people don't sustain themselves on autonomic functions, the brain does that — Garrett Travers

The brain does not do it alone. Reason doesn't ensure survival. And reason without other functions is even less reliable. So, it is not a good argument to base ethics on the mere fact that humans use reason, or even that reason in some sense "heads up" all the other functions. And the Objectivist claim that reason is primary only for humans does not entail that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.

I quite literally thought you were trying to say that breathing was in the realm of what we were discussing. — Garrett Travers

It is, as I just quoted you omitting the means other than reason,.

a debate about how humans actively ensure their survival — Garrett Travers

"How humans actively ensure their survival" requires definition.

And humans don't ensure their survival. No matter what we do, we can't ensure that you'll survive into the next minute.

So putting aside "ensuring", breathing definitely is active and necessary for survival.

And, again, the Objectivist argument is that it is only humans that use reason as the primary agency for survival.

"Some level of reason" is a partial retreat you arrived at after earlier making stronger claims. And still "some level of reason going on" disagrees with Objectivism anyway.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

This is what I've said the whole time, and no it doesn't disagree with Objectivism. — Garrett Travers

You claim that it is incorrect to say that Objectivism says that even the lowest creatures are using some level of reasoning?

Have you really been arguing this whole time that there are some things the body does autonomically that aid in survival? Very well. Duh. — Garrett Travers

And it has taken you all this time to recognize it.

My argument from the start has been there are attributes of humans other than reason that are needed for survival, therefore it is not correct to say that only reason is necessary for survival. That point needed to be made in response to your:

"[H]umans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival." — TonesInDeepFreeze

But reason is in the means of survival. It is part of a palette of means.

That it took me so long for you to recognize this does not make me childish; it arose only because of your own recalcitrance to grant an obvious point. Whether that recalcitrance is due to childishness, I don't opine.

I said that science holds that reason and memory are inextricably linked. Meaning, if stimuli can be stored as memory to inform future behavior, then there's undoubtedly some level of reason going on. But, nobody would know how to determine that right now. — Garrett Travers

"Some level of reason" is a partial retreat you arrived at after earlier making stronger claims. And still "some level of reason going on" disagrees with Objectivism anyway. I will look at your link later to see what it says about any mere response to stimuli being any kind of reason.

You just claimed you didn't see why it was ethical — Garrett Travers

No, I said that you haven't given a logically valid argument for the claim that an act is ethical if and only if it is selffish.

then I explained it. — Garrett Travers

You've made specious arguments. I detailed the exact points of your speciousness.

Breathing is a mechanism you need to live.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

And? it is not sufficient to sustain your life. How you accrue resources and meet your needs is through reason. — Garrett Travers

You did it again. Shifted from necessity to sufficiency. I will lay it out one more time:

Neither reason nor non-reason means are sufficient.

Both reason and non-reason means are necessary.

Please cite where Objectivism incorporates the view that a bug smelling food and turning to it is "organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

Strawman. — Garrett Travers

Not at all. You claimed that Objectivism will incorporate whatever science comes up with. And you claimed that science supports the view that lower creatures use reason,.

It may preserve your life in a certain individual situation, but that is not a mechanism you live by. — Garrett Travers

Breathing is a mechanism you need to live.

If I automatically gasp for air, that's not organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

It's also not a suvival mechanism that sustains your life. — Garrett Travers

Getting air into your lungs can save your life.

Sufficiency and necessity were conflated with what? — Garrett Travers

With each other.

Raising the notion of possibility gets into a sticky place with Objectivism, as Objectivism rejects as arbitrary making claims on the basis that they are possible.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

I haven't made any claims in association with this comment. — Garrett Travers

You said that science holds as possible that certain low level responses involve reason.

Essentiality is more than just necessity.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

I explained it as more. — Garrett Travers

Yes, you conflated necessity and sufficiency, then made clearly incorrect arguments about them (you skipped my demonstration of that). But you didn't deploy the notion of essentiality.

