Ilya Startsev

To understand Kant, one needs to put him in context with other philosophers, like you did. I have to read up on Euclid, Wolff, and Reid in order to evaluate your context for Kant. In my own opinion, Hume and Descartes had the greatest influence on him, but his philosophy belongs to neither tradition, as my Diagram shows. Instead, his philosophy has been unknown for over 2000 years, throughout which all works of Democritus have been lost. By his 'philosophy,' of course, I do not mean his theology, which is, perhaps, what made his (non-)idealism be called transcendental. His prediction is like the predictions of global warming (and I also believe that, philosophically, our history goes in cycles). In truth, Peikoff is as optimistic about Objectivism and Objectivist politics as Ayn Rand ever was, and this means Peikoff is still an optimist. You might ask this of him yourself, and I predict that his answer will be affirmative. You only need to hurry because Peikoff is pretty old, and it would be worse to perpetuate such false claims about him after he would have passed away. Nicky's reply has been spot on. His 'pissing into the wind,' as you call it, is following Objectivism in opposition to mis (conservatives like Trump) and dis (liberals, like Hillary?--Hillary is an amoeba whose philosophy I don't pretend to understand). Maybe you are seeing your own pessimism in Peikoff? I allow that Peikoff has a pessimistic underbelly, but his optimism is the prevalent crown. dream_weaver's reply is excellent: Peikoff shows what majority believes (and enacts in reality), but the minority -- like Objectivists -- are certainly the better path on which the enlightened few need to continue (intellectually, rhetorically) fighting to prevail even after 'probable' setbacks and even while minority itself is seemingly fractured by interpretations of Peikoff's genius hypothesis. Like I've implied above, Peikoff's 'predictions' are not as important as his contextualizations of the most important and archetypal philosophies. That, as far as I know, has never been done before to such an extent. You seem to be cutting off Peikoff's overarching vision by reducing it to your own blind fight. Peikoff is certainly close to Hegel in his evaluations (e.g., of Kant) and idealizations of their own philosophies, but Peikoff very clearly presents his evaluations with the major implication of Objectivism being 'the better path' (in dream_weaver's words), even though he is not so explicit about this in this book. Rhetorically, though, it's a brilliant move, since the obvious absence formidably invites attention and pulls at our focus. Actually, your criticism is not correct. Peikoff is totally right in evaluating Einstein as a MIS (Platonic idealist in my book, connected through Berkeley -- also thanks to Leibniz -- to Plato). The reason Einstein is a MIS is that he idealized ('beautified' and overgeneralized--like Harriman is trying to do now with his physics/philosophy applied to other MIS like Copernicus and Kepler) only an interpretation or a specific instance of Lorentz's transformation, whose mathematics is so extensive that it allows space for an aetheric (Newtonian) physics, which Lorentz himself supported but for which couldn't make a case. However, the case for this kind of INT physics could be attributed to an ignored genius physicist by the name of Hannes Alfvén, who, like Lorentz before him, was discarded in favor of another Einstein: a popular Einstenian and bigbanger darling -- Hawking. Now, however, all this is ancient history. The physics debate progresses on the quantum level, such as Copenhagen vs. quantum decoherence and consistent histories and string many-worlds interpretations. In contrast to what many of you believe, philosophical debates are indeed currently taking place in contemporary physics, but Rand and Peikoff would never understand them because of being restricted to an obsolete, classical view of atomic structure. This is indeed very interesting and salient. While considering that I take all materialists as DIS and all idealists as MIS, you may find that the whole traditions of non-atheistic materialists and atheistic idealists had started with Kant. Kudos to Kant, wouldn't you say? You may also now thank him for confusing the hell out of idealists. (Poor Rand, she had no idea what she got herself into, but at least her intense hate for Kant opens her up to deep criticism.) God, indeed