Mindy
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Posts posted by Mindy
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Not true. Although Empiricism grants that the real world exists and so does Objectivism, Empiricism disavows the conceptual level of functioning so an empiricist explaining how concepts work is just impossible.
I thought I might need to qualify that. The original idea of empiricism is that all knowledge and information comes to us, in its original form, through the senses. The implication that has for a theory of universals, the process of concept-formation, propositional meaning and criteria of truth, etc., etc. has been construed in error, and in different ways, by different thinkers, some of who continue to call themselves "Empiricists," and some who use other terms.
My reference to empiricism is only to the original idea, saying all knowledge originates in sensory experience. Does that satisfy?
-- Mindy
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Life is only a value to those who rationally choose it with consideration to all other circumstances affecting that person's life. It is rationally possible to choose death as a value over life given the right circumstances. In this case, life ceases to be of value. It doesn't matter that the heart keeps beating, the liver keeps functioning, skin cells keep growing, because they are not man's "life". In fact, they are now a dis-value to the man who rationally seeks to end his life, all of these functions being things that he seeks to no longer act to gain or keep; functions that he is acting to stop and no longer pursue. Man's mind determines his values, not the functioning of the parts of his body. While they are of value to a man who chooses to continue to pursue his life, they are no longer a value to the man who seeks stop them in order to achieve his new goal of death. I really can't think of a simpler way to demonstrate that to you.
If you want to keep talking about plants making choices and such... that's up to you. However, since this board is about Objectivism, a philosophy for guiding man's life, I'm going to bow out.
I would disagree that one might rationally choose death over life. Galt saying that he would kill himself to prevent Dagny's being tortured is not his choosing death over life, but of choosing Dagny's protection at the cost of his life, with the proviso that what life would be possible to him once he endured her being tortured was less than life qua man. The valuing that life qua man implies is impossible to someone who has accepted the price of such torture.
This is very much like suicide in the face of permanent, debilitating pain. Life qua man does not include lying drugged and moaning 24/7. For someone in that situation, life is already over. Disease has made living impossible, and suicide merely kills off the suffering, which is all that is left. I like to think of it as one's life versus one's living. The living of life can become impossible before organic integrity is wholly lost. But it is living, doing, that we want, and, in the absence of that, organic death doesn't matter.
The significance I find in this context is organic life is a value because it is a prerequisite for living in the sense of being more than a vegetable--for living the life of man qua man, in Rand's terms. The "living" sense of life can never be rationally rejected. In that sense, one cannot rationally choose death over life. Death has not become a value. Organic dissolution can be a value when it ends pain, and when living is no longer possible.
-- Mindy
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Since we are empiricists, we classify mental contents, most broadly, as effects of the impact of sensory energy on our senses. Hearing a sound is being affected by the reverberatory energy of, e.g., the slamming of a door. Seeing a blue ball is the effect of the impingement on the eye of certain wavelengths of light (leaving out contextual factors.)
Since perception is the primary level of consciousness, our sensory effects have been processed by the brain, and turned into a different rate/pattern of brain activity. The relation between the sensory energy that impinges on our sense organs and the primary level of consciousness of objects remains in part a mystery. I suggest the best way of conceiving of it is in terms used by Gibson's theory of perception, which is basically that there are invariances in the ambient sensible energy, and we extract those invariances in perceiving.
This means the genus of the "integration" of sensory information into perceptual is "effect." (The genus of the verbal form is "processing." Sense organs are affected by ambient energy. Those effects are transduced and propagated by the brain, so they might as well still be called "effects." Alternatively, we could say simply that they are "conditions" of the nervous system, where "condition" doesn't only regard states, but such activity as propagation (one nerve causing another to fire, and so on.)
The integration operates on effects, and produces different, but related effects on/within the brain. Notice that the propagation of peripheral (sensory) effects keeps them in existence beyond the incident of sensation. It also moves them centrally, and permits interactions among indivdual such effects.
I did mark that you didn't want an answer in terms of physical factors, but I believe it is only an explanation of this sort that could prove satisfactory.
-- Mindy
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I'd like to make a couple of observations on the debate in general, not in response to the last post.
