John McVey

Not necessarily. Making saving-for-retirement free of government interference would likely just mean a change in the particular vehicles by which people save and invest, and in turn see a movement of capital about the various financial industries. That may mean some people exit those forced-savings programs and invest in stocks directly, or invest via ordinary mutual funds, or not in the stock markets at all (eg in property or bonds). Any changes at that level may lie in the average size of individual trades, alongside the shift two or from stocks in total vs property or bonds or bills, or even reduced rates of saving. What would significantly change the way the stock market works is a change in the listing, disclosure and trading rules themselves. JJM

Information and risk-taking have already been covered so I wont go into those again. What's been left out is the issue of capital formation itself. In the primary market, ie the purchase of new stocks and bonds, the investor is creating value by turning resources into capital. Prior to then, the owner of those resources is entitled to consume them, which is the end of their story. By investing them, however, they are forwarded to the company and are then used to generate goods and services that in turn aid production of more goods and services. By delaying consumption now the investor is creating value by making possible extra production in the future and so earns a chunk of that extra production fair and square, even when that investor is only occasionally checking out what the CEO et al are doing or plays no part in business operations. I think anyone who isn't anti-business will have few problems with the primary market, so I'll leave it at that. What's more problematic for the unitiated is the secondary market, which I will give more attention to. In the secondary market, ie trading of existing stocks and bonds, the investor isn't giving new money to the company but just buying the stocks from previous investors. What value, then, is the second investor generating (besides information and risk-bearing already covered)? Again it comes back to provision of capital, in two ways. The first benefit is that it preserves the company's business capital (ie its buildings, machines, IP, etc) against having to sell some of it to allow an investor to exit. This separation of investor trading of financial capital from company usage of business capital then allows the CEO et al to spend a far greater proportion of their time dealing with operating the company, and also to do so on a longer term basis with less fear of having to sell assets to cover disinvestments. That makes the use of capital more efficient, and keeps the total amount of capital in existence higher than it would be without the secondary market. Together this means more production than would otherwise take place, and so the secondary market investors earn a share of that production because they helped make it possible. As a counterpart of the CEO acting with greater certainty of future conditions, the secondary market also also allows investors themselves to act with greater certainty in getting their money back. This is especially important when the company rules out investors withdrawing capital before a set time so they don't have to deal with partial liquidations. The benefit here is that the increased ease of investor exit reduces the barriers against primary-market investors investing in the first place. That makes then it worthwhile for more people to be primary investors than would be the case, which in turn leads to there being more primary investment total than would be the case. Once again the secondary investors - ie the day traders and Wall Street firms et al - make that possible, and so are in turn entitled to a share of what the companies themselves produce. JJM

Pfft. That alone is the kiss of death for this program's credibility. It's not science, it is naked propaganda. JJM

That topic is the one that got former Harvard president Larry Summers in trouble. According to this article, he offered three theories: time-allocation priorities, IQ distributions, and bona-fide sex discrimination. The first, and most imporant says Larry, relates to time-allocation priorities. According to this theory, getting to the highest levels of academic subjects requires dedication and constant attention to the state of the art as it progresses through the years. Men are more likely to meet this standard than women because women tend to take time out to be mothers whereas men will let the womenfolk take care of that while they stay in the workforce (which includes academia). So, the theory goes, women fall behind and are more likely to give up trying. I have no idea how true the premise is in empirical implementation (ie what proportion of scientifically- and mathematically-inclined women can successfully mix having most of the child-rearing duties left to them while also being a top-flight academic). The second, IQ distributions, was what got him in the smelly stuff. He raised the theory that while average male and average female IQ's are pretty much the same, the distribution curve for men's IQ's is broad and somewhat flat while that for women is more concentrated around the 100IQ mark. According to this theory, the proportion of men with average IQ's is lower than the proportion of women with average IQ's, but as one goes to either side of 100IQ the incidence of women's IQ's falls off much more than men's. By the time one considers very low and very high IQs there are now more men than women. Since the high-IQ range is a major influence on careers in the sciences and mathematics, it follows that, rather than sex discrimination, innate differences as reflected in IQ distributions is the chief explanation these days why there are more men than women at the highest levels of these subjects - which is also mirrored in the opposite end by there being more dumb-ass men than there are dumb-ass women. Other than that I do accept that there are differences in male and female brains, I wouldn't have a clue how true this theory is, but it's out there and taken seriously by seemingly credible academics. The third needs no explanation. While there is no doubt it was a (if not THE) major-league factor in the past, I couldn't tell you anything about the prevalence and relative importance of sex discrimination in modern academia. JJM

