Zoid
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Posts posted by Zoid
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I'm going to limit my involvement to addressing this one statement, as this thread is a huge can of worms to me..
Objectivism rejects faith, but this does not preclude the possibility of self-proclaimed Objectivists or students of Objectivism taking some of Rand's assertions on faith. It doesn't even make it all that much less likely. Rand gives such reasoned responses that it is possible for a person to claim they have thought the issues through for themselves, while merely parroting her in a more complex fashion.
One sign to look for with this latter possibility, would be someone who, having read Rand's works, would find it impossible to genuinely process works by other writers or philosophers. Of course this is expressed as "everyone else [excepting the few writers Rand lauded, in the specific way she lauded them, or writers who sound exactly like Rand] is trash".
Another sign would be how much a person relies on quoting Rand herself when answering questions on any topic. This comes out as "She said it better than I can say it, so why shouldn't I quote her?" Obviously it's okay to quote in certain contexts, but I have seen people who seem to be able to do nothing else!
Fair enough, but the original poster wasn't talking about individual Objectivists; he was talking about Rand's writing. He said he was having trouble taking the ideas seriously because "faith has never been [his] thing." This amounts to a passive-aggressive way of saying that Rand's ideas have no rational basis. A person is welcome to believe that, but using it as a basis for asserting that Objectivism endorses faith is dishonest.
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OK. So what is the philsophic evidence that religion is never in any individual's self-interest? I concede there are plenty of contexts where mentally modeling reality allows an organism to avoid threats to survival. If this is a basis, then whether or not abstract principles are integrated with this basis or not, the argument rests on an empirical/biological argument.
The options are not "deal only with specific empirical data" and "appeal to an abstract model in your head." (Religious principles, having no factual basis, are an example of the latter method.) The proper approach is to observe reality and use reason to form principles on the basis of one's observations, so that the empirical and the theoretical work together.
As distasteful as I find theists who preach about Hell, there is a related example that challenges the belief that truth is (or even likely is) in the interest of survival; the false belief that someone will go to Hell can (at least in some situtations) clearly drive that individual to strive for survival and consequently lead to a higher likelihood of proagating his or her alleles.Given Christianity's track record of spreading misery and death throughout the world, this is a curious attempt at a counterexample to the survival value of truth.
Also, propogating one's alleles has nothing to do with the Objectivist ethics, which is an abstract toolkit for living one's own life, not creating new ones.
Now, you could reasonably object that it is still not in the self-interest of a person because it would make him or her less happy (or otherwise not in the interest of survival yet in the person's interest in another sense). But if you do, I would think you can not have your cake and eat it at the same time. You would be conceding that mere survivial is not your basis for "self-interest." What, specifically, is the argument or evidence that honesty or logic is always in one's self-interest?It's worth noting that in asking for evidence that knowing the truth is in one's self-interest, you're conceding that the truth should be the arbiter of your beliefs.
More importantly, though, a moral commitment to truth is a consequence of a more fundamental principle in Objectivism: reason is man's means of survival. Notice that our tools of survival - clothing, shelter, medicine, technology, etc. - came from the human capacity for thinking. Adhering to a falsehood drives a wedge in this kind of thinking and places a person at odds with reality. You can't cure polio if you think that bloodletting is the proper way to treat illnesses.
I read a few of her books. While they have some of the most badass arguments I ever heard, and efinitely shaped my perspective for life, I am left with too much cognitive dissnoance when I try to take every last point seriously. Like Christianity, I am just not capable of believing things without evidence. Faith has never been my thing. Without evidence that true beliefs are always in one's self-interest.Objectivism rejects faith, so I'm not sure what you mean by this.
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"The one minute case against 'special interests' as the cause of corruption in politics." Click "View the full post" at the bottom.
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I think you forgot to add the 1990-1995 option.
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Just as the science of medicine is based on the premise that a healthy body is a desirable goal, the science of ethics is based on the assumption that one wishes to live. Objectivism doesn't say "here's why you should live." It says "if you want to live, here are some principles you need to live by."
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Some things I post on here are trolling attempts, but mostly not.
Why would any of your posts be trolling attempts? Trolling shows a pretty fundamental lack of respect for the members of a community.
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Also, the blog post is tagged with the words "satire" and "snark", so yes, it was definitely intended as a joke.
