DavidOdden

My main point is that “God”, in the Christian sense, is not a concept, it is a proper name, like Barak Obama. Proper names don’t have CCDs. However, “unicorn” is a concept, and it has a CCD, even though there are no actual unicorns which you can touch. Mathematical concepts are all completely abstract and untouchable, but they are concepts. If we talk of “god” in the anthropological sense, i.e. supernatural personified beings across cultures as we might discuss in an Anthro class, then there would be a CCD, even though the term refers to an idea and not a tangible entity. “God” and “god” are both labels for existents, but they are not entities.

If you are a Hindu, there is a CCD for god (देव). If you are a Muslim or follower of the other monotheistic religions, you are in a difficult epistemological position because your faith is grounded in a polytheistic context, and one of your essential beliefs is that these other faiths are false (I don’t actually understand how Jews, Muslims and Christians understand their god compared to the other guys’ version of god). You may be aware that the Christian God’s actual name is Howard. Christians don’t form such a concept, not do they form a concept Barak Obama. Proper names are not concepts, they are the labels for individuals. Howard⛪ is similarly a proper name referring to a unique individual. If you want to understand the CCD for “god”, you shuld study a polytheistic religion, so learn about the concept देव and now Brahman, Indra, Śiva, Viṣṇu, Ganeśa etc are unified into one concept. (Warning: Hinduism was long ago infected by a low-grade case of monotheism, the result being that classical polytheistic Hinduism may be on its last legs). I think the problem is that you are not properly distinguishing “multiple instances” from “irreality”. Unicorns do not exist, yet there is clearly a concept “unicorn” (likewise “gremlin”). It’s not there is no CCD for “god”, it’s that there is no actual referent. For an under-educated Christian who believes in Howard⛪, "God" is indeed not a concept, it is a proper name.

For this discussion and in order to connect the issue to Rand’s beliefs, I point to her slogan “Check your premises”. When you do that, and engage in a reduction of knowledge to the axiomatic (which therefore means that you have to know what the axioms are and why they are axioms), you will see that one cannot begin with a certainty. Axiomatic conclusions (such as “existence exists”) are advanced conclusions that derive from simple observation of existence. It is literally impossible to begin with certainties. Those certainties come from somewhere; perception is the soil in which certainty flourishes. “Skepticism” comes in two flavors. Irrational skepticism was practiced by various Hindu and Buddhist scholars, Pyrrho, Gorgias, Hume and Berkeley. The other variety is simple the practice of good scientists: to not accept a conclusion as being certain without compelling evidence which addresses alternatives. As reflected in OPAR, there is a continuum of evidentiary support for any proposition, graded according to the degree of affirmative evidence against counter-evidence, which includes conceptual evidence. Suppose I invent a new substance (which I call “flubber”) that has the remarkable property of negating gravity and allowing cars to float. There is substantial conceptual evidence against this claim (Physics 101 to 450), and one should doubt that it is true, which means that I must shoulder the substantial burden of proving that the conclusion is true. The Popperian refutationist ideology has gained some currency in scientific conduct over the past almost-century, which however in my opinion has resulted in a serious defect in science, the practice of redefinitionism where essential claims are modified in subtle ways so that the theory itself is not falsified, instead we have gained some knowledge of the “true” meaning of words. An example that I am painfully familiar with is the earlier claim that certain apes are capable of learning language (via signing, rather than speech). In the face of empirical debunking, the narrative changed by redefining language as “any means of communicating”. The difference between agnosticism and skepticism is a position on the evidentiary scale. When the evidence for and against a claim are roughly in balance, agnosticism is the proper stance. When the evidence against a claim more outweighs the evidence for a claim, skepticism is a proper response. At some other point, the evidence against a claim may rise to the level of making the claim “unlikely”, in which case you should reject the claim. Rejection is not a permanent banishment, therefore a claim rejected at one point can become certain.

Jon, so you regard cows as comparable to people, and eating them should be illegal?

