/lit/ - Literature

>>11296669
The clearest manner in which to understand what she is talking about on the differences betseen the faculties of man and animals is this part from TVOS. This is my favorite peice of her writing of all time and is actually the best way to understand her epistemology from the ground up. Pastebin coming shortly.
Rand identified that their are fundamentally 4 classes of living entity and they are subsumed under these 4 words:
Function (plants and similar organisms)
Sensation (the lower animals)
Perception (the higher animals)
Conception (man)
The 4th class of living entity possesses all 4 of these faculties… the 3rd it's unique faculty + the lower 2, and so on.
https://pastebin.com/XaLszVpM

>>11296669
>hates religion
>still arbitrarily exalts the condition of man

>>11296669
>Rand
>Making sense
Hellooooooooo

>reading anything written by a woman
Seriously kys

>>11296669
>he has human rights - because he has the capacity to reason.
That's exactly what she didn't state.

>>11298113
Honorary man, she hated the toxic wiles of women. Would never vote for a woman president ect.

>>11298113
hurr durr, I'm male, therefore, ... ... ... I'm male...

>>11298126
This

>>11298126
>Honorary man
No such thing

>>11298542
I don't know...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqoaf5S9m0M
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/femininity.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vANA3AGs4Dg

>>11298039
>that link
How embarrassing. It's like she read a Wikipedia article on Aristotle and rehashed it badly in her own words

>>11299381
>Ayn Rand
>Around the time of websites existing
Anon...
She phrases it this way because she expands on the theory of concepts in a way no philosopher had before her and that requires building on an Aristotlean base. Yes she employs Aristotlean logic but the core acheivement rest in her discover of intrinsic/subjective/objective trichotomy.

>>11298585
>It means that a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their [...] leader.
>writes Dagny Taggart

>>11298113
>>11298126
>>11298538
>>11298542
Disgusting.

>>11296669
Rand was caught in the materialist paradigm that cannot conceive any state of consciousness beyond the existence of intellect. She is correct in stating that all people have inherent value, but this inherent value extends to all life, not just homo sapiens.

>>11300474
Dagny acted the way she did because of the men around her. She was still a submissive little darling for d'Anconia (a proper man) when they were both young-ens.

>>11296669
>Ayn Rand

>>11301007
>She was still a submissive little darling for d'Anconia
And for Rearden. And for JG.

>>11300993
>state of consciousness beyond the existence of intellect
t.mystic

>>11298052
No but she does objectively exalt the condition on man

>>11298039
>4 classes of living entity
>Function Sensation Preception Conception
Interesting

>>11298039
Alright. I've read it. Perhaps I am a brainlet but I don't think that that answers my question. In the excerpt, she defends reason as being a necessity for human life but does not imply that reasoning being a necessity for existence means that man has human rights because of him having reason.

>>11296669
>>11298039
Lmao @ you nerds who still haven't found out that dogs, dolphins, and parrots can do complex reasoning (including mathematics).

>>11303166
call me when parrots are proving mathematical theorems, bitchboy

>>11303235
Most humans can't do that either, retard

>>11303166
Parrots do not even really "speak". When a parrot says "polly want a cracker" is does not grasp the abstract meaning of language and is cognizant of the difference in meaning between

>>11303166
Parrots do not even really "speak". When a parrot says "polly want a cracker" is does not grasp the abstract meaning of language and is cognizant of the difference in meaning between "polly", "want", and "cracker". All it is doing is repeating sounds and all it grasps is that it is hearing a particularly novel bird call.
Animals, not even the most highly trained of monkeys, grasp concepts.

>>11304700
*is not cognizant

>>11302441
That's exactly right. So what were you confused about?

>>11298052
man is objectively superior to all other mammals because he has reason

>>11296669
Maybe if you're a postmodernist cuck

>>11298126
>Honorary man
10/10

>>11298052
thinking not needing a sky daddy means you should become a self destructive degenerate
>>11298126
she hates everyone but her ideal version of mankind. everyone else is at best a lost soul

>>11306136
I'd rather live with a dog than someone like ayn rand.

