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StrictlyLogical

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  1. Haha
    StrictlyLogical reacted to tadmjones in Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?   
    Yeah.. MAGA is a cult
  2. Haha
  3. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in Ayn Rand and dualism   
    No. Although Rand may have had a view here or there that suggested dualism, her general metaphysics and biocentric ethics and psychology would not be consistent with dualism. At least not in the sense of dualism as usually meant: of some sort of fundamental dichotomy of the physical and the mental.
    Rand did not have a fundamental dichotomy between the inanimate and the animate, even though the latter has a profoundly different character than the former. Living systems can have even the feature of non-intentional, non-conscious teleological causes of individual life cycles, ways of life, and reproduction to continue the species, which is entirely absent in the inanimate components whose activities make possible that overall ends-pursuits of the living system. It would be untrue to all that reality to deny the existence of either the living things or the non-living things and their very deep differences in character (or the relationships in which they stand to each other). One does not have to choose between eliminative reduction of life to the inanimate on the one hand or dualism of the living things and the non-living things on the other.
    Similarly, conscious mind is not a biological feature that one must think of as either really just non-conscious living activities on the one hand or dualism on the other. Those alternatives are not the only ones under which one might comprehend the relation between conscious mind and the physical. Indeed they leave out the alternative relation that is the truth (for which one needs neuroscience and not only the philosopher's armchair).
  4. Thanks
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from EC in presuppositional foundationalism in Objectivism   
    I am no philosopher.
    I would characterize Rand as finally being wholly unbiased in operational orientation towards deduction or inference, and that certainly post maturation, her structures were girded by both, as the state of all prior knowledge and observation required for the particular bit of construction on the edifice of her philosophy.

    It may be that she leaned towards a deductive foundational approach in the early years, but I do not believe she leaned in any particular direction in the mature philosophy...
    A dichotomy is presented here which may not be necessary.

    what has not been provided is a third option... one which leans in neither direction.
  5. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from tadmjones in Text to Image   
    Just a second… how would you visualize a spatial problem?  For example imagine placing furniture so that it fits a room but also imagining it in place to determine if there is flow and if it will work functionally long term?  Do you not visualize it i.e. see it in your mind’s eye?
    If someone described “An isosceles triangle pointing straight up, its horizontal base longer than and resting on a square, a smaller vertically oriented rectangle resting in the square at its base, a small circle inside and to one side of the rectangle” do you see anything in your mind’s eye or would you literally have to draw it first following this description as if they were a set of instructions?
  6. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in Text to Image   
    Just a second… how would you visualize a spatial problem?  For example imagine placing furniture so that it fits a room but also imagining it in place to determine if there is flow and if it will work functionally long term?  Do you not visualize it i.e. see it in your mind’s eye?
    If someone described “An isosceles triangle pointing straight up, its horizontal base longer than and resting on a square, a smaller vertically oriented rectangle resting in the square at its base, a small circle inside and to one side of the rectangle” do you see anything in your mind’s eye or would you literally have to draw it first following this description as if they were a set of instructions?
  7. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in Text to Image   
    This reminds me of much, and brings up a thought or perhaps a sentiment...
    a certain asymmetry...
     
