[Lewis Little's Theory of Elementary Waves: Book Review]

Third, I just want to say that when I volunteered to stick around this site and chat with people for a while about my book review, what I had in mind was primarily that people would be interested in asking some questions about physics -- e.g., making sure they understood the derivation of Bell's theorem I presented in the review. It is profoundly disappointing that so far there has not been even one single question of that type.

Frankly, what I would find beneficial is a very basic description of the double-delayed-choice experiment, including drawings (or pictures) of the equipment used and the results obtained -- in other words, something I can see and evaluate with my own eyes. For example, there are any number of such pictures and drawings available of the famous "double slit experiment" -- and one look at the results makes it clear what is meant by the statement that light appears to posses the properties of both waves and particles. Are there any comparable visual explanations of the double-delayed-choice experiment and its results?

[The Mistreatment of Workers]

Could capitalism have advanced poverty? If I look out only for myself and personal, fiancial gain, a way to get more money is to pay workers less and force them to work longer.

In addition to all the other points that have been made, remember that in a free market you must compete with other businesses for the labor available in a given area. You have no power to force any worker to accept any particular wage, set of hours or working conditions. You have only the power to offer a trade -- and if a better trade is available to labor at another business, they will generally take it, leaving you without a workforce.

[A Fetus Is Human]

What I hold is that a fetus is a human life at that stage in its development.

An acorn is an oak tree "at that stage in its development". However, an acorn is not an oak tree.

You are conflating the potential and the actual.

[A Fetus Is Human]

Untitled, your post number 100 is riddled with context-dropping and conflation.

The context-dropping takes the form of isolating my statements while ignoring the complete argument. For instance, you start by isolating my second sentence as follows:

A being is a biologically independent, biologically self-sufficient, separate entity.

Then you react as follows:

Then a 1 week old baby is not a human being. A baby (even after it is born), is not biologically self-sufficient, it still depends on its mother for food. Could a mother simply decide that she doesn't want to feed her baby and just let it die? It is HER body, right?

Thus, by dropping context you leap to a conclusion that is in fact the opposite of the conclusion I reached at the end of the entire post.

You then proceed to more context dropping, this time to conflate a reflex with a volitional consciousness.

I wrote:

The faculty of reason requires a volitional consciousness that can process the information provided by the senses.

You responded:

As stated above, 8 week old fetuses can feel pain and react to it in the EXACT same way that a newborn baby would react.

In fact, an 8 week fetus can not react to pain the same way a newborn can. A fetus can only react by a physical reaction like a reflex. But the mind of a newborn possesses the ability to discriminate one sensation from another and begin the gradual process of retaining sensations to form percepts. How quickly or slowly a given child uses this ability to get to the level of perception varies from child to child -- but that development is possible only after birth, when a volitional consciousness first emerges.

You conclude by reiterating the claim that my argument supports the notion that parents can leave a child to die.

What if the mother didn't "volunteer" to feed her newborn baby? Imagine a woman who births a child alone in the woods. Only her actions can save the baby. If she leaves it alone, it dies. Even though the action is now voluntary that is required to keep the baby alive, how is that different? You offer no explanation.

Yes, I did offer an explanation, as follows:

Once born, all of that changes. Granted, a newborn infant cannot engage in all the actions necessary for its survival, but it does possess a volitional consciousness and can (and does) initiate the process of learning how to use its rational faculty, even if the first steps of that process are something as basic as leaning how to focus its eyes and how to understand the sensations flooding its senses.

Now that it is a human being, the infant possesses all the rights of other human beings. However, it clearly must undergo both physical and mental growth before it can exercise all of those rights. The parents, by choosing to create this human being, assume responsibility for the exercise of those rights until such time as the child becomes an adult.

(Emphasis added this time.)

What part of that last sentence do you not agree with or understand?

