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Next Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order |
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 SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone...   Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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A quote from an interview with Ayn Rand in Playboy:
"Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life? Rand: Qua religion, no ? in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusion of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man?s life and code of moral values, were made by religion, before man graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very?how shall I say it??dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith." Diskussion willkommen. [Oh, and sorry, no nudes of Ayn Rand.] -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
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Silversoul Rhizome   Registered: 01/01/05 Posts: 23,576 Loc: The Barricades |
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/me zips pants back up. -------------------- 
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SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone... Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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I suppose I might as well bring it all:
PLAYBOY: Miss Rand, your novels and essays, especially your controversial best seller, Atlas Shrugged, present a carefully engineered, internally consistent world view. They are, in effect, the expression of an all-encompassing philosophical system. What do you seek to accomplish with this new philosophy? RAND: I seek to provide men -- or those who care to think -- with an integrated, consistent and rational view of life. PLAYBOY: What are the basic premises of Objectivism? Where does it begin? RAND: It begins with the axiom that existence exists, which means that an objective reality exists independent of any perceiver or of the perceiver's emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Objectivism holds that reason is man's only means of perceiving reality and his only guide to action. By reason, I mean the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. PLAYBOY: In Atlas Shrugged your hero, John Galt, declares, "I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." How is this related to your basic principles? RAND: Galt's statement is a dramatized summation of the Objectivist ethics. Any system of ethics is based on and derived, implicitly or explicitly, from a metaphysics. The ethic derived from the metaphysical base of Objectivism holds that, since reason is man's basic tool of survival, rationality is his highest virtue. To use his mind, to perceive reality and to act accordingly, is man's moral imperative. The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics is: man's life -- man's survival qua man -- or that which the nature of a rational being requires for his proper survival. The Objectivist ethics, in essence, hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself. It is this last that Galt's statement summarizes. PLAYBOY: What kind of morality derives from this, in terms of the individual's behavior? RAND: This is presented in detail in Atlas Shrugged. PLAYBOY: The heroine of Atlas Shrugged was, in your words, "completely incapable of experiencing a feeling of fundamental guilt." Is any system of morality possible without guilt? RAND: The important word in the statement you quoted is "fundamental." Fundamental guilt does not mean the ability to judge one's own actions and regret a wrong action, if one commits it. Fundamental guilt means that man is evil and guilty by nature. PLAYBOY: You mean original sin? RAND: Exactly. It is the concept of original sin that my heroine, or I, or any Objectivist, is incapable of accepting or of ever experiencing emotionally. It is the concept of original sin that negates morality. If man is guilty by nature, he has no choice about it. If he has no choice, the issue does not belong in the field of morality. Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will -- only to those actions which are open to his choice. To consider man guilty by nature is a contradiction in terms. My heroine would be capable of experiencing guilt about a specific action. Only, being a woman of high moral stature and self-esteem, she would see to it that she never earned any guilt by her actions. She would act in a totally moral manner and, therefore, would not accept an unearned guilt. PLAYBOY: In Atlas Shrugged, one of your leading characters is asked, "What's the most depraved type of human being?" His reply is surprising: He doesn't say a sadist or a murderer or a sex maniac or a dictator; he says, "The man without a purpose." Yet most people seem to go through their lives without a clearly defined purpose. Do you regard them as depraved? RAND: Yes, to a certain extent. PLAYBOY: Why? RAND: Because that aspect of their character lies at the root of and causes all the evils which you mentioned in your question. Sadism, dictatorship, any form of evil, is the consequence of a man's evasion of reality. A consequence of his failure to think. The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose -- a productive purpose. PLAYBOY: Weren't Hitler and Stalin, to name two tyrants, in control of their own lives, and didn't they have a clear purpose? RAND: Certainly not. Observe that both of them ended as literal psychotics. They were men who lacked self-esteem and, therefore, hated all of existence. Their psychology, in effect, is summarized in Atlas Shrugged by the character of James Taggart. The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others. That is not the same thing as a productive or creative purpose. PLAYBOY: If a person organizes his life around a single, neatly defined purpose, isn't he in danger of becoming extremely narrow in his horizons? RAND: Quite the contrary. A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man's life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find. PLAYBOY: Couldn't the attempt to rule whim out of life, to act in a totally rational fashion, be viewed as conducive to a juiceless, joyless kind of existence? RAND: I truly must say that I don't know what you are talking about. Let's define our terms. Reason is man's tool of knowledge, the faculty that enables him to perceive the facts of reality. To act rationally means to act in accordance with the facts of reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong. A whim is an emotion whose cause you neither know nor care to discover. Now what does it mean, to act on whim? It means that a man acts like a zombi, without any knowledge of what he deals with, what he wants to accomplish, or what motivates him. It means that a man acts in a state of temporary insanity. Is this what you call juicy or colorful? I think the only juice that can come out of such a situation is blood. To act against the facts of reality can result only in destruction. PLAYBOY: Should one ignore emotions altogether, rule them out of one's life entirely? RAND: Of course not. One should merely keep them in their place. An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions -- provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows -- or makes it a point to discover -- the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow -- then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction -- his own and that of others. PLAYBOY: According to your philosophy, work and achievement are the highest goals of life. Do you regard as immoral those who find greater fulfillment in the warmth of friendship and family ties? RAND: If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships. PLAYBOY: Do you believe that women as well as men should organize their lives around work -- and if so, what kind of work? RAND: Of course. I believe that women are human beings. What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same. I would not attempt to prescribe what kind of work a man should do, and I would not attempt it in regard to women. There is no particular work which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do. PLAYBOY: In your opinion, is a woman immoral who chooses to devote herself to home and family instead of a career? RAND: Not immoral -- I would say she is impractical, because a home cannot be a full-time occupation, except when her children are young. However, if she wants a family and wants to make that her career, at least for a while, it would be proper -- if she approaches it as a career, that is, if she studies the subject, if she defines the rules and principles by which she wants to bring up her children, if she approaches her task in an intellectual manner. It is a very responsible task and a very important one, but only when treated as a science, not as a mere emotional indulgence. PLAYBOY: Where, would you say, should romantic love fit into the life of a rational person whose single driving passion is work? RAND: It is his greatest reward. The only man capable of experiencing a profound romantic love is the man driven by passion for his work -- because love is an expression of self-esteem, of the deepest values in a man's or a woman's character. One falls in love with the person who shares these values. If a man has no clearly defined values, and no moral character, he is not able to appreciate another person. In this respect, I would like to quote from The Fountainhead, in which the hero utters a line that has often been quoted by readers: "To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'" PLAYBOY: You hold that one's own happiness is the highest end, and that self-sacrifice is immoral. Does this apply to love as well as work? RAND: To love more than to anything else. When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. PLAYBOY: You have denounced the puritan notion that physical love is ugly or evil; yet you have written that "Indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence are possible only to those who regard sex and themselves as evil." Would you say that discriminate and selective indulgence in sex is moral? RAND: I would say that a selective and discriminate sex life is not an indulgence. The term indulgence implies that it is an action taken lightly and casually. I say that sex is one of the most important aspects of man's life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being. Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important. PLAYBOY: Does this mean, in your view, that sex should involve only married partners? RAND: Not necessarily. What sex should involve is a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should or should not become a marriage is a question which depends on the circumstances and the context of the two persons' lives. I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives -- a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one's choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values. PLAYBOY: As one who champions the cause of enlightened self-interest, how do you feel about dedicating one's life to hedonistic self-gratification? RAND: I am profoundly opposed to the philosophy of hedonism. Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality. Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value, that pleasure is not a first cause, but only a consequence, that only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgment can be regarded as moral, that pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality. To say that pleasure should be the standard of morality simply means that whichever values you happen to have chosen, consciously or subconsciously, rationally or irrationally, are right and moral. This means that you are to be guided by chance feelings, emotions and whims, not by your mind. My philosophy is the opposite of hedonism. I hold that one cannot achieve happiness by random, arbitrary or subjective means. One can achieve happiness only on the basis of rational values. By rational values, I do not mean anything that a man may arbitrarily or blindly declare to be rational. It is the province of morality, of the science of ethics, to define for men what is a rational standard and what are the rational values to pursue. PLAYBOY: You have said that the kind of man who spends his time running after women is a man who "despises himself." Would you elaborate? RAND: This type of man is reversing cause and effect in regard to sex. Sex is an expression of a man's self-esteem, of his own self-value. But the man who does not value himself tries to reverse this process. He tries to derive his self-esteem from his sexual conquests, which cannot be done. He cannot acquire his own value from the number of women who regard him as valuable. Yet that is the hopeless thing which he attempts. PLAYBOY: You attack the idea that sex is "impervious to reason." But isn't sex a nonrational biological instinct? RAND: No. To begin with, man does not possess any instincts. Physically, sex is merely a capacity. But how a man will exercise this capacity and whom he will find attractive depends on his standard of value. It depends on his premises, which he may hold consciously or subconsciously, and which determine his choices. It is in this manner that his philosophy directs his sex life. PLAYBOY: Isn't the individual equipped with powerful, nonrational biological drives? RAND: He is not. A man is equipped with a certain kind of physical mechanism and certain needs, but without any knowledge of how to fulfill them. For instance, man needs food. He experiences hunger. But, unless he learns first to identify this hunger, then to know that he needs food and how to obtain it, he will starve. The need, the hunger, will not tell him how to satisfy it. Man is born with certain physical and psychological needs, but he can neither discover them nor satisfy them without the use of his mind. Man has to discover what is right or wrong for him as a rational being. His so-called urges will not tell him what to do. PLAYBOY: In Atlas Shrugged you wrote, "There are two sides to every issue. One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil." Isn't this a rather black-and-white set of values? RAND: It most certainly is. I most emphatically advocate a black-and-white view of the world. Let us define this. What is meant by the expression "black and white"? It means good and evil. Before you can identify anything as gray, as middle of the road, you have to know what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two. And when you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil. PLAYBOY: Then you believe in absolutes? RAND: I do. PLAYBOY: Can't Objectivism, then, be called a dogma? RAND: No. A dogma is a set of beliefs accepted on faith; that is, without rational justification or against rational evidence. A dogma is a matter of blind faith. Objectivism is the exact opposite. Objectivism tells you that you must not accept any idea or conviction unless you can demonstrate its truth by means of reason. PLAYBOY: If widely accepted, couldn't Objectivism harden into a dogma? RAND: No. I have found that Objectivism is its own protection against people who might attempt to use it as a dogma. Since Objectivism requires the use of one's mind, those who attempt to take broad principles and apply them unthinkingly and indiscriminately to the concretes of their own existence find that it cannot be done. They are then compelled either to reject Objectivism or to apply it. When I say apply, I mean that they have to use their own mind, their own thinking, in order to know how to apply Objectivist principles to the specific problems of their own lives. PLAYBOY: You have said you are opposed to faith. Do you believe in God? RAND: Certainly not. PLAYBOY: You've been quoted as saying "The cross is the symbol of torture, of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. I prefer the dollar sign." Do you truly feel that two thousand years of Christianity can be summed up with the word "torture"? RAND: To begin with, I never said that. It's not my style. Neither literarily nor intellectually. I don't say I prefer the dollar sign -- that is cheap nonsense, and please leave this in your copy. I don't know the origin of that particular quote, but the meaning of the dollar sign is made clear in Atlas Shrugged. It is the symbol, clearly explained in the story, of free trade and, therefore, of a free mind. A free mind and a free economy are corollaries. One can't exist without the other. The dollar sign, as the symbol of the currency of a free country, is the symbol of the free mind. More than that, as to the historical origin of the dollar sign, although it has never been proved, one very likely hypothesis is that it stands for the initials of the United States. So much for the dollar sign. Now you want me to speak about the cross. What is correct is that I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn't that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture. 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. PLAYBOY: Then what you are saying is that to achieve these changes one must use essentially educational or propagandistic methods? RAND: Yes, of course. PLAYBOY: What do you think of your antagonists' contention that the moral and political principles of Objectivism place you outside the mainstream of American thought? RAND: I don't acknowledge or recognize such a concept as a "mainstream of thought." That might be appropriate to a dictatorship, to a collectivist society in which thought is controlled and in which there exists a collective mainstream -- of slogans, not of thought. There is no such thing in America. There never was. However, I have heard that expression used for the purpose of barring from public communication any innovator, any non-conformist, anyone who has anything original to offer. I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a "mainstream." It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward. PLAYBOY: Do you believe that Objectivism as a philosophy will eventually sweep the world? RAND: Nobody can answer a question of that kind. Men have free will. There is no guarantee that they will choose to be rational, at any one time or in any one generation. Nor is it necessary for a philosophy to "sweep the world." If you ask the question in a somewhat different form, if you say, do I think that Objectivism will be the philosophy of the future, I would say yes, but with this qualification: If men turn to reason, if they are not destroyed by dictatorship and precipitated into another Dark Ages, if men remain free long enough to have time to think, then Objectivism is the philosophy they will accept. PLAYBOY: Why? RAND: In any historical period when men were free, it has always been the most rational philosophy that won. It is from this perspective that I would say, yes, Objectivism will win. But there is no guarantee, no predetermined necessity about it. PLAYBOY: You are sharply critical of the world as you see it today, and your books offer radical proposals for changing not merely the shape of society, but the very way in which most men work, think and love. Are you optimistic about man's future? RAND: Yes, I am optimistic. Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered. I think men will have time to discover them. It is significant that the dying collectivist philosophy of today has produced nothing but a cult of depravity, impotence and despair. Look at modern art and literature with their image of man as a helpless, mindless creature doomed to failure, frustration and destruction. This may be the collectivists' psychological confession, but it is not an image of man. If it were, we would never have risen from the cave. But we did. Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man's mind. You will see man's unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? -- I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self esteem.  -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
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Silversoul Rhizome Registered: 01/01/05 Posts: 23,576 Loc: The Barricades |
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Her contention that work is our highest calling is bullshit. Work is a means to an end. It is natural for us to only do as much work as necessary to satisfy our wants. I find it rather hypocritical for her to be telling me that I should live for no one other than myself, and then telling me what my goals should be. If I'm living for myself, I'll define my goals, thank you very much.
