Elightened Selfishness
The other day I published a bit of a request, but got no takers, either in comments or via email. I also said that my reasons for this would reveal themselves in the fullness of time. Here’s a small piece of that "revelation."
Check this out, and those of you who know who you are will find it interesting, I think. The author’s biography (Yasuhiko Kimura) is certainly not the sort of thing you’d expect to see where someone is writing of Western philosophy. What’s most striking is that I cannot find a single thing where he misrepresents Rand in even the tiniest slightest way, yet he thinks her philosophy is incomplete — a view I have had some sympathy for for a long, long time. It is an entirely different thing to say that she was wrong, than that she was incomplete.
Besides, it’s silly to think that anything of such a profound nature represents all possible knowledge (complete).
I have read over this a couple if times, and will do more, but I find it intriguing. Yes, of course; I immediately bristle at talk of the "oneness of Being," and so forth. Then, when I get my own ego under control, I wonder what we rationalists mean when we toss around terms like "conscience." Why would we think that someone should "listen to their conscience," if we do not think there are some universals that they must have integrated somehow, and, at least in some sense, are supposed to be the same for everyone — transcending to large degree knowledge, culture, economics and a whole host of things.
Thinking specifically of a device that Billy employs quite a lot, when the drones of Nazi Germany herded their fellow man into cattle cars, "ignoring the voice of their own conscience," what makes us think they had one, or if they did, that it in any way resembled our own? I’m not thinking or talking about anything material, or any sort of anthropomorphic spirit (the Western assertion of God). At this point, I’m just talking about what I think is something.
For those interested in looking more deeply into this, as I am, here is an index to other articles by Mr. Kimura.
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Kimura: a rational theory of reality based solely on the absoluteness of reason and the evidence of the senses (a premise which ultimately breaks down in the kosmic awareness of Primary Reality)
There's Platonic essences rearing their ugly head again. It's one of my top candidates for the root of all evil.
Having read some additional stuff, I do not believe that he in any way means primacy of consciousness. I think he means, essentially, that we may not directly perceive all of reality (all aspects of it) with our senses.
I'm not sure that's right, and even if it is, I'm not exactly sure what I think of it. But I have read enough interesting ideas to pursue this line of inquiry further.
You never know when and how you might gain perspectives you'd never considered before.
I'll probably blog about it later, but the article on "Ethics, Politics, and Plenitude" from that index is quite interesting. See if you don't think that the door is left open for anarchism )clearly implicitly and almost explicitly), which I always like to see because it tells me someone is thinking to fullest integral implications.
I haven't read it yet, Rich. I might get to it tonight.
Kyle:
In further reflection, and also, having read a few other things, let me see if I can provide an analogy that kinda-sorta expresses where I think the author is coming from.
Take Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. It is now well established that Newtonian is perfectly valid, but only to a certain point, where at the extremes of gravity and time "distortion," near 'c,' Newtonian physics breaks down to render incorrect calculations. By incorrect, I mean they no longer reflect reality in that context.
It doesn't mean Newtonian physics is wrong. Quite the contrary. It just means that its contextual limit has been found.
As rationalists, I think we well understand that all knowledge is contextual, and limited. There's no "no limits," so far as we understand the nature of reality.
Now, whether there is any part of reality that can't be observed by our senses, or thus reasoned, I don't know. I really don't dwell on such questions, but I suppose I don't mind speculation along those lines so long as nothing already known is contradicted.
The biggest problem with the primacy of consciousness, in my view, is that it seeks to contradict known facts, to supplant sensory experience and reason with floating abstractions. I really don't think that's what this author means to do, which is one reason I'm still reading.
It's a fresh approach and integration, to me, so I'm going to withhold any quick final judgments.
I won't take up Kimura, who I think is just appalling. I would, however, like to address this:
I wonder exactly what sort of a question you're asking. I would point out that, in fact, I'm talking about a capacity which must necessarily be present in any entity that we're going to understand as a "human being". Now, a better question might wonder precisely when such a capacity went dead in the specimens that I'm talking about, and/or why. But there can simply be no question that these creatures are/were fundamentally different from you and me, as if they had never in their lives had any such capacity in the very nature of their existence. We know better than that, Rich, because we have the post-Holocaust testimony of those who recovered it.
