The saying about making other happy isn't logical according to how Man thinks. Giving and experiencing Joy from giving and serving others, is mostly a spiritual experience. If you are dead set against the spiritual realm even existing, than you probably won't enjoy giving. Also, you must be doing it out of your own desire, other wise you won't likely recieve that sense of Joy for seeing how much you can make a difference in someone elses life.
I find that most who dismiss Ayn Rand’s morality don’t really understand it. Her “selfishness” is long-term, principled self-interest. People are a combination of the physical and mental, and your self-interest includes psychological values. Self-interest is not to be reduced to only the physical, such as money. Other people can be of tremendous psychological value (i.e. friends, lovers, children.) Rand recognized that benevolence toward strangers is in one’s own interest, in a free country.
Sure, if I were to weigh helping someone else or helping society, I would do so with the objective of advancing the collective interest.
If I had an individual that was working in opposition to my interest or the interest of someone I loved, how should I respond? In my interest? Which interest supercedes the other? Is there an arbitrator in this scenario?
Should I be forced to conform with another man's interest if it allows a more utilitarian outcome?
@Redfingers No, you shouldn't be forced, but if society at large gains winds of your conflict, then expect to be. It can't be said that society is right or wrong to force you to conform, but it will do what it must to ensure the better outcome for itself.
If she beleives in morals then she beleives in God. If she love her family then she loves God, If she love her counrty then she loves God even if she does not know it. its sad.
And probably also a chained view as well. You can not see the world differently can you? Or at least not with ease... You cannot imagine another world can you? If that idea would speak against god that is... I hope you do more thinking in your life at some point.
@prreyreyland Its not sad. And the fact you just said if she believes in morals then she believes in God is BS. First you have to believe that god is moral. But which one? The one YOU believe in. There are sooooo many people that believe in a different god that isnt yours and would find you immoral. Morality is not dictated by god. It it were, we would be living our life as it is in Leviticus and you wouldnt even be on your computer.
Rand was a huge hypocrite. She directly went against her own ideology to pay for lung cancer treatment through medicare, then proceeds to go on about taking responsibility for one's own self and actions. She will go down in history as a hypocrite and a liar.
The value of selfishness? Uh, there is none. If she means that ENABLING bad behavior is wrong, then that is correct. But she never says that. She just rambles on about how being selfish is good, a primitive conservative notion that always pops up in totalitarian states. Take this nonsense to Europe and they'll puke in your face.
If making people happy makes you happy go for it! The end game is still pleasing yourself. I so agree you can't love everybody, if you did what value does your love have? I'd rather love a chosen few and make a difference to them then have some silly, slushy vague idea I'm doing any good by loving everyone. Free love also means that love has no value, keep it.
@Exsugarbabe1 You are right on. Rand is right on that you cant love everyone but if helping other people makes you happy go for it. I like to go out of my way a lot for other people. I think it's is due to the praise. It's gratifying to me, even if it's momentary. Knowing I will be remembered by that person for a long time (depending on the severity) is worth it for me. In that sense it is selfish. So I guess Ayn was right after all. lol.
@Exsugarbabe1 i can't imagine why. we are an imperfect species that evolved selfish actions in order to survive over the years. Ayn Rand perhaps doesn't see it like this and it's too much to all be completely selfish all the time because we have to help each other. That's what a society needs to survive. All of it has a a line that can be crossed very easily. For instance, if we all become 100% selfish but only available to those we love. That just can't fly in society.
@SkyFortStudios We developed both selfish and collectivist instincts. Society is made of individuals...but individuals need society to flourish. You have to see both sides, right?
@Exsugarbabe1 I am not saying we are all selfish. It's the good of the group mentality as well. But we are now to the point in our evolution that we can step out of our primitive mentality and live against our genes. Contraceptives are a perfect example. Sex for pleasure instead of fun.
I have had the experience where everyone and everything exists within my Greater Self. Therefore, compassion for life itself, for the environment and its life forms, is as natural as caring about the foot, the hand, the legs, the water supply....One can be a loving being. One can live in love. Such a state is not intellectual. It is the state of Bliss.
Most libertarians have no time for this despicable woman, who once called the super rich 'the most oppressed minority in America.' She was a cultist of the Jim Jones variety: probably a socio-path and far too convinced of her own supposed intellectual superiority. Atlas Shrugged could have been 90% shorter than it was and still have got its message across. Objectionable character
About Dostojevsky's altruism; Is she referring to Maria Dmitrievna Isayeva? I can find no record of her death being a suicide. Or is she confusing his life with what he wrote, referring to the short story "A Gentle Creature", which does indeed feature a suicide prompt on by the self-defeating love/narcissistic compassion of the protagonist.
To quote an aptly written article, "If we ask by what validated methodology Kant has justified these beliefs of his, one is hard put to give a cogent answer. Since Kant has (like Hume) essentially given up on the intricacies of inductive logic, or perhaps never known or understood them, the arguments he puts forward can only constitute window-dressing around what is simply an intuitive-declarative mode of philosophizing.
@TheRectangularVerb ya think? Remember how old RONNIE REAGAN was realllly down on early stem cell research... then he started doing that DYING THING and his WHOLE OUTLOOK CHANGED... GO! GET THOSE STEM CELLS... WILL LIVE BABIES HELP? I CAN GET LIVE BABIES... NANCY, GO ON TV AND GET SOME LIVE BABIES! NOW! I'm DYING HERE! ME! THIS IS ME! DYING... yep... the great rationalizer/equalizer... death.
Being totally selfish and isolated is a bad thing just like being totally dependent other people is a bad thing. We evolved in groups, and formed societies. There's always a balance. If I have plenty of money on me, and my friend is broke, I have no problems about buying him food or a brew. And in return, he'll do the same for me when the time arises. I believe in Karma alot, it may not be instant, but it'll get you.
@FuIIOfFaiI I agree with your response, though I would like to point out that it doesn't have to be a "give and take" thing. The reason one borrows money to a friend is because it is ensuring the conditions necessary for him to prosper as a human being. Now, it doesn't matter if your friend would or will do the same for you so long as you have fulfilled your duty towards him, which is the same for all humanity and everything: treat it according to its nature.
@TheRectangularVerb I didn't really mean to imply I'm doing it for only the pay-back reward. In alot of cases I wouldn't even accept it if I already have money. I usually just tell them, "just return the favor to someone else", but If I'm dead-broke, then sure. I know that I've already payed off my debts in other ways, so I won't have any qualms about accepting a small gift, like a beer or a sandwich.
@FuIIOfFaiI Ah, I am happy to hear. The thing that caught my attention in your first comment was the last line about karma, more specifically: "it may not be instant, but it'll get you". It seemed to me that you did point the justification back at the self, do correct me if I'm wrong, yet this is simply self-love in disguise if you ask me.
@TheRectangularVerb I think you misunderstand my motivations. The Karma comment was just basically; treat people like shit, don't be surprised if they treat you like shit back. I don't really get how you get the 'self-love in disguise' from that, but I guess you'd have to know me and my experiences to really understand my perspective.
@FuIIOfFaiI The self-love in disguise comes from the idea of doing something for the sake of it's consequences, that is to say, because the consequences are pleasurable, and pleasure and the happiness it may or may not lead to are basically just self-love because that's all that it ever reaches, the individual subject. On the karma note though, is the only reason for not treating people badly that they would otherwise treat you badly in return?
Correct me if im wrong but does she always seems like an anarchist (i owe nothing to anyone). All she ever proved is that theres nothing forcing or bargaining with us to be good people. she took this to mean that we don't have to care about others. Error: Being able to do something that is not punished does not make it okay to do.
@iron100159 The problem is that Rand posed the quesiton "why be moral" and, in trying to answer this meta-metaphysical question, left the realm of the metaphysical and turned to the physical. Hence, happiness and selfishness. She is looking at things and not at ideas. In doing what she did, the only answer she can find will be hypothetical, but never apriori and universal, which is what ethics requires.
@TheRectangularVerb i guess my problem is this: say you see a guy choking. Since your not obligated to him, you don't have to save him. And if it makes you happy, you can laugh at him as he dies.She decided that since we need to survive to exist, then dying is the worst thing possible, and somehow surviving = total selfishness. This forgets the social contract and that some people would die for their beliefs.
@TheRectangularVerb Its all very animalistic that the only point of life is surviving. However, I find the human rights part of objectivism interesting in that it could be stretched ad nauseum to altruism while contradicting Rand's assertion that all we have to care about is our own happiness.
@iron100159 It is in fact very animalistic to think like Rand and the reason she gets there is because she looks at man as an object, thus leaving out of the picture higher mental processes such as beliefs, understanding, reasons, motivations and values. To her it's a problem of what is the case, in this case that human beings are clearly selfish, because they are animals, because they need to survive, but not what ought to be the case. I'm not quite sure I get you on the objectivism
@TheRectangularVerb survial and selfishness are not the same things though are they? I can selfishly enjoy something that does not contribute to my survival. Meeting our own needs and the needs of others are not necessarily contradictory ideas. And this begs the question: do we need/always want to survive? If someone does not want to survive, which could have a variety of reasons, doesn't that put a hole in the whole thing. Or if someone wants to live for selfless reasons or die for selfish ones
@iron100159 Well, according to Rand, the selfish death idea would be pure nonesense, she would probably regard it as an illness of the mind rather than a problem. I do, however, find the point you are making interesting, yet I do not think we could justify not surviving in many contexts, maybe in a war situation. However, when looking at human nature as "social animal" rather than "selfish individual", you get a different picture, where selflessness is necessary.
@TheRectangularVerb Selflessness is mindlessness. Selflessness doesn't really exist, and when it does occur, it is morally wrong.
What you call selflessness is actually selfishness. If you actually understood what selflessness implied, you wouldn't call any acts of goodness selfless.
@Khayman8888 Look, acts in accordance with ethics and and idea of a universal good, are necessarily selfless because the self does not affect matters of pure reason, that is to say, concepts that are unaffected by experience, and hold true before experience. If we act in accordance with the moral law, we do so for its own sake, not because it feels good, or because we were told to do so, but because we understand that it is our duty. The concept of duty is meant in an abstract sense here.
@TheRectangularVerb The self does not affect matters of pure reason? Impossible. The self is the only origin for reason. One can only reason through one's own mind. Without the self, there is no reason. No concepts can be "unaffected" by experience. If "understanding" or morality were automatic, as you seem to be implying, there would never be a discrepancy. When we act in accordance with moral law, we do so because of an understanding of our duty, not to some nonexistent universal law, but to
@TheRectangularVerb our own set of values, whether those were acquired through reason or through education and blind acceptance.
