Memes, Free Will, Strong Naturalism, and Toilet Paper

[NOTE: This is the article I deleted yesterday. I got up at 2:30 a.m. to rewrite it.]

Last week (8.21.08) I used a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), which in part read that various contemporary philosophers "interpret ‘naturalism’ differently," that "philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way..." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/index.html#note-1

To prevent this Academy blog from being misunderstood, I found it necessary to post in the left-hand sidebar column the "strong" definition of "Naturalism" to which this Academy holds itself. It's author wrote a great many things which I'm certain would be arguable in this blog; as well as a strong definition of "Naturalism," this Academy holds a "strong" position on the philosophy of Objectivism, using quotes Objectivists where they support the Naturalist convictions argued here. Mr. Fuller can not be said to be Objectivist, but I cannot deny that his definition of Naturalism is my own. I can place Objectivism into Fuller's definition like a hand in a custom-made glove.

As to what is "weak" Naturalism, it often not only strays from the conviction that "natural grounds" are objectively definable and that in the area of human behavior "man's will" is as much a law of nature as are the firings of neurons and the possibility that some behavioral traits are genetic. How else to explain the lives of twins, separated at birth, who without knowledge of the other's existence, has managed to put together a life where even his choice of clothes is similar, not to mention the type of house in which he lives and the model of car he drives?

But this Academy recognizes that such things are not the things in a person's life that are metaphysically important. Siblings often have divergent world views while dressing alike; they often diverge from their parents' religion yet continue to maintain similar views on other things of importance. This is where the free will of the individual comes into play. Clothes and cars are not of metaphysically important where a person cares more for his own character and integrity, more for his ethics and world view, than for the aesthetics of his everyday choices.

SEP says, "There may be as much philosophical controversy about how to distinguish naturalism from non-naturalism as there is about which view is correct." And quite often it appears that statements or even entire theories put forth and defended by those who call themselves Naturalists seem, to other peoples' opinions, to be not only inclined to weaker definitions, but in an "unrestrictive way" appear to be completely un-Naturalistic.

Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore are big targets for this Academy to be disagreeing with, but certain ideas cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, even by someone such as myself who has basically zero scientific background compared the people who's ideas need challenging. Such is the case with Dennett and Blackmore's defence of "memes."

Blackmore "has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation; [ ] no longer works on the paranormal; [ ] writes a blog for the Guardian newspaper," and appears on television. "She is author of over sixty academic articles, about forty book contributions, and many book reviews. Her books include Beyond the Body (1982), [ ] Test Your Psychic Powers (with Adam Hart-Davis, 1997), and The Meme Machine (1999). Her latest book is Conversations on Consciousness [was] due out in the USA in January 2006." http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe "a unit of culture." More specifically, it describes what causes that "unit" to exist. The definition of a "unit" of culture seems to be found in the definition of meme.

Calling herself a "memeticist," Blackmore's ideas are characterized by the PBS station WGBH : "[C]ulture is carried forward by memes, [which are] units of ideas, habits, skills, stories, customs, and beliefs that are passed from one person to another by imitation or teaching. Memes are, in effect, units of information that are self-replicating and changeable, just as genes are." [italics added] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/2/l_072_05.html

Objectively one must ask how something that is learned from another person through example or words can be "self-replicating just as genes are." Speaking of the comparison in the way genes and memes change, Blackwell says: "Our ideas, catch phrases, beliefs, games, and creations also evolve. Think of the differences between Ice Age cave art and modern painting, the chants and songs of centuries-ago people and the crooning of Britney Spears, the stone axe and the atomic bomb. Is there something gene-like that carries culture?" [ibid]

"Evolutionary Epistemology is a naturalistic approach [whereby] trial and error learning and the evolution of scientific theories are construed as selection processes," states the SEP, under the general description of memes. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/ "[Richard] Dawkins observed," says the SEP, "that [ ] biological evolution is differential reproduction. [ ] If culture was to evolve, on this view, there had to be cultural 'replicators', or entities whose differential replication in culture constituted the cultural evolutionary process. [Memes] were characterized as informational entities which infect our brains, 'leaping from head to head' via what we ordinarily call imitation. Common examples include infectious tunes, and religious ideologies."

Princeton online describes culture as "the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group" and "acculturation: all the knowledge and values shared by a society." http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GZEZ,GZEZ:2008-32,GZEZ:en-GB&pwst=1&defl=en&q=define:culture&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title Values and knowledge are metaphysical components of the concepts held by a person. Those which are held in common among many in a society are merely that: common, and are hardly "infections leaping from head to head."

By most accounts, Naturalism does not support the idea of human free will. "A major problem with theories of free will is that arbitrary choices are simply random. If the will is fundamentally a randomizer, it is not clear how will is different from some kind of mathematical function. [ ] And if it is not different, then there would seem to be no reason not to assimilate "will" to naturalistic theories about indeterminacy and randomness in physical systems. Free will, consequently, would provide no basis for denying a materialistic and naturalistic interpretation of the self. " Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

But a Naturalistic interpretation of the self ought to include the idea that some "infectious tunes," for example, are actually repulsed by the minds of some people, for the very same reasons that create the values on which a person's character and integrity are grounded: the epistemic logic that gave those values their grounding. Why is it that some persons despise the music of Johann Strauss? of Elvis? of the entire Romantic school of concertos and symphonies?

