Harrison Danneskjold

Subjectivism is a rejection of objective reality which requires a blending of consciousness and existence (what you see and the fact that you see it). Yes, when you close your eyes the world literally disappears- from your perspective. A subjectivist is someone (usually miserable) who doesn't recognize any other perspective as valid. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? A subjectivist would say not- and would also say that when you close your eyes, the world around you ceases to exist. That's the significance of the tree-in-the-forest hypothetical; whether objects still exist when not directly perceivable. To see why that's wrong, simply ask yourself what it would mean to fully and completely accept it. How much of your knowledge is based on direct observation, without the slightest inference or interpretation? If trees in virgin forests do not exist, then neither can atoms. Neither can people whom you've never met before, nor planets which you've never been to, nor the entire Chinese nation (or Swedish or Australian; name anywhere you haven't been). But it goes further even than that- does your bathroom still exist when you leave it? Does your physical body exist when you're asleep? If one accepts perception as the same as existence then nothing exists but what you are immediately aware of, right now; there can be no past or future, nor any form of knowledge. --- The simple fact is that trees do not require your ears in order to make a sound; the only question is whether YOU will hear it.

Yes, but the importance of being "fed and housed by some anonymous entity" is not in actual, concrete anonymity; anonymous groups are only groups of individuals, anyway. The importance of it is as applied to rights. If I have "the right to be given X" then, in practice, that translates into my right to a specific person's X (which nobody may have). Now apply this to retributive force: We know that your right to avenge any crime against you is delegated to a proper government, but either you have the right to choose otherwise (as a vigilante) or you do not. If you do not then what you ACTUALLY have is "the right to have X punished on your behalf, full stop." Now, suppose you and I lived together in a society of three total members, under such a political design. What happens if that third party violates my rights? I cannot retaliate against him; that would be vigilantism. This means that I have the right to have YOU retaliate against him, for me. If so then, in fact, I have the right to your time and energy. If I have the right to your time and energy then you do not; nobody has the right to violate rights (such as choosing not to punish X for me). Anyone who does not have the right to their own time and energy is a slave. With regards to the OP, what I have realized is that the proper prohibition of force requires the proper epistemology. The greatest government and the best of intentions would be completely worthless without the correct epistemology. What I have been hinting at, but have not yet made explicit, is the further realization that with the correct epistemology and delineation of rights, a government is superfluous. Objectivists have historically favored a centralized government in order to clearly separate initiated force from retaliatory force; so that everyone immediately understands, whenever they witness violence, whether it is just or unjust violence. But this requirement does not necessitate a centralized government. Everyone could retaliate on their own behalf, so long as they and anyone who witnessed it were Objective about it. Again, on this final point: reread miss Rand's critical examples of anarchistic violence and project how they would change if the characters were rational.

A quick internet search identified Paley's Problem as the teleological argument, which is an analogy that runs as follows: 1. The existence of a complex mechanism, such as a watch, entails a watchmaker 2. Similarly, the existence of complex mechanisms such as ecosystems and solar systems entails a designer To be clear, I'm not criticizing evolution at all. It's a good theory. But there is a much simpler answer to Paley's Problem: it steals the concept of volition. 1. The existence of a watch entails a watchmaker- why? Because watches aren't found in nature; they must be made. The creation of a watch requires conscious and purposeful action. 2. The existence of nature entails a naturemaker- why??? Because nature isn't found in nature????? The second half of the argument requires us to see artificial entities, such as watches, as exactly the same as natural entities- while the first half requires us to see the difference. It's a stolen concept because it uses teleology as a means of obliterating teleology- since purpose can only be defined by relation to purposelessness and this argument sets out to destroy the latter. To see why this is wrong, imagine that you don't find a watch lying around in some forest- imagine that you find it growing on a tree, amongst hundreds of similar watch-nuts. If you were to see that, would it still necessitate the existence of a watchmaker? Not at all- because those watches would be natural entities, which don't require the slightest bit of intention or purpose to exist. In the same way and for the same reasons, the existence of the Duckbilled Platypus and the Tetse Fly doesn't mean anything about the origin of the world, at all. There is only one organism whose existence necessitates intentional creation- and that's man. My existence necessitates the deliberate actions of my mother and father, as does yours and everyone else's on earth. But notice that anyone's existence requires only the intentional action of themselves and a few other people; no grand architect is even remotely necessary. So the correct answer to Paley's Problem is to realize WHY a watch necessitates a watchmaker and subsequently realize what makes the second half blatantly absurd.

