Hotu Matua

The point of disagreement does not have to be on Ethics, but on any particular opinion of Ayn Rand, if I am understanding correctly the question being asked here. It could be on applied politics, the role of a woman as President, pornography, homosexuality, interpretation of American history, air pollution, UFOs, esthetics of folk dances, etc. If that is the question, I would say yes. You may disagree with some concrete applications of Objectivist philosophy as expressed by Ayn Rand and still be moral, because as any human being, she might not have all relevant information about an issue, stay focused 100% of the time, have enough insight to tell between her reasoning and her emotions, etc. As far as I remember, Leonard Peikoff has recognized he disagrees with Ayn Rand in things like pornography and homosexuality. In the future, other still greater philosopher may honor the memory of Ayn Rand while pointing out the mistakes she made, just as she honoured the memory of Aristotle but recognized his flaws. Now, if the question is about Objectivism as a philosophy (as the title of the thread suggests) then Tanaka's answer is correct.

Nowadays, in this world, very smart and physically strong people coexist with retarded, physically weak people. Nobel-Prize winners and Olympic gold-medal athletes coexist with people with, say, Down's syndrome. How do Nobel Prize winners and Olympic gold-medal athletes tend to treat retarded or diseased people? Do they tend to mistreat them? Do they violate their rights? Sci-fi literature is used to present our species, in its current condition, as much more gentle, benevolent and sensitive than any post-human or trans-human being. This is equivalent to presenting Neardenthal men as more gentle, benevolent or sensitive than modern Americans. Furthermore, the process of evolution from hominid pre-human species to fully human Homo sapiens was blind, while the evolution of our species from now on will be directed by reason. If blind, non-rational evolution produced such a precious, great, beautiful thing as the human mind, imagine what this precious, great, beautiful mind could create in turn!

Tara Smith picked the question on how the quest for "survival" translates into the quest of, say, designing the tablet thatwill beat the iPad, or spending holidays in a luxurious resort in Tahiti. Living, for a man, means achieving, creating, self-challenging, innovating, expanding his mind and experiences, or like some transhumanists would put it, displaying a " will to evolve". We humans don't just want to breathe, eat and reproduce. We are interested in becoming. We are builders of our character. We are the writers of the play we are acting. Therefore, every time I think in immortality, I am thinking in a life qua man. However, life qua man does not imply, by necessity, keeping an appendix, tonsils, or earlobes. Man is an integrated unit of mind and body. So far so good. But... What specific kind of body? What specific kind of tissues, cells, metabolic processes, neurotrasmitters? Objectivism does not provide an answer... And it does the right thing, because that belongs to the realm of biology, not philosophy. I would say that the right kind of body is the one that provides the better chance for the existence and success of that integrated unit. A body that allows my mind to keep working, creating, evolving. Remember: it is the mind, and not the body, the primary, direct tool of survival. Ayn Rand never said " Hands are man's tools of survival ". So, if my hands in their current state are doing a nice job in assiting my mind in the quest for a bountiful life, good. If they are not, I better do something about it. I will have to repair them or, if this is not feasible, replace them. Whether my hand is now a bionic cyberhand or just an arthritis-free hand is irrelevant. It will be part of my renovated body, which is helping me efficiently to preserve myself as an integrated unit.

I did not misuse the word "freedom". Rather, you are dropping the context. The freedom you are referring to ( freedom from coercion) belongs to a political context. Every time Ayn Rand pronounced a definition of freedom, she started with the warning "in a political context" and then proceeded to define the concept. You can quickly check this out in the Ayn Rand Lexicon. She knew that there was be more then one context. Otherwise this disclaimer made no sense. The context I am using "freedom" or "shackles" here is clear for anyone who wants to understand. If you want to use "independence" instead of "freedom" or "limitations" instead of "shackles" that is fine with me. My point is not affected.

