Rules of Existence

[Dglgmut]

What do they say about kids so often, that they need boundaries? Kids, or human beings?

What's the first thing people wonder when they try a new video game? "What do I have to do?" "What can I do?" ... Essentially, "What are the rules?"

I've said before that civilization has pulled people away from reality, not by denying them access to it, but by eliminating the necessity to deal with it. What many people are not getting is the same thing that so many councilors and psychologists suggest children are lacking: clear boundaries--rules of existence.

"What do I need?" has been replaced by "What do I want?" And who's supposed to answer that?

Reason isn't a tool if nothing in life is absolute. If we cannot reason, if we cannot think to effect, self-esteem is surely out of reach.

There is a responsibility that comes with life that is not always evident, and people can't take responsibility unless they know it's there.

[syrakusos]

Trade-offs are a fact. TANSTAAFL. But I grant fully, that in terms of ethics and morality, Ayn Rand cogently began with Robinson Crusoe. Alone on an island, you desperately need morality. But you do not need ethics. And social living allows us to live immorally, even if we behave ethically. But that is a price we pay for the value in trade and knowledge that comes from social living. It is why an objective morality is a precondition for an morally ethical society. Otherwise, we do, indeed, have the war of all against all.

[BaalChatzaf]

Trade-offs are a fact. TANSTAAFL. But I grant fully, that in terms of ethics and morality, Ayn Rand cogently began with Robinson Crusoe. Alone on an island, you desperately need morality. But you do not need ethics. And social living allows us to live immorally, even if we behave ethically. But that is a price we pay for the value in trade and knowledge that comes from social living. It is why an objective morality is a precondition for an morally ethical society. Otherwise, we do, indeed, have the war of all against all.

Help, help! What is the difference between morality and ethics?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Peter]

About the topic, “Rules of Existence?” There is only one rule. It has to exist.

[anthony]

Not to be flip, I think it is a worthy topic, but I recall MSK relating once about instructing

his step-daughter (?) to drive: "Don't bump into anything, and don't let anything bump into you".

That advice is about as basic as it gets for a rule of existence.

[Selene]

Not to be flip, I think it is a worthy topic, but I recall MSK relating once about instructing

his step-daughter (?) to drive: "Don't bump into anything, and don't let anything bump into you".

That advice is about as basic as it gets for a rule of existence.

Correct...the first rule of communication and sales...

Keep

It

Simple

Stupid

There is something beautiful about the human kiss...

and next to the Iwo Jima photo...this is one of the most memorable to my mind...

V-J Day in Times Square, a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was published in Life in 1945 with the caption, In New York's Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers

Funny how it was the sailor that was uninhibited...

[Mikee]

Have a goal. Make a plan. Then do what Tony said. If you don't know where you're going it doesn't matter if you run into things.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

- Benjamin Franklin

[Xray]

Trade-offs are a fact. TANSTAAFL. But I grant fully, that in terms of ethics and morality, Ayn Rand cogently began with Robinson Crusoe. Alone on an island, you desperately need morality. But you do not need ethics. And social living allows us to live immorally, even if we behave ethically. But that is a price we pay for the value in trade and knowledge that comes from social living. It is why an objective morality is a precondition for an morally ethical society. Otherwise, we do, indeed, have the war of all against all.

Help, help! What is the difference between morality and ethics?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Good question.

The Latin word 'moralis' is a translation of the Greek 'ethikos':

From the Online Etymological Dictionary: http://www.etymonlin...owed_in_frame=0

ethic (n.) late 14c., ethik "study of morals," from O.Fr. etique (13c.), from L.L. ethica, from Gk. ethike philosophia "moral philosophy," fem. of ethikos "ethical," from ethos "moral character," related to ethos "custom" (see ethos). Meaning "a person's moral principles" is attested from 1650s.

moral (adj.) mid-14c., "pertaining to character or temperament" (good or bad), from O.Fr. moral (14c.) and directly from L. moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," lit. "pertaining to manners," coined by Cicero ("De Fato," II.i) to translate Gk. ethikos (see ethics) from L. mos (gen. moris) "one's disposition," in plural, "mores, customs, manners, morals," of uncertain origin. Perhaps sharing a PIE root with English mood (1).

But why would one need morality alone on an island? Imo in Rand's island example, what she calls 'morality', is more something like 'survival skills'.

[Dglgmut]

Have a goal. Make a plan.

The point of this topic was that we want rules.

