Grames

Lack of the effect is evidence of absence of the cause. An understanding of an effect (happiness) implies an understanding of the cause the creates it (principled thinking and acting). One would expect more people to be happier, if they actually knew what happiness was and how to achieve it. So I conclude that if people aren't achieving happiness, they aren't being principled. It is possible that the failure to be principled is not a failure of knowledge, but a willful choice to be evil but that is going to be a small minority of people. I rule out the possibility of systematic ineptness because I know people have volition and can learn to be more rational and wise.

I have no need to assume anything. The evidence that the ethics course is for a general audience of non-Objectivists is provided in the original post which describes the content of the course. So although the OP is responding to his correspondent, that particular future student in this course will have as his audience a set of non-Objectivists and a good answer should be addressed to that ultimate audience. If I have assumed anything, it is that the OP does understand who his ultimate audience is, but I cannot reconcile this assumption with the inadequacy of the answer given. Hence my objection. Addressing this question in terms of principles is going in the direction of more fundamental, logically prior knowledge and is therefore an application of the hierarchy of knowledge as applied to communicating and teaching, while a response in terms of ultimate happiness goes in the direction of a broader abstraction and unjustifiably assumes agreement on prior knowledge. The very question at issue here "why not steal?" is evidence that principles need to be explained and justified, and cannot be relied upon in formulating a more advanced answer. And yes, a fully complete answer would would require a reiteration of a great deal Objectivism, but the longest journey begins with a single step and it helps if it is at least a step in the right direction.

Welcome back. I'm glad to see you attending to your thread. Without any inkling of the epistemological issues involved, the answer given is doomed to be inadequate. As I stated, the issue is the general one of "why be principled?" which cannot be explained or justified on ethical grounds alone. Furthermore, the answer you did give concerning happiness is incorrect. Thieves do not steal even as an attempt to be happy. In general, people who are not happy in the long course of their lives are not even trying to be happy, and probably don't even know what happiness properly is. Aristotle wrote that no man having full knowledge of a choice between a good and an evil act would deliberately choose the evil act. That is naive bullshit. It is equally false that all men desire happiness and act to achieve it. How can a man desire what he doesn't even know exists? Acting out of a neurotic attempt to relieve an anxiety is not equivalent to a pursuit of happiness. Scolding a thief that he will never achieve happiness by stealing, though true, is so far beyond the range of his comprehension, and of the comprehension of most people in an undergrad ethics course, as to be useless, unconvincing, unpersuasive, and just flat out lame. A demonstration of the need and utility of principled thinking and acting has a better chance of being persuasive.

Bingo! That is the frame of mind, the sense of life of the criminal mind (or at least, one type of criminal mind). Life sucks and everyone suffers, who gives a shit? Anyone with any spirit or vitality in them would attempt to rebel against this idea, but in the absence of philosophical thought or vocabulary the only rebellion possible is an emotional rebellion. Better to be the conqueror than the conquered, the master than the slave, the thief than the mark. But the little rebellions just delay and prolong the suffering. Life still sucks but in a different way. Very insightful of you sir.

Lame. No epistemology in the answer. And there is also this response: thieves don't steal to be happy, they steal because they need to. They do other things to be happy. This question is about principles, and acting in a principled manner. Why is it in one's rational self interest to constrain your own behavior in accordance with some abstract principle, when it looks like you can get away with violating the principle?

The argument exists, it just isn't within the scope of that essay. The idea that values can be primaries or absolute is the application of the epistemological theory of intrinsicism to a specific idea, the "good". A full refutation of intrinsicism is an epistemological argument and doesn't properly belong in an essay on ethics. A full refutation is given in OPAR Chapter 4: Objectivity in the section titled "Intrinsicism and Subjectivism as the Two Forms of Rejecting Objectivity". What it boils down to is that intrinsicism is primacy of consciousness, which in turn was considered and rejected in the Objectivist metaphysics as contradicting the three true and axiomatic statements concerning existence, identity and consciousness.

In my opinion, because these kind of predicaments are created by the normal functioning of the mind they shouldn't be classified as illnesses. Illness in any other context is about physical malfunctioning and can have a physical remedy. If no physical cure is even possible, why lump it together with clinical depressions and make analogies to allergies? This is bad concept formation. "Mental dysfunction" can work as a genus for all mental problems, but actual mental illnesses have nothing in common with psychological problems beyond both being mental so it doesn't help to use the term unless in the context of differentiating from medical problems that medical doctors address.

I am reminded of the "cheating on your girlfriend" thread. Ethics is more fundamental than politics, so an act can be morally wrong without violating anyone's individual rights. Attempting to legislate morality or to justify coercion on the basis of an appeal to emotion discards the idea of objectivity in law. More strongly stated, it discards the idea of law because people have all kinds of emotions in all kinds of different contexts. No act could ever be safely known to be lawful because someone somewhere would take offense and could appeal to their emotional reaction to justify initiating force.

No argument from me. In my example the neighborhood existed before the business. That could have been more explicit I suppose.

