Boydstun

David, in some usages of "implicit knowledge", there is nothing mystical or magical. There is a sense of implicit useful in cognitive-development research literature (viz., Gelman and Meck 1983, 344). The child is said to have implicit knowledge of the counting principles if she engages in behavior that is systematically governed by those principles, even though she cannot state them. The child has gone far beyond learning first words (roughly months 12 to 18) by the time she is learning to count. By 30 months, the basic linguistic system has become established and is fairly stable (Nelson 1996, 106). Not until around 36 months or beyond does the child have an implicit grasp of the elementary principles of counting: assign one-label-for-one-item, keep stable the order of number labels recited, assign final recited number as the number of items in the counted collection, realize that any sort of items can be counted, and realize that the order in which the items are counted is irrelevant (Gelman and Meck 1983; Butterworth 1999, 109–16). Gelman and Meck liken this implicitness of the counting principles at this stage of cognitive development to the way in which we are able to conform to certain rules of syntax when speaking correctly without being able to state those rules. That much seems right, but there is a further distinction I should make. The child’s implicit counting principles are being learned (and taught) as an integral part of learning to properly count aggregations explicitly, expressly. In contrast, we can (or anyway, my preliterate Choctaw ancestors centuries past could) live out our lives, speaking fine in our mother tongue, following right rules of syntax, yet without being able to state those rules; indeed, without even knowing any of the terminology of syntax. Our learning of tacit rules of syntax is not for the sake of becoming able to follow them explicitly, only tacitly. Another sense of implicit is in more common use. That is the logicomathematical sense. It is in that sense that we say a certain theorem is implicit in a set of axioms; Hertz’ wave equation for propagation of electromagnetic radiation is implicit in Maxwell’s field equations; an inverse-cube central force law is implicit in a spiral orbit; dimension reductions are implicit in Kolmogorov superposition-based neural networks; certain measure relations are implicit in any similarity discerned in perception; or certain measure relations are implicit in a concept class. Cf. Rand (1969, 159–62); Campbell (2002, 294–96, 300–10); Boydstun (1996, 201–2). In addition to using "implicit" in her theory of the genesis of measurements-omitted concepts (which I suppose for the concept existence requires suspension of particular measure-values along all the measure-dimensions possessed by all the kinds of existents there are), Rand used "implicit" in describing a cognitive growth in our infant comprehension from existence to identity to unit.* References Boydstun, Stephen. 1996. Volitional synapses (Part 3). Objectivity 2(4):183–204. Butterworth, Brian. 1999. What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math. New York: Free Press. Campbell, Robert L. 2002. Goals, values, and the implicit: Explorations in psychological ontology. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 3(2):289–327. Gelman, Rochel, and Elizabeth Meck. 1983. Preschoolers’ counting: Principles before skill. Cognition 13:343–59. Nelson, Katherine. 1996. Language in Cognitive Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rand, Ayn. [1969] 1990. Transcripts from Ayn Rand’s epistemology seminar. Edited by L. Peikoff and H. Binswanger. Appendix to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian.

@8g9 – That name is not a mystery, what with google and all. Do you have use for saying that a batch of brownies you just took out of the oven exist? Don't they have to exist for you and your guests to eat them? Isn't it plain to you that both the oven and the pan of brownies exist. The bare conjunction between existents, oven and pan, is not originated by us. Our acknowledgement of the conjunction that is there in the kitchen is from us. Likewise for the bare conjunction of the existents kitchen and sun. Is the idea that this exists and that exists and so forth meaningful to you? Then the existence of any and all existents is meaningful to you. What is the stretch of Hume you have in mind in saying he says we do not perceive existence. Are you getting crossed his (and Nicholas of Autrecourt's) ideas about perception of substance, or perhaps perception of necessary connections between distinct events, rather than existence? He was arguing against concepts in scholasticism in his predecessors and contemporaries. Moderns such as Rand have simply the substances such as oatmeal or entities as disclosed by chemistry, physics, geology, and so forth. And here "existents" does't refer to anything but those things, their interactions, and traits. And as opposed to the old Schoolmen, the basic necessary connection between distinct events we think today worth having is physical connection. And that necessary connection between distinct events sometimes can be manifest in direct sensory perception. (If you are trying to pull out a certain kind of vine growing among a mesh of vines that you want to keep, you can take off your gloves, pull taut the bad vine on its free end, see where the mesh is moving, with your other hand find the taut vine among the mesh (not mainly by vision, but by its tautness), getting hold of it between thumb and a finger in the mesh, hold it taut on into the mesh, and so forth hand over hand, until you arrive at the root of the bad vine and pull it out. All along the way one was feeling the physically necessary connection of vine tautness between distinct grasps of it with one's fingers. Perhaps Hume's concerns simply are not applicable to how we tackle the world today in realist philosophy. Physical, physical, physical, . . . .) In sensory perception of my fingers on the keyboard, I am perceiving those objects and motions as existing. The same can happen in hallucinations. Existence is part of the content of and character of one's sensory perception. That is the primary form of consciousness: an act of perceiving existing things as existing. Other sorts of consciousness, such as hallucinations or dreams, are derivative of that primary sort of consciousness, according to Rand. I agree. Existence is not inherently tied to perception. There is much existence in the history of the universe before the appearance of any life, let alone any sensory perception.

