 And then go. Question about materialism. So since I brought up materialism, so Cody says, I get called a materialist a lot by conservatives, presumably because I'm an atheist. How do you differentiate your view from a materialistic view? Well, materialism assumes that everything is, that everything acts kind of out there in the physical world, like billiard balls, although they don't necessarily even have a very sophisticated view of the physical world because they can't ascertain certain phenomena. They don't even deal with certain physical phenomena. But everything is just, what it denies materialism is consciousness. What it denies is the fact that there is something else other than material. Now. Well, and it actually, I think a more denies even conceptual consciousness. Well, it's a consciousness and then conceptual consciousness and then what conceptual competence make possible is a spirit, a soul, actual experiences of the soul, right, of the spirit, whether it's art or whether emotional experiences, love. So they assume, or free will, for example, they assume that if you don't believe in God, then there's no such thing. You don't believe there's such a thing as a soul or a spiritual experience. If you don't believe in God, they assume you don't believe in free will. And I say, no, there are two phenomena in the world. There's the material world out there and there's the consciousness that can understand it and know it. And that consciousness has certain characteristics among them, it's ability to have these experiences, emotional experiences, spiritual experiences. You don't need God, you just need introspection to observe that. Well, and also the ability to design a human life, right? So the ability to design and go out and live a human life, which is gonna be different for each person. It's gonna, you know, when you look at a human being, the essence of a human being is not the animal aspects, not the physical aspects. The essence of a human being is what that human being conceives of and brings into reality in the world. That's really what humans are about. Materialism would deny the importance of all of that. And Halley's denying the importance of all of this, that basically wants everybody to just be productive and how dare you go and explore new values and things out there on social media where a lot of people are becoming aware. He wants you to follow the Bible and he wants you to live the life as he sees he thinks you should live. And he rejects, he thinks free will leads you to temptation, free will leads you to the devil. And free choice leads you to the devil and he wants to restrict your choices because we're all weak, we're all fallible, we're all easily tempted by the devil and the devil is online and because the devil's pretty smart and sophisticated and he wants to save us from the devil. And look, the thing is one of the things you have to do as an atheist and what I do and you can decide, I don't know how different people probably deal with this differently. I basically said, look, people say but isn't consciousness just material? And I go, I don't know. I mean, I don't experience as a material and I have free will. So it's a material in the same way I understand the material world out there. So how does consciousness come about? I don't know, it just, but I know it is. It's a starting point, the conscious because you're conscious. So that's what's important. So don't let them trick you into this reduction at absurdum kind of a materialist view. We're not materialist, we believe this consciousness and we also don't know what the so-called scientific explanation of consciousness is but we know it's an axiomatic concept because... Yeah, well, if you did not have free will and the ability to choose what was right or wrong any such thing as proof would be gone. So the proof that... Yeah, so it's interesting how the religious, many secularists, many of the atheists agree about the rejection of free will or at least agree about the rejection of free will. As we see it, also they agree about the perfect ability of man. They think it's impossible because we're weak, we're feeble, we're corruptible. Both the left and the right completely agree about this particularly if you're wealthy, successful with lots of degrees as well as Holly said you're particularly fallible and the left agrees with that. I mean, it's the, again, the Michel and Hertha Earth, the religionists on the right and the Marxists on the left agree on that. Just the religionists call them the proletariat and the right calls them, I don't know, the working people. Let's compete, don't work, but are very rich. I don't know how they got rich if they don't work. No, and that's another, I mean, talk about somebody who discounts the spiritual. See what he won't admit into the actual spiritual and provide the proper value for is the mental work, the work that an entrepreneur does to conceive of the best way to use capital and to arrange a whole organization and give each person his role to play within an organization to produce a value that's gonna improve human life. That sort of creative genius and the hard work that it takes to conceive that sort of thing, that's what he's discounting entirely. He wants to just say that doesn't, you know, that it's- And again, that's where Marxists and them