Two new questions: Value and Intelligence.

[Tenure]

I have two questions, and I'm going to keep them short. One concerns the nature of value, the other the nature of intelligence. So here goes:

1) I've been reading The Psychology of Self Esteem, and he mentions again and again, just like Ayn Rand, that values are volitionally chosen. This, I find very bizarre. It's not volition I find odd - it's this idea that values are volitionally chosen. How does one chose some values over the others? I've never thought about why I love acting or the theatre so much, other than that the former, I am quite good at, and the latter, I enjoy going to visit.

Now, notice both of these involve a feeling of satisfaction, or just general pleasure, resulting from a confidence in my abilities and their results, or from seeing certain other values, like beauty and truth, expressed.

My question is though: If I were to ask myself why I value something - and I don't just mean a biochemically necessitated value, like hunger or thirst or the act of sex (disregarding the actual goals chosen to fulfill these values, for now) - is an unidentifiable 'pleasure', the simple fact that I enjoy something, and that it doesn't harm me in the long term, a rational basis for choosing a value, i.e. finding something that I wish to attain or keep? In short: is an unexplained pleasure the reason we value certain values?

2) What is intelligence? I mean, really, what is it, in fundamentals? I hate using that newbie form of asking questions, 'What is the Objectivist viewpoint on...', so I'll clarify further than that: going from fundamental, Objectivist, metaphysical principles, up to the concept of intelligence, what is intelligence?

The reason for my asking, is that I'm interested in the factors that move someone towards a value, which, if the answer to first question was 'yes', consist of principle of pleasure. So, this splits into two questions: 1) is it possible to be born with a 'creative' or 'mathematical intelligence' or any type of intelligence? 2) do these predispositions have the power to influence value choosing?

On a related note, has anyone read the work of psychologist called Howard Gardner? I'm interested in studying Linguistics with my Philosophy degree, because of my interest of the formation of language and the nature of it in man's mind, and more fundamentally, the formation of man's mind, so this man's research into development is of great interest to me.

Edited September 20, 2007 by Tenure

[DMR]

1) I've been reading The Psychology of Self Esteem, and he mentions again and again, just like Ayn Rand, that values are volitionally chosen. This, I find very bizarre. It's not volition I find odd - it's this idea that values are volitionally chosen. How does one chose some values over the others? I've never thought about why I love acting or the theatre so much, other than that the former, I am quite good at, and the latter, I enjoy going to visit.

One approach that occurs to me is to say that values are volitionally chosen in the sense that they are rationally revisable, in the same way that a lot of the time we make simple decisions without reasoning about them, but we can later go back and reason about those decisions and determine that we made a mistake. Stupid example: suppose that as a matter of fact, acting was destructive to rational happiness. You might come to value acting for no reason other than that it seemed to make you happy. But then you might apply your reason to it, discover that it was a bad thing to do, and subsequently re-evaluate it.

2) What is intelligence? I mean, really, what is it, in fundamentals? I hate using that newbie form of asking questions, 'What is the Objectivist viewpoint on...', so I'll clarify further than that: going from fundamental, Objectivist, metaphysical principles, up to the concept of intelligence, what is intelligence?

I don't see why you need to go from fundamental principles every time you want to answer a question. Don't work to hard. Instead, let's answer an easier question: under what circumstances can we say of a person that he is intelligent, or that he is more intelligent than another person? The answer seems pretty straightforward: he is able to solve the problems standing between him and happiness. In the comparative context, one person is more intelligent than another person in a particular domain if when problems in that domain stand between the two people and happiness, the one tends to be more successful than the other at getting to happiness.

The reason for my asking, is that I'm interested in the factors that move someone towards a value, which, if the answer to first question was 'yes', consist of principle of pleasure. So, this splits into two questions: 1) is it possible to be born with a 'creative' or 'mathematical intelligence' or any type of intelligence? 2) do these predispositions have the power to influence value choosing?