Hear, hear! Beyond what Rand wrote about philosophic axioms in her 1957 is Chapter 6 "Axiomatic Concepts" of her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Additional defenses of the Objectivist philosophical axioms are these: Machan 1992 Chapter 4 of H. Binswanger's How We Know (2014) Chapter 11 of Blackwell's Companion to Ayn Rand (2016) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ References I cited but failed to show in my earlier post: Braver, Lee. 2012. Groundless Grounds – A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Jary, Mark. 2010. Assertion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Additionally relevant, from an earlier scholarly paper* of mine: PHILOSOPHY FRAMES The foundation of a house is one thing, its framework another. That is not so for a submarine. Its inner, pressure hull is the craft’s passive support against collapse under external hydrostatic pressure. The pressure hull is the foundation, but it is also an integral part of the frame of the structure. When speaking of epistemological foundations, we tend to slip into analogy with foundations of a building. I’ll use foundation and framework interchangeably in connection with epistemology, rather like their fusion in the structural organization of a submarine, though with a further character. When thinking of bases of knowledge, analogies from statics are natural. (See another statics analogy in Binswanger 2014, 151.) But knowledge entails processes of knowing, and it entails growth of knowledge. The continuing organization that is knowledge is more like a dynamically maintained structure, such as an animal cell wall. All cell walls must withstand internal hydrostatic pressure that arises ultimately from net negative electrical charge of their internal molecules of life. Analogy of my philosophic foundationalism with the cell wall of a plant would go no further than analogy with the hull of a submarine. Structural integrity of the plant cell wall against hydrostatic pressure is by strength of materials, and its account is by statics. Analogy with the delicate cell wall of an animal is fuller by its requirement of continuous dynamic maintenance of the wall, which is by ion pumps across it, preventing the buildup of internal pressure. The structural integrity of the animal cell wall is by dynamical process featuring continual commerce with its surround (Boydstun 1994, 121–23). Similarly, the structure that is knowledge has core principles by which it is dynamically maintained, and these principles include patterns of success in external commerce. Core principles of the maintenance of the animal cell wall are a finer analogy to what I’ll mean in speaking of foundations or frameworks in epistemology. Nicholas Wolterstorff (2001, 187–91) demarcates foundationalism as invoking mediate and immediate justified (or warranted) judgments in which there are justification conditions of the immediate judgments and methods by which such merit of justification can be conveyed to mediate judgments. The foundationalism of Rand, and mine too, can be brought under Wolterstorff’s broad formula if the immediate judgments (or action-schemata prior to language acquisition) are ordinary judgments expressing facts disclosed in perceptual acquaintance, such as “this pen still writes” or “the oven is on” or “this board is less bowed than that one.”1 Metaphysical axioms and their core elucidations, Rand’s or mine, are widest scene-setters and are quality controls for conveyance of justification to mediate judgments. Among the quality controls for conveyance of justification would be logic, deductive and inductive, whose foundations lie with metaphysical axioms and their elucidations. By taking First Philosophy as widest frame, I mean only frame encompassing and situating all other wide frames of human life and knowledge. Quest for widest frame entails foundationalism, descriptive, explicative, and regulative. Philosophers not skeptical and not foundationalist are in pursuit of wide frames subsidiary to widest. (Notably not foundationalists would be logical positivists; see Friedman 1999, 2–5, 10–11, 119–20, 124, 144–52). In her foundationalism, Rand evidently took the special sciences, including the modern hard sciences, to be in a one-way need of philosophy.2 I do not. First Philosophy discerning grounds and widest frames of the sciences, mathematics, and ethics stands in organic, indeed symbiotic, relationships with those arenas in their greater specificity. We know what truth is by having some truth.3 Occasions of finest truth require our grasp of the world, together with critical, integrative reflection on that grasp. We had some truth in image- and action-schemata prior to having language, and our prelinguistic truths are stems from which linguistic form of truth, with its higher level of reflectivity, develops and receives continual support.4 There are no conceptual cognitions, no logical connections of anything, without guidance by existence, utilizing our prelinguistic image- and action-schemata (Prinz 2002, chap. 6; Barsalou 2008; Noë 2006; Churchland 2012). The normativity of logic is ultimately from normativity of life, thence life of mind and its conceptual capture of the world. By fact I mean that which is, that which is the case in Existence. (I’ll capitalize existence when meaning not only existence per se, but existence as a whole.) Truth is grasp of fact.5 Fact precedes truth, necessity precedes certainty. That is so genetically and logically (cf. Rand 1973, 27; Peikoff 1967, 108–9). Mature and healthy certainty critically gauges exactitude of candidate truth and contingencies of its alleged fact, setting them within one’s abiding truths and their facts, concrete and formal. Subjective probabilities are to be continually recalibrated by objective frequencies and by advancing understanding of natures. Faintness or ambiguity of truths, I should add, does not disqualify them out the gate