Harrison Danneskjold

I very much like the thread 2046 linked to; it should prove helpful. I think the thing to bear in mind is that, in order to show someone the truth, they have to be interested in the truth. I always assume this at first (innocent until proven guilty) but it's important to remember throughout. The other big thing is to ask people why they think what they do. When someone declares that we have a duty to provide for the poor, simply ask them why; this serves two purposes. 1: As in the linked thread, it forces them to stop and reexamine their reasoning at least momentarily. It makes them remember what led to their belief in X and, simply by recalling and concentrating on that for a few moments, check their own premises. In a worst-case scenario, this will throw a self-righteous evader off-guard; best-case scenario, they may realize that they're wrong and simply call their own convictions into question. 2: Once they explain their reasoning behind it, you can begin to get some idea of their conceptual structure and where the problem truly lies. A self-consistent altruist won't accept capitalism until they accept rational selfishness; a self-consistent mystic won't relinquish altruism unless they accept existence as an absolute. Most collectivists can't be convinced by purely political arguments; you have to get down to the root of it. And if they're interested in the truth then, eventually, they will come to see it. If they aren't then they'll twist themselves into semantic pretzels in order to oppose everything you say; if so then they're evading reality and persistence is futile. Although, to be honest, sometimes it can be fun to continue such a conversation with a known evader; like poking dead things with a stick.

Black box scenario; is it full of money or explosives? Note that your answer, while not infringing on your free will in any way at all, would drastically alter your subsequent actions. Within that context, the choice to "not think of a bomb" would constitute a certain, very specific action. . .

When someone looks at you and declares that induction works splendidly, you may (or may not) choose to focus on it. You may focus on the content of the statement and contemplate the act of induction. You may be reminded of something similar that someone else said, long ago. You may dismiss the entire issue by making some trivial pun and be none the wiser. There are many, many decisions you must make along the way. When someone throws a dodgeball at your face, it is not the same. You WILL focus on it or it WILL hurt you; selective attention precedes induction which precedes VOLITIONAL attention. When you tell me that focus=thought, you are dodging something on an entirely different scale from dodgeballs. Stop it.

Presumably however infants originally do so. But alright; let's say it DOES presuppose thinking. Now, how did we arrive at that conclusion, except by. . . ? "Focus=thought" regardless of its falsehood, is a generalization derived from specifics. Your objection TO induction PRESUPPOSES INDUCTION. Shall we count the ways you inducted during the original post, alone?

Apparently, at the very end of everything, the prosecution tried to introduce manslaughter and child abuse (?!) as possible charges. "Is he guilty?" "Well, surely he's done something to warrant a hanging." -Exerpt from Sweeny Todd Unbelievable.

Induction requires memory and selective attention; nothing more. So, for instance, certain animals are perfectly capable of induction; in my opinion it very much resembles Pavlov's dogs and the underlying mechanism they displayed. [bell-food once, bell-food twice; bell a third time- where's the food? That's induction] But could Pavlov's dogs calculate the workings of universal gravitation, or question whether induction actually works at all? No- because while they can form percepts (which is all classical conditioning is) they cannot take the next, volitional step into concepts.

That was my problem in further reducing "value"; you can't point at the difference between desirable and undesirable, as such. Because it's introspective. But you could point at a rabbit and a dead rabbit, I suppose.

Actually, that's an intriguing thought. There's a very fine line between identifying an act of evasion, and demanding omniscience. . .

It doesn't matter how many causes of "meow" you eliminate; there are an infinite number of potential causes and thusly, without generalizations, you can NEVER tell me that the cat causes it. And if generalizations are invalid then past experience truly doesn't tell us anything about the future (in which case learning to speak, learning to walk and learning that objects have three dimensions and weight- was all fallacious). If so then I invite you to practice what you preach and stop making arbitrary assumptions. Popper's essay wanted my money before I could read it. Sorry, but there are quite a few Objectivist books I'm still waiting to buy; I won't pay to read your link.