--------------------
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SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone... Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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PLAYBOY: According to your philosophy, work and achievement are the highest goals of life. Do you regard as immoral those who find greater fulfillment in the warmth of friendship and family ties?
RAND: If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships. Without really grokking where she's coming from - what angles/perspectives/meanings she is professing this premise, including sementical differences [remember, this was in 1964, entirely different era, different cultural attitudes, etc.] of her vocabulary, I'm a bit disconcerted to fully evaluate her stance. In a way I can see how I could agree with what she's essentially saying, but on the other hand, I can also agree with your stance as well. If the message she is portraying can be illustrated more accurately in today's language by removing the word "work", and leaving just the word "achievement", then I would agree with her more. -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. Edited by SkorpivoMusterion (10/21/05 02:10 AM)
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 IgnatiusJReilly Up From Sloth  Registered: 08/28/05 Posts: 668 Loc: LA Last seen: 1 year, 10 months |
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She's a robot and sexy as hell!
-------------------- "A Bad Day for Pants"
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MushmanTheManic Stranger  Registered: 04/21/05 Posts: 4,587 |
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"Objectivism tells you that you must not accept any idea or conviction unless you can demonstrate its truth by means of reason."
Continental rationalism 
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it stars saddam Satan  Registered: 05/19/05 Posts: 15,571 Loc: Spahn Ranch |
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Prosgeopax Jaded, yethopefu  Registered: 01/28/05 Posts: 1,258 Loc: Appearing at a m Last seen: 20 years, 8 months |
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Can you provide a cogent explanation as to why this response comes from you? -------------------- Money doesn't grow on trees, but deficits do grow under Bushes. You can accept, reject, or examine and test any new idea that comes to you. The wise man chooses the third way. - Tom Willhite Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my opinions should I become aware of additional facts, the falsification of information or different perspectives. Articles written by others which I post may not necessarily reflect my opinions in part or in whole, my opinions may be in direct opposition, the topic may be one on which I have yet to formulate an opinion or have doubts about, an article may be posted solely with the intent to stimulate discussion or contemplation.
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Prosgeopax Jaded, yethopefu Registered: 01/28/05 Posts: 1,258 Loc: Appearing at a m Last seen: 20 years, 8 months |
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Brilliant response! Care to elucidate? -------------------- Money doesn't grow on trees, but deficits do grow under Bushes. You can accept, reject, or examine and test any new idea that comes to you. The wise man chooses the third way. - Tom Willhite Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my opinions should I become aware of additional facts, the falsification of information or different perspectives. Articles written by others which I post may not necessarily reflect my opinions in part or in whole, my opinions may be in direct opposition, the topic may be one on which I have yet to formulate an opinion or have doubts about, an article may be posted solely with the intent to stimulate discussion or contemplation.
