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Bold Standard

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  1. Also, if I read the posts on this thread and had not seen the inteview, I would have believed Rand to be flawless as a television personality. This just wasn't the case. She was quite nervous, though nothing detrimental to her performance. Her posture was tight, she looked down every so often, and her voice seemed to quiver.

    Rand was a great thinker, but a great personality she was not.

    How do you know she was nervous? How many 80 year olds do you know whose voices don't quiver? A great personality she was!

  2. If you look up the definition of “GREED” in the dictionary, you will find that it means excessive desire (mostly of material things) that one does not need or deserve.

    What is "the dictionary"? Which dictionary? Published by whom, and when? What standards employed by those defining the words in this dictionary were superior to Ayn Rand's, and why?

  3. Yet our actual rights are not rights we have in virtue of being individuals, but in virtue of being human.

    Why would these be mutually exclusive? Mustn't we be individual *and* human in order to have rights?

    After all, animals are individuated, but they don't have individual rights.

    But I think we call them "individual rights" because the delimit the proper relationship between the individual and the state. They are referred to as "individual rights" because they belong only to individual humans, rather than groups of humans, organizations, governments, corporations, etc.

  4. This is a very good point. There are plenty of people out there debunking environmentalism - but the general public that gets its news from the mainstream media rarely gets to hear about it. And when such information is published, it is either buried in the middle of an overall pro-environmentalist article or on an obscure page that does not generate much notice or subsequent conversation.

    But there are exceptions to this. I've seen some interesting reports by John Stosell on the news show 20/20 debunking various claims from environmentalism (he includes statements by actual scientists, from my memory, but I don't know any specific names).

  5. It just seems very bizarre to me. It is easy to understand why certain environmentalists would embrace a false science of global warming. What is not easy to understand is why the majority of academic research and government scientists would. Certainly I can see a bias, but not an intentional hoax.

    Let's assume for a second that it's true that a majority of academic research and government scientists endorse environmentalism. I think it's bizarre, too. I also think it's bizarre that the majority of academic and government scientists endorced racism in Nazi Germany. I think the reasons are similar (and it's no coincidence that the Nazis were extreme, fanatical advocates of environmentalism themselves). It is an easily verifiable fact that environmentalism is being used, and always has been used since it began as a movement, to increase the scope of government. In other words, it has been used quite effectively to gain power. Why would a government scientist be motivated to endorse environmentalism? Well, think--who picks these scientists? Who pays them? Who desides which projects will be funded and which won't? In any political system in which there is such a thing as "a government scientist," such corruption should be expected--the system is designed specifically for that type of coersive influence to exist.

    But I don't think it's true that the majority of scientists embrace that view anyway. Most of the science I've seen debunking environmentalism is not even from Objectivist sources. The same type of people who debunk supposedly "scientific" claims of the paranormal, space aliens on Earth, voodoo, ghosts, Intelligent Design, etc, often debunk claims made by environmentalists as well. Environmentalism is on the same level as these others--it's only that it has more political muscle behind it, so its advocates are more visible in certain circles than the others.

    You don't have to be a scientist to debunk alleged experimental evidence for the efficacy of psychics, for another example--a philosopher can do that, because the contradictions are blatant logical fallacies. Similarly, you needn't be a scientist to debunk the typical position of those who support global warming--assuming by "global warming," you mean the full position, with all of its premises, conclusions, and consequences (rather than some specific scientific evidence of some actual change in climate that might occur in some delimited period of time, as a mere observation, without all the causal coorelations, implications, and everything else claimed in the actual "global warming" position).

    Because philosophers simply cannot debate science with scientists. There needs to be some hard science out there which disproves the global warming "hoax" that ARI must be using.
    I think it's a little misleading to call it a "hoax," because that implies that its advocates don't actually believe that it's true. Although some of them might not believe it, and might be only using it as a Machievellian tool--many of them obviously believe it.
  6. Certainly the state of the science has changed from when Rand wrote that (likely in the 70s or perhaps early 80s?)

    Well, yes, but you said "'official' [O]bjectivist position," so I thought you wanted a quote from AR. The opinions of particular Objectivists on contemporary issues is not necessarily "officially" Objectivism, and strictly speaking, only the particular ideas advanced and condoned by Ayn Rand in her lifetime are "official" Objectivist positions, since Objectivism is "the philosophy of Ayn Rand."

    Certainly the state of the science has changed from when Rand wrote that (likely in the 70s or perhaps early 80s?)

    The top quote I gave was originally published in the January, 1971 issue of The Objectivist. The second was from the September 1974 issue of The Ayn Rand Letter.

