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ruveyn1

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Posts posted by ruveyn1

  1. Wrong on all counts. The axioms are empirically validated, the a priori doesn't exist, and Popper's falsification is garbage. If you want to know why, try actually reading Rand on the subjects. When you do, make a thread challenging what you've read and I will then spend more time on dissecting the errors you keep asserting.

    Popper's garbage is the following principle of logic a -> b   - b  therefore -a.  Even Aristotle knew that piece of garbage.

  2. Is Robespierre's famous quote true? "If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid

    revolution it is at the same time [both] virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent."

     

    And do you think his definition of political terror, explained in the excerpt, matches up with Rand's definition and thoughts about justice?

    Nothing like Rand.  Robespeirre was a nasty piece of work.  He managed to divorce virtue from any comprehensible notion of goodness and righteousness.  Talk about the stolen concept!

     

    ruveyn1

  3. Nicky said:

    "Ethics isn't a science. It can however be proven to be true."

    What reasoning process lead you to reject Philosophy as a science?

    Philosophy is not empirically bases.  A prior principles are assumed at the foundation of philosophy.  Also most philosophical systems cannot be empirically falsified.  When something contradicts the system,   the system "explains it away".  Physical empirical science does not work that way.  That was why the history of physical science is littered with the bones of busted theories.

     

    ruveyn1

  4. Read the Objectivist Ethics in The Virtue of Selfishness.You obviously have no idea what Oism is about or has to say on almost anything.If you do, present particular challenges to Oist ideas showing that your not just here to spout whatever nonsense that comes to you. Otherwise you are simply here to troll.

    Actually I "spouted" nothing.  I asked a question  which you choose not answer.

     

    Can you show or at least outline a method of deriving ethical laws from the physical laws of nature and a method for empirically corroborating that derivation.  This is a question,  not a "spout". 

     

    ruveyn1

  5. Couple of points:

     

    1. I don't agree that's what Hobbes is saying.

    2. I don't agree the above inference is valid.

    3. I don't think that has anything to do with the point in contention.

     

    The claim is that there are no ethics in war, and that this is justified by survival. Hobbes argues that there is only one natural law and that is that anyone can do whatever he wants so long as it is necessary to survive (with various caveats.) As an Aristotelian and Randian, this survivalist ethic is found to be rather lacking. What that has to do about scrapping and a Commonwealth, is beyond me. But so is a neo-Aristotelian-Randian eudaimonist ethic, or a Hobbesian survivalist ethic more reasonable? Which one can be justified, and what are the arguments for each?

    Hobbes argues that living in a state of nature is a state of no-law.  Which is why he advocates having a State or Commonwealth so that property is possible.

  6. I don't know what you mean by "account for" this phrase.

     

    Again, the question is whether or not we accurately protray historical philosopher's works, or if we embarrass ourselves by repeating mythological versions of them.

    I quoted directly from Hobbes.  Hobbes saw the natural state of man living without any law or authority as leading to brutality and making industry and culture above mere survival impossible.  He advocated the State precisely to control the violence and to give some safety to the possession of property.  

  7. Just to clarify the terminology a bit, the term chaos or chaotic does not mean random or disordered when used in the scientific/technical sense.   In the scientific use of the term chaotic system are sensitive to initial condition.  Here is a portion of the wiki article on chaotic dynamics:

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    Sensitivity to initial conditions means that each point in such a system is arbitrarily closely approximated by other points with significantly different future trajectories. Thus, an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behaviour. However, it has been shown that the last two properties in the list above actually imply sensitivity to initial conditions[9][10] and if attention is restricted tointervals, the second property implies the other two[11] (an alternative, and in general weaker, definition of chaos uses only the first two properties in the above list).[12] It is interesting that the most practically significant condition, that of sensitivity to initial conditions, is actually redundant in the definition, being implied by two (or for intervals, one) purely topological conditions, which are therefore of greater interest to mathematicians.

