Settling the debate on Altruism

[Xray]

I have no intention of not speaking my mind just because some of what I speak criticizes Rand's oversimplifications when she made them, or I identify psychological traps in Objectivism I have lived through or observed in others.

Will you give me a quote from Rand that you regard as an oversimplification?

[Selene]

Excuse me, and I may be rude saying this, but how the hell would you have any clue as to what their marriage was all about -

Have you read Barbara Branden's biography on Rand? It looks like got to know Ayn's marriage very, very well.

I'm done with this issue with you xray.

We disagree.

Adam

[Xray]

Xray,

You'd really have to ask Ayn that, or those who knew her personally. I'm not about to contest what she stated about Frank. It's in black and white and I would have to take her at her word for it.

~ Shane

Barbara Branden's book on Rand is a very interesting source.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Will you give me a quote from Rand that you regard as an oversimplification?

Xray,

I will do even better than that since you are bent on doing the anti-Rand thing. Here is an oversimplification followed by a flat outright wrong statement (VOS, "The Objectivist Ethics," p. 30):

Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are "tabula rasa." It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.

Here is the oversimplification: "Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious..." Within the context of the rest of the essay, it is fair to say that Rand meant all emotions and not just some of them. The truth is that some of man's emotions are the results of chosen value judgments (by "value judgments," Rand made it clear she meant "chosen"), but not all of them.

For instance, there is a category of emotions called "affects" which are prewired from birth and they are more varied than "pleasure-pain." This leads to Rand's flat-out wrong statement that man is born with an emotional mechanism, but it is "tabula-rasa" at birth. In biological terms alone, hormone levels lead one infant to be sullen and another to be happy. And there are other problems with the "tabula-rasa" at birth concept that science has proven otherwise.

There are several instances of Rand oversimplifying ideas in this manner. I believe she tried to make some of her deep insights cover more than they actually did. So what should be a deep insight for a restricted case becomes a wrong standard for the whole kit and kaboodle. For my own life, I have chosen to identify these problems of scope where they exist, keep the insights and restrict them to where they apply, and make it clear I do not agree with the oversimplified part.

None of it, however, annuls the enormous admiration I have for her thinking and courage. Nor does it annul the parts of her ideas I have adopted as my own.

Now your turn.

Is there anything about Rand's work and/or life that you admire and/or agree with without a string of qualifiers?

Michael

[Selene]

:cheer: :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

^^^^ geez that is soooo gay!

Adam

[Xray]

Now your turn.

Is there anything about Rand's work and/or life that you admire and/or agree with without a string of qualifiers?

Michael

I agree with AR's position concerning the rejection of faith.

Rand: "Religion ... is the first enemy of the ability to think. That ability is not used by men to one tenth of its possibility, and before they learn to think, they are discouraged by being ordered to take things on faith." (end quote)

I have shed my faith, but don't want to replace one Procrustes's bed with another.

Edited April 26, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

This is the way you are using the word, yes.

"A Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. Sometimes the term is applied to the pan and scan process of cropping motion pictures for television and home video."

[Christopher]

Now your turn.

Is there anything about Rand's work and/or life that you admire and/or agree with without a string of qualifiers?

Michael

I agree with AR's position concerning the rejection of faith.

Rand: "Religion ... is the first enemy of the ability to think. That ability is not used by men to one tenth of its possibility, and before they learn to think, they are discouraged by being ordered to take things on faith." (end quote)

I have shed my faith, but don't want to replace one Procrustes's bed with another.

Dear Mr. XRay Nay-Sayer,

You've been rejecting or criticizing so much of Rand's works that I was really happy when Michael asked you whether was anything you agree with regarding her work. I find it amusing that the only thing you agree with is a rejection of something else.

Are there any beliefs you affirm that are not a negation of something else?

Christopher

[Selene]

Chris: This is from your first post on this thread.

"Dictionary.com provides the following two definitions of empathy:

1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself."

"...experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another..."

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vicarious

This is one of the ones that I use.

vicarious

One entry found.

Main Entry:

vi·car·i·ous Listen to the pronunciation of vicarious

Pronunciation:

\vī-ˈker-ē-əs, və-\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Latin vicarius, from vicis change, alternation, stead — more at week

Date:

1637

1 a: serving instead of someone or something else b: that has been delegated <vicarious authority>2: performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another : substitutionary <a vicarious sacrifice>3: experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another4: occurring in an unexpected or abnormal part of the body instead of the usual one <vicarious menstruation manifested by bleeding from the nose>

— vi·car·i·ous·ly adverb

— vi·car·i·ous·ness noun

Does that fit better as to what you mean?

Adam

Edited April 26, 2009 by Selene

[Christopher]

Chris: This is from your first post on this thread.

"Dictionary.com provides the following two definitions of empathy:

1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself."

"...experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another..."

From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vicarious

This is one of the ones that I use.

vicarious

One entry found.

Main Entry:

vi·car·i·ous Listen to the pronunciation of vicarious

Pronunciation:

\vī-ˈker-ē-əs, və-\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Latin vicarius, from vicis change, alternation, stead — more at week

Date:

1637

1 a: serving instead of someone or something else b: that has been delegated <vicarious authority>2: performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another : substitutionary <a vicarious sacrifice>3: experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another4: occurring in an unexpected or abnormal part of the body instead of the usual one <vicarious menstruation manifested by bleeding from the nose>

— vi·car·i·ous·ly adverb

— vi·car·i·ous·ness noun

Does that fit better as to what you mean?

Adam

From a psychological standpoint, I believe the subjective experience of empathy and the experience of vicarious living are two different events.

