REPOST: Rand & Kant-Philosophy of Religion (long)
Ed Matthews
On Fri, 24 May 1996, Ernest Brown wrote:
> Leonard Peikoff's book, OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND, is a
> fairly decent overview of her thought, but it illuminates her weaknesses.
> The section on religion, especially pages 30-33, really show ignorance of
> the Thomistic heritage of the Christian religion and its influence in
> Western Culture, ironically enough including Rand's thought. Rand and
> Peikoff assert that ALL religious believers insist on "the primacy of
> consciousness" (i.e., reality is controlled by, and dependent on, a mind)
> vs. "the primacy of existence" (reality is external to any mind),
> conveniently forgetting that Thomas asserted that God's EXISTENCE is
> primary, not God's consciousness.
This is utterly false.
"Existence exists" does _not_ mean that some type of reality is real,
without specifying what that reality is. Rand means that the world we
see, hear, touch and experience is real, without any prior validation.
The primacy of existence means choosing to accept the validity of
the evidence of the senses _without_ qualification or limitation. I
suggest you re-read the first part of the first chapter of OPAR, in which
he examines the implications of the observation, "There is something of
which I am aware."
Thus, contrary to any claim to stressing the primacy of god's "existence"
over his consciousness, the entire issue of god's existence is based on
the primacy of consciousness. Why does god exist, in their view?
Because a book, or society, or their faith, or their feelings say so?
That is, quite frankly, a massive equivocation to equate that with the
method of reason, of analyzing the evidence of the senses.
> To continue with this illumination of the errors of Objectivism with regard
> to classical Christianity, here is Rand herself...
>
> What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his
> Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell
> from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares
> that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge he acquired a
> mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of
> good and evil he became a moral being. He was sentenced
> to earn his bread by his labor he became a productive being.
> He was sentenced to experience desire he acquired the
> capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn
> him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy all the cardinal
> values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth
> of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not
> his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his
> nature as man. Whatever he was that robot in the Garden
> of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without
> labor, without love he was not man.
> Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained
> the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard,
> are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt,
> they charge, is that he lives.
> Ayn Rand, Galt s speech - For the New Intellectual, pb. pg. 13
>
> Mankind is NOT judged for any of the things that Rand mentions, just the
> opposite. It is the unwillingness to face the alienation of man from man
> in the intellectual and social dimensions of human existence that results
> in judgement.
Judgement by whom? By God? Where was the "alienation of man from man"
in the garden of Eden, when God threw Adam and Eve out of paradise?
> Engaging in the "straw man" fallacy indicates to me that
It is not a straw man. Just ask the orthodox Christians.
> Finally, in response to the Objectivist view of the Middle Ages, I'd say
> that science is one of Christianity's greatest achievements.
Really! I'm sure Copernicus, Galileo, etc. would agree. After all, look
how quickly the Catholic Church officially recognized that the Earth
revolved around the sun. Look it up. It was only in the last few years,
I think after 1990!
> The Enlightenment's greatest figures never were able to adequately
> answer why science exclusively arose and maintained itself without
> stillbirth in the Christian West , and since that time skeptics have been
> strangely silent on this point.
How about the Islamic middle east, which for a while, under the influence
of Aristotle, surpassed the technology and knowledge available to Western
eyes?
------------------------
Ed Matthews
e...@gladstone.uoregon.edu
Ernest Brown
In order to clear up a few things before Bill and I present our argument,
we have decided to present our premises for examination. I apologize for
the length of this article, but I find it preferable to splitting it up
into segments that will be scattered throughout the newsgroup out of proper
order. Bill Ramey and I are Christians who are philosophically committed
to the moderate realism of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition.
MY PREMISES IN THIS DEBATE: (Part I)
I've mentioned this before in discussions with Objectivists:
I accept as axiomatically true the following statements:
1) The law of identity (A=A)
2) The law of non-contradiction (A cannot = non-A)
3) the law of excluded middle (either A or non-A)
4) The law of inference (A=B, B=C, then A=C)
We certainly do not desire to criticize Rand without any positive
commentary. First, I don't believe that any rational analysis of a
philosopher is *destructive* if carried out properly, even if the
conclusion is to reject a philosopher's contentions. Secondly, Bill and I
agree with her about her contentions regarding:
A) The Primacy of Existence. (Smith, ATHEISM, AYN RAND AND OTHER HERESIES,
p. 198)
B) Reason over emotion as the means of human cognition.
C) Philosophy is the Queen of Sciences. (Ibid. pp 197-98)
D) Immanuel Kant as the prime source for most modern philosophical errors.
E) Aristotle (and his heir Aquinas) being the philosopher most worthy of
emulation.
F) The corrupt effect subjectivism has on modern education.
G) The primacy of individual rights as guarantees of liberty.
Rand asserts that there are three primary axiomatic concepts, existence,
identity, and consciousness. Given that she is a moderate realist, who
believes in the objective, mind-independent existence of the world (as I
do), then we can draw some interesting conclusions, which will come later.
First, there must come some air-cleaning...
Leonard Peikoff's book, OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND, is a
fairly decent overview of her thought, but it illuminates her weaknesses.
The section on religion, especially pages 30-33, really show ignorance of
the Thomistic heritage of the Christian religion and its influence in
Western Culture, ironically enough including Rand's thought. Rand and
Peikoff assert that ALL religious believers insist on "the primacy of
consciousness" (i.e., reality is controlled by, and dependent on, a mind)
vs. "the primacy of existence" (reality is external to any mind),
conveniently forgetting that Thomas asserted that God's EXISTENCE is
primary, not God's consciousness. (For example, God can't "think" another
God into existence since that violates the principle of non
contradiction, among other things.)
in judgement. Engaging in the "straw man" fallacy indicates to me that
Objectivism needs to put reason in practice. "Judge, and prepare to be
judged."
I don't understand how a philosophy can claim sole ownership of rationality
while engaging in such flagrant logical fallacies. I have read most of
Rand's philosophical works, and while I agree with the Aristotelian
realism that forms its base, I think she went wildly astray in trying to
marry it to atheism. As a point of information, I believe that morality is
derived from the nature of man, and I hardly consider Aristotle and
Aquinas "outdated," as trendy academics do, since I accept THEIR derivation
of morality from human nature.
PLAYBOY: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered
anything of constructive value to human life?
RAND: Qua religion, no in the sense of blind belief, belief
unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the
conclusions of reason.
Considering that this is *not* the historical Christian notion of "faith,"
but a late addition that has found its way into modern Christianity, I
don't accept her characterization of "faith" in any way, shape or form. No
Christian has to, or is obligated to by the premises found in the
Scriptures or Christian theology.
Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the
negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an
early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the
universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and
a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men
graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as
philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points.
They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate,
but in a very contradictory context and, on a very how should I
say it? dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith."
It's nice to know that the Pope and Ayn Rand are in agreement on this
point, since what she's defined is a deformed, irrational notion of
"faith." [which, Biblically speaking, is 'confident trust and assurance' in
God and his works, not 'blind belief without proof'] This particular
perversion of thought has a formal name in philosophy and theology:
FIDEISM: A doctrine of Abbe' Bautain which attempted to justify
the teachings of Christianity by the theory that all knowledge
rested upon premises accepted by faith. The premises of religion
are to be found in the tradition of the Synagogue and Church.
This tradition *needs no rational criticism* because it is self-
critical. THE DOCTRINE WAS CONDEMNED IN 1840 BY {POPE} GREGORY
XVI. (DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, ed by Dagobert D. Runes, 1983,
p.124, emphasis mine
Fideism was popularized in Protestant circles by Soren A. Kierkegaard,
founder of existentialism. (and a fan of Kant!) It has become popular among
certain "fundamentalist"/conservative Protestants as a way of avoiding
intellectual justification, which is ironic, since its Kantian premises
about our knowledge of the world are fundamentally hostile to historic
Christianity. (I say this as a Protestant myself, it's a genuine problem
but not one that is allied to Biblical Christianity)
Finally, in response to the Objectivist view of the Middle Ages, I'd say
that science is one of Christianity's greatest achievements. Recent
discoveries in the history of science demonstrate that it actually came
about in the High Middle Ages, due to the presumption of a guiding
intelligence in the cosmos that did not over-determine the course of
natural events. (This discovery is a real-life example of intellectual
heroism that would put the fictional Galt to shame, but that's for another
time] The Enlightenment's greatest figures never were able to adequately
Ernest Brown
The citation for Galt's speech should be page 137 of FNI, not "13." I'll
be more careful of word processor dropouts in the future.
Ernest Brown
Michael Huemer
Ernest Brown <c50...@showme.missouri.edu> writes:
> 1) The law of identity (A=A)
> 2) The law of non-contradiction (A cannot = non-A)
> 3) the law of excluded middle (either A or non-A)
> 4) The law of inference (A=B, B=C, then A=C)
Perhaps you should clarify your thought by specifying what "A" stands
for in all of these.
> D) Immanuel Kant as the prime source for most modern philosophical errors.
Poor Kant sure has a lot laid at his door.
I think you should be looking more at David Hume as your suspect.
>Finally, in response to the Objectivist view of the Middle Ages, I'd say
>that science is one of Christianity's greatest achievements. Recent
>discoveries in the history of science demonstrate that it actually came
>about in the High Middle Ages, due to the presumption of a guiding
...
*Cough, choke*, excuse me?
Philosophy and science began in ancient Greece, and considering the
advancement of their philosophy and devotion to reason (particularly
in comparison with the 'philosophy' of other cultures at that time),
if it had continued unabated, we should now be at an amazing level of
scientific development. I often wonder how much we've lost. Anyway,
unfortunately, Greek philosophy was superseded by *Christianity* after
Emperor Constantine converted, and thence followed the Dark Ages. Or
are you forgetting that Christianity held sway over all of European
culture for *a thousand years* during which there was practically zero
intellectual advancement, whether scientific or philosophical?
>time] The Enlightenment's greatest figures never were able to adequately
>answer why science exclusively arose and maintained itself without
>stillbirth in the Christian West , and since that time skeptics have been
>strangely silent on this point.
Are you also forgetting episodes like the Church's condemnation of
Galileo? Descartes suppressed his own work on physics after hearing
about it, and who knows how many other would-be scientists were nipped
in the bud by this sort of thing? Fortunately, Galilean physics
managed to prevail *in spite of* Christianity, not because of it.
Given the church's treatment of the founder of modern physical
science, I find it hard to believe that you think Christianity was
somehow responsible for the development of modern science!
--
^-----^
Michael Huemer <o...@rci.rutgers.edu> / O O \
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~owl | V |
\ /
Bill Ramey
Michael,
>Philosophy and science began in ancient Greece ... if it had
>continued unabated, we should now be at an amazing level of
>scientific development.
This begs the question of why science did not in fact continue
unabated. Despite the implied assumption that Christianity ended the
Greek age of reason, the Greeks themselves were responsible for the
stillbirth of science. Although there were important achievements in
science (for example, Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the earth's
circumference within 200 miles), the Greeks viewed science as too
abstract to be of any use in living the good life or attaining virtue
[1], the main concerns of the civic-minded Greeks; after all, how does
knowing the circumference of the earth help one to live the good life?
That is why philosophy in the Hellenistic era came to be dominated by
Epicureanism and Stoicism, philosophies of consolation that emphasize
the cultivation of virtue.
Moreover, slavery impeded the development of technology, because the
educated classes had no impetus to use scientific knowledge to solve
problems. In short, the ethos of modern science did not exist in
ancient Greece. For the Greeks, knowledge is virtue. The Baconian
concept of knowledge as power would not come until the late middle
ages.
>I often wonder how much we've lost.
A contrary-to-fact fallacy. Something has to be gained before it can
be lost, and there is no evidence that the Greeks would have developed
science as we now know it. The fact is that they did not.
>Or are you forgetting that Christianity held sway over all of
>European culture for *a thousand years* during which there was
>practically zero intellectual advancement, whether scientific or
>philosophical?
Actually, the level of intellectual achievement in art, philosophy,
science, architecture, law, and literature during that thousand-year
period is quite stunning, and it had an impact on Western civilization
that cannot be overstated. The idea of a thousand-year period of
darkness in which there was "zero intellectual advancement"--weasel
words such as "practically" notwithstanding--is a myth. Any history
of Western civilization textbook will suffice to disabuse one of the
myth. The text I used in college states: "The High Middle Ages ...
was one of the most creative epochs in the history of human endeavor"
(Lerner, 246). Just to mention a few highlights of the "Dark Ages":
+ The Carolingian Renaissance
+ The preservation and translation of ancient texts
+ The first universities in the West
+ The introduction of writing to Europe by Christianity
+ The rise of Christian humanism: Chaucer, Dante, Boccaccio
+ The laws of thermodynamics
+ Impetus theory
+ The invention of eyeglasses, clocks, paper, etc.
+ Thomas Aquinas and the introduction of Aristotle to the West
+ Gothic architecture
+ New techniques in painting
And so on--this just scratches the surface. I have no doubt that many
will protest here and rhapsodize over Galileo, the industrial
revolution, the Pentium, the invention of sliced bread, etc. as
superior to anything that came out of the Middle Ages. But it should
be intuitively obvious that pitting one era against another is a
rather pointless activity--a kind of temporal ethnocentrism. What's
past is prologue. The fact is that the Middle Ages was a time of
great intellectual achievement.
>Given the church's treatment of the founder of modern physical
>science, I find it hard to believe that you think Christianity
>was somehow responsible for the development of modern science!
I'm not sure how the Galileo affair vitiates the claim that modern
science originated in the High Middle Ages and hence has Christian
connotations. It's not a surprising claim; even Whitehead and
Oppenheimer recognized a connection between Christianity and science,
and recent developments in the philosophy of science, especially the
reassessment of Pierre Duhem's once-suppressed multi-volume work on
science in the middle ages, _Le Systeme Du Monde_, support the
connection even further.[3] The following quote is rather long, but
it drives home the point:
[In 1330] John Buridan took the chair of philosophy at the
Sorbonne. As was the custom of other professors, he taught by
offering a commentary on various works of Aristotle. One of the
most important of those works is a cosmology, usually referred to
as DE CAELO or ON THE HEAVENS. There Aristotle states most
emphatically that the universe is eternal and that therefore
there had been no beginning to the foremost of its motions which
is the daily revolution of the celestial sphere.
Buridan was not, of course, the first Christian to read Aristotle
and to reject his teaching about the eternity of the universe and
of its motion. For Christians it had been for many centuries an
explicit tenet of their faith that the history of the universe is
strictly finite. For this is the meaning of the phrase that God
created the universe out of nothing and in time. But Buridan did
what no Christian philosopher or theologian had done before him.
He reflected on the manner in which motion was given to the
celestial bodies, once they were created.
Buridan's thinking was genuinely scientific because it was about
the *manner* in which bodies moved. In substance he stated that
in the beginning, when God made the heaven and earth, He imparted
to the celestial bodies a certain amount of impetus, by which
Buridan meant the equivalent of what later came to be called
momentum. Then he added that those bodies keep their momentum
undiminished because they move in a frictionless space. Such a
motion is an inertial motion. Buridan taught at the Sorbonne for
over twenty years and the same is true of Nicole Oresme, his most
important student and successor in the chair. Oresme faithfully
repeated Buridan's ideas in an even more famous series of
lectures. Copies of Buridan's and Oresme's commentaries on ON
THE HEAVENS can be found in such ancient university libraries as
Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge, Bologna ... and last but not least,
in Cracow. It was in Cracow that Copernicus learned about
inertial motion. He use it to explain why birds and clouds and
the very atmosphere do not fall behind on a fast-rotating and
even faster orbiting earth.
The formulation by Buridan of the idea of inertial motion is the
spark that functioned with respect to science as does the
sparkplug in an automobile.... That very spark or Buridan's idea
of inertial motion failed to turn up in any of the great ancient
cultures. The reason for this should seem obvious, if one
recalls the theological context in which that spark appeared in
Buridan's mind. All of those ancient cultures were pagan. The
essence of paganism, old and new, is that the universe is
eternal, that its motions are without beginning and without end.
Belief in creation out of nothing and in time is the very
opposite of paganism. Once that belief had become a widely
shared cultural consensus during the Middle Ages, it became
almost natural that there should arise the idea of inertial
motion. Certainly, the idea appeared very natural to Buridan, to
his contemporaries, and to the subsequent eight generations
between Buridan and Descartes. In the entire vast manuscript
tradition during that period there are but few instances of a
rejection of Buridan's ideas whereas its endorsements are
numerous. Insofar as that broad credal or theological consensus
is the work of Christianity, science is not Western, but
Christian. (Jaki, 7-8)
In other words, the ethos for modern science existed in the High
Middle Ages, and moreover it emerged out of a Christian context. No
one is suggesting that science did not exist in other cultures and
times; it certainly did--for example, in China, Greece, and the Middle
East. But one has to ask why modern science did not continue unabated
in those cultures and yet did continue in West. We've already seen
why it didn't in Greece. As for the Middle East, Arabic thought
became so heavily deterministic that it stifled the golden age of
Arabic science. The stillbirth of science in China is even more
interesting:
To someone who shared the values of Voltaire, it was extremely
puzzling that "rational" Confucian China, an ancient and settled
civilization with a long history of scholarship and a
demonstrated capacity for mechanical invention, should never have
developed science. The failure of the much admired classical
world to develop science in the modern sense could be blamed on
Christianity, but what was it to be blamed on in the case of
China? After all, science had flowered in monk-ridden Europe,
and it could hardly, therefore, be a particularly frail blossom;
why, then, not in China? The question was never satisfactorily
answered. It has since been largely ignored. (Inwagen, 53)
It's telling that science died in two cultures where Christianity had
no impact and yet survived "monk-ridden Europe." Not bad for a
religion that gave us the Dark Ages.
Endnotes
~~~~~~~~
[1] A good example of this attitude is the story associated with
Thales, who supposedly fell into a ditch while contemplating the
stars, and was chided by a young girl for having his head in the stars
and ignoring his feet on the ground. The story is probably
apocryphal, but it demonstrates the moral pragmatism of the ancient
Greeks, who looked upon scientific and philosophical abstraction as
arcane pursuits.
[2] The conflation of Catholic politics with Christianity is an
obvious category fallacy. One can point out that Copernicus' works
were published under Lutheran auspices. In fact, Galileo's _Dialogues
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems_ had the official blessing of
Catholic censors. That Pope Urban V, a close friend of Galileo's,
later forced him to recant is a sad fact of intellectual history; but
it hardly justifies the "Christianity is the evil oppressor of
science" myth.
[3] The suppression of Duhem's work is an example of how a secular
ethos can be just as intellectually oppressive as a religious one.
His works were suppressed by those who bought into the myth of the
Dark Ages.
Works Cited
~~~~~~~~~~~
Inwagen, Peter van. "Quam Dilecta." _God and the Philosophers_. Ed.
Thomas V. Morris. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.
Jaki, Stanley L. "Science: Western or What?" THE INTERCOLLEGIATE
REVIEW 26.1 (1990): 3-12.
Lerner, Robert E., Standish Meacham, and Edward McNall Burns.
_Western Civilizations_. Volume 1, 11th Edition. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1988.
---
Bill Ramey
"... the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather
than light ..."
---
Bill Ramey
Ernest Brown
On Thu, 23 May 1996, Ed Matthews wrote:
I wrote-
> Leonard Peikoff's book, OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN
RAND, is a fairly decent overview of her thought, but it
illuminates her weaknesses. The section on religion, especially
pages 30-33, really show ignorance of the Thomistic heritage of
the Christian religion and its influence in Western Culture,
ironically enough including Rand's thought. Rand and Peikoff
assert that ALL religious believers insist on "the primacy of
consciousness" (i.e., reality is controlled by, and dependent on,
a mind) vs. "the primacy of existence" (reality is external to
any mind), conveniently forgetting that Thomas asserted that
God's EXISTENCE is primary, not God's consciousness.
Ed replied-
This is utterly false.
"Existence exists" does _not_ mean that some type of reality is
real, without specifying what that reality is. Rand means that
the world we see, hear, touch and experience is real, without any
prior validation.
For Aquinas, the existence of first principles is self-evident and the
existence of God is not. (Summa Theologica, Question 1, Article 2) His
arguments for God's existence do not rest on the "need" for a priori
validation of our sense experience. In fact, he was the most prominent
critic of Anselm's ontological argument during this time period!
The primacy of existence means choosing to accept the validity of
the evidence of the senses _without_ qualification or limitation.
I suggest you re-read the first part of the first chapter of
OPAR, in which he examines the implications of the observation,
"There is something of which I am aware."
Thus, contrary to any claim to stressing the primacy of god's
"existence" over his consciousness, the entire issue of god's
existence is based on the primacy of consciousness. Why does god
exist, in their view? Because a book, or society, or their
faith, or their feelings say so? That is, quite frankly, a
massive equivocation to equate that with the method of reason, of
analyzing the evidence of the senses
Unfortunately, Peikoff makes the key intellectual error of associating the
notion of -causa sui- ("self-causation") with the concept of God, a fallacy
also committed by Spinoza and Sartre. In orthodox Christian theology, God
does not "self-create himself," such a notion is arrant nonsense. Rather,
since something now exists, something has always existed, and that always
existent- something is God, contra Peikoff. (OPAR, pp. 18-22)
Aquinas's contention is that God exists, not on anyone's "say-so," but
demonstrably from the facts of existence. This notion that Christianity is
-based- on "faith" as "blind belief without proof" (as opposed to certain
Christians mistakenly -affirming- that it is based on such "faith") is
exactly the "question-begging" fallacy Bill and I object to!
> To continue with this illumination of the errors of Objectivism
with regard to classical Christianity, here is Rand herself...
>
> What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers
call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he
fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares
that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge he acquired a
mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of
good and evil he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn
his bread by his labor he became a productive being.
He was sentenced to experience desire he acquired the
capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn
him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy all the cardinal
values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth
of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not
his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his
nature as man. Whatever he was that robot in the Garden
of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without
labor, without love he was not man.
Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained
the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard,
are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt,
they charge, is that he lives.
Ayn Rand, Galt s speech - For the New Intellectual, pb.
pg. 137>
Mankind is NOT judged for any of the things that Rand mentions,
just the opposite. It is the unwillingness to face the
alienation of man from man in the intellectual and social
dimensions of human existence that results in judgement.
Ed responded:
Judgement by whom? By God? Where was the "alienation of man
from man" in the garden of Eden, when God threw Adam and Eve out
of paradise
On the contrary, they became ashamed of their humanity and alienated from
it after the fall, not champions of it! (Genesis 3:7, compare Gen 2:25) It
was also intended for man to experience desire and engage in creative work
-before- the fall. (Genesis 2:20-25) What's offensive about Rand's
statement isn't that it is a criticism of the Christian view of man, but
that she doesn't even engage in the minimal intellectual elbow grease
needed to get the story straight. Rand demanded that others do this for her
own work, but she failed to do it herself.
I wrote-
> Engaging in the "straw man" fallacy indicates to me that
Ed responded:
It is not a straw man. Just ask the orthodox Christians
The last time I checked the classical statements of the Christian faith and
St. Thomas Aquinas it was indeed a "straw man." There are a lot of teenage
Rush (the band) fans who think that Objectivism is a blanket license for
their own desires, should I judge Rand's thought by how -they- present it?
As I said before, Kant has infected modern theology as well as philosophy.
This, combined with horrible religious education in this country
(paralleling the bad secular educational establishment) has given rise to
this something for nothing -faithism-, which I reject on Biblical and
philosophical grounds.
I wrote:
Finally, in response to the Objectivist view of the Middle Ages,
I'd say that science is one of Christianity's greatest
achievements.
Ed responded:
Really! I'm sure Copernicus, Galileo, etc. would agree. After
all, look how quickly the Catholic Church officially recognized
that the Earth revolved around the sun. Look it up. It was only
in the last few years, I think after 1990
I'm sure they would, given that they were Christians themselves!!!
As Bill pointed out, to confuse Catholic Church politics with Christianity
is a category fallacy.
I wrote:
The Enlightenment's greatest figures never were able to
adequately answer why science exclusively arose and maintained
itself without stillbirth in the Christian West , and since that
time skeptics have been strangely silent on this point.
Ed responded:
How about the Islamic middle east, which for a while, under the
influence of Aristotle, surpassed the technology and knowledge
available to Western eyes
You have just cited a key support for our thesis. Why -did- the Islamic
East fall behind after it originated the modern university system and drank
Aristotle from a purer source than the West? The problem was in their
application- of Aristotle. They took a very literal and determinate reading
of his philosophy, which ultimately undermined itself and stagnated,
leaving it open to the criticisms of the orthodox (and equally
deterministic) Islamic thinkers. It was the combination of a stronger
notion of freedom of the will with Aristotle in Aquinas, plus criticism of
his notion of the eternal nature of the cosmos by Christian scientists such
as Buridan and Oresme, that saw science take root and flourish in Europe.
Ernest Brown
On 24 May 1996, Michael Huemer wrote:
Ernest Brown <c50...@showme.missouri.edu> writes:
> 1) The law of identity (A=A)
> 2) The law of non-contradiction (A cannot = non-A)
> 3) the law of excluded middle (either A or non-A)
> 4) The law of inference (A=B, B=C, then A=C)
You replied-
Perhaps you should clarify your thought by specifying what "A"
stands for in all of these
? The last time I checked A was a substitution instance for the name of an
object (A=Ernest Brown)
I wrote-
> D) Immanuel Kant as the prime source for most modern
philosophical errors.
You replied-
Poor Kant sure has a lot laid at his door.
I think you should be looking more at David Hume as your suspect
Rousseau also has a lot to answer for, but the synthesis of his thought and
Hume's in Kant gave both of their erroneous paths new vigor.
I wrote:
Finally, in response to the Objectivist view of the Middle Ages,
I'd say that science is one of Christianity's greatest
achievements. Recent discoveries in the history of science
demonstrate that it actually came about in the High Middle Ages,
due to the presumption of a guiding
...
You responded:
*Cough, choke*, excuse me?
Philosophy and science began in ancient Greece, ..
and science died the death of a dog before the birth of Christ there as
well.
and considering the advancement of their philosophy and devotion
to reason (particularly in comparison with the 'philosophy' of
other cultures at that time), if it had continued unabated, we
should now be at an amazing level of scientific development. I
often wonder how much we've lost. Anyway, unfortunately, Greek
philosophy was superseded by *Christianity* after Emperor
Constantine converted, and thence followed the Dark Ages. Or are
you forgetting that Christianity held sway over all of European
culture for *a thousand years* during which there was practically
zero intellectual advancement, whether scientific or
philosophical
You seem to confuse Greek science with Greek philosophy, only a few Greek
schools emphasized the importance of studying the natural world for itself.
After Aristotle, philosophies of consolation and skepticism ruled Greek
thought, and by the time of Christ scientific inquiry in anything
approaching the modern sense of the term was dead in the Hellenistic world.
>time] The Enlightenment's greatest figures never were able to
adequately answer why science exclusively arose and maintained
itself without stillbirth in the Christian West , and since that
time skeptics have been strangely silent on this point.
Are you also forgetting episodes like the Church's condemnation
of Galileo? Descartes suppressed his own work on physics after
hearing about it, and who knows how many other would-be
scientists were nipped in the bud by this sort of thing?
Fortunately, Galilean physics managed to prevail *in spite of*
Christianity, not because of it. Given the church's treatment of
the founder of modern physical science, I find it hard to believe
that you think Christianity was somehow responsible for the
development of modern science
Once again, as Bill has already pointed out, this is a category fallacy.
Roman Catholic church politics does not equal Christianity, and Galileo was
himself unapologetically Christian. (Kearney, p. 144-6) The view you
espouse, namely that of scientists always being fearless freethinkers
fighting against the forces of repression (a.k.a. the Whig Theory of the
History of Science) has little influence among those who are actually
knowledgeable about the particulars of scientific development. (Kearney,
pp. 18-22, 148-9) In fact, it was Galileo's fellow scientists who "ratted
him out" and Pope Urban the VIII who was his (sadly weak) friend!
Also, the view that the Church was a monolithic force blocking all rational
inquiry during the Middle Ages is equally wrong-headed, as most of the
genuine intellectual advancement in that era took place under its aegis.
(Goldstein, pp. xi-xiv, c.f. footnotes on p. 69, 70 and 76)
Works Cited:
Goldstein, Thomas. DAWN OF MODERN SCIENCE. Foreward by Issac Asimov.
American Heritage Library edition. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1988).
Kearney, Hugh. SCIENCE AND CHANGE 1500-1700. World University Library. (New
York, Toronto: Mc Graw-Hill, 1971)
Ernest Brown
In further response to Michael Huemer...
The Passion of Pierre Duhem:
"Silence is the greatest persecution."
-Pascal
In reality, science as a discipline was stillborn in Greece after
Aristotle's death, long before Christianity came on the scene. If any
discipline has been "flawed" due to religious reasons, it's the history of
science. You see, the information about Buridan and Oresme was suppressed
for years at the behest of certain elements of the French government,
because it indicated a Christian origin of science. The case was notorious
in France in the 50's, (when the info was finally released) and my
philosophy advisor (an atheist and Marxist scholar) told me that it was
used in French universities of the time as a prime example of government
censorship. (after I brought it up in class) Here's the story...