I have two objections to your argument: a soft and a hard one. Here is the soft one: a member of a primitive tribe, faced with the vision of the modern man would have feared the very same thing. Look at you : Are you really worried about the possibility of not having food to eat over the next week? Over the next month? Are you concerned about contracting cholera or smallpox and die because of it? Has the sex act lost its glamour because of Viagra? Has progress taken passion out of life? No. You keep pursuing values and enjoying life, even when your life is infinitely less dangerous than that of a caveman. Here is the hard one: The value you are pursuing is more than biological survival. You are pursuing a flourishing, lucid, bountiful life. And this challenge requires all your wit, commitment, intelligence, perseverance and virtues. You may live one day without the fear of cancer, but a cancerless life will not mean a happy life by itself. It would still require YOU to make it happy and meaningful. Values derive not just from the pursuit of life but from the pursuit of a particular kind of life.

The "means" I am referring to are reason, science and technology. I am referring to voluntary, self-interested means. What kind of "problematic" means are you talking about? Besides, length is of interest of you, inasmuch as you are making plans as if you were going to live tomorrow. You are betting for tomorrow, because you want to live tomorrow. Animals care only about today's survival.

...which is a great thing, because you will always have the chance to end your life, and there will always be a reason to be productive: a reason to use your mind as a tool of survival. Yes, it does. The basis of that desire is your self-recognition as a living rational being who faces constantly ( not just today) the dilemma of life or death, and keeps choosing life and acting accordingly. You desire immortality as much as I do. Otherwise we both would be dead by now. All your rational actions so far have had this purpose. . Animals don't know they are going to die. But you do and nevertheless fight: you are a hero. And when you die ( still the most likely thing) you will die thirsty of more life, thirsty of more love, fighting.

Let's Simon Young, from "The Transhumanist Manifesto" answer directly your question. "The future lies not in state-run eugenic programs, but in voluntary consumer access to Superbiology, enabling individuals to enhance their bodies and minds as they see fit, in their own interests-- not those of the state!" (The italics are those of the original text) Nanite has much more knowledge than me regarding Transhumanism. I am just writing about the book I am reading. The thesis of these books are clearly individualistic. There is no "collective" and no enforcement of any kind foreseen in Young's thesis. The point, however, is not whether Transhumanism is right or wrong, but whether this specific thesis (enhancement of bodies and minds through science and technology to prolonge life as long as possible) is valid or not. I am not inviting people to become Transhumanist. Objectivism is the only philosophy to live on Earth. I am inviting Objectivists to discuss this particular idea, and see whether it is a logic corollary of Objectivist ethics or not. But we already do that, Sophia. We already influence the neurology of our children in many ways. Our actions range from Selecting sperm from a genius in a sperm bank, to choosing an intelligent partner as the father/mother of our offsprings. We already do it when we stimulate our babies early enough, and when we teach them certain skills more than others, or expose them to certain experiences more than other expereinces. . And notwithstanding this, children are volitional beings and they will be free to make their own choices, regardless their "chips". It is exactly because Objectivists are NOT determinists that we can trust that any body enhancement (including those improvind mental functions) will not take away our freedom.

What is that SOMETHING, Make? Duty? Heavens? The common good? The Ten Commandments? What is that "something"? It is life...a happy life. But corpses cannot have a happy life. So you first avoid becoming a corpse.

I think you are right, whynot. There is no reason to join such a mixture of people with contradicting philosophies. I just wanted to share with you a brand of Transhumanism that takes borrowed Objectivist ethics to a new arena for debate, becasue Objectivist will sooner or later have to discuss these ideas, endorse them or oppose them. Now, let me answer Grames why the claim of a mind-body dichotomy in my version of Howard Roarks on the edge of the cliff is absurd. Mind-body dichotomy is a fallacy by which mind and body are put in opposition, belonging to different "realities". Look how Ayn Rand refers to this dichotomy in Galt's speech(bold is mine) "They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave." And here, in For The New Intellectual "The New Intellectual . . . will discard . . . the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. He will be an integrated man, that is: a thinker who is a man of action" In my version of Howard Roarks, he is not planning to become a disemboddied ghost. He is not fighting his body, but helping it... rescueing it. He is planning to enhance his body under the command of reason. He wants to enhance his body beacuse he loves it and wants to live in his body. Beacuse it is an integrated part of him. Since you love your body you take good care of it, and you keep it safe from disease and decay. Notice, in the first quotation, how Ayn Rand states that the believers in mind-body dichotomy think in the grave as the ultimate freedom. This is quite interesting and powerful. Grave is the ultimate source of freedom for mystics of the muscle and the spirit. For Objectivist continuous life, and not death, is the source of freedom. I want to live forever in my body. This is why I will take care of it. I will free it from viruses as well as accumulated mutations (accumulated mutations are the hallmark of ageing). I will free it from a gangrenous appendix as well as a gangrenous leg, if necessary. I will incorporate new pieces into it, so that the net effect of those bionic pieces add value to the integrated entity. I will substitute a worn organ by a new organ. I will shape it and re-shape it constantly. I will make it more beautiful, as a faithful manifestation of my mind and life. I'll make of my body a piece of art. The body of a hero.

