From MSNBC: “The Iraqi government is upset about foreign reporting of an anti-government demonstration outside the Iraqi Information Ministry in Baghdad earlier this week, said Eason Jordan, CNN president of newsgathering.”
Demonstrations??? But I thought the vote was 100% Mr Hussein? Why would anyone want to protest?? Oh well, the’ve probably been shot by the time I write this. I’ll be waiting for any liberals who care about about “human rights” to bring this up next time they talk about Iraq….
Meanwhile: “Iraqi officials claimed CNN fabricated a report that government authorities had fired one or more guns into the air to disperse demonstrators earlier this week. Jordan said CNN had footage of the gunplay.”
Anybody seen this footage (or any other protests) in the news? It’s nice to hear so much about how the citizens of Iraq love their leader, but even this was mentioned only in passing in another article…
Author: David Veksler
Touchstone
I came across this line in the Touchstone, Texas A&M’s local liberal loony paper:
“Greedy capitalists will not likely relinquish their firm grip on the currency. The future therefore looks bleak.”
I appreciate the compliment, but there is a small error in this logic: the government is actually in control of the currency, not “greedy capitalists.” The more general reply is that liberals have no idea what money actually is. Instead of writing a long rant on it, let me refer them to someone who wrote a much more graceful essay on it. To quote from it:
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
One more quote from the same piece: “The bottom line in commercial radio is the bottom line, and entertainment is merely a by-product, if there is any at all.”
Let me quote my friend Tim on this:
“No one will listen if they have no reason to (unless they are simply bored and like listening to ads, which some people do)
The one reason radio stations continually repeat ‘popular songs’ is to hook the commuter who only listens while driving (or working out) and wants to hear their favorite song.
So, just like any other company that truly has to work for their money (via advertisements, etc.) they must have something to sell. And the reproduction of entertainment certainly follows that line of reasoning.
Nevertheless, the Touchstone writers insist that socialism is not only inevitable, but desirable: “[According to] dialectical analysis…the only rational and humane conclusion is to do everything we can to bring about socialism.”
What can I say to that? According to Marxist theory, socialism may indeed be the inevitable conclusion, but if it’s really inevitable, there’s no point worrying about it, since we are merely products of our linguistic chains and “capitalism [cannot] go on destroying lives and the ecology indefinitely.”
Bush
In response to the ridiculous claims by Democrats that Bush in effect pushing seniors of a cliff by “privatizing” social security, the RNC has released an even more ridiculous cartoon about Bush “saving” social security, as if this Ponzi scheme of the ages can (or should) be saved:
The Republicans also reassure us that Bush’s scheme is NOT in fact privatization:
Ideas Matter!
Dante said in the Divine Comedy that “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis.” For those of us who understand the dangers of collectivism and its growth in America during the 20th century and especially now, the time of great moral crisis is upon us NOW. However, among those aware of the dangers of omnipotent government, there are two kinds of people.
One has grown weary or apathetic of the fight for freedom and compromised with the dominant ideas of the day. They include many prominent libertarians and conservatives as well as organizations that promise to “defend our rights” while conceding the argument that “some” rights should be limited. Some of them have gained fame, fortune, and success, and claimed that “compromise” with the other side is necessary because “idealism” and “radical ideas” will never be the “practical” thing to do.
However, there is a second, smaller group of individuals who recognize that, as Ayn Rand said, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.” They realize that in the process of compromising with their opponents, they concede that statists have a point, that maybe the government really does have the right to interfere in our lives, and the question is only how much of our lives the government may run for “the social good.” This second group recognizes that the problem with conservatives is that they can only say “slow down!” on the road to serfdom. By compromise, they may gain all sorts of recognition and win the battle, but inevitably, they lose the war because they betray their own side.
