Did Ayn Rand View the Choice to Live as a Pre-Moral Choice?

 

Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Decoded: Replies to Recent Criticisms of the Objectivist Ethics

Part 4: Are There Pre-Moral Choices, and Is the Choice to Live One of Them?

 

“To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,”

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

Hamlet’s soliloquy, by William Shakespeare

 

In parts 1, 2, and 3 of this essay, I explored claims made here by Edward Younkins in his comparison of Ayn Rand’s ethics with that of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl (hereinafter R&D). In this concluding part, I will look more specifically at the issues surrounding Rand’s statement (1970) about what has become known as “the choice to live,” a statement containing ambiguities that are difficult to resolve:

To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course. (118)

A couple of questions immediately arise that might seem arcane to readers, but which would nonetheless be important to anyone holding that Rand’s philosophy (and especially her ethics) is objectively grounded on facts and principles, rather than feelings and non-moral choices.

1. Does this statement commit Rand to the view that the choice to live is “pre-moral”[1] and thus that one is not engaged in moral behavior or subject to moral praise or blame until one makes this particular choice? Also, does this statement commit Rand to the view that a person cannot be subject to moral praise or blame for whatever choice they make about whether or not to live?

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Neera Badhwar and Roderick Long lay out the battlelines that have been drawn up over this issue: “The much-debated question of whether the choice to live is a moral choice (Mack 1984, 2003; Long 2000; Rasmussen 2002) or a pre-moral one (Peikoff 1991; Gotthelf 1999; Smith 2000, 2006).” Actually, the pre-moral faction got in the first volley when Leonard Peikoff made the following statement in lecture 7 of his 1976 Objectivism course:[2]

The choice to live, however, that basic choice as such is not itself a moral choice. It precedes morality. It is what gives rise to the issue of morality. It is because man chooses to live that he needs a morality. (emphasis added)

In the fifteen succeeding years, Peikoff’s formulation of this pre-moral view of the choice to live changed but little: “That choice [the choice to live] itself, therefore, is not a moral choice; it precedes morality; it is the decision of consciousness that underlies the need of morality” (244–45, emphasis added). Peikoff then refers the reader to Atlas Shrugged, p. 941, where the hero, John Galt, says: “My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: Existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these.”

The important takeaway from this, and from Rand’s 1970 statement, is that, for Rand, you are not in the field of morality until you make the choice to live. Once you make that choice, you then and only then become a moral agent; prior to that, any other choices you make are “pre-moral,” as it were, including the choice to live. In the view of many thinkers, this “pre-moral” view faces grave difficulties. It is best displayed in Peikoff’s argument (1976) that:

To ask, “Is there a reason to choose life?”, in that basic sense, is an invalid question. Once you ask for reasons, you have already accepted life and reality. The choice to live is a primary, which precedes and makes possible the giving of reasons; and if you do not make that choice, you cannot talk, argue, or make any further sounds.

This seems counter-intuitive. First, well prior to accepting some religious or secular morality, isn’t it true that children (as well as animals) make choices all the time, without engaging in self-aware deliberation, let alone ethical thought processes? As a consequence, while children and animals may be scolded for their behavior (“bad dog,” “naughty boy”), they are not recognized by the law or by most reasonable adults as being moral agents, capable of being tried as adult human beings for criminal acts or held responsible by adults for acts they morally disapprove of. (In Western culture, the “age of reason” is thought to begin typically about age 5 to 7.)

Secondly, four-year-old children can give a reason for something they say or do. Does this mean they have already, at their tender age, made “the choice to live”? More importantly, does this also mean they are moral agents, somehow leapfrogging Piaget’s developmental timetable? And what about Peikoff’s argument that you cannot give morally legitimate reasons if you’re not a moral agent who has chosen to live?

I think the resolution to this conundrum requires looking beyond the narrow conception of the choice to live as a deliberate, reflective decision (which it certainly can be, for older children and adults), and considering whether there isn’t already a well-ingrained policy of choosing (over and over) to live long before one enters the arena of morality per se.