    Although "We cannot know things-in-themselves" is flawed
    it is a certainty that
    "things-in-themselves cannot know We... only We do." is true.
  8. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to necrovore in USA v. Donald J. Trump – Indictment 8/1/23   
    My definitions of "fact" and "opinion" might not be the same as the legal definitions... I'd consider a "statement of fact" to be something concrete and an "opinion" to be something more abstract. A statement of fact can be correct or not, but you could verify it with observation (or possibly the use of instruments). An opinion can also be correct or not, but in order to assess its correctness you'd have to apply abstract principles which are drawn over large numbers of facts. It's possible for an opinion to be based on Objectivism or Communism but it's not possible for a claim of fact to be based on an ideology, because it's supposed to be the other way around -- ideologies, if correct, are supposed to be based on facts! (Of course, if someone lies about a fact, then the motive for the lie might be some ideology... and sometimes an ideology can bias someone toward making certain kinds of errors... but you cannot conclude that something is a lie or an error merely because it supports some ideology...)
    A legal system cannot conform to reality by itself; it depends on its practitioners (judges, attorneys, police, etc.) for that. Sometimes practitioners make mistakes, but a legal system should be devised to take that into account and allow those errors to be corrected. A legal system should also be devised to correct for the situation where occasionally a practitioner is corrupt. Even when the legal system makes provisions for these kinds of problems, the provisions may not always work and errors may occur. However, if a majority of the practitioners are sufficiently corrupt, such as by an ideology, there is not much the legal system can do.
    Ayn Rand noted decades ago that America had a rift between its people and its intellectuals. The intellectuals become the legal system's practitioners. Now they are the permanent bureaucrats, the DC "swamp." They have the power to declare what is "true" and "false" as far as the government is concerned, and to enforce those pronouncements through the legal system. Although that power should be used to keep the government aligned with actual reality, they can also use it to keep themselves in power, and that's what they are doing here, and I believe they have done it in other cases.
    The question of what would be "laughed out of court," and what wouldn't be, is up to them.
  9. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to tadmjones in USA v. Donald J. Trump – Indictment 8/1/23   
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
  10. Thanks
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Doug Morris in Catholic Church Slurp at the Public Trough Called Religious Liberty and Education Freedom by Republican Governor   
    Morally, the only right answer is separation of state and education.
    Constitutionally, the courts have to work it out.
     
  11. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    Is that the ONLY basis? What about the self-likeness basis of "species solidarity" which Branden wrote of in "Benevolence versus Altruism" (1962)? I'd bet a Coca-Cola that potential of any sort is not the most basic reason humans are protective of human infants. I know all the usual chant about children being most precious because "they are our future." That is a preciousness for sure, but not the main preciousness of the individual child one is dealing with. It's a more human-to-human-as-particulars thing than any sort of considerations about continuation of the species or potentials of the actual child at hand.*
  12. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in The Presuppositionalist Argument for the Axioms of Objectivism   
    DAVID TYSON
    The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 25. Nos. 1-2, 2023
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I have cleaned up my remarks from earlier in this thread on this paper by David Tyson:
     
