phibetakappa
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Posts posted by phibetakappa
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This is reifying volition, as if it were a Prime Mover acting as an original cause. The act of focusing is volition, as are other choices. There is not a separate faculty of volition apart from the various modes of acting.
At the risk of a giant digression, what is the justification for this distinction? Similarities and differences are both given perceptually, utilizing either in forming a concept requires some degree of focus.
If a person does not have a conceptual consciousness, then the choice to form concepts would not be available to him. A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty. Without it there would be no possibility of being volitional in any respect.
Your infant son is growing his conceptual faulty organically and incrementally. He does not have a choice about expressing what is genetic to his human nature. He will someday have a conceptual consciousness whether he wills it or not. Whether he uses it or not will be his fundamental choice. With use it will become more capable and with neglect less capable but it is always there so long as he remains whole and healthy.
Choosing not to choose is itself a choice, but only so long as the alternative exists.
One's mind just doesn't come into focus by accident and then suddenly they have volition. Focusing one's mind is a choice, that presupposes the capacity to make choices. As you stated the act of focusing is volitional, i.e., presupposing a capacity of volition.
Reify means "to regard as a concrete thing"
That is precisely what you are doing with the concepts of "consciousness", "faculty", "conceptual", "conceptual consciousness" and "faculty of reason"
You state:
If a person does not have a conceptual consciousness, then the choice to form concepts would not be available to him. A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty. Without it there would be no possibility of being volitional in any respect."A conceptual consciousness is a physical faculty" This is the definition of reify.
Here in the next section you do it again:
Your infant son is growing his conceptual faculty organically and incrementally. He does not have a choice about expressing what is genetic to his human nature. He will someday have a conceptual consciousness whether he wills it or not. .A conceptual consciousness is not a physical faculty. It is a spiritual faculty, i.e, non-material. One has to choose to have a conceptual faculty, and if one is to keep it one has to continually choose to keep one's mind in focus and to management one's mind via a constant volitional effort.
If one never does choose to focus, never chooses to maintain the continuous effort the conceptual level of consciousness requires, one still has volition, but one does not have a conceptual consciousness. One has a perceptual consciousness, with the potential of being activated, utilized and/or sustained via a continuous volitional effort.
Again I recommend Harry Binswanger's Freewill lectures, and if you can spend the money and get an early copy of his new book which has an entire chapter on freewill.
Over and out.
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The fundamental volitional act, the primary choice, is to focus. Focus only applies to conceptual consciousness.
The act of focusing requires volition. You have to will your mind into focus. The faculty of volition exists prior to bringing our mind into focus. We use volition to bring our mind into focus, then we can use it to form our first acts of abstraction which lead to concept formation.
Grasping similarities as opposed to differences is a volitional process, and is the essence of having a conceptual level consciousness. Grasping similarity as opposed to differences requires the mind to be in focus. It is in this manor that our minds attains it attribute of being potentially conceptual.
If the person never chooses to volitionally observe similarities and differences and form his first concepts, it would be wrong to say he had a "conceptual consciousness." But you could still say he has a volitional consciousness.
My infant son for over a year and a half has not known a single word, has not shown any sign of having formed his first concept. But he can be seen exerting mental and physical effort in goal-directed ways, he can me observed making choices at the perceptual level.
In other words he is entirely perceptual and exerts choice all over the place. He does not possess a conceptual consciousness. Having a conceptual consciousness is a matter of choice.
It is not as if we are just born with a conceptual faculty and it just starts up one day, and we just start form concepts. Our volitional consciousness has to be willed to work in a conceptual way. If we never will it to operate in a manor to produce concept, it is not and will never be a conceptual consciousness.
It is true that there is no evidence that any animal is conceptual. It may be true that their brains do not even possess the physical potential to become conceptual, and the the average human brain does possess that potential. But, it is possible for a human being, despite having the potentiality of choosing to be conceptual, never does make that choice, and/or never sustains the choice to operate at the conceptual level for very long. For long stretches such a man can drift mentally, and can and does exert freewill and volition.
Having a conceptual consciousness presupposes having volition. But having volition does not presuppose having conceptual consciousness.
Forming concepts requires effort. A child has to choose to make his consciousness conceptual.
This presupposes his volitional faculty is already working and he is making choices, and directing his perceptual consciousness for many many months before he ever makes the choice to sustain the effort of gathering up the bunches and bunches of perceptual observations of similarities and differences of objects, which he will eventual use to form his first concept.
