[LucentBrave]

A chimp being able to utilize sign language does not make it volitional. It is a learned habbit. Animals can think and form extremely simple concepts. They do not have a choice in this matter. You are confusing the concept of volition with the concept of learning a skill.

Animals can learn and be trained and conditioned to do many things.
You ask what is going on when a chimp is communicating in sign language?
How does a fully trained dog respond to it's owner when the owner tells is to "sit?"

It sits, because it was taught to do so. A chimp will respond with an appropriate sign because it was taught that way. What would happen if a chimp was offered a new sign to learn? One that it has never seen before? I can look at some signs and pretty much figure out what they are just by to motion of the sign. I can also pretty much be told what the sign means once, and remember what it means for a long time. Do you think a chimp can? No, you have to repeat the meaning of the sign over and over until it is learned.

If you could somehow prove that primitive animals have the faculty of volition, then I suppose Objectivism would have to validate the proof to see if it holds water. And if it does, I suppose it would have to embrace it as a valid concept.

[Dominique]

[quote name='scottkursk' date='Jan 14 2005, 07:20 PM']
Tried a google search. It yielded nothing.

Anyway in a cage a parrot wouldn't have any means of commiting suicide.
[right]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/right]
[/quote]
Suicide per se, no. They will stop eating and pick their feathers out making them able to easily contract illness. Also, rabbits that have been pair bonded can also quit eating when their pair bond dies. They can do into GI stasis and they die pretty soon thereafter. It has something to do with the hardwiring of different breeds inside the species. I've personally seen it happen as I raise and foster rabbits.
Is it a volitional act of suicide, no. I will disagree with the idea that it is volitional but I would have to describe it as a "neurotic" act that causes death for lack of a better way to describe it. I think it's a case of some animals can handle change better than others and what we percieve as neurosis is actually the way the animal responds to the stimuli or lack thereof.
[right]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/right]
[/quote]
Yes, I tried to find a source myself, and couldn't then I remembered that it was as you say-the starving and plucking, African Grey's are known for weird behavior, but you're right, this doesn't neccessarily make a case for volition. They just get sick. Interesting though.

[Bowzer]

LucentBrave, on Jan 14 2005, 09:50 PM, said:

If you could somehow prove that primitive animals have the faculty of volition, then I suppose Objectivism would have to validate the proof to see if it holds water.  And if it does, I suppose it would have to embrace it as a valid concept.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To be accurate, philosophy is concerned only with man and his relation to the world. A discovery such as this would have no impact on philosophy whatsoever.

[LucentBrave]

Thank you for bringing that up Bowser. I spent a long time looking at that last line, and I knew something didn't seem right with it.

Thanks again.

[scottkursk]

Dominique, on Jan 14 2005, 08:52 PM, said:

Yes, I tried to find a source myself, and couldn't then I remembered that it was as you say-the starving and plucking, African Grey's are known for weird behavior, but you're right, this doesn't neccessarily make a case for volition. They just get sick. Interesting though.

I don't know why it's entitled African Grey Myths since the article goes onto detailing the endless reasons why they pluck feathers. To quote:

Quote

Plucking seems to occur more often in Greys because they must be managed more carefully than other species. Internal conflicts involving environment, cage, diet, activities, bathing, discipline, training, amusement produce internal disharmony and anxiety. The companion Grey may internalize these events and be unable to resolve them in a non-destructive manner. When something is amiss, they may express their discomfort or anxiety by feather plucking.

So really it's just a bad "coping" mechanism that Greys have that cuase their death eventually. Kind of like fainting goats who respond to stess by fainting and playing dead. Which of course leads them to be eaten with relative ease by predators.

[gadfly]

BurgessLau, on Jan 13 2005, 12:59 PM, said:

My rough, tentative, and shortest definition of environmentalism would be this: A religion of the worship of nature. A somewhat expanded, but still essentialized definition would be: A religion whose ontology is a polytheistic one-world (with Gaia, the Earth Goddess, as the supreme deity); whose epistemology is intrinsicist; whose ethics is setting nature as the highest value; and whose politics is using aggression to subordinate peaceful and honest human activities to nature (Gaia).

You seem to use the term "environmentalism" as a name for rational land management by its owners. That would be a neologism. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The issue of when/how to form a concept is an interesting issue. I agree with the essentials of your definition, but I want to flesh out some of the issues pertaining to definition per se.

There are a number of possible definitions, and I am thinking of 2 in particular: 1) we could consider "environmentalists" to be the group of all people who want to preserve nature and animal species, and lump together those who pursue this by immoral means with those who do not, or 2) we could define it as the group of people who pursue the goal via immoral means.

What are the various reasons for doing both?

