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Reidy

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Posts posted by Reidy

  1. The Objectivist ran a 4-part article "Biology Without Consciousness - and its Consequences" by Robert Efron, a physician / neuroscientist, in 1968. (He's apparently still in practice.) It's available, paywalled, online, presumably the text that ran in The Objectivist.

    I gather that an Objectivist would say consciousness is an activity of a person and that a functioning nervous system is a necessary condition of this activity.

  2. A few years back on Quora somebody wanted to know what Aristotle meant when he said that the mark of the educated man is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at once. Several people chimed in with what they thought were Aristotelian explanations, but the quote turned out to be from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up. (They say that if you read the whole thing, Fitzgerald says that eventually you have to resolve the inconsistency.)

  3. Are you sure this is an accurate quote? It looks hinky to me. The Romantic Manifesto is a book-length anthology. Do you know which of the collected pieces is supposed to contain it? The Objectivist was a monthly. Do you know which month in 1969? I have all the 1969 issues except July. Tell me which month and I'll check it out.

  4. I agree that Measure 1 was a heavy-handed ad hoc attempt to maintain abortion restrictions and that we're better off for its failure, but a supermajority requirement for a (state) constitutional amendment might yet be an idea worth another look. Numerous 2/3 or 3/5 rules are already in place in our political system: both branches of congress to override a veto, states to ratify an amendment, senators to end a filibuster. California requires a 2/3 popular vote to raise property taxes.

  5. I see no inconsistency in the statement tadmjones quotes. It names two species of the genus freedom (among several others including religious freedom, medical freedom and the freedom to cross borders). "I bought some fruit: grapes, apricots and pears" is similarly not a contradiction, although "a grape is an apricot" is.

  6. Natan Ehrenreich at National Review (may be paywalled) has denounced Freedom Conservatism for its lack of religiosity, the very feature that would make the organization most interesting to this readership. Their statement seems to show a Randian influence, most conspicuously in its insistence that free will and human nature, not religion, are the origin of liberty. The long list of signatories doesn't contain any recognizably Objectivist names.

    I'll be watching them with curiosity.

  7. An article that makes for interesting reading in connection with The Fountainhead and Rand's theories about art. Sullivan was her model for Henry Cameron.

    The author's observation that highrise is on the decline in the US but going strong in China raises a question: has technology decentralized work so that such buildings are obsolete? If so, you'd expect freer markets to catch on sooner. On the other hand, maybe politics brought this on by making big cities more expensive, dilapidated and dangerous.

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