ninskigirl ([info]ninskigirl) wrote in [info]aynrandforum,
@ 2007-10-22 17:12:00
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Criticizing Objectivist Free will
I found this article by Franz Kiekeben entitled Rand on Causation and Free Will

I was wondering if there are other people criticizing the Objectivist position on free will. This article made me really interested in this topic and i want to read more.
But i'm seeing articles online that are not so academic (i think) and i don't want to read articles that are not peer reviewed. So i was wondering if you know any articles or books tackling on this topic.

thanks.

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[info]contrariandoer
2007-10-22 04:11 pm UTC (link)
I just read Franz Kiekeben's article. He does not even talk
about the theory of free will in Objectivism, which is the
idea of volitional consciousness. It is closely related
to concepts such as choices, goals, values, etc, and one
cannot grasp the theory fully without understanding Objectivist
epistemology - concept formation.

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[info]writerspleasure
2007-10-22 04:53 pm UTC (link)
interesting splurge of ideas, but nowhere does the author actually establish that rand's theory of causality implies psychological determinism.

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[info]wynand
2007-10-24 03:16 am UTC (link)
I don't know of any academic articles on Objectivist free will that aren't in the core Peikoff/Rand/Kelley stuff--they are kind of far and few between with Ayn Rand work. Check out the bottom part of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_work_on_Objectivism. Some of these are political or oh-my-god-what-do-people-see-in-this articles, but some of them (Feminist Interpretations and others) are good and may have what you need.

If you want to look at the question of Objectivist free will from one remove, check out other philosophers--Frankfurt, van Inwagen and Hilary Bok I remember as being pretty good back in the day--preferably in an anthology with a bunch of different articles. See what they have to say about various problems of free will, then come back to Rand and see how you can reconcile the positions. This is probably the best option since as far as I know there just isn't much academic attention paid to Ayn Rand's notion of free will (I don't even know how or why she differentiates non-human causation from human causation, honestly, other than by just declaring it as an axiom that humans have free will, beggin' that question.)

This is not peer reviewed, but makes some okay points: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/archives/2004/08/first_letter_to.html

Good luck with this!

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-24 10:27 am UTC (link)
Thank you for your help.

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[info]felephant
2007-10-25 01:51 pm UTC (link)
First, I commend you in demanding nothing less than peer-review in your information.

The problem with finding peer-reviewed material on Rand is, unfortunately, that no serious philosopher considers her worth their time. Her defence of free will is just plain stupid, and relies on polemic to convince people. There's damn near nothing peer-reviewed, either for or against, on Rand's philosophy, so you'll have to make do with internet resources. I myself got entangled in the debate with an Objectivist some time ago, and if you look at my journal - either under the tags "free will" or "objectivism" -, you will find my response to an Objectivist's "tour de force" in defence of free will (I don't know if you'll find his actual tour de force, because he appears to have deleted it. He promised a response to my response, and I'm assuming that, unable to make a counter-attack, he deleted his post).

[info]philosophy occasionally features (good, intelligent) swipes against Objectivism, if you want to look through its archives, or subscribe to see if one appears again any time soon. But for your own diginity, don't post about it, or you'll be laughed at - the members there are sick to the teeth of Objectivists.

Internet resources aren't as reliable or good, but if you think about what they say, and study philosophy, you'll be able to takes what's best from them, and find your own view. Ray Child's Open Letter to Ayn Rand is a good website/letter.

Hope this helps you overcome your affliction.
-James

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-25 03:51 pm UTC (link)
yeah. i'm having difficulties finding decent articles online.

Thanks. I'll look into your journal and hopefully it's still there.

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[info]felephant
2007-10-26 09:17 am UTC (link)
I found that guy's spiel on my computer. I'll give it to you if you want.

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-26 03:20 pm UTC (link)
Sure. I would like to look into it.

Thank you.

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[info]felephant
2007-10-26 06:39 pm UTC (link)
I'll post it here now.

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-26 03:59 am UTC (link)
It is unfortunate that i have no access to any newsletters and/or journals that focuses on Objectivism since i'm only a student and our library database has no subscription to any of these.

So it is hard to read peer-reviewed articles on this topic.

