[Philadelphia Area objectivists]

Atlas, I'd be interested in both.

I'm game for a holiday meetup, (but only if Mimp comes!!)

Looks like folks might be available this weekend. Does that not work for anyone?

[Antibiotics]

Is it moral for the state to restrict access to antibiotics if misuse of these drugs can result in antibiotic-resistant pathogens and hence create a public health hazard?

No. Because the use of antibiotics does not create a public health hazard in any sense of the word.

[Philadelphia Area objectivists]

There used to be a "Meet Up" group but I showed up just as they disbanded. Never met anyone.

[Philadelphia Area objectivists]

So I've been in the Philly area for about 6 months now, and looking to connect with Philly area Objectivists. I noticed there is a group listed at ARI website, but no info about it. Any other Philly area Objectivists out there, and do you know of active meet ups?

[OCON – Day 1 & 2]

By Kendall J from The Crucible,cross-posted by MetaBlog

It’s lunch time on Day two of 2009 Objectivist Conference. I had intended to blog daily but alas, yesterday was so full, I’ve not gotten to the post until today. In essence that is the theme concretized. This is my third conference and what always amazes me is the level of intellectual stimulation, through presentations, dinners, and the casual side conversations that arise spontaneously.

Highlights from the first few days of Session #1

Lectures

1. Craig Biddle’s course on Metaphysical Law and Moral Rights. This is a phenomenal course. Biddle essentially develops Rand’s basis for individual rights, as contrasted with the Founders. In essence day 1 he analyzed the philosophical basis behind the lines in the Declaration of Independence, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” Self-evidency and endowment by their creator are not accidents. They trace back to Locke in his ideas of “natural law” and Jefferson’s conception of “moral sense.” Starting with Day 2 he masterfully develops Rand’s contrasting basis for rights from the facts of reality. Biddle’s case is clear and well presented, and I highly recommend this course.
   
2. Dr. Tara Smith’s lecture on Atlas Shrugged, entitled No Room for Ceasar: Good and Evil in Atlas Shrugged examines the either / or nature of key hero’s decisions in Atlas Shrugged. It is a powerful look at how the facts of reality give rise to absolute decisions, and how one cannot shirk from making those types of decisions in leading a fulfilling life.
   
3. Finally, today Dr. Onkar Ghate presents a tremendous analysis of the philosophical basis of the “separation between church and state” essentially articulating what is meant by the term, and tracing it’s roots back to Locke’s proper conception of rights, and the role of government and the church. He then illustrates how both today’s religionists (“freedom of religion”), and secularists (“freedom from religion”)make incorrect and unfounded arguments for the meaning of this separation. Dr. Ghate is brilliant and this lecture shows it. Highly recommended!
   

Themes

A few themes I see in this year’s conference

• Several courses are analyzing Locke’s influence on philosophy. Biddle examines Locke’s incorrect conceptions of natural law, and the divine basis for rights, while Dr. Ghate examines his very well formulated concept of the separation between church and state.
  
• The courses are increasingly presented in a way that does not require a background in Objectivism to be clear. Biddle’s development of Rand’s idea of rights is inductively based and relies at each step upon observations of the facts of reality.
  
• The passion exuded by both speakers and the attendees gives on a sense of how importantly ideas are taken, and how clearly and powerfully those ideas are presented. Whether its Tara Smith forcefully entreating us to commit to live our own lives, or Craig Biddle beginning to tear up as he relates the story of an 11 year-old girl whom the FDA restricted from obtaining experimental cancer drugs, as a way to show that force is anti-life, you see real concrete evidence of the power of ideas and philosophy in living on earth.
  

Social

1. Opening Banquet. I always go to this, as it’s a great chance to meet everyone at the start of the conference, and to meet new people as well. I had a great dinner with Paul and Diana Hsieh, and fellow OAC classmate Brian Olive. Paul and I continued a discussion we’d started via email on methods and tips to help get some of my newly written op-eds published.
   
2. Dinners. I had dinner last night with my roomy Ray Niles, Richard and Lisa Salsman, and John Lewis and his wife. It was fantastic! Good food, good wine and certainly fantastic intellectual conversation.
   
3. I’ve gotten the opportunity to meet several objectivists who I knew only online or who were fellow OAC students. It’s always a pleasure to meet people who I’ve only known electronically, and finally put a personality to the ideas we’ve exchanged.
   

Communications

Just a quick reminder that there should be several bloggers posting on Ocon as well. I saw Paul Hsieh writing a post in lecture just this morning so Noodlefood should have something new. Also, multiple OCON attendees including myself are Twittering their activities at OCON. You can follow them all if you look for the #OCON tag.