How can you be sure that anything exists beyond your own mind? Why? Step 1: Observe This consists of experiencing and actively paying attention to sensations. When anything (sensation, perception or concept) correlates with anything else, notice it. Step 2: Find correlations Raw sensations are a stream of constant and dynamic changes. Whenever these changes happen simultaneously, or a past one resembles a new one, they 'correlate' with each other. Most correlations are sheer coincidence and should only be noted, in passing. Step 3: Remember correlations; perpetually reinterpret old observations Organize correlative things (sensations, percepts, concepts) according to the frequency and consistency of their correlation. There is a rule of thumb for this: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." "The first time a guy calls you a horse. . ." Correlations are organized according to frequency and consistency (the 'strength' if you will) across a continuum, from coincidence to causation. With causal relations, the independent variable is chosen according to temporal primacy. Whatever happens first is the cause. By consistently remembering all previously-noted correlations and their particular strength, one moves from specific experiences to generalizations: "When the cat's face moved, I heard a noise." "There- it happened again. The cat's face moved exactly when I heard the noise." . . . . "The cat says meow." If not then does the cat say meow?

DA: Suppose I came up to you in the street one day and handed you a black box. Now, after handing you the box, how would you react if I told you it was full of money? Alternately, how would you react if I told you it was a bomb? Your ideas influence your actions by providing your choices with CONTEXT. This does not suppress free will at all, in any way; they are an INTEGRAL PART of your free will! You cannot function unless you know where you are and what you're doing, as well as why. Without philosophy, no choices would be possible to anyone; without choice, a philosophy would be impossible to formulate. You keep insisting that ideas are contradictory and antithetical to free will; that the extent of one's influence is inversely proportional to the other. It's just not the case and I don't know how much simpler I can make this.

Thank you! So: Friend (-Enemy)= Mutual valuation (-Solitary valuation)= Value (-Nonvalue)= Conditional existence of life! And yeah; I treated it as a static relationship between entities because, while in reality it isn't, I thought that might simplify things a lot. Like the concept of 'running'. The act of running involves a mind-boggling number of discrete movements, adjustments and readjustments; to specify each and every action which is part of 'running' would strain the limits of even the best attention-spans. . . Or you could simply visualize 'running' as if it were a constant and perpetual repetition. At least that's my reasoning behind it. Am I correct?

I'm trying to figure out a formal method of reducing concepts back to percepts, consistently; something sort of universal. It occurs to me that if conceptual reduction were given the rigor and the structure of formal logic then, if anyone who disagreed with anyone else were to have their argument out thusly (with reduction and deduction, combined), the only way they could possibly fail to understand each other would be through evasion. There would simply be no remaining obscurity to get lost in. So that's my goal; I'm working with the provisional "For X, identify -X and integrate" and I'm currently stuck at "value." Any help would be immensely appreciated!

So I've now read OPAR, and I still don't have a very good handle on it (although I have identified a lot of my worst habits as stemming from context-dropping). Per his example, the concept "friend" is a specific form of human relationship, as opposed to enemy or stranger. These relationships are all forms of reciprocal evaluation, as opposed to solitary valuation [unrequited love, etc]. Mutual valuation and solitary valuation are both expressions of value and consequently (deviating slightly from Peikoff's example; I think I found a shortcut) I can trace "friend" back down to "value" by systematically comparing something with its opposite, eliminating the particulars and tracing it backwards one step. But the opposite of "value" would be "nonvalue" and no matter how many examples I can think of to attempt to integrate, the only recurring commonality is "as understood by a conscious mind." So. . . Is the next step consciousness, the axiom? Or am I going about it wrong?

Originally Garshasp had said that terrorism isn't a real threat; it's the federal government that's a danger. I disagree because the collectivists want us all enslaved to one degree or another, while the terrorists actually want us all to be dead. Not a little bit dead; dead-dead. And I made a comment to the effect that 'most Muslims are perfectly harmless human beings' [not strictly numberically-most, but the Muslims you're most-likely to actually meet] which led to some people declaring that all Muslims are monsters and less than human, which led to other people declaring that all Muslims are harmless and the terrorists would've terrorized anyway for any reason or no reason at all. Which pretty much brings us up to this post, right here.

Muslims: How much danger do they pose and how much guilt do they bear (and which degrees to which ones)? Were Muslims simply in the wrong place at the wrong time (with the wrong, accidental members)? Or should we start rounding them up for the gulags? What would Ayn Rand say, if she were alive today?

If an infant has, say, some neurochemical imbalance which predisposes him or her towards violence, do you think it would matter whether you taught him/her to be rational and productive and ambitious, or to be unconditionally obedient? Do ideas matter at all? Or are they arbitrary linguistic constructs which have no effect on the real world?

