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.
The name of the entity at this url has changed in order to reflect the altered nature of the site, specifically that of its new mission as the "Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism".
Its mission has become how to discuss the ontology of the definition of "materialism" its connection to "naturalism"; and of the definitions of metaphysical naturalism, ontological naturalism, and philosophical naturalism.
But more than that, it is to foster a discussion of whether "materialism" as it is historically defined has any bearing on naturalism at all, or whether, as John Searle puts it, the traditional vocabulary is "inconsistent with what we know about the world both from our own experiences and from the special sciences."1
For quite some time I have been personally dissatisified with those traditional meanings, which are often as not used or defined differently from one text or author to the next. Sometimes it a matter of semantics.
But overall the problem is greater. It is whether or not the third person objectivity of science which demands evidence based on behavior or physics for proof of "mental states", has any relevance to first person consciousness and "mind" and our very noticeable mental states that no third person examination can uncover. I have found that more often than not they do not reflect my own experiences.
And while the title "Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism" is just a place holder until I can form a proper entity worthy of that name, this new Journal welcomes and invites all serious comments.
Question: Is it possible to accept a materialistic naturalism, ("a 'monistic' form of naturalism in that it maintains that only one basic kind of stuff exists--physical stuff" [1]), while maintaining at the same time that the existence of nonphysical abstract objects are not "transcendent Platonic forms beyond nature"? [1]
In other words, isn't it possible that the "mind" (for example), typically rejected by naturalists as being "beyond natural" and therefore categorized as a species within supernaturalism, is instead the natural quality of the physiology of the brain, expressing the nature of the brain and without which the purpose of the brain would be unthinkable?
To restate it: is it not possible that "mind" is the ever-present but immediate and momentary phenomenon created by the physiology of the brain, and which is elusive as a defined quality as is the phenomenon of "life"? Is it possible to accept the metaphysical definition of "mind" while accpting that the existence of such abstract objects is the direct result of transient yet enduring qualities of the physiology of the brain itself, without reverting to calling such metaphysical evaluations "pluralistic"?[1]
If the mind can be so described, and be as physically real while being qualitatively transient, as is the form of lightening or of a thunderclap or of the "strings" in string theory, then why does naturalism deny the existence of "mind" while not denying "consciousness"?
I keep seeing the word "transdoxical" used in the Philosophy forum of Yahoo Answers (YA!), and it seemed to have a misleading nature, as if the users wanted to flumox anyone who tried to answer the question containing the word.
So, I Googled the word for its definition. I found exactly 4 references, none of which gives a serious definition demonstrating the word is in actual usage. What I found was this YA! "question":
"Transdoxical a word created in this philosophy section ( i believe by the master of points himself, Morpheus) that means beyond (trans) + opinion (dox). Panoptic, I'll let you find this seldom used word on your own." The poor grammar and syntax are (sic).
("Morpheus" is the screen name of a YA! user.)
The YA! question that made me inquisitive was this one: "What is the transdoxical character of the cosmos?" After seeing the word so many times I had to Google it. To my surprise, my first intuition about the word was correct; it is made up by the biggest, most foolish character in YA! philosophy.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online defines "panoptic" as ":being or presenting a comprehensive or panoramic view "
It appears obvious that "trans", meaning "across", combined with "opinion", has nothing to do with "panoptic".
If the attempt was not being made to pull the wool over people's eyes as to the existence of this word and as to its undefined "definition", let me put it to bed now.
"Transdoxical" is a non-sense word, intended to demonstrate the ability of this "Morpheus" character to demonstrate his ability to lead sheep to an oasis where no etymological water exists.
If that is too alliterative a characterization, let me say it this way: the word "transdoxical" is metaphysical bull crap.
P.S.; Now there will be at least 5 Google references to the word.
The question was recently posed: Does Metaphysical Naturalism accept the epistemological premises of Plato's intuition of knowledge, or those of Aristotle's acquisition of knowledge?
