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According to Plato, known existents are actually shadows or copies of pure Ideas located in the Hyperuranion. Likewise, in a materialist framework, mental "existents" (percepts) are mere shadows or copies of pure Things located in the Physical™ world. The idea is that mind-stuff is unable to produce matter, because of the Law of Identity: mind-stuff has an identity that is toto genere different from the identity of matter. On the other hand, matter can easily produce mind-stuff because.. it just can, okay? Peikoff is constantly oscillating between different meanings of the word "consciousness", according to what is convenient for his purposes. At the beginning of the quoted part, he takes "consciousness" to mean passive awareness of objects; he then shifts to a broader meaning which encompasses volitional aspects, like fantasizing/desiring that the food disappears. It doesn't seem to occur to Peikoff that, as per the Law of Identity, even if a mind was able to productively create the entirety of the contents of consciousness, the creative process itself would not be "free", but constrained by certain laws. I'm free to draw a line in my mind, but I'm not free to do so without making use of point and space. The laws of geometry are the necessary "stage" for freely drawing the line, which is to say: the mind produces not just one kind of representation (drawing the line) but also the representation of the lawful backdrop (point and space). Metaphysics is not as simple as trying to make food disappear. Here is the original claim: And this cannot be stressed enough. Man can err, yet at the same time be completely convinced that he is merely "following reality". Try to challenge his assertions, and you're met with replies such as "Well.. is 2+2=4?!", implying that, since he was merely following "reality", his conclusion was pristine and perfect. The only "authority" is intellectual honesty when dealing with reality.