Despite the fact that he was one of France's greatest scientists at
the turn of the 20th century, if not its greatest, Pierre Duhem's
masterwork Le Systeme du Monde was suppressed by the French government and
his own publisher because it refuted, through contemporary documentation
(10 volumes of 500 pages each, drawn from 120 notebooks of 200 pages each
filled with excerpts from Medieval manuscripts that he had to beg to borrow
from other French libraries), the notion that there was no scientific
progress in the Middle Ages. As Jaki, his biographer, puts it, "He had no
microfilm, no Xerox machines, no dictaphones, not even ball point pens at
his disposal. Above all, he had no research assistants of any sort. Worse,
he often had to hold firm his trembling right hand with his left." (Jaki,
p. 178) This was not Duhem's only project, he continued with a full slate
of journal publications as well as a three-volume historical study of the
scientific work of Leonardo! To complicate things, Duhem did all this work
out in the sticks of France, so to speak. His original doctoral
dissertation presented his co-discovery of a new scientific law (still in
use today). Unfortunately for him, the scientist who formulated the old law
was the politically powerful former French Minister of Education, who used
his political influence to fail Duhem's dissertation, and deny him a seat
in any Parisian university for the rest of his life. After years spent
writing an entirely new dissertation, Duhem was passed by a board of pure
mathematicians who didn't give a fig for the minister's power, but spent
the rest of his life in provincial universities.
Although he was a Roman Catholic, and thus not entirely disposed to
regard the Middle Ages as a wasteland, he shared the general belief that
one had "to jump well over a thousand years from Archimedes or Ptolemy to
Galileo" (Jaki, 178) to do the history of science. In doing a series of
articles on the history of the science of statics, he jumped from
Archimedes to Stevin and Cardanus. I'll let Jaki continue:
But in reading Cardanus, Duhem found a cryptic
reference to a certain Jordanus, a name noticed during
the previous ten or so years by several historians of
science, who, unlike Duhem, had not cared to track down
that elusive figure whom Cardanus seemed to credit with
an important scientific insight.
The task, involving a search for half-a
millennium-old medieval manuscripts and the deciphering
of their quasi-cryptic scripts, would have been shunned
by all theoretical physicists and by most historians of
science, who at that time were still few and far
between. Duhem's heroic effort paid a most unexpected
dividend. He found that in speaking of the laws of balance
Jordanus, who turned out to have flourished around 1320,
enunciated the law of virtual velocities which is the
cornerstone of general dynamics. (Jaki, 178)
And that was just the beginning...
Duhem's mental acuity and writing ability were such that his first-draft
manuscripts were outstandingly publishable according to any rigorously
refereed scientific publication standards. He was reading the proofs for
the 5th volume of Le Systeme du Monde when he died on Sept. 14 1916. His
publisher, A. Hermann et Cie, was one of France's most noted scientific
publishing houses. They took great pride in obtaining the best quality
paper for the set, even during wartime conditions.
At first, his death was feared to have cut off the series, but a group of
manuscripts found in his papers was soon determined to be the drafts for
the final 5 volumes. His daughter and sole survivor, Helene, then 25,
turned the manuscripts over to the French Academy of Sciences. Her father
had several good friends there, including the perpetual secretary Darboux.
(who died shortly thereafter, however). The Academy set up a committee to
determine the publication status of the manuscripts and their findings were
thoroughly positive. The manuscript of the sixth volume was handed over to
Hermann in 1917 for publication.
It was not published until 1954.
-What Happened?-
The direct cause of the failure to publish the manuscript was a change in
management at Hermann et Cie. Adolphe Hermann had retired and his grandson
by-marriage M. Freymann took over. Freymann stonewalled Helene for 30+
years with feeble excuses about hard economic times while volume after
volume of esoteric scholarship issued forth from his presses. According to
the original publishing contract, Duhem was obliged to present the
equivalent of 500 large octavo pages of manuscript every year, and forgo
all royalties on the first 400 copies of each volume, receiving %40
royalties thereafter. (the print run for Le Systeme du Monde was only 700
copies per volume!!!) The only obligation Hermann et Cie had was to publish
the volumes at a rate of 1 per year.
Helene Duhem later learned that the company was being supported by radical
and anti-clerical intellectual elements of the French government and
academic community. Her informant was no less than the head of the
Institute of Science and Technology at the Sorbonne, Abel Ray, a political
radical himself. Despite this, Ray was one of the rare individuals who put
recognition of scholarship above ideological differences. Since no one
suspected him of being pro-Catholic (which in the French context=pro
Christian), he was able to accumulate the backdoor political information
necessary for Helene to continue her fight.
Quite a different spectacle was cut by George Sarton, editor of the leading
journal of the history of science at the time, ISIS. At first, he lauded
the publication of Le Systeme as a landmark of scientific historiography,
but after Duhem's death the worm turned. Sarton tried to pass himself off
as the first historian to investigate Leonardo's scientific work, ignoring
Duhem's exhaustive prior study. He also banned any further review of Le
Systeme in the pages of ISIS, and contrived as much as possible to have it
covered up, except for a hypocritical subscription call for independent
publication, which he really opposed. His underlying motive for this came
from his devotion to the anti-clerical philosophies of Freemasonry. Sarton
knew from the thrust of vol. 3-5 that the old lie of the Middle Ages being
anti-scientific was Duhem's target. With Sarton as an example, the rest of
the secular establishment followed suit. (Perrin, a Nobel-laureate
physicist, even directly helped in the suppression)
To make a long story short, Freymann dug in his heels over the years and
became more stubborn in his opposition to publication. Helene suffered
agonies of torment during WWII, fearing that the manuscripts might be lost
or destroyed. (she didn't have copies) A group of scientists headed by de
Broglie finally threatened Freymann with court action on March 31, 1954.
This would have suited Freymann just fine, enabling him to continue
delaying publication, but he died 3 days later. The new director of Hermann
et Cie, Pierre Beres, immediately published the sixth volume, and the whole
set almost as quickly.
Historians and philosophers of science, such as A. Koyre, praised Duhem's
scholarship even as they tried to sweep his conclusions under the rug.
However, thanks to the tireless efforts of his daughter the attempt to
destroy Duhem failed.
But the silence continues...
Works Cited:
Jaki, Stanley L. "Science and Censorship: Helene Duhem and the Publication
of the Systeme du monde." in THE ABSOLUTE BENEATH THE RELATIVE AND OTHER
ESSAYS. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America) 1988, pp. 173-187.
I suggest that you educate yourself about the realities of scientific
development in the Middle Ages. For us to go on would be to "protest too
much," since the objective evidence for such developments is
overwhelming. As someone who claims to support "objectivity," your
self-confessed disdain for proper exegesis and love for informal fallacies
does you no credit as a champion of reality.
E. Brown
frank forman
Great stuff about Pierre Duhem! I first learned about this from Lawrence
R. Brown, _The Might of the West_ (NY: Ivan Obolensky, 1963) and was the
one who furnished copies of the originals for its reissue, Washington:
Joseph J. Binns, 1979. It's my favorite book and I've read it eleven times.
BUT: My understanding is that hardly any serious scholar looks upon the
medieval period as "dark" anymore. Is this true?
By the way, the great Oresme drew the first graph, invented fractional
exponents, and was the first to expound the quantity theory of money. It
will take a while longer, I suppose, before the standard history
textbooks catch up, but then again it has been 116 years since _The
Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
I'm a devout atheist myself.
Frank
Daniel Smith
(frank forman) writes:
{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hi Frank -
Could you expound briefly on the above?
Regards,
Dan
Jimmy Wales
I'll save Frank the trouble.
Frank is well aware that his statement above is false. He's only
saying it to try to be witty and controversial, or something like
that. He wants attention and respect as some kind of intellect...
but he doesn't get it. Why? Because he has done nothing to *earn*
it. He just likes to put down Objectivism and Objectivists. As to
his motives, I will let you speculate.
I advise people to killfile him.
--Jimbo
Billy Beck
for...@netcom.com (frank forman) wrote:
> _The Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
What's going on here, Frank?
Do you really not know any better than this?...or are you simply
throwing firecrackers in the pond?
Come on, man.
Billy
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/free.html
"Rant" updated 4/16/96
DEFanyo
>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
>>Hi Frank -
>>
>>Could you expound briefly on the above?
>
>I'll save Frank the trouble.
>
>Frank is well aware that his statement above is false. He's only
>saying it to try to be witty and controversial, or something like
>that. He wants attention and respect as some kind of intellect...
>but he doesn't get it. Why? Because he has done nothing to *earn*
>it. He just likes to put down Objectivism and Objectivists. As to
>his motives, I will let you speculate.
>
>I advise people to killfile him.
Gee, Jimbo, if we all killfile everyone we don't agree with, these
conversations will become even more disjointed than they already
are. From the lack of answers that I get, I can safely presume that
I'm in many killfiles, probably yours.
I don't know exactly what Frank had is mind when he said "So do
Objectivists" think that man is the product of special creation,
but I have some reservations about Ayn Rand's view of the nature
of man which fit the bill. Even though all other animals on this
earth are stuffed with instincts, Rand insists that man (one more
animal species on earth) is in some unspecified manner totally
devoid of them. As far as I know, the assertion that man is born
tabula rasa is just that -- an assertion. If you *know* better,
PLEASE let me know!
No one to my knowledge has found out when, in our tick of the
evolutionary clock, humans managed to get rid of all instincts. If
you could provide evidence of such an unlikely event, I would be
*very* glad to hear it.
I wonder -- in the proposed HPO, would Frank be kicked off for his
statement? Would I for this post?
--Dorothy
>
>--Jimbo
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I have ventured to paint my happiness upon the wall.-- Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Smith
>>(frank forman) writes:
>>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
>>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I wrote:
>>>Hi Frank -
>>>
>>>Could you expound briefly on the above?
Dorothy wrote [snip....]
>I don't know exactly what Frank had is mind when he said "So do
>Objectivists" think that man is the product of special creation,
>but I have some reservations about Ayn Rand's view of the nature
>of man which fit the bill. Even though all other animals on this
>earth are stuffed with instincts, Rand insists that man (one more
>animal species on earth) is in some unspecified manner totally
>devoid of them. As far as I know, the assertion that man is born
>tabula rasa is just that -- an assertion. If you *know* better,
>PLEASE let me know!
>No one to my knowledge has found out when, in our tick of the
>evolutionary clock, humans managed to get rid of all instincts. If
>you could provide evidence of such an unlikely event, I would be
>*very* glad to hear it.
>I wonder -- in the proposed HPO, would Frank be kicked off for his
>statement? Would I for this post?
> --Dorothy
You raise some interesting questions Dorothy. But I think we need to
clarify what is meant by "instinct". I am not implying that is in
inapplicable to humans, just that we should clarify what behaviors are,
and are not, instinctual. I think Rand may have had a certain disdain for
the term because of its association with Freud at the time, who seemed to
link all behavior to instincts. Also, I think Rand's conception of tabula
rasa referred to conceptual contents of consciousness, not sensual or
perceptual. I think the only "instinctual" basis of behavior Rand would have
agreed with was the function of the physical pain-pleasure mechanism of the
body, and to a lesser extent the pain-pleasure mechanism of mental
processes, which are of course relational. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to
discuss this if you're willing.
Regards,
Dan Smith
Ernest Brown
On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, frank forman wrote:
(nice comments about Duhem snipped)
> BUT: My understanding is that hardly any serious scholar looks upon the
> medieval period as "dark" anymore. Is this true?
That's true, even intellectually responsible analytic philosophers have
discovered that a wealth of innovation and discussion in logical analysis
alone took place during this period. There's simply no excuse for those,
like Huemer and others, who repeat this tired old canard like a mantra.
> By the way, the great Oresme drew the first graph, invented fractional
> exponents, and was the first to expound the quantity theory of money.
"Whadda bum! He shoulda invented the PET ROCK, then we'd consida him
'enlightened,'maybe."
:->
(stuff about Rand and evolution snipped)
E. Brown
frank forman
In article <4p4a0f$r...@venus.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales <jwa...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>(frank forman) writes:
>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>Could you expound briefly on the above?
>
>
>Frank is well aware that his statement above is false. He's only
>saying it to try to be witty and controversial, or something like
>that. He wants attention and respect as some kind of intellect...
>but he doesn't get it. Why? Because he has done nothing to *earn*
>it. He just likes to put down Objectivism and Objectivists. As to
>his motives, I will let you speculate.
What I mean is this: Ayn Rand leaned toward the spiritualist pole of
the physicalist-spritualist continuum, so far, I now think, that she all
but viewed
Man as a product of special creation. She doesn't really; in fact, she
doesn't care. Here's from an earlier post of mine, "Surprises from the
_Letters_":
From a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, an early
libertarian and once a close friend of Ayn Rand,
from 1946 December:
"As to the word 'spirituality,' I use it to
denote all that which pertains to man's
consciousness, most particularly to his thinking
(which is the base and essence of his
consciousness). I do not know (nor care too
greatly) whether man's consciousness is a
special spiritual element, different from the
material, much as the religious conception of a
soul--or whether it is only a function and
manifestation of his physical body. I am
concerned only with how this consciousness
worked, here, on earth, what it can do, what it
should do, how it should live. Whether material
or immaterial, a man's consciousness (his
spirit) is the essence of man and of his life,
and it is (as you have often stated) a prime
source of energy--spiritual (thinking) and
physical energy, both" (p. 355).
This is very telling about her attitude, at
least at the time, for the place of the mind is
just about the chief topic of metaphysics. But
here we find her lack of concern. Later, she was
to denounce what she called materialism as
*denying* consciousness, but here she held out
that the mind could be wholly material. But if
the latter is true (and I do not see how a
philosophy of reason could embrace the existence
of immaterial entities), it is not materialism
per se that is false but rather *ontologically
reductive* materialism. The great Mario Bunge is
an *emergentist* materialist, but Miss Rand was
not familiar with his writings. Had she been, I
don't think she would have allowed her lack of
concern with the question of the materialism
that she had in 1946 to continue. Nevertheless I
maintain, on the basis of her writings as late
as _The Ayn Rand Letter_ that she remained
something of a spiritualist on the (emergentist)
materialism-pure spiritualist continuum. She
seems to have refused to become interested in
the field of biology.
=============================
She never did accept the theory of evolution and indeed knew very little
about science. At least she certainly displayed no especial knowledge of
science in her writings. And her epistemology, while it makes references
to the external world and to deduction, never discusses how real
scientists go about their work. I don't think she ever used the word
"experiment." Her reasoning, in practice, is almost wholly deductive. She
will import such facts as men have to stay alive to value and act, but
she produces no empirical or experimental evidence that, say, happiness
requires that one be productive.
This concentration on deduction is a sign that she regards Man as mostly
spirit. Now spirits that actually exist in the flesh, I should think, have
to be products of special creation. From another post:
^[She rarely uses the word brain and
almost always says "rational being" instead
of "rational animal." Methinks her thought is
towards the end of the spiritual pole on the
spiritual-materialist continuum, even while
she officially rejects the mind-body
dichotomy.]
===============================
Think about her ideas on sex. I see here also mostly deductive
abstraction: she rather ignores the physical aspect of it, except to say
that coitus is the highest expression of romantic love. But this is just
an obiter dictum. Note also that the unconsious mind that punishes man
psychologically for his evasions might as well have direct access to
reality, as well as being a "lightning calculator" (her term), while all
that really happens is a certain cognative dissonance, not between what
is believed and what is really there (accessed directly), but between
beliefs that arise from inspecting the world that clash with one another.
Even her notion of a *true* definition (I like the basic idea very much,
I hasten to say) claims that *in a given context* the true definition
picks out the essence of the things being conceptualized or rather "that
fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number
of other characteristics depend, and which distinguished these units from
all other existencts within the field of man's knowledge" (IOE, Signet,
1979, p. 69). The difficulty is the "s" in parentheses: when does one
stop adding characteristics to the essence? And why can't there be rival
definitions when our knowledge is incomplete? *Scientists* argue over
rival theories all the time when they have the *same* body of facts. A
pure spirit could take a body of facts and come up with only one theory.
Here's something from still another post, this time from Mario Bunge
about how scientists go about definition making:
Here's from Mario Bunge's _Scientific Research_ (1967), Vol. 1, p. 67.
Athough a complete description of actual existents, and even of certain
constructs (notably infinite sets) is beyond human power, an accurate
determination of the set of *characteristic* or peculiar (not necessarily
essential) properties is often possible, at least ot ensure an
unambiguous application of a concept.... Thus, e.g., most zoologists
agree that the concept of a mammal has only three or four earmarks, all
of them of an osteological character and realted to the lower
jaw-middle-ear complex. This leads them to regard these earmarks as
defining the class concept "Mammalia", although none of them is obviously
related to, let alone identical with, the possession of mammary glands.
The core intension of a concept, made up of its earmarks, although
insufficient for a complete categorization, supplies what we shall call a
*working definition* of a concept, namely thus
(x) [Cx = P1x & P2x & ...& Pmx].
Recall that the m defining properties may be just a few of those making e
up the total (perhaps unkonwn) intension, and that they may be far from
essential: a working definition of a concept does not provide the essence
of the concept's reference but is just a tool for classing. Yet, of
course, the less superficieal or derivative the prperties chosen as
earmarks the deeper the knowledge will the working definition embody and
the more natural will be the grouping of individuals make with its help.
End quote
Well, do we ever get at the absolute essence of a concept, or do we just
keep plugging along, trying to get deeper and deeper?
I invite Paul Hsieh to give his practical experience in radiology here.
But generally, I hold the Master in higher regard than the Mistress,
since the former gets far closer to what scientists actually do when they
explore the world and try to understand it, while the Mistress is fairly
well over to the spiritualist side of the materialist-spiritualist
continuum and talks more about what people *ought* to be doing in some
sort of idealized world.
===============end of quotation from earlier posts.
All of this is fine for a novelist, the worship of Man, the insistence
that we keep in full focus on all issues during all of our waking hours,
the exaltation of man *qua* man, and the rest of it. But this is a
morality of aspiration, not a description of empirical man as a product
of evolution.
Dorothy brought up the business of instinct, so I don't need to repeat it
here. Anyhow I hope I am clear.
>I advise people to killfile him.
>
>--Jimbo
"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to
put out on the troubled seas of thought." -- Galbraith
Frank
Billy Beck
An aside...
for...@netcom.com (frank forman) wrote:
>From a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, an early
>libertarian and once a close friend of Ayn Rand,
>from 1946 December:
Does everyone know who Rose Wilder Lane is?
She was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a name which should be
familiar to just about anyone who watched prime-time TV in the 70's.
She was a seminal American libertarian, who deeply influenced Robert
LeFerve and wrote introductions to at least one of his books. (I
believe it was "This Bread Is Mine" - my copy of which is currently
checked out to a friend's card!)
DEFanyo
In article <dls216.36...@psu.edu>, Daniel Smith (dls...@psu.edu) writes:
>
>
>Dorothy wrote [snip....]
>>I don't know exactly what Frank had is mind when he said "So do
>>Objectivists" think that man is the product of special creation,
>>but I have some reservations about Ayn Rand's view of the nature
>>of man which fit the bill. Even though all other animals on this
>>earth are stuffed with instincts, Rand insists that man (one more
>>animal species on earth) is in some unspecified manner totally
>>devoid of them. As far as I know, the assertion that man is born
>>tabula rasa is just that -- an assertion. If you *know* better,
>>PLEASE let me know!
>
>>No one to my knowledge has found out when, in our tick of the
>>evolutionary clock, humans managed to get rid of all instincts. If
>>you could provide evidence of such an unlikely event, I would be
>>*very* glad to hear it.
>You raise some interesting questions Dorothy. But I think we need to
>clarify what is meant by "instinct". I am not implying that is in
>inapplicable to humans, just that we should clarify what behaviors are,
>and are not, instinctual. I think Rand may have had a certain disdain for
>the term because of its association with Freud at the time, who seemed to
>link all behavior to instincts. Also, I think Rand's conception of tabula
>rasa referred to conceptual contents of consciousness, not sensual or
>perceptual. I think the only "instinctual" basis of behavior Rand would have
>agreed with was the function of the physical pain-pleasure mechanism of the
>body, and to a lesser extent the pain-pleasure mechanism of mental
>processes, which are of course relational. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to
>discuss this if you're willing.
Oh, I'm more than willing, as old-timers on apo could tell you! :-)
You're probably right in your estimation of how Rand would organize
her thoughts on this subject, and I do understand that she limits
tabula rasa to conceptual knowledge. However, there are components
(word choice?) to human nature other than conceptual and sensual or
perceptual that are part of the furniture of the brain. I call them
instincts... others may call them drives or needs or demands of the
psyche for certain things. Whatever the name, we're full of 'em...
and they're not learned, we're born with them.
For instance, 200 years ago we heard the ringing words declared
in a political document that man has the right to life and property.
All life fights for survival, and I maintain it's an instinct in
man to fight for his life -- which includes working for it, just as
plants and other animals work for theirs. When it was finally
declared that man has a right to life, that was in reality
an affirmation of a great fundamental instinct embedded in all of
life.
Many, many other animals would tell you (if they could! :)) that
they have the right to property, just as we do. It's an
instinct. Animals as "lowly" as some fish fight for their
staked-out territory, and it's a common phenomenon among birds and
mammals. Try to take away a dog's bone and he'll growl that it's
_his_ and offer to take your hand off at the wrist. Take away a
baby's rattle and he'll roar to high heaven that it's _his_. Take
away a man wallet and he'll try his best to take it back -- it's
_his_. A man's home is _his_ castle -- just as a bear's cave is
_his_ cave. Stating that man has a right to property is affirming a
great fundamental instinct embedded in life.
Fighting for survival and clinging to property are not a matter of
choice... both are instinctual, built into the Grand System of life.
Acting against either is an abberation made possible only by the
complexities and misuse of the Big Brain. No animal other than man
would turn against himself in such a deadly way.
I could go on (and on and on!... we are possessed of many more
instincts -- for sex, for status, for stimulation, for security and
more), but this should do for a start...:-)
Waiting to hear what you think is or is not instinctual...
--Dorothy
Jimmy Wales
Frank Forman continually and, in my opinion, *deliberately* misrepresents
Objectivism. I do not know his motives. But neither do I believe him to
be merely mistaken. I offer the following analysis for your
consideration.
Frank Forman wrote:
>>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
In response, I wrote:
>>Frank is well aware that his statement above is false. He's only
>>saying it to try to be witty and controversial, or something like
>>that. He wants attention and respect as some kind of intellect...
>>but he doesn't get it. Why? Because he has done nothing to *earn*
>>it. He just likes to put down Objectivism and Objectivists. As to
>>his motives, I will let you speculate.
Frank then attempted to "defend" his claim by positing a bunch of
irrelevant verbiage. He knows full well that Objectivists do *not*
believe in "special creation". He knows full well that *Ayn Rand*
did not believe in such a thing. Yet, he posted it. Why?
His defense is that Ayn Rand (allegedly) "leaned toward the spiritualist
pole of the physicalist-spiritualist continuum." Since such a continuum is
*invalid*, and since Ayn Rand *rejected* it, we can only suppose that
Frank (who feels free to cite from obscure private correspondence and who
has read enough Rand to know better) is just grasping at straws... rather
than doing the simple and *honest* thing and simply apologizing for
spreading mindless slander.
>...she all but viewed
>Man as a product of special creation. She doesn't really; in fact, she
>doesn't care.
In other words, he knows that Rand does *not* believe in "special
creation" and that his earlier post was false. He doesn't indicate
that this is a new discovery on his part, and that he was simply
mistaken earlier. Instead, he suggests throughout the post that he
knew all of this all along. That is, he *deliberately lied*.
>She never did accept the theory of evolution and indeed knew very little
>about science.
The only source of this claim of which I am aware is Nathaniel
Branden, a confessed liar on a grand scale. So there is reason
to doubt the anecdote anyhow. But even if we take Branden's claim
at face value, Rand does *not* claim to believe in special creation.
What she says is precise: "I am neither a supporter nor opponent
of the theory of evolution." She goes on to say that it is the
only scientific theory available.
What did Rand mean? Should we take her to have been an opponent of
science? A believer in creationism? Of course not, that's not the
least bit plausible. Interpretation requires that one stick to
*plausible* inferences.
*I*, Jimbo Wales, am neither a supporter nor opponent of the theory
of quantum mechanics. Make of that what you will.
Someone else said it best the other day: Frank Forman is the master
of the informal fallacy. Here's a dramatic example. Motive? I will
let the reader decide.
>Her reasoning, in practice, is almost wholly deductive. She
>will import such facts as men have to stay alive to value and act, but
>she produces no empirical or experimental evidence that, say, happiness
>requires that one be productive.
>
>This concentration on deduction is a sign that she regards Man as mostly
>spirit. Now spirits that actually exist in the flesh, I should think, have
>to be products of special creation.
What a fantastic series of non sequiturs.
The thing is, Frank's no dummy. What's he up to? Why?
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales
I wrote:
>> The only source of this claim of which I am aware is Nathaniel
>> Branden, a confessed liar on a grand scale. So there is reason
>> to doubt the anecdote anyhow.
Lance responds:
>Slander if I've ever heard it.
>
>What exactly do you mean by "liar on a grand scale"????
It isn't slander at all. You've read Branden's autobiography, I would
assume. He lied to a *lot* of people about *important* things over a
*long* period of time. He lied to Ayn Rand about his motivations for
ending their romantic relationship. He lied to his wife about his
sexual activities. He engaged in systematic deception of people who
had *every right to know* these things.
He has admitted all of this and, to his credit, he has acknowledged
that it was *wrong* to do all of this. He has issued what amounts to
an apology to the world. (See _Six Pillars_, for example, in which
he quite frankly acknowledges his past mistakes.)
We can look at this past history -- and the consequences of it -- and
recognize that it is likely that Branden carries a lot of hard feelings
towards Rand. (Various of his writings about Rand since the break would
tend to confirm this.)
As a result of all this, I am sure that Branden understands that a
great many people will have a hard time trusting him. That's one of
the costs of lying -- when honest people find out about it, your
credibility is likely to be permanently damaged.
Whenever there is an anecdote like this, we have to assess *all* the
evidence for it. This includes giving *some* weight to Branden's claims,
but we also have to include what we know about Rand from other sources
(her books, primarily, but also the testimony of other people who knew her
intimately).
In this case, I think that there is reason to doubt the anecdote.
--Jimbo
Lance Neustaeter
On 10-Jun-96 08:17:40, Jimmy Wales jwa...@MCS.COM wrote:
>>She never did accept the theory of evolution and indeed knew very little
>>about science.
> The only source of this claim of which I am aware is Nathaniel
> Branden, a confessed liar on a grand scale. So there is reason
> to doubt the anecdote anyhow.
Slander if I've ever heard it.
What exactly do you mean by "liar on a grand scale"????
Lance
--
. . . I have found that Objectivism is its own protection against
people who might attempt to use it as a dogma. --Ayn Rand
Lance Neustaeter
On 12-Jun-96 07:56:14, Jimmy Wales jwa...@MCS.COM wrote:
> Whenever there is an anecdote like this, we have to assess *all* the
> evidence for it. This includes giving *some* weight to Branden's claims,
> but we also have to include what we know about Rand from other sources
> (her books, primarily, but also the testimony of other people who knew her
> intimately).
> In this case, I think that there is reason to doubt the anecdote.
Branden certainly made mistakes in handling portions of his private life
and personal relations. Who hasn't? (And the people with whom *we* are
relating are mere mortals--not intimidating pillars of perfection like
Rand).
I don't think that Branden's episodes of dishonesty in certain personal
relations and circumstances is relevent to whether or not he would lie
about something like Rand's position on evolution. I would put alot more
weight into the possibility that Branden may have said something which has
been mis-interpretted (by Forman?)
Now, if you were a prospective romantic partner of Branden's, *then* the
above info might become relevent to your decision and considerations of him
(as would his explicit statement that he was wrong to have been dishonest
in those circumstances).
Only the relevent facts, ma'am.
PMccutc103
la...@portal.ca (Lance Neustaeter) wrote:
>I don't think that Branden's episodes of dishonesty in certain personal
>relations and circumstances is relevent to whether or not he would lie
>about something like Rand's position on evolution. I would put alot more
>weight into the possibility that Branden may have said something which
has
>been mis-interpretted (by Forman?)
I don't know what Brandon said, or what Forman said that Brandon said,
because I missed the beginning of this thread. So my comments may be off
the mark.
However, I have dealt, professionally, with situations in which two are
more persons are asked to recall conversations that took place some period
of time ago. It is not at all uncommon for people to misremember or
mishear conversations, particularly when they have an interest in
remembering it one way. So, even if Brandon had said "Ayn Rand told me
that she believed in special creation and not the Neo-Darwinian theory of
evolution," I would still not consider this conclusive evidence that she
in fact held these beliefs -- Brandon could quite easily have misheard or
misremembered something that she did say.
Moreover, there is at least some chance that he is lying. Granted, his
possible sexual partners have more reason to distrust him than do we.
However, he does have a motive to make himself look good and Rand bad.
There is also the chance that Forman misremembered or misunderstood
something that Brandon said. The hearsay rule was not invented just to
give lawyers something to do. In my experience, if you are talking about
a situation where A is repeating something that B told him that he heard C
say, C will allways claim that she said something completely different.
Here, the relevant question (it seems to me) is whether Rand's writings
support this, uh, odd claim. Many of the people in this ng are more well
read in Rand than am I. However, everything that I've read by or about
Ayn Rand suggested that she was a pretty hard core atheist. Given this
committment, it seems to me that her only option was to accept some
naturalistic explanation of human origins.
________________________
Pete McCutchen
Forget the Dream Team -- send the BULLS to the Olympics!
Tom Scheeler
In article <459.6738...@portal.ca>, la...@portal.ca (Lance Neustaeter) wrote:
>
>On 12-Jun-96 21:17:32, PMccutc103 pmccu...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Moreover, there is at least some chance that [Branden] is lying. Granted,
> his
>> possible sexual partners have more reason to distrust him than do we.
>> However, he does have a motive to make himself look good and Rand bad.
>
>
Himself as the second coming.
Tom
Lance Neustaeter
On 12-Jun-96 21:17:32, PMccutc103 pmccu...@aol.com wrote:
> Moreover, there is at least some chance that [Branden] is lying. Granted, his
> possible sexual partners have more reason to distrust him than do we.
> However, he does have a motive to make himself look good and Rand bad.
And that would be....?
Lance
talisman
In article <4po89c$7...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:
> la...@portal.ca (Lance Neustaeter) wrote:
>
>>I don't think that Branden's episodes of dishonesty in certain personal
>>relations and circumstances is relevent to whether or not he would lie
>>about something like Rand's position on evolution. I would put alot more
>
(stuff snipped)
>Here, the relevant question (it seems to me) is whether Rand's writings
>support this, uh, odd claim. Many of the people in this ng are more well
>read in Rand than am I. However, everything that I've read by or about
>Ayn Rand suggested that she was a pretty hard core atheist. Given this
>committment, it seems to me that her only option was to accept some
>naturalistic explanation of human origins.
She may (and this is pure speculation) have agreed with some variant of
Nietzsche's comment on Darwinian evolution:
(paraphrased from memory)
'Life evolving through competition for scarce resources is an absurd postulate.
The essence of life has always been an abundance of resources."
Michael McCormick
_ELAN_
DEFanyo
In article <4ps52v$e...@shiva.usa.net>, talisman (tali...@mail.usa.net) writes:
>In article <4po89c$7...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
> pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:
>> la...@portal.ca (Lance Neustaeter) wrote:
>>
>>>I don't think that Branden's episodes of dishonesty in certain personal
>>>relations and circumstances is relevent to whether or not he would lie
>>>about something like Rand's position on evolution. I would put alot more
>>
>
>(stuff snipped)
>
>>Here, the relevant question (it seems to me) is whether Rand's writings
>>support this, uh, odd claim. Many of the people in this ng are more well
>>read in Rand than am I. However, everything that I've read by or about
>>Ayn Rand suggested that she was a pretty hard core atheist. Given this
>>committment, it seems to me that her only option was to accept some
>>naturalistic explanation of human origins.
It's one huge step from accepting some naturalistic explanation of
human origins to knowing what man has inherited from his animal
ancestors and what that has to do with the nature of man.
>She may (and this is pure speculation) have agreed with some variant of
>Nietzsche's comment on Darwinian evolution:
>
>(paraphrased from memory)
>
>'Life evolving through competition for scarce resources is an absurd postulate.
> The essence of life has always been an abundance of resources."
My reading of Nietzsche is that he thought that that abundance of
resources was the basis for striving for power. Related to humans,
he meant power over one's self and power over the environment,
which Rand would agree with, I'm sure. Nietzsche also thought that
people strive for power over others (which they indeed do -- the
perpetual fight for status, for one small instance), which Rand
thought immoral.
--Dorothy
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than
in the one where they sprang up. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
--------------------------------------------------------------------
frank forman
Other than speculating on whether Nathaniel Branden can be trusted in his
report that Ayn Rand would never accept the theory of evolution (I don't
really see why not) and whether *I* might have misrepresented him (It's
on the lecture tape, "The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn
Rand"(1982). She also brushed aside any discussion of psi phenomena: this
I can far more readily understand, as I stopped looking into it years ago
after I concluded that my opinion is worth no more than that of many
other people), no one has added further remarks on Jimbo's attacks on me.
Let me try to make myself more clear.
In article <4phhr4$s...@mars.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales <jwa...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>Frank Forman continually and, in my opinion, *deliberately* misrepresents
>Objectivism. I do not know his motives. But neither do I believe him to
>be merely mistaken. I offer the following analysis for your
>consideration.
>
>Frank Forman wrote:
>>>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
>
>In response, I wrote:
>>>Frank is well aware that his statement above is false. He's only
>>>saying it to try to be witty and controversial, or something like
>>>that. He wants attention and respect as some kind of intellect...
>>>but he doesn't get it. Why? Because he has done nothing to *earn*
>>>it. He just likes to put down Objectivism and Objectivists. As to
>>>his motives, I will let you speculate.
>
>Frank then attempted to "defend" his claim by positing a bunch of
>irrelevant verbiage. He knows full well that Objectivists do *not*
>believe in "special creation". He knows full well that *Ayn Rand*
>did not believe in such a thing. Yet, he posted it. Why?
Alas, *I* have been misrepresented! I said Ayn Rand was "basically" a
Creationist, not *actually* a Creationist. Jimbo left out the crucial
word basically. It's easy to overlook a word, and I am not outraged. What
I mean is the same thing that Objectivists mean when they charge Immanuel
Kant with being "basically" a totalitarian in politics. No, I don't have
a quote with that exact word ("basically") at hand, but if anyone here
were to make this claim of Kant and use the word, no one would think the
idea was not communicated. Of course, Kant's explicit politics were
broadly those of the Enlightenment, i.e., pro-freedom and
anti-aristocratic and anti-theocratic. But, Objectivists charge, Kant's
underlying mystical metaphyiscs and epistemology "lead to"
totalitarianism.
It's a great thesis, aand the steps are as follows: mysticism does not
allow for any sort of rational ethics, so a mystic will just accept
whatever is in the Zeitgeist, which was altruism in Kant's day, as the
ethics to uphold. And Kant was indeed an altruist, under Ayn Rand's
classifying altruism as any ethical doctrine that man does not have a
*total* right to his own happiness. Knat surely held this, though he did
skspeak of duties to self. (Mis Rand also sometimes thinks of altruism as
the ehtical doctrine that man has *no* right to his own happiness.) The
next step is that if you don't have *total* right to the pursuit of your
own happiness (IShould have said pursuit above also.) then someone is
going to come along and enfore the morality at gun point. (There are
enforcers at gun oint under Objectiism, too, I now just realized in this
context.)
[Standard insert, prepared in advance:
Sorry for all the typos. Whenever I strike
a key, a signal goes to my Internet
service provider, Netcom, in San Jose, CA,
on the other side of the continent. My
computer here is really operating as a
remote terminal to the UNIX system there.
The lines are clogged right now, which
means that I see what I've typed sometimes
as much as thirty seconds after I have
typed it. So I am largely typing blind. I
could go back and correct all my mistakes,
but the way things are now this would take
longer than the original message itself.
I'm sure you'd rather have the message
with the typos as it is now than one
without typos but at most half as long.]
I won't get into examining the links in her arugment (I hope I've
reproduced what she wrote in "For the New Intellectual" accurately, but
it's been a long time since I readit.). I just want to say I was making a
similar argument, not that Kant was basically totalitarian, but that Ayn
Rand was "Basically" a Creationist.
>His defense is that Ayn Rand (allegedly) "leaned toward the spiritualist
>pole of the physicalist-spiritualist continuum." Since such a continuum is
>*invalid*, and since Ayn Rand *rejected* it, we can only suppose that
>Frank (who feels free to cite from obscure private correspondence and who
>has read enough Rand to know better) is just grasping at straws... rather
>than doing the simple and *honest* thing and simply apologizing for
>spreading mindless slander.
What she said was that a physicalist-spiritualist *dichotomy* was
invalid. In one of her most brilliant articles, "Censorship: Local or
Express," reprinted in PWNI, she said that liberals are physicalists
(materialists was her word) and only want to control the economy, since
the products of the mind are unimportant or non-existent and vice-versa
with the conservatives, who are for free markets but unfree minds. (It's
may be startling at first to observe that, since she thought
both were real, she did *not* want to control both.)
Now since very few of us are perfect physicalists or perfect
spiritualists, there's a continumm, jst like there is one between 100%
egoism and 100% altruism, as Jimbo pointed out elsewhere. It is my
considered judgment that Ayn Rand was definitely toward the spiritualist
pole of the continuum.
>>...she all but viewed
>>Man as a product of special creation. She doesn't really; in fact, she
>>doesn't care.
>
>In other words, he knows that Rand does *not* believe in "special
>creation" and that his earlier post was false. He doesn't indicate
>that this is a new discovery on his part, and that he was simply
>mistaken earlier. Instead, he suggests throughout the post that he
>knew all of this all along. That is, he *deliberately lied*.
Well, I won't countercharge that I am being *deliberately* misunderstood.
>>She never did accept the theory of evolution and indeed knew very little
>>about science.
>
>The only source of this claim of which I am aware is Nathaniel
>Branden, a confessed liar on a grand scale. So there is reason
>to doubt the anecdote anyhow. But even if we take Branden's claim
>at face value, Rand does *not* claim to believe in special creation.
>What she says is precise: "I am neither a supporter nor opponent
>of the theory of evolution." She goes on to say that it is the
>only scientific theory available.
What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
>What did Rand mean? Should we take her to have been an opponent of
>science? A believer in creationism? Of course not, that's not the
>least bit plausible. Interpretation requires that one stick to
>*plausible* inferences.
>
>*I*, Jimbo Wales, am neither a supporter nor opponent of the theory
>of quantum mechanics. Make of that what you will.
If I though Jimbo was hesitating endorsing QM out of fear that it might
contradict what one woman says about causality, I would not think too
highly of Jimbo. On the other hand, if he were hesitating to endorse
certain philosophical *interpretations* of QM, while at the same time
accepting the results of the many experiments made by quantum physicists,
this is sensible. But Jimbo did not say the latter. Perhaps he was just
writing in haste.
>Someone else said it best the other day: Frank Forman is the master
>of the informal fallacy. Here's a dramatic example. Motive? I will
>let the reader decide.
>
>>Her reasoning, in practice, is almost wholly deductive. She
>>will import such facts as men have to stay alive to value and act, but
>>she produces no empirical or experimental evidence that, say, happiness
>>requires that one be productive.
>>
>>This concentration on deduction is a sign that she regards Man as mostly
>>spirit. Now spirits that actually exist in the flesh, I should think, have
>>to be products of special creation.
>
>What a fantastic series of non sequiturs.
No, just evidence of her being toward the spiritualist pole of the
physicalist-spiritualist continuum.
>The thing is, Frank's no dummy. What's he up to? Why?
I hope I can engage in introspection and not be accused of
psychologizing. Ayn Rand's was the first system of ideas I took
seriously, and I am still clearing the deck of her thought to work out my
*own* ideas. I can't exactly explain why I just didn't casually drop
Objectivism like many other ex-Objectivists have done. But part of it is
a feeling that I can somehow never measure up, or in other words that I
have succumbed to some of the "hazards" of her philosophy that Branden
talks about. In my case this is perfectionism. Now I may just be that
way. Perhaps it is characteristic, or at least not entirely
uncharacteristic, of INTJs. It *is* common among adult children of
alcoholics, which I am, though consciously Ayn Rand has exerted more
influence over me that my Pop!
At a less psychological level, I am only working out ideas and wanting to
compare Ayn Rand with the work of Mario Bunge in metaphysics and
epistemology, with David Hume and his ideas on natural sentiments
(reenforced by knowledge of how we evolved that way) in ethics, and with
James Buchanan and his ideas on a social contract in political theory.
There are lots of others I want to integrate also. In the end, we might
not have a real *system* so much as organized common sense. I am one with
Paul Hseih in my regard for the common law. I also think that
philosophers are *under-laborers* for scientists, whose job it is to help
them build their--always temporary--foundations. I read in a review in
the _TLS_ (May 10) that this idea has been around since Locke. I know it
has been around since Peirce. Bunge has caarried out this task more
thorouglhly than anyone else.
In the end, it may all come down to the fact that I enjoy writing
satirically about inerrantists of all stripes.
Frank
Daniel Smith
(frank forman) writes:
>Alas, *I* have been misrepresented! I said Ayn Rand was "basically" a
>Creationist, not *actually* a Creationist. Jimbo left out the crucial
>word basically.
The above is basically bullshit.
^^^^^^^^^
I'm sorry Frank, but I have given you the benefit of the doubt long
enough. I cannot deny your intelligence, but the way in which you use it
baffles me.
Dan Smith
Basic - 1. of or forming a base 2. first and necessary beyond all else
American Heritage Dictionary 3rd ed.
Jimmy Wales
Frank Forman wrote:
>>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
Which is still false, and which Frank *still* knows to be false.
Notice that throughout this *entire* thread, this quote has been
prominent. I included it *precisely* so that Frank could not
seriously claim that I have misrepresented him. His exact words
were quoted, for the benefit of readers interested in evaluating
the nature of his remarks.
I have been very patient with Frank for quite some time now, engaging
him in private e-mail, offering him my reasons for thinking of him
negatively. He has responded only with more insults and fantastic
claims which he *knows* to be false.
I wrote:
>> He knows full well that Objectivists do *not*
>>believe in "special creation". He knows full well that *Ayn Rand*
>>did not believe in such a thing. Yet, he posted it. Why?
Frank writes:
>Alas, *I* have been misrepresented! I said Ayn Rand was "basically" a
>Creationist, not *actually* a Creationist. Jimbo left out the crucial
>word basically.
Check the quote, Frank. Your exact words are there for everyone
to see... and they have been all the time. I know the type of
debate tactics you like to engage in, so I've been particularly
careful to quote you accurately and fairly.
Let me rewrite my claim -- it doesn't change anything to do so:
Frank Forman knows full well that Objectivists do *not* believe in
"special creation", 'basically' or otherwise. He knows full well that
*Ayn Rand* did not believe in such a thing, 'basically' or otherwise.
Yet, he posted it. Why?
[Notice that I'm deleting Frank's misguided attempt to steer the
discussion toward Kant! At issue here is Frank's repeated and deliberate
misrepresentations of Objectivism.]
>What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
>difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
>precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
Yes, this is very clear. You are using -- deliberately, I can only
suppose, given your apparently high level of intelligence -- an informal
fallacy in an attempt to mislead people.
Let me put your argument into clear steps.
1. Ayn Rand believes that humans are radically different from other
entities. (Debatable, depending on your meaning, but this is the claim.)
2. Creationists believe that humans are radically different from other
entities.
3. Therefore Ayn Rand is "basically" a believer in "special creation."
No one who knows the least bit about logic would accept that argument
as valid. Yet, you have asked us to do so. Why?
I wrote:
>>*I*, Jimbo Wales, am neither a supporter nor opponent of the theory
>>of quantum mechanics. Make of that what you will.
Frank responds:
>If I though Jimbo was hesitating endorsing QM out of fear that it might
>contradict what one woman says about causality, I would not think too
>highly of Jimbo. On the other hand, if he were hesitating to endorse
>certain philosophical *interpretations* of QM, while at the same time
>accepting the results of the many experiments made by quantum physicists,
>this is sensible. But Jimbo did not say the latter. Perhaps he was just
>writing in haste.
I was not writing in haste, and I did not mean the former, nor the latter.
Check your premises.
Here's a clue. I have heard a bit about quantum mechanics. I have
heard from advocates and detractors of the theory, and of various
interpretations of the theory. But my knowledge is based on reading
Usenet and "pop" science magazines. I have not studied the theory in
depth, and I could not be trusted to give a cogent summary of what,
exactly, it says. I have not examined the evidence, and although I have
the mathematical tools at my disposal to begin such an investigation, I
have neither the time nor the inclination to gain all the other knowledge
necessary to do so.
Therefore, I can not take any position of *advocacy* with respect to
QM or any of its interpretations. I've heard a few things that sound
definitely wrong to me, but people whom I respect (Tom Radcliffe, for
example) apparently believe them, and so I'm not willing to throw them
out fully without investigating.
I would imagine that *if* Ayn Rand ever said "I am neither an advocate
nor an opponent of the theory of evolution" she would have said it for
the same kinds of reasons.
(Incidentally, I *have* studied the theory of evolution, and I *am*
an advocate of it.)
Frank speculates on his own motives for the unsavory behavior we
have seen here over the past several months:
>I hope I can engage in introspection and not be accused of
>psychologizing. Ayn Rand's was the first system of ideas I took
>seriously, and I am still clearing the deck of her thought to work out my
>*own* ideas. I can't exactly explain why I just didn't casually drop
>Objectivism like many other ex-Objectivists have done. But part of it is
>a feeling that I can somehow never measure up, or in other words that I
>have succumbed to some of the "hazards" of her philosophy that Branden
>talks about. In my case this is perfectionism. Now I may just be that
>way. Perhaps it is characteristic, or at least not entirely
>uncharacteristic, of INTJs. It *is* common among adult children of
>alcoholics, which I am, though consciously Ayn Rand has exerted more
>influence over me that my Pop!
Perhaps Frank, and please do take me seriously here, you might want to
seek professional help in dealing with whatever psychological problems you
may have. I don't think that bashing Ayn Rand and Objectivism in a
newsgroup is likely to be a productive route to happiness. You may take
my advice or leave it, I don't care. But be aware that you are not
making a very good intellectual impression. You are starting to
give off a serious aura of crackpot.
--Jimbo
haskell jack
I don't recall reading anything about Darwin in Rand's works. She
probably ignored him.
Remember, that he also wrote the Descent of Man, and in it attempted
to show that man differed only be degree from other animals. Rand
expressed the idea that man differed in kind rather than degree.
/jack
Michael Huemer
dls...@psu.edu (Daniel Smith) writes:
>Basic - 1. of or forming a base 2. first and necessary beyond all else
>American Heritage Dictionary 3rd ed.
"Basically" is also commonly used in conversation as a sort of vague,
general qualifier to a statement -- meaning something like "sort of"
or "more or less," or "stated in simple terms."
Dictionaries are often disappointingly poor sources for the meanings
of words.
--
^-----^
Michael Huemer <o...@rci.rutgers.edu> / O O \
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~owl | V |
\ /
Tom Scheeler
In article <4qaseu$g...@niflheim.rutgers.edu>, o...@niflheim.rutgers.edu (Michael Huemer) wrote:
>dls...@psu.edu (Daniel Smith) writes:
>
>>Basic - 1. of or forming a base 2. first and necessary beyond all else
>>American Heritage Dictionary 3rd ed.
>
>"Basically" is also commonly used in conversation as a sort of vague,
>general qualifier to a statement -- meaning something like "sort of"
>or "more or less," or "stated in simple terms."
>
>Dictionaries are often disappointingly poor sources for the meanings
>of words.
>
Arcade's "Dictionary of Word Origins" by John Ayto. Quite helpful.
Tom
Steve Smolinski
haskell jack (mei...@chelsea.ios.com) wrote:
: I don't recall reading anything about Darwin in Rand's works. She
: probably ignored him.
"Probably"? What evidence do you have for that smear?
None? Surprise, surprise.
: Remember, that he also wrote the Descent of Man, and in it attempted
: to show that man differed only be degree from other animals. Rand
: expressed the idea that man differed in kind rather than degree.
She held that man's mind differed in kind with those of
animals -- that there were other conscious beings, but none with *our*
type of consciousness. Differed in degree -- in that we all have a
consciousness; differed in kind -- in that ours is the only
*conceptual* one.
Please remember that difference in "degree" or "kind" is
established contextually. For example, if we are differentiating
conscious beings from, say, inanimate ones, then we differ only
in degree from dogs. In this context a difference in kind would
be rocks vs dogs (or humans). If we are differentiating between
humans and dogs, however, then we are different in kind.
Ayn Rand covers all of this in her discussion of
essences and their contextual nature in ITOE.
Steve
DEFanyo
>Here's a clue. I have heard a bit about quantum mechanics. I have
>heard from advocates and detractors of the theory, and of various
>interpretations of the theory. But my knowledge is based on reading
>Usenet and "pop" science magazines. I have not studied the theory in
>depth, and I could not be trusted to give a cogent summary of what,
>exactly, it says. I have not examined the evidence, and although I have
>the mathematical tools at my disposal to begin such an investigation, I
>have neither the time nor the inclination to gain all the other knowledge
>necessary to do so.
>
>Therefore, I can not take any position of *advocacy* with respect to
>QM or any of its interpretations. I've heard a few things that sound
>definitely wrong to me, but people whom I respect (Tom Radcliffe, for
>example) apparently believe them, and so I'm not willing to throw them
>out fully without investigating.
>
>I would imagine that *if* Ayn Rand ever said "I am neither an advocate
>nor an opponent of the theory of evolution" she would have said it for
>the same kinds of reasons.
However, since you are not concerned with writing about, say, the
fundamental building blocks of matter, you have neither a pressing
need nor a respomsibility to study QM. Were you to so write, you
would have to study QM in depth in order to be intelectually
honest.
Ayn Rand was fundamentally concerned with man and his nature.
Since evolution is as much about the nature of man as it is about
the nature of all other living things, it would seem that it would
have been wise for her to give it more than an "I don't know."
>(Incidentally, I *have* studied the theory of evolution, and I *am*
>an advocate of it.)
Great! I'm sure that the experts in biology, zoology, Darwinism
and many other related fields, such as biochemistry and cognitive
studies are happy that you agree... ;-)
One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
in degree from our cousins the chimps?
I do hope you answer. The last two or three times I've replied to
your posts, my remarks seemed to fall into a black hole...:-)
BTW, my server doesn't see fit to send me all posts . If any one of
you thinks that I have rudely ignored you, please don't hesitate to
repost or email... Several times I've been disappointed by
unexpected silence...
Jim Klein
>One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
IMO, any response to this question would only give information about
the speaker's definiton of "in kind" and "degree", rather than any
solid information about humans or chimps. To explain using extremes:
1) Do two individual differ in kind or degree? Well, most of us would
say "degree", but you couldn't really argue with someone who claimed
they were more different "in kind" due to the fact that they have
completely distinct molecules, and all that those molecules make
up---organs and so on---as well as totally different minds and
personalities.
2) Does an individual differ from a rock in kind or degree? From our
perspective, considering what we value, clearly it's a difference in
kind. But on a universal level, is it necessarily so? The basic
building blocks of each are identical, and subject to the same laws of
physics, so in that sense it's a difference of particulars, not kind.
(Of course, the best response to this is, "Speak for yourself!")
Sorry to bring up such a trivial point, but I just didn't think that
any response could possibly answer whatever it is you're seeking.
Plus, it relates to a recent comment by one of the ObjectiPrinces about
a human having "more in common" with a rat than a brain cell. I
attempted to point out the ambiguity of "more in common", but I don't
think I was quite successful. Obviously, in his case, he was exactly
correct!
jk
Betsy Speicher
Jimmy Wales <jwa...@MCS.COM> wrote:
> >What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
> >difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
> >precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
> Yes, this is very clear. You are using -- deliberately, I can only
> suppose, given your apparently high level of intelligence -- an informal
> fallacy in an attempt to mislead people.
Actually, this is a FORMAL fallacy -- a flaw in his syllogism -- first
identified by Aristotle. I believe it's called "undistributed middle" and
any Aristotle scholars out there can correct me if I'm wrong.
Betsy Speicher
Ayn Rand's Ideas On Talk Radio -- The Leonard Peikoff Show
KIEV 870AM in Los Angeles Monday thru Friday at 2:30-3:30 PM
(Callers who disagree with Dr. Peikoff given preference)
Jimmy Wales
Dorothy writes:
>Ayn Rand was fundamentally concerned with man and his nature.
>Since evolution is as much about the nature of man as it is about
>the nature of all other living things, it would seem that it would
>have been wise for her to give it more than an "I don't know."
Yes, it would have been good for Ayn Rand to have studied evolution.
But for the things you are talking about, and the kinds of questions
that I know you have an interest in (biological components of human
behavior) it would have been even better for her to study biology,
zoology, psychology, and the like, in depth.
But she was a mortal woman with interests of her own.
It is possible to wish that Rand had done more (I would love it if she
had written more about concepts and propositions and truth and knowledge,
myself) without taking the kind of harsh condemnatory tone that Frank
has taken. And surely the fact that Rand wasn't a scientist isn't a
justification for accusing her of believing (basically) in "special
creation". That's my main criticism of the position Frank has taken.
>One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
Humans are different in kind from our cousins the chimps. Chimps are
different in kind from baboons. Parakeets are different in kind from
parrots. The 'kind' in question is 'species'. As I understand it
(and I'm no expert on the finer points) biologists classify different
kinds of species on the basis of the potential for viable offspring.
If two kinds of animals can not successfully breed, then they are of
different species. (I'm sure it is more complicated than this in many
instances, but that's one of the main factors.)
Humans are *similar* to chimps, in that we are, as you say 'cousins'. We
share a genetic heritage that gives us many similarities in phenotype.
Chimps are one of the most intelligent non-human animals, able to engage
in some rudimentary classification, communication, etc., on a scale far
greater than most other animals.
Now, since all of this is rather obvious, I'm suspecting that I'm missing
the import of your question. :-)
What I *don't* think is that there is something mystical or inexplicable
or non-biological or non-natural about human mental processes. They
are processes that take place in a particular kind of animal, humans,
with a particular identity (and heritage). There are many aspects of
human cognition that are a function of the hardware. :-)
>I do hope you answer. The last two or three times I've replied to
>your posts, my remarks seemed to fall into a black hole...:-)
>
>BTW, my server doesn't see fit to send me all posts . If any one of
>you thinks that I have rudely ignored you, please don't hesitate to
>repost or email... Several times I've been disappointed by
>unexpected silence...
Same here! You are one of my favorites, and I wouldn't want to miss
anything from you if you are asking.
--Jimbo
Greg Swann
In article <32...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>And now, just to round it all out, let's put the body and mind
>decently back together and consider: Do we differ from the chimps
>in kind or degree?
Is it possible that you're pushing this farther than it wants to go?
Degree/kind is a concept of consciousness, a statement more about
the categrozing predilictions of the observer than about the observed.
Clearly organisms differ in kind from non-organisms, but that would
tend to argue that each organism differs from the others only by
degree--it is more like any other organism than it is like any
non-organism. OTOH, the cerebral cortex is unique to our species,
and the capicity it gives us is rather hugely a difference of
kind in the sense that the chimps don't have the slightest curiousity
about you.
The original point, I think, was about divine intervention or some other
form of inexplicable causation resulting in volitional consciousness.
The ability to choose and reason is a big advantage to our species, and
there is no evidence to suggest that this advantage is shared by any
other species. To say that that which is unique and sublime is miraculous
is a faulty construct. The contrary proposition--human consciousness
is either deterministic or random in origin--strikes me as being
equally faulty. It seems pretty likely to me that the latter-day
capacity to reason and choose owes to the reasoning and choices
of our forebears. IOW that potential became reality through the
reiterative apllication of volition over many generations.
Janio's argument is that a genetic homo sapien becomes a human being,
a person, an ego, as the result of being reared by human beings. In
this sense, the ego is not metaphysically caused (in Rand's terminology)
but volitionally caused. If we can imagine that same process stretching
back over thousands of generations, we can posit a growth path of
volitional consciousness that requires neither miracles nor
miraculously unlikely accidents, just good parents who want a better
life for their children and go about it the best way they know how.
Is any of this satisfying to you, or should I go wash dishes? <g>
Greg Swann
_____________________________________________________________________________
gsw...@primenet.com
http://www.primenet.com/~gswann (last updated 5/24/96)
70640...@compuserve.com
Redemption Is Egoism _In Action,_ in the real deeds of your
real life. By your self-loving actions, you redeem the errors
of your past and make of them the _achievements_ of your
present and future. It is not impossible to _avoid_ doing
this. Most people waste their whole _lives_ trying to pretend
that past errors need not be corrected. But neither is it
possible to avoid the consequences of failing at redemption.
- Janio Valenta
_____________________________________________________________________________
DEFanyo
In article <4qbptf$h...@sunburst.ccs.yorku.ca>, Steve Smolinski (yu12...@yorku.ca) writes:
> She [AR] held that man's mind differed in kind with those of
>animals -- that there were other conscious beings, but none with *our*
>type of consciousness. Differed in degree -- in that we all have a
>consciousness; differed in kind -- in that ours is the only
>*conceptual* one.
Now that you've separated the mind from the body, let's consider
the question in regard to the body. Do we differe from the chimps in
kind or degree?
And now, just to round it all out, let's put the body and mind
decently back together and consider: Do we differ from the chimps
in kind or degree?
