Craig Biddle vs Alex O'Connor

[Solvreven]

Here is a recent debate between objectivist Craig Biddle and Emotivist Alex O'Connor:

Starting to blow up in views - however I think it was a missed opportunity.
Just wanted to post here if of interest to anyone.

Cheers

[Boydstun]

Hi, guy.

Pretty good.

No. If you cannot die, you are not "still people." 

And by the way, both those guys are going to die, just like you and I, and one should get on with consciousness of that enduring condition of one's entire interval of living. One is going to stop existing. That's the deal. Time in the ongoing world will continue, but not oneself continuing further. All one's loved ones who have died ended at that moment. Completely. Absolutely. Modern-day secular imaginings of continuing forever or continuing without a living body are the same old failure—as with Plato and Plotinus—to tie fully one's light, free-gliding mind with physical body, specifically, one's corruptible living body. There is no excuse for that today: Principles of Neuroscience; Conscious Mind – Resonant Brain.

 

Carriage

The strings of the harp

return to silence.

 

Gone voices echo

through living chambers.

 

Gone brows again rise,

gone but for your love.

 

Mind-crossed strides new-bless

your priceless carriage.                               (Nov. 2019)

 

 

All Along

Become some reason, then all along,

beneath each chant, arch, trance, and tear,

was known

stop-still of life, the end, no more,

no something, no place, no passage.         (Sept. 2021)

 

What is most serious in human thought is not in oral debates or discussions, but in written compositions. Here are some in the vicinity: 

Would Immortality Be Worth It?

Can Art Exist without Death?

Vegetative Robots and Value

—discussion

[Solvreven]

Thanks for your response @Boydstun.
The reason I think this is a lost opportunity is this, and if you read the comment-section it becomes obvious:
The objectivist worldview is so fundamentally different from what most think.
Alex O'Connor in my view does not understand the philosophy of Ayn Rand, even though he is obviously a bright fellow.
Starting with ethics is like beginning in the middle.
This needed to be atleast 5(?) hours, to cover the metaphysical and epistemic part at first.

Also for the thought-experiment.
If objective reality would change, then yes objective morallity would change.

Beautiful texts.

[whYNOT]

Very well expressed, Stephen. As I eventually learned to see it, absorb entirely that one fact: there will be no "more", no second chance - and get on with the living; one can hardly rightfully speak of "absolute reality" nor, "rationality" until this single reality has been fully realised. Also: with that (moral) commitment, one's life turns most liberated, enjoyable, filled (in my experience).

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. [I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time".]

Jack London

Edited August 11 by whYNOT

[whYNOT]

2 hours ago, Solvreven said:

Thanks for your response @Boydstun.
The reason I think this is a lost opportunity is this, and if you read the comment-section it becomes obvious:
The objectivist worldview is so fundamentally different from what most think.
Alex O'Connor in my view does not understand the philosophy of Ayn Rand, even though he is obviously a bright fellow.
Starting with ethics is like beginning in the middle.
This needed to be atleast 5(?) hours, to cover the metaphysical and epistemic part at first.

Also for the thought-experiment.
If objective reality would change, then yes objective morallity would change.

Beautiful texts.

Quite so. He just doesn't 'get it', intelligent as he is, although Biddle tried to inform him. He would have to comprehensively turn his world-view on its head, and most neo-mystics like him won't or can't.

"Morality", given unlimited human life-span and lacking challenge and risk, would become trivial (or superfluous), I believe. B-ooorr-ing.

"Value" could not survive, particularly "self-value". 

[Solvreven]

8 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Quite so. He just doesn't 'get it', intelligent as he is, although Biddle tried to inform him. He would have to comprehensively turn his world-view on its head, and most neo-mystics like him won't or can't.

"Morality", given unlimited human life-span and lacking challenge and risk, would become trivial (or superfluous), I believe. B-ooorr-ing.

"Value" could not survive, particularly "self-value". 

I am in full agreement.

I'm not sure how to turn this around either, other than slow and steady over time.

It's even hard to convince a person to start to make an effort to truly investigate the philosophy at all.

