Smart Dolphins, Stupid Post-Modernists
(Work in Progress…)
(Metaphysics)
One of the most common debates on the nature of human intelligence and free will is whether either one really exists. The predominant view by one outspoken “post-structuralist” is that “the world we live [in] is nothing more that symbolic or linguistic interaction change over time by structures and social interaction that have lead to different interpretations and outcomes.”
In other words, this physicalist (my own term) view reduces human beings to their causal interactions with their environment. Humans are nothing more than machines passively receiving whatever the world sends them and sending out whatever their genes and environment programmed them to send out given certain inputs. According to this view, there is no intelligence and the difference between humans and dolphins (or computers, or rocks for that matter) is simply the degree of complexity to their behavior and structure.
Free will is non-existent, the post-modernist claims, because human output is limited to its input and reality is defined by the group’s (social, racial, or ethnic) interpretation of it. When society is not defining reality and morality, post-modern non-absolute non-thinkers embrace nihilism, which allows them to reject reality, morality, and causality in one leap and claim that all that is real and right is determined by passive interaction of human machines with their environment.
The best and most coherent alternative to this view is presented by Objectivism, a philosophy developed by Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand’s most important and most unique contribution to philosophy (in my opinion) is the idea that existence has primacy over consciousness. Philosophers throughout history (and most today) have held the opposite opinion— that consciousness and comprehension comes before reality because man either changes reality with his mind (such as by prayer) or defines reality by his particular understanding of it (Kant and his philosophic heirs.) Objectivism is the first philosophy to hold that reality exists independently of man’s mind, that no amount of wishing or prayer, and no amount of reinterpretation changes the basic fact that everything in the universe possesses a certain identity, and that the property of existence itself involves the possession of a specific identity.
The religious view is that God creates order out of chaos, and the post-modern view is that man creates order by his particular interpretation, but the Objectivist view is that identity is implicit in an object’s existence, and because each object may only act according to its identity, order is inextricably tied to existence. No “alternative universe” is possible and nothing can act outside of its own nature or without a nature at all—hence no God is necessary or possible.
The purpose of man’s mind is then (as I explained in my email on objective morality) to use his senses to interpret his sense-data to form an understanding of his world. Ayn Rand’s contribution in this area is to show that all knowledge is not only contextual, but absolute and universal within that context. For example, the subjectivist will claim that something as simple as a chair can be different things when examined from difference point of view, with different lighting, by men familiar and unfamiliar with its design, and as a blob of atoms or chemical bonds by the scientist. However his position is inherently contradictory because he admits that from a specific context the object’s identity is absolute.
When I see a chair, I am aware that it will appear different in the dark, that it feels solid, yet it is mostly empty space. However when I change my perspective, I am not changing neither the nature of the chair not my perception of it: I am simply changing the context by focusing on different aspects of the same object. From the perspective of ordinary experience, the chair will always be a solid wooden object, from the chemical perspective, it will always be a cellular structure made out of cellulose and lignin, from the atomic perspective it will always be made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and other atoms and from the sub-atomic perspective it will be made of interactions of three of the six quarks. Additionally, from the human perspective, it is a skillful work of ingenuity on the part of some unnamed carpenter.
The subjectivist will claim that each perspective involves a different object, with different properties, yet it is easy to understand that a chair will always be a chair with the same exact properties within the same context. If I ever somehow acquired a sixth sense by which to view the world in a new light (x-ray glasses for example), I would not be changing reality by my new perspective—I would simply be seeing another aspect of it.
The particular evil of the subjectivists is to subjugate reality to the mind and claim that comprehension determines the facts of reality. This is comparable to the cavemen who sees an exploding volcano, and instead of running away, prays for the god’s to make it go away, or shuts his eyes tight in hope that it will somehow go away. The caveman has some excuse in that he does not know any better, but the modern post-modern subjectivist is inexcusably guilty of actively and knowingly evading reality when he claims that his (or societies or his race’s) particular interpretation can make the volcano go away. Modern America has done just that numerous times—not just in philosophy, but in politics, economics, (I give numerous of businessmen doing just that in my “Capitalism and Philosophy” speech) ethics and every other area of life, often with disastrous consequences.
The second major contribution of Objectivism to philosophy is in its view of human consciousness as causally connected to reality, yet unique in its ability to understand and change the world by free and volitional actions.
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(Epistemology)
My favorite approach to human epistemology is to study the human body and mind as operating on three levels: the sensual, the perceptual, and the conceptual. The sensual level refers to the operation of our senses, the perceptual level refers to our perception of things and people using our senses, and the conceptual level refers to the relationships (or concepts) we create between various objects we perceive. To explain why the post-modern approach is deeply flawed, and what the actual nature of the mind is, I am going to go over each of these levels and give an example that integrates all three.
The sensual level refers to the operations of our five senses. The key things to grasp about the operation of the sensory organs are that (a) they are infallible, and (b) because they are infallible, they provide us with raw and unbiased data about reality. The post-modern approach rejects both these statements by holding some variation of the position that (a) our senses “fool” us all the time with optical illusions and the like (b) senses are limited to human perceptions and are thus unable to demonstrate the “true” nature of reality and © whatever we do perceive, can only be perceived within a social/linguistic context, and thus doesn’t reflect the “true” nature of reality, which is either unknowable or non-existent.
