I have 65 hours of listening to do.

Yes we have to be intentional to avoid logical pitfalls because knowledge is not automatic. It requires a method, not arbitrary feelings, hopes, and wishes. The capacity and type of our brain is inherited, not the content. And it must be done with philosophic principles, not the unprincipled "truth is what works" and "what is true today need not be tomorrow" of Pragmatism and its political expression in Progressivism.

"Philosophy and Sense of Life" (which is one chapter in the book The Romatic Manifesto) explains the role of philosophy in human life at the most basic (not scholarly or academic) level. We have discussed this topic before at https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... The title essay in Philosophy: Who Needs It explains at a more advanced, explicit level what philosophy is and why we need it.

People don't start with philosophy at birth. It's part of the knowledge they learn or absorb from around them over time. As such, as a way of looking at the world it has varied in sophistication throughout human evolution as knowledge (and otherwise as beliefs) have accumulated or been lost, and passed on whether correct or not from generation to generation. The earliest form was primitive religion trying to explain the world through miracles and gods, passed on through common superstition. The very earliest form when the human means of cognition was first developing was necessarily extremely primitive.

The first known explicit formulation of the basic question of trying to find unity among diversity in natural terms is attributed to Thales in ancient Greece (6th century BC). That is what began the first recorded elementary philosophical outlook, which grew over the centuries through the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and those that followed until the collapse of civilization in the Dark Ages. Plato was the first to attempt an integrated, systematic approach, though he was wrong on all major questions, and the best of Aristotle did not spread enough to stop the collapse. After the collapse it took about a thousand years before the west recovered in the "rebirth" during the Renaissance and then the emphasis on reason and individualism of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was made possible by the influence of the best of Aristotle struggling to the surface, having lost out the first time to Plato through Plotinus, which led to Christian thinkers like Augustine.

It's not as if there was some date at which the Enlightenment threw a switch and suddenly philosophy was correct; there was a gradual improvement until reason and individualism dominated in essence, culminating in that age with Locke for political philosophy. But Enlightenment philosophers had big problems and gaps. (In particular the egoism of their ethics was only implicit and they lacked an explanation of conceptual thought to defend reason.) The failures allowed the counter-Enlightenment reversion with the likes of Kant, Hegel and others leading to the retrogression we have today -- including remnants of religious thinking -- undermining the great achievements (including your own career) due to Enlightenment reason and individualism.

Most people do not and never have studied the details of the philosophers, but the basic ideas pervade thinking everywhere. To understand it you have to understand what the basic ideas are, where they came from, what they were in reaction to, and the arguments for and against them -- and what is right to advocate in their place.

You can see the dominant philosophical positions explicitly taken and their influence over the last 2,000 years of western civilization in a good history of philosophy, with none better than Leonard Peikoff's lectures:
https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-cou...

The complete audio of all the lectures with questions and answers, in two sets of recordings, is at:
https://estore.aynrand.org/p/95/found...
https://estore.aynrand.org/p/96/moder...

"And emotions are not primaries, they are automatic responses based on values accepted."
A huge and interesting claim. I'll have to read those books to comment. What you're saying is huge though. I see the mind as constantly tricking us with heuristics that worked from a selective-pressure standpoint but are non-philosophical. The selective pressures were for the genes to survive, not to lead to correct philosophy. So we have to be intentional to avoid logical pitfalls.

I think you're saying people start with a philosophy. Then did bad philosophies hold sway from when humans first appeared up to the Enlightenment?

(I had a professor who used to answer, "It's in the readin'. As MM says, the answer to my question maybe the type of thing Ayn Rand hid in books.)

If you think people can only be tricked into recognizing rights and made to fear be caught, what else would you resort to?

There are no "ancient impulses". There are no innate ideas. And emotions are not primaries, they are automatic responses based on values accepted.

