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Reidy

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  1. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from jonathanconway in Holding an idea without accepting it   
    Your advice is good, but, despite what a lot of sources say, the quote doesn't come from Aristotle. It originated in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up: "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
    Aristotle says that a good intellect will not require more or less rigor than a topic allows. Nichomachean Ethics I 1 1094b23: "The mark of the educated man is to seek precision insofar as each class allows it, so far as the nature of the subject-matter admits. To accept probable argumentation from a mathematician is like asking a rhetorician for formal proof." I.e. the two are equally absurd.
    Philosophers other than Rand observe what they call the principle of charity: when in doubt about how to read a text, prefer the interpretation that makes it come out correct.
  2. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Boydstun in Why Read Aristotle Today?   
    The author is apparently unaware of Rand, but much of what she has to say is of Randian interest.
    https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-aristotle-teach-us-about-the-routes-to-happiness?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+(Aeon+Magazine+Essays)
     
  3. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from William O in Why Read Aristotle Today?   
    The author is apparently unaware of Rand, but much of what she has to say is of Randian interest.
    https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-aristotle-teach-us-about-the-routes-to-happiness?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+(Aeon+Magazine+Essays)
     
  4. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from dream_weaver in Why Read Aristotle Today?   
    The author is apparently unaware of Rand, but much of what she has to say is of Randian interest.
    https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-aristotle-teach-us-about-the-routes-to-happiness?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+(Aeon+Magazine+Essays)
     
  5. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from softwareNerd in Quick Question: What time period was America at it's Best?   
    If the future is not a permissible answer, then I'm with the others who say it's now.
    A family of four can live on a single income if it's willing to accept an early-60's middle class standard of living. One voice-only phone. One b&w tv. One bedroom for every two household members. One car. No air conditioning (and none in the car either). Maybe a dishwasher, probably a garbage disposal.
  6. Thanks
    Reidy got a reaction from RohinGupta in INDUSTRIAL SOCIOLOGY, ORGANISATIONAL ETHICS, AND OBJECTIVISM   
    Ed Younkins is another who has written on related topics.
  7. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Boydstun in The Law of Identity   
    Whatever the merits of the wider point here, the participants show a shaky understanding of Heraclitus. He lived and wrote before philosophy had the sophistication to express a notion such as the law of identity. What people nowadays think are his positions are actually the work of soi-disants Heracliteans of later generations.
    Aristotle distinguishes between the historical Heraclitus and "Heracliteanism" a couple of places in the Metaphysics:
    - For it's impossible for one and the same both to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus said (IV 3, 1005b23);
    - Further, seeing that nature is in motion, they all thought that of what changes nothing can be said truly and that what is always changing in every respect does not admit of the truth. From this supposition grew the most extreme of the foregoing views, namely the view of those who claim to Heraclitize, such as Cratylus, who in the end thought nothing could be said, but only moved his finger and criticized Heraclitus for saying that there's no stepping into the same river twice; he [Cratylus] didn't think we could even do it once. (IV 5, 1010a6)
    (emphasis added) though not always:  1012a24, 34, 1062a32, 1063b24.
    When I studied H. I hit on a reading that I was later flattered to hear from Julius Moravcsik, a famous academic. He observed diversity and change in the world and yet wanted to find some way to see it at once and to pronounce stable truths about it. That is to say, ,he was struggling to identify conceptual thought, but nobody could grasp this until Plato came along. The nearest Heraclitus could get was simultaneous perceptual awareness of everything, in the mind of god. Thus he was like the man in Anthem, struggling to identify the first-person singular, but he never quite got there.
  8. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from William O in The Law of Identity   
    Whatever the merits of the wider point here, the participants show a shaky understanding of Heraclitus. He lived and wrote before philosophy had the sophistication to express a notion such as the law of identity. What people nowadays think are his positions are actually the work of soi-disants Heracliteans of later generations.
