Betsy

Please don't psychologize. The reason I selectively quoted was to focus on the essential principles from "How to Judge a Political Candidate" that are applicable to voting today. That essay was not a commentary simply on Goldwater. Ayn Rand always spoke in principles even when discussing concretes. Observe that her essay is titled "How to Judge a Political Candidate" and NOT "How to Judge Barry Goldwater." Certainly. Goldwater was a Christian, not an Objectivist, and an example of what Ayn Rand meant by someone who "advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons." Ayn Rand also supported Gerald Ford. Ford was quite religious (here) and opposed abortion rights (here). She opposed Reagan because she saw him bringing religion into politics. Observe, however, that a few paragraphs later she wrote Her final statement was that if a religious conservative she despised were running against a leftist like McGovern or Kennedy (or, perhaps, someone farther to the left than Kennedy like Kerry), she would find it necessary to vote for the religious conservative! See what I just wrote.

I mean that we cannot know for sure -- i.e with the same certainty that we have about our own minds -- when we evaluate the minds of others. Their introspections, if available and reliable, can provide the necessary data. While not 100% reliable, statements like that are pretty close to it. The reason why is that most people tell lies to gain a value or prevent a disvalue. When they make statements or confessions adverse to their own interests or where they have nothing to gain by making the statement, like the one I made up, such statements tend to be very reliable. It is the report of an introspection because the person is directly perceiving something in his own consciousness (introspecting) and reporting it ("I refuse to look at the facts because ..."). No, it is that necessarily incomplete knowledge can still result in a conclusive moral evaluation. We can have conclusive moral evaluations of others, but the standard when judging people is different from the one we use judging physical phenomena. With physical phenomena, conclusive evidence consists of showing a necessary causal connection and explaining why any other conclusion would contradict the nature of the thing. When we judge people, conclusive evidence is simply "beyond a reasonable doubt." That's the best we can do. When it comes to another person's past and current actions our knowledge is necessarily incomplete because we can't read minds. When it comes to his future actions it is incomplete because we can't read minds AND he has free will.

I didn't? I gave the link to the entire article so anyone can see the entire context. What do you think I omitted that's relevant? Yes, I am quoting Ayn Rand again, maybe for the fourth time. What's wrong with that? There is an insinuation that I did something improper in quoting Ayn Rand, but unless the actual impropriety is named, this is nothing more than an arbitrary accusation. If that is true, how do you reconcile Ayn Rand recommending voting for an individual candidate based on his individual merits with That sure looks like a contradiction to me. That is a very good idea.

That's wonderful news. I am looking forward to reading your essay.

Can I take it that you disagree with the following?

The original context was someone secretly stealing money from a business owner. A certain amount of personal use of business supplies or business time for personal matters is generally considered OK and even useful rather than stealing. It depends on whether the visits were business-related entertainment expenses. If he was charging personal entertainment to the business, I would deduct the cost from his pay and warn him never to do it again. If he did it or anything like that after the warning, I'd fire him. I have had a long and successful career as a software consultant and project manager for some of America's largest corporations. Making money is a goal -- and I have made quite a bit -- but the noble end of making money does not justify using or sanctioning immoral means.

I really don't have enough information know whether Bush meant it when he gave his "Axis of Evil" speech. I suspect it was written for him by a speechwriter who understood the situation far better than the President and Bush delivered it because it probably made him feel good to say the words. Based on how I have seen Bush deal with abstract ideas and principles in other contexts, I have serious doubts that he really understood what he was saying. Does that answer your question?

How so? I didn't say that. My position is that the bureaucrats and academics are, in fact, advocating literal socialism and moving in the direction of more and more government control of our lives regardless of what they call it, whether they will admit it, and whether or not they are aware of what they are doing. The only thing that has changed in the past fifty years is than we have moved further down the road to full government control. In addition, the road is now littered with additional junk like multiculturalism, pacifism, and anti-Americanism. ... which leads to .... (let's abstract a little) Isn't "health care" really doctors, nurses, drug companies, hospitals, etc. -- the means by which we produce the products and services to maintain our health? Yes! And radio talk shows, and how we raise our children, and ... Maybe not today, but after she has control of health care and has instituted the Fairness Doctrine, it just might be the next step. Do you think someone like Hilary would ever say, "Now I'll stop. I have enough power?"

My position is that certainty is totally epistemological. I use the term "certainty" or "absolute certainty" to describe direct sense perception, axiomatic truths, and causal explanations that can be shown to reduce to sense perception and logical inference (using axiomatic truths). I use "degrees of certainty," "possibilty," and "probability" to describe the epistemological status of knowledge -- but knowledge that is not absolutely certain.

To clarify, since this seems to be the issue, I am talking about absolute certainty, the truck-like certainty of sense-perception and the axiomatic, self-evident certainty of the Law of Identity. I call anything else "probability" (rather than speak of "degrees of certainty") to avoid confusion with absolute certainty. It is possible to have a great deal of knowledge about others and to make moral assessments and predictions about their future actions that are highly or extremely probable. These assessments and predictions of others are made by inference, and can never have the truck-like certainty that only direct awareness (in this case introspection) can provide.

