Invictus2017

That's a misunderstanding of "primary". In this context it means, "first", not "greatest". If you act, first, to benefit yourself and, second, to benefit another, you are the "primary" beneficiary, regardless of who (by whatever measure) gets more from your actions.

That rather depends on which person isn't doing their part in the discussion, doesn't it? Be that as it may, I just restated my position in greater depth. But I'm basically done here. None of this is rocket science, and I am for damned sure not going to respond further to vague "I disagree!" or "You're unclear!" complaints. Specific questions and critiques will get a response; everything else will be met with silence.

1) A concept is a mental integration of units. Each unit must have the same essential characteristics, but in differing degrees or measures. Every unit of a concept will therefore have commensurable characteristics, but this does not mean that the units themselves are commensurable in any meaningful way. An illustration from mathematics. An ordered pair of numbers (a, b), has two elements, each of which is commensurable with the corresponding elements of other ordered pairs. But in what way can ordered pairs themselves be commensurable? Two ways. The first is to simply impose an arbitrary scale on the units, such as ordering them by the value of the first element. Precisely because such orderings are arbitrary, they are meaningless. The second is to consider ordered pairs as units of a different concept, such as two dimensional coordinates. In such a case there are measures associated with the new concept such as "distance from the origin" that can be used to make the ordered pairs, considered as units of two dimensional coordinates, commensurable. Commensurability of units depends on the concept; there is no absolute requirement of a non-arbitrary measure for units, even though there is an absolute requirement that essential characteristics of units of a concept be commensurable. So, yes, commensurability is essential to concept formation, but it is commensurability of characteristics, not commensurability of units, that is essential to concept formation. 2) This subdiscussion originated from the notion that there is some way to compare how much benefit one person gets from an exchange to the benefit another person gets from an exchange. To make such a comparison, it is not enough that benefits are commensurable; they must be commensurable in a way that permits ordering of the benefits. Not all measures permit ordering; some merely classify, as in the various types of rocks. So, even if one were to demonstrate that units of "value" are commensurable, it would be necessary to provein addition that the measure permits ordering. 3) The notion that benefits to different people are commensurable stems from the cases where exchanges provide an obvious benefit to one person while not doing so to the other. "Of course the starving man who exchanges money for food benefits more than the grocer!" But this works only because one is smuggling in a different notion of value, call it "immediate survival value", that does permit some ordering, and classifying the respective benefits by that different notion. If one sticks to value as such, no such ordering is possible.

I will not do your thinking for you.

"Arbitrary" has a specific meaning in Objectivism, but it also has a common usage. The Objectivist usage would have been incorrect where I used it, but not the common usage. There is, of course, the possibility of confusion over which meaning I intended, but I assumed that people would know which. I don't think "optional" is appropriate as an alternative, though. It applies to something that can be left out or not done, not to something where there is an equally acceptable alternative.

You have not in any way addressed what I said, and I'm not willing to waste further time on your irrelevancies.

Instances of a concept possess the same essential characteristics. The individual characteristics may be commensurable, but that in no way requires that the instances themselves are commensurable. Even if the characteristics are all numerical, that does not imply any particular combination of them is meaningful or that any combination of them is meaningful. Also, keep in mind the context: Things that are greater or lesser against a scale. A given characteristic may but need not be measurable on a scale of greater or lesser. E.g., electrons and positrons have charges that are identical in magnitude but opposite in value, and which is positive is arbitrary -- one cannot say that because a positron has a positive charge and an electron a negative one, that the positron has a greater charge. Also, there are characteristics that are not definable in number at all, such as the affect and evaluation that distinguishes different emotions. Or organisms differentiated by mode of existence. So, no, instances of a concept are not necessarily commensurable, especially not in the particular sense at issue. The assertion of commensurability must be proven, not assumed.

It is because they are instances of the same concepts, not because they are commensurable. A thing is of value -- and has the value it does -- only with respect to the particular life it supports. So one can't compare values when they apply to different lives, and thus it is meaningless to even ask who gets more benefit from some exchange. I suggest that "value" is being used in more than one sense in this discussion. I'm talking about "value" in the ethics sense. But there is also "value" in the sense of monetary value. This allows comparisons between peoples' values, insofar as people are willing to relate their values to money (or other existents valued for exchange). It creates a commensurability that otherwise does not exist and allows a rational means of comparing value, but only where values have been related to money.