Found it - the source of the history I mentioned. JJM

Ultimately, yes, so long as one measures rationally. If you are better off after taking action than you would have been without taking that action, then you have produced value and profited by it. Indeed, look in OPAR p206 to see what Dr Peikoff says about three fundamental questions that set the tone for the whole of the field of ethics (emphasis mine): That theme is taken up again in the section dedicated to the third question, pp229-242, and elsewhere besides. However, that's at the broadest philosophical level, not the economic context Dr Peikoff has in chapter 11 as Haz asked about. His (or, more exactly, Isabel Paterson's) particular context is marketable value, which is a subset of value generally. Yet even so, your example can be an economically-identifiable profit-making venture as well as an introspective philosophical one: Yup. Both philosophically and economically, he has indeed profited if by rational evaluation we can see that value was produced. First, to the extent the value was a consumer value, such as him just wanting something interesting to do for a while, he consumed it at the same time as he produced it. Even without reference to owner-drawings that he spends as income, his net production was the ability to gain certain experiences that were more valuable than what he gave up to produce them, and consumed them by partaking them. The trick is separating the consumption of the experiences (eg enjoying the time spent working rather than at home) from consumption of what it took to enable having them (eg settling accounts payable or doing the books). And, to the extent the value was a producer good, such as an improvement in his trading or business acumen, the market value of the work he can do has increased. Rational employers are interested to know what people have learned from their past actions, including any mistakes - and yes, rational Personnel Dept staff and recruitment agents can and do put dollar values on that. His benefit is thus effectively having a mix of capitalisation of some of the spending he made plus unrealised capital gain, where in this analogy the capital item in question is himself. The profit is measured in terms of total marketable value possessed being higher than what one started out with, not just the cash outlay. I still go back to the "Ultimately, yes" here, because the narrow economic concept of profit is only a particular application of the broader philosophic concept of profit. Rational economic theory requires rational value theory at a level all the way down to even just prior to any ethical theory whatever. That's why I spent so much effort looking at the philosophical meaning of value as a precursor to discussing economic value in the chapter on value in my personal economic grimoire JJM

What's wrong with offering those, at market value, as part of a serviceman's pay? What Steve said. You're confusing the entitlement to vote with the fundamental rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. None of those things will be in doubt. The government will always be bound to abide by all primary rights and protect them of all citizens, irrespective of who does or doesn't have the franchise. Free speech, btw, is not a primary right. It, like the right to privacy (thanks Jenni & David), is only a derivative of property rights. As to the franchise itself, what it's really saying is that those who have it are entitled to direct the body possessing the monopoly on retaliatory force to lawfully turn guns on other people as and when required for justice. As part and parcel of why the propriety of that monopoly arises, the said other people already possessing the franchise have every right to demand proof that a candidate for the franchise is going to abide by those others' rights and have a sound understanding of justice before giving authority to give such directions. Note that this earning of the franchise is not and cannot be a substitute for the people at large maintaining a proper understanding of rights and abiding by them. Prevailing philosophy always trumps existing political institutions in due course, and there's nothing that any system of government checks and balances can do to stop that. If there is no widespread prevailing proper understanding of justice as an ethical virtue then justice as a political principle is hosed, irrespective of whatever a Constitution may say. A denial of a vote does not mean that someone wont have the ability to be heard. A non-voting resident of some electorate would still have the right to complain about possible improper government action to his or ler local member of the legislature of that government, who would then take up the matter by grilling appropriate officers and employees of the executive. Not having the vote only means not having a say in how that member was chosen in the first place. You're missing the point. A willingness to die doesn't automatically translate to know the first thing on how to draft or implement reasonable law. There is no close connection between the two. JJM

Production in this sense means to have created more value than one consumed in the process. The net difference is what you produced. That is, you made a profit in the philosophical objective-valuational sense of the word. Thus as Dr Peikoff notes the two are synonymous, when the context is properly understood. Things are different if by "profit" you have solely the accountant's perspective in mind without regard to the context of value. There are many activities that lead to a net positive accounting profit that aren't production, such as gambling winnings (I'm assuming there's no third party's entertainment involved). Nevertheless, leaving examples like that aside, making an accounting profit (in either an accruals or cash basis) does also mean having produced, even when the producers themselves don't have a clue what it is they actually produced to make that profit (eg ask stock traders what they have produced and many will give you a blank stare). The key is understanding that the primary concern is the net creation of value, irrespective of whether or not a transformation of material is involved. I see. You're confusing "production" generally with the narrower concepts of "gross production" and "net production." Gross production is what you have ended up with, without regard to any other consideration. Gross consumption is what you used up to obtain that gross production. Net production = gross production less gross consumption = profit. When philosophers speak of "production", take that to mean "net production" unless the context specifies otherwise. JJM