All these pre-conceptual activities are volitional. The faculty of volition exists prior to having a conceptual consciousness, and the faculty of volition exists and can be active when and if a man choose not to operate at the conceptual level, i.e., when he chooses not to have a conceptual consciousness.
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I recommend you get Harry Binswanger's lectures on the topic of freewill. and/or I recommend you ask him yourself. and/or You sign up for the review of his latest book which covers the subject of freewill here: "How do we know"
I just finished reviewing Harry Binswanger's 1999 lecture entitle "Freewill," in hopes to find a more precise reference instead of just saying review the whole course.
(Sorry I only have the cassette tape version)
On Tape 1, side B, during the Q&A the last question HB takes is on the topic of animals and volition.
The man asks I have a dog and I trained him to wait to eat his favorite biscuit. Something like "I put the biscuit on his nose and he as to wait until he is given the command to eat it, and the dog sits there as salivates, and visibly struggles and strains every muscle to keep from eating the biscuit. Does that show that the dog has some form of volition because it is seemingly using 'effort' to not eat the biscuit."
Binswanger gives a good answer. He states he is sympathetic to the view that some animals do display what can be characterized as (volitional) "effort," in some contexts, because he has witnessed these kinds of instances too. He gives a great contrasts and states cats just cannot be seen to ever be place in the type of "conflict" provided in the dog/biscuit example.
More importantly he explicitly states it is not part of Objectivism that no animal cannot have some form of volition/freewill. He states there is no reason to be dogmatic about stating that no animal cannot have some form freewill, under highly delimited circumstances.
I believe far and way the more important thing is understanding man's form of volition because understanding it is life and death for us/joy vs suffering. But that is not the topic of this post. The post is above "Volition in Animals."
Again I recommend Binswanger's lecture because he approaches it inductively, examining what facts introspectively can be viewed related to volition.
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Reading this discussion as an outsider, I have to agree that you are confusing the two, however I wouldn't blame you - I was as well. Diana's main point is that "volition" becomes a non-sensical, meaningless term if divorced from the faculty of reason. One must have a faculty of reason in order for one to either choose to focus and access that faculty, or not choose to focus and not access that faculty.
Why would the term "volition" become nonsensical and meaningless if divorced from the faculty of reason? In what basis of fact do you have for claiming this?
One must have a faculty of reason in order for one to either choose to focus and access that faculty, or not choose to focus and not access that faculty.How are you coming to this conclusion? Based on what? Why, does one have to have the faculty of reason in order to focus there mind?
What do you mean by the faculty of reason? What does it mean to have "access that faculty"?
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I'm done here, as I'm just interested in tolerating any more incivility.
I don't think I have been uncivil by any means. I have put forth claims, have disputed yours and have supported myself using the O'ist literature.
If stating you have stolen the concept "voluntary" in this thread, I think based on your statement that you have been getting your ques as to how to use the term from how Aristotle has been translated to use it 2500 years ago, should raise a question in your mind as to just what your trying to do with the term.
It is great to study Aristotle, but Aristotle's context and our modern context are very different.
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(2) My use of the term "voluntary" is straight from Aristotle, as I explained in my post. Go gripe to him -- or his translators, if you please. But perhaps you might attempt to understand his views of such matters before rejecting them out of hand.
You are dropping context. Aristotle is not a spokes person for O'ism. The context Aristole had 2500 years ago on the subject of "volition" is very different from the context we have today. Further Aristotle's use of the term "voluntary" in his context, does not excuse you from stealing the term in a modern context.
Again, if you are going to act as if you are putting for a view consonant with O'ism, then provide references which support your claim, and/or provide first-hand evidence to support it.
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(1) If you don't grasp the enormous difference between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think, then you don't understand the Objectivist view of volition.
Where does Objectivism make a distinction between focusing your eyes on a distant object and focusing your mind to think?
Why couldn't you be focusing your eyes, ears, etc, etc as part of the process of thinking, in the act of gathering more evidence. Infants go through a stage of not having concepts, i.e., not having reason, and they so obviously have volition. Animals can be observed with volition.
I am willing to bet based on your comments that I am far better versed in this topic than you are.
So far you haven't supported your view with any citations from prominent Objectivists who you contend support your point of view. Further you have not addressed the citations I have provided which clearly refute your arbitrary assertions.
You have not provided any evidence to support your view at all.
So don't try to act as if you are speaking for "Objectivism". If you believe you are putting forth a view that is consonant with O'ism then support it with references.