I hope not. At least Gorgias understood (while most reduce his understanding to mere sophistry) that nothing exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time because that is the 'nature' of nothing. Kant, on the other hand, wrote that nothing can be proved about the existence of Noumenon, which logically means one and only one thing: Noumenon doesn't exist physically for the sole reason of it being Nonexistence (I swapped the terms, but essentially you get the same thing). Hence Peikoff was right in his criticisms of Kant, as Kant opposed things for having the nature of things, i.e. being those things. Kant's 'nature' (which he swaps for 'matter') is only found through mental categories, which leads, on the inward path through the metaphysical brain/mind to his highly cherished Nonexistence (yes, it is found inside mind; and yes, that's how his theoretical and practical reasons connect, see Crit#3). To a point, I agree with Kant, but only to a point -- I think his subjective theology is (and was) revolutionary. Mostly, what Peikoff misunderstands about him is Peikoff's own psychological inadequacies projected on Kant. Other than that, Peikoff is nearly perfect (haha). In addition, Boydstun, you may disagree that 'rational foundation' is as overrated as the concept of 'God.' I'd rather stick to reality than be fooled by anyone to illusively get unstuck from it because everything is learned only in relation to a context (reality). Kant was merely critiquing knowledge but not learning anything new or integrating anything with it. Actually God is not only within Noumenon but also as if shimmering within it because His sight cannot be continuously grasped. See Remark to §86 of Crit#3. This means not only that God is not the only one within Noumenon but also that he is, in a way so conceived, 'beyond' it as if behind its veil. This can be confused with mysticism, but... well, I am not sure what exactly this is other than the term I use: "subjective theology." This concept of God, in Kant, had nothing to do with philosophy as a whole, and this was Kant's great revolution: he separated philosophy from God as the US founding fathers separated state from church. Did Peikoff grasp that? I don't think so. But don't blame Peikoff. Many philosophers today perhaps understand neither Kant's philosophy nor its true accomplishment. Yes, but you need to remember that ancient theists wrapped their philosophy around God in a very different way than Kant did. You earlier stated more properly Kant's negative way concerning God. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and others (Plotinus too, but I haven't yet studied Pseudo-Dionysus or Alcinous, even though if the latter were a true Platonist, his negativity would be made-believe as much as his positivity) were quite positive about this concept (even while they gave it other names). Kant's break from conceiving of God in this ancient way is thus quite profound. In fact, it's unprecedented because it's not atheistic. Now, what you wrote about those who described God by what God is not seems to be an implicit proof from absence (kind of like Objectivism in Peikoff's DIM) -- not evidence of absence or argument from ignorance. Kant never claimed that any proof of God is possible, only that we should praise reason that leads us to God (means he enjoyed proofs of God but never defended any himself). Thus, Kant differentiated himself from such objective theologists, i.e. theists, who would like to find a proof of God (even in Kant). I would say reduced, inversively. Kant followed this inversive reductionist formula: make the outer world into both the non-world (noumenon) and the inner world (phenomenon) by reducing it through categories of thought. Only the non-world is basically a deeper 'inner world', like an unconscious level several subconscious levels deep. So, basically, the reason we cannot phenomenally sense Noumenon is that it is too far and deep in us from our conscious mind. Thank you for sharing the analogy, dream_weaver. In a way it reflects the process in the movie 21 Grams -- what I consider to be an integrative piece of art. On the other hand, this is not the process employed by David Harriman in The Logical Leap. Instead, Harriman overgeneralizes, waves hands, and thinks that all pieces are used in an integration without being able to prove this (understandably, as this cannot be so). Have you read it? I will need to check it out.

