icosahedron

I wish it had never been raised; having said that, I am not about to let it stand unchallenged while speculators blather ... because I have time to spare at the moment.

And I can't quite tell if you were referring to my post as support for the half-baked pea-shooter, so just to be clear, it wasn't. I was making the point that without gravity or something awfully similar in principle, you can't make physical structures (they would explode or evaporate).

Amen to dropping this thread.

(I like that you refer to past experience for its evidential merit, rather than as a matter of tradition.)

Cheers,

- David

AP - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount anti-gay protests outside military funerals, despite the pain they cause grieving families.

Now that is just not right. The Supremes once again show that they have no philosophical compass. Sheesh.

- ico

I think it is simply the fact that MOST are ignorant of the concept "synergy", and how it operates in Universe. Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredictable from examining ONLY the parts of the system. One should not be "in awe" of synergy, i.e., when one discovers gravity between two things, but not in any one thing, it does not mean their is a ghost in the machine -- it's simply how things work. Another way of seeing it is that systems have INTEGRITY, and that is a holistic thing, can't be broken down into pieces, by definition. And the integrity of systems is GREATER THAN the sum of the parts. Not magic; SYNERGY.

- ico

I take issue with this, Grames. Only individuals have rights. Government has CONTRACTUAL responsibilities, which must be carried out to the letter and to the best of the ability of the individual government agents. Government has corresponding CONTRACTUAL powers necessary to act as my agent, to the sole purpose of defending my Right to make my own decisions.

Government, indeed, has not rights at all. Only individuals have the fundamental Right to make decisions, and hence only individuals have any other right, since any and all valid rights are logically connectable back to the root Right.

This is not anarchistic. Government is my agent, your agent, our agent. Government's job is rigidly circumscribed and precisely well-defined. Ideally, government acts as a robot, as my agent, protecting my Right to make my own decisions. And is in no way involved in making value judgments, or any attendant economic plans per se, beyond what is naturally needed at minimum to fund and run the government -- but, this funding/running must be accomplished by voluntary payment for service provision.

Government is IMPORTANT and ESSENTIAL -- just so long as it respects and protects my Right and your Right to make decisions. That is clearly not an anachronistic position.

- ico

"Contradictions do not exist." is like saying "False is false." Statements identifying what is false (statements about statements) are all justified by the law of identity or they are not justified at all. The law of identity is axiomatically true.

"Contradictions do not exist" is a corollary proposition to "Existence is identity". Take each term in "existence is identity" and negate it, and reverse the order of subject and predicate (contraposition): "Non-identity is non-existence". In proper vocabulary "Contradictions do not exist", and it is true because it is a logical equivalent to a statement that is axiomatic and about something that exists (or in this case, everything that exists).

Here's my nutshelling, based on my inductive interpretation of AR+LP.



Read the first full paragraph of page 5 of OPAR, and see if you still have issues with Existence being finite (a finite aggregate of finite aggregates is finite, no matter how complex, evolutionary, and recursive the structure). Universe exists within Existence, so must be finite if Existence is.



Read the final paragraph of page 2 of OPAR, continuing on to page 3. As stated on page 5 of OPAR, "Existence covers only what is known, implicitly or if not explicitly, by the gamut of the human race". Humans experience a particular electromagnetic variation with their visual sensory apparatus, and label it color. And, if they did not recognize a variation, they wouldn't make up a concept for it. Color is just the human means of identifying a specific range of visual properties. In a world without humans, the human means of noting variations in electromagnetic output in the range accessible to natural human visual function would not exist; however, what leads you to the arbitrary assumption that, without humans to grasp it, the electromagnetic outputs of the surroundings would cease to behave as they seem to, independent of human involvement?



"Doing nothing" is a contradiction in terms, eh? Try to be more specific about what you mean here. If you mean, "not producing material value", such as when celebrating by spending material values to raise spiritual values, why would you want to be in less than full focus for the fun stuff? That's usually easy for me to focus on, especially the human interaction side of the equation.

The point is to be wholly committed and natural doing whatever it is you are doing ... not, to dumb yourself down so that mediocre feels natural (THIS DOES NOT WORK, BTW -- as a quick check will convince a rational mind); but to refrain from committing and deciding to do something unless and until you are certain it will be valuable to do, when possible; and dedication to do what is your best rational guess when perfect certainty is unavailable -- and then learn from mistakes/inefficiencies in your methods.

