KyaryPamyu

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.

The post-kantians claim that all consciousness is basically self-consciousness (this is also true of indian philosophy, but I'll limit myself to the former). The argument can take this form: self-awareness is a quality possesed by certain objects of observation (humans), but not by other objects (like rocks). Now, if you have no clue what self-awareness is, you are unable to recognize it, even if you encounter it a quintillion times. You must have a prior acquaintance with it, even to recognize it in your own person. This prior acquaintance is demonstrated by showing how all human judgements, without exception, have a universal abstract form, which could be formulated like this: 'I'm aware of my self-awareness'. Take the statement: 'I love the Spice Girls'. What is its basic form? 'I know that I'm acquainted with my musical taste'; I know (awareness), that I'm acquainted with myself in some way (self-awareness). Another example: the statement 'Tiger Woods did not properly study his opponents' occurs in a declarative form: 'I know that I'm acquainted with my opinions about Tiger Woods'. Now, do you imagine your reality? Well, not quite. The mind does have the power to delimit itself to particular thoughts; however, to delimit itself to something is, nevertheless, a form of being limited. Those two perspectives are reconciled by synthesis: consciousness is theoretically unlimited, but practically limited. That is, there's no theoretical limit to how much you can alter your world, but there's the practical limit of being constrained by your past choices and shortcomings. By the time you finished reading the previous sentence, you've already deduced time, space and Kant's categories (which he merely lifted from Aristotle). This kind of dual-consciousness is Rand's starting point, and she never considers anything other than what is given in it: 'I don't feel that I create nature, therefore I don't. I feel that I'm free, therefore I am free. Q.E.D.' Inspired by Kant's third critique, Hegel and Schelling consider the possibility of an original non-difference of freedom and determinism. The unconscious plant has no clue what its doing, yet it appears utterly purposive, as if it was consciously grasping at some end-goal. The kantians try to strip away the mistique surrounding freedom by proposing that determinism and freedom could be a single phenomenon: a blind, mechanical march of nature towards increasingly sophisticated tools of self-knowledge (organisms). Under this model, there's no skepticism about whether the world of mental phenomena conforms to the world of material objects, since they're one world, not two. This is a proto-darwinian view that suggests the possibility of laws which are both mechanical and somehow purposive (laws of evolution).

There's only one, since subjective idealism is Berkley's version; It's also quite different from the usual strand of idealistic theories, so it's not very indicative of other western varieties. If I get this point correctly, you claim that since 'mind' designates an aggregate of existents (logic, thought, feeling, imagination and so on), it's impossible for only mind to exist. I agree; but I think that, in this thread, 'mind-only' means mental-phenomena-only, as opposed to a dualist theory where both mental phenomena and physical matter exist. Glad to see Shankara mentioned here. SEP has a systematic overview of his philosophy. Common sense sometimes means 'cold air can give you a cold', and 'the sun revolves around the earth'. Thankfully, there's plenty of nutjobs willing to consider the contrary. So, people would never argue if it was impossible to be wrong; and they can only be wrong if reality does not necessarily correspond to human claims. Therefore, facts are independent of claims made by human minds. Fair enough, but not necessarily exhaustive. It's true that the Eiffel Tower is in France even if I say it's in Uganda. On the other hand, try this experiement: declare your existence. How do you do it? You say: 'I declare my existence'. This declaration is true in virtue of declaring it. No correspondence theory at play here. Now, try to declare your existence and, at the same time, declare your non-existence. Can you do it? Probaby not. Your mind is free to determine itself; freedom and necessity do not occur apart from each other, there's an identity between the two. Those two observations stand at the core of post-kantian critical idealism. The experience of Selfhood exists, paradoxically, in virtue of being affirmed against a non-self - which takes the form of an individual freely subjugating a non-self (nature) to its own purpose. This project is never completed, because the self is a self in virtue of determining its being, as opposed to having it determined for him.

Simple, I just need to rehash the standard O'ist argument: Q: Why can't the mind be aware only of itself? A: Well, refer to the axioms, which boil down to: 'there is something of which I'm aware'. Q: Can the something of which I'm aware be produced by my mind? A: No, you must first go through many experiences before you can have an inner world. Q: But why aren't those formative experiences self-produced? A: Because I don't feel that I produce them. Q: What if you do it unconsciously? A: Hm? How could that happen? Q: [Describe Hegel's position, or similar] A: So, who are you guys voting for in the next election? --- (Here's my attempt to disprove idealism on O'ist grounds, although I don't personaly subscribe to either realism or idealism).

