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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The Single Intelligible Object--Repost

Repost of Blogger from 9.3.08

The Academy's Blogger of 9.01.08 on the subject of "world views," specifically that of the Atomist Lucretius as he described his own view in his historic poem "On the Nature of Things," allows us to take up the subject again, this time from other perspectives than those of Atomists.

"It is because atomism [naturalism] views matter as independent of God," I wrote, "that atomism was demoted by St. Augustine from the predominating world view, a view that held sway for nearly 1000 years. St. Augustine turned it into the skeptical position against theism. All men have a world view that for each, in some way, is his explanation of the meaning of existence, of the world." http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/08/atomism-is-incompatible-with-judeo.html

The purpose of the mind of men turning to thoughts of the meaning of life is to summarize it, and the briefest summary is the one that describes everything in the least possible words. A definition of a word in a dictionary is the meaning of a word, in the least number of words.

"A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are. But it is important to remember that a definition implies all the characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not their exhaustive, characteristics..." Ayn Rand; "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology"; p.42

It is that idea that creates the need to describe the world in which we live, not as a single word, which would leave out so much of the essence of existence and our emotional reaction to it; but the fewest number of words which describe that essential characteristic, as a single intelligible object, as any dictionary definition turns the concept(s) described by a word as a single intelligible object.

What follows is a very brief condensation of my book, The Search for the Single Intelligible Object. The purpose of the book is to address the need for such a description, and to explain the naturalistic, objective description of a world which neither knows about us, nor cares about us, and can become anything we have the capacity to turn it into. Or, we can become whatever we let it makes us become, for better or worse and usually for the worse, by ignorning thatexistence has no cognizance of us, and by believing that we cannot over come genetic predispositions, and environments, and a "world we didn't make.

But to do so is a return to Plato's Cave, to astrology, the "reading" of cards and tea leaves and spilled toothpicks on the kitchen floor. It is a return to the belief that there is a wrathful intelligence in the universe, rather than one of justice and truth, and that it is us.

I
The Single Intelligible Universe

Imagine, for a moment or two, floating way away from Earth. Float away to the outside of the universe itself, outside of all known and unknown existence, and then look at the universe as the astronauts on their way to the moon saw Earth, as a whole. Except that instead of seeing only one-half of the global universe at a single moment, there is no "dark side of the moon," so to speak. You are able to turn the universe over and over in your hand and examine it in minute detail as if it was a snow globe. You are able to look into any part of it of which you are aware. The examination, and the detail you discover, will be determined by your own capabilities.

Those of us who are least aware of the concept of “cosmology” easily understand what it means when it is explained as an awareness of the universe, an awareness one has when one “holds the world before his mind as if it were a single intelligible object.” To which it must be added, “While holding the universe in one's hand and mind, he decides what his place is or is to be, in that universe as he comes to understand it.”

Aurelius wrote, “He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself." Such a conscious examination is formal cosmology, not in the science of physics which deals with very different questions and information; but in the sciences pertaining to formal Philosophy. Sometimes that "science" is quite simply the meditations of people who find the time to think about the world, because it requires a deeper thread of thoughts, and deep thinking is the science of philosophy.

Deciding, i.e., evaluating, one’s place in the world in which he lives, means: holding before his conscience (as if in his hand, as well) the evaluation of one's judgment of his world, for the mind does not operate in a moral vacuum, but is attached to its moral center of judgment. Deciding what one’s place in the world "is or is to be" means looking, sometimes deeply, into one’s conscience, because that is where the real results of evaluations take place. The conscience is the one place where one cannot lie to oneself about who and what one is, and where he is.

Conceiving of the universe as a single intelligible object and then trying to perceive it in metaphysical terms [the theory of everything that exists,] and placing oneself in that universe, leaves us with a "sense of life." The human mind cannot not think in metaphysical terms; it is the first science of Philosophy without which the mind would not be conscious. The mind works in strict terms of philosophical principles whether or not one has evaluated them or is even conscious of them.

“Holding the universe as a single intelligible object," William Watson wrote of it using, not epistemology, the philosophical science of proving the truth of what we believe, but by using literary aesthetics, another philosophical science, in “Dawn on the Headland.” His words ring with an emotional truth, a truth that scares some people and comforts others:

Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the Cosmic Wheel

In the hold collision of Forces, and the clangor of boundless Strife,

Mid the sound of the speed of worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal

Of the thunder of Life.

