KyaryPamyu

Objectivism upholds the 'if/then' model of morality ('if you want X, do Y'). At first glance, this is completely incompatible with the Categorical Imperative, which simply demands you to 'do it', no matter the context or situation. However, in philosophical discussion, the restrictive CI is always connected to concepts such as freedom, autonomy and human dignity, so what gives? Since human freedom is a hot topic for Objectivism as well, perhaps we can extract some nuggets of truth from the CI's two most popular formulations (those of Kant and Fichte). After a brief presentation of both, I'll tackle the issue of human autonomy, as applicable to the Objectivist Ethics. ______ Kant and the CI Kant tackled morality as part of a wider project encompassing the human faculties: reason (theory), conscience (morality) and taste (aesthetics). In the first installment of his project (The Critique of Pure Reason), he argued that in conscious experience, when the world undergoes changes, it still remains the same world, and thus, you also remain the same self throughout. He then shows how certain relations, such as causality, enable this sameness-in-difference. But, although you can prove that such relations are necessay for preserving the sameness of the self, Kant claims that it's an unjustified leap to assume that the exact same relations operate beyond the senses (Prolegomena, § 28). Reason is extremely tempted to do that, but whenever it tries to make claims about what lies beyond experience, it short-circuits and ends up in antinomies, i.e. for a given metaphysical thesis, it can also prove its opposite, the antithesis. However, since we're endowed with certain faculties such as moral conscience, we can show that certain assumptions are justified, albeit not provable. For example, morality presupposes a belief in freedom, i.e., in the ability to cause an action of our own will, without being forced to cause it. This model can be formally expressed as 'just do it' (the Categorical Imperative). The CI's rival is the Hypothetical Imperative, which can be expressed as follows: 'Do X, but only if you want to attain Y'. According to Kant, since the CI is implicit in freedom of action, our concrete actions should be in harmony with that. For example, it's not possible to 'just lie', because lying depends on first building trust; this turns lying into a Hypothetical, rather than Categorical imperative. Kant also thought that human conscience is innately biased toward the CI, and that following the HI takes a toll on our dignity (in the latter, freedom is merely the 'freedom' to dutifully comply with everything nature asks you to do, like a good boy/girl). Since the phenomenal self is rooted in the noumenal self (outside of the senses), it's reasonable to assume that both selves are in harmony somehow, even if it looks as if maintaining the CI is sometimes impractical or useless. Fichte's Formulation Fichte believed that the proposition 'A exists' does not have universal truth, since 'A' could be a unicorn or a talking chinchilla. However, the proposition 'A = A' does have universal validity, and grounds all of logic. He wanted to track the source of this universal validity, and allegedly found it. He explained that, in self-consciousness, the self (as subject) relates itself to its own self (as object). Thus, in the proposition 'I = I', the mind opposes the two terms, then relates them (in ITOE-parlance, ‘differentiates and integrates’ them). While the truth of 'A exists' is conditional upon what 'A' stands for, the truth of 'A = A' is universal, since it points to an actual content, namely, the unity of subject and object. Theoretical Portion Thesis: I am I. Antithesis: However, I (the subject) am also not I (the object). Those two are distinct, opposed. Synthesis: The 'I' and 'Not-I' co-exist, each having some quantity relative to the other. As you can see, rational integration (synthesis) does not succeed in resolving the separation of subject and object, it merely makes them cohabit. To properly achieve the unification that theoretical reason failed at, we'll simply have to incorporate this 'Not-I' into ourselves, through practical