Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is an automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death—so the emotional mechanism of man’s consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.
But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.
Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are “tabula rasa.” It is man’s cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man’s emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.
But since the work of man’s mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought—or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone’s authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.
…just as there is only one “real” chair, its ideal Form, there can be only one ideal standard of charity, by which we measure all the imperfect copies.20 The Forms reveal to us what a true equilateral triangle looks like, or a perfect game of tennis, or a perfectly turned urn, so that we can judge the less-than-perfect examples in our midst…they also teach us what loyalty is, as well as disloyalty, and allow us to understand the true nature of justice and laws. They lead us to do what we know is right and to avoid doing what is clearly wrong—in short, to make virtue an exact science.
The Forms have a real existence, Plato tells us in the dialogues, but outside time and space. They are not part of the realm of the senses or the world we normally describe as reality. They are the models from which that world is built; so they must be prior to, and higher than, that world we engage in on a daily basis.
To the Pythagoreans, numbers were both living entities and universal principles, permeating everything from the heavens to human ethics…on one hand, [numbers] had a tangible physical existence; on the other, they were abstract prescriptions on which everything was founded.
Statistics published by the [Oakland] police department showed year-to-year crime had dropped by 33% overall... But a new Chronicle review of Oakland police data found that the city overstated the improvements...
Capitalism holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it… Not merely the validity of the experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
The difference between an exchange of ideas and an exchange of blows is self-evident. The line of demarcation between freedom of speech and freedom of action is established by the ban of the initiation of physical force.
Once again, people are pretending to be frightened over the fact that Joe Biden stumbled going up stairs at age 80. I literally stumble going up the stairs at least twice a week. I even fell down my spiral staircase a couple weeks ago. I’m 41 years old, workout daily, and actually use the stair-stepper at the gym 5 days a week. Should I be concerned?
Since nature does not provide man with an automatic form of survival, since he has to support his life by his own effort, the doctrine that concern with one’s own interests is evil means that man’s desire to live is evil—that man’s life, as such, is evil. No doctrine could be more evil than that.
Yet that is the meaning of altruism.
We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.
[John Searle argues] there is no more reason to expect the brain to be a computer than a steam engine.
But there is. A steam engine is not a universal simulator. But a computer is, so expecting it to be able to do whatever neurons can is not a metaphor: it is a known and proven property of the laws of physics as best we know them.
Paris ist ein Ort, an den ich längst hinstrebe, für den ich mich schon längst in einem unwillkürlichen Drange, indem ich das Französische schon früher und besonders seither betrieb, vorbereitet, ein Ort, der ganz zu meiner Individualität, zu meiner Philosophie passt, an dem sich daher meine Kräfte entwickeln und selbst solche, die ich noch nicht kenne, hervortreten koennen.
Hayek,
Friedrich.
The
Counter-Revolution
of
Science:
Studies
on
the
Abuse
of
Reason.
New
York,
1964:
The
Free
Press.
(237,
note
298)
Wie der Architekt ein Bauwerk, bevor eine Hand zur Ausführung sich rührt, schon im Geist vollendet hat, nur unter Beihilfe von Zeichenstift und Feder zur Fixierung seiner Idee, so muss auch das komplizierte Gebilde von Glas und Metal sich aufbauen lassen rein verstandesmässig, in allen Elementen bis ins letzte vorausbestimmt, in rein geistiger Arbeit, durch theoretische Ermittlung der Wirkung aller Teile, bevor diese Teile noch körperlich ausgeführt sind. Der arbeitenden Hand darf dabei keine andere Funktion mehr verbleiben als die genaue Verwirklichung der durch die Rechnungen bestimmten Formen und Abmessungen aller Konstruktionselemente, und der praktischen Erfahrung keine andere Aufgabe als die Beherrschung der Methoden und Hilfsmittel, die für letzteres, die körperliche Verwirklichung, geeignet sind
Hayek,
Friedrich.
The
Counter-Revolution
of
Science:
Studies
on
the
Abuse
of
Reason.
New
York,
1964:
The
Free
Press.
(219,
note
94)
Hier ist es wo uns das merkwürdige, vielleicht das merkwürdigste Problem der Sozialwissenschaften entgegentritt: Wieso vermögen dem Gemeinwohl dienende und für dessen Entwicklung höchst bedeutsame Institutionen ohne einen auf ihre Begründung gerichteten Gemeinwillen zu entstehen?
Hayek,
Friedrich.
The
Counter-Revolution
of
Science:
Studies
on
the
Abuse
of
Reason.
New
York,
1964:
The
Free
Press.
(217,
note
74)
[T]here is something obscene in the attitude of those […] who are willing to condone the slaughter of defenseless victims, but march in protest against wars between the well-armed.
