RoR: Forum

Robert,

There should at least be nothing "caustic" about Freedom, or free-will, since Objectivism takes it as a given.

You're missing the point. Look, again, at what you are saying:

... nobody is saying that God, Freedom, and Immortality actually exist.
Objectivism says that freedom actually exists. This quote, like a snake, slithers around the point -- saying basically that we may not be free, but that we should believe we are, anyway (because of the good that comes from believing in freedom). It's a Primacy of Consciousness stance which takes philosophy mid-stream, looks at some "good" which can come from perpetuating a Noble Lie -- and treats humans as a collection of puppets or programmable computers.

There is no objective virtue in that. It is anti-man and, therefore, anti-life.

Ed

Post 121

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 4:33pm

Gosh, I wish I popped from the womb with a fully integrated set of ideas, as Robert is implying Rand did.

Robert, in 1934 Rand's ideas were not, repeat, NOT complete. Her theories were still a work in progress at that time. To take and use that early writing as an example of a hard Rand principle is disingenuous.

Post 122

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 4:48pm

It has been argued that everybody has their "God," even atheists and materialists.

Steve wrote: I don't take that kind of argument seriously. I asked if you were using some of your posts as a back-door to arguing for a religious position - for God. If that is the case, you can do so, but the rules of this forum require that it be done in the Dissent area.

Man IS Rand's religious position, believe it or not.

Post 123

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:04pm

Ed,

You wrote:

Objectivism says that freedom actually exists. This quote, like a snake, slithers around the point -- saying basically that we may not be free, but that we should believe we are, anyway (because of the good that comes from believing in freedom). It's a Primacy of Consciousness stance which takes philosophy mid-stream, looks at some "good" which can come from perpetuating a Noble Lie -- and treats humans as a collection of puppets or programmable computers.

There is no objective virtue in that. It is anti-man and, therefore, anti-life.

That sounds like a conclusion you've been driving toward all along.

However, I only have to reply that it is up to you to prove your arbitrary assertion that free-will exists.

For Kant, free-will exists, though as unprovable it is not constitutive of any empirical reasoning, as with Objectivism, but only as a matter of faith: a postulate that has to be believed in order for morality to continue.

That shouldn't be a problem since most everybody takes free-will for granted as a given in empirical or just common-sense reasoning, as Objectivism does.

Post 124

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:06pm

Robert, you said,

Man IS Rand's religious position, believe it or not.

You make that naked assertion, while ignoring my arguments, including where I said, In all of the commonly used meanings of religion that is nonsense. To have an affirmative emotional response to that which you value isn't a religion."

You may believe what you want. And you can choose to not respond to anything particular thing I've written - as a subject or issue you aren't interested in pursuing with me, but it defeats the purpose of a forum to repost an assertion without addressing at least one of the arguments made against it, or without presenting a new argument of some sort.

"Believe it or not" isn't considered an argument that carries great weight.

Post 125

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:16pm

Steve wrote: Steve wrote: I don't take that kind of argument seriously. I asked if you were using some of your posts as a back-door to arguing for a religious position - for God. If that is the case, you can do so, but the rules of this forum require that it be done in the Dissent area.

This thread is not about MY religious beliefs, assuming I have any. It has always been about Rand vs. Kant, the topic has not changed.

Post 126

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:23pm

Steve,

But you started your post stating that you would not my kind of argument seriously.

Why then should I take yours seriously?

Post 127

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:27pm

Teresa wrote: Robert, in 1934 Rand's ideas were not, repeat, NOT complete. Her theories were still a work in progress at that time. To take and use that early writing as an example of a hard Rand principle is disingenuous.

I did no such thing. That part of the journal entry from 1934 was written around the very idea that her pre-intellectual "instincts" needed to find some intellectual form.

Am I therefore taking it as a hard and fast principle? I take Rand at her word when she says that she has contradicted her own belief in reason by laying down first principles that have no basis in reason.

But then she wrote that they really are reason, or instinct, or instinct that wants to be reason someday, or something along those lines.