  7. This matches what I have heard from other women. I hypothesize that this is the case for women in general.

    It might be more common for women than men, but I've known women who could get aroused from visual stimulation, and who liked to masterbate to pornography.

    I am curious - is there anyone (male) reading these lines who is incapable of getting turned on by a picture of a naked woman without knowing anything about her mind?

    I think you can know things about a person's mind just from seeing her naked.

  8. What is the "official" objectivist position on global warming exactly?

    Is it that the science behind it is all wrong and that global warming (if it is occurring at all) is just the result of natural climate trends?

    It's not that the science behind it is wrong, but that it is not science at all.

    Predictions of universal doom are interspersed with complaints of this kind. And nowhere, neither in this survey nor elsewhere, does one find any scientific evidence—no, not to prove, but even to support a valid hypothesis of global danger. But one does find the following.

    "... some scientists," the survey declares, "like to play with the notion that global disaster may result if environmental pollution continues unchecked. According to one scenario, the planet is already well advanced toward a phenomenon called 'the greenhouse effect.' Concentrations of carbon dioxide are building up in the atmosphere, it is said, as the world's vegetation, which feeds on CO2, is progressively chopped down. Hanging in the atmosphere, it forms a barrier trapping the planet's heat. As a result, the greenhouse theorists contend, the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature which, if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood. Other scientists see an opposite peril: that the polar ice will expand, sending glaciers down to the temperate zone once again. This theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born."

    This is what bears the name of "science" today. It is on the basis of this kind of stuff that you are being pushed into a new Dark Age.

    A horde of savages that would make Attila look civilized by comparison, has given the world a perfect concretization of three abstractions, which civilized men have taken with too foggy a tolerance: collectivism, which regards individual lives as of no value—the rule of force, which implements the whims of the subhuman—ecology as a social principle, which condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men's return to "nature," to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.
  9. Thank you. Unfortunately, I don't have the Ayn Rand Lexicon in my current home, nor will I be able to obtain it in the next few days, until my referat on Mill has to be presented (on Monday, and I was hoping to get Rand`s perspective on it before that). So if you could quote the relevant text, or show me a link to the relevant text, it would mean a lot.

    Thank you in advance.

    I put Mill and Bentham in the Objectivism Research CD-ROM, and it pulled up mostly brief quips against Mill from AR, but there is a more substantial reference from The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff.

    Virtually all the defenders of capitalism, from the nineteenth century to the present, accept the ethics of utilitarianism (with its slogan "The greatest happiness of the greatest number") as their moral base and justification—evading the appalling contradiction between capitalism and the altruist-collectivist nature of the utilitarian ethics. Mr. Cohen points out that utilitarianism is incompatible with justice, because it endorses the sacrifice of minorities to the interests of the majority. (I said this in 1946—see my old pamphlet Textbook of Americanism.)

    [...]

    What is the cause of today's egalitarian trend? For over two hundred years, Europe's predominantly altruist-collectivist intellectuals had claimed to be the voice of the people—the champions of the downtrodden, disinherited masses and of unlimited majority rule. "Majority" was the omnipotent word of the intellectuals' theology. "Majority will" and "majority welfare" were their moral base and political goal which—they claimed—permitted, vindicated and justified anything. With varying degrees of consistency, this belief was shared by most of Europe's social thinkers, from Marx to Bentham to John Stuart Mill (whose On Liberty is the most pernicious piece of collectivism ever adopted by suicidal defenders of liberty).

    While the collectivists were finding their chief inspiration in the trends of Germany, their establishment opponents—the defenders of the American system, capitalism—were looking for answers primarily to England. During the crucial, turning-point years between the Civil War and the end of the century, they were relying for philosophic support mainly on two movements: classical economics and evolutionary biology.

    The most philosophical representative of the former is John Stuart Mill, widely quoted by American conservatives at the time (and since). A weary agnostic on most of the fundamental issues of philosophy, Mill bases his defense of capitalism on the ethics of Utilitarianism.

    Utilitarianism is a union of hedonism and Christianity. The first teaches man to love pleasure; the second, to love his neighbor. The union consists in teaching man to love his neighbor's pleasure. To be exact, the Utilitarians teach that an action is moral if its result is to maximize pleasure among men in general. This theory holds that man's duty is to serve—according to a purely quantitative standard of value. He is to serve not the well-being of the nation or of the economic class, but "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," regardless of who comprise it in any given issue. As to one's own happiness, says Mill, the individual must be "disinterested" and "strictly impartial"; he must remember that he is only one unit out of the dozens, or millions, of men affected by his actions. "All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life," says Mill, "when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world ...." [Footnote: Mill's Ethical Writings, ed. J.B. Schneewind (New York, Collier, 1965); Utilitarianism, pp. 291, 290.]

