Top 10 Reasons Ayn Rand was Dead Wrong
I happened across this by accident, fairly recent too… Someone is upset at the Objectivist philosophy, I started to read the reasons and was angry after reading the first but broke into laughter on the second reason when the author truly tried to convince the reader that “Reason has real-world limitations”. Then it goes into a hit piece on Ayn Rand personal life. My favorite reason is number 9, “Reading Rand creates instant jackasses”. Read the comments below, the author is lambasted…
Your truly, Jackass
Your truly, Jackass
The only flaw I would contest is did the individuals in question reason themselves into the situation or were they conned? Either way their choice their responsibility. Thumb up for the comment Gilles
"I, _, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
We served the Constitution and only the Constitution. The Constitiution served the nation until the people's elected delegates saw fit to sit it aside time after time by open vote and presidential signature.
We were not relieved of our sworn duty. to support and defend , not to the best of our ability, but without purposes of evasion which is not listed in the above quote.
We were also taught any President who becomes an enemy of or turns against the Constitution was not exempt.
There was at tone time a move to make officers appointed over read 'uniformed officers.' Thus exempting the Service Secretaries from the Chain of Command which goes from Commander In Chief to the Commander US Military (Chairman of Join Chiefs) and the Commanders of the separate branches or Departments of the Military Chiefs of Staff. We just took it to mean by never asking officially it meant uniformed officers. not civilian officials.
Still. people, country, etc. are not mentioned. Now we serve a Constitution that has no country. The Country and the Citizens shit canned it without word or whimper on multiple occasions.
But the sentiment of Blarman was well intended and well received Your welcome. Some of us will continue to do so. while others hide behind closed forums. .
The adrenaline rush or chemically induced and how to use it not abuse it is also part of training. Instant response learned as and individual and as a team without and our greatest fear was some newbie would fly off the handle and do something stupid.
When you say they speaking of combat training I say We. We wouldn't allow the use of the word flight or anything else that negative. Move to a position offering the best cover, concealment and set up a hasty ambush it was always combat positive. Most of those responses were the result of unceasing drills Of course our unit was a touch above the others be it actual,A field exercises or even computer simulation probably why we enjoyed a high survival ratio. All members could do the job of the other members no natter how different the skills and alll could take over and lead. We also had zero draftees and zero with low intelligence scores. While I'm thinking back the deck was stacked in our favor. But now I now how to deacribe what we were doing except instinctive mode. which doesn't exist in humans supercharged thinking mode is a better choice.
The other dude died for his country or whatever.. we just hit the showers That and a paycheck took care of the why? The rest didn't mean a thing.
I take the example of the 2-3-yr-old child. I've been around my fair share of these and though the basic emotions are all there, the actual responses differ signficantly. In the households where parents have taught self-discipline, even 2-3-yr-olds can show restraint from hitting (anger), taking others' toys (jealousy), hugs (love), etc., but this is by no means a determinant as I have seen siblings with exactly the same upbringing react completely different because their personalities are completely different. Do these children really "reason" about what anger or jealousy are? Not even remotely. All the parent can do is help the child isolate and identify what they are feeling and then help them practice appropriate responses.
"If you have appropriate emotional responses due to a rational thinking"
One does not generate emotional responses as a product of internal thinking, however. Emotions are generated by external stimuli acting on us. They are instinctual - not driven by the logical thought process. The "fight or flight" response is one such reaction: wholly ungoverned by and non-susceptible to rational thought processes. The adrenal glands kick in and the cognitive portion of our brain actually shuts down in favor of the instinctual portion. In combat training for soldiers, much of what they are drilled on repeatedly is reconditioning their reactions to the fight-or-flight response to channel their heightened senses and reaction times into pre-arranged response patterns - not because there is cognition or reason available but precisely because it is not. They also do it so as to improve their bodies' ability to revert back from a chemically-induced instinctive mode to a logically-controllable mode.
A second example stems from the old "count to ten" rule for dealing with anger. This is nothing more than a conditioned response which gives the cognitive portion of our brains time to re-engage after the initial emotional rush of chemicals hits us.
