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Veritas

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Posts posted by Veritas

  1. I ousted this over on Harry Binswanger’s board to get a critique of this response that I have written to my friend. Was curious what Objectivists here think about this response. Below, I will summarize what Mr. Binswanger said in reply. To see his actual post you will have to sign up at his website, which I highly recommend. 

     

    A conflict of rights?

    I wrote this as a response to a friend. I am wanting to know if my response is coherent or flawed.

    There is no conflict between the immigrant and the taxpayer.

    One man is paying taxes that go towards welfare. Immigrants are coming over, which allows certain policies to drive up the cost of taxes paid to accommodate the potential need for the added members that would come from immigrants coming over and receiving welfare. The man paying taxes has the right to keep his property, in this case his money, yet the immigrant has the right to his freedom, that is, the ability to go where his work is in demand and where he can commence in voluntary trade. In this case the immigrant does not want to be a part of the welfare system. He is a dreamer and wants to create his own wealth. Yet, he is part of a group that by coming over increases the taxes that are imposed upon the man who opposes the welfare tax.

    In this case, it is my contention that there is no infringement upon the taxpayers’ rights due to the immigrant who wants to come and trade. However, there is an infringement of rights that directly come from the state that is taking your money without regard to your life.

    The ends (in this case keeping taxes low) do not justify the means (overriding the right to a person’s life). Paying more in welfare tax is not caused by immigration. Paying more taxes is caused by the idea that man must be supported by the collective in order to live. This is furthermore supported by the idea that taking someone else’s money through taxation is justified because it is good that we all share in our wealth to make a better society. Both of these ideas are contradictory, irrational, and evil.

    The solution is not to maintain your rights by violating the rights of someone else. This is a contradiction and is sanctioning the principle that the ends justify the means, as well as the principle that one can have one’s cake and eat it too. You do not have the right to property at the expense of another person’s right to freedom and a person does not have the right to freedom at the expense of your right to property.

    The problem in this case is the arbiter of means. Let’s reverse this role. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

    What if every immigrant were taxed every time a person obtained property. Let’s say that the justification is that property is so expensive that in order to obtain it, you need a bit of stimulus from the collective wealth of immigrants. However, the property is substandard and can barely be said to raise a flourishing family.

    The problem is that the more people who want property, the more the immigrants will have to be taxed in order to support the growing demand to have property. What if most property owners believe that this is a great idea? They are ok to live in substandard property and they live off the support of the immigrants. However, you come along and are a contractor with the ability to have the property well above the standard property allotted apart from the assistance of the immigrant stimulus. You want to exercise your right to your own property that you earn by the work of your hand.

    The immigrant, though, as more and more people are ok with substandard property, gets upset because as the demand for property increases, so does the tax upon the immigrants. They insist that you are not allowed to obtain property at all, not even substandard property, because they have reached their limit with the amount that is already coming out of their taxes. They insist that you are part of the group that is ok living off of the stimulus and will only add to the problem.

    In this case it would seem that you will note that your right to your property is not one that is given to you, but is derived from your existence as a human being and that no one should be able to stop you from doing what you have the right to do simply because of the destructive policies of the group that imposes the taxes.

    The solution cannot ever be rights at the expense of rights. The fight must happen with those imposing the polices and those that are directly taking away your rights.

    Secondarily, if this is the fight that you want to make (however irrational it might be), it would be better aimed at children being born and going into the public school system. The more children the greater need for more eduction taxes. Education taxation is greater than welfare taxation so if one were to want to act in accordance with one’s idea, you would be better off stopping children from going to school than the immigrant from entering into the States, since a higher percentage of your state tax goes towards eduction over taxes that come from welfare. In this case you might begin to look at the womb as the border and the public school system as the land by which the child will embark upon. In this case it would make more sense, according to this type of thinking, to ban all children wanting to enter this public school system through the womb and stop them before your education taxes are raised even higher that they were before.  

    However, this is irrational and we must return and fight the fight where the battle is actually happening. We must oppose those who are the initiators of force and not those who want to live their life.

