Ayn Rand's Self-Sainted Selfishness
Yes, I know you hate Ayn Rand. (Except, of course, for you.) :)
Philosophy professor Max Hocutt dismissed the phrase 'the virtue of selfishness' as "rhetorical excess", saying that "without qualification and explanation, it is too paradoxical to merit serious discussion".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtue_of_Selfishness#Use_of_the_term_selfishness
What does Rand mean by selfishness? Is it true that we ought to encourage humankind to be more selfish? Which is more widespread and more problematic in Western civilization: an excess of altruism or an excess of selfishness?
If altruism is a moral no-no, is there any moral obligation to decrease the suffering of suffering people?
Is all this moral topsy-turvyness anything but a Nietzsche-esque reactionary sally against the self-destructiveness of Christian virtue when taken to the martyr's extreme?
Philosophy professor Max Hocutt dismissed the phrase 'the virtue of selfishness' as "rhetorical excess", saying that "without qualification and explanation, it is too paradoxical to merit serious discussion".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtue_of_Selfishness#Use_of_the_term_selfishness
What does Rand mean by selfishness? Is it true that we ought to encourage humankind to be more selfish? Which is more widespread and more problematic in Western civilization: an excess of altruism or an excess of selfishness?
If altruism is a moral no-no, is there any moral obligation to decrease the suffering of suffering people?
Is all this moral topsy-turvyness anything but a Nietzsche-esque reactionary sally against the self-destructiveness of Christian virtue when taken to the martyr's extreme?
Comments (433)
This is true, I only hate Farraday. Guy wasn't even a real scientist....
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Now this is how this is gonna go down: You and I, and ayone else who wants to go, are gonna do this, but it has to be for real. Never in my life have I met people oppositional to Rand that are willing to debate her like grown ups, so that's what I expect. Deal?
What does Rand mean by selfish:
P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals
Let's start there, what's your issue with this proposition? Is it valid, is is sound? If not, then why for each.
I have elected myself as "willing to debate all of you," on this subject. As it happens, Rand is among the many I have a wealth of knowledge on and I'm gonna see who can really argue against her, and I'm gonna rip through every fallacy I detect. So, gird them loins sweet cheeks.
Our use of the term "selfish", greed, callousness, etc., is in fact not a selfishness - it is a self-destructiveness. Such behavior should be looked upon with pity, not disdain. Such disdain comes forth from completely misplaced envy.
Not sure what Rand would think about this, but I thought I'd throw my perspective in there.
You aren't using her clearly stated definition of selfishness, this is what she means: rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes.
Rational selfishness, is meant to denote a conscious valuing of one's life, which is finite, and the value of the requirements of one's rational faculty to meet the demands of a finite life to achieve happiness, success, equilibrium, and sustenance. That such is the basis of ethics both between humans, as well as individually.
Quoting Tzeentch
"Our" use of "selfishness," not rational selfishness.
Quoting Tzeentch
She would say callousness is a perception you derived from something that was not relayed to you with any intention. Greed is only an evil when it violates the right of someone to pursue their own values, and self-destructiveness is a direct violation of rational selfishness that is part of the cause to all of those descriptors.
How is this different from the normal use of the word?
The use of the word "rational" here seems to do little more than introduce bounds to what we consider "acceptable" selfishness, based on Rand's (or presumably, society's) preferences.
As such, if those preferences are self-destructive, so is the concept of an "acceptable" selfishness that they prescribe.
I don't even know who is Ayn Rand. I feel pretty ignorant right now...
Is there a reason these premises are written like this, Garrett? To me it sounds like it was translated out of Swahili into broken unclear English. Sorry. :smile:
If humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.. I can't follow what this is trying to say. Humans are rational beings as a consequence of nature?
Quoting Garrett Travers
This first premise is simply untrue. Humans have the capability of using logic and rationality, but often times choose not to do so, or simply make logical and rational mistakes.
Barring that, one can come to the logical conclusion that eliminating their neighbors would result in a boost in wealth or power.
With premise one invalidated, 2 and 3 fall.
By selfishness, I understand Rand to mean rational self-interest - assuming of course that we’re talking about the possibility of a wholly rational consciousness, which human beings are not. What is problematic is insisting on either altruism or selfishness in an affected consciousness with a relative capacity for awareness. The former (Rand agrees here), constitutes unnecessary ignorance, isolation and exclusion of the potential of self; the latter (Rand is less forthcoming here) permits ignorance, isolation and exclusion of the potential of ‘other’. The trick, I think, is to recognise that Rand’s idea of a rational consciousness is limited by the perceived potentiality of individual human survival. So, it still permits a level of selfishness, and therefore ignorance, isolation and exclusion - which Rand seems to argue is necessary.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
No obligation as such, according to Rand. She does, however, appear to encourage it insofar as it doesn’t conflict with our own pursuit of rational (honest, justifiable, productive, etc) self-interest. There are a number of other ‘objectivist’ virtues that extend this self-interest, steering us towards increasing awareness, interconnection and collaboration with others, but only insofar as any action doesn’t impede our own success, happiness, survival, etc. This means that kindness, generosity and gentleness, for example, are considered conditional virtues.
Rand’s philosophy does make a certain amount of rational sense, offering a broad reductionist methodology for those who believe themselves to be wholly rational beings. But I think its over-complicatedness owes itself to a limited and distorted understanding of reality. And while her philosophy seems to render this limitation (human survival) necessary, her fictional writing (particularly in relation to characters who intend beyond their rational self-interest) does not.
Look her up. You'll be interested. She was a.... unique person. Besides being an anti-communist philosopher, she wrote the worst science fiction book in history - "Atlas Shrugged." So very, very, very bad, it's goo...No, sorry. It's just bad.
Wow an anti-communist philosopher writing books about science fiction. I can't get over it :lol:
I just checked in Google and there is a Spanish editorial which translated all her works. I would give a try in one of her works :cool:
Hey, L. Ron Hubbard, who was a pretty good old-style science fiction writer in the 1950s, started Scientology.
She is an.... acquired taste.
So, what part is untrue? Not employing reason, does not negate the fact that we exist through natural processes, and have developed reason, as opposed to fangs, to survive. Premise one still stands as a self-evident, and scientifically informed fact.
Quoting Philosophim
To logically conclude something, you'll have to conclude so logically, rather than just by this unsupported assertion. Besides, we haven't moved on to this portion of the conversation, which is covered by Rand extensively. Stick with just this proposition for now.
Sorry about the typos, I wrote it at like 2 in the morning, lol.
P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if its only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capabale of living according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals
That should be better.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, evolution. We evolved to produce reason as our means of survival, rather than fangs or claws. We create concepts and frameworks of behavior through reason. To negate such an assertion, evidence will have to be provided that opposes this as a deductive conclusion, and evidence for some other processes will also have to be presented.
What do you mean, the two are entirely not related. One describes just mindless self-pursuits, and the other is a principle of rationally understanding that it is only through the use of one's mind, and his/her rational faculty that life can be lived at all. The "bounds" are exactly what is going on, rational bounds on selfishness. It isn't just about self-attainment with no consideration for others, it is precisely the value of rationality and reason as a human universal that is valued to begin with. Which as a principle, renders the vanilla definition of selfishness illogical as an individual practice.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
Yo, Clark, no well-poisoning. The deal was, we were going to actually do this, and not act like a bunch of PhD's who have never taken a logic course. Present an argument, because these kinds of comments are simply reorienting the views of people who read it through nothing but shit talk.
And also, qualify your opinions. What about Atlas Shrugged was "just bad?" It's literally one of the most influential novels of the past century, you'll have to come up with something at all that's better than that.
Arguments, got any?
Let's take a look at these:
Perhaps that was your deal, but you are not the original poster. I think my post was in the spirit of the original post. I also think it's reasonable for me to make my disdain for Rand clear.
That being said, I don't plan to interfere with your plan to have a reasonable discussion of Rand's ideas. See my previous post.
Not assuming such.
Quoting Possibility
No, she regards it as evil because it asserts that it is proper for the human to be regard as a fit subject for the practice of sacrifice, either to someone, or someone to your self. Respect for one's own reason is inconsistent with this view.
Quoting Possibility
That is your choice. It is against the value of reason to hold others not responsible for their own pursuit of knowledge and a better life.
Quoting Possibility
Yes. Individuals are bound to this one precarious life woth only their reason as a means of survival.
Quoting Possibility
100%, it simply doesn't admit willful ignorance, that's irrational.
Quoting Possibility
Yes. It is impossible for me to do any good for those I love within my virtue, without an increasing knowledge base, productive skills, and refinement of virtues.
Quoting Possibility
That's a cool point. Who did you have in mind?
What does an Ayn Randian society do with those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to pursue their own values. Specifically, I'm thinking of people who are severely handicapped, severely schizophrenic, children with severe birth-defects, etc.?
What would it be then? What allows you to do anything? You'll need to expand this beyond internal confusion.
Quoting T Clark
Cool, explain. Where do we get our values if not from ourselves? Saying other people will simply just mean that reason constructed values that have been passed on to us. It will be the same process. So, where?
Quoting T Clark
And only in the society described above can such values be freely expressed. These are not incompatible, but complimentary.
Fair enough.
It will be, just like with children, the responsibility of those who created them to take care of them.
Quoting RogueAI
Same thing. If you have a child who is autistic, its your child. If you are rationally self-interested, you will know of such risk before having a child and prepare for the worst.
What happens if "those who created them" are unable to take care of them? Reliance on charities?
Yes. Taking care of them was their creators' responsibility. If you desire people to adopt that responsibility, you will need to appeal to them through reason. Forcing you to take care of them, or stealing your money so that I can, are ethical violations masquerading as virtue. And your real question should be: what did the creators do to place themselves in this position, and how do we ensure that this doesn't happen again. Of course, if they've died that's another thing.
Here's my problem with that: there are irresponsible people in this world. They have kids without planning for it. Sometimes their kids have problems. There are also tragedies that happen to parents who happen to have kids that need a lot of help. So we have this group of kids who, through no fault of their own, can't take care of themselves and also, through no fault of their own, have no one to provide for them. You think private charity is enough to care for this group. But history has shown that, in times of severe hardship, charities get overwhelmed. So, in the Ayn Randian society, when times are tough and charities are struggling...sucks to be you?
This is an appropriate subject for a thread of its own. There have been many on the forum.
You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice? Most people don't. Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight. I'll say it again, your position is unsupported and unsupportable.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason. As I said, I disagree with this. If, instead, you were saying that we use our reason to express our values, I'll at least agree that it is one of the facilities we use to do so, not the only one and not the primary one.
I am heading out now and won't be back for a few hours.
No, I think that our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on it. That was the premise.
Quoting T Clark
Exclusively.
Quoting T Clark
That's the problem.
Quoting T Clark
This is different. Humans are an altricial species with a rearing period of about 20 years or so. It takes them a long time to develop their rational faculties. Love of family needs to be a rational choice if it can be determined through development that such people are antithetical to one's own happiness. That comes in time.
Quoting T Clark
That's exactly what I said. Reason is where values come from, even if they've been passed on to you.
Quoting T Clark
We do both, the two are not incompatible. And cognitively there is no evidence to suggest that our values are not abstractions we develop from recurrent neural networks of sensory data constantly being processed and vetted for interests and pursuits, and thereby the data that is accrued from those interests and pursuits.
Rand
This definition of Altruism has the ring of the ad hoc.
The dictionary says:
the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.
"some may choose to work with vulnerable elderly people out of altruism"
No mention of evil in connection to what benefits oneself.
Why does Rand espouse this exaggerated notion of altruism?
Will try to from here on. Lot's of these questions have to be explained in modern terms, I've noticed, but yeah. No prob.
Rand
Are not all persons in part motivated by "irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims"?
Know your enemy. :smile:
Of course. But, the idea is that it is immoral for you to predicate your actions on such, hence the "It is not a license “to do as he pleases”and it is not applicable to the altruists’image of a “selfish”brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims." That doesn't mean you aren't going to feel any of those things. They simple aren't a predicate for behavior.
You'll find your ally instead. For example, how many Randians have been known to kill people, as opposed to christians, socialists, and statists? Something to put some thought to.
No, you're just delimiting the view of it, and how it has been used throughout history, and the actions of people and states that it has been used to justify. In other words, you've provided a reduction of the word, when historically it has been used in broad, sweeping ways that aren't contained in that one definiton. Particularly the manner she is highlighting.
If others are your standard for good, then you are in fact a sacrificail animal for the benefit for others. Either to be used by the state (Nazis, Red Russia, China, Khmer Rouge, etc.) who kills people for benefit of its chosen, the church (Christianity, Islam particularly) who extolls human sacrifice, or even by individuals who would have you forfeit your right to your own happiness for the sake of theirs, or those they claim to represent. The Altruistic principle is a two-way street used for the destruction of one, over another.
Altruism from Rand: The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
What you quoted from Rand was an explication of this definition. You'll see here that her definition from her lexicon is consistent both with your basic definition, and also how it has been enacted in history.
Not my problem.
Quoting RogueAI
Immoral behavior.
Quoting RogueAI
I agree. Rand wasn't against you helping them and she's given her condolences for those situations, even. Rand wasn't a heartless brute. However, I will say in good faith, that this is quite genuinely one area that she did not cover in great depth. So, it is completely understandable to have some push back in this specific regard.
Quoting RogueAI
Yes. There are thousands of people waiting in line to adopt children even in our current Dirigist economy. If people were free to accrue more money in a Laissez-Faire Capitalist system, more charity would be in the world for such people. Does that mean everyone will be taken care of? No. Will more people be taken care than now? Bet your ass. We would be able to have a system where I could directly contribute to societies of people built around solving just this very problem. Right now the state "takes care of it" mostly, and you do not want to hear about how they are doing so with these poor kids just in West Virginia alone, where I come from. I have a friend whose an executive for the main institution down there, it's a fucking nightmare.
Quoting RogueAI
History has shown us that with statist/dirigist systems. You are describing the norm with states specifically. Laissez-Faire Economies have never existed. We only know what the markets have been capable of in Dirigist systems, and it has changed the world in 200 years. At least in Free Markets, we would be able to find an uninhibited market solution.
Quoting RogueAI
No. It's "I don't even think of you, and you shouldn't think of me because you aught to be thinking of yourself." That's the general disposition. In a Randian society, again, there would be numerous institutons that were committed to this that could be paid for through voluntary subscriptions, that all of us would be inclined to pay for as a means of disaster mitigation associated with children growing up without their families (lot's of crime), who are the parties you should be mad at, or cast any blame onto before you turn to ANYBODY that wasn't involved.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That's true, but to implement your system, and hope that charities can take up the slack, is quite a gamble. We have a system now that takes money from the richest and provides somewhat of a safety net for the worst off. It's not perfect, but your system is too much of a gamble. Are you familiar with John Rawl's veil of ignorance?
Yes, but don't you undertand that if I live in a society that values me enough to respect my basic right to pursue my own ends rationally, that I'm MORE willing to ensure that same thing for everyone else because humans are valuable to me and I to them for the same reason? That I don't want to live in a world where children are so irresponsibly and irrationally created and left to the dust? You underestimate the power of this view my friend.
Quoting RogueAI
They do take money. Money that could be going to creating and funding more charities that they'd be willing to pay for if they had the freedom. You saw what Musk did for Ukraine on fly, didn't you? Imagine if more people could be counted amongst the wealthy to act just like that in love for the rational mind that could be potentially wasted through such circumstances. But no, these safety nets do nothing for people. I know, I've seen the statistics, and I grew up as one of the people accessing the nets. Most people with access to them are the crudest kind of self-indulgent, drug addicted, child abusing people I've ever come across. I would consider that I'm telling you something that's true, I genuinely mean to say what I'm saying to you here.
Quoting RogueAI
I am, and I think John Rawls mistakes his analysis for phenomena that is a by-product of exactly the saftey-nets he proposed, and that have been in existence for years that allow people to turn a blind eye and say "that's the governments job, I already pay taxes for it." It's ad hoc, in other words. However, what did you want to elaborate on about Rawls?
Everything exists through natural processes, that's irrelevant. We have reason that we can use to survive, but we don't always use reason. Her other premises are built on the idea that we are all reasonable human being who will always do what is reasonable. We're not. Not everyone uses reason to survive in every day to day case.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
Simplifying this, you've stated, "It is only through reason that we can live our lives with values we have developed through reason."
Meaning if you don't act reasonably, you cannot obtain those values you've concluded with reason. Since many people are not reasonable, or do not always reason on every decision, many decisions by people do not meet these values. Further, I will note again, that someone can conclude values with reason that would require the murder, theft, or other harmful things to other people.
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals[/quote]
1. If people do not always act reasonably, then the free pursuit of what they want (not necessarily values) will not be rational, and not be able to meet their values. Should people be free to do irrational things, like murder someone in anger?
2. If we go by the fact that we assume everyone is free to rationally pursue the values they have concluded from their rationality, it still leaves the problem that I can define my own values, and I can create values that are immoral and harmful to other people.
Truth is the only thing that is relevant to any proposition, and whether or not one chooses to not use reason is itself a non sequitur. The premise must be addressed from the point of truth, or non-truth. You are choosing to not do so.
Quoting Philosophim
No it isn't, you're making that up. The premise states that humans developed reason through natural processes, and that reason is the human's means of survival. It is not a categorical proposition that describes what some, or all humans do with that reason. Continue evaluating the proposition.
Quoting Philosophim
You aren't following the argument, go back. It doesn't have anything to do with "some people" doing or not doing anything. And, again, until you can grasp the proposition, we're not moving to murder, theft, or other harmful things. Continue evaluating.
Agreed, in essence, but let's be honest here: she clearly delineates from selfishness and rational selfishness. Meaning, if this is a discussion about Rand, that needs to be the exclusive usage for the term. Same way if we were talking about Marx, we would discuss Capitalism from precisely his view, even the definitions are no longer the same today. Right?
This told me nothing. Is it true that we don't always use reason in our day to day actions? Of course it is.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Remove natural processes, because its irrelevant, and you have, "Reason is the human's means of survival." No, no it is not. Plenty of people are not reasonable in many day to day actions of their lives. People overeat. Don't get vaccinated. React in anger or other emotions. Rationalize behavior. Reason, or rational thinking, is one aspect of humanity that it does not use exclusively.
And no, she is not saying what people who use reason, necessarily do with it. That's fine. I'm simply pointing out that because she does not say what people must necessarily conclude with reason, that I can see situations in which reason would conclude in evil being committed against another person.
So again:
A. People do not use reason in all of their decisions.
B. Even if people use reason in a decision, the conclusion of that reason may result in evil.
Therefore the final premise: The only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals,
fails because people will often times do irrational things, which can result in immoral actions, or conclude values that are immoral to others in society. You're going to really have to rebuff what is stated here. No more statements about "What I'm not doing". If you want to play, its time to get in there and demonstrate why the above reasoning is wrong.
Hey man, if you're not going to address the proposition, then take a hike. I'm not going around with you. This is not a categorical proposition describing behavior. That's the last time I'm addressing this before dismissing your arguments entirely. Either address the truth values of the propositions, or find another thing to discuss.
Quoting Philosophim
Nobody performs actions that extenuate their lives that are unreasonable at base value. You'll actually have to provide an example of one for this assertion to be true.
Quoting Philosophim
That's a conclusion drawn through the application of reason.
Quoting Philosophim
Eating is reasonable, overeating is damaging. The proposition is about how people survive. You're making my case for me.
Quoting Philosophim
This is not reason, this is the opposite.
Quoting Philosophim
Humans must use it to survive. Again, not a categorical proposition.
Quoting Philosophim
This a group of non sequiturs. Defer to above explanation and conitnue evaluating the original proposition.
Quoting Garrett Travers
There's a ton of emotion in the COVID anti-vaxxer movement. Further, you might say irrationalism manifests in confirmation bias vis-a-vis Facebook disinformation. Reason might play a small role.
Sure, but, to the degree one makes an emotional decision, one makes a harmful decision that goes against one furthering their life. Which is exactly what the pro-vaxxers say the anti-vaxxers are doing. So, we're still agreeing with Rand any way you're looking at it.
Which is fine. Rand was an advocate of a voluntary system of contribution to basic needs being developed. In which case, if a government goes overboard in their actions, we the people maintain a democratic fiscal veto power over their resources. She wasn't against safety nets, she was against the forced ones we have had for almost a hundreds years, which can hardly be shown to have been a net positive.
Thanks for clarifying. Reason does seem to separate us from the other animals but it's not as if reason has been very popular with people - politics, advertising, religion, art would not have such a massive and irrational influence on human behaviour if we used reason the way you think is right. Maybe your point is simply that reason is used? I would agree that humans have the capacity to use reason effectively - but it is just a part of how we think and act.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I struggle with this one. Is this circular? Only through reason we can we live by reason? Or are you saying that only through reason can we develop values that are based on reason? Same thing, kind of. Or are you saying that only reason can allow us to live according to the values we construct? For me we come back to the problem that humans use reasoning, certainly, but the quality of the reasoning is not clear - it often amounts to emotion directed choices or reasons that 'make sense' to the person.
I addressed your proposition clearly. Show me how I am wrong. Have you read your proposition clearly? Don't get mad at me. If I'm wrong, easily point out where I am misunderstanding the first proposition. You said humans use reason for their survival. I clearly pointed out they do not always use reason for their survival. They can use reason for survival, but they also don't have to. Where am I wrong? I can have a hammer, yet use a screwdriver to bang on a nail. Its not very effective, but I can. Do you understand?
If your first premise is simply, "Humans can reason," then my same arguments apply. This isn't hard to understand. I'm clearly addressing your points, stop avoiding them.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Wrong. A grenade lands at your feet with 20 good people nearby. You have just enough time to cover your body over it and save the 19 other people around you. Or, you could quickly jump behind another person who is close by that did not notice the grenade, save yourself, and the grenade goes off killing almost everyone else. Isn't it reasonable to save the other 19 people? Saving my life would be unreasonable in this situation would it not? If it is not, then what value am I holding? That the deaths of 19 other people are worth my life?
Quoting Garrett Travers
While it could be, it can be made through ignorance and fear. My point again, not every decision is made through reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No, I used this as an example to show you that people do not always make reasonable choices. You can have the capability to reason, but not use it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That is my point. I think you understand my point now.
Quoting Garrett Travers
100% incorrect. Do animals need reason to survive? Of course not. We are animals. We can survive through unreasonable, less effective, and sometimes outright dumb means. My point has been "we MUST reason" is incorrect. Demonstrate to me how we cannot survive in any way shape or form if we do not use reason.
I don’t think we need to encourage people to be more selfish It is impossible to produce any action, to think any thought or feeling, to have any simple perception without these being ‘for the sake of a self’ But self isn’t a little honunculus lurking inside one’s body that stands in opposition to an outside world. It is a relation to the world. The contents of the self are the contents of the world as seen from a point of view. What we think of as a subject, self, ego, the ‘I’ is the ongoing coherence and self-similarity of the flow of expereince that makes up the contents of events for each person. The self is really a self-consistency to this flow of experience, a way in which events are organized so that each is not just encountered but assimilated. Thus, what people call altruism isnt the abandonment of this assimilatory process. It is merely an expansion and enrichment of the self as assimilatory process. We are altruistic towards those we can relate to in some fashion. Improving their lives improves our lives because we are able to assimilate their values and thinking. Helping them
expands our self.
