Ninth Doctor

As she had feared, the distance to Hollywood became a severe problem. Frank had promised to teach her to drive their new Cadillac convertible, so that she would not be dependent on him. He gave her several driving lessons, then they both gave up the attempt in mutually enraged despair. Frank was a very bad driver-some of the most terrifying hours in the lives of his friends were spent in cars with Frank at the wheel-and Ayn, who found mechanical objects impossible to master, was unable to learn. Whenever she had to go to the city, Frank had to take her. Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand, p.187 LOL

Perhaps it was an off-the-cuff, ill considered remark? She never put that view in writing.

What does this mean, "built on top of"? Aristotle was a geocentriscist who believed men have more teeth than women do. You can obviously be an Aristotelian without subsuming his errors. Same goes for Platonists.

My purpose isn’t to vindicate Kant, it’s to communicate to you that your piece isn’t any good. You don’t build a logical argument. You hold up one of the best things Kant wrote to juvenile mockery on grounds that have nothing to do with the content of what you’re quoting. Why not quote material that backs up what you want to criticize? I would say the Ten Commandments are anything but principled, in the sense of being universal moral maxims. Consider the context, immediately after being commanded Thou Shalt Not Kill, what are we told happened? The Jews loyal to Moses kill everyone who had worshiped the golden calf. Fast forward to the book of Joshua and you read a chronicle of genocide. The commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill should read: Thou Shalt Not Kill Other Jews. But no, for if a Jewish woman is found, on her wedding night, to not be a virgin, she’s to be stoned. There are plenty of other examples, a favorite is that if another Jew suggests you go check out a nearby pagan feast, you are commanded to kill him instantly. My main point, though, is that this is a tribal morality, giving free rein to the chosen people to murder or enslave other groups. Primary? I contend that they are not even necessarily derivative from them. And I rephrased an Objectivist principle so that it sounded like it was derived from them. Huh? We're talking ethics. I suggest you read this: http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/objectivity/walsh1/ And I suggest being very careful critiquing Kant. In my experience Rand fans itch to denounce him, but don’t understand, and typically misrepresent him. It’s long been a stumbling block to respectability for Objectivism.

According to The Passion of Ayn Rand, she didn’t drive. There was some mention of them owning a car (and what type it was) when they lived in LA, and that Frank would chauffeur her to work in Hollywood. Among her letters I recall one, I think she was writing to the IRS of all people, which was about why she claimed some kind of expense deduction for her husband, where she says that she does not drive. Or it may have been the letter she wrote to the phone company asking them to extend the lines to their home, noting that in case of an emergency, if her husband couldn’t help, that she couldn’t drive. This made me think of a funny anecdote. In one of his Ford Hall Forum talks in the early nineties, Peikoff mentioned that he’d just switched from a Pontiac to a Lexus. He declared that this was the equivalent of going, philosophically, from Wittgenstein to Aristotle.

Have you read the Critique of Practical Reason? It’s much easier reading than the Critique of Pure Reason. While there’s plenty to object to in Kant’s ethics, the moral maxims you’ve taken from the Groundwork aren’t really the problem. They’re just a kind of restatement of the Golden Rule, also found (with better prose) in Confucius, Rabbi Hillel, and Jesus. It’s a call for principled morality, as opposed to the one rule for the King, another for the Aristocrats, and another for the Lumpen situation you had under, say, the casuist Jesuits of Louis XIV. Objectivism calls for principled moral thinking as well, it’s just that the guiding principles are so different. Derived rationally, while Kant ultimately rests it all on God. You move on to mocking other aspects of Kant’s ideas, but they don’t follow necessarily from the maxims, then the cartoon of Kant at the bottom is simply juvenile. Plus you roll out what must be my least favorite Peikoff quote. No, I’m being too nice: those may be the two most stupid sentences I’ve ever read. EDIT: Ayn Rand didn’t write this, but I think she could have: Act on the non-initiation of force principle yourself, if you intend it to be a principle others act on in their dealings with you. Is this inconsistent with Kant’s maxims?

You might try looking into the ideas of Joseph Campbell, there’s a good bit here, early on, where he talks about theists believing their metaphors are facts, while atheists know they are not, his point being that both groups still need metaphors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyK1KKi1QPM

Consider the 1680’s, when John Locke was writing (but unable to publish) his most influential works, in exile from the Catholic James II, while Louis XIV was revoking the Edict of Nantes, and witches were swinging in the Massachusetts of Cotton Mather. Fast forward 100 years and it’s unthinkable that you have the founding of the United States, where freedom of religion and the press are part of the founding principles. The point is that big changes can happen, ideas are vital to those changes, and history is very unpredictable. As is the future.

Another way of thinking of it is by reference to the Richard Feynman video I posted earlier, when he talks about “jiggling atoms”. We can all agree that the atoms have mass, but does the jiggle?