     

    This is my summary of his response to me. He used examples to strengthen his post.  

     

    The two points then from your response are, 

    1. The immigrants actually produce more than what they pay in, furthermore, they not only produce more but by the very nature of the mindset of the producer and the parasite they will produce more.

    2. One shouldn’t look at taxes as growing larger or lesser due to any specific demand, rather look at it as a large withdrawal from the American people to go towards whatever fancies the political whim at any given time, driven by the need for votes. 

  2. 7 hours ago, SpookyKitty said:

    This is a contradiction. There is always some property that some thing has from which we can deduce that another thing has it too.

    Proof:

    Let g be "God" and let u be "universe". Let P be any property.

    First, suppose that "P(g) or not P(g)". Then, by the law of excluded middle we have,

    "P(u) or not P(u)".

    By implication introduction this gives,

    "if 'P(g) or not P(g)', then 'P(u) or not P(u)'".

    Now, let the property Q(x) be defined as "P(x) or not P(x)". We now derive,

    "if Q(g), then Q(u)".

    The proof of the converse is left as an exercise to the reader.

     

     

     

     

    I don’t see how it could follow “if P(g) or not P(g)n then P(u) or not P(u)”.

    I am arguing that in order for God to “create” U then (u) must be a part of God in some manner, but since (u) is not a part of God in any manner then U could not be from God, it must be necessity be eternal. It is a fact that in in order for there to be existence it must have identity. Existence has identity and that identity is the universe. The universe is what has always exists The form might have changed over time but not its existence. 

  3. On 2/22/2020 at 1:44 PM, Eiuol said:

    All you showed is that god is not made of matter. The idea of creation (to a Christian) is that god created the physical universe, not that he created existence. Existence is eternal, it doesn't need to be created because it always existed. This is the Objectivist position. The difference is just the demand for a sentient being. 

     

    I am confused now as to where what I was showing could be reduced to showing that God was not made of matter? I suppose after considering this further what I have concluded is that this type of response that I have made above is not necessary. My goal was to show that the implications of “something can’t come from nothing” is that God could not have created the physical universe because in order to do that God would not be able to be any part of what the universe is. Since God by definition is something or that all that the universe is then it is a contradiction to say that he created it. 

    It is all a contradiction. Which actually makes the claim incoherent. That was my point. 

  4. 12 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

    Why not? You're dealing with an omnipotent being. Of course he could create himself and everything else from nothing. He can do anything. You are beginning from a semi-logical context trying to inject a bit of common sense into a concept of god. If you're going to do that, you might as well just define god as a figment of the imagination and go watch some TV instead of struggling with your formulations.

    Well, I am trying to to show the absurdity of the claim, "God created the universe". Really, I am trying to show that nothing created the universe, that it has always been by necessity. I guess the error is trying to show that by adding a necessary component (the concept of God) to refute it doesn't make much sense? Is that what you are getting at?  

  5. On 2/19/2020 at 1:19 PM, MisterSwig said:

    You can't establish that God is not something. You begin by labelling the universe as "something," arbitrarily denying God the same undefined label. God is indeed something. It is an idea. It is a word. And it is these things self-evidently.

    Also, you couldn't deny that God is something by giving a materialistic definition for "something," because then the universe would not fit your definition. The universe is not a material object. It is an idea, word, similar to God. It is a collective noun referring to the group of everything that exists, including ideas in people's heads.

    I am contrasting the universe from God because they cannot be the same from a classical definition. God is what "created" everything so by definition cannot have in his own "nature" what isn't created yet. He is "Spirit" (whatever that means) and what he created is the material universe by definition. The material universe is the "something".

    I am not sure why you say that the universe being a collective noun means that it is not a collective noun referring to a matter. Ideas, words, etc are emergent properties of matter. Matter is a primary. 

  6. On 2/19/2020 at 12:55 PM, William O said:

    Your disproof reminds me of Parmenides. Respectfully, though, I think a more "Objectivist" approach would be to start by asking why you're trying to disprove something that there is no reason to believe in the first place.