    Aristotle distinguishes between the historical Heraclitus and "Heracliteanism" a couple of places in the Metaphysics:
    - For it's impossible for one and the same both to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus said (IV 3, 1005b23);
    - Further, seeing that nature is in motion, they all thought that of what changes nothing can be said truly and that what is always changing in every respect does not admit of the truth. From this supposition grew the most extreme of the foregoing views, namely the view of those who claim to Heraclitize, such as Cratylus, who in the end thought nothing could be said, but only moved his finger and criticized Heraclitus for saying that there's no stepping into the same river twice; he [Cratylus] didn't think we could even do it once. (IV 5, 1010a6)
    (emphasis added) though not always:  1012a24, 34, 1062a32, 1063b24.
    When I studied H. I hit on a reading that I was later flattered to hear from Julius Moravcsik, a famous academic. He observed diversity and change in the world and yet wanted to find some way to see it at once and to pronounce stable truths about it. That is to say, ,he was struggling to identify conceptual thought, but nobody could grasp this until Plato came along. The nearest Heraclitus could get was simultaneous perceptual awareness of everything, in the mind of god. Thus he was like the man in Anthem, struggling to identify the first-person singular, but he never quite got there.
  9. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Boydstun in Classical music   
    We already know who Leo was. I don't remember the last name, but the ARI people published an illustrated Rand biography several years ago with a photo of him; no need to conjecture. He went the way of Leo in the book and was executed in the 1930s, long after Rand emigrated.
  10. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Ilya Startsev in What are the similarities between Rand and Nietzsche?   
    Lester Hunt, a philosopher anthologized in the book mentioned in #9, once said that N. is important to a biographical or developmental understanding of Rand but useless for understanding the positions she arrived at.
  11. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Severinian in The value of preventing others' suffering   
    The thinking here seems to be that money is the only rational motivator and that a rational actor would consider this and nothing else. This looks like a good case where this would not be true. Being kind to animals is also a motive.
    The question would rarely come up anyway; gratuitously painful slaughtering methods would probably not be economically prudent. On the other hand, people hold snails to starve in order to empty out their digestive tracts. The Japanese (I've read) appreciate sashimi from fish butchered live at the table; feeling the reflexive death twitches on the tongue is part of the experience.
  12. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from JASKN in Reblogged:Let Matt Be Michael   
    You and Lucas are right, but I'm willing to overlook Maloney's statement, protected as it is by the three-week rule.
    People say a lot of fatuous things when they've lost an election (though never as much as in 2016). My policy is to waive adult standards of rationality and good will for three weeks; after that, back to normal.
  13. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Boydstun in Objectivist Mechanical Engineers   
    If only Popeye had lived to see this day.
  14. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from MisterSwig in The Tactics and Threat of the Alt-Right   
    Yet another
  15. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Scott Bouranis in Trump   
    If you have access to back issues or reprints of The Objectivist, read her 1968 kiboshing of George Wallace; it's as close as you'll get (which is close indeed) to what she'd say about Trump.
    The character most resembling him in her fiction is James Taggart. Both are classic mixed-economy businessmen, getting rich by government favors and connections in a highly-regulated industry. Both are contemptuous of ideas and principles. Both are what Objectivist jargon calls social metaphysicians. Taggart stroked his vanity by letting his wife think he was a man of acheivement. Trump is trying to do this with the entire world.
  16. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from softwareNerd in Trump   
    If you have access to back issues or reprints of The Objectivist, read her 1968 kiboshing of George Wallace; it's as close as you'll get (which is close indeed) to what she'd say about Trump.
    The character most resembling him in her fiction is James Taggart. Both are classic mixed-economy businessmen, getting rich by government favors and connections in a highly-regulated industry. Both are contemptuous of ideas and principles. Both are what Objectivist jargon calls social metaphysicians. Taggart stroked his vanity by letting his wife think he was a man of acheivement. Trump is trying to do this with the entire world.
  17. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Repairman in Trump   
    If you have access to back issues or reprints of The Objectivist, read her 1968 kiboshing of George Wallace; it's as close as you'll get (which is close indeed) to what she'd say about Trump.
    The character most resembling him in her fiction is James Taggart. Both are classic mixed-economy businessmen, getting rich by government favors and connections in a highly-regulated industry. Both are contemptuous of ideas and principles. Both are what Objectivist jargon calls social metaphysicians. Taggart stroked his vanity by letting his wife think he was a man of acheivement. Trump is trying to do this with the entire world.
  18. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from JASKN in How important to you is it that your partner be an Objectivist?   
