Mess or Masterpiece?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony,

You wouldn't believe the acrimony this discussion caused against people who essentially said what you just said.

Michael

[moralist]

Michael writes:

Even Greg, for as religious as he is, doesn't show signs of "mystery-mystique-mysticism" view of art.

Ah, but I have wild-eyed totally mystical view of economics ... and attribute my fiscal well being to discerning the signs of the times so as to avoid stepping into the bottomless pits. Nassim Taleb refers to it as not being a sucker.

Greg

[anthony]

It doesn't surprise any more that many don't want to be liberated from the mystery-mystique-mysticism of art.

The 'out-of-body transcendental' feeling, experiencing art sometimes, is responsible for this, I think. What Rand did is bring it within the full reach of man's consciousness (and one man's mind). Therefore, she in fact elevated art along with man's mind, giving it clarity and importance, but is instead seen to have adulterated it and dictated to it - for those of mystical bent. Far from the truth.

Yes, I think art is hazily seen as another partial surrogate of religiosity coming with its own doctrines and priesthood.

Tony,

When you say things like this, that is where you are talking from the dogma you accept.

Those who hold a "mystery-mystique-mysticism" view of art are hard to find. Would you say Hollywood holds this view? Or the music industry? How about the writers who regularly appear on the NYT bestseller list under fiction?

Even Greg, for as religious as he is, doesn't show signs of "mystery-mystique-mysticism" view of art.

What you just wrote probably sounded like a profound truth to you, but when I try to find the actual artists and thinkers who adhere to a "mystery-mystique-mysticism" view of art, it looks to me like a strawman you set up to have Rand knock him down. That will reinforce a belief that Rand is saving the world from intellectual monsters, but in reality, this particular version is a story you tell yourself and pretend it's real--and very little else.

You have wonderful eyes. Why not use them, then check what you see through the Randian lens instead of the contrary?

Anyway, it's your mind, not mine.

Obviously you will use it as you judge best. And that's as it should be.

Michael

Then you haven't been around artists and galleries, collectors and critics much, Michael. The 'mystical' and the 'spiritual' is what they most wax on about. (To give them due, the most down to earth I've known are the artists themselves). Again it's the mistake of perceiving me as stereotypical Randian. What I write connects to what I've seen and known. Objectivism at its best is not a doctrine, it is methodology; how to think, not what to think.

In these art threads have also been mystical undertones (as distinct from religious - they arent always the same thing. In all other respects, in thinking and living, many a Christian like Greg is highly practical, not in the least mystical).

[Brant Gaede]

Objectivism at its best is not how the philosophy is taught. It's how to think about Objectivism and the world, not actual, critical thinking but acceptance of someone else's. That's hard work so much of it is acquired through an osmotic process of hanging out, even discuss, discuss.

--Brant

[anthony]

Tony,

You wouldn't believe the acrimony this discussion caused against people who essentially said what you just said.

Michael

Actually, I can imagine. Nothing like the (ahem) 'religious' fervour of being confronted with "evil", and having licence to condemn it. Real evil exists in action, and it - and its premises - should be attacked uncompromisingly. But what do you have left in ammo when you've been firing away at everything in sight (art that's fairly benign, or in fact of value like the statues). Keep that weapon loaded, soldier.

[Brant Gaede]

Don't like them, would never have them. The essence of human being is not over-coming physical handicaps or telling the handicapped the handicaps they fight are important per se as opposed to fighting them. I'm not capable of killing Goliath with a sling. In that sense I'm handicapped. But still The David as art is encouraging me to overcome that handicap. So I go get a gun and shoot Goliath. I don't need or want a statue of a balding naked 71yo man with glasses holding an M-16, much less a sling, even if the pose is right.

--Brant

the idiot who would rather do business with those 1,000 shitheads instead of me won't live very long even though he's his own kind of shithead

LOL...

I get the impression someone didn't read my text and only looked at the pictures.

