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Yes that is quite the trick, a little leaky though ,lol, at least in the mammals I’ve known. One of our dogs used to run sleep, and another was a dream yipper. I remember some episodes as a youngster of sleep walking , the last few decades I developed the habit of finding myself propped up on my elbow after have been asleep, surprised I don’t have nerve damage the wrist isn’t designed to be in that position ,lol. Freud is speaking to the content of the movie , I’m still concerned here commenting on the subjective experience.

You'd have to be able to defend it militarily, not only from full-on invasions but also from foreign countries abducting people, or robbing banks, or destabilizing your new country in other ways.

The conflicts over national ownership of land seem to be the most likely cause for World War Three, as opposed to ownership of intellectual property, or unattached property. Land seems to be the most incendiary issue. I have not seen people be willing to die over the right to speak a language, or have they? There are multiple conflicts that can be reduced to a conflict over land, that seem to be painted as conflict over ideology or identity. There is the Ukraine War over sections of Ukraine that one side claims to be theirs. There are the Malvina islands that Argentina and the UK have an issue over. There is the Israel-Palestinian issue. There is the China-Taiwan issue. Greece and Turkey over Cyprus. The Kurdish lands in Iraq and Turkey. And then the China South China Sea and its islands. And many more. Within a nation, when there is conflict over real estate boundaries, you have a court system, deeds, etc. But in an anarchist model, which is the case on the national level, there are no inherent indicators that determine who owns what. The land is not the color of the people or no label stamped on it by God. You have the Israelis being up a multi-century of history. Similarly, Putin brings up the historical relationship. China also claims that Taiwan simply belongs to China, as it always has. There is the idea of the rise of civilizations in history that form a physical boundary And there is also the non-historical idea of "might is right" or balance of power, this land belongs to the one who can keep it by force, i.e. defend its possession. Was the American Revolution, an ideology? Or another example of might is right? On one hand, we cringe at the idea of "might is right" and are proponents of "rights" that go beyond it. But there seems to be an element of potential force and "the will of the inhabitants" included in world opinion about ownership. Gibraltar is not given back to Spain because the population has voted not to join. Crimea separated from Ukraine via vote. Is a vote the final arbiter? Should a country that forms on an island in the ocean declare its ownership of that island by a vote? Meaning without a major power backing it? Or should it be done based on a certain principle? Mixing labor with the land. Antarctica is not inhabited but there is an agreement in place by the powers that be. Is that the proper model? I have seen a disagreement between Yaron and Leonard regarding immigration which seems to be around what entity owns the land that they can cross.

I was using the politician quoting merely as one public token. Another political token of the culture knowing something of Rand would be Obama's reference to "the virtue of selfishness" and his reliance on the public's widespread rejection of such a thing. A Sunday school teacher warding the students away from reading Rand would be a token of her becoming mainstream; I just don't have a public example of it. Protestantism is mainstream without having a politics. There is nothing inherent in Objectivism to take institution of its political philosophy as a necessary condition for rating the philosophy mainstreamed. Philosophy need not be primarily a tool for political aspirations. Aristotle was not championed by the founders of this country, I should say. Objectivism, by the way, is not going to have its Politics comprehensively applied in American culture. What is taken for just under the law changes here, but it is not going to land on Objectivist Politics, entirely coinciding. Not ever, while we are a democratic republic, and when we are not, we are no longer America. One can be successful and happy without the dream of perfect justice being taken for a real possibility. One might continue to march for it only by loving justice, all the same, I imagine.

It is fairly simple. Within a nation, it is determined by the laws of the nation (allowing for jurisdictional subdivisions, for example in the US, ownership of land is mainly governed by state law). A Dutch guy can own property in North Dakota or Peru, and any limits on what he can do with the land are determined by what entity has jurisdiction over the land. The US does not “own” the US (nor does Turkey “own” Turkey), those governments have jurisdicion over their territory. However, the US (government) does own certain pieces of land in the US, just as individuals can own land. In addition, the feds “hold in trust” a larger chunk of land, for example most of Washington state (bastards!). On occasion, there are disputes between nations, for example the NW corner of Kenya known as Ilemi being the border with South Sudan is indeterminate. There is a rock between New Brunswick and Maine which is disputed. Jammu and Kashmir is a famous example. Again, these are not ownership disputes, they are jurisdiction disputes. Hatay province of Turkey is technically in dispute (Syria claims jurisdiction), but it is in fact in Turkey and not Syria, and there are very many people who own property there – under Turkish law. Syria’s claim is more window dressing and they have not pursued the matter in court (the usual way to solve these problems). The other way is to go to war, as in the Indo-Pakistani war, the Ogaden war, and the Russia-Ukraine war. Again, these are not questions of real estate ownership, they are disputes of national jurisdiction. Land ownership remains stable under changing jurisdiction (modulo change in property laws following a change in jurisdiction).

Multinational alliances would need to be in place and acted on for a world war. War between individual nation states usually involve territorial expansion/control as a result or most likely intention regardless rhetoric used by regimes to instigate populations.

