Answer: See Ayn Rand Lexicon, entry on “Metaphysics"
2) Ayn Rand says that a “…sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character.” (Pg. 25, “Philosophy and a Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_, Ayn Rand) What does it mean for something to be “preconceptual”? What does it mean for something to be “subconscious” as opposed to “conscious” ( in other words, what is the “subconscious” for Rand)? What does it mean for something to be “implicit” in your mind, as opposed to “explicit”?
a) “Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value-judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life.”
b) (See entry on “Subconscious” in Ayn Rand Lexicon) “Strictly speaking, Objectivism does not subscribe to the idea of an unconscious at all. We use the term ‘subconscious’ instead- and that is simply a name for the content of your mind that you are not focused on at any given moment. It is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness…” (Quoting Leonard Peikoff, from Entry on “Subconscious” in Ayn Rand Lexicon)
c) Implicit knowledge- Axiomatic concepts identify explicity what is merely implicit in the consciousness of an infant or an animal. (Implicit knowledge is passively held material which, to be grasped, requires a special focus and process of consciousness –a process which an infant learns to perform eventually, but which an animal’s consciousness is unable to perform.)” (See Ayn Rand Lexicon, Entry on “Implicit Knowledge”)
3) When discussing the concept of “sense of life”, Ayn Rand seems to speak of some part of the human mind that is not directly under one’s control. (“Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him.”(Pg. 26, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand [emphasis added]) Try to reconcile her view that the “subconscious mechanism” is, in some sense, not directly under one’s control with the fact that Rand was clearly a proponent of volition and choice. (“The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically...” (Galt’s Speech, Atlas Shrugged, See also entry on “Free Will” in Ayn Rand Lexicon)
Answer: While Rand thought that the process of reasoning, of acquiring new knowledge, is volitional, there are other aspects of our consciousness that are not under our control (percept formation), and there are also aspects of our consciousness that are not under our direct control although the content of our thinking will affect them (emotions). “To the extent to which a man is mentally active, i.e., motivated by the desire to know, to understand, his mind works as the programmer of his emotional computer –and his sense of life develops into a bright counterpart of a rational philosophy. To the extent to which a man evades, the programming of his emotional computer is done by chance influences; by random impressions, associations, imitations, by undigested snatches of environmental bromides, by cultural osmosis.” (Pg. 26, first full para. down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
4) A person who regards himself as an alcoholic will sometimes describe the urge to drink as difficult (or even impossible) to resist, such that once he has had one drink, he cannot resist drinking to excess. Ayn Rand says in “Philosophy and Sense of Life” that one’s “…subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him.”(Pg. 26, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand [emphasis added]) Is the difficulty alcoholics have in resisting the temptation to drink to excess after having one drink an example of such a “habitual pattern”?
Answer: I think yes. Obviously, this is more of a question for the science of psychology, and I am, by no means, an expert on this.
5) Consider this description of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from a University of Florida web site:
“Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)…is characterized by recurrent and disturbing thoughts (called obsessions) and/or repetitive, ritualized behaviors that the person feels driven to perform (called compulsions). Obsessions can also take the form of intrusive images or unwanted impulses.
Common types of obsessions include concerns with contamination (e.g., fear of dirt germs, or illness), safety/harm (e.g., being responsible for a fire), unwanted acts of aggression (e.g., unwanted impulse to harm a loved one), unacceptable sexual or religious thoughts (e.g., sacrilegious images of Christ), and the need for symmetry or exactness.
Common compulsions include excessive cleaning (e.g., ritualized hand washing), checking, ordering and arranging rituals, counting, repeating routine activities (e.g., going in/out of a doorway), and hoarding (e.g., collecting useless items). While most compulsions are observable behaviors (e.g., hand washing), some are performed as unobservable mental rituals (e.g., silent recitation of nonsense words to vanquish a horrific image).” (http://www.ufocd.org/WhatIsOCD.htm )
Could Ayn Rand’s description in “Philosophy and Sense of Life” (that one’s “…subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him.”(Pg. 26)) be a clue helping to explain how some people become Obsessive-Compulsives?
Answer: I think so. This appears to be more of a question for the science of psychology. But, note this paragraph from this essay: “Since an act of volition –a process of thought- is required to use that mechanism for a cognitive purpose, man can evade that effort. But if he evades, chance takes over: the mechanism functions on its own , like a machine without a driver; it goes on integrating, but integrating blindly, incongruously, at random- not as an instrument of cognition, but as an instrument of distortion, delusion and nightmare terror, bent on wrecking its defaulting processor’s consciousness.” (pg. 27, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
6) According to Ayn Rand in “Philosophy and a Sense of Life”, how is a sense of life formed? What is the key concept, in the formation of a sense of life? Is this key concept in the formation of a sense of life an ethical or metaphysical term?
a) Sense of life is formed “…by a process of emotional generalization which may be described as a subconscious counterpart of a process of abstraction, since it is a method of classifying and integrating. But it is a process of emotional abstraction: it consists of classifying things according to the emotions they invoke -i.e., of tying together, by association or connotation, all those things which have the power to make an individual experience the same (or a similar) emotion.” (pg. 27, first full para. down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
b) “The key concept, in the formation of a sense of life, is the term ”important”.”(pg. 28, first full para. down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
c) “’Important’ –in its essential meaning, as distinguished from its more limited and superficial uses –is a metaphysical term.” (pg. 28, 2nd full para. down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
7) What is a “metaphysical value judgment”?