Reminds me of the way I used to read Playboy magazine.

Michael

Guilty. So I'll go back and read.

--Brant

grump

but I liked the Playboy pictures

edit, read it (actually again)--while it's interesting I still don't like the art and just looking at the faces don't like the faces very much either--I think they're not engaged

Edited June 30, 2015 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

edit, read it (actually again)--while it's interesting I still don't like the art and just looking at the faces don't like the faces very much either--I think they're not engaged

Brant,

The point isn't for you to like it. The point is to realize that other people may like it for the same reasons--on one level--that you like your stuff. To realize that they are not unspeakably evil and suffering from a death premise and are despicable enemies of man's mind.

They can actually be good, productive, heroic people who love man's mind and reason, and are merely looking at it from a different perspective. In other words, it fits their core story in a manner far differently than it fits yours.

We all can heroes if we want to be. We don't have to be in the same story to be one of the good guys.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, and my point is I like what I like for my reasons and I don't object to the same attitude from others. Live and let live. I'm quite willing to share insofar as I can why I like and dislike certain art, but I'm the template for my liking or not liking something. I do not like any Objecivist or other traducification of this subjectification and will say so. It can be worse than the Objectivist traducification of objectification in other areas. Nobody's art is any better wrapped up in any philosophy not even sold but imposed in moral glory. It's Lysenkoism come to Jerusalem, you/me being the latter.

--Brant

https://youtu.be/72QC8EGnxTw

[anthony]

Tony,

I'm not sure the following point is going to be clear, but the frame in evaluating art is critical, not just from an emotional angle, from a cognitive one.

In O-Land, Rand's hardening of the categories on her frame has caused all kinds of mischief. Some people actually feel guilty for liking rock music.

{}

Fuel or core story?

Michael

Michael: Why not both.

To put it this way, let me break down or "isolate" every aspect of the "rational animal" like this:

Man's metaphysical nature vs. man's human nature, vs. man's biological nature (inclusive of his physical and animal nature, brain chemicals, impulses, etc.), vs. man's emotional nature, vs. man's psychological nature vs. man's cultural nature vs. man's social, communal nature, vs. man's 'core story' nature.

(Have I missed any others?)

This "isolation" is purely epistemological for studying each aspect of his nature, since in reality there are no "versuses". It is all one package, an interdependent combination comprising the human entity. (No mind-body split, unless one allows it). All these then, compose a mutilple false dichotomy.

And above all, clearly, is the umbrella of "man's metaphysical nature", without which there wouldn't be (e.g.) art creation or consumption ... or anything else known and possessed by mankind (like you and I being able to easily communicate on our pc's in a common language).

Of course, all the "natures" played and play an important role: our animal nature ensured we survived long enough to evolve; our social nature within tribal communes enabled passing on knowledge and sharing co-operative effort, to survive and begin to thrive.

But his metaphysical nature is what determines man.

I can't say I'm terribly familiar with core-story or the "narrative" and sort of see it only by its outcome - often of its power over people's self-beliefs, who might be deluding themselves too. It's generally a fuzzy concept, so I think has the danger of being distorted and used by unscrupulous people to manipulate and deceive.

Here's a thought though: if you consider an individual's "sense of life" (subconscious and preconceptual) as affected - as I think it must - by an aggregate of human fables, stories and myths in younger years, very similar to how they affected others around him, over roughly the same period - and multiply it by x million people in that society -- what about the collective result that emerges, as being 'the core story'?

Therefore, the root of core story IS a sense of life?

Rand's insight (not hers alone) is that the subconscious and preconceptual ('sense of life') is the source of art creation. Call it core-story if you will, but I think there's a strong case for saying it has its foundation in sense of life. So your sculptor tapped into this for his inspiration like every artist has ever done, and you haven't differed from Rand as much as you think.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Therefore, the root of core story IS a sense of life?

Tony,

No, it is not.