The fact is that man acquires his knowledge from the time of birth, filling his tabula rasa from sensory experiences. This is an Aristotilean concept. Plato, on the other hand, believed there were "permanent objects of knowledge [Forms or Ideas] directly apprehended by intuition (Gk. nohsiV [nóêsis]), the fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality." http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2h.htm
Plato held intuition to be the highest form of "knowing" because it demonstrated reason's ability to comprehend these Forms, which he defined as universals. The question then becomes, where does one acquire the concepts by which intuition is revealed?
They are acquired initially as simple sensory experiences, placed upon the tabula rasa where the faculty of reason then applies the hard-wired faculty of epistemological identification. Just as the faculty of sight and the other senses are hard wired and begin working immediately, so is the mind's faculty of epistemological operations.
Nothing is in the mind which was not first in the senses--"'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' All the materials, or content, of higher, intellectual cognition are derived from the activity of lower, sense cognition." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html
But intuition is not moot to the subject of epistemology. It merely does not work until there is sufficient material in the mind from which the subconscious can extract such "intuitions."
Plato believed intuitions to be direct, non-inferential awareness of abstractions or of concrete truths. Metaphysical Naturalism defines them as direct inferences, "that a subconscious entity of knowledge or of speculation integrates with conscious material to present to the consciousness both a comprehensive and immediate metaphysical analysis of the integration." Metaphysical Naturalist Glossary
In plain English, the subconscious is always on, always working, always analyzing. When a "light bulb comes on over your head" it is an intuition presented to your consciousness through its connection to the subconsious, which was working on the problem all the time.
If "something is on the end of your tongue" but you can't find the word that on the tip, it is because the word has not been culled from the subconscious. The conscious mind cannot be conscious at all times of all the things of which it was at one time previously conscious. We would be overwhelmed with images and words and music playing in our minds. What is not necessary to have in the "forward" consciousness is stored in the subconsciousness.
Aristotle is thus correct about the acquisition of knowledge. Plato is incorrect both about the nature of "intuition" and about the metaphysical nature of that which can be known.
But Aristotle thought knowledge of the essences and natural laws were objects of cognition which no intuition can reveal, but which science can prove to exist. When defined as in the Metaphysical Naturalist Glossary, intuition does not contradict the acquisition of knowledge through the senses, nor does it contradict abstract knowledge which necessarily is abstracted from sensory knowledge and only sensory knowledge; or from concepts, which are formulations made from previous abstractions.
"Dictatorship and determinism," wrote Ayn Rand, "are reciprocally reinforcing corollaries: if one seeks to enslave men, one has to destroy their reliance on the validity of their own judgments and choices—if one believes that reason and volition are impotent, one has to accept the rule of force. “Representation Without Authorization,” The Ayn Rand Letter, I, 21, 1
Today, we see the spectacle of a federal government nearing totalitarian power over society. It seeks to re-create the nation in its own image--green, "socially just", ignoring the power of the individual and his right, both Constitutional and natural, to empower his own will; and it is doing so by giving us cause to relinquish our reliance on the validity of our own judgments and choices.
It is telling us that General Motors and Chrysler no longer know how to manage their own companies, because in a world where they naturally lost their share of the market to competition, they also lost money when a disaster struck the economy after government interference in that economy.
Of course, the government has interfered in the capitalist economy almost from the beginning of our nation's founding. But once it became large enough to be a real force, then the concept of capitalism was replaced by the concept of the "mixed" economy. But no one calls it that.
They still call it capitalism, and so when this mixed economy fails because the capitalists have lost control over their own capital, lost it to bureaucrats who were not seeking to protect capital but rather to protect special interests from the capitalists, then the bureaucrats could claim the capitalists were incompetent of maintaining a healthy economy. It isn't "socially just" to allow a few incompetent money mongers to destroy everything for everyone.
