What does Rand mean by selfish:
P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals — Garrett Travers
[We] have developed reason, as opposed to fangs, to survive. — Garrett Travers
our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on [reason]. — Garrett Travers
I addressed your proposition clearly. Show me how I am wrong. Have you read your proposition clearly? Don't get mad at me. If I'm wrong, easily point out where I am misunderstanding the first proposition. You said humans use reason for their survival — Philosophim
but they also don't have to. — Philosophim
I can have a hammer, yet use a screwdriver to bang on a nail. — Philosophim
Wrong. A grenade lands at your feet with 20 good people nearby. You have just enough time to cover your body over it and save the 19 other people around you. — Philosophim
Or, you could quickly jump behind another person who is close by that did not notice the grenade, save yourself, and the grenade goes off killing almost everyone else. Isn't it reasonable to save the other 19 people? Saving my life would be unreasonable in this situation would it not? If it is not, then what value am I holding? That the deaths of 19 other people are worth my life? — Philosophim
While it could be, it can be made through ignorance and fear. My point again, not every decision is made through reason. — Philosophim
Do animals need reason to survive? — Philosophim
We can survive through unreasonable, less effective, and sometimes outright dumb means. — Philosophim
Demonstrate to me how we cannot survive in any way shape or form if we do not use reason. — Philosophim
Sociopaths are just as affectively driven as the rest of us. — Joshs
Sociopaths are just as affectively driven as the rest of us. — Joshs
We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. — Garrett Travers
I suppose I was thinking of emotional numbness. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Certainly, sociopaths lack the kind of positive emotional patterns that keep most of us from going on a killing spree — ZzzoneiroCosm
So our ‘numbness’ is t a secondary withdrawal from stress and intense emotion, it is the emotion itself, because it is the situation itself that becomes incoherent and meaningless. — Joshs
That's not a definition of 'selfish'. It's a conditional statement of the form:
If P1 and P2, then C.
I take it though that you mean it as an argument of the form:
P1
P2
Therefore, C
Anyway, it's not a definition of 'selfish'. — TonesInDeepFreeze
It's not clear what "generated", "natural processes" are supposed to mean there. — TonesInDeepFreeze
Human survival also depends on other means, including ingrained responses (you jump from fire by a natural tendency to avoid its pain well before you reason about it), emotion (enthusiasm, hope, love) , physical effort (pushing a rock to not be crushed by it), and cooperation with other humans (except for extraordinary people, survival by oneself with just reason is not likely). — TonesInDeepFreeze
I value fresh air, not from reason, — TonesInDeepFreeze
So, reason is only part of the means of human survival. — TonesInDeepFreeze
Surviving is one thing, but living life according to values is additional. Living according to values includes survival a fortiori. — TonesInDeepFreeze
And it requires argument to show that there are not values other than selfishness that are developed with reason — TonesInDeepFreeze
And the conclusion does not follow from the premises. — TonesInDeepFreeze
I value seeing a colorful flower, not from reason, but simply from the unmediated pleasure I get from it — TonesInDeepFreeze
The species developed reason along with other physical, psychological, and social attributes. — TonesInDeepFreeze
If reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values, then an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason. — TonesInDeepFreeze
Survival depends on intelligence, which we may says includes crucial reasoning. But survival also depends on other physical, psychological, and social attributes too. — TonesInDeepFreeze
We do have physical attributes including feet, legs, endurance running, five senses, teeth, fingernails, fingers, opposable thumbs, et. al. We have psychological attributes including will, hope, fear (fear cause you to avoid a snake on the ground), anger (anger against an adversary can help you beat him to death in self-defense), et. al. We have social attributes, including compassion, empathy, rescue). — TonesInDeepFreeze
Reason and emotion (positive and negative emotion) work together in the decision-making process. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Positive emotions play a role in making life-, self- and other-affirming decisions. — ZzzoneiroCosm
The proposition is not a categorical one regarding behavior, there is no argument being made that humans always use their reason. — Garrett Travers
The proposition is that humans survive using the application of reason, and reason is that means of survival.
but they also don't have to.
— Philosophim
In what way can you use anything else for survival? Keep the argument here, this is what you need to demonstrate. — Garrett Travers
I can have a hammer, yet use a screwdriver to bang on a nail.
— Philosophim
You just used reason to determine those tools could be used in a like manner, that's conceptualization. This is not a case of not employing reason. — Garrett Travers
Wrong. A grenade lands at your feet with 20 good people nearby. You have just enough time to cover your body over it and save the 19 other people around you.
