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norak

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  1. norak

    Beauty by Race

    I have never heard of this idea either, but I do know that Ayn Rand wrote an essay on racism in her book The Virtues of Selfishness.
  2. In a piece denouncing Objectivism, Rothbard claims there is a neo-Randian group called Students of Objectivism for Rational Bestiality. This brings up the question of whether bestiality is moral under Objectivism and whether it is rational. Objectivism holds that pursuit of happiness is moral. Sex in pursuit of happiness is selfish and also moral and rational. Sex between humans and non-human animals or any transspecies intercourse has the additional benefit of zero risk of pregnancy, meaning there is no worries about having to rush to the abortion clinic the day after. Some people criticism bestiality, saying that non-human animals cannot consent to sex and therefore sex with animals goes against their freedom. However, if this were true then killing animals for food would be immoral as well and we should all be vegetarians. When humans kill animals for food the animals certainly don't consent to being killed. Killing an animals is done at the expense of the animal's will and for the pleasure of meat-eating humans.
  3. What is my theory of morality? I merely state that Objectivists believe in moral absolutism. Is it moral to eat peanuts or not? To answer that question we must ask, moral according to which morality system? I was talking about Objectivism, which is a system of morality. Objectivism states that it is moral for an individual to persue life and happiness, so eating tasty healthy peanuts would be moral and so would avoiding poisonous peanuts. How can a definition not be self-evident? How can you prove a definition? For example, in law you must define what a child is before you decide whether someone is guilty of statutory rape. How can you prove that a child is someone under 18? You don't prove it. It is just defined as such. Proof would be reasoning like the following: You raped someone under 18. A child is defined as someone under 18. Therefore, you raped a child.
  4. That's a brilliant idea, Mammon. When I grow up that's what I plan to do.
  5. We know what Objectivism says about the freedom of individuals to run their own business. This is the ethics of capitalism. Marriage and family can be seen as a business. Just as an employer can hire multiple accountants because there is just too much work to be done wouldn't that ethic carry-over into family so that we can say that a man or woman may want multiple spouses to satisfy a desire for greater variety of sex partners. If it is immoral to have multiple spouses then wouldn't it also be immoral to have multiple cars?
  6. With this example, the question of what is moral or not can be generalized. You can generalize by asking, "Is the pursuit of happiness moral or immoral?" If yes then eating peanuts when you can is moral while not eating peanuts when you can't is immoral. I think your idea of morality may be different to my idea of morality. Morality is "concern with the distinction between good and evil." With regards to whether you should eat peanuts or not, that doesn't strike me as an issue of good versus evil. But it does generalize down to whether pursuit of happiness is good or evil and Objectivism supports pursuit of happiness. Morality being absolute means that it is fixed and universal. What is good and evil is the same no matter where you are. E.g. child rape would be evil whether or not you are in country A or country B. However, the opposite of moral absolutism is moral relativism, the idea that there is no one truly correct code of morality and that what is good or evil depends on the culture and environment you are in. So in one culture child rape may be good and in another culture child rape may be evil. "Moral absolutism is the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act. "Absolutism" is often philosophically contrasted with moral relativism, which is a belief that moral truths are relative to social, cultural, historical or personal references, and to situational ethics, which holds that the morality of an act depends on the context of the act." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism That's nice of you to think your definitions correspond to reality, but that does raise the question of whether definitions do in fact exist in reality or whether definitions are primarily perspective-based. Suppose we defined a car to be a piece of metal with four wheels. How can we be certain that is the universally correct definition? I'm not attacking you, I just want to start a discussion about whether definitions exist as objective reality or not. Before I starting my reasoning, I defined my terms. These definitions are axioms. They are the starting points before the reasoning. According to Google, an axiom is "a proposition that is not susceptible of proof or disproof; its truth is assumed to be self-evident." Or "In epistemology, an axiom is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest, from which other knowledge is built up. Not all epistemologists agree that any axioms, understood in that sense, exist." A definition is assumed to be self-evident and from the definitions I provided, conclusions are derived through logical reasoning. But of course, are definitions right just because the dictionary says so? Why then are there multiple dictionaries instead of just one correct dictionary? When it comes to the