--Dorothy
DEFanyo
In article <4qda3m$9...@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, Jim Klein (rum...@ix.netcom.com) writes:
>In <32...@teekay.win.net> de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>
>>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
>
>the speaker's definiton of "in kind" and "degree", rather than any
>solid information about humans or chimps.
An answer would indicate the speaker's perceived relationship
between chimps and humans, wouldn't it, and _might_ even indicate
how he feels about it. (I use "feels" deliberately.)
Now, both you and Steve Smolinski wrote words, but neither answered
the question. Steve performed a neat mind/body split, and you've
posited a couple of honest-to-goodness extremes! :-)
I still await Jimmy Wales's answer...
>To explain using extremes:
>
>1) Do two individual differ in kind or degree? Well, most of us would
>say "degree", but you couldn't really argue with someone who claimed
>they were more different "in kind" due to the fact that they have
>completely distinct molecules, and all that those molecules make
>up---organs and so on---as well as totally different minds and
>personalities.
If we differ from chimps in only 1% of our genes, how much
difference is there between two human beings? I seem to remember
that there's something called the Human Genome that some very
bright folks are busy mapping.
>2) Does an individual differ from a rock in kind or degree? From our
>perspective, considering what we value, clearly it's a difference in
>kind. But on a universal level, is it necessarily so? The basic
>building blocks of each are identical, and subject to the same laws of
>physics, so in that sense it's a difference of particulars, not kind.
>(Of course, the best response to this is, "Speak for yourself!")
Ah, the universal ONE, the God's-eye view.
>Sorry to bring up such a trivial point, but I just didn't think that
>any response could possibly answer whatever it is you're seeking.
My question is one way of nudging your "ObjectiPrinces" into
remembering that the classic definition of man as a rational animal
means just that -- an animal with the potential, realized in varying
degrees, of being rational. I think that both words of the
definition are equally important -- in fact, it's interesting to
note that the definition is grounded in 'animal' with 'rational'
as modifier.
>Plus, it relates to a recent comment by one of the ObjectiPrinces about
>a human having "more in common" with a rat than a brain cell. I
>attempted to point out the ambiguity of "more in common", but I don't
>think I was quite successful. Obviously, in his case, he was exactly
>correct!
Appreciatively...
DEFanyo
In article <4qe5iu$d...@Venus.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales (jwa...@MCS.COM) writes:
Thanks for a thoughtful post!
>Dorothy writes:
>>Ayn Rand was fundamentally concerned with man and his nature.
>>Since evolution is as much about the nature of man as it is about
>>the nature of all other living things, it would seem that it would
>>have been wise for her to give it more than an "I don't know."
>
>Yes, it would have been good for Ayn Rand to have studied evolution.
>But for the things you are talking about, and the kinds of questions
>that I know you have an interest in (biological components of human
>behavior) it would have been even better for her to study biology,
>zoology, psychology, and the like, in depth.
Good, yes. Better, no. This is a very complex bundle of questions,
and I don't know that I can do it justice. Knowing the basics of
the evolutionary process, knowing what we _had_ to have inherited,
would, I think, have made a difference in some of the background
assumptions of the philosophy. Examples:
1) Ayn Rand might have been much clearer about what it could
possibly mean to say that humans have the choice to live or to
die. One of the facts which becomes obvious from knowing something
about evolution is that all living things are programmed to
struggle for survival -- the program is *for* Life (survival and
reproduction), and man is no exception. The human choice (a result
of cultural evolution) is whether to live to the optimum possible
for man or whether to settle for less. Very obviously, untold
numbers of humans down through the ages have survived and
reproduced (and still do) under minimal conditions -- and short of
blowing ourselves out of existence or dirtying our nest beyond
survival or a world-wide catastrophe, they will continue to do so.
Yes, the fact still remains that in order to live to his potential
in human culture, man has to choose to make the effort to do so.
2) The flat assertion that emotions stem from what we think needs
qualifying. Some (most?) indeed do. However, some result from
the animals we are -- we need no principles of property to be
outraged when something we own is taken from us, or even
threatened. We need no principle of the right to life to fight
for physical survival.
Yes, all emotions can be controlled no matter what their origin.
Nevertheless, it's psychologically invalid to "blame" all emotions
on thinking. Taking Ayn Rand at her word, a man or woman would have
to assume faulty (evasive?) thinking were either to be sexually
attracted by a total stranger or a person other than their "highest
value." Nature would just smile.
3) The unwarranted assumption that we are devoid of instincts is
contrary to the principles of evolution. To rightly make such a
claim, one would have to know when and how man shed them all. Our
cousins the chimps certainly are possessed of instincts. It would
be stretching credulity to posit that the 1% difference in genes
would be the very ones which account for all instinct.
No, humans are not slaves of their genes, nor of their memes.
Reason can negotiate with instincts, make choices between them, and
even deny fulfilling them if willing to pay the price for such
denial. Reason can decide memes are invalid. What humans cannot do
is exorcise them.
>But she was a mortal woman with interests of her own.
True... but her philosophical interest was man.
>It is possible to wish that Rand had done more (I would love it if she
>had written more about concepts and propositions and truth and knowledge,
>myself) without taking the kind of harsh condemnatory tone that Frank
>has taken. And surely the fact that Rand wasn't a scientist isn't a
>justification for accusing her of believing (basically) in "special
>creation". That's my main criticism of the position Frank has taken.
My two cents worth: I don't think Frank was saying that Ayn Rand
actually believed in a special creation -- since he well knows, as
do you and I, that she didn't believe in a creator, that's absurd on
the face of it. Overlaying my own thinking on Frank's remark, I
think she moved man too far out of nature instead of leaving him
properly embedded in nature. We are part and parcel of nature,
totally dependent upon her, inexorably interwoven into the web of
life.
>>One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
>>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
>
>Humans are different in kind from our cousins the chimps. Chimps are
>different in kind from baboons. Parakeets are different in kind from
>parrots. The 'kind' in question is 'species'. As I understand it
>(and I'm no expert on the finer points) biologists classify different
>kinds of species on the basis of the potential for viable offspring.
>If two kinds of animals can not successfully breed, then they are of
>different species. (I'm sure it is more complicated than this in many
>instances, but that's one of the main factors.)
Gladly granted.
>Humans are *similar* to chimps, in that we are, as you say 'cousins'. We
>share a genetic heritage that gives us many similarities in phenotype.
>Chimps are one of the most intelligent non-human animals, able to engage
>in some rudimentary classification, communication, etc., on a scale far
>greater than most other animals.
>
>Now, since all of this is rather obvious, I'm suspecting that I'm missing
>the import of your question. :-)
I plead, and apologize for, a badly put question. I was thinking
of our 'cousinship' with the chimps and how closely related we are,
rather than thinking 'species.' It's hard to think of difference
in kind between cousins... :-)
>What I *don't* think is that there is something mystical or inexplicable
>or non-biological or non-natural about human mental processes. They
>are processes that take place in a particular kind of animal, humans,
>with a particular identity (and heritage). There are many aspects of
>human cognition that are a function of the hardware. :-)
Agreed. And not only cognition. The three products of the brain
that particularly fascinate me (and from the volume of posts about
them, I'm say it's a pretty general fascination) are the self, the
mind, and consciousness. And I think that chimps experience all
three at the level warranted by the complexity of their brains. We
just have more of the same! Again, a difference in degree...
Jim Klein
>The three products of the brain
>that particularly fascinate me (and from the volume of posts about
>them, I'm say it's a pretty general fascination) are the self, the
>mind, and consciousness. And I think that chimps experience all
>three at the level warranted by the complexity of their brains. We
>just have more of the same! Again, a difference in degree...
Here, I have to (almost apologetically) disagree. I see no indication
that ANY creature on this planet has the ability to *mentally*
symbolize, and therefore conceptualize, anything. Perceptual ability?
Yes. Memory? Yes. I realize that chimps even have the ability to
repeat complex actions, like the use of a tool, and are able to make
sounds which symbolize their state of "emotion". But I still maintain
that the ability to internally symbolize these actions as concepts, and
retrieve these concepts later, let alone connecting the concepts with
logic, is an ability which remains particularly human, at least on
Earth.
I don't deny that I could be wrong on this, but I've seen no evidence
to the contrary.
jk
DEFanyo
In article <gswann-2106...@ip101.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann (gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>In article <32...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>
>>decently back together and consider: Do we differ from the chimps
>>in kind or degree?
>
>Degree/kind is a concept of consciousness, a statement more about
>the categrozing predilictions of the observer than about the observed.
>Clearly organisms differ in kind from non-organisms, but that would
>tend to argue that each organism differs from the others only by
>degree--it is more like any other organism than it is like any
>non-organism. OTOH, the cerebral cortex is unique to our species,
>and the capicity it gives us is rather hugely a difference of
>kind in the sense that the chimps don't have the slightest curiousity
>about you.
Err... Greg, any animal which has learned *anything* or made a
single voluntary movement has a cerebral cortex, chimps at the top
of a huge number of growing complexity with only humans to beat
them. And while cousin chimp may not sit in his aerrie kingdom
contemplating what strange creatures those humans be, were I to
come face to face with one, he'd have a LOT of curiosity about me!
While humans have a much larger cerebral cortex and a greatly
enlarged forebrain (praise be!), we ain't got nothin' that the
chimps don't have in a lesser degree!
(Even the lowly planaria seem to make choices, though what they
make choices *with* no one can say. We live in a world full of
wonders! I'll send you email about that amazing phenomena -- and to
anyone else who requests it.)
>The original point, I think, was about divine intervention or some other
>form of inexplicable causation resulting in volitional consciousness.
That's not quite right, but it'd take too much bandwidth to explain
in full. I hope you'll take time to browze the rest of the
thread, and, to find where I stand, read my reply to Jimbo's fine
post.
>The ability to choose and reason is a big advantage to our species, and
>there is no evidence to suggest that this advantage is shared by any
>other species.
One could pose question marks. How about the unwilling female
chimp who side-tracks the unwelcome ardors of the pursuing male by
offering him a banana and escapes into the bushes while he eats it?
No choice? No reasoning? I've been known to work the same ploy
myself with variations, and I didn't have to learn it anymore than
the chimp did! She and I just figured it out... self-preservation
too can be the mother of invention! :-)
>To say that that which is unique and sublime is miraculous
>is a faulty construct. The contrary proposition--human consciousness
>is either deterministic or random in origin--strikes me as being
>equally faulty. It seems pretty likely to me that the latter-day
>capacity to reason and choose owes to the reasoning and choices
>of our forebears. IOW that potential became reality through the
>reiterative apllication of volition over many generations.
I'd say that human consciousness is the product of the workings of
the brain, though of course I agree absolutely that *what* one is
conscious of depends on what one knows.
My favorite story to illustrate that point is about the very young
boy who had had the good fortune to attend a Montessori school
where they call a spade a spade.
At the end of a long gruelling day of viewing one European
cathedral after another, his parents drug him protesting to just one
more. He trudged in. As he glanced up at the dome high above, his
face and eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "Oh, mom, look at the
tetrahedrons!" And, of course, had he not known what *is* a
tetrahedron, his tired eyes would have seen only an
undifferentiated jumble of colors.
>Janio's argument is that a genetic homo sapien becomes a human being,
>a person, an ego, as the result of being reared by human beings.
That is certainly a necessry component, as witness the pitiful
feral children. In some way (far, far from being understood), the
workings of that amazing 3 pounds of matter within the skull
produces what we call a mind and a consciousness as well as a sense
of self. Since they obviously aren't three pearls (to use Dennett's
term) tucked away in our brains somewhere, scientists have a long
way to go to find out just how all that comes about.
Those remarks should assure you that I don't sell our brains short.
I'm in no way trying to belittle human ability. My point is that
we're not quite as unique as some would like to think. We are *of*
nature -- not outside it, not above it -- and we are totally
dependent upon it. And nature does not depend on us.
>In
>this sense, the ego is not metaphysically caused (in Rand's terminology)
>but volitionally caused.
If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
>If we can imagine that same process stretching
>back over thousands of generations, we can posit a growth path of
>volitional consciousness that requires neither miracles nor
>miraculously unlikely accidents, just good parents who want a better
>life for their children and go about it the best way they know how.
>
>Is any of this satisfying to you, or should I go wash dishes? <g>
You wash, and I'll dry, and we'll have a great conversation. :-)
Greg Swann
>
>In article <gswann-2106...@ip101.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann
(gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
[monstrous clip]
>>In
>>this sense, the ego is not metaphysically caused (in Rand's terminology)
>>but volitionally caused.
>
>If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
No, I mean that if your _parents_ had not chosen to raise you as a human
being, you would never have abstracted the self (nor any other non-obvious
idea). The potential to abstract the self is natural in origin, but the
cause of your having abstracted the self is volitional, and the volition
is not your own but that of your parents.
I'll come back to this because it is interesting to me (as are you, as
are all of the recently-named drivel scriveners).
--GSS
haskell jack
yu12...@yorku.ca (Steve Smolinski) wrote:
>haskell jack (mei...@chelsea.ios.com) wrote:
>: I don't recall reading anything about Darwin in Rand's works. She
>: probably ignored him.
> "Probably"? What evidence do you have for that smear?
>None? Surprise, surprise.
So, If someone, such as myself, who had previously spent over a
quarter of a century as an adherent of Objectivist philosophy notes
that Ms Rand probably ignored someones ideas, then such people are
attempting to smear her? (Note: I now prefer Aristotles philosophy.)
> She held that man's mind differed in kind with those of
>animals -- that there were other conscious beings, but none with *our*
>type of consciousness.Differed in degree -- in that we all have a
>consciousness; differed in kind -- in that ours is the only
>*conceptual* one.
And unless you are proposing some kind of mind/body dichotomy, then
you will have to agree that makes man-qua-man different in kind. You
see, I leaned my lessions well from Ms Rand, you, however, still need
practice in conceptual integration.
> Please remember that difference in "degree" or "kind" is
>established contextually.
And the context had better be the whole man, rather than an abortative
attempt to break him up into parts and declare that the parts lack
cohesion of the whole. That, incidently, is a lession learned from
Aristotle.
>... if we are differentiating conscious beings from, say,
>inanimate ones, then we differ only in degree from dogs.
and...
>If we are differentiating between humans and dogs, however,
>then we are different in kind.
Rand never said that. You're not defending any Objectivism tenets.
>Ayn Rand covers all of this in her discussion of essences and their
>contextual nature in ITOE.
And you should note that the IT part of ITOE means not complete.
/jack
Jim Klein
>And while cousin chimp may not sit in his aerrie kingdom
>contemplating what strange creatures those humans be, were I to
>come face to face with one, he'd have a LOT of curiosity about me!
There is no reason to think that the chimp conceptualizes in any
fashion to formulate "curiosity". Like many lower animals, he might
perhaps react to the new sensations in such a way that we
anthropomorphize curiosity, but I for one see not the least shred of
evidence that actual curiosity is happening.
>While humans have a much larger cerebral cortex and a greatly
>enlarged forebrain (praise be!), we ain't got nothin' that the
>chimps don't have in a lesser degree!
Do you have any evidence that ANY animal besides man is able to
conceptualize (i.e. store complex perceptions for later retrieval and
interconnection)? IMO, even complex tasks such as tool-use don't
qualify because these can be explained through "simple retrieval", and
don't require any form of logic or human-like memory (self-referencing)
to occur. That is, I see that the chimp can do it, but I'm highly
suspect that he knows he's doing it or that he did it yesterday.
>(Even the lowly planaria seem to make choices, though what they
>make choices *with* no one can say. We live in a world full of
>wonders! I'll send you email about that amazing phenomena -- and to
>anyone else who requests it.)
I'd be most interested if you'd care to send it along. Thanks.
>One could pose question marks. How about the unwilling female
>chimp who side-tracks the unwelcome ardors of the pursuing male by
>offering him a banana and escapes into the bushes while he eats it?
>No choice? No reasoning? I've been known to work the same ploy
>myself with variations, and I didn't have to learn it anymore than
>the chimp did! She and I just figured it out... self-preservation
>too can be the mother of invention! :-)
That's a tough one, I admit. I'd like to see the details. Do you
think she knows what she just did?
>That is certainly a necessry component, as witness the pitiful
>feral children. In some way (far, far from being understood), the
>workings of that amazing 3 pounds of matter within the skull
>produces what we call a mind and a consciousness as well as a sense
>of self. Since they obviously aren't three pearls (to use Dennett's
>term) tucked away in our brains somewhere, scientists have a long
>way to go to find out just how all that comes about.
Language, I'm inclined to think.
>Those remarks should assure you that I don't sell our brains short.
>I'm in no way trying to belittle human ability. My point is that
>we're not quite as unique as some would like to think. We are *of*
>nature -- not outside it, not above it -- and we are totally
>dependent upon it. And nature does not depend on us.
This is a great and true point. (Is that redundant?) I've never
understood why the "nature lovers" see so much nature in a bird
building a nest, but not a in man or woman creating a building.
>If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
I'm inclined to agree here, but I look to language as being the primary
factor, rather than any outside influence.
Thanks for the topic...but I wonder what Frank Forman thinks about his
name leading it!
jk
DEFanyo
In article <gswann-2306...@ip044.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann (gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>In article <33...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>
>>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
>
>being, you would never have abstracted the self (nor any other non-obvious
>idea). The potential to abstract the self is natural in origin, but the
>cause of your having abstracted the self is volitional, and the volition
>is not your own but that of your parents.
Short of locking me in a barrel and feeding me through the bung
hole (or equally dire measures), I don't see how my parents could
have prevented me from eventually knowing that I am my self
whatever that means exactly. (That funny-looking space is not a
typo.)
Hmm... "Abstracting the self" gives me pause. What concretes could
the self be abstracted from I wonder?
An acquaintance adopted an 18-month-old boy who had spent his
entire life in a crib in an orphanage. He'd never been out of that
crib , not even to be put into a tub of water... the good old spit
bath had sufficed. Nevertheless, the child showed every evidence of
having as much of a sense of self as any other child his age. He
most certainly knew the meaning of "me" and "you" and the
differences between the two.
What we call the self results from choice no more than does what we
call mind or what we call consciousness. They all arise from the
workings of the brain. Of course our early environment (including
the humans we live and interact with) can and does affect the *kind*
of self, mind, and consciousness that will emerge, but the bare fact
of their existence is a result of the workings of the brain. That
_must_ be -- what but the busy brain could possibly account for
them?
>I'll come back to this because it is interesting to me (as are you, as
>are all of the recently-named drivel scriveners).
And very interesting to me... I'll be looking forward... you're
obviously pressed for time, so whenever...
Greg Swann
>
>In article <gswann-2306...@ip044.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann
(gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>>In article <33...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>>
>>>If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
>>>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>>>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
>>
>>No, I mean that if your _parents_ had not chosen to raise you as a human
>>being, you would never have abstracted the self (nor any other non-obvious
>>idea). The potential to abstract the self is natural in origin, but the
>>cause of your having abstracted the self is volitional, and the volition
>>is not your own but that of your parents.
>
>Short of locking me in a barrel and feeding me through the bung
>hole (or equally dire measures)
But people do do this, and, similarly, you mentioned the Wildmen
(calling them "feral", I think).
[clip]
>>I'll come back to this because it is interesting to me (as are you, as
>>are all of the recently-named drivel scriveners).
>
>And very interesting to me... I'll be looking forward... you're
>obviously pressed for time, so whenever...
And now I'm doubly deferring you, dagnabit. Usenet means never having
to keep your promises; they quietly scroll away <g>.
--GSS
Michael Huemer
Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> writes:
>> >What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
>> >difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
>> >precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
...
>Actually, this is a FORMAL fallacy -- a flaw in his syllogism -- first
>identified by Aristotle. I believe it's called "undistributed middle" and
>any Aristotle scholars out there can correct me if I'm wrong.
The middle term in this case would be 'believer in a radical
difference between man and the rest of reality.' I don't think it's
the undistributed middle you're thinking of; I think the middle term
IS distributed in the premise "Creationists believe in a radical
difference between man and the rest of reality," because I think Frank
means that ALL creationists believe this.
I'm not sure what the Aristotelian terminology is, but, if we leave
out the statement "an evolutionist does not," then the fallacy would
be just affirming the consequent (or a variant thereon) -- If you're a
creationist, you believe x; Rand believes x; therefore, Rand is a
creationist.
However, I don't think this is Frank's logic, because he also said,
"An evolutionist does not [believe in a radical difference between man
and the rest of reality]." I take this to mean that no evolutionist
believes in such a radical difference. (Note that here the middle
term is also distributed.) From this together with the minor premise
that Rand did believe that, it follows that Rand was no evolutionist.
However, it doesn't follow from THAT that she was a Creationist; there
are other alternatives. I think Frank is assuming that everyone who
is not an evolutionist is a Creationist, and vice versa.
Michael Huemer
jwa...@MCS.COM (Jimmy Wales) writes:
...
>>One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
>>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
>
>Humans are different in kind from our cousins the chimps. Chimps are
>different in kind from baboons. Parakeets are different in kind from
>parrots. The 'kind' in question is 'species'. As I understand it
I suspect Dorothy was thinking of human intelligence vs. chimp
intelligence. Here are two possibilities:
(a) you might think that the other primates all have varying levels of
intelligence. Perhaps a chimp has an IQ around 20. What happened
when humans evolved was simply that, as our brains got ever bigger by
degrees, we got higher and higher intelligence; i.e., our mental
capacities simply increased along a certain dimension.
(b) on the other hand, perhaps, instead, what happened was that at
some point, we got a completely new mental capacity, of which the
chimps have absolutely zero. I.e., while humans have IQ's around 100,
chimps and all other organisms would have exactly 0 IQ (assuming IQ is
a measure of intelligence).
Now, an argument can be made that (b) is inconsistent with the theory
of evolution, together with our having evolved from a common ancestor
that didn't differ in kind from the chimps. There's also some reason
to think that Rand held (b).
Frank would conclude from this that Rand rejected the theory of
evolution. However, there's another possibility (in addition to the
possibility that she had no opinion on it): it's possible that she
had an incorrect understanding of the theory of evolution, one
according to which evolution would permit sudden qualitative changes
through mutation. (In fact, of course, that sort of thing is
*possible*, but highly unlikely.)
This isn't really the important issue, though. The important issue is
whether Objectivism, as such, is wedded to answer (b).
Michael Huemer
>>animals -- that there were other conscious beings, but none with *our*
>>*conceptual* one.
By the way, I think there's some confusion about the "degree/kind"
distinction. To say that A differs in kind from B is not to say
something about HOW different A is from B. That is, the distinction
between "differs in kind" and "differs in degree" is not the
distinction between "is very different" and "is only a little bit
different."
Rather, the distinction is this:
Sometimes, A and B both vary along a certain dimension; however, they
occupy different places on that dimension. In this case, they differ
in degree. For example, A could be 1 meter long and B 2 meters.
On the other hand, sometimes A has a position along a certain
dimension, and B has *no position at all* on that dimension. For
example, A could be 1 meter long, whereas B doesn't have any length at
all -- just as, for example, my belief that the sky is blue doesn't
have any length. In this case, A differs in kind from B. Thus, my
belief that the sky is blue differs in kind from my desk.
Needless to say, A and B could differ in degree with respect to one
property, and also differ in kind with respect to another property.
DEFanyo
In article <4qlalk$b...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>, Jim Klein (rum...@ix.netcom.com) writes:
>In <33...@teekay.win.net> de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>
>>contemplating what strange creatures those humans be, were I to
>>come face to face with one, he'd have a LOT of curiosity about me!
>
>fashion to formulate "curiosity". Like many lower animals, he might
>perhaps react to the new sensations in such a way that we
>anthropomorphize curiosity, but I for one see not the least shred of
>evidence that actual curiosity is happening.
Goodness, I don't think the chimp has to conceptualize "curiosity"
in order to be curious. Isn't curiosity a wanting to know what's
going on in the environment, at whatever level? It's certainly a
imperative survival tactic. At the base, isn't that why humans
exhibit curiosity, in order to survive at whatever level has been
decided upon?
>Do you have any evidence that ANY animal besides man is able to
>conceptualize (i.e. store complex perceptions for later retrieval and
>interconnection)? IMO, even complex tasks such as tool-use don't
>qualify because these can be explained through "simple retrieval", and
>don't require any form of logic or human-like memory (self-referencing)
>to occur. That is, I see that the chimp can do it, but I'm highly
>suspect that he knows he's doing it or that he did it yesterday.
Well, my schnauzer has me well trained! Anytime she wakes up and
without further ado starts barking and dancing around me, I know
it's time to quit whatever I'm doing to let her outside. While she
may have no concept of "yesterday", if I ignore her (which I've
tried just to see what happens) she continues her demand (it can be
nothing else) until I comply. I find it most difficult to think
she doesn't know what she's doing and why.
>>(Even the lowly planaria seem to make choices, though what they
>>make choices *with* no one can say. We live in a world full of
>>wonders! I'll send you email about that amazing phenomena -- and to
>>anyone else who requests it.)
>
>I'd be most interested if you'd care to send it along. Thanks.
You're welcome. It'll probably arrive before this.
>>One could pose question marks. How about the unwilling female
>>chimp who side-tracks the unwelcome ardors of the pursuing male by
>>offering him a banana and escapes into the bushes while he eats it?
>>No choice? No reasoning? I've been known to work the same ploy
>>myself with variations, and I didn't have to learn it anymore than
>>the chimp did! She and I just figured it out... self-preservation
>>too can be the mother of invention! :-)
>
>That's a tough one, I admit. I'd like to see the details. Do you
>think she knows what she just did?
I can't for the life of me think she voluntarily gave up her banana
for *nothing*! :-) A definite heirarchy at work, don't you
think... involving choices. I don't remember other details -- as
reported by Goodall or one of the other experts. (And I'm
certainly not going to report details of my manipulations! That
would be giving away trade secrets! :-))
The Japanses studied a group of island-bound monkeys (closely
relatied to the Rhesus) for years. They started feeding the
islanders yams by throwing them onto the sandy beach. One young
female decided that she didn't like sand with her yams, so she
washed it off in the water! Eventurally, a few others followed
suit, but never the alphas. Reason? Solving a problem? What else!
It's *very* interesting to note that when another new food was
introduced, the alpha male was the first to eat it. And in *that*
case, *all* the rest of the tribe was eating it within four hours.
>>That is certainly a necessry component, as witness the pitiful
>>feral children. In some way (far, far from being understood), the
>>workings of that amazing 3 pounds of matter within the skull
>>produces what we call a mind and a consciousness as well as a sense
>>of self. Since they obviously aren't three pearls (to use Dennett's
>>term) tucked away in our brains somewhere, scientists have a long
>>way to go to find out just how all that comes about.
>
>Language, I'm inclined to think.
For full-blown human self, mind and consciousness, I couldn't agre
more. I think there are lesser manifestations in other animals,
most especially the primates -- which are certainly accomplished
without language as we know it.
>>Those remarks should assure you that I don't sell our brains short.
>>I'm in no way trying to belittle human ability. My point is that
>>we're not quite as unique as some would like to think. We are *of*
>>nature -- not outside it, not above it -- and we are totally
>>dependent upon it. And nature does not depend on us.
>
>This is a great and true point. (Is that redundant?)
Be as redundant as you please! That's a very important
understanding.
>I've never
>understood why the "nature lovers" see so much nature in a bird
>building a nest, but not a in man or woman creating a building.
I think you'd be interested in Dawkin's _The Extended Phenotype_.
The title is self-esplanatory.
>>If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
>>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
>
>I'm inclined to agree here, but I look to language as being the primary
>factor, rather than any outside influence.
It's interesting that not only my mind has a sense of self but that
my body does also.. My immune system has very definite "opinions"
as to what is "us" and what is "them" and is ever ready to repel.
>Thanks for the topic...but I wonder what Frank Forman thinks about
>his name leading it!
From what I've gathered about Frank from his posts, I'd say he'd
be delighted. IMO, Frank likes nothing more than to have one of
his deliberately provocative remarks engender a thread...:-)
Greg Swann
>What we call the self results from choice no more than does what we
>call mind or what we call consciousness.
No I disagree, although that could be a function of what we mean by
the self. In any case, while I agree with you that humans are a part of
and a product of nature, I don't agree that behaviors we observe in
animals are any more than analogically similar to human conceptual
activity. Animals are like humans to the extent that they publish
peer-reviewed articles about how remarkably like animals are those
interesting human specimens <g>. Is this a difference "of kind"? You
decide. A very similar distinction can be made between Western
culture (Fathertongue culture) and all of the other (Mothertongue)
cultures of the Earth: we study them to distraction and they study
us not at all. (FWIW, I have cross-cultural questions about the
meta-biases in the debate; everyone (myself included) who has spoken
about "how humans behave" has spoken about how cultural Paterlinguists
behave.)
In any case, I'm fobbing you off with the discussion of the origin of
the self from Chapter 3 of "Janio at a Point". This may prove less
than satisfying, also, but at least you'll know where I'm approaching
this from.
