Boydstun
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Posts posted by Boydstun
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SL, the study has gone on and does go on, apart from any implications for the morality or legal prohibition of abortion. One serious reference is chapter 4 of the fourth edition of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience by Mark H. Johnson and Michelle de Haan (2015).
About a third of our fellow citizens believe that a fetus becomes a human at conception, when a unique DNA is formed. That DNA is now the surrogate of the soul which endows the body with the human spark or image of God.
Hopefully, the other two-thirds of the citizens will now get fighting mad and give candidates who run in part on this cultural issue and are anti-abortionist (in law) loss at the polls. Then the US Congress and Executive might be able to get a law protecting the right to procure an abortion across the land. I doubt that result is attainable because of the Senate super-majority situation. More attainable would be election to State offices, especially Governor, candidates who favor the right to abortion in law of the State.
Apparently, Mike Pence thinks he can advance himself in the next Republican Presidential Primary by calling for prohibition of abortion in all States. The two most recent Republican Presidents made prohibition of abortions a component of their campaign agendas, and they won the general elections even though most of the voters favor legality of abortions.
Most of my libertarian or Objectivist acquaintances never put the priority on legality of abortion that I did over these decades; I always voted against and encouraged voting against candidates who were anti-abortionist. They would reply to me: "Oh, it will never happen." I don't blame them for what has happened, because we are few, but what a betrayal, what a wrong prioritization, what a wrong gauge of depth among principles at stake—forced labor.
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PS – Contrary to popular assumption, the significance of the stage at which viablity outside the womb (in the judgment of the attending physician) is reached has never been posed as mark of being human or of human personhood. It is simply the point at which adults not the mother can take on the project of supporting the continued life of the fetus/infant without impressing the mother into the service of their project. After delivery too, the rights practically, concerning the infant are rights between adults over support of the infant, rights against theft of your infant or injury to your infant, rights over what is right nutrition, how the child is raised, what is right education, when are the parents no longer responsible for higher-education financial support, and so forth.
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On 5/19/2021 at 5:49 AM, Boydstun said:
“and at 12 weeks the ‘unborn human being’ has ‘taken on “the human form” in all relevant respects”.” —Justice Alito, Dobbs v. Jackson
Hardly.
At 12 weeks, the brain of the fetus has the form of a mammalian brain, but not yet the form of a primate brain, let alone a human brain.
The serious consistency of today’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is with its past upholdings of the right of government in the US to conscript citizens into military service. Forced labor of still-warm bodies of young men. Forced labor of pregnant bodies of women conscripted into service of reinforcing other citizens' mass psychosis and confusedness.
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EC had written “The universe is deterministic but a rational entity’s mind is not because of . . ..”
SL remarked: “This is a naked contradiction.”
Rand’s considered (1973) defintion of the Law of Causality was:
“All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe—from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life—are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved.”
The notion of “determined” here is broad enough to apply not only to nature, but to human artifacts such as a pulley, a tee-pee, or an aircraft. They are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved. Similarly, volitional consciousness can be caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved. Human inventions, and the brain too, have natures to which that sort of determination applies. When I freely choose to compose this note before returning to mastering some eighteenth-century philosophers this morning, I am making a choice caused and determined by the nature of human brain and its feature of (free)volitional consciousness.
Earlier, in her 1957, Rand had further claimed that the choice to think was one’s only genuine choice, and all other choices and the course of one’s life, depend on that continual choice. This was a view of William James in Principles of Psychology (1890). It is false. One chooses some actions, and one has some free choice in direction of mental actions additional to, even if part of, the choice to think (and therewith the choice to live).
Also in her 1957, Rand strongly insinuated that all causality per se is of the uniquely-determined-path genre, which Leonard Peikoff expressly confirmed for Rand in a Q&A of his lecture series “The Philosophy of Objectivism.” Which is false. That false physical determinism is the assumption for which EC is trying to find an end-run around by take-offs of critical-point phenomena—phase changes in states of matter. That is the sort of determinism, one that in fact does not hold in full physical reality, even at the macro classical scale—no matter how often people repeat the falsehood down from Laplace.