We're talking about human beings.
The matter is exactly that simple, to begin with.
What happens to certain of them after that is a very different question.
Billy:
My question is, really, is that conscience merely programmed, learned, or is it fundamentally part of a real human being?
I guess we know it can be "turned off" or circumvented, by, I suppose, what essentially amounts to supplanting an "authority" taken to be grater than our own.
If it is fundamentally part of a human being, and we can be horrified or appalled be an experience at a perceptual level, before we're even had time to conceptualize it, then where does that come from, and how?
It's simply honest inquiry. I'm making no assertions, and I'm open to listening to varied speculations.
My question is, really, is that conscience merely programmed, learned, or is it fundamentally part of a real human being?
It's a recognition of a contradiction.
I guess we know it can be "turned off" or circumvented,
The word you're looking for is "evaded".
I still haven't had time to read this in full, though my impression from skimming it is in line with Billy's. I do intend to take up Kimura and your comments on it as soon as I can, but it won't be today, at least not in full…
As rationalists, I think we well understand that all knowledge is contextual, and limited. There's no "no limits," so far as we understand the nature of reality.
This is why I brought up Plato, it's been much on my mind lately. His essences say, in effect: "true knowledge is without context". Not even all rationalists disagree, and the influence of that one poisonous idea is *everywhere*.
It's not primacy of consciousness, though Kimura may or may not make that error as well.
Now, whether there is any part of reality that can't be observed by our senses, or thus reasoned, I don't know.
In what context could such a "part" of reality exist? Or more to the point, what is it that divides reality into parts?
"It's a recognition of a contradiction."
A contradiction of what, and what is the absolute source of the elements in contradiction?
"In what context could such a "part" of reality exist? Or more to the point, what is it that divides reality into parts?"
At this point, what I think I'm talking about are as yet unknown elements of reality which reason does not give rise to, at least not in the sense we normally speak of reason, which is to integrate data from the senses.
How about speculation or "leaps of faith" that lead to something valuable that can later be conceptualized, but would not have been reached initially through a process of reason?
More to that last point, reason is a bottom-up approach, whereas, is speculation, or intuition, or perhaps even "spirituality" (?) a "top-down" approach?
A contradiction of what, and what is the absolute source of the elements in contradiction?
Of two concepts, which is what all contradictions are. In the case of "conscience", it would be between a concept of what is right and the concept of some action you are contemplating. The source is the same source as any other concept: reason applied to percepts.
At this point, what I think I'm talking about are as yet unknown elements of reality …
"Can't" implies something other than "haven't yet". If you're saying there is some aspect of reality that is off limits to our consiousness and reason, I ain't buying it. If you're saying there's aspects that can be neither observed nor deduced or induced, I'll (tentatively) buy that: SQRT(-1).
More to that last point, reason is a bottom-up approach, whereas, is speculation, or intuition, or perhaps even "spirituality" (?) a "top-down" approach?
I don't think that's the right axis to split the question on. Speculation is just inventing concrete concepts that have not been observed or deduced, and deciding whether they contradict anything. Once they're shown to be non-contradictory, they still have to be shown to be actual – or if abstract enough, at least necessitated by other more concrete facts.
Intuition is close to that. It's probably something like the "right-brain" version of speculation.
"Spirituality", I won't even try to analyze until somebody tells me what is meant by the term. It usually means something very close to faith – "believing in something in the absence of evidence and without regard to proof" – i.e., belief absent context.
"Of two concepts, which is what all contradictions are. In the case of "conscience", it would be between a concept of what is right and the concept of some action you are contemplating. The source is the same source as any other concept: reason applied to percepts."
What is in essence contradictory (in the cognitive sense) that makes you immediately recoil in horror at seeing some stranger be the victim of a horrible accident?