So, you don't have to be producing trade-able values to be in focus; you could just be enjoying yourself, enjoying springtime or what have you, just happy to be alive, breathing, dancing, laughing, etc. -- being human in the fullest sense, celebrating life. But of course, there is a time to produce, you can't celebrate always, that is part of what focusing means ... to know when to change/refine focus is part of the skill.

- ico

Right, focus and concentration not synonyms. Concentration means using your focus towards a particular goal, but the ability/choice to focus is sort of the "atom" of concentration. And, the visual analogy works: focus means how sharp any given frame is, such as if you imagine a freeze-frame of a tennis ball about to be served -- the frame can be blurry or sharp, distorted or correctly aspected, etc. Whereas concentration refers to how the frames are sequenced, e.g., concentration is what it takes to actually cause the racket to hit the ball in the process of serving. So focus is like the individual frames of a filmstrip, whereas concentration is the choice of what sequence of frames to consider.

- ico

Right at the beginning of OPAR, LP makes it very clear what is his definition of the Objectivist concept "existence". Page 5 (one of the key pages in the book, nutshell-wise), paragraph 1, of OPAR:

"The concept of "existence" is the widest of all concepts. It subsumes everything -- every entity, action, attribute, relationship (including every state of consciousness) -- everything which is, was, or will be. As the first concept at the base of knowledge, it covers only what is known, implicitly if not explicitly, by the gamut of the human race, from the newborn baby or the lowest savage on through the greatest scientist and the most erudite sage. All of these know equally the fundamental fact that there IS something, something as against nothing."

A few points:

a. By "widest", LP means "of greatest scope", i.e., "containing everything". In other words, nothing is out of this world, everything that is, is part of, is within, existence.

b. Note that "human race" is the set of cognitive individuals considered in the definition; this might need generalization someday, if another species of conceptual volitional beings is discovered/invented.

c. My favorite definition of Universe (my etymological translation: "towards unity") is was given by R. Buckminster Fuller, but as you can see, it is in concert with LP's statement: http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s03/p0000.html

d. Universe is less than or equal to all of existence, because Universe is based on human GRASP of existence, via experiences; whereas Existence is not based on anything, and subsumes humans, their experiences, and the entities of their experience, too -- plus all relationships among all those ideas. On the one hand, operationally, it makes no difference if one takes Existence to have meaning beyond our experience of it or not. If there is no operational distinction, then in fact Universe as defined, and Existence as defined, are synonymous. If one chooses to accord the existential substrate independent existence a priori to consciousness, no problem; in that case, Existence is strictly larger than Universe, conceptually on paper, but in practice the difference cannot make a difference.

In a nutshell, using Fuller's most succinct statement: "Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated non-simultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences."

And, before you knee-jerk that this is a primacy of consciousness perspective, revisit LP's definitions/statements in OPAR, and think about it: all we have to work with are interleaved sequences of experiences across multiple perceptual modes conjoined with our current conceptual frame. Experience is an integral of existence and consciousness, and cannot exist without both me, and "not me" for me to relate to.

- ico

Right at the beginning of OPAR, LP makes it very clear what is his definition of the Objectivist concept "existence". Page 5 (one of the key pages in the book, nutshell-wise), paragraph 1, of OPAR:

"The concept of "existence" is the widest of all concepts. It subsumes everything -- every entity, action, attribute, relationship (including every state of consciousness) -- everything which is, was, or will be. As the first concept at the base of knowledge, it covers only what is known, implicitly if not explicitly, by the gamut of the human race, from the newborn baby or the lowest savage on through the greatest scientist and the most erudite sage. All of these know equally the fundamental fact that there IS something, something as against nothing."

A few points:

a. By "widest", LP means "of greatest scope", i.e., "containing everything". In other words, nothing is out of this world, everything that is, is part of, is within, existence.

b. Note that "human race" is the set of cognitive individuals considered in the definition; this might need generalization someday, if another species of conceptual volitional beings is discovered/invented.

c. My favorite definition of Universe (my etymological translation: "towards unity") is was given by R. Buckminster Fuller, but as you can see, it is in concert with LP's statement: http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s03/p0000.html

d. Universe is less than or equal to all of existence, because Universe is based on human GRASP of existence, via experiences; whereas Existence is not based on anything, and subsumes humans, their experiences, and the entities of their experience, too -- plus all relationships among all those ideas. On the one hand, operationally, it makes no difference if one takes Existence to have meaning beyond our experience of it or not. If there is no operational distinction, then in fact Universe as defined, and Existence as defined, are synonymous. If one chooses to accord the existential substrate independent existence a priori to consciousness, no problem; in that case, Existence is strictly larger than Universe, conceptually on paper, but in practice the difference cannot make a difference.