One is that "contract" presupposes enforcement. You cannot rely on contracts to create reliable enforcement organizations.
Also, the very common references to "objective laws," "objective society," etc. represent a huge mistake about the meaning of "objective." When Rand talked about the importance of objective laws, she did not mean "Objectivist" laws, she just meant laws that were explicit, laws that were specific enough to be enforceable, that were permanent, and thus could be relied on by citizens. The laws themselves might be wrong-minded and still be fully objective in the relevant sense.
As an after-thought to that point, it amazes me that anyone can actually imagine a group of people could be vetted as "Objectivists," and they would represent an ideal, peaceful, right-thinking group requiring the intervention of enforcement agents very little if at all! Doesn't the history of the movement itself make you aware of how changeable, volatile, unpredictable, and contentious "Objectivists" are?
The Constitution is the heart and soul of a good government. An explicit statement of the rights of men, and of the due process by which those rights may be interfered with, along with provisions for checks and balances, etc. is sufficient to put people's interactions on a civilized footing.
Notice that due process is like objective, explicit law. Due process defines and makes explicit what law enforcement does in proving charges, sentencing a perpetrator, etc. It is the definition, the explicitness, the restrained processing of offenders, etc. that fosters justice. This quality of objectivity--of explicitness--cannot make up for a deficient constitution, but in combination with a right-minded one, such as ours, it serves well to institute peace and justice among men.
The problem of corrupt individuals in government is addressed, in part, by the requirements of due process. Due process itself works counter to subjectivity. It puts each case into a common frame, allowing fair comparison, and thus revealing arbitrary decisions or treatment.
A constitution, explicit laws, and due process are very much under-valued in most of the debate here, I find.
It can't be emphasized too much that the idea of contractual enforcement agencies puts the cart before the horse. A contract presupposes a governing institution. What is the force of a contract if breaking it has no consequences beyond the anger of the other party to that contract? This is a fatal flaw, and ignoring it leads to hopeless and hapless schemes without the proverbial snowball's chance...
--Mindy
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Also, it took a long chain of reasoning to get to the concept of knowledge.
OK, I get you now. I would suggest, though, that it wasn't "a long chain of reasoning," but, rather, a long process of conceptual development.
The earliest, most rudimentary form of this is probably the voluntary orientation of sense-organs, which goes very far down the evolutionary scale. Organisms that have the capacity to orient their sense organs put a premium upon doing so. They will interrupt most activities to try to see/hear/smell, etc. something already intimated by sense-perception. The point is that they utilize a form of criterion for "knowing well enough." Such a functional equivalent of a concept of knowledge isn't what you are interested in, I realize. But it is interesting, no?
The concept of knowledge is a product of introspection. Obviously one must have a good deal of knowledge before the opportunity to conceptualize it as such arises. So the question becomes, what variety of instances of knowing must be manifest to introspection, in order to support the abstraction of the differentiating characteristics of the concept, "knowledge?" And this leads to the question of where introspection starts, and how it occurs. Which I bring up to impress you with the complicated nature of your question.
When a baby makes efforts to see something, is he introspecting? His behavior is deliberate, and aims at his becoming situated so as to "see," and in that way to know about something. Does not that qualify as a rudimentary concept of knowledge? A full-fledged concept of knowledge is probably not possessed by any but some life-long epistemologists. I do realize you mean the well-read Objectivist's grasp of "knowledge," but I'm pushing for a broad perspective on the issue.
There are logical restraints on the answer to your question, but they play a minor part in answering it. The development of knowledge is a question of cognitive development, not specifically of logical connections. I think, therefore, that while we could create scenarios for acquiring the concept, "knowledge," they would have to be regarded, at best, as conjectural. I'll take a stab at creating such a scenario, if you're interested.
--Mindy
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Many other things we'd know by implication to grasp the concept. We'd have to know that our minds don't create reality (rejection of subjectivism) and that our minds are not passive perceivers of reality (rejection of intrinsicism) and that we can't accept ideas on faith without evidence (rejection of mysticism).
The logical relation between these positions and an explicit knowledge of what is and isn't knowledge is undeniable. But that doesn't mean we reach these positions prior to developing a full-fledged understanding of knowledge, or even a mature concept of it.
