[The necessary-contingent dichotomy] was interpreted in the twentieth century as follows: since facts are learned by experience, and experience does not reveal necessity, the concept "necessary facts" must be abandoned. Facts, it is now held, are one and all contingent --- and the propositions describing them are "contingent truths." As for necessary truths, they are merely the products of man's linguistic or conceptual conventions. They do not refer to facts, they are empty, "analytic," "tautological." [107]
Although not all or even most contemporary philosopher accept the necessary-contingent dichotomy, those that do advocate it believe in something close to what Peikoff describes. In other words, Peikoff has not grossly misstated this particular view, which is unusual for him. What, then, is his objection to this dichotomy? His main objection is the view, supposedly entailed by the dichotomy, that facts are contingent. Such a view, contends Peikoff,
represents a failure to grasp the Law of Identity. Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific identity, nothing in reality can occur by chance. The nature of an entity determines what it can do and, in any given set of circumstances, dictates what it will do. The Law of Causality is entailed by the Law of Identity. Entities follow certain laws of action in consequence of their identity, and have no alternative to doing so. [108-109]
Peikoff is here guilty of doing the very thing that the analytic-synthetic dichotomy (and the necessity-contingent dichotomy that underlies it) was set up to discourage: that is, Peikoff is engaged in verbalistic speculation. He is attempting to determine matters of fact on the basis of logical and verbal constructions. The "law of causality" is not "entailed" by the "law of identity." The so-called "law of identity" is a tautology; and you can't draw specific inferences from tautologies. What if the identity of a given object is that it is governed by chance? If chance can be the identity of something, like a pair of dice, then any talk of causality being "entailed" by the phrase "A is A" is sheer nonsense.
Another objection Peikoff raises to the notion that facts are contingent is that, historically, that view "was associated with a supernaturalistic metaphysics; such facts, it was said, are products of a divine creator who could have created them differently... This view represents the metaphysics of miracles."
Here Peikoff resorts to a common Objectivist trick: he attempts to dismiss one view by relating it to another view. In other words, guilt by association. Since Hume most philosophers who believe in the contingency of facts are not motivated by a supernatural agenda. Nor are they, as Peikoff alleges, guilty of a "secularized mysticism." The secular belief in the contingency of facts arises out of the desire to stop rationalistic speculation at its very root. This may not seem obvious at first glance, but a more detailed explication, to be provided in the next post, will make it clear that it is so.
What if the identity of a given object is that it is governed by chance? If chance can be the identity of something, like a pair of dice, then any talk of causality being "entailed" by the phrase "A is A" is sheer nonsense.
ReplyDeleteAh, but any good Objectivist will tell you that the fall of dice isn't really governed by chance: it's determined by the exact components of the linear and angular momentum of the dice when released, the surface on which they fall, the air currents, etc. We normally can't measure or predict these things accurately enough to know in advance what the roll will be, so we call it "chance" even though it is in fact deterministic.
I used to have conversations with Objectivists about quantum mechanics. Most of them insisted that it had to be wrong, or incomplete, or something, because it wasn't possible that an electron's behavior could be acausal or non-deterministic (as QM seems to require). They'd quote the Peikoff line Greg quotes -- "the nature of an entity determines ..."
Then I would ask them, "But why can't the identity of an electron be such that its action isn't deterministic? Its action would still be caused by its nature, just as it is for man." Most of them insisted that this wasn't possible. Only man has volition and is non-deterministic.
I would ask how they knew the electron had to be deterministic, especially given that we already know there's at least one type of entity (man) that is not. Can we be certain that man is the only exception to the rule that causality implies determinism? They came up with all sorts of things: man can make choices because he is a sufficiently complex/advanced organism, an electron is too simple to have any organs of choice; if electrons aren't deterministic, then man would be forever incapable of understanding reality, and we know that's false. None of them were comfortable with the idea that uncontrollable, unknowable, uncertain chance might be baked into the very fabric of reality. At the time, I wasn't either, but I never found any of their explanations convincing.
It gets a lot simpler when you decide to conform your rules to reality rather than the other way around.
" Only man has volition and is non-deterministic."
ReplyDeleteOf course, the rub there is that this very statement falls under the same category as the dice roll.
Our brains are, after all, complex electrochemical machines - too complex for current technology to fully predict, but composed all the same of chemicals and compounds that are either understood or can be researched in the usual ways.
Just as you ought to be able to predict a die roll with enough data, one ought, therefore, to be able to predict what a brain will do - if one just had enough data. As the processes of the brain are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, what one perceives as "volition" is simply a staggering array of varied chemical reactions happening at just the right moment due to just the specific stimuli at hand reacting with stored data.
Causality would dictate then that we were always going to react as we did in the past, that what we do now is the result of ongoing chain reactions, and that what we will do in the future is pretty much set by the precise measure of the ingredients in our heads. That we cannot predict these outcomes does not mean they are not, essentially, pre-determined. To argue otherwise would be to presume some kind of theoretical "x-factor", like a soul or some such, to expand the idea of consciousness past the actual physical processes of the human brain.
I have not explored the Objectivist position on this matter, but I'd be willing to bet it would be kind of an annoyance, for a philosophy that touts free will and volition.
"I used to have conversations with Objectivists about quantum mechanics. Most of them insisted that it had to be wrong, or incomplete, or something, because it wasn't possible that an electron's behavior could be acausal or non-deterministic (as QM seems to require)."
ReplyDeleteTo the extent they're making scientific claims based on inferences from philosophy, they're not doing as peikoff advised. he insisted that philosophy could make no claims about science, and needed to stop before that point.
what philosophy can say, according to peikoff, is that _whatever_ an electron does, it does so because of what it is.
it can also say that epistemologically, nothing of the experiments in QM justifies a conclusion, on the basis of science, that the motion of electrons is acausal or non-deterministic, only that we are unable, at the current level of science, to determine a cause or determine whether it is determined.
that's why this isn't a case of "failing to conform your rules to reality." QM describes our observations of subatomic particles. it justifies no claims about causation or determinism, except in the imaginations of acausal adeterminists.
" As the processes of the brain are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, what one perceives as "volition" is simply a staggering array of varied chemical reactions happening at just the right moment due to just the specific stimuli at hand reacting with stored data."
She would say that while they are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, the brain is such that under the laws of physics and chemistry, our brains have the capacity to choose, based on values, and that while there is evidence that many aspects of brain function can be determined by mere chemical reactions without regard to chosen values (like putting a bullet through one), there is no scientific evidence that _all_ activities of the brain operate purely on a chemical basis, without regard to chosen values.
I remember Peikoff saying, in one of his taped lectures, that "philosophy has veto power over science." By this he meant that if science purports to find evidence for a logical contradiction in reality, philosophy can "veto" this claim.
ReplyDeleteSince Objectivism sees some aspects of QM as entailing contradictions, Objectivism tries to "veto" QM.
My impression is that Peikoff is not well versed in these matters. For instance, he described Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as "a problem of measurement" - i.e., that if we had simply better instruments, we could know the particle's position and momentum at the same time. This is incorrect. The uncertainty principle states that it is impossible even in theory to know both data points at once. It has nothing to do with technical difficulties in measurement.
Re the brain, a lot depends on whether quantum processes can take place there. If uncertainty and probability are built into QM, and if quantum processes can occur in microscopic brain structures such as microtubules or in the synaptic gap, then it's arguable that "free will" could be explainable as a quantum effect.
As a dualist myself, I don't think the brain produces thought in the first place (I see the brain as a receiver or transceiver, with thought as a kind of signal), so deterministic arguments grounded in physicalism don't faze me. For Objectivists, though, these arguments should be a problem, since Objectivists reject both dualism and QM, and thus seemingly have nowhere left to go.
Perhaps they could argue that free will is an emergent property of a deterministic system. An emergent property need not share the properties of its constituents. The wetness of water is not found in either hydrogen or oxygen. I'm not sure this argument would really hold up, though.
ECE and Michael,
ReplyDeleteThanks for weighing in on this. As you correctly note, the issue of volition is one of the really vulnerable parts of Rand’s philosophy.
In “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, Peikoff states: “The principle of volition is a philosophic axiom, with all the features this involves.” It’s easy to skate over a statement like this without fully realizing what Peikoff is saying when he calls volition “a philosophic axiom”.
If volition is a philosophic axiom, it’s a starting point: you can’t go behind it. Above all, you can’t talk about volition as a consequence of higher levels of complexity. To do so is to suggest that a full knowledge of this higher level of complexity would yield an understanding of what causes someone to initiate thought. But this is precisely what Peikoff is denying when he calls volition a philosophic axiom.
Objectivists often argue: animals can initiate motion – and in the same way, but at a far higher level, humans can initiate thought. It’s instructive to see where this analogy breaks down.
Scientists understand the muscular, perceptual and neurological systems of animals – and how they use these systems to deal with the world around them. We know a very great deal about the processes that make it possible for an animal to initiate motion.
If volition is “a philosophic axiom”, no such explanation is possible. We can’t point to a portion of the brain where that volition takes place; we can’t specify the conditions, either in the brain or in the world around us, that allow the volition to take place or not take place. If we could, volition would no longer be axiomatic. For Peikoff, free will just is. Period.
Sorry, this isn’t good enough.
Questions connected with free will are tricky and unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. However, for anyone interested in moving beyond Peikoff’s naive formulations, a good starting point would be Brand Blanshard’s essay “The Case for Determinism”. It is part of an anthology entitled “Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science”, which is freely available on the Net. Like all of Blanshard’s work, it is refreshingly clear, and marked by a civility that should be a model for us all.
"If volition is “a philosophic axiom”, no such explanation is possible. We can’t point to a portion of the brain where that volition takes place; we can’t specify the conditions, either in the brain or in the world around us, that allow the volition to take place or not take place. If we could, volition would no longer be axiomatic. For Peikoff, free will just is. Period."
ReplyDeleteYou're conflating the axiomatic "principle" of volition with the scientific "mechanism" of volition. In the context of that article, he's clearly referring to the former, not the latter. the principle of volition is that you -- as a being -- choose. And that without acknowledging the fact of human choice, everything falls to the ground in a mass of contradictions.
That is not the same as a scientific study of the mechanism of free will. It certainly doesn't preclude such a study. It just says that study itself presumes the existence of volition, because it presumes that the studier collects data and analyzes it according to principles of reason, rather than simply coming to the conclusions his glands demand.
But I think you understand the difference between these two aspects of volition.
"She would say that while they are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, the brain is such that under the laws of physics and chemistry, our brains have the capacity to choose, based on values, and that while there is evidence that many aspects of brain function can be determined by mere chemical reactions without regard to chosen values (like putting a bullet through one), there is no scientific evidence that _all_ activities of the brain operate purely on a chemical basis, without regard to chosen values."
ReplyDeleteWell, she would be dead wrong on that score. Or rather, she would face the same argument that Objectivists give about things like, say, the existence of God: There is no scientific evidence that there is anything that happens in the brain which is NOT happening on a chemical basis - and the idea that there is such a process is the claim that requires greater proof.
As to the rest, sure, your brain chooses based on values (and a host of other factors) - which are ALSO chemically stored in your head. Thus, as long as chemicals can be predicted to have specific reactions under specific conditions, what the mind decides or does not decide should be merely a function of causality.
This is not in any way to say that people should just give up trying to make choices or that we should all behave as we are puppets on strings - just that if one insists that there is no real source of random behavior in the universe, whether in dice rolls or quantum mechanics, one also has to concede the same for the processes of the mind - or irrationally believe in something for which there is not a shred of evidence.
Or conversely, if one insists that there is some kind of non-chemical uncertainty at work in the brain, one ought to also allow for things like quantum uncertainty - for which there is far greater scientific evidence.
"There is no scientific evidence that there is anything that happens in the brain which is NOT happening on a chemical basis - and the idea that there is such a process is the claim that requires greater proof."
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but that's because we don't really know how the brain works yet:). One ought not assume -- without evidence -- that is operates purely deterministically in a chemical sense -- until we understand it.
And in the meantime, before we understand how the brain works at a mechanistic level, all we have as evidence is our experience. And our experience is one of partial choice, bounded by chemical determinism but not completely encompassed by chemical determinism. Our experience is one of partial choice.
Since our experience is the best -- indeed the only -- evidence on that point, because science doesn't yet know how the brain works, it's the most rational and parsimonious basis for making a determination regarding free will:).
This differs from arguments about god, in which the "best evidence" is no evidence at all:). Here, the best evidence is my personal experience in my life. And that's a lot better than the scientific evidence about how my "values" are stored in the brain ... which is ... to date ... nonexistent:).
these are not rand's arguments to my knowledge -- they're mine. but neoobjectivist I think.
"And that's a lot better than the scientific evidence about how my "values" are stored in the brain ... which is ... to date ... nonexistent:)"
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you're very wrong there.
Values are a function of memory. If you can't remember things you like and dislike, how do you know how to react when presented with, well, anything? And memories are chemically stored in the brain. Any knowledge that endures must be stored in the brain, and must therefore be chemical in nature - unless you're postulating some process we cannot yet detect, that is beyond physics as we know it.
If all thought happens in the brain, and the brain is an electrochemical machine, then either causality must rule or one must hope for things for which there is no evidence - save for feelings.
And just feeling that it must be so isn't any more proof of free will than the complexity of the universe is proof of God. The problem is that the same ruthless standards Objectivists like to use against any other question do not support the idea of free will. Something must give: either the concept of free will must change or the standards have to be relaxed.
"Values are a function of memory. If you can't remember things you like and dislike, how do you know how to react when presented with, well, anything?"
ReplyDeleteValues are more than a function of memory -- they're also an evaluation of that memory. So I remember being beaten by my girlfriend. What makes me decide whether I like that memory or not? Not memory. Something else. Something science hasn't yet put its finger on yet. May someday, but hasn't yet.
"If all thought happens in the brain, and the brain is an electrochemical machine, then either causality must rule or one must hope for things for which there is no evidence - save for feelings."
I think it's fair to distinguish between mere "feelings" and "introspection" in this context. feelings are somewhat arbitrary. but introspection is an observation of internal states. thus for instance feeling is the sensation of pain, but introspection is the observation that one is experiencing it.
that's why I think my experience of free will is more than a "feeling." it's an essential component of my cognitive framework. I experience it constantly. I observe it about myself the same way I might observe that I am experiencing pain.
whether that experience has a scientific basis is a second question of course. but it's a question that hasn't yet been answered by science:). so the best evidence I have is my introspection. which tells me I can choose some things, some of the time.
As far as I know, science has not had much luck locating memories in the brain. Karl Lashley performed years of experiments in which the brains of salamanders were progressively cut away, in an effort to eradicate their memory of how to run a maze. But he was unable to do it; even when nearly all of the brain was gone the salamanders still knew how to run the maze. Sometimes they had to drag themselves through the maze because their motor functions have been so badly compromised by the surgery – but they still knew the way.
ReplyDeleteWilder Penfield did succeed in stimulating brief fragments of memory by placing electrodes on the brain. But stimulating the same specific location never resulted in the same memory twice, leading Penfield to conclude that memories are not stored in any specific location.
The idea now seems to be that memories are stored across the entire brain in some way that is not understood. They are "everywhere and nowhere" in the brain. An alternative, from a dualist perspective, is that memories are stored outside the brain and are simply accessed via the brain.
A related issue is the question of how much of the brain is necessary in order to function normally. There have been cases of people who functioned at an average or even slightly above average level, who, when autopsied, were found to have virtually no gray matter. From a 2007 Reuters article:
"Scans of the [deceased] 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.
"'He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant,' Dr. Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universitie de la Mediterranee in Marseille wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal."
There have been other such cases. They strike me as more consistent with a dualist position than with the conventional physicalist interpretation. In any event, such anomalies clearly show that we don't know enough about the brain to make definitive statements.
Comments lucid and appreciated as always, Prescoott. I think dualism qualifies as a fair hypothesis, albeit not necessarily the most parsimonious one, since (at least to my knowledge), we have no actual evidence of a mind outside the body, nor can we exclude the possibility that the body does everything necessary by some mechanism we don't yet understand.
ReplyDeleteStill, parsimony is no basis for holy wars, so long as we all agree we're standing on the admittedly shaky ground of hypothesis, rather than the falsely certain ground of dogma.
Objectivists talk a lot about "volition" without ever giving a good definition what this in fact means. Apparently they reason that by introspection you "know" that you are free to choose between different options, for example choose between action A or action B. The flaw in that argument is that the fact that you think you're free to choose is not incompatible with a fully deterministic brain. Determinism is not the same as predictability.
ReplyDeleteSure, in theory you could predict the actions of a deterministic system if you knew all the relevant variables. But in many cases, and certainly in such a highly complex system as a human brain, the combinatorial explosion makes such a prediction in practice completely impossible.
It is the unpredictability in practice of human thought processes in the brain that creates the illusion of "free will". We think and act as if we are really free to choose, but that doesn't mean that our thoughts can't be generated by a strict deterministic process. It is in fact similar to the randomness of throwing dice: as the deterministic processes in throwing a die are intractable to us, we can use it as a "random" generator (similar for the balls in a lotto number generator).
I agree that the minds of many people's minds operate in a similar manner to the throwing of dice. I wouldn't even argue with a person whose introspection told them that their mind operates in exactly that way. I just consider that sort of mental state to be dysfunctional. At its most extreme states, psychotic.
ReplyDeleteMy mind does not work in the same way as the rolling of dice. It works by volition. Which means that I have the experience of selecting values, selecting goals, and deciding whether or not to pursue them. Not randomly (although many people do make their decisions randomly) but systematically.
This is one of the areas where I think objectivism could have benefited by simply acknowledging that many people have no idea what it means to choose. They genuinely experience their lives as determined or random. Because their brains are not fully functional.
Hello Michael.
ReplyDeleteI read your comments about brain research with interest, and I'd certainly agree that we are far from a deep understanding of how the human brain functions. It is, after all, the most complex natural mechanism we know.
However, I think that some of the research you cite counts against dualism, not for it. The salamander example is especially noteworthy. It shows that it's hard to find a specific area of the brain where learned behaviours are stored. But unless dualism extends to salamanders (!), it's a bit of an overreach to suggest from this that "memories are stored outside the brain and are simply accessed via the brain."
Incidentally, I don't regard the lack of a memory center in the brain as especially puzzling. After all, computers place things in the first available space: that's why they eventually have to be defragged. I suspect that our brains may do about the same thing. (And that's putting aside the fact that there are many, many different kinds of memory: muscle memory and reciting Keat just aren't the same thing.)
Note to Jzero & Dragonfly:
ReplyDeleteLet me repeat my recommendation of Brand Blanshard’s essay “The Case for Determinism”. It is part of an anthology entitled “Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science”, which is freely available on the Net.
I'm certainly no dualist, so I'm onside in very general terms with what you say. But there's more to this issue than just waiting for the research to come in; one also has to square that research with the issues of freedom and moral responsibility that are raised by determinism. Blanshard is a good place to start - and unlike 99% of philosophers, he's a pleasure to read.
@ungtss: I didn't say that the brain works the same way as rolling dice, I merely pointed out the analogy in having a deterministic system which is in practice unpredictable and which we therefore treat as if it is non-deterministic.
ReplyDeleteThat you have the experience of selecting values, deciding etc. does not imply that this experience cannot be generated by a deterministic system. With introspection you can only observe the end result of the deterministic processes, your thoughts and feelings, not the processes "under the hood" (like the firings of the neurons in the brain).
Introspection and experience are just completely useless for determining the low-level functioning of your brain. It's like trying to deduce the internal workings of a television set by looking at the images on the screen. And no, I'm not saying that the brain functions like a television set, this is just another analogy.
"That you have the experience of selecting values, deciding etc. does not imply that this experience cannot be generated by a deterministic system."
ReplyDeleteNo, you're right, it doesn't. But it does give me reason to believe that the system is not deterministic, because it doesn't seem that way to me. At least not entirely. My introspection gives me strong reason to believe that part of my mental action is definitely determined by something other than my conscious choice, but also that part of it is determined solely by my conscious choice -- and that the part that is not deterministic is neither chemically determined nor indeterminate, but determined by act of will.
The fact that it seems that way to me is not the strongest imaginable evidence. But it's the strongest evidence available. Because while scientists continue to do great work in neurology, they still really have no idea how this stuff actually works, and therefore can't say whether we are in fact chemically determined.
When a phd doesn't know, and a toddler speaks, and you have no evidence that the toddler is wrong, the toddler is the best witness you have. I believe him.
"What makes me decide whether I like that memory or not? Not memory. Something else."
ReplyDeleteEmotion.
"I experience it constantly. I observe it about myself the same way I might observe that I am experiencing pain."
The problem is that there's no way to verify it, is there? It just FEELS free. But, as was pointed out, you don't know what actually causes any thought you may have simply by introspecting about it, just as when you look at something, you perceive light and color - but you do not perceive the process of photons passing through your cornea and hitting your retina.
I am somewhat bemused by the resistance to the idea that everything you think is chemicals in the brain. If this were nearly any other subject - like, say, dice throws - I imagine that the Objectivist stance would be to stand behind the science and claim - with CERTAINTY! - that the dice rolls are determined entirely by physics.
But when science has - as far as I know - not found any evidence whatsoever that anything happens in the brain which is not chemically-based, it's "well, we shouldn't jump to conclusions" or "science doesn't know EVERYTHING, so I'm going to go with my gut instincts instead."
It just sounds like something of a double standard to me.
""What makes me decide whether I like that memory or not? Not memory. Something else."
ReplyDelete"Emotion."
True, but emotion depends on our ideas. It comes from somewhere. If I'm into S+M, I may remember the beating pleasantly. If I'm not, I may remember it unhappily. What makes the difference? My ideas. Not my memories, but my ideas about what is good and what is not.
"The problem is that there's no way to verify it, is there? It just FEELS free. "
Well, in that sense, there's no way to verify anything, because all of our "verifications" depend on our observations:). i think the observation _is_ the verification, until something proves otherwise. Trusting my perceptions is the most reasonable default position, until something to the otherwise shows me my perceptions are inaccurate. and at the moment, there's nothing in science to do that, because science doesn't know how the brain works.
"I am somewhat bemused by the resistance to the idea that everything you think is chemicals in the brain."
I'm not really resistant to that idea, only to the idea that those chemicals in the brain work in the same deterministic way as chemicals in a test tube. the brain is a highly complex piece of technology. we don't know how it works. it may work in such a way that all our ideas are in fact "just chemicals," but the chemicals are arranged -- and operate -- in such a way that they are neither determined by purely chemical reactions, nor random, but actually, really, determined by act of will. until we know how the brain works, we don't know. so our introspection is the best evidence we have.
this is not to say that the brain is "other than chemical," only that "we don't know how the chemicals work and they may not be deterministic in the context of the brain because it sure doesn't seem like they are."
Dragonfly:
ReplyDelete>Objectivists talk a lot about "volition" without ever giving a good definition what this in fact means.