Saying that an act of good is selfless demands that it is not in one's self interest to commit that action. It's insulting and it's wrong. Selflessness implies a lack of personal choice. It isn't just a philosophical truth but a psychological and physiological truth. We carry out actions of our own accord. We follow a thought process before we make a decision.
@TheRectangularVerb We never "put" someone's interests before our own. We merely absorb their interests into our own and act accordingly. A truly selfless person would have no rational limit. He would have no measure of restraint because his actions would not involve self interest and, thus, there would be no barring the degree.
He'd see a homeless man and give him the keys to his car and the deed to his house. Furthermore, if love were "selfless", it would be unearned, it would neither
@TheRectangularVerb have any measure, because it's from the SELF that a rational or even emotional assessment originates. A selfless love has no personal basis to differentiate between values. It is the same for one's wife as it is for a rapist in a prison. There is no intelligence because it is selfless, it is based not on the calculations of one's own reasoning mind, but on an altruist morality that does not bother to distinguish in its binary criteria for good and evil.
@TheRectangularVerb At the end of the day, when the chips are down, this is the difference between you and I.
I do good, donate, and help people because my personally formulated, rational hierarchy of values includes good will towards man as a principle that's worth a "reasonable" (note that word) concession of material goods and time. Thus, a five dollar bill to a homeless woman, or a 10 dollar meal for my friend, is not a sacrifice in the sense of a higher value being traded for a lower value
@TheRectangularVerb the value of good will towards others easily supersedes the the value of money and time that I have to spare.
On the other hand, a 100 dollar bill to a homeless man is an absurd expectation, because I need that 100 dollars to take care of MYSELF. This is where the rationale enters into, you see? This is where self interest comes in. 5 dollars to the homeless man is deemed rationally acceptable for its reward in good will and personal fulfillment, but 100 is too much.
@TheRectangularVerb Now you, on the other hand, you must feel that giving that 5 dollars to the homeless man, or that 10 dollar meal for your brother, is not in your self interest. It is a sacrifice that you must make. You must force yourself, against your own rational desire, to make these concessions. What, then, prevents you from giving that homeless man 100 dollars? Simply MORE rational desire? In the end, your rational egoism takes control, yes? Certain donations can be rationalized, others
@TheRectangularVerb can't, right? You wouldn't, for instance, donate your girlfriend to a homeless man.
In the end, you and I are likely EQUAL in our charity and good will towards men. The difference is that I believe that it comes from me, that it's something that I have CHOSEN to do. You believe that you must be forced by an external sense of duty, that it is carried out without self esteem or voluntary will. Even if you didn't want to, you think, you would still be FORCED by some absolute
@TheRectangularVerb sense of duty that derives from ANYTHING but your own rational observation of the world, and your own experiences in life. I find that interesting. I, personally, think it is an insult to your good nature.
And by taking responsibility of myself, and not so much embracing as merely UNDERSTANDING that all people, throughout the world, and myself no less included, DO act in self interest. And it is our self interest that we must formulate through the use of REASON in order to
Because it isn't the beneficiary of the action that should logically determine the value of the action. It is the action itself that must hold up with demonstrable ethical principles. But by taking responsibility for myself and my rational mind's DUTY to function at all times, I will never be bidden to do evil for another man's sake. I will never justify an atrocious action based on the recipient of that action, and I will not be a victim to men of influence.
@Khayman8888 There are two things I would like to point out to you in the following series of comments. Firstly, the faulty notion of a rational desire. Secondly, the notion of hypothetical reasoning.
@Khayman8888 In the above you mentioned the self is the centre of all reason and that nothing can happen without the self. While I do agree that having a self is a necessary condition for reasoning, I do not agree that the self is necessarily what affects its functioning in itself. When basing reason on sense experiences, the self does interfere with reason. However, when talking about pure reason, the self does not interfere with it.
@Khayman8888 Now, what do I mean by pure reason? Pure reason is what you reason about when you reason about reason, that is to say, when you look at the very essence of what reason is. This must happen without sense experience, as you otherwise only see what reason seems to be as opposed to critically examining what it really is.
@Khayman8888 Since in ethics we wish to find out not just what seems to be good, but what is actually good in itself, we must approach it in a pure fashion. Now, since there is no object of my self that I can look at (there are sense inputs I get of myself: mirror image, feelings, but not never a distinct object I can distance myself from), in order to understand myself, I must imagine the object that is me. That is, I must imagine what I am like.
@Khayman8888 This process can become conscious and instead of basing how I look at myself on chance or desires, I can do so consciously. This is where freedom of the will lies. Now you may say, "hah! there is no freedom in this because I look at myself by means of the selfish desires I have!", and I would agree with you. When you look at yourself without the use of pure reason, you will never be free, because you can only base it on a sense experience of yourself which you do not understand.
@Khayman8888 Now, when by means of pure reason, we establish what I ought to look at myself as, I can thus determine what I ought to act like. However, when speaking of desires, which Rand and I suppose you, take to be the basis of morally selfish behaviour, you cannot understand it because you are necessarily caught up in it (no systematic object of the self). There can be no rational desire because desires do not originate in reason but rather by means of chance and cause and effect at best.
@Khayman8888 Now moving into the second thing I wanted to touch upon: the characterisation of action. In order to establish whether or not something was good, we must be very clear about what it actually is. Now, when characterising an action by means of the desires that brought it about, you can never fully understand the action because you can never fully understand the desire. Using this as the basis of moral reasoning leads to absurdity.
@Khayman8888 The reason why Rand indulges in it, is because she made an attempt at doing what Kant did not: look at what moral action concretely has to be (according to human nature), that is to say answer what is the case, rather than what metaphysically should/ought to be the case. The problem with this is, that Rand, in doing so, had to refer to hypothetical reasoning and so ended up with a form of hypothetical action as the moral one.
@Khayman8888 But hypothetical action is not the level of analysis at which ethics has to occur. Hypothetical reasoning is "If/then" reasoning. If I break the law, then I will be punished. Other types of action include expressive action (energy-regulation, e.g. reflexes or spasms) and traditional-conventional action (based on unquestioned authority: "I do X because we have always done it"). In terms of intellectual freedom, these are all below hypothetical reasoning.
@Khayman8888 However, since the only source of systematic understanding of non-physical matters (I dare say metaphysical matters, as ethics surely belongs into the realm of the pure) is pure reason, we cannot base our understanding of ethics on hypothetical reasoning and experience, because we cannot find the object of the good in the physical. The most important aspect is freedom, and by that I do not mean abstract freedom that Rand talks about (because of the hypothetical fallacy),
@Khayman8888 but true freedom that enables us to reason freely and truly understand the basis of our action. When I say I do X because it is pleasurable, I do not fully understand why I am doing it, because I cannot understand why it is pleasurable, since at that moment I am caught up in the world and have no psychical distance to it. The central aspect to duty is not to abide by it, but instead to understand systematically and fully the grounds of one's actions.
@Khayman8888 Thus selflessness cannot lie in an understanding of the physical, of experiencing trees and dogs and love, etc. But selflessness lies in true freedom, when truly understanding what the self is, and what the reasons for one's actions truly are, not hypothetically, but categorically. Not being caught up in the world, but happening to it, which can only be the case when we distance us from it conceptually, by means of pure reason. Everything else is unfortunately self-contradictory.
@TheRectangularVerb I'm sorry, but that was the most convoluted and jarbled bunch of nonsense I've read in a long time. What is this "PURE REASON" you speak of that exists without the sense experience of human beings? Are you trying to imply a logical order to the universe that exists without the necessity of human understanding? Even languages like mathematics are merely a codification of human understanding. There is no SUCH thing as reason without a human mind (or some other similarly
@TheRectangularVerb intelligent and hitherto undiscovered species capable of rationale). Even if you made the declaration that there was, you'd be pissing in the wind. It would require the function of your own mind to even begin to understand it, and thus it would be enslaved to the limitations of your mind's ability to perceive the world you live in. "Sense experience", as you describe it, is the basis for all rational thought. More to the point, the cognitive function of one's own mind is the
@Khayman8888 only means through which one may understand any facet of epistemology. Even if you could make a good argument for this "pure reason", external to the understanding of human beings, which you can't, it'd be a laugh for you to say that it should be the basis of ethics. Rational thinking, as it is capable of being carried out, is, and has always been, the basis for ethical debate.
You're going to have to come down to earth and deal within the parameters of human intelligence to
@TheRectangularVerb discuss ethical questions, or you might as well be conceding all responsibility of thinking to a higher power. This "pure reason" theory doesn't hold water in legitimate philosophical conversations and never has.
@TheRectangularVerb Beyond that, you seem to have so thoroughly misunderstood Ayn Rand's objectivist ethics that, in order to even carry on further discourse with you, I feel I would have to outline her entire premise- which is decidedly NOT that the moral measure of an action is determined by its basis in desire. Rationalization is a human function that exists independently of desire. In practice, they both tend to influence a person's actions, but that does not make them the same. Rand's
@TheRectangularVerb theory of ethics didn't present personal desire to be the basis of morality, nor even of self interest. The objectivist ethics were a comprehensive school of logical ideas that existed as a constant codex, regardless of personal desire. That was one of her major disagreements with Nietzsche. She believed that reality was a metaphysical truth that could, in fact, be determined through the application of reason. The entire basis of the objectivist ethics is the concept of
@TheRectangularVerb individual sovereignty, just another step on the course of existentialism, which you necessarily depart from when you talk about pure reason and "hypothetical action". Are you even taking a page out of Kant's book with this conjecture? I'd be interested in hearing how this "pure reason" can even lead you to conclude any kind of ethical facts, or axioms, or whatever you seem to be implying it will yield. You're thinking a little too "outside the box" and it doesn't get anyone
@Khayman8888 I will gladly tell you more about the nature of pure reason and just what it's relevance in understanding ethics is. So, what is pure reason? In case I had not made it quite clear enough before: pure reason is reason in itself, it is reason independent from sensibility. It is the reason which contains the principles to understand something plainly a priori, which is the single most important thing, when trying to understand something as it is in itself, that is entirely.
@Khayman8888 By means of understanding the nature of pure reason and applying it on itself, we may understand the metaphysical nature of ourselves and of the true meaning of freedom. That is to say, the Hegelian idea of freedom, not just in terms of negative rights, but also in terms of freedom from other influences, society, etc. True freedom of the mind and decision-making.
