Boydstun

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.

Introduction to "Necessity and Form in Truths" Part 1 – Leonard Peikoff Part 2 – Morton White Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – A Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – A' Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – B What are the right relationships between metaphysics today and modern science? The Analytic-Synthetic dichotomy of the Logical Empiricists and Quine’s refutation and replacement of their dichotomy are bound up with contemporary skepticism towards metaphysics and differing ideas about the relationships of philosophy to science and of logic to reality. Rand took metaphysics to be the study of existence as such, which is faithful to a traditional conception of metaphysics as the study of being as being. Metaphysics so conceived pertains to all things. It pertains to all things in ordinary experience or in science, which latter makes available more experience and more subtle targets of knowledge. I propose that metaphysics can, alongside logic and mathematics, rest on ordinary experience and on information attained in empirical sciences. Against Kant and others, such as Morganti 2013, I propose that metaphysics need not be a priori to fulfill its distinctive modern functions vis-a-vis other disciplines. Metaphysics can be in important part from reflection on knowledge gotten in those disciplines. Metaphysics can sift for principles to which all rational disciplines and their findings conform or set as norms of performance. Metaphysics can aim for setting the fullest context of knowledge, and that without itself uncovering potentials and limits of concretes as in science. And without itself uncovering possible structure in the formalities of situations as (I say is done) in mathematics. Rather, metaphysics can have the job of forming an explicit widest frame for fuller comprehension of findings in those disciplines. Whether such a metaphysics can also set the reality-base for logic employed in ordinary, scientific, and mathematical thought is yet another criterion for the goodness of the metaphysics. Metaphysics need not and should not in these activities also propose any new ontological finds deeper than anything found in the sciences, such as substances other than those of chemistry, physics, and science of materials. Metaphysics should not try to cook up some special metaphysical concept of time, but address only the time of physics and ordinary experience. One may and should look, I suggest, in the course of any experience or inquiry, to metaphysics for the integrated whole that one is holding, sourced from all areas of experience. Rand and Peikoff, however, maintained that the concept existence, as one might enlist it in the assertion that “existence exists” or “there are existents” does not mean specifically physical existence (ITOE App. 245–48). In their view, it means only a “that” exists; it means something exists. If that is all one means by “existence” as such, then I say metaphysics could not be a keeper of widest context and general norms worth employing. One does not need to have language and express understanding that existence is what one is taking physical actions with and in or that existence is identity in order to implicitly know “existence” is those things in all one’s early activities and experience (and one doesn’t need to have the concept of experience to be having experiences). Learning of alleged sorts of existence that are not physical existence comes later, after acquiring language. To know that existence is physical existence—to know unsupported objects fall, for example—is prelinguistic. We have scientific developmental cognitive psychology on that now for decades. It is far past time to leave behind our folk conjectures on such early developments supplemented with old psychological conjectures of, say, William James. When I was teaching adults to fetch a ball I rolled across the floor, I was engaging physical existents, and when I say “existence exists,” I am generalizing from such physical specifics, and I still mean them, such physical things, first and foremost by “existents.” Under explicit assertion, “existence exists” is assertion of some physical existence. If we reject the notion of a physicality-not-yet-committed “existence” in “existence exists,” it is more plausible that a Randian metaphysics can be an integrated unity from all experience and thought and a pertinent constraint-from-the-whole on the various parts of reality for pruning some absences of fact alleged as fact. An example of such pruning would be from the ancient metaphysical principle “nothing comes from nothing.” Under that good principle, the conception that an elementary particle came from vacuum space while maintaining that such space is nothing is false. Again, that all mass-energy of the universe came into existence from nothing preceding it can be pruned as false. Ex nihilo creation of the world by an intelligent being is quashed by good metaphysics. Yet metaphysics can still have things to learn from advancing physics. When physics explicated and experimentally set up situations of chaos in the classical regime in the last three decades of the twentieth century, philosophy could wake up to the aspect that fully deterministic situations do not always allow of realistic in-principle predictability and that ability to control the chaotic action did not require significant predictability. From our widest-world assessment of advances in science for their import for metaphysics, however, we must understand the