In a nutshell, using Fuller's most succinct statement: "Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated non-simultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences."

And, before you knee-jerk that this is a primacy of consciousness perspective, revisit LP's definitions/statements in OPAR, and think about it: all we have to work with are interleaved sequences of experiences across multiple perceptual modes conjoined with our current conceptual frame. Experience is an integral of existence and consciousness, and cannot exist without both me, and "not me" for me to relate to.

- ico

This is a perfect example of the fallacy of using statistics in individual cases. The individual is the essential context for any question relating to the health and happiness of the individual.

Is it possible that tobacco use is highly correlated with mental stresses? If so, then could it be that the mental stress is the cause of ill health for some, and by reducing it they live better? Can you say that cigarettes are bad in ALL contexts, for ALL people, based on statistics?

There was an old Dutch study that found self-described stress as the only significant correlate to cancer. I'll try to dig up the documentation.

- ico

I see "floating abstraction" as the larger concept; "invalid concepts" are floating abstractions of a particular kind: they contradict reality at every turn, accept unreality as a basis, and a mind using them runs roughshod over the virtue of honesty; whereas the notion of floating abstraction is more generic and can include cases where only some of reality is evaded or contradicted.

Agree, a deductive approach establishes the fallacy of God, assuming Existence. And an inductive approach is necessary to imagine limit processes, such as Existence.

- ico

This is a perfect example of the fallacy of using statistics in individual cases. The individual is the essential context for any question relating to the health and happiness of the individual.

Is it possible that tobacco use is highly correlated with mental stresses? If so, then could it be that the mental stress is the cause of ill health for some, and by reducing it they live better? Can you say that cigarettes are bad in ALL contexts, for ALL people, based on statistics?

There was an old Dutch study that found self-described stress as the only significant correlate to cancer. I'll try to dig up the documentation.

- ico

I see "floating abstraction" as the larger concept; "invalid concepts" are floating abstractions of a particular kind: they contradict reality at every turn, accept unreality as a basis, and a mind using them runs roughshod over the virtue of honesty; whereas the notion of floating abstraction is more generic and can include cases where only some of reality is evaded or contradicted.

Agree, a deductive approach establishes the fallacy of God, assuming Existence. And an inductive approach is necessary to imagine limit processes, such as Existence.

- ico

I am disgusted to see the query "Is Objectivism Totalitarian" always on the top of the forum stack each day. So here I am adding to the thread and continuing the currency, go figure ...

First of all, the question is not semantically valid, and worse, it misleads one into accepting its implicit premise, i.e., that "totalitarian" is an adjective appropriate to describing a philosophy. But totalitarian has nothing, per se, to do with philosophy; totalitarian refers to human social control structures, such as governments, where power-mongers who operate the structure dictate the behavior of the structure's individual constituents.

So, really, the question needs to be rephrased, e.g.: Does the logical implementation(s) of a government consistent with Objectivist principles result in the construction of a totalitarian state?

The answer to THIS (correctly posed) question is an emphatic "NO!", and the reason is simple: Objectivism advocates the virtue of independence, and does not sanction any political system that makes that virtue impractical. A totalitarian state, by its nature, requires that the virtue of independence be obliterated from public view.

So, "NO!": The logical implementation(s) of government consistent with Objectivist principles will NOT result in the construction of a totalitarian state.

NONONONONONO!!!!!!!

- ico

No more than I consider a programmed computer to be making decisions for itself ... the government has to stick to the script, it's not a producer and should not pretend to be.

Remember, government has the power to use deliberate force legally. That power is not consistent with making choices, and its use must be thoroughly proscribed -- the government does not have the law in its hands any more than I do; it's job is enforcement and mediation of rights, not determination, value judgments, nor interpretation.

- ico

I don't understand it, because it is not true. I'm rejecting it because it is not true.

Again, I appreciate your clearly written post. But I think you should look at where your 2cd paragraph ends and your 3rd begins. I'm unconvinced on this point. I was trying to argue about this with Grames what seems like several pages ago. I thought I asked him politely about this in my post #147 (around pg. 8), but he rejected me out off hand. I hasten to add that this part of the argument having to do with competition doesn't have the most weight with me. It is interesting to me, but it is not my main argument. Mostly, I'm pleased to have an excuse to return to the point where Grames said he was through talking to me because I bored him 4 or 5 pages ago.