That’s an interesting question. A rational being holds that knowledge derives exclusively from reason, but Rand’s concept of reason include sense perception, as well as conceptualization and logic. Perception is non-volitional. A person may be for example physically incapable of hearing a sound above 12Khz in which case there is no question of “choosing to hear”. Or, you may hear but disregard, which is a volitional act. Reason acts on two things, the chosen and the un-chosen, the latter being direct sense perception. Reason is a human faculty, an ability that is part of the mind residing in the brain. Dogs and worms don’t have it, they have something else, even though they have sense perception. Concept formation is 100% volitional. I take that to be so self-evident that it needs no further discussion, but if you disagree, we can pursue that topic. Although logic is vastly more compact than concept formation, I would not claim that it is hard-wired into the human brain, I would claim that it is learned and volitional. Certainly one must choose to apply logic to sensations in deriving knowledge. As you presumably see, 2/3 of reason is volitional, therefore volitionality is a concomitant of rationality. I am satisfied with this as an answer to the question about man on Earth, but it would also be reasonable to ask about imaginary science fiction beings, such as Vulcans. Would we actually integrate other kinds of consciousness into the concept “rational”, if the content of their “faculty of reason” were hard-wired and non-volitional, and if all processing of sense data is automatic (not just bare sensation, but also concept formation and all other aspects of cognition). After all, we historically generalized the concepts “speech”, “arms” and “the press” to accommodate new existents. ChatBot very weakly directs our attention to other imaginable kinds of consciousness, ones where logic is built in and obligatory. Could any living being have a fixed and automatic conceptual faculty? I say no, that by definition, a cognitive system with a fixed and automatic set of concepts is not a conceptual system, it is in fact a fancy form of dog cognition, a closed list of mental groupings.

"Is" comes first, and irreducible. The sequence: metaphysics and epistemology, then the ethics logically following (by necessity), was the unique feat AR performed in her essay. Often - the metaphysics, the general nature of life and specifically man's life and nature, gets left behind or taken for granted. I believe the full justification of rational egoism is weakened. Tad, I thank you for your response. But could you quote my post to alert me? In this forum, by some mutual consent or orders from high, it seems I have been excluded ("canceled"?) from debate.

First a small correction, this is not a debate, it is a position statement. I am not satisfied with the definition of science as being the nature of a subject for a couple of reasons. First, it is based on what turns out to be a problematic concept, namely “a subject”. Second, the bar is set too low, at “study the nature of…”. There is one subject, and the possibility of selective focus thereunder – the universe. The action of studying is not what defines science, science is defined in terms of a goal, which is to gain conceptual knowledge of the subject. “Studying” is one way of talking about the actions that are part of science, but however you define science, it should be in terms of the ultimate goal, and not the means of reaching the goal. I also disagree with the statement that truth is impervious to denunciations or false praise. Why? Because truth is the grasping of the relationship between a proposition and reality, and a consciousness must choose to grasp that relation. Denunciations impede truth, i.e. the grasping of reality. Now, reality is not affected by denunciations and ignorance, and does not depend on there being any consciousness. One view of science is the social majority view: “scientist” is defined according to the criteria set by the majority of scientists. I won’t bother to discuss this since it is patently circular. The second is via analogy and ostensive definition, classically by pointing to chemists and physicists, and saying “and those who are similar”. The third, and I would say best approach, is via integration and differentiation – what specific actions do you want too include, and what do you want to exclude? Some classic problem cases are: mathematics, history, psychology, engineering. Social Justice Warriors and literary critics purport to be seeking the truth, but I would not call them scientists. A very large proportion (probably a majority) of actual scientists do not purport to be seeking the truth, thay are ___ (some other expression, for example “developing a model”, “contributing to knowledge”). In fact, I do not find it useful to focus on criteria for applying the label “scientist”, instead, I would focus on two things. First, the truth of a particular claim. Second, the reasons for accepting the claim. A scientist worth his salt should be not just able to discover a true proposition, they should be able to show that it is true, and superior to alternative propositions.

KyaryPamyu, thank you for these good objections an angles. The dark paintings of Ivan Albright may have been triggered by what he witnessed in WWI. We don't really know. In connection with your hypothetical suffering person, I naturally thought of the actual artist Nietzsche. He suffered so horribly physically all the years he was producing Daybreak, Gay Science, Zarathustra, and beyond, yet his works seem more like motion upward beyond his daily suffering. I'd conclude at least that one's condition and life course does not necessarily settle what from the creator will be important to communicate.

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.

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:

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).

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)

Do you not see the irony? "If we force ourselves to stay within a stringent orthodoxy without adapting to new knowledge, we end up unable to make any scientific insights. Rather, since Objectivism is that which is true, everything grounded in reason and observable reality must be Objectivism." Objectivity is the master framework, not Objectivism. At least, so long as you accept that realism is true. Objectivism does not have a monopoly on philosophical realism. It just has a particular theory of objectivity that you think is true.