Could it be they despise such music on the basis that the metaphysical values contained within those forms are anti-thetical to the live one has chosen to live? Naturalism in art is considered a backlash to the "idealism" of Romanticism. If one can choose to create a backlash to something one despises, what causes the despisement, what causes a desire or a need for a backlash, and what causes the precise form of the backlash? Such causes are decided by the values one has chosen, and values are based on the validations of one's epistemology.

If Naturalism in literature is the form of backlash to Romanticism accepted and used by most people who despise Romanticism, is it because of some of biological entity of consciousness called a "meme," or is it because once the wheel has been invented, it is not necessary to re-invent it? And if someone can create a new form of literature, for whatever reason, whether out of idealism or out of hatred for one or another form of idealism, is that not the definition of free will?

Why is it that I am expected by secular science to accept "that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds," [Fuller] while at the same time I am expected to dismiss any idea of free will as against natural grounds? Is it because Naturalism "as encompassing sensationalism, materialism, determinism and reductionism" [David Ray Griffin] are "backlashes" against the theist defenses of free will?

Are the deterministic-minded scientists so afraid of giving in to theists' beliefs in free will that they are willing to go to any length to state a hypothesis that might give credence to the denial of free will?

It does not seem possible that a belief in free will could be construed as a belief in the supernatural. If Aristotle could formulate the concept of "qua," an objective standard applicable to any entity of life based on the nature of that particular entity where its "qua" was not necessarily applicable to any other entity of life--for example the difference in the nature of a deer and a hippopotamus--then is it not justifiable to believe that standards, not memes, are the basis of commonly held concepts among men?

If "weak," or non-existent Naturalism strays from the conviction that "natural grounds" in empirical reality are objective in nature, strays from comprehending "man's will" as a law of nature of "Man qua Man," then it strays from a rational difference of opinion about the nature of the "supernatural."

"Free will is a concept in traditional philosophy used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes," says The Skeptics Dictionary. http://www.skepdic.com/freewill.html "Traditionally, those who deny the existence of free will look to fate, supernatural powers, or material causes as the determinants of human behavior."

Invoking "supernatural powers" means that even in the realm of theists, there are "weak" and "strong" principles at work. Naturalists who deny free will can claim their denial is justified because strong theists justify free will based on supernaturalism, that of the existence of God or a Creator. "Free will advocates [ ] believe that while everything else in the universe may be the inevitable consequence of external forces, human behavior is unique and is determined by the agent, not by God or the stars or the laws of nature."

Now, this is where things begin to bog down and get messy. Christians have always argued for free will based on the theory that God granted it to us. The Skeptics Dictionary says the opposite. Deists, who deny any organized religion is legitimate, base their strict devotion to God precisely because they say it was God who gave Man Reason, and that from Reason necessarily comes free will.

Most Naturalists claim free will does not exist because their epistemic qualifiers for its existence are different than those of theists. Yet in other science you may read this: "Free will is probably located in the pre-frontal cortex, and we may even be able to narrow it down to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex." --Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works

According to Pinker's homepage at Harvard University his short bio goes this way: "Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and Slate, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature."

Cognitive science is the area of expertise for Daniel Dennett. He seems, on a first reading, to disagree with Pinker. Dennett "is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dennett.html "Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are." http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/dan_dennett.html

I repeat, this is where things bog down and get messy. Perhaps Dennett does not disagree with which part of the brain free will is found in, but he denies that it has to do with epistemic considerations or metaphysical choices. "He argues that the brain’s computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn’t." [ibid]

"The first problem that really grabbed me was the question of how on Earth a brain can learn. I thought there's got to be some way that neurons can try things out by trial and error and in effect get punished for getting it wrong and encouraged for getting it right." http://www.pbs.org/saf/1103/features/dennett.htm

The metaphysics of this Academy would maintain that while trial and error are necessary given that Man is not supernatural and omniscient, the "reward for getting it right" is the rational recognition that a syllogism of deductive logic was valid and thus memorable. In other words, in an effort of trial and error, the mind goes through equations of language, such as "If I stick my finger in a flame, my finger will burn." Man knows this from trial and error, and it is rationally evident, as well as physically, painfully evident.

The mind is limited in the number of deductive "equations" it can make. The number is 256, including variations known as "moods and figures." Out of these 256, only fifteen are valid. This means the mind has only 15 chances to "get it right," while it has 241 chances to "get it wrong." Is this not the "some way" that Dennett says was "the first problem that really grabbed him"?

Now, I'm certain that Dennett, an expert logician, went beyond this explanation to look for the neurological explanations for what happens in the brain during these 15 valid moments and these 241 invalid moments.

But what is revealing here is when he says that rational recognitions of logical validity "are just simple switches and springs and so forth. [ ] It takes on just the tiniest bit of mentality. It does something that we think of as requiring a mind."

