secondhander

Yes. Although I don't consider that the legitimate objectivist view of sex. I view it more as Ayn Rand's personal view of sex, resulting from the fact that she (like many people) confused sex and romance. And like in some other areas, her personal views became the "objectivist view" for some people, even if they don't rightly belong in that category. (I should say that Rand's thoughts on sex do show up in her writings on objectivism; I nonetheless believe those thoughts are flawed and don't belong as a part of objectivism.)

I'm not sure why you think it could be considered force to tell someone something. It's not force if a stranger walks up and tells you that you should accept Jesus or perish in judgment, is it? Even if you are very naive and believe everything you hear, it's still not force. Why would it be any different. Now it is force for parents to make their children go to Sunday school, to make them do chores, to take away their toys or Internet access, or whatever. But children are a special case -- still under the care of their parents and without full property rights of some things, such as those toys and Internet they didn't work for or pay for in the first place. There is still a kind of harmful force that can't be done to children, but I don't think teaching them false stories and beliefs falls under that. The real force in this case would be the government telling people what they can and cannot teach or say to other people. How would you keep that from happening without the initiation of an unjust, non-retaliatory force?

No, that's not what I'm saying, Nicky. I'm talking about women whom men know casually or as acquaintances, and many men "fall in love" with them before they actually know them well. And I believe that's what Kevin is talking about too. Did you watch the video?

Well I'm back to report after listening to the video. First off, you have a good speaking voice. Second, I'm happy to say that we agree on most all of the major points in your video. In fact, I used almost the same language in my post that you did in your video! That makes me happy. But don't fret over losing out on the chance for some fun disagreements. I can tell there are fundamental issues regarding relationships, that peeked through in passing comments you made (and from some reading on your site) that we would disagree on big time. All that aside, I applaud you for the work you've done on the website and videos and teaching. Nice work.

Ooh. You and I are going to have some fun disagreements, I can tell already. I am at work and haven't watched the video yet. I'll watch it tonight in a bit. But I'll say this much based the text: The problem is not about having feelings of attraction for multiple other people other than your girlfriend. The problem is "falling" in love in the first place. You don't fall into love, like you would into a hole. That's merely infatuation, often caused by confusing sexual desire with deeper feelings of bonding love. It's impossible to love someone you don't actually know, and you can't know someone really well after only a day, a week, or even a month or two. You grow in love with people. In just the same way that you don't have a "best friend" after a day or a week of knowing someone (unless you're a weird, clingy, creeper dude), you also don't fall in love with someone (can't) after that amount of time. You grow to love people. People who think they've "fallen" in love are simply infatuated and sexually interested. I hope your video says something to that effect. I'll find out tonight.

