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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.

If it's in man's nature, does it not exist 'inside' of nature? "Is" supplies the "ought". To turn against our nature, there's "the evil".

I can add that this does not follow the law of causality which is what determinists use. It does follow the law of identity. It also begs the question if we can find this in animals, cells etc.. or some form of similar trace, which can point to what is conciouss and what is not. Maybe even point us in the direction of what might have free will of organisms/living entities.

So I'm not sure how many in this forum has seen this update. There might be some evidence that suggests that conciousness is created by something called microtubules. At the same time the study shows that the brain uses Quantum Effects that as far as we know are indetermined. This does not prove that we have free will, but it ties a theory between Quantum Mechanics and Metaphysics. Hope this could be interesting for more people here. Here's a video:

References for the Preceding Post Bissell, R. 1997. The Essence of Art. Objectivity 2(5):33–65. ——. 2004. Art as Microcosm. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5(2):307–63. Crowther, P. 2007. Defining Art, Creating the Canon. Oxford. Peikoff, L. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton. Plato c. 428–348 B.C. Plato – Complete Works. J. M. Cooper, editor. 1997. Hackett. Rand, A. 1960. For the New Intellectual. Title essay. Signet. ——. 1961. The Objectivist Ethics. In The Virtue of Selfishness. Signet. ——. 1963. The Goal of My Writing. The Objectivist Newsletter (ON) 2(10):37–40, 2(11):41–42. ——. 1965a. The Psycho-Epistemology of Art. ON 4(4):15–16, 18. ——. 1965b. Art and Moral Treason. ON 4(3):9–10, 12–14. ——. 1966a. Art and Sense of Life. The Objectivist (O) 5(Mar):33–40. ——. 1965b. Art and Moral Treason. ON 4(3):9–10, 12–14. ——. 1971. Art and Cognition I. O 10(Apr):1009–17. Stroud, S. R. 2011. John Dewey and the Artful Life. Penn State.

