nanite1018

I can change my essence. People have the capacity to change their hierarchy of values, shift priorities, etc. Instead of placing all that value on my current work, I get a new hobby or go back to school and learn something new. My essence only exists if I exist. I can only have an essence so long as I exist. So existence comes first, essence second. As a result, my current essence can be sacrificed in order to protect my capacity to have an essence. Something can't be an objective value before I select it, objective values only exist as a relation between me and the universe. If I don't currently value something (and I am fully rational) than it isn't an objective value for me. I never said it wasn't possible to value your essence more than your life, I am saying it is irrational. A man who acts to try to prevent the rape of his wife is probably behaving rationally if he thinks that the loss/pain of that event would outweigh the risk of losing his life. All rational choices among multiple options are about percentages and the weighing of costs and benefits, otherwise there would either be only one possible choice or the choice would not be rational. My "beef" so to speak is with the idea of someone acting when the know (i.e. are as certain as anyone can be) they will die. I do not have a problem with someone risking their life, that can certainly be rational. But I don't understand how anyone could value anything more than their own existence. You have to exist to even have the capacity to value, it is a necessary requirement for it, so to place a value higher than existence seems like putting the cart before the horse.

But I'm still alive. I understand that if I am to exist I have to exist as something. I would, in this hypothetical case, be living as a human who does not get any pleasure out of life. Certainly it is a monstrously deficient way to live, but at least I exist. If there is absolute certainty that I will die, whatever consequences my death would have would not affect me and so my choice to die could not be moral. If I continue to exist, there is at least the possibility that things will change in the future, and so it is better for me to continue to exist (even if it isn't a flourishing life in any sense) than to die. I can't think of any case where I would intentionally die for anything at all. Risk death, sure, absolutely. But act knowing that I would absolutely die? No.

The example often given in these discussions is one given earlier by WhitneyFisher, namely jumping in front of a bullet for someone you love. Or alternatively, doing something which you have every reason to think will result in the end of your existence in order to protect someone you love. I do not really understand how this could be anything other than a breach of rationality on that person's part, resulting from an overwhelming emotional reaction. The only reason to love someone is because they make my life more enjoyable. It is impossible that their existence is the only thing I enjoy. And so, naturally, even with their death I will still find some (if minimal) pleasure from living. And even if I don't have any pleasure whatsoever, and do not enjoy anything at all, it shouldn't matter anyway because existence is by definition preferable to nonexistence. Living in pain and suffering is always better than not existing, because there is the remotest chance it may end (even for terminally ill patients, remarkable recoveries happen). So I do not see how you can ever choose to die for something you value, since by dying you cannot ever value anything and cannot gain any reward from working to protect that value at all. There is a difference hear between running the risk of dying and certainly dying. If there is a 30% chance that you will die but your loved one gives your life 50% of its enjoyment, than it is rational to run the risk to protect her (since 50% loss is greater than the probabilistic 33% loss). If the risk of death is near 100%, it seems impossible that running that risk can ever, under any circumstances, be rational.

Actually Dawkins is a 6-6.9 on a scale between 0 and 7. And the only reason he is not a 7 is because it would require him to make the absolute positive statement "There is no God or anything remotely like it" which any good scientist would never make since we do not have complete knowledge about the universe. He's "agnostic" to God in the same way as he is agnostic about fairies, leprechauns, invisible pink unicorns, and Thor. So, basically, he rejects the idea of them as stupid and arbitrary, which is essentially the same thing Objectivists do. I agree that many atheists do fall into the pragmatic/utilitarian camp, or argue that we have a somewhat innate moral sense that can be explained by evolution (there actually are some pretty good arguments that human's have evolved with emotions that lead them to adopt a benevolent morality). I think they are far better than religionists though, and would much rather live in a world filled with people at least explicitly committed to reason than a world explicitly committed to faith. Even lip-service to reason is better than faith (at least you've got an in).

Sorry, I edited it, I missed a whole page. Also, sorry for calling that person (not sure who) an idiot, though asserting that making a prediction is an assertion of determinism makes no sense at all, especially based on the passage you quoted from Kurzweil. I tend to be more loose with terms like that in conversation, since its pretty obvious that I never actually think the person is truly stupid when in person (got to get to know me I guess), but it is inappropriate on a forum, since tone of voice, facial expression, and experience with the person doesn't really exist.