@tadmjones Yes in one sense. No in another sense. The statement is an analytic proposition: A proposition whereby the predicate concept is contained in the subject concept. This is contrasted with a synthetic proposition, whereby the predicate concept is not contained in the subject concept. There is a lot of philosophical debate over the issue, the wikipedia article on it is pretty good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic–synthetic_distinction Now to my example of Bart and Lisa: Notice that I am making a truth statement about which person has a greater age. All that was known beforehand is which person was born first. Those are, in a certain way, two different concepts. It is apparent that the definition of "age" is something like, "the amount of time that has passed since a person's birth." To show that "order of birth" is one concept, and "age" is a different, albeit related, concept, let's try a thought puzzle. Let's say that Bart was born a year before Lisa, but he was also the first astronaut to fly aboard a spacecraft that could achieve the speed of light, and he took a voyage that lasted three Earth years. Because of the theory of relativity, when Bart returns only a small amount of time has passed, but for Lisa, three years have passed. Thus in that case it can be true that Bart can be born before Lisa, and yet Lisa could be older than Bart. All I'm trying to show with this thought experiment, and nothing more, is that order of birth is not exactly the same concept as order of age in one sense. That the predicate concept, in the thought experiment, is not contained in the subject concept. But of course, the idea of time changes due to relativity and the speed of light is not the norm, and if it were it would render my deduction null and void, because we could no longer rely on the analytic quality of it to make the deduction. So the thought experiment was a bit of an aside, I hope you don't mind. I thought it was an interesting way to show how birth order and age order could be two different concepts in a certain way. So let's get to the sense in which you are absolutely right. When I argue, "Lisa was born after Bart; therefore, Bart is older than Lisa," I really am not saying anything "new." All I am doing is using different language to say the same thing. Because if the very definition of "age" is "the amount of time that has passed since a person's birth," then to say that someone is older than another person, is to say that someone was born before another person. And when you break it down, all I am really saying is A=A, the primary law of logic. So do I attain any knowledge when I use reason when A=A? Yes, actually I do. When I accept the laws of logic a priori, I can attain the knowledge of a cause-effect relationship a priori. Empiricism cannot do this. All empiricism can do is know effects. It can only know what has happened in the past and what is happening now, but it cannot truly know what will happen in the future, because the future is not within the realm of sensory perception. To illustrate this: If I say I have two oranges in a basket, and then I add two more oranges to the basket, I can know that I will have four oranges in the basket. How do I know this? I don't have a literal basket and literal oranges in front of me, so I can't use sense perceptions. I'm only thinking of oranges in my mind, and yet I know that I will have four oranges in the basket if I were to do this in real life. It's not a conjecture that I will have four oranges, it's justified knowledge. But how can I justify it? I have yet to investigate it with my senses. And notice that all that is being said here, when you break it down, is A=A. One of the very definitions of "four" is two sets of two. So to say that I put one set of two oranges together with another set of two oranges, and I can know I will have four oranges, is, as you said, "just a restatement of the same fact." Yes, in a way. Because "2+2" is another way to say "4." But notice that the predicate concept (4) is not found in either of the subject concepts (2). It is only when those two subject concepts are combined, and their cause-effect relationship can be known, that we can see that together, they are a definition of the predicate. The knowledge we can have, that empiricism can't give us, is the cause-effect relationship. The same is true in much more complex math formulas. Again, an aside for sake of example: If I give: "3x+1=10, find x." I can determine that x=3. When I plug that back into the equation, I find that 3(3)+1=10. calculating the left side of that equation, I find that 10=10, which is nothing more than saying A=A. The law of identity. So, if I can know that "3(3)+1 is the same as 10," do I know anything new? Not in a sense, I've merely restated something using different language. But I can know the cause-effect relationship of things, without using sensory perception or induction! I did not need to use my eyes, or ears, or touch, or smell, or taste! And yet I can know. That's a priori. And the more complex an equation gets, the more I can know, using deduction, the cause-effect relationship of things a priori. Empiricism simply cannot do this. The question at hand regards the method of justifying belief statements in order to attain knowledge. So under empiricism, how do you know that when one person is born before a second person, that more time will have passed for the first person than for the second person? How do you know that putting two oranges together with another two oranges will equal four oranges? How do you know that 3(3)+1=10? How do you know that 10=10? How do you know that A=A? And thus we get to the crux of the issue -- how do you know that the laws of logic are true? With empiricism, maybe you have seen oranges before. Maybe you have put two oranges together with another two oranges in the past, and you've seen that the result was four oranges. You investigated that with your senses, and have seen the outcome. Maybe you've put two anythings together with two other anythings, and you have seen that each and every time you have had four things as a result. You know that from your sensory perception. And you can hypothesize that, because it has happened that way each and every time in the past, then perhaps it will happen that way in the future. But you can't know that; you can only make a guess. You can't know it until you see it (or sensory perceive it). The only way for you to be justified in knowing that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, under empiricism, is that you experience it when it happens. So, let me ask you: As an empiricist, do you accept knowledge arrived at deductively? Do you accept the truth of the laws of logic? And if so, how? @Plasmatic No, I don't believe I have done that at all. You asked two questions. I brought up the Bart and Lisa scenario in the question relating to a priori knowledge. I didn't talk about transcendental argumentation until I addressed your other question, about how I define transcendental. But I am not applying the transcendental argument to the deduction of the Bart and Lisa scenario, except only to the degree of how you can know the laws of logic can be known in the first place. And I do not say that the transcendental argument is the only way to have a universal justified belief, except, again, only to the degree of how you can know the laws of logic in the first place. I accept induction, and empirical investigation as a pathway to having justified belief. But of course the data taken in by the sensory perceptions must be ordered and understood by the laws of logic in order for you to make sense of them, in order to know the cause-effect relationship. Without the laws of logic, it is like a computer taking in data from a camera and microphone onto a hard drive, but with no processing program to make sense of the data. It would be raw data that was meaningless, without the laws of logic to give them structure. Are you sure about that? So, are you saying that an objective value is not a universal value?

