Mindy

I didn't say TV programs, I said mirrors. It matters. An animal will make all kinds of different adjustments to be able to see or hear something they have detected. They make the adjustments the situation requires, and the specific behavior involved varies greatly. The goal of this behavior is seeing or hearing. They act to be able to see, etc. Seeing is the goal of that, instrumental behavior. Isn't it true, then that they have some primitive grasp of what it is to see, versus not being able to see, something they have detected? I think so. And, as we share that animal level of organization, our well-defined concept of knowledge is likely to have its roots in that very primitive grasp. That's why I mentioned the behavior of infants who would not be considered conceptual. Are you comfortable dismissing such behavior entirely? -- Mindy

Sensation is pretty passive. Whatever energies impinge on the sense organ, the senses register. Sensory effects are propagated through the structure of the nerve net, and that propagation alone changes the sensory effect in certain ways, especially its time-stamp, so to speak. Propagation also allows separate sensory effects to interact, providing the mechanism for integration. This is all automatic, but except for the initial energy's effect, it is activity, but it is activity following the event of sensory energy impinging on the organism. While sensory effects are passively received, they are active in the sense that the sense-organ transduces the energy impinging on the sense-organ. (Transduction just means it changes the form of the energy. Light energy and soundwaves, ext., are both turned into bio-chemical events. Notice that transduction is not limited to nerves. Your door-bell, for example, transduces the mechanical energy of your pushing finger into an electrical current that sounds the bell.) If sensory energy were not transduced, it could not be propagated, as our bodies do not contain light channels, etc. No propagation means no mechanism for integration. The activity of relating, as you put it, depends on the transduction of sensory energy. Now, is transduction passive or active? Your skin gets warmer or cooler as more and less light falls on it. Your eye does also. But your eye does more than that, by transducing the energy. In an organismic sense, it is active. In terms of content it is dictated to, it is passive, tabula rasa. You see the wax as passive in its being imprinted by the signet ring. However, it is the wax that cools, preserving the effect. If the wax didn't solidify, the ring would have no lasting effect, and wax seals would not work to ID the sources of missives. It isn't that the ring is cold and cools the wax (though that could be done,) but that wax hardens at room temperature. The wax must do its thing for the trick to work. It is the action of the wax material, by solidifying at room temperature, that makes the use of signet rings possible. In case this is confusing, I'm saying that the activity that consciousness categorically exhibits may be as nearly "passive" as the transduction of sensory energies. Transduction is active at the organic level, but passive in recording (some of) the formal characteristics of the sensory event. If consciousness is active in forming its contents, objectivity comes into question. If it is the passive reception of content reflecting the world, like a photograph, there is no explaining the relations between contents and the world--they don't match up, as in the question of universals, and in perceptual illusion, etc. Consciousness is active, yet its activity does not falsify. That is the conundrum. I'm saying the blob of wax isn't as totally passive as you think it is, and sensation, though a part of consciousness, is largely a passive event. (Just to keep clear, the original reason for bringing up Aristotle's metaphor was to show the impossibility of consciousness conscious of nothing but itself.) -- Mindy

You have nothing to apologize for! If the universe consisted of nothing but one person, solipsism would make sense. But organisms need environments. Well, he might reply, I exist as a mind only, disembodied. But that would mean a mind conscious of nothing but itself. The empty, reflecting mirrors scenario. A consciousness conscious of nothing is not a consciousness. I really like Aristotle's model for consciousness, of the wax and signet ring. The imprint the ring makes on the wax is akin to consciousness. Then, consciousness of pure consciousness would be the puddle of wax imprinting itself...only it already is a puddle of wax. It would have to change so as to become what it already is...which is no change at all. The mind can just invent terms and definitions, but those terms and definitions won't get it/him anywhere. They won't coincide with the reality he must live in. They won't form a coherent system. If he want's to define "illusion" in a way that doesn't contrast with "existence," it won't mean what "illusion" means, so it won't get him where he wanted to go with his statement. That reality may not be real is neatly contradicted by stepping on the speaker's foot. (I am not recommending that initiation of force!) If he wants you to get off his foot, tell him to believe you have gotten off. If reality is up to him, it is his fault his foot hurts. You can invite your solipsist to think up things differently, like gravity being a repelling force...if he can't do it, if things still fall to the floor, what does that say about his philosophy? The tactic here, of course, is to allow reality to manifest itself, independent and potent, stubborn and uncaring as it naturally is. Radical claims like these are so far gone that they are unworkable. The person proposing them doesn't plan to carry them out anyway. They just want an "out" for some immediate rock-and-a-hard-place they find themselves in. If you take them at their word, the preposterous infeasibility of their proposals will become clear. -- Mindy