    Sensitivity to initial conditions is popularly known as the "butterfly effect", so called because of the title of a paper given by Edward Lorenz in 1972 to theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

    A consequence of sensitivity to initial conditions is that if we start with only a finite amount of information about the system (as is usually the case in practice), then beyond a certain time the system will no longer be predictable. This is most familiar in the case of weather, which is generally predictable only about a week ahead.[13]

    The Lyapunov exponent characterises the extent of the sensitivity to initial conditions. Quantitatively, two trajectories in phase space with initial separation cef6eb327c3267188747f8b3630029de.png diverge

    9e5be4e8871a13affdad28bf9cbc5351.png

    where λ is the Lyapunov exponent. The rate of separation can be different for different orientations of the initial separation vector. Thus, there is a whole spectrum of Lyapunov exponents — the number of them is equal to the number of dimensions of the phase space. It is common to just refer to the largest one, i.e. to the Maximal Lyapunov exponent (MLE), because it determines the overall predictability of the system. A positive MLE is usually taken as an indication that the system is chaotic.

    There are also measure-theoretic mathematical conditions (discussed in ergodic theory) such as mixing or being a K-system which relate to sensitivity of initial conditions and chaos.[4]

     

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

    There are deterministic chaotic system which cannot be predicted because we cannot specify the initial condition of the system to infinite precision.

    The convective behavior of the atmosphere  is deterministic and can be described by non-linear differential equations. There is nothing random or "mixed up" about the convective motion of air driven by solar heat  yet the dynamics of the system are chaotic simply because of the sensitivity of the outcome to initial conditions.

     

    ruveyn1

  8. Chaotic ,being an attribute , makes no sense in this context. 'The Universe' is not an entity. Do you mean, in understanding the maths that try and descibe the conditions in the past can be called 'chaotic' or disorderly? Although this would imply a standard.  

     

    I started on this line because creation theories seem to be based on some vague idea of 'coming out of chaos'.

    The physical cosmos is a closed thermodynamic system

  9. Though Daniel already made my point, perhaps understanding what a "law of science" is and how it comes about might help.

    First, a genus/differentia definition:

    1. Genus: a scientific law is a type of statement. (as an aside, the most important thing you need to know about statements is that they are made by people, not rocks or imaginary deities)

    2. Differentia: scientific laws are the result of a scientific process. They start out as hypotheses and postulates, which are then verified (through observation and experiments) and become laws if and until there is nothing found to contradict them.

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_science

    AGAIN: a scientific law is a STATEMENT which expresses scientists' knowledge of the physical world. They are nothing more, and they do nothing more (they most certainly DO NOT govern anything-scientific laws were created long after the things you're claiming they're "governing" have been around).

    What you are doing is, instead of understanding that process of how laws of science are FORMULATED (to understand why they have value), you assign a mystical quality to them as a substitute for that process. "Law of science", when used this way (not as a statement made by scientists, but as some mystical abstraction found in some unmentioned place somewhere), becomes a stolen concept, of no use or value to anyone.

    How does genus-differential  produce the mathematical laws of physics?

  10. Laws exist only as concepts. Things that exist move according to their own nature and if many things have the same nature than we may find laws that in a sence govern those things.

     

    There is no entity that we could call chaos. Also the Universe was less disorderely in the past than it is now.

    The physical processes of turbulence in water and air are chaotic.  They are extremely sensitive to initial and boundary condition.

     

    Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaotic_dynamical_system

  11. Rights are moral absolutes that identify freedom of action as a necessary component to man’s pursuit of life and happiness. 

    Rights are conditions of existence X,  such that is X is denied or forbidden then one either will die or cease to exist as a human person.  For example slavery can reduce a human person to a mere meat machine incapable of choice or discernment. 

  12. Sam Harris is one of the "New Atheists" and from having read some of his works there is NO WAY he could be called an Objectivist. His morality as I have been able to piece it together from readings consists of the unsupported assertion that morality consists of reducing suffering--he once said we are ethically indefensible as long as someone else in the world somewhere is suffering while we aren't. (And his emphasis on suffering at the start (we don't feel obligated towards rocks because rocks cannot suffer) tells me, only 2 minutes in as I write this, that he hasn't changed much.

    I *do* like the fact that he does say you can rationally study morality and values though. I just wish he himself would do so.

    His entire book -The Moral Landscape-  while very entertaining and sometimes intellectually challenging fails to make the case that science can deal with the problem of ethical values.  His book, if you will,  expresses a fond wish.  The only way for him to prove his case is to produce a science such that its conclusions would be assented to by any rational or ethical person.  Which is very unlikely since there are many ethical systems,  some pairs of which are contradictory or contrary.  It is impossible for all ethical systems to be "true"  in the metaphysical sense. 

  13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antropic_principle

     

    If I understand it correctly the anthropic principle states that the Universe is fine tuned for life because otherwise we would not be here asking why the Universe is finely tuned.