Second question first: "Do you claim that one would have the "a priori" without sensory input? That is, that it is not dependent on the sensory perceptual at all." No. And I think this is one of the common confusions of what a priori knowledge is. A priori, for all but the most extreme rationalists, does not mean that there is no relation whatsoever to the world of sensory perception. It means that the justification for knowledge is independent of sensory input. The emphasis on "justification" is important. Kant said, "although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience." He argued that while experience is fundamentally necessary for knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought. (Not unlike what Ayn Rand has said. And I think the confusion here is that Rand and others are conflating "source of knowledge" with "justification of knowledge," and slightly misunderstanding what is generally meant by a priori.) A priori means that there is knowledge that is justified using deduction, not induction alone; that you can deduce that something is true without having to use sensory perception in each and every case for the justification of the knowledge. An example: Lisa was born after Bart. Therefore, Bart is older than Lisa. If you know the first premise to be true, then you can hold a justified belief that Bart is older than Lisa. Note that you don't have to go do an empirical investigation of Bart and Lisa to determine their ages empirically in order to know which one is older. So long as you know that one was born before the other, then you can deduce that one is older than the other, without using your senses in an empirical investigation whatsoever. Now of course you still have used sensory input to "know" Bart and Lisa in the first place, to know what birth is, to know what age is, to know what humans are. But when you want to know which one of them is older, in this case, you can gain the justification for knowing that Bart is older purely by using deduction, apart from sense experience. Keep in mind that a priori and a posteriori aren't concerned with what comes first chronologically, but what is needed logically in the justification of some statement of true belief. In other words, yes we first (chronologically) had to have some empirical knowledge of the world around us and of Bart and Lisa, but when it comes to the specific statement that "Bart is older than Lisa," what we have for the justification of that knowledge is the proposition that Lisa was born after Bart, and then if that proposition is true, the deduction is made about which one is older. That justification does not rely on sense experience, so therefore is a priori knowledge. We can make the belief statement that Bart is older than Lisa, and we can justify it purely from deduction, not induction, without having to physically examine the bodies of Bart and Lisa. By the way, a priori deductive knowledge is the only way to have universally true knowledge, which is why I think it's odd for Rand to uphold objectivism, and yet deny a priori knowledge. If you don't have a priori knowledge, then I don't see how you can hold any kind of knowledge to be objectively true in all cases. For example, if I know that today is Sunday, then I can say that today is not Monday. How can I know that? Can I know that only about this Sunday, since I am in it right now, and so far it hasn't been Sunday and Monday at the same time today? I know that sounds odd to even suggest it, but the reason it sounds odd is because you already accept, a priori, the law of non-contradiction. You accept that A cannot be ~A at the same time and in the same sense. Therefore, you can know that today is not Monday, if today is Sunday. And you not only know it for this Sunday and every other Sunday you have lived through and used your sensory perception in, you can know it for every future Sunday for all time, because the justification for that knowledge doesn't rest on empirical, sense perception investigation of each individual case, it rests on logical deduction based on laws of logic that are known a priori. Your first question: Can you define "transcendental?" Yes. Don't confuse the term "transcendental" with the term "transcendent." Those are two different things. A transcendental argument is an argument that shows that something is true because you would have to accept it as true in order to try to make a refutation of it. Another way to give an example is: The statement "A is not true" requires "A is true" as a necessary precondition. Therefore, A is true. That may be confusing, but here's a practical example: Let's say someone walks up to you and says, "Spoken words do not exist!" And you respond, "But in order for you to speak that claim to me, you are implicitly accepting the truth that spoken words DO exist. Spoken words are a necessary precondition for your spoken statement that they don't exist. Therefore, your statement is logically incoherent." So that's what I mean when I say that we can know the laws of logic presuppositionally, through transcendental reasoning. The laws of logic must be held as a true presupposition in order to know anything else, and if anyone says "the laws of logic are not true," that person is relying on the laws of logic as a necessary precondition of the world in order to even make that claim, therefore their claim is logically incoherent, and the laws are logic can be known to be true. This is actually what Ayn Rand says herself, when she discusses axioms! So, Rand puts it beautifully well, here. What boggles my mind, then, is how she can believe that "Whatever the degree of your knowledge" these axioms are "irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake," and yet try to deny a priori knowledge. I don't see how you can know axioms in that way, transcendentally, go on to say that they are known to be universally true without the need to first examine sense perceptions of individual events, and then say they aren't known a priori.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to reply to you in full right now, but a couple quick points: It seems to me that you've misunderstood or misread at least some of what I've said. You said of my post: "You stated that the laws of logic are somehow hard wired in the brain/mind(not sure which one or if you maintain a difference) and that this is their genesis." And yet that's exactly opposite of what I actually said: "I don't think the knowledge of the laws of logic are "hard-wired" into us ..." (added emphasis). And then you said: "The gist of what you are saying seems to imply that axioms exist based on consciousness." And that is exactly the opposite of what I've argued, although perhaps I could have made things a bit more clear. Laws of logic have their ontological foundation based in the reality of the world. They are objective, because the world is objective. They do not get their ontological existence from a person's consciousness. However, in terms of epistemology, they are known to be true axiomatically, or said another way, by a sort of transcendental reasoning, or presuppositionally. This does not mean that their existence is predicated on consciousness, only that they are known to be true because of their axiomatic nature. And you confuse me when you say, "The laws of logic are based on the axiom of identity , but they are not the same as the axiom." What do you mean that they are not the same as the axiom of identity? The primary law of logic is the law of identity: A=A. The axiom that "existence exists" is based on the law of identity. So the axiom that existence exists is true because the law of identity, which is its foundation, is true and is an irreducible primary that must be true transcendentally. And yes, laws of logic are not "hard-wired" in a genetic sense, as I have said, but they are "innate" from an epistemological sense, meaning they are known a priori. You cannot "know" the law of identity to be true a posteriori, because you would have to examine every single "A" in the universe to know for sure that "A=A" in all cases, which would be an impossibility.

