Bold Standard

My first thought was that some type of exercise would probably help you (although I'm not the most athletic person around, so I don't know too much about what types, etc). My hypothesis is that maybe your problem isn't just a low threshold for pain, but a lack of endurance in general. (Which can be improved through exercise, but you'd probably want to meet with a personal trainer, or maybe a coach at your school about what type would be good for you).

I agree that Atlas Shrugged was her literary peak, but I think Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology was her most important philosophical work.

I think it might be an issue of honesty, in a lot of cases. When I was a Christian, one thing that really bothered me was that, even though most people around me claimed also to be Christians, and really believed in a lot of the Christian philosophy, very few of them really seemed to take it seriously and try to apply it consistently to their lives. I tried very hard to apply it consistently, and the result was, of course, disaster for my life. I expect anyone who is consistent on a religious philosophy will have a similar experience, and anyone who is honest will notice a causal relationship between the two. After that point, the ones who choose to damn reality and keep their religion are the ones who hate life, and the ones who choose to reject the religion and keep reality are the ones who want to live. But most people are perfectly content to hold religious convictions (or other mistaken premises) as an abstract concept detached from most of their day to day lives and decisions.

Maybe this is just nit-picking on my part, but I'm still not sure why you use the term "physical death." I agree that it is death or not that corresponds to existence or non-existence. Why qualify it as "physical" death, though? I assume you don't think there is a soul that goes on living after the body dies. But the issue is whether or not a person goes on living after the mind dies. For example: Terri Schiavo. Was she still alive, after her consciousness had permanently left, but her body was kept going by machines? Your mind can't exist without your body, but your body can't keep itself alive without your mind either. I don't understand why you hold that the physical aspect of life it more fundamental than the mental.. I would think they both start out at the same time, as equals.

For me, it was like reading my own thoughts.. Except, much more eloquent! Reading Ayn Rand did help me identify some major contradictions that I had been holding though--before her, I had been holding on to a very fragile and bruised, but very serious belief in Christianity, for example (as I understood it, which was incorrectly). After reading ITOE and Atlas Shrugged, it was clear to me how much in opposition that was to everything else I believed in (i.e. reality), and happily dropped it. But then when I read The Fountainhead, which was the next one I read, it was like she was writing it specifically to me. Howard Roark is as close as I've ever seen in art to the embodiment of everything I'm passionate about. So reading a novel based on that, I experienced the things I alone had valued, that nobody else mentioned, transform into objective values that people should and some do value, before my eyes. All that was my last year and first year after high school (I graduated in 2000). Since then, when I read something new from her, she never ceases to surprise me, or reveal new insights I'd never considered. But it does give me an eerie feeling sometimes, like I'm having my private thoughts repeated back to me, only stated much better. I can't claim to have been a natural Objectivist, because my religion created a whole host of false premises and regrettable moral decisions for me, but I had a deep feeling of recognition and connection with her philosophy and sense of life, and I was never hostile to anything in her works, including her treatment of the idea of God, when I was still a theist.

Why do you say physical existence? A man qua vegetable has physical existence.. Doesn't the mind have requirements for its health, besides the mere requirements of the body? What I mean is, doesn't man's life qua rational being require that he has a healthy mind, not only a healthy body?

I think that the most important thing to buy is Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE). In my judgment, this is the most essential single book to read for understanding Objectivism, along with Atlas Shrugged. But, luckily, there are volumes of fascinating courses and books available, on just about any subject.

For one thing, being born with a billion dollars does not mean that you will automatically be a billionaire for the rest of your life. You need to at least be productive enough to know how to manage your money, and keep it safe, or at least to be able to distinguish people you can trust to manage it, from those you can't. Then of course, there are the needs of life other than having money, some of which have been mentioned. I think that this scenario is possible, for a certain type of depraved person, in an unusual type of situation. But it doesn't matter, because happiness is not the standard of morality (Objectivism is not eudaimonism), life is. Happiness is the goal and reward for being moral, but not the standard (see "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, specifically pg 27, and pgs 32-33). This depends on the context for your use of happiness. If you mean eudaimonia, or "the good life," which is more than a simple, fleeting emotion, then achieving happiness is more difficult, and would require more objective virtues than it would if you mean hedone, or momentary pleasure. Unfortunately, we only have the one word in English, and sometimes people equivocate on what exactly they mean, so it's sometimes helpful (in my experience) to use the more specific Greek terms. (Usually, when Ayn Rand uses the term, I think she means something closer to eudaimonia. But when a Pragmatist uses it, he probably means something closer to hedone). No--when Ayn Rand speaks of the "life of man qua man," I believe she means, "the life proper to a rational being."

