The Objectivist Account of Free Will is Nonsense

1. If consciousness is volitional, it can still be causal ­­- it is merely causal in the way that its nature requires, and the nature of the soul is to be able to choose what it will do and what its exact identity is. In this way, the soul can choose its cause, keeping intact causality because nothing is uncaused while supporting free will by means of the choice. The choice itself isn’t uncaused, either – it is caused by the nature of the soul. Everything does operate according to a fixed law – the law of identity – and this law demands that consciousness follows its identity and is volitional. There is no contradiction here. My opponent contends that it is in the nature of the soul to be free. However, he has not provided a sensible mechanism by which a soul's identity could lend itself to many different behaviors. If everything behaves according to it intrinsic nature, then two identical brains would have to behave identically. If my opponent appeals to the free nature of the soul to explain the difference, then my opponent must explain how the soul (and its nature) are not emergent through the brain, since the soul could not meaningfully determine the behavior of the brain if it were itself determined by the brain. If two physically identical brains produce different results, then the physical world is inadequate to explain all physical phenomena, in which case it is unwarranted to claim that wishes and whims cannot affect the physical universe, as Rand so often asserts is the case. If two identical souls choose different paths, then what could have accounted for it? If nothing accounted for it, then there is no reason that one choose one path and the other choose a different path, in which case their choice was random, and free will is out the window. If something accounts for it, then the situations are not identical, in which case we are not talking about identical minds - and since our minds are identical to our minds, it would be irrelevant to our situation as conscious beings. 2. Quoting Peikoff from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand: The principle of causality does not apply to consciousness, however, in the same way that it applies to matter. In regard to matter, there is no issue of choice; to be caused is to be necessitated. In regard to the (higher-level)actions of a volitional consciousness, however, “to be caused” does not mean “to be necessitated” If the soul exists in the way Rand describes, it is what it is. Nothing you can describe about neural connections or anything else can dispute the fact that the sum of them creates an entity with volition. This provision is unjustifiable, given that according to Rand, consciousness is the product of the brain, which is made of matter. An awareness that does not have to answer to the deterministic nature of its brain is a ghost, which, in keeping with its view of the relation between mind and matter, Objectivism would have to reject. 3. My opponent asks, foolishly, the following question: “If volition cannot in any way contradict the structure of the brain from which it arises, and if the brain must behave according to its intrinsic causal nature as determined by its material configuration (which must be fixed, since A is A) then where’s the freedom?” The correct response is that it doesn’t matter that the parts of the mind are of a certain kind if, when combined, they produce an entity with an identity that has the characteristic of being volitional in nature. It’s not only the parts that are deterministic. Their interaction and configuration are regulated and determined by physical laws over which humans have no control. If the overall nature of an entity cannot contradict its individual parts, and if the parts are entirely deterministic, then obviously a volitional being is restricted to only those behaviors which are consistent with the deterministic parts in question. 4. My opponent might as well ask “If a tapestry cannot in any way be different from the threads from which it arises, and if the individual threads must be of single colors according to their intrinsic colorful nature as determined by their material configuration (which must be fixed, since A is A) then where’s the rainbow pattern coming from?” It’s absurd to say that, since the individual parts of something don’t have quality x, the whole won’t either, and my opponent goes a step further by saying that even if the whole had quality x it would be somehow “contradicting” the parts! That’s not analogous to my criticism. A correct analogy would sound like: if a tapestry cannot in any way contradict its individual parts, and if all the parts are of a different color, then how could the whole tapestry be of one color? 5. If we cannot choose between evasion and the recognition of reality, then we have no way of knowing if we are right or wrong in our conclusions – we have no way of forming and proving accurate conceptions about anything, including determinism. Men are fallible if they choose to be and infallible if they choose to be. Determinism, however, destroys this choice and replaces it with solely a string of perceptual information and concepts formed from these percepts – there is nothing that guarantees infallibility over fallibility without the ability to choose between the two. This amounts to the assertion that all errors of cognition are consciously chosen i.e., that a person with false beliefs must know that they are evading reality. That’s obviously ridiculous. People make honest mistakes all the time - according to Bossy, I must be consciously aware that my position is false. I know no such thing, and I consider it rude of him to even suggest it. Infallibility is not necessary for certainty. We can be wrong, but not about things that are true by definition - things which help to define "wrong" in the first place. If determinism is true, then we are constantly uncovering what nature has in store for us. When we can logically justify our beliefs, we don't have to worry about being forced to think incorrectly, since obviously nature did not intend us to. Even if we are deterministic minds, we can be certain about our thinking when we use truth as our standard - logic is defined as the set of rules which preserve the fact that truth is true. I argue that truth contains within itself the rule for its justification; properly, logic is totally self-contained. My opponent claims “If we cannot choose between evasion and the recognition of reality, then we have no way of knowing if we are right or wrong in our conclusions.” Since logic is self-evident, there is no way that we could be wrong about it, because it describes the standard for judging truth by definition. If someone thinks they know self-evident truth, but it turns out that they are wrong, then they were more or less obviously not justified in believing it - and that fact was implicit in their belief. According to this view, there can be no such thing as an honest conceptual error; everything is either deliberate evasion or a valid recognition of reality. 6. The problem is that there is no way to validate that a truth is self-evident if you cannot choose to do so. If you hold that determinism is true, then you hold that you can hold that things are true, and to do so you have to either choose to validate statements or infallibly reach the conclusion via things outside of your control. If you do not have control of your mind, though, and your mind is fallible, then all attempts at thinking and justification are, by definition, fallible. If your justifications are fallible, then the justification for determinism is also fallible, and, if this is so, determinism is self-defeating since it provides no solid ground for its own validity. Even the self-evident truths you speak of will be subject to this fallibility since you have no choice over whether or not to recognize that they’re self-evident or not. No matter if it’s true by definition or not, you have no way of knowing that for certain unless you’re able to justify your beliefs, and you cannot do that if you are forced into a fallible framework like determinism. Self-evident truth is self-evidently self-evident. If determinism is true, ultimately we don’t have control over whether we come up with self-evident truth. However, when we do come up with self-evident truth, all else is irrelevant; the truth of the proposition is given by its definition, and we are faced with a proposition which, if denied, would lead to contradictions. 7. My opponent claims that, in this respect, Objectivism begs the question. I suppose that Dylan thought this argument was very clever. However, it doesn’t work. It refutes itself because it does not hold the Law of Identity as a primary axiom. If arguments from the Law of Identity work, they work no matter what – by definition, there are no possible circumstances under which A is not A. Therefore, any argument from axioms cannot be refuted by potentials, since there are no potentials which make sense without first accepting that reasoning from axioms is correct. As such, if Rand’s arguments from axioms holds true, there is no possibility that we are deterministic minds. The supremacy of the Law of Identity trumps that possibility and rules it out at the very start, so that any attempt to use that possibility to refute the Law of Identity are cut short long before they can do any damage. The argument is only justifiably circular if it is logically impossible that we are deterministic minds. In that case, no argumentation from bossy is needed, and my opponent might as well keep his mouth shut for the remainder of the debate. There's no sense in providing arguments if deep down inside everyone know's he's right, but wants to evade reality. How can it be logically impossible for a consciousness to be aware of a fixed train of thought? If we attempted to construct such an awareness, would we be magically prevented from doing so? That seems silly to me.