All right, perhaps not elimination-that’s going to happen no matter what. But I stand by what I said-trying to obtain food anyway one can, or the avoidance of pain.
xtisme, no, what I meant was, pain=avoiding. You aren’t going to leave your hand there on the stove. You’re going to find someway to avoid it. Perhaps in the wilderness, it would be if something touched YOU, and you found it painful-that would be a better example-a bee sting.
Madgolf-how is crying then, “instinctive”? Dog80-hell if I know.
Rand wrote often and wrote clearly about the subject of animals surviving solely by brute instinct and man surviving solely by reason. “Virtue of Selfishness” and “The New Intellectual” had chapters devoted to it plus I think a few speeches in Shrugged used the term “brute” in her usual manner.
Nazi soldiers were taught to think like animals, with impulse reaction and feelings, not reason. Most leftist values are based on feelings, not reason. “Mother Earth is hurting” gets a far more effective stimulus response than “some oil was dug up from one hole in the planet then dumped in another hole in the planet”.
Forcing a human to behave like an animal causes a human to become irrational because animals do not have anything in common with humans in regard to survival and the facilities to do so.
In my defense I did write is was “perhaps” instinctive.
It was the only survival skill I could think of that started one second out of the womb with no training and it is a great skill to be born with. Babies don’t stumble upon crying… they hit the ground running with it and it is at full perfection immediately.
Of course animals “reason”, they simply don’t have the extra equipment. Just because an oxcart is not a Corvette doesn’t mean it doesn’t roll, it just means it doesn’t roll as well.
The example that leaps to mind is the chimpanzee that “fishes” for termites with a stick, to glean a bit of protein. The chimp doesn’t pick up a stick and wave it about at random and fortuitously stab into a termit mound, the chimp plans, deliberates and executes. That is reasoning, that is inventing Bugs on a Stick. No, it ain’t a Pronto Pup, but hey! he’s a monkey, he works with what he’s got!
Not necessarily. I was thinking of Dagny and Francisco d’Anconia (before he flakes out) where they were born with all the privilage in the world but had more drive and ambition than anyone. The message seems to be that being born wealthy isn’t an excuse to sit around like a waste and that you had the responsibility to use that gift to the best of your ability (I think Reardon actually says this to Francisco).
Galt and Reardon and several others come from more modest backgrounds.
I think the message is that a man should be able to rise as high as his ambition and ability will let him. He should not be restricted by birth class.
The medical term is “suckling reflex” which is an instinctive neurological function, not instinctive behavior.
Human adults do not posses the suckling reflex FWIW.
I concede one can argue suckling is an instinct but I do not possess it nor does anyone I know.
I have to recuse myself intellectually from the immediate topic as my wife works two days a week with lactation consultants and my personal experiences are too far in the negative of the debate as to offer anything unbiased. As far as I am concerned, force feeding kids with bottles is about the only things that saves stupid people’s babies. It is tough work teaching a kid how to suckle IMHO. The poor wives are spent enough as it is and what with all the post partum…
It is quite “German” to the topic at hand. (Booo! hisss!)
Rand’s protege, Peikoff, wrote a whole book about it.
You want to talk Rand philosophy on the middle and working classes? (And Kant and Nietzsche, etc) The book is nothing BUT Rand philosophy about the middle and working classes… and how they were conned en masse into evading reason by… (drum roll)… Nazism.
Haven’t you ever wondered how a whole nation was conned then deprogrammed so quickly? It is not addressed much in today’s society because of the truth of the matter.
Read the user comments on the book. Note the political leanings of the detractors. Note the political leanings of the rather agitated detractors.
As do I in yours, which means I know you know that those words can mean different things to different people in different contexts. You must have had a specific meaning in mind when using those words. I asked you the question to discover that meaning.