Uniqueness for every physical outcome and uniqueness of the string of outcomes in the past does not entail uniqueness of possible outcome for any of them at the time of their occurrence; there may come an intersection with an independent causal stream along the way. A droplet of water in the mist at Niagara Falls just now was not predetermined to be composed of just those molecules it is or to have just the temperature it has, because: It was formed to its present constitution and conditions by intersection of independent causal stands. Then too, the course of situations into which a water molecule may enter during the course of its existence is not uniquely determined from the outset of its formation. Volition is NOT the only possible reason for lack of unique possible outcomes in the course of nature (contra Rand, Leibniz, . . . but in step with Peirce and Aristotle). The reason for that lack is simply that that is not the way physical reality is, when one gets seriously realistic about it. Period. The fact of that lack of a pedestrian-acclaimed predetermination character in physics and in everything going back to physics makes possible the background in which activities of brain and of mind can evolve and develop free volition. And, for that matter, that lack makes possible the background in which life and aircraft can come to be.
SL, EC has a contradiction if universal one-path determinism is from what (and apparently it is from what) he is concerned to except rational mind. There is another and more important contradiction—a contradiction with reality—in characterization of all the processes of physical reality as being of that nature in the first place.
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10 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
A triangle is a way of regarding three lines as a single unit; a line is a way of regarding multiple dots as a single unit. Dots are ways of regarding several sensations as a single unit.
Unit-perspectives are not properties. Emergent properties (such as life) arise out of an integration of existents, not out of a mental integration of sensations.
In O'ism, unit-perspectives are a form of being economical, and the perceptual apparatus + the things it comes in contact with actually exist, and operate according to what they are, A is A.
This is in contrast with Kant's view, for whom integration is not about unit-persepective, but about a 'mine - not mine' perspective: unlike your own thoughts, sensations originating from interactions with the world must be regarded as not of your own doing - that is the rule, and the categories are the means by which that rule of integration is fulfilled.
KyaryPamyu,
You added “+ things it comes in contact with actually exist.” That is on the correct line, meaning line to truth, I say. From our science we know that lines, their orientations, and object shapes are actually in the distal stimulus that results in the proximate stimulus—the photo-receptors at the retina, whose stimulations get processed at LGN and visual cortex with all their interconnections. No concepts are needed for the integral shape of a baseball in one's hand to be discerned by hand and by vision. No economization by unit-economies or set-memberships are in necessary play at that perception of shape.
In Kan’t mine/not-mine view of sensory perception, he had the matter or content of the sensation be the matter or the content of the “sensible intuition,” be the not-mine component, and the spatial form such as line, configuration, and shape be the mine component, even though in experience, we do not have a sense of it as mine, but as not mine. His arguments that spatial forms are really mine rather than not-mine are really aimed at explaining how Euclidean geometry, true of the empirical world as we experience it, is possible, given the methods we actually use in Euclid and the universality and necessity we arrive at in truths of geometry.
His explanation of how it is possible—that space and its Euclidean relations are form contributed by the faculty of sensible intuition—is false and fantastical. But Rand and her intellectual comrades failed at refuting or displacing Kant’s explanation, wrong and (to modern heads) laughable as that explanation might be. Talking about perceptual form in a sophisticated modern, realist theory of perception, and talking about theory of concepts in which set- and unit-ways of looking at things subsumed under concepts do nothing to explain how the method used in geometry (synthetic geometry, not analytic geometry) is successful in attaining truths with the character of necessity and generality they possess come about, indeed how they are possible.
Rand should have opposed Kant’s tenet that all formality is necessarily the product of the subject in episodes of perception. There is elementary form—such as the betweenness-relations (my right index finger is between my right thumb and right middle finger), a right-hand glove is an inversion of a left-hand glove, and so forth—belonging to concrete particulars and belonging to them as particulars and independently of our perception or any overt cognitive process concerning them. Kant’s notion that formalities in our perceptions and understanding do and must bar our discernment of mind-independent reality then dissolves. The betweenness-relations among my fingers may require some conceptualization to fully firm in mind, but like some similarities and magnitude-relations, which Rand did notice (ITOE App. 217, 199–200, 278–79), those betweenness-relations are physical relations lying in the physical, extra-mental world. Hilbert lifted betweenness-relations to the honor of primitive relations useful for a rigorous Euclidean geometry. Their residence, I notice, is not only as elements of an abstract geometry but in given physical reality.