Edited because somehow I missed a whole page of this thread, haha: Paul Lemke: Kurzweil has stated that there maybe slow-downs or even downward movement in his curve, depending on conditions. He actually has identified some slow-downs (great depression for example) where technology advanced a bit slower than predicted. Massive wars might make it go negative. His point is that his curve is an average, it is the best fit ignoring all the slow downs (or more properly, accounting for them by decreasing the overall rate of growth somewhat). Separately, on the main topic of the singularity and the possibility of the creation of an actual consciousness equivalent in power to that of a biological human in a computer: To say that we will never be able to create a consciousness in any form of a computational substrate is to ignore the fact that we do so all the time when we have babies. The real question is if we can create one without going through any remotely standard reproductive channels, and even more specifically, to do so without using a biological substrate. Well, in order to deny this possibility you must either 1) assert that the brain is so complex that we will never have enough computational power to emulate it, meaning that there is a cap at the maximum theoretical amount of computational power that man can pack into a computer of arbitrary size or 2) to assert that somehow human consciousness has to have a biological substrate, which is to assert the existence of a non-corporeal soul totally outside the realm of physics (since given enough computing power, we can emulate any physical system of any size, at least theoretically). Since 2 is just ridiculous and might as well come right out of the mouth of Jesus, I'll only address 1. The brain is about one kilogram of matter. Given access to any amount of matter, it seems absolutely certain that we could emulate its behavior down to the level of atoms. More important though, we shouldn't have to do that. While the behavior of synapses is likely affected by the dynamics of cell membranes and ion transport and concentration, any effect below the level of individual proteins is likely just noise, not actually computationally significant. Noise can be replicated in a computer by a randomness generator (if true randomness is needed, we could use a pile of radioactive isotope). Computation must be emulated. Neuroscientists estimate the needed computational power would be in the range of no more than about 10^28cps. That would be reached by 2045 at the present rate of increase in computer power. It may be far sooner than that since that is the high range of estimates. There is no reason to think that we couldn't create something equal in size to the brain that could emulate its computational activities perfectly. The brain has a lot of junk it doesn't need for computing, so if we strip that all out, we don't even have to be as efficient as the brain is in order to match its power. If you emulate all of the activity of the brain, then you've created the same platform for consciousness as the human brain, and so why shouldn't it be conscious? If I can emulate its behavior, it will do the same things, and the emulated person (for example) will behave exactly as the person it was based on (allowing for natural differences resulting from different random influences by biology for the person and the noise generator for the computer). The emulated person would recognizably be the same as the biological one, and no one would be able to tell the difference. As a result, there is no reason to think anything has changed, or that somehow the computer isn't "conscious" like a human is conscious, since it behaves the same.

This was mostly just nonsensical ramblings. Even the pantheist part at the end is basically meaningless, since its meaningless to say God is literally the universe, might as well just say the universe is the universe so you don't get into a religious debates. I guess you could argue that the universe fits the description of God, or at least some of them, but it has no bearing on human knowledge or activity, or even an understanding of the universe, so why do so?

Well, I was a hard determinist when I started posting on this forum. And if we're discussing physics, I still am. For a long time I thought that deterministic physics and volition were incompatible, but reconsidering it I have figured out how they are in fact compatible, at least to my satisfaction. You could try this approach with your friend and see how it goes. Philosophy addresses a few things, namely metaphysics (which is very very limited in scope really), epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics (at least, that's how Objectivism does it). Now, the key behind all of these (except maybe metaphysics) is that they discuss conscious entities and how minds perceive things. Physics talks about particles, waves, and discrete objects. They are two different topics, and one cannot translate into the other. Just because physics is deterministic, and your brain is made of stuff governed by the laws of physics, doesn't change the fact that you have volition (or must take volition as axiomatic) because you are still a conscious entity that needs to know how to understand the world, and how you should act. To say that you can discard volition and treat everything as if it was governed by physical law is to argue that you don't need any guides on your behavior or what you should do (which is self-evidently not the case if you intend on living very long). Even in a deterministic material universe, volition must be taken as an axiom of philosophy if you are to be able to have epistemology or ethics. And since both are required to survive, volition is an axiom for anyone who wants to live. Also, physics says that the particles of your brain will all behave according to this table of rules *points to laws of physics*. Philosophy says that your mind has the ability to choose between two or more possible options. How to reconcile them? Well, my preferred option is that while the laws of physics may be deterministic, there is a fundamental limit on the amount of information you can have about the universe. And so if you said "well if I knew the position and momentum, etc. of all the particles in the universe, I could predict what you would do" is stupid, since you can never, under any theoretical circumstances, do this, even for so much as a single subatomic particle, let alone the universe. You can say that there are "hidden variables" in quantum mechanics, if you wish, but it doesn't change the fact that you will never be able to know what they are or were, ever. And as a result, if you say "well you always had to do what you did since you did it, and the laws of physics are deterministic" you are making an error, since the laws of physics are deterministic only in so far as the initial conditions are precisely defined, given a range, you will have little idea what could happen. And even taking quantum physics at face value, the fact remains that all it says is the probability of a set of options occurring, which doesn't negate volition, since volition would predict that you can do any of a number of options (and of course some will be more likely than others, I could scream "kamalazoo!" in three seconds, but its unlikely that I will). And so, no matter how you slice it, "deterministic" physics (which is a very wide sense of the word anyway) is compatible with an assumption of volition in philosophy, since that assumption is necessary for all philosophy addressing human action, initial conditions can never actually be fully known and so can be said to be permanently in flux (or only meaningful to talk about in ranges), and any meaningful theory will make it so that the only thing you could know about any system is the likelihood it will do something, never exactly what it will do.