>>11296669
No man has no rights, i forgot Rand was a humanist dressed like a fascist. Humans have no rights if the security state wanted to blaq bag u nd rape you with german shepards, skin you and then throw you off an aircraft carrier they could do it no questions asked. humans energy reserves for inhuman systems and the owner-ruling classes. German billionaires and Jewish oligarchs control your fate. Her books were published because they serve an elite who colaborate with the gov to keep their assets overvalued and to depress the fitness of their competitors. You have no idea how little room there is for agency or rights. Rand posters should be banned on sight

>>11306179
>Humans have no rights if the security state wanted to blaq bag u nd rape you with german shepards, skin you and then throw you off an aircraft carrier they could do it no questions asked
'If' is the keyword her in this fantasy you've concocted moron. It's almost like there things in place that makes real life NOT like this movie script.
>Her books were published because they serve an elite who colaborate with the gov to keep their assets overvalued and to depress the fitness of their competitors
If you had read a word she had written you'd know she argue explicitly against the phenomenon that allows in the mixed economy.
>Rand posters should be banned on sight
Go back to r/philosophy fag

>>11303235
Call me when you can

>>11306347
Wow anon, that completely invalidated his point. Nice work.

I don't see how value based on nature could be arbitrary. Man is a rational animal that is capable of philosophy or seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake. This nature is what gives us value and while as far as we know right now humans are the only rational animal, right's aren't limited to us alone. Since value is based on the rational nature or ability to philosophize rather than being a human, any animal that demonstrates the ability to philosophize would be considered valuable and deserving of the same "human" rights as us.

>>11296669
Rand was an imbecile. Imagine how shady that argument is the moment you have a person that isn't capable of reasoning, like a demented grandpa or something.
Shouldn't be surprised. Bitch barely knew anything about philosophy and wrote everything with Soviet-inspired PTSD.

>>11301010
kind of fucked

>>11306416
Thanks i tried

>>11303235
>>11304334
This. The whole argument for humans being capable of reason falls apart the moment you realize most humans are dumb as shit and even smart ones are incredibly irrational. There are animals out there smarter than some of the niggers in Africa, and that's a fact.

>>11306554
I don't think she's as dumb as people make her out to be because people just seem to repeat the same nonsense about her. It seems like it all comes from a very biased and irrational place from people who simply don't like her conclusions because I've seen slight variations of your comment a hundred times over.

>>11306607
>why do people keep pointing out the same flaws
Maybe they're right and Rand is actually shit. Check your premises

>>11306636
You didn't point out any flaws. You just called a dumb doody head who don't reason good.

>>11306656
Anon if people call out the same flaws over and over again for decades its a pretty good bet they're hitting on something fundamental. Try thinking with your head instead of this non-logic wherein aggreeing criticism is somehow incorrect by nature.

>>11306667
Again, you didn't mention any flaws so what the hell are you talking about? Lots of people doing what you did is merely more of the same.

>>11306682
Her flaws are she's a terrible novelist (bad prose, flat characters, weak plotting) and a bad philosopher (her conclusions don't follow from her premises, her premises are asserted without reason or explanation, general lack of intellectual rigor)
You've heard all this a hundred times. Maybe they have a point?

>>11306703
These are not flaws in her arguments and they don't address her philosophy or arguments in any way. This is what I'm talking about, the only attacks I see of her are on very subjective things like her writing ability or they'll be vague statements about her philosophy that amount to calling her a doody head because they're worthless. I could tell you that Plato asserts things without reason and that the conclusions don't follow from the premises but it doesn't mean shit until I show it. If lots of people made the same assertion about Plato as I did without showing it that wouldn't suddenly make it true.

It would probably only mean that lots of dumb people are repeating each other because they have the same irrational bias and they really really don't want the conclusions to be true.

>>11306110
"she defends reason as being a necessity for human life but does not imply that reasoning being a necessity for existence means that man has human rights because of him having reason."

I'm trying to bridge this gap

>>11304700
There's dozens of documented cases of parrots understanding concepts like "larger/smaller," "same/different," names, consent, requests, preference, age, etc.

