How "ought" things be?


BaalChatzaf

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Rand observes that “the choice of the beneficiary of moral values . . . . has to be derived and validated by the fundamental premises of a moral system” (VoS x). Rand offers arguments and a conception of morality in support of the conclusion that “the actor must [should] always be the beneficiary of his action” (VoS x).

“Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival,” and this is the case “by the grace of reality and the nature of life” (VoS 23). “By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose” (AS 1017).

Rand argues that “man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge” (VoS 20); that conceptual thought is an activity of individual minds (AS 1017); that “thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness” (VoS 20); that “the act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional” (20–21); that “the men who choose to think and to produce . . . . are pursuing a course of action proper to man” (23); “that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself . . . and, therefore, that [each] man must [should] live for his own sake” (27).

The individual’s own life “is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself” (VoS 47).

Furthermore: “Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death. Such a being is a metaphysical monstrosity, struggling to oppose, negate, and contradict the fact of its own existence . . .” (AS 1014 [hb], boldface added).

As noted earlier in this thread, Robert Hartford contributed a paper last spring to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8(2):291–303. The title of his paper is “Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism.” In this paper, he argues that “the foundation of an objectively verifiable ethical system is the [voluntary] acceptance and use of the principle of holding one’s own life as the motive and goal of one’s action” (302).

Robert argues that if one rejects Rand’s principle of holding one’s own life as the motive and goal of one’s action, then one is contradicting a fact about the very mind rejecting the principle. That fact is the biological role that the mind has in human life. “The mind has unsurpassed power to select action that results in pursuit and achievement of values, pursuit and achievement of that which benefits one’s life” (300). If one selects an action that is known—known consciously or subconsciously—to be harmful to one’s life, then some aspect of one’s mind is implicitly acting in a way at odds with the fundamental role of the mind in human life. The mind is then in a contradictory state. It strives to achieve what benefits the life of the person whose mind it is while at the same time, in the particular choice, it strives to harm that person. Therefore, one should always select one’s action with one’s own life as the motive and goal of the action.

I would say that the biological role of the mind is not only to enable the survival of the individual whose mind it is, but to enable the survival of other members of the human species. So I don’t think Robert’s proof works. The faulty premise in Robert’s argument is appealed to in the complex weave of Rand’s argument as well. How wide are the ramifications of this flaw in her argument? I wonder.

Of related interest:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4240

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...amp;#entry43084

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This is my take.

If one needs to experience a specific consequence then one ought to be acting in that why necessitated by it.

However if one wants to experience a specific consequence then one should act in the why necessitated by it.

Need address the requirements of life. Making ought non-conditional.

Want address the whims of emotion. Making should conditional.

In short, we should know causes. I will second that notion.

I see "ought" as the causal relation between means and ends. Such a relation can be determined or at least sought objectively.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Regarding "Proof of Egoism":

I thank Stephen for a fairly accurate description of a critical step in my effort at a "Proof of Egoism."

As noted earlier in this thread, Robert Hartford contributed a paper last spring to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8(2):291–303. The title of his paper is “Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism.” In this paper, he argues that “the foundation of an objectively verifiable ethical system is the [voluntary] acceptance and use of the principle of holding one’s own life as the motive and goal of one’s action” (302).

Robert argues that if one rejects Rand’s principle of holding one’s own life as the motive and goal of one’s action, then one is contradicting a fact about the very mind rejecting the principle. That fact is the biological role that the mind has in human life. “The mind has unsurpassed power to select action that results in pursuit and achievement of values, pursuit and achievement of that which benefits one’s life” (300). If one selects an action that is known—known consciously or subconsciously—to be harmful to one’s life, then some aspect of one’s mind is implicitly acting in a way at odds with the fundamental role of the mind in human life. The mind is then in a contradictory state. It strives to achieve what benefits the life of the person whose mind it is while at the same time, in the particular choice, it strives to harm that person. Therefore, one should always select one’s action with one’s own life as the motive and goal of the action. [RH: I would say 'non-contradiction requires selection of' rather than 'one should always select' See The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies paper for the reasons.]

I would say that the biological role of the mind is not only to enable the survival of the individual whose mind it is, but to enable the survival of other members of the human species. So I don’t think Robert’s proof works. The faulty premise in Robert’s argument is appealed to in the complex weave of Rand’s argument as well. How wide are the ramifications of this flaw in her argument? I wonder.