I know that some psychologists describe certain people as having creative or mathematical intelligence, and that people are clearly good at different sorts of things. Whether the concept "mathematical intelligence" and related concepts do a good job of capturing what is going on with the people purported to have those qualities is not something I'm qualified to discuss.

However, it is clear that people are highly diverse in their aptitudes for particular skills and subjects. It is clear that at least some of that is inborn. And since people tend to (and generally should) prefer things they are good at to things they suck at, these aptitudes are certainly going to influence their value judgments in at least some respects.

[Abstractionreaction]

I have two questions, and I'm going to keep them short. One concerns the nature of value, the other the nature of intelligence. So here goes:

1) I've been reading The Psychology of Self Esteem, and he mentions again and again, just like Ayn Rand, that values are volitionally chosen. This, I find very bizarre. It's not volition I find odd - it's this idea that values are volitionally chosen. How does one chose some values over the others? I've never thought about why I love acting or the theatre so much, other than that the former, I am quite good at, and the latter, I enjoy going to visit.

Now, notice both of these involve a feeling of satisfaction, or just general pleasure, resulting from a confidence in my abilities and their results, or from seeing certain other values, like beauty and truth, expressed.

My question is though: If I were to ask myself why I value something - and I don't just mean a biochemically necessitated value, like hunger or thirst or the act of sex (disregarding the actual goals chosen to fulfill these values, for now) - is an unidentifiable 'pleasure', the simple fact that I enjoy something, and that it doesn't harm me in the long term, a rational basis for choosing a value, i.e. finding something that I wish to attain or keep? In short: is an unexplained pleasure the reason we value certain values?

2) What is intelligence? I mean, really, what is it, in fundamentals? I hate using that newbie form of asking questions, 'What is the Objectivist viewpoint on...', so I'll clarify further than that: going from fundamental, Objectivist, metaphysical principles, up to the concept of intelligence, what is intelligence?

The reason for my asking, is that I'm interested in the factors that move someone towards a value, which, if the answer to first question was 'yes', consist of principle of pleasure. So, this splits into two questions: 1) is it possible to be born with a 'creative' or 'mathematical intelligence' or any type of intelligence? 2) do these predispositions have the power to influence value choosing?

On a related note, has anyone read the work of psychologist called Howard Gardner? I'm interested in studying Linguistics with my Philosophy degree, because of my interest of the formation of language and the nature of it in man's mind, and more fundamentally, the formation of man's mind, so this man's research into development is of great interest to me.

Question number two is an area I have been giving some thought too as well recently and I think that intellegence is a persons ability to abstract. By which I should clairify the degree to which they can abstract.

We all have a limit to the information we can hold at one time in our frame of consciousness, I contend that being more intellegent allows you to consider more data at one time than someone with less intellegence. Now, I think its appropriate to say that people can abstract different types of information better than others. For example you claim a proficiency with acting where as I am quite natural with martial arts.

The question arises now, (assuming I am correct) does the type of data being reguarded effect how one should evaluate a persons ability to abstract?

Edited September 20, 2007 by Abstractionreaction

[~Sophia~]

Now, notice both of these involve a feeling of satisfaction, or just general pleasure, resulting from a confidence in my abilities and their results, or from seeing certain other values, like beauty and truth, expressed.

My question is though: If I were to ask myself why I value something - and I don't just mean a biochemically necessitated value, like hunger or thirst or the act of sex (disregarding the actual goals chosen to fulfill these values, for now) - is an unidentifiable 'pleasure', the simple fact that I enjoy something, and that it doesn't harm me in the long term, a rational basis for choosing a value, i.e. finding something that I wish to attain or keep? In short: is an unexplained pleasure the reason we value certain values?

Your guide is your long term happiness. The reasons behind what you specifically find enjoyable and why are not as unidentifiable or unexplained as you think but discovering the answers may require a lot of introspection: consider how acting ties in with your other values, look back at your childhood influences - try to recal the moment you had discovered acting, try to pin point more specifically what is that you are getting by doing it (I find it pleasurable because...).

2) What is intelligence? I mean, really, what is it, in fundamentals?