A couple of points: 1. Those teachers who would conceal and carry in their classrooms are the same people who conceal and carry outside of the classroom. If they don't have a breakdown and snap and shoot people in other aspects of their lives, why do you presume they would at work? 2. If a person did snap and decide to kill people, or kids, at a school, what does the right to conceal and carry at a school have anything to do with it? If they are going to break the law against murder, then the law against carrying a gun to school doesn't matter to them either. They could just as easily bring a gun from home, or go out to their car, if they have a gun kept there, and bring it into the classroom. Just as easily as a non-teacher, or anyone, could bring a gun into a school and start shooting. Do you think a "gun-free zone" really makes a difference? It's important to realize that yes, there are psychotic people out there, and eventually a teacher may show themselves to be one and kills some students, but there is no reason to make collectivist judgments about all people and back laws that treat everyone as a criminal from the get-go.

If I read you right, you are asking how a person "knows" the laws of logic. And you say there must be something "hard-wired" in us that lets us know them. I don't think the knowledge of the laws of logic are "hard-wired" into us the way I mean when I talk about beliefs that come via evolutionary adaption. I think we "know" laws of logic axiomatically, by a sort of transcendental reasoning -- or that we know them presuppositionally. In other words, We know that the laws of logic exist, because in order to argue against them, you would have to first affirm them, thus rendering any argument against them to be self-referentially incoherent. Therefore, you know that they necessarily exist, in order for all other knowledge to exist. In other words, If I maintained that there were a multitude of viewpoints in the world, and if you were to come to me and say that "contrary viewpoints do not exist," your statement would be nonsensical, because you would have to first hold to the truth of the position that "contrary opinions do exist" in order to argue contrarily to it. Your very argument refutes itself. Therefore, the laws of logic (law of identity, law of non-contradiction, law of secluded middle) are known axiomatically because you must presuppose the truth of them in order to even argue against them -- in fact you must presuppose the truth of them in order to argue anything, or to hold to any truth whatsoever.

I do mean to refer to genetically-inherited instincts and hard wiring, and maybe they don't fit into the mix. And perhaps my understanding of objectivist epistemology is incomplete, and I'd appreciate some clarification. But I think the debate depends on what is meant by tabula rasa and knowledge. Do you mean that the mind is blanked of knowledge, whereby you define knowledge (basically) as justified true belief? But yet the mind still possesses other data, such as axioms and laws of logic, that can't rightfully be viewed as "knowledge" because they aren't yet conscious beliefs? If that's the case, then I may be able to accept the idea of tabula rasa, because there can be no "belief" without cognition or consciousness. Or do you mean that the mind can only be written upon by the means of empirical investigation and reason about the world around us? If that's the case, then I don't think tabula rasa is true, because evolutionary psychology indicates that the mind is pre-programmed with the conditions for certain beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs may not manifest until later in life (at puberty for example), and while there cannot be a true belief until there is consciousness and cognition, the unrealized beliefs do exist in the DNA code, and therefore exist in the mind. So can the mind be said to be a tabula rasa in that case? Those beliefs would still require a relation to the real world to be processed, but they didn't get imprinted upon a blank state from an investigation of the world. They existed wholly apart from an empirical investigation of the world -- pre-programmed in the mind via evolutionary processes. For example, a belief that healthy women of child-bearing years and who are good at nurturing happen to be sexually attractive is not a belief that is arrived at through empirical and rational investigation of the world. It is a belief that is "hard wired" onto the slate of the mind, embedded into the evolved human DNA code. The reason it is there is because the women who were healthy and nurturing, and of child-bearing years, were the ones who ended up having a greater number of healthier children, compared with women who were sickly, and cruel, and older in age (thus having a higher propensity for children with health problems). And the fathers who sexually desired those healthy women, ended up had more offspring (who happened to be healthier with higher survival rates). Therefore, those fathers' propensity to desire the types of women who were able to produce more and healthier offspring was passed along, and that propensity, over time, edged out the propensity to be sexually desirous of women who had fewer survivability traits. This shows that there are certain beliefs (if they can be called that) that do not come from a rational, empirical study. They came prepackaged. Does this fit with tabula rasa? I don't know. Again, I think it depends on how you define tabula rasa, and how you define "knowledge." To be clear, Locke and others who talked about tabula rasa were drawing a contrast to the Platonic idea of the forms and the particulars -- that to Plato, knowledge was the act of recalling the truth of the forms that exist already in the mind. To those who advocated tabula rasa, there was no innate knowledge in the sense of abstract forms that are merely being recalled when we take in sensory data. No, the knowledge comes from experience of sensory data itself. Locke also argued against Descartes' view of epistemology. Descartes of course rejected the senses as unreliable by themselves, and tried to strip away any information that could be doubted, until he arrived at a fundamental axiom that could not be doubted: "I think, therefore I am." Descartes therefore believed that logical propositions were innate ideas, and while they are used to make deductions using sense perceptions, the deductive logic itself did not come from the senses. It is not learned through empirical investigation. Locke argued against the view that logical propositions were innate ideas. It seems to me then, that the idea of a tabula rasa rejects axioms and laws of logic as a default condition of the mind. I fail to see how an axiom can be known by empirical investigation and inductive logic. That would seem to me to defeat the very idea of an axiom. So I don't understand why Rand would want to hold to a view of tabula rasa, and yet still hold to a belief in axioms and a belief in objective truth. It seems to me that tabula rasa is antithetical to objective truth.

