New Buddha

@Nicky "Well, if that's how you go about trying to make people agree with you, then that is indeed irrelevant." I don't try and MAKE people agree with me about anything. I could care less. Do you care that others agree with you? "I won't insist that it is not." Insist away to your hearts content.

What could possibly prevent you from "borrowing" or "synthesizing" some aspect of Objectivism to form your own philosophical view? Are there some Objectivist Cops that I'm un aware of that drive the country arresting people? And not open to discussion? Really? Most people on this web site are bored with the same-old-same-old that they would more than welcome a new and insightful take on some aspect of Objectivism or an outright disagreement with it. I think you're confused.

I'd say that trying to get others to agree with you that video games are art, is largely irrelevant - in the sense that some will insist that they are not. That being said, I'm replaying Gothic 3 (w/Community Patch!) and am once again amazed at how beautiful the landscape is. The music, voice acting, etc. all bring about an enjoyable aesthetic experience on par with that of art in the traditional mediums.

@frank, You fail to understand the context in which "closed" or "open" is used frank. It's closed to the extent that co-opting the philosophy by others is discouraged. This is to avoid schisms or claims such as "What Rand REALLY meant was....". That's the extent of it. It ain't that complicated.

@Plasmatic "You didn't answer my question. Nothing in what you quoted addresses the idea that anyone was looking for "reified" knowledge independent of the mind , or what such string of symbols even means." The term "reified" knowledge, as I used it, is along the lines of Kant's "because we have eyes, we cannot see...." It's ties into philosophers who devalue knowledge that has been gained by a "process". The belief that our perception has distorted reality as it really is. That's ALL I meant by the use of term. Knowledge that is a priori. Hume's attempt to naturalize knowledge, by discarding the theory of innate ideas, was fairly radical and exposed himself to claims of his being an Atheist. However because he did not understand that essence is epistemological and that the senses are valid, he could only conclude that induction was justified psychologically (by "habit"). I'm not presenting anything radical here, or a new interpretation of Hume.

@Plasmatic & @dream By independent of the mind (of man) I mean that much of Christian philosophy studied how God has ordered existence, identity and morality. There was an ontological order to the Universe decreed by God. Philosophy was an attempt to discover that order. Hume was looking for a naturalistic approach. From Wiki Hume "Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature." "....he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience." And regarding the secular nature of his thought: From Stanford Hume on Religion "Whatever interpretation one takes of Hume's philosophy as a whole, it is certainly true that one of his most basic philosophical objectives is to unmask and discredit the doctrines and dogmas of orthodox religious belief. There are, however, some significant points of disagreement about the exact nature and extent of Hume's irreligious intentions. One of the most important of these is whether Hume's sceptical position leads him to a view that can be properly characterized as “atheism”. Although this was a view that was widely accepted by many of Hume's critics during his own lifetime, contemporary accounts have generally argued that this misrepresents his final position on this subject." Now, do I need to spell out for you Plasmatic that I do NOT advocate Hume? I mean, what the hell?

Hume's failure is the failure of Moderns. He was searching for a type of "reified", omniscient and immutable knowledge that exist independent of the mind. Even though he was a product of the Enlightenment, he still inherited the baggage of Christianity and the idea of a divine order in the Universe. Failing to find such an order, he resorted to belief/probability to justify knowledge. It was modern, secular and scientific for it's age.

"How can these saying float around in our mind, but float around with no real substance or understanding? What is that we're doing here?" Rand's concept of the "floating abstraction" seems to be what you are looking for? Ideas which you accept as true and/or false without really being able to trace back the their origins in reality. But I got to tell you, I picked up on this sentence "....I'm able to save my mind from destruction." You can't live your life thinking like this. Floating ideas are not time bombs - we all have them to some degree. It's the price of being able to think abstractly.

lol "Irrational parents do not necessarily create irrational children, and almost everyone on this forum is living proof of that." +1

We gots lots of cheap, readily available coal....

@dream, I can see we are pretty much talking right past each, but I'll give it one more shot. If something comes of it, fine. If not, well, the Seattle Mariners are set to start soon... FL Wright said of Louis Sullivan something along the line that "Sullivan always searched for the rules of Nature, while I (Wright) searched for the exceptions". My use of the Man-from-Mars was meant to say that if someone were to look at all the living animals on this planet with a fresh set of eyes, what would be immediately apparent is that the most intelligent and complex animal is also the one that repeatedly behaves in appallingly irrational ways. To me this "exception" catches my attention, and it is a worth while endeavor to try and understand how this came to be. I find speculation on it to be intellectually stimulating. If you don't well, we can both stop the back and forth.

@dream "Man, as the rational animal, versus the instinctual actions of the rest of the animal kingdom?" I differ with you on what can be termed "instinctual actions". I would say that there are in fact very few behaviors that can be called instinctual in the animal kingdom among animals of any real complexity. The following is taken from Wiki's Instinct page and is more in line with what I mean when differentiating "instinct" from "learning and/or rational" behavior: "The role of instincts in determining the behavior of animals varies from species to species. The more complex the neural system of an animal, the greater is the role of the cerebral cortex and social learning, and instincts play a lesser role. A comparison between a crocodile and an elephant illustrates how mammals for example are heavily dependent on social learning. Lionesses and chimpanzees raised in zoos away from their birth mothers most often reject their own offspring because they have not been taught the skills of mothering. Such is not the case with simpler species such as reptiles." I'm arguing that an animal's learning of complex behavior is an exhibition of rational behavior, and certainly not instinctual. But, please keep in mind, that my definition of "rational" is following a contextually narrow one in order to distinguish it from "irrational" behavior, relative to this post. And I still stand by my position that greater cognitive complexity makes irrationality possible, and that less cognitively complex organisms do not exhibit irrational behavior.