as candidates for framing core. Deeper and deeper mathematics is faintly born, then grown articulate, setting in new light earlier mathematical treasures. It is like that in lesser degree with right First Philosophy, enveloping all existence and knowing, empirical or formal (cf. Physics 184a22–25, in Aristotle [ca. 348–322 B.C.E.] 1984, 315). Outside we living seekers of fact, there is nothing bearing meaning or truth. Before truth and with truth are not only fact, but life and value. Without conscious life and value, there are no challenges or problems, no curiosity, no accuracy or correctness, no meaning or truth. Truths of logic and their necessity have ground in formal features of existence and in the facts and necessities-for-ends of living mind. The zone of philosophic reflection reached by Descartes in Meditations by doubting is a famous, if misshapen, sample of what is distinctively philosophical reflection (cf. Gilson [1939] 1986, 97). Phenomenological reduction of Husserl is a portion of what is distinctively philosophical reflection (cf. Drummond 1991, 45–48, 64–67). Philosophical reflection on the world and on us in it includes discerning what conditions what, in broadest perspective, and with what varieties of necessitation (Stoljar 2017, 25–34, 40–53). It discerns, in widest perspective, what depends necessarily on what.6 Independence of the existence of thinking subject, as in Meditations, from correctness of particular thoughts is one such dependency structure. Dependencies of self-reflecting acts on memory and on object-grasping acts are such structures. Dependence of justifications or refutations of knowledge on knowledge are two more such structures. The philosophic quest for most general categories is a quest for best hierarchical conceptual dependencies. Ethics concerns dependencies of the good. Dependencies between enquiry and value are among the structures to be discerned in philosophy. Philosophical reflection also includes making general identifications such as the definition of man as an animal capable of and requiring rationality, and this work is informed by what depends necessarily on what. Definition of man as an animal capable of and requiring rationality contributes to philosophical foundational framing furthermore through its explication, its clarification, of a prevalent workaday concept. Such too would be Plato’s craft of justice, Tarski’s craft of truth, or Rand’s craft of reason.7 Philosophy is discernment of essentials and their situations in wider to widest existence. Such activity grows one’s picture of what is human being and one’s self. All of the truths of logic and pure mathematics are also discerned in divisions of what I am calling the zone of philosophical reflection (cf. Philebus 56d–58d, in Plato [ca. 428–348 B.C.E.] 1997, 446–48; and Metaphysics 1061b18–27, in Aristotle [ca. 349–322 B.C.E.] 1984, 1677).8 Discernment of the dependencies of formalities on each other and on their occasions in concretes is part of philosophical reflection (cf. Grosholz 2007, chap. 2; Sher 2011). The necessity in truth of conclusions deduced from true premises is one type of necessary dependence discerned in the zone of philosophical reflection, though not the only type and not independently of other types peculiar to the zone. In this zone, we grasp that nothing comes from nothing, that any matter is spatial and susceptible to stress, and that the simplest straight-edged closed figure in the Euclidean plane is a triangle.9 It is in this zone Aristotle discerned the principle of noncontradiction. Here, discerned that “the activity of mind is life” (Metaphysics 1072b27, translated by Lear 1988, 296).10 Rand would discern in this zone that life is an end in itself (1936, 42; 1957, 121; 1964, 17, 27, 29).11 Insights in the philosophic zone are generally not immune to error, particularly by way of supposed completeness and supposed complete independence from empirical knowledge attained in prelinguistic development, in mature common experience, and in science (cf. Armstrong 2004, 26–29; Stoljar 2017, 31–32).12 My pursuit of foundations—specifically a set of axioms, corollaries, postulates, and definitions—is because it looks to be feasible, indeed at work, and because it is desirable by the economy, unity, and comprehension it provides (cf. Posterior Analytics 72a15–18, Metaphysics 996b26–997a25, 1005a19–29, in Aristotle [ca. 349–322 B.C.E.] 1984, 116, 1575, 1587). Successful epistemological foundationalism is furthermore, secondarily, a barricade and corrective to the pitfalls of epistemic skepticism.13 In no wise are philosophic foundations, mine or Rand’s, “responsible for everything” (Sider 2011, 105; further, 112–16, 137–41). Neither existence per se nor existence as a whole is “responsible” for themselves or any particular existents they encompass. In no wise are these foundations something “in virtue of which” less fundamental facts or truths hold. Fundamental facts do not “give rise to” less fundamental facts. A valid syllogistic form does not “give rise to” the validity of its instances. Mathematical category does not “give rise to” its instances, such as the category of groups or the category of vector spaces. Differential equations do not “give rise to” the equations that are the solutions to those differential equations; the solutions merely satisfy the differential equations. Conservation of angular momentum does not “give rise to” the increasing angular velocity of a particular spinning skater who pulls in her arms. Two intersecting lines, whether in carpentry or Euclid, do not “give rise to” the plane they determine. Physical spacetime structure does not “give rise to” the conservation laws it determines. This is not a terminological quibble. Metaphysical axioms and their core elucidations can be more fundamental—and are more fundamental in my sense and Rand’s—just by being wider form bound to narrower form or wider species subsuming narrower species or individuals. Metaphysical fundamentals need not give rise to or bring forth more particular bits of the world in order to bring light on the bits, including on us, in the world. Some of the References Friedman, Michael. 