How much education do we OWE our children?

[Easy Truth]

6 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Is that the ONLY basis? What about the self-likeness basis of "species solidarity" which Branden wrote of in "Benevolence versus Altruism" (1962)? I'd bet a Coca-Cola that potential of any sort is not the most basic reason humans are protective of human infants. I know all the usual chant about children being most precious because "they are our future." That is a preciousness for sure, but not the main preciousness of the individual child one is dealing with. It's a more human-to-human-as-particulars thing than any sort of considerations about continuation of the species or potentials of the actual child at hand.*

The preservation of the human species has an inherent value? Or is it that species solidarity is emotionally based?

[Boydstun]

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

The preservation of the human species has an inherent value? Or is it that species solidarity is emotionally based?

Emotions (and actions) are based on values. In the case of these emotions, if they are based on the value to individuals in the preservation of the human species, then that is a more distant basis of the emotion. Closer value-basis of the emotion, I'd say, would be the likeness-valuation that Branden wrote about in that essay.

Then too, these human emotions towards human infants could have likeness-valuation causes mediating value-of-potential-for-rationality causes. (Cf. structuring causes and triggering cause in the case of gravitropic root growth, pp, 188–90.)

By the way, I notice that if self-likeness and species continuation and potential for rationality in others are taken as solid nature-values given to individuals in the course of early brain development and interaction with the world and other persons, then value of self to itself is not the sole operator among biocentric values, which is to say that pure ethical egoism is false. I should mention, however, that if rationality in others is an inalienable part of one's own rational self, this need not stand as a confounding situation for egoism, but a radical renovation in the conception of what is one's rational self (leaving in place, I should say, Rand's idea that one's self is one's mind.) I don't think valuation of species continuation stands in such a unity with valuation of the self by the self. And I should mention that the circumstance that such valuation of distant matters must be carried home by valuation in self-likeness does not transform the valuation of the distant circumstance into a valuation of self by that self; that is, there no turning the valuation into an egoistic one by that conveyance factor.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

Click on page 15 of the PDF for Benevolence versus Altruism.

July 1962 of The Objectivist Newsletter, page 27.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Boydstun

[InfraBeat]

On 6/19/2023 at 2:20 PM, DavidOdden said:

It is false that man’s essential character is a combination of reason and great body strength

It needs to be justified that:

(1) Definitions* must be only by essential characteristics. That is, that extensional definitions must be disallowed, or that there may not be cases where extensional definitions are more conceptually useful depending on uses.

* 'definition' in the Objectivist sense of formation of concepts that are then branded with words, as opposed to the more usual sense of 'definition' as defining a word in terms of other words.

(2) For every definition for a concept, there is just one characteristic of the units that is the essential characteristic and its essentiality is a given that we discover as opposed to inventing or stipulating.

(3) Where there are multiple characteristics, there is an objective method to determine which characteristic is "responsible for all the rest of the units' distinctive characteristics, or at least for a greater number of these than any other characteristic is". This requires an inventory of characteristics, a calculation of which is responsible for more than any other, and a clear notion of what it means for a characteristic to be responsible for another characteristic. 

(4) Rights must be based on the essential characteristic alone. Even if we grant that reason is the essential characteristic of humankind, still people survive and thrive by a combination of characteristics including but not exclusively reason: instincts, physical capabilities, emotions, and social cooperation. It needs argument to say that rights must be based only what has been determined to be the essential characteristic.

(5) Rights must be based on surviving and thriving alone.

(6) Rights must be only individual. Even if we grant that rights must be based on surviving and thriving alone, if for certain people, surviving and thriving depends on social cooperation, then it has to be shown that groups don't have rights in the interest of social cooperation for the purpose of the surviving and thriving of the members of the group.

(7) Are we really sure that reason is the essential characteristic of humans? Have we systematically established that there is not some other characteristic that is responsible for more of the rest of the characteristics? Meanwhile, have we systematically established that there not other animals such that their degree of reason (even if not as great a degree as humans) is an essential characteristic?

