Doug Morris

No, borders still matter for defining jurisdiction and military aggression. Open borders means borders should not limit people's freedom of movement and should not limit their freedom to produce and trade.

Godel's result applies only to systems that consist exclusively of logically deducing propositions from other propositions. It does not apply to any system that involves induction or reasoning on the level of concepts or starting with the evidence of the senses or checking conclusions against reality. Thus it applies neither to human cognition nor to Ayn Rand's philosophy. Concepts are very different from sets.

Can you quote from Rand to back this up? The axioms are good without exception. Human cognition is not a formal system of the sort studied by Godel. Sets are real mental entities, but if badly defined they give results that are nonsense, not counterexamples to the laws of logic.

Physicists are still arguing about how to interpret QM. But how does it violate our laws of logic? Relativity does not violate any laws of logic. All it does is show that concepts such as simultaneity are not as simple as traditionally believed. Godel's incompleteness theorem does not violate any laws of logic or show that anything does. All it does is show that any given formal system is not enough to prove everything. Russell's paradox does not show that reality violates any laws of logic. All it does is show that if we are reckless in how we define sets, our definitions do not make sense. How does the question of how experiences arise in the brain show that anything fails to conform to our intellectual laws of logic?

If I point and then sweep my pointing hand around to indicate different directions, how is this different from pointing at the universe as we know it? What is the significance of the word "solid" in this statement?

Why? It is possible to mathematically define two sets of points that are identical except for handedness and to prove mathematically that they are congruent, but that neither can be superimposed on the other by rigid motion. Isn't this a way of grasping the difference through concepts without relying on perception? The distance between objects affects how they can interact with each other and how easy and/or quick it is to get from one to the other. Doesn't this allow a way of grasping "near" and "far" through concepts without relying on perception?

Can you give examples?

To be blunt, you seem very confused about Ayn Rand. If you are going to comment on her, it would help if you read her more carefully and more thoroughly.

Her starting point is axiomatic concepts, which are metaphysical, not epistemological. (Even though she covered them in the epistemology book.)

Try studying The Virtue of Selfishness and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. If you study both and still think her philosophy was Platonic, please explain.

Maybe you should try reading Ayn Rand yourself first.

Would you approve of outlawing anchovies? Would you approve of outlawing honey? Would you approve of outlawing physics textbooks? Would you approve of outlawing blood sausages? If your answer to any of the above questions is no, does it necessarily follow that you sell the item in question? Ayn Rand was for the legalization of recreational drugs, but she would never sell them or advise anyone to use them.

We don't necessarily recognize one another. But there are various organizations and websites where we can hope to find one another.

You need to quote more extensively from Ayn Rand to have a solid case. The reason I brought up what she said in print about evolution was to lend support to my question:

Actually, I'm a mathematician, not a physicist. But I know something about physics.