The idea of CO2 leading to a Greenhouse Effect is over a century old. Scientists have known about it since before Miss Rand was even born. However, for most of its life it was dismissed by most scientists - until Margaret Thatcher (who was a scientist before she was a politician) raised it to public respectability. She did that as a means to promoting nuclear power (also thereby to smash the coal-mining and power-station unions who had caused such destruction in the UK of the 70's, plus open up facilities to make the cores of Polaris nuclear-tipped missiles) and as means to getting credibility and an aura of leadership over her comparatively uneducated EU peers. When she presented the idea to the EU the politicians there quickly realised it would be a potent weapon in a trade war against the US because it would hurt the US to implement it far more than it would the EU. Europe has a higher population density and hence a lower proportional dependence on oil for transport, plus a higher proportion of electricity generated by nuclear power (especially in France) rather than coal or oil. On top of that, the Germans could get to claim credits for "reduction" by way of replacing the inefficient plants of the recently-reunited former East Germany, so the Germans would barely feel a thing. It got legs from there, taken up by the ecologists who could not now be dismissed by the politicians who had just enabled them. Without pragmatist politics on the backdrop of statist, nationalist and anti-industrial sentiments, GHE would have remained a fringe theory. JJM

I would have said that was subtle if I thought it was deliberate. JJM

I think Heinlein had his priorities reversed in the concrete application of a reasonable principle. The reasonable principle is that the franchise should be earned in some fashion rather than doled out like an 18th birthday gift. In contrast to Heinlein I think that prior earning the franchise should be a prerequisite of being anything higher than a PFC (or equivalents thereof in the other services), and that military service shouldn't count towards earning the franchise. The entitlement to vote should be predicated on demonstrated understanding and acceptance of individual rights, not the willingness to shed blood or to conform to a system that expects public-service as payment for getting the ear of one's government. JJM

I did that up 10 years ago, and haven't updated it in 3. Anyway, it is nonsensical to try to figure out the form of government without basing it on the nature of the relationship between individuals and the members of that government. That includes integrating the nature of rights, individuals' qualifications for franchise etc with the form of government, nature of oversight required, and the details of that government's operation. I'll give you one example for now - that the government gets its authority from the consent of the governed, and exists to serve the governed: I advocate the Congressional system rather than Parliamentary, if by that you mean how the Cabinet is formed. The Congressional method has a strict separation of executive offices (HoS + Cabinet) from legislative offices, while the Parliamentary method has the HoS+Cabinet drawn from the legislature. I advocate the former because it upholds the doctrine of the separation of powers, which doctrine is a critical element in the system of checks and balances. One of the purposes of the legislative body is to provide some oversight on the executive. The concrete means of this in relation to people is that each individual member of the legislature is a representative of the electorate he or she came from. It is the function of that member to bring executive officers to account in response to possible improper action by those officers against the said individual constuents. This is the basis for the legislative body's authority to haul executive officers into their chambers for a what-for session. A Parliamentary system compromises that role in a variety of ways: - it puts the actual cabinet members in a conflict-of-duties situation, that their legislative role is in conflict with their executive role. - the lack of a separate Executive necessarily leads to a Party-based system in order for there to be stability in executive roles - the two combined above leads to almost all legislative members to treat concern for their constituents as vehicles for political promotion (ie toeing the party line in order to get front-bench positions or even just their questions being asked in the chamber), further compromising the checks-and-balances system All this eventually ends up leading to a breach between individual people and their government, that instead of government being for, by, and of the people, government becomes something for, done to and in the name of the people. That leads to an increasing attitude of servant and master with the government as the master prattling on about noblesse oblige. It is no accident that Parliamentary systems are those with a prior history of aristocratic and monarchial rule. At the end of the day, the Parliamentary method opens the door for the erosion of the rights of man, past historical developments notwithstanding. The method wont do it alone (what the constituents themselves will allow plays a critical role), but it makes it much easier to fall into decay. That being said, I am sure someone with a better grasp of the Philosophy of Law could put this better than I. JJM

Check for previous threads on the topics by using the search function or just going back over the contents of the political philosophy and law subforums. Some examples here, here, here, and here. This is my handiwork, drawn from the US and Australian Constitutions plus my own thinking. JJM

