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niapri

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About niapri

  • Birthday 02/27/1989

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  • Experience with Objectivism
    I'm relatively new to all this - read the Fountainhead a year ago, right before my graduation, and a couple of months ago, I picked up the Virtue of Selfishness, just out of curiosity. Aaaand it turned out to be possibly the most important book I could have read at this point in my life. Then I picked up Atlas Shrugged (finally, after months of having people tell me I needed to read it), and I am nearly done with it (probably will be done by the time anyone reads this, but I always forget to update this kind of thing...).
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    UT at San Antonio

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  1. Well, I can tell you that the actual answer is that it hasn't been exactly proven, nor has it been explicitly disproven. That was actually one of my initial misgivings about Objectivism, since my degree is in psychology - keep in mind when it comes to "tabula rasa" that Ayn Rand was writing when the cognitive revolution in psychology was in its infancy, and at that time, I believe behaviorism was still a big thing (B. F. Skinner's Walden Two was published in 1948), meaning that one of the prevalent ideas was that of "tabula rasa". So, she was basing her statements/theory on current knowledge - and our understanding of the "tabula rasa" idea hasn't been contradicted, but it has been clarified. With later research, and the use of the software metaphor and systematic research, they found that people aren't necessarily a blank slate - it's more like there are some tendencies which you have (i.e., perception of causality, introversion/extraversion). But even those are subject to change over time/with willpower. So, basically, the mind is like a computer that comes with certain hardware (motherboard, graphics card, etc), and through childhood, you're basically finishing the install of an operating system, and after that it's mostly up to the user (volitional consciousness) - even the degree to which you exercise what power you have over your tendencies/scripts, etc. As ruveyn1 said, judgment and opinions on complex subjects happens later and are formed gradually, by layering more complex ideas/development on top of more basic concepts/groundwork, etc. The best example I can think of for a particular area that's specifically relvant to this, that is also peer-reviewed, is some of the BIS/BAS (Behavioral Inhibition/Activation Systems) research - it's much more focused on those systems as inborn tendencies, but there are a number of articles that mention/explore the fact that even those tendencies can be overcome/changes. Other areas you'll find relevant peer-reviewed research is in self/personality psychology - the journal Self and Identity is a good one for current research there. Anything in social cognition would touch on that as well, and one of the current leading journals is JPSP (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). So, the answer I ended up settling on with regard to 'tabula rasa' in terms of Objectivism is that, in the context given in some of Ayn Rand's writing, it's is true, scientifically. Basically, it's a nature vs. nurture issue, and in nearly all areas of life, volition wins out over tendencies/automatic processes - and in most cases, it influences and has a degree of influence/power over those processes if you're aware of them. Though THAT I'm not aware of any actual research on, only of anecdotal evidence. Hopefully that answers the question a little and gives you somewhere to start, research-wise, and clears up the possible misconception that it's an all-or-nothing, "proven or disproven" issue at this time. And I've had to condense a lot of info into as short an explanation as possible, so if I've been unclear/incomplete, please let me know.
  2. Hello. I'm new. (*gasp!*) So, I guess to start off with, a little about me: I happen to be an extremely unhappy atheist - atheist because I can't even pretend to believe in any form of deity anymore, and unhappy because absolutely no atheist spokesperson/philosophy could apparently come up with an alternative system of values which was comparative to religion and, instead of replacing "God" with "society/humanity", actually gave some sort of logical framework that could answer the question "Why be good without God?". I found secular humanism to be vapid, and everything else I found was just too eclectic to serve as a philosophy proper. The biggest problem was that I couldn't find anyone who had gone from the ground up and tried to rebuild values and give meaning to life based purely on reason, on reality. They seemed to take what was already considered "good" and go from there, rather than asking the questions "good for who and for what?" Oddly enough, Objectivism was not well-liked in the circles I was in - perhaps because it seems like a lot of atheists take altruism/doing things for the good of humanity as a necessity to prove to the religious that they're still good people? I actually found my way into Objectivism through hearing from a friend that Ayn Rand's philosophy was "evil" - only he couldn't actually tell me what it was she said/believed/promoted. I happen to be afflicted with a peculiar mental condition in which I can't take someone's comments about something as the truth, so I finally picked up the Fountainhead out of curiosity, with the intention of "debunking" (i.e., debating with/commenting on the author's ideas, which I do with most books...) as I went along. It took me about three weeks to get through it, and by the time I was done, I was questioning a few of my basic assumptions about myself, how I was relating to life, etc. (Considering that I'd found more to agree with than to "debunk".) About a year later (roughly two months ago), I started on Atlas Shrugged, and it was...basically exactly what I have been looking for ever since I started to shed my religion(s). I guess I'm here for interesting conversation and to understand Objectivism a little bit better. Looking forward to talking with you all!
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