Reviewing the Terminology of Naturalism's Classifications

I made some additions a few days ago to the Wikipedia page "Naturalism (Philosophy)". One editor was not pleased, immediately deleted all my comments, and said he detected that I had an "agenda".

He was correct; I do have an agenda. It is to correct definitional differences between various pages of Wikipedia on the subject of naturalism; but more than that, to discover whether or not there exists a class of naturalists who are not "pluralists" or "dualists" yet who accept the natural first-person experiences of such "mental states" as mind, consciousness, ego, soul, volition (free will), and emotions.

After the deletion of my material in Wikipedia because of arguments I later thought might have some merit, not in terms of "agenda" but in the possibility that what I had written was incomprehensible or its purpose was incomprehensible, I began some investigating to see whether any other author was already "on to" the same subject of reviewing the terminology used in the science and in the metaphysics.

I immediately discovered "The Rediscovery of the Mind" by John R. Searle (MIT). When I read, "How is it that so many philosophers and cognitive scientists can say so many things that, to me at least, seem obviously false?", then I knew I was at least (and at last!) reading an author who thought like me. Whether or not I would agree with his review of the terminology and with his conclusions and professional recommendations for altering the terminology would have to be determined after I read the book. I'm only a little way into the book, but it seems I am not the only one who does not see "materialism vs. dualism" as the only way out of the morass.

Please read the Journal entry titled "Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism" for the mission statement of this newly titled url, and then feel free to make serious and relevant comments. All points of view are welcomed.

Curtis Edward Clark

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Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism

The name of the entity at this url has changed in order to reflect the altered nature of the site, specifically that of its new mission as the "Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism".

Its mission has become how to discuss the ontology of the definition of "materialism" its connection to "naturalism"; and of the definitions of metaphysical naturalism, ontological naturalism, and philosophical naturalism.

But more than that, it is to foster a discussion of whether "materialism" as it is historically defined has any bearing on naturalism at all, or whether, as John Searle puts it, the traditional vocabulary is "inconsistent with what we know about the world both from our own experiences and from the special sciences."¹

For quite some time I have been personally dissatisified with those traditional meanings, which are often as not used or defined differently from one text or author to the next. Sometimes it a matter of semantics.

But overall the problem is greater. It is whether or not the third person objectivity of science which demands evidence based on behavior or physics for proof of "mental states", has any relevance to first person consciousness and "mind" and our very noticeable mental states that no third person examination can uncover. I have found that more often than not they do not reflect my own experiences.

And while the title "Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism" is just a place holder until I can form a proper entity worthy of that name, this new Journal welcomes and invites all serious comments.

Curtis Edward Clark; September 9, 2009


1 The Rediscovery of the Mind; John R. Searl; © 1992 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Naturalism, Mind, Pluralism

Question: Is it possible to accept a materialistic naturalism, ("a 'monistic' form of naturalism in that it maintains that only one basic kind of stuff exists--physical stuff" [1]), while maintaining at the same time that the existence of nonphysical abstract objects are not "transcendent Platonic forms beyond nature"? [1]

In other words, isn't it possible that the "mind" (for example), typically rejected by naturalists as being "beyond natural" and therefore categorized as a species within supernaturalism, is instead the natural quality of the physiology of the brain, expressing the nature of the brain and without which the purpose of the brain would be unthinkable?

To restate it: is it not possible that "mind" is the ever-present but immediate and momentary phenomenon created by the physiology of the brain, and which is elusive as a defined quality as is the phenomenon of "life"? Is it possible to accept the metaphysical definition of "mind" while accpting that the existence of such abstract objects is the direct result of transient yet enduring qualities of the physiology of the brain itself, without reverting to calling such metaphysical evaluations "pluralistic"? [1]

If the mind can be so described, and be as physically real while being qualitatively transient, as is the form of lightening or of a thunderclap or of the "strings" in string theory, then why does naturalism deny the existence of "mind" while not denying "consciousness"?

Answers will be gratefully accepted below.

[1] Internet Infidels http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/pluralistic.html

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Reason and Perfection

The Question: Why is man rational? What makes us different from other animals?