I've ran across people with an active contempt for EP, who dismiss it as not even a science. I am too ignorant about the details of EP to say either way or what schools may be within it who might be more rational than others - though my own researches, experiences, and thinking lead me to reject the idea that there are a variety of integrated value-systems inherent in people. What you're writing about is essentially the rejection of the existence of free will, which flies in the face of observable evidence. There is too much capacity for people to change their entire world-views and emotional responses to things, plus the very nature of concepts and value-formation, for the idea of innate archetypes to have any plausibility. Until further notice, I still entirely subscribe to the idea that any developments of any such integrated value-systems are the product of post-myelination experiences and cognitive processing that we are capable of reviewing and replacing if we put the effort in to doing so. My favourite quote from G K Chesterton on the matter sums it up nicely (not exact): I don't believe in a fate that befalls men however they act, but I do believe in a fate that befalls them unless they act. I kinda doubt that I will ever give notice, for that would mean my abandonment of acceptance of volition, which I am not dumb enough ever to do. On top of that, there's a difference between what I happen to think, what other Objectivists far better placed to comment think, and what Miss Rand herself wrote on the matter. For Objectivism, Miss Rand wrote that we have free will, that this is necessary both for concept-formation and value-formation (the two processes are intricately bound up with each other) and as a part of that the emotional responses we have to things are the consequence of what conclusions we have thoroughly integrated and automatised within our subconsciousnesses. We have a certain integrative faculty, and either we take responsibility for the content in that faculty or we will be lead around by others, whether we are aware of that or not. All I have done is take that, verify it for myself as best I could, and expand on it a little. These are more or less true, we do have a certain capacity to perceive, integrate and evaluate, but to suggest that there is a certain content inherent along with the capacity to create that content is a non-sequitur. The physicality of the brain does not intrinsically lend itself to determinism. Rather, our neural capacity gives us the ability to form integrations from perceptual data, but that also requires free will as part of that capacity so as to pick and choose what aspects of percepts to integrate, and later to review those actions. Looking over what you've written, not just in this listing of a point of EP but your whole post, a fair chunk of your confusions stem from equating consciousness as such with exclusively the forefront of one's mind. Objectivism holds that there are two parts to consciousness - the forefront where we have direct volitional control over focus, and the subconscious that is not directly volitionally controllable but nevertheless has an automatised methodology and content built up over time solely arising from what we do in the forefront. What this point 3 is writing about is more to do with the subconscious than the forefront. The nature and operation of the subconsciousness is covered by Objectivism under the topic of "psycho-epistemology." Others are better placed to deal with that than I, there's always the search function for this forum, and there are materials available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore (especially by Dr Harry Binswanger). This is a technical point I know is in error. Different sections may well be earmarked as generally being for such and such processing, but can be retasked to other kinds of processing if the need arises. Dr Binswanger has work on that, too. Even leaving aside the question of the importance of that and its ignoring of the phenomenon of volition, you do realise that this at best would get you back to precisely what I have been saying all along: whatever predispositions are innate will be primitive in nature and very small in quantity? Broadening Undergraduate Education. Sorry, I thought it was a nation-wide term because the federal government mandated them. Last I heard, all Australian university students are compelled to undertake electives totally outside the fields in which we are majoring. I took philosophy, politics and sociology courses. What we feel is the consequence of what we believe. Emotions are lightning-speed evaluators of what is perceived as judged against our automatised standards. The issue, then, is where do the standards come from? Objectivism holds that the standards are formed from what we have come to believe and the methods of judgement we have come to hold as the right ones. One example is in OPAR, and tells the story of six men looking at the same one set of medical slides. Each has wildly different emotional reactions, all stemming from their different beliefs. Another I raise myself (as did Thales of Miletus 2600 years ago, though he had another purpose in mind) is that people have religious beliefs that are totally incompatible with each other and which cannot possibly all be right, yet there are adherents of each who are 100% drop-dead emotionally sure of their own creeds. They took up those creeds as a result of what they accepted without question and occasionally supplemented by their own - obviously erroneous - conclusions. Note further that in line with the first example, from OPAR, people's emotional responses can shift dramatically if they change their beliefs - what would once horrify them or they would be ambivalent to can be totally reversed, in line with them changing their minds about what is the truth. What I mean about responsibility is that we must not accept our emotional responses as inexplicable. Instead, we must first recognise that emotions have understandable causes, and also that we must take charge of the causes - that is, to examine and reprogram our subconsciousnesses as required by revising everything we believe (as and when the need to do so arises). That means figuring out the truth and then making it a part of our being. It's not an easy task, but it is a possible and necessary one. For what you're saying, again that's the issue of the nature of psychoepistemology and the subconscious as dealt with above. That includes the article's own discussion of how we don't explicitly conclude we must stop at red lights or steer around obstacles. For the rest of the article itself it's just dealing with a particular variant of perceptual-level estimation. Nobody here would have any problems with the basic findings from that dot experiment. Miss Rand noted that we get the hang of that in the first few months of life, and the rest is refinement - and likely tied in with hand-eye coordination as some commenters note. This article is just demonstrating that we can get pretty good at eyeballing things with practice. This isn't earth-shattering. It's also saying we do it better like that than trying to make explicit calculations. The most likely answer to that is "the crow" (you'll find where it comes from in ItOE) - we only have capacity to hold yay much in forefront at any given moment, and so my guess is that it's very damn difficult to try to keep all those numbers actively in the forefront, leading to errors. All knowledgeable Objectivist would say "of course" to that. More importantly, however, the article is also showing an error in what the researchers think rationality consists of. Broad rationality is to do with the proper use of concepts and logic, whereas this article is trying to assert that rationality means accuracy in calculation and hence that since we can get pretty damn good at eyeballing we are "more rational" than others have hithertho held. That's where the article falls down. Additonally, note the comments in that thread - orthodox psychology doesn't even accept the existence of the subconsciousness. I've seen the same rejection elsewhere, too. So much for the merit of orthodox psychology. For a detailed answer, yes. The short answer is that we have to pick and choose how we are going to perform the integrations required to go from an array of instances to forming concepts from them, because there are a wide variety of different concepts that are entirely permissible to draw from those instances depending on one's purpose. For example, I can organise an array of geometric shapes to form concepts of names based on number of sides or demonstrate the concepts of regularity versus irregularity, and so on. I have to choose how I am going to approach that array, because neither the array's contents nor my purpose are going to make that decision for me. I also need the ability to detect and correct errors in my approach, plus choose my purpose to begin with, and so on. The prevalence of phenomena like that among human beings is right on the edge of my level of ignorance. I can't say whether or not something like that exists in newborn humans - but I can say (as I have before) that after a certain age any such pre-disposition is entirely volitional, and can be overridden as you say - not just in forefront consciousness but also as automatised in subconsciousness too. I certainly still don't buy into any intricate value-system that lasts for life as an inherent structure. JJM

