Richard_Halley

DeeVee, I agree that these people are, in some sense of the term, "mentally ill," so long as you are not intending this to mean that they do not have the freewill not to be. These people have a rational faculty, their "illness" is a choice not to use it.

Betsy: Thanks, I see now. Dondigitalia: An infant does have a conceptual faculty, as Stephen discribed. And DeeVee: Philosophy must identify what criteria must be met by an existant in order for it to be considered human. Science may only work to identify what meets that criteria, not decide the criteria itself.

Why? Of what value to ARI is the name/website/properties of TOC? Why not simply let them die in their own time? And what makes you think they would sell?

Firstly, I think an infant is a rational being. Perhaps it is not rational in the same sense as an adult is, but it has a conceptual faculty at birth. Would you agree with that? Dealing more directly with the topic at hand, I disagree because I see no reason why something which is not rational may be considered a human being. So, I ask you: By what moral basis may you say that something which may become rational is to be given any rights, and indeed rights on an equal level to that which is rational? Basically, for what reasons do you ascribe rights to something which has the potential to be a human being? What seperates a fetus from an infant, by this standard? Perhaps you are merely putting the words, "has the potential to develop into a rational being," where I put the words, "has a conceptual faculty," but intending the same meaning. If so, than I suggust you change your wording to mine (or something similar to it). Yours implys that anything which may eventually become rational (examples: sperm, egg, fetus, etc...) has rights. If not, than I implore you to answer the above questions, at which point I will be happy to tell you why I disagree (assuming I still do disagree).

You are, saying that potential for being a human being instills you with the same rights as actually being one. I disagree.

Your support for a Libertarian candidate is only immoral because it accomplishes nothing except to publicize anarchism. If your candidate had a chance to win an election, and was better than the other options, it would be a good idea to vote for him. But, alas, he does not, and a vote for him does nothing except add to the partys percentage of the vote (which they then use to advertize their party). That is why voting for Bush over Kerry is different from voting for Brown over Bush.

You do not perpetuate your own body by having children. You make a new body, which may have some similaritys to yours, but it is a different body nonetheless. Nor do you perpetuate your mind by having children. You make a new mind, to which you may teach some things which you know, but it is a different mind nonetheless. Having children may be of assistance in perpetuating your ideas, since you may teach your children things which you believe to be important, but it is not a way to perpetuate yourself. If you are planning on having children in order to do so, I suggust you reconsider, since you will likely become unplesent when you realize that your children are not you.

It should be noted that Ragnar is the real Robin Hood, the man who stole the taxes from the taxers and gave them back to their rightfull owners. It is only the Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, whom Ragnar condems. However, since "stealing" what belongs to you is not, in fact, stealing, it remains true that there is no such thing as a noble theif.

The more control crime has over an area, the less likely that there are honest people to report a crime, and the less likely that those honest people will be safe in doing so. So, the more crime there is, the more it becomes unlikely that any given crime will be reported.

This is not the issue at hand. The issue is the following: with Bush some protection from/action against terrorists, with Kerry you get none. If you do not vote, you are evaluating that these two--when summed with the other policies held by each candidate--are equals. The choice is between being robbed and life, or being robbed and death (or leaving the country). There is no other option, there is no none of the above. It is a betrayal of life not to make a stand for the first, as opposed to the second. Also, I think the situation is different from the one provided by CapFo, as the man with the gun is a different man from the one taking your wallet. What you really have is a choice between two men who will both take your wallet, one who will prevent you from being shot by a third man, and one who will not. Only if you pick Kerry. As pointed out above, Bush will try to stop the shooting. Now remove the third man (the one with the gun), and pretend one of your two candidates will take slightly less of the money in your wallet than the other. Just as not picking the one who will prevent you from being shot is a betrayal of your life, not picking the one who will take less is like betraying that extra bit of money, handing it over. The point here is, you only have two options (assuming you are not prepared to leave the country or go on strike a la Galt), if one is better than the other, it is immoral not to try to pick the better one. And, again, a vote says nothing except that you believe the candidate you voted for is better than the other option.

I agree with you, but find your description of the problem to be unclear. There is nothing wrong with filing lawsuits or supporting legislation, so long as the laws/legislation in question is moral. It is not that Sun competes using lawsuits and legislation that is the problem, but that they use immoral laws/legislation when doing so.

Based on this, I would guess that you already understand that Capitalism is the only moral system, but do not understand that this means that it is the only practical system. Read OPAR, as suggusted by Jason Fowler, it should (at least) give you a basis by which you may see why this is the case.

Yeah, but being a deist is not incompatible with that statement... And being a deist would make him not an atheist.