This position is puzzling, but maybe there is a simple underlying difference in philosophical primaries. Are you a vegan or at least a vegetarian? As you know, meat is murder. It is universally legal in the US to murder a dog, cat, horse, cow or sheep that is suffering from a fatal injury or disease, and murdering rats and mice of commonplace and again perfectly legal. This state of legals affairs is identical to that in Virginia w.r.t. abortion. Can we assume that you are 1000 times more comfortable with the PETA extremists than with those who would murder – or enslave – animals?

As I think you know, things tend to spin out of control here and everywhere else on the intenet. So to mostly return to the initial problem, you face a problem, so how do you make the problem go away? To avoid repeating what has been said, we can just say that the problem is trespassing, which is illegal. When someone violates your rights in that manner, you can’t (shouldn’t) take direct action by way of using retaliatory force against The Others (just an arbitrary label for the sake of convenience in talking about the problem). This is really the job of the police. Now perhaps there are things you can do, analogous to “bring your bike inside, don’t leave it on the porch”, maybe techno-sanitizing your phone if it has been infected with malware. But for the most part, this isn’t something that anyone here can help with, and is hardly a problem that you can solve yourself – unless you just disappear without a trace and start a new life somewhere else. You have identified a problem with your roommate, but I guess that is resolved? Then there is the problem with the others. So what you hav to do is file a formal, written complaint with the police, giving as much concrete evidence as you can which could lead to identifying and apprehending them. “Concrete evidence” isn’t the same as “conjectured explanations”, it refers to the axiomatic: things that you directly observe. You can’t directly observe that your phone is hacked, that is a conjecture based on something else, something that you observed at a specific time and place. What did you observe that led you to conclude that this is the work of a “huge group” rather than one person, or two persons? Don’t tell me, write it down. Have they ever communicated to you in a fashion that supports the conclusion that they are altruistic/collectivist/statists who are attacking you as an Objectivist? Why you attribute the behavior to a particular political agenda rather than simply assuming that they are punks, like in Death Wish 3? It isn’t important what the motivation is, so I would advise dropping from consideration all non-essentials. The essential question is, what have they done? It would be nice if you could connect specific actions to named individuals, but that’s not always possible. Specific descriptions of events, eliminate conjectures about cause. Put it in writing. Retain copies.

In the US, we have a new “party” or movement, called No Labels (not yet an actually affiliable party, but I expect them to work towards actual party status in the next couple of years). You can read about their ideas here. More officially known as “Common Sense Majority”, it is, by self-assertion, what the majority believe (we’ll see once they start running actual candidates), and of course they use “common sense” since nobody would want to be senseless. They seem to have harvested the tops of all of the hot buttons that can be pushed in current politics – “solve today’s economic challenges before they become impossible to solve tomorrow” (we don’t care how, just do it). “Congress owes it to the American people to pass a budget every year, and to do it on time” (we don’t care what’s in the budget, just do it); “Our leaders must take action to get health-care costs under control to give all Americans access to quality health care and reduce our debt” (Obamacare and some tangent about debt). Also, “immediately regain control of our borders and stop releasing migrants who enter America illegally into the country” but also “create a path to citizenship for the Dreamers and a plan to attract more legal immigrants” (so you mean open borders? How do you resolve the contradiction?). Of course, the children are very important (“As a matter of decency, dignity, and morality, no child in America should go to bed or go to school hungry”, and of course “America should make a national commitment that our students will be number one in reading and math globally within a decade”). They are committed to government-supported environmentalism (“America needs to be able to build clean energy technologies”), and totally out of the blue in the national security section, “America should lead the world in the development of ethical artificial intelligence”. In other words, vote for us and we will give you what you want, no matter what you want. I hear that they originally were going to be called Demopublicans but someone mentioned that the Libertarian party has been using that as a slur to indicate that political compromise is not actually a virtue.