@dream_weaver "What is it that make rationality possible in the first place?" Dogs and cat's exhibit rational behavior. We see them learn from their mistakes and modify their behavior accordingly. This is true for a great many animals. Most, if not all, mammals must learn how to live by interacting with others of their kind. If you drop a young wolf into the forest, he will die without guidance. We don't really begin to see what we would identify as irrational behavior until we reach the primates. The greater the intellect, the greater the capacity for irrational behavior. Correlation many not equal causation, but if I were the Man-from-Mars, I'd sure take note.

@Harrison "All forms of irrationality stem from the premise that ideas don't matter" Your missing my point, and your reply is rather simplistic. My question - and it is to hopefully spark some insightful responses and not just cliché answers - is what make irrationality possible in the first place? What neurological component allows humans to be uniquely irrational? Why did it develop? Evolution does NOT weed it out, since we all inherit the capacity to be irrational. And why do we not consider the behavior of other animals as irrational? Is irrationality a necessary offshoot of volition? Is volition only made possible BY the capacity to be irrational? If I were the proverbial Man-from-Mars and I landed on Earth, the first thing that I would notice is that the dominate, intelligent species on the planet has the capacity for irrationally. I wouldn't just cast the observation aside and say that "irrationality stems from the premise that ideas don't matter".

You make a valid point, Dorm. I could have worded it better. My main point (which you did not respond to, by the way....) is why is irrationality even possible in the first place? Why did nature allow it to come to be that humans can be irrational? And if irrationality is so bad, why didn't evolution weed it out? Until this is answered, people will treat irrationality as an "original sin".

Humans are inherently irrational - and this is neither good nor bad, it just is. We don't say that earthworms, eagles, dogs, cows, etc. are irrational. We only say this about humans. If one accepts some form of evolutionary psychology, is it conceivable that irrationality can in fact be beneficial to an individual? I'm not sure what a "completely rational" human society would look like, but I'm pretty certain I'd not like to live in it.

Funny, I've been engaged in a running debate on another blog regarding this very story ( wmbriggs.com ) . In answer to your specific question "when is [it] appropriate to boycott a commercial relationship with someone or some company." I would say that it is up to each individual to decide. Each individual must choose for himself those he wishes to associate with. Was such a boycott appropriate or not? That's for you to decide. But somehow I feel you know that. Is that really your question....?

"When we call altruism "evil" what makes that assertion conceivable,...." "....can anyone actually live amorally?" When Rand uses the terms "altruism" and "amorality" (taken from other philosophies, not hers), you need to understand that, in her mind, they are "floating abstractions" which cannot be practiced. They are not "options" . She is demonstrating the logical fallacy of the concepts.

The desire to escape responsibility.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you. -- Thomas Jefferson, to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787. (capitalization of the word god is retained per original) This is as close to he could ever come to saying he was an Atheist without actually saying it.

Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is so epic in scope that it defies an easy explanation. He weaves together: banking, cryptography, Liebinz, Newton, the Royal Society, alchemy, the birth of chemistry, the Puritans, the Enlightenment, the death of Divine Right of Kings, the birth of individual liberty, mechanical computers, Soloman's Gold, the settlement of the New World, Japanese culture in the 1600's, how Damascus steel was produced,etc. I typically avoid historical fiction like the plague, but this sucked me in. It's nerd nirvana.

lol Bill, do you really believe that Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Popper, Russell, etc. etc. etc. believe that man can obtain objective knowledge from the senses? With anticipation of your actually understanding (some day in the distant future) what you read, thanks

The Baroque Cycle novels of Stephenson cannot be recommended enough. It focuses on the birth of science, the enlightenment, private property, banking, etc. It's about 2,800 pages of goodness.

"What isn't accounted for is error and the stark reality that other people (a) take the same sensory data, but derive other accounts of abstracted truths and ( the process of selective perception gives different individuals different data, therefore different truths." You really haven't read Rand, have you? For it to be said that an INDIVIDUAL has obtained objective knowledge, what is required is that he has - to the best of his ability - reconciled and accounted for any known, contradictory information. Example, Newton's knowledge was objective., but Einstein later provided a better description of gravity. And you know what? Einstein's ideas have flaw's too. Objectivism (and objectivity) is not about achieving omniscient, flawless, never-to-be-amended TRUTH about the Universe. All propositions are contextual, all definitions are contextual. Actually read FeatherFall's post #104 and think about it.

The point is that - while I'm glad you are posting in the forum -- I've completely lost whatever point you are trying to make. Can you just make a statement with out referencing what Dennet thought when Keynes interpreted Sraffa's position on Ramsay's quotation of Kant?