reason. In other words, if our bodies can follow our wills, so can the rest of material nature. Needless to say, that's a daunting project (but doable). Science, technology, art etc. will become our tools for this project. Rand and the Choice To Live Nature blackmails us with endless conditions to fulfill, so at first glance, it looks as if we're only 'free' to dutifully obey whatever nature nags us to do. One of the things I find remarkable about Rand's ethics, is that the basic choice underlying the 'if/then' model is unconditional. More specifically, the choice to live is a pre-moral choice, a precondition for the possibility of morality. Unfortunately, I think OPAR kind of ruins this insight by phrasing things like some pious cleric: No thanks. I'm not bowing my head to anything. Contrast this with Rand's own presentation: That’s a big difference of emphasis. A free being does not pursue life because it's forced to do so by natural appetites, but rather: pursues life (with all of its appetites) as an act of freedom. Back to OPAR: After claiming that the choice to live is pre-moral, Peikoff tactlessly brings up the rungs of hell, suggesting moral condemnation for the sin of not 'accepting reality' (choosing life). Kelley made fun of this in one of his lectures. I just want to empathize how truly radical the 'pre-moral' idea is. Obviously, there's a stark difference between the CI and the Objectivist Ethics. The CI does not even allow people to take their own lives, because that would remove from existence an instrument of freedom. But Objectivism roots the fundamental choice in our absolute autonomy. Not in mechanical causality, not in nature's whims or in externally imposed edicts, but in us. When it comes to those philosophies that uphold 'freedom for it's own sake' (e.g. Fichte's system of ethics), it's tempting to retort: 'no, it's freedom for life's sake'. But the dignity of freedom is so important, that its absence can completely absolish a person's desire to live. As always, one needs to go beyond what's 'technically true' and see the living, breathing reality that faces us. Another example: it's perfectly valid to speak of one's body as a tool/machine for one's will. Rand herself does this in Galt's Speech (FTNI, pg. 130) without contradicting her thesis that a person is an indivisible entity. Likewise, for Fichte, the 'Absolute I' is merely the target; the 'real I' is always a mind-body trying to incorporate the rest of nature into its will. I think there's a grain of truth in the idea that the desire for freedom somehow underpins all of our actions. We strive for a perfect state of affairs that will finally satisfy us, yet the moment we find something that fits the bill, we're struck by its ghastly restrictiveness and incompleteness. The spirit revolts against limitation, all limitation. Perhaps, if Objectivist 'activists' focused on presenting reason as a tool for freedom, we'd see a spike in interest for the philosophy. Personally, I'm definitely not in the camp of people that consider that it's not necessary to 'sell' reason to the masses. No human being is interested in something, unless that something bears positively on his freedom. At least, that's what attracted me to The Fountainhead and VoS in the first place: the fact that Rand wrote about the autonomy of the human spirit. To this day, I still don't care about fawning over how cool Ancient Greece was, or about cringey polemics regarding alternative logics. This is another fact to consider: there might be Objectivists out there who don't care about most of the Objectivist memes, and maybe, *gasp*, they don't even enjoy Atlas Shrugged. All the more reason to focus on properly marketing the philosophy (forgive my blasphemous language), rather than struggling to pull in 500-1000 'rational newcomers' per year, of which at least a portion will be dogmatists who don't care to challenge their views, anyway. ______ Further Reading A brief, interesting overview of Kant's work Kant's weird list of 'duties' (notice the Christian influences) Stephen Boydstun's thorough coverage of Kant's moral theory in relation to Rand's A review of Michelle Kosch's book on Fichte's Ethics

