StrictlyLogical

It's ironic but unsurprising, to see how those calling loudest for government support, welfare, etc. have the lowest opinion of human nature. Especially, rational and free "human nature". To them a society must have forced 'charity', and 'kindness' - aka taxation - when, left to one's own devices and free choice, it's certain there'd be more disposable wealth and a much greater benevolence to the needy by the rich - even from the less well off. They know this, I think, but their altruism demands force be applied, negating individual freedom, or goodwill to men.

Atlas Society’s Instagram … 

Classic instance of fallacy of "the stolen concept".
"..is the fallacy of using a concept [e.g. free will] while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) [free will] on which it logically depends."
Takes a free will to deny free will.

@hedonic I just noted this disturbing remark you made in reply to David. I don't mean distinctively disturbing to folks abiding in the Objectivist framework; I mean disturbing for its being so contrary contemporary research on animal intelligence. 
I do not get your immediate inference from cognitive levels to bearing rights. Rights are sensible lines by which violence between humans can be made small and their prosperity can be made large. Rights are a human-to-human thing. We have crows at my house. We leave them alone since they are not damaging anything and any ugliness in their calls is compensated by the entertainment value they bring to the scene. We don't need to be making contracts with them, or charging rent, and truth be told, they do not have the cognitive powers for such things.
 

I would reframe… is ANY philosophy, any form of knowledge, and any morality or ethics rendered pointless for you to try to pursue or act upon if you actually have no free will?  And to be more specific, if you actually have no free will why bother pretending to choose to reject or accept Objectivism or any philosophy?

SL, I understood the OP to be simply questioning the Randian view of human nature and thinking it at odds with a view informed by human evolution. (Perhaps not very well informed, and perhaps not even very interested as it turns out.)
Unfortunately, there has been no response from hedonic, and I incline to think now that this OP was just another of those posts generated from AI resources for the amusement of the perpetrator in sending us into spending time digging and talking to nobody. I'm going to stop now, making any responses to newcomers until some evidence accumulates that they are a real person sincerely wanting to talk to real people here. I know I'm a little paranoid now about what appears anywhere online these days. Evaporation of online trust was one of the near-term effect predicted by Hinton, AI guy (among other distinctions), as I recall, when he left Google. 

I have my copy and am reading it. 

Very enjoyable and it may be quite refreshing for some Objectivists who have rationalist, intrincisist, or utilitarian leanings... for me it reinforces much area I had explored previously including here on this forum. 

When I finish it I will give my thoughts.

The OP claimed the "species" as some kind of whole or collective IS aggressive.  That Objectivism was not directed to the species but only some heroic fantasy representation of it. This indicated to me an implicit collective "we" perspective of thought ... as a hammer see everything as a nail, I sensed an attitude that assumes "Objectivism" is just another "ism" meant for US... (the central planners, utopians, coordinating types frame everything, ethics, politics, and society in this vein... WE need something to make US better, selfless, obedient etc)  I was attempting to nudge this person to understand, that NO indeed, this is not a central planners guide to utopia for some collective, not a prescription for any US, not  even humanity, or the species,
it is a font of truth  for everyONE, anyONE, each ONE of us who wishes to understand and to live.

I inadvertently failed to include the important factor that the mortal being is one "with free will".
So:
Flourishing is the heroic act of a mortal being capable of thinking and acting on his own free will.
 
Whether or not statistically speaking one may claim "humanity" IS some percentage this or that... unheroic, criminal, insane... this does not of necessity say anything about any particular person .... as individual beings with rationality and free will I am the author of my own soul and am responsible and responsive to determine my life's path from all the possibilities within my power.

Objectivism does not correspond with or concern itself with "humanity" or the species.
It is to be understood through the lens of individuals. 
Flourishing is the heroic act of a mortal being capable of thinking, it is also firmly embedded in the possibilities and eventualities of the reality of leading one's life.  As such Objectivism is about reality and nothing else.