NO! I meant it in response to the quoted text immediately preceding my comment which was If you are going to criticize my ideas, please have the decency to take issue with what I actually wrote and not some mangled version you created by attaching my response from one statement to another statement where is doesn't belong. The idea that it is impossible to be certain about others is something I never said, do not believe, and would not defend. I am not "uncertain" and not for the above "reasons." To reiterate my actual position: A person can be directly, introspectively aware of, and in causal control, of his own consciousness. He cannot read minds or be directly aware of anyone else's consciousness but must infer the content, state, and operations of another's consciousness from their statements and actions. As a result, he cannot be as certain about another's consciousness as he can be of his own. In addition, the other person has free will and can choose to change and make different choices in the future than he did in the past. This is what can make accurately predicting the future actions of others so difficult -- but not impossible.

It was split from a previous thread by a moderator, not me. See the first post. Then the issue is over how well you can know and predict another person's behavior. I agree that when you know someone very well, you can predict their behavior rather well, but you can never have the same degree of certainty about another person's future actions as you can about your own. The reason why is rather obvious: you are in control and can be aware of your own mind, but not control or read the minds of others. Is the need for or depth of moral judgement a matter of predictability or is it a matter of something more essental: the impact that person might have on your life? The hairstylist's customers might end up having a bad hair day, but her employer could end up losing a lot of money or his entire business. Really? I would fire them as soon as I found out they were stealing from me. Not me. I am selfishly evaluating whether they are good for me or bad for me using the moral standards Ayn Rand taught me. It has helped me successfully separate the people I can trust from the ones I can't and the people who have values to offer me from the ones who don't or who threaten my values.

I am doing no such thing. I agree. Why not? If a person seems to be rational today, it is extremely unlikely that tomorrow they will become an evading second hander -- but it is possible. Stadler and Branden come to mind. Yes we can and we jolly well ought to be. That silly position is the exact opposite of mine. I'm not the one doing the implying here.

Ayn Rand often endorsed candidates who were religious. If they had the right political principles, it didn't matter to her if they held them for the wrong (i.e., religious) metaphysical reasons.

The "they" are the aforementioned hard to dislodge people in government and academia. Note that I did not say they advocate explicit socialism -- in fact, I said many dare not name what they advocate. I said they advocate literal socialism. As evidence that they really want full socialism and not just a mixed economy or a "social safety net," observe that no matter how many laws, regulations, and taxes the they get, it is never enough. They always want more.

That is the opposite of my real view. In fact, here's what I did say: Judging, given the evidence we do have, as carefully and as rationally as we can, is what objective moral judgment is all about. As Ayn Rand indicates, even when a person is ruthlessly objective and rational it can be very difficult to apply abstract moral principles when it involves the moral character of another person. It isn't. You presume wrong. (And that's the kind of presumption that can lead to non-objective judgments.) In fact, as I said, we can judge "whether their actions and statements are (1) true or false and (2) good for us or bad for us" and, as Ayn Rand indicated, the way we evaluate a person's actions and statements is by reference to an abstract moral principle or standard. I never said anything about any "last refuge." This and all that follows is an outrageous, gross misrepresentation of my actual position along with an incredible amount of unsupported negative insinuations and wild speculation. OK "Quinn Wyndham-Price," whoever you really are. You are obviously not a friend of mine. The board information says that you joined today and this is your first post. Did you come here just to dump on me? It sure looks like it. Well it won't work. I am damn proud of my forty-five year very public history and my consistent track record in support of facts, values, Objectivism, and Ayn Rand. My real views are are well-known or available to anyone who cares to look, so any attempts to misrepresent my record and my views will backfire. Others have tried to get me in the past and they're all gone while I'm still here. I was able to out-fact, out-value, and out-virtue every single one of them.

That is not my point at all. There are many things we can be dead-bang, 100% certain of such as the nature of physical entities because all things in existence are strictly determined -- with one exception. That one exception is man who has free will. People are not rocks.

That makes no sense to me. Why can you count on them being honest because they are capable of choosing to be dishonest?

For almost all of them, whether they dare name it for what it is or not, that is their ultimate goal and they have been implementing it one step at a time. As an example, look at Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village. Her goal is for "society" (i.e., the goverment) to be responsible for raising children.

No, I don't, but some Objectivists are of the opinion that it is.

People have free will. That's true. He still has the freedom to make different choices at some time in the future. Because actions tend to become automatized into habits, past actions are pretty good predictors of future actions, but they are not infallible or 100% reliable predictors. It is not arbitrary, but a real possibility. An honest man has to choose to remain honest "in every hour and every issue." Does that mean that once you have consistent observations about the person over a long enough period of time, he no longer has free will and is now determined to remain honest?

I don't think so. Socialism, like any evil, can only win by default or with the sanction and the help of the good. Right now socialism is the default because not even religion has been able to dislodge it from government or academia. If socialism is on the ropes, the last thing we ought to be doing, in my opinion, is to sanction it and help it by voting for socialists.

In Ayn Rand's opinion and mine, collectivism is dead as an intellectual ideal. Unfortunately, individualism is yet to be reborn. That is why, politically, we still have a mixed economy with the socialistic part of the mix even stronger than it was in Ayn Rand's day.

Could you provide a reference, please, for Ayn Rand. As far as I know, she hasn't expressed an opinion on the culture since 1982.

Me too. Socialism is more of an established fact in our political system than religion. Most all of the existing taxes, regulations, and government agencies are promoting and enforcing socialism, not religion, and I don't see them drying up or disappearing any time soon. That's what Ayn Rand recommended: voting for individuals. See her essay "How to Judge a Political Candidate" in the March 1964 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter.