frank harley

Perhaps a fertile way of defining the issue would be to say that each species of animal has a 'cosciousness' particular to its own genre. In other words, dogs and homo sapiens are each conscious in their own way. To extend this a bit, i might suggest that consciousness is, by definition, those learning traits specific to a particular species. In the very least, this perspective would abolish the 'next to god' or 'spark of godliness' assumptions that underlie and sabotage much of the inquiry into animal learning. Of course, those of philosophical; bent will recognize this as the Cartesian issue of dualism redux...speaking of which...a good arrticle would be Nagel's "What's it like to be a bat?"....

First, i believe that it's important to understand that Hume's attack on induction was against Bacon: his 'new method was insufficient, not wrong. For Hume, Innate ideas belong within the realm of imagination, as does the existencof god. This diovision between the sensible 'is' and the imaginitive 'ought' is what is referred to as 'Hume's fork'. They are simply incommensurate domains--hence the Kantian challenge to re-unite them, so to speak. Is metaphysics, defined as the synthetice a priori, possible? The twist to Hume was to have doubted the verifiability of sensory data to begin with. So yes, for better or worse, this puts him at odds with 'existence (as sensory data) exists (as a true entity)'.. But he knew this all along, and his critique of Bacon was made precisely on these grounds. Induction is 'true' if and only if all of the paerticular empirical facts are themself true. In other words, inductively, 'tuna, salmon, bass= fish, yes; tuna, salmon, whale=fish, no. So what kind of background information do we neeed to tell us thqat a whale is not a species of fish?.

First, there are two relativities--not 'a' theory with two parts. Special says that the Lorentz contraction is present as a third coefficient in all Newtonians. General calculates how gravity bends light.As the velocity of light serves as a standard © by which both time and distance can be measured, gravity 'reletivizes' this measurement. Now i'll be happy to go into greater detail, but my basic point is that before you 'do' philosoophy, you need to grasp the science. * The two relativities are first of all...equations. If you don't understand the equations, all further commentary is useless. * 'Space' isn't empty * The universe, while expanding, has finite boundaries, or an 'edge'. Weyl geodesics explains how gravity works in these far reaches, absent of any mass. * In sum, there is not an 'Objectivist' physics, rather objectivist insights as to what physics means. Fierts, know the physics, Or as Kant said, 'Dare to know'. FH FH

U-238 'yellowcake' is a as finite a resource as oil. For the french, it's primarily mined in the 'Azwan', or the northen flood plain of the Niger River in the upper part of Mali. It's inhabited by Tuaregs, and the seasonal farming there goes back some 20,000 years. French exploitation will become far more expensive now due to the influx of modern weapons; the Tuaregs have always fought back, since 1900. Herbert used this struggle as the basis for his novels, 'Dune'.

Band shifting towards red indicate that galaxies are moving apart. As for the bounce-back, they already have, from the time of the universe's creation. With hearing devices that are sufficiently sensitive, we can listen to the primordal echo of the big bang...

>>>why a 10mm line, 10mm x 10mm area and a 10mm x 10mm x 10mm cube contain the same number of points<<<< Cantor wrote that because the infinities of line and space are different, they are therefore real. >> find time as a method of recognition or establishing a unit of motion with which to measure other units of motion quite satisfactory.>>> You could not do the math or either of the two relitivities with this notion of time. My explicit philosophical position is the orthox one in this regard: A+A is logic, not epistemology. It's statement cannot justify truth because everyone feel that their own A's equal real A's.

My respect for the practice of science was given in my three statements listed above. All practitioners of science appeal to authority, reference reality, and take prior scientific knowledge to be self-evidently true. That being said, again, the epistemological standard would reside elsewhere...

It bounces back and is received by ultra-sophisticated microwave devices....as waves.

1) Abbot is free to look up Cantor's proofs at his own convenience. So are you. If, after reading,either of you decide that it's within the 'flat earth' genre, i'll be happy to explain. Otheriwse, you're statement is empty rhetoric. 2) No, according to both Relativites, time is a basic constituent as to what the universe consists. Parmenides did not do Physics. :"Space" is not 'relational' as far as Physics goes. Rather it's a meaphor that's basically nonsense. 3) A=A is not epistemology. rather. logic. As epistemology is abouit how we justify statements as true, to claim that such statement is A-true because it's A is a hopeless tautology. FH

Relative to plutonium and 238>235, thorium is cheep, a serious pollutant, and low-level output. For this reason, Savannah was abandoned. FH

It would seem to me as if such statements are made by those who want to sound 'philosophical' in a cocktail party. According to my eldest in her pre-teen years, a character from Saved By the Bell, replied to "I think, therefore i am", with "And if i think not, am I not?" I had to tolerate that one for about two weeks!