The decision to birth a child is the decision to create a being that posses all the individual rights of an adult but is unable to exercise those rights and will perish unless someone exercises them on his behalf. Since morality demands that man accept responsibility for the consequences of his actions, this can only mean that the parents -- who bear sole responsibility for the decision to create the child -- must exercise the child‘s rights on his behalf until he becomes an adult. That means -- for instance -- exercising his right to work by working on his behalf, to earn what is necessary to materially support the child.

And that is why the Objectivist view of rights -- which is based on the Objectivist view of morality -- means that parents cannot simply abandon their children.

[Five Years of Occupation -- What a Disaster!]

I’ve never asked you to prove Saddam’s evil intentions. Re-read the thread. My request was for some proof that Saddam “threatened the West.” All sorts of grisly murders are committed around the globe a thousand times a day without disrupting the lives of average Americans. The gassing of Halabja, horrible as it was, didn’t make a dent in my ability to conduct my business or live my life.

I think you need to re-read my posts. You are dropping context again, which is why it is impossible to settle anything with you.

I brought up Saddam's 1991 invasion of Kuwait as evidence that he posed, at a minimum, a threat to our economic interests -- I did not claim that this proved he posed a physical threat to us; in fact, I made it clear that we weren’t certain about the latter. And now that I've listed a portion of his actions that demonstrate his irrationality -- in response to your demand that I prove he posed a threat to our economic interests -- NOW, you wish to switch back to the issue of whether or not he posed a physical threat to "the west".

If you can offer no proof that Saddam wanted to sell the world less oil than any other petro-dictator, then you’re not very convincing.

Well, as I said in my last post, if you can look at Saddam's record and not see the risks inherent in letting someone that irrational gain control of a significant part of the world's oil supply, then you are beyond convincing. Essentially, you are demanding omniscience on our part in evaluating the intentions of our sworn enemies.

First of all, Rumsfeld didn’t say, “We don’t know for sure where Saddam’s WMDs are.” He said, “We know where [iraq's WMD] are.” Secondly, if we don’t know for sure that X is a threat to the West, then we have no business claiming, “X is a threat to the West.”

Nonsense. If a man points a gun at your head, and cocks the hammer, then you may properly claim that he is a threat and act upon that conclusion -- even though the fact that you “don’t know for sure” that the gun is actually loaded means that, strictly speaking, you cannot be completely certain he is a threat.

Again, the standard you demand requires one of two things: either we be omniscient mind-readers -- or , we wait until an enemy stages a physical attack and kills some of us.

What threat?

Once again, you drop context. Which is it? Are you really unable to grasp the distinction between talking about a principle -- which is what I was doing when I stated that if we are faced with a threatening regime, the proper response is to destroy that regime, NOT adopt a civlian-friendly policy of acting as that nation's police force -- versus the debate about whether or not a particular regime? Or do you just keep switching subjects and dropping context as a means of evasion? I'm inclined to think its the latter -- but either way, the futility of responding to you is becoming quite obvious.

Okay, then why shouldn’t the U.S. come home now that Saddam is dead? What difference does it make whether he was shot by U.S. soldiers at his hiding place or hanged by Iraq’s finest at Camp Justice?

I haven't argued against bringing our soldiers home. You need to read more carefully.

[Five Years of Occupation -- What a Disaster!]

I’ve seen no evidence that Saddam was interested in stopping the sale of Middle Eastern oil on the world market – which is just what he would have had to do in order to cause any decline in the amount of oil available to U.S. buyers.

Saddam was willing to gas thousands of his own civilians to teach them a lesson. Saddam was willing to send thousands of his own soldiers to futile deaths in an 8 year war with Iran. Saddam was willing to invade Kuwait, then set his soldiers loose to pillage and plunder at will. Saddam was willing to rain down ballistic missiles into Tel Aviv suburbs in an effort to provoke the Israelis into getting involved in Desert Storm. Saddam was willing to set fire to virtually every oil well in Kuwait just to spite the U.S. After all that, you're still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, by demanding that we prove his evil intentions?

If you can look at Saddam's record, and not believe that allowing him to gain control over a significant portion of the world's oil supply was a significant risk, then you are beyond convincing.

