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I have now posted* at Facebook the first seven chapters and the tenth one (whose title has been changed to Mortal Life and Care).

"The laughing-face emoticon is an exemplar of an intellectually dishonest tool, which should be obliterated from this forum." David Odden

Not illusory as in "evil demon is tricking you", but more like "underneath all of this breathtaking diversity there's just plain atoms/some basic unity". People at a more complete stage of knowledge accept both diversity and its underlying unity as non-contradictory perspectives on the same world. Advaita Vedanta echoes Spinoza's observation that two existents can't be classified into the same class (world) if they're radically different. For example, in popular culture we say that god is not situated on the Moon or in the Andromeda galaxy - he's located in another dimension entirely. That's an intuitive grasp of Spinoza's observation: god is too different to be classified into the same world as the objects we know. With this, a famous problem enters the philosophical scene. A basketball has weight, size, rigidity, and as a consequence it can hit or push other objects (that likewise have weight, size, rigidity). In contrast, the mind totally lacks any of those qualities, so it's impotent to hit or push material objects. Its impotence extents to the entirety of the vast material universe, with the sole exception of one's physical body. According to Spinoza, both mind and matter are in the same world, as against being separated in different dimensions (like we envision god and the world to be). So what is the basis for classifying mind and matter into the same world/class? Well, we could look at Nature and observe that from a physical object, there emerges other physical phenomena, e.g. from a candle there emerges fire, from hot tea emerges smoke. Now, if only we could extend this principle, and say that non-physical mind emerges from matter, just like physical smoke emerges from hot tea! It would certainly solve Spinoza's problem. Advaita Vedanta opts for a different solution: mind and matter are classifiable together because they are aspects of the same Absolute. For all intents and purposes, "mind" and "matter" are related to the Absolute as "woman" and "daughter" are related to Taylor Swift. They are aspects of the thing in question, not ingredients making it up. "Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature." ["Natur ist hiernach der sichtbare Geist, Geist die unsichtbare Natur"] - F.W.J. Schelling, Ideen

Sorry, I thought you were speaking of a hypothetical case and you were asking about recording error. You said they were “his private records”. Give me a link to the actual pipe case, I’ll see if I can sort out any difference.

A Friday Hodgepodge Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner. *** 1. As our family waited in the terminal ahead of an hours-long couple of flights from the West Coast to home, my son cast an uncomfortable and concerned glance at his parents. "I feel nauseous," he said a little weakly. Grabbing a bag from the lunch Mrs. Van Horn had just brought over, I thrust it into his hands. "Keep this with you in case you can't make it to a bathroom in time," I said. His older sister complained that she didn't want to sit next to him on the plane. "April Fool's," my son replied. He got all of us good by catching us completely off-guard and with an impeccable delivery. Well-played, my son! 2. Although I sometimes do wish my son were more interested in sports or outdoor activities, I don't share the moral panic many other parents do about his screen time -- which strikes me as a mashup of the reading, television, and gaming I did as a lad. Yes, reading, in the sense that he learns things and often follows up. Having learned about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he mentioned it to us as probably a good family movie, so that's what we did one Sunday evening. I hadn't read the book or seen the movie, so it was new to me, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. From the corner of my eye, I spotted these turtles while crossing a pedestrian bridge last week. (Image by the author. Feel free to copy/reuse.)3. After the move from Florida, I still miss seeing the wide variety of birds along with the occasional alligator I'd see when when I took walks there. That said, the more compact town we live in means that my walks can have other advantages, like including stops at coffee shops, in addition to being more scenic overall. As it turns out, my walks are not devoid of wildlife. The ponds and waterways here teem with turtles, as you can see from this picture I took from a pedestrian bridge. Oh, and I run into the odd crow now and then. If I start encountering those with any regularity, I might try my hand at befriending them. 4. Ahead of a trip last month, I looked ahead in my tickler file for the days I would be away and discovered something I had slipped into a Friday folder to file away during my weekly review: My car registration receipt. I'd tried getting my car inspected earlier in the week, but was told I'd need my registration receipt and was turned away. Since Florida doesn't require inspections, I was five or six years out of practice: Thinking I'd probably not need that scrap of paper, I stashed it in the tickler file and forgotten about it. Indeed, at the inspection station, I thought I might need to go back to the DMV and ask for the document, which would mean another hour or two of wasted time. Finding this was a big relief, because I knew I could very quickly get the inspection done now, and not have to waste time or risk getting a ticket. Chalk one up for having a (usually boring) clerical routine in place. -- CAVLink to Original