science for ourselves, or at least get report of the science by a qualified authority. One should not just take on board the pronouncements of others about the import for metaphysics. In Rand’s metaphysics, existents as such have broad subdivisions such as actual or potential, current or past or future, entity or its attribute or activity (animate or inanimate), individual or collection or assembly, natural or man-made, causal (often scientifically lawful) determinations of entities or of their attributes or activities. In Rand’s metaphysics also, existents have magnitude structures we implicitly capture in perceptual-level similarities and in our concepts, concepts in her analysis, being a type of set implicitly structured by suspension of particular measure values within characteristic ranges along dimensions common among collections of particular existents. Right metaphysics can set a science in right relations to other sciences and set out its right relations to reality. A metaphysics such as Rand’s can be a protector of science by defending realism in science and by refuting mystical and skeptical degradations of science. Metaphysics can tackle integration of the specific findings of all the different sciences, assimilating them into a comprehensive network of conceptual dependencies. Then too, general metaphysics can offer integration across and guidance to detailed philosophies of each science. Kant would have metaphysics be conceived as “nothing other than the philosophy of the fundamental principles of our cognition” (1763 2:283). Furthermore, two dozen years later: “Metaphysics is a speculative cognition by reason that . . . rises entirely above being instructed by experience. It is cognition through mere concepts (not, like mathematics, cognition through the application of concepts to intuitions)” (KrV Bxiv). Rand, and I also, and many moderns deny there is any such thing as a priori knowledge, knowledge entirely independent of any experience. Rather, I say, any knowledge we have derives ultimately from our interactions with the physical world and coordinations with other people in the world. That is the source of our knowledge in the physical sciences as well as in mathematics and logic. This is not to deny that some of our rational thinking is intimately tied to the capacity for thought; it is only to say that that thinking, such as deductive inference, is not entirely unentangled with physical experience in its emergence and continuance (contra Ichikawa and Jarvis 2013 and Casullo 2012). Kant had logic as a priori and as analytic. Logic, in his view, provides the way to make previous knowledge distinct (Lu-Adler 2018, 90). That is the facility of logic as analytic. Kant stressed that logic (i.e., deduction) does not have for its function or power the gaining of new knowledge, and logic does its job of rendering distinctness without rendering new content. I notice that the notion of logic providing only improvement in old knowledge does not in fact entail that logic is a priori. Contrary to Kant’s view, analyticity might obtain even were that skill to have issued from interactions with the world, not from dictates and organization of Kantian faculties of reason and understanding. I should mention too that right philosophical analyses of conceptual dependencies, which is so much a task for philosophy, is more than being analytic in the sense of drawing out implications of whatever stipulations. Conceptual dependencies of concepts won through ordinary experience, science, and mathematics trace reality in our grasp. Kant’s reason for thinking that pure logic and pure mathematics must be a priori is because the only way he imagines they could issue from empirical interactions is as empirical generalizations, whose character cannot yield the manifest absolute impossibility-of-exception universality had by logical and mathematical principles. Aristotle might enter the friendly point: “To accept as a sufficient starting point that something always either is or happens in a certain way, is not to take things up in the right way.” (Phys. 252a32–33). “If we now put aside all cognition that we have to borrow from objects, and merely reflect on the use just of the understanding in general, we discover those rules which are necessary without qualification, for every purpose and without regard to any particular objects of thought, because without them we would not think at all. Thus we can have insight into these rules a priori, i.e., independently of all experience, because they contain merely the conditions of the use of the understanding in general, whether pure or empirical, without distinction among its objects. And from this it follows at the same time that the universal and necessary rules of thought in general can concern merely its form and not in any way its matter.” (Kant/Jäsche 1800, 12; cf. KrV A52–55 B76–79) “The boundary of logic is determined quite precisely by the fact that logic is a science that provides nothing but a comprehensive exposition and strict proof of the formal rules of all thought [including discursive thought not entirely independent of the senses]” (KrV Bix). “This science of the necessary laws of the understanding and of reason in general, or what is one and the same, of the mere form of thought as such, we call logic.” (Kant/Jäsche 1800, 13). Logic is a canon “and as a canon of the understanding and of reason it may not borrow any principles either from any science or from any experience; it must contain nothing but laws a priori . . . ” (ibid.). “Logic is a science of reason, not as mere form, but