KyaryPamyu

It makes absolutely no difference whether suffering is the statistical norm or not. Suppose that everyone on Earth was happy, except for one unfortunate fellow who suffered from fibromyalgia. What would that individual think if someone showed him the following quote? "Pain, suffering, failure do not have metaphysical significance—they do not reveal the nature of reality. Ayn Rand’s heroes, accordingly, refuse to take pain seriously, i.e., metaphysically." (Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 8 ) I suspect he would not care, even in the slightest, about pain's "metaphysical significance", because his own daily fare is nothing but chronic widespread pain, constant fatigue, headaches, abdominal cramps and depression. I am of the opinion that it's up to individuals to determine the "proper" subjects for their contemplation. The fibromyalgia patient would have every right in the world to create or contemplate artworks that are focused exclusively on life's negatives. This is a very rich topic. Consider, for example, Schenk's Anguish (1878): If we only take the sheep into consideration, then perhaps this painting is tragic without any positive foil or contrast. But if we also factor in the crows, the painting seems to illustrate something deeper about Nature, namely that the tragedy of some individuals often coincides with the fortune of others. Whether man is king over creation or not, he is still product of Nature and lives in its bosom. Even if no humans are present in this painting, we cannot help but draw some metaphysical import from it. Now, consider Hebbel's Schlafen, Schlafen: To sleep, to sleep and only sleep And never wake and have no dreams! The bitter woes that made me weep but half-remembered fading gleams. So I, when echoes of life’s fullness Reverberate down where I lie, Deeper infold myself in stillness, Tighter shut the weary eye. (Translated by Sean Thompson) I'd argue that this poem's subject of contemplation is sleep's ability to "release" us from life's tribulations. Is that a "positive"? Yes, but only by the standard of the poem's own gloomy worldview. If a particular artist's worldview is geared toward a "positive" outlook, then of course he should only deal with negatives "as a means of stressing the positive". But for everyone else, that principle is invalid are irrelevant.

According to Plato, known existents are actually shadows or copies of pure Ideas located in the Hyperuranion. Likewise, in a materialist framework, mental "existents" (percepts) are mere shadows or copies of pure Things located in the Physical™ world. The idea is that mind-stuff is unable to produce matter, because of the Law of Identity: mind-stuff has an identity that is toto genere different from the identity of matter. On the other hand, matter can easily produce mind-stuff because.. it just can, okay? Peikoff is constantly oscillating between different meanings of the word "consciousness", according to what is convenient for his purposes. At the beginning of the quoted part, he takes "consciousness" to mean passive awareness of objects; he then shifts to a broader meaning which encompasses volitional aspects, like fantasizing/desiring that the food disappears. It doesn't seem to occur to Peikoff that, as per the Law of Identity, even if a mind was able to productively create the entirety of the contents of consciousness, the creative process itself would not be "free", but constrained by certain laws. I'm free to draw a line in my mind, but I'm not free to do so without making use of point and space. The laws of geometry are the necessary "stage" for freely drawing the line, which is to say: the mind produces not just one kind of representation (drawing the line) but also the representation of the lawful backdrop (point and space). Metaphysics is not as simple as trying to make food disappear. Here is the original claim: And this cannot be stressed enough. Man can err, yet at the same time be completely convinced that he is merely "following reality". Try to challenge his assertions, and you're met with replies such as "Well.. is 2+2=4?!", implying that, since he was merely following "reality", his conclusion was pristine and perfect. The only "authority" is intellectual honesty when dealing with reality.

