 So you mentioned Kant, and you mentioned Ayn Rand's aversion to Kant, and you mentioned how Kant is problematic in a way, and how Jordan Peterson, you claim, is a Kantian in terms of his epistemology. So let me ask you, what do objectivists find problematic about Kant? Kant believes that it's the formulating categories of our mind that shape the experiences, that shape the world the way that we see it, but Kant does believe in the objective world. He does believe that there are objects out there, that there are things in themselves, that we can't experience them directly, but they're there, and we have this imperfect filter. That's a good question. He doesn't know that. He can state that. He can say whatever he wants, and that's why his followers ultimately doubt the existence of things out there. They doubt the existence of reality. That's a great point because he can't prove it, right? Look, so let me preface this, right? I am not a philosopher, so I'm not an expert on this. You'll have to have Greg Salamiri, Anka Gatte, or somebody who is a real philosopher and who understands Kant deeply. So I'll give you my understanding of Kant, which is not complete and not full. But that's an example of what I mean. How does he know reality exists? He just states it because he says that what we're observing is not reality. He says, indeed, that the categories of the way our brain is structured, it distorts or creates a mirage for us in terms of what we're seeing. We're not seeing actual reality. We're seeing what our senses and our mind filters that is representative of something maybe in reality. And that, of course, opens up that though to reality doesn't exist, which is what the moderns ultimately come to. I think that's both absurd and maybe because it comes before Darwin, you could somehow accept that. But if our mind truly didn't give us what is really out there in reality, the human species would not be around today, right? All the evidence suggests that when I pick up a pen and write, it's actually a pen and actually writes. It's not me imagining. It's not filtering the pen is not something else. All of my senses are consistent in terms of this. And when the sabertooth tiger is chasing me, it's a sabertooth tiger, not a little cat. And if it was a little cat, then I'd be wasting a lot of energy. And if when I saw a cat and it was actually a sabertooth tiger, I'd be dead because sabertooth tiger would have eaten me. So I think that I think that, you know, just our experience of reality suggests that reality is there and that we're experiencing as it is. Now, it doesn't mean that we experience it in every aspect of it, right? So a bat experiences reality differently than we do. But a bat still experiences the same reality. Just from a different perspective, it senses it using sound waves. So its experience of it is different. But it's the same reality. That is, if it looks at a cave, I can measure the cave and the bat, in a sense, will measure the cave. And we will be able to if the cat could describe it, we will be able to describe exactly the same cave. Can't would agree with that. I don't think I would agree with that. Really? Yeah, he still believes that if, if I have this cup here, he believes that I'm not experiencing the thing in itself, but that I am having sensations that deliver sense data to my to my mental apparatus, and that I can make true claims about this, about this mug. I'm not sure that I don't think that's true. Okay, so I don't think I don't think true in this sense means the same thing. I don't think true means that that it that what I'm describing is I'm describing something that really is in reality. It's true in the sense that me and you because we have the same category of comparatives over the same structure of the brain, according to Kant. And again, why is that? How do we know we all have the same, maybe women have it differently than men, maybe blacks and whites have it differently, and maybe Asians have it differently. So you stop breaking it up into identity politics, which is completely Kantian. And we all have different structures of the brain. And we all so when I supposedly right, I'm not arguing this. Supposedly when a woman describes the cup, it's a very different cup than when I describe a cup. But we because we're men are describing the same cup. I see your point. According to Kant, all of us as human beings are describing the same cup, I am claiming that what we're describing is a real cup. And it has that what we're describing about the cup really does exist in reality. And therefore, if a bat could talk a bat that has a completely different structure of the brain, it would describe the same cup as well. Because otherwise, I would bump into I couldn't use the cup, I couldn't actually get it, you know, into my mouth and actually get and the bat would keep bumping into it because it could. So if you think about it from a post evolution perspective, we have evolved to be able to see reality as it is. Otherwise, we would die. And reality as it is the same for us as it is for the bat, we just observe it differently. And we observe different aspects of it because it because of how our senses work with different senses. But the reality has unchanged. And I think that's important. Because again, Kant now, once you have this structure of brain and categorical, you can now break it up in different ways. This is how the Nazis can say, Well, there's an Aryan way of looking the world, and we