Again, I don't think the deductive mode is going to pay off. Consider the behavior of a kitten who encounters a mirror for the first time. He bats and paws at his image, treating it as he would another kitten. But he just touches a flat glass. After a while, he quits reacting to his own image at all, and (usually) never does again. It seems as if he has learned that certain appearances of cats are not knowledge of the presence of a cat. I'm not proposing that the kitten does arrive at such knowledge. My point is that experiences that simple provide data to support a first notion of knowing. I would also claim that actions of animals and infants in trying to see or otherwise perceive something amounts to a primitive notion of knowledge.

"Why" the ions exert pressure is explained by diffusion, as I said. Are not the prestidigitations of a magician "physical interaction?" Effects are not explained by using jargon such as "entity-action." If window glass is broken by a baseball, you would probably insist that the glass "broke," because that fits your "entity-action" format. It doesn't add anything, however. How a magic trick is managed is as truly an explanation as anything else. You don't want to become so enamored of narrow explanations that you miss explanations in macro applications. -- Mindy

The dual senses of "value," that you note derive from several facts about man's nature. Life's being an active process is one of those. Living things must act, or die. Vegetables act in one, relatively passive way, and animals act more complexly, including, especially, the ability to locomote, subserved by sense-perception. Humans share the vegetative and animal levels of life, and those requirements to act. Come the conceptual level of cognition, action includes alternatives and deliberation no other animal faces. At that level, choices of goals are explicit. At that level, we contemplate our goals, and we need rules and principles to guide us. The same freedom that our intellectual capacity gives us complicates our valuing. As an animal, we must act, and whatever we act to gain is a value. But as the intellectual being we are, our chosen actions are not automatic, not set for us by appetite, etc. Whatever we act towards is a value on the behavioral definition. Only if it is chosen in light of knowledge and reason is it a value "qua man." Just as we can fail to act above the animal level, we can fail to value above that level. To value as a man, we must refer to a standard, identify a standard, and decide to use it. -- Mindy

Let me point out a flaw in your reasoning. It goes like this: the test approach to determining adulthood/rights says "If you can do x, y, and z, then, you are an adult, regardless of age." Your scenario of the criminal who fakes his not being responsible due to not passing that test says "If you cannot do x, y, and z, then, you are not an adult, regardless of age." You are claiming that anyone accepting the former, must, logically, accept the latter. That relationship is of this form: If A, then B implies If not A, then not B. That is not valid. A implies B doesn't mean not-A implies not-B. Classical logic. (Example: If it is a German Shepard, it is a dog. If it is not a German Shepard, it is not a dog.) -- Mindy

I hoped there would be more discussion of what explanation consists in. My at-hand dictionary says it is to make something plain. What needs to be made plain? Well, whatever is confused or complicated, has hidden aspects, or seems to contradict accepted tenets, etc. A magic trick needs explaining. What happened is not clear, not plain, something else seems to have happened. I think this means explanation is essentially a matter of analysis. In explaining the magic trick, you are taking individual motions of the hands, etc., and identifying a second aspect of that motion, how when the magician seemed to flourish the deck, he was tossing it away and getting the hidden deck from his sleeve... (not an actual explanation...) The analysis (in this case) cross-classifies elements or aspects of the thing to be explained. To explain osmosis, you refer to the operation of diffusion in the presence of a semi-permeable membrane. Diffusion is a known phenomenon of materials, and semi-permeable membranes are known structures of the body. Osmosis, then, explains the toxicity of certain extreme levels of normal substances--salt, for example. Diffusion isn't toxic, and our membranes aren't, and salt is necessary to life. But too little salt and too much salt are both toxic, and both act via osmosis, causing cell death. Diffusion drives both toxic effects. This requires an explanation, the same thing having different effects. The new classifications are explanatory iff they assimilate the thing to be explained to pre-established rules, laws, or categories. -- Mindy

Since volition pertains only to one's cognition, would you agree that introspective knowledge is required before volitional choices can be made? One must be aware of the alternative of focussing, of thinking, and those are concepts of mental events or actions, and thus are introspective. -- Mindy