It takes awhile for a child to graduate from the level of 'this object, that object' to the realization that 'this is my perception of this object and that object'. He learns that people in his environment do not see, hear etc. the same things as he does, so he needs to distinguish between different minds, of which one of them is 'his'. This is why self-consciousness is inseparable from the discovery of consciousness itself. Galt's argument is probably in this line, that consciousness of consciousness (self-consciousness) depends on perceiving a world of objects and people first. Pure self-consciousness, in the context of Yoga, is a physiological state achieved by entering a very low metabolic state, where the five senses and the thinking faculties (citta) are temporarily suspended. It's like dreamless sleep, except the meditator maintains awareness in the midst of it. The goal is to shift the attention toward the subtler, quieter levels of the mind, which normally go unnoticed because the attention is too engrossed in objects, thoughts and feelings to notice what's underneath them: the sense of observer-hood, of being a witness to such and such object, thought and feeling. The meditator's argument is that self-consciousness is always 'on', underneath every object of experience, from babyhood to old age. This includes underneath the dreaming state and even (!) underneath dreamless sleep; a sign of enlightenment is said to be when the Yogi becomes aware during sleep, and realizes that even unconsciousness is, paradoxically, an object presenting itself to consciousness. Rand's philosophy does not mention or discuss the idea that sense perception might be influenced by unconsciously performed mental acts. This is a consequence of her theory that every concept, without exception, is derived from the conscious level, including the concepts used in arguing for a pre-conscious activity. Yoga is an interesting challenge to this theory, because it's based on bringing the unnoticed, unconscious levels of the mind into conscious awareness. Experienced Yogis claim to directly perceive the mechanism by which the mind generates the phenomenal world, and have meticulously documented it.

Stephen, do you know if Kant's argument about a 'universal grammar' has been adressed in O'ist literature? I'm curious how this could be tied to Rand's argument about axiomatic foundations. I mean this argument: 1. Human experience is comprised of two kinds of appearances: sense perception and concepts 2. Sensations are passively received. 3. Concepts are actively formed. Essences (distinguishing characteristics) are epistemological, not metaphysical. 4. 'Experience' is a freely formed concept; sensations do not exhibit an essence of 'experience', much like chairs do not exhibit 'chairness'. 5. Just as adding 'chairness' to observed phenomena makes it look as if 'chairness' actually exists out there, adding 'experience' (along with the implied notion of experincer) to raw sense data does the same thing. 6. All conceptual thought follows the universal grammar of quality, quantity, relation and modality. E.g. the sentence 'if lightning strikes, thunder will sound' exhibits: The quantity of universality: the statement applies to every possible instance of lightning. The quality of affirmation: it affirms (rather than denies) that property of lightning. A hypothetical relation ('If-then'), as opposed to the simple declarative or disjunctive ('either-or') relation. The modality of necessity: a certain event (thunder) will follow upon another, based on a rule. 7. All perception is colored by this universal grammar. The table of categories is simply the table of judgements applied to sense data. -------------- The above argument rests on the notion that thought has an innate, fixed structure - as long as you're a human being, no thinkable thought is exempt from a universal grammar. Putting this in Randian terms, you must use this grammar to deny it. I've been wondering lately whether Rand's metaphysics, in a similar vein, starts by identifying the limits of thinkability (for example axiomatic concepts and innate faculties like measurement) and simply runs with it. (I wonder how the history of western philosophy would have turned out if eastern philosophy entered the discussion much earlier than it did).

I think there's a natural dynamic of leader-follower in sex, following from the anatomical aspect. Usually the male is the 'boss', but polarity can be present in many other ways, even a female dominatrix. Either way, I personally don't see a philosophical significance to submissiveness, penetration or even special clothing. Other animals don't care whether they get to business in a hotel room or in a hole in the ground. Where sense of life enters, in my view, is when people (consciously or unconsciously) add to the experience in various ways, according to what makes them feel like they're truly living the million-dollar life.

The relationship in question is how sense of life affects your artistic and sexual preferences. By preference I mean: the kind of partner and 'techniques' that make sex good or underwhelming to you. Why is it good or underwhelming? Because it gives you a sense of power, or fails to do so. And why does this particular person, this specific technique etc. make you feel like that? Because... (the reasons you give will tie in to certain beliefs - the same beliefs that make you like certain heroes, situations and attitudes in art). Pray do tell how it is irrelevant to: ----- No sense of life arises from viewing a situation as risky or not. Rather, the sense of life that you already have (formed over a long period of time via automatic emotional generalization) is active when you judge that, in the same way only privileged people ride in limos, only 'privileged' individuals get to have that kind of sex.