I'm not talking about your later analysis, where you reason that the universe is not malevolent, this is a freak accident, the person is a human being, etc. etc. I'm talking about that instantaneous reaction that even a young person would experience (I recall such an experience in my own youth) long before conceptualizing all the elements of analysis?
I'm asking because I don't know yet, not as a rhetorical device.
Spirituality? I don't know, but the concept gets tossed around a lot, and I think people have different senses of what it means (including ghosts). I would say that it's the sphere of abstraction that deals in non-concrete referents of self and being.
"If you're saying there is some aspect of reality that is off limits to our consiousness and reason, I ain't buying it."
(nod) That's right. I'm not, either. For one thing, the very assertion of such a thing would imply that our consciousness is radically distinct from reality (or vice-versa, if you want), and my very first (trick) question would be, "Just exactly how do you know that?" If that question could be answered with reference to facts, then the thesis fails. Likewise if it can't be, because we cannot, at that point, be said to be discussing facts ("reality").
You're dead-on, Kyle, about "spirituality". I'm not sure what we're talking about, here, but I do know the traditions of this sort of thing. (And, I know what I read in Kimura, who — so far as I've read — has been fairly cagey about explicating himself.)
I would, however, agree that "reason is a bottom-up approach", in that it begins with reality. And to my mind, there is absolutely no other way to do it. Nothing else can pretend to knowledge, which is the necessary fundement of "reason".
"What is in essence contradictory (in the cognitive sense) that makes you immediately recoil in horror at seeing some stranger be the victim of a horrible accident?"
(furrowed brow…)
I think the answer here is, "introspection".
It's the realization of the similarity of the victim-entity with oneself, and understanding the horror in the possibility that "That could be me."
I'm not understanding how this example arises as a "contradiction".
"I'm talking about that instantaneous reaction that even a young person would experience (I recall such an experience in my own youth) long before conceptualizing all the elements of analysis?"
If I have your example right, I would say that it's a product of a natural automation of reason that's at work in the fact that we don't have to, for instance, consult a turn-by-turn map every single time that we drive a familiar route every day, but can do it while we're applying cognitive power to other things while we're doing it. Briefly: the things that we already know, we really do already know, and we don't have to validate them step-by-step every time we reach for them in our minds. Knowing ourselves and what we are, and having compared that self to certain beings around us and drawn the essential similarities, all the work of empathy is already done by the time we happen upon the accident. This is not enormously complex, and in most people, a great deal — if not all — of the work is already done, even in a young person.
What is in essence contradictory (in the cognitive sense) that makes you immediately recoil in horror at seeing some stranger be the victim of a horrible accident?
Is that an attack of *conscience*? Or does conscience come in when you contemplate walking by without doing anything? Or maybe when you notice you are fascinated by the sight? Or not at all if you do whatever it is you think is the right thing to do in that situation.
The horror is, as Billy said, more empathy than conscience, so I don't think its an example of conscience as recognition of a contradiction. Whether any feelings of horror whatsoever must have some contradiction at their root, I haven't thought about it.
""Can't" implies something other than "haven't yet". If you're saying there is some aspect of reality that is off limits to our consciousness and reason, I ain't buying it. If you're saying there's aspects that can be neither observed nor deduced or induced, I'll (tentatively) buy that: SQRT(-1).
I was going to let that go, but since 'B' jumped on it…
In the first case, we could never know if there are or aren't so it's not a valid question, or assertion. It's not anything. In the second case, yea, I guess that's what I mean. SQRT of minus one, or other mathematical [im]possibilities can be expressed, or "considered," but they are meaningless, or contradictory, etc. Higher mathematics has all kinds of that stuff, like working out to 10 dimensions (when our minds work off of three), imaginary numbers, and so on.
Still, they are "real" in the sense that we can make them up in our minds, and sometimes use them to get somewhere or to benefit us in some way, but they are not conventional, A is A sort of thing.
That's all I'm getting at with this "spirituality" study. Is there a non-harmful, or indeed, beneficial use for it so long as we are not acting on blatant contradictions with moral consequences?
