TomL

Hold on just a second. What Geoff asked was: But you claim to never have answered that question. The question calls for an evaluative answer, and you have not directly given one. Do you mean to now tell me that you think its immoral to walk down a street at night in a high-crime area, but its not immoral to smoke knowing the risks of it? There is a difference between evaluating a person in one specific context, and the person in general. Ayn Rand and your mother are both immoral in the specific context of smoking, knowing the high risk of severe consequences to their lives. That statement does not mean that they are overall, in general, immoral people. It means only in one specific context. To evaluate a person overall means to sum up all of the individual, specific contexts in which they can be morally evaluated, with appropriate weight to each context. There are plenty of things about a person which are more important to another's evaluation of them than whether or not they smoke, such as whether or not they steal, or lie to others to get what they want. The smoking is generally only hurting themselves, so its of little consequence to your life or mine that Ayn Rand or your mother smoke(d), so I agree that both may overall be evaluated as "moral" by others and by themselves. But the overall evaluation of "moral" does not wipe out the immorality of those specific contexts in which each person is immoral.

Fine. Then we agree. The fact of Ayn Rand smoking is irrelevant to the ethical question of whether it is moral to smoke. Why are we talking about it then, and why are you so hell-bent on showing what an immoral creature Ayn Rand was? Does this somehow make Objectivism less true?

Only if you first have a philosophy about what the science means. The Christian take on Galileo is that "God made it that way", and on Darwin -- that his conclusions are fallacious based on the "missing link" idea, which they consider to be valid a scientific idea. The science is only as good and usuable as the philosophy used both to perform the science and to interpret it. There is no such thing as "science" apart from "philosophy". All scientific questions are philosophic questions, and there is no reason for anyone to pursue any scientific endeavours except for philosophic reasons. Wrong. Philosophy determines what science measures and how, and what those conclusions mean. Without this, any experiments in any science are completely and utterly meaningless. You can measure cause and effect relationships, but on what basis? How will you determine what are causes and what are effects? Only a philosophy can do that. The subconscious can do things very quickly, without your explicit knowledge, and it does so all the time. This doesn't make it magical, or non-computational, or non-logical. It just means you aren't aware of it or of how it performs this feat.

Quantum mechanices does not suggest any such thing. The premise for subjectivism appears to be validated by it, but this is not the case if you think about the actual experiment more closely. Science does not "suggest" philosophic truth, since philosophy is used to perform the science in the first place. The experiments may be fine, but the philosophy used in concluding what the experiment means is also a factor here. Your "experience of the supernatural" is nothing more than a lack of knowledge on your part. Describe your experience, and I'll tell you where you're wrong. Reality is a not a view, even a common one. Reality simply is, and that's that. It does not need to be viewed, perceived, or thought about in order to exist. It exists independently of the minds of men. Matter is not only energy. We know that matter can be converted into energy. It does not mean that matter is non-matter. Matter is still matter, despite whatever it may be made of or what it may be converted into. Matter still has properties which energy does not, and in that sense it is more than energy. Humans do not have a link between physical reality and the "ethereal", because there is no ethereal. We have consciousness and reason. That doesn't make us magical, it just makes us unique among the existents of the universe of which we are aware. There is no unknown within my mind. I know what it is you speak of. The fact that you don't doesn't change the fact that I do. My idea of the "universe as fixed" remains intact. Before you start talking about how love defines the universe, you should define "love" and "emotion" first. There are definitions. They are even objective! Whether you care to discover them or not is up to you. Being objective and being Objectivist does not mean giving up emotion, love, or happiness. On the contrary, they are part of our nature and we should embrace them. This can be done rationally. There is no dichotomy between reason and emotion. Faith -- the idea that one doesn't need evidence to believe something is true -- is the true enemy of man, not his emotions. It is often confused with trust, which is a different concept altogether. Trust is an idea based on previous experience and results, not on the abscence of such. Trust can earned, faith can only be given as a surrender. In short: trust good, faith bad. The term "reality" does not properly refer to "a individual's set of knowledge". Reality is the entire universe, not just the parts of it that a particular individual is aware of. Reality is a whole, it is the universe. Your mind and your ideas exist in the universe, they only exist apart from the universe in the sense that they are "in here", not "out there". If you weren't confused enough, I'm sure that will put you over the top

In a criminal case, the court-supplied translators needed would be paid for by the loser of the trial. In a civil case, the language will be specified by the original language of the contract between the two parties in dispute -- if not by specific clause, then by the language the contract is written in. The government will not enforce contracts is has not specifically agreed to enforce, so it will probably have rules about what language(s) contracts may be written in, depending on what languages are available in its enforcement courts.