Ayn Randian notions of selfishness are based on the need to protect the self from those we cannot relate to , whose behavior and thinking is too different from our own to assimlate, embrace, relate to. Randian selfishness isn’t actually protecting some inner homincular entity ( set of rational processes) in our body, although that is what she believes it is doing; it is instead protecting our assimilative, relational processes from disruption by actions of people that we cannot relate to. If I am deeply i love, my identification with my beloved is so
close that the boundaries between my self and their self are almost non-existent. If I identify strongly with my family or community, then the distinctions between our various ‘selves’ are porous and ambiguous. In these cases, ‘ selfishness’ involves the gap of alienation between myself, my loved ones and community on the one side , and a strange or threatening individual
or community on the other side.
Rand formulated selfishness in terms of the solitary individual because too much of the world around her appeared alienating and threatening. Because of her brittle notion of rationality, she didnt have faith that one could turn the alien into the relatable and thereby embrace and assimilate it into the self. Much of the world outside her was simply wrong, irrational, or evil, so she argues that one needed to retreat to a safe, constricted space within whose bounds a hermetically sealed machine-like rationality could function to assimilate at least a limited range of features
of the world.
Reason and emotion (positive and negative emotion) work together in the decision-making process. A completely rational (emotion-free) person is a kind of monster. Sociopaths tend not to have a vibrant emotional life.
Positive emotions play a role in making life-, self- and other-affirming decisions.
They not only work together , they are inseparable. The idea of affect-free reason is incoherent. Sociopaths are just as affectively driven as the rest of us.
That's not a definition of 'selfish'. It's a conditional statement of the form:
If P1 and P2, then C.
I take it though that you mean it as an argument of the form:
P1
P2
Therefore, C
Anyway, it's not a definition of 'selfish'.
Moreover, the conclusion of the argument is not that ethically that people should be selfish. Rather, the conclusion is that people should be free to be selfish.
Looking at the arguments:
A. "[H]umans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival."
It's not clear what "generated", "natural processes" are supposed to mean there.
Reason is not the only means of survival. Human survival also depends on other means, including ingrained responses (you jump from fire by a natural tendency to avoid its pain well before you reason about it), emotion (enthusiasm, hope, love) , physical effort (pushing a rock to not be crushed by it), and cooperation with other humans (except for extraordinary people, survival by oneself with just reason is not likely).
B. "It is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty"
Surviving is one thing, but living life according to values is additional. Living according to values includes survival a fortiori.
And the conclusion does not follow from the premises. This premise also is needed:
If P1 and P2, then C.
But that claim itself needs justification.
And it requires argument to show that there are not values other than selfishness that are developed with reason, or even that values developed aside from reason shouldn't count (I value not experiencing the pain of being burned. That's not a value developed from reason but rather simply from my utterly basic preference not to experience pain. I value fresh air, not from reason, but simply from my utterly basic preference to feel refreshing oxygen in my lungs. I value seeing a colorful flower, not from reason, but simply from the unmediated pleasure I get from it.)
So, reason is only part of the means of human survival.
And it requires argument to show that what is ethical is only that which best contributes to living according to values based in reason. That is, it requires argument to show that "Action A is ethical if and only if it contributes to values based in reason."
Quoting Garrett Travers
The species developed reason along with other physical, psychological, and social attributes.
The Objectivist argument is:
1. Reason is the essential attribute that provides for a human's survival.
2. Reason provides for human values.
3. An act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason.
Those are three separate claims, without connecting logic, unless a missing premise if filled in: The premise that is missing:
If reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values, then an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Survival depends on intelligence, which we may says includes crucial reasoning. But survival also depends on other physical, psychological, and social attributes too.
This is the last time I will address this, because I did easily point it out. The proposition is not a categorical one regarding behavior, there is no argument being made that humans always use their reason. That's it. Now you must re-evaluate the proposition and address it from the point of validity and soundness. Meaning this : "You said humans use reason for their survival," does not mean : "You said all humans use their reason at all times." The proposition is that humans survive using the application of reason, and reason is that means of survival.
Quoting Philosophim
In what way can you use anything else for survival? Keep the argument here, this is what you need to demonstrate.
Quoting Philosophim
You just used reason to determine those tools could be used in a like manner, that's conceptualization. This is not a case of not employing reason.
Quoting Philosophim
Non sequitur. This has nothing to do with the human's basic tool for survival. The introduction of force against reason is a violator of reason. This is irrelevant.
Quoting Philosophim
You aren't using reason correctly, this is making a bit more sense. Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
None of this faculty is afforded to people who have grendades thrown at them, one will be forced to make a snap decision, reason has nothing to do with the equation, nor does this scenario address the proposition. You need to stay with the proposition until you can show that it is either invalid, or unsound.
Quoting Philosophim
I'm not addressing this again.
Quoting Philosophim
Animals have other evolutionary advantages for survival. We have evolved our reason. We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. We barely have instinctual inclinations in any comparable way because of this evolutionary adaptation.
Quoting Philosophim
Name one. All of that sounds like you're inputting your own standards into actions, and evaluating them from the perspective of your thought, logic, and judgement.
Quoting Philosophim
We are born altricial and have a rearing period of about 20 years, and if we're left alone to fend for ourselves before our conceptual faculty has been fostered, we die. We have no knowledge of how to survive without the development of that faculty. We currently only maintain our lives by our own logical processes of thoughts and values, and the productive effects of others. Even if such reasoning doesn't meet your interpolated standards.
I suppose I was thinking of emotional numbness.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-emotional-intensity/201810/depersonalisation-why-do-you-feel-empty-and-numb
Certainly, sociopaths lack the kind of positive emotional patterns that keep most of us from going on a killing spree.
Humans do have physical attributes including feet, legs, endurance running, five senses, teeth, fingernails, fingers, opposable thumbs, et. al. Indeed the various features of the human body itself - that provides for breathing for oxygen to the cells, ingestion for hydration and nutrition, organs for regulation of chemicals, elimination, immunity, et. al - all are means of survival. To say that certain creatures don't have, say, wings to survive makes no sense in claiming that humans don't also have their own anatomical attributtes. And humans have psychological attributes including will, hope, fear (fear causes you to immediately avoid, without mediation of reason, a snake on the ground), anger (anger against an adversary can help you beat him to death in self-defense of your life), et. al. And humans have social attributes, including compassion, empathy, rescue.
In the article, the notion of emotional numbness is treated like a reaction to emotional events, as if one first encounters trauma and then the body decides to emotionally ‘shut down’ as some protective device. This is too reductive for my taste. Emotions, moods and feelings are not devices or mechanisms
or inner states. They are the manifestations of our ways of understanding and coping with situations as we interpret them. Emotional trauma is already a ‘numbness’ in the sense that negative
emotion indicates a breakdown in anticipatory sense making, rather than being the cause of such breakdown.
When we lose our grip on the world , when it becomes
a fog of chaos and confusion, this is both a cognition and a feeling. The two aren't separate processes , they are aspects of the same experience.
So our ‘numbness’ is t a secondary withdrawal from stress and intense emotion, it is the emotion itself, because it is the situation itself that becomes incoherent and meaningless.
If they lack certain ‘emotional patterns’ then this is because they lack certain ways of assessing the relevance of human factors. The emotion cannot be understood apart from the personal assessment and construal of a situation.
Well, sure: if you're defining numbness as an emotion, there's no argument to be made. :)
I know it is not. To get to the selfish part, one has to go through the logic. That's why I said we will "start" here. The terms have already been laid out in other posts, though.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Evolution.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
All of this is involved in the reasoning process, and how your brain determines one's actions. The pain/pleasure response is about the best thing here as far as a natural response to immediate stimuli that ensures survival, so I think you can have that. But, even that is an essential element to: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic- or reason.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If you value it, it's reason. If your body does it for you, its just automation. But, breathing isn't going to get your food, shelter, or skills for continued survival for you.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, the things you mentioned are minor parts of survival that could potentially exist outside of : think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. However, this definition is the primary means of survival without which you die.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Yes, means of survival are developed by reason, values are secondary.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, it doesn't. That isn't necessary at all. All values developed with reason. Selfishness is the value in the reasoning faculty to provide life and values. Doesn't matter which values you generate.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If humans survive by reason, and reason is the human's means of surviving and living in accordance with the values produced from reason, then a society that respects that process is the only one conducive to human life. How does that not follow? Saying as much isn't enough.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If you can use thought to enumerate the reason, that's reason.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
None of which are sufficient on their own for our basic survival.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
This is completely fair. So, I say we go from there.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Survival beyond merely being alive requires some form of reason. The other physical attributes are not sufficient for long-term survival.
Again, all attributes that, without the employment of the reasoning faculty, are not sufficient for basic human survival. All of those psychological traits are specifically elements of the reasoning process. So are social attributes. Your compassion is selective based on the application of your reasons to certain people. You're not making an argument against the importance of reason in survival by describing what reason uses to ensure its success.
That is specifically my argument here, thanks.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Sure, all part of the reasoning process.
Then you agree with my point, and I've said nothing wrong.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Here you are now recanting what you just said earlier. You are saying humans MUST use reason to survive. But we've already both agreed that humans don't always have to be reasonable, and you can survive when you don't make reasonable choices.
We've already mentioned a few. I can overeat and be a few pounds overweight, even though I know its not reasonable to do so. It won't kill me. Lets go from the aspect of ignorance as well. Lets say I really like eating vegetables, but I don't know that they're healthy for me. It wasn't reason that makes me eat vegetables, its that they taste good.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You're arguing that if I have a hammer in front of me, using a screwdriver to beat a nail into the wall is reasonable? There is nothing reasonable about it. That's just an emotional whim. If you think that picking a screwdriver over a hammer is reasonable, please clarify how. Are you saying that reason is just creating concepts, but not their effective use?
Quoting Garrett Travers
What? If reason cannot withstand force, then how do we survive when faced with force? If reason must be used to survive, then whenever someone uses force on a human being, do they just die? You are avoiding the point, and it is silly.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You are changing what reason is on a whim. First, my using a screwdriver instead of a hammer is somehow reasonable. You're saying I concluded I could use a screwdriver over the hammer by thinking, understanding, and forming judgements by logic. Yet there is no one reasonable in the world would think it is reasonable to use a screwdriver over a hammer.
I'm not asking you to make a snap decision. We're considering this now, so that when a time of judgement is needed, they've already used reason to determine what they will do. Soldiers consider this in places across the world. It is more reasonable in this situation to save the lives of 20 others. That means it is reasonable for you to lose your life.
And yet, that results in the loss of your basic survival. Meaning we have a very clear case of a situation in which we can reasonable conclude something that results in our death. We cease to survive, which has everything to do with the premise. Reason can lead to our survival, but does not necessarily lead to our survival.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, if you're stating that we only have reason for survival, then we MUST use reason for survival. We have many instinctual inclinations, watch a few babies. Blow on their face and they hold their breath. Put something to suckle when they're hungry, and they do. It is not reason that makes a baby survive, it is the care and sacrifice of the involved parents. They put their own survival at risk for the child. But so do many other animals that lack reason.
If reason is: "Quoting Garrett Travers", and also implying that animals lack reason, then you need to show human actions apart from basic functions that animals do to survive, like eat, hunt, and defend themselves, are absolutely necessary.
It is not that reason is not invaluable, but it is a cherry on the cake. Survival does not require reason, if we are equating reason as something that other animals do not have.
This is where I get tripped up.
Suppose we have two people, one of whom makes all of their decisions "emotionally", and one who makes all of their decisions "rationally". Now suppose that, as a matter of pure dumb luck, they just happen to make all of the same decisions on issues of significant import (e.g. they both decide not to get vaccinated, they both decide to become vegetarians, they both decide to vote for the same candidate in each election, they both decide to support the same social causes, etc., etc.).
The means are different, but the ends are the same. In terms of observable outcomes, their lives are morally equivalent. So how can we say that the one has made "harmful" decisions while the other has made "beneficial" decisions?
In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Mothers love babies before they're born. Parents don't decide to love their children for rational or any other reason, they just do. It's built into us. I tell you this as a father. There is no rationality behind my feelings for my children.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I think that's true of very few people. It certainly isn't true of me.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of.
If a value is the frame, and rationality refers to the structure of relations made intelligible by the frame, the is the shift from frame to frame rational, irrational or a-rational?
If we use as an example of a value system a Kuhnian scientific paradigm, the how do we characterize the transition from one paradigm to another. It certainly isnt deductive or inductive. But is it irrational? Could we instead say that it is pragmatically useful, which is different from both rationality and irrationality? I suspect that the way we operate WITHIN values systems also has more to do with pragmatic usefulness than strict logic. That leads us to Wittgenstein’s approach to language.
I would also add that what people call ‘emotion’ ,rather being something outside of or independent of our experience of usefulness, gets to the very core of the feeling , the sense, of what is useful or not. We don’t feel logic. Logic is dead and empty. We feel usefulness. Usefulness is what matters to us, what is relevant to us , what is coherent or incoherent.
This is getting silly. No, I didn't. You asked a question about people, then asked a question about me.
Quoting T Clark
I don't expect reasonable people to agree.
Quoting T Clark
I can't help you with science you're aware of. You're going to need to review some cog-sci. Yes, values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you.
Nothing said were fair points. The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. If love isn't rational for you, I would reconsider that it is in fact love at all. Conncections require an alignment of values, that's reason, same as love. Every bit of this is dependent on reason. Not talking rationally about this stuff is why the wrold looks the way it does right now.
(1) Laissez-faire capitalism is the proper socioeconomic system to aspire towards.
(2) This has not yet existed.
(3) But if it did exist, it would be fantastic.
In my view, replace "laissez-faire capitalism" with "communism" and you'll have the crux of that argument as well. Completely unfalsifiable. No historical evidence. Just declarations -- based on principles that simply reduce Aristotle to a cartoon.
Rand is mostly a waste of time, but one has to tackle her to understand a lot of the justifications given for our current neoliberal era. A more sophisticated alternative for doing so would be Milton Friedman, or perhaps Hayek.
In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As @Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way.
If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them.
Um, what are talking about? The transitions from classical mechanics to relativity wasn't rational? From universal constant to Hubble constant wasn't rational? Is this a joke? It's specifically rationality that overcomes a crisis in a Kuhnian revolution. The undeniable facts of observation, inductively and deductively derived (reason) is, as a point of exactitude, what sees a shift through from normal science to a new paradigm. It is the unreasonable that get in the way.
No, because we have an immense amount of data over just the past 70 years showing us what markets produce for the world, and how states ruin the world as a result of being in control of those markets. There's more evidence to suggest the success of Laissez-Faire than what doesn't exist. You're talking through some right now.
Quoting Xtrix
Make an argument, this isn't one.
In your experience (accrual of data), values are not conceptual understandings (a conceptual understanding derived from data). You just contradicted yourself.
Quoting T Clark
Let me go find some. Gimme a bit.
Digest this : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
And this : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full
This is a good starting point.
Quoting Garrett Travers
This alignment of values also describes postive feeling. We wouldn’t know that there was a positive alignment without positive feeling. Accord, agreement, unification, harmony always feels a certain way that tells us it is this connectedness and coherence. I. fact, the feeling isn’t anything f outside of the meaning of coherence itself.
By e same token, we wouldn’t know the meaning, the sense of incoherence, discord and disagreement without a negative feel or ‘emotion ‘. The emotion isn’t some mindless reflex or hormone. It is the very feel of the meaning of disappointment, alienation, failure of alignment.
So emotion isnt the CAUSE of irrationality. It is our expereince of how things line up in our world , coherently or incoherently , in accord or discordantly, harmoniously or disjunctively. We have a habit of blaming our emotions for our cognitive assessments.
I don't understand your argument, sorry. What do I need to understand about reason that I don't?
Feeling is a part of the reasoning process, it isn't a stand alone system. There's nothing about having the capacity for Positive Energy that is not in complete accord with the Randian view of things.
Quoting Joshs
Exactly my point. Check out the studies I just posted to Clark, they'll elucidate the process a bit. And those are not the only ones.
No, it is not rational if by rational you mean that there was some precise pre-existing order and the shifts in science you mention are transitions that are completely regulated by that pre-existing order. What kind of advance in knowledge would that be? Are you really satisfied with the idea that scientific enlightenment consists of additional f details to a logical scheme without putting into question the very premises of that scheme? As scientists , are we stuck with that foundation forever? That, to me, constitutes the very failure of progress.
“…when we sit down to try to figure out what will happen in the future, it usually seems as if the thing to do is to start with what we already know. This progression from the known to the unknown is characteristic of logical thought, and it probably accounts for the fact that logical thinking has so often proved itself to be an obstacle to intellectual progress. It is a device for perpetuating the assumptions of the past. Perhaps at the root of this kind of thinking is the conviction that ultimate truth -at least some solid bits of it - is something embedded in our personal experience. While this is not the view I want to endorse, neither would I care to spend much time quarreling with it. It does occur to me, however, that one of the reasons for thinking this way is our common preference for certainty over meaning; we would rather know some things for sure, even though they don't shed much light on what is going on. Knowing a little something for sure, something gleaned out of one's experience, is often a way of knowing one's self for sure, and thus of holding on to an identity, even an unhappy identity. And this, in turn, is a way of saying that our identities often stand on trivial grounds. If I can't be a man I can, at least, be an expert.
“ …if man were no more than a bystander to that procession we call the universe, or if the universe were itself no more than a spatially distributed display of interesting objects, then we might reasonably regard experience and truth as facsimiles of each other. But what man thinks he sees leads him to conjure with what he has not seen, and what he has experienced makes him wonder what he has missed. So imagination, once stirred, often leads to initiative, and initiative to action, and action produces something unexpected for men to contemplate and experience, and, finally, the newest experience throws the recollections of prior experiences into fresh perspective, thus reducing them to the level of mere chronicler's facts, facts whose historical meaning takes its shape from present rather than past interpretations.”
“I must still agree that it is important for the psychological researcher to see the efforts of man in the perspective of the centuries. To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”
Not sure why you want to prioritize reason here. It's emotion and reason working together as equal partners.
That love and connections and everything else you enumerated are all predicated on the reasoning process by which standardized those connections. No way around it. You don't just go around asking women to marry you, or concluded that fifty different cities are your favorite, or any of that. There is a reasoning process from start to fininsh. Sorry for they typos above.
No, not as equals. Reason has the frontal cortex dedicated to its processing of the kinds of executive function. It is specifically your reason that uses everything else, not the other way around:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.
Typos are fine - I'm big on making them myself. :cool:
Ok so a reasoning process is fine. I reason that Berlin is my favorite city in the world because I met my wife there and we had some great days and nights travelling around. How valuable is this type of reasoning philosophically?
Joshs... My friend. You're too smart to be saying stuff like this. Reason is : think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. Do you really mean to imply that Kuhn conveyed to you that revolutions in paradigms happen not as a result of this definition, and all of the behaviors in the sciences that fall into this category?
Quoting Joshs
This is all a description of the reasoning process. Defer to the studies I posted for Clark and Cosm.
Other than that, can you try to clarify what point you're making with these passages?
I have gone back through all of your posts in this thread and I didn't find any reference to specific sources or references which would provide evidence about a "modern scientific understanding of nature" and how it relates to your position. You are just performing "seems to me" philosophy. I acknowledge I am doing the same, but I haven't made the type of definitive claims you have.
It's valuable because you get to understand that you are in fact an independent, co-equal producer of the source of value in the world. And that only a system that respects such, can be considered a valuable one, as those that don't destroy the source of value to sustain themselves. Other than that, nothing really.
No, I posted you some stuff that opens up the doorway to underwstanding the process of conceptualizations and abstractions. I'll post again so you can see it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.
Can you provide a quote from the linked source that supports the view that "reason [not the brain or its constituents] uses everything else."
Now you're just being silly.
No, that's absurd. C'mon, let's not be silly. Reason is the method by which the brain uses all of those functions to create abstractions from data that inform behaviors, and derive values with the collection of more data. And yes, there are some references above that will begin to elucidate this process.
Again, a source to support this claim?
No, I'm not. This is quite literally you expressing a value, and you developed it through sensory data accrual, no shit. It's a complete contradiction.
Thanks, that's a bit clearer.
Are you deliberately choosing not to read? Here, let me help. And remember, I said the conditions were that we do this right, no bullshit. So, let's not beat around the bush.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.
Start with these, it's a process of understanding what is happening with the brain. Much more where these come from.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Quoting Garrett Travers
I guess the point I’m making is that we have to make a distinction between formal logic and forms of pragmatic logic. Only pragmatic logic gives us the creative innovations of the sciences as well as
the arts. When we construe harmonies and inferential
compatibilities among unique events, this is different from formal logic , which can only operate on structures that are in some respect absolutely identically repeatable.
Pragmatic logic recognizes that the world doesn’t sit still for us , not even for a moment. We can pretend that the world consists of such identically repeatable structures , but this is only an idealization, a convenience to simply things.
Kuhn’s notion of paradigm change does not rely on formal logic but something closer to the way change
takes place in the arts.
I took a quick look. I didn't see anything applicable to the questions we are discussing.
We're not getting anywhere. I think we've carried this discussion as far as we can.
Which is..... Reason! Ding Ding!
Quoting Joshs
This, of course, all true. But, active human thought and logic and reasoning itself isn't strictly formal. Wittgenstein knew that very well. We operate deductively and inductively both, all at the same time in very complex ways. But, reason is involved in all of those ways.
I'm asking you to provide a quote, not a collection of sources.
You've made a claim. Now support it with a quote from your sources.
Providing pages and pages of reading material - that isn't an argument.
So, the pfc's function, how the brain differentiates between data signals, and the recuurent neural networks that integrate data have no relevance... Gotcha. Thanks for stopping by!
I thought you used the work capitalism in one of your propositions but now I can't seem to find it. Can you get me to it if you did? Thanks.
That's not how this stuff works. There's no such thing as a quote of such a kind. The process is distributed over billions of neurons that compute sensory data, reward, executive function, etc. You have to analyze the entire process through different research. The idea that values and concepts aren't generated by the brain in accordance with sensory data isn't something that is in dispute.
I didn't at all. But, we can get there once we get past the first proposition.
Maybe this will help:
"The activation signature of a concept is a composite of the different types of knowledge of the concept that a person has stored, and each type of knowledge is stored in its own characteristic set of regions"
‘Each time we learn something, we permanently change our brains in a systematic way,’ said Bauer, the study’s lead author. ‘It was exciting to see our study successfully implant the information about extinct animals into the expected locations in the brain’s filing system.’
https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroimaging-concepts-brain-2113/
OR, just open this study and go to the introduction and read it:
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/25/9307
Okay. You want to prioritize the brain (you say reason, but then you talk about the brain, so I'm more comfortable saying the brain) over the emotions. How do you want to say that? The brain rules the emotions? The brain controls the emotions? The brain creates the emotions?
Some kind of clear formulation of reason's dominion backed up by quotes from your sources....
The subject on the table is whether the source of human values is based on reason. You say yes. I say no. The articles you linked to have nothing to say about that.
From what I can gather, the brain controls everything. The brain produces the capacity to reason, which is used to navigate the world in accordance with the data it receieves. How it chooses to navigate the world is predicated on concepts derives from an accumulation of data, Employing those abstractions through behavior leads to more data accrual, and verification or dispensation of those concepts based on successful or failure of said concepts in accordance with a goal. The goal is based on a value derived from the whole process. This is how humans operate and survive in the world.
