KyaryPamyu

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.

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.