Rand understood that some similarities and comparative degrees of similarity found in perception lead the formation of concepts tuned to the world given by perception. However, Rand’s theory is an account suitable to only concepts of kinds of things and their contrasts and their taxonomic hierarchies. It is not an account aiming to account for our conceptual knowledge of spatial relationships or adequate to account for conceptual geometric knowledge. How from sensory experience do we learn that two points determine a line? Randian empirical abstraction from sensory experience to the concept line (straight line) together with the concept points will not yield the certain truth that any two points determine a unique straight line containing them (cf. A25 B39–40). And we do not come to know definitively such a thing by empirical testing such as eventually we came to know the existence of atoms. Kant innovated a theory of how we have such conceptual geometric knowledge (B40–41), a horribly mistaken one, needing outright detailed replacement, which is not to be found in Rand (directly).
- tadmjones and KyaryPamyu
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EC, I think your thesis should be your Theory of Volition in Mind, rather than Theory of Mind. Mind should be in the genus of instrumentation-and-control systems of autonomous agents (from snail to human to autonomous machine [this last, as you may recall, I think to require life, be a living artifact we made, although you do not]), and then we should layer volition on some minds.
I have said that engineering-like systems in nature or in our artifacts are possible only because the world has causal streams independent of each other, which though deterministic (say, classical regular [not classical chaotic] mechanics, classical thermodynamics, physical chemistry, and classical electrodynamics) and conforming to deterministic laws with analytical solutions for trajectories, have no determinism concerning the joining of the causal laws to yield a new organization in the world. Such as a slider-crank or a pulley or a tee-pee. You might like to have a look at my essay "Volitional Synapses" – Part 3 and the Eilon-Boydstun exchange following on it. A living thing requires such contingent intersections of independent causal streams (and if mind is a living instrumentation-and-control system, as I say it is, then mind also requires such intersecting streams) and such contingent intersections are also required in inanimate nature for life to arise back at the single-cell level.
SL, I think EC does not have a contradiction there if we consider the time and development aspect. Rand talked the same in thinking of existence and consciousness. Sure, consciousness is an existent. But firstly in analysis of consciousness-existence and in emergence of that existent in nature is existence as independent of the presence of consciousness (or life). I myself think of consciousness as requiring life, and I think consciousness requires mind. Although, there may be animal minds that are not conscious. (Now would come a wise-crack from Rand: "most people most of the time.")
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On 5/17/2020 at 7:19 AM, Boydstun said:
Some Comments on Rand’s Theory and Some Historical Notes
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These notes below do not go to the truth or importance of Rand’s theory (and its presuppositions), only to its originality or uniqueness and its relations to other theories in the history of philosophy.
From my essay:
In the years after composing this paper (2002–03), I learned of a “pale anticipation” of Rand’s measurement-omission perspective on concepts way back in the fifth or sixth century. My studies of Roger Bacon, a contemporary of Aquinas, led me to study Bacon’s mentor and model Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253). The latter mentioned that Pseudo-Dionysus (an influential Neoplatonic Christian of the fifth or sixth century) had held a certain idea about the signification of names. From James McEvoy’s The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (1982): “[Grosseteste] reminds us that Pseudo-Dionysius himself at one point introduced the hypothesis that the names signify properties held in common, but subject to gradation in the order of intensity. Thus the seraphim, for instance, are named from their burning love; but it goes without saying that love is a universal activity of spirit” (141–42). Angels were thought to exist and to have ranks, I should say. Some kinds have burning love; others do not have that kind of love. The thought of Pseudo-Dionysius and of Grosseteste was that angels in the different ranks, angels of different kinds, all shared some properties (e.g. their participation in being, their knowledge, or their love) that the various types possessed in various degrees.
I have located the pertinent text of Pseudo-Dionysius. It is in chapter 5 of his work The Celestial Hierarchy. The heading of that chapter is “Why the Heavenly Beings Are All Called ‘Angel’ in Common.” Dionysius writes: “If scripture gives a shared name to all the angels, the reason is that all the heavenly powers hold as a common possession an inferior or superior capacity to conform to the divine and to enter into communion with the light coming from God” (translation of Colm Luibheid 1987).