There is an even smaller group of intellectuals among those who refuse to compromise with evil. These are people for whom the fight for freedom is not a burden but a joy. Many of them are alienated and belittled by their fellow intellectuals, lose opportunities for prestigious academic positions, have a hard time getting their books published, and are frequently lambasted as “radicals” by the media. However, they generally manage to live happy and successful lives and rarely, if ever, complain of their fate. I believe that the distinguishing feature of such men and women is that they care about ideas – they believe that what is True and Good is True and Good no matter how unpopular it is and no matter how much misfortune their views give them. As one jailed Soviet dissident said “I cannot do otherwise.” Not all of them are right, and in fact many of them differ with me on many views, but all of them believe that life is only worth living when it is lived on one’s own terms — or as Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
If I were to worship anyone or anything in this world, it is these men and women that I would worship and proudly call my heroes. Their greatness comes not from their willingness to make great sacrifices or act with unusual bravery, as society tells us, but simply to life every day of their lives with the proud motto that ideas matter. They wont think twice about sacrificing worldly success, material values, or even their lives for that they believe in: for them it is not a sacrifice but the preservation of the only terms they are willing to live their lives by. As Howard Roark said in The Fountainhead when he acted on principle and forfeited a major commission, that is “the most selfish thing you’ve ever seen a man do.”
These men are not just an abstract ideal: there are many examples of them in real life. I would like to recognize one you might not have heard of: Ludwig von Mises. I think Mises the best and most dedicated defender of classical liberalism of the 20th century. He developed his idea in a climate of increasing state worship and socialist revolution across the world. He staunchly defended laissez faire economics during a period of growing government involvement in every level, and wrote his epic, Human Action, shortly after the world was getting out of a the Great Depression and into a major world war, as government was being accepted as the cure to every social and economic problem. He lost out prestigious university positions and had trouble printing his epic work when Keynesianism “proved” him wrong. Most of his former students turned away from his ideas and told him that he was his own worst enemy, and that everything he published was only hurting his career. As Lew Rockwell says, “Mises was surely aware that he was not advancing himself, and that every manuscript he produced, every book that came to print, was harming his career ever more. But he didn’t back off. Instead he chose to do the rarest thing of all in academia: he chose to tell the truth regardless of the cost, regardless of the trends, regardless of how it would play with the powers that be.”
Mises prevailed. He gained a small but growing following of new intellectuals who saw the truth in his views. The Mises Institute, established after his death, has been a major success, placing many free-market economists in university positions and becoming a major source of economic research, education, and support for free – market economists. Certainly neither Mises nor the Mises Institute are right on all the issues, but you will never find such dedication to ideas among the nihilistic and pragmatic liberals of today.
So here is my tribute to heroes. I hope I can live up to my heroes by living according to my own ideals and never forgetting that ideas matter.
Saddam gets 100% of the vote!
In other Axis news, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein won re-election for another six years by – get this – 100%. No, not 99.7% like last time, a full 11,445,638 to ZERO vote of the ENTIRE ELECTORATE. Never mind that there are active Kurdish rebel movements in the country, and many remote areas are not accessible or under Iraq’s control — apparently they put down their arms and came to vote in “loving support” of their glorious leader.
ABC news suggests ordinary Iraqis are pleased as well:
“This referendum and the 100 percent shows that all Iraqis are ready to defend their country and their leader,” said Khaled Yusef, hopping up and down among a cluster of men dancing on a street corner.
Who woulda thunk it? (Oh, I guess the fact that Hussein was the only guy in the ballot and anyone voting against him was unceremoniously shot kinda helped. ya think?)
Oh well, who are we to question another culture or infringe in Saddam’s divine right to terrorize his slav, err “citizens” as he wishes? After all, it’s a “democracy”.
North Korea's Making Nukes!
If you read my blog from August, you’d know that I suspected that some of that expertise the U.S. is putting into building North Korea a nuclear reactor might not just be used for peaceful purposes. Not surprisingly, N. Korea just admitted to having an active nuclear weapons development program, rejected its previous anti-nuclear agreement, and refused to allow any inspections. Oh, and when the U.S. envoy asked about its programs, it accused our diplomats of “threatening remarks.”