To start with, sense of life is something Rand made up that is similar to reality, but is too clunky to be a practical idea. There's no way to identify it with any clarity, measure it, isolate it, any of that.

But if you accept this fuzzy notion and pretend it refers to something profound, and further pretend it is a technical philosophy term, you can use it as grounds to demonize some people (or some art) and favor others--which is exactly what Rand did with it while she was alive.

Setting that aside, here is a really basic core story--one that includes every human being that is or ever was (and probably ever will be) with a minimum normal cognitive ability:

1. The protagonist is comfortable or at least in a familiar situation.

2. Something disrupts this situation.

3. The protagonist goes out into the unknown to face obstacles and antagonists, and acquires knowledge, skills or resources that deal with the disruption.

4. The protagonist brings them back to his or her original situation and uses them.

This is called the Hero's Journey and it is found in all mythologies since recorded time. Joseph Campbell wrote a book about it: The Hero with a Thousand Faces and there are countless works discussing it, fiction based on it, and so on.

Even Rand's fiction is based on it.

Whenever storytellers use this plot outline, they get audience. They can do it poorly and people will still like it. Why? Because it frames a universal human experience.

Stories based on this storyline are art--the kind of art humans have to do because they can't not do it. That has nothing to do with sense of life, naturalism versus romanticism, etc. But it does have something to do with human universals.

Cultural core stories, which are more specific to a group of people, cut deep like that, too.

Just on one level, there are certain unique local ways of expressing emotion and overall moods that people learn (by imitation) as they grow up within a culture--English upper class folks are restrained, Brazilian masses are exuberant and noisy, and so on.

It would be a mistake of the primary order to call this sort of culture learned by imitation as one grows up a "sense of life." Rand's idea of sense of life is based on subconscious or "preconceptual" integration, not imitation.

Here is a glimpse of what I mean. The following is from The Mysteries of Mind-Reading by Malcolm Gladwell:

Paul Ekman first encountered Tomkins in the early 1960′s. Ekman was then a young psychologist, just out of graduate school, and he was interested in studying faces. Was there a common set of rules, he wondered, that governed the facial expressions that human beings made? Silvan Tomkins said that there were. But most psychologists said that there weren’t. The conventional wisdom of the time held that expressions were culturally determined–that we simply used our faces according to a set of learned social conventions. Ekman didn’t know who to believe. So he traveled to Japan, Brazil, and Argentina–and to remote tribes in the jungles of the Far East–carrying photographs of men and women making a variety of distinctive faces. To his amazement, everywhere he went people agreed on what those expressions meant. Tomkins was right.

Not long afterwards, Tomkins came to visit Ekman at his laboratory in San Francisco. Ekman had just tracked down a hundred thousand feet of film that had been shot by the virologist Carleton Gajdusek in the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea. Some of the footage was of a tribe called the South Fore, who were a peaceful and friendly people. The rest was of the Kukukuku, who were hostile and murderous and who had a homosexual ritual where pre-adolescent boys were required to serve as courtesans for the male elders of the tribe. For six months, Ekman and his collaborator, Wallace Friesen, had been sorting through the footage, cutting extraneous scenes, focusing just on close-ups of the faces of the tribesmen, in order to compare the facial expressions of the two groups. Ekman set up the camera. Tomkins sat in the back. He had been told nothing about the tribes involved; all identifying context had been edited out. Tomkins looked on intently, peering through his glasses. At the end, he went up to the screen and pointed to the faces of the South Fore. “These are a sweet, gentle people, very indulgent, very peaceful,” he said. Then he pointed to the faces of the Kukukuku. “This other group is violent, and there is lots of evidence to suggest homosexuality.” Even today, a third of a century later, Ekman cannot get over what Tomkins did. “My God! I vividly remember saying, “Silvan, how on earth are you doing that?” Ekman recalls. “And he went up to the screen and, while we played the film backward, in slow motion, he pointed out the particular bulges and wrinkles in the face that he was using to make his judgment. That’s when I realized, ‘I’ve got to unpack the face.’ It was a gold mine of information that everyone had ignored. This guy could see it, and if he could see it, maybe everyone else could, too.”