The Answer:
In Greek philosophy of "natural law" (physics) there was a term no longer used: perfection. This doesn't have the same meaning as the word we use.

In a sense, the Greeks understood evolution, because the First Science was metaphysics, which is about "Being" and "Becoming." http://www.tompotter.us/being.html
http://www.albany.edu/~rn774/fall96/phil…

"The things of this world are or exist only so far as they participate in the being of the eternal ideas, or so far as man in his creative capacity of craftsman, artist, and especially lawmaker copies these ideas. Here teleological thinking enters the scene. In the concept which gropes after and apprehends the essence or the idea of the thing there is contained at the same time also its end, the completion or perfection of the idea of the thing.

"The essences of things, which are exemplifications of the ideas conceived by the divine intellect, constitute at the same time the end or goal of the things themselves. The perfection or fulfillment of the things is their essence: formal cause and end are one (causa finalis is ultimately identical with causa formalis)." http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_s…

So, in evolution (becoming) all things tend toward the perfection of the idea naturally inherent in the subject that has "being". What it evolves into (the act of "becoming") can be described as the acorn that can become nothing but an oak. It can't become a donkey or a pine tree.
In the essence of the "being" of the thing called "mind", there is the evolution into what it can only become, like the acorn into an oak.

Other natural forces could have prevented it, as they prevented the dinosaurs from remaining on earth. Something natural could have wiped out all life on earth, or all life containing "mind".
But that didn't happen. So the mind had to evolve from the simplest forms, to its "perfect" form. That would appear to be "rationality." The chimp is said to be closest to man in this respect but is 400,000 years behind us. Perhaps in another 400,000 years we will discover whether "rationality", in the act of "becoming", will find a new perfection.

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Human Cognition

The question: Are the cognitive capabilities of all organisms(including humans)limited by their biology? If yes, does it also imply that sciences ( which are made of the results of human cognition) are cognizant of only those aspects of existence which fall with in the spectrum of their cognitive faculties, rathar than of all aspects of existence?

Answer: Man has the faculty of reason, which is not fully developed yet in our nearest cousin, the chimp. Evolutionary and cognitive sciences tell us the chimp is about 400,000 years behind us in that category, (though it does deserve to be removed from the genus Pan and placed in the genus Homo).

Our reason is, or at least can be, continual. In other words, where "Brutes abstract not", [Hume] humans continually abstract. It doesn't mean they always use their faculty of reason, but they are capable of continuously doing so if they have the will and the discipline. A chimp moves unwillingly in and out of states of reason.

Our ability to remain continually rational (thought not always right) means that what Kant called "Noumena" and Plato called "Forms" are no longer barriers. No such things exist any longer--they never did--, because we know we have the means to discover tomorrow what we don't know today, if we stay the course of reason.

This does not mean we are not limited by our biology. We are not omniscient, nor can we ever be. We must, as Aristotle said, "acquire knowledge". But the things that Plato would have said were Forms, and which Kant would have said were Noumena, have since been proved to be phenomena. Reasons task is to discover the nature of the phenomena, and that is an ongoing, never-ending task precisely because of the limitations of our biology, limitations which reason itself overcomes with time.

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Transdoxical Nonsense

I keep seeing the word "transdoxical" used in the Philosophy forum of Yahoo Answers (YA!), and it seemed to have a misleading nature, as if the users wanted to flumox anyone who tried to answer the question containing the word.

So, I Googled the word for its definition. I found exactly 4 references, none of which gives a serious definition demonstrating the word is in actual usage. What I found was this YA! "question":

"Transdoxical a word created in this philosophy section ( i believe by the master of points himself, Morpheus) that means beyond (trans) + opinion (dox). Panoptic, I'll let you find this seldom used word on your own." The poor grammar and syntax are (sic).

("Morpheus" is the screen name of a YA! user.)

The YA! question that made me inquisitive was this one: "What is the transdoxical character of the cosmos?" After seeing the word so many times I had to Google it. To my surprise, my first intuition about the word was correct; it is made up by the biggest, most foolish character in YA! philosophy.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online defines "panoptic" as ":being or presenting a comprehensive or panoramic view "

It appears obvious that "trans", meaning "across", combined with "opinion", has nothing to do with "panoptic".

