First some general comments. My educational background is in Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science at a university level. What is your educational background if I may ask? It might help me better understand where you are coming from.
Trained in electrical engineering and management, and worked (until this March) as the QC supervisor for a food-ingredients manufacturer. Besides a smattering of introductory BUGE subjects with associated readings, plus Objectivism, my further knowledge of the prevailing schools of psychology is less than yours. My lay-researching of biology is a little more substantial, though hardly in depth as befitting a real biologist. From that, I am totally certain of two sets of facts:
I know that evolution is essentially a series of mistakes in replication that were later found to serve the expediency of the moment, and so it is hardly surprising that in addition to the incredible adaptations and breath-taking precision there is also a bucketload of kludgy inefficiencies, structures that would get a first-year engineering student instantly flunked, and legacy systems that once served a purpose but which are now balls and chains with tendencies to muck up the smooth operation of other systems. Whatever exists in the brain from conception and development will reflect that just as much as every other part of the body - hardly material to be taken for granted and held exempt from being questioned!
I also know that the faculty of consciousness is real - in particular, that human consciousness is also capable of being volitional and conceptual, where full adulthood consists of volitionally taking total responsibility for conceptual content and values formation, and hence of action to match. The whole point about consciousness in general is to learn about what exists in reality and respond to that with action in more depth and greater timeliness than DNA-programmed action can hope to match. Even without awareness of philosophy I can justifiably look at the concept of innate knowledge beyond the most rudimentary levels with a very jaundiced eye because such a thing would very strongly tend to defeat the purpose of consciousness. With the awareness of philosophy, particularly understanding of what a concept is and how the existence of human volition is essential to their formation and validity, I can dismiss the notion of innate concepts outright as a matter of both philosophical and biological principle. Thus whatever validity the idea of innate behaviours may have will be limited to crude and short-range actions, arising from circumstances that recur so often across many generations that it is safe for DNA to take care of the actions required and that consciousness need not concern itself with them - noting also the above caveat on kludges etc.
Any school of psychology that expects to be taken seriously has to begin by accepting those two sets of facts. I automatically dismiss any notion of “higher realms”, any hint of mysticism, any notion of a-priori concepts or thinking “through concepts”, any hint of considering emotion as a means of telling true versus false, or any other suggestion that runs totally counter to the context of how and why consciousness arose.
Do Objectivists reject these Jungian theories?
As something innate to people, yes - how they may develop after birth is another matter. It is much more likely that people, with the same kind of consciousness, beginning with learning the same obvious first-level reasoning skills by themselves and later trained to think with similar methods of thinking (be they rational or not), and facing the same types of circumstances, will draw the same kinds of conclusions that are then habitualised to form integral parts of character. I would not find it at all surprising if there were recurring themes of characters matching these common conditions. Nor would I find it surprising that there is indeed a set of underlying pre-dispositions that are part of the context for those characters. However, those dispositions would not be the bases for complex archetypes but just whatever concrete-bound reproduction-related preferences that came as a legacy of our non-volitional and semi-volitional ancestors.
Nevertheless, people can and do change their characters. We are volitional beings. We can go back and revise every single conclusion we ever drew and every single value we have formed since our birth. It takes effort, sometimes a lifetime of it, but we can do it: Objectivism holds that man is a being of self-made soul. The only exception to that will be those crude reproduction-related issues of sexual preference and sexual identity, and there is strong debate about how much is actually innate – off the top of my head that while there’s definitely some that’s innate I’d say not a helluva lot else is, it being limited to what concrete-level shapes and sounds (ie male or female) someone finds pleasing or otherwise either in another or themselves plus what one can and cannot physically do with one’s body. It would be later conclusion-drawing that would expand this into something bigger, and that’s within the realm of volitional control.
All this is the material for an objective examination of psychology, psychoepistemology, neurology, and so on. I’m not qualified to say more, so I wont.
I’m not sure what innate perceptual-level values and behaviours are.
Perceptual-level means cognition of individual objects and actions. Conceptual level means cognition of classes, beginning with classes of perceptual-level objects and actions, and later also cognition of classes of classes.
Actually there’s no single agreed definition of knowledge but if you like we can use your definition for the purposes of this discussion. Is that an Objectivists definition?