    I would definitely agree with that concerning an "Objectivist" approach and I can appreciate the veracity of "the burden of proof principle". Someone asked me to take a "rationalistic" approach to the argument so I did this intentionally. Just was wanting to see if it works under scrutiny. :-)

  7. Can anyone here tell me if my formulation follows? I think it is air tight, but I want an outsiders perspective. 

     

    God did not create the universe

    Here are two difference and separate classifications of which by definition do not overlap or entail any attribute of the other.

    God = ( -P)
    Universe = (P)

    That the universe exist is self evident. Any part of the universe or all of the universe can both be referred to as “something”.

    Let’s let “something” = S, which is equal to P since the universe is self evidently something.

    Both P and S are logically the same. It can then be said that P = S or S = P

    Anything that is not S is “nothing” Nothing contains no attributes of  something. Let’s call nothing N.

    It follows then that N must not be P or S. So it can be said that N is the same as -P or -S.

    It is self evident that something can never come from nothing. In other words nothing cannot logically be the cause of something. From the above we see that “nothing” is the same as -P and “something” is the same as P.

    It therefore follows that since it is a fact that P exists that it could not have come from -P

    If God is something other than the universe in every quality and attribute then it stands to reason God could not have been the cause of anything that exists.

    It follows further that for anything to exist it must have within itself that attribute of P and never -P

    P must have always been and -P is inconsequential to the existence of -P

    Therefore God could not have created the universe. (P = -P)

     

  8. 8 hours ago, Eric D said:

    "You are concluding then that in this sense that matter could be a standard for value equal to a strong nuclear force equal to life and that if life could be said to be the standard then any of the above mentioned (matter or strong nuclear force) could be said to the the standard as well.  From this you might also ask why not just say “existence is the standard of value”.

    "I want to make sure I completely understand what you are saying before I respond.

    "Is this correct?"

    Hi Veritas, it's very close, but not precisely right.

    I'm not saying that matter or etc. could be the standard of value, but that as far as the reasoning goes (as I understand it), we have just as much reason to conclude that it's matter or etc. that is the standard of value as we do to conclude that it's life. So the claim is that life is a necessary condition for value, and that this claim - life's being a necessary condition for value - is somehow relevant to life's being the standard of value. My point was that there are plenty of necessary conditions of value, and so there's no reason to pick this one necessary condition - life - over the others. That is - and this is important - there's no reason given by the argument (viz. the argument from life's being a necessary condition of value to its being the standard of value). Now of course we could come in and then, post hoc, adduce all sorts of reasons to conclude that it's life that is the standard of value, and not any of the other sundry necessary conditions. But then it's not at all clear what argumentative work identifying life as a necessary condition of value did to move the reasoning closer to the conclusion that life is the standard of value.

    Ok, so in terms of understanding you I need to retain that you point is the “reasoning” from A to B is the issue. Wouldn’t the correlating reason over and above x,y,z be understood in the meaning behind the words used, such as, life, standard, etc,.

    There is a lot of reading that digs deeper. Greg Salmieri has some entries in “Blackwells Companions to Philosophy”. I hope you continue in this route to further refine your inquiries. Although, I also understand that people here who endorse her philosophy gives quick access to a response. I would like to be able to fill that role as well as notice the gaps in my own understanding. But, there are great resources if you find value in digging any deeper outside of this forum or having exhausted the replies by others here.

    Maybe instead of doing textual criticism on what she said in VOS we can just start here. 

    1. I exist

    2. In order for me to exist to be meaningful I have to exist in a particular way (law of identity)

    3. My particular existence is subject to my particular identity, which is a living organism.

    4. Me as a human living organism cannot live without taking particular actions, which are dictated by my particular identity.

    5. I need an ultimate guide to continue to exist as a human organism. The guide is morality.  Its why we need morality at all. Otherwise whats the point? 