    Capitalism, Mill acknowledges, is not based on any desire for abnegation or renunciation; it is based on the desire for selfish profit. Nevertheless, he says, the capitalist system ensures that, most of the time, the actual result of individual profit-seeking is the happiness of society as a whole. Hence the individual should be left free of government regulation. He should be left free not as an absolute (there are no absolutes, says Mill), but under the present circumstances—not on the ground of inalienable rights (there are no such rights, Mill holds), but of social utility.

    Under capitalism, concluded one American economist of the period with evident moral relief, "the Lord maketh the selfishness of man to work for the material welfare of his kind." As one commentator observes, the essence of this argument is the claim that capitalism is justified by its ability to convert "man's baseness" to "noble ends." "Baseness" here means egoism; "nobility" means altruism. And the justification of individual freedom in terms of its contribution to the welfare of society means collectivism. [Footnote: Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State (Ann Arbor, U. of Michigan P., 1964), p. 54. The economist quoted is Edward Atkinson, The Industrial Progress of the Nation (New York, 1890).]

    Mill (along with Smith, Say, and the rest of the classical economists) was trying to defend an individualist system by accepting the fundamental moral ideas of its opponents. It did not take Mill long to grasp this contradiction in some terms and amend his political views accordingly. He ended his life as a self-proclaimed "qualified socialist."

  10. 2. furthermore, replication is a fact of life. We are all born and die, hopefully after we have produced offsprings. And all cells in our body replicate. All cells except nerve cells. Not only are nerve cells the most energetic ones, they also don't renew themselves. That's odd. One should think that the most active cells in our body would be the ones in most desperate need of being replaced, but the opposite is true. We are born with a set of brain cells and these very same cells remain the engine of our consciousness throughout our life. To me that's a pretty strong clue. Consciousness requires physical persistence over time. The implication is that you cannot easily interchange cells in our brain and expect to have the same consciousness!

    Actually, the most recent research indicates that new brain cells are generated in adult humans, and that in fact this happens all the time--a process called neurogenesis. (Especially in the hippocampus, and there is evidence that new brain cells can migrate to other parts of the brain as well--at least, we know that happens in the brains of adult macaque monkeys).

    Neurogenesis article

    Wiki article

  11. After expressing admiration of Ayn Rand I was told by a Kantian that Intelligent Design and Objectivism have "the same conceptualisation of things". My knowledge of Oism tells me that he's probably wrong but my lack of knowledge of ID doesn't tell where his error stems from. How similar are the two theories of conceptualization and is there any evidence that ID has copied Oism?

    I don't know that much about ID either, but based on my knowledge that ID is religious and claims to be scientific, it seems possible that ID would claim that scientific observation can lead to knowledge of reality.

    If so, a Kantian might say that Objectivism is similar in that it also holds scientific observation can lead to knowledge of reality, as opposed to Kant who said that observation only leads to knowledge about the functioning of the human mind as it appears to us, and that reality "as it is in itself" is unknowable. (A stretch too, I guess, but Kantians are used to stretching).

  12. As I said, the hypothetical is not perfect in every respect. The point of it to show is that the appearance of choice does not equal an actual possibility of different outcomes. That is all.

    Oohhh, I thought that the analogy was supposed to be a response to the question, "If there is no free will, what does it mean to 'act as if one has free will'?" Which confused me because I couldn't see how failing to predict the possible outcomes of a choice would mean that it wasn't really a choice. But I guess it was actually supposed to be a response to the first part of the quote, "If one one has no alternative (in a given situation) whether they accept the good argument or the bad one, how can it be said that reason exists?" Because the man tried to reason about which wire to cut, when there wasn't a consequentially significant alternative (although, in the context of his knowledge, there might have been). Now I see what you were saying (I think).

  13. Peikoff completely and utterly denies mechanistic causation as the general form of causation. It is the form of causation only of entities which do not have the capacity to act otherwise, and, when properly understood, it is a subcategory of Aristotelian causation. Aristotelian causation says that: entities act in accordance with what they are.

    Thank you for bringing this up. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread already, but even so it bears repeating: Dr. Peikoff doesn't define causality as a mechanistic chain of events, and many determinists do take this view. For him, causality is the behavior of entities acting according to their identities.

    Many determinists reject volition, because they hold that all of existence is a chain of events that are necessitated by previous events, and therefore volition is impossible because it would mean an event which is not necessitated by events which occured prior to consciousness. If it is understood that causality is the action of entities according to their nature, then it can be easily understood that entities of different natures will behave differently, and that a "mechanistic" view of causality is grossly insufficient to explain such diverse phenomena as actually exist.