-Mindy
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First a confession: I read the first three pages and the posts made in 2010 on this thread, but not the whole thing.
I have a few comments to offer. One is that before birth, the baby is not an individual. This is true in the most basic and physical sense. The implanted, fertilized egg is tissue in its mother's uterus. It is a growth of her egg, that growth made possible by fertilization and implantation in the womb. Just as her eggs are her own cells, and not a crowd of little people-to-be, the embryo is her tissue until it has matured to the point of being able to be separated from her--until birth, in the normal course of things.
It is wrong, I think, to conceive of pregnancy as a kind of going back on your promise--you had sex, so now you are responsible for a child. Accidental pregnancy is a medical problem for the woman, not a moral one.
The comparisons with infanticide are rather alarming. Birth physically separates the infant--occurring at the point that the infant is ready to live in the world--and makes it into an individual. Parents have a moral responsibility to arrange for care for their child. That doesn't mean they have to keep it, though it does mean they have to hand it off to willing others. Choosing to kill one's new-born rather than handing it off in this way is a crime.
I think we all recognize the value of the potential of an embryo, but the value of a potential cannot trump the value of an actual being. Even if the embryo can be called a being, its status as being human is only potential. And the being it has, actually, is not even that of an individual. Think of an embryo as the mother's egg, fixed within her other tissues. It isn't someone else, inside her, it is her own cells entirely. (Just to avoid an objection--the DNA contributed by fertilization is a molecular salt, not a cell.)
Abortion is the solution to a problem, the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. That means the woman wishes to excise some of her own cells. When we develop technology to remove an embryo and sustain it outside the mother's body, the morality of a mother's choices may be changed. Since abortion itself is the removal of tissue, the morality of refusing to allow the embryo one is discarding to be fostered by another seems at first blush to be questionable, a view in line with the original questioner here.
The anchoring context of discussions of abortion should be the fact that it is the woman's egg, her tissues, that make up the embryo. Also, that pregnancy involves illness and disability, and childbirth endangers the woman's own life. The obligation to raise the child is "icing" on the cake.
This doesn't add up to an argument, so take it as comments. If there is any doubt: I am for abortion.
-Mindy
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I find this question interesting, but I don't fully understand what you are getting at. It is the "must," I think, that throws me off. Can you clarify?
--Mindy
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I have the opposite view. I think intelligence is biologial, basically genetic, and only mimimally amendable. What makes the human brain superior to the brains of other animals... genetics. Likewise, the differences between individuals within a species are attributable to genetics.
IQ is real. Exactly what it is and isn't responsible for is not settled. But in terms of being able to hold multiple items in memory, and to relate and manipulate them, people have clear differences from early on. It mainly affects how powerful a person is at making single abstractions, like recognizing patterns well. Ever played an old logic game called WFF 'N PROOF? That sort of thing.
It doesn't matter a lot in living, because a less brilliant person will get the same place, just in two or more steps. The main variable among people is <i>overwhelmingly</i> what intellectual scruples a person observes.
Mindy
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I.Q. is not the main thing. One's habits of thought, intellectual "activeness" and intellectual honesty, account for most of the intellectual achievements of the world. It is a great mistake to take a fatalist view of one's potential such as I read in this thread.
Neither Abelard, nor anyone else could win a false position against a right-thinking person who was well-appraised of the issues. That is some sort of Ivy-Tower legend. Being wrong is being wrong, and the flaws are there to be exposed. Fallacies are not beyond the ken of most people, if they become versed in them.
Mindy
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I know this example of proving consciousness has already been brought up, sort of, but there is a test you can do yourself.
Is the mind physical? If I answer no, then proof is this - I can't point to or show correspondence of a no to something physical, because there is not no(thing) there, but something. In other words I know of a no in my mind alone and can't point to a no outside my mind. I can even variate this, if I look at a picture of myself, brain scan or some other outside source of my brain, I can't point to my mind. It isn't there in the physical sense, but it is there.
Reality is one in one sense, because everything is connected; but the mind doesn't not correspond to the brain as physical - it is connected, yes and it also obeys reality just like the physical part, but it is not physical.
