Now, let's continue dissecting Ayn Rand's paper regarding her philosophy. We pick up the pace starting from my refutation of her solving the is-ought problem.
Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.
Oh, I see Ayn Rand acknowledges the philosophy of hedonism, which determines good and evil through pleasure and pain. I'm willing to tag along for the time being.
The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life.
Okay, I agree. The ability to experience pleasure and pain is innate in our physiology; there is nothing we can do about it. Although what confuses me is how Ayn Rand suddenly inserted the notion of life as a standard. What did she exactly mean by that? All I can say for sure that life is a prerequisite for the experience of pleasure and pain, Perhaps this is what she meant.
The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man—and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness—serves as an automatic guardian of the organism’s life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it. The best illustration of this can be seen in the rare, freak cases of children who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain; such children do not survive for long; they have no means of discovering what can injure them, no warning signals, and thus a minor cut can develop into a deadly infection, or a major illness can remain undetected until it is too late to fight it.
I agree that the pleasure-pain mechanism serves as a signal that can help an organism preserve its own life (biological existence). Although I must clarify that feeling pleasure does not necessitate that you're pursuing the right course of action (it must be specified that this action is aimed towards self-preservation). Same goes with feeling pain. An example of pleasure which does not help self-preservation is getting high from drugs. Meanwhile, receiving booster shots can be painful, but they're good for you. I agree with her illustration; not being able to feel pain does not help you survive; in fact, it puts your life in constant danger.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival.
This is a pretty problematic statement. Simply staying awake... staying conscious, won't ensure your survival. You can say that consciousness for those--living organisms which possess it-- is the prerequisite for survival. A conscious organism must be, well, conscious for it to start surviving, but that is also not true. After all, we need to sleep, which is a state of unconsciousness. Does this mean we're killing ourselves when we sleep?
The simpler organisms, such as plants, can survive by means of their automatic physical functions. The higher organisms, such as animals and man, cannot: their needs are more complex and the range of their actions is wider. The physical functions of their bodies can perform automatically only the task of using fuel, but cannot obtain that fuel. To obtain it, the higher organisms need the faculty of consciousness. A plant can obtain its food from the soil in which it grows. An animal has to hunt for it. Man has to produce it.
I'll be lenient with this paragraph and let this slide. It seems pretty okay, anyway.
A plant has no choice of action; the goals it pursues are automatic and innate, determined by its nature. Nourishment, water, sunlight are the values its nature has set it to seek. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. There are alternatives in the conditions it encounters in its physical background—such as heat or frost, drought or flood—and there are certain actions which it is able to perform to combat adverse conditions, such as the ability of some plants to grow and crawl from under a rock to reach the sunlight. But whatever the conditions, there is no alternative in a plant’s function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.
Given the fact that plants have no brains, we can safely assume that they are incapable of making conscious decisions; actions which require the existence of a mind. Thus, it can also be said that its physiology only acts for its self-preservation, without being conscious of such an act.
The range of actions required for the survival of the higher organisms is wider: it is proportionate to the range of their consciousness. The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation, which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body, that is: by an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of values. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. Within the range of action possible to it, it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction.
I can agree to this paragraph, although counter-instances might exist, which I have no knowledge of. Feel free to share me some if you have them.
The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception. A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by percepts. Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further. It is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of the higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation. And an animal has no choice in the standard of value directing its actions: its senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life. An animal has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In situations for which its knowledge is inadequate, it perishes—as, for instance, an animal that stands paralyzed on the track of a railroad in the path of a speeding train. But so long as it lives, an animal acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice: it cannot suspend its own consciousness—it cannot choose not to perceive—it cannot evade its own perceptions—it cannot ignore its own good, it cannot decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.
I'll leave the majority of this paragraph to the scrutiny of zoologists, but I must object to this sentence:
But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation.
Not all animals learn to survive by rote. Countless scientific experiments demonstrated that some animals actually think of something new. They can use their memory to suit their purposes. They can devise new ways of catching food, given specific parameters and obstacles. Experiments showed that some animals, to some degree, are capable of reason.
Objectivists can check out Kanzi, the bonobo. I have also watched documentaries in my philosophy class about dolphins who can follow commands even if the order's been jumbled up; they followed the commands in a different order, without learning it by rote. Science has shown that, while not as sophisticated as humans, some animals are also capable of analysis.
Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions—but his consciousness will not function automatically. Man, the highest living species on this earth—the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge—man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional.
Huh? But a while ago Ayn Rand said that man can know good and evil in their simplest forms through pleasure and pain? The pleasure-pain mechanism is innate in us humans. What does Ayn Rand mean when she said that man's senses do not automatically tell him what will benefit his life or endanger it? What about a newborn who instinctively looks for his or her mother's breast for milk? We humans, like animals, also have built-in survival mechanisms. What I also don't understand is the last part of this paragraph.
"...man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional."