There is, for those not frightened of it, an exciting and moral challenge in dwelling “in the midst of the Cosmic Wheel.” For those who find the words chilling more than comforting, they may, after understanding the sense of life, the cosmology, found in metaphysical naturalism, discover instead the excitement of that moral challenge, and find it uplifting. It is a challenge often posed in the questions and answers of theology.

Religions have cosmologies.

“The term ‘Logos’ in Christian theology marries, through the revelation of St. John’s Gospel and the Epistles of Paul, its Greek philosophical meaning of an all encompassing rational order uniting humans and divinity into a ‘great cosmos,’” says a long article called “Sacred Cosmology in the Christian Tradition," by Vincent Rossi, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_1_30/ai_59520591 and is “thus the supreme ordering principle uniting all levels of being, from the sublimity of the divine to the deepest density of the mineral kingdom.”

This “all encompassing rational order” certainly exists. It exists, though neither as a miracle nor as something intelligently designed either from within, or from without as a chef might design a wedding cake.

It is an all-encompassing rational order only when made comprehensible through an act of rationally ordering what one knows about it, in other words, putting its parts in a hierarchy of rational meanings. This rational ordering is done by the only thing capable of such ordering: the mind of Man. It is Man's mind that decides what his place is or is to be in the "all encompassing rational order."

Any human thought, sentence, expression of language, or fully developed work of fiction, non-fiction or art can and usually does contain a sense of life, an idea that expresses the place of men in the world in which they live.

The Declaration of Independence, is one of those, placing into an all-encompassing rational order the exact purpose for its existence, i.e., it rationally says all it has to say about why the signatories signed it. It does this in its very first paragraph, which is incredibly only one long sentence, part of which is: that often it "becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another," the colonies from England. The Founders knew their place in the world in which they existed, and they knew where they wanted their place to be and it was not in the world as seen by the British Empire. The Founders' sense of life was one of political freedom from tyranny.

Metaphysics are the values of philosophy, and epistemology is the method of "proving" the values. These two manifestations. these elements of consciousness, help make up the subject of cosmology as far as the humanities are concerned. There is also a science of cosmology that deals almost specifically with what are commonly called the "laws of nature," and it is called Physics. Physics has its own "cosmology," described in phrases meant for other physicists.

This sort of cosmology "attempts to measure the immeasurable in mega parsecs and speak rationally about the immensity of space, to explain how its incalculable number of astronomical bodies occupy their incalculable vastness. Cosmology is the human effort at locating us and our environment in relation to all the other environments and their possible inhabitants."[a]
But it has always been the profession of philosophy to put into perspective the ideas of all the other professions. It is why there are ethics of law, ethics of medicine, ethics of warfare, and of journalism, to mention only a very few.

Not one person on Earth needs formal training to make a judgment about the world he lives in, in the sense with which this book deals. We all make those kinds of judgments everyday of our lives.

In the connotation of cosmology as a sense of life, it must be recognized that this sense is as automatic a function of Man's consciousness as his "five senses" are. It cannot be turned off any more than sight can be turned off. We can close our eyes and ignore what would otherwise be visibly before us. We can also choose to ignore the cognitions of our sub-consciously, automatically, evaluating mind: cognitions of impending marital doom, or of something simply being amiss, such as the bad behavior of a child when our evaluation of his behavior turns us toward thoughts of mental illness. Who wants to jump right to that conclusion? So we put off jumping until jumping is no longer a choice. That is, we put it off if we are not rigorous in the integrity of our minds. Most of us are not, sometimes. Many are not, most of the time, suppressing the unasked question, "What should I do?"

Naturalist Loren Eiseley, in his own tranquil and unique cosmological styling, wrote in his classic work, "The Immense Journey," http://www.amazon.com/Immense-Journey-Imaginative-Naturalist-Mysteries/dp/0394701577 of an archaic Homo sapiens, an early Man, having the experience of pondering the meaning of existence. It was about the “Adam” of men, about the first Man to have such contemplation, the first man to think in philosophical terms.

“For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated
himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the
wind in the night reeds. Perhaps he knew, there in the grass by the chill
waters, that he had before him an immense journey. Perhaps that same foreboding still troubles the hearts of those who walk out of a crowded room and stare with relief into the abyss of space so long as there is a star to be seen twinkling across those miles of emptiness.”