So, not only are we sending Korean troops millions in food every year, but we are even teaching them to build nukes!
Whatever happened to the “Axis of Evil”? And how does the fact that Korea may have an advanced nuclear weapons program affect our stance towards Iraq? I’m not sure, but if there is anything to be learned, it is that you shouldn’t provide weapons and military training to wacko fundamentalists, such as we did for Afghanistan, military intelligence and support for dictators (as we did got Iraq in its war against Iran) and nuclear plants and other aid for the “Axis of Evil” – such as we are doing now for North Korea.
Really people, this isn’t rocket science.
Post: Why theft is always self-destructive.
[October 15, 2002] After tonight’s meeting I had a debate with a friend of mine (the only other Objectivist on this list)
I took the opposite position of the one I held tonight and played devils advocate as he tried to prove why theft is always wrong.
Take a look, and skip to the bottom if it gets boring.
–David
GreedyCapitalist: Give me a solid proof of why theft is always self-detrimental
RedRyan3523: First of all it may be wise to consult textbooks on egoism/altruism. They seem to say that both egoism and altruism say that you shouldn’t steal or do something against other people, but where they disagree is whether it’s wrong to refrain from doing something for other people. I’ve been thinking on the subject and think I’ve come up with an idea.
RedRyan3523: Your self-interest is your health and happiness. Happiness can only be achieved in a certain way, and it’s in the nature of happiness that you refrain from theft. You don’t refrain from theft because you care about the other guy, you refrain from theft for your own selfish reasons.
RedRyan3523: So all it has to be demonstrated is that by the nature of happiness and logic, and then it follows that theft is detrimental.
GreedyCapitalist: how?
RedRyan3523: also one can’t have the value of pride if he steals. Altruism neglects this aspect of man’s character.
GreedyCapitalist: Can’t you be proud of being the best in your business (thievery)?
RedRyan3523: can you be proud of how many women you have sex with in a short period of time?
GreedyCapitalist: sure, why not?
RedRyan3523: what is the character of such a person?
RedRyan3523: is he really happy?
RedRyan3523: Happiness is dependent upon self-esteem. That which hurts self-esteem hurts happiness. Self-esteem entails self-reliance.
RedRyan3523: So while you may gain what you steal, you lose some degree of self-esteem because you aren’t being self-reliant.
GreedyCapitalist: why does self esteem entail self reliance?
GreedyCapitalist: can’t you have high esteem in your ability to steal?
RedRyan3523: Stealing only seems attractive because you are only taking under consideration material values.
GreedyCapitalist: oh?
GreedyCapitalist: why can’t you be satisfied by material values alone?
RedRyan3523: It’s not in your nature.
RedRyan3523: Man needs material to maintain homeostasis, but he will be little more than a vegetable unless he has other values.
GreedyCapitalist: why can’t he get those materials by theft?
RedRyan3523: that neglects his non-material values.
GreedyCapitalist: why does he have to fulfill them [non material values] to be happy?
RedRyan3523: it all falls back on self-esteem and its relationship to happiness and self-reliance and its relationship to self-esteem.
RedRyan3523: Feelings of helplessness are common symptoms of depression.
GreedyCapitalist: you still haven’t tied self reliance and self esteem
RedRyan3523: It seems there’s a relationship between self-esteem and competence, i.e. self-reliance.
RedRyan3523: Depression feeds on incompetence, and one’s evaluation of oneself is dependent upon what a person can do.
RedRyan3523: In other words, happiness is not independent of the path through which you try to achieve it.
GreedyCapitalist: ok, but why can’t you feel competent at thievery?
RedRyan3523: self-reliance entails dealing with reality independent of an agent. Theft is dependence.
GreedyCapitalist: ok, but why is self-reliance so important to self-esteem?
RedRyan3523: You judge how well you do on a test by how much you got right. Your evaluation of yourself entails a standard by which to evaluate. An evaluation of a particular entity entails a particular standard by which to judge that entity. Self-reliance is that standard.