If the attempt was not being made to pull the wool over people's eyes as to the existence of this word and as to its undefined "definition", let me put it to bed now.

"Transdoxical" is a non-sense word, intended to demonstrate the ability of this "Morpheus" character to demonstrate his ability to lead sheep to an oasis where no etymological water exists.

If that is too alliterative a characterization, let me say it this way: the word "transdoxical" is metaphysical bull crap.

P.S.; Now there will be at least 5 Google references to the word.

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Intuition Vs. "Acquisition" of Knowledge

The question was recently posed: Does Metaphysical Naturalism accept the epistemological premises of Plato's intuition of knowledge, or those of Aristotle's acquisition of knowledge?

The fact is that man acquires his knowledge from the time of birth, filling his tabula rasa from sensory experiences. This is an Aristotilean concept. Plato, on the other hand, believed there were "permanent objects of knowledge [Forms or Ideas] directly apprehended by intuition (Gk. nohsiV [nóêsis]), the fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality." http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2h.htm

Plato held intuition to be the highest form of "knowing" because it demonstrated reason's ability to comprehend these Forms, which he defined as universals. The question then becomes, where does one acquire the concepts by which intuition is revealed?

They are acquired initially as simple sensory experiences, placed upon the tabula rasa where the faculty of reason then applies the hard-wired faculty of epistemological identification. Just as the faculty of sight and the other senses are hard wired and begin working immediately, so is the mind's faculty of epistemological operations.

Nothing is in the mind which was not first in the senses--"'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' All the materials, or content, of higher, intellectual cognition are derived from the activity of lower, sense cognition." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html

But intuition is not moot to the subject of epistemology. It merely does not work until there is sufficient material in the mind from which the subconscious can extract such "intuitions."

Plato believed intuitions to be direct, non-inferential awareness of abstractions or of concrete truths. Metaphysical Naturalism defines them as direct inferences, "that a subconscious entity of knowledge or of speculation integrates with conscious material to present to the consciousness both a comprehensive and immediate metaphysical analysis of the integration." Metaphysical Naturalist Glossary

In plain English, the subconscious is always on, always working, always analyzing. When a "light bulb comes on over your head" it is an intuition presented to your consciousness through its connection to the subconsious, which was working on the problem all the time.

If "something is on the end of your tongue" but you can't find the word that on the tip, it is because the word has not been culled from the subconscious. The conscious mind cannot be conscious at all times of all the things of which it was at one time previously conscious. We would be overwhelmed with images and words and music playing in our minds. What is not necessary to have in the "forward" consciousness is stored in the subconsciousness.

Aristotle is thus correct about the acquisition of knowledge. Plato is incorrect both about the nature of "intuition" and about the metaphysical nature of that which can be known.

But Aristotle thought knowledge of the essences and natural laws were objects of cognition which no intuition can reveal, but which science can prove to exist. When defined as in the Metaphysical Naturalist Glossary, intuition does not contradict the acquisition of knowledge through the senses, nor does it contradict abstract knowledge which necessarily is abstracted from sensory knowledge and only sensory knowledge; or from concepts, which are formulations made from previous abstractions.

Recommended reading about Knowledge ; Aristotle and Knowledge

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Exorcism and Homosexuality

NEW YORK - Truth Wins Out [TWO] condemned Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn., for practicing child abuse in the name of religion, after a video surfaced where the church tried to exorcize demons from a gay teenager....Patricia McKinney, pastor of the nondenominational church who describes herself as a prophet, told CNN that she believes homosexuality, like crack addiction can be influenced by demons. "It's not just the homosexuality spirit. It could be the alcohol spirit, the crack cocaine spirit, the adultery spirit. Everything carries a spirit," McKinney told CNN. http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/church%E2%80%99s-exorcism-of-gay-teenager-is-child-abuse-and-fanaticism-disguised-as-faith/

"Everything carries a spirit." We would expect Christianity to employ supernaturalism; it wouldn't be Christianity if it didn't.