In the art world Grandma Moses described in paint on canvas a sense of life which obviously was not formed of the elements of say, a Van Gogh or a Rockwell. Her skills and her cosmology are described as "Primitive." No matter the skill of the artist to depict her world, the way in which any artist sees it, good, bad, ugly, or wondrously beautiful, gives us a look into the soul of the artist. Hers was a productive soul, intent on journalizing the world in which she lived.

"Her images of rural life provided soothing respite from otherwise turbulent times, and fifty years later her vision of the simple life still strikes a resonant chord." [with examples of her work] http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa76.htm

Dow Chemical's world view was presented in its advertising, giving the world a gift of Romanticism, i.e., the world view of the ideality of what it means to be alive in the best sense of "alive." Dow called their advertisement The Human Element. It is rare anymore to see Romanticismi expounded so elegantly, not to mention unabashedly.

The Dow TV ads are a collage of video clips of real people in their own real environmental "elements," on four continents. Dow says it describes their company's vision for the future in their interactions with cultures and environments and people. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw it, and I have not been disappointed yet, seeing it over and over again.

It is a brilliant, shining star of Romantic cosmology, of what Man means in the universe, in an environment that would have no purpose without him.

The Human Element
For each of us / there is a moment / of discovery.
We turn a page. / We raise a hand. / And just then,
in the flash of a synapse, / we learn that life / is elemental.
And this knowledge / changes everything.
We look around / and see the grandness / of the scheme.
Sodium / bonding with chlorine.
Carbon / bonding with oxygen.
Hydrogen / bonding with oxygen.
We see / all things connected.
We see / life unfold.
And in the dazzling brilliance / of this knowledge
we may overlook / the element not listed / on the chart.
Its importance so obvious / its presence / is simply understood.
The missing element / is the Human Element.
And when we add it / to the equation / the chemistry changes.
Every reaction is different.
Potassium / looks to bond / with potential.
Metals / behave with hardened / resolve.
And hydrogen and oxygen / form desire.
The Human Element / is the element of change.
It gives us our footing / to stand fearlessly
and face the future.
It is a way of seeing / that gives us / a way of touching.
Issues. / Ambitions. / Lives.
The Human Element.
Nothing is more fundamental. / Nothing more elemental.

"We see all things connected. We see life unfold. And in the dazzling brilliance of this knowledge we may overlook the element not listed on the chart. Its importance so obvious its presence is simply understood. The missing element is the Human Element." What more can be said about a cosmology of wondrous delight in being human, of human interaction, of human bonding; of "a way of seeing that gives us a way of touching issues, ambitions, lives?"

Philosophical Romanticism is the benevolent cosmology described (by me) as, "From each according to his ability, then he ought to be rewarded ten times over." It is the cosmology of ideals that are attainable by the best of Men (qua Men,) and it allows for the rest of us to look up to things as having possibility, e.g., the performance of Olympic Athletes; wealth created by men of vision in any endeavor, but look at the founders of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, and at Warren Buffet and others, for inspirational examples. They came, they created, they took, and now they give back a hundred-fold.

Cosmology is demonstrated in every piece of art, which is created by psychological action. Scottish novelist George MacDonald wrote of a young man in a story about the title character called "Malcolm."

Malcolm is a fisherman about whom there seems to be a mystery that he himself is not too aware of; and honestly, he does not much care about the mystery. His mind is on things that matter, and the mystery about him is not high on his hierarchy of values. Malcolm has a blind father he loves more dearly than anyone in the world, yet who he knows is not his biological father and believes to be his grandfather. This is part of the mystery about which he cares little, because Malcolm is as devoted to his father and to the people of his Scottish fishing village and to the Lord of the manor, as anyone could be to anyone or anything. It is not that he does not think about the future or the past, but he lives in the present and his values are not of things he cannot control, but of things he can control. He is loved and revered by the fisher folk, and the only person in the town who treats him badly is a woman who treats everyone badly and who is considered by some to be a witch. Malcolm has serenity.

MacDonald wrote about Malcolm that;

“Joy itself seemed embodied in the wind blowing on him. When it came on to blow hard, instead of making him feel small and weak in the midst of storming forces, it gave him a glorious sense of power and unconquerable life.” [italics added]

Those words in italics are a world view, perhaps caused only when Macolm felt the wind blowing, as you might guess by this excerpt. But is describes Malcolm's overall sense of life, and he carried it with him throughout each page of the book.

The cosmology of Malcolm made it one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I have ever had, and indirectly, along with Moby Dick, set me to thinking about writing this book. Malcolm's psychology is one that ought to be emulated much more than it is. There was a time not so long ago when a reasonable and "decent respect"i for "the opinions of others," as Malcolm demonstrates toward everyone he meets, was expected, even if it was a surprise when it came as gracefully as it came from Malcolm.

