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

[Brant Gaede]

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').

Or?

Everything is intellectually "negotiable." Consider all possible positions and their logical results to justify your statements. Logical real-life results or these are word salads. So what are they ref. each position? Thus we separate wheat from chaff.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Re #249:

I finally figured out about NB's review. It doesn't pertain to Lorenz' On Aggression but to a book called Man and Aggression, ed. by Ashley Montague.

Link to a review in American Anthropologist by Weston La Barre. The subject of the book is Ardrey and Morris and the "killer ape" hypothesis.

The link doesn't work going through OL. I suppose it worked on my search because that was going through UHa's server.

Looks like the book isn't still in print.

More tomorrow.

Ellen

PS: Yes, I know of Bonnie and Clyde. I didn't know Bonnie's last name and still don't know Clyde's.

[Ellen Stuttle]

What [NB] gave you was his evaluation of Lorenz-Ardrey more than [that of the "fourteen scientists"]. They got a collective pat on the back, I guess for agreeing with his own position.

Brant,

I'd like more information on NB's review. Does he specifically mention Lorenz?

Lorenz isn't to be blamed for Ardrey, who came up with the thesis that it was having a weapon in hand which spurred the development of "the big brain."

African Genesis, the book in which Ardrey presented this thesis, was published in 1961. Konrad Lorenz' On Aggression was published in German in 1963 and in English in 1966.

The issue of "open instinct," in regard to which I mentioned Lorenz, isn't the same issue as that of whether the pre-human ancestors of humans developed an instinct to kill other humans, which is what Ardrey proposed.

I read Ardrey's book not long after it was published. It was the book that got me back into being able to read novels after Atlas. I'd read Atlas, except not the whole of Galt's Speech, in June 1961. (I read the rest of the speech that summer.) On returning to school in the fall, I just couldn't get into any of the novels I tried to read. They weren't "big" enough. African Genesis, which is told in novelistic fashion, bridged the gap.

I was very interested by what Ardrey conveyed of the paleoanthropologists who were digging up bones in Africa, in search of the human lineage.

The killer thesis, however, I thought obviously missed the actual important issue, that of making tools, of which weapons are but one type.

Regarding the book NB was reviewing, Man and Aggression, best I can tell so far, the "fourteen scientists" were anthropologists not biologists. Judging from the Weston La Barre review I tried to link in the post above, they accepted as likely the idea of an imprinting factor in human language acquisition.

Ellen

For easy finding, here's your initial post about NB's review:

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

[Ellen Stuttle]

I've been wanting to comment on a particular part of Tony's post #195.

Since Tony declined to fix that post by taking his reply out of the quote box headed by my name, I'm picking this up from my subsequent reposting (#208) with Tony's name affixed:

You showed how you selected your purpose and your values, and I don't see a strong departure from Objectivist ethics.

When I first read Galt's Speech in the summer of 1961, I thought that Rand's ethics was a grown-up formulation in the same vein as my little guidelines. I later concluded otherwise as I began to think that there was a discrepancy between Rand's statement, via Galt, of the purpose of her ethics - to teach you to live and enjoy yourself - and her working out of the specifics with the list of virtues.

It was the Ellen-consciousness that observed, that wanted, and aimed toward gaining the virtues and character required to earning and keeping your values.

I never thought in those terms. Nor are any of Atlas' fictional beings - heroic, villainous, mixed, or mixed-up - depicted as thinking in those terms, but instead as being directly value-oriented.

Later, when I got to know NYC-area Objectivists, I thought that an important factor in why their behavior so often seemed to me role-playing and stultified was their focusing on living virtuously. I was reminded of a similar pattern I'd observed when for a brief time (until I complained) I was sent to Bible-school classes. It's the behavior pattern I've elsewhere called "goody-goody church school."

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

You're hearing it doesn't make it true.

Grrr. I noticed that - "you're" instead of "your" - while looking for a post of Brant's. Too late to edit.

My Safari program has an inbuilt spell-fix feature, and if I don't watch carefully, it "corrects" words I type to an alternate spelling or even to a different word.

Ellen

Back to typing in more of my long-ago book sketch in awhile.

[Brant Gaede]

AA Book News

ISSUE NO. # 3

(1969)

p. 7

MAN AND AGGRESSION by M.F. Ashley Montagu

The religious doctrine of Original Sin has presented itself in many guises apart from the official Christian doctrine. One such guise is the Freudian theory of an inherited "Id." Another is the concept of man's "aggressive drive"--a twentieth century form of Augustinianism advanced by the eminent ethologist Konrad Lorenz ("On Aggression"), and popularized by such writers as Robert Ardrey ("African Genesis," "The Territorial Imperative"). This view of man as a "natural killer" has gained a wide degree of publicity and public acceptance.