Here is recent experimental evidence that photon (edit: light, even) is a wave of particles (objects) and energy (contextual quantum vacuum), as I said. Source: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html And as Andie Holland mentioned to me in one closed thread: That's too bad, Andie. Because how do we get mass? From massless particles, right? Therefore, massless particles are more fundamental than massive one, as you also said that: Please, connect the dots.

Here is an intriguing criticism of Rifkin in line with my own: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5558

I've read Jeremy Rifkin's book called The Third Industrial Revolution (2011) and watched his promotional videos of his two other books: The Empathic Civilization and The Zero Marginal Cost Society. My thesis is that Jeremy Rifkin is a neosocialist and is currently probably the most dangerous man on earth. Considering his influence on government leaders throughout the world, I don't think this supposition is far from being true. Compare these two definitions of neosocialism: Definition 1 (historical): A French and Belgian political movement of the 1930s, proposing a "constructive revolution" headed by the state and technocrats. Definition 2 (modern), characteristics: A belief in the concept that capitalism has failed, but can be resuscitated by a new partnership between government and business. This new partnership will be inherently more fair to more people. A belief that competition isn't necessarily bad, and that government can and should be permitted to compete with private industry. A belief that big government isn't necessarily bad; what is bad is BAD big government. Big, effective government is desirable. A belief in the transcendent quality of the world community while de-valuing national interests. A sense of American relative and actual decline in the world, one that demands of us a more compliant approach to problem solving. A perception that American decline is not necessarily a bad thing. My analysis of Rifkin's ideas: He uses "non-A is A is non-A" logic. In other words, we start with us now (non-A), create an "empathic" civilization (A), and then focus on "biosphere consciousness" (non-A). A vehicle of such integration in order to disintegrate is a "sharing economy" (see its criticisms), which is inherently (hence in the long run) value-less and non-humanly efficient. If we follow Rifkin's advice to the end he proposes, there will be no humankind left. His hand-waving and legerdemain is making people believe in the illusion of supporting "social capital" after "the internet of things" is created. In reality, his promise of "social capital" focus "after" is very similar to Lenin's when talking about the glorious Communism somewhere so close behind the horizon. What socialists found behind the horizon, as we well know, was death from overexertion and economic suffocation. Here is from Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution (2011) when he praises the role lobbyists played in causing our current economic trends: The lobbyists connected the dots. That is, they brought together all of the disparate commercial forces and melded them into a set of relationships that became an embryonic template for a new economic organism. (Ch. 4, "Seeing the big picture," my emphases) Rifkin is using Society Is Nature conceptual metaphor. The same kind of thinking repeats through Rifkin's book and presentations, especially when he compares economy to the nervous system and mind. Compare this to what Vladimir Lenin wrote in “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats” (1894): Economic life is a phenomena analogous with a history of other areas of biology. Earlier economists did not understand the nature of economic laws when they were compared with the laws of physics and chemistry. A deeper analysis shows that social organisms as deeply differ from one another as animals and plants. Aiming from this point of view to investigate the capitalist economic organization, Marx thereby formulates the strictly scientific purpose that must be pursued by any accurate investigation of economic life. The scientific value of this research is to determine those special (historical) laws that regulate the origin, existence, development and death of a given social organism and its replacement by another, higher organism (высшим организмом). (my translation from Russian and my emphases) The message Rifkin proposes is analogous, except he criticizes Adam Smith and current economists for using metaphors of Newtonian physics instead of laws of thermodynamics, and he explains economics in biological, environmentalist ways. Social "organism" in both quotes is viewed without definite boundaries as a metaphysical conception characterized by nature. What Rifkin is doing is happening right now in political, social, economic, technological, and pretty much every other area you can think of. Judge him for yourselves. edit: changed "Newtonian metaphors of physics" to "metaphors of Newtonian physics"