By 'going against who they are', do you mean that they get their kink from pretending to be someone else - a hospital patient and a nurse? Then you missed my point. Fantasy is obviously a good-natured form of playing. It's the content of the game that's being analysed here, vis-a-vis sense of life. Role playing is versatile, For example, some people engage in role playing simply because it dissolves some of the familiarity that seeps into a relationship over time, a sort of return to the early days of dating where everything feels like treading new grounds, embarking on an adventure. And in other situations, it can be a philosophical kink. Implicit in sex is that pleasure is open to those who deserve it. Pleasure is open (benevolent-universe premise) to those who deserve it (sef-esteem). Having sex consummates this fact. The nurse-patient code of conduct is there for the sake of everybody else in that hospital (what they do somewhere else, in private, is up to them). Somebody who believes that the world stops him from getting what he wants (with the many necessary laws of conduct) might also conclude that a great (efficaceous) person is one that can plough through those limitations and get away with it. In other words, there's a dichotomy between the good (properness) and efficacy (one's sense of power, of being able to get what one wants). For such a person it's 'good to be bad', as it were. He thinks that by breaking the rules (perverting the good) he's an exceptional individual that can bypass the world's attempts to cripple his freedom and enjoyment. Such an individual is not going against who he is.

The section starts with some necessary prep for understanding Rand's theory that sex is "a celebration of one’s power to gain values and of the world in which one gains them." [OPAR p. 344] For some people, illicit situations - such as breaking the nurse-patient code of conduct - are examples of being able to do things that ordinary people can't, in lieu of who one is; think along the lines of the rockstar stereotype, who can allegedly bypass the normal courtship process which binds to ordinary mortals (since women stick to his windows like Playdoh) and sleep with women as casually as brushing his teeth. These examples signify greatness to some people, but not to everybody. This is why Francisco D'Anconia says "Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life." In addition to Branden's lecture (BPO 58), an interesting discussion of sex can be found in Peikoff's course Objectivism through Induction.

For those interested in an extensive Objectivist discussion of architecture (not mine): Roger Bissell - Art as Microcosm