Greebo does a good job of answering you above, but I’ll again recommend the Lawrence Krauss lecture, there’s an interesting twist you’ll find in there. If you can’t bother to watch it after this many referrals, there’s no reason I should spend more time on you. Meanwhile, there’s a new creation myth being published, and I think this one finally gets it right. I feel so close to shouting it: I’m a believer!

Yeah yeah, I didn’t create the thing, and it’s just supposed to be funny, ok?

I’m wondering about something, in this fantasy cosmological scenario you’ve developed, was matter formed, cooled down to zero degrees Kelvin (aka absolute zero), and then set in motion by God? I ask because I doubt you’re aware that matter is created, or you might say transformed into matter from energy (ref E=mc2) at very high temperatures, in all cases much higher than absolute zero. For example, the temperature of the universe was about 4,000K when hydrogen was first formed. So what, you say? Well, what is temperature, what does it measure? And what’s this business about absolute zero? Alas for your theory, temperature is actually a measure of MOTION!!! And absolute zero is the temperature at which all motion has stopped. Look it up, get some education. Absolute zero is not observed in nature, we can get close in the lab, and empty space between galaxies is between two and three degrees Kelvin. Which is very cold, kill you instantly cold, but not cold enough to stop motion. This was the point of the Feynman video called “Jiggling Atoms” I posted earlier, I thought I’d make the meaning explicit since the point is tangential, or only implied, in what he said there. So, in order for matter to form, it had to already be in motion, and had to be in motion immediately afterwards. And to the extent it is above absolute zero, it is in motion. Would you like to switch now to God created matter? This motion/volition business just doesn't cut it. No, you’re just going to dismiss everything I say on the grounds that it’s “special science”. Which I believe I have a working definition of, at last: special science is whatever the typical bible school dropout remains ignorant of. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFMmzKDonRY

Dr. Edwin Locke did a talk called “Animal Cognition”, I’d say it was about 20 years ago, I had it on cassette tape (I probably still do, somewhere). He went through examples of scientists trying to get chimps to solve problems and learn words, things like that. His main point was that they don’t reach the conceptual level. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udzhDvsG-s

I say no, but it might be interesting to contrast Rand’s taking advantage of Medicare and Isabel Paterson’s refusal to take Social Security. Paterson died poor, but on principal wouldn’t accept money from a program she hadn’t paid in to and had opposed. She died in 1961 at age 74. She refused work for National Review in protest of its Atlas Shrugged review. Was there really never a cent paid in to Social Security on her behalf? I don’t know. Did she martyr herself needlessly? I’m inclined to think so. Medicare was put in place in the mid sixties, and Rand took benefits in the mid seventies. Had she paid in? No doubt. Had she paid in “enough”? Sounds like a job for a forensic accountant, and I doubt the data is available. Besides, surely she’d paid plenty of income tax over her lifetime, is it the citizen’s job to do a fund accounting analysis? She died a millionaire, so there’s little doubt that she didn’t need LBJ’s teat.

Obviously there’ll be no piercing your veil of ignorance. So, just enjoy the bongo video, I know that the other one, and the point it makes relevant to this topic, is not going to penetrate.

One of my grandfathers volunteered, and fought in the Pacific. The other flunked the physical, I’m not sure if he also volunteered or was drafted. One ought to be careful with contrafactual history, often there’s no telling how things would have played out. If the OP had used Vietnam as his example, there’d be much less room for dispute. Plenty of people were very motivated to fight in WW2.

Just pray it’s not Click.scriptbubbles.net. I had to ditch Firefox after getting hit with that. I haven’t had trouble since switching to Opera, though there are some things it won’t do. Example: book samples on Amazon, it gives a message that the feature's not compatible with my browser. So I use Firefox to browse Amazon, no Clickbubbles there.

Equivocating? How pedantic can you get? It was a list, an incomplete and deliberately disparate list of physics concepts that apply to “everything that exists”, and not necessarily to motion. Though, glancing again at the examples, they do all apply to motion in one context or another. Small wonder there, that would be hard to avoid, motion is about as basic a concept as can be. Does a toddler need to understand conservation of energy to form a rudimentary version of the concept “motion”? Of course not, but a philosopher better have graduated to a more sophisticated, informed, and integrated concept before pontificating about prime movers, first causes, “reactions” and “volition”.

It would be nice if she’d given an example of a special science. I say podiatry is a special science in the sense she seems to be using it. Motion, the basic laws of nature like conservation of energy, forces like gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear; these apply to “everything that exists”. Not that you need to study them in any great detail to discuss ethics or politics, but if someone’s making the claim that motion ultimately requires volition, the full answer is going to have to reference science, just as the original assertion does, however ineptly. Oh brother, you’re really getting annoying. Bad philosophy doesn’t reference facts, how’s that?