The real capitalists knew better, but the majority of people alive today believe that the government has proved "capitalism" is the special interest who must be shackled and told how to manage its own affairs; when the fact is, it has been shackled for so long it no longer knows how to do what it is supposed to do.
It is supposed to say no to government interference, relying on the validity of its own choices based on objective market values. No such values can exist when a mixed economy by definition is subjective.
And since the government can now make the claim that "health care" is inefficient and have that backed up by the health care industry climbing naked into bed with it, "the people" are beginning to believe that reason is impotent---when it is not governed.
When a new piece of electronics hits the market, it is always expensive at first. Look at the price of the IPhone, which now has dropped by more than 60%. The first real laptop computer for under $200 is being advertised heavily on TV by a major wireless internet carrier who sells that laptop.
So when a new piece of medical equipment, or new medicines, hit the market, they are always expensive. The difference is, there are not hundreds of thousands of hospitals rushing out to buy the new equipment, and the meds are not immediately prescribed to millions of people, so there is no reason for the price to come down.
Yet, everyone who gets sick and can be helped by the new equipment want it used on them, and they then complain about the cost of health care, and they equate it with health care itself. There is nothing wrong with health care. There is something wrong with everyone wanting the best and the most expensive procedures used on them, while complaining about the costs.
"Social justice" is a form of alleviating the effects of determinism, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Determinism doesn't exist, but if the philosophers can get you to believe it does, then they have power over everything and everyone, including government policy, because it is they who taught the policy wonks everything they know.
If neither an "act of God" nor the hand of another man ends your life, then it is true that you always play the only role in shaping your fate, when "fate" is defined as the end you meet when you meet it.
Determinists say that because we are what the events of our lives have caused us to be, that our fate is out of our hands for the most part. If an auto accident took your leg, free will could not bring it back, nor change it.
But these determinists forget that what you are requires experience. It requires the existence of things that happen to you, for you, and by you. These things are the very stuff of life. Without empirical existence and the things it causes you to deal with, there would be no you.
So it is up to you to consider the events of existence as the "natural resources" of your consciousness, because without them you would have no consciousness. And if they are your natural resources, then only you can use them to your advantage.
This blog was the first to report yesterday that Fox News' Senior Legal Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said that extortion was committed on many American banks by the Bush Administration. The story was being typed as the Judge was speaking, and published to the internet within minutes.
Wednesday, on Fox's Studio B with Shepard Smith, Napolitano said that banks that did not need the bail-out money, did not want the bail out money, and tried to refuse, were specifically told by the FDIC and the Treasury that if those banks did not take the money they would be subjected to expensive and lengthy audits which the banks themselves would have to pay for.
Napolitano said that Monday night he met with an official of one of those banks who explained how the process had gone down. This official is reported to have told the government to go ahead with the audit because his bank was "clean" as far as its book were concerned. That is when the official was told his bank would have to pay for the audit, and his employees would have to give their time, paid for by the bank, to assist with the audit.
The Business and Media Institute said three hours later that "the method the Treasury Department employed to get banks to go along with the TARP bailout breached legal boundaries to the point of 'extortion,' according to Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former Superior Court Judge for the state of New Jersey.
The Judge defined extortion as " a threat to perform a lawful act to affect some ones free will."
"This person runs a bank that’s worth about $250 billion, it has no subprime loans, it has no bad debts, wasn’t involved in credit default swaps," Napolitano said. "It didn’t need any money. It didn’t ask for the money and didn’t want it. The FDIC with Treasury backing - officials from both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Treasury said if you don’t take this money, we will conduct a multi-year public audit of you."
In addition, those banks which were unduly forced to take the money now owe 5% interest on those government "loans". Some banks cut investor dividends at the end of their business cycles in order to pay for the interest owed.