PFC: "This region is implicated in the most human of behaviors, such as social interaction, moral judgment, fairness, self-control, prediction of the future, and decision making in conflict situations.88-9"
Sensory Data Accrual: "In everyday life, we choose between options with multiple attributes. The attributes of an option (e.g., shoes) can be qualitatively different (aesthetics and expenses) and are associated with positive or negative values. For successful choice behavior, individuals need to integrate the different values into an overall subjective value."
Data Sifting: "People can conceptualize the same action (e.g. ‘riding a bike’) at different levels of abstraction (LOA), where higher LOAs specify the abstract motives that explain why the action is performed (e.g. ‘getting exercise’), while lower LOAs specify the concrete steps that indicate how the action is performed (e.g. ‘gripping handlebars’). Prior neuroimaging studies have shown that why and how questions about actions differentially activate two cortical networks associated with mental-state reasoning and action representation, respectively"
Concept Informed Behavior: ""The activation signature of a concept is a composite of the different types of knowledge of the concept that a person has stored, and each type of knowledge is stored in its own characteristic set of regions"
That's basically what's going on. But, the process is fucking complicated and I believe, once understood, not only verifies Rand's basic ethical code, but allows us to understand ethics altogether.
lol. Be sure to observe the quotes I left from those journals just below your comment. In short, my position is reinforced by data, yours by opinion.
To repeat - none of the articles you linked to say anything about reason as the source of human values, no matter how ol you l.
Thanks.
So the brain controls reasoning and also anything irrational or emotional in the human system(s)? It controls, in a word, everything in the human system(s)?
Do you concede that the brain is in some sense itself controlled by the variety of incoming stimuli?
Yes, it's not even something that's a question in neuroscience. It controls everything in accordance with its task to maintain homeostasis. Reason is its means of doing so in regards to behavior within the world. Irrationality comes in when one installs a conceptual frame work that values : not logical or reasonable means of acquiring knowledge and informing behaviors. Something humans can be trained to do conceptually.
Influenced, of course. Controlled, no. Other than by it's genetic code, which is more structural integrity, rather than control.
As said another way:
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
You need to answer that better than you barely do [see later in this post].
/
Quoting Garrett Travers
So you should not have suggested that it is.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) Reason depends on the biological process of the brain. So one could just as easily say that all reason involves biological process.
(2) Not all those examples involve reason. Or, if they do, then everything involves reason, but also, human survival also involves physical, emotional, and social attributes. So one might as well just say "the means of survival", inclusive of all means, rather than pick out only reason as determinative over all of them.
(3) Some of those examples do not involve reason. I retract immediately upon touching fire, not because I reason about it. Of, if you call that 'reason' (because it contributes to survival) then virtually anything is reason that contributes to survival. And in that case, if it contributes to survival then it's reason and if it's reason then it contributes to survival. And in that case, your framework is circular.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Your argument is that reason should be singled out as the necessary attribute. But then I mention another necessary attribute. But then you say it contributes to reason. But whether the other attributes contribute to reason or not, they are necessary. Without better argument, you are arbitrary to claim that reason is the essential necessary attribute, let alone to further argue that ethical behavior is all and only that which is based on values corresponding to reason. One could as well say that ethics is all and only that which contributes to pleasure and avoidance of pain. Or one could as well say that ethics is all and only that which contributes to survival. Adding that it must be toward life corresponding to "values based on reason" doesn't follow from your premises.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) On it's face, that means that whatever I value is based on reason. But you can't mean that, because you hold that certain values are not based on reason. So it's ambiguous what you think reason is.
(2). And, no, reason is not why I value the air. I value it because it is excruciating not to have it. I don't reason about that; I just feel the pain of suffocation and desire not to suffocate - immediately without reason. You said yourself that you concede pleasure/pain may precede reason. If turning toward air, even as an animal would do, is from a process of reason, then virtually any behavior is from reason and the word 'reason' loses its particular meaning.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Ah, your argumentation relies on shifting between what is necessary and what is sufficient. Yes, breathing is not sufficient for certain things but it is necessary. And reason is not sufficient either. But your point has been the necessity of reason. If you point out the necessity of reason, then I correctly also point our the necessity of breathing, even though neither is sufficient.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) Again, there are necessary means of survival that are not developed by reason.
(2) And you support my point when you say values are secondary. Since they are secondary, unless there is other connecting argument, it is arbitrary to claim that ethics is identified with them in the particular way that Objectivism does.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) The point I made is that it requires argument to show that there are not values other than selfishness developed from reason. I didn't claim that selfishness as a value is or is not developed by reason.
(2) "Doesn 't matter which values you generate". On its face, that can't be what you mean, even in this context, since you hold that there are values that are irrational.
(3) Even though, quite arguably, valuing one's life and pleasure and enjoyment of certain values is selfish, it does not follow that (a) all values are developed by reason (which was my point) and (b) that one can't develop from reason also unselfish values (a point I'm adding in response to your response here).
(4) Even though, quite arguably, the value of selfishness contributes to one's own life and values, it does not follow that ethics is merely that which contributes to one's own life and (rational) values. It is pure question begging to merely say that ethics does not permit putting the lives and (rational) values of other people above your own.
I'm willing to take it as axiomatic that ethical behavior must at least contribute to life, pleasure, and rational values. But whether (a) that must be (or, weaker, can be) only one's own life, pleasure, rational values (egoism) or (b) life, pleasure, rational values in general (utilitarianism), requires argument. The proposition you need to demonstrate is "Ethical acts are all and only those that contribute to one's own life and (rational) values".
I wrote:
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
You replied:
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) Physical capability, unmediated response, emotion, social inclination are obviously not minor.
(2) Even if they are merely minor (which, they are not), that wouldn't provide for your framework as singling out reason while disregarding all the other aspects of survival. Let alone that without physical capability, there is no reason anyway.
(3) If they can exist without reason, then that destroys your point.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) You are shifting the argument.
Your original conclusion was that people should be free to be selfish. I don't opine here on that. But I point out that it doesn't follow from your premises.
Now you say that a "society that respects that process is the only one conducive to human life". A premise (which is uncontroversial) "society should be conducive to human life" does contribute to "people should be free to be selfish". I don't mind too much taking liberty in that respect as a kind of starting ethos, as long as it is not categorical. It does not necessarily follow that an ethical society may not limit certain selfish pursuits. First, without better Objectivist argument, we should not accept the Objectivist escape hatch that violation of the rights or others is never selfish. Second, if promotion of life is the fundamental value, then it is not ruled out that society disallow people from doing things that threaten their own lives. Third, again, it is question begging to claim, without supporting premises, that society should not act to promote life, pleasure, and values of people in general rather than merely allow people to pursue selfish objectives that happen not to violate rights.
(2) The Objectivist position that ethics is all and only that which is selfish, it is not itself that proposition above you hold about society. Again, as to Objectivism, the premise that needs to be supported is:
If reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values, then an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
As was clear, that is not my own position.
And:
(1) There are attributes needed for survival other than reason.
(2) If the claim is not just necessity but is moreover essentiality, then Objectivism needs to support its philosophy of essentialism, and provide argument how essential properties entail certain other normative claims.
(3) The whole conditional sentence itself requires argument, unless it is simply an axiom.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Okay, go from there. Try to make a logically sound argument for it.
That the proposition impresses Objectivist as overwhelmingly true is not a demonstration that it is true. A demonstration is showing:
"Reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival". (And that has not been shown.)
and
showing that
"Reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values"
entails
"An act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason."
Quoting Garrett Travers
I don't know what "enumerate the reason" is supposed to mean.
I can use thought to enumerate the emotions I felt yesterday. That doesn't entail that the emotions themselves are reason.
These are not my premises. The first two are, that conclusion is yours. We haven't gotten to the moral justifications portion of this conversation yet.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
I didn't, I said we'd "start" here.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
That's specifically what I'll be arguing.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
That's because you didn't analyze the rest of the statement. It does not matter whether you can value irrational concepts, the concept itself is generated through the same process of reason per individual.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
There is no evidence to suggest this, and plenty to suggest otherwise. I've linked studies in the thread.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Reason is without a doubt the necessary attribute. One that uses the attributes that you described to initiate and standardize behavior. They are necessary attributes, but are not sufficient protocols for survival, reason must be employed to ensure long-term homeostasis. You do not understand my conclusion, you are only talking from your conclusion that I did not assert.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Nope, that was you. This was my specific argument.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
We're gonna do this one on a separate comment, after I get through your gish gallop.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If you can describe why you enjoyed something, then such is a matter of reason.
So, here's how we're gonna move forward. Don't post any more of these gish gallops, and you and I will handle each objection individually, like I've been doing with everyone else. I'll let you decide which one you want to tackle first. Post it in a comment, and you and I will explore it. I'm not responding to any more of these huge messages with numerous issues of which may or may not have been derived from you misunderstanding something entriely.
So waking to a room on fire and escaping in a panic - this isn't an example of incoming stimulus controlling the brain?
The brain controls reasoning and also the irrational in the human system(s)?
So the brain, in its control of irrational thoughts, emotions and behavior, is both rational (given to reasoning) and irrational?
No. It is the brain integrating data to be used in motivating you away from harm, and into safety. It's a function of reason. Your brain is always reasoning, even in situations of this kind. However, situations of this kind limit the breadth of executive function in that process, which limits total reasoning capacities. In the case of Randian Ethics, that executive function aspect of how you formulate your code of behavior is something that should never be jettisoned. And it strikes me as bizarre that anyone would come to a separate conclusion.
Yes. Aren't you reading what I've showed you. You have the capacity to instantiate systems of thought and value, that do not value reason. Which is strange, because you're actually using reason to do so. Individual reasoning capacities and manipulation have a strong part to play in this process.
Think of it in terms of religion. If I can convince you through sensory validation that there's a god, or you should believe in god, it is reason you are using to conclude whether or not I can be trusted, and my arguments sound. If you are convinced, there's a good chance you will adopt a system of religious belief that specifically regards reason as anti-thetical to god. Thus, through the application of reason, which isn't avoidable because that's how humans survive, you have adopted an anti-reason, and therefore anti-human, conceptual framework of behavior. I once met a guy who told me he didn't need evidence for believing something, while simultaneously holding opinions based on observed phenomena...... Humans have done a number on themselves, my friend.
And how can a person know whether his present thoughts, emotions or behaviors are rational or irrational?
Is it possible to believe a given thought, emotion or behavior is rational when upon closer inspection it turns out to be irrational?
For example, your behavior right now on this forum: is it possible that while you believe it to be rational it turns out to be irrational?
That's what we have language for. We've mapped the word "reason" to a concept that is a standard for interaction with the world, it simply happens to correspond to human nature. Meaning, reason is itself a definition one can defer back to, in case they think they're predicating an action on a desire that would override a more wholesome, and equilibrated action.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Of course. Happens to me all of the time. I only recently found out about Epicurus. His history utterly negates everything we knew about communism and capitalism. Yet, most of us, including myself until last week, are walking around with all of these concepts that seem rational, when in fact they're contradictory completely. Which would make sense as to why Communists and Capitalists can't square their damn differences. Just as an example.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes. But, I value empiricism, which is also a standard placed on top of the "thinking" aspect of reason, that I personally value for the results I can achieve with it. If you were to show me demonstrable proof that Rand was wrong, and Kant was right, I'd change my mind right now. As it stands, the only evidence that currently is compiled, supports most of Rand's views, as opposed to Kant's. Does that all make sense?
Oh no. Here we go again. An Ayn Rand thread... 16 hours and 5 pages.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What are you talking about?
You listed P1, P2, and C:
Quoting Garrett Travers
I pointed out that it is a conditional statement, not an argument. But then I allowed that you probably mean it as an argument.
But P1 and P2 do not logically entail C.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Whatever you haven't gotten to, it includes not having gotten to a valid argument. If you have a valid argument for C, then it requires more than P1 and P2.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Then you'll be arguing in the opposite direction of your gravamen.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I took you to mean it was a definition from which you would go on to make other points. So, now, good that it's clear that it wasn't a definition of selfishness, but then it that case you were mislading to say it was what is "meant" by 'selfishness'
Quoting Garrett Travers
I didn't shift any argument. What argument do you claim I shifted?
You shifted from the point that there are survival means that are not reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I didn't ignore any "rest of the statement". Please cite the "rest of the statement" that you think I ignored.
Then the process of reason includes violation of rationality. I wouldn't disagree too much - included in reasoning is incorrect reasoning or irrationality. But, since, presumably, irrationality detracts from survival, your argument is weakened by allowing that irrationality is also a process of reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I look forward to seeing how you think you think you are're going to do it.
"gish gallop" has no rational argumentative value. You have not shown that my points, especially the central ones, are inaccurate. Nor have my points been unreasonably numerous, especially as they have been point back directly to your posted claims; moreover, I have barely gone much further than direct counterpoint.
Quoting Garrett Travers
"A matter of reason" (a vague rubric) is not what's at issue. What is at issue is whether the original mental events were reason. If there is a difference between emotion and reasoning, then my emotions yesterday were not reason. The fact that I can later use reason to think about the emotions I once had doesn't make those emotions themselves reason. Otherwise, any mental state is reason. If you persist to deny this, then you make yourself risible.
Oh, but yes.
Did you not read where I said I was not going to respond unless we took the arguments one at a time? Which argument do you want me to address first? We will go from there.
Quoting Garrett Travers
So while believing ourselves to be following our rational self-interest we may in fact be following our irrational self-interest?
In other words, while believing ourselves to be rationally selfish in the Randian sense we may actually be just plain selfish?
Haha.... She's a Firestarter...
Makes sense.
Yep. Happens all of the time. The thing about it is, humans have these default mode network settings that do not require one to move beyond a certin level of sophistication in their reasoning. Basically, whatever can induce a base-level homeostasis, is really all most people will seek out.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes. I've met a ton of Randians that were irrational ideologues.
I don't take myself to be obligated to reply to only one of your many claims at a time.
You can reply or not to whatever you like.
If you would like a first point though, then you could start with my first point, and as I have elaborated on it:
P1 and P2 do not entail C. So if you claim C, then you need premises more than P1 and P2. What are those premises?
Through voluntary donation. If it fails it fails.
Okay so let's tackle this.
P1. Quoting Garrett Travers
Evolution is clearly not a deniable source of human creation I'd imagine, so we'll deal with reason.
Reason being: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. All human thoughts are informed by sensory data used to inform further action in a feedbackloop. What actions that are life-sustaining are not classified by this description? That's what you're going to need to dismiss P1.
PFC is implicated in most human behaviors.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Integration of multiple values informs our choices.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Cortical networks work together to process various levels of abstraction.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Different regions of the brain work together to store and integrate knowledge.
All this to say the brain controls everything? Am I following?
No, it isn't. No system is perfect and there are always going to be successes and failures. This kind of system is going to be incentivized to maintain, and increase quality output over time, in accordance with the value being placed in their developments by the voluntary contributions to the project. If it fails, so be it.
Furthermore, it has never been stated the current system cannot do some good, nor that it cannot sustain itself for a long time. But, specifically, that it is not the system that is most conducive to the human's life. However, markets could very well be relied on to produce all of that, with variation through competition.
Yep, and all human behaviors lead to data accrual to inform further behaviors based on that data: Reason.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
All formed from sensory data: Reason
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
All using sensory data: Reason
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Reason defined
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Yes, as far as I know, this it what the evidence suggests. Thank you for steelmanning the position so far, I appreciate it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You keep skipping my reply to that:
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
So if any mental state is reason, then your argument reduces to:
P1. if humans evolved with mental states being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through mental states that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals[/quote]
But I am even more interested in the fact that even if we accepted P1 and P2 as true, they don't entail C.
What are your additional premises added to P1 and P2 to derive C?
We're not there yet, we're still on P1, so let's just answer Garrett's question and we'll continue. What life sustaining actions are not characterized by the description I gave, in accordance to the cognitive scientific data currently available (which I have posted), and the current working definition of reason?
Not clear in this.
Are you equating sensory data and reason?
Thank you, friend. Really, I just want you guys to walk away from this without this fabricated idea that Rand was "nOt A pHiLoSoPheR." She was, and a damn good one. I encourage you to read the first chapter of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, just the first. If you still think she's useless, I'll never bother you about her again.
I am equating, because they are equal, any sensory data informed behavior with reason, however low-resolution you think it may be outside looking in.
You skipped again my response. If you are going to keep doing that, then there is no hope that you'll ever get around to addressing my point.
You have lost the argument about reason and survival. You persist in it only by skipping my rebuttals.
But, even more interesting is that you should recognize that reasoning includes accepting premises for sake of argument. So, in that vein, even if I granted P1 and P2 as true, they don't imply C.
If you think C is implied by anything, then what premises other than P1 and P2 do you adduce?
If you keep saying that you won't address that question until we have settled P1, which is a dead horse by now, then I take it that you wish to avoid facing that P1 and P2 do not entail C.
I can't make this out. Can you rephrase?
The Objectivist argument is:
1. Reason is the essential attribute that provides for a human's survival.
2. Reason provides for rational human values.
3. Therefore, an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's rational values derived from reason.[/quote]
1 and 2 do not entail 3.
I read it and studied it. It's bunk.
You must think you're talking to someone you're not. I don't do gish gallops, fallacies, or any other form of bullshit. If you want to argue with me, we will address the premises one at a time, until the two of us can establish validity, soundness, or unified dismissal. Othewrise, you will be dismissed as, how did you say? Risible.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
That's funny, science thinks this assertion is bullshit. So, let's just go back to the starting question and explore that, eh?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
We aren't there yet, we'll have to see, won't we?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
We'll get there when we get there, dig?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, you should take it as, Garrett sees you're concerned about addressing premises individually, because he may just demonstrate to you that you're incorrect, and thereby embarrass this forceful display you've put on for everyone. You could, instead, look at it like we're all just a bunch of smart ass nerds online having fun with some intellectual stuff, irrespective of what happens. I suggest the latter, and I insist again that we finish up with P1 before moving on.
Bet.
Quoting Garrett Travers
To my eye it suggests a central hub of activity, a primary nexus or central station - but I don't see the element of control you'd like me to see.
Any behavior informed by sensory data, is in fact an example of reason.
Yes, a central hub of control that uses sensory data to inform behaviors that leads to more sensory data and so on. The only time reason is not a part of this process, is when a value structure as been put in place that dismisses reason as valuable itself.
For example: Prayer, as opposed to active pursuit of knowledge to achieve whatever goal one has. This is actively diminishing one's ability to achieve goals derived from values, derived from concepts, derived from sensory data. It's anti-reason.
You claimed that I posted gish gallop. I detailed exactly how you are incorrect about that. Instead, you shifted to claiming that you don't post gish gallop.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I don't care whether you argue with me or not. I will post or not in reference to your posts, no matter how you feel about it.
Again, you say "one at a time", which for you boils down to ignoring my rebuttals.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You don't understand logic and discourse. It is quite reasonable to say, "Even if we accept the premises, they don't entail the conclusion". This is especially reasonable when the question of the premises is a dead horse and an interlocutor wishes to move on to look at the argument's logical structure.
I'll say it again:
P1 and P2 do not entail C.
I am guessing that you are incapable of suppling added premises that would entail C.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Then Garrett suffers delusions.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I'm finished with P1 and P2.
Now I am interested in what premises one would add to derive C.
Precisely what I identified. Too concerned to address even a single premise. Come back when you're ready.
Well, I thought I was done with P1.
What does "informed" mean?
A baby has the sensory data of a shiny object. I don't take it that the baby uses reason and then makes a reasoned decision to smile in response.
When a hammer is tapped on my knee, I have sensory data, but I don't take it that it is a function of reason that I lift my leg in response.
When my finger touches fire, I have sensory data, but it's not reason by which I take my finger away.
I addressed it amply.
So, I take it that you can't adduce premises added to P1 and P2 that entail C.
I don't care to confine my posting based on imperatives uttered by you.
Means what?
No prob. My interest here is mostly in getting a clear picture of Randianism.
Informed, means the process by which the brain gathers data to allow the human to interact in the world that ensures and/or maximizes homeostasis. This is, in fact, the only process by which we have any means to ensure our survival as a species. It does not matter what bodily appendages we have that reaason can use, it's that reason uses it to do whatever it is has generated as a concept to inform behavior, predicated on a goal.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
This is, unfortunately, very true in the regard you are emphasizing. We are an altricial species and have about a 20 or so year rearing period. By about 12 and up, we start being able to generate concepts independently from our parent's interpolations. That being said, the reasoning process is in fact still unfolding even in an underdeveloped brain. But, it doesn't have all the systems, so it is operating on delimited functions; basically animal instinct.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
That's exactly what is going on. Data has informed your behavior to induce a removal of yourself from the recurrence of a homeostasis disrupting event, that could potentially kill you. It is reason. And thereafter, your behavior will be informed in association with that data, also reason. Not reason, would include you just doing what you did before, even though the data is there to confirm for you that that was some dumb shit.
Any questions on premise one you need me to clear up? If not, I'll need you to describe for me one of those life-sustaining behaviors that aren't included in the elaboration of reason here that I have just given. So, that we can finish up with P1.
Anything you're disagreeing with so far that you'd like me to clear up?
The Objectivist argument is:
1. Reason is the essential attribute that provides for a human's survival.
2. Reason provides for rational human values.
3. Therefore, an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's rational values derived from reason.
1 and 2 do not entail 3.
I'm interested in the long game. And I want to review my Kindle highlights on Rand to make sure I haven't misrepresented her view.
At work today, so posting on the fly.
If you have anything to say about Paul Ryan, I'd be interested. I suppose you'll say his is a corrupted Randianism.
Paul Ryan is a statist who is paid a living through theft, to be a representative of a monopoly on force that violates human rights. One needn't not suppose, dear fellow, but assume it with confidence. To quote Rand on Reagan:
"I do not think of him. And the more I see, the less I think."
But, try to remember, that I am personally anti-political, to the bone.
There is something in Rand's work that attracts these conservative types. Smaller government and less welfare, more Freedom as in Free Trade.
Conservatives know that if they want to have market allies down the rode, they need to pander. That's where their big campaign money comes from. But, it's both parties that protect the corporate system, and it was liberal Presidents, Wilson and FDR, who instantiated that process, finally to be capped off by the conservative Nixon in 71. I think.... They're all scum Dirigists who say and do whatever power-pigs have to, so that they can keep their power. That's why when Ryan was pushed, he denounced Rand. You see?
If you really look closely, you'll notice that the only difference between the two parties, is what they want to do with your money, nothing else. There is no left/right conservative/liberal dichotamy, just the Capitol Class with all our labor, and all the people they pay the media to keep incensed with one another.
Then that includes even automatic response such as knee jerk.
Of course, you can skip that point and declare yet again that you are right.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That doesn't vitiate my point that many behaviors are not exercise of reason, unless 'reason' is taken in such a broad sense that it is robbed of particular meaning.
The fact that as people mature they use reason more and more does not support the claim that all behavior toward survival is based in reason.
It is of course obvious that the human species could not be what it is without reason. But it is overstatement to say that all behavior toward survival is based in reason.
It appears that the reason Objectivism makes this incorrect overstatement, this implausible reduction, is that it is needed to drive other conclusions about ethics and politics. But even granting the reductions, the conclusions don't follow.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You keep skipping my point that if that is reason, then all human behavior is reason in response to stimuli is reason. But that is not what people usually mean by 'reason'. And with your framework, even response in sleep to stimuli is exercise of reason. If a feather falls on my nose during sleep and I twitch my nose, then I don't know anyone who would say that is exercise of reason.