    Not important at all for me. An interest in Objectivism is not a deepest value, and such an interest is neither necessary nor sufficient for such a sharing. This is not to deny that the character traits that caused the two to take an interest in Rand's writing could be deepest values. Such an interest might also be superficial or even bad-willed; most of us, I suspect, have met at least one thoroughly repellent character who claimed to be an Objectivist.
    Somebody who is positively snide and hostile to Objectivism wouldn't attract me, not because of overt convictions but because of traits hat this hostility indicates. People hit it off - as lovers, friends, business partners, performing partners and so on - or they don't. Nobody deduces the outcome from the contents of a checklist.
  19. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Anything Wrong With These Quotes About Book Learning < Learning from Experience?   
    One feature these quotes have in common is a failure to appreciate the division of labor. Trying to produce all your own knowledge is as futile as trying to produce all your own food or all your own gasoline. Some skills take relatively little input and a higher proportion of work on one's own: athletic skills may be the extremes, with dancing and musical performance not far behind, but few, if any, excel with no cooperation at all. Math and computer science are examples from the opposite end of the scale. If you do well at one end of this scale, fine, but your aptitudes and preferences aren't binding on the rest of us.
    To take them up one at a time:
    - "I am not attracted to book smart..."
    Intelligence has to be intelligence about some topic or other. If you limit yourself to what you can learn from uninformed doing or unverified word of mouth, you won't be intelligent about much of importance. Not anyone can sit behind a desk, at least not productively. At least as many can run off at the mouth on topics he doesn't know much about, and that's really what's usually going on when you sit on a rooftop at 2am. I was an adolescent once myself.
    - "Books only contain information..." And not all of them do at that. This is pretty much a tautology (a word I learned reading a book): books contain what books contain and not what books don't contain. The quote refers to the latter as "knowledge", which information from non-book sources might be but isn't necessarily. Personal impressions and haphazardly-acquired prejudices can be be true or false, too. The latter ways of learning may actually be more prone to error. "Knowledge is gained from personal experience" is true if it means some knowledge and false if it means all knowledge. The last statement probably traces its ancestry back to John Dewey. The originator of the quote may not have known this (mistrusting book learning as he did), but somebody along the chain of transmission took the time to read.
    - "I'm an intellectual who doesn't read books." This is possible; Rand wasn't much of a reader after her school days. You might be the kind of intellectual (a mathematician, for example) who works it all out in his head or on paper or at a keyboard, but this requires having learned a lot and having read a lot of books beforehand, and it takes a lot or sitting at a desk. (Rand wasn't much of a reader after her school days, so it can be done.)
  20. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Does Egoism Lead Ultimately to Socialism?   
    Thomas Hobbes said all this nearly 400 years ago. What you and he, but not Rand, have failed to do is question what self-interest is. The behavior you describe just isn't what she meant by the term. If you want to appeal the matter up to a higher level and argue that your characterization is more cognitively useful than Rand's or more explanatorily powerful or that it avoids inconsistencies that hers falls into or what have you, I'd have to hear your case. On this level it is simply inaccurate about the plain language or her published writings.
  21. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from AlexL in Reblogged:How the U.K. Could Make This Victory Meaningful   
    Did Johnson in fact make that claim? The news stories I've seen attribute it to Nigel Farage.
  22. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from AlexL in Reblogged:We've Heard the GOP's Line on Trump Before   
    The best comment I've seen about Trump, fitting well with the one above, was in National Review yesterday.
  23. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from softwareNerd in Reblogged:We've Heard the GOP's Line on Trump Before   
    The best comment I've seen about Trump, fitting well with the one above, was in National Review yesterday.
  24. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from softwareNerd in Contra Trump – by Harry Binswanger   
    Say something nice about Barbara Branden?
  25. Like
    Reidy got a reaction from bluecherry in Galt's Speech vs. The Objectivist Ethics   
    The radio speech goes into more topics than just ethics. On the other hand you ought to read it in the context of the story. The Objectivist Ethics goes into more detail on ethics and how to arrive at ethics ("metaethics" is the technical term for the latter).
    If you have time, read the entire novel - as you may already have done - and then move on to The Objectivist Ethics.
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