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frank harley

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Everything posted by frank harley

  1. My own prof (Deleuze) said that we're all Marxists to the extent that the question he posed, 'What is capitalism' dominates our discourse. Marx never said that Capitalism would 'lead' to socialism. Rather, that capitalism would break down due to its own internal contradictions. Chiefly, it's focused upon the impovershment of the working class at the expense of an ever-shrinking class of the increasingly wealth, but we're talking about market inabilities, as well. To a certain extent, the reality of mixed economies have , for the last 120 years, been based upon tendencies shown by Marx to be true, yet fixable. In other words, our rig-up is a classical case of having one's cake and eating it, too: personal innovation plus security. What i therefore find most peculiar about the rants of the intellectually 'pure' from both sides is their marked inability to work with quantities to support their arguments. For example, take health care. The average American spends $5600 for the same services that are available in France at half price--the French having better health indices, as well. So is the philosophically pure posture of personal freedom worth the difference? That doesn't even pass the laugh test.
  2. Well first, Quine wrote that all philosophy should be a 'philosophy of science'--so you're in good company! Re consensus (Craig 24): It simply means that in the majority of cases, the majority is usually correct. Yet this does beg the question of 'majority of whom?' And since peerage defines who gets to call themself a 'scientist' what you really do have is a small group that serves as intellectual gatekeeper. Now in the hard sciences, this really isn't a problem, excepting the epistemological status of probabalistic cause. But then, go to Economics and you find those such as marxists and austrians who reject quantification as useless. Another half-way group, the Institutionalists such as Galbraith, , say that quantities are doable only within a framework, and that frameworks are incommensurate. Readers of keynes will recognize this stance as his pre-general theory work with Ramsay, Scraffa, and Russell. On a positive note, conmmunity presence serves to pull in the famous, but recently having gome over the top. My two best examples here are Pauling (V-C) and prigogne (dissipative-evolution).
  3. Several points, please: 1) Basic ZFC set theory includes the null set as operative thing-ness. Common sense, moreover, informs us that looking for an entity and failing to find it is meaningful. For example, a genetic sweep of the murder scene indicated that Amanda Knox's DNA was not present at 'criminal grade' level..That the confessed killer's (Guesde) was ivalidates the negative-positive. might we conclude from the ensuing legal blundering that the applelite magistrate was an Objectivist for whom null-ness is meaningless? 2)'A=A identity, as extracted from Aristotle, is the first principle of logic. It gives no indication as to what 'A' is, in reality. For example. Gork is a martian because he conforms to martianish criteria. 3) Existentialist nothingness is specific to the ontological issue of being. Simply put, Sartre wrote (against Heidegger and Husserl) that there are no essentials. All is contingency and choice, Therefore all is possible.
  4. 1) I Have my doubts,as well, particularly concerning QM and both Relativities. 2) Scince is separated from mysticiem by its method of demanding proof. 3) Yes, I agree to a point: delving into mysteries is merely asking interesting questions about things we know little about. To this extent, its healthy. OTH, claiming to have some sort of priveleged access to truth qua mystuicism is nothing but mumbo-jumbo that rand was correct to denounce. Re Ontology. I'm really not much for Humpty-Dumpty daffy-nitions. i believe communication goes better if we all get on the same definitional page.
  5. Classical economic theory of the late 1900's was concerned with the justification of any system that would clear the market to enable re-production. Tha accepted standard of measurement became to be called 'Pareto' after the guy who devised the measurement. So if this is what you want to call 'harmonizing with nature', that's fine with me. BTW, both Tolstoy and Melville wrote that moral goodness resides in the human agency that makes flow of goods optimal; 'evil' is its willfull stopping. Rand, oth, breaks withthis tradition in defining Capitalism's moral worth as a securing of an individual's rights.Per her hissyfit when having been introduced to Hayak, it's safe to assume that she favored a moral, yet inefficient capitalism over a mixed economy that works, yet only at the expense of personal liberties.
  6. The etymology of 'mystic' is the greek 'mystery'. It indicates that there's a secret form of knowledge accessable to only a few. So yes, Rand is correct that Enlightemnment thought has rejected this claim of priveledge. Now, all truths are so because they're demonstrative in fact. As to how this demonstrates that O-ism has integrated science with philosophy is beyond me. Mysticism, in any case, is not central to doing philosophy...
  7. Ontology in this sense would refer to the priority (ontos) of a particular perspective. What's essential; is the best way of looking at things. For Aristotle, as an example, it was cause.
  8. Stiglitz is drawing consequences form market asymetry that suggest that Pareto opthomality is an illusion. In only words, goods will flow to the extent that consumers know what to buy. So if this is what you mean by harmonizing with nature, then, no.
  9. Assuming that you want a log-normal result (Gaussian bell curve) the obvious solution is to call the test into question. Otherwise, you might want to rig a test that will want to give you a few extraordinary achievers to weed out the rest. In other words, there is no nartural assumption tha any test has to offer median success. This would be called 'Cauchy'-- to give a predictable, low-frequency highly-positive outcome
  10. First, the context of markets are a human construct. For better or worse, they are not 'natural'. In other words, we make ourselves market-contextualized to the extent that we want it to be at any particular time.. Next, you'd be far better off usinggthe textbook term 'involuntary' to describe non-aware brain activity. 'Sub-conscious' carries far too much baggage of Freudian mumbo-jumbo.
  11. Yes, it's the emotiveness of the market which led Stiglitz, et al to write that markets are fundamentally asymetric. Much of his work, btw, was highly influenced by the 'heuristic' of Kahneman and Tversky.