My Ethical Theory and Rand’s Perception of mind-independent existence is fundamental to human consciousness, though not the whole of what is fundamental in human consciousness. “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. No one understanding the statement “Existence exists,” whether uttered, signed, or written, has such an occasion of consciousness without co-referential history and ongoing context of his or her language and intellectual community. The reader is not without the writer, and the thinker addresses a standing audience of others, however unspecified, as well as self. Co-reference precedes the one-word stage of language acquisition, and ever after the acquisition of language, the standing suitability for co-reference attends every thought that something is the case. Co-referential potential of thought, and the mutual recognition of intentional being that requires, is a condition of one’s existence as a thinker in language. Indeed, pronominal other person is in and with oneself as existence is in and with oneself. In one’s conscious and subconscious existence is resonance with existence in general, resonance with living existence, and special of the latter, resonance with other person. “Existence exists” is registration of existing among other existents. Further, the act of grasping the statement “Existence exists,” I observe, implies performance of and grasp of acts, not only acts of consciousness, but acts of living body. There are no acts of and grasps of consciousness without acts of and intentional grasps with one’s living body. There is no grasp of the externality of existence to subject without grasps of externality to one’s body. If one observes one’s consciousness, one is acquainted with one’s living body and one’s actions with it. Moreover, one knows in any episodes of post-linguistic observational consciousness others of one’s acting and conscious kind. Then too, one had always (in a practical sense of always) known Mother or other caregiver. “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. There is normativity in that most basic metaphysical frame (mine, not Rand’s). We are given, dedicated to grasping reality in awareness concerted with other and in coordinated acts with other. This is automatic animal engineering-performance-norm of operation. We are given, already loving truth, truth-getting, act, self, and other. With later education, we learn that life ends, that it requires maintenance, and in our human case, that it requires production and education and social cooperative conventions. We learn that those means to life require a waking state and adequate sleep. Going beyond the original grasp of life in breath and cry and suckle, learning more of life and its requirements requires some focused effort. The plenty and exuberance of human life of today required individual creativity, initiative, and freedom coordinated at the large social scale by moral- and rights-constraints on treatments of others. Human moral life arises in the milieu of learned character of life, all within and ever with the basic frame “Existence exists, we live.” In learning life beyond the basic knowing, we can grasp the concept of “alternative” mined by Ayn Rand: Only with advent of the ends-getting organized matter that is life do alternatives enter nature. I observe, in addition: We say that when we've got the accelerator on, a given electron is either going to encounter a positron or not. That saying is true to nature, but it, unlike identity, is not something in nature independently of a striving mind. Either-Or, I wrote in "Existence, We", is based in identities in nature, but is only in nature where living systems are in nature facing nature. That is, the Law of Excluded Middle for thought rises as high-animal mind rises by organic evolutionary layers on vegetative neuronal control systems of animals. The electron will either encounter a positron or it will not, but the electron does not face an alternative of continued existence or not. We see the possibilities, but the electron, unlike a living cell, does not face them. We and all living things face the alternative of continued existence or not, and from that fundamental alternative, all alternative is born. In moral life, we elect to keep life going, including to keep going life known in the basic frame. Once we have the developed powers, we elect to keep thinking, coordinating, creating, and producing. The moral virtue of truth-telling is rooted in the basic frame, constantly at hand. Life known in the basic frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specs. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves. Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves. The preceding is my proposal for a biological basis of distinctly moral proprieties. As with Rand’s, in my proposal, biological operations as they resulted in the course of nature on earth resulted in such things as needs and functions coming into the world. It is upon the organization that is life and its character we have the fact upon which oughts can have objective ground. Functions had come into the world before humans emerged. We and our ancestors were each of us functioning, more and less well, at any stage of our existence. Famously, for part of Rand’s ethical base, she characterized life in complete generality as self-generating and self-maintaining. This she took from standard biology along with the findings that all organismic life is cellular the findings of ontogeny and of evolution from Darwin to the present. It is quite true that self-generation and self-maintenance are features of any life. Even if we humans become creators of life from inanimate matter, our success will mean that we created means for the appearance of matter organized such that it is self-generating and self-maintaining. We are relying on that character when we plant, water, and fertilize crops, even if we only dimly notice that the crops do the growing themselves and possess various ranges of adaptability themselves under changes in surrounding conditions. That living things have functions in their subsystems to the preservation and replication of the whole organism and that living things have powers of self-generation and self-maintenance might better have some elements such as growth drawn out more, but I’ll stay with Rand’s broad meanings of self-generation and self-maintenance. Notice that these steps are not necessarily only suited for a ladder to ethical egoism. To be a fair characterization of life in general, we must understand “self” in self-generating and self-maintaining in a broad and indeed rather shifty way. Overwhelmingly, life gets started from life. Other life. Self as individual organism and self as its species work back and forth for continuation of those two selves. An individual life can be just a quickly disposable trial tool in the function of preserving the species, although overall, the species requires individual organisms. Of course. I stress that functions are operating in each one of us in all one's ontogeny. Rand noted that the pleasure-pain mechanism of the body is the progenitor of what is joy and suffering in organic elaboration and that all of those are indicators for good or evil for life of and proper functioning in the individual animal, including humans. I stress that it is not only other animals in which all of that is part of its overall individual control system. Our high-level, socially instructed conscious control system in maturity remains tied to the automatic one still running. Rand centered on a choice to live in the case of human life. I think that element is better characterized as a choice to continue living. And that means continuing to pursue the facts and the coordination with others in that pursuit. Rand has it that rationality is our overarching method for getting the facts and making good uses of them. That is fine, but I contest the picture in which one was just going along alone rationally pursuing the facts and how to use them and then as it were noticed, secondarily, that the existence of other people is enjoyable, knowledge-boosting, and economically advantageous. The higher intelligence of humans does indeed have launchings spontaneously in individuals. Young children will spontaneously seriate a group of rods according to their lengths; none of our closest primate pals do that. But we have been in intelligent human company all along our individual active existence, from precautions and playing to learning common nouns, proper names, verbs, classification, and predication. Rationality is profoundly social in one from the get-go, even as its acquisition by each person consists in individual facility in its operation independently of direction from others and self-direction in seeking information or in seeking specialized skills from others. Rationality is seen by Rand as the basic moral virtue because it is the necessary general operation needed for the human form of life. She takes the other virtues in her ethical system to be salient strands of rationality aimed at individual survival. I say, rather, that rationality is the given proper being of a human and the proper responsiveness to persons, other and self. Rationality is the grand means of human survival, as Rand held, but that is not the whole of its story. Rand had proposed that the virtue of rationality is not only virtue in a social setting, but virtue—main moral virtue—for a castaway on a deserted island. This is because in the isolated setting rationality is necessary to the individual’s survival. That is so, however, I say that enabling survival is not the only source of the goodness of rationality. There is a person on that island: the castaway. Rationality is proper responsiveness to and continuation of his self. It is call of life in that life form that is his personal self that is the distinctively moral in the virtue of rationality for a castaway. Though the castaway carries along other in foundational frame, he is now the only human present. He is an end-in-himself with much rightness to continue himself. (A pet might go a ways for fulfilling the need to love and interact with another human self.) Returned to society, an individual remains an end-in-himself rightly making his life, a fully human life with interactions and mutual values and interactions with the other ends-in-themselves that are human selves at centers of making lives. Ayn Rand offered an ethical egoism in which rationality took its place as central overall virtue for a person due to the need for rationality in making one’s reality-according individual human life. She tried to weave the prima facie virtue of truth-telling to others as a derivative of the need to be honest with oneself about the facts. That is not plausibly the basic reason one wants to and should want to be honest with others. Rand’s account of honesty is inadequate by reliance on a purely egoistic basis. Ethical egoism, a genuine one such as hers, one attempting to derive all its moral virtues purely from self-interest, is false. It rests on an inadequate view of what is the constitution of the human self. Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending. The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue. One failing to have it is in human failure, including moral failure. Although my account builds on a social nature of human individuals running deeper than social nature as characterized by Rand, I land in much agreement with Rand on general characterization of life as self-generated and self-maintaining action and as teleological action (even for vegetative actions such as gravitropic plant roots) and with life as the phenomenon among existents with which such things as function, needs, alternatives, problems, and solutions enter the world at all. All of those features are in stark contrast to inanimate matter in our ordinary experience and as in our modern science. In the case of human selves and lives, all of those glories are reached in coordination with others, living or long deceased, and humans have greater choice than other animals in shaping longer arcs in their lives. As with Rand's ethics, Rationality remains the overarching human virtue, although, into my reasons for that there is not only the instrumental value of rationality (solo and in cooperation) for successful continuation of life, but the inherent value of rationality to human self and life, including joint participation of rationality in lives and selves. Rationality is inherently self-directed, so independence in a social environment (in thought and in making a life) remains a virtue, as with Rand. Creativity and productivity and integrity and benevolence and voluntary association are also part and parcel of my broadened notion of rational human nature. There is an additional distinctive feature in Rand's general characterization of life I'd like address: Life is an end in itself. I endorse that characterization also, although what constitutes individual human life is deeper in its connections to others, than in Rand's characterization of it, and that is so, even though in maturity choice is a factor in which relationships are instituted. Rand had the circumstance that life is an end in itself in a beautiful dual role in her ethics. (i) Directed to one's general moral conduct in all circumstances, it has one rightly treating oneself as an end in itself; self-interest is the ultimate criterion for any decisions or actions. (ii) Directed to one's conduct towards others, Rand adds that they too are ends in themselves and that conformance to individual rights correctly has each treated as an end in himself and makes possible each continuing self-direction all together in coordination. The second (ii) is correct within my system. The first (i) is not, because self-interest (or other-interest) are inadequate moral criteria stemming from inadequate understanding of human nature. Life known in my basic metaphysical frame is striving and growing, and doing so with other. Those were given; they are given engineering specifications. Keeping such life operative in oneself is moral life. Striving and growing with other becomes joint thinking and production, and, as well, joint generative, out-flowing love of nature, the creation nature affords, and such love of such selves. Living selves. Moral life is elected allowance of continued resonance of life among selves. Selves living ever under the alternative of cessation, which is death. The call of moral conduct is the call of life in its form that is living selves. Caring for human life includes caring for rationality in human selves, indeed caring of the entire human psyche supporting its rationality. What good would be a person having all she desires but her rational mind? Distinctively moral caring is caring for human selves, notably in the great psyche-constituent and power of rationality—caring in the sense of concern and caring in the sense of tending. The power of human rationality is discovery and utilization of nature, and it is also our fundamental human love, which is an originative, out-springing love for the natural world and, as well, for we humans in nature, for human selves and our attainments. It is the love of creation and production, the love of intelligent conversation and commerce. That rationality is the fundamental human virtue.