    Tyson makes his distinction of those two sorts of foundationalism as follows:
    “Deductive foundationalism evaluates whether a certain item of knowledge is foundational [α] in terms of being most prior through deduction or entailment, and foundational knowledge is [β] held in the form of deductive axioms that serve as premises from which necessary conclusions can be inferred by deduction or entailment.
    “Presuppositional foundationalism evaluates the foundational status of knowledge [α’] in terms of being logically most prior, and foundational knowledge is [β’] held in presuppositional axioms, which serve as presuppositions that provide the necessary conditions that make the rest of knowledge possible.” (155)
    Tyson makes the intellectual-history claim that until the last century deductive foundationalism was the model of knowledge. He claims that Euclidean geometry and Aristotle set that model. On that model, there is basic knowledge that supports, or founds, all other knowledge and justifies it. If the relation between the basic knowledge and non-basic knowledge is deduction and entailment, we have deductive foundationalism. If the relation between basic and non-basic knowledge is by presupposition, we have presuppositional foundationalism.
    Tyson does not cite the precise places in Aristotle for what is here being called deductive foundationalism. But Tyson refers us to a nice online survey of foundationalism by philosopher Ted Poston and there we are told to look to Posterior Analytics. As I recall, it is at II.19 that we find the influential model of knowledge (most snobbish sort of knowledge—science), and this is not the same as the structure of knowledge we find in Euclid, though both employ deduction in their ramifications.
    One version of foundationalism that Poston discusses is that of Descartes. Tyson places Descartes’s foundationalism under his class “deductive foundationalism.” True to Tyson’s criteria for that class, Descartes did allege that the philosophic bases he established in Meditations were necessary support for scientific knowledge such as geometry. Descartes rightly got some flack over that particular “founding” since it is plain that geometers proceed the same whether or not they know that the soundness of procedures in geometry rest on the demonstration that there is a non-deceiving God settling that soundness of them.
    As for the knowledge-structure of Meditations itself, Descartes regarded putting it into a deductive form wherein there are postulates, axioms, and definitions from which his conclusions are drawn as inferior to the process he chose in Meditations for bringing the reader into the light. Then too, the procedure that Descartes touted for justifying his scientific successes (such as his theory of the rainbow) was not the procedure set out by Aristotle for scientific knowledge. So I don’t think Descartes is suitable as instance of Tyson’s deductive foundationalism.
    Spinoza or Wolff are suitable, I notice. Μοre precisely, the metaphysics of Spinoza and of Wolff fall under [β] rather than [β’]. Tyson’s distinction between [α] and [α’] is unclear, and I’m unable to apply the former, which is insufficiently specified, insofar as it is alleged to differ from the latter.
    Tyson attempts to fortify his distinction between deductive foundationalism and presuppositional foundationalism by having the former establish the correctness of its axioms by intuition and having the latter establish the correctness of its axioms by showing them to be undeniable on pain of self-contradiction. To which should we consign Spinoza’s axiom “Whatever is, is either in itself or in another.”? I do not recommend Tyson’s distinction between “deductive foundationalism” and “presuppositional foundationalism” as a clarifying one for analyses of foundational philosophies.
    There are bits of misinformation in Tyson’s paper which I should squiggly-underline. He tries to demarcate the distinction(s) in philosophy between implication and entailment as technical terms, and stumbles (158–59). Solid online information on entailment is available in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Check within the entry on Bolzano and the entry on Relevance Logic.
    Tyson sows confusion when he writes: “5. Entailment is progressive and synthetic (not regressive and analytic)—that is, it moves forward from premises to conclusion by deductive inference. (Example: Euclidean geometry, which draws theorems and other conclusions from axioms, is synthetic.[6])” 
    Note 6 is a quotation from Morris Klein introducing the distinction between synthetic and analytic geometry, which is unrelated to the distinction in logic, from Aristotle, between the synthetic and the analytic. 
    The result is the impression that Euclidean geometry is only synthetic geometry, not analytic geometry. And that is incorrect. Euclidean geometry as Euclid presents it and we learn it in high school is a synthetic geometry, but it can also be cast as an analytic geometry, as when we write (in a coordinate system) the equations of two intersecting lines, equate them, and solve for the location of the point(s) they have in common.
    Tyson is thinking of the presuppositional axioms as being presupposed in anything one might claim or question. That is, they are common factors in whatever objects one might be thinking about and in whatever objective thinking one might have. I agree with him that Rand's axioms have that character. That the axioms apply to to every object and every occasion of correct thinking is shown by showing the contradictoriness one gets into if one denies them for any object or occasion; Tyson correctly realizes this.
    Additionally, Tyson is correct in thinking that Rand's axioms are not conceived as for the purpose of deducing any more particular knowledge, unlike we do in geometry and unlike Spinoza or Wolff do in metaphysics. Rather, I should put it that the Objectivist axioms are to be touchstones of correct thought. Cross them, and one has gotten disconnected from reality. The circumstance that the axioms are implicit in any more particular knowledge means only that one is implicitly affirming the axioms when affirming the more particular knowledge; it does not mean that one can deduce the more particular knowledge from the axioms.
    I think the distinction between axioms conceived as touchstones of knowledge rather than as springboards to further knowledge is the distinction between kinds of axiomatic foundationalisms worth noting, not Tyson's distinction between "deductive foundationalism" and "presuppositional foundationalism."
     
