TheEgoist

This is a question of the possibility of knowledge and is therefore not the job of science to determine.

I remember Peikoff, I believe it was, saying that Rand gave it a go with marijuana use once, to see what it was like. She apparently hated it. Personally I find that if it's one drug that makes me a little bit stupider, it's alcohol. Weed can make you paranoid, but nothing dumbs me down like a few mixed drinks.

Post-modernists are not the only ones who think that existence is inferred, not directly known. There's a long tradition in philosophy of this, from the pre-Socratics all the way up present day analytic philosophers. Of course, as some already pointed out, this is an argument over the existence of conscious experience. There's less doubt about the transparency of conscious experience in modern philosophy, though it does exist.

The notion that a government can in any manner be objective in the salient sense is historically falsified by the American empire. That there is a centralized force to administer justice only means justice is even more corruptible, if you're to by the arguments for capitalism offered by many Objectivists. Beyond the moral issue, there is also the fact that there is no way for economic calculation of a monopoly to take place. Government is monopoly on force, so how do we determine how costly justice is? We submit it to a market place, but statists demand that justice not be a matter of market determination. Also, for the record, market anarchism does not start with Rothbard. The first in spirit market anarchist was Gustave de Molinari. Rothbard and other respected market anarchists usually admit to his being the first and most robust theory of private justice.

An update from an earlier post, I now smoke pretty regularly. Nausea is usually from a dizziness that can overwhelm first time smokers. I'd say coughing a lot contributes to that. I know if I have a hard coughing session, I'm very out of it for a little while after. From your description, it sounds like you smoked an indica. That gives you much more of a body high, and sometimes that's good and sometimes, especialyl for a first timer, it can't be overwhelming. I mainly smoke sativas, because they allow me to keep my wits about me while also still in that cozy weed head space.

I wanted Romney but only because I am spiteful of reddit liberals. Otherwise, I had no horse in this race, except a bunch of weed laws which all got voted for.

If he hasn't dropped dead from a heart attack by then. Vote nobody.

No. Would it be moral for someone to report a Jewish man to Nazis because they are getting in your way, even harming you?

The idea that Israel is treated differently under different presidents for the past 30 years is jsut silly. Obama is not anti-Israel. He isn't even neutral. He is pro-Israel. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have been elected or re-elected. (As I imagine he will be). I think the drone policies would have been pulled back in favor of more direct engagement. We probably would have still gotten another stimulus package, but it would have been altered. We wouldn't see as much a resurgence in people touting limited government, because people are blinded by Republican rhetoric both on the Right and Left.

The problem with "nature" is that it is terribly uninformative. Nature is what exists, what exists is nature. This rules out nothing except for that which is admitted not to exist, which is not where any of the most interesting problems in science come from.

"We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." End of discussion.

No, the plot makes it very clear that Bane is being manipulative of Gotham's feelings by using populist rhetoric about the rich. His true disdain is not for the rich of Gotham, it's for ALL of Gotham. He says he is there to fulfill Ra's Al Ghul's destiny, and the end twist solidifies that.

Rand's view of consciousness says nothing about how or why it is composed, simply that consciousness is inarguable axiom. It commits her to no other physical or metaphysical claims.

This myth needs to be stopped. The Republican economic plan is thorough going pro-business government, not laissez faire. Simply because what they call they support capitalism doesn't mean they are arguing for the same concept you are. When they say capitalism, they don't mean unrestrained free market. They mean State Capitalism.

I'm not a full on determinist about the world outside of volition. In fact, as opponents to a narrow efficient causation view, Objectivists shouldn't be held to the same doctrine as the strict deterministic-fatalists. Things act according to their nature. Anyway,the sort of distinction you're making doesn't make man above nature anyway. Whatever man does, it is part of the natural order of things. It is human action, which is a natural process.

I think it's an unnecessary distinction. Human beings are not above nature anymore than an ape or a slug is. This doesn't mean we don't have any distinction in nature, but we're all biological creatures. A skyscraper is as natural as an ant hill.

The idea that human beings are not natural or that what they do creates some sort of supernature is absurd. We're just another, all natural organism.

To add an interesting thought: I think that the enactive perception of Alva Noe and his influence in J.J Gibson offers an interesting response to the Hard Problem. For Noe, perception is non-proposition sensorimotor knowledge. We become acquainted and learn how to perceive the world around us. An organism operates by acting in its environment. In this way, we don't answer the hard problem but render it irrelevant.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0908j.asp Nothing short of war crime.

Nowhere else can an Objectivist be found blaming individuals for the failure of the collective. There were many anti-militarists in Japan and none of them deserved nor was it necessary for them to be vaporized.

Right, we should do more than just feel sad for the suffering of these animals. We need to proactively treat them well for our benefit, and for the fact that it is their existence that is allowing us to grow as we are.

I am against the wholesale murder of a people even after their government has admitted defeat.

No, because you cannot reason an animal out of ripping the throat out from another animal. It is an inevitable process that no amount of rational deliberation, disagreement, market boycott could ever change. Also, it's very rare that another animal actually tortures their prey. I am not concerned with the momentary suffering of cattle. As I stated, necessary steps to the consumption of meat are fine. However, I don't want the food I eat to have been beaten across the head and body with baseball bats. I don't want the food I eat to have been locked in a cage and not allowed to move for years. These are things I think we can do without. As to where the torture of animals rates on a scale of morality, I would say the wanton abuse of someone's pets rates very highly in terms of moral disgust for me. I would not associate with any such person, ever. That's opposed to other behavior, which while I may frown upon, I can still overlook.

So any cultural phenomena beyond the initiation of force is irrelevant to you?

So, Objectivists who seem to think torching hundreds of thousands of innocent people is acceptable, do you accept the bombings that took place after we dropped two nukes on Japan?