    6. Morality as it applies to me is a guide for looking at what I am and what I should do. 

    7 The most fundamental choice I have to decide is to live or to die.

    8. The standard that I have to make that particular choice is an understanding that “mans life”, which would include me requires life giving values (food, shelter, etcs,.) and the method for discovering those values is my mind. It is the only method. My mind learning reality (the identity of everything) and a specific application of what I discover to my unique existence as a human organism.

     

    Also, what are you philosophical leanings? You mentioned Kant (nemisis ;-)). Are you sympathetic to his approach to morality?

     

     

  9. 9 minutes ago, Eric D said:

    "Eric, I suppose I do not understand that objection per se. What would be the “host of additional necessary conditions of valuing”? Life is the fundamental  condition."

    I'll try to make my point clearer.

    First, note that the relation 'is a necessary condition of' is transitive. That is, if A is a necessary condition of B, and B is a necessary condition of C, then A is a necessary condition of C.

    Second, let's grant that life, or being alive, is a necessary condition of value, or of valuing. It follows, via the transitivity of the necessary condition relation, that anything that's a necessary condition of life is also a necessary condition of value. And life has a host of necessary conditions, e.g. the value of the strong nuclear force. But then the value of the strong nuclear force is as much a necessary condition of value as life is, and it's not clear why one necessary condition, viz. life, is the standard of value while the other, viz. the value of the strong nuclear force, is not. 

    N.b. this is an objection, not a refutation; that is, I'm just pointing out that the fact that life is a necessary condition of value does little to no work to establish that life is the standard of value, given the sundry other necessary conditions of value that we could invoke.

    Does that make the objection clearer?

    I think I see your reasoning here.  Here are some statements that could be made.

    1. A strong nuclear force is a fundamental for binding together matter.

    2. Matter is required for life to exist.

    3.  Matter is a necessary condition to life

    You are concluding then that in this sense that matter could be a standard for value equal to a strong nuclear force equal to life and that if life could be said to be the standard then any of the above mentioned (matter or strong nuclear force) could be said to the the standard as well.  From this you might also ask why not just say “existence is the standard of value”.

    I want to make sure I completely understand what you are saying before I respond.

    Is this correct?

  10. 5 hours ago, Eric D said:

    So here's my question: what work does this do in the argument for the conclusion that life is the standard of value? At most, as far as I can tell, it shows that life is a necessary condition of value (or, that being alive is a necessary condition of valuing). But there are a host of additional necessary conditions of valuing, and none of them are the standard of value. So precisely what work does this bit of Rand's argument do to help establish the conclusion that life is the standard of value?

    Eric, I suppose I do not understand that objection per se. What would be the “host of additional necessary conditions of valuing”? Life is the fundamental  condition. Conceptually, in order to understand any condition we must understand that life is the basis and perquisite for any other condition to exist. What can exist without life? Life (fundamentally speaking) is what gives rise to the need for values at all. 

    What would be something equal to or greater conceptually than the concept of life that one could derive the concept of value from?

  11. 3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

    Veritas: You didn't attribute the quotation in your OP. 

    Oh sorry, this original quote was from a Facebook conversation that I started having with someone that is a bit critical of Ayn Rand view of ethics. I asked him to come over here to make the conversation easier and flow better. 

  12. 3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

    f one takes "my life" to be the standard of value, one devolves eventually to holding a subjective 'standard' (no standard at all). One needs be careful to not mistake this, "man's life" for an individual, concrete, 'man's life'. The latter is one's own supreme value - but the first is the standard of value. 

    Nowhere is it as crucial in Objectivism to get right, with clarity, as this moral code of rational selfishness, imo. 

    I definitely agree with this. My life shouldn’t be taken as “my life” in a subjective way as if it something other than “the life” that I am living. I see how in talking with people that this gets taken incorrectly. 

  13. 4 hours ago, Eric D said:

    "I am not sure I am following your connection that if we have a choice “and it is reason based” that the choice cannot be based on life being the standard. "

    I'll try to clarify that remark. You wrote, ""In other words my life gives rise to the fact that I have to make choices." But that's not quite right. It's not the mere fact that I'm alive - my life - that 'gives rise to the fact that I have to make choices', but, if anything, the fact that I choose to remain alive. Now that choice is either based on some rational considerations, or it is not. If it is based on rational considerations, then those considerations cannot include 'life as the standard of value'. For the alternative at this point is, to remain alive or not? And if I've not yet chosen to remain alive - if I'm deliberating about whether to remain alive - then 'life' cannot be the standard to which I'm appealing, but some other rational considerations must be at work here.
     

    The choice to remain alive as a child is not based on anything more than mere desire. How to stay alive is where "rationality" comes in.  "Rationality" is what we use to make sure that our actions are in accordance with "Reality"  for flourishing. Children do not deliberate or make arguments for life. They desire to live because of  values that they in-explicitly choose. 

    Also we might be using the term "Standard" differently here. It is not life qua life that is the standard (although, I think we agree with this).

    Does it follow that the act of deliberating means that "(my)life" cannot be the standard but some antecedent that is "causing the deliberation?

    No. The act of deliberating simply points to me having some sense of volition. What I would deliberate (later in life) explicitly is how I am going to live and what value I will choose to do so. 

     

  14. Quote

    Herb Torres 

    I think we can think of it like this.. 

    Imagine a world where human memory recall is only meant to produce survival reflexes, not a worldview. In that world, every time one would go to recall our axioms, there would be no reason to suspect that memory had not duped us, so to speak. In this way, it might be the case that our evolved psychology requires thought in terms of axioms even though those axioms are mere survival conducive categories, not justified beliefs about the world.

    Another example. Suppose the world is just empty, something like Nargarjuna's universe, where everything is evanescent, without a core essence. Consciousness and identity are trivial in that world because nothing possesses a mind as we Westerners think of it. It could be granted, for the sake of skepticism, that we cannot help but *think* in those categories (conceptual necessity), but that by itself is not enough to say that said categories count as knowledge about the world.

    Now consider this point of view and those questions from a Christian perspective. Of course we agree to play that game. But for us, those questions about the world - universality, exclusivity, knowledge, and so forth - are answerable because our argument does not stop at the conceptual level. We both agree you can't deny those so-called axioms. The difference is that the randians “you” only reason for doing so is an appeal to his own psychology. Which is where we depart.

    Last point, in terms of skepticism.. the question is not that we don’t have knowledge. I take us both to knowledge. The question is for example, I’m describing a square like it has four sides, it can’t be a triangle, but you’re saying no a square can be a triangle. Can you explain what it would mean to say I have a reason to believe this but that doesn’t entail that it’s not not impossible for me to have a reason to believe it. Warrant is the question. 

    Sorry for the length.. hard to shorten these convos lol.

    A few questions to clarify,

    In your first paragraph you mention a wold were memory recall is only meant for survival. This is to some degree the world we live in for most species who act instinctually or simply by memory  (sensory and or perceptual level). But, then you speak of “us” who are able to operate on a conceptual level. Axioms are not just categories that we have evolved to think of for survival. Axioms fundmental to existence whether we think of them or not.

     Can you clarify a world world that is “Empty” and where there is no consciousness? I can imagine a world with no consciousness but not a world with no “identity”. To exist is to have identity. Also can you clarify what you mean by we could “think” in a world where there is no consciousness? 

  15. Quote

    "What it means for “my life” to be the standard of value is that “my life” is the precondition for values at all."

    I don't think that follows. For example, another precondition for 'values at all' is that the strong nuclear force have the value it has. Without it, there would be no atoms, and without atoms, no life as we know it. Yet the strong nuclear force, a precondition of values at all (as much as life is), is not the standard of value, life is. Objectivists have to do far more work than appeal to life as a precondition of value to get to the conclusion that life is the standard of value.

    "In other words my life gives rise to the fact that I have to make choices. If my life did not require me to make choices then it would not be the standard for morality at all."