While you're looking for what Rand may say on a priori knowledge, I'll respond to what you said earlier, which I meant to get around to. I disagree. You don't believe that biological evolution is bad science, do you? Why then, if the various organs of the human body have evolved over time as species themselves have evolved, would the brain be any different? Do you believe the mating and survival behaviors of other animals in general are evolved behaviors? I would find it odd if you were to say that you believe the behaviors of various animals have been shaped according to natural and sexual selection, and you would agree that the human species has evolved according to natural and sexual selection, and yet you would maintain that the human brain itself, with the psychology and behaviors therein, is somehow exempt. I find that there are usually four reasons why evolutionary psychology induces such a strong negative reaction in some people: 1. The false notion that humans are somehow ontologically distinct from other animals, because of a mystical or religious special designation for humans. This cause people to believe that the same factors of natural selection that shape the traits and behaviors of other species somehow doesn't or can't apply to humans. 2. The natural law fallacy. This is the "is-ought" problem -- the notion that what is seen in nature is morally preferable. But that's incorrect thinking. What you see in nature simply is. It is not an ought. So, for example, if evolutionary psychology can offer up a reason why the human species experiences racism (that species tend to group together into tribes or communities for mutual protection and resource gathering, and look upon outsiders as potential threats to their survival), some people will mistakenly believe that EvoPsy justifies racism. But that would be a fallacy. Just because a natural cause for a behavior can be shown, it doesn't mean that that behavior is morally preferable. (As an aside: Ayn Rand shows how objective moral value can be derived from the real world, but she approaches the issue somewhat differently. Even with her solution for deriving an "ought" from the "is" of reality, the traditional is-ought problem still exists, and necessarily should.) 3. The fear that free will is destroyed if evolution has shaped our desires and behaviors Two things I'll say about this: A.) Free will is not destroyed. Just because you might be naturally predisposed and have little initial control over certain desires (your sexual desires for example) does not mean you have no control over those desires or the decisions you make. B.) The fact that you are naturally predisposed with certain desires is no threat whatsoever to objectivist morality. That is because objectivism shows that morality is founded on objective realities that do not change, no matter what your predispositions may be. So, that means that you might be predisposed to murder and steal. But just because you are predisposed for that, it doesn't make it morally OK for you to do them. That would be a subjective approach to morality, and it would commit the natural law fallacy. 4. EvoPsy is psuedo-science and pop-science. This is a somewhat valid criticism. EvoPsy is a "new" scientific field of study, and as such the processes for test-ability of hypotheses has not always been scientifically rigid. Add to that the fact that popular mainstream culture has jumped on EvoPsy and has rushed to produce popculture books that play fast and loose with the scientific data and method. And there is a temptation to "go fishing" and try to find a EvoPsy explanation of cultural beliefs and norms, where those explanations beg the question instead of follow a valid scientific approach. But this sloppiness by some in no way refutes the truth that the brain is part of biology, and that the sexual and natural selection process shapes the psychological traits, as well as physical traits, of species. EvoPsy is good science, and it should be easy to see why. If you believe that biological evolution is good science, and explains how the physical traits of species developed due to the forces of natural and sexual selection, then it's illogical not to apply evolution's selection process to the whole of the species, brain and body.

Yeah, that's what Leonard Peikoff thinks. I was already aware of his quotes there. Here is an interesting analysis of them: http://intothesophosphere.blogspot.com/2012/04/priori-peikoffs-misconception.html

How do you (or how would she) view a priori knowledge, including the laws of logic such as the law of identity? How would she view properly basic beliefs? She believed in the axiom that existence exists, correct? Isn't that a properly basic belief, known a priori without a need for observation? It seems to me that there has to be some sort of foundational understanding of the law of identity upon which all other observed knowledge, and the rationalization of that knowledge, can be organized. It seems also that if there is no properly basic belief then we would be left with subjectivism, not objectivism. I'm not making a challenge here, I mean these as sincere questions and would love your input.

Are you saying that people owe you business, and that if they do not choose to buy from you then they are harming you? Because, while it would surely be harder for you to survive if people chose not to do business with you, I wouldn't say they are violating your right to your own life by freely choosing not to buy with you, as though your survival is their obligation. Second, it's not the true knowledge about you and your history that is harming you. It's other people's actions, if anything, done (or not done) toward you that you find unpleasant. This is a bit different from lying (like in the example of fraud), where you make decisions based on false information purposefully supplied to you. Yes your own actions are directly harming yourself when you get duped by a lie, but you are doing them because you have been tricked about the nature of reality. But when people relate or respond to you based on true information they have about you, then they may related to you in unpleasant and possible vile ways, but it's their own actions that are the cause, not the fact of the truth itself.

Can you give an example of where someone telling you the truth can harm you? And if we take the trip to Mars lie example and put it in the real world, then there will be questions like: How was the trip was taken? Who built the ship? Can other people go? How can I go? If someone believes the trip to Mars lie, in the real world, and begins to spend money, time and resources to travel to Mars themselves, then they may be harmed.

