| | Bill,
Thank you for hanging in there. My last post, reading it now, was kind of sloppy. From what you said in reply to my first block of quotes I can see we are dealing with both purpose and values.
Any 'choice' I make has a purpose. And the assumption is that a value explains the purpose. You said, "You decide based on your values." The 'deciding' being the selection of the values and/or the examining of the alternative choices relative to a given value, for the purpose of gaining or keeping the most significant value. If I have that right, then I can make a minor correction to one of your sentences: "I chose the right answer based on my desire to pass the test." That should be, "I chose the right answer based on the purpose of passing the course, because the course has a value to me in meeting my degree requirements."
So, the choosing is the process and purposefulness is built in. We have to act and that requires making a choice between alternative actions and that is the purpose in general and the context determines the purpose in particular. If I am sufficiently aware, I can identify my purpose (before choosing, during choosing or after the fact). A purpose is always there as the connection between the value and the choice made. That would be so even if I identify it incorrectly, or identify what I intend to be my purpose, but act on another purpose. (Like if I tell myself that my purpose in responding to some post is to be informative, but it really is to show-off :-)
Likewise, the value is built in. It is the goal being sought which is presumed to be a value. Because I can err in judging the facts, and because I can hold 'values' that really aren't, it will always be the goal of the choice, but it may not be beneficial to me. It is value in that strict Randian sense of 'that which we act to gain or keep.' And I or may not be aware of, or accurate in, identifying the value - just like with 'purpose.'
You say, "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 agree that all of this is goal-directed - that seems to be the structure of the thing - the very heart of it. But I believe this is where some complexity is built in. We can sense the differences between an irrational purpose and a rational purpose (to varying degrees based upon the individual, his values, his introspective skills, etc.) I'm not saying we 'sense' the truth of a proposition, but rather we sense our inner process as being an honest effort to reason, versus evading or acting on a whim. No one fools themselves totally in that regard without being psychotic.
We can also sense the difference between going with a short-term goal of pleasure now, versus a longer-term goal of greater happiness or well-being in the future.
I maintain that the process of choosing often has multiple conflicting goals and that sometimes the 'resolution' is part of the choosing process. I believe that a property of each of the goals is that goal's source as 'I was being mostly rational" or "I was being somewhat irrational," and a time-frame for the goal (short-term, long-term).
There is a third thing that is relevant for goals - their context. The choosing mechansim is capable of throwing out goals that are entirely out of context for a purpose. For example, some of the words in a multiple choice question could be about health. And I have health related values and health related goals. But the choosing process will disregard those as goals because they don't fit the context of passing the test (my purpose). So, I could end up with two goals that both match the context of passing the test - one is to answer quickly, get out of here, I'm hungry, pass with an adequate score. The other is take your time and answer correctly to get the best score possible.
So, if we have more than one goal for the same purpose, I have to stop the choosing process and perform some sort of evaluation that will rank the goals in importance, then when I resume the choosing process that more important goal will arise by itself and the process will direct my action accordingly. But if the two goals that arise are marked as both valid in context, but one is rational and the other is irrational, it can be a different process. At this point, I imagine you would point to a value of rationality being measured versus a desire or value of some other sort (representing the irrational goal). And I agree. But it is right here that I believe that an effort can be exerted to shift the focus of awareness to, in effect, make the rational goal be more in the forefront of awareness and the irrational goal more in the background. Or, not make the effort, or even let a strong desire to evade that is like a standing order in the particular context do the opposite - pushing the rational goal into the background. I believe that this is a uniquely human capacity that is needed to be rational. That it isn't undetermined as in without cause, but that cause is not the same as the way cause is spoken of when event A causes event B.
I would agree that the value of rationality, and habit of being rational or lack thereof, are important in influencing this shift. But without this ability I see no way we can have a difference between rational and irrational as knowledge. There would be no mind that could process that. It would remain 'true' that poison would kill us but we could not reason that poison is a disvalue and we could not know that it is true.
I said, "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." That was pretty sloppy. You replied, "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?"
I agree with almost everything you said. I don't believe that we make "arbitrary, unmotivated choices" but I do believe that the choices are arbitrary in the sense that they aren't determined outside of a willed shift in focus which is a first cause for the following chain of events. It will always be goal-directed, but could be directed at a rational goal or an irrational goal, a short-term or a longer-term goal. The key sense in which it is NOT arbitrary is that being able to choose, to initiate a first cause at a decision point is the uniquely human form of goal-directedness which is part of the rational faculty. Other animals make 'choices' but on a lower level that is automatic. The dog trotting down the sidewalk decides to pass to the left or right of an obstacle. I believe that the dog chooses but that the choice isn't arbitrary and is goal-directed, but the dog can't initiate a first-cause shift between alternatives. His mechanism is simpler and he will always resolve in favor of one goal with out any such shifting.
You said, "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." I think that this capacity IS the nature of rationality, which lets us make mistakes, but also lets us conceptualize, to envision that which has never existed, to make choices that aren't automatic. And those are our unique form of survival.
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