"For the love of Galt, stop the conceptual limbo already!" Crow: I'd like to apologize for this assertion, specifically; I wasn't aware of the distinction at the time. To clarify this: My fundamental understanding of 'rights' is based on decisions. That's what I mean when I say that someone has the right to X; it's properly their decision to make and nobody else can interfere with it. So the right to life is the right to CHOOSE life (or not) but only for yourself. Property rights are the rights to decide how to dispose of your own property- or not (but disposal in some form, to some extent, is necessary for ownership; you do not own pennies that you drop and forget on the sidewalk). Now, we all know that adults have certain inalienable rights (choices) which nobody else may make for them. When I say that a parent "has no right to make any decision which their child is capable of making" I only meant it of those decisions which would properly be an adult's right, such as when the child goes to bed or what they eat; not whether the nextdoor neighbor should have an abortion or not, etc. Now, there are many decisions which a parent DOES have the right to make for their children, which fall into one of two categories: 1. Anything involving the parent's property or person, by virtue of which is the parent's right to decide already. I think Devil's Advocate best summarized this as "my house, my rules" and it would cover everything from jumping on the bed to smoking in the household- but not beyond! Your individual rights do not extend beyond yourself and your things. 2. Anything which the child is incapable of deciding rationally. This second category would be based on a parent's obligation to care for their children, which includes making decisions which they are unqualified to make yet. And when I speak of "rationally deciding" or "considering in full context" the capacity I'm referring to is usually called "wisdom" or "maturity". So of the second category, a parent has the right to make any decision which their child is incapable of making- due to the fact that children are naïve. This right ceases to exist when the cause of it (the blank slate) ceases to exist. As for determining what a child is qualified to decide for themselves, that would be a bit trickier because the soundness of any decision can only be fully evaluated in retrospect. But it can be determined by inferring from other comparable decisions the child HAS already made. So, for instance: When my son is a teenager, if he wants to go to a party with underage drinking, I'll base that decision on whether or not (by my best educated-guess) he's ready to handle such a situation. So if he's cutting classes, failing school and getting into trouble for fights or graffiti, then I would forbid it- because he would have demonstrated himself unable to project the consequences of those actions and thusly make rational decisions. But if he's getting good grades, looking into prospective jobs and preparing himself for the real world, then I would supply him with the alcohol myself- because he would have demonstrated the requisite responsibility. With respect to property rights, I think these principles should be implemented exactly the way Strictly Logical described by a simple extension of the reasoning above.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think it's rooted in a metaphysical view of man. If you understand the difference between the intentional and the accidental (manmade vs. metaphysically-given) then there are two ways in which that can manifest itself, corresponding to which you consider to be more important. If the intentional is more important then that leads to an egocentric view of reality; looking for any given thing's potential to benefit yourself (and this is necessary for a properly rational philosophy). If the accidental is more important then it gives rise to antihumanism and collectivism; looking at everything as it is, without any concept of how it could be (racism, sexism and environmentalism, in particular). If you cannot grasp the distinction in the first place then a novel, a plague, an invention and the theory of evolution would all be things of an identical order. That would be a prerequisite for demanding that goods and services be provided automatically, blaming president Bush for a hurricane and declaring that "you didn't build that". Furthermore, if you cannot grasp the difference between the deliberate and the accidental, how could you define yourself for any selfish sort of morality? That still wouldn't explain it all, but it's something.