My main argument is that taxes violate my right. As long as I don't initiate force against anyone else, no one has the right to use force against me.

If that strikes you as far too simple, even though it is perfectly true, then my second argument begins with the question, "why do we not believe that human beings are capable of providing law and order for themselves voluntarily?".

Answer any way you like. Disagree with the premise if you care to. My answer is that we don't believe it, because our track record suggests otherwise. With as much senseless crime against humanity as there has been, how could we expect that a nation of good government could exist, if the population wasn't either tricked or forced into it?

It is commonly put like this: If we allowed people to stop paying their taxes, they wouldn't. Anarchy ensues.

I have some sympathy for this view, but it is wrong. It isn't just wrong, it is terribly wrong, because it normalizes the view that people aren't good enough to be free. They just can't handle the responsibility. That's profoundly incorrect. But that is the idea behind taxes.

If there actually were such a thing as "voluntary taxes", I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with them. Except that it is confusing language. Money that you give voluntarily is either charity or the market price. Taxes are money that's exacted from you by a neighborhood law enforcement agency. And they do that when you're on "their" turf, simply because you own property near theirs.

Human beings are capable of acting like animals. But you don't prevent that by treating them like animals. The hell is when we act like animals, and you prevent it by fostering individual responsibility.

Edit: market price is really just another way of saying a sum of money that you would voluntarily part with

No more than I consider a programmed computer to be making decisions for itself ... the government has to stick to the script, it's not a producer and should not pretend to be.

Remember, government has the power to use deliberate force legally. That power is not consistent with making choices, and its use must be thoroughly proscribed -- the government does not have the law in its hands any more than I do; it's job is enforcement and mediation of rights, not determination, value judgments, nor interpretation.

- ico

When my wife and I were dating we had a number of political disagreements -- particularly on environmental issues. So we argued them, and what we found was that our disputes were based on differences in factual knowledge and on the application of shared principles. Over time and with discussion our concrete political views converged, because we did share the same underlying political values.

My conclusion is that disagreement on concrete political issues in the early stages of a relationship can stem from a number of different causes. If it's a result of fundamentally incompatible political values, that's a bad sign. If it's a question of ignorance or tactics, that's less significant.

Interested to hear how folk think about this -- clearly their is an intimate relationship between knowledge and information, but it is interesting and fruitful to explore it, IMHO.

Thoughts?

First, realize that at 25 you are still maturing philosophically (my sense is that most men don't fully mature until at least 35 if not 40 years old). At some point, if you are reasonably successful at living, you will find your confidence reaches a plateau which it never again falls below, even if circumstances get dire. This seems to me related to Ayn's idea of "pain going in only so far".

Now, what you want to do is accelerate your development. My suggestions, in order:

0) Use downtime to read. Standing in line? Read. Commuting? Read. Walking down the street? Read. On the toilet? Read. Maybe not whilst driving tho'.

1) Read Peikoff's book. Over and over again. Until you understand it in your bones.

2) Read all of Ayn's writings; reread as the mood strikes you.

3) Find a few intelligent, articulate, driven people to share ideas with, and perhaps to associate with in a professional sense, too.

4) If you aren't married yet, wait.

5) If you don't have children yet, wait.

6) Wait to commit to an "ultimate lover" until you are mature enough, in your own estimation, to make a good choice.

7) Don't buy expensive things (such as cars or houses) on credit unless you are accounting them as investments intended to provide you more value than they cost -- and even then, be very careful.

8) Work for/with experts in your chosen field to refine your skills

9) When prepared, start your own thing, maybe with a few friends, and kick it. Hard. Work your dang butt off -- which will be easy to do if you pick a field you like and have talent for.

10) Once your success is more or less predictable, and your view has resolved into a long-range, clear perspective, start searching for your "ultimate lover" (no need to refrain from love in the meantime, just reserve the right to change your mind if you discover that you need a different kind of lover). Never compromise your principles to attract a lover ... if you are mature and rational, then in a world of 7 billion you'll have a pretty good chance of finding someone who agrees with you in principle -- or is interested to learn.

11) Now that you are happy, enjoy life as long as possible!

