| | What if I were to tell you that I actually can decide to choose job A or decide to choose job B (as long as the values I hold for the money and drive distance come close to supporting either decision).
The way that I do this is by shifting my focus so that I see one value from a perspective that makes it more desirable or less valuable than the other. I focus more on the dis-value of a long drive to work, the wasted time, etc. and I end up choosing that job. Why do you shift your focus? For what purpose? Whatever the purpose, it is that which determines your choice. And if you say that there is no purpose, then you're saying that the act of shifting your focus isn't a choice, since a choice is a goal-directed action. I would liken this to trying on clothes before buying them... you get to make up your mind as you go. The purpose is to look good, within a certain style and purpose for dress (casual, sports, winter, summer, etc.) If two pieces of clothing are close to meeting the desired purpose then you actually decide instead of the values. Again, the values don't decide. You decide based on your values. My desire to pass the test didn't choose the right answer; I chose the right answer based on my desire to pass the test. Now in deciding between two roughly equivalent values, what is the value motivating your decision? You're saying that there isn't one, but I would say that the value is your desire to reach a decision within a certain period of time, so you choose whichever value you happen to be focused on at the time you want to make your decision.
Talking about the computer program, you said, "Nor is it goal-directed, for it does not make decisions for the sake of any end, value or purpose. Human beings do. Humans frequently, actually all most always, hold conflicting goals - goals that exist in hierarchy, subconscious goals, goals that are contingent, hypothetical goals that we try on for size, etc. If we shift our focus to an alternate goal, then we put that goal-directed mechanism in a different direction - like turning the car's steering wheel. If you have conflicting goals, then you have to resolve the conflict by deciding which goal is more important. If you can't determine which is more important but have to make a decision within a certain period of time, then, again, you'll choose to pursue whichever goal you happen to be focused on at the time that you need to make the choice. But all of this is goal-directed, including the goal of arriving at a timely decision.
I wrote, "There are many subtle psychological factors operating that your own introspection can't immediately identify, but that doesn't mean that these factors are not at work motivating your decisions." And I think that at least one of these factors is volition. Like we will a muscle to contract, we will the focus of our awareness and we learn how to do it to shift between values of similar weight when making a decision. Volition isn't a factor motivating your choice; volition is the process of choice itself. Yes, we will a muscle to contract and we choose to focus our awareness, but we always do so for a reason. We don't make purposeless or pointless choices. The question becomes, how could that view of free-will, which matches how we 'feel' it works, and matches our common sense, and suits the use of the words 'choice' and 'decision' and much more closely matches the concept of responsibility be disproved. Well, not everyone "feels" that it works that way, and you can't use your feelings as a justification for your conclusions. As for matching our "common sense," it is the "common sense" view of a lot of people that the soul exists independently of the body, that God created the universe, that naive realism is true, the latter being the view that colors are out there in the object independently of the perceiver. As Rand observes, "common sense is not enough where theoretical knowledge is required: it can make simple, concrete-bound connections -- it cannot integrate complex issues, or deal with wide abstractions . . ." You may feel as though you make arbitrary, unmotivated choices, but this kind of choice is at odds with the fact that the actions of living organisms are not arbitrary, but are goal-directed. Why should it be any different for human choice?
As for our concept of responsibility, we are quite willing to hold people responsible for choices that are not arbitrary in the way you've suggested, but are clearly determined by their deepest convictions and most strongly held values. Moreover, the very fact that we endorse punishments and rewards suggests that we believe that people's choices are not arbitrary but are motivated by their values.
Finally, the law of causality states that the same thing must act the same way under the same conditions. Why should it be any different for human actions? Why should the actions of everything else, including those of the higher mammals, be determined by causal necessity, with human beings an exception to this principle?
To be sure, none of this is a proof that (classical) free will doesn't exist. It may exist, but if it does, it is curious faculty and one which would seem to have little if any survival value.
- Bill
|
|