But, "Things of this sort [spirits] are the Platonic Forms, abstract entities that exist independently of the sensible world," says Britannica. (Platonism was inextricably welded to Christianity, most notably by St. Augustine, as well as by many others.)

This means that that which are objectively considered abstractions by the the bulk of western civilization are considered to be real objects, or "reifications" of the abstractions, in the tradition of Platonic metaphysics.

This means that the "spirits" are considered to be universals inherent in things. About universals: "The metaphysical issue is whether or not these features exist independently of the particular things that have them: [Platonic] realists hold that they do..." Britannica

Universals in the Platonic thinking are "special existents unrelated to man’s consciousness—[not] to be perceived by man directly, like any other kind of concrete existents [tables; apples; children], but perceived by some non-sensory or extra-sensory means," wrote Ayn Rand.

"Unfortunately, this terrifying incident is not unique" continues TWO. "It is a standard part of groups such as Exodus International, which promise to help people "pray away the gay." "When talking to the public or media, such organizations try to appear mainstream and uncontroversial," said Wayne Besen, TWO's director. "But, when they get behind closed doors, they engage in practices that are barbaric and backwards. While demons do not cause homosexuality, the efforts of churches to 'cure' gay people can accurately be describes as quite evil."

The attempt to view such intangible universals as non-material entities in a supernatural world, to be perceived only by supernatural means, provides an evil view of existence, where the burning of witches by the Catholic and Protestant churches comes to mind. But even in modern Catholicism, "[exorcism is] but rarely used, and never without the express permission of the bishop," says the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.

Why is it rarely used? Because "there is room for no end of deception and hallucination when it is question of dealing with the unseen powers." New Advent

When humans attempt to perceive "deception" and avoid "hallucination" while dealing with supposed supernatural inhabitation of humans, there is not only room for error, but the error is inherent in the nature of the beastly act itself.

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Is Death Noumenal?

Sometimes, metaphysics isn't so complicated as many of the blogs I have written about here, such as the "tree falling in the forest" question that answer to which lies in the "primacy of existence." Sometimes metaphysics is just simply simple. Kant is not considered to be "simple" philosophy, but when you break it down, it can be shown to be simpler than Kant would wish you to think his ideas were.

In this blog, someone asked the simple question of whether or not "death" was an example of Kant's "Noumenon" theory.

Death is phenomenon. "Noumena", according to Kant, is anything our animal senses cannot detect about what is empirical, and which our logic cannot reach.

Death is empirical, observable, and logically explainable. What lies on the other side of physical death, if it exists, would not be a Noumenon either, because a Noumenon regards only that which is undetecable about a phenomenon.

In other words, we see a baseball, but that is the empirical phenomenon. What we cannot detect about the baseball is Kant's "real reality" precisely because our animalism (which he abhored and which therefore prevented him from being objective about it,) prevents us from seeing it.

But the baseball and the state of physical death are still empirical. There is nothing about the afterlife that is empirical--it is supernatural; therefore it cannot be noumenal.

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Altruism and Mother Theresa

It has been asked repeatedly whether altruism can actually exist. Even Mother Theresa has been doubed as an altruist, since, if the claim that no one can be one is true, then she was not.

The reason the Vatican published her letters of fear that for 12 years her God had forsaken her was to prove that indeed, she was an altruist.

Auguste Comte coined the word to mean: "the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

In Comte's use of the word he invented, Mother Theresa was indeed an altruist. All she wanted was to have her God speak to her, and he did not. Why do you think she looked so sad all the time?

It's amazing how people have twisted the word "altruist" to mean that no one can be one "because we all do things for our own benefit." If she wanted to work for 12 years without a word from God, she had a reason, which was "the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity.

"But "self-abnegation" is not to one's benefit if one thinks that that action has caused God to forsake you. If you hear from God on a regular basis while abnegating your sense of self in the service of other people, then you are benefitting, and cannot be considered altruistic.