A few people have replied indicating that they interpreted me as making a thread about what the rules are, rather than the psychological need for rules and why they are not only necessary for morality, but that morality is a result of us accepting the terms of our existence.

Morality is our way of saying, "Okay, I'll play."

[Mikee]

Rules are necessary, yes. To the rest of the natural world we are either inconsequential or we are food. To avoid being eaten or ended in some other way we need to act. These actions need rules, they cannot be random. Some of the rules are inherent, part of our nature. Others are learned through our experience and the experience of others who teach us. You can call morality rules for acting to preserve oneself. This necessarily includes rules for interacting with others who interact peaceably with oneself. The psychological need for rules is simply the desire to live and continue living. That defines a goal. You need to plan to achieve goals. You can't plan without knowing rules. Goals are future oriented, they will be the result of complex cause and effect actions. You can't predict effects from causes without knowing the rules.

"Have a goal. Make a plan." Same thing, fewer words.

[Dglgmut]

The psychological need for rules is simply the desire to live and continue living.

I don't think that's it. Without rules there is no game.

[Mikee]

Calvin,

You are born with a will to live and innate awareness of some rules and the desire to learn others. It is not a game. Do you believe in evolution?

[BaalChatzaf]

Calvin,

You are born with a will to live and innate awareness of some rules and the desire to learn others. It is not a game. Do you believe in evolution?

I am a product of evolution. I have over 4 billion years of ancestors who lived long enough to reproduce their kind.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

... Alone on an island, you desperately need morality. But you do not need ethics. And social living allows us to live immorally, even if we behave ethically. ...

Help, help! What is the difference between morality and ethics?

Ba'al Chatzaf

See my discussion here:

http://www.objectivi...?showtopic=8715

Morality and Ethics

Started by Michael E. Marotta, May 29 2010 07:50 AM

Posted 29 May 2010 - 07:50 AM

Professional societies have codes of ethics. They do not propose codes of morality. While we often use the words interchangibly, we often distinguish between them. I seek to make them distinct on the basis that morality is personal, required for surviival qua human by nature and that ethics is social.

... The Latin word 'moralis' is a translation of the Greek 'ethikos': ...

I understand that. See the discussion link. We often use the words as synonyms, but often differently. Thus, an ambiguity exists. As with "selfishness" (or Byzantine) we commonly use words conveniently -- and with confusion.

But why would one need morality alone on an island? Imo in Rand's island example, what she calls 'morality', is more something like 'survival skills'.

Yes, indeed! Morality is required for human survival. You need to understand Ayn Rand on this point. As with "selfishness" and "capitalism" you cannot just take the common notions. Morality is required by the nature of choice. Every human choice is an answer to a question: Right or wrong? Granted, that the answer can be subjective, even trivial: chocolate versus vanilla. Still, given your preferences, one is right and the other wrong. More to the point, of course, serious consequences hang on choices of right and wrong. As Rand said about the girders at the Rearden Mills: each one was placed in answer to a single question: Right or wrong? Engineering is morality.

Alone on an island, you make moral choices - and your survival hangs in the balance.

Actually, being in society allows us to act immorally, to offload the consequences of our bad choices on to others.

Rather than hash it out here, go to the discussion here on Morality and Ethics.

[Dglgmut]

Calvin,

You are born with a will to live and innate awareness of some rules and the desire to learn others. It is not a game. Do you believe in evolution?

What I mean is that we want objective goals; we want to know that we are doing the right thing. We like to play games because there are clear rules, and objective goals.

Many people don't believe there are any objective goals in life, and I am just thinking that that may be the root of the moral dilemma.

[anthony]

Calvin,

You are born with a will to live and innate awareness of some rules and the desire to learn others. It is not a game. Do you believe in evolution?

What I mean is that we want objective goals; we want to know that we are doing the right thing. We like to play games because there are clear rules, and objective goals.

Many people don't believe there are any objective goals in life, and I am just thinking that that may be the root of the moral dilemma.

Calvin, Mikee is pointing the right way, I think. The rules of existence can only be taken from the nature of existence. (And man's nature.)

Which is what makes Objectivism so singular.

Your second sentence is the problem, (the "challenge") and quite true.

There's the rub.

Essentially, either individually, or as an abstract group, Objectivists are living by different "rules" to most people around them.

Does this put us at an advantage - or a disadvantage - or both, at varying times?

[Dglgmut]

No, I think that people do not know that there are rules. Like the children who want boundaries, adults still need to know there is an objective right or wrong, or else they will have problems too.