In the preceding post, I should have included: Rand, A. 1958 [2000]. Lectures on Fiction Writing. In The Art of Fiction. T. Boeckmann, editor. Penguin. Rand specified a function of art beyond its beckon of experience and contemplation for its own sake. Art has integral place in the realm of life functions (cf. Greater Hippias 295c–e on the fine). In its selective re-creations of reality, according to Rand, art isolates and integrates aspects of reality to yield a new concrete that can serve certain functions for the human psyche (1965a, 16). The highest goal Rand had in her novels was the portrayal of ideal men. The experience of meeting those characters in the stories is an end in itself. She aimed for a story offering an experience worth living through for its own sake, and she aimed for protagonists to be a pleasure to contemplate for their own sake (Rand 1963, 37). That kind of contemplation, in all art, serves a human need, the need for moments sensing as complete the life-long struggle for achievement of values (41). Notice that the concept of contemplation here is broad enough to include rapture, esthetic rapture (cf. Crowther 2007, 35–36). There is that Randian integration in the esthetic experience of art. However, there are other kinds of contemplation of art for its own sake besides that one, I should say, important and lovely as that one is. American Heritage Dictionary defines art as “the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty; specifically, the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.” The types after the semicolon are the specific types most typically meant when the term is used in the general sense of art preceding the semicolon. This dictionary has nine other senses in which art is used, but the one quoted here is the one pertinent to this discussion. On Rand’s definition, art is “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value judgments” (1965a, 16). I am not persuaded that all art under the dictionary definition I just quoted nor that all of what should be grouped under art is captured by Rand’s theoretical explanatory definition. Her definition holds for a major subclass of art. We are able to sense the feelings indicated in a great variety of created illusions, or re-creations of reality. One would expect the same for artists, and some artists might have considerable success in expressing a sense of life not their own. It is only a slight modification, a slight broadening of Rand’s definition to say art is a selective re-creation of reality according to metaphysical value-judgments, therewith leaving in suspension how much they are favored by the artist, if at all. Rand observed that “every religion has a mythology—a dramatized concretization of its moral code embodied in the figures of men who are its ultimate product” (1965a, 16). Such characters and their associated deeds and ordeals, when visualized in a drawing or painting or sculpture, I should say and likely Rand would say, do not bring a moral sense of life to the artwork by their iconographical status. The means of sense of life, including moral sense of life, in a work of art are from other elements in the work, not iconography. In Rand’s “For the New Intellectual” (1960), she had conceived of human consciousness as preserving some continuity and as demanding “a certain degree of integration, whether a man seeks it or not” (18). Philosophy should formulate “an integrated view of man, of existence, of the universe” (22). “Man needs an integrated view of life, a philosophy, whether he is aware of his need or not” (18). Rand saw art as addressing a related need for integration. “Art is a concretization of metaphysics” (Rand 1965a, 16). It provides the power to summon in a full, perceptually conscious focus, a condensation of the chains of abstract concepts forming man’s “fundamental view of himself and of his relationships to reality” (16). Rand elaborated further what she meant by a sense of life. It is a person’s “generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences” (1966a, 17). This generalized feeling she took to be the result of a subconscious integration summing the history of one’s psychological activities, one’s reactions and conclusions. This conception of sense of life is an extension of her earlier notion that human consciousness preserves willy-nilly some continuity and demands a certain degree of integration (1961, 18). Rand found metaphysical, cognitive, and evaluative linkages in art. Her final characterization of their assembly was under her concept of a metaphysical value-judgment. Rand’s explications of sense of life and metaphysical value-judgments are in terms of metaphysics that bears on human life and the role and character of values in it. She said that a sense of life sums up one’s view of man’s relationship to existence. That suggests that when she said this subconsciously integrated appraisal that is sense of life includes appraisal of the nature of reality, she was confining the metaphysical appraisal to implications for moral, human life. That would include some notion of the intelligibility or lack thereof in existence in general and in living existence in particular. It is, I think, overly restrictive to confine the metaphysical in art to man’s relationship to reality, that is, to Rand’s metaphysical value-judgments. That said, Rand’s house of metaphysical value-judgments itself need not be so restrictive as one might first think from her list of metaphysical value-questions. For example, to ask whether the universe is intelligible is also to ask whether existence is one and interconnected within itself and whether a negative judgment on that question-couple leaves existence intelligible and, if so, differently so than were existence truly one and highly interconnected. This would seem to be an expansion of Rand’s list of questions, remaining within her conception, because the judgments the question and its subsidiaries invite are metaphysical and bear on basic human purposes. Rand’s compact definition of art is intended to cover arts literary and visual (and more). When she says these works are re-creations of reality, one needs to remember two things implicit in that conception: imagination and stylization. An artist stylizes reality in his re-creations. In that, re-creations are his (his/her) integration of facts and his metaphysical evaluations, and these are set concrete in his selection of theme and subject, brushstroke and word, and indeed in all his craft with elements of the medium (Rand 1966a, 35; 1971, 1011–12). I should stress that one might concur with Rand’s definition of art, yet one might disagree with Rand’s analysis of various artworks within that framework. In her 1963, Rand characterized misery, disease, disaster, and evil as negatives in human existence and “not proper subjects of contemplation for contemplation’s sake. In art, and in literature, these negatives are worth re-creating only in relation to some positive, as a foil, as a contrast, as a means of stressing the positive—but not as an end in themselves” (38). Within Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, one sees people who have already died, people in despair, and people with hope, waving to get the attention of a very distant ship. This painting fits squarely within what Rand described as having a subject containing negatives of human existence, yet also a positive in contrast, and worthy of contemplation for contemplation’s sake. When it comes to the great negatives in life, I have some reservations concerning Rand’s idea that negatives are unworthy as whole subjects of a work of art. Sometimes