    Then the position that conscious entities operate on a different type of causality than unconscious entities, or that living entities operate on a different type of causality than inanimate entities, and so on, becomes much less controversial. It's only on the premise that there is one type of mechanistic causality that all entities *must* conform to, all appearances and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that forbids people from accepting or even comprehending this view.

  14. My point in the example is simply to show that while a man may believe he has the "choice" to create different outcomes, that does not mean that there is ever a possibility of different outcomes.

    But the outcome was different. He diffused the bomb by cutting the green wire, instead of diffusing it by cutting the red wire. Are you suggesting that since the consequence of either action was identical, the wires themselves were metaphysically identical? (There is a type of metaphysical position derived from Pragmatism that would claim this).

  15. I have given a whole lot of thought to this subject. I do not have the time now to express it all, so I'll just start.

    There is so much involved in this question that is outside the scope of this thread, I almost think it deserves its own thread..

    If we assume the first choice, it runs against evidence. Evidence shows that no "will" "thought" "emotion" "desire" etc' exist without a physical representation. There is no massless, shapeless "will" that is floating in your brain, moving particles.
    How could this even posibly be shown by evidence? Are you actually asserting that you have seen evidence of the nonexistence of will? There seems to be an immense equivocation between the mental and the physical throughout this post. Will is massless and shapeless because it is not a physical quality, but a mental one. Thoughts, emotions, and desires, while they might correspond to physical phenomena in the brain, are not descriptions of physical phenomena in the brain, but are mental phenomena, and thus do not have mass, shape, quantity, or any other attribute that applies only to physical entities. The exact mechanisms by which physical activity in the brain and mental activity in the mind interact is not known--but it is known that they both exist. Claiming that mental activity simply doesn't exist because it can't be explained by what we know of physical activity is not a solution. You could just as easily claim that physical activity doesn't exist because it can't be explained by what we know of mental activity. Yet, we know that both exist! And they must interact somehow. So don't use Ockham's razor to slit your throat--entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, but physical reality, mental reality, and volition are all necessary.

    Every single experience and mental process we have is a result of physical changes that occur in the brain.

    How do you know this? You've gone from positing a correlation to claiming knowledge of causality. How do you know that the physical changes aren't the result of the mental processes? How do you know that they are not reciprocal phenomena? How do you know anything besides that the two states are always observed to accompany one another in time?

    Now let's put 1+2+3 together:

    [*]Every single mental process/experience is a result/accompanied by a physical process. There is no breach between the two. One cannot "command" the other: they are inseparable.

    It's a contradiction to say that the mental is a "result" of the physical, and at the same time, "One cannot 'command' the other." To command means to be the result of something.

    [*]There are no other entities in the brain other than the elements we know, forces of gravity, electricity, and the rest. There is no new and unknown "power" in the brain. At least, none has been observed in any experiment until now. Nothing strange or against the physical properties of the cell ever happened.

    You are claiming complete omniscience of the workings of the brain? I've had several conversations with professional neorologists who wouldn't claim anywhere near this degree of expertise regarding the mechanics of the brain. Maybe I should tell them to contact you with questions they might have. (Sorry, that was a little sarcastic : P). But sersiously.. Are you claiming omniscience of the workings of the brain? Because if not I'm totally misreading you.

    IF we agree that the brain does not contain anything "non-inanimate" and "unknown powers" then the clear conclusion, as I see it, is that our brain is a device with a certain nature, that is designed to do whatever we can introspect to realize that it does (and more, since not all of it's operations we are aware of).
    I agree that the brain does not contain anything "non-inanimate," but the mind does. Consequently, you can not judge the brain the same way you would judge any other physical object in existence--because it is the only physical object in existence which is directly connected to consciousness. It's analogous to this: although the laws of gravity are pretty much universal, you couldn't expect a bird to behave the same way that a rock of the same size and shape would behave if you threw it from a window. Because the bird is acted upon by *wings.* Similarly, the brain won't behave the same way as, let's say a computer (of the kind that actually exists), because the brain is acted upon by *consciousness.*

    But then you say "but it's not my brain, it is ME that is making the choice!" I tell you: "The conscious activity of your brain IS you, and therefor no wonder that you experience that it is 'you' who is in control".

    But your brain is not "conscious." You are conscious.. Your brain is merely the metaphysical condition for consciousness.

    But then you say: "but I can listen to ideas, consider them and decide if I want to reject them or not", so I tell you: "Of course. Your brain is a device that does just that: processes visual/auditory input into entities and concepts, analyses the result (according to it's automatized mechanism, and the current content of your mind) and decides what to do, while you are conscious of it all while it happens, with a recognition that it is you who is thinking". If someone takes out the part that represents 'you' in your brain, you will still think, but may not be aware who is doing the thinking. There is no "your will" to float between the neurons of your brain and tell them how to act.