definition of cat and dog, there is a wide consensus on what is a cat and what is a dog. The probability of miscommunication therefore is lower. Political correctness, on the other hand, seems to have huge variety in definitions just as the word "Western" does (e.g. most people don't know whether Japan or Russia are Western countries or not). The definition I have seen here, that political correctness is "nihlism of Western culture" doesn't make life easier because the meaning of the word "Western" itself seems to change depending on who you ask. Some believe it depends on form of government derived from Ancient Greek teaching, e.g. republicanism and democracy, and in that case then Japan is Western. But some believe it has more to do with whether the country was capitalist or communist during the Cold War and so some believe Russian is not Western. This definition that political correctness is anti-Western culture doesn't seem to be mentioned based on quick definition searches I've made. According to Google's definition collection of political correctness: Definitions of political correctness on the Web: * A trend that wants to make everything fair, equal and just to all by supressing thought, speech and practice in order to acheive that goal. www.information-entertainment.com/Politics/polterms.html * avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude or marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn * Political correctness is a term generally used to disparage efforts to raise awareness about and eliminate social and political biases in language and other forms of representation. The term also appears in the adjectival form politically correct (often abbreviated PC). While it frequently refers to a linguistic phenomenon, it is also extended to cover political ideology and behavior. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness Perhaps Dave you could provide us with your definitions for the following terms: political correctness, the West, and multiculturalism. With the definitions worked out there will be less miscommunication.
  7. Morality as objective I recall is a cornerstone of Objectivism, as opposed to moral relativism. Quote of Ayn Rand I can find: "Reality, the external world, exists independent of man's consciousness, independent of any observer's knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires or fears. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they areā€”and that the task of man's consciousness is to perceive reality, not to create or invent it." "Reason is man's only proper judge of values and his only proper guide to action.... Rationality is man's basic virtue, and his three fundamental values are: reason, purpose, self-esteem." http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pag...vism_essentials As Ayn Rand says in one of her books, if there is a problem then likely you need to check your premises and maybe this case is just a case of differences of definition, in particular the definition of political correctness and multiculturalism. Axiomatically I am defining political correctness as censorship to conform to a particular culture. This is monoculturalism. Therefore (1) political correctness=monoculturalism. Anything is either A or not A. Either a government is monoculturalist or not monoculturalist. Not being monoculturalist is being multiculturalist. So (2) either a government is monoculturalist or multiculturalist. Combine (2) and (1) to get (3) either a government is politically correct or multiculturalist. Suppose we had a government against political correctness. If it is against political correctness it is therefore multiculturalist. If the government is for political correctness it is therefore against multiculturalism. You're either for one or the other, yet it seems as if many conservatives are against both, so that just doesn't make sense to me.
  8. A politeness culture. Political correctness is the attempt to minimize offense to people. It is a culture of politeness. So you define political correctness as whatever goes against existing American culture? That wasn't the definition I had in mind. According to Princeton Uni Wordnet, political correctness is the "avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude or marginalize or insult people." So even if you walk around naked on the streets and someone tells you to cover yourself up, the person who tells you to cover yourself up is being politically correct because he is trying to avoid you expressing your nakedness because it may offend certain people, e.g. Muslims and Christians. Anyway, let's go back to your definition that political correctness is action that goes against American culture. Let American culture be the prevailing attitudes, values, and beliefs that American citizens hold. In Atlas Shrugged, characters like John Galt, Dagny Taggart, etc were in the minority. Their culture of entrepreneuralism and capitalism contrasted with the statist culture all around them. What did they do? They went on strike. They refused to conform to the prevailing American culture and by going against the American culture they are multiculturalists. Objectivism holds that morality is absolute and exists as an objective reality. Therefore, if what is right is to be moral, and if political correctness is just following whatever everyone else is doing, then Objectivism is politically incorrect if Objectivism is not supported by most Americans. Most Americans are not Objectivists, which therefore means that Objectivism is both politically incorrect and multicultural.
