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Rand stated in Atlas Shrugged about Aristotle's incomplete formulation "existence is identity" with her offer of completion "consciousness is identification". There are really two parts. The identity that is given by existents. The identification that is provided by consciousness, which also help to have it be maintained for future reference. Peikoff added something for me in his introduction to logic about A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time, and in the same respect. As you point out, reasoning it out as you are grasping it is helpful. In talking to others, you cannot reason it out for them. If you understand the reasoning well enough, let them indicate where they are in their process of understanding and you may help them take the next step. This is a skill, and like any ability, man is not born with it. Objective (not Objectivist) communication is a skill to be learned, developed and by some, mastered. Consider the clarity with which Rand wrote. Few write well enough to also read it straight to an audience as she did in Philosophy: Who Needs It. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are some who don't agree with it.

@Easy Truth, @MisterSwig, @StrictlyLogical Sorry, I see there were some typos and inaccuracies in my original post. Eiuol filled in the blanks and was correct. There's more context I could've originally provided so I'll do it now. The rest will take me some more time to think through before replying. Keep in mind the majority of what I'm about to write was in the context of a discussion about asking the question of "will this flight that I'm about to catch crash?" and how to think about such a statement. Yes, I meant to say man is non-omniscient and fallible. LP said fallibility is addressed by logic. And that non-omniscience is addressed by specifying the context, i.e., by implicitly acknowledging for complex items of knowledge (inductive generalizations) that your statement is preceded by “within the available context of my knowledge”. He states that this does not mean anything else is possible or “maybe I will discover something to upset this”, but only: “everything now known supports this and I acknowledge there is more to learn. If my method is right, the more I learn will not contradict what I have so far.” The more knowledge you have that’s relevant to your current context will simply mean the addition of new conditions, e.g., the discovery of the Rh factor blood as relevant for blood type compatibility (from the OPAR chapter on Reason.) LP says that there are two ways to be wrong: (1) you’ve applied the method of objectivity correctly and specified a context, but new knowledge teaches you a qualification which doesn’t contradict the old context; or (2) you’ve erred in your method and new knowledge will contradict your old knowledge. Metaphysical possibility and epistemological possibility are different concepts. LP says that metaphysical possibility refers to a capacity or capability or potentiality, e.g., a plane has the capacity to crash but a feather does not. A metaphysical ‘possibility’ is a statement about the nature of the entity and an epistemological possibility refers to advancing a hypothesis about a situation. You cannot say it's impossible for the plane to crash metaphysically, but you can say it's impossible epistemologically with no evidence of causal factors or conditions that actuate that metaphysical possibility. Yes, I think this is what I was getting at. 'Certainty' is epistemological. A plane crash is metaphysically possible, but may be epistemologically impossible. If, on principle, you're concerned about the metaphysically possible as a guide to action but with no evidence of epistemological possibility then you end up paralyzed and unable to act.

With all the arguing about Firefly, I thought I'd look it up on Wikipedia. I only read part of the article. What I read cleared up for me what the Alliance was. It also included "Firefly is an American space Western drama television series, created by writer and director Joss Whedon, " and "As Whedon states in an episode of a DVD commentary, every show he does is about creating a family.[12]"

That's a good restatement. The grammar was difficult to get exactly right.

So another way to put it would be: "What I know is mutable, allowing me to bring my knowledge into alignment with what is true."

In "what you know to be true is mutable" I think he is using "what you know to be true" to mean "what you think according to your knowledge (or assumed knowledge) to be true" and not using "what you know to be true" (in this context) to mean that "the truth in reality of which I actually know".

Never go full Parmenides

"lies, damned lies and statistics" The list of the top ten strongest men in the world, that is the ranking of the participants in the competition of the same name , not the actually ranking of the strength of men on earth .

Violence with sexual attraction; violence with humor. These achieve what the script writer wants, that we second-guess and negate the ugliness of violence to find hidden motives. Instead of violent acts being the last recourse, when reason has failed, violence is - normal. Or sexy or funny. It's in fact the substitute for reason. Which is why there's hardly a film made now that hasn't a fight scene in it: Muscles over minds. In a distorted pursuit of the hero values people inchoately still need, the last man(woman) standing *must* be somewhat better, 'heroic', than their antagonists, by definition. And all he/she did was beat them in combat.