Intelligence is the ability to acquire, integrate, and apply knowledge. It is tied to mental functioning and thus to some, small degree, it is dependent on biology but to a much greater degree it is developed.

do these predispositions have the power to influence value choosing?

All kinds of early predispositions (biology+environment) affect value choosing. Musical ability for music, being tall and fast for playing basketball ect but one still chooses to pursue those possiblities. There are things that I am good at yet don't pursue and then there are things that I value which don't come naturally to me.

Edited September 21, 2007 by ~Sophia~

[blackdiamond]

My question is though: If I were to ask myself why I value something - and I don't just mean a biochemically necessitated value, like hunger or thirst or the act of sex (disregarding the actual goals chosen to fulfill these values, for now) - is an unidentifiable 'pleasure', the simple fact that I enjoy something, and that it doesn't harm me in the long term, a rational basis for choosing a value, i.e. finding something that I wish to attain or keep? In short: is an unexplained pleasure the reason we value certain values?

-bold mine.

I don’t see how you can conclude that a certain pleasure “doesn't harm me in the long term” without identifying (the source of) that pleasure; without explaining that pleasure.

[aequalsa]

Question number two is an area I have been giving some thought too as well recently and I think that intellegence is a persons ability to abstract. By which I should clairify the degree to which they can abstract.

We all have a limit to the information we can hold at one time in our frame of consciousness, I contend that being more intellegent allows you to consider more data at one time than someone with less intellegence. Now, I think its appropriate to say that people can abstract different types of information better than others. For example you claim a proficiency with acting where as I am quite natural with martial arts.

The question arises now, (assuming I am correct) does the type of data being reguarded effect how one should evaluate a persons ability to abstract?

I had a similar thought. I am not certain to what extent it is the result of environment, prenatal development, or genes, but it does seem obvious that some people will often lack an ability to grasp a concept, regardless of knowledge level regarding the subject while for others it may come easy even with completely new concepts.

My guess is that some people have a larger "crow" than others. They can hold more elements together and therefore keep a broader context when analyzing the problem. Make quick correlations to the knowledge they do have, and quickly integrate it into their knowledge set.

That being said, most often when people seem to have great natural intelligence it is in particular areas. Not just mathematical, spatial or linguistic, but also kinesthetic, like you mention, or in social behavior or with regard to introspection.

Those occasional few who seem good at everything they try(Francisco D Anconia style) and perform above average all the time seem to share one trait in common. They can focus intently for long periods of time. When they walk into a classroom or Dojo or workplace, they are there and nowhere else. Any issues outside of that subject seemingly gets dumped from their "RAM" so they are dedicated to that one thing. They stay in the moment, in other words. In this way it creates the illusion that it comes natural to them even when it does not.

I have occasionally taught martial arts and have witnessed first hand that some people are unable to coordinate sets of movements properly after months and others can see it once and can do it instantly. Even things which do not require any special physical capacity like height, strength or flexibility. I think that often the "natural" abilities people possess are actually activities which have a strong carryover from something they are familiar with. For example, the similarities between pitching a baseball and punching. Obviously the specific movements differ, but the general activity of coordinating muscle contractions to project force in a single direction are almost identical.

So while some part of intelligence is probably determined, most intelligence is, I suspect, an extension of the ability to focus combined with previous experience.

[JMeganSnow]

My question is though: If I were to ask myself why I value something - and I don't just mean a biochemically necessitated value, like hunger or thirst or the act of sex (disregarding the actual goals chosen to fulfill these values, for now) - is an unidentifiable 'pleasure', the simple fact that I enjoy something, and that it doesn't harm me in the long term, a rational basis for choosing a value, i.e. finding something that I wish to attain or keep? In short: is an unexplained pleasure the reason we value certain values?

I'd bet money you are asking "is there a valid reason to prefer theater over movies?" Values like this are exceedingly narrow and since both are good for you there is no way to determine which one is better except by which you prefer. Why do you prefer it? Maybe you have long acquaintance with the theater. Maybe you went to the theater a lot with your parents when you were a kid and you enjoyed it. It's a psychological reason rather than an existential one, but why fight it when there is no reason to?