About humans and animals vis-vis reason* and instincts, while I am not an expert, it seems that both humans and animals use both reason and instinct. That is not to say that, obviously, reason is more prevalent in humans than in animals, but at least that the starting point of conversation should recognize that there is not a simple dichotomy.

* Recalling that reason has been used in this discussion in a broad sense such that a newborn human with less reasoning skill than an adult primate still uses reason. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by InfraBeat

[DavidOdden]

My crow just died. Do you want to simplify this to one manageable point of discussion?

[InfraBeat]

14 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

My crow just died.

I don't need a crow to count to 7. You can reply to as much of it, as little of it, or to none of it as you please.

Edited July 24, 2023 by InfraBeat

[Doug Morris]

15 hours ago, InfraBeat said:

About humans and animals vis-vis reason* and instincts, while I am not an expert, it seems that both humans and animals use both reason and instinct.

What do you mean by "instinct"?

[DavidOdden]

I address your first assertion; see ITOE p. 41

The rules of correct definition are derived from the process of concept-formation. The units of a concept were differentiated—by means of a distinguishing characteristic(s)—from other existents possessing a commensurable characteristic, a "Conceptual Common Denominator." A definition follows the same principle: it specifies the distinguishing characteristic(s) of the units, and indicates the category of existents from which they were differentiated.

Is this sufficient, or do you require further explanation?

 

[InfraBeat]

10 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

What do you mean by "instinct"?

David Odden mentioned 'instinctual knowledge' to say that humans don't have it. In the context, I surmise he means to contrast humans with animals. For a defintion of 'instincual knowledge', you'd have to ask him. Since the Objectivist definition of 'knowledge' is "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation", I don't know how that would square with a notion of 'instinctual knowlege'. In the meantime, my sense of 'instinct' is just an ordinary dictionary one:

": a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity

: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason

: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level" [Merriam-Webster]

[InfraBeat]

10 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I address your first assertion

I don't find that to be an on point response to my first assertion, which was "It needs to be justified that definitions must be only by essential characteristics."

I am familiar with the passage you cited and the rest of the chapter. I know that the passage is part of Rand's context that involves essentiality, but the passage does not in and of itself justify that definitions must be only by essential characteristics. A justification would consist of a valid argument that ends with "therefore, definitions must be only by essential characteristics". 

But even at the start of that chapter, we find again that Rand insists on using a word in her own special sense. Of course, a writer is entitled to use a word in her own special sense, but it does make it awkward in this instance when one might wish also to use the word 'definition' in its more ordinary sense.

But more basically, what is required is to see whether indeed all of the assertions in the chapter do derive from the Objectivist axioms. A while ago, I mentioned the first axiom and responses I have to it.

Edited July 25, 2023 by InfraBeat

[Boydstun]

On 7/23/2023 at 8:58 PM, InfraBeat said:

. . . 

About humans and animals vis-vis reason* and instincts, while I am not an expert, it seems that both humans and animals use both reason and instinct. That is not to say that, obviously, reason is more prevalent in humans than in animals, but at least that the starting point of conversation should recognize that there is not a simple dichotomy.

* Recalling that reason has been used in this discussion in a broad sense such that a newborn human with less reasoning skill than an adult primate still uses reason. 

Perhaps the better term for first day is cognition. I have written about those early days here before, and I'll copy that over to here (the multi-quote function is not working this morning). I find it rather challenging to try to divide what is going on in this early development between reason and instinct.

From Early Development – Concepts and Quantities

Quote

 

. . .

By day of birth, one had the additional reflexes of pupil dilation, kneejerk, and startle. On that day, one had visual preference for 3-dimensional objects (one perceived something of the 3D of objects), visual discriminations of different static line orientations, visual correction for 3D size constancy under variation of distance and correction for shape constancy under variation of object orientation. One was unable to detect boundaries and unable to fill in invisible parts of objects. One’s visual acuity was poor (probably due to immaturity of both the retina and the visual cortex), and one’s contrast sensitivity was poor.