    But your life isn't what requires you to make choices; rather, at best the *choice* to live is what requires you to make choices. But then the choice to live, if it's reason-based, cannot be based on life as its standard, since life, as we're using the term here, hasn't entered the picture yet. Does that make sense?

    Ok, I thought it would be easier to continue the conversation in here and it will be easy to keep track of. 

    Right, it is by being alive that I have a reason to choose to continue to maintain being alive or not. 

    I am not sure I am following your connection that if we have a choice “and it is reason based” that the choice cannot be based on life being the standard. It is not life in general it is ‘my” life. What makes possible the ability to make a choice at all is that there is existence. 

    So as it is, because existence is real and I am something that exists in a particular way (conscious and volitional) in order to stay that way my life specifically is the standard for what choices I make. If I wasn’t alive or there was no one alive there would be no standard for morality at all. There is no standard for morality for a tree. Only volitional beings have the need for morality.

  16. Ayn Rand said in ITOR in regards to concepts

    “The ability to regard entities as units is mans distinctive method of cognition”

    Isn’t this what a gazelle is doing when it only gets afraid of the Lion that is nearby and not the elephant or the ground hog? Isn’t it separating in its mind somehow the difference between the group lions? Isn’t it distinguishing particulars amongst the animal existents?

  17. Existence is independent of consciousness. I cannot think, "tree move" and it succumb to my wishes. But, what it is it that makes my hand move? It cannot be my thoughts can it? Thoughts have no influence over matter. What is it that makes my hand move? How is it that the material that makes me me connect to my mind in a way that is different that my mind being connected to the tree? Is it simply because my consciousness it part of my identity? 

    What am I missing?

  18. 19 hours ago, P@NTH3ON said:

    What about the method of Proof By Contradiction?  Assuming the opposite of a proposition is true and then demonstrating that such an assumption leads to a contradiction is a way to prove a negative. 

    @StrictlyLogical I agree with you that any claim is made has to be based on SOME evidence.  And that is exactly why whenever anyone makes any meaningful claim they are at the very least implicitly making an assertion that is NOT ARBITRARY on some level.  And in those cases, if an any assertion made either implicitly or explicitly implies a contradiction, the claim can be dismissed as FALSE.  Take for example your statement about the fact that a nonexistent thing CANNOT leave behind any evidence.  How did you know that?  What evidence do you have to support that claim that it CANNOT leave behind any evidence?  You know because the opposite proposition implies a contradiction. 

    I think that one can prove a negative in certain circumstances, but it has to be something that pertains to reality. One cannot prove a negative statement about something that is arbitrary and I think that is what they were getting at. For example I can prove that Karl is not in the room by simply opening up the room and seeing that Karl is not there. But Karl is at least a possible person and not arbitrary. The idea of God (strictly the miracle working god) is incoherent (rationally speaking) and arbitrary in regards to reality. 

  19. On 5/30/2019 at 4:14 PM, EC said:

    You posted this one HBL too? I saw this there yesterday and had clicked on it because it's exactly what I've been thinking on the subject lately, also. I've been thinking about it because of the non-stop irrational questions I've been seeing on god and religion on Quora lately.

    One would have to explain by what means and laws of physics and reality a god would exploit to violate all the other laws of physics for it to exist. As a "god" that couldn't violate any of the known laws of physics and reality could not be really defined as an actual god. "God magic" would have to be fully explainable and defined for an actual "god" to exist.

    The above is more of a thought experiment on the subject which can be rationally dismissed prior to even getting that far because of such a concept being both arbitrary and counter to the Primacy of Existence to begin with.

    Right, one would have to prove that the Law of Identity is false and then establish a new system of reality in order to prove an existence that can exist with no identity, which is quite arbitrary. 

  20. I wanted to add this to the discussion at hand as it adds to the very scope of what I presented initially, what was commented on, and how I conclude the matter.