Indeed the law of non-contradiction, which is true of all of reality, is not physical, because you can't literally show A=non-A at the same time and in same sense, yet it is true.
With regard
Mikael
You fail to know where in a (can we suppose it is a video, not a still picture?) video of brain activity to point to pick out the mental happenings. If you look at very simple examples, this becomes less problematic.
Imagine sand-paper rubbed on your skin, touching a mirror, and then a pin-prick. Imagine recording the nerve action to each stimulus, and finding they are different in terms of the rate of firing. Would it be puzzling to you that these three kinds of physical things produced different effects on your sense-receptors, that the nerves of your skin were caused to fire at different rates, and that three different sensations were produced?
I do not find that puzzling. It seems pretty natural. If you try to couch the mind-body problem in terms of this sequence, doesn't it seem artificial?
I think the answer to the M-B problem lies in a genuine epistemological dualism. I must emphasize that this is not the same as "aspect dualism" where that term is equivalent to "property dualism." What I refer to is an old, venerable, but also ignored point of view that says there are two radically different ways to take cognizance of the same thing, and we call the one "mind" and the other "body."
These two ways of conceiving of the psychological/epistemological/mental catch just the tail of one another's full character.
Mindy
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I have to agree with gurugeorge.
In a sense I am absolutely certain that I don't have absolute certainty and yet I am not absolutely certain.
And yes, it is a contradiction and no, it is not.Check your premises!!! So what is the core premise, the IFF premise that underlie all other premises? That reality has been, is and will continue to be immutable.
Now this means in a single absolute sense that reality is so and not in any other way, but not all aspects of reality are not singularly so over time. I know with absolute certainty that what I know have changed over time; in other words I know for now that I could be wrong or right, because what I know can over time change. Thus it is not singularly so or immutable what I know, but that could change over time and this includes what I know now.So why is what I have said not a contradiction, because a contradiction is about a given time - "A contradiction is impossible, because all contradictions can be reduced to claiming that something both exists and does not exist at the same time, which is likewise impossible." http://wiki.objectivismonline.net/wiki/Causality But I know that my knowledge could change and I don't even know IFF reality will remain immutable, thus I don't know now if my knowledge could change, so I would know in the singular sense. Namely I know with certainty now that my knowledge can change, but I don't know of the future if that changes, so I would know what my knowledge can't change.
This position even has a name: Fallibilism In other words I am absolutely certain in one sense, namely now, that I am not absolutely certain of the future, but that might change.
That even has a name - it is the induction problem. With regard
Mikael
There are a lot of equivocations in this post, Mikael. Also, some overly narrow claims.
A contradiction may be about a specific time, but it doesn't have to be. It has to be about given aspects. The conservation of mass/energy, for example.
It is one thing to merely claim you know you know, or that you know you do not know. Even these claims must, however, be proved. Could you prove the various claims of that sort in your post?
Mindy
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There was no ire present, whYNOT, simply an explanation. I apologize for misunderstanding to whom your comment was directed.
The painting/painter argument is a blatant fallacy of question-begging.
Who says the universe is a painting? To say so is to take it for granted that it is the product of intelligent design--the painter. So ask the person who makes this argument how they know the universe is a painting. Their assumption of the very thing they set out to prove will probably come to light as they try--if they bother to try--to explain that.
Mindy
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But the certainty we posses is merely about the form of the identity (the structure of logical implications - "analytic" truth). We possess no certainty that the object dubbed X is an X. The existential claim is a posit, a punt, a bet. Formally, logically, it always has the status of a conjecture.
"If this is an X, then we can be certain it will behave thus-and-so." That certainty we can indeed possess (it's just another way of describing "contextual certainty"). (If and when it is an X, and if and when it does behave in that way, then the truth turns out to have been "analytic" all along.)
In order to have first recognized and enunciated that "If this is an X, then we can be certain it will behave..." we have to have been certain that we were observing and generalizing over Xs.
Recognition of anomaly itself requires certainty.
