[Krimel]
To the extent that our sense of moralistic or esthetic values
are not inherited, they are inculcated by participation in our
social communities.
Your ideas about freedom of choice are both grandiose and
untenable. That freedom is mostly illusory. I am not free to
see with my ears or to enjoy eating poisons. In fact the more
closely you examine any freedom at all, the more it dissolves
into wishful thinking.
Denial of individual freedom is what I see as the tragedy of the
collectivist worldview. In the
history of mankind, all discoveries, creations, and social advancements have
originated as the individual's realization of value. I haven't quoted Ayn
Rand for some time, but I can think of no better rebuttal of your argument
that this classic statement:
"The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a
collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An
agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn
upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary
act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone. We can
divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach.
No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his
brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are
private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel.
We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an
airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only
the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty
which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step.
This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It
belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of
the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the
exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet
that capacity is our only means of survival."
-- Rand: 'For the New Intellectual', (1978)
As for "seeing with your ears" or "enjoying poisons", I'm surprised that you
would resort to such churlishness after characterizing my choicemaker
concept as "grandiose and untenable".
-- Ham
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Ham]
Preference and intent are what guide human choices, not the
evolution of Nature. The point I was making, which you've
quoted somewhat out of context, is that preference is man's response to
perceived values and is proprietary to the individual subject. Morality
is
the collective expression or consensus of individual (i.e., subjective)
preferences. WE are the agents who bring value into our world as evolving
objects and events.
[Krimel]
The choice that are available and our ability to interact with them are
entirely the product of evolution and nature. Preferences for what is good
and bad relative to us as individuals are likewise the products of our
genetic heritage combined with present circumstances and our individual
histories. Morality is entirely about human interaction. It makes no sense
to talk about the morality of the universe or the morality of some
hypothetical isolated human being.
[Ham]
Individuals don't "adopt collective evaluations" unless
forced to do so by the church or state. A collective doesn't sense value;
it is the individual who perceives (realizes) value and chooses to act
according to his preferences. If anything, it's the collective which
"adopts to" the subjective, not the other way around. The individual, not
society, is the world's choicemaker.
[Krimel]
Yes, we do indeed disagree completely here. It is flatly absurd to state
the
we adopt collective evaluation only through the use of force. No society
could succeed that way. We are introduced into the values of our culture
by
our parents who, in their desire to make copies of themselves, include as
part of that, instilling the values of the community. Without such values
human life would be impossible. The values of society are its intellectual
level. They are the shared understandings and experience of all who claim
to
be one of us.
Individuals can certainly make personal decision that are at odds with
society but we become fully human only by participating in the shared
heritage of our community.
[Ham]
The values I'm talking about are moralistic or esthetic values like
goodness, beauty, compassion, and justice. Only human beings possess this
kind of sensibility and the freedom to choose discriminately. Without
subjective awareness there would be no realization of value, nor a moral
system to guide society.
[Krimel]
To the extent that our sense of moralistic or esthetic values are not
inherited, they are inculcated by participation in our social communities.
Your ideas about freedom of choice are both grandiose and untenable. That
freedom is mostly illusory. I am not free to see with my ears or to enjoy
eating poisons. In fact the more closely you examine any freedom at all,
the
more it dissolves into wishful thinking.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