I've read "The Property Status of Airwaves" (I googled it, thanks DavidOdden for pointing me toward it) but unfortunately it doesn't answer my question, at least not fully. Laissez-Faire, my response to your supposed contradiction is that he does not own the land his house sits on, he owns the house. If he defaults on his land rental payments, then someone could use the land beneath his house for something, so long as it does not disturb his house in any way (since then it would damage his property). Similarly, if he "owns" a field and has a farm on it, then theoretically someone could use it if he isn't paying rent, but they could not disturb his crops (again, that would infringe on his property rights). In general, this person would have a very difficult time doing so, probably impossible, and so people wouldn't mess with such used areas. But if he has a fallow field somewhere and has never used it, or used it long ago but nothing is left except weeds, then someone could use it without messing with his property at all. The key is that while practically people won't mess with anything that is actively being used, only the things someone has created are actually off-limits. And the main issue is that anyone who refuses to pay their fee to retain control over the land will have a difficult time selling their house if it does not come with ownership of the area around it. Since that would very negatively affect their home's market value, they would have to keep up with the payment. "The Property Status of Airwaves" was an interesting read, but as I said before, it didn't really address the question. Her example of why this idea is ridiculous is that a concert pianist can own his body and the piano but not the airwaves of the concert hall, and therefore has no right to give a concert without a license from the government. That's ridiculous. He can give a concert. But someone else could start banging on the drums somewhere nearby and he couldn't stop him, since he hasn't claimed exclusive use of the area. If, however, he rented the concert hall for the night, then he could prevent such an event from happening. The key difference is not that you cannot use any "common" property without a license. It is that you cannot make others not use it without a license. In the case of a broadcast, you own the content of the broadcast (and so it cannot be reproduced without permission), but you don't have the right to force others to not use the same frequency you are using within the range of your transmitter, because you haven't actually done anything to claim the right of exclusive use. Of course practically no one would want to use the same frequency as another since both would be garbled beyond recognition, but that doesn't prevent it. I can yell over you on a street corner and you can't sue me for it, unless you have claimed exclusive privilege to speak on that particular street corner. The idea still seems valid to me. Also, the objection that you can't know rents without prices is false. If you charged the full rental value then the price of all land on the market drops to zero. So you can use the market price as a barometer for the rental value (you can't charge 100% of course, that's cutting it too close to going negative with prices, but you could almost certainly claim 90+% without going to negative prices, this is all that you can reclaim in an orderly fashion and so is all anyone could think of having a right to claim anyway, so it doesn't violate the principle). The great thing about a land value fee/tax is that it doesn't change economic considerations whatsoever, it doesn't make your house less valuable, or the school, doesn't change whether I want a piece of land or not (since the land rent is still exactly the same degree higher for valuable land vs. bad land as it would be with prices), doesn't effect labor, productivity, or capital, its completely free of adverse economic effects (except depriving the owners of property from gaining benefit from simply owning property without doing anything useful at all with it).