Skipping a few paragraphs:

Thanks. : ) It's sort of a paraphrase of Leonard Peikoff:

Aristotle's application of final causation (teleology) to the universe as a whole, including inanimate objects, was a mistake, and I would agree that it is the primary theological element in Aristotle. And it is a significant element in his metaphysics. But it is not the most essential element. I would say the most essential achievement in his metaphysics is in his claim that there is only one world, which *is* the world of perception, and that universals exist in particulars, rather than in a supernatural World of Forms. Also, since teleology does exist in (individual) living organisms, some of his observations about final causation were important for subsequent, secular, scientific inquiries. If you wish to argue for Pragmatism, the debate forum would be the appropriate place to do so. Ayn Rand was quite radically opposed to the Pragmatist theories of truth and meaning, but it's out of the scope of this thread to name her objections. Of course he could claim it--a person can claim anything he wants. People are quite capable of uttering contradictions, and medieval philosophy is a great place to look for examples (especially in characters like Eckhardt, who were apparently quite proud of it). Exactly--it was usually the case that the unknowable would also turn out to be ineffable. But, if you do what the mystic tells you, then you can understand it, and approximate communication about it with analogies or bromides or something. This leads to what Ayn Rand called "the mystic formula": "For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who don't, none is possible." Convenient, eh? I'm not an expert either, but based on what I've read from Kant (CPR, Critique of Judgment, and various excerpts, essays and interpretations) it seems that he made quite a lot of claims about the Neumenal World, considering he held that it was entirely unknowable, and inconceivable. Indeed, I believe that was one of Hegel's major criticisms of Kant--if the Neumenal World is unknowble, how do you know there even is one? So Hegel did away with the Neumenal World altogether. It's still epistemological, because the question is whether you can know something without experiencing a direct sensory observation of it.. Can you make inferences? Can you abstract away from particulars and form concepts? Is it possible to identify scientific principles, or is the best scientific explanation you can hope for along the lines of, "here, now--GREEN... there, now--MOVING," etc. There is never evidence for the nonexistence of something--nonexistent things don't leave evidence of their not existing.

I didn't read every post in this thread, but on page 684 of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand says, "The pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil?" I think "the pursuit of wealth" is a good definition for greed, and it is usually what people mean when they use the word (the negative connotations come from most people's negative evaluation of the pursuit of wealth).

Yes--not in its essentials, anyway. As I said before, there were still remnants of (theological) Platonism--but theology in Aristotle is so weak and inessential to the rest of his system, that I think it is appropriate to consider Aristotle's metaphysics as primarily secular, and as the basis for subsequent (more consistently) secular systems. Well.. the onus of proof is on you. So, a physicist doesn't need to know whether or not A can equal non-A at the same time and in the same respect? He doesn't need to know whether physical objects obey natural laws, or whether all events are entirely random and unknowable? The conclusions he draws from observable phenomena (assuming that there is such a thing as observable phenomena--a metaphysical assumption!) would not vary greatly depending on his answers to these metaphysical questions? He doesn't need epistemology either? Proper methods of induction (i.e., "the scientific method") and deductive reasoning are not vital for his craft? This depends entirely on which metaphysician you ask. The majority of metaphysicians in history (especially prior to The Enlightenment) were not empiricists. If you asked a metaphysician in the middle ages how he could explain something unknowable, he would have a whole arsenal of answers ready for you--mystical revelation, innate knowledge, intuition, reading the stars, casting lots, came to him in a dream, etc, etc. But that doesn't only apply to pre-enlightenment philosophers. Try asking a Kantian sometime how he can explain the unknowable. He will undoubtedly have given the issue a lot of thought, and will have a very complicated, highly technical, completely unintelligible answer for you. I agree with you that one shouldn't try to explain the unknowable--but that's assuming certain principles in epistemology that not every metaphysician subscribes to. That's an epistemelogical question. You consider it to be a possibility that there is a fat man who lives in the north pole, employing elves to make toys for all of the children of the world, which he will deliver all in one evening, by riding a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer, and squeezing up and down chimneys, with all the toys in a bag? (Just to be sure you know who Santa Clause is--I'm not sure if they have that fairy tale in the Netherlands or not!)

