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So Kant was right.

Values aren't possible without life. Therefore, life has intrinsic value.

Print my whole statement. No, nevermind. I'll not bother with you further.

Aristotle didn't believe that where there is life there are needs?

It's true that Objectivism "starts" with the primacy of existence, as contrasted with the primacy of consciousness. Your "conscious experience of determinate objects" presupposes the primacy of existence. If your "experience" is not experience of existence ("determinate objects"), then what is it experience of -- non-existence? If "experience" is not a consciousness, then is it a non-consciousness? Consciousness prior to existence is consciousness of non-existence. But prior to or without existence, there is no consciousness -- what is it conscious of, if not existence?. Consciousness conscious of nothing but itself, without prior consciousness of existence, is consciousness of nothing, is no consciousness.

Ratios are in the magnitude structure of the world, independently of discernment by intelligent consciousness (with its devised measurement scales, coordinate systems, and so forth). However, there is no such thing as the proportionate in a world not faced by the organizations that are living beings.* Where there are no needs, nothing is proportionate or disproportionate. Where there is no life, there are no needs. Additionally, where there is life, there are needs. Aristotle did not understand this, it seems, given the way he went around projecting teleological causation beyond its proper bounds, which is life (including vegetative life) we know on earth. He projected teleological causes even onto the celestial sphere he and his predecessors thought carried the fixed stars over the night sky, and he projected life and intelligence onto the Primary Mover even while thinking the fixed stars and Prime Mover eternal and not susceptible to corruption or decline, hence without needs.

My personal answer is, of a certainty my life has infinite value to me, and I suspect the universe values nothing, but that is of no consequence.

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. Our first notebook comes from Nat Bennett, from whom I got the following quote, which is today's Quote of the Day in my planner:There's a very specific reputation I want to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat get things I care about done."At the link above, he describes how he goes about acquiring such a desirable reputation in a post called, "Why You Need a WTF Notebook." The notebook of which he speaks helps him keep track of problems he notices upon joining a team, which he simply collects as he becomes acclimated and better able to figure out which ones are addressable and worth trying to solve. Whether you have ever been overwhelmed by such things as a new team member, or observed someone tripping over themselves trying to Change the World on Day 1, you will likely appreciate this patient and deliberative approach. Image by Tim Collins, via Unsplash, license.2. Bennett's post naturally jogged my memory about other notebooks I've learned about in the past. One of these, the Spark File, is something I still use to track writing ideas. I say I use it, but am considering burning it down and starting over, to exaggerate a little bit. For example, I long ago fell out of the habit of consulting the whole thing monthly, and frankly don't see how that's practical, at least in its current incarnation. It's just a text file, so it isn't eating my hard drive or anything like that. My current thinking has been to keep the whole thing, but review how I'm using it and start over by taking the time to review it in toto and trim it down to what is actually viable, and link from it to the unedited original. I'll kick this off with a quick re-reading of the above post. 3. Another notebook Bennett caused me to remember was Barbara Sher's Autonomy Notebook, which she describes in part within I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was, specifically in her section on getting the wrong job:Autonomy means you're in business for yourself, no matter who you're working for. Always remember, if you have a slave mentality you'll be defeated every time -- even if you're the favorite slave. You always have to be your own boss, no matter who you're working for, no matter how happy they are with your work. That doesn't mean you don't do what the boss wants. It means you do what they want for yourself because you want to learn it well. And you do more. More? Yes, I mean that absolutely. If you're a gifted runner and you have a good coach, you listen to that coach with respect. Not because he's the boss, but because you are. Think about it. If you're a gifted runner you aren't trying to get an A in gym. You want to be really good. After all, the coach won't win any medals. You will.I tried this once and may try it again. In any event, I'm glad I looked this up again, because the above quote about the slave mentality -- which our culture encourages in many ways -- is gold. 4. In the process of composing this post, I was saddened to learn that Barbara Sher died at the age of 84 in mid 2020. I think the following, from a tribute written by one of her sons, does her much more justice than does the obituary in that open-air sewer of conventional "wisdom," the New York Times:She decided to stop allowing the people who came to see her for counseling to dwell in the rooms of their past -- the going trend -- and instead to focus on realizing their wishes. (She used our last money to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times in the late 1970s that read, "Realizing your dreams can be more therapeutic than analyzing them." The giant photo of herself in the ad was beautiful and powerful. Mom was neither self-absorbed nor vain, rather fully engaged in every moment, especially when it came to Danny and me.I especially love that quote, which her death has made into a memento mori for this person, who has to guard against such a tendency. -- CAV Link to Original

Pretty much. What's yours? I assume you're an atheist but I don't know.