My question (perhaps this belongs in questions about Objectivism, but it is aimed squarely at political philosophy, so I feel it belongs better in this area) is fairly simple: How do you come to own land? I mean this in the economic sense of the word land, meaning not labor, or capital. Whales, rocks, the moon, stars, real estate (in terms of a plot of regular-old land, not counting the house or whatever), are all land. How do you own it? For example, how if I find an island, or what I think is an island, does that give me the right to claim all of it as mine? What about if I go all the way around it, map it, and then build a small house on it, even going as far as to set up a security system and arm myself against intruders? Do I own it now? It doesn't seem to me that you do, not in a moral sense. All you've done is seal it off from others and threaten them not to step foot on it or else you'll shoot them. Obviously the critical point is that the government grants you a contract to it. However, there seems to be a problem. How does the government get to give you a contract? Its simply claimed that land as part of its territory, which amounts to much the same problem as with the individual ownership problem. I understand that a government has to have a claim to the use of retributive force in a given geographic area. But does that then grant it the ability to grant by fiat an economic value to someone? I have read some about Georgism, and the idea that land is by right the common resource of everyone (since the government does not have the right to grant economic favors to some rather than others, and there is no other way to objectively decide ownership of land) sounds rational. The solution he proposes is fairly simple. Since it is self-evident that some people need to be able to keep other people from laying claim to a certain area, they have to pay for the right to exclude everyone else. The amount is the land rental value of the land, which is basically the value of controlling who can use the property. The receipts from this land value fee/tax would be distributed to the rest of the population (or used to pay for the government in the first place) so as to give every member of society their lost value (from not having been the recipient of government's graces). I'm not particularly interested in the topic of the funding of government, since I think a fixed fee of a percentage of the value of all contracts to be enforced by the government (or the payment of all costs in enforcing any given contract that doesn't have that insurance) is perfectly justifiable and would suffice for that task. No, my main line of inquiry is about the claim that land (land not actively used by someone, or land which hasn't been claimed) is justifiably the common "property" of all, or the "property" of none, and that the only way to have a claim to property is for government to make an arbitrary decision to grant one person's claim and exclude everyone else from the land, thereby conferring upon the recipient of the claim economic advantage over others. Is that true, and if that is the case, shouldn't that economic advantage be reclaimed and given back to everyone else? There is very little as far as I have read on this subject (initial claim of ownership over land) in Rand's books, and it doesn't seem to me that the above argument interferes with any claim of Objectivism (since it says that the actual products of someone's efforts, such as a house or the gold from a mine, is under the rightful claim of the producer, since he produced it). That's why I'm posting this topic, to discuss it with others familiar with the philosophy.

I don't think sustainability is bad in principle, if it doesn't cost much then I don't see a problem in making my house use far less energy than normal by increasing efficiency, etc. I'd only do it if it saves me money in the long run though. And that is the only way "sustainable" or "green" products are ever going to get any leverage, to be actually cheaper in the long run. The problem is in the long run the world will be a very very very different place. Example: In vitro meat is rapidly advancing. I read somewhere that the cost for a given quantity is having every couple of years, and so it will be cost competitive with traditional meat supplies before 2050. Other examples include advances in biotechnology massively increasing the nutritional value and density of growth for crops, also increasing their growing seasons and viable environments. Food shortage, thanks to those advances, is virtually impossible to imagine. Fusion power is only a couple of decades away, solar panels are halving in price every year or two, and some say they will actually be cost competitive with fossil fuels by 2020 (that's assuming oil prices don't spike due to legislation). Pollution will be cleaned up with bioengineered bacteria, effectively fixing environmental problems. Even further down the line, nanotechnology will allow us to break down any and all waste of any kind, and rapidly transform it into virtually any material good we desire to produce, and will drop production prices dramatically. Artificial intelligence will grow dramatically in power thanks to increasing computer power, and will increasingly take over manufacturing (and maybe other, more creative) jobs, reducing production prices even more. All of this together means the price of living, the quality of living, and humanity's "impact" on the environment will be dropping dramatically during the 21st century. Considering that, what does it matter if what I'm doing now isn't particularly "environmentally friendly", even if for some reason I am supposed to be concerned about that? Science and technology will fix all those problems, along with increasing the standard of living of the poorest of the poor right along with the richest of the rich. The aims of socialists, environmentalists, and all the other anti-capitalists and anti-technologists will be achieved through capitalism and advancing technology. They aren't going about their humanitarian aims correctly in the first place and so I don't pay their "suggestions" much heed, unless they make economic sense in the first place (such as replacing incandescent bulbs with flourescents, since they're cheaper in the long run).

