phibetakappa

You keep rephrasing your question. Now you added "causally independent" to it. I did not provide an argument from authority. I provided you what Ayn Rand stated about HER philosophy. Further, I never claimed that isolated, individual perceptions, without processing from our conceptual faculty lead to anything related to your bizarre question. You made that claim, then tried to put it in my mouth. You are amusing... you trying to write up a straw man about individual perceptions, try to put it in my mouth... and now you are saying.. you have come up with some brilliant conclusion about all existents this and all consciousnesses that... try calming down for a few minutes... and actually read... "...rather induced..." how do you think axioms are formed? Axioms are sophisticated formulations. Children don't state axioms, adult, learned philosophers do; that should be a clue to you that axioms are way up the hierarchical chain of knowledge. Further, if I were to take your request seriously for a moment... how am I going to write you a post, and provide you with a "perception?"

It was not my implication. It was Ayn Rand's. She states it explicitly, and I have provided the reference above.

Another interesting integration is if we tie back to the first chapter of the book (ITOE), and we find her use the word continuous, in a slightly different context: It is the omission of mental time measurements, which creates this "unit perspective" with regard to the "outer" and the "inner", the subject and the object. I.e., man using axiomatic concepts can then treat the "outer" as a unitary whole, and then following that, he can regard his inner states, his self, as a unitary whole. Now, if your want an integration, tie the concept "time" to the "outer," i.e., as dependent on existence. Time, as we perceive it, is based on an the external relationships of objects moving outside of us. E.g., the earth as it moves around the sun, and all the movement affects on shadows, changing seasons, i.e., the time related uniformity of change around us. It is in becoming aware of time passing in external reality, that we are only able to get a "sense of time" in our own consciousness. (for further evidence of this, note examples when we loose track of time, and why?) This highlights the dependence of consciousness on existence. As it is the recognition of time as an implicit "category of measurement", from which we 'omit' any particular instance thereof; which becomes our means of forming the concept of a continuous, unified "inner" state of awareness, i.e., of a consciousness as such. Another follow up and fruitfull integration is to review the nature of measurement as such, and its dependence on existence. Then when we fully understand that human consciousness, particularly its use of concepts, depends on measurement omission, we will have an even clearer understanding of the fundamental primacy of existence to consciousness, i.e., that man's particular form of conceptual consciousness completely depends on existence.

I'm interested where you are going with this line of thought. I've read this passage too. It matches up very well with this text from the actual chapter on axiomatic concepts, where she describes how axiomatic concepts provide us the ability to differentiate the inner from the outer, i.e., allow us to differentiate the subject of cognition from the object of cognition. In particular, in the paragraph before these she states how this kind of "continuity" is achieved, This links up with the example provided about the lion: The key word here is a concept of "time", i.e., the word "before"

Reason is not an end-in-itself. Your lost already. I've heard at least one prominent O'ist recomend writing college papers drunk, as this mental state most closely approximates the state needed to succeed in one of todays philosophy classes. Given that you are trying to write a paper with reason cut off from values, i.e., cut off from human beings, sounds like this is your best bet. Good luck trying to argue "for better" or "for worse" without values.

All of them.

What I wrote was: (Note: "self-evident perception" is redundant. There is no such thing as a non-self-evident perception.) Your question does not follow from what I wrote. That statement is a summary of Ayn Rand writes in ITOE in her chapter on Axiomatic concepts: She continues, The only knowledge that is self-evident are sense-perceptions. She afirms this belief in the first sentence of Chapter 6 of ITOE page 55 In the appendix she goes into details as to the necessary conditions of forming axiomatic concepts which the propositionally stated axioms are composed:

Ayn Rand lived in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, and lived through the Great Depression, both events were far worse than anything we have seen in our life times, both rife with mooching, legalized looting, and power lust on a massive scale. Ayn Rand knew human depravity at its worst, she did not have to imagine it, she lived it. She was not overly "optimistic".

Is this a serious question?

I'm not sure why you re-quoted this with a question mark, but the statement is from this passage:

Go back and read everything I have written an provided you. I've given you the answer. I've explained it. I've provided you with all of the relevant passages from both Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. I've put everything you need in front of you. If you truly understand that "Existence exists." is an axiom, then you have the answer. the "primacy of existence" is not a separate axiom from "Existence exists." The "primacy of existence," is an elaboration of the axiom; and I have elaborated it again, and again and again. In order to form the concept "consciousness", one must first be aware of something, i.e., of some content, i.e., of existence. Consciousness conscious of nothing, of no content, is a contradiction in terms; the concept "consciousness" presupposes that something exists; the concepts consciousness and/or awareness, means awareness of an object, i.e., of something. Existence is not dependent on consciousness, but consciousness is dependent on existence. As I stated in my previous post, you will need to reform the concept of "consciousness" from scratch, because like Descartes and Lock you have stuck yourself inside your own consciousness, and are trying to prove something exists. You need to induce it first hand again, and figure out where it comes from before you are going to believe that consciousness depends on existence, and that existence does not depend on consciousness.