I have long praised a happy result of the free market: It discourages racism. Two memorable examples I have brought up here include commercial desegregation in Houston (when segregation was called "bad for business") and the universal reach of the Sears catalog across the South. Both of these show capitalism blunting the force of segregation, or helping end it outright. Notably, thanks to a recent John Stossel article, we can now add a historic example of capitalism actively resisting Jim Crow due to the power of self-interest:Image by Unknown Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain."It's often forgotten that owners of buses, railways, streetcars in the American South didn't really segregate systematically until the late 19th century," says [economist Johan] Norberg [, author of Capitalist Manifesto]. "It was probably not because they were less racist than others in the South, but they were capitalists. They wanted money, they wanted clients, and they didn't want to engage in some sort of costly and brutal policing business in segregating buses." Even when segregation was mandated, some streetcar companies refused to comply. For several years after Jim Crow laws passed, black customers sat wherever they wanted. Norberg adds, "Those owners of public transport, they fought those discriminatory laws because they imposed a terrible cost….They tried to bypass them secretly and fight them in courts. They were often fined. Some were threatened with imprisonment." The streetcar company in Mobile, Alabama, only obeyed Jim Crow laws after their conductors began to get arrested and fined. [bold added]Notice that capitalism, the system that respects individual rights, strongly penalizes racism, because it is antithetical to a person's actual self-interest: It took the active abuse of government, in the form of fines and imprisonment, to fully implement the costly folly of treating customers badly, or forfeiting them altogether. I have not myself read Norberg's book, but on this evidence, it appears to be worth consideration by any serious advocate of capitalism or racial equality. -- CAVLink to Original