Thank you Miovas and whyNOT for responding (I was busy yesterday, sorry). Miovas, you are correct that I am struggling with optional values. It seems like there "should be" an ideal set of values that you would arrive at, one set of decisions that would rationally maximize your life. However, given that we only have so much time and intellectual capacity, I suppose it would be impossible to go through the work necessary to find out what that set would be exactly, after all many of the variables are simply too complex to be able to handle effectively (exactly what physique you should find appealing, exactly what to eat at a given moment in time, etc.), and so the choice has to be made by best-guess approximations (which is what you are discussing when you talk about a class of options, in which ever member furthers my life and is rational) and some set of other criteria (for a volitional consciousness which has emotions for example, this would individual preferences). whyNOT, you are correct on a number of points: 1) I do view things, such as Objectivism, from a "coolly" logical point of view, and give no weight to emotion where intellectual matters are concerned (like philosophy, science, etc.). Unfortunately, that tends to bleed into every area of my life, which makes introspection exceedingly difficult (I intellectualize and rationalize almost as easily as I breathe, haha). 2) I do not like having to make choices, they are extremely difficult for me (because I feel I do not have the requisite information to make a correct decision). My career is up in the air, even my assortment of majors, minors, and certificates I'm going for (I'm in college, 2nd year) is still in flux. Hell, I stand in front of the jelly section of the supermarket for 10 minutes trying to pick between the various jellies, jams, and spreads available (how am I supposed to pick one if I've never had them before?!). So yeah, spoiled for choice might be a good way to describe me. Your point about flourishing is a good one, and one which I hadn't really considered before. Thinking about it now (as in the above) I conclude that for a finite consciousness with emotions, flourishing is the primary goal/value. Now just to work out how I'll flourish... haha. Thanks to you both for your help coming to terms with this issue.

Well your example makes sense as far as it goes. But my question is more about (in the context of your example) why I should want one girl over another. Why should I like one body shape more than another, or why should a sense of humor be really important as opposed to being very serious-minded, etc.? Because it seems pretty hard to relate those sorts of things back to "man's life as the standard" except in a way that simply says "because it is more attractive to me" or "because I want to be able to laugh a lot with my partner as opposed to always being so serious." And those are about emotional reactions to those qualities, what I enjoy about them, but if I kept asking "why do I enjoy them" I would likely get stuck, or have to come up with a rationalistic answer like "laughing reduces stress, thereby improving my health and allowing me to live longer." I don't think anyone, including Rand, argues that you should think of things in terms like that, because it seems whole categories of experience and personality types will then be deemed irrational and bad, or the way people try to relate their answers in a oblique way to man's life as the standard end up being rationalizations rather than rational. Am I wrong on that point, is that exactly how you are supposed to think about everything?

In the range of possibly rational choices, you are advocating then just picking whichever you enjoy most. But what you enjoy is a result of your value judgments. But, and here's my point, how do you determine what you should value? And I don't mean "you should value food", or something like that. I mean, should I want to eat more kiwi's or apples? Should I play game X or game Y? You are saying that you should pick what you enjoy most. But why pick one seemingly rational option over another? How can I even tell if my "value premises" are rational, based on man's life as my ultimate value? My point is that selecting one possible value over another possible value (since I've taken from the above that you don't think you can pick actually work down to the level of "what game" or "what fruit" on a rational"istic" basis) is a result of a whim basically (whatever makes you feel best). That doesn't make it bad, but it does mean it isn't rational in the abstract sense of the word.

See that was my point, it comes down to, eventually, making a choice based on emotions rather than rational assessment of options (without emotion). It makes sense to me that this should be the case, since I may not be able to control or alter (to any significant extent, or at least only very very slowly) certain predilections which formed for whatever reason based on my biology and my youth (and possibly other unknown reasons, various experiences, my beliefs and ideas, etc.). My main point in all this was saying that when Objectivism says that you should be rational, it isn't talking about starting from scratch and basically starting from square one emotionally, but taking the things which you enjoy (which are going to ultimately come down to "because I enjoy them", which basically means for unknown, non-rational reasons) and using those as a starting point. The need to examine why you enjoy certain things (and more importantly, should you) is a tool for weeding out "bad" desires which don't help you. But what desires you do have (like what foods taste good to me, or what type of work I enjoy actually doing) aren't things that I sat down and decided based on a rational assessment of pros and cons, and relating the benefits to survival, and whatnot. They are going to be whatever was left after the myriad of influences of my environment when I was young, combined with my subsequent decisions (which were strongly influenced by the desires caused by childhood and earlier experiences). I wanted to grasp how you are supposed to go about selecting a CPL rationally from among a number of plausible options, when it really doesn't make sense and seems to be impossible. I liked your explanation of why flourishing and my own enjoyment are important. The idea that they give you the motivation to live and work is one which I generally discount as irrational (life is better innately than nothingness, so how could you rationally not want to live?). But given the nature of human beings, if we take no pleasure in what we are doing, we will likely stop doing it. And regardless of how irrational it may be, if life gives us no meaningful pleasures than it doesn't seem much better than no longer existing I suppose. Thank you for your post. Now to figure out what I really want to do (I have interests, but they are widely varied and even the strongest span so many disciplines I won't be able to do everything I want in them). Thanks again.

