Some more thoughts on existence. How can that which is not conscious cause its own part which is conscious? (Existence causes conscious beings.) Because it causes consciousness (of our reality) so much beneath its own reality (the universe) that it can be considered (not known) an unconscious process. I am still not clear on whether Objectivists think of existence as everything or as the objective reality (nature) or as the universe. This clarification is very important because consciousness is reflected differently through the model. We are subconscious to Nature but are so subconscious to the Universe that can be considered to be caused unconsciously by it (the unconscious cause but a conscious effect). It is very important for me to differentiate subconscious, conscious, and superconscious. Our brains or minds are subconscious because we do not experience them directly in our consciousness (see P.P.S. below). Our consciousness is our bodies and the life that we live in the market (with others). Our superconsciousness is our industries and objective reality that spans the Earth. A great example of superconsciousness is when Dagny thinks of herself as the railroad industry. From Atlas Shrugged (digital): “We are the soul, of which railroads, copper mines, steel mills and oil wells are the body – and they are living entities that beat day and night, like our hearts, in the sacred function of supporting human life, but only so long as they remain our body, only so long as they remain the expression, the reward and the property of achievement.” So, again, returning to the question of unconscious existence: it is not that existence is unconscious, it is simply unconscious of us, like we are unconscious of our particular atoms and subatomic particles from which our bodies are composed.
P.S. I am not against Capitalism. It just seems to me that Republicans today are not a great cause of it or as great of its leaders. I would rather support Capitalism by pure Objectivists.
P.P.S. Our minds are subconscious. From Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche (Kaufmann 1966:24, original italics): "a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks; but that this “it” is precisely the famous old “ego” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “it thinks”–even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the grammatical habit: “Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently–” " In other words, “thinking” is what we call whatever the mind does, and it’s what the mind does itself, not necessarily what we do. What we do is interpret into consciousness what our minds do.
As a note of warning: I try to fit, if I can, all and any metaphors into my model literally. That is, I show how a rhetorical trope can be expressed as a conviction rather than a belief. The criticism of this being “anti-concept” or “context-dropping” is only adequate if my concepts polemically polarize us or confuse contexts. I argue that we agree on the terms and relations of the contexts, and thus what I have shown are neither “anti-concept” nor “context-dropping.” If I am still not clear, please ask questions and criticize my thoughts, so I explain myself more thoroughly and help interpret my thinking into yours.
As a side note and an interesting observation, sleep is a state when subconsciousness becomes consciousness, viz., we become our minds in lucid dreaming.
There appears to be a slight vitriol here toward Capitalism, and more directly toward Objectivism.
Historically, the Luddites became known for attacking what they did not understand. When the labor-saving device made their debut on the scene, naturally these machines where built to perform the tasked being performed of the day, only more efficiently than what was being performed tediously and less efficiently.
Did the Luddites embrace this new advance in the application of reason to the problem of production? Quite contraire. The proud new owners of these fine pieces of machinery enabling higher productivity than previously possible often found themselves the victims of vandals.
The mechanical weaving loom embodied the new knowledge of the time. It was attacked by those who desired things to remain the same. In this sense, the Luddites resisted change. The Luddites did not want to change. Their response was to try to destroy the physical symbol of this change, in their feeble effort to stop the change. Now while they were successful at destroying others private property, new machines were being produced and innovations implemented along the way to improve their efficiency. Unfortunately, sometimes the owners of these machines were attacked instead of, or in addition to.
What has any of this to do with Capitalism or Objectivism? The analogy is apt. Keep in mind, the mechanical loom was the embodiment of the new idea. The owners were savvy enough to recognize the benefit it would bring them. Before the idea could be embodied into a machine, or another mind recognize the potential it offered, it first had to be discovered. This is key.
Capitalism has never been given a full political test run, but still continues to operate to this day, The black-market, which runs when arbitrary decrees seek to throttle various aspects of it, arise under nearly every political regime, where a full embracement of Capitalism is verboten.
So what do the modern day ‘Luddites’ have to fear? It is simple. The moral underpinnings that will support Capitalism in the future, the same moral underpinnings that ground Objectivism as a philosophy proper to man. To paraphrase Ayn Rand speaking through John Galt, morality needs to be discovered. Well, Miss Rand has discovered the foundations for morality. The opponents of this morality may obfuscate, misrepresent, and even muddy the waters - but the waters will settle, the misrepresentations will be exposed, and the feeble evasions exposed as attempts being unclear and confusing at best. This does not wayside the fact that such a morality has been discovered. While Aristotle’s Law’s of Logic were relegated to relative obscurity for nearly a millennia, it is hard to fathom Miss Rand’s discovery being relegated to the same fate.
