Boydstun

I neglected to list the second reference cited for author Rasmussen. That one is: Rasmussen, D. B. 2014. Grounding Necessary Truth in the Nature of Things. In Shifting the Paradigm: Alternative Perspectives on Induction. P. C. Biondi and L. F. Groarke, editors. Berlin: De Gruyter.

@tadmjones One accomplishment of the Trump administration was that they had the EPA stop on those methane emission rules for coal-fired power plants. I agreed with stopping that. I am very doubtful that global environmental challenges are a proper function of US government, although, so far as I know, no constitutional challenges to such function of the US government has been brought to court and I doubt the challenge would get a concurring ear from any Justice on the Supreme Court. Anyway, I liked the move against those methane-emission administrative EPA rules. That move was standard Republican Party position, of course, not something distinctive to the positions of Mr. Trump. Another standard Republican move by Pres. Trump was to appoint anti-abortionists as Justices to the US Supreme Court. In one way, Pres. Trump acted like a Democrat. In April of 2017, both chambers of the Congress were Republican. When the final hammered-out compromise budget arrived on the desk of the President for signature, it was a budget in the red. He should have sent it back to the House and told Ryan to keep all the proportions the same, but lower the amounts of expenditure allowed for each area so as to bring total expenditure even with expected revenues. That would have been of great historical importance for our country, for the good of our country, which has the federal government running with budgets in the red, big red, for the last 23 years. But the opportunity passed. Yesterday, I studied the positions being put forth by the three remaining Democratic Primary candidates for the House from my area. Only one even mentioned the word "inflation", and she's the one I'll vote for for the nomination. The incumbent is a Republican, and he says nothing about or for his positions. He just puts out yard signs that includes Trump's name after his, and of course, we can assume that that Representative, being Republican, is an anti-abortionist in the law, since the Republicans still cave to the old "moral majority" faction, whose founder Jerry Falwell and his Liberty University (which is neither) is based in this town.

It is not only the "media elites [of the left]" that have turned their intelligence against Trump. Didn't you hear about his reception at the Libertarian Party national convention last month? The article at Spiked launches with "the Trump show trial", and that hardly portends a "level-headed assessment." It has indeed taken a while for we the intellectuals to absorb how really vulnerable to con men were the members of the lowest third of our high school class and how far the love of America as a democratic republic under its rule of law empowered by the Constitution was not in their hearts. After the Nazi's took over Poland, they wiped out the intelligensia. No, Trump and his third are not Nazi's, even if that politician panders to such groups in America for votes and violence. Trump and his third are just the anti-intellectual proto-fascists, just as George Wallace and his following in the 1968 presidential election. Anti-intellectualism was part of why Rand called them proto-fascists (not that they would know or take the trouble to find out what the proto part means). It is obscene, moreover, to identify Trump's supporters with the American working class. Some of my friends who are Trump supporters are working class, but most of my friends who are the latter are not the former. Intellectuals are often working class; I worked for seven years in unskilled labor at my start. My friends who are Trump supporters are only that way because for now they think that is the only way to stand for the Republican Party against the Democratic at the top level in the coming election.

I do not. Furthermore, the memory required for consciousness is specifically working memory. (This is not to say, by the way, that working memory is sufficient for consciousness.* My own view is that consciousness is a feature only of living systems whose working memory has developed in the way of organic ontogeny.) Remembering previous moments is not sufficient for working memory. Moreover, expanding the concept of "memory" to things such as magnetic hysteresis and to memory materials (a class of materials whose constitutive equations contain a dependence upon the past history of thermodynamic, kinetic, electromagnetic or other kind of state variables) is simply changing the concept of memory (equivocation), as was attacked by Robert Efron in his paper Biology without Consciousness* in The Objectivist. Working Memory Working Memory of Primates Cf. Episodic Memory: A, B.

The idea that there is any consciousness at all without working memory is absurd. If plants have no working memory, they have no consciousness at all, and I've seen no demonstration that plants have working memory. On degrees of consciousness in animals: Ascent to Volitional Consciousness by John Enright.