See this is what I am talking about. But my question is oriented around two points: 1) Do you need to really look at what my value premises are now? If I can decide on what my values should be, why not just go by those and let my emotions take care of themselves (it seems like they'll change eventually in accordance with your new values). If I wanted to know my value premises that my emotions are based on, I see how my emotions would be useful in that sense. But are those really important when it comes to deciding how to act? 2) What exactly is my guide to what will service my life? Its not my emotions or sensations of pleasure or pain. But while Objectivism clearly says you should behave in a way that reason dictates will aid in your survival (or whatever definition of life they use, which I'm not clear on), it doesn't seem as though, for example, expressing her vision of the ideal man really served Rand's survival as much as say being an engineer or a doctor would have (since she probably would have made much more money and thus had better health care and lived longer). I understand once I pick a central purpose then everything else will be organized around that. But picking a central purpose does not seem to be a pragmatic matter at all, it just seems to be about whatever you will enjoy, not what will enable you to live longest. As another example Laughlin Burgess' discussion of it in this blog post (in the comments). He disucsses what you love to do or what you find interesting, supposedly as a guide to picking a CPL. It seems, invariably, that no matter how one tries to figure out their CPL, it has to come down to on some level what they enjoy (since its just about how much money you will make and how high a quality of health care you can afford, Rand wouldn't be a novelist and Burgess wouldn't be a historian/philosopher). So that is my question, how do I pick a CPL if not in reference to what I enjoy (at least in part)? And doesn't that just make it an irrational selection, since it isn't based purely on your capacity to survive with that CPL?

Actually, Rand and Peikoff both discuss your subconscious being programmed by your conscious thoughts, so "programmed" is the correct word choice. My point is that my subconscious is programmed by whatever experiences and thoughts I had in the past, and since I haven't always been perfectly rational (like most people) my emotions do not seem to be any meaningful guide to my "nature". When I said "what does it matter why I enjoy it?" I wasn't defending my enjoyment (which seems to be your interpretation based on your response). My point was "what is the importance of my emotions at all?" I mean the only reason my emotions might be valuable is because they make me recheck my thinking, but other than that it seems like they wouldn't be valuable in any way. I am defending reason, not unthinking. I simply am looking for what Objectivists mean by my "nature" and how I am supposed to understand it. And the after-effects of garbage I thought in my past doesn't seem to be a proper basis for determining my nature.

I don't understand this conception of value that you seem to be using. Values are things you act to gain or keep. The primary value (which all others should serve) is living. So pleasure isn't a value, in that it doesn't aid your life (too much candy for example). Pleasure-giving things offer no value. Nor do emotional "rewards", since all that matters is living. If life is the highest value, which organizes every other possible thing you may value, then what makes you happy, what gives you pleasure, or what makes you feel like dirt doesn't matter, if reason leads you to know that it will further your life. Is my problem with my definition of life? Life is a process of self-generating and self-sustaining action. So isn't the reason for all my actions ultimately staying alive (without making continued life impossible on principle, of course)? Some have talked about "flourishing" as the meaning of living according to Objectivism, but I don't understand that. That seems to devolve into hedonism. The only highest value which allows all your values be based on solely rational bases is survival, not flourishing. I don't see how it can be otherwise.