Mindy
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This ought not to be a cause for anxiety: it is not rational to think that we may be mistaken about something until and unless something anomalous happens - i.e. until and unless the object we dubbed "X" doesn't behave as an X ought to (according to the logical implications of its identity).
Hello,
The above is a quote from the initial post of this thread. I'd like to point out an inconsistency in it, but I have not taken the time to read all of the responses. I may be repetitive, and will end up with egg on my face, but I hope, as my point is brief, it will be a minor faux pas if it is at all.
The inconsistency here is that we have a sufficient degree of certainty to judge that X has behaved anomalously. If we can be certain of how X would behave if we identify it correctly in some test case, we possess the certainty in question. Challenges to knowledge always face the error of self-exclusion.
Mindy
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Mindy, certainly you don't equate the BTK killer's ability to employ his intelligence to not get caught by the police with virtuous action do you?
Similarly I do not agree that evil can not be independent. A lot of evil men operate independently, the unibomber for example.
I do agree that Integrity, by definition (adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.) can not be evil though.
Yes, in a limited way, it is. It serves an evil end, and that makes it evil. But the formulation of his ends is not done intelligently. The efficacy with which he gets away from a scene, for example, if taken in isolation, is virtuous. Note that I am not saying he is virtuous in getting away with his crimes!
= Mindy
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Integrity, independence, intelligence etc. are no virtues by themelves, they can be used for good and evil purposes.
Intelligence as in IQ is a given, but its employment is a virtue. Integrity and independence are great virtures. Note that evil cannot show integrity, nor be independent.
= Mindy
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The problem here is that in speaking about actualities versus potentialities, you have glossed over what the actualities are. Humans ARE creatures whose means of survival is reason, whether the human is 1 day old, 30 years old, or 98 years old -- it is a human by virtue of the fact that reason is its means of survival (put the embyro/zygote/fetus debate aside here). A chimp does not operate on this level. The fact that a human baby and a chimp baby are as intelligent as eachother is irrelevant when drawing conclusions about the essential traits of either entity. A human baby possesses the rational faculty and has merely not developed it; a chimp does not. Rights do not stem from intelligence or the USE of the rational faculty -- otherwise, there would be a lot of people without rights.
It might help to note that infants and children are not given full legal rights until they are considered to have reached adulthood. Children cannot enter into contracts, for instance. Also, what would be considered assault if performed with an adult is merely child-care, for much of a child's life. One is allowed to physically restrain toddlers--and you'd better do it, too--because telling them to stay out of the street isn't good enough. Talk yourself blue-in-the-face to a lion, telling him you'll feed him twice a day if he'll stay out of the village, you'd still better not leave your doors or windows open at night.
Also, we do have rules against cruelty to animals, recognizing that their unnecessary pain and suffering is a moral wrong.
The essence of rights is the alternative reason gives us in dealing with one another. We don't have to live by brute strength if we can agree on terms of interacting with one another. The lower animals are damned to a life of physical dominance and predation. Man is not.
= Mindy
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Do you have a link to a specific article that you could share? My wife is a fish-eating vegetarian (pescetarian?), while I eat any dead animal that's reasonably clean. I'd love to have a good reason to avoid the nasty un-meats she eats.
"...any dead animal that's reasonably clean" I'm still laughing, thank you, Jake!
= Mindy
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With reason. I won't deny that there are enemies of reason coming by here who find trolling to be great sport and who are proud of their skills in deception and denunciation, but they shouldn't be our main concern. We're talking about our friends and associates. So having correctly identified that we're dealing with a friend and associate, either they understand and agree with specific aspects of Objectivism, or they don't. If it's the former, great! If it's the latter, then you have to try to understand what the problem is -- not understanding, not even having the most basic knowledge of, or some form of conscious rejection? As an example, some people simply do not know at all what the Objectivist position on intellectual property is; some people reject it. If you are dealing with simply not-knowing, it's very simple to just say what the Objectivist position is. Rejection OTOH is hard to deal with because it means that the person is holding contradictory positions, and you have to unwind their furball of assumptions to see where exactly the contradiction is. Unfortunately, many people are deeply offended at the idea that they could possibly have unresolved contradictions in their thinking, and when actually presented with that evidence, they can turn from being reasonable to being snarly. At this point one should simply re-evaluate the evidence that you are aware of -- why do you think that this person embraces reason as his proper means of existence, when he allows emotion to override his mind? What made you think that he was in some sense a friend of Objectivism? Simply focus on those specifics that you can be certain of, and slowly build on that to resolve the contradictions in his thinking.