In "Man and Aggression," edited by anthropologist Ashley Montagu, fourteen scientists in the fields of biology, anthropology, ethology, etc., undertake a devastating critique of the attempt to explain destructive aggressiveness in human beings by reference to instincts. In his Introduction, Professor Montagu quotes an Old English proverb, "Let him make use of instincts, who cannot make use of reason." Montagu's point is that the explanation via instincts represents the easy way out for theorists who do not care to inquire into the actual causes of behavior, or--in the case of human destructive aggressiveness--do not care to recognize that such a trait is acquired, is learned, and hence can be unlearned. [italics in original and all henceforth.]

Unfortunately (and incredibly), certain advocates of capitalism believe themselves to have found in the Lorenz-Ardrey doctrine a sanction and support for their own views concerning the importance of private property. And, predictably, some of the critics of the Lorenz-Ardey position are evidently of the anti-capitalist persuasion. But the political issue is totally irrelevant to this issue and should never have been raised by the "conservatives" in the first place. Their fascination with the Lorenz-Ardrey position is, if anything, an embarassment to rational defenders of capitalism.

What is important about "Man and Aggression" is that it provides valuable clarification concerning the untenability of recourse to instinct as a device of psychological explanation--and, in addition, by exposing the gaping loopholes, non sequiturs, and ignoring the contradictory evidence, in the Lorenz-Ardrey position, the book effectively refutes this latest version of Original Sin.

--Reviewed by Nathaniel Branden

[Ellen Stuttle]

Thanks a lot, Brant!

Yup, Nathaniel conflated Lorenz and Ardrey, and also got the sequence backward.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

You're hearing it doesn't make it true.

Grrr. I noticed that - "you're" instead of "your" - while looking for a post of Brant's. Too late to edit.

My Safari program has an inbuilt spell-fix feature, and if I don't watch carefully, it "corrects" words I type to an alternate spelling or even to a different word.

I've had a few of those issues lately too, but fortunately I've caught most of them before the edit window has closed. The interesting thing is that I find that I still fear Roland Pericles. I think of him every time that I reread a post of mine and discover an error. Especially the you're/your type.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think of [Roland Pericles] every time that I reread a post of mine and discover an error. Especially the you're/your type.

On noticing the error, I thought of Roland. Long shadows, that presence cast.

--

Other news: I ordered a copy of the 1968 paperback of Man and Aggression. I wasn't able to find a complete list of contributors, and I'm curious to see who all they were. And what they were saying forty-five years ago. Times have changed since then in views of professional researchers on how much animal carried over into "rational animal" post the evolution of the current human body and brain.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

I think of [Roland Pericles] every time that I reread a post of mine and discover an error. Especially the you're/your type.

On noticing the error, I thought of Roland. Long shadows, that presence cast.

--

Other news: I ordered a copy of the 1968 paperback of Man and Aggression. I wasn't able to find a complete list of contributors, and I'm curious to see who all they were. And what they were saying forty-five years ago. Times have changed since then in views of professional researchers on how much animal carried over into "rational animal" post the evolution of the current human body and brain.

Ellen

For the record: I'm all animal.

--Brant

I use the wolf as my role model, but I don't hunt in packs

[caroljane]

Any particular wolf you emulate? Jack London's or Farley Mowat's maybe? Aha I knew it you are a Closet Canadian in deep denial and an errant son of the Sacred Igloo!

[Brant Gaede]

Any particular wolf you emulate? Jack London's or Farley Mowat's maybe? Aha I knew it you are a Closet Canadian in deep denial and an errant son of the Sacred Igloo!

Russian sleigh ride wolf.

--Brant

go ahead--go on one

[anthony]

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').

Or?

Everything is intellectually "negotiable." Consider all possible positions and their logical results to justify your statements. Logical real-life results or these are word salads. So what are they ref. each position? Thus we separate wheat from chaff.

--Brant

I think the consequences of entertaining a mind-body breach: metaphysically, we can create a false dichotomy between man's biological nature and his metaphysical nature; ethically, it may lead to a false dichotomy between 'the moral' and 'the practical'; and psychologically, the result is probably self-alienation.

[Brant Gaede]

Self-alienation means too much something/someone else: religion, state, la causa, the great leader, etc. It's displacement and few feel displaced thanks to their upbringing and education and taking the easy way for social being and placement. Oneself is a difficult fellow.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

The full Table of Contents is in post #150.