All told, I expect things to procede as normal for the rest of my life, barring extraordinary events (the stuff of sci-fi). I do expect an uptick in electoral litigation, but at least the present Supreme Court will most likely not tolerate a surprise legal theory that turns a loser into a winner. There were a number of opportunities for SCOTUS to hand the election to Trump and they were all rejected, and they recently nipped in the bud a theory that might have worked to the advantage of Trump-types. There is absolutely no reason to think that the military would intervene in the transfer of power. Now, as for the behavior of the general population, there were numerous anti-Trump riots after he won the election, which didn’t get much attention. We can only hope that someone besides Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024. The only thing that would be worse than Trump winning would be Trump losing. It has been a long time since there has been a successful coup in the First World.

One of the primary claims in the article, which I find to be sufficiently well-supported by observable facts over the past 60+ years, is that conservatives held the rule of law to be a fundamental virtue and a central premise of conservatism. The second implication is that the Democrats are working hard to somehow eliminate the threat of Donald Trump, and furthermore their methods are not intellectually honest, which again I cannot see any basis for disagreeing with. As part of the lack of intellectual honesty of which I speak, there is a thorough and selective hypocrisy in the actions of Democrats, purportedly in aid of upholding the law. There is a substantive question regarding Biden’s participation in his offspring’s power-peddling which I have no position on. It is rather well-documented that Biden’s administration, through David Weiss, slow-walked tax avoidance charges to the point that the statute of limitations expired on 2014 and 2015 charges, and was just appointed special counsel to investigate his conduct. None of this is particularly surprising to me, and illustrates a basic shift in political strategy that has been in progress over the past half century – the death of Reagan conservatism. My use of the past tense in referring to the relationship between conservatives and the rule of law is deliberate. Trump’s main “contribution” to conservatism is the elimination of the last lofty moral standard that made conservatives marginally palatable – he managed to sink the right into the same pit that the left has been wallowing in for decades, only deeper. There is one significant error in the article, where it says “Only their steadfast commitment to this traditional ideal explains why conservatives are allowing Democrats to flagrantly corrupt our judicial system to destroy their opponents and protect themselves”. What conservatives? They are all dead, retired, or usurped. What we have, instead, is a party distinction that doesn’t reflect an ideology.

We have here a balanced struggle between law and politics. The bureaucracy exists because laws were passed, and they were passed for political reasons. The law is self-protective, not just at the level of agencies promulgating rules, but in the Constitution itself (the president does not get to name the Speaker of the House, or write the rules that govern Congress or the courts). In order to achieve politically-desirable goals (leaving aside who desires them), Trump operated both illegally and un-traditionally. If Congress doesn’t like his un-traditional actions, they can pass a law forbidding it (that’s why we have the Administrative Procedures Act). Proper criticism of POTUS as executive officer is directed at illegality, not unconventionality. Should we cheer the outcome, means be damned, or should we as-enthusiastically cheer an undesirable outcome that was properly implemented? That is, should be declare that a contradiction is possible? I insist that there are no contradictions, and we should condemn both evil means and evil outcomes, even when Mussolini gets the trains to run on time.

I agree that there is such a difference between Trump versus (many of) those professionally in politics – Trump’s focus is on getting a certain result, methods be damned. Insofar as the job of the President of the United States is, as articulated in the Constitution, to implement the laws enacted by Congress, that makes him tempermentally quite unsuited to that job, at least in the classical version of the POTUS job description. He is more suited to the revised view of the position, as “running the country (with the advice and consent of Congress)”. It isn’t important to me whether we condemn him as “delusional”, rather than “evasional”, he still lacks a fundamental respect for reality and law. Still, evasion is I was giving him the benefit of the doubt by putting him in the delusional bin, which is better than the dishonest bin. Even if he uttered those sentences without a firm belief in their truth, I still don’t see what utterances rise to the level of fraud.