Let’s suppose for a moment the lion did not exist before we became aware of it. There is no such thing as knowing the non-existence of an object. The words, “know” and “how”, “proof”, “thing” all presuppose the existence of something. One cannot “detect” a ghost, a figment, a phantom, a god, a no-thing. The term consciousness only has meaning if it is applied to detecting that which exists. There is no such thing as being conscious of the non-existent. You seem to want an argument to produce a “consciousness” that can detect a void, a nothing, a non-existent. By what means would such a “consciousness” be conscious? The word would lose all meaning: a “consciousness” somehow conscious by no means what-so-ever, and able to be aware of no-thing. And by what terms would the argument use? Since we can only know/detect/be aware of what exists, and all our concepts presuppose this, how would we formulate such an “argument?” An argument in terms of non-existence, which makes us somehow “conscious” of the non-existent, a void, a no-thing, i.e., you want a non-argument using non-terms, to non-produced a non-consciousness, of a non-existent. Good luck with that...

You can "deduce" NOTHING from them. You can, and must begin by inducing by using them as a guide from where to start (reality), but you can not deduce anything from them. They merely state: Everything that exists exists. Everyone that is conscious is conscious. Everything that is something specific, is something specific. Deduction requires a premise. S is P, and a middle term M. These statements say, E is E. C is C. A is A. Existence exists. Consciousness is conscious. Identity is identity. There is no premise here to deduce from. Axioms are an explicit conceptual expression of the perceptually self-evident. That is all, which is EVERYTHING.

*Note: there is no such thing as an "argument" explaining the status of an axiom. The concept argument presupposes the axioms. In the appendix of ITOE on page 250, Professor K asks a very similar question to Ayn Rand: Claiming that it is a special problem to establish the independent existence of the world, i.e., that there is a need for a special argument in order to establish that existence exists independently of our consciousness is quote...

No, clearly that you do not understand what the axiom of "Existence exists" means. Nor do you understand what the concept "consciousness" means. You are, in fact, stealing the concept consciousness. Again, "Existence exists" is the axiom. 'existence' is not an axiom. 'existence' is an axiomatic concept.

... Sure that's what you meant... If you did you wouldn't have asked the question because you would have known its a bogus question showing you don't know what the three axioms mean. Secondly, I am going to quote Ayn Rand herself, who discovered Objectivism: Peikoff even makes the point later on page 19,

First of all the three axioms are NOT "existence, identity and consciousness." Axioms are propositions, and they are: Existence exists Consciousness is conscious A is A. Secondly, the person mentioned does NOT hold the three axioms, they are either lying or the person has been misjudged as holding them, because: The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists. I.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity.

The apparent problem from my vantage point is that your concept of "consciousness" does not mean a faculty of awareness of things. Do you remember being a child, and your sensory perceptual experiences, and the order in which you became aware of things? Do you not believe sensory-perceptual experience is a form of awareness, i.e., a form of consciousness? What evidence do you have that your faculty of awareness is creating or able to create things? Are you trying to argue that it is possible that we are "brains in a vat"; that some scientist, using some advanced science is using electrodes to create the objects we are aware of? I.e., that it is possible that we are in some kind of Matrix like machine "creating" existence?

Does it follow that when a consciousness is conscious of some object, the object springs into existence the instant the photo receptors of one's eyes begin receiving light reflected from that object? (Note: there would be no object to reflect the light, there would be no light, no eye and no receptors) Does it follow that when a consciousness is conscious of some object, the object springs into existence the instant when: vibrations in the air move our ear drum? chemicals interact with our taste buds? chemicals are inhaled into our nose? Our sense organs have no power to create existence. They function mechanically and deterministically. Sense-perception is our primary form of consciousness. In OPAR, Leonard Peikoff puts the point, A consciousness conscious of no object, is a contradiction in terms. Again, Ayn Rand puts the point this way, Here is how Peikoff describes the process by which we become aware of awareness, i.e., the process across time which later provides each individual with incentive to coin a concept so we may become conceptually aware of awareness/consciousness. It is not until we as children have many, many instances of being aware of objects, that we are able to mentally step back & abstract and form an explicit concept of awareness itself. For example my one year old son is not yet even able to speak, nor is able to understand what we mean when we point to a ball and say, "there it is go get it... get it!"; has only this week learned he can put a finger in each ear and stop the "awareness" of the sounds coming in. This experience and many others will become the data he uses to mentally isolate "awareness" itself. The act of awareness, i.e., the act of being conscious, is implicit in every sensory-perceptual experience of objects, and becomes the data we then use to form the concept "awareness," or the concept "consciousness," thus allowing us more sophisticated identifications about the nature of consciousness as such.

I am having trouble following your use of the pronoun "it". Is this what you intended to write? It doesn't follow from the fact that a consciousness is conscious of something that [consciousness] existed before the consciousness was conscious of [some object].