 

One’s significant body motions were in alternation with visual attending. One was capable of rough, saccadic tracking, which was not only not smooth, but not anticipatory. One fixed on interesting objects, and perhaps one had some slight control in this; perhaps it was not entirely passive capture. One may have had an early visual preference for faces in tracking. One could imitate two facial movements and one head turn; one could perform these imitations when forced to delay until the model movement was absent.

One’s auditory resolution of pitches and volumes was already pretty good. One had a preference for Mother’s voice over the voice of a stranger, and one could distinguish human language from other auditory input. One was engaged in early head-turning, in the horizontal plane, towards sound sources. As of the time I compiled—a dozen years ago—the developmental time line from which the items here are taken, it was unknown whether the sound source is experienced as outside the head; head-turning had been evoked also by earphones.

Let’s wrap up the first day. One cried when other infants cried. One had auditory recognition memory; retention was for days under conditioning, for 24 hours under habituation. One was sensitive to pain, to touch (coetaneous and active), and to changes in bodily position.

By the end of the second day, one could discriminate Mother’s face from a stranger’s face. One had a preference for infant-directed speech (motherese) over adult-directed speech.

By five days, one engaged in early reaching towards an object in the visual field, reaching that included a preparation for grasping. This reaching and visual detection may be an undifferentiated attention system.

By twelve days, one could imitate three facial (oral) movements and one set of sequential finger movements. By fourteen days, one had a preference for Father’s voice over that of other males. By three weeks, one expected the reappearance of visual objects that were gradually occluded by a moving screen, provided the occlusion time was short.

Through the third week, I don’t think the infant has yet had a percept. She is not yet able to engage in explorations sufficiently controlled, and with enough memory, to have what we would call a percept. Sensory experience, discriminations, detections, responses—but no percepts. If no percepts, then no knowledge in the strict sense.

If the infant in the first couple of days, and even in the first three weeks, has yet to have a percept, do his sensory registrations and preferences, his reaches, and his expectations amount to identifications? Well, yes, she does seem bent on singling things out, especially Mother. It’s just that the strivings and discriminations do not yet coalesce into a percept.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Boydstun

[DavidOdden]

10 hours ago, InfraBeat said:

I don't find

I don't find your response to be on point. I provided what should be a sufficient reminder of the argument, and clearly a small passage can only stand for and not fully reproduce the reduction of a conclusion to the axioms. Oddly, you don’t justify the claim that a justification would consist of a valid argument ending with a particular phrase.  Nor do you justify the claim that Rand insists on using a word in her own special sense, or even that she does so without insistence.

Perhaps the first step should be you proving what the ordinary sense of the word “definition” is. We could then compare Rand’s putative “special” sense (which I suppose you can identify for us), and even other senses of the word that are out there. My main “criticism” of the Objectivist epistemology is that it focuses on the logic of reasoning and not the applied statistics of ordinary thinking, which is where polysemy rears its ugly head.

BTW if you are thinking that all of Rand’s conclusions follow from a set of listed axioms (see Galt’s speech) and nothing else, you are mistaken, and nobody believes that Objectivism is a purely deductive system, in fact it is mostly inductive.

 

[Doug Morris]

15 hours ago, InfraBeat said:

": a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity

: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason

: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level" [Merriam-Webster]

This is very broad and sweeping.  "behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level" would include at least reason-based behaviors that have been automatized and reflex actions that have nothing to do with consciousness and are not knowledge.  " a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity" would include the capacity for reason.

What is the point of conducting a discussion in such broad, sweeping terms?

I'm sure David Odden had something narrower in mind.  Why didn't you ask him for clarification before responding?

 

[DavidOdden]

4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

What is the point of conducting a discussion in such broad, sweeping terms?

I can only conjecture about motivations.