The Objectivist theory of mind is basically vacant, and so vague it can accommodate almost any position Objectivists feel like taking on the matter. And the positions they do take are nothing particularly interesting or original. When this topic comes up I usually refer readers ( I know you will be familiar with it) to Diana Hsieh's overview here.
">Objectivists talk a lot about "volition" without ever giving a good definition what this in fact means."
ReplyDelete"“Volitional” means selected from two or more alternatives that were possible under the circumstances, the difference being made by the individual’s decision, which could have been otherwise." Leonard Peikoff,
The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 3
Volition, then, is the capacity to do that. the power to select from two or more alternatives under the circumstances.
i don't know how much clearer it could be.
to the extent objectivists don't define volition from a biological perspective, that's true -- but that's because nobody knows how the brain works at that level.
determinism is the act of faith, because it demands that we ignore our first-hand experience of volition as "unverifiable," and then accept that our brains are fully chemically determined, and that we lack any free will, without any evidence at all.
ReplyDeleteI think Objectivists are right when they say free will is axiomatic, in the sense that the denial of free will is self-refuting. This argument is not original with Rand. I read it in C.S. Lewis years ago, and I'm sure it predates him.
ReplyDeleteIf thoughts were purely the result of deterministic events, there would be no reason to trust our thought processes. Why should the arbitrary concatenations of atoms result in true or valid ideas? But if we can't trust our thought processes - if any conclusions we arrive at are grounded in arbitrary physical reactions - then we have no basis for holding any conclusions whatsoever, including the conclusion that our thoughts are deterministically produced.
In order to advocate determinism, we must effectively exempt ourselves from determinism and assume (tacitly) that our thoughts, at least, are reliable and valid, even if everybody else's thoughts are not. But then we are implicitly accepting free will for ourselves - "volition for me but not for thee."
If we are consistent enough to include ourselves in the category of thinkers whose thoughts are deterministically generated, then we forfeit the epistemological right to hold that opinion (or any opinion).
So the position is self-refuting, and its contrary (free will) is axiomatic.
Determinists sometimes answer this argument by saying that arbitrary physical processes can generate valid or true thoughts because natural selection has favored accurate cognition. But this merely repeats the error, since they are starting with the assumption that their ideas about natural selection are valid and true, when (as determinists) they have no epistemological right to assume that any of their ideas are valid or true.
^
ReplyDelete!
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truth
"The "law of causality" is not "entailed" by the "law of identity." The so-called "law of identity" is a tautology; and you can't draw specific inferences from tautologies."
ReplyDeleteThe above is why virtually every Objectivist completely ignores Greg Nyquist and his interminable and bitter attacks against Objectivism.
If Greg knew anything about Objectivism, which you think he would since he's written a whole book attacking it, he would know why Objectivism holds that the Law of Causality is entailed by the Law of Identity.
Greg doesn't interact with that position, he just dismisses the claim like a hack.
Then with more philosophical hacky-ness, Greg regales us in the tried and true whine fest that the Law of Identity is just a tautology, and so blah blah blah.
Which is ignorant since a tautology in philosophy is different from what a tautology means to laymen or regular people. To laymen, or outside of philosophy, a tautology is needless redundancy. In Philosophy a tautology is a statement that is necessarily true.
Which is exactly what you want in a philosophical system so it is sound and correct on it's core principle(s).
Determinism is certainly not self-refuting. Natural selection has endowed us with a brain that in general can generate valid thoughts and draw correct conclusions, but as everyone knows, it is far from infallible. However, a brain that wouldn't be able to get it right in general wouldn't survive in evolution.
ReplyDeleteHow can we know that? It is by experience, experiment and exchange of information with other people that we can check whether our ideas are indeed correct. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If we see that an atomic bomb gives a big bang, we may safely conclude that our theories and reasoning how we could make that happen were on the right track and not some random ideas unrelated to reality.
In the same way we know that the evidence for the mechanisms of evolution is overwhelming. There isn't any reason that this couldn't be argued by a deterministic system that gets all the necessary input from the outer world.
The alternative is that we know the truth by mystical revelation, the dualistic view of consciousness. It is ironic that Objectivism with all its anti-mysticism rethoric is in the core a mystical system: in Objectivism everything is causally connected, except the human brain, according to Objectivists consciousness is sui generis, not caused by pure physical processes. It resembles the idea of the élan vital that once was proposed as an "explanation" of the phenomenon of living beings.
"i think the observation _is_ the verification, until something proves otherwise."
ReplyDeleteThe problem with that is that there have been decades of serious brain study from all different angles. Your argument seems to be along the lines of: since science hasn't completely, absolutely solved each last mystery of the brain and how it works, you're going to go ahead and chuck all the evidence that HAS been gathered over the years in favor of your own feelings.
You claim your introspection is the better evidence, but for that to make any kind of sense you have to either discount - or be entirely ignorant of - all the evidence that HAS been gathered to date in order to propose that something beyond physics as we know it is at work in the brain to create true free will.
"I'm not really resistant to that idea, only to the idea that those chemicals in the brain work in the same deterministic way as chemicals in a test tube."
How else would you propose chemicals to work? Do you believe in things like homeopathy?
(Related:
"Why should the arbitrary concatenations of atoms result in true or valid ideas?"
Why SHOULDN'T they? I see no reason to assume that deterministic brain processes must perforce be untrustworthy - at least not any more than is demonstrated by real brains in real life all the time.
Besides which, who says they're "arbitrary"? They follow patterns and rules, these chemicals, they perform functions in the brain - we die if there aren't enough of the proper chemicals, or too much of one kind or another. Our bodies produce them for reasons - why then assume that they are incapable of generating the thoughts we have - other than an aesthetic distaste towards the idea of a "free will" that could conceivably be predicted if we just knew enough?)
To hypothesize something for which there is no evidence, and to brush aside existing evidence to avoid the uncomfortable conclusions which that evidence suggests - I think that qualifies as resistance.
Now, I might be willing to entertain the notion that there is some kind of quantum uncertainty at work in the electrical impulses in the brain, but then, I'm not an Objectivist that is resistant to all the uncertainty entailed in quantum mechanics, either.
It still comes down to this: if you believe that the natural world is deterministic, even at the quantum level (and such uncertainty as we seem to see is just our lack of understanding), then either our brains themselves, as part of the natural world, must also operate in a deterministic fashion - or as Dragonfly says, there is something about the mind which is SUPERnatural, beyond nature's laws.
That, or you have to live in a world where more than just your free will is non-deterministic, with all the messy problems THAT entails.
I'd agree with some of the recent posts which argue that a determinist position is not self-refuting. Paradoxical, perhaps. But a statement can be paradoxical and still be true. And if you don’t think that the opposite position also leads to paradoxes, keep on thinking. You’ll find them.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes: "the arbitrary concatenations of atoms" is indeed loaded terminology. Come on, Michael. Fight fair. I personally find it hard to characterize three billion years of evolution as "the arbitrary concatenations of atoms".
That still leaves us with the fact that all of us have an introspective sense of freedom that seems to clash with a determinist view of thought. But it’s worth looking at that sense of freedom a little more deeply before we decide that it settles the discussion.
In the Blanshard essay I’ve already mentioned, he observes that “when we are making a choice our faces are always turned toward the future, toward the consequences that one act or the other will bring us, never toward the past with its possible sources of constraint. Hence these sources are not noticed. Hence we remain unaware that we are under constraint at all. . . . You may remember that Sir Francis Galton was so much impressed with this possibility that for some time he kept account in a notebook of the occasions on which he made important choices with a full measure of this feeling of freedom; then shortly after each choice he turned his eye backward in search of constraints that might have been acting on him stealthily. He found it so easy to bring such constraining factors to light that he surrendered to the determinist view.”
There are lots of other good things in the Blanshard piece. One thing I’m convinced of: the Objectivist argument regarding volition is not the slam-dunk that many people think that it is.
@Jzero: indeed, those concatenations of atoms are of course anything but arbitrary, those very specific concatenations have evolved during billions of years just because their functionality made them evolutionary survivors, from relatively simple bacteria to the complex structure of a human brain.
ReplyDeleteAbout the random effects of QM: I’ve already written elsewhere on this blog why it’s unlikely that these play a role in the functioning of the brain, but even if they'd play a role, it wouldn't save volition: a thought or decision determined by a random input of its physical substrate is no more "free" than that in a deterministic system.
See also my post at http://tinyurl.com/mntpxo5 (scroll down to 11/05/2007/ 08:20:00 AM)
@Dragonfly: To be honest, I don't have any particular stake in whether there's a truly non-deterministic free will or not - my own intuition tells me that it PROBABLY is deterministic, because all the known components of the brain work that way and as of yet we have no hint at all that anything else exists of the mind. Even if it is deterministic, my PERCEPTION of thought is such that it might as well be free will, so I might as well act as if I have free will until such time as that perception is changed - if ever. Whether determination is or isn't true won't really affect my daily life and how I choose - or "choose" - to live it.
ReplyDeleteI just find it hard to resolve a wholly deterministic universe worldview with the idea of complete free will - or rather, I don't see how one can vigorously endorse one viewpoint but kind of shrug weakly over the other when it contradicts. Or rather again, I can see how one can do it but don't regard that as particularly rational.
“Determinism is certainly not self-refuting. Natural selection has endowed us with a brain that in general can generate valid thoughts and draw correct conclusions, but as everyone knows, it is far from infallible. However, a brain that wouldn't be able to get it right in general wouldn't survive in evolution.”
ReplyDeleteThe argument (and it isn’t original to objectivism, but has been used by defenders of free will for many years) is that if what you say is true, then you have no basis to tell anyone who disagrees with you that they are wrong. You come to that conclusion based on your chemicals. I come to my conclusion based on my chemicals. And nobody has any basis for telling the other person they are wrong, because nobody chose anything based on reason. They simply believe what they have to believe.
I don’t doubt for a second that many people simply believe what their chemicals tell them to believe. I know many people whose minds operate this way. It’s known as being a “coward.”
“The alternative is that we know the truth by mystical revelation, the dualistic view of consciousness.”
I think there are more alternatives than determinism and mystical revelation☺.
“The problem with that is that there have been decades of serious brain study from all different angles. Your argument seems to be along the lines of: since science hasn't completely, absolutely solved each last mystery of the brain and how it works, you're going to go ahead and chuck all the evidence that HAS been gathered over the years in favor of your own feelings.”
The issue here is how the brain operates at a molecular level. Therefore, any studies of the brain that don’t answer that question are not relevant to the issue. I don’t think science has any idea how the brain functions at a molecular level. They’ve managed to isolate certain activities to certain areas, but they have no idea what’s actually happening at a molecular level. But “where” things happen is not the issue. And until science can say how brain activity works at a molecular level, they have nothing to say of relevance to this issue.
“How else would you propose chemicals to work? Do you believe in things like homeopathy?”
I don’t propose anything about how chemicals work in the brain:). If you put a personal computer in front of a medieval and asked him how the chemicals worked, he couldn’t be able to tell you. Nevertheless, there they are – working according to principles of matter he didn’t yet understand.
We stand in that same position – looking at a magnificent machine we don’t remotely understand. And just as the medieval would be tempted to explain it in terms he understood, we’re tempted to explain the brain in terms of the chemistry lab. But the brain is a hell of a lot more sophisticated than what happens in a test tube. It’s arrogant to assume we know the principles upon which it operates, when we clearly do not.
“Why SHOULDN'T they? I see no reason to assume that deterministic brain processes must perforce be untrustworthy - at least not any more than is demonstrated by real brains in real life all the time.”
Well, if I disagree with you, and your deterministic brain made you come to your conclusion, and mine made me come to my conclusion, what are we to do about it? We certainly can’t reason with each other. That would involve choosing from right and wrong answers.
"Well, if I disagree with you, and your deterministic brain made you come to your conclusion, and mine made me come to my conclusion, what are we to do about it? We certainly can’t reason with each other. That would involve choosing from right and wrong answers."
ReplyDeleteHow in the world do you assume that? There's nothing about determination that says some volume of information or knowledge is set in stone, forever. It can be changed, updated - just that when it does so, it's according to the laws of the chemistry in the brain, not some kind of imaginary not-physical-mind theory.
" But the brain is a hell of a lot more sophisticated than what happens in a test tube. It’s arrogant to assume we know the principles upon which it operates, when we clearly do not."
Isn't it even more arrogant to say that there must be some operation at work that defies all other scientific knowledge, based solely upon your own rumination?
I don't have to know the principles of how the brain itself works, I merely have to know that there has to date been no evidence whatsoever that chemicals can act in a non-determinative fashion, and that there is no evidence that the brain is anything but chemicals and electrical impulses. From those two facts, I know that in order for non-deterministic free will to exist, something heretofore unknown that contradicts a large chunk of other science must be factored in.
Well, I'd be willing to consider the evidence for such a claim, if there was any such evidence that didn't boil down to someone's raw faith on the matter. Otherwise, it has to fall under any other supernatural claim.
U: "Well, if I disagree with you, and your deterministic brain made you come to your conclusion, and mine made me come to my conclusion, what are we to do about it? We certainly can’t reason with each other. That would involve choosing from right and wrong answers."
ReplyDeleteJ: “How in the world do you assume that? There's nothing about determination that says some volume of information or knowledge is set in stone, forever. It can be changed, updated - just that when it does so, it's according to the laws of the chemistry in the brain, not some kind of imaginary not-physical-mind theory.”
So if we both have all the same information, but still disagree, then what?
U: "But the brain is a hell of a lot more sophisticated than what happens in a test tube. It’s arrogant to assume we know the principles upon which it operates, when we clearly do not."
J: “Isn't it even more arrogant to say that there must be some operation at work that defies all other scientific knowledge, based solely upon your own rumination?”
Well, again, I’m not saying anything that defies any scientific knowledge. I’m pointing out that there is no scientific knowledge at all on this point. Nobody knows how the brain processes thought at a chemical level. It’s a black box.
J: “I don't have to know the principles of how the brain itself works, I merely have to know that there has to date been no evidence whatsoever that chemicals can act in a non-determinative fashion, and that there is no evidence that the brain is anything but chemicals and electrical impulses.”
Well, I think my life is evidence that chemicals can act non-deterministically under certain circumstances – e.g. under the circumstance of a living human brain. It’s evidence because I perceive myself as non-determined, and I know I have a brain. I don’t know how those two work together at a chemical level, but neither does anybody, so that doesn’t bother me too much.
this might be a simpler way to put it: if i put myself on one chair, and a test tube filled with some reacting chemical substance on the chair next to me, these two things act in fundamentally different wants. me? i choose. the test tube? no choice. purely deterministic.
ReplyDeletenow determinists tell me that because we know the reaction in the test tube is determined, then my brain must also be determined. but that's nonsense, because a) they don't know how my brain works, and b) i act a hell of a lot different than a reaction in a test tube.
the most parsimonious explanation is that my brain works in some way that gives me the very real choice i perceive in my daily life. the act of faith is ignoring my perception of choice because some scientist told me that even though he doesn't know how my brain works, he's absolutely sure it operates according to the same deterministic principles as a reaction in a test tube.
"So if we both have all the same information, but still disagree, then what?"
ReplyDeleteBut who said we all had the same information?
Where do you get this from?
"Well, again, I’m not saying anything that defies any scientific knowledge. I’m pointing out that there is no scientific knowledge at all on this point. Nobody knows how the brain processes thought at a chemical level. It’s a black box."
But the fact that nobody knows how the chemical processes in the brain work, exactly, does not mean we assume that the laws that chemicals follow anywhere else in the known universe do not apply in the brain for some unexplained reason.
You are saying that chemicals in the brain can - SOMEhow - operate in a non-deterministic way. This is inherent in your argument. And in any other situation, in any other controlled scientific test, has this ever shown to be possible? So to make that claim, you must, by sheer logic, be saying that chemicals do not act the way they usually act, but only in the brain for some unexplained reason. It's the nature of chemicals themselves that you are defying.
"now determinists tell me that because we know the reaction in the test tube is determined, then my brain must also be determined. but that's nonsense, because a) they don't know how my brain works, and b) i act a hell of a lot different than a reaction in a test tube."
Suppose you toss a single six-sided die to the floor. In the room are countless instruments all set to record every force that acts upon that die, from gravity to air currents and pressure to angles of impact, you name it. Analyzing your throw and all other forces, the machines predict which side will land face up, unerringly.
Now, bring a bag of ten thousand such dice and dump it upon the ground. Not only has the difficulty of measuring been multiplied ten thousand times, there's further factors at work as each dice collides with its neighbor, further complicating the calculations. Only immensely, unimaginably powerful devices could handle the job. Now get a bag of a million dice. A billion.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Just because a bag of a billion dice is far too complicated for humans to accurately predict, we don't just arbitrarily say they are operating under different, special laws of physics. We know what principles are at work, we just cannot predict with accuracy where each die will land.
This is your "test tube" analogy. Of COURSE you act differently than a test tube - you're far more complicated by an astronomical factor. But that doesn't let you plead some kind of mystery chemistry to avoid determination.
U: "So if we both have all the same information, but still disagree, then what?"
ReplyDeleteJ: But who said we all had the same information? Where do you get this from?
This is the heart of the demonstration that determinism is self-defeating.
The point is this: that if our thoughts and behavior are determined, then they don’t arise by an act of choice, but simply by chemical reactions. This includes ideas. So your ideas are simply the result of chemical reactions. So the question is, if you and I have different ideas as the result of different chemical reactions, how are we to tell who’s correct? Your conclusions came from your chemicals. Mine came from mine. Nobody could have chosen differently at all.
You then said, “well, we can always gather more information.”
To which I responded, “okay, if we all had the same information, but still disagreed, how could we argue with each other, since each of us just believe what our chemicals make us believe? How can you say I’m wrong, if I just believe what I do because of my chemicals? And especially how can you say I’m wrong if I know all the same stuff you know, and still disagree?
This is it☺. This is why a ton of people reject determinism on philosophic grounds☺.
U: "Well, again, I’m not saying anything that defies any scientific knowledge. I’m pointing out that there is no scientific knowledge at all on this point. Nobody knows how the brain processes thought at a chemical level. It’s a black box."
J: But the fact that nobody knows how the chemical processes in the brain work, exactly, does not mean we assume that the laws that chemicals follow anywhere else in the known universe do not apply in the brain for some unexplained reason.
It gives us reason to believe the brain acts according to unique principles, because our brains APPEAR to behave differently than anything else in the known universe. Living brains do things no stars or chemical reactions or anything else can do. They’re unique in the universe. They think. They create. They analyze. They build. Nothing else does that. That’s why it’s reasonable to conclude that because they act in unique ways, that those unique behaviors may well result from unique properties, according to laws of nature we don’t yet understand.
I’m realizing now how critical context is in communicating this point.
1) The brain’s behavior is unique in the universe.
2) We don’t know how the brain works.
3) Therefore there’s nothing ludicrous in believing that the unique brain operates according to unique principles.
“You are saying that chemicals in the brain can - SOMEhow - operate in a non-deterministic way. This is inherent in your argument. And in any other situation, in any other controlled scientific test, has this ever shown to be possible?”
It hasn’t. But since nobody’s been able to figure out how the brain works, and the brain is unique, that doesn’t really matter☺.
“So to make that claim, you must, by sheer logic, be saying that chemicals do not act the way they usually act, but only in the brain for some unexplained reason.”
On the basis that the brain appears to act differently than any other chemicals of which I’m aware. Unique brain, unique chemical behavior.
“It's the nature of chemicals themselves that you are defying.”
It’s the unique nature of the brain I’m recognizing☺.
“Just because a bag of a billion dice is far too complicated for humans to accurately predict, we don't just arbitrarily say they are operating under different, special laws of physics.”
ReplyDeleteThe difference between dice and the brain is, we can identify the principles operating on the dice. Gravity, angular and linear momentum, location, air resistance, physical properties of the ground, etc.
We don’t understand the principles operating on the brain. No clue.
So while you may be able to predict one dice but not a billion, that’s fundamentally different than trying to predict mental behavior, because while you know what makes a die do what it does, you have no idea what makes a brain do what it does.
“Of COURSE you act differently than a test tube - you're far more complicated by an astronomical factor. But that doesn't let you plead some kind of mystery chemistry to avoid determination.”
It’s not a question of increased complexity. It’s a question of understanding the principle at all. I know what happens to sodium and chloride in solution. I don’t know what happens to my ideas when they go in and out of that grey thing in my skull. And neither do you. And neither does anybody, yet☺.
"The point is this: that if our thoughts and behavior are determined, then they don’t arise by an act of choice, but simply by chemical reactions. This includes ideas. So your ideas are simply the result of chemical reactions. So the question is, if you and I have different ideas as the result of different chemical reactions, how are we to tell who’s correct? Your conclusions came from your chemicals. Mine came from mine. Nobody could have chosen differently at all."
ReplyDeleteBut that does not preclude correctness, or a lack thereof. How would it?
"To which I responded, “okay, if we all had the same information, but still disagreed, how could we argue with each other, since each of us just believe what our chemicals make us believe?"
But we don't all "have the same information", since that is impossible.
As example: you are arguing against determinism, based on your impressions, based on what seems to me to be utterly bizarre reasoning (if not outright evasion). That you do this is the result of uncountable chemical reactions that have occurred in your brain throughout your entire life. Your moment right now is the sum total of all those reactions, including all memories, all emotions, all experience, all introspection. Not just chemicals, but all the external inputs that act upon and trigger those chemicals. Billions of dice? Billions of billions?
While I have had another lifetime's worth of such reactions, but in different places and times and situations.
Nobody has the same data. NO ONE. Even identical twins must differentiate. So long as two people must occupy separate bodies this must be the case.
Computers (made of chemicals) can compare and correct their data with each other. Why is this so impossible to fathom for the human mind under normal chemical conditions?
"It hasn’t. But since nobody’s been able to figure out how the brain works, and the brain is unique, that doesn’t really matter☺."
I think it does. Yours is the more extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
What is more reasonable: my position - that chemicals act as they always have, and that the brain is so complex that thought simply feels free--
OR, the brain is entirely unknown and probably magic in some way, and free will is completely free but all understanding of chemistry and physics has to be utterly upturned.
Incidentally:
"We don’t understand the principles operating on the brain. No clue."
Seriously?
No, we don't understand it fully. But are you so confident in your knowledge of current science that you can say we have absolutely NO CLUE?
All the MRI, all the drugs made to treat the brain, all the chemicals discovered operating in the brain, everything: no clue. Well, I'm sure researchers across the globe will defer to your expertise when you claim they know absolutely nothing.
“But that does not preclude correctness, or a lack thereof. How would it?”
ReplyDeleteIt precludes any basis for knowing whether you are correct or not. Remember, you and I disagree because our chemicals told us different things. It’s the chemicals determining our beliefs, not our reasoning choice. So who’s to say your chemicals are better than mine?
“Nobody has the same data. NO ONE. Even identical twins must differentiate. So long as two people must occupy separate bodies this must be the case.”