  13. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in The Presuppositionalist Argument for the Axioms of Objectivism   
    SL,
    I gather Tyson is thinking of the axioms as being presupposed in anything one might claim or question. That is, they are common factors in whatever objects one might be thinking about and in whatever objective thinking one might have. I agree with him that Rand's axioms have that character. That the axioms apply to to every object and every occasion of correct thinking is shown by showing the contradictoriness one gets into if one denies them for any object or occasion; Tyson correctly realizes this.
    Additionally, Tyson is correct in thinking that Rand's axioms are not conceived as for the purpose of deducing any more particular knowledge, unlike we do in geometry and unlike Spinoza or Wolff do in metaphysics. Rather, the Objectivist axioms are to be touchstones of correct thought. Cross them, and one has gotten disconnected from reality. The circumstance that the axioms are implicit in any more particular knowledge means only that one is implicitly affirming the axioms when affirming the more particular knowledge; it does not mean that one can deduce the more particular knowledge from the axioms.
    I think the distinction between axioms conceived as touchstones of knowledge rather than as springboards to further knowledge is the distinction between kinds of axiomatic foundationalisms worth noting, not Tyson's distinction between "deductive foundationalism" and "presuppositional foundationalism."
  14. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in The Presuppositionalist Argument for the Axioms of Objectivism   
    Why does Tyson call the axioms "presuppositional"?  Isn't what is actually presupposed the "possibility of knowledge" as such, and based on that presupposition, the axioms follow ... almost.. dare I say, deductively?
  15. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in The Presuppositionalist Argument for the Axioms of Objectivism   
    David Tyson sensibly takes inference to include these varieties: deduction, induction, and abduction. He takes recognition of presuppositions to also be a kind of inference. This last strains the English word inference. Tyson’s program, however, of setting up two distinguished kinds of foundationalism, presuppositional v. deductive, can get underway (and crash just as well) without casting recognition of presuppositions as a kind of inference.
    Tyson makes his distinction of those two sorts of foundationalism as follows:
    “Deductive foundationalism evaluates whether a certain item of knowledge is foundational [α] in terms of being most prior through deduction or entailment, and foundational knowledge is [β] held in the form of deductive axioms that serve as premises from which necessary conclusions can be inferred by deduction or entailment.
    “Presuppositional foundationalism evaluates the foundational status of knowledge [α’] in terms of being logically most prior, and foundational knowledge is [β’] held in presuppositional axioms, which serve as presuppositions that provide the necessary conditions that make the rest of knowledge possible.” (155)
    Tyson makes the intellectual-history claim that until the last century deductive foundationalism was the model of knowledge. He claims that Euclidean geometry and Aristotle set that model. On that model, there is basic knowledge that supports, or founds, all other knowledge and justifies it. If the relation between the basic knowledge and non-basic knowledge is deduction and entailment, we have deductive foundationalism. If the relation between basic and non-basic knowledge is by presupposition, we have presuppositional foundationalism.
    Tyson does not cite the precise places in Aristotle for what is here being called deductive foundationalism. But Tyson refers us to a nice online survey of foundationalism by philosopher Ted Poston, and there we are told to look to Posterior Analytics. As I recall, it is at II.19 that we find the influential model of knowledge (most snobbish sort of knowledge—science), and this is not the same as the structure of knowledge we find in Euclid, though both employ deduction in their ramifications.
    One version of foundationalism that Poston discusses is that of Descartes. Tyson places Descartes’s foundationalism under his class “deductive foundationalism.” True to Tyson’s criteria for that class, Descartes did allege that the philosophic bases he established in Meditations were necessary support for scientific knowledge such as geometry. Descartes rightly got some flack over that particular “founding” since it is plain that geometers proceed the same whether or not they know that the soundness of procedures in geometry rest on the demonstration that there is a non-deceiving God settling that soundness of them.
    As for the knowledge-structure of Meditations itself, Descartes regarded putting it into a deductive form wherein there are postulates, axioms, and definitions from which his conclusions are drawn–he rated such as that inferior to the process he chose in Meditations for bringing the reader into the light. Then too, the procedure that Descartes touted for justifying his scientific successes (such as his theory of the rainbow) was not the procedure set out by Aristotle for scientific knowledge. So I don’t think Descartes is suitable as instance of Tyson’s deductive foundationalism.
    Spinoza or Wolff are suitable, I notice. Μοre precisely, the metaphysics of Spinoza and of Wolff fall under [β] rather than [β’]. The distinction between [α] and [α’] is none, so I don’t expect any philosophy can be brought forth which falls under the one but not the other.