The point of her statement was that she did not START out studying to find out what those first principles are. Rather, she started out with some "instincts," and then she studied so she could put them into conceptual form.

Post 128

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:38pm

Steve:

"Believe it or not" isn't considered an argument that carries great weight.

I wrote that because you indicated up front that you would not take seriously any such arguments from me. And obviously you didn't because I included those arguments in my post. Now you're saying my arguments don't exist, and that I have substituted a mere "believe it or not" for arguments. All I'm saying with that is if you won't take my arguments seriously then there's nothing much I can do except shrug.

Post 129

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:39pm

Robert, you said,

It has been argued that everybody has their "God," even atheists and materialists.

And I said, "I don't take that kind of argument seriously. It amounts to throwing away the specific, contextual meaning of key words as a way of avoiding the actual issue."

Now, in a later post, you asked why you should take an argument of mine serious when I said I didn't take a particular kind of argument of yours seriously.

Because my kind of argument isn't the same kind of argument you used.

I've adhered to the general principle of using words to convey meaning with sufficient accuracy to suit the context. You used words as if they had no specific meaning in the context.

When athiest is by definition someone who does not believe in God, then you are committing the Stolen Concept fallacy in your statement. And your statement is off target in another way - because if everyone is a believer in God then attempting to paint Rand as religious is silly because your statement makes everyone 'religious' in that sense. How can anyone take that serious.
-----------------

You said that this thread is about Kant and not a back-door attempt to argue in favor of the belief in God - Okay, just asking.

Post 130

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:52pm

steve,

And you replied, "How, may I ask, do these man-worshippers "SEE" man's highest potential BEFORE it has been actualized?"

You wrote: A potential is seen as a potential until it is actualized, and then it is seen as an actualized potential - What's confusing about that? Can you not see some of the man to be in the boy of today?

You are applying your counterargument to a boy becoming a man. Rand is applying it to Mankind and not as any specific kind of physical form.

I can imagine what the boy might look like as a man. But can you imagine what the highest potential of Mankind might look like?

I don't have any special insight or "instinct" into what the highest potential of Mankind looks like. So can you please fill me in, Steve, by substituting your sight for that which I obviously lack?

Post 131

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 6:07pm

Steve,

At the moment I can only manage this reply in piecemeal fashion.

You wrote:

But Rand uses reason, not faith, to examine the philosophical question of man's potential and to discard the claims that he is, by nature, a worm. Self-esteem is a psychological state but it is one that is open to examination by reason, and one that is available to those to chose to act according to our properly understood nature. No gifts from God here.

Your attempts to claim that Rand engaged in faith, based upon the 1934 journal entries you quoted won't get you where you want to go.

...1934 journal entries AND the article on man-worship.

Then there is Roark admitting to Gordon Prescott that he is very religious about his work. HOWEVER, that can be interpreted in the same sense as being passionate about it.

But not when Rand uses words like man-worship. And not any particular man either, as when a wife "worships" her husband. This is MAN worship.

To which does such worship belong: philosophy, or religion?

Why does Rand use words like "exaltation" and "sacredness" at the end of the article which is entitled with the word "worship"?

And why does she say this? -

It is this highest level of man’s emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man.

It takes a very selective focus NOT to see the obvious in this case.

Post 132

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 6:07pm

Robert is quite right that man is Rand's "religion," but he's using it in my sense as a spiritually* stylized way of life, rather than meaning as a faith-based mystical system. It's wrong to pretend that these two senses are identical, and to equivocate on the meaning of religion because one wants to assert that Rand advcoated acting on any faith.

(*Spiritual meaning pertaining to one's highest ends-values, the enjoyment of which is an end in itself, like art or career or romance, rather than means-values like health insurance.)

Post 133

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 6:19pm

Steve:

You wrote: The subconscious content is a special form of information - we know that it might not be presenting us a rational conclusion, but we also know that it is a product of our past thinking and choosing. We give it a hearing before the spotlight of consciousness. But you appear to be mixing this up with divine revelation and adoption of scripture as truth because of what they are and without an independent examination of content by rational principles. Rand is expressing confidence that she was beginning to feel in her cognitive abilities - she was beginning to trust her inner voices enough to bring reason to bear on them and from that to craft solid belief systems out of the building blocks of primitive ideas. No faith here.