GreedyCapitalist: why is it the only possible standard?
GreedyCapitalist: maybe you could have a standard of other-reliance, i.e. altruism
RedRyan3523: Evaluation of a particular entity entails evaluation by a particular standard. You don’t judge how well you did on a test by the same standard as how you would judge how ell you did building something. The standard of evaluation goes hand in hand with what you are evaluating. Altruism entails assuming that one’s self is worthless, so that in particular can’t be used as a standard.
GreedyCapitalist: but you are saying that actions can only be evaluated by one standard — self-reliance. Why are other standards not applicable?
RedRyan3523: Like you can only evaluate particular things according to the nature of the thing being evaluated, you can only evaluate people by a particular standard. How much is a person worth to you? That depends on what he can do for you and how well he can do it.
RedRyan3523: There may also be characteristics of character people may have to be worth something. What qualities do you find attractive in others? Ability and character are the standards by which you judge others, so those two are the standards by which you evaluate yourself.
GreedyCapitalist: I see
GreedyCapitalist: Going back to the thief, I think you correctly point out the necessity of self-reliance for self esteem — which is itself necessary for happiness
GreedyCapitalist: The nature of humans is such that they must be productive to survive, and being a thief violates that nature
GreedyCapitalist: One may confuse true productivity with proclivity in crime, but that will only worsen the thief’s reliance on others labor for his welfare
GreedyCapitalist: he cannot escape that fact because reality is such that if you are not producing your own daily sustenance, you are taking it from others
GreedyCapitalist: The professional thief lives a life that goes against the objective requirements needed for a human being to provide for his own sustenance, and as long as he obtains his sustenance by stealing from others, he cannot have any self-esteem. The same thing can be seen in lifelong welfare recipients and mooching bureaucrats. They may hide from that fact, but they cannot avoid it, and that fact probably account for why most of them are losers who are often depressed, don’t amount to much in life, and are afraid to get a real job that doesn’t involve stealing from others hard work
Notes: David’s Brief Case for Objective Morality:
David’s Brief Case for Objective Morality:
October 15, 2002
- The are two forms of matter in the universe: living and nonliving, distinguished by the fact that living matter is mortal
- All lifeforms, including humans must satisfy certain needs (ie food, air, shelter, etc) in order to stay alive These needs are specific to the particular nature of each being: i.e. fish need water and worms, man needs air and meat/veggies
- Hence, all lifeforms have certain values (needs) they must achieve if they are to stay alive.
- For non-human animals, values are automatic: ie, their instinct tells them automatically that they must act in a certain way (hunt, run, reproduce) in order to remain alive. Humans however, are unique in that values are not automatic to them: unlike plants and animals they may choose to starve and die, and sometimes do.
- Man is also unique in that the means of survival is not automatic for him: instead of instinct he must learn to think and choose to do the things that prolong his life. He cannot (speaking generally) stay alive without using his mind. Thus, he must not only choose the values needed for life, but he must also use his rational faculties to achieve them.
- From 4 and 6, survival for man is dependent on the unique and necessary ability to use reason as his primary (actually, only) means of survival. Man cannot wish or pray for his food. He may steal it for a while, but someone, somewhere must create his daily sustenance by using his mind as the tool of his survival.
- The requirements for survival are objective (from 2) hence (from 6) the requirements for survival are the same for each individual and require the use of his mind to achieve objective (universal) goals in order to remain alive.
- Humans can choose other goals and ends during their life, but in order to accomplish them, they must remain alive (at least as long as death isn’t the goal they’ve chosen, in which case no values or actions would be needed at all.)
- Thus, in order to stay alive and accomplish any other goals, man must satisfy the requirements needed for his life: the use of reason to accomplish the needs of his survival.
- Since reason is a necessity of survival (from 7) and survival is the prerequisite of all other goals (from 9), all goals beyond mere survival must be analyzed to see how they affect survival. (For example, one can decide to risk his car as a race car driver, but since being a successful race car driver requires one to stay alive, he must take some minimum safety precautions.)