Answer: (pg. 28, 2nd full para. down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
8) What are some of the examples that Ayn Rand gives of the concept of “important” (as the concept is used in this essay)? Can you think of any others? What does the integrated sum of these “basic values” represent?
a) (pg. 28, bottom, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
b)
c) “The integrated sum of a man’s basic values is his sense of life.”(pg. 29, top, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
9) Does a man’s “sense of life”, his “implicit sense of values” that remains in his subconscious, necessarily have to match the philosophy that he explicitly embraces? Does the possibility of a variance between a man’s conscious philosophy and his subconscious “sense of life” explain why a person who embraces the self-sacrifice of Christianity or Socialism could, in his daily life, at least for a while, be successful at living (“successful” by the terms of Ayn Rand’s philosophy –a good career, decent friends, good wife/husband, etc.)?
a) “In some cases, a man’s sense of life is better (closer to the truth) than the kind of ideas he accepts.” (pg. 30, second full para down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
b) Yes, this is why you could have a Christian/Marxist person who is “successful at life” (defined by Ayn Rand’s meaning of success), but I think his long-run prospects aren’t good unless he changes his expressly held beliefs. (pg. 31, Second Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
10) Did Ayn Rand believe that a person’s “sense of life” is incapable of being changed? At the end of Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”, the character of Dominique Francon has changed her mind regarding whether “the good”, as represented by people like Howard Roark, can succeed in this world. At the beginning of the novel, she is normally described as having a “malevolent universe premise” (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-Fountainhead.id-111,pageNum-48.html ). At the end, Dominique rejects this premise. Rand says in this essay, that: “Since it is an emotional sum, it [sense of life] cannot be changed by a direct act of will. It changes automatically, but only after a long process of psychological retraining, when and if a man changes his conscious philosophical premises.” (pg. 31, Second Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand) Does this mean that, at the end of the novel, Dominique Francon would have needed to engage in a “…long process of psychological retraining…” (or was she doing this throughout the novel)?
a) No, while it is not under one’s direct control, it is possible to change it. “Since it is an emotional sum, it [sense of life] cannot be changed by a direct act of will. It changes automatically, but only after a long process of psychological retraining, when and if a man changes his conscious philosophical premises.” (pg. 31, Second Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
b) I’m not sure. I’d have to go back and read the novel now.
11) What two aspects of a man’s existence does Rand regard as the “…special province and expression of his sense of life…”? Does the concept of “love at first sight” have any legitimacy in Ayn Rand’s philosophy? A cynical person might say that “love at first sight” is really just “lust at first sight”, in other words, especially for men, love is initially based on the opposite sex’s physical appearance/anatomy; is this necessarily inconsistent with what Rand is saying here about it being “…a person’s sense of life that one falls in love –with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality.” (pg. 32, Third Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)?
a) love and art (pg. 32, Second Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
b) I don’t know, but I did read in _Letter’s of Ayn Rand_, ed. By Michael S. Berliner, where she said she believed in “love at first sight”.
c) I think that sexual attraction has to do with what one regards as important. A woman is going to tend to emphasize herself and her body in different ways, based on her “implicit sense of values”, and a man who has a similar “implicit sense of values” about what is important in a woman will notice the fact that she emphasizes those features of her body in the way she dresses and behaves. For instance, physical health in a prospective sexual partner might be regarded as important by someone who wants a long-term relationship, because they want a husband/wife that they can be with for a long time, and if they appear unhealthy, then they might die sooner. (Note that at one time, a woman with greater body weight was considered more desirable because it was an indicator that she was “well fed”, and therefore healthy. Now, in modern times, when food is readily available to all, being overweight is a sign of being unhealthy.) The point is, physical appearance often says a lot about what a person finds important in themselves and in a prospective romantic partner, so I think that saying it is really “lust at first sight”, instead of “love at first sight”, is an inaccurate description of the mental process that is occurring.
12) What religious myth does Ayn Rand mention as being a sort of allegory describing the subject matter of her essay, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”? Give an example from a religion of this myth. Do you agree or disagree with her assessment (provide reasons why or why not)?
a) The religious myth she refers to is the myth of a “supernatural recorder” from whom nothing can be hidden, who lists all of man’s deeds. She says this is a primitive attempt to explain a man’s sense of life.
b) Christianity –“judgment day”, when you die and God judges your life (pg. 31, First Full Para Down, “Philosophy and Sense of Life”, _The Romantic Manifesto_ by Ayn Rand)
c) Interesting. I find her connection there intriguing. It means that for Rand, YOU are, in some sense, the judge of your actions, and must live, on some level of consciousness, with all of your actions.
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