  9. I know someone who claims to be both against multiculturalism and against political correctness. But is this contradictory? Political correctness is the censorship of words, values, attitudes, etc to mitigate any offense it may cause people. Political correctness then is a form of monoculturalism since it attempts to force a certain culture upon people. Therefore, to be against political correctness is to be for multiculturalism. Is this right?
  10. Although some people use the term sloppily, most Objectivists I think when referring to the West refer to a system of government and so geography (e.g. whether the government is in Asia or Europe) or skin color are irrelevant. The Japanese government is Western.
  11. Cigarette smoking or any other addiction is usually irrational and many smokers end up regretting their decision. The assumption made for individual freedom is that the individual knows what is best for himself, but often within individuals there is a battle within, a battle against addiction. Does this, do you think, give the right for government to intervene to give, say, shock ads that scare young people into thinking that smoking is really bad and helps prevent regret later on in life.
  12. At the Wikipedia entry on Drug Rehabilitation it says the following: "With regular use of many drugs, legal or otherwise, the brain gradually adapts to the presence of the drug so that the desired effect is minimal. Apparently normal functioning of the user may be observed, despite being under the influence of the drug. This is how physical tolerance develops to drugs such as heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine or alcohol. It also explains why more of the drug is needed to get the same effect with regular use." This suggests that as you smoke, say, 10 cigarettes a day, your brain develops tolerance to it and to get the same amount of satisfaction as you did when you first started smoking you need to increase the amount you smoke, maybe go up from 10 cigs per day to 20 cigs per day. If you smoke, does this happen to you? Does this hypothesis sound right? Is there any scientific evidence for this ramping up of smokes?
  13. One of the arguments for nationalism is that if you allow different groups to live together then conflict will erupt. For example, Jews and Muslims living in the Middle East just don't seem to get along. The answer, according to nationalists is to divide people up so they can live among their "own people." Jews live among Jews and Muslims live among Muslims. Every day I hear about homophobia. Most people in the world are religious and most people tend to follow an Abrahamic religion, i.e. Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. The Abrahamic religions all seem to denounce homosexuality. Throughout history this has been the case. Sometimes I wonder why so many Christians hate homosexuals because it seems to go against the teachings of Christ of the New Testament who taught about love and tolerance, etc. But anyway, because of the influence of the Abrahamic religion, it is not surprising that many people are homophobic. If Jews and Muslims can't get along and the answer is to separate them into their own nations, then why don't we apply the same concept to the conflict between homosexuals and heterosexuals? If homosexuals and heterosexuals cannot get along then why not just create a separate nation for homosexuals? Maybe slowly change an existing nation (e.g. America) into one that is fully tolerance of homosexuals or establish a country where homosexuality is actively practiced and is declared as the state sexual orientation. There are many pedophile activists around and many pro-pedophile organizations like NAMBLA. Pedophile activism has created a lot of controversy, as you can imagine. There are websites like Perverted Justice that tries to bait pedophiles and shame them using public humiliation. Another site that I think is strong on child protection is Warriors for Innocence. These people claim that they are the "only thing that stands between evil and the innocent." Given that there seems to be so much conflict between pro-pedophiles and anti-pedophiles, why not just allow pedophiles to have their own country where they can do whatever they want? This may not work because, for most people, even just the thought that a child in another country is abused causes discomfort. However, even a Muslim who believes that some child in Israel is reading the Torah instead of the Koran might cause discomfort as well, so if nationalism applies to religion then why shouldn't it apply to sexual orientation?
  14. On another thread I read the following: "Objectivists need to consider building a nation we can call our own, where our principles can be put to practical use. If we are so great, then we should have no trouble repidly forming the greatest nation on earth. We need only find John Galt, stop the motor of the world, and bring all those producers to our country. The rest of the world, lacking it's scientists and technical geniuses, will be helpless to do anything about it. If we take all their mechanics, engineers and scientists and bring them to our side of the table, it will paralize the world government and we might have a chance to rise to a world power." Instead of building anohter country, why not just overtake the ones that exists and change them? That being said, are there any Objectivist politicians out there? Christians have a strong influence in politics, especially in American politics. Can Objectivism ever aspire to the level of influence that Christians have?
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