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epistemologue

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Posts posted by epistemologue

  1. On 8/24/2016 at 1:05 PM, Yes said:

    My criteria for a good candidate is ... One who fully understands the Constitution and the purpose of American government as dictated by the Constitution.

    I think that's a great criteria for judging a candidate, and actually Evan McMullin is pretty outstanding by that standard (his moderate policies aside).

     

  2. On 10/20/2016 at 3:38 PM, Nicky said:

    Their actions likely saved people, but, at the same time, condemned 5000 Czechs to death (including the whole village of Lidice: the men were executed immediately, and most of the women and children were later gassed in extermination camps).

    This isn't a good analogy, because in this case one's actions still do not cause the death of these innocent Czechs. You aren't killing them, someone else is; you didn't cause their death, the Nazis did. It's not your moral responsibility, it's theirs.

    So you are entirely justified in "pulling the lever" in that case - you're acting in self-defense against these aggressors, and you are not the one causing the deaths of innocent people.

  3. On 10/20/2016 at 4:44 AM, bluecherry said:

    I've registered objections to this argument of yours previously in the chat before.

    Would you like to state your opinion here? Or would you mind if I quoted you from the chat?

  4. On 10/26/2016 at 2:37 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

    Because man cannot and should not analyze each particular situation of reality anew (he does not have the luxury of endless time and resources to do so), he uses and applies general principles, and whether they are principles of physics, mathematics or morality they are efficient and often indispensable. They are derived from and apply to general contexts and are useful as principles generally.

    This is not the origin or justification for principles! Newton made careful observations of reality and identified a universal truth about the nature of reality: the law of gravitation. Rand, studying man, identified universal truths about the nature of man: the principles of egoism or individual rights, for example.

    These are not heuristics that are generally, pragmatically useful for making judgments under time constraints in order to achieve some outcome that you prefer! These are truths that are discovered about the fundamental nature of reality and of man. These are characteristics of identity, and so they apply universally, on pain of contradiction.

  5. 16 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

    The point is that "joy" and "exaltation" refer to certain kinds of experiences, which means that Egoism is ultimately a form of positive-utilitarianism (which, incidentally, is a very handy way of conceptualizing it).

    When Rand talks about seeking "joy" and "exaltation", these are different from moral values.

    As she writes in Galt's speech, "Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values." In other words, happiness isn't the value itself, it's a result, a feeling that follows from having achieved one's values.

    Moral values aren't in the experiences themselves. Moral good refers to a person's virtue and integrity.

  6. On 10/23/2016 at 11:27 PM, Eiuol said:

    I act with regard to virtues in terms of what virtues are for: attaining and protecting values. A virtue is not just your psychological will to be virtuous, but also how it helps to attain a teleological goal of our nature. That goal is life. So virtue is two parts, 1) a desire or will to be virtuous psychologically, and 2) a reliable and capable way to further your life physically. Consequentialism I say ignores 1 for the sake of 2. Deontology ignores 2 for the sake of 1.

    Virtue ethics is both, the way Greeks and Romans tried to do it. My basis is virtue ethics, too. I look at consequence AND principle. Fortunately, no virtue will contradict itself by using consequence and principle. The consequence of a principle is flourishing, which leads to deeper spiritual values. In other words, if an act intentionally lead to protecting values, it required intention and competence to do so. The intention and competence is virtue. Intention without competence is not virtue.

    At least on your part, your actions won't cause you to lose values, or at least protect as many values as possible. Integrity requires standing for those values in hardships, with the knowledge and trust that rationality/justice/etc will be the best choice. Sure, having integrity is more important to Roark than merely having money, or people as friends. Yet he still acted in a way to benefit from long-term. He won't -die- from his actions. -His- actions do not harm his values, not when an action is able to protect more than not acting.  Any less is a sacrifice of integrity. Working in a quarry is not going to hurt at all, as all is still well and good.

    All you really said is that -ever- using aggression is harming your integrity. I don't see why rights enter into tragic situations, though.

    This is a false dichotomy you're making between "intention" and "competence". The issue isn't a division between whether you desire something vs. whether you act to achieve it; it's between whether you desire something and act to achieve it vs. whether you actually achieve it. It's action vs. outcome. Virtue and morality pertain to the action itself, not to whether or not you happen to achieve the effects that you desire, which can depend on other factors. Roark acted with integrity despite not achieving the effect he desired, to build the building the way he wanted, because actually achieving that effect depended also on the actions of others.