"Consciousness" (a faculty) perceives "an idea or an emotion. . ." (an object). According to this formulation, the faculty (consciousness) and its objects (ideas, emotions) are distinct from each other. Or, more specifically, the identity of consciousness is to be consciousness-like, while the identity of objects is to be object-like. However, if we try to imagine: an idea/emotion existing outside of a consciousness, or a consciousness devoid of any content whatsoever we cannot do so. The separation exists in theory, but not in practice, so to speak. To get around this, some 19th century Romantics had an interesting concept called "productive perception" (or productive intuition): consciousness comes into existence through an action; without this action, there is no consciousness. We, contemporary thinkers, could associate this with the activity of a brain, or, if we're adventurous, with some primordial cosmic action. It doesn't matter for our intents and purposes. Now, from this action arises more than just consciousness alone. The content arises as well. To illustrate this from a materialistic framework, suppose that I hit my toe. As a consequence, I feel pain. But "pain" is not a mind-independent existent; on the contrary: my brain produced or created the pain-sensation in the aftermath of the stimulus. (For non-materialist readers, substitute whatever you want.) Hence, the "productive intuition/perception" moniker. Of course, from my perspective, my consciousness is not "productive" at all. This is because the productive operations of the brain/primordial-act cannot themselves enter consciousness. But if I wanted to observe how consciousness comes to be, I could for example: Observe the brain in a lab (according to physicalists) Freely perform a mental action, then observe any involuntary productive acts that my mind does as a result of the first act (according to idealists) Idealist systems like those of Fichte and Schelling employ the latter method, which is centered on observing your own mind in the process of generating the general categories and content of experience (Subject, Object, sensation, time, substance etc.) Now, the premise of those Romantics is that, although the "primordial action" lies outside of my awareness, I myself must have been the author of this act. Stated differently, I blindly strive for consciousness, and my striving results in attaining consciousness. So, to me it appears as if my brain acts "blindly" in order to give rise to my consciousness. But from a higher perspective, the brain is not separate from me; the brain is me in the process of striving for consciousness. Or, more clearly: in my awareness, the unconsciously-acting aspect of me looks like a brain, while the consciously-acting side of me looks like a "will" that controls my physical body from inside, as it were. ___ My sources: Fichte, Schelling

Why Life Originated (And Why it Continues) --- [The Lord to Mephistopheles:] Man is too apt to sink into mere satisfaction, A total standstill is his constant wish: Therefore your company, busily devilish, Serves well to stimulate him into action. (Goethe - Faust)

According to some Objectivists, "Identity" presupposes that the Universe is comprised of more than one single existent. That is, no doubt, an observation from experience. When we say that an object is "finite", we mean that it has a boundary; precisely where that object ends, another one begins. So we say, for example, that the US "ends" where Canada begins (in the north), or where Mexico begins (in the south), etc. People seem to intuitively grasp this concept. Suppose that someone is experiencing an existential crisis. His friend asks "What are you so anxious about?" to which the other replies "Nothing in particular". In other words, there's no particular offending "thing" or "object" to narrow down, because everything is the issue. By contrast, a determinate "thing" is a delimitation, a narrowing down from the "All". Keeping this metaphysical preamble in mind, we can now turn to the fate of humanity. In the beginning stages of humanity, the difference between man and beast was not very pronounced; it's almost impossible to imagine primitive people committing suicide over existential angst. On the contrary: the more difficult life was, the stronger people clung to it. Fast forward to our current times, and we've climbed to a stage where being eaten by animals or getting bashed in the head with a rock is a lot less common. By all metrics, life today is better than it used to be. But if Schopenhauer's observation is correct, then: When life is free of problems, our mind compensates by turning trifles into big issues. (*) So long as we are determinate beings (finite), there is always something external to us that can potentially cause trouble for ourselves. Therefore, there is no end to "progress". When we successfully solve a pressing problem, there is a brief period of celebration, after which we begin to notice another crack in the wall. In truth, that crack was always there, but we were too busy with other things to notice it: What real value is there for a man In all the gains he makes beneath the sun? (...) The eye never has enough of seeing, Nor the ear enough of hearing. Only that shall happen Which has happened, Only that occur Which has occurred; There is nothing new Beneath the sun! (Ecclesiastes) At our stage of history, most people do not have the luxury to ponder existential questions. But if at some point in the future, humanity at large becomes disappointed with the futility of problem-solving, people might change their strategy and pour all of their efforts into a new project: the mind. After all, happiness is in the brain, so to speak. If scientists discover a way to modify the human brain in such a way that unhappiness becomes physically impossible to experience, it's quite likely that many people will opt for this modification. At this hypothetical stage of history, we'd see a grim spectacle: billions of people standing still, in their synthetic bodies made of very resilient materials, enjoying continuous bliss for millions of years until the Sun finally swallows up the Earth. In essence, human progress might not be a "straight line" which extends into infinity, but rather an "arch" that begins with a rise to glory and ends with a descent into non-life. In the previous installment, we explored Fichte's claim that Nature fulfills a formal role: to make us aware of our freedom. We, speaking regulatively, can modify Fichte's theory, and say that futility fulfills a formal role in the human soul: Only in a world where "doing a good job" is not necessarily followed by a just reward, can we stop acting for "rewards" and instead, pursue excellence because it's enjoyable. "Those who [are] always looking ahead and impatiently anticipating what is coming, as something which will make them happy when they get it, are, in spite of their very clever airs, exactly like those donkeys one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a stick on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it; this is always just in front of them, and they keep on trying to get it. Such people are in a constant state of illusion as to their whole existence; they go on living ad interim, until at last they die." (Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, §5).

