This is a common enough type of question for people who know little or nothing of the 'simple level' cognitive mechanics of the mind, the kind that might be called in college "Cognition 101". The eyes don't "know" anything; but lets use this question as a metaphor.
Our eyes don't know until our mind figures it out. Our mind doesn't figure it out until it has enough prior examples in the memory from which to make inferences and draw conclusions. The mind doesn't have any prior (a priori) examples at birth.
"As far as can be ascertained, an infant’s sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos. Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.
"A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/percep…
We must go from that state of undifferentiated chaos, to a mental state whereby we can begin to makes sense of the world. We can only do that by using the hard-wired system of the brain that is like an empty thumb drive--empty except for the operating software called "logic"; a thumb drive which gets filled by life's experiences--like seeing and touching a tree for the first time. You don't know what it is. You parents or a sibling or someone tells you.
("Logic" has two connotations. The one we think of first and most often is that of an induction, deduction, argument, etc., that demonstrates a thought that is in accord with reason; in other words, it appears rational, whether or not we detect a mistake in it, such as a fallacy. The second connotation is the processes of the mind by which thought would be impossible without, like a car without an engine.
(The second form of logic is built in to our brains. If it was not, then Aristotle could not have deduced that there are exactly 256 forms of categorical syllogism, no more no less, that the mind has at its disposal. These 256 are identical in every culture and language on earth. But they are devoid of content, i.e., of metaphysical measurement, until we gain experience from which to form percepts using that system of logic.)
Just as your lungs know how to breath, and your stomach knows how to digest, your mind knows how to perform the functions of logic. But an empty stomach can't digest; and an empty mind can't make inductions.
Until your mind knows whatever basic percepts it requires for survival in its specific environment, your eyes "know" nothing that is front of you--neither things of empirical content, nor the things of conceptual content that you can "see" even with your eyes closed.
I just read something I've heard before, written by William Hamilton:
On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind.
On earth there is nothing greater than man when man is at his greatest, and that is when he chooses to use his mind. But it is a choice. Our description as "the rational animal" doesn't mean we are infallibly rational. It means we have the capacity to reason unlimitedly. After all, by the rules of logic we know which deductions are fallacies, because they break the rules. But TV commercials use such fallacies to sell their wares and often they are upfront, blatant, about it, sometimes to prove a point, sometimes to make us laugh.
Shysters know the rules of logic and break every one they can get away with, so long as you believe them and don't know they have broken a rule of logic.
But even knowing all the rules we can sometimes make the mistake of missing one of them, or we become unwilling to do what is rational because it would hurt too bad. I think that most mothers who kill their children in post-partum depression know they are doing wrong; but the alternative of doing the rational thing, of giving up their kids, would hurt them unbearably so that they could not live with it.
Well, of course they could live with it if they were given immediate help, put on suicide watch, and coached back into the world of sanity. But moments of insanity are often only moments of refusing to live according to reason because it would cause insanity.
And yet, without mind, there is nothing greater in man than in any animal on earth. The mind helps others in their time of need, during earthquakes and typhoons and hurricanes; through the death of loved ones; with soup kitchens, food banks, and food stamps; and even going to war to save others from tyrants.
There is nothing on Earth that is worth having without mind, because to have known "mind" is to know all that is great in Man.
Why are People Driven to Ask Atheists About Revelations?
After taking three holi-days of breaks from blogging, (I don't blog on Sunday,) and working exclusively on my brickfront retail operation Meta Candles and Gifts*, I would like to say that I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving weekend. Even the smallest turkey was too large for the two people in my home; I'm going to freeze one of the breasts, but we managed without too much difficulty to finish off the pumpkin pie! I know at Christmas I will be forced to eat what ever pie we decide on, and freeze half the Honeybaked Ham.
[*Click on one of the pretty images if you want to order online America's best-made candles or fabulous gift baskets! Hint: Join the Candle of the Month for a near-50% discount! Or contact me through that online site if you have questions about the products and services. Blatant capitalistic promotion is naturalistic, don't you think?]
I hada casual, workplace conversation with the owner of the brickfront, who deals in rare, unusual and expensive antiques. He is religious, and has talked about his work in the church as organist; he keeps a piano (for sale) in the antiques store and sometimes sits down to play it. But until yesterday he never brought up the subject of religion in any way that required an answer or reaction from me, except to listen.