I’d grant that’s true, but I don’t think it’s solves the problem with determinism, and that’s what I’m trying to demonstrate. That’s why I was asking about a hypothetical in which we did have all the same data, but I see it missed the mark☺.
The problem with determinism is that if our beliefs are determined by chemicals, not by choice, then we have no way to determine their reliability when we disagree. Say we can never have the same data. Okay, then we can never agree. Because the data and the chemicals determine the outcome, and the data can never be the same, so the chemicals can never be the same, so the outcome can never be the same.
U: “"It hasn’t. But since nobody’s been able to figure out how the brain works, and the brain is unique, that doesn’t really matter☺."
J: “I think it does. Yours is the more extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.”
Certainly, but I’m not offering proof. If a medieval saw a computer, he’d need “extraordinary proof” to support any claim he wanted to make about how the computer worked, but he wouldn’t need extraordinary proof to say, “um, I think matter can do a lot of stuff we don’t know about yet, because I didn’t know matter could do this, but there it is.”
And that’s the only claim I’m making. The humble claim of the medieval observing something he doesn’t understand – which is that “the world is more complicated than any of us understands as yet, so let’s not claim to know how this computer works until we actually do.”
“No, we don't understand it fully. But are you so confident in your knowledge of current science that you can say we have absolutely NO CLUE? All the MRI, all the drugs made to treat the brain, all the chemicals discovered operating in the brain, everything: no clue. Well, I'm sure researchers across the globe will defer to your expertise when you claim they know absolutely nothing.”
Again, keep track of the context. We’re talking about how the brain processes thought at a molecular level. That’s the issue. We know a lot of stuff about other stuff the brain does, but nothing about that. And that’s what matters in this context, because we’re talking about how human beings think.
Consider the implications of determinism for our conversation. If I’m evading, as you suspect, it’s only because my chemicals are making me do it. I’m not choosing to. My birth, and my experiences, and my determined responses to those experiences, make no other behavior possible to me.
So what are we to do about that? Why get mad at a person for something he can’t help? And why try to reach out to him, if he can’t choose to think differently?
That’s the philosophical problem with determinism in a nutshell.
"It precludes any basis for knowing whether you are correct or not. Remember, you and I disagree because our chemicals told us different things. It’s the chemicals determining our beliefs, not our reasoning choice. So who’s to say your chemicals are better than mine?"
ReplyDeleteBut this is garbled nonsense. You're making some curious assumptions for which I can find no rational reason.
If determinism is true, then our "reasoning choice" and our "chemicals" are one and the same. That the conclusions we may draw are predetermined from all the thoughts and experiences we've had before this moment does not mean somehow that there is no thinking process going on. We still observe, we still consider and evaluate. But it's chemicals that perform these tasks, not magic.
"And that’s the only claim I’m making. The humble claim of the medieval observing something he doesn’t understand – which is that “the world is more complicated than any of us understands as yet, so let’s not claim to know how this computer works until we actually do.”"
But that's not exactly what you are claiming. You don't JUST say, "I don't have any idea how this works," you say "I am certain I have free will despite any evidence to the contrary, and to support my argument, I declare there is total ignorance as to how thought works." That's not the humble medieval, that's the self-assured polemicist.
"Again, keep track of the context. We’re talking about how the brain processes thought at a molecular level. That’s the issue. We know a lot of stuff about other stuff the brain does, but nothing about that. And that’s what matters in this context, because we’re talking about how human beings think."
Chemicals operate at a molecular level. As I've repeated, we don't have to know the precise mechanism of thought to know that chemicals behave in a deterministic way, and thus, since the brain is made of chemicals and nothing else, whatever the thought process is, it must be chemically-based, and thus deterministic - OR ELSE we have to postulate some kind of activity or force that contradicts what we know, not about the brain, but about chemicals.
This is the context. You can't argue for full free will without implying this situation, no matter how many times you just say "but we don't know how thought works!" It is not necessary to know how thought works, just to know that up to this point, nothing but chemicals has been discovered in the brain, and chemicals are deterministic.
Holding out faith and hope that some unknown element that defies chemistry will be revealed that allows for full free will does not sound like a particularly rational stance to me.
As for the rest, the philosophical problems with determinism are only a "problem" inasmuch as it might cause you to have to reevaluate firmly-held beliefs. But I think it's a far leap to just assume that we should abdicate any sense of responsibility due to determinism. Gordon Burkowski posted some writings on the matter.
I think it's time to say a word about reductionism - because reductionism seems to be at the root of the sillier remarks that have been made in the course of this discussion.
ReplyDeleteLet's be clear. It would be impossible to offer a totally chemical explanation of the behaviour of an amoeba, let alone a human being. And it probably always will be. That doesn't prove that amoebas have free will - any more than the same argument proves that human beings do.
Human beings are complex systems. And human brains are the most complex system of all. I can understand people who argue that it is unacceptable reductionism to argue that mind and brain are the same. It's a tricky philosophical issue, with a great deal depending on how one's terms are defined - and rational people may see the issue in very different ways.
But again, let's be clear: no one, but no one, is out there saying that chemicals determine our beliefs. This is a remarkably fatuous interpretation of what determinism means.
Those who are sceptical of concepts like free will are discussing the systemic determinants of human thought and human behaviour. They may also be looking for links between changes in the brain system and human thought and human action. These are the matters that need to be discussed here - if one wishes to be taken seriously.
"If determinism is true, then our "reasoning choice" and our "chemicals" are one and the same. That the conclusions we may draw are predetermined from all the thoughts and experiences we've had before this moment does not mean somehow that there is no thinking process going on. We still observe, we still consider and evaluate. But it's chemicals that perform these tasks, not magic."
ReplyDeleteThis is true, but beside the point. The point is that if that's true, we have no basis for claiming that one set of conclusions is superior to another set of conclusions, because all sets of conclusions are nothing more than the result of physical necessity.
"Chemicals operate at a molecular level. As I've repeated, we don't have to know the precise mechanism of thought to know that chemicals behave in a deterministic way, and thus, since the brain is made of chemicals and nothing else, whatever the thought process is, it must be chemically-based, and thus deterministic - OR ELSE we have to postulate some kind of activity or force that contradicts what we know, not about the brain, but about chemicals."
Chemicals operate differently in different configurations. Hydrogen is different by itself, combined with oxygen, combined with chlorine, in a computer chip, and in a human brain. It behaves differently depending on its context. It can do things in a computer screen or a star that it can't do when bonded to water. As far as we can tell, when chemicals are combined in a living brain, it exhibits radically different characteristics than when in other configurations. We don't know what those characteristics are. We don't know how they work. But we can see them. And the most dramatic of those characteristics is the apparent capacity of an entire organism to choose.
"Holding out faith and hope that some unknown element that defies chemistry will be revealed that allows for full free will does not sound like a particularly rational stance to me."
On the contrary, I'm just saying that it's reasonable to expect that what we know about ourselves -- that we choose -- may well end up being explained by what we don't know about ourselves -- how our brains are designed.
Gordon, you're in no position to dictate what people must do to be taken seriously. Taken seriously by whom? You? Ha! You get to tell other what they must do to have you try and understand them? Lulz.
ReplyDeleteQED
ReplyDeleteQED is not an appropriate phrase in the context of a tautology like "I don't take you seriously because you don't meet the criteria for me taking it seriously." One does not "prove "a tautology.
ReplyDeleteA rational person takes everyone seriously. That is how he continues to learn. An irrational person decides in advance who he will take seriously. And he only take seriously people who agree with him. That's what his mind melts into a big pile of mush in his skull.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I agree with Rand and untgss on the issue of determinism. When applied to human beings, determinism is a "stolen concept," inasmuch as the determinist, in defending his position, tacitly assumes that his ideas, theories, and opinions are subject to logical proof and validation - yet this is precisely what is impossible if his ideas are entirely determined by nonlogical processes (which is what I meant by the arbitrary concatenations of atoms).
ReplyDeleteArguing on the basis of evolution misses the point, since a determinist, as I see it, has no epistemological right to maintain that any of his ideas, theories, or opinions are logically provable or capable of validation, including the theory of evolution.
This line of argument seems clear to me, yet apparently it's unpersuasive to many smart people, like Gordon and Dragonfly. Either I'm missing something, or they are. I choose to think I'm right. Or - hey - maybe I don't choose ...
"The point is that if that's true, we have no basis for claiming that one set of conclusions is superior to another set of conclusions, because all sets of conclusions are nothing more than the result of physical necessity."
ReplyDeleteI don't see how you arrive at that conclusion. If a man's brain tells him 2+2=5, we can judge that conclusion to be wrong, regardless of whether he arrived at it with the help of free will.
Bill jumps off a cliff; dies.
Joe remains on the path; lives.
Assuming both desired to live, Bill's actions could be judged to be the worse of the two courses. There is no reason for this to not be so if determinism is true. Even if chemicals made Bill jump (a brain tumor? schizophrenia from a chemical imbalance?), we can evaluate both outcomes and judge one to be preferable. We may not be able to FAULT Bill for his actions, or blame him much, but that doesn't mean no good or bad can be assessed.
" As far as we can tell, when chemicals are combined in a living brain, it exhibits radically different characteristics than when in other configurations. "
You would have to cite some far more compelling evidence for me to grant this statement any credence.
Just the fact that a brain chooses is insufficient. There are grain-sorting machines that scan things like rice or beans for color variations that indicate spoilage or contamination; they choose what passes and what does not, but they don't require free will to do so.
No chemical found in the brain to date is beyond modern science to understand; nobody has a vial of some brain protein, going, "I don't know what atoms make up this stuff!" It is not a mystery that cells can generate electric charges, or that we have neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain that allow some cells to send signals to other cells.
The mystery is in how it all ties together and forms our thoughts and consciousness.
To expand on your Hydrogen example:
Yes, H20 is different than H, than H2SO4, than CH4, than C6H12O6. But even though these Hydrogen-bearing molecules all behave differently, they all obey certain overarching principles: a Hydrogen atom bonds with other atoms in particular ways and combinations, according to (and limited by) its nature. (Gaseous Hydrogen can not, for example, bond 12 Hydrogen atoms together all by themselves.) And each molecule is consistent with its kind: Each molecule of CH4 is going to react the same way under the same conditions. Even the most exotic molecule must obey its laws.
And if every other physical phenomenon in the universe is deterministic - including chemistry - then it is the more reasonable conclusion to assume, based on all available real evidence, that the process of consciousness is also deterministic, that "apparent free will" is just that - apparent, but not actual. To claim free will exists is, in my view, starting with a conclusion and working backwards.
Because I am not a stickler for some kind of badge of certainty, I allow that I might be proved wrong about this in the end - but the proof will have to be far more convincing than someone saying, in effect, "look at me having all this free will! I know it's free because I can't understand how it works!"...
"yet this is precisely what is impossible if his ideas are entirely determined by nonlogical processes (which is what I meant by the arbitrary concatenations of atoms)."
ReplyDeleteThat assumes that a deterministic system must be non-logical.
I don't think that's been established.
@ Gordon:
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I started this by comparing the deterministic view of physics (as touted by Objectivists) with chemistry, which I do believe is pretty much what drives the brain and mind. (I don't believe these are simple and predictable chemical reactions, but I don't think there's any reaction going on that is so exotic that it cannot be understood in terms of known science.)
This is somewhat different than the determinism as Blanshard explains it (I've only just skimmed a few of the opening pages, enough to know I want to give it more time than I have right at this moment). Blanshard appears to be driving at a more general causality - all your various experiences in the past shape your decisions in the present, leading you to specific outcomes that can happen no other way. Given the exact same circumstances (by which one must mean one's entire life to this point), one will always make the exact same choices.
This sounds pretty plausible as he describes it - but I don't think it invalidates my chemical-specific argument, either, reductionist though it might be.
Hi. Just a few responses.
ReplyDelete1) First of all, a final word about chemicals. Yes, every life process is ultimately a chemical process – but the chemical processes are necessary conditions, not sufficient ones. The chemical processes going on in Michael Jordan’s body are identical to the ones going on in mine – but he plays basketball a hell of a lot better than I do. In other words, the systemic causes are far more important and informative here than the chemical reactions – even though nothing could happen without them.
2) “When applied to human beings, determinism is a ‘stolen concept,’ inasmuch as the determinist, in defending his position, tacitly assumes that his ideas, theories, and opinions are subject to logical proof and validation - yet this is precisely what is impossible if his ideas are entirely determined by nonlogical processes (which is what I meant by the arbitrary concatenations of atoms).”
You could write a book about the number of assumptions working under the surface here. And lots of people have. Let me list some of them.
a) I’ll start by repeating my point above about necessity vs. sufficiency. Stop the nonsense about chemical causation or concatenations of atoms: these are red herrings. The real issue is as follows. When speaking of human reasoning ability, are we talking about the human brain as a naturally evolved system interacting with its environment? Or are we maintaining that to make sense of the human capacity for reason we must assume a free (presumably non-material) mind using the brain as a transceiver? Or claiming, along with Peikoff and his ilk, that only the physical world exists but that humans have an “axiomatic” capacity for volition that must be treated as self-evident? In short, the real point at issue here is: the relation between brain and mind.
b) Now let’s talk about the notion of ideas being “entirely determined by nonlogical processes”. It’s amazing how many questionable notions slide into the discussion under the cover of these five simple words.
To begin with, we have to ask: which processes? The ones we use when thinking, or the evolutionary process that brought us to our present state of development? It’s certainly likely that life on earth would not have taken the form it did – or might not have happened at all – if various random events like meteor collisions had not taken place. But life did happen. We’re here.
I can’t say it too often: the brain is a naturally occurring SYSTEM. Indeed, all life processes are systems, using natural processes like chemical reactions to maintain the organism. Calling the natural development of these systems a “nonlogical process” is a pretty loaded concept, but I’ll let that pass. The more important point is: we have in the brain a system for gathering data from its environment and (sometimes) for acting on that data. It is also a self-correcting system: new information and experiences (or good arguments from other people!) may result in a change of conclusions and a change of action. But at any point in time, we can only think or act in accordance with the complex of facts, emotions, influences and stressors that we’re faced with.
c) And finally, there is the distinction between the poor robot determinist – and the free human being whose views are based on “logical proof and validation”.
Note that this distinction only works if one ignores the fact that the brain is a naturally occurring system with a capacity for self-correction. Why in heaven’s name am I supposed to believe that a system for gathering data from its environment is supposed to be impervious to logical proof and validation?
In short, the “stolen concept” argument for volition does a great job of setting fire to a straw man. As Blanshard correctly notes, people have a feeling that they have freedom about the decisions they make. But a feeling is not the same thing as a logical proof.
U: "The point is that if that's true, we have no basis for claiming that one set of conclusions is superior to another set of conclusions, because all sets of conclusions are nothing more than the result of physical necessity."
ReplyDeleteJ: I don't see how you arrive at that conclusion. If a man's brain tells him 2+2=5, we can judge that conclusion to be wrong, regardless of whether he arrived at it with the help of free will.
The problem is not with his capacity to choose, but with yours. How can you judge his opinion without choice of your own? How do you know whether your opinion of his answer is _right_, without being able to choose between right and wrong? How do you know you’re not both just following your chemicals?
That’s why I keep emphasizing that the problem is not with people coming to conclusions, but with determining whether our conclusions are correct. It’s certainly possible (in theory) for him to decide 2+2=5 on a deterministic basis. But determinism also applies to you as the judge. And determinism deprives you of any ability to say whether he’s wrong or not. Because your opinion just came from your chemicals too.
In order to reliably and meaningfully judge something, you must be able to choose freely between right and wrong answers. You must be able to look at the answer “5” and say “no,” and then look at the answer “4” and say “yes.” That requires free choice. Otherwise you’re just saying “4” because your chemicals demand it, and he’s saying 5 because his chemicals demand it, and that’s the end of the story. Nobody has any basis for judging anyone right or wrong, because nobody could have done any differently.
Again, the focus is on the reliability of your judgment, not his.
“Even if chemicals made Bill jump (a brain tumor? schizophrenia from a chemical imbalance?), we can evaluate both outcomes and judge one to be preferable.”
It’s your evaluation that requires choice. How do you decide which is preferable? By choice.
“Just the fact that a brain chooses is insufficient. There are grain-sorting machines that scan things like rice or beans for color variations that indicate spoilage or contamination; they choose what passes and what does not, but they don't require free will to do so.”
The difference is, we know how grain sorting machines work, and we know they don’t require free will, because we understand what they are programmed to do, and we can see they’re simply following their program.
We can’t do that with the human mind. We don’t know how the brain works. We don’t know it doesn’t require free will, because we don’t understand what it is programmed to do, and we don’t see it simply following a program, and it seems to be capable of writing its own programs to a limited extent.
That’s why the analogy with mechanistic technologies breaks down …
“But even though these Hydrogen-bearing molecules all behave differently, they all obey certain overarching principles:”
They obey those overarching principles when not configured into a living organism … but as soon as they are configuring into a living organism, they start behaving in startlingly different ways. To understand the fundamental difference, just compare a person the moment before he dies to the moment after he dies. All the chemicals are the same, and there’s no evidence of any “ghosts.” But the chemicals start behaving in a fundamentally differently. Instead of reacting and choosing and speaking and thinking, they simply begin to decay. Their decay is deterministic, predictable, describable. The behavior of the living organism was not predictable. There is something fundamentally different between a living organism and a dead one. Living organisms look like they choose. Dead organisms don’t. It is that living configuration of the organism – whatever that is – that makes the organism capable of doing whatever “choice” is.
G: "It is also a self-correcting system: new information and experiences (or good arguments from other people!) may result in a change of conclusions and a change of action."
ReplyDeleteJ, this comment from G is another illustration of where choice comes in. Self-correction requires the active application of criteria to a selection. If you can't select, you can't correct.
"The problem is not with his capacity to choose, but with yours. How can you judge his opinion without choice of your own? How do you know whether your opinion of his answer is _right_, without being able to choose between right and wrong? How do you know you’re not both just following your chemicals?"
ReplyDeleteThis presumes that "following your chemicals" prevents one from choosing. I don't think it does, and I don't think you have given any reason why it should.
Even if our brain is only chemicals, those chemicals are still capable of holding abstract concepts, of experiencing sensory input, of feeling emotion. All the necessary tools needed to evaluate a statement are there. The fact that the result of the evaluation may be predetermined by chemicals or causality does not mean the process of thought to determine validity has not taken place. As long as a brain understands the concepts of math, it can judge whether an equation is true, lack of free will notwithstanding.
" To understand the fundamental difference, just compare a person the moment before he dies to the moment after he dies. All the chemicals are the same,"
ReplyDeleteAh, but you're wrong. They are not the same, the conditions change. Oxygen is no longer being supplied, nutrients are not delivered...
“The fact that the result of the evaluation may be predetermined by chemicals or causality does not mean the process of thought to determine validity has not taken place.”
ReplyDeleteBut it does mean you have no basis for determining whether your “process of thought to determine validity” is better than mine. Both of ours were predetermined. We both came up with different answers. On what basis can you say my predetermined process is wrong, and yours is right? What is the _justification_ for your judgment?
Ah, but you're wrong. They are not the same, the conditions change. Oxygen is no longer being supplied, nutrients are not delivered...”
I’m talking about the moment of death – obviously this is after the moment when oxygen is not being supplied and nutrients are not being delivered, because it takes a while for the cells to run out of gas. I spent some time on active duty. The bullet goes through the brain, and death is inevitable. But it takes a while for the body to figure that out. Perhaps a more down-home example would be a chicken running around with its head cut off.
Untgss wrote: "The problem is not with his capacity to choose, but with yours. How can you judge his opinion without choice of your own? How do you know whether your opinion of his answer is _right_, without being able to choose between right and wrong? How do you know you’re not both just following your chemicals?"
ReplyDeleteRight. This is the issue. With all respect, I think Jzero may not quite get it. After all, he wrote:
"This presumes that 'following your chemicals' prevents one from choosing. I don't think it does, and I don't think you have given any reason why it should."
So now Jzero is apparently arguing that humans do have free will, since nothing prevents them from choosing,
"The fact that the result of the evaluation may be predetermined by chemicals or causality does not mean the process of thought to determine validity has not taken place."
And now we're back to not being able to choose, since the results are predetermined.
Gordon wrote: "To begin with, we have to ask: which processes? The ones we use when thinking, or the evolutionary process that brought us to our present state of development?"
The ones we use when we are thinking.
"Calling the natural development of these systems a 'nonlogical process' is a pretty loaded concept"
I'm not talking about their development; I'm talking about the actions that take place in the brain during the process of mentation.
"Why in heaven’s name am I supposed to believe that a system for gathering data from its environment is supposed to be impervious to logical proof and validation?"
Because in order to believe anything, you have to make choices (this idea is true, that idea is false). Determinism, by definition, holds that you cannot make choices. According to determinism, the brain (and mind) is essentially like a computer, accepting data and processing it according to preset routines. Computers cannot think, any more than calculators or abaci can.
J: "This presumes that 'following your chemicals' prevents one from choosing. I don't think it does, and I don't think you have given any reason why it should."
ReplyDeleteMP: "So now Jzero is apparently arguing that humans do have free will, since nothing prevents them from choosing,"
Good catch -- Missed that. I guess I interpreted it in the framework of compatibilism without thinking about it, but that may have been premature -- JZero, when you say determinism doesn't preclude choice, are you speaking from a compatibilist position?
I wonder if C.S. Lewis should be a mandatory introduction to Ayn Rand. They both would have balked at the prospect, of course. But I think Lewis provides a much more measured introduction to the basic premises that Rand took much closer their logical conclusions. Much easier for the modern mind to absorb. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteMichael: "And now we're back to not being able to choose, since the results are predetermined."
ReplyDeleteWrong. You're confusing determination with predictability. A chess program can choose very well (and beat you at a game by choosing better than you with all your intellectual capacities and "real" thinking), even if it is completely deterministic. It is its unpredictability that makes it a better player than you. Even in the very limited world of chess there are so many combinations possible that the result is unpredictable (otherwise we would know what "the" winning game - or forced draw - of chess is, just as we know it for tic-tac-toe).
In general is choosing between different options for finding some optimal result (whatever that may be) very well possible for a completely deterministic system, there isn't any valid argument against it.
"Determinism, by definition, holds that you cannot make choices. According to determinism, the brain (and mind) is essentially like a computer, accepting data and processing it according to preset routines. Computers cannot think, any more than calculators or abaci can."
ReplyDeleteIf that's your definition, then I can see why you take Peikoff's argument seriously. Obviously, it isn't mine. Nor is it the position of Brand Blanshard, who is a declared determinist - and also an Absolute Idealist. Not exactly the philosophical position of someone who regards himself as a computer or an abacus.
Jzero aptly summarized this viewpoint as follows: “Blanshard appears to be driving at a more general causality - all your various experiences in the past shape your decisions in the present, leading you to specific outcomes that can happen no other way. Given the exact same circumstances (by which one must mean one's entire life to this point), one will always make the exact same choices.”