About a year ago, Florida enacted a draconian anti-immigration measure that, as I put it, "conscript many otherwise productive Floridians for border patrol duty." Predictably, this is now damaging its economy:About a year ago, Florida Governor and then presidential candidate Ron DeSantis passed one of the toughest crackdowns on immigration in the country. SB1718 punishes employers who use undocumented labor and forbids undocumented people from having a driver's license. Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state, hurting their bottom line. "A lot of people are scared," says [fruit farmer Fidel] Sanchez. "A lot of people went north and never came back."The article notes that this artificially-induced labor shortage is not just increasing produce prices: It's poised to damage the state's economy to the tune of $12.6 billion in added costs. The NPR piece correctly advocates immigration reform, but I have noted before that this should also include citizenship reform, as, in the long run, abolition of the welfare state. As I said of that last, years ago:Were the educational and medical sectors privately run, we would not attract or encourage freeloaders, and non-citizens who used these facilities would be paying customers. Who could complain about that?Conservatives like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are eroding America's proud and prosperous history as a destination for hard-working and enterprising people from around the world. Instead, they could be making it easier for people to get here and stay here, and for those of us already here to keep our own money, while also benefiting from the chance to trade with the world's best workers and customers. -- CAV P.S. On the subject of immigration reform, I highly recommend the talk embedded below. Link to Original

"Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness. Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic). This means that although reality is immutable and, in any given context, only one answer is true, the truth is not automatically available to a human consciousness and can be obtained only by a certain mental process which is required of every man who seeks knowledge — that there is no substitute for this process, no escape from the responsibility for it, no shortcuts, no special revelations to privileged observers — and that there can be no such thing as a final “authority” in matters pertaining to human knowledge. Metaphysically, the only authority is reality; epistemologically — one’s own mind. The first is the ultimate arbiter of the second. The concept of objectivity contains the reason why the question “Who decides what is right or wrong?” is wrong. Nobody “decides.” Nature does not decide — it merely is; man does not decide, in issues of knowledge, he merely observes that which is. When it comes to applying his knowledge, man decides what he chooses to do, according to what he has learned, remembering that the basic principle of rational action in all aspects of human existence, is: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” This means that man does not create reality and can achieve his values only by making his decisions consonant with the facts of reality." “WHO IS THE FINAL AUTHORITY IN ETHICS?” The Objectivist Newsletter/, Feb. 1965, 7

Over the weekend, I heard a podcaster speculating on reports that someone was paying people to stage pro-Hamas "protests," i.e., tresspass, squat on, and vandalize college campuses, while threatening Jews or counter-protesters. Given the overall looniness of this day and age, any headlines to that effect would remind me of Poe's Law:Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.Only now, one often needs to replace the emoji with a reputable source and creationist with conspiracy theorist, while remembering that there are some bat-#$%& crazy things going on out there because nobody is calling out the nuts, bigots, or war-mongers for what they are even as they accuse civiilized people of exactly those things. Reputable news outlets are indeed reporting strong evidence of as much. From NBC News at the first link:New York City officials said that a significant number of people arrested this week at campus demonstrations were not affiliated with the schools. Nearly 30% of the people arrested at Columbia were unaffiliated with the university and 60% of the arrests at City College involved people who weren't affiliated with that school, the mayor said. And The Wall Street Journal, in a report titled "Activist [sic] Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests" adds:Image by jakerome, via Wikimedia Commons, license.In March, there was a "Resistance 101" training scheduled at Columbia with guest speakers including longtime activists with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based group that celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The administration twice barred the event, citing some of the organizers' known support of terrorism and promotion of violence. Columbia students hosted the event virtually nonetheless, which prompted Columbia President Minouche Shafik to suspend several of them. ... Polat said student organizers at Columbia learned the discipline and planning needed to pull off an effective protest movement not only from their work with veteran demonstrators and outside groups, but from participating in Black Lives Matter marches or student labor organizing. Some tools they learned were practical, such as how to raise money via student fundraisers and donations from friends and supporters to buy tents for encampments.The links came from a post at the conservative Hot Air blog which asserts that these sources confirm not just that non-affiliated people are protesting, but that they are funded by George Soros. While the latter wouldn't surprise me, I see no proof of that particular allegation. (That said, I do not know nor have looked into whether Soros is a major funder of some of the groups giving aid and comfort to these non-student, non-faculty thugs.) -- CAV P.S. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, astroturfing is (or was) a smear that leftists used to dismiss any kind of campaign of protests or rallies they didn't like, on the grounds that they allegedly didn't have as much organic support from the public as they seem to. It's funny how that word hasn't come up yet, although, to be fair, many college students and faculty do support Hamas, thanks to the ideas that saturate college campuses: "Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university." (HT: Yaron Brook)Link to Original