Perhaps I'm mixing up who said what? I'll have to think that over.

Regarding 'early development' arguments, I take a more conservative stance. We also start as flat-earthers, but it doesn't follow that we should dismiss the spherical earth just because we had to perform complex calculations to prove it. Berkeley never once denies that we experience ourselves as embodied individuals in a spatio-temporal world subject to causation; he provided a theory about the 'source' of this experience, and realism does the same. Perhaps a lingering confusion is whether idealism is compatible with physiological theories of perception. The answer is a resounding yes. In this thread, I am solely concerned with the status of claims that can't be verified by experience (cosmic intellect, mind-independent realm, Hyperuranion etc.); I have no beef with wholly verifiable claims, such as those of neuroscience.

I think the discussion is in the right place. I was calling into question whether transcendent claims can be proven or disproven. A brain-in-a-Vat can endlessly bicker that 'Vat-Theorists' don't doubt the existence of brains, vats and scientists. Does that prove anything? No. It merely turns attention to what philosophy can and cannot do. In other words, I can defend realism in the face of objections, but I can never conclusively disprove idealism. To claim otherwise is to overstep the limits of philosophical inquiry.

Stephen, My position is simple: one can doubt that M1 is a representation of a real banana, but not that M2 is a representation of M1. In other words, metarepresentation can be immediately proven, while direct realism cannot. I deliberately describe metarepresentation as an 'object-percept' relationship in order to provoke; all objections to said description will necessarily rest on some presupposition, e.g., on metaphysical realism. And by what standard is metaphysical realism a 'successful' explanatory theory? I say, a metaphysical theory is successful insofar as experience vouches for it. For example, people who commit to determinism must forfeit their beliefs when dealing with the law, since responsibility implies free will. Thus, I am open to the possibility that more than one successful system is possible (unless proven otherwise, of course).

Today, I'd like to introduce the notion of a 'Vacationing Objectivist'. Definition: Thus, a V.O cannot call himself/herself an Objectivist, but can nevertheless continue to admire Objectivism and the work of Objectivist intellectuals and institutes. He/she can also entertain the possibility of 'returning to the club' one day, after clearing all doubts. As a V.O myself, here's a small sample of my doubts, mostly targeting the O'ist metaphysics. (This thread is the evil brother of another thread of mine, where I attempt to defend realism.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ §1. Mind-independence is not claim-independence Do I have stray thoughts, or not? The answer can be true and false, because that fact is independent of any human claims. Therefore, 'claim-independent truth' is not the same as 'mind-independent truth'. §2. Nothing can be deduced from the 'externality' of facts Facts are 'external' to human claims. Fair enough. Let's move on to the next step. The Hyperuranion is external to human claims. Er... what the frick is 'the Hyperuranion'? Precisely. Deducing a so-called 'physical realm' from the externality of facts is as arbitrary as deducing the Hyperuranion. §3. The mind is permanently related to itself To conclude whether a claim is true or false, my mind must look 'outward', at reality. I start with the proposition 'I have stray thoughts', so I look outward at... wait, 'outward'? Yes, because 'outward' and 'inward' reveal an important fact: the mind is inherently a self-relation. §4. "All of your examples are about introspection, not extrospection". Glad you noticed. Actually, all of my examples are about the inner-sense, rather than the outer-sense. The so-called 'outer' sense is still a sense, which makes 'intro-' and 'extro-' a matter of semantics. I deliberately use introspective examples in order to prevent the knee-jerk equivocation between 'outer-sense' and 'outer-realm'. §5. Mental states can represent themselves I'm engrossed in thoughts about yogurt; that's a first person perspective. I snap out of it, and see myself being engrossed in useless thoughts about yogurt; that's a third person perspective on my previous mental state. The latter (M2) is a mental representation of the former (M1). §6. Doesn't M2 exist independently of M1? The same way a physical banana exists independently of the visual percept of a banana. No, and this reveals the unity of 'percept' and 'object'. Does that unity make logical sense? No. Does it happen anyway? Yup. A man will deny he has a nose if logic and/or some dictionary tells him otherwise. §7. If M2 represents M1, where does M1 come from? Let M1 stand for 'the percept of a banana'. To find out where this image comes from, you have two options: either accept it as given, and move on to doing something more fun; or: speculate about its provenance (or lack thereof). Speculation is more of a spiritually fulfilling pastime, rather than a necessity; the practical side of life remains the same, whether you know M1's provenance or not. §8. "We grasp physical objects through our senses, not our senses through a second group of senses." Pure speculation. Plus, it's not about a group of senses grasping a secondary group of senses; it's about the unity of percept and object. More precisely, 'percept' and 'object' are two perspectives on the exact same thing. §9. "Why does experience cohere? If I exit the room and return, all objects are exactly where I left them". Because experience coheres. The only positive claim we can make is that we experience coherence, but not the source of this coherence. We can speculate about its source, but that's about it. §10. "Value implies 'to whom' and 'for what'." No, it implies only a 'for what'. For the task of sending a banana to Mars, a spaceship is good. §11. "But, who benefits from that interplanetary delivery?" In that example, nobody. §12. "Does that mean that morality is not a thing anymore?" No. It means that a pleasant, amazing life is an intrinsic value. That's right: a good life has no utility, so let's scrape the 'for what', shall we? And a pleasant life is pleasant, period (even if you happen to hate it); so let's scrape the 'for whom' as well. Does epistemology support 'intrinsicism'? Nah. Nevertheless, is a good life, good without qualification? You bet. So a 'good' thing is not good merely because it's useful; it's good only if its usefulness pertains to some intrinsic good, i.e., for life.