Aryans are a particular brain. And look, our skulls are different than Jewish skulls. And therefore, the brains are different. And if we do see the world differently, Jews don't see the world that we Aryans. And therefore, there are different species. And we can wipe them out because the evil or whatever, right? I think it's it's that concepts that in motion, in by saying that our brain dictates the reality that's out there, not just in in in that it's it's particularly categorical, you know, categories that make that possible. And then, of course, so that's one, that's as epistemology and metaphysics, which I think are wrong, ultimately, very promising of consciousness. So our consciousness is in some way, creating, filtering, determining what reality is. And look, that comes from a rationalist tradition, going back to the cards. I mean, I, you know, I think therefore I am not, I'm rants, flip that around, right? I'm rants, I'm rants, formulation is much more interesting. She says, I am therefore I think, which is much more what human beings are, I am, what am I am a human being, therefore, what is characteristic of a human being is thinking. But thinking that it takes on a different category, it's about it's about awareness of reality. It's not about playing games in your mind. So I think con to some it kind of attaches reality from the mind, even though he doesn't go all the way, his followers take the consequences of what he has established all the way. And it's worse with Hegel, and it's worth then with every iteration forward all the way to the postmodernist that we have today. And I think they are children of Kant in ways that everybody in a sense today in modern philosophy, in one way or another is a child of Kant. And then morally, of course, this is where he's particularly offensive. Yeah, where morally this does I'm ran stand. So Kant has his categorical imperative is deontology. And then there's utilitarianism, consequentialism that has dominated the world. Our our democratic policies are our progressive taxation is based on on utilitarianism. And then there's virtue ethics. Where does I ran stand in that sort of tripartite story of ethics? Well, if you had to do a tripod, then she would be on the virtue ethics part. But that is that is too superficial to put her just in virtue ethics. Because the question for virtue ethics is why? Why these virtues? What's the standard by which we determine the virtues? Where do the virtues come from? And the vote, as far as I understand, again, the virtue ethicists don't know exactly how to answer any of those questions. It's not a clear answer. So what we demand asks, she has a question that I don't think any philosophers have asked in a very long time, probably since the Greeks. What do we need ethics for? You know, what's this field for what's in and it's it's to give us a it's to give us a guide for what values to pursue. So what are values? And and what makes values possible? What is the context in which human beings need values? And, you know, so values are things one acts to gain or keep or why would one act to gain or keep anything? What is that? What is it? And she says, Well, there's really only one fundamental choice that all living things face, they're all living being face. And that is the choice between life and death, right? And and therefore, she says, you know, if you choose life, there's no there's no dictating that you should choose life. But if you choose life, then the question becomes, what value should I pursue to achieve life? Right? But you but you first have to identify this fundamental alternative that we all face as human beings. And then who should be the beneficiary of these values? Well, I chose life, my life, right? That's where the focal point of values and virtues, virtue ethics should be, is how do I live life? How do I survive? How do I thrive? How do I live as a human fully as a human being? What are the values and virtues? They're gonna achieve life, right? If I want death, that's easy, right? But life is hard. Figuring out how to live is complicated. I mean, we still as scientists look at other animals and say, how do they live? What do they have to do in order to survive in order to be successful as a cheetah, or as a tree, you know, what are their mechanisms? And that's what's, well, she what she says is ethics is that scientific question applied to human beings. What do human beings need to do in order to achieve life? Now, what makes human beings unique, Ein Rand says, and again, some philosophers would question this, right, is that we have free will, that we get to choose our values. And that the fundamental mechanism by which human beings survive is by the use of their reason, which for Ein Rand is the identification of reality, that is the understanding of what is reality. So again, anti content, in a sense, that for us, it's the most important thing we can do is figure out what is out there. What is reality and integrate those facts and and work to help us, you know, to guide us in changing reality to adapt to our own means to our own needs. So all the virtues and values are really derived from this idea of reason, the idea of the fact that reason is our basic means of survival, man's means of survival is to think man's means of survival still be aware of reality and to think and to integrate it into so cognition. So whole ethics flow from that to the virtues, i.e. virtual ethics, come from what are the actions, virtues