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[info]msmollison
2007-10-28 06:29 am UTC (link)
I've recently delved into this pretty deeply, with good results in affirming Rand's position on free will. (Don't listen to people like felephant, who rudely dismiss and insult Rand, and imply that Objectivists are idiots or stupid - that is just a stand in for lacking a good argument to demonstrate what he wants to believe.) I think many people's problem with accepting the Objectivist theory of free will is that they can't conceive of the metaphysics - the Objectivist metaphysics of causation differ from the "common man's" metaphysics of causation. I can send you some literature that explains that if you'd like - I think it makes Rand's positions quite straightforward, disregarding the issue of focus, which I don't think is necessarily central.

Also, philosophers like Harry Binswanger delve deeper into the topic than even Peikoff. I don't believe Rand ever did a thorough treatment of the topic.

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-28 07:59 am UTC (link)
Yes. I agree that Ayn RAnd's causation differs from others.
Determinism holds that free will is only an illusion for they uphold the relationship with cause and effect. And we also know that Ayn RAnd abhors determinism yet accepts causation. It seems contradictory if we look at it.
I think, in order to resolve this problem, one needs to know what Ayn Rand meant by "causation".
That i have to figure out. Because for her, every event has a cause (nothing is causeless). This includes actions and entities.

I have a question, in her idea of "focus and not focus", where does this choice come from? I mean, is it necessary for man to choose because of his nature? Cause if it is, it follows Identity yet its kind of determinism.

Or it really depends on her notion of "causation"?

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[info]msmollison
2007-10-28 05:36 pm UTC (link)
Ayn Rand does not hold that everything is "caused" in the sense you mean, i.e. the billiard ball sense. What Ayn Rand holds is specifically this: "Entities act according to their natures." You have to accept this to accept her notion of free will.

It was an extremely hard thing for me to accept, because frankly, we are taught by science teachers from a young age that billiard ball causation is in place and drives physics.

What allowed me to accept this model of causation is the realization that it is actually the one that physicists accept, more or less. Physicists DO NOT accept the billiard ball (or event-state-event) model, because phenomena in science conflict with that. The best example is a radioactive particle which decays. It seems that the steady decay is "uncaused" - it's just happening because that's the nature of the radioactive particle (which, for Rand, is causation). The paper that clued me in on this physics insight is here: http://www.objectivistcenter.org/events/advsem03/ReedOOP.pdf That paper is actually on a different topic, but if goes into this as well.

With this information (plus introspection, plus the axioms - which mean that free will must exist, for us to have knowledge at all - which isn't the same as a validation, but it similar), I have come to accept free will. I don't know that much about the "primary choice, to focus or not focus." I think Peikoff and Binswanger would say it is a choice we are all able to make at any point in time, because of our free will, and it is a prerequisite to thinking and thus to actually making other choices, rather than kind of doing things automatically, which perhaps is what animals do since they can't focus. But that might be a TOTAL evisceration of the concept (and if not, it probably is way too short to treat the subject fairly). There is a Binswanger essay that deals with this in more detail that I can point you to.

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[info]ninskigirl
2007-10-29 07:36 am UTC (link)
I would like to see what Binswanger had to say about that.

Ayn Rand has sets of definitions which differ from others and i think this is the reason why most of the people in he academe do not take her seriously. Her definitions differ from the usually taken meanings. Like here, i have to fully understand her definition of "causation" before i fully accept or understand her account on free will.

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[info]msmollison
2007-12-24 06:08 am UTC (link)
Made any progress on this? I have to apologize for not getting that Binswanger essay to you somehow... the only copy I know of is the one on paper, in my possession, so that makes it hard, plus I'm not sure about copyright implications.

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[info]ninskigirl
2008-01-14 07:03 am UTC (link)
I was not able to get hold of the Biswanger essay you were talking about. But as i read Ayn Rand and Peikoff, i realized my mistake.

I took Rand's causation in this form: Everything is caused. While it should be like this: Actions are caused by entities. Rand did not say that everything has a cause. We can't ask about the cause of man or reality (metaphysically given), because it just is (and we're going to be bombarded with the axiom "existence exists").

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[info]roberts_c
2007-11-03 12:44 pm UTC (link)
I would like to know about this issue too.

Does anyone have what ninskigirl calls peer-reviewed articles?

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