2. Even without being possessed of moral agency, however, isn’t it true that babies and young children (and animals) do choose to live? That they face alternatives and, if in pain or hunger or fear, will choose one course of action rather than another?

Yes. Even though they have no power of deliberation (aka “free will”), children can and do make such choices almost from the moment they are born and latch onto their mother’s breast and learn to suckle and then later to seek the breast again and to eagerly accept it when it is presented to them.

Oh, the objection goes, but these are not choices from moral agency, but instead are automatic choices, biologically programmed or “wired-in” by evolution and instinct and learned pleasure-pain responses, so isn’t it wrong to think of their actions as resulting from choices among alternatives?

Well, young children, babies, and animals indeed can’t help acting for their survival by seeking nourishment, safety, comfort, etc., so we might instead paraphrase Aristotle and say that just as all men seek to know—indeed, all animals seek to be aware—all men, all animals in fact, naturally and without hesitation seek to survive. Old or young, whether by free, reflective choice or simply by automatic choice, human beings (and animals) respond positively to opportunities for survival and awareness.

Up to a point, of course. And that point, for human beings, is when the cost of choosing to be aware or to survive is too painful or uncomfortable to bear, and the thought occurs: “Do I really have to do this?” That, and not before, is when the deliberate choice to think (and to be aware) happens—and, Rand would probably say, that is when one becomes a moral agent.

It’s true that some young children learn to blank out their awareness when their family environment is too irrational and tormenting or unsupportive, and some young children for similar reasons just give up on survival and die with a diagnosis of “failure to thrive.” These are by far the exception, of course.

3. Actual decisions, rather than learned responses, to evade reality or escape life are made consciously, deliberately, and freely by mature adults. But what about choosing to actually live or be aware? Is this a “free” choice, or is there something that drives or causes this choice, rather than the opposite?

The choice to actually live or be aware hardly seems to be a choice we even think about, let alone anguish over.

Even for adults, the choice to actually live or be aware hardly seems to be a choice we even think about, let alone anguish over whether or not to make it. We just go on seeking to fulfill our survival needs and to stay in touch with the world. In this respect, we are hardly more aware of the issue of choosing to live or to be aware than are children or animals. It is the virtually unexamined foundation of our daily lives.

But yes, the question “Do I really have to do this?” does arise from time to time—and the official Objectivist position on it is that nothing makes you choose to live or be aware, you just either do it, or you don’t. As Peikoff said, regarding being aware, in lecture 3 of his 1976 series on Objectivism:

There can be no such thing as a factor making you decide to become aware. To grasp that factor and decide, you must already be aware. So, nobody can ask about a man: “What made him focus or not?” The only answer is: “He chose.”

Here, he was speaking, of course, about the choice to think, but he extended the point in lecture 7 of that series, to say: “Once you ask for reasons, you have already accepted life and reality. The choice to live is a primary, which precedes and makes possible the giving of reasons” (emphasis added). And we could add that, in the realm of our mental processes, the choice to think is a primary, which precedes and makes possible the giving of reasons.

Except . . . Peikoff undercut his own argument when he said in lecture 3: “[T]he inviolable essence of your choice is: what kind of reason moves you? The reality orientation or the out-of-focus, anti-effort drift? This is the choice, at each moment, which controls all your subsequent choices” (emphasis added). And later, in lecture 7: “[A]ny values or reasons of any kind are possible only within the realm of reality. You can demand or offer a reason for a choice only if you first accept and stand within the framework of existence.”

So, despite his adamant claim that you cannot ask for the reason why someone chose to think, for instance, Peikoff explicitly states that the reason that moves you to think is your having “the reality orientation.” What does that mean? It means, of course, that you think because you prefer to stay consciously connected to the world and to facts. And where did that preference come from? From the observable fact that all men, by nature, seek to know—that all animals, by nature, seek to be aware. We, as youngsters, along with our lower animal cousins, right out of the starting gate “accept and stand within the framework of existence.” We don’t have to decide whether to acquire it at some later point.