@Khayman8888 Pure reason contains the categories of thought in virtue of which we may understand the basis for thinking itself, which we must if we want to understand how freedom of the mind is possible. I do agree that thinking and reason cannot exist without human beings, and while I agree that they cannot occur without a mind, I do believe that the self (which I believe we have differing ideas of) need not necessarily play a role in its activities.
@Khayman8888 Let's see about the self in more detail now: the self, in terms of being identified with ones desires and emotions, I do not agree needs to affect the workings of the mind. Now, the self as the "I think", I agree does play a rather important role in thinking, as unity of thought is a necessary condition for cognition: the way we understand something must not contradict itself. I assumed you meant "self" to rather mean the former, excuse me if this was not the case.
@Khayman8888 Either way, since we are dealing with ethics, we must be in the need of finding something that is universally true as an idea of the good cannot be based in something purely subjective as it results in a contradiction. What is the nature of understanding? It must be to find what something is in its nature or essence, if you like. That means, that if we want to find what is good, we must understand what the good is in itself.
@Khayman8888 The good depending on the individual leads us to accept that any given act can be good for A but at the same time bad for B as the grounds are not universal. This is like saying that something is X and not X at the same time; a clear syllogistic contradiction. Clearly, ethics must be universally holding. Pure reason is the tool we may use for finding this in virtue of its ability to cognize something a priori.
@Khayman8888 Freedom is so essential in this because in order for any action to be right, we must understand why it is right. It is not enough to do it, we must understand it too. Good action can only take place when we are free and most of the time we are not free, we are affected by all sorts of unfulfilled needs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs). True freedom can only be found when we distance ourselves from what is the result of pure chance and
@Khayman8888 instead base our understanding on certainty, a priori statements. Since the physical is ever changing, experience cannot deliver certainty. You sir, in virtue of your previous reasoning, appear to me as an empiricist. Correct me if I am wrong. Yet, you must understand that basing our understanding on something that ought to be universal in its nature on experience will never hold any proper results.
@Khayman8888 I hope this makes my position somewhat more clear, if it doesn't, do ask a few specific questions so that I can answer them more systematically. I do ask you to tell me more about Rand's theory in concreto, seeing that I have never actually read her works myself but only heard of her theories from others and by means of youtube. Cheerio!
Ps. sorry for upside down posts again.. How do you do it?
@TheRectangularVerb So when I first read your argument, I admit that it was absolutely incomprehensible, the idea of pure reason that you spoke of. Naturally, not wanting to be close-minded, and hoping to learn from this dialogue, I looked up pure reason and found that it was a primarily Kantian idea. So I read about Kant (as much as a person can in about 2 hours, anyway). I found there to be a great deal of stuff that I couldn't really swallow- chiefly the "reality" of the noumenal world
@TheRectangularVerb versus the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. Furthermore, Kant talked about analytic and synthetic a priori, and analytic and synthetic a posteriori. From what I understood, he believed that analytic a posteriori was almost a contradiction in terms and disregarded it, and seemed to imply that synthetic a priori could not be discovered by rationale. In short, what could be knowable were analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori.
@TheRectangularVerb I believe I am more of a rationalist than an empiricist, but I think both are driving from the same direction. This "pure reason" exists in opposition to both schools of thought, really, but one can't entirely rule out the validity of Kant's thoughts on analytic vs synthetic knowledge, or the distinction between a priori and a posteriori. I can accept space as an analytic a priori, or mathematical law. The concept of analytic a priori in the sense of predicate and subject
@TheRectangularVerb concepts seems less of a philosophical truth and more of an issue in language terms. I agree with the distinction between analytic and synthetic "understanding" but wonder if it bears any real relevance on philosophy and, furthermore, fail to see its basis in ethics.
From what I'm reading, Kant's idea of "reality" and what "ought" to be derived from a realm of understanding that was strictly inaccessible to human cognition. Therefore, he ruled out reason and
@TheRectangularVerb empiricism as a means to understand morality, and yet barely formulated the alternative, suggesting that it could not be known by thought but might be automatically "just known" through intuition and a sense of duty. But how does pose any legitimate alternative for understanding morality, and where did it lead Kant? As far as I understood, Kant regarded the moral worth of an action in the exact opposite fashion as Nietzsche, and yet he did so in such a strange way.
@TheRectangularVerb That moral worth is only displayed if an action either affects no benefit to the actor or if the actor benefits with no knowledge of the benefit or pursuit of values being achieved. Essentially, moral worth could only be displayed in opposition, not only to what one held in his self interest, but in opposition to all of his natural impulses, all sense of his self, and more importantly, to his own knowledge and understanding. One must NOT want to commit an action in order for
@TheRectangularVerb it to posses moral value. The desire to help another person is amoral. One is only moral if he commits an action against his own nature and his own will, but the caveat is that it must be in accordance with that vague concept of a "sense of duty" which one must experience intuitively. Now, personally, I can neither accept this in practice, nor can I comprehend the origin of such thinking. In my personal opinion, I believe Kant was overreaching. I hardly see how he followed
@TheRectangularVerb this view of "moral value" from his more legitimate and influential epistemological works in the "CPR". How could you then, for a layman like myself, justify this sort of thinking without employing word games and intuitive declaration that sources from a cognitively inaccessible reality? It seems beyond the scope of the human mind and, thus, worthy of being thrown out as a basis of ethics. Just because there may be no epistemological means of verifying a universal ethics
@TheRectangularVerb through reason, doesn't mean you can create an unknowable source of universal truth and declare that it can be known through intuition. The concept of intuition sounds a bit too much like emotion, and is probably the basis for his understanding of synthetic a priori. But it holds no real weight and offers next to no guidance.
But you seem to be saying something slightly different in your focus on "freedom" as defining principle of good. Perhaps I should read Hegel instead
@TheRectangularVerb of Kant or Hume. And yet it's that concept of freedom, as I understand it, that Rand championed. But she was more like a rationalist than an empiricist. One doesn't necessarily exclude the other. More, they seek to differentiate the true origin of knowledge. Rationalists extract from empirical knowledge, but refine it through rationalization, asserting that there exists a form of truth, or knowledge, that cannot be acquired through empiricism alone. Instead, it is through the
@TheRectangularVerb cognitive apparatus of thinking men that more advanced knowledge can be ascertained, and I believe this employs Kant's definitions of analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori-- which only exist in terms of language- be that verbal language or mathematical language.
Rand denied the very idea of a noumenal world, and with good reason, because Kant himself believed that knowledge of the noumenal world was fundamentally exclusive of human understanding.
@Khayman8888 Let me scholar you on Kant and advise you to toss away whatever you have read of him that makes you understand the above of his theories. Reducing his theories to a quick "analytical vs. synthetic" and "phenomenal vs. noumenal" seems to in this case have been highly confusing, to say the least. The distinction between analytic and synthetic statements is necessary to set the conditions for answer the main concern of the CPR: is metaphysics as a science possible?
@Khayman8888 That is to say, are synthetic statements a priori possible? He then talks about the transcendental aesthetics, i.e. the faculties of sensibility in themselves; key words to research include the inner and outer sense, and space and time. After he set the basis and deducing from the ideas of space and time as a priori necessities, he concludes that synthetic statements a priori are in fact possible.
@Khayman8888 He then ventures on to the transcendental logic, the heart piece of the work, where he now deals with the transcendental framework of thinking, judging and understanding, just as he did with perception before. This is pure reason. It is pure because it contains no empirical observations. Otherwise, it would have to be called empirical reason.
@Khayman8888 The essential purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason, is to for the first time gain a systematic understanding of thinking in itself and to understand the true limitations of reason. This task becomes especially clear when he speaks about the antinomies of pure reason. Kant was not an empiricist, nor a rationalist, and let alone an idealist. Kant synthesised contemporary empiricism with the rationalism of ancient Greece.
@Khayman8888 The two main ideas of the time, which split up Philosophy and led it into the dark direction of scepticism. Hume had a great influence on Kant because he was essentially trying to do the same thing, but he did it in a much less systematic manner, to say the very least. Now, furthermore Kant explains how there are "Anschauung", which we receive through our senses, and "Begriffe", which we deal with in thought.
@Khayman8888 Anschauung roughly translates into perceptions and Begriffe into concepts. However, we cannot think only by using concepts, we need Anschauung to make sense of it. Transcendental Anschauung lies in the a priori conditions of space and time. In geometry you draw a line or a shape, you have a concept in mind, but it is not until you make Anschauung of it in space, that it make sense. Similarly, we cannot base our understanding on Anschauung solely.
@Khayman8888 "Thoughts without content are empty, Anschauung without Begriffe are blind". Pure reason, although it may seem as though it has no Anschauung, does have its grounds in the transcendental aesthetics, which Kant start from.
@Khayman8888 Now, moving on to the idea of the noumenal and the phenomenal. The problem of empiricism and scepticism (and Hume for that matter), was that they saw the mind spinning around objects, as opposed to having the object spin around the mind. You see the distinction? Since the world is in a state of constant flux ("You can't step into the same river twice"), we can at its best be sure of the world at a moment in time only, but we cannot know the things themselves.
@Khayman8888 Kant made an important distinction here: between the phenomenal and the noumenal. All we ever get of the world, are phenomena that we must, in virtue of thought, synthesise into an intelligible whole. When I see a tree I take all the things I sense (shape, colour, etc) and synthesise them into the concept "tree". However, what the tree in itself is, that is to say, what enables me to see the "tree" in all images of it, is the noumenon. Let me explain further.
@Khayman8888 Let's say we are at a park and we see different people play with their dogs. I ask you to sketch a dog for me on a piece of paper. Even though your drawing kills are not those of a maestro artist, we can both agree that what you have drawn is in deed a dog. Now, what enabled us to see all these different dogs (and even the one you drew) as dogs, was the idea of the dog in itself, the noumenon, which we, however, never may know because we cannot have any Anschauung of it.
@Khayman8888 As soon as you imagine any Anschauung of it (which we after all found to be necessary), you get set into the realm of the particulars and of phenomena again, where the universal nature of the thing in itself is lost. Thus, we cannot know noumena of the physical. However, just because we cannot know things in themselves, does not mean we cannot appreciate a good understanding of it in virtue of systematically synsthesising our perceptions.
@Khayman8888 This is essentially what science does. In science, we can never have full certainty, instead we build up models that give us Anschauung of our perceptions (measurements, etc.) so that we may understand it in thought. However, just what "an atom" is in itself is much more complicated to understand without any Anschauung. Surely, we can put it into concepts. But we will still not know what "an atom" in itself is, we will only know what it appears to be.
@Khayman8888 Which, if you ask me, is perfectly fine. After all this is the beauty of science, the fact that it changes as soon as observation tells a theory otherwise. But back to philosophy.