So here is a Naturalist, a revered scientist in his many fields, who does not deny the existence of free will, but attributes it to "switches and springs" which "take on just the tiniest bit of mentality," in an act "that we think of as requiring a mind."

Well, doesn't it require a mind? Not the kind of rational mind a man of his stature and education would be expected to recognize.

This tiny bit of mentality is "what I call the intentional stance. Think of something as simple as a mousetrap. It's set up, it's open, it's waiting. Well, there's one little thing it can do. It can snap. And it may snap at the right sort of thing, it may snap at the wrong sort of thing."

So free will is the "snapping" of "mousetraps" in the "tiniest bit of mentality" that isn't really what we think of a mind, and the fact that it snaps at the wrong sorts of things means Dennett, this cognitive scientist, is not recognizing that when the mousetrap "snaps" it does so in an act of epistemological validation or invalidation of the syllogism that makes the whole mousetrap work in the first place.

I'm not willing to buy into any of it. Yes, I do not deny that the mind works neurologically but I stand with the "philosophers who maintain that the most important aspects of consciousness — intentionality and subjective quality," http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dennett.html are matters of value judgments made by people who have validated enough syllogistic mousetraps to be able to rationally choose which mousetrap to spring and when to spring it.

I do not deny that if memes exist they are things that get trapped in our minds as "units of culture," but I deny that they are "infections" that cause us to do such mindless and purposeless things as to fold our toilet paper in squares. http://kingsofsimulcast.blogspot.com/2008/02/toilet-paper-meme.html Anyone who folds TP in squares is not infected with the idea, but perhaps for no reason whatever that could be identified, chose to fold it. ""A major problem with theories of free will is that arbitrary choices are simply random." [Kelly]

So it would seem that memeticists such as Blackwell and Dennett and others cannot bring themselves to the simple idea that free will is often arbitrary and random, and that acts of free will such folding one's TP may have no "infectious" content but is a decidedly human and silly thing to do.

I cannot hold a strong position on Naturalism, and at the same time deny that the free will of humans exists; nor accept that its existence is based on the supernatural grace of God; nor deny that its existence is based on the justified natural grounds that consciousness can arise from atomistic and tychistic events tied to the nature of the brain itself.

(Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations.) http://www.ditext.com/runes/t.html

Chance is an objective reality, and to deny that consciousness and free will are natural, not supernatural; or to accept it as supernatural, from a Creator rather than as existents of objective reality based on natural law, is to deny that Naturalism is objective, making it impossible to deny that some of its claims are not defences against theist arguments that free will can only come from God.

"The philosophical goal of pursuing knowledge about the truth of naturalism contributes to bringing the philosopher to an epistemic state where a cultural consequence is that the person desires and [ ] endeavors to bring about a certain state of culture, in this case, a mainly secularized academia. [T]he most important philosophical aspect of pursuing this cultural goal in a philosophically governed way is producing better arguments (to put matters in a simplified way) than the theist, which requires an openness to a fair-minded evaluation of good arguments for theism." [italics added] Quentin Smith http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

It is obvious that aguments of "infections" and "mousetraps" and "tiny bits of mentality" and the reasons people around the world fold their TP into squares, and that "the brain’s computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn’t," are not better arguments than the Deist who claims a devout belief in God because only Reason can bestow Reason.

It is also obvious that the arguments of Naturalism are becoming so fragmented and convoluted in some cases, that the Creationist have a good chance of relegating Naturalism to the dust bin, if only because the Creationists sound so much more rational than some of our best known secularists.

And I thought Naturalism was about rationality, whereas theism was about the acceptance of faith, the most powerful abnegator of reason in the arsenal of logic--or illogic.

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Who is John Galt? A Naturalist's Letter to a Critic

Who is John Galt?

"Okay," someone wrote, "I already know who John Galt is. I read the book 'Atlas Shrugged' and want to know if anyone agrees with Galt's god-awful long speech about how people's intellectual properties should only belong to the intellectuals..."

Dear Critic: Galt spoke these words in that speech:

"We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made [the strikers] quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

"I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical. " http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm


These are the tenets of a man who recognized the natural, unalienable rights of every individual human to own what is his or hers, not just of "intellectuals." Through out the book Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon are driving through the countryside looking at the dilapidated houses and the starving people, and wondering how America and the entire world could have been brought to this situation by their leaders, whom the people trusted. When they are not driving, they see in their minds the poor, the starving, the destitute of soul. In a world governed by the recognition of naturalistic philosphy, such as the Unites States once was, such poor, starving, and destitute people were being lifted out of the mud, not put back into it.


It is against the elite leaders, who believe they know what's best for the people, that Galt deplores. Under author Ayn Rand's system of laissez faire capitalism, every man and woman would be enabled of their birthright, as opposed to "being allowed by government," to do whatever--repeat whatever--he/she wanted to do with their lives, their minds, their property, so long as they did not use the initiation of force to overwhelm the same birth-given rights of another person. "Unalienable" does not mean the government cannot, with enough power and coercion, prevent you from using your rights; it can, illegally and with tyranny. "Unalienable" means birth-given.