MinorityOfOne, I agree. However, I don't think you hit the most important point, so I would like to add that the Fairness Doctrine was a definable constant... the Libertarian party is not. When offering blanket support for the Fairness Doctrine, one knows exactly what one is offering support to. When offering blanket support to the Libertarian party, one is offering support to an unitentified goal. Not advisable... (This does not rule out your support for an individual candidate, though).

Aren't you ignoring the fact that Devers was standing in the doorway, therefore physically preventing the door from being closed.

Yes, but is this what is going on in a rap song? Not in most cases, usually the music and the lyrics are completly unrelated. In any case, you are correct, lyrics may be a good reason to like a song. They, however, may never be a good reason to like the music.

I thought Jefferson, along with many of the other founding fathers, had been a deist...

The lyrics count for nothing, musically. You may, of course, appreciate the poetry of a musician's lyrics, but they say nothing about and add nothing to the music itself.

You are being absurd... I said absolutly nothing even remotely similar to this. What I said was that nobody Objectivist is arguing that Israel is the justification for going into Iraq. I asked you, many times now, to read up on why we actually claim we should go into Iraq. Either you have not done so, or you are dileberatly putting up a straw-man. Either way, you would do better to stop arguing against Israel as the reason for the war, as no one is going to defend that reason.

Firstly ALL goods must be produced. If you show me something which you think does not, I will show you how it does. So, while the way one directly meets the basic requirements of survival is to consume goods, this is only possible AFTER those goods have been produced. This is a funny thing to say, considering that NEVER has there existed a society which did not have a mixture of the two. And, those anecdotes result in this conclusion: The freer the society, the more prosperous. One is to produce ones own means of survival. And besides, what do you mean "the environment required by trade," the only thing which "society" must provide is other people, who have things which you want. This, incidentally, is also a requirement of theft. Profitable to whom? By what standard? Not by any moral one.

Nobody here has stated that Israel is the reason for going into Iraq. If you had looked at the threads and articles which I have now mentioned many--was it 3 or 4?--times, you would know to quit suggusting it.

They did threaten us, in various ways which have already been descirbed on this thread, on other threads here, and in various Objectivist Op-Eds... As for imposing our will upon them, if that is how you describe ending a dictatorship in favor of a democracy, than yes, that is what we are there for. As for their treatment of "our boys"... well, thats not how my cousin, who is there, tells it. This is absurd, the hatred for America in fundemental Islam comes from the fact that we are productive, non-islamic, infidels. Israel is little more than an excuse. Furthermore, if Israel returned to the "green line" than tomarrow Hamas would demand they recede farther back, and farther back after that, etc... But even so, none of this is relevent, as Israel should not "return to the green line" merely because a bunch of wackos will blow them up otherwise, they should fight back, instead.

Not true, the basic requirments of survival may only be met by production. One may trade ones own product for someone else's, or one may forcably take someone elses product, but it is the production itself which allows for survival and prosperity, not the trading/stealing. And by the way, fraud is a kind of force, there need be no distinction between the two in this case.

"The Objectivist view on X is Y," may be translated to: "Objectivism, when applied to X, leads us to Y." So the claim is not actually about Objectivism itself, but about what we may infer by applying Objectivist principles to X. Does this answer your question about this sort of claim? If it doesn't I will try to word it better for you. It can't, and if Peikoff's lecture (which I haven't heard) does claim that, than, I would argue, it was a mistake. Yes, there is a connection to Objectivism, specifically, the work you speak of is based on--and presumably compatible with--Objectivism. This doesn't justify calling it Objectivism though, and I'm not sure exactly how you see this as an argument for doing so. Please clarify, if you still think that it is. Yes, you should integrate your new understanding with your previous concepts... but why call the new concept Objectivism? Why attribute it to Rand? Or perhaps, as Peikoff and Binswanger suggust, each individual discovery included in your "broader notion," should be called "an extention of Objectivism." You may freely claim, and argue for, thier compatibility with Objectivism, so long as you don't assert that they are Rand's ideas (by calling them "Objectivism"). As for your proper noun question, I would say that "Objectivism" refers to the philosophical ideas/system espoused by Ayn Rand. True, this is why we must sometimes argue about what her writing meant, and thus argue about what Objectivism is. It does not mean that every person's claims about what she meant are to be properly called Objectivism. I hope this answers--at least some of--your questions. If you would please point out which ones it dosen't and why, I would be happy to take another shot at it.

When you say this, you do so in ignorence of all the non-altruistic reasons to invade Iraq presented in this thread, other threads on this forum and Op-Ed's on the topic from ARI. If you are going to say something like that, you had better provide some evidence. And, yes, we should do it right, we should hit Iran--we should have already hit Iran in my opinion--we should hit Saudi Arabia and we should hit a number of other countrys in the middle east and elsewhere. However, all of this is not an argument against the Iraq war, so I don't see its relevence to this topic.