It's supposed to be the "primacy of existence," not the primacy of physical existence. The primacy of existence is a corollary of the law of identity. Things are what they are. Consciousness can perceive what things are but, aside from physical action, cannot affect what they are. But "things" are not just physical things. The primacy of existence also applies when consciousness perceives an idea or an emotion or another consciousness or any other non-physical thing. An idea, or an emotion, or another consciousness, is what it is, and you can try to discover its nature, but you cannot change its nature by will alone. Nothing is different on account of non-physicality. Also, the primacy of existence is also derived not only from the fact that physical objects have identity, but from the fact that consciousness has identity. Consciousness is a means of perceiving or understanding, it is a means of choosing whether to act and what action to perform, but it cannot, apart from action, change anything. Once an action is taken, the results also come from reality, from the nature of the entities involved, and are not controlled or determined by consciousness. It even applies when one is perceiving one's own consciousness, through introspection -- and although, with effort, you can change your habits or your ideas, there are certain things about the nature of your consciousness, of any consciousness, that cannot be changed.

That is what I meant. O'ism understood in that frame says reality is dualistic and assigns primacy to one pole. Not very parsimonious.

You're not responding to anyone's objections to your arguments or their questions about what it is what you actually think. Either start doing that or wrap it up. No one's interested in hearing you go off on wild tangents instead of engaging with what's actually being said to you. Just to preempt your response, this is still not addressing a point. @necrovore's point was pretty clear, and you are blowing it off with this low effort nonsense, opting to go on a paragraph-long tangent about "monism" in response to @EC, which isn't even answering the question he asked you. I'm fairly certain you're here to troll at this point.

Yes, it can. "Challenge reality's authority?" On the basis of what, exactly? It's only because of looking at reality (e.g., Copernicus and later Kepler looking at the motions of the planets) that people learned that the sun does not revolve around the Earth.

I'm chiding him because for days now he's been acting abusively towards other forum members and then crying foul about how he's actually being abused, all the while presenting non-arguments that could be resolved with a very short amount of reading and constantly shifting goalposts during conversation. He is an intellectually dishonest person that turns around and mocks people if they dare get annoyed with him. Excuse me if I chide. As for your question, I never once said that emotions are a product of memory or thought. I said that they are the result of a series of value judgements, which is true. The scope and intensity of your emotions, just like any other act of consciousness, is a product of the automatizing of the use of concepts, in this case, metaphysical value judgements that make-up your hierarchy of values. Once automatized, that hierarchy of values will inform further value judgements, which then are subconsciously automatized, and used to inform further value judgements etc. etc. etc. This is applicable for every act of consciousness as well, but they are absolutely distinct processes. I appreciate you being clever in how you phrased your question. I initially thought you were trotting out some tired non sequitur argument against consciousness, which I am glad to see was not the case.

If you're asking what Aristotle would say, he would say that you cannot look at a virtue in isolation, but in regard to an integration among them all. You could be "productive" in terms of an immediate product, but productivity must be analyzed in relation to all the other virtues. Each of your examples is an example of looking at virtues in isolation without regard to integrating them. The Golden mean is a way to find out what counts as virtue. Once you figure out what virtue is, then you ought to always be virtuous. So excessive pride by Aristotle's standards is not actually pride, but vanity. He doesn't say that the excess of any virtue is bad. There is a certain quality that is in excess, but is not the virtue in question. The quality is a kind of self regard, where vanity is the excess, humility the deficiency, and pride is the right amount of it. Vanity is pride in a superficial way, but it isn't actually pride. "In all the states of character we have mentioned, as in all other matters, there is a mark to which the man who has reason looks, and heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard which determines the mean states that we say are intermediate between excess and deficiency, because they are in accord with correct reason." Book 6, Chapter 1, Nichomachean ethics As much as you say that you spent a lot of time studying this, you make some elementary errors of reasoning, even misinterpretation of philosophers you use to support your positions. You aren't making substantial critiques, your positions are more like what I've heard people say when they haven't spent much time actually working out what Rand is right or wrong about. Or what people say when they have only been introduced to her recently.