Namaste
 

@Boydstun
I think you have implicitly identified (yet another) false dichotomy, a "you" - "us" dichotomy as the foundation for the "good".
I do not claim that you explicitly hold this as part of your philosophy, only that my understanding of it, points in this direction.
Polarized concepts such as "the one" and "the group" dominate the discussion of ethics.  On the one hand selfishness, on the other collectivism (or a sort of arithmetical utilitarianism).  When pushed to recognize the issues with such a choice, the response is often a sort of "through one approach ... the concern of the other is answered" and we thus have the claims of "other people being a value to a selfish person" as well as "the individual plays a pivotal role in the collective", and that although both benefit, really seeing only through one lens has importance or primacy.  But the stark sense of a binary and forced choice is kept. 
The concept of the good traditionally is either based on the good for "You" or for "Us".
 
I find in your writings a different nexus for the good, neither wholly in "you" or "us" but in the recognition that the ultimate good IS in both, and that (perhaps ironically for you) NO sacrifice need be made from either to the other.  Ironically also Rand touched on an economic version of this in the trader principle and the concept of building wealth, i.e. a win-win between atomistic agents... but this did not carry over to any direct win-win relationship between an individual and society or others.
What I am hearing is that You (and We) can go forward recognizing that every moral choice (by groups and individuals) can be aimed at the flourishing of both, and that the responsibility being centred around each individual and society at large, not only is the "one"  and the "many" protected in every sense, so too is the "one" and the "many" responsible for the other.  The relationship of the "You" and the "Us" flourishes as a result of both individuals and society flourishing.  [I note, this does not negate the alternative of life versus death, without individuals a society dies and without society, others, loved ones the individual cannot flourish.  Also, implies no sacrifice of any individual and no sacrificing of the group or others.  As such, predation on any one or the many is immoral.]
 
It seems that in every moral consideration, it cannot be just about me or just about others, and so it can never not be about me or not be about others.

 
 

@Boydstun
I think you have implicitly identified (yet another) false dichotomy, a "you" - "us" dichotomy as the foundation for the "good".
I do not claim that you explicitly hold this as part of your philosophy, only that my understanding of it, points in this direction.
Polarized concepts such as "the one" and "the group" dominate the discussion of ethics.  On the one hand selfishness, on the other collectivism (or a sort of arithmetical utilitarianism).  When pushed to recognize the issues with such a choice, the response is often a sort of "through one approach ... the concern of the other is answered" and we thus have the claims of "other people being a value to a selfish person" as well as "the individual plays a pivotal role in the collective", and that although both benefit, really seeing only through one lens has importance or primacy.  But the stark sense of a binary and forced choice is kept. 
The concept of the good traditionally is either based on the good for "You" or for "Us".
 
I find in your writings a different nexus for the good, neither wholly in "you" or "us" but in the recognition that the ultimate good IS in both, and that (perhaps ironically for you) NO sacrifice need be made from either to the other.  Ironically also Rand touched on an economic version of this in the trader principle and the concept of building wealth, i.e. a win-win between atomistic agents... but this did not carry over to any direct win-win relationship between an individual and society or others.
What I am hearing is that You (and We) can go forward recognizing that every moral choice (by groups and individuals) can be aimed at the flourishing of both, and that the responsibility being centred around each individual and society at large, not only is the "one"  and the "many" protected in every sense, so too is the "one" and the "many" responsible for the other.  The relationship of the "You" and the "Us" flourishes as a result of both individuals and society flourishing.  [I note, this does not negate the alternative of life versus death, without individuals a society dies and without society, others, loved ones the individual cannot flourish.  Also, implies no sacrifice of any individual and no sacrificing of the group or others.  As such, predation on any one or the many is immoral.]
 
It seems that in every moral consideration, it cannot be just about me or just about others, and so it can never not be about me or not be about others.