As you do, I believe #2 is the rational choice, because it's important to clearly distinguish between those who are dangerous to a free society - and reason - and those who are not. One motive behind such a choice is a moral/philosophical one - we more or less want to clearly define who our enemies are. To not do so would allow them to ride on the coattails of morally acceptable people in order to pursue their destructive ends. It could also be that this simply describes the majority of such people, and captures their essence.

On the other hand, I would like to have some label for those people (i.e. me) who simply want to preserve nature for the purpose of enjoyment and want to do it by moral means. For example by buying such property, as the Nature Conservancy does. Defining the term as in #2 leaves me a referential "orphan", i.e. without a label (this would not keep me up a night, but...). Am I simply a "nature lover"?

What are your thoughts on the process of defining in this case?

[BurgessLau]

gadfly, on Jan 15 2005, 04:11 PM, said:

The issue of when/how to form a concept is an interesting issue. I agree with the essentials of your definition, but I want to flesh out some of the issues pertaining to definition per se.

There are a number of possible definitions, and I am thinking of 2 in particular: 1) we could consider "environmentalists" to be the group of all people who want to preserve nature and animal species, and lump together those who pursue this by immoral means with those who do not, or 2) we could define it as the group of people who pursue the goal via immoral means.

What are the various reasons for doing both? [...]
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Gadfly, you have done an excellent job of identifying, characterizing, and concretizing a problem I have wrestled with for a long time. I can briefly tell you my answer, which I consider probable but not certain.

The guiding rule is cognitive necessity. This is an idea, a criterion, that I learned from Ayn Rand -- In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but I can't find the exact page (probably in the discussion of concept formation).

At first, I kept looking for what I now realize was a Platonic criterion "out there." There isn't any such criterion. The issue is just this: What do I need to do -- for example, in choosing a term, in deciding whether to form a new concept, or in resorting to a descriptive phrase -- in order to deal with the world objectively, that is, based on facts and drawing my ideas logically from those facts.

If there were only one or two environmentalists in the world -- instead of an extremely popular, enormously destructive, mass movement -- there would be no cognitive necessity for a special term and a new concept with referents defined as you and I have done. We need to identify this movement, and we need to identify its fundamental characteristics, the ones that make it so destructive.

Likewise, at this point in our society's evolution, most of us don't need to set up a new concept for "nonaggressive nature lovers." They aren't a threat, number one, and number two, the idea is already implicit in other concepts (used in certain contexts), such as: birdwatchers, hikers, and hunters. So, a descriptive phrase -- adpated to the context -- should be enough.

That is as much as I have been able to come up with so far. It works, and I have confidence in it -- but I also have an inkling that something is missing or partly wrong.

[Inspector]

It's a frustrating problem: convincing people that the environmental movement as a whole is anti-man.

It's as if there was one large "child appreciation" organization that included both teachers and pedophiles... which was controlled by the pedophiles but largely popularly known for the teachers.

[Betsy]

ironworks soundlabs, on Jan 13 2005, 11:11 AM, said:

I can't see how one could say animals cannot reason at all. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You will find an excellent analysis of claims for animal cognition in this lecture by Dr. Edwin A. Locke here.

[gadfly]

BurgessLau, on Jan 15 2005, 07:29 PM, said:

The guiding rule is cognitive necessity. This is an idea, a criterion, that I learned from Ayn Rand -- In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but I can't find the exact page (probably in the discussion of concept formation).<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do remember that discussion by her. When you posted your definition, I knew there was something she wrote about it, but could not remember what, or if I had, how to apply it to this situation.

I was interested in your particular reasons as well, and that's pretty much what I thought was behind your definition.

As to what might be missing, I would like to hear more specifics on this topic, since I don't remember there being much more than what you described. I think this topic would make an interesting subject for a longer essay. Objectivism has redefined many popular terms, and this issue is bound to come up again in the future the more widely the philosophy becomes discussed.

Thanks.

[gadfly]

Inspector, on Jan 15 2005, 09:32 PM, said:

It's a frustrating problem: convincing people that the environmental movement as a whole is anti-man.

It's as if there was one large "child appreciation" organization that included both teachers and pedophiles... which was controlled by the pedophiles but largely popularly known for the teachers.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's a good - albeit scary - analogy.

Another one I was thinking of came up recently on another site - that weight-lifter's forum (which I think you posted to) - and was the idea that Ayn Rand co-opted/warped the definition of "selfishness" into "rational self-interest" in order to sell more books.

While I think that idea is vicious garbage, it did raise this same philosophical issue for me, namely, if selfishness is changed to mean "rational self-interest", what happens to all the truly bad people that were once referred to by this term - what do we call them? An example would be a husband who panics and abandons his wife and child on a sinking ship to take the last life boat, or (more mundane examples:) someone who cuts in the front of a line, or never pays for dinner even though others do, even though they are equally capable of doing so. These people used to be lumped together with, say, someone of integrity who stands up for their (rational) idea in the face of (irrational) criticism, and won't change their mind. Perhaps these are simply hedonists.