    If you're not sure whether rights enter into tragic situations, what about rationality, justice, or integrity? Individual rights are the application of moral principles to a social context. Whether or not the situation is tragic is irrelevant, the question of context pertains to whether or not the situation is social: if it is, then individual rights apply, for the same reason that rationality, justice, and integrity apply.

  7. On 10/23/2016 at 7:20 PM, MisterSwig said:

    You seem to follow Dustin around this forum quite a bit. I've noticed.

    Would you also like to register as an agent of the Alt-Right? Are you shitposting here?

    I have a benevolent universe premise and a benevolent people premise, so no, I do not identify with the alt-right.

    However, you seem vehemently opposed to the idea of persuading people who disagree with you through rational argument, which is characteristic of a malevolent people premise. Are you sure you don't identify with the alt-right yourself?

    See my thread on the subject here:

    Also, I have to say, this conspiratorial frenzy you've worked yourself up into over people like Louie and I, who have been on this forum for years, is absurd to the point of being comedic. Relevant Seinfeld:

     

  8. I wanted to start a thread just for general discussion of a benevolent or malevolent sense of life, and in particular, the concepts of a benevolent universe premise (BUP), malevolent universe premise (MUP), benevolent people premise (BPP), and malevolent people premise (MPP). Which of these do you identify with personally, and why? And do you have any reservations or disclaimers you want to add?

    In general, one can have a benevolent or malevolent sense of life. A "sense of life" is the basic emotional stance one has on life that comes from one's implicit metaphysical value judgments. Metaphysical value judgments are one's overall value judgments or feelings about the essential nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence.1

    If one has an overall positive judgment about the metaphysical nature of reality and of man, then one's basic emotional stance on life will be positive. One will have a benevolent sense of life. Likewise, if one has an overall negative judgment about the metaphysical nature of reality and of man, then one's basic emotional stance on life will be negative; one will have a malevolent sense of life.

    Someone with an overall benevolent sense of life has a philosophical conviction that their life and the universe are good and valuable, a conviction that is not shaken simply by going through trying circumstances. They have a conviction that joy, exaltation, beauty, greatness, and heroism are the meaning of life, and not any pain or ugliness that they may encounter. They believe that happiness is what matters in life, but suffering does not, and that the essence of life is the achievement of joy, not the escape from pain. Pain, fear, and guilt are inessential and are not to be taken seriously as a scar across one's view of existence. Their basic stance when it comes to any question is that they love being alive, and they love the universe in which they live. "We exist and we know that we exist, and we love that fact and our knowledge of it" (Augustine).

    One's sense of life can be further analyzed into two basic categories: one's judgment of the universe, and one's judgment of man. An overall positive or negative judgment about the nature of the universe is what Rand calls the "Benevolent Universe Premise" (BUP) or "Malevolent Universe Premise" (MUP), respectively; a positive or negative judgment about the nature of man is the "Benevolent People Premise" (BPP) or "Malevolent People Premise" (MPP)2. A fully benevolent sense of life will combine a benevolent judgment of the universe and a benevolent judgment of man: both BUP and BPP. One may have a characteristically mixed sense of life, with a benevolent universe premise but a malevolent people premise (BUP/MPP), or a malevolent universe premise but a benevolent people premise (MUP/BPP).3

    A benevolent universe premise (BUP) is characterized by a reverence for the Universe, and the belief that the universe, by nature, is intelligible to man, and that his happiness is possible in a place such as this. It's the belief that the things around you are real and ruled by natural laws, and that reality is stable, firm, absolute, and knowable. Tragedy is the exception in life, not the rule. Success, not failure, is the to-be-expected. It's the conviction that man is not ultimately doomed in this universe, but rather that a human way of life is possible.

    A benevolent people premise (BPP) is characterized by a reverence for Man, and the belief that man, by nature, is to be regarded as rational and valued as good. It's the belief that man has the power of choice, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, and the power to direct the course of his life. It is the conviction that ideas matter, that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters. It's this conviction that leads to a respect and goodwill toward men, and an attitude, in individual encounters, of treating men as rational beings, on the premise that a man is innocent until proven guilty. One is unable to believe in the power or triumph of evil; evil is regarded as impotent and unreal, and injustice is the exception in life, not the rule. Consequently one has confidence in one's ability to judge others, to communicate with others, and to persuade them by rational argument, and a belief that the great potential value of men is the to-be-expected. The rationality in others is what matters, not their irrationality, and in essence they are a potential source of value, not a potential threat of dis-value.