It starts with the needs of a person; honestly think people can live without really understanding that they have needs, even though they'd label them as needs, they wouldn't consider what it really means. For this reason they feel they don't have responsibility... and this may be the real thing, here. We need to know we have responsibility for ourselves. Before being independent we have to know that there's a job for us to do, for ourselves.

Objectivists are not playing by different rules, they are playing by the rules, whereas most other people don't think there are rules (amorality). I use "Objectivists" loosely there, as I assume you did.

[Peter]

whNOT wrote:

Essentially, either individually, or as an abstract group, Objectivists are living by different "rules" to most people around them . . . Does this put us at an advantage - or a disadvantage - or both, at varying times?

end quote

Much of the *human universe* is causal, some is volitional, and a bit is also random. Complicating the issue of optimistic human interaction is the fact that some irrational behaviors can be short termed and are not inherited by future generations. So a very rational human being can be harmed by a mystic or a brute. I despair at times when looking at the entire world, because so many individual humans are irrational - at so many levels. And institutionalized irrationality such as insufferably, murderous religiosity abounds. Is it possible we will return to a primeval state, not through a cataclysm but through human irrationality? Yes. And two examples are North Korea and the European Dark Ages.

Ba'al Chatzaf wrote:

I am a product of evolution. I have over 4 billion years of ancestors who lived long enough to reproduce their kind.

end quote

Not so fast you guys. What evolutionary created, mental traits are induced by your physical traits? Remember - in evolution, beneficial, RANDOM mutations interact with the physical environment to hardwire inheritable traits. There is a lot of *random chance* involved.

Can Volition, involving limited or no randomness, alter our mental evolution in any way? I caution philosophical Determinists to NOT give me their knee jerk, determined response because the evidence is that hard and soft determinists are ten percent wrong. The proof is in what (infamously) used to be called eugenics. Humans have the ability to alter their genes so that future offspring pass down those created, beneficial genes. During this *selective breeding process* random mutations would be mostly secondary to planned mutations. These “planned mutations” are volitionally induced and are not mentally determined.

Peter Taylor

Notes: An old letter of mine and for fun, and especially for whNOT, a chestnut from the lovely Barbara Branden. No one is under any obligation to reread the following or to comment upon it.

“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”

Ray Bradbury

“The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.”

Arthur C. Clarke

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”

Norman Vincent Peale

Is Volition Axiomatic? When you wake up in the morning do you initiate thinking or do you wake up thinking? I wake up thinking. Sometimes, I am still in the logic of a dream. As the dream dissipates I start going through “thinking options,” and then I may choose to rouse up and think.

If volition is axiomatic it must be "perceived or experienced directly, but grasped conceptually." And volition is perceived and experienced directly, but grasped conceptually.

Yet, in ITOE, Chapter Six, Ayn Rand named only three axiomatic concepts, Existence, Identity, and Consciousness. She discussed their nature, role, and importance in establishing the foundations of an objective epistemology in general and in her Objectivist Philosophy specifically. They are "irreducible primaries . . . . perceived or experienced directly, but grasped conceptually. They are implicit in every state of awareness, from the first sensation to the first percept to the sum of all concepts."

end quote

Thinking may be our normal and natural state when we leave the "sleep state." To *not* think may require an act of will, IF our subconscious has been programmed to initiate thinking upon waking. Consider thinking at this sleepy level as natural to our evolutionary nature as creatures who might be killed and eaten at any moment, if we were not wary. Sleep is necessary, but surrendering our consciousness to regenerate our bodies and minds, is enough to cause nightmares. So, sleep lightly little primate.

The closest a human can come to this primordial state might be in any “escape from harm” or in an armed conflict when we wake up in the morning - looking without moving - straining to hear a sound - sniffing the air - before we move a muscle.

But beyond the subconscious musings of our mind and its ability to program our initiation of thought upon waking, we then advance further up the slope of reason. Let me ramble some more.

Proponent of Axiomatic Volition Ellen Moore once wrote:

"Volition is the human attribute that regulates the precondition of actions that achieve conscious awareness in order to think - either keenly in focus, or lowered in passivity, or in evasion . . . . The human method of acquiring conceptualization is the work of reasoning by means of applying volitional actions to abstract awareness, thought and logic."

Would you agree with this formulation? Ergo:

1) Existence exists. (Existence)

2) I am conscious and experience existence, As a Human. (Consciousness)

3) As a Human, I raise my awareness beyond the sensory, perceptual level. (Volition)

4) My volitionally raised mental state Identifies existents within existence. I am I. A is A. (Identity)

Contrarily: as George H. Smith has observed the validity of Volition hinges on both philosophical and scientific claims. Does this remove it from axiom status?