In related news, "Signature Bank of New York said on Tuesday that it had repaid $120 million to the Treasury Department. Old National Bancorp of Indiana returned $100 million, Iberiabank of Louisiana paid back $90 million, and Bank of Marin Bancorp of Novato, Calif., repaid $28 million. All of the banks paid 5 percent interest on the money they had received. "New restrictions on executive compensation and dividend payouts made such aid less palatable to bank managers." New York Times
Extortion was committed on many American banks by the Bush Administration, said Fox News' Senior Legal Analyst, former judge Andrew Napolitano.
Tuesday, on Fox's Studio B with Shepard Smith, Napolitano said that banks that did not need the bail-out money, did not want the bail out money, and tried to refuse, were specifically told by the FDIC and the Treasury that if those banks did not take the money they would be subjected to expensive and lengthy audits which the banks themselves would have to pay for.
Napolitano said that Monday night he met with an official of one of those banks who explained how the process had gone down. This official is reported to have told the government to go ahead with the audit because his bank was "clean" as far as its book were concerned. That is when the official was told his bank would have to pay for the audit, and his employees would have to give their time, paid for by the bank, to assist with the audit.
In addition, those banks which were unduly forced to take the money now owe 5% interest on those government "loans". Some banks cut investor dividends at the end of their business cycles in order to pay for the interest owed.
In related news, "Signature Bank of New York said on Tuesday that it had repaid $120 million to the Treasury Department. Old National Bancorp of Indiana returned $100 million, Iberiabank of Louisiana paid back $90 million, and Bank of Marin Bancorp of Novato, Calif., repaid $28 million. All of the banks paid 5 percent interest on the money they had received.
"In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of 'hope' equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states," wrote A.W.R. Hawkins in HumanRights.Com
"When the Constitution was being ratified during the 1780s, the 10th Amendment was understood to be the linchpin that held the entire Bill of Rights together," Hawkins pointed out. This is one of the primary history lessons learned by all American elementary students when they are taught that each state was considered to be its own "country" before the ratification of the Constitution.
The amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"Sometimes thought of as an afterthought, to 'sweep up' anything the Founders may have forgotten, the 10th Amendment today is taking on monumental importance as increasing federal intrusion into state affairs threatens to completely destroy the balance between state and federal power," says State Rep. Samuel E Rohrer, PA-128th District. 10th Amendment Center
The Founding Fathers "took pains to outline how the Constitutional structure of the government would prohibit the federal government from becoming big enough to overwhelm the powers of both the states and the democratic process," he said.
"Republicans and Democrats alike have been guilty of trampling states' rights for generations," said Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer. "Finally, elected officials in state legislatures across the country are pushing back."
The website MRStep makes the claim that thirty-three States can soon be counted as having similar resolutions about their Tenth Amendment rights.
As of this date, there seems to be little media attention paid to what the States are doing. I have seen no major online publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc., with articles on this movement; but there are dozens of independent online sites trying to keep it in front of the public.
At present, it seems the only purpose to which any State may be using their resolutions is to refuse to accept certain public funding that the Obama administration would like to force upon them, one case in point being the much publicized refusal of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin refusing Federal funding for special needs education, despite the fact that she and her husband have a special needs chile themselves.
Alaska is not the only State to consider refusing "line item" funding. Some States have said they would refuse certain funding because to do so with the expectation that they would pay back the Federal Treasury means they would have to raise taxes to do it!
Europe does not like Obama's nationalistic economic policies either. "The United States' decision to pump ever-larger sums into its economy is the 'road to hell,'" Mirek Topolanek, the President of the European Union, said Wednesday, just a week before he was set to meet the US president in London.
If the States face down the Obama administration, there will be a Constitutional upheaval such as we have not seen since the secession of the southern States during the Civil War.
Let us hope so. It may be the only saving grace left for individual sovereignty in this nation. The Ninth Amendment states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, [meaning the 1st through the 8th Amendments] shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
And that means that just because some of our rights are guaranteed in writing does not mean we do not also retain "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States," because what is not delegated to Washington D.C. and not prohibited to the States "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [10th Amendment]
They are absolutely not reserved to the Federal government.
