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merjet

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Everything posted by merjet

  1. No, and neither is what Tyson said, despite Macdonald and Dore. Macdonald's counter-argument commits the fallacy of composition as much as he alleges Tyson does. Tyson could have been more precise, but I believe he meant that the part of the universe which is not us is indifferent. So interpreted, what Tyson said concurs with the second sentence of what Ayn Rand said.
  2. Blanshard on Implication and Necessity #4 Blanshard on Implication and Necessity #5
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing This page can't be edited by almost anybody. But other pages can be. Where this page has the 'View source' tab near the top, editable pages have an 'Edit' tab. Click on it and type away. You are not required to log in to edit, but it's probably better to create an account and log in (top right of any Wikipedia page). Start with something easy until you catch on. Also, you can edit and click on 'Show preview' to see what you did without having to save your changes.
  4. ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again #2 Blanshard on Implication and Necessity #1 Blanshard on Implication and Necessity #2 Blanshard on Implication and Necessity #3
  5. The term Hicks uses to describe Kant in Explaining Postmodernism is Counter-Enlightenment. His reasons for using it are much like those in the second excerpt here written by Ayn Rand.
  6. This only half fits the thread's title. Anyway, here is another interview of Stephen Hicks, this one by Glenn Beck. Scroll down for the video. The main topics are socialism, individualism, ethics, rational and anti-rational, and postmodernism and political activism nearer the end. Almost 90 minutes.
  7. I hadn't heard the recent audio interview when I posted yesterday. I just finished listening. Most of their conversation is about postmodernism, like the earlier video one. Reminiscing: I still have my copy of Explaining Postmodernism. I bought it July 5, 2004. Stephen Hicks signed it with a note the day I bought it. He encouraged me to write a review. I did, and it became my first on Amazon. It is the third oldest review of EP on Amazon, dated July 21, 2004.
  8. Jordan Peterson interviewed Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks almost two years ago. In March he did so again. Links: video of first interview audio of second interview They are long, about 1.5 hours each.
  9. Fannie and Freddie trying to make another housing bubble? Another bubble and collapse
  10. It won't answer the title question, but to somebody enough interested in modus ponens I recommend Bland Blanshard's The Nature of Thought, Vol 2, the chapter Formalism and Necessity. The Feb 1963 The Objectivist Newsletter included a favorable book review of Blanshard's Reason and Analysis by N. Branden. That book also addresses modus ponens ("p implies q"), but not as much.
  11. ProPublica and "prefilled filing" ProPublica Targets TurboTax Again
  12. Two Logics #1 Two Logics #2 ProPublica Targets Free File Tax Preparers ProPublica Targets TurboTax TurboTax, Forbes, ProPublica
  13. The Entrepreneurial State #1 The Entrepreneurial State #2 The Entrepreneurial State #3
  14. The Innovators #2 The Innovators #3 The Innovators #4
  15. Sort of. I believe that ‘putting the cart before the horse’ – like the one Amazon reviewer of Two Logics wrote – is a better description than ‘stolen’. I received a copy of Two Logics via inter-library loan and read some it. Mostly Two Logics is a critique of what Veatch calls the relating-logic of analytic philosophy and a contrast to what-logic, which was mostly originated by Aristotle. Veatch says the following about relating-logic and the fallacy of inverted intentionality. To recur to our own well-known illustration, suppose that our concept “planet” involved among its various notes that of moving in a particular circular orbit. As [C.I.] Lewis would see it, that this particular note should be contained in our concept of planet would be entirely of our doing, it being up to us to define our concepts in any way we choose, packing into them only those notes that we ourselves might decide we wanted them to contain, and leaving out those that we did not want” (106-7). It "is nonetheless an inevitable consequence of that rigid dichotomy between analytic and synthetic, or between language rules and statements of fact, in terms of which a relating-logic must operate. … [W]hat this dichotomy means is that all necessary connections are confined exclusively to the sphere of the linguistic and the logical: they represent only our human devices for relating and connecting things, and not any real connections or relations in things themselves” (113). “However, this still does not obviate the confusion, or even the fallacy – although it may be a more subtle fallacy that that of a confusion of use and mention. Indeed, we propose to call it the fallacy of inverted intentionality, thus availing ourselves – though for our own purposes – of the Scholastic distinction between first and second intentions. For the interesting thing about this distinction is that it serves to [point up what would seem to be an obvious and inescapable order of priority in regard to what we might call the various levels or orders of meaning or of intention” (119). “Moreover, so far as the distinction between first and second intentions is concerned, we may say that when we make statements about red and green, they are of first intention; and when we make statements about how the terms “red” and “green” are to be used, they are of second intention … Now we will go further and say that there is clearly an order of priority involved here. It is only because of the sorts of things that words like “red” and “green,” or logical devices like inference tickets, etc., are used to mean or signify, that we are justified in laying down the various logical and linguistic rules for the use of such terms” (120). The first Objectivist literature on the stolen concept is an article with that title by N. Branden in The Objectivist Newsletter, Vol. II, No. 1, Jan. 1963. He wrote: “Man’s concepts are derived from and depend on earlier, more basic concepts which serve as their genetic roots. For example, the concept “parent” is presupposed by the concept “orphan”; if one had grasped the former, one could not arrive at the latter, nor could the latter be meaningful.” So in my view Branden described the error as contradicting or ignoring the genetic concept more so than stealing it. I may or may not read more of Veatch’s book. There are two things I believe important that Veatch’s book does not address. One is the term logic developed by Fred Sommers after Veatch’s book was published. This was the subject of The Logic of Natural Language (1984). It was further explained in An Invitation to Formal Reasoning: The Logic of Terms. Sommers’ logic handles relations and multiple categories quite well. Another is that Veatch does not address Boolean logic or Boolean algebra, originated before Veatch was born. Boolean algebra was very important to the development of computers.
  16. The Innovators #1 Bernie Sanders lies about Amazon income taxes Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All #2
  17. CBS News on Canada's climate change IRS pinches middle and lower income self-employed Bird eggs
  18. Sorry. I can't answer that, since I haven't read Veatch's book. I have ordered it via inter-library loan.
  19. The linked page has a Libraries button. When I clicked it, the title wasn't auto-fed to the new page. However, entering the title and clicking Find a Library gives search results as a list of titles. Clicking on a title there may help in locating a copy of the book in a library not too far away. A good review of the book is here.
  20. The Smithsonian Channel will have a show about black holes tomorrow, April 12, at 9:00 PM Eastern (link).
  21. I would express the modus ponens inference in Objectivese as an identification of reality. We induce propositions such as "the street is wet, therefore it rained very recently." It's possible that the street is wet because the fire department flushed nearby hydrants. However, if all roofs and back yard lawns less than a mile away are also wet, then flushing fire hydrants being the cause is eliminated. While modus ponus can be used deductively, I don't regard it as a deduction from the the law of identity. I believe that is too "ivory tower." The facts we observe that justify modus ponens are also facts that justify the law of identity. Boydstun wrote: “If p, then q” is taken in logic texts to be identically equivalent to “Not (p and not-q).” So "the street is wet, therefore it rained very recently" cast in that form is: "Not (the street is wet and it didn't rain.)
  22. Little math problem NY Times Promotes Hate Speech Transistors and the history of hearing aids Medicare Advantage finance 60 Minutes show on climate change
  23. Income Taxes 2018 Income Taxes 2018 #2 Jerry Merryman RIP Tax Rates for Socialism Amazon HQ2 #4 Cost of Socialist Healthcare
  24. The Wright Brothers #4 The Wright Brothers #5 The Wright Brothers #6
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