Indeed, if we think of this “reality orientation” as being a value, something worth having, then Rand’s signature “gain and/or keep” analysis shows us that we already have gained that orientation long before we become moral agents. It is our built-in, genetic birthright as normal, healthy, conscious animals. The reality orientation is a pre-moral endowment that helps us to survive and flourish. And contra Peikoff, we are perfectly capable of giving reasons for our thoughts and actions long before we have consciously chosen whether to be aware or not.

We do not even have anything faintly resembling a moral dilemma in regard to using our consciousness until we reach the age where we first face the question of whether to keep that reality orientation, i.e., the age where we are first aware that we may be able to do and want to do something other than stay consciously oriented to the world and to facts. That is where the choice to be aware becomes an issue of moral vs. pre-moral—cleaving to our natural selves or jumping off into the void. (Even then, an abused child who avoids the choice to be aware and to be oriented toward reality, may well be acting “instinctually”[3] to avoid the terrible reality that threatens to befall him.)

And the same considerations apply to the choice to live. Just as there is a reality orientation that we all begin life with and navigate through a good portion of our lives before realizing that we perhaps don’t have to keep it, there is also a survival orientation (or “instinct”) that we all naturally possess long before the question arises as to whether to abandon it. The survival orientation, too, is pre-moral, and all of our built-in choices to live (as well as to be aware) are controlled by this orientation and thus are pre-moral. (If an eight-year-old who understood the meaning of life and death were confronted by someone perverse enough to ask whether they wanted to live rather than die, the child would understandably react with incredulity, rather than a thoughtful, deliberative frame of mind. And hopefully, call the cops.)

So, it is very true, as Peikoff says in lecture 7, that “Once you ask for reasons, you have already accepted life and reality. The choice to live is a primary, which precedes and makes possible the giving of reasons” (emphasis added). However, it is true in a quite different sense than he meant it. He meant to say that there is no reason for accepting life and reality. You just either do it—or you don’t. This is not a misinterpretation. He says so in his 1991 book:

[T]here can be no motive or value judgment which precedes consciousness and which induces a man to become conscious. The decision to perceive reality must precede value-judgments. Otherwise, values have no source in one’s cognition of reality and thus become delusions. Values do not lead to consciousness; consciousness is what leads to values. In short, it is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such “why.” (59–60)

Instead, the sense in which Peikoff’s statement is true is that by the time we are able to ask others for reasons (“Why, Daddy, why?”) or offer a reason for something we did or said, we are already well locked-in to both the survival orientation and the reality orientation. So, the real moral and psychological urgency in choosing to live is not, “Carpe vitam,” since one has already “carpe’d one’s vitam,” but instead, “Don’t let it go!”[4]

4. Once more, however, we must ask: is the considered adult choice to live pre-moral, as Rand seems to say? Is morality inoperative if one chooses not to live? Or is living something a mature human being should choose because it’s worth choosing, and because one should do what is worth doing—and therefore, there’s something fundamentally immoral about one’s choice not to live (rather than its simply being unfortunate, regrettable, disappointing, or sad)?[5] If the latter, then the next important ethical questions are: Why should you do what is worth doing? How do you even know it’s worth doing before you evaluate it as such? But if the former, if you evaluate something—including living (or being aware) as worth doing, why wouldn’t you just do it, rather than deliberate about and choose to do it? How could you not do it? In which case, where does the “should” come from if it’s not chosen, but instead natural and inescapable, even on the adult level?[6]

This conundrum, which dates back at least to Plato’s Euthyphro, puts it squarely on the horns of the intrinsic vs. subjective dilemma. Either there is an intrinsic duty, an unchosen obligation to choose life—or, as it appears from Rand’s final considered opinion on the matter, it is entirely an arbitrary, subjective choice, a “voluntarist” leap into the void. To sharpen the preceding questions: How can there be a “should” that is unchosen yet morally obligatory? On the other hand, how can a choice not be morally obligatory and yet open one up to praise and condemnation, reward and blame? What are the grounds for morality and moral obligation?