It would require someone better versed than I in evolutionary biology to assess our conflicting assertions. I asserted that "the mind [is] a human valuing mechanism" is a valid inductive inference based on the nature of value, valuing mechanisms, and "the evolution of the human species." (302) I take Stephen's assertion that the "role of the mind" is also to "enable the survival of other members of the human species" to be a possible consequence of the mind's fundamental role as a valuing mechanism. Therefore, I don't think that his assertion negates the proof I present.

http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/v8_n2/8_2toc.asp#rh

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x

It would require someone better versed than I in evolutionary biology to assess our conflicting assertions. I asserted that "the mind [is] a human valuing mechanism" is a valid inductive inference based on the nature of value, valuing mechanisms, and "the evolution of the human species." (302) I take Stephen's assertion that the "role of the mind" is also to "enable the survival of other members of the human species" to be a possible consequence of the mind's fundamental role as a valuing mechanism. Therefore, I don't think that his assertion negates the proof I present.

http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/v8_n2/8_2toc.asp#rh

Substitute for the word "mind" the word "brain" and you have it pretty well correct. The brain is the valuing "mechanism" (it is organic, so mechanism is not quite right). The way our brain works is one of the ways in which we survive adverse aspects of our environment. We do not need some immaterial, objectively undetectable -thing- to account for our success. We have a very detectable and observable thing. It is called a brain.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob,

You will not obliterate the word "mind" from the English language. Especially not on an Internet forum.

I find your insistance akin to addiction.

At NA I was taught that insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different result.

Michael

You are quite right. I am obsessed with by precision and accuracy. Perhaps Copernicus and Galileo should have given up but they kept on doing what they did and sure enough, eventually they prevailed.

There is no such thing as mind as an independent self standing object or substance. Minds are ectoplasmic bats in the belfry. Ghosts in the attic. Spooks in the steeple. So to speak. The greatest progress in treating "mental" diseases has been through pharmacology and surgery dealing with the physical brain. What does that tell you? Dualism centering about the existence of mind (as opposed to matter) has lead to failure and mistreatment of folks suffering from neurological dysfunction. Am I insane to trying to achieve something better? It is the people who cling to the erroneous concept of Mind in a Cartesian dualistic manner who are insane, not me. I have the facts on my side. What do you have on yours? Introspection? I phart in the general direction of Introspection.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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You are quite right. I am obsessed with by precision and accuracy.

Does this mean you never use a figure of speech? Why can't you think of 'mind' as a figure of speech meaning "abstract thinking" or something. That's what I do.

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You are quite right. I am obsessed with by precision and accuracy.

Does this mean you never use a figure of speech? Why can't you think of 'mind' as a figure of speech meaning "abstract thinking" or something. That's what I do.

I try to qualify my figures of speech with phrases such as "so called" or "so to speak" and such like. And most people -use- the term "mind" in a substantive way without appropriate qualification. This language habit has kept Cartesian dualism alive and ill for more than 300 years past the time it should have been put away. There is no such substance as mind. At most it is a word referring to a subset of the functions of the brain. Our brains think, our brains cogitate, our brains decide. We ARE our brains, particularly the pre-frontal cortex. The rest of our body is just a machine for carrying our brain (which is the real us, as it were) around. Our soul, if you would use that word, is our pre-frontal cortex. We are material beings which work in a manner accurately described by so-called physical laws (which are not laws, but hypotheses). We are as material as rocks and water. In fact we are ungainly bags of mostly water. (seventy percent).

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob,

Dom Quixote or Copernicus and Galileo?

Copernicus and Galileo had a body of their own work to draw on and prestigeous places where they presented their published findings.

You flatter yourself without merit.

Michael

Galileo had a place to publish alright. His house in which he was placed under house arrest for the last seven years of his life. He had to smuggle the manuscript of his last great work, -Dialogs on Two New Sciences- out to Holland to get them published freely.

I just try to keep the record and the facts straight. Cartesian Dualism is ka ka and it should have been expunged over 200 years ago. But careless folk who speak of mind as though it were an object and a substance keep that abomination alive.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

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We do not need some immaterial, objectively undetectable -thing- to account for our success.

Bob, let's look at this from a different angle.

If I recall correctly, you said somewhere that most mathematicians are "closet Platonists" - that they suspect there is an abstract "world" (if you like) behind physical reality, or at least behind the physical ink marks a physical mathematician makes on a physical piece of paper. This "world" is somewhat mysterious, in that it is full of problems we have yet to solve, or even discover, but is not mystical because we can in fact solve and discover at least some of those problems.

Now, we could debate the existence of this abstract, entirely non-physical mathematical "world" for a while, and I think some reasonable arguments could emerge that it really does exist objectively - that is, outside of our subjective imaginations - just not physically (although it does relate very powerfully, and even unreasonably so, to the physical world)

So I put it to you: if non-material objects, such as mathematical systems, can credibly exist, why can't prima facie a non-physical state such as consciousness exist? After all, non-physicality is not the same as non-existence. Otherwise what are we referring to when we call something "abstract"?