Hmmm... I think you're right, even if I would make extra emphasis on the arbitrarily-invented part as first occurred to me. JJM

A lot of the commentators there were clearly Objectivists - which apparently included Jack Crawford, Ed Thompson and Harry Binswanger (!). I can't tell from back here what sort of following or influence this Galupo guy has, so what concerns me more is that this article had so few comments. This lead me to wonder why on earth so many heavy-duty Objectivists would want to pile on?? Merely the fact that it is the Washington Times, or should we expect to see a flood of comments over this weekend? At the moment it looks as though there were several RPG rounds used to get rid of a single lame sheep that's riddled with maggots. JJM

That's focussing on the method of obtaining the data about the instances, whereas the differentiae lie in the instances themselves. Existential concepts are concepts referring to something in the external world outside of the mind (which external world includes the brain), while concepts of consciousness are concepts referring to states and processes of the mind (which excludes states and processes of the brain). Yes. A percept in this instance would be observing within yourself an instance of being happy or using logic or focussing your attention on something, and so on. A concept of consciousness is formed when you take a number of commensurate instances and unite them to form the concept of happiness or focus or thinking etc, just the same as is done with percepts of existential objects. No contradiction. The instances you observe would have been real events that actually took place. Further, we are pre-set to be able to have emotional responses (with the triggers being under our longer-term volitional control), so concepts of them are as entirely valid as any external activity. Similarly, so long as you been objective in acting where you had the volitional control to act the observations of what you did in your mind are also objective. The fact that they happened to take place in the same location as the means by which you observe them does not detract from their reality, and hence does not detract from the objectivity of the concepts you form from those observations. An example of what wouldn't be an objective concept of consciousness would be where you arbitrarily invented some meaningless mental practice, observed yourself doing it a number of times, and created a concept for that practice. JJM