R&D make a bit more of the distinction between their view and Rand’s than is warranted.

While there are very real problems with Rand’s approach to grounding moral obligation, however, I think that R&D make a bit more of the distinction between their view and Rand’s than is warranted. They compare their and Foot’s approach to Rand’s in terms of two supposedly distinct forms of “hypothetical imperative.”[7] Rand’s approach, they say, is the “problematic hypothetical imperative,” better known as “if-then.” As Rand phrases it: “You must eat, if you want to survive.”^[8] That is: if you want to live (survive), then to get what you want (survival), you must eat. This is the source, she says, of the basic “ought” or moral obligation. Once (and only once) you choose to live (because that is what you want, then you “ought” to eat. The existential “must” (necessary condition of survival) plus the psychological desire (to survive) produce the ethical “ought.”

R&D and Foot, by contrast, dispense with the “problematic” and the accompanying “if” and “once,” and they go right to the “since” or “because,” which has the technical label of the “assertoric hypothetical imperative.” To put it in parallel terms: since you want to survive, then you ought to eat. R&D’s (and Foot’s) assertoric, however, is just Rand’s problematic with the addition of the premise: “you want to survive.” In other words, now we have a syllogism: “If you want to live, then you ought to eat. You want to live. Therefore (since you want to live), you ought to eat.” Compressing this into a one-liner (i.e., an immediate inference or enthymeme), we have: “Since (or because) you want to live, then you ought to eat.”

However, the assertoric gambit does not work! Neither side in this argument has produced a reason why one should choose to live—merely that if or since one has so chosen, one then ought to act in certain ways. Neither party has offered a deeper grounding of why one ought to choose to live, as opposed to the much easier question of why one ought to choose to support one’s choice to live, if or since one has chosen to live. Neither party has done the additional heavy lifting in order to properly ground moral obligation.[9]

Nonetheless, in discussing this most general choice, the “choice to live,” R&D do correctly identify a crucial error in Rand’s attempt to logically ground moral obligation. This choice, Rand says, is rooted in the choice to think; living for human beings requires focusing our awareness and thinking. However, she also says (via Peikoff in his 1976 lectures and, nearly verbatim, in his later book) that although the faculty to think is our means of survival, “[I]t is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such ‘why.’ There is only the fact that a man chose.”^[10] The startling implication of this (amounting to an odd sort of voluntaristic indeterminism) is that Rand appears to be committed to holding, as R&D put it, that “there is nothing that this faculty is for—nothing toward which it is naturally oriented” (23).

Except that there is! Shortly after Peikoff asserts that there is no reason that we choose to think, he then off-handedly provides the very reason that we choose to think. We will “maintain the tie between [our] mind and reality,” or not, he says, because we either choose “the reality orientation,” or not. The essence of human freedom, he says, “lies in the issue: what kind of reason moves a man? Has he chosen the reality orientation or its opposite?”^[11]

This is an important, and not fully acknowledged, point within some Randian circles. As with all of our other choices, whether made impulsively or after extended deliberation, we pursue and thus actually value consciously orienting to reality rather than reality avoidance, because we prefer or desire the reality orientation more highly than the alternative. (How could we elude this necessity and do otherwise? This seems to be an inescapable axiom of human action.) The internal mechanism by which that choice is made is not (fully) understood, but there must be one, or the choice would be arbitrary and causeless (anathema to Objectivists, certainly), and that mechanism, whatever it is, is part of our nature as living, conscious, choosing beings.^[12]

The key to understanding this “reality orientation,” though, is to realize that while it is not arrived at (initially) by caprice or deliberation, neither does it come from nowhere. It is already there, working automatically (as for all conscious beings) long before we realize that we actually have an option to suspend or undercut it. Being reality oriented is another one of those basic preferences of conscious living beings that we humans are biologically wired to pursue, and our nervous systems readily facilitate our choosing to pursue it, since we come wired to consciously connect with the world. (If upbringing or circumstance have not beaten them out of us, of course.)