This is really not the point. "Primacy" sets up an epistemological order necessary for establishing the O'ist epistemology, thus empowering the O'ist ethics, and the rest, i.e., it makes explicit introspection possible, makes objectivity possible, makes reason possible. The primacy of existence establishes the first hierarchy in O'ist epistemology, i.e., first, existence, then consciousness. Since, Descartes, Modern philosophy starts with consciousness first, they are never able to escape consciousness. It advises that to be cognitively efficacious one needs to subordinate ones consciousness to existence. Rand makes the point in Galt's speech as, Also, the idea will remain "dubious" in our mind as long as it is not held in the context of its contrast, i.e., the "primacy of consciousness," which is why when she formulates the point, Rand always does so in contrast to the "primacy of consciousness," such as: Ayn Rand Lexicon The most important point in this context is: "This crucial distinction is not given to man automatically; it has to be learned." In other words, its not "obvious." In ITOE, she makes the distinction even more clearly, stating that it is only possible to explicitly experience, grasp, define, or communicate one's inner awareness of consciousness, in relation to the content of the external world, stating,

Reference please. Where does she say this, and what is the surrounding context? For example on page 563 of Atlas Shrugged Dagny is thinking Or Here Dagny is thinking of the power plant, Or When James Taggart evasively runs to try to forget what a worthless rotter he is, The "sum" she continues to refer to is a purposeful progression, i.e., when one has an end goal and heads towards it, accomplishing all the intermediary steps; which then become the basis for further progression onward. She is talking about the "sum" of building on some aspect of one's life, part by part, heading towards and end-goal, i.e., the progression of self-sustained and/or self-generated action. For man, this progression is inescapable because of the nature of man's distinctive volitional consciousness. James Taggart serves to dramatize a man trying to escape the responsibility of one's volitional consciousness, which Rand uses to concretetize the fact that a choice to evade one's requirement of choice, is still a choice. So that, in the end, even a man attempting to evade choice, still possesses the character and/or life (lack there of) caused by the choices he failed to make. Positively, Dagny, Rearden, Francisco, Galt and the other's character and/or life, have been build consciously, each taking responsibility for their own consciousness, and as a consequence their own lives by selecting their own long range, productive goals (careers), and progressively moving step by step towards accomplishing them. Thus, when any one of their lives is viewed at any given point in time, all the actions leading up to that point, "sum" together to create where that person is, i.e., the prior steps were the consciously chosen means to that point in time in that persons progression towards their end-goals. Finally, Ayn Rand in VOS, states the overall idea that "Man's life is a continuous whole: for good or evil, every day, year and decade of his life holds the sum of all the days behind him." This thesis that "Man's life is a continuous whole," is probably her most refined statement of the point. This is the sense of "sum" she means, i.e., the sense of life being a unified whole. Note: when she explicitly states "Man's life" she means it. She means specifically man's life because she is alluding to man's distinctive means of survival, i.e., his volitional / conceptual consciousness, as opposed to an animal's life and it's kind of consciousness. The title essay of the book "Virtue of selfishness" is entirely dedicated to elaborating this point and its implications. The way you are using "math" here is not really in accordance with how Ayn Rand uses the concept of one's life being a sum. O'ism is not some implicit formulation of Utilitarianism, which seems to be the underlying current of your inquiry. I would also recommend you read ITOE regarding the nature of measurement and the relationship of mathematics to man's consciousness. "Equanimity of Happiness" is a very strange locution, that does not apply to anything I've read about O'ism.

EXACTLY. Why did they write the myths? Why did the select the circumstances of the myths? Men wrote the myths to describe how things might be an ought to be. Gods are made up constructs for explaining and dispensing advice for how to live one's life. News flash... gods aren't real... In a certain sense, the authors/tellers (men) of the myths continued to "set" the vultures on Prometheus on each retelling. As they could have chosen to retell the story differently, or even could have reversed the plot, but they chose to tell the story for a purpose, possibly providing a kind of moral warning to men who would have the courage to bring a new invention, such as fire, electricity, the light bulb to man kind. Further, there are many, many different castings of the myth. For example, there are major differences between Hesiod's telling and Aeschylus various plays on the subject, the two figures most associated with the earliest popular use of the Myth. Here's one analysis of the two artists vastly different recastings of the myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus Hesiod and Aeschylus are as using the myths to convey certain virtues, warnings and explanation, according to their own philosophy. This is precisely what Ayn Rand has done in remolding the myth again to match the story of Atlas Shrugged. It's amazing to me how ridged and concrete bound peoples minds can be, especially when speaking of a completely man-made, volitionally created work of art. I mean next the guy is going to say, using "Atlas" another mythical figure is not "apt" for the major mythical allusion used in the novel, and ultimately used in the Title. Maybe Ayn Rand should have named it something else?

It is not "apt?" It is apt for the story of Atlas Shrugged. What would be apt for you?