Man's Craving for Nothingness According to Schopenhauer, pleasure does not come to us originally and of itself; instead, pleasure is only able to exist as a removal of a pre-existing pain or want, while pain (which signals a threat to survival) directly and immediately proclaims itself to our perception. This is mirrored in Objectivist theory: "Pleasure—using the term for a moment to designate any form of enjoyment—is an effect. Its cause is the gaining of a value, whether it be a meal when one is hungry, an invitation to a party, a diamond necklace, or a long-sought promotion at work. The root of values, in turn, is the requirements of survival. Self-preservation, in other words, entails goal-directed action, success at which leads (in conscious organisms) to pleasure." (OPAR, Happiness as the Normal Condition of Man) We could also state this idea as follows: the constant entropic pull, which wants to disintegrate our bodies, is the root of all pleasure. And we certainly like pleasure, so it's no surprise that the most desirable life for us is the one least troubled by debilitating sickness, distracting pain, mental over-strain, hunger, social conflict and the like. Thus, man's deepest desire, his most sought-after jewel, is Invincibility; he wants the ability to act purely for acquiring pleasure (motivation from love), without worrying that, in his pursuit of joy, he might mess something up and bring Nature's wrath upon his head (motivation from pain). To be invincible then, is to be worry-less, like a child that has not yet been acquainted with the realities of life. Like sleeping infants the gods breathe without plan or purpose; the spirit flowers continually within them, chastely cherished, as in a small bud, and their holy eyes look out in still eternal clearness. (Friedrich Hölderlin - Hyperion's Song of Fate) Yet this kind of Invincibility is impossible to man: But to us no resting place is given. As suffering humans we decline and blindly fall from one hour to the next, like water thrown from cliff to cliff, year after year, down into the Unknown. Before he decided that philosophy can't compete with poetry, the celebrated German poet Friedrich Hölderlin studied philosophy at the Tübinger Stift, where he was friends and roommates with two giants of philosophy, Hegel and Schelling. In his philosophical thought, Hölderlin was primarily reacting to the then-trending philosophy of Fichte. According to Fichte, "I act" literally means "I am disrupting the current state", and that current state is obviously inert matter. Regardless of whether Nature truly exists or not, human cognition needs it in order to make possible the consciousness of free agency. Apart from that, Nature has no other value, thought Fichte. Hölderlin was not a fan of this. After all, things like scientific and poetic talent are generously offered by Nature, and are not generated by us ex nihilo. Fichte's theory also worsens the rift between free beings and mechanistic "nature", by turning Nature into a mere instrument for human projects. Furthermore, since: no external inhibition = no possibility of freedom Fichte declared that "freedom from limitations" is an infinite goal of morality, an imaginary ideal we can only approach step by step, with no end in sight. This did not go well with the younger generation, which was just recovering from the failure of the French Revolution to deliver its promised utopia. Riffing on the same theme, Hölderlin held that the human condition is characterized by two opposing drives: 1) the desire to be Myself, as against "That"; 2) the desire to attain "That", precisely because it is separate from Myself, therefore threatening my autonomy and Invincibility As Hölderlin's preference for poetry over philosophy suggests, he locates the resolution of this conflict in the feeling of Beauty. In Aesthetic contemplation, we (spiritually) attain the end-goal of all moral striving, i.e. we feel both infinite and determinate (limited) at the same time. It is different for the real world. Here, "survival" and "life" are synonymous. The day this impossible Indestructibility is achieved is the day where "survival/life" is no longer a thing. Thus, the striving for our most sought-after jewel, for Invincibility, is paradoxically an open striving for destruction. ___ (My source for Hölderlin's metaphysics was Edward Kanterian's excellent recorded lecture delivered at the University of Kent, 23 November 2012.)