- Since the great majority of people have values that require their long-term survival (even when engaging in risky behavior) they must place their life as a primary means to all their other goals.
- Irrationality and mysticism are not a valid means of survival (from 6), and irrational values necessarily lead one towards death, since they do not accomplish the actions necessary to stay alive. (Not to mention not having any basis — which is another argument)
- Hence, “Reason is man’s only proper judge of values and his only proper guide to action. The proper standard of ethics is: man’s survival qua man — i.e., that which is required by man’s nature for his survival as a rational being (not his momentary physical survival as a mindless brute). Rationality is man’s basic virtue, and his three fundamental values are: reason, purpose, self-esteem.
- There is no other rational end (no possible rational justification for acting against self interest) – For example, not altruism since altruism goes against the rational requirements necessary for life.
- Thus: “Man — every man — is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.” Thus Objectivism rejects any form of altruism — the claim that morality consists in living for others or for society – because altruism is the irrational state of acting against one’s own life and towards death.
Introduction to Objectivist Ethics
(Notes for my presentation on Nov 13, 2002)
What questions does ethics answer? – 3 fundamental yet interrelated questions:
- For what end should we live?
- What fundamental principle, if any, should guide our actions?
- Who should profit from our actions?
What have been traditional answers to these questions? This depends on the source of morality various philosophers have used.
- God
- Society
- Individual subjectivism
- No basis for morality at all (since we can’t go from an is statement about reality to an ought)
Objectivism says that morality is derived from the nature of reality, and answers the fundamental questions as such:
- Ultimate value is life.
- Primary virtue is rationality.
- Proper beneficiary from actions is oneself.
Before we can get into what values man should have, we must ask what values are, and what their purpose is.
The meaning of values is derived from observation of how people act in everyday life.
Ayn Rand said that values are something “is something that one works to gain or keep”
This implies that values have a specific goal to be achieve and an alternative, that is an alternative outcome is possible.
This implies that values imply choice, as only one outcome may actually be possible in reality, but it does imply that the entity possessing values perceives an alternative where the value is not achieved. If some value is automatically guaranteed, it is not in our power to achieve or fail to achieve it, and this it is outside the scope of morality.
For example, one may value gravity and food. However, the law of gravity is an aspect of nature that you have no control over, while all animals, including humans, must act to pursue food if they are to survive.
The only entities that we know to have values are living organisms. A rock or a chair does not pursue values because it has no alternative other than to sit there.
Living organisms on the other hand, must pursue self-generated and goal-directed actions in order to survive. From the simplest amoeba to a human being, it is our mortality that gives us the alternative between life and death, and gives us the ability to have values.
In short, goal-directed entities do not exist in order to pursue values – they pursue values in order to exist. Or, as AR says in Atlas Shrugged, “it is only the concept of life that makes values possible.” Life is thus the proper target of all goal-directed actions, it is not just a requirement for all other values to be possible, but the goal of all other values.
When applying this principle to man, we observe that man is fundamentally different from animals and plants. For all other varieties of life on earth, values are automatic, while man is the only being capable of choosing the values by which to lead his life.
Some people in this group have brought up dolphins as an example of an advanced “thinking” species of animal. Suppose this is true – suppose that dolphins have a limited vocabulary, highly developed communication skills, and complex social orders. Even if true, this the purpose of a dolphins is always the same – to survive. A dolphin may have a limit knowledge of the world and limited reasoning skills. But whatever abilities it may have, it only can only use them for a single purpose: to continue its own and its species survival.
Man on the other hand, is a being that developed a volitional, conceptual consciousness. We do not have an automatic course of action, no overwhelming desire for self-preservation. The evidence for this is not only in many suicides but our hostility to many life-sustaining processes by self-destructive actions.