I have to repeat: human brains are self-correcting systems. If I burn my fingers once, I take care to insure that it doesn’t happen again. If the airplane I designed falls out of the sky, people are entitled to expect that I or someone else will design a different airplane the second time around. This is not that different from an animal that avoids something which once did it harm. I don’t see how any of this necessitates the existence of free will.
By the way, I’d really like you to give me a specific quotation from a thinker who claims that the human brain “is essentially like a computer, accepting data and processing it according to preset routines.” I don’t think that even a Naturalist like Zola would come up with something as crazy as that. After all, the average chicken can do better. . .
Dragonfly,
ReplyDeleteYour example of the chess computer program is right on the money. These programs actually are designed to "learn" from lost games. As such, they are replicating one of the behaviours that some would regard as the unique province of the human mind. . .
"Wrong. You're confusing determination with predictability. A chess program can choose very well (and beat you at a game by choosing better than you with all your intellectual capacities and "real" thinking), even if it is completely deterministic."
ReplyDeleteWe choose in a fundamentally different way than a chess program. It chooses according to programmed if/then statements and algorithms. We choose according to values. Values cannot be programmed into a chess program.
"I have to repeat: human brains are self-correcting systems. If I burn my fingers once, I take care to insure that it doesn’t happen again."
ReplyDeleteI can't help myself. Gordon: you claim my approach on this blog does not show self-correction, but rather shows evasion, dishonesty, trollery, and all sorts of other reprehensible characteristics which you've repeatedly identified in detail.
How does your naïve "human brain is self correcting" paradigm account for this phenomenon? is my self-correction chip disabled? if so, why do you become angry with him, call me names, attempt to socially intimidate me and isolate me?
and how do you explain the fact that I blow off your attempts to train me in pavlovian fashion, because I consciously interpet you as a blowhard more concerned with looking like the smartest guy in the room than with making any sense?
in other words, apply your theory to experience, and notice how you're not applying it. and can't apply it. because if you did, you'd be paralyzed.
"JZero, when you say determinism doesn't preclude choice, are you speaking from a compatibilist position?"
ReplyDeleteFrom a brief scan of Wikipedia, no, I don't think so. Read Dragonfly's and Gordon's comments, which are closer to what I'm saying.
I do not accept the idea that choices do not occur without free will. I find no reason to believe this to be true.
Suppose you took a job at a dice factory, and your job was to sort the output of a conveyor belt by such factors as size and color and shape. Each morning before you began your shift, let's say a wizard casts a spell on you, such that you are unable to refuse to do your job, or to intentionally do it wrong.
Now, even though you may not know beforehand what sort of dice comes through on the conveyor, your actions are predetermined. You will see a die, analyze its shape and color and size, and choose which box you will place it into. Only if your senses fail can the outcome be incorrect.
This is choice. Your complex mind evaluates all input at any given time by whatever standards have been set in it by the totality of your previous existence, and comes to a conclusion or decision based on that information, which you then act upon.
If you believe that the universe is deterministic, that every event has a cause, and every event has a result, then your life could not have possibly happened any other way. And what you do now will affect how you act later, but you can't act once and have two opposing results - you cannot choose to sit and stand at the same time. Whether you sit or stand is the result of all that has gone before, and will affect (if only in a miniscule way) what you do next. Your brain is a participant in this process, both slave and driver. If your brain could not choose, you would not do anything. But your choice is constrained by what has already happened.
ungtss: "We choose in a fundamentally different way than a chess program. It chooses according to programmed if/then statements and algorithms. We choose according to values. Values cannot be programmed into a chess program."
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary: values are programmed into a chess program: the value of an open line, material superiority, the values of the different pieces and their positions, etc. It is thanks to such values that the computer can judge different future positions that it calculates and make a good choice for its next move. The zillions of not-chess related values (like how does your opponent look, is it quiet in the room, are you hungry etc.) can be ignored.
“I do not accept the idea that choices do not occur without free will. I find no reason to believe this to be true.”
ReplyDeleteThen I can’t understand what you meant when you said this:
"This presumes that 'following your chemicals' prevents one from choosing. I don't think it does, and I don't think you have given any reason why it should."
If “following your chemicals” doesn’t prevent you from choosing, but you do not accept the idea that choices do not occur without free will, I’m not able to understand what exactly you mean.
“Suppose you took a job at a dice factory, and your job was to sort the output of a conveyor belt by such factors as size and color and shape. Each morning before you began your shift, let's say a wizard casts a spell on you, such that you are unable to refuse to do your job, or to intentionally do it wrong.
Now, even though you may not know beforehand what sort of dice comes through on the conveyor, your actions are predetermined. You will see a die, analyze its shape and color and size, and choose which box you will place it into. Only if your senses fail can the outcome be incorrect.”
I have no reason to believe there’s any such wizard:). My experience is that when I go to work, I have to select between competing desires – the desire to accomplish work and the desire to do things I consider to be more immediately fun. I think about those two options, and their results, and I select one. Then I execute it.
My experience gives me no reason to believe I have to pursue any one of these paths. On the contrary, I experience a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty, followed by an act of will, followed by a course of action. Until somebody can explain to me on a biochemical level how and why what I’m experiencing is merely an illusion, I don’t feel obliged to believe it:).
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ReplyDelete"On the contrary: values are programmed into a chess program: the value of an open line, material superiority, the values of the different pieces and their positions, etc."
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, those are not programmed in as values, but as components in a series of mathematical algorithms. The program does not have any notion that one set of outcomes is more desirable than another -- it merely follows mathematical calculations and logical and, nand, or, and nor gates:).
"If “following your chemicals” doesn’t prevent you from choosing, but you do not accept the idea that choices do not occur without free will, I’m not able to understand what exactly you mean."
ReplyDeleteYou do not understand because for some reason you equate choice and free will, and treat them as identical things.
"You do not understand because for some reason you equate choice and free will, and treat them as identical things."
ReplyDeleteYes, because i'm an incompatibilist. if we could narrow the issue down to compatibilism, that would be very helpful, but JZero seemed to think that was not the determinist consensus here.
compatibilism is essentially the position that choice and free will are different things -- that you can choose without having free will. incompatibilism is essentially the idea that they are the same thing -- that if you have choice, you have free will.
ReplyDeleteHaving thought a bit more about this, I think I can see where some of the confusion lies. It has to do with the meaning of the word "logical."
ReplyDeleteThe argument I'm making is that logical thinking cannot be predicated on nonlogical physical systems. The response has been something like this: "There is no basis for saying physical systems aren't logical. They obey the laws of physics, or the law of natural selection, etc."
As I see it, this is an equivocation. We are using the word "logic" in two different senses.
When a person says, "My thinking is logical," he is not saying, "My thinking obeys the laws of physics," or ,"My thinking obeys the laws of natural selection." He is saying (roughly), "My thinking obeys the laws of logic as defined by a certain philosophical system" - usually, in the West, Aristotelian logic.
Chemical reactions in the brain are not following Aristotelian syllogisms. They are not asking themselves, "If I send an impulse across this synaptic juncture, will it result in a fallacy or a valid conclusion?"
Chemical actions do have a certain logic, but it is not the kind of logic that is relevant to mentation.
There also seems to be some equivocation over the word "choice." Everyone agrees that we appear to make choices; in this sense, "choice" is uncontroversial. The question is whether the appearance is deceptive or not. Do we actually choose, or do we merely act as if we are choosing? People use "choice" in the second sense to argue for the validity of human reasoning, which can only be grounded in "choice" in the first sense.
One problem with analogizing to a computer is that the computer runs a program created by a human mind. Whatever simulation of thinking may be possible for a computer takes place only because it was designed that way by an actual thinking agent. The computer analogy might work as an argument for Intelligent Design, but somehow I doubt it's intended that way. :-)
Finally, what's the point in arguing about this, if one is a determinist? Presumably the determinist thinks those on the other side ought to change their minds. But if our thinking is predetermined, we can't change our minds. There is not even any room for "ought" in such a context. It's another stolen concept.
So in the very process of advancing and defending determinism, the determinist is contradicting himself. This is reminiscent of folks who say there's no such thing as consciousness - and then write books about it! Books presumably written unconsciously and aimed at unconscious readers ...
Excellent points about the equivocation in "logical" and "choice." this -- as well as this whole conversation -- makes me want to define more clearly what I mean in the context of "logical thought," to more clearly articulate the contradiction in a determinist attempting to persuade. I keep tacitly presuming a premise in that argument that I can't quite articulate.
ReplyDeleteHi Michael.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for your latest post. The ambiguous sense people attach to the word logical is the reason why I referred in my earlier post on this to “natural processes” rather than “nonlogical processes”.
“Chemical reactions in the brain are not following Aristotelian syllogisms. They are not asking themselves, ‘If I send an impulse across this synaptic juncture, will it result in a fallacy or a valid conclusion?’ ”
But having said that, I’ll confess that I’m a little baffled at your apparent willingness to ignore the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions for thought.
If there were no impulse across a synaptic juncture, a lion wouldn’t see a tempting antelope. That impulse is a necessary condition that must occur if the lion is to see or do anything. But clearly that impulse is quite different from the lion’s perception of the antelope. No one is in the least puzzled by this – although I have no reason for thinking that the lion’s experience of perceiving an antelope is all that different from what ours would be.
But for some reason, it’s suddenly supposed to be enormously significant when the impulse across a synaptic juncture is a necessary condition for my having a thought.
It’s not. Certain chemical reactions and nerve impulses are a necessary but not sufficient condition for perception or action; others are a necessary but not sufficient condition for thoughts. And the thought part isn’t unique to us either: you can see the same process going on at a primitive level when a chimp piles up some boxes to reach a high banana.
I think we need to resist the idea that there’s a Magic Moment when evolutionary development becomes irrelevant and we suddenly become Minds that happened to be equipped with a body and a brain transceiver. There is no such moment: our bodies – and our brains – are in every particular structured like those of other mammals; and more generally, like all living things for that matter.
But that doesn’t make us the robots in your caricature of the determinist position. As I said, we are constrained by our neurons and the chemical reactions in our body only in the way that a computer is constrained by its power source and memory capacity. They are the necessary conditions for our brain to function. Let me repeat: we have in the brain a self-correcting SYSTEM for gathering data from the environment and (sometimes) for acting on that data.
There is nothing in any of this that requires any assumed supervention on the evolutionary process that got us here. Nor do I see any evidence that the necessary physical conditions for brain activity mean that such a supervention must take place if independent judgment and logical thinking is to be possible. Why should it?
Michael: "Chemical actions do have a certain logic, but it is not the kind of logic that is relevant to mentation."
ReplyDeleteIt's a question of increasing complexity: there isn't much mentation in a single chemical reaction of the type A + B ↔ C + D, but even in simple organisms the process of natural selection has developed logical actions that can be seen as the first step to mentation. For example there is a receptor that recognizes certain molecules as beneficial ("food") and ensures that these are absorbed/reacted with. This is already an example of an elementary choice: is it good? Eat it, otherwise avoid it! This "higher-order" logic is completely explained by the lower-order logic of the elementary reactions. It is the process of evolution that generates this kind of higher-order logic, as it by its nature does have a certain purpose: survive and create descendants -if you don't do that you'll disappear from the stage.
All living beings function with this kind of logic, it guides all their actions. Most of them cannot understand their own logic, but the enormous complexity of the human system has enabled it to become self-referential so that it can understand what it's doing and manipulate its thoughts. No "explanation" by some mysterious esprit vital is necessary.
"One problem with analogizing to a computer is that the computer runs a program created by a human mind. Whatever simulation of thinking may be possible for a computer takes place only because it was designed that way by an actual thinking agent."
That is a variant of the old Paley watch argument. For a refutation, see for example Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.
"But if our thinking is predetermined, we can't change our minds"
I'm afraid that you've a rather outdated view of deterministic systems as rigid, unchangeable things with a fixed output. Computers can very well change their minds, when they see that the result of a previous action was not desirable for their purpose. Such systems are not isolated, they interact with the environment, and can thereby change their tactic.
Now it's true that there are some very stubborn systems that don't change their mind, regardless of the input...
"But that doesn’t make us the robots in your caricature of the determinist position. As I said, we are constrained by our neurons and the chemical reactions in our body only in the way that a computer is constrained by its power source and memory capacity. They are the necessary conditions for our brain to function."
ReplyDeleteGordon, determinism by definition is the idea that the sum of our chemical conditions, including impulses through junctures, are sufficient to explain thought and behavior. If they are not sufficient, then they do not comprehensively determine the outcome. Which means determinism is false.
The idea that chemical conditions are sufficient to explain thought and behavior is hardly a caricature of determinism. That is determinism.
You're trying to create a determinism that isn't deterministic by blurring focus.
ReplyDelete"Now it's true that there are some very stubborn systems that don't change their mind, regardless of the input..."
Well said.
"I'm afraid that you've a rather outdated view of deterministic systems as rigid, unchangeable things with a fixed output. Computers can very well change their minds, when they see that the result of a previous action was not desirable for their purpose. Such systems are not isolated, they interact with the environment, and can thereby change their tactic."
ReplyDeleteThere's no such thing as a computer knowing what its purpose is, or changing its mind. Computers are bound by their programming. Have you ever programmed a computer?
i'm really struck by the sheer audacity of trying to define determinism as the belief that chemical conditions are necessary but insufficient to explain our thought and behavior. it tells me that determinists are starting to recognize their ideas are nonsense, and so are trying to keep the same label while abandoning the actual meaning of determinism.
ReplyDeletea believer in free will would of course acknowledge that chemical conditions are necessary but insufficient to explain thought and behavior. you've blurred determinism out of existence.
"Yes, because i'm an incompatibilist. if we could narrow the issue down to compatibilism, that would be very helpful, but JZero seemed to think that was not the determinist consensus here."
ReplyDelete"compatibilism is essentially the position that choice and free will are different things -- that you can choose without having free will. incompatibilism is essentially the idea that they are the same thing -- that if you have choice, you have free will."
The brief bit I read seemed to be indicating that compatibilists believed in free will but defined it far differently than most; that's not what I'm saying. If compatibilists believe in choice and free will as being different things, then fine, that's what I am, I suppose. I don't know enough about the named stance to say for certain.
(continued)
ReplyDeleteI do not regard choice as dependent on free will; choices are made constantly, by each of us, all the time. But are they the result of free will? Certainly they may feel free, and in a practical sense, as I've said, one might as well behave as if they are free, since one is unlikely to be able to effectively manipulate the universe or "peer behind the veil", as it were, so as to achieve a truly free will.
But consider this question: why am I here, talking on this forum?
One day I decided to enter the conversation, after having read a great deal of this blog, and after reading a few of the exchanges in the comments sections.
But to participate, it is a prerequisite condition that I had to find this blog in the first place.
How did that happen? Well, I was online trying to do some quick research on Rand and Objectivism, and in particular, looking for sites on the subject that didn't seem like blind cheerleaders for the philosophy, sites that might have a bit more objective (small o) analysis. Whether you think this site qualifies, that is how I found this site.
But why was I looking for such a reference? Well, I was trying to understand the seemingly deranged viewpoint of some folks who verbally accosted me way over on some completely unrelated forum and declared me their mortal enemy mainly because I expressed the opinion that privatizing the US road system was probably not a very good idea.
(Why was I on that other forum? It was dedicated to some things I have an interest in. And so on.)
Each step in the chain, from me reading an overly angry reply to my words to being here now debating determinism can be traced in a causal way.
At each point, there may have been many potential, theoretical decisions I could have made. I could have ignored the Objectivists completely - which would have resulted in me not finding this place. I might have called on the forum's management to ban the offenders for abusive behavior.
But I did neither. My back was up a bit and I wanted to know what the source of such sheer obnoxious arrogance was, so that I might be able to dismantle it if accosted again.
In making that decision, one might figure I had free will, and could have chosen one of any possible action. But the conditions were such that I made the choice I made. And the conditions were ALWAYS going to be what they were at that moment - my mood was always going to be in such a state, the words that angered me were always going to be exactly those words, all the other conditions in the universe were always going to be what they were. So what agent could have made things turn out different? To say "free will might have" is to place faith in an imaginary feeling, the conviction that since you can't perceive the ties upon your actions, none must exist. But they ARE there, if you honestly look.
A sense of ambiguity while choosing an option is not sufficient evidence. Once you choose, the issue is resolved - as if a scientist finishes a massively complex equation scrawled across his blackboard, finally arriving at the answer. It may have been a struggle to get to the answer, but that answer is the only one that can be rightfully given.
In the case of human life, the equation is: your entire life = what you do next. Free will rejects causality and presupposes that something can happen for no reason whatsoever.
Interesting debate, everyone. Let me see if I can tangle it further.
ReplyDeleteI'll take determinism to refer to the proposition that, given two identical brains in the same electrochemical state and the same input to both brains, the same next state invariably results.
I'll take materialism to refer to the proposition that consciousness is nothing more than the form in which a sufficiently sophisticated living organism experiences its material state and changes in that state -- in particular the electrochemical state and activity of the brain.
Materialists tend to be determinists, and non-materialisits tend to be non-determinists, but I don't think that's required. For instance, one can believe that there are non-deterministic processes in the brain (as ungtss has suggested). It's also possible to be a non-materialiist and a determinist -- although that combination seems rare.
Given what I know of the science, I'd say that the determinist-materialist position has the best evidence. (I find it interesting, for instance, that there is apparently a specific brain structure that is responsible for maintaining a distinction between "self" and "everything else" and that impairing this structure results in an experience of being one with the universe, more like being in a puree than being a distinct chunk of potato in the cosmic soup.)
I don't think it's self-refuting to say that the experience of making a choice is the form in which I experience an underlying reality of my brain moving deterministically from one state to another. I experience it as making a choice, perhaps because of feedback loops in the brain's electrochemical signaling system, perhaps because of something about the transition from one state to another; whatever the scientific details (and they aren't known), I don't see how that contradicts my experience.
Here’s an example that fewer people seem to find troubling. At the atomic level, my keyboard is mostly empty space, and the atoms aren't stationary but are vibrating around. My experience of it as solid is an effect of the way the electrons in the keyboard interact with the electrons in my fingers, all of which sets off an electrochemical transmission to my brain. No matter what I do, I can't feel vibrating atoms -- at least not as vibrating atoms. What I feel them as, is a solid surface. I would not call my conscious experience of solidity an illusion, but rather the form in which I experience certain arrangements of atoms.
Similarly, I would not call "choice" an illusion; it's just the form in which we self-aware organisms experience certain brain states and/or state transitions (since the brain state is presumably constantly changing). The difference between choice and solidity is that choice has to do with the brain acting back on itself to control its own behavior (and perhaps behavior of the rest of the organism to which it belongs), so it seems weirder to try to think about. It may seem paradoxical that we experience choice when the outcome is foreordained, but I think it's not a contradiction, just describing the same phenomenon at two different levels. If you spend enough time around quantum mechanics, you get used to the idea that the same reality can "look" very different at different levels without there being any contradiction between the levels.
Continuing the previous thought ...
ReplyDeleteAs another way to think about it, consider a dog placed between two food bowls. Contrary to urban legend, the dog doesn't starve but goes to one or the other. Most people have no problem with the idea that the dog's brain deterministically goes into some state that "sends" the dog one way or the other. So at that level of brain function, when I choose, what's going on is basically the same as it is for the dog. The difference is that, as far as we can tell, the dog has no awareness of itself as choosing. It has the brain states that determine what it does, but it (apparently) doesn't have the additional structures that produce the "let me think" phenomenon.
JZero, i certainly don't have a problem with a compatibilist form of determinism -- only with the incompatibilist form. as far as i can tell, rand's problems with determinism were also focused on the incompatibilist -- that is, the idea that because we're determined, we're not really making choices, but only _think_ we do. but compatibilism is more subtle than that -- it also takes on the form ECE is describing -- of experiencing reality at two different levels -- and at the level of a human being, we experience choice, no matter what might be happening at the atomic level.
ReplyDeleteultimately, though, i think the question of "whether things could possibly have been different" is one we can't answer, because they never _are_ different. whether our brains could go in X direction or Y direction, in any given moment, they only go in one direction, so there's no way to know whether they could go in Y.
What i'm concerned with, and what rand was primarily concerned with, was the experience of choice -- that as humans, we experience that ambiguity, we experience that sense of options, and that we choose. as far as i can tell, she opposed determinism only to the extent it attempts to negate that reality of human experience. which incompatibilist determinists do.
that doesn't mean i'm a compatibilist myself of course, only that i think the difference between compatibilist determinism and incompatibilist free will is by and large hypothetical and academic at this point:).
regarding your illustration of the various situations that led you here, it's true that all those circumstances brought you here, but there are also a serious of choices that brought you here.
for instance, the choice, when confronted with those objectivists at that other forum, to a) be curious and explore other sources, b) detach and withdraw from the issue, or c) start ranting and raving against that point of view notwithstanding your limited experience of a few of its proponents.
that is the sort of choice of interest to advocates of free will. nobody will argue that if you hadn't run into that other blog, you wouldn't have come here. the question is, why you chose to do what you did in response to that stimulus.
an incompatibilist determinist would claim you made no choice at all, but only thought you did. in reality, they say, you were compelled to do as you did as a result of your chemical state, prior experiences, etc.
the compatibilist determinist would claim you did choose what you chose, but you could not have chosen any differently.
the incompatibilist advocate of free will would claim you did choose what you chose, and could have chosen differently.
my own position is slightly more nuanced than the last one -- essentially, "you appear to have chosen what you chose, and science gives you no reason to believe you couldn't have chosen otherwise because science has no idea what happened in your brain, so that's the most reasonable hypothesis.
it's kind of a "provisional" or "popperian" incompatibilism. sure, maybe you couldn't possibly have chosen differently. but there's no evidence of that right now, so go with the evidence you have.
i don't see any real reason for conflict between compatibilist determinism and free will. it's largely academic anyway. the position i consider dangerous is incompatibilist determinism, and that's more common than you'd think:).
"it's kind of a "provisional" or "popperian" incompatibilism. sure, maybe you couldn't possibly have chosen differently. but there's no evidence of that right now, so go with the evidence you have."
ReplyDeleteThat, however, begs the question: what evidence do we, in fact, have?
You seem to say that your apparent perception of free will is "the" evidence one should "go with". But I counter that as everything else in the universe is deterministic, to count the brain as somehow exempt requires special pleading. As I see it, "the evidence" points towards determinism, not free will. If there is no evidence you could not have chosen differently, there really is no solid evidence that you could have, either.
I don't think we have evidence that everything in the universe is deterministic. For one thing, we don't know anywhere close to everything about the universe, so we can't say what "everything in the universe does:)." For another, we behave a lot differently than non-living matter. A lot less deterministically:).
ReplyDeleteI feel that at this point the two sides are just talking past each other. It's a question of fundamentally different assumptions.
ReplyDeleteYou can see this in the increasingly personal and sarcastic attacks from the deterministic side (e.g. Dragonfly's crack about stubborn systems that won't change their minds, as seconded by Gordon).
