tadmjones

Posting to subscribe to the thread.   I really don't care about this conflict because I am neither jewish nor muslim.  I would just like to remind everyone of the big picture: modern Isreal exists because of the ideology of Zionism and jewish supremacism embedded within it.  If Zionism is invalid then anything which is a consequence of Zionism is invalid.

I've made it to 75 today, and I'm still learning and writing fine!
(Birthday gift from my husband in the link – design by Eero Aarnio in 1960's.)

Did SA apartheid end, or just flip ?

Tad, you're correct, I've heard, to use "all youse all" for an audience of three or more.
You're sounding normal to me, just with above-average introspection to report.
Be that as it may, I thought I'd add that I have certain flash-sketch images of scenes in memory that were set when I first read the scene in literature. The final scene of Hank Rearden in his office with the farewell salute from the mills and Galt and Dagny etc, etc, in the abandoned rail tunnel. I don't seem to have any particulars of what their faces look like other than being man's or woman's and being White, but such images and movements in the scenes as I do conjure do not change upon re-reading the book. And I doubt they'd get displaced by any filmmaking of those scenes.
At least one dream researcher Hobson proposed that the stories we make in our dreams are handicapped attempts to make sense of images that are being randomly presented to the dreamer. I've noticed that Freud was right in one thing at least about the phenomenology of dreams, for what it is worth, and that is that frequently objects or actions or problems in dreams are residue of real waking experiences of the preceding day. I think sometimes the day residue can be from experience of television or film images. I still recall a dream from before 1980 during which I became awake. It was just of a nude blonde woman, details of her body indefinite, but she was vertical and as without support and amidst wind-billowing satins and shears, all of it in bright slightly golden light accompanied by my feeling of the greatest preciousness and attractive beauty. (I don't recall if I was having one of those involuntary you-know-whats.) I entered it into a poem I wrote a few years ago called "Dream to Sleep". By her face and hair, I knew well enough that she was not any particular person I'd known at all. Indeed, I'd say she mostly matched ads from 1960's television for Breck.
I have a curiosity, Tad. Imagine having a glove on your left hand. In your mind, take it off and turn it inside out. Pull it onto your right hand. Does it seem like it should fit the right hand? Does it seem a verdict is not reached by this mere imagining? It was in the early 1990's I think that psychologists and neuroscientists found the sequence of brain activities that support human abilities to turn objects over in the mind. I don't know if there has been similar research on inversions such as in the glove transformation. (I've tried it with a real glove, and it fits. That might be useful someday.)

Just a second… how would you visualize a spatial problem?  For example imagine placing furniture so that it fits a room but also imagining it in place to determine if there is flow and if it will work functionally long term?  Do you not visualize it i.e. see it in your mind’s eye?
If someone described “An isosceles triangle pointing straight up, its horizontal base longer than and resting on a square, a smaller vertically oriented rectangle resting in the square at its base, a small circle inside and to one side of the rectangle” do you see anything in your mind’s eye or would you literally have to draw it first following this description as if they were a set of instructions?

Yesterday I heard mention of a phenomenon called aphantasia , the self reported lack of 'innner' imagery. Oddly it seems "I have it", odder still a few weeks ago I was discussing this with my wife! But I thought the fact that what I was trying to explain to my wife and her reporting back of her phenomenal experience of imagination visually, in comparison to what I was describing didn't 'line up' was due to semantic misalignment.
I did not realize that when most people report 'seeing' 'things' in their mind's eye or imagination that they were not speaking metaphorically. I always assumed 'visual imagery' was a collectively agreed upon ambiguous concept to describe an 'inner' understanding or cognition(?) of an imagined 'thing', and not a 'quasi-actual' visual image.
If I were prompted to close my eyes and imagine say a pink elephant, I only 'see' the dark behind the lids, there is nothing 'there' that appears anything akin to visually apprehending a pink elephant, but the 'idea' of a pink elephant is present or experienced, perhaps better described as almost a state of awareness of being predisposed to 'accepting' a nonheretofore 'appearance' of a 'visual experience' of a pink elephant .. actually it is rather hard to describe, especially because I never thought I would have to describe this aspect of experience , going off the assumption that all youse all was just speaking metaphorically!
I do dream 'visually' and I sometimes mistake the experience of having read a novel as having watched a film of the story, but i don't seem to be able to bring up visual imagery 'on demand' , so maybe on the spectrum as it were, lol.
So , yeah AI imagery ain't never gonna live up to my expectation, but only because the bar is too low !
 