Not true.

"We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5, 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.

"We know where [iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.

You are dropping context here. I said that Bush didn't know for sure that Saddam had WMD's, especially ones that he could use against us, and that this was reflected in the fact that he described Iraq as a "gathering" threat, not an imminent one. The fact that he quotes intelligence reports indicating that Saddam had WMDs does not contradict this.

What does that mean? Allow no government at all to take seat in Baghdad?

It means you destroy the threatening regime and tell the survivors that if another threatening regime emerges, we will come back and destroy it as well.

So if the U.S. had been less “civilian-friendly” it could have destroyed more of the non-existent weapons?

No, it means that if we'd been less "civilian-friendly", we could have destroyed the threatening regime with far fewer casualties to our side.

We didn’t shoot him on the spot. We had the Iraqis put on a trial and then execute him. Does that mean the U.S. can’t come home now?

I made no such argument and neither did Dr. Binswanger.

[Five Years of Occupation -- What a Disaster!]

Gary, you wrote:

Why should I spend time worrying about Teodoro Obiang Nguema when the same institution (with free elections, by golly!) responsible for the deaths of people I knew is still ruling over me -- and last year stole 18% of my income?

And:

I still don't have an answer to my question of when the West was threatened by Saddam -- unless we suppose the West is anything within 360 degrees of the Prime Meridian.

So which argument are you making? That Saddam was never a threat to the United States -- or that he is less of a threat to you, personally, than our statist government?

I think Saddam proved with his 1991 invasion of Kuwait that he was a threat to our economic interests, at a minimum. If we hadn't ejected him from Kuwait, he could have easily rolled over Saudi Arabia and found himself in control of a significant portion of the world's oil supplies. That would have put him in a position to do significant economic damage to the world’s economy – of which we, of course, are a part.

Now, one can argue that after we defeated him in Kuwait, the resulting embargo of Iraq’s oil exports deprived Saddam of enough revenue to ever become a threat again. However, we know now that he was cheating the embargo and planned to resume his WMD development. That was one of the conclusions of the Duelfer Report after the war.

Would he have been successful at developing WMD and if so, would he have had any means of deploying a WMD against us? I don't know, and neither did Bush when the decision was made to take Saddam out. Bush didn't claim that Saddam was an imminent threat, but rather a "gathering", threat, i.e. a possible future threat.

The problem is that the appropriate reaction to such a threat is regime destruction, not regime change. But crippled by his allegiance to pragmatism and altruism, Bush launched a partial, limited, JAG-policed, civilian-friendly war that has left our military functioning as a domestic police force in Iraq and saddled the American people with what is essentially another gigantic government welfare project.

As Harry Binswanger commented on his list, consider how much better off we’d be today if, after catching Hussein, we’d simply shot him on the spot – then told the entire world that this is what we do to people we consider threatening to us or our interests – and then come home.

[Five Years of Occupation -- What a Disaster!]

Does lying their asses off fit in there somewhere?

Who do you think lied?

[Five Years of Occupation -- What a Disaster!]

The most damaging aspect of the war in Iraq is that it has served to discredit the notion of using of military force to deal with our enemies. Of course, that is not the proper conclusion one should draw from what's happened in Iraq -- the proper conclusion would be to see it as a grand-scale demonstration of the consequences of both altruism and pragmatism -- but Bush has permitted the left to depict the Iraq fiasco as the logical, necessary outcome of military action.

And so now we are in for a period of intense pacifism, probably initiated and led by an Obama administration.

[A Fetus Is Human]

Thanks for the compliment, Ramesh. The ideas and the logic, of course, are all Miss Rand's and Dr. Peikoff's.

[A Fetus Is Human]

You have to explain why a "baby/young child/comatose patient" is a human being, and why the term does not apply to a fetus. It's not enough to make a statement.

A fetus is not a being; nor is it human.