1999. Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilson, Étienne. [1939] 1986. Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge. Translated by Mark A. Wauck. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Grosholz, Emily R. 2007. Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and Science. New York: Oxford University Press. Lear, Jonathan. 1988. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sher, Gila. 2011. Truth and knowledge in logic and mathematics. In The Logica Yearbook 2011. Edited by Michal Pelis and Vít Punčochář. London: College Publications, King’s College. Sider, Ted. 2011. Writing the Book of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Stoljar, David. 2017. Philosophical Progress – In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 2001. Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

@8g9 The assertion that something exists does not have to serve as any sort of axiom to be meaningful and true. Russell was not taking that assertion as some sort of axiom when he disputed Bradley's claim that it was meaningless. Why, by the way, would Bradley be wanting to say that "something exists" is meaningless? If he permitted himself to comprehend Russell's assertion, he would be allowing himself to authentically question the truth of metaphysical idealism. It is a curiosity for thinkers to try to find what are the widest, most comprehensive things. That is enough for pursuing that quest. As it happens, much can be said for taking the fact of existence to be the widest, most pervasive, indeed only thing. That there are diverse words in this text is evident, that this screen is not my keyboard is evident, that they both exist is evident. Perfectly sufficiently, however meager or erudite is my understanding of their operations, the operations of my fingers, or operations of my eyes. Also manifestly distinct from any of those would be the pain in my back and the perspiration under my arms. One thing all those things have in common is that they are in the same spatial neighborhood. Another is that they all remain constant or change during the interval of me making this post. Existence is a commonality of all those diverse particulars as well as of all occasions of such things, all loci in space, all intervals of time. Existence is a contraction, a reigning in, of the old widest-thing candidate thing: being. Existence is what had been known as qualified being. Assertions like "Existence exists" or "Existence is Identity" have some traits of axioms we are familiar with in philosophy, mathematics, or axiomatized sciences such as mechanics or SR. But they do not have the fertility or productivity trait of axioms + posutlates + definitions in geometry. And other philosophers besides Rand, such as Spinoza or Wolff, have had distinctively philosophical (metaphysical) axioms, yet not given them the same mild function given them by Rand. I notice that axioms are selected in all these intellectual areas with conceptual dependency relations in mind, whatever the variety of uses one might try to make of such asymmetric relations. In her 1957, Rand set out her fundamental wide categories of existents in the course of articulating her axiom "Existence is Identity." Showing that any proposed existent not falling under one or more of those categories leads one to self-contradiction is a way of showing that Identity, and in just those sub-divisions, necessarily attaches to anything that exists. Of course most of us go along fine thinking productively and making a garden or a living presuming that any existents are of diverse natures and have distinctive identities, and leave it to folks with the philosophical-curiosity bent to ponder further "Existence is Identity." One use of that axiom was to expose as empty the traditional via negativa approaches to characterization of God, should one dally in such stuff, which Rand did in her 1957. There is nothing common between existence and nonexistence, as you know. The latter is only a lack of standing in the former, a mere lack noted by us, by us in and of existence (cf. Rand 1966–67, 58, 60–61; Branden [ca. 1968] 2009, 28). The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) in the form “For every existent, there is a reason why it exists, rather than not” can apply at most to constituents or proper parts of Existence, not to that comprehensive standing Existence, the all, the whole comprising all actuals and their potentials, all those concretes and all their formalities. PSR in the form “Nothing happens without a reason” applies only within Existence, not to that all of alls Existence. PSR in the form “There must be a sufficient reason for every truth of fact” applies to the bare truth Existence exists only in the sense that there must be a sufficient reason for our knowledge of the fact, not for the reality of the fact (cf. Schopenhauer [1813, 1847] 1971, 13). Talk of reason for the fact that Existence exists is foolishness (cf. Heidegger in Braver 2012, 151–52; see also Nozick 1981, 141–42). None of these bounds on the various versions of PSR diminish by one iota the complete intelligibility of Existence. To assert Existence exists is to remind oneself or another of that ultimate framing already known or to bring into full light what one or the other had known without previous articulation. Rand rightly held that it is incorrect to try to prove the existence of the external, perceived world (1961b, 28). The world’s existence is self-evident in perception. The existence of distinctive character and spatiality and action is self-evident in perception. To deny the existence of the world or to assert the possibility that it does not exist or that we have no way of knowing