Determinism

Determinism is the doctrine that every human choice is the necessary result of antecedent factors, so that a person could never have chosen otherwise. Objectivism rejects it, holding that volition is a fact of human consciousness and that determinism is self-refuting.

The argument from causality

The standard case for determinism runs: every event has a cause; a choice is an event; therefore a choice is caused; therefore it is not free.

Objectivism accepts causality and denies the conclusion, on the grounds that the argument assumes a particular model of causation. Causality is the law of identity applied to action: a thing acts according to its nature. The unit of causation is the entity, not the event.

Human consciousness is an entity of a specific kind, and its nature includes a self-initiated capacity to focus or not. A volitional choice is therefore not an exception to causality but an instance of it, namely a person acting as the kind of being he is. What the determinist argument smuggles in is the premise that only mechanical causation counts as causation, which is an assumption about physics rather than a truth about causality.

The self-refutation

The deeper objection is that determinism cannot be asserted consistently.

To claim that determinism is true rather than false is to claim that one has weighed evidence and reached a correct conclusion. But if every conclusion is the necessary product of antecedent factors, then the determinist reached his conclusion because he had to, and so did his opponent. Neither weighed anything; both merely emitted what their antecedents produced. There would be no distinction between a mind that follows evidence and one that does not, and so no basis for calling any conclusion true.

Arguing for determinism therefore presupposes the very capacity it denies: that one's audience can consider the evidence and change their minds. This makes volition an axiomatic concept, validated the way axioms are, by showing that its denial uses it. See Fallacy of the stolen concept.

The same point applies to knowledge generally. If reason is not volitional, objectivity is not an achievement, error is not a failure, and there is nothing a person can do to make his thinking more reliable.

What volition does not claim

Objectivism's position is narrower than it is often taken to be, and several things are conceded:

• Choices are heavily shaped by knowledge, habit, upbringing and psychology. What remains open at any moment is whether a person brings his mind to bear on the situation at all.
• Volition does not mean randomness. A random event is not chosen by anyone; randomness is the opposite of choice rather than an example of it.
• Volition does not require a soul separate from the body. Objectivism rejects the mind-body dichotomy and leaves the physical basis of consciousness to the special sciences.

See also

• Volition · Causality · Identity · Axioms
• Consciousness · Reason · Objectivity
• Mind-Body Dichotomy · Morality · Fallacy of the stolen concept

Discussion

• Do humans have instincts?
• Human vs animal consciousness
• Altering one's psycho-epistemology

References

• Rand, Ayn. "Galt's Speech", Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 2.