Bill Gates and his wife have done more for the third world than 1000 Mother Theresas could do in terms of providing material needs. They are not in the Third World 100% of the time as the Mother was, so they cannot provide for the spiritual needs of people when they are not there. But do you think that when they do visit the places to which they send their philanthopy that the happy faces and filled stomachs and dancing and music provided by the villagers are not better for the spiritual needs of those villagers than a self-abnegating altruist with a sad and spiritless-looking face?

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Abstraction, Intelligence, and How We Use Them

It has been asked often why man considers himself, over other animals, to be "the rational" animal, when he often doesn't act rational, and even commits acts of irrationality.

What we do with our intelligence is not the question. The answer is: Brutes abstract not. (Locke)

Because they cannot abstract, at least with any degree of mnemonics, the naturalist Loren Eiseley said that animals live in an "eternal present" from which they can never escape.

Ayn Rand described it as "range-of-the-moment consciousness", which explains the lack of mnemonic cognition. They can't teach their young what they've learned in a manner which gives the young something to build on. Whatever they learn, it stops rights there, even it is passed on to the entire tribe, like those macaques who learned to wash their food. This action was caught on camera by scientists who had been studying these particular groups of monkees and had never seen them do it until one accidentally dropped his food in the water-------and liked the result. So he continued to do it, and the other monkees mimmicked him and discovered they liked it too.

But that didn't lead to an abstraction. Nothing more was learned than that washing food tasted good. Perhaps in an act of evolution, only the monkees who wash their food will survive someday during a storm of biological pestilence upon their food. But it wasn't because they learned to make anti-biotics.

Man can learn to understand that because he washed his hands and his food, he prevented himself and others from getting sick. That knowledge was an abstraction, and it can be taught to others.

THAT is what makes man intelligent. That he foolishly or criminally uses his intelligence is a different question.

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God, Creation, and Evolution

The official New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia has no problem with evolution or science.

"God does not interfere directly with the natural order, where secondary causes suffice to produce the intended effect" (De opere sex dierum, II, c. x, n. 13). In the light of this principle of the Christian interpretation of nature, the history of the animal and vegetable kingdoms on our planet is, as it were, a versicle in a volume of a million pages in which the natural development of the cosmos is described, and upon whose title-page is written: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."

"To what extent is the theory of evolution applicable to man? That God should have made use of natural, evolutionary, original causes in the production of man's body, is per se not improbable, and was propounded by St. Augustine (see AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, SAINT, under V. Augustinism in History). The actual proofs of the descent of man's body from animals is, however, inadequate, especially in respect to paleontology. And the human soul could not have been derived through natural evolution from that of the brute, since it is of a spiritual nature; for which reason we must refer its origin to a creative act on the part of God."

"The scientific theory of evolution, therefore, does not concern itself with the origin of life. It merely inquires into the genetic relations of systematic species, genera, and families, and endeavours to arrange them according to natural series of descent (genetic trees)."

"The formation of new species is directly observed in but a few cases, and only with reference to such forms as are closely related to each other; for instance, the systematic species of the plant-genus Œnothera, and of the beetle-genus Dimarda. It is, however, not difficult to furnish an indirect proof of great probability for the genetic relation of many systematic species to each other and to fossil forms, as in the genetic development of the horse (Equidæ), of ammonites, and of many insects, especially of those that dwell as "guests" with ants and termites, and have adapted themselves in many ways to their hosts."

"At present, however, it is impossible to decide how many independent genetic series must be assumed in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This is the gist of the theory of evolution as a scientific hypothesis. It is in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe; for Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and of animals were originally created by God. As early as 1877 Knabenbauer stated "that there is no objection, so far as faith is concerned, to assuming the descent of all plant and animal species from a few types" (Stimmen aus Maria Laach, XIII, p. 72)."http://www.newadvent.org/ [italics added]

Evolution therefore is not inconsistent in the theology of Christianity with the statement, "In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth," because "Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and animals were originally created."

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What is "Time Travel"?

Husserl wrote "The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness." One thing it demonstrates clearly is that "time" is a phenomenon of consciousness, not of of physics.