Brilliant, Nanite. And the position of Objectivism is important because there are already people opposing this particular thanshumanist view, which is a corollary of Objectivist ethics, and this opposition could result, if successful, in preventing the cure of many diseases and the elimination of much suffering in me, in you, and in the world. In a later post I will answer Grames about his alleged body-mind dicotomy in my paraphrasing of the scene of naked Howard Roarks on the edge of the cliff.

What if this happens today to you or to me? I don't think I am understanding your point. What could be an example of a person preventing me from prolonging my life by non-coercive means?

One funny thought. Today's "crazy hippies" will be tomorrow's "civilized thinkers", and today's "civilized thinkers" will be tomorrow's "crazy hippies". Let me explain myself. Today, people promoting the search for lifespans of 800 years or beyond are considered a bit crazy. But tomorrow, people promoting to remain with wrinkles in your face, white hair, decay and death at 90 will be doing it to be "in harmony with Mother Nature". They will be the hippies of XXI century. If some future Objectivist could write "The Return of the Primitive (Reloaded)" they would include the description of these "pro-ageing hippies" as representatives of the movement to return to the primitive, abhorring reason and science, to enter "perpetual communion with Gaia through death".

Why? Why would it be irrational to extend it by 50 years? and by 150 years? and by 1000 years? When would it become "irrational"? It would become irrational at the moment you find there is no value to pursue. It is interesting to me Ayn Rand's response to the interviewer, in the sense of wanting to spend eternity with Frank O'Connor, her highest value, if that were possible at all. It is impossible now, but we are not intending to become immortal overnight. We are just studying how to control ageing process. That's a first by enormous step. So it's fine if we evade the debate now, but we will have to face it within few years. Objectivists have to be prepared. Making the excercise to apply principles to situations that have not ocurred but are likely to ocurr is part of planning. Besides, the doubling of life expectancy over the XX century is not hyphothetical. It is history. The fact of scientists currently studying the biology of aging, or developing nanomedicine, is already part of reality. Who said "no matter the means"? Who said that extending your life today, with the technology currently available, is moral "no matter the means"? Of course means matter. Means reflect intentions and have consequences over the life you are trying to attain. Remember: we are not pursuing just biological life: a life in contradiction, a life as a sub-human criminal or slave. We are pursuing life qua man: bountiful, lucid, enjoyable. But this, certainly, is part of our daily choices. What we do with our five extra years (or 500 extra years) is our responsibility.

What does immortality mean? Staying connected to an artificial breathing machine for ever and ever? No. not for transhumanism. Immortality means Reading more books, composing more songs,, producing more goods and services, developing more technologies, sharing more moments with your family, enjoying more orgasms, visiting more places, learning more skills... In short, living qua man. So of course immortality is a prime value. But, curiously enough, it is already a prime value for you all. You are already choosing life day after day after day after day... It should not surprise you. As long as you have values to pursue, the moral thing is to keep living. As long as you keep living, you may choose values to pursue. Can you imagine any instance in which choosing death is preferable to choosing life while life is still worthliving? You can't because that would be a contradiction.

Dear Grames You are missing the point in this discussion and keep attacking a strawman. I have never talked about "coercion" by nature. I have never hinted about nature "conspiring" against men.The fallen rock trapping the miner has obviously no intentionality. The crocodrile is obviously not committing a crime. And the genes codifying for apoptosis and ageing are not " evil".I have never advocated these views so please stop. Let me make an effort to explain myself again Getting in trouble with a collapsed mine, a crocodrile, a virus or a kidnapper is undesirable. It deserves fighting against it because it gets in my way, endangering my chances to live. The intentionality of these things is not the point. When you are trapped you are trapped, both if someone put you in jail or if you happened accidentaly to fall in a jail or if the jail fell from a cloud just over your head. Having genes codifying for ageing process is not immoral, sinful nor represent a flaw in human character. It is just a fact of reality, like floods and collapsing mines. All we have to do is treat them as we do with floods and collapsing mines. Furthermore, that is the moral thing to do, if we love life and have the resources to do it. That's all.