If there can be no explanation of why a man behaved with honor, for example, a denial of character is implied. We do explain human choices and actions. It is a large part of life. We rely on people of reputation, believing that their character has been proven, and that it will continue to be what it has been, at least under normal circumstances. That means we are comfortable predicting what their choices will be, which way their volition will take them. Isn't that right? I'll just state, for the record, that I do believe in volitional choice. I also believe in "the self-made soul." And I think that soul involves how one wields one's volition. My partial solution to this conundrum is that choices to focus or think, at a given moment, must be interpreted in terms of the fundamental values the person understands to be at stake. Also, and as a necessary corollary, once a person's priorities are set, rationally, they are are permanent. This leads to the conclusion that there is not a great deal of variability in how an individual makes his choices, but, also, that new insights can bring about a radical change. I welcome comments or criticism on this "conundrum" and my proposed solution. -- Mindy

Yes, that fits what I'm trying to say. The brain automatically processes what is available from the senses. It does this from the beginning, that process isn't learned. But the grouping achieved changes over time, akin to abstracting from abstractions, versus reaching a very high abstraction from concretes. Exactly. Thanks. -- Mindy

"Automatic learning" is the problem. If it isn't redundant, it is contradictory. "Perception is an automatically learned system..." (From yFeldblum, 6-27 post.) How is that any different from saying it is a learned system? My position remains that it isn't learned at all. -- Mindy

I'd be interested. -- Mindy

I don't think Rand was making any distinction between properties and characteristics. It isn't usually necessary to distinguish those concepts from "feature," or "quality," etc. That being said, I offer two examples of use that maintains the distinction. When we say something like, "It is characteristic of him to be late to meetings," we are implying that being late is usual and typical, but not invariant. When we say something like, "Polymorphic minterals have the same molecular structure but different properties, such as specific gravity and hardness," we are referring to absolutely invariant "features" of those minerals. Usually, though, we don't need to make such distinctions. -- Mindy

Experimental psychology demonstrates three distinct stages of perception. The third depends on the preceding ones. Completely novel stimuli must go through these three stages. As adults, we are accustomed to the third stage's being automatic. Infants are starting at stage one, though. When they attain that grasp, they are in a position to go to stage two, etc. Against the interpretation that this shows levels of learning how to perceive, rather than of learning to perceive a certain, novel thing, consider situations adults may face, in which they also go through all three stages before becoming able to perceive certain things. I gave the example, in my earlier post, of learning to perceive whether a tennis ball was struck with top-spin or back-spin (they are the ball's spinning toward its goal or backwards, towards the hitter.) While it seemed magical, long ago, to be able to see the stroke's imparting one or the other spin, it finally became effortless to perceive it. Obviously, an adult has already learned how to perceive, yet he may find himself confused as a babe when he is faced with radically new perceptual tasks. -- Mindy

Lots of organismic processes are auomatic without having developed through learning. More pertinently, the fact that many cognitive processes are automatized by learning does not prove that all are. -- Mindy

The link you gave is about 50 pages long. I'm familiar with The Comprachicos, but haven't read it in the past many years. I know Montessori theory pretty well, and I know in horrific detail what goes on in our schools. I don't see what grounds you find in all of this to say power-lust is first and fore-most a strategy for gaining approval. You'll have to be more specific, please. -- Mindy

The clearest example of experiences that leave indelible psychical damage is in sexual aberrations. Pedophiles seem to be incorrigible, though drugs help. Fetishes, etc. remain powerful throughout the individual's life, or, at least, until their sex-drive fails. A child can be emotionally crippled by abuse of various sorts--emotional, deprivation, etc. And while they may recover enough to live well, it seems that they cannot attain the sense of security, the benevolent sense-of-life that good parenting provides. That means they would have to find their way over the hurdle of the unreasonable tenor or intensity of their emotions, and continuously edit and proactively counter those tendencies, forever. Nothing that isn't a medical condition keeps someone from using their reason. Everyone who uses language, you must realize, is doing so. Not thoroughly, perhaps, but it is certainly reason. Everyone uses reason most of the time. There is no more the possibility of forgetting how to reason than the possibility of forgetting how to speak. There are, however, conditions of a life ruined by folly to the extent that resuming consistent reasoning would require heroic efforts. And where in such ruins would a hero reside? Every evasion, every act of cowardice, etc., requires twice the strength to repudiate, twice the strength that wasn't there in the first place. Rand's great saying about man's self-made soul captures this fearsome truth. -- Mindy