Empathy involves a set of neural mechanics that perceive another's feelings and mirror those feelings in one's own experience, albeit with the identification tag being that the feelings belong to another. These neural networks are hardwired at birth in areas of the brain such as the ventral striatum, septal nuclei, and medial orbitofrontal cortex (I'm providing the technical aspects to make a point).

Vicarious learning depends on learned associations and attributions of identity. Through these learned processes, man mistakenly perceives a group's experience and associates (through conceptual categorization or unconscious associations) to his own experience. This activity is found in the lateral temporal cortex and the basal ganglia (for unconscious/emotional associations) and the hippocampus and inferotemporal cortex (for conceptual categorizations).

Here's a developmental perspective:

Even a few months after birth, infants react to a disturbance in those around them as though it were their own, crying when they see another child's tears. By one year or so, they start to realize the misery is not their own but someone else's, though they still seem confused over what to do about it. In research by Martin L. Hoffman at New York University, for example, a one-year-old brought his own mother over to comfort a crying friend, ignoring the friend's mother, who was also in the room... On seeing a his mother cry, one baby wiped his own eyes, though they had no tears. Such motor mimicry, as it is called, is the original technical sense of the word empathy as it was first used in the 1920's...

Motor mimicry fades from toddlers' repertoire at around two and a half years, at which point they realize that someone else's pain is different from their own, and are better able to comfort them.

So there's two things here:

First, a child experiences empathy even before concepts of self-identity and other-identity are able to form. Therefore, there is a clear distinction between empathic neural circuits and vicarious living associated to learned concepts of self-identity as I have explained them.

Second, Goleman has evidenced that empathic awareness is experienced through activation of one's own emotions, and that those emotions are naturally attributed to another person through normal development. We could argue that attributing one's empathic experiences to another person could be developmentally interrupted. If that is the case, then one never separates from another. However, Ken Wilber describes this state in Integral Psychology as being totally dissolved of identity (no self-identity ever formed), highly neurotic, and basically unable to function as a normal adult in society. I doubt that most people who live vicariously (as Nathaniel Branden uses the term) are experiencing an interruption of development.

Another way to think about this is the following:

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning. The first represents something fundamental to human perception and behavior, the second represents a cultural product.

Hope this elucidates my position,

Chris

[Dragonfly]

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning.

I find nothing attractive in high heels.

[Selene]

Guys:

Hello. Women are hardwired also. Wow, you mean humans have some hard wiring. Ok.

Adam

[Selene]

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning.

I find nothing attractive in high heels.

Does your seeing eye dog? :whistle:

[Selene]

Chris:

Interesting place the human brain.

"First, a child experiences empathy even before concepts of self-identity and other-identity are able to form. Therefore, there is a clear distinction between empathic neural circuits and vicarious living associated to learned concepts of self-identity as I have explained them."

"...even before concepts of self-identity and other-identity are able to form." That we are aware of at this point.

I agree with you that there is a distinction, but I do not, based on what you have said. believe that it is clear, yet.

"The evidence indicates multiple centers of feeling in the brain, associated with various aspects of self (self-image, conscience, will, etc.). Locating all brain functions related to feeling & self in a single "circuit" not only entails the fallacy of the homunculus, it doesn't leave much for the rest of the brain to do."

Would you agree or disagree with this last statement?

Adam

[Selene]

Nice brain site

http://brainmaps.org/index.php?p=about

[Brant Gaede]

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning.

I find nothing attractive in high heels.

Does your seeing eye dog? :whistle:

Man o' man: that's a good one!

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning.

I find nothing attractive in high heels.

I find nothing attractive in hairy armpits.

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

I find nothing attractive in hairy armpits.

And what about hairy vulvas?

[anonrobt]

Most men are hardwired to be aroused by female figures after puberty. Men can also learn to be erotically attracted to other shapes (like high heels) through emotional associations or cultural learning.

I find nothing attractive in high heels.

I find nothing attractive in hairy armpits.

--Brant

That is because you have been culturally induced to - it has been a 'stigma' in Mad Ad ever since the flapper days, and 'only peasants' would cling to their so-called barbaric image...

[do you shave your own? no? then why it is 'attractive' on a male but not on a female? -culturally induced sexism]

[anonrobt]

I find nothing attractive in hairy armpits.

And what about hairy vulvas?

Oh indeed - and the hairier, the greater the forest, the sexier... it was only in 'hiding' the fur behind bikinis that cultured the waxing and inducing the pre-pubescent imitative look, which is gross, pretend pedophilia, and very unsexy...

Edited April 28, 2009 by anonrobt

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I love a hairy vulva, but the problem is that a woman always comes attached.

(ducking...)

Er...

(All right, all right! That was just a quip!...)

Michael

[Selene]

Male abuse is the most unreported crime in America!

creatively blocks the I-pod with the back of the hand! B)

[Xray]

I find it amusing that the only thing you agree with is a rejection of something else.

Are there any beliefs you affirm that are not a negation of something else?

Although Rand's philosophy is a belief system imo, the issue for me is not about affirming or rejecting beliefs. It is proof and disproof which interest me.

Dear Mr. XRay Nay-Sayer

I'm not a "Mr".

Edited April 29, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

Finally, I have been waiting for that pick up.

I always knew you were a Ma'am which is a kinda southern or western curtesy, Ma'am.

lol

Adam

[Xray]

Finally, I have been waiting for that pick up.

I always knew you were a Ma'am which is a kinda southern or western curtesy, Ma'am.

lol

Adam

Easy to find out since my profile here lists my first name.

Edited April 28, 2009 by Xray