"In the beginning..." (Christology and Randology)

[PDS]

That nonagenarian sounds like a dirty old man! I like that in a scientist.

Yes, first he would test you "with many instruments."

--Brant

kinky

Let's leave Selene out of this.

[caroljane]

No. It is possible to love another person more than you love yourself, but it is still yourself doing the loving.

With love being "Never self-less" - you agree. If I'd said "Always selfish" would you still agree?

[caroljane]

Tony,

Yes, I think I would agree.

Re your previous, I am not hiding! I just leave OL up on the screen so much I do not want to look like a moderator or Phantom of the OLera to lurkers. Just think of me as omnipresent. You know I can't go long without my OL fix.

Brant and PDS,

Yes, let us leave our friend out of it. Even he would draw the line at musical instruments, I'm pretty sure.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Tony,

Yes, I think I would agree.

I wouldn't.

Ellen

[anthony]

Tony,

Yes, I think I would agree.

Re your previous, I am not hiding! I just leave OL up on the screen so much I do not want to look like a moderator or Phantom of the OLera to lurkers. Just think of me as omnipresent. You know I can't go long without my OL fix.

Brant and PDS,

Got ya. I'll think of you as one of the Pop-Up Posters.

[anthony]

[...] beyond consciousness, and beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing.

There's a great deal which is "beyond" consciousness, in the sense of not being something of which one is or even can be directly conscious, but which isn't beyond being known. One hell of a lot of our scientific knowledge, for a big example.

Ellen

"...the capacity of one's consciousness?" #209

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] beyond consciousness, and beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing.

There's a great deal which is "beyond" consciousness, in the sense of not being something of which one is or even can be directly conscious, but which isn't beyond being known. One hell of a lot of our scientific knowledge, for a big example.

Ellen

"...the capacity of one's consciousness?" #209

Here's the full "package-deal" muddle you wrote in the post (#218) I quoted from [my emphasis].

I think the depth of love is beyond Rand's definitions of selfless and selfish.

Rand's definitions aside, is "never self-less" synonymous with "always selfish"? Yea or nay.

I don't see it possible to accept the first and reject the other.

If "the depth of love" is beyond 'self', it's therefore beyond consciousness, and beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing. So - something mystical, which by definition cannot be upheld as the ultimate state.

(I was meaning romantic love, but a mother's love applies as well. Instincts are knowable, too, as in Ellen's rambling tale.)

[emphasis added -ES]

To the extent there's "logic" in that, the implicit claim is that either one takes the position that every aspect of human behavior is "selfish" or one is being "mystical," your intermediary premise being that to say something is beyond "self" is to say that it's "beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing," i.e., anything which can be known or experienced is "self."

Rand, btw, held that there aren't instincts. You appear to be disagreeing, and to be claiming that instincts are "selfish." I.e., you end up, as in the case of "altruism," with a category so all-inclusive as to be useless for making distinctions.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Instincts: I'd guess for humans there is some kind of hard-wiring built into the brain which isn't knowledge, but channels and encourages certain actions and ways of being. Rand was seemingly oblivious to this possibility respecting instinctual behavior. Nathaniel Branden once said (or wrote) that "instinct" merely covered over ignorance, it explained what we couldn't yet explain.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Nathaniel Branden once said (or wrote) that "instinct" merely covered over ignorance, it explained what we couldn't yet explain.

He wrote that in an "Objectivist Newsletter" article titled, I think, "Does man possess instincts?" I might have posted the whole article on this board. I'll check in a bit.

Branden later changed his mind on the subject and accepted that the idea of "open instincts," as used in ethology, makes sense. I don't have documentation of what he said, although I had the piece once upon a time. It was a newsletter or something he sent out for awhile under Academic Associates auspices.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

A comment about the Objectivist meaning of "selfish." It's an alternate term for "rational self-interest."

This indicates chosen value, cognitive processing acquiring the value. According to Rand - see Galt's Speech - humans aren't even born with such a thing as "an instinct of self-preservation" - a mushy notion, I grant. Nonetheless, Rand's statements on the subject are indicative.

Ellen

[caroljane]

How sad that she suffered such tortures in rationalizating her own natural instincts re the NB relationship, into logical moral judgments.

[Brant Gaede]

Nathaniel Branden once said (or wrote) that "instinct" merely covered over ignorance, it explained what we couldn't yet explain.

He wrote that in an "Objectivist Newsletter" article titled, I think, "Does man possess instincts?" I might have posted the whole article on this board. I'll check in a bit.

Branden later changed his mind on the subject and accepted that the idea of "open instincts," as used in ethology, makes sense. I don't have documentation of what he said, although I had the piece once upon a time. It was a newsletter or something he sent out for awhile under Academic Associates auspices.

Ellen

It was probably in AA's quarterly "Book News" as part of a book review he wrote. I think I have all of them. If I knew the issue I'd look it up for you. Just the year would be a big help.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

It was probably in AA's quarterly "Book News" as part of a book review he wrote. I think I have all of them. If I knew the issue I'd look it up for you. Just the year would be a big help.