On page 55 of "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," Ayn Rand writes that axiomatic concepts are:

"The identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest."

end quote

So, in a sense, if someone disagrees with a proposed axiom and it requires further explanation, or you cannot point to it and say, "There it is," then it is not an axiom. It that sense, volition and causality MAY not be axioms, but could be corollaries.

Before I give demonstrations or examples for Causality and Volition, I want you to remember the Dictionary, the Randian, and Ellen Moore's definitions of Volition. Perhaps Dgig can supply us with a Scientific definition of Volition and always let us know if he is using it.

the dictionary definitions:

"Volition:

1) an act of making a choice or decision,

2) the power of choosing or determining: Will."

Volition, in the most common Objectivist definition, as Barbara Branden once said, means that we can raise or lower our level of "conscious awareness," at will.

Ellen Moore provided this Objectivist definition:

"Volition- a primary attribute of human consciousness given the power to initiate and sustain actions and operations regulating functions of awareness."

A demonstration for each position might be:

Causality: A bright light shines and twinkles, and a tiny bell rings, just above a baby's crib, as a newly installed mobile revolves just within the babies reach. The baby watches the phenomena and is fascinated with the light and sound. Eventually the baby reaches up to touch it. The twinkling, ringing, revolving light causes the baby to be aware of the object. The baby was caused to reach for the light during an act akin to that of somnambulism (an abnormal condition of sleep in which motor acts are performed.) When the agent causing the act of awareness and reaching, is removed from the baby's sight, the baby resumes a sleepy, twilight state of awareness. This is a basic stimulus / response seen everywhere in the animal kingdom.

Volition: A bright light shines and twinkles, and a tiny bell rings, just above a baby's crib, as a newly installed mobile revolves just within the babies reach. The baby watches the phenomena and is fascinated with the light and sound. Eventually the baby reaches up to touch it. The twinkling, ringing, revolving light causes the baby to be aware of the object, but now the baby is grasping at the light and sound and thinking about it. Thought is a Volitional activity. Now, perhaps two mobiles are presented to the baby, and the baby chooses one of the objects to focus on or grasp. Then, the baby has used the dictionary's definition of choosing between alternatives. What if both mobiles are now taken away from the baby, and the baby cries. You, the parent / scientist try to figure out what the baby wants. Eventually, through an "informed" trial and error (not hungry, not wet, does not want to be held) you realize the baby wants the mobiles placed above it again. When they are again placed above the baby, the baby stops crying. The baby has now Volitionally chosen a stimulus. The baby chooses and plays with one of the mobiles. It volitionally raises its consciousness and thinks about how this object is different from the other mobile and different from all the other objects it has seen.

From OPAR:

"Thought is a volitional activity. The steps of its course are not forced on man by his nature or by external reality; they are chosen. Some choices are obviously better - more productive of cognitive success - than others. The point is that, whether right or wrong, the direction taken *is* a matter of choice, not of necessity.

The choices involved in performing a thought process are different in an important respect from the primary choice. These higher-level choices, as we may call them, are not irreducible. In their case it is legitimate to ask, in regard both to end and means: *why* did the individual choose as he did? What was the *cause* of his choice? Often, the cause involves several factors, including the individual's values and interests, his knowledge of a given subject, the new evidence available to him, and his knowledge of the proper methods of thinking.

The principle of causality does not apply to consciousness, however, in the same way that it applies to matter. In regard to matter, there is no issue of choice; to be caused is to be necessitated. In regard to the (higher level) actions of a volitional consciousness, however, "to be caused" does not mean "to be necessitated." OPAR

Adding Volition as an axiom, means I can point to myself thinking as an example of my volition, or I can view the affects of an act of volition, such as fluffing my pillow to my satisfaction, before I become non-volitional for a few hours.

I don't know. It’s debatable. I guess Volition is a corollary of Consciousness. Could designer genes create John Galt? Would most Objectivists want to?

From Barbara Branden to atlantis@wetheliving.com 3/10/2001

Re: ATL: RE Godlike‏

My own difficulty with John Galt is not that one COULD NOT be like him, in essence -- that is, a person of great accomplishment who embodies the Objectivist virtues, the apotheosis of the human potential -- but that in certain respects one SHOULD NOT be like him. Galt, like Howard Roark and like Rearden, (Francisco is the exception to this) is a man who deals with people, even people whom he loves, in an almost totally cerebral way; one knows by other means that he is a man of great emotional passion, but one sees it only in his sexual encounter with Dagny. One understands deductively the passionate commitment that has driven him all the years of his strike, but one rarely hears it in his words.