Thanks to this "cognitive guardian", more and more people can now keep in mind that if a thing exists, then it exists 🤷‍♀️ IMO, the "axiom", if there is any, is this: Conscious experience of determinate objects. Notice that I didn't say "consciousness of determinate objects." I said "conscious experience of determinate objects". The difference is not insignificant: - The referent of "experience" is just that: experience (regardless of its type, origin etc.); no other assumptions are made. - The referent of "consciousness of" is: an existential relationship between a physical object and a faculty of consciousness. Objectivism starts with the latter, i.e. with an existential fact, rather than with the former. Quite a feat! If someone sees nothing wrong with this, then he should stick with whatever makes him happy.

In my opinion, it doesn't. I briefly explain why in this post.

@Ogg_Vorbis, you might find the following of interest. "Results from the 2020 PhilPapers survey, with responses from nearly 1,800 philosophers (mainly from North America, Europe, and Australasia), to questions on a variety of philosophical subjects and problems, have now been published." (Source) As you can see from the results, on the question of an external world (i.e. the ground of appearances or phenomena), 79.5% of the surveyed philosophers align with non-skeptical realism. Personally, I couldn't care less whether the external world exists or not. What I want is a comprehensive view of reality that isn't argued for on the basis of some lame Subject-Object distinction. In my opinion, neither Kant nor Rand have succeeded in this endeavor.

Apparently, this was one of Ayn Rand's favorite paintings. Salvador Dali, Corpus Hypercubus, oil on canvas, 29" by 23", 1954. Rand's favorite painting - she spent hours contemplating it at the Metropolitan Musuem of art. She even felt a kinship between her personal view of John Galt's defiance over his torture in Atlas Shrugged and Dali's depiction of the suffering of Jesus. (Jeff Britting- Ayn Rand) Remember that part where John Galt explains to his tormentors how to fix the torture device that had broken? I guess Rand really liked men who don't back down. While I was reading The Fountainhead, I distinctly remember starting to feel physically sick on more than one occasion. I felt as if the author wanted to subject Roark to every possible misfortune. Needless to say, reading until the end took some willpower. Consider here a moral man who has not yet reached professional or romantic fulfillment—an Ayn Rand hero, say, like Roark or Galt, at the point when he is alone against the world, barred from his work, destitute. In existential terms, such a man has not “achieved his values”; he is beset by problems and difficulties. Nevertheless, if he is an Ayn Rand hero, he is confident, at peace with himself, serene; he is a happy person even when living through an unhappy period. (...) A man of this kind has “achieved his values”—not his existential values, but the philosophical values that are their precondition. He has achieved not success, but the ability to succeed, the right relationship to reality. The emotional leitmotif of such a person is a unique and enduring form of pleasure: the pleasure that derives from the sheer fact of a man’s being alive—if he is a man who feels able to live. We may describe this emotion as “metaphysical pleasure,” in contrast to the more specific pleasures of work, friendship, and the rest. Metaphysical pleasure does not erase the pains incident to daily life, but, by providing a positively toned context for them, it does blunt them; in the same manner, it intensifies one’s daily pleasures. (OPAR, Happiness as the Normal Condition of Man) I can't say I'm too inspired by this "metaphysical pleasure," but I can say what I personally see in Dali's painting. Christ is liberated from suffering, without being liberated from the cross (which represents hardship). This is why he appears fixed to the cross, but not fixed at the same time; the four nails float in front of him, not making contact with their targets. In a certain sense, we are all on that cross, and we too can discover that we don't need to remove the cross in order to be happy.

No doubt. But Monart's question was specifically about Advaita. The majority of Indians belong to the superstitious Shaivite and Vaishnavite denominations of Hindu religion. By contrast, Advaita is less religion and more philosophy. Popular with seekers but not with the masses.

Advaita is less influential in India than Objectivism is in the West. It differs from Objectivism in that it's not a full "system", so no ethics or politics is involved. In other words, it's pure metaphysics. Further, it's not meant to amend any common-sense facts, but only to situate those facts into their wider context (the Absolute). I suppose you could say that Advaita Vedanta is practically useless, much like poetry is practically useless. But in a deeper sense, both are "useful" in that they enrich our experience of regular things. I'd say the "collection" part is crucial for differentiating Rand's position from others. No one (except Gorgias) disagrees that something exists. But they've been fighting for millennia over what exists.