Image by Patrick Tomasso, via Unsplash, license.Miss Manners tersely addresses a reader's question about a polite way to respond to the point-of-sale panhandling that has become so common today. Notably, the reader is being subjected to donation requests on every visit to a grocer he visits almost daily! The reader is completely correct on etiquette grounds that this practice is rude due to the "implication that one is being miserly" and because "Some people who would like to give generously are simply not in a position to do so, and shouldn't feel embarrassed." Miss Manners's response jibes with this, as well as the fact that the store apparently also doesn't even notice regular donations:Does this not seem to you like an inordinate amount of time to spend worrying about something to which the sales staff, the store manager and the other customers are not paying the slightest attention?Ouch! On etiquette grounds, both are spot-on, but the elephant in the room neither mentions is: Why would not making a donation appear 'miserly?' And, more to the point: Why do the charities concerned feel the need to constantly hector busy people not quite on their guard -- in order to chisel a few pennies from them every time they turn around. The short answer is: altruism -- the idea that sacrifice to others is a moral ideal, and that we owe our time and money to those who happen to have less. It would be suicidal to follow this code consistently, but it is so widespread that almost everyone equates it with the idea of morality, treating such actually virtuous activities as production and trade as if they are outside the scope of morality. In practice, this means that on a psychological level, most people end up trying to buy their reputations or even their feeling of virtue, guiltily making one donation or doing "good deed" at a time along the margins. And they feel up to the task of defending their time and money only on big matters, when it would obviously be detrimental to their well-being to make a given donation or commitment. (And even then, many still feel the need to be able to explain their reasons to other people, as if their own wishes or well-being aren't a good-enough reason.) To top it all off, since morality is a subject fraught with guilt and regarded as outside the realm of reason, most people have neither the desire to think about it, nor imagine that they can, anyway. This is what is so morally objectionable about the practice Miss Manners discusses: Pocket change isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but giving up is held up as a moral ideal. In the moment, almost anyone who hasn't given the subject much thought will feel some combination of guilt, social pressure, and weariness (It's only eighty-three cents...), and cave in. It is this sleazy reliance on unearned guilt that makes POS panhandling not just rude, but reprehensible. This strikes me as the exact opposite of morality, and of the benevolence that should motivate charitable giving, and reminds me of the following quote by philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand:It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others -- a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal. A man of self-esteem can neither offer help nor accept it, on such terms.Any charity worthy of donations should appeal to actual generosity and goodwill, and make the best positive case for itself to those most inclined and able to help it. For a charity to do the opposite -- as so many do today -- makes it suspect in my eyes. Having made a negative case against this practice, let me also make a positive one: By refusing to donate at cash registers, you are making a small stand for your right to your own life and everything you have achieved, big or small. The best way to do this is with a polite, guilt-free, and firm, No thanks! every time you are asked. (This shows consideration for the cashier, who may have to ask as a condition for employment.) You are not only withholding an undeserved moral sanction and financial windfall to a group of people who are thoughtless at best, you might actually also help others who see this do the same with your example. A nice extra of that last is it potentially helps others in a truly benevolent and non-self-sacrificial way. -- CAVLink to Original

