KendallJ
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Posts posted by KendallJ
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For all the pro- (Google Street View) people, some questions:
What is it that seperates the Google activity from that of a Peeping Tom or other lawless activity based on criminal surveillance?
Or should all Peeping Tom / Prowling / Stalking / Loitering / Disturbing the Peace / Criminal Voyuerism / Criminal Surveillance laws be abolished?
Surveillance is generally defined as the secret observation of the activities of another person for the purpose of spying on them and invading their privacy. It also applies to a person who peeps through windows or doors.
I'm not a legal scholar but I'll give you my thoughts.
1. other evidence that such surveillance has a strong causal link to the initiation of force.
2. To the extent that there is nothing regarding #1 with the activity: yes.
3. Surveillance is "secret observation for the purpose of spying." Bit circular that...
Surveillance as such is not a violation of any rights. Just as the owning of a firearm is not. The fact that a few people who survey or own firearms ultimately act to harm does not make the act itself criminal. It is the act of force that is criminal.
Some have claimed that this mechanism is too easy to access. Well, most technological innovation make everything easier including crime. The bizarre fear that somehow increasing the ease of a criminal act will somehow increase the prevalence of the act is flawed thinking, but it is the thinking that is at the heart of the idea of "privacy".
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Isn't it different to take a permanent record of your home without your consent than to just pass by because you have to get around?
Why is this different?
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He also said that Rand included a scene with alcohol as a message to puritan Objectivists, so I take that as a precedent.
Can you cite a reference for this? I'm not even sure if when Rand wrote the book that the term Objectivist had been coined. So she'd be including a message to a non-existent group of people. Why would she need to do that?
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Well, you're both right and you're both wrong. The mormon church has made inroads into the management of the troops that it sponsors and the councils where mormon churches are prevalent. However, all troops are essentially independently formed and policies are hardly uniformly practiced.
When I was a Scout the religious aspects were almost non-issues in my particular troop and what was taught was a non-religous specific "reverence" (which today, I apply as a reverence for the myself, and for the human capacity for reason)
You'd simply have to know more information about chuckleslord specific context and to advise based upon some broad brush generalization will yield poor advice. The Eagle Scout award is not a "degree" and it has no value as such. The advice I'd give someone who was just starting into scouts and someone who only had 3 months to finish is vastly different. At this point in chuckleslord progression, it is far less about an abstract policy discussion that might not even apply in his case, than about having the personal character to complete what he has already 99% completed.
If someone says they have 3 months to finish, they probably have already completed the Eagle Project, and lack maybe a few merit badge requirements and a board of review. At this point it is basically about finishing and acknowledging your already 99% completed accomplishment. I was 2 merit badges short of my Eagle and considered quitting. I'd regret to this day if I did. It had nothing to do with some larger philosophical issue at that point, and more with a 13 yr old kid who was starting to discover high school and girls.
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(I have 3 months to finish, but it is very doable)
the dilemma I am having is that I don't agree with many parts of