     

    Quited from AR Lexicon

    Arbitrary

    “Arbitrary” means a claim put forth in the absence of evidence of any sort, perceptual or conceptual; its basis is neither direct observation nor any kind of theoretical argument. [An arbitrary idea is] a sheer assertion with no attempt to validate it or connect it to reality.

    If a man asserts such an idea, whether he does so by error or ignorance or corruption, his idea is thereby epistemologically invalidated. It has no relation to reality or to human cognition.

    Remember that man’s consciousness is not automatic, and not automatically correct. So if man is to be able to claim any proposition as true, or even as possible, he must follow definite epistemological rules, rules designed to guide his mental processes and keep his conclusions in correspondence to reality. In sum, if man is to achieve knowledge, he must adhere to objective validating methods—i.e., he must shun the arbitrary . . . .

    Since an arbitrary statement has no connection to man’s means of knowledge or his grasp of reality, cognitively speaking such a statement must be treated as though nothing had been said.

    Let me elaborate this point. An arbitrary claim has no cognitive status whatever. According to Objectivism, such a claim is not to be regarded as true or as false. If it is arbitrary, it is entitled to no epistemological assessment at all; it is simply to be dismissed as though it hadn’t come up . . . . The truth is established by reference to a body of evidence and within a context; the false is pronounced false because it contradicts the evidence. The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence, facts, or context. It is the human equivalent of [noises produced by] a parrot . . . sounds without any tie to reality, without content or significance.

    In a sense, therefore, the arbitrary is even worse than the false. The false at least has a relation (albeit a negative one) to reality; it has reached the field of human cognition, although it represents an error—but in that sense it is closer to reality than the brazenly arbitrary.

    I want to note here parenthetically that the words expressing an arbitrary claim may perhaps be judged as true or false in some other cognitive context (if and when they are no longer put forth as arbitrary), but this is irrelevant to the present issue, because it changes the epistemological situation. For instance, if a savage utters “Two plus two equals four” as a memorized lesson which he doesn’t understand or see any reason for, then in that context it is arbitrary and the savage did not utter truth or falsehood (it’s just like the parrot example). In this sort of situation, the utterance is only sounds; in a cognitive context, when the speaker does know the meaning and the reasons, the same sounds may be used to utter a true proposition. It is inexact to describe this situation by saying, “The same idea is arbitrary in one case and true in another.” The exact description would be: in the one case the verbiage does not express an idea at all, it is merely noise unconnected to reality; to the rational man, the words do express an idea: they are conceptual symbols denoting facts.

    It is not your responsibility to refute someone’s arbitrary assertion—to try to find or imagine arguments that will show that his assertion is false. It is a fundamental error on your part even to try to do this. The rational procedure in regard to an arbitrary assertion is to dismiss it out of hand, merely identifying it as arbitrary, and as such inadmissible and undiscussable.

    The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series

    Leonard Peikoff,
    The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 6

  21. 20 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

    I'll try a different approach. In the original post, your example of a miracle is turning water into wine. To me, this means that in one moment you have a cup of water, and in the next moment, by some miracle, that cup contains wine. Never do you have a cup filled with both water and wine at the same time. Before the change, there is only water. And after the change, there is only wine. Yet, a few sentences later, you say:

    It seems that you're talking about a different miracle. The first turns water into wine. The second turns water into waterwine, where the cup is filled with both water and wine at the same time.

    So which miracle do you mean? Because you seem to be using the second to invalidate the first. But nobody actually argues for the second.

    Ok. I see. I see the difference you pointed out. I am referring to the first, water and then only wine. 

  22. 4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

    There is a difference between a logical only evaluation of ideas as amongst themselves and an evaluation of an idea all the way down to percepts.  This difference between evaluation of “incoherent” and “arbitrary” is what you asked me to explore.

    As for the issue of proving God doesn’t exist, disagreement depends on whether you see that you cannot prove the non existence of an arbitrarily claimed thing, and that the onus is on he who asserts the positive.

    Ok. I see. So what you are saying is coherence simply applies to arguments in and of themselves and arbitrary has to do with what can  ultimately be perceived?

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