“To collapse correctness into propriety is to obliterate the essential character of thought” (Haugeland 1998, 317; further, 325–43; see also Rasmussen 1982; 2014, 337–41; Rand 1966–67, 47–48; Peikoff 1967, 104; 1991, 143–44). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haugeland, John. 1998. Truth and Rule-Following. In Having Thought – Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Peikoff, Leonard. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1966–67, 88–121. ——. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. Rand, Ayn. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian. Rasmussen, Douglas B. 1982. Necessary Truth, the Game Analogy, and the Meaning-Is-Use Thesis. The Thomist 46(3):423–40. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Identity elements for arithmetic There is an identity element in mathematics-venues from sets, groups, vector spaces, Lie algebras, and associative algebras to things less algebraic and more topological, such as uniform spaces and Abelian topological groups. Indeed there is an identity element in any other venue qualifying as a mathematical category (having such an element is one requirement for qualification as such a creature). Under the morphisms of the category, the identity element transforms any element in the category into itself. That is what is going on also, I have noted, when it is ordinarily said that A is A. I mean in the simplest and most usual meaning of A is A, not the fuller meaning such as when we say a thing is the something it is (added by Avicenna, wielded by Rand). Aristotle took the first-figure syllogisms as obviously valid. With assumption of a few other propositions taken as truly valid (they do appear valid), he was able to show that all the other forms of syllogism could be reduced to the first-figure form. Therefore, he concluded, those other forms of syllogism are also valid. Later on, others (e.g. Leibniz) showed that if you used A is A as a premise in a syllogism, you could prove by syllogism those “other propositions taken as truly valid.” So in logic, the identity mapping of A to itself brings, with a little reworking, a streamlining of theory of the syllogism—fewer assumptions. I’d expect those self-mappings (mappings are a kind of morphisms [the morphisms for the category Sets], but people are more comfortable talking of mappings, so that’s why I’m using it) to be useful in streamlining the theory of groups, the theory of the natural or the real numbers, and so forth. That’s not the kind of usefulness most folks are concerned with, but it is a usefulness for adventurers in mathematics and logic. And that usefulness is itself an objective finding within those disciplines, just as I've found that it pays to sharpen an axe for efficient chopping. That the identity element for multiplication takes any number into itself (and, so, takes itself into itself) under the mapping is not chatter on arbitrary stipulations, but a readout of character of a realm.

Lava flow in Iceland these days.

@KyaryPamyu Another consciousness—one in the background of historically sensitive philosophic thought—is the alleged creative mind of God. It was a traditional view that things resulting from God's free choice were contingent facts. Leibniz thought along that line. That connection—the coupling of (i) God's free choice outside things not eternal truths to (ii) contingency within facts resulting from such choice—seems sloppy and does not give physical necessity in physical contingency the depth it deserves. Leibniz and Wolff, pretty sure, by the way, are not going to like an opposition of free will to PSR. Objectivist metaphysics does not make PSR so comprehensive as Identity. (Wolff would say it is that comprehensive because he [wrongly] argued that PSR follows from PNC, and like Leibniz and the later Objectivists, he saw PNC as based on Identity.) It would be nonsense under the Objectivist metaphysics to look for reasons that Existence exists or that existence is identity. I agree, and that is no shortcoming of reason that there are no such reasons. I think the error of Rand/Peikioff Objectivist metaphysics was not that it overextended the scope of PSR by giving its reaches the same reaches as Identity.* Rather, the error was in extending the pervasive fact of identity to entail natural law. What natural law did Aristotle know? Like any infant, he would have come to know that here on the surface of the earth unsupported objects fall. That is not what we today would call a law of nature; we wait for the mathematical characterization of various physical variables and their relations in such a thing (Galileo) before awarding it the natural law status; and this is so for good reasons I'll report another time. But even the fact that, in the common right circumstances, unsupported objects always do anything such as falling is not something following from the fact of identity. More squarely to the full Objectivist overextension: The fact that there are some natural laws (in our full modern sense) or other natural laws to which existents conform is not an implication of the fact of identity, not an implication of the fact that things have specific natures. Thanks for the reflections. They are keepers.

I am no longer writing poetry, only philosophy prose. I think now an apt description of my poems overall would be that they are lyrical poems of life and death and love. I have put the text for this reading of nine—His Day / We of Love / Dream to Sleep / Matters / Carriage / Companion / The Song / Yes / Once—in the opening description for the video, and one can scroll down as they are being read.

KyaryPamyu, I agree that there are contingent events and formations throughout nature. Aristotle and C.S. Peirce concur with us. Leibniz and Rand/Peikoff dissent. (The Metaphysics chapter in the Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand tries, without notice, to alter what was the position of Rand/Peikoff in this). I agree that there is real chance in nature. However, I think that most fundamentally the reason nature in its full scenes is rife with contingency is because they consist of independent causal streams criss-crossing, thereby continually resetting "initial conditions" and "boundary conditions" of causal processes unfolding in accordance with deterministic partial differential equations. I have not yet completed my analysis from which the preceding installment on Morton White 1952 is an excerpt. My impression of Peikoff's analysis in his essay that was off the mark was his treatment of the concept of contingency vis-a-vis necessity. He portrays contingency as only something with a consciousness giving rise to it. Thereby, he does not take up what is really important in the contemporary (at his time of writing) attachment of contingency to physical factual statements: their necessity is physical. Is there a qualitative difference between physical necessities and logical or conceptual necessities? Did the Logical Empiricists such as Carnap and Ayer capture the distinction correctly? Is Quine's alternative continuum sufficiently definite and sensible to be taken up as the right alternative? It is fine to say with Rand and Peikoff that the breeze-motions of each leaf on each branch in the woods outside my window, and each of greens they are showing in the morning sunlight and shadow, are necessities of fact. But one should halt as they proceed to proclaim that from the law of identity, such a scene in nature has the character of a law of nature, a deterministic law of nature. Do not pass Go when they say that from the Law of Identity: In a given circumstance, a given thing of nature not under influence of human mind can do only one thing. That claim about potentials does not follow from the Law of Identity, and it is not implied by the fact that only one result, whichever it is, will be actualized in the situation.