If any response to stimuli is exercise of reason, then your argument reduces to:
P1. if humans evolved with response to stimuli being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through response to stimuli that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals.
And, again, even if P1 and P2 are true, then C is not entailed.
Quoting Garrett Travers
And if you allow that there are animal instincts that contribute to survival, then we can see also that there are human animal instincts that contribute to survival. So reason is not the only means toward human survival, unless you think lower non-human animals are exercising reason too.
It's too bad you won't admit that "it's all reason" is an overstatement. You would be on better ground to stress the great importance of reason, and to devise arguments about ethics and politics with reason as an important prong, rather than falling into your own trap of saying it is only by reason that man survives.
Are there any current American political figures, journalists, commentators, consultants, activists you admire?
It is someone who has a poor grasp of logic who can't see that examination of the logic or illogic of an argument does not depend on examination of the truth or falsity of the premises. If the logical form is not valid, then the conclusion can be not entailed by the premises even if the premises are true.
So I am interested in what premises Objectivists would add to this to make it a valid argument:
1. Reason is the essential attribute that provides for a human's survival.
2. Reason provides for rational human values.
3. Therefore, an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's rational values derived from reason.
Too bad there's not an Objectivist here to respond.
Yes, that is sensory data, that involves thought, and the sound response to a verified phenomenon. Not that jerking one's knee will save their life or anything.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
What's it based in, then? Non-reason? Reason is the process by which the brain integrates data and informs behavior in accordance with that data. Data is real, the propositions are sound, the behavior is logically informed. What else could it be? You're going to need to provide an alternative to what neuroscience tells us about the process.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
This isn't an argument. This is just you talking. Calling an assertion a reduction deosn't make it one. For it to be a reduction, it would need to be less complex than: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. Not accurately describing the process in accordance with science.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
I don't allow that. You are born with no animal instincts that could ensure your survival. You must develop beyond the confines of basic human instinct to live as a human on Earth. When instincts meet the ability for sensory data to be used in future behaviors, reason is possible. When that really happens specifically is still unclear.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
You've still not provided a single life-sustaining behavior, that falls outside of the confines of reason, that could ensure human survival. This is the last time I'm asking for what you'll need to dismiss premise 1, before I just stop responding.
I like Michael Malice and Yaron Brook. And even them I don't watch on a daily basis or anything. I regard politics as blatantly evil, and I regard people who involve themselves in it as either duped, or wannabe tyrants.
P1. Humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. It is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty.
C. Therefore, the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals.
I put this in a form I'm more familiar with. I'm no logician, but it's clear that, as it stands, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
Oh yeah? What makes it clear that it doesn't follow?
Again, for about the tenth time, you do not address my point, that if knee jerk is from a process of reason, then any human behavior in response to stimuli, is reason, even unconscious response such as twitching your nose if ticked by a feather.
Quoting Garrett Travers
There is a more general claim that you backed yourself into: That all responses to stimuli are in a process of reason.
Another matter is whether all means of survival are from a process of reason. But even basic animal instincts (I'm accepting your rubric 'instinct') contribute to animal survival, and you granted that humans at stages of maturation, do respond by such instinct. You backed yourself into the reductio ad absurdum from the claim that all all means of survival are based in reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I already told you: Automatic response, animal instinct, emotion. And as to necessary attributes, not just reason is required, but all the biological processes and physical capabilities.
You keep saying we should settle one point first, but we have come full circle on the point long ago, while you continue to skip certain decisive arguments I've given.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I don't claim that is an argument that refutes you.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That's right. And it's not necessarily incorrect to make reductions. But I have not just said that it is a reduction; I showed how your particular reduction is incorrect, on pain of taking 'process of reason' to include even knee jerk or even nose twitching during sleep.
Quoting Garrett Travers
(1) What is the proof of that claim?
(2) Even if one is not born with the instincts, that doesn't make them a process of reason. If humans are not born with animal instincts, then I would guess that there are instincts of lower animals that are also not present in birth. Or are you claiming that lower animals endow all their instincts in completeion genetically?
(3) Even if we granted that all human instincts are learned, still the learning is so basic that it's not what people ordinarily mean by 'reason'. When I was an infant and refrained forever from touching fire because it once was painful, I didn't use reason for that, again, unless 'reason' is defined so broadly that it loses ordinary meaning. Just as, if a lower animal learns certain responses, ones not given at birth, then we don't say that the animal used reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, you blew right past what I said about that many posts ago. I have not claimed that means other than reason are sufficient for survival. They are necessary for survival. Even granting that reason is necessary does not vitiate that other attributes are also necessary. And reason alone is not sufficient for survival.
If you can't get straight the difference between necessity and sufficiency then of course you wouldn't be able to properly reason about this.
Moreover, you are leaving out that the Objectivist argument is not just with regards to necessity but also as to essentiality. So not only is your argument not valid, it doesn't an aspect that particularly characterizes the Objectivist import. And I mentioned before that the Objectivist argument requires justification of the Objectivist essentialistic framework.
Are you claiming that it does follow?
And I already told you why it doesn't follow.
It is missing premises that would provide entailment.
One premise that could be added:
"If humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival, and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty, then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals."
With that added premise, it is a valid argument. (NB: 'valid does not mean that the premises and conclusion are true. 'valid only means that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true.)
Your argument doesn't lock. The premises (irrespective of whether they are true or not) don't provide a lock by which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true.
A technical point: To prove that an argument is invalid requires showing an interpretation of the vocabulary in which the premises are true but the conclusion is false. Or showing at least hypothetical circumstances in which the premises are true and the conclusion is false. Because the vocabulary here is not so easily transposed to different meanings, it would be pretty unwieldy to provide such a proof of invalidity. So, a more restricted claim technically needs to be made: The proponent of the argument has not shown the validity of the argument; the proponent of the argument has not cited a valid logical form of which the premises along with the conclusion are are an instance or that valid form. But, for example, by adding another premise, I showed an argument in valid form, viz. modus ponens.
Are you thinking of it as a syllogism?
Yes, fundamentally. That doesn't mean one is employing reason at the level of executive function, but the cognitive process of integrating data to inform behavior is reason. That is what I already asserted here numerous times.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
All of this is dependent on reason to be used to sustain life.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
To the degree that animal behavior is genuinely predicated on the integration of sensory data, which we don't know how much that is, I would go ahead and grant this to you. However, if it is instinctual very low resolution, unsophisticated reason. I also didn't back myself anywhere. Reason is the means of survival. Animals are not exclusively relegated to having such as their means.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, if human reason covers that process as well as higher cognitive processes, nobody is asserting a reduction. Variable gradients exist in all complex systems. Cognition is no different.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
When you're born you're 8 pounds, with a squishy head and an under-developed brain, with more than a decade rearing period. Reasoning abilities and capacities are developed over decades, babies and children would die on their own in a way that would leave our species unable to achieve its birth rates. It can only survive when it can develop its reasoning abilities to the point of achieving goals.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
..... No. But, many of them are ready to be on their own, in accordance with their evolutionary adaptations, in a very short time. Humans specifically develop this reasoning faculty, over a long number of years, as their evolutionary adaptation to ensure survival.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Gradients of sophistication are not relavent to the definition.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
You didn't come to that conclusion based on the integration of sensory data that informed your future actions in a way that avoided harm..? ... Okay, sure. Yeah you did.
Reason: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
That's true, we use the word Pavlov left us. I'm not going to deny the current linguistic framework, nor ask you to adopt a new one. Again, when it comes to animals it's a bit different, reasoning isn't an intrinsic aspect of any other species, we don't know at what level of sophistication they're operating with. Like I said, I'll concede the animal stuff out of sheer ignorance.
Yep.
It's clearly not an Aristotelian syllogism.
So what valid syllogistic form do you claim it to be?
Modus Ponens
Actually it does, nevermind.
My point stands that your view requires a notion of 'reason' so broad as to lose ordinary meaning. Also, using your notion of reason, I stated your "syllogism" to show that it is even more implausible than you started with. Quoting Garrett Travers
Going back about 50 posts, I pointed out that reason depends on them. No physical processes, then no brain, then no reason. Physical processes themselves are necessary too. It is arbitrary to say that only reason deserves to be mentioned as an attribute necessary for survival.
Actually yes, this may be what messes up the syllogism in its current form to begin with.
Okay. So, does that mean you don't want to contend with "my" view of reason?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
They are necessary. But they are not sufficient for survival. That's the point.
Well, of course I am. It's the most complex system in the known universe. But, I am actually trying to demonstrate how cool the brain is in accordance with modern data.
Modus ponens is the form:
If P then Q
P
Therefore Q.
Your argument is not of that form.
But I showed you how to put it into modus ponens form. But then, if you want to move past mere validity to a demonstration of the truth of your conclusion, then you have to demonstrate that the "If P then Q" and "P" parts are true.
For your reference, here is an instance of modus ponens:
(If P then Q) If humans evolved with response to stimuli being their means of survival, and if it is only through response to stimuli that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty, then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals.
(P) Humans evolved with response to stimuli being their means of survival, and if it is only through response to stimuli that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty.
Therefore, (Q) the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals.
/
That is valid.
But to demonstrate that Q is true, you sill need to demonstrate that both "If P then Q" and "P" are true.
I can say this much. The word "selfish" has a different meaning to its conventional one in Rand's works. If not I fail to parse her.
What does 'it' refer to? Your argument? What do you mean 'it does'? It does what?
That doesn't vitiate the point that humans also have such attributes, and we don't call it 'reason'.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That doesn't vitiate that humans also use attributes other than reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, for about the tenth time, the question is not whether humans could survive by non-rational means alone. The point is that reason is not the only necessary attribute.
Quoting Garrett Travers
The fact that reason is not an attribute used by lower animals doesn't vitiate that reason is not the only human attribute required for survival.
Quoting Garrett Travers
That is not enough to cay it's "reason". If an animal takes sensory data to respond in certain ways in the future, then we don't call that "reason".
Post after post after post, you merely persist to claim that all human response is reason, even though that is a patently untenable position, even as I have spelled out exactly why it is untenable.
No, terminology is not why your argument is not modus ponens. It's not modus ponens because it is not of the form of modus ponens.
Your notion of 'reason' is so dramatically iconoclastic that it is truly not recognizable as any sense of the word 'reason' I've ever seen. (I don't think I've even seen Objectivists use 'reason' in a sense that would allow that knee jerk or involuntary nose twitching in sleep is exercise of reason.)
Moreover, even with your personal notion of 'reason', your original argument is invalid.
And even more at the bottom line, no matter what an Objectivist notion of 'reason' is, this Objectivist argument toward the conclusion that ethical acts are all and only those that are selfish. But what is interesting at least is Objectivist essentialism that is used in the argument.
Yes, I fucked up the syllogism. We'll have to either simply continue via Socratic argument, or reformulate it. My apologies.
It was not your original argument. You started switching to it only long after your necessity position crumpled. And it still is a wrong argument. Attributes other than reason are not sufficient for survival, but also reason is not sufficient for survival. So it's arbitrary both to single out reason as necessary, since other attributes are also necessary. And it's arbitrary to disqualify non-reason as insufficient, since reason is also insufficient.
As I mentioned, the Objectivist argument is more involved than yours, as it deploys essentialism. Maybe you might go back to reread your Objectivist texts. Though, the Objectivist argument is not valid anyway.
No, my notion of reason is broadly understood in the neuroscientific community to include what I have discussed.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Yes, we can reformulate it if need be. Or, I believe you had one from earlier that looked good, the original reformulation you did. Not the one with your specific conclusion in it conclusion.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, we'll have to get to that point, kind of a process of understanding.
Those attributes help the person initiating reason to survive, but they are tools of reason itself. We of course need the body we exist in. But, it is specifically reason by which we generate concepts for the usage of that body.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, I'm all set. I am also recognizing essentialism, that has nothing to do with the argument.
Okay. A syllogism has the form:
1. A is B
2. C is A
3. Therefore, C is B.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
So you can see from the form and from the example that something from the first premise must be included verbatim in the conclusion.
There may be a way to finagle your argument into the syllogistic form by rephrasing. Not sure.
Didn't say it did. I said those attributes are tools of reason, not the other way around.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
It's the only one that directs the usage of the others.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
It may be untenable from someone who is looking at things only in the form of an argument, but not in function. I already stated that if an animal does use sensory data to inform action, then that constitutes reason, even if only a very low-resolution kind. But like I also said, we don't know what's going on with them cognitively.
It is very key to the Objectivist argument.
You did touch on it when you mentioned that animals don't use reason.
For sake of argument, let's set aside dolphins, ravens, primates and such, and let's simplify to say that only humans use reason.
The Objectivist view then is that the essential property of being human is reason. Then with that essentiality premise, the argument goes through some steps to conclude that selfishness, and only selfishness, is ethical.
I know, defer to my above statement. I fucked up the syllogism. It will have to either be reformulated, or dismissed. However, that doesn't mean that any of the arguments I have made outside of the syllogism are wrong, just that the syllogism was not in form.
Maybe you can mention an article that explains that? Perhaps something at the level of an encyclopedia.
Yeah, I fucked mine up too, but you get the idea...
Correct. Your other arguments are wrong for their own reasons.
In that view, a remarkably unintelligent bug senses things and acts in response, so the bug is using reason. And that is consistent with the notion of 'reason' in science?
And your notion of 'reason' seems to make it untenable to say that reason is the essential attribute of humans.
That's true. But I'd encourage you to try the syllogism again. Maybe there's a longer logical form your argument would fit into.
There's lots of logicians around. :smile:
We don't have to set aside creatures that constitute a gap in knowledge regarding to what degree a term like reason applies to them, they're irrelevant. They can only be compared to young children who are underdeveloped and are also using a delimited reasoning capacity. It's not a factor here.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
If reason is how we individually generate concepts, and if concepts are how humans survive, and if concepts include ethics, then ethics should be predicated on individual human survival. And reason is the method by which the process unfolds.
And if concepts include values, standards, methods, interests, or any other individually generated group of ideas from sensory data, then it follows that the individual's reason used to produce them is the proper predicate for them. And if one values reason, then he/she values himself in his basic nature as one who reasons. This is the selfishness Rand is speaking of.
There is, I'd have to reorient my mind to do it. I'll try tomorrow. Let's see if we can get anywhere from where we are now. I literally just aced a logic class last semester, I flubbed this syllogism pretty hard.
Not if the act is simply a measure of instinct. Again, we don't know how high of a resolution animal reasoning is, if there is anything beyond instinct. If it is the case that data is integrated as a predicate for future behavior in some sense, then yes this is reasoning on some level by every cognitive standard I know.
And, no, it shouldn't. It is the essential element of human ability to survive in the world. I don't know what else to say. We don't survive in any other way. We build concetpual framework to guide behavior.
Nope, still working that one out.
It happens.
I might say (as gently as possible) that the emotional satisfaction of certainty at times leads us all astray.
A good example of rationality taking an imperceptible irrational turn?
At any rate, that you're willing to admit a flub reflects well on you. Some folks around here will take their errors to their graves.
Objectivism explicitly mentions the difference between humans an animals, as part of the explanation of the Objectivist notion of reason.
Quoting Garrett Travers
There is no logical form there to suggest that those premises entail the conclusion that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Merely responding to stimuli is not enough to constitute concept formation.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What does "proper predicate for" mean?
Quoting Garrett Travers
Objectivism holds that we value reason because it is our means to survive. It would then be circular to say that we value our survival because we value reason.
And I value myself as one who reasons. But I don't subscribe to the Objectivist notion that actions are ethical if and only if they are selfish.
"[R]eason is the faculty that organizes perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic". - Peikoff
When I first retracted my fingertips from fire, I was not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When a bug responds to stimuli, it is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When I immediately turn my head upon hearing a crashing sound, I am not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by the principles of logic. When a horse immediately runs away from fire, it is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by the principles of logic. When adrenaline increases in me when I am threatened, that is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by principles of logic.
Even though I must use reason to survive, it is not the only means I use to survive.
You're welcome for my having pointed out that essentiality (which you have omitted until now) not just necessity, is part of the Objectivist argument,.,
And? That was decades ago. We've learned thing about the nature of human cognitive computation that have emerged in the past 2 years alone. For what its worth to Objectivism, she was ahead of her time. But, as far as the science is concerned, reason has an inextricable link to memory. So, when I say, if data can be used to inform future behavior in any capacity, then there is at least some reasoning going on.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
An act is selfish if it is predicated on one's own reason as his/her means of survival.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Okay. Cool.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
It means that the predicate has a place that is determined by the individual's nature. That being reason as his only means of survival, his means being confined to his body, his means having been developed for his specific use, and that use including the production of self-generated values, which renders him a source of value intrinsically.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No it wouldn't. Humans aren't a proposition, we're conscious beings constantly taking in data and generating concepts. Valuing reason because it allows us to survive is only circular linguistically, not functionally.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Sure, neither do I. But, then again, I don't know of any type behavior that promotes flourishing more than this kind of rational selfishness. What would you regard as ethical behavior that falls outside of such category?
I don't use all words sometimes..? Your welcome.
We don't survive in any way other than a combination of many faculties that are not reason with the faculty of reason.
On what level do you think this is true? You quite literally used the pain to inform future behavior. That's conceptual.
Yes. Reason is how those tools get used.
You omitted a key concept in the argument. It's not a matter of whether you sometimes don't use all the terminology.
And I explained the same idea in detail. The word was not necessary.
So animals conceptualize.
Sometimes they're used even without reason.
What have I already said? It is possible, if that data is used to inform future behavior. We don't know if this is happening.
The concept is key.
To survive?
Objectivism disagrees. Objectivism does not regard a bug turning to a sticky spot as reason.
The concept is not key in any way that I didn't directly imply using other descriptors.
Objectivism disagreeing with science isn't a thing. If science indicates that it is 'possible' on some level, then Objectivism incorporates as much.
If you did you'd be in good (evil) company.
Rand defines altruism and selfishness in a very specific way.
What you're claiming undermines important planks in the Objectivist platform.
If you wish to dissent from Objectivism, that's fine with me. But your particular dissent is misguided. People don't regard a bug smelling something and turning to it as reason. Then you say that science does. I asked for a reference.
That has to be, right?
No, you just won't actually integrate what I'm saying to you, nothing more.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
I'm not dissenting. I'm saying that if one of the standard measurments for reasoning capacities is memory, and if it can be shown that animals and bugs use stimuli to inform future behaviors in some manner, then some level of reasoning is occurring in them. None of this contradicts anything. I did not say science did anything other than this, at all.
I thought the Objectivist view is of survival with enjoyment of exercise of rational values. I can use reason to survive, but that is not in and of itself ethical, even for an Objectivist, I don't think.
And it has not been shown by you that an act is ethical if and only if it is predicated on one's reason as his or her means of survival. (a) One might use reason to survive but not survival that enjoys the exercise of rational values, (b) One can do things that aren't even related to survival. I can use reason to determine that if I kick a can down the road then it will end up many feet away; but I am not unethical in kicking a can for a purpose other than survival but rather merely to exercise my whim to do it. (c) More basically, you simply haven't made an argument in which your premises entail your conclusion.
Cool that I've pointed out that mere response to stimuli is not reason.
If I automatically gasp for air, that's not organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.
No, what's ethical is that ethical conceptualization is also a product of reason. To produce ethics that standardize the behaviors of others is unethical, because it violates the ethical source, which is individual reason, the same place we develop our cognitive framework for all other behavior in the world. If individual humans are the source of reason, and reason is the source of behavioral framework upon which they live, and among those frameworks is ethics, then any ethical standard must be predicated on its own source.
Essentiality is more than just necessity.
(1) Please cite where Objectivism incorporates the view that a bug smelling food and turning to it is organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.
(2) You keep saying "science". I asked twice for a reference.
(3) Raising the notion of possibility gets into a sticky place with Objectivism, as Objectivism rejects as arbitrary making claims on the basis that they are possible.
I integrated and then disemboweled it.
Objectivism does not agree that bugs use reason.
For the fourth time, what reference to "science" do you have?
It's also not a suvival mechanism that sustains your life. It's a basic response to stimuli, which will inform your future behavior, so there's definitely reason involved. It may preserve your life in a certain individual situation, but that is not a mechanism you live by.
I explained it as more.
All of that, even without disputing it or not, does not vitiate my point.
Strawman.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Reference for what?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
I haven't made any claims in association with this comment.
Yes, you conflated necessity and sufficiency, then made clearly incorrect arguments about them (you skipped my demonstration of that). But you didn't deploy the notion of essentiality.
You don't have a point to be vitiated. You just claimed you didn't see why it was ethical, and then I explained it.
Sufficiency and necessity were conflated with what?
You said that science holds as possible that certain low level responses involve reason.
With each other.
Getting air into your lungs can save your life.
No, I said that science holds that reason and memory are inextricably linked. Meaning, if stimuli can be stored as memory to inform future behavior, then there's undoubtedly some level of reason going on. But, nobody would know how to determine that right now.
As far as memory and reason is concerned, that's mainstream: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00056/full
Breathing is a mechanism you need to live.
And? it is not sufficient to sustain your life. How you accrue resources and meet your needs is through reason.
Not at all. You claimed that Objectivism will incorporate whatever science comes up with. And you claimed that science supports the view that lower creatures use reason,.
No I didn't. I never claimed science supported that.
You did it again. Shifted from necessity to sufficiency. I will lay it out one more time:
Neither reason nor non-reason means are sufficient.
Both reason and non-reason means are necessary.
No, I said that you haven't given a logically valid argument for the claim that an act is ethical if and only if it is selffish.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You've made specious arguments. I detailed the exact points of your speciousness.
Yes, the same way your organs have to be working. That's not something in dispute in Objectivism. This is how a child analyzes something. Have you really been arguing this whole time that there are some things the body does autonomically that aid in survival? Very well. Duh.
"Some level of reason" is a partial retreat you arrived at after earlier making stronger claims. And still "some level of reason going on" disagrees with Objectivism anyway. I will look at your link later to see what it says about any mere response to stimuli being any kind of reason.
No you didn't.
This is what I've said the whole time, and no it doesn't disagree with Objectivism.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Response used to inform future behavior is what I've said. That would imply memory.
And it has taken you all this time to recognize it.
My argument from the start has been there are attributes of humans other than reason that are needed for survival, therefore it is not correct to say that only reason is necessary for survival. That point needed to be made in response to your:
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
But reason is in the means of survival. It is part of a palette of means.
That it took me so long for you to recognize this does not make me childish; it arose only because of your own recalcitrance to grant an obvious point. Whether that recalcitrance is due to childishness, I don't opine.
I should have been more clear. Breathing is not a means, or method of survival. It is, in fact, a necessary autonomic bodily function required to live. Doesn't belong a debate about how humans actively ensure their survival, which is where the realm of this debate should have stayed.
You claim that it is incorrect to say that Objectivism says that even the lowest creatures are using some level of reasoning?
Yeah, I quite literally thought you were trying to say that breathing was in the realm of what we were discussing.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Okay, that's a bit more clear. This didn't need to take this long. Yes, humans have basic functions. Means is to imply methods, people don't sustain themselves on autonomic functions, the brain does that. That's not the realm in which we're talking.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
There's one of two ways you can look at that. Yes, there are other mechanisms like breathing or blood flow. That's not even something that is a part of this. This is about how does the living human continue his existence. Navigate his world. We do not have basic instinct that guides us. We're not talking about that which is intrinsic to him being alive at all.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
No, it's due to me not understanding that that's literally all you were saying. I thought you were actually equating them as far as the human's actual methods of survival. Not just remarking on things that are a given.