Equality comes from the freedom from that force and coercion of government, but government ideas come from the elite who gain power and twist the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean. Did you ever stop to wonder why our government has such power over us, when the Founders clearly meant to limit such power? The elite at one time were our saviors; now they are the ones who would betray us for a handful of gold, or for that power to decide "the common good."

There is a difference between "the common good," which on its face sounds like equality, and "the common defence and general Welfare" used in the Constitution as the purposes of that document. The "common good" is a concept to either run from, or better yet, to destroy, because there is no "common good" but what is good for each individual as individuals. The "general Welfare" means the protection of the rights of individuals, not the collection of power to be used over individuals to provide for some undefined "higher value" than the rights of single human being to exist in the state that nature provided for him, the state of being a rational animal so that he would know how to provide for his own good.


In the Fourteenth Amendment was created the new concept of "citizens of the United States," a class of citizen which until then did not exist. That class of citizen is directly under the control of the Federal Government, which was the intended purpose of that clause of the Amendment, but not for the purposes of a more powerful government in general. The newly-minted power of the Federal Government that came with control of this new class of citizen was intended by the Radical Republicans to be used to immediately stop the abuses of the "Freedmen" that were not stopped by the Thirteenth Amendment. But since then, it has been used for every thing under the sun, by the newly-minted class of elites created by that clause. Anyone who dares use that clause for anything but the protection of individuals is an elitist who would take your birth-given rights because they don't see individuals; they see "classes." The Freedmen were seen as a class of men, not as individuals who merely fit the profile of those whose protection the Fourteenth was intended to protect.


That is what Rand's book is about--the loss of reason and sanity to be found in the tyrannical control of classes of people. It is universally recognized in our nation that laws may not be written to target any individual, nor to be used against only one individual; but it is as equally recognized that laws may be targeted against classes of citizens. No, today's America is hardly a "tyranny" in the classical sense. But then, today's political situation would be a very intolerable "classical" tyranny to the Founders and they would decry the creation of such a political entity as a "citizen of the United States," controlled by the Federal Government. Their intended plan for freedom was exactly the opposite, that the "control" was in the consent of those being controlled, and that could only come from the rights of the States to protect its citizens from the tyranny of a Federal Government out of control with power.


"Your acceptance of the code of selflessness," Galt spoke, referring to this fictional time in the world when the morality of absolute altrusim, "has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab."

Such altruism comes from the propaganda of a thing the elites call the "common good." What they define as "good" is less individual power over one's own life, so that the masses have the power over individuals. This is nothing less than the mentality of gangs.


But Galt is also speaking to the altruist in all of us right now, because the world in "Atlas Shrugged" is Rand's vision of the logical-extremist ends of the domestic and international policies our government has been following for 60 decades or more. Both of our current Presidential candidates have admitted that the $700,000,000,000 a year we pay for foreign oil and foreign aid is often spent in nations that hate us and who would use that capital to do us harm. That is the altruism of a nation only wishes in good faith to help spread the good fortune of America's wealth. Both candidates agree this altruism must stop. But only one of them says the intellectual rights of oil producers in this country should be given back, and then only to alleviate a problem for consumers (the common good), not because it is the right thing to do for the producers.

Galt is also giving confirmation to the rational humans who understand the purpose of the strikers in the novel, and to the common man both in the novel and in the reality of today who understands why the leaders of industry have disappeared, gone on strike, to leave the economy to distintigrate further and faster, like a train out of control.


The common man who understands the purpose of the strikers cheers for them, he does not condemn them. He wishes he could go on strike and join them. Those common people understand, and part of the purpose of Galt's speech is to vindicate them. In parts of the speech he speaks directly to them, telling them they are not morally wrong, that they are right, and that when the elites get their heads out of their as*es, the leaders of industry will return.


You need to read the book, not just take the speech out of context without seeing the miserable way in which the common people are living, and the compassion the book's heros have for those people. The character of Eddie Willers was purposefully meant to represent them--you, me us, and anyone who is not a Bill Gates, Suze Orman, Warren Buffet, Martha Stewart, or a T. Boone Pickens, the very people who would go on strike in a real "Atlas Shrugged" world--with dignity and grace.


Let's hope you get some common sense of your own and wake up to the freedoms Rand was trying to instill in you. She was Jefferson, she was Thomas Paine, she was Madison, she was the Federalist Papers, she was the Constitution, as they were intended to be remembered and used.


"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.


"A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is required to make a society free and to keep it free—a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.


"The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government." from “The Nature of Government,” in "The Virtue of Selfishness"; Rand.


"Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document—the Constitution—which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments—unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions—demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.


"The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination." from“Censorship: Local and Express,” in "Philosophy: Who Needs It"; Rand


"This country," Galt said, "wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth."


Do you think it was the "intellectuals" who put their backs and brawn into building railroads, bridges, dams, and skyscrapers? Do you think it was "intellectuals" who were the first to be told they were valuable enough to earn $5 a day in Henry Ford's car factories? Ford was the "intellectual" in that situation, and he knew that their worth to him was to reward them by making them the best-paid employees on the planet in their day.