Aristotle believed that God (the Prime Mover or Unmoved Mover) was the sum-total of all actualization, perfect actualization. For Aristotle, life is a potential for actualization, with the Prime Mover equated, as it were, with life's ultimate actualized being, although it transcends all mortal life. The Prime Mover is immortal. That's a philosophical determination, not a biological one. Much of philosophy consists of positing such ideas. His statement “And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality” seems circular. While it's a truism that the question of value depends on living things to do the valuing, it doesn't follow that life is the source of value. Things can be beautiful without requiring a human to judge their beauty. That's why beauty could be a universal form or concept existing independently of human perception and cognition; it is not necessary, however, for it to be a Platonic Form. The Golden Ratio is a natural mathematical pattern that, while linked to our perception of beauty, is not dependent upon human consciousness for its existence.

How does Aristotle use ‘life’ ? As being , as the recognizable actions of being or the less sinew-y and more fundamental ground of experience of being? It seems the the actuality of thought being life, would place life in awareness as such.

Life is the residence of all value. And the value of all value. Notice the analogical projection of life into nature of an immaterial god-mind by Plato, Philo, Pseudo-Dionysus, Boethius, Anselm, Avicenna, Albert, Aquinas, and Luther. The apostle Paul writes of “the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein” (Acts 14:15; also Deut. 32:40 and Psalm 18:46). Consider too the breaths of life from God to men (Genesis 2:7 and Psalm 104:30). Aristotle on God’s mind and ours: “And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality” (Metaph. 1072b26–27; also 1022a32 and Top. 136b3–7). Why do all these impute life to God? Because of a suspicion that life is the source of all value, and God has no value without life. (Full disclosure: if something is alive, it is mortal. So, if God is immortal, It is not living.) Until life enters the universe, there is no such thing as value (or questions or solutions).

He speaks to the separate aspects of the intellect from a much less than a hard materialist frame. I’ve haven’t read any of his books , but I’ve seen him speak about his ideas around the division and interactions between the hemispheres of the brain and the interplay between the characteristics of each. I believe his first most talked about book was “The Master and His Emissary “

Are you familiar with Rand's answer to such a question?

Never heard of him, actually.

I ran across the following question in a discussion I was having somewhere else: Why is life a value in an atheist universe? I don't have an answer. Do any of you?

Not really. One thing to note is that free will could be attributed to a whole mind, even if various parts of a mind participate in that free will by setting in motion a choice prior to other parts experiencing that choice has been made. The intention to make a choice precedes both the perceived initiation of the exercise of choosing and the introspection of the time of having made it.. plus the exercise of choice although overseen by consciousness is often self experienced as spontaneously arising. This is consistent with an initiation of choosing, followed by actual choice somehow... some gestalt of factors... followed by a slightly delayed experience of having decided. It's fun to think about.

Do you follow Iain Mcgilchrist at all ?

Do Libet's experiments undermine your confidence in the concept of free-will?

I think neurology has the answer, but I don't like to depend on scientific materialism to explain these mysteries.

I'm not quite done with my own questions. What does reflective introspection reveal exactly? That question is for anybody. Your rational actions do not require your conscious attention or ego. This split-brain experiment shows rational action without conscious intent. Or perhaps there is a consciousness and a will that you can't reflect on through introspection because you're not aware of it at any time.

Question: Is your question answerable (provable?) within the realm of the application of sound (proven?) philosophical principles alone (not mere speculation), or does an answer to the particular problem of free will require evidence, observation, empirical experiment, etc.... i.e. does it fall within the realm of philosophy or the special sciences?

This idea isn't limited to Objectivism. I asked a Mormon guy if free-will exists, and he raised an arm to prove it ("a sort of action"). He could've chosen not to raise an arm as proof. That is one of the most common "proofs" of free-will. Ayn Rand isn't different from the run-of-the-mill. The "I could have chosen otherwise" proof isn't as common. But it's still a version of the subjective/intuitive/introspective/reflective first-person perspective proof. Let's not call it a feeling, but an intuition: direct evidence of free-will although it is not an entity that we can perceive directly, but only indirectly through reflecting back on an action. Schopenhauer claimed our sense of free choice comes (or may come) from only being conscious of the final motives behind our actions, not the prior chain of unconscious drivers leading to those motives (which was my first counter-argument).

Right, but they are asking you to deny the certainty and primacy of existence "out there", i.e. independent reality, as opposed to some kind of consciousness thing whether an individual, collective, or spiritual/godlike consciousness being primary or the only type or existence. My point only was that the conclusions we reach from a mountain of evidence is not to be thrown aside in face of a claim which amounts to little more than a groundless maybe.