What does Rand mean by selfish:

P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals — Garrett Travers

That's not a definition of 'selfish'. It's a conditional statement of the form:

If P1 and P2, then C.

I take it though that you mean it as an argument of the form:

P1
P2
Therefore, C

Anyway, it's not a definition of 'selfish'.

Moreover, the conclusion of the argument is not that ethically that people should be selfish. Rather, the conclusion is that people should be free to be selfish.

Looking at the arguments:

A. "[H]umans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival."

It's not clear what "generated", "natural processes" are supposed to mean there.

Reason is not the only means of survival. Human survival also depends on other means, including ingrained responses (you jump from fire by a natural tendency to avoid its pain well before you reason about it), emotion (enthusiasm, hope, love) , physical effort (pushing a rock to not be crushed by it), and cooperation with other humans (except for extraordinary people, survival by oneself with just reason is not likely).

B. "It is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty"

Surviving is one thing, but living life according to values is additional. Living according to values includes survival a fortiori.

And the conclusion does not follow from the premises. This premise also is needed:

If P1 and P2, then C.

But that claim itself needs justification.

And it requires argument to show that there are not values other than selfishness that are developed with reason, or even that values developed aside from reason shouldn't count (I value not experiencing the pain of being burned. That's not a value developed from reason but rather simply from my utterly basic preference not to experience pain. I value fresh air, not from reason, but simply from my utterly basic preference to feel refreshing oxygen in my lungs. I value seeing a colorful flower, not from reason, but simply from the unmediated pleasure I get from it.)

So, reason is only part of the means of human survival.

And it requires argument to show that what is ethical is only that which best contributes to living according to values based in reason. That is, it requires argument to show that "Action A is ethical if and only if it contributes to values based in reason."

[We] have developed reason, as opposed to fangs, to survive. — Garrett Travers

The species developed reason along with other physical, psychological, and social attributes.

The Objectivist argument is:

1. Reason is the essential attribute that provides for a human's survival.

2. Reason provides for human values.

3. An act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason.

Those are three separate claims, without connecting logic, unless a missing premise if filled in: The premise that is missing:

If reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values, then an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason.

our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on [reason]. — Garrett Travers

Survival depends on intelligence, which we may says includes crucial reasoning. But survival also depends on other physical, psychological, and social attributes too.

I addressed your proposition clearly. Show me how I am wrong. Have you read your proposition clearly? Don't get mad at me. If I'm wrong, easily point out where I am misunderstanding the first proposition. You said humans use reason for their survival — Philosophim

This is the last time I will address this, because I did easily point it out. The proposition is not a categorical one regarding behavior, there is no argument being made that humans always use their reason. That's it. Now you must re-evaluate the proposition and address it from the point of validity and soundness. Meaning this : "You said humans use reason for their survival," does not mean : "You said all humans use their reason at all times." The proposition is that humans survive using the application of reason, and reason is that means of survival.

but they also don't have to. — Philosophim

In what way can you use anything else for survival? Keep the argument here, this is what you need to demonstrate.

I can have a hammer, yet use a screwdriver to bang on a nail. — Philosophim

You just used reason to determine those tools could be used in a like manner, that's conceptualization. This is not a case of not employing reason.

Wrong. A grenade lands at your feet with 20 good people nearby. You have just enough time to cover your body over it and save the 19 other people around you. — Philosophim

Non sequitur. This has nothing to do with the human's basic tool for survival. The introduction of force against reason is a violator of reason. This is irrelevant.

Or, you could quickly jump behind another person who is close by that did not notice the grenade, save yourself, and the grenade goes off killing almost everyone else. Isn't it reasonable to save the other 19 people? Saving my life would be unreasonable in this situation would it not? If it is not, then what value am I holding? That the deaths of 19 other people are worth my life? — Philosophim

You aren't using reason correctly, this is making a bit more sense. Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

None of this faculty is afforded to people who have grendades thrown at them, one will be forced to make a snap decision, reason has nothing to do with the equation, nor does this scenario address the proposition. You need to stay with the proposition until you can show that it is either invalid, or unsound.

While it could be, it can be made through ignorance and fear. My point again, not every decision is made through reason. — Philosophim

I'm not addressing this again.

Do animals need reason to survive? — Philosophim

Animals have other evolutionary advantages for survival. We have evolved our reason. We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. We barely have instinctual inclinations in any comparable way because of this evolutionary adaptation.

We can survive through unreasonable, less effective, and sometimes outright dumb means. — Philosophim

Name one. All of that sounds like you're inputting your own standards into actions, and evaluating them from the perspective of your thought, logic, and judgement.

Demonstrate to me how we cannot survive in any way shape or form if we do not use reason. — Philosophim

We are born altricial and have a rearing period of about 20 years, and if we're left alone to fend for ourselves before our conceptual faculty has been fostered, we die. We have no knowledge of how to survive without the development of that faculty. We currently only maintain our lives by our own logical processes of thoughts and values, and the productive effects of others. Even if such reasoning doesn't meet your interpolated standards.

Sociopaths are just as affectively driven as the rest of us. — Joshs

I suppose I was thinking of emotional numbness.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-emotional-intensity/201810/depersonalisation-why-do-you-feel-empty-and-numb

Sociopaths are just as affectively driven as the rest of us. — Joshs

Certainly, sociopaths lack the kind of positive emotional patterns that keep most of us from going on a killing spree.

We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. — Garrett Travers

Humans do have physical attributes including feet, legs, endurance running, five senses, teeth, fingernails, fingers, opposable thumbs, et. al. Indeed the various features of the human body itself - that provides for breathing for oxygen to the cells, ingestion for hydration and nutrition, organs for regulation of chemicals, elimination, immunity, et. al - all are means of survival. To say that certain creatures don't have, say, wings to survive makes no sense in claiming that humans don't also have their own anatomical attributtes. And humans have psychological attributes including will, hope, fear (fear causes you to immediately avoid, without mediation of reason, a snake on the ground), anger (anger against an adversary can help you beat him to death in self-defense of your life), et. al. And humans have social attributes, including compassion, empathy, rescue.

I suppose I was thinking of emotional numbness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In the article, the notion of emotional numbness is treated like a reaction to emotional events, as if one first encounters trauma and then the body decides to emotionally ‘shut down’ as some protective device. This is too reductive for my taste. Emotions, moods and feelings are not devices or mechanisms
or inner states. They are the manifestations of our ways of understanding and coping with situations as we interpret them. Emotional trauma is already a ‘numbness’ in the sense that negative
emotion indicates a breakdown in anticipatory sense making, rather than being the cause of such breakdown.
When we lose our grip on the world , when it becomes
a fog of chaos and confusion, this is both a cognition and a feeling. The two aren't separate processes , they are aspects of the same experience.
So our ‘numbness’ is t a secondary withdrawal from stress and intense emotion, it is the emotion itself, because it is the situation itself that becomes incoherent and meaningless.

Certainly, sociopaths lack the kind of positive emotional patterns that keep most of us from going on a killing spree — ZzzoneiroCosm

If they lack certain ‘emotional patterns’ then this is because they lack certain ways of assessing the relevance of human factors. The emotion cannot be understood apart from the personal assessment and construal of a situation.

So our ‘numbness’ is t a secondary withdrawal from stress and intense emotion, it is the emotion itself, because it is the situation itself that becomes incoherent and meaningless. — Joshs

Well, sure: if you're defining numbness as an emotion, there's no argument to be made. :)

That's not a definition of 'selfish'. It's a conditional statement of the form:

If P1 and P2, then C.

I take it though that you mean it as an argument of the form:

P1
P2
Therefore, C

Anyway, it's not a definition of 'selfish'. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I know it is not. To get to the selfish part, one has to go through the logic. That's why I said we will "start" here. The terms have already been laid out in other posts, though.

It's not clear what "generated", "natural processes" are supposed to mean there. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Evolution.

Human survival also depends on other means, including ingrained responses (you jump from fire by a natural tendency to avoid its pain well before you reason about it), emotion (enthusiasm, hope, love) , physical effort (pushing a rock to not be crushed by it), and cooperation with other humans (except for extraordinary people, survival by oneself with just reason is not likely). — TonesInDeepFreeze

All of this is involved in the reasoning process, and how your brain determines one's actions. The pain/pleasure response is about the best thing here as far as a natural response to immediate stimuli that ensures survival, so I think you can have that. But, even that is an essential element to: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic- or reason.

I value fresh air, not from reason, — TonesInDeepFreeze

If you value it, it's reason. If your body does it for you, its just automation. But, breathing isn't going to get your food, shelter, or skills for continued survival for you.