Cross-posted from Metablog

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

Either model will cost the producers, but would one be cheaper than the other?

Fighting it on this basis is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Getting regulation more efficient and cost effective is giving the sanction of the victim. It is not an intermediate step. It masks the problem even more.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

Well done, Mixon.

I'll 2nd that. Rand always seems to explain it pretty clearly.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

This is has been discussed numerous times as well. Suggest a search for children in the title.

I don't think Rand addressed it directly, however, I would think a de minimus rights protection is warranted on the part of govt. When I say de minimus, I'm talking about those parental actions when have acute survival threats to the child. The government should not be in the business of assuring proper development of a child.

In the same way that a brilliant mind can be born into extreme poverty, and that is a fact of reality and does not confer special privileges on that mind, so too bad parenting does not either. It is a fact of life, most of which can be undone when you're an adult, assuming you choose to do so.

Things like lack of vaccination, and passing on bad philosophy to a child are what they are. They are facts of existence.

As Zip has pointed out, why is it that people "care enough" to force other people to act? It is really a misplaced concept of value. You are responsible for what you care about. If you value the neglect of other people's children so much, great, you are free to contribute and to advocate others to do so. Think if we had self-interested charity instead of forced ineffecient taxation. The reason we think charity can't handle the problem is because most of us "already gave at the office."

I don't want to suggest that the feelings of horror or disgust at the maltreatment of children is not warranted or heart wrenching. Those are valid feelings to anyone who values life in general, and Rand expressed such in essays such as the Comprachicos. If you feel that way. Do something about it! Don't demand that I should. That is the point.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

If YES, then isn't that infant just as responsible for repaying the debt as I am for paying my credit card?

ARe you suggesting that if a child is capable of volition, then you vaccinating him is an example of his exercise of that volition. The fact that children might be capable of volitional action as regards some aspects of their lives, does not mean that any and all actions which they may or may not have agreed to are "voluntary." It's a bizarre definition of voluntary.

And if the child kicks and scream that he doesn't want the shot? Isn't he exercising his volition then?

You were doing better when you were trying t make a pragmatic cost-benefit calculation than to imply that a child is making a deal with you to pay you back for his shot. Of course the whole real irony here is that you started arguing that the basis for taking the decision away from the parents is because children were innocent, helpless (i.e. non-volitional) victims of their parents irrationality. But now that you're vaccinating them instead they become volitional beings responsible for paying back the debt you thrust upon them.... and of course the unspoken assumption is that somehow governments are eminently more rational in setting their policies.

As to taxation, you should read more Rand. She explicitly addresses it. Check the lexicn under... well "taxation".

[The Problem of Geniuses]

I don't know why today should be any different"?

Even that is reasoning. The problem is why should it be the same? Stuff changes unexpectedly in the world too, so why his statis something to expect?

e.g. I had 30 crops in a row that were successful, but last year they were eaten by locusts. Stuff happens. Why shoudl I expect the crop to be good this year? Without an understanding of causality, neither statis nor chance are explainable. Everything is arbitrary.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

I didn't see any essays within Selfishness or Capitalism containing charity in the title, but will keep a lookout while reading.

The lexicon is helpful for locating where topics are discussed in context.

Suggest you look up Charity, and it's antithesis Altruism.

[Incorporation and Limited Liability]

In essence, Corporations allow me to generate profit without the risk and responsibility tied to my business operations.

That is incorrect.

Here is a thread where it was discussed: http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...Liability\

The first L in LLC stands for "limited," or as Jenni points out, what you get from a corporate structure is actually delimited liability. It's not that you have no risk or responsibility, it is that the risk and responsibility is broken up, and you are a priori knowledgable about what risks you're taking on when you obtain ownership.

As such, it is a form of objective law, and an indispensable tool of modern corporate financing. If someone has an issue, it in essence is with the fact that liability can be broken up at all. As such, the campaign for "unlimited liability" severely damages the ability to finance large corporate entities.

[Ultimate Goal of Businessmen is Monopoly]

The premise fo the question contains the same problem that Rand points out. That is the confusion between political power and economic power.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with non-coercive economic monopoly. And yes, since the way to that end is to provide the absolute best most efficient products at the best possible service, yes my goal is complete economic monopoly, and that is a good thing.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

A future producer is by definition a producer, if he stops he would become a looter and starve accordingly, from that point he's responsible for himself. The debt he pays off is his own and it doesn't go away until paid, it is in essence a loan (not welfare) from the older to the younger.