And as far as numbers go, honestly, the only thing that could possibly be considered a borderline case would be the concept of "one" in and of itself. That might be a singleton; it's debatable. Everything greater than one or less than one is an abstraction from multiple units, where each unit IS "one"!

Each number is an abstraction from its counting-measurement (of things in reality) and really is sort of the essence of 'unit' as such. The number 1 is composed of the idea of one unit- as against 2 or 3, et cetera. It could be considered a singleton except for the fact that it only applies where other numbers could also apply. For instance- it makes perfect sense for me to speak of one dollar or one apple. But if I was rattling off a guest list of names, how would you react if I did so as: "One Harrison Jodeit" etc.? It would be nonsensical. Now, I'm not a mathematician at all, but you seem to be referring to the fact that there is only one set of real numbers; i.e. "One, two, three" as opposed to "One, three, seven" etc. That's certainly true. But the concept of a "set of real numbers" is obviously a composite abstraction- from real numbers, themselves. So to call that a singleton is equally nonsensical. What you described in the OP applies perfectly well to names for the perceptually-given. It doesn't apply to abstractions. There is no higher-order concept formed from itself; that's a logical impossibility.

Every banker and stock broker in the world would be very interested in that statement. If an employee of some company has a pension fund set aside, which he cannot access until he retires, does he own it? If not then we need to round up every single member of the finance industry, to be charged with the largest Ponzi scheme since Catholicism. Agreed. I agree that "full control of X" is ownership of X; that's the identity of property rights. And your premises, both 1 and 2, would apply with full accuracy to a newborn infant. But I most emphatically reject that 1 applies to a child, at all. Not any child whom is capable of conceptualization and deliberate action (which an infant is not). A parent simply has no right to make any decision that their child is capable of rationally considering, in its full context. So I can confiscate any cigarettes my son might find (because he can't even use full sentences, yet) but I cannot dictate which toys he plays with, when and how (as one must do for an infant, when playing with one). And when he demonstrates the ability to rationally consider the full consequences of cigarette smoking then he will in fact have the right to smoke them, whether he does so at twelve or twenty-seven.

Only if he doesn't fully grasp what they are. That's the difference between taking a pack of cigarettes away from a small child and taking them away from a 17-year-old (or from a small but exceptionally intelligent child, versus a 17-year-old who has no real grasp of causality). SL: I thoroughly agree with what you've enumerated and think that just about covers it all.

The trouble is that a parent is obliged to care for their child's safety and well-being, which material "possessions" are vital towards. So let's try to isolate our variables. Suppose there is a girl, being raised by her father, whose grandmother dies at some point and bestows a small fortune to him- while demanding that a modest amount of it be set aside for the girl's college fund. So he does so and several years pass, and eventually he squanders all of the money she left him- suddenly finding himself broke and without income, except for a monthly disability check (which is enough to pay all of the bills, with $50 to $100 remaining for food). So, at that point, this girl's immediate well-being is assured one way or the other. The question is this: Would it be properly-legal for him to empty out her college fund and squander that? I would hope that everyone can agree it to be immoral, but immorality shouldn't necessarily be illegal. Evasion, for instance, is monstrously immoral- and yet it must remain legal. So the question, for the sake of clarity, can be rephrased more accurately as: Do children have property rights, independent of their parents? If not then the girl in this scenario has no right to that money; it belongs to her father and he may spend it however he pleases. If so then she does and HE DOESN'T. --- There are all sorts of things that parents should not do, many of which they shouldn't even be allowed to do. If you wouldn't give an infant a tattoo then you shouldn't squander its college fund; if so then it has property rights of its own which aren't dependent on you.