— Philosophim
Non sequitur. This has nothing to do with the human's basic tool for survival. The introduction of force against reason is a violator of reason. This is irrelevant. — Garrett Travers
You aren't using reason correctly, this is making a bit more sense. Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
None of this faculty is afforded to people who have grendades thrown at them, one will be forced to make a snap decision, reason has nothing to do with the equation, nor does this scenario address the proposition. — Garrett Travers
Do animals need reason to survive?
— Philosophim
Animals have other evolutionary advantages for survival. We have evolved our reason. We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. We barely have instinctual inclinations in any comparable way because of this evolutionary adaptation. — Garrett Travers
", and also implying that animals lack reason, then you need to show human actions apart from basic functions that animals do to survive, like eat, hunt, and defend themselves, are absolutely necessary.Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. — Garrett Travers
Sure, but, to the degree one makes an emotional decision, one makes a harmful decision that goes against one furthering their life. — Garrett Travers
You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.
— T Clark
No, I think that our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on it. That was the premise.
I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice?
— T Clark
Exclusively. — Garrett Travers
Most people don't.
— T Clark
That's the problem. — Garrett Travers
Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight.
— T Clark
This is different. Humans are an altricial species with a rearing period of about 20 years or so. It takes them a long time to develop their rational faculties. Love of family needs to be a rational choice if it can be determined through development that such people are antithetical to one's own happiness. That comes in time. — Garrett Travers
Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason.
— T Clark
That's exactly what I said. Reason is where values come from, even if they've been passed on to you. — Garrett Travers
And cognitively there is no evidence to suggest that our values are not abstractions we develop from recurrent neural networks of sensory data constantly being processed and vetted for interests and pursuits, and thereby the data that is accrued from those interests and pursuits. — Garrett Travers
often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to places and people, art, music, sex, food, friendship, travel... We can talk rationally about them, but generally this ends up sounding like prattle. — Tom Storm
In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it. — T Clark
You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree. — T Clark
I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of. — T Clark
All fair points, TC. I often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to places and people, art, music, sex, food, friendship, travel... We can talk rationally about them, but generally this ends up sounding like prattle. — Tom Storm
values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you. — Garrett Travers
the how do we characterize the transition from one paradigm to another. It certainly isnt deductive or inductive. But is it irrational? Could we instead say that it is pragmatically useful, which is different from both rationality and irrationality? — Joshs
In my view, replace "laissez-faire capitalism" with "communism" and you'll have the crux of that argument as well. Completely unfalsifiable. No historical evidence. Just declarations -- based on principles that simply reduce Aristotle to a cartoon. — Xtrix
Rand is mostly a waste of time, but one has to tackle her to understand a lot of the justifications given for our current neoliberal era. A more sophisticated alternative for doing so would be Milton Friedman, or perhaps Hayek. — Xtrix
In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way. — T Clark
If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them. — T Clark
Conncections require an alignment of values, that's reason, same as love. Every bit of this is dependent on reason. Not talking rationally about this stuff is why the wrold looks the way it does right now. — Garrett Travers
Nothing about said were fair points. The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. If love isn't rational for you, I would reconsider that it is in fact love at all. — Garrett Travers
This alignment of values also describes postive feeling. We wouldn’t know that there was a positive alignment without positive feeling. Accord, agreement, unification, harmony always feels a certain way that tells us it is this connectedness and coherence. I. fact, the feeling isn’t anything f outside of the meaning of coherence itself. — Joshs
By e same token, we wouldn’t know the meaning, the sense of incoherence, discord and disagreement without a negative feel or ‘emotion ‘. The emotion isn’t some mindless reflex or hormone. It is the very feel of the meaning of disappointment, alienation, failure of alignment. — Joshs
The transitions from classical mechanics to relativity wasn't rational? From universal constant to Hubble constant wasn't rational? Is this a joke? It's specifically rationality that overcomes a crisis in a Kuhnian revolution. The undeniable facts of observation, inductively and deductively derived (reason) is, as a point of exactitude, what sees a shift through from normal science to a new paradigm. It is the unreasonable that get in the way. — Garrett Travers
Sure, all part of the reasoning process. — Garrett Travers
I don't understand your argument, sorry. What do I need to understand about reason that I don't? — Tom Storm
Not sure why you want to prioritize reason here. It's emotion and reason working together as equal partners. — ZzzoneiroCosm
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