You haven't resolved the problem of someone else making choices and decisions for a child. You've simply made it a societal imposition. So now you've replaced a parental decision which you claim may be variable in it's rationality, with a government decision who's outcome you're going to force the child to accept whether he likes it or not, because he was too young to accept it when it was made.

I thought you said there was no physical force involved with this?? How blatantly wrong you are. You're going to force the taxpayer to pay for this, adn then you're going to force the child to accept his debt, calling him a looter if he chooses not to. One cannot be a "looter" if he had no choice in whether to accept the debt. The child is morally blameless. To label him as such is monstrous.

You do realize the police state you're talking about, right? This is how we got into this mess.

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

No physical force is involved, though there would be a tax to support the effort (which is repaid by the aforementioned direct and indirect means).

Longer post coming on your methodology, but htis is socialism pure and simple. Using this same logic, why stop there? A case can be made for the future worth of just about anything, and one can simply suggest that rather than place the responsiblity where it belongs that society should pay for that future worth today.

Taxation by majority vote is force.

You misunderstood my original post. There is no such thing as intrinsic worth of something.

[Ultimate Goal of Businessmen is Monopoly]

Whew, someone needs to read the history of AT&T a little bit better or at least get through Capitalism The Unknown Ideal. Utilities are commonly claimed to be examples of how natural coercive monopolies can come to exist. State control is at their roots. Not the free market.

Here's an excellent article by a good friend of mine on another such touted utility, electricity.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues...ectric-grid.asp

[Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine]

The development and distribution of the vaccine was not carried out using a capitalist model, but through a combination of voluntary charity (March of Dimes) and taxpayer dollars.

This is not entirely correct. Capitalism is not solely an economic system, but a political one based fundamentally on individual rights. As such voluntary charity is the expression of individual liberties and represents a capitalistic system. The key issue here is voluntary. As for Salk, the right to something also includes the right to dispose of it as you see fit. This includes your life and the works of your life. So the fact that he chose not to profit from it does not make him an altruist, as Kelly pointed out.

... it strikes me as a waste of human potential to not vaccinate infants who cannot pay.

Please Rand's discussion of charity, and very specifically her conception of value. To "waste" something means that it has value, but it does not have value intrinsically, i.e. in and of itself. Valueing presupposes a valuer, i.e. something from be of value to someone. If you see a value and subsequent waste of value, then you can choose to appropriate some of your surplus to that value. If this is in accordance with a heirarchy of values, then it is not sacrifice and this is how Rand looks at charity. Charity is not a duty, and in a proper heirarcy of values, charity toward anonymous people comes from surplus. That feeling you feel is a valid one, as anyone who holds a general reverence for human life might too feel. It is when your valuing of such a thing somehow is made intrinsic in teh thing itself, and then that value is forcibly transferred to me to support that you violate individual rights.

[OCON 2009]

Florida the year after.

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

By the way, here was an interesting discussion on surrealism. Obviously when it comes to somewhat borderline areas, even objectivists can disagree.

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...=11871&st=0

[OCON 2009]

Brian, looks like you and I are the only ones participating in this discussion. I know Kathryn and Rory will also be there, so not enough for critical mass to plan something. I suggest we do a pick up. Plus we all have other affiliations that are probalby larger (OAC students, Diana's Obloggers, etc) which are all planning some meet ups as well. Tag along! We'll be sure to include you.

Eliot, you should come down none the less. Let me know when you're here. I'd like to see you and Thaissa again!

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

Why, if a painting (in the modernist style) is skillfully executed and elicits postive emotion from its audience that in some manner elevates their spirits, would that painting be considered "invalid" art?

OK, you've done this a couple of times. Let me ask you. Would you consider then something man made that was a) skillfully executed and eliciting positive emotions as art? This seems to be too broad a definition, as it would include many things which are functional such as machinery and the like. While those things have some esthetic or design component, it seems to really miss this sort of "for it's own sake" property of the things that one would consider art, such as sculpture, and painting.

I believe in the Romantic Manifesto, Rand differentiates from those things which have a function from those things she chategorizes as art. She does this specifically with respect to the "decorative arts" which are used to accessorize a piece of architecture for example.

Then eliciting positive emotions seems problematic as well since it could include things like sunsets, and fuzzy bunnies which in and of themselves are not art. Also, I'm not sure that the emotions need be positive. Rand was a huge fan of Dostoyevsky, whom she considered to have a decidedly horrific sense of life. His work she considered masterful but it was not inspirational in the least.