 
 

My Ethical Theory and Rand’s
Perception of mind-independent existence is fundamental to human consciousness, though not the whole of what is fundamental in human consciousness. “Existence exists, we live.” The act of grasping that statement implies that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
No one understanding the statement “Existence exists,” whether uttered, signed, or written, has such an occasion of consciousness without co-referential history and ongoing context of his or her language and intellectual community. The reader is not without the writer, and the thinker addresses a standing audience of others, however unspecified, as well as self. Co-reference precedes the one-word stage of language acquisition, and ever after the acquisition of language, the standing suitability for co-reference attends every thought that something is the case. Co-referential potential of thought, and the mutual recognition of intentional being that requires, is a condition of one’s existence as a thinker in language. Indeed, pronominal other person is in and with oneself as existence is in and with oneself. In one’s conscious and subconscious existence is resonance with existence in general, resonance with living existence, and special of the latter, resonance with other person.
“Existence exists” is registration of existing among other existents. Further, the act of grasping the statement “Existence exists,” I observe, implies performance of and grasp of acts, not only acts of consciousness, but acts of living body. There are no acts of and grasps of consciousness without acts of and intentional grasps with one’s living body. There is no grasp of the externality of existence to subject without grasps of externality to one’s body. If one observes one’s consciousness, one is acquainted with one’s living body and one’s actions with it. Moreover, one knows in any episodes of post-linguistic observational consciousness others of one’s acting and conscious kind. Then too, one had always (in a practical sense of always) known Mother or other caregiver.
“Existence exists, we live.” The act of grasping that statement implies that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
There is normativity in that most basic metaphysical frame (mine, not Rand’s). We are given, dedicated to grasping reality in awareness concerted with other and in coordinated acts with other. This is automatic animal engineering-performance-norm of operation. We are given, already loving truth, truth-getting, act, self, and other.
With later education, we learn that life ends, that it requires maintenance, and in our human case, that it requires production and education and social cooperative conventions. We learn that those means to life require a waking state and adequate sleep. Going beyond the original grasp of life in breath and cry and suckle, learning more of life and its requirements requires some focused effort. The plenty and exuberance of human life of today required individual creativity, initiative, and freedom coordinated at the large social scale by moral- and rights-constraints on treatments of others.
Human moral life arises in the milieu of learned character of life, all within and ever with the basic frame “Existence exists, we live.” In learning life beyond the basic knowing, we can grasp the concept of “alternative” mined by Ayn Rand: Only with advent of the ends-getting organized matter that is life do alternatives enter nature.
I observe, in addition: We say that when we've got the accelerator on, a given electron is either going to encounter a positron or not. That saying is true to nature, but it, unlike identity, is not something in nature independently of a striving mind. Either-Or, I wrote in "Existence, We", is based in identities in nature, but is only in nature where living systems are in nature facing nature. That is, the Law of Excluded Middle for thought rises as high-animal mind rises by organic evolutionary layers on vegetative neuronal control systems of animals. The electron will either encounter a positron or it will not, but the electron does not face an alternative of continued existence or not. We see the possibilities, but the electron, unlike a living cell, does not face them. We and all living things face the alternative of continued existence or not, and from that fundamental alternative, all alternative is born.
In moral life, we elect to keep life going, including to keep going life known in the basic frame. Once we have the developed powers, we elect to keep thinking, coordinating, creating, and producing. The moral virtue of truth-telling is rooted in the basic frame, constantly at hand. Life known in the basic frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specs. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves.
Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves.
The preceding is my proposal for a biological basis of distinctly moral proprieties. As with Rand’s, in my proposal, biological operations as they resulted in the course of nature on earth resulted in such things as needs and functions coming into the world. It is upon the organization that is life and its character we have the fact upon which oughts can have objective ground. Functions had come into the world before humans emerged. We and our ancestors were each of us functioning, more and less well, at any stage of our existence.
Famously, for part of Rand’s ethical base, she characterized life in complete generality as self-generating and self-maintaining. This she took from standard biology along with the findings that all organismic life is cellular the findings of ontogeny and of evolution from Darwin to the present. It is quite true that self-generation and self-maintenance are features of any life. Even if we humans become creators of life from inanimate matter, our success will mean that we created means for the appearance of matter organized such that it is self-generating and self-maintaining. We are relying on that character when we plant, water, and fertilize crops, even if we only dimly notice that the crops do the growing themselves and possess various ranges of adaptability themselves under changes in surrounding conditions.
That living things have functions in their subsystems to the preservation and replication of the whole organism and that living things have powers of self-generation and self-maintenance might better have some elements such as growth drawn out more, but I’ll stay with Rand’s broad meanings of self-generation and self-maintenance. Notice that these steps are not necessarily only suited for a ladder to ethical egoism.
To be a fair characterization of life in general, we must understand “self” in self-generating and self-maintaining in a broad and indeed rather shifty way. Overwhelmingly, life gets started from life. Other life. Self as individual organism and self as its species work back and forth for continuation of those two selves. An individual life can be just a quickly disposable trial tool in the function of preserving the species, although overall, the species requires individual organisms. Of course.