It's also pretty common for bird-owners to give their pet birds puzzles to solve, including puzzles that involve abstract and/or spatial reasoning.

Birds in the wild make and use tools, as well as developing simple music (drumbeats & singing).

Dismissing these behaviors as mere repetition is silly, especially when the consensus among biologists is that there's complex thought going on. You can trust science or be a Randian, but not both.

t. bird enthusiast who reads too much about birds

>>11306784
>It would probably only mean that lots of dumb people are repeating each other because they have the same irrational bias and they really really don't want the conclusions to be true.
Or, they aren't irrationally biased, they repeat each other because the same problems are obvious to lots of different people?
Take the example in this thread:
>For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship—the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgments. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer, but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and of the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.

>This does not mean that a feminine woman feels or projects hero-worship for any and every individual man; as human beings, many of them may, in fact, be her inferiors. Her worship is an abstract emotion for the metaphysical concept of masculinity as such—which she experiences fully and concretely only for the man she loves, but which colors her attitude toward all men. This does not mean that there is a romantic or sexual intention in her attitude toward all men; quite the contrary: the higher her view of masculinity, the more severely demanding her standards. It means that she never loses the awareness of her own sexual identity and theirs. It means that a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother—or leader.
Do you think, assuming good faith, nobody could ever disagree with this? Do you find, in your experience of relationships, this is an accurate view of human behavior?
When people call her insane it's because of weird shit like this which reads like she never met another person

>>11306863
Non criticism doesn't become criticism simply because lots of people repeat it. People can disagree with anything but that doesn't mean they'll have good reasons for that disagreement. You do not have good reasons for criticizing Rand which is why you've reduced yourself to quoting text and appealing to emotions. Saying "how could anyone POSSIBLY agree with this she's insane" is not an argument and it's not a criticism, it's sophistry.

>>11306899
I did have reasons, but you ignored them in favor of your pre-existing belief that everyone who disagrees with Rand is acting in bad faith. Let's try again:
>the essence of femininity is hero-worship—the desire to look up to man
You think this is true? I say it's not. I'll put on my feminist hat and say 'femininity' is a social construct designed to keep women subservient to men (other critiques of the concept of femininity are available, as are other definitions of the word apart from Rand's).
So there, now you have a critique of Rand. Please feel free to post other concepts of hers and if I can be bothered I'll show you why someone might disagree with them

>>11307003
I don't believe there aren't valid criticisms of Rand, I just don't believe you have any. I also don't think you know how an argument works because you responded to what you think Rand is saying with a blanket statement and called that a critique. When you make a state like "femininity is a social construct" you need to follow that up with a reason to believe its true but before you even get to that you ought to represent the argument your responding to as clearly and accurately as you can and merely quoting a line without context doesn't do that. I don't even know what you're attempting to critique.

>>11307053
I already quoted the entire passage of Rand, what more do you want? Rand gives a definition of femininity, and I've responded to her definition, using terms which should be familiar to anyone (though I fear not you)
Are you suggesting femininity is not a social construct developed to control women? I'm assuming you know what a social construct is and I don't need to explain it.

>>11307081
Femininity being a social construct developed to control women is not something that can be taken as prima facie true. You need to justify your assumptions along with explaining what the hell it's even supposed to mean because the assertion is extremely vague. Was there a meeting of of men in a cave sometime in 6,000 BC where they decided to consciously oppress women? Is this "social construct" entirely devoid of natural designs? It could mean anything to anyone and does mean many different things to different people.

Merely disagreeing with Rand's definition of femininity and inserting your own is not an argument and it's not a critique. This is getting old.

>>11307127
Well dude I'm not going to summarise half of 20th century thought for you. If that's what you require then sorry you're out of luck today on this Bhutanese Cave Painting Symposium.
I'll recommend De Beauvoir's Second Sex to start with, then the Feminine Mystique then if you are a big boy try Foucault. They are familiar touchstones to most intelligent people and they don't really require someone referencing them to summarise them in full each time they are mentioned.
But hey, you won't read them will you?