Now you do bring up the interesting example of a conditioned response due to shock therapy. What one is focusing on in such a scenario is first and foremost conditioning a response. What is further to be considered, however, is that the conditions are largely artificial as well and that one is not generating the emotion, but instead the circumstances in which an emotion may evince itself. In this case, the brain automatically recognizes the false nature of the situation and instinctively blocks the reaction and recovers more quickly than when a real threat evinces itself.
To conclude, my own empirical observation rejects the notion that logic drives emotion. All logic can help us do is understand what actions are appropriate and assist us in conditioning our responses.
If you believe you will be shocked when a button is pressed (because that has been your experience in life) - you will learn that and have an emotional response that is based on this "knowledge". So when someone who goes to press a button which makes you get scared and stressed - that is your emotional response. Others who have not had this experience in life will not have this response. The response is based on what you know and believe.
Rand pointed out that if people are raised from a young age with a rational approach to reason and taught how to use their experiences and knowledge to form their opinions and morality, that their emotional responses will be based on their particular experiences and how they have incorporated them into their knowledge base and morality (their particular valuation system).
When things happen that are positive to their morality, they will have a positive emotional response, and equally have a negative emotional response to things that are opposed to their value system. Your emotional responses thus, if raised objectivist - should result in rational emotional responses verses irrational responses such as when the moral/value system is based on a philosophical system such as Kant's.
If you have appropriate emotional responses due to a rational thinking - why should they then be "controlled" or held at bay? If someone has irrational emotional responses - their family, friends, parents, etc... need to help them review their beliefs and re-evaluate their premises and adjust accordingly. Even the "shocked" person can learn after experiencing buttons being pushed and not being shocked, that having buttons pushed doesn't equal pain - and their emotional response will change with confidence in their new found knowledge that button pushes do not in fact equal shocks.
I'm a Scoutmaster dealing with 11-, 12-, and 13-year old boys 2-3 times a week. And I can tell you that the maturation processes are very different in the dozen+ boys I am responsible for. I have one 12-year old Patrol Leader with four older brothers who is very mature and responsible. I have another who is older by six months with one older brother who is incredibly immature both emotionally and psychologically. My Senior Patrol Leader (13) has more emotional maturity than many high school seniors I've met. I don't equate age with maturity one bit.
"In other words, you appear to claim that ideals cannot be achieved, that failure is inevitable and normal. Perhaps you mean that no one can be completely rational; and that anyone who thinks that he is perfectly rational is deluding himself. Either assertion is wrong because it confuses rationality with knowledge."
Actually, in order to be perfectly rational, you have to be able to see reality for what it really is - not merely for what you think it is. Our own ignorance is a huge barrier in many ways to this. We can make rational decisions that still turn out to be completely fallacious - and why? Because our reasoning is built on unsound principles and bad premises.
"With finite experience, we draw incomplete conclusions."
YES! Failures are not necessarily irrational. Failures may result either from a willful choice in departure of what we know or a choice which runs contrary to reality despite our ignorance. I acknowledge that no human being is going to achieve perfect knowledge, and that as such, we are all going to make decisions that at some point run contrary to reality. Does that mean we should not strive to make perfectly rational decisions? No. What we need to be willing to do is to act according to what we know and accept correction when appropriate.
I meant what I said, let me elaborate for you on this:
Let me first state that we are only arguing semantics… I’m an engineer first and a word smith somewhere around my ability to tie my shoes. I’m okay with that…
The first error is not an error at all and should have been very easy for you to understand. My point is exactly how its worded and exactly what that the sentence says. Making a basic switch in your belief system due to word of man from the word of god is a monumental shift. For this to occur, the person would have to rationally realize the previous belief systems was faulty. My point is that if you make a fundamental shift like this, you must also admit that your previous decision was void of logic and though extension you “new” choice must also be in question. Seems clear to me… I grew up in a religious family, I have always asked why, including a god.
Again, I mean exactly what I said, the argument here is disproving a negative.
The negative of your argument is the absents of god, you can say that god doesn’t exist because god hasn’t spoken to you. But maybe that’s because god thinks you’re an asshole and he/she simply wishes not to speak with you? This argument is fundamentally different from the religious person’s point of view, which is god exists because the bible says so (for illustration) or something else like that. This argument points to proof, rather true or not as evidence to the decision. Whereas your argument is being made on a lack of proof ether way. The flaw in your argument is that you wish me to say, you’re right, I don’t hear god ether; me must have never existed.