Trained in electrical engineering and management, and worked (until this March) as the QC supervisor for a food-ingredients manufacturer. Besides a smattering of introductory BUGE subjects with associated readings, plus Objectivism, my further knowledge of the prevailing schools of psychology is less than yours. My lay-researching of biology is a little more substantial, though hardly in depth as befitting a real biologist. From that, I am totally certain of two sets of facts: I know that evolution is essentially a series of mistakes in replication that were later found to serve the expediency of the moment, and so it is hardly surprising that in addition to the incredible adaptations and breath-taking precision there is also a bucketload of kludgy inefficiencies, structures that would get a first-year engineering student instantly flunked, and legacy systems that once served a purpose but which are now balls and chains with tendencies to muck up the smooth operation of other systems. Whatever exists in the brain from conception and development will reflect that just as much as every other part of the body - hardly material to be taken for granted and held exempt from being questioned! I also know that the faculty of consciousness is real - in particular, that human consciousness is also capable of being volitional and conceptual, where full adulthood consists of volitionally taking total responsibility for conceptual content and values formation, and hence of action to match. The whole point about consciousness in general is to learn about what exists in reality and respond to that with action in more depth and greater timeliness than DNA-programmed action can hope to match. Even without awareness of philosophy I can justifiably look at the concept of innate knowledge beyond the most rudimentary levels with a very jaundiced eye because such a thing would very strongly tend to defeat the purpose of consciousness. With the awareness of philosophy, particularly understanding of what a concept is and how the existence of human volition is essential to their formation and validity, I can dismiss the notion of innate concepts outright as a matter of both philosophical and biological principle. Thus whatever validity the idea of innate behaviours may have will be limited to crude and short-range actions, arising from circumstances that recur so often across many generations that it is safe for DNA to take care of the actions required and that consciousness need not concern itself with them - noting also the above caveat on kludges etc. Any school of psychology that expects to be taken seriously has to begin by accepting those two sets of facts. I automatically dismiss any notion of "higher realms", any hint of mysticism, any notion of a-priori concepts or thinking "through concepts", any hint of considering emotion as a means of telling true versus false, or any other suggestion that runs totally counter to the context of how and why consciousness arose. As something innate to people, yes - how they may develop after birth is another matter. It is much more likely that people, with the same kind of consciousness, beginning with learning the same obvious first-level reasoning skills by themselves and later trained to think with similar methods of thinking (be they rational or not), and facing the same types of circumstances, will draw the same kinds of conclusions that are then habitualised to form integral parts of character. I would not find it at all surprising if there were recurring themes of characters matching these common conditions. Nor would I find it surprising that there is indeed a set of underlying pre-dispositions that are part of the context for those characters. However, those dispositions would not be the bases for complex archetypes but just whatever concrete-bound reproduction-related preferences that came as a legacy of our non-volitional and semi-volitional ancestors. Nevertheless, people can and do change their characters. We are volitional beings. We can go back and revise every single conclusion we ever drew and every single value we have formed since our birth. It takes effort, sometimes a lifetime of it, but we can do it: Objectivism holds that man is a being of self-made soul. The only exception to that will be those crude reproduction-related issues of sexual preference and sexual identity, and there is strong debate about how much is actually innate – off the top of my head that while there's definitely some that's innate I’d say not a helluva lot else is, it being limited to what concrete-level shapes and sounds (ie male or female) someone finds pleasing or otherwise either in another or themselves plus what one can and cannot physically do with one's body. It would be later conclusion-drawing that would expand this into something bigger, and that's within the realm of volitional control. All this is the material for an objective examination of psychology, psychoepistemology, neurology, and so on. I’m not qualified to say more, so I wont. Perceptual-level means cognition of individual objects and actions. Conceptual level means cognition of classes, beginning with classes of perceptual-level objects and actions, and later also cognition of classes of classes. The Objectivist definition of knowledge is: a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation. You’re assuming brain = mind. Objectivism rejects that assumption. The mind, that which actually takes the mental grasp, is born tabula rasa. What the brain can do before the mind asserts full control is a separate matter. Growth as a baby includes the first steps of learning how to assert that control, such as learning to use ones limbs or focus ones eyes, which until then will be acting in ways not fully controlled by the mind. In the interim the mind will be a observer (with decreasing levels of passivity) and the brain will be doing its own thing (with decreasing levels of primacy) – if it didn’t then serious medical intervention would be required, as you note. Over time the mind will be constantly putting two and two together, then using the conclusions to assert control ever more successfully. Some actions that the mind can take control of will remain semi-voluntary, such as breathing, while others will in time become fully voluntary and the original brain circuits involved be deactivated (perhaps physically dissolved, too, but that’s pure educated guesswork). For instance, when was the last time you looked at a woman’s breast and then instantly thought about lunch, or conversely, instantly clapped eyes on the nearest woman’s chest after your stomach began growling? I am of course taking your word for it that a human baby actively seeks out nipples right from birth, as opposed to a nipple being placed in the mouth and the suckling action alone being innate, followed by easy conclusion-drawing and subsequent searching out of nipples. I don’t have children of my own, nor did the young mothers I know breast-feed their children, so I can’t easily check that first-hand. I wouldn’t dismiss it either, since I have seen it and comparable activities in other creatures, such as how barely-formed marsupial infants climb of their own accord into the pouch and hunt for their mothers' nipples within. Brain yes, mind no – not until the mind starts watching what the brain is doing and realising what other bodily sensations are associated with the whole affair. If they existed and were immutable, sure. But they don’t (not as immutable predispositions), so no. As for wanting to be a mother, for example, the widespread and nearly systematic lack of that in almost every western country is becoming an issue, particularly among xenophobes and religious fundamentalists who misuse the data for their own agendas. I think it more likely a lifestyle option that a woman is totally free to choose, which she had been often pressured into doing by others in the past and now (along with reliable birth control) which pressure many women are not experiencing as strongly. The xenophobes et al are going to get more and more shrill in the future, particularly relating to births of "muslim babies". There was a CD-ROM available for a while that had a high proportion of the older Objectivist writings on it. It was withdrawn from sale last year, but I think there might be a new issue in the works if I recall correctly. In the mean time, if you’re lucky you could pick up a second-hand copy. Solely, never. In part, all the time –major examples are choice of career and choice of lover. My point was that emotion cannot tell you what is true or false, and that reason had to take primacy and scrutinise the available options prior to final choice based on which option had the better emotional impact. In all seriousness, I’d pick A. I am not a fan of tropical conditions. I was in Brisbane several years ago and I hated the climate even though it was only August. I’m a dry-heat guy, as the cliché goes. The world knows her as Ayn Rand, not Ayn O’Connor. That’s how she presented herself to the world, so that’s how I continue to refer to her. JJM

I got bored out of my skull after about 6 or 7 paragraphs. JJM

From the BBC. Billy Beck is right - it would take a heart of stone not to laugh Not only are clowns like them opposed to oil tankers, they are opposed to any example of large ocean-going vessel that would be able to rescue them in such weather. And by implication, every modern advance that has gone along with the development of these vessels both directly and indirectly, such as the engine, the radio, modern medical facilities, clothing, food and water storage, and so on. Don't expect these clowns to get a clue, though - the heart-felt thanks they feel wont last long before its back on the activism trail. JJM