A being is a biologically independent, biologically self-sufficient, separate entity. A human being is a being that possess a rational faculty, that is, the faculty of reason. The moment of birth is the moment when this entity becomes a being -- it is the moment when it ceases to be part of the mother's body -- and it is also the first moment it becomes conscious of reality and can be said to possess the faculty of reason.

The faculty of reason requires a volitional consciousness that can process the information provided by the senses; the moment of birth is the first moment such a consciousness emerges and it is the first time such processing can begin. It is the moment of transition from an unconscious, passive, biological parasite to a conscious, active, biologically independent entity capable of self-generated, self-directed, volitionally-conscious activity. This is the beginning of human life.

I am aware that a fetus moves about in the womb, and I am aware of the claims that it reacts to various stimuli such as heat and light. But reaction and consciousness are two different things. Plants also react to stimuli, but they are clearly not conscious in the human sense of the term.

Once born, a child has the capacity to be rational, though he must learn how to use that capacity. Prior to birth, the fetus does not even have the capacity to be conscious. The rational is a possibility (as distinguished from a potential) for the child, but an impossibility for the fetus.

Now, how does this relate to the issue of rights?

To remain alive, man must think and act. He must use his faculty of reason to discover how to produce what his survival requires (or he must use his faculty of reason to learn that knowledge from others). The purpose of the concept of rights is to define the conditions that must exist, vis-à-vis other men, for a rational being to take the actions necessary to support his life. The basic condition that must prevail, then, the basic right that a rational being must possess, is freedom to take action -- freedom from the physical interference of other men. This is the meaning of the right to life – it is the right to be free to initiate and sustain all the actions necessary for a rational being to survive.

The right to life does not mean the right to remain alive at someone else’s expense; it does not mean that others must feed, shelter and cloth you. Rights are always rights to action, not to objects.

Now we can see why one cannot attempt to invoke a right to life on behalf of the fetus. A fetus is incapable of volitional consciousness, it is incapable of reason and it is incapable of initiating and sustaining any action in furtherance of its own existence – invoking a right to freedom of action on its part is nonsensical. Furthermore, the fetus’ very existence constitutes a physical interference with the mother’s freedom of action. Thus, to invoke a right to life on behalf of the fetus is to claim a right to physically interfere with another person’s freedom – it is to claim a right to the physical, involuntary use of another human being’s body – and no one can claim such a right.

Once born, all of that changes. Granted, a newborn infant cannot engage in all the actions necessary for its survival, but it does possess a volitional consciousness and can (and does) initiate the process of learning how to use its rational faculty, even if the first steps of that process are something as basic as leaning how to focus its eyes and how to understand the sensations flooding its senses.

Now that it is a human being, the infant possesses all the rights of other human beings. However, it clearly must undergo both physical and mental growth before it can exercise all of those rights. The parents, by choosing to create this human being, assume responsibility for the exercise of those rights until such time as the child becomes an adult.

.

[God exists]

You just said the burden of proof was on me to disprove the gremlins. YOU CONTRADICTED YOURSELF:: SEE THE BURDEN IS ON YOU TO DISPROVE GOD.

No, I didn't contradict myself -- I merely adopted your standard of proof to illustrate why it is invalid. Are you truly incapable of grasping an example? Do you not see that the fact that we cannot "disprove the existence of god" is just like the fact that you cannot "disprove the existence of gremlins" -- and that the lack of such disproof does not prove that either thing exists?

I suspect that you can see that fact quite clearly -- you simply don't want to face its implications. Read what I wrote about the nature of proof in post 9.

In terms of sleep no, I am not talking about being awake but in death yes

So now you are saying that existence is dependent on the presence of human life, not human consciousness? Why on earth would you believe such a thing?

You have a major problem with the primacy of consciousness fallacy. That fallacy is a rejection of the most fundamental of axioms, the axiom that existence exists. As Miss Rand points out, that rejection leads to the notion that knowledge of reality is gained by looking inward at one's own consciousness (or at revelations from some other, superior consciousness). In practice, what this "looking at one's consciousness" generally means is that one is moved by one's feelings, wishes, urges, etc. -- i.e. one is guided by emotion.