I'm afraid you're wrong, Sophia. Objectivism states that we (as all living organisms) constantly face the dilemma of life and death. You face this dilemma now, as you will face it within 20 or 60 years. And your choice will be the same: life or death. You will either choose to get your atheroma plaque repaired by nanorobots or you choose to get a heart attack. A value is something you strive to gain or keep. If life is a value to you, you will act to keep it. If you are successful, you will indeed KEEP IT. I am not here to invite you to embrace another philosophy, but to reflect on a concrete idea of Transhumanism, that is infrequently discussed in Objectivism, but is compatible with Objectivism and, as I have said, essential as a corollary of Objectivist ethics. Picture Howard Roarks, naked, at the edge of the cliff as in the first words of The Fountainhead. He sees the rocks and trees around him and imagine how they should be transformed to meet the visions of his mind. "He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at the tree. To be split and made into rafters.He looked at the streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me; wating the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them". Since he is naked, the natural corollary is: "He looked at his extremities. To be made strong as iron, elastic as rubber, durable as diamond. He looked as his thorax. To be the home of a heart who never collapses. He looked at his abdomen and thought of the digestion ocurring inside. To be transformed into an efficient metabolic factory, to emerge as an extraordinary source of nutrients for his brain. This body, he thought, is here for me; wating the laser, the genetic engineering, the nanorobots and my voice; waiting to be strengthened, healed, enabled, powered, reborn; wating for the shape my mind will give it". What a fantastic picture of a XXI century Howard Roarks!

Maybe because there is a movement against it. Most people believe that death is a given. "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Hence, Socrates is mortal" Most people throughout history have believed your body is not entirely yours. They believe it belongs to God, to Mother Gaia, to the "Circle of Life" (in Disney's Lion King's terms), to society, to the State... And the final proof of it is the fact that we don't want to die and still die. Your volitional thinking is defeated, annulated, proved to be useless. You may claim victory over armies, ideologies, theats, diseases, and then, sooner or later, you still get sick, suffer, and die. So, the mystics of the muscle and the mystics of the spirit are quite happy with the fact of death. They can use it to frighten you and keep controlling your life. "You are transient and insignificant. Mother Russia/Germany is eternal and glorious." "You are transient and insignificant. God is eternal and glorious." "You as individual are transient and insignificant. You as a cell of humankind are eternal and glorious" By expanding your health and lifespan as long as possible you are telling the church, the state and society: "Look: I belong to myself. I don't need a God to grant me life. I don't need to sacrifice myself to others in this earth to gain a ticket to eternal life as a disembodied ghost. There is only one life, and it belongs to me."

The immense freedom the rationality of being human affords us is so good, so damn good, that we don't want to lose it. We want to keep it. Think in a life after 70 without the threat of Alzheimer's. Year after year, millions of formerly intelligent, independent people get disconnected from reality due to Alzheimer's disease. Their personality breaks down. Mind collapses. Isn't this a tragedy? Ageing is a disease. Death is the anti-value.

Sorry, Dante!

Thanks for bringing this fresh air to the discussion, nanite. I think we should see Transhumanism as a intellectual movement that we could observe and prudently support, here and there, in self-interested way. For example, the main enemies of Transhumanism nowadays seem to be religionists and statists which are, not coincidentally, our ideological enemies. Religionists oppose Transhumanism on the grounds of "playing God". Statists oppose it because it seeks to "widen the gap between the haves and the haves-not" An potential contribution of Transhumanism, at least in the Extropian version of Simon Young, is the concept of the "Will to Evolve" as part of human nature. We all know that men use their minds to survive. What Objectivism has not explained in depth (although Tara Smith has hinted some insights) is how "survival" translates into progress. We pursue to know more, do more, achieve more, and not just settle with what we have. Survival means for men something radically different than for animals. Survival alone does not explain our behaviour. Trahsnhumanism sees in man a will to become more complex. But that is maybe the theme for another post in this thread.