Q: How does everyone else around me know that this world is real? I don't have a clue, all I see is images. But everyone in the streets knows that this world is real. What makes them know more than me?
The existential angst demonstrated in this real question I answered in another forum is common and becoming more common every day. The belief that existence exists because our consciousness creates existence takes two forms:
A:Those "images" you see are called "cognoscendi." Those are objects of cognition, according to multiple dictionaries of philosophy.
If you have objects of cognition, you have cognition. Why do you think they are merely images? If you mean "images" as visual sensations of things which may not be what they appear to be, you are not alone in your estimation of them. But whether they are what they appear to be, the fact that they are images of something means that something exists that is more than just the image you perceive.
Kant had this problem, and solved it by inventing what he named "noumena." Noumena (plural of noumenon), Kant thought, are the "real" reality behind the images. But why should there be something behind the curtain?
You can't have cognition of things that don't exist unless you are mentally ill, and Kant knew this, so we are not discussing mental illness. We are discussing how people evaluate the things they perceive.
You may wrongly identify them once in a while. Someone who hears voices or "sees things" is identifying the objects of his cognition wrongly. You might also mistake one thing for another. We've all done this.
Otherwise, if you have cognition, it is cognition of real objects, meaning the objects exist, that the "image" is an image of "something". As to whether or not the images are the "real reality," that is a matter of metaphysics, and you are quite free to believe the metaphysic of your choice. You can believe the metaphysics that leave you feeling insecure and fearful, and as if you know nothing, as you have suggested that you feel.
Or you can accept the metaphysics that allow you to feel that you do indeed have the faculty of knowledge, that knowledge is knowable, and that you are a person of capability who is walking through a real world.
Why should the "images" of your perception be something other than what you identify it to be? Why do you fear that there is something "behind" what you perceive? Science will break down the physics of every object in existence if man has enough time in the universe to do so. Every time physics reveals something previously unknown about any object, it is like peeling the layers of an onion.
Will you be satisfied that things are what you perceive them to be when physics finally gets to the inside layer? No, because there is no "inside layer." The more we know about anything, the more there is to discover. Every answer creates more questions. That is the nature of man's mind.
It is the nature of man's mind and not the nature of the universe, because it is man's nature to discover. There ought to be nothing to fear in the discovery that the wizard behind the curtain is merely a man. That is the purpose in the doctrine of naturalism---to prove that all things are natural, and not as Kant would have us believe, unknowable. Noumena are absolutely unknowable, and your fear is that you cannot know what "everyone in the streets" seems to know.
You already know what "everyone in the streets" knows, and that is the world is something to be known, not something that is unknowable. But you must accept that the "images" are merely man's means of dealing with the world, and that what science ultimately shows us about the inside layers of the onion do not change the fact that a table is a table, and that a rose by any other name is still a rose.
We all, everyone of us, is constantly doing "cognitive surgery" on reality; in other words, each of us is constantly re-evaluation the things we think we know--when it is appropriate to re-evaluate them. But you cannot re-evaluate what you fail to accept in the first place because you will never accept any re-evaluation. You will still consider your perceptions and your thoughts about them to be about "images" instead of about the reality of acceptance.
You can remain in existential angst, unaccepting of the metaphysics that says your mind is capable and reliable; or you breath a sigh of relief in the knowledge that the only difference between you and the average Joe is that Joe knows the world changes, that he can accept change, and that for now, the images he sees are the images that make the world go 'round.
If God does not exist, then where do the "rights of man" come from? Glenn Beck, a good man with good intentions, said that without God man's rights would not exist because God gave them to us.
But the American Founders believed in something called "individual sovereignty" and that concept has as much validity with or without God. Natural rights are those said to belong to every human being by virtue of his rationality. This is because no man can have the right to decide another man's use of his will, and it is free will that is always at the center of the concept of "individualism".