Speaking of co-opt, I don't want to co-opt this thread, I just wanted to mention the similarity I saw. I need to think about it some more anyway.

[MisterSwig]

gadfly, on Jan 16 2005, 11:55 PM, said:

While I think that idea is vicious garbage, it did raise this same philosophical issue for me, namely, if selfishness is changed to mean "rational self-interest", what happens to all the truly bad people that were once referred to by this term - what do we call them?

I call them "inconsiderate" or "thoughtless."

[the tortured one]

I read earlier in this thread that someone said babies do not have rights. If that is the case, do newborn infants not have rights? This is merely something I do not think about at all.

[stephen_speicher]

the tortured one, on Jan 18 2005, 09:53 AM, said:

I read earlier in this thread that someone said babies do not have rights. If that is the case, do newborn infants not have rights?

An infant possesses rights by virtue of being human. The essential difference between children and adults in this respect is that children require a guardian for those rights -- someone with the knowledge and skill to exercise the child's rights -- because the child is not physically and mentally equipped to exercise all of them on his own.

[nemethnm]

Since this thread was originally geared toward Environmentalism I have decided to post this link. It is an article titled The Toxicity of Environmentalism by George Reisman, an Objectivist Economist (and a personal hero of mine). The article is an excerpt from his incredible book Capitalism: A Treatise On Economics.

If I have understood Dr. Reisman correctly, I think he believes that the fundamental philosophical flaw that the Environmentalists make is that they believe in intrinsic value. The Environmentalists claim that nature has an intrinsic value in and of itself and independent of any judge of value. Man must, by his nature, change his surroundings so that they are in a better relationship with him. If one holds that nature has an intrinsic value then any changes that man makes to his surroundings destroy nature. Furthermore, since man must make such changes in order to survive then he is inherently evil. Therefore, the logical end of Environmentalism is a burning hatred of man because of his inherent evilness.

[oldsalt]

I am always a little amazed when people attempt to call what animals do "volition" or "reason" because they manifest some activity that may closely mimic what humans do.

Animals and humans share certain characteristics because human beings belong to the animal world. All animals act according to their nature in order to survive. Animals do so by the use of their perceptual consciousnesses. Some of them manage some truly astounding feats, which tells me that a perceptual consciousness is capable of some pretty high level processes. Crows are a good example of this; they are amazingly animals, capable of changing their behavior to suit a situation, of acting in concert or singly, etc. Chimps have learned to use crude "tools" to attain food (eg. sticks to get termites, rocks to crack nuts). All this says, however, is that a perceptual consciousness is capable of doing these things, i.e., that it doesn't take a rational, conceptional consciousness to accomplish certain tasks. One can see this in children who have not yet reached the age of reason. Language, as used by animals is very specific to the communication. For example, birds use language to stake out and maintain territory, etc. An animal may choose one option open to them over another, such as Kibble over Alpo. And, an animal might pine over the loss of a companion or behave neurotically.

These are all aspects of animal nature, to whatever degree an animal is capable of them. Human beings are animals, and as such, display all of these behaviors along with other animals.

But the human animal possesses something that other animals do not -- at least we don't know of any other animal which does. Humans possess a conceptual consciousness, which operates via reason and demands a conscious choice for its use. These are the things the questioner needs to understand before s/he tries to determine if animals have rights.

When I read a treatise on Einstein's Theory of Relativity written by a chimp, when I see a fifty-story skyscraper made of steel and reinforced concrete built by a dolphin, when I see pictures taken of Titan's moon produced by the collective effort of a group of ants, then I'll talk about animals with a conceptual consciousness. Until then, please don't ask me to consider a chimp with a 150 words vocabulary in sign language -- taught over long years by a human -- on the same level with a human being.

[AisA]

oldsalt, on Jan 18 2005, 11:51 PM, said:

When I read a treatise on Einstein's Theory of Relativity written by a chimp, when I see a fifty-story skyscraper made of steel and reinforced concrete built by a dolphin, when I see pictures taken of Titan's moon produced by the collective effort of a group of ants, then I'll talk about animals with a conceptual consciousness.  Until then, please don't ask me to consider a chimp with a 150 words vocabulary in sign language -- taught over long years by a human -- on the same level with a human being.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In addition to these excellent points, I would say that when you show me an animal that is willing and able to respect my rights, I will then take up the issue of whether or not it has rights.

[the tortured one]

that was an excellent post Oldsalt, very informative. Thanks.