They're equivocating on the word, conflating "to make use of" with "to take unfair advantage of." What they're on about is the claim that we are using up resources faster than nature is producing them. I've seen books that have suggested that Marx's prediction of the immiseration of the proletariat that would lead to revolution has been delayed because the immiseration has been perpetrated upon nature instead. Thus instead of the communist revolution and the taking over of industry by the proletariat what's now going to happen is the communist revolution and the elimination of industry along with return to a pre-industrial living that is then taken over by a now less urban proletariat, blah de blah blah. Old-school industrial Marxism is dead, replaced by watermelonry. Natural recycling of key resources from our wastes, particularly air and water, with the rear brought up by things such as replenishment of soil fertility, etc etc. Water issues are increasingly becoming more newsworthy - the major wars of the future will be related to access to water, so it is said. There's heaps of examples, some of which are legitimate (which these people are banking on to gain credibility). Do AGW and rising ocean levels ring any bells? All that prattle about hurricanes increasing in both number and strength? Overfishing (eg see the excuses of the Somali pirates and their apologists)? Hillside forest clearing leading to mudslides? General rainforest clearing and the inability of such soils to last more than a few years before becoming almost infertile? Desertification? Rising salinity? Soil erosion in general (both sheet and gully)? And so on. JJM

Kira. Hmph! *scritchyscritchy* No more christmas-cards for YOU! JJM

I'm sure the ARI will re-activate the Campaing Against Servitude before too long. I have no doubt that the wheels would have started turning on this the moment Obama mentioned it in speeches, if those wheels ever even stopped at all. The last time around the ARI was offering itself as a place for young Objectivists to serve out their penance-for-ability. This time it could be a much bigger program, which besides helping more kids avoid the indoctrination would also be a good vehicle for publicity both for anti-servitide campaigns in particular and Reason-Egoism-Capitalism in principle. JJM

I don't have much exposure to a wide variety of music, but nevertheless off the top of my try these instrumentals: Helloween: "Malmsuite in 1001 D-Doll" (on the album "Master of the Rings") Ayreon: "Chaos" (on the album "Universal Migrator Part 2 - Flight of the Migrator", which is my favourite album among my whole collection.) JJM