Splitprimary, think of a mental state is having a potential to initiate an emotion but does not necessarily lead to an emotion. An emotion is an experience you feel through your body from a change in heart rate. The problem I find with those who answer Yes on the question is that they don't differentiate emotions from thoughts because they focus on their minds instead of their souls. And with Objectivists especially, Rand's concept of soul is just that, a concept, or a mental state she calls "the sense of life." Life needs to be experienced and not merely thought about, but you cannot experience life if you only focus on thoughts. Yes, fear as reverence is not an emotion because it is metaphysical, whereas fear as terror is an emotion because it changes your heart rate. Reverence is psychological (or neurological) and not physiological in that regard, yes. Reverence can be a change in brain-activity but not in heart rate, and so it won't be measured by the scanner. But then it makes to sense to pay with reverence. What are you going to be paying for and to whom? To God? It's a joke. You can revere non-economically by staying alone on a desert island. Hence, I don't care about such mental states. I only care about emotions and people who can feel them. The only thing that can interfere with my scanner is if you are being ambivalent and hence emotionally irrational. I believe in rational emotions (or rational programming of emotions, as Rand teaches). Yes, if it is an emotion, it is necessary that it is also a mental state. You cannot feel emotions without initiating them from your brain! What neurologists and other "brainiacs" (my word for insane people) study is how brain initiates emotions but they forget about the actual end (i.e., emotion). As Aristotle taught, happiness is the end, and happiness is also an emotion. If you focus only on reason, you lose emotions (e.g., see Descartes), but if you focus on emotions, you also find reason. The latter is the best way to go and the way I am teaching with my economics. Yes, I was using values in the mathematical sense. For example, loving is a positive value (as in +1 emotional point [ep] from an emotional response) and fearing is a negative value (-1 ep). In my economy both are necessary, but only one can occur at a specific transaction. Sorry for the confusion about "fear" in the Christian definition. When you wrote "'Fear' in that sense (awe, respect, reverence)," I replied "That "fear" is not an emotion but merely a mental state." That "fear" as reverence is not an emotion. But actual fear is an emotion. The confusion of thoughts and emotions started with Peter Ramus and Rene Descartes, by the way. They surely were reductionists (the first reduced rhetoric to style and the second reduced soul to mind). Descartes and Leibniz (another reductionist, who reduced everything to imaginary "monads") also inspired Immanuel Kant. We have many problems since the Enlightenment. The soul in my conception is very much mystical but it is also physical. I keep Aristotle's realism/mysticism as a whole physicalism without reducing it to mere "realism," which by itself can degenerate into the materialism of Kant. (Aristotle also knew that the soul, or "common sense," as he referred to it, is in the heart.) Soul is the electromagnetic field of our heart, and mind is the electromagnetic field of our brain. Both are also known as auras, but in the Western, objective sense, not in the Eastern, subjective one. I highly recommend reading A.S.Presman's foundational book Electromagnetic Fields and Life (1970) and/or the HeartMath Institute's Science of the Heart (2001). I hope this clarifies what I meant. You can also read my blog, where I explain the new philosophy in great detail.

Twelve out of fourteen Marxists have already voted Yes. Are there anyone on this forum to show that they are Objectivists, be brave and vote? Come on, the results are anonymous, and you don't even need to explain your answer. It would be nice to have at least five, for comparisons.

That "fear" is not an emotion but merely a mental state, just like "love" could be considered a mental state of valuing someone or something. So, I would say that one can feel fear and love at the same time in the mind but not in the soul. Yes, this question is directly related to my theory of Emotional Economy. In my economy, all values are categorized as either negative or positive but never both at the same time (that would be an error in the result of the heartbeat scan). From lots of research in electromagnetic/photonic/radio biology and neurocardiology, I know for a fact that emotions are physiological. A positive emotion is when your brain impulses synchronize with your heart's pulses, and a negative emotion is when there is desynchronization. The first is also known as resonance, in terms of frequency, and coherence, in terms of connection. The opposite is interference and incoherence. Logically, you cannot feel both emotions at the same time, but maybe they can switch really quickly, like possibly happens in BDSM.

John was one of the better apostles, if not the best. Thank you. However, over the period of history, fear was also defined as "a reverential awe toward God." Thus, most Christians think that fear and love can be concurrent. Of course, that is due to conceiving of emotions as metaphysical, or purely mental, phenomena and not actual experiences we feel at an exact moment of time, such as in a single second. Splitprimary, I don't remember seeing you before. Are you an Objectivist?

I am conducting research, the results of which will be posted on my blog. The question I am most concerned with is: Can you feel fear and love at the same time?

The context was: Yes, there was evil in the beginning of that thread and it was escalating to even more evil, but I was able to overcome it, not embrace it. The idea is to see where you opponent is coming from and thus to converse through each other rather than at each other, since screaming at each other only strengthens your positions and does not allow understanding the position of you opponent. Whenever you debate with radicals of beliefs different from yours you start with facing their evil by accepting the debate and argument with them to later try to overcome or reshape such evil by understanding reasons behind it that may stop seeming so evil in the first place.

I fully well understand incommensurability. Incommensurability is an evil, a "monster", as Randy Allen Harris wrote on p. 118 of Rhetoric and Incommensurability (2005).

Talking very loudly without escalating into violence? Unlikely. As the OP shows, I debate Marxists. The debate is inconclusive, however, but it stopped escalating to violence due to my efforts to overcome our "incommensurability".

That's the point: there are no debates between Objectivists and Marxists. This means that there can be only violence between them.

And here I can see why Objectivists are unable to resolve conflicts with Marxists without resorting to violence. I am just patiently waiting when you would finally rid each other from this world.