Where you say "Consciousness is conscious," I think you really need "Consciousness is conscious of existence". I know that the latter is included in what you mean in the shorter, but readers outside of Rand readers (might you be having their audience) would not. But to your sequencing: When you state "Consciousness is alive" that looks to be a third-person sort of statement. That is fine, and we and biologists and neuroscientist take that standpoint usefully all the time. My view is that we have not only that outside look: consciousness is alive. We have also and firstly the inside experience of it. That elementary take on life is not, as I observed in the text, so extensive on what all is life, such as one can learn later (e.g. that life ends, requires maintenance, and in the human form, requires production). The elementary knowing of life in breathing and in elementary knowing of consciousness is what I place back earlier in the sequence. I lay it right with "Existence exists", but not in the form "Consciousness is alive." Rather: "Existence exists, we live". (Or, as we have discussed "I and other live.") That is what is most basic with us. I should mention also, as I wrote in the paper "Existence, We", this "we live" does not arise in that second-moment 'corollary axiom' movement. No. This "we live" is right there in the first phase containing "existence exists." The two are a yoked pair right there at the base. So my way with this is would be in parallel with a recoiling from Descartes for whom the basic things (after God) are matter and mind, i.e., extension and thought. A recoiling to Augustine, where knowing one's aliveness is primitive and whose form of Descartes's later skeptical exercise is that even being under a deception, one knows that one lives. Though, in my basic knowing, the life of self known is companioned: another lives.

I see the term "anti-value" used a few times on this forum, but "anti-virtue" isn't as common. There is no such thing, of course. Productivity is a virtue, even if someone else doesn't like the product. Hitler and Marx produced books by practicing the virtue of productivity. Whether the books are morally valuable to someone else is irrelevant.

There are dualist schools of Hindu philosophy, but Advaita is non dual. For me the most attractive element is the realization that the Vedic philosophies/religions are consciousness centered inquiries.

“Existence exists, we live.” "The act of grasping that statement implies that things exist, including you and I conscious living selves, our consciousness being something alive and being the faculty of perceiving that which exists." Based on my understanding of this, I would make this series of propositions: Existence exists. Existence is identity. Consciousness is conscious. Consciousness is identification. Consciousness is alive. Some existents live. I live. Others live. We live.

How are you understanding Advanta Vedanta such that it appeals to you? It posits a dualistic reality of an illusionary phenomenal self/world and a true ultimate self/world, doesn't it?

That was screen-capped from Google Gemini.

An explosion is now reported here, which may be some retaliation of Israel upon the recent aerial attack on Israel by Iran. CNN

But the pipe dude’s are business records , they are subject to federal scrutiny for ten years. How is it Bragg has cause to scrutinize Trump Org documents , aren’t they just as private as the fittings guy’s?

Why and why and why. A sister of mine committed suicide a few years ago (a wife, mother, and grandmother), and from what I know of her physical miseries for which she could get no further help, it was a well-and-long-considered sensible suicide.* The appropriate model of human perfection is not a perfect crystal, but perfect health, which can be lost and possibly regained. Resilience and recoveries are virtues. I was in a mental hospital as a young man, due to my suicidal responses to my existential situation. I began to read The Fountainhead there, and my doctor encouraged me to finish it, which I did. And I lived another six decades (so far, so good) without such problems again, and I achieved difficult things in love and work and in personal projects, though not ones I most treasured and aimed for as a youth. And I have been happy. "I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice . . . I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is so that you can be free to fight for all of these things." –Dr. Fried –S

As you describe it, the pipe dude has nothing to worry about. The law requires that the false entry be made with intent to defraud. A person cannot be convicted for making a mistake. The prosecution would not only have to prove that defendant actually entered false information (respondeat superior does not make the boss guilty of crimes committed by employees), but also that his intent was to defraud. Furthermore, since you stipulate that the records are private records, they are not covered by the law – only business records are covered. In Trump's case, the prosecution has to prove specific intent, though the jury might accept the flimsiest of evidence on that point.

An owner of a speciality pipe fitting manufacture in Albany entered a grounds maintainance fee invoice as a supply invoice in his private records , should he be concerned ? That statute sounds ripe for elasticity.

"In the course of my initial presentation during the debate, I quoted Miss Rand's statement (from "The Objectivist Ethics") that 'happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions'. Could anyone ever be happy when held to this extreme standard? I asked. And scores of voices from the audience screamed back (somewhat to my surprise): Yes!!!" (294). That reminded me of GK Chesterton, in the 2nd chapter of his Orthodoxy , presents his oft quoted aphorism "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason". And ends it with " But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name. "

His Twitter/X page indicates conspiracy theorist. Could be hypothesizing, but he sounds pretty convinced to me.

Indictment, updated, of this case, with jury selection currently underway: People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump

Hypothesist

Hello, Descartes and Hume, as amateur philosophers, were not university philosophy teachers. European philosophers didn't go professional until the 18th century. Some ancient Greeks were professional philosophers. I believe the first modern professional philosopher was Kant, who taught at the University of Königsberg. I understand that amateur philosophy wasn't a genre until the 19th century. But amateur philosophy existed before that.