Hmmm.. You know, I wouldn't be suprized if there were some kind of scholarship available for someone in your type of situation. I don't know how you would go about looking for that, though. You have every right to feel hurt by your father's position. I hope things work out for you.

Don't you think that losing someone close to you creates psychological issues that need to be dealt with, besides these two? It seems to me that the death of a human being you love is different from the loss of other high values (for instance, losing your job), and requires special coping skills. Not just after the death, but also, if there is a terminal illness, the whole period after you learn that the person is sick and probably going to die. I don't think that it's fear or apathy driving the emotional state of someone losing or who has lost a loved one.

Awesome, I tried to look for that same clip when I saw this thread yesterday, but didn't see it. That's one of my favorite parts of the documentary. Does anyone have any speculations about who the Greek philosopher is that she was quoting? It's probably not going to be an exact quote of the translations that we have, since she probably read it in Russian (she said that she was 16). Based on my knowledge of Ancient Greek philosophers (which is still pretty limited), I think Epicurus is a good bet. He had a lot of similar, interesting things to say about death.

The exact definition of "sense of life" from TRM was quoted in an earlier post by Stephen Speicher: "a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence." But this is greatly elaborated on and explained in the chapter mentioned, "Philosophy and Sense of Life," which is better written and probably shorter than this thread will end up being. I haven't read it in a while, and I could probably stand to freshen up on my own understanding of sense of life--but I'll do my best to answer your questions as far as I think I understand it. A person's sense of life effects and determines the way he experiences emotions, and it also is a type of emotional experience, or at least involves emotions. Now I think I understand what you're asking enough to say--no, the specific emotional experience that is a direct product of bipolar disorder is not a product of or component of sense of life. In the same way, experiencing the emotion of surprise when you hear a sudden, loud noise has nothing to do with your sense of life. On the other hand, a person's sense of life will necessarily effect his emotional experience inasmuch as it is a product of his judgments and premises, etc. There are some manic depressives who are cynical, and some who are optimistic--some who are benevolent, and some who are malevolent--some who respect themselves and some who don't; all of those things involve sense of life. If you'll allow me to try some armchair psychology to try and explain it, I would conjecture that a manic depressive with a benevolent sense of life would probably try to obtain medicine and therapy, because when he is down, he would know that it's not normal, that people aren't meant to suffer, and that the world is not metaphysically against him, and yet his emotions might be as low as they would be if that were the case, so he would know something is wrong. A person with a malevolent sense of life, however, might avoid medicine and therapy. He might think that his extreme depressions actually give him a better insight into how things are really, and how a person's emotional state should be, in a world such as this. (Maybe this conjecture would work better for clinical depression than bipolar disorder--I've only known people with manic depression, but have actually experienced clinical depression, so I'm more knowledgeable about it). To try my example with the sudden loud noise--sense of life won't effect the fact that the initial emotion will be surprise; but it might effect whether the next emotion is courage or cowardice. Does that help at all?

Have you read "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manefesto? You seem to be asking a lot of questions that are answered in that. But the state of a manic-depressive person is not addressed in it (I'm not aware of that topic coming up in any of Ayn Rand's writings). What specific emotions are you referring to, when you say "those emotions"? Emotions involve the body and chemicals, but they also involve the mind and philosophy. Is your specific question whether bipolar disorder has a necessary effect on a person's sense of life? If so, I don't think I'd be qualified to answer that. I've had friends who are manic depressive, and I can say it's a real drag, but I don't know enough specific details about its significance to a person's identity, philosophy, or sense of life. From all of one's ideas. [edit: At least, I think so.. If I understand you right.]

