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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.

Not sure where to point for exposition but I'm sure there are descriptions of the concept of the hierarchy of value(s). "Proper" value seeking in O'ism doesn't necessarily distinguish between values, all values being moral, as 'kinds' more like 'degrees'.

Spam @Eiuol @Pokyt

(At the risk of rousing sleeping dogs) What ever happened to EC? Did his numerous enemies finally get to him?

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There is no colloquial (street-wise) distinction that I've heard of. Asking the average person on the street would likely get you nowhere. All of the online dictionaries and philosophy sites (Stanford, Oxford...) have an entry on the difference. For example: An instrumental value is something that is valued not for its own sake, but because it serves as a means to achieve some other end or goal. A moral value, on the other hand, is an intrinsic principle or belief that guides ethical behavior and decision-making. How does Oism distinguish between instrumental and moral values?

First what is the colloquial, or non O’ist difference?, assuming there is a well established ‘one’ to point to or notion you have in mind.

Thank you! That was very well put! In Oism, what's the difference between an instrumental value and a moral value?

In Oism a value is that which one acts to gain or keep. Colloquially value is understood as intrinsically beneficial , Oism claims a system of discernment of choice is needed to avoid obtaining ‘dis-value(s)’.

No. Not if you mean by "intrinsic value" a so-called value which is wholly independent of any and all valuers. Proposing "life" as holding a place as "value" (which seems reasonable), is OK, however only "life" can value anything, so only by virtue of being valued as a value by a valuer can "life" be a value... which is not independent of all valuers

How do you get from axioms to ordinality?

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).

So Kant was right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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