What does it matter why I enjoy it? There are things which will further my life, since I have a specific nature and those things have a specific nature. It doesn't matter what I enjoy (for whatever reason my random past experiences make me do so), only what furthers my life. I know what does that according to reason, not emotion, and so I don't really understand why emotions should matter at all (except in emergencies when I do not have time to think in detail). Nevertheless, it seems that I should simply look at what I can do and then look at available activities and match them up based on what makes maximizes the probability I will continue to live and be able to keep doing such activities. Why I have a negative emotional reaction to being an English teacher doesn't have anything to do with my nature, it simply has to do with whatever trash my subconscious was programmed with in the past. By that standard, than I would have to simply go with whatever my emotions told me to do, since it reveals something about my nature. My understanding is that you are supposed to look at your what statements and beliefs inform your emotions to make sure you aren't missing something (the emotion has no meaning in itself). Which in the end boils down to follow reason and your emotions aren't important (except in emergencies). Note: I don't have anything against saying emotions are of no value (I've never really liked them much anyway) but I do want to figure out how, without considering them, you can make decisions about what to do with your life. And more particularly, just what is meant by my "nature", is that just my abilities and intellectual capacities, or does that include emotions (and doesn't that then make it irrational?)?

Related to the problem of induction and the above quote: All claims to knowledge are followed by the addendum "given the context of X knowledge" where X may be the knowledge available in Newton's time, or Einstein's, or all of my own knowledge. But, that context means that the only thing I am certain about are the exact conditions I have encountered before. There is no reason to think that those conditions will not change or will not have changed in the future. As a result, while I can be certain that in the context of my present knowledge certain things are true, I cannot know whether they will continue to be true (in that I cannot know if my knowledge will apply in a new context, such as tomorrow or in Africa or in the Andromeda Galaxy). So the basis for my actions based on my current knowledge is a provisional assumption: that the context has not changed. Now this is a justified assumption since if am acting on the full context of my knowledge than the only basis for decision making is the context I have (and I will discover as a result of my actions whether the context has indeed changed or not). Is the key for the relation of the contextual nature of knowledge to action that you must act in an appropriate context for the situation (that is, in light of all your knowledge, and constantly be vigilant for any new information)? Also, why is it so bad to call Newton's theories "wrong" given the knowledge that they do not apply universally in the context of knowledge today? They are correct in the context of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, but in today's world they are at best simply approximations for more exact methods and are therefore false in the context of full human knowledge in the present day. I don't really see a problem with this (new knowledge isn't invalidating the old knowledge, it simply means that the old knowledge no longer applies because the context changed, and since its a different context that knowledge is false in the new context). This seems to be compatible both with traditional understanding of the advance of science and the nature of inductive knowledge (that it always has the possibility of being incorrect, if the context changes) and the Objectivist view that knowledge is contextual. It is basically saying inductive knowledge is valid (since it includes the context) but that the "fact" that knowledge removed from the context is false if placed in a new one. I think that satisfies both the "problem" of induction and provides a way to explain the idea to non-Objectivists (for example, my philosophy of science teacher, or the late philosopher Karl Popper, who thinks induction is garbage).

There are a couple things here that confuse me, and I haven't quite worked out. How do I find my nature? Exactly what tells me what I am, what furthers my life, etc.? My answer to 1 is that I work out what I enjoy. I don't see any other way to pick my career, except waying my enjoyment of it and whatever material values I can gain from it. But doesn't this make it just hedonism? A special, very very constrained form of hedonism, but ultimately it comes down to doing what I enjoy, for whatever irrational or rational reasons that may be (after all, how can I possibly know that a career in engineering will let me live my life better than one in astrophysics or philosophy, if not for how much I enjoy it?). Is there some system that I can use to figure out exactly what my skills and innate abilities are (math is easier, writing comes without much effort to be good, etc.) and then base all my decisions off of those? What if it turns out that based solely on my skills I should go into a job I don't like at all? Since emotions are not guides to cognition, should I just ignore that since I made my decision based on objective fact rather than my personal preferences? After all, what is a personal preference but a result of some random influences of my childhood before I started working to be fully rational, which make me like sandwiches with pickles more than sandwiches with tomato, or like doing physics problems more than studying other cultures? This is one of my problems with figuring out what I should do with my life. If every reaction I have to something is completely irrelevant since its just an emotion, than it seems like I'm likely going to end up having 1) a very very hard time selecting the ideal career for me and 2) a decent probability of hating the career I choose, at least for a very long while. I'm not sure if this exact problem is ever addressed in Rand's writings (I haven't read all of them, but I've read VOS, AS, TF, WTL, Anthem, ITOE, and am currently reading TRM), and I don't remember anything about it in OPAR. All I remember is that emotions are not tools of cognition (and are thus no basis for any decision), and since pleasure and discomfort are merely emotions (not counting actual physical sensations in the definitions of those terms in this context), then my own enjoyment of anything should not play any part in my decision-making, it needs to be totally rational. That doesn't seem to be what Rand means at all, but I don't see how to avoid that without saying that you should do what gives you joy and follow that rationally as a goal (which is simply a restrained form of hedonism).