Sensory organs are the biological tools evolution has provided us to gain an understanding about reality. However, it is important to understand that senses in and out of themselves do not interpret what reality is: they simply faithfully transmit data to our brain. The cones and rods in the eye do not know if they are looking at a mirage or illusion or a real objects, the eardrum does not know if it is hearing a human voice or just a recording, and our tongue does not know if it tastes sugar or just a good imitation. Because the senses are just organs of perception without any ability to understand or interpret what they perceive, they are thus infallible. If we err in thinking that a straight stick is bent in water, we err in our interpretation of our sense-data - our eyes are not fooling us in any way, because they have no such ability to fool us or not - they can only faithfully transmit the inputs they receive to our brains. Given the correct interpretation, we can understand that a mirage isn’t real, and that light is bent in water - however if we do not, it is our brain that misinterprets our sense-data, as our senses have no abilities, save to pass on whatever inputs they receive.
This brings me to the second contention, first developed by Emmanuel Kant - that our senses are somehow invalid because they cannot perceive the “true” nature of reality - whatever that is. Ayn Rand summarizes this argument as such:
His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes-deaf, because he has ears-deluded, because he has a mind-and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them.
The major flaw with this argument is that whatever man perceives, he perceives it in the form that his senses present it in. That is, whatever man or any other being (even God, if he existed) perceives, is perceived with the particular nature of that being’s senses. There is no “absolute” or “independent” or “sense-independent” way of perceiving reality because all knowledge is contextual to the specific nature our (or anyone else’s) senses perceive it in. For example, humans can view reality in several contexts– the visual world, the microscopic, the atomic, the sub-atomic and the astronomical, but on each level we view the same reality in a particular context. Animals on the other hand, are only able to understand reality in one context – their immediate surroundings. However, just because each man (or animal) perceives reality in the specific nature that his senses perceive it, does not mean that differences in perception result in men perceiving different realities.
A colorblind man and one who can see colors experience the world in very different ways. However, just because I see roses are red and violets as blue, and a blind man only perceives shades of gray, does not mean that we live in different realities. Within the specific nature of my senses, roses are always and within the specific nature of the colorblind man’s senses, violets are always a light shade of gray. This does not mean that the colorblind man cannot know what a color is, and I cannot know what the world would be in black and white - I can wear specially shaded glasses, and he can observe the wavelength variations of different colors - but just because everything we perceive is perceived in the specific nature and form of our senses does not mean that we are perceiving two different realities.
(Ethics)
What questions does ethics answer? – 3 fundamental yet interrelated questions:
- For what end should we live?
- What fundamental principle, if any, should guide our actions?
- Who should profit from our actions?
What have been traditional answers to these questions? This depends on the source of morality various philosophers have used.
- God
- Society
- Individual subjectivism
- No basis for morality at all (since we can’t go from an is statement about reality to an ought)
Objectivism says that morality is derived from the nature of reality, and answers the fundamental questions as such:
- Ultimate value is life.
- Primary virtue is rationality.
- Proper beneficiary from actions is oneself.
Before we can get into what values man should have, we must ask what values are, and what their purpose is.
The meaning of values is derived from observation of how people act in everyday life.
Ayn Rand said that values are something “is something that one works to gain or keep”
This implies that values have a specific goal to be achieve and an alternative, that is an alternative outcome is possible.
This implies that values imply choice, as only one outcome may actually be possible in reality, but it does imply that the entity possessing values perceives an alternative where the value is not achieved. If some value is automatically guaranteed, it is not in our power to achieve or fail to achieve it, and this it is outside the scope of morality.
For example, one may value gravity and food. However, the law of gravity is an aspect of nature that you have no control over, while all animals, including humans, must act to pursue food if they are to survive.
The only entities that we know to have values are living organisms. A rock or a chair does not pursue values because it has no alternative other than to sit there.
Living organisms on the other hand, must pursue self-generated and goal-directed actions in order to survive. From the simplest amoeba to a human being, it is our mortality that gives us the alternative between life and death, and gives us the ability to have values.
In short, goal-directed entities do not exist in order to pursue values – they pursue values in order to exist. Or, as AR says in Atlas Shrugged, “it is only the concept of life that makes values possible.” Life is thus the proper target of all goal-directed actions, it is not just a requirement for all other values to be possible, but the goal of all other values.
When applying this principle to man, we observe that man is fundamentally different from animals and plants. For all other varieties of life on earth, values are automatic, while man is the only being capable of choosing the values by which to lead his life.
Some people in this group have brought up dolphins as an example of an advanced “thinking” species of animal. Suppose this is true – suppose that dolphins have a limited vocabulary, highly developed communication skills, and complex social orders. Even if true, this the purpose of a dolphins is always the same – to survive. A dolphin may have a limit knowledge of the world and limited reasoning skills. But whatever abilities it may have, it only can only use them for a single purpose: to continue its own and its species survival.
Man on the other hand, is a being that developed a volitional, conceptual consciousness. We do not have an automatic course of action, no overwhelming desire for self-preservation. The evidence for this is not only in many suicides but our hostility to many life-sustaining processes by self-destructive actions.
Like all other animals, man has a specific nature he must act in accordance with in order to survive, just as a lion must hunt, and a fish must swim. However, for humans the process of survival is not automatic, and the knowledge does not come to us without a mental effort.
The specific nature of man is that he must use the faculty of reason in order to survive. Reason involves the ability to form long-range goals, to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term goals, to continually use his faculty of reason. Man, like all living organisms must continually act in accordance with his specific means of survival, and when we stop using our means of survival, it’s as if we let go of the wheel while driving a car down the road of life. We can pray and hope to get to our destination, but without using the facility required to do so, we’ll only end up in a ditch.
Because unlike animals. we have no instinct to guide us at every stage of life, long term planning become a necessity for all human beings, this is where the need for principles arises. Principles are not an idealistic luxury but a requirement for all human beings in order to achieve their long term values.