agree, right? Yeah, yeah, no. And, you know, why is it, I guess, he's projecting, he's the one who is weak-willed and not able to withstand or avoid the devil online. And he's considering this up as a lead into the way Ayn Rand thinks about the issue of free will. So if you try to entertain the idea that antecedent factors do determine all our actions, the actions of every human being, of every individual, you have to come in mind two things. So one, what I brought up already, we don't know which antecedent factors, as it's so quoting, putting Pinker's quote up again. We don't know. We can't, we're not in a position to predict it. You need to apply that to yourself. And part of the reason I like Harris is that he's very open in a certain way about his views and the implications of his views. You don't control your own decisions and judgments, and you don't even know what are the factors that are actually determining your actions. I mean, that's the picture. And this is, I don't, sorry. I don't, all my Harris images have disappeared, but this is a quote from Harris. And this is, if you read the book, this is his view of when you're sort of, Iran, Dr. Rukh talked yesterday about introspection. When you're looking inward at the functioning of your own mind, this is one example he gives, but it's one example of many. You're struggling to save money, but you are also tempted by a new computer. Where is the freedom when one of these opposing desires inexplicably, now I've emphasized inexplicably, but that's his word, inexplicably triumphs over its rivals. So you've got these two competing, you're trying to save money, I don't know, for college, you wanna buy a house, and you're tempted by the latest Mac that has come out and you wanna buy it, but well, that would be a dent in your savings. And you find yourself doing one of these. You either, yeah, decide I'm gonna keep saving the money for a college or for to buy a house, or you find yourself in the store buying a computer. And it's inexplicable, you've got these two competing things and one wins out, you don't know why, you don't know what factors led to it. That's, and this, as I said, if you read the book, that's the, and it is right, I think, that that's the picture, you don't know what's controlling you, because you're not controlling yourself. Something else is, but you don't know yet. So this is how you would think about it. But notice if you apply, almost all Harris's examples are like this, struggling to save money versus you're tempted by a computer, you're in the morning or you're gonna have tea or coffee. It's these kinds of examples. If you switch the example a bit, you get something really strange and problematic. And it's, this is something that Rand pointed out, but she wasn't distinctive or unique at pointing this out. This has been a kind of criticism or question raised about determinism. And you can put it as the dilemma of determinism. How do you know that determinism is true? So this was the quote from Harris. Switch some of it. You're struggling to figure out if determinism is true, as maybe some of them in the room are. You're thinking about this issue, but you're also tempted by the idea of free will. Where is the freedom when one of these opposing ideas inexplicably triumphs over its rivals? So Harris, he's got, he's writing a book about it. He's thinking about the issue of determinism, free will. And lo and behold, the idea of determinism wins out in his mind. And some of his opponents, well, they're thinking about it. And lo and behold, the idea of free will wins out in their mind. Why do I think one is true and the other one's false? You don't know what led to this. And that is if you don't have control over your own mind. That is actually, I think it is the right way of looking at it, but it's an incoherent way, because you can apply the view to yourself. If he really viewed himself as I'm just determined to accept determinism, that's not grounds for thinking it's right. It's correct. It's true. So there's something really wrong or an incoherent, I think, in the end about the determinist position. But that doesn't tell you either, it doesn't tell you how to think about the issue of free will. It just tells you there's something incoherent in this position. And so now what I wanna talk is about how Ayn Rand thinks about the issue of free will and that there's an important way that she looks at it that is different and different say than the way Harris is looking at it and the typical kinds of examples that I have to save for college or save for a house. First I'm gonna buy a computer, I'm gonna make myself tea in the morning, I'm gonna make myself coffee in the morning. These decisions about a particular, I'm gonna put it as a particular item of content, tea or coffee, saving my money, spending it on a computer. That if that's all you have when you're thinking about the issue of free will, you're not going to get what the control is that a person actually has over his life. So one of the key insights and one of the things to remember from my talk, if you remember anything, is that there's a different perspective in objectivism and Ayn Rand on the issue of free will, that she thinks you need to rethink the issue and look at it in a different way. So the different way is she thinks we're looking in the wrong place or