Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU!eyal
From: eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will and Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <8805182232.AA29965@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 18 May 88 22:05:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 40

In article <445@aiva.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>So, indirectly, even the obsession itself is  under the person's
>>volitional control.
>
>I would be interested in knowing what you think *isn't* under a
>person's volitional control.  One would normally think that having
>a sore throat is not under conscious control even though one can
>chose to do something about it or even to try to prevent it.

Which is why I used the word "indirectly". You have direct volitional
control only over your thoughts and actions; but this means that your
physical and psychological health, your intelligence, your success
etc., to the extent that your actions can affect them, are indirectly
under your volitional control.

>As far as you have explained so far, Rand's theory is little more
>than simply saying that free will = the ability to focus consciousness,
>which we can all observe.  Since we can all observe this without the
>aid of Rand's theory, all Rand seems to be saying is "that's all there
>is to it".

This is true in a sense, in that the choice to focus your consciousness
or not is the only fundamental free-will choice. However, this choice
leads to other, derivative choices, which include the choices of what
to think about, what views and values to hold, and what actions to
take.

Whenever a person faces a decision about what view to hold on some
issue, or about what action to take, that person may focus his thoughts
on all relevant information and thus try to make an informed, rational
decision; or he may make no such effort, deciding on the basis of what
he happens to feel like at that moment; or he may deliberately avoid
considering some of the relevant information, and make a decision based
on evasion. In each case, his decision is based on some reasons, but,
by choosing one of these three approaches, he has volitionally chosen
what those reasons will be.

	Eyal Mozes

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