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Is Reproduction the ultimate value? Or Life?

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Reproduction in essence is a growth, a bettering of life. and as such is not a goal but result of living process. When two animals copulate they don't do it for sake of their species or future generations. They just enjoy themselves. This is a case when a individual gain also results in benefit for others, but such a benefit is not a primary goal. The same applies to the human individual gain which is result of rational selfish conduct-productiveness and other virtues.

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The telomeres degrade with each duplication. After 50 duplications or so the daughter cell of the 51 st generation (or so) dies. Unless it is cancerous in which case the entire organism will die of the cancel. Any activity which is a physical consequence of the underlying substance or object can be said to be "programmed". The laws of physics and chemistry are the ultimate "program" of the cosmos.

Bottom line. We are all doomed. But that is a good thing in the large. That assures there will always be room for New Stuff as long as the Sun shines, which is not forever. The Sun is programmed to die. It will die in about 5 billion years or so. But humans will not be around to enjoy the show.

More imprecise language. You used scare quotes twice around "program" but not a third time. "Program" implies a programmer. The sun isn't alive so it cannot die. You have no idea whether humans will be around in 5 billion years.

Your usage of the word "good" is not connected to reality. A proper definition of "good" would be connected to human life. "Good" cannot be defined with reference to both life and death. Those two things are opposites and thus the definition would be self-contradictory -- which is exactly what you have done in your first sentence.

Presumably telomeres duplicating is an essential process for life. When telomeres duplicate they are supporting your life. You can't then turn around and say the same process is killing you, that is a contradiction.

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As an aside, the explanation for why the process of cell division isn't infinite is that, from an evolutionary perspective, that would be of no or very little benefit to a species, but would come with a significant extra cost (would likely affect the rate of injuries healing, muscle strength, etc.). A species who's individuals spend energy on not dying of cancer and heart failure rather than just surviving long enough to reproduce, is not going to last long enough to invent the combustion engine and start living long enough for age related diseases to become an issue.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to genetically engineer a species that doesn't age, or that it's impossible to chemically induce cells to divide infinitely. In fact, it's even possible for a natural mutation to cause an individual animal to not age. One might be out there right now. But, of course, that would come at a cost, and that cost would mean that him and/or his descendants would not be fit enough to survive in the long run, in nature. For humans, that's not an issue, and I'm quite confident that someone, eventually, will live for many hundreds of years.

You have to remember that human beings are already doing plenty of things that would make no sense for a species to do, from an evolutionary perspective. It would make no sense for a species to move at Mach 1 along the surface of the Earth, for a species to fly around at Mach 4 in the air or Mach 40 in space, etc., etc.

So just because something doesn't make sense within the context of evolution, doesn't mean that it's impossible and we're doomed to never achieve it. Evolution is limited by the need for being the fittest species. We aren't limited by that, we have no competition. If we manage to not waste energy on trying to kill or enslave each other, we can afford to spend most of our energy doing silly things like going to the Moon and living for a really long time.

Edited by Nicky
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I'm so disheartened and disappointed. Evolution seems to reject the Objectivist position that life is an end in itself. Isn't our purpose as biological beings to reproduce? After all, why do we have reproductive organs? Someone please explain to me how evolution is compatible with objectivism. I have searched the forum and Peikoff's podcast's but it is taking too long to find an answer.

Thank you,

Cory

Hello Cory, I was really glad when you opened this thread and I now believe it's appropriate to share some of my thought on the matter.

First of all I should say that this topic strikes me as surprising only because it doesn't seem to have been thoroughly discussed before, when it should be one of the first questions for anyone studying Objectivism. Maybe that's a little self centered because it was my personal experience that I found that the enunciation of Objectivism, and the childlessness of Ayn Rand, obviously go hand in hand.

There is little to no doubt that Ayn Rand was absolutely heterosexual. There could be more doubt regarding her fertility but then I can point out 'We the Living', her only semi auto-biographical novel, in which Kyra reacts with an admixture of astonishment, pity and indignation at Sonia's ignorance of birth control (Sonia, after having another abortion, asks Kira something like 'How do you keep from getting pregnant?', and Kira simply doesn't lower herself to respond.

So why would a heterosexual, probably fertile, sexually active woman didn't have children? No one can really know, or intrude her privacy that way, but one could think it was because she had her novels to write and she valued her quest and her work above the possibility of maternity. In fact, she considered maternity a choice.

For Western Civ the early 20th century (from WWI to the 60s) proved to be the time of inflection between maternity as a given and maternity as a choice.