Today, many people seem to be in spiritual agony, skeptics, hatefilled for life itself, or at least for most other human beings. We are losing our grace in the face of people, places, and things we cannot change and over which we ought not have control. But we want people to be the way we want them to be, and we let it eat at us like acid on metal. And that, in itself, is a world view, that people are objects to be changed into what we disire them to be in order to make our own world better, and that when we don't get what we want the world throws acid on us.

Although Malcolm was not thinking in the metaphysical terms of "glorious" and "unconquerable," the author clearly was thinking of Malcolm’s psychology—Malcolm was “feeling” the impression upon his soul in those seconds of living in the moment of the wind, and his reaction was automatic. Few of us contemplate our own minds when we are "feeling the moment"; we are too busy enjoying the feeling; or too busy wishing the problem would go away; or too wrapped up in trying to make others be what we want them to be.

MacDonald’s words describe in psychological framing a beautiful moment, for while a cosmology can be descriptive of the entirety of a man’s evaluation of his place in the universe, it is most often consciously experienced at pivotal moments. The rest of the time, we just go on about our lives.

Some persons, perhaps most, never know that such a thing as a "sense of his life" exists, at least not in conscious terms. They may simply experience life as “generally happy,” for example, or “generally drab;” or they may feel that "sense" suicidally, or with melancholy or joy, or with any other emotion within Man’s range. One does not have to be aware of his own cosmology in concrete conceptual terms as described here. Yet in concepts of the connection between mind and soul, reason and heart, it can be seen to exist automatically, as automatically as consciousness itself, for it is “first consciousness.” That is why metaphysics which describe it is the "first science."

Without cosmology we humans would be not even be Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, the “Vulcan” who denies the effect of emotions upon his logic and must subjugate them to it, as do all Vulcans. We are not Vulcans; whether you believe the soul to be eternal or to die with the body, to be real or fantasy, to be mentally or biologically mechanical, or mystic and religiously spiritual, or to be the sum total of a man’s evaluation of what the world is and who he is and where he is in it—your emotion-perceiving soul is demonstrated through your actions, and your soul can often be seen in the way you live and in the way to treat and speak to others.

One’s reaction to his own cosmology demonstrates him as he sees himself in the cosmos, or in the chaos if he believes that is what the world is. His cosmology demonstrates the humor, the pathos, or the travesty of the drama, or the serenity of what he believes existence to be. Spock's logic is not the highest ideal a thinking creature can achieve. Discurse is a tool of reason, and logic is a tool of reason. Irrational logic can be proven to be illogical. A Vulcan's subjugation of his emotions to his "logic" is not an ideal for a thinking feeling being. Subjugating emotions to reason is an ideal. Just ask the Stoics, or Aquinas.

But in some ideas there is a very ugly, hurtful, hurting emotion about life. Most of us would want to suppress that, or get help for it before the suppression destroyed him. We can see the soul of ideas when we look at them.

French philosopher Montaign painted a very different and ugly picture of life than MacDonald did when he described Malcolm’s joy.

“Man,” Montaign wrote, “is this miserable and wretched creature who is not so much master of himself,” yet who “should call himself master and emperor of the world?”

His miserable description of cosmological evaluations did not end there. He continued: “Man feels and sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the worst and deadest part of the universe.”

Other persons have felt these same things about life, and it is a pity. This is a man’s “first consciousness” expressed overtly consciously, and they are demonstrations of each author's recombinants. Imagine Montaigne's evaluation as your sense of life. You would not have to do harm to anyone else with your denigrating ideas, but you certainly will not rise out of the "deadest part of the universe."

I prefer Malcolm’s joy, or Hermann Melville’s rapturous declaration that, “Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellow creatures should run to throw their costliest robes.” Amen; Melville's declaration is a cosmology of Romanticism.

At the other end of the metaphysical/ epistemological/ psychological scale from Melville, Byron wrote in Manfred that man is “half-dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar.” Dryden, on the same sink hole, wrote of man as a “dull and…insensible… beast,” and Thomas Brown called Man “splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.”

There are stark differences between cosmologies that see man in filth and unable to climb out of it, and in one that refuses to be nailed, that values the feelings of joyfulness, gloriousness, life unconquerable, noble, sparkling, grand, and glowing.