Values, in general, go toward different ends -- particular lives.

Your values and my values are incommensurable, because they serve different ends. It is therefore an error to even try to determine whether you get more from an action than I do.

Your self-interest is that which will support your life, whether or not you see it or what others think it may be.

The benefit to others is irrelevant to the question of whether an action is egoistic. All that is required for an action to be egoistic is that the action be directed to one's own benefit. Whether another benefits or is harmed, and the degree of that benefit or harm, has no bearing on whether the action is egoistic.

I'm very aware of this point. Recall the scare quotes.

The essence of Randian egoism is a hierarchy of values rooted in that which is necessary for a human being to survive as required by his nature. Each value must, in some way, contribute to that specific form of survival. The virtues are principles that, enacted, result in gaining and/or keeping such values. At this level of abstraction, it would be improper to have, as a beneficiary of one's acts, anyone other than oneself. But as these abstractions are particularized, as one fills in the relevant values and virtues, it becomes apparent that some actions can be taken that also benefit others and, concretely and short-term, benefit others more than oneself. This would be true in relationships, where one might act "altruistically", benefiting others, to satisfy the long-term goals of gaining or keeping appropriate relationships. Or politically, where one might act "altruistically" by putting one's life on the line to protect one's society. Such "altruism" is not justified on the premise that the good is that which benefits others. (Hence the scare quotes.) Rather, it is justified on the premise that to obtain certain values -- a proper relationship, a proper society -- values that benefit oneself -- one must put others' immediate welfare above one's own immediate welfare. If, at this point, one drops the context, ignores the value hierarchy, one can mistakenly see a mother's actions that benefits her child but cost her dearly, or a soldier's putting his life on the line and even losing it, as actions "for others", a sort of altruism that egoism supposedly rejects. But keeping the context, it's clear that the person who chooses motherhood also chooses the emotional bonding that requires that she "sacrifice". But she does so for the long-term benefits of motherhood, as she conceives them. Similarly for the soldier; if he chooses to defend his society, he also chooses the soldierly virtues that go with it, which may involve "sacrificing" his life. Keeping the context, remembering that humans have a nature, and refusing to accept contradictions -- those are how and why Randian egoism, even though it requires that the beneficiary of one's actions be oneself, also permits and even requires acting for others, sometimes even "sacrificing" for others.

If a concept is a floating abstraction, any statement that makes use of it is necessarily arbitrary. More generally, once you use the arbitrary in any purported process of reasoning, all of the products of your reasoning from that arbitrary are arbitrary. Or, to put it simply: Once you just make up stuff, everything you base on that stuff is just made up too.

You can, if you wish, call a floating abstraction an arbitrary concept, without doing violence to either term. "Arbitrary" in the epistemological sense means, basically, "I just made it up", and can reasonably be applied to concepts as well as statements. But the standard vocabulary is "floating abstraction" and there is no strong reason to confuse matters by saying "arbitrary concept" instead. It's not "no connection", which is an impossibility. Everything you are conscious of, including floating abstractions, reflects some aspect of reality; otherwise, you could not be conscious of it. What makes a statement non-arbitrary or a concept not a floating abstraction is that you followed a rational (but not necessarily correct) process to arrive at it.That process constitutes the connection to reality that makes something non-arbitrary.

That's a different kind of "arbitrary" than I've been talking about. One might distinguish them as "epistemological" and "rhetorical" arbitrary. The former indicates statements that an individual has not related to his context of knowledge; the latter to statements that others insist one must accept without examination. This illustrates my point. There is a species of leftists who simply assume that there is such a thing as global warming and demand that others do too. That's one kind of arbitrary, and one may safely ignore their demand. On the other hand, it is a perfectly legitimate physics question to ask whether the total energy in the biosphere is changing, and even to use "global warming" to refer to an increase in that energy. There is, after all, some evidence that this total is increasing, so this sense of "global warming" is not arbitrary.

Unless you're talking fictive imagination, you can't say that an arbitrary statement is imaginable or unimaginable. Either way, doing so is a category mistake. To repeat myself: Until you've related a statement to your context of knowledge, the only legitimate reasoning you can do in relationship to it is to try to form that relationship.

Only in a fictive sense --- and in that sense, so also is a tree winning a marathon.