I hereby give my vote to Black Wolf! It is an ad hominem, if substituted for reasons. -- Mindy

Generally, what is automatic is not learned, and vice versa. I don't know what to make of your statement that "Perception is an automatically learned system..." In the first paragraph, above, you equate color-blindness with "perception...learned differently." What is the source of these propositions? I have never encountered a psychological position that says we learn how to perceive. It is true that we learn to perceive certain things...such as whether a tennis ball was hit with top-spin or under-spin, but that isn't learning how to perceive. As a separate consideration, doesn't "automatic" imply "uniform?" There are aspects and there as aspects, but an action or event that is "automatic" is independent of outside factors in the relevant respect, is not conditioned on them. They are not variables in determining its properties. That means, logically, uniformity--in the relevant respect. -- Mindy

Kudos to the questioner for working out all these implications! Relevant to the issue is that perception is, of course, automatic. Consciousness at that level does not require volitional "focus." Learning at the animal level of association and conditioning is also automatic, as are "perceptual abstractions" that allow us, and animals generally, to react to types of things, where the type can be distinguished perceptually. This takes us quite a way in cognition. It does not embrace the use of language. Up to a certain point, we are more or less passive, after that point intellectual life loses its automatic quality. And it is there that volition comes into play. Volition did not evolve. In the technical sense, it might be said to be a capacity man created in himself, like language. The intelligence that makes language possible evolved, the tool, language, is man-made. If language-use moves man radically out of the category of a being of a completely evolved nature, there is a kind of "freedom" that naturally attaches to his wielding that tool. I suggest that that distinction is helpful in understanding "free will," or "volitional choice." Unfortunately, it may also raise some conflicts with extant Objectivism. (I think any such will be terminological only.) -- Mindy

Me, too. I will point out that you beg the question when you say your consensus is of "a good community." That is not another matter, but the central issue. If consensus is good enough for you, so be it. Whatever you offer, however, that is consistent with replacing reason with consensus will not properly be termed "Objectivism." -- Mindy

From Enixyle, today, 2:48 pm: "Mindy, no post has mentioned that contributors may attain expert status through voting. Contributors themselves would receive no votes. Rather, contributions may be voted as good, which then will accumulatively build the contributor's reputation." Mindy: Now there's a distinction without a difference... The contradictory nature of your defense is, I am forced to say, a condemnation of the project in exactly the aspect I first stated. Enixyle: "As for disagreements, that's one reason I'm strongly leaning towards a voting system over a Wiki system." (same post) Your second comment is hardly needed, as you've indicted yourself with your highly equivocal statements on "voting," and, which is the significant point, consensus, as your measure of adequacy. I do not mean to offend anyone, but you aren't considering the consumer of this project. If your esteemed contributors can't agree on an answer, how can it seem feasible that by giving the questioner a spate of inconsistent responses, you are helping them? You guys can't sort it out, but the newbie can?? Reminds me of those who say let the kids decide what to learn in school, let them write the curriculum. Anybody remember a "game" that Rand's "group" used to play, in which someone was given two terms of philosophical significance, and had to, off the top of their head, explain the connection between them? I suggest that until you can do that, and not just to your own personal satisfaction, you aren't qualified to hold yourself out as teaching or explaining Objectivism. How about forming a sub-forum in which people are invited to test one another on their mastery of Objectivism? -- Mindy

I'm curious what your source is on saying approval is the primary motive, could you explain? -- Mindy

My "you" was a general one, including all the enthusiasts. But judgment as to what is a "good" question in philosophy is not to be taken for granted. It is not nonsense to respect the complexity of philosophy. That "you" resort to terms such as "good question," reflects the fundamental need for wise, knowledgeable people. Your several levels of learners, with implied standards for each just elaborates that requirement. An earlier post mentioned answers that would get a contributor voted, or recognized, as an expert... That is consensus instead of knowledge. If there isn't one expert to set all these criteria, it will take majority agreement to do it, right? Consensus. Who will decide whether a position exhibits a stolen concept versus commits question-begging? What if everybody doesn't always agree? What about the disservice "you" do when you give an answer that, though you believe it is valid, is incoherent or misses the essential point? That isn't much of an issue when people ask and respond as equals, which is what takes place here. When people set themselves up as experts, to whatever degree, they take on a corresponding degree of responsibility. I don't see on-line Objectivist sites as being over-run with the required expertise. How do Forum questions placed here fail to offer what your new blog-site would provide? -- Mindy