Let's ask Oxford English: anti (preposition): opposed to : against virtue (noun): behavior showing high moral standards. value (noun): a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life. So, to be "anti-virtue" is to be "against or opposed to behavior showing high [rational] moral standards," and to be "anti-value" is to be "against or opposed to rational standards of behavior." Definitions seem pretty clear to me! You couldn't have worked that out on your own? Taking stuff out of context isn't so effective when you're talking to people who have actually read the material you're referencing, and even less so when the lexicon is free for anyone with an internet connection (so everyone reading your posts) to reference. I even own that lexicon in book form, so if I was orating this message over the phone from prison I'd still know you're full of shit. Absolutely neon-violet prose aside, implicit in all of this is obviously a rational formulation of morality and values, Adolf Hitler and Karl Marx were both "killers who assume[d] the right to stop you," and saying you should behave in a way that doesn't limit you in your pursuit of values/associate with people who limit you in that pursuit is indisputably a good idea. Also, it is absolutely true that "all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind" and you should feel nothing but regret and shame for ever calling yourself an "Objectivist" while not understanding what that means. The problem is not with Ayn Rand. The only problem here is that you, despite being a forum member for 17 years longer than I have, still never figured out that what is being created isn't strictly material. You can CREATE VALUE. If you are a rational, thinking person, then your PRODUCTIVE WORK IS PRODUCING (OR CREATING) SOMETHING THAT IS OF VALUE TO YOU, AND IN TURN YOU ARE CREATING THE VALUE WHICH OTHERS CONSUME. THIS REQUIRES INGENUITY AND CREATIVITY TO ACCOMPLISH. Excess paint-huffing leads to this post. "Excessive," according to Merriam-Webster, can be defined as: "exceeding what is usual, proper, necessary, or normal" What is "usual" or "necessary" doesn't matter when it comes to pride, so the only part of that definition we need to start off with is "exceeding what is proper." Surely you realize the "proper" amount of pride for someone to have is entirely context dependent. The difference between arrogance and pride is in how someone's pride in themselves scales with what they have to be proud of. Are you seriously suggesting that there is a set in stone amount of pride that it's okay for every human to have? Are you seriously saying that? If so, are you expecting me to take you seriously? Big ask. What is "excess rationality"? That leads to "emotional repression"? What? It leads to an understanding of your emotions and how to regulate them. What makes you feel a certain emotion is not pre-determined, it is the direct result of a value judgement that you have consciously made. For instance, it is not irrational to be upset by an action that contradicts a rationally formulated value judgement. Get it? Being a "workaholic," in the sense that you're using it, is to compulsively work to the point that it's to your detriment, i.e. harmful to your pursuit of value, i.e. to be counter-productive. Where that line sits is, again, entirely dependent on the person and where their priorities are, and there isn't one correct answer for what specific things in your personal life you should be valuing. That is a personal issue. What there is one correct answer for is the standard and ultimate value that you should be using to form those values in pursuit of. That being your life. If your work habits are harmful to your pursuit of life, then obviously you are acting irrationally and should change. Whether or not that is the case is dependent on your personal values. As an aside, all this makes your other thread very confusing to say the least. For someone who claims to have "spent hundreds of hours studying Objectivism," your objections to the philosophy are so unbelievably basic that I have absolutely no idea how you had an "entire philosophical framework" to "lose" in the first place. You are so unfamiliar with even the most basic things about the philosophy that I'm having to sit here and wrangle you like I'm talking to someone who's never even looked into any philosophy, much less Objectivism. In another thread you say to Objectivists: "you can't think for yourself?" I mean, did you ever? Did you ever make any connections between what you were reading and the world as you saw it? I certainly did and this is just a hobby to me. My life isn't dedicated to the study of philosophy; my passions lie elsewhere. How is it that someone who was as entrenched as you claim to have been, to the point where you are apparently having this earth-shattering realization, so clueless about the subject matter? Part of me doesn't even believe that you've read much of anything Ayn Rand wrote. Your aggressive behavior towards others also indicates that you're not arguing in good faith, but I'm perfectly willing to reciprocate that so whatever it's a moot point. What isn't, however, is that you are not at all knowledgeable about this philosophy, but you're very insistent that you've found major flaws with it. What a disgusting display of arrogance and stupidity. It does. It's ironic that you're complaining about "unclear definitions" when you're insisting that arrogance should be defined as having "excess pride" without even delineating the amount of pride it's apparently bad for people to exceed. The definition's that have been provided to you both make sense and are the contemporary definitions of the words we're using. Which I guess you address next: My 1989 edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "retarded" as "slow or limited in intellectual, emotional, or academic development <a~child>."

I think he was being sarcastic. "Rational altruism" is a movement that Sam Bankman-Fraud Fried was involved with.

I disagree on both fronts. "Miss Manners" is completely correct and whoever's writing in needs to get out of their own head a little, because that's the only place where any guilt or shame is coming from here. People choose not to donate in front of me all the time, and I could go either way depending on what I think is appropriate at the time. The only reaction I've ever gotten either way is a quick "thank you" if I say yes. If it was common to get some other reaction, then I think you'd have a point, but that simply isn't the case. No one cares whether or not you donate to charities when you're buying groceries. Altruism does play a role in this person's letter, but that's limited to their own psyche. At least subconsciously, they feel guilty for not donating to charity, and that insecurity has caused them to feel victimized by charities that are doing nothing but existing, and store clerks who couldn't care less. Also, regarding the charities, saying that they're doing something wrong by accepting donations from grocery store checkout lines is pretty silly. It's not as if they're extorting anyone; they're trying to raise money and that's an efficient way to do it. There's nothing wrong with that.