it exists is talking on empty (see too Heidegger in Braver 2012, 150–52; Jary 2010, 45–46, 86–88). Question or denial of the world’s existence or the existence of other persons attempts to reverse the embedment of meaningful assertions in world and living body. Denial or doubt of the world’s existence or of each other’s existence voids our common ground for all communicative utterance. Then too, “The world may not exist” includes the possibility that that text does not exist, that its originator does not exist (in the viewpoint of a reader, including the originator reading it). That notion of possibility is empty. It is not merely a zero probability of a specified possibility, such as the possibility that a random number from the real line will be a rational number. To hold forth existence of the world or of other minds as things not presupposed in rational, discursive proof would be vacuous. The question “What is Existence?” is sensible if we are asking for the most fundamental character and compass of Existence in itself or in its relations to us, a part of it. The question is not sensible, however, if by it we are seeking: to cleave an existent in two by whether it is sensed or thought; or to disqualify some existents as truly existent or as fully existent (such as attributes, alterations, situations, potentials, or formal relations vis-à-vis concrete Randian entity or Aristotelian substance); or to penetrate deeper than existence, go behind or beyond existence (so portraying Being, the mind, the Good, the One, or God). Answers to the sensible versions of the question would be broad characterizations of Existence: the patent everything-everywhen around us and in us as we sense it or think it ordinarily and in science; or the most basic thing constituting and provisioning cognition; or the most basic thing whose most basic categories are those discerned by Aristotle, Whitehead, Rand, Lowe, or oneself; or the universe, spacetime and mass-energy. The questions “Why do existents have definite character, or definite nature, or why are there concrete existents having potentials and formalities?” are not sensible. That these broad propositions are true of and most fundamental to existence is, upon reflection, self-evident. Their denial, as in denial of the principle of noncontradiction, stands one in performative self-contradictions (see also Braver 2012, 130). My meaning of the self-evident is the usual one: the manifestly true requiring no proof. Truths accepted as self-evident are sometimes defeasible as to truth, such as occurred with the old view that heavier bodies fall faster. (See also Summa Contra Gentiles 1.10–11, in Aquinas [ca. 1259–68] 2014, 13–15.) An axiomatic self-evident truth in metaphysics should be fundamental and necessarily true. Its denial leads to bumping into the widest frame. I notice that susceptibility to performative self-contradiction upon denial is not the source of a proposition’s truth (the source is fact). Leonard Peikoff characterized Rand's axioms as perpetually evident. Fair enough.

My Ethical Theory and Rand’s Perception of mind-independent existence is fundamental to human consciousness, though not the whole of what is fundamental in human consciousness. “Existence exists, we live.” The act of grasping that statement implies that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. No one understanding the statement “Existence exists,” whether uttered, signed, or written, has such an occasion of consciousness without co-referential history and ongoing context of his or her language and intellectual community. The reader is not without the writer, and the thinker addresses a standing audience of others, however unspecified, as well as self. Co-reference precedes the one-word stage of language acquisition, and ever after the acquisition of language, the standing suitability for co-reference attends every thought that something is the case. Co-referential potential of thought, and the mutual recognition of intentional being that requires, is a condition of one’s existence as a thinker in language. Indeed, pronominal other person is in and with oneself as existence is in and with oneself. In one’s conscious and subconscious existence is resonance with existence in general, resonance with living existence, and special of the latter, resonance with other person. “Existence exists” is registration of existing among other existents. Further, the act of grasping the statement “Existence exists,” I observe, implies performance of and grasp of acts, not only acts of consciousness, but acts of living body. There are no acts of and grasps of consciousness without acts of and intentional grasps with one’s living body. There is no grasp of the externality of existence to subject without grasps of externality to one’s body. If one observes one’s consciousness, one is acquainted with one’s living body and one’s actions with it. Moreover, one knows in any episodes of post-linguistic observational consciousness others of one’s acting and conscious kind. Then too, one had always (in a practical sense of always) known Mother or other caregiver. “Existence exists, we live.” The act of grasping that statement implies that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. There is normativity in that most basic metaphysical frame (mine, not Rand’s). We are given, dedicated to grasping reality in awareness concerted with other and in coordinated acts with other. This is automatic animal engineering-performance-norm of operation. We are given, already loving truth, truth-getting, act, self, and other. With later education, we learn that life ends, that it requires maintenance, and in our human case, that it requires production and education and social cooperative conventions. We learn that those means to life require a waking state and adequate sleep. Going beyond the original grasp of life in breath and cry and suckle, learning more of life and its requirements