    Wow, it feels nice to get it off my chest.

    How are you defining will, and why would it have to "float between the neurons of your brain" in order to exist?

  16. Because if man has no awareness of how his actions are determined he will act as if he has free will.

    I'm confused about what you mean.. Are you saying he will act as if he has free will, or that he will act as if he is determined but thinks he has free will?

    This is an good point. When I am talking about the prior conditions I am including the internal (mental) conditions of the individual up to the point where the choice is made. The thing is, however, that Peikoff can't agree with me that the premises, psychology, etc. is included and that the man would choose the same. This is because it would simply yeild another form of determinism, a form of "internal determinism" instead of external. It would be saying that the material external world is mechanistic and separate from the causal chain inside the human mind, but the human mind has its own deterministic causal chain resulting in the same choice every time.
    This is where I think you're using the terminology differently than Dr. Peikoff (and I think that his use of the terminology is much less misleading and more consistent with the traditional usagage). You seem to be using determinism in this section to be exactly equivolent to causality. Determinism means, and has always meant, the belief that human actions or behavior is necessitated by forces outside of consciousness. "Internal determinsim" is a contradiction in terms. Since the time of Democritus (at least), it has been the determinist position that the "internal" is merely an illusion fed to us by faulty sensory perception, or some such inadequacy of the mind. This has held true for every determinist that I've studied, from Materialistic determinists like Democritus, Skinner, and Hobbes, to Idealistic ones like Hegel (and contemporary determinists who are normally a mishmash of these, sometimes smuggeling in premises from the advocates of volition when the contradictions of determinism become too obvious).

    I don't see how the cognitive factor could be different. The array of cognitive factors I use in the decision and their weight seems entirely determined by the preconditions. In your hypo, my anorexia is the factor that tips the scale in favor of soup. If the "experiment" was run again, unless I somehow didn't have anorexia, the outcome would be identiacal.

    Well, not being a psychologist, I was using "anorexia" to mean merely a habitual psychological evasion of the fact that one's body needs sustenance, but that is probably not a proper or acurate use of the term. But even in the case of actual clinical anorexia, I don't think it's the case that the anorexic person must starve himself in all circumstances. (Except maybe in some extreme cases). But for the purpose of my example, just forget I said anorexia and pretend I said, you were evading the knowledge that you needed to eat for whatever reason. In order to have chosen differently, your reason would have to be different, but that's an internal, mental difference and therefore volitional not deterministic.

    For Peikoff to say the outcome might be diffrent either there must be some difference in the cognitive factors or else a change in their weight. And since cognitive factors are directly dependant on the person's environment, history, personality, etc, their change would require a change in those areas as well.
    But you're begging the question. The idea that all cognitive factors are directly dependant on a person's environment, history, personality, etc, (depending somewhat on what you mean by "personality" and "etc") and nothing else is exactly the proposition under criticism by the Objectivists. The question of whether there might be an ultimate necessary connection between physical and mental processes is a scientific one, and Dr. Peikoff explicitly says in his History of Western Philosophy course that there may be such a connection, but that the available evidence is insufficient to conclusively say one way or another. Philosophy says merely that both physical and mental processes necessarily exist (which is immediately validated through sense perception), and that the type of causality which governs the physical world is called "deterministic," whereas the type which governs the mental is called "volitional."

    It is not definitive at all. Yet it is far more problematic for Peikoff than any extremist "hard" determinist position he characterizes. At best, it means his reductio argument in favor of free will needs to be rewritten to account for it.

    I'm quite convinced at this point that "hard" determinism merely means "consistent" determinism, and that you only consider "soft" determinism to be more problematic because it attempts to find middle ground between determinism and volition, but that it's not in fact problematic, because the elements of determinism which are considered necessary by soft determinism are not necessary, and not true (or at least are stated in a way which is unecessarily confusing and misleading).

    This is because humans have a unique view on reality in the sense that although their actions can be seen to be determined by looking at them once they are completed, because humans can think and have self-awareness they have a view at the moment of choice in which different possibilities seem open. This is in part because humans don't have the knowledge of what deterministic factors influence their decision or what their decision will be.
    When you say "humans don't have the knowledge of what deterministic factors influence their decision," do you mean that humans are incapable of knowing these factors? If the factors are unknowable, what possible evidence could we have that they exist?

    I am trying to think of a good example, and this is the best I have come up with so far although it is not perfect.