Human beings are "philosophical creatures" in that we cannot live on the range of the moment; we require an integrated view of existence. Such an outlook on life is acquired, deliberately or by absorption or some mixture, and is held implicitly or explicitly, but cannot be avoided. See Ayn Rand's "Philosophy and Sense of Life" anthologized in The Romantic Manifesto. Being a "philosophical creature" does not mean everyone is or should be an academic scholar of philosophy (and given the nature of most of it, heaven help us if we tried). But it is necessary that the intellectuals, including educators, know enough to spread and use the right principles.

I understand all of that except for the "the choice to resort", which implies intention. I don't think anyone made a choice, and I certainly wouldn't if I had that power. I'm observing one trend causing another, not talking about anyone's intentions.

Regarding the rest, I see humankind as usually driven by emotion and ancient impulses. Reason and philosophy are the exception when we rise above our first instinct. You believe, in my understanding, that we are philosophical creatures who often adopt bad philosophies, bad in the sense that you can logically derive contradictory propositions from them, and that these bad philosophies, besides just being incorrect, cause problems.

That people make choices based on their basic values and that this determines their resulting actions and the course of a culture is not "fanciful". The continual denials dismissing the the role of ideas and the mind in human life is profoundly anti-intellectual.

Nations are not "going away"; the choice is whether the use of force by government is used to defend the rights of the individual or violate them through more dictatorship, welfare statism, and other varieties of socialism resulting in both war and oppression of individuals within their borders. That choice in political philosophy depends on the more fundamental principles of ethics, how knowledge is attained, and a view of the nature of reality and man's relation to it. The choice to resort to cynical manipulation and fear is the result bad choices in the rest.

"That the course of a culture and in particular its politics is determined by its fundamental philosophical ideas is not "romantic". "
Well, it's an idea I like that feels fanciful or utopian to me. I suspect the idea of creating a confederacy or union of the British colonies based on philosophical ideas would have seemed far-fetched to me at the time.

"There is no trend for nations to "go away"."
If that's true and we need nations to prevent socialism, then that's one fewer thing to worry about. I do think separate nations are disappearing one way or the other, and I don't think that resists or encourages socialism.

That the course of a culture and in particular its politics is determined by its fundamental philosophical ideas is not "romantic". "Grim reality" thought of as "tricking people" and "fear" is naive cynicism that will accomplish nothing good and is not a substitute for ideas.

There is no trend for nations to "go away". The whole world is still carved into nations. There is only a utopian collectivist-statist ideology that still seeks control of "one world". We are "dealing with it": it's called self defense, and that doesn't mean "imagining" nations "stay as they are".

"A philosophy of reason and its implementation cannot be based on "tricking people" and fear of the law because violators are caught. You are missing the entire foundation of what the law is for and why people have rights."
This is interesting. I'm torn between a) a romantic view of colonists in a remote area taking Enlightenment philosophy and trying to build a working society around it and b) the idea that the gritty reality of it must involve all the things I mentioned.

" Imagining a utopian 'one world' without regard to what most people think and value is not an answer."
Regarding everything you said about obliteration of nations, I do not have a utopian view of it leading to good things. I'm saying the trend is already in progress, IMHO, and we should deal with it rather than imagining that nations will stay as they are. If lack of separate nations leads to socialism, we're in big trouble, because I think nations are going away whether we like it or not.

A philosophy of reason and its implementation cannot be based on "tricking people" and fear of the law because violators are caught. You are missing the entire foundation of what the law is for and why people have rights.

Obliteration of nations obliterates the possibility of free societies because the "one world" does not culturally support individualism. In most areas it is welfare statism, and it goes downhill into more extensive varieties of socialism and other forms of dictatorship from there. This has previously been explained. Imagining a utopian 'one world' without regard to what most people think and value is not an answer.

By causal vector I mean A is not a primary cause of B, without rulling out B causing A or some other thing C causing both A and B. Maybe that's the wrong word.