I'm not suggesting that things that elicit positive responses are not nor shoudl they not be a value in your life. However, is this necessary and sufficient to consider something art? Objectivism doesn't negate those responses. It just classifies them differently. If blue makes you warm and happy, great! Paint your rooms blue. When I discussed the mechanism of response you'll see that I mentioned that the sense of life mechanism was only partially responsible, but it is the causal element that is responsible for something being art, it is a subconscious response to conceptual ideas. As such the object of its repsonse would have to be something that is representational. One can certainly claim that a panel on the wall of the color yellow would elicit an emotional response, but I would assert that this response cannot be through the "sense of life" mechanism.

Rand suggests the same thing. This of course makes all sorts of art, that you think don't qualify (such as impressionism, and even some forms of modernism a la Dali) qualify as art. However, Rand does draw a distinction at non-representationalism as non-art. Here is some discussion of this aspect.

What are the valid forms of art—and why these? . . . The proper forms of art present a selective re-creation of reality in terms needed by man’s cognitive faculty, which includes his entity-perceiving senses, and thus assist the integration of the various elements of a conceptual consciousness. Literature deals with concepts, the visual arts with sight and touch, music with hearing. Each art fulfills the function of bringing man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts. (The performing arts are a means of further concretization.) The different branches of art serve to unify man’s consciousness and offer him a coherent view of existence. Whether that view is true or false is not an esthetic matter. The crucially esthetic matter is psycho-epistemological: the integration of a conceptual consciousness.

As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art.

Whether the value judgements are true or false, uplifting or horrifying is not the test. The key is can you have a "sense of life" emotional response to it (vs just any emotional response) and is that response the sole end of the man-made work. She limits art to "selective recreations of reality" because those are the only ones that you can have a sense of life response to.

If the fundamental causal mechanism of artistic response is through this "sense of life", i.e. response through a subconscious but decidedly conceptual evaluation, then the object being evaluated has to be conceptual in someway. It has to be recognizable as something. What is a conceptual evaluation of yellow?

While a yellow panel might elicit a response, it's not through this mechanism, and Rand says that this is the crucial mechanism that distinguishes art. Certainly, something that elicits a happy response. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. However, on a wall, it's decoration, not art.

I think that abstract modernism fails even on your other test. For what is the standard by which one can deduce the idea of "skillfully rendered"? How does one judge a skillfully rendered blob of paint (a la Jackson Pollack) vs a poorly rendered blob? One can't, because there is no standard of skill in rendering things that are not recognizable as something. What is good "stream of consciousness" literature vs. bad "stream of consciousness" literature? To the extent that it can be judged as being better than something else will relate not to its "stream of consciousness"-ness but rather to the extent that it retains some recognizability as a story about something and someone.

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

My issue, and let me be very clear here, is the EXCLUSION of almost every other style of art that isn't a direct relation or descendant of romantic realism from the category of "art".

I'm a bit confused here. Can you provide a reference for this "exclusion as art"? I know the Objectivist corpus pretty well and I'm not familiar with it. Now if you mean instead that by providing a standard, one is able to judge art and categories of art as good or bad, that is a different story. However, that is not what you're saying.

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

You might find what Dr. Ellen Kenner has to say on emotions to be helpful:

I'd start first with what Rand had to say on the topic.

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

shades of grey,

Thanks for the welcome. I'm not actually in Philly yet, but will be there in about a month.

Certainly. OK, first claim: I'll refer you again to the Romantic Manifesto, pg. 45:

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments. Man's profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man's fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important.

Admittedly I paraphrased, though not inaccurately.

Ah ok, I think I see some parts of the issue. You're correct I believe your paraphrase is not technically inaccurate. However, right off the bat you don't apply the concepts correctly, and as such are misrepresenting it. As below.

Second claim: Actually, yes. Perception, by definition, is not limited to the physical senses. I refer you to part of Merriam's definition stating: "Immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment: i.e. An artist of rare perception." Perception therefore is not limited to physical signals before they reach the brain, but is also reflected by the brain's initial processing of them.

While it's true that this could be a possible meaning of the word perception, it is not true that a word in any usage denotes all of its possible meanings. When you selectively choose one meaning to represent, as you have admittedly done, you have to have a basis for concluding that in the context of usage, the word actually has that meaning. What's even more critical however, is that used in philosophical discourse, the concept perception is a technical term. That is, it is a technical term of the science of philosophy, and more specifically the branch of epistemology. Different philosphers can and do mean something different by the term because their systems of philosophy depend on how they mean it to differentiate themselves. What Mirriam Webster suggests could be a meaning of the term has no relevance, and if Rand is an honest philosopher that should be at term that she has developed as part of Objectivist epistemology and in fact she is quite clear on what it means and how she is using it.

If you click through the lexicon link in my sig, it's actually quite easy to find.

A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.