"How humans actively ensure their survival" requires definition.
And humans don't ensure their survival. No matter what we do, we can't ensure that you'll survive into the next minute.
So putting aside "ensuring", breathing definitely is active and necessary for survival.
And, again, the Objectivist argument is that it is only humans that use reason as the primary agency for survival.
It is, as I just quoted you omitting the means other than reason,.
As of the moment, yes. I stated clearly that there's a difference between what happens when you respond in reflex, which informs later behavior, and what we know of the bug as far as the same phenomenon.
Autonomic function is in the same realm of reason?
The brain does not do it alone. Reason doesn't ensure survival. And reason without other functions is even less reliable. So, it is not a good argument to base ethics on the mere fact that humans use reason, or even that reason in some sense "heads up" all the other functions. And the Objectivist claim that reason is primary only for humans does not entail that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.
As in, act in the world to ensure survival.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Okay, which word would you like then? Seek, pursue, attempt, or direct. Are those better for you?
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Sure, it just isn't in the realm of guided behavior or thought devised for survival.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Yes, it is the human's primary agency for survival.
Clearly, it is not all that I am saying. It was part of an argument I layed out very clearly, and with any rebuttals needed to advance it against your specious replies, and even as your specious replies chronically skipped key points I made.
I don't know how to argue with assertions of this kind. You are equating autonomic functions with the cognition by which humans standardize all of their behavior. One is a conversation about where we get philosophy and mathematics, and the other is breathing and heartbeat, facts that aren't disputed by the philosophy in question. I don't know what to say to you.
"You cannot do math without reason."
"Yeah but you cannot do reason without breathing."
Okay. Not the same ballpark of stuff.
You said that there are things we don't know about creatures, but for many posts you claimed that even the least response to stimuli involves reason (even, if I recall (I'm not going back now to find the quotes), that it is an instance of reason). I even pointed out that knee jerk is not exercise of reason, and you persisted to claim that it is (the point about knee jerk not being a survival mean is not relevant to the mere question of what is and is not reason).
Breathing is not exercise of reason, and not plausibly at any "level". So reason is not the only thing necessary for survival, which is to take exception to your original description in your earlier flubbed argument.
Now you move the goalposts to what is "in the same realm", while that is quite vague terminology, and my argument doesn't rely on realm anyway.
I can't take your argument seriously. You were a thousand times better on the logic stuff. You're "very clear" arguments were pointing out functions like breathing and likening them to the cognitive functions that bring us the LHC. That's the definition of specious.
I addressed 'ensure'.
And breathing is an action. It is necessary for survival, but does not ensure it. Using reason is an action. It is necessary for survival but it does not ensure it.
Breathing is an action directed to survival.
That is so specious.
I said that breathing is necessary and it's not reason. You reply, essentially yeah but its's not reason (guided thought).
I said data being integrated to inform future behavior is specifically what reason was this entire time. And, I'm certainly moving the goal posts now away from this nonsense. I had no idea what you were actually trying to argue. I've been confused by why you keep talking about reflexes all night. No, reason is not all that is necessary for survival, not in that manner. But, it is most certainly from any methodological , or evolutionary advantages perspective. And, babies don't survive on autonomic function, reason has to be applied in their direction for a good long while. But, I'm not gonna continue talking about blinking and urinating and bloodflow, this is absurd.
Specious is you bringing up basic bodily functions as a means of long-term survival and regarding that in the same caliber of what we're talking about. It's complete bullshit and you know it. It isn't even something that is denied regarding Objectivism.
'primary agency' requires definition.
And, you skipped my main point, again. Even if reason is primary, that fact does not entail that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.
That is false. I asserted no such equation. I said that both are necessary for survival. I did not in any way claim that they are equal (in a sense of identity) nor equal in importance (I don't even know how that would be measured) nor equal in primacy ('primacy" not even defined) nor equivalent in any way. They share the property of being necessary; that is not a claim of "equality".
What kind of survival? Can babies live by just being left alone to breathe?
'ballpark' is abysmally vague.
And my argument doesn't require that one is "in the ballpark" of the other. I have explained that; you skip,
Yes, they share a property. One is the source of all human science, wealth, technology, medicine, and philosophy, and the other is breathing. Placing them together as if they belong, or were ever in dispute in the capacity you've been playing around with is an attempt to reduce the role reason plays in human survival, which supercedes that of breathing.
You are doing it again. At this point it is trolling.
Breathing is directed to survival. Breathing is necessary for survival. Breathing is not sufficient for survival.
Reason is directed to survival. Reason is necessary for survival. Reason is not sufficient for survival.
And that is not "equating" one with the other.
It does require it. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Again, reason is how the human navigates the world. We aren't tlaking about mitochandria.
Now you're lying by putting words in my mouth.
It is, reason is how one actually directs their behavior to survive. Breathing is autonomous action.
Even if we accept that in some general sense as true, it does not entail that an act is ethical if and only if is selfish.
I'm pointing out that your argument against reason, is to talk about breathing because it also is required to live, as if it were a part of the discussion to begin with. It has never been. The discussion about Objectivism, and ethics in general, is how one standardizes, methodizes, and systematizes behavior for a maximal life. Which is through reason.
It depends on what you mean. If one understands ethics to be a conceptual framework with standards, then it isn't at all difficult to see why such a standard would be made, I explained. Individual humans are the source of ethics, ethics are standardized by that individual. If you mean to say that you are looking for an is/aught distinction, that's not something you'll be getting from me, because I don't think the philosophy has achieved something that is impossible.
I don't mistake that breathing and reason are not the same thing. I don't mistake that breathing and reason do not share all properties. I don't mistake that even the properties they do share are not necessarily held to the same extent. I don't claim that breathing is more important or less important than reason.
If you persist in insisting that I have claimed an equality, then you will be persisting in lying about me.
You claim that I asserted an equality. I did not.
I don't know what you thought you were getting across, but it wasn't an argument against how humans devise survival methods, or any other conceptual idea.
Saying "it is not at all difficult to see" is not a logical argument.
I do not.
I said exactly what my argument is.
I literally made the shortend version of the argument in the statement. If individual humans are the source of ethics, then ethics are standardized by the source from whence they came.
Yes, I read your words.
That does not entail that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.
You read without understanding simple English. Or you understood, but chose to skip the most telling points. Then eventually to resort to putting words in my mouth.
Another abysmally vague term.
And I made no claim of sameness of caliber nor containment in the "same ballpark" or anything like that.
That's not Objectivism's argument:
Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.
It isn't an if and only if equation.
Then they wouldn't have been brought up together.
I didn't say it is an argument. it's the conclusion of an argument
You don't think that Objectivism claims that an act is ethical if and only if is selfish?
If and only if it is a benefit to one's own survival?
'if and only if' is not an equation; it is an equivalence.
You don't think that Objectivism holds that if an act is ethical then it is selfish, and that if an act is selfish then it is ethical?
And even if it were only one direction of the arrow, no matter which direction, it doesn't follow by valid logic in the Objectivist arguments.
I don't see the point in quibbling whether we say "to benefit one's own survival" or "selfish".
Except, again, Objectivism says not just survival, but surviving to enjoy the exercise of one's rational values (which, is pretty much the Objectivist notion of selfishness).
And you just said it is not in 'if and only if ' form, yet you present your own version in 'if and only if' form.
No, it's a biconditional.
Yes, the standard has to be in accord with the benefit of the individual conceptualizing the behavior. Behavior that is self-oppositional is not something that follows from logic, or in function.
That is absurd. Bringing up two items for consideration together is not in and of itself equating them.
Good. That's what I said it is. I don't know why you said it isn't then changed your mind.
Yes, because you weren't relating the two in function.
Whatever 'relate in function means', my not mentioning it is not an assertion of an equality.
Because it's two in the morning, and I've been going around with you for hours about nonsense. Yes, ethical conceptualizations are self-benefitting actions. Self-oppositional actions are not ethical, because they harm the source of ethics, and the source of values, and the source of conceptualizations generated to guide one's behavior. It is inconsistent in function, and in logic.
Function, as in what the purpose reason has been evolved to fulfill. What it is doing in function.
Then there was no reason to waste our time on it. I'm going to bed now. I'll pick this up tomorrow.
It's been two in the morning for 16 hours for you since your second post.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yours.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Moreover, that should be bidirectional. With both directions, my original formulation is tantamount to yours.
My point did not depend on equality. I explained my point long ago. And I have pointed out that you chronically skip the telling points in my original argument and the further explanations in response to you.
Quoting Garrett Travers
So I guess your promise to another poster that you wouldn't bother him with your Objectivism if he read ITOE and found it wanting doesn't apply also to me.
/
You said you recently aced a course in logic. What was the textbook?
Okay. Still, the Objectivist ethical thesis is not supported by valid argument.
Same argument, just a broader perspective.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, same argument, broader perspective. Your understanding of ‘the value of reason’ is relative to a human conceptualisation of affect.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Perhaps, but consciousness isn’t, and neither is rationality. Which suggests that there may be more to rational consciousness than Rand’s philosophy makes out. And certainly more to consciousness than this concept of the ‘individual’.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Fair enough. Except how can you tell the difference, when each individual’s reasoning and will are necessarily bound by their own (irrational) preference for survival? What you judge as wilful ignorance may simply be ignorance on their part, and vice versa. In this sense, we can only make moral judgements on our own behaviour and intentions. But then we have no way of determining the extent of our ignorance.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Agreed - and yet we don’t often include these potential gains in rationalising our willingness to do good. It’s also arguable that kindness, generosity and gentleness regularly net gains in awareness, connection and collaboration - increasing our knowledge base, productive skills, refinement of other virtues, etc - in ways that are unpredictable, or at least unquantifiable in potentiality.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Irina and Sascha in We The Living who resist the communist regime at the cost of their freedom. Howard Roark in The Fountainhead also loses his one opportunity to work as an architect by choosing integrity. These characters muddy the waters somewhat, choosing to risk their self-interest for the idea of a rational consciousness that is ultimately bigger than this one precarious life. It’s a minor point, granted, but for me it renders the idea of rational self-interest as a possible reductionist methodology, not an obligation.
No, just since two.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
It can't be. If my ethical standards are out bound in the direction of other humans, I have violated the exact same reasoning process that is naturally ourcurring within them, with the application of standards that they have not generated. Such an act benefits nobody. In the event that standards align, then benefit is still present for both parties, as mutually aligned standards are mutually beneficial.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
Sure, I never implied anything different. But, we weren't done here.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
We didn't use a textbook. Professor did a series of lectures supplemented with a payload of online resources and exercises.
Since capitalism, in your sense, admittedly has “never existed,” then any results you’re referring to is the product of a mixed economy.
So once again your assertion, much like with other zealous individuals, amounts to nothing more than “anything positive is attributable to markets over the last 70 years.” Despite your claim that free markets have never existed.
So either something positive has come out of state-capitalist systems, which is all that exists, or state interference ruins everything.
It’s incoherent. And what data are you referring to, exactly?
You didn't have a point with this. It isn't relavent to what we're talking about.
Glad to see we're finally past that, maybe we can make this constructive from here on, what do you say?
Okay, not that validity implies truth, but let's start with this one. What problems do you have with it as an argument?
If individual humans are the source of moral reasoning, then individual benefit is the standard for moral action.
Individual humans are the source of morality,
therefore, individual benefit is the standard for moral action.
That's why I said markets specifically. We can see what markets have produced just within the current system in the past 70 years.
Quoting Xtrix
I've said no such thing. I'm talking about the specific positives that have specifically markets to thank, like most technology and services. There's nothing incompatible with what I've said. The current state structure is a part of that assessment.
Quoting Xtrix
Just from a little bit of all over that shows the trends in gdp, individual income, corporate income, and the changes in tech, health, literacy, etc. that have accompanied:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.DEFL.KD.ZG?locations=US
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts
Where have free markets existed?
You’ve said capitalism hasn’t existed. By capitalism you mean laissez faire capitalism. So that hasn’t existed, but free markets have? Where? When?
Free markets have never existed. Thus your claims about what markets have produced is irrelevant. Why? Because “markets” don’t function in a vacuum— there’s state intervention on every level. If these markets have produced things, good or bad, they’ve done so with support of the state.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What technology and services? Like computers and the Internet? Which developed through state funding?
Quoting Garrett Travers
The first link shows graphs of various metrics. The second talks about progress in various domains (like poverty). What does any of this has to do with free markets?
Notice the first graph — GDP. When was the era of highest growth? Not during the neoliberal era. It was when capitalism was MORE regulated, not less.
Also, extreme poverty decreases have come overwhelmingly from China. Is THAT your example of what “markets” have produced? There’s massive state intervention there— and the state happens to be communist. So I assume, by your theory, that we should attribute the decrease in poverty to markets/capitalism in China. Since, by essentially definition, “communism bad.”
The reality is that state capitalist economies is all that’s ever existed, with various levels of influence from the state (regulations, taxes, etc). Turns out that with more regulation and more state-direction, as in the era of “regimented capitalism” in the 50s and 60s, you had far greater growth, wages, etc— better outcomes. Since the 80s, the neoliberal “Government is the problem” era, we’ve seen poor results (except for those on top).
Yet the claim continues. Much like trickle-down economics, its a zombie idea. It doesn’t die. Why? Because no matter what happens, there’s always a way to twist the evidence. There’s no way to falsify it.
Well, we don't have much else to go on except other human conceptualizations, so I'm stuck with empirically approaching this from what is most well understood. I'm open to ideas, of course.
Quoting Possibility
Those are all good postulates, I just don't know how much support they have empirically. From what we know, consciousness is a neural phenomenon, so is reason and rationality, and those processes are confined to the individual brain producing them. The concept of the individual qua individual, is empirical. I'm talking to you right now, and you me. Neither of us are talking to anyone else in this specific conversation. Individuality is self-evidently so. And I don't see any way around that.
Quoting Possibility
To be honest, the only real irrationality I've ever noticed, as everybody operates empirically in their day to day functions, is the kind that is encapsulated in values. The dismissal of reason as a value itself. The kind of stuff that allows people to pray over cancer patients, and then thank God when chemo works out. Reason is a natural function of the brain itself, it is constantly taking in data in these recurrent feedback loops. One's values can guide that process at a very high level. Reason, even from the Randian view, makes room for natural capacities/limitations, that's not really an issue at base Objectivism level. It can be when you're talking about the genuinely under privileged.
Quoting Possibility
I'd meant "within my purview" with that, sorry. But, yes. These ethical standards that are directed at others are in fact beneficial if the ethical standards of those others align with yours. I wouldn't suggest being kind to a clepto, drug addict, or a murder in any way that implied connection or collaboration. But, for those who respect you as a reasoning individual, being good to them is being good to yourself through respect of THEIR individual reason. Rand highlights this in Atlas Shrugged endlessly. And I mean, over and over and over.
Quoting Possibility
That's a good point, I'll reflect on that. I really didn't enjoy that one all that much, smacked of her attempt at Russian Existentialism. It read well for a Russian to English first time novel, but I prefer her Romanticism.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, Howard was written specifically for that, as in specifically. He was supposed to represent the walking ideal of "integrity at all costs." It's a Romantic novel. The point being that if one cannot have their own reason and consciousness, and all of the contents of its product, then life isn't worth living. I would agree. She didn't grow up like that, and currently we live in a world that is only now getting close to being conducive to it- apart from Russia, of course, who'd have thought? Human societies flourish when mutual respect for individual consciousness and reason are values of that society. Such is rational selfishness defined, as applied broadly. This does not apply to many societies in history at all.
Quoting Possibility
It is. Don't you see? You're 100% right. How do I take the whole of human interaction, and reduce it to its base function? I have the individual, his/her capacity to reason, which informs his/her interactions with others. That's the basic unit. You've nailed something that is key here. If I can't approach our interaction from exactly that perspective, you and I are going to have issues with one another, especially if our interactions are in person. I think you and I should explore this more, to expand appreciations and what not, if you feel like.
The only places I know of in history, are Epicurean communes. Where property was respected, productivity was a value/virtue, and inabilities were fostered with education and philosophy. In other words, the only real successful communist Societies, have been Capitalist ones, and have been exctinct since the time of Constantine. Now, there are some Christian adaptations that exist to day, like the Hutterites, or the Amish, but that's about it.
Quoting Xtrix
Again, I just said that I accept this. The question isn't that states do something, it's how states do something. The effectiveness of markets have been demonstrated. That's all I'm saying.
Quoting Xtrix
It doesn't, it has to do with (markets).
Quoting Xtrix
Post war, yes. When the soldiers came home, flooded the market labor force, and the science from the war brought services, services, services. Markets. Regulations or not have no bearing on what I'm highlighting.
Quoting Xtrix
Xtrix, relax and try to follow what I'm saying to you. You and I are in agreement here. It's just you aren't differentiating laissez-faire and markets in your head, or in mine.
Quoting Xtrix
There's no such thing as state capitalist economies, only dirigist ones. As far as post 60's economy, that's primarily due to the effects of the Fed and federal taxation setting in, in tandem with the instantiation of the corporate structure we know today that initiated the decline in median income, all mixed in with new tech and innovations that sprang up out of post-war science. So, lot's of variables. Again, none of this stuff is anything I disagree with you on, except for what you call it. State economic domination has been going for thousands of years.
You've done a good job providing strong arguments against GT's position.
Against the original syllogism, yes. Nothing else so far.
For starters, unless one is a Candidean optimist who desires everything he has and who has everything he desires, a Randian egoist is oddly similar to everyone else and not exactly an egoist at all (and certainly not special).
Given that even a Randian egoist still has to make a living, either by selling products or services, or by theft or robbery, this means that his values and goals need to be aligned with the values and goals of other people. For in order to make money, by selling one's products or services, one has to offer other people products or services that they will buy, ie. those products or services need to be aligned with other people's values and goals, or they won't buy them. So not much individuality here. But the thief and the robber aren't much better off either, for they are still bound by what other people have that can be taken from them, and those things are a reflection of those other people's values and goals. Again, not much individuality here.
In short, all this Randian talk of the freedom to pursue one's own values and to achieve one's own goals doesn't contain much freedom nor individuality. At best, it's a hotheaded glorification of the ordinary.
A nice opinion, but fair enough. Keep it as you wish.
Quoting baker
This is specifically the perspective of the Randian. Objectivist ethics is predicated on individual benefit being the standard measurement. This is because it is specifically the individual human that is the source of ethical deliberations to begin with, and relies solely on reason to obtain resources that sustain his/her life, and pursue self-directed goals in accordance with self-generated values that leads to happiness. To extend ones own individually concluded standards to another, violates the exact same reasoning process occurring by way of his/her cognitive functions, which he/she may not have concluded is of benefit to him/herself. This is a violation of ethics, as it violates the ethical processes of one in favor of another, meaning one is hurt through a violation to the benefit of another, destroying the possibility of mutual co-operation, which is a benefit to both. It is through an alignment of reasoning and values that people are mutually benefited. But, at base analysis, both parties are forced to either respect eachother's independent reason, the source of ethical deliberation, or violate it. Mutual benefit is the only way to approach this situation ethically.
Quoting baker
That's the definition of individuality. The respect for individual reasoning between parties that allows for peaceful co-operation for mutual benefit, is as individualistic as it gets. I benefit from your ethical actions, and you from mine. But, I can only benefit from you if you are ethical individually, and I can only benefit myself by seeking benefit that doesn't involve creating hostilities through violations of other's values, or forcing them to accept my own for no benefit to themselves. This is why swindlers, cheats, bad product developers, and people like Putin lose business and support. You think Putin has gained anything by violating Ukraine's rights of self-determination for his own irrational purposes? The world is about to show you how it feels about such things, the guy is finished. Very selfless behavior on his part, he took no mind to his own benefit; now watch his markets crumble. Now, if only we'd apply that same standard between individuals, we'd probably get somewhere in life. Just like I have. I went from homeless, to making money, to university, because I started putting my life above the considerations of others, and I didn't have to violate anyone's personal ethics to do so.
Quoting baker
You've come to the exact opposite conclusion that is implied by the standard. Think of the 1st Amendment. The entire predicate of this country is the protection of just this very expression of reason and pursuit of individual benefit as non-violable ethically. Not an imperative that one be made to regard the well-being of others as their moral standard. This is as free a country one can imagine, notwithstanding that the government is still trash. Again, the rational selfishness standard of ethics is the only one that produces interpersonal harmony, or individual flourishing. You've just got it mixed up a bit is all.
What do you gain by bad faith and misrepresenting others?
Americans love drama and they love to overstate the obvious and try to present it as something special.
I don't know what this question is asking or why. It doesn't apply to me.
One party's right to self-determination includes their right to make themselves an enemy to another, but that other must simply stand by?
It's literally the single rarest value on the planet.
It doesn't apply to me.
What is the question here? Elaborate on who it is you are representing in each of these descriptors.
Or, we'd never be able to get them to sit, duh.
The "effectiveness of markets"? Demonstrated how, exactly?
Quoting Garrett Travers
So not free markets, just markets. Meaning markets with state intervention, which is all that exists. So whether we're talking about successes or failures, we're talking about state capitalist systems -- i.e., mixed economies.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You're really not highlighting anything. Soldiers coming home from war is an example of..."markets"? They weren't coming back for 30 years. Also, manufacturing was the heart of the economy. So the comment about "services services services" is meaningless to me. Services existed then as they do now.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Markets have existed for millennia. In our modern age, since the rise of the nation-state and in the industrial age, they also exist. They aren't free. There is no laissez-faire. So you pointing to the miracles of "markets" means exactly nothing, as in the case of China. Plenty of success there. But so what? Does the state intervention/planning not deserve credit as well? Of course. Why? Because, as has been said now many times, markets don't exist in a vacuum. They're not some free-floating force of nature, some "invisible hand." They exist, and they exist with massive intervention. So praising markets is essentially praising governments, which runs counter to everything you've claimed so far.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Of course they exist. You're just not familiar with the term.
"Mixed economies" is fine as a term as well. Doesn't matter much: the state intervenes in either case.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What is "primarily due to the effects of the Fed"? What does "federal taxation setting in" mean?
The economy of the last 40 years has involved the Federal Reserve, yes. They've played an important role in bailing out corporate America. But that's monetary policy. I was referring to both the executive actions of the neoliberal era, beginning with Reagan, as well as fiscal policies. It was an era of deregulation, tax cuts, privatization, union busting, "free trade," and globalization. These are the policies that have defined this era, in contrast with the, say, "Keynesian" era of the the 40s-70s.
"instantiation of the corporate structure" is likewise meaningless. If you want to explain it, please do, but don't assume anyone knows what you're talking about when you're being this vague. "Corporate structure" has remained largely the same. Corporate governance, on the other hand, has changed a great deal. That's worth talking about. But let's at least be clear about what we're addressing.
I already gave the statistics that you mischaracterized to evade this point, I'm not going over it again.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, I was simply talking about markets, even within that context.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes. The labor force was flooded by soldiers returning home, and that multiplied by the other factors I enumerated, including the introduction of women to the labor market in force, were all variables of market expansion. The point being only, lots of variables there.
Quoting Xtrix
No, it means plenty. It's just, you've been trained not to listen to any of it, or actually analyze data. Markets have not been around for millennia. Almost nobody has had rights for the entirety of civilizational history. Not markets of free participants, which is a part of what defines actual markets. But, again, all we've ever had, including today is Dirigisme. We just have a couple extra perks to help things along.