@Khayman8888 Now, eventually, after dealing with dialectic ideas such as God and the antinomies of pure reason, Kant moves on to another area of metaphysics in the Critique of Practical Reason. You see, in the end the CPureR meant to lead up to the CPractR and so did. This is what my mumbo jumbo about pure reason leading us into ethics is all about, because it is the only way by which we can continue a systematic approach to it.
@Khayman8888 Now, in ethics and when concerned with human existence, the nouminal world need not be fully exclusive to human understanding. We can know what the good in itself is, but we must understand it freely and for ourselves as otherwise we do not understand it freely. That is to say, we cannot tell each other "these are your duties, do them, they are right" because the other one would not commit to them freely and in virtue of his own reason then.
@Khayman8888 I did get concerned when you started to speak of his ethics because you seemed to misunderstand a great deal once more (I blame it on that paper you read, lots of pseudo-philosophical stuff out there). The sense of duty is not something that we must commit to against our will. Au contraire, the good will, the autonomous choice to commit to duty on the basis of reason and understanding what duty is in itself, are the fundamental ideas in Kant's system.
@Khayman8888 There are four major characteristics of ethical action according to Kant: 1) Universalisability: the maxim you are acting on must hold as a universal law of nature (all humans as noumena are equal and free); 2) Treating humanity as an end in itself: and never just as a means; 3) Furthering the Kingdom of Ends: that is a society where people treat each other never as means and instead follow their duty (not police officer duty! rational duty for its own sake, difficult key concept);
@Khayman8888 and 4) the Good will: which is basically ventures around doing something for its own sake because it is good in itself rather than for some hypothetical reason. Apropos, the idea of hypothetical action that I earlier introduced is actually an idea of Max Weber, another great German philosopher and sociologist, I believe, that you might want to look up yourself.
@Khayman8888 Look, we cannot prove to each other that our own theories must be true because each of us in convinced of the one and will not really look at what the other is saying but rather in such a way as to refute it. Don't get me wrong, I do try to look into what you are saying, but let's be honest, neither of us is intending in any way to radically change ones opinions at the moment. I can only advise you to read the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft for yourself and see where it leads.
And, no psychologist or neurologist has proven that minds are not self-perceived and self-developed. Stop spitting fluff. The standard world view that we endorse (yes, I am a psychologist) is that the mind is a type of developing computer that possesses some innate ability to act in ways that would subvert previous experiences and even composition.
@Thethoughtcircle But surely, you yourself have no perception of yourself as a whole. There is no objective idea "thethoughtcircle" in your mind as there may be an object "telephone". The problem is, that since we need perception to makes sense of physical things and objects, and there is no object of the self that we can sufficiently perceive with our senses, we cannot know the true "I". Instead we must imagine it to make sens eof ourselves. In a sense, this leads to freedom.
I don't think that she is citing a philosophical law. She is citing logical axioms -namely, identity. Moreover, no individualist (including Rand) thinks that humans live in a vacuum. The point is that ethical norms are indescribable if they are not rooted in reality, and to root said morals, requires that the individual entity ascertain them. The only way to do this is egoism.
Individualists who cite philosophical laws to explain the human condition are like creationists who cite the bible to explain human existence. If the individualist philosophy can't acknowledge that humans don't live in a vacuum, then it can't be remotely rooted in reality.
@RipTheSystem33 While most "philosophical law" (besides logic there is no such thing) has it's roots in apriori necessities of the mind, the "individualist philosophers" cannot sufficiently present these apriori necessities because the connections that need to be made are too many to be squeezed into 484 characters on YouTube. Which is sad, because it would make many of these discussions much more intelligible.
Ayn Rand operated on the presumption that self-interest is always rational, when in fact it is not, and it is certainly less likely to be rational than public interest. "Individualism" assumes we like in a vacuum, when we don't. The reality is that everything is interconnected. Ayn Rand's ethos was far detached from reality, and preached for "individualism" and "self-interest," which are mere feel-good words for "self-absorbed."
@RipTheSystem33 .Individualism assumes no such thing...capitalism,which Rand advocated is a social/economic system which by obvious definition means other people are a value. Every action a human being takes..from rolling over in bed to going to work to even committing suicide is done to gain a new value (as the actor see's it) that he previously did not have. Look up the science of Praxeology", the study of human action, for a deeper explanation. Find "Praxgirl" on Facebook...good stuff.
@RipTheSystem33 The fact is only individuals exists..and preform the distinctive human trait..which is to think and conceptualise..its our unique survival mechanism after all..and its an individual process, the group,be it the family,community,society or the nation are only floating abstractions..they don't actually exist as beings in themselves. If you focus on protecting the individuals rights from harm then,by default, you ensure that all the subsequent abstract groupings he forms are ok too.
@Riellysdad "The fact is only individuals exists."
This is not true. I'm not sure how this could ever be true, considering everything in existence is relative to everything else. It's observable and scientifically verifiable. Also, you are incorrect that humans are the only species that can conceptualize. Any time an animal learns through repetition that they can and cannot do certain things, they are conceptualizing.
@RipTheSystem33 ..If animals could truly conceptualise then they would be able to pass on learned information and we would see evidence of this in their descendent's doing things differently to their forebears. But we don't. The only species yet known that displays evidence of doing just that is ours. And show me a human being who is not an autonomous individual where it counts..in their mind. Even Siamese twins are individuals in this context.
@Riellysdad Of course humans can conceptualize at a higher capacity than other animals, as far as we know, that is. But your notion of humans being "autonomous" in their mind is not even remotely true. There are entire and multiple fields of study that deal with psychological formation. The environment that the human mind forms in, especially through early developmental years, is the biggest influence on the human mind. Again, this is reality, not opinion. "Where it counts" is your opinion.
What Rand says in essence is....There's nothing wrong with other people being happy,wealthy,joyous, loved, materially sustained etc etc....nothing all all. In fact those are marvellous and great things...fantastic,more of it. BUT....not at the un-chosen expense of your OWN happiness and well-being and certainly not by the initiation of physical force against you to bring it about. That's pretty unequivocal and straight forward. Who can't understand that?
If we were all just self-absorbed, selfish fucks...then no one would reach out to help others, I am talking about complete strangers, who are in need. There is a part of the human condition among a great many people that is full of compassion and caring that transcends the needs of self. If it was all just dog-eat-dog survival, we would live in a world dominated by thugs, bullies and predators. And all great great chieftans have always been judged on the amount that they give...not take.
@superhornet69 I used to think of Rand's work and ideas same as you. Then someone challenged me to read some of her stuff. I was floored. All she was saying is not to equate selfishness with irresponsibility and narrow material interest like most people do. Rather, one must adhere to one's true desires freely, but know that real values are those that affirm one's own life. If you value helping others you have every right to do so and must do so. That is your own self interest. That's all.
@MrCameron9911 Whoa dude, don't stoop that low. That makes you even more narcissistic than she is. Telling someone to go fuck themselves is the poorest argument that anyone can make in an argument.
@robair9911 You obviously have absolutely no idea what Rand stands for. What she is saying is you should do what makes you happy. If giving to charity and helping the underpriviledged makes you happy, then you should be free to do it. On the other hand, if giving to charity and helping the underpriviledged doesn't make you happy, then nobody should force you to do it. What she stands for is self-reliance, not selfishness.
@bobbymars171 ...Yes...and its a thankless task trying to correct them. The untruths,misconceptions and outright lies told about her and what she advocated is depressing.
@556deltawolf ..Actually she IS advocating selfishness...just not as most people understand the term. She meant it in the sense of "rational self interest...and said that it is the natural birth right of all people to practice it...its what keeps us alive and allows us to be happy and proper in life. We are given life with no unchosen obligations bound to us....our purpose is to enjoy ourselves and live. Our only limitation is a moral requirement to respect the same right for all other people.
"its like exhanging christmas presents that neither party wants". this is how she describes happiness in regards to altruism. And people listen to this women????WHY?
to me, it seems, she is saying being selfless you encourage others to be selfish at the expense of yourself. So, why not cater to yourself? Every action has selfishness in it even helping others. Turning on a light because you deserve to see. But selfishness to the point of affecting others affects you because your selfishness will be your downfall. Strive for selfishness that encompasses altruism as a by-product. Like businesses wanting profit by providing shoes.
@Preteranimus exactly i got what she said, she isnt talking about selfishness in stepping over others,it's maintaining your self-esteem yourself rather than others!
We are ALL selfish. When you donate time or money to charity it is certainly for selfish reasons: Reason #1 Wanting to "Please God", #2 Want to "look good" to those around you, #3 Seeking good "Karma", #4 Attempting to make a better world for all to live in, thus creating a place you would wish to live. All human action is self-serving. Giving your life in combat for a comrade because you couldn't live with your guilt if you didn't... Even the "Golden Rule" is built on utter selfishness!
I think its funny that the same people who are drooling at the chance to destroy religion are the same people who preach the same crap about "loving your fellow man" and "helping others"
The saying about making other happy isn't logical according to how Man thinks. Giving and experiencing Joy from giving and serving others, is mostly a spiritual experience. If you are dead set against the spiritual realm even existing, than you probably won't enjoy giving. Also, you must be doing it out of your own desire, other wise you won't likely recieve that sense of Joy for seeing how much you can make a difference in someone elses life.
da7nesman 5 days ago
I find that most who dismiss Ayn Rand’s morality don’t really understand it. Her “selfishness” is long-term, principled self-interest. People are a combination of the physical and mental, and your self-interest includes psychological values. Self-interest is not to be reduced to only the physical, such as money. Other people can be of tremendous psychological value (i.e. friends, lovers, children.) Rand recognized that benevolence toward strangers is in one’s own interest, in a free country.
SwordOfApollo 1 week ago
@SwordOfApollo
Sure, if I were to weigh helping someone else or helping society, I would do so with the objective of advancing the collective interest.
If I had an individual that was working in opposition to my interest or the interest of someone I loved, how should I respond? In my interest? Which interest supercedes the other? Is there an arbitrator in this scenario?
Should I be forced to conform with another man's interest if it allows a more utilitarian outcome?
Redfingers 1 week ago
@Redfingers No, you shouldn't be forced, but if society at large gains winds of your conflict, then expect to be. It can't be said that society is right or wrong to force you to conform, but it will do what it must to ensure the better outcome for itself.
sexyloser 5 days ago
Snyder is a little little man.
cineasta71 1 week ago
She has an ugly square head.
samwst56 2 weeks ago
If she beleives in morals then she beleives in God. If she love her family then she loves God, If she love her counrty then she loves God even if she does not know it. its sad.
prreyreyland 2 weeks ago
@prreyreyland That is called Pantheism, not Christianity, noob.
normalkuriboh 2 weeks ago
@prreyreyland
A very close minded view of the world.