Argument from self-knowing (auto-epistemic)
1. If P were true then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore P cannot be true.
2. If P were false then I would know it; in fact I do not know it; therefore P cannot be false.
In practice these arguments are often fallacious and rely on the veracity of the supporting premise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumen...
My point is that both sides of the argument is wrong…
Another way… “The patent is free from cancer because I looked for malignant cells and found none.” This argument is a fallacy in itself. Better said that: “The patent appears to be free from cancer as I’m unable to find any additional malignant cells.” The argument leaves wiggle room in an argument where you will never be 100% positive of the results. Errors in tests, wasn’t looking in the right place, the list goes on and on.
I don’t see god, therefore he doesn’t exist is the negative and your argument is “prove me wrong” … This is a fallacy because I can’t disprove a negative.
Mitch
To be a good Libertarian....must be more than just I'm for legalized marijuana because it feels good. Yet many view it from the outside as exactly that. They fail to see the strong points one of which revolves around the liberties afford by a strong economically capitalist based system of government called constitutionalism. I don't see how validating a belief system is being at odds with the validation system.
If you apply objectivism as you have are you not an objectivist. If the system tested successfully by your own conscious reasoning and ethical standards is libertarianism are you not a libertarian? Where in lies the disconnect?
Easy to see with some who have no belief system nor belief in themselves. In this case... difficult or impossible to see.
Therefore having seen the good in Libertarian what about the not so good? Someone else at odds for whatever reason who bristles at the words Cato Institute might want to take a stab at that one.
Being a humble acolyte I fail to see more than a few minor points of disagree all constantly under review.
Concept formation quickly becomes the human mode of knowledge. What you choose to believe defines how you react to the world around you. Ultimately, what you believe about yourself determines how you carry on your life.
Its failure, by repression, creates unresolved - and unresolvable - internal conflicts. Compartmentalization is one way that people get by: never letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. The consequences of that are all around us. Just for one: engineers at General Motors "rationally" decided that it was cheaper to pay the victims than to redesign the product. That moral failure came from irrationality, not reason. Ayn Rand wrote on open letter to Boris Spassky about the compartmentalization of the rationality of chess apart from the irrationality of communism.
Another example of that seems to come from your statement: "I am not arguing that reason isn't the ideal, only that if any of us think we can reach that we're delusional." In other words, you appear to claim that ideals cannot be achieved, that failure is inevitable and normal. Perhaps you mean that no one can be completely rational; and that anyone who thinks that he is perfectly rational is deluding himself. Either assertion is wrong because it confuses rationality with knowledge. You can be "perfectly rational" and still be wrong about a great many things. Knowledge depends on experience. With finite experience, we draw incomplete conclusions. The path from Galileo to Newton to Einstein may be a paradigm for that. But they were not irrational or delusional.
Mountains of misunderstanding can grow from our molehills of paragraphs. It is not always easy (or necessary) to dash off a reply that conveys all of your ideas on a subject.
You wrote:"if you change your belief in a god due to a philosophy, it just illustrate the fact your original choice was faulty and your ability to make rational decisions is also questionable."
What you said means that whatever you believe first must always be your conviction. Your statement means that improvement is not possible. Ultimately, it says that we must be infallible or else incapable of making any decision.
Few people come to a belief in god from a rational decision. Mostly, we grow up with it; and accept it as given. Then, we find justifications for it. At least most people around me in America seem to have.
You also said (twice) " you cannot disprove a negative. You mean that it is impossible to prove a negative. It is easy to disprove a negative: just provide a positive example. Foxhole Atheists is a club for soldiers with non-traditional religious beliefs. Most are atheists; many other are just uncommitted. "There are no atheists in the foxholes" is a negative statement that has been disproved.
As I recall, in the Basic Principles of Objectivism class, Nathaniel Branden offered this example.
A: "The far side of the Moon has rose gardens with Coca-Cola vending machines."
B: That's ridiculous.
A: "Prove that it is not true!"
The implication is that just because we have not found them, does not mean that they are not there. Disproof is impossible.
Karl Popper set falsifiability as a requirement in science because, as he put it, both Freudian psychology and astrology have great explanatory powers. You can explain anything and everything. Every challenge is met with more explanation. But they set no standards for disproof.
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