It's pretty clear that the determinists are not willing to seriously consider or engage with the Augustinian arguments for free will.
That's unfortunate, but I'm afraid it's characteristic of uncreative minds caught in the dead end of an exhausted paradigm – in this case, materialism.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI genuinely regret that you took umbrage at Dragonfly’s remark. When I seconded it, I certainly wasn’t thinking about you. . .
However, I do feel that it was unjust of you to call out Dragonfly for sarcastic and personal attacks while ignoring some of the real nasty abuse that has been spewing out of Guess Who. Check out his post dated
6/03/2013 11:55:00 AM. It was the reason why I seconded Dragnfly's remark - and I hope it isn't your idea of how to seriously engage with the materialist position.
I think both sides may be running a little low on patience. That, at least, might explain your odd suggestion that free will is supposed to be a new and startling alternative to an exhausted materialist paradigm. You’re not being serious, are you? Both of these views have been around for over 2000 years!
Actually, Gordon, that comment made a clear point you ignored. You've interpreted me as a non-self-correcting system. So non-self-correcting that you've adopted referring to me as "You Know Who."
ReplyDeleteIf in fact "the human brain is self-correcting," as you claim, then what do you think is wrong with mine? Why do I continue to blow you off based on my interpretation of you as a blowhard and a fake? Why don't I correct myself in light of your eminent wisdom?
The question is still hanging out there, waiting for you to answer, and correct my misapprehension.
the answer is, of course, that you don't actually believe the human brain is self-correcting. you use that theory when it suits you, and reject it when it doesn't suit you. depending not on what you actually believe, but on what suits you at the moment.
ReplyDeletethat's how determinism works. nobody actually believes it comprehensively. they simply pull it out when it's useful. and stuff it back into their pockets when it's not useful anymore.
Perhaps Gordon could have phrased it better by saying the brain is self-adjusting, adapting (or not) as it sees fit to whatever information comes its way. That would have taken "correctness", implying "rightness", out of the mix. A brain does not have to be correct, whether free-willed or determined.
ReplyDeleteEarlier you made a statement dismissing a chess program's ability to choose as merely a complex mathematical equation. But - since as you state we DON'T know how the brain works - why is it any less probable that the human mind is simply an unimaginably MORE complex mathematical equation, juggling not just math, but memory, emotion, logic, and even values, than the idea that "somehow" totally free will can just kind of instantiate itself unbidden?
“Perhaps Gordon could have phrased it better by saying the brain is self-adjusting, adapting (or not) as it sees fit to whatever information comes its way.”
ReplyDeleteThat would definitely have been better. But then he’d face the issue of how the brain decides what it sees fit, and why different brains see fit to do and think different things … which brings us back to choice:).
“But - since as you state we DON'T know how the brain works - why is it any less probable that the human mind is simply an unimaginably MORE complex mathematical equation, juggling not just math, but memory, emotion, logic, and even values, than the idea that "somehow" totally free will can just kind of instantiate itself unbidden?”
It certainly might be, at the root, since as you rightly point out, we don’t know. But it seems less probable to me because on the surface, people do not act like chess programs. A chess program does one thing. We do many. Chess programs do not express values. We do. Chess programs do not care whether they win or lose. We do. Chess programs cannot do anything that’s not in their program. We’re constantly doing things that aren’t in our program, adjusting and readjusting our program.
It’s certainly possible that what looks like A on the surface is actually not A at its root. But since it looks like A on the surface and we don’t know what it is at the root, I’m going with what it looks like on the surface for now:). Again, provisional and popperian. Any scientist is welcome to demonstrate that i'm wrong. but until they do, i'm going with what has seemed self-evident to me since I was 2:).
That, at least, might explain your odd suggestion that free will is supposed to be a new and startling alternative to an exhausted materialist paradigm. You’re not being serious, are you? Both of these views have been around for over 2000 years!
ReplyDeletePerhaps both paradigms are exhausted! Perhaps neither describes the reality people actually face when making choices. Perhaps the issue is not between free and "unfree" will, but between strong and weak wills.
Even so, I still find free will the stronger position, although I don't think that's Rand's arguments against determinism are valid or that her particular version of free will is plausible. Rand rejects (in the very teeth of an enormous amount of evidence) the existence of innate tendencies which may influence or predispose the will to a certain course.
Karl Popper, in his books on indeterminism and the brain, has brought forth much better arguments against determinism and reductive materialism than those proposed by Rand and her disciples. He does not confuse free will with blank slate views of human nature; nor does he regard free will as some sort of self-evident "axiom" -- as if it were true a priori!
Come on, Michael, why so thin-skinned, where is your sense of humour? You aren't degenerating into a Randian, are you? I've given you a serious reply, but you only become defensive about a little joke at the end. Or is it that the shoe fits too well?
ReplyDeleteHello Greg - and thank you for this post.
ReplyDeleteAs your reference to Popper makes clear, this is far from being an either-or dispute between dualism (which I reject) and materialism (which I also reject, if it doesn’t take into account the existence of higher level systems and instead sticks to talk of atoms and chemical reactions).
These are complex issues. The biggest harm in the Peikoff formulation is that it has the effect of closing off inquiry instead of encouraging it. People who buy into it walk away with the self-satisfied confidence that there’s nothing left to discuss.
Read Popper, who opposes determinism. Read Blanshard, who does not. This is not a one-sentence issue.
" But then he’d face the issue of how the brain decides what it sees fit, and why different brains see fit to do and think different things … which brings us back to choice:)."
ReplyDeleteWell, no it doesn't. It has to be obvious that (as I said before) each brain is unique in the information it has processed and stored - not to mention simple differences of physical/chemical makeup. As many sets of unique fingerprints as there are, that's how many different brains exist, each with potentially different viewpoints and processes.
" But it seems less probable to me because on the surface, people do not act like chess programs."
This is faulty reasoning, since the contention is not that the brain acts like a CHESS program, but like a far more complicated program, with a far higher degree of complexity.
"We’re constantly doing things that aren’t in our program, adjusting and readjusting our program."
How do you know that feature isn't in your program?
Even the chess program adjusts to what isn't "in its program" - the opponent's moves.
To put it another way: What evidence do you have that anything you do, no matter how seemingly "free" of a choice it seems, is NOT the result of a life's worth of programming and adjustment?
What is the chance that tomorrow you will reject Rand and her teachings and decide to become a socialist?
If free will exists, then you could choose to do that. You could up and decide to make a dramatic change in your life and viewpoint, just like that!
But in truth, you are not going to do that, without the intervention of some kind of near-catastrophic event to trigger such a change. Assuming that tomorrow things will be much as they are today, you will still admire Rand and despise socialism. Your potential choice is actually no choice at all. Your life experience - your program - binds you to only choose one way.
Unless of course you have that "near-catastrophic" trigger event, upon which your programming reacts to new data...
J,
ReplyDeleteI think we might be spinning around because we’re switching between two burdens of proof. In your last message, you’re asking me:
“What evidence do you have that anything you do, no matter how seemingly "free" of a choice it seems, is NOT the result of a life's worth of programming and adjustment?”
But in your previous message, you asked me:
“why is it any less probable that the human mind is simply an unimaginably MORE complex mathematical equation, juggling not just math, but memory, emotion, logic, and even values, than the idea that "somehow" totally free will can just kind of instantiate itself unbidden?””
Evidence that something is not true is very different from evidence that one thing is more probable than another. I’m not claiming to have any evidence that determinism is not true. I’m claiming that under the current state of my knowledge, and the rules of reason as I understand them, free will seems significantly more probable than determinism.
For a comparison: “Joe was seen in New York both last night and tonight. Janie was murdered this morning in Cleveland. I don’t have any evidence that Joe flew to Cleveland last night and flew back to New York this afternoon.”
Question 1: Do I have any evidence that he didn’t kill her? No – he could have flown there and back and I just don’t have proof of the flight. I have no evidence that that is false.
Question 2: Which is more probable? Surely it’s more probable that he didn’t kill her, because he was in a different city both last night and tonight, and I have no reason to believe he flew last night. If you come up with some evidence that he flew last night, I’ll reconsider. Until then, I’m going with the simplest most reasonable answer: that he stayed put.
As you can see, those two standards of proof yield vastly different results. That’s why it’s important to be clear on which one we’re applying.
“This is faulty reasoning, since the contention is not that the brain acts like a CHESS program, but like a far more complicated program, with a far higher degree of complexity.”
It is faulty reasoning if I’m trying to prove your position false, but it’s not faulty reasoning if I’m simply trying to prove mine more reasonable.
“What is the chance that tomorrow you will reject Rand and her teachings and decide to become a socialist?”
Chances can’t be calculated out of thin air like that:). My behavior tomorrow depends both on what I experience tomorrow and how I choose to respond to that experience, both of which are unknowns.
A better question is, “if tomorrow you encountered an argument that you perceived as refuting a randian idea at a fundamental level, would it be likely to change your mind?
And the answer to that would be “absolutely, I’ve rejected a number of randian ideas in the past as soon as better arguments came around. One in particular is hit on by nyquist in his last post – her “tabula rasa” premise – which is so obviously false to anybody with children it’s almost shocking to believe she could advance it with a straight face:).
@Gordon: The biggest harm in the Peikoff formulation is that it has the effect of closing off inquiry instead of encouraging it. People who buy into it walk away with the self-satisfied confidence that there’s nothing left to discuss.
ReplyDeleteYou could say that about the whole philosophy. Its effect is largely to close off inquiry. Rand has proven all her conclusions, we have certainty, it's just a matter of if and when the rest of the world will embrace reason -- and all the specific conclusions that entails.
One side effect of this is that in general, Objectivists are remarkably incurious -- especially for people who regard themselves as intellectuals.
"You could say that about the whole philosophy. Its effect is largely to close off inquiry."
ReplyDeleteBingo.
The motto "Check your premises!" looks so good on the surface. But in practice, the result is that Objectivists look for an allegedly flawed premise in someone's reasoning - then treat everything else being said as tainted fruit. They don't allow themselves - even provisionally - to enter into the logic of an opposing view.
That's particularly damaging because sometimes premises can indeed be flawed - but those flawed premises may have led to uncomfortable facts that need to be dealt with rather than simply dismissed.
This kind of thing is on full display in Ayn Rand's Marginalia.
In my own experience, you can be sure that a discussion is about to go nowhere if you hear an Objectivist say phrases like "premissed on. . . " or "based on the assumption that. . ." This is particularly so because the "premises" and "assumptions" they claim to have discovered usually don't have a lot to do with the opposing argument. . .
"One side effect of this is that in general, Objectivists are remarkably incurious -- especially for people who regard themselves as intellectuals."
ReplyDeleteI find describing any large group of people in any particular way as remarkably incurious. "muslims are this, objectivists are that, germans are this, blacks are that, collectivists are this, Christians are that."
this stereotyping is a classic way to insulate oneself from the the uncomfortable realities of human uniqueness -- to dehumanize the individual.
reality is, personality precedes ideology, and an incurious person is going to be incurious whether an objectivist or an animist or a fundamentalist. blaming personality on his ideology is like blaming one's sense of style on the clothes one chooses to wear.
one is able to avoid this by dehumanizing those we dislike -- and to further protect ourselves from the reality of what we're doing, we hide behind terms like "in general." that way we can advance destructive and ignorant stereotypes and point to any evidence to the contrary as "the exception."
rand was guilty of this sin, of course. somehow it doesn't surprise me that a number of those attracted to her objectivism who subsequently rejected it would be guilty of it too.
"But in practice, the result is that Objectivists look for an allegedly flawed premise in someone's reasoning - then treat everything else being said as tainted fruit."
ReplyDeleteFlawed as this may be, it's much preferable to empty generalizations, social intimidation, evasion, and ostracism. which is pretty much all you've exhibited in the short time I've known you. Healer, heal thyself.
Greg:
ReplyDelete>Karl Popper, in his books on indeterminism and the brain, has brought forth much better arguments against determinism and reductive materialism than those proposed by Rand and her disciples.
Which is the critical point. What does Randian doctrine add to the debate? Nothing at all - if anything, it simply muddies the issues. This explains why her followers end up distributed almost randomly across the usual positions.
Compare that with say Popper's contribution, which even if you disagree with it at least gives us an original and imaginative leap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper's_three_worlds
"In your last message, you’re asking me:
ReplyDelete“What evidence do you have that anything you do, no matter how seemingly "free" of a choice it seems, is NOT the result of a life's worth of programming and adjustment?”
But in your previous message, you asked me:
“why is it any less probable that the human mind is simply an unimaginably MORE complex mathematical equation, juggling not just math, but memory, emotion, logic, and even values, than the idea that "somehow" totally free will can just kind of instantiate itself unbidden?””
These are two different questions to address two related, but separate lines of thought. In the latter, we are addressing what is more probable (and I don't think you've established that free will is more probable); in the former, we are questioning the nature of your evidence - whether you have in fact given true consideration to all sides of the issue, and not simply gravitated towards the (largely subjective) evidence that supports the conclusion that you'd prefer.
Because if you can't effectively refute determinism, and your evidence in favor of free will is subjective... perhaps this is an emotional issue more than a logical one.
Painting the behavior of groups of people with broad brushes is not unreasonable at all and is definitely not a sign of being "incurious", whatever that means. It is simply a judgment that to different degrees is accurate or inaccurate. Moreover, Objectivism is not a system passed on from parents to children. It is one individuals decide to identify with, and for that reason, as well as the relative strictness of the tenets they identify with, patterns in the kinds of individuals who subscribe to Objectivism are quite noticeable. Moreover, if the generalization applied to 90% of individuals who identify as Objectivist, do we for the 10% who do not refrain from the generalization?
ReplyDeleteIt is better to understand as people have done here the source of the closed-mindedness of Objectivists. My siblings who are Objectivists were not as intolerant of dissension before becoming Objectivists. Now, even disagreeing with their evaluation of a movie like "Up" can make you a philosophic turd.
On the issue of determinism and free will, I take the compatibilist position because it encourages analysis of the causes of one's decision, something indeterminism generally doesn't unless it is framed as part of a very robust psychology like Popper does. I used to be a hard deterministi, but I think that is incompatible with my belief in agnosticism on the ultimate question. I know that in some cases, we really do not make choices and that is why determinism is at least true in part.
The issue of whether determinism undermines logical judgments is IMO handled adroitly by Blanshard. He points out that sometimes, the structure or an argument is the reason why we believe it is true. He does point out that there are many reasons we can be wrong. We could be under duress or the influence of alcohol. We could also be stressed. But there are times when we see an argument and believe it is true because of its structure.
ReplyDeleteThe key is to realize that it is not the atoms making this judgment, but a system comprised of these atoms that is. That is why placing the world of ideas/information on a different causal level from the world of atoms might be one way out of the paradox for some individuals. However, there is a form of determinism that occurs on that level and it is clearly affected by lower levels (alcohol affects judgment, for example).
"My siblings who are Objectivists were not as intolerant of dissension before becoming Objectivists. Now, even disagreeing with their evaluation of a movie like "Up" can make you a philosophic turd."
ReplyDeleteBut of course Objectivists don't see themselves as intolerant - even when everyone else does. After all, they argue, you can't compromise between food and poison.
And if someone's views are poisoned at the root, any kind of abuse or invective is an appropriate response to views that are "irrational" or "evil".
The result: people who assure you of their rationality even as they pile ad hominem attacks on anyone who disagrees with them. It's a philosophy which is a perfect match for people who aren't good at self-criticism or self-evaluation.
"These are two different questions to address two related, but separate lines of thought."
ReplyDeleteThat's fair. But what happened above was, you asked me one question, and I answered it, and then you asked me the second question without addressing my answer to the first. perhaps we should deal with each question separately and comprehensively.
do i think there's any evidence at a molecular level that the brain isn't deterministic? no. there's no evidence on that issue at all.
do i think it's more probable that whatever the brain is, and however it works, it exhibits free will? yes. because we act like it does.
"Because if you can't effectively refute determinism, and your evidence in favor of free will is subjective... perhaps this is an emotional issue more than a logical one."
well, that raises the interesting question of whether emotion and logic can be separated. and neuroscience is pretty clear that they can't:). everything we think and do is both emotional and logical. both you and me:).
"Moreover, if the generalization applied to 90% of individuals who identify as Objectivist, do we for the 10% who do not refrain from the generalization?
ReplyDeleteif you want to be a fair person, you say something like, "X characteristic seems to be overrepresented in objectivism." instead of the bigoted "objectivists are X." then you can consider the selection mechanisms that might be involved, without painting everybody with a brush.
"My siblings who are Objectivists were not as intolerant of dissension before becoming Objectivists. Now, even disagreeing with their evaluation of a movie like "Up" can make you a philosophic turd."
And to the extent you want to talk about your siblings, their attraction to objectivism, and the basis of their opinions about "Up," you're dealing with interesting questions about real people, while to the extent you want to say "Objectivists in general are X because my siblings and their friends are like this" you're just stereotyping.
ReplyDelete"It is better to understand as people have done here the source of the closed-mindedness of Objectivists."
Yes. Intolerance isn't just a characteristic of some Objectivists: it's a logical result of the system.
Anyone who doesn't believe this should reread Peikoff's notorious essay "Fact and Value". . .
""It is better to understand as people have done here the source of the closed-mindedness of Objectivists."
ReplyDeleteYes. Intolerance isn't just a characteristic of some Objectivists: it's a logical result of the system."
Your trick here is to avoid distinguishing between intolerance with respect to particular behaviors. The system does require intolerance of things like "initiating the use of force to impose your will on others." but it also permits tolerance on a great many things that other ideologies would find intolerable -- like say the desire to work for your own happiness.
By treating the ideology as "intolerant" as a whole, you manage to again paint it with an inappropriately broad brush.
Everybody is intolerant of something. Even advocates of tolerance are intolerance of intolerance.
If objectivists choose not to tolerate certain things, and to tolerate other things, they're no different than anybody else.
But of course you're able to side-step this issue by failing to identify what, exactly, they're intolerant of, and why, exactly, you think intolerance of that particular thing is inappropriate.
which is of course your goal.
myself, i'm intolerant of dishonesty. would it please you if i tolerated more of yours?
"But what happened above was, you asked me one question, and I answered it, and then you asked me the second question without addressing my answer to the first."
ReplyDeleteWell, I did. You answered:
"But it seems less probable to me because on the surface, people do not act like chess programs."
To which I pointed out that "not acting like a chess program" was faulty reasoning - the question does not expect anyone to act like a chess program. The question asks if it is more probable that our brains are deterministic systems like the rest of known physics (save perhaps at the quantum level, which has already been covered), or that something as yet completely unknown grants free will.
Such evidence in favor of free will as you give rests on two points:
1) Your "perception" of free will - assuming that you have it because you are unable to directly perceive causal reasons for your decisions (and/or are unwilling to look for them).
2) The possible existence of some unnamed, undiscovered something in the brain or the universe that would enable free will. It's an argument from ignorance - "we don't know, how can anyone know?"
On the other side, you have the existence of every facet of the physical world that we have discovered to date, and the lack of any evidence for 2) at all. And yet you call your conclusion more probable?
This is why I suspect an emotional component to your stance, since I can't fathom the logic you use.
Statement: "But of course Objectivists don't see themselves as intolerant - even when everyone else does. After all, they argue, you can't compromise between food and poison.
ReplyDelete"And if someone's views are poisoned at the root, any kind of abuse or invective is an appropriate response to views that are 'irrational' or 'evil'."
Response: "myself, i'm intolerant of dishonesty. would it please you if i tolerated more of yours?"
QED
"On the other side, you have the existence of every facet of the physical world that we have discovered to date, and the lack of any evidence for 2) at all. And yet you call your conclusion more probable?"
ReplyDeleteI do, because "every facet of the physical world that we have discovered to date" excludes the only facet in the physical world that appears to exhibit free will:).
So you've got 1000 facets that are deterministic both on the surface and at the root.
And one that is not deterministic on the surface, and is unknown at the root.
I'm supposed to conclude that the one facet that's different on the surface is the same at the root? why? it's different on the surface, and nobody knows what's going on at the root:). why shouldn't I conclude that what's different on the surface is different at the root?
Why should I conclude it's different than it appears to be, just because everything that appears different on the surface is also different at the root?
by analogy, you have 100 black dogs and 1 tan dog. nobody knows what makes them black or tan. but the tan one definitely appears different from the black ones, based only on the most superficial glance.
as I understand your argument, it's that because all the black dogs are the same at the root, we should assume that the tan dog is also the same at the root.
my argument is that the tan dog is obviously different than all the black dogs at the surface, so I have no reason to believe it's the same as the black dogs at the root.
on the contrary, the fact that it's different on the surface gives me reason to believe it's different at the root.
that said, I can certainly respect a compatibilist position, although I disagree with it. (mental note to others busy stereotyping objectivists: we can be tolerant of views other than their own).
It's the incompatibilist determinist position that i'm not tolerant of, because it appears to be a direct assault on reason itself, and i'm intolerant of assaults on reason because I know too many people engaged in that project, and I know what their goals are.
""And if someone's views are poisoned at the root, any kind of abuse or invective is an appropriate response to views that are 'irrational' or 'evil'."
ReplyDeleteResponse: "myself, i'm intolerant of dishonesty. would it please you if i tolerated more of yours?"
QED"
Yes, QED indeed. I'm not talking about your views, I'm talking about your honesty. You're pretending I'm talking about your views, in order to pretend to have a valid argument.
That's dishonest.
If you've noticed, I disagree with Prescott, Nyquist, and JZero on a number of issues. But they're being honest. So we're having productive discussions.
You're different. Because you're not being honest. That's my problem with you. Not your views, but your honesty.
Your decision to conflate "views" with "honesty" to create the illusion of an argument is just another example of your dishonesty.
"I do, because "every facet of the physical world that we have discovered to date" excludes the only facet in the physical world that appears to exhibit free will:)."
ReplyDeleteBut A) we have discovered much about the brain that does in fact conform to known chemistry and physics, and B) you're assuming an IS from an APPEARS.
To use your "tan dog" analogy, the fact that there are 1000 black dogs, and a tan dog appears that is OTHERWISE THE SAME as all the other dogs, enough that I can call it a dog and not a cat or a duck, would lead me to think that at the root, it is likely the tan and black dogs are the same, or at least that assumption is more probable than they are somehow markedly different at the root.
You seem to be saying that it is more reasonable to see the tan dog and think, "well, this might very well be a cat under that skin!" It might indeed be a cat - maybe, until you open it up who knows? - but if we're talking what is more probable or more reasonable, I don't think that assuming it's wholly different - considering all the other similarities - wins out on that score.
"To use your "tan dog" analogy, the fact that there are 1000 black dogs, and a tan dog appears that is OTHERWISE THE SAME as all the other dogs, enough that I can call it a dog and not a cat or a duck, would lead me to think that at the root, it is likely the tan and black dogs are the same, or at least that assumption is more probable than they are somehow markedly different at the root."
ReplyDeleteGlad we have a potentially helpful analogy. I'm greatly enjoying the opportunity to discuss this with you, btw -- to sharpen our respective ideas.