there is widespread common background of the beholders, who know the subject is from a larger story with its road to a positive; such would be a painting showing only that the dead Jesus is being taken down from the cross. War scenes as subjects of artworks, containing no positive aspects in the subject, may have viewers who know some history from which the scene is taken and some evaluation of that history, possibly positive. On the other hand, a war scene—say, a massacre—as subject of a painting, might be effective in inducing the horribleness of such an event to a viewer and nothing more than that horror. I would not want to contemplate that painting so much that I put it on the living room wall opposite me just now, in place of the triptych of Monet’s water lilies spanning that wall. However, the well-executed massacre painting might be worth my contemplation in a memorial museum of the event or in an art museum, where one passes from one feeling of life to another. Rand was aiming for what has been called a “‘wrapper definition’ that attempts to cover the entire extension of a concept,” rather than only “an evaluative characterization of what the best forms of art aspire to be like” (Stroud 2011, 5). Rand took up the challenge of showing literary and nonliterary art-forms to be distinctive and explicable under a definition, her definition of art, which is, we recall: “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.” In the course of her examinations of various art-forms, we learn more about what she means by re-creation of reality in the way of art. For poetry without story or characterization—say, Rossetti’s Silent Noon—Rand does not take up the challenge of articulating how such poetry differs from so-called mood studies, thence, with that difference, how such poetry is art. The poem Silent Noon has a scene and an event. (The idea microcosm comes quickly to mind; see Bissell 1997; 2004.) In this poem, existence and human act are told of. They are re-creations of reality and the basic draw of the consciousness aroused in the readers. Imagined perceptions and induced feelings are aroused by what is said in the poem and how it is said, all well integrated. I don’t have an example of what Rand was calling literary mood studies, so I don’t know how it might differ from this sort of poem. Do such mood studies concretize a theme, but without re-creation of reality, without any showing of existence and purpose driving consciousness? This much is clear by Rand and satisfactory by me: an artistic selective re-creation is a re-integration, and for all art, not only literary, there will be a theme. For arts not literary, the theme will not be so fully expressed in words as in the medium, but it is there and is the large integrator. @123Me, Rand thought that Romantic art is the main source of a moral sense of life in the child and adolescent. “Please note that art is not his only source of morality, but of a moral sense of life. This requires careful differentiation. // A ‘sense of life’ is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics—an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man’s nature and the nature of reality, summing up one’s view of man’s relationship to existence. Morality is an abstract, conceptual code of values and principles.” (Rand 1965b, 10) Having moral content was not a requirement in Rand’s view for something to be art. A Rothko would fall short in whatever are the ways “mood studies” would fall short, under Rand’s theory, I suggest. In “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” Rand wrote that art fulfills a need for end-in-itself concretization of metaphysical value-judgments. That is consonant with her idea, stated earlier in “The Goal of My Writing,” that the function of art is to supply moments of sensing as complete the life-long struggle for achievement of values. In the later essay “Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” Rand was not broadening her view of what is “the” function of art; she was only articulating more of the means by which it fulfills that function (see also Rand 1966a, 34, 36–37, and 1971, 1009). In Rand’s view, there are other enjoyments in art besides fulfillment of that function, but no other function (1966a, 39). About psycho-epistemology: Rand and her circle had been using the term to refer to an individual’s characteristic method of awareness. Is the time scope of his outlook brief or long? Is his concern only with what is physically present? Does he recoil into his emotions in the face of his physical life and need for action? How far does he integrate his perceptions into conceptions? Is his thinking a means of perceiving reality or justifying escape from reality? (Rand 1960, 14, 19, 21). Art performs the psycho-epistemological function, in Rand’s view, of converting metaphysical abstractions “into the equivalent of concretes, into specific entities open to man’s direct perception” (1965a). Rand held art to be a need of human consciousness. As an adult, I produced only one sort of artistic creation, and that was composition of poetry. From that, I accede, at least in the realm of those creations, that I have a sense of life and that it is singular. This seems correct, even though I wrote quite a variety of poems. I’ll try to add an example at the end of this post. (The painting, so suited to the poem, is detail of a Bierstadt.) I would be hard put, however, to state what is that sense of life. Importance is the concept Rand took to be key in formation of a sense of life. She then restricted importance to a fundamental view of human nature. A sense of life becomes an emotional summation reflecting answers on basic questions of human nature read as applying to oneself. Such questions would be whether the universe is knowable, whether man has the power of choice, and whether man can achieve his goals (Rand 1966b, 19). In development of one’s sense of life in childhood and adolescence, Rand was thinking of more particular forms or ramifications of those broad questions in application to oneself. Later the broad questions themselves can be formulated and generalized to human kind, not only oneself. Importance as Rand’s criterion of esthetic abstraction is a salient criterion in such abstraction, but the broader criteria of significance and meaningfulness also sort the esthetic from the purely cognitive and normative types of abstraction. To two overly narrow restrictions in Rand’s esthetics—function of art and criterion of esthetic abstraction—I should add a third. Rand’s range of philosophical issues going into the makeup of all the facets of one’s sense of life might well be too limited. The fundamental importance-questions whose emotional answers are vested in a sense of life were the same as Rand had listed the previous year in spelling out what are metaphysical value-judgments. Those questions had been: “Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable? Can man find happiness on earth, or is he doomed to frustration and despair? Does man have the power of choice, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, the power to direct the course of his life—or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, which determine his fate? Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil?” (1965a, 16) That last question would seem at first blush to be a normative question, rather than a metaphysical one. I suggest, however, that it is a question for (i) the metaphysics of life and value in general, to which, as metaphysical fact, man is no alien and (ii) for the metaphysics of mind joining (i) (see also Peikoff 1991, 189–93).