And probably also a chained view as well. You can not see the world differently can you? Or at least not with ease... You cannot imagine another world can you? If that idea would speak against god that is... I hope you do more thinking in your life at some point.
~Jkun~
Jkun 2 weeks ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@prreyreyland Its not sad. And the fact you just said if she believes in morals then she believes in God is BS. First you have to believe that god is moral. But which one? The one YOU believe in. There are sooooo many people that believe in a different god that isnt yours and would find you immoral. Morality is not dictated by god. It it were, we would be living our life as it is in Leviticus and you wouldnt even be on your computer.
nicethoughts1 1 week ago
Rand was a huge hypocrite. She directly went against her own ideology to pay for lung cancer treatment through medicare, then proceeds to go on about taking responsibility for one's own self and actions. She will go down in history as a hypocrite and a liar.
1019079 2 weeks ago
@1019079 Absolute truth right there.
Conspiratardz 1 week ago
The value of selfishness? Uh, there is none. If she means that ENABLING bad behavior is wrong, then that is correct. But she never says that. She just rambles on about how being selfish is good, a primitive conservative notion that always pops up in totalitarian states. Take this nonsense to Europe and they'll puke in your face.
tstruss912 2 weeks ago
What a sexy woman!!! How my loins stir with manly passion!!!
HedgehogRebellion 3 weeks ago
was tom blowing smoke at ayn?
billthestinker 4 weeks ago
If making people happy makes you happy go for it! The end game is still pleasing yourself. I so agree you can't love everybody, if you did what value does your love have? I'd rather love a chosen few and make a difference to them then have some silly, slushy vague idea I'm doing any good by loving everyone. Free love also means that love has no value, keep it.
Exsugarbabe1 4 weeks ago
@Exsugarbabe1 You are right on. Rand is right on that you cant love everyone but if helping other people makes you happy go for it. I like to go out of my way a lot for other people. I think it's is due to the praise. It's gratifying to me, even if it's momentary. Knowing I will be remembered by that person for a long time (depending on the severity) is worth it for me. In that sense it is selfish. So I guess Ayn was right after all. lol.
SkyFortStudios 3 weeks ago
@SkyFortStudios Thank you, I get so much hate mail for being honest you wouldn't believe!
Exsugarbabe1 3 weeks ago
@Exsugarbabe1 i can't imagine why. we are an imperfect species that evolved selfish actions in order to survive over the years. Ayn Rand perhaps doesn't see it like this and it's too much to all be completely selfish all the time because we have to help each other. That's what a society needs to survive. All of it has a a line that can be crossed very easily. For instance, if we all become 100% selfish but only available to those we love. That just can't fly in society.
SkyFortStudios 3 weeks ago
@SkyFortStudios We developed both selfish and collectivist instincts. Society is made of individuals...but individuals need society to flourish. You have to see both sides, right?
HedgehogRebellion 3 weeks ago
@HedgehogRebellion Makes sense to me yes.
SkyFortStudios 3 weeks ago
@SkyFortStudios Thank you. For more quick logic please hit my 60 second video on the illogic of the fear of death.
HedgehogRebellion 3 weeks ago
@Exsugarbabe1 I am not saying we are all selfish. It's the good of the group mentality as well. But we are now to the point in our evolution that we can step out of our primitive mentality and live against our genes. Contraceptives are a perfect example. Sex for pleasure instead of fun.
SkyFortStudios 3 weeks ago
@Exsugarbabe1 sex for pleasure instead of Procreation*
SkyFortStudios 3 weeks ago
suicide is never an altruism practice. just plain stupid.
Lobitta504 4 weeks ago
I have had the experience where everyone and everything exists within my Greater Self. Therefore, compassion for life itself, for the environment and its life forms, is as natural as caring about the foot, the hand, the legs, the water supply....One can be a loving being. One can live in love. Such a state is not intellectual. It is the state of Bliss.
Chidanandaji 1 month ago
Rand placed a high value on selfishness and adultery. But I guess those two moral pearls are sort of related anyway.
termsofusepolice 1 month ago
Most libertarians have no time for this despicable woman, who once called the super rich 'the most oppressed minority in America.' She was a cultist of the Jim Jones variety: probably a socio-path and far too convinced of her own supposed intellectual superiority. Atlas Shrugged could have been 90% shorter than it was and still have got its message across. Objectionable character
Bastiat90 1 month ago
About Dostojevsky's altruism; Is she referring to Maria Dmitrievna Isayeva? I can find no record of her death being a suicide. Or is she confusing his life with what he wrote, referring to the short story "A Gentle Creature", which does indeed feature a suicide prompt on by the self-defeating love/narcissistic compassion of the protagonist.
retardooo 1 month ago
spoken like a true psychopath :)
alvisc2002 1 month ago
Such an authoritarian approach (he tells us what the truth is, from a privileged standpoint) is bound to lead to errors and inconsistencies."
Khayman8888 1 month ago
To quote an aptly written article, "If we ask by what validated methodology Kant has justified these beliefs of his, one is hard put to give a cogent answer. Since Kant has (like Hume) essentially given up on the intricacies of inductive logic, or perhaps never known or understood them, the arguments he puts forward can only constitute window-dressing around what is simply an intuitive-declarative mode of philosophizing.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
im a selfish person with selfishness
318ray 1 month ago
Two years later she was dying of cancer and on MEDICARE and DISABILITY... I would have made her pay for her own poison.
SEANFIR 1 month ago
@SEANFIR I think it is a lot more painful for her to owe her life to the welfare system than to lose it inspite of it.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb ya think? Remember how old RONNIE REAGAN was realllly down on early stem cell research... then he started doing that DYING THING and his WHOLE OUTLOOK CHANGED... GO! GET THOSE STEM CELLS... WILL LIVE BABIES HELP? I CAN GET LIVE BABIES... NANCY, GO ON TV AND GET SOME LIVE BABIES! NOW! I'm DYING HERE! ME! THIS IS ME! DYING... yep... the great rationalizer/equalizer... death.
SEANFIR 1 month ago
@SEANFIR I don't see what you just did. Enlighten me.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
I love how there appears to be a very low amount of profanity in the comments below. I am in the intellectual part of YouTube <3
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
Being totally selfish and isolated is a bad thing just like being totally dependent other people is a bad thing. We evolved in groups, and formed societies. There's always a balance. If I have plenty of money on me, and my friend is broke, I have no problems about buying him food or a brew. And in return, he'll do the same for me when the time arises. I believe in Karma alot, it may not be instant, but it'll get you.
FuIIOfFaiI 1 month ago
@FuIIOfFaiI I agree with your response, though I would like to point out that it doesn't have to be a "give and take" thing. The reason one borrows money to a friend is because it is ensuring the conditions necessary for him to prosper as a human being. Now, it doesn't matter if your friend would or will do the same for you so long as you have fulfilled your duty towards him, which is the same for all humanity and everything: treat it according to its nature.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb I didn't really mean to imply I'm doing it for only the pay-back reward. In alot of cases I wouldn't even accept it if I already have money. I usually just tell them, "just return the favor to someone else", but If I'm dead-broke, then sure. I know that I've already payed off my debts in other ways, so I won't have any qualms about accepting a small gift, like a beer or a sandwich.
FuIIOfFaiI 1 month ago
@FuIIOfFaiI Ah, I am happy to hear. The thing that caught my attention in your first comment was the last line about karma, more specifically: "it may not be instant, but it'll get you". It seemed to me that you did point the justification back at the self, do correct me if I'm wrong, yet this is simply self-love in disguise if you ask me.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb I think you misunderstand my motivations. The Karma comment was just basically; treat people like shit, don't be surprised if they treat you like shit back. I don't really get how you get the 'self-love in disguise' from that, but I guess you'd have to know me and my experiences to really understand my perspective.
FuIIOfFaiI 1 month ago
@FuIIOfFaiI The self-love in disguise comes from the idea of doing something for the sake of it's consequences, that is to say, because the consequences are pleasurable, and pleasure and the happiness it may or may not lead to are basically just self-love because that's all that it ever reaches, the individual subject. On the karma note though, is the only reason for not treating people badly that they would otherwise treat you badly in return?
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
Correct me if im wrong but does she always seems like an anarchist (i owe nothing to anyone). All she ever proved is that theres nothing forcing or bargaining with us to be good people. she took this to mean that we don't have to care about others. Error: Being able to do something that is not punished does not make it okay to do.
iron100159 1 month ago
@iron100159 The problem is that Rand posed the quesiton "why be moral" and, in trying to answer this meta-metaphysical question, left the realm of the metaphysical and turned to the physical. Hence, happiness and selfishness. She is looking at things and not at ideas. In doing what she did, the only answer she can find will be hypothetical, but never apriori and universal, which is what ethics requires.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb i guess my problem is this: say you see a guy choking. Since your not obligated to him, you don't have to save him. And if it makes you happy, you can laugh at him as he dies.She decided that since we need to survive to exist, then dying is the worst thing possible, and somehow surviving = total selfishness. This forgets the social contract and that some people would die for their beliefs.
iron100159 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb Its all very animalistic that the only point of life is surviving. However, I find the human rights part of objectivism interesting in that it could be stretched ad nauseum to altruism while contradicting Rand's assertion that all we have to care about is our own happiness.
iron100159 1 month ago
@iron100159 It is in fact very animalistic to think like Rand and the reason she gets there is because she looks at man as an object, thus leaving out of the picture higher mental processes such as beliefs, understanding, reasons, motivations and values. To her it's a problem of what is the case, in this case that human beings are clearly selfish, because they are animals, because they need to survive, but not what ought to be the case. I'm not quite sure I get you on the objectivism
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb survial and selfishness are not the same things though are they? I can selfishly enjoy something that does not contribute to my survival. Meeting our own needs and the needs of others are not necessarily contradictory ideas. And this begs the question: do we need/always want to survive? If someone does not want to survive, which could have a variety of reasons, doesn't that put a hole in the whole thing. Or if someone wants to live for selfless reasons or die for selfish ones
iron100159 1 month ago
@iron100159 Well, according to Rand, the selfish death idea would be pure nonesense, she would probably regard it as an illness of the mind rather than a problem. I do, however, find the point you are making interesting, yet I do not think we could justify not surviving in many contexts, maybe in a war situation. However, when looking at human nature as "social animal" rather than "selfish individual", you get a different picture, where selflessness is necessary.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb Selflessness is mindlessness. Selflessness doesn't really exist, and when it does occur, it is morally wrong.