A character in Moby Dick has a cosmology of the universe being not so good a place, life in colonial New England being what it was, and the profession of whaling being even harder; but in that cosmology he found himself a good place in which to be.
"[A]nd while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy," he says.

These demonstrate differences, psychologically, of each author’s valuation of Man qua Man. And every living human demonstrates in one way or another his or her cosmology, his or her evaluation of man-in-the-cosmos. Some see his status "qua Man" as filthy, some see him as the highest form of being. But the descriptions say more about him or her who demonstrates these overtly conscious ideas than about reality, because a reality not comprehended of the highest standards of personal worth and behavior do not reflect a “sense of life” of possibility, probability, serenity, virtue, or value, nor of an existence—environmental or psychological—recombinant to Man’s will.

The Human Element / is the element of change.
It gives us our footing / to stand fearlessly
and face the future.

©The Dow Chemical Company. Permission granted.

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The Naturalistic Existence of Free Will, Soul, and Ego

In Tuesday's blog (8.26) I made a big deal of the concept of the actual existence of an actual human soul, and of free will as something actually available to men.

“Free Will,” according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), refers to "a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives [and] that the concept of free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility."


As I shall show, this "moral responsibility" is at the heart of most schools of naturalism--and there are many varieties, but almost all admit, "Brains and buffaloes exist (for instance), but minds and moral values must not, because they are invisible to the five senses and therefore invisible to scientific enquiry." J. P. Moreland [italics added] http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000872.html


In quoting Moreland, I understand I am open to the naturalist's defense that I am using religious claims to counter scientific claims. But the heart of this metaphysical and epistemological portrayal by science of "man without mind or moral responsibility" is what is wrong about naturalism, and what is right about religion--for the wrong reasons.


It is because of the correct view of moral responsibility by religion, and of the wrong view by science, that epistemological caveats were placed on the definition of naturalism by which this Academy operates. [See sidebar]
[Mirriam-Webster Online defines caveat as "an explanation to prevent misinterpretation; a modifying or cautionary detail to be considered when evaluating, interpreting, or doing something." B.A.G.Fuller's definition, standing alone, does not cover all the subjective, non-normative goals of an empirical science that can scan a brain in real time and watch its parts "lighting up" while the subject under scrutiny looks at pictures of porn or posies, listens to various types of music, eats most-favorite and least-favorite foods, or in general has his or her empirical sensory organs stimulated.]


The view of an active will that is free of coercion whether it is coercion by other men or by nature, satisfies "the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. [ ] But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility" (as we shall see,) continues the SEP.


For the sake of the argument allow that "ego" is an agent of cause in the lives of men. Naturalists will deny the ego exists, and people unfamiliar with the complexities of naturalism will not know why the ego should be discounted at all, since they believe all men believe it exists. The ego seems to be self-evident, and we base our morals on restricting the ego as it attempts to become king of a hill. Most naturalists do not agree it exists, that what appears "self-evident" is fiction designed only to explain, before modern science "showed" otherwise, why we acted in such and such a way.


So for the sake of the argment, "ego" is accepted by most men as the reason for demanding and accepting recognition for one's accomplishments of time, effort, and creativity; accepted as the reason for the recognition of individual sovereignty and the dignity of persons to remain free of human coercion; and accepted as the reason for values we place on other people, places, things, attributes and actions.


But naturalists don't accept free will, the soul, or the ego as real objects, not even as objects that reflect the reality of the mind, because they don't accept "mind" as anything but a fiction designed to explain a phenomenon.


The moral argument for them is exactly "[a]s you'd expect in a culture wedded to mind-body dualism but inhabiting an age of science..." http://www.naturalism.org/choice.htm

That partial sentence says it all, if you know what is at stake. The mind-body dualism leaves us "at the mercy of two monsters whom man [can] not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelations—" Ayn Rand For the New Intellectual, http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/soulbodydichotomy.html Men who believe in existence without a free consciousness want no part in moral responsibility, as the direct quotes below will show. That is why consciousness "inhabiting an age of science" is not a good thing for them.

The problem is that "they" have now declared that not only does the soul not exist either as "mystic revelation," nor as a natural element of the consciousness of man. They also now deny that consciousness is anything more than neurons firing, memes, genes, etc. and that what we think is consciousness--is not.

Modern science is philosophical materialism, "the metaphysical view that there is only one substance in the universe" and that that substance is empirical." http://www.skepdic.com/materialism.html The philosophical materialism of naturalists is the belief that spiritual substance does not exist.