That certainly seems to be true of your belief in god. That belief is not based on reason, but on feelings -- which is why, when it is challenged, you respond in all capitals.

Apparently, you have never learned to grasp the distinction between your inner world and the existence that exists outside your consciousness. Until you do, you will continue to confuse your feelings with the facts of reality. There is no more disastrous confusion.

[God exists]

No if you look back i am not trying to prove god whatsoever through that thought process...merely stating that i do not belief reality can exist without consciousness

Do you think some amount or portion of reality goes out of existence each time you lose consciousness by going to sleep?

Fly to Venus until then use your experiences to make a rational descion if you believe there are by all means go ahead

No, the burden of proof is on you to disprove the existence of my gremlins. After all, I want to believe in these gremlins -- it's my desire and you've already said that all desires have fulfillment -- so isn't it logical to conclude that these gremlins are just as real as god?

[God exists]

yes but god is a consciousness entirely separate from that

And the gremlins on Venus studying Hegel are a consciousness seperate from that as well.

[God exists]

Time is an energy in the natural world. God is in the supernatural. They are on two different planes. So conciousness and existence both exist now. That is a fact you can't refute. It could be one way but it isn't. And how do you now that the world would continue to exist. Prove it. O wait you can't because there is no consciousness.

Are you trying to argue that since both consciousness and existence exist at present, this proves that God exists? If so, that's a whopper of a non sequitur.

And I'm still waiting for you to refute my claim that there are gremlins on Venus studying Hegel.

[God exists]

Essentially you are stating that there could be reality without any consciousness in the world. And that consciousness only serves to observe and interpret this reality.

Yes, exactly. If everyone on the planet died tomorrow, the planet would not cease to exist. Existence does not depend on consciousness -- but consciousness depends on existence.

There could be but there isn't.

Yes, at the moment, both consciousness and existence exist.

Essentially you are saying absolutely nothing beside perpetuating my argument. There is always a reason for everything, so what is the reason consciousness is made.

I do not accept your premise that everything is "made" for some "reason". I note that you don't fully accept that premise either -- because if you did, you'd be seeking to know who or what made God and for what reason.

You have to prove I am "guilty" of the belief in God. You have said nothing here accept you think that the world would still exist if consciousness went away. You contradicted yourself by suffusing abstractions into this. CAN YOU ACTUALLY REFUTE THE EXAMPLES I LAID OUT WITHOUT SAYING O NO THATS NOT RIGHT BECAUSE GOD JUST DOENS"T EXIST???????

Can you refute the claim that there are gremlins on Venus studying Hegel?

[God exists]

Primacy of consciousness is the fallacy of thinking that the function of consciousness it to create reality; it is the belief that reality, in effect, depends on and proceeds from consciousness. That is, in fact, the literal view of religious people who believe that God -- a consciousness -- created existence out of nothing.

Objectivism is so named because it rests on the acknowledgment that existence exists independent of the content or processes of any consciousness, that the function of consciousness is the perception of existence, not its creation, that existence is the object of consciousness, not its subject.

Apart from that, your post is so full of floating abstractions one scarcely knows where to start in demonstrating their lack of tie to reality. Let's start with a simple point. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is indeed a valid principle -- for the very simple reason that proof can apply only to that which exists or to that which happened.

Proof consists of facts, data, evidence, etc, which, taken together and viewed logically, allow us to reach a conclusion about reality. The unreal, that which does not exist, will not give rise to any facts, data or evidence-- it will not manifest itself in reality in any fashion whatsoever. That's why there will never be any evidence of the non-existence of something. The nonexistent creates no evidence -- it leaves no fingerprint.

So, in invoking this "innocent until proven guilty" principle, you have actually invoked the reason why the burden of proof is on YOU to prove that god exists -- and not on me to prove that he does not exist.

To illustrate this point a little better – and to introduce you to the meaninglessness of the arbitrary, I offer you this proposition (borrowed from Dr. Peikoff): I say there are gremlins on Venus studying Hegel. Prove that there are not.