Why live at all? The canned Objectivist response to this question goes something like this: "A motive is a reason for doing something, and survival is the only reason for doing anything. If you don't want survival, motives are irrelevant to you." The number of real-world people who find this answer useful is probably slim to none, so we can move on with our investigations. Why live at all? I think Objectivism somewhat indirectly answers this question through its distinction between "motivation by love" and "motivation by pain". Let us quickly concertize both. "Why live at all?" Answers motivated by fear of pain: Dying is painful or scary; plus, a botched suicide might leave me in a disabled condition. I fear that dying is not truly the end, and a worse fate will expect me. It would pain me to bring sadness or disillusionment to my loved ones. Answers motivated by love of life: The suffering I am going through will soon end, then I'll be rocking a good life again. I'm having fun. There's still plenty of movies to see, lots of sex to have, many spiritual heights to unlock. My life is decent but I'm expecting a breakthrough. In the future, there lies the X I'm looking for: spiritual triumph over distress and dissatisfaction of all kinds. For now, I'll skip over the "motivation by pain" part and jump straight to motivation by love. As far as the latter goes, what can Objectivism do for: People for whom pleasure is no longer impressive or attractive enough to justify the purchase of an entire life. Individuals who feel like their accomplishments so far have not gotten them closer to happiness, but have merely changed the specifics of their lifestyle (and so it will continue). I'd say that there's not much the Objectivist ethics can do for such people, because ethics presupposes that: a). pleasure is blowing your mind, and b). you see the future with rose-tinted glasses. By contrast, if you think that pleasure is not all it's cracked up to be, or that the future is nothing special (when the dust eventually settles), you may start to feel as Fichte said: "Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered; — this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself?" (*, p. 53) ___ There is one further area in which the Objectivist ethics probably falls flat. Consider the words of the staunch atheist Mainländer: "One day, I witnessed how an old good lady visited an acquaintance, who had lost her husband a few days ago and was in a depressed state. As the old, withered, silver-haired lady said goodbye, she spoke: “Stay calm. God does not forsake the widows and orphans.” Not these words themselves moved and shook me: it was the sound of the voice, the tone of great determination, of the most unshakable faith, of unconditional trust; it was the glance of the blue eyes, that flashed light and then glowed calmly, brightly, mildly, peacefully again. (...) As religion gives the individual the marvelous trust, it gives it in the cloak of pretty delusion. It lures humans with a sweet image, which awakens in them the passionate desire and with the embrace of the marvelous illusion it crushes the fear of death away from his breast. He has contempt for the earthly life, to maintain a more beautiful heavenly life. (...) We live now in a period, where the blissful internalization by the continual decrease of faith becomes more and more rare, the unhappy groundlessness and peacelessness become more and more common: it is the period of inconsolable unbelief. Only the philosophy remains. Can she help? Can she, without a personal God and without a Kingdom of Heaven on the other side of the grave, give a motive, which internalizes, concentrates and thereby sprouts the blossom of the real trust, the unshakable peace of mind? Yes, she can; certainly, she can do it. She bases the trust upon pure knowledge, like religion grounded it upon faith." (*) Clearly, Leonard Peikoff does not agree with the words I bolded out, because in OPAR he says: "The ability to achieve values, I must add, is useless if one is stopped from exercising that ability—e.g., if an individual is caught in a dictatorship; or is suffering from a terminal illness; or loses an irreplaceable person essential to his very existence as a valuer, as may occur in the death of a beloved wife or husband. In such situations, suffering (or stoicism) is all that is possible." (Happiness as the Normal Condition of Man) So, it's safe to say that the Objectivist ethics does not advertise itself as something able to help you find happiness and meaning even at your worst. (For many people in the West and East, that aspect is still currently handled by religion.) Upon hearing about Leonard Peikoff's announcement that he has finally, after 8 decades of life, found true happiness, one member of this forum commented: "Peikoff describes himself as finally fully happy at age 81 (though I'm certain he must have enjoyed himself to some extent throughout his life), and he attributes this to having discovered what he "really wants to do in life" (as opposed to at least some portion of his work theretofore, which he "dreaded"). To me, in my life, such a thing is simply unacceptable. I would not want to wait until I'm 81 to be able to describe myself as "finally fully happy" and in fact I have not waited. Though I have challenges and setbacks from day to day, as I expect everyone must, and sometimes severe or lasting ones, I consider myself happy in all of the major areas of life." The takeaway of today's installment is that there are at least two areas where Objectivism openly does not promise much power: a). blows of fate, and b). overly-stringent personal criteria for happiness. Those whose ethics is based on the "pursuit of happiness" and "non-lifeboat scenarios", should remember the words of this Mesopotamian poem written 3 millennia ago: He who was alive yesterday is dead today. For a minute someone is downcast, then suddenly full of cheer. One moment he sings in exaltation, Another he groans like a professional mourner. The people's condition changes like opening and shutting [i.e. in a twinkling]. When starving they become like corpses, When sated they rival their gods. In good times they speak of scaling heaven When it goes badly, they complain of going down to hell. (*)

Conspiracy theorist.