The concord between mind and truth is not identical to the concord between mind and a physical object. A simple example is identifying whether your mind has stray thoughts, or not. Your answer can be true or false, because that fact is independent of any human claims. Oh, and the ability to take a third-person perspective on your own mind does not imply stepping out into an external realm. The equivocation between the 'externality' of facts and the 'externality' of the so-called physical realm is not a serious argument, and that's my main gripe with Kelley's book. By the way, thanks for posting the summaries you linked in your sig. I used to read them before ARI released these courses on their website.

Most theories of truth are based on some kind of correspondence, regardless of how said theories are named. They are, as it were, competing views as to which type of correspondence indicates truth. Also, Hegel is not talking about a discord between a word and a concept, but literally between a concept and its own self. Far-out, I know.

My thoughts as well. PoC makes positive, determinate claims about the identity and operations of consciousness, sometimes to the ridiculous extreme. Apophatic theology takes the opposite route. I agree, but the claim that 'physically real things' arise out of consciousness is pretty rare, at least in modern philosophy. IMO, the notion of 'consciousness without existence' is as meaningful as Coke cans without existence. It only attains a metaphysical meaning if you define consciousness as a 'detection' mechanism, in which case, yeah, what the frick is it supposed to detect. However: --- Yeah, not a big fan of it. The coherence theory of truth is somewhat of a correspondence theory in disguise. For example, Hegel's 'immanent critique' analyses the disparity, or lack of correspondence between what a concept claims to be, and what it actually is. No 'stepping out of the mind' is required for that. Also, I agree with Stephen on Kelley's interpretation of Kant.