What you call selflessness is actually selfishness. If you actually understood what selflessness implied, you wouldn't call any acts of goodness selfless.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Look, acts in accordance with ethics and and idea of a universal good, are necessarily selfless because the self does not affect matters of pure reason, that is to say, concepts that are unaffected by experience, and hold true before experience. If we act in accordance with the moral law, we do so for its own sake, not because it feels good, or because we were told to do so, but because we understand that it is our duty. The concept of duty is meant in an abstract sense here.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb The self does not affect matters of pure reason? Impossible. The self is the only origin for reason. One can only reason through one's own mind. Without the self, there is no reason. No concepts can be "unaffected" by experience. If "understanding" or morality were automatic, as you seem to be implying, there would never be a discrepancy. When we act in accordance with moral law, we do so because of an understanding of our duty, not to some nonexistent universal law, but to
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb our own set of values, whether those were acquired through reason or through education and blind acceptance.
Saying that an act of good is selfless demands that it is not in one's self interest to commit that action. It's insulting and it's wrong. Selflessness implies a lack of personal choice. It isn't just a philosophical truth but a psychological and physiological truth. We carry out actions of our own accord. We follow a thought process before we make a decision.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb We never "put" someone's interests before our own. We merely absorb their interests into our own and act accordingly. A truly selfless person would have no rational limit. He would have no measure of restraint because his actions would not involve self interest and, thus, there would be no barring the degree.
He'd see a homeless man and give him the keys to his car and the deed to his house. Furthermore, if love were "selfless", it would be unearned, it would neither
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb have any measure, because it's from the SELF that a rational or even emotional assessment originates. A selfless love has no personal basis to differentiate between values. It is the same for one's wife as it is for a rapist in a prison. There is no intelligence because it is selfless, it is based not on the calculations of one's own reasoning mind, but on an altruist morality that does not bother to distinguish in its binary criteria for good and evil.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb At the end of the day, when the chips are down, this is the difference between you and I.
I do good, donate, and help people because my personally formulated, rational hierarchy of values includes good will towards man as a principle that's worth a "reasonable" (note that word) concession of material goods and time. Thus, a five dollar bill to a homeless woman, or a 10 dollar meal for my friend, is not a sacrifice in the sense of a higher value being traded for a lower value
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb the value of good will towards others easily supersedes the the value of money and time that I have to spare.
On the other hand, a 100 dollar bill to a homeless man is an absurd expectation, because I need that 100 dollars to take care of MYSELF. This is where the rationale enters into, you see? This is where self interest comes in. 5 dollars to the homeless man is deemed rationally acceptable for its reward in good will and personal fulfillment, but 100 is too much.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb Now you, on the other hand, you must feel that giving that 5 dollars to the homeless man, or that 10 dollar meal for your brother, is not in your self interest. It is a sacrifice that you must make. You must force yourself, against your own rational desire, to make these concessions. What, then, prevents you from giving that homeless man 100 dollars? Simply MORE rational desire? In the end, your rational egoism takes control, yes? Certain donations can be rationalized, others
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb can't, right? You wouldn't, for instance, donate your girlfriend to a homeless man.
In the end, you and I are likely EQUAL in our charity and good will towards men. The difference is that I believe that it comes from me, that it's something that I have CHOSEN to do. You believe that you must be forced by an external sense of duty, that it is carried out without self esteem or voluntary will. Even if you didn't want to, you think, you would still be FORCED by some absolute
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb sense of duty that derives from ANYTHING but your own rational observation of the world, and your own experiences in life. I find that interesting. I, personally, think it is an insult to your good nature.
And by taking responsibility of myself, and not so much embracing as merely UNDERSTANDING that all people, throughout the world, and myself no less included, DO act in self interest. And it is our self interest that we must formulate through the use of REASON in order to
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb be good people.
Because it isn't the beneficiary of the action that should logically determine the value of the action. It is the action itself that must hold up with demonstrable ethical principles. But by taking responsibility for myself and my rational mind's DUTY to function at all times, I will never be bidden to do evil for another man's sake. I will never justify an atrocious action based on the recipient of that action, and I will not be a victim to men of influence.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 There are two things I would like to point out to you in the following series of comments. Firstly, the faulty notion of a rational desire. Secondly, the notion of hypothetical reasoning.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 In the above you mentioned the self is the centre of all reason and that nothing can happen without the self. While I do agree that having a self is a necessary condition for reasoning, I do not agree that the self is necessarily what affects its functioning in itself. When basing reason on sense experiences, the self does interfere with reason. However, when talking about pure reason, the self does not interfere with it.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now, what do I mean by pure reason? Pure reason is what you reason about when you reason about reason, that is to say, when you look at the very essence of what reason is. This must happen without sense experience, as you otherwise only see what reason seems to be as opposed to critically examining what it really is.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Since in ethics we wish to find out not just what seems to be good, but what is actually good in itself, we must approach it in a pure fashion. Now, since there is no object of my self that I can look at (there are sense inputs I get of myself: mirror image, feelings, but not never a distinct object I can distance myself from), in order to understand myself, I must imagine the object that is me. That is, I must imagine what I am like.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 This process can become conscious and instead of basing how I look at myself on chance or desires, I can do so consciously. This is where freedom of the will lies. Now you may say, "hah! there is no freedom in this because I look at myself by means of the selfish desires I have!", and I would agree with you. When you look at yourself without the use of pure reason, you will never be free, because you can only base it on a sense experience of yourself which you do not understand.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now, when by means of pure reason, we establish what I ought to look at myself as, I can thus determine what I ought to act like. However, when speaking of desires, which Rand and I suppose you, take to be the basis of morally selfish behaviour, you cannot understand it because you are necessarily caught up in it (no systematic object of the self). There can be no rational desire because desires do not originate in reason but rather by means of chance and cause and effect at best.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now moving into the second thing I wanted to touch upon: the characterisation of action. In order to establish whether or not something was good, we must be very clear about what it actually is. Now, when characterising an action by means of the desires that brought it about, you can never fully understand the action because you can never fully understand the desire. Using this as the basis of moral reasoning leads to absurdity.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 The reason why Rand indulges in it, is because she made an attempt at doing what Kant did not: look at what moral action concretely has to be (according to human nature), that is to say answer what is the case, rather than what metaphysically should/ought to be the case. The problem with this is, that Rand, in doing so, had to refer to hypothetical reasoning and so ended up with a form of hypothetical action as the moral one.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 But hypothetical action is not the level of analysis at which ethics has to occur. Hypothetical reasoning is "If/then" reasoning. If I break the law, then I will be punished. Other types of action include expressive action (energy-regulation, e.g. reflexes or spasms) and traditional-conventional action (based on unquestioned authority: "I do X because we have always done it"). In terms of intellectual freedom, these are all below hypothetical reasoning.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 However, since the only source of systematic understanding of non-physical matters (I dare say metaphysical matters, as ethics surely belongs into the realm of the pure) is pure reason, we cannot base our understanding of ethics on hypothetical reasoning and experience, because we cannot find the object of the good in the physical. The most important aspect is freedom, and by that I do not mean abstract freedom that Rand talks about (because of the hypothetical fallacy),
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 but true freedom that enables us to reason freely and truly understand the basis of our action. When I say I do X because it is pleasurable, I do not fully understand why I am doing it, because I cannot understand why it is pleasurable, since at that moment I am caught up in the world and have no psychical distance to it. The central aspect to duty is not to abide by it, but instead to understand systematically and fully the grounds of one's actions.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Thus selflessness cannot lie in an understanding of the physical, of experiencing trees and dogs and love, etc. But selflessness lies in true freedom, when truly understanding what the self is, and what the reasons for one's actions truly are, not hypothetically, but categorically. Not being caught up in the world, but happening to it, which can only be the case when we distance us from it conceptually, by means of pure reason. Everything else is unfortunately self-contradictory.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb I'm sorry, but that was the most convoluted and jarbled bunch of nonsense I've read in a long time. What is this "PURE REASON" you speak of that exists without the sense experience of human beings? Are you trying to imply a logical order to the universe that exists without the necessity of human understanding? Even languages like mathematics are merely a codification of human understanding. There is no SUCH thing as reason without a human mind (or some other similarly
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb intelligent and hitherto undiscovered species capable of rationale). Even if you made the declaration that there was, you'd be pissing in the wind. It would require the function of your own mind to even begin to understand it, and thus it would be enslaved to the limitations of your mind's ability to perceive the world you live in. "Sense experience", as you describe it, is the basis for all rational thought. More to the point, the cognitive function of one's own mind is the
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 only means through which one may understand any facet of epistemology. Even if you could make a good argument for this "pure reason", external to the understanding of human beings, which you can't, it'd be a laugh for you to say that it should be the basis of ethics. Rational thinking, as it is capable of being carried out, is, and has always been, the basis for ethical debate.