requires some focused effort. The plenty and exuberance of human life of today required individual creativity, initiative, and freedom coordinated at the large social scale by moral- and rights-constraints on treatments of others. Human moral life arises in the milieu of learned character of life, all within and ever with the basic frame “Existence exists, we live.” In learning life beyond the basic knowing, we can grasp the concept of “alternative” mined by Ayn Rand: Only with advent of the ends-getting organized matter that is life do alternatives enter nature. I observe, in addition: We say that when we've got the accelerator on, a given electron is either going to encounter a positron or not. That saying is true to nature, but it, unlike identity, is not something in nature independently of a striving mind. Either-Or, I wrote in "Existence, We", is based in identities in nature, but is only in nature where living systems are in nature facing nature. That is, the Law of Excluded Middle for thought rises as high-animal mind rises by organic evolutionary layers on vegetative neuronal control systems of animals. The electron will either encounter a positron or it will not, but the electron does not face an alternative of continued existence or not. We see the possibilities, but the electron, unlike a living cell, does not face them. We and all living things face the alternative of continued existence or not, and from that fundamental alternative, all alternative is born. In moral life, we elect to keep life going, including to keep going life known in the basic frame. Once we have the developed powers, we elect to keep thinking, coordinating, creating, and producing. The moral virtue of truth-telling is rooted in the basic frame, constantly at hand. Life known in the basic frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specs. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves. Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves. The preceding is my proposal for a biological basis of distinctly moral proprieties. As with Rand’s, in my proposal, biological operations as they resulted in the course of nature on earth resulted in such things as needs and functions coming into the world. It is upon the organization that is life and its character we have the fact upon which oughts can have objective ground. Functions had come into the world before humans emerged. We and our ancestors were each of us functioning, more and less well, at any stage of our existence. Famously, for part of Rand’s ethical base, she characterized life in complete generality as self-generating and self-maintaining. This she took from standard biology along with the findings that all organismic life is cellular the findings of ontogeny and of evolution from Darwin to the present. It is quite true that self-generation and self-maintenance are features of any life. Even if we humans become creators of life from inanimate matter, our success will mean that we created means for the appearance of matter organized such that it is self-generating and self-maintaining. We are relying on that character when we plant, water, and fertilize crops, even if we only dimly notice that the crops do the growing themselves and possess various ranges of adaptability themselves under changes in surrounding conditions. That living things have functions in their subsystems to the preservation and replication of the whole organism and that living things have powers of self-generation and self-maintenance might better have some elements such as growth drawn out more, but I’ll stay with Rand’s broad meanings of self-generation and self-maintenance. Notice that these steps are not necessarily only suited for a ladder to ethical egoism. To be a fair characterization of life in general, we must understand “self” in self-generating and self-maintaining in a broad and indeed rather shifty way. Overwhelmingly, life gets started from life. Other life. Self as individual organism and self as its species work back and forth for continuation of those two selves. An individual life can be just a quickly disposable trial tool in the function of preserving the species, although overall, the species requires individual organisms. Of course. I stress that functions are operating in each one of us in all one's ontogeny. Rand noted that the pleasure-pain mechanism of the body is the progenitor of what is joy and suffering in organic elaboration and that all of those are indicators for good or evil for life of and proper functioning in the individual animal, including humans. I stress that it is not only other animals in which all of that is part of its overall individual control system. Our high-level, socially instructed conscious control system in maturity remains tied to the automatic one still running. Rand centered on a choice to live in the case of human life. I think that element is better characterized as a choice to continue living. And that means continuing to pursue the facts and the coordination with others in that pursuit. Rand has it that rationality is our overarching method for getting the facts and making good uses of them. That is fine, but I contest the picture in which one was just going along alone rationally pursuing the facts and how to use them and then as it were noticed, secondarily, that the existence of other people is enjoyable, knowledge-boosting, and economically advantageous. The higher intelligence of humans does indeed have launchings spontaneously in individuals. Young children will spontaneously seriate a group of rods according to their lengths; none of our closest primate pals do that. But we have been in intelligent human company all along our individual active existence, from precautions and playing to learning common nouns, proper names, verbs, classification, and predication. Rationality is profoundly social in one from the get-go, even as its acquisition by each person consists in individual