- D

Edited by Daniel Barnes
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So I put it to you: if non-material objects, such as mathematical systems, can credibly exist, why can't prima facie a non-physical state such as consciousness exist? After all, non-physicality is not the same as non-existence. Otherwise what are we referring to when we call something "abstract"?

- D

Mathematical objects DO NOT exist in the physical world, except as neurological brain farts. In order to take these brain farts seriously enough to work on them for years at a time, mathematicians must pretend that the objects are real (have an external existence). Hence, while they are doing math, they are Platonists. When they come to their senses they can be something else.

Trees exist Out There. Forests exist in our heads.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Daniel,

In other words, for Bob, math as a mental structure is done "somehow."

:)

I personally don't know how someone can have total certainty that something does not exist, but is incapable of explaining what is observed other than by using subterfuges like "brain farts" and so forth. That does not stand under the most elementary logic. If you don't know, you don't know. The same standard applies to what is and what isn't.

Maybe your brain passes gas differenly than his does. I guess it depends on what you feed it and how fast it eats... :)

Michael

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Daniel,

In other words, for Bob, math as a mental structure is done "somehow."

Done with one's brain. When I had my PET scan done I watched my temporal lobe and prefrontal lobe light up while doing math problems. That is the somehow.

One breaths with one's lungs, one proves theorems with one's brain. It is not done by some ghostly mind which cannot be observed objectively by a second party. Attributing mathematical ability to a mind is like attributing the creaks and groans in the attic to a ghost.

Maybe you have a mind (I would have no way of knowing that). I do not. I have a brain which both I and the technicians observed in action during the PET scans and the MRI scans. My brain can be observed by someone other than myself. Your mind can only be observed by you. So how do you know it is not an hallucination? Your introspections are equally ill founded and unwitnessed. Claim all you want but you do not have a shred of objective evidence. Believing in minds is like believing in God. No evidence or proof for the belief. Not one bit.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited by BaalChatzaf
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I personally don't know how someone can have total certainty that something does not exist, but is incapable of explaining what is observed other than by using subterfuges like "brain farts" and so forth. That does not stand under the most elementary logic. If you don't know, you don't know. The same standard applies to what is and what isn't.

Baal doesn't mind using colourful figures of speech like 'brain farts' but has trouble with a bland one like 'mind'. Let's do a survey, how many people reading this think there is an object called 'the mind'?

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Don Quixote (Bob),

Mind does not mean ghost.

The English language will continue with this word and it is a good one. I predict that this word (and mente in Portuguese, and a word meaning mind in all other languages on earth) will be used until the end of human history or forever, whichever happens.

Whether you claim to have a mind or not means zilch in the big scheme of human history. It is merely an insignificant irritation on the websites you frequent due to your repetition, but forgotten as soon as you stop posting. This argument will not survive you, nor does it convince anyone as far as I have seen.

Your steed is a strawman and your lance is semantics, not ideas, with this windmill powered by oversimplification.

Michael

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Robert argues that if one rejects Rand’s principle of holding one’s own life as the motive and goal of one’s action, then one is contradicting a fact about the very mind rejecting the principle. That fact is the biological role that the mind has in human life. “The mind has unsurpassed power to select action that results in pursuit and achievement of values, pursuit and achievement of that which benefits one’s life” (300). If one selects an action that is known—known consciously or subconsciously—to be harmful to one’s life, then some aspect of one’s mind is implicitly acting in a way at odds with the fundamental role of the mind in human life. The mind is then in a contradictory state. It strives to achieve what benefits the life of the person whose mind it is while at the same time, in the particular choice, it strives to harm that person. Therefore, one should always select one’s action with one’s own life as the motive and goal of the action.

I would say that the biological role of the mind is not only to enable the survival of the individual whose mind it is, but to enable the survival of other members of the human species. So I don’t think Robert’s proof works. The faulty premise in Robert’s argument is appealed to in the complex weave of Rand’s argument as well. How wide are the ramifications of this flaw in her argument? I wonder.

I must agree with Baal that in the above passage 'mind' is used so frequently that one wonders if there is not some confusion. With respect to this analysis, how can one know something sub-consciously? One may have a feeling about something but that is not the same as knowing. If someone chooses actions known (or believed) to be harmful to one's health then obviously there is some pathological process in play, however, I don't think we can address this problem in the context ethics or morality because it is primarily a mental health issue.

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Whether you claim to have a mind or not means zilch in the big scheme of human history. It is merely an insignificant irritation on the websites you frequent due to your repetition, but forgotten as soon as you stop posting. This argument will not survive you, nor does it convince anyone as far as I have seen.

Your steed is a strawman and your lance is semantics, not ideas, with this windmill powered by oversimplification.