Responding to the OP, even though it is page 4. The dynamic causing psychological distress in the witnesses is empathy for the animal. Though not rational, animals do have consciousness and do feel pain. The automatized reactions of normal people to pain include alarm, fear, flinch, cringe or retreat. Since these are normal and involuntary reactions, there is a basis for writing an objective law constraining such behavior on the same basis as any disruptive public behavior. Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire is illegal because you put other people at risk. If a display of animal torture distracts drivers, causes pedestrians to form a crowd or walk into the street in an attempt to avoid the scene, or blocks a storefront then there is a rational basis to interfere. Private property doesn not provide blanket protection from the law. Suppose a man, in his front yard facing the street, constructs an altar where he practices cutting the hearts out of live pomeranians. Even if he has a legitimate business exporting pomeranian hearts (to say Vietnam for example) the law can require him to block the sight and sound of his business practices to passerby. Whether you are justified in enforcing a law yourself is another matter. You are certainly empowered to speak your mind, and can rally the crowd to apply peer pressure by shaming the man.

Hmmm. Let's get this straight. Existence exists. Existence is identity. Consciousness is identification. But nothing we identify can be relied upon as evidence. Then how do we know these axioms are valid, and what is the use of these axioms? No, you don't actually fully understand or accept the axioms.

Yes, that is what I meant. Apparently I am part of the horde of people using latin incorrectly. Google returns pages of people using "mutis mutandis" in context but not a single definition. Doctor-patient relationships should be voluntary, except when they cannot be because the patient is incapacitated or under the age of consent. Even in that circumstance someone acting in the role of parent, guardian or next of kin will provide consent on behalf of the patient. The definitions of "capacity" and "incapacitated" ought to be in legal terms and not dependent on the state of a specific science. The power of the legal proxy appointment can be abused but that issue is legal not scientific.

I'm not familiar with the history of medicine, but as one example medical doctors used to treat nearly every problem by bleeding the patient. Doctors don't do that anymore because medicine is now on a scientific basis and not a folklore basis. Is medicine therefore forever tainted by these past practices and invalid as a field? No. Apply the same logic mutis mutandis to psychiatry. Putting psychiatry on a scientific basis by understanding brain chemistry and functional MRI brain scans will lead to (has already in some cases) effective and humane psychiatric interventions.

Obtuse non sequitor (or is that redundant?)

Rand could have used the word "anxiety" instead, but being a writer with a fondness for the dramatic she selected "terror" instead. For the reasons given by JMegansnow above, this is an entirely legitimate word choice to describe the mental state to which Rand was referring. Also, consider that in the passage you quoted she was describing a hypothetical person entirely driven by emotions: Now, most people are not entirely driven by their emotions, but to the partial extent that they are this passage is accurate. If a person is intensely religious, they actually need to pray to assuage this anxiety.

No. The idea that you need to belong to the church in order to be saved is pervasive in the culture and, from what you revealed above, may be particularly powerful in your own life. Nobody here owns or controls rationality and reason, so feel free to save yourself anytime.

Stigmatization is a social phenomenom, in no way is it an essential feature or purpose of the doctor-patient relationship in psychiatry.

Only you could watch that scene and immediately appreciate the deflationary pressure on prices.

What is the unit "bp"? And for perspective, how many bp are in an individual genome?

The phrase "random point in time" means "cause unknown".

The government in Atlas Shrugged keeps aggrandizing to itself more and more power throughout the novel. The society collapses anyway in contradiction to Hobbes' theory. Rand's position is that government is essential to bring objectivity to the use of physical force in defense of individual rights. Rand has repeatedly excoriated anarchy and libertarianism. This post attacks a strawman with a straw stick.

Our enemies ARE emboldened.

Identity inheres in the object of consciousness and all of its relations to all else that exists. Only your identification is the product of consciousness. Existence is independent of consciousness, and so is identity.

The idea of competing deed registries has the same flaw as competing police forces: it breaks down at the first conflict. A registry has no value unless it has some claim to being official and enforceable. With no mechanism to reconcile conflicts short of going to court, competing registries will actually multiply the number of conflicts and court cases. No one would ever have confidence their land claims were secure until they were successful in court. Secret ownership works fine until you get neighbors trespassing across your plot, or squatters working your land. Then you face the choice to come out and defend your claim or walk away from it. There is no way to secretly defend your claim. At least the judge and defendant must know the plaintiffs identity, and if the case goes to trial it should be a public trial. So technically deed registration does not need to be mandatory because it is a self-enforcing requirement as needed. While searching for examples on the internet I came across the Singapore Land Authority which has two systems in place: a voluntary deed registry covering the rural areas and a mandatory system for use inside the city. So if you tried to defend your secret ownership in Singapore without a title against a newly lodged claim to your land you would be in real danger of losing. The homesteading principle might help your claim if you actually occupy or work the land but if it is vacant it is probably lost. (But then, if you actually occupy or work the land what was the secret?)

If your ownership is a private matter, then how can you possibly prove it should the necessity arise? Without objective proof, your legal status is no different from a squatter, and there would be no way to settle an ownership dispute other than on the basis of possession. Ownership without an owner is every bit as nonsensical as existence without identity.