I really think those three things I mentioned do cause increase recognition of rights. Reason delivering products and services means people have a non-philosophical motivation for learning it. Sharing stories tricks people into putting themselves into other's shoes and seeing rights violations from the other party's point of view. Catching criminals and clearing innocent suspects leads to more respect for the law.

" Without a government to enforce our rights there are no rights and no capitalism. "
Right

"That is what "one world" gets you."
I don't see that (hence the false choice between one world and capitalism), but if it's true we're in deep trouble because the one world is getting smaller every day.

What is a "causal vector"? Implementing the rights of the individual requires a lot more than "sharing stories", "delivering the goods", and ability to "catch criminals". None of that causes recognition of the rights of the individual, as illustrated throughout history all over the world. The rights of the individual require a philosophy of reason and individualism, which the "one world" does not have.

Ayn Rand did not present a false choice between capitalism and separate nations. Where did you get that from? Without a government to enforce our rights there are no rights and no capitalism. That is what "one world" gets you. You haven't addressed anything I wrote.

The causal vectors don't go from decreased importance of nation state --> respecting rights. There are probably many causes for increased respect of human rights: ability to share stories, the fact that reason delivers the goods in the modern world, and technology helps catch criminals. That's a subject for a book. My point here is decreasing importance of the nation state is not a primary cause.

In any case, I think nations are going away regardless of whether they're good or bad for individual rights.

The excerpt from To Young Scientists sounds (without full context) like it offers a false choice between capitalism and separate nations. You can have any combination of those.

I thought he was referring to annihilation by nuclear war, not fear of technology. With the spread of nuclear weapons the 'odds' are "steadily increasing". This isn't a matter of rolling dice; wars are caused, and those seeking power -- from Iran to Russia to North Korea and China -- are increasing their means. It's not a matter of odds in a frequency probability. They only have to do it once and it's 100%.

Nationhood relegated to only "vestiges of a bygone era" is a prescription for the complete loss of our freedom. The purpose of a national government is to protect the rights of the individual, and that can only be done within defended borders of a specific jurisdiction, i.e., nation, in which the laws apply.

325 million out of about 7 billion worldwide -- 5% of "one world" -- have no chance to protect the rights of the individual against the tender mercies of the likes of the UN representing the overwhelmingly dominant collectivism and outright tribalism of the rest of the world.

Reason and freedom have always led to what people want -- if they want to live as individuals. It is not what looters want, on the scale of nations it is not the trend in most of the world, and it is under progressively increasing attack here, including by those "liberals" who want to open up "the goods" of America to the rest of the world by turning it into an "open borders" international welfare central. "'Come one, come all -- and vote for 'democratic socialism' so that it can't be stopped by the minority of the world in the way."

The cause of wars internationally has always been the dominance of statism, not the existence of nations, and not the existence of free nations in particular. Statists who rule nations are confined within national borders only because that is all they could attain power over, as much as they would have liked to control much more or the whole world (as many of them have dreamed of and attempted). The nations they have controlled have shifting boundaries that are whatever they can get at the time. The answer to that is not to eliminate the concept of nations for "One World". They fight for power; we seek to maintain a defended region in which our rights are respected. The need for borders has not "been removed"; they are a moral necessity that collectivists want removed to destroy freedom of the individual.

As Ayn Rand put it in "To Young Scientists" in 1962, anthologized in The Voice of Reason , "capitalism does not force individuals or nations into the collectivist slave pen of a world government. The so-called One World is merely 'one neck ready for one leash.' Capitalism leaves men free for self-defense, but gives no one the political means to initiate force or war."

And,

"A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. A free nation—a nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its citizens—has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its form of government. The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense)...

"Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations." -- from “Collectivized ‘Rights’” in The Virtue of Selfishness http://anthemfoundation.org/for-profe...

"Why do you think that "nation states" are less important, either as a trend or a goal? "
The reason for nation states, natural borders separating people, has been removed. I see nations as a vestige of a bygone era.