Earlier in the primary season Trumpists encouraged or aided Green crusader/anti-vax conspiracy nut RFK, Jr. -- first as a primary challenger to Joe Biden and then as an independent candidate for the Presidency. They did the latter because they saw him as doing more damage to Biden's prospects than to Trump's. I disputed that idea months ago, in part due to the kind of voter that finds appealing the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump -- and historically, George Wallace and RFK, Sr. This morning, I ran across a piece at UnHerd that comments on what it calls "the growing RFK Jr. coalition." It comes from a far-left perspective -- given away by its assertion that the Kennedy's relatively sane position on Israel is a liability. Most interesting are its quotes from disenchanted Trump supporters:Steve, a musician, tells me that over the past three elections, he has moved from Bernie Sanders (until the DNC "rigged" the selection) in 2016 to Trump in 2020 to RFK Jr in 2024. "Kennedy talks about issues that the other two candidates totally ignore," he says. "This is Kennedy against the uni-party -- something I thought Trump did until he became President."Uh-oh. As a conservative said of Steve Bannon's earlier promotion of RFK, Jr., "Blame Bannon. His monster got out of the cage." Here's another one of those voters, as well as a Trump supporter who doesn't quite fit that mold:Anti-vax nuts have been popping up in conservative circles longer than lots of us would care to think. This photo comes from a Tea Party protest. (Image by Fibonacci Blue, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Suzanne, another Bernie-Trump-RFK supporter, admires Kennedy for his commitment to prising the US out of "foreign misadventures". "He's not an America First-type like Trump," she says. "His positions are much more considered -- he doesn't want to withdraw us from the world, but merely thinks that we should not be funding all these wars abroad." Along with various other people I speak to there, Suzanne has particular ire for the man she voted for in 2016. "Trump talked a big game, but the debt blew up under him and he was the one that implemented all the Covid shutdowns ... I'll never forgive him for that." While RFK's views on Covid are well-documented, ranging from the credible to the crankish, it would be misleading to characterise all his supporters as militant anti-vaxxers. Many would rather emphasise the importance of medical freedom in general. "I was vaccinated but I was against the shutdowns and mandates," John Myers tells me. "But this isn't just a Covid thing -- it's about the right to choose what's best for you and not have the government tell me what to do."To borrow from the UnHerd piece, the reasons former Trump voters might defect to RFK, Jr. range from the credible to the crankish, but I think it is a real possibility that a second candidate positioning himself as outside the establishment is more dangerous to the other such candidate among voters most unhappy about that establishment. -- CAVLink to Original

Rand was onto this back in 1968. After Robert Kennedy was killed, a lot of his voters went over to Wallace, the lowbrow populist, and she observed that this should not surprise anybody: It is enormously significant that in many sections of the country (as indicated by a number of polls) former followers of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy are switching their support to George Wallace. At a superficial glance, this may appear to be a contradiction, since these two figures seem to represent exact opposites in their political views. But, in fact, it is not a contradiction: in terms of fundamentals, both Robert Kennedy and George Wallace are "activists" - i.e., men who proposed (and clearly project the intention) to take direct action, action by the use of physical force, to solve problems or to achieve (unspecified) goals. In this sense, both of these leaders are symptomatic of a country's intellectual and cultural disintegration, of the ugly despair which seizes people when - disillusioned in the power of ideas, abandoning reason - they seek physical force as their last resort. Most of the voters who liked Wallace eventually came home and voted for Humphrey. If the parallels hold, this predicts that most Kennedy supporters and a fair number of Trump supporters will come home to Biden.

"A deep sense of guilt whenever I could not identify a reason behind a desire, and a stifling of any natural ambition, natural pleasures of life, in the name of reason and not living irrationally. Whim worship, I feared it like the plague." I never felt that way when I was an Objectivist. You remind me of the evangelists who tell tall tales of the sins they committed and misery they suffered before they were "saved"—in your case, before you were no longer an Objectivist. "I'm anxious to discover other answers to life's questions. So here I am. I may have a lot of silly questions in the future. Bare with me." No. Bear with me. You are here to preach, starting with disingenuous questions.

It also occurs to me that the idea that it is irrational to entertain even the possibility of a supernatural being leads to censorship of the mind. This is the rational taking to an extreme.

I don't care. You shouldn't be allowed to moderate your own conversations. This whole site has gone to shit ever since guys like you have been given mod powers, because you don't understand the basic rules of having a conversation online. You're either a mod or a participant in a conversation, asshole. You can't be both. There are other mods on this forum. You're supposed to let them moderate, when you decide to participate in a thread.