So, while it is true that many of our value-judgments are formed subsequent to a deliberate choice, many other value-judgments are made in very early childhood, as the result of automatic choices to perceive reality, well before first self-aware choice to perceive reality (rather than to dampen or block our awareness). Thus, by the time our faculty of conscious choice comes into play, we already have a vigorously growing stock of value-judgments, including especially the “reality orientation or its opposite” (one’s preference for whichever, however, is never fixed automatically henceforth to the complete exclusion of the other).

Seeking to be consciously connected to and to understand (rather than evade) reality is one of these initially wired-in drives. (Aristotle, again: “All men by nature desire to know.”) Another, of course, is the more primal preference to survive. (Paraphrasing Aristotle, we could say: All men by nature desire to live.) Just as there is an innate biological factor that explains and causes one’s automatically choosing to consciously connect with reality, there is a similar factor that drives our automatic choice to live.[13] We explicitly and consciously choose to live (i.e., to continue living) only much later in life, while as young children, we automatically act for our survival, just as we, as children, not only perceive the world but also form our first layer or two of concepts without deliberating over whether or not to do so.

People usually, but not always, prefer to connect with reality. Therefore, they will usually, though not always, choose to focus their awareness. Similarly, people will choose to live if they prefer surviving more than they prefer to suffer and die—a preference which we can think of (adapting Peikoff’s wording) as a “survival orientation.” Accordingly, they also will usually, though not always, choose to survive. By their nature, then, all conscious beings (including humans) desire to consciously adhere to reality (focus) and to continue to exist in reality (survive) more than they prefer the opposite. This is what a “reality orientation” or a “survival orientation” means and amounts to in nature, including human nature.

 

Conclusion

Long ago and in a journal far away, Douglas Rasmussen speculated: “There may be an important connection between what Rand calls ‘the choice to think’ and ‘the choice to live,’ and it may be useful to resolving these difficulties in Rand’s thought.”^[14] Indeed, that is how I have proceeded in this issue; and, at this point, I want to underscore the connection I have already made between reality orientation and survival orientation.

While I have argued that these two orientations are tightly linked in operation, I also argue that they are so not just after one has made a self-aware choice to think and to live, but actually from the moment of one’s first breath and one’s first perception. The same applies to one’s living according to life as the standard. At birth, one hits the ground running (i.e., living and being aware) because the standard of life is already wired into one’s very biological organism.

Consider this analogy: just as the first chicken preceded the first chicken-laid egg, while resulting from the first chicken-producing egg, so too did the first reality-orientation state precede the first deliberately chosen reality-orientation-producing state, while resulting from the earlier, automatic reality orientation-producing states. Similarly, the first survival-seeking state preceded the first deliberately chosen state that produced survival-seeking behavior, while resulting from earlier states that automatically produced survival-seeking behavior (as noted above by Heripal, Koval, and Qureshi).

Even if one decides to become a suicide bomber, one must still act by the standard of life.

The most one can do later on in life is either to ratify or abandon that wired-in standard if and when one becomes aware of doing so as being an option[15]—and one may face this option more than once in one’s life. However, even if one decides to, say, become a suicide bomber, one must still act by the standard of life, doing whatever is necessary to keep oneself alive, long enough to carry out one’s mission of dealing out death and destruction along with the anticipated collateral result of one’s own death. Any other supposed standard of value, including the purported standard of death itself, is necessarily parasitical upon the standard of life. Even if one chooses to die, one must still stay alive, and do whatever that takes, long enough to carry out one’s intention to stop living. Thus, the choice to die with death as the purported standard of value, is parasitic upon the choice to die with life as the actual standard, and denying this amounts to what Rand would call a “stolen concept”—actually, a stolen standard of value in this case.