    Imagine a man trying to defuse a bomb. There are two wires he could cut, red and green. He is told that cutting one wire defuses the bomb and cutting the other will detonate the bomb. He agonizes over which to cut and eventually settles on cutting the green wire. The bomb stops ticking and he sighs with relief. What he does not know is that the bomb was actually designed such that cutting EITHER wire would have defused the bomb. The detonation/disarming choice was after a fashion, only illusory. In reality, the outcome would be the same in each instance regardless of the "choice" made.

    I realize there are some problems with this hypo but it might help a bit.

    Hm.. So you're saying that the man didn't actually chose to cut the green wire, because if he had chosen the red wire instead, it would have disarmed the bomb? At this point, you've completely lost me.

  17. I don't want to denigrate Ayn Rand, but while her philosophy is brilliant and correct, I think she in many cases does an inadequate job of presenting it in her books. (The same could be said, to a lesser degree, about OPAR.) I have often had to come scour the internet for a more in-depth explanation of a principle, and this forum, among other sources, has been invaluable for that purpose.

    Do you mean inadequate in terms of style, comprehensiveness, consistency, or something else? And are you speaking primarily of her fiction, non-fiction, or both?

    Welcome to the forum.

  18. This is, I repeat, not an act of second-handedness, simply because the value lost happens to be embodied in a human being.

    I do agree with you that it's not necessarily second handed if you love someone so much that life without them would be unbearable, in contexts besides the one in the example, though. There is the example of [censored--possible spoiler] telling Dagny he wouldn't want to live if she were killed by the villains. In that case, it wouldn't be because of guilt, and wouldn't be second handed for his life to be unbearable.

  19. Ayn Rand was normally very precise about her words. If she intended to say "that life without having acted to save the loved person could be unbearable," then I think she would have worded it that way.

    I don't think it's necessarily proper to make claims about what specific intentions motivated her to chose the words she did, since there's no way to prove it either way (for the record, I never said she intended to say that, and I don't think she did). But I could speculate that maybe she worded it that way to emphasize that it's the loss of the value that would primarily be the source of misery in that situation, however in the context she clearly (clear to me, anway) identifies that the loss of self-esteem resulting from the failure to act would significantly contribute to the despair.

    In fact, if she worded the sentence to say "life without having acted to save the loved person could be unbearable," I think it would be a little circular. Why would failing to save the person be a disvalue unless the person was a value who's loss would be painful to begin with? I think she says "could be unbearable" to emphasize the fact that the loss of the person would not necessarily be unbearable, but only under certain circumstances--such as the one she describes, in which the husband could have saved her but chickens out.

    Also, if she'd said "life without having acted to save the loved person could be unbearable," it might confuse the reader into thinking she's suggesting that risking one's life for another is a moral duty on which self esteem intrinsically depends, which is actually part of the position she's arguing against in that paragraph.

  20. If you mean that objectivism has some special definition of axiom which is contrary to the accepted dictionary and academic definition I am not particularly interested in hearing about it. Objectivism already has tried to change the meanings of too many words for my liking. It is easier to discuss philosophic matters if we stick to accepted usage rather than propriatary definitions.

    Hm, this might be a little off topic, but this strikes me as a strange position from someone with a degree in philosophy. I've not studied philosophy in school, but in my private studies of various philosophers--whenever I study a new philosophy or philosopher, I take it for granted that I will have to learn his specific terminology and definitions. Inherent in a definition are implicit philosophical premises. A dictionary definition merely reflects the philosophical ideas which are prominent in the time and place in which that dictionary is published. Academic definitions vary greatly over time, possibly even from one decade to the next or quicker (example: see how rapidly the meaning of "the verifiability principle" evolved over the first part of the 20th century).

    But at least Ayn Rand defined her terms.. Many philosophers use their terms in an ambiguous way, and let the reader interpret them however he wants, rendering their ideas unintelligible.

  21. I also see a problem with Ayn Rand's wording.

    Is this based on Ayn Rand's statement from "The Ethics of Emergencies"?

    To illustrate this on the altruists' favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one's life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one's sake, remembering that one's life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)

    If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person's value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one's own life to save him or her—for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.

    Conversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes panicky, gives in to an unjustified, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life in loneliness and misery—one would not call him "selfish"; one would condemn him morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Remember that values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and that one's own happiness has to be achieved by one's own effort. Since one's own happiness is the moral purpose of one's life, the man who fails to achieve it because of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is morally guilty.

    If so, the issue in question is not merely whether life would be bearable without her, if you take the sentence in its full context, but whether life would be bearable without her, knowing that you could have saved her but chose to let her drown instead.

    [Edit: Also, notice that she says "could be unbearable" not "couldn't bare life without," which leaves open that it could be bearable, but suggests that it would at least be difficult.]