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incubaby_421 half naked andfu  Registered: 08/14/04 Posts: 2,629 Loc: the center of th Last seen: 8 years, 2 months |
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spoken like a true hippy -------------------- "yet the more i dig, the more i consume, the more i unfold... the less protected i feel. i am the spit on the hair of the son of an electron, swimming around the nucleus of a cell inside the sperm of a killer bee, and my purpose is as nebulous as why weve been bestowed with the capacity to give a shit" Brandon Boyd 
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SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone... Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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I'd also love to hear what Mushman and itstarss have to bring to the table, but I predict either of two things will happen:
A)They will not respond, because they know their arguments are so weak that they cannot withstand debate. But of course, they'll never admit this. B)"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."... This will be the theme of their arguments. -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
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crunchytoast oppositional  Registered: 04/07/05 Posts: 1,133 Loc: aporia Last seen: 19 years, 5 months |
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i don't know what mushman's and istar's had in mind when they posted, but i liked their posts.
a good alternative to this is to say that ideas and convictions derive their truth from experience, not reason. consider: if a person convinces themself through reason that there is no gravity, and then they observe the world, and find that yes indeed there appears to be gravity- which conclusion are you going to support? the one arrived at through reason, or the one arrived at through empirical evidence?
this sounds like attributing to one's enemies imaginary weakness. isn't it more honest to say "i dont like sadism, dictatorship, or any form of evil." "evasion of reality"... it's like justifying one's preferences on a "rational" level for an ego boost; nothing wrong with that, but it is essentially a person boosting their own ego through rationalization. IMO, the smiley fits the quote. -------------------- "consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger
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Silversoul Rhizome Registered: 01/01/05 Posts: 23,576 Loc: The Barricades |
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Indeed. It is interesting that Rand's position here is more or less identical to that held by Aristotle. This was the model used for several centuries, until we figured out the scientific method, which combines reason with empirical testing. --------------------
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SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone... Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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a good alternative to this is to say that ideas and convictions derive their truth from experience, not reason. consider: if a person convinces themself through reason that there is no gravity, and then they observe the world, and find that yes indeed there appears to be gravity- which conclusion are you going to support? the one arrived at through reason, or the one arrived at through empirical evidence?
A counter example: Rand uses the example of a pencil in a glass of water. The pencil seems to bend in the water, due to the refraction and such. The observer's visual experience tells him that the pencil is bent. But if he pulls it out, and it appears straight again, that's a new experience. The experience tells him nothing about the nature of the supposed bending. The ability to reason, which presupposed experience, will lead him to the right answer, if properly applied. [Reason based on non-objective evidence will lead him to the wrong answer.] Another example is when a child hears about Santa Clause and gets a glimpse of him at the mall. The child's experience is that he has been told of Santa, sees him, therefore he must be real, right? The senses are not wrong, he has seen something...it's the interpretation behind the experience that matters. Crunchy, after Kant and Berkeley came along, folks began to think of "reason-in-itself" - as if it could REALLY be separated from experience. But that ain't never how it works, man. As a weird historical quirk, it seems that it was primarily folks whose name started with A [Aristotle, Abelard, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand] who continued to think correctly about the inter-relation of reason and experience. Peikoff put it simply [caps for italics]:
As you can see, logic stands in for reason in Peikoff's quote. The reason that it's okay to switch words - without switching meaning - is provided by the following quote from Rand herself [caps for italics]:
So logic is the method of reason. Contradictions can't exist. When found, then one or another of our premises are wrong [and we must go back and look]. Another way to say this is that logic and experience are always working together. Logic is like the watchdog that lets us knowing when we are wrongly interpreting experience. -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. Edited by SkorpivoMusterion (10/22/05 06:33 PM)
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it stars saddam Satan Registered: 05/19/05 Posts: 15,571 Loc: Spahn Ranch |
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I think that the glaring subjectivity of this statement removes all necessity for me to bring anything to the table. On the other hand, does anyone have an argument as to how that statement could ever be universally applied and taken seriously? will suffice for now.
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crunchytoast oppositional Registered: 04/07/05 Posts: 1,133 Loc: aporia Last seen: 19 years, 5 months |
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dude, contradictions can exist, as long as they're empirically consistent. "the pencil is bending" "the pencil is not bent" works as long as there's a full apprehension of the pencil in all of its realities. it's not like the pencil really isn't bent. it's arbitrary to say that the pencil-unbent is the true pencil, whereas the pencil-hydrated is that false image. both images contribute to the concept of the pencil. what is an object but its manifold sensations? secondly, to say that truth is found by the combination of experience and logic, i think falls into the trap of interpretation. where does the interpretation of the experience begin, and the experience itself end? it's never knowable until after new experience comes along the refutes the interpretation. example: my parents tell me santa claus exists. my parents never lied before that i know of, i conclude they're right. then it turns out there's no santa. here the kid used logic to extrapolate from the empirical evidence. yet the empirical evidence is what remains, even after he discovers the truth (no santa). at age 10 he thinks 'i've seen no santa, and my parents told me there was.' IOW the parents telling him there's a santa, is taken as an empirical event, not one with an interpreted context. i'm saying logic is interpretation. it's like saying the bible's creation story is symbolic vs. non-symbolic. it's arbitrary which interpretation you choose- because the interpretation isn't contained within the text itself, but projected from our minds. also i would say that science is empiricist, not a combination of logic and empiricism. it was illogical to think that light had an absolute velocity, until empirical evidence pointed to the contrary. then mysteriously the logical and illogical re-composed their domains to accomodate the new evidence... what thinkest thou? -------------------- "consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger
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SkorpivoMusterion Livin in theTwilight Zone... Registered: 01/30/03 Posts: 9,954 Loc: You can't spell |
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dude, contradictions can exist, as long as they're empirically consistent.