To the preceding compilation of historical anticipations of Rand’s analysis of concepts in terms of measurement omission, I should add the case of John Duns Scotus. Continuing from Aristotle and Porphyry, medieval thinkers reflecting on universals and individuation held specific differentia added to a genus make a species what it is and essentially different from other species under the genus. Similarly, individual differentia added to a species make an individual what it is and different from other individuals in the species. Scotus held individuals in a species to have a common nature. That nature makes the individuals the kind they are. It is formally distinct from the individual differentia, a principle that accounts for the individual being the very thing it is. The individual differentia, in Scotus’ conception, will not be found among Aristotle’s categories. Individual differentia are the ultimate different ways in which a common nature can be. Individual differentia are modes of, particular contractions of that uncontracted common nature. “The contracted nature is just as much a mode of an uncontracted nature as a given intensity of whiteness is a mode of whiteness, or a given amount of heat is a mode of heat. It is no accident that Scotus regularly speaks of an ‘individual degree’ (gradus individualis)” (Peter King 2000—The Problem of Individuation in the Middle Ages. Theoria 66:159–84).
To the historical list, I see now I should add Christian Wolff (1679–1754), who writes in his 1713 Logic, or Rational Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding with their Use and Application in the Knowledge and Search of Truth, known more usually as his German Logic: "Every man is not temperate in the same degree. In order to define temperance therefore we are not to confine ourselves to this or the other degree thereof, in this or the other person . . . ." Wolff understood that we better understand a thing when we measure its qualities and establish their variable quantity's dependence with variations in the quantities belonging to other things. However, in the quoted passage, Wolff does not see what Rand saw, i.e., that indeterminateness of the particular value of a measurable quality is an aspect of what is an abstract concept of a thing. He goes on in the passage to say it is the particular highest measure in the range of values taken on by quantity of a quality of a thing that should attach to the concept of that thing. This comes up in his attempt to argue for his overblown definition of philosophy: "The Science of all possible things, together with the manner and reason of their possibility.”
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53 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:
What an informative article!
I wonder how one can validate the idea that technological and health progress was proceeding faster in the period before 1940 talked about and the period since then. I'm not a reactionary like the guy who pointed out the subjectivity in the concept of progress. But there is background valuation and value aspiration in what one counts as progress. That is a subject-relativity which can be teased out into awareness.
Thanks!
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On 5/9/2022 at 4:08 PM, Economic Freedom said:
. . . If you don't know about the Dept. of Defense documents indicating the financing of bioweapons labs in Ukraine, then you know nothing about Ukraine. . . .
That "indicating" claim about DOD is false, prejudiced.
"At the time of its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union, despite being a State Party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), had a large and sophisticated biological weapons program, consisting of dozens of research, development, and production facilities, with tens of thousands of employees, spread across many of its successor states.
"In violation of the BWC, this Soviet weapons complex developed a broad range of biological pathogens for use as weapons against plants, animals, and humans, including the weaponization of anthrax, plague, and smallpox.
"In contrast, no other European state nor the United States possessed any biological weapon development programs, in compliance with their obligations under the BWC. When the Soviet Union dissolved, it left some newly independent states, like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with legacy biological weapons program facilities, equipment, and materials that were vulnerable to theft, misuse, and unsafe handling and storage. THE U.S. DEPARTMENTS OF DEFENSE AND STATE FUNDED PROGRAMS TO HELP TRANSITION SUCH FORMER SOVIET WEAPONS FACILITIES INTO PEACEFUL PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES.
"The United States, through international collaboration, has also worked to address other biological threats throughout the former Soviet Union. Subject matter experts in biology, biodefense, public health, and related fields were engaged from across the U.S. government. These efforts advanced disease surveillance and enhanced peaceful biological research cooperation between former Soviet Union scientists and the global scientific community, consistent with international norms for safety, security, nonproliferation, and transparency.
"The United States has also worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health, providing support to 46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades. The collaborative programs have focused on improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation.
"This work, often conducted in partnership with outside organizations, such as the WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has resulted in safer and more effective disease surveillance and detection. Ukrainian scientists have acted consistent with international best practices and norms in publishing research results, partnering with international colleagues and multilateral organizations, and widely distributing their research and public health findings." —DOD( EMPHASIS ADDED BY ME.)
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2 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:
My kind of people... the tender, thoughtful, meaningful, creative empaths are committing suicide. Perhaps the self esteem that Objectivism bolsters is a kind of emotional inoculation, but I think America is losing a lot of the artists and musicians that are a source of the wealth of my consciousness. Music concerts were my Sistine Chapel, they were better than church for most Americans. It isn't hard to make a correlation that religious leaders were eager to shut concerts down out of jealousy.