That's hard to interpret just from this passage in the interview alone. OTFOI she's distancing herself from the whole concept of urges, but not so far as to totally deny their existence outright. That would be understandable, as she already laid out in The Objectivist Ethics the existence of innate perceptual-level values and behaviours that are programmed into other animals. Given the content of The Objectivist Ethics, perhaps, but I can't really speak for her. For myself, however, to the extent that the concept of urges (which was not defined) is legitimate, yes that's how I would look at the issue. We have varying levels of energy and varying qualities of how it is felt, and so on. Those I'd call urges: we can have urges we later identify as sexual passion or anxiety over particular circumstances, appetites for food in general or certain types of food, and so on. But while we have them and can easily separately them on the perceptual level, that does not mean having a clue what they mean on the conceptual level or knowing what to do about them. I am sure, however, that in many cases it is fairly easy to put two and two together after enough experiences of different contexts - after all, that's a fundamental part of what a conceptual consciousness is set up to do. A drive, OTOH, implies a whole integrated course of action requiring complex motions over a considerable time frame that one is determined to follow without knowledge of why we are so driven. It's like those bizarre cases of sleep-walking that can even include conversations, except more complex than that and drawn out over longer time frames and which there is no waking up from. I am sure these things happen from time to time, but they're freaks and extreme oddities caused by unusual circumstances (often psychoactive drugs, but not exclusively so). They do not have the kind of significance in philosophy that the interviewer in the Playboy article is trying to suggest (who is basically just reporting what specialists in the universities etc are preaching). They are about as relevant to general ethical conduct as life-boat scenarios. I think a major part of the problem is equivocation over the word "knowledge". To be knowledge, it has to be held in one's actual consciousness and explicitly used as an item in cognitive activity. This is a whole different phenomenon from there being a small repertoire of genetically pre-programmed cue-driven reflexes and behaviours that implicitly take the existence of things for granted without going so far as to say the DNA sequences responsible confer explicit awareness of either those things or the connection between the behaviour and intended outcomes in relation to those things. The macro-level consequences of that programming is no more "knowledge" of what is taken for granted than we are born knowing what ATP is merely because most of the cells in our body are set up on the presumption of the use of that molecule. Notice how easy it is to trigger the same behaviour by other objects, such as the rubber nipples for bottles or pacifiers (or more humorously, I saw a series of pictures of a mother holding her toddler son on her hip while in a museum, standing next to a bronze statue of a nude woman which the boy then tried to nurse from!) Would you then suggest that the suckling behaviour that makes this possible then implies innate knowledge of rubber (or bronze)? Obviously not. Thus I don't doubt that part of our programmed behaviours include suckling motions, but they still do not in any way translate to a baby knowing what a nipple actually is nor of the connections between it, drinking the milk, and hunger pangs (which Miss Rand identifies). Your friend would not have to teach her sons how to suckle (nor would they have to be taught how to identify a human face, nor how to do a number of other concrete-level things) - but one day they will have to learn what women's breasts are actually for even despite themselves once having been-there-done-that. Another part of the problem is the blowing WAY out of proportion of the importance of these repertoires in human affairs. Miss Rand never denied the repertoires existed. Quite the opposite, in "The Objectivist Ethics" she notes that many animals have nothing but those repertoires, each set being specific to the type of creature possessing it and which are crucial part of the identity that creature as that type of creature. After that, the "higher" an animal's scope of consciousness the less proportion of total lifespan is spent relying on the functioning of those repertoires to obtain its needed values. The animals with the lowest level of conscious functioning can go through their whole lives using nothing but their genetic repertoires, cued by sensations of the moment. But as we look at animals with progressively more sophisticated consciousnesses we find that the "higher" the creature's level of consciousness, the lower the importance the behaviours have for the successful living of a creature as that creature in adult form. Remember that the whole point of consciousness is that it can allow the possessor to adapt to changing circumstances far faster than DNA can. The repertoires of behaviour exist as means of a creature tiding itself over (so to speak) in early childhood until consciousness gets up to sufficient speed. When we qua biologist finally get to us humans as members of the animal species Homo sapiens sapiens we find that the actions in our own repertoires are but a miniscule part of things we can do, and ceased to be important (in normal healthy people) at an early age. As adults, not only is the repertoire small and unimportant but the vast majority of what we do - which includes all of that which defines as as humans - has to be painstakingly learned from scratch. Thus when we qua philpsophers get to us humans as instances of the concept Man we are totally justified in saying that the repertoires are not of any importance at all to philosophy, and so they have no business being introduced into a discussion of codes of values as appropriate to man qua man. The code of values Miss Rand speaks of are those we have actual awareness of and are operative in the evaluative part of our consciousness as grown adults possessing fully-developed versions of a certain kind of consciousness: one that possesses volition and the capacity to form concepts, where man's code of values is itself also conceptual in nature. A baby's consciousness is not yet functioning anything like an actual man's - and it is the content and function of a man's consciousness that this whole innate-knowledge and innate-values debate is about. Notice that the innate-knowledge crowd is to try to insinuate that there are conceptual-level codes of values and moral principles that are to be exempted from rational scrutiny, all at the level FAR removed from the concrete-bound level of our babyhood repertoires. Primitive behaviours are not knowledge and do not translate to any built-in concept whatever, thus this code of values appropriate to us qua men excludes any reference to our non-conscious baby behaviours. So, Miss Rand is entirely correct: on the conceptual level, which this the level that this debate deals with, we begin with nothing: no knowledge of values, no knowledge of the meaning of the sensations we feel within us, and no knowledge of what to do in response to them. No, it's not a special case, and yes genetics can influence behaviour. As already noted, other animals and the very young even among humans depend on that to survive, as your own nipple example demonstrates. To go on, it is also increasingly being found that some problems previously though psychiatric are actually either genetic or neuro-developmental. The issues is whether any of this consitutes knowledge and innate values, and whether that has any relevance to what constitutes an appropriate code of ethics and moral principles. The answer in both cases is no, because they relate to primitive-level behaviours that once might have had proper context for our mammalian or reptilian ancestors and NOT to us as beings possessing conceptual consciousnesses. Further, in application to the particular context of the Playboy interview, there is no innate propensity for a man to run after sluts or whatnot, but there is considerable amounts of evidence that the general matters of sexual preference and sexual identity are often built in either by genetic predisposition or physical development of the brain as influenced by exposure to hormones at key stages. Perhaps other knowledgeable people here could provide information on the first (and there are probably a pile of threads on this board about it), and for the second Zoe Brain's site is a treasure-trove of both proper medical citations and personal anecdotes. So, in sexual preference for example, while a man may be innately bound to prefer women or men in general, that does not say anything thing about the kind of person interests him other than the gender of that person. That's not quite correct. What is rejected is the blind following of one's emotions and the treatment of feeling as a means of cognition. Life presents us with a great many options. We use our minds to narrow the list down to what is viable for us in our own particular circumstances - but application of reason does not mean that it is always possible to narrow the list down to contain one item! When our reasoning thus gives us a short-list of a number of equally acceptable options we are then perfectly free to pick the one that we most feel like doing. There's nothing non-objective about this procedure. This is that urges v drives issue again. General energy levels and temperament are at least partly included in our genetic heritage (but I couldn't say for sure). To varying degrees we all want excitement and ecstasy - we have a need to experience value, and the more the better. A fair chunk of that is naturally going to include a physical component in our pleasure-pain mechanisms as part of our pre-human heritage, including the old "getting the juices flowing" thing. It is dead easy to associate that need with the ability to get up and do something in particular about that need, with the what and how set by personal experience as already described. This is of course rough'n'ready off of the top of my head, and your best bet would be to ask someone knowledgeable in psychology such as Dr Ed Locke, Dr Micahel Hurd, or Dr Ellen Kenner, and so on. JJM