According to a passage in Atlas (during Dagny's first stay in the valley) a mother moved to the free society to raise her children in a good place.

Evolution (or rather, Human Nature) is, in the matter you refer to, compatible with Objectivism because unlike tigers, lizards or chimpanzees, humans disproportionately use our mind instead of our body as a means of survival. This allows some individuals to 'sublimate' the very real need for offspring by having mindchildren which can sublimate biological children even better than adopted children.

For it is not cuddling and raising a small creature the point of parenthood (pets work well for that) but transmitting one's own identity.

The traditional and basest way of accomplishing this, we also share with animals: biological replication through sexual reproduction. It is the equivalent of physical force, another attribute we share with animals.

The novel, daring, either ersatz or heroic way of doing it would be the way exclusively humans (and human creations like A.I.) can: by replicating not one's genes but one's identity. This can be done through memes, creation, indoctrination, diffusion: basically art (and art more than science, but also religion and technology). Computers and software allow for a syncretic way to pass on one's identity, and that's what people are trying to do by building pyramids and sarcophagi of personal information through Facebook, Picassa, personal websites, the internet in general. But even the holy grial of ID preservation: uploading of a mind, would only constitute a good pyramid, but not necessarily a successful transmission of one's identity. Writing a novel(s) or creating other types of artifices have proven to work independent of technological progress.

The tricky part is that our genetic composition is, to a point, a good part of our identity; still one can still identify Plato's and Aristotle's ideas in many people and books, but would anyone recognize any of the many direct genetic descendants of either philosopher?) ref: no kids please we're Selfish

ref broken link http://patrifriedman.com/writing/prose/whydrugsmatter.html in which Patri Friedman argues that there is an open struggle between what our genes command us to do and our free will, and that society's controlling institutions such as family, church and state have uncannily similar ultimate goals that mirror our genes'.

Some students of the mind such as S Freud argue that the will to live, construct, create, are derivative of a tendency towards Eros (life expressed in the act of celebrating one's own and creating new) while Tanatos, the tendency to destroy and ultimately die, prevails (for the sake of sanity, since death is inevitable). This speaks poorly of Sanity and that is what Celia Green calls the Human Evasion (please donate 13USD or more to Celia Green and the Oxford Forum after reading that last link).

Freud however leaves room for sublimation and he would likely interpret Ayn Rand's writing in place of birthing, as sublimation.

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But as a self described egoist, would Rand have valued admiration of her ideals post her demised more highly than 'speaking the truth' during her lifetime? Was seeking admiration the guiding force behind her creativity?

But as a self described egoist, would Rand have valued admiration of her ideals post her demised more highly than 'speaking the truth' during her lifetime? Was seeking admiration the guiding force behind her creativity?

Honest questions, though also somewhat rhetorical, I think. No doubt, at a personal level, Rand revelled in the attention she received. However, that wasn't the end of it by any means, as I know you realise.

I think the 'will to truth' is the greatest drive a human can have; and when it runs concurrently with the second strongest drive, 'the will' to create or produce, aspects like replication and reproduction become almost superfluous, I imagine.

Leaving something, or somebody, behind for one's posterity is important, as a combination of instinct, psychology and conviction, to most of us. Then again, most of us didn't have the vision as artist and philosopher that Rand had even as a girl.

Couple in an incomparable ego, and an energetic genius - and we have a creator and visionary of unimaginable scope.

Admiration? I think any author obviously writes to a specific audience, to a degree. That envisaged reader may be one single person, a whole society, or directed to all mankind. But truth at all costs is even more powerful than that in an artist with integrity. The nearer you get to truths the more enemies you find - knowing that, as I'm sure she did, popularity was not Rand's main motivation.

I believed from my first read that Rand cared; and the more she thought, the more she cared. (The reverse, too.)

Does that make her a self-sacrificing altruist? Don't laugh. I've heard that very disingenuous criticism, that in her "selfless service to humanity" she did not "practise what she preached" - and of course it could only come from those who loathe rational selfishness, who only know slave and master, and who willfully refuse to face the self-evident: the apparent contradiction that only from a great ego can eventuate benefits that touch everybody's life.

Edited by whYNOT
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But as a self described egoist, would Rand have valued admiration of her ideals post her demised more highly than 'speaking the truth' during her lifetime? Was seeking admiration the guiding force behind her creativity?

Admiration could be a perk or an irrelevance, but is definitely besides the point. Procreation or self replication's purpose is perpetuation of the self's identity.