I recommend you get Harry Binswanger's lectures on the topic of freewill. and/or I recommend you ask him yourself. and/or You sign up for the review of his latest book which covers the subject of freewill here: "How do we know"
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To lump them all under the category "volition" renders you unable to study or discuss the latter in any meaningful way. It's an integration of concepts beyond necessity.
This is very mistaken. We are not lumping anything together. You loose nothing or hamper yourself in anyway, because we are observing what actually is the case. There is nothing remarkably different from what you are arbitrarily designating as "voluntary," in the case of non-human animals, and what is observed in adult humans.
In fact you are stealing the concept "voluntary."
That seems like a better option than making a hash of some very important and distinctive Objectivist concepts.I am not making a hash out of very important and distinctive Objectivist concepts, if anything I'm attempting to keep the most fundamental concepts on which O'ist rest, safe from your mistaken assertions.
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You are confusing processes of reasoning with the faculty of reason
I have not confused anything. I'm not sure why it is even relevant in this context to try to bring in a distinction between the process of reasoning and when we speak of the "faculty" or "capacity" to reason.
The process of reasoning is obviously regulated via volition, the choices we make in terms of what questions we ask and answer and the other aspects of it.
The faculty of reason is a certain potentiality human being possess to reason, for which they can utilize or not.
Here is what Ayn Rand has to say both about the "faculty" of reason, and the preconditions that faculty depends on. Yes, the conditions the "faculty" of reason itself depends on (not the other way around as you are stating):
"Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of-focusing one's consciousness is volitional.Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality-or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.
When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious."(Virtue of Selfishness, 22)
Do you think this statement is claiming as you state, "Thus the existence of volition requires the existence of the faculty of reason."
On the contrary I believe it displaces your statement all together. Firsthand observation via introspection also supports the opposite. The faculty of reason, depends on an aspect of volition, not the other way around.
But what volition operates on -- what it pertains to -- what it's a function of -- is the faculty of reason. Thus the existence of volition requires the existence of the faculty of reason. There's no volition on the perceptual or sensational levels of consciousness.The existence of volition does not require the existence of the faculty of reason.
Why would it? What exactly do you mean by the "faculty of reason?"
There is nothing about the nature of volition which precludes it from operating on the perceptual level.
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Note that the claim / question was about tool creation. (Later you speak of tool use). So what are the details of ape tool creation, where an animal manufactures an object out of something, for some purpose.
I'm not exactly sure whether the following video is "tool" usage or tool creation, but it is fascinating. It shows a crow that has adapted to the urban environment by utilizing the traffic lights, and cars to break nuts for food.
Crow That Uses Cars as Nut Cracker
The whole process does have some traditional aspects that can be explained by standard operant conditioning, but I think other aspects of it could be explained via a perceptual level volition.
It could be subsumed under the description Ayn Rand gives in ITOE I previously provided:
"And although I hesitate to talk about volition on the preconceptual level—because the subject isn't aware of it in those terms—even a preconceptual infant has the power to look around or not look, to listen or not listen. He has a certain minimal, primitive form of volition over the function of his senses" (ITOE,150).It is not an infant, but the bird does seem to show an ability to choose its actions, selecting from alternatives.
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What evidence would be accepted to show animals have volition? Tool creation, language use, a lack of tail, fur and scales?
I think play behavior in adult dogs, primates and some birds demonstrates some perceptual level volition. Also, see the example I provided about my dog.
Further, we can observe perceptual level volition in infants, which I think supports the claim that some animals can have a form of volition. (see my post).
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(1) Volition is the activation of conceptual consciousness, i.e. of reason. So volition requires reason. (That should be obvious, I hope.)
This is false. Volition does not require reason. Reason requires volition. You need to reread OPAR and listen to Harry Binswanger's lecture on Freewill, I've provided the sections above. But for example in OPAR page 56:
Volition subsumes different kinds of choices. The primary choice, according to Objectivism, the one that makes conceptual activity possible, is the choice to focus one's consciousness.(OPAR, 56)Followed by:
"Focus is not the same as thinking; it need not involve problem-solving or the drawing of new conclusions. Focus is the readiness to think and as such the precondition of thinking. Again a visual analogy may be helpful. Just as one must first focus his eyes, and then, if he chooses, he can turn his gaze to a cognitive task, such as observing methodically the items on a table nearby; so he must first focus his mind, and then, if he chooses, he can direct that focus to the performance of a conceptual-level task."(58)The effort to bring one's mind into focus is chosen, i.e., it is volitional.