Michael

As insignificant as treating human illness an an unbalance of humours. That bogus theory has lead to the deaths of millions.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

My straw man is about what is true. There is no substantial stand alone mind. It does not exist. What is in our heads are brains, nerves and glands. Treating mental illness is equivalent to driving out evil spirits by drilling holes in the skull. How many people have suffered and wasted away in "mental" hospitals because of this bogus notion? Psychiatrists and psychologists are the modern version of shamans and "medicine men".

The welfare of the human race will be promoted when we finally get rid of the notion of mind (res cogitens). In the world there is only matter and motion. Res extensa. Burying Descartes bogus notion is long overdue. The human race may achieve happiness and contentment when it becomes thoroughly materialistic. Man does live by bread alone (in a manner of speaking). We are our flesh and that is all we are.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Whether you claim to have a mind or not means zilch in the big scheme of human history. It is merely an insignificant irritation on the websites you frequent due to your repetition, but forgotten as soon as you stop posting. This argument will not survive you, nor does it convince anyone as far as I have seen.

Your steed is a strawman and your lance is semantics, not ideas, with this windmill powered by oversimplification.

Michael

As insignificant as treating human illness an an unbalance of humours. That bogus theory has lead to the deaths of millions.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

My straw man is about what is true. There is no substantial stand alone mind. It does not exist. What is in our heads are brains, nerves and glands. Treating mental illness is equivalent to driving out evil spirits by drilling holes in the skull. How many people have suffered and wasted away in "mental" hospitals because of this bogus notion? Psychiatrists and psychologists are the modern version of shamans and "medicine men".

The welfare of the human race will be promoted when we finally get rid of the notion of mind (res cogitens). In the world there is only matter and motion. Res extensa. Burying Descartes bogus notion is long overdue. The human race may achieve happiness and contentment when it becomes thoroughly materialistic. Man does live by bread alone (in a manner of speaking). We are our flesh and that is all we are.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Is there: breathing, running, sitting, digestion, etc.? No! These do not exist in reality. They are functions of real things. They are epistemological existents. Which means they are 'intellectual' resultants of the relationship existing between what reality is and what a human mind is.

So is mind. Mind is a function of the human brain. The human brain is physically and electrochemically different from other brains. The functioning which exists specifically because of that difference is called - the mind function.

An interesting aspect of the mind function is that it must be properly operating for its existence to be properly acknowledged.

Edited by UncleJim
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Is there: breathing, running, sitting, digestion, etc.? No! These do not exist in reality. They are functions of real things. They are epistemological existents. Which means they are 'intellectual' resultants of the relationship existing between what reality is and what a human mind is.

So is mind. Mind is a function of the human brain. The human brain is physically and electrochemically different from other brains. The functioning which exists specifically because of that difference is called - the mind function.

An interesting aspect of the mind function is that it must be properly operating for its existence to be properly acknowledged.

All of the above exist. They are -physical- processes. The interaction of particles and fields. A human mind (functioning of a brain) is a dynamic collection of Brain Farts.

The mind (i.e. brain functions) of an imbecile can be objectively observed. It does not have to be "properly" functioning at all.

Ba'al ChatzaF

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Reporting for duty, well satisfied mentally if not physically (dead tired from weeks of huffing and puffing, tramping hot streets, stumbling over luggage). Found a great primary school, neighborhood grocery store, big modern house with nice bathrooms, double garage for the kid to scooter around, enormous park and playground a block away, plenty of bus service, excellent shopping downtown. Required zillions of moral, heuristic, and interpetive monads. Hotel life is hell, by the way.

:)

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Wolf,

It is great to see you again. You have zillions of these things?

Monad-TheGreatMonad.jpg

This is from here and has the following caption: The Great Monad. (From Dragon, Image and Demon; H. C. Du Bose, 1887.) Of course this is a Great Monad. My thinking is why not be great? You are, after all, Wolf DeVoon.

I just can't see you with any old monad like the following:

Monad.gif

btw - Here is my monad: :)

:)

Michael

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Is there: breathing, running, sitting, digestion, etc.? No! These do not exist in reality. They are functions of real things. They are epistemological existents. Which means they are 'intellectual' resultants of the relationship existing between what reality is and what a human mind is.

So is mind. Mind is a function of the human brain. The human brain is physically and electrochemically different from other brains. The functioning which exists specifically because of that difference is called - the mind function.

An interesting aspect of the mind function is that it must be properly operating for its existence to be properly acknowledged.

All of the above exist. They are -physical- processes. The interaction of particles and fields. A human mind (functioning of a brain) is a dynamic collection of Brain Farts.

The mind (i.e. brain functions) of an imbecile can be objectively observed. It does not have to be "properly" functioning at all.

Ba'al ChatzaF

Are you saying an imbecile can "properly" acknowledge the existence of his (or another's) mind function?

Edited by UncleJim
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