 

Is this for me? If it is, then first cool down. Then explain, calmly, your objection to my comments.

Is the notion that that CIA coined the term 'conspiracy theory(ist)' as a propaganda tool to dissuade people from engaging in the idea that JFK's assassination may not be the result of a lone wolf actor, a theory about a conspiracy ? or an actual action of the CIA?
Trump is a Russian agent!! Proof pending..
Covid infection is lethal!!
Covid mRNA injections are safe and effective !!
Snickers really satisfy!!
Yeah , what is Tony on about.
I'm sure you just mean , that you have to challenge his assertion that the 'entire' , every single vestige of the 'media' is centrally directed verbatim yada , yada.
All lives matter is racist!!
Ukraine is basically Kansas!! Who wouldn't display the colors?! a Traitor that's who !!

Is the notion that that CIA coined the term 'conspiracy theory(ist)' as a propaganda tool to dissuade people from engaging in the idea that JFK's assassination may not be the result of a lone wolf actor, a theory about a conspiracy ? or an actual action of the CIA?
Trump is a Russian agent!! Proof pending..
Covid infection is lethal!!
Covid mRNA injections are safe and effective !!
Snickers really satisfy!!
Yeah , what is Tony on about.
I'm sure you just mean , that you have to challenge his assertion that the 'entire' , every single vestige of the 'media' is centrally directed verbatim yada , yada.
All lives matter is racist!!
Ukraine is basically Kansas!! Who wouldn't display the colors?! a Traitor that's who !!

This whole thread is based on OPs willful evasion of the difference between Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli nationals of Arab ethnicity.
 
Palestinians living in the occupied territories aren't second class Israeli citizens. They're not Israeli citizens at all. They're an enemy population, being indoctrinated into hating Israel and killing Jews from childhood until they die, by a government that is at war with Israel. Of course Israel discriminates against them. Every nation state discriminates against foreign nationals, as they should. The expectation that Israel, or the US, or any other state treat foreigners the same way it treats its own citizens, is unreasonable. Especially in the middle of a war. Calling that act of self defense apartheid is just childish name calling, by people who are at a loss of actual arguments.
 
Meanwhile, there is another group of Arabs, who are Israeli citizens. None of the laws and cases OP cites are discriminatory against Israelis of Arab ethnicity. Ethnic Arabs in Israel have the same exact rights Jews do, and, as Leonid said, one fewer obligations.

I did not write "massively". But a change there has been. Anyhow, it seems I must stress the obvious: this is no longer a Communist-atheist dictatorship. Its ideology is predominantly Orthodox Christianity, and therefore Russia poses little threat now to other nations, as it did when the state and intellectuals had a mass ideology to export, one that convinced and coerced many other people.
The change is more fundamental than mere political, (i.e. simply, "authoritarian v. democratic").
Fundamentally, the Russian people's/culture's convictions have flipped from (Communist) subjectivism/skepticism - to - mystical-intrinsicism.
During roughly the same period the West has been moving the opposite way - into subjectivism-skepticism (neo- Marxism: to post-modernism, to Wokeism/etc.).
Both positions are the clearest example of "different sides of the same counterfeit coin", in Rand's brilliant formulation. In essential terms, they equally represent primacy of consciousness.
With newfound subjectivity and skepticism, anti-reason and anti-individualism, the West is in the process of losing some liberty and freedoms at the same time the Russians are gaining somewhat more than they had.

That is not at all what that section of OPAR (45-6) is saying. He doesn’t say anything about anything’s being outlandish, that is not what “meta puffs” refer to, but a stand-in for whatever the fundamental particle or building blocks of matter is supposed to be. 
 
And the point he’s trying to make isn’t that whatever the fundamental particle turns out to be, it “doesn’t refute Objectivism,” he says it doesn’t have any philosophical significance. I think this is false if taken in the literal sense, because whether or not there even can be a fundamental building block of matter, and what matter is, is itself a question for philosophy of nature. But anyways, that’s not the point of that section “sensory qualities as real.”
But more to your question: what if the scientific consensus were such and such, would that be a problem, well only if you assume scientism were true. Scientism here meaning something in the neighborhood of “truth is just what the scientific consensus says it is.” If that’s not true, then it’s not a problem for any philosophy necessarily, not just Objectivism.
 
Anyways, in general what science even is and what methods it employs and question it should be addressed is also itself discussed in philosophy. So without answering those questions, the further downstream question of what is objectivism’s relationship to scientific consensus is not really helpful.