I stress that functions are operating in each one of us in all one's ontogeny. Rand noted that the pleasure-pain mechanism of the body is the progenitor of what is joy and suffering in organic elaboration and that all of those are indicators for good or evil for life of and proper functioning in the individual animal, including humans. I stress that it is not only other animals in which all of that is part of its overall individual control system. Our high-level, socially instructed conscious control system in maturity remains tied to the automatic one still running.
Rand centered on a choice to live in the case of human life. I think that element is better characterized as a choice to continue living. And that means continuing to pursue the facts and the coordination with others in that pursuit. Rand has it that rationality is our overarching method for getting the facts and making good uses of them. That is fine, but I contest the picture in which one was just going along alone rationally pursuing the facts and how to use them and then as it were noticed, secondarily, that the existence of other people is enjoyable, knowledge-boosting, and economically advantageous.
The higher intelligence of humans does indeed have launchings spontaneously in individuals. Young children will spontaneously seriate a group of rods according to their lengths; none of our closest primate pals do that. But we have been in intelligent human company all along our individual active existence, from precautions and playing to learning common nouns, proper names, verbs, classification, and predication. Rationality is profoundly social in one from the get-go, even as its acquisition by each person consists in individual facility in its operation independently of direction from others and self-direction in seeking information or in seeking specialized skills from others.
Rationality is seen by Rand as the basic moral virtue because it is the necessary general operation needed for the human form of life. She takes the other virtues in her ethical system to be salient strands of rationality aimed at individual survival. I say, rather, that rationality is the given proper being of a human and the proper responsiveness to persons, other and self. Rationality is the grand means of human survival, as Rand held, but that is not the whole of its story.
Rand had proposed that the virtue of rationality is not only virtue in a social setting, but virtue—main moral virtue—for a castaway on a deserted island. This is because in the isolated setting rationality is necessary to the individual’s survival. That is so, however, I say that enabling survival is not the only source of the goodness of rationality. There is a person on that island: the castaway. Rationality is proper responsiveness to and continuation of his self. It is call of life in that life form that is his personal self that is the distinctively moral in the virtue of rationality for a castaway.
Though the castaway carries along other in foundational frame, he is now the only human present. He is an end-in-himself with much rightness to continue himself. (A pet might go a ways for fulfilling the need to love and interact with another human self.) Returned to society, an individual remains an end-in-himself rightly making his life, a fully human life with interactions and mutual values and interactions with the other ends-in-themselves that are human selves at centers of making lives.
Ayn Rand offered an ethical egoism in which rationality took its place as central overall virtue for a person due to the need for rationality in making one’s reality-according individual human life. She tried to weave the prima facie virtue of truth-telling to others as a derivative of the need to be honest with oneself about the facts. That is not plausibly the basic reason one wants to and should want to be honest with others. Rand’s account of honesty is inadequate by reliance on a purely egoistic basis. Ethical egoism, a genuine one such as hers, one attempting to derive all its moral virtues purely from self-interest, is false. It rests on an inadequate view of what is the constitution of the human self.
Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending.
The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue. One failing to have it is in human failure, including moral failure.
Although my account builds on a social nature of human individuals running deeper than social nature as characterized by Rand, I land in much agreement with Rand on general characterization of life as self-generated and self-maintaining action and as teleological action (even for vegetative actions such as gravitropic plant roots) and with life as the phenomenon among existents with which such things as function, needs, alternatives, problems, and solutions enter the world at all. All of those features are in stark contrast to inanimate matter in our ordinary experience and as in our modern science. In the case of human selves and lives, all of those glories are reached in coordination with others, living or long deceased, and humans have greater choice than other animals in shaping longer arcs in their lives. As with Rand's ethics, Rationality remains the overarching human virtue, although, into my reasons for that there is not only the instrumental value of rationality (solo and in cooperation) for successful continuation of life, but the inherent value of rationality to human self and life, including joint participation of rationality in lives and selves. Rationality is inherently self-directed, so independence in a social environment (in thought and in making a life) remains a virtue, as with Rand. Creativity and productivity and integrity and benevolence and voluntary association are also part and parcel of my broadened notion of rational human nature.
There is an additional distinctive feature in Rand's general characterization of life I'd like address: Life is an end in itself. I endorse that characterization also, although what constitutes individual human life is deeper in its connections to others, than in Rand's characterization of it, and that is so, even though in maturity choice is a factor in which relationships are instituted. Rand had the circumstance that life is an end in itself in a beautiful dual role in her ethics. (i) Directed to one's general moral conduct in all circumstances, it has one rightly treating oneself as an end in itself; self-interest is the ultimate criterion for any decisions or actions. (ii) Directed to one's conduct towards others, Rand adds that they too are ends in themselves and that conformance to individual rights correctly has each treated as an end in himself and makes possible each continuing self-direction all together in coordination.
The second (ii) is correct within my system. The first (i) is not, because self-interest (or other-interest) are inadequate moral criteria stemming from inadequate understanding of human nature.
Life known in my basic metaphysical frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specifications. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves.
Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves.
Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending.
The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue.