Devil's Advocate: Thank you. I think you're right; inheritance was a flawed way to look at it because, when an adult inherits any given thing, it fully belongs to them without strings or compunctions (unless otherwise specified). The distribution of rights within a rented home, between the landlord and the tenets, is much more applicable and simply nails the exact thing I was trying to express. Thank you. I apologize; I must not have understood you properly. You see, when you said "children are property" I thought you meant "children are property". I understand now that wasn't your intention. And by "intention" I mean "linguistic convention". So "ownership" means something different from "full rights over what it does and where it goes"? What a "good" "intention". For the love of Galt, stop the conceptual limbo already! Now. Mdegges asked a perfectly valid and exceptionally pertinent question: if children have no property rights, can one rightfully strip them of all property and leave them to die? A response such as this. . . . . . Is an affirmative [yes, he thinks that would be properly-legal] followed by a prompt retreat from the entire realm of morality. . . . Is a recital of completely irrelevant details, driven by the implicit knowledge that Mdegges' hypothetical would be WRONG but attempting to deny precisely that (and accomplishing nothing whatsoever). --- As Strictly Logical pointed out, we could sit here and recite the American legal code until our children have become adults, and it wouldn't give us any information about the rightfulness of such laws.

Ditto Louie. It's somewhat disappointing, as well, because I find it entirely plausible that Chimpanzees might be self-aware in a similar sense to the way we are. A few other species (such as Dolphins and Elephants) I think are possible, but dubious; almost everything else on Earth is obviously not conscious. So I find it rather disappointing because given the described experiment, the only conclusion we can draw with any sort of certainty is that when a Chimpanzee needs more information they will stop and look for it- there's no way of knowing what went on in their minds. They may have thought to themselves "I don't know that; I need to go back and see" or, more like honeybees, they may have simply reacted to the missing information by instinctively going back and checking, without any conscious decisions whatsoever. There's simply no evidence provided to support either possibility, at the moment. That said- I really think that more needs to be done with sign language. We can teach them to communicate and we want information about their minds; the method to retrieve that information seems inescapably obvious to me.

Indeed! I'm amazed by the things most people teach their children. Win at games- but not too often; allow yourself to lose sometimes. Share your belongings- whoever wants it the most should get it. Tell the truth- unless the truth is upsetting. Children's television shows are especially bad; any of them which include any sort of morals. Is it any wonder that everyone's philosophies are so screwed up, when they're spoon-fed such garbage literally from the time they're still being spoon-fed?

Absolutely not! Property has no rights; a rancher has no such obligation to his cattle. Stop and think about it: to call children the property of their parents is to call them categorically LIVESTOCK. You can never own another human being, full stop! Then you'll be delighted to hear my well-qualified opinion on the arcane secrets of poopy diapers. Children absolutely have property rights. If my son were to start composing symphonies, the way young Mozart did, that music wouldn't be mine. It wouldn't be my wife's or anyone else's, either; it would be his- in the same way and for the same reasons that my accomplishments belong to me. This doesn't apply to anything at all, you say? Well, what if he's busily stacking a monolith of blocks which another child suddenly wants to play with; would it be proper for the other child to take them? What if he only stomped his feet and demanded to share- in some miniature altruistic tirade? The underlying principles of property rights apply equally well to children. Their implementation is different for obvious reasons (block towers cannot be owned in perpetuity) but this doesn't translate them into something completely different. As for the majority of their actual, adult-type property, such as clothing and toys and blankets. . . I believe the principles involved in property inheritance are appropriate. I would consider the child in this scenario to have a right to the kitchen set, but only a derivative right- specifically derived from the benefactor involved. If he enjoyed or was even fond of the kitchen set I would not give it away, and as it's explained I would ask this other relative, first (the original owner). In addition, property rights are the right to use and enjoy property, not ensure that it mildews properly in some forgotten corner. I know that's counterintuitive and rubs against the entire grain of the rest of Objectivism, but here's the principle involved in my reasoning: If you would not even realize it were X to vanish one morning, it isn't a crime to take X from you. . . Any more than it's a crime to find a penny and pick it up. And the principle of pennies, there, is also WHY block towers can't be owned in perpetuity. At some point the builder will get bored and wander off somewhere, officially putting his monolith up for grabs. --- So those are the major things involved in a child's ownership, I think: their property rights are derivative and the disposal of said property (which may involve decades of intricate plans for adults) tends to be much more limited. And, considering that with respect to almost all of my son's belongings that benefactor is myself, I always ensure to practice what I preach and ask myself for permission before making any crucial decision about them. And by 'myself' I mean 'my wife'.