Hi Frank, I have pondered this question a lot myself. In my experience, O'ist arguments against the primacy of consciousness can be divided into four classes: 1. The 'Analytic' Argument Analytic judgements are allegedly true in virtue of the word's definition, e.g., 'all triangles have three sides'. In this example, the arguing party will uncritically assume the following definition of consciousness: 'being aware of things which are independent of consciousness itself' - and will provide the 'analytic' argument: Consciousness means being conscious of something; Existence precedes consciousness. Q.E.D Ironically, arguing from definitions and/or upholding the 'analytic-synthetic' dichotomy is an argumentation error which O'ists call rationalism. 2. The Anstoß Argument Anstoß is a philosophical term introduced by a famous idealist philosopher to designate an obstacle, hindrance, or 'something that offends freedom'. The Objectivist argument goes like this: I can't choose to not see the color green; no matter how much I try, I see it all around. I can't even control my own sense-perception, so the limitation must be rooted in the nature of some physical organ. However, arguing from common-sense is not an argument at all. For example, because visual perceptions exhibit color, people have long assumed that things 'out-there' really are colored. Philosophy and science are supposed to free us from such errors of common-sense, not to defend them. 'Limitation' does not logically imply that the limit is caused by something outside of consciousness itself. 3. Argumentum ad Peikoffum A (mistaken) O'ist characterization of Kant's philosophy is that Kant declared consciousness to be invalid because it has identity, or because it must process knowledge. In a twist of irony, Objectivists sometimes drop this charge altogheter, and replace it with its opposite: that idealists do not believe that consciousness has identity. Then, they go on to argue that if consciousness has no identity, it does not operate lawfully, and hence A is not A. Oh my Aristotle! However, a closer examination of Idealism will reveal that, in such systems, consciousness exists, is an instance of identity, knows of itself, has an 'in-itself' external to conscious experience (self-in-itself, ParaBrahman), that it operates by necessary laws, and that such facts are true even if consciousness itself denies them. Oh, did I mention that many idealists got into trouble due to charges of atheism, and that, although the charges were false, idealistic atheism is a real thing? Things like these are not difficult to find if one simply scans the first pages of any important idealist system: (This comes from a philosopher that didn't even believe in Kant's thing-in-itself, let alone in a mind-independent world.) 4. The 'System' Argument According to some Objectivists, if the mind creates its world, then A is no longer A, capitalism is false, rationality is useless, chickens will take over humans as the master-race, and Kalman's operettas are pessimistic-propaganda in disguise. However, most systematic idealist philosophies start with the world and its laws (the same world and laws which are meticulously described by Peikoff in OPAR), then proceed to give a transcendental account of how this world arises from consciousness. This means that, yes, the Objectivist ethics, politics etc, can be 100% true even if they are grounded in the laws of some mind-in-itself. I actually made a case like this a few months ago when I posted an outline of Schelling's 1800 System. Schelling takes the cue from Kant's conception of genius, namely that artists create in a lawful manner, bound by certain strict laws, yet without actually learning those laws beforehand. According to him, this makes art sui-generis, because even the scientific discoveries of geniuses like Newton can still be attributed to methods of investigation which are available to everyone. According to Schelling, the mind-in-itself is precisely such an artist, unwittingly finding itself in the spatio-temporal world of mechanical causation as a result of its striving to represent itself. My point was that this metaphysical view still leads Schelling to OPAR's familiar features, such as the stress on adjusting nature to man by using reason to penetrate its laws, and many other nice things. The reception was lukewarm; there were some great replies, which addressed the notion of 'conditions for possibility'. Apart from that, some people got hung up on how I used a certain word, or on whether I'm talking smack about Objectivism's reception of Kant - completely missing the actual purpose of the thread. Looks like this subject has resurfaced in this thread, with Schelling being replaced by quantum physics. ---- To conclude, Frank, I noticed that this particular subject is of great interest to you (since many of your threads are dedicated to this aspect of metaphysics). I think that, if OPAR's arguments did not satisfy you, you're likely going to find the same unsatisfying arguments on this forum as well. My advice to you is to either study idealism (which will help you identify precisely what is causing your dissatisfaction with OPAR), or to look for articles written by Objectivists who have studied idealism themselves, because not everybody who studied O'ism in depth is automatically able to give you an O'ist critique of every metaphysical view, unless they are acquainted with said theories.

Creating the ability to act freely is different from creating the free actions themselves. That was the point of the 'clashing atoms' example (a classic argument for determinism); if we look for causes of free actions, we're already at a dead end, because the 'cause' is obviously the person who chose to act that way. We should instead look for the causes of the ability itself, in the brain or wherever.

Thanks. On the note of artificial brains, the popular franchise Ghost in the Shell has brought the philosophy of brain prosthetics to mainstream attention. Cyberbrain

If I get this correctly, you mean that you can't prove axioms by listing a bunch of reasons ('causes') for their existence. For example, let's say I want to prove consciousness by studying someone's brain in the laboratory. How am I going to study it without already possessing the five senses? I obviously don't require any 'antecedent reasons' to believe that consciousness is real. Likewise for proving volition. Why do I need proof for X? Because without proof, I have no friggin' idea whether to believe in it, or not. I implicitly concede that I am responsibie for accepting or discarding X. In other words, I operate volitionally. When we're confused or drunk, we are incapable of making sensible choices; we must first snap out of zombie-mode and switch to clarity mode. Objectivists call this 'flipping the switch'. This choice to flip the switch is the primary choice, because it's the prerequisite for other choice-making. If 'flipping the switch' occurs because various atoms clash in space according to mechanical laws of motion, then it's basically the atoms which flip the switch, not me. It's akin to how the clock moves its arms - not because the clock wills to move them, but because of the way the mechanism is set. However, Objectivism has a simpler view of causality: look for the cause in the acting entity. If humans are faced with the alternative of operating like a drunk zombie or caffeinated demi-god, there's an anatomically-based reason why they face this alternative, but bugs and octopuses don't. Remove that anatomic cause from humans, and you get real zombies. Recreate that cause in a silicone brain, and you get volitional robots.