facility in its operation independently of direction from others and self-direction in seeking information or in seeking specialized skills from others. Rationality is seen by Rand as the basic moral virtue because it is the necessary general operation needed for the human form of life. She takes the other virtues in her ethical system to be salient strands of rationality aimed at individual survival. I say, rather, that rationality is the given proper being of a human and the proper responsiveness to persons, other and self. Rationality is the grand means of human survival, as Rand held, but that is not the whole of its story. Rand had proposed that the virtue of rationality is not only virtue in a social setting, but virtue—main moral virtue—for a castaway on a deserted island. This is because in the isolated setting rationality is necessary to the individual’s survival. That is so, however, I say that enabling survival is not the only source of the goodness of rationality. There is a person on that island: the castaway. Rationality is proper responsiveness to and continuation of his self. It is call of life in that life form that is his personal self that is the distinctively moral in the virtue of rationality for a castaway. Though the castaway carries along other in foundational frame, he is now the only human present. He is an end-in-himself with much rightness to continue himself. (A pet might go a ways for fulfilling the need to love and interact with another human self.) Returned to society, an individual remains an end-in-himself rightly making his life, a fully human life with interactions and mutual values and interactions with the other ends-in-themselves that are human selves at centers of making lives. Ayn Rand offered an ethical egoism in which rationality took its place as central overall virtue for a person due to the need for rationality in making one’s reality-according individual human life. She tried to weave the prima facie virtue of truth-telling to others as a derivative of the need to be honest with oneself about the facts. That is not plausibly the basic reason one wants to and should want to be honest with others. Rand’s account of honesty is inadequate by reliance on a purely egoistic basis. Ethical egoism, a genuine one such as hers, one attempting to derive all its moral virtues purely from self-interest, is false. It rests on an inadequate view of what is the constitution of the human self. Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending. The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue. One failing to have it is in human failure, including moral failure. Although my account builds on a social nature of human individuals running deeper than social nature as characterized by Rand, I land in much agreement with Rand on general characterization of life as self-generated and self-maintaining action and as teleological action (even for vegetative actions such as gravitropic plant roots) and with life as the phenomenon among existents with which such things as function, needs, alternatives, problems, and solutions enter the world at all. All of those features are in stark contrast to inanimate matter in our ordinary experience and as in our modern science. In the case of human selves and lives, all of those glories are reached in coordination with others, living or long deceased, and humans have greater choice than other animals in shaping longer arcs in their lives. As with Rand's ethics, Rationality remains the overarching human virtue, although, into my reasons for that there is not only the instrumental value of rationality (solo and in cooperation) for successful continuation of life, but the inherent value of rationality to human self and life, including joint participation of rationality in lives and selves. Rationality is inherently self-directed, so independence in a social environment (in thought and in making a life) remains a virtue, as with Rand. Creativity and productivity and integrity and benevolence and voluntary association are also part and parcel of my broadened notion of rational human nature. There is an additional distinctive feature in Rand's general characterization of life I'd like address: Life is an end in itself. I endorse that characterization also, although what constitutes individual human life is deeper in its connections to others, than in Rand's characterization of it, and that is so, even though in maturity choice is a factor in which relationships are instituted. Rand had the circumstance that life is an end in itself in a beautiful dual role in her ethics. (i) Directed to one's general moral conduct in all circumstances, it has one rightly treating oneself as an end in itself; self-interest is the ultimate criterion for any decisions or actions. (ii) Directed to one's conduct towards others, Rand adds that they too are ends in themselves and that conformance to individual rights correctly has each treated as an end in himself and makes possible each continuing self-direction all together in coordination. The second (ii) is correct within my system. The first (i) is not, because self-interest (or other-interest) are inadequate moral criteria stemming from inadequate understanding of human nature. Life known in my basic metaphysical frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specifications. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves. Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves. Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending. The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue.

CORRECTION: "As with Rand's ethics, Rationality remains the overarching human virtue, although, into my reasons for that there is not only the instrumental value of rationality (solo and in cooperation) for successful continuation of life, but the inherent value of rationality to human self and life, including joint participation of rationality in lives and selves."