A misapplication of “A is A” along the way is, quite simply, a misapplication of “A is A” along the way.
If the owners of new mechanical looms are said to be savvy enough to recognize the benefits it would bring to ‘them’, then it would follow that the Luddirtes were savvy enough to see the misery it wouold bring to themselves, too.
Mechanical looms tossed people out of jobs. as does much or automation. That automation can serve as a benefit to all (and not just the 'them-people orf invention) is an issue that must be discussed in a collective, cost-benefit sort of way…
If the owners of new mechanical looms are said to be savvy enough to recognize the benefits it would bring to ‘them’, then it would follow that the Luddirtes were savvy enough to see the misery it wouold bring to themselves, too.
Mechanical looms tossed people out of jobs. as does much or automation. That automation can serve as a benefit to all (and not just the 'them-people orf invention) is an issue that must be discussed in a collective, cost-benefit sort of way…
This is a pertinent issue. I quote from The Divine Right of Stagnation by Nathaniel Branden (Rand, Ayn, Nathaniel Branden. The Virtue of Selfishness. 1964: 117f, original italics):
Among the arguments used by those who long for a “pastoral” existence, is a doctrine which, translated into explicit statement, consists of: the divine right of stagnation.
This doctrine is illustrated in the following incident. Once, on a plane trip, I became engaged in conversation with an executive of a labor union. He began to decry the “disaster” of automation, asserting that increasing thousands of workers would be permanently unemployed as a result of new machines and that “something ought to be done about it.” I answered that this was a myth that had been exploded many times; that the introduction of new machines invariably resulted in increasing the demand for labor as well as in raising the general standard of living; that this was demonstrable theoretically and observable historically. I remarked that automation increased the demand for skilled labor relative to unskilled labor, and that doubtless many workers would need to learn new skills. “But,” he asked indignantly, “what about the workers who don’t want to learn new skills? Why should they have troubles?”
This means that the ambition, the farsightedness, the drive to do better and still better, the living energy of creative men are to be throttled and suppressed—for the sake of men who have “thought enough” and “learned enough” and do not wish to be concerned with the future nor with the bothersome question of what their jobs depend on.
Capitalism’s tempo (likened to the hectic Nietzsche’s tempo, for me) is greater than that of Socialism. Some people just want to be lazy and invincibly ignorant. Others want to evolve.
Since I am reading Nietzsche right now, might as well quote him. From Beyond Good and Evil (Kaufmann 1966:39, original italics):
It is hard to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotagati [as the current of the Ganges moves] among men who think and live differently, namely, kurmagati [as the tortoise moves], or at best “the way frogs walk,” mandukagati (I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself!)–and one should be cordially grateful for the good will to some subtlety of interpretation.
An interesting Subjectivist idea particularly relevant to morals, ibid. 90-1: "What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good–the atavism of a more ancient ideal. […] Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil. […] Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants–love God as I love him, as his son! What are morals to us sons of God!” "
Here is Nietzsche’s critique of ethics and morality, ibid., 97-8, original italics: “the real problems of morality […] emerge only when we compare many moralities. In all “science of morals” so far one thing was lacking, strange as it may sound: the problem of morality itself […] What the philosophers called “a rational foundation for morality” and tried to supply was, seen in the right light, merely a scholarly variation of the common faith in the prevalent morality; a new means of expression for this faith; and thus just another fact within a particular morality; indeed, in the last analysis a kind of denial that this morality might ever be considered problematic–certainly the very opposite of an examination, analysis, questioning, and vivisection of this very faith” and, ibid., 100, original italics: “Every morality is, as opposed to laisser aller [letting go], a bit of tyranny against “nature”; also against “reason”; but this in itself is no objection, as long as we do not have some other morality which permits us to decree that every kind of tyranny and unreason is impermissible. [etc]”
The idea here is that, the way I interpret it, without using one’s soul (see P.S.), one could lose it, ibid., 20, original italics: “declare war, relentless war unto death, against the atomistic need” which still leads a dangerous afterlife in places where no one suspects it, just like the more celebrated “metaphysical need”: one must also, first of all, give the finishing stroke to that other and more calamitous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the soul atomism. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible,
as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of “the soul” at the same time, and thus to renounce one of the most ancient and venerable hypotheses-as happens frequently to clumsy naturalists who can hardly touch on “the soul” without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as “mortal soul” "
P.S. To differentiate mind from soul, one needs to see what organs these fields correlate to: brain and heart, respectively. Although I originally stated (but deleted) that they contrast, now I am of a mind to say that the mind and the soul are very similar, yet distinct. Their similarity is exactly in that they could be lost if not used. If one stops being rational (e.g., being an Objectivist), one could lose one’s mind (literally, not necessarily figuratively). Whereas, if one stops feeling emotions, one could lose one’s soul.