Reason can not get off the ground until the mind is volitionally brought into focus. This is a pre-rational condition needed to think.
Peikoff later states,
"The choice to focus, I have said, is man's primary choice. "Primary" here means: presupposed by all other choices and itself irreducible.Until a man is in focus, his mental machinery is unable to function in the human sense—to think, judge, or evaluate. The choice to "throw the switch" is thus the root choice, on which all the others depend.
Nor can a primary choice be explained by anything more fundamental. By its nature, it is a first cause within a consciousness, not an effect produced by antecedent factors. It is not a product of parents or teachers, anatomy or conditioning, heredity or environment (see chapter 6). Nor can one explain the choice to focus by reference to a person's own mental contents, such as his ideas. The choice to activate the conceptual level of awareness must precede any ideas; until a person is conscious in the human sense, his mind cannot reach new conclusions or even apply previous ones to a current situation. There can be no intellectual factor which makes a man decide to become aware or which even partly explains such a decision: to grasp such a factor, he must already be aware."(OPAR, 59)
You can check this yourself via introspection. I recommend in the morning when you first wake up.
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PBK, my question was much simpler. I understand why Diane's statement isn't correct; what I wanted to know -- if you have an answer to the question -- is, what is "volition"? I know it is not focus, reason, rationality: I don't want to know what it isn't. Can you define it, in the sense "make clear what the concept refers to"? If not, fine.
I do understand your point about the potential trouble of stating what is not subsumed under a given concept, i.e., the potential problems with negative definitions.
But, focus in this case is an instance of volition i.e., focus according to O'ism is subsumed under the concept volition. So, "focus" is not an example of stating what volition is not, but it is an example of what volition is. My point being that we cannot exclude focus as an instance of volition, which needs to be consider as part of the entire context of what volition is.
I will work on "defining" volition. Given volition is an axiomatic concept it will be difficult. Likely we are going to be left with a sort of ostensive definition. Off the cuff I'd say,
The ability of animals to choose how to direct their actionsHowever, I am concerned over this statement:I cannot imagine what a 'primitive form of volition' could be.I meant "primitive" in the sense of a form of volition that does not involve the sort of complex mental regulation that humans do on the conceptual level. We bring our minds into focus, then we choose to think, then the process of thinking is essentially a process of asking and answering questions. This process of asking and answering questions is volitionally regulated. We can choose how to manage our minds, (except for the psycho-epistemological aspects of thinking.)
Now, to my knowledge there are no conceptual animals except human beings. So, obviously no animal is going to be engaged in the complexity of asking and answering questions, because they can't form questions without concepts. (Also, given that values are certain kinds of concepts, animals will have no meta-ethical behavioral regulation guiding their actions, in the sense of not having conceptual goal-direction guiding their actions.)
Here is what Ayn Rand has "hesitantly" to say about a primitive form of volition with regard to preconceptual infants.
Prof. A: Abstraction is a volitional act. Is that right?AR: Oh yes.
Prof. D: Then how do I go about abstracting the very first time? How do I know what to do,
volitionally? Unless I first had the idea of abstraction, how could I proceed to will to
abstract?
AR: No, you do something else volitionally. That is, you abstract volitionally, but you don't
will it directly the first time. Do you know what you will? You will to observe. You use your
senses, you look around, and your will is to grasp, to understand. And you observe similarities.
Now, you don't know yet that this is the process of abstraction, and a great many people never
grasp consciously that that's what the process is. But you are engaged in it once you begin to
observe similarities.
And although I hesitate to talk about volition on the preconceptual level—because the subject
isn't aware of it in those terms—even a preconceptual infant has the power to look around or not
look, to listen or not listen. He has a certain minimal, primitive form of volition over the
function of his senses.
But volition in the full sense of a conscious choice, and a choice which
he can observe by introspection, begins when he forms concepts— at the stage where he has a
sufficient conceptual vocabulary to begin to form sentences and draw conclusions, when he can
say consciously, in effect, "This table is larger than that one"—that he has to do volitionally.
If he doesn't want to, he can skip that necessity, and you can observe empirically that too many
people do, on too wide a scale" (ITOE, 150).
You stated,
Man has free will; animals do not. What possible middle ground is there?I could understand being so adamant to claim animals don't have concepts. But there is plenty of first hand, observable information to support the existence of some form of volition in some animals.