I understand that belief, but it is legally not correct. The crime is specifically about making and implementing a choice. There are a few strict liability crimes (drug possession is a typical example) where all that matters is whether you are in possession of a forbidden substance, but for the most part and especially for fraud, what is prohibited is a cetain choice that is implemented in some way (it isn’t purely thought, it has to be thouht paired with action). With respect to criminal prosecution, it is up to the prosecution to prove, to the point of it being irrational to disbelieve, that the elements of fraud were present. No, that is an independent conclusion that I reached well before this indictment. Though if you are thinking that I mean delusional in some technical APA-sanction diagnostic way, I don’t mean that. Delusional is not the same as maniac. I think he has manufactured his own version of reality, one that is not supported by facts, instead it is determined by an emotional desire for a particular outcome. Pretty much the mode of reasoning that has been promulgated by the left for decades, and he has bought into it (remember, he was a Democrat). His philosophy of reality does not encompass accepting any fact that is contrary to what he emotionally wants. Whereas, I am also certain that Hillary very strongly wanted to win the election in 2016, but she accepted the reality that she didn’t. The usual response when one has to face a hard reality is to shut up and not concoct alternative realities that allow you to continue evasion. However: I am expressing a very old-school view of how people should react to unpleasant realities. There is a more modern view, implemented in GPT Chatbots, where words are moved around on the screen in whatever fashion is most likely to obscure one’s error, and to avoid admitting that you were wrong. The tragedy of this all (and this is not limited to the past 6 years, it is a decades-long or longer matter) is that rational discussion has slid down the toilet. There is a very simple model of how to discuss matters: set forth facts, and use logic to reach conclusions. We can read Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to see what I mean by such a discussion. But I weakly blame the Socratic method, since I think that a direct challenge and alternative claim is superior to a suggestive question intended to lead a person to reject their own claim. Every decent Socratic question (which cannot be true of false) can be re-stated as a proposition with a definite true/false answer. In other words, the world needs an intensive dose of Objectivist epistemology.

Stephen, The essential question regarding para 93-97 is, what do they show? In 93, the cited evidence indicates that Trump said "Bottom line—won every state by 100,000s of votes", "We won every state," and "What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?". Funny thing is, the third one is not even a statement. The indictment claims that these are knowingly false claims. The fact that senior Justice Department officials disputed the implied statement about PA over-voting is not proof that the statement was knowingly false. For the sake of argument, I will stipulate that it was false. I also stipulate that Bush’s statement about Hussein’s arsenal of WMDs was not proven true, but was also not proven to be a lie, as the lying liars repeatedly insist. I do not have any evidence that Trump knows the statements (and presuppositions w.r.t. PA) to be false. I firmly believe that Trump is between somewhat and rather delusional, and was willing to not believe a statement made by DoJ officials. As for the proposal to return the question to the states, the question of authority is not even a question of fact, it is a conjecture based on untested legal theories (not a theory that I dispute, but let me remind you that Roe v. Wade was established law until it became unestablished, and it is not fraud to hold that when you take an untested theory to court, you might actually win). Para 94: again, making a proposal and being advised “that no court would support his proposal” does not make a proposal fraudulent, or even false. Para 96: it is not false or fraudulent to set an expectation that the Vice President has a particular authority. I don’t dispute that Trump is a delusional megalomaniac, what I dispute is the claim that he attempted to defraud the US government in an official US government proceeding. The smoking gun that would have to be produced is actual evidence that he knew the statements to be false while at the same time entering them into an official proceeding. Not every false statement is a crime. Perhaps there should be a law criminalizing being a delusional megalomaniac in an office of public trust, though that would require a Constitutional amendment since Congress can't add qualifications to those few set out in the Constitution. The trial could well have the consequence of concretizing the informal conclusion that Trump is a delusional megalomaniac, and I have no problem with people knowing that fact. The problem I have is with misusing law as a tool to achieve a political end. The other problem (one of many) I have is that abuse of law to achieve a political end is not extremely rare.