I thought the Objectivist view is of survival with enjoyment of exercise of rational values. I can use reason to survive, but that is not in and of itself ethical, even for an Objectivist, I don't think.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

No, what's ethical is that ethical conceptualization is also a product of reason. To produce ethics that standardize the behaviors of others is unethical, because it violates the ethical source, which is individual reason, the same place we develop our cognitive framework for all other behavior in the world. If individual humans are the source of reason, and reason is the source of behavioral framework upon which they live, and among those frameworks is ethics, then any ethical standard must be predicated on its own source. — Garrett Travers

All of that, even without disputing it or not, does not vitiate my point.

I'm not dissenting. I'm saying that if one of the standard measurments for reasoning capacities is memory, and if it can be shown that animals and bugs use stimuli to inform future behaviors in some manner, then some level of reasoning is occurring in them. None of this contradicts anything. I did not say science did anything other than this, at all. — Garrett Travers

Objectivism does not agree that bugs use reason.

For the fourth time, what reference to "science" do you have?

No, you just won't actually integrate what I'm saying to you, nothing more. — Garrett Travers

I integrated and then disemboweled it.

Objectivism disagreeing with science isn't a thing. If science indicates that it is 'possible' on some level, then Objectivism incorporates as much. — Garrett Travers

(1) Please cite where Objectivism incorporates the view that a bug smelling food and turning to it is organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.

(2) You keep saying "science". I asked twice for a reference.

(3) Raising the notion of possibility gets into a sticky place with Objectivism, as Objectivism rejects as arbitrary making claims on the basis that they are possible.

The concept is not key in any way that I didn't directly imply using other descriptors. — Garrett Travers

Essentiality is more than just necessity.

To survive? — Garrett Travers

If I automatically gasp for air, that's not organizing perceptual units into concepts by principles of logic.

Merely responding to stimuli is not enough to constitute concept formation.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

Okay. Cool. — Garrett Travers

Cool that I've pointed out that mere response to stimuli is not reason.

An act is selfish if it is predicated on one's own reason as his/her means of survival. — Garrett Travers

I thought the Objectivist view is of survival with enjoyment of exercise of rational values. I can use reason to survive, but that is not in and of itself ethical, even for an Objectivist, I don't think.

And it has not been shown by you that an act is ethical if and only if it is predicated on one's reason as his or her means of survival. (a) One might use reason to survive but not survival that enjoys the exercise of rational values, (b) One can do things that aren't even related to survival. I can use reason to determine that if I kick a can down the road then it will end up many feet away; but I am not unethical in kicking a can for a purpose other than survival but rather merely to exercise my whim to do it. (c) More basically, you simply haven't made an argument in which your premises entail your conclusion.

Objectivism explicitly mentions the difference between humans an animals, as part of the explanation of the Objectivist notion of reason.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

And? That was decades ago. We've learned thing about the nature of human cognitive computation that have emerged in the past 2 years alone. — Garrett Travers

What you're claiming undermines important planks in the Objectivist platform.

If you wish to dissent from Objectivism, that's fine with me. But your particular dissent is misguided. People don't regard a bug smelling something and turning to it as reason. Then you say that science does. I asked for a reference.

So animals conceptualize.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

What have I already said? — Garrett Travers

Objectivism disagrees. Objectivism does not regard a bug turning to a sticky spot as reason.

The word was not necessary. — Garrett Travers

The concept is key.

Reason is how those tools get used. — Garrett Travers

Sometimes they're used even without reason.

When I first retract my fingertips from fire, I was not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When a bug responds to stimuli, it is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When I immediately turn my head upon hearing a crashing sound, I am not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by the principles of logic.
— TonesInDeepFreeze

On what level do you think this is true? You quite literally used the pain to inform future behavior. That's conceptual. — Garrett Travers

So animals conceptualize.

I don't use all words sometimes — Garrett Travers

You omitted a key concept in the argument. It's not a matter of whether you sometimes don't use all the terminology.

We don't survive in any other way. — Garrett Travers

We don't survive in any way other than a combination of many faculties that are not reason with the faculty of reason.