Like all other animals, man has a specific nature he must act in accordance with in order to survive, just as a lion must hunt, and a fish must swim. However, for humans the process of survival is not automatic, and the knowledge does not come to us without a mental effort.
The specific nature of man is that he must use the faculty of reason in order to survive. Reason involves the ability to form long-range goals, to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term goals, to continually use his faculty of reason. Man, like all living organisms must continually act in accordance with his specific means of survival, and when we stop using our means of survival, it’s as if we let go of the wheel while driving a car down the road of life. We can pray and hope to get to our destination, but without using the facility required to do so, we’ll only end up in a ditch.
Because unlike animals. we have no instinct to guide us at every stage of life, long term planning become a necessity for all human beings, this is where the need for principles arises. Principles are not an idealistic luxury but a requirement for all human beings in order to achieve their long term values.
Listserv: On the Nature of Free Will and Volition
The debate between free will and determinism is one of the most ancient in philosophy and has led to many misconceptions about what the various positions are. For this reason, before I go into explaining just what free will is, I have to cover what it is not. The major positions on the nature of volition can be described as determinism, indeterminism, and self-determinism.
Determinists claim that the nature of the universe is such that it is governed by certain universal scientific laws, so that each action is caused by a specific prior cause, and human action is no exception. They claim that the human mind is also governed by these rules such that no alternative course of action is possible to humans other than the specific and unique set of prior factors that caused that human action to be made. Thus, human choices are not “free” because they are determined ahead of time by whatever environmental, social, genetic, biological and any other unknown factors caused such choices to be made. Accordingly, men cannot be held morally responsible for their actions, since they have no more control over the causal chain of events in reality than anyone else.
One example of an argument for determinism is a man who must choose randomly between two eggs laid in front of him. He thinks that he chooses an egg randomly, but the determinist would say that the choice is actually because of some unknown factor – for example because one egg is minutely closer to him. Besides, the determinist would argue, when the man chooses to pick one egg, could he randomly choose to do something else? Could he choose instead … to kill himself? To jump of a cliff? No, the state of his mind is clearly not such that he would not act in this way, and the same goes for his choice of one egg and every other action: they are all determined by whatever prior factors that caused them to happen.
The determinist would say that whether the human mind operates by random firing of neurons or strict logic is irrelevant: both are governed by specific prior causes, and even if science could show that human choices were caused by random firing of neurons, the choice would not be “free” because it would not be “chosen,” independent of prior factors. In fact, to the determinist, free will would not be possible under any condition: if it was caused by prior causes all choice would follow the strict laws of causation, and if it was independent of any prior causes it would have to be random, and hence not “chosen” in any meaningful way. A skeptic could argue that just as one does not know what side a coin will land on when flipped, we do not know what people are going to decide ahead of time – but the determinist would reply that just because we do not know all the aerodynamic and structural factors that affect which side a coin will land on, does not mean that the flip is truly “random” as given enough information, would could determine the outcome of a flip ahead of time – and likewise for the choices made by a human mind, which we would be able to predict given enough information on its workings.
The classic reply in favor of free will to adopt some sort of indeterminism: that is claim that free will involves some sort of exception from the rules of causation. Traditionally, God has played this role, providing some sort of mystical “staging ground” for choice to occur. Rene Descartes took a more extreme position and argued that the mind exists on a separate plane from the body, and more recently, quantum physics and chaos theory have provides excuses to “escape” causation and allow a possible for “free” choice to occur. Both of these notions are nonsense. If a human choice is independent from any prior factors grounded in causation then it must be random, and randomness is in no way a “choice.” Whether God or quantum physics is the excuse, it is not viable to claim that human choice is independent of prior cause, and yet not completely random. As Baruch Spinoza said, “’it makes no sense to view God as the cause of all things and, at the same time, to believe that humans possess a free [will].”