It was Aristotle who termed man "the rational animal." Reason was a natural virtue, given by nature to every man and woman of normal mental capacity. Some people have better than normal, some people have less than normal and must be cared for. But virtues came in two varieties, according to Aristotle: mental, such as perception, abstraction, analytics, conceptualization, etc.
The second kind of virtue he termed "habitualized." This is virtue of character. This virtue is habitualized because only by acting on one's moral beliefs and practicing the principles in all our affairs can we gain what we call our "character" and our "integrity."
"Character" is the specific manner in which we practice the principles of our virtues, which by the way, is the practice of morals. Practicing principles of virtues is the practice of morality.
"Integrity" is the virtue itself of being consistent in the practice of one's morals. If we are seen to be relativists, doing one thing this time, another thing another time, and we cannot be counted on to be the same person each and every time, if we cannot be counted on for consistency in our means and objectives, if we cannot be predictible in the sense that our character can be known, then we have no integrity.
The life of habitualized virtues as the "central issue for Aristotle is the question of character or personality — what does it take for an individual human being to be a good person?" Character and integrity "must essentially involve the entire proper function of human life." Britannica
"One leading commentator says you could easily think of Aristotle as a supercilious prig. Aristotle purports to set out for us how we should live. I suppose this is consistent with his being a prig. But it is also what a lot of people think philosophy should be providing. Not logic chopping, not playing with bizarre ideas which bear very little relation to the world we have to live in, but offering wisdom, serious, considered, guidance on what life is all about and how we should deal with it." Aristotle's Ethics
How does this correspond with "natural rights" as "sovereignty" which pertains to what the law can and ought to guarantee, when the proposition is made that God did not provide us with these rights?
Let me reverse the question and ask: Why are natural rights with the attendent sovereignty of the individual only possible when given by God?
These two questions can be reconciled with the premise that "rights from God" and "natural rights" come from the same place; and, that one camp says if we don't accept rights as a gift from God we have nothing to be responsible toward, while the other camp says it is individual men to whom we must be responsible because if one wishes one's own sovereignty to be respected one must then respect the same sovereignty as it applies to another and all individuals.
Ayn Rand Predicted Today's World
Atlas Shrugged Tops Amazon's Bestseller List --Earlier this year Ayn Rand'sprophetic novel Atlas Shrugged was selling at triple the rate it soldat in the beginning of 2008. Now the novel is soaring to even greaterheights, and its trade paperback edition is currently in first place in the Classics category on Amazon.com's best-seller list forsales in the United States. The 50th anniversary mass-market paperback edition of Atlas Shrugged ranks as #2 and the trade paperback Centennial edition ranks as #3. For several weeks Atlas Shrugged has been holding steady in the top 10 best-sellers in the broader United States Literature and Fiction category, and as of the writing of this release, different editions of the novel stand at #3, #5 and #6 in Amazon'sranking. http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=JlsV9sK8abvp7QWvpCXtNg..http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=dqrrXDpVYiPsqpgXhwAlCg..
I answered a question for someone who asked about Ayn Rand's use of the word "altruism" and her vehement objection to it.
"I've heard people ranting and raving about Rand's ethics, and I must admit that I find it disappointing. She goes on about how "most philosophers" and the "history of philosophy" have favored altruism, but she provides no examples of who might fit these descriptions. I honestly can't think of a single philosopher who fits her idea of altruism, and it appears to me that her whole argument is rooted in a strawman argument: she is attacking an opponent who doesn't exist. How can a Rand fan defend her?"
ANSWER:
RAND: It is ideas that determine social trends, that create or destroy social systems. Therefore, the right ideas, the right philosophy, should be advocated and spread. The disasters of the modern world, including the destruction of capitalism, were caused by the altruist-collectivist philosophy. It is altruism that men should reject.
PLAYBOY: And how would you define altruism?
RAND: It is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships. In order to seek freedom and capitalism, men need a nonmystical, nonaltruistic, rational code of ethics -- a morality which holds that man is not a sacrificial animal, that he has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself. In other words, what is desperately needed today is the ethics of Objectivism." http://www.ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html
"Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.
"Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime.There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.
"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes." http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/al...
Altruism: (Alter: other) In general, the cult of benevolence; the opposite of Egoism (q.v.). Term coined by Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer. 1. 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 self-abnegating love...As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism 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. Dictionary of Philosophy: Runes http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html
Altruism is the opposite of egoism. The term “egoism” derives from “ego,” the Latin term for the English word “I”. “Egoism” should be distinguished from “egotism,” which means a psychological overvaluation of one’s own importance, or of one’s own activities. Rational egoism claims that the promotion of one’s own interests is always in accordance with reason. http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm#SH2a
THEN THERE WAS kant: By contrast, philosophers in the Kantian tradition conceive of altruism as a rational requirement on action. They claim there is no need to postulate a benevolent desire to explain altruism. Kant's initial argument appeals to his requirement that we may only act on principles that we can will as universal laws. Willing a world in which everyone has a policy of not helping others, while knowing that you will need help, would be inconsistent, so we must will to help those who are in need. Kant also argues for a duty of beneficence on the basis of the requirement of treating humanity as an end in itself. He argues that you must treat the ends of others as you treat your own ends. You take your own ends to be good and worth pursuing, so consistency requires that you treat the ends of others as good and worth pursuing. This suggests that we have reason to help not only those in need, but anyone we are in a position to help.http://www.bookrags.com/research/altruis...
The fallacy of altruism, or altruistic moralism (or moralistic altruism), is the sense that there is a general duty, or that morality as such requires us always, to act in the interest of others.http://www.friesian.com/moral-1.htm
OK, SO..............Because Rand was a rational egoist, and because altruism is defined as the opposite of egoism, anything not egoism is altruism. Collectivism of any sort, whether Marxism, Obama-ism (redistribution of wealth), communism, socialism, etc is thus altruistic, especially since Comte DEFINED it as being anti-egoistic, by making it "self abnegating love," whatever that is. An egoist would say you cannot love if you abnegate your personality.
BUT DO NOT SAY IT DOES NOT EXIST, as many people claim. The questioner says it is a "strawman" argument. Others say no such thing as altruism can actually exist because no one can live by its requirements.
There are plenty of people out there who are trying to make it work. This web site http://www.altruists.org/about/altruism/ even calls itself "Re-Establishing Altruism As A Viable Social Norm", as if it ever was the norm.
In the sense that anything which is NOT rational egoism is collectivism is altruism, that is how Rand meant it. You can listen to a half hour debate about it that Rand had on a radio show here http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?p...
It is in the DEFINITION of altruism as "a theory of conduct by which only actions having for their object the happiness of others possess a moral value", that Rand objected.
Yet, there are those who believe that in order to produce happiness in one's own being, one MUST take actions which have as their object the happiness of others.
Mr. Dennett is an interesting figure because he does not argue that man is not by nature deterministic, but he certainly gives it new meaning, and his ideas appear alongside the names of others who may--or may not, there are so many of them--see the nature of man as more fatalistic (see below.) Some may even see us as less deterministic than Dennett; I couldn't begin to list the view of all the other people he appears beside if I had a year to do it. Which books, which lectures, which interviews did those others write or give in which their idea of man's determinism is defined?
The field of scientific naturalism leaves the door open to so many who "do not think alike on many action issues, and beyond the other principles [listed] below, it is not the movement’s desire to press for conformity." [emphasis added] The Brights
This lack of conformity is the reason that this Academy Blogger holds as a principle that free will and the soul exist, not as supernatural entities, but as a collection of Man's physiological actions which he then identifies as having a common "thread." This thread is a "unit" which is a "bridge between metaphysics and epistemology [and are] viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships." [emphasis in the original] Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology; Ayn Rand
Thus, man is able to naturalistically use his conscious powers to identify common elements between certain relationships of emotion and intellect, relationships which theists attribute to the supernatural, but which a metaphysical naturalist identifies as merely part of the process of the life of a man. He groups together these things into a relationship which he gives the name "soul."