Nowhere did Ayn Rand or anyone else claim that perceptions "circumvent the domain of the ego", and I don't even know what that means. If you mean there is a short-circuit between the senses and something you can't name (awareness?), where reason is bypassed, then you are mistaken. You are confusing consciousness with a conceptual faculty. They are not equivalent. Animals have consciousness, but they cannot and do not form concepts. As far as where you say this fallaciousness stems from, to what logical proposition are you referring? Well of course it does. Consciousness is a prerequisite for integration, differentiation, and all other forms of cognition. That which is not conscious has no need or use for cognition. Out of curiosity, why did you use "cognitive" as an adjective? Is there some other kind of integration or differentiation possible in the field of epistemology? And if that were true, it would not hold up. But it isn't. Also, do not fall into the trap of using science to define philosophy. Philosophy is the arbiter of measurements. Without philosophy one cannot create a system of math, define numbers, or anything upon which the physical sciences depend. All science is philosophy, but philosophy -- as a science involving consciousness, which defines all other science -- does not and cannot use numbers or math. The physical sciences can validate or invalidate philosophy, but they cannot prove or disprove philosophic premise #1. One is using a particular espistemology in either performing the science experiments, doing the math, or reading about the conclusions afterwards. There is an epistemological process involved in all of the above, and there's no way around it. If the underlying philosophy is bad, then so is the science.

Exactly how extensively is "extensively"? Ranked by whom? Ranked how? Among which group of stories, and what groups of stories were included/ommitted from the ranking, and for what reason? Is it at all conceivable that Ayn Rand still did not know, even in the face of this reporting? I was not there in 1964 when this happened. Were you? Let's ask Burgess if he remembers and can give us a first-hand account of the reporting. At any rate, my understanding is that Ayn Rand stopped smoking when she learned from her doctor(s) that her health was being affected. Unless the report contained objective evidence to its conclusions, she would have had every reason to dismiss it out of hand until she had some evidence to the contrary. Perhaps she thought it was needless fear mongering by then -- she had been smoking for 40 years at that point and to her knowledge she was perfectly fine. But this is all pure speculation. You cannot know what she knew or didn't know, or what her entire set of knowledge and thinking on the subject was, and she's not around to ask her. The real problem here is the premise of "If Ayn Rand did it, then it must be moral." Go rationalize someplace else. Ayn Rand was a human being, able to be ignorant and/or make mistakes. The fact of her discovery of Objectivism does not imply that she was infallible in any way. Whether or not Ayn Rand smoked knowing the hazards is irrelevant to whether it is immoral to do so.. it is. You know it, or this thread would not even exist. That is reality, and no man's actions to the contrary may alter it.

If sex to you is a reflex, then our conversation is ended. Sex for man is a celebration, and celebration cannot be reflexive. It requires awareness of something to celebrate. If the sex YOU have is not celebratory -- that's not my fault, but don't tell me I'm an animal just because you are. Everyone wants to justify their evasions in the name of "instinct" or "automatic knowledge" or "biological urges". But for man -- with volition -- none of these things apply to the actions he takes, or to the content of his subconscious mind as far he programs it, explicitly, himself. A is A. It's as simple as that. Fuzzily defining a concept in one's mind doesn't make the fuzziness OK. To objectively define a term, one needs to grasp explicitly the proper genus and differentia for the term, and the concept must be hierarchically built upon other such concepts, all the way down through the perceptual level to the axioms. All higher level concepts presuppose some other concepts -- the definitions of the words depend on the proper definitions of other words, and thus their meaning is only as clear as the definitions of the words upon which they depend. Fuzzily define "chair" and you'll have a fuzzy "furniture" as well. "Sex" is a very, very high level concept with many, many antecedent concepts, and not one that is easily reduced (as observed in the many varied "definitions" for sex that people use and act on). No! Absolutely not. You are equivocating "reflex" with "preference", "mode", and "bias". Your beating heart is not a "preference". Your breathing is not a "mode". Your reflex to pain is not a "bias". It is a reflex -- nothing more, nothing less. It is part of your nature, and needs no other explanation. It has no connection to cognition, i.e. thinking, anymore than the facts that you have toes and/or hair have a connection to cognition. I don't wish to call them either, because they are neither. To do so would be to steal the concept of "knowledge" and reduce it to nothingness. The role that reflexes play in human behavior and development, if any, are neglible to the point of being inconsequential the more knowledge a person gains.