also as to matter; a science a priori of the necessary laws of thought, not in regard to particular objects, however, but to all objects in general; – hence a science of the correct use of the understanding and of reason in general, not subjectively, however, i.e., not according to empirical (psychological) principles for how the understanding does think, but objectively, i.e., according to principles a priori for how it ought to think.” (Kant/Jäsche 1800, 16) Judgments might fail to adhere to logic set down from the faculty of reason, Kant thought, because of unrecognized spoiling influences from the senses on judgment (Kant/Jäsche 1800, 37; see also KrV A293–94 B350–51). The sensory inputs themselves are not erroneous, in Kant’s view, for only judgments can be true or false. Kant is here staying near Descartes’ view that errors all arise from allowing our will to outrun our understanding. One might think it a bit odd that logic should be among the norms for right judgments without its principles having arisen from interactions with the world. More basically, one should question, as did Bolzano, how logic can be normative for cognition if logic is not for the purpose of attaining truth. Kant took some experience to be necessary in order that reason get going in logic. This is analogous to the old Leibniz thought that some sensory experience is needed to trigger access to innate ideas. Not natural or popular logic, but “only artificial or scientific logic [not natural or popular logic] deserves this name [logic], then, as a science of the necessary and universal rules of thought, which can and must be cognized a priori, independently of the natural use of the understanding and of reason in concreto, although these rules can first be found only through observation of that natural use.” (Kant/Jäsche 1800, 17) Our contemporary students of elementary logic may add to Bolzano: right deductions aid in the pursuit of truth only by giving the rules for preserving truth of premises to truth of conclusions. Necessity in deductive logic, I should clarify, is not that we necessarily follow the rules of valid inference. No, necessity in deductive logic is otherwise in two ways: (i) If we want to preserve truth of premisses to conclusions, we must follow the rules of logical deduction. That is a necessity-for, a necessity for attaining an end. That has nothing to do with the other necessity in deductive logic: (ii) Rules of deductive inference are necessarily right. Rand could say, and I do say, that this necessity, a necessity-that, is from the obdurate everywhere fact that existence exists and is identity and logic is conformed to that circumstance, the widest necessity-that. That first-figure syllogisms are necessarily right is due to the fact that identity (here, particular-to-classed collection character) is a formal feature belonging to concrete existents (once collections are rendered classes and particulars their members). I say contra Kant: The necessities in the formal disciplines stem ultimately from formalities that are not sourced most fundamentally in mental operations. The necessity-thats of formal disciplines attach to existence and to effective mental operations forged by utility of those formalities. Formalities belonging to situation (mathematics) and to passage and character (logic) are the Ur-springs of necessities in the formal disciplines. The necessity of truths in the formal disciplines—necessity absolute and differing from necessities in empirical generalizations—are inherited from the necessity-that of existence and of the formalities belonging to fundamental categories of existence. That Existence exists, I should add, is true because it states a fact. It is not true only because any item of thought can be mapped onto itself. That is to say: That Existence exists is not true due to it being a tautology. Rather, that things are susceptible to our mapping them onto themselves is because Existence exists and is identity and part of that identity is the affordance (by highly intelligent animals) of having itself mapped onto itself. (To be continued.) References Aristotle c. 348–322 B.C.E. Physics. J. Sachs, translator. 2011. In Aristotle’s Physics – A Guided Study. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Casullo, A. 2012. Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification. New York: Oxford University Press. Ichikawa, J.J. and B.W. Jarvis 2013. The Rules of Thought. New York: Oxford University Press. Lu-Adler, H. 2018. Kant and the Science of Logic. New York: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. 1763. Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality. In Immanuel Kant – Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770. D. Walford and R. Meerbote, translators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 1781(A), 1787(B). Critique of Pure Reason. W. Pluhar, translator. 1996. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. 1800. Jäsche Logic. J.M. Young, translator. 1992. In Immanual Kant – Lectures on Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morganti, M. 2013. Combining Science and Metaphysics – Contemporary Physics, Conceptual Revision and Common Sense. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Introduction to "Kant's Wrestle with Happiness and Life" I. To 1781 II. Towards 1785 III. Into 1785 IV. Moral Worth, Necessary and Free – A IV. Moral Worth, Necessary and Free – B

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

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.

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).