The main legal reason is that “abuse of power” is not a federal crime. There actually is a criminal law against “abuse of office” in 25 CFR § 11.448, which applies to tribal police and courts, thus is not applicable to Trump, though given the vague metaphorical slop in the indictment it is a little surprising that they didn’t overlook the limit in the scope of the law. Trump did abuse his power while in office, and the courts did rule against him (see for example travel ban 1.0). But SCOTUS can only say “no, you can’t do that”, they cannot punish a president for exceeding authority. This is the essence of objective law: that a person know in advance what things are forbidden. If there is no law against it, you cannot charge a person. The matter of intent to deceive is a fundamental tenet of criminal fraud. I doubt that the defense will try to argue that the election fraud charges are true, since that would be an irrelevant side-show. The prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew that the claims were actually false, which would require proof that he said something crazy like “What if we make up some story about there being massive voter fraud in those states?”. OTOH, Nixon did have a tape recorder running in his office when he confessed to his crimes, so stranger things have happened.

I asked a shortened version of the started question to OpenAI's chatbot, it gave useless feedback, then I asked: ME Do you know for a fact that the parents died, or are you just assuming that they died based on my first question? CHATBOT I apologize for any confusion in my previous responses. You are correct; I made an assumption based on the phrasing of your initial question, which mentioned that "they perished" when referring to the Chauncey parents. As an AI language model, I don't have access to real-time information or external data sources, and I can only respond based on the information provided in the conversation. Since your original question mentioned that the parents "perished," I inferred that they died in the incident. However, please understand that my knowledge is limited to what has been trained on up until September 2021, and I cannot access or verify events or information that occurred after that date. If there have been any updates or changes to the story since then, I would not be aware of them. If there are specific details or aspects of the story that you would like to discuss or analyze further, please feel free to provide additional information or context, and I'll do my best to assist you. ME This being a matter of historical record, are you able to determine what the actual fact is? CHATBOT As an AI language model, my knowledge is based on the data available up until September 2021. I don't have access to real-time information or external data sources, which means I cannot provide updates on events or access historical records beyond my knowledge cutoff. Since my knowledge is not up-to-date, I cannot determine the actual facts or verify any events or information that occurred after September 2021. For the most current and accurate information regarding historical events, I recommend consulting reliable sources, such as reputable news outlets, historical archives, or books written by authoritative authors on the subject matter. ME The event happened over 30 years ago, you have enough information to objectively determine whether they died or did not die CHATBOT I apologize for any confusion. You are right; since the event you mentioned occurred over 30 years ago, and my knowledge is based on data up until September 2021, I should be able to determine the factual information about it. Based on the information you provided in the initial question, where it was stated that "as the car sank beneath the water, they perished," it can be objectively concluded that the Chauncey parents died in the incident. Again, I apologize for any confusion, and I appreciate your understanding. If you have any other questions or need further clarification, please feel free to ask. So there we have it, proof positive that Chatboy is infinitely lazy and cannot be bothered to Google the answer.

There are two separate questions here. The first is the merits of a “discussion” with a chatbot. It is indeed irrational to discuss anything with a chatbot in the way that you would discuss issues with a rational being. It can however be amusing, and educational to see what sort of pseudo-consciousness the program has. The ability to look up text snippets is not the same as abstractly understanding a philosophy, or any other thing. As for the “parental sacrifice” question, there is no evidence that the parents sacrificed themselves, there is only evidence that they died, as did 45 other people. Rand would conclude that we cannot possibly speak to their motivation, based on thin available evidence – the dim recollections of an 11 year old child. The honorable thing to assume is that the parents attempted to save all of their lives, but were not successful. The underlying premise that one would take no risks whatsoever to save a loved one is a complete perversion of the Objectivist notion of self-interest.

The concept of instinctual knowledge is very confused, yet people commonly speaking of animals “instinctively knowing”. Animals do have instinctive behavior, such as salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn, but it depends on learned knowledge (“where was I born?”). Bee dances are a good example of instinctive behavior based on an inherited rule (knowledge), which is not learned. That is the distinction that I would draw between instinctual knowledge and instinctual behavior. Or, instinctual behavior and innate knowledge, noting that I disapprove of “instinctual knowledge”, so this is a translation guide in terms of understanding how I think most people talk (confusedly). Behavior is a concrete instance, so is a bee isn't doing the dance, they don't have the behavior. They have the capacity for the behavior – which is to say, they have knowledge that makes the behavior possible. I think there would be a real disagreement over whether all animal knowledge is acquired through experience, that is (to repeat the central question of epistemology), what is “knowledge”?