>>11307187
If you don't want to justify your assumptions that's fine but will you recognize that you haven't argued against Rand in the least? All you did in response to Rand was make an assertion and when pushed to provide reasons to believe that assertion was true you refused. In the end, all you did was point a finger at Rand while saying "she's wrong" and then acted like it was a critique.

Your appeal to authority is cute but it's similarly irrational. Just because some smart people somewhere believe something doesn't mean it should be accepted without reason. It also doesn't excuse you from explaining what exactly that something is that you're asserting which for some reason you seem to have trouble with.

>>11307270
So if I paraphrased all the feminist literature which addresses the topic of femininity and it's nature as a social construct, you'd be happy? That would take about two hundred posts. Much easier to assume you're familiar with basic concepts (alas you seem not to be)
I'm not actually appealing to authority if you read my post carefully. I'm giving you a reading list to save myself typing.
If I say John Galt's machine violates the laws of physics will you accept that or demand I show my working? (Not suggesting that as a critique of AS, it's an acceptable conceit for a sci-fi novel and not a flaw per se)

>>11307329
I'm not asking you to write two hundred posts. I'm asking for you to explain exactly what you mean by "femininity is a social construct designed to keep women subservient" since it is a vague statement for the reasons I've given you and then I want you to give at least a single reason to believe it's true. That is how you justify assertions.

>>11307365
Not the guy you're arguing with, but "femininity is a social construct" means "womanhood is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one," and the other half of his sentence means "in most cultures, ideas about womanhood serve as a way of indirectly constraining women's choices."

For evidence of the first clause, we could look at things like the history of the high-heeled shoe — first worn by male aristocrats because the added height was considered masculine, then transitioning to a "feminine" shoe after it was used by french prostitutes to accentuate the legs and ass — or the persisting cultural weirdness around cooking — it's seen as effeminate to cook, but at the same time, there's a bias against women in professional kitchens. These contradictions wouldn't arise if womanhood was mere biology, because we could investigate femininity scientifically and make definite conclusions about what clothes, activities, etc. are and aren't feminine.

I'm not going to argue for the second clause, since it's more controversial (and poorly-phrased), but it should be obvious to anyone who does even a little bit of reading about the history of gender roles that "femininity" is something that people — both men and women — make up as they go along.

>>11307507
If you were to only say some female behavior or femininity is a social construct I could agree with you but I don't think it follows that because some clothing choices aren't biologically driven therefore all femininity is a social construct. Women can be driven by biological impulses to act in certain ways while also having certain clothing norms imposed by society.

>>11307554
There's no credible evidence that "biological impulses" unique to one gender or the other exist — attempts have been made to show this, but as far as I know, no peer-reviewed research shows that there are substantial differences between the brains or brainpower of men and women. On the other hand, there's a giant historical record that shows again and again that almost everything we think is "essentially feminine" is actually just culture (additional examples include perfectly-rectangular torsos, editing film, and many types of instruments). So it makes more sense to believe that the stuff we haven't figured out yet (sexual submission, pay gap, etc.) is also cultural, since that's what explains every difference that we can explain.

I understand that's only a heuristic argument, but it ought to trump mere speculation about the "essence of womanhood," since it's based on stronger and more specific evidence.

>>11306332
there’s no such thing as a phenomenal self or agency, all human behavior is predicated on random inputs from enviro and genetic influence, top-down authoritarian techno-capitalism w/butress techno-socialist welfare state hand railing is the only way forward for global economy. you do not belong here

her arguments mean nothing

>>11307615
i think with men and women the difference is in degree, not type. Men and women are not fundamentally running different hardware, but men will use a lot more of x and women of y, even if they both have both.

Just interacting with both sexes it is obvious that they perceive things differently and have different motivations.

>>11307644
>hardware
lol wired magazine pseud

men and women have different gray matter volume, different cortical connectivity, different brain volume, different hormonal balance, different immune function, different adiposity (which has effect on mood and cognitive function), different response to high intensity stimuli, different sexuality, they’re biologically distinct

>>11307649
yeah which is all a difference of degree, not type, you pleb

>>11307615
Men and women have different levels of testosterone and estrogen. Don't you think that alone can affect the way people think? I don't know much about brainscans but I've always heard there's a difference in transgender brains before and after hormone treatments.

