Doug Pridgen

Rational discussion typically involves two or more peoples. Otherwise it is a monologue. So your analogy is inaccurate. I chose to talk to you because you said something that piqued my curiosity. If you are unable or unwilling to participate, to answer honest questions, then so be it. You are the one who accused Peikoff of being a rationalist without providing evidence and rational argument to support the assertion. Are you still confused?

Why are you fixated on Peikoff? Ayn Rand chose him as her intellectual heir. She read and approved the article on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. Therefore, by your reasoning, Ayn Rand is a rationalist. But why are you talking about people instead of ideas? I think that tendency is in itself telling.

Are you saying that tautologies are statements that have no content? If so then how is that different from saying they aren't statements? Also, isn't your example about the moon a dichotomy rather than a tautology? "Either the moon is made of cheese or it isn't" is different from "moons made of cheese are comprised of cheese". I know what rationalism is, and I know Lebniz had some belief about monads, but know little beyond that about "Leibnizian rationalism". Would you care to clarify or elaborate, since I know quite a bit about Objectivism and would be very surprised to find out it has a lot in common with rationalism of any variety. My understanding is that rationalism requires no observation of physical reality, no induction, but only deduction from presupposed postulates. It's like a non-religious philosophical version of theology. If that is what you think then it's not surprising you view tautologies as statements having form but devoid of content.

Are you saying humans are fully rational after birth? I work with adults and pass people on the way to work and at the grocery store (and so on) on a daily basis who are evidently not yet fully rational. Do you differentiate between accepting reason as an exclusive cognitive method and guide to action as opposed to living second-hand as a dependent thinker on the conclusions of others (without understanding their derivation)?

What claims did you make? I'll gladly address those if you can clearly state them. I can't help it if your rhetoric lacks clarity.

human_mudra, you appear to be equating desire with value, as in the fact that someone desires x makes x a value and that desires and values are always congruent. The mere fact that someone desires something doesn't tell them whether what is desired is valuable or not, the standard being whether it promotes their life, leads to self-fulfillment, benefits rather than harms them. You said a homosexual's desire is consistent with their values by default, whether they are rational or not, at least by implication. This is untrue of everyone, irrespective of sexual orientation. If you are not interested in ethics then why are you discussing desires and values, while apparently equating the two? They aren't the same thing.

Thanks for this clarification Nicky, as it further elucidates the point I was trying to make. Whether a person is attracted to the same gender, the opposite gender, or both genders has no relevance morally, any more than their ethnicity does. A black man can choose to act and behave like Neil Degrasse Tyson or Mike Tyson, and that will determine his moral character, but not his ethnicity. Likewise, as you rightly point out, it is not which gender you are attracted to that has moral significance, but the specific person of that gender. Excellent post.

Your opening statement strikes me as pretentious, but I'll ignore it as non-essential, apart from pointing out that homosexuality is quite common among non-human animals. Since they lack volitional consciousness, being limited to sense-perception, how would you explain this? They obviously aren't making a choice. I never said "the only choice." The acceptance (or abandonment) of reason is the primary choice. Are you suggesting people who evade, drift, and adopt their concepts second-hand lack desires? Granted they have failed to evaluate in the specific sense of the rational appraisal and prioritization of values, but desires are metaphysically given, not man-made. To fail to recognize that distinction is to operate on a primacy of consciousness premise. In your next statement you correctly identify the acceptance (or abandonment) of reason as the primary choice. I agree. Next, speaking as a heterosexual, I can find a woman visually appealing, and therefore sexually stimulating, before knowing anything else about her. If I talk to her, and she turns out to have values that are inconsistent with mine, as well as an irritating or otherwise undesirable personality traits, then the sexual stimulation diminishes. No matter how visually appealing the woman, this additional information has vetoed any possibility of intercourse (assuming she would have agreed in the first place). You don't have all of this information just by looking at a person. Introspection has nothing to do with any of this, unless by introspection you mean my definition of evaluation (the rational appraisal and prioritization of values). The process I described above is extrospective. That's all I have to say for now, apart from the fact that there is a recent--scientifically peer-reviewed--study identifying two chromosomes on the human genome that indicate a correlation to homosexuality. I'm not claiming the article is correct, since I'm not a biologist. You can read it and judge for yourself, if you're interested, but I really don't think it's truth or falsehood is essential to what I have already stated.

Desires are not choices. Whether or not you act on a desire is a choice. When you say "desires are the psychological manifestations of your values," are you talking about as in a rationally appraised and prioritized hierarchy of values? You have desires before you evaluate in that way, and those desires are not "psychological manifestations" of rational values, since they are not chosen. Are you saying a person's sexual preference is entirely chosen and not genetic at all? If so, can you point me to evidence to support this claim?

Are these your arguments? Not being homosexual, I cannot speak on their behalf, but I know that in my own case the fact that I am sexually attracted to females is not a choice. I would therefore conclude the same is true for those who are attracted to people of like gender, or people who are attracted to both. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice? We are perhaps getting off topic. I'm just curious if this is what you believe.

It's an ad baculum fallacy. Is appeal to consequences another name for it? Another point of note is that there is no wager, since there is no evidence or data that would provide for the calculation of a probability. Since god is an invalid concept, not one derived from sense-perception, there is nothing indicated and therefore nothing to wager.

As many here have already pointed out, lots of people deny the Law of Identity on a daily basis. It's not stupid, being the basis of valid inference through non-contradictory identification, and it's not a theorem, it's a tautology. It impacts everyone's life all the time. Aristotle formulated the Law of Non-Contradiction, not the Law of Identity, although the LoI is implicit in the LoN-C. So Aristotle indicated the LoI, by implication, as the basic principle of logic, in his explication of the LoN-C.

I am. This was posted five years ago, but if you're still on here let me know.