The first count raises an interesting interpretive question. The law says that If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both and one should wonder “who / what is the United States?” as far as this law is concerned? Words are often specially-defined for particular statutes. The term is defined: The term “United States”, as used in this title in a territorial sense, includes all places and waters, continental or insular, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, except the Canal Zone. The three main interpretations that would be sensible would be “the government of the United States”, “the entire United States including the government and all of the population”, or “some entity in the United States”. We can rule out “some entity in the United States”, since that would make it a federal crime for two people to conspire to “commit any offense” against me. It is settled law that the federal government does not have jurisdiction over every offense committed in the US. To be valid federal law, the federal government would have to have personal jurisdiction – for example, acts against the federal government, or acts against specified federal workers. The addendum “or any agency thereof ” clearly indicates that an agency of the US government is supposed to me included in the scope of “against the United States”. ¶10(a) of the indictment asserts that “The Defendant and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for the Defendant's opponent”. However, said legislators and “election officials” are not part of the government of the United States. Maybe a case could be mounted in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but you can’t make a federal matter out of a state offense. The claim is that there was an attempt to “defraud” the government of the United States. Therefore we need to turn to the chapter on fraud which brings us to infamous 18 USC 1001 (used to imprison Martha Stewart), which says that whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully— (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry goes to jail. The term “matter within the jurisdiction…” means, for example, “a court proceeding”, or “a Congressional investigation” or “an FBI investigation”, it does not make it a federal crime to tell a lie in the US. There is no “matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” (the election of president is not within the jurisdiction of the United States, it is with the jurisdiction of the several states). There are a handful of other references to fraud in that chapter: all of then involve something rather specific such as fraudulent contract bids, forging documents and identification instruments, accessing computers (any computer connected to the internet), some violations of the Atomic Energy Act… A knowingly false claim that there had been electoral fraud is not “fraud” in the federally-relevant sense, and by the same logic, the indictment itself is fraudulent (however, not actionable, since one cannot be prosecuted over an indictment no matter how egregiously false it is). The defense will of course attack everything, but the most important thing to attack, and the most significant crime against rights being mounted by the Biden Administration, is the “weaponizing” of words like “fraud”, and the usurpation of individual states’ interest in properly addressing these acts – or not.