The fact of individual symbols (words) having more than one meaning depending on context does not detract from the objectivity of the definitions themselves. All it means is that context is required in order to determine which definition for a given symbol (word) applies. I also find it hilarious that you would use an ad populum argument to defend an ad populum argument! Oh, the irony... So? The brain is also "pre-programmed" for making your heart beat and breathing. Do you call these things "knowledge"? Is there any evidence for a connection between the "programming" for a beating heart, and anything whatsoever in the conscious mind?

No, it is not. There is a plenty of controversy over the subject between "Objectivists". I am rare in my stance on the subject, actually -- but then again being the odd-man out doesn't automatically make me wrong, either

You mean: if one defines "knowledge" correctly. Argumentum ad populum, as well as argumentum ad verecundiam on the basis that the "experts" cited do not agree, and dictionary authors are not authorities in philosophy. It is not knowledge, it is a reflex. And, since you haven't shown how my exclusion of reflex from being an instance of knowledge is false except through a logical fallacy, then it stands.

I would say there is nothing innate about the human sexual drive. It is purely driven by value-judgements. The discussion of that topic is a complete tangent and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

There are two type of animals in this world: those with volition, and those without. Only man has volition, and only man is born tabula rasa. This is no coincidence. Volition means more than the ability to choose -- it means the ability to choose between life and death in a metaphysical sense. No animal other than man can choose to commit suicide with full knowledge that the act will end the life of the organism. No other animal can choose to take any action which, according to its knowledge and means of living, would purposely contradict its own life (here, the intent may be either explicit or implicit). The only way nature can provide an organism with such an ability -- the ability to choose life or death -- is to first strip it of all automatic knowledge. There is no such thing as volition -- the freedom to chooose one thing over an other regardless of the consequences -- in the face of automatic knowledge. If there were any automatic knowledge whatsoever, then it would be just that -- automatic -- which means that the organism does not have a choice as to what it knows and what it can do with that knowledge. It is entirely possible for a man to not learn even the simplest of human tasks -- isolate him from all other men at birth and see what happens. It is also entirely possible for a man to reject valid, true knowledge and dismiss it as false, thereby explicitly failing to act on it. No other animal can do this. Whatever biological structures are inherent in the human brain at birth, they consist of reflexes, like jerking one's hand back from pain. This is not conceptual knowledge or instinctive knowledge, but a biological reflex. While some of the higher animals do learn certain non-instinctive behavior from their parents, most of their knowledge is instinctive, such as their play instincts, or the instinct to remain with their mother. To summarize: both concepts and instincts are a form of knowledge, while reflexes are not knowledge at all in any form. It is entirely possible that science may one day show that there is a direct connection between language, its structure, and some human reflex associated with hearing and/or vision. But it will never show that a reflex is knowledge (either conceptual or instinctive), because it isn't. The scientists who are doing this research should study epistemology and think very hard about the difference between a reflex and an instinct before they write their conclusions and present the world with more false information than it already has. Philosophy is the arbiter of science, not the other way around. Without a philosophic basis, there can be no math, no physics, no psychology, or any other science. The quality of the science and its conclusions depends entirely upon the philosophy of the scientist, whether implicit or explicit, and how consistently he adheres to that philosophy without fuzzying out, floating any concepts, or compartmentalizing. Unfortunately, the majority of today's scientists are highly compartmentalized and see no value whatsoever in studying philosophy. They care only about their science, not seeing that they need a consistent, true philosophy in order to study it properly.