"Unit" is above the perceptual level of awareness while names coincide with it. An animal may be trained to remember perceptually-given designations, but measurements (which "unit" pertains to) are beyond their grasp. This difference, between a thing's label and its relation to all other things, is the difference between "moon" before and after Galileo. --- Your assertion is essentially correct, A1. "An integration of two or more units" is inapplicable to certain first-order concepts, which refer exclusively to concretes. Perhaps "abstraction" would be an appropriate designation for all concepts higher than this, to which "two or more units" is applicable For instance, "culture" would be considered an abstraction from two or more units, as opposed to "the moon" or "my maternal grandmother" which are a more concrete sort of concept.

"Irrational societal normalization" my, what an imaginative description of Society Nicky! Let's examine its rationality. To be rational is to draw logical conclusions from the facts of reality. Nicky's reasoning, if expressed as a syllogism, would look something like this: P: Guns can be used to defend yourself p: It is moral to defend yourself C: Guns can be used morally So, if this is irrational, that must mean one of three things: 1- Guns cannot be used to defend yourself 2- It is immoral to defend yourself 3- These true premises reached a false conclusion through bad logic Now let's examine the difference between playing Cops and Robbers with nerf guns and doing so with cap guns; this vast difference which allows one to be moral while the other isn't. Is it the superficial appearance of the toy, completely removed from function or use? Methinks you should check your premises.

Kate 87: If you do consider a hunter's feelings about his gun to be the same as a murderer's then you must recognize, in your own thinking, that you consider hunters equivalent to murderers. If so then you also consider animals to be equivalent to human beings, in which case that is the root of your confusion and that is what you must sort out before you may understand the root cause of my country's gun culture. What is the difference between a person and an animal?

They do not have specific definitions. I applaud your attempt to give them such (and you succeeded about as well as I think is possible) but they cannot be given such precision without removing portions of their connotations. An anticoncept is an idea which contains a self-contradiction. They are notable in that they are essentially bundles of implications, which hint at a great many fuzzy possibilities, but do not clearly mean anything at all. For instance: the concept "freedom" clearly refers to freedom FROM violence; the absence of physical force. It is also full of implications and connotations (Braveheart comes to my mind) but that is its specific referent. That is what a concept should be like. Doesn't this describe every group of human beings (including this forum) in all of history? Yes; your definition would properly specify the concrete meaning of polarization. But look at your definition; why would such a descriptor ever be necessary? It's an obvious extension of 'disagreement' which is inevitable within any large enough group of people. And yet, whenever you hear it being used (note "Partisanship" because it refers to the same thing) it's always used to convey pettiness, pointless squabbling and feuds; it comes prepackaged with images of bickering children and sibling rivalry. Whenever and wherever it is used, the common denominator is the assumption that such disputes are unnecessary and detrimental- that it would just be best if everyone were to compromise. It's an anticoncept because it lumps rationality and irrationality- logical convictions and arbitrary whims- into the same idea of "alone-ness" which is assumed to be bad, as opposed to the good which is "together-ness". "Foreign policy adventures" is a nice touch. The word you're looking for is "war" (and then this definition would be as correct as it could be). Isolationism is based on the implicit knowledge that peace is a SELFISH ideal- while war is not. It is the accusation of heartless, callous, unfeeling selfishness, which is the trademark protestation of every rejected altruist on Earth. . . Applied to an entire country in a single idea. Extremism refers to consistency; acting in accordance with one's ideas. It does not specify which ideas or what their consequences are; only that consistency is bad. Like polarization, extremism is based on "together-ness" as the intrinsic value: those who refuse to sacrifice their ideas to the common good are considered extreme, whether their ideas are good or evil, logical or illogical. Extremism connotes bad things but refuses to denote much of anything at all. -------- So that's what an anticoncept is. Now, as for "gun culture". Would you consider a sportsman's fondness for his hunting rifle equivalent to a mass-murderer's fondness for his AK-47? Or are those two different things? Packaging those very different things together, into the same concept, is what makes such an idea fallacious. So, if you feel this designation is unwarranted, the solution is simple: unpack those referents and the implicit reasoning.