According to David Hume, we cannot know with certainty whether the sun will rise tomorrow. But if the sun might not rise tomorrow, my plan to go to the beach will be ruined! That's what would hurt people (including Objectivists) the most: an unpredictable, fickle, undependable, untrustworthy world. If there was any way out of that uncertainty, we'd cling to it with all of our soul, just like Koalas grab onto trees. Certainty is one means to attaining peace of heart. One of the biggest obstacles to a predictable Reality is none other than God. If God exists, the behaviour of Nature is no longer predictable. In fact, Nature is as predictable as a capricious person. Oh no! It's hardly surprising that Objectivists are so keen on philosophizing about identity-this and identity-that. Thanks to our blessed and holy Identity, a potato's lack of vocal chords is sufficient for me to predict that no potato will ever sing in the next few millions of years. Nature is reliable again. Thank God Identity! (But that's not the only cool thing about Identity: we could say that, even if a God did exist, we'd be able to form some idea about what he can and can't do, simply by studying his nature.) With this background in mind, it's quite natural that (some) Objectivists vilify Kant. An Objectivist wants to assert the non-existence of God with the same certainty with which he asserts that potatoes will never sing. And Kant, that no-good scoundrel, wants to take that away from us. To be sure, Kant didn't claim that God exists, only that no one can establish this fact with immutable certainty. A few Objectivists also demonize Kant on the basis of a straw-man they got from reading Rand, namely that [W]e are in danger of getting killed because our sense organs systematically “distort reality.” This is suggested by the story of the astronaut landing on an unknown planet in Rand’s Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982, 1–4). Because his confidence in his reason, his senses and his instruments has been weakened, he dies. Now some students draw from this story the suggestion that Kant would say: “That is no surprise, because you can’t be certain of what your consciousness tells you about space and time.” Or the suggestion that the astronaut was himself a Kantian. There is no doubt that if Rand had meant to suggest anything like this she would have been mistaken. For Kant said very clearly that “[t]his ideality of space and time leaves, however, the centrality of empirical knowledge unaffected, for we are equally sure of it whether these forms necessarily inhere in themselves or only in our intuition of them” (Kant 1933, B56). The Kantian astronaut, then, would be just as likely to survive as if the Objectivist theory of knowledge were true [...] (Source) This kind of thing is on a par with a Creationist's misinterpretation of Darwin. It's not a good look, but thankfully many Objectivists think on their own feet and don't base their judgements on "Rand wrote" or "Peikoff said". As for the thing-in-itself debate, here's my two cents. Objectivism, to my knowledge, doesn't entertain the possibility that finitude and infinity are epistemological, not metaphysical. I'll briefly explain this. Existential objects are finite in magnitude. By contrast, mathematical space can be infinitely divided. Together, this means the following: I can pick an existential object, e.g. a tomato, and (purely in my mind) zoom into this tomato forever and ever. I can zoom into its subatomic particles until said particles are as big as the current Universe, and I can keep going indefinitely. This doesn't contradict the finiteness of the tomato. Now, let's say that the mind-independent world was utterly devoid of magnitudes, and that cognition nevertheless divides experience into units which mutually delimit themselves. Where one unit ends, the next one begins. "Nonsense!" shouts the Objectivist. "The law of Identity means that existential things are of limited magnitude!" Nope. The law of Identity simply states that something is a certain way, as against another way. In accord with this holy law, we can say that, if the mind-independent world is free of magnitudes, then it is free of magnitudes (A = A). As a corollary, if the world is devoid of magnitudes, then the opposite cannot be true (A ≠ non-A). And we can say that either the external world lacks magnitudes, or it doesn't (A or non-A). My point is that establishing the relationship between consciousness and existence is not as easy as looking at some axioms. But that rabbit hole goes deep.

