Volition Illustrated

by Reginald Firehammer

In one of my illustrations of consciousness from, “Consciousness Illustrated,” I showed something I labeled “random to habituated behavior.” RHB is a pseudo-concept, because there is no specific existent or class of existents it identifies—it is a way of collecting several disparate things that have a similar function for the sake of illustration only.

All of the separate functions do have two things in common—they are direct responses to the content of consciousness (like the emotions) and functionally precede volition.

Functionally, volition lies between RHB and any actual action or behavior, including thinking.

RHB, Major Functions

By, “random to habituated,” I mean all the functions related to consciousness that exist as potentials or mechanisms but at birth are unprogrammed and undeveloped (and “random” if they function at all), including the mind (conceptualization) and all learned physical skills from walking and talking to using a keyboard, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. These include the emotions, but I do not include the emotions in RHB because they are not under the direct control of volition.

The two primary functions included under RHB are overt action (which includes such voluntary internal actions as intentional swallowing as well as all external behavior), and control over the storage and recall of perceptual data to and from memory. These two functions, like all the functions of the mind and consciousness, are so closely related we can only separate them for the sake of analysis, but must keep in mind that as functions their interrelationships are extremely complex and never totally distinct.

Overt Action

I begin with overt action or behavior because it has the advantage of being observable. Unfortunately, it has the disadvantage of beginning in infants, and while we can observe their behavior as adults, we do not have the advantage of knowing what the conscious experience of infants is, introspectively from memory, because we do not remember our own early development. To some extent all we say about the development is conjecture. Nevertheless, we do know we are volitional beings, and do remember some of our very early development and learning and can extrapolate from that knowledge to the most likely hypothesis about an infant’s earliest development.

In the earliest stages, immediately after birth, an infant’s behavior appears to be totally random, but in a very short time, even in the first few hours and days, there is a kind of “order” that begins to manifest itself. One of the earliest observable differences is in an infants ability to recognize sounds, for example. This phenomenon seems to mystify psychologists, but should not. Before a child can recognize (become aware again that it is again), the infant must have heard that sound before.

Volitional From the Start

While Objectivism considers volition a conceptual process, there is a difficulty in this view, because the process of concept formation is itself volitional. The problem is, if concepts are required for volition, and volition is not possible without concepts, how does the process of conceptualization ever get started. Rand was obviously aware of this difficulty and addressed it in one of the conversations recorded in the appendix of her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

Prof. D: Abstraction is a volitional act. Is that right?

AR: Oh yes.

Prof. D: Then how do I go about abstracting the very first time? How do I know what to do, volitionally? Unless I first had the idea of abstraction, how could I proceed to will to abstract?

AR: No, you do something else volitionally. That is, you abstract volitionally, but you don’t will it directly the first time. Do you know what you will? You will to observe. You use your senses, you look around, and your will is to grasp, to understand. And you observe similarities. Now, you don’t know yet that this is the process of abstraction, and a great many people never grasp consciously that that’s what the process is. But you are engaged in it once you begin to observe similarities. And although I hesitate to talk about volition on the preconceptual level—because the subject isn’t aware of it in those terms—even a preconceptual infant has the power to look around or not look, to listen or not listen. He has a certain minimal, primitive form of volition over the function of his senses. But volition in the full sense of a conscious choice, and a choice which he can observe by introspection, begins when he forms concepts—at the stage where he has a sufficient conceptual vocabulary to begin to form sentences and draw conclusions ….

(Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology “Appendix—Abstraction as Measurement-Omission,” “Abstraction as Volitional”)

In fact, human beings are volitional from the beginning, which means, everything a human being does must be by conscious choice from infancy. Rand’s attempt to avoid the obvious problem of pre-conceptual volition does not solve the problem, it only pushes it back. “You will to observe. You use your senses, you look around, and your will is to grasp, to understand,” does not answer the real question. The advantage of regarding volition as a conceptual process is, at that level, it is easy to understand. At the conceptual level choice is easy to explain. But how the pre-conceptual child wills anything, much less willing to “observe,” use “senses” or to “look around” or “to grasp, to understand,” before any of those concepts are possible to the child is left unanswered. How does a child will or choose to do anything without concepts?

Physiologists and psychologists call the development of the skeletal muscles, motor skill development. The mechanism by which motor (skeletal muscle) behavior is initiated in the brain are complex and not completely understood, but are not important to philosophy. The important point to philosophy is the fact the earliest motor behavior is undifferentiated and must be learned.