Well, I don't know if it's a quarrel, but the name of the thread is "WHAT ARE METAPHYSICS," so I thought that the point was to provide a proper definition. I'm not sure I follow this analogy. In what respect would these sets be similar? The Big Bang theory and Creationism are both specific attempts to explain the origin of the universe. There are striking similarities between the two--for example, they both hold that the universe appeared ex nihilo. But, as far as I know, Creationism has always been a theological position, in which a Supreme Consciousness "creates" the universe; whereas the Big Bang theory is a supposedly secular explanation of how the universe exploded into existence, using the laws of mechanics on a cosmological scale. The relationship between metaphysics and physics is different. Metaphysics has traditionally been merely a theory of the nature of the universe--supernatural or not. Originally, in fact, it was not supernatural (with Aristotle). But then people applied the term to religious views as well, so that we had Plato's metaphysics, and Pythagoras' metaphysics, and later Augustine's metaphysics, and so on. Physics, however, does not mean metaphysics minus the supernatural. Physics is not a theory of the nature of the universe. It is a scientific attempt to explain one delimited portion of the universe--but not the universe as a whole. It only explains the dynamics between physical objects. It says nothing on, for instance, ideas, or the mind (as apart from the physical mechanisms of the brain) and so on. And besides that, the study of physics (as the word is normally used--dictionary.com says "the science that deals with matter, energy, motion, and force" which seems okay to me) is a science which relies on the answers to questions about the nature of the universe that are more fundamental. For example, physics deals with questions like: "how fast will a weight or a feather fall when dropped?" But it doesn't deal directly with questions like: "Are weights and feathers real? Are laws of nature immutable, or can they be molded by human consciousness? Are there any necessary connections between events?" Okay--religion is a type of philosophy. Christianity is a type of religion, which holds positions in metaphysics (different positions depending on which Christian philosopher you mean). Physics and Wicca have no explicit relationship that I'm aware of. Right--religion is the genus, and Wiccans and Christians are both species. Personally, I think that would be acceptable in a certain sense (if you wanted to consider physics to be a species of metaphysics)--but I have seen people present arguments that an applied science such as physics or paleontology or whatever should not be referred to as "philosophy," on the grounds that philosophy should deal with general principles and should not require specialized knowledge that is not available to everyone (any adult human with a working consciousness, I mean). So it might be more clear to distinguish between what is "science" and what is "philosophy," even though science is necessarily dependent on philosophy. In that case, a physicist (qua physicist) would be a scientist, and a metaphysician (qua metaphysician) would be a philosopher. Inasmuch as physics as a science is dependent on and presupposes philosophical positions, I would argue that it is most dependent on metaphysics and epistemology. No, because Wiccans and Christians are different species of religion. I don't think that they necessarily should, qua scientists. But a specific scientist, if he is also interested in philosophy, could be a metaphysician qua philosopher. So you dispute the claim that it was called this because it was the section that came "after the physics" when Aristotle's works were compiled? It might be ambiguous if you attempt to derive meaning from the root words without that historical insight in mind, but with it it seems to make sense to me (assuming that it is an accurate historical fact). No, but that's an epistemological issue. Metaphysics doesn't (necessarily) attempt to explain things that are unknowable. Aristotle was an empiricist--he didn't believe in innate ideas. He thought that all knowledge was derived from experience, including knowledge of metaphysical principles. For one thing, physics is a science which requires specialized knowledge of the physical world, whereas metaphysics should be derivable from the knowledge possessed by every adult human. Also, if you are okay with the definition of physics as "the science that deals with matter, energy, motion, and force," that is insufficient for a complete theory of being qua being, since knowledge of more than matter, energy, motion, and force is possible (for instance, knowledge of psychology; or of law as it pertains to government, is also possible, and those are not exclusively dependent on nor are they derivable from knowledge of matter, energy, motion, and force). A person who accepts the onus of proof principle ("the burden of proof is on he who asserts the positive") would reject any proposition which lacks sufficient evidence (although he would likely employ a gradation from impossible, to possible, to probable, to true, etc). A person who accepts some form of faith would have no problem accepting a proposition without any evidence at all (although he would likely require an appeal to emotion or authority before accepting it, etc). To accept that a proposition is at least possible, without sufficient evidence, would, I think, require a certain amount of faith. To reject a proposition in spite of sufficient evidence is skepticism. The approach I advocate is to reject a proposition until there is sufficient evidence (I don't think there might be a Santa Claus, only it's impossible to say for sure--I say there is no Santa Claus). But a person can suspend judgment on a proposition, and at the same time employ any of these principles--faith, skepticism, or onus of proof.