For Galileo to convince Aristotle that he was wrong about heavier objects falling faster than lighter ones, how could he do it except by demonstration? For Kepler to convince Aristarchus that planetary orbits are elliptical, instead of more philosophically pleasing circles, how would he do it without reference to facts? He needed decades worth of observational data to figure it out for himself. He went into it with a philosophical (even mystical) expectation of what the answer was going to be (something about the perfect solids), and found that that isn’t how it is. I must confess I don't understand what distinction you make by adding the adjective "special".

I was just thinking of the philosophers who rejected the Copernican view, pre-Newton, on the grounds that if the earth was rotating we’d all fly off. Obvious, right? They didn’t have to look at data, or peer into a telescope, no-no they could rule out this crazed upstart’s idea by means of “philosophy”. Meaning, dopey ideas about physics arrived at without reference to observation and testing. Example: Libertus Fromundus, a contemporary of Galileo, critiquing the Copernican model, claimed “buildings and the earth itself would fly off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface.” And the same author wrote: “If the earth is a planet, and only one among several, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?” One wonders if he was open to data that would contradict the first quote, given his commitment to the ideas of the second. It's a shame Dr. Feynman was incorrect in his conclusion here: Someone's explained Primacy of Existence vs. Primacy of Consciousness to you, I hope. I gather you've been debating god(s) here for some time.

Well then post a link, or IM me. I have to say, now of course I don’t know you and haven’t yet formed an impression, but still I’m worried it’s got to be some real crackpot stuff. The big bang isn't a politicized theory like global warming. I wrote this: He hasn’t identified himself as a Christian, he may very well be a Deist ala Paine and Franklin, so I’m being unfair. Not good enough? Note that this is a discussion thread, not a one on one debate. Lucky you, you get to eavesdrop on my asides to other posters. You didn't like the human sacrifice video? It sure gets the blood pumping, unlike a communion wafer. How is one to know what “motion” even is, without reference to physics? I must say I find this totally amazing, I mean you do realize that philosophy deals with facts, right? We know how the universe went from having no matter, to matter, then to matter in motion, do you dispute this? Crap, how can you know even that, if you won’t consider the subject of physics? This really is pointless, it’s like talking to a geocentricist who refuses to look into a telescope. Take it away, Dr. Feynman:

What special scientific grounds? Do you have an alternate explanation for the background radiation? The red shift? Are you in favor of a steady state model? I suppose this would call for a separate thread, but who have you been reading, that you’ve come to this view? I refer to it because Jacob86 makes (pseudo-) scientific claims, so I refer him to distinguished scientists whose popular works I’ve read. Maybe he’ll check them out and learn something, change his mind, who knows? However, in an earlier post I said, in effect, that a person in the Bronze age or even a caveman would have been justified in rejecting his claims; I don’t regard the present level of scientific understanding as necessary to reject such unsupported assertions as he’s made.

As Krauss (and Hawking etc.) notes, there is a wall of separation when we look at the big bang. Information from the prior state does not communicate forward, so there is nothing to observe. This always makes me think of the Jorge Luis Borges short story, The Wall and the Books, but that’s a tangent for another time. It may be that an answer to what came before (and caused) the big bang will be proven, but I don’t mind resting my case by noting that we don’t know, may never know, and that grants no one license to start making shit up. I’d love to see how Jacob86 logically gets from a disembodied consciousness, acting by no definable means to get stuff started, to a celestial tyrant who cares who we have sex with, for what reason, and in what position, issues commandments, sends his son to be tortured and executed, you know, the whole deal. He hasn’t identified himself as a Christian, he may very well be a Deist ala Paine and Franklin, so I’m being unfair. But, who’s to say the correct religion isn’t this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_99mcINufQ I say they arrived at their doctrine by the same means the Abrahamic ones did. Fuck that. EDIT: added "Fuck that", I dare say an appropriate emotional ejaculation given the subject.

I’d advise the slave owners to get the hell out of town. To go into exile, before they get lynched. Is there a particular modern day country you have in mind? I think we can turn this into a more interesting subject for discussion. The classical Greeks had slavery, Aristotle even approved, and arguably this freed enough of them up to develop philosophy, science etc., and without their contribution we’d all be where? Somewhere not as good, presumably. There’s the rub when talking contrafactual history, whichever side of an issue you take, you can’t conclusively prove a case. But anyway, what if slavery was a necessary institution at one time in the evolution of the culture? So the cultures that adopted it advanced, and the ones that didn’t, didn’t. Does this open the door to moral relativism? Or a critique of principled morality, meaning the view that a valid moral code must apply to everyone equally? How to argue the issue with Aristotle, knowing that his context was one where there were other nations that would invade and enslave the Greeks without a qualm? I’ve always been struck by Rand’s claim that she couldn’t have developed her political views before the Industrial Revolution. Hmm, I suppose that calls for a citation, sorry but I can’t recall where I read that right now.