The physics in it is the consciousness of movement, and then of difference in the lengths of those phenomenons, such as a star moving across the sky versus a caterpillar walking up a tree.

Since "time" is a phenomenon of consciousness, it cannot be manipulated outside of consciousness, in the empirical world.

However, we know that the pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope are of events that happened millions or billions of year ago. So if we were able to invent a means of transportation that would get us to one of those events in a second, would that be considered time travel? Nothing would have changed in the universe except your placement in it; yet you would instantly be at an even which in your original placement had already passed a long time ago.

But transportation to a place in the universe where something happened in a different "time" when compared to the relationship of Earth to "place X" is not the same as travelling back to yesterday.

If travelling back to yesterday becomes possible, then once again it is merely moving your own physical and mental existence from one place to another. What makes yesterday on earth different from what is photographed by the Hubble? Nothing at all, except the Hubble cannot see that close up.

So if you can go in the blink of an eye to what the Hubble sees, yet you have merely moved materially through a long distance of space, then why is that different from moving materially back to yesterday?And if that becomes possible, is it possible to move materially to an unknown place when that "place" (tomorrow) has not yet happened?

We could conceivably create a transportation device that would move us materially across the universe faster than the speed of light. To return to yesterday, we would have to invent a "Hubble" that can see yesterday on Earth by the same means. It would simply be a "closeup" shot.

But how are we to see tomorrow?Such a form of travel, to what Hubble sees, is not time travel, because time is a phenomenon of consciousness, not of physics.

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Same-Sex Marriages

Marriage requires neither church nor state, because in nature, on an island for example where only two people exist, it comes down to a simple verbal contract between two people.

The church originally stepped in when it decided that "God" must sanctify this contract before it could be acceptable, but we all know that such dogma is merely for the purpose of having power over other people.

The state stepped in when it became obvious that certain legal matters, such as inheritances and child support, needed a basis in law if they were to be agreed upon in all similar situations across the board and over a long time. But this began with precedent, when an arbitrator of one sort or another had to determine what was to be.

The church may have every right to determine how marriage is to be handled in its denomination or in its individual congregations. But the state must by its nature remain neutral.

This neutrality means that a contract made by two people which denies no other people the same right cannot be denied. It is not a "special right" to let two women enter into such a contract, as opposed to a man and a woman. This contract is, after all, found first in the nature of humans who must be free to make them if they are to be allowed to live in justice.

Laws that deny such freely made contracts are laws that deny the right to freely make contracts where such action does not deny others the same right. A "contract" between heterosexuals to deny the same right to homosexuals is an unlawful "contract."

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What is "Human"?

To be human was defined by Aristotle as being "the rational animal." For that, we can't ignore intelligence.

But because we see intelligence in other animals---chimps, dogs, whales, elephants, dolphins---we have to wonder about their reasoning abilities, especially when a dog, for example, has been seen to "think" in stressful situations and run for help, continuing to bark until someone pays attention to it, then leading people to the problem, such as a child who is hurt.

But the great naturalist Loren Eiseley described this kind of intelligence as the animals' "eternal present" because they learn nothing from it that is learned by others of its kind. It does not pat itself on the back and later think about the good deed it did, and it does not tell other dogs of its exploits. Once the event is over, it may remain as a part of the animal's overall empathy toward the child it saved, or it may even bolster its own self-esteem if such a thing exists in an animal; but these would be sub-conscious since we see no evidence of its own conscious recognition of what it has accomplished.

Ayn Rand had another description for this kind of "thinking" on the part of animals; "range-of-the-moment consciousness." That is easier to understand than Eiseley's phrase, when used without an explanation.

So "being human" is a matter of retention of consciousness, which it expands all the time by integrating other moments of consciousness into it. First Responders, for example, make a career out of what the dog does only in emergencies.

Retention and integration of moments of consciousness removes man from that "eternal present" and presents him with a dilemma: what to do with his memory?

He "feels" his memory as conscience when it deals with morality; and when it deals with morality it becomes part of his (natural, not super-natural) soul.For this reason, "being human" must at least implicitly involve being "good" or "bad", and certainly involves intelligence.