actions, what are the actions, what are the principled actions that human beings must take in order to thrive, in order to flourish as human beings. And so it's an egoistic approach, which some virtual ethics just have, they take that from Aristotle. It's an egoistic approach in terms of I'm the beneficiary of my actions. But it's an approach rooted in reality. It's it's this is the is art that she bridges. The is is the nature of man, the nature of the world out there. The art is what do I do given that my nature, given the nature of reality, what do I need to do in order to survive to thrive to flourish as an individual human being. So there is informs the art. Yes. Yes. So and the big way in which it informs the art is reason is the man's basic means of survival given the world given how we've evolved given what we are as human beings, it is a reason that is distinctive it is a reason that makes it possible for us to survive in the world. So how do you respond to thinkers like Jonathan height, who claim that, you know, hey, reason's excellent. It's an excellent tool. But we're not that good at using it. We engage in motivated reasoning. We are tribal creatures, we evolved to be tribal, tribal creatures, we engage in confirmation bias. And we're basically circling around sacred totems, and then making judgments intuitively, and then applying post hoc reasoning on top of that, and engaging in confirmation bias to basically justify the things that we already intuitively believe to be true prior to reason. How do you respond to that? I think it's a it's a combination of things. One, I think it's descriptive, not normative. So yeah, a lot of people behave this way. That's true. That's how we should behave. Does that mean how that is the only way for us to behave? Does that do we have an option? Second, so one, I think it's descriptive. It's not normative. So it's not ethics in that sense. Ethics is normative. Ethics should tell you this is how you should be. Second is, I think there's a lot that we don't know that is disguised as evolutionary psychology, which Heights and Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker and all these guys advocate for. What are we born with? What aren't we born with? What is free will? I mean, most of these guys reject free will, right? Now, I mean, Jordan Peterson doesn't but as a Sam Harris does, though, some Harris does and Pinker does, right? Steven Pinker rejects free will, which I don't understand. Jonathan Knight against tries to have it both ways. So, so, you know, what, what are we born with? I mean, Aristotle said we were born Tableau Rousseau. What does that mean? So I still think we're born and I ran certainly thought we were born Tableau Rousseau in the sense of ideas. We can't be socialists at birth. It makes no sense if you understand how and this is why I ran's contributions to philosophy are so massive and so important. I ran has a theory of concepts. She has a theory of how we come at ideas, how we integrate the observations, the perceptions of our senses into concepts into first, first level concepts, chair, table, furniture, and then more and more abstract concepts all the way up to socialism sounds locky and there's a sense in which it's lucky. You know, though, again, I don't know enough about locks, epistemology, he's a bit of a at some point, he's a bit of a mystic, unfortunately, lock, but but you know, again, this is the enlightenment. This is this is this is the age of reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if the elements of luck there. But she has a whole theory about how we do this, which I think is fascinating. And if in one of the one of the great pleasures when I had when I had kids was to watch them form their first concept, and to say, Yeah, that's exactly what I ran wrote about in terms of how human beings do it. And I wish, like child psychologists, like people like Piaget, that Jordan Peterson loves to read a site, looked at I ran's theory of concept and looked at actually how children learn, and they would be blown away, I think by how much of a genius she was. So I think it's still tragic that we don't have that. So, so none of these people understand the theory of concepts, they think we're born with high level abstractions, which you can't code, you can't code abstractions into into the genome, the abstractions are something that have to be abstracted from perception. If you haven't had perception, how can you have an abstract right simple sensations? Yeah. Yeah, so you start with sensations, then perceptions, and then abstractions and only human beings as far as we know, have abs can abstract animals can see but they can abstract. So if you have that sequence, if you can if you can. So they can't they don't they're not capable of separating. So for example, if I asked them, how do you separate between emotion, a senses, thought, inclinations, you know, what else instinct what they could call the same thing and a million other different forms of what it is we're born with what it is. They can't even differentiate they don't have definitions for any of these things. And then they go out and say we're born with X. They don't know what they're talking about. So I believe that evolutionary psychology is like it's it's infancy. People talk about it as if it's science. But it's still very, very early. So when Jonathan Heights says we're born, you know, conservatives are born conservatives. I mean, that's silly. It's yes, people are