The Trendy Cynic

Perhaps it's my complete and utter lack of experience with philosophy that makes me suspect reasoning like this as mental sleight-of-hand. I understand arbitrary things to be propositions for which there exists no evidence for or against, not that they 'must forever be outside man's awareness.' Claiming that there is an alien civilization on Pluto would be an arbitrary proposition, but that in no way means that it must be forever out of our awareness (we could, for example, go there and check ourselves in a few decades). As such, I do not believe there is a fundamental violation of identity when it comes to arbitrary claims. I lean more towards what JMeganSnow said, in that arbitrary claims are empty and must be treated as if nothing was said. There's no contradiction inherent to saying nothing, is there? How can there be? Saying something is 'impossible,' to me, means it cannot be; it implies knowledge that this thing is not true. Arbitrary statements, though, by definition, are unknowable -- how can you have the knowledge that an unknowable proposition is impossible? Okay, fair enough -- but in this particular argument, when there only exist two possible alternatives (in that it's not even possible to conceive of something else, because it's an either-or sort of thing), it is no less valid to negatively attack the wrong one than it is to positively support the right one, correct?

I realise that. I was asking a question relating to the structure of his definition. When analysing a definition, is it always the case that adjectives placed in front of the genus are included in that genus? You seemed to look at that definition and choose 'profoundly experiential relationship' as the genus. I looked at that definition and chose 'relationship' as the genus, identifying 'profoundly experiential' as differentia. Following the steps you outlined: 1. What am I defining? (Life) 2. What am I differentiating it from? (Relationships) 3. How is it different from other similar objects? (Profoundly Experiential, Man & Existence) Woops, you caught me! To think I could have pulled one over on you...

My main objection is to the part where he claims the herd lacks volition, as opposed to the correct interpretation of their behavior (ie. they are choosing not to think, or are making mistakes based on false premises). The only alternative to the absence of volition is determinism, and so it follows that anyone advocating a lack of volition is also advocating determinism. It's fairly explicit. Perhaps he was speaking metaphorically, but then this whole article doesn't warrant consideration as it doesn't constitute any contradiction to Objectivist principles.

Why? Isn't this a further refinement of the broader genus, 'relationship'? Though "profoundly experiential" appears as an adjective in front of relationship, does that alone afford it the status of genus as opposed to differentia? If not, I don't see how the difference between 'profoundly experiential' and 'between a man and existence' has any cognitive difference; both are further qualifications to the type of relationship.

I'm by no means an expert on Objectivist epistemology, but I'll give it a go The genus is the class of existents you are distinguishing your concept from, in that they all possess common characteristics that you will then refine to distinguish 'life'. You definition of life (which, actually, I do like, at least in a human sense) is: "Life is the profoundly experiental relationship b/t man and his existence with reality." You've got your genus and differentia explicitly written. You can determine the genus by extracting all of the information that serves to qualify or restrict the definition, then look for what's left. The genus of your definition of life would be 'relationship;' life, by your definition, is a type of relationship. Genus: Relationship. The CCD(s) is the characteric(s) that all members of the genus possess, and that you are using to distinguish your type of relationship. Concepts of relationships are composed of two things: The nature of the relationship, and the entities it applies to. Your definition differentiates 'life' on the basis of both, and so both would be your Conceptual Common Denominators. CCDs: 1) The nature of the relationship. 2) The entities it applies to. Your differentia are the specific range or qualities of the CCDs that distinguish your type of relationship from all types of relationships. Differentia: 1) The nature of the relationship: "profoundly experiential" 2) The entites it applies to: "man and existence" Thus, life is a type of relationship (genus) that is both profoundly experiential and applied to man and existence (differentia).

When presented with a complete list of possibile explanations for something (say, volition vs. determinism), I know that I can support one of the explanations by shutting down the others. Evidence that clearly eliminates determinism as a viable option is, as I see it, just as effective as evidence that clearly supports volition. The reason I choose the former over the latter has to do, I think, with my experience with irrational theists. Regardless of the evidence I present in support of an atheistic argument, I learned to loathe the "well, divine alternative X is still possible," while at the same time being unable to deny the truth of that statement -- alternative X, I would think to myself, is technically possible. The result became the deep-seated conviction that it is necessary to defeat alternative explanations (negative), regardless of how effectively you support you own explanation (positive). While I always knew that the arbitrary could be dismissed as irrelevant, I've come to evaluate a conclusion that states "this is true, because all alternatives are arbitrary" as being somewhat less convincing than a conclusion that says "this is true, because all alternatives are impossible." I just can't find it within myself to allow the wiggle-room afforded by the former type of conclusion when I'm capable of drawing up the latter type. Could you expand a bit on why taking the negative position should be considered less logically appealing than taking a positive stance (err, assuming that taking the negative position can lead to a decisive conclusion, such as when you're able to negatively address all alternatives)?