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This bears all the stylistic hallmarks of satire. Notice the focus on Rand's well known traits, such as the fact that she smoked.
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I never said she was only referring to those things. I just used them as examples. Either way, I'm certain she wasn't referring to the process of deciding whether a defendant is legally guilty of a crime. Such decisions are necessary in a free society.
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When Ayn Rand said that individual rights should not be subject to public vote, she meant that rights-violating government policies like welfare programs and socialized medicine should be banned no matter how many people support them.
Criminal trials arise from the need to protect individual rights. A jury deliberating on a verdict is not voting on whether individual rights should be protected, but on what decision best protects those rights. This is the case even if the jurors make a mistake.
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Just for clarities sake, I think you may be referring to WilliamColton's response.
Oops. Yes, my mistake. Sorry about that.
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I don't think it is that simplistic my friend. Why does a specific child get bad genes while most don't. Why do specific people meet with accidents. Why do specific people die of calamities while most don't?
RationalBiker's answer wasn't simplistic. He listed five reasons children get cancer, all of which are extremely complex scientifically and depend themselves on a number of factors.
Belief in causality is not a belief in some sort of cosmic scale of justice. It's not a choice between "there is a mystical force of justice that gives meaning to every accident in human life" and "reality is random." Causality is nothing more or less than the principle that all entities act according to their natures. It's not a guarantee that everyone who suffers somehow deserves it.
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Yes, you're correct in that the Judeo-Christian concept of God as the Uncaused Being means that God is eternal and uncaused. In the no-God hypothesis, all things need a present cause outside of themselves in order to exist. So all things, including all those things which are causing things to be, need a cause. They can give being only so long as they are given being. Everything that exists, therefore, on this hypothesis, stands in need of being caused to exist. But without an uncaused final cause, nothing could begin to exist, and so nothing could exist right now.
I disagree that this is a necessary tenet of atheism. In fact, for exactly the reasons Dante has given, I think existence itself is an example of something without a cause.
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Regarding Zoid’s last post ...
1. AR made a mistake in her evaluation of Hickman. She made a mistake in her evaluation of many, perhaps most, of the journalists condemning him (e.g. Edgar Rice Burroughs). Two private mistakes.
2. Reread Zoid’s earlier statement:
“ ... since sociopathy is characterized by a habitual disregard for the rights of others, and since rights are central to Rand’s philosophic thought, it’s clear that she would never have deemed such psychological illness ‘a gift.’”
It’s a fallacious, rationalistic argument. What she said in the 1920s is what she said. She could have made a mistake despite whatever is central to her current -- or later -- philosophic thought.
Again, where are you getting this idea that I'm claiming Rand never underwent intellectual development? If Alice says "Bob would never advocate the initiation of force" and Carol counters with "Not true; Bob started a fight when he was in the third grade," then Carol is missing the point entirely. I meant that "Ayn Rand as a mature philosophic thinker would never have deemed sociopathy a gift."
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Zoid’s two arguments are fallacious. (1) One can make a mistake in private just as one can make a mistake in public.
I'm well aware of this, but we don't hold somebody to what they write in a private journal in the same way we do for published works. Also, I said that she was discussing her personal feelings rather than reasoning about the concepts involved, so the term "mistake" is not really applicable.
(2) The argument: “AR was an Objectivist, an Objectivist thinks X, therefore AR thinks X” neglects the fact that AR was only in her 20s. Give the lady a break. She wasn’t born fully formed and armored like Minerva out of the head of Zeus.I said nothing about what "an Objectivist" thinks; I merely pointed out that the view that sociopathy is a gift is utterly inconsistent with Rand's written philosophy. Nowhere did I imply that Rand didn't undergo intellectual development throughout her life.
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No, she didn't openly suggest it, but she seemed to have this sympathy and admiration for William Hickman which is a little strange IMO. She did, in a quote seem to suggest that some of the traits sociopaths have are a gift. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something about not having an organ to process feeling for others. But she did very clearly draw the line about where it becomes degeneracy, so I'm not saying she really believed that it's good to be a psycho, I just don't think she actually understood what he really is. Her admiration of Hickman was emotional and not rational. We all make some intellectual mistakes, no matter how precise we are.