born with certain inclinations. There's no question about that. But both my sons, from the moment they were born, they were different. So there's something different in them. But it couldn't have been their ideas. Right. And it could have been other things. But what are those other things? I don't think the heights of the world and others have yet the tools to describe what it really is we're born with and what distinguishes us when we're born with versus, because they don't have the epistemological tools to understand how we develop concepts, how we grow up, how we become adults. So until they develop that. So in other words, I think Jonathan height, and all these evolutionary psychologists desperately need iron rands, epistemology, if I encourage them all, if you're listening to read iron rands introduction to objectives, epistemology, and to read it, you know, the companion time and studies and the chapters and epistemology says a lot of work that's being done being done, and I hope will be done on her theory of concepts on her epistemology that I think will help clarify these guys work in the future. Let me just add one other thing. Reason is hard. In in a sense, right? Not hard in a sense that oh my god, it's painful. No, it's hard in the sense that it requires effort. It requires work. And this is this is iron rands unique view of free will. Iron rands view of free will is not that I choose every time I do this, right, which is that, you know, has Sam have a stupid neurological study that he sites all the time, which has been debunked by lots of different people, but he continues to cite it anyway, right, that every time I do this, I'm actually thinking I should do this and that's free will. That's silly, right? Free will is fundamentally the choice to focus your mind on not to focus your mind to stay in touch with reality or not to stay in touch with reality, or in other words, to reason or not to reason to be or not to be. And and she would say to reason or not to reason is to be or not to be right? It's because the essential activity of being exactly reasoning is to be conscious is to be aware of the world. I think a lot of people maybe most people and height would would I think would suggest this is true. Don't choose to think don't choose to engage. So what if you got left if you're not thinking if you're not reason, you've got the tribe, you've got your emotion, you're drifting, you're just following what people are saying you're going along. So yes, the default of reason is all these things Jonathan height describes as the way people behave today. But what are we capable of? Because even Jonathan height, even all of these scientists, they draw nice bell curves. But what about what about these people are here? What about the people out at the extreme the bell curve? What about the people are not tribal? What about the people are not agreeable? They have these agreeable with you know, the people who who don't do everything based on what other people think. Again, think about the fact that we're taught from when we're very little, other people important, other people are the most important thing for you. Don't don't spend too much thinking, don't too much time thinking, follow the leader. Who are you? You little twerp. I mean, you're nothing. So yeah, we train kids to be tribal. We train kids to emote today and at schools, we put them around in a circle and ask them, What do you think about Donald Trump when there's six? Well, they don't think about Donald Trump, right? You know, they emote. So you're basically elevating emotion above anything else. Now, students this six, when they're eight, when they're 10, when they're 12, when they're 14, even they should spend time in school learning stuff, not emoting. I don't care about your emotions in as a teacher, right? I care about what's in here. Your parents might care about your emotions. Your friends might care about your emotions. I don't care about your emotions as a teacher. And until we get to an educational system that that looks to teach rather than to coddle, then we're not going to get the kind of people that I would like, which are independent, truly thinkers. And when we do, Jonathan Heights studies would look a little a lot different. Because I mean, unfortunately, I mean, Anna Smith was the same way when he talks about ethics, he doesn't talk about it from a normative perspective. He talks about it from a descriptive perspective. This is what people do. Yeah, they're always Christians. So they all care about other people more than they should. You know, so so then he says, Well, there you go, that's ethics. No, that's the ethics of the time right dictated by certain ideas that are present at the time. But it doesn't mean that's what what is the best in man that doesn't mean what they're capable of. It's just what they've been taught. And you know, in that sense, too many people because they don't exert free will are the products of their environment. And that is sad. So I'd like more people to exert their free will and Sam Harris, on the one hand, is it can be an original thinker can think outside the box engages his reason. I think Sam Harris is a thinker and is using his free will to think. But then he uses it to deny free will, which is so rationalistic and silly and actually does harm in the world, which is sad. But if more people like Sam Harris in the sense of they were engaged with reality and thinking, then the world would be a better place.