     

    1. For more on "sense of life", see the chapter "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto, by Ayn Rand

    2. "Benevolent People Premise" is a term coined by Objectivist Dan Edge in blog posts back in 2007. You can find them here and here. Also see his thread here on Objectivism Online here.

    3. See how Ayn Rand applies the BUP/MPP and MUP/BPP mixtures to the field of literature in her chapter "What is Romanticism?" in The Romantic Manifesto, where she discusses "volition in regard to existence, but not to consciousness" and "volition in regard to consciousness, but not to existence".

  9. Another quote from Ayn Rand's letters relevant to positive utilitarianism:

    Quote

    You ask me about the meaning of the dialogue on page 702 of Atlas Shrugged:

    “ ‘We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?’ she whispered. ” ‘No, we never had to.’ ”

    Let me begin by saying that this is perhaps the most important point in the whole book, because it is the condensed emotional summation, the keynote or leitmotif, of the view of life presented in Atlas Shrugged.

    What Dagny expresses here is the conviction that joy, exaltation, beauty, greatness, heroism, all the supreme,  uplifting  values  of  man’s  existence  on  earth,  are  the  meaning  of  life—not  the  pain  or ugliness he may encounter—that one must live for the sake of such exalted moments as one may be able to achieve or experience, not for the sake of suffering—that happiness matters, but suffering does not—that no matter how much pain one may have to endure, it is never to be taken seriously, that is: never to be taken as the essence and meaning of life—that the essence of life is the achievement of joy, not the escape from pain. The issue she refers to is the basic philosophical issue which John Galt later names explicitly in his speech: that the most fundamental division among men is between those who are pro-man, pro-mind, pro-life—and those who are anti-man, anti-mind, anti-life.

    It is the difference between those who think that man’s life is important and that happiness is possible—and those who think that man’s life, by its very nature, is a hopeless, senseless tragedy and that man is a depraved creature doomed to despair and defeat. It is the difference between those whose basic motive is the desire to achieve values, to experience joy—and those whose basic motive s the desire to escape from pain,  to experience a momentary relief from their chronic anxiety and guilt.

    It is a matter of one’s fundamental, overall attitude toward life—not of any one specific event. So you see that your interpretation was too specific and too narrow; besides, the Looters’ World had never meant anything to Dagny and she had realized its “sham and hypocrisy” long before. What she felt, in that particular moment, was the confirmation of her conviction that an ideal man and an ideal form of existence are possible.

     

  10. Listen to Leonard Peikoff's answer to this question:

    http://www.peikoff.com/2008/05/26/if-five-people-are-in-an-emergency-room-dying-and-one-healthy-person-in-the-waiting-room-could-save-them-all-if-we-used-his-organs-is-it-morally-permissible-to-do-this-even-though-hell-die/

    Quote

    I say no, it is morally impermissible. The one is innocent.

    It isn't the responsibility of the innocent guy to pay. Accidents happen to everybody, you don't kill somebody else to make up for somebody's accident! Someone else's ignorance, irresponsibility, criminal negligence, or bad luck, does not justify you committing murder of an innocent person. There's no need for a "mystical moral faculty" to divine the answer.

     

  11. 17 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

    You evade even now from concretizing what you think he should do.  He can't fight with every power the trolley problem... remember, he is helpless,  it does require human carnage and he only has a choice.  Say it... just say what you think he should let happen to those 30 million people ... let's throw in Dagny and Galt for good measure... and allege that it is in his rational self interest to choose not to act. I want to hear you say it.

    Go ahead... Say what YOUR Rearden should do.

    I'm at a loss at how to state this more clearly. Let me try to answer in the style of Dr. Seuss's "green eggs and ham":

    I would not murder someone in a house
    I would not murder them with a mouse
    I would not murder someone here or there
    I would not murder them ANYWHERE!

    I would not, I could not on a boat
    I will not, will not, with a goat
    I will not murder someone in the rain
    I will not murder someone with a train
    Not in the dark! Not in a tree! 
    Not in a car! You let me be! 

    I will not murder someone!