Tony, I see that the part you are quoting is from my subsequent elaboration of a point in my essay, and that is why it cannot be found by searching the original post. That elaboration was: Where I speak of "a biological function of rationality", I am only stating a fact of nature. These are traits of individual humans in a statistical way of that species. They can be occasioned partly automatically as in breathing or sleeping or digesting or in reproducing. They can be incidents of occasions of fulfillments of objectives in chosen actions. Someone's post of a video showing how to replace the chain on my chainsaw can be directed to a general anonymous audience. That has been a benefit to me in particular, of benefit to this one particular of the kind Rational Animal. That knowledge goes to various sorts of my utilities, such as design value in the grounds, protection of people and the house from fallen dead timber, and getting wood for the fireplaces for use next winter; and I, like Rand, contend that all of them are auxiliaries of the continuation of human life, including this example of my particular life. But what is this self that is me or the man who made the video or the selves composing the social enterprise who produced this chainsaw? Contra Rand, I deny that we are selves without a pronominal other as part of our most elementary conscious selves. We naturally care for that whole self we are; just as when Aristotle says "all men by nature desire to know." By instruction one can train to block out part of that constitution, and one can be trained to not acknowledge that in one's psyche one is not in presence of other selves or in presence of physical existence—that those are in oneself and part of what makes up oneself. Most any deliberate behavior concerning others that I would commend under caring for rational selves under Resonant Existence, I imagine could be also seen as virtuous in an artificial way under the model (distortion) of oneself most fundamentally alone with reality. (You and I have countered on which is most true and right in an earlier exchange.) Both Rand and Descartes take up that "lone-self-with-reality-beyond-self" picture in setting forth their fundamental metaphysics. (That failing in Descartes was noticed by my professor John Haugeland in one of his books; I should address explicitly sometime this failing in Rand that can arise specifically from writing large the picture in Anthem.) I deny such a picture contains all that is elementary to us. That incomplete picture at the ground floor lands one later in wrongly seeing some situations of choice as rightly decided by the criterion of self-alone utility or other-not in-elementary-self utility. There are indeed situations in which one has to consider what course is in one's self-interest, such as when one receives a summons to report for a physical for induction into the army. But that is not the usual (and better) social situation in which one is living. More regularly, self-interest is part of what is enacted in being an independent thinker and in thinking things through. It is the nature of mature effective rationality to be independent in this sense. Fidelity to that nature is good; it is caring for rational selves, which need not appeal to a self-alone-versus-other and selection of self (e.g. Anthem, Fountainhead, Atlas). That is, independence is good and without taking rational self-alone-interest as one's systematic criterion of what is good. Giving up basic justification of the prima facie goodness of truth-telling to others as being on account that one will otherwise end in not sticking to reality in one's own mind—giving that up—is freeing oneself from a scissored picture of what is one's most fundamental conscious nature. It is better integration, better life of mind, better life of self with other. (Tony, would it be alright with you if I share our exchange on Facebook? And alright that I mention your full name?)

I had looked under III. Executive Immunity in this opinion earlier, but I could not find “Presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts does not exist at all”. Or did you mean that as an inference from other things in the opinion?

Which lower court? The DC appelate?

Those two arguments are a false dichotomy, and it is false that in order to be justly entitled to property, one has to have earned it. Most property most of us have was earned by our own labor. But children inheriting property from wealthy parents are rightly entitled to it, even though they did nothing to deserve it. (And the fantasy that if the inheritor of wealth does not subsequently act in tending to it as though he or she would have been able to have earned it in the first place, they will lose their inherited wealth in the marketplace (a Rand assertion in her AS, as I recall), is just getting poetic justice mixed up with real-life free markets.) I'm not saying anything against inherited wealth (by will) here; people correctly have a right to give their property to underserving offspring. It is the idea that property is only just (as to having a right to it) if earned that should be dropped. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rights, Games, and Self-Realization (1988) Introduction / Part 1 - Rights against Personal Injury for Two in Isolation / Part 2 - Imperfect Rights in Land / Part 3 - The Just State / Freedom ---Followup to the preceding 1988 on its method of government funding: here.

What policies of Harris as President do you think more dangerous than Biden's?