Quoting Xtrix
Depends on what they've done and how they did it.
Quoting Xtrix
No, they most certainly would exist without governments. Nothing else would exist but markets in the absence of governments. Markets and market creations.
Quoting Xtrix
No, their the sum total of human action leading to the production of socially valuable goods that can be traded between one another. That's why the freer we become, the more markets expand. That's why wealth exploded after the founding of America. More people than ever were protected from property violations. Excpet for the blacks of course. Then when they were freed, another explosion, as more people contributed to market production. It is naturally emergent human behavior.
Quoting Xtrix
No, ahistorical. Mass intervention deems it valuable, and so assumes control. Nothing more.
What he's actually refering to is :
state control of economic and social matters. He just wants you to keep using that term while turning your gaze from his preferred dirigisme.
Quoting Xtrix
The "neoliberal" phase of a heavily regulated economy that hasn't stopped in a long time. And I actually gave you a report on this a while back and you simply didn't even respond to it. Regulation has not been diminishing over the past 70 years, but growing. Another thing you just don't get: https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/reg-stats
Quoting Xtrix
The complete bullshit in this statement will be dispelled by the above source. I'm not responding to this nonsense.
Quoting Xtrix
In 1971, Nixon abolished the gold standard and the process of corporatizing America was complete. Afterwards which, the data will demonstrate that everything you hate about modern markets is in fact the fault of the government: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Quoting Garrett Travers
You gave no statistics, you gave a website with various metrics, like GDP and poverty. I could give the same link after talking about government policies. So this demonstrates the effectiveness of government policy? No -- accordion to you these "statistics" demonstrates the "effectiveness of markets." I'm asking: how? How do we know the results are an outcome of "market efficiency" and not governmental policy?
The world is just not as simple as you want to make it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Markets within the context of mixed economies. Which, again, I ask: since the markets are largely influenced by government intervention, the "effectiveness" you talk about can be equally interpreted as a result of policy. Simply pointing to graphs like "GDP since the 1940s" and then saying: "See, market effectiveness!" is nonsense.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No. It's not an example of markets. Soldiers returning home had many effects, one of them being on markets.
Quoting Garrett Travers
How about you stop pretending you know more about this than I do, when you and I both know it's not true (I've demonstrated it over and over again.), and try a different tack? Are you trying to fool yourself or others that may be viewing this interchange, or me? Who?
It is you in fact, who, through your zealous devotion to Ayn Rand, has largely prevented yourself from seeing recalcitrant data, historical and economic.
Quoting Garrett Travers
They have. Plato and Aristotle had things to say about them, in fact. Were they the global markets of today? No, of course not. But no one is claiming that.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, which means we have to look at policies, fiscal and monetary. Not simply point to graphs and say "markets."
Quoting Garrett Travers
I'm talking about the real world.
There's no evidence to suggest "nothing else would exist but markets in the absence of governments." Statements like these just aren't serious.
Quoting Garrett Travers
This is gibberish.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No, that's not close to what he's referring to; nor am I.
The second sentence is laughable and meaningless.
Also, you use the word "dirigisme" way too much. Friendly criticism.
Quoting Garrett Travers
So the neoliberal era is primarily due to the effects of the Federal Reserve? I have no idea what this means, and I'm fairly sure you don't either. But feel free to elaborate.
Quoting Garrett Travers
A report on what? The "effects of the Fed"? Because that was the topic. This paragraph is completely out of left field and has nothing to do with the above. The link you provide, which I did indeed look at, deals with regulations.
What does this have to do with your statement that the "neoliberal phase" is "primarily due to the effects of the Fed?" The "Fed" is the Federal Reserve, which is the central banking system of the United States. Did you mean the government?
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not a surprise, given that these are concrete, and well documented, policies that have taken place over the last 40 years, starting in the late 70s.
The "above source", again, is talking about regulations. So how this would "dispel" the policies of tax cuts, union busting, free trade agreements, and globalization is beyond me. If you mean it dispels the notion that there has been deregulation over the neoliberal era, then you're wrong. There has been -- especially in the financial sector. SEC rules governing buybacks is a good example.
The absolute number of regulations on the books is not what is meant by deregulation. So your source doesn't address even this.
Quoting Garrett Travers
The link you provide is a series of graphs, with no commentary that I can see. Many of those graphs look suspect to me -- but that's a moot point, since there's no argument presented. Besides the fact that a number of graphs are seemingly suggesting something happened in 1971 that changed various trajectories. Fine.
Yes, I'm well aware of the Nixon shock. What does this have to do with "corporate structure"? Can you be concrete about anything?
For someone who falls back on "That's not an argument; no argument has been presented" etc, etc., you sure offer up a lot of vaguery, poorly constructed sentences, and unsubstantiated fluff. No offense!
I think that needs work. Pretty sure the greedy men who are in charge of making cheap and tasteless shit live in a world of heightened, plastic free luxury.
Unbelievable.
Quoting Xtrix
No, it can't. Because governments have existed for thousands of years without those results. It is specifically laws that protect freedom to produce and sell property on an individual basis, that have produced the results that you are ignoring, the ones in the links I sent. Particularly Our World In Data, that to this day, have not been overridden by any research yet.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, more people in the markets means more production. Sorry, basic shit.
Quoting Xtrix
I never said I had a devotion to Ayn Rand. All of you assumed this because you all have a devotion to your plagiarist god emperor Marx. I simply defend her ethics because they're correct.
Quoting Xtrix
Fair enough. To clear it up a bit: Markets, in the capacity you or I know them, have NOT been around. Remember, slavery is only something that has been abolished for a little while historically speaking, that is a market/economic net loss across all metrics. That went for thousands of years.
Quoting Xtrix
No, you're not. In what fantasy of yours would people not trade goods? It's moronic. States are not required for markets, states use markets to maintain power.
Quoting Xtrix
No, it's how I am describing how what he is describing is bullshit. There is only Dirigisme, and no I will not stop saying it.
Quoting Xtrix
No, that's just an element, among all the other elements I highlighted.
Quoting Xtrix
Unbelievable. I'm beginning to see the trend with you and data. Don't worry about it, just know that you have no evidence to back up the opinions of some neoliberal age of non-regulation and what that entails. Regulations have not stopped building since FDR's tyrant ass.
Quoting Xtrix
That isn't what I said.
Quoting Xtrix
That are directly refuted by the stats I posted, but okay.
Quoting Xtrix
It covers more than that across numerous decades, and if you looked through it, you would know that. In short, neoliberal is a fake term.
Quoting Xtrix
Okay, that's fine. It does actually take some looking into, I over looked that. My apologies. Kind of comes second nature to me on that specific source. Unfortunately, I don't really know a better single source. To make this argument I'd have to grab numerous articles, but you can start by looking at this pew one. In 71 Nixon solidified the economy as a fiat one. In conjunction with the fed, the tax structure and the growing regulatory and SS system, the corporate structure you know today was complete in its creation. That's when wages began to fall, and haven't stopped: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Quoting Xtrix
Yeah, I could, but it's gonna be a while, there's a good deal of info that goes into the whole thing. You can start here to learn what the hell they are, as opposed to normal businesses:https://open.oregonstate.education/strategicmanagement/chapter/2-the-evolution-of-the-modern-corporation/#:~:text=Corporations%20have%20existed%20since%20the,the%20British%20East%20India%20Company.
Check out the wikipedia page on them to see how they operate in the states:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
Numerous funding methods through banking system:https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/03/062003.asp
Banking system controlled by the Fed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
This is all a good place to start investigating the massive coporate behemoth that the government feeds off of, I assure you there's more. But, no, it isn't something I can just explain. It's something you'll to piece together, no one argument is gonna do it. It's a topic for a series of discussions.
The words of a deeply entrenched consumer, who loves consuming market products for consumption.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Nation-states have not existed for thousands of years. We're talking about the modern world, and modern industrial capitalism.
Regardless, to argue "without those results" is, once again, pure fluff. What results? The results of GDP and wages, for example? Yes, no kidding these results didn't exist -- because GDP and wages weren't measured, and weren't "a thing." It's like arguing that the Roman empire didn't produce the electric generation capacity.
The point I was making, and continue to make, is simple: there are various metrics to analyze: GDP, poverty, wages, productivity, infant mortality, lifespans, education, etc. All kinds of things to analyze. Simply throwing a graph around means nothing. To point to said graph and say "this is because of markets" is, as I said before, absurd. There are many factors involved, including fiscal and monetary policies, regulatory systems, tax structures, subsidies, welfare programs, etc., which all contribute to these measurements. To point to higher GDP growth in the 50s and say "it's because of markets," is simply incomplete. Yes, soldiers returning from war played a role -- and so did the GI bill. The GI bill was hardly "the market."
Again, it's just not as simple as you want to make it out to be.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not necessarily. This is well documented as well. With the rise of better technology, better equipment, automation, etc. -- production can increase while the number of workers decreases. So it's not so "basic."
But that's also irrelevant. Because the fact remains that soldiers returning from war is a historical event, not "the market." You simply mis-spoke. Did this event have an effect on markets? Yes, of course.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I know you never said you had a devotion to Ayn Rand. You don't need to say it, either. It comes through pretty clearly.
"All of us" have a devotion to the Karl Marx? I haven't once referenced Marx, or used his terminology. From what I've read, however, he's very useful.
Quoting Garrett Travers
In the modern industrial sense, yes. Agreed.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Are you incapable of imagining a society that doesn't trade? A self-contained society that doesn't need to trade with outsiders, and can produce their own food and water, etc., would have no need for trade. Not hard to imagine.
That's not to deny that trade has been a very common feature in human societies, especially since the agricultural revolution. But so has social organization as well, albeit perhaps not warranting the term "government."
Quoting Garrett Travers
A mixed economy is bullshit? That's the majority of nations today. There isn't complete control by the government, but there isn't "free markets" either.
And I didn't ask you to "stop saying it." I said you say it way too much. Why you often capitalize it is another mystery.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Here if what you said:
Quoting Garrett Travers
So I still have no idea what that one element even means. I realize you mention other elements, but I'm asking about the first one: the "effects of the Fed." I still have no idea what that means. What effects? From what actions? Are you talking about Volcker? That was the late 70s. I'm genuinely unclear about what you're driving at, all snide remarks aside.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I never once said regulations "stopped," or that they "stopped building" (in this sense you mean total number, which is irrelevant).
There is enormous evidence of deregulation of various industries, particularly finance.
Some major examples:
1976 – Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act PL 94-435
1977 – Emergency Natural Gas Act PL 95-2
1978 – Airline Deregulation Act PL 95-50
1978 – National Gas Policy Act PL 95-621
1980 – Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act PL 96-221
1980 – Motor Carrier Act PL 96-296
1980 – Regulatory Flexibility Act PL 96-354
1980 – Staggers Rail Act PL 96-448
1982 – Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act PL 97-320
1982 – Bus Regulatory Reform Act PL 97-261
1989 – Natural Gas Wellhead Decontrol Act PL 101-60
1992 – National Energy Policy Act PL 102-486
1996 – Telecommunications Act PL 104-104
1999 – Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102
From Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation#United_States
A pretty good summary. But there are dozens of others. If you want references, I'm happy to give more. David Harvey has a good book about it. But there are plenty of other scholars. Ha-Joon Chang, Michael Hudson, etc. Brookings and RAND have done very thorough studies as well.
An interesting perspective on the neoliberal era:
https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/
Lastly, that "tyrant" was also one of the most popular presidents we've ever had. And probably the best one.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, it is what you said.
Let's go over it again:
You stated:
Quoting Garrett Travers
To which I replied:
Quoting Xtrix
To which you said:
Quoting Garrett Travers
Then I said:
Quoting Xtrix
Your response to this? The following:
Now you say "I never said that."
So let's start over: What exactly did you mean by "primarily due to the effects of the Fed?" What was "primarily due to the effects of the fed?" Since you now claim it's not the "neoliberal phase," what exactly were you talking about?
Quoting Garrett Travers
What stats? Be specific. Referencing one website, with many metrics, doesn't "refute" anything -- especially when you haven't once demonstrated that you understand these policies. It's not only deregulation, for example -- it's also tax cuts (Reagan's, Bush's, etc.), privatization, union destruction, etc. All facts, all non-controversial. How is any of this -- the policies I refer to above -- "refuted" by the "stats you posted" (which, incidentally, you didn't do -- you simply linked to a website)?
Quoting Garrett Travers
So cite the relevant passages. Since you've "looked through it," that should be easy enough. I'll be happy to take a look at what I missed. "More than that"? Meaning more than regulations? Like what? What else does it "cover"? Tax policy? Free trade agreements?
Quoting Garrett Travers
I hate to nit-pick, but "Nixon solidified the economy as a fiat one" is meaningless. What you mean to say, I think, is that we went off the gold standard -- meaning away from representative currency (backed by gold) and into fiat currency (backed by the government).
That aside, the rest is a hodgepodge of words without any sense that you really understand what you're communicating. "Conjunction of the fed, tax structure, and the growing regulatory and SS system" -- throwing a lot of terms around wins no points with me. I see right through this, so please stop doing it. If you don't understand it, don't pretend. If you do, you have got to write clearer -- otherwise it looks like word salad.
None of this -- not the state of social security, not regulations, not the "tax structure," and not the Federal Reserve -- has the slightest thing to do with corporate structure. The structure of the corporation is and has been essentially the same for eons. Corporations consist of boards of directors, and top executives (CEO, COO, CFO, etc). The shareholders (if a company goes public) elect the board of directors. The CEO, which the board hires (and can fire), is the top management whose decisions and orders, in coordination with the board (and often with their approval for major decisions), get disseminated throughout the organization.
This is the basic structure of a corporation. This is how a corporation is organized. Shareholders, board of directors, and CEO/management.
This did not change in 1971. So I have no idea what you're talking about.
Incidentally, none of the data from the Pew reference goes before 1980, so far as I could see. Nothing about 1971. But regardless, even if there was -- it still has nothing to do with a change in corporate structure.
Quoting Garrett Travers
It's as if you're trying to explain to me what a corporation is. I know what a corporation is.
Likewise, I know what the Federal Reserve is, and what it does.
I appreciate the links -- but none of them address the point you made about corporate structure. So maybe this is a better question: what do you mean by "corporate structure"? Can you at least define that? Did you mean corporate governance models? Because that certainly has changed -- from managerialism to shareholder primacy. But if not this, I'm not sure what you mean.
Almost everyone is forced to meet the quota of a lazy ass society that just wants more, more of this and more of that, something just to buy something. On top of that, it's destroying the planet.
Well, I’m not entirely convinced that you ARE ‘open to ideas’ as such - based on your insistence on an empirical approach. But I’ll take your word for it.
Quantum physics demonstrates that predictability beyond empirical data must take into account a qualitative aspect to potential energy as well as a quantitative one. This is the rational structure of potentiality. At this level, human conceptualisations of the process don’t much matter - so long as a qualitative application of a quantitative prediction works with consistent accuracy. It’s kind of in reverse to an empirical approach, but it remains consistently accurate in a way that an empirical approach (assuming we could acquire one) cannot hope to match.
From what I understand, affect in brain function seems to work in a similar way: through a process of aligning four-dimensional prediction structures with four-dimensional application in terms of distributing attention and effort. That’s just one way to conceptualise it - and arguably not the best way - but suffice to say the process works, and is consistently more accurate than an empirical approach. This is the speculative ‘idea’ I’m working with.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Okay, fair enough. So, allow me to speculate wildly for a bit. Consider that our respective ‘individuality’ is an heuristic device to consolidate potentially inconsistent structures of rational consciousness for the purpose of discussion, using shared language concepts. Now go back to my tentative conceptualisation of interacting four-dimensional structures above, and imagine this taking place within a five-dimensional potentiality or ‘consciousness’, and that consciousness being ‘yours’, in a conversation with ‘mine’. I don’t believe ‘individuality’ bound to an empirical brain is as self-evident as we like to think. Of course I’m not certain of this, and I probably haven’t described it in the most universally understandable way, but I think the reasoning is sound, and consistent with phenomenal experience.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I guess it makes sense that you won’t notice much irrationality if you’re not looking beyond empirical evidence. What you dismiss in your phenomenal experience as unquantifiable or lacking conceptualisation is what others use as possible qualitative structures for understanding when empirical information (or indeed rationality) is insufficient. Correlating this with affect without sound logical structure is considered ‘sufficient’ for a prediction in the same way that quantum calculations correlating with potential energy are considered sufficient for quantum physics - it’s in the application that what’s missing needs to be taken into account - qualitative structural relations in QM, and rationality in the case of cancer patients.
The point I’m trying to make, though, is that accurate reasoning needs to acknowledge the relativity of logic, energy and quality, regardless of how we conceptualise reality. If we dismiss rationality from our prediction, it has an unpredictable effect on empirical observations, contributing to prediction error in affect (experiences of loss, pain, humiliation). Likewise, if we dismiss indescribable quality (‘significance’) or unexplainable affect (‘feelings’) from our prediction, the accuracy of any reasoning is limited relative to what’s ignored. An alternative structure of consciousness aligning with such a prediction is going to come across qualitative and/or affective distortions in their own interpretation, simply because they cannot account for the same significance or feelings the author experienced in relation to this particular expression of their reasoning. Whenever we conceptualise our reasoning, this distortion is unavoidable, and arguably the source of most disagreements in philosophy (and quantum physics).
That’s probably enough for now. I can address the rest later...
Humans have other means of survival, such as cooperation. But I do not know whether you are implying that logic, rationality and conceptual activity are the ONLY means of survival. Maybe you meant they are some of the means of survival. (Side note: You used rationality, a synonym of reason, to define reason)
Quoting Garrett Travers
Values don't necessarily come from the use of reason. They can come from emotions for example. And we can live a live in accordance with our values without the use of reason. (Side note: What do you mean by "conceptual faculty of reason" ?).
People follow their values for reasons other than reason. Plenty of people believe killing is wrong, and don't commit murder due to some fear of a god or the law, not directly because of their values.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I don't see how this follows from your premises. Let us assume that humans survive only through reason, and that they create and follow their values with reason. A sceptic could argue that values developed with reason are unreliable, and that values must come from some religious text. They could then proceed to the conclusion that reason is dangerous when applied to morality, that we must prevent people from forming their values rationally and that we must put in place a totalitarian government ensuring that people abide to the rules of the religious text and do not apply reason to their values. Therefore, by assuming that he is right we do not deny your premises yet we can deny your conclusion, and as such your argument is invalid.
Quantum physicis demonstrates that we must do such specifically in regard to quantum mechanics. Those mechanics don't apply to the macroscopic world. Unless you have a way to actually relate them to the macroscopic world, I don't see the relevance of this particular line of thought. Nothing about quanta demostrates a need for dismissal of empiricism, it is, in fact, still empiricism that scientisits use to study quanta.
Quoting Possibility
This is going to have to be shown. How is it more consistent?
Quoting Possibility
Doing so, incorporating anything that you are talking about into thought and data that inform behaviors, is in fact an application of reason. I don't how you're drawing this conclusion. Reason cannot be insuficient if you are using it to do what you're describing.
Quoting Possibility
All of this is reason. Every bit.
Quoting Possibility
All of this seems quite probable to me. I fail to see how you are not reasoning with it all. Again, any data gathered to be used in informing behaviors of approach, or anything like that is specifically what reason is.
Reason is the human's only tool to navigate the world in pursuit of the resources needed for longterm survival, and the fulfillment of his/her values. Co-operation is an excellent example of not just reason, but the respect of reason between people.
Disclaimer: I am not talking about basic autonomic functions that keep humans alive, I am talking about actual methods of navigating the world and procuring resources. Talk of autonomic functions are not relevant in this discussion.
Quoting Hello Human
Emotions are a part of the reasoning process. Values that aren't imparted to you in childhood, before you can truly reason, require reason to establish, either through reward, social interaction, or someother means of processing data. Reason is the faculty by which we generate concepts and form conclusions in accordance with sensory data. Reason: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
Quoting Hello Human
All of this is reason.
Quoting Hello Human
You are correct, it does not. Earlier discussion brought my attention to my bad form of syllogism, we actually dismissed it a while ago. Better now to just debate the truth value of the premises independently, or you can take a crack at my reformulated syllogism. Which is:
If individual humans are the source of moral reasoning, then individual benefit is the standard for moral action.
Individual humans are the source of morality,
therefore, individual benefit is the standard for moral action.
Quoting Hello Human
They could. The point here would be, how did they conclude?
Quoting Hello Human
Yes, this is precisely what has caused most of the problems in the world. Using reason to conclude reason is dangerous is itself a violation of reason at its source. This is not reasonable, and leads to the oppression of reason, meaning it is not moral, as morals come from reason. Meaning, violating the source of reason, violates the source of morality, which is not moral by definition.
Quoting Hello Human
We'll not be assuming as much. But, we can dismiss my original syllogism.
Well, I would suggest being kind to a clepto, drug addict or murderer - just not in any way that might endorse or enable the particular aspects of their ethical standards that conflict with yours. Your willingness to connect and collaborate with them, particularly towards increasing their awareness with regards to ethics, nets gains with respect to their potential in developing a rational consciousness, and will broaden this overall capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration beyond your own ‘individual’ reason. The challenge here is to refrain from moral judgement - which I argue is a possible reductionist methodology, not a necessary one - without ignoring their potential for ‘evil’.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, it’s easier to influence the qualitative attentions than the political efforts of a rational mind.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I get that in Rand’s perspective this virtue of ‘integrity’ translates to respect for an essentialist concept of individuality. But the rational ideal of integrity is honesty with oneself - inclusive of a humility that comes from an honest understanding of your own limitations. For Howard, it was arguably not about rational self-interest, but this rational ideal of integrity achieved through collaboration - it wasn’t so much Howard’s isolated, individual qualities that brought ultimate success, but a collaboration with Wynand whose own quantitative power correlated with the qualitative inspiration of Howard, and with the affect or desire embodied in Dominique. To me, that makes more sense. None of these three characters is really complete as an ‘individual’.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I think it’s fair to say that this basic unit - one’s individual capacity to reason - is inconsistent, relative, and variable. It’s no wonder we have issues with one another. Perhaps we need to look for an alternative ‘basic unit’. Personally, I’ve found the Tao Te Ching to propose an intriguing model, but it’s difficult to translate into conceptual language (which I suggest might be the main issue here).
I guess my objections to your premises have been properly addressed with this definition then.
Quoting Garrett Travers
A skeptic could answer by saying that though morality is discovered through human reason, the principle one discovers through moral reasoning is that you must play your pre-determined role in society. In that case, you accept the premise yet you deny the conclusion.
They are not two different worlds - this is a misinterpretation, and a closer look at theoretical quantum physics (not just the calculations of QM) would show you that. Qualitative applications of QM are a relation to the macroscopic world. And I haven’t called for a dismissal of empiricism - just a recognition of its limitations. Read again what I wrote, only this time without bringing your preferred explanation of quantum mechanics into it. Be open to ideas.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Quoting Garrett Travers
An application of reason, yes. Not reason itself. Reason (rationality limited by an ’individual’ human consciousness) is not identical to its application. Any data gathered is not identical to its use in informing behaviours. I just wanted to clear this up before we go any further.