I think I have a vague recollection that it was in '85 or '86, since it seems to me that it was here in Connecticut that I read it. But I'm really vague about it.

Maybe in a review of one of Koestler's books?

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

It was probably in AA's quarterly "Book News" as part of a book review he wrote. I think I have all of them. If I knew the issue I'd look it up for you. Just the year would be a big help.

I think I have a vague recollection that it was in '85 or '86, since it seems to me that it was here in Connecticut that I read it. But I'm really vague about it.

Maybe in a review of one of Koestler's books?

Ellen

AA went out of business in 1973.

--Brant

I'll go look

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't find anything on this board where I posted or even quoted from NB's "Newsletter" piece about instincts.

To my surprise, I only find 11 posts by me, prior to this one, in which I use the word "instinct" or "instincts."

A couple of the posts I found have directly relevant material.

One, on a thread titled "MQM," quotes extensively from Galt's Speech pertaining to the nature of man.

Link to the full post (#45 on the thread).

Here's Rand as Galt speaking:

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. [....] Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

[....]

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice--and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man--by choice; he has to hold his life as a value--by choice; he has to learn to sustain it--by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues--by choice.

I see no room for a mother-protecting-child instinct in that.

Here's something from a way-back post of mine, #43 on a thread titled "Social Metaphysics."

At the time when I wrote this, April 26, 2006, I was hoping soon to depart from posting anywhere on discussion boards.

[bracketed insert added, and bold emphasis added]

I didn't, and don't, believe [in the reality of what's meant by] the idea of "social metaphysics" developed from the theme of The Fountainhead. Consider what the idea literally would mean, someone who substitutes other people's opinions for assessing reality: Are we talking about needing a "seeing eye" person to tell the "social metaphysician," for instance, whether a stop light is red or green? The supposed defining characteristic isn't something I can recognize as what I call in categorizations of psychological terminology "a real."

Which isn't to say that giving too much weight to what others think isn't a real. Etc., etc. But I see no unifying "syndrome" or "condition."

On the other hand, I think it's a truth of significant importance to understanding human behavior that we are evolved from a social-simian line. And that for humans, along with other social animals, the group is an essential feature even of who we are. A solitary cat is no trouble to picture. A solitary social-simian is a dead animal, in the majority of cases -- at least until adulthood. Humans couldn't even survive to adulthood without being cared for. Nor would they learn language. (Yes, I think the ability to form language and the impetus to do so is an "instinct" in a sense, but one which requires being taught at least minimally to develop -- what Konrad Lorenz called an "open" instinct.)

I guess my fundamental point here is that I think -- rather along similar lines to MSK's explorings with the "child in the wilderness" hypothesized scene -- that the importance of "others" to the human being isn't, and maybe can't be, properly addressed within an Objectivist framework.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Book News issue #3 (1969)

Review of Man and Agression

"... fourteen scientists . . . undertake a devastating critique of the attempt to explain destructive aggressiveness in human beings by reference to instincts....'Let him make use of instincts who cannot make use of reason.'"

The idea is man is not a natural born but learned killer.

Nathaniel Branden

--Brant

I'll kept reading

[caroljane]

Re Ellen's instinctual experience - I was surprised to hear that St Bernards are volatile,I had thought of them as man's bff!

Labs are the perfect protector/pets for kids from Day 1.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Re Ellen's instinctual experience - I was surprised to hear that St Bernards are volatile,I had thought of them as man's bff!

Labs are the perfect protector/pets for kids from Day 1.

You're hearing it doesn't make it true. Brant said that someone told him that. First I've ever heard such a statement made. Which doesn't mean that the statement isn't true.

I recommend some research.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Book News issue #3 (1969)

Review of Man and Agression

"... fourteen scientists . . . undertake a devastating critique of the attempt to explain destructive aggressiveness in human beings by reference to instincts....'Let him make use of instincts who cannot make use of reason.'"

The idea is man is not a natural born but learned killer.

Nathaniel Branden

--Brant

I'll kept reading

I think that On Aggression well deserves destructive critique. The reasoning in that book is poor. Indeed, Konrad Lorenz' facile extrapolation from animal behavior, especially that of his greylag geese, to human behavior is generally poor. Doesn't invalidate the idea of "open instinct." I'm not actually sure who coined the term. Haven't time to look into it now. Sunday.

Ellen

[anthony]

[...] beyond consciousness, and beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing.

There's a great deal which is "beyond" consciousness, in the sense of not being something of which one is or even can be directly conscious, but which isn't beyond being known. One hell of a lot of our scientific knowledge, for a big example.

Ellen

"...the capacity of one's consciousness?" #209

Here's the full "package-deal" muddle you wrote in the post (#218) I quoted from [my emphasis].

I think the depth of love is beyond Rand's definitions of selfless and selfish.

Rand's definitions aside, is "never self-less" synonymous with "always selfish"? Yea or nay.

I don't see it possible to accept the first and reject the other.

If "the depth of love" is beyond 'self', it's therefore beyond consciousness, and beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing. So - something mystical, which by definition cannot be upheld as the ultimate state.