Man is a certain kind of animal, and I know of no evidence that precludes other animals from having the ability to choose their actions, on a non-conceptual level.
Children from conception to birth, from infancy to adolescence; developmentally progress basically through all the stages that most non-human animals take. That is their development takes them from being a piece of protoplasm to embryo etc, etc. etc. For a brief period after they are born, like any higher animal, they experience only the perceptual level of consciousness. Behaviorally, they act and engage their environment like any chimp or intelligent dog would.
I've observed this first hand with both my infant son and my dog.
If you observe closely you can watch an infant progress from a writhing, non-volitional animal (degree by degree) to something obviously volitionally directing its perceptual senses; then later to something of a hybrid state of consciousness, flirting with conception. The child remains for months like this, before it ever shows any sign of even implicitly knowing its first word, and then its first concept.
In this sense we observe the child behaving exactly as Ayn Rand describes here:
And although I hesitate to talk about volition on the preconceptual level—because the subject isn't aware of it in those terms—even a preconceptual infant has the power to look around or not look, to listen or not listen. He has a certain minimal, primitive form of volition over the function of his senses" (ITEO, 150).It is in this sense that an animal could have volition. And in my opinion, it is in this sense that some animals such as "intelligent" dogs do have volition.
In the case of my dog, and the dozens I've observed, the dog not only "has the power to look around or not look, to listen or not listen," there are definite indications of other "selections". (Note: I use scare quotes here because I am aware of the danger of anthropomorphizing, and I am aware of the dangers of trying to apply concepts meant to describe human behavior such as "choice," or "selection" to describe animals.)
Obviously, as we know dogs are non-conceptual so the dog is not conceptualizing its environment, it is not engaged in measurement-omission, and thus does not discover "similarities" and differences as described in ITOE.
As one example of what can be observed in the case of my dog. My dog has a "vocabulary" of probably a dozen words such as sit, stay, roll over etc. Also, I have words and phrases for 1) "do you want to go outside" and "do you want food." I have tested and the dog keys in on the phrase "do you want...", she will sit and intently focus until I give her the 2 alternatives, either "go outside," or "food."
When she hears "food" and she has to urinate, she will get quiet settle down, and wait, until I give her the next alternative. When she hears "go outside," she gets very excited, and barks and jumps.
But, if I don't move, and ignore her response, then ask again, "do you want..." and pause; she will settle down, and her gaze intensifies as she waits for the alternative again. Then when I say, "food" she can be observed to quiet down even more, and wait, for the next alternative.
Her behavior varies dependent on if she is hungry or if she needs to urinate. As she is conditioned to come to me for either option, she does every time and waits to be given the alternatives. And as I like to test her abilities, I often ignore her response, and feed her the alternatives until she provides unambiguous responses to my questions.
I submit this and other examples like it from other pet owners demonstrate a form of volition on the perceptual level.
I do not think these behaviors can be explained via operant conditioning, but I will expect to hear some people try.
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Alright, let's clarify exactly what you're disagreeing with. What is volition?
dianahsieh states,
"Volition (or free will) is not merely the power to choose between alternatives based on values. It requires reason; it's the power to focus one's rational mind or not, simply as a matter of will."She obviously has some knowledge of O'ism and chooses to bring in the idea of "focusing one's mind," in relation to volition.
But then she artificially narrows the concept by stating volition requires reason, especially in the phrase:
"[volition] is the power to focus one's rational mind or not, simply as a matter of will."According to everything I know of volition including my first hand introspection, and my review of O'ist literature including Harry Binswanger's course on "Freewill," the concept of volition cannot validly be delimited this way.
My position agrees with L. Peikoff's statement in OPAR page 56:
"Volition subsumes different kinds of choices. The primary choice, according to Objectivism, the one that makes conceptual activity possible, is the choice to focus one's consciousness" (OPAR, 56).Note the sentence, "The primary choice, according to Objectivism, the one that makes conceptual activity possible, is the choice to focus one's consciousness"
In O'ist term "focus" (focusing one's mind) is a "volitional" act. Peikoff defines focus as:
"'Focus' (in the conceptual realm) names a quality of purposeful alertness in a man's mental state. 'Focus' is the state of a goal-directed mind committed to attaining full awareness of reality" (OPAR, 56).After a certain degree of mental focus is achieved, one can then engage more sophisticated forms of mental regulation, including simple to complex reasoning.