What is intelligence? I mean, really, what is it, in fundamentals?

Try doing a forum search, there's a thread on this topic somewhere. I have a rough functional definition of intelligence that I use: it's raw brain processing power, kind of like the mHz rating on your CPU. Intelligent people grasp new concepts and abstractions more quickly and can deal with a broader range of them, just like a faster computer can do more stuff. However, even a slow computer can chew through a program eventually. This is why people with average IQ's can study their asses off and become doctors. The bright person may not have to study as much (or may go into an exceedingly difficult and arcane specialty field), but the average person can still do it. It just takes longer.

[musenji]

On that last note, a fascinating article on the nature of human expertise:

http://scientificamerican.com/print_versio...F9E83414B7F4945

To sum it up, researchers studied thousands of chess matches and found that chess expertise has less to do with some sort of "innate talent" than with effortful practice and gaining of experience, which leads to the ability to integrate greater abstractions (patterns of moves). The findings are believed to generalize into other fields of human endeavor as well.

[Robert J. Kolker]

Question number two is an area I have been giving some thought too as well recently and I think that intelligence is a persons ability to abstract. By which I should clarify the degree to which they can abstract.

What about originality and creativity?

Bob Kolker

[JMeganSnow]

What about them? I know plenty of highly intelligent people that are about as original and creative as a potato. I refer to the vast majority of them by the lovely term "bitheads" because they appear to parse English about as well as a computer. A lot of them are computer nerds and mathematicians, but this by no means exhausts the field.

You probably need to be reasonably intelligent to be creative (because creativity depends on being able to integrate a large amount of material . . . the more stuff you can understand and file away in your mind, the more creative you can be) but that doesn't guarantee it.

[Tenure]

Thank you all for chiming in on this thread. The reason I asked was because I was interested in what a value is, psychologically. I understand it is what a man seeks to gain or keep, and that it must be rationally chosen. I couldn't understand, however, what it meant to value something - I mean, what is emotion associated with value, for one thing? This is why I asked, is it simply pleasure? I don't mean mindless, causeless plesaure, and I think blackdiamond hit that nail on the head:

I don’t see how you can conclude that a certain pleasure “doesn't harm me in the long term” without identifying (the source of) that pleasure; without explaining that pleasure.

That's what has been puzzling me. I love the theatre, and it probably isn't worth the effort to go all the way back and find all the things that lead me to choosing that value. I think I understand better, however, the process of 'value choosing', when it seems like we didn't implicitly choose a value. I don't think Roark sat down one day and thought that a Skyscraper was, for his creative purposes, a better symbol of man's power, than, say, a statue or a book. But why?

It brings him pleasure to build, as it brings me pleasure to write and to act. But what is the nature of that pleasure? As blackdiamond says above, and as I think, one must surely identify a pleasure, to know that it is a rational. Or is this another case of reasonable doubt, where my values are rational beyond reasonable doubt, and there is no evidence that leads me to examining the nature of my pleasure, and I should just shut up and stop fretting?

I think DMR says as much, when he says that if acting were destructive for whatever reason, then I would have to apply my reason and introspect. So is that the nature of the issue? Does one not need to bother examining the source of a pleasure until events lead us to question that pleasure? If we are rational enough, are we able to identify the nature of our values earlier on - and, consequently, is our bad-premise detection system better? Which leads me further to question: if one is raised perfectly rationally from birth, is taught to think principally and to apply reason, will they be able to identify the nature of each pleasure as soon as they encounter it?

Jenni, sorry to disappoint, but the nature of my questioning is not to discover why I like theatre over cinema - it is to discover why I value something to begin with. Why, if I look back in my past, did I find actions which led up to choosing such a value, enjoyable? Why were those values valuable? Or am I just begging the question - are values simply that which is pleasurable, and that pleasure is something latent and subconscious, and perhaps, even, genetically pre-determined? But... then that requires knowledge-before-birth, and that's ridiculous.