I was concentrating on the wars we have fought in because the relative freedom of America only became relevant with respect to our military (specifically Crow Epistemologist's insinuation that American soldiers might round up and shoot American citizens). Not the most direct line of reasoning towards that, I suppose. The primary thing is that the vast majority of our soldiers enlist out of a desire to defend their loved ones and their ideals, which is fundamentally incompatible with murder. The American military is composed of men and women who, at one point, idolized superheroes and knights-in-shining-armor. I do not think the majority of them are capable of real evil. As to the relative freedom of America, as I said, it's debatable. And it's an exceptionally complex proposition, involving an immense range of variables; I'm sure that even among consistently rational Objectivists there would be a wide range of opinions. Personally, I would still consider this to be the freest country in the world. . . By a rather narrow margin. But as far as violently suppressing internal dissent? Not in your lifetime or mine. I agree with the rest of your post, but I would modify the reasoning behind this just slightly. Here's why: You have the right to do whatever you want to do, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else- right? The non-initiation of force principle. Applied to gun control, this would mean that you have the right to own whatever you want to own (other than people) and this would clearly include guns. BUT you do not have the right to USE those guns against anyone else, except in self-defense. But all defensive force is preemptive force, undertaken whenever a threat becomes clearly apparent. This objectively apparent threat need not be immediate; if you discover a plot to murder you next week then defensive violence is justified. Therefore, if and when an individual is objectively determined to be mentally unstable or aggressive, the government may take preemptive measures against them- such as confiscating potential weapons. This differs from your resolution in only one concrete way: instead of being required to prove your own responsibility in order to own a gun, the government would have to prove your aggressive intent in order to PREVENT you from owning a gun. But, after all, aren't you innocent until proven guilty- and peaceful until proven violent? The abstract difference consists in recognizing that confiscation of someone's property, as well as prohibition against even acquiring said property, is a form of coercion. As such it can only be used in defense or retaliation- either of which must be objectively defined and proven for any given case, according to the strictest standards. So it isn't a big difference, but I think it's necessary for any principled restriction of weaponry. We can't be handing out firearms to every Mexican Drug Cartel that asks for one, but neither can we accept the principle that you acquire and retain your property by the permission of society (which is where Kate is coming from).

Reason is limited by its identity. It requires mental content (experiences, memories) with which to apply it, because you can't think about nothing in particular. Whatever you think about, you are thinking ABOUT SOMETHING; that something is some form of content. Furthermore reason is not effortless; it takes time and energy, just as manual labor takes time and energy. Anyone who denies the effort required has never seriously grappled with a difficult question. Those are the only limitations of reason; time, energy and content. Those who argue that reason is limited invariably mean something different; that there are certain things to which it is inapplicable; there are subjects which are out-of-bounds to reason. I believe this can be traced back to Immanuel Kant. But no subject, once clearly understood (with adequate CONTENT) is beyond reason. Think of a computer. You wouldn't dream of declaring any calculation or algorithm to be uncomputable, right? Even certain monstrously difficult calculations, such as calculating pi to the n-th decimal point, are still computable; they only take a long time to complete. Well, to say that any question or subject is beyond the scope of reason, would be like saying that a certain calculation is beyond mathematics. It's simply gibberish. This is ALWAYS used as a smokescreen to defend irrational mysticism; to hide it and prevent anyone from asking too much about it. I'll return at some point with some brief refutations of it, but the short answer is that it's simply wrong. It's wrong in full, on its face, by its very conception; it refutes itself. All you have to do is point that out.