No. So long as a statement is arbitrary, "imaginable" -- other than in a fictive sense -- is not relevant. It's a category mistake. The only thing you can do with an arbitrary statement is to find something, some relationship to your context of knowledge, that makes the statement non-arbitrary. Only then can you properly talk about whether the thing is imaginable or possible. I'd say that if someone brings an arbitrary statement into a discussion, you should ignore it. I'm pretty sure that that's what Peikoff meant. But this doesn't mean that you must ignore them in every possible circumstance. You may, as I suggested earlier, look for something that makes the statement non-arbitrary. "Arbitrary" applies to statements; "floating abstractions" to concepts. What they have in common is that neither has a relationship to one's context of knowledge. I note that SL suggests a gradation of "floating" in floating abstractions. There's a similar gradation in "arbitrary". The distinction here is between abstract classification and practical thinking. A statement is either arbitrary or it is not, a concept is either a floating abstraction or it is not. But you may not know which without thinking about it. So, in that sense, you can legitimately work with arbitrary statements or floating abstractions and even treat them temporarily as legitimate. But only to ascertain their relationship, if any, to your context of knowledge.

Knowledge, in the philosophical sense, is always personal. I have knowledge, you have knowledge, but the stuff you or I put on paper to represent what we know is not knowledge. It is merely a representation of our knowledge. A statement, put on paper, is not, for the purposes of this discussion, true or false. It's not even a statement; it's just marks on paper. So, when I say that such and such a statement is arbitrary, I am engaging in a short-hand. What I mean is that, that statement, as held by some particular person, is arbitrary -- is held, not as a rational conclusion from percepts, but as a mere concatenation of symbols. But in another person's mind, the exact same sequence of symbols might be a truth, a falsity, a possibility. For that matter, a statement might start out in your mind as an arbitrary assertion and then, as you investigate, become a statement about which you can ask truth questions. For that matter, a statement could start out as not arbitrary, arrived at by an undetected error and, once the error has been detected, be demoted to the arbitrary. Arbitrariness is not, strictly speaking, a property of statements. It is a property of statements within some person's context of knowledge. It is a relationship, or rather the lack of a one, between the statement and the context. This does not mean that you should always ignore an arbitrary statement. But what it does mean is that, before you do any reasoning with an arbitrary statement, you must relate it to your context. So if you find some particularly intriguing statement, "We are in the matrix", say, you may, if you choose, look for some evidence that would allow you to consider the statement's truth. If you find it, the statement is no longer arbitrary and you may reason with it. If you don't, it remains arbitrary, and any sort of reasoning, even asking about possibility, is an error. Where you draw the line is largely up to you. There's no point in investigating statements about unicorns and other such absurdities, but checking out other arbitrary statements might prove of value, even if only as intellectual exercise. One thing to keep in mind. When someone makes a statement that you can't relate to your context and is thus arbitrary and which requires you to reach a contradiction should you use the methods of reason with the statement, it's a good idea to require of the statement's proponent that he provide some evidence to support the statement. Otherwise you're likely to waste a lot of time on drivel.

This is incorrect. "Arbitrary" has nothing to do with truth or falsity, possibility or impossibility. Like floating abstractions (see the recent discussion), arbitrary propositions have no connection to reality; they're mere concatenations of words that follow the syntactic rules of propositions. Assertions about truth and possibility (or their absence) are about knowledge. If a statement is not knowledge, it is a category mistake to even ask if the statement is true or possible; it is the same sort of error as asking if a concept has polkadots. So, before wondering if a statement is possible, you must first know that the statement is some kind of knowledge. Knowledge is the product of integrations of percepts. A statement that does not derive from percepts is not knowledge. Now, we have the notion of "the matrix" from science fiction (and earlier), but no percepts from which one might derive the possibility that such a thing is more than fiction. Without that, it is simply an error to ask if "the matrix" is possible. "But that's not satisfying!" Awww. Poor baby.

"The moral is the practical" and, conversely, what is not practical is not moral. What cannot be done in practice cannot be required in principle.

Not necessarily. Responsibility depends on a mental state, not on physical accident. If the car rolled because you were negligent or deliberately set it in motion, you are responsible. But not if, say, the brakes failed due to a manufacturing defect (in a new car) or because someone else disengaged the brakes. Note also that "mixing labor with land" is not what makes ownership of or responsibility for land, but that's not a discussion I want to spend time on right now.

I'm not going to debate America's military; I'm too busy. I will note, however, that rational people can disagree over whether a particular entity is a threat.