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To: PatrickHenry
Well, if you don't have free will...

I don't deny that you or I have free will. That is part of being created in the image of God. What I believe I have demonstrated is that free will, like spirit, is a non-entity in objectivist thought.

Can you refute that objectivism results in solipsism?

596 posted on 02/23/2002 7:36:32 PM PST by Tares
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To: Tares
I don't deny that you or I have free will. That is part of being created in the image of God. What I believe I have demonstrated is that free will, like spirit, is a non-entity in objectivist thought.

In objectivism, free will is an axiom, and the reasons for this have already been given in post #313:

I can't prove that I have free will. Not directly. However, if we don't have free will, then we can't reason, because we would have no power to reject invalid conclusions. We would be no more free than our calculators, which provide only the answers they are constructed to provide. Therefore, if we are to conduct ourselves as if we were rational beings, we must assume the existence of our free will as an axiom. This is an axiom of absolute necessity, and not one which is adopted arbitrarily; because without such an axiom, all rational thought becomes impossible.
The axiom works because: (a) it's necessary; and (b) it's bullet-proof. I think that your reason for accepting free will has problems. I have no idea how you get from: (1) "being created in the image of God" to: (2) "I don't deny that you or I have free will." It is very possible that God can create beings with no free will; and I don't see how it can be otherwise for a God who knows the future. I know there are cliche' responses to this problem, but it certainly seems to me that a future-knowing god (if that's what god is) is contradicted by our possession of free will. This uninverse ain't big enough for both.

Can you refute that objectivism results in solipsism?

solipsism: a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing.
Certainly. Objectivism has an axiom which deals with this: Existence exists. We perceive the world which is external to ourselves through our senses, which are also axiomatically presumed to provide data about the external world. Given such axioms -- which again are absolutely necessary to proceed as rational beings -- we are then equipped to get through the day (and through conversations such as this) without each of us imagining that we are the only functioning entity in the universe, and unable to know anything but ourselves (plus of course, what some swammi then preaches to us).
597 posted on 02/24/2002 3:00:05 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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