I believe that the emotional repression of Ayn Rand's heroic male characters is one of the reasons that so many of her admirers came to see repression almost as a virtue and not to fight it in themselves.

Ayn Rand further buttressed this error in her male characters by having her people make remarks to the effect that they would never allow a woman they love to see them in pain. This was Rand's own philosophy; she told me that when she first had met Frank O'Connor, she did not tell him of all the miserable and mindless jobs she had to work at -- because she never wanted to face him in pain. It seemed she felt that to show her suffering to the man she loved would be the equivalent of demanding his help, even his pity. Why she believed that, I do not know. And perhaps it was all the hidden and repressed pain in her life that caused her, in later years, to talk about little except her suffering.

Barbara

[Dglgmut]

From Barbara Branden to atlantis@wetheliving.com 3/10/2001

Re: ATL: RE Godlike‏

My own difficulty with John Galt is not that one COULD NOT be like him, in essence -- that is, a person of great accomplishment who embodies the Objectivist virtues, the apotheosis of the human potential -- but that in certain respects one SHOULD NOT be like him. Galt, like Howard Roark and like Rearden, (Francisco is the exception to this) is a man who deals with people, even people whom he loves, in an almost totally cerebral way; one knows by other means that he is a man of great emotional passion, but one sees it only in his sexual encounter with Dagny. One understands deductively the passionate commitment that has driven him all the years of his strike, but one rarely hears it in his words.

I believe that the emotional repression of Ayn Rand's heroic male characters is one of the reasons that so many of her admirers came to see repression almost as a virtue and not to fight it in themselves.

Ayn Rand further buttressed this error in her male characters by having her people make remarks to the effect that they would never allow a woman they love to see them in pain. This was Rand's own philosophy; she told me that when she first had met Frank O'Connor, she did not tell him of all the miserable and mindless jobs she had to work at -- because she never wanted to face him in pain. It seemed she felt that to show her suffering to the man she loved would be the equivalent of demanding his help, even his pity. Why she believed that, I do not know. And perhaps it was all the hidden and repressed pain in her life that caused her, in later years, to talk about little except her suffering.

Barbara

That's interesting, because in an interview Rand said herself that repressing emotions is a weakness... they were talking about athletes openly celebrating success, if that rings any bells.

I think Barbara was right, and yet Rand contradicted herself.

[Mikee]

Calvin,

You are born with a will to live and innate awareness of some rules and the desire to learn others. It is not a game. Do you believe in evolution?

What I mean is that we want objective goals; we want to know that we are doing the right thing. We like to play games because there are clear rules, and objective goals.

Many people don't believe there are any objective goals in life, and I am just thinking that that may be the root of the moral dilemma.

These people could live a thousand years and still be children. Because they've never had to be adults. Perhaps modern science and technology and a free society has created an abundance that has insulated too many from real life and prevented their maturing into adults. Perhaps that abundance will end if and when our free society ends and the children will wake up.

[Dglgmut]

Well, as they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." But more than that, necessity is the mother of discovery. So I agree.

But what do they have to discover, exactly? Is it that they are not fulfilling their obligation to themselves, or is it, more specifically, that they do not identify themselves with their bodies, and therefor do not identify with the needs of their bodies... until, of course, it gets really bad (a wake up call)?

I think self-identification is problematic for most people: it can be easy to forget the way in which we exist when we are not getting enough reminders from our bodies (hunger, pain, fear).

[Mikee]

Hunger, pain and fear are the great teachers (perhaps the only ones) of dull minds.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

Search for meaning and/or settling on it is, also, one of the greatest teachers of all, even of dull minds.

People generally find meaning in the stories that are told in the tribes or societies they belong to (especially the stories in the respective religions and/or philosophies), but unfortunately, many stop their search right there. At a certain point in adulthood, they settle on a core story (and accompanying body of ancillary stories), declare to themselves the meaning of my life is there, and close the door on all further inner meaning-related doubts.

From then on, they don't question the stories, but at least they learn their moral lessons from them. And some practical lessons, too. A whole professional class exists to tell them the hidden meanings in these stories. Such folks are generally called preachers or the Holy Ones, but they can also be professors or gurus of some sort.

Michael

[Dglgmut]

Discovery fatigue...

[anthony]

Discovery fatigue...

I empathize...