In one sense only they are correct: that thing which they deny as "soul" cannot be objectively evaluated by any known scientific standards or methods. You can't make the "soul" light up like parts of the brain do. It is metaphysical, but metaphysical descriptions are descriptions of things that exist, in this case of what we sense as the effects we feel as emotional, or at least physical, within our bodies.


The difference between the materialist and the Objectivist position accepted by the majority of all humans who ever lived and who live now, is that "ego," and "free will" explain non-material objects that are not supernatural, and not of any substance except of knowledge of events in space-time that occur inside out bodies. As for "soul," Objectivists are on the side of the naturalists in declaring it to be the effect of empirical activities originating within the central nervous system, and which therefore die with the body.


Yet, it is disagreement as to the cause of these events that distinguishes the difference between materialistic science and objective epistemology; and it precisely the epistemology of both science and religion that is wrong.

A rational man will not harbor "the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. [ ] He will know that the [ ] volitional level of reason and thought—is the basic necessity of man’s survival and his greatest moral virtue. He will know that men need philosophy for the purpose of living on earth. Ayn Rand For the New Intellectual

[I take up Rand so much in this article because one of the staunchest supporters of scientific naturalism, denying the soul and individual responsibility for personal action, is Tom Clark, of Naturalism.Org, already quoted above and much quoted below.

In email between myself and Tibor Machan http://www.hoover.org/bios/machan.html http://www.cato.org/people/tibor-machan, who has argued against Clark in the past http://www.naturalism.org/libertar.htm#_ftn3, Machan said, "Clark is an avowed reductive materialist, which is a highly restricted version of naturalism (it begs the question as to what can be part of nature.)" Obviously, soul, ego, and free will are not "parts of nature," but are reduced to biological functions of the brain.


Science takes the fact that soul, ego, and free will cannot be objectively evaluated by any known scientific standards or methods to mean that no such ontological objects exist. When we insist they mean more than the identification of empirical effects on our nervous system, the effect that "feels" like what humans have always called our soul, our ego, our free will, science denies it. Once we give those objects the identity of a "moral existents" of consciousness, they cease to be scientifically useful. You can't put morals under a microscope. So soul, ego, and free will are denied, not as things we don't recognize and can not talk about, but as something with any scientific value. The only value to science of the soul and the ego is that they are the empirical effects of an empirical (chemical/electircal) cause, or of a conceptual, e.g., ideological, cause.

But conceptual causes are, themselves, attributed to empirical causes, thus eliminating them as ontological.


"In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson took note that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Wilson suggested that biologists need to investigate how human genes predispose people to believe in a soul." [attribution unknown]

"Man is viewed as coordinate with other parts of nature, and naturalistic psychology emphasizes the physical basis of human behavior..." says the SEP. [ibid]

"Daniel Dennett has championed the idea that the human survival strategy depends heavily on adoption of the intentional stance. [This,] Dennett suggests, has proven so successful that people tend to apply it to all aspects of human experience, thus leading to [to] conceptualizations of soul." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

Watching parts of the brain light up (with functional magnetic imaging resonance) demonstrates a causal relationship between sensory stimuli, and those parts of the brain responsible for registering something about the stimuli. Comparisons are made on the particular emotions the subject is feeling at the time this-or-that part of the brain shows activity.

For example, "when you're in love, your eyes light up, your face lights up -- and, apparently, so do four tiny bits of your brain, said Andreas Bartels, a doctoral student at University College London who presented his research at the Society for Neuroscience." http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/11/08/love.in.lights.ap/index.html

We know this. This kind of thing is not new news. We've all seen it on TV if not in our own lives. What those of us in the general population don't comprehend is that scientists reverse the cause and effect, enabling them to make claims such as that because a part of your brain lights up, it causes an emotion; therefore, emotions are caused by events that take place within the empirical brain; therefore, "an individual’s development and behavior are entirely the result of prior and surrounding conditions, both genetic and environmental;" [italics added]http://www.naturalism.org/center_for_naturalism.htm

Or this: "Our bodies and minds are shaped in their entirety by conditions that precede us and surround us...We see that there but for circumstances go I. We would have been the homeless person in front of us, the convict, or the addict, had we been given their genetic and environmental lot in life." [italics added] http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/descriptions.htm

But in order to humor us about our souls, and in an attempt to explain what it is that people are comtemplating when they meditate upon their mortal souls, we get explanations like this:

"It doesn't hurt...you know... to think about people playing harps sitting on clouds..." Daniel Dennett; The Atheism Tapes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v46Wd7qwq0

The soul is the seat of self-awareness as a metaphysical entity. The soul incorporates the inner "voice" of each living being. It is the basis for consciousness of consciousness, because it is that consciously "given" thing within us upon which we focus our consciousness. We focus our consciousness back inside ourselves, and there we find an entity with a specific identity; the self.