The fact that much of our literature and entertainment have let society down by not standing up to moral scrutiny in its explanation of "human-ness" means only that modern philosophy, the philosophy of context-dropping and of creating moral greyness where black-and-white ought to be visible, is present in our forms of art.

That does not make the authors, painters, actors and other artists correct in their evaluation of what it means to be human. It means they are obfuscating and refusing to face up to the fact that man has moral choices to make if he wishes to remain "the rational animal."

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Determinism, Government, and Social Justice

"Dictatorship and determinism," wrote Ayn Rand, "are reciprocally reinforcing corollaries: if one seeks to enslave men, one has to destroy their reliance on the validity of their own judgments and choices—if one believes that reason and volition are impotent, one has to accept the rule of force.
“Representation Without Authorization,” The Ayn Rand Letter, I, 21, 1

Today, we see the spectacle of a federal government nearing totalitarian power over society. It seeks to re-create the nation in its own image--green, "socially just", ignoring the power of the individual and his right, both Constitutional and natural, to empower his own will; and it is doing so by giving us cause to relinquish our reliance on the validity of our own judgments and choices.

It is telling us that General Motors and Chrysler no longer know how to manage their own companies, because in a world where they naturally lost their share of the market to competition, they also lost money when a disaster struck the economy after government interference in that economy.

Of course, the government has interfered in the capitalist economy almost from the beginning of our nation's founding. But once it became large enough to be a real force, then the concept of capitalism was replaced by the concept of the "mixed" economy. But no one calls it that.

They still call it capitalism, and so when this mixed economy fails because the capitalists have lost control over their own capital, lost it to bureaucrats who were not seeking to protect capital but rather to protect special interests from the capitalists, then the bureaucrats could claim the capitalists were incompetent of maintaining a healthy economy. It isn't "socially just" to allow a few incompetent money mongers to destroy everything for everyone.

The real capitalists knew better, but the majority of people alive today believe that the government has proved "capitalism" is the special interest who must be shackled and told how to manage its own affairs; when the fact is, it has been shackled for so long it no longer knows how to do what it is supposed to do.

It is supposed to say no to government interference, relying on the validity of its own choices based on objective market values. No such values can exist when a mixed economy by definition is subjective.

And since the government can now make the claim that "health care" is inefficient and have that backed up by the health care industry climbing naked into bed with it, "the people" are beginning to believe that reason is impotent---when it is not governed.

When a new piece of electronics hits the market, it is always expensive at first. Look at the price of the IPhone, which now has dropped by more than 60%. The first real laptop computer for under $200 is being advertised heavily on TV by a major wireless internet carrier who sells that laptop.

So when a new piece of medical equipment, or new medicines, hit the market, they are always expensive. The difference is, there are not hundreds of thousands of hospitals rushing out to buy the new equipment, and the meds are not immediately prescribed to millions of people, so there is no reason for the price to come down.

Yet, everyone who gets sick and can be helped by the new equipment want it used on them, and they then complain about the cost of health care, and they equate it with health care itself. There is nothing wrong with health care. There is something wrong with everyone wanting the best and the most expensive procedures used on them, while complaining about the costs.

"Social justice" is a form of alleviating the effects of determinism, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Determinism doesn't exist, but if the philosophers can get you to believe it does, then they have power over everything and everyone, including government policy, because it is they who taught the policy wonks everything they know.

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Determinsm, Free Will, and Experience

If neither an "act of God" nor the hand of another man ends your life, then it is true that you always play the only role in shaping your fate, when "fate" is defined as the end you meet when you meet it.

Determinists say that because we are what the events of our lives have caused us to be, that our fate is out of our hands for the most part. If an auto accident took your leg, free will could not bring it back, nor change it.

But these determinists forget that what you are requires experience. It requires the existence of things that happen to you, for you, and by you. These things are the very stuff of life. Without empirical existence and the things it causes you to deal with, there would be no you.

So it is up to you to consider the events of existence as the "natural resources" of your consciousness, because without them you would have no consciousness. And if they are your natural resources, then only you can use them to your advantage.

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