So, reason is only part of the means of human survival. — TonesInDeepFreeze

No, the things you mentioned are minor parts of survival that could potentially exist outside of : think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. However, this definition is the primary means of survival without which you die.

Surviving is one thing, but living life according to values is additional. Living according to values includes survival a fortiori. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes, means of survival are developed by reason, values are secondary.

And it requires argument to show that there are not values other than selfishness that are developed with reason — TonesInDeepFreeze

No, it doesn't. That isn't necessary at all. All values developed with reason. Selfishness is the value in the reasoning faculty to provide life and values. Doesn't matter which values you generate.

And the conclusion does not follow from the premises. — TonesInDeepFreeze

If humans survive by reason, and reason is the human's means of surviving and living in accordance with the values produced from reason, then a society that respects that process is the only one conducive to human life. How does that not follow? Saying as much isn't enough.

I value seeing a colorful flower, not from reason, but simply from the unmediated pleasure I get from it — TonesInDeepFreeze

If you can use thought to enumerate the reason, that's reason.

The species developed reason along with other physical, psychological, and social attributes. — TonesInDeepFreeze

None of which are sufficient on their own for our basic survival.

If reason is the essential attribute for a human's survival and reason provides for human values, then an act is ethical if and only if it contributes to the actor's values derived from reason. — TonesInDeepFreeze

This is completely fair. So, I say we go from there.

Survival depends on intelligence, which we may says includes crucial reasoning. But survival also depends on other physical, psychological, and social attributes too. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Survival beyond merely being alive requires some form of reason. The other physical attributes are not sufficient for long-term survival.

We do have physical attributes including feet, legs, endurance running, five senses, teeth, fingernails, fingers, opposable thumbs, et. al. We have psychological attributes including will, hope, fear (fear cause you to avoid a snake on the ground), anger (anger against an adversary can help you beat him to death in self-defense), et. al. We have social attributes, including compassion, empathy, rescue). — TonesInDeepFreeze

Again, all attributes that, without the employment of the reasoning faculty, are not sufficient for basic human survival. All of those psychological traits are specifically elements of the reasoning process. So are social attributes. Your compassion is selective based on the application of your reasons to certain people. You're not making an argument against the importance of reason in survival by describing what reason uses to ensure its success.

Reason and emotion (positive and negative emotion) work together in the decision-making process. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That is specifically my argument here, thanks.

Positive emotions play a role in making life-, self- and other-affirming decisions. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Sure, all part of the reasoning process.

The proposition is not a categorical one regarding behavior, there is no argument being made that humans always use their reason. — Garrett Travers

Then you agree with my point, and I've said nothing wrong.

The proposition is that humans survive using the application of reason, and reason is that means of survival.

but they also don't have to.
— Philosophim

In what way can you use anything else for survival? Keep the argument here, this is what you need to demonstrate. — Garrett Travers

Here you are now recanting what you just said earlier. You are saying humans MUST use reason to survive. But we've already both agreed that humans don't always have to be reasonable, and you can survive when you don't make reasonable choices.

We've already mentioned a few. I can overeat and be a few pounds overweight, even though I know its not reasonable to do so. It won't kill me. Lets go from the aspect of ignorance as well. Lets say I really like eating vegetables, but I don't know that they're healthy for me. It wasn't reason that makes me eat vegetables, its that they taste good.

I can have a hammer, yet use a screwdriver to bang on a nail.
— Philosophim

You just used reason to determine those tools could be used in a like manner, that's conceptualization. This is not a case of not employing reason. — Garrett Travers

You're arguing that if I have a hammer in front of me, using a screwdriver to beat a nail into the wall is reasonable? There is nothing reasonable about it. That's just an emotional whim. If you think that picking a screwdriver over a hammer is reasonable, please clarify how. Are you saying that reason is just creating concepts, but not their effective use?

Wrong. A grenade lands at your feet with 20 good people nearby. You have just enough time to cover your body over it and save the 19 other people around you.
— Philosophim

Non sequitur. This has nothing to do with the human's basic tool for survival. The introduction of force against reason is a violator of reason. This is irrelevant. — Garrett Travers

What? If reason cannot withstand force, then how do we survive when faced with force? If reason must be used to survive, then whenever someone uses force on a human being, do they just die? You are avoiding the point, and it is silly.