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

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).
 

I second that.

"Publish" it here in a new thread, they seem to be unable or not willing to block your access to this site.

Boydstun, I think in the spirit of your personally being “not purely egoist”, you might consider it important to sketch, if only in broad strokes, the bones or main structure of your ethics (which you deem are on a solid footing) in a sort of “introduction” which you might be able to expand upon if the finitude of life’s span permits, but which nonetheless represents the unwavering unshakeable base you have already formed, and upon which any remaining  more detailed formulations and expositions are to be made.  I propose a sort of ITBE (Introduction to Boystun’s Ethics) even if only in essay form, but possibly of any length or of any title, again in the spirit of how crucial the philosophy of ethics is and your being “not purely egoist”.  

Boydstun, I think in the spirit of your personally being “not purely egoist”, you might consider it important to sketch, if only in broad strokes, the bones or main structure of your ethics (which you deem are on a solid footing) in a sort of “introduction” which you might be able to expand upon if the finitude of life’s span permits, but which nonetheless represents the unwavering unshakeable base you have already formed, and upon which any remaining  more detailed formulations and expositions are to be made.  I propose a sort of ITBE (Introduction to Boystun’s Ethics) even if only in essay form, but possibly of any length or of any title, again in the spirit of how crucial the philosophy of ethics is and your being “not purely egoist”.  