But the question remains: as and when the option presents itself, should one choose to live rather than die—and why? A clear answer has not yet come from any quarter. I offer this brief speculative clarification: If choosing to live is almost completely determined, at least in children, if one must choose to live—and in fact, this means: if one must choose actions that support one’s continuing to live—then how can it be a moral choice? For that matter, how is it even legitimate to call it any kind of choice? Can one act against one’s preference? If one prefers to die, how can one choose to live? If one prefers to live, how can one choose to die? It doesn’t seem one can in either case, and that whatever one “chooses,” that supposed choice is determined by one’s nature to act for one’s preference rather than against it.

As suggested above, this seems to be an axiom of human action and probably all animal action in general. So, of the available alternatives of which one is aware, one has to act for the one that one most prefers. If so, how is it a choice, and thus how is one’s acting for one’s highest preference morally praiseworthy or blameworthy? In other words, how can we morally judge someone for doing what he had to do, what he couldn’t help doing, because it was his highest preference? If we can’t, then aren’t there perfectly rational ways to deal with such people, anyway? (Such as social pressure, persuasion, ostracism, and in more extreme situations, forcible restraint or incarceration, etc.)[16]

In any case, contra Peikoff, whatever choice to live that we ever make does not (and cannot) precede valuing. It proceeds from the so-called instinctual[17] valuing of life. Similarly, the choice to focus does not (and cannot) precede chosen values (morality). It proceeds from already existing “instinctual,” wired-in values (including the constantly acted upon preference to focus) that are in operation long before they become consciously chosen values. We focus our awareness, and we act toward survival—and at some point, we realize, hey, we don’t have to do this, and we then realize it is an option. This is what gives rise to the issue for humans of whether to focus or not, and whether to live or not. Self-conscious realization of options is what gives rise to morality, not the choosing from options per se.

Self-conscious realization of options is what gives rise to morality, not the choosing from options per se.

Exceptions abound, of course. People may decide to evade, to detach their awareness from reality, if the emotional stress of guilt or fear or anger is too high, as may occur in one’s interpersonal relationships or one’s relationship to the culture or the political system one lives in. This might be prompted, for instance, by fear of the anger of another person who is in the position to desert or punish you in some way that would be too stressful to accept, and by the thought that you could avoid it by lying or unjustly threatening the other person. This could also explain the toxic desire for power over others because controlling them would damp down one’s own unbearable feeling of not being worthy or in control of one’s own life in a productive, humane manner. Similarly people may (decide to?) commit suicide if suffering from severe mental health problems or an agonizing terminal illness, or when faced with certain death in a military combat situation or tortured for information in an espionage situation, or when believing that suicide bombing a number of “infidels” will gain them eternal happiness with Allah.

Again, however, it is only because such extreme cases are abnormal responses to life stresses, aberrations, that the human race has survived in spite of those too weak to deal with physical or emotional pain to stay in touch with the world, or too irresponsible (morally weak) to deal with the effort to live an independent, productive, just life among other human beings. Thankfully, these extreme reactions to stress are the exceptions, not the rule, or the human race would not have learned enough to crawl out of caves and jungles and to have discussions such as this!
 
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Notes

[1] The view Rand expresses here is an exact parallel to, and is apparently borrowed from, Aristotle’s approach in his Metaphysics in dealing with the Sophists who tried to challenge the validity of logic. The choice to avoid contradictions, which is the foundation of logic, is itself pre-logical. One does not arrive at it by logic, but by seeing that it cannot be avoided if one wants to correctly grasp reality. Similarly, one does not arrive at the choice to live by some moral process, but by seeing that it cannot be avoided if one wants to survive and live in reality. Aristotle’s position was that if a man chooses to avoid contradiction, the rational principles of logic would tell him what principles of thinking were required to implement his choice—and if he chooses not to avoid contradiction, then nature will take its course!

[2] This course was endorsed by Ayn Rand as being the only correct and authoritative version of her philosophy, so we are getting it, if not from the horse’s mouth, then at least from the mouth of the horse’s leading proxies.