Yesterday he asked if I "believed." I told him I did not. What came next is not unusual in such a situation; it has happened to me many times, so many over the course of four decades of discussing it that I try never to discuss it, because what I hear, and what I am forced to repeat, is simply too pedestrian, and lame at that, to allow myself to be forced into discussing my beliefs--because no one ever lets it go at what I answer.
I cannot recall one incident in all those many years when someone simply said, "Wow. I never would have guessed!" or "Each to his own," or anything that resembled the conversational equivalent of "I have no intention of impressing on you what I think is wrong in your way of thinking." That would be a blessing to hear.
Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to show what he/she thinks is the error of my logic. Or it goes the direction it went yesterday, when the antiques dealer brought up the subject we can call, "What if you're wrong?"
The "what if you're wrong" debate takes two forms. The first is about the idea that when we die we discover we were wrong, by discovering ourselves in the "afterworld." What will we do, then? we are asked.
The second form of the debate takes the position of, "What if something happens while you're fully alive to change your mind?" The implication here is that if we atheists were faced with some sort of revelation, either a revealedrevelation, or one of observation and logic resulting in a possible change of mind, would I be able and/or willing to change my mind? see Horvath and Revelationand On Revelations; Thomas Paine
Why do people need to know this? Why are they driven to inquire? Are they convinced we may say we would be "forced by the circumstances" to believe? Are they convinced, perhaps, that some argument on their part could makes us see the "error" of having a "closed mind"? Are they looking for an opportunity to make the case that "no one can be certain that no god exists"?
It seems my friend was of the mind that he could get me to admit that I could not be certain. I've been drawn in to this argument before, and I knew that it was he who did not have the "open" mind to listen objectively to me, and to objectively ask about my logic. People like him, who are otherwise fine as friends, would rather impress upon us the logic they believe will show we are the ones with "closed" minds.
And by the way, this is behavior in which I never engage, that is, trying to convince someone who doesn't want to listen to the logic of naturalism. It is improper etiquette--and rude.
I did not take the bait. I merely got up from my chair, walked to my computer, pulled up the Academy's "Strong" Position on Naturalism--which I then read to him. I thought that if I presented my argument in its written form, rather than trying to speak from the mind and heart--a situation where I knew he would not be able to resist interrupting me, repeatedly, to argue this point or that--that he would understand I had given the subject considerable scrutiny to publish it in a blog that is readable world-wide.
Instead of being objective, or at the least considerate of my well-thought out argument, his reaction surprised me.
"Do all those big words impress you?" he asked? Believe me when I tell you there was no sarcasm ringing in his words. He wasn't trying to be rude either, though of course it was one of the rudest things he could have thought to ask.
No, he wanted an objective answer: Was I impressed by the words?
I said no, of course not. I said I understood each and every word, that to me each of the words were not "big" words; they were the properly definitive words for the concept expressed by the word in that context. "Do not use two words when one will do," said Thomas Jefferson, though I must admit you must also take into account who will be doing the reading, and choose your words carefully for the purpose.
He was not someone who understood the words of the Academy's Position.
He told me about his cousin, his best friend, who for one of his university degrees was forced to read some difficult books with similarly "big," difficult-to-understand words, and how his cousin had read some of it out loud to him and tried to impress on him the meaning of what he was being forced to read. He had no more understood what his cousin was explaining than what I was explaining.
My friend had successfully changed the subject from my concrete, written logic (and his beliefs, for that matter,) to something else entirely: how he was not impressed by big words that meant nothing to him.
What it came down to for my friend was that he was not prepared to overcome my concrete logic with his faith. Faith, in the end, has no words, and that is the meaning of faith: that it is a matter of faulty epistemology that results in a metaphysical world-view that the supernatural must exist.
When confronted by logic that declares all things to be natural and that nothing is supernatural, this faulty epistemology is frustrated. It cannot make the leap from faith-based beliefs to objective, i.e., non-faith-based, arguments. It must stick to what it knows and that is implicit, unconscious knowlege that if a believer enters into the area of objective language, he will be forced to admit that his belief is not objective. That must be a very difficult thing to be forced to accept.