    Tyson attempts to fortify his distinction between deductive foundationalism and presuppositional foundationalism by having the former establish the correctness of its axioms by intuition and having the latter establish the correctness of its axioms by showing them to be undeniable on pain of self-contradiction. To which should we consign Spinoza’s axiom “Whatever is, is either in itself or in another.”? I do not recommend Tyson’s distinction between “deductive foundationalism” and “presuppositional foundationalism” as a clarifying one for analyses of foundational philosophies.
    There are bits of misinformation in Tyson’s paper which I should squiggly-underline. He tries to demarcate the distinction(s) in philosophy between implication and entailment as technical terms, and stumbles (158–59). Solid online information on entailment is available in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Check within the entry on Bolzano and the entry on Relevance Logic.
    Tyson sows confusion when he writes: “5. Entailment is progressive and synthetic (not regressive and analytic)—that is, it moves forward from premises to conclusion by deductive inference. (Example: Euclidean geometry, which draws theorems and other conclusions from axioms, is synthetic.[6])” 
    Note 6 is a quotation from Morris Klein introducing the distinction between synthetic and analytic geometry, which is unrelated to the distinction in logic, from Aristotle, between the synthetic and the analytic. 
    The result is the impression that Euclidean geometry is only synthetic geometry, not analytic geometry. And that is incorrect. Euclidean geometry as Euclid presents it and we learn it in high school is a synthetic geometry, but it can also be cast as an analytic geometry, as when we write (in a coordinate system) the equations of two intersecting lines, equate them, and solve for the location of the point(s) they have in common.
  16. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in There Is No "Thing-In-Itself"   
    NYA, things-in-themselves taken as things not in relation to any things not themselves are non-existent (ITOE 39). If one is thinking of things-in-themselves as not what the name says on its face, but as things as they are independent of any consciousness of them, then one has taken things-in-themselves as saying things-as-they-are-independently-of-mind. That last thing exists. But we should call it what I called it there and not call it things-in-themselves.
    Kant's talk of things-in-themselves smuggles things as existing independently of mind, which is a legitimate conception, and mixes it together with the idea of things as they are, out of all relation to other things. Were there things existing out all relation to to other things, then naturally they could not stand in the known-knowing relation with consciousness. But as Rand argued, no such thing-in-itself exists. All existents have identity, and all stand in some relations to existents not themselves. I concur.
    Kant contrasted the phenomenal world and appearances composing it with his things-in-themselves, but in his outlook, that is not a contrast between the illusory and what truly exists. For Kant the phenomenal world is a reality and one worth caring about and learning more about. An analogy would be with Locke's view of material substance, which he took to exist and to support the traits of the material world, though he thought that only those traits are knowable. He thought that the substances cannot be known by the human mind. Leibniz took issue with Locke's view on that, and the history of science since then vindicated Leibniz and has ground Locke's view into dust. The point of the analogy between Kant and Locke is that just as Locke held both substance and its traits to be real, so too did Kant hold both the phenomenal world and the noumenal world (and things-in-themselves) to be real.
    "Still less may appearances {Erscheinung} and illusion {Schein} be regarded as being the same. For truth and illusion are not in the object insofar as it is intuited, but are in the judgment made about the object insofar as it is thought. Hence although it is correct to say that the senses do not err, this is so not because they always judge correctly but because they do not judge at all." (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A293/B349-50; see also B70. Against the idea that Kant’s “appearances” are illusions, see Anja Jauernig, The World According to Kant [New York: Oxford University Press, 2021], pp. 248–57 and 267.)
  17. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    What do you think, Infra? What do you think is a correct basis of a right of an innocent human being not to be killed?
    Do you think right bases of rights are emotion-free?
    Rand took individual rights to rest on the circumstance that individuals are ends in themselves endowed with capability for autonomous thought and direction. Respecting rights of others is from recognition of that circumstance and the rightness of treating things as the kind of things they are. Layers of strategic-game consideration could be added to that in defense of respecting individual rights, but the fundamental is that each life is an end in itself. Do you think this basis for the right of an innocent human being to not be killed is a sound basis?
    I think it is. Additionally, proper responsiveness to others (or to oneself) requires operational emotion. There are no human desires, valuations, or thought were all varieties of emotions unplugged. Just as there would be no thought as purported by Descartes in Meditations were it really possible, as he pretended, to unplug entirely from body inputs and sensory inputs.
     