It might seem like I'm contradicting myself with this quote, but I'm not. The meaning of core facial expressions is not arbitrary. People don't adopt this correspondence by imitation as they grow up. The substance of these facial expressions is universal--i.e., valid for all humans.

(When I say "all" in this context, I mean all reasonably normal and healthy humans, not deformed or sick people or other exceptions like that.)

However, the kinds of facial expressions and temperaments they signal that are habitual within different groups of people are learned from imitation, both from imitating the people around and imitating the attitudes expressed in the core stories that are used within a particular group.

I don't know that much about the South Fore and Kukukuku tribes that Gladwell talked about, but I have little doubt if you look to their mythologies, their stories of rites of passage and so on, you will find nurturing stories in the first and violent stories in the second.

What do you think allowed Hitler to manipulate vast crowds of intelligent enlightened individuals and turn them into lockstepping monsters? Could it be that an entire nation grew up with preconceptual emotional integrations (sense of life) that made these folks evil people, rotten to the core? Or were there core stories in the air--especially victimization and hope stories--they all could relate to that induced them to follow a madman?

Adolf Hitler (see here) loved much of the same music as Ayn Rand, fer krissakes!

Hitler's passion for Richard Wagner is well documented: however this collection contains works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Borodin which are worn and scratched from frequent use.

Take that sense of life conundrum and stuff it in your pipe and smoke it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Then you haven't been around artists and galleries, collectors and critics much, Michael. The 'mystical' and the 'spiritual' is what they most wax on about.

Tony,

Art galleries--all snob cultures in fact--use this stuff for sales hype, not for explaining the need of art by humans. Not at root.

Esoteric stories are a way to keep out undesirables and establish an in-group.

Tribal glue.

This is far different than real aesthetics.

Michael

[william.scherk]

It might seem like I'm contradicting myself with this quote, but I'm not. The meaning of core facial expressions is not arbitrary. People don't adopt this correspondence by imitation as they grow up. The substance of these facial expressions is universal--i.e., valid for all humans.

(When I say "all" in this context, I mean all reasonably normal and healthy humans, not deformed or sick people or other exceptions like that.)

Thanks for bringing that wonderful Ekman-Tomkins story to light here. Ekman's work subsequent to that story time has had a great impact in anthropology, sociology, psychology, cognitive neuroscience and a half-dozen others I forget. His work resulted in what I find key -- emotions may be preverbal, pre-cognition, pre-rational, though of course the inputs to the person's mind and internal dynamics are also in play -- one can 'mask' one's emotions, and one can 'override' one's emotional expression.

Standing on one foot, what Ekman's research around the world revealed was that any human being (reasonably normal and healthy) can 'read' the basic six (Ekman) emotions on another person's face. The universals of facially-apparent emotions has been repeatedly demonstrated empirically -- especially in the new subfield of affective neuroscience. That means, it doesn't matter what culture you are immersed in, you will be able to identify emotions by the free facial expression of other human beings. A stone-age tribesman of the Fore will be as just as adept as any sophisticated, educated and 'elite' thinker like Kahmi.

-- about your caveat, Michael, I think even a sub-optimal person can evince the six basic (or Plutchik's eight) emotions ... though of course there are those who are profoundly autistic or mentally retarded who may not be able to 'read.'

For a brief excursion in Ekman and emotion, see his "An argument for basic emotions." Plutchik I have mentioned far too many times over the years here, but I will post his intriguing 'color wheel' conceptual graphic.

I think understanding emotion makes a lot of the moralist whoopee about art a bit moot. If there are differing emotional reactions to particular pieces of art, that is the way it is -- no amount of 'ought-ism' can change that reality. If a piece of art leaves you cold but inspires emotion in your neighbour, that is the way we are as humans. The differential is wonderful and we should not be surprised at the passion of another who is not ourself.