@123Me I want in my next post to reply to your inquiry and add to what HRSD said. In the present post, I want to leave a list of works so far in print concerning Objectivist Esthetics. Rand developed this theory mainly in the 1960's. It is part of the Objectivist philosophy. The theory, that is—not Rand's trials at applying it to creative works other than her own. Galt's Speech contains the essentials of Objectivism (plus other things), and that was in 1957. So, while the Objectivist Esthetics is part of Objectivism, it is not part of the essentials of that philosophy. An Objectivist is one who is in agreement with the essentials (which would include its logical fundamental elements as well as straightforward implications of them, such as opposition to military conscription, and momentous implications of them widely recognized as demarcating the philosophy, such as atheism and ethical egoism). Rand’s Texts on Her Esthetics 1971. The Romantic Manifesto. Signet. Chapters 1–4 1. The Psycho-Epistemology of Art (1965) 2. Philosophy and Sense of Life (1966) 3. Art and Sense of Life (1966) 4. Art and Cognition (1971) Books or Chapters about Rand’s Esthetics Peikoff, L. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton. Chapter 12 Art I. Art as a Concretization of Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 II. Romantic Literature as Illustrating Role of Φ in Art . . . 428 III. Esthetic Value as Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 Torres, L., and M. Kamhi 2000. What Art Is. Open Court. Sciabarra, C.M., editor, 2004. Ayn Rand and Art: A Symposium. Dedicated issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 2(2). Part VI of the Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand: The Objectivist Esthetics: Art and the Needs of a Conceptual Consciousness (Harry Binswanger) Rand’s Literary Romanticism (Tore Boeckmann) Mayhew, R., forthcoming. Ayn Rand as Aristotelian: Literary Esthetics. In Ayn Rand and Aristotole. J. Lennox and G. Salmieri, editors. Papers pertaining to Rand’s Esthetics Sures, M.A. 1969. Metaphysics in Marble. The Objectivist (Feb-Mar). Seddon, F. 1984. On the Randian Definition of Art. The Free Philosopher Quarterly 2(2):33–36. Husted, J. 1984. Art, Analogy, and Access to the “Sense of Life” The Free Philosopher Quarterly 2(4):106–8. Reedstrom, K. 1995. What Is Art? Is Ayn Rand’s Definition Enough? Full Context (June):9–11. Bissell, R. 1999. Music and Perceptual Cognition. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 1(1):59–86. Kamhi, M., and L. Torres 2000. Critical Neglect of Ayn Rand’s Theory of Art. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 2(1):1–46. Bissell, R. 2004. Art as Microcosm. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5(2):307–63. Minsaas, K. 2005. Mimesis and Expressivism in Rand’s Theory of Art. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 2(1):19–56. Mayhew, R. 2005. Ayn Rand as Aristotelian: Literary Esthetics. Delivered December 29th at the Ayn Rand Society in New York. Rand’s essay “Art and Cognition” includes the topic of music. Concerning this portion of Rand’s esthetics, in 1995 Marsha Enright contributed the following paper to Objectivity (V2N3:117–47). Con Molto Sentimento I. Briefly, Theories of Music’s Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 II. Neuropsychological Data on Language and Music . . . 125 III. Neuropsychological Data on Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 IV. Beyond Neuropsychology to Music as Art . . . . . . . . . 135 V. Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 SUBJECT INDEX for “Con Molto Sentimento” ABSTRACTION; and Concrete Rendition 136, 138 / ART; and Deep Truth 136; Psychological Need for 136 / BRAIN; Cerebral Lateralization of 126–30, 144, 146–47; Information Processing by 126–31 / EMOTIONS 146; and Music 117–20, 122–25, 128–34; and Sociability 124–25; 131–33 / EVIDENCE; Scientific 126–30 / EXPERIMENTS; in Musical Experience 120–23 / EXPLANATION; Scientific 120–24 / HYPTHETICO-DEDUCTIVE METHOD 117–18, 120–23 / INTELLIGENCE; and Musical Cognition 139 / LANGUAGE; and Music 119–20, 125–28; Semantics and Syntax of 119, 126; Sounds 119, 126, 131, 146 / MIND; Abstractive 133–35 / MUSIC 117–47; v. Bird Song 146 / NEURONAL MEDIATION; of Language 126–27, 146–47; of Music 126–27, 130, 141; of Perception 126–27 / OBJECTIVISM 117–18; 135–43 / SUBCONSCIOUS; Preconscious Part of 147; and Thought 147 / SYMBOLS; Iconic 121, 123, 133–34, 136–37, 142–43 / THOUGHT; Inventive 133–35, 143 In 1997 Roger Bissell contributed the following paper on Rand’s esthetics to Objectivity (V2N5:33–65). The Essence of Art I. The Two Valid Concepts of Art . . . . . . . . 33 II. Art as a Tool of Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 III. Cognitive Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 IV. Art, Nature, and Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 V. An Invalid Category: Fine Art . . . . . . . . . 54 SUBJECT INDEX for “The Essence of Art” ABSTRACTION; Conceptual 37–46; and Concrete Rendition 34, 37–46; Emotional 37 / ACTION; and Contradiction 56 / ANALOGY 34–35 / ART 33–65; Essence in 34, 52–53; Fine 54–62; as Microcosm 34, 48–49, 51, 54, 62; and Possibility 47–49; Psychological Need for 41–42, 45–46; without Reference 49, 53–54; Unity in 34, 46 / ASSOCIATION; v. Representation 39–40 / CONCEPTS; and Language 39, 42–44; and Mental Economy 41–42 / CONSCIOUSNESS; Intentionality of 37–38 / DEATH 35; and Possibility of Art 35–37 / EXPLANATION; Unity of 48–49 / IMAGES; v. Concepts 40; v. Percepts 34–35, 52–53 / INFORMATION; Conceptual 41–42 / INTROSPECTION 38 / LIFE; of Organisms 35; and Thought 35–36; Unity in a 35 / LOGIC; as Ideal Reasoning 56 / MIND; Abstractive 34, 37–38, 40–42; Constructive 34–54 / MUSIC 33, 49, 53, 59, 63 / OBJECTIVISM 34–39, 45–46, 50–54, 55–56, 61–63 / PERCEPTION; Existent and Content of 37; Recognition in 40–41 / PHILOSOPHY 45 / REASON; Integrating Perceptions 36–38 / SYMBOLS; Esthetic 40–46; Iconic 37–44; Lexical 37–44 / THOUGHT; Comprehensive 34–41; Discursive 39–44; Inventive 33–35, 46–54 / UNITY; of World v. of Mind 49 / VALUE; Artistic Embodiment of 34, 45–46, 49, 52; Cognitive Instrumental 35–46; Esthetic 51–52; Metaphysical 34–35; Moral 45