It doesn't refer to "Existence", which Ayn Rand took to be the collection of all existents. The Absolute is what those existents have in common, i.e. their genetic origin. Here's an analogy. Ayn Rand looks at the world and says "Look, clay objects!" (existents); Advaita looks at the same world and says: "Look, clay!" (the Absolute). As for consciousness and intelligence, we can use the analogy of the color spectrum. At some point in the spectrum, the color red ends and the color orange begins. Objectivists look at the color orange and say "Look, here's where color comes into existence. Before orange came about, no other colors existed". By contrast, Advaita sees consciousness as a spectrum. The consciousness spectrum starts with mechanical causes (pressure and impulse), ascends to stimuli (plants), climbs up to first-person experience (higher animals) and culminates with conceptual consciousness (humans). From the ultimate standpoint, the Absolute has nothing to be aware of but its own self. Knower and Known are the same entity. Advanced consciousness represents the Knower as "mind-stuff" and the Known as "matter-stuff". Neither mind nor matter are real. To say that mind and matter are unreal is similar to saying that music doesn't really exist and that the ultimate reality is air molecules vibrating. Again, there's no evil demon tricking you. Mind (Knower) and matter (Known) are unreal only in the sense that Knower and Known are fundamentally the very same entity, separately represented only in consciousness. If you're wondering why there exists more than one knowing subject, it's because the consciousness of the Absolute is perspectival. An imperfect analogy for this is how the very same person can view himself as: a father, man, brother, musician, gourmet, young etc. All of these perspectives are partial, but do not contradict the unity of the person. In the consciousness of the Absolute, those "roles" and the relationships between each role are generated according to stringent laws. Of course, if one views consciousness as a "mirror", they'll probably scratch their heads at this concept; the Advaita view of consciousness is analogous to how a poem (conscious experience) can very exuberantly express something very plain (the Absolute).