That said, I add a small plaintive hope. Please post depictions of art that makes you feel something, if you want to talk about Art qua Art -- at the very least describe the art in story-prose-narrative, as Michael does. The conceptual chains and hierarchies of Objectivish dogma about Art need illustration, at lest for this poor viewer ...

Edited July 1, 2015 by william.scherk

[anthony]

Imitation. Well right, it comes under man's "biological nature".

I keep saying I learn more about people by watching my dogs and their behavior in our human-dog pack..

I already understand quite a lot of their most subtle expressions. (How do puppies learn?)

Sorry, but it changes nothing and takes nothing from man's metaphysical nature.

[anthony]

To explain 'mysticism' applied to art - and the notion exists, not only as hype - one needs look no further than a common religious, core story, narrative, too.

And as I'm thinking presently, from the same place as one's subconscious sense of life.

[anthony]

If one puts Randian theory through one's own experiences and thinking (without skepticism) the sky's the limit.

Do you here mean methodological or philosophical skepticism? I always get confused with your use of the term ... if I encounter a thinker who does not have a skeptical methodology, I tend to think him not fully-equipped with rational tools of inquiry. Short of a full hand, so to speak.

Not to rag you, but have you ever read the magazines Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer?

I guess I just wonder how you maintain the distinction between the good scientific skepticism (and its bad cousin philosophical skepticism) and between good empirical (reality oriented) methodology and bad empirical methodology -- do the two good/bad empiricisms correlate to the good/bad skepticisms in your mind ... ?

As I use it often, the philosophical skepticism. The criticality of the methodological type can be safely assumed. Facts (or 'factoids') need hard and constant checking, naturally. It's a world apart from 'Skepticism' - of ideas, of principles, and of any and all philosophy.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sorry, but it changes nothing and takes nothing from man's metaphysical nature.

Tony,

The term, "man's metaphysical nature" has to have a meaning other than a get out of jail card.

You are using it in the oddest manner, kind of like a mantra to say you are not wrong whenever you get in front of a fact you can't deny.

What does that term mean to you?

btw - You don't have to be sorry. I am not offended.

Michael

[moralist]

But his metaphysical nature is what determines man.

Yes.

That is the heart of the matter, Tony.

I define metaphysical (beyond physical) as "the objective reality of moral accountability" which does not exist in any other life form. It has no physical form other than the good or evil our actions manifest into this world.

Greg

[anthony]

They are absorbing, those 'emotion charts' you put up every so often, William. I guess by demonstrating a range of emotions (though not I think exhaustive) felt by mankind you are making some conclusive point. Human vulnerability? Anything goes, emotionally? Hard to tell sometimes.

First for me, is the fact that man's mind could objectively identify all those emotional nuances (cognition applied to emotion). Then, that nearly all fit somewhere on the scale of the pleasure-pain spectrum. "Joy or suffering".

Each and every emotion relates to - *something* - they don't spring up out of nowhere. They are observably always a response to an "action", mental or physical. (Action -- emotion; action -- emotion...)

I've been considering the sheer volume of output and input of "actions" in any given day. Cause and effect can in fact be allowed to reverse, to overlap, to run on: (...emotion-action-emotion-action-emotion...) Erroneously and at times self-destructively this will bring a prior emotion to bear on a fresh "action": cart before horse. In this way much of the time a person will act upon emotion. Following this, emotion can follow emotion, causelessly - emotional responses to emotions - until he-she becomes a mass of inchoate emotions.

That's why and how people call emotions "subjective", I believe. Speaking for themselves - they are 100% correct.

The second part is, WHICH emotion is experienced as the response?

"Emotions are the automatic results of man's value-judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them [...] lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss". AR.

You have seen this a few times, I'm sure.