Although Rand never mentions how she reached her theory of art, it's reasonable to assume that she did it by induction from established and important works of literature, painting etc. Virtually all art up until the late 19th century has been representational. Rand's contribution is a theory of representational art, so it can be argued that it has little application to alternative frameworks such as non-representational and conceptual art. Whether this is a limitation or not comes down to your personal preferences. If you like non-objective art and want to integrate it with representational theories of art, Rand's aesthetics will at best give you some hints for your project. What is art for? People love to occasionally take a break from the real world and live inside an idealized world. Granted, there are alternative ways to experience a different world: daydreaming, video games, intoxication and even sex come to mind. Art is unique because it's ready-made; no productive participation is required of the consumer. Rand stresses in many places that any justification for art other than enjoyment chips away at the very soul of the artistic enterprise: Why does art portray a total philosophy, and not just a few individual philosophic principles? Let's say a novelist writes a novel about a hairdresser for celebrities. If his hero is fictional, the novelist will construct his life according to what he thinks human beings go through in virtue of being human beings: despair, triumph, futility etc. If, on the other hand, his subject is a real historical person, he'll make it seem as if the events of his life are perfect examples of the despair, triumph or futility of life. This is akin to how religionists take everything to be a proof of god—fortune or misfortune, the existence of the world or the non-existence of the world etc.—it doesn't matter what you throw at them, they'll find a way to convert it into evidence for their beliefs. In art, every action, political rant, brushstroke etc. is in some way consistent with the artist's basic assumptions. By contrast, the real world contains some degree of randomness, e.g. Peikoff's example of fumbling while trying to elegantly open a champagne bottle during a date [OPAR 425]. (whether randomness exists outside of human actions is a much-debated philosophical topic). Some O'ists find it puzzling that a four-line stanza or a statue can hold a total, entire, complete philosophy. This is because they look at the object and not at 'where it comes from', i.e. the source of the selections that construct the work. Such a concatenation is supposed to evoke a distinctive kind of world to your consciousness: A person can hardly enter another world by means of a statue if he looks at it the same way he looks at a G.I. Joe action figure. Most of the philosophical sciences look outward to the external world; aesthetics is uniquely tasked with studying man's inner world in correlation to outward objects of the senses, such as a canvas. Is music a microcosm? Despite being built out of invisible air vibrations, you'd be hard pressed to find a quicker way to tune out of your bus ride and slip straight into another world, than by putting a pair of headphones on. Is architecture art? I'm inclined to think that Rand simply commented on the traditional list of fine arts, rather than reconstructing such things from the ground up. In my opinion, architecture doesn't fit in with her definition of art. If buildings can be art, lunch boxes can be as well. Both are non-representational; both can be either enjoyed for their visual style and significance, or used to enclose people or sandwiches. Why is aesthetics even a part of philosophy? Art has existed for much longer than philosophy, so it certainly wasn't invented by philosophers. When we describe man, characteristics such as having two eyes and a nose won't suffice—too many other animals have eyes and noses. By contrast, the moment you mention 'reason = primary means of survival' you've instantly narrowed the search down to a single entry: man. Likewise, if you want to build a universe in miniature, you have to ignore contingencies and go straight to the essential, important characteristics of earthly existence, i.e. metaphysical features. This is what gives your mini-world an instantly recognizable character, what we refer to when speaking of the world of Rembrandt or Monet. Theory is hard and makes people's brains hurt. By contrast, everybody understands what they encounter in the world of the five senses. Philosophy can be downright unintelligible without the superheroes, pop idols and ancient myths that seep into popular culture and act as statements of what human life is all about. The philosopher, priest and artist deal with the same topics, but in different forms. The philosopher describes the world in a conceptual form, the priest allegedly connects you to the immanent essence of that world, and the artist builds a world for contemplation. Aesthetics is an objective science Creating art is a skill. Natural talent and inclination is crucial, but producing tight artworks requires technical know-how. This technical toolkit removes restrictions to expressive freedom, rather than constraining it with asinine rules: Does aesthetics study beauty? It can be argued that non-beautiful art has little appeal for those who seek art specifically for enjoying themselves. Rand makes no mention of aesthetics as a theory of beauty, but she does discuss a closely related subject: taste. Understanding precisely how taste works can help us identify why combinations that come across as 'tacky', 'sophisticated', 'chaotic' etc. can also come across as beautiful to some people and not to others. The subconscious mind integrates everything we believe about the world. Thanks to this, we naturally feel the overall context underlying our everyday existence, with no further need to translate this feeling into words. Rand calls this phenomenon a sense of life. In my experience, this sense only comes to the forefront of my conscious attention in moments when something makes me feel that life is amazing, or when I feel that life is offensively not how it ought to be. Those strong reactions are an instance of my sense of life being converted into full-fledged emotions. Artists are so attuned to their sense of life that, during creation, most of their selections are almost forced upon them by their subconscious 'computer', as if possesed by a muse. This kind of inspiration works the other way as well: Rand notes how an essentialized fictional character (concretization of ethics) is just like an essentialized world (concretization of metaphysics): it can summon selections to your conscious mind, as if divinely inspired; Your sense of life, to be useful, needs to be rekindled constantly, the same way a fire needs a constant stream of logs to remain active. Otherwise it subdues into nothingness, and you're no longer able to make effortless and 'inspired decisions' the same way the artist does while creating. Put differently, you have to work much harder, because the conscious and subconscious are practicing social distancing rather than being a whole. Your brain is famished, and art is what it craves: Sex and art Implicit in good (human) sex are two interrelated feelings: 1. That having sex is a special, out-of-the-ordinary activity. Some couples even use stories and role-plays to enhance the feeling that something special is going on. (By 'special', many people understand 'illicit', e.g. a nurse breaking the code to do naughty stuff with a patient. I'll leave other possible examples to your imagination.) 2. If sex it that special, then it's not something open to every Joe or Jane, right? Sex is a response to a person that you feel has a unique ability to navigate life. Both men and women look for strong partners; even if the masculine sex usually takes the lead in a sexual relationship, underlying the woman's sexual attitude must lie a strenght on par with the man's. The more flustered, excited and adoring your partner is, the bigger and greater you feel. Sex doesn't provide self esteem, it merely allows you to enjoy its perks. Branden notes [BPO 58] that no rational person will be motivated to keep himself pristine and admirable if his effort is not rewarded somehow. (It's even harder if you're being punished for it by government goons). Sex is philosophical, just like art, in this manner: no sense of life is involved when you hear somebody say that water is a solid rather a liquid; you just find it goofy. But hearing from somebody that living is a meaningless, futile and mindless ritual?? I'll have to stop you there, buster. Pleasurable sex only happens when you feel that you're wholly entitled to that pleasure—as a human being and as this particular individual. If you genuinely feel like you're a useless blob of determined matter, there's no adoration to 'deserve' and sex is a farce. -------------- BPO 58 - Nathaniel Branden's taped lectures on the "Basic Principles of Objectivism" Lecture 16 (1958) FW 58 - Ayn Rand's 1958 fiction-writing recorded course PO12 76 - Leonard Peikoff, "Philosophy of Objectivism" Lecture 12 (1976) RM - Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto