| | One of the questions Rand addresses in Ayn Rand Answers (p. 154) is the following: "Is the choice to focus a rational choice?" She replies,
No, it's a primary choice--that is, you won't be rational if your mind isn't focused. But conversely, once you've acquired the rudiments of reason, you focus your mind consciously and volitionally. But how do you learn to focus it originally? In the same way an infant learns to focus his eyes. He is not born with his eyes in focus; focusing his eyes is an acquired attribute, though it's done automatically. (I'm not sure whether it's entirely automatic; but from what we can observe, no volition on the infant's part is necessary.) Why does he learn to focus them? Because he's trying to see--to perceive. Similarly, an infant or young child learns to focus his mind in the form of wanting to know something--to understand clearly. That is the beginning from which a fully conscious, rational focus comes. [This was in answer to a question asked at her lecture, "A Nation's Unity," at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston in 1972.]
I'm having some difficulty with her reply. I would have thought the questioner was asking if the choice to focus were something that could be viewed as rational (i.e., as a choice that is rationally desirable and for which one is morally responsible). This is certainly the impression one gets from Branden's articles on "The Objectivist Theory of Volition," which appeared originally in the February 1966 issue of The Objectivist, in which he writes:
Man's freedom to focus or not to focus, to think or not to think, is a unique kind of choice that must be distinguished from any other category of choice.
It must be distinguished from the decision to think about a particular subject: what a man thinks about, in any given case, depends on his values, interests, knowledge and context. It must be distinguished from the decision to think about a particular physical action, which again depends on a man's values, interests, knowledge and context. These decisions involve causal antecedents of a kind which the choice to focus does not.
The primary choice to focus, to set one's mind to the purpose of cognitive integration, is a first cause in a man's consciousness. On the psychological level, this choice is causally irreducible; it is the highest regulator in the mental system; it is subject to man's direct, volitional control. In relation to it, all other choices and decisions are regulators.
...Just as a man cannot escape the implicit knowledge that the function of his mind is volitional, so he cannot escape the implicit knowledge that he should think, that to be conscious is desirable, that his efficacy as a living entity depends on it.
So, when Rand replies to the question, "Is the choice to focus a rational choice?" by answering, "No, it's a primary choice--that is, you won't be rational if your mind isn't focused," she implies that it is not a choice that can be viewed as rational (i.e., as rationally desirable) from the perspective of the person facing it. Observe that Branden also refers to it as a "primary" choice, by which he means a "first cause in man's consciousness." He does not, however, suggest that it is not a rational choice. On the contrary, he writes that a person "cannot escape the implicit knowledge that he should think, that to be conscious is desirable..." The answer to this paradox might seem to lie in the term "implicit knowledge." However, to say that one "knows" that one should think, that to be conscious is desirable, implies rationality, however "implicit" one's knowledge; otherwise there can be no rational meaning to the terms "should" or "desirable," which are normative terms implying a rational standard of value.
Also, observe the paradox between Rand's remarks at the start of her answer, in which she says that the choice to focus is not a rational choice, and her remarks at the end of her answer, in which she says, "That is the beginning from which a fully conscious, rational focus comes." (emphasis added) Whether this is a contradiction or simply an ambiguity in her explanation depends on what she means by "a fully conscious rational focus." If she means "a fully conscious rational choice to focus," then it is a contradiction. Unfortunately, I suspect that she may indeed have meant it in this sense, for she states that "once you've acquired the rudiments of reason, you focus your mind consciously and volitionally"--which is to say, consciously and rationally); otherwise, of what relevance is the phrase, "once you've acquired the rudiments of reason"?
Does anyone else have a different take on this? If so, I'd be interested in hearing your explanation.
- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 12/26, 9:50pm)
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