Given that the context in which she was writing was a private journal and was talking about her personal feelings rather than about formal philosophy, it's not really appropriate to call what she wrote about Hickman a "mistake." In any case, since sociopathy is characterized by a habitual disregard for the rights of others, and since rights are central to Rand's philosophic thought, it's clear that she would never have deemed such psychological illness "a gift."
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I think that people who think long term _implicitly_ believe in another life. Not in a mystical sense, just in the sense that life doesn't just stop and turn into nothing.
By life, I mean the whole complex of cognitive and emotional experiences.
Could you clarify what you mean here? I think long term, but I also believe that when a person dies, his life stops entirely - cognition and emotional experiences cease to exist.
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Nothing like taking the time to register on a public forum and writing a long-winded, narcissistic post for an entire community to show how much you don't need people.
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If a man does not know the source of these virtues (and does not care to find it out), they are floating abstractions, no different from any religious dogma.
It's possible to inductively validate a virtue without studying an entire philosophical system.
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What about a hypothetical situation in which the US is attacked in the second world war, and no draft is legislated. There is a volunteer army, supported by the taxes of everyone. (I think it is relevant to notice that the people who take a risk of being killed are those who volunteer ).
Does a free-rider problem exist in such a case? Is it moral for a person not to volunteer?
It can certainly be moral for a person not to volunteer. Only the individual knows whether he can best protect his values by serving in the military or remaining at home. It depends on his context, skills, weaknesses, and value hierarchy.
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When I talk about the non-physicality of mind, I
do not adress the question whether it is somehow linked
to physical processes or not. I think that in its nature, mind is not physical. The question of what is the nature of mind (does it exist? Is it physical? ) is a different question of the link between it and the physical.
For example, one could argue that mind exists, it is not material BUT it has no causal efficacy of its own AND the sufficient cause for it is the brain.
It was a clarification.
Okay, but you would need consciousness to be independent of matter to successfully argue for reincarnation. And even then, it wouldn't be enough.
A question to you - how can you be an objectivist given your ideas?
If the mind arises from physical actions, do you think there is a space for cognitive choice?
Objectivism says that mind and body are integrated. Of course there is space for cognitive choice. A biological explanation of volition wouldn't suddenly render volition nonexistent.
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I think there is a strong argument in favor of reincarnation, from the existence and the non-physicality of mind. (Since mind exists, is non physical, and its sufficient cause cannot be matter, then it has to be reincarnated from a previous lifetime, ad infinitum).
On the contrary, neurology has definitively linked thought processes to brain processes, so there's good reason to believe the mind arises from physical actions. Even if consciousness were somehow matter-independent, that wouldn't prove the existence of reincarnation. And the soul, if it existed, could not be reincarnated from a previous lifetime ad infinitum because there are only finitely many generations of humans - we evolved from simpler organisms.
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FeatherFall’s linked to article on DXM tends to tell against his point, for it concludes: “Explaining OOBEs [out of body experiences] is difficult and is in my opinion currently beyond neuroscience.”
This isn't a point in supernaturalism's favor. Our ignorance of a natural process doesn't mean we're entitled to assume a mystical explanation. And a full explanation of a phenomenon isn't necessary to conclude that said phenomenon is naturalistic.
I don’t have much to offer on this subject except to say I’ve always found the debunking of vitalism a boor. You only have to experience the death of a loved one to realize that life is more than a body. (Added: I don't mean to imply that there’s life after death though.)
Huh? The tragic death of loved ones has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not life can emerge from physical processes.
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I'm not talking about dreaming; I'm talking about the abnormal neurological activity that can result when the brain is drugged or under stress. Additionally, even when sedated or dying the brain can respond to stimuli like sounds or movement. There are also cases of machines failing to detect brain activity in supposedly brain dead patients. Add to this the anecdotal nature of most documented near-death experiences, and there is again no reason to postulate the supernatural.
The State Of Positivity In Movies :)
in Movies, Shows, and Theatre
Posted
Really? Off the top of my head, I came up with
Up
Ratatouille
The Incredibles
The three Toy Story movies
The Avengers
The first three Star Wars movies
The first three Indiana Jones movies
Shawshank Redemption
When Harry Met Sally
Superman
Superman II
Iron Man
That's eighteen movies, and I could easily find more if I checked IMDb.