What i'd say is that even though I don't know what makes some dogs tan and other dogs black, the fact that one dog is tan gives me reason to believe that something different about that dog all the way at the root.
of course, we know that the difference is genetics -- that the tan dog's dna has a different chemical composition, which causes it to grow a different color hair.
but even if we didn't know about genetics. even if all we knew about the dogs was that they were different colors, the difference would tell me "there's something fundamentally different about these dogs. something way way different at the basic level. a basic level I don't understand.
To bring it back to our topic, free will, replace "tan gene" with "choice" and "black gene" with "chemically determined."
what we have are two things -- a living dog that appears to choose, and a dead dog whose every behavior is obviously chemically determined.
we know that something is making that choosing dog different from that non-choosing carcass. something fundamental. I don't know what it is, but I know that a living dog chooses, and a dead dog doesn't. what's the difference? I don't know. but whatever it is, it's significant enough not to ignore:).
I'm not going to claim that a living dog acts according to the same principles as a dead dog until somebody can show me how they do:). because even my 4 year old can tell that there's a fundamental difference between the two.
"But A) we have discovered much about the brain that does in fact conform to known chemistry and physics, and B) you're assuming an IS from an APPEARS."
These are both true. But
a) while we've discovered much that does conform to known chemistry and physics, we haven't discovered what makes us think in terms of known chemistry and physics. and
b) yes, that's a fundamental aspect of human existence. we must start with "appears," because until we have something better, that's the best we have. I will not reject "appears" in favor of "theory says." I will only replace one "appears" with a better "appears."
for instance, if somebody were able to predict or control human behavior on a molecular level. if somebody could make a person like chocolate cake instead of vanilla cake by manipulating chemicals. that would be a better "showing," and one I can take seriously.
until that time, the best "showing" I've got is that humans somehow freely choose. the mechanism of choice is a black box. but the input and output are pretty clear.
i'm happy to stand here in the same position as a medieval looking at a space shuttle liftoff. "I don't get it, it violates everything I know about the universe. nevertheless, there it is."
Ungtss,
DeletePeople who think intelligently can see that "Objectivists are intolerant" is a generalization from a small sample and that as stated maybe be an attempt to connect Objectivism with intolerance. You actually know this, so I can only laugh at your attempts to pretend otherwise. Since you apparently think only bigots stereotype people, that is unfortunate, but your use of colorful language to describe your convictions doesn't affect the reality.
I have dealt with many Objectivists across various forums. I have read multiple Objectivist books and read lots of other material. I can make generalizations about Objectivists which are well informed, and if they are considered stereotypes based on some vacuous generalization about the morality of stereotypes rather than actual knowledge of my experience with Objectivists, I will briefly humor you and later ignore you.
There is nothing implicitly wrong with generalizations. Nuances can be explicated by further discussion.
"I will briefly humor you and later ignore you."
ReplyDeleteWell of that isn't intolerant and closed-minded, what is?
The only difference between you and me is, I don't blame your habit of "briefly humoring and then ignoring" people with whom you disagree as stemming from whatever ideology you have. I see it as stemming from your personality.
And assuming your objectivist siblings have adopted the same sort of "i'll briefly humor you and then ignore you" approach to communicating with other human beings, it's not because they're objectivist, but because you and they share that personality attribute.
"Briefly humoring and then ignoring" is the definition of a close-minded, non-curious, dogmatic personality. Whether you're objectivist or fundamentalist or the typical smarmy western liberal who gets all his ideas about the world from the daily show.
You're free to continue to do that, of course. But you're not free to have other people help you pretend your expressed intention is anything other than intolerant and close-minded.
no no, I got it. "Objectivists are intolerant and closed-minded. And I will briefly humor and then ignore anyone who disagrees with me."
ReplyDeletenice:).
Hahaha.... All you have done is pointed out that stereotypes are wrong without qualification, not that I have no evidence, or that most Objectivists are tolerant. Or that my statements have confused anyone. Forgive me, but unless you have something substantive to say other than to engage in linguistic gymnastics, I think you have confused the issue. I am inviting you to stop hiding behind language and to make substantive empirical claims influenced by evidence. Present the tolerant Objectivists. Show an example. Stereotypes are not inherently problematic.
ReplyDelete"All you have done is pointed out that stereotypes are wrong without qualification, not that I have no evidence, or that most Objectivists are tolerant."
ReplyDeleteActually, I've demonstrated that people who aren't objectivist can also be intolerant. which is the point. i'm not arguing that any particular percentage of objectivists is or is not intolerant. i'm arguing that the person calling objectivists intolerant is being quite intolerant about it:).
i've also shown that describing a person as "intolerant on the whole" is problematic because everybody is tolerant about some things and intolerant about others -- the only question is what we tolerate and what we don't tolerate.
and nobody has specified what objectivists are intolerant of, why they're intolerant of it, and why such intolerance is unacceptable.
which is the other point. really people only get upset about others being "intolerant" about things they think should be tolerated. so what are those things? what do objectivists not tolerate that should be tolerated?
no answer yet.
my original objection was lodged to your claim that labelling any large group of people struck you as remarkably incurious. That to me seemed to be a way of refusing to address whether the statement was correct or not, even if only in part,on the basis of evidence. If you have now confused this claim with one that you have now invented in your head that I am never closed-minded or something I know not what, feel free.
ReplyDeleteDear Xtra Laj:
ReplyDeleteSo pleased to make your acquaintance. As a moral reject myself, I feel a certain kinship with anyone whom the local guru can describe as “a close-minded, non-curious, dogmatic personality.” Apparently that makes you potentially “objectivist or fundamentalist or the typical smarmy western liberal”. Quite a broad ideological band that – but who am I to argue with so subtle a mind?
I myself have been identified by the guru as “a blowhard more concerned with looking like the smartest guy in the room than with making any sense” – quite a neat trick. And of course I am also fundamentally “dishonest”. After scanning our guru’s posts and then looking at this set of epithets, I’m tempted to take a page from Cyrano and reply: Thanks for introducing yourself. MY name’s Gordon.
Perhaps we ought to start a self help group: the MLA (Moral Lepers Anonymous). We can then reach out to the moral leper who still suffers.
I note that you have gotten into an exchange of posts with the guru. Be warned: if you want to have the last word, you’re going to be doing this for a long, long time. Not that that means that this man has any sort of compulsion to have the last word. No indeed. He believes in free will. So every one of those hundreds of last words were the result of rational consideration. Other people have OCD. He’s different.
I myself do not engage the guru directly – except for the occasional QED which I throw out there when he is being (a) characteristic and (b) especially nasty. But I’m long past debating with the guy. So, I’ve observed, are quite a few others. It seemed that more and more people are seeing the wisdom propounded many years ago by a Southern lady who said: “Never faht with a pig. Yuh both git durty – but the pig lahks it.”
"That to me seemed to be a way of refusing to address whether the statement was correct or not, even if only in part, on the basis of evidence."
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, I've demonstrated that the question is framed so as to be unanswerably vague:). What is an "intolerant" person, exactly? Somebody who disapproves of murder? Somebody who's intolerant of intolerance? Somebody who calls people on it when they lie?
You can't have any evidence of how many "intolerant people" are in any group, because the concept "intolerant people" is so vague it's impossible to meaningfully define.
Now if you were to say, "The majority of objectivists tend to be intolerant of collectivism," i'd respond, "no kidding. and the majority of collectivists tend to be intolerant of individualism. so what?"
But this whole "tolerance" charade is just designed to smear people in an undefined, unclear, irrefutable way. Because it doesn't mean anything unless you talk about _what_ they're intolerant of, and _why_ it's wrong to be intolerant of it.
fascinating to see social intimidation tactics and ostracism at work so nakedly. the posturing, the "i'm way past talking to him and more and more people are too" ... all while carefully avoiding the substance of what's actually being said. extraordinary, really.
ReplyDeleteOkay, ungtss.
ReplyDeleteA final note. Once and for all. Let’s talk about “social ostracism” and “social intimidation”.
Get it straight. This is a fantasy. There is no Vast Social Ostracism Conspiracy to Get Ungtss. I don’t do it. Nobody does it. If people are tired of you or exasperated by you, it’s not my doing. It’s yours. A lot of people are turned off by the things you say and – far more importantly – by the way you say them. Nobody’s spurring them on. They’re getting pissed off at you all by themselves, one at a time.
I remember one line from Ayn Rand that really impressed me. She said: don’t try to understand a folly, ask what it’s meant to accomplish. I ask myself: why this paranoid notion of a group effort at social intimidation? My answer goes something like this. When most of us notice we’re annoying a lot of people, we tend to ask: what am I doing wrong? Now the great thing about ideas like social ostracism and social intimidation is that you never have to ask what you’re doing wrong. You never have to do any self-criticism or self-evaluation. All you have to do is blame any sensed disapproval on that big conspiracy.
Are paranoid constructions really preferable to self-criticism? That’s sad. Really sad. But it’s your own business. And at bottom, I really don’t care. So let’s get down to cases.
Understand clearly. I don’t want to turn anyone against you. In fact, I don’t want to have anything to do with you. For me your style of argument is utterly repulsive. If I had your assurance that you would never comment on any of my posts, I’d be happy as a clam. Certainly I have zero interest in commenting on yours.
Go ahead. Have the last word. Make it just one word: Agreed.
It cracks me up that my comment that "in general, Objectivists are remarkably incurious" has spawned so much heated debate.
ReplyDeleteI would think that "in general" would have made it self-evident that I knew I was generalizing, and yes, I know the dangers of stereotyping, etc., don't need lectures, thank you.
I find it especially hilarious that ungtss seems to have taken this particular generalization so personally, since it wasn't even directed at him. So let me clarify that I consider ungtss an outlier on the Objectivist-curiosity bell curve. Most Objectivists would not even bother to read this blog; they dismiss it out of hand as obviously misguided and/or evil -- just based on the title. So whatever disagreements I may have with him, and they are many, ungtss at least has shown up and is trying to participate, and I'll give him some credit for that.
One other quick comment before I go back to real life.
ReplyDeleteI find it ironic that ungtss is complaining about stereotyping now. In the first exchange I had with him, I posed a hypothetical involving a person who needed medical treatment but could not afford it. Without knowing anything else, his immediate response was to prounounce all sorts of moral judgments against this hypothetical person -- they must have a character defect, anyone who would be in such a position is a loser, he knows because he encountered some cases in his job, and on and on.
So ungtss, before you get on others for stereotyping and dehumanizing and whatever else you claim has been done to you, maybe you should start with the man in the mirror.
"Get it straight. This is a fantasy. There is no Vast Social Ostracism Conspiracy to Get Ungtss."
ReplyDeletenobody said there was. it's just you.
" I don’t do it. Nobody does it. If people are tired of you or exasperated by you, it’s not my doing. It’s yours. A lot of people are turned off by the things you say and – far more importantly – by the way you say them. Nobody’s spurring them on. They’re getting pissed off at you all by themselves, one at a time."
Notably, there's no evidence here. Just you, telling me "how it is." As though you hold any personal credibility.
By contrast, let me tell you what ostracism and social intimidation look like: telling other people that talking to the target is useless, and that fewer and fewer people are doing it because they realize he's a jackass. that's what you just did. it doesn't refer to anything i actually said. it's a purely social story.
so there it is, gordon. i'm identifying evidence. you're just telling me "how it is," based on nothing but personal credibility you don't have.
"why this paranoid notion of a group effort at social intimidation?"
and again, nobody said it was any sort of group effort. just you. pretending you're a group.
"Understand clearly. I don’t want to turn anyone against you."
haha this reminds me of the narcissist in chief's habit of prefacing every baldfaced lie with "Let me be clear."
"Go ahead. Have the last word. Make it just one word: Agreed."
This is my favorite theme of yours. I'm somehow obsessed with the last word by virtue of the fact that i respond to people who address me. But you, in responding, are not.
"I find it ironic that ungtss is complaining about stereotyping now. In the first exchange I had with him, I posed a hypothetical involving a person who needed medical treatment but could not afford it. Without knowing anything else, his immediate response was to prounounce all sorts of moral judgments against this hypothetical person -- they must have a character defect, anyone who would be in such a position is a loser, he knows because he encountered some cases in his job, and on and on. "
If you recall, what i asked was "how did this person get to this place where he has no opportunity, no friends, can't do anything, and can't get charitable care?" That's not a stereotype, but a question. I then illustrated exactly how hard it is to become completely helpless in this country, by showing exactly how many things a person has to do wrong to get there.
that was not a stereotype, but an illustration. a person has no friends to help him? why? he is incapable of finding work? why? no family? why? charity won't take him? why?
that's a far cry from a stereotype. it's examining a hypothetical.
in fact, the point of examining the hypothetical was to illustrate that there are very very few such people, if any, and anybody who fits that profile must be something else.
ReplyDeleteit's about a specific profile of a hypothetical person who for some reason has no abilities, no savings, no friends, no family, and no ability to go to charity. i'm pointing out that such a person is by definition going to be quite an outlier. how on earth is that a stereotype?
Gordon,
ReplyDeleteGood to meet you. I am actually a long time reader of this blog. I stopped posting in part because it was time consuming and in part because arguments are often done online in more linguistic than substantive ways.
I have followed ungtss long enough to see how he argues. I just wanted to make the point that stereotypes can be well informed and can have different degrees of correctness. To weasel out of the need to provide evidence that a stereotypesl may be true by simply casting aspersions on stereotypes is bad form.
Good luck!
except i'm not "casting aspersions on stereotypes in general," i'm showing how this particular stereotype is vacuous. gordon, for instance, is intolerant of me. is that a good thing or a bad thing? depends on your values. everybody's intolerant of some things. the only question is whether those are the right things.
ReplyDeletethis is not evading. this is making a point. the lack of a response tells me it's hitting home.
people call other people "intolerant" when the other people are intolerant _of them_. they don't notice intolerance that's not directed at them, notwithstanding the fact that it's all over the place.
ReplyDeleteas non-objectivists, you would of course experience a great deal of intolerance when speaking with objectivists that you wouldn't experience when speaking with people whose ideas line up more closely with your own.
it would be ludicrous, however, to judge them as more _intolerant_ than others simply because they're more intolerant _of you_ than others.
Yes Xtra Laj, I had noticed your posting before - and you're right: the whole thing can indeed be time consuming.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'll find occasion to contribute in future. There are many sharp contributors to this blog. I'll do my best to pay heed to them - and them only.
Ungtss,
ReplyDeleteI am posting from a cell phone (and have been all this while hence my inability to quote your responses and keep you fairly honest). The simplest way to show that you are not intolerant (and I do this often) is to describe your opponent's position in terms he would agree with, nuances and all. You don't have to agree with the position - you just have to show that you understand and can defend the argument competently. My guess is that your inability to understand this point leads you to confuse disagreement with intolerance. They are clearly not the same. Even if I do not agree with Objectivists, I can admit that there are some advantages to thinking that avoids understanding the opponent with empathy. I can also defend the Objectivist position on many issues with some skill, even if I do disagree with it. The same could be said for many of the posters here.
Rand often failed to understand or describe her opponent's position in terms they would accept. Hence you see her confusing determinism with the to choose, rather than tackling the issue which Spinoza and Schopenhauer amongst others posed of whether a choice has determinants that necessitate it. In fact, Rand believed so strongly that ideas determined choices that she might have been a determinist of sorts given what she thought a choice said about a person's ideas and vice versa.
However, so many Objectivists take Rand's framing of an issue as correct and it prevents them from understanding alternate perspectives, talk less of truly disagreeing with them, as it is hard to disagree with what you do not understand.
now that's potentially valuable information! i think we've switched from "tolerance" to something more like "willingness to empathize and understand." these are two different things.
ReplyDeleteone can show tolerance by empathizing, but one may also show tolerance without empathizing and understanding.
for instance, "i don't really understand what you're saying, nor do i care, but go right ahead and believe it."
so in any event, you've shifted the topic from "objectivists are intolerant" to "objectivists caricature their opponents and refuse to understand them." at least we're on more solidly "wrong" ground.
but it still faces a similar problem to your "tolerance" argument. who decides what's a caricature? when you describe rand in a particular way, is that an accurate description, or a caricature? are you understanding and defending her argument, or not?
you seem to think so. but does anybody else?
in your case, i have every reason to believe you can understand, and effectively defend ideas you disagree with. i haven't found you to be dishonest. but it seems to me gordon absolutely refuses to do so, and simply relies on the most obvious lies, misrepresentations and strawmen to try and concoct and illusion of his own mastery of the subject matter.
so statistically, are objectivists any worse about framing their opponents than non-objectivists? i'm not sure how this could be determined or measured. i find most non-objectivists think of rand as advocating "stomping all over people." to me, that appears to be a straw man, as i think she advocated exactly the opposite. you might disagree about what she advocated, i guess. but any "study" on who's more involved in straw men is going to have to assume a certain standard. which is going to make any mass study on the topic difficult or impossible.
that's why i think it's better to avoid generalizing, and instead to focus on particular people. you're clearly a different person than gordon is. you think in fundamentally different ways. and that difference -- not any unsubstantiated unqualified unperformed surveys -- is interesting to me.
"Rand believed so strongly that ideas determined choices that she might have been a determinist of sorts given what she thought a choice said about a person's ideas and vice versa."
ReplyDeleteThis is very true. In this regard, it's important to distinguish in Rand's thinking between the whole raft of low level "choices" that we all make every day, and the primary choice which drives everything: volition.
Rand believes that, strictly speaking, the only true choice anyone can make is: to think or not to think. In her philosophy (and psychology!), all follows from that one basic choice.
Once you start thinking (about philosophical issues at least), the facts of reality can lead you to one and only one result: hers. If you don't accept her positions, it can only be because you have stopped thinking. You are evading. Or as d'Anconia put it, there is only one evil thought: the refusal to think. It’s the basis for Rand’s famous (or infamous) statement that what she sought from people was: reasoned agreement.
Note that this amounts to equating philosophical demonstration with mathematical demonstration. You don’t choose whether to believe in the Pythagorean Theorem: you just follow the logic, then assent. Arriving at a philosophical system that does what math does is a philosophical dream that goes all the way back to Plato. Rand is no more successful at this than anyone else has been: to say the least, developing theorems that are necessarily true of lines, points and circles on a flat surface is less demanding than developing theorems that apply to the whole universe.
There are many destructive notions in Objectivism, but the whole concept of evasion is one of the worst. The idea that anyone who disagrees with your positions is literally not thinking is a virtual guarantee that no debate can be possible. This goes far beyond mere disagreement with an opposing view. It encourages the sort of lockstep conformity on the part of doctrinaire Objectivists which is behind the Randroid label.
Note too that this is a psychological claim as well as a philosophical one. It commits one to the view that everyone who disagrees with Objectivist tenets must be “evading” and is therefore by definition evil. And by everyone I mean everyone: Rand is not just talking about the Taliban.
It doesn’t take much exposure to people with different political and philosophical beliefs to realize how crazy this viewpoint as. It can only be sustained by really determined – evasion? :)
Dealing in particular people is important bit relatively uninteresting uinless you deal with those people repeatedly. Generalization, when informed by experience and analysis, is the gold we seek. To reject that gold because it may have impurities is not the way of modern man, who accepts error as a stepping stone to greater and better refined knowledge.
ReplyDeleteWhen generalizations are uninformed or naive, we may have a problem. But it must all be placed in the context of the problem being solved. So at least, I find that my proposal as a test of tolerance, while not synonymous with tolerance, was found agreeable to you. I do think you missed the part where I wrote that the description on the opponent's position must be in terms that the opponent must accept. Since I don't debate against the dead and I sure hope you do not, I mean that my statement of your position must be acceptable to you. Not my criticism of it, but my description of it.
This is not as hard as it seems - academics do it quite often. It is one of the reasons why people are asked to quote their opponents and explain what they think the opponent meant if there is any doubt.
Hopefully, that addresses your issue on who decides. So if I am debating you, I can show your position is tolerable to me from a debating perspective by embracing it, describing it in terms acceptable to you, and possibly addressing some trivial criticisms that it withstands.
Now are Objectivists worse at doing this than most people who are not Objectivists? This is shifting the goalposts quite a bit. For one, Objectivists tend to be individuals of above average intelligence. Many Objectivistss dicuss issues that most people who are not similarly intelligent barely care about or have the capacity to discuss without wasting important time.
The question is why Objectivists often express strong convictions to the point of making out people they disagree with to be idiots on
1) matters they have hardly studied like human psychology or quantum mechanics.
2) matters they should know are largely subjective like music and the arts.
3) issues that cannot be resolved by simple tests and therefore will maintain enough complexity and ambiguity to allow for multiple perspectives, even when one answer is possibly the right one.
If you notice, issues 1 and 2 are related to 3. In fact, 3 is not something that plagues Objectivists exclusively. But for people who are advocates of reason, it is troubling to see it show up again and again.
“The question is why Objectivists often express strong convictions to the point of making out people they disagree with to be idiots on
ReplyDelete1) matters they have hardly studied like human psychology or quantum mechanics.
2) matters they should know are largely subjective like music and the arts.
3) issues that cannot be resolved by simple tests and therefore will maintain enough complexity and ambiguity to allow for multiple perspectives, even when one answer is possibly the right one.
If you notice, issues 1 and 2 are related to 3. In fact, 3 is not something that plagues Objectivists exclusively. But for people who are advocates of reason, it is troubling to see it show up again and again.”
Probably for the same reason many non-objectivists express strong convictions about things they have no idea bout – because they heard somebody say something that sounds smart, and heard that person say it like it was self-evident, and they’re simply aping that opinion without considering it.
I’m sure this happens in objectivism. I know it also happens outside objectivism. So for me the interesting variable is not whether a person is an objectivist or not, but whether they think for themselves or simply ape what they’ve heard. In my experience, this character trait is independent of ideology:). You’re not doing it, that’s clear. But I’m pretty sure I’m pretty sure I’m not either:).
That’s why when it comes to generalizations, I find that they must be based on the proper variables. And I don’t think you’d disagree with that. The question is whether “being objectivist makes you such and such” is a meaningful generalization, or “aping what you’ve heard because you want to sound smart.” I think the latter is much more useful.
For example, Gordon’s most recent shenanigan: claiming that “Rand believes that, strictly speaking, the only true choice anyone can make is: to think or not to think. In her philosophy (and psychology!), all follows from that one basic choice.”
Rand of course would not agree with that remotely. She recognized that thinking could result in errors – she called them “errors of knowledge.” She would never say “if you choose to think you will automatically agree with me.” She would say “if you think you will learn, and in the long run, I think you’ll arrive at my conclusions.”
But Gordon runs around completely misrepresenting her ideas. Showing “intolerance” by your standard:).
i'm also struck by how he misrepresents rand as having believed that "disagreement = evasion." which is nonsense of course. disagreement can be honest or dishonest. the difference is in the process. as you describe, Xtra, if you articulate a person's views in terms that person would accept, you're not evading -- even if you disagree.