Cheers,

- David

I wish it had never been raised; having said that, I am not about to let it stand unchallenged while speculators blather ... because I have time to spare at the moment.

And I can't quite tell if you were referring to my post as support for the half-baked pea-shooter, so just to be clear, it wasn't. I was making the point that without gravity or something awfully similar in principle, you can't make physical structures (they would explode or evaporate).

Amen to dropping this thread.

(I like that you refer to past experience for its evidential merit, rather than as a matter of tradition.)

Cheers,

- David

The idea of matter as a condensate of cosmic energy is not unwarranted per se (not certain that is a fair restatement of bukhari's conjecture, fwiw).

However, what would cause the condensation? Are purely electrical forces, as are involved in a balloon floating in the wind rather than homing in on the Earth's center, sufficient to explain such global condensation?

And, what would prevent the atmosphere from evaporating into the lower density of space if not gravity?

As I see it, there must be at minimum two distinct, complementary types of force in dynamic balance to create stable structures: a global, scalar potential, tensionally contiguous (although not continuous) envelopment tending to force things together (which would be observed locally as an omnidirectional attractive force, e.g. gravity); and a locally repulsive "strutting" force that acts explosively to keep the global envelopment from collapsing completely (e.g., the electrostatic repulsion between electrons).

I am not saying I can reduce the known physical forces to these two (yet). I am simply observing that to create volumetric (i.e. real) physical structures requires balancing globally integrated, omnidirectional tension (as in a shrink-net basketball sack) against locally isolated bi-directional compression (as in the strutting of a bicycle wheel).

Point is, you can't get away without the omnidirectional tensional aspect ... and this one's potential is by nature dependent only on the relative locations of entities, not their motion (which is why physicists will never isolate a graviton ...).

Cheers.

- David

Interested to hear how folk think about this -- clearly their is an intimate relationship between knowledge and information, but it is interesting and fruitful to explore it, IMHO.

Thoughts?

The idea of matter as a condensate of cosmic energy is not unwarranted per se (not certain that is a fair restatement of bukhari's conjecture, fwiw).

However, what would cause the condensation? Are purely electrical forces, as are involved in a balloon floating in the wind rather than homing in on the Earth's center, sufficient to explain such global condensation?

And, what would prevent the atmosphere from evaporating into the lower density of space if not gravity?

As I see it, there must be at minimum two distinct, complementary types of force in dynamic balance to create stable structures: a global, scalar potential, tensionally contiguous (although not continuous) envelopment tending to force things together (which would be observed locally as an omnidirectional attractive force, e.g. gravity); and a locally repulsive "strutting" force that acts explosively to keep the global envelopment from collapsing completely (e.g., the electrostatic repulsion between electrons).

I am not saying I can reduce the known physical forces to these two (yet). I am simply observing that to create volumetric (i.e. real) physical structures requires balancing globally integrated, omnidirectional tension (as in a shrink-net basketball sack) against locally isolated bi-directional compression (as in the strutting of a bicycle wheel).

Point is, you can't get away without the omnidirectional tensional aspect ... and this one's potential is by nature dependent only on the relative locations of entities, not their motion (which is why physicists will never isolate a graviton ...).

Cheers.

- David

The idea of matter as a condensate of cosmic energy is not unwarranted per se (not certain that is a fair restatement of bukhari's conjecture, fwiw).

However, what would cause the condensation? Are purely electrical forces, as are involved in a balloon floating in the wind rather than homing in on the Earth's center, sufficient to explain such global condensation?

And, what would prevent the atmosphere from evaporating into the lower density of space if not gravity?

As I see it, there must be at minimum two distinct, complementary types of force in dynamic balance to create stable structures: a global, scalar potential, tensionally contiguous (although not continuous) envelopment tending to force things together (which would be observed locally as an omnidirectional attractive force, e.g. gravity); and a locally repulsive "strutting" force that acts explosively to keep the global envelopment from collapsing completely (e.g., the electrostatic repulsion between electrons).

I am not saying I can reduce the known physical forces to these two (yet). I am simply observing that to create volumetric (i.e. real) physical structures requires balancing globally integrated, omnidirectional tension (as in a shrink-net basketball sack) against locally isolated bi-directional compression (as in the strutting of a bicycle wheel).

Point is, you can't get away without the omnidirectional tensional aspect ... and this one's potential is by nature dependent only on the relative locations of entities, not their motion (which is why physicists will never isolate a graviton ...).

Cheers.

- David