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.
No, I’m afraid I can’t quite accept that analogy. Firstly it would not be the consequences that are considered knowledge but the programming itself. In the babies case there is a program somehow stored in the babies mind that facilitates suckling which admittedly which may or may not be knowledge depending on whether the baby is conscious and/or thinking (according to your definition of knowledge).
You’re assuming brain = mind. Objectivism rejects that assumption. The mind, that which actually takes the mental grasp, is born tabula rasa. What the brain can do before the mind asserts full control is a separate matter. Growth as a baby includes the first steps of learning how to assert that control, such as learning to use ones limbs or focus ones eyes, which until then will be acting in ways not fully controlled by the mind. In the interim the mind will be a observer (with decreasing levels of passivity) and the brain will be doing its own thing (with decreasing levels of primacy) – if it didn’t then serious medical intervention would be required, as you note. Over time the mind will be constantly putting two and two together, then using the conclusions to assert control ever more successfully. Some actions that the mind can take control of will remain semi-voluntary, such as breathing, while others will in time become fully voluntary and the original brain circuits involved be deactivated (perhaps physically dissolved, too, but that’s pure educated guesswork). For instance, when was the last time you looked at a woman’s breast and then instantly thought about lunch, or conversely, instantly clapped eyes on the nearest woman’s chest after your stomach began growling?
I am of course taking your word for it that a human baby actively seeks out nipples right from birth, as opposed to a nipple being placed in the mouth and the suckling action alone being innate, followed by easy conclusion-drawing and subsequent searching out of nipples. I don’t have children of my own, nor did the young mothers I know breast-feed their children, so I can’t easily check that first-hand. I wouldn’t dismiss it either, since I have seen it and comparable activities in other creatures, such as how barely-formed marsupial infants climb of their own accord into the pouch and hunt for their mothers’ nipples within.
I would suggest what is going on in the babies mind is something like this:
(perception of hunger) + (perception of shape of nipple) → (trigger/call suckling subroutine)
Brain yes, mind no – not until the mind starts watching what the brain is doing and realising what other bodily sensations are associated with the whole affair.
But what if human being come preconfigured with certain Jungian archetypes (such as the archetype of a mother) which a human being is predisposed to ascribe a certain value to, do not such concepts deserve inclusion in a discussion about codes of values?
If they existed and were immutable, sure. But they don’t (not as immutable predispositions), so no. As for wanting to be a mother, for example, the widespread and nearly systematic lack of that in almost every western country is becoming an issue, particularly among xenophobes and religious fundamentalists who misuse the data for their own agendas. I think it more likely a lifestyle option that a woman is totally free to choose, which she had been often pressured into doing by others in the past and now (along with reliable birth control) which pressure many women are not experiencing as strongly. The xenophobes et al are going to get more and more shrill in the future, particularly relating to births of “muslim babies”.
By the way, if anyone knows where I can get a text file of Atlas Shrugged so I can do text searches could you please post a link! I have already paid for both the physical book and the audio book of Atlas Shrugged. It would be useful to have a text file of it. 
There was a CD-ROM available for a while that had a high proportion of the older Objectivist writings on it. It was withdrawn from sale last year, but I think there might be a new issue in the works if I recall correctly. In the mean time, if you’re lucky you could pick up a second-hand copy.
Do Objectivists permit themselves to ascribe value to something solely or in part due to the emotion impact it has on them?
Solely, never. In part, all the time –major examples are choice of career and choice of lover. My point was that emotion cannot tell you what is true or false, and that reason had to take primacy and scrutinise the available options prior to final choice based on which option had the better emotional impact.
What would you prefer to do:
A. Walk on a treadmill in a gym for 2 hours facing a brick wall or
B. Walk along a pristine tropical beach on a sunny day for 2 hours.
In all seriousness, I’d pick A. I am not a fan of tropical conditions. I was in Brisbane several years ago and I hated the climate even though it was only August. I’m a dry-heat guy, as the cliché goes.
PS: Why do you refer to her as Miss Rand? She was married for most of her life after all.
The world knows her as Ayn Rand, not Ayn O’Connor. That’s how she presented herself to the world, so that’s how I continue to refer to her.
JJM