I can imagine how emotionally painful it could be for some performers to not be able to perform. A number of successful performers have also died of the coronavirus, which is something like the public lights that were snuffed out by AIDS before the scientific rescue came through (still no vaccine). I wanted to mention also that regular churches and synagogues suffered greatly in religious feeling during the shutdowns. The getting together in person with their fellowship in a common faith and ceremony of worship is a really big part of many who are religious. Internet viewing would just not cut it.
After the first couple of months, I got bored of all discussions, often politicized, about covid-19 and the various approaches to suppressing infection, keeping ICU in enough supply, shutdowns, and so forth. Poltiticalization occurred also in connection with AIDS. At my sister's church (1984), in a discussion group, it came out that some members thought no research should be done on it because in the US the infection was associated with being gay, which God condemned (and they condemned), and the right way was to let them die as punishment. (For the first couple of centuries of European law in North America, the earthly punishment for homosexuality was execution. That was still the case and continued when "the land of the free" was born.) Then too, there was the flocking of libertarians to theses of the cell-researcher Peter Duesberg who denied that HIV was the cause of AIDS, that taking the one medication that had been developed against HIV to that point, together with too much nightlife and recreational drugs, was the cause of people losing the immune defenses in the syndrome called AIDS. I wrote to the editor at LIBERTY magazine, which had carried the Deusberg line on its pages, told them what I knew and had experienced first hand, that the concern of this libertarian flock was political (no research money for AIDS), not a concern for preservation of my life, and that I was going to continue to follow my doctor in his recommendation for anti-HIV medications as they came up for test. To his credit, the editor followed up with an expert writing against the Duesberg views.
During those first couple of months of the online discussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, I did a little digging and learned what all had happened during the 1957-58 pandemic of Asian Flu. Eisenhower had gotten some funds for ramping up production of the vaccine which had been developed before the infection hit America and swept across the country in spring of '57. The higher production rate was able to save lives in the fall of that year. The administration considered shutting the schools, because children were especially susceptible to this disease. But the government agencies assessed that it was going to spread so rapidly, that little if any good would be done. So decisions went to local administrators and individual families. Some school districts closed, often because attendance had stopped. Even if your child was not sick, you might call in the child as sick, in order to protect your child. At that time, the country overall, as I gather from the NY Times in those years, was very concerned that our armed forces personnel should not be knocked down with this communicable disease. Ike did not direct closure of businesses. That was correct in my view. Let the chips fall there, like in the schools. One problem in the recent pandemic with closing work places by the federal/state government is that having prevented people from working, you have something of an obligation to compensate them. If they lost work instead from individual decisions, well, then it would just be the usual deal that nature is a giant.
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10 hours ago, tadmjones said:
Is my subjective experience of consciousness equivalent to the concept of human consciousness?
Maybe we should check with Stephen .
Are asking about cloth masks , or the more ephemeral (?) act of altering your appearance to others ? A projection of a nonA you?
Tad, one's way of appearing to others or to oneself in the mirror would be a bit of what Damasio called one's extended consciousness and one's extended self. That is the self we usually think of as our self. It includes one's long-term memory of one's life, the position one has in society, the ideas and organizations one identifies with, and I would say also the deliberate ways one makes one's emotional and physical appearance for others and for oneself. Rand remarked that oneself is one's mind. I agree, and mind in that sense is one's thinking, feeling, connections to sources of knowledge, and one as sharer with others of the world, experiences, and life-making. But first and foremost, mind is one's embodied thinking. As a system of perception and control, one's self that is one's mind is an entity. But it is a doer as well, that is, it falls into both of Rand's categories entity and action.
I've noticed that when one has an addiction to something like cigarettes or beer, one may find it hard to think of oneself as living without them. They have become part of oneself. But people who have succeeded in quitting find in a while they are still themselves. I don't think a germ-mask or wearing a dust-mask in the shop are so tightly tied to one's extended identity as are addictions such as cigarettes. Those masks are woven into one's habits, like the habit of using a cane for while. The mask of the Lone Ranger is more essential to his social persona than anyone wearing a health-mask, pretty sure.