Humans “use” things other than reason, for example we “use” digestion which is not a kind of reason, likewise respiration, perspiration and defecation. Everything that we directly perceive is automatically processed by the brain and is not the product of reason (however, reason will enter into the discussion once we sort out perception). There are various reflexes which are automatic spinal chord reactions to stimuli, such as the patellar reflex, the Babinkski reflex, a number of eye reflexes. These are all extremely simple immediate physical responses to stimuli.

Instincts are more complex and delayed behavior patterns, which are innate in an animal. There are myriad examples such as Pacific salmon return to the birthplace instinct, numerous sex-related instincts, bee dances (communicating where the food is). There are very few proposed candidates for instincts in humans, none of them persuasive in my opinion, the best cases being applicable to infants (for example, crying, which is not analogous to the pupil contraction reflex, and happens right away without any thinking about it). Perhaps the “maternal bonding” instinct, driven by oxytocin, could be included. Whereas numerous animal instincts can reasonably be said to constitute a kind of knowledge that they already know, the only good candidates for instinct in humans are particular feelings, which are not knowledge.

I think it is true that people do use emotions in place of real knowledge. This is painfully obvious when you ask a person why they hold some opinion, and they answer “I (don’t) want X”, which is completely illogical insofar as I asked for your reasons for holding an opinion. Can’t you at least say “X is bad (good)”? While I am skeptical about instincts for humans, I am certain that there is no such thing as “instinctual knowledge” in humans. We don’t have it, there is nothing to account for.

[InfraBeat]

On 7/25/2023 at 7:27 AM, Boydstun said:

I have written

Interesting article. Thank you. Are the passages that start with "By day of birth [...] and end with "[...] provided the occlusion time was short" yours or are they quotes? If yours, were you observing a particular baby referred to as "one"?

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat

[InfraBeat]

On 7/25/2023 at 8:58 AM, DavidOdden said:

a small passage can only stand for and not fully reproduce the reduction of a conclusion to the axioms

Of course. I was only asking about the most proximate steps to the conclusion that definitions must only be by essential characteristics (as well as the other points I mentioned about a rigorous notion of essential characteristics). But, indeed, a thorough account would go back the axioms. And I mentioned the first point in the axioms that deserves examination.

On 7/25/2023 at 8:58 AM, DavidOdden said:

you don’t justify the claim that a justification would consist of a valid argument ending with a particular phrase

"therefore" was just example verbiage. I didn't mean to require some particular phrase. That would be ridiculous. An argument consists of premises and a conclusion, and a demonstration also applies logic to the premises to derive the conclusion. My point only is that a justification would allow us to clearly see all the logic applied. 

On 7/25/2023 at 8:58 AM, DavidOdden said:

Nor do you justify the claim that Rand insists on using a word in her own special sense, or even that she does so without insistence.

If the word 'insists' is unfair, then my remark is revised to the more neutral 'uses the word [...]'.

"A definition is a statement that identifies the nature of the units subsumed under a concept. It is often said that definitions state the meanings of words. That is true, but it is not exact. A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept; a word has no meaning other than that of the concept it symbolizes, and the meaning of the concept consists of its units. It is not words, but concepts that man defines - by specifying their referents." [ITOE pg. 40; which indeed is the start of that chapter, as I mentioned]

Rand mentions the usual notion of 'definition' but goes on to specify her own special sense. The ordinary sense of the word 'definition' is a statement that conveys the meaning of a word, usually by referring to other words and/or phrases. This is ordinary as with Bob saying "What is the definition of 'pulchritude'?" and Mary answering, "I don't know; look it up in a dictionary", as a dictionary is a set of definitions of words in terms of other words and/or phrases. Also, there is a less common, but still somewhat common, notion of definitions as pertaining to concepts, but Rand's own definition differs even from that.

On 7/25/2023 at 8:58 AM, DavidOdden said:

nobody believes that Objectivism is a purely deductive system

In this thread we already went over that point, and I said that it is not the case that an Objectivist derivation must be deductive only. 