    ***

    Seriously though, there is no trade you can offer me that would make it worth it, it doesn't matter what are the stakes, it doesn't matter how many murders, tortures, or rapes you put on the other side. Why? Because it's a moral principle based on the metaphysical nature of man. It's a matter of integrity, and as Rand has demonstrated in her fiction and philosophy, to sacrifice one's integrity is irrational.

    Intentionally killing an innocent man cannot add value to the world or to your life; all values that are produced in the world come from such men, and to murder them goes against the cause of your interests. All of those deaths you want to put at stake are not caused by this innocent man, destroying him can only add to the destruction and affirm the evil. If you want to stop the destruction and fight this evil, you must stop it at its cause. In a hypothetical where you are cut off from that cause and there is nothing you can do to stop it, the only choice remaining to you is to not add to the evil in the world in your own actions and in your own person. You can only fight evil by standing on principle for the good in your own person in the alternatives and choices available to you.

  12. 1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

     

    Epist

    I don't think you have any idea what Rearden would do.  In fact you purposefully are avoiding clearly stating what you think Rearden would do.  

    I'll provide you the opportunity now. To avoid murdering one stranger how many people should he let die so that he has acted in accordance with his value hierarchy and in full accordance with his rational self interest? 2 people? 1 billion?  What if all of his family and friends are in the billion?

    I cannot tell you if I am like YOUR Rearden until you commit and say what HE would do.

    In Ayn Rand's concept of egoism, whether it's in Roark, Rearden, or others, she demonstrated that sacrificing one's integrity is not rational - in principle it goes against one's own judgment, and in practice, it contradicts one's own interests.

    I wouldn't deliberately act irrationally. The question is being posed as if doing something irrational would yield good results, but it can't, and even if it could, how could I know it? I can only know and act on a rational basis.

    If I make a choice to refuse to take some action, because such an action is self-contradictory, then I have an indisputable reason for my choice. I will stand by that reason against anything that anyone has to say, and I will do so with a sense of complete assurance.

    As for what Rearden would do, he was explicit.

    Murder is a human sacrifice. It's a violation of individual rights - and the violation of one man's individual rights is a violation of all men's individual rights. If he were asked to perform such a sacrifice, he would refuse, he would reject it as the most contemptible evil. He would fight it with every power he possesses, even if the whole of mankind were against him, with full confidence in the justice of his battle and of a living being's right to exist.

    How can his position be mistaken?
     

  13. 16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    I don't know why you keep repeating that bit about outcome.

    The reason I'm stressing outcomes and consequentialism is because that's exactly what you're suppporting. Look at the things you're saying and tell me this is not an outcome-based, consequentialist ethics:

    "If a moral principle (not stealing) leads to you dying...the principle doesn't apply"

    "If an action causes you to die, it's immoral."
    "If an action causes you to live and flourish, it's moral."

    "we want to bring about flourishing, We're able to measure flourishing by the effects it has on one's life concretely"
       
    "the value of habits and virtues is from their consequences"
       
    "outcomes are how to measure if something is part of [morality]"

    16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    You seem to be saying the principle itself supercedes a concrete value. I'm, in a way, saying virtues aren't values per se. You don't act to attain virtue like you attain money, for example. The only way for a virtue to be recognized AS virtue if you are able to point out what in reality you acted to gain or keep.

    You can recognize virtue by the values it produces in reality. Everything of value produced by man depended on his acting virtuously. But the issue of having virtue is distinct from the fruits of virtue. You can have virtue and act virtuously while losing everything.

    16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    Roark maintained his virtue because he acted in a way that all his values were maintained, thus assuring a spiritual value like his integrity - as embodied by his actions - are preserved.

    Roark cared more about his integrity than he did about any concrete value. He didn't measure his integrity by the concrete results, he measured it according to the standards of rational, moral principle. Refusing the commission because he wouldn't compromise his standards was an act of integrity without any concrete results. He wasn't just trying to produce the "best" concrete results that he could, he was trying to produce results that were good, according to his standards. The value he cared about wasn't in the buildings (the concrete results), it was in buildings done his way, in the integrity of their design, and in his integrity as a designer.

    Roark:

    Quote

    "I'm not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain."

    "Where does it stop?"

    "Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important."

    "[What they are doing to it] doesn't matter. Not even that they'll destroy it. Only that it had existed."

    Dominique:

    Quote

    "If they convict you--if they lock you in jail or put you in a chain gang--if they smear your name in every filthy headline--if they never let you design another building--if they never let me see you again--it will not matter. Not too much. Only down to a certain point."