And attempting to accept, to argue, the position that naturalism and not supernaturalism is the "default position," [see The Big Question of Existence] of objective discurse, it may open a door to the other side of faith that he is not prepared to face. That door is precisely the fact that supernaturalism was the skeptical position for two thousand years, until the faulty Platonic epistemology of St. Augustine reversed the logic, making naturalism the skeptical position against supernaturalism.
But what, the frustrated believer would ask by taking Augustine's position, about the door that opens to faith, the door he would say we naturalists are keeping closed?
The answer is that Reason permanently closes that door, and the only way it can be opened is if Reason fails--if a person of Reason has what is defined as a "revelation" and his Reason cannot overcome the neuropathological or psychological causes.
The epistemology, the logic, of naturalism challenges the seemingly-convincing appeal of the cosmological, mechanical, and moral arguments for the existence of existence itself, and holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government. If someone who maintains this logic suddenly has a neuropathological or a psychological experience that causes him to abandon Reason for faith, or at the very least question his Reason in an episode of skeptical vulnerablility to faith, then he as abandonded what makes Man sui generis from all other creatures, and that is the faculty of Reason.
Faith is understandable. Our animal brains are succeptible to latching on to any argument that seems reasonable. When Man gained enough brain neuropathy to be able to add philosophy to his mental tools, it quickly became apparent--within a few hundreds of years--through the Atomists and others, that the universe was natural and that it had natural laws.
Natural laws do not admit of the existence of things which are not natural; it would be contradictory, and supernaturalism is by definition not natural. Supernaturalism is what man clung to before he discovered the discipline and science of philosophy.
There is no longer any Reason to continue thinking, as I'm certain many of our other animal relatives do, that a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightening, or the shaking of the earth, is anything beyond our understanding.
But the religiously faithful still ask "what if we naturalists are wrong, what if the supernatural exists and what if we find reason to regret our earthly logic when we die and meet our maker"?
If God exists, He will not ask us to regret using the Reason He blessed Mankind with; but He will pity the fool who believed that faith and the abandonment of Reason was what He blessed them with.
He would say that the pre-philosophical belief in the supernatural is not the default position, and therefore supernaturalism is contradictory to naturalism.
Of course, that being so, He would never exist in the first place, to tell us such a thing.
Yesterday, I wrote about differences in the descriptions of Naturalism, differences described both by Naturalists themselves, and by non-naturalists trying to drive a "wedge" between the various factions of Naturalists. (I failed to use the word "wedge," although I did refer to it in my 5-part series on "Secularity." 8.11-8.16.08. This wedge "is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement," according to Wikipedia. More on this tomorrow.)
But yesterday I used a quote from the Stanford Enclyclopedia of Philosophy, which in part read that various contemporary philosophers "interpret ‘naturalism’ differently," that "‘naturalism’ is [ ] a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’," and that "Those 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
One of those who work with a less "restricted" view of naturalism than does this Academy is Tom Clark of Naturalism.Org http://www.naturalism.org/ and The Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ , which has a prestigious Advisory Board including Daniel Dennet and Susan Blackmore among thirteen listed, as well as a long list of "Allies of Naturalism," and a list just as long of "Contributors to the CFN qualifying as Allies of Naturalism (and wanting to be listed as such)." Some of my favorties are among them, including Julian Baggini, whose book, "The Philosopher's Toolkit" is one of my favorite quick reference books. Baginni is the co-founder of "The Philosophers' Magazine" http://www.philosophersnet.com/.
Now, none of this is relative to what comes next, but it was important for the reader to understand that Nat.Org and CFN.Org are well-known and much more established than is this Academy or its blog. We are not even toddlers yet, let alone walking among the "adults" in this field.
But Tom and I have been communicating, and it seems that some of that "unrestrictive" nature in the science comes out when I read Smith's work and he reads mine! It has led to some points of interest for both of us.
"I’m wondering about your prominent link," Tom wrote me, "to the Ayn Rand Institute on your blog. They strike me as being pretty irrational when it comes to ideas about the self and free will, and it seems to me this irrationality supports a morally objectionable radical individualism, see my critique here. "
It was "Part 4" of a series of very short pieces which together go by the name of "Libertarianism and the Myth of Radical Autonomy." I'm not a big fan of Libertarianism, not since I read Ayn Rand's scathing critique of it as having forgotten its epistemic roots, shooting only for the metaphysics, and shooting from the hip without regard for means, ways, and ultimate ends.