So as such, Rand is referring only to the senses with percepts being a collection of sensory inputs, ONLY. So your claim about the perceptual level in the Objective definition of art is invalid. People do not perceive things different, unless their senses are malfunctioning. The fact that people have differing emotional responses to art however is covered by Rand, and it is subsumed by the term "sense of life." But that is addressed in you next point.

Claim three: I actually did provide a broad example in the case of abstract art, but allow me to clarify. Since objectivism defines what is art and what is not art, it thereby negates the validity of any emotions experienced while looking at art that is considered "not art" by objectivism. So if you were looking at some random abstract painting and were somehow moved emotionally by it, objectivism would state that that emotion is incorrect or misplaced. Which it can't be because it's an EMOTION. Particularly one elicited by an inanimate object. I can't substantiate it any more other than to say that once you try to tell people what they should or should not feel, you've already lost the rational argument. If there's one thing people don't like, it's the invalidation of their emotions. Personally, I think a lot of art out there is crap, but it's still art. Your experience, as is mine, is inconsequential. We're talking definitions.

You gave an alternate definition of art, yet you seem not to be sticking to it at all. Your implicit assumption here is that art seems to be whatever you respond to emotionally, or maybe respond to emotionally and positively. If you study Objectivist thought on the nature of emotions you'll see that Objectivism doesn't "negate the validity" of emotional responses to anything. What Objectivism does say is that emotions aren't tools of cognition. That is, an emotional response to something will not tell you if that something is good or it is bad. Your emotions are not the standard or tool to cognitively determine anything. Beyond that, emotions are not the province solely of art, and as such Objectivism cannot negate a response to something that is not art. As others have pointed out, one can have an emotional response to many things, and of many shades. It says nothing of art. Objectivism doesnt' say what you "should" feel about a particular piece of art. It says only that your emotions are a response, a causal response, part of which is based upon the ideas you have integrated. It says that your response to art will be determined by your "sense of life," i.e. an automated response that you essentially have burned into your subconscious based upon the ideas you explicitly and implicitly. If you love death consistently, then you will like anti-life art. etc.

The "should" part comes regarding the ideas you choose to hold, but if you can find Rand anywhere saying that therefore you "should" emote in a certain way, I'd like to see how you interpret that. It's a very common mistake for instance among Objectivists early on to actually imitate the characters in Rand's books. They then question the fact that they don't always feel the way they think they should. They misunderstand the nature of emotions. Emotions don't follow ideas directly and immediately. You don't automatically change your emotional responses once and even if you adopt a new idea. That's why you dont' use your emotions to know if something is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. And it's why Rand doesn't address emotions in that way in her work.

Claim four: I'm not sure what to make of this one. I used direct quotes from Ms. Rand herself for the statements in question, so you'd be hard-pressed to prove that I've misstated the objectivist position. Simply declaring that I've done so is insufficient. I do appreciate your reply though, and look forward to further discussion.

Sure, you stated the definition almost correctly, and then proceeded to ignore what it meant and make claims about it that are incorrect. You don't appear to understand the quotes and what they mean.

If you look at an impressionist painting and it motivates you to improve yourself and your life, I think you'd be hard-pressed to de-classify it as art when a romantic realist painting may not elicit the same motivation. It goes back to my point about how the definition of the word "art" should have never been changed in the first place, but I won't beat a dead horse. Any more

ugh, this is a really muddled sentence conceptually. Objectivism doesn't declassify impressionism as non art. Nor does it negate the feeling one gets from it. Again, you are assuming a sort of consequentialist definition for art.

[A disagreement over the ability to define "Art"]

Let's check a few premises.

The objectivist defintion states that art is what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect, objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form.

Can you please substantiate this claim?

The key word is "perceptual". In the context of art, perception becomes subjective and as such, is no longer able to be concretely defined. This naturally presents a problem for an objectivist. Given that, according to objectivists, art is how the artist sees the world, how they express their "sense of life". However there are many examples of objects at which two people can look and see very different things, neither of them incorrect.

Uh, no. The see perceptually the exact same thing. They interpret it conceptually differently. It is not an issue of perception being subjective.

Additionally, many objectivist descriptions about art or art appreciation eschew emotion. Emotion is as real a part of the world as the ocean or mountains. Purely, it is a series of electrochemical reactions within the brain which are expressed physically by the body. However, what elicits emotion is SUBJECTIVE.

Can you provide examples of the Objectivist eschewing of emotion as it relates to art? I find this to be a wholly unsubstantiated claim and in my experience just flat wrong.

I don't think you've stated the Objectivist position properly in any way. Without the proper premises the rest of your argument falls flat.