Consciousness of consciousness is found in our Latin name. We are Homo sapiens sapiens, not, as some mistakenly believe, just "plain old" Homo sapiens. "Plain old" Homo sapiens is called "Archaic Homo sapiens" and lived "300,000 to 30,000 B.P." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Homo_sapiens

The soul is the basis for our seat of self-awareness, but not the cause. The cause is simply that when someone got around to looking, he saw. It had been there all the time, like math and oxygen. But someone had to be the first to see it.

Other animals have self awareness, but it is on the level of what naturalist and biologist Loren Eiseley called the eternal present. They are stuck in it. They can't think further than their next meal, or at least further than their next act. Chimps have been seen to take justice to the "eye for an eye" variety. Worse, they have been seen stomping other chimps to death just for having accidentally entered the other tribe's territory-- but they only stomped the other chimp to death after searching for it for hours, in apack like wolves. That is more than "eye for an eye," so it really means they have not given morality any consideration. They only live by their emotions, and if you are an invading chimp, friendly or not, you deserved to die.

A dog can think far enough ahead to know that when his master needs help, he must go seek that help. Dog's have a persistence to be admired. But after the rescue, they do not pat themselves on the back, and tell their friends, or their puppies, how they heroically ran up the hill, swam the creek, and ran two miles to get home to tell the Mrs. that the Mr. was injured. When the rescue is done, as far as the dog is concerned, its done. There may be residual pride. Who has not seen a proud pet. My cat's proudest moment was showing off her kittens, but after that it was the night she brought home an owl. She didn't egoistically act as if she even remembered it the next day.

So, after the event, everything is back to normal, and as for the chimps you wouldn't know in either tribe that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Because it was not out of the ordinary. And things were back to normal. Normal is living in the present with no thought to any means of bettering their relations with other tribes, or whether that is even necessary for their own survival as a species, as a tribe, or as an individual. They act as their species has acted since they popped up on the evolutionary scene, with a consciousness stuck in the moment.

Man's self-consciousness is on a different level. I like to think that psychologically man gained "sapient sapience" when the first Greek (or someone of another culture such as the Chinese,) made the first syllogism of philosophy and connected it to another and another. That was a feat no creature on earth had ever done before, and that none but man has done since.

So inner reflection, on an ontological entity, as a learned action, and the capability to make chains of syllogisms that are specifically philosophical, is the seat of the self consciousness, and what it is conscious of is its empirical sensory manifestations collectively called conscience.


But here is where I must repeat: science has the cause-and-effect backward. So what if the mechanism of the brain causes those empirical sensory manifestations? They relate to something, and that "thing" is value based. Science tests the lighting-up of the brain by using sensory stimuli, but then forgets to mention that all stimuli have value-based relationships to life; and that when it is man's brain lighting up to the smell of popcorn, or the picture of a national hero, or the sound of a melody that one danced to at his/her senior prom, that all those things have value-based relationships to a human life.

This forgetfullness should bother us--greatly. Man has the virtue of volition. Human beings are a volitional species, where "volition" means "[acting] without being compelled - by someone, or by external circumstances, or by mental illness," against one's rational considerations. http://www.naturalism.org/lexicon.htm The problem with this quote is that in the original it didn't end with "rational considerations." It ended with "to do it against one's wishes" which the materialist naturalist will tell you "are entirely the result of prior and surrounding conditions, both genetic and environmental." [italics added]

Volition and free will are synonymous, where free will means "the capacity unique to persons that allows them to control their actions," http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/freewill.htm No such virtue as volition can exist as freedom to think or not, when genes and the chair you sit in and the sandwich you had for lunch are the cause of your desire to talk to your mother, or vacation in Orlando instead of New Orleans.

Why does science get cause and effect confused? It is entirely purposeful and based on altrusim; and not just on altruism, but on altruistic bones that we somehow get from mother nature even when altruism is a moral choice.

