Richard_Halley

Drop the Ad Hom, feldblum.

It is a mistake, feldblum, to give the government ownership of an expired patent. Not true. It is the inventors rights which define it as property. The government merely enforces that right.

Good point, MinorityOfOne.

Such a limit is not relevent to this topic... feldblum's argument is that if such a limit is reached, the government then takes ownership of the patent. Absurd.

No one suggusted it as a part of the legal code, so this is irrellivent. While there may come a point where it is no longer proper for someone to be the sole legal beneficiary of an invention, it is, at that point, inappropriate to sell the right back to him, as an extention. Again, your premise is that the government may sell the rights to an invention... this is, clearly, inappropriate.

You are right Ash... A concept should not be dismissed because it has been misinterpreted. My point was that courage is no more than an application of other virtues.

By recongnising that the result commits no evil, but that the cause does.

Courage is an ill-defined concept; in my opinion, it is an unnecessary one, as well. Courage may be--and has been--defined as anything from fearlessness in defending ones values, to simply rushing into the face of death for no apparent reason. The reason I call the concept "courage" unnecessary is that any virtues it could possibly entail are more simply laid out by other concepts (such as integrity and rationality).

Firstly, feldblum, all of this emotion-response vs. action-response is unnecessary. Hatred speaks of an emotion, the actions which one chooses as a result of that emotion should not be refered to with the same word, else we infer that--in the same way that one does not directly control ones emotions--one does not directly control ones actions. When Islamic terrorists come to kill me, the action of coming to kill me is not to be refered to as hatred, but merely as "coming to kill me." By lumping the emotion and the resultant action of "hatred" into one word, you accomplish nothing but confusion. The "emotion-response" of hatred is NOT something to judge, as it is subconscious, not directly volitional. As Rand wrote, "It is not man's subconscious, but his conscious mind that is subject to his direct control--and to moral judgment." The fact that emotions are based in values only proves that emotions, as such, should not be judged, but rather that one should judge the values which cause them. Saying "It is wrong to hate Howard Roark," is essentially an attack on the values which drive one to hate Howard Roark, but it is an attack which avoids stating its target, and avoids proving its validity. If one wishes to condemn ones values, one should point out and condemn ones values, not their subconscious result. By condemning an emotion, one only puts up a straw-man. Meanwhile, saying "It is wrong to kill Howard Roark," is essentially an attack on the action of killing Howard Roark, not the hatred of him. To lump the murder in with the hatred, again, causes nothing but confusion on the nature of both.

feldblum, your system requires that one should have to pay in order to have a right to one's own inventions. Patents and copyrights should be no more than documentation of proof of who invented something, their cost should be no more than what it costs to file that documentation in a safe place. And, while lawers would not have to be the ones to write the contracts, if no one with legal knowledge reviewed them, the signers would be risking that the contract is not in complience with the law.

The question is, what are the movies really about. The fact that crime happens to be the central action does not mean that crime is what the film is glorifing. With the exception of "The Italian Job" (which I have not seen, and so, cannot speak for), the films you mention are primarily cat and mouse games (either romantic or otherwise). Perhaps it is the skill involved in the chase (the skill of the chaser, the chasee or both), not the crime itself, which is being glorified.

Yes, Betsy... I said emotion could be used as a tool, not a certian indicator. Thanks for clarifing my point, though.

It is improper to condem that person for hating Howard Roark, yes, but not improper to condem him for the values which led him to hate Roark. Values, as volitional choices are subject to moral evaluation, emotions are not.

One should note, when making a statment such as the above, that many Environmentalists disagree about what methods and justifications should be used in order to accomplish the above stated goal. In fact, I would say that there has never been an idealogy more apt at hiding its true purpose than the so called "antropocentric environmenatism." Bearster is essentially correct in his assesment of environmentalism, but an elaboration is in order... Bearster says that environmentalism believes that "the proper standard of value is 'the earth'," While this is true about many environmentalist idealogies, many disagree with this idea. What all environmentalists agree upon is that, because man is superior to all other things in nature, he is: 1) evil or 2) morally obliged to subordinate himself to the inferior. Bearster is correct in identifying that environmenatlism is, necessarily, anti-man.

It is important to note that hatred--as well as all other emotion--is, as non-volitional, exempt from moral judgment. As Betsy, points out, hatred may be neither proper nor improper. One may use emotion, however, as a tool for identifing the necessary information to make a moral judgment. Particularly, one may use it to discover values. So, if one says: "it was improper to hate John," what one should really say (and hopefully what one intended to say) is: "the values which you hold, and which led you to hate John, are improper."

Upon further consideration, I have decided that one may not.

Firstly, as you already stated, the mountain couple was unwilling to give up their land at any price, no "just compensation" is possible. More importantly, you are still aruging that allowing theft is an effecient way for an economy to run. As AisA said: Allowing theft is destructive to a society and its economy, not "effecient."

Certainly it should not be limited to physical contact, if one may alter or use a peice of property without physicaly coming in contact with it, than those actions should still be considered force. How about "The alteration and/or use of..." If that is accurate, it is a bit more descriptive than "contact with..."

You are suggusting that it is more efficient to allow the railroad to steal the property of the people in the mountain pass. Allowing theft, however, is not more efficeint than allowing one to keep ones own property, as Capitalism TUI explains quite well.

Unskinned, are you honestly suggesting that property rights are the problem with capitalism... the moral implications of this claim are disgusting. Those aside, in your first example... you would either come up with another place to run your railroad, or develop a new way to ship your cargo across the mountain. As for your second example... firstly, Reading had every right to do that. And besides this, I find it likely that the regulations imposed on railroads had something to do with their decision not to let so much as a trolly line cross their road.

Emotions are not actions, at least not volitional ones. They are subconscious, and, while they are based on ones values, one does not directly control them. Hatered is an automatic response to something which threatens your values. So, the question is not, "do you value hatred," but: "Do you value ANYTHING, and are any of those values threatened." As for Roark, notice that he did have emotion... but it only "went down so far." Why did it stop? Did it not stop because his most important values were never threatened? Did it not stop because Keating and Toohey where impotent when it came to effecting his primary values in any way. Roark's primary values were placed completly out of the reach of others, that, I contend, is why we never see hatred out of Roark.

[A philosophy is a full system including Metaphysics, Epistemology, etc... Based on your description, Transhumanism is merely a single ethic--particularly, technology is good--and a small collection of beliefs about what is coming in the feature. This is why I call Transhumanism a floating abstraction, it contains only one philosophical view. As for your other question, I define unjustified, in this case, to mean that you have not justified them. As a matter of fact, you have hardly defined them... "Singularity," it seems, depends on the idea that human production may be pre-calculated with exponential functions. You have defined it as the point where the function grows very fast. Even if we could rely on human production to keep with the exponential function, the implications of what you call "the singularity" are merely that we will get better technology very often. As you say, what that technology will do is anyone’s guess. My main point though, is that while the set of beliefs held by Transhumanists may be completely correct, that set of beliefs is a floating abstraction, and one should avoid associating oneself with it.

Sporting events, much like art, have value in what they represent. You wouldn't say the above about great sculptors, why about footballers? There is absolutely nothing wrong with placing value in a sporting event. In fact, I would argue that our society's love of sports is revealing of its great sense of life.

Yes, but this is not to say that their is no corrolation between availability and price. Price actually depends on both the amount of value placed upon it by consumers and the amount of the product that one may get ahold of. Note, also, that the primary reason footballers are paid so much is becuase of their resale value. They get paid so much because so many people are willing to pay a couple of bucks to sit at Old Trafford and watch them.

Yes, GC, I did say "freedom."