John Stossel offers a rebuttal to the idea that Trump "drained the swamp" even a little bit during his first term:Image by Florida Memory, via Wikimedia Commons, license."He made government bigger," Economist Ed Stringham says in my new video. 'That's going in the wrong direction. Looking through a list of agencies, every single one I could see, there were more employees after his presidency than before." Trump added almost 2 million jobs to the federal workforce. He did make some cuts at the State Department, Labor Department, Education Department, and his own office. But total spending under Trump nearly doubled. Some was in response to COVID-19, but billions in extra spending came before. That spending increased the size of the swamp. New programs filled Washington with more bureaucrats. Trump launched a $6 billion "Farmers to Families" Food Box Program to bring food from farmers to families. "Last I checked," jokes Stringham, "we have an industry for that. It's called the supermarket industry. It exists for a reason. Markets are good at getting things from farmer to consumer."I've noted Trump's spending contribution to "Bidenflation" here before, but had not seen other specific examples of his profligacy mentioned until this column. Specifically, I did not know about the two million new federal employees he hired. The welfare state is so big that size can be a proxy for abuse of government -- but only if we remind ourselves of the proper purpose of government, which is the protection of individual rights. We need a government to do that, and it should be no bigger or smaller than necessary for the task. To the best I can tell, Trump's first term included a few marginal -- and often easily-overturned -- improvements on a few things, while, overall, he governed like a Democrat from a few decades ago, to put it charitably. When Stossel says Trump "doesn't understand the source of the swamp," he's understating or missing the problem: Expanding the swamp as he did (and threatens to do again if elected) indicates a stupendous degree of ignorance or indifference about the problem. -- CAVLink to Original