Hi Frank,
I have pondered this question a lot myself. In my experience, O'ist arguments against the primacy of consciousness can be divided into four classes:
1. The 'Analytic' Argument
Analytic judgements are allegedly true in virtue of the word's definition, e.g., 'all triangles have three sides'. In this example, the arguing party will uncritically assume the following definition of consciousness: 'being aware of things which are independent of consciousness itself' - and will provide the 'analytic' argument:
Consciousness means being conscious of something; Existence precedes consciousness. Q.E.D Ironically, arguing from definitions and/or upholding the 'analytic-synthetic' dichotomy is an argumentation error which O'ists call rationalism.
2. The Anstoß Argument
Anstoß is a philosophical term introduced by a famous idealist philosopher to designate an obstacle, hindrance, or 'something that offends freedom'. The Objectivist argument goes like this: I can't choose to not see the color green; no matter how much I try, I see it all around. I can't even control my own sense-perception, so the limitation must be rooted in the nature of some physical organ.
However, arguing from common-sense is not an argument at all. For example, because visual perceptions exhibit color, people have long assumed that things 'out-there' really are colored. Philosophy and science are supposed to free us from such errors of common-sense, not to defend them. 'Limitation' does not logically imply that the limit is caused by something outside of consciousness itself.
3. Argumentum ad Peikoffum
A (mistaken) O'ist characterization of Kant's philosophy is that Kant declared consciousness to be invalid because it has identity, or because it must process knowledge. In a twist of irony, Objectivists sometimes drop this charge altogheter, and replace it with its opposite: that idealists do not believe that consciousness has identity. Then, they go on to argue that if consciousness has no identity, it does not operate lawfully, and hence A is not A. Oh my Aristotle!
However, a closer examination of Idealism will reveal that, in such systems, consciousness exists, is an instance of identity, knows of itself, has an 'in-itself' external to conscious experience (self-in-itself, ParaBrahman), that it operates by necessary laws, and that such facts are true even if consciousness itself denies them. Oh, did I mention that many idealists got into trouble due to charges of atheism, and that, although the charges were false, idealistic atheism is a real thing? 
Things like these are not difficult to find if one simply scans the first pages of any important idealist system:
(This comes from a philosopher that didn't even believe in Kant's thing-in-itself, let alone in a mind-independent world.)
4. The 'System' Argument
According to some Objectivists, if the mind creates its world, then A is no longer A, capitalism is false, rationality is useless, chickens will take over humans as the master-race, and Kalman's operettas are pessimistic-propaganda in disguise.
However, most systematic idealist philosophies start with the world and its laws (the same world and laws which are meticulously described by Peikoff in OPAR), then proceed to give a transcendental account of how this world arises from consciousness. This means that, yes, the Objectivist ethics, politics etc, can be 100% true even if they are grounded in the laws of some mind-in-itself.
I actually made a case like this a few months ago when I posted an outline of Schelling's 1800 System. Schelling takes the cue from Kant's conception of genius, namely that artists create in a lawful manner, bound by certain strict laws, yet without actually learning those laws beforehand. According to him, this makes art sui-generis, because even the scientific discoveries of geniuses like Newton can still be attributed to methods of investigation which are available to everyone. According to Schelling, the mind-in-itself is precisely such an artist, unwittingly finding itself in the spatio-temporal world of mechanical causation as a result of its striving to represent itself. My point was that this metaphysical view still leads Schelling to OPAR's familiar features, such as the stress on adjusting nature to man by using reason to penetrate its laws, and many other nice things. The reception was lukewarm; there were some great replies, which addressed the notion of 'conditions for possibility'. Apart from that, some people got hung up on how I used a certain word, or on whether I'm talking smack about Objectivism's reception of Kant - completely missing the actual purpose of the thread. Looks like this subject has resurfaced in this thread, with Schelling being replaced by quantum physics.
----
To conclude, Frank, I noticed that this particular subject is of great interest to you (since many of your threads are dedicated to this aspect of metaphysics). I think that, if OPAR's arguments did not satisfy you, you're likely going to find the same unsatisfying arguments on this forum as well. My advice to you is to either study idealism (which will help you identify precisely what is causing your dissatisfaction with OPAR), or to look for articles written by Objectivists who have studied idealism themselves, because not everybody who studied O'ism in depth is automatically able to give you an O'ist critique of every metaphysical view, unless they are acquainted with said theories.

There's a good article at Vox about a Florida intuition I will miss when we move out of state: Publix, the state's ubiquitous and well-liked grocery chain.