Consciousness and the Default State of Volition

If all overt behavior as volitional and all behavior has to be learned, it would seem that behavior could never start. Of course, there is the involuntary behavior, reflex and autonomic nervous system, and we are conscious of that behavior even though we do not initiate it consciously, that is volitionally. We might “learn” (remember) something from being conscious of that involuntary behavior, but it is difficult to see how that would help learn that overt behavior that is volitional.

In my high-level illustration of consciousness is show RHB as a direct response to the content of consciousness, but stated that in human beings RHB had to be programmed. In infants, that aspect of RHB responsible for motor functions, for example, is “free-wheeling,” that is, it provides a continuous, though random, string of impulses to act. Between those RHB impulses and overt action itself, volition acts as a gate or valve that allows or disallows those “impulses to act” from actually initiating motor responses.

In an infant, there is no reason not to allow every impulse from RHB, and the natural default state of volition is to allow all impulses from RHB. Since the impulses from RHB are more-or-less random the resulting overt behavior is random.

The infant is conscious of the impulses from RHB and the resulting overt behavior and whatever external and internal experiences result from the behavior. As I stated earlier, we cannot ignore the fact that memory and external behavior functions cannot really be separated, and we only separate them conceptually for the sake of analysis. For example, all early random behavior results in lots of perceptual data being stored in memory.

Though the default state of volition is to allow RHB impulses to initiate overt behavior, the child can at anytime volitionally disallow those impulses. The first truly volitional act of a child is to disallow some RHB impulses. The question is, how does the child do that, and why.

The Emotional Bias

Ayn Rand’s description of pre-conceptual volition, “You will to observe. You use your senses, you look around, and your will is to grasp, to understand,” is not correct about the will, but is correct about something else. Every creature’s nature provides it the exact characteristics and attributes it requires to live successfully as the kind of creature it is.

Since our human nature requires us to choose consciously all our behavior, and knowledge is required for choosing, our natures provide us the attributes necessary for the acquisition of knowledge. Our emotional mechanism is one of those attributes. Though that emotional mechanism is tabula rasa at birth, just as our minds and memories are, and must be programmed, the basic mechanisms comfort/discomfort and pleasure/pain will obviously be biased toward the requirements of human nature. The infant cannot will to observe, use its senses, look around, grasp or understand—but any observations the child experiences consciously as a result of the random looking around, any relationships that capture its attention, will result in an emotional experience that affirms it as comfort or pleasure.

The infant does not know what order or making sense of what it is in conscious of means, but whatever is orderly or sensible in consciousness will result in comfort or even pleasure, and whatever is disorderly and confusing will result in discomfort or even pain, emotionally. The emotional experience is very general at the beginning, (because the mechanism has not yet been programmed), but is sufficient to act as a motivator for learning.

The Role of Memory and Attention

The role of RHB with regard to memory is quite different, and less well understood than its role with respect to overt behavior. The physiological (cerebral) aspects of those functions, that is, how these functions are performed physiologically, are not pertinent to philosophy, but what those functions are in essence is very important to understanding the nature of consciousness, volition, and ultimately, rationality.

My, “High Level Graphical View of Consciousness,” illustrates the fact that whatever RHB causes to be stored or recalled from memory is volitionally controlled. The illustration is not exact, however. The following view is a better representation of the relationship between consciousness, RHB, volition, and memory.

All that is stored in memory is perceptual data from consciousness. We cannot remember what we have never been conscious of.

Some perceptual data (indicated in my drawing by the arrow passing from consciousness through RHB, bypassing volition) is stored directly in very short term memory, sometimes called “sensory” memory. This data is always from what we are conscious of directly, both internally and externally, and is the source of new perceptual material to be stored in longer-term memory.

All other data stored in memory is directly determined by (RHB) as allowed or disallowed by volition. Data recalled from memory is also determined by RHB as allowed or disallowed by volition.

Unlike the pre-programmed random action of RHB pertaining overt behavior, the RHB function pertaining to memory is not random, and while it’s basic function must be programmed, it performs that function from the beginning. Since it is not a behavior in itself, but merely a mechanism for storing data, this predetermined function is not like instinct, but like any of the other autonomic functions, merely a mechanism at the disposal of volitional control.

