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Bowzer

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Everything posted by Bowzer

  1. This would be a good place to start to learn more about Ludwig.
  2. This exact topic is the subject of Leonard Peikoff's, The Ominous Parallels. I can't recommend enough that you read this book.
  3. There is a lengthy discussion of implicit concepts (see "Implicit Concepts") in the Appendix of ITOE. The main idea is:
  4. I don't believe Miss Rand meant "a state of awareness as opposed to something else." She was merely highlighting a state of the faculty of awareness from the faculty itself. This is common usage in the Objectivist literature. She clarifies this usage in the Appendix: As to your model, I don't see how that is helpful here.
  5. Please visit the Ayn Rand Centenary site and celebrate the life of Ayn Rand.
  6. Objectivism rejects the a priori/a posteriori distinction in its entirety. See Leonard Peikoff's epic essay, "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
  7. I would much rather see books like this one coming out. I'm not saying that you don't appreciate this either. I'm just illustrating why a book like The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics was not written by a Dr. Peikoff or a Dr. Mayhew; they're too busy producing positive material.
  8. Yes, please tell us more about Libertarianism.
  9. [This was supposed to be a PM but I haven't had my coffee yet. ]
  10. Michael Berliner has a wonderful article, Ayn Rand: A Legacy of Reason and Freedom, published today in Men's News Daily.
  11. As far as we know (perhaps a moderator can verify), this is entirely optional. It is a fact that you can edit your own post without this note being added (it's an option that you simply turn on or off) so I assume it's the same for moderators editing posts.
  12. He is incomparable. Let me be the first to admit that we need him more than he needs us. What happened is that there has been a breach of security if you will. Someone was given a power over the content of this site who should not have been given such rights. Their actions were unwarranted and Mr. Speicher had every reason to assume that every one of his 2,500+ posts were at risk as well. That means that the integrity of countless hours of hard work had been jeopardized. Work, I might add, that constitutes the majority of the valuable content of this site all of it done voluntarily not for pay. Why would anyone tolerate such treatment?
  13. It has been my point from the beginning that there was nothing outstanding in those posts that warranted this action. I have read at least two of the three edited posts and they were no worse than dozens of other posts elsewhere on this board. How such a person was given moderator status is beyond me. Before giving someone moderator status, there should be sufficient evidence that 1) the member has an adequate understanding of the philosophy of Ayn Rand and 2) the member can arbitrate objectively in forum matters. I think that even a cursory review of this member's history should have raised questions in both respects. Now this forum has suffered a great loss for no good reason.
  14. Up to this point I was willing to entertain the notion that you had made an innocent error. But given that you think that this summarizes Stephen's posts (I have read the posts) along with your refusal to see a problem with what you did (Betsy has raised many important points with your behavior), I can no longer believe that this was done innocently.
  15. At the same time, this forum needs to be very picky about who to give moderator privleges to because some people just aren't qualified to arbitrate justly.
  16. Well I did read at least one of Mr. Speicher's edited posts before they were destroyed and if the moderators on this forum are going to interpret Rule #2 that liberally (and without warning) then Mr. Speicher won't be the only person leaving.
  17. The quality of a public forum lies in the intellectual qualities of its members. Mr. Speicher accounted for 6.5% of the total posts on this forum (more than any other member) and he was its intellectual fountainhead. What a loss...
  18. Phew, that just took a huge load off my mind.
  19. I think it's obvious that your "respect" for Objectivism is merely words aimed at gaining enough airtime to continue spreading your Libertarian views on this BBS. You're fooling no one.
  20. Ahhh, I'm sorry Burgess, I paid no attention to the hyphen. I will be more critical of that pesky little mark in the future, thanks! If it isn't obvious, I meant "metaethics" in my prior post.
  21. I first heard of the term in my classes in the OGC and it stuck in my mind from that point on. I was unfamiliar with the history behind it. Certainly, it is not a well-known term of Objectivism but it is used in the index of TVOS (see "Metaethics"). I don't see a problem in using the word "metaethics" any more than using terms like "metaphysics." That is, we use them despite the modernist butchering of otherwise completely legitimate concepts.
  22. Maybe this will shed some light on the issue. Chapter 6 of OPAR is devoted to the topic of meta-ethics. Dr. Peikoff writes about the task of meta-ethics in the opening section of this chapter: He then discusses why the topic does not fall within the scope of previous chapters: Finally, he then tells us why this material deserves its own chapter:
  23. Actually you should be more careful in noting that I stated a hypothetical (and nowhere did I imply you in it). If it does not apply to you then do not take heed to what I say.
  24. Dr. Peikoff’s wording was quite deliberate and quite correct. Just because animals do not go through a conscious process of evaluation in reaching their standard (nature, in effect, has done this for them) does not mean that a standard is not present. On pages 18-21 of TVOS, “The Objectivist Ethics,” Miss Rand discusses this point: If you don’t believe that a standard of value is present in the actions of living organisms, then I don’t see how you can say that living things pursue values at all. If there is no ultimate end or standard then what are living things acting for? Do they act for some different purpose on Tuesdays than they do on Thursdays? Nowhere in Objectivism is it said that animals act toward some consciously chosen purpose. Miss Rand takes care to separate her position from anything of the sort: Life is “self-sustaining and self-generated action,” that is, it is goal-directed. To say that life is the ultimate standard for a living organism is just to say that the actions of living organisms are directed at the ultimate goal of life, life is its standard of value.
  25. I think you understood my point well, Mark. To clarify, reification is "regarding or treating an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence." In this case, the abstraction is "species propagation" and it is being treated as if it was a concrete in nature acting physically on organisms. What really exists in nature are individual organisms and they live and die in accordance with their actions. Man has observed that, over time, the successfulness of some species relative to others leads to the propagation of organisms of the successful species while the unsuccessful ones die off. But this is a man-made observation, not a physical mechanism in nature. For this reason, "species propagation" cannot be a value to a living organism.
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