It seems we agree with each other on some of these things. Let me go back to your earlier question and try to parse it, and try to explain my thoughts a little better: The question you raised is how do you distinguish between immoral acts that violate rights, and immoral acts that don't violate rights. And you brought up lying as an example. And you did seem to agree with me, at least in part, when you said that lying is "a destruction of life on some level." And you said that you don't believe lying is a rights violation. Then I argued that lying IS a rights violation, and I argued the case that lies promote a false or distorted view of reality, and therefore can lead to harm for the person acting on that false information. I gave fraud as an example, and some other kinds of examples. I did make the mistake of making a blanket statement, and when the point was brought up that some lies may not end up harming someone, I clarified by stressing that they are a rights violation to the degree that they cause harm. And I think we agree on that, because you say now that: And this is different than saying that lies cause "a destruction of life on some level" and yet are not a rights violation. Your statement was a blanket statement as well, and now that we've delved deeper I think we are finding more agreement. And this is a topic for me that I haven't thought about in all these terms before, so I'm learning and refining as we go. But I think my contention that lying is a rights violation to the degree that it causes harm, related to the objective value of life and a person's freedom to own life, is true. So again, let's examine your question and look at what I think you are really asking: "How are you distinguishing from rights violations and non-rights violations that are immoral?" I think what you're really asking is, "How can we call something 'immoral' if it doesn't violate someone's rights?" (If that's not what you were really trying to get at, then you may have to clarify again for me. I might be missing something.) I think there are two reasons why lying is "immoral," whether it causes harm or not. And I think part of one answer to that question can be found if you ask yourself whether attempted murder is immoral, and why. We would say that attempted murder is still immoral because if the act were to be completed it definitely would cause harm. Therefore, immorality of it is due to its relation to the objective value of life (and the desire to end life). It's important to keep in mind that the way the concept and term "immoral" is used in the objectivist sense is, I believe, different than the way mystics use the term. It does not refer to a violation of some law-code established in relation to the nature of "sin" in reference to a relationship to a spiritual being or state. "Immoral" in the way I mean it is more akin to a negation of reality, including the objective reality that life is better than non life. So why is a lie "immoral"? It's "immoral" (a negation of reality) because it directly negates reality, whether it is believed or not believed, causes harm or doesn't cause harm. Again, I think people slip back into that spiritual notion of "immorality," and that's where the disconnect happens. If "moralness" has simply to do with conforming to the objective nature of reality, then immorality is the negation of objective reality. And lying is a spoken negation of reality. And it can lead to harm, because if people believe the lies, they will arrange their life and their activities around those lies, to their own harm. Religions are a perfect example of this. Lying becomes a rights violation whenever it leads to a destruction of life or the necessary attributes that are a requirement for life (ability to own the self and property). Fraud happens to be a lie that is clearly seen as a rights violation -- because it directly leads to a theft of property. It's not a theft by force, it's a theft by lying and trickery. One other point on this: Lying may not be a direct action by one person against another person that causes harm, in the way murder is. Instead, it is a trickery that causes a person to unknowingly cause harm to themselves. Again, fraud is a good example. This topic about lying is a bit of an aside to the main conversation we were having, namely what Rand meant about the relationship of rights to a social context. And I maintain that she was saying that rights exist "in" a social context, not that they exist "because" of (in an ontological sense) a social context. In other words that it's not the existence of other people (a social context) that give rights their ontological grounding. It's reality that give rights their grounding, but it's a social context that defines their purpose, because rights refer to the insurance that one person's values will not be taken away by other people. If there are no other people, rights have no meaning. Like I said above, I'm still parsing out objectivism and trying to ask the hard questions, understand it deeply, and apply it consistently. It's very likely that you'll help me refine my own thoughts. So I appreciate your input and where you think I'm off course.

Spend money on a ticket to Mars, obviously. Perhaps I am wrong in part, and i am open to insights. But at this point i do think that if you are knowingly given a false view of reality and you act on it, then your right not to be harmed has been violated. Like I said, some lies may be so preposterous that you see them for what they are, and you don't act on them at all. Other lies that you do act on may not really harm you very much, even if they do harm you. And perhaps there should be no punishment given for a lie that doesn't harm you much, versus a definite punishment for a lie that harms you a lot, such as financial fraud. It's sort of like this: Let's say someone stole a pen from your desk at work, a pen that was your personal property that you spent your own money on. And let's say you didn't even notice it was gone for a month. Did they violate your rights? Yes of course. They stole your property. but were you harmed a lot? No, only a very little. Still, your rights were violated. So, if someone tells you a lie that you act on, and it harms you, even if only in a very minor way, it still seems to me that your right to not be harmed was violated.

Yeah, I was making a joke. I know you guys are having an actually serious conversation here, and now that I've gotten my joke out of my system I might have to join in, too. I will say that I find it interesting that you are one (of many apparently) people who are trying to merge objectivism with a system of religious faith. I think you are trying to combine two fundamental opposites, and will probably figure that out eventually, but it's amusing (and I'm not mocking ... yet ) to see your attempts and follow your arguments.