"But we still have (some very long) wars with nations and the threat is always there."
I think this will decrease because reason and mutual trades rather than force "deliver the goods". If value were in cattle, there are spoils to be had by stealing them, even though it's wrong. In the modern world, doing the right thing (reason and free enterprise) gets people what they want.

"catastrophic outcome / very low probability."
A very succinct and sobering way to put the peril nuclear, nanotech, and biotech pose to humankind

Why do you think that "nation states" are less important, either as a trend or a goal? Wars between nations haven't been going away; we have avoided 'world wars' involving multiple nations in all-out war, and there is now additional war from ethnic groups spanning nations and tacitly encouraged or permitted by nations they inhabit. But we still have (some very long) wars with nations and the threat is always there.

As Yoda often said - "difficult to see the future..." I agree that the civilized nations no longer view wars as noble. Yet, the greatest annihilation of people has occurred from the most "civilized" (except for China; in the people quantity department, Chinese have always outranked everyone). So, there is reason for hope, yet the capacity of the "civilized" world at extermination is steadily increasing. In business terms - a catastrophic outcome / very low probability.

" a one world order as being peaceful is a bit utopian."
I realize now it sounded like I was saying one world order would be peaceful and free. I don't think that. I just think wars between nation states are going away. I also think there is a separate long-term trend away from violence. These are both good trends, but it does not mean there will an end to war-like violence (e.g. drone strikes on people suspected of murder) in my lifetime. I don't think there will be a place with low taxes that respects people rights to speech, weapons, free-speech, and so on in my lifetime.

I'm not saying decreasing importance of the nation state would decrease the negative things you talk about: invading gangs, statism, dictators, etc. I'm saying the nation state is less important and wars between nation states are going away.

I think that a lot of the seeming decline in major wars is due to the "intervention" by US policy -- as awkward, stumbling, incompetent, or worse, as it often is.

There is no sign that world-wide statism causing war is declining. That is what an eventual elimination, or near elimination, of war requires -- a replacement of irrationalism, collectivism and statism by reason and individualism making proper government possible world-wide -- and that surely is not happening today.

I am afraid that the view of a one world order as being peaceful is a bit utopian. The very horrific acts traditionally committed in wars may be in decline, but that may be due to the fact that when the information about a defeat (a killing, in other words) is instantly transmitted around the world, in an original frame, the horrific mass murders are no longer necessary in order to send the message for the populace to submit. But the use of force is likely to remain a reality for a very long time.

Wars began between rival wandering tribes long before there were cities within a nation, and nations do not inherently start wars; statist nations do. National jurisdiction, which requires borders, is necessary to define where the laws apply. Invading gangs and internet hackers do not cease without borders; that only makes it easier for evaders to pretend that nothing has happened.

It is not possible to have peace without government for the protection of the rights of the individual. Worse than war is statism, under which the rulers conduct war to oppress defenseless citizens. 'One world' abolition of borders and nations would not protect us from gangs and dictators; it would not even make it possible to pretend that there are no wars despite leftist evaders pretending that collectivism is "peace".

See Ayn Rand's "The Roots of War".

"What makes you think that war between humans will ever disappear? "
Reason 1: The horrific aspects of war in the ancient world have disappeared. They now exist only as rare atrocious crimes. I expect this trend will continue.
Reason 2: War between nation states started when people in distant cities started thinking of themselves as part of a single nation. There were roads to carry people can good from one city to another, but there were geographic, cultural, and language barriers caused people on the other side of a range of mountains to be considered a different people, a different nation. Those boundaries are meaningless. Declaring things of value at customs is a relic from a time when I couldn't send software, firmware, hardware CAM files, and money around the world instantly almost for free. If I'm correct that the nation state is in its last gasp of life, war between nation states will disappear. It may persist as are against international extremists groups, but that may be toned down due to the general trend I mentioned in reason #1.