What does "Sense of Life" mean?

[UncleJim]

If you want to learn some physics (and you do need the lessons) Ba'al Chatzaf

No. The 'jiggling' physical universe is rigid and Newtonian enough for my purposes. A few half-microns one way or the other doesn't bother me or Intel or anyone else who has to build, grow food, fly aircraft, keep the lights on -- and you know it. Argument from intimidation doesn't work on Objectivists.

Newtonian Physics is not correct. It is Galilean Invariant and this has been empirically falsified. Newtonian Physics works when velocities and speeds are small compared to that of light and masses are not great. Newtonian Physics is fine for building bridges and sending probes to the outer parts of the solar system. Newtonian physics is false for describing atoms, does not address electromagnetic fields and does not correctly describe and predict gravitation.

The falsification of Newtonian physics is not intimidation. It is Fact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It's also irrelevant to the health and wellbeing of human-beings. Just because mathematicians are unable to describe what it is and how it operagtes that does not change anything about what it is and how it operates.

[BaalChatzaf]

It's also irrelevant to the health and wellbeing of human-beings. Just because mathematicians are unable to describe what it is and how it operagtes that does not change anything about what it is and how it operates.

Physical science is the well spring of technology and technology is the source of our material health an prosperity.

Science is just about the most important thing in our highly industrialized and technological society.

Visit Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia or Haiti and see what a society without science is.

By the way, the computer system on which you type your wisdom is the child of quantum physics, which is irrelevant according to you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

Just because mathematicians are unable to describe what it is and how it operagtes that does not change anything about what it is and how it operates.

It is not the job of mathematicians or physicists to say what something is, that exercise in futility lies in the realm of metaphysics.

[Mike11]

In a thread last year about whether Objectivism is a philosophy I mentioned it usually assumes something about the world, assumes it is self evident, than attacks any question about what the world is or how it was known as an attack on Man's Reason, His Virtue etc etc etc

This thread shows symptoms of this I think.

Edited March 20, 2008 by Mike11

[UncleJim]

In a thread last year about whether Objectivism is a philosophy I mentioned it usually assumes something about the world, assumes it is self evident, than attacks any question about what the world is or how it was known as an attack on Man's Reason, His Virtue etc etc etc

This thread shows symptoms of this I think.

Objectivism makes no such assumptions. The world is either what it is, or it is-not that. A=A is the starting point of the Objectivist Philosophy.

When another says the world is different from what it is, this is where the Objectivist Philosophy seems to make an attack; but does not.

The Objectivist Philosophy is based only on what is. Since what the world is-not, does not exist, then Objectivism is unable to comment on that.

[BaalChatzaf]

These things are opinion, but why the qualifier "mere"? No, we don't have a way to measure sense of life with a scientific instrument by doing some sort of brain scan yet, but everyone forms opinions of other people's moods/senses of life/intentions/mental states constantly. We have to do it in order to have any sort of semi-successful social interaction. The statement that you "don't have a psyche" is just ridiculous.

"Mere" as in one can agree or disagree. In matters of Opinion (as opposed to Fact) there is no sure fire way of evaluating its quality beyond an empirical check. Since most Opinions lack clarity and definiteness even that is not always possible. As a friend once told me: Opinions are like rectums. Everybody has at least one. Fact is Solid. Opinion is Mere.

I am an Aspie*. Born with a brain and no mind. Nor do I have a soul. I just have a body regulated by a functioning neurophysical and glandular system. If I tell you I have no pysche, take my word for it. It is the same as if I told you I have a belly-ache. I am in a position to know and you are not.

I am a physical entity all the way down to the sub-atomic level. Not an iota of spirit therein. When I die my remains will rot. My Soul will not fly to the Here After.

Maybe you NT-s** are different.

Ba'al Chatzaf

* short hand for a person with Asperger's syndrome.

** NT or neurotypical, a person who is not autistic or who has Asperger's Syndrome.

[arkon]

Sense of Life is a needless abstraction. I find the brain image idea equally irrelevant. While both seek to create a definition of the results of the senses, this is unnecessary. It is thinly-veiled subjectivism. That isn't to say that I disagree with the sentiment or that looking at such things is essential to forming a rational self-interest, or more accurately that self-interest arises from percepts. Rather, that such ideas tend to gloss over necessary deliberation of what is what and how the senses function, which seems to be at least in part the more scientific element that Ba'al is trying to introduce here. To preclude that there is a "mind" or general sensory impression created from myriad data is a vast over simplification of sensory data to reach the convenient conclusion that what we currently perceive is an accurate perception of what is, or A is A. While I agree that a certain amount of language and "general sense" needs to be assumed to function in your own self interest, it is important to hedge a certain amount of doubt as to the source of these derivatives, as they are completely arbitrary. This presupposes and supports the idea that "people should just know better" or that good men are simply born that way, and a lot of the needless blame game that fills the Objectivist philosophy. While admitting concretes is essential to proper function, we willingly suspend that belief to defend subjective ethics, and therefore look on confused when the supposed altruist is disgusted with what he conceives as our heartless rhetoric. His point is furthered as we purport an inhuman, mechanistic legal system run by humans that has no profit based goal as its purpose, and gloss over the altruistic elements inherent in the running of such a system, simply trotting out the "noble" visage of a successful businessman to validate it. "I want", while subordinate to "I have", is supported by an altruistic willingness by some to support what others "have".

I believe the inherent fallacy in this comes from this willingness to simplify the workings of the senses in ethics. It is the subordination of the immediate response of the organism to achieve its goals through the easiest means possible to subjective ideas like truth, justice, liberty, altruism and the like- "meta" physics. These are not concretes but inevitably subjective, limited human responses, generally created in my hypotheses by the organism's desire to find the easiest means of continuing and possibly improving upon its goals. It is a willingness to accept falsehood because it seems to ease the acquisition of that which is desired. Objectivism accepts this idea in business, pointing to capitalism's success, a completely subjective system that in fact does not promote the best made product inherently, but what people buy. I agree with this and wish the ethical questions could be viewed in the same manner. It isn't the promotion of objective fact but subjective whim that is the reason for capitalism's success. The goal of ethics is to validate the human condition and promote it, not create an altruistic system to limit choice.

This is best illustrated in the idea that it is immoral to initiate force against another. That statement is obvious enough in its ethics, but then we take the wild leap, using that as support, that the same is true for objects. That simply by grabbing an object and saying it is his, possibly changing it in some way, a person adds it to themselves. To use a metaphor, if I was walking with a friend and he picks up a rock, writes his initials on it and says it's his, I may be inclined to agree with him, as I also have rocks that I value and want to keep, but, if the rock he had became necessary for the continuance of my pursuits, and he left me no reasonable recourse to get it, it would become unethical for me to validate his claim, because it would impinge upon, and this is my main point with this, my ability to live. It's easy to talk about "Who cares what happened in the past, look at this beautiful, rose colored trading empire I'm part of", but this becomes less tenable when this system accepts, and now this is the flaw, its guardians selflessly defending any whim up to and including withholding the basic elements to even sustain life. And this severe ethical shortcoming is not the rarity, the exception, but the standard by which the system operates. It is inevitably anti-life in this respect, and the almost vain unwillingness, the "blanking out" of key questions of how we arrive at our apprehension of the world, are the cause.

[Brant Gaede]

Percepts, ethics. I have to disagree with this sequence. Try concepts, ethics. As for everything else, keep working your clay but don't fire it yet.

--Brant

[arkon]

right on.