I think many in the world are pivoting away from old conflicts defined in terms of polar opposites which are not at play right now as they once were.
When the world is seen as filled with mostly "good" cultures and societies which generally value peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone... the philosophical quibbles over just what the good is and why, and how best to achieve it can be real and indeed can be very contentious and stark:  Atheism versus Religionism, Capitalism versus Socialism, but in the end they are not existentially and urgently crucial.
Christians have been quite harsh on "heretical" or "heathen" thinking for quite some time and the vehemence with which the Atheists "rebelled" against Christianity, religious and mythical thought is quite breathtaking.  But over recent times I think many feel that the animosity between generally good people over these issues is rather small potatoes.
For the world is now seen as having a sort of "thing" working in the background, of people whose motive is sheer political and economic power, whether governments and bankers or oligarchs and powerful families etc. or all of them... it possesses an unmistakable "evil" culture which does not value peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone... instead valuing those for some: personal friends and family, and are happy to "pay the price" of consigning everyone else to their antitheses : war, authority, isolation, misery and death.  
What point is there to fight over just exactly what good is and how to get there when a faint but clear harbinger of cultural evil.... atheist non-moral anti-human post-modern evil that is arising.  Whether or not consciously emerging from the nexi of power, or whether unconsciously emerging in the psychology of culture which has lost the basis of its morality and has not discovered objectivism, the inhuman evil is now at work here. 
 
It makes sense for those that hold humanity, human life, individual life and liberty in high esteem to band together for humankind.  It has been happening.
 
Craig Biddle debated with Denis Prager a few years back putting forth the position that they should not fight... Prager at that time was stuck in the mind set that he must scare people back into religion with the bromide "without religion morality is impossible"... as if membership in the good camps was more important than sheer numbers of good people.
Richard Dawkins has announced that he is an "Atheist Christian"... quite a claim to unpack but nonetheless one which is symbolic of a real spiritual and mental alliance ... good people who still value humanity and life on earth as free individuals with peace, autonomy, family, life, happiness, for everyone, NOT just some people, should and will come together.
 
Of course the "thing"'s activity in sowing divisions is accelerating, men against women, blacks against whites, left against right, atheism against religion, Christian against Muslim...
 
Christians citing Objectivism and Objectivists reaching out to good religionists is a good thing and all individual human loving people need to come together.

Yeah.. MAGA is a cult

No. Although Rand may have had a view here or there that suggested dualism, her general metaphysics and biocentric ethics and psychology would not be consistent with dualism. At least not in the sense of dualism as usually meant: of some sort of fundamental dichotomy of the physical and the mental.
Rand did not have a fundamental dichotomy between the inanimate and the animate, even though the latter has a profoundly different character than the former. Living systems can have even the feature of non-intentional, non-conscious teleological causes of individual life cycles, ways of life, and reproduction to continue the species, which is entirely absent in the inanimate components whose activities make possible that overall ends-pursuits of the living system. It would be untrue to all that reality to deny the existence of either the living things or the non-living things and their very deep differences in character (or the relationships in which they stand to each other). One does not have to choose between eliminative reduction of life to the inanimate on the one hand or dualism of the living things and the non-living things on the other.
Similarly, conscious mind is not a biological feature that one must think of as either really just non-conscious living activities on the one hand or dualism on the other. Those alternatives are not the only ones under which one might comprehend the relation between conscious mind and the physical. Indeed they leave out the alternative relation that is the truth (for which one needs neuroscience and not only the philosopher's armchair).

I am no philosopher.
I would characterize Rand as finally being wholly unbiased in operational orientation towards deduction or inference, and that certainly post maturation, her structures were girded by both, as the state of all prior knowledge and observation required for the particular bit of construction on the edifice of her philosophy.

It may be that she leaned towards a deductive foundational approach in the early years, but I do not believe she leaned in any particular direction in the mature philosophy...
A dichotomy is presented here which may not be necessary.

what has not been provided is a third option... one which leans in neither direction.

Just a second… how would you visualize a spatial problem?  For example imagine placing furniture so that it fits a room but also imagining it in place to determine if there is flow and if it will work functionally long term?  Do you not visualize it i.e. see it in your mind’s eye?
If someone described “An isosceles triangle pointing straight up, its horizontal base longer than and resting on a square, a smaller vertically oriented rectangle resting in the square at its base, a small circle inside and to one side of the rectangle” do you see anything in your mind’s eye or would you literally have to draw it first following this description as if they were a set of instructions?