     

    Quotes from Atlas:

    Quote

    "I am destroying d'Anconia Copper, consciously, deliberately, by plan and by my own hand. I have to plan it as carefully and work as hard as if I were producing a fortune--in order not to let them notice it and stop me, in order not to let them seize the mines until it is too late. All the effort and energy I had hoped to spend on d'Anconia Copper, I'm spending them, only . . . only it's not to make it grow. I shall destroy every last bit of it and every last penny of my fortune and every ounce of copper that could feed the looters. I shall not leave it as I found it--I shall leave it as Sebastian d'Anconia found it--then let them try to exist without him or me!"
    "Francisco!" she screamed. "How could you make yourself do it?"
    "By the grace of the same love as yours," he answered quietly, "my love for d'Anconia Copper, for the spirit of which it was the shape."

     

    Quote

    "Dagny, we who've been called 'materialists' by the killers of the human spirit, we're the only ones who know how little value or meaning there is in material objects as such, because we're the ones who create their value and meaning. We can afford to give them up, for a short while, in order to redeem something much more precious. We are the soul, of which railroads, copper mines, steel mills and oil wells are the body--and they are living entities that beat day and night, like our hearts, in the sacred function of supporting human life, but only so long as they remain our body, only so long as they remain the expression, the reward and the property of achievement. Without us, they are corpses and their sole product is poison, not wealth or food, the poison of disintegration that turns men into hordes of scavengers."

    ...

    "You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production. Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce. But the looters--by their own stated theory--are in desperate, permanent, congenital need and at the blind mercy of matter.

    ...

    "You don't know what is right any longer? Dagny, this is not a battle over material goods. It's a moral crisis, the greatest the world has ever faced and the last."

     

    To answer your last point,

    16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    You emphasized to me once, on another topic or in chat, that rights are a political principle. While, yes, in political contexts, you're right, does that mean ALL moral choices require political principles, too? If yes, theft is always wrong. If no, well, theft or murder is okay in some rare instances.

    I no longer support utilitarianism as a moral philosophy*. It is inconsistent with Objectivism. Intentionally killing an innocent person is morally unjustifiable - i.e. murder - regardless of the circumstances.

    * See my post in the metaphysics of death thread for some discussion of that:

     

  14. 13 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

    If you are the type who would allow all the world to die to avoid murder, then brother, you and I are simply not the same.

     

    Quote

    I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good my means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself of the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their mood requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!" 

     

  15. 5 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

    I am not a white nationalist but consider myself alt-right because I've considered myself so from the time when the term encompassed not just white nationalists but monarchists, those who are anti-democracy, also certain anti-feminists identified as such, etc. The way you are using the term, which is becoming more and more common today (mostly thanks to the media) but is not the original definition, is "alt-right = white nationalist".

    Correct... I don't think white nationalism (a la stormfront, etc) is a part of the "alt-right" at all, actually.

  16. 4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

    I hope and assume others have not so misunderstood.

    I've been rereading your posts in this thread and the other, and your position as far as I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is that "This is not an easy choice but depends on the context of the chooser", and that while pulling the lever IS murder, the question is whether or not one could live with such a thing as being a murderer in exchange for saving five lives (and presumably by "live with" you mean being able to live with yourself, as in psychologically and morally, not merely in terms of the legal or social consequences you'd face from the outside).

    If so, then I believe splitprimary is asking a legitimate question: if one is doing the right thing morally by killing the person, then why wouldn't they feel righteous, virtuous, and morally proud of their action? Why are you agreeing that it's murder, and that there these devastating moral and psychological consequences? If you were fully convinced it was the right thing to do wouldn't you argue that it's not murder, but rather a justified killing, and feel differently?

  17. 5 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    Insofar as rights are a political principle, violating them isn't necessarily violating virtues, if a situation isn't a political/social question. Being a tragic situation does that. I am not saying I'd act to get more people to live because I care for the greater good. I'd do this because defending values is itself virtuous and how I measure that I am in fact being virtuous. If I am able to act in such a way that provides me more value, I will do so. It's not that I am violating a principle for the sake of other people. I'd be acting for the sake of my values that my virtues enable me to find and protect. If I were to permit lesser values to outweigh greater ones, the principle I used to justify it would be sacrifice, by definition.

    Louie, rights are a moral principle.