--GSS
From Chapter 3, Knowing, of Janio at a Point
(http://www.primenet.com/~gswann/Janio.html)
But _what_ is it that Is is? I don't have to tell you that objects
vary widely. I don't even have to tell you that I don't have to tell
you, but I do it anyway (grin). For our purposes, it will suffice to
divide all entities into three broad categories: inanimate objects,
organisms, and humans. We do this in order to make observations about
the _identity_ of each type, and, in turn, to draw conclusions about
types of _causality._
Now I've been using those words, identity and causality, for quite a
while without giving any clue as to their meaning. It's time I did
them justice.
The _identity_ of an object is what that object is. It is itself,
irrespective of our consciousness of it. And it is _as_ it is
according to it nature, according to the properties of the components
of which it is made. An object can exist in different forms. A mineral
can be a solid or a liquid. _But no object can change its identity._ A
mineral cannot become a gas, for instance, or a tree. The Law Of
Identity, A is A, a thing is itself, is _absolute._ It admits of no
exceptions.
Humans can be conscious of the identity of an object. But that
awareness is not the identity of the object, nor does the object make
its identity known _automatically._ We can observe ice, but our
observation of it does not change _its_ nature - or our own. The ice
itself is immediately obvious to the senses, but its _identity_ is
not. We cannot know merely by gazing at it that its melting point is
zero degrees celsius. Nor can we claim that we _create_ the melting
point of ice by looking at it. The identity of ice - or of any object
- is what it is _regardless_ of what we think or feel about it...
_Causality_ is the way objects interact. It is a _manifestation_ of
identity, a necessary relationship of objects among other objects.
Each object has its identity, its own real nature. When one object
comes into contact with another, they act upon each other. The
simplest and most common example is the billiards table. A billiard
ball will sit still until acted upon by another object. Then it will
move in a straight line until it is slowed by friction or until it
bounces off one of the walls of the table. When one ball slams into
another, the slammer is stopped and the ball slammed begins to move.
The _effect_ of the slammed ball's motion was _caused_ by the energy
transferred by the slammer.
Again, we can be aware of this, _but our awareness changes nothing._
When talking about inanimate objects, _causation is inviolable._ There
is no thought you can hold or action you can take that will cause
events to reverse themselves. No matter how much you might want it to
be otherwise, the slammed ball must move when hit, and the slammer
must stop. In the same way, the prior causes that put the Earth in
motion around the Sun cannot be reversed by your ideas. You can _wish_
that the world moved in the opposite direction, but your wish will not
cause it to happen...
And, of course, you know all that. But there is more that you might
not have thought about.
Call back to mind our three categories: inanimate objects, organisms
and humans. _Identity_ is absolute for all three types of entity.
There is no such thing as a gas that is simultaneously a rock, for
example, or a tree that is also a bird, or a human who lacks the
capacity to choose. But _causality_ is not the same for all three...
Causality among inanimate objects is inviolable. Objects cannot change
their identity, and human observers cannot change identity. So an
object always is what it is, and it always interacts with other
objects in the way its identity requires. There is nothing in the
nature of either a billiard ball or a human observer that can cause
the ball to remain still when hit by another ball. Given the prior
cause the effect _must,_ necessarily, manifest itself, without
exception. The effect is _foreordained_ by the nature of the objects
interacting, and nothing can change it. Period.
_Organisms,_ by contrast, have a degree of flexibility in their
responses. The simpler an animal is, the less flexibility there is.
And, high animal or low, _most_ of an animal's actions are
_foreordained_ by its nature. Foreordained in a different sense than
we used that word for inanimate objects, though. An organism's actions
are selected - for the most part - by its instincts, by the "race
memory" if you like, imposed upon it by its genes. The higher animals
do have some degree of choice about what actions to take, but even
that choice is preprogrammed by the animal's nature. Your dog can
choose to bite your sister or play with her, but it cannot choose to
play _Chess_ with her. And when an animal is faced with a situation
for which its instincts have not prepared it, it is paralyzed to act.
As an example, think of the stupid, self-destructive timidity
displayed toward humans by the animals of the Galapagos Islands. Now,
animals the world over know we are dangerous. That's why they do such
a good job of staying out of our way. But the animals of the Galapagos
have no "race memory" of us. Their instincts do not tell them how to
respond to us, and they lack the ability to learn in any systematic or
lasting way.
Anyway, the point is this: an animal's actions are predetermined by
its nature. It has _some_ flexibility _within_ that nature, but _none_
outside it. Your dog can choose to be friendly or mean, but he cannot
choose to be a vegetarian. You can _train_ him not to scratch the
floor, but you can never teach him that it is unreasonable to try to
scare up snakes and bugs by scratching at parquet. In the most
fundamental sense, an animal's actions are _foreordained_ by nature
and are not malleable by any action of yours.
But humans are _very_ different. We share with the higher animals the
power of choice, but we lose the inviolable instincts and gain the
power to reason. Because we act upon volition unhindered by instinct,
none of our _purposive_ actions are foreordained. There are certain
types of actions, such as reflexes, that _are_ genetically
preprogrammed. But the part of our action that is under our conscious
control is _entirely_ under our conscious control. We can do anything
we like, within the bounds that nature allows, and nothing in _our
own_ nature impedes our freedom.
What is more, we have the capacity to reason, to _choose to_ abstract
sense evidence into concepts of objects. And we have the power to
_choose to_ communicate these concepts among ourselves, thus
multiplying the power of our minds. Man is a being of volitional
conceptuality, and he is unique as such among beings.
Now, what does this _mean?_ An inanimate object acts as it must,
according to the prior causes acting upon it. If it comes into contact
with another object, it can _be_ a causal agent in a new causal chain.
But it cannot _choose_ to be a causal agent. An animal acts as it
must, according to its genetic preprogramming. It acts as its
instincts command, though in some cases it can choose among
alternatives offered by its genes. When it acts, it is a causal agent.
But it cannot _choose_ to be a causal agent, nor even identify its own
limited power of choice.
By contrast, man can do both. He can _identify_ his power to _choose_
to be a causal agent. The actions of an inanimate object are
absolutely foreordained. The actions of an animal are foreordained
with some tolerances. But the actions of man are _not_ foreordained.
They are exclusively the product of his volition.
This is vital. It tells us a great many interesting things about man
and his actions. It also offers us a distinction between types of
causation. From here on, I will refer to the metaphysical cause and
the volitional cause. The metaphysical cause refers to the actions of
inanimate matter and animals. When something is metaphysically caused,
_it could not be otherwise,_ given the prior causes. A metaphysically
caused event is causally _unavoidable._
By contrast, a volitionally caused event is _always_ causally
avoidable. It happened because someone _chose_ to make it happen, and
that person could have chosen an alternative. As an example: the shape
of North America at the time of its discovery was caused by nature; it
was the product of an enormous number of prior causes, each of which
was metaphysically unavoidable. But the shape of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts is man-made. It consists of entirely arbitrary lines men
have drawn upon a map, _by choice,_ for reasons of their own. It's
true that some some of Massachusetts' boundaries are natural in
origin, but the use of natural barriers as boundaries is _also_ a
matter of choice. Nature could not decide to change the shape of North
America, but men could easily choose to change the shape of
Massachusetts. They have done so several times. Men can even choose to
change the shape of North America. We do it all the time, with dredges
and landfills.
Men are unique among entities. We have the power to reason, and we
have the power to choose. Our power can lead to our undoing, as we saw
in the last chapter. There is no other living being that can _choose_
to act in self-destruction. Certain animals _do_ act contrary to their
own interests: lemmings are the textbook example. But no animal
_knowingly_ acts against its own interests. Humans can and do. Many do
little else...
But our power is also our glory. There are no other animals who
compose poetry or erect skyscrapers. No animal could write _The
Organon_ or the Ninth Symphony. Some dogs are very playful, but they
can never know the _conceptual_ joy of viewing a Degas dancer or
seeing Ibsen's _Master Builder._ Beavers have the reputation of being
very efficient, but no beaver can choose to build something _other
than_ a dam. Dolphins, whales and apes are said to be very
intelligent, but none of them is smart enough to husband a food supply
- or organize against a common enemy. Man is that smart and more. No
other animal can even _conceive_ of an unforeseen disaster - an
earthquake, a tidal wave, a forest fire. Because he has reason and
choice, man can not only _see_ the future, he can _plan_ for it...
***
I've said it before: man is a being of volitional conceptuality. What
does this _mean?_
First, it means that man can _reason_ about sense evidence. Like any
higher animal, he can observe the real entities and actions in the
world around him. But unlike any other being, he can recall past
perceptions and compare them to present ones. He can organize and
reorganize his past perceptions, uniting those that are similar and
separating those that differ. He can order whole classes of objects
and events into _concepts,_ ideas. He can reason about those ideas in
order to understand other ideas. And he can _communicate_ his ideas to
others, with one word standing for a whole class of entities or
processes or ideas.
For example, if I use the word "smelting", you might think of the
whole process of metal forming, from mining to firing to purification
to pouring. You know all of this from past experience, which is
retained by mental integration under a concept. In the same way, if I
say "poetry", you might think of some of the thousands of poems you
have read. But if I say "poetry in motion", you might think of
athletics or the dance or horse-racing, whatever that concept means
_to you,_ whatever your past experience has led you to believe it
means.
But man is a being of _volitional_ conceptuality. That means two
things. It means that man _can_ reason, but that he only actually does
so _by choice,_ and that every choice he makes results from his having
thought about it _by choice._ But it _also_ means that reason and
choice are _themselves_ volitionally caused...
Not the _capacity_ to reason and to choose; these are genetically
foreordained and are not subject to change by choice. But their
_development_ is very much a product of choice, and if that choice is
absent, so will be volition and conceptuality. And the choice is not
that of any particular person, but of his _parents..._
Look at it: children are born with the _capacity_ to walk upright. But
they have neither the muscular development nor the _knowledge_ to walk
upright on their own. In order to learn to walk, they have to _teach
themselves_ how, with the help of their parents. And they have to eat
and sleep comfortably and exercise, with _all_ of these things
obtained or motivated by their parents.
In the same way, to learn to reason, and to learn to _choose_ to
reason, a child must be supplied with a great deal of stimulation he
could not obtain on his own. His parents present him with all sorts of
sensory challenges: mobiles and toys and car rides and cuddles and
nonsense speeches about the beauty of his toes. They don't - for the
most part - do this with the view of stimulating the child's brain;
they just do it because they love him. But their actions have the
_effect_ of stimulating the baby's in-born capacity to choose to
reason, even if this is not the intent.
What would happen _without_ that stimulation? The child would not
learn to reason, and he would not learn to make _abstract_ choices.
This is a matter of established fact, documented under the general
heading "Wildmen", humans raised by animals. And we can envision an
even fuller - and more monstrous - test. Imagine a man-made womb, a
sensory deprivation tank that provides a newborn with food and
disposes of his wastes. Inside it, the child would experiences no
sensations, not even the sounds he heard prior to his birth. Would
this child reason? About what? Would he choose? From among which known
alternatives?
There is a third sense in which we can say that man is a being of
volitional conceptuality. It is in fact a variation on the first, but
it is interesting on its own. Man can choose to be _not_ conscious. He
cannot change his identity; identity is inviolable. Be he can choose
to forbid himself the use of reason and choice. Madness is a form of
this, but a temporary and specific variety. Suicide is a very, very
fast expression of it. But the thing itself is _anomie,_ the on-going
_refusal_ to be human, to reason about evidence and act upon it by
choice. Real anomie is not something you'll see often; victims of it
don't last very long. But if you can imagine our child in the sensory
deprivation tank, that's what you'd have, a genetic human who does not
react _at all._ This is done as the _product_ of a choice, but the
choice is to renounce choosing, to renounce even the positive act - by
comparison - of suicide. Such is the power of the human mind, that it
can completely obliterate itself...
But the _normal_ human mind is an agent of _creation,_ not
destruction. As we have seen, people _can_ engage in self-destruction,
but they need not and they do so only at their own peril. What
interests us now is what we can observe about man, about the being who
reasons and chooses and chooses to reason...
For a first thing, we can note that a man can have _knowledge,_
remembered abstracted sense data. Knowledge is awareness of the truth,
and it is particular to a person. We can speak of a book as "embodied
knowledge", but only as a matter of poetry. No book "knows" anything,
and if the data recorded in a book is not known to _someone,_ it is
not known. The Rosetta Stone was "embodied knowledge", but for the
entire time that we did not know how to decode it, no one "knew" what
that knowledge was.
In the same way, "common knowledge" does not violate causality. It may
be "common knowledge" that water freezes at zero celsius, but that
does not mean that this fact is known _automatically,_ or that
_anyone_ could know it without having _discovered_ it. You do not know
_anything_ without having found it out. There is no automatic
knowledge, and there are no short-cuts to validation, to proof. To
prove something means to prove it in identity and causality, to show
that it _must_ be so, _because it could not be otherwise._
Knowledge is particular to a person and so is volition. When a person
chooses to do something, it is _only_ that person who is choosing, not
someone else. It is very common to hear Sleepwalkers say things like,
"Creation is a collective process." They are lying - and they know it.
Ideas do not exist apart from brains, and the choice to think about
something in a different way does not occur apart from the brain of
the person who makes that choice.
Volition is the _exclusive_ motivation of humans. A person can choose
to be unmotivated - as with anomie - but he cannot choose an
_alternate_ motivation. Humans are motivated by their own choices, or
they are not motivated at all...
What is more, each human is _self-motivated._ The self is an idea each
person abstracts _about himself._ He observes himself in the world
around him, takes note of his metaphysically caused nature and his
volitionally engendered desires. He takes account of his thoughts,
words and deeds, and, through time, forms an idea of who and what he
is. It is this idea - the ego, the self, the soul, the spirit, the
self-concept - that is both the actor and the thing acted-upon in his
every choice.
The self is not metaphysically necessary. Nature does not cause man to
abstract _any_ ideas, much less one so complex. But in the presence of
its prior causes, the idea of the self is _unavoidable._ If we put a
pregnant woman on a completely deserted island, and if she died while
giving birth, her child would die within hours. Newborn humans are not
even _close_ to being able to survive alone. If we put her among
wolves and the same thing happened, and if the wolves raised the
child, it will be as if he _were_ a wolf, a terribly crippled one. The
child would not develop his capacity to reason, and thus he would
never _identify_ his power to choose. His poor emulation of wolf
instincts would be a _product_ of choice, but he would not know this.
Not ever, unless he is rescued _very_ young. But in the presence of
normal human upbringing, the child will abstract the idea of self _as
a consequence_ of developing conceptual fluency.
I like to think of the spirit as a sort of doll, an idea of his own
body that each person sustains in his mind. By his actions in the real
world, he acts upon that body. And he acts upon it, too, by those
actions of his that are only introspectively known. By his own
estimation of how his thoughts and deeds serve his interests, _as he
identifies them,_ a person assesses his ego. And by that assessment,
he determines his _future_ thoughts and actions.
It is poetic to think of the soul as a doll of the body, but the body
really _is_ the doll of the spirit. If you want to know why some
people always get what they want while others always get walked on -
the spirit is your answer. We make our souls _real,_ we _embody_ our
self-concept in our actions. When a person feels he _is_ worthless -
he _acts_ worthless. When he feels he is great, he makes that image of
himself manifest in his body. The self-concept is invisible, but its
_expressions_ are not...
DEFanyo
>However, it doesn't follow from THAT that she was a Creationist; there
>are other alternatives. I think Frank is assuming that everyone who
>is not an evolutionist is a Creationist, and vice versa.
What are these other alternatives?
(I am NOT saying that Rand was a Creationist, which is absurd. I'm
just looking for those other alternatives.)
--Dorothy
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The safest way to hide the limits of your knowledge
is not to transgress them. -- Giacomo Leonardi
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ed Matthews
> Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> writes:
>
> >> >What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
> >> >difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
> >> >precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
> ...
> >Actually, this is a FORMAL fallacy -- a flaw in his syllogism -- first
> >identified by Aristotle. I believe it's called "undistributed middle" and
> >any Aristotle scholars out there can correct me if I'm wrong.
I think the basic error is an equivocation of the _type_ of "radical
difference". Creationism (at least in the variants that I am familiar
with) call for a supernatural origin for man. Yet Rand clearly denies
that such other "realities" can exist.
Of course, the proper method to establish whether or not Rand was a
creationist is to look at the _essentials_ of Objectivism and creationism to
begin with, and not an arbitrary choice of attributes. For instance, I
could easily say "Rand read the newspaper"; "Tony Snow writes for the
newspaper"; therefore, "Rand read Mr. Snow's columns."
There is an equivocation involving "newspaper", since (among other
things) I didn't specify which papers she read, which papers Snow wrote
for, or what periods of time are involved. In which case, although the
attributes I am considering both use the word "newspaper" they may not
necessarily refer to the same concepts or concretes.
------------------------
Ed Matthews
e...@gladstone.uoregon.edu
talisman
In article <4qlalk$b...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
rum...@ix.netcom.com(Jim Klein ) wrote:
>In <33...@teekay.win.net> de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>>While humans have a much larger cerebral cortex and a greatly
>>enlarged forebrain (praise be!), we ain't got nothin' that the
>>chimps don't have in a lesser degree!
>
>Do you have any evidence that ANY animal besides man is able to
>conceptualize (i.e. store complex perceptions for later retrieval and
>interconnection)? IMO, even complex tasks such as tool-use don't
>qualify because these can be explained through "simple retrieval", and
>don't require any form of logic or human-like memory (self-referencing)
>to occur. That is, I see that the chimp can do it, but I'm highly
>suspect that he knows he's doing it or that he did it yesterday.
>
>>That is certainly a necessry component, as witness the pitiful
>>feral children. In some way (far, far from being understood), the
>>workings of that amazing 3 pounds of matter within the skull
>>produces what we call a mind and a consciousness as well as a sense
>>of self. Since they obviously aren't three pearls (to use Dennett's
>>term) tucked away in our brains somewhere, scientists have a long
>>way to go to find out just how all that comes about.
>
>Language, I'm inclined to think.
Have you studied linguistic theory, specifically as it relates to "Universal
Grammar" and the modular nature of language processing?
I won't go into a lot of background, hoping you are somewhat familiar --
it is curious to me that language (or at least the rules by which it operates)
is separate from the conceptual faculty (or at least the volitional
consciousness, if you will). That's the current thinking, at least.
Could this mean that other animals have consciousnesses capable of
conceptualizing, but simply lack the "language module"?
If *this* is true, what do their consciousnesses *do*?
Can they reason without language?
Can they conceptualize in some "alien" way or to some degree?
(except for symbolic language, they show no ability to follow grammar or syntax
rules, so the studies say)
Thoughts?
>>If you mean that we each choose to "make" a self, I can't agree.
>>It's one of those things that happens and we don't as yet know
>>exactly how, though theories are in evidence.
>
>I'm inclined to agree here, but I look to language as being the primary
>factor, rather than any outside influence.
>
>Thanks for the topic...but I wonder what Frank Forman thinks about his
>name leading it!
It probably keeps him reading it. :)
>jk
Michael McCormick
_ELAN_
Betsy Speicher
> >> >What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
> >> >difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
> >> >precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
> ...
> >Actually, this is a FORMAL fallacy -- a flaw in his syllogism -- first
> >identified by Aristotle. I believe it's called "undistributed middle" and
> >any Aristotle scholars out there can correct me if I'm wrong.
> The middle term in this case would be 'believer in a radical
> difference between man and the rest of reality.' I don't think it's
> the undistributed middle you're thinking of; I think the middle term
> IS distributed in the premise "Creationists believe in a radical
> difference between man and the rest of reality," because I think Frank
> means that ALL creationists believe this.
Then the syllogism would be:
All Creationists believe X
All Objectivists believe X
--------------------------
Therefore, Objectivists are Creationists
It is the same formal fallacy as:
All mothers are parents
All fathers are parents
-----------------------
Therefore, all mothers are fathers
Michael Huemer
Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> writes:
>Then the syllogism would be:
> All Creationists believe X
> All Objectivists believe X
> --------------------------
> Therefore, Objectivists are Creationists
Sorry, you were right -- that is the undistributed middle. The term
"believers of X" is undistributed, because neither of the premises
makes a claim about ALL the people who believe X. Rather, only
"creationist" and "objectivist" are distributed, because something is
said about all of each of those classes. It's still essentially the
same as affirming the consequent, though.
Jimmy Wales
(I've split my response in two: one deals with the original subject of
this thread, "Frank Forman's misrepresentations," while this one deals
with "Dorothy on evolution".)
I just have a couple of comments here.
>1) Ayn Rand might have been much clearer about what it could
>possibly mean to say that humans have the choice to live or to
>die. One of the facts which becomes obvious from knowing something
>about evolution is that all living things are programmed to
>struggle for survival -- the program is *for* Life (survival and
>reproduction), and man is no exception. The human choice (a result
>of cultural evolution) is whether to live to the optimum possible
>for man or whether to settle for less.
Well, perhaps. I'm not sure what you are saying here.
Humans *do* have a choice about whether to live or die in the most
literaly sense. Humans make the choice to die (literally) often
enough that it isn't freakish. (I'm thinking of outright suicide
here.) So it isn't obvious to me what you mean when you say that
the choice is between optimal and sub-optimal living. Yes, we have
that choice, but we also have the choice (and it is more fundamental,
obviously) to live or die. We aren't "programmed" for survival, if you
mean by "programmed" what people usually mean by it... i.e. unable to
do otherwise.
>2) The flat assertion that emotions stem from what we think needs
>qualifying. Some (most?) indeed do. However, some result from
>the animals we are -- we need no principles of property to be
>outraged when something we own is taken from us, or even
>threatened. We need no principle of the right to life to fight
>for physical survival.
I think the distinction you are looking for is probably one that Ayn
Rand would agree with. We don't always need a _principled_ or
_conceptual_ evaluation of something in order to respond to it
emotionally. (Frequently, we *do*, as in the example Peikoff gives
in OPAR of emotional responses to X-ray film.) But we *do* need
an identification in *some* form, or else there can be no emotional
response. We may react with a "fight or flight" response to a
*perceived* threat to our physical survival, but we have to *perceive*
it (in some form).
>Yes, all emotions can be controlled no matter what their origin.
>Nevertheless, it's psychologically invalid to "blame" all emotions
>on thinking. Taking Ayn Rand at her word, a man or woman would have
>to assume faulty (evasive?) thinking were either to be sexually
>attracted by a total stranger or a person other than their "highest
>value." Nature would just smile.
Well, I'm not at all sure this is accurate. Can you give a quote
supporting this interpretation of Rand, or is it just an impression
you get? I think she would say that it would be wrong to live a life
of constantly pursuing random encounters with appealing strangers, but
I doubt she would claim that a rational person would be immoral for
experiencing physical desire in non-romantic conditions.
>Agreed. And not only cognition. The three products of the brain
>that particularly fascinate me (and from the volume of posts about
>them, I'm say it's a pretty general fascination) are the self, the
>mind, and consciousness. And I think that chimps experience all
>three at the level warranted by the complexity of their brains. We
>just have more of the same! Again, a difference in degree...
O.k., this is a bit more precise.
I would say that our cognition differs not just in degree but in kind
from that of chimps. Let me make my terms more clear.
Let's imagine me playing chess. I'm quite frankly a mediocre chess player.
I'm good at games generally, and so I understand the principles of good play.
But I've not practiced, I don't know any of the standard openings, etc.
The difference between my cognition and that of Kasparov when he's playing
chess may be fairly characterized as a difference in degree. We do the
same *kinds* of things, but he's much better at it than I will ever be.
(He's better at it, it is said, than anyone who ever lived.)
Now imagine the cleverest chimpanzee in the world sitting at a chess
board. The chimp's thought processes with respect to the situation
are different in *kind*. Even if someone has taught the chimp a few
things about moving the pieces around (in order to get rewards), there
isn't any evidence (of which I am aware, anyhow) that a chimp could ever
grasp even the rudiments of the game. In part, I believe, this is because
understanding a game like chess requires that one grasp various complex
*propositions* about the rules of interaction of the pieces.
Chess is but one example, but I think this holds across the board. If we
come up with a metric for human intelligence, we might be able to
(loosely) rank various people along a continuum (showing that they have
some aspect of intelligence in various degrees): a retarded man working as
a gardener, then the cable guy, then Jimbo, then a top physicist, etc.
But if the test was substantial enough to really capture what is important
about human intelligence, we would have to admit that a chimpanzee is not
just a really dumb human, mind-wise, but a different *kind* of animal with
a different *kind* of consciousness. The difference arises from our ability
to reason in syllogisms, etc.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales
Sorry I qouted so much, Michael, but I saw no convenient way to
edit down your remarks.
Michael Huemer <o...@amenti.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>I suspect Dorothy was thinking of human intelligence vs. chimp
>intelligence. Here are two possibilities:
>(a) you might think that the other primates all have varying levels of
>intelligence. Perhaps a chimp has an IQ around 20. What happened
>when humans evolved was simply that, as our brains got ever bigger by
>degrees, we got higher and higher intelligence; i.e., our mental
>capacities simply increased along a certain dimension.
>
>(b) on the other hand, perhaps, instead, what happened was that at
>some point, we got a completely new mental capacity, of which the
>chimps have absolutely zero. I.e., while humans have IQ's around 100,
>chimps and all other organisms would have exactly 0 IQ (assuming IQ is
>a measure of intelligence).
Right. I choose (b). As a simple proxy, I will say that the new mental
capacity is: the ability to comprehend and complete the following
syllogism: "All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. Therefore..."
That isn't all of it, obviously. But that's an example of a mental
ability that humans have (barring some unfortunate brain problems)
that chimpanzees do not, period. Other such abilities include the
ability to use a language, etc. (As I understand it, Chimps can learn
to string together a few words, but not to understand grammar as such.)
The *exact* nature of chimpanzee cognition is whatever it is, and I'm
not an expert on it. But I contend that it is not *merely* a difference
in degree in the sense you outlined in (a). Any metric of intelligence
which captured what is important about human cognition would leave
chimpanzees totally out in the cold.
>Now, an argument can be made that (b) is inconsistent with the theory
>of evolution, together with our having evolved from a common ancestor
>that didn't differ in kind from the chimps. There's also some reason
>to think that Rand held (b).
Well, if there is such an argument to be made, I hope you'll make it.
I don't see any validity to this line of argument myself. We evolved
from a common ancestor with the chimps, but in *many* ways we differ
not just in degree, but in kind. One area is cognition -- it isn't
that chimps are just *really dumb* people!
There are many examples in evolution of a new species emerging with new
properties which are not in evidence in the earlier animals. I see no
reason why intelligence should pose any special problem.
>Frank would conclude from this that Rand rejected the theory of
>evolution. However, there's another possibility (in addition to the
>possibility that she had no opinion on it): it's possible that she
>had an incorrect understanding of the theory of evolution, one
>according to which evolution would permit sudden qualitative changes
>through mutation. (In fact, of course, that sort of thing is
>*possible*, but highly unlikely.)
I don't see how the speed of change is relevant here, but if you think
it is, I hope you'll explain it to me.
(Just as a by the way, my own study of evolution suggests that the
existence of sudden qualitative changes is not seriously in dispute.
Stephen Jay Gould's work on 'punctuated equilibrium' was motivated
by the longstanding mystery of why the fossil record does not, in many
instances, record a long series of minute changes, but rather shows us
the sudden arrival of new *kinds* of animals. The mathematics of genetic
drift in small populations is fascinating, and I believe that Gould's
work is now the standard theory.
Two footnotes: First, many evolutionists are quoted out of context by
creationists. The pattern is this: an evolutionist makes a disparaging
remark about 'Darwinism,' meaning it in a technical way, namely the view
that evolution is a process of minute changes over a long period of time.
But the creationist interprets it as an example of a scientist rejecting
the theory of evolution in favor of creation! Even Gould has been
subjected to this sort of dishonesty!.
Second: It would not surprise me to learn that I have done a grave
injustice to some other scientists by crediting the theory of punctuated
equilibrium to Gould alone. I just mention him because he is the most
famous, and I have read him.
>This isn't really the important issue, though. The important issue is
>whether Objectivism, as such, is wedded to answer (b).
Well, yes, this is the important issue. I don't think that Objectivism
is "wedded" to answer (b), but I do think that answer (b) is correct.
What do you think? Does my argument convince you?
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales
[This is on-topic, i.e. it is about Frank Forman and his deliberate
misrepresentations of Objectivism.]
I wrote:
>>And surely the fact that Rand wasn't a scientist isn't a
>>justification for accusing her of believing (basically) in "special
>>creation". That's my main criticism of the position Frank has taken.
Dorothy responded:
>My two cents worth: I don't think Frank was saying that Ayn Rand
>actually believed in a special creation -- since he well knows, as
>do you and I, that she didn't believe in a creator, that's absurd on
>the face of it.
Yes. This was the original point of my criticism.
Frank knows full well that Ayn Rand and Objectivism are not in favor
of "special creation," not "basically" or otherwise. He made the claim
anyway, knowing full well it was false. He lied.
His motive? He is often hostile to Ayn Rand and Objectivism, as well
as to leading Objectivists. He prefers to use insulting rhetorical
language rather than actually presenting arguments. (Witness his continued
attacks on Peikoff by spelling his name "Pea Cough" in true juvenile fashion,
as well as his absurd claim that there is no evidence that Leonard Peikoff
has checked any of his premises.)