As Aristotle pointed out and Ayn Rand 'completed' Identity IS existence. The ability to express one's identity with high fidelity and then make it 'popular' enough for it to survive, is no different from achieving 'inmortality' through the passing of one's genes and inheritance.

What I earlier called diffusion, popularity, is different from admiration.

Therefore I could enunciate: Life is the ultimate value, and as established, it requires compliance with reality. There is strong anecdotal evidence that human beings, being conscious of both past and future, are preoccupied with their own mortality and have to solve this preoccupation one way or another. One way would be reproduction.

So there is no contradiction in saying that Life (which includes reproduction or some substitute for it) is the ultimate value.

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Species of biological entities that do not have a value for reproduction (i.e. do not reproduce) are either extinct or will be shortly.

Anyone who is alive at this late date in the unfolding of our planetary biota is living proof that someone or something took reproduction to be of value, since they did it.

ruveyn1

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Are you saying that Rand did what she did with her life to achieve her ultimate goal, that being the appreciation of her efforts by others?

No... not the appreciation of her efforts at all, but the expression of her thinking (which constitutes the most important part of her identity in her case) even at the expense of misinterpretation and hatred during the time she was alive), and yes its diffussion or 'popularity' in the distant future, which is very different from popularity (which is consumed alive), it is in Steve Jobs words 'denting the universe'.

all mammals and most humans dent the unvierse by passing on their own genes, Ayn Rand, Da Vinci, even Andy Warhol or Van Gogh, achieve the same by denting the universe though comprehensive mind childrend, or cultural work.(altough I don't know about V.Gogh's potential natural children).

Bach was prolific in all the senses of the word, I don't now which suprises me more that one man can create so many dozens of excellent (some perfect!) works or that one man can father 18 or 22 children.

Bach dented the universe in the best way achieved so far.

Species of biological entities that do not have a value for reproduction (i.e. do not reproduce) are either extinct or will be shortly.

Anyone who is alive at this late date in the unfolding of our planetary biota is living proof that someone or something took reproduction to be of value, since they did it.

ruveyn1

yes.

Ayn Rand however enunciated a philosophy that puts individual life (as in one lifespam) before the life of the people, much less the species.

By doing that she rejected half the most basic tenents of Judaism (while embracing the search for an ultimate truth) while staying a friend of Israel and Jews. That's my posture as well.

She gave space for mothers who would want to reproduced, as described in Atlas Shrugged in chapter first visit to Mulligan Valley.

But she was also very interested in cognitive studies and computers, and she was able to describe a philosophy for a humanity that is giving birth to its evolutionary descendant, A.I.. In any form it takes, the independence of the mind (and body) from its genetic masters is a prerequisite. That is reason, that's the man, mounting and controlling the horse. the man is the mind, the horse are the genes (instinct).

After all Objectivism only works in a technology advanced scenario as it depends on men following and exploiting the laws of nature instead of exploiting the fuzzy behaviours of men in groups.

Edited by volco
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I think the 'will to truth' is the greatest drive a human can have; and when it runs concurrently with the second strongest drive, 'the will' to create or produce, aspects like replication and reproduction become almost superfluous, I imagine.

Leaving something, or somebody, behind for one's posterity is important, as a combination of instinct, psychology and conviction, to most of us. Then again, most of us didn't have the vision as artist and philosopher that Rand had even as a girl.

Couple in an incomparable ego, and an energetic genius - and we have a creator and visionary of unimaginable scope.

I do, I have the vision and the philosophy since I was a toddler it never changed, meeting Ayn Rand's work and loves were a natural consequence. I can perfectly understand that erecting an opera renders genetic reproduction precisely superfluous. I rejoice in the families of others but I could never imagine another life taking the place of my work, my only chance to make the real best of this ONE opportunity to experience and experiment the universe.

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l.

She gave space for mothers who would want to reproduced, as described in Atlas Shrugged in chapter first visit to Mulligan Valley.

If I recall the novel correctly one mother with two children age four and six.

This is the child population of a community with several hundred people.

With that kind of a reproduction rate, the Heroes of Production will be extinct in 70 years or so.

The only way to assure a future for mankind is for enough people to make babies.

ruveyn1

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If I recall the novel correctly one mother with two children age four and six.

This is the child population of a community with several hundred people.

With that kind of a reproduction rate, the Heroes of Production will be extinct in 70 years or so.

