The Journals of Ayn Rand (131 page)

[
Speaker: Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, “Mechanical Recognition of Sentence Structure.
”]

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
(a conscientious scholar):

I think the hierarchical structure of concepts is what they need for their problem—if I understand him at all.

All this is obviously a substitute for epistemology—or an attempt to fill the vacuum left by the destruction of epistemology; linguistic analysis had to lead to this.

[Bar-Hillel concludes that] it is impossible, by present knowledge, to arrive at a unique interpretation of syntactic structures for use in computers. His reasons: readers use “context” (“they are not tabula rasa”). “The hope for a complete automatization of syntactic analysis is close to utopian.” They had the hope of substituting “redundancy” for context.

He
seems
to be good.

[Speaker: Hans Herzberger, “Kernalization.
”]

Hans Herzberger
(a voodoo or medieval witch-doctor):

To “kernalize” a sentence is to break it into simpler “kernal” sentences.

Arbitrary BS.

A batch of undefined terms related to nothing—practically a total divorce of thought and language from reality.

The time it would take to do all that would eliminate the need for a computer—it would take less time to solve the problem by one’s own nonmechanical thinking.

 

 

[AR attended the same conference the next year.
]

There are no laws in evolution (or in biology); everything is unique. After stating that no explanation is possible, since everything is unique, he states that we all have an “intuitive, instinctive feeling” that explanation and prediction are connected “in some way.”

After all the modern BS, he goes right back to abstraction, via such things as “anterior and consequent configuration.”

[Speaker: Colin Pittendrigh, “Evolution and the Explanation of Organization.
”]

“Organization in biology is end-directed.”

“It can trap the improbable and make it common.” This is a sample of the approach, of the method of speaking.

“Organization is strongly history-dependent.”(!!)

There could have been more than two ways of respiration—but only two exist, the “possibilities” being limited by “history.” Good God, by what standard? What do they mean by possibility of other ways?

[Speaker: Ernest Nagel, “Commentary.
”]

Regarding syllogisms: you will not draw any conclusion unless the necessary terms were “smuggled into” the premises. Example: You can’t deduce the age of the captain from the position of the ship. (Good God!!!)

“Whether something is explicable or not depends on the assumptions which you are making.” (Boy, oh boy!)

All of this is an escape from—or ignorance of—abstractions. God, what is left of epistemology?!

They all substitute metaphors for concepts—like savages.

None of them know what they are talking about and all of them are going through the motions.
Anyone
can set the terms and the direction.

 

 

The “able to live” and the “worthy to live” issue can be called “Darwinism” as applied to man: only the man who has made himself
able
to live is
worthy
to live—which means: the man
fit
to survive,
can
survive—which means: the intellectual (and moral) “survival of the fittest.” But observe the meaning of this, as against the “Spencerian” kind of Darwinism: (
a
) other species survive by
“destruction”
of lesser species (incidentally, not by the destruction of their own species, there is no such thing as “dog-eat-dog”)—man survives by
production
(not by fighting over the given in nature); (b) the human “survival of the fittest” benefits every human being (the “pyramid of ability”), except the parasites.

All altruist societies create the metaphysical contradiction of: the man
fit
to survive finds himself
unable
to survive—because of conditions geared to the non-thinking parasite and because of the principle of penalizing virtue for being virtue. (This is the [key] for explaining the altruist’s package-deal about “compassion” and concern for the “unfit”—the
unable
or the
unwilling
?—their
real
concern is: “Let me survive out of focus at
your
expense.”)

 

 

The sacrifice of material goods is only the last, and superficial, result of altruism. The basic demand of altruism is the sacrifice of one’s mind.

To sacrifice material goods means to sacrifice one’s values—which means, to sacrifice one’s judgment—which means, to sacrifice one’s mind. (Give clear examples.)

(Power-lust is the attribute of the irrationalist. A rational man wants to know the truth, to perceive reality, and has no vested interest in the subversion or submission of another man’s mind.)