Peikoff clarifies the relationship between the volitional act of focusing and thinking:
"Focus is not the same as thinking; it need not involve problem-solving or the drawing of new conclusions. Focus is the readiness to think and as such the precondition of thinking" (OPAR, 58).Focusing is a volitional act, and it is not thinking, it is non-conceptual, i.e., it is pre-conceptual; pre-rational, i.e., it is a necessary condition of engaging in conceptualization (the essence of thinking/rationality).
If volitional is artificially delimited to "the power to focus one's rational mind or not, simply as a matter of will," we implicitly undercut the O'ist basis for the axiomatic concept of volition.
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There is no reason why a given animal cannot possess a primitive form of volition. If a given non-human animal did possess a form of volition this would have no negative implications for man or society. Possessing volition is not a sufficient condition for rights or any other negatively man-impacting implication. Man still maintains his particular identity as a rational being, regardless of what attributes some other species possesses.
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Volition (free will) is not merely the power to choose between alternatives based on values. It requires reason; it's the power to focus one's rational mind or not, simply as a matter of will.
Volition does not require reason. Reason requires volition.
Volition is not the power to focus one's "rational mind." One can not be rational until and unless one's mind has already been focused.
The choice to focus one's mind is the primary choice, prior to any reasoning.
If you want proof you are gong to need to honestly introspect.
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I wanted to disprove God on metaphysical grounds.
You cannot prove that something that does not exist... does not exist. I.e., because god is a figment of imagination there's no evidence that such a thing exists.
In other words, it is NOT your obligation to disprove the existence of a god, it is your friends obligation to prove that a god exists. That means he has to provide supporting evidence to this claim that something he is calling a god exists.
No one has ever provided evidence that god exists and no one will ever be able to do it. A zero, a nothing, a figment of imagination does not leave a trail, it does not interact with objects, there will be nothing to cite as factual evidence supporting "its" existence.
Incidentally, "disprove" means building a case using factual evidence, which explains a phenomena better than a previously argued, factually supported case.
The word disprove does not apply in this discussion, because no one has ever demonstrated the existence of a god by building a case using factual support, i.e., evidence. Just like your "friend" people have only made assertions assuming the existence of a gold.
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'phibetakappa'
This is a bromide, it is not an argument. "naturally" have the right to raise their children. As I stated in a collectivist state parents would not have the right to raise their children. More parents every year in America are being told by various forms of government how they can and can not raise their children.[/code]Careful. Rights are inalienable; being able to exercise them is a different issue.
(Note: I edited the above post, so this quote is incorrect.)
Yes, they are inalienable but that does not mean rights can be violated by the state, i.e., taken away via force.
There is no "right" to raise children.
There is a "right' to raise [b]YOUR[/b] children, i.e., the children that [b]BELONG[/b] to you, i.e, your [b]OWN[/b], children, the children you [b]OWN[/b].
(Highlighting all the words which indicate ownership)
There is a right to property; and children are produced, gained and/or kept like any other value.
This just reminded me of another aspect that children have in common to any other form of property, they can be stolen, i.e., kidnapped. Who are they returned to when found? The parents, the legal owners of the children.
They remain such until the relationship changes based on the maturity of the child into an adult; and the parent and child form a new relationship, one that is more appropriate for two adults.
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Like so many people you seem to read what you want and skip the rest.
Does that really sound like children are their parents' to use and dispose of?I don't understand your point.
The fact of the matter parents do direct their children's lives. That is what to dispose of means.
Children are their parents' responsibility, and responsible parents naturally have the right to raise their children.This is a bromide, it is not an argument. You state they "naturally" have the right to raise their children. Why? As I stated in a collectivist state parents would not have the right to raise their children. More parents every year in America are being told by various forms of government how they can and can not raise their children.
It is not an owner-property relationship, by any means.Again, you are very obtuse. I've given dozens of reason why the parent-child relationship has similar characteristics as any other owner-property relationship.
In some cases, its ashame that people don't take care of their other property the way they take care of their children.
Try observing the facts and not reacting to the emotions the word property invokes in you. I.e., try being objective, instead of emotion driven.
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In Objectivism, children are unequivocally considered men, and all men are ends in themselves. Men cannot rightfully be property.
You are being obtuse.
The fact of the matter is that children are not men. They are in an in between state. This is why a special term children was coined, and why there are so many legal and social exceptions made for children.
If children were men they would not need parents.
Children, if they remain healthy will unequivocally become men, and be able to make decisions for themselves.
Parents do, and understandably should, behave towards their children as they are property; their most cherished property.