Too bad you can't ask Miss Rand if her subconscious premises (sense-of-life, "instincts") back in 1934 were the product of our past thinking and choosing.

It's hard to imagine what she would say. However, we do have her statement to the effect that she had developed her philosophy of life by the time she was 3 (in another context she said 2 1/2) years old.

What past thinking and choosing had the 3-year-old Ayn Rand engaged in by that time?

Were they the product of divine revelation? I never said they were. That's not what I mean by "Rand's religion."

Post 134

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 6:34pm

I did no such thing. That part of the journal entry from 1934 was written around the very idea that her pre-intellectual "instincts" needed to find some intellectual form.

Of course you did. The whole idea of human instincts, pre-intellectual or otherwise, were rejected by 1954. You'll find nothing in Rand's published work advocating such a thing. She never had a published journal in 1934. Those were ideas under development, not complete treatments, and never meant for wide circulation. Rand was far too much of a perfectionist to allow something like that to be published while she was alive.

It's like you're taking the drama written by a 15 year old, and applying it to the adult who wrote it 30 years prior. It's dishonest and unfair.

Post 135

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 6:51pm

Robert,

On post 30 of yours, I can only say that it is complex. That one can build a sense of benevolence over time that is part of their sense of life and it works in conjunction with their level of self-esteem and these must not contradict deeply-held philosophical beliefs.

To answer your question more directly, Yes, I can imagine the highest potential of man. But not as a specific and concrete projection. And the breadth of that vision is going to relate to the levels of abstraction that I'm capable of as well as to the limitations of my psychology (the self-esteem and the sense of life items).

Try this. Instead of seeing the man in the boy as a literal exercise, imagine that it is your son and you are wishing him a good life where he is happy and successful. Further, you have virtues that you strongly believe will be needed for him to succeed. Now, holding all of that in mind, imagine you see in the daily struggles of the child the strengthening of those virtues and see in that a pattern that spells success for him at ever greater levels as he becomes a man. Can you imagine the intermingling of love, admiration, and the concretization of deeply held values being experienced in the present as you view this potential?

That is a much deeper abstraction and it integrates the valuing, the emotion, and the forward looking aspect of potential. Maybe it will help you grasp my meaning.

Because if you can feel that for a son, then perhaps you can at imagine a similar feeling for the potential of man.

---------------

As to the question of religion - I agree completely with what Ted said in his reply on that. Faith is the difference. And in my posts I've referred to religion, the term as it is commonly used - as faith based beliefs and rituals. There are things in traditional religion that should be reclaimed from the mystics and reinstated in a rational framework - like redemption, like spirituality. The heart of what Ted is saying, from my point, is that you are equivocating by switching from spiritual values supported by reason, to spiritual values based upon faith - and pretending there is no difference.

Post 136

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 7:31pm

Steve,

I can understand your point if I had written GOD, but instead I used scare-quotes: "God."

In that sense, Elvis Presley could be someone's "God" if the right psychological mechanisms are in play.

Post 137

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 7:34pm

Steve,

Regarding your post 135, I can see your example leading somewhere, but not to the extent of whatever Rand thought of as "exaltation." So I have to wonder what kind of concrete examples Rand had in mind to make her feel exalted over mankind's possibilities.

Post 138

Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 8:32pm

"So I have to wonder what kind of concrete examples Rand had in mind to make her feel exalted over mankind's possibilities.

If you have read Atlas Shrugged, then the image of rubies and furs, or of a bar of gold in the woods at midnight, or of a train crossing a bridge over a gorge, or of a polished pine cabin in the rockies, or of a man, tied to a bed, covered in electrodes and sweat, who laughs — these images should make clear to you the meaning of the word "exalted."
(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/10, 9:42pm)

Post 139

Monday, January 11, 2010 - 8:30am