Sex, cigars, and Jesus. What do they have in common? Leonard Peikoff says: "One schizophrenic in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital routinely equated sex, cigars, and Jesus Christ. He regarded all these existents, both in his thought and in his feelings about them, as interchangeable members of a single class, on the grounds that all had an attribute in common, “encirclement.”. . . Imagine studying cigars and then applying one’s conclusions to Jesus!" (OPAR, Definition as the Final Step In Concept-Formation) Just imagine! But wait a minute... "The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist." (ITOE, p. 56) In other words, "existence" is not an entity, but a shorthand way of referring to sex, cigarettes, Jesus, and everything I left out due to space-related reasons. And yet, neither Rand nor Peikoff have any problem with statements like "existence is X', "existence is Y". This indicates that, in a certain context, applying your conclusion about cigars to Jesus is A-OK, and not schizophrenic at all. But how? Under which conditions is it possible to generalize from cigars to everything else? (Guys, I promise this is related to achieving happiness!) Let's start with the wrong answer: the basis of this wondrous generalization cannot be relations. Relations between what? I can see how one apple can be to the right of a tomato, but I can't envision a spatial "relation" without the apple and orange. Ditto for any other kind of relation. Let us continue with the proper answer: sex, cigars and Jesus must share some concrete quality. In another thread, I wrote about Spinoza's observation that: "two existents can't be classified into the same class (world) if they're radically different. For example, in popular culture we say that god is not situated on the Moon or in the Andromeda galaxy - he's located in another dimension entirely. That's an intuitive grasp of Spinoza's observation: god is too different to be classified into the same world as the objects we know. With this, a famous problem enters the philosophical scene. A basketball has weight, size, rigidity, and as a consequence it can hit or push other objects (that likewise have weight, size, rigidity). In contrast, the mind totally lacks any of those qualities, so it's impotent to hit or push material objects. Its impotence extents to the entirety of the vast material universe, with the sole exception of one's physical body." In other words, we can envision a basketball smashing a window, because the basketball and the window are fundamentally alike. Conversely, we can't imagine our minds smashing a window Jedi-style, because the mind has no weight, no rigidity, it cannot fly from one position in spacetime to another. The question then arises: how does the mind interact with physical existents? Harry Binswanger is on the right track: "Since your consciousness causes your voluntary action, and since the physiological cause of your action is a process in the brain, it follows that your consciousness has the power to change the physical state of your brain. This conclusion may appear to contradict the primacy of existence, since it means that consciousness alters the state of something in the physical world — the brain. But that worry is unfounded. The primacy of existence holds that a state of awareness neither creates nor alters its object." (H. Binswanger - How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation, ch. 1) Many Objectivists will seethe at Binswanger's separation of mind and brain; this is because they're under the false impression that Ayn Rand has condoned their own spiritually bankrupt materialism. But let's move on. Philipp Mainländer concurs with Rand that similar objects can be classified together - which simply means: to speak of one member of the class, is to speak of all others. However, unlike Rand (which is silent on this), he saw "similarity" naturalistically, as the offshoot of genetic development. Simply put: when two chemicals combine, what will result from that? That's right, another chemical. "Chip off the old block"; from chemicals, only more chemicals can emerge. So far, we can tell Mr. Spinoza that sex, cigars and Jesus can be classified togheter on the basic of genetic kinship: all three are derived from a small number of basic chemical elements. About 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The complex mixture of chemicals in tobacco smoke includes carbon monoxide [oxygen, carbon], benzene [hydrogen, carbon] and others. Now, if the kinship between humans and cigars is explained by their reliance on the basic elements, then what about those basic elements themselves? Why do they look as if they were "cut from the same cloth"? That cloth is no more, replies the sober Mainlander. It's not rocket science: if two elements are needed to beget a third one, then a single, lonely element wouldn't have anything to combine with in order to generate the diversity in the world. The "cloth" had to break down, leaving behind those kindred chemicals. (Henceforth, I will refer to the "cloth" as the Overbeing) Us humans are, in many respects, at the mercy of external factors. By contrast, the Overbeing was the sole existent; nothing else was around to set it in motion. It contained all motion within itself, so to speak. Therefore (regulatively speaking), when the Overbeing split itself up into parts, it merely followed the impulse within the innermost core of its own being. What does "speaking regulatively" mean? It means that we are in a situation where how we describe something is irrelevant. Suppose that someone turns on the TV, and the newscaster says: "A meteorite is heading toward Antarctica!" The viewer quips: "Well, actually! Its not heading toward Antarctica, like a human might head to Walmart. It's just following the laws of physics!" No, Mr. TV Watcher, at the most profound level, the meteorite is indeed heading toward Antarctica. This is not the time for nitpicking. To believe in your heart of hearts that the meteorite wants to go to Antarctica accords with existential fact. And now, good luck. As a reminder, we were talking about how the Overbeing disintegrated into parts, into a collective (i.e. what Objectivists call "existence"). In this collective, everything interlocks. Leonard Peikoff's, in his lecture titled Unity in Epistemology and Ethics, describes how a change in one atom ends up producing an effect in all other atoms, from one corner of the Universe to the other. Mainländer echoes: "Lichtenberg once said that a pea thrown into the North Sea raises the level of the sea on the Japanese coast, even though the change in level cannot be perceived by the human eye. Likewise, it is logically certain that a pistol shot fired on our earth will have its effect on Sirius, indeed on the outermost limits of the immeasurable universe; for this universe is always in the most violent tension and is not a limp, lame, pathetic so-called infinite." (P. Mainländer - The Philosophy of Redemption, Metaphysics) You, the reader, are just one individual among a finite, but unimaginably vast collective of individuals. Of course, you are not conscious of how every atom in the universe has an influence on you; this subterranean influence might feel as if an inexplicable, invisible hand is sometimes guiding you toward some things and away from others, as if fate is at play. Here's an area where religionists intuitively grasp something about