Fair enough. Here's one that I think strikes at the heart of many disagreements, but which is also concrete:
A hypothetical scenario. A corporation makes $10 billion in profits per quarter (after taxes, after expenses, etc -- net earnings). Many of their workers are making $12 an hour and can barely get by. The board of directors decides to spend $6 billion on stock buybacks and another $3 billion on dividends. The workers have no seat at the table, but they'd all like a significant raise. The company (mostly the CEO) says that a large raise would put the company at a disadvantage and negatively effect share price.
Is this a desirable way of governing business?
Awesome, welcome to neuroscience.
Quoting Hello Human
Humans are the owners and source of the reasoning mind that generates his/her own famework of engaging with that societal one to properly achieve maximal benefit from within it. For example, I regard the state as an evil, generally speaking, that's a value predicated on data I have recieved. So, I do my best to avoid any contact with the state I am suspended in. There are all kinds of roles in society, and most are all are chosen in accordance with benefit, or values that were shaped as producing maximal benefit. I may have a moral framework foisted upon me, and you may as well. But, the points at which we depart from alignment internally, or accept alignment internally, are all aspects of individual reason, and are all associated with maximizing benefit. Even the moral framework of society is predicted on the benefit of itself and asserts its own standards in accordance with those needs. It is all a reasoning process, all human sourced, and all predicated on benefit of either the individuals that adopt them, or the collective of individuals it attempts to be applied to, which is the same concept that requires individual benefit in a net way. Meaning, individual human benefit is the standard for moral behavior as its source. Does that make sense, or would you like me to go more into details and such?
Also, some data to put this into perspective. This is actually the process from a simple functional perspective of what the brain is doing, according to current research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472787/
It's complicated. There's variables like voluntary employment. But, no, this isn't how I would run a business, and it isn't how private owners do, by and large, in accordance with their profits. This is particularly a corporate phenomenon, and I hate corporations probably more than you do - not meant as a slight. Check out this source. This is not the way business should be operating, and such business is a state manufactured form of business. Tell me what you think about this: https://open.oregonstate.education/strategicmanagement/chapter/2-the-evolution-of-the-modern-corporation/#:~:text=Corporations%20have%20existed%20since%20the,the%20British%20East%20India%20Company.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they were two different worlds. I meant domains of observation within the same world. How things operate disparately between domains isn't important if they don't translate between the domains. My apologies. Is that more clear?
Quoting Possibility
I haven't brought anything of the sort. I'm saying issues like the observer effect, or things of that nature in QM, are not examples of the limitations of empiricsim, but gaps in empirical methods that have been devised that can meet the challenge associated with that domain of observation. It was actually empiricism that revealed the mysteries themselves, and empiricism that is being used to solve them, exclusively.
Quoting Possibility
This is not true, as far as I can gather from research. Applications of reason are reason. In fact, the brain is perpetually in a state of reasoning, even if it is not directed from executive function. Reasoning takes place at different levels across multiple cortical regions that assist our executive function: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
Quoting Possibility
This is going to need some defense, this is not clear from the research on this subject. The human being is a reasoning animal, as I said at multiple levels, in its nature. Data retrieval is a recurrent process that informs all emergent behavior. We can explore this assertion, but I don't know if there's data to suggest the truth of it. There is more data to suggest the exact opposite, that I know of.
You'll notice I qualified the assertion with "in any way that implied connection or collaboration." Doing this, is going to require tact and rationality, which is a conceptual framework of behavior predicated on navigating that territory with minimal acceptable benefit, or preservation.
Quoting Possibility
I like your reasoning, it assumes a possible benefit associated with the interaction for all involved. Remember, their ethics is a benefit to you, not just your own. Net gains are a self-benficiary analysis. You have not only applied reason in this scenario, but done so on the basis of mutal benefit thereof.
Quoting Possibility
No, that's your take on the rational take on the concept, which is fine. But, integrity is honesty and principle. Whatever those principles are: rationality, humility, what have you. Limitations is what one will already notice if he is guided by reason, they're obvious most of the time, and revealed through application of conceptual behavior.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, Rand highlighted that concept over and over again in Atlas Shrugged. It isn't really about rugged individualism, but values, integrity, productivity, and the value of the mind as that which produces it.
Quoting Possibility
It isn't inconsistent, it's universal a far as any sort of conceptualization goes, it's human cognition. But, relative and variable, definitely. That doesn't change the fact that a human cannot even be moral without it. It's where formulation of morals comes from, and every rationalization one gives oneself. I'll look into the Teo Te Ching bit. Where does that stem from?
There's much to say about voluntary employment, which does get raised a lot. "It's not as if someone has a gun to your head -- you can leave and get a better job," etc. But let's table that.
I wouldn't run business that way either. I agree that many small business owners don't run their businesses this way either -- they have relationships with their employees, and genuinely care about them, etc. So if I wasn't clear, I'm restricting my hypothetical to a major corporation, especially one publicly traded.
That out of the way, I'm glad we agree that this isn't close to an ideal way of running a company.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I wouldn't say I hate them. I see them as kind of a like a tool -- a legal invention that can serve a decent purpose, or can be harmful. I don't particularly hate the people who run them, either -- I just think they're making a terrible mistake in their decisions. Not only to the environment and the population, which is bad enough, but to the businesses themselves -- as William Lazonick and the late Lynn Stout did excellent research on.
Quoting Garrett Travers
It's certainly aided by the state, who shares a major responsibility in all of this, no doubt. But I think the thinking/justification behind a lot of this bad decision making -- which we've seen get especially worse in the last few decades (stock buybacks, etc.) -- is more a class phenomena. Meaning that a class of people at one point felt threatened and, with the aid of academia, developed a new way of running things which, ultimately, has the effect of transferring most of the generated wealth to themselves. Shareholder primacy theory, for example. You can also read basically a blueprint of this movement from the 1971 Powell memo to the Chamber of Commerce.
Thus you have the widening of income/wealth inequality, etc.
So yes, there's much to blame the government for. But recalling that corporations weren't always managed in this way, and that government wasn't always influenced by the same special interests, should give us reason to also question the class of privileged, wealthy people and their attitudes/reactions to the New Deal and, especially, the movement of the 1960s. That too was (and is) very real and had enormous effects of corporate governance and the behavior of elected representatives in government.
As for your link -- I looked at it once before. It's not very long, but interesting. The following questions are, I think, definitely the right ones:
Yes.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, they are. If we insist on keeping things they way they are. I don't see how it's sustainable, The earth is oppositional, the wealth disparities are too poignant for people to handle, consumerism is fucking with people's development, and everything that once was contained in are and music seems to be dead. But, we've locked ourselves in. We abolish it now, millions of people die before the world picks itself back up. Solutions to problems like this have to start ground up, and I don't mean grassroots politics. I mean the socialists of the world have to start buying land and building independent prosperous communities. The entrepeneurial spirit of small-scale productivity has to come back - it has in some domains of industry. You see what I'm saying? This isn't something a state, or politics is going to fix, it's part of the machine generating it. By the way, there's a huge sect of Libertarians that are on board with everything I'm saying, and a growing number as well.
So there are allies all over in this particular domain of initiatives. I'm glad to see that we've reached some concensus. I'll also have you understand that when people like me use the term Capitalism, and you need read this because it's something even Rand overlooked this, we are only talking about real businesses, not these corps of today, or of Mercantilism. Real people, doing real work, that is really valuable, and giving them the freedom from force to do so. But, what else can we cover? Keep it one at a time, it's the only way to do this sort of thing.
Could you please clarify?
Applying the ethical standard of rationally selfish benefit to a collective of individuals, is still individual benefit as decided and recieved by those individuals that comprise the collective, and is also still distributed by individuals to them, individually. Meaning, rational selfishness is the only rational, consistent, or scientifically correspondent starting point for ethical standardization, even beyond the fact that the individual human mind is the source of all ethical deliberations in the first place. Does that make sense, or need more?
Ok, perhaps not so much limitations in empiricism, then, but in quantifying observation and measurement. The fundamental formulae of quantum physics were discovered not by empirical but by analytical methods, by working ‘backwards’ from existing data - this points to an important atemporal aspect of QM, which in empiricism amounts to a different ‘domain of observation’.
Time in empiricism flows in only one direction, but when we correlate different ‘domains of observation’, what we struggle to conceptualise we have no problems in applying accurately, suggesting that we’re missing something from our conceptual reasoning that is not missing from our application: qualitative intentionality, or a particular focus of attention. QM is solved when calculations qualitatively align with specific observation/measurement - and vice versa. It’s this potential reversibility of QM that is beyond the limits of observation/measurement and (for some) empiricism. I’m talking four-, five- and six-dimensional reality. I don’t think this is necessarily beyond empiricism, but it’s well beyond certainty.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Reasoning is an ongoing action/event; Reason is a capacity/potential. They are not identical. Applications of reason include reasoning and affect. Reasoning is a process of drawing from experience and reason to generate ‘thought and data’ that inform not only behaviours, but also adjustments to reason. But what directly informs behaviour is affect (energy distributed in a four-dimensional system of ongoing attention and effort), so reason must translate into affect in order to inform behaviour. This is an application of reason. But affect is not reason, it’s a qualitative arrangement of energy. Reason, on the other hand, refers to qualitative ideas in a logical structure.
Sure, there's going to be analytical elements, but those formulae don't just emerge in analytics and then become immediately accept by the physics community, they have learned to be applied, learned through applications ahead of those developments. That's why we have the domain of applied physics, the empirical domain. But, yes, you are correct as well. I just wouldn't separate them with too much space in between.
Quoting Possibility
Right, you're echoing my position. Empiricism is how we test for reality, but that doesn't mean our methods are currently up to snuff, hence the LHC. That thing was designed, wonder of the modern world, to approach empirical understanding of quanta. In the end, when we do understand how QM and Relativity are compatible, it will be through empirical methods. No doubt whatsoever.
Quoting Possibility
Again, this is echoing what I have already asserted here. Affect is an element of reason. Emotions, attention, conceptualizition, all elements of reason. We are agreeing.
If I understand well, your claim is that a benefit to a collective of individuals also constitutes a benefit to the members of the collective ?
Also, what do you mean exactly by “benefit” ?
Yes. The only reason a collective would claim right to something as a general good, would be because it is of good to each individual, or the maximal number of individuals. Meaning, even if one wants to stray from the baseline standard of ethics, they simply cannot, any more than they can see throught the eyes of someone else.
Quoting Hello Human
Any perceived gain. However, a rational approach, as implied by 'rational selfishness,' would have one consider that not all perceived gains are actual gains, and to be sure that analysis is present.
So, you agree with this approach only insofar as there is sufficient self-benefit. But mutual benefit is not the basis - that’s just to consolidate this point beyond which our approach differs. Because when I talk about collaboration netting gains, I’m not referring to a self-beneficiary analysis of actuality. Increasing awareness, connection and collaboration nets a qualitative gain beyond the sum of individually perceived gains - that is the nature of collaboration. There’s no empirical evidence of this, of course, unless you’re looking for it specifically. And where’s the reason in looking? Beyond this ‘event horizon’ of rational self-interest, for starters.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I discussed the Tao Te Ching in considerable detail with T Clark in his thread last year, including the difficulties of translating from an ideological to a conceptual language. Our views were quite different, but I found the discussion and deep exploration itself was useful.
The TTC is written in an ideological language, not a conceptual one. The language of traditional Chinese literature consists not of word concepts (the naming of 10,000 things), but of qualitative ideas (characters) arranged according to a logically structured syntax and grammar. The first chapter of the TTC outlines the limitations of the text in relation to reality, including what is missing (desire/affect), and basically explains that the truth of reality consists in embodying a relation of individual affect with this logical arrangement of qualitative ideas. So, the text remains consistent, even though each quality/character is variable according to its relative position in the text, and each reader always approaches the meaning of the text from a variable position of relative affect.
I just don't see how that could be the case. "Net gains" describes an individual benefit for a number of individuals receiving benefit. The "qualitative net gain" you speak of would not be agreed to by people who did not understand how they were benefitting, and would not be agreed to it unless you forced them. Nor should they. There's no way out of the individual cost/benefit analysis, which, has always been the basis of Ethics. The "good life" of the ancients is the same "rational selfishness" that individuals decide upon in mutual co-operation. You must be able to see this. You wouldn't be speaking with me here if you hadn't perceived some gain from it, and the same goes for me. We're hardwired to avoid pain and seek pleasure, and that is the basis of all ethical deliberations. That doesn't mean that that is where deliberations end, that's where rationality comes in. But, it is an ethical non-starter if an action is not at bare minimum self-beneficiary.
Quoting Possibility
Don't know how I missed that. Must have been when jackass wasted my time for an entire night before he ran off.
Quoting Possibility
I'll give this a look when I have some bandwidth to spare. I had a buddy that exposed me to some Buddhist philosophy that was unreal in the realm of logic, super interesting stuff. Have a look if you'd like. But, as a side note, given where we are in the conversation, tell me what your take on the Randian view is now that we've explored a bit. Are you less hostile, are you more hostile? Are things more clear, did you have misconceptions that were dealt with? Give me a comment jus on that sort of analysis, would you?
Buddhist stuff I mentioned:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes-beyond-simple-truth
I’ve been trying to process all of this carefully, and I have to admit that my original criticism of her philosophy being ‘limited’ came from individualist approaches to the essence of her philosophy, which she described as:
“the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
To say that Rand’s philosophy amounts to individualism is a misunderstanding of the rational depth and breadth to the terms ‘happiness’, ‘productivity’ and ‘reason’. These extend through reasoning processes far beyond the individual towards a logical absolute, prior to any self-beneficiary analysis.
When we act, we do so necessarily from a position of selfishness: reason, at the end of the day, is not what moves us. But it is our capacity for reasoning (extending awareness, connection and collaboration towards a logical absolute) that can take into account these limitations of humanity - our finite resource of time, effort and attention - and from it create a qualitative contribution to rational consciousness.
I do think there is a romantic variability to Rand’s philosophy that leaves it vulnerable to the ignorant, isolating and exclusive political ideologies of individualism, moralism and capitalism - all three of which Rand supported to an extent. That is its weakness, and perhaps the main reason for hostility and misconception. What constitutes a qualitative contribution in her philosophy is too easily hijacked by propagandists, and then capacity for reason is limited.
A fair assertion. What is this area beyond the individual, and when does anybody involved contemplate an ethical action without a self-beneficial analysis? I'll need you to describe what you're talking about, just as I described what I was talking about.
Quoting Possibility
..... Then what moves you? It's reason that moves me. Describe what moves you, and in what way it is divorced from reason.
Quoting Possibility
Ignorant? You're gonna need to have a supported argument before you get to use that term here.
Quoting Possibility
Except it has never been associated with mass murder the way all of her competition has, from Marxism, to Kantian Deontology, to Christianity. All of these are murderous ideologies on their own, Objectivism is not. Again, you just saying things doesn't make them true. You're going to need to defend your claims, or at least explain why you are claiming them.
There is no ‘space’ in between - it’s all about qualitative structure. Theoretical physics is five-dimensional, applied physics is four-dimensional. That’s the only real difference.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I appreciate the phrase ‘to approach empirical understanding’. I have my doubts that we can achieve a sufficient level of certainty or agreement in any conceptual understanding of reality at this level. It is the nature of conceptualisation that lets us down, as a key tool in our empirical methods. But this appears to be an unreasonable assertion of faith on your part. To reach a position of ‘no doubt whatsoever’, there must be a degree of ignorance, isolation or exclusion. Our finite access to time, effort and attention seems to be the problem - and we’re already deep in the red here, collaboratively speaking. A dose of humility is in order - preferably as an experience of prediction/calculation, rather than observation.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not really - you seem to be equivocating reason and reasoning without qualification. Reason is five-dimensional, reasoning is four-dimensional. Affect is also four-dimensional: an element in reasoning, but an aspect of reason.
I just wanted to address these before I tackle your approach to ethics...
I don't think we're talking about the same thing here.
Quoting Possibility
I don't understand what any of this has to do with what we were talking about. The no doubt part is how we discover truth, that is within the realm of reason and empiricism, no doubt whatsoever. Experience and calculation fall into the observation category. That's the integration of data via multisensory induction.
Quoting Possibility
reason- think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
reasoning- the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way.
This is what I mean. Not equivocating anything. Look, man. Just read what I say. Don't worry about interpreting it, just read what I say and that will suffice.
Quoting Possibility
Sounds good, I've been waiting for this since the thread went up from someone. Please keep it legit, don't want a repeat of the last guy that tried to do this.
What about when we perceive some action as a general good for another person while we wouldn’t see it that way for ourselves? For example, a person who doesn’t like pizza buys some pizza for her friend. That doesn’t constitute a good to her, but it does to her friend. In this case it seems compassion is at play instead of rational selfish motives.
Quoting Garrett Travers
How do we distinguish between actual gains and false gains ?
People who constitute a value to you being pleased with something you've done is a value to you, a benefit, or you simply would not do such a thing. Giving a friend a pizza would only happen as a result of having excess funds, and/or that person being a friend you desire to remain a friend, so benefit plays into that. Even if it's only to make oneself feel better about themselves, people will do things for other people. But, frankly, not all actions are morally valenced. For example, friends don't give friends money when rent is due and they're barely scraping by, that would be a morally valenced action. Pizza, not so much, but benefit never leaves the equation. Rand's point on this is about sacrifice. Compassion is fine, giving is fine. But, one should never sacrifice their rent for their friend's circumstances, not unless the giving didn't constitute a sacrifice for some reason.
Quoting Hello Human
Knowledge and education. Which is why the pursuit of both is ethically valenced, and willful ignorance is evil. It's not always going to be clear, but one learns along the way.
You seem to be assuming that I’m talking about ethics in relation to a collection of individuals, but I don’t subscribe to individualism at all. I recognise that the individual cost/benefit analysis applies in relation to choosing to act (or not), but that’s all. The possible gain I perceive from our interaction has always been to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, and whether that occurs in my mind or in yours is a gain either way. To that end, I sometimes have to step away and work through the pain of humiliation, or restrain my glee before engaging, because this tendency to avoid pain and seek pleasure only distorts perception through ignorance, isolation and exclusion, which is counter-productive at this level of discussion. Action is another story.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I’m talking dimensionality (again - bear with me). The ‘individual’ is a five-dimensional consolidating system of potentiality in consciousness, defined in common perception by the observable/measurable (4D) logical and energy structures of a human life, yet extending in qualitative variability beyond these spatio-temporal limitations through reasoning processes. Beyond this ‘individual’ is the perceived potentiality of the universe, with which this ‘individual’ is considered an eternally interacting element.
But this perceived potentiality is defined in reasoning by the (5D) logical and energy correlations of the human mind, extending in qualitative variability beyond perceived value through rational speculation. Beyond rationality is the imaginable possibilities of reality, to which this mind exists in necessary relation.
Quoting Garrett Travers
When reasoning in perceived potentiality or rational speculation - ie. engaged in philosophical discussion.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You misunderstand me. I did not say that what moves us is divorced from reason. Let’s be honest: not all affect derives from reason, and not all reason contributes to affect. Yet it is affect that moves us, and affect which is ultimately selfish - as this term is more commonly understood.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Okay, let me be clear here first, before you get your back up. I do recognise the pure romantic ideals behind these ‘-isms’. But the political ideologies that result do tend towards ignorance, isolation and exclusion. Individualism ignores the logical interconnectedness of reality; Moralism ignores relativity; and Capitalism ignores intrinsic quality. Most ‘-isms’ do ignore something.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Don’t get defensive - this is not a competition, but she was aiming for perfection, was she not? If Rand wants her philosophy to see us maximise our capacity for reason, then she needs to address this romanticism as a weakness. These notions of morality, nobility and singularity are not rationally absolute.
Trying to follow you here, but you keep using ‘reason’ as a noun, and then define it as a verb.
Reason (noun) - the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically.
Reason exists without spatio-temporal location, as a system of value/potential. Another term for this is conceptual structure (which I prefer as it’s less confusing), or mind. Reason develops in potentiality, and informs the reasoning process by generating predictions, hypotheses, etc, based on existing knowledge, values and beliefs, structured according to perceived value or significance (not according to time or space).
Reasoning is an ongoing (4D) event without a definitive spatial location, as a system of change. Reasoning is the process by which our conceptual structures are open to change from experiential data, and vice versa - through a mutual language of affect. Reasoning occurs in time.
What if one considers one’s rent as important, but at the same time also considers their friends’ wellbeing as more important? It is still a sacrifice, but it is done in the name of some greater good.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I agree, but by itself, that knowledge does not create any true normative proposition. For example, knowing that one is allergic to chocolate is not enough to form the proposition that one mustn’t eat chocolate. For that proposition to be formed we need the proposition that allergenic reactions are to be avoided. So we need some value judgments with that knowledge.
Right, this kind potential-benefit analysis is never absent from an ethical deliberation, and is the basic standard for your ethics.
Quoting Possibility
Well, I'm not talking strictly pain/pleasure analysis, although that's going to be the basic biological impetus to action. I'm talking any perceived benefit, which is up to subjective analysis. What you are describing is a benefit analysis as an impetus to action, it just may be more broad than pain/pleasure, and may include values that differ from mine, i.e. the avoidance of the ignorance that blinds a basic pain/pleasure analysis. It's still all rationally selfish, it's unavoidable.
Quoting Possibility
So, this is a cool perspective, but it isn't really aligned with modern cognitive neuroscience, which is one of my personal philosophical/scientific pursuits. Reason is how we take miultisensory data, and use it to inform future behavior, at a basic level. Is this kind of what you're getting at? Because, they postulate that reason evolved as a means to overcome adversity in a chaotic set of changing environments. So, in other words, even reason was designed by nature to be a rationally selfish tool, and actual may encompass what you're talking about here in this paragraph.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, biologically, affect is older and more imperative, as it were, from that perspective. But, reason is the executive function that conceptualizes how such affect can be utilized for future behavior. Any process by which you inform future behavior is reason, or is encompassed by reason. And it happens to be your only means by which to navigate the world in pursuit of the means to sustain your life.
Quoting Possibility
Hehaha, I have no back up, brother. It's just me. I agreed to take you all on here, irrespective of how many of you came to detract. I consider it a pleasure. And, frankly, the only ideology that has resulted from Objectivism is Libertarianism, and it is the only remaining legitimate political party in America for reasons of having not been associated with war crimes, mass murder, or any other major evil in America's history. However, let's handle these topics at a different time, topic is too big.
Quoting Possibility
Hey, fair enough, no worries. But, no, not perfection. Her writing was meant to convey the ideal human's, but they're Romantic novels by nature. Like reading about Jean Valjean, same idea. In other words, it was intentional. It wasn't meant to be argument. Her arguments are far more structured and supported. I recommend you check out at least chapter 1 of Intro to Objectivist Epistemology, if you haven't, to get a sample of what I mean. Her arguments are grounded and sophisticated. Probably the most sophisticated ethical arguments of the past century.
If one actually values the person, then no, it is selfish. However, Rand would have you consider the rational reasons behind why you value them more than your rent, and fact that if your friend valued you, they probably wouldn't be asking for money in such circumstances. It's ethically neutral to give, it is not ethically neutral to give in ay your own expense of well-being, and nobody should ever ask such a thing of you.
Quoting Hello Human
The normative position is grounded in your benefit. Knowledge informs the dimensions associated with that benefit with a greater clarity, it doesn't provide it itself.