    You said, "I'd do this because defending values is itself virtuous and how I measure that I am in fact being virtuous."

    I know. That's precisely what I'm arguing against. The terms "principle" or "virtue" do not refer to the outcomes of your actions, and cannot be measured in that way. They specifically refer to the character of the action itself independent of the outcome. Roark had integrity because he followed his principles even in the face of huge threats, even in the face of huge losses. Remember the scene where Roark rejects a contract to build a skyscraper because they asked for a few minor adjustments - he was broke and this was his last hope before he would be forced to go work at the quarry. That is integrity. That is principle, that is virtue.

    "It's not that I am violating a principle for the sake of other people. I'd be acting for the sake of my values that my virtues enable me to find and protect."

    Theft and murder are violations of a moral principle, whether you do it for the sake of other people (which you wouldn't, I know), or for the sake of your own ends.

  18. More needs to be said of the political philosophy of the so-called alt-right*. 

    This is one of the most revealing things I've ever seen:

    13 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

    Every alt-rightist I have ever met also holds a Malevolent Universe Premise and has a negative view of human nature. Every one, including the non-racial-nationalist ones such as me1, although "degrees of malevolence" vary.

    Now that I think about it, there may be a fundamental incompatability between Objectivists and the alt-Right, because now that I think about it, the fundamental thing that unites all of our disparate movements is what you call the "Malevolent Universe Premise", and the related fact that we take the negative view of human nature.

    What are the logical consequences of a philosophy that takes a "negative view of human nature" (a malevolent people premise)? The first thing to go will be individual rights. A negative view of human nature implies that there's no real basis for holding the non-aggression principle: that one ought to deal with others on the basis of consent. 

    Quote

    Democracy sucks, the strong should rule the weak, and we could use a good old-fashioned dictator to clean up this mess.

    Here is a great article by Andrea Castillo discussing the alt-right neoreactionaries:

    https://theumlaut.com/2014/07/29/a-gentle-introduction-to-neoreaction-for-libertarians/

    Quote

    A puckish new brand of right-wing radical subverts the postmodern power machine each day over Twitter and RSS for fun and praxis. It’s a real hoot to watch. These rudely triggering firebrands are denounced by the people who matter as wrong-thinking zealots of the most problematic variety—to the masochistic vindication (and occasional sacking) of our impish dissidents. Their freakish messages seem almost tailored to demand attention in our outrage-driven world of social media signaling. Libertarians, meet the neoreaction.

    Remind you of someone?

    The political philosophy of the alt-right is monarchist. If that seems weird or obscure to you, think of it in these terms: what they desire is an authoritarian strong-man to oppose the Establishment Left. That should not be an obscure idea at all, at this point.

    What's interesting is the origin of this political philosophy; quoting from Mencius Moldbug, the father of neoreactionary political philosophy:

    Quote

    That leaves libertarians. Now, I love libertarians to death. My CPU practically has a permanent open socket to the Mises Institute. In my opinion, anyone who has intentionally chosen to remain ignorant of libertarian (and, in particular, Misesian-Rothbardian) thought, in an era when a couple of mouse clicks will feed you enough high-test libertarianism to drown a moose, is not an intellectually serious person. Furthermore, I am a computer programmer who has read far too much science fiction - two major risk factors for libertarianism. So I could just say, "read Rothbard," and call it a day.


    On the other hand, it is hard to avoid noticing two basic facts about the universe. One is that libertarianism is an extremely obvious idea. The other is that it has never been successfully implemented.

    http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html

    This is not an oddball political movement that's come out of nowhere - the predecessor of this political philosophy is none other than the quintessentially D2 anarchocapitalism of Rothbardian libertarianism

    Think about it - what is the next logical step down the path of D2 politics? It's the disintegration of the non-aggression principle itself on the basis of a malevolent view of human nature.

    Continuing from Castillo's article:

    Quote

    Understanding Moldbug’s Cathedral is key to understanding this Dark Enlightenment. Think of it as a public-private partnership that promotes and protects the entrenched secular Puritan paradigm (long story) that neoreactionaries believe runs the world.

    The "Cathedral" that Moldbug discusses in his writing is the new secular "religion" that inhabits the media, Hollywood, academia, big government leftists, etc., that propound postmodernism, feminism, egalitarianism, democracy, etc.

    Note how this fits with the narrative of how the election is "rigged" against Trump, "a public-private partnership" which includes at its forefront "the media".