What does she exactly mean by man being the only organism born without the guarantee of being conscious? Well, maybe a human baby might die while a mother is giving birth, but this also happens to animals. But that's also the cornerstone of my other objection; a baby, just like any human being, has no choice of living or dying. We all die. We have a choice of speeding up our deaths or slowing them down. That's all. Consciousness isn't entirely volitional; it's true we can choose to sleep and be unconscious, wake up and be conscious, but we can't choose to be conscious when we die. This is a major hole in Ayn Rand's epistemology.
Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant’s body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal’s—so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man. Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically.
This is not true. While we're higher than animals in terms of mental acuity, there is a choice for us to live like animals and still survive, although the effectiveness is dramatically lower. But we didn't do such a thing; why? Is it because we inevitably need a higher form of knowledge to survive? Not really; we can just imitate the animals and live in the woods or something, although, as I've said before, the effectiveness is lower. We progressed to become more intelligent because we can; our physiology provided us with the opportunity to become what we are today.
A “concept” is a mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes, which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. Every word of man’s language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a concept, an abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind. It is by organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts that man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate perceptions of any given, immediate moment. Man’s sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts—the process of abstraction and of concept-formation—is not automatic.
Goodness, too much jargon. Anyway, as I understand it, a "concept" according to Ayn Rand is putting together a bunch of concrete things (things observable in one's surroundings), analyzing them with your mind and coming up with a united set of ideas based on existing definitions. For example, you can formulate your concept of beauty by observing a bunch of ladies and analyzing whether they are viable mates. In the process, you come up via analysis that you consider specific characteristics as "beautiful," and so you end up with a set of ideas, or characteristics that satisfies your concept of "beauty." Although it's obvious that not everyone gets the same sample of ladies, which is why the concept of "beauty" differs from culture to culture.
Ayn Rand says that it is through the formation of concepts that man is able to acquire knowledge. She also emphasizes that concept-formation is not automatic.
The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.
I guess I can agree with this. Seeking knowledge is an active action. You must be aware of what you are doing when seeking knowledge. And the faculty that is responsible for seeking knowledge via analysis and concept-formation is reason.
Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.
I guess this is where Ayn Rand begins to divulge on her so-called epistemology, which is reason. Her definition of reason is acceptable. Rational thinking is indeed not automatic. You have a choice to think things through or just stay dumb at your own risk. So far, so good.
When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious.
I must stress that reason, as shown earlier, is not exclusive to man. This is to challenge this part of the paragraph: "But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being--"
The rest, I suspect, is a matter of semantics. An unfocused mind is not conscious? It depends on what Ayn Rand meant by "unfocused" and/or "conscious."
Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.
My comment is best demonstrated by mathematical logic.
~ = Not
⊃ = Implies
T = Thinking
F = Focusing
C = Conscious
L = Life
D = Death
Premises:
(T v ~T)⊃(F v ~F)
(F v ~F)⊃(C v ~C)
(C v ~C)⊃(L v D)
Applying the principle of hypothetical syllogism to the first and second premise, I can conclude that (T v ~T)⊃(C v ~C); thinking or not thinking implies being conscious or not conscious. Applying this principle again to my new information with the last premise, I can conclude that (T v ~T)⊃(L v D); thinking or not thinking implies life or death. Given how Ayn Rand worded her paragraphs, I can say that she meant this; thinking means life; not thinking means death. Therefore, by Ayn Rand's argument, you die when you sleep. (Note that Ayn Rand meant thinking in a volitional sense, not the constant brain activity).
I just wanted to point out the absurdity that arose from this particular argument.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival. For man, the basic means of survival is reason. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available—but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge—and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it.
I have contested the first sentence in the earlier part of this article. I also challenge the sentences that followed. Man can survive by imitating animals, because we're also animals in a biological sense. Also, man does not need to identify the concept of "hunger" to do something about hunger. We living organisms have a built-in survival mechanism that addresses discomfort. Moreover, it's true that man cannot survive without thinking, but this is the same for animals. They are not programmed to automatically find food regardless of environmental conditions. They are also capable of cutting back on food should the need to do so arise, looking after their young, and hunting.
Also, Ayn Rand makes it look like our progression as a civilization is solely born out of a necessity to survive. I'm not a primitivist, mind you, but while there was a need for creativity for man to better adapt to nature, much of our technology today has been driven by curiosity and scientific accomplishment, not just the desire to survive, rendering Ayn Rand's argument contingent; it may be true in some cases, but not true in all cases. Was the invention of the wheel a matter of life and death? Not really, ancient people can suck it up and withstand the hardships of having no wheels. Yet we invented the wheel, and this is because our physiology provided us with the chance to become smarter creatures, and the chance to discover things not just to survive but simply for the sake of discovery. We can live without computers, although we'll be more primitive beings; but we'll still be able to live. Then why invent the computer? Perhaps money, but there is an element of the pure desire to discover.
--To be continued--
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