  12. I think your answer would be to define & defend your allegation that the a priori /a posteriori discinction is invalid. I assume, moreover that Rand has an answer for this? Kant wrote 'Dare to know' because he thought that the faculty of reason wiil always be there for us to aid in clarification. This, of course, is the 'given', or a priori. The variable is what we factually know or what he called 'the understanding'.
  13. The boobs who don't research the American leaders --both military and civilians--and cite their own words are unqualified to speak of what passed as 'strategy'. Of course, this negligent boobery pails in comparison to that of citing a moovie about Patton. Oh yes, that one in which he is shown to have cakllenged a straffing run withthe pistol! Going forward, intelligent cinephiles immediately recognized that the film is only about how a Patton hagiography would be written: a tale told by an idiot, as it were. But i digress... What we're supposed to be discussing is the essence of they-ness which SA banters about--as if it's a done deal to think of all Japanese as enemies, not just the military. Well, not. Obversely, if all japanese were, indeed the 'enemy', genocide might somehow be justifiable.
  14. Actually, you've made my point for me: Churchill, by escalating a bombing campaign far larger in scope than what Hitler did, was not just retaliating. Rather, he was therefore a participant in evil. Moreover, both Goring, Harris, and the B-29 commander in the Pacific admitted to having carried out a policy that was aimed at demoralization through terror. In other words, yiou rightfully call Hitler 'evil' because he terror bombed, but fail to apply the same standard to the allies. Therefore, perhaps you feel that the means of terror-bombing is justifiable if the ends are justified?
  15. Pheremone trails can either trigger a comand mechinism or convey symbolic language. In the former, You can say that the command system varies genetically from one inbred mound to another. This is entirely possible in so far as on mound = one queen = one DNA. Or you can say that chemical trailing is combined with language (gesture/ sound) Or that the reception of a chemical trail is either learned of locked in my a genetic code that won't work in a new mound. Within the realm of symbol, one has to distinguish 'sign' as a set command. for example, a hexagonal, when driving, means 'stop!. Yet in In the former, meaning slides. So as for other animals, yes, it's an interesting question as to how they might symbolize.
  16. Actually, the Brits bombed first. Regrettably, Hitler was correct in saying that the London blitz (and other places, as well including Coventry) were 'payback'. What's truly howling, then, is your lack of google-ship. You can also google up 'Bomber Harris' and find out rather clearly that he had intended to 'bring Germany to her knees by terrorizing the population. Americans dropped the nuclear devices thay had--two , to be exact, so-called fat man and little boy. I'm amazed that anyone doesn't know this. Obviously not having read that much, perhaps, at least you might have seen the movie? The stated plan was to drop as they came off of the factory line, estimated at one a month. Again google-read the statements of the American hi-ups in their own words & see for yourself that they would kill civilaians until Japamn surrendered. Since they barely did (the final vote was split with the Emperor casting the tie-breaker), the American intent, in realistic terms was to exterminate the population until there was no one left. As for bumpeer stickers, the only moralizing I see on them are all about how jesus loves the unborn and who is John galt?
  17. Okay. I've lost the thread, Kindly re-post the Rand citation and I'll offer you a comment on that, and that alone...
  18. A gazillion bodily functions have to work in order to go into deep dreamy sleep. But if you think being 'philosophical' is writing like a Ken Wilbur wannabe, that's okay.
  19. Hume's words in THN, 89, although he never used the word 'induction'.: "....methods that predict or infer, that instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them, which leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved. In other words, how do you tell a good from a bad induction? This, of course, is central to the establishment of causality, against which Hume was famously skeptical..so much so that kant was 'shaken out of his dogmatic slumber'. Keynes was nudged by Ramsay (with Sraffa and Russell) to revitalize Hume for the purposes of attacking the epistemology of Classical Economics. "Hume's eggs" cannot apply for, say, the relationship between interest rates and investment over a period of time....etc... here, induction involves bad probability,
  20. There are three basic & measurable levels of brain activity associated with sleep--or what's called in bio-med, being un-conscious'. Food intake prior to becoming 'unconscious' does, indeed alter the observed waves. Of course, sleep levels differ greatly from those of being awake, or 'conscious'. To this end, I 'spoze that 'body consciousness' has something to do with Zen or pot?
  21. Simply reading up on animal behavior and their disputes with EO Wilson over instinctivity is not 'coming to a conclusion'.
  22. When Planck published his results, most everyone deemed his experiment 'irrelevant' and impertinent'. The few guys (mostly young!) who accepted the importance creade QM. In other words, concretely, at high levels of energy (ultra violet), the basic thermodynamics of input=output is contradicted. The dot-connecting here involved the hypotheses of ..uhhh...real dots (particles). Not generally accepted. One way in which particles became theoretically (conceptually) supportable was by a guy named Einstein who used it to explain the already-known Lorentz modification of Maxwell's electromagnetic band. This became SR: "All Newtonian Mechanics are modified by a third coefficient, the Lorentz" Or F=MAG.
  23. In Justice for Hedgehogs, Dworkin makes the point that doubting everything is an impossible, internal contradiction.
  24. In science, you say that the distinguishing characteristic is causal as opposed to descriptive.Tthe standard of 'perceptual given similarity won't get you anywhere because many things in chemistry look the same, but aren't. Moreover, most gasses give no immeduate perception, being odorless, colorless, and tasteless. If epistemology indicates 'justification', then the episemological winners are the experiments that work, and that explain events better. The periodic table, in any case, was the work of one guy (Mendeleev) with major revisions by another (Seaborg), who offered a clear explanation as to why he jerked out the unstables. His 'epistemology. btw, was widely debated prior to its acceptance. Atomic # , btw, is only the number of protons.
  25. It seems as if you a hopeless cartesian, too. The body plays a role in sleep because it's the body that sleeps. If you don't believe me, try eating blue cheese at bed time.
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