Now, one might object that such is what religion, particularly Western religion, accomplishes in general. Perhaps, but they begin with and assert an anthropomorphic being. The Eastern traditions don't. From the point of view of your typical Christian, they are atheists. Yet, they seem to have a highly developed sense of spirituality that seems to serve them well. Living in Japan for five years, I observed it often, though I never looked into it. But now it's of interest to me.
"I'm not understanding how this example arises as a "contradiction"."
Kyle proposed that conscience is the recognition of a contradiction. Mine is an attempt to provide an example of a "pang of conscience" that does not appear to be contradictory.
You all say it's empathy, but is that not an aspect of conscience?
Now, how about if you just jump in, risk your life to help some stranger, and you haven't really even thought about it?. Many of us say we would not do that for a stranger, others say they would, but I think no one really knows what they will actually really do in that split second, and it could cost their life. It has, for many heroic people.
Does reason adequately explain all of this? I don't think so, at least not to my satisfaction. However, I certainly would not claim that it's "beyond reason," i.e., that it's beyond the realm. It's perhaps simply beyond me.
What is in essence contradictory (in the cognitive sense) that makes you immediately recoil in horror at seeing some stranger be the victim of a horrible accident?
Possibly, with the addition of never, ever, dropping context.
You all say it's empathy, but is that not an aspect of conscience?
I think that's still an open question.
Does reason adequately explain all of this?
Maybe not, if you think of reason as something consciousness merely *does*.
Or… Yes it can, if you allow that reason is a process that consciousness is not always conscious of doing – IOW, is not always doing deliberately and introspectively.
"Now, how about if you just jump in, risk your life to help some stranger, and you haven't really even thought about it?"
I have done that very thing, and what I know is that I had thought about it long before the event. I could tell you about an SUV that went tits-up in an intersection on Buford Highway in Atlanta, with gas draining all over the place and a seventeen year-old girl who was still strapped in place upside-down while dozens of strangers stood around staring. I'm not interested to discuss "heroism", and I'd stand still for it if anyone wanted to call it "foolish": my first move was to drop my $350 Givenchy jacket in the middle of the street, crawl into that vehicle and get that girl out of the wreck.
Now, I don't know why nobody else did that, although I have kept it as an Endarkenment datapoint ever since. (I couldn't believe it, Rich: they just stood there, staring. I thought that the least they might have done would have been to just move along and, if that girl was going to die, at least not ogle the deal like a bunch of fucking vultures.) However, for myself, the decision was one of those "automated knowledge" things that I referred to. I had all the ethics of it wired-up before it ever happened, and there was simply no choice: I never would have been able to live with myself in peace if I'd just kept on driving past it.
It was about the principle, and that's why it was automatic. That's not the same thing as never having thought about it. The instant concrete case at hand was unprecedented, but that doesn't mean that I didn't know what I was doing.
This is what "principles" are for.
Billy:
>solemn bow< Man, you risked your life for that girl, having no assurance of any consequence whatsoever.
That's heroic, doesn't surprise me a bit from you, and I'll just leave it at that, except to say that I'm just not convinced that reason accounts for such acts.
Whether it does or doesn't, doesn't deter from the fact that but for such people, there would be no such thing as civilization.
"I'm just not convinced that reason accounts for such acts."
I am. It was extremely selfish, Rich, and I knew it all along. It really wasn't about her. It was about me and being able to live with myself. If that thing had gone up and I hadn't tried to do anything about it while I'd had the chance, it would have haunted me for the rest of my life.
I knew every explicit thing about it, step by step, before it ever happened, except for only one thing: I wasn't entirely certain, but I was pretty sure that I was going to get away with it. I was in that car within less than thirty seconds of its stopping spinning on its roof, and I figured that I had enough time.
That was the only variable.
*nod* Been there. Line between "heroism" and "damnfoolishness" is pretty thin at times. ;]
Does come down to exactly that sometimes: some damnfoolishness is worth the risk of dying at… because living with what you become if you don't isn't worth it.