I, for one, think all of these behaviors make him look like a nutcase.
And I've been trying to communicate to him that he can't honestly take
a non-response from quality participants in the Objectivist online community
as evidence of an inability to answer his claims. He needs to honestly
re-evaluate his own immature behavior and realize that a lot of good
people (like me!) typically just delete his posts as the rantings of
a loon, refusing to sanction his vicious debate tactics.
I hope he's listening.
--Jimbo
Michael Huemer
jwa...@MCS.COM (Jimmy Wales) writes:
>>(b) on the other hand, perhaps, instead, what happened was that at
>>some point, we got a completely new mental capacity, of which the
>>chimps have absolutely zero. I.e., while humans have IQ's around 100,
>>chimps and all other organisms would have exactly 0 IQ (assuming IQ is
>>a measure of intelligence).
>
>Right. I choose (b). As a simple proxy, I will say that the new mental
>capacity is: the ability to comprehend and complete the following
>syllogism: "All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. Therefore..."
So I take it what you're saying is that we have the capacity to infer
conclusions from premises. Correct me if I'm wrong; there could be
other interpretations of that example (for instance, that we have the
ability to *deduce*, or that we have the ability to understand
*universal* propositions), but this seems the most likely.
I don't know that chimpanzees don't have that capacity. I don't KNOW
that they do either, because I'm not an ethologist. However, I THINK
they do, because it is hard for me to imagine them surviving in a
relatively complicated environment as they do without being able to
infer anything from anything else. (Suppose the predator is rushing
towards the chimp. The chimp hasn't actually observed the predator
eating him; however, he infers that the predator is soon going to eat
him if he remains where he is. This seems to be inferential
knowledge.)
>that chimpanzees do not, period. Other such abilities include the
>ability to use a language, etc. (As I understand it, Chimps can learn
>to string together a few words, but not to understand grammar as such.)
I read a little about language experiments with other animals. It's
possible to get other animals to use a small number of words in simple
combinations. That seems to me to be something differing in degree
(albeit a very large degree) from our use of language. I'm not sure
about the bit about grammar. I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you
mean that, when you teach the chimp several words, some of which refer
to actions (verbs), and some of which refer to objects (nouns), the
chimp will just combine them willy nilly? If not... I think being
able to distinguish these classes of words enough to combine nouns
with verbs is a primitive form of grammar.
Someone else also pointed out how obvious the various technological
achievements (e.g., buildings) of humans are, and how other animals
don't produce any such things. This doesn't really prove that animals
don't have any intelligence, though. It doesn't even, really, prove
that they have vastly less intelligence (though it's clear for other
reasons that they do) -- because the technological achievements of
humans are the result of accumulation over a very long period of time,
and among a huge number of humans who have exchanged knowledge and
resources.
>>Now, an argument can be made that (b) is inconsistent with the theory
>>of evolution, together with our having evolved from a common ancestor
>>that didn't differ in kind from the chimps. There's also some reason
>>to think that Rand held (b).
>
>Well, if there is such an argument to be made, I hope you'll make it.
I'm trying to remember the title of that article by Herbert Simon that
one of my undergrad anthro professors made us read. I think it's
called "The Evolution of Complexity" or something like that. There,
he explains why, in order to evolve something complicated, you have to
have a lot of intermediate stages where the animal has part of the
complex structure and is still viable. For instance, you couldn't
expect the eye to evolve just directly (the odds of this are
astronomically small). You would have to first have a part of it
(like, maybe, the retina) evolve, and have survival value on its own.
So if you have a complex structure like an eye, it has to evolve
*gradually*.
Simon explains why this vastly increases the probability of the
structure evolving.
>There are many examples in evolution of a new species emerging with new
>properties which are not in evidence in the earlier animals. I see no
I'm not sure what sort of properties you're referring to. Maybe
something like wings evolving from arms? Could you give an example?
>(Just as a by the way, my own study of evolution suggests that the
>existence of sudden qualitative changes is not seriously in dispute.
>Stephen Jay Gould's work on 'punctuated equilibrium' was motivated
...
Actually, I think the difference between puntuated equilibrium and
more gradual evolution is a bit exaggerated by the pop science media.
Anyway, I recall hearing a biologist say so. The divergence between
these two kinds of biologists, you might say, is a difference of
degree - and not a very great degree at that.
>by the longstanding mystery of why the fossil record does not, in many
>instances, record a long series of minute changes, but rather shows us
>the sudden arrival of new *kinds* of animals. The mathematics of genetic
Well, I'm no biologist, but I think "sudden" in this context probably
means something like "50 thousand years" or maybe longer -- not at all
sudden by our standards.
By the way, I think the human brain about doubled in size over the
last 2 million years. This is considered a very rapid change in
evolutionary terms. But in normal human terms, that's an extremely
slow, gradual change. Anyway, one would wonder at what point during
that 2 million year growth, the sudden appearance of a totally new
faculty occurred. It would have to be sudden, of course, since it is
supposed to be a qualitative change, not a quantitative one, and a
qualitative change can't come gradually.
>Well, yes, this is the important issue. I don't think that Objectivism
>is "wedded" to answer (b), but I do think that answer (b) is correct.
>
>What do you think? Does my argument convince you?
I don't think Objectivism, as such, is committed to (b), because I
don't think it's a philosophical fundamental. I suppose I think that
(b) is false too, but I also think that's really an issue for
biologists and ethologists, not philosophers (especially
epistemologists).
haskell jack
"The autonomy of rational beings depends upon the use of symbols, and
especially on the use of words... This is what makes such beings
independent in some degree of their physical and perceptually
presented environments... Such autonomy is beyond the reach of even
the most accomplished sign-cognizant. And here, if anywhere, is the
difference in kind between men and the lower animals... Animal
learning, with the responsiveness to signs which results from it, is a
primitive form of induction, as Hume noticed. But the lower animals do
not seem to rise to the independent or autonomous thinking which the
use of symbols makes possible. Their thinking always remains "tied."
And so, though we must not deny that they think, we hesitate to call
them thinkers."
Prof H. H. Price -Thinking and Experience
Jimmy Wales
Well, in what is sure to be considered a historic moment in Usenet, I'm
going to change the subject explicitly rather than just wander off on a
tangent. It sounds like Mike and I may have some minor disagreements on
factual matters about what chimpanzees are capable of, but neither of us
is more than an educated layman in biology. So what might be more
interesting is a closer look, philosophically, at this question of "a
difference of degree" versus "a difference in kind."
What's interesting is that I'm claiming that there is a difference in
kind between chimp and human cognition. Mike is claiming that the
difference is one of degree rather than kind. I don't think either of
us is particularly adamant about our position, but we both seem to think
it an interesting question.
Now, to combat my claim that the difference is one of *kind* rather than
*degree*, Mike presents evidence that chimps and humans are *more similar*
than I might have supposed. This would suggest that he thinks that a
"kind" is a "large degree." But we know he isn't thinking of kinds and
degrees in that way, because he flat-out said so in a different post.
So what *is* a "kind"? And what *is* a "degree"? We can think of some
obvious examples. Mike's pencil is 4 inches long, mine is 6. Along
that dimension, they differ in *degree*: they both *have* a length.
But (as regards length) a pencil and an idea are different in *kind*.
An idea doesn't *have* a length, since it isn't a spatial entity at all.
But in other cases, it may be less clear, perhaps unless we make very
explicit what it is that we are talking about. Drinking water, contact
lens solution, and water from a salt lake are all different *kinds* of
things, thought about one way. But thought about another way, they
'merely' differ in degree of saltiness.
Perhaps it is like this for human versus chimp cognition. Certainly
we can (roughly) rank all conscious animals along a scale of "complexity
of cognition" with humans at the top, chimps lower, dogs lower, and
lawyers at the bottom (ha ha). But we can also see that there are
some differences in *kind* as we add new abilities not seen in lower
animals.
In my past examples, I tried to give things close to the borderline. But
all I really need to do is talk about Plato's dialogues. No chimpanzee
can understand or appreciate the beauty of a Plato dialogue. Even dumb
people can. The difference is one of kind -- involving various abilities
of abstraction.
It is true, and I do concede, that there are things going on in chimp
brains that might be classified as "inferential cognitive processes."
Mike's example is a good one: a predator is charging, and the chimp
correctly (if implicitly and in an unreflective way) infers that he's
going to get eaten if he doesn't scram right now. But I see no reason
(though I'm not a biologist at all, and so probably don't know enough
to be sure about this) to suppose that there is a conscious process of
deliberation and action.
But -- and this is the thing I'd be interested in discussing -- is
it possible that Mike would agree with this claim (provisionally anyhow)
about how chimps respond, and *yet* claim that this is still a difference
in degree rather than kind?
If so, then what *is* the difference between degree and kind? By
what method could the question be answered: "Do you think that X is
different Y in degree or in kind?" What additional suppositions
must be made, etc.?
I'd like to get this clearer in my own mind.
--Jimbo
Daniel Smith
(Jimmy Wales) writes:
[big snip...]
>If so, then what *is* the difference between degree and kind? By
>what method could the question be answered: "Do you think that X is
>different Y in degree or in kind?" What additional suppositions
>must be made, etc.?
>I'd like to get this clearer in my own mind.
>--Jimbo
As I'm sure you would agree, both degree and kind are concepts of
measurement. This presupposes a standard of measurement. With regards to
the measurement of forms of cognition, we may not know enough to establish
an objective enough standard to apply in order to distinguish between
differences of kind or degree between chimps and humans. I think plausible
arguments could be made for either position (i.e., the difference between
a chimp's cognitive capacities and a human's is one of either degree or
kind).
Mortimer J. Adler makes strong case for the differences between humans and
all other animals as one of kind and not degree in his book "THE DIFFERENCE
OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES". I'm sure equally strong arguments
which support that the difference is one of degree also exist.
When discussing the problem of borderline cases Ayn Rand suggested:
In the case of existents whose characteristics are equally
balanced between the referents of two differing concepts
-- such as primitive organisms, or the transitional shades
of a color continuum -- there is no cognitive necessity to
classify them under either (or any) concept. The choice
is optional: one may designate them as a subcategory of either
concept, or (in the case of a continuum) [a continuum of cognitive
capacity in our scenario] one may draw approximate dividing
lines...or one may identify them descriptively....
I think that the degree-kind debate with regards to the cognitive capacities
of chimps and humans is one of these borderline cases. Ultimately, I
think the ability to make a distinction between degree and kind in this
situation requires more knowledge about chimps, humans and their respective
cognitive processes. Nevertheless, whether or not it is a difference of
degree or kind, the difference between chimps and humans is distinctive
enough to necessitate a conceptual distinction between the two which
seperates them within the genera of "animal," "mammal" or "primate".
So, in answer to your question Jimbo, I suggest that the method of
establishing the distinction between degree and kind is contingent upon what
existent is being measured and the extent of our knowledge regarding
that existent. In short, it is contextual.
Just my two cents. I am very open to corrections.
Regards,
Dan Smith
DEFanyo
Quite apropos. And I'll agree that "...here, *if anywhere*, is the
difference in kind between men and lower animals." [Emphasis added]
That takes care of the differences in the abilities of mind and its
uses between man and other animals.
I'll agree that in the highest sense of the word, we don't call
other animals thinkers. Nevertheless, they are problem solvers --
else, I venture to say, we wouldn't be here.
In coming to an understanding about the nature of man, it will
hardly do to separate out man's language abilities and ignore our
inheritance as a species in the world. Man's exclusive ability to
use language is imposed upon old, old brain structures which we
share with other animals... the functions of those structures are
still operative in man and have much to do with what we are.
It's being theorized that we have no brain structures that other
animal don't have, that it seems possible that language structures
in the human brain are in large measure adapted from vision
structures that we share with chimps. The six-layered cerebral
cortex appeared in mammals 200 to 300 million years ago and is
only 1/8 of an inch thick. Our claim to fame is that is more
folded than in other animals.
See the June 1996 issue of _Discover_, "The Brain that Talks."
Ivan Ordonez
In article <4qovqp$s...@Mars.mcs.com>, jwa...@MCS.COM (Jimmy Wales) wrote:
[...]
> obviously) to live or die. We aren't "programmed" for survival, if you
> mean by "programmed" what people usually mean by it... i.e. unable to
> do otherwise.
If "people" mean that then they are wrong. To be "programmed" by our genes
means that we have a tendency towards a certain kind of behavior. Most
mammals are constrainde by their genes to stay in the land; however, a few
of them ventured into the sea and became whales. Evolution is possible
precisely because there are variations in behavior from individual to
individual in every species, and those variations cause differences in
probability for survival. The fact that our behavior is far more complex
than that of any other animal does not mean that we are any less
programmed than them.
[...]
> Now imagine the cleverest chimpanzee in the world sitting at a chess
> board. The chimp's thought processes with respect to the situation
> are different in *kind*. Even if someone has taught the chimp a few
> things about moving the pieces around (in order to get rewards), there
> isn't any evidence (of which I am aware, anyhow) that a chimp could ever
> grasp even the rudiments of the game. In part, I believe, this is because
Actually, the fact that chimps can grasp abstractions as complex as those
required to understand language suggests that you are wrong. Yes, probably
chess is a game too complex for them, but I don't see any reason why they
should not be able to learn, say, tic-tac-toe.
There is mounting evidence that the differences between humans and chimps
are a matter of degree, and nothing more. Some chimps have and IQ of 80
and above, higher than some humans.
> understanding a game like chess requires that one grasp various complex
> *propositions* about the rules of interaction of the pieces.
Which requires language, something chimps seem to be capable of.
> But if the test was substantial enough to really capture what is important
> about human intelligence, we would have to admit that a chimpanzee is not
> just a really dumb human, mind-wise, but a different *kind* of animal with
> a different *kind* of consciousness. The difference arises from our ability
> to reason in syllogisms, etc.
All we knoe about biology contradicts your assertion above. All religions
want to place man as a special kind of creature. Trying to do so in the
face of all we know from evolution will make it hard to defend against
charges of dogmatism.
--
Ivan Ordonez
iord...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (finger for PGP public key)
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~iordonez
DEFanyo
In article <4qovqp$s...@Mars.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales (jwa...@MCS.COM) writes:
This is the first time I've had the "honor" of seeing my name in
the subject line... do remember that I'm no expert on evolution --
only a very interested layman.
>I just have a couple of comments here.
>
>>1) Ayn Rand might have been much clearer about what it could
>>possibly mean to say that humans have the choice to live or to
>>die. One of the facts which becomes obvious from knowing something
>>about evolution is that all living things are programmed to
>>struggle for survival -- the program is *for* Life (survival and
>>reproduction), and man is no exception. The human choice (a result
>>of cultural evolution) is whether to live to the optimum possible
>>for man or whether to settle for less.
>
>Well, perhaps. I'm not sure what you are saying here.
>
>Humans *do* have a choice about whether to live or die in the most
>literaly sense. Humans make the choice to die (literally) often
>enough that it isn't freakish. (I'm thinking of outright suicide
>here.)
To decide to suicide, too, would be possible only after cultural
evolution, because man alone can act against the command of his
genes. There's no earthly way I can prove it, but I would seriously
doubt that any hunter-gatherers did themselves in.
And I doubt if Ayn Rand was talking about suicide when she spoke of
the choice between life or death.
Man has the choice to live to the human potential (to live _qua_
man) or to betray that potential (to allow the ability to live _qua_
man to be unfulfilled -- to allow the best that is within
you to perish).
>So it isn't obvious to me what you mean when you say that
>the choice is between optimal and sub-optimal living. Yes, we have
>that choice, but we also have the choice (and it is more fundamental,
>obviously) to live or die. We aren't "programmed" for survival, if you
>mean by "programmed" what people usually mean by it... i.e. unable to
>do otherwise.
"...unable to do otherwise" is the state of other animals in regard
to instincts. Surely in your obviuosly careful study of evolution
you learned that man alone among the animals is not subject to the
tyranny of his genes... He may deny their commands outright if he's
willing to pay the price for denial; he can negotiate between them;
and by the use of reason he can find civilized ways to satisfy
them. What he cannot do is throw them out of his nature. And I
think he ignores them or denies their existence at this peril, by
not understanding himself as fully as he might.
>>2) The flat assertion that emotions stem from what we think needs
>>qualifying. Some (most?) indeed do. However, some result from
>>the animals we are -- we need no principles of property to be
>>outraged when something we own is taken from us, or even
>>threatened. We need no principle of the right to life to fight
>>for physical survival.
>
>I think the distinction you are looking for is probably one that Ayn
>Rand would agree with. We don't always need a _principled_ or
>_conceptual_ evaluation of something in order to respond to it
>emotionally. (Frequently, we *do*, as in the example Peikoff gives
>in OPAR of emotional responses to X-ray film.) But we *do* need
>an identification in *some* form, or else there can be no emotional
>response. We may react with a "fight or flight" response to a
>*perceived* threat to our physical survival, but we have to *perceive*
>it (in some form).
Other animals perceive threats to their survival.,. and babies far
too young to have any possible identification of the the idea of
possession, will be *very* unhappy, often loudly, if you try to
take *his* rattle.
I thought Rand said that emotions result from the thinking we do,
and that we each program our own sub-conscious. Do correct me if
I'm wrong!
>>Yes, all emotions can be controlled no matter what their origin.
>>Nevertheless, it's psychologically invalid to "blame" all emotions
>>on thinking. Taking Ayn Rand at her word, a man or woman would have
>>to assume faulty (evasive?) thinking were either to be sexually
>>attracted by a total stranger or a person other than their "highest
>>value." Nature would just smile.
>
>Well, I'm not at all sure this is accurate. Can you give a quote
>supporting this interpretation of Rand, or is it just an impression
>you get? I think she would say that it would be wrong to live a life
>of constantly pursuing random encounters with appealing strangers, but
>I doubt she would claim that a rational person would be immoral for
>experiencing physical desire in non-romantic conditions.
I didn't mention *pursuing* encounters; I mentioned a totally
unreasoned sexual attraction. No, I can't give a quote. I spoke
from my memory of Ayn's exhortations about one's highest values.
It's my impression that, according to Rand, one would have done less
that optimum thinking if one's body had responded to other than
someone who was at least important to one in other ways, another
instance of the mind and body being one. Perhaps I'm wrong.
>>Agreed. And not only cognition. The three products of the brain
>>that particularly fascinate me (and from the volume of posts about
>>them, I'm say it's a pretty general fascination) are the self, the
>>mind, and consciousness. And I think that chimps experience all
>>three at the level warranted by the complexity of their brains. We
>>just have more of the same! Again, a difference in degree...
>
>O.k., this is a bit more precise.
Sorry... I tried...:-)
>I would say that our cognition differs not just in degree but in kind
>from that of chimps. Let me make my terms more clear.
I enjoyed Dan Smith's essay on kinds and degrees... He just may
have a point -- I say po-tay-to, and you say po-tah-to...:-)
[snip chess example]
>But if the test was substantial enough to really capture what is important
>about human intelligence, we would have to admit that a chimpanzee is not
>just a really dumb human, mind-wise, but a different *kind* of animal with
>a different *kind* of consciousness. The difference arises from our ability
>to reason in syllogisms, etc.
It is true that a 4-year-old human can outstrip a mature chimp
intellectually.
The anatomical differences are really rather superficial... we have
less hair and we walk more unright and we're prettier. :-) I don't
know whether we have a differen *kind* of consciousness or whether,
since we are the sole earthly animals with language, we are able use
the extra brain capacity differently. Has that been discovered?
It is, of course, true that somewhere along the line we developed
a *self consciousness* able to think about today and yesterday,
able to narrate, imagine, deceive (deception is common among other
animals and even some plants)... Whether Jaynes was right and it
happened 3 to 4 thousand years ago, who knows? But happen it did.
The cortex, however, is not the only part of the brain. We also
share with our animal ancestors all the other brain structures, and
those structures, too, have a bearing on what kinds of creatures we
are. And I think it's important to understand that and how
Objectivist principles apply to the instincts (drives, needs,
call them what you will) that we share with other animals.
Look, Jimbo, I know that, thanks to the Big Brain and cultural
evolution, there's a huge difference between humans and our cousins
the chimps. And we've come a long way since believing that we're
just a little lower than the angels who are just a little lower
than God in the Great Chain of Being, with us "holding dominion"
over other animals, and plants not even in the running so to speak.
However, I think we have just a bit further to go to fully realize
our kinship with anmals in general and mammals primates in
particular, and what that means to us in understanding what we are
and in understanding why we do many of the things we do.
Survival, territory (possessions), social structures, competition
for status, a deep need for stimulation,a concern with safety are
not human inventions -- their long and honorable history stretches
back for hundreds of millions of years. It's up to us to handle
them -- one of reason's big jobs.
DEFanyo
>[This is on-topic, i.e. it is about Frank Forman and his deliberate
>misrepresentations of Objectivism.]
>
>I wrote:
>>>And surely the fact that Rand wasn't a scientist isn't a
>>>justification for accusing her of believing (basically) in "special
>>>creation". That's my main criticism of the position Frank has taken.
>
>Dorothy responded:
>>My two cents worth: I don't think Frank was saying that Ayn Rand
>>actually believed in a special creation -- since he well knows, as
>>do you and I, that she didn't believe in a creator, that's absurd on
>>the face of it.
>
>Yes. This was the original point of my criticism.
Jimbo, I wouldn't get involved with this at all had you not used a
remark of mine as a springboard for your post. Whether you agree
with me or not is not the point... the point is that I didn't write
clearly enough and gave you plentry of room to misunderstood what I
attempted to say.
I'll try again.
Since Frank well knows that Ayn Rand could not possibly believe in
a "special creation", (just as you and I know), then I think it's
absurd on the face of it to think that he literally meant that she
believed that we humans are the product of a non-existent creator.
I then went on to say what I *thought* Frank meant, but I won't
go into that here.
Lionell Griffith
de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>I thought Rand said that emotions result from the thinking we do,
>and that we each program our own sub-conscious. Do correct me if
>I'm wrong!
Add to "the thinking we do" the thinking we
do NOT do, as well as the summation of our
experiences.
frank forman
Michael Huemer <o...@amenti.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>jwa...@MCS.COM (Jimmy Wales) writes:
>...
>>>One question: Do you hold that humans are different in kind or only
>>>in degree from our cousins the chimps?
>>
>>Humans are different in kind from our cousins the chimps. Chimps are
>>different in kind from baboons. Parakeets are different in kind from
>>parrots. The 'kind' in question is 'species'. As I understand it
>...
>
>intelligence. Here are two possibilities:
>(a) you might think that the other primates all have varying levels of
>intelligence. Perhaps a chimp has an IQ around 20. What happened
>when humans evolved was simply that, as our brains got ever bigger by
>degrees, we got higher and higher intelligence; i.e., our mental
>capacities simply increased along a certain dimension.
>
>some point, we got a completely new mental capacity, of which the
>chimps have absolutely zero. I.e., while humans have IQ's around 100,
>chimps and all other organisms would have exactly 0 IQ (assuming IQ is
>a measure of intelligence).
>
>of evolution, together with our having evolved from a common ancestor
>that didn't differ in kind from the chimps. There's also some reason
>to think that Rand held (b).
I don't think (b) is inconsistent with evolution. After all, birds did
get wings and can do something differently *in kind* than they could
before, namely fly. Biologists are not in full agreement about how this
happened, on the general idea that half a wing is worse than no wing at
all, in terms of survival value. Since you need half a wing before you
can have a full wing, there is a paradox that desparately needs
explaining. The usual answer is that certain reptitles evolved so that
they could *glide* down from trees. Now this, so the arguments goes, did
have survival value, and so did the gradual addition of muscles into what
became full-fledged wings. But other biologists attack this, invoking
some principles of aerodyanmics. The proponents respond to their critics
and do NOT blank out. Conferences have been held on the subject, but I
can't say if any consensus has been reached.
As far as the human brain goes, I can only speculate that, as the
cerebral cortex enlarged, more and more permutations and combinations of
percepts became possible, until there was enough gray matter to allow
these combinations and permutations to be formed in what *seems* to be an
unlimited variety. I have a rather strange book, however (Elliott
Jacques, ed., _Levels of Abstraction in Logic and Human Action: A Theory of
Discontinuity in the Structure of Mathematical Logic, Psychological
Behavior, and Social Organization_ (London: Heinemann, 1978), which
suggests *to me* that our brains can only go about five levels deep.
(This is why Kant and other such wordy profs inevitably tie
themselves up into pretzels and wind up contradicting themselves!)
Now we do know that animals can form concepts at some level. Indeed
percepts may be viewed as a low level kind of concept formation out of
sensations, and we may go even further by saying that sensations
themselves result from concept formation of things even lower. This will
have to be written up in the language of set theory *and* cojoined with
some neurology *and* tested against the facts.
So maybe apes can go only four levels deep. Or is it that man, before
language developed, could go four levels but apes only three? There is
also the possiblity of fractional levels (we'd want this, I think, to
keep evolution continuous) but with the feature that levels 1.00, 2.00,
3.00, etc., have stability properties, in some sense.
Just speculation here, but I hardly think evolution precludes the
emergence of novelty!
>Frank would conclude from this that Rand rejected the theory of
>evolution. However, there's another possibility (in addition to the
>possibility that she had no opinion on it): it's possible that she
>had an incorrect understanding of the theory of evolution, one
>according to which evolution would permit sudden qualitative changes
>through mutation. (In fact, of course, that sort of thing is
>*possible*, but highly unlikely.)
What I have *observed*, however, is that Ayn Rand was not much interested
in the business of evolution, and this suggests a certain bias on her
part toward looking at man as though he *need not* be a product of
evolution. I've seen this same bias elsewhere in Ayn Rand, and I pointed
out other instances of it. You'll find it widespread among humanities and
social science people, as well as among creative artists. They view man
as *radically different* from the rest of existence, and for them
existence might as well be Creation. And the reason for this last
statement is that they (not all of them, of course) are *not interested*
in the evolution of man, and this lack of interest is a bias *toward* the
things they regard as important. (Recall again Miss Rand's great essay,
"Censorship: Local or Express," I believe, where she said the liberals
treat only the physcial as important and hence don't want to bother
regulating products of the mind, while conservatives do exactly the
opposite.)
It is true that Ayn Rand did not literally belive in Special Creation--it
conflicted with her atheism--and when I said she was "basically" a
Creationist I meant no more than the general bias I have just discussed.
I wasn't trying to mislead anyone and thought I had made myself clear (I
did, after all, discuss other instances of this bias), but evidently I
wasn't clear. I hope I am now.
I am not denigrating a great writer for not having a view so balanced as
to have a keen interest in evolution. And who knows whether she might
have developed an interest if she has some enthusiastic biologists among
her friends. All we know is that she did not develop such an interest on
her own.
It is really too much to ask that someone take absolutely everything in
its proper perspective: we evolved, after all! But I do denigrate those
who follow the *content* of her philosophy and not her spirit.
>This isn't really the important issue, though. The important issue is
>whether Objectivism, as such, is wedded to answer (b).
I think I've answered the question as no, even though I have certainly
not done the research to show how man came to have a concept-forming
ability that is different in kind from the other apes. But maybe not: if
the powers that be decree that Objectivsm is wedded to answer (b), then
any who disagree will have to turn in their Objectivist cards.
[Jimbo, I think I have answered most of what you said in your post, and
thank you for inspiring me to further expound on how evolution can work.
If there is something further for me to address, please let me know.]
Frank
frank forman
have seen and read my comments on Mike's question about evolution in kind.
In article <4q9eum$o...@mars.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales <jwa...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>Frank Forman wrote:
>>>>{snip...} but then again it has been 116 years since _The
>>>>Origin of Species_ was published, and liberals still believe, basically,
>>>>that man is a product of special creation. So do Objectivists.
Please note the word "basically" is in the previous sentence. If I wasn't
clear about what I meant then, I hope I am clear now.
>Which is still false, and which Frank *still* knows to be false.
>Notice that throughout this *entire* thread, this quote has been
>prominent. I included it *precisely* so that Frank could not
>seriously claim that I have misrepresented him. His exact words
>were quoted, for the benefit of readers interested in evaluating
>the nature of his remarks.
>
>I have been very patient with Frank for quite some time now, engaging
>him in private e-mail, offering him my reasons for thinking of him
>negatively. He has responded only with more insults and fantastic
>claims which he *knows* to be false.
I've tried not to insult Jimbo and instead I have blamed my own ability
to communicate. I have freely bashed certain other Objectivists, but
*never* David Kelley, who really does think things through.
>I wrote:
>>> He knows full well that Objectivists do *not*
>>>believe in "special creation". He knows full well that *Ayn Rand*
>>>did not believe in such a thing. Yet, he posted it. Why?
>
>Frank writes:
>>Alas, *I* have been misrepresented! I said Ayn Rand was "basically" a
>>Creationist, not *actually* a Creationist. Jimbo left out the crucial
>>word basically.
>
>Check the quote, Frank. Your exact words are there for everyone
>to see... and they have been all the time. I know the type of
>debate tactics you like to engage in, so I've been particularly
>careful to quote you accurately and fairly.