The basic motive of altruism: parasitic survival or the destruction of the mind? Both—since it is the same issue. Existentially, it is not so much parasitic survival (and, sometimes, not at all) as the “sense of life,” “pseudo-self-esteem” kind of search for metaphysical-epistemological vindication or “pseudo-efficacy”—for the reassurance that if one can destroy man’s reason, one can get away with surviving by one’s corrupt, irrational psycho-epistemology. It is the constant urge to
get away with
irrationality—in order to escape the anxiety of knowing that one is unfit to exist. In this sense—the
“non-venal”
lust for power (“obedience for the sake of obedience”).

The dominance of anti-mind in world religions: Lucifer, Adam, Prometheus, Phaethon, Icarus, the Tower of Babel. Pride as a sin is always the
pride of the mind,
that is,
reason.
(Which means: the absolutism of one’s own rational judgment, the reliance on one’s own “unaided” intellect.) Superficially, people think that pride is some sort of
moral
conceit, the boast “I am good,” usually unearned. But it does not pertain to
morality
—it pertains to
epistemology,
as intended by the altruists. For mystic altruists—it is “the pride of the mind”; for collectivist-altruists-it is “the pride (or the evil) of independence.” (Observe how the second brings out the intention of the first, by bringing the issue down to earth. This is an instance of the mystics of muscle being the product and heirs of the mystics of spirit.)

The need of all power-lusters for a “higher authority” to sanction their doctrines, either God or Society—the ultimate reason is that no man could get away with demanding the sacrifice of
your
mind to
his;
he
has to
be the spokesman of a “higher power.”

“Under altruism, no moral calculations are possible.
” All altruistic-collectivist systems are guilty of the “fallacy of the stolen concept” in regard to individualism: they intend to preserve the values of individualism while destroying their base.

(America’s subordination to the “underdeveloped nations” in the U.N. is the national counterpart of what altruism demands of the individual: the sacrifice of the power of judgment.)

Non-objectivity-as revolt against the independent mind. The “tyranny of reality.”

People do not want total irrationality or dependence. What they want is much worse: an independent mind who, in case of conflict, accepts their judgment above his own. (This is impossible, therefore the result is neurotics with switching metaphysics; also—the men who reserve their independence for their professions, but surrender their mind in everything else. Examples: Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright.)

The ultimate political-social result and expression of the sacrifice of the mind: unlimited majority rule, “democracy,” numbers (or the collective) as the standard of morality and truth. (Current examples: Kennedy, the Saskatchewan doctors.)

The “frozen absolute” attitude toward altruism-collectivism: “What will you do about the poor?”

Altruism is destructive of the mind of the giver and also of the
receiver.
(“It’s for your own good”—white lies, etc. Example: the universal tragedy of “self-sacrificial” parents.)

 

 

[AR was interviewed by the New York Times on the day after the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson presidential election.
]

“
I am
not a ‘conservative,’ but an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. I think that this campaign was conducted very badly, that this is the end of old-fashioned, anti-intellectual ”conservatism‘—and that the advocates of capitalism have to start from scratch, not in practical politics, but as a cultural-philosophical movement, to lay an intellectual foundation for future political movements. It is
earlier
than you think. The
status quo
of today is a mixed economy with a fascist, rather than socialist, trend—and [Lyndon] Johnson is the conservative in the exact sense of that word. Today, the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, which Sen. [Barry] Goldwater is not, are and have to be radical innovators.“

 

 

“The Short-Range View of Reason”:
The people who claim that “man cannot live by reason alone” are concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment non-thinkers who have no idea of principles, wide integrations, fundamental issues, philosophy—and, therefore, who use their mind only moment by moment, on immediate, concrete problems. They have no inkling of a phenomenon such as a sense of life and no idea of the way in which mind determines emotions. These are the people who say that
reason
can deal only with the
means
to achieve values, but not with the ends—that the choice of values is subjective, mystical or arbitrary—that morality is not the province of reason, and there can be no rational morality. (If a man like [Ludwig von Mises] advocates this last, it is a sign of some enormous repression (or second-handedness) in the realm of values—since he is certainly
not
concrete-bound in his
professional
psycho-epistemology; if anything, he is “rationalistic” (Kantian) and inclined to floating abstractions. This is an interesting psychological lead.)