But your question, "but why fight it when there is no reason to?" is spot on - this is what I'm now thinking - do I only need to introspect when circumstances give me reason to? I've always prided myself on my powers of introspection, in both the blessing it has been in self-discovery and honesty, but also the curse when I have chosen to constantly pursue very negative things, to selectively focus on the bad and not the good, on strange, bizarre things, etc etc. How does one tell when one is introspecting too far into a value? At what point does it become a matter of "it is, because it is!" ?

The intelligence thing was more of an ancillary thing, and thank you all for your input on that. I think aequalsa and musenji's theories combined paint a clear picture of the human processing powers - the raw number of things that one can constitute on at a single time. I think that the nature of my question is one that really demands a good knowledge of neurology and psychology combined, so I may leave that there. I think it's very hard to prove the little things that built up to leading someone to 'naturally' enjoy playing an instrument, so it may be impossible, or at least, not worth the investment, for a researcher to spend their time looking into the causes that lead people to their 'natural' skills in each field.

[DMR]

It brings him pleasure to build, as it brings me pleasure to write and to act. But what is the nature of that pleasure? As blackdiamond says above, and as I think, one must surely identify a pleasure, to know that it is a rational. Or is this another case of reasonable doubt, where my values are rational beyond reasonable doubt, and there is no evidence that leads me to examining the nature of my pleasure, and I should just shut up and stop fretting?

At some level of uncertainty about the rationality of a particular pleasure and some level of certainty that the consequences of that pleasure's being irrational would be so bad, it becomes rational to investigate the pleasure. Of course, it's up to you to determine the tipping point you're going to go on.

DMR says...that if acting were destructive for whatever reason, then I would have to apply my reason and introspect.

My point was that the substance of "choosing your values" is that you have the option to apply reason to them. I was attempting to unify the theoretical position that values are volitional with the common-sense intuition that we just wake up one day and decide we want to be actors or whatever.

If we are rational enough, are we able to identify the nature of our values earlier on - and, consequently, is our bad-premise detection system better? Which leads me further to question: if one is raised perfectly rationally from birth, is taught to think principally and to apply reason, will they be able to identify the nature of each pleasure as soon as they encounter it?

Obviously rationality must improve our bad-premise detection system (or else we have been using the term "rationality" incorrectly all this time). However, I do not think your example of the rational child is very realistic. The human brain is not designed to do that much theoretical work. A person raised to be rational would certainly be better at quickly identifying the nature of pleasures than one who was not raised to be rational, but the kind of perfect identification you're envisioning is not possible.

[JMeganSnow]

Jenni, sorry to disappoint, but the nature of my questioning is not to discover why I like theatre over cinema - it is to discover why I value something to begin with.

I.e. why do you like theater instead of something else, right? You're not asking "why do I value anything at all?" but "why do I value something specific in preference to other options?"

We're set up to acquire values, it's part of our overall mechanism. As Ayn Rand said (paraphrasing): You have no choice about whether you will feel that something is good or bad for you, your only choice lies in what you will feel is good or bad for you. Your emotions will latch onto something, so if you ask "why do I value?" in general, the answer is: you're alive.

Now, in my personal case I can definitively identify the source of some of my values, like writing and books. My mom read books to me a lot when I was very young, and I always received great encouragement when I wrote anything. So, I learned that writing and reading (and learning, and thinking) were good for me. This is one of the reasons parenting is such a responsibility, because you can help or hinder your children in their path to developing particular values. My parents helped me in some ways but they hindered in others, so I suppose I'm really about typical. I have some good values (learning, writing, drawing, etc.) and some not-so-good values (overeating). I work to increase the former and decrease or eliminate the latter.DMR: I think it is possible to identify the source of your values, but it's not a matter of extreme rationality but of being good at introspection and identifying the roots of your own psychology. Some psychological matters are difficult to identify because simply *examining* them is painful. I think with practice and patience anyone can do it, however.