5. Heaven and Earth

A. Animals and "Howling Savages"

Is Rand aware that man evolved? If so, I haven't noticed it. She writes as if she

hadn't even heard of Darwin. Where did the big brain come from? How did it

get that way? What's the connection to our animal heritage? Volition just is,

that's all, and animals don't have it.

First, animals aren't the simple push-pull pleasure-pain mechanisms Rand makes

them out to be. See the studies of ethologists, for instance. Rand had formulated

her ideas about man and animal before the field of ethology was much known to

non-specialists, and her views about animal behavior might be considered unimportant

details - except: she draws a dichotomous contrast between man and animal, then

uses the contrast in formulating her notions of human mentality, thereby

introducing falseness into her picture of man.

Second, she displays little conception of cultural development with the result

that she's blatantly unfair to "howling savages" and, I might add, to the whole of

Eastern civilization.

Rand says, now and then, that there might be "some excuse for savages,"

they're like children and don't know any better. But other times she talks as

if, for instance, the American Indians could have developed the resources of

their habitats the way the European settlers did, had the Indians "chosen to think."

Also, in her denunciations of "tribalism," she again displays lack of awareness

of where the human came from. Humans evolved from social simian ancestry,

and the social group provided as much a "tool of survival" as did reason

(using her terminology, although I don't like it). A pre-hominid or hominid alone

on the Pleistocene savannah was soon a dead animal, not better off than such

a creature living without the social group.

Third, Rand's lack of understanding of cultural development is a factor in

another blind spot: her myopic view of the current scene. I think that Rand,

modified, has much to offer the "hippies" she so decries, if but she and they

both knew it. I doubt that she'll ever find out, but I think that the counter-culture

folk might become influenced by Rand, though in ways she wouldn't

necessarily recognize or like.

[to be continued]

===

Ellen

[caroljane]

Are the Pussy Rioters spiritual granddaughters of Rand?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Are the Pussy Rioters spiritual granddaughters of Rand?

I don't know. I don't know who they are. But I sure did think that the Age of Aquarius-ers could have found some kinship with Rand if they but knew it. And dare I say? - don't make too much of this, folks - Rand was born during the zodiacal period which is called "Aquarius" (it isn't actually "in" that "constellation" sidereally, but the old designations are kept in what's called zodiacal astrology).

Ellen

[caroljane]

Never mess with the Zohar, let alone with Zodiac! \I love it! and especially enjoy when you are frivolous, Ellen. I bet if things had been different back then you could have got Rand to loosen up.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I bet if things had been different back then you could have got Rand to loosen up.

I did get her to loosen up once, without a word being said.

It was at one of the New York courses post-break. I sat at those lectures with a friend of mine who would get there early and save me a seat next to his in the row in front of the one reserved for Rand and her cohort. Sometimes before the lecture started and during the break, I would be busy copy editing a manuscript or reading page proofs. A couple times I heard Rand comment to Edith Packer that I looked interesting, so I know she was aware of which person I was.

One time I was arriving at the lecture room just slightly behind her. The doorway was wide. As I was passing to her right, this artsy type woman who would sometimes approach Rand and gush was making an approach from the seating area to Rand's left.

I noticed Rand's slight flinch of preparation for the unwelcome, so I gave her a big grin of amusement. She did a mock grimace and semi-wink in return.

I didn't tarry to watch what happened next, but it didn't take long, whatever it was, since Rand arrived at her seat soon - not more than a minute, I estimated - after I arrived at mine.

I remember thinking that night that she could probably be fun in the right circumstances - but that probably those circumstances didn't often happen.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

The full Table of Contents is in post #150.

5. Heaven and Earth

A. Animals and "Howling Savages"

Is Rand aware that man evolved? If so, I haven't noticed it. She writes as if she

hadn't even heard of Darwin. Where did the big brain come from? How did it

get that way? What's the connection to our animal heritage? Volition just is,

that's all, and animals don't have it.

First, animals aren't the simple push-pull pleasure-pain mechanisms Rand makes

them out to be. See the studies of ethologists, for instance. Rand had formulated

her ideas about man and animal before the field of ethology was much known to

non-specialists, and her views about animal behavior might be considered unimportant

details - except: she draws a dichotomous contrast between man and animal, then

uses the contrast in formulating her notions of human mentality, thereby

introducing falseness into her picture of man.

Second, she displays little conception of cultural development with the result

that she's blatantly unfair to "howling savages" and, I might add, to the whole of

Eastern civilization.