Math is indispensible to physical science. It is the only means by which physical scientists may induce. Philosophy explains the relation of math to reality, i.e. what numbers are. It cannot use numbers to do so! Philosophy is the arbiter of measurements -- it subsumes the proper relationship between one object (the universe) and consciousness. The message of philosophy is "perceive reality", and philosophy doesn't need and cannot use numbers to express it. Philosophy is pressupossed by all math -- there is no math without philosophy first. All math is built upon philosophic premise. Philosophy has primacy over all other sciences. Your attempts at inducing or deducing philosophic truths (upon which math itself depends) through math are a failure to recognize this basic fact. It is similiar to trying to deny one of the axioms and being forced to use it in the process.

A first-hander does not assume any such thing about anyone, including Ayn Rand. But the fact of not assuming it makes it no less true upon inspection. She did not. She had elements of strength misinterpreted by her opponents as bitterness. I cannot imagine where anyone could find any "weakness" in anything Ayn Rand did -- I haven't seen anything that could be interpreted as such. But then I often assume people are more first-handed than they actually are. Philosophy is a not a process. Philosophy is a guide for living. If its premises are wrong, the the life lived by it will be less than it otherwise could be. And just because a 100 on the quiz happens to be really hard is NO reason whatsoever to throw one's hands in the air in despair and shoot for a 90. Again, I stress the importance of grasping that the ideal is what's practical. See Chapter 9 of OPAR. It's not the persona of Rand or Peikoff which is of paramount concern. It is the ideas they came up with, which -- regardless of whatever other errors they made -- are true and useful for living, if one learns how to use them.

One of the biggest mistakes is trying to explain it to people who don't care. It's one thing to explain something when honest questions are asked, but to evangelize about individualism is... well... silly. My best advice: If they aren't honestly interested, don't bother. Wait for honest interest before expending energy on the explanation.

It most certainly depends on, at the very least, stating what you think the inconsistentcy is, thereby suggesting possible alternatives. You have not done so. All you have done is say "this is inconsistent." With what? How? Well you're the one that brought it up! Why bother? You have asked how things are contradictory that are self-evidently so. For example: No. The fact that reason depends on the validity of the senses is not a "proposition". Tell me why it is not a "definition" and I'll tell you, as I could guess Ayn Rand would have herself, to "look and see." Who cares how people use it? We don't. We only care about what it actually is, not the mob's misguided, floating, and fuzzy notion of it. Then do so, instead of implying that a true definition comes from consensus rather than reality. Oh really? What the heck is that, then? Just as soon as you give us the common definition! The context is "reason". The definitions are: Induction: the primary process of reaching knowledge that goes beyond perception through a process of valid generalization. Valid generalization, in turn, requires valid concept formation, and a hierarchy beginning with self-evident first-level generalizations, to which all generalizations must be reducable. It also requires the contextual discovery of causal connections using the methods of difference and agreement (which I can explain further if you like). Deduction: a secondary process of reaching knowledge that goes beyond perception by subsuming new instances of known generalizations. Thus, any deduction presupposes prior inductions, and thus induction has primacy over deduction. Go ahead, attack the suggestion I gave! Who's stopping you?! What suggestions? Where?

Yes, they do depend on that by corollary. To say that "this part of this statement could be wrong" is the same thing as saying "this part of this statement might actually be <something else>". The fact of you not being explicitly aware of what the <something else> is (possibly buried in your subconscious mind) doesn't change the fact, and is only further evidence of wishy-washiness. Every concept (word) actually has one and only one objective definition. A is A. Many words represent multiple concepts in different contexts, thus the fact that words have multiple definitions. The fact of a mob improperly, innacurately, or completely failing to acknowledge an objective definition for a given concept does not wipe that objective definition from reality, nor does it make the "common" definition correct. Agreed. It most certainly does. Arguments of the type which try to simply argue that a given idea is wrong but offers no assertion of a correct solution itself, offer no way to refute the assertion that the original idea is wrong. You simply want to cast shadow and doubt on the idea and leave it like that -- in a dark cloud, unable to be penetrated or grasped clearly by anyone. Any alternative suggested by you could be attacked by us and thereby give more clarity to the actual definition, which is something you clearly wish to avoid. I can only imagine why.