>
>Let me rewrite my claim -- it doesn't change anything to do so:
>
>Frank Forman knows full well that Objectivists do *not* believe in
>"special creation", 'basically' or otherwise. He knows full well that
>*Ayn Rand* did not believe in such a thing, 'basically' or otherwise.
>Yet, he posted it. Why?
Again, I hope I am clear, and I don't think my use of the word
"basically" is non-standard English. If so, I'd like to get another word
to express the same idea.
>[Notice that I'm deleting Frank's misguided attempt to steer the
>discussion toward Kant! At issue here is Frank's repeated and deliberate
>misrepresentations of Objectivism.]
I thought that was clear also: I was trying to show how a claim that Kant
was "basically" a totalitarian makes sense (given Ayn Rand's
understanding of the man).
>>What I very much *do* see in her writing is the idea of a radical
>>difference betwenn man and the rest of reality. Creationists believe
>>precisely the same thing! An evolutionist does not. Am I clear now?
>
>Yes, this is very clear. You are using -- deliberately, I can only
>suppose, given your apparently high level of intelligence -- an informal
>fallacy in an attempt to mislead people.
>
>Let me put your argument into clear steps.
>
>1. Ayn Rand believes that humans are radically different from other
>entities. (Debatable, depending on your meaning, but this is the claim.)
>2. Creationists believe that humans are radically different from other
>entities.
>3. Therefore Ayn Rand is "basically" a believer in "special creation."
>
>No one who knows the least bit about logic would accept that argument
>as valid. Yet, you have asked us to do so. Why?
I was not making an argument in deductive logic! What I was doing was
providing empirical evidence for my claim that Miss Rand was "basically"
a Creationist. Either I am using that word incorrectly or else my
evidence did not support my argument or I got the evidence wrong.
>I wrote:
>>>*I*, Jimbo Wales, am neither a supporter nor opponent of the theory
>>>of quantum mechanics. Make of that what you will.
>
>Frank responds:
>>If I though Jimbo was hesitating endorsing QM out of fear that it might
>>contradict what one woman says about causality, I would not think too
>>highly of Jimbo. On the other hand, if he were hesitating to endorse
>>certain philosophical *interpretations* of QM, while at the same time
>>accepting the results of the many experiments made by quantum physicists,
>>this is sensible. But Jimbo did not say the latter. Perhaps he was just
>>writing in haste.
>
>I was not writing in haste, and I did not mean the former, nor the latter.
>Check your premises.
>
>Here's a clue. I have heard a bit about quantum mechanics. I have
>heard from advocates and detractors of the theory, and of various
>interpretations of the theory. But my knowledge is based on reading
>Usenet and "pop" science magazines. I have not studied the theory in
>depth, and I could not be trusted to give a cogent summary of what,
>exactly, it says. I have not examined the evidence, and although I have
>the mathematical tools at my disposal to begin such an investigation, I
>have neither the time nor the inclination to gain all the other knowledge
>necessary to do so.
>
>Therefore, I can not take any position of *advocacy* with respect to
>QM or any of its interpretations. I've heard a few things that sound
>definitely wrong to me, but people whom I respect (Tom Radcliffe, for
>example) apparently believe them, and so I'm not willing to throw them
>out fully without investigating.
This would be an excellent topic for another thread, namely when it is
reasonable to accept current scientific opinion without duplicating the
research oneself. I say that anyone with a benevolent universe premise
would do so! He should, however, reserve the right to investigate the
matter himself and realize that the experts may change their opinions. I
can expand on this if anyone asks.
>I would imagine that *if* Ayn Rand ever said "I am neither an advocate
>nor an opponent of the theory of evolution" she would have said it for
>the same kinds of reasons.
>
>(Incidentally, I *have* studied the theory of evolution, and I *am*
>an advocate of it.)
>
>Frank speculates on his own motives for the unsavory behavior we
>have seen here over the past several months:
>>I hope I can engage in introspection and not be accused of
>>psychologizing. Ayn Rand's was the first system of ideas I took
>>seriously, and I am still clearing the deck of her thought to work out my
>>*own* ideas. I can't exactly explain why I just didn't casually drop
>>Objectivism like many other ex-Objectivists have done. But part of it is
>>a feeling that I can somehow never measure up, or in other words that I
>>have succumbed to some of the "hazards" of her philosophy that Branden
>>talks about. In my case this is perfectionism. Now I may just be that
>>way. Perhaps it is characteristic, or at least not entirely
>>uncharacteristic, of INTJs. It *is* common among adult children of
>>alcoholics, which I am, though consciously Ayn Rand has exerted more
>>influence over me that my Pop!
>
>Perhaps Frank, and please do take me seriously here, you might want to
>seek professional help in dealing with whatever psychological problems you
>may have. I don't think that bashing Ayn Rand and Objectivism in a
>newsgroup is likely to be a productive route to happiness. You may take
>my advice or leave it, I don't care. But be aware that you are not
>making a very good intellectual impression. You are starting to
>give off a serious aura of crackpot.
Again, I see that Ayn Rand had her imperfections, but that doesn't mean I
don't admire her achievements and the strength of her character, since I
do, and very much. It's many of her followers that I object to. And I
*try* to bring good humor to my satires, evidently not to unanimous
success. Sarah reminds me that humor can be very close to hostility, but
I don't think it is so close that I need professional help. I suspect I'd
talk circles around any shrink anyhow. Oh, well....
Frank
Ivan Ordonez
[...]
>
> In my past examples, I tried to give things close to the borderline. But
> all I really need to do is talk about Plato's dialogues. No chimpanzee
> can understand or appreciate the beauty of a Plato dialogue. Even dumb
> people can. The difference is one of kind -- involving various abilities
> of abstraction.
No, they can't. Isn't it obvious? Do you know any dumb people at all?
[...]
> If so, then what *is* the difference between degree and kind? By
> what method could the question be answered: "Do you think that X is
> different Y in degree or in kind?" What additional suppositions
> must be made, etc.?
Depends on your universe of discourse. Concepts such as "degree" and
"kind" do not make sense in abstract, only in context. Water and ice are
of different kinds if inter-molecular bonding is relevant; they are the
same kind if molecular structure is what matters. From a certain point of
view, the diference between all living things is just that of degree; from
another one, each individual is one of a kind.
Brad Aisa
>As I'm sure you would agree, both degree and kind are concepts of
>measurement. This presupposes a standard of measurement. With regards to
>the measurement of forms of cognition, we may not know enough to establish
>an objective enough standard to apply in order to distinguish between
>differences of kind or degree between chimps and humans. I think plausible
>arguments could be made for either position (i.e., the difference between
>a chimp's cognitive capacities and a human's is one of either degree or
>kind).
The conceptual faculty is categorically distinct from the perceptual one --
simply observing the difference between man and all other species is
sufficient to demonstrate that.
--
Brad Aisa <ba...@tor.hookup.net> http://www.hookup.net/~baisa/
"The highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the
guardians and integrators of human knowledge." -- Ayn Rand
DEFanyo
In article <4qroff$4...@Venus.mcs.com>, Jimmy Wales (jwa...@MCS.COM) writes:
>Well, I will have to respectfully disagree. At the very least, we have to
>leave it as an open hypothetical... as you admit, there is no *evidence*
>that "cultural evolution" is necessary for suicide. It's an interesting
>question, I guess, but not central to the issue at hand.
Fair enough... but I'd bet money that chimps never suicide... at
least I've never heard that they did. Therefore, I would say that
cultural evolution to some extent is working before the phenomenon
of suicide enters the picture. Of course, there *are* the
lemmings. Interesting...
By the way, why the scare quotes around 'cultural evolution'?
>The other thing I would disagree about is your interpretation of Rand on
>sexuality. I don't think that there is anything to suggest that Rand
>would have thought someone immoral for having a sexual desire not based on
>grand "highest values" type issues. I think you may be interpreting her
>view that sex should optimally be between people who regard each other in
>the highest possible way. That doesn't mean you can't morally find Sean
>Connery hot. :-)
Wasn't it Franscisco who made the long speech about the
relationship between the object of a person's sexual interest and
the state of his soul? I seem to remember that this is used
as another example of the unity of mind/body.
Daniel Smith
>dls...@psu.edu (Daniel Smith) wrote:
>>As I'm sure you would agree, both degree and kind are concepts of
>>measurement. This presupposes a standard of measurement. With regards to
>>the measurement of forms of cognition, we may not know enough to establish
>>an objective enough standard to apply in order to distinguish between
>>differences of kind or degree between chimps and humans. I think plausible
>>arguments could be made for either position (i.e., the difference between
>>a chimp's cognitive capacities and a human's is one of either degree or
>>kind).
(Brad Aisa) writes:
>The conceptual faculty is categorically distinct from the perceptual one --
>simply observing the difference between man and all other species is
>sufficient to demonstrate that.
No argument from me Brad. But the disagreement which I was addressing
was whether or not that distinctive difference was one of kind or degree.
If you have an argument that demonstrates that it is a difference of
kind, I'd love to hear it; it would provide me with knowledge I did not
have before. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Dan
DEFanyo
>The conceptual faculty is categorically distinct from the perceptual one --
>simply observing the difference between man and all other species is
>sufficient to demonstrate that.
What are you calling an instance of the perceptual faculty at work?
A simple "there is something"? ... or the bit more complicated
"there is something good to eat" or "there is an enemy"? How do
the last two differ from a conceptual faculty? Does it take more
than identifying and catagorizing for such an instance to be the
workings of the conceptual faculty?
A chimp seeing a good piece of fruit will reach for it. A chimp
seeing a leapord will scream and run. Are these instances of the
conceptual or of perceptual faculty at work?
He had to learn to do either (as he had to learn *many* things in
order to survive). Is that the conceptual faculty or the perceptual
faculty at work?
Are these two methods of knowing absolutely distinct and divorced
from each other, or do they blend, or at least work on a continuum?
I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
answer!
Greg Swann
>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>answer!
I'll answer: I think the difference between an "Objectivist" as Mr. Aisa
might define that term and an "Objectivist" as Steve Reed might define
that term is that the latter type of person has grown weary of refusing
to think and act when he or she is burning up with the need to say something
that will make the former type geek.
<g>
--GSS
Steve Reed
>Tony Donadio wrote:
>>For the "Objectivist cultist," it is the other way around: adherence (ie,
>>belonging) to Objectivism is the standard, to which the truth of what
>>Objectvism actually IS is to be sacrificed, if necessary.
>Hmmmm... and who does that describe? Someone who treats "Objectivism" as
>a floating abstraction, a name not connected to any ideas in particular; [...]
"Ayn Rand broke new ground in every branch of philosophy; her insights exposed
and challenged the deepest assumptions of her predecessors. Because she
understood the importance of integration, she was a self-conscious
'system-builder'; her views of reality, of knowledge, of human nature, of
values, and of society form an integrated whole. [60-61]
"[...] if Objectivism is to be regarded as a philosophy rather than a body of
dogma, it cannot be defined in the manner Peikoff demands. The alternative is
not, as he claims, the freedom to rewrite Objectivism as one wishes. The
alternative is to define it objectively. He himself observes that the essence
of a philosophy consists in its fundamental principles. Ayn Rand said a great
many things, not all of them fundamental. Even if we restrict our attention to
her philosophical statements (which is itself an act of interpretation), we
will find that they cover a wide range, from the general to the specific, from
the fundamental to the derivative. We need to discriminate among them. We need
to ask: What is distinctive about Objectivism? At what key points does it
differ from other philosophies? What are the essential principles that give it
its internal structure as a system? What are the broad avenues that we keep
returning to as we make our way through the philosophy?" [65]
>[...] who treats people openly hostile towards reason, reality, egoism,
>capitalism and/or romantic realism as deserving of "benevolence" and
>"toleration", [...]
"To be tolerant, in short, is to acknowledge the virtue of rationality in
others -- indeed, to value and admire it -- even when it is exercised in the
service of ideas we believe are false. The negative aspect of toleration is
refusing to condemn people for errors that are honest; the positive aspect is
valuing their honesty even when it is in error. This policy is required by an
ethics of reason, and it is the only policy that has any chance of being
effective; here, as elsewhere, the moral is the practical. People of
self-esteem do not cave in to high-pressure tactics, nor do they quiver in the
face of accusations that they are immoral for believing what they do. They
simply dismiss the accuser as a zealot or a crank. [48-49]
"[...] It is true that thinking is not a collective activity. The primary
tools of cognition are observation, abstraction, and inference -- processes
that take place in the privacy of an individual mind. Discussion and debate
are secondary tools that provide us with material to integrate and a way of
checking the objectivity of our results. The use of these secondary tools must
be decided by reference to the primary ones. There's a time to seek opposing
views, and a time to decide one has heard enough. A physicist may reasonably
forgo the opportunity of debating a Flat Earther. A philosopher may reasonably
dismiss the tabloids' latest 'evidence' for life after death. For this reason,
the cognitive case for tolerance is narrower than the argument from justice.
You may have nothing to learn from an opponent if you've heard all his
arguments before, yet you may still regard him as honestly mistaken, and so
refrain from condemning him." [54]
>[...] but those who agree with Ayn Rand's philosophic ideas are
>somehow not; [...]
"Objectivism is first and foremost a philosophy. Anyone who subscribes to the
philosophy is an Objectivist, and anyone who works to realize its
intellectual, political, or cultural potential is a part of the Objectivist
movement -- regardless of his relationship or personal history with any
particular individual or group. Let us abandon the notion of a central
authority with the power to define an orthodoxy and expel dissenters. As long
as we think in such terms, what we are thinking about is not a movement but a
tribe." [76]
>[...] who is "open" enough to disconnect values from facts, [...]
"I hold, with Ayn Rand, that every value has a factual basis. This implies
that some facts have value significance, not that every fact does; the latter
is a separate issue. [...] objectivity requires that we be prepared to
identify the factual basis of all our values, not that we engage in a fevered
search for the possible value implications of every fact we encounter." [9]
>[...] method from content, [...]
"If we divorce the inner choice from the outer action, then we divorce the
standard of rationality from the standard of life. But rationality is a means
to an end, not an end in itself. If reason did not help us pursue and maintain
our lives -- if it made no difference whether we thought well, or poorly, or
not at all -- then rationality would not be a virtue nor a standard of
judgment. In moral judgment, as in any other type of evaluation, life is the
fundamental and all-encompassing standard." [10]
>[...] and moral judgement from ideas.
"Only the direct effects of an idea are immediately implied by its contents,
and it is only these effects that exponents of the idea can be said to be
advocating. The indirect effects occur because the idea is false. To grasp
that such effects do or would follow from implementing the idea, one must
first grasp that the idea is false. ...
"Objectivists should be especially sensitive to this point. All of us have
heard the accusation that we are fascists, and felt that the charge was a
preposterous misinterpretation. The real problem is that the accusers are
reading into our defense of egoism their own assumption that egoism involves
the sacrifice of others to self, and thus the glorification of power. If that
assumption were true, then our philosophy would indeed have bad effects. But
they would be indirect effects, and our critics would still have to
acknowledge that we do not advocate the pursuit of power as such. Fairness
requires that we draw the same distinction when we criticize other views." [32]
I don't know whom you're describing, Ed, with that bit of innuendo, but on the
basis of these quotes from "Truth and Toleration," it isn't David Kelley.
Do you ever read the words of the people you make snide comments about?
§ § § § § § § § § § § § § § § § § § § § §
Steve Reed ... jsr...@interaccess.com
Piece of Sky Consulting, Chicago
Windows assistance and fine type crafting
Lionell Griffith
Steve provided these quotes from "Truth and Toleration" by David
Kelly.
I provide comments.
>"Ayn Rand broke new ground in every branch of philosophy; her insights exposed
>and challenged the deepest assumptions of her predecessors. Because she
>understood the importance of integration, she was a self-conscious
>'system-builder'; her views of reality, of knowledge, of human nature, of
>values, and of society form an integrated whole. [60-61]
A statement of opinion.
>"[...] if Objectivism is to be regarded as a philosophy rather than a body of
>dogma, it cannot be defined in the manner Peikoff demands. The alternative is
>not, as he claims, the freedom to rewrite Objectivism as one wishes. The
>alternative is to define it objectively. He himself observes that the essence
>of a philosophy consists in its fundamental principles. Ayn Rand said a great
>many things, not all of them fundamental. Even if we restrict our attention to
>her philosophical statements (which is itself an act of interpretation), we
>will find that they cover a wide range, from the general to the specific, from
>the fundamental to the derivative. We need to discriminate among them. We need
>to ask: What is distinctive about Objectivism? At what key points does it
>differ from other philosophies? What are the essential principles that give it
>its internal structure as a system? What are the broad avenues that we keep
>returning to as we make our way through the philosophy?" [65]
A series of questions.
>"To be tolerant, in short, is to acknowledge the virtue of rationality in
>others -- indeed, to value and admire it -- even when it is exercised in the
>service of ideas we believe are false. The negative aspect of toleration is
>refusing to condemn people for errors that are honest; the positive aspect is
>valuing their honesty even when it is in error. This policy is required by an
>ethics of reason, and it is the only policy that has any chance of being
>effective; here, as elsewhere, the moral is the practical. People of
>self-esteem do not cave in to high-pressure tactics, nor do they quiver in the
>face of accusations that they are immoral for believing what they do. They
>simply dismiss the accuser as a zealot or a crank. [48-49]
An attempt at a definition. It consists of opinion and extrapolated
example. It is at best a description of what he thinks about
"toleration."
>"[...] It is true that thinking is not a collective activity. The primary
>tools of cognition are observation, abstraction, and inference -- processes
>that take place in the privacy of an individual mind. Discussion and debate
>are secondary tools that provide us with material to integrate and a way of
>checking the objectivity of our results. The use of these secondary tools must
>be decided by reference to the primary ones. There's a time to seek opposing
>views, and a time to decide one has heard enough. A physicist may reasonably
>forgo the opportunity of debating a Flat Earther. A philosopher may reasonably
>dismiss the tabloids' latest 'evidence' for life after death. For this reason,
>the cognitive case for tolerance is narrower than the argument from justice.
>You may have nothing to learn from an opponent if you've heard all his
>arguments before, yet you may still regard him as honestly mistaken, and so
>refrain from condemning him." [54]
On what basis can we determine "honestly mistaken"? Telepathy?
Precognition? Clarvoyance? Fantasy? Projection?
>"Objectivism is first and foremost a philosophy. Anyone who subscribes to the
>philosophy is an Objectivist, and anyone who works to realize its
>intellectual, political, or cultural potential is a part of the Objectivist
>movement -- regardless of his relationship or personal history with any
>particular individual or group. Let us abandon the notion of a central
>authority with the power to define an orthodoxy and expel dissenters. As long
>as we think in such terms, what we are thinking about is not a movement but a
>tribe." [76]
By this definition Neo-Tech is Objectivist to the core! Anything is
Objectivist as long as Objectivist words and formulii are used. All
one has to do to "subscribe" to a philosophy is to spout its words and
formulii. Imagine, actually having to USE the methods of objectivism
to validate the ideas for, by, and to yourself. No, that's not
necessary.
To be a "part" of the movement, all you have to do is "work" to
realize its "potential." There is no need to actualize it within your
own life. This is a PRIME example of mind-body split. he argues
against authority and orthodoxy by establishing the basis of
authority and orthodoxy. Wonderful!!! Now we have Peikoff Orthodoxy,
Kelley Orthodoxy, and Neo-Tech Orthodoxy. Catholic, Protestant, and
Holy-Roller. We must be tolerant of them all for they are only
"honestly mistaken." Their intentions are good. BLAUGH!!!!!!
>"I hold, with Ayn Rand, that every value has a factual basis. This implies
>that some facts have value significance, not that every fact does; the latter
>is a separate issue. [...] objectivity requires that we be prepared to
>identify the factual basis of all our values, not that we engage in a fevered
>search for the possible value implications of every fact we encounter." [9]
All fact has "value significance." To be achieved and sustained,
values necessitate action. For action to be effective, it must be
based upon reality -- FACT! Thus fact supports the effective
action by which we achieve and sustain our values. Still another
example of mind-body split in Kelley's writings.
>"If we divorce the inner choice from the outer action, then we divorce the
>standard of rationality from the standard of life. But rationality is a means
>to an end, not an end in itself. If reason did not help us pursue and maintain
>our lives -- if it made no difference whether we thought well, or poorly, or
>not at all -- then rationality would not be a virtue nor a standard of
>judgment. In moral judgment, as in any other type of evaluation, life is the
>fundamental and all-encompassing standard." [10]
Then why does Kelley exibit repeated mind-body splits? Oh, I forgot,
all he has to do is repeat the Objectivist Formulii and he is an
Objectivist. I am "honestly mistaken." It is not a contridiction,
it only LOOKS that way. I must be tolerant of him because I could be
wrong. BS!!!
>"Only the direct effects of an idea are immediately implied by its contents,
>and it is only these effects that exponents of the idea can be said to be
>advocating. The indirect effects occur because the idea is false. To grasp
>that such effects do or would follow from implementing the idea, one must
>first grasp that the idea is false. ...
One is responsible for ALL the effects of the causes one enacts. The
state of your knowledge of the consequent effects has no impact upon
ones responsibility for them. You choose the cause. You enacted the
cause. You OWN the effects. The mind and body ARE connected! An "I
did't know" does NOT absolve you.
>"Objectivists should be especially sensitive to this point. All of us have
>heard the accusation that we are fascists, and felt that the charge was a
>preposterous misinterpretation. The real problem is that the accusers are
>reading into our defense of egoism their own assumption that egoism involves
>the sacrifice of others to self, and thus the glorification of power. If that
>assumption were true, then our philosophy would indeed have bad effects. But
>they would be indirect effects, and our critics would still have to
>acknowledge that we do not advocate the pursuit of power as such. Fairness
>requires that we draw the same distinction when we criticize other views." [32]
Another attempt at mind-body splitting.
Fairness requires that we consider "intent" independently of real
world effects? How are we going to separate self-serving statements
of intent and honest intent? A person's ideas, thinking, or lack
thereof are the force behind his actions. They set his values.
They set his understanding of effective action. They are therefor
the primary fact behind his ethics. Since we cannot get inside
another's mind and see its content, we can ONLY judge by words and
actions sustained over a period of time.
Since causes and conseqences are necessarily connected, the effects,
both direct and indrect, are necessarily the result of the choosen
actions. It is no defense that the person did not "intend" the
result. If he did not "intend" the result, he damn well better have
acquired better knowledge of cause and effect before he acted. The
PRIMARY default is that persons inability and/or unwillingness to
acquire better knowledge of reality and his willingness to act in
spite of ignorance. If one does or MUST act without sufficient
knowledge, then one must be prepared to accept the consequences of
that ignorance.
Reality is not forgiving. Why should I be so forgiving?
Jim Klein
>What are you calling an instance of the perceptual faculty at work?
>A simple "there is something"? ... or the bit more complicated
>"there is something good to eat" or "there is an enemy"? How do
>the last two differ from a conceptual faculty?
They don't differ from the first case very much, if that's what you
mean. But as you know, I'd disagree that there's *knowledge* in even
the simple case.
>Does it take more than identifying and catagorizing for such an
>instance to be the workings of the conceptual faculty?
Maybe not, but it takes at least that. I know it seems like they're
identifying, but that doesn't make it so. I'll grant that there *is*
an answer, and even that the answer could be that they are identifying.
I just think there should be some way to prove it...the studies you
quote come close, but it should be unambiguously shown somehow. I
think I'd go to the chemists, rather than the philosophers.
>A chimp seeing a good piece of fruit will reach for it. A chimp
>seeing a leapord will scream and run. Are these instances of the
>conceptual or of perceptual faculty at work?
Depends who you ask, eh? I'm using "perceptual" for that basically
physical level, where plain chemical reaction to stimulus is
accomplished, even if it physically changes how the animal will react
in the future. I reserve "conceptual" for the ability to know, think
or speak about the event itself. Of course this begs the argument that
even conceptualization is a purely physical act also, though magnitudes
more complex. To that I'd agree...this is why I have so much trouble
with the "in kind vs. degree" or "more in common" stuff.
>He had to learn to do either (as he had to learn *many* things in
>order to survive). Is that the conceptual faculty or the perceptual
>faculty at work?
If you use "learn" as we would normally use it, then of course it's
conceptualization---it would also have the unfair advantage of
answering its own question.
>Are these two methods of knowing absolutely distinct and divorced
>from each other, or do they blend, or at least work on a continuum?
Well, this is a great question, and you're a great discusser of it! I
only had time to look at one post this trip...I'm glad it was yours.
>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>answer!
Unfortunately, when you deal with an "Objectivist" of that sort, you
can't even be sure there's a killfile! Some objective world, huh?
jk
Michael Huemer
Dorothy said:
>>genes. There's no earthly way I can prove it, but I would seriously
>>doubt that any hunter-gatherers did themselves in.
...
>leave it as an open hypothetical... as you admit, there is no *evidence*
>that "cultural evolution" is necessary for suicide. It's an interesting
I'm sure there is plenty of evidence relevant to this (use your
imagination!), though we three probably aren't privy to it. We can't
do a survey or autopsies on the corpses of pre-civilized man; however,
we could do studies of the causes of suicide in contemporary humans
(obviously, such studies have already been done; we three just don't
happen to have read them); we could then determine whether those
causes are the sort of thing that exist only in civilization. We
could determine them by doing statistical correlations, by
interviewing attempted suicide victims, and by reading suicide notes.
I suspect primitive people probably did commit suicide sometimes,
though for different reasons than people in modern cities -- an old
and infirm member of a tribe might have gone off to die because he had
become a burden to the tribe (I think this is actually an Eskimo
tradition.)
Greg Swann
>
>In article <gswann-2706...@ip100.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann
(gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>>In article <33...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>>
>>>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>>>answer!
>>
>>I'll answer: I think the difference between an "Objectivist" as Mr. Aisa
>>might define that term and an "Objectivist" as Steve Reed might define
>>that term is that the latter type of person has grown weary of refusing
>>to think and act when he or she is burning up with the need to say something
>>that will make the former type geek.
>>
>><g>
>
><G>
Here's a very sad story: In "The Passion of Ayn Rand" Barbara Branden
relates how she permitted Ayn Rand to rob her of her love for Thomas
Wolfe. Perhaps at this point the Mind Police will wish to jump in and
parrott Rand's denunciations of Wolfe, and they are certainly welcome
to do so. The denunciations themselves, though, consist of Rand
publicly humiliating Branden for having an "unfocused psycho-epistemology".
There are so many tragedies in this story, one of which is the sort
that I cite above: for years, every time Barbara Branden had a
subconscious recollection of something she had admired in Wolfe, she
had to make a conscious war on her own mind, deliberately and intentionally
blanking out her own involuntary response to a work of art in order to
fake reality, posturing as a doll of Rand's ideals in preference to
living her own life by her own standards. That is, living an absurd
and vicious aneogism in preference to egoism. There is nothing in
Dostoevsky, nothing in Gogol, there is nothing in _Celine_ as
horrifying as this: willful self-destruction in the name of an
ideal...
Yet another tragedy is that Rand never once met a Galt or a Francisco
in real life, never met someone who could, with style, wit and grace,
tell her to stuff her insufferable assertions right up her... drainspout <g>.
--GSS
PS: Will you be coming to h.p.o.? It's hardly my place to extend
hospitality, since I'll surely vanish in due course. But a.p.o. seems
doomed to become the backwater the h.p.o. advocates predicted.
Michael Huemer
>cultural evolution. We stand on the shoulders of giants and also on
>the shoulders of lots of "common folk". Were one of today's
Ouch. Are the common folk regular sized? And are the giants standing
on top of them?
>new-borns transferred back in time to be reared by a Cro-Magnun
>family, he'd live and have his being as a Cro-Magnun, not as a 21st
>century AI expert.
>It wouldn't be wise to posit that he'd pull up the whole tribe by
>any theoritically added intelligence -- remember the advantages of
>cultural evolution are *learned*!
Good point. In fact, he really couldn't do much at all -- even if you
transported him back full-grown and with all of his present knowledge.
He'd try telling the Cro-Magnons how to program computers, but then,
they wouldn't have any computers, so it would be useless. So he'd
try to tell them how to build a computer out of silicon chips, but
... they don't have any silicon chips. So he'd try to describe the
construction of one... but you'd need some plastic and refined silicon
for that, and he wouldn't know how plastic is manufactured (anybody
here know?) And even if he did -- they wouldn't have any
manufacturing plants.
All of this illustrates an interesting point: Most of the knowledge
that we have is valuable only in context -- in the context of our
present society, because of how it meshes with the knowledge and
economic structures of the rest of our society. The lone AI expert
really couldn't do anything for the Cro-Magnons.
Also, Cro-Magnon man wasn't primitive because he was stupid. Most of
us, if we were transported back through time, probably couldn't make
much if any improvement on how the Cro-magnons did things. (Would you
know how to make the better spearpoint that was the next required
stage in the development of weapons?)