I don't know how much of the Party has come around to Rand's way of thinking to amend their ways by referencing the philosophical tenets from which the Party ought to have been conceived. Their ends are proper and all in the advancement of freedom, but at what costs, asked Rand, when the epistemic ends have been ignored or forgotten?
I clicked on the "here" link, only to find a piece I had read some time ago and forgotten about in the meantime. So I re-read it, made notes of my objections to his objections, and wrote back to him.
"Dear Tom: I can see your problem with Objectivism. I have encountered it many times. I don't often have the opportunity to address it."
Part of Tom's objection to Rand's firm reliance on the concept of "free will" was addressed this way: "...there’s no way to square Objectivism’s ostensible commitment to scientific objectivity, reason, and anti-supernaturalism with the idea of a self-made soul."
I wrote in return, "Where Rand says, 'As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul," she most definitely does not mean that we create our soul as we might create another foot, both of which are impossible.
"In the same way that the mind is said to be tabula rasa at birth, so is the soul. The soul being self-made comes from this:
'Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments. [ ] "Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are "tabula rasa." It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both.' The Virtue of Selfishness
"And: 'Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life. [ ] 'It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as "important," those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man's subconscious and form his sense of life.' The Romantic Manifesto
"It is in this manner [I wrote,] that is the mechanism for the "self-making" of the soul."
Part of Tom's criticism of what he calls "radical autonomy" in Rand's concept of the self-made soul was this:
"Science shows that individuals in all their aspects and capacities are fully a function of their environmental and biological determinants, not literally self-made. True, once we become autonomous, rational agents, it’s usually our own desires that determine our choices, including some choices that may influence our very character and values." [italics added]
My reply to that: "A man does not have to live with the education about society that he picks up from his family and friends; he can learn to live better if need be. In the same way, using your virtues to become a better person, to acknowledge the affairs of others when to do so is in one's interests, in short, to become a stronger and more virtuous character with an integrity that is better than before, is how a man makes his own soul.
"Or he leaves it to chance. He remains mentally passive and merely reactive, accepting his automatized reactions as if they were not subject to question."
These differences between Tom's assessment and mine of Rand's free will are major stumbling blocks for the many critics of Objectivism. I'm not certain if these criticisms come from casual readings of her material, or from something inherent in Rand's method of writing. I know that when I had such questions of her philosophy I could always find the answer in something else she wrote, as if she had picked up on her own thoughts there and addressed them here in realtionship to the current topic here on which she was writing about.
Now, perhaps I am mis-readind Tom, when I infer his inclination to believe that somehow Rand actually meant that "self-made soul" was in the same fashion as "self-made wealth," that somehow, just as a person can begin penniless and create a fortune he can begin without a soul and somehow fashion it from this or that and put it into his conscience or into his heart. It is difficult for me to believe that anyone could read Rand's words and take them that way.
But straightening out such misconceptions is what the free exchange of ideas is about, and I'm grateful to Tom in this case for showing me in just what fashion Rand can be mis-read. The rest of Tom's paragraph backs up his reading of Rand. (I won't call his a "mis-reading." We are all free to understand what others write and say in our own fashion, and it may be that after my letter to him he is unmoved to change his interpretation of what he has read.)
But his interpretation in Part 4 into the subject of "radical" free will goes much deeper:
"But there are two errors here," he writes, "in addition to thinking we’re ultimately self-made. One 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.[2] Second, it’s to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish. But there is no direct implication from a natural is to an ethical ought."
Until then, I had no idea that anyone thought of this as either an "ethical ought" or as a "naturalistic fallacy." Given that there are so many widely varying descriptions of Naturalism, I am hardly convinced that all Naturalists accept this "ought." I, for one, have never accepted it, and I'm a life-long Randian, at least, since high school some 36 years ago.
"On the subject of our 'altruistic bones,'" I replied, "I think Rand was much more aggressive in her definition of 'altruism,' [than you may be,] accepting [Auguste] Comte at his word."