There is much more integration (not just coherence, but mutual reinforcement and support) between modern conservatism and Marxism and postmodernism, than there is between Marxism and postmodernism. For just one of many examples, one of the current leading and most influential conservative philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre continues to argue, using Aristotelian and Thomistic methods that Bernstein blathering on about in peak Objectivist mode, that modernism (aka the Enlightenment) is a failed project precisely because of its liberal capitalism, scientific rationalism, and individualism, and to invoke Catholic social teaching (here and now, not 12 century) for a substantial collectivist vision that engages with key Marxist and Thomist concepts. Macintyre further argues that Marxism "achieved its unique position by adopting the content and function of Christianity." Again, this is one of the top living conservative philosophers (although I'm sure someone will spew some banality in order to avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.) Jordan Peterson taught them to say "postmodern neo-Marxism" in the same way the left was trained to use "white supremacists Nazi": it's a contentless stand in for "thing I don't like." In the same way, Randians programmed each other to say "Thomas Aquinas" and "Enlightenment" and "rediscovery of Aristotle" as a filler for a wider manichean drama of the forces of light historically prevailing over the bad philosophers without ever having actually read anything about it.

That and the primary purpose of most of these people is to channel new converts into the Objectivist lecture/books/course/conference/membership ecosystem, which is the primary monetization enterprise, aside from convincing rich people to donate money to them. I'd just recommend steering clear of them altogether, there's only a few of them that are even good at what they do. Let's take a look at the following propositions that DO mentioned: 1. The facts and logic always lead to only one conclusion 2. If two people come to different conclusions, then one if them has betrayed reason 1 and 2 are false. So the conclusion (one possible way to arrange it) that "you must agree with me" and (paraphrasing) "we can't tolerate disagreement in our ranks" (who is this "we" and what "ranks" are these?) are also false. A lot of this discussion depends on taking these premises for granted, connected to the general idea that "two rational people are supposed to agree at all times." If 1 and 2 are not true, then that idea is also not true, if it's supposed to depend on 1 and 2. What's a very brief reason to believe 1 and 2 are false? S' knowledge that p depends on S' belief that p be epistemically justified. One form of that is the propositional interpretation of justification. This is the idea that it's the belief that bears the primary epistemic justification. Justification modifies p, not S. Another form is the personalistic interpretation, the person is the primary bearer of justification. S bears the justification in believing or inferring that p (p can be said colloquially to be justified, but technically in a derivative sense.) If p and not S bears the justification, then the context of the knower holding or inferring p would be unrelated to the justification of p. This wouldn't make sense if knowledge is contextual and hierarchical, as well as held and achieved by an individual knower connecting his inferences to first-handed perception.

Maybe this will actually help provide clarity. I don't think we're having a conflict of interest, at least not in Rand's sense. I take Rand's sense of interest from the VOS introduction and "The Objectivist Ethics" to refer to ones good as a human being. (Or more precisely, to refer to the scope of one's good.) I take this because she uses self-interest and selfishness interchangeably (or as selfishness as concern for ones own interest), and refers to them as "the values required for man's survival qua man." I don't think my good and Merlin's good are in conflict. We don't have to agree to pursue our good. This because we have different goods. If you think our natural or ultimate end is something like a "dominant end" where Merlin and 2046 are merely loci in such a good, then if we have different conclusions about what that is, we might be said to conflict. But if you think of our ultimate end as an "inclusive end" that is only made real through our individualized natures, it's possible to understand the form of my "survival qua man" and Merlin's "survival qua man" to be particularized in different ways. So Merlin and I don't have to agree to not be in goods-conflict. Opinion-conflict is distinct from that. Also, were not "interacting" strictly speaking. (interaction here, I mean act in some way whereby we must have some effect on the other.) And our disagreement over some thesis, or over what methods one should take in considering a thesis, has nothing to do whether or not I think, say Person A, B, or C is not a high-quality philosophy writer, or person in general. Or at least they are disjunctive with such things. And that is perfectly normal and healthy. In fact, I think 99% of the people that post on here are roughly as low-quality as Merlin's posts are. That's just part of internet intellectual junk-food. But I do think my posts about method can be helpful to some people, even if they don't like me or think I'm a jerk. Which is also perfectly reasonable. But I think this relates to the bit about "in a free society" that Swig brought up. She does seem to qualify the whole discussion, that her thesis only applies to a free society. I take it she means something like the following: Merlin and I can just dismiss each other, each one thinking the other is silly, in a free society. A free society is based on individual rights, including private property rights. And part of private property rights is that people aren't forced to interact, because they can draw a boundary around each. Respect for boundaries is a solution for conflict. Thus, in a free society, a solution to every potential goods-conflict exists: each person can ignore the other and go their own way (see last paragraph in the chapter.) What's interesting is she says "no interests are possible" in an unfree society. I'm not sure what she means by this. Presumably, the initiation of force makes human flourishing impossible, is her point in We the Living and so forth. But that's a really authoritarian regime? What about a semi-free society? She doesn't really address those questions. I think one could use examples of a limited kind of flourishing people are able to achieve in places like even gulags and prisons to argue against the idea that "no interests are possible." The case of Admiral James Stockdale provides an interesting example. But I take it that her point is that if Merlin and I were forced to interact, now we have a zero-sum game where our goods are both diminished, at least compared to us just going our own ways, or if one or the other just didn't exist.