The basic function of memory RHB facilitates the storage and the recall of perceptual data. Both the storage and recall of perceptual data is effected in response to conscious attention.

Conscious attention at the beginning is whatever in consciousness has the most intense or pronounced perceptual qualities. An infant’s conscious attention consist almost entirely of the loudest noises, the brightest colors, the most motion, the most intense physical sensations. The entire field of consciousness is always present but will be dominated by that which is the most, “interesting,” which, preconceptually, will be whatever is the most perceptually rich or intense.

The basic mechanism of memory storage in RHB is attention. The degree of attention anything in consciousness demands determines how it will be stored in memory, and how permanently it will be stored and how recallable it will be.

The basic mechanism of memory recall in RHB also involves attention, but also involves another attribute, similarity. The exact form in which perceptual data is stored in memory is not known, but apparently it is quite varied; that is, both “whole images” even “scenes” are stored in memory as well as perceptual “components” of percepts including individual colors, sensations, objects, even parts of objects, and generalized shapes. What will be recalled from memory is stored perceptual data that is similar to the current content of memory and that similarity is determined by anything in memory that has similar perceptual qualities (color, shape, sound, etc.) to that which is currently in the field of consciousness.

The field of consciousness is at all times very rich. If everything in memory were recalled that had any similarity to anything in consciousness the result would be a meaningless chaos of recalled data. Attention, in recall, serves the purpose of providing a basic order to the function.

Volition, Recall, and Attention

Attention is essentially automatic. The most intense or vibrant perceptual events will dominate consciousness. Preconceptually, the dominate percepts will be those which result from the most intense sensory inputs, and they will determine both what is stored in memory and what is recalled, as the automatic response of RHB to the content of consciousness.

The content of consciousness at any moment includes percepts resulting from perceptual data recalled from memory as well as perceptual data from the internal and external nervous system. Part of that content of consciousness is RHB activity related to overt behavior. Since both overt behavior and memory storage and recall are determined by RHB response to the content of memory, and RHB responses occuronly as allowed by volition, particular overt behavior resulting in intense (attention getting) percepts will result in related storage and recall of perceptual data to and from memory, but only if volitionally allowed.

Intellectual development begins with noticing that volition changes experience. The exercise of volition in allowing or disallowing what is recalled from memory and in allowing or disallowing overt action will change the content of consciousness—it is noticing this change that is the beginning of programming of RHB. This “noticing” must occur very early. There is one more aspect that determines how real intellectual development proceeds.

After discovering that volition changes things, the emotional bias mentioned earlier, motivates the discovery of the relationship between volitional control and experience, because some volitionally controled actions will be “pleasant”and others “unpleasant,” there is a natural bias toward volitionally allowing RHB responses that are “pleasant” and disallowing RHB responses that are unpleasant.

Remembering that the emotional bias means, whatever is orderly or sensible in consciousness will result in comfort or even pleasure, and whatever is disorderly and confusing will result in discomfort or even pain, emotionally, those RHB responses that recall from memory and produce behavior that begins to “make sense” of the content of consciousness will be favored. The details of that process are complex and will be covered in another post. Here, I am only trying to establish the relationships between the different aspects of consciousness and volition.

Evidence of Volitional Development

I said, “Conscious attention at the beginning is whatever in consciousness has the most intense or pronounced perceptual qualities.” This changes as the infant discovers relationships between what it perceives and experiences as a result of its actions. One of the things it will discover is volitionally allowing the eyes to move will change the content of the visual aspects of consciousness—which is the discovery it can change what it is attending to visually. Interestingly enough, there is evidence this is exactly what happens.

From an article, Through the eyes of an infant:

“Around 1 to 2 months of age babies often have difficulty in shifting their gaze away from a stimulus they are looking at and may exhibit extremely long periods of fixation. This phenomenon has been called ‘obligatory attention’. It can be observed for several weeks from 6 weeks on and declines rather abruptly at 3 or 4 months of age. Becoming able to shift gaze easily and to disengage from a salient stimulus is a prerequisite for early exploration and communication and contributes to the cognitive and social development of the infant.”

Development begins when the infant discovers its ability to volitionally control it’s action (eye and head movement for example) and what it recalls from memory. Because what is being recalled from memory is part of the visual field, and because what is recalled from memory is determined by what is currently being perceived, by allowing the RHB response to a current remembered percept to recall the same perceptual data, that remembered percept can be “held” in consciousness.