their existence, but don't know how to explain it except by personifying nature into gods. For our next step, observe how bitterly people regret the mistakes they make, how remorsefully they hit themselves in the head over bygones. It doesn't require a genius to see that, had they known in advance what they were about to do, they would have instantly avoided that course of action, like one avoids the Bubonic plague. People do not voluntarily throw themselves into the fiery pits of hell, but do so out of ignorance and various conjectures. When people get burned to a crisp, they naturally learn their lesson, and have no need for snarky remarks from moralizing priests and Objectivists. In some cases, said individuals might even begin to overthink to the point of choice-paralysis. And overthinking is a common malady of our modern culture, stripping away people's will-to-live as we speak. In short, in the innermost kernel of our actual day-to-day lives (abstractions be damned), we are faced with something very strange: our own mistakes paradoxically happen to us. We can learn from our mistakes, and are quite eager to do so when things go south; but we are also, in all things and matters, guided by that invisible, supernatural hand (we are always speaking metaphorically). But what if this invisible hand chooses to make my life miserable? Well, Mainlander tells us to look at Christianity: according to its adherents, the Heavenly Father wants bliss and joy for his children, and the children want bliss and joy for themselves too! A happier concordance of desires could not be imagined. Thus, when things get messy, they are consoled by the thought that whatever the invisible hand (God) does, he does it in order to guide people toward a Kindom of absolute bliss, where everyone will be reunited with their friends and lovers, and there's going to be happiness and revelry throughout, and no existential crises will ever arise. What is the atheist Mainländer going to make of this? Well, those religionists are again intuitively grasping a profound truth, and yet again, they lack the means to explain it without inventing pretty delusions. If it wasn't clear from the preceding, people cling to Christianity because religion offers a coping mechanism; a way to deal with the blows of fate, contra Peikoff's talk of "suffering (or stoicism) is all that is possible." Mainländer looked at Schopenhauer's philosophy, and thought: "wow, if this philosophy is purified from errors, it could provide people with that unwavering fearlesness that religion provides - but on the basis of knowledge, not faith." Let's see what he was up to. In our daily lives, we experience a more "colloquial" form of entropy. If we don't clean our houses regularly, things will get messy. If we don't drink water over and over again, we will die of dehidration. "we continually die, our life is a slow death struggle, every day death gains, against every human, more might, until it extinguishes of everyone the light of life." (P. Mainländer - The True Trust) It is no different for the Universe. Like us, the Universe is growing old; with each day that passes, it is growing closer to its ultimate fate: all life on Earth will vanish, the Sun's hydrogen supply will run out, stars and planets will be yanked out of their orbits, everything will decay until only black holes are left, and the last black hole will evaporate. The Universe will continue to expand further and further away, spreading sub-atomic particles so thin that they will never interact with another particle ever again. And then, just a cold, black void for eternity, as time loses meaning. Continuing: "Could such an organization of the things be possible at all, if in essence, man, in the primordial core of his being, would not want death?" (By "primordial core", he is referring to the Overbeing; the impulse of destruction originated from within it, resulting in its disintegration. [It will be a looong disintegration, lasting something like one googol (1x10100) years].) All of the matter composing our bodies was in the Overbeing, so that destructive impulse was metaphorically "our" impulse as well, in the "primordial core" of our being. "Ethics is eudaemonics or the doctrine of happiness: an explanation that has been challenged for thousands of years without being shaken. The task of ethics is to examine happiness, i.e. the state of satisfaction of the human heart, in all its phases, to grasp it in its most perfect form and to place it on a firm foundation, i.e. to indicate the means by which man can attain full peace of heart, the highest happiness." (Philosophy of Redemption, Ethics) In light of all of the preceding, what could bring us full peace of heart, the highest happiness? Before completing today's investigations, let's see if we can attune ourselves, for a moment, to Goethe's wavelength: "I have always been praised as someone particularly favored by good fortune; nor do I want to complain or criticize the course of my life. But basically it has been nothing but toil and labor, and I can well say that in my seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of real pleasure. It was the eternal rolling of a stone that always wanted to be lifted anew." (Conversations with Eckermann) It seems like Goethe is saying that success is an uphill battle; and of course, he is right, because the natural tendency of the Universe is entropic (the dirty house!) and consequently nothing is secure: reputation, jobs, fame, social harmony and everything else are a ticking time bomb. Now, what if, unlike Goethe, you become thoroughly fed up with your distress? Is the answer not already obvious? Stop caring! Stop deriving your happiness from external conditions, whenever possible. Remember the Mesopotamian poem I quoted in the previous installment: good and bad alternate like flapping your legs when you walk; don't allow yourself to have "only four weeks of real pleasure", and shout: "I don't mind experiencing [bad outcome]!" "I don't mind missing out on [good thing]!" With those words, you're not saying that you want bad things to happen, but rather that you don't mind it if, in spite of your sensible efforts, they do. (I'm not placing Peikoff on the same level as Goethe, but his discovery of happiness at age 81 seems to be in the same vein. As for Rand: my view of her is that she can was like a raging storm, rather than a calm and blissful lake.) In this thread, I chose to bring up Mainländer's newly translated work because of: a) the Nietzsche-Rand connection, and b). the remarkable similarity between Rand and Mainländer's epistemology. The latter's immortal contribution (tongue-in-cheek, since he empathized the mortality of the universe) was his insight that philosophizing regulatively (yet based on real knowledge) can give religion a run for its money. And the idea of such philosophical poetry came from Kant, of all people, who was so rigid and dutiful to holy Reason that people set their clocks by his daily walks. This aesthetic and teleological bridging-tactic thereby emotionally super-charges the personal and social practice of natural scientific research by conferring upon it the collectively-felt solidarity of a coherent, meaningful, and intersubjectively valid rational enterprise. In this sense, Kant is the original discoverer of the aesthetics of science. (Hanna, Robert, "Kant’s Theory of Judgment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)