It is the essential element of human ability to survive in the world. — Garrett Travers

You're welcome for my having pointed out that essentiality (which you have omitted until now) not just necessity, is part of the Objectivist argument,.,

"[R]eason is the faculty that organizes perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic". - Peikoff

When I first retracted my fingertips from fire, I was not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When a bug responds to stimuli, it is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by following the principles of logic. When I immediately turn my head upon hearing a crashing sound, I am not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by the principles of logic. When a horse immediately runs away from fire, it is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by the principles of logic. When adrenaline increases in me when I am threatened, that is not organizing perceptual units in conceptual terms by principles of logic.

Even though I must use reason to survive, it is not the only means I use to survive.

We don't have to set aside creatures that constitute a gap in knowledge regarding to what degree a term like reason applies to them, they're irrelevant. — Garrett Travers

Objectivism explicitly mentions the difference between humans an animals, as part of the explanation of the Objectivist notion of reason.

If reason is how we individually generate concepts, and if concepts are how humans survive, and if concepts include ethics, then ethics should be predicated on individual human survival. — Garrett Travers

There is no logical form there to suggest that those premises entail the conclusion that an act is ethical if and only if it is selfish.

reason is how we individually generate concepts — Garrett Travers

Merely responding to stimuli is not enough to constitute concept formation.

And if concepts include values, standards, methods, interests, or any other individually generated group of ideas from sensory data, then it follows that the individual's reason used to produce them is the proper predicate for them. — Garrett Travers

What does "proper predicate for" mean?

if one values reason, then he/she values himself in his basic nature as one who reasons. This is the selfishness Rand is speaking of. — Garrett Travers

Objectivism holds that we value reason because it is our means to survive. It would then be circular to say that we value our survival because we value reason.

And I value myself as one who reasons. But I don't subscribe to the Objectivist notion that actions are ethical if and only if they are selfish.

I already stated that if an animal does use sensory data to inform action, then that constitutes reason — Garrett Travers

In that view, a remarkably unintelligent bug senses things and acts in response, so the bug is using reason. And that is consistent with the notion of 'reason' in science?

And your notion of 'reason' seems to make it untenable to say that reason is the essential attribute of humans.

that doesn't mean that any of the arguments I have made outside of the syllogism are wrong — Garrett Travers

Correct. Your other arguments are wrong for their own reasons.

my notion of reason is broadly understood in the neuroscientific community to include what I have discussed. — Garrett Travers

Maybe you can mention an article that explains that? Perhaps something at the level of an encyclopedia.

I am also recognizing essentialism, that has nothing to do with the argument. — Garrett Travers

It is very key to the Objectivist argument.

You did touch on it when you mentioned that animals don't use reason.

For sake of argument, let's set aside dolphins, ravens, primates and such, and let's simplify to say that only humans use reason.

The Objectivist view then is that the essential property of being human is reason. Then with that essentiality premise, the argument goes through some steps to conclude that selfishness, and only selfishness, is ethical.

As I mentioned, the Objectivist argument is more involved than yours, as it deploys essentialism. Maybe you might go back to reread your Objectivist texts. Though, the Objectivist argument is not valid anyway.

They are necessary. But they are not sufficient for survival. That's the point. — Garrett Travers

It was not your original argument. You started switching to it only long after your necessity position crumpled. And it still is a wrong argument. Attributes other than reason are not sufficient for survival, but also reason is not sufficient for survival. So it's arbitrary both to single out reason as necessary, since other attributes are also necessary. And it's arbitrary to disqualify non-reason as insufficient, since reason is also insufficient.

does that mean you don't want to contend with "my" view of reason? — Garrett Travers

Your notion of 'reason' is so dramatically iconoclastic that it is truly not recognizable as any sense of the word 'reason' I've ever seen. (I don't think I've even seen Objectivists use 'reason' in a sense that would allow that knee jerk or involuntary nose twitching in sleep is exercise of reason.)

Moreover, even with your personal notion of 'reason', your original argument is invalid.

And even more at the bottom line, no matter what an Objectivist notion of 'reason' is, this Objectivist argument toward the conclusion that ethical acts are all and only those that are selfish. But what is interesting at least is Objectivist essentialism that is used in the argument.

this may be what messes up the syllogism in its current form to begin with. — Garrett Travers

No, terminology is not why your argument is not modus ponens. It's not modus ponens because it is not of the form of modus ponens.