You're going to have to come down to earth and deal within the parameters of human intelligence to
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb discuss ethical questions, or you might as well be conceding all responsibility of thinking to a higher power. This "pure reason" theory doesn't hold water in legitimate philosophical conversations and never has.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb Beyond that, you seem to have so thoroughly misunderstood Ayn Rand's objectivist ethics that, in order to even carry on further discourse with you, I feel I would have to outline her entire premise- which is decidedly NOT that the moral measure of an action is determined by its basis in desire. Rationalization is a human function that exists independently of desire. In practice, they both tend to influence a person's actions, but that does not make them the same. Rand's
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb theory of ethics didn't present personal desire to be the basis of morality, nor even of self interest. The objectivist ethics were a comprehensive school of logical ideas that existed as a constant codex, regardless of personal desire. That was one of her major disagreements with Nietzsche. She believed that reality was a metaphysical truth that could, in fact, be determined through the application of reason. The entire basis of the objectivist ethics is the concept of
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb individual sovereignty, just another step on the course of existentialism, which you necessarily depart from when you talk about pure reason and "hypothetical action". Are you even taking a page out of Kant's book with this conjecture? I'd be interested in hearing how this "pure reason" can even lead you to conclude any kind of ethical facts, or axioms, or whatever you seem to be implying it will yield. You're thinking a little too "outside the box" and it doesn't get anyone
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb anywhere.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 I will gladly tell you more about the nature of pure reason and just what it's relevance in understanding ethics is. So, what is pure reason? In case I had not made it quite clear enough before: pure reason is reason in itself, it is reason independent from sensibility. It is the reason which contains the principles to understand something plainly a priori, which is the single most important thing, when trying to understand something as it is in itself, that is entirely.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 By means of understanding the nature of pure reason and applying it on itself, we may understand the metaphysical nature of ourselves and of the true meaning of freedom. That is to say, the Hegelian idea of freedom, not just in terms of negative rights, but also in terms of freedom from other influences, society, etc. True freedom of the mind and decision-making.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Pure reason contains the categories of thought in virtue of which we may understand the basis for thinking itself, which we must if we want to understand how freedom of the mind is possible. I do agree that thinking and reason cannot exist without human beings, and while I agree that they cannot occur without a mind, I do believe that the self (which I believe we have differing ideas of) need not necessarily play a role in its activities.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Let's see about the self in more detail now: the self, in terms of being identified with ones desires and emotions, I do not agree needs to affect the workings of the mind. Now, the self as the "I think", I agree does play a rather important role in thinking, as unity of thought is a necessary condition for cognition: the way we understand something must not contradict itself. I assumed you meant "self" to rather mean the former, excuse me if this was not the case.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Either way, since we are dealing with ethics, we must be in the need of finding something that is universally true as an idea of the good cannot be based in something purely subjective as it results in a contradiction. What is the nature of understanding? It must be to find what something is in its nature or essence, if you like. That means, that if we want to find what is good, we must understand what the good is in itself.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 The good depending on the individual leads us to accept that any given act can be good for A but at the same time bad for B as the grounds are not universal. This is like saying that something is X and not X at the same time; a clear syllogistic contradiction. Clearly, ethics must be universally holding. Pure reason is the tool we may use for finding this in virtue of its ability to cognize something a priori.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Freedom is so essential in this because in order for any action to be right, we must understand why it is right. It is not enough to do it, we must understand it too. Good action can only take place when we are free and most of the time we are not free, we are affected by all sorts of unfulfilled needs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs). True freedom can only be found when we distance ourselves from what is the result of pure chance and
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 instead base our understanding on certainty, a priori statements. Since the physical is ever changing, experience cannot deliver certainty. You sir, in virtue of your previous reasoning, appear to me as an empiricist. Correct me if I am wrong. Yet, you must understand that basing our understanding on something that ought to be universal in its nature on experience will never hold any proper results.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 I hope this makes my position somewhat more clear, if it doesn't, do ask a few specific questions so that I can answer them more systematically. I do ask you to tell me more about Rand's theory in concreto, seeing that I have never actually read her works myself but only heard of her theories from others and by means of youtube. Cheerio!
Ps. sorry for upside down posts again.. How do you do it?
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb So when I first read your argument, I admit that it was absolutely incomprehensible, the idea of pure reason that you spoke of. Naturally, not wanting to be close-minded, and hoping to learn from this dialogue, I looked up pure reason and found that it was a primarily Kantian idea. So I read about Kant (as much as a person can in about 2 hours, anyway). I found there to be a great deal of stuff that I couldn't really swallow- chiefly the "reality" of the noumenal world
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb versus the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. Furthermore, Kant talked about analytic and synthetic a priori, and analytic and synthetic a posteriori. From what I understood, he believed that analytic a posteriori was almost a contradiction in terms and disregarded it, and seemed to imply that synthetic a priori could not be discovered by rationale. In short, what could be knowable were analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb I believe I am more of a rationalist than an empiricist, but I think both are driving from the same direction. This "pure reason" exists in opposition to both schools of thought, really, but one can't entirely rule out the validity of Kant's thoughts on analytic vs synthetic knowledge, or the distinction between a priori and a posteriori. I can accept space as an analytic a priori, or mathematical law. The concept of analytic a priori in the sense of predicate and subject
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb concepts seems less of a philosophical truth and more of an issue in language terms. I agree with the distinction between analytic and synthetic "understanding" but wonder if it bears any real relevance on philosophy and, furthermore, fail to see its basis in ethics.
From what I'm reading, Kant's idea of "reality" and what "ought" to be derived from a realm of understanding that was strictly inaccessible to human cognition. Therefore, he ruled out reason and
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb empiricism as a means to understand morality, and yet barely formulated the alternative, suggesting that it could not be known by thought but might be automatically "just known" through intuition and a sense of duty. But how does pose any legitimate alternative for understanding morality, and where did it lead Kant? As far as I understood, Kant regarded the moral worth of an action in the exact opposite fashion as Nietzsche, and yet he did so in such a strange way.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb That moral worth is only displayed if an action either affects no benefit to the actor or if the actor benefits with no knowledge of the benefit or pursuit of values being achieved. Essentially, moral worth could only be displayed in opposition, not only to what one held in his self interest, but in opposition to all of his natural impulses, all sense of his self, and more importantly, to his own knowledge and understanding. One must NOT want to commit an action in order for
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb it to posses moral value. The desire to help another person is amoral. One is only moral if he commits an action against his own nature and his own will, but the caveat is that it must be in accordance with that vague concept of a "sense of duty" which one must experience intuitively. Now, personally, I can neither accept this in practice, nor can I comprehend the origin of such thinking. In my personal opinion, I believe Kant was overreaching. I hardly see how he followed
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb this view of "moral value" from his more legitimate and influential epistemological works in the "CPR". How could you then, for a layman like myself, justify this sort of thinking without employing word games and intuitive declaration that sources from a cognitively inaccessible reality? It seems beyond the scope of the human mind and, thus, worthy of being thrown out as a basis of ethics. Just because there may be no epistemological means of verifying a universal ethics
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb through reason, doesn't mean you can create an unknowable source of universal truth and declare that it can be known through intuition. The concept of intuition sounds a bit too much like emotion, and is probably the basis for his understanding of synthetic a priori. But it holds no real weight and offers next to no guidance.
But you seem to be saying something slightly different in your focus on "freedom" as defining principle of good. Perhaps I should read Hegel instead
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb of Kant or Hume. And yet it's that concept of freedom, as I understand it, that Rand championed. But she was more like a rationalist than an empiricist. One doesn't necessarily exclude the other. More, they seek to differentiate the true origin of knowledge. Rationalists extract from empirical knowledge, but refine it through rationalization, asserting that there exists a form of truth, or knowledge, that cannot be acquired through empiricism alone. Instead, it is through the
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb cognitive apparatus of thinking men that more advanced knowledge can be ascertained, and I believe this employs Kant's definitions of analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori-- which only exist in terms of language- be that verbal language or mathematical language.
Rand denied the very idea of a noumenal world, and with good reason, because Kant himself believed that knowledge of the noumenal world was fundamentally exclusive of human understanding.
Khayman8888 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Let me scholar you on Kant and advise you to toss away whatever you have read of him that makes you understand the above of his theories. Reducing his theories to a quick "analytical vs. synthetic" and "phenomenal vs. noumenal" seems to in this case have been highly confusing, to say the least. The distinction between analytic and synthetic statements is necessary to set the conditions for answer the main concern of the CPR: is metaphysics as a science possible?
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 That is to say, are synthetic statements a priori possible? He then talks about the transcendental aesthetics, i.e. the faculties of sensibility in themselves; key words to research include the inner and outer sense, and space and time. After he set the basis and deducing from the ideas of space and time as a priori necessities, he concludes that synthetic statements a priori are in fact possible.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 He then ventures on to the transcendental logic, the heart piece of the work, where he now deals with the transcendental framework of thinking, judging and understanding, just as he did with perception before. This is pure reason. It is pure because it contains no empirical observations. Otherwise, it would have to be called empirical reason.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 The essential purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason, is to for the first time gain a systematic understanding of thinking in itself and to understand the true limitations of reason. This task becomes especially clear when he speaks about the antinomies of pure reason. Kant was not an empiricist, nor a rationalist, and let alone an idealist. Kant synthesised contemporary empiricism with the rationalism of ancient Greece.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 The two main ideas of the time, which split up Philosophy and led it into the dark direction of scepticism. Hume had a great influence on Kant because he was essentially trying to do the same thing, but he did it in a much less systematic manner, to say the very least. Now, furthermore Kant explains how there are "Anschauung", which we receive through our senses, and "Begriffe", which we deal with in thought.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Anschauung roughly translates into perceptions and Begriffe into concepts. However, we cannot think only by using concepts, we need Anschauung to make sense of it. Transcendental Anschauung lies in the a priori conditions of space and time. In geometry you draw a line or a shape, you have a concept in mind, but it is not until you make Anschauung of it in space, that it make sense. Similarly, we cannot base our understanding on Anschauung solely.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 "Thoughts without content are empty, Anschauung without Begriffe are blind". Pure reason, although it may seem as though it has no Anschauung, does have its grounds in the transcendental aesthetics, which Kant start from.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now, moving on to the idea of the noumenal and the phenomenal. The problem of empiricism and scepticism (and Hume for that matter), was that they saw the mind spinning around objects, as opposed to having the object spin around the mind. You see the distinction? Since the world is in a state of constant flux ("You can't step into the same river twice"), we can at its best be sure of the world at a moment in time only, but we cannot know the things themselves.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Kant made an important distinction here: between the phenomenal and the noumenal. All we ever get of the world, are phenomena that we must, in virtue of thought, synthesise into an intelligible whole. When I see a tree I take all the things I sense (shape, colour, etc) and synthesise them into the concept "tree". However, what the tree in itself is, that is to say, what enables me to see the "tree" in all images of it, is the noumenon. Let me explain further.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Let's say we are at a park and we see different people play with their dogs. I ask you to sketch a dog for me on a piece of paper. Even though your drawing kills are not those of a maestro artist, we can both agree that what you have drawn is in deed a dog. Now, what enabled us to see all these different dogs (and even the one you drew) as dogs, was the idea of the dog in itself, the noumenon, which we, however, never may know because we cannot have any Anschauung of it.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 As soon as you imagine any Anschauung of it (which we after all found to be necessary), you get set into the realm of the particulars and of phenomena again, where the universal nature of the thing in itself is lost. Thus, we cannot know noumena of the physical. However, just because we cannot know things in themselves, does not mean we cannot appreciate a good understanding of it in virtue of systematically synsthesising our perceptions.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 This is essentially what science does. In science, we can never have full certainty, instead we build up models that give us Anschauung of our perceptions (measurements, etc.) so that we may understand it in thought. However, just what "an atom" is in itself is much more complicated to understand without any Anschauung. Surely, we can put it into concepts. But we will still not know what "an atom" in itself is, we will only know what it appears to be.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Which, if you ask me, is perfectly fine. After all this is the beauty of science, the fact that it changes as soon as observation tells a theory otherwise. But back to philosophy.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now, eventually, after dealing with dialectic ideas such as God and the antinomies of pure reason, Kant moves on to another area of metaphysics in the Critique of Practical Reason. You see, in the end the CPureR meant to lead up to the CPractR and so did. This is what my mumbo jumbo about pure reason leading us into ethics is all about, because it is the only way by which we can continue a systematic approach to it.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Now, in ethics and when concerned with human existence, the nouminal world need not be fully exclusive to human understanding. We can know what the good in itself is, but we must understand it freely and for ourselves as otherwise we do not understand it freely. That is to say, we cannot tell each other "these are your duties, do them, they are right" because the other one would not commit to them freely and in virtue of his own reason then.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 I did get concerned when you started to speak of his ethics because you seemed to misunderstand a great deal once more (I blame it on that paper you read, lots of pseudo-philosophical stuff out there). The sense of duty is not something that we must commit to against our will. Au contraire, the good will, the autonomous choice to commit to duty on the basis of reason and understanding what duty is in itself, are the fundamental ideas in Kant's system.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 There are four major characteristics of ethical action according to Kant: 1) Universalisability: the maxim you are acting on must hold as a universal law of nature (all humans as noumena are equal and free); 2) Treating humanity as an end in itself: and never just as a means; 3) Furthering the Kingdom of Ends: that is a society where people treat each other never as means and instead follow their duty (not police officer duty! rational duty for its own sake, difficult key concept);
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 and 4) the Good will: which is basically ventures around doing something for its own sake because it is good in itself rather than for some hypothetical reason. Apropos, the idea of hypothetical action that I earlier introduced is actually an idea of Max Weber, another great German philosopher and sociologist, I believe, that you might want to look up yourself.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Look, we cannot prove to each other that our own theories must be true because each of us in convinced of the one and will not really look at what the other is saying but rather in such a way as to refute it. Don't get me wrong, I do try to look into what you are saying, but let's be honest, neither of us is intending in any way to radically change ones opinions at the moment. I can only advise you to read the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft for yourself and see where it leads.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Ps. sorry for inverse order again :P
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@Khayman8888 Ps. sorry about the inverse order :S
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
@TheRectangularVerb Your writing seems forced. I smell a rat.