  22. Peikoff's characterization requires awareness as it characterizes deterministic forces as a "force" automating a person's actions, thought, etc. If a person had no awareness of this force it would essentially not be a force on his actions at all.

    I don't understand how this statement follows.. Why would a force not be a force unless a person was aware of it?

    By starting conditions I mean the complete state of the universe prior to the human choice/action. Man is indeed a part of the makeup of the universe, but man is not his own cause. Man is a product of the universe, and obviously did not exist from the beginning of time.
    Nobody said that man is his own cause, only that he is the cause of his actions. When you say "complete state of the universe prior to the human choice/action," are you including that person's premises, psychology, motives, etc in that state of the universe? If so, I think Dr. Peikoff would probably agree that he would choose the same. But, if you mean merely the state of the physical universe outside of the man and his mind prior to the action, then of course the person could choose differently--it's not the alignment of the planets or even genes that cause actions, but the cognitive process (the choice).

    Peikoff believes that there is something about human consciousness that "breaks" causal chains that existed prior to his action or intervention and that man's conscious, volitional actions are essentially an "uncaused cause" (as God was often held to be.)

    I really don't think that's his position. He definitely doesn't use that kind of language in the quotes you provided. I'll read that part of OPAR tonight though.

    For example, for lunch today I had soup although having a sandwich was also an option. Peikoff's position would mean that if we could somehow "turn back the clock" to 11:30 today before I made the choice to get soup, and let the clock start ticking again, I might very well end up getting a sandwich. Nothing in the makeup of the universe would have changed, none of the factors that influenced my lunch choice would have changed, yet somehow my choice would have changed.
    No, I don't think so-- "Man's actions do have causes; he does choose a course of behavior for a reason," (emphasis mine). If you turned back the clock, presumably you would still have the same reason for declining the sandwich that you did the first time. But if you don't mind getting hypothetical--let's say that although you declined the sandwich, you were really hungry for a sandwich but were evading those hunger pains because of anorexia. Then I think Peikoff would say, if you made the decision to think, and face the hunger pains, then you would have chosen the sandwich; you would have chosen differently. In that case, all of the environmental factors would be the same, but there would be a cognitive factor that was different.

    There may very well still be scholars or philosophers who entertain the idea of "hard" determinism. But these people have essentially been sidelined in the current academic debate for the obvious reason that their position is untenable not to mention impractical.

    Well, Beyond Freedom and Dignity was published in 1971, about the same time Dr. Peikoff was working on OPAR. So when discussing the Objectivist position on issues, it might be a little unfair to assume the issues as they've been modified in their most recent manifestations (Ayn Rand, the only one who definitively stated the Objectitivist position on most issues, died in 1982). But, besides, determinism has existed in various forms for thousands of years, and explicitly since Ancient Greece, so why should the latest psuedo-determinism be considered the definitive determinist position, such that to use the term "determinism" to refer to the traditional argument is attacking a straw man?

  23. [i typed this up as evidence that the position attributed in this discussion to determinists does exist, but while I typed it up I see Vladimir has responded, so I'll go ahead and post this and then respond to his new post (since I've already transcribed it).]

    Nothing in the idea of a deterministic universe precludes rational, thinking beings discussing the idea of volition and accepting or denying it as the case may be. You are essentially assuming a determinist position which does not exist and then arguing why it is impossible.

    Here is B F Skiner, arch-determinist, arguing that the idea of the mind is unnecessary and unscientific:

    The function of the inner man is to provide an explanation which will not be explained in turn. Explanation stops with him. He is not a mediator between past history and current behavior, he is a center from which behavior emanates. He initiates, originates, and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous-and, so far as a science of behavior is concerned, that means miraculous.

    The position is, of course, vulnerable. Autonomous man serves to explain only the things we are not yet able to explain in other ways. His existence depends upon our ignorance, and he naturally loses status as we come to know more about behavior. The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behavior of a person as a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved and the conditions under which the individual lives. Unless there is indeed some capricious or creative intervention, these events must be related, and no intervention is in fact needed. The contingencies of survival responsible for man's genetic endownment would produce tendencies to act aggressively, not feelings of aggression. The punishment of sexual behavior changes sexual behavior, and any feelings which may arise are at best by-products. Our age is not suffering from anxiety but from the accidents, crimes, wars, and other dangerous and painful things to which people are so often exposed. Young people drop out of school, refuse to get jobs, and associate only with others of their own age not because they feel alienated but because of defective social environments in homes, schools, factories, and elsewhere.