[tadmjones]

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Quite so. He just doesn't 'get it', intelligent as he is, although Biddle tried to inform him. He would have to comprehensively turn his world-view on its head, and most neo-mystics like him won't or can't.

"Morality", given unlimited human life-span and lacking challenge and risk, would become trivial (or superfluous), I believe. B-ooorr-ing.

"Value" could not survive, particularly "self-value". 

Alex O'connor is a neo-mystic? I thought he was a naturalist atheist.

[EC]

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Quite so. He just doesn't 'get it', intelligent as he is, although Biddle tried to inform him. He would have to comprehensively turn his world-view on its head, and most neo-mystics like him won't or can't.

"Morality", given unlimited human life-span and lacking challenge and risk, would become trivial (or superfluous), I believe. B-ooorr-ing.

"Value" could not survive, particularly "self-value". 

Well when mind transfer technology becomes fully available to mankind and everyone utilizes it their will be a majority of kids who will commit suicide out of this "boredom" before they reach even their first googleplex year (which is of course well within their individual rights), but this is *not* a negation of objective morality for the following reasons. 

First, at this point time for our form of rational entity will now exist on a completely different time scale that will apply over eternity itself and not simply the minute time frame of the current context at the very birth of our species, and life scale adjustments will have to be appropriately accounted for within this new context. Second, the eternal Universe as a whole from a mind perspective is an unbound place where an unbound number of productive activity and life affirming action can occur over unbound time in a particular broken symmetry localverse and beyond and just as it is in the present extremely limited context rational entities like ourselves responsibility to fully engage with that life as the scale becomes unbound that same responsibility to create a happy life still exists on the full time scale. 

Losing access prematurely to one's rational consciousness from one's fully contextual personal perspective for eternity is not what creates objective morality and what is required to sustain that life existing on a vastly "larger" and unbound scale does *not* eliminate its existence nor its purpose, what it does is change the time scales involved. An example of this outside of rational beings but beings that are still conscious (but to whom the concept of morality doesn't apply as they are of course non-rational, non-volitional beings like ourselves to whom it does) would be comparing the life of a Mayfly to something like the lifespan of a sea tortoise living 150 years. The context of the time scales are different but it does not affect the concept of life itself. When the life scale of Man becomes eternal in possibly while still requiring value creation (and possibly other things like energy) to sustain it, the time scales involved have changed context, Man has not become "eternal valueless 'robots'", but rational beings that still must create values to sustain that possibly eternal life, create values for that purpose and create the best and happiest life possible in this new context. 

This is my own brand new expansion of philosophy based on the philosophical principles of Objectivism and reality but is *not* part of it as Objectivism is a closed system that only includes Miss Rand's own statements.

Edited August 11 by EC

[whYNOT]

57 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Alex O'connor is a neo-mystic? I thought he was a naturalist atheist.

The New Atheists substituted "God" for "society" - the Soul for the brain. You know, "mystics of muscle" and all that. Unknowing his reputation, I hear he professed determinism, so would discount a volitional consciousness in favor of meaty brain matter and then, to be consistent, individualism and rational egoism would collapse as well.

Edited August 11 by whYNOT

[Solvreven]

18 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

The New Atheists substituted "God" for "society" - the Soul for the brain. You know, "mystics of muscle" and all that. Unknowing his reputation, I hear he professed determinism, so would discount a volitional consciousness in favor of meaty brain matter and then, to be consistent, individualism and rational egoism would collapse as well.

He is a hard-determinist AFAIK. He subscribes to Harris and Sapolsky in this respect (even they seem to have very minor disagreements).
Harris still talks about morallity, while Sapolsky atleast admists there are none, even though he tries to tell people what they ought to do.