Redmaverick, you seem to be discussing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is largely ignored by physicists (since it is centered around a measurement and a consciousness, etc. and so is, well, dumb). Physicists largely subscribe to the decoherence interpretation, which basically says that the quantum uncertainty about the position or path of a particle leaks into the environment through interaction. For example, in the double slit experiment, you either end up with an interference pattern (the reason of which is interference in the particle's wave function) or you end up with two bars. Now, most say "oh well its a wave and a particle." Well, no, its not. What actually happens is when you measure which path it takes, the interaction massively reduces (to basically zero) the uncertainty in the wave function of the particle, but that uncertainty is carried over into the wave function of the experimental apparatus. Since the apparatus is trillions of times bigger, the uncertainty is so small as to be unnoticeable on a macroscopic scale. That's how macroscopic objects all behave "normally", and subatomic particles behave all weird. Its not a duality, its just the nature of the interactions. And this still allows for an objective reality which my consciousness becomes aware of. No one ever said it can be aware of it without interacting with it though. That's why I can't know the exact position and momentum of a particle, knowing one forces me to interact with it in such a way as to lose all information about what the other may be. That's a natural and obvious limitation on knowledge, but isn't at all an attack on the idea of a reality which exists outside of my mind.

While it might be irresponsible to not plan for its support beyond "give to an orphanage for adoption", I think it is still better than simply preventing that life from existing at all. Out of respect for the potential of a human life, I would say that at such a late stage in the game one should (but can't be made to) give birth to the baby and give it up for adoption.

Well you see that's my point Thomas, the actions of the physical systems of your body make up your senses, consciousness, etc. But, when you are discussing things like ideas, beliefs, entities, and volition it isn't useful to think of them in terms of physical systems, it gives you no insight and isn't the proper way of going about it. Those things are about the interactions of those systems, how they interact with each other and most importantly how they "perceive" the interactions. Its the difference between third-person and first-person, they have different consequences and ways of viewing reality, but neither is more "valid" than the other, they are simply different. I'm trying to explain the connection between the two, how one can view it all as the actions of particles obeying certain rules and the other view it as entities making choices. I think the difference lies in the innate restriction on knowledge about reality (you can't know everything, sometimes more knowledge about one necessarily prevents knowledge about another aspect), and difference in viewing something from the outside and the nature of its self-experience. I think I've reconciled the two views to my satisfaction.

An infant isn't rational, Marc K. It has no language, its brain is underdeveloped, it can't understand any abstractions whatsoever. I will admit that I was wrong in my earlier position, the infant does not gain "rationality" at 30 weeks after conception. I apologize. But its sensory capabilities do arise at that time (see the link to that paper, and also the notes about the linking up of thalamic nerves which are responsible for sense sensation in the brain occurring at 30 weeks), and once it has actual senses then it becomes conscious, and since it is a human it is a human consciousness. Human consciousness grants you rights. And it can sense things in the womb, there is sound, some light, it can feel pain, etc. So it is aware of something, and so can be said to be genuinely conscious. If a part of your body has consciousness then it is not merely a part of your body, it must be said that it is a different entity, not just a subset of yourself. So after 30 weeks or so, the question of abortion changes in nature, from "can i kill an unconscious growth" to "can i kill a consciousness?" and the latter requires at least more careful consideration. I will grant you that the fetus is still entirely dependent on the mother for nutrients, but if she gave birth to it, that would no longer be the case. So if the mother simply wants to no longer have it growing inside her, then she could give birth to it and her problem would be solved. If the woman will die if the baby is not aborted, then she has that right, since the fetus is not capable of decision-making it cannot be asked what it wants and so the woman's decision is final. I will grant you that the same logic would apply to simply wanting to abort the fetus as well, and I will concede that the woman would have to have the legal right to abort it. But I will not say that I could condone such an action if it was not absolutely necessary. It would betray a profound disrespect for human life and the potential each life has. Given that the baby is viable and the woman can give it up for adoption immediately upon birth, to not do so makes the woman profoundly inconsiderate and makes me question how much she respects human life.