You're in good company with your struggle. Saying that something exists, and that 'it is what it is' is not terribly specific. This is why, when we try to say something a little more, um, useful, we have to smuggle in some additional assumptions. Such assumptions include substance ('the world is made of X'), quantity ('there's lots of stuff'), and so on. Where do these extra assumptions come from? The Objectivist answer is pretty straight-forward: they come from sense perception. Idealists echo this, so what's the difference? Well, for starters, thinking has no shape, lenght, face or color. But when we describe it, we use sense-based metaphors, such as 'I thought deeply, long and hard'. You can see where the idealist argument is going: the spatio-temporal world is a figurative, symbolic representation of the thinking activity. In the West, some of the most ferociously smart metaphysicians operated in post-Kantian idealism. IMO that's a great thing to study in parallel with Objectivism. Whenever I get curious about the O'ist view on [insert kantian claim], I discover that Stephen Boydstun has already posted an extensive study on that, somewhere on this forum.

I think the point is that Harrison made an absurd claim, that the only way to reproduce a movie is to do literally exactly everything the same way Harrison was quoting a post of mine, where I distinguished between reproducing a movie by giving an encore performance, and distributing an already produced movie by selling replicas/duplicates of it. In any performance art, reproducing also has the important meaning of re-making an artwork, in addition to replicating or duplicating. Classical music is a prime example: a piece of music is recreated millions of times, with each new performance. No such 're-production' can occur for novels, where you're limited to the replication of the text. The closest a novelist can come to what an actor or musician does, is to rewrite the whole thing in a different way (as opposed to copying the previous version word-by-word). When discussing intellectual property, it's crucial to note that copyright is a case-by-case scenario. If I record a one-minute film twice, following the same script and plan, I'm in posession of two distinct films. By contrast, if I have a digital copy and a print copy of a poem I wrote, I do not own two poems, only one.

Clearly (hopefully there is no disagreement), this is an asinine way of pointing out a disagreement or confusion. Did you really think that, in a discussion about whether copying files is okay, someone would pop up and say that 'actually, copying files is impossible, you've gotta film the whole movie again'? Another day on OO.com, I guess. I thought the difference between performance arts and literature is obvious, but apparently not. Here's a short musical piece performed by two people, to illustrate how the exact same construction of pitches can be rendered in strikingly different ways. True reproduction, as distinguished from duplication, is a creative act in and of itself. Therefore, in the example below you have both examples simultaneously: reproduction as creation, and reproduction as duplication via digital means. One and two.

The shift from movie to novel doesn't work. I outlined the reason in my previous post: two different performances of a movie are, in fact, two distinct source materials, i.e. two different movies following the same plan. By 'source material', I mean precisely what is duplicated when you copy and paste an .mp4 file. I knew this confusion would pop up, so let me paraphrase that part by changing "movie" into "novel": to reproduce the novel (reproduce as in re-create, not duplicate), you must engage in an entirely new and fresh creative act, which could not produce the exact same novel any more than a performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony can be identical to any other performance. When 'reproducing' is taken to mean duplicating a source material into a new object, some people ignore the issue of whether they own the material which is to be duplicated. You own something when you make it yourself, or when you acquire it; this ownership gives you the right to produce and distribute copies of it. People use the word 'production' when referring to making a specific pair of headphones like the Sennheiser HD650, but use the word 'reproduction' when they mean that a source material is copied into multiple mediums: CD, digital file, vinyl, phonograph cylinder and so on. The problem is that some conflate the first case with the latter.