This does not mean children loose their rights, that they are abused; in fact it assures they are treated with love and affections by those person who's choice and effort conceived, birthed and loves them; and it assures that children are legally able to get guidance without interference from the state or other men.
As children mature into men, the standards for how to treat a given person depending on the maturity of the given person. Likewise the way in which parents regard their children properly shifts from thinking of them as a protected possession to an autonomous adult, who is able to take care of themselves.
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If the concept of rights is totally beyond a dog's , and is irrelevant to its life, If you can own anything that doesn't have rights, then you can own a dog, but since humans have rights, you cannot own one.
I don't follow your argument.
Humans have rights because they are volitional, and possess the ability to reason. Children do not hold any special exception to this because by nature, they possess the ability to reason - that ability is simply undeveloped. A dog can never hope to develop reason.Human don't have rights solely because they are volitional. They have rights because there are certain necessary conditions their life requires, which must be maintained if they are to live among other men in a society.
However, you are correct, when a child becomes an adult he will have the same requirements has any other person in society, and those requirements must be maintained when attempting to live in and around other men, if they are to life qua men in society.
You are correct a dog can neither reason or hope (which depends on reason).
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Great thanks.
Yeah, this (below) reasoning is just wrong, as-wells-as based on false assumptions what "causality" is and how people know it.
"Hume challenges other philosophers to come up with a (deductive) reason for the connection. If he is right, then the justification of induction can be only inductive. But this begs the question; as induction is based on an assumption of the connection, it cannot itself explain the connection." -
Whereas children are living rational animals that depend on us for sustaining their lives.
The fascinating aspect of the nature of children is the fact is that children by definition are not fully rational. We do not consider children able to make decisions for themselves. I.e., who we consider a child is in large part deterred by the rational capacity of the given person.
Developmentally, children are in a hybrid state of development for many years. Human ontogeny is the longest of any species of animal, i.e., the length of time between birth and maturity.
This is why legally we treat them as exceptions, making special legal concessions to compensate for their immature state. Legally, maturity basically consists of when the person is thought to be completely responsible for their actions, such as being able to understand the consequences of their actions.
From ITOE, AR states,
The concept "property" denotes the relationship of a man to an object (or an idea): his right to use it and to dispose of it—and involves a long chain of moral-legal concepts, including the procedure by which the object was acquired. The mere observation of a man in the act of using an object will not convey the concept "property.""dispose" here does not mean destroy, to get rid of an object; it means to "to arrange or decide matters." It means to do with an object what one believes is right. The opposite is to do only by permission.
It is precisely because legally that children are treated as a highly specialized form of property, that parents retain a legal right to make the decisions for on behalf of their children. Parents can raise their children precisely because they have a limited form of property rights to them. The right to raise a child according to the parents judgment is only a form of the right to dispose of one's property.
This is why I stated don't through the baby out with the bath water. It is a child's highly specialized and delimited state of being a form of property, which give parents the right to raise their children, giving parents the right to decide how to feed, clothe, shelter, school their children. (Granted as we progressively loose our property rights, we also, loose our rights as parents to decide what's best for our children.)
Otherwise, the opposite is literally a system of collectivism, where the rights to one's property does not exist. A notable feature of collectivism being that parents of children do not have a right to dispose of their children, i.e., to decide on their behalf. Rather, the state disposes of children for the good of the collective.
The limitations of the hybrid-property rights arise because of the consideration of the full nature of the child. It is because children are known to be immature humans that they are only granted a sub-set of legal rights; whereas their parents maintain the majority of rights to make decisions on the child's behalf. Why? Because the child is not able to make decisions for themselves.
Acknowledging that children in their hybrid-state of being immature adults, gives rise to a highly delimited form of property rights to the parents of children thereof does not have some evil consequences. It is not as if having such a delimited form of property rights allows parents to legally murder their children, or eat them, exploit and/or prostitute them.
Further, it is not as if parents having a highly limited form of property rights over their children necessarily removes the child's rights, which they are not capable of exercising. But as the child becomes more aware, more fully rational and able to make their own decisions, we socially and legally began granting children more rights. In certain cases a child can petition the court for emancipation, at which point the parents limited right to dispose of the child is legally broken, and the child is considered and adult and able to dispose of themselves.
Parents can and do "dispose" of their children, i.e, can and do make decisions as to what their child will and will not do.