You aren't using reason correctly, this is making a bit more sense. Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

None of this faculty is afforded to people who have grendades thrown at them, one will be forced to make a snap decision, reason has nothing to do with the equation, nor does this scenario address the proposition. — Garrett Travers

You are changing what reason is on a whim. First, my using a screwdriver instead of a hammer is somehow reasonable. You're saying I concluded I could use a screwdriver over the hammer by thinking, understanding, and forming judgements by logic. Yet there is no one reasonable in the world would think it is reasonable to use a screwdriver over a hammer.

I'm not asking you to make a snap decision. We're considering this now, so that when a time of judgement is needed, they've already used reason to determine what they will do. Soldiers consider this in places across the world. It is more reasonable in this situation to save the lives of 20 others. That means it is reasonable for you to lose your life.

And yet, that results in the loss of your basic survival. Meaning we have a very clear case of a situation in which we can reasonable conclude something that results in our death. We cease to survive, which has everything to do with the premise. Reason can lead to our survival, but does not necessarily lead to our survival.

Do animals need reason to survive?
— Philosophim

Animals have other evolutionary advantages for survival. We have evolved our reason. We do not have speed, senses, fangs, venom, claws, wings, talons, or any other advantage they have that has allowed them to survive in their respective environments. We only have reason as a means of survival. We barely have instinctual inclinations in any comparable way because of this evolutionary adaptation. — Garrett Travers

Again, if you're stating that we only have reason for survival, then we MUST use reason for survival. We have many instinctual inclinations, watch a few babies. Blow on their face and they hold their breath. Put something to suckle when they're hungry, and they do. It is not reason that makes a baby survive, it is the care and sacrifice of the involved parents. They put their own survival at risk for the child. But so do many other animals that lack reason.

If reason is: "

Here's what reason is: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. — Garrett Travers

", and also implying that animals lack reason, then you need to show human actions apart from basic functions that animals do to survive, like eat, hunt, and defend themselves, are absolutely necessary.

It is not that reason is not invaluable, but it is a cherry on the cake. Survival does not require reason, if we are equating reason as something that other animals do not have.

Sure, but, to the degree one makes an emotional decision, one makes a harmful decision that goes against one furthering their life. — Garrett Travers

This is where I get tripped up.

Suppose we have two people, one of whom makes all of their decisions "emotionally", and one who makes all of their decisions "rationally". Now suppose that, as a matter of pure dumb luck, they just happen to make all of the same decisions on issues of significant import (e.g. they both decide not to get vaccinated, they both decide to become vegetarians, they both decide to vote for the same candidate in each election, they both decide to support the same social causes, etc., etc.).

The means are different, but the ends are the same. In terms of observable outcomes, their lives are morally equivalent. So how can we say that the one has made "harmful" decisions while the other has made "beneficial" decisions?

You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.
— T Clark

No, I think that our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on it. That was the premise.

I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice?
— T Clark

Exclusively. — Garrett Travers

In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it.

Most people don't.
— T Clark

That's the problem. — Garrett Travers

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree.

Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight.
— T Clark

This is different. Humans are an altricial species with a rearing period of about 20 years or so. It takes them a long time to develop their rational faculties. Love of family needs to be a rational choice if it can be determined through development that such people are antithetical to one's own happiness. That comes in time. — Garrett Travers

Mothers love babies before they're born. Parents don't decide to love their children for rational or any other reason, they just do. It's built into us. I tell you this as a father. There is no rationality behind my feelings for my children.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason.
— T Clark

That's exactly what I said. Reason is where values come from, even if they've been passed on to you. — Garrett Travers

I think that's true of very few people. It certainly isn't true of me.

And cognitively there is no evidence to suggest that our values are not abstractions we develop from recurrent neural networks of sensory data constantly being processed and vetted for interests and pursuits, and thereby the data that is accrued from those interests and pursuits. — Garrett Travers

I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of.

All fair points, TC. I often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to places and people, art, music, sex, food, friendship, travel... We can talk rationally about them, but generally this ends up sounding like prattle.

often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to places and people, art, music, sex, food, friendship, travel... We can talk rationally about them, but generally this ends up sounding like prattle. — Tom Storm

If a value is the frame, and rationality refers to the structure of relations made intelligible by the frame, the is the shift from frame to frame rational, irrational or a-rational?
If we use as an example of a value system a Kuhnian scientific paradigm, the how do we characterize the transition from one paradigm to another. It certainly isnt deductive or inductive. But is it irrational? Could we instead say that it is pragmatically useful, which is different from both rationality and irrationality? I suspect that the way we operate WITHIN values systems also has more to do with pragmatic usefulness than strict logic. That leads us to Wittgenstein’s approach to language.