[God exists]

Let's see. Here is your syllogism:

A. Everyone has a desire for god.

B. All desires have some form of fulfillment.

C. Therefore, god must be real.

Well, I really cannot imagine a clearer example of the primacy of consciousness fallacy.

[Collective Thought]

This thread will be better understood if you know the context it's coming from.

I recently got into an argument with my debate coach. It was sparked when I ran one of my arguments for use in the next tournament past him. Basically, my argument went as follows:

1) The resolution makes use of the phrase "just society."

2) Justice is a virtue that can only be held by a decision-making entity.

3) There is no group thought, because all cognition occurs within separate brains.

4) Therefore, societies cannot be just, and the resolution is self-negating.

I should point out at this point that I'm not interested in critiques of this argument (that tournament's over now anyway), and include it here only for context.

My third premise has some pretty obvious Randian origins. The coach objected to it for two reasons:

1) It's like saying "There is no human life, because all life occurs within separate cells of the body."

It is self-evident that while individual human beings can think and practice the virtue of justice independent of the other members of any particular group, the individual cells of a human being cannot function as stand-alone, biologically self-sufficient entities that are the equivalent of human beings. So the relationship of the individual human being to the group is not analogous to the relationship between the individual cells of a human being and the human being. In short, his analogy is faulty.

2) Minds come in different orders of organization. A lone neuron can be considered a mind, a severed brain segment can be considered a mind, a full brain can be considered a mind, and a group can be considered a mind.

Skyscrapers come in different levels of organization. A lone brick can be considered a skyscraper , a pile of steel beams can be considered a skyscraper, a "full" skyscraper can be considered a skyscraper, and the city of New York can be considered a skyscraper -- provided you throw out the law of identity and permit words to mean whatever anyone "considers" them to mean.

[Free Michael Vick]

Is there nothing rational about enjoying violence? This is the question that I am kind of pondering right now, and I'd be interested to hear what you think.

I certainly think it is rational to enjoy displays of violence in proper self-defense. Roark's dynamiting of Cortland Homes -- a housing project for the poor!! -- was sweet to contemplate. Danneskjold's blasting of every mill that tried to make Reardan Metal, so as to terrorize the looters into leaving the Metal alone, was equally wonderful. And how about Francisco's destruction of D'Anconia Copper, followed by his message to the world displayed above New York City: "Brothers, you asked for it!"

However, the violence of terrorists flying passenger jets into office buildings is completely repulsive – and one can make a good case that anyone who experiences pleasure at such a sight is immoral.

But watching animal on animal violence? I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would enjoy that; it seems so utterly pointless and unrelated to man's existence. I don’t see how violence – just plain violence detached from any impact on man – can be a rational value.

[Free Michael Vick]

Whether "I think" and "I believe" is interchangeable does not change what I said. He offered no reason at all what so ever on the why. He also offered no reason at all as to why men (rational or otherwise) could not be inspired by animals.

Moebius, you have repeatedly misrepresented my statements into a straw man argument.

1) I certainly did not offer my disbelief of the Samurai claim as proof of its falsehood, as you have repeatedly claimed even after KendallJ pointed out your error. Here is what I actually said:

I don't believe the Samurai claim that a dog's behavior fighting for its life against another dog tells us something about the human virtues of "courage and tenacity".

In the first place, it doesn't say, "I don't believe it, therefore it is false."

In the second place, the emphasis on the word"human", which was in my original post, makes the reason for my disbelief clear: the claim rests on the unsubstantiated assertion that one can learn about human virtues from the actions of non-human animals.

In the third place, I am entitled to reject all unsubstantiated claims, which is what this claim was since all that was offered at the time was "the Samurai believe it". The rejection of an unsubstantiated claim is not the equivalent of declaring it impossible.