Tad, in waking hours, I think relation of one's subjective experience of consciousness to human consciousness as awareness of existents is this (from standpoint of my own philosophy in "Existence, We"):
"Grasps in observational acts of consciousness are actions. Making statements are actions. The fact of consciousness is implicitly affirmed in making and grasping statements about existence. The fact of consciousness, one’s own and others’, is the fact of an activity, a fact of living activity. One does not wait on education in biology to know one is alive, to grasp in know-with attending observation that the self and other of consciousness are intending and alive.50 Implied in the act of grasping any statement about existence is the fact of living action.
", , , Consciousness is living action itself, as intender. Self-consciousness is living existence itself, as intender and self-controller. Life conscious of itself is us self-conscious and other-conscious. In any knowing of consciousness is knowing of life. To imagine a consciousness not a living feature of living entity is to neglect the essential of life in one’s own most basic knowing of consciousness.”
Rand thought of the consciousness in dreams as depending on the basic waking consciousness: awareness of existents. I concur, and I think all the science on dreaming bears out at least that dreams are in part made up of things and persons and events from waking life. Dreams would seem a good example of subjective experience of consciousness.
On 7/11/2020 at 6:25 AM, Boydstun said:For anyone interested in these issues, I'd encourage getting in hand Damasio's layout of core/extended consciousness and core/extended self in The Feeling of What Happens.
For introduction it is easy to view Antonio Damasio on his book Self Comes to Mind, especially 4, 5, 7.
On 7/11/2020 at 7:23 AM, merjet said:It's been many years since I read a few of Gerald Edelman's books, so my memory of their content has faded. Anyway, he made a similar distinction between primary consciousness and higher consciousness. An Amazon search on his name will give a longer list of the books he wrote.
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53 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
. . . common sense in today's world is that covering your mouth helps stop the spread of germs. Common sense would say that a mask would help.
That seems to be a major district in what people take for common sense. What we think of as common sense in one era may have been knowledge that required empirical science and shrewd innovative thinking in the earlier era from which it has descended. That bodies require work to keep moving whatever kind of non-spinning motion they are undergoing was an idea overturned by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. But nowadays I hear young people who don't know the history say of the principle of inertia—say, of the Voyager spacecrafts now in interstellar space: they will continue to move in a constant direction, locomotion-wise, and at a constant speed unless acted upon by an external influence, viz., an external force—"well of course. That's just common sense." It's a good thing that good scientific sense gets taken in time as common sense.
I take as common sense with that sort of heritage that to protect myself from airborne pathogens I should have a face mask in my pocket for crowded gatherings of people (and something else in my pocket were I about to get into a situation of possible exposure to an STD).
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PS – I forgot to mention that Hilbert lifted betweeness-relations to the honor of primitive relations useful for a rigorous Euclidean geometry. Their residence, I notice, is not only as assumptions in an abstract geometry, but in given physical reality.
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One way to rescue the thing-in-itself within the spirit of Kant’ critical philosophy is the way of Salmon Maimon (1753–1800). Maimon urged conception of the thing-in-itself as only an ideal of reason, an asymptotic concept which human thought requires and under which it can profitably proceed, rather than conceiving thing-in-itself (as had Kant in A250–53, A38; 1783 §§12, 13, 32, 57; Bxxvi–xxvi; A45–46 B62–63, B69, B306–9, A696 B724) as an object in a noumenal domain (Beiser 1993, 306–309). Rand can maintain that no such ideal of reason is necessary for cognition, and of course, for Rand the parts of an existent unknown in present perception or thought concerning it can be things not only as things possibly knowable, but things as they are.
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QuoteIn order to exhibit change, as the intuition corresponding to the concept of causality, we must take as our example motion, as change in space {1786, 4:476–77}; indeed, only thereby can changes, whose possibility no pure understanding can comprehend, be made intuitive. . . . And this intuition is that of the motion of a point in space; solely the point’s existence in different locations . . . is what first makes change intuitive. For in order thereafter to make even internal changes thinkable, we must make time, as the form of inner sense, comprehensible figuratively through a line (i.e., through motion), and hence we must make the successive existence of ourselves in different states comprehensible through outer intuition. (B291–92; see further, Guyer 2018, 161–67)
In all that sort of sensibleness in the second edition (1787) of KrV, Kant was not retreating one inch from his characterization of space as form supplied from the side of the subject, form ideal and without which no outer experience is possible, form that does not exist without a perceiving subject (A26–28 B42–44, A42–43 B59–60, A85–89 B118–22, B148, A492 B520). Kant’s primacy of outer intuition is not Rand’s primacy of existence. Contrary the primacy of existence, Kant writes, for example: “Apperception, and with it thought, precedes all possible determinate arrangement of presentations” (KrV A289 B345).