How come you know so much about Marxism? Were you a Marxist before, Andie? I never knew Marxists were so evil until I visited that forum. It is unfortunate that I thought of myself as a Marxist when I first joined this forum. I view Communism as harmonious and creative, not destructive and antagonistic like Marxists tend to believe.

There is a lot to it now. The hatred developed from the responses by Subversive, which I will not post here. My OP was this: I know that there are these two classes into which all of humankind is divided by Marxists. The reasoning is that the first is exploited by the second, so they are different, like slave and master. The issue in our post-industrial era, after the advent of the Internet and the related restructuring of labor, is that the boundaries between the proletariat and bourgeoisie have become transparent. In developing and developed countries, a large sector of population is the middle class, whether already established or on the rise (e.g., see, on TED, Hans Rosling's "Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen"). So my question is: Isn't there a way to integrate the classes without exploitative or dominative behavior from either side? The point is to internalize a classless consciousness through integration.

Follow my thread Integrating the proletariat and bourgeoisie at The Home of the Revolutionary Left. Your contributions to the discussion are welcome. There is going on much violence and entertaining engagement.

You do realize that we are applying philosophy to quantum scale here, right? And you keep living with the facts from the 19th century. Rand and Peikoff ignored the dual nature of reality. They simply threw words around without completely differentiating the real differences between the two scales. What physical data did they have to back up their words? None. Only abstract ideas. Planck time is real fundamentally; it is real to particles, but it is not immediately real to us as human beings. The word "fundamental" reflects physical reality on quantum scale. Whether following its etymology or not, you can choose any number of synonyms, such as elementary, irreducible, cardinal, bottom, underived, underlying, necessary, and axiomatic. These words reflect what we know about the infinitesimal scale. They are identities, too, so we keep using them, rather than throw them away because you were metaphorically persuaded to conform to a remote idealism. Energy is not exactly nothing, is it? I claim that energy is the reality (i.e., context) of subatomic particles. How else would they form if not from their context? Vanishing from observation means they become pure energy that is inaccessible to observation. 'Negative,' though, is pure mathematical speculation.

Greg, How could we strengthen connections between language and reality based on the philosophical foundations that Rand provides? I want to understand reality. More than anything, I am focused on it. Language and consciousness are secondary. Rand does not help in my quest to comprehend reality. Do you know why? Because of the biggest mistake Rand ever made. In order to understand reality, one first needs to distinguish it from non-reality. But ignoring non-reality does not help in distinguishing the two. Such ignorance only makes reality a vague and imprecise concept. This is similar to the mistake that Christian mystics made. They did not distinguish between emotions and reason, and they fell victim to materialist reason, thinking that materialist morals are about emotions and that their values are the same. Because materialists do not value emotions for emotional sake whereas mystics do is the great point of difference that was ignored. And out of that ignorance an evil philosophy was defended by the deceived, and many lives were lost. I have been writing on this forum mostly about Nonexistence. I've done this highly displeasing act for the sole reason that Objectivists ignore Nonexistence, since Rand and Peikoff ignored it. Well, however much we hate it, we have to face it. By facing what we do not know and learning about it as much as possible we get a chance to understand it deeper and contrast it with what we believe in. This process of distinguishing is similar to distinguishing "evil" from "good," and it makes us stronger at the end, when we know surely what's metaphysically evil and what's metaphysically good. Nonexistence is evil, but it is there. Moreover, it is a necessary evil. We start with it in order to get it over with. Once we supersede it, we can never look back, and we never should. What would be left is our conviction of choosing good over evil and what those things really mean. When we are all on the same path, we can finally bathe in all the goodness that's ahead of us. If this sounds true to you, then it is a common ground that we share. And if we share it, then we should be more sensitive to each other. After all, we have chosen existence, and we will do anything that's in our strength in order to defend its value and achieve its purpose.