the wrong aspect of the way we use our mind. That it's not primarily about an issue of content. So about save or buy a computer, order vanilla ice cream or chocolate, make yourself tea or coffee. It's about the functioning or the processing that your mind engages in. So it's not about an issue of content primarily, free will. It's about the actions or the processing that your mind engages in or doesn't engage in. That that's what you have basic and fundamental control over. And it will then color the decisions you make and reach and the choices that you make about particular items of content. Say, are you gonna save your money or are you gonna splurge and buy the new Mac computer? Those are made in the light of something and in the context of you having activated your mind or not or put it. So this is the, in terms of thinking of the processing that is going on or the activity that is going on. One of the ways, because what Rand thinks in terms of free will, the basic issue is to introspect so to become self-aware of the control that you have over your own mind. So it's to observe that you do and can exert this kind of control over your mind. So what we're trying to do is put into words and language to conceptualize activity that we engage in and over which we have control in our own minds. And one of the ways to do that, I think, because we only have access and awareness, we're self-aware, we have an awareness of our own mind, not of the functioning of other people's mind. Of one of the ways to try to put it into words and to conceptualize. And one of the, when you're first doing it, is in terms of metaphors or analogies to things in the external world that more than one person can observe and so on. So the title at the top, Seizing the Rains of Your Mind, is a metaphor. Now, I don't know what's happened to the PowerPoint, but we've lost all the images. So I had an image here of a horse with reins. It is that you have a control you can put. So there's various kinds of analogies or metaphors that she gives. You can put your mind in gear. So if you think in terms of a car that it's in neutral, it can't go anywhere. If you put it into gear, you're putting it, it's ready for motion. It's a basic set that you can now engage in activity, you can direct it. In terms of thinking of a horse with reins, it's galloping, there's some activity going on. To seize the reins means you can take control of that activity. And that that is the basic control that you have over your mind. So take the example of, to Harris's example, you're going to save for your, let's just put it, you're gonna save for college, or are you gonna spend by a computer or a Mac computer you're tempted on? Rather than it being, well, just one of these desires happens to win out and I find myself either at the bank depositing my paycheck in the bank, or I find myself at the Mac store buying a computer. And it was like, it's inexplicable, how did one of these one, maybe next time the other one would win, who knows what's going on. Rather than thinking of it like that, what actually happens, what can you introspect? If you're actually making a decision about it, there's all kinds of activity that you're controlling about. So for instance, like why am I trying to save money? Why am I tempted by this computer? Is it that just I like always having the latest gadget, so this is one more thing and this is exactly why I set a budget, because I know I'm always doing this kind of thing and I'm never gonna save for college if I do that. And you can think about it. And you can assess and think, yeah, this is exactly why I set this budget and yeah, I'm gonna not resist that temptation and not buy it, or it could be, well, like why am I tempted? Well, I lose, I have my current laptop is junk. I spend all kinds of time waiting it for it to boot up and it crashes at various times. It would make a lot of sense for me to buy the computer. So even though I am trying to save, I'm gonna try to do it in other areas because this is something that I actually need. There's a reason I feel tempted to buy it because I actually need this and it's really detrimental to me not to have it. You can engage in that kind of activity, that kind of thinking, that kind of product. And then it's not inexplicable. It's not mysterious why you do one or why you do the other. But it's not, now we're not talking just about the content. We're talking about the activity or the processing that your mind is engaging in, in the face of this. And that, Rand thinks, that is under your control. That is what you have choice and it's sort of the primary or it's the locus of choice. That is what you can control. So one way she puts it, so in terms of this example, it's that you can think about it and you can ask yourself questions and you can direct your mind. So one of the ways she puts it, that the basic choice, and Dr. Brooke put it like this yesterday, is that you can think or not. But that thinking is a process, it's activity. And that's what you can set in motion and direct in control or you cannot do that. So that's one way and that's not a metaphorical use. So seizing the reins, setting your mind and gear or metaphors to capture the issue that there's activity. But we're talking about mental activity and the primary mental activity in that regard is in terms of thinking.