What is really needed is a book that shows people how to apply Objectivism. There are at least two key elements in moving from understanding Objectivism into doing Objectivism (that I've identified in the last 20 seconds of thinking): 1. One must learn to think in principle. Non-Objectivists rarely think in abstractions, they almost always deal only with the concretes of the range of the moment. 2. One must learn what introspection is, and how and when to do it. If you've got more, feel free to add them.

No. It implies that our own lives can be enriched and improved by having more rational people around us to trade with -- and to accomplish that, we have to show them rather explicitly how they are being irrational.

It's not arbitrary; its objective. All the facts of it are tied together. And no one says you have to convert the world! First, you have to take care of yourself. Please, please, please -- re-read my first post. What you are begging for is HOW TO USE Ojbectivist epistemology. Please also see my blog entry Introspection, Part 1 for the answer! Not directly. No philosophy does that directly -- it takes effort on your part. You must use Objectivist epistemology and introspect to gain what you are seeking!

Kevin, I think I know what you're talking about when you say men take dating too seriously, but you're phrasing it wrong. The fact is that men worry about dating too much -- about what women want, and not enough on actually being the hero that a woman wants. If a man simply focuses on being the best man he can, then his heroicism will be genuine. If he focuses on it only in respect to dating, any heroicism the woman sees in him is likely to be faked for her benefit, and doesn't carry over into his actual character. You see no contradiction in those two statements? Fascinating. Tell me, what is the difference between romantic interest and romantic involvement, in the context of a date? A date is romantic involvement -- it is the progression from "interest" into involvement. Asking a woman out on a date only on the basis of her looks is the same as treating her as a piece of meat. You yourself have said that she should have some romantic interest in the man before dating him -- and "romance" is a concept that requires knowledge of a person's character. Period. I am almost totally in agreement with you though on the "dating after marriage" tangent. Values are things to be gained and kept -- which means they require maintenance in order to preserve them. However, that doesn't mean that the man should do things he despises. If the couple is truly right for each other, there ought to be enough common interests that they can do something together that they both enjoy. At the very least, do two things together: one that he enjoys and she doesn't, and vice versa. That is a completely valid form of trade. But to say it should be all for her and nothing for him will only cause resentment. Why not have it all?

The disgusting premise you try to smuggle in here and which runs throughout your post is that one's happiness depends on other people, "somehow". It does not.

Case in point: you should be introspecting as to the cause of that jealousy (an ugly little emotion if I might say). What implicit premises are you carrying around that cause you to feel this way? Once you discover them, you must (dare I say religiously?) eradicate this part of your subconscious. Simply knowing it is wrong does not make you stop feeling it -- you must reprogram your subconscious. Mull over the reasons, repeat to yourself why your implicit premises are wrong until you feel better. Do this each and every time you feel jealousy for the same thing, and eventually it will go away.

Here's what I've come up with on this issue. People new to Objectivism are prone to overlooking the branch of epistemology. Many people are interested primarily in metaphysics, or ethics, or politics -- but few are initially introduced by way of epistemology and thus the means by which they can USE the philosophy eludes them. The key to USING Objectivism, and thus increasing one's happiness, lies in grasping Objectivist epistemology in the widest sense possible. As my wife pointed out, this is probably why Ayn Rand herself wrote ITOE and left OPAR for someone else. The reason I say "the widest sense possible" is that many studying epistemology fall into the trap of focusing in too narrowly on specific points, and never stepping back and reintegrating all those small points into one, cohesive picture of epistemology. This is absolutely necessary if one is to learn not only what the best tools are for increasing happiness (introspection!) but how to do it (observing oneself as a 3rd party) and when to do it (everytime an emotion is felt). The rest of Objectivism gives one the premises to use in rebuilding, refining, or reinforcing one's emotional mechanism. Only epistemology can drive the process and MAKE it happen.