NO

The only way to assure a future for mankind is for enough people to make babies.

ruveyn1

Ayn Rand wanted to try to attempt to lay the foundations to 'assure' happiness of man on Earth, to preserve and create life worth living. She lived in a futuristic, optimist or post optimist era when the United States of America had a future almost for granted, and she worked on that almost. Her advice can still work but who knows if it's too late for America, or Israel.

The reproduction rate of producers and people who think seems to be in decline in all technologically advance countries (the phenomenon beginning to appear in East Asia as well), with exceptionalism on religious-based or religious embued technologically advanced countries like the USA or Israel. Maybe some producers have children but that's not the point. The higher fertility in some technologically advanced countries vs other seems to be correlated with religiousness, the only force able to stray a first world, high IQ citizen into devoting his or her life to children instead of his or her work. Of course Objectivism respects individuality foremost and so if someone decides that parenthood is his or her thing, then ahead it goes, more fertility.

The problem seems to be that child bearing isn't as dependent on choice as it is of economic and intelligence status. The lower either children come more naturally and unexpectedly, the higher either intelligence or economic status children don't come but are planned for or simply never had since the choice exists.

Therefore while not what Ayn Rand and Objectivism is about, your preoccupation is legitimate: the current layer of producers might be extinct (or individual terms, dead) in 70 years, but given the right philosophy/ideology/even society, new producers and inventors will arise in the future evolution of the large urban slums. Or didn't you get 'Anthem'. The fame is never extinct while a human mind is able to think. ,

On the other hand Mulligan Valley with it's low fertility rate but high right to exist is a god metaphor for a right to be elitist in the World scene that could have saved life-valuing places like Rhodesia in the past, and all of the Western World as we speak.

Edited by volco
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If I recall the novel correctly one mother with two children age four and six.

This is the child population of a community with several hundred people.

With that kind of a reproduction rate, the Heroes of Production will be extinct in 70 years or so.

The only way to assure a future for mankind is for enough people to make babies.

ruveyn1

Therein lies the apparent gulf between individualism and specie-ism.

I am not responsible for the future of mankind.

Don't fret, Ruveyn - the human race will survive!

(btw, I've done 'my bit'. Only one. Now, you must do yours, and I suggest 3 or 4

children to compensate for me. See how silly it gets? :))

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Why would anybody worry about the human race dying out? There are so many breeders going around! Some malls I won’t even go to ‘cause there are so many breeders roaming around with their screaming kids.

On of those "breeders" my one day produce a doctor who extends your life when you reach old age. There is an old saying "Do not pee in the water in which you stand. You may have to drink it some day"

ruveyn1

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If you breed two black bears you won't once get a grizzly.  I don't believe in free-will so I believe there is human scum.


On of those "breeders" my one day produce a doctor who extends your life when you reach old age. There is an old saying "Do not pee in the water in which you stand. You may have to drink it some day"

ruveyn1

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Therein lies the apparent gulf between individualism and specie-ism.

I am not responsible for the future of mankind.

Don't fret, Ruveyn - the human race will survive!

(btw, I've done 'my bit'. Only one. Now, you must do yours, and I suggest 3 or 4

children to compensate for me. See how silly it gets? :))

Been there. Done that. I got the t-shirt.  I have 4 children and 5 grandchildren.

 

ruveyn1

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Been there. Done that. I got the t-shirt.  I have 4 children and 5 grandchildren.

 

ruveyn1

 

Didn't know or imagine your age, now that I realize you might not be a superbright teenager as my imagination pictured you, I admit I have been impertinent with you in the past. I'm very happy that your intelligence and 'flame of life' have been passed on successfully, I'm rationally happy that there are at least 9 more of your carriers. It's easy and redundant to call you an exception or your situation exceptional.

 

 

On

of those "breeders" my one day produce a doctor who extends your life

when you reach old age. There is an old saying "Do not pee in the water

in which you stand. You may have to drink it some day"

ruveyn1

 

Maybe one of your children becomes a life-saving discoverer/inventor but I recognize that logic as pure and simple desire for Mashiaj.  You wouldn't try to convince the mother of The Saviour to adopt planned parenthood, would you? 

 

Or as the Roman interpreters of the concept would put it:

Nisi Dominus Edificauerit Domum, in vano laboraverum qui edificant eam (...) Ecce Hereditas Domini: filii: merces, fructus ventris

 

If without the LORD a City/Building is built, in vain worked those who built it (...) Behold the LORD's fruit and reward of the womb: children

 

And isn't it true even if non Objectivist? If Israel is the city, what would be of Israel without a LORD. If a life is built, what is of it without descendants?

 

Or are there alternatives?

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