This is a pertinent issue. I quote from The Divine Right of Stagnation by Nathaniel Branden (Rand, Ayn, Nathaniel Branden. The Virtue of Selfishness. 1964: 117f, original italics):
Capitalism’s tempo (likened to the hectic Nietzsche’s tempo, for me) is greater than that of Socialism. Some people just want to be lazy and invincibly ignorant. Others want to evolve.
It’s not a laziness vs evolution issue. Rather, the advance of techology serves and hurts whom? If Luddites qua metaphor stand for ‘any tech innovation is bad’, then it’s equally wrong to assume any tech’s goodness.
It’s not a laziness vs evolution issue. Rather, the advance of techology serves and hurts whom? If Luddites qua metaphor stand for ‘any tech innovation is bad’, then it’s equally wrong to assume any tech’s goodness.
Technological goodness by itself is bad. Just as anything by itself is bad. (I am arguing the same about Objectivism.) Technological progress must be coupled with spiritual evolution, viz., the evolution of consciousness.
A pertinent quote from Beyond Good and Evil, 88: “Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a good deal of it is rather the condition of all being good.” Such Pharisaism can be either technological or spiritual. Either one is the right of stagnation.
Technological goodness by itself is bad. Just as anything by itself is bad. (I am arguing the same about Objectivism.) Technological progress must be coupled with spiritual evolution, viz., the evolution of consciousness.
A pertinent quote from Beyond Good and Evil, 88: “Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a good deal of it is rather the condition of all being good.” Such Pharisaism can be either technological or spiritual. Either one is the right of stagnation.
I think you’ll have far more success in ridding yourself of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and getting down to the basic question: a particular technology for whom?
I think you’ll have far more success in ridding yourself of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and getting down to the basic question: a particular technology for whom?
What’s the big deal? Just say what you think about technologies. Aren’t they robotizing humankind? Or humankind wants to be robotized?
No. ‘Robotizing’ is a value-judgment. Tech also makes life easier.
It does make life easier, and comfort is indispensable. How much of this comfort is too much though? Is comfort more important than being human? Do you realize that they are making bionic humans nowadays? And making military men into people without hearts and emotions. Perfect killing machines. Similarly, people give up their lives for technology. Here is a video you should watch, if you haven’t see it.
Unlike the caring Romans, Normans, Vandals, Huns, Mongols and Spartans?
Do you want to go back? Only it’s worse now. Those people at least had families, wives, children. Nowadays being single is the standard. And I think Vandals were Slavs, pissed off at how Romans treated _slav_es. Mongols were Slavs as well. Only they set Europe into the Dark Age. Besides, I thought history was not important for Objectivists. Either you look at the historical context or you don’t. I am following you here.
Besides, I thought history was not important for Objectivists.
Why do you get stuff like this?!
Either you look at the historical context or you don’t. I am following you here.
History is critical. You cannot have philosophy and political theories without having a deep grasp of history. History comes first and foremost. Empirical data is the only basis on which to build any knowledge.
History is critical. You cannot have philosophy and political theories without having a deep grasp of history. History comes first and foremost. Empirical data is the only basis on which to build any knowledge.
Hm, then I have misunderstood you. I thought that the “theory of history” of Rand was that individuals are better off without strict government regulations. Has there ever been a society like so? No, never. And the only example you are going for is America, which is mixed economy. Please correct me, if there had ever been anything close to free-market capitalism historically.
Hm, then I have misunderstood you. I thought that the “theory of history” of Rand was that individuals are better off without strict government regulations. Has there ever been a society like so? No, never. And the only example you are going for is America, which is mixed economy. Please correct me, if there had ever been anything close to free-market capitalism historically.
So, your reasoning goes as follows:
A mixed economy is the closest we have come to a free economy, but we have never been totally free. Thus, Objectivism is wrong about its theory of history, which says that people are better off without government regulation. Then, because the theory of history is wrong, Objectivism doesn’t consider history to be important.
If this reflects your thinking, it is total nonsense.