It was to those types of people that Galt was speaking when he said, "[T]hose of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves" will quit living "with undeserved, irrational guilt," guilt born of accusations of "selfishness" that we use more resources per capita than other nations; in effect, what has come to be called "conspicuous consumption." If Americans quit consuming as much as they did, the rest of the world would go broke. As soon as other nations' peoples can afford to consume as much as we do, they will do so.


So long as what we consume is paid for, the people of the nations we buy the raw material or the finished goods from make out like bandits--as well they should. But in the world of "Atlas Shrugged," it is those other nations that fall first--because America has come to believe in its own guilt, and in an attempt to attone in the only way such guilt allows atonement, lets down the rest of the world. One by one, the destitute nations who accepted altruism much quicker and easier than America are taken over by the same tyrannical despots who have come to control the United States.


In a comparison of the Ten Planks of Marx's "Communist Manifesto" along with the American adopted counterpart of each of the planks, Marx stated in the "Manifesto" that these planks will test whether a country has become commmunist or not.


Plank #1 was: Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose. In the U.S. this is becoming implemented through the 14th Amendment, and various zoning, school & property taxes, as well as the Bureau of Land Management. (For a comparrison of all 10 Planks against America's implementation of them, see http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/10planks.htm . Some of them are arguable; some of them could contain many more breaches by the Government than are listed.)


Galt knew that we commoners needed the intellectuals, and it was intellectuals he talked into striking with him. How did he get these self-made, wealthy business and industry leaders walk away from their businesses to leave them to rot or to go to the "looters"?


He told them they did not deserve the way their government treated them. He told them that if they treated their own workers that way, the workers would strike against him. He told them they were the only thing, the only people, propping up the tyrrany of the government that made slaves of them by controlling their industries for their own purposes.

Today we have laws governing virtually every industry from automobiles to drugs to bread manufacture. At one time there was a law that prevented anything that resembed today's nutritious whole grain breads from being called "bread." Bread was defined by its ingredients and were bland, bleached, or robbed of all nutrition. There was a law that prevented 2% milk from being called "milk." The inventor of 2% is still alive (as far as I know), so that law was not so long ago. Neither was law against calling "nutritous baked wheat loaves" by name of "bread."

The right to control such things as new foods, new accessories on cars, new methods of fueling those cars, and especially drugs because they are so large in our culture and our news the right to much longer property rights on drugs that cost hundred of millions of dollars to invent, test and market--the rights of control are "intellectual" property rights, and they properly belong to those who invent them. The rights to control them do not belong to the people except under tightly defined parameters, such as the length of time a patent shall be held before its expiration.

But such things have been shortened for "the common good," to make generics available. "Generics" are the elites' code word for stolen property, because they had to shorten the patent rights in order to get "generics." Now is it any wonder that drug companies must charge exhoribant prices to get a return that will allow them to continue to operate?

So yes, Dear Critic, intellectual property rights do belong to the intellectuals, not to the "people." Patent rights on drugs are no different than those on toys. After a certain period of time, should every toy manufacturer have the "right" to produce their own Barbie Doll, or their own Madden Football, or their own competing Chicago Bears team or their own competing IPods? Those are products that belong to the intellectual who created them when "intellectual" is defined as a branded product created by a human mind.

It is one thing to start a competing football team; it is a completely different thing to steal a trademarked name, which is a branded product created by human minds, and give the right to manufacture it to every Dick and Mary who has enough money to do so. If Dick and Mary cannot create their own Prozac, Dick and Mary have no business, legal, moral, or otherwise to use the intellectual possessions of other individuals, any more than you or I should have the right to start a team and call them the Detroit Tigers.

Intellectual property is the property of an intellect; intellect belongs to individuals, not mobs, gangs, or elites who represent the common good. Naturalism is about the place of individuals in the society of men, in the conditions created by living on earth, and those conditions create not only birth-given rights to freedom from physical force and coercion, but intellectual birth-given rights, without which no mind would be free to conceive of new ideas, and without which all intellectuals should go on strike.

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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.

This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Existence Exists: A is A; Concepts in Naturalism

Tautology: a thing that is "true by virtue of its logical form alone." (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008.)

Logical truth. A statement which is necessarily true because, by virtue of its logical form, it cannot be used to make a false assertion. Example: "If neither John nor Betty is here, then John is not here." http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/t.htm#taug

Existence exists. This is generally what people mean when they use the definitions of "tautology" that are listed first in almost every dictionary, which are: "needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word," and "redundant" and "superfluous."

At first glance, to the uninitiated, "existence exists" does look redundant. But it is true by virtue of its logical form, which makes it important because besides being necessarily true, it is true about the first subject of metaphysics, "Being."

"Existence exists" is in the form of "A is A." This form is proper both gramatically and in its syntax. Any word that represents any subject can take the place of the first "A." Any word that is a predicate (i.e., tells something about the subject,) can take the place of the second "A." It is like math, where "A+B=C." You can put any number in "A" and in "B," but if "C" is incorrect then you have not put the proper values into one of the positions.

