Bryan

Thank you for pointing this out, as it's a point that is often overlooked. Its not like she is going to sit there and "consciously" waste away. As I understand it, people who have feeding tubes removed are essentially put in morphine-induced comas, and don't feel a thing.

I agree that the point-by-point quoting technique takes away from the readability of the thread by causing the conversation to become lost. It is simple way to respond to a person, but the response is only beneficial to the person you are responding to. Anybody else would have to reconstruct the entire post and/or thread to make any sense of the small phrases inside the quotes. I admit that I’ve been guilty of the point-by-point quoting myself, but I think it is something to be avoided. As a side note, I noticed a new feature that seems to have been enabled sometime in the last couple weeks. When you respond to a post, all the quotes within that post are automatically embedded inside your response. Unless these embedded quotes are manually deleted when writing a post, this adds to a lot of excessive quoting in threads.

Off the top of my, I would recommend picking up a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. There are three essays in there that I think could provide you with a little guidance, "What is Capitalism", "Man's Rights", and "The Nature of Government". The last two are also in The Virtue of Selfishness.

I'm going to third softwareNerd's and Andrew's suggestions about posting specific questions. I'd be more than happy to help with any specific concept/program/problem in C.

The title of the thread is "Nukes and Copyrights". Is your question pertaining to copyrights, implying that the United States somehow has a "copyright" on nuclear weapons? Or is it a national defense question?

I'm beginning to believe that he's creating objections simply for the sake of argument.

I give up . The example is about the concepts of "big" and "small" and the measurements omitted in the formation of those concepts, not the concept of "word". I was simply trying to demonstrate, in a given context, what could qualify as a big word and what could qualify as a small word. Big is defined as "of considerable size, number, quantity, magnitude, or extent; large." "some number" is equivalent to "big" or "small" in relation to another word that is either less than or greater than it. What are you trying to accomplish in this thread? Are you trying to invalidate measurement omission in the process of concept formation? People give you reasonable explanations and you misinterpret them, distort them, or ignore them completely.

Pages 147-157.

The page number of the initial quote that Kevin gave you is on page 154 of the paper-back version of VOS. Upon a search of The Objectivist Research CD-ROM I was unable to find anything Ayn Rand directly attributes affirmative action to collective consciousness.

I was trying to demonstrate the possible omissions using your example "A big baby weighs 7 kg." You can replace "baby" with any noun, you can replace "weighs" with any verb applicable to the noun and "kg" with any applicable measurement. I'll do it with the word "word", as you seem to imply that words can't be measured. X = word, Y = is, Z = letters in length A big word is 7 letters in length. A small word is 3 letters in length. No, Y is the verb, review your 3rd grade English. It can be any context, that's part of what is omitted.

This woman has extensive brain damage. How could they possibly cure that?

A big "X" "Y" 7 "Z"; a small "X" "Y" 3 "Z". X is the noun being measured, Y is the verb decribing the context of measurement, and Z is the unit of measurement. You can replace X Y and Z with anything you want, as long as the attributes are applicable, and the concepts of "big" and "small" are still valid. A big cat eats 7 mice a day; a small cat eats 3 mice a day.

For something to be described as "big", it must be larger in magnitude in comparison to something else. That X is bigger than that X. It doesn't matter what the X is. That's the omission. The relationship could be used to compare anything regardless of their relative sizes. There are big planets compared to other planets, there are big bugs in comparison to other bugs. The context of "big" between a big planet and a big bug are completely different. What do all dead objects have in common? They were all organisms that were once alive. Organism is a well-defined standard. For the concept of death, it doesn't matter what the specific organism is; it is omitted.

This is a textbook example of an anti-concept, attempting to destroy the value of dedication to your work. Thanks for pointing that out Elle .

The concepts of big and small indicate a degree of magnitude. The omission is the context of what is being measured. Lots of things can be big; a big number, a big galaxy, a big drinker, a big bug. Given the answers provided in this thread, are you still in the dark about the concept of "godless"? I think you are taking the word "measurement" too literally. It doesn't always have to be a well-defined unit of measurement (i.e. mile, pound, degree Fahrenheit), it is just the attributes that can be applied to a certain concept. For example, here is one definition of death : the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism; "the animal died a painful death". The measurement omitted is the specific organism that's dead. Not pregnant is not a single concept; it is the combination of two different concepts. This is simply not true, every concept, as a concept, has its measurements (meaning the applicable attributes) omitted. If you really want a better understanding of Ayn Rand's theory of concepts, I recommend reading/rereading Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. IMO, the epistemological aspects of Objectivism are by far the most intriguing attribute of the philosophy. And, as shown in this thread, the aspect that I understand the least .

A product could not both meet a customer's requirements and not be in the customer's objective interests unless the either the customer's requirements or interests are flawed. I would not work to produce any product that fit this category. I would derive no satisfaction at all producing a product that was destructive to the people who purchased it. I'm not sure how this question follows from the discussion of Roark and Cortlandt Homes.

But it's perfectly ok for a person "of ethnicity" to tell the same racist jokes about themselves??

Godless is no god, which presupposes a concept of god. It could be any god, what are being omitted are the god's attributes (his powers, what he looks like, where he lives). Take the example of weightless. Would you agree that this is a valid concept meaning "no weight"? It presupposes the concept of weight.

I would define "a god" as a being with supernatural powers. The concept of god certainly describes something imaginary. Unicorns are a little more concrete because there are horses and there are animals with horns. The concept of god is a little more abstract because its more open-ended. The supernatural powers that a god has could be anything and everything. Take the greek gods for example, they all had supernatural powers but there were limits to them. The Christian god, I'm not exactly sure what he does, besides taking Sunday's off and making women out of men's ribs. An anti-concept hijacks and destroys a valid concept by distorting its meaning, the concept god doesn't do this.

Go to the somethingawful forums. Some the stuff there is pretty funny. Ironically, it's a comedy site

On que, this is an aspect of the anti-concept of humor that Inspector quoted. Why would you ever find your beliefs humorous? Do you mean to imply that regarding yourself as an object of humor as a good thing?

God isn't an anti-concept. This was also printed C:TUI. She uses "extremism" as an example of an anti-concept. As a valid concept, extreme is just "a measure of degree". This is turned into an anti-concept by making it have some sort of negative connotation of "going to extremes", which really means having well-defined principles. The concept of god doesn't fit into this definition. It is a perfectly valid concept, referring to some sort of being with supernatural powers. God is just as valid a concept as unicorn, leprechaun (that's a hard word to spell), Santa Claus, or Harry Potter.

You are correct, godless is indeed an adjective, I should have been more careful in my definition. Godless is simply "without god". The omitted measurement is the specific god. What is the purpose of your question??

Those are the two most disturbing sentences of that article. What would a legislature vote for something they knew was too vague? I've killed thousands upon thousands of people playing Quake I/II/III online, I doubt that this has made me any more effective at handling a rocket launcher . Seriously though, do these people honestly think that children can't separate what's ok to do in a world of 3-D rendered polygons with what's ok to do in reality?

I noticed this when I started reading Logic: An Introduction by Lionel Ruby. It is essentially a text book, I was shocked how clearly written and easy to follow it was. I thought to myself, "why can't all text books be like this?!"