I pasted a definition from the "Dictionary of Philosophy," Runes, 1942, which attributed the origination of the word altruism to Comte, and said in part: "For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology. " [Wilbur Long]http://www.pragmatism.org/genealogy/cambridge.htm
"By this standard," I wrote in my email, "even your own pursuit of charity seems out of the question as a topic of debate, or it may apply [only] to Rand's own thinking: she never said the question was, 'Should men ignore the plight of those in need?' She always maintained that the proper question was, 'Do you have the right to refuse to help?' to which Comte's altruism would say no to."
Now, in a previous email convo, Tom and I discussed his humanist approach to Naturalism, because, as is the case with many of the various "versions" of Naturalism as hinted at by http://plato.stanford.edu/ in yesterday's essay, I could not comprehend where humanism of even a "soft" form of altruism fit into any concept of the science of Naturalism. When I questioned him about this, he replied:
"If you read the Guide to Naturalism and the Q&A, that will be a start in understanding where the progressive, humanistic implications come from in this version of naturalism. Others who have seen these implications (Spinoza, Darwin, Einstein) are quoted here. There are several contemporary philosophers that also take this view, among them Derk Pereboom, Tamler Sommers, Joshua Greene and Bruce Waller."
Again, I had no idea. I've been walking around in a world in which I believed Naturalism was the opposite of Creationism or its earlier incarnations. I didn't know that "progressive humanism" was attached to it by anyone, let alone by so many.
"To the question of are we 'morally required to pursue our self-interest?'," I continued, "it begs the next question: What is our best-interest?
"If my best interest is in helping to prevent my town from being flooded, I'm going to be shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who is filling sandbags. If my self-interest is in eliminating illiteracy--if only so more people can read my works, then I will be helping illiterate people to learn to read.
"But 'to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish,' is the definition of 'logical' egoism, not 'rational' egoism. See http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm ," I said. I am not, at this point, certain whether or not Tom knew there was a difference. Perhaps that was as much news to him as the "progressive humanism" was to me. I highly doubt that many of Rand's admirers or detractors are aware of the various "versions" of egoism.
"If," I wrote, "your logic is a reaction to the philosophy of Rand and other's, I understand the reaction. I began reading Rand in 1973, and often made the same mistakes of assumption I believe you are making. I had to read and re-read many other Rand passages to come to an understanding of how compassionate she could really be.
"Oddly enough, my post today, [8.19.08 ], is titled 'Who is John Galt: A Naturalist's Letter to a Critic,' and it addresses many of these concerns of whether or not Rand had any compassion or capacity for emotion." Sincerely, Curtis Edward Clark
Tom's short, simpl reply was, "Ok, many thanks for these clarifications, most interesting. It would be nice if all Rand’s acolytes examined her philosophy as assiduously as do you, ending up with more nuanced conclusions about the legitimacy of compassion and limits of egoism."
Well, it is my desire that Rand is not taken to be such a harsh philsopher than anyone could mistake her writings for anything less than "compassionate." Her entire philosophy presupposed that if one was objective enough in his/her dealings with other people and the world at large, that those who deserved compassion would get it as a result of the rational egoism of him/her who was dealing with the world; and that those who were egotistic or altruistic or tyrannical would come to a just end, or find their way like Pilgrim did in his walk of Progress, and as I have been finding my way among the many various factions of Naturalism.
I consider Tom Clark to be an eminent Naturalist. He has his objections to egoism, believing al egoism to be the same, as I once believed all Naturalism to be the same.
I can say that the compassion of my Objectivism would not allow me to help a person in dire and immediate need to save his life. But my compassion does not always apply to those who will not help themselves. I don't know yet how far Tom Clark's compassion goes. I have yet to read most of those links he provided me with. I certainly intend to read them all.
To be an "informed' Naturalist, one must know all of the objections made by those with eminent power to defeat one's own principles in argument, and understand how to prevent one's justifications from such defeat.
Maybe after I read all the links, I will happily discover that Tom and his famous associates and I are more or less on the same page. Until then, I can only confess to remaining confused as to how anyone can misread the rationality and compassion of Rand. When I want to meditate and immerse my sense of self and of the compassion Rand saw was capable of being brought forth by men, I simply take a few minutes and read and read and re-read Chapters 11 and 12 (11 especially) from "Anthem," which in part reads:
"...to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned. "I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold. "The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. "I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose." http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html
"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 AynRand'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 HenryFord'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.
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.
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.