This “intentional holding in consciousness” of a remembered percept is “intentional attention.” Since external behavior is also RHB response to the content of consciousness, it will react to intentionally held remembered percepts as it does percepts from the internal and external nervous system. Discovering that intentionally held percepts results in external action when RHB response is volitionally allowed is the discovery of intentional action.

This discovery is necessary for the infant to “break” the cycle of obligatory attention. It is also the beginning of discovering the relationship between recalled perceptual data from memory and external action, the first steps toward full volitionally controlled consciousness.

NOTES:

1. It is a mistake to think that consciousness itself is volition or volitional, and the expression, “volitional consciousness,” really means we are conscious of volitional choice, and only make choices pertaining to things we are conscious of. That is why the involuntary reflexes and aspects of the autonomic system cannot be controlled volitionally, because we are only conscious of those actions after the fact. To some extent, some autonomic functions are under the control of volition, depending on where in the nervous system the behavior is initiated, apparently.

2. The normal state of volition is “yes,” that is, whatever the learned and habituated behavior being initiated is, will be allowed, because it is normal for the brain and memory to learn about reality correctly—it would be an indication of a fault in the mechanism of the brain and consciousness if volition was predominantly “no.”

3. Volitionally intended action is realized through the development of many alternate behaviors in response to similar kinds of consciousness. Saying yes to one is accomplished by saying no to all the others. Consciously, there is no difference between, “I choose to do this,” and (the actual volitional act) “I say not do all the other possible actions.”

4. True volition is not possible until after conceptualization. Not until a language is learned, and alternative actions can be verbalized and held in consciousness as identifications of actions can volitionally determined behavior in the sense we understand volition—that is, being conscious of what there is to choose and consciously choosing it.

5. Patterns of thought are also habitualized. If correct patterns of thought are habitualized, ones thinking will be sound in almost all areas.

Why does the child learn?

I said, the motivator of all action is desire, but desires, other than those physiologically caused feelings we learn the meaning of and call “desires,” like hunger and fatigue, are emotions and at birth, the emotional mechanism is tabula rasa. But, the mechanism is there and functions, though there is nothing in particular to drive it. Nevertheless, there is a general response from the beginning, a kind of general uneasiness or discomfort that is like a desire.

There is a general sense of discomfort with being “out of control” and a satisfying comfort, even pleasure, with being “in control,” and this vague experience is in response to the child’s consciousness of any connection between its perception and behavior (comforting) or disconnection between its perception and behavior (discomforting).

Attention and Focus

Attention is the default state. An infant tends to be held by whatever is currently at the center of consciousness, and visual sensations seem to be the strongest. Attention will be drawn to whatever has the dominant perceptual attributes in the field of consciousness, such as loudness, or brightness, or motion.

The infant/toddler actually has to learn to break attention, because attention is apparently the default state. This fits exactly the idea that volition is actually saying ‘no’ to what happens naturally or habitually.

Note on “focus” in Rand

Rand and Peikoff mean something different by “focus” than I mean by attention. The usual idea of focus is a matter of pointed attention or concentration as I have used the word.

The Objectivist use of the word focus is quite different. First, it only pertains to the conscious use of concepts, not consciousness itself, although the language sounds like that, because of the confusion between consciousness and its content in objectivism.

“To ‘focus’ one’s mind means to raise one’s degree of awareness. In essence, it consists of shaking off mental lethargy and deciding to use one’s intelligence. The state of being ‘in focus’—in full focus—means the decision to use one’s intelligence fully.”

Peikoff uses vision as the example of “focus” in the Objective sense:

“Let me introduce the concept of ‘focus’ with a visual analogy. A man cannot do much with his faculty of vision until his eyes are in focus. Otherwise, his eyesight gives him only a blur or haze, a kind of visual fog, in which he can discriminate relatively little. Although the power of visual focus is not possessed by newborn infants, they acquire it very early and soon automatize its use. As adults, therefore, our eyes are automatically focussed; it takes a special effort for us to unfocus them and dissolve the world into a blur.

“A similar concept applies to the mind. In regard to thought, as to vision, the same alternative exists: clear awareness or a state of blur, haze, fog, in which relatively little can be discriminated. On the conceptual level, however, one must choose between these alternatives. Intellectual clarity is not given to man automatically.”

(Objectivism:The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, “Chapter 2—Sense Perception And Volition,” “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not”)

—(02/19/06)