Well, yes. If you love life as your highest value, the rational course of action is to do all necessary actions that preserve your life. If you have a tumor that has a chance to be cured, and you have many projects in life that makes your life worth living for you, the MORAL action is to go to the doctor and get your surgery, chemo or radiotherapy. Not doing that would be irrational and hence immoral. When Steve Jobs resorted to mediation and herbs to cure his pancreatic cancer, he was doing the immoral thing. When he changed his mind and got rational therapy, he was doint the moral thing.

No, I am not. I am not claiming that identity is coercion. You said that freedom is freedom from coercion. I am just saying that the man trapped in the jaws of a crocodrile is as unfree as the man trapped in the hands of the smartest kidnapper. That's why both will fight for their freedom, regardless of the coercive or non-coercive nature of the situation. The love-loving man trapped in the jaws of the crocodrile would not give up and say: "The identity of the crocodrile leads him to act as a carnivore. It is a metaphysical fact, and I must accept to be his prey". I am not the determinist one here, Dante. Don't target the wrong guy. I am not the one accepting that my genes "determine" that I will lose my mind, my vigor and ultimately my life.

If freedom indicates freedom of action, what kind of action does a man in Intensive Care Unit have? what kind of action does a man with severe dementia have? If freedom means fredom from external coercion, then a copper miner trapped by a natural disaster in Chile is free, while a man trapped in a Soviet gulag is not? I disagree with you in this comparison between programmed death and gravity. The dilemma of any living being is to live or die. If we are to live as men, we have to survive as men. Not just for a month, for a year, for 80 years, but as much as possible, as long as there are values to pursue, as long of a rational life of joy is attainable. Genes which program us to die go directly against our highest value. Against our highest pursuit. And here we are not talking about all of our genoma. We are talking just about the part of the genoma that makes us die. When you say that "we are born into reality, and we must deal with the world as we encounter it" does it mean that a person born with a inherited disease must accept that fact as metaphysically given, even if new medical treatments become available to heal his condition? Death is already being defeated, Dante. Life expectancy was about 40 years by the end of XIX century. Now it is around 80. This doubling of lifespan means that death has been defeated by 40 years in a single century.Every year you gain, is a year you won from death, your constant alternative as a living organism. By the end of XXI century, a life span might be well beyond 150 years. Objectivists are deliberate life-lovers. In the thread "Should we seek immortality?" the positive answers won by landslide. So probably transhumanism, as a movement, is little more than a club where people with all kind of contradictory philosophies sit together with more libertarian-like guys. But the point I am trying to bring here is that the principle of seeking to extend and improve life as much as possible (even if it gets "endless") is not just compatible with, but essential to Objectivism. Since I personally favor David Kelley's position on dialogue and cooperation with libertarians and other potential allies to achive specific improvements in my world, I am naturally interest in knowing Transhumanist people of an individualist vein. I think their insights will be important in the realm of the forthcoming bioethical debate on extending lifespan. After Frank O'Connor's death, old Ayn Rand was asked in a TV interview whether she had been tempted about any beliefs on an afterlife. She answered that, if she had any reason to expect joining Frank in heaven (which of course she had not), she would commit suicide immediately. Her answer is extremely powerful. When we have a value to live for, we embrace life, immediately, without hesitation.

Sin? Flaw? You didn't choose your genes, Grames. There is no sin to feel guilty for. I don't know what exactly you mean by flaw, in the context of your answer. being born with any condition that endangers your survival is undesirable, if your goal is to live. Our genetic programming is undesirable, to the extent that it kill us. If we agree that being born deaf is undesirable ( which hinders but not prevent us from living qua man ), how could we deny that being born with a program for self destruction is undesirable? Being humans does not entail by necessity getting old, demented, frail and dead. There is nothing in Objectivism that equals being a man with being sick and mortal. All the opposite. When would a man stop being a man? When he gets 150 years old, 300 years old, 1000 years old? You stop being human when you die. So let's stop dieing. Let's keep enjoying life.. on and on and on...