I especially like the account of its founding at the start of the article:I had not been aware of any of this -- except that a few other states in the South also have locations. Sadly, Louisiana isn't one of them: I checked soon after we decided to move there. (I don't shop there for everything, but it has been my go-to for grilling night and gourmet items the whole time we've been here.)

As one might expect of a large, leftist media outlet, the piece is ultimately about politics, and seems at times to try really, really hard to slam the chain for such transgressions as not permitting workers to wear BLM garb on the job; a baker leaving a space on a cake for the word trans due to erring on the side of caution for leaving politics out of work; and an heiress (who has zero active role in the company) donating money to Donald Trump.

The piece comes up empty. To Emily Stewart's credit, she does acknowledge the chain for also not kowtowing to the right, such as with this quote:The piece ends almost wistfully:I appreciate Publix both for being an outstanding grocery chain and for showing a new generation by example that it is both possible and desirable to live life in the pursuit of excellence.

Politics isn't everything: It's only a means, and we should be highly suspicious of anyone "left" or "right" who seems to think we should live our lives for a cause -- rather than supporting a cause because it will improve our lives.

-- CAVLink to Original

I should locate this work and its Addendums in this collection of works. I expect to be adding yet another addendum, this one on Descartes and Rand in their relations to Aristotle's metaphysics and philosophy of mechanics and biology.
Foundational Frames: Descartes and Rand

[This was written as part of a message to my grandson for his recent 10th birthday. He is an intelligent, articulate, and athletic free learner who doesn't go to government school, won''t eat animals, and is a healthy, happy individualist.] Self-Sufficient - being Smart, Strong, and Straight
Being Smart is Knowing clearly what’s real and what’s not. Discovering what exists, what it does, and what goes together or not. Learning well your words, numbers, pictures, and sounds. Understanding deeply who you are, where you’re going, and why. Seeking with reason what is true, what is good, and what has beauty.   Being Strong is Working smart and working hard, using your mighty mind. Spending all the energy and effort it takes to get it done. Making the best and most of your life, not settling for less. Never giving in to fear or despair, holding tight your love and joy. Fighting for your rights without surrender, with goodwill constant.   Being Straight is Staying smart and strong, pointing always at your shining star. Keeping on your true course until the end, unbent and unbroken. Moving up and forward – free and flexible, curious and caring. Honoring your principles and promises, having solid integrity. Aiming proudly for your noble purpose, striving for romantic happiness.
  ------   Image: "Out of the Box" by Bryan Larsen

I think his statement subsumes the process argument re thermodynamical and information-theoretic reasons.
As concept it seems 'all-knowing' would be akin to 'unicorn' , eg the concept is valid as its referent is 'knowingly' not really real.
I don't know anything about limitative theorems of logic , but intuitively it may point to the idea that a theorem or other could posit that a complete set of 'all the facts in existence ' could not be determined to be logically consistent in 'itself' based on some rational that determination of logical consistency requires some interaction with null sets and or the possibilities of unknown unknowns.
I think there is also a need to distinguish between information and knowledge.
It may be tangentially related that one of the ways 'they got' the chatbots to 'produce' more intelligible responses was to tweak 'up' the randomness of the relevance weights(?) , not sure what they did algorithmically/software wise but there seems to be a sweet spot for randomness at least for the results to appear more 'inline' with natural language comprehension.

VDH gives some fine examples of specific actions of the political 'left' and the damage it has doen to the Republic in the recent past.
https://victorhanson.com/the-frightened-left/