So we take "A is A" and we put words in the place holders "A" and "A." Apple is fruit. Sun is hot. But without being so primative, you can say "An apple" as the subject, or "The sun" or "Twenty dogs" or "Dancing ladies." But if the predicate that takes the place of the second "A" does not logically follow from the subject, then you are using the wrong word in one of the places. You have created a contradiction.

For example, "Dancing ladies are shaped like cows." That is not only not a tautology, it isn't true by virtue of the definition of the words. "An apple is fruit" is a not a tautology not because it does not make a "false assertion," but because you could have said "is red or green;" or "is round;" or "has seeds containing arsenic." "An apple is fruit" is a good part of the definition of an apple, but it is not the denotation; a denotation is the one definition that defines the essence of a thing. Many things are "fruit." The word "fruit" is generic to a lot of different foods, but something called a "differentia" takes a thing out of the generic and puts it into its own class all by itself.


That is to say, once you find the correct differentia it then puts a thing into its own class. Some of the differentia of "apple" are "round, red, green, juicy, tart, sweet," etc. One particular differentia is what sets the apple apart from all other entities in existence, and that one particularity is the denotation. A general dictionary like my Webster's gives the denotation of "apple" as "fruit of the trees of the genus Malus."


Pears don't come from Malus; nothing comes from Malus but apples. So that is the differentia that sets the apple apart from all other existents in existence. This is not a tautology. It says something about something, something that is not self-evident.


"Existence exists" is an axiom which states that there is something, as opposed to nothing. [ ] Existence is axiomatic because it is necessary for all knowledge and it cannot be denied without conceding its truth." http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_ExistenceExists.html "Exists" can be said to be the one predicate, the one differentia of "existence" that denotes "existence."


"Existence exists" is a tautology because it describes what seems to be self-evident. But because tautologies are axioms, they describe everything that has ever been known, is known, or will be known about a thing, in this case "existence." We can still learn much about the apple. Saying it is the fruit of Malus is not the full extent of what has been known, is known, or will be known about the apple. We know it is "delicious."

Existence cannot ever have "not existed." That is why the tautology is so important. To concede that existence could once have "not existed" is to concede a contradiction in terms. Even if you say that god created matter, heaven, and earth, it must be true that god existed; therefore god did not create existence.


(I am aware of the theological argument against this statement of naturalism, but in this context it is not germain. This theological argument could be one of the "defeators" as defined by Dr. Quentin Smith http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile , discussed in last week's series about keeping naturalism "secular." So it is an important theological objection against "therefore god did not create existence." Knowing this argument and how to rebut it would qualify as an "undefeated justifier for naturalism." But this is another subject for another day.)


Existence is defined by naturalists as a self-sufficient primary not in need of the supernatural for its presence nor its natural laws. Existence has always existed; but has this present universe always existed? Probably not. Man cannot fathom "infinite time." There could have been billions or trillions of universes before this one.But they all existed in existence; they could not have existed in non-existence. Therefore, existence has always existed, and the material form of it is ever changing.

Naturalism cannot deny the existence of existence. "A is A" is Aristotle's Law of Identity. It's like saying E=MC². It doesn't tell the whole story. It's just the code phrase. It is the conclusion of Einstein's long mathematical formula, its denotation. "A is A" is the shorhand for the Law of Identity, just as E=MC² is shorthand for the entire Einsteinean equation.


Aristotle's Law of Identity states: "These truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being . . . . For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis . . . . Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 3 (W. D. Ross, trans. Quoted from “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” The Virtue of Selfishness ; Ayn Rand)


Let me repeat; the Law of identity is this: that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.


Naturalism relies on the identity of existence for all of its propositions. If "Existence did not exist" as a tautology, nothing about metaphysical naturalism would make any sense. Before Aristotle's formulation of the Law, it had to have been a sub-conscious concept in the minds of pre-Aristotelean philosophers who set the standards for the science of naturalism. Had it not been even sub-conscious, in other words, if the concept had not existed in any form in the minds of men, naturalism could not have been conceived.

Naturalism is the recognition that all things in existence including the laws of nature are "natural." Again, that sounds redundant, but that is only if you forget that the opposite of "natural" is "supernatural." So it means even the laws of nature do not rely on a supernatural entity to have created them, or to maintain them, or to cause them to work.


Existence for the metaphysical naturalist is the acceptance that existence has always existed, that it is primary, necessary, and impossible never to have existed; that it could not have been created. To accept that existence was once non-existent and had to be created means at one time it was nothing, that nothingness was a metaphysical entity, that nothingness was an existent and that it was existant.


If nothingness was once an existent, then language means nothing. Contradictions have validity in a world where non-existence is accepted as once having existence. Naturalism is the science of removing contradictions from the identity of all things in existence. Naturalism is the antidote to dogma, superstition, supernaturalism, and the contradiction that existence must have been created from the the nothingness of non-existence.