If high testosterone will make somebody aggressive it seems reasonable to assume that a lack of testosterone will cause somebody to be less aggressive and this would correspond with things like pay levels. If higher paying jobs are better fulfilled by aggressive personalities, it makes sense to believe that the pay gap is a result of individual decisions being influenced by individual biology. Men have more testosterone which make them better at fulfilling higher paying jobs so they get paid more. This is not to say that culture has no influence at all, but rather that culture is not all there is to it.

It is quite a big leap to say that because X Y Z behaviors are culturally influenced therefore all behaviors are culturally influenced.

>>11306667
OR the erroneous premises they all are opperating are simply in vogue. Objectivist philosophy is literally the hardest thing in the world for people to accept because it requires they stare all of their flaws striaght in the eyes.

Is objetivism just a collection of axioms?

>>11307897
you can do that without being an objectivist though. seeing all your flaws doesn't promote any particular sort of ethics

>>11306855
What you describe are all perceptual inferences. This is a misuse of the word concept.
Puzzle solving is not the widening of the grasp of the perceptual reality confronting an entity by absraction than a human alone is capable. An animal such as monkey may exercise it's perceptual faculy in higher and even (as you said) more complex ways than lower animals but this is incomparable to the abstraction of actual conceptualization.
Do not conflate the complex with the abstract. Fundamentally different are these two words. Abstraction is what makes a concept what it is. Not "complexity".
You now know what those scientists you cite are actually talking about.

>>11307946
Sure they can, Objectivists simply have the better tool of psycho-epistemogical integration at their disposal as well.

>>11307941
No. It opperate off of three irreducible axioms and build upwards from there.
Existence
Conciousness
Identity

>>11307961
>What you describe are all perceptual inferences. This is a misuse of the word concept.
I don't know what planet you're from, but on Earth we have to teach young kids the difference between many and few, and plenty of grown adults have trouble understanding consent. These are concepts.

>Puzzle solving is not the widening of the grasp of the perceptual reality confronting an entity by absraction [sic].
The scientists observing the puzzle-solving process note that the bird is using abstract reasoning. The bird observes, develops a model of reality, makes a prediction, and tests the prediction.
Observation: If I (the bird) throw 1 pebble into the glass of water, the water rises a little bit.
Model: Throwing pebbles into the glass makes the water rise.
Hypothesis: If I throw more pebbles into the glass, the water will rise more.
Test: I will throw more pebbles into the glass.
This is a tiny version of the scientific method.

> An animal such as monkey may exercise it's perceptual faculy [sic] in higher and even (as you said) more complex ways than lower animals but this is incomparable to the abstraction of actual conceptualization.
All Rand's rambling about "faculties" is pseudoscience from the 1870s that contemporary scientists distrust. Intelligence isn't binary — it's a spectrum, and we're not as far away from animals as we like to think.

>Do not conflate the complex with the abstract. Fundamentally different are these two words. Abstraction is what makes a concept what it is. Not "complexity".
You can't have complexity without abstraction; complexity is the joint use of several abstractions (e.g. a "large yellow cube" is a combination of the abstractions "large," "yellow," and "cube," and therefore complex).

Y'all gotta read some contemporary philosophy of mind.

>>11306136
other animals reason, though. dolphins, pigs, monkeys, etc. are even smarter than 2 year old humans. youre relying on the same arbitrary exaltation of man as christfags. like all species, we're tribal, and to concede that other species overlap with us with regard to cognition, emotion, etc. calls into question our treatment of animals.

>>11307644
>Just interacting with both sexes it is obvious that they perceive things differently and have different motivations.

By this logic, trans people on HRT would have drastic personality changes after the first year or so of treatment. But this isn't usually the case — it's true that sexual preferences often (but not always) change, but things like career, outspokenness, and other more broad personality traits tend to stay the same.