Scientific naturalists refuse to identify these relationships as having the name "soul" because it is so tied through history with the theist notion of supernaturalism. But that is the theist's mistake; the scientific naturalist's mistake is in not recognizing the correct title of the relationship while denying the origins given to it by theists.
Properly identifying those relationships as "internal experience," someone mockingly wrote: "Pity us poor rational dualists. We have internal experience and yet no beliefs about God or Afterlife. We have more to lose. What I wonder: Are you absolutist non-dualists pretending not to have experience in order to soften the terror of your own deaths?"
I wonder if it is precisely this "internal experience," this "consciousness [of] certain existing relationships," that most naturalists fear?
Perhaps the "absolutist non-dualist" ideas he was considering were these:
"More and more, biology and neuroscience show that the brain and body do everything that the soul was supposed to do."[1]
"If you don’t believe in anything supernatural – gods, ghosts, immaterial souls and spirits – then you subscribe to naturalism, the idea that nature is all there is."[2]
"...there’s no evidence for immaterial souls..."[3]
"This means to see ourselves as completely physical, embodied, caused creatures, linked to the world in each and every respect, without souls..."
And: " The death of God up there is now followed by death of the “little god” in here: the soul..."
And: "...in dropping the soul and free will we get rid of the fictional supernatural agency that blocks true explanations of phenomena. This gives us power."[4]
The last bullet quote in [4] demonstrates how getting rid of the word "soul" itself somehow gives scientific naturalists their "power" to explain everything by physiology. But notice that while the author of all those quotations refuses to admit to a "non-material" soul, he is referring to something about "internal experience," identified as metaphysical. Metaphysics by definition is not material, so the author is denying the soul as "internal experiences" to which we give the metaphysical name "soul," even while metaphysical naturalism keeps supernaturalism out of it. To say something is "metaphysical" is not to say it is supernatural.
The author of those quotes, Tom Clark, runs a pair of websites devoted to debunking the metaphysics of the soul and of free will. Daniel Dennett's name appears on Clark's sites, alongside those many other names who may or may not agree with either Clark or Dennett, who here appear to be disagreeing each with the other.
Last week, I wrote, "...because the brain is specifically an animal organ, a determinist would think that his thoughts are actions caused by specific psychical or physical conditions." This is what Clark would have us believe.
And, in fact, this view is true, if you do not figure fatalism into the mix. "Fatalism is the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Clark would have us believe in this powerlessness. The argument runs that if you could go back in time and all other things remained the same, would a man have the free (libertarian) will to do differently than he did the first time? To answer no is fatalism, because it denies the ability to do something other than what one did do. To say "given that all other things remain the same," is to say "of course he could do nothing differently; nothing has changed." That is a not a fair test of free will, to change nothing, yet expect that free will would do something different anyway. Change one thing, then ask if free will would act differently, or if it would choose the same.
The difference between the determinism of scientific naturalism and the non-determinism of metaphysical naturalism is in this case metaphysics. The determinist has us believing that the brain is nothing but "conditioning," nothing but physiological actions of the "sensory cortex [ ] activated [ ] using corticocortical and corticothalamic fibers." Bernard J. Baars and Katherine McGovern
Such determinists do not deny that we have choices. In an interview in Reason magazine online, Daniel Dennett, appearing to contradict much of what his fellow authors say, said this:
"Determinism is the idea that what you do depends. What happens depends on what you do, what you do depends on what you know, what you know depends on what you're caused to know, and so forth -- but still, what you do matters. There's a big difference between that and fatalism. Fatalism is determinism with you left out."
Thank goodness someone sees the metaphysical relationships that determine the existence of "me, myself, and I." The way scientific naturalism is headed, someone, someday, is going to declare that those entities are also supernatural, and therefore do not exist.
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