"The capacity for such self-modifying choices [as come with what some call free will,] and their direction, for good or ill, can always be traced back to influences that were prior to both our character and our choice-making capacity. Such tracing is at the heart of empirical explanation; it’s what science does for a living, partially. This is to say that, on a scientific understanding of ourselves, our autonomy and its uses are fully natural and fully determined, ultimately arising out of conditions that were not within our control.

"[To suppose the existence of free will] is to suppose that in empirical fact we are merely self-interested creatures. But we aren’t; there are many altruistic bones in our body," writes Clark. [2] [italics added] http://www.naturalism.org/libertar.htm#_ftn4

Since he said this specifically in response to the "ruthless egoism" of Objectivism*, let me quote again from the originator of Objectivism: [*rational egoism is not ruthless. It is the justice one pays himself in recognition of his individual sovereignty and of the sovereignty of every other individual.]

"Do not hide behind such superficialities [in the argument about altruism] as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime." [italics added] Ayn Rand "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” Philosophy: Who Needs It

Altruism, as I personally argued with Clark, was coined by Auguste Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer. For Comte the word meant the eradication of self as found in ones "desire," and it meant a life devoted to the good of others, not just freely offered when one had a desire to do so, since desire was to be eradicated. More particularly, Comte meant by "altrusim" selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved self-abnegation conceived as an ideal. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition to egoism, understood as rational self-interest.

Altruism is not to be confused, as Clark does, with kindness, e.g., "altruistic bones," or with good will or respect for the rights of others, said Rand. Altruism makes kindness impossible, because Comte also meant that altruism was opposed to the formal or theological pursuit of charity.

"The irreducible primary of altruism," Rand wrote, "the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good." [ibid]

Clark responded, saying, "It would be nice if all Rand’s acolytes examined her philosophy as assiduously as do you..."

To which I would add, "It would be nicer if educated men do not misunderstand it, or the meaning of such words as "altruistic," as badly as you do."

I said that science willfully forgets to tell us about the value relationship that existents have on our consciousness, and that this ought to bother us greatly. Well, here is the reason why. It is as "faith based" as religion is, and I can say this because people who forget to tell us about the value relationship of our right to give or not to give to someone needy is what altruism is all about; and the people who forget to tell us that tell us the things they want us to believe.

"Our bodies and minds are shaped in their entirety by conditions that precede us and surround us...Seeing that we are fully caused creatures - not self-caused - we can no longer take or assign ultimate credit or blame for what we do. This leads to an ethics of compassion and understanding, both toward ourselves and others. We see that there but for circumstances go I. We would have been the homeless person in front of us, the convict, or the addict, had we been given their genetic and environmental lot in life." http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/descriptions.htm

We are all blameless. The astronaut who walks in space cannot take pride for having earned that position of responsibility as a crewmember: it was "entirely caused by conditions that preceded him/her and surrounded him/her." And it was genes that "predisposed" him or her to believe that all the hard work and years of waiting were the cause of his/her position of responsibility on the crew.

Thus, it was Hillary Rodham-Clinton's genetic and environmental "lot in life" that prevented her from winning the Democratic nomination; and Barrak Obama's charm, youth, good looks, and electrifying speeches were not the result of having worked hard to earn or to maintain those virtues, or to use them at the time in his life when he knew he could make them come true; it was his "lot in life."

Do you know what a "lot in life" is? When used as it is here, it is a predisposition, pre-set fate, that which one carries in his genes as given him by some long-ago primate ancestor; and in his mental makeup as caused by the size of the bedroom he grew up in, the condition of the mattress on his bed, and the lack of calcium, or the excess of caffeinated soda he drank, while growing up or just before deciding to run for President.

"Researchers [from the World Health Organization] are asking people throughout Britain to describe how happy they are with their lot in life to help improve the effect of the healthcare they receive." http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/16384.php

"[I]f we remain unconscious of [ ] predispositions we can only continue to run into inexplicable and irresolvable conflicts. These are the battles where logic and reason fly out of the window..." http://www.santafecoach.com/DRC/drcpp-test%20theory.htm

"...environmental factors [ ] and genetic predisposition for asthma..." http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/nod/onderzoek/OND1289114/ Yes, I believe we do have such things as predispositions to diseases that may be environmentally or genetically caused. But there is no environmental or genetic predisposition to running for President or for losing the candidacy, nor for robbing a bank, nor for drive-by shootings, nor for cutting fetuses from living wombs, nor for strapping a bomb to one's body and blowing it up in the middle of a market, nor for anything else that science would like to attribute to "genetics and environment," which, but for the grace of god go I.

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