Reply To: Man | Questions

[Jon Hersey]

Hey guys,

I would just add a few things to Steve’s answers here, which I think are all correct.

1. To value is to act to gain or keep something. Plants automatically act to gain or keep the things they need to live. So yes, they value. They just don’t do so consciously, as do animals and man. This is why Peikoff (and Binswanger) make a point of distinguishing “goal-directed” from “purposeful” action, which we can certainly discuss in today’s session if you’d like. “Purpose” entails consciousness, whereas “goal-directed” does not. This distinction helps clarify the difference between Rand’s metaphysical views and those of Aristotle, who is widely interpreted as a universal teleologist.

2. Organisms simply are NOT mechanisms, on the Objectivist view. The point here is to distinguish Objectivism from all forms of determinism. One widespread form of determinism is atomism, the view that we are mere collections of material atoms, and that all human phenomena are the product of atoms colliding or organizing in certain ways. On this view, man is mere materiality, without consciousness. Or, in more sophisticated versions of the view, adherents may accept consciousness but hold that it, too, is the product merely of atoms in motion, meaning that consciousness is essentially reducible to physics, that there is no room for volition. Thus, man is a mechanism that, if we had the right data, could be fully explained by one material thing impinging on another. Objectivism rejects this view and upholds volition, as we saw in earlier chapters, that man’s thoughts and actions ARE caused, but their causes are mental, not merely material, that there is consciousness over and above mere material, and that this shows why the view of man as a mechanism of any sort is wrong.

3. I think it’s fine to regard consciousness and awareness as synonymous in certain contexts, whereas it may be clearer to make a distinction in others: Rand says conciousness is the faculty of awareness: “Consciousness is the faculty of awareness—the faculty of perceiving that which exists.” It doesn’t follow that it may not be the faculty of anything else. It is also the faculty of dreaming, of imagining, of emotion. So depending on how broadly or narrowly we take “perceiving that which exists,” we may find contexts in which it is fruitful to highlight that consciousness is the broader concept, and awareness, although it’s most essentially and defining feature, is not it’s only feature. Make sense?

4. Yes, I think you’re right that rationalization is a type of evasion, an attempt to fake cognition. Rand wrote in “Philosophical Detection”:

“Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one’s emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications—in order to hide one’s motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion and, ultimately, the destruction of one’s cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”