Volition
Volition, or free will, is man's capacity to choose. In Objectivism the primary choice is not among courses of action but a choice about consciousness itself: the choice to focus one's mind or to let it drift. Every other choice a person makes depends on whether he has raised his awareness to the conceptual level first.
“That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that 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.”
~ Ayn Rand, "Galt's Speech", Atlas Shrugged
The choice to focus
Perception is automatic: eyes open, and the world is given. Conceptual thought is not. Forming concepts, holding a context, checking a conclusion against evidence, all require an effort that can be withheld, and withholding it is not experienced as a decision so much as a drift.
Rand located free will at exactly this point. The alternative is "to think or not to think", and it is available at every waking moment. What follows from focusing, the specific conclusions a person reaches, is then constrained by logic and by evidence rather than being arbitrary. Volition is the freedom to engage the faculty, not a freedom from identity or causality.
Volition and causality
The standard objection is that free will contradicts causality: if every event has a cause, a choice must have been caused, and then it was not free.
The Objectivist answer is that causality is the law of identity applied to action. A thing acts according to its nature. Human consciousness has the kind of nature that includes a self-initiated capacity to focus, so a volitional choice is not an exception to causality but an instance of it: the entity, man, acting as the kind of entity he is. The alternative view smuggles in the premise that only mechanical causation is causation.
Volition is also an axiomatic concept, validated the same way as the axioms: anyone arguing that choice is impossible is presenting his conclusion as one his opponent ought to accept after weighing it, which presupposes that the opponent can weigh it. See Fallacy of the stolen concept.
Why it matters
Volition is the hinge between Objectivist epistemology and ethics:
- Because thinking is chosen, it can be done well or badly, which makes objectivity an achievement rather than a given and makes error possible without making knowledge impossible.
- Because man must choose to use the means of his survival, he needs a code telling him how. Morality applies to man and not to animals for exactly this reason.
- Because choices are his, a person can be praised or blamed for them. Moral responsibility presupposes volition.
Common misunderstandings
- That free will means any choice is equally possible at any moment. It does not. A person's knowledge, habits and psychology set what options are live for him. What remains open is whether he brings his mind to bear on the situation at all.
- That volition makes behaviour unpredictable or random. Randomness is the opposite of choice, not an example of it. A choice is made by someone, for reasons, and character is the accumulated result of many such choices.
- That it requires a soul separate from the body. Objectivism treats consciousness as an attribute of a living organism and leaves the question of its physical basis to the special sciences. See Mind-Body Dichotomy.
See also
- Consciousness · Reason · Concept formation
- Causality · Identity · Axioms
- Rationality · Morality · Emotions
- Mind-Body Dichotomy · Determinism
Discussion
References
- Rand, Ayn. "Galt's Speech", Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957.
- Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 2.
External links
| Epistemology Topics |
|---|
| Senses | Consciousness | Volition | Concepts: Unit, Concept-Formation |
| Objectivity | Knowledge: Context, Hierarchy | Reason: Certainty, Truth, the Arbitrary | Emotions |