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

The Big Question of Existence

What “Exists”?
“Existence” is often referred to as the "Universal Truth.” It is common for people to ask, “What is truth?” or “What is reality?” They are asking about Existence, the Big Question.
Cartoons depict people climbing to the top of a mountain to consult a “wise man,” to get the answer to a question that is burning in their minds. The comic strip B.C.1 integrated the “wise man” right into the prehistoric era of man, where the “wise men of mysticism,” Socrates and Plato, belong.

Often when asking about the “Big Question” it is with the expectation that a secret and mystic explanation will be given, and that perhaps it will be years before they can “divine” what the wise man told them is “the answer to the universe.” (That is why the mystics belong in the pre-history of philosophy.

But more than likely they harbor the wish that they, too, will comprehend this secret and divine or mystic explanation in one single lecture, in a revelatory moment. Sometimes, as with “Yahweh,” a single word which if spoken would do something. There are those who even say that word, when spoken correctly, will destroy the world.
People who ask about reality or facts don't always understand that they, too, are asking about existence. Existence is the universal preoccupation of our intellectual lives, because we not only want to know, “Where did it come from?” but it is the cognoscenti of our intellect. It is the object for which our consciousness pines and on which it is inextricably linked—cognoscenti are objects. Our consciousness is the subject of those objects.
When the Big Question is not phrased as "What is reality?" or "How do I know I exist?" or "Isn't the whole world subjective?", or “What exists and what does not?”, then, the Big Question is provoked of us in the angry, defiant tone of the indignant statement "Prove that I exist!"

Yes, people actually get angry about logic, and demand that someone talke them out of their irrationally induced life of skepticism. More often than not the Big Question is yet another but equal statement, “Prove God does not exist.”

Knowledge of what exists and what does not has become smudged and greyed when “existence” comes to be seen as “perceptions”. Don't you often hear the question, “Is reality our perceptions?” [continued]
[1Johnny Hart; http://lambiek.net/artists/h/hart.htm ]

[continued] The lines of knowing what exists and what does not have been blurred, sometimes erased altogether. A person can be convinced that the ego is necessarily egotistical; that nothing one does in life can have any meaning because “in the end we all die”; and that being “dust in the wind” has some significance to the life one must lead.
They can be convinced there is the possibility the sun won't rise in the morning, that the dog who got out won't get hit by a car, so they don't worry or hurry, then the dog gets hit, proving the human is flawed because he has been convinced of that (Kant) or because he wants to be convinced of that. Sketpicism has convinced him he cannot be right because there is the possiblity that he his not right.
Those two concepts of being “dust in the wind” and “in the end we all just die anyway” are the most skeptical arguments for un-reason in today's verbal arsenal on existence. Those questions have a lot of people flummoxed. What is the purpose of following a principled life if in the end you just wind up dead? We will get to the answer.

Consciousness and “Existents” Must Exist
But this concept of existence itself is not possible to comprehend without consciousness, and that very fact as a thing in itself implies the existence of at least one one thing in existence: consciousness. If one thing exists in existence, it becomes the proof of the existence of existence. That is how a tautology works, and why it must work. It cannot be defeated without at least one unworkable concept going to its grave, or another one proving to work right along it. Aristotle out; Copernicus and Galileo in.

(You can also say this is the time that traditional metaphysics went to its grave, because Aristotle out means his metaphysics. In came physics, standing alone in the mind of one man, and his metaphysics were different from Aristotle's. It was modernly cosmological, and ever since the cosmology of astro-physics has become more remote from its roots. I met a cosmologist in his office on a university campus, where he proceeded to call ideas of metaphysics other than those of physics to be “Bunk!”

“Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go,” wrote Ayn Rand, in “For the New Intellectual.”
In her “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,” she writes, “It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences.”
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/science.html

The "universal truth" is the following: "Existence exists." It is also equally as true that “Existents exist”, and neither statement can be true without the other also being true.
Existents (noun) are any thing and all things that exist, have existed, and can exist. From the “strings” in string theory—even if strings are someday proved not to exist, they still exist as ideas—to the spaghetti on your plate and the plate under the spaghetti.
Ideas are existents because they have existence in the mind. Rocks and gas, and muons, and Harry Potter, trolls and fairies and elves are existents, if not in empirical, “material” reality, then at least as subjective reality, i.e., concepts, in our heads. Concepts are subjective existents. Spaghetti is an objective existent. Spaghetti the idea is a subjective existent.

An “existent” is anything that exists; therefore, existents exit in existence.

Proof of the correctness of this statement is as follows;
If: existence did not exist, You would—could not—exist in any form, not as an independent objective existent in an independent, objective, empirical universe;
nor as a subjective existent in someone's mind or in the “godhead” or as figment within another mind;
nor as an existent in Your own mind whether or not you believed Your mind was the only existent in existence.

(To be existent in Your own mind, and to argue that all other things in existence are created by Your consciousness is called “Solipsism.” This is also called the Primacy of Consciousness.1 But it is a fallacy, having no basis in empirical reality. It still requires the acknowledgment that at least one thing, Your consciousness, is an existent. Solipsism is sometimes the reason for asking “IF a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”; with the resultant answer, “No, because a 'sound' is something heard, and if you were not there to create the falling tree it could not fallen in the first place.2

(I have seen the question asked—more than once—“If I die, or close my eyes, does the world cease to exist?”)