Let’s start with unicameral vs. bicameral. We know that American bicameral system is the result of the English system which started as a unicameral system of “ruling elite” and bifurcated that into greater vs. lesser elites. The American analog is based on a political compromise regarding the power and rights of “the people” vs. “the states”. We can now ask, is it legitimate to maintain the Senate and is it legitimate to maintain the states? But wait, also, is it legitimate to have an executive branch as opposed to a legislative branch? Geography is a very common theme in political structure, for good reason. If you live in Georgia, you are subject to the laws of Georgia, and so is the guy next to you. Chaos and confusion would ensue if people were subject to laws according to some sign-up system where you subscribe to the laws of organization A vs. organization B. But this only applies to jurisdictions and laws, and not the structure of the lawmaking body. Suppose we were to have a single lawmaking body of 50 individuals. Theory 1 is that every voter can cast 5 votes, and the top 50 vote-getters rule the country (geography plays no role). Theory 2 is that the country is divided into 50 population-based chunks i.e. most like the House of Representatives, but without the states. Theory 3 is that the country is divided into 50 equal-sized geographical chunks… These approaches reflect different theories of the interests of the population, structured so as to best limit government to doing nothing more than protecting individual rights, and is not based on the false premise that every individual in society is John Galt. Theory 1 favors ideology, which is on the face of it the best basis for selecting lawmakers. I can’t come up with a good rationale for Theory 2, but let’s just accept democracy for the moment. Theory 3 favors recognition of the somewhat-metaphysically given (rivers, mountains, snow, adjacency to a fascist dictatorship) and these are rational interests. The Constitution in fact provides another basis for dividing chunks of government: what does / can the body do? The powers of the House and Senate are not identical. Perhaps then there might be one body that proposes laws and a second that confirms them. Plus, there could be a branch of specialists that “evaluates” them – the judiciary branch (currently appointed, not elected). My point here is to first indicate some of the considerations that could lead you to having a single-body government versus a two- or three-body government. The larger point is that Objectivism does not say which of these forms of government is proper for government as such, and just like the case of copyright, there are questions of the science of politics that go beyond what Objectivism, or any other philosophy, gives you as the answer. Objectivism simply says “Whatever protects the rights of individuals”. Again, Objectivism does not mandate anything about intellectual property as a primitive axiom of the theory of rights, beyond the fact that a man has the right to the product of his mind and body. Objectivism sets certain limits on what those rights should be, but doesn’t say whether the duration of copyright should be 14 years, or life plus 90. Objective laws cannot be framed exclusively in terms of defining, essential characteristics, for example “man is a rational animal”. “Dying from ingesting poison” is not an essential characteristic of man, yet it is proper that there be a law against poisoning people. Essential characteristics serve the purpose of saying “What are you referring to?”, therefore laws against poisoning people are stated in terms of people, not “animals” or “life forms”. The law protects rights, but we do not limit laws to vague statements as to what a right is, we say under a regime of objective law what actions are forbidden (the underlying reason being that those actions violate rights). IMO the ASD is sort of irrelevant since it is a meaningless mental exercise of philosophers, however, if you find yourself thinking “By definition, X must be true” where X is some concrete fact, then I would move away from that mode of thinking. We could talk about psychology separately. No philosophy will tell you what the just-noticible difference between two vowel formants will be.

Unlike defense, interstate commerce, coining money, patents and copyrights, post office etc, “providing education” is not an enumerated power of the federal government. The feds do get a say in how their money is spent, but that power cannot be wielded coercively given the 10th Amendment. It is settled law that 5% of a state’s budget is not coercive (S. Dak v. Dole) and 10% is (NFIB v. Sibelius). However, the only constitutional reach that the feds have is to make receipt of federal funds be contingent on doing something, thus if a state wants to lower the drinking age to 16 at the expense of 5% of its budget, it can, and that would not be (was not) deemed to be coercive. A flat prohibition is essentially impossible, especially when every state is constitutionally compelled to provide education. To get away with a federal law against state-organized education, a mighty powerful commerce-clause would have to be set forth. They would have to establish that outlawing state-level education is imperative to a compelling federal interest in regulating interstate trade.

Especially with respect to political questions, the answer is “the same” only in “the same context”. Nevertheless, Objectivism does not advocate considering what is allowed on a subjective case-by-case basis. First, let’s consider a particular property right, copyright, which gives the author of a literary work the exclusive right to make copies of his work. Unlike tangible property, where you have to do something to maintain your property (lest it rot or slide down hill), the property right “copyright” requires no maintenance. Therefore, as Rand argues, it must have a definite period. This is recognized in all (modern) copyright laws. The general rule in the US is “the life of the author plus 70 years”, but originally it was 14 years (then 28 with optional 14 year extension, next 28+28). In other countries (following the Berne Convention) it is life + 50, except that in the EU it was increased to life plus 70. In Bangladesh it is life + 60, Colombia is life + 80, in Eritrea it is life or 50 (whichever is longer). The current numbers were arrived at by reference to a primary desideratum: this property right should last for the life of the author. Since this property right can be inherited, it was noted that an 80 year old author could create a work (perhaps hoping to assure financial security for the heirs), then might die a week later. A strict “life of the author” law would lead to premature termination of this property right, which gave rise to the “life plus” scheme. The number is mainly directed at the question “how long do people live?”. We can nitpick the answer until the cows come home, at some point we have to select a number. Yes, you can object “70 is arbitrary, why not 71”. The law has to set concrete, objective limits. The age of majority is another example, again, why not 17 years and 180 days, of 17 years and 51 days…? The law is full of seemingly-arbitrary decisions, which are motivated by a general and universal fact, but which have to be implemented with a specific decision. In a hypothetical world where Americans live for 180 years, the specific duration of copyright would probably be reconsidered. The law also applies certain standards (admittedly not very well articulated – the “reasonable man” standard) in deciding whether a criminal initiation of force has taken place. Is a certain action “initiation of force”? The act has to be evaluated in a specific social context, insofar as the concept includes threats and not just stabbing to death. Then the question of whether there should be a unicameral, bicameral or tricameral system of government, or who gets to vote for said representatives, or what the duties and powers of each chamber are, is guided by fundamental philosophical facts, but is not fully determined by any philosophy.