Quoting Hello Human
Right, that's why your ethics are grounded in rational selfishness. You don't eat the chocolate, because the choclate is a detriment to your life, and your benefit is the standard of your ethics. It's way more straight forward than what you are just letting yourself see. Try to simplify things in your mind here. Self-good = Moral. Self-harm = Evil. Basic as hell.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I wonder how you reconcile your notion of self with that of Varela , who integrates results from cognitive neuroscience and mindfulness traditions to conclude that there is no such thing as a ‘self’ as a self-same entity, only a constantly changing relational process that integrates bodily and social inputs. Because the self is its relations with others, it is the interaction that is primary.
“We believe that the view of the self as an economic man, which is the view the social sciences hold, is quite consonant with the unexamined view of our own motivation that we hold as ordinary, nonmindful people. Let us state that view clearly. The self is seen as a territory with boundaries. The goal of the self is to bring inside the boundaries all of the good things while paying out as few goods as possible and conversely to remove to the outside of the boundaries all of the bad things while letting in as little bad as possible. Since goods are scarce, each autonomous self is in competition with other selves to get them. Since cooperation between individuals and whole societies may be needed to get more goods, uneasy and unstable alliances are formed between autonomous selves. Some selves (altruists) and many selves in some roles (parents, teachers) may get (immaterial) goods by helping other selves, but they will become disappointed (even disillusioned) if those other selves do not reciprocate by being properly helped.
What does the mindfulness/awareness tradition or enactive cognitive science have to contribute to this portrait of self-interest? The mindful, open-ended approach to experience reveals that moment by moment this so-called self occurs only in relation to the other. If I want praise, love, fame, or power, there has to be another (even if only a mental one) to praise, love, know about, or submit to me. If I want to obtain things, they have to be things that I don't already have. Even with respect to the desire for pleasure, the pleasure is something to which I am in a relation. Because self is always codependent with other (even at the gross level we are now discussing), the force of self-interest is always other-directed in the very same respect with which it is self-directed. What, then, are people doing who appear so self-interested as opposed to other-interested? Mindfulness/awareness meditators suggest that those people are struggling, in a confused way, to maintain the sense of a separate self by engaging in self-referential relationships with the other. Whether I gain or lose, there can be a sense of I; if there is nothing to be gained or lost, I am groundless. If Hobbes's despot were actually to succeed in obtaining everything in the universe, he would have to find some other preoccupation quickly, or he would be in a woeful state: he would be unable to maintain his sense of himself. Of course, as we have seen with nihilism, one can always turn that groundlessness into a ground; then one can maintain oneself in relation to it by feeling despair.
The mindfulness/awareness student first begins to see in a precise fashion what the mind is doing, its restless, perpetual grasping, moment to moment. This enables the student to cut some of the automaticity of his habitual patterns, which leads to further mindfulness, and he begins to realize that there is no self in any of his actual experience. This can be disturbing and offers the temptation to swing to the other extreme, producing moments of loss of heart. The philosophical flight into nihilism that we saw earlier in this chapter mirrors a psychological process: the reflex to grasp is so strong and deep seated that we reify the absence of a solid foundation into a solid absence or abyss.
As the student goes on, however, and his mind relaxes further into awareness, a sense of warmth and inclusiveness dawns. The street fighter mentality of watchful self-interest can be let go somewhat to be replaced by interest in others. We are already other-directed even at our most negative, and we already feel warmth toward some people, such as family and friends. The conscious realization of the sense of relatedness and the development of a more impartial sense of warmth are encouraged in the mindfulness/awareness tradition by various contemplative practices such as the generation of loving-kindness. It is said that the full realization of groundlessness (sunyata) cannot occur if there is no warmth.“
I'd say the facts are generally correct, but the conclusion is wrong. There's no reason why someone would conclude that a progressive diminution of automaticity would somehow lead to a lack of self. It's exactly the opposite. One becomes more individual as one gains knowledge and independence from basic programming. Not to mention, even with automaticity, a biological entity is unequivocally, and inarguably, self-contained. So, really this is little more than intellectual exploration that doesn't line up with science. I take the exact opposite opinion usign the same information he is, with the extra help of modern neuroscience.
How can a biological entity be self-contained if it is not a container? Does the body contain organs? If we extract a liver, is the liver a self-contained entity? What about liver cells? Is each cell self-contained? What about mitochondria within the cell wall? Are these self-contained? We could go on and on , accumulating all sorts of little selves within the body. But any of these little containers are just arbitrarily labels we slap onto aspects of organismic functioning that tell us nothing about themselves, how they function and what role they play in the organism’s functions. If we put a liver on a table, its structure and function only become clear when we know that it belongs to a digestive system , and this digestive system serves the purpose of dealing with fuel for an active organism , which has means of moving around itse environment. Each animal has parts that are exquisitely organized in relation to its functioning as a whole , and this functioning can only be understood in terms of how it fits i it that animal’s specific ecological niche, what it eats, where it lives , what nests it builds , how it breaths, what its social behaviors are. So if there is a container , it is not some imagined boundary around a body , but the ecological niches that the animal is a part of.
The human body includes the air it breaths and exhales , the food it eats and eliminates, the surfaces it moves onithat keep its bones healthy , its social stimulation that allow its perceptual system to take shape. The adaptive patterns of our neurological functioning , the specific nature of our rationality , is created, supported by and dependent on the human-built social-technological environment that we live in. We can only move forward in our understanding of our world by changing that niche through social and technological progress.This changed environment will then in turn feed back to us and enable further innovations of thought. So our ‘container’ is this culture that supports us. Of course , each of us inhabit our own micro-culture within the larger one consisting of our families, friends , neighborhood, etc.
Everything that is precious to you as a modern rational philosopher and scientist comes to you as pieces of the minds of others, the devices you use and services, education and entertainment you make use of , the advice and support you get, the medical care, etc. Those pieces from others is what allows you to grow as a person. Every time you make a decision to expose yourself to and benefit from anything anyone else has produced, you are expanding your self by incorporating a piece of them into you. We are always ‘altruistic’ towards those pieces of value and creativity we embrace from others from the time we are in the womb, and do everything f we can to protect, nourish and encourage them. Because there are other pieces of others we cannot relate to or embrace , we say we are selfish , but in fact we are discriminating altruists.
Think real hard about this argument, and get back to me. The human being is a self-contained organism that possesses self-contained consciousness. I do not care about the ways you can reduce the human being by describing all of the individual components that comprise a human being. This is a non-sequitur. It has nothing to do with consciousness and ethics.
Quoting Joshs
Every single word of this is irrelevant to what we're talking about.
Quoting Joshs
Irrelevant.
Quoting Joshs
And? It is my prerogative to value any of that, because I am a self-contained individual who gets to choose to do so, because my consciousness belongs to me. Again, benefiting from eachother for the value we produce is part of the ethical model in question. You're simply echoing my argument here. I do not benefit from people who do not provide value to society, notice you didn't mention any of them. This society you are talking about is itself comprised of individuals, not of an amorphus blob of human emotion, as all societies are. I don't know what the point of this post is.
Quoting Joshs
No, we're not. Children are the exact opposite of altruists, they are irrationally selfish beings by nature, as are all animals that are not eusocial, which we are not. And I'm not altruistic at all, and I find it to be grotesque, the concept. Exchanging value between people who value one another is not altruism. Altruism is specifically placing a higher value on life that is not my own. If what you describe is how you operate, you will suffer for it. Consider this your friendly warning from a fellow philosopher, I really woudn't just say it to make a point. I genuinely believe it as a result of reason and experience, and history for that matter.
Quoting Joshs
The people who are discriminating altruists, will understand one day just how evil such a thing can be, and will suffer for it. I, however, am not an altruist, and I don't believe anybody really is when they think about it. I think that Christianity left us with the idea that such was the proper mode of being, and most humans fall for the trap of sacrificiality. People want to be regarded by others as ethical, because they have no self and no pride of it. They require the acceptance of others. Well, guess what, that's not the way, my friend. I will never be treated with disrespect to my value as a conscious being ever again, and I will never initiate anything of the kind either. Now, let's get on with talking about Objectivism, I'm not really here to discuss our different opinions.
In fact, idea: moving forward, let's keep our posts as short as we can keep them, so that we can address individual points about this topic in an isolated manner. I don't much care for this multi-response thing all of us have going on here on TPF. IT drains me pretty hard, and this stuff is important to all of us. I think it will be far more productive that way. Sound good?
I agree that the basic biological impetus to action is more broad than pain/pleasure - it’s more along the lines of valence and arousal. A subjective analysis must eventually tend towards a form of ‘rational selfishness’ in proposing a distribution of attention and effort, but this is merely a translation of reasoning into affect, not a justification.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes. DNA was ‘designed by nature’ as a means to overcome adversity in a chaotic set of changing environments, too - just at the level between 3D and 4D structures. Reasoning - or the process of converting back and forth between affect and reason - achieves the same at the level between 4D and 5D structures.
Quoting Garrett Travers
This is an oversimplification. The process is more of a collaboration between reason and affect. Reason cannot function in the world without affect, but affect can function without reason - just not anywhere near as accurately.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Your focus here is on defending Rand, I get that. I’m not suggesting that Rand or indeed Objectivism was the cause in any way. But a lack of political association with ‘evil’ does not necessarily amount to innocence, only a lack of responsibility. Libertarianism seems to me an a-political movement, not a political party. Still, I’m not American, so my capacity to debate this topic is severely limited by ignorance - and I agree that it’s too big to take on here. We have enough to discuss.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I will check it out, thanks.
Right, exactly. The justification comes from a philosophical analysis that I'd love to finally address with you, now that we're on the same page here with this material above.
Quoting Possibility
Give me time to play with this idea, this is new to me. Any references to look up with this? I believe I can probably adopt it into my own philosophy, maybe even Rand's, if it isn't woo. Which, I don't think you've been a woo type guy thus far, so that's a good sign.
Quoting Possibility
Accepted assertion. I think we're getting places, you and I. I dig it. I agree, that was an oversimplification, but not in an attempt to do that, but to crystallize something in writ that would generally take a while to lay out.
Quoting Possibility
Thanks, pal. I appreciate it.
Quoting Possibility
Just first chapter. You think it's garbage after that, I'll never bother you about again, you have my word.
I just noticed this in passing and felt the urge to pipe in. Studies show that babies and young children are not as selfish as we assume - this is part of what makes them so vulnerable. Altruism is commonly misinterpreted or consolidated as placing a higher value on life that is not one’s own. But I see it as part of an underlying impetus to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, which prevails to some extent in all of existence, drives evolution through variability, and forms the basis of ethics.
Okay. Can you point me to them I'll have a look? If I'm wrong, I will retract this portion of my argument.
Let me retract my use of the term altruism then. What I want to say is not that we value others above
ourselves but that in our dealings with people in our lives that we care about , we find what they offer us to be almost as valuable as our own thoughts and feelings. In relating to loved ones it’s mostly not a question of choosing between ourselves and them but of having both. What difference does it make that I know and care for my self a little better than I know my loved one? I need both my own thoughts and feelings and what they contribute to me, even thought I slightly prefer my own. Those aspects of the other that I can’t relate to or embrace I will reject, but in any close relationship those moments are secondary. Small children love and need their parents intensely. So why do they appear irrational selfish? Because one minute their parent offers them
exactly what they need in terms of love, comfort or understanding , and the next minute the parent seems to deprive them of what they want , or punish or ignore them. The young child doesnt understand why the parent cannot act and think exactly as the child thinks all the time, and so moves from love to hate and back again for the parent constantly. But when the child is in a loving mood, it wants only the best for the parent, even though it still recognizes its own thinking and feeling as slightly preferable to the parent. So in love the child isn’t choosing itself over the parent, it is choosing both.
As adults, mostly I and my beloved find our interactions to be mutually valuable without having to worry about the fact that each of us value ourselves slightly higher than we value the other. This is because in my day to day living the central choice is not between my interpretation of a situation and my friend’s interpretation of that same situation, but between my being alone and isolated or in the company of someone who I value. So we dont spend most of our lives choosing our selves over others, we spend most of our lives using the valuable qualities we find in others to trigger richer thoughts and feelings in our own selves that we could not have generated without their help.
We make these choices all the time. We can sleep all day, stare at a wall, listen to music , watch television or be with a friend. In each of these examples our ‘self’ is being stimulated by something that is added to our experience. Each of those situations expands our ‘self’. But why is it that being with a close friend causes me to have much more enjoyable thoughts and feelings than staring at the wall? It’s because what my friend contributes is almost as valuable to me as my own thoughts and feelings, so much so that being with them triggers richer and more valuable thoughts and feelings within my ‘self’ than I ever could have generated alone. Thus, I can only achieve my best self by seeing the world through their eyes.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What does seeing others as almost as valuable as yourself have to do with disrespecting your own value?
Yes, this is all 100% in line with Objectivism. However, I will add that children cannot independently conceptualize ethical material, and it isn't clear what age they start. Around 12ish and beyond is the best guess.
Quoting Joshs
Bingo. You're an Objectivist, for your own part. Although, I'll not dare tell you what you are. I'm sure you are wonderful mixture of many things. But, know that this is what it is really all about. Romantic love, true, valued, romantic love, was the highest form of value for Rand.
Quoting Joshs
100%, Josh. You and I are finally on board. And we are all completely compatible. And this is why I do these kinds of conversations, to come to this point. Now, we can get into the nitty gritty of where you depart from the framework in a far more rational, and mutually understood way.
Quoting Joshs
Because, that which makes Man valuable is universal. Any discrimination thereof is asymmetrical, and invites diminution of my own value. Not to mention, one cannot violate a separate, but equal source of value, and call that a value. It simply cannot be done. To violate value in its source and origin, is to violate value itself. It is evil.
It’s also possible that my friend does value me, but does not value me more than having a roof over their head. Values are not either/or, they come in degrees.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What do you mean exactly by wellbeing?
That's exactly the point.
Quoting Hello Human
Wellbeing: the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.
Did you get this part...?
Quoting Possibility
We conceptualise in potentiality.
"Reason exists without spatiotemporal location". Ok, but what's a (5[sup]th[/sup]) dimension?
No references - this is my own speculative philosophy. Let’s just say that the article you posted about Buddhist logic is indicative of how I have developed this - by resisting the urge to simply dismiss the woo, and finding more rational ways that we already accept to make sense of seemingly irrational expressions of reality. Following the Tao Te Ching’s structure makes this easier. Carlo Rovelli’s ‘philosophical’ writing has also been very helpful, as was a book entitled ‘Quantum Enigma: Quantum Physics Encounters Consciousness’ - my understanding of quantum physics is not mathematical. But I do have a specialist Mathematics teacher in my back pocket, who keeps me from going wildly off the reservation, because my basic approach is almost purely qualitative (think Ontic Structural Realism).
I make sense of the dimensional structure by extrapolating from my understanding of dimensional geometry and art, particularly the relationship between awareness and processes of expression, definition and creation, as well as describing and rendering. I’m pretty confident the structure I have in mind can withstand empirical testing, but I’m no scientist - I lack the time and the academic discipline to develop workable hypotheses at this stage.
Most people here don’t see it - they don’t understand how I make sense of the dimensional structure. For me, it is beautiful in its rational symmetry and simplicity, but I find it’s really complicated to answer the question: what is a dimension?
Dimension is basically a qualitative structure of relations. When you make two marks on a page, the relationship between them is one-dimensional. But when you draw (or imagine) the line connecting them, that one-dimensional line exists in two dimensions because of its internal relational structure (as a series of points) and their relationship to a reference point or observer. So a line exists as a dimensional structure only in relation to an extra-dimensional point.
Each dimension also has a quality to it that is relative to the overall structure, and to the structure of the observer. The basic qualitative structure goes: distance, direction, space, change, value, meaning.
Then if someone makes some material sacrifice, it is almost always the case that they do so only because doing so brings them more comfort and/or happiness than letting their friend become homeless, so giving is not a real sacrifice in the majority of cases.
Prediction error minimization for emergence of altruistic behavior
Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation
Not garbage, but let’s just say that I think there are at least two main ways we can approach concept formation. Rand appears to give primacy to quantitative integration, I give it to qualitative differentiation. I’ve encountered this difference with others in many discussions at this level, and I usually put it down to a general distinction in our value structures. It doesn’t contribute to the discussion to simply say that she’s wrong, because the very methodology she employs in concept development doesn’t enable an awareness of what I believe is missing.
I’ll start with the definitions of the first two chapters:
“Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active state that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration.”
This then quickly moves to:
“A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated according to a specific characteristic(s) and united by a specific definition.”
When did differentiation take a back seat? This explains a lot about the issues I have with her philosophy.
Now to her supposing an implicit concept on the level of sensation - this is where I think the difference in awareness between something and nothing is more accurately a qualitative sense of valence/arousal, not a ‘thing’ or object. It highlights the criticism I also have of Kant’s aesthetics: the unnecessary reliance on a pre-existing ‘object’ of attention. There is simply no need for a subject-object distinction here - that’s a function of conceptual language structure, not pre-linguistic concept formation.
Concept development, according to Rand, starts with an awareness of objects representing an implied concept, and then an awareness of particular properties of that implied concept, followed by grasping the relationships of similarity and difference between each instance of that concept...?
This is all back to front. It may be how most people are taught to logically construct or define concepts, based on a Cartesian illusion of certainty. But surely you would agree that modern neuroscience doesn’t support this as a process of pre-linguistic concept formation? It certainly doesn’t fit with my own experience as a parent.
An infant would process sensation according to awareness of affect first, and then develop a differentiation of quality, before grasping logical relations that formulate a predictable structure. All of this can be fast-tracked by language as a pre-existing value system, which is then learned in much the same way - ie. most useful or desirable goal-concepts first (‘mum’, ‘more’, ‘no’, ‘teddy’); then qualitative relational descriptions such as ‘here/there’’, ‘behind’, or ’hot/cold’ ‘soft’, and lastly logical relations and structures such as numbers, letters, measurements, etc.
An example from personal experience: one of my daughter’s first words was ‘bah’, which wasn’t surprising, given her love of bath time. I noticed one day while we were driving in the car that she kept saying ‘bah’ at seemingly unsolicited times. After observing her for a while, it occurred to me that she was referring to the puddles from the rain that she spotted on the side of the road. Her use of the word ‘bah’ was to represent the more general qualities of ‘water’ - she just hadn’t yet differentiated bathwater from rain puddles.
I do enjoy the way Rand writes, though - no romanticism here... except for that niggling, quiet assumption that humanity constitutes the pinnacle of evolution.
“This is the key, the entrance to the conceptual level of man’s consciousness. The ability to regard entities as units is man’s distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.”
I do agree with the second sentence, but that’s not the entrance - it’s a laurel we’ve crowned ourselves with, and then rested upon, in my opinion.
Yes, I mean, this all sounds like interesting stuff. I had a buddy who was really into sacred geometry, and not in the woo kind of way either. Smartest guy I ever knew. I'll look more into all of this.
Yes, especially if it is done on the individual giver's terms. I myself never give, nor ask for largesse that is not well supported in the reason category. None of what we have discussed is anti- Objectivist.
Dude. You actually read it. Thanks man. Let me take some time to analyze your assessment and I'll respond to it in detail. I just got back after 2 days off of the forum. I'll have a response before today is out. This is great stuff, by the way. I'm impressed with you. Bravo.
You'll notice that it actually didn't, even in the quote you provided. "Integration" is repeated, but "differentiation" is explained as "isolated according to a specific characteristic(s) and united by a specific definition." That is differentiation, it's the same process as described above.
Quoting Possibility
It rather does, in fact. They use the term recurrent neural networks to describe the process of information integration that we use to develop concepts with greater and greater sophistication. Here's a small article on it, but there is more science to go with it if this doesn't cover it, I'll be happy to grab them. https://neurosciencenews.com/recurrent-neural-network-frontal-cortex-19348/
Quoting Possibility
Yes, she covers this in great detail throughout chapter 1 and 2. None of this is contradictory to Rand or modern science so far.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, I've got a 2 year old nephew who won't stop saying "dirt" in exactly the same fashion. It's the first indication of the things we're discussing here as far as concept generation, but highly unrefined. They're missing the qualitative aspect you're highlighting.
Quoting Possibility
You know, I see what your contention is, but I find it difficult to not place us at the top of the animal kingdom, at least for now. It appears we are, in fact, this planet's pinnacle predator.
Ok, so we differentiate into basic units by characteristic(s) first, then integrate them back together under new, united differentiation. So how do we identify these characteristic(s) by which we first differentiate? Where do those ‘characteristics’ emerge from, and how are they differentiated? Do you see how backwards this is?
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not contradictory. Backwards. But I’ll read the article and get back to you.
Quoting Garrett Travers
In Chapter 2 she starts with measurement - with quantity, not affect or quality. Then this ‘measurement’ is stripped of quantitative characteristics. This is the difference. It’s a key difference, because it comes from an assumption that logic alone is a priori. You have to read between the lines to realise that the unquantified, qualitative relation of ‘length’ has already formed in the child’s mind before he applies it to the objects in any logical relation of measurement.
Quoting Garrett Travers
It’s the assumption of ‘pinnacle’ that bothers me, as if there is nowhere else for us to go in terms of evolution.
No, because the manner in which we do that isn't straight forward, it's a fluid and amorphus group of methods and multisensory correspondence, including parental guidance, and then a process of coherence thereafter. It's really not like something that can be backward or forward. Do you see what I mean? Every new verified dimension that constitutes a basic unit contributes to the concept in question, from whence more concepts can be abstracted. As far as I know, this is aligned with modern cog-sci.
Quoting Possibility
This may be correct. I may need to revisit chapter 2. She was very thorough, so I want to see what you mean specifically. I feel like there's no way she missed this, but she could have. I'll have to get back to you on it. It's been a minute since I dove in.
Quoting Possibility
Totally fair. I think it's a bit more on the side of "point that has been reached," rather than "could go." But, yeah, I see your contention.
Well, then we agree on everything. But still, I wonder how all of what we discussed is linked with reason, as you use the word very often.
Yes, any sort of analysis that takes place beyond basic instinct that can be used to inform later behavior is basic reason that can only grow in sophistication from there. But, that basic position is where reason begins. Meaning, reason is encompassing all of this deliberation we've discussed. And I'm very glad to have had this conversation with you, friend. Really, I just wanted you all to walk away from this, at bare minimum, having relinquished this strange, and I do mean strange, idea that Rand was not a philosopher. Yes, she was, and a damn good one at that. However, as a defender of Capitalism, a good deal of politics cloud one's view of her. So, I get it. But, it's time to move on from that, methinks. Wonderful chatting with you, Human.
I get where you’re coming from, and I agree that the ongoing conceptualisation process is atemporal. I don’t doubt that modern cognitive science supports that. But Rand is referring here specifically to ‘building blocks’: first, second and third stages of a child’s initial concept formation. But her assumed sequence of ‘logic then quality’ is more obvious in chapter 2.
I do think that, when we reflect on our reasoning processes, Rand’s sequence makes sense. But I also think that this reflecting is conducted rationally - that is, from a perspective that values logic over quality, and pays no mind to affect/energy at all - because it isn’t useful at this level. That’s different to what she’s trying to describe here: how concepts are formed. Abstracting concepts from a basic conceptual ‘unit’ is not how young children first develop conceptual structure. They are very much in the experience, not in their heads.
Yeah, I think you're right about that. I'd say this is a dimension of the Epistemology that could use a neuroscience update. Maybe I'll write about this. I'm working on an ethical outline myself that is more aligned with modern neuroscience that could inform this process a bit better than what Rand could back in 1967. Good call.