ReplyDeleteRand knew that. it's implicit and explicit throughout her work. disagreement is not evasion within objectivism. evasion is evasion wherever it shows up.
but see Gordon's in the midst of bona fide evasion. he doesn't want to deal with me as I am, or rand as she was. he refuses to. that's evasion.
"The question is why Objectivists often express strong convictions to the point of making out people they disagree with to be idiots. . ."
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned above, anyone who thinks that orthodox Objectivism leaves any room for philosophical disagreement - or even genuine exchange of views with competing intellectual positions - really needs to read Peikoff's essay "Fact and Value."
To be sure, the David Kelley contingent takes a different position. Trouble is, I think Peikoff's position is far more consistent with Ayn Rand's - both intellectually and emotionally. That's why he's ended up splitting with almost as many people as she did. . .
"Xtra, if you articulate a person's views in terms that person would accept, you're not evading -- even if you disagree.
ReplyDeleteRand knew that. it's implicit and explicit throughout her work."
Is it? Between like-minded people, perhaps, but for those Rand despises, I doubt there's one argument she states from the opposing side that actually resembles the opposing view, at least as they see it. Atlas Shrugged is a parade of strawmen, our heroes encountering such arguments as only the most extreme partisans might make - if even that.
Even if Rand believed in the principle, she doesn't seem to have exercised it herself. Possibly the most glaring example of this is her blaming of Kant for all of the woes of today's philosophies, without giving much evidence that she ever read one word of his writings. At best you could say that she grossly generalized Kant's views, but it seems more likely that she just heard a few things second-hand, disapproved, and then set out to condemn Kant based on a highly flawed impression straight from her own prejudices.
"At best you could say that she grossly generalized Kant's views, but it seems more likely that she just heard a few things second-hand, disapproved, and then set out to condemn Kant based on a highly flawed impression straight from her own prejudices."
ReplyDeleteWhen you read the Burns and Heller biographies, it becomes clear that Rand was very adept at "milking" people of their specialized knowledge - then giving the result her own occasionally wingy spin.
Thus, she drew much of her knowledge of political philosophy/American history from Isabel Paterson; philosophy from Peikoff and Barbara Branden; psychology from Nathaniel Branden; and economics from Allan Greenspan (supplementing other figures from the American right wing of the '30's and '40's).
When scholars finally get unrestricted access to the Ayn Rand Archives - if they ever do - I suspect they may find that Rand's actual reading and knowledge base was far narrower than her supporters imagine.
U: ""Xtra, if you articulate a person's views in terms that person would accept, you're not evading -- even if you disagree.
ReplyDeleteRand knew that. it's implicit and explicit throughout her work."
J: "Is it? Between like-minded people, perhaps, but for those Rand despises, I doubt there's one argument she states from the opposing side that actually resembles the opposing view, at least as they see it."
I think we're looking at two different issues -- a) whether ayn rand thought disagreement was evasion, and b) whether ayn rand consistently applied her recognition that disagreement is not always evasion.
I was talking about issue a. you're talking about issue b. On issue B, I agree with you that she did not always consistently apply the principle that disagreement is not evasion. But Gordon was making the much different claim that in the objectivist mind, disagreement is evasion, which is plainly untrue:).
To the extent Rand became increasing set in her ways and rigid as she got older, one ought not forget that that is, in fact, normal. Biologically, our neuroplasticity decreases as we enter old age. The woman was in her 50s for AS, and her 60s and 70s for her non-fiction.
Without saying that being rigid is okay, one can certainly recognize that being rigid is a common aspect of getting old. I see no reason, however, to blame her rigidity in later life on her ideas, any more than blaming my grandpa's rigidity in his leftist views in later life.
I'd like to add to the debate about how Rand handled dissent. Specifically, I think one should take a look at the book 100 Voices - which collects interviews from people who knew Ayn Rand.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, many interviewees report that she could be courtly and polite to Trotskyites, Liberals and others who clearly did not share her views. The implication would seem to be: if she was this nice to such people, surely she would be even nicer to those who shared at least some of her convictions. And this is just a half step away from concluding that people who say otherwise must be lying. This is a plausible but mistaken conclusion - and two quotes from McConnell's book show why:
First, there is the following remark from Richard Cornuelle: "I remember Ayn's belief that people were your adversaries in almost inverse proportion to their proximity to your position. She thought that people - like Taft - who seemed very much on our side but were willing to make exceptions, because of their apparent popularity, were worse than people who were utterly and elementally opposed to what we stood for." In practice, this of course meant that that those closest to her - the innermost Objectivist circle - had to be in complete lockstep with her in all particulars or face excommunication. For example, she split with the Blumenthals because of their musical and artistic preferences.
Even more revealing is the following from Harry Binswanger: 'She once said to me, "If I ever become very polite and calm and mild, that's the time for you to worry, because then I've lost all respect for you. If I'm angry at you, it's because I expect better of you, and I still care about you, I still respect you. But when that's gone, without that, when I'm just bored and polite, that's when you know I've lost all interest in you."' In short, if you think that Randian politesse is a sign of benevolence to all (rather than indifferent contempt), it's time for you to check your premises.
These quotes from Cornuelle and Binswanger are my best proof that the "positive" and "negative" accounts of Rand are not contradictory. Clearly Rand could be charming and enthralling. You don't need McConnell to find that out: you can read about it in Burns and Heller, as well as in the memoirs by the Brandens. But the negative accounts - of her intolerance, personal cruelty and emotional volatility - are also true. The key point is: the closer you got to Rand, the more personal autonomy you had to give up (just look up John Hospers' memoirs of her to see how that worked). What we have in these accounts are different sides of a complex and rather disturbing personality.
"Interestingly, many interviewees report that she could be courtly and polite to Trotskyites, Liberals and others who clearly did not share her views."
ReplyDeleteAnd what is "courtly and polite" if not tolerant? what exactly must an objectivist do to be "tolerant?" actually agree with those with whom they disagree?
"In short, if you think that Randian politesse is a sign of benevolence to all (rather than indifferent contempt), it's time for you to check your premises."
And why should a person not be entitled to indifferent contempt? Are we supposed to go out of our way to express approval of those we believe do harm in the world? what more can a person expect from his enemies than indifference?
"If I'm angry at you, it's because I expect better of you, and I still care about you, I still respect you."
This is a common approach among many people. Those who know people like this know it's a take-it-or-leave-it personality attribute. you either accept that a person is hardest on those they love the most, and enjoy the relationship, or you decide that's not the sort of relationship you want, and you move on.
For example, Gordon’s most recent shenanigan: claiming that “Rand believes that, strictly speaking, the only true choice anyone can make is: to think or not to think. In her philosophy (and psychology!), all follows from that one basic choice.”
ReplyDeleteRand of course would not agree with that remotely. She recognized that thinking could result in errors – she called them “errors of knowledge.” She would never say “if you choose to think you will automatically agree with me.” She would say “if you think you will learn, and in the long run, I think you’ll arrive at my conclusions.”
But Gordon runs around completely misrepresenting her ideas. Showing “intolerance” by your standard:).
Why is this a serious misrepresentation of her ideas? Could you cite the relevant passages that led you to your position?
the more interesting question to me is, what makes people like that? "Splitting" is a common psychological phenomenon in which a person comes to see phenomena in black and white, all-or-nothing terms. It's subconsciously triggered by anxiety, and therefore can come and go throughout life, or even throughout the day. In the case of people suffering from anxiety disorders, it can be chronic.
ReplyDeleteHer description of her view of people -- that if you're in you're in and it's hot and heavy, but if you're out you're out and she doesn't give a damn about you -- is consistent with splitting. which is consistent with an anxiety disorder. which is consistent with a number of her other oft-criticized foibles, such as chain-smoking (a well-recognized self-medication for anxiety), her tribalist approach to her close relationships, etc.
when ayn rand is understood through the lens of chronic anxiety, suddenly a lot of things come into focus.
but understanding her in that light would require treating her as a human being, rather than a caricature.
X: "Why is this a serious misrepresentation of her ideas? Could you cite the relevant passages that led you to your position?"
ReplyDeletehttp://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/errors_of_knowledge_vs_breaches_of_morality.html
U:
ReplyDeletehttp://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/errors_of_knowledge_vs_breaches_of_morality.html
Where do you think Gordon got his position from?
"Where do you think Gordon got his position from?"
ReplyDeleteMy current hypothesis about Gordon, open to revision based on evidence, is that he's a blowhard who makes up crap has he goes, and doesn't trouble himself about evidence. so the short answer to that question would be "his rectum."
“Where do you think Gordon got his position from?”
ReplyDeleteHi, Xtra Laj. I will ignore the guru’s bathroom graffiti and answer your question. Here are quotes from my post followed by relevant citations.
1) “Rand believes that, strictly speaking, the only true choice anyone can make is: to think or not to think. In her philosophy (and psychology!), all follows from that one basic choice.”
See the entry on Free Will in the Objectivist Lexicon. Specifically, and taken from Galt’s speech: “. . . [T]hat which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.”
2) Re “The idea that anyone who disagrees with your positions is literally not thinking”: see the citations on “Evasion” in the Objectivist Lexicon, where evasion is identified as man’s “basic vice, the source of all his evils.” To see how far this idea can be pushed, see Peikoff’s essay “Fact and Value.”
3) The issue of errors of knowledge vs. breaches of morality is irrelevant to the issues raised in my post. Of course Rand admitted that people could have errors in knowledge. There’s lots of evidence that she was prepared to talk through issues well into the wee hours with anyone who wanted to listen. However, as I stated in my post, she also was convinced that “Once you start thinking (about philosophical issues at least), the facts of reality can lead you to one and only one result: hers. If you don't accept her positions, it can only be because you have stopped thinking.” That’s the point of her statement that she was seeking reasoned agreement. And it’s the reason why she ended up splitting with so many independent minds.
If you check out the entry on errors of knowledge vs. breaches of morality, you’ll see that the whole concept of a breach of morality is directly dependent on the notion of evasion – i.e. the refusal to think.
4) There was nothing remarkable in my post. I was stating the Objectivist position on these matters. I know those positions very well indeed. I lived with them for many years. And I have no difficulty in telling when someone who is pretending to be an Objectivist does not know what the hell he is talking about. That is the case here.
you'll note, X, that Gordon has turned rand's idea that the choice to think is man's fundamental choice into his own ridiculous idea, that the choice to think is man's only choice. he doesn't have any support for this. doesn't even cite any. just turns x into y and smirks.
ReplyDeletebut the difference between the choice to think as man's fundamental choice versus his only choice is critical, because gordon is trying to turn this premise into an argument that "if you think, you'll agree with me."
but if you read the quote from galt's speech, you'll see she advocated the utmost patience with people who make mistakes while honestly thinking, but no patience for those who evade thinking.
but gordon doesn't want to see that, because he wants to believe rand thought if you think, you'll necessarily agree with her. he wants to blur "errors of knowledge" with "moral failures."
'cause that's how he rolls.
the whole plot of atlas shrugged is built around dagny and reardon making honest mistakes. they're her protagonists, but they're wrong on numerous issues at a fundamental level. they fight galt tooth and nail. but galt is consummately patient and tolerant of them. lets them discover for their own. because he knew -- and said -- you can't coerce people into agreement.
ReplyDeletefrom this, gordon gathers things that an average freshman in any college english course could see are not there.
"when ayn rand is understood through the lens of chronic anxiety, suddenly a lot of things come into focus.
ReplyDeletebut understanding her in that light would require treating her as a human being, rather than a caricature. "
You mean, as she depicted her enemies?
In point of fact, I think everyone here treats Rand as human - ALL TOO HUMAN, fallible, flawed, capable of some fine things but just as capable of being a prejudiced jerk, too.
This, however, is at odds with the pedestal she is placed on by orthodox Objectivists. Treating her as actually human - human in the sense of humans as they exist all over the planet right now, good and bad, rather than the idealized uber-human Rand proposed as the baseline standard - would require taking her assertions with an economy-sized grain of salt.
"In point of fact, I think everyone here treats Rand as human - ALL TOO HUMAN, fallible, flawed, capable of some fine things but just as capable of being a prejudiced jerk, too."
ReplyDeleteI find that some do, but most want to villify her to the same extent someone might want to idealize her. it's just one caricature versus another.
real people have to be seen in context. and her context is fully available. an extremely intelligent woman, culturally isolated in a foreign country, speaking in her fourth language, living through wwi, a bolshevik revolution that shattered her family and life, and then living through wwii in the united states. in that context, her views become less those of a "prejudiced jerk" and more those of someone making sense of her world in the best way she knew how, and coming up with some pretty damn good ideas along the way.
i mean really. a woman? and russian immigrant? doing and saying what she did and said in the 30s through the 50s? she had more cajones than all of us combined. she was effing brilliant. and bold. and advanced a lot of ideas that we now take for granted.
ReplyDeletedid she have problems? sure. but i'd take her over gordon anyday.
Bold? Sure. Brilliant? Eh. I'll grant that she was brighter than a lot of folks, but she got too much stuff wrong for me to count her as "brilliant".
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as context goes, if we can excuse or smooth over her views as being understandable in light of her experiences and situations, can't we do the same for, well, everybody?
"Well, sure, he seemed like a murdering warlord, but taken in the context of his abusive childhood, his views were less about war and murder and more about just making sense of the world the only way he knew how..."
I mean, isn't that how people excuse their older racist relatives when they say something terribly offensive? "Oh, he's just a product of his times." Sure, but that doesn't grant them immunity.
Ungtss, no matter what you think of Gordon's interpretation, and in this case, I think he is largely justified, I am somewhat disappointed that you couldn't reference the passages that drove his interpretation. Peikoff has gone as far as saying that to save the world, one only has to think.
ReplyDeleteMost of us who seem to mostly criticize Rand do do in response to Objectivist hagiography. We accept that she was an important woman with some accomplishments in literature and some influence in 20 th century politics. However, too many people unacquainted with philosophy think she was very accomplished there.m after hearing the Objectivist version of things. Critics like Gordon should be understood in that context.
J: "And as far as context goes, if we can excuse or smooth over her views as being understandable in light of her experiences and situations, can't we do the same for, well, everybody?"
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to excuse or smooth them over, only to understand where they came from. if she's wrong, to understand why she was wrong. that means to understand her views of collectivism in the context of her having experienced collectivism at its most extreme, in russia, and less extreme, in wwii america.
for instance, we think she paints a caricature of collectivism. but were we there to see what she saw? maybe we should take a closer look at those time periods, and what she experienced and what she saw, before we assume she completely made it up?
in wwii america, of course, democratic president and collectivist roosevelt ordered all people of japanese descent into internment camps, and rationalized it as "evacuating and temporarily caring for them."
if you heard a president today say that, and had grown up among people making similar rationalizations to do much more horrible things, what would you think?
as to whether one can be brilliant and make mistakes, i think you're adopting the notion that thinking makes you right:). i don't agree with that. i think brilliant people make all sorts of mistakes. but it's the few gold nuggets they come up with that change history:). being smart does not guarantee you'll be right about everything. on the contrary, it means you have the guts to think about things nobody understands yet, which means you're likely to make a lot of mistakes along the way:).
"Ungtss, no matter what you think of Gordon's interpretation, and in this case, I think he is largely justified, I am somewhat disappointed that you couldn't reference the passages that drove his interpretation. Peikoff has gone as far as saying that to save the world, one only has to think."
I'm not sure why it's my job to cite things to support his case, particularly because i don't think anything does:). What's his job? To make claims citing things that don't support his case and then wait for me to cite things that do support his case?
As to that quote by peikoff, that's peikoff of course, not rand. and the answer to that nonsense is rand's character, dr. stadler, who tried to "save the world by thinking alone," which of course doesn't work. she repeatedly pounded away at the notion. i strongly suspect if rand had heard that quote, she would have disapproved angrily:).
"However, too many people unacquainted with philosophy think she was very accomplished there.m after hearing the Objectivist version of things. Critics like Gordon should be understood in that context."
I can understand your comments in that context, but not Gordon's.
Was she well accomplished in any objective sense? I'm not sure I know exactly what that means. I do think she came up with some intriguing contributions to philosophy -- not so much in purely original ideas, but more in refinements of old ideas advanced and held by people who hold her basic values. the idea of "rational self interest" is thousands of years old. but i think she refined it a great deal. etc.
ultimately, the question is one of "errors in knowledge" versus moral failures. all i see in her is a person genuinely, honestly, trying to figure it out. she may have made mistakes along the way, and failed to identify and eliminate certain contradictions. fine.
ReplyDeletebut she's remarkable in comparison to the overwhelming number of people who don't bother to think at all. who simply either a) repeat what they've heard without considering it, or b) like gordon, make fake arguments to try and sound smart.
those are the sorts of people that make me mad. to the extent rand made mistakes, at least she was trying. just like i'm trying. and i know you are.
"for instance, we think she paints a caricature of collectivism."
ReplyDeleteDo we? No, we think she paints a caricature of anyone whose viewpoint she strongly disagrees with - which may include collectivISTS, but also includes philosophers, scientists, teachers who (supposedly) espouse all these terrible anti-mind, anti-thought ideas, some of which sound vaguely like things one might have heard in real life, if you only had the most surface knowledge of the other side's arguments.
It's not that we have to understand her disdain for collectivism in the context of her early life in Russia, it's that if we hold the idea that knowing and understanding the arguments of the other side is a hallmark of intellectual non-evasion, then one is hard-pressed to find an example where it is obvious that Rand does indeed know and understand the actual arguments from the other side.
The example of Kant, again, because she seemed to have singled him out for particular contempt - but does she ever quote him directly? Has she pointed to his writings and said, "here is where his logic fails"?
In Atlas Shrugged, at the various times when one protagonist or another rails at the failure of "modern" intellectualism to properly educate children or the people, is there any such proposition or statement in the book that matches a real-life philosophical stance? Particularly as the the proponents of such a stance see it?
Hardly. At best they are grossly distorted; at worst nobody ever said anything remotely close to such a thing. Which is fine for a work of fiction, where you can postulate a time where most folks have adopted wild ideas, but not so good for a work of philosophy that assumes people think those ways now, here, in real life.
"as to whether one can be brilliant and make mistakes, i think you're adopting the notion that thinking makes you right:). i don't agree with that. i think brilliant people make all sorts of mistakes. but it's the few gold nuggets they come up with that change history:)."
Sure, brilliant people make mistakes. But the difference between Rand and, say, Einstein, is that Einstein could be persuaded that he had made a mistake, and that he also worked in an environment where his work was subjected to scrutiny by his peers specifically to double-check for such errors. By comparison, Rand insulated herself from criticism and did not seem to confess to many mistakes, if any.
Espoused features of Objectivism are also its flaws: pride/hubris in combination with dogged certainty. Such that, if one makes a mistake, one grips onto that mistake and justifies it, rather than discard a wrong idea.
As to that quote by peikoff, that's peikoff of course, not rand. and the answer to that nonsense is rand's character, dr. stadler, who tried to "save the world by thinking alone," which of course doesn't work. she repeatedly pounded away at the notion. i strongly suspect if rand had heard that quote, she would have disapproved angrily:).
ReplyDeleteWhile the word "think" is superficially similar in both contexts (free will vs. Stadler), there are differences in the senses in which they are used, one being about focusing, the other being used to attack theoretical physics.
Was she well accomplished in any objective sense? I'm not sure I know exactly what that means. I do think she came up with some intriguing contributions to philosophy -- not so much in purely original ideas, but more in refinements of old ideas advanced and held by people who hold her basic values. the idea of "rational self interest" is thousands of years old. but i think she refined it a great deal. etc.
How much moral philosophy have you read and how do you know how original her contributions are?
"Espoused features of Objectivism are also its flaws: pride/hubris in combination with dogged certainty. Such that, if one makes a mistake, one grips onto that mistake and justifies it, rather than discard a wrong idea."
ReplyDeleteJzero, thanks for that. A useful and suitably pointed remark. Not that it's going to do any good. . .
j:
ReplyDelete“Do we? No, we think she paints a caricature of anyone whose viewpoint she strongly disagrees with - which may include collectivISTS, but also includes philosophers, scientists, teachers who (supposedly) espouse all these terrible anti-mind, anti-thought ideas, some of which sound vaguely like things one might have heard in real life, if you only had the most surface knowledge of the other side's arguments.”
I ran into this interesting question before – the question of whether she’s painting everyone she disagrees with into a corner, or whether she’s just describing a set of beliefs she actually believes are anti-life, anti-mind, and believes they are anti-life and anti mind for particular reasons, but is not making any claims about people who do not hold such ideas.
I don’t understand how anybody could gather from her writings, “anybody who disagrees with me on anything is anti-life.” I can easily understand how someone would gather from her writings, “if you believe this, you are holding an anti-life belief, and here’s why. I disagree with that position.”
In other words, the fact that a particular idea is “anti-life” is a separate question from whether rand thinks it’s wrong. The question of whether an idea is “anti-life” must be demonstrated on its own terms.
Whether she does it successfully is a second question. But the fact that she tries to is beyond dispute. She clearly defines the nature of an anti-life idea, and shows how premise leads to conclusion all the way down the line.
This would not smear “anybody who disagreed with her,” but only those who hold those ideas for those reasons.
“The example of Kant, again, because she seemed to have singled him out for particular contempt - but does she ever quote him directly? Has she pointed to his writings and said, "here is where his logic fails"?”
That’s a good point, to my knowledge she never quoted him. If I were to be charitable with her, I’d say it’s because kant’s books are not very quotable, in the sense that his writing style is not given to soundbites – his arguments are long, twisted, and hard to understand. Even people who like kant will acknowledge this fact:).
Myself, I have read kant. And while her analysis is certainly broad-brush, I don’t think it’s particularly inaccurate. He did set out, quite explicitly, to create a definition of morality that explicitly excluded anything humans want to do. And he did set out, quite explicitly, to define human understanding in a way that prevented humans from knowing things in themselves. Those were his goals. She disagreed strongly with those goals. So while she perhaps could have benefitted from a more detailed, credible analysis of kant’s work, rather than the broad brush strokes she used, I don’t think her broad brush strokes were necessarily wrong☺.
“In Atlas Shrugged, at the various times when one protagonist or another rails at the failure of "modern" intellectualism to properly educate children or the people, is there any such proposition or statement in the book that matches a real-life philosophical stance? Particularly as the the proponents of such a stance see it?”
We must have gone to different schools:). The one thing that struck me most when I read AS after college was exactly how accurately it portrayed the intellectual environment I was so happy to escape:).
“By comparison, Rand insulated herself from criticism and did not seem to confess to many mistakes, if any.”
That’s probably a fair criticism, at least toward the end of her life. But to the extent she made that mistake, her characters in her books did not. On the contrary, even her heros made mistakes, and learned from them. And that is her philosophy – her own personal foibles notwithstanding.
So to the extent she didn’t live up to her own ideals, I’d say, “that does not invalidate the ideals themselves.”