More completely:

Really, how so?

Completely arbitrary assertion (and an example of smearing).

Ayn Rand "Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." Quote right from this forum.

Robert Campbell, an academic psychologist who used to be active on the O-web, wrote about the Skinner / Chomsky wars. One of his points was that Rand was unduly pessimistic, thinking that behaviorism was the leading position as of the early 70s. He also said that Skinner wrote Beyond Freedom and Dignity for a lay audience because he was by then a has-been, no longer taken seriously in his field. (One might say the same of John Kenneth Galbraith.) Ayn Rand and the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology (clemson.edu)

The poster evaluated an individual's self described self observation as an example of a proper result flowing from a proper application of principle, I was suggesting the poster more closely evaluate the source of the report of having achieved a paragon status of rationality.

Once we discover the deductions, yes. But they can be complicated and/or subtle, and difficult to find.

There is a famous refutation of behaviorism, “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior” (Language 35: 26-58, 1959) which appeared in what was at the time the premier scientific journal for linguistics, written by Noam Chomsky. What is relevant to the present issue is that the refutation is not based on advanced technical training and specialized investigations, it is not a scientific refutation, it is a philosophical refutation that the theory is not even wrong. True, there are also footnotes with references to technical scientific literature, but the review is entirely composed of a logical dissection. The essence of the review is a philosophical explication of how the book and the underlying theory is meaningless and unsupported gibberish. Usually, a professional attack on a scientific theory is based on competing science, occasionally as in the review of Verbal behavior, it is based on a philosophical determination that the emperor has no clothes. Being the target of a well-reasoned philosophical attack is shameful for a scientist, which is why such refutations are usually not required. Sometimes, though, they are required yet lacking, and that is when you know that a particular science has devolved into meaningless blather.

So volitional consciousness is the acme or apex of naturally occurring phenomenon, not 'outside' of nature? Your wording seems to leave open the possibility that cancer is evil, but I don't think that is what you intended to express.

Theory is applied philosophy, science is a method to test a theory against reality. Premises are context, they may be incorrect against wider contexts, incongruent when integrated into a wider , or the widest context, but premises aren't/can't be 'out of context'.

First, the Bhopal accident was in 1984, what happens in 2014 is totally irrelevant. Second, the accident was at a Union Carbide plant, and Dow acquired UC only in 2001. Third, UC paid the contemporary equivalent of 100,000,000,000 cents for this. Fourth, the number of deaths in the immediate aftermath was 2,000, not your hallucinated 20,000. Finally, Paul Orrefice had no connection to the accident, at most Warren Anderson might, and in fact Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of the Indian company that was actually responsible, was arrested, tried and convicted for various crimes connected to the accident. Did someone pay you to write this fictitious denouncement of an American hero?