In the fourth place, the burden of substantiating this claim rests with you. In particular, you must explain how it is possible to learn about human virtues by observing non-human behavior. Human virtues, as moral acts, are possible only when the individual faces choices. In an involuntarty dog fight between two animals there are no choices, except fight or die. I await an explanation of how moral knowledge can be gained by observing such a "life boat" type situation.

2) Nor did I ever say, as you put it:

"AisA claims that it's not possible to be inspired by animals."

Here is what I actually said:

In any event, I don't for a minute believe that dog fight fans are in it for educational purposes or to be "inspired" by the dog's efforts.

Clearly, I did not claim that it was impossible to be inspired by animals. (Nor did I ever state, as you claimed in another post, that man cannot learn anything from animals.) I expressed a strong belief that dog fight fans -- those who pursue it as a recreation, who take pleasure in viewing the fighting and who seek to view fight after fight -- are not in it to be "inspired" or educated. I base that on the fact that I see nothing inspirational or educational about watching two beings bred for maximum viciousness and possessing a perceptual-level-only consciousness try to rip each other to pieces with their teeth and claws -- at least, I see nothing rationally inspiring or educational about it.

Now, as for your claims about Roy Jones:

The difference is I actually linked a video where Roy Jones Jr. specifically explained what he has learned from cock fighting, and I have personally watched many of his fights. In 2002 when Jones defended his title against Glen Kelly, he dropped his hands and was clearly seen imitating a game cock while dodging Kelly's shots, before unleashing a right hook that knocked Kelly out. So no, it's not exactly subjective at all, because I have actually seen him fight like a game cock, listen to him talk about fighting like a game cock, before I made my evaluation. I didn't just come out and with no back up at all proclaim that "well since I don't believe him, it can't be true". Frankly his belief is really irrelevant without an explanation.

1) The link you provided does not work for me.

2) I never said, "well since I don't believe him, it can't be true". Here is what I actually said:

Nor do I believe that one can learn anything useful about how to fight by observing the fighting of dogs; a rational man that wants to learn how to fight takes martial arts or boxing lessons or watches the fights of other men, not dogs.

I will elaborate on what I though was obvious enough not to require elaboration. In a dog fight, the dogs try to kill each other with their teeth and their claws. In a cock fight, the cocks try to kill each other with their beakes and their claws, in some cases with, as I understand it, razor blades taped to their claws to enhance the ripping action. In both cases, the beings engaged in the fighting are perceptual level beings whose behavior is at least partly determined by their breeding.

Since man does not fight primarily with his teeth, claws or beak, and since man is a being of volitional consciousness with no in-bred behavior, it seems obvious that one can learn far more about human fighting by studying human fighting and being instructed by humans with fighting expertise. I can see no reason why one would expect to learn something useful about fighting humans by studying how dogs fight dogs or cocks fight cocks.

Is it possible that Roy Jones learned one of his moves by watching cockfighting? Perhaps, but his self-serving claim does not convince me that his motivation for watching cock fighting is a desire to learn how to box. Here is a LINK to an ESPN page. About half way down on the right is a link to an August 22nd, 2007 interview with Roy Jones. In that interview, he expresses a desire to move to the Dominican Republic so that he can resume watching cockfights, which are legal there. I find it highly unlikely that his motivation is to improve his boxing, since, as I understand it, he is into rap now. Perhaps he expects to learn some rap lyrics or themes from cock fights.

In any event, even if you succeed in establishing that someone has learned something valuable by observing dog fights, and even if you establish that such learning was their motivation in attending, I stand by my original point: I see no reason for a rational man to value, as an end in itself, staged animal struggles in which the participants attempt to rip each other to pieces. To value such a thing -- again, to value it as an end in itself, merely for the pleasure it gives you to watch it -- means that you value the suffering or the struggling or the frenzied effort or the viciousness or the aggression or whatever qualities might be exhibited by non-rational beings forced to fight for their lives. I can imagine that a sadist might value such things. I cannot imagine how a man who holds reason, purpose and self-esteem as his ruling values can value such things.