"While the word "think" is superficially similar in both contexts (free will vs. Stadler), there are differences in the senses in which they are used, one being about focusing, the other being used to attack theoretical physics."
ReplyDeleteActually, i think the stadler version of think was to attack "thought detached from practical action." whether theoretical physics fits that bill is a second question. She lionized galt's understanding of theoretical physics, because it was combined with practical action in the context of voluntary trade. so i don't think it's fair to say she was attacking theoretical physics, so much as attacking the wish to insulate theory from practice.
which is of exactly what one would gather from peikoff's rather silly motto. "thinking" won't save shit. thinking, making mistakes, learning, and applying your knowledge is your best shot.
"How much moral philosophy have you read and how do you know how original her contributions are?"
I'm fairly well read in moral philosophy ... obviously it's possible that some of the ideas i consider to be original are not, if i haven't found those source materials. are you aware of any precursors for her fundamental tenets?
G:
ReplyDelete"Jzero, thanks for that. A useful and suitably pointed remark. Not that it's going to do any good. . ."
I had assumed that remark was general, and not pointed at me. J has consistently shown himself to be above that sort of nonsense. Feel free to let me know if i should be offended, J, or if, as i suspect, G is reading insults into your comment that you didn't intend.
Jzero:
ReplyDelete>In point of fact, I think everyone here treats Rand as human - ALL TOO HUMAN, fallible, flawed, capable of some fine things but just as capable of being a prejudiced jerk, too...This, however, is at odds with the pedestal she is placed on by orthodox Objectivists.
Correct. She also became a caricature of herself, as people surrounded by groupies and flunkies so often do. Her critics didn't do it first; she did.
Also, "brilliant" and "most important philosopher of the past 2000 years" are not at all the the same thing. We will cheerfully concede the former but consider the latter a ridiculous claim. Yet it is frequently made by Objectivists - in fact it is one of their core beliefs, and one that Rand herself encouraged.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>"Splitting" is a common psychological phenomenon in which a person comes to see phenomena in black and white, all-or-nothing terms...when ayn rand is understood through the lens of chronic anxiety, suddenly a lot of things come into focus.
On the other hand, "black-and-white thinking" is also a well-known thought-control principle that helps shape people around specific doctrines. Objectivism actually contains, intentionally or not, a good number of such cultic incitements. Once understood through that lens, suddenly a lot of things come into focus too.
Xtra Laj:
ReplyDelete>It is better to understand as people have done here the source of the closed-mindedness of Objectivists.
If you go reasonably deep, you can look at it the way Bill Bartley does, in that the Western tradition is dogmatic attachment vs the Eastern tradition of detachment (neither are necessarily correct). Objectivism is a quite typical example of example of Western dogmatism.
Looking a bit more proximately for the cause, I look at Robert Clifton's Eight Criteria For Thought Reform" and I count at least six, maybe more, in the Objectivist movement.
We can conjecture about how they got there, by accident or design or a bit of both. But there seems to be enough evidence in Rand's and her followers' writing to suggest it mostly wasn't mere powerful personalities distorting an innocent text, but are real problems baked into the doctrine.
I will also add that Rothbard's Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult lays out the issues that seem to completely perplex ungtss quite clearly; namely that movements can have exoteric and esoteric sides, and that these can be quite opposite in nature; and the dominance of the latter in actually-existing practice merely illustrates that the former was never really viable in the first place. This was the precisely case with the Communists.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I read The Communist Manifesto in great detail, and was unable to find any recommendations about gulag archipelagos, state terror, and relentless grinding poverty. In fact it was the opposite: it was all about human liberation! Therefore the problems with communism in practice must be due to Marx, Lenin, and Stalin's personal foibles, not to mention the unfair generalisations of communism's critics..
ReplyDelete"I will also add that Rothbard's Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult lays out the issues that seem to completely perplex ungtss quite clearly; namely that movements can have exoteric and esoteric sides, and that these can be quite opposite in nature; and the dominance of the latter in actually-existing practice merely illustrates that the former was never really viable in the first place. This was the precisely case with the Communists."
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair and interesting comparison. rhetorically effective in this context.
I guess as someone who has had zero contact with "the movement," i'm much more interested in the application of the ideas to my life as an individual. and as far as that goes, i've seen an enormous amount of success, personally, without any culting.
but it might be that i've modified objectivism in exactly the ways that would be necessary to avoid those abuses, based on my prior experiences with straight-up cults.
the issue is, though, when you read communist manifesto, it's possible to identify where the errors in logic lead. for instance, the reification of the "proletariat" is a fallacy, because no large group of people have a unified will. thus this reification is necessarily a cover for the coming to power of a small group of people empowered to speak for this "proletariat."
if objectivism has similar fallacies that lead inevitably to similar perversions, what are they, specifically? the bulk of what i've heard thusfar is merely misrepresentations of what she actually said, and when the misrepresentations are countered, i meet with silence. i'd like to hear something else for a change.
“Rothbard's Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult lays out the issues that seem to completely perplex ungtss quite clearly; namely that movements can have exoteric and esoteric sides, and that these can be quite opposite in nature.”
ReplyDeleteThat’s certainly true when it comes to the oft-quoted statement by Hugh Akston in Atlas Shrugged extolling intellectual independence – versus the reports of intellectual totalitarianism from people eventually expelled from Ayn Rand’s inner circle.
Anyone who wants to see this in action should read John Hospers’ account of his time with Ayn Rand. He was a professional philosopher, fascinated by her and interested in probing her views. But after more than two years of discussions, he began to see that a genuine exchange of views with Rand was not sustainable. He writes:
“The more time elapsed, the more the vise tightened. I could
see it happening;I hated and dreaded it; but knowing her personality, I saw no way to stop it. I was sure that something unpleasant would happen sooner or later. The more time she expended on you, the more dedication and devotion she demanded. After she had (in her view)dispelled objections to her views, she would tolerate no more of them. Any hint of thinking as one formerly had, any suggestion that one had backtracked or still believed some of the things one had assented to previously, was greeted with indignation,impatience, and anger. She did not espouse a religious faith, but it was surely the emotional equivalent of one.”
The blow-up came when he invited her to give a paper on her aesthetics to an academic audience – and ventured what he thought were mild criticisms:
“I did not intend to be nasty. My fellow professors at the conference thought I had been very gentle with her. But when Ayn responded in great anger, I could see that she thought I had betrayed her. She lashed out savagely, something I had seen her do before but never with me as the target. Her savagery sowed the seeds of her own destruction with that audience.”
Then later:
“[A]fter the evening's events were
concluded, and by previous invitation I went to Ayn and her husband Frank's suite in the hotel, I saw that I was being snubbed by everyone from Ayn on down. The word had gone out that I was to be (in Amish terminology) ‘shunned.’ Frank smiled at me, as if in pain, but he was the only one. When I sensed this, I went back to my room. I was now
officially excommunicated. I had not so much as been informed in advance. It was all over. In the wink of an eye.
“So now a two-and-a-half-year friendship was at an end. It had come with such suddenness, I couldn't quite handle it at first. The long evenings with Ayn were now a thing of the past. I was now the one to feel a sense of betrayal.
“But my pain was not entirely unmixed with relief. The pressure had been mounting, and certain tensions between us had been increasing steadily. Being forced to choose between friendship and truth as I saw it (even if I saw it mistakenly), was not my way of conducting intellectual life. I would sooner or later have had to escape from the vise, I reflected. Perhaps it was better this way, with an outside event precipitating the break. Sooner or later, probably sooner, I would have been too explicitly frank or honest, and
she would have had an angry showdown with me, and that would have been that. Or so I told myself. At any rate, along with the pain and the desolation, I felt a sense of release from an increasing oppressiveness, which had been inexorably tightening.”
A sad story. But an enlightening one.
Incidentally, you’re making a big mistake if you think that the problem here is Ayn Rand’s personality rather than her philosophy. She’s been dead for 30 years and the same stuff is still happening at the Ayn Rand Institute.
The rest of Hospers’ memoir is equally fascinating. He had a discussion with Rand about determinism which people following this blog would probably be most interested to read.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>if objectivism has similar fallacies that lead inevitably to similar perversions, what are they, specifically?
I always say, solve one problem at a time. I also prefer to identify any common ground first and foremost, as people can quibble over anything.
So, let's identify and agree on the fallacies first, then discuss their likely consequences. A good overview of Greg's and my own views of the fallacies of Objectivism, obviously, here.
This will save us having to debate it all out piecemeal in real time only to discover we have much in common, as is often the outcome. So it's a win/win.
Once you've read it, if you haven't already, tell us what you agree are the fallacies in Objectivist doctrine and what you think aren't.
Then we have at least some common ground to examine what the consequences of Rand's ideas might be.
my leisure reading is limited to audiobooks these days i'm afraid:). y'all really should get your book up on audible. i'll keep watching here, though, for a fallacy that's actually a fallacy:). so far all i've seen are fallacies that stem from a failure to understand what's being said:).
ReplyDeletegordon, do you really think taking one person's side on an interpersonal conflict is a rational way to understand what happens? a person who says "i didn't mean to offend her, but she was really mad, and i got shunned?" really? i mean when you were in jr. high, did you just take one grouchy, whiny teenager's side of a fight and assume it was all there was to the story?
that's preposterous of course. every story has two sides. for every overbearing uptight celebrity, there's a simpering tagalong who uses somebody else's fame to get attention, and then goes one step to far.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>my leisure reading is limited to audiobooks these days i'm afraid:)
Really?? You seem to have plenty of time to read and reply to comment threads. Just sayin'. Hey, and it's even free to read online.
My recommendation would be that your time would be better invested in trying to understand at least the fundamentals of the ARCHN criticism rather than fumbling around in this rather scattershot, pedantic approach you're currently attempting. By looking a bit deeper, you might surprise yourself by finding many underlying points of agreement.
You might also find that the more seriously you take your opponent's point of view, the more seriously they take you.
But of course how you ultimately choose to spend your time is up to you...;-)
"You might also find that the more seriously you take your opponent's point of view, the more seriously they take you."
ReplyDeleteWell said.
"Really?? You seem to have plenty of time to read and reply to comment threads. Just sayin'. Hey, and it's even free to read online."
ReplyDeleteThanks to the glory of smartphones, i'm able to read and respond wherever i am, within a matter of seconds, in between regular life. that is of course different from sustainedly sitting down with a book. i have a four year old:). but audiobooks are doable, because i can multitask. today, for instance, i listened to "poor economics" for 6 hours while on the roof repairing my swamp cooler, and took 2 minute breaks periodically to read and respond to this:).
but where's it free online? i might be able to pump it through some text to speech software.
"My recommendation would be that your time would be better invested in trying to understand at least the fundamentals of the ARCHN criticism rather than fumbling around in this rather scattershot, pedantic approach you're currently attempting."
That's fair enough. Although I suspect the original posts around here give a fair taste of the argument -- otherwise what are they here for?
"You might also find that the more seriously you take your opponent's point of view, the more seriously they take you."
I'm not particularly interested in being taken seriously:). i'm interested in learning. but i do think that to the extent ARCHN wants to be taken seriously (and as a book and blog, that seems like a reasonable goal) it ought to spend a little more time and effort understanding the nuances of rand's thought:). i'm learning a great deal here, but it's primarily from parsing through errors:).
as to gordon's echoing your sentiment, perhaps he's capable of understanding that his unwillingness to take me seriously might have some effect on my willingness to take him seriously:).
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>if objectivism has similar fallacies that lead inevitably to similar perversions, what are they, specifically?
For example, there is one you have identified yourself: "black and white" thinking, which you consider the result of "anxiety disorders".
A good expression of this basic fallacious tendency which pervades Objectivism is Rand's Cult of Moral Grayness". This tendency is also the source of fallacious metaphors such as the oft used but erroneous food/poison one (which is in fact about degree, or "grayness", rather than kind).
Incidentally, the philosophical as opposed to psychological description of this fallacy is usually called "rationalism".
ReplyDeleteARCHN is free to read on line at the link provided.
ReplyDeleteNow we're onto something! The question is whether these ideas of hers cause black and white thinking, reflect subconscious black and white thinking, both, or something else?
ReplyDeleteAs to whether anxiety causes splitting, that's not me, that's just a fact.
But does the fact that splitting can cause us to split inappropriately mean that there are no blacks or whites? i don't think so. i think that the appropriateness or inappropriateness of our splitting must be evaluated according to objective criteria.
bold blooded rape and murder, for instance. should we view it in "grey" terms? i don't think so. i think it really is black, on objective, moral terms.
so from that perspective, i think her argument against an all-encompassing moral greyness is actually quite sound.
could this argument be used to rationalize subconscious and _inappropriate_ splitting? i bet in absolutely could, and is.
and perhaps that's something worth thinking about -- regardless of the merits of her arguments, the degree to which they provide fodder for rationalizing destructive behavior. i think an article like that absolutely could.
but i also don't think it needs to. the article itself explains that many cases are morally mixed, and that understanding the mixture is critical to understanding the situation. that is, in essence a call not to split:).
whether a person is capable of doing that in the heat of the moment is another question.
but i don't see this argument as fallacious, only as potentially misused.
how do you see it as fallacious on logical and/or philosophical grounds?
it's telling me it's $4 to read online:).
ReplyDelete>and perhaps that's something worth thinking about -- regardless of the merits of her arguments, the degree to which they provide fodder for rationalizing destructive behavior. i think an article like that absolutely could....but i also don't think it needs to. the article itself explains that many cases are morally mixed, and that understanding the mixture is critical to understanding the situation. that is, in essence a call not to split:).
ReplyDeleteExcellent. Now I will invite you to once again meditate on the gaps between exoteric - the image that is projected - and esoteric - the way things actually work - doctrines, and how they are papered over. This is often by way of "magic asterisk" clauses, such as the one Rand inserts into that essay (which I should note the link only excerpts). Exoteric doctrine: Compromise is EVIL!* Food and POISON means DEATH!* The middle is ALWAYS EVIL!* THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE IN MORALITY*
*Actually, life is really complicated. Sometimes - hey, maybe quite a bit - gray is "permissible". It's kinda sorta ok. Context always has to be taken into consideration, and we all know how big a job understanding context can turn into...
That's basically the way Rand rolls. Big headlines, which seem to provide her and her followers with strong brand differentiation against other philosophies, then magic asterisks in the fine print that walk it all back again.
>it's telling me it's $4 to read online:).
ReplyDeleteRats, it's been a while since I looked at that site, they musta changed the rules.
interesting ... i can understand reading that as a magic asterisk ... i guess the way i read it, it's more of fighting a defined "bad," while recognizing a nuanced good.
ReplyDeletethe "bad" in this case are those who claim that nothing is really good or really bad, because all human action is mixed. i'm quite familiar with this position in the context of fundamentalist christianity, in which it is claimed that because we are all totally depraved from birth, no person is good, no action is good, unless god either "does" it or makes us do it.
on the secular side of the spectrum, you have the determinists (more of a big deal in her day than in ours), who claimed that morality is an illusion, because humans simply respond to stimuli in pavlovian fashion.
so what i hear her saying is "those guys are rotten -- there is an absolute right and wrong. but in recognizing right and wrong, we also need to recognize that life is complicated, and our actions and ideas are often morally mixed."
in essence, she blasts a fake "moderation," and then establishes a new one that is fundamentally different than the one she blasts.
but that's just my reading. i appreciate your explaining yours to me. i can definitely see how someone might read it that way.
sorry, determinists = behaviorists, hazards of typing quickly in the midst of real life:).
ReplyDelete"I ran into this interesting question before – the question of whether she’s painting everyone she disagrees with into a corner, or whether she’s just describing a set of beliefs she actually believes are anti-life, anti-mind, and believes they are anti-life and anti mind for particular reasons, but is not making any claims about people who do not hold such ideas."
ReplyDeleteThis is kind of a weird, tortured way to put it. I mean, she explicitly presents her ideas as objectively good (and in favor of life), and if your views are not for life - as she defines it - they are by default anti-life. One must therefore agree with Rand (which one will, eventually, if one is thinking "properly") or be of the only other position Rand allows you to have: anti-life (and reduced to an ugly, ineffectual caricature within the pages of Atlas Shrugged).
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. If she has a significant disagreement with you, you are automatically anti-life AND get painted into a corner.
That someone might say, "hold on, this 'anti-life' label you're saddling me with is complete nonsense and here's why" does not seem to be allowed as a viable possibility.
"I don’t understand how anybody could gather from her writings, “anybody who disagrees with me on anything is anti-life.”"
Well, you're slipping that ANYTHING in there, as if the argument is indeed that even the slightest disagreement about one's favorite color or any trivial matter could get one labeled "anti-life". And while Rand apparently, from anecdotal evidence, could dramatically resent some trivial disagreements, that's not the real argument being put forth.
"So while she perhaps could have benefitted from a more detailed, credible analysis of kant’s work, rather than the broad brush strokes she used, I don’t think her broad brush strokes were necessarily wrong☺."
Now - would a Kantian see it that way? Remember, the issue is not necessarily whether Rand's analysis is correct as YOU see it, but rather whether someone who endorses Kant (since Kant himself is unavailable) would agree with that assessment of Kant's work...
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other. If she has a significant disagreement with you, you are automatically anti-life AND get painted into a corner."
ReplyDeletethis is a really interesting issue for me. it seems to me as though we're reading her in opposite ways. you're saying if you disagree with her, you're anti-life. i'm saying if you're anti-life, she disagrees with you.
i'm trying to figure out how one would go about resolving this question. is her analysis of an idea as anti-life the effect or the cause? if indeed it is the effect, then such a label would be insane. but i don't think it is. and i don't think it's half a dozen. i think that "anti-life" is the cause, and "disagree with you" is the effect.
"Now - would a Kantian see it that way?"
I think a Kantian would agree that Kant's epistemology was indeed a "critique of reason" in the sense that it denied our ability to comprehend the noumenal world, and that a Kantian would agree that Kant's morality was indeed based solely on duty, and excludes all action people take out of desire, because he says so, repeatedly, in the metaphysics of morals.
a kantian would of course disagree with rand about whether his views are meritorious or not. but i can't imagine a kantian would disagree that those are, in fact, his views. they're about as explicit as possible.
Ungtss, since you go out of your way to explain away Rand's faults as being a function of her experiences, age etc., have you considered doing the same for Kant and if so, what was the result?
Deleteit's essentially the same as the difference between "i call you a fake because i don't like you" or "i don't like you because you're a fake." the latter seems so self-evident to me that the former doesn't even cross my mind. but there it is.
ReplyDeletehold the phone, this is primacy of consciousness vs. primacy of existence. primacy of existence says "this is, and therefore i feel this way about it." primacy of consciousness says "i fee this way about this, and therefore it is this."
ReplyDelete"This is kind of a weird, tortured way to put it. I mean, she explicitly presents her ideas as objectively good (and in favor of life), and if your views are not for life - as she defines it - they are by default anti-life. One must therefore agree with Rand (which one will, eventually, if one is thinking "properly") or be of the only other position Rand allows you to have: anti-life (and reduced to an ugly, ineffectual caricature within the pages of Atlas Shrugged)."
ReplyDeleteA good summary of both the moral stance of Atlas Shrugged and her own approach in real life - where it didn't work all that well.
Especially true is the notion that you will inevitably come to agree with her if you go on thinking.
I would challenge anyone to go through everything written about or by Ayn Rand and come up with one example - just one - where she admitted to a mistaken philosophical, political or aesthethic judgment. And I mean: from birth. Even her clear youthful attraction to Nietzsche gets rationalized away.
Yes, she enjoyed interminable philosophical debates - but only provided that they ended with her winning. Even mild disagreement at the end of this process would be enough to cast you into outer darkness. See the John Hospers account which I gave above. Or the Blumenthals, whose intellectual crime was enjoying Mozart and the Impressionists. . .
"Ungtss, since you go out of your way to explain away Rand's faults as being a function of her experiences, age etc., have you considered doing the same for Kant and if so, what was the result?"
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, Rand herself vehemently rejected explanations of this kind, which she regarded as deterministic. See her discussions on the issue with John Hospers.
"Ungtss, since you go out of your way to explain away Rand's faults as being a function of her experiences, age etc., have you considered doing the same for Kant and if so, what was the result?"
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure i've said anything about kant's personal faults, so i'm not sure where this came from. i certainly don't have any strong opinions about him, personally. i've only identified two of his fundamental ideas. which were in fact his ideas. whether or not those ideas are good or not, and whether or not he was a good person, haven't been put on the table.
that said, i think some of kant's work could be understood in terms of being raised by fundamentalist mystic parents, and possibly OCD, as i understand he was known to pace the town in exactly the same route on exactly the same schedule every day, which is consistent with OCD. OCD is also an anxiety disorder, btw.
"Incidentally, Rand herself vehemently rejected explanations of this kind, which she regarded as deterministic. See her discussions on the issue with John Hospers."
i think she left room for such explanations when she talked about how man's only choice with regard to philosophy was to develop one consciously or allow one to develop randomly, i.e. biologically.
even so, i think her "tabula rasa" argument would have been much better framed as "tabula animala." essentially, you are handed an animal body and mind, and the heroic act is to form a human out of it. this would have been much more consistent with what we know of psychology, and would have opened up an examination of the many hard-wired animal processes which can be overcome by deliberate effort, but must be identified to be overcome. latent anxiety being one of these.
"i think that "anti-life" is the cause, and "disagree with you" is the effect."
ReplyDelete"hold the phone, this is primacy of consciousness vs. primacy of existence. primacy of existence says "this is, and therefore i feel this way about it." primacy of consciousness says "i fee this way about this, and therefore it is this.""
I suppose it comes down to whether you believe such a thing as "anti-life" exists, as Rand puts it.
I don't. I find it to be one of Rand's more ludicrous assertions.
To me, it seems plain that Rand developed some strong emotional revulsions to various concepts, and "anti-life" (along with much of Objectivism itself) is an attempt to provide a "logical" justification for declaring such concepts evil.
After all, who would want it to be said of themselves that they are against life itself? If I detailed all the flaws of unfettered capitalism and started naming it Puppy Head Crushing, you could make the argument:
"I don't call you a Puppy Head Crusher because I disagree with you - I disagree with you because you ARE a Puppy Head Crusher!"
Rand doesn't just express disagreement with an issue, she frames it in such stark, binary terms that there is no meeting of the minds to be had. You are either for life (as Rand defines it), or you are for death. You don't want to be FOR DEATH, do you? That's BAD. You should reconsider your views.
That is a good point. That is the issue. As evidence for the existence of the anti- life attitudes, I'd point you to the people who shoot up elementary schools. And the ones who blow up the finish line at marathons. These actions serve no purpose except to destroy life. As do actions such as Jeffrey Dahmer's. The real question is, not whether some people are anti-life, but whether these particular ideas she identifies as antilife serve that purpose. Interestingly, the whole plot of her book is structured around exactly how difficult and unpleasant it is to accept this possibility. She clearly recognized how undesirable it was. And I certainly found it undesirable myself. It took me about 12 years to realize that she was right.
ReplyDelete