine one's choice to think just as well as they determine one's choice of (physical) behavior.

- Bill

Post 91

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 11:18pm

Bill,

By "the same conditions," I meant the conditions immediately preceding the choice. Free will is the ability to choose either of two alternatives under those precise conditions ...

Yes, you mean the conditions before the choice -- including the thought thoughts; but thoughts are original (you can't just suppose them, and then include them, in a definition of free will).

To say that people's chosen actions are determined ... it simply means that their actions are necessitated by antecedent causes.

Only when you include thought thoughts -- which is rationally impermissible; because thoughts are individual, and not just individualized to the same person, but to that person at that exact instant (thoughts can change by the second).

The act of thinking -- of raising one's level of awareness -- depends on the moral agent's evaluating it as worth choosing.

What you are saying is that the act of thinking depends on prior thinking (i.e., on an ongoing mental evaluation). I agree, but this doesn't support -- or rather, extend-into-meaningful-territory -- the central thesis of value-determinism that ...

"In whatever context, whatever you did, you wanted most to do."

Ed

Post 92

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 2:34am

Ed:

Thanx on that tid from M-A; been a while since I read him (including that fascinating book.)

-- "...and the Beat goes ON, and the beat goes on...."--

LLAP
J:D

Post 93

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 3:49am

Mr. Thompson writes:

Right, Rev'.

I mean, it's like you took the words right out of my mouth ...

:-O

;-)

Ed

p.s. Mr. Kolker, do you believe in consciousness (the individual power to identify internal, external, and intentional reality)?

Mr. Kolker Responds:

You bet I do. And it is not belief, it is experience. My brain does the job and it does it quite well. There is no mystery here (only a scientific question). Brains do consciousness and thinking through purely physical processes. We do not know how in detail, but the fact remains. Consciousness is a physical process that takes place in the space-time manifold and is governed by physical laws. It is no more mysterious than is electro-magnetism.

I have volunteered to have MRI scans, PET scans and CT scans of my head. I have -seen- myself think in real time. In all those scans, never once did I or any of the professionals in the study discover a mind. All we ever saw (or detected) was my physical brain doing physical things. I consider it a wonderful and delightful thing that my three pound lump of goo can conceive of the cosmos, prove theorems and write poetry. And it does.

Perhaps I am like Mr. Data in STTNG: He has a brain but no mind. This complex carbon unit and bag of mostly water is physical.

Bob Kolker

Post 94

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 2:10pm

I wrote, By 'the same conditions,' I meant the conditions immediately preceding the choice. Free will is the ability to choose either of two alternatives under those precise conditions ..."

Ed replied,

Yes, you mean the conditions before the choice -- including the thought thoughts; but thoughts are original (you can't just suppose them, and then include them, in a definition of free will).

Ed, what in the hell are you talking about?? "Thought thoughts"?? What's that? Look, the choice I'm referring to here is the choice to think. What I'm saying is that free will is the ability to choose either to think or not to think under the same conditions, which means under those conditions that immediately precede the choice. What part of this don't you understand?

I wrote, "To say that people's chosen actions are determined ... simply means that their actions are necessitated by antecedent causes." You replied,

Only when you include thought thoughts -- which is rationally impermissible; because thoughts are individual, and not just individualized to the same person, but to that person at that exact instant (thoughts can change by the second).

Ed, I haven't the vaguest idea what you're saying here or how it relates to the statement that you just quoted.

I wrote, "The act of thinking -- of raising one's level of awareness -- depends on the moral agent's evaluating it as worth choosing."

What you are saying is that the act of thinking depends on prior thinking (i.e., on an ongoing mental evaluation). I agree, but this doesn't support -- or rather, extend-into-meaningful-territory -- the central thesis of value-determinism that ..."In whatever context, whatever you did, you wanted most to do."

Why not? -- if you agree with me that the choice to think depends on prior awareness, that it means raising one's awareness from a lower level to a higher level, and that it presupposes an evaluation of the choice as worth making. Why doesn't this imply that in whatever context you chose, you chose what you wanted, i.e., what you valued?

- Bill

Post 95

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 2:27pm

I am new to this forum but have been very interested in the Objectivist position on free will for years. From my reading in your forum, my position seems closest to that of William Dwyer. I believe that free will can be true/valid at one level and not at another level of analysis.

As I understand it, Ayn Rand believed that free will is introspectively obvious. The evidence for free will, she believed, is in thinking and choosing, something you observe yourself doing. Let's analyze this, speaking (for simplicity) about physical actions.