Eiuol: I don't have much time tonight to do more response than this, but I wanted to address this statement. This is like asking that if someone was plotting to murder you, and on the way over to your house he was hit by a car and killed, did he violate your rights? Well no, because he wasn't able to act. So the thoughts in his head never translated to action, and therefore your life was never negatively impacted by him. Or that perhaps your brother found out that this person was going to murder you, and he killed him before he could get to you. Were your rights violated? Again, he wasn't able to act against you, so technically no. In the same way, if someone lied and told me that they took a trip to Mars, and I immediately saw the ridiculous story as the lie that it was, and discarded it, then were my rights violated? Well no. The lie never acted upon me, or the way it's normally put: I never acted upon the lie and false information. What if I was told a slightly more believable lie, but I was suspicious and investigated for myself, were my rights violated? Aside from the fact that I had to waste my time investigating the claim, I still never acted on the false information, so I'd say my rights were never violated. However, if I'm told a lie and I act upon the false information about reality and the world, then it will necessarily have some kind of negative consequences for me. This is what I was talking about when I am talking about a lie -- the lie actually acting upon me, in the same way that if we were discussing whether murder was a violation of rights the assumption would be that the murder did take place and I was harmed. Just as a failed attempt to harm someone isn't a violation of rights (because it failed), so too is a failed attempt to lie (it still happens to be a lie, just an unsuccessful one, whereas a failed murder isn't called a murder. Perhaps that language is what is the disconnect here). But if a lie is successful and I act upon that false representation of the world, then I will necessarily be harmed (sometimes to a very small degree, sometimes, as in financial fraud, to a large degree). And that indeed is a violation of my right not to be harmed.

Jesus also said "blessed are the poor," and I'd hate to take that blessing away from them. Besides, if it's true that "for everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded," then I say it's time to demand much from those who have received a lot of handouts.

I was just thinking about this topic. I'd be interested to hear what you all have to say, but it seems to me that science (logic, reason, empirical data) has shown that we are not born with a blank state. We are born with a brain, and DNA, and evolved reflexes and concepts. Further, evolutionary psychology has proven that certain concepts, like attraction, desire, fear, anger, are pre-programmed into our brains for the sake of survival and reproduction. The brain is an organ just like the lungs, and just as the lungs are pre-programmed to function (controlled by the brain), so too the brain is pre-programmed to function, pumping out emotions and beliefs. Some pre-programmed concepts may not show up until well after birth, but that doesn't mean you wrote them onto a blank slate. The sexual desire of a heterosexual young man for healthy girls of his age was not something he decided upon, they were part of his evolved biology, and though they didn't manifest fully until a certain state of biological growth, they were pre-programmed in his DNA code. To the degree that Rand argued for a blank state, I would have to (begrudgingly) disagree with her.

For Eiuol That's not quite correct. A priori and a posteriori are two types of knowledge; they are both based in reality. It is true that a priori knowledge is held intuitively, without the need for empirical investigation in a strict sense, but it is no less involved in the real world. A priori has nothing to do with knowledge held "before" or "after" a sense experience in a temporal sense. A priori is deductive logic; a posteriori is inductive logic. But both use evidence found in reality. (A priori will use deductive, rational logic alone; a posteriori will use empirical data combined with inductive and deductive logic.) A priori knowledge also tends to be tautological. For example, here's an a priori statement: All bachelors are unmarried. You know this to be true without having to do an empirical investigation, and the reason why is because the concept of "unmarried" is inherent in the meaning of bachelorhood. So you hold this knowledge a priori. You could also make a deductive argument along the same lines: P1: All bachelors are unmarried. P2. Tom is a bachelor. Therefore: Tom is unmarried. You can know that Tom is unmarried by pure deduction (provided the premises are true) without going out and experiencing the world; you arrive at that knowledge by pure deductive reason. And still, deductive reasoning is grounded in reality, namely the reality of the laws of logic. Here's another a priori knowledge: 2 is greater than 1. Again, this is known intuitively without the need for induction or experience of the world, per se. It is also tautological, as most all (if not all) a priori knowledge is, for the definition of "2" is two 1's. Also, the laws of logic are a priori knowledge. The law of identity, that A = A, is known a priori. Same with the law of non-contradiction, that A cannot equal not-A at the same time and in the same sense. These laws of logic correspond to reality because they are based on the fact that reality exists. So, a priori knowledge is very much valid in objectivist philosophy. In fact, this is why I said that the objectivist axiom, existence exists, and the objectivist value, life is better than non-life, are known to be true a priori. You quoted me as writing: I wasn't clear with my language. The point I was trying to make was that while rights are expressed only in a relationship to social contexts, they don't get their ontological grounding from social contexts. In other words, if you are the sole human on the planet, there is no need for "rights," because rights tell you how to relate to other rational beings. You don't have to worry about a right to your own life, because no other being will try to take it from you. Now as soon as one other person exists with you, your right to your own life can be expressed. But the right to own your own life has as its ontological grounding the objective value that "existence is better than non-existence," and that as a necessary condition for you to continue to exist you must be able to own your own life, without losing your life or your ability to control your life to other people. A person doesn't need to express that right until he is in a social context, but the grounding for that right was always there -- grounded in the objectivist value of "life is better than non-life." It sounded to me as though you were arguing that rights exist because they are pragmatic for getting along with other people. I see now that perhaps I was misreading you, and that we are closer to each other than first appeared. But maybe not. Feel free to clarify and correct me. Rand's argument was: "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." Note the "in" a social context (rather than, "because" of a social context). I do believe that lying is a rights violation. I have a right not to be defrauded. Lying is knowingly giving false information to someone about the world. It is knowingly tricking a person into misunderstanding the real world and certain facts pertaining to situations that affect him. Lies can kill, because they distort reality, and we need proper knowledge of reality for survival. It is no different than fraud. If someone calls up a elderly woman and says that her grandson is in trouble and in jail, and he needs $5,000 dollars to post bail immediately, and the woman sends the money, only later to find out that she was talking to a con-artist and that her grandson is fine, then she has had her rights violated; not only because she has had her property stolen from her, but also because in order for the theft to occur she was fed false information about the world. Or to use an extreme example, suppose you are in a dungeon with only two doors, and one door leads to the exit, and another door triggers an explosion in the room that will kill you. There was a person who went before you, and he chose the right door and survived, and his voice comes over a speaker in the room. You ask him which door is the safe door, and he lies to you and tells you to open the deadly door. Lies kill. And though this example is of course extreme and is an "emergency situation" kind of story, even real-life lies kill you, though to a lesser degree and not as definitively, because they feed you a distorted picture of the world, which hampers your ability to survive and achieve your value. So again, your right to be harmed (in this case by being given false information about reality) is expressed in a social context. If you were the only person on the planet, you would have no use for a concept of a "right" not to be lied to, or a "right" not to be harmed, because there would be no one there to harm you or lie to you. When there is someone there to harm you or lie to you, then you can express you rights, but the rights get their foundation from the ever-present, immutable, objective ethic that the loss of life is evil.

