Doug Morris

Again, you are the one who contaminated this discussion with an impossible counterfactual.

If anyone claims that there are lots of flaws in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, the burden is on them to exhibit such flaws. Ayn Rand has done this in her books. My understanding is that Ayn Rand's objection to debate has to do with the debate format, as opposed to the presenting ideas format, and with her experience that people who wanted to debate her never understood her views, making the debate worthless. Schisms in Objectivism have been discussed elsewhere, most recently in the thread "That Kelley creature". I don't see any point in rehashing this here. My point is that If anyone claims that there are lots of flaws in anything that has been proven, the burden is on them to exhibit such flaws.

You are the one who contaminated this discussion with an impossible counterfactual. Maybe I would have done better to ignore that post. My point is that the evils of history do not show that humans are by nature evil. They are the result of a lack of good ideas.

Reason is a mental faculty. It emerges from a physical substrate which is still not very well understood. It is not yet known to what extent differences in reasoning ability are genetic, to what extent they are environmental, and to what extent they are the result of choices made by the individual early in life. It is a statist abomination to impose a one-size-fits-all approach from above that is supposed to improve the human race. Parents who try to do something genetic to improve their children need to be very careful to make sure that they are acting in the child's best interests. ************* In general, you seem to be taking a very simplistic, distorted view of evolution. Can you provide any quotations or links to back up what you are saying?

This does not follow. I was not claiming that this was an argument for Objectivism. I was claiming that this was why history had worked out so badly. If anyone proves that there are lots of flaws in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, or in Einstein's theory of relativity, or in the theory of chemical bonds in its modern form, or in the theory of evolution as formulated by modern biologists, then whatever has been proven to be flawed will have to be reworked or replaced. We shouldn't treat this as a serious possibility unless there is strong enough evidence for the existence of such a proof,

Yes, although that would have been impossible, because first the philosophy must be formulated, and then people have to learn it.

Yes, although there may have been more than one mutation, and one gene can affect the functioning of other genes.

Our concepts are built up from perceptions by a complicated process that includes abstraction from abstractions. We can set up a Fahrenheit or Celsius temperature scale with a zero point and then perceive that there are lower temperatures. There are other examples of negative numbers, such as negative net worth, that we can arrive at after we have built up conceptual knowledge that starts with perceptions. Also ultimately based on perception, with a lot of conceptual work along the way.

"a Ukraine government run by a neo-Nazi gang (the Azov Battalion) with a puppet president (Zelensky)." What are your grounds for this accusation?

Non-rational (lacking the faculty of reason), not irrational (having it but failing to use it). There is plenty of evidence, including but not limited to comparisons of genomes, that we share common ancestors with all other animals, none of which are rational as we are. Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the senses. One crucial feature is the ability to form concepts, as discussed in ITOE.

What are your grounds for this accusation?

It has always been true that more countries have authoritarian governments than relatively free ones. Even in the relatively free ones there have been lots of mistakes, which have done a lot of harm. There have also been lots of wars and mass murders.

This is different from what LB said. Evolution in this way is how we acquired the faculty of reason. Once we had reason, we used it to acquire morality.

I won't argue with you about Freud. Can you back up your claim about Darwin?

The crucial reason history has worked out so badly so far is that people have had too little in the way of good ideas to guide them, and too much in the way of bad ideas. Ayn Rand has provided better ideas which, once they become widely enough known, will make better results possible. There is plenty of data about how people perform when the mysticism/altruism/collectivism axis of ideas dominates the culture. How much data is there about how people perform when the reason/egoism/individualism axis of ideas dominates the culture?

Can you be more specific?

It is not altruism to care about others. It is altruism to sacrifice oneself for others. We should use reason alone to achieve knowledge and make decisions. But in our reasoning we must consider every relevant part of reality, including our own feelings where relevant. There are irrational people in the world. To the extent that they have power, it may be necessary to try to understand them for the purpose of judging what they are likely to do. This is fully consistent with understanding that they should not be irrational.

I'm not sure how consistent usage is here, but I've seen the distinction drawn as follows. Decriminalization makes the penalty just a fine. Legalization makes it totally legal.

My admittedly not carefully-thought-out reaction: too bad this wasn't done. We may end up with something like this anyway, but probably without free movement, and definitely without having saved lives.

Should we be saying productivity or productiveness? I understand the latter to refer to the virtue and the former to refer to measuring the amount produced or the rate at which it is produced. A quick peek at the Ayn Rand lexicon indicates that this is how she uses the words.

The United States is badly contaminated by mixed-economy statism and the resulting pressure-group warfare. But isn't it a serious exaggeration to call the United States a corrupt kleptocratic empire?

The virtues are for living on earth. A desert island is part of earth. From the Ayn Rand lexicon: You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most.

You may be in a situation that is both unstable and unusual, but you still have to do the best you can.

No, you still must produce what you need.

Peikoff's key point about Kelley is to class Kelley with those who "reject the concept of “objectivity” and the necessity of moral judgment" and "sunder fact and value, mind and body, concepts and percepts". I'm not convinced that Peikoff was right to class Kelley in this way. It seems to me that Peikoff and Kelley are using the phrase "closed system" in different senses. If we are to make an important issue of whether Objectivism is "open" or "closed", we need to carefully analyze what this should be taken to mean. If we are to evaluate Kelley on the basis of this issue, we must make sure we correctly understand what he meant.