     

    It is true that we would not be here if fine tuning was out of sync with life, but that doesn't mean that that is the cause of the fine tuning.

     

    If the Universe conisted of many 'smaller universe' it would makes sense that life would only exist in a universe where the laws and constants are finely tuned, that however does not prove that there are more than one universe, therefore (if no evidence for a Multiverse exists) the anthropic principle is wrong.

     

    Also there is no need to explain any supposed fine tuning of the Universe. It is what it is and that's all we need to know.

     

    Or am I wrong?

    The weak anthropic principle  states the obvious that later states of the cosmos logically constrain what the initial states might be given the laws of physics which are really the time evolution or unfolding of the cosmos.  On the other hand the Strong Anthropic Principle introduces purpose to the unfolding of the cosmos which makes it very unpopular with physicists. The weak principle is almost a tautology  and the strong principle is rejected out of hand because it postulates cause other than formal, material and efficient cause.  A physicist while he has his physicist hat one simply rejects teleology as a physical condition or factor.

  14.  

     

     

     

    I believe that you're ascribing your own motivation to others. I operate on the premise that adults have already chosen their view, and short of a genuine lift threatening or life altering experience they will take their choice and all of its just and deserved consequences with them to their grave. So my stating my view does absolutely nothing to interfere your freedom to argue against it all you wish. I'm content knowing that each one of us gets exactly what they deserve as the results of their choice. This knowledge tends to defuse arguing and contending.

     

    I am pushing 80 and I have had to change many of my views and assumptions during my life,  hundreds and perhaps thousands.  My views and beliefs are governed largely by the facts I learn and by the consequences of my heretofore held views and beliefs.   Time and the Facts are stern teachers.

  15. The issue is not coal per se.  it is the effluent that burning the coal in inefficient ways  produces.  Coal would be a dandy fuel (we have many centuries of coal buried under our -own- soil) if: 1 The noxious effluents could be separated and sequestered in a harmless place  or 2. could be burned so hot that the effluents would be broken down by the heat.  There is a theoretical way of burning coal so hot the the gases produced are a plasma.  Look up magneto hydrodynamics.  

  16. German universities have been around for almost 700 years. Neither the The Weimar Republic nor Hitler had much to do with Germany's scientific excellence, it was those universities which produced the minds which fueled scientific research.

    That is true.  Adolph was living off the interest of capital investment made before he was born.

     

    The point I was making is that all these institutions were State created and State supported.  And Americans profited from them greatly.

     

    Our first generation scientific elite in the 20 th century was mostly German educated.   The second generation of which Richard Feynman is a prime example was American educated,  but in schools heavily staffed by emmigres from Europe running from Hitler and his cronies. 

  17. No, again, that's not Hobbes' thesis.

     

    That's not really what Hobbes says though. The argument wasn't simply, that gee, we need laws and order and security, and that these are good things. The argument he gives is that it is literally impossible for two people to cooperate, that they will be like wolves and eat each other up, unless a third party is like a wolf to both of them, ergo, we must have an absolute sovereign. Quite a different claim than the trivial one of, oh well we need laws and rules to prevent crime.

     

     

    Really?  Then account for "nasty, brutish and short"

  18. Marc K.,

     

    The decision to nuke or not, to carpet bomb a large swath of land or not, to demolish a mosque or not, will always involve ethics, and thus philosophy.

     

    I understand and agree with Yaron Brook's criticism of Just War Theory. But what confuses me is when other Objectivists just push the policy of nuking into the realm of military strategy and be done with it. Tell me, by what principle does a general decide when to carpet bomb as opposed to nuking a city, if it is not in consideration of the enemy's civilians' lives? Is it the monetary cost? By what principle is it decided that instead of surgically bombing a country, invading it, putting our soldiers' lives at risk as opposed to laying it to waste, if not in consideration of the country's inhabitants lives? We don't owe them anything, right?

     

    Are you into math, and engineering? There is a trade off between our lives and theirs' depending on what is used to eliminate the threat. This is an optimization problem, what is the least amount of deaths that we can achieve when it comes to our soldiers' lives? Once we answer that do we take it? Or is there something else we consider, their lives, the geo-political situation (other countries opinions of us)?

     

    Is it because of what the rest of the world thinks? Is our foreign policy dictated by the whims of other countries?

     

    Alex

    Ethics ceases when war begins.  The main question changes from "what is right"  to "what will win"

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