    We can follow the path taken by physics and biology by turning directly to the relation between behavior and the environment and neglecting supposed mediating states of mind. Physics did not advance by looking more closely at the jubilance of a falling body, or biology by looking at the nature of vital spirits, and we do not need to try to discover what personalities, states of mind, feelings, traits of character, plans, purposes, intentions, or the other perquisites of autonomous man really are in order to get on with a scientific analysis of behavior.

    I do not think Skinner would entertain the terms, "rational, thinking beings" as anything more than the lowest kind of misleading euphemism for determined, reacting objects.

  24. You are essentially assuming a determinist position which does not exist and then arguing why it is impossible.
    It's one thing to accuse someone of assuming a determinist position which is not yours, and another to accuse him of assuming a determinist position which doesn't exist. How many theories of determinism have you studied? How do you know there aren't determinists who profess exactly the type of ideas you are describing? In fact, I know that there are (and can give famous examples if you want).
  25. As to the straw-man argument, here it is:

    This is a straw-man argument because it assumes that the determinist position holds that man's consciousness is automatic, and that man can have "awareness" of some sort of the deterministic forces shaping his thoughts and actions. IE, it would be as if man was simply a passenger along for the ride who could see what was coming up ahead but not react to or change anything. The problem is that this is not a valid determinist position at all.

    I agree that it's not a valid position, but what makes you say that it's not the (at least, traditional) determinist position? I'll need to read that section of OPAR more thoroughly, but I don't see from the parts you quoted where he ascribes awareness of deterministic forces to the determinist position, or why that would be essential to his argument.

    A deterministic view of human choice does not mean that such choices are automatic or that humans have any knowledge whatsover about what "he had to accept." Whether or not the universe and human consciousness is deterministic, humans would still act as if they had free will because of their unique perspective of reality. As such morality, epistemology, and all other disciplines still have their essential function. The only thing that changes is that past decisions are said to be necessitated by their preconditions. IE, a decision could not have been otherwise.
    That you describe determinism as almost indistinguishable from volition makes me skeptical about whether what you are describing is really the determinist position. There are many variations on determinism, but most of the versions I've studied end up saying that choice is completely illusory, and then draw special conclusions from that, such as that people should not be held responsible for their actions, or that attempting to control one's own destiny is futile. Many of them also claim that thought and consciousness do not exist either, at least in the form of autonomous individual minds.

    What you describe seems to be more of a psuedo-determinism, with elements of free will, but with the components that lead to volition arising from "necessary" efficiently caused events. Essentially, if I'm reading you right, you're saying that we do make choices, but that we couldn't have made different choices than we did, assuming that all the conditions were the same.

    "The point is that, whether [the choice]is right or wrong, the direction taken is a matter of choice, not of necessity." p 64
    I'll need to find the part where he defines "necessity" to understand this. (OPAR is so broad in scope, I've found some of the definitions to be somewhat skimpy and breif, which is one reason I haven't spent as much time on OPAR as other works by Dr. Peikoff. I've found that the definitions are usually in there, but it's hard for me to keep track of what he's talking about sometimes).

    "The principle of causality does not apply to consciousness, however, in the same way that it applies to matter." p 64
    But this is certainly true. Inanimate matter is incapable of goal oriented behavior, and therefore doesn't "act" autonomously, but merely reacts to other forces acting on it. A conscious entity, on the other hand, is capable of acting with a future goal "in mind" (a consequence of having a mind), which is an autonomous decision, and a product of its own consciousness, rather than merely physical objects bumping into it and making it move in certain ways etc.

    "Man's actions do have causes; he does choose a course of behavior for a reason - but this does not make the course determined or the choice unreal. It does not, because man himself decides what are to be the governing reasons. Man chooses the causes that shape his actions." Here is where I think the big logical gap is. How is deciding governing reasons not governed by the starting conditions? Peikoff is stating, from what I can tell, that nothing in the makeup of the universe before a human choice will predict of necessitate the governing reasons a man uses to make a choice. This seems, on its face, entirely unfounded. Although Peikoff denies a hole in the law of causality, that is exactly what this is. To him, the human weighing of governing reasons is caused only by the human rather than any other preconditions. Thus it follows that to Peikoff, given the same initial starting conditions before a human choice, you could "run the experiment" multiple times and end up with different choices each time. This seems absurd to me. It turns human conciousness into a sort of quantum "switch" in the law of causality where normal rules don't apply.

    I don't think you're interpreting Peikoff correctly. What do you mean by "starting conditions" here? Why do you think that it is his position that "nothing in the makeup of the universe before a human choice will predict [or] necessitate the governing reasons a man uses to make a choice"? He says, "man himself decides what are to be the governing reasons. Man chooses the causes that shape his actions." Is man not part of the makeup of the universe?

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