I first observe that for every action that I take, I can either know why I did it, or not know. For example, I might think mightily about the choices offered to me at a restaurant and order 'large platter A' because it fits many criteria (I am very hungry, I want a lot of variety, etc.). For this choice I am fully conscious of why I made this selection. But also, in this manner, my choice was somewhat 'dictated' by the logic of the situation - it really was the best choice given my values and options; it wasn't exactly free, it was 'determined', in a way, by the reality of the situation, as I saw it at the time. Indeed Rand acknowleges the fact that most of our decisions are 'determined' by facts, values, etc.. by stating that the real choice is simply whether we think or not, the rest (this implies) is to some extent determined.

For some actions, I am NOT fully aware of why I do them. For example, if I am engaged in a soccer game, I will not be able to state to you in each instance why I swerved left or right. When speaking with a group of people, I may not know exactly why I phrased something the way I did. Or, if I am purposefully TRYING to act randomly, say with the game rock/scissors/paper - I may not know why I chose the option I did. In these cases, the actual outcome could easily have been determined by factors outside of my control; that is, outside of my conscious control of them; factors in the subconscious or elsewhere, that happened to lead to the result they did. In other words, there is nothing about the experience that obviously tells me that it could have been otherwise!

Analyzing in more detail, then, Rand's emphasis of the decision to think or not, I'm not sure it can escape the two options above. The reasons I choose to think or focus harder are many, including: (1) good thinking habits (2) I happen to have a good energy level at the time (3) recognition of the importance of focusing at the time (4) other factors outside my conscious awareness.

I have a hard time avoiding a (hard) deterministic position given my arguments above, but on the other hand - there is a sense in which we all clearly do have free will. Thinking DOES matter and DOES lead to results. It is efficacious - not an epiphenomenon, in my view, it is just constrained more than we seem to realize. So I believe we DO make choices, we do choose to think, we do make decisions that affect our lives and that this is important. This, I believe, is what we typically are referring to when we speak of free will.

I believe there are many implications of the above argument, but not as many as you might think. Certainly not a rejection of ethics, or justice, or the important of thinking and trying hard, etc.. But this discussion is for another time, just wanted to see what you thought of the above.

Post 96

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 3:50pm

Bill,

What you are doing -- and what I am complaining about -- is hypothetically freezing someone's thoughts (on the last thought that they had immediately prior to an action).

This is impermissible. It's fine to hypothesize about the same person in the same external situation, in order to examine their choices and what-not. But when you over-determine the context by trying to include their intellectuality -- their moment-by-moment thoughts -- then you are merely postulating arbitrary data to fit your theory. The same person in the same external situation may choose differently because of different, instantaneous thoughts. Thoughts are the key to decision-making, not feelings -- feelings are dependent on prior and current thoughts. Thinking is a process, not a still-picture which can be isolated.

Re-read the Bergson quote about how you cannot capture intellectuality -- like you are, at least indirectly, saying that you can do (when you say: "same conditions").

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/02, 3:51pm)

Post 97

Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 7:06am

Mr. Kolker,

I have -seen- myself think in real time. In all those scans, never once did I or any of the professionals in the study discover a mind. All we ever saw (or detected) was my physical brain doing physical things.

Perception tells that something exists, but not what it is that we are looking at -- which requires conceptual understanding. When you expect to "see" only physical things you did -- and just tagged on the term "think" to that. All you really have here is temporal association. As you thought, your brain was active. You are discounting the existence of a mind based on failing to find it in the physical world. That's a "category mistake."

A lack of (appropriate) evidence -- is not evidence of a lack.

Ed

Post 98

Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 7:49am

Reply to post #97

The same thing could be said of the Luminiferous Aether. But no physicist thinks this undetectable Stuff really exists.

There is not one scintilla of objective evidence that can be witnessed second hand indicating a non-material mind exists.

If you want to define the word "mind" to mean what the brain does (or some of what the brain does) then by all means do.

Apparently I am like Data on ST:TNG I have a consciousness producing brain (organic, not positronic) and no mind in the sense of res cogitens. I also pay no attention to my introspections. They could just as well be wills of the wisp, subjective meanderings or just plain hallucinations, or subjective Bats in My Belfry. In any case there is no way in principle of distinguishing an hallucination from a delusion from an introspection. That is the way it is with purely subjective experiences.

Bob Kolker

Post 99

Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 9:39am