If you re-read the fountainhead, you'll notice that Howard Roark worked on buildings with his father basically from the first moment he could. The things you do and enjoy when you are young (with or without your parents) make a lasting impression on you and set your preferences for the rest of your life. Basically any time you hear a young person say "That's cool!" you are observing this process in action.

Edited September 26, 2007 by JMeganSnow

[KendallJ]

That's what has been puzzling me. I love the theatre, and it probably isn't worth the effort to go all the way back and find all the things that lead me to choosing that value. I think I understand better, however, the process of 'value choosing', when it seems like we didn't implicitly choose a value. I don't think Roark sat down one day and thought that a Skyscraper was, for his creative purposes, a better symbol of man's power, than, say, a statue or a book. But why?

It brings him pleasure to build, as it brings me pleasure to write and to act. But what is the nature of that pleasure? As blackdiamond says above, and as I think, one must surely identify a pleasure, to know that it is a rational. Or is this another case of reasonable doubt, where my values are rational beyond reasonable doubt, and there is no evidence that leads me to examining the nature of my pleasure, and I should just shut up and stop fretting?

T, I have a couple of thoughts on valuing, and maybe we can use some of those to help you think about your instance. First off, your value of theater has a specific nature, right? That is, you don't value theatre irrespective of the role it plays in your life. And any valuing of theater is not necessarily proper. For instance if you "valued" theater by going to it every day, spending all your money watching it to the point of ruin, that would hardly be a good thing. The other point is that you had a hand in creating the specific context in which theater is now a value for you.

So you have had to act to create the current context of value. However that action had to based on some context of value in the first place. Maybe it wasn't quite the mature one you hold now, but it was enough of one to cause you to act to create a new context where you refine your concept of what your valuing of theater means. Maybe some of the folks who are parents can chime in, but that is the way I think such complex and abstract values derive, even through childhood and into mature adulthood. That is, because value causes action, which in turn provides sensory evidence that one can integrate back into values, that this allows one to "bootstrap" oneself from very imature, concrete values ("Mommy, I want that teddy bear") to very mature, absract values ("architecture as an emotional expression of man's creative nature...").

So I think to ask why one values theater, per se, is misleading. You may simply value it, as opposed to photography, because at some point in your development some aspect related to theater became a value for you in an immature way and subsequent action refined that value into what it is today. The particular choice of a career is arbitrary, as long as it is productive.

[Tenure]

We're set up to acquire values, it's part of our overall mechanism. As Ayn Rand said (paraphrasing): You have no choice about whether you will feel that something is good or bad for you, your only choice lies in what you will feel is good or bad for you. Your emotions will latch onto something, so if you ask "why do I value?" in general, the answer is: you're alive.

I think this emotional part is what I'm looking to understand. Why do I value, rather than not value? And further - what is the nature of valuing? If I am reading this correct, you are saying that it is human nature to value, which I understand as meaning we are self-sustaining, goal-seeking creatures (and we create our own goals). And what is the nature of valuing? Again, if I'm reading this correctly, 'value' is when we feel that something is good - it is a feeling of pleasure, in juxtaposition to pain; that which is pleasureable is good (for me), that which is painful is bad (for me), within a given context.

Suppose we aren't looking at a reward system, like your parents rewarding you for reading and writing, but instead a completely self-discovered value, like playing with Lego bricks. Why is it that that is pleasureable? I believe it is because it is a sign of ones own efficacy, because it proves that one is capable of taking a bunch of discrete blocks and turning them into whatever one imagines.

So then, can we trace value-formation back to ones nature as human being, back to psychological neccesities, such as efficacy? Is efficacy itself - the visualisation of ones ability, whether it be in solving a maths problem in ones head, or building a kite - the thing which underlies our values? Afterall, one wouldn't want a process of action-failure, and that certainly wouldn't promote values.

And one last point - if we take a normal situation, where one is raised by parents, do those parents values, perhaps values for Classical Civilisations or for the Military, effect what a child will form his own values? I mean, I understand he chooses for himself, but does implicit training from a young age lead a child to almost inevitably absorb those values? I think that would only happen in a vacuum, and not in the normal world, where a child is often challenged with other world views and values.