The fact that viewing such events gives one pleasure does not justify it, not unless one accepts the morality of hedonism. If you find pleasure in dog fighting, you need introspection to learn why you experience pleasure in watching such a thing. Then you can decide if it is a rational value, i.e. one appropriate to the needs of a rational being.

[Free Michael Vick]

Moebius wrote:

As I have already said, the value derived from a dog fight does not come from the death itself, but from the fight.............

I am trying to point out however that the death is not in and of itself the goal of the dog fight.

I agree that the goal of the dog fight is not simply a dog's death. The goal of the dog fight is to witness the process of death, i.e. to witness killing or, at a minimum, to witness a struggle to kill. That's why I said the participants value the destruction of life. And the fact that they do not want to witness a quick, painless, uncontested death simply means they value a specific mode of destruction: drawn out, painful and vicious.

I see nothing in this activity that a rational man should value. I don't believe the Samurai claim that a dog's behavior fighting for its life against another dog tells us something about the human virtues of "courage and tenacity". Nor do I believe that one can learn anything useful about how to fight by observing the fighting of dogs; a rational man that wants to learn how to fight takes martial arts or boxing lessons or watches the fights of other men, not dogs. In any event, I don't for a minute believe that dog fight fans are in it for educational purposes or to be "inspired" by the dog's efforts. Vick and his cohorts named their enterprise, "Bad Newz Kennels" for a reason. "Bad Newz" for the dogs was their goal and the source of their enjoyment -- and I see no way to defend that.

[Free Michael Vick]

Moebius asked:

Now, assuming that I know that one some levels I am attracted to violence, yet my rational mind is perfectly able to distinguish moral actions from non-moral ones and acts accordingly, what is immoral about being able to enjoy two animals fight each other?

This question is easier to answer if you put it in terms that concretize exactly what we are talking about here: Is it moral to value -- to take pleasure in -- a staged struggle in which two animals try to tear each other to pieces with their teeth and claws until one is either incapacitated or dead, purely as an end in itself, not because it accomplishes anything else, not because it tests human skill or advances human interests in some fashion, but purely for the sake of seing the destruction of life or the attempted destruction of life?

["Proof" God exists article by Rabbi - Deconstruction]

There is no absolute empirical proof for general statements where the domain of the statement variable is infinite or indefinite. For example try proving all crows are black. Every crow that is, ever was or will be. There is no way of exhausting the domain of the statement. How would one know if the domain has been exhausted, even if finite?

This is the synthetic part of the analytic-synthetic fallacy. It rests on the notion that the arbitrary qualifies as the possible, such that no matter what observations one makes, it can always be speculated that the next observation will contradict -- and therefore refute -- the previous observations.

Because a white crow can be asserted as a possibility, no one can be certain that all crows are black. Because a cat giving birth to puppies can be asserted as a possibility, no one can be certain that cats only give birth to kittens.

Thus, the arbitrary is used to invalidate one half of man’s reasoning ability: induction.

On the other hand mathematical results are absolute, but they are abstract and have no referents in the real world. For example nowhere in the world will you find points, lines, circles etc, nor will you find numbers. These are all abstract and live strictly in the intellect. You can be absolutely certain that Euclid's postulates including the parallel postulate imply that the sum of angles in a triangle (which lives in your head) add up to pi radians.

And here we have the analytical part of the fallacy. Absolute certainty is possible, but only when the propositions have no referents “in the real world.” We can reason from abstractions to “results”, i.e. we can reason from generalizations to specifics, but only when the entities involved “live in our head”.

So here we finish the job by arbitrarily banning from reality the other half of man's reasoning ability: deduction.

That completes our task of invalidating human cognition. Global warming and global religion, you have a go for your mission. Next stop: the destruction of man.

["Proof" God exists article by Rabbi - Deconstruction]

Is there absolute proof that G–d exists?

by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

There is no absolute proof for anything at all.

If there is no absoute proof of anything at all, then there is no absoute proof that the Rabbi's statement is true. Why then, dear Rabbi, do you state it with such certainty?