Rand says, now and then, that there might be "some excuse for savages,"

they're like children and don't know any better. But other times she talks as

if, for instance, the American Indians could have developed the resources of

their habitats the way the European settlers did, had the Indians "chosen to think."

Also, in her denunciations of "tribalism," she again displays lack of awareness

of where the human came from. Humans evolved from social simian ancestry,

and the social group provided as much a "tool of survival" as did reason

(using her terminology, although I don't like it). A pre-hominid or hominid alone

on the Pleistocene savannah was soon a dead animal, not better off than such

a creature living without the social group.

Third, Rand's lack of understanding of cultural development is a factor in

another blind spot: her myopic view of the current scene. I think that Rand,

modified, has much to offer the "hippies" she so decries, if but she and they

both knew it. I doubt that she'll ever find out, but I think that the counter-culture

folk might become influenced by Rand, though in ways she wouldn't

necessarily recognize or like.

[to be continued]

===

Ellen

She did heroic and magnificent work with what she had and if she was still deficient 31 years after her death it's on us, not her.

--Brant

this doesn't mean she's not to be analysized or figured out, accepted or rejected, in whole or in part, so I'm not knocking Ellen for doing what I do

[Brant Gaede]

I bet if things had been different back then you could have got Rand to loosen up.

I did get her to loosen up once, without a word being said.

It was at one of the New York courses post-break. I sat at those lectures with a friend of mine who would get there early and save me a seat next to his in the row in front of the one reserved for Rand and her cohort. Sometimes before the lecture started and during the break, I would be busy copy editing a manuscript or reading page proofs. A couple times I heard Rand comment to Edith Packer that I looked interesting, so I know she was aware of which person I was.

One time I was arriving at the lecture room just slightly behind her. The doorway was wide. As I was passing to her right, this artsy type woman who would sometimes approach Rand and gush was making an approach from the seating area to Rand's left.

I noticed Rand's slight flinch of preparation for the unwelcome, so I gave her a big grin of amusement. She did a mock grimace and semi-wink in return.

I didn't tarry to watch what happened next, but it didn't take long, whatever it was, since Rand arrived at her seat soon - not more than a minute, I estimated - after I arrived at mine.

I remember thinking that night that she could probably be fun in the right circumstances - but that probably those circumstances didn't often happen.

Ellen

I had a phone conversation with Barbara Branden when she was researching her Rand bio and I told her apropos my feelings toward Rand how much love I felt for her and Barbara replied that she did too. Ellen's story is illustrative of such. Frankly, too much Nathaniel Branden got between her and the world, IMHO.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] Frankly, too much Nathaniel Branden got between [Rand] and the world, IMHO.

Brant

I started to think that in my earliest reading of material in The Objectivist Newletter, in late spring 1963.

I had the wish that I could rescue her from Nathaniel. I remember thinking about that wish as I drove across country from the Midwest to NYC at the start of September 1968. This was shortly after the break, which I didn't know had happened until I was told when I went to the NBI offices to see what courses might be offered that fall. My first thought on being told that there'd been a break was "Oh, good, she's seen through him." Then when I read TWIMC, I was horrified by her publishing that and I ended up in a position of somewhat defending Nathaniel, saying that "Even the Devil deserves a fair trial." What a mess.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I just discovered, or rediscovered, that Richard E. Rubenstein, who wrote Aristotle's Children, also wrote a book called When Jesus Became God. Fun parallelism to my long-ago title The Woman Who Became God.

Rubenstein's book about Jesus was mentioned on this board September 18, 2010, by Ninth Doctor - see - but I'd forgotten.

I rediscovered the parallelism because Larry has been looking up some passages in Aristotle's Children and he left that book sitting on the dining room table last night and I noticed the "By the author of" line on the front cover.

Ellen

[caroljane]

In the next post I'll copy a passage which both briefly touches on the issue of The Word becoming Christ and indicates Ehrman's view on the question of Jesus' historic existence.

There's quite a few talks by Ehrman on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbpUNLBJDjI

I've read Misquoting Jesus and a couple others by him. He did one recently that purports to disprove the 'mythicist' claim that there was no historical Jesus, and while I'm quite ambivalent on the subject I thought that that book wasn't very good.

Misquoting, my shinpad. He is obviously air quoting here, in public, and must be taken into custody by the NO NRQQ.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Misquoting, my shinpad. He is obviously air quoting here, in public, and must be taken into custody by the NO NRQQ.

And then what? Have you rescinded your prescribed punishment? See. (If not, it's you who deserves the torments of the damned, though maybe I wouldn't go so far, though I'm tempted to, as to suggest burning at the stake.)

Ellen