You write:

"If there are differing emotional reactions to particular pieces of art, that is the way it is--no amount of 'ought-ism' [punny] can change that reality. If a piece of art leaves you cold but inspires emotion in your neighbour, that is the way we are as humans".

That there can be differing emotions (to the same thing) is observable and apparent. It is 'a reality' of many men. But is it "reality"?

If confronted with a beautifully done artwork of the most foul image which you can conjur up, say, of human suffering and brutality, the response of predominantly-rational individuals would most likely be of horror and disgust. Horror at the image, and disgust with the artist.

I think that would be an appropriate, moral, rational and objective (and "fully human") emotional response. If they know it or not, their responses are based on their value-judgments and "the reality" that man's life is the standard of value.

Another individual comes to the same image, and feels delight - or indifference - or ecstacy. Here is true "subjectivity". (What would you think of him? would you even want to know him?)

Is that "differential" indeed at all "wonderful" ?

Emotions MAY be all over the place for different people, but to the varying degrees he is rational, predicts a reasonably narrow range of any individual's emotional response.

So I disagree with "no amount of ought-ism can change that reality".

[Brant Gaede]

There is nothing "subjective" about emotions. They are physiological reactions to stimuli. You can call the stimuli objective or subjective if you want to use what are likely wasted words.

--Brant

you can take Rand's philosophy and use it to make yourself an expert on almost anything, something she was an expert at--too--even while she acknowledged there were some specific areas in which she wasn't, which made her other claims even more credible

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Each and every emotion relates to - *something* - they don't spring up out of nowhere. They are observably always a response to an "action", mental or physical. (Action -- emotion; action -- emotion...)

Tony,

If one day you start studying the brain for real, you are in for such a big deception. What you just said, in the tone of instructing others, is off. Not a little off. A lot.

(And Rand's definition is limited to a very small group of emotions when you look at reality, although she presented it as if it were the whole shebang.)

Ask yourself: why does the pattern of action to emotion only exist and why doesn't the contrary exist? Another way of asking it is: why don't both exist?

And another question: Is emotion just one thing in the brain? I don't mean the different emotions. I mean the process that serves them all up. Is that just one thing like the word is?

If you start digging for real, you might not like the answers. Of, if you like facts more than your assumptions, you might like learning what they are.

Michael

[anthony]

Actually, I observed a lot of that in myself. The first bit was my own, and then some embellishing from Rand's insights.

I always like answers that are true, it's a while since I was scared of any truths.

Clarity, consistency and sustainability - of cognition and emotion - are the most important benefits of philosophy in one's life, I think.

I don't believe I claim it is always so easy, but the clear foundation one starts with can define all the rest.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... the clear foundation one starts with can define all the rest.

Tony,

This is precisely my point.

If the clear foundation is that Allah will provide an eternal Hooters for martyrs for Him, that will define all the rest.

If the clear foundation is that lying and sleazy behavior to persuade people to save the planet from an ecological Apocalypse is virtue (in other words, the ends justify the means), that will define all the rest.

If the clear foundation is a proclamation that emotions are ONLY the results of actions, that will define the rest, too.

If the clear foundation is learn something correctly before teaching it, that will certainly define things.

There is nothing wrong with giving witness to one's own experience. You, yourself, are at your best when that's what you do. I do it all the time. You will often see me say things like, "what I've seen so far is this..." or "in my years of online discussions, this is what I have seen."

In fact, for as much as I love Barbara Branden, I came to the conclusion the other day that when she was witness, she was awesome. Among mankind's best, albeit the area she witnessed was tiny. I mean that. But when she tried to be guru and issue proclamations, she didn't do so well. For example, she couldn't even stop smoking as she taught others the way to quit (she wrote an article about it). As witness, she did find a very effective method for others to try. And I believe she helped some people because she shared what she found. As guru, she tried to preach this method, but fell off the wagon too often.