I would also add that what people call ‘emotion’ ,rather being something outside of or independent of our experience of usefulness, gets to the very core of the feeling , the sense, of what is useful or not. We don’t feel logic. Logic is dead and empty. We feel usefulness. Usefulness is what matters to us, what is relevant to us , what is coherent or incoherent.

In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it. — T Clark

This is getting silly. No, I didn't. You asked a question about people, then asked a question about me.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree. — T Clark

I don't expect reasonable people to agree.

I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of. — T Clark

I can't help you with science you're aware of. You're going to need to review some cog-sci. Yes, values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you.

All fair points, TC. I often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to places and people, art, music, sex, food, friendship, travel... We can talk rationally about them, but generally this ends up sounding like prattle. — Tom Storm

Nothing said were fair points. The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. If love isn't rational for you, I would reconsider that it is in fact love at all. Conncections require an alignment of values, that's reason, same as love. Every bit of this is dependent on reason. Not talking rationally about this stuff is why the wrold looks the way it does right now.

Rand:

(1) Laissez-faire capitalism is the proper socioeconomic system to aspire towards.

(2) This has not yet existed.

(3) But if it did exist, it would be fantastic.

In my view, replace "laissez-faire capitalism" with "communism" and you'll have the crux of that argument as well. Completely unfalsifiable. No historical evidence. Just declarations -- based on principles that simply reduce Aristotle to a cartoon.

Rand is mostly a waste of time, but one has to tackle her to understand a lot of the justifications given for our current neoliberal era. A more sophisticated alternative for doing so would be Milton Friedman, or perhaps Hayek.

values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you. — Garrett Travers

In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As @Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way.

If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them.

the how do we characterize the transition from one paradigm to another. It certainly isnt deductive or inductive. But is it irrational? Could we instead say that it is pragmatically useful, which is different from both rationality and irrationality? — Joshs

Um, what are talking about? The transitions from classical mechanics to relativity wasn't rational? From universal constant to Hubble constant wasn't rational? Is this a joke? It's specifically rationality that overcomes a crisis in a Kuhnian revolution. The undeniable facts of observation, inductively and deductively derived (reason) is, as a point of exactitude, what sees a shift through from normal science to a new paradigm. It is the unreasonable that get in the way.

In my view, replace "laissez-faire capitalism" with "communism" and you'll have the crux of that argument as well. Completely unfalsifiable. No historical evidence. Just declarations -- based on principles that simply reduce Aristotle to a cartoon. — Xtrix

No, because we have an immense amount of data over just the past 70 years showing us what markets produce for the world, and how states ruin the world as a result of being in control of those markets. There's more evidence to suggest the success of Laissez-Faire than what doesn't exist. You're talking through some right now.

Rand is mostly a waste of time, but one has to tackle her to understand a lot of the justifications given for our current neoliberal era. A more sophisticated alternative for doing so would be Milton Friedman, or perhaps Hayek. — Xtrix

Make an argument, this isn't one.

In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way. — T Clark

In your experience (accrual of data), values are not conceptual understandings (a conceptual understanding derived from data). You just contradicted yourself.

If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them. — T Clark

Let me go find some. Gimme a bit.

Digest this : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
And this : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full

This is a good starting point.

Conncections require an alignment of values, that's reason, same as love. Every bit of this is dependent on reason. Not talking rationally about this stuff is why the wrold looks the way it does right now. — Garrett Travers

This alignment of values also describes postive feeling. We wouldn’t know that there was a positive alignment without positive feeling. Accord, agreement, unification, harmony always feels a certain way that tells us it is this connectedness and coherence. I. fact, the feeling isn’t anything f outside of the meaning of coherence itself.
By e same token, we wouldn’t know the meaning, the sense of incoherence, discord and disagreement without a negative feel or ‘emotion ‘. The emotion isn’t some mindless reflex or hormone. It is the very feel of the meaning of disappointment, alienation, failure of alignment.
So emotion isnt the CAUSE of irrationality. It is our expereince of how things line up in our world , coherently or incoherently , in accord or discordantly, harmoniously or disjunctively. We have a habit of blaming our emotions for our cognitive assessments.