On the other hand, if culture was the chief factor, you would expect a new friend group to change a person more drastically, and there's mountains of examples of this. People pick up on each other's slang, talk louder around other loud talkers, dress to fit in, etc.

The best predictor of these traits is the environment they're in, not the amount of estrogen in their system.

>>11307672
>Men and women have different levels of testosterone and estrogen. Don't you think that alone can affect the way people think? I don't know much about brainscans but I've always heard there's a difference in transgender brains before and after hormone treatments.

See above; it's mostly dating and sex preferences, and sometimes a worsening of dysphoria symptoms.

>If high testosterone will make somebody aggressive it seems reasonable to assume that a lack of testosterone will cause somebody to be less aggressive and this would correspond with things like pay levels.

This is a ridiculous oversimplification of endocrinology. High T contributes to things like body odor and baldness, sure, but influence on personality is a stretch — there's little data to support it.

But, again, men (and women) whose friends are aggressive tend to be more aggressive, which suggests a stronger influence.

>It is quite a big leap to say that because X Y Z behaviors are culturally influenced therefore all behaviors are culturally influenced.

The argument isn't: "some behaviors are culturally influenced therefore all are;" it's: "all known examples of gendered behavior are culturally influenced, so it's more likely that other gendered behaviors are influenced by culture."

It may be the case that some of gender really is biological, but there's 0 (zero) evidence for that besides hand-wavy speculation about hormones. On the other hand, there's dozens of rigorously-researched histories that show culture has a profound impact on gender. The evidence comes down in favor of gender being chiefly (and possibly entirely) a product of culture. But you're right to say more research is needed.

>>11308080
>to concede that other species overlap with us with regard to cognition, emotion, etc. calls into question our treatment of animals.
There's no way to say this without sounding like an edgelord, but why should we value other species (or even other people) that are similar to us? It seems kind of arbitrary to say "this thing can suffer, therefore you have responsibilities towards it." I love my dog, and I would be heartbroken if he died, but I only take care of him because we have a bond. If I had never met him, and saw him as a stray, I wouldn't care much; the same is true of the man asking for change by the train station. Why should I feel bad about ignoring animals (or people) that I have no connection to, and never will?

>>11307988
so axioms, thanks

>>11308108
If hormones have no affect on thinking or behavior then why would drastic changes in hormone levels like that which happens during menopause cause women to become angry and depressed? I'm not terribly interested in digging through medical journals because I don't think it is a radical notion which would make it worth the effort but I will give you a few choice quotes that demonstrate how even small doses of testosterone can have dramatic effects on thinking and cognitive ability as well as the link between testosterone and aggression.

>In a revealing study, 243 men received a single dose of either testosterone or placebo, then took the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), which estimates a person's capacity to override incorrect intuitive judgment or, in other words, realize when they're wrong and take steps to fix it.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316001989_Single-Dose_Testosterone_Administration_Impairs_Cognitive_Reflection_in_Men

>Men who received testosterone performed more poorly on the CRT, which suggests they were more likely to go with their gut instincts and had reduced cognitive reflection. Colin Camerer, chair of the T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience at Caltech, said in a press release:

>"What we found was the testosterone group was quicker to make snap judgments on brain teasers where your initial guess is usually wrong … The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work or increasing the intuitive feeling that 'I'm definitely right.'"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170428154556.htm

>Past research has linked testosterone with aggression and poor impulse control, as well as fighting between males. The researchers suggest that reducing cognitive reflection may be one mechanism by which testosterone affects judgment, noting that it may also enhance confidence, leading men to have less self-doubt and be less likely to correct mistakes. It's the first time a study has shown testosterone may affect cognition in just one dose.

https://www.menshealth.com/health/g19546430/health-news-05-01-2017/
http://www.newsweek.com/testosterone-supplements-effects-thinking-mistakes-592692

To say that behavior is even chiefly or fully explained by culture is radically premature and not supported in any way by the evidence. Even if every single currently observed behavior could be fully explained by culture it would still not follow that every single behavior that will be observed in the future will also be explained by culture. In such a world there is still always a chance that something can be at least partially be explained through biology.

>>11301053
Your point?