You would be duplicating the source material for distribution, not reprising the creation of the source material. By contrast, two different performances of a play or song are treated as two distinct source materials, e.g. two different performances of Hamlet. Copying Atlas Shrugged by hand produces a duplicate of the source material, which involves costs on your part (time and money); this is why book publishers also get paid. It's a division of labor: one person produces the text, the other produces the physical book. It's also possible for a writer to self-publish, in which case he's compensated for both kinds of labor.

Kate and Harrison, whether you build a skyscraper or a novel, the same kind of labor is involved: molding a material (such as clay or words) into a fixed, concrete 'thing'. It doesn't matter whether the thing is made out of cement, water, mental concepts, or spirit-energy. 'Thinkers going on strike' is not a novel, it's an abstraction whose generality allows for a seemingly infinite number of possible concrete implementations (novels), differing in lenght, style, characters, setting, mood, core message and so on. This is why Atlas is a concrete product, not merely a 'complex idea'. With this in mind, we discover the difference between reproducing and distributing an artwork. The only way to 'reproduce' a movie, for example, is to rent out the same studio, call back all of the actors for an encore-performance, repeat the exact same camerawork and so on; distributing the result of that process is a different issue. Just like any product, the owner is the one who chooses whether to distribute it, pass ownership to someone else, or nuke it.

A product is something you build out of various materials, e.g. you create a dress from silk, and you create a novel from concepts/ideas. In the latter case, you sell your construction, not the building material (concepts). When you buy Atlas Shrugged, you don't just own the paper and ink; you also own the right to access the story, just as you can buy the right to use a venue or museum without gaining full ownership.

Intellectual property is fully compatible with Objectivism, because a creator owns the product he makes, not the idea of that product. For instance, the idea of a novel about 'thinkers going on strike' cannot be owned, just as you can't own the idea of a spear. However, once you create a product based on that idea, the product is yours, just as the spear you created is yours. In this sense, Atlas Shrugged is a scarce resource because there's only one (1) Atlas Shrugged in the whole wide world. The novel as such is independent from its possible forms (print, digital, audiobook), which is why royalties are split between the writer and publisher.

Suppose I say that strawberry yogurt is a light dessert. I take it that the word 'light' means 'easy on the stomach', not that yogurt is made of sunlight, or that it's light like a bird's feather, or that yogurt is an easygoing individual. How is that obvious? By refering to the full sentence, its surrounding paragraph (after all, it might be a post about things made of sunlight), and cues from earlier posts. It doesn't look like this is a popular idea on ObjectivismOnline. For example, this part: ...makes reference to Rand's theory of volition as focus-regulation. A few hours later, the same poster makes this claim: which means: for Rand, the shift from lesser to sharper focus is 'your fault' simply because you feel that you're the one producing that shift. My point? Not everybody assumes that feeling like you're 'seizing the reigns' of your mind, is an argument. And not everybody assumes that passively receiving visual and tactile sensation proves that the mind does not unconsciously originate its contents. However, everybody starts with the experience of perceiving an allegedly external world and of having control over one's mind. This is not a serious level of discussion, so I will not be replying to any further requests for clarification. Everything is 'messy' when it's read in a certain manner.

Read the title of this thread, then read the first posts. Perhaps, since you contributed some posts about meditation, you forgot that this thread is not about a particular kind of idealism. Berkley, Eastern philosophy and my contribution (a post-kantian stance) were brought up later for the sake of discussion. I won't rewrite the paragraph, because I didn't claim that O'ism is compatible with idealism. I said that Rand takes the feeling of freedom to be actual freedom, and the experience of passive receptivity (sense perception) to be actual passivity. Idealists don't. Simple.

It means that consciousness is split into volitional and non-volitional aspects, as described in the paragraph from which you quoted. As for the Rand connection, she claims that because sense perception is lawful (as shown even during illusions, such as the stick appearing bent in water), this adds to the proof for realism. Her other claim is that free will is axiomatic, because looking for proof presupposes that you only accept claims which you can vouch for. But idealism of the Hegel variety does not actually claim that there's no lawful perceptual apparatus coming into contact with a world; nor does it prove freedom simply by appealing to the experience of adjusting your level of focus.