Yes, Cantor proved that there are many actual infinities. The universe is not outside of time, and is filled with 'things' as an astro-physical fact. ther is no void, hence, no 'space'. That the universe is relatively flat with an edge enables microwaves to bounce back, from said edge, thereby offering big-bang evidence. Lastly, I'm really not sure as to whether statements of formal logic such as A=A have much to do with the understanding of science.

You're assuming that there is only one possible explanation that does not involve contradiction, ignorance, or evasion. Yet the practice of science refutes your assumption on a daily basis. *As what passes as contradictions are those statements of one's rivals, in most cases an informed outsider is unable to refereeas to which party is the more contradictive. * As the knowledger base is shared, no one can be said to be 'ignorant". * All parties act openny, and without evasion. So again, the matter of truth-belief justification remains up in the air, in so far as Rand wrote of 'epistemology'. All she's said are that some people are ignorant, some contradict themselves, and some are evasive. This is as helpful as opposing welfare on the grounds of a welfare Cadillac.

>>any given contents may be integrated or differentiated freely, while only one option is correct.<<, The point of having an 'epistemology' is to distinguish which one is true. I don't see arnd as having offered any criteria for this. >>>Reality" is the interpretation of sensations as being caused by something quantifiable,<<< We all know that what is is that which is either caused or causal. Aristotle has been around for a long time; we don't need Rand to tell us this. Aristotelian accounts were challenged in these gronds, in any case: many contradicting cauusal accounts are given, only which one is true. Again, epistemology is spozed to indicate which, noyt offer us a primer in Aristotle. >>>the elegance of Objectivist epistemology; it's only a formalization of the way every fully-functional adult already thinks.<<< That's my point in having brought in neuro sci: it's what everyone does because we're all rigged this way. But this isn't 'epistemology', which accounts for a) differences in reason(s) and which reason is correct, assuming, again, all reasonable candiidates are causal? FH

Well, I obviously agree that epistemology cannot be reductable to neuro sci. My point, however, is that in default of critera as to how 'correct' bundleing of perceptions is done in order to create concepts that are 'true', Rands's account sounds like...neurosci. perhaps, for the sqake of argument her story as been amended by other of whom i'm not aware. I likewise agree that volition plays a huge role in not only how we bundle,, but also what gets bundled to begin with. Kany said as much. His dogmatic slumber, as it were, was to have assumed in a Baconian sort of way that scientific-grade sensory data was automatically induced into causal statements. In passing, this indicates that no real 'epistemology would be needed: we sense, we process, we just form the right concepts,and that's that. FH

Dream and A, According to Rand,sensory data as 'perceptions' are processed into concepts by the brain. 'Bundleing is my term whic adequately describes how snmll bits of data become a general idea, or 'concept'. So yes,, my point is that neuroscience-- true, false, or otherwise is-- not epistemology. But this is theonly account of epistemology that Rand seems to offer. We all derive concepts from putting data bites of experience together. To a certain extent, this might be called 'induction'. Yet this sameness works against Rand's epistyemology as such: what, in her book, counts for a 'true' concept versus a 'false' one in sofar as all concepts derive from the process of reasoning?

Yes, indeed, there are real arguments as to whether generated randomness is really 'random'. Again, from a mathematician's pov, the issue of predictability. So yes, to 'Dream Weaver': 'non-predictibility' stands as a sufficient definition without genus classification and yes, perhaps, Harrison that 'arbitrary might easily stand for 'random', It's just that the later has always been in current use.

Part of the fallacy issue as described is that objectivist 'epistemology' assumes that all concepts that are created by the bundleing of perceptions are necessarily true. But in reality, many different people employ the same 'perception bundling' method to derive concepts that are different. Likewise, there is obvious dispute as to what the perceptive inputs are, varying as it were from person to person. In this sense, Rand's 'epistemology' is only a rough outline as to how the brain processes and derives concepts fronm sensory inputting. But again, this is what everyone does. As such, it cannot account for the justification of beliefs, whci is what 'epistemology is supposed to do.