I was not referring to contradictions in empirically derived data. Objectively, contradictions don?t exist. "the pencil is bending" "the pencil is not bent" works as long as there's a full apprehension of the pencil in all of its realities. Objectively, the pencil in reality is either bent or not bent. it's arbitrary to say that the pencil-unbent is the true pencil, whereas the pencil-hydrated is that false image. Incorrect. It is reasonable and rational to say that the pencil is actually unbent, despite there being a phenomenon called refraction that occurs when objects submersed in water are being viewed at various angles. what is an object but its manifold sensations? An object which exists is it?s own identity, and as such, it will act according to it?s own nature ? regardless of any wishes or confusions we have of the object itself, such as in the case of one perceiving the pencil to actually be ?bent? when submersed in water. i'm saying logic is interpretation. ...And? ======================== Man's knowledge is not acquired by logic apart from experience or by experience apart from logic, but BY THE APPLICATION OF LOGIC TO EXPERIENCE. ======================== ======================== The METHOD which reason employs in this process is LOGIC--and logic is the art of NON-CONTRADICTORY IDENTIFICATION. ======================== Crunchy, what we experience is necessary to any knowledge. What you seem to fail to realize is that without reason, all of your experience that is offered to you via your senses is nothing more than a chaotic white-noise. You have said absolutely nothing so far that vitiates the neccessity of reason. Did you notice that your very argument utilized your faculty to reason? Crunchy, I challenge you to restate your argument in a way that uses only experience divorced from reason [which is an impossibility]. I think you will get the picture then. -------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
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crunchytoast oppositional Registered: 04/07/05 Posts: 1,133 Loc: aporia Last seen: 19 years, 5 months |
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yeah right.  i looked at dictionary.com for the definition of reason: v. rea?soned, rea?son?ing, rea?sons v. intr. To use the faculty of reason; think logically. To talk or argue logically and persuasively. Obsolete. To engage in conversation or discussion. so whether an argument is reasonable, is whether the argument is logical.
the thing is, contradictions exist in logic as contradicting statements. contradiction, in logic, is a statement about statements. yet you can have contradicting statements that are true. "the pencil is bent""the pencil is unbent." a contradiction, but consistent. in those two statements plainly "the pencil" refers to two separate images of the pencil. yet these statements lack empirical consistency. the statements are contradictory (logically) but consistent (empirically). paradox is another example. both dox  of a paradox can be empirically consistent, yet paradoxes are contradictory by nature. consider: "they have ears but hear not" from the bible. naturally "they hear", yet they don't. it's about being deaf to the truth of the word of god, while still hearing the words. yet even without my exegesis, the statement could also stand alone.another example is the way two positives can make a negative. as i responded to your post: "yeah right " that makes no sense in logic. yet languistically this can take place, and is perfectly fine.
sensation is the source of knowledge, interpretation the source of of confusion.
"the pencil" in the two statements refers to two separate images of the pencil. thus "the pencil is bent" and "the pencil is unbent." yet logic allows no room for multiple meanings of a single word, since that yields contradictions. in fact, the logician ends up excluding certain meanings:
yet it is perfectly correct to say that the pencil is bent, in the sense that the image is bent. logicians may believe they are the arbitrators of language, and they can decide which meanings of a word are legitimate; yet in reality double-positives-yielding-negati
indeed, the brain probably operates as living chaos: http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FLM/M if the brain is chaos, then so is logic, our brain's faculty. we're hardly computers objectively processing information according to rigid rules. -------------------- "consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger Edited by crunchytoast (10/23/05 09:28 AM)
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Gomp ¡(Bound to·(O))be free!  Registered: 09/11/04 Posts: 10,890 Loc: I re·side [prim Last seen: 6 months, 20 days |
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whats this thing for the German words, all over? did I miss anything?
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