myboycoltmccoy 1 month ago
@myboycoltmccoy What do you mean? :P
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
And, no psychologist or neurologist has proven that minds are not self-perceived and self-developed. Stop spitting fluff. The standard world view that we endorse (yes, I am a psychologist) is that the mind is a type of developing computer that possesses some innate ability to act in ways that would subvert previous experiences and even composition.
Thethoughtcircle 1 month ago
@Thethoughtcircle But surely, you yourself have no perception of yourself as a whole. There is no objective idea "thethoughtcircle" in your mind as there may be an object "telephone". The problem is, that since we need perception to makes sense of physical things and objects, and there is no object of the self that we can sufficiently perceive with our senses, we cannot know the true "I". Instead we must imagine it to make sens eof ourselves. In a sense, this leads to freedom.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
RipTheSystem33,
I don't think that she is citing a philosophical law. She is citing logical axioms -namely, identity. Moreover, no individualist (including Rand) thinks that humans live in a vacuum. The point is that ethical norms are indescribable if they are not rooted in reality, and to root said morals, requires that the individual entity ascertain them. The only way to do this is egoism.
Thethoughtcircle 1 month ago
A.R. must have been Oprah's tutor.
oldscorpion13 1 month ago
Individualists who cite philosophical laws to explain the human condition are like creationists who cite the bible to explain human existence. If the individualist philosophy can't acknowledge that humans don't live in a vacuum, then it can't be remotely rooted in reality.
RipTheSystem33 2 months ago
@RipTheSystem33 While most "philosophical law" (besides logic there is no such thing) has it's roots in apriori necessities of the mind, the "individualist philosophers" cannot sufficiently present these apriori necessities because the connections that need to be made are too many to be squeezed into 484 characters on YouTube. Which is sad, because it would make many of these discussions much more intelligible.
TheRectangularVerb 1 month ago
Ayn Rand operated on the presumption that self-interest is always rational, when in fact it is not, and it is certainly less likely to be rational than public interest. "Individualism" assumes we like in a vacuum, when we don't. The reality is that everything is interconnected. Ayn Rand's ethos was far detached from reality, and preached for "individualism" and "self-interest," which are mere feel-good words for "self-absorbed."
RipTheSystem33 2 months ago
@RipTheSystem33 .Individualism assumes no such thing...capitalism,which Rand advocated is a social/economic system which by obvious definition means other people are a value. Every action a human being takes..from rolling over in bed to going to work to even committing suicide is done to gain a new value (as the actor see's it) that he previously did not have. Look up the science of Praxeology", the study of human action, for a deeper explanation. Find "Praxgirl" on Facebook...good stuff.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
@RipTheSystem33 The fact is only individuals exists..and preform the distinctive human trait..which is to think and conceptualise..its our unique survival mechanism after all..and its an individual process, the group,be it the family,community,society or the nation are only floating abstractions..they don't actually exist as beings in themselves. If you focus on protecting the individuals rights from harm then,by default, you ensure that all the subsequent abstract groupings he forms are ok too.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
@Riellysdad "The fact is only individuals exists."
This is not true. I'm not sure how this could ever be true, considering everything in existence is relative to everything else. It's observable and scientifically verifiable. Also, you are incorrect that humans are the only species that can conceptualize. Any time an animal learns through repetition that they can and cannot do certain things, they are conceptualizing.
RipTheSystem33 2 months ago
@RipTheSystem33 ..If animals could truly conceptualise then they would be able to pass on learned information and we would see evidence of this in their descendent's doing things differently to their forebears. But we don't. The only species yet known that displays evidence of doing just that is ours. And show me a human being who is not an autonomous individual where it counts..in their mind. Even Siamese twins are individuals in this context.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
@Riellysdad Of course humans can conceptualize at a higher capacity than other animals, as far as we know, that is. But your notion of humans being "autonomous" in their mind is not even remotely true. There are entire and multiple fields of study that deal with psychological formation. The environment that the human mind forms in, especially through early developmental years, is the biggest influence on the human mind. Again, this is reality, not opinion. "Where it counts" is your opinion.
RipTheSystem33 2 months ago
What Rand says in essence is....There's nothing wrong with other people being happy,wealthy,joyous, loved, materially sustained etc etc....nothing all all. In fact those are marvellous and great things...fantastic,more of it. BUT....not at the un-chosen expense of your OWN happiness and well-being and certainly not by the initiation of physical force against you to bring it about. That's pretty unequivocal and straight forward. Who can't understand that?
Riellysdad 2 months ago
If we were all just self-absorbed, selfish fucks...then no one would reach out to help others, I am talking about complete strangers, who are in need. There is a part of the human condition among a great many people that is full of compassion and caring that transcends the needs of self. If it was all just dog-eat-dog survival, we would live in a world dominated by thugs, bullies and predators. And all great great chieftans have always been judged on the amount that they give...not take.
superhornet69 2 months ago
@superhornet69 I used to think of Rand's work and ideas same as you. Then someone challenged me to read some of her stuff. I was floored. All she was saying is not to equate selfishness with irresponsibility and narrow material interest like most people do. Rather, one must adhere to one's true desires freely, but know that real values are those that affirm one's own life. If you value helping others you have every right to do so and must do so. That is your own self interest. That's all.
bobbymars171 2 months ago
@superhornet69 ...Read Rand....She says nothing of the sort.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
@MrCameron9911 Whoa dude, don't stoop that low. That makes you even more narcissistic than she is. Telling someone to go fuck themselves is the poorest argument that anyone can make in an argument.
556deltawolf 2 months ago
@robair9911 You obviously have absolutely no idea what Rand stands for. What she is saying is you should do what makes you happy. If giving to charity and helping the underpriviledged makes you happy, then you should be free to do it. On the other hand, if giving to charity and helping the underpriviledged doesn't make you happy, then nobody should force you to do it. What she stands for is self-reliance, not selfishness.
556deltawolf 2 months ago 2
@556deltawolf
i say more self-interest, than self-reliance.
galerouth 2 months ago
@556deltawolf sadly, most people who criticize Rand have never read her work or don't understand her philosophy.
bobbymars171 2 months ago 2
@bobbymars171 ...Yes...and its a thankless task trying to correct them. The untruths,misconceptions and outright lies told about her and what she advocated is depressing.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
@556deltawolf ..Actually she IS advocating selfishness...just not as most people understand the term. She meant it in the sense of "rational self interest...and said that it is the natural birth right of all people to practice it...its what keeps us alive and allows us to be happy and proper in life. We are given life with no unchosen obligations bound to us....our purpose is to enjoy ourselves and live. Our only limitation is a moral requirement to respect the same right for all other people.
Riellysdad 2 months ago
"its like exhanging christmas presents that neither party wants". this is how she describes happiness in regards to altruism. And people listen to this women????WHY?
robair9911 2 months ago
Doestovsky was a genius. This women has no ground to say poorly of him
robair9911 2 months ago
Fuck Ayn Rand and fuck her sociopath narcissistic bull shit followers.
MrCameron1976 2 months ago
to me, it seems, she is saying being selfless you encourage others to be selfish at the expense of yourself. So, why not cater to yourself? Every action has selfishness in it even helping others. Turning on a light because you deserve to see. But selfishness to the point of affecting others affects you because your selfishness will be your downfall. Strive for selfishness that encompasses altruism as a by-product. Like businesses wanting profit by providing shoes.
Shrunkenhead61 2 months ago
Ayn Rand speaks in such ambiguous and loaded terminology, I am afraid listeners are misinformed by their own inference.
Preteranimus 2 months ago
@Preteranimus exactly i got what she said, she isnt talking about selfishness in stepping over others,it's maintaining your self-esteem yourself rather than others!
Adjei88 2 months ago
We are ALL selfish. When you donate time or money to charity it is certainly for selfish reasons: Reason #1 Wanting to "Please God", #2 Want to "look good" to those around you, #3 Seeking good "Karma", #4 Attempting to make a better world for all to live in, thus creating a place you would wish to live. All human action is self-serving. Giving your life in combat for a comrade because you couldn't live with your guilt if you didn't... Even the "Golden Rule" is built on utter selfishness!
randy109 2 months ago
I wish some of those guys on Wall St. would watch this.
15hmael 2 months ago in playlist Liked videos
I think its funny that the same people who are drooling at the chance to destroy religion are the same people who preach the same crap about "loving your fellow man" and "helping others"
Crackshot1983 2 months ago
@Crackshot1983 amen to that
PolakFury 2 months ago
Ayn rand doesn't realize that happiness is derived from the people around you.
cdc482 2 months ago