Rand should have argued against Kant’s tenet that all spatial form is necessarily the product of the subject in episodes of perception. There is elementary form—such as the betweenness-relations (my right index finger is between my right thumb and right middle finger), a right-hand glove is an inversion of a left-hand glove, and so forth—belonging to concrete particulars and belonging to them as particulars and independently of our perception or any overt cognitive process concerning them. Kant’s notion that formalities in our perceptions and understanding do and must bar our discernment of mind-independent reality then dissolves. The betweenness-relations among my fingers may require some conceptualization to fully firm in mind, but like some similarities and magnitude-relations, which Rand did notice (ITOE App. 217, 199–200, 278–79), those betweenness-relations are physical relations lying in the physical, extra-mental world.
The truths and necessities of geometry can be attained without falling into thinking that (i) if they are empirically founded, they must be established by empirical testing (thereby removing the incontrovertible necessity we honestly find in them and being blind to how we actually proceed in geometry) or (ii) thinking with Kant that that necessity (and applicability to physics) is attainable only if geometry rests on form the constructing subject brings to perception and not on form in the world independently of our perception of it as well as in the world as we perceive it.
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Bird, G. 2006. The Revolutionary Kant. Open Court.
Beiser, F. 1993. The Fate of Reason. Harvard.
Fugate, C. D. and J. Hymers , editors, 2018. Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics. Oxford.
Guyer, P. 2018. Baumgarten, Kant, and the Refutation of Idealism. In Fugate and Hymers 2018.
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The issues in this thread have been raised and debated also in a paper Is Benevolent Egoism Coherent? by Michael Huemer. You can sign up and read the paper for free at that site. Reply: On Egoism and Predatory Behavior by Michael Young. Rejoinder: Egoism and Prudent Predation by Prof. Huemer.
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SL in the preceding post draws attention to consideration of strategic self-interest in social interactions such as not violating rights. This has been developed in terms of game theory. Rights have been supported by game-theoretic self-interested strategy. See. They tell how the couple of things Rand said about rights—subjugation of collectives to moral law and the social-coordination function of rights—can come about. (These are professional academics; they do not mention Rand; one has to make the connection to Rand's system for oneself.)
The strategic considerations SL brings to decision of respecting rights are also pertinent to decision in truth-telling, another issue raised by LB in this thread. Listeners to one's reports on happenings in reality know that reality all fits together self-consistently. So to tell lies, one has put one's memory to work overtime: one has to remember what all one has said before and not undermine the lie by inconsistencies. Just routinely telling the truth is a lot easier because one can just keep looking back to reality (which one is continually doing for oneself anyway) and reporting it, and leave it to reality to take care of consistency. Being found out in lies can be a great handicap in opportunities for further satisfactions from social interactions, due to reconfiguration of people's attitude toward you, and this is the point at which SL's line of thought concerning rights is a consideration also concerning honesty.
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"Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see, of exempting from the absolute of reality some one small wish of yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else—that was the act of subverting you consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch—and a censored reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn't, held together by that embalming fluid of mind which is an emotion exempted from thought." (Rand 1957, 1037 [1st ed. hb.])
Rand here argues for constant rational moral principles by claims about human psychology, about bad results for the mind that crosses moral principles once in a while. This is opposite the sort of argument she makes for her principles of metaphysics: she does not argue that Existence is identity (if no identity of a thing, then no such thing) by observing that incoherence in the mind will result if that principle is not so. She points to examples of identity-delimitations, examples from various categories of existents, and generalizes to all existence, and then she defends the generality by showing* contradiction in any denial of the generalized principle. I think it is fair for Rand to shift strategy for moral principles as distinct from metaphysical principles. Appealing to effects of decisions on the mind of the agent seems fine in thinking about moral principles. Human beings have a general nature, which is pertinent in every human act. Of course, claims about what that general nature is need to be substantiated to support a thoroughly sound argument for constant rational moral principles.
* Rand did not execute much of this showing, but a few years ago, I did some of it for her.