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, InfraBeat said:

Interesting article. Thank you. Are the passages that start with "By day of birth [...] and end with "[...] provided the occlusion time was short" yours or are they quotes? If yours, were you observing a particular baby referred to as "one"?

Infrabeat,

They are quotes from my earlier composition that included my compilation of research done to the time of that compilation. I can chase down the original research papers and books going into the compilation if anyone is ever in need of that. And I probably have the larger cognitive development sequence I had compiled up to about age 3 from this modern research still stashed away somewhere, which was a handout I made for a presentation I made (I think in Boulder in 1998).

The "one" is any human being whatever. Sometimes people use "you" that way. I generally prefer "one" to "you" because the latter can get misconstrued as carrying a sense of talking down to the audience as inferior to the writer. 

I'm glad you mentioned that use of "one" in this developmental context because it gives me a perch to say explicitly and with stress: This development applies to everyone. And that goes for all the philosophers who have ever speculated on child development. They themselves followed THIS course, whatever the Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Mill, or Rand may have set forth in the descriptive portions of their epistemologies or their other representation of human nature.

I've encountered a few accomplished philosophers even in the last three decades who do not acknowledge that if they are going to write about the origin of concepts or philosophy of perception, they need to assimilate the related psychological and neuropsychological research; if they are going to write about metaphysics (beyond its history), they need to assimilate modern physics, including field theory; and if they are going to write any sort of biocentric sort of theory of value, including ethics, they need to assimilate biology and scientific anthropology. They need to do those assimilations even as they bring the philosophic mind to its special tasks and methods in those areas of philosophy in order to do the best job possible. In 1990 l started my (hardcopy) philosophy journal titled Objectivity, to which I gave the subtitle A Journal of Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Theory of Value Informed by Modern Science. By now the major part of the profession not doing history of philosophy have come around to holding themselves to that subtitle.

I am pleased to say that yesterday I secured arrangements of the online facsimile of Objectivity known as Objectivity Archive, with its supplementary Indexes to be preserved online throughout the life of the generation after I die (and he says he is going to pass the responsibility to his son after that). So all of the links I have made in online discussions to works of people in that journal will remain valid for continued use by this subculture a long time after my time.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Boydstun

[InfraBeat]

2 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

They are quotes from my earlier composition that included my compilation of research done to the time of that compilation.

Got it. Thanks.

[InfraBeat]

On 7/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, Doug Morris said:

broad and sweeping

One is free to narrow it per any given context. 

On 7/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, Doug Morris said:

"behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level" would include at least reason-based behaviors that have been automatized

Since the context of this conversation regards a distinction between reason and instinct (or instinctual knowledge), I guess that we would exclude reason-based behavior as instinctual. So, in this context, instinct would include behavior, not by automatized reason, mediated by reactions below the conscious level. 

On 7/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, Doug Morris said:

" a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity" would include the capacity for reason.

Since the context of this conversation regards a distinction between reason and instinct, I guess that we would exclude the aptitude or capacity for reason as instinct. So, in this context, instinct would a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse or capacity other than reason.

The third sense is:

"a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason" [Merriam-Webster]

On 7/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, Doug Morris said:

I'm sure David Odden had something narrower in mind.  Why didn't you ask him for clarification before responding?

By that time I had forgotten that he said 'instinctual knowledge' rather than 'instinct'. It's important to note that I didn't make a strawman by claiming he meant a certain sense, though he did not.

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat

[InfraBeat]

On 6/19/2023 at 11:32 PM, DavidOdden said:

Man’s special tool for existence is “use reason”, not “turn color when threatened” or “run fast”. We do not have instinctual knowledge that certain berries are poisonous or that certain creatures are dangerous – we have to learn this from observation and reason.

If I'm not mistaken, you are contrasting humans with other creatures. What do you mean by 'instinctual knowledge' and how, if at all, does that meaning differ from the meaning of 'instincts'?