    Neoreactionaries see themselves as explicitly "enlightened", and "beyond libertarianism":

    Quote

    Think of the neoreaction as an early attempt to build a kind of “meta-politics without romance.”... It extends our toolkit ... beyond analyzing simple economic class to consider culture, status, and tribal political behavior... With their own broadened focus, neoreactionaries believe they see the writing on the wall that we libertarians are simply too scared or myopic to consider.

    ...

    Unrelenting democracy combined with short-term demographic trends render the libertarian political project doomed...they do not harbor our Hayekian sentimentality for the transformative promise of rigorous liberal intellectualism. Many find our unusual reverence to abstract market forces to be shallow, degrading, or even autistic.

    ...

    They will defend what even libertarians find indefensible: sexual restraint, gender specialization, temperance, ethnic exclusion, and nationalism. Our great-grandparents’ legacies, more or less. 

    One last thing I'll point out from this article, quoting from the "Dark Enlightenment" writer Nick Land:

    Quote

    If reaction ever became a popular movement, its few slender threads of bourgeois (or perhaps dreamily ‘aristocratic’) civility wouldn’t hold back the beast for long

    Well what we see right now is reactionary political philosophy becoming a popular movement in the Trump campaign. The threat is real, and we've been warned: its few slender threads of civility will not hold back the beast for long.

    Dismissing these people as "trolls" and attempting to silence them is extremely foolish; you are cutting yourselves off from the very people you need to be persuading.

    On 10/21/2016 at 6:39 AM, Dustin86 said:

    if you want to attract these people, you have to explain to them how Objectivism is going to help them. They're not going to be "shamed away" from "collectivism" that you don't approve of

    As Peikoff identified in DIM, we've been on a "distintegrating" (D-type) trend in our society for quite some time, and this is the next logical evolution of D-type political philosophy. I think in light of the apparent size and popularity of this mass movement as we see in the Trump campaign, we need to be re-evaluating what was already a very dubious prediction at the end of his book, that society will devolve into the previous, unmixed "stable state" of the M2-type. On the contrary, what we are seeing right now is the progression of the D-type trend into the unmixed "stable state" of the D2-type. That is a much more credible prediction of where society is going now, and we need to be ready for it.

     

    * the article quoted above identifies the original meaning of the term "alt-right"; it's an umbrella term that included the "manosphere", "neoreactionaries", HBD (human bio-diversity), the "orthosphere", the "Dark Enlightenment", etc.

    Quote

    This motley band of techno-futurists, traditionalists, seduction artists, funnymen, reluctant Sedevacantists, inconvenient ethnonationalists, monarchists, communitarians, general heretics, homebrewed evolutionists, and one dedicated Jacobite to guide them all is perhaps easier for libertarians to initially understand through what they commonly oppose [the "Cathedral", as explained above] than for what they separately advocate.

     

  19. 6 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    Interesting idea. Can you clarify? I mean, as far as I see, consequentialists are glad to answer hypotheticals, emphasizing how to calculate morality like a baking recipe.

    Eiuol, I'm happy to clarify. As I said, tragedies in art, and hypothetical emergencies like this trolley problem and others in ethics, present the most extreme cases, where one is forced to deal with a person who is irrational or a world in which one's interests are frustrated, to the point of becoming existential questions about how to deal with a world where such things are possible.

    Whether the case is a man with a moral code facing torture and death if he doesn't cooperate with the looters, or a man of genius and integrity driven to work as a day laborer in a quarry, or a starving man facing the choice to steal to live, or in this case one is faced with the choice to murder in order to save lives - these kinds of questions are designed to separate acting rationally and morally from the achievement of desirable outcomes. If you fundamentally rely on judging the ends in order to justify the means, then you are left without principles, without a moral code, helpless to make the right decision in these situations: you are forced to compromise your integrity, to steal, to lie, and to murder.

    You've stated elsewhere that in some situations you are willing to steal and to murder in order to save your own life. And now you've said you're willing to do it in order to save other people's lives. As an Objectivist you claim to stand for your integrity, for moral principle, and for individual rights. You claim to stand on the side of Galt, Dagny, Rearden, Francisco, Ragnar, and Roark. Yet, for the sake of your ends, you are willing to sacrifice these, like James Taggart, Wesley Mouch, Floyd Ferris, or Robert Stadler.