The fact that life is better than non-life for Bob holds true even if he murdered my wife. However, Bob can be punished by a legal system that makes judgments based on the objective nature of the world and the objective truth that he committed an evil against my wife. That way force used against Bob as punishment corresponds to an objective morality, and is not force used against him based on subjective whim. My "Bob" analogy speaks to the general case. You are now trying to introduce new scenarios to the story, which would of course change things. I've already covered this above when I said, " ... therefore it is an objectively immoral act to destroy a real life unless there is an overriding moral reason to destroy that life." Another overriding moral reason to destroy a life is to kill as a means of self-defense against someone who is intent on murdering you. Of course, this is the difference between murder and a just killing.

It is objectively an evil act for you to murder Bob. Why? Because for Bob, life is better than non-life. That's clear. It is an a priori truth. So to end Bob's life is objectively an evil act done to Bob. Now, you might say, "Yes, but am I morally bound to live according to that since it's Bob's life and not mine? Isn't my own life the only really objective value I have, not other people's lives?" The answer, I think, is that whether you choose to respect Bob's life or not, it is still an objective truth that for Bob, life is better than non-life, and if you end his life it is an objective evil done to him. Even though this objective truth is applied individually instead of collectively, it is still objectively true, not subjectively true. You cannot say that, "Well Bob's life isn't really an objective value of any sort." Incorrect. It is an objective value, indeed. Whether Bob chooses to acknowledge his own life as a value or not, it is still objectively better for Bob's life that Bob's life is in existence rather than not being in existence. I think the confusion is that this objective truth is applied individually, and yet is no less an objective truth. Even though it is applied individually, it is still true for every individual with no exceptions, and it is not dependent on the whim or opinion of any person. If I tell you that China is an objective reality, and you say to me, "I don't live in China, so it's not real to my world," I would say that it doesn't matter whether you live in it or not, it still objectively exists. Likewise, you don't live inside Bob's body and mind, and yet he exists objectively, the fact that life is better than non-life is an objective truth for both you and him, and therefore it is an objectively immoral act to destroy a real life unless there is an overriding moral reason to destroy that life. Therefore as a society we are correct to agree to a system of law that rests upon the truth that destruction of life (in part or in whole) is an objectively evil act to the person it is committed upon, and as a society law should rest on objective reality, not subjective whims or opinions of those who wield the most power. You cannot murder someone and say, "Well, I don't think it was really evil or wrong. It's all subjective." Wrong. Reality is objective, and truth of reality does not rest on your subjective thoughts. You can convince yourself all you want that there is no wall in front of you, but when you try to walk through it, the objective nature of reality will smack you in your face. Likewise, the fact that life is better than non-life for Bob is a truth statement tied to the objective reality of the world and the logic of the real world. All your self-convincing cannot make it any less of an evil act for Bob. So a justice code that punishes you for the killing of Bob is based on the objective nature of reality and is valid.