Sorry, my statement wasn't very clear. What I meant when I said, "You can't go by majority rule in philosophy," is that philosophical terms or ideas should not be defined by whatever the majority of philosophers assumes that they mean. In other words, we should not define "metaphysics" by simply taking a survey of the way that most philosophers have used the term, complete with all of the premises that they base that usage on, and all the conclusions that they reach from it. If you did that, you would have to abandon philosophy as such, because philosophy, historically speaking, usually includes false premises and false conclusions (with a few non sequiturs and logical fallacies in between). To state it a different way, the same procedure by which you have rejected metaphysics could be used to reject anything about which most people have been wrong--which is nearly everything. Likewise, if we allow our common sense (reason) to be guided by [universal] facts, we will end up with a kind of metaphysics which is radically different from the popular ones. Why do you allow this to work for philosophy in general, but not for metaphysics? Unfortunately, I can't read Greek, so I don't know what those characters mean (there is a phrase in English for when something is unintelligible, which comes to mind-- "It's Greek to me!"). But based on the part that I do understand, I think you have set up a straw man as your definition for Metaphysics. You have chosen a specific species of Metaphysics (supernaturalism) to stand for the whole concept. But I think the essential definition of Metaphysics is simply that it is a theory to describe the nature of the universe as a whole. In this definition, "physics" would be merely a subset, or application, of the broader concept "metaphysics." I believe my definition is more consistent with the original meaning of the term, because Aristotle himself was not a supernaturalist, in any significant way--there were still remnants of his mentor Plato's (supernaturalistic) philosophy in his metaphysics, but he was for the most part an empiricist (of a much different kind than the post-Humean nominalist/sensualist variety, since he did believe in universals, but thought that they existed in particulars) and an advocate of the reality and exclusivity of this world, as opposed to a supernatural one. I think agnosticism evades the issue, because: just because you don't know something doesn't answer the question of whether you accept the proposition or reject it.

You can't go by majority rule in philosophy.. Most authors in epistemology have ended up in skepticism or mysticism of some sort. Should we do away with epistemology too, then? Most philosophers, in general, have ended up with false conclusions of practically every kind imaginable, and many impractical and unimaginable kinds, too. Should we abandon philosophy altogether? Yet Ayn Rand is a perfect example of a metaphysician who rejected the supernatural, and there are others who did to varying degrees also. Why should metaphysics suffer this guilt by association you attribute to it? Is that just?

Happy birthday, David! POW!! ::CONFETTI FALLS EVERYWHERE::

By the way, an excellent early performer of theremin music whom I've recently discovered is Clara Rockmore. She is interesting on many levels!

Or, we could start a new thread on Billy Corgan vs Madonna.

This is known as the "argument from design" defense of the existence of God. I reject this argument primarily because I hold existence, rather than consciousness (human or divine), as primary. I don't think that anyone invented gravity or friction, etc, because I think that those things are inherent in the nature of the universe--the nature of existence as such. Also, I think it is wrong to apply teleology (intentional or goal oriented behavior) to the universe as a whole. The universe is what it is, and not because any mind or minds made it that way--the function of a mind is to perceive, not to create, existence. But I agree with you about the injustice in regards to sympathy for the terrorists. I hadn't considered what it must be like for children who live in New York City, to try and understand what happened. It's hard enough for me, as an adult, living halfway across the country, to deal with it. : (