It's fairly clear that the author of this article is not saying that reason is invalid, or that people do not follow reason, or that free choice is an illusion or non-existent. He clearly supports the existence of free choice; to the author, volition is real. He just believes that it only exists for some people, and not for others. What evidence does he present to support the idea that some people are void of free will? He shows that a large group of society (his 'herd') consistently make mistakes in the evaluation of the stock market. It follows, by his logic, that this herd does not follow reason and, thus, lacks free will. If this herd lacked volition, then they would not merely avoid following reason, they would be incapable of reason. In other words, a necessary premise to the author's argument is that every member of that 'Small Speculators' category is absolutely incapable of reason -- not merely ignorant of reason, but incapable of it. What does this mean for his argument? It means that, according to the author, it is impossible for any member of the 'Small Speculators' group to elevate himself to the 'Large Speculators' group. The latter, by the author's claim, does possess reason and volition, while the former does not. How can one learn reason and volition when he is supposedly incapable of both? Thus, demonstrating even a single instance of a member of the herd becoming an effective trader would invalidate his argument that being a member of the herd necessarily implies you lack volition and reason. And then there's this blatant contradiction. The members of the herd have reasons for what they're doing? Then they accept, understand and apply the faculty of reason! The fact that they do it wrongly is irrelevant -- they're still aware of their freedom of choice and applying 'reasons' to their actions. The problem for the author is that he's using evidence of fallibility as conclusive evidence of determinism. Nothing about fallibility implies that humans can't be fallible as a collective; just look at religion, or altruism. No one claims that the legions of Catholics or philanthropists are automatons; they're just irrational. The same is true, evidently, of the yellow bar, and just like those other groups, it's probably traceable to some fundamental contradiction they all believe in. The search for such an irrational premise, some defining contradiction, perhaps by comparing the reasons given by members of the herd to those given by successful traders... now that would be an interesting article to read.

Woo, I'm famous Actually, returning to this issue and summarizing it will be useful to my continued grasp of the nature of volition and the rejection of determinism. There were two main points brought to bear in the rejection of determinism outlined in that thread. The first point is that free choice is absolutely necessary to knowing anything. Through introspection, you can see that you have free choice. Thus, if your consciousness is determined, then it's clear that this free choice you can sense must be illusionary: You are not aware of all of the causes that force you to think a thought or make a choice, otherwise you wouldn't be able to believe you're doing it freely. Human minds are fallible, though. It is obvious that the inner workings of your mind are not a perfect means of observing reality. These causes, then, that you're unaware of, are likewise fallible -- and you have absolutely no way of judging or evaluating them, as you're unaware of them. Any attempt to judge anything, any attempt at thought, is pre-empted by these mysterious, unknowable, fallible causes that you are forced to follow. When you 'trust' knowledge, how do you know that you aren't being forced to trust it, forced to believe in something that's a lie, by these mysterious causes that exist beneath your awareness? The problem I had in grasping this first point was grasping the pervasiveness of this fact. Every thought is affected, when holding to this theory. No thought can be trusted, no shred of knowledge, however trivial, accepted with any confidence whatsoever. The second point attacks the reason for considering that determinism is even possible. Determinism rests on the false assumption that one can make conclusions about the nature of consciousness by making inferences about the nature of the brain as a physical object. We look around us and observe all manner of physical objects, of which the brain is one. We observe that all physical objects operate under mechanical causality (cause-and-effect, like dominoes falling), and so we can infer that the brain behaves in the same manner, based on these observations. This is not an entirely unreasonable conclusion to draw, because we can immediately observe the similarities between the brain and other physical objects. The point to grasp is that all of this reasoning is based on our observation of these existents, and the conclusions we can draw based on the similarities between these observations. The error is to then make another, similar leap of logic and state that because the brain likely follows mechanical causality, that consciousness does, too. This requires a separate evaluation of the similarities between our observations, this time among physical objects and the processes that arise from them. The problem here is that consciousness is utterly unique; our observation of the brain-consciousness relationship bears no similarity, even remotely, between any other relationship we have observed. All observations of consciousness are from the 'inside out,' as in, we are the consciousness and we are trying to grasp it from 'inside' it. You can never look at consciousness from the outside in, as you do with every other physical process. There's a clear, obvious rift between our observations of consciousness and our observation of the brain or other physical objects: Inside->Out vs. Outside->In. But any inference about the nature of consciousness from applying materialistic causality MUST be derived from similar observations about other existents, and there simply cannot exist any observations that are similar to those made of consciousness. Thus, it follows that no observations made of any other relationship in reality can be applied to the brain-consciousness relationship. While it may seem intuitive to think that consciousness-from-the-brain is similar to Windows-from-your-computer, there simply exists no logical basis to justify such an intuition: We can never see Windows from the inside-out (by... somehow... 'being' Windows), and so it cannot be related to our observations about consciousness. The claim that we can apply knowledge about other physical processes to our knowledge of consciousness is arbitrary. In order to doubt the self-evident, we need a valid objection that is supported by evidence. We can see, through introspection, that we possess volition. While it is not impossible that this volition is illusionary, it is also not impossible that an invisible leprechaun is sitting on your shoulder and making you imagine the words on your screen. We can safely dismiss both determinism and leprechauns on the same basis: There exists no logical evidence to support either. I'm sorry if that was convoluted... I'm kind of hurrying with this so I can catch my bus home from work