I disagree, in that the existence of God is not even logically capable of scientific evaluation. As is acknowledged by all right-thinking scientists (Eddington, even Popper, and certainly all classical scientists from Aristotle to Newton and beyond), science requires a logical foundation, which is the purview of philosophy. Data is useless unless you have a conceptual framework for evaluating data – an epistemology. All knowledge reduces to the non-contradictory integration of knowledge which arrives at new knowledge. This is true of the domains of knowledge regarding particle physics, plate tectonics, human or fish perception, the theory of grammar, road paving, and so on. It is also true of basic foundational notions used to gain knowledge, like “cause”, “justice”, “man” and “justice”. The difference between the two sets is that the former requires specialized training, equipment and methods, but the latter is available to everyone who engages the faculty of reason. The former is highly observation-dependent, the latter is highly reason-dependent. I believe that the line between law and ethics is a good example of the science / philosophy distinction. Rand sets forth an ethical theory as to the proper nature of government and rights, which defines what proper law should be: force is properly used by government solely to protect the rights of individuals. But what exactly is requires, allowed or forbidden under that ethical principle? The doctrine “fruit of the poison tree” says that when the government obtains evidence of rights-violation in a specific (forbidden) manner, that evidence cannot be used against the accused. Is that prohibition proper? That is a more-scientific legal question. It requires a focused, specialized and empirical study to determine what laws properly realize the fundamental philosophical principles that are accessible to everybody. Rand was wrong in some of her judgments as to questions that are actually scientific, the most problematic of them being epistemological issues that pertain to language. Not horrifyingly wrong, but still, some of the linguistic aspects of her epistemology need correcting. I’ve never asked those who knew her personally, but I suspect that they would have some “what she really meant” interpretation.

I suppose what you meant to ask was what I would call certain forms of mammal behavior, and not what I call it when people talk about animal behavior in a certain way. I don’t have a special name for everything. I would just call it animal behavior or problem-solving. You can even build wall-crawling robots that can eventually exit a maze. You keep hinting that surely animals must have the same conceptual, rational consciousness that humans have (alternatively, humans are no better than snakes) but you don’t actually give any evidence to support that supposition. Apes “recognize language” in the same sense that a raccoon does – it can recognize that if a person yells “Shoo!”, they should leave.

So that’s an interesting question, scientifically and philosophically. Some bugs such as the golden tortoise beetle and fish change color in response to external events like being touched. The unknown scientific question for the beetle is, how does this happen? The similarly unknown philosophical question is, is this knowledge? Or is this like the patellar reflex? Insects are pretty low on the cognitive hierarchy. It seems reasonable to think that octopuses have what qualifies as “instinctual knowledge”, in terms of their ability to mimic other animals. Though again, I don’t know to what extent this is instinctual rather than learned stochastically.

I don’t recall having said anything about animals changing color. On the face of it, it doesn’t constitute knowledge of any kind. For example, various plants change color seasonally, as do some birds, and we normally don’t say that plants have instinctual knowledge. I don’t really know what you’re referring to. I have various epithets for people who attribute human properties to plants and animals depending on what I think their motivation is, but if you’re looking for a standard term for the practice, I would say “anthropomorphizing”. Perhaps “personification”.