Vanderlanden

Hmm. I think you have a point. Stepping on private property will be in the interest of the owner, and you can reasonably assume that, since he/she will want to be informed about what you want to tell, ask or have to offer to him/her. You can't say that for the wireless network issue. Agreed. Concerning private property (you house), that is. But I think Lathanar still has a point on the other issue (wireless network, see my reply to him).

Hmm... The No-trespassing sign analogy is a good one, and thinking about that: How do you know you are implicitly allowed to step on the property, even if there is no sign? It would have to be a general agreement in society, I mean, thinking about it, it's not that trivial, is it? Unless it is unknowable that you are facing private property (e.g. stepping into a private forrest with no signs given), you would have to assume that it is (a house doesn't grow on its own and a well mowed lawn doesn't either, so its man's mind that created it, thus there is an owner), and in such a case you would be obliged to ask for permission, make an agreement. Why not? If it is a general agreement, it would have to be written somewhere in the law, wouldn't it?

I think the question is not really whether someone put a sign for "free use" or not. It is rather: Does the owner of the wireless access point have the RIGHT to allow others to use it, even with his own consent? I think what you pay the internet provider for is PROVIDING THE SERVICES TO YOU, not someone else. If someone else used the connection, he would infringe upon the property rights of the internet provider. Anyone else but you should make his own arrangements with the internet provider to acquire the right to use the service. By making a contract with your internet provider, you are bying the right to use it alone. However, if you provide your connection to others not included in the contract, you are causing losses to the company, you are depriving him of gaining profit from would-be customers. Also, it is not the responsibility of a customer to shield himself from external use. If you drop your property on a public park bench, it is still your property, and no one has the right to it. Same goes for your internet connection. The one who detects an undetected connection and surfs the net with it is using a) the technology of a device (acces point) that belongs to someone else, and the service provided for someone else that you didn't pay for. If you say making yourproperty accessible is to be understood as giving up your property, then that woudl be ok as for your notebook. But if making your internet connection accessible wirelessly to everyone should, by convention, be understood as saying "I am allowing you to use my connection to surf the net", then you are breaking the contract you have made with your provider.

Meanwhile the problem why there can't be nothing seems solved to me, but the solution raises a new problem. My thinking goes this far: Suggestion: there should be nothing. "Be" does not go without identity, so "nothing" cannot be. Well, that would be true, but: "nothing" shouldn't be understood as an existent, saying "there is nothing" is not like saying "there is an existent that is called "nothing". Rather "there is nothing" is equivalent to "The state of reality is as follows: Reality contains no existents." But if reality contains no existents, then there IS no reality, is there? That would make the statement "there is nothing", i.e. the statement equivalent to it self-contradictory. So there cannot be nothing, even if you don't look at "nothing" as an existent, but a state of reality. So far so good. But how then can we talk about "empty amounts" in mathmatics, as in A = {} ? Wouldn't that be an illegal, too? If the amount is empty, then the amount doesn't exist, because an amount IS elements taken together. The power set of the amount shouldn't contain the "empty amount" then, because such a thing is self-contradictory. And yet "empty amounts" seem to be accepted by mathematicians. Don't they see the problem?

But isn't saying "the stone is circular" applying a relation of the stone to a circle that exists only in one's consciousness and then calling the "circularity of the stone" one of its properties?

The circular stone exists, OK. But could the contence of this sentence have any meaning at all if it wasn't equivalent to "the stone exists and it has the following property: it fits to my concept of a circle." The property mentioned is a relation. But since the concept of a circle would cease to exist if there was no conciousness, the relation would vanish, too, and so would the property, i.e. the relation the stone has to my concept. But if that particular stone should be able to maintain its identity independent of consciousness, then it must be said that all those "properties" that are relations of the stone to certain concepts are not defining properties. They are unneccesary for the circular stone to be what it is. This raises the question to me as to whether relations of entities to other entities can or should be considered "properties" at all.

You say that the stone is being a circle because it exists in this way and that there is no conciousness needed to discover that? So a fact can also be the realization of a conceptual structure and when we observe the fact we realize its existing properties? Well, the very original issue is still why there cannot be nothing, but that's for later. I started off with only accepting identity as unnecessary to explain (that is to find its cause), trying to add "truth" to the realm of axioms, which, as I am now telling you, I believe I had mistaken for just the same thing, identity, since: It seems clear to me now that the aforementioned concepts like "traingle", "sphere" and their truisms are not somehow "out there", because I have discovered the reason why I was used to think so: I was asking myself, what forces me to make the conclusions about those truisms and seems to be there independent of me and the objects in my consciousness: Identity. What I said was that truth exists, but what I meant was that identity exists. It is the existence of identity that is impossible not to exist, and identity that drives me to make the conclusions about my geometrical objects.

The object could be a triangle with edges of equal length. Property A would be the property of the equality of those lengths, property B the property of the equality of all inner angles. As you know from my last posting, I don't know what to make of the notion that you "find spheres on the beach" anymore, if spheres exist only in consciousness.

You say that sphere is a fact. But that doesn't fit to your notion that facts are independent of consciousness: It is true, according to JMeganSnow, that that 'sphere' would not exist without your making it up. By saying "I have here on my desk a naturally-occurring stone sphere", you are sparing a lot of words: The stone sphere is actually not on your desk. What is on your desk is just a naturally-occurring stone, but in your consciousness you have formed the concept of a sphere and then integrated the stone into that concept, hence you say you 'have' a naturally-occurring stone sphere on your desk, while in fact you have a stone that can be integrated into the concept of a sphere in your mind, right?

But what then makes certain things about those objects facts? What makes it a fact that certain rules apply to the given objects? The process of concluding property B from property A is based on reason, the recognition that the conclusion does apply. What makes the conclusion applicable? Prior to my concluding, it is clear that no opposite conclusion can be made. The clearness of that does not depend on my concluding. Prior to my thinking of the object with property A it is ALSO clear that if a there was a consciousness and if it made up the object with property A then property B would follow. The italic phrase is a fact. It doesn't depend on me. I didn't create it. My making that statement is a recognition of a fact, not an invention. Another thaught: You say geometric objects cannot exist without a consciousness to create them? Then what is the identity of these objects? Is their identity physical? The are located in a certain part of my brain. But to identify them as physical, you whould have to say the objects are certain arrangements of atoms in my brain: You would have to say that made up geometric objects are atoms in a human brain. Nothing more. Would you make that conclusion?

So in your view, geometric rules as the ones I pointed out wouldn't be valid, iow wouldn't be facts without the physical world, is it that what you're saying? I agree that the chuck of dry land would not exist without the physical world, because land is implicitly physical by its nature. But I have problems with saying the same thing for mathematical rules because I see a contradiction in that: It would mean that they are logically invalid, which is wrong. And also, if, according to you, the physical world is all that comprises existence, what is the whole point of using that term ("existence") after all? Wouldn't it be much less confusing and direct to the point if you used "the physical world" instead?

This could help a lot. I wasn't making any distinction between these two terms. It's a very good thing to point out, thanks. It was my impression that people use the term "truth" as a synonym for "facts" and that it has no other meaning. But if I got you right, you call "truth" (i.e. you say that "truth" is defined by) a state of consciousness that reflects facts of reality, right? That is, of course, not what I meant by "truth" at all. If I got you right, it seems to me that I have to replace all uses of "truth" in my preceding posts with "facts". Do you then agree that FACTS exist independent of consciousness and the physical world? That would solve the whole problem (I don't mean the problem of the topic, but you know).

It seems DavidOdden and JMeganSnow disagree on exactly the same thing with me. I have a problem with that. If truth was consciousness-dependent, then all inner angles of a triangle could add up to more or less than 180 degrees, since you claim that it is consciousness that makes the 180-rule true, hence this fact, this truth, would cease to exist once all consciousness does. I don't see how this is consistent with primacy of existence, to me it sounds much more like primacy of consciousness. But I for myself believe, i.e. I know for a fact that the 180-rule would apply without any consciousness to discover or be aware of it. A denial of this would be a denial of the validity of logic. The 180-rule couldn't not exist, it is true. If men built a triangle of stone and then cease to exist, the stone would still continue to exist. And it would still be true that there would BE a physical representation of a triangle and its angles adding up to 180 degrees. The triangle with its properties would still EXIST, INDEPENDENT of consciousness. To deny this would be to deny certain properties the triangle has in itself. According to JMeganSnow you need two parallel lines to exist before anything about their properties becomes true. That is true if you are talking about a specific set of parallel lines. But I was talking about two parallel lines in general. I was making a general statement about parallel lines. You cannot ask "then which parallel lines are you talking about?", because that would be to refer to a specific set of parallel lines, i.e. some physical representation of parallel lines you know of, most likely on earth. You could ask "then what are parallel lines in general?" I would say they are abstract entities, that can neither be denied, nor can they be created, they are discovered, but exist prior to consciousness. If you refused to accept that geometric rules apply independent of consciousness, then you would have to conclude that they would be all false if there was no consciousness, which is incompatible with common sense. By accepting that a geometric rule is true, you accept that it is valid. You accept that it bears truth in itself. You are not dictating the truth. You are discovering it. You are discovering consequences that derive from the properties of objects you think of. You have no control over those consequences. And you gain this knowledge through reason. You cannot derive the newly discovered facts only with the objects themselves. You need something that enables you to derive them: reason. Reason is the voice of truth. The fact that you have and use it implicates that you accept that reason does tell the truth, ergo that you believe in truth. You just notice that an if-then-statement is logically correct. Hence you identify this statement as a part of reality. You call this statement a name. You call it something true.