I don't come out with a dogmatic statement, then a Randian quote to back it up. (At least I don't think I do anymore. )

So, to my mind, there is everything wrong with presenting blanket statements as fact, not to be questioned, then presenting Randian scripture as proof.

Michael

[anthony]

... the clear foundation one starts with can define all the rest.

Tony,

This is precisely my point.

If the clear foundation is that Allah will provide an eternal Hooters for martyrs for Him, that will define all the rest.

If the clear foundation is that lying and sleazy behavior to persuade people to save the planet from an ecological Apocalypse is virtue (in other words, the ends justify the means), that will define all the rest.

If the clear foundation is a proclamation that emotions are ONLY the results of actions, that will define the rest, too.

If the clear foundation is learn something correctly before teaching it, that will certainly define things.

There is nothing wrong with giving witness to one's own experience. You, yourself, are at your best when that's what you do. I do it all the time. You will often see me say things like, "what I've seen so far is this..." or "in my years of online discussions, this is what I have seen."

In fact, for as much as I love Barbara Branden, I came to the conclusion the other day that when she was witness, she was awesome. Among mankind's best, albeit the area she witnessed was tiny. I mean that. But when she tried to be guru and issue proclamations, she didn't do so well. For example, she couldn't even stop smoking as she taught others the way to quit (she wrote an article about it). As witness, she did find a very effective method for others to try. And I believe she helped some people because she shared what she found. As guru, she tried to preach this method, but fell off the wagon too often.

I don't come out with a dogmatic statement, then a Randian quote to back it up. (At least I don't think I do anymore. )

So, to my mind, there is everything wrong with presenting blanket statements as fact, not to be questioned, then presenting Randian scripture as proof.

Michael

Those things you mention are un-reality, Michael. Self-evidently. And the clarity that adherence to reality lends, I am not going to learn by educating myself on others' opinions - or by their empirical experiments. Learning about the brain tells me little about consciousness. To the extent I'm able, I understand reality by and for myself, and from a considerable store of induced knowledge from my past.

"Actions" btw, are also "actions of the consciousness" [NBranden]. Which has to include the sub-conscious, thus resulting in emotions 'by connotation and association' (which would seem as if they come from nowhere).

If emotions are possible outside of "actions" (of any sort), I would like to hear about such evidence.

"To be conscious, is to be conscious of *something*". Do you at least agree with that? I'd reckon that the corollary of this is: To be emotional, is to be emotional of *something*.

[Brant Gaede]

Those things you mention are un-reality, Michael. Self-evidently. And the clarity that adherence to reality lends, I am not going to learn by educating myself on others' opinions - or by their empirical experiments. Learning about the brain tells me little about consciousness. To the extent I'm able, I understand reality by and for myself, and from a considerable store of induced knowledge from my past.

"Actions" btw, are also "actions of the consciousness" [NB]. Which has to include the sub-conscious, thus resulting in emotions by connotation and association (which would seem as if they come from nowhere).

If emotions are possible outside of "actions" (of any sort), I would like to hear about such evidence.

"To be conscious, is to be conscious of *something*". Do you at least agree with that? I'd reckon that the corollary of this is: To be emotional, is to be emotional of *something*.

This could be true if you weren't purblind on how you already educated yourself to now about some things. Ayn Rand's opinions especially--and what it did to the entirety of your philosophical psycho-epistemology and method of discourse leaving no room for the "empirical."

--Brant

what's done is done and won't be undone and I'm through with this with my being unkind (and as for "kind"--I generally avoid it)

[anthony]

But his metaphysical nature is what determines man.

Yes.

That is the heart of the matter, Tony.

I define metaphysical (beyond physical) as "the objective reality of moral accountability" which does not exist in any other life form. It has no physical form other than the good or evil our actions manifest into this world.

Greg

Greg, This is a very good appraisal, imo. You understand personally-held convictions and principle, while practising the self-responsibility and self-sufficiency which leaves others to do what they so choose. I will always heartily toast to those, no matter where I differ with you on the basics.