And you ask the Scientologists, and they will tell you without doubt that it was thetans. You seem intent on giving reason some sort of metaphysical essence, some transcendance. But its nothing more, and nothing less, than a mental tool, a useful abstraction. Madmen can reason quite well, oftimes, as can monsters. What was insane was the ground assumptions, the foundation of madness upon which reasoned actions were taken. Albert Speer was a reasoning man, so was Werner Heisenberg. (I think so, leastways, pretty sure…)
Reasoning is a process, it is not a virtue, it does not bestow any grace on its practitioners. It does not enoble. A hammer for a good man is a building tool, for a a bad man, a weapon. A brilliant good man is a blessing for us all, a brilliant bad man a horror and a curse.
Perhaps you are determined to have no place for “spirit” or “soul” in your philosophy. So be it, but more fool you if you try to fill the hole with Reason.
If they can reason “quite well” then please, do list the fruits of these madmen.
Skyscrapers? Sports cars? Designer drugs? Generic drugs? Dual core processors? A new form of DVD perhaps? Genetically engineered vegetables? Gene splicing? Space travel (with a real spaceship)? Climbing Everest? World Record on Donkey Kong? The Jarvic 7? A renowned sonata? A mediocre sonata? A crappy sonata? An algorithm? Six functional arc welders? Did I already ask about gene splicing? A medical dictionary? A regular dictionary? Pink LEDs?
Madmen, by definition, have predictable resulting output: nonsense and destruction.
Reason (reasoning “quite well”, if you will) is a choice that healthy humans make over mysticism or emotional impulse. Reason is the proper identification and integration of available sensory input. Animals have perceptive input and man has both perceptive AND conceptual input.
Reason begets valuable product to others of reason.
I beg to argue that there is no such thing as poor reasoning by virtue that I think they already made up a word for that affliction.
Effective destruction often requires quite a bit of reasoning capacity: look at the various psychopathic murderers who have elaborately planned and temporarily gotten away with complicated and well-concealed crimes.
But this will not affect your position, because you insist on interpreting the word “reason” (like the word “social” and the word “instinct”) only in the way you want to interpret it, regardless of how that interpretation distorts the usual meaning of the word as generally understood.
There’s a nice exclusive definition. Any higher cognitive processes that result in products that you don’t consider valuable can simply be dismissed by you as not qualifying to be called “reason”.
This was Rand’s rhetorical strategy throughout her work: she simply declared that words meant what she chose them to mean, and insisted that her chosen meaning represented reality. So how was it possible for her to be wrong about anything? From her perspective, everything she said was as obvious and indisputable as A=A.
The destruction of a life is a VERY simple act. Gravity can do it and most gravity, if so inclined (get it?), will readily admit it. Introducing a complicated coverup of the destruction has nothing to do with the SIMPLE act of destruction.
Man possesses the capability to judge on the basis of learned knowledge. I always prefer my judgments to come from those that I judge reasonable and relatively wise. We may differ, we may not. We have both come this far in life and as a fellow human, I hope we can reconvene in forty years and revisit the sticking point in our discussion. You have no clear beef with my stated alignments and definitions other than that I am not as concise as your sensibilities dictate.
Wait for it… waaaaaaaaait for it…
Bang! Because a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress found Atlas Shrugged to be second in influence only to the Bible, FWIW.
I cannot defend an entire philosophy anymore than I can defend half the definitions I use to defend my own appreciation of said philosophy.
What I can do is offer for inspection what I have learned in a truthful and honest manner and let a whole bunch of people have at it.
I really like skyscrapers. I really like Corvettes. .50 caliber guns are so boss and even those gay little iPods are a technological marvel. My socks have not lost their elasticity in like ten years now and my eyes do not ache after staring at a flatscreen for 14 hours a day. Steak is plentiful and the front end of my Chevy 1500 has lasted over 111,000 miles without a change of wheel bearings, tie rod ends, struts, or ball joints.
Reason brought me these things and I protect the concept of reason even if it means offending your definition or anyone else’s definition.