[ewv]

ironworks soundlabs, on Jan 13 2005, 10:06 AM, said:

I recall that Dr. Gary Hull's lectures on the ARI site seemed to be quite against environmentalism. I am wondering why this is?<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To return to this original basic question, it is important to realize that environmentalism is both an ideology and a very powerful political movement. Polls show that something like 90% of the population consider themselves to be "environmentalists", but they mean it in a vague, watered down version, unaware of its ideological roots and meaning. They generally have in mind an ambiguous combination of opposition to harmful "pollution" and a utopian image of undeveloped nature as a kind of Garden of Eden, which is anything but analyzed or well-defined in their minds.

Most of the leaders of the viro movement carefully cultivate the ambiguity, knowing that people aren't ready for their radical philosophy if made too explicit. Environmentalism worships nature as an "intrinsic value" superseding human rights and civilization, and seeks rule by an ecological bureaucracy of "scientists" to enforce it. They already have such power in some important areas (but it is still only the beginning of what they want,in both scope and intensity), including control over the energy production and chemical industries, "wetlands" laws controlling (dry) land, the Endangered Species Act, and outright comprehensive dictatorial control by the National Park Service -- even over private property -- in regions it controls. Much of this directly impacts a minority, often in rural areas, so is not well known to the general public.

Environmentalists continue to conduct fund raising with appeals against "pollution" and using semi-poetic rhapsodies and imagery appealing to scenery, but their lobbying and power in government is overwhelmingly destructive. It is crucial that we understand what they are doing and why, and fight them both philosophically and politically.

A national expert (not Objectivist) on the politics of the viro movement is Ron Arnold, who has written several books that should be read and which are valuable references. Some of them are:

Trashing the Economy -- analyzes the major segments of the viro movement and summarizes the activities and funding of the national organizations: the National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, National Parks and Conservation Association, Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, etc. etc. (I provided a lot of research used in a couple of the chapters of this book.)

Undue Influence -- describes how tax exempt foundations, activists and government agencies collaborate. Some of the revelations of how this worked and what they got away with in the Clinton-Gore administration (and would have much more under Gore or Kerry) are absolutely horrifying.

Eco-Terror -- provides a comprehensive history and analysis of ecoterrorism and its relation to the viro organizations and movement over the last several decades. Second Renaissance used to sell this book.

Another important author and (past) syndicated columnist, who I worked with in exposing major National Park Service scandals in the late 80's and early 90's, is Alston Chase. His In a Dark Wood - The Fight over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology describes the intellectual history and roots of environmentalism in 19th century Germany ecologism and how it motivates and drives the contemporary viro movement. (Unsurprisingly, it goes back to Hegel.) My review of this book (and a link to it) is here

A link to articles on "animal rights" at the ARI website was already provided earlier in this thread.

A broader search reveals a large number of ARI links on environmentalism.

Ayn Rand's classic essay "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" is reprinted in The Return of the Primitive, edited by Peter Schwartz, which also includes his excellent more recent essay "The Philosophy of Privation". These are essential to understanding the Objectivist position on environmentalism.

[themadkat]

Hey there folks. I was hoping some of you could clear up a bit of a mystery for me. See, I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand, and I think it's fair to say I've been deeply influenced by her ideas. The only reason I don't call myself an Objectivist is because I don't think my personal philosophy can ever be summed up by something ending in "ist" (I hope some of you understand what I mean by this). On the other hand, I also consider myself an environmentalist. Other than the fact that I know Ms. Rand would call me an anti-life evader for this standpoint, I have never particularly felt a disconnect between being an environmentalist and adhering to an individualist, freedom-oriented philosophy. In fact, to my way of thinking, one reinforces the other. Now, I know why Ms. Rand, personally, objected to environmentalism. She didn't have a good understanding of science and didn't care to, as she didn't have a good understanding of the facts behind many of the things she commented on. This is by her own admission (she told Nathaniel Branden that she didn't really have much understanding of psychology, for instance). This is not a slam on Ms. Rand by any stretch of the imagination. I greatly admire her, and let's face it, no one has time to be a scholar on every subject. I certainly don't!

So my question is, why do Objectivists today continue to disparage environmentalism? Is it because of agreement with her personal opinions? Or is it because they genuinely feel it has a deep conflict with the philosophy? If the latter, I am interested in talking it out. I really don't see it, myself. I mean, I'm definitely speaking as a science-oriented person who is proceeding from a certain understanding about the way our physical world works. I don't at all care for the sentimentalist environmental movement and find it counterproductive, even destructive. But in light of certain empirical facts, if facts seem to conflict with ideas, isn't it the ideas that must be revised, not the facts? I thought one of the biggest tenets of Objectivism is that Reality is the final arbiter of all philosophical disputes, as reality is non-negotiable.

Thanks!
Kat