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CJM

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  1. Just before I leave Not being certain does not mean I cannot form subjective opinions in relation to your first point. A satisfactory answer would give me ample reason to hold these subjective opinions. I can also come to an imperfect and subjective conclusion, it need not be objective and it most certainly need not be true, I just have to believe it. G,night.
  2. Identity applies to attributes. If we cannot know identity, as you seem to agree, how can we know the identity of attributes? Also I was not suggesting your perception is a contradiction, just your position and thus your arguments on this subject. Okay guys, I am done here, since I simply won't have the time to reply properly after today, I won't do it at all. Thanks to the people who took the time to reply, however I am surprised with the amount of contradictions in the info I was given between different people, and the fact I was bombarded with strawman arguments as well as ad hominem ones. There also seems to be a certain crowd who couldn't muster up more than feebly repeating the arguments of others where they did not apply. I found this odd for the champions of individualism and reason, but whatever. On the whole I found the majority of the responses highly stimulating and interesting. A lot of the issues I had with the Ehtics has been cleared up, though my problems with reconciling causality and free will remain, as well as my obvious problems with the epistemology. The arguments I had on detail didn't seem to be properly understood by anyone, so that is probably my error. Try to think of it as like Zenos dichotomy paradox(lol, obviously not the Tortoise and achilles one, I am tired) without an appeal to infinity but the fact that our senses cannot perceive the absolute detail of anything as it exists. I will come back and read this in the hope something does come up that clears up the problems I raised , or if you want to call me illiterate or a troll or something else of that nature it will also be perfectly worth your while. I won't reply though, because I feel doing it half assedly would be an insult to you and pointless for both of us. Cheers.
  3. This is what this sentence should say, the edit function wasn't working for some reason.
  4. What correspondence, if we know no things as they are in reality? Where does this correspondence come from if we know no things identity? And "correspondence" is a very ambiguous word to use here., it will need a definition. It seems to me that you are trying to hold that we can hold objective Knowledge, which must conform to reality, while also claiming we cannot know things as they are in reality. This is a contradiction.
  5. Great, rational argument to solve the problem of causation and free will. You are an exemplary rational figure.
  6. Do some reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket Parentheses have many uses, you tool. Now if you are done attempting your ad hominem argument, would you mind addressing the actual arguments?
  7. What exactly does "things as they are in reality" mean to you so? Is it not identity? Well? Are you smoking crack Rockefeller? No it does not, if our perceptions are wrong. If our perceptions are wrong our reason may function perfectly and still lead us to believe that our knowledge is non-contradictory. So your point immediately falls flat on it's ass. Non contradictory knowledge, IF this knowledge is meant to be objective, is unobtainable. I would never claim otherwise and never did. I never claimed this is what Rand said, or argued. I consistently stated they were implications of her ethics, and never anything else. On the other hand, when I was asking a question and not making a statement, I also made this clear. Questions aren't strawmen. Maybe thats why I made the specific statement IF THE ODDS ARE INSURMOUNTABLE???! Did you miss that part? That would imply that said man had evaluated the risk and found it insurmountable. Jesus titty fucking christ. This was also after I had stated I was doing nothing more than discussing implications of following Objectivist ethics. Projection? This was nothing I said, it was an assumption on your part. Do you know what they say about assumptions? Because this was an assumption on your part, I won't target the rest of the stuff you just posted for obvious reasons. An alternative is an object or choice, where if you choose one, you cannot choose others. They are mutually exclusive. How did I bring up a false definition in saying we can weigh up alternatives that are not physically possible to carry out? You need to buy a dictionary badly. I have never claimed consciousness is a spectator or not physical or material. In fact that would go AGAINST what I am arguing. I clearly was talking about PHYSICAL VARIABLES not changing. Holy shit, could you be any more wrong up their on your high horse?
  8. Not the infinte, and yes that is my whole fucking point! If it is based on reality and derived by a reliable method, how is it notknowledge of things as they are in reality?