I might be misunderstanding what you mean by, "...why do you think that this person embraces reason as his proper means of existence, when he allows emotion to override his mind?" But if I do understand you, I would largely disagree with your recommended course of action.
If you question their position logically, beginning at a sensible point and proceeding in logical steps, you treat them as equals intellectually, and all the relevant facts and arguments will come to light in an appropriate sequence.
If you set about to untangle their "furball" of errors, your attitude will be patronizing. Let them discover their (false)assumptions as they respond step-wise to a contrary point of view.
Telling other people what their assumptions are, what their motives are, that they are allowing emotion to override their mind, and how bad their thinking is is sure to create animosity, and nothing but animosity.
= Mindy
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The main research question is, I think, how we would determine that he had free will but no conceptual consciousness? Conceptually speaking, what would it mean for a being to be able to freely choose between actions, without the ability to abstract generalizations about the world in a symbolic form? I don't really know, so we can't perform the experiment.
Abstraction starts at the perceptual level, and abstraction confers generality, so any sensory organisim can be expected to behave categorically to objects, without that implying that they possess concepts.
My dogs know the word, "kennel" means to get into their bed. But when we're outside, "kennel" gets them to enter the car, or, if I show them a cage and tell them to "kennel," they will enter it. If we are in a new place, and I put down a rug, show it to them, and announce, "kennel," they will treat it as their bed. You could clump together some words to express the implicit meaning they have for that command. Though I use it as a concept, they use it more concretely. The communication between us works because we are both using abstractions. That doesn't mean we are both using concepts.
The point is that "abstract generalizations" are possible without "symbolic" abstraction. (No implication for the free will issue.)
= Mindy
Are any Objectivists here in love with a religious person?
in Ethics
Posted
I think you are under-valuing the issue.
Religion is not irrelevant to life, because philosophy is not irrelevant to life. Someone who finds they must believe in God is, afterall, choosing blind faith over reason. If you think that won't ever be important in your life, you can't much credit the importance of an integrated code of values, right?
I'm not talking about things we claim to believe or endorse, I'm talking about living. Especially the hard parts of life. I'd ask (and have done so!) my lover why he believed in God, given there was no evidence. It doesn't take much discussion to lay out the major arguments that make a belief in God irrational--the problem of evil, etc.
What I've heard back is that when it comes to such things, he just goes with his upbringing and family beliefs, which means peer pressure. These guys were smart people, devoted to reason, disgusted with other's irrationality--up to a point. When the contradiction between their active values and their religious belief is openly acknowledged, at that point where they say they just "do," the fundamental difference becomes almost palpable--a silence that creates a distance between us--there is nothing to say, nothing to be done. It is unworkable. It isn't reason if it pertains only up to a point. It will be feelings or Biblical sayings or altruism, or fear of God's wrath that takes over at that point. Reason that gives way to anything else, from the beginning, or only at a certain point, is not any kind of discipline at all. If you value reason, truth, facts, science, etc., at all, you value them all the way.
What do you say when your kid asks why Mom believes in God but you don't? If there's no reason to believe in God, why does Mom believe? How can Mom and Dad disagree about something that is so important? Is there a heaven or not? If you get mealy-mouthed on such issues, to avoid the contradiction between your beliefs, the child may suffer, may well be turned off deep thinking, becomes insecure due the rift in his parents' beliefs, not knowing how far it extends, whom to believe, who or what to trust whenever you two disagree...
There's a reason that discussions about religion become heated. The differences matter. So I recommend you two have that conversation asap, and the atheist tries to determine how far the anti-intellectualism, atruism, supernatural tendencies, and failure to rely on reason goes in the believer. It really is a simple issue--do you accept reason or not.
If you take yourselves seriously, you need to work this out before making a commitment. I wish you the very best of luck, but I fear the worst.
-- Mindy