Hi, I'm completely new to Objectivism, in fact I'm just interested in the reason-based approach to metaphysics and Objectivists seem to be the most active people in this area. Well at least, they are officially known for that and claim it over and over again. Having read the basics, I don't really know what to make of what I read, whether it's really something new, a new insight into reality, or just a summary on trivial things I've always known. What drove me to occupy myself with objectivist metaphysics, is the unsatisfied question of why there is a physical world and why there is consciousness. Science will never answer this question, because it doesn't go any deeper than physics itself. And up to know, I don't really see how Objectivism explains this. My problem starts right at the beginning, the basis of Objectivism - the three axioms. I understand that an axiom is supposed to be something that cannot be reduced to something else. Though I still think that this doesn't implicate that an axiom doesn't require any further explanation: I agree that all three axioms cannot be reduced to something else. However, identity and existence are selfexplanatory axioms to me. Things must have an identity. And the existence of existence is too. I also don't deny the existence of conciousness. But the existence of consciousness requires an explanation to me. It is only an empirical fact, not a self-explanatory fact. Now, my problem with the axioms is not that I'm denying them, but I don't see how they explain the existence of a physical world and of consciousness. Both are just empirical facts, not self-explanatory facts of reality, as opposed to identity and existence. They don't have to be: Even if there was no physical world and no consciousness, that would not mean that there was nothing. There would still be truth. Truth exists. Hence there wouldn't be nothing, there would be something: truth. Truth exists, independent of the physical world and consciousness. And every thruth that does not involve the physical world and consciousness is either self-explanatory, or can be explained by something self-explanatory. Whether you take the truth that two parallel lines never intersect, the truth that there can't be a square circle or the truth that the composition of two amounts can never contain more elements than the sum of both amounts taken together. You name it. But none of this neccesitates the existence of a physical world or consciousness. But all of this shows that even without the physical world and consciousness, there wouldn't be nothing. There would be something. The truth. So why, ULTIMATELY, do these two empirical facts of reality EXIST? I see neither reason nor necessity for them. Their existence is not self-explanatory and I don't see any possible explanation for them. How does objectivist metaphysics produce an ultimate explanation for them from existence and identity? Does it at all? Or does it only state that it must have a (neccessarily non-physical) reason, due to the law of causality, but leaves the question unanswered?

I don't know what you expect me to do. Look, if you assume that I'm right, then how would you expect someone to proove the existence of something that isn't made of any material? There is no evidence like measuring some weight etc. I can only know it myself, and I can only do so by identifying myself, by looking at what I am. I think you agree that this is true if you assume that I'm right about what I said about consciousness. I don't see how you can make something that IS deny its own existence. And this is the same proof I can offer to you, though it's not a proof I can make to you directly, it's a proof you can only make to yourself, because I have no means of perceiving your consciousness. Only you do, and if I'm right then you ARE a consciousness, just like me, and that implies that you know what you are since a consciousness is conscious of its own existence. The only "proof" to me about what YOU are is what you can tell me about yourself, about what you know you are, about what you identify yourself as. And knowing what I am, I would then also know that such a thing can exist (if your description of yourself equaled my description of myself), so I would then assume, given the fact that all your biological properties are of the same kind as mine, that you're right about yourself. And this "proof" goes vice versa. As for my claim about the indestructibility, it is directly and logically derived from the nature of consciousness as described by me: Non-materialism implies indestructability. So once you have accepted my version of the nature of consciousness, its immortality logically follows. Hope that helps understand what I mean.