(I was meaning romantic love, but a mother's love applies as well. Instincts are knowable, too, as in Ellen's rambling tale.)

[emphasis added -ES]

To the extent there's "logic" in that, the implicit claim is that either one takes the position that every aspect of human behavior is "selfish" or one is being "mystical," your intermediary premise being that to say something is beyond "self" is to say that it's "beyond the faculty of knowing and experiencing," i.e., anything which can be known or experienced is "self."

Rand, btw, held that there aren't instincts. You appear to be disagreeing, and to be claiming that instincts are "selfish." I.e., you end up, as in the case of "altruism," with a category so all-inclusive as to be useless for making distinctions.

Ellen

You seem to think I believe everything Rand wrote and said is Gospel.

Anyhow, I'm not so sure she said there were no instincts, it is their irrationality and inefficacy she mostly points at.

You appear to be always playing both ends against the middle: citing Rand's authority when it suits you, but equally, dismissing her concepts( her "sweeping assertions") when it suits you too.

This is a sophomoric, Sophist trick to 'win' arguments.

The "category" is "self", and all that it entails. Do you know a way to separate self from consciousness?

[Brant Gaede]

Book News issue #3 (1969)

Review of Man and Agression

"... fourteen scientists . . . undertake a devastating critique of the attempt to explain destructive aggressiveness in human beings by reference to instincts....'Let him make use of instincts who cannot make use of reason.'"

The idea is man is not a natural born but learned killer.

Nathaniel Branden

--Brant

I'll kept reading

I think that On Aggression well deserves destructive critique. The reasoning in that book is poor. Indeed, Konrad Lorenz' facile extrapolation from animal behavior, especially that of his greylag geese, to human behavior is generally poor. Doesn't invalidate the idea of "open instinct." I'm not actually sure who coined the term. Haven't time to look into it now. Sunday.

Ellen

Never read the book; never will. 14 authors!? Thanks, but no thanks, NB.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand, btw, held that there aren't instincts. You appear to be disagreeing, and to be claiming that instincts are "selfish." I.e., you end up, as in the case of "altruism," with a category so all-inclusive as to be useless for making distinctions.Ellen

You seem to think I believe everything Rand wrote and said is Gospel.

Anyhow, I'm not so sure she said there were no instincts, it is their irrationality and inefficacy she mostly points at.

No, I don't think that you believe that everything Rand wrote and said is Gospel. However, you do appear to be radically departing from her view on instincts.

See.

The "category" is "self", and all that it entails. Do you know a way to separate self from consciousness?

Are you claiming that no other animals besides humans are conscious? Or that all other animals which are conscious experience a "self"? Or just what?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Never read the book; never will. 14 authors!? Thanks, but no thanks, NB.

Huh? The "fourteen scientists" to whom NB referred were presumably reviewing Konrad Lorenz' On Aggression - whether together or separately isn't clear from your quote of NB.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Never read the book; never will. 14 authors!? Thanks, but no thanks, NB.

Huh? The "fourteen scientists" to whom NB referred were presumably reviewing Konrad Lorenz' On Aggression - whether together or separately isn't clear from your quote of NB.

Ellen

They are "together" in the book, but they must have written separate articles. I might read it now on further consideration. I got the impression NB's was a hurried-up review for he didn't consider or evaluate any of the authors separately. What he gave you was his evaluation of Lorenz-Ardrey more than theirs. They got a collective pat on the back, I guess for agreeing with his own position. That's confirmation bias to some extent. However, humans, especially males, are wired, nature made, to hunt, fight and defend. That that is basically learned behavior is a joke. What is learned is piled on top of that and integrated with that. Of this Nathaniel here seems oblivious, but I doubt he would argue the point face to face. That's just his inadequate reviewing IMHO. I think he was still deep into his impatience in which he saw everything around him moving with great slowness and it's reflected in this short piece. If I ever get a chance to talk to him again, I'm going to ask him if he's still impatient in a general way. He didn't seem impatient a year ago, but that's not necessarily the same thing.

--Brant

you don't know Bonnie Parker (see that other thread)?--wow!--she looked great with her shotgun!

[anthony]

Rand, btw, held that there aren't instincts. You appear to be disagreeing, and to be claiming that instincts are "selfish." I.e., you end up, as in the case of "altruism," with a category so all-inclusive as to be useless for making distinctions.Ellen

You seem to think I believe everything Rand wrote and said is Gospel.

Anyhow, I'm not so sure she said there were no instincts, it is their irrationality and inefficacy she mostly points at.

No, I don't think that you believe that everything Rand wrote and said is Gospel. However, you do appear to be radically departing from her view on instincts.

See.

The "category" is "self", and all that it entails. Do you know a way to separate self from consciousness?

Are you claiming that no other animals besides humans are conscious? Or that all other animals which are conscious experience a "self"? Or just what?

Ellen

I'm saying that mind-body unity is not negotiable. Whatever comes under the purview of the self-aware, rational animal -everything observable and introspectible- has to be recognised and admitted (as integral part of his consciousness and his totality of 'self').