[3] I am not here endorsing the concept of “instinct,” just affirming that some readers may better understand the discussion in such terms, while preferring myself to speak instead in terms of the empirical-behavioral concept of “orientation.” Not only did Rand unequivocally reject the concept of “instinct,” but her one-time colleague Nathaniel Branden argued more broadly that the concept was misleading even when applied to animals other than human beings. He maintained (1969) that any animal behavior “has not been explained” unless it has been explained in terms of either “neurological responses to physical stimuli,” actions “guided directly by an animal’s pleasure-pain sensory apparatus,” or “actions which are the result of learning,” or “some combination of them” (23). Nonetheless, he also said that “there exists in living entities a principle of self-regulating action, and that that action moves toward, and normally results in, the continued life of the organism” (35). Thus, these orientations of living entities toward self-preservation and of conscious entities (animals and human beings) toward awareness of reality are, as Branden acknowledged, observable facts. In particular, this is true of the severely abused child’s retreat from awareness. So, even if we don’t understand the physical, chemical, and biological details of the mechanisms at work in living organisms as they orient toward survival and reality awareness, we must affirm their existence just as we affirm the existence of gravity without fully understanding its nature.

[4] And a shout out here to Dagny Taggart, who is one of my role models for integrity and loyalty to values.

[5] Considering the parallel between the choice to live and the choice to think—indeed, considering that Rand argues that the choice to think is the choice to live—it would seem that since some Objectivists are very willing to judge others for not focusing (which they equate with evasion, which is immoral), and that choosing to not focus is tantamount to choosing to be immoral, one might therefore reasonably also assume that those Objectivists would judge others for not choosing to live as immoral, too. See also note 9 below.

[6] Isn’t this just a version of the notion of intrinsic duties, of unchosen obligations? Isn’t this like Original Sin? How can there be a “should” that is unchosen yet is morally obligatory? There can’t! Check your premises!

[7] See Rasmussen and Den Uyl 2023, p. 23.

[8] Rand 1970, p. 119.

[9] Neither side, of course, is theistic or deistic. Most religions merely assert that because God has gifted us with life, it’s immoral to throw the gift away. My thanks to Vinay Kolhatkar for reminding me of this point.

[10] Peikoff 1991, p. 60, emphasis in original.

[11] Ibid., p. 66, emphasis added.

[12] See Bissell 2015, pp. 79–81; and Bissell 2017, pp. 120–122.

[13] As neurophysiotherapists Harjpal and Quereshi and physiotherapost Kovela (2023) claim: “Survival reflexes, originating from the brainstem, are involuntary motor responses that are present at birth and facilitate the survival of the neonate.” (I am indebted to Vinay Kolhatkar for bringing to my attention this empirical evidence that both the “survival orientation” and the “reality orientation” which is causally connected to it are necessary conditions for newborn human beings.)

[14] Rasmussen, 2002, p. 85, n 15.

[15] That, of course, is from the ontogenetic or individual-developmental perspective. From a phylogenetic or species-evolutionary standpoint, reality-oriented apes evolved into reality-oriented hominids and then came reality-oriented humans who could actually reflect in their mature stage on such things as the choice to live. I appreciate Vinay Kolhatkar’s pointing out to me that our ability to self-consciously consider life as an option did not come from nowhere, but instead as an emergent capacity for self-reflective consciousness and introspection that accompanied our continuing evolution from earlier species as the only linguistic animal on earth.

[16] These are questions with which I have been wrestling for over 20 years and meeting with little more than raised eyebrows from staunch believers in the orthodox Objectivist view of free will. My own view is conditional free will governed by value determinism: We can and must pursue that which we most prefer/value. For more details, see Bissell 2015, Bissell 2017, Bissell 2019, Bissell 2021, and Bissell 2022.

[17] As indicated in note 3 above, following Branden, I understand the terms “instinctual” and “instinct,” if they are to be understood at all, to be colloquial stand-ins for values and preferences that are neurological, pleasure-pain, or learned responses.

 

References

Badhwar, Neera K. and Roderick T. Long. 2012. “Ayn Rand.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/sum2014/entries/ayn-rand/.

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______. 2017. “Conditions of Volition.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 17, no. 1 (July): 120–22.

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