Nothing about said were fair points. The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. If love isn't rational for you, I would reconsider that it is in fact love at all. — Garrett Travers

I don't understand your argument, sorry. What do I need to understand about reason that I don't?

This alignment of values also describes postive feeling. We wouldn’t know that there was a positive alignment without positive feeling. Accord, agreement, unification, harmony always feels a certain way that tells us it is this connectedness and coherence. I. fact, the feeling isn’t anything f outside of the meaning of coherence itself. — Joshs

Feeling is a part of the reasoning process, it isn't a stand alone system. There's nothing about having the capacity for Positive Energy that is not in complete accord with the Randian view of things.

By e same token, we wouldn’t know the meaning, the sense of incoherence, discord and disagreement without a negative feel or ‘emotion ‘. The emotion isn’t some mindless reflex or hormone. It is the very feel of the meaning of disappointment, alienation, failure of alignment. — Joshs

Exactly my point. Check out the studies I just posted to Clark, they'll elucidate the process a bit. And those are not the only ones.

The transitions from classical mechanics to relativity wasn't rational? From universal constant to Hubble constant wasn't rational? Is this a joke? It's specifically rationality that overcomes a crisis in a Kuhnian revolution. The undeniable facts of observation, inductively and deductively derived (reason) is, as a point of exactitude, what sees a shift through from normal science to a new paradigm. It is the unreasonable that get in the way. — Garrett Travers

No, it is not rational if by rational you mean that there was some precise pre-existing order and the shifts in science you mention are transitions that are completely regulated by that pre-existing order. What kind of advance in knowledge would that be? Are you really satisfied with the idea that scientific enlightenment consists of additional f details to a logical scheme without putting into question the very premises of that scheme? As scientists , are we stuck with that foundation forever? That, to me, constitutes the very failure of progress.

“…when we sit down to try to figure out what will happen in the future, it usually seems as if the thing to do is to start with what we already know. This progression from the known to the unknown is characteristic of logical thought, and it probably accounts for the fact that logical thinking has so often proved itself to be an obstacle to intellectual progress. It is a device for perpetuating the assumptions of the past. Perhaps at the root of this kind of thinking is the conviction that ultimate truth -at least some solid bits of it - is something embedded in our personal experience. While this is not the view I want to endorse, neither would I care to spend much time quarreling with it. It does occur to me, however, that one of the reasons for thinking this way is our common preference for certainty over meaning; we would rather know some things for sure, even though they don't shed much light on what is going on. Knowing a little something for sure, something gleaned out of one's experience, is often a way of knowing one's self for sure, and thus of holding on to an identity, even an unhappy identity. And this, in turn, is a way of saying that our identities often stand on trivial grounds. If I can't be a man I can, at least, be an expert.

“ …if man were no more than a bystander to that procession we call the universe, or if the universe were itself no more than a spatially distributed display of interesting objects, then we might reasonably regard experience and truth as facsimiles of each other. But what man thinks he sees leads him to conjure with what he has not seen, and what he has experienced makes him wonder what he has missed. So imagination, once stirred, often leads to initiative, and initiative to action, and action produces something unexpected for men to contemplate and experience, and, finally, the newest experience throws the recollections of prior experiences into fresh perspective, thus reducing them to the level of mere chronicler's facts, facts whose historical meaning takes its shape from present rather than past interpretations.”

“I must still agree that it is important for the psychological researcher to see the efforts of man in the perspective of the centuries. To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”

Sure, all part of the reasoning process. — Garrett Travers

Not sure why you want to prioritize reason here. It's emotion and reason working together as equal partners.

I don't understand your argument, sorry. What do I need to understand about reason that I don't? — Tom Storm

That love and connections and everything else you enumerated are all predicated on the reasoning process by which standardized those connections. No way around it. You don't just go around asking women to marry you, or concluded that fifty different cities are your favorite, or any of that. There is a reasoning process from start to fininsh. Sorry for they typos above.

Not sure why you want to prioritize reason here. It's emotion and reason working together as equal partners. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, not as equals. Reason has the frontal cortex dedicated to its processing of the kinds of executive function. It is specifically your reason that uses everything else, not the other way around:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.