What I own and what I do is my business, unless it directly harms you. Period. You have no right to dictate what I can or cannot buy for myself, voluntarily- and that's all there is to it. If that contradicts something else Rand said then Rand be damned; I'll stand by that principle. "I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese alright? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinatti in a non-smoking section. I wanna run around naked with green jell-o all over my body reading a Playboy magazine. Why? Because maybe I feel the need to okay pal?" -Exerpt from Demolition Man And that's all I have to say to the Safety-Nazis.

Debatable but also irrelevant. Let's count the number of wars America has waged against Australia. Every single war America has ever engaged in has been against dictators and tyrants. If we ever invade Australia or England, then it would be worth reexamining the issue; until then we're still the good guys. So don't give them to your children. If I dislike the color of your house, do I have the right to fix it for you? No? Then LEAVE OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF ALONE. So let me get this straight. The fact that you voluntarily trade goods and services with a certain company, gives you the right to dictate how that company functions- because they use your money to do so? I.e.: "I would like to purchase this milk and sugar, but only so long as you do not use my money to buy ammo for your inventory."??? So then, if I buy the DVD set of BBC's Sherlock Holmes, I could require BBC to start broadcasting Ultimate Warrior. Or Future Weapons! Or does it only work that way if I'm a certain demographic? It would give a whole new meaning to TANSTAAFL. Thank you. Reference, please? Where did Rand say this? Unless the context of the rest of the essay somehow alters its meaning (a rather large caveat), I would consider Rand wrong on this one- by the same reasoning I explained several posts ago about the "essential purpose" of guns. Incidentally, I would completely reject the abolition of guns in full, at its root, by this nifty little concept: "The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible." -Ayn Rand If YOU can decide what I can or cannot own, then my property rights are meaningless; all I have are property PERMISSIONS. If I have no property rights then I have no right to my own decisions. And note how this, while based directly on Rand's philosophy, contradicts the quote you gave- which is why additional context becomes necessary. It's entirely possible that she contradicted herself, but I'd like to see some truly hard evidence of that before I accept it. Politically, the principle that the government gets to pick and choose what you can or cannot own, is a long walk off of a short pier.

You'd be surprised how much information you can find on the internet, with just a little bit of digging. There are summarized versions of their works out there- I personally have one on Sartre (don't bother; entire thing's based on hatred of the universe). But if that's not your thing then you could try simply skimming their original work. Here's a digital copy of the Critique of Pure Reason: http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/kant/Critique-Pure-Reason6x9.pdf But, personally, I wouldn't bother with Kant either. His entire goal was to protect Christianity from science and he considered concepts to be tools of distortion, which confuse the truth and prevent us from knowing anything at all. With that information alone, I think any specific argument of his becomes fairly transparent.

"The moon" is a first-level concept, formed by integrating "the moon last night" with "the moon tonight" and "the moon I saw last January," et cetera. "The moon tonight" on any given night is a perception, formed by distinguishing the sight of the bright moon as against the sight of the night sky and identifying those two sensations (light and dark) as having two different sources; one of which is called "the moon". Your example does show something interesting; "moon" probably didn't mean quite the same thing to people before Galileo because they had no idea what it really was. But I digress. "Moon" is not formed by integrating all of the different instances of actual moons (which aren't visible with the naked eye) but by integrating all of the different memories one has OF "the moon" as different from "the night sky".

Sorry. I call it as I see it. Like I said, though, you're almost always right. It just seems like you don't pay as much attention to WHY you're right. In my own opinion.