>this state of this thread
Randists are truly the niggers of philosophy.

>>11306863
She is right

I heard Sadler say she's a bad Aristotelian but he never explained why

>>11308662
>actually defending that shit instead of taking evasive maneuvers like every other Randroid in this thread

>>11308108
tranny detected

>>11308108
>By this logic, trans people on HRT would have drastic personality changes after the first year or so of treatment.
You don't just get to suplant the logic invloved with that phenomenon and say it can apply in the same respect to this other phenomenon. There are far more factors in play in transgenders. First of all hormone therapy doesn't work ven come close to true conversion
We are at least a few centuries away from the utopian technology that would fully convert a person from one gender to the other.

>>11308067
Yes, they are grasped BY US conceptually. Not animals. Assuming they grasp it in the same manner is you simply anthropomorphizing human traits onto the minds of animals.

>>11309355
She is THE Aristotlean. People say things like this because the thought of a respected philosopher beimgllng integrated with capitalist-absolutism fills them with ire.

>>11310317
>She is THE Aristotlean
What did he mean by this? You mean she's more influenced by Aristotle than any other thinker has been influenced by Aristotle? Or she's done more with Aristotle than anyone else?
Why not Heidegger? Or the Islamic scholars?

>>11310411
The latter.

>>11310317
>beimgllng
Christ how did I manage that?

>>11310607
How do you think her treatment of Aristotle differs from Heidegger? Wasn't she just copying from him?

>>11310919
Her reading of Aristotle that is

>>11296669
I have a question for you, are you paid to spam Ayn Rand?

>>11310944
No desu

>>11310919
I have not read Heidegger. I can't say without guesswork. Can you encapsulate his difference from Rand for me?

>>11296669
Don't know if she'd agree, but I'd say that we have rights because they are a -product- of reasoning. Rights/morals aren't inherent, they're created by us -- codifications of behavioural patterns which we believe enhance collective utility.

So, we have inherent value to ourselves -- as all healthy life does -- but rights are produced by our reasoning and technology, not automatically inherited along with the capacity to reason. I've no doubt that other types of intelligent animals can reason and asbtract to some inferior degree, but with no capacity to formalize and propagate such thoughts between themselves and their generations, they don't establish moral codes like we do. One may consider some of the behaviour exhibited by social animals to be the beginnings of morality, but it is not formalized in the sense that the term 'rights' implies. I expect that primitive human populations occupy some sort of middle-ground.

In short, rights are a conceptual abstraction and therefore can't be considered immutable or intrinsic to life in the simplest sense (although they are possibly inevitable to beings with complex language & reasoning). However, like all useful abstractions, rights are based upon real patterns which can serve some utility.

>>11310296
>Assuming they grasp it in the same manner is you simply anthropomorphizing human traits onto the minds of animals.

Ignoring the easy first-person case (I have access to my own thoughts, therefore I grasp concepts), how do you determine whether another being (human, animal, alien, robot, etc.) grasps concepts?

If we require language, then young children, deaf-mute illiterates, and all people born pre-language are not conscious. But that's obviously false. So we have to observe behavior.

Animals show the same sorts of behaviors — learning, pausing to think, experimenting, and even getting frustrated with hard problems — that humans do. Again, through their actions, they show an understanding of the world that requires conceptual understanding, albeit of a less complex kind.

The literature on this since Rand is vast. It may have made sense for her to believe that man is special in her time, but in our own, that line of thinking is obviously wrong. There's no way to differentiate cleanly between the minds humans and certain other animals without ignoring the evidence.

>>11313257
>Animals show the same sorts of behaviors — learning, pausing to think, experimenting, and even getting frustrated with hard problems — that humans do. Again, through their actions, they show an understanding of the world that requires conceptual understanding, albeit of a less complex kind.
What they cannot do is project their perceptual grasp of the world long range. They cannot take first level abstractions into concepts and those base concepts into higher and higher concepts. The material an animal is capable of working with is in-the-moment, reludimentary and it can conceive of no ways to integrate abstract relationships into each other. It cannot define. That a thing does a certain action or if it (the animal) does x object will do y are things retainable by it. But it only grasps that IT IS but the WHY it is is inconceivable to it. A chair and what it sounds like, a puzzle and what simple steps will result in it being rewarded with a treat, and what goofy behai our will result in it's human master become pleased with it and exhibit agreeable simply ARE to it.
We can teach the cleverer of the perceptual entities to retain and memorize certain new novel things inside and about the perceptual reality confronting it and certain actions it may take to or please itself. But it is not capable of integratimg these into a sum.