When the nature of the property is different, if the property is a car or a dog for example, certain limitations to the range of how the owner (parent) can dispose of the property are legally upheld. We do not yet have car cruelty statutes but in most states we have animal cruelty statutes (see Michael Vick case). Whereas on the flip side, people are allowed to keep live stock to slaughter and eat, but not if those live stocks are dogs and cats.
It is in the legal and cultural considerations of the precise nature of the "property" being owned that give rise to limitations to the ownership.
In the case of children, being potential rational/responsible adults, has given rise to a complex system of rights and cultural norms regarding how parents are expected to raise their children. Parents can not starve, beat, kill, prostitute, sexually abuse, their children. These (and many others) are the limitations on their right to dispose of their children as they see fit.
But within the social and legal limits, parents have great latitude to dispose of their children as they see fit. They can choose when and where their children will go, who they will associate with, where they will live, what they will eat, where they will go to school etc. etc. etc.
How are they legally and morally able to dispose of their children in such ways? "Their" children are "theirs," i.e., their children are in fact a highly-limited form of property.
If you don't believe this try to tell any given parent how to parent their children. You will illicit the same response (only more potent) as if you had told them how they should drive "their" car, how they should keep "their" yard, how they should where "their" clothes etc. etc. etc.
Parents are "possessive" over their children. For the same reason why the are possessive over any of their possessions.
The difference is that children grow up, and are able to eventually decide for themselves.
It is in the assertion of these specialized property rights which characterized the universal nature of adolescence, and the fundamental conflict between teen agers and their parents. Parents assert they have the right to dispose of their children and the children counter, stating they can run their own lives.
It is precisely the love for one's property, which characterize parental love, and the lengths most loving parents will go to protect, and raise their child to the best of their ability. For most it is the most valuable property they have, and they spend most of their lives planning on the disposal of their children, i.e., how to put their children in the best position they can as those children leave their hybrid-state and become fully autonomous adults.
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One should not play devil's advocate with principles. Children are not property - period.
They are not fundamentally like animals at all.
Parents do not own them - period.
Yes, in fact they ARE animals! Just like like adults. That is our genus, i.e., man is properly defined as the rational (differentia) animal (genus).
You are not considering the full context.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. :-)
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I just don't see what the evidence could be for the claim that children are property.
Again, extending devils advocate:
If you want evidence to support the thesis that children are similar to property, just examine what makes pets and lives stock property, especially pets.
Pets are living non-rational animals that depend on us for sustaining their lives.
Now, obviously, these similarities end when we consider the full context of the specific kind of animal a child is a species of, i.e., the type of consciousness it possess, and what a child will be.
As I stated before, the relationship between parent and child has many of the same characteristics that conventional ownership displays. The parent can exercise control of the child to some degree similar to how they exercise control over their pets. Parents can even sell their children and/or give them away using surrogacy and adoption. Parents can even exercise limited use of force over their children in terms of punishment and restricting their actions.
We even speaks of their children as if they are property, stating these are my children, this is my child, which indicates a belief of "possession."
However, context needs to be maintained, and what a child will be is accounted for and thus we develop set of complex hybrid rules, which apply to children differently than those applying to adults. For example, "the age of consent," "the legal drinking age," "being tried as an adult", "selective service", "voting" etc, etc. etc.
Volition in Animals
in Biosciences
Posted · Edited by phibetakappa
I have not been representing any of Binswanger's views here. I suggested people, especially you, study Binswanger's lectures because he properly approaches subjects inductively. Whereas you are at best dogmatic and rationalistic in nearly every one of your statements. You don't think, you snatch parts of conclusions from Objectivism (seemingly) at random, then jigger them around and/or make rationalistic deductions from them.
Any views I've represented of Binswanger I have provided references to them above. The only view of his on the subject which I'm presenting here is that there is no reason to be dogmatic when it comes to thinking about animals and volition. I.e., there's no reason other animals can not possess volition, i.e., there is nothing in the nature of being an non-human animal which precludes it from having volition.
Yes, I know it does. And a "metaphysical dualism between matter and consciousness" is not an Objectivist view, i.e., it is not a view supported by any Objectivist literature. Given the use of the term "dualist," it sounds like your own attempt to jigger modern philosophic ideas, and cram them into Objectivism, which seems par for the course for you.
Prime example of your rationalistic deductive epistemology. "The primacy of existence principle states..." You just grab something like a definition and start making deductions with it.
The primacy of existence is not some out of context premise to be plucked out of thin air to start making deductions from. Furthermore, the "primacy of existence" is not even a principle. It does not state that "consciousness is derivative of existence."