If existence did not exist, You, in any form whatsoever would not exist because there would be no existents whatever. In what medium can an existent such as "consciousness" exist except in the medium of existence? Even if we discovered that the only existence is in “the godhead,” at least one thing would exist. Certainly nothing can be an existent in the absence of existence.

The "axiomatic concept"3 that "existence exists" began at least no later than Aristotle, who used it as formulaic. The formula "A is A" means literally that a “thing” cannot be something else. To Aristotle it means first and foremost that [continued]

[[1Ayn Rand: “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”
[2This is not even the true meaning of the question, but for most people that meaning has been lost or never found. We will examine that Q&A in Chapter &.
[3“An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts....all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought—consists of axiomatic concepts.” Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology; Ayn Rand; © The Objectivist, Inc. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axiomaticconcepts.html ]]


[continued] Existence exists.”

The Axiomatic Concept (see Note 3 above) becomes “Just” an Axiom.
The first “A” in the formula is any “object” you want to put in the formula; the second “A” is its non-contradictory identity, called the “subject,” no matter which “identity” one chooses as the subject.
For example, Man can be identified as “an upright primate with opposable thumbs”; or as “the animal with grammatical and syntactic vocal patterns, or as “the rational animal.” None of these description contradicts what we know “Man” is, but the first two descriptions are more general as differentia than the second, which is more particular. (Differentia is the difference between two or more things. The cagegory the two or more things are in are called a genus.) They do not contradict each other, but the identity of “rational animal” supersedes any other description because it is the most particular of all the descriptions of “Man.”
The “most particular definition” of a thing is found in the “axiom”1. And that “most particular definition” is called the “essence” of a thing.“Rational animal” is the ultimate, most particular definition of the concept “Man.” The “essence” of a thing is always contextual. The “essence” of the concept “latch” can be either a thing that keeps something else, like a door, closed; or it can mean to secure something like a door with that thing called a “latch.” One is a noun; one is a verb. But if you are talking about “latching” on to a husband, the meaning of the verb again changes. There is no contradiction in these differences, because in each case we are not talking about the same thing.
But in the case of the question, “What is the essence of Homo sapiens?”, it can only be “the rational animal” because Bigfoot walks upright also, but we don't know if he is rational, yet we know that the only known rational animal is Man.
Existence in Metaphysics2 and in Epistemology3 See Chapter $"Existence exists" is the epistemological axiomatic concept ; "existents exist" is the metaphysical axiomatic concept. This means it cannot be said that “existence” does not exist; and it cannot be said that existents do not exist. To say either one, is to deny that whatever means by which you comprehend such things and come to deny them also does not exist!
These axiomatic concepts have, therefore, been argued if not utilized by all [continued]

[[1 “An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” Galt's Speech; “For the New Intellectual”; Ayn Rand http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axioms.html
[2 “Metaphysics” is the identification of the “essence” of a thing, as well as all the constituent identities, and whether or not they exist in the first place. And if one is found to exist, like “Goldilocks”, only in the mind and literature, but not in empirical physics, its placement in the importance of all things metaphysical may be low. All things metaphysical have a placement in a hierarchy of values that your mind determines. Your spouse would probably come before Goldilocks, your dog before your shoes.
[3 “Epistemology” is the method by which identifications are discovered, identified, and verified as true or real. It is a hard-wired faculty of the mind, ready at birth to go to work identifying the new world, just as the lungs are ready to go to work breathing. But neither faculty works until birth. ]]


[continued] philosophers, and none disagrees, at least by default, that existence exists because it would require the statement that "existents do not exist."
As axiomatic concepts, they are the given, the self-evident, and describe all things that have existed, exist now, and ever will exist. Therefore, since no philosopher can disagree that existence does not exist, even if he acknowledges it with Solipsism, all must agree that existence cannot never have existed, at the risk of contradicting that .
The Default Position on Creation Non-existence is not the "default position" to argue from. Creationists make it the default position. But why should it be said that at one time God was the only existent?
To argue this default position is to contradict the axiomatic definition of the word "existence", not to mention contradicting the axiom of physics that states that matter does not cease to exist, it only changes forms. God had to make Creation out of things that already existed, because the matter he used never disappears. (If you don't believe in God, it's OK; this is just a sidebar.)
Since matter, according to the accepted laws of physics, does not cease to exist, it must always exist in the future and cannot have been created or it cannot have always had the nature of being existent. If we admit that God exists, we must also admit that he used material in the Creation that exhibits the physics of not ever having been non-existant.
That goes directly back to the concept that the "absence of existents" is not the default position. The "absence" of a thing is not the existence of the absence of a thing. "Absence" of existence cannot be an "existent."It is from these axiomatic concepts that all other concepts, axioms, propositions and thoughts are derived.Axiomatic concepts are the most particularized definition (denotation) of existents. The concept “existence” is derived from the perception of “existents,” the very fact of which proves that at least one this exists in existence, even if that one thing is the consciousness of a Solipsist.

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