    Quote

    "This is no time for squeamishness," James Taggart spoke up with unexpected vigor, but his voice, too, was oddly low. "We don't have to be sissies about it."
    "It seems to me . . ." said Mouch dully, "that . . . that the end justifies the means . . ."
    "It's too late for any scruples or any principles," said Ferris. "Only direct action can work now."
    No one answered; they were acting as if they wished that their pauses, not their words, would state what they were discussing...
    "It seems to me . . . that we have no other choice . . ." said Mouch; it was almost a whisper.

    Well we've shot your ethics out of a cannon, and it's exploded like a porcelain doll. You're not going to make it out of the quarry. The heroine who should have been your true love regards you with that merciless indifference of a zero which Dominique had for Keating in bed. You will not be contacted to enter the gulch.

    Such will be your status morally until you learn to justify your actions, not according to those values that come from the outcomes, but according to those individual rights and moral principles that come from the metaphysical nature of man.

  20. 49 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

    What is it that Rand stated in The Fountainhead: The Soul of the Collectivist? It was:

    Don't bother to examine a folly—ask yourself only what it accomplishes.

    Leonard Peikoff explains that line in The Fountainhead:

    Quote

    That is Toohey speaking, not Rand. She would ask "How do you know it is a folly without examining it?"

    From "Philosophy, Who Needs It?":

    Quote

    If you feel nothing but boredom when reading the virtually unintelligible theories of some philosophers, you have my deepest sympathy. But if you brush them aside, saying: "Why should I study that stuff when I know it's nonsense?"--you are mistaken. It is nonsense, but you don't know it--not so long as you go on accepting all their conclusions, all the vicious catch phrases generated by those philosophers. And not so long as you are unable to refute them.

    That nonsense deals with the most crucial, the life-or-death issues of man's existence. At the root of every significant philosophic theory, there is a legitimate issue--in the sense that there is an authentic need of man's consciousness, which some theories struggle to clarify and others struggle to obfuscate, to corrupt, to prevent man from ever discovering. The battle of philosophers is a battle for man's mind. If you do not understand their theories, you are vulnerable to the worst among them.

     

  21. Replying to this from the other thread here...

    16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    If it's 5 strangers versus 1 stranger, I'd do what I can to save the 5.

    So you would murder an innocent stranger for the sake of the greater good?

  22. Tragedy in art and emergencies in ethics take questions to the level of existentialism. What if you're faced with the situation of a man who is irrational or a universe that is malevolent? These questions completely separate your ability to make ethical decisions from the outcomes, and force you to justify your actions on the basis of being rationally self-consistent with your nature.

    Likewise in tragedy, it forces you to completely separate your judgment from whether or not you like the outcomes or the effect (you won't; it's a tragedy), and to evaluate the artwork according to its metaphysical self-consistency, especially when it comes to judging the characters in the tragedy according to these same ethical standards of rational self-consistency with human nature. 

    Emergencies take ethics to its extreme to reveal the character of the system to the furthest possible extent. At what limit do one's principles break down, if at all? If the outcomes seem to be working against you, at what point do you break down to accepting a malevolent universe premise? What would break Roark? The only way to stress test that limit is to put them up against an extreme test: amidst a complete absence of his values, his ability to work, to have someone to love, etc, does he abandon his principles, or does he persist?

    If your ethics is a fragile, porcelain doll, you'd fold like a house of cards facing half of the adversity Roark faced.

    Only a consequentialist would be so deathly afraid of a hypothetical emergency that they'd evade the question or declare their inability to handle the moral question. Roark was given an ultimatum, that he must design according to popular styles, or be crushed by Wynand's power, and he did the opposite of evading the issue or crumbling under the pressure: he sketched what it was he was being asked for, and laughed it off as the most absurd thing he'd ever heard, as if to say, of course my principles are completely unbreakable, no matter how impossible you make it for me to succeed - this is my identity, and integrity compels me to act accordingly, regardless of the consequences.

    "I wish I could tell you that it was a temptation, at least for a moment."

    If the story had ended with Roark stuck in the quarry it still would have been a great work of tragic art. To stress the point, instead of relieving the conflict with Enright getting in contact with him, she could have pressed Roark further, have him face death itself, starving from lack of work or crucified, and made it an even greater work of tragic art by showing the furthest extent of his integrity. She took Galt that far - she did have him facing the threat of death, and even had him tortured.

    "It was the torturers who were trembling with terror... Wesley Mouch was first to break."

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