[Solvreven]

42 minutes ago, EC said:

Losing access prematurely to one's rational consciousness from one's fully contextual personal perspective for eternity is not what creates objective morality and what is required to sustain that life existing on a vastly "larger" and unbound scale does *not* eliminate its existence nor its purpose, what it does is change the time scales involved. An example of this outside of rational beings but beings that are still conscious (but to whom the concept of morality doesn't apply as they are of course non-rational, non-volitional beings like ourselves to whom it does) would be comparing the life of a Mayfly to something like the lifespan of a sea tortoise living 150 years. The context of the time scales are different but it does not affect the concept of life itself. When the life scale of Man becomes eternal in possibly while still requiring value creation (and possibly other things like energy) to sustain it, the time scales involved have changed context, Man has not become "eternal valueless 'robots'", but rational beings that still must create values to sustain that possibly eternal life, create values for that purpose and create the best and happiest life possible in this new context. 

This is my own brand new expansion of philosophy based on the philosophical principles of Objectivism and reality but is *not* part of it as Objectivism is a closed system that only includes Miss Rand's own statements

This is basically the same answer I would give.

[whYNOT]

EC, I may disagree with you but admit you made a well thought-out argument. I usually find that a sort of projection is made by proponents: from "this" to "that" - "now to then" - a floating abstraction.

In effect, "If this my life is this good, then why should it not go on indefinitely?". Of course the idea has had my sympathy and absorbed me.

But the "good" entails what we know of a good life (lived rationally and well), which contains the premise, if only subconsciously by most who suffer "death anxiety" - that it is a MORTAL one. 

Remove this one premise, so will the other, value, be affected. Value and time are corollaries, it seems. 

And knowledge. When you have "done" and seen and conceptualized almost everything there is, what comes next to claim your passionate interest and purpose?

Value cannot be sustained by any individual consciousness, ad infinitum, I claim still.

The maximum a person's peak, good life can be maintained (assuming the medical advancements)? That would take a conjectural projection: 150 to 200 years?

Edited August 11 by whYNOT

[necrovore]

Keynes said "In the long run, we are all dead."

Sometimes people can use death (including from old age) to escape the consequences of their mistakes. It's the ultimate form of evasion. (This especially applies to politicians, who can lay the groundwork for guaranteed ruin -- in 50 to 100 years, long after the politician is dead.)

If people lived long enough to have to deal with the consequences of their mistakes, maybe they would be more careful.

[tadmjones]

45 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

 

 

Value cannot be sustained by any individual consciousness, ad infinitum, I claim still.

 

On the basis that an 'ad infinitum' level of duration would not be possible to an individual consciousness?

Because based on an O'ist definition of value as long as the consciousness had a beginning , denoting an alternative, value would always be possible, and that the existence of the consciousness would necessitate value qua value.

[Eiuol]

11 hours ago, Solvreven said:

Alex O'Connor in my view does not understand the philosophy of Ayn Rand, even though he is obviously a bright fellow.

It was not a debate about Rand. It was a debate against Biddle. 

Alex did not claim to understand Rand. He was asking what Biddle believed, proposing him questions and allowing him to make himself more clear. He asked good questions. Biddle certainly claimed to understand Rand, but failed to justify his own thinking. He wasn't able to answer the questions. His answers flailed, and when he diverged from Rand, he did even worse. 

 

[Solvreven]

9 hours ago, Eiuol said:

It was not a debate about Rand. It was a debate against Biddle. 

Alex did not claim to understand Rand. He was asking what Biddle believed, proposing him questions and allowing him to make himself more clear. He asked good questions. Biddle certainly claimed to understand Rand, but failed to justify his own thinking. He wasn't able to answer the questions. His answers flailed, and when he diverged from Rand, he did even worse. 

It was not about Rand and against Biddle yes. About objective (in this case objectivism) vs subjective morallity.

I agree that Alex asked good question in the context of debating ethics.. However he does not understand the framework of Objectivism, as very few people does.
This is what I'm critiquing.
I also agree that Biddle could have done a better job, I still think he did okay..

I think the error is where they started the debate, and I can't come up with a scenario where Craig could win it based on the participants and audience knowledge before entering the debate.
Ayn Rand certainly would have won such a debate, but she is literally a "worldie".

[Eiuol]

10 hours ago, Solvreven said:

I also agree that Biddle could have done a better job, I still think he did okay..