The self-determinist position rejects both of these views. Affirming free will does not involve a rejection of causality in favor of a magical mechanism for human choice, but an affirmation of the process of volition that is the process behind all human choice. The self-determinist position rejects both the notion that any supernatural forces are involved or that any other cause of action is possible other than that which is determined by whatever laws, known and as yet unknown governed the workings of the universe. No “alternative world” where different choices were made is possible because the mind is not excused from the same rules that govern all other matter. Rather, “free will” refers to the uniquely human process of volition that allows multiple courses of actions to be considered and evaluated and one selected.
Human beings are thus unique in an important way: the process of volition, which makes them different from both inorganic matter as well as other forms of life, and allows for caused, yet free choices to occur. This definition of “free will” is not arbitrary but implied in the notion of “will” itself. When men commonly refer to human “choice” they are not rejecting causality but referring implicitly or explicitly to this process of volition. Volition is “free” in the sense that each individual must independently choose to think, as the choice to think or not is the primary choice and source of volition. This choice is not random, and certainly not independent of physical laws, yet it is a process unique (as far as we know) to human beings. The choice to think is not “free” in the sense that it is independent of prior cause but free in the sense that every individual must choose for himself to think or not, and suffer the consequences of his choice. Animals do not have such a choice: their actions are automatic and governed by instinct. For example, when a dog misbehaves, we punish it not because we hold it responsible but to change its action, but when a human acts in an immoral way, we hold the person as morally responsible: as culpable for their basic choice: to think or not. In other words, humans have a unique ability to project what the world be like given various courses of action (or inaction) and choose a course of action that leaves the universe in a more desirable state than the one prior to their action.
The skeptic will claim that human thought is not fundamentally different from a car: after all, we turn a key and the car either starts or not, depending on whether reality is such that the process of causation leads to an engine starting or to the battery being dead. In the same way, the determinist will claim, the human mind will either make the right or wrong choices, depending on what prior state it is in. However a car and a human mind are fundamentally different: the ignition process is a rigid mechanical chain, whereas human thought (when one chooses to think) involves a process of evaluation and conceptualization, (creating “models” of reality) which considers multiple possible avenues of action and allows for an evaluation of the consequences of each choice. To claim that starting a car’s engine is the same as choosing to think is to claim that a car can evaluate whether it is low on gas, and then decide to start or not depending on a variety of such factors. Of course a human may design such a car, but the evaluation to include such a feature still rests with the human, not the car.
The objective definition of free will then, rejects both the mystical mind-body duality and the strict physicalism of post-modernism. It holds that the nature of the human mind is unique in that it allows due a process of volition, by which arises from the structure of our brains and is readily apparent by introspection. As Leonard Peikoff says, “A course of thought or action is ‘free,’ if it is selected from two or more courses possible under the circumstances.” Of course only one course of action is always actual, but nevertheless numerous courses of action are considered and evaluated in the process of thinking.
While the evidence of free will is readily apparent to introspection, one can only analyze the roots of decisions to a certain level. Decision making is not an infinite regression of choices, but is based on a fundamental choice – to focus. On other words, our fundamental choice is to focus (and think) or not (and remain in a daze) and the choice must be accepted as a given, readily apparent by introspection, but not derived from any other choices, as there can be none. The implication of free will is that individuals can be held morally liable for their actions, because unlike animals, they have the ability to rationally consider the implications of all their actions instead of acting on their urges or whims.
While the determinist position generally accepts the possibility of thought, it rejects the possibility of true choice, negating the possibility of more responsibility. However the determinist position is contradictory and cannot be logically held. By saying that humans should “pretend to have free will” the determinist accepts that all human thought requires choices to be made between various possible choices. (Possible to the mind considering them, that is.) He implicitly accepts the correct definition of volition while rejecting its logical consequences. The determinist cannot even argue that he knows his position is true – after all, he is only arguing for it because of prior environmental factors, not because it is independently true or false. In short, in arguing for determinism, the determinist implicitly accepts the opposite of his position.
…
Nothing exciting happening lately…but Tim’s kitten is pretty cute:
Update: I forgot all about my b-day, which I really didn’t do much on, though I got some nice presents ($)