[KendallJ]

So then, can we trace value-formation back to ones nature as human being, back to psychological neccesities, such as efficacy? Is efficacy itself - the visualisation of ones ability, whether it be in solving a maths problem in ones head, or building a kite - the thing which underlies our values? Afterall, one wouldn't want a process of action-failure, and that certainly wouldn't promote values.

Not efficacy. Survival. What underlies values is the fact that we survive and flourish when we pursue them. It is not tied to psychology as much as it is reality.

[JMeganSnow]

Not efficacy. Survival. What underlies values is the fact that we survive and flourish when we pursue them. It is not tied to psychology as much as it is reality.

In an adult philosophical context, yes. In a fundamental, emotional context what underlies values is our brain's hardwired pleasure/pain mechanism. On the most basic level I think it's likely that we all experience pleasure when we act. If you watch babies they are absolutely fascinated by anything they can fiddle with.

You can sort of extrapolate the developmental process of value-acquisition from there:

1. I can fiddle with it! (poke poke poke poke)

2. I can fiddle with it and achieve a result! (poke rabbit toy falls over)

3. Oo, this result is cool! (mom comes and picks up the rabbit toy)

4. Repeat ad nauseum

This is one area where evolutionary psychology might actually hold some water, namely in describing the method by which learned behavior is acquired. It doesn't make any sense to say that because one particular type of bird instinctively builds a particularly arcane type of nest that humans must have an attraction to triangular shapes for roofs or something, but it DOES make sense to observe rats learning how to get food by pushing a button or running a maze. That's because we don't share the particular environmental circumstances that led to that particular nest shape, but we do share a pleasure/pain mechanism that encourages us to fiddle with stuff.No matter how screwed up someone gets, I don't think it's possible to get rid of that drive to mess with things. All you can do is channel it into some really unhealthy pursuits.

And one last point - if we take a normal situation, where one is raised by parents, do those parents values, perhaps values for Classical Civilisations or for the Military, effect what a child will form his own values? I mean, I understand he chooses for himself, but does implicit training from a young age lead a child to almost inevitably absorb those values? I think that would only happen in a vacuum, and not in the normal world, where a child is often challenged with other world views and values.

Yes, your parents don't absolutely determine what you will and won't value. Their values certainly affect your value structure, but they don't effect it. Depending on the way your parents treat you, you may actually come to seriously dislike the things they value because you're sick to death of hearing about it.

Edited September 26, 2007 by JMeganSnow

[KendallJ]

In an adult philosophical context, yes. In a fundamental, emotional context what underlies values is our brain's hardwired pleasure/pain mechanism. On the most basic level I think it's likely that we all experience pleasure when we act. If you watch babies they are absolutely fascinated by anything they can fiddle with.

I would totally agree with this. I only meant that what shapes any sort of innate learning mechanisms that we have, is ultimately their function to aid us in surviving.

I also tend to think, back to T's point of "efficacy", that partially, it is the functioning of that mechanism that in and of itself provides some sort of pleasure.

But I also don't like to collapse the analysis like T does to come up with the idea that valuing sort of is the pleasure / pain mechanism. What we see today as abstract values are built upon multiple layers of mechanisms, including pleasure/pain, and conceptual integration which together result in values as Rand describes them. Otherwise you get into this sort of "we are the product of our emotions" sort of thinking which is NOT correct.

[softwareNerd]

Basically any time you hear a young person say "That's cool!" you are observing this process in action.

Very cool concrete, Jenni! With right context, one might then say: good parenting is the creation of "that's cool" moments.

[JMeganSnow]

I would totally agree with this. I only meant that what shapes any sort of innate learning mechanisms that we have, is ultimately their function to aid us in surviving.

Right, we wouldn't have the learning/valuing mechanism at all if it weren't pro-survival, I meant more that you can't identify that at the time when you are learning/acquiring values because you don't have the context of knowledge to say that. As you get older, you can identify it. The source *is*survival but you *experience* it as pleasure/pain.