He did terrible. He made bad arguments for the objectivity of morality. The most he was able to do was completely depend on Rand, unable to come up with his own answers to questions. When he had to answer questions about objective morality that Rand did not explicitly answer, he couldn't do it. It's like he wanted to lecture Alex, rather than actually debate the issue. 

[whYNOT]

On 8/11/2024 at 7:10 PM, tadmjones said:

On the basis that an 'ad infinitum' level of duration would not be possible to an individual consciousness?

Because based on an O'ist definition of value as long as the consciousness had a beginning , denoting an alternative, value would always be possible, and that the existence of the consciousness would necessitate value qua value.

I think there's a little rationalism that can enter when debating this topic. We are projecting into unknown territory, after all.

Except for the "immortal (and indestructible) robot" device by Rand, there is not much to go on about immortality from O'ist literature, apart from your own reasoned experience.

We know implicitly that *too much* of something reduces its worth to one--psychologically.

Simple one, the sense of taste: having too much of your favorite pie lessens its appeal. Or: While you would e.g. enjoy seeing your kids/grandchildren graduate from college, how many scores or hundreds of great, great ... grandchildren, which you have lived long enough to be aware of, would severely curtail your enjoyment of the same events, in future? How many dozens of professions and careers would it take to reduce the pleasure/pride in productive work? What would then be the state of one's self-esteem?   Many further questions.

I found a short item from ITOE which bears out this theory of an inverse ratio between value and time. Where one's time, part of one's conventional lifespan, is one "currency" that "one invests in one's values" - an unlimited expanse of lifespan would therefore lower a value's emotional intensity.

Obversely, less time corresponds with higher value.

In short, Quality of one's life (as man qua man) is more important than Quantity. I do concur that having both can be feasible - and desirable ... for a period I can only speculate.

 

"Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one’s lifespan, it is a part of one’s life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it".

“Concepts of Consciousness,”

Edited August 13 by whYNOT

[tadmjones]

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

I think there's a little rationalism that can enter when debating this topic. We are projecting into unknown territory, after all.

Except for the "immortal (and indestructible) robot" device by Rand, there is not much to go on about immortality from O'ist literature, apart from your own reasoned experience.

We know implicitly that *too much* of something reduces its worth to one--psychologically.

Simple one, the sense of taste: having too much of your favorite pie lessens its appeal. Or: While you would e.g. enjoy seeing your kids/grandchildren graduate from college, how many scores or hundreds of great, great ... grandchildren, which you have lived long enough to be aware of, would severely curtail your enjoyment of the same events, in future? How many dozens of professions and careers would it take to reduce the pleasure/pride in productive work? What would then be the state of one's self-esteem?   Many further questions.

I found a short item from ITOE which bears out this theory of an inverse ratio between value and time. Where one's time, part of one's conventional lifespan, is one "currency" that "one invests in one's values" - an unlimited expanse of lifespan would therefore lower a value's emotional intensity.

Obversely, less time corresponds with higher value.

In short, Quality of one's life (as man qua man) is more important than Quantity. I do concur that having both can be feasible - and desirable ... for a period I can only speculate.

 

"Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one’s lifespan, it is a part of one’s life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it".

“Concepts of Consciousness,”

Given the context of the thought experiment , emotional estimation of value eventually overrides the rational pursuit thereof ?

[whYNOT]

15 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Given the context of the thought experiment , emotional estimation of value eventually overrides the rational pursuit thereof ?

The proposition - unlimited lifespan - I think rests on the premise that man's consciousness would also be identically and accordingly "unlimited".

However, the mind possesses "identity" - a *nature*.

Sensory, perceptual, volitional, conceptual,value-assessing, a subconscious, and psycho-physiological (emotionality), the entirety based on the biological: brain and nervous system. 

Over-riding the mind's total nature, to defy reality and existence, is the very meaning of IR-rationality.

----

Rand: "Values are the motivating power of man’s actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically.

Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations—like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly assessing his relationship to reality"...

"The form in which man experiences the reality of his values is pleasure".

----

"...his survival, psychologically as well as physically".