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Welcome to Objectivism Online, Infrabeat.
     
  18. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from tadmjones in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    Arguendo "wanting" to have or keep raising children MEANS being prepared for, and earnestly and genuinely loving and caring for another person who starts out deeply dependent.  Whether it fits any philosophical standard, humans DO literally need love to grow into a sane and moral adult.. it is not a psychological luxury, it is a deep human necessity.
    Perhaps it is only moral to "have" and/or be the guardian of anyone, if and only if you actually WANT to be one, with everything that entails, and ALL that it means.
     
    Summary:  Have a kid you don't want and/or cannot care for? Just  f#@&ing give it up for adoption as soon/early as you know, so someone else can do so.  Our world would be a MUCH better place, and so many people SO much better off, if everyone followed this.
  19. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    "If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty." Ayn Rand
    I suggest we read between the lines and remember what kinds of values Ms. Rand deemed to be valid, and just how human Ms. Rand actually was.
     
  20. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    I suggest that moral responsibility for training and education of children lies firstly with the child's parents, although not as part of a package of responsibility attaching merely to having caused the child's existence. That Objectivist position focussing on causal relationship, down from the era of N. Branden in the 1960's, was off the mark. Moral responsibility for training and educating the child lies firstly with the child's parents, I suggest, because of the moral goodness of responsiveness to persons and the potential person they may become, responsiveness to persons as persons.
    That responsiveness is, I say, the core of moral relations among people (and indeed, differently, relations of a self to itself). That is the preciousness that is the moral in a social setting. This position is a cashing out of the concept of moral justice, treating a thing as the kind of thing it is—that moral virtue. What a thing is includes its internal systems, but as well its distinctive external relations, actual and potential. The relations of responsiveness to persons as persons have a specially intense and distinctive character in the relation between the persons who are parent and child (natural parent most strongly, of course, but strong with adoptive parents as well).
    Additionally, there is a moral goodness in the benevolent protectiveness—that responsiveness—between any adult and any child. That such responsiveness fosters continuance of the species human as human may well be the underlying biological reason for this responsiveness. But that is not the reason the responsiveness of parent or other adult to the child and responsiveness of the child to them as persons is moral. Rather, the nature of value in the life of individual humans together, which is their best situation in the world, is the source of the moral goodness of such responsiveness to persons as persons. 
  21. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    It depends on what colleges are available, how much real knowledge they teach, how much Marxist indoctrination they push etc.
    It may be worth the money to self learn, hire persons with knowledge, private tutors, mentors etc.
     
    Good parents do everything in their power to launch their children as high and as far as they wish to go, sometimes that is something more spiritual than economic, like a small business, or career in art... it depends greatly on the context of the child's wants and needs and realistic dreams, and the means of the parents, good people work this out and do their best.
     
    Rationalizing falling short of this is usually confined to people who really would rather have the "hat" than feed the child...[paraphrasing]
    but really that was one of THE wisest things Rand ever said in her writings.
  22. Like
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Boydstun in How much education do we OWE our children?   
    Arguendo "wanting" to have or keep raising children MEANS being prepared for, and earnestly and genuinely loving and caring for another person who starts out deeply dependent.  Whether it fits any philosophical standard, humans DO literally need love to grow into a sane and moral adult.. it is not a psychological luxury, it is a deep human necessity.
    Perhaps it is only moral to "have" and/or be the guardian of anyone, if and only if you actually WANT to be one, with everything that entails, and ALL that it means.
     
    Summary:  Have a kid you don't want and/or cannot care for? Just  f#@&ing give it up for adoption as soon/early as you know, so someone else can do so.  Our world would be a MUCH better place, and so many people SO much better off, if everyone followed this.
  23. Thanks
    StrictlyLogical got a reaction from Gnome07 in Can the Objectivist view on free-will be considered a form of agent-causation?   
    I think the thing which sets Objectivism apart is its amenability to non-deterministic causation/action  flowing from absolute identity.
    Things behave according to their nature, lawfully, but not all things do so strictly in a deterministically Leibnizian manner. 
    Free-will is not the ability of a person to choose against his or her own nature/identity in some arbitrary way, but the freedom to choose from a number of possible choices perfectly consistent with the person's nature/identity.
     
    Free will is non-deterministic but not completely arbitrary.
  24. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Jon Letendre in Reblogged:Ayn Rand on Disney's Bootleg Capitalism   
    The problem is that it is not just a legal entity. Rather, it is a government entity, empowered with government functions and powers, and controlled by a single corporation. That corporation obtained that special privilege in the '60s by corrupting the Florida legislature.
    Let's be clear—Disney is not some free market hero who fought government and improved property rights for all. Rather, they bribed and corrupted a state legislature to gain exemptions from law, special privileges and their own local government, for themselves. That is not capitalism, it is crony-statism.
  25. Like
    StrictlyLogical reacted to Doug Morris in Reblogged:Fox Discovers 'Addition by Subtraction'   
    Most of these people still buy the altruist morality.  Most of them do not understand what government is.  
    This makes them ineffective as defenders of rights or of freedom.
    Only when enough people learn what Ayn Rand has to teach.
     
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