>are totally dumb, which I refuse to countenance. It's sobering to
>consider what a human child raised by chimps would become and when he
>would surpass his guardians -- without the benefits of human
>cultural evolution, it would be later than at 4 years, that's for
>sure!
I think there was a case of a child who was raised in a closet or
something of that sort, and she never learned to talk. It's also
sobering to contemplate how much *more* of our potential is perhaps
not being realized in normal childrearing because we're not developing
our children in the optimum way.
>I think the most glaring example is the flat assertion that man
>inherited no instincts (needs, drives, tendencies we hold in common
>with our animal ancestors) and that therefore he's free from such
>"contaminating" influences.
I certainly agree that this is one of Rand's more scientifically
ignorant claims. I posted this argument in the past, but got no
response: If man truly has no instincts, but yet all of the other
primates do have instincts, then our genetic ancestors had instincts
as well (i.e. the common ancestors of us and the other hominids -- or
mammals, for that matter). Therefore, what Rand is saying is that, at
some point during the last 2 million years during which homo sapiens
was differentiating from the rest of the hominid line, those genes got
*selected out*, and then replaced, as it happens, by another mechanism
(reason) which in most cases induces you to do the same thing.
Furthermore, since the other animals have emotions that are caused by
these instincts, the genes for emotional responses were also selected
out during the same time period, but as it happens, the same emotions
are also caused, in much the same sorts of circumstances (e.g., fear
when in physical danger, anger when other animals take your food,
desire when a member of the opposite sex appears, etc.), by the
faculty of reason.
One would wonder why these genes that all the other animals have were
selected out of us.
> In my opinion, that assertion was
>necessary to save the idea that man has a choice about
>*everything*.
Perhaps, but there is no need to maintain that man has a choice about
everything.
>As I've said many times, humans are *of* nature and we are totally
>dependent on her for *what* we are and *that* we are. I think it
While I appreciate your devotion to natural science, Dorothy, I fear
you may at this point be forgetting about the existence of free will
and things like that.
Even if humans do not differ *in kind* from the rest of nature, humans
do differ from the rest of nature. The difference of degree is great
enough to make it important to draw a distinction there.
>I won't go into detail, but will simply state that I don't think
>that incorporating the fact of evolution as it bears on human nature
>does violence to the basic tenets and principles of Objectivism.
Good, neither do I.
DEFanyo
In article <gswann-2706...@ip100.phx.primenet.com>, Greg Swann (gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>In article <33...@teekay.win.net>, de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>
>>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>>answer!
>
>I'll answer: I think the difference between an "Objectivist" as Mr. Aisa
>might define that term and an "Objectivist" as Steve Reed might define
>that term is that the latter type of person has grown weary of refusing
>to think and act when he or she is burning up with the need to say something
>that will make the former type geek.
>
><g>
<G>
--Dorothy
Jim Klein
Huemer) writes:
>Good point. In fact, he really couldn't do much at all -- even if you
>transported him back full-grown and with all of his present knowledge.
This simply isn't true. As a newborn? Yes, one would have no effect.
But even with what we considery rudimentary knowledge about the
"simplest" of things, an adult would have tremendous influence there.
>He'd try telling the Cro-Magnons how to program computers, but then,
>they wouldn't have any computers, so it would be useless. So he'd
>try to tell them how to build a computer out of silicon chips, but
>... they don't have any silicon chips. So he'd try to describe the
>construction of one... but you'd need some plastic and refined silicon
>for that, and he wouldn't know how plastic is manufactured (anybody
>here know?) And even if he did -- they wouldn't have any
>manufacturing plants.
Of course, that's not what he would do, presumably.
>The lone AI expert really couldn't do anything for the Cro-Magnons.
I think this is a serious error. As I said, even the simplest of
knowledge...about bacteria, or planting a seed, or making a truss...
could have massive effect.
>Also, Cro-Magnon man wasn't primitive because he was stupid.
This is true, and the reason why a baby taken back there probably
wouldn't do a whole lot different than the natives. On the other hand,
he *might*, considering the tremendous genetic advantages he would
have.
>Most of us, if we were transported back through time, probably
>couldn't make much if any improvement on how the Cro-magnons did
>things. (Would you know how to make the better spearpoint that was
>the next required stage in the development of weapons?)
Don't kid yourself...there may be physical acts at which we'd be no
better, but we'd have more inventions every day than they've had in
their entire lives!
>>I think the most glaring example is the flat assertion that man
>>inherited no instincts (needs, drives, tendencies we hold in common
>>with our animal ancestors) and that therefore he's free from such
>>"contaminating" influences.
>
>I certainly agree that this is one of Rand's more scientifically
>ignorant claims.
Is that right? Did she claim that man had "no instincts", or only that
the important, determitive functions were matters of the mind? Even
this seems silly, because a heartbeat seems more like instinct than
decision; yet, it's mighty critical! Do you have any definitive
statements by her? (Is that Her in some groups?)
>I posted this argument in the past, but got no
>response: If man truly has no instincts, but yet all of the other
>primates do have instincts, then our genetic ancestors had instincts
>as well (i.e. the common ancestors of us and the other hominids -- or
>mammals, for that matter). Therefore, what Rand is saying is that, at
>some point during the last 2 million years during which homo sapiens
>was differentiating from the rest of the hominid line, those genes got
>*selected out*, and then replaced, as it happens, by another mechanism
>(reason) which in most cases induces you to do the same thing.
If that's really what she's saying, that would seem to be preposterous.
I frankly don't imagine her claiming something such as this.
>Furthermore, since the other animals have emotions that are caused by
>these instincts...
Who's saying this, you or her? It's not axiomatic that animals have
"emotions".
>Even if humans do not differ *in kind* from the rest of nature, humans
>do differ from the rest of nature. The difference of degree is great
>enough to make it important to draw a distinction there.
This is a great point! To me, this represents the epitome of proper
human thinking.
>>I won't go into detail, but will simply state that I don't think
>>that incorporating the fact of evolution as it bears on human nature
>>does violence to the basic tenets and principles of Objectivism.
>
>Good, neither do I.
Three then...too bad it's not subject to a vote. But Dorothy has done
a magnificient job at beginning the road to that seemingly impossible
task...reclamation of the word "Objectivism"!
jk
Tom Scheeler
>de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>>I think the most glaring example is the flat assertion that man
>>inherited no instincts (needs, drives, tendencies we hold in common
>>with our animal ancestors) and that therefore he's free from such
>>"contaminating" influences.
>
as in "knew it instinctivly". Dorothy knows this, but can't/won't figure it
out though it has been pointed out to her several times.
Steve Reed
>>>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>>>answer!
>>I'll answer: I think the difference between an "Objectivist" as Mr. Aisa
>>might define that term and an "Objectivist" as Steve Reed might define
>>that term is that the latter type of person has grown weary of refusing
>>to think and act when he or she is burning up with the need to say something
>>that will make the former type geek.
>><g>
><G> --Dorothy
<g> cubed. Y'know, though, even more savory than coming up with words to
make them geek ... is to get THEM to come up with their own nicely wrapped
self-contradictions, making them make themselves geek. More fun, too.
I offer the set-to I've had with Speicher over in HPO. I got her to admit
*on her own terms* that all who follow Rand's work to frame debates should be
able to describe themselves with "Objectivist" ...
"But I think I done seen 'bout ev'rything / When I seen a elephant fly."
-- "Dumbo," 1941
talisman
writes:
>
>>The conceptual faculty is categorically distinct from the perceptual one --
>>simply observing the difference between man and all other species is
>>sufficient to demonstrate that.
>
>A simple "there is something"? ... or the bit more complicated
>"there is something good to eat" or "there is an enemy"? How do
>than identifying and catagorizing for such an instance to be the
>workings of the conceptual faculty?
>
>seeing a leapord will scream and run. Are these instances of the
>conceptual or of perceptual faculty at work?
>
>order to survive). Is that the conceptual faculty or the perceptual
>faculty at work?
>
>from each other, or do they blend, or at least work on a continuum?
>
>answer!
I will! Besides, I *know* I'm in Aisa's killfile.
Have you studied linguistic theory, specifically as it relates to "Universal
Grammar" and the modular nature of language processing?
I won't go into a lot of background, hoping you are somewhat familiar --
it is curious to me that language (or at least the rules by which it operates)
is separate from the conceptual faculty (or at least the volitional
consciousness, if you will). That's the current thinking, at least.
Could this mean that other animals have consciousnesses capable of
conceptualizing, but simply lack the "language module"?
If *this* is true, what do their consciousnesses *do*?
Can they reason without language?
Do they conceptualize in some "alien" way or to some degree?
(except for symbolic language, they show no ability to follow grammar or syntax
rules, so the studies say)
Thoughts?
Michael McCormick
_ELAN_
http://www.netins.net/showcase/elan
To *have* to combat one's instincts -- that is the formula for decadence: as
long as life is *ascending*, happiness and instinct are one. -- Nietzsche
DEFanyo
In article <4r1k5t$h...@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>, Jim Klein (rum...@ix.netcom.com) writes:
>In <33...@teekay.win.net> de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>
>>A simple "there is something"? ... or the bit more complicated
>>"there is something good to eat" or "there is an enemy"? How do
>>the last two differ from a conceptual faculty?
>
>mean. But as you know, I'd disagree that there's *knowledge* in even
>the simple case.
You mean that a monkey in the cage at the zoo looking at you
through the bars doesn't *know* you're there? Aw, come on, Jim!
Even my house-bound dog knows whether I'm inside the door or out!
Otherwise, the barking she does when I'm outside the door is just
noise for no reason, and that's *very* hard to believe.
>>Does it take more than identifying and catagorizing for such an
>>instance to be the workings of the conceptual faculty?
>
>Maybe not, but it takes at least that. I know it seems like they're
>identifying, but that doesn't make it so. I'll grant that there *is*
>an answer, and even that the answer could be that they are identifying.
>I just think there should be some way to prove it...the studies you
>quote come close, but it should be unambiguously shown somehow. I
>think I'd go to the chemists, rather than the philosophers.
May I venture to say that perhaps the "ambiguity" is in your mind
and nowhere else? :-)
>>A chimp seeing a good piece of fruit will reach for it. A chimp
>>seeing a leapord will scream and run. Are these instances of the
>>conceptual or of perceptual faculty at work?
>
>Depends who you ask, eh? I'm using "perceptual" for that basically
>physical level, where plain chemical reaction to stimulus is
>accomplished, even if it physically changes how the animal will react
>in the future. I reserve "conceptual" for the ability to know, think
>or speak about the event itself.
Well, of course if you specify speach, you're _ipso facto_ closing
out all non-human species.
>Of course this begs the argument that
>even conceptualization is a purely physical act also, though magnitudes
>more complex. To that I'd agree...this is why I have so much trouble
>with the "in kind vs. degree" or "more in common" stuff.
>>He had to learn to do either (as he had to learn *many* things in
>>order to survive). Is that the conceptual faculty or the perceptual
>>faculty at work?
>
>If you use "learn" as we would normally use it, then of course it's
>conceptualization---it would also have the unfair advantage of
>answering its own question.
Well, as far as I know, "learn" means "learn" -- to know something
you didn't know before. I'm reminded of Elsa, the lion cub who
had been raised to maturity by humans. Before they (the
Johnsons?) returned Elsa to the wild, they tried their best to
teach her what she had to know to survive. And they still were
very apprehensive because Elsa had not had the advantage of
learning from her own kind in the environment to which she was
returned.
>>Are these two methods of knowing absolutely distinct and divorced
>>from each other, or do they blend, or at least work on a continuum?
>
>Well, this is a great question, and you're a great discusser of it! I
>only had time to look at one post this trip...I'm glad it was yours.
So am I! :-)
I may be a discusser (sounds indecent, doesn't it!), but I'd really
like to know the answer to the question....
>>I'm probably in Brad's killfile :)... so, please, will *someone*
>>answer!
>
>Unfortunately, when you deal with an "Objectivist" of that sort, you
>can't even be sure there's a killfile! Some objective world, huh?
Hmmm... there is that, isn't there! :-)
John Power
> If man truly has no instincts, but yet all of the other
> primates do have instincts, then our genetic ancestors had instincts
> as well
How's that? If the common chimp-human ancestor "chuman" (don't worry,
that's not Latin) had instincts, why couldn't some of our intermediate
ancestor's have had a limited faculty of reason thrown in with some
instincts? And by the time we arrive on the scene 5 million years
later, et viola. no instincts! Why does every ancestor to us along the
chain have to have instincts?
> those genes got
> *selected out*, and then replaced, as it happens, by another mechanism
> (reason) which in most cases induces you to do the same thing.
This strikes me as a mighty strange comment. I can't think of anything
that "instincts" have in common with the faculty of reason. Could you
elaborate?
> Furthermore, since the other animals have emotions that are caused by
> these instincts,
It's possible here that you are using the terms _emotion_ and _instinct_
in a different way than Objectivist do-or at least that's my understanding
of Objectivism. I don't think animals have emotions, rather they have
somatic feelings. Men on the other hand have emotions which consist of
both a somatic and an ideational component.
> the genes for emotional responses were also selected
> out during the same time period,
No, the genes creating sensations, feelings and urges are still there,
it is reason that has been added to the mix.
> One would wonder why these genes that all the other animals have were
> selected out of us.
If that were true, yes one would wonder.
Although I welcome a response to the above, I wonder if it wouldn't be
more fruitful to steer this conversation in another direction since it
has the potential to get lost in biological jargon. Would you mind giving
me an example of what you consider instinctual behavior in human beings?
-----John Power
Greg Swann
>de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>>Greg Swann (gsw...@primenet.com) writes:
>>>de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) wrote:
>
>>>>answer!
>
>>>might define that term and an "Objectivist" as Steve Reed might define
>>>that term is that the latter type of person has grown weary of refusing
>>>to think and act when he or she is burning up with the need to say something
>>>that will make the former type geek.
>
>>><g>
>
>><G> --Dorothy
>
><g> cubed. Y'know, though, even more savory than coming up with words to
>make them geek ... is to get THEM to come up with their own nicely wrapped
>self-contradictions, making them make themselves geek. More fun, too.
>
>I offer the set-to I've had with Speicher over in HPO. I got her to admit
>*on her own terms* that all who follow Rand's work to frame debates should be
>able to describe themselves with "Objectivist" ...
>
>"But I think I done seen 'bout ev'rything / When I seen a elephant fly."
>-- "Dumbo," 1941
Without letting the original point go, I wish to congratulate you for the
remarkable work you are doing in h.p.o. It's riotous in its content and
thrilling in its cadence. Symphonic is the word, I think.
But I wish to retain the original point in order to keep hammering on it.
Way back when, when I was still trudging through the slush in Moscow on
the Charles, you and I talked about the then-newly-released "Country of
the Heart" by Kay Nolte Smith. I read that book as a fictional treatise
on Official Objectivism (I read all of Smith's books that way; cf.,
http://www.primenet.com/~gswann/KNS.html). IAC, in support of the
original point, I should like to quote a bit from that book:
:"Stalin had been dead for six or seven years when you wrote the violin
:concerto. He had been exposed. He was finished."
:
:"The things he made one feel--they never finish. To hear yourself called
:an enemy of the people, because of your music...to see people turn away
:from you on the street, in the halls of your own building.... Do you
:remember Stassov? Taught composition at the conservatory. A colleague,
:and a splendid one, I thought. He understood what I was trying to do in
:my music. When your father died, I thought, well, thank God, a bit of
:Sergei's spirit lives on in Stassov. Then comes the denunciation, and
:two months after that comes Stassov's article attacking me and my music
:as decadent, to save his own hide. Such things do not go away just
:because the ugly little man who made them happen falls into his grave.
:They become part of your dreams, and then part of your music, until one
:day you wake up and realize you are composing music that is proper and
:safe. So you grab your pen and write something that bursts out,
:something you know Stalin would denounce if he were still alive--that
:is why you write it. And then you realize, dear God, in trying to
:escape him, you are still thinking of him."
:
: --Kay Nolte Smith, "Country of the Heart", p. 229, all ellipses Smith's
--GSS
talisman
In article <jsreed.31...@interaccess.com>,
jsr...@interaccess.com (Steve Reed) wrote:
>Ed Matthews writes:
>>Tony Donadio wrote:
>
>>>For the "Objectivist cultist," it is the other way around: adherence (ie,
>>>belonging) to Objectivism is the standard, to which the truth of what
>>>Objectvism actually IS is to be sacrificed, if necessary.
>
>>Hmmmm... and who does that describe? Someone who treats "Objectivism" as
>>a floating abstraction, a name not connected to any ideas in particular; [...]
>
>"To be tolerant, in short, is to acknowledge the virtue of rationality in
>others -- indeed, to value and admire it -- even when it is exercised in the
>service of ideas we believe are false. The negative aspect of toleration is
>refusing to condemn people for errors that are honest; the positive aspect is
>valuing their honesty even when it is in error. This policy is required by an
>ethics of reason, and it is the only policy that has any chance of being
>effective; here, as elsewhere, the moral is the practical. People of
>self-esteem do not cave in to high-pressure tactics, nor do they quiver in the
>face of accusations that they are immoral for believing what they do. They
>simply dismiss the accuser as a zealot or a crank. [48-49]
As I said in a previous post:
The Kelly side seems to me to be filled with people who realize that
Objectivism is incomplete, possibly flawed, but fundamentally (esp.
metaphysically) correct. These people are constantly acting as "devil's
advocate", searching for truth, testing truth against reality. An
integral part of this is *learning how to learn* -- learning to listen
to opposing viewpoints with reference to "REALITY" and not to "RAND's
EVALUATION OF REALITY" -- Even when the opposition is incorrect, often,
they have a valuable process, or an observation, which may have been
overlooked.
For instance, it was serialism in music which first introduced me to
atonal and polytonal sounds. I disagree with serialism, because it does
not have an emotional content and it would have been easy to discard
everything new that came with it. (e.g., quoting Rand to someone who
disagrees with her and not thinking anymore on the subject). However,
the tools and accidents of serial composing have transferred quite well
to my understanding of how to use atonal and polytonal sounds in
creating music *with* an emotional content. A Peikoffian Objectivist
would have considered such curiosity "toleration" and would never have
allowed himself to act in such a morally bankrupt way. A Kelly
Objectivist would have done just what I did.
Jim Klein
>Could this mean that other animals have consciousnesses capable of
>conceptualizing, but simply lack the "language module"?
>
>If *this* is true, what do their consciousnesses *do*?
This is a great question, and shows the *very close*, if not
synonymous, relationship between language and thinking.
Of course, I also find it supportive of my position that only humans
conceptualize. Though solid proof it isn't.
jk
DEFanyo
In article <4r2ci8$2...@niflheim.rutgers.edu>, Michael Huemer (o...@niflheim.rutgers.edu) writes:
>de...@teekay.win.net (DEFanyo) writes:
>
>>cultural evolution. We stand on the shoulders of giants and also on
>>the shoulders of lots of "common folk". Were one of today's
>
>Ouch. Are the common folk regular sized? And are the giants standing
>on top of them?
:-) Yep, often. A fine average couple can, by a chance combination
of genes, produce "out of the blue" an offspring with the mental
capacity of a giant. And all giants, as well as the rest of us,
come from a loooong line of ancestors upon whose shoulders we
stand.
>>new-borns transferred back in time to be reared by a Cro-Magnun
>>family, he'd live and have his being as a Cro-Magnun, not as a 21st
>>century AI expert.
(I later squirmed when I realized that I had misspelled
Cro-Magnon, not once but twice!... :^)
>
>>It wouldn't be wise to posit that he'd pull up the whole tribe by
>>any theoritically added intelligence -- remember the advantages of
>>cultural evolution are *learned*!
>
>Good point. In fact, he really couldn't do much at all -- even if you
>transported him back full-grown and with all of his present knowledge.
>He'd try telling the Cro-Magnons how to program computers, but then,
>they wouldn't have any computers, so it would be useless. So he'd
>try to tell them how to build a computer out of silicon chips, but
>... they don't have any silicon chips. So he'd try to describe the
>construction of one... but you'd need some plastic and refined silicon
>for that, and he wouldn't know how plastic is manufactured (anybody
>here know?) And even if he did -- they wouldn't have any
>manufacturing plants.
>
>All of this illustrates an interesting point: Most of the knowledge
>that we have is valuable only in context -- in the context of our
>present society, because of how it meshes with the knowledge and
>economic structures of the rest of our society. The lone AI expert
>really couldn't do anything for the Cro-Magnons.
Speaking of context, he'd also have one *___* of a time trying to
get them to understand Objectivist principles...:-) They'd have no
problem with "existence exists" for they lived with the nature's
immediate challenge day in and day out, but "enlightened
self-interest"?!?
>>are totally dumb, which I refuse to countenance. It's sobering to
>>consider what a human child raised by chimps would become and when he
>>would surpass his guardians -- without the benefits of human
>>cultural evolution, it would be later than at 4 years, that's for
>>sure!
>
>I think there was a case of a child who was raised in a closet or
>something of that sort, and she never learned to talk. It's also
>sobering to contemplate how much *more* of our potential is perhaps
>not being realized in normal childrearing because we're not developing
>our children in the optimum way.
Very, very sobering. In all too many instances children aren't
being taught what they need to know to survive on their own in the
culture -- and requirements for surviving are growing by leaps and
bounds! Witness the growing numbers who, in their adulthood, are
returning to live with their parents.
(See the fine Australian film, _The Earthling_ with William Holden,
which graphically illustrates the necessity of tough love in
teaching survival. The film deals with teaching and learning
physical survival, but the same principles apply to survival as a
fully human being in a technological society.)
>>I think the most glaring example is the flat assertion that man
>>inherited no instincts (needs, drives, tendencies we hold in common
>>with our animal ancestors) and that therefore he's free from such
>>"contaminating" influences.
>
>I certainly agree that this is one of Rand's more scientifically
>ignorant claims. I posted this argument in the past, but got no
>response: If man truly has no instincts, but yet all of the other
>primates do have instincts, then our genetic ancestors had instincts
>as well (i.e. the common ancestors of us and the other hominids -- or
>mammals, for that matter). Therefore, what Rand is saying is that, at
>some point during the last 2 million years during which homo sapiens
>was differentiating from the rest of the hominid line, those genes got
>*selected out*, and then replaced, as it happens, by another mechanism
>(reason) which in most cases induces you to do the same thing.
>
>Furthermore, since the other animals have emotions that are caused by
>these instincts, the genes for emotional responses were also selected
>out during the same time period, but as it happens, the same emotions
>are also caused, in much the same sorts of circumstances (e.g., fear
>when in physical danger, anger when other animals take your food,
>desire when a member of the opposite sex appears, etc.), by the
>faculty of reason.
>
>One would wonder why these genes that all the other animals have were
>selected out of us.
And exceptionally good and clear argument for the inheritance of
instincts and basic emotions. I'm leaving it intact for the benefit
of some whose servers may not have passed it on the first time
around. I like your your tongue-in-cheek "as it happens". The
inescapable suppositions inherent in Rand's stand do indeed stretch
credulity to the breaking point...:-)
>> In my opinion, that assertion was
>>necessary to save the idea that man has a choice about
>>*everything*.
>
>Perhaps, but there is no need to maintain that man has a choice about
>everything.
Agreed! But some apo'ers have maintained and maintained and....
>>As I've said many times, humans are *of* nature and we are totally
>>dependent on her for *what* we are and *that* we are. I think it
>
>While I appreciate your devotion to natural science, Dorothy, I fear
>you may at this point be forgetting about the existence of free will
>and things like that.
Not so, Michael. I keep trying to make the point that we are what
we are, and that the characters ("souls" in Rand's term) that we
build and the cultures we create are constructed on the foundations
of our evolutionary heritage -- and that we have no choice about
the nature of that foundation. We are free to deny gratifying an
instinct... we are *not* free to be free of that instinct.
>Even if humans do not differ *in kind* from the rest of nature, humans
>do differ from the rest of nature. The difference of degree is great
>enough to make it important to draw a distinction there.
Absolutely. All due to the Big Brain (different in capacity but
not in structure from other animal brains), language and cultural
evolution... We are indeed fortunate in our double inheritance.
>>I won't go into detail, but will simply state that I don't think
>>that incorporating the fact of evolution as it bears on human nature
>>does violence to the basic tenets and principles of Objectivism.
>
>Good, neither do I.
It's so very *good* to know that a person who understands the issues
agrees!
Jim Klein
>You mean that a monkey in the cage at the zoo looking at you
>through the bars doesn't *know* you're there? Aw, come on, Jim!
Alright, it sounds silly, I know. But I'm still sticking with it for a
while.
>Even my house-bound dog knows whether I'm inside the door or out!
>Otherwise, the barking she does when I'm outside the door is just
>noise for no reason, and that's *very* hard to believe.
I'm starting to feel that way, myself! Nonetheless, I still see a
difference between the reaction to various perceptions, and the ability
to "step back" from the perception and be able to deal with it
symbolcally to various ends.
>May I venture to say that perhaps the "ambiguity" is in your mind
>and nowhere else? :-)
I would hope that you wouldn't be bashful! I would be a hypocrite, at
least, if I didn't want someone to speak their mind. Hell, you've
*almost* got me believing it!
>Well, of course if you specify speach, you're _ipso facto_ closing
>out all non-human species.
I did say "know, think OR speak...". So I've left you an opening to
prove your point without physical speech.
>Well, as far as I know, "learn" means "learn" -- to know something
>you didn't know before. I'm reminded of Elsa, the lion cub who
>had been raised to maturity by humans. Before they (the
>Johnsons?) returned Elsa to the wild, they tried their best to
>teach her what she had to know to survive. And they still were
>very apprehensive because Elsa had not had the advantage of
>learning from her own kind in the environment to which she was
>returned.
Well, prove to me that she "knew" anything, in the sense that to know
is different than to react, and I'll join your club right away.
I'd feel a lot more comfortable here if you were arguing my point...you
definitely win the "debate"; I wish I could accept your point on only
that!
jk
DEFanyo
><g> cubed. Y'know, though, even more savory than coming up with words to
>make them geek ... is to get THEM to come up with their own nicely wrapped
>self-contradictions, making them make themselves geek. More fun, too.
>
>I offer the set-to I've had with Speicher over in HPO. I got her to admit
>*on her own terms* that all who follow Rand's work to frame debates should be
>able to describe themselves with "Objectivist" ...
You did?!! Wish I'd been there! And isn't it sweeeeeet of her to
give such conditional permission... :-)
>"But I think I done seen 'bout ev'rything / When I seen a elephant fly."
>-- "Dumbo," 1941
Yea, verily!
DEFanyo
>I suspect primitive people probably did commit suicide sometimes,
>though for different reasons than people in modern cities -- an old
>and infirm member of a tribe might have gone off to die because he had
>become a burden to the tribe (I think this is actually an Eskimo
>tradition.)
My first thought was, "Oh, of course, thanks for reminding me,
Mike." My seond one was, "Wait a minute here... did those Eskimos
decide on their own to go off and die, or did they do it because it
was expected (demanded) of them.?"
If it's the later case, can this be called suicide? Or is it
death by tribal decree? In effect, he was killed by the tribe.
Or is this splitting hairs? :-)
DEFanyo
>Here's a very sad story: In "The Passion of Ayn Rand" Barbara Branden
>relates how she permitted Ayn Rand to rob her of her love for Thomas
>Wolfe. Perhaps at this point the Mind Police will wish to jump in and
>parrott Rand's denunciations of Wolfe, and they are certainly welcome
>to do so. The denunciations themselves, though, consist of Rand
>publicly humiliating Branden for having an "unfocused psycho-epistemology".
I call this sort of mental pounding "psychological murder" -- the
mental equivalent of hitting someone over the head with a 2 by 4.
Perhaps someone will finally get around to saying "you shall not
initiate mental force." Often a person who would never dream of
hitting another in the nose thinks nothing of calling him the scum
of the earth, a bundle of evasions, EVIL.
When that is done from impotent rage, the consequences are
negligible and can even be rather amusing. When it's done by a
person whom you admire and one who is in a position of power over
you, the consequences can be devastating.
>Yet another tragedy is that Rand never once met a Galt or a Francisco
>in real life, never met someone who could, with style, wit and grace,
>tell her to stuff her insufferable assertions right up her... drainspout <g>.
Sadly, power corrupts -- not only in politics.
>PS: Will you be coming to h.p.o.? It's hardly my place to extend
>hospitality, since I'll surely vanish in due course. But a.p.o. seems
>doomed to become the backwater the h.p.o. advocates predicted.
Your invitation made me feel warm all over... Thank you very
much...:-)
I'll get there as fast as I can... but I won't desert apo.
I wouldn't write finis to apo just yet! -- not when, for instance
(there are others!), Paul Knight gives us the benefit of his wide
knowledge of the workings of the brain; not when Jim Klein continues
to poke at the soft spots; not when Michael Huemer patiently works
at keeping discussions on track; not when someone (I'm so *sorry*
I've lost his name) appears out of the blue and presents a polished
piece positing the (new to me) idea that revolution against a
government gone astray *is* the people governing themselves.
There's lots of chaff, yes, but also much nutritious golden wheat,
and it's not all that hard to separate one from the other -- just
takes a little winnowing... :-)