What I think would cause immense psychological/emotional harm, (mind-body)self-alienation, etc.,etc., if not what's called, "existential angst", would be the attempt to ~stretch~ consciousness (like a muscle), beyond its subconscious 'value-limits'. Instead of the beneficial, intended expansion of one's happiness via a (long-)prolonged lifespan the result would surely be misery and contemplation of an end, well before reaching the life-extension limits of the body.

 

 

Edited August 13 by whYNOT

[tadmjones]

12 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

The proposition - unlimited lifespan - rests on the premise that man's consciousness would also be identically and accordingly "unlimited".

However, the mind possesses "identity" - a *nature*.

Sensory, perceptual, volitional, conceptual,value-assessing, a subconscious, and psycho-physiological (emotionality), the entirety based on the biological: brain and nervous system. 

Over-riding or denying the mind's total nature, reality and existence, is the very meaning of IR-rationality.

----

Rand: "Values are the motivating power of man’s actions and a necessity of his survival, psychologically as well as physically.

Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations—like a sensitive guardian watching and constantly assessing his relationship to reality". AR

----

"...his survival, psychologically as well as physically".

What I think would cause immense psychological harm, (mind-body)self-alienation, etc.,etc., if not also, "existential angst", would be the attempt to ~stretch~ consciousness (like a muscle), beyond its subconscious 'value-limits'. Instead of the beneficial, intended prolonging of one's happiness via a (long-)prolonged lifespan the result would be misery and contemplation of an end, well before the life-extension limits of the body.

 

 

So.. yes? In the context of the thought experiment, emotionalism becomes the guide of action. An indestructible form of being would not act 'out of reason' , perhaps psychologically whim worship is rooted in an implicit idea of immortality, consequence-less actions have no effects and none meaningfully deleterious.

 

[Solvreven]

I think if you where a person that could not die..
It would be reasonable and moral to invent/discover a deathpill. If we still had the pshyque of a human as we know of today.

[Boydstun]

Thought experiments in which one imagines a frictionless plane for simplification and approximation to reality are a far cry from imagining surfaces of matter having friction and rubbing against each other and not generating heat or wear. An endlessly functioning machine or living organism is like that latter imagination. It invites one to imagine all the ways in which thermodynamics manifest in a machine or organism as not applying.* Such imagining as that is mental junk.

What about a machine or organism designed by us to last a billion years in its functioning, overcoming for that long all issues of wear and failure modes of materials, issues of energy reception and transformation, and issues of failures in self-repair abilities. Lets imagine also that its human designers structure its operations according to value rankings and value interconnections put into the machine's or organism's self-controller of its operations. And give it abilities lasting for a billion years that prevent it from falling into boredom or depression.

It could be said that such values are vicarious values in that they reflect design goals of its human designers, and those designers had authentic values. So here we could say that the vicarious values of the artificial machine or artificial organism required the life and values of its human designers. In this imagined case, as in our own construction in nature, value requires life and rightly conceptually presupposes life (the designers' lives and their intelligence).

In the case of organism, the artificial organism imagined here, does it have authentic values on account of being alive? No. Not during its first interval, which is a billion years long. For during that interval of life, it is incapable of dying. That is not real life and those are not authentic values, which obtain only for real life, which is to say, only for life under the continual potential for death.

 

 

Edited August 13 by Boydstun

[whYNOT]

23 hours ago, tadmjones said:

 perhaps psychologically whim worship is rooted in an implicit idea of immortality, consequence-less actions have no effects and none meaningfully deleterious.

 

Going back to the neo-mystics, secularists who had to give up on "Eternal Life", there's their way out: immortality through the means of 'science' - i.e. whim-worship. 

The notion "Death is a disease" seemed to me to only arrive quite recently, in this intellectually post-modernist and post-religionist era. 

Edited August 14 by whYNOT

[necrovore]

I don't think "immortality" is achievable.

I think "agelessness" may be achievable, meaning that one's body would never grow old, but if you don't die of old age or the illnesses that go with it, there are still plenty of other things that can kill you.

I don't think agelessness would change anything as far as philosophy is concerned. Life would still be conditional, ethics would still be necessary.