>>11313257
Cont-
>If we require language, then young children, deaf-mute illiterates, and all people born pre-language are not conscious. But that's obviously false. So we have to observe behavior.
>young children [...] are not concious
If you mean extremely young infants, yes. A child straight out of the womb (and couple/few weeks thereafter) is a barely perceptual entity. A human is born tabula rasa with alot of hardware available to it and it's conceptual faculty has to develop from this state. Which brings me to your second example:
>[blind] deaf mutes [...] are not concious
Here you assist with my point. From-birth blind deaf mutes ARE and remain percept only beings unless drastic and novel means are used to organise the inexplicable chaos of it's very retarded sense information and educate it. This is the whole point of the Hellen Keller story. The process to give her a conceptual faculty was excruciatingly difficult.
>people born pre-language are not conscious
A caveman just up and deciding he will call the shiny rock he likes "gralgak" is already then and there achieving the base concept of language and we can end this point here.

>>11311941
>I have not read Heidegger
>he hasn't read Heidegger
Anon...easy on the grandiose claims about Rand until you have a firmer grasp of 20th century philosophy

>>11313907
>They cannot take first level abstractions into concepts and those base concepts into higher and higher concepts.
This is exactly what Alex the parrot did in the later years of his life. Here's a choice quote from wikipedia: "He [Alex] called an apple a "banerry" (pronounced as rhyming with some pronunciations of "canary"), which a linguist friend of Pepperberg's thought to be a combination of "banana" and "cherry", two fruits he was more familiar with." He had two concepts, banana and cherry, and used them jointly to describe an unfamiliar object. This is a textbook example of conceptual reasoning — the invention of a new word.

>A chair and what it sounds like, a puzzle and what simple steps will result in it being rewarded with a treat, and what goofy behai our will result in it's human master become pleased with it and exhibit agreeable simply ARE to it.
Again, this just isn't the case. I recommend reading some more about Alex (who I should have cited earlier); he's really the perfect case study.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

>>11313974
>If you mean extremely young infants, yes.
I'm talking ages 2 to 4 — exploring, learning simple math, understanding language, etc. At this point in a kid's development, I'd definitely say he or she can do conceptual reasoning.

>From-birth blind deaf mutes ARE and remain percept only beings unless drastic and novel means are used to organise the inexplicable chaos of it's very retarded sense information and educate it.
I disagree, but there's no sense harping on this when the main point is about language rather than disability.

>A caveman just up and deciding he will call the shiny rock he likes "gralgak" is already then and there achieving the base concept of language . . .
I think this is an oversimplification —linguistics isn't my field of study (I'm more of a phil. of mind guy), but I've read enough from linguists to know that even the most primitive languages need more features than this, and must exist in a speaker-listener context. But all that's besides the point. Early humans often traded — something Rand would surely identify as evidence of conceptual understanding — in spite of their total lack of language. The point I'm trying to make is that language isn't the only way to have a conceptual understanding, so using that as a way of disqualifying animals doesn't hold up.

>>11314210
I have a decent grasp of 20th century philosophic just not Heidegger.
Through reading Rand and other philosophers I have concluded that her Aristotlean acheivement was the most historic.
I admitted I hadn't read him becasue I was looking for you to descibe his Aristotlean acheivement and describe how historic it truly was. Depending on how much you have read of Rand, you may be able to compare it to Rand's conception. All ears.

>>11315126
>I have a decent grasp of 20th century philosophic just not Heidegger
Oh you must try him anon. I'm surprised you got much out of Derrida, Sartre or Marcuse without a grounding in Heidegger.