It's sarcastic, meant to parody the absurdity of the generally cynical attitude of today's society by painting it as a social fad that, to be consistent, they should be equally cynical of. While this admittedly doesn't fly with the Greek origins of the word, I coined it years ago considering only the colloquial definition. It's a rejection of cynicism through sarcasm, not an acceptance of it, primarily as a defense against today's oh-so-trendy rejection of idealism. It's also a fairly good defense against those people who put more stock in one's name than in one's words, wouldn't you say?

Sum 41, a Canadian punk-rock band, is great. Sometimes their songs are just so able to be interpreted as being supported by an Objectivist philosophy that I have to wonder. Of course, some of their other songs are quite the opposite. Here's the lyrics to a song I see as praising individualism, lamenting the loss of reason, and condemning society as blind and irrational... whaddayathink?

I'm CRUSHED that no one has mentioned LOST yet. An incredible show. My list: Lost Carnivale Firefly (cancelled) Boston Legal 24

I've read the series up to Naked Empire, then stopped. Faith of the Fallen was brilliant. Pillars of Creation and Naked Empire? Predictable, pedestrian, nonsensical trash in my humble opinion. I have no idea what happened to him between FotF and PoC, but for some reason, those last two books were painful for me to read -- especially when compared against Faith of the Fallen, which was spectacular. Am I alone in thinking the last two entries were just atrociously awful when compared to the other six?

Still have to read TEW. I'm going to read it right this instant... as soon as I finish this post. Having just completed chapter 4 today, I'm in complete agreement with you -- in fact, I think I'll include Chapter 5 in that as well because I feel the section on arbitrary propositions has huge ramifications on how the average person might process claims made in the first few chapters. Had I read through to the end of chapter 5 before questioning volition in chapter 2, for example, I would have understood the contextual/hierarchical nature of knowledge, the fallacy of the stolen concept (which I thought, until recently, referred to making use of a concept without aknowledging it) and the nature of arbitrary claims -- all of which would have helped me better understand the axiomatic nature of volition.

Exactly. And let me just say... it's foolish to think that physicists -- physicists -- would arbitrarily dismiss contradiction and theorize some form of physical nature to probability as if they didn't value identity, causality and non-contradiction to the same level Objectivists do. They do. Their entire study -- the sum total of scientific knowledge -- is based upon the universality of those concepts, and they aren't going to flaunt them capriciously. I'm not saying they are correct, but these sorts of wacky conclusions are necessitated by the current understanding of QM. There is currently no other way to describe single photon behaviour in the double-slit experiment without radically contradicting something profound: Either causality, locality or identity, something is being flipped on its head. Blissfully steamrolling over this fact is irresponsible at best, as in all likelihood it probably will have profound implications on all fields of human knowledge (including philosophy) when the answers are finally understood.

Thank you all for your help -- all of my questions were answered, and most of my unexpressed 'could he mean this?' questions were confirmed with a 'yes he does!' Well, actually there is evidence to support the fact that, in QM, 'likely state' and 'actual state' are one and the same. I've listed it below in quotes if you're interested... it has no bearing, really, on this discussion... I agree with the comments made regarding QM in this thread, and no longer see any conflict (and I've yet to read the Little Waves page, which I'm looking forward to). Besides, it's clear to me that the axiomatic concepts are inviolable, and it's silly to question them solely on the basis of a very poorly understood science. So, as I said, this is just for your personal interest, so stop reading if you aren't curious