Hi - New member here!

[Carrier of the Zero]

Hi to all. Please allow me to introduce myself.

I am 29 years old. I have been a fan of AR, and an off-and-on student of Objectivism, since I was 13. Anthem was my first introduction to AR's work, and I have yet to 'outgrow' her influence

So I've been lurking here for quite some time, and I've always been really impressed by the intelligence and intellectual honesty of the majority of posters on this board. I cant recall ever seeing someone here just making empty assertions; everyone always has evidence and reasoned arguments to back up their positions (except for the few trolls who just come here to make trouble). This willingness, when in an argument, to appeal to the other side's sense of reason is something that seems to be entirely absent from other intellectual persuasions.

(As an aside, I once met the sci-fi author Samuel Delany. He said to me, something to the effect: "The problem with Libertarians is that they expect people will change their minds just because you give them a rational argument." I really should have pressed him further, but I guess I was struck speechless. I'm still trying to figure out why that's too much to ask of people.)

Anyway, I hope to meet some interesting people here, and learn things, and be intellectually challenged... and maybe even introduce some topics of my own that might widen the application of Objectivism to lines of thought that haven't been considered before.

I look forward to meeting everyone. Thanks!

[K-Mac]

Welcome!

[Tenure]

What Samuel Delany said to you, I've been discovering the hard way. (Not here - on my blog) I'm convinced that the Analytic-Synthetic dichotomy is at the heart of almost all bad thinking, at least some form of separation between the 'world' of ideas and the real world.

Welcome to the forum! If you like reasoned argument, then you will enjoy this place; it weedles out a lot of non-thought-out-thinking when it comes to arguing a topic.

Enjoy.

[softwareNerd]

Welcome to the forum, "Carrier of the Zero".

Re: the quote from Delany. I don't think it's true, unless one interprets it in a certain restricted sense. It could make an interesting thread of it's own.

[JMeganSnow]

Hi!

I don't think you can expect to convince someone if you *just* give them an argument without thoroughly tying that argument to reality. Maybe that's what he meant: Libertarians aren't exactly good on fundamentals.

[John McVey]

Hi to all.

Greetings from Down Under!

"The problem with Libertarians is that they expect people will change their minds just because you give them a rational argument." I really should have pressed him further, but I guess I was struck speechless. I'm still trying to figure out why that's too much to ask of people.

You're confusing two issues with that. It is certainly not too much to ask of people who retain their volition to accept a reasoned argument. They damn well should accept proper rational arguments, and they are immoral if they choose not to, irrespective of what their reasons for ignoring rationality are. What is too much to ask is to expect that most people will in fact accept a rational argument, especially in this day and age. Should and will are not the same thing!

As to why there is wide-spread non-acceptance, Tenure cited the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy as to why people divorce ideas from the world, but while that may be an issue for some of the more educated it is not an explanation for the vast majority of people who wont accept a rational argument. There is no single specific reason. Reference to philosophy is a key, but that is a broad generalisation covering a wide range of specifics of which the ASD is only one, and another explanation beyond philosophy is psychological problems.

A fair chunk of the explanation is that people have been taught to believe in what feels good, especially in relation to those things that cut closer to the bone on valuational matters, such as ethics and politics. It is a fault that predates the ASD by a long shot, and originates in mysticism. It is what keeps faith alive, and turns the mind into an amplifier experiencing high levels of feed-back. This is simultaneously a generator of and product of bad philosophy, in that feed-back set-up taken broader to thoughts communicated with others.

Another explanation is just plain evasion, that they are willfully ignoring arguments. This is different to the feeling-good explanation in that feeler would believe that rationality does not apply to the question at hand, whereas these people implicitly accept that rationality is applicable here but then ignore it. Their reasons for ignoring rationality may range from attempts to avoid reality to try to gain or keep specific things, through avoidance of clashes between reality and cherished beliefs by asserting the latter in defiance of the former, and on to behaviour bordering on psychological illness. All of them, however, still leave their practitioners morally culpable so long as their volition is intact. Again philosophy comes in - for example, bad philosophies are described by Miss Rand as "systems of rationalisation."

A third is just mindless parroting of what they've been taught or otherwise picked up from others. These people are passive-minded, they don't want to think at all but just cruise on through, taking each day as it comes. They are basically promoting and defending the ideas they hold on plain chauvinist grounds, and to hell with anyone who says different to them. The more aggressive among them tend to hector and harangue, while the more timid tend to accept what their Significant Others tell them to do and believe.

These aren't exhaustive, and there's overlap too. That's about as much as I care to spend time thinking up, so I will leave it at that.

JJM

[Carrier of the Zero]

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies.

Regarding the Delany quote, I don't think he was attacking Libertarians (or Objectivists) specifically, but Reason in general. After I became more familiar with his critical work, it quickly became apparent that his philosophical leanings were toward the Postmodernism/Deconstructionism axis. I think he was saying that reason is not a valid means of persuasion, period; and that everyone's beliefs have material causes only. Obviously, I couldn't disagree more.

And Mr. McVey touched upon something that I have firmly come to believe: that most people subordinate their minds to their feelings. They just go with their gut, their first emotional reaction when confronted with an issue of morals or values (what feels good), and expend their mental energy justifying that first reaction. They never examine the fundamental causes of their beliefs, and take their emotional evaluations as self-evident. Also, a lot of people base their whole sense of identity on their beliefs, so there is a lot of emotional energy invested in defending whatever arbitrary collection of values they've happened to adopt. They feel their whole sense of self is under attack if you criticize some belief of theirs.

And this points to something else I've thought a lot about; humans have a psychological need for a coherent sense of self, an 'identity'. Without an explicit understanding of reason to guide them, without a method of rationally evaluating values and the issues that confront them, it's so much easier for these people to just adopt some pre-existing value structure (religion, or Leftist ideology, or some subculture) to provide them with that sense of self. And, you know.... some of these value systems could be completely irrational, but most of them probably have some valid points on certain issues; but without reason guiding them, they're basically just an arbitrary collection of values based on 'mixed premises', as AR would say. And so the people who adopt these systems, also without reason to fundamentally guide their thinking, are unable to untangle the good from the bad in their chosen belief systems.

Anyway, thanks to everyone again for the replies, and for making me feel welcome here!