Choice determines an individual's ideology AND ideology dictates their choices. This relationship, between free will and philosophy, is not a contradiction; it's a feedback loop. You choose what you accept as true, pure and simple. What you accept as true sets the terms and the context of every subsequent decision. It is ultimately an individual's choices which determine their actions (since philosophy, which also plays a role, is also self-chosen), hence their individual guilt. But even the most despicable of brutes has some REASON for his actions, even if it is a fantasy, even if it exists only in his own mind; he must have one, at least in his own mind. So the relationship between Islam and terrorists is analogous to the relationship between Charlie Manson and the crimes of his followers. But the real issue here is not that, either; it's how much evil can be attributed to evasion and how much is due to honest error. I wonder how many suicide bombers have blown themselves up because of their philosophy, which they did not accept as a source of rationalizations, but on the premise that "my mommy wouldn't lie to me." Unprovoked aggression is a bad choice. The premise "Bad decisions cause unprovoked aggression" is ultimately reducible to "bad people do bad things" i.e. a tautology.

Curi: Without generalizing from specifics, one literally cannot learn whether the Cow says "moo".

Curi: Without generalizing from specifics, one literally cannot learn whether the Cow says "moo".

I think that "observe, guess, criticize" is compatible with Objectivism (and that's what I've been referring to) so long as you put "induct" in place of "guess". But considering that induction is necessary for any sort of thought at all, I figured it properly belongs there anyway. And I still think that "observe, induct, criticize" is entirely compatible with Objectivism. . . Because that wouldn't really change anything, anyway. However, in retrospect, I have been making a lot of broad generalizations about Popper based on minimal information (curi's comments and an hour or two of research) which led me to form untrue inferences about your comments, as well. Several of my assertions were completely baseless and I'm sorry for that. But so "observe/induct/criticize" should be compatible with Oism but I'm not sure how much of that is actually Popperian.

The process of elimination applied to numbers? When have all the alternatives been eliminated?

Not exactly, but I think it's likely that when they see one side of something (because your field of vision is two-dimensional), whereas perceptually-operating adults automatically infer the opposite side and any number of other things, infants might simply see what is literally visible and nothing more. And they are. I'm sorry if I was ambiguous; I didn't mean to imply that reality is 'filtered' as in distorted or obscured. I meant something more like a computerized information-feed that 'filters' through the raw data in order to provide more coherence. And I really don't think Rand ever did mention magicians. That was all me. But what I was trying to point out about magicians is exactly the difference between sensations and perceptions, because if you think about it, every trick they perform amounts to an exploitation of the nature of perceptions. For example, when you think you see someone being sawed in half, you don't literally see that; you see a head and feet and a saw inbetween and automatically sort those sensations into an unbelievable perception. So it's a good demonstration of the way we work on a perceptual level. And the only reason I really brought up perception in the first place is that we form sensations into perceptions by the same method we organize them into concepts: induction. The only difference is that it's intentional on the conceptual level. But volitional or not, they're both induction. If generalization is invalid, in full, then there is absolutely no logical reason to believe that the moon is three-dimensional or that "meow" noises correlate to cats or that the opposite side of your computer screen exists, at all. And if you check the back of your computer screen to make sure, how can you be sure that it still exists when you aren't looking? Without generalizing from specifics, knowledge isn't simply unattainable- it's incommunicable.

Interesting. Look at every scripture in which God condones and openly advocates (if not perpetrates) genocide, then take a closer look at those Crusades. And just one or two other things. That hypothetical contradicts itself; any Objectivist who decided such would by definition be non-Objectivist. Have fun applying the same to any variety of mysticism. Now ask yourself why your first comment merits further examination. The rest of this is entirely true. . . Except for the analogy that 'Objectivism is to the Tea Party as Moderate Islam is to Radical Islam'. Again, reexamine your first comment. Not all philosophies are equally true or equally good, for very definite reasons. And if they were all equal then there would be no reason for this forum, or any such pursuit of truth.

The reason that imposing such a morality on everyone else doesn't work, is because people will only stand for it if they already agree with you. The human mind cannot be domesticated. If you attempt to domesticate [enslave] those who disagree with you, they will fight tooth and nail against it or else they will lose any desire to live. People do not sit still while you do such things. People will think. They will solve, they will innovate, they will find ways around you- and through you, if necessary. And that is what makes this utopia impossible. It has nothing to do with original sin and everything to do with reason. So what can be done for it? "Give me liberty or give me death." Specifically, the answer to your question is genocide; nothing less could suffice because anything less would be a problem that we would inevitably solve. If genocide doesn't appeal to you then consider liberty; hands-off capitalism.