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat

[DavidOdden]

“Instinctual knowledge” is generally used to refer to innate knowledge, that is, knowledge which is genetically predetermined and not learned from experience. I would not devise a definition of “knowledge” according to which only humans have “knowledge”. You could call it a cognitive program of some sorts, which governs behavior. It isn’t a short-term spinal chord reaction, and it isn’t an immediate emotional response. It is not an ability (for example, the human ability to reason is not knowledge, it is a faculty). As the name implies, instinctual knowledge is a kind of knowledge. The point of rejecting “instinct” is simply that people are very sloppy in calling everything “instinct” when in fact it is no such thing, especially when it is applied to humans. Breathing is not an instinct, it is an autonomic function. Keeping quiet then being stalked is not an instinct when done by humans, it is an application of reason.

Reason is the application of logic to prior knowledge to create new conceptual knowledge. Animals don’t have a faculty of reason, they don’t have concepts and they don’t have propositions, they have something else.

[EC]

@InfraBeat the point I believe Odden was trying to make is that one has to use the objectively correct definition of a concept in the exact context that it is being used to convey correct meaning, not "specialized meanings" that only apply to "specific philosophies" (even Objectivism) but to *everyone* at *all times*. Yes specific words can change over time but *concepts* can't except for more essential specific definitions as new knowledge becomes explicitly available that was always implicit in the concept but due to usually lack of specific scientific knowledge at the time was still explicitly unknown still or the exact correct context was still unknown or undiscovered. But that's my interpretation of Rand more than what Mr. Odden means (and I noticed he posted a reply as I was writing this).

Edited July 30, 2023 by EC

[InfraBeat]

On 7/25/2023 at 6:06 PM, DavidOdden said:

I can only conjecture about motivations.

So you won't have to conjecture, and so I won't have to conjecture as to what you conjecture:

Because I was asked what I meant, I mentioned a dictionary definition that happens to be my own general sense of the word. I am not an expert in the subject, and the best I can do is to point to a dictionary definition that accords with my non-expert sense, at least as a starting point. Of course, for purpose of context or greater depth, we are free to refine, revise, or expand on such definitions. 

Also I note: "an inborn impulse or motivation to action typically performed in response to specific external stimuli. Today instinct is generally described as a stereotyped, apparently unlearned, genetically determined behavior pattern." [Encyclopedia Britannica]

I've read (albeit merely in articles for general, non-technical readers) that such things as below are instinctual for humans:

avoiding falling from heights, reaction to loud sounds, avoidance of snakes, saving, sexual intercourse, parental protectiveness (mother to baby), baby crying, flinching at shadows, sucking, seeking other humans. Maybe also grasping and locomotion. 

Perhaps some of those are shaky (likely sexual intercourse and parental protectiveness), but perhaps some are solid. 

But a first question is whether all behavior is exhausted by only two categories: is either instinctual or reasoned.

The context here is in distinguishing humans as using reason and animals using instinct. If humans don't use only reason but do use certain instincts, and if certain animals also use some reason, then we should keep that in mind when we move to the more complex matter of whether reason is the one and only essential characteristic of humans (and putting aside the even more fundamental questions of whether definitions must be essentialistic and then onto whether 'rights' must be defined only as to the essential characteristic of reason.
 

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat

[InfraBeat]

21 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:

Instinctual knowledge [...] Reason

Thank you for your remarks on that. 

You mentioned an animal changing its color. That is use of instinctual knowledge?

When people describe certain animals such as dolphins and primates as using reason, if not reason, what do you call it?

[InfraBeat]

19 minutes ago, EC said:

one has to use the objectively correct definition of a concept in the exact context that it is being used to convey correct meaning, not "specialized meanings" that only apply to "specific philosophies" (even Objectivism) but to *everyone* at *all times*.

And my point is that sometimes, regarding key words, Rand does not do that.

Edited July 30, 2023 by InfraBeat