A couple of headlines this morning reminded me of the logical fallacy named above, which Wikipedia reminds us:... refers to several types of arguments that are . Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a personal attack as a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background. The most common form of this fallacy is "A" makes a claim of "fact," to which "B" asserts that "A" has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going entirely off-topic, and hence "B" concludes that "A" has their "fact" wrong - without ever addressing the point of the debate. Many contemporary politicians routinely use ad hominem attacks, which can be encapsulated to a derogatory nickname for a political opponent.The first headline this reminded me of was "Trump: 'Hannibal Lecter Is a Wonderful Man'" at The Hill. Other outlets jumping on the story -- in an attempt to make news out of a word salad/feeble attempt at humor -- added such things as in apparent praise of the cannibal. I am no fan of Donald Trump, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't advocating cannibalism. Just a hunch. My quick read of one was that the above impression on my part is correct, and that this is just another of many hysterical reactions by some of the leftish people who let Trump live rent-free in their brains. I wouldn't put it past Trump to have deliberately done this to provoke such stories so he can go back and smear all such stories as hysterical nonsense, not that Trump hasn't said and done things that merit condemnation. So -- although with Trump, He did it randomly on a whim is an equally likely explanation -- Trump now has a new example of what he can call Trump derangement syndrome in the news media in order to discount more substantial attacks from opponents, if they ever get serious enough to raise them. Trump is an awful officeholder, but a grade-A politician: Whether or not he meant to stir up a hornet's nest, he will not waste a good opportunity to recycle this new ad hominem into one for his own use. People may make outlandish charges in order to discredit what Trump has to say. The fact that they do so does not mean that we should jump to condemn Trump nor does it mean there aren't good reasons to do so. I don't care what he says: I'm taking a walk today. (Image captured from video by United States Senate, via Wikipedia, public domain.)The second time I thought of ad hominem was when I spotted a link to the following headline at the tail end of another news item: "Dr. Oz discusses the many benefits of walking." Having resumed my walking regimen a couple of months ago after our time-consuming interstate move, benefits of walking caught my eye. And then it landed on Dr. Oz. Considering my well-founded low opinion of Mehmet Oz as a medical expert, its should be obvious I have no interest in what he might say on the matter. All the same, just because this quack recommends walking doesn't mean it's snake oil. Realizing that a mindless rejection of walking would be to succumb to that fallacy caused me to make a connection regarding many of Trump's followers, whose approach seems to be trust Trump, regardless of what he says or any past evidence. While ad hominem is usually used to discount an argument because of who is saying it, it can be useful to consider the perils of making a similar error: Taking the source of an argument (alone) as reason to accept it. Just because Dr. Oz says walking is beneficial doesn't mean it isn't. And just because someone you might trust claims to have an answer doesn't mean he does. Leftists do this all the time when they treat the advice of government-sanctioned experts like marching orders (See the last pandemic.) and Trumpists are doing the same thing with regard to their orange savior. To use someone's else's judgement categorically as a guide to action is foolish, and yet accounts for quite a bit of what's going wrong nowadays. -- CAVLink to Original

My guess is that this was done purposely and like not by Gus.

What is wrong with you? What is good for the life of man qua man is the good and what is opposed to the life of man qua man is the evil, and this directly follows from man's nature as a rational being. Why are you even on this forum, let alone the mass of anti-Objectivists also posting. You are lucky that I was demodded for enforcing the forums (appropriate) rules as written and in context.

Science is applied philosophy such as physics or ethics in the same way engineering is applied science. Areas of ideas don't exist as random separated islands, there is a hierarchy of knowledge. What is it with this forum being bombarded from a million different directions by false irrational ideas and strange random assertions all based of floating concepts, out of context premises, etc?

The strike-through text of this post can be corrected by one with editing access. The problem is caused by a keystroke that can be undone.