  9. Total has nothing to do with infinity. How do you not get this? 1. Things exist in reality. Correct? 2. These things have identity. Correct? Edit: I may as well finish this 3. This identity is finite and real, and entails the totality of the thing. Totality is just the thing, the shole of it. 4. To know something objectively is to know it as it exists 5. To know something objectively is to know it's identity Do you disagree with any of these? The problem is that you are taking totality as meaning something it does not, as demostrated by your ridiculous "infinity" remarks. Totality just means the whole of something, as it exists in objective reality. Do you get it? I think now would be a great time to hear your definition of objective knowledge, which you failed to define earlier.
  10. You might want to tell that to all the people who think we can gain objective knowledge about the world on this forum, because you are the first person to hold this. You said closest starting point. You what Objectivism held was Representative realism is totally contradictory to Objectivism. It seems like you are the person who holds an incorrect understanding of Objectivism, telling me a contradictory philosophical position is the closest starting point and claiming it doesn't hold that we can gain objective knowledge about the world. What do you mean we only know the parts partially? I have already pointed out the problem with this, numerous times. These partial parts of parts have parts, which we cannot perceive in totality. This continues to the level beyond what we can perceive. Taken from rebirth of reason. So who is wrong? Me, most of the people on this forum, and this website, or you Grames?
  11. No it is not. Knowing a part as it is in objective reality is still knowing it objectively. How do you not get this? If you know a part in objective reality, you need to know the totality of this part. Otherwise you do not know it objectively at all. Rand rejected representationalism, I have no idea what you are taking about.
  12. You misunderstand the use of the word "total". Either our knowledge of a thing in reality corresponds totally or it does not. If it does not, our knowledge isn't objective. You can't know half or a quarter of a thing objectively to be true, because you can't know the totality of that half or quarter. You cannot know a half or quarter of this half or quarter to be true either, because you cannot perceive the totality of that half or a quarter of a half of a quarter. What you seem to be suggesting I am saying is that for us to know anything about anything, we must know everything about everything, this is not what I am saying at all. For us to know anything as it is in objective reality, to know it as it is, we must know it in totality, because this is what it is in objective reality. This same reasoning applies to a part of thing, to any aspect, to anything. I do not mean to know anything about a table, we must know the total table down to parts we cannot perceive. But we must know the total of the anything. I cannot make it clearer than that. Understand what I mean by total correspondence? I will capitalize whichever words I like, sir. Yes, objective has a specific meaning. It is something that is true independent of mind. To know something objectively is to know it as it is in objective reality. You cannot gain objective knowledge through subjective experience, that's a contradiction. To a large extent I have, but I may be missing some. My meaning of objective is the standard one and works perfectly in conjunction with your up to the point of concept formation, as I see, so there is no reason to be worried about that when talking about perception. Yet again, why does it being automatic and deterministic mean that it must be infallible? This is the problem. If they are based on reality and the sources are held to be totally reliable, then my definition of objective(objective being used in it's standard sense here) knowledge fits perfectly. How on earth can representative realism be the closest starting point when it claims we cannot know the external world as it is, when Objectivism holds that we can? How does that make ANY sense?
  13. I agree that it is a pointless question, I wasn't the one who asked it. Yes, it is a representation of reality, and it has everything to do with what we know. If what we perceive is a representation, it isn't reality. Again, what "we perceive is reality" is a statement that has a few different interpretations. It can mean A. That what we perceive is itself reality. This statement tells us nothing about our perceptions, merely what they are based on. B. That out perceptions are an accurate representation of reality. Yes, but what your perceptions are not. Yes. So what. You don't seem to have anything to say about the fact that the neurons can send the wrong signals to our brain leading to incorrect perceptions. Yes, I meant Objectivism. In this very thread, I have been misinformed on this issue then. Consciousness requires thought, which is held to be volitional. I was under the impression(given to me by a member here) that volition implied it was subjective. What in that statement led you to believe that was a "definition" of causation, and not something it necessarily entailed? Be careful with your assumptions. It is quite funny that the problem here arose from you attempting to guess what I was saying. Note the following sentence Now, would you jump to the conclusion that I have just defined Aristotle as the law of identity? This came from a fuck up on your part, not mine. As I said, watch those assumptions, otherwise you are likely to get some pretty strange ideas of what anybody believes. Radn defines free will as our minds freedom to think or not, or choice to think or not(we shall ignore the glaring problem that choice denotes forethought). She claims that at any point in a mans life, he is free to think or to evade the effort. "Free" implies that it is not controlled by obligation, that it is not caused. If it is necessitated by cause and effect, it is in no way free. Nothing can happen without being caused, that is causality, cause and effect. If the choice to think is caused by external factors(do not say it was caused by me, "me" is caused, as you said, by factors outside your control-your parents decision) then how is it to be called free? Unless the factors outside our control changed, we would not change, and the choice would not. To hold differently breaks the chain of causality.