To take a simple cue of where Rand was wrong is that matter is indeed destructible. Matter becomes energy when annihilated. Matter and energy, however, are NOT the same, unless you would listen to Andie on this point, and even there she contradicts herself (see below). I am on these forums because I am seeking those who defend Existence. My primary goal in life is Existence. But defending Existence by myself is a bleak path. If you would rather want me to stop posting and would rather enjoy Andie's company, I can accommodate you. But then you would need to remember that you've failed in idealism and had become materialists as you were doomed to become. I may be you last hope to properly reach Existence, but instead you'd rather abandoned me, or, more probably, never decide to understand my mission. Right reasoning can become wrong reasoning. You can start with misintegration that could be corrected but instead end with disintegration. Subatomic particles possess the same basic substance. It's called energy. They form in difference ways, hence they have different quantum numbers. And quantum spacetime is photons, which are not exactly objects. I really dislike mixing fermions and bosons. It's like mixing objects with their forms/shapes. The two are inseparable distinctions. QM's metaphysical reality is Nonexistence. Don't deceive yourself. You are not one of idealists. When fermions collide, they don't "simply vanish or change in to [sic] a negative." They annihilate, i.e., disintegrate into their basic substance, which is energy. Now, to go back to our conversation when you claimed of my "ignorance of basic Physics": Baryons (specifically protons and antiprotons) are collided to find fundamental particles. What do we get exactly when we experimentally collide electrons and positrons? Planck time is the most fundamental unit of epistemological time. More fundamental can only be metaphysical Time. All are standards of time, but only Planck is the most fundamental. Fundamental means original, basic, or primary source for all the rest. So, Planck spacetime is the most fundamental of all realities. It is the reality of sensations. If you divide Planck time, you get out of epistemology and into math that has nothing to do with any known reality. The infinity you talk of is actual mathematical infinity. There is no such thing in physical reality. Only absolute nothing can be actually infinite.

You can't be "put" into the state, neither on the forum nor in real life. The present moment is ever fleeting and can never be attained unless you would not exist.

The article is missing two crucial components: the most fundamental unit of time, which is the Planck time, and the most common state of time, which is the present moment. And these two components are derived from metaphysical (capital T) Time, not epistemological (small case t) time. But really you already know it. In order to have implicitly conceived of Existence, you had to subconsciously conceive of this Nonexistence, which you keep ignoring and putting off. But when you ignore something that is inherent in your own position, you only accelerate toward it and hence fall victim to the deception of materialist conceptions. It is impossible to separate Existence from Nonexistence. Whenever you decide to go without Nonexistence to begin with (which means you lack it and thus go toward it), Existence is doomed to annihilation. Nonexistent is the time without motion or change. And since "the Universe" does not move, Nonexistence is within Existence. The particular spacetimes are epistemologically within "the Universe." Remember that "the Universe" is also finite, even if unbounded. So, I explain the lack of "universal" motion by having the abstract Time when nothing moves to be metaphysically within "the Universe." I've already told you that Nonexistence is the Time aspect of absolute nothing. The reason Existence is motionless is that Time is motionless. In other words, there is a causation connecting them, and as Michael Miller wrote in the article, "Time is existence."

I would rather go from reality to language than relate the language back to reality. The dangers of "a discussion about how language relates to reality" should be well-known to you by now. This discussion is the domain of materialistic, subjectivist, Kantian thinking, of A as non-A, of Andie's conceptual Essence Is Matter metaphor, of accuracy of predictions by lucky guesses or observer-driven mathematics, of imagination to reduce reality to particles (i.e., matter), of taking the negative half-waves, or the 'vacuum' zero-point oscillations, as observable reality and the truth, of Chomskyan innatists, of anti-foundationalists, post-process, social constructivists, who claim that language creates reality, that it is situational and indeterminate. Is that the way you want to go, Greg? If so, then you already have it. With this thread.

Since you do not match Peikoff's position, my judgment may not apply to your conception of time. Photons have impulse in addition to energy. And fermions also have mass. By 'your' in 'your vacuum,' I meant the side that you are representing (i.e., standard Physics). Our physical reality is not actually metaphysical but potentially metaphysical. It can only be actualized in language, such as: "[T]here is something I am aware of. There is—existence; something—identity; I am aware of—consciousness" (OPAR-digital, p. 17). And only in language, the law of identity can be constant. It is invalid to equate 'non-A is A' with 'A is non-A.' The first is a potential identity in the process of actualizing. The second is a contradiction (or annihilation).

Lakoff showed that "colorless green ideas sleeping furiously" has meaning that allows us to understand that it's syntactically valid. Edit: and your concept of time is not valid, since it has no metaphysical foundation.