The preceding pair of studies of mine, joining and criticizing Ayn Rand in her theory of value, theory of moral value, and her ethical egoism were written 14–16 years ago. Since then I developed my own metaphysics, also both joining and criticizing Rand in some of her fundamentals. My account is in the OL thread "These Hours of Resonant Existence" and in the links I included therein. I have not changed my mind about anything I wrote in the 2008 studies I have quoted in this post. But now I have the affirmative alternative, neighboring Rand's ethical theory, that I think more correct and best replacement for hers. In the OL thread "These Hours of Resonant Existence," I wrote out Chapter X of the monograph. Although my account builds on a social nature of human individuals running deeper than social nature as characterized by Rand, I land in much agreement with Rand on general characterization of life as self-generated and self-maintaining action and as teleological action (even for vegetative actions such as gravitropic plant roots) and with life as the phenomenon among existents with which such things as function, needs, alternatives, problems, and solutions enter the world at all. All of those features are in stark contrast to inanimate matter in our ordinary experience and as in our modern science. In the case of human selves and lives, all of those glories are reached in coordination with others, living or long deceased, and humans have greater choice than other animals in shaping longer arcs in their lives. As with Rand's ethics, Rationality remains the overarching human virtue, although, into my reasons for that there is not the instrumental value of rationality (solo and in cooperation) for successful continuation of life, but the inherent value of rationality to human self and life, including joint participation of rationality in lives and selves. Rationality is inherently self-directed, so independence in a social environment (in thought and in making a life) remains a virtue, as with Rand. Creativity and productivity and integrity and voluntary association are also part and parcel of my broadened notion of rational human nature. There is an additional distinctive feature in Rand's general characterization of life I'd like address: Life is an end in itself. I endorse that characterization also, although what constitutes individual human life is deeper in its connections to others, than in Rand's characterization of it, and that is so, even though in maturity choice is a factor in which relationships are instituted. Rand had the circumstance that life is an end in itself in a beautiful dual role in her ethics. (i) Directed to one's general moral conduct in all circumstances, it has one rightly treating oneself as an end in itself; self-interest is the ultimate criterion for any decisions or actions. (ii) Directed to one's conduct towards others, Rand adds that they too are ends in themselves and that conformance to individual rights correctly has each treated as an end in himself and makes possible each continuing self-direction all together in coordination. The second (ii) is correct within my system. The first (i) is not, because self-interest (or other-interest) are inadequate moral criteria stemming from inadequate understanding of human natue. As I wrote earlier in "These Hours of Resonant Existence" X: This broader rationality and the individual human end-in-itself that I embrace is an extra-easy fit with respect for the rights of other individuals. I am sorry that I've needed to go ahead and develop and present the ethical sector of Resonant Existence in such an unscholarly way. I'd have hoped to set it out with the pageant of all previous thought on ethics and situation with respect to other ethicists, those leading in the philosophical profession today. But there is that cessation thing for each life, and I wanted to at least get hold of and share in these hours we have this outline for this vital subject.

Memory of CMS

Nikka Shakarami

From These Hours of Resonant Existence Contrary SJ's insinuation, I did not say "alone". Furthermore, in no way did I state, imply, or insinuate that pickup of belonging-formalities were passive. Taking off my left glove, turning it inside out, and finding it fits my right hand is very active. So is every example I have ever given of discernments of belonging-formalities. For the most part, SJ's criticisms of my philosophy of Resonant Existence pertain to positions taken in other philosophies, not ones taken in mine.

I had recently written: “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."* To which SJ responded: “So Kant was right.”* Wrong. How disappointing to Kant were he to hear such a report of his view on space, after all his argumentation and reiterations that the magnitude structure of the world (i.e. Euclidean geometry) is not independent of intelligent consciousness.

To my recent remark “Under that good principle [‘nothing comes from nothing’], the conception that an elementary particle came from vacuum space while maintaining that such space is nothing is false,” SocratesJr ignores the qualifier “while maintaining that such space is nothing”. SJ writes: “Yes, this is leading to big problems for your metaphysics. Because it's a fact (A is A) that virtual particles come and go from empty space. The Casimir Effect demonstrates a tiny attractive force between two closely spaced metal plates. QFT explains this force arising from the exchange of virtual photons between the plates, even though no real photons are emitted. The Lamb Shift observed a slight shift in the energy levels of hydrogen atoms. The shift can be explained by the interaction of the electron with the virtual "cloud" of particles surrounding it.”* I do not maintain that space is nothing. I’ve written a hundred times to the contrary. One did not need to wait on the discovery of quantum field theory and the richness of the vacuum to know that empty space is an existent. Anyone who ever attempted to sit in a chair which had been pulled away should face up to the fact that empty space is not nothing.

"A deep sense of guilt whenever I could not identify a reason behind a desire, and a stifling of any natural ambition, natural pleasures of life, in the name of reason and not living irrationally. Whim worship, I feared it like the plague." I never felt that way when I was an Objectivist. You remind me of the evangelists who tell tall tales of the sins they committed and misery they suffered before they were "saved"—in your case, before you were no longer an Objectivist. "I'm anxious to discover other answers to life's questions. So here I am. I may have a lot of silly questions in the future. Bare with me." No. Bear with me. You are here to preach, starting with disingenuous questions.