  14. Oh, and what is it so? Knowlegdge is what is known. Objective, in reference to Objectivity, means the world as it is, independent of our minds. If Objective knowledge is knowledge of the world as it is, then things as they are and things as we perceive them MUST correspond, otherwise it isn't freaking Objective. Go. I agree. Just because data may seem fully and wholly non-contradictory to us does not mean it is, I may not have taken your use of the word "standard" as to be as large a part of your argument as it was. I was merely using it as criterion, which was most likely a mistake while responding to your argument if you had previously defined it as something else which I missed. I am not setting up a strawman, this is just an interesting discussion on the implications of Rands ethics, nothing more. A man may choose death yes, but there is no more reason for him to fight for his values than to swallow a cyanide pill if the odds are insurmountable. Just like there is no more reason to push a loved one out from a train whole sacrificing your life than their is to swallow a cyanide pill. In fact, you'd be better off taking the pill, if you are fully rationally self interested because your end will most likely be a whole lot less painful. This rejection had nothing to do with that, it was about whether a mans life being his standard of value made it his standard of value. Whether that is switching metaphysics and ethics around doesn't have anything to do with man holding his life as it's highest value. I have not rejected the idea of either of either. You claimed choice required the possibility of alternatives(or at least implied it) I simply pointed out that one can weigh up alternatives and choose a course of action even if the alternatives you were weighing up are not physically possible to carry out. That implies an assumption we cannot posit impossible actions. It comes from being asked a ridiculous question. To assume that I could choose other values, my identity would have to act against it's nature. I could not have done what I did not do, and I could only do what I did. If you were to replay a choice over and over again without changing any physical variables, how could I choose differently? How? What points did I miss? I know I skipped the "keyboard is an elephant", because it A. Makes no sense. Everyone has numerous instances where people have perceived thing s in totally different ways to them. B. Doesn't just have to do with the senses, but concept formation. Are you basically saying that what Rand meant when she held that what we perceive is reality is not that our perceptions represent reality, but merely what we are perceiving is? How does that then lead her to conclude that our perceptions can lead us to Objective knowledge? Objective reality being objective reality doesn't do anyhting for the problem of the veil of perception. No it isn't. It is just to claim that what they give us are imperfect, subjective perceptions rather than objective ones. Do you people have a different idea of what perception is? I take it to mean, from my reading of Rand, what is referred to as sensation in modern Psychology. The physiological stimulus detection that occurs when our sense organs sense external stimuli and translate them into nerve impulses sent to the brain. Correct?
  15. Consciousness(as I understand the way you and her are using it in this context, to choose to think or not) is held to be subjective and volitional in Objectivity, so therefore what we perceive isn't objective anyway. No I did not say this is what Causality is. And where did this decision come from? Was it not caused? You are assmuning the wrong signals cannot be sent to the brain. There is no reason for thinking this. I will leave your analogy for the moment as this seems to be a bigger problem. I do not see how I am, could you elaborate? You clearly did not know, and the sense I am using it is not undefined. I am not taking words and using them while giving them my own definitions. Rand argues that we only hold these as values in how they relate to our own lives. If you are sacrificing yourself for another only because you feel life without them isn't truly life/living as a heroic being you are doing nothing but committing suicide, and may as well do it in a way that does not save them if it is more convenient for you. You are not dying for a person or cause, but for yourself. I accept this rejection. I fail to see how it is a contradiction. I can choose to stand up without remaining seated being a possibility, even if I do not know that it is not a possibility. Choice requires that we sum up alternatives and come to a conclusion. It does not require that the alternatives which we do not choose be physically possible to carry out. No it does not, that is not how I perceive consciousness at all. This is not what I demand, this is what you demand. THAT is objective knowledge, which you claim is possible. I am aware, that is my problem with it. Of course it was, and I am not claiming that this position isn't subjective and distorted(distorted to a degree).
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