I know that these issues are a far drift from the topics in Binswanger 1990, the topic of this thread, and in particular the nature of teleology in organisms that are without consciousness or are under some direction by their consciousness, which is much less autonomous and discerning than human consciousness. But that is all right with me if we chat a bit on these interesting byways, because the intervals required for me to produce the substantial segments of the essay view of that book, including putting it into historical perspective, is long, at least weeks. I'll peg what is here so far, for convenience: 
Part 1, Part 2 – Aristotle I am working now on the remainder of Part 2, which is Suárez, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Part 3 will return to the layout in the subject book, which is cast in our contemporary biology.
Tad, on your two questions: No. No.
Neither Rand nor I would concur with the dualism of Descartes in his sense that thought (he means anything mental) and spatial extension are two fundamental substances, the only two we have, each depending on nothing else, aside from God who brought them into existence. Clipping it down, neither Rand nor I would concur with the dualism of Descartes in the sense of thought and extension being two fundamental substances, each depending on nothing else.
Rand stressed the distinction and fundamentality of existence and consciousness. "Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, . . . " (AS 1015–16). Both are present for one's discernment of them from day of birth to now, although, one would be on towards an age of being able to understand Rand's 1957 writing about it to get explicitly in mind those two things, existence and consciousness.
What Rand says there is fine by me and important, but I go ahead and incorporate what we know about the biological character of consciousness by modern science and make a somewhat more general distinction in place of that one of Rand's. She had the division: existents and existents that have consciousness. I wrote instead (in EW) the division: existents and existents that are of-existents. The latter includes the living activities that are consciousness (awareness of existence) but as well any living action whatever.
So in my terms, here is how I think about your second question. Potentials are featured only in concrete existents and only pertaining to them in their aspect of being not also of-existence. Possibilities are in existents that are of-existents, such as when we sort out the potentials of things for possibilities of our control and possibilities of our inventions and possibilities of our behaviors, or when we grasp the belonging-formalities of concretes and grow vast tooling-formalities upon them for use in our inventions and actions and for our satisfactions of mind, or possibilities are in our story-making entertainments, our fictions. So it's worth making this distinction I've labeled potentials and possibilities.
I don't think Rand would have thought of a line segment as not really real. I guess she could get into that sort of trouble with talk of only concretes being real and then denying that spatial relations are concretes (if she did). However, I should say also for Rand that she recognized that there are relationships in the world independently of our mental grasps of the world. Perceptual similarities are in the world, in her understanding. So are quantities, which we get under our scaled rulers.
I am with Descartes and with Newton on the reality of lines in physical space. Our procedure for bisecting a line segment using compass and straightedge reflects formalities of physical space around us and what it is possible to do with them. Hero of Alexandria said that a straight line is a line stretched to the utmost, and like him when I want to approach getting stones laid in a line, I stretch a string. The things we do in the mind in synthetic geometry, as in Euclid, are not without connections to the world, even though our method in geometry is quite different than our method in chemistry or geology.

There's no "paranoia". I didn't bring this to light on this forum for more gaslighting but again objectively I do understand reasonable doubt given that I only gave an extremely brief synopsis of the countless events, crimes, gaslighting, and harassment that I have experienced and I do still appreciate the comments greatly as I feel less isolated from the world which I shouldn't mention tbh because they keep erasing or limiting everything that I value especially when I speak of valuing something.
My vehicle was not stolen (yet, crosses fingers while ignoring that as an Objectivist I'm not superstitious lol), although some of my other property absolutely *has* been stolen, but  my SUV has been both sabotaged in various ways and repeatedly gone through and "messed" with, and, yes, I understand that saying these facts of reality that in a normal situation could be seen that way and truthfully if I hadn't gone through everything that I have and experienced all this nonstop nonsense I'd be as skeptical reading someone list it all cold like this too. But, they from my recent research they do so many things like this as both a form of gaslighting and to make it *look* like paranoia to discredit the victim. 
More importantly, me knowing and commenting all of this provides extremely important evidence that *I* specifically possess the metacognition that an actual person undergoing any type of actual paranoia would *not* possess do to their actual illness. A person undergoing actual paranoia would not be able to consider that such a possibility could exist in the same way that an individual that had psychosis or hallucinations would not understand that that's a possibility. The metacognition of understanding what all this could * look like* to uninitiated individuals who have never even possibly imagined that such things that *are* beyond absolute doubt happening to myself (as was the case for even myself a couple years ago) virtually *proves* that it absolutely is *not* any form of "paranoia" nor "delusion".

Trump threatens, and has damaged, our system of democratic elections and orderly transfer of power.  He'll probably do even more if he wins or comes close.  If he wrecks our system of democratic elections and orderly transfer of power, we'll be left with a contest of physical force to see who gains office.  Whoever wins that contest, having used force to get power, will probably use force to keep it, and we'll have a dictatorship.  This is a more immediate threat to our rights than the gradual slide into statism that the current Republican party can only delay and tweak, not prevent.
To do my bit to stop Mr. Trump from winning the electoral votes of my state in 2024, I'd vote for H. Biden were he the opposition candidate.  (Yes, I said H.)  I'd vote for a yellow dog.  I'd vote for that apparent serial killer that was recently arrested in Long Island.
 

This looks like a very dangerous indictment to me because it implies that the government can define the "facts" to be whatever they want them to be. Once that is done, anybody who disagrees with those "facts" is obviously guilty of "perjury," "fraud," or the like, and any "evidence" against those "facts" is obviously "fabricated," etc.
Once a government can set the facts to their tastes, the constitution and the law mean nothing.

But Biden is a stronger general candidate or do you mean Harris or Newsom maybe the Transportation Secretary? Big Mike ?

You said it.