Every entity is of some kinds that are exclusive relative to other kinds of entity. Let me argue this thesis for Rand. That is, let me argue the axiomatic standing of “existence is identity,” where the existents are entities and the identity is kind-identity. All entities are of some exclusive kinds—a leaf cannot be a stone at the same time—and this postulate must be accepted on pain of self-contradiction.
Suppose an entity exists and is not of any kind that excludes it being any other kinds. If the supposed entity is nothing but existence itself, then there is no contradiction; one is simply talking about existence as a whole. So suppose an entity exists and is not of any kind that excludes it being other kinds and is not existence as a whole.
Then the supposed entity could be one with any other entities that are of exclusive kinds (just as a leaf that is a drain clogger could be one with a leaf that is dead, maple, and wet). For it is not an entity of any kind excluding it being other kinds. But to say that an entity is not of any exclusive kind and that it is one and the same with another entity that is of some exclusive kind(s) is a contradiction. (Non-A is A.) Indeed, if some entity were not of any exclusive kind, then it could be one with the person who supposes such an entity. Then to suppose an entity that is not of any exclusive kind is to suppose that one’s person could be an entity not of some exclusive kinds. (If A is identically B, then B is identically A.) But that supposition contradicts the presupposition that one is of the exclusive kind person, a person who makes the (errant) supposition. (Cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1007b19–1008a28.)
My argument is supposing that particular, numerical identity is admitted by both disputants, while specific identity is the identity at issue. But that seems a fair supposition.
- Doug Morris and dream_weaver
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5 hours ago, The Laws of Biology said:
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- I have seen Ayn Rand write that the duty of honesty is not a social duty done for the benefit of others, but is rather a duty to oneself, a striving to maintain one's personal integrity. But I wonder if that really provides a sufficient justification for Objectivism's doctrine of Universal Rights.
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That rationale for honesty is not sufficient in its authenticity, and the same would be true in the case for universal individual rights to be respected. In both cases, there is another element in Rand's picture of human nature that is being left out, and it is here. (Rand approved the essay in which N. Branden spoke of species solidarity.) Also, consider that the conceptual organization for Rand has it that the circumstance that every individual human is an end in themselves is prior to two consequent branches: one immediate branch is universal individual rights, the other is rightness of rational self-interest, indeed a morality of rational self-interest. The latter branch is not basis for the former branch, whose support is back on the trunk, just like ethical egoism.
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7 hours ago, The Laws of Biology said:
- . . . always respecting the rights of all others is a rule that requires self-sacrifice for the sake of other people, just as in Socialism, Altruism, Christianity, etc. . .
Jesse James committed self-sacrifice. But then it was a small sacrifice, considering only the actual sort of self at hand.
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I'd rather the science, not dumbing down and not humanities' social-agendas rattle-talk, LB, for this sector, advances as in root post and in these links.
Between Aquatic and Land Vertebrates
The good social news is that science, the hard sciences, continue to roll back the darkness as ever since Newton and with much educated public interest, including readers at this site, any presumption, wishing, or hollering to the contrary notwithstanding.
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Pope Francis appeals to government leaders on Ukraine: "Please do not bring humanity to ruin"
"The Pope! How many divisions does he have?" —Lenin
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Sexual Selection Promotes Giraffoid Head-Neck Evolution and Ecological Adaptation
QuoteThe morphology and inferred ecology of D. xiezhi provide another example for understanding the neck evolution in giraffoids. Fossil giraffoids exhibit a higher degree of diversity in headgear morphology than any other pecoran group; such a diversity, associated with the complex head-neck morphology, likely indicates the intensive sexual combats between males in the evolution of giraffoids. For interspecific relationship, one possible strategy of early giraffoids is that they might have avoided competition with coeval bovids and cervids by taking advantage of other niches in the ecosystem. Giraffa,with its long neck, did not appear until the early Pliocene in savannah areas, when C4 ecosystems started being vastly established. “Necking” combat was likely the primary driving force for giraffes that have evolved a long neck, and high-level browsing was likely a compatible benefit of this evolution. The ecological positioning on the marginal niches promoted the intensive sexual competition, and the fierce sexual combats fostered extreme morphologies to occupy the special niches in giraffoids.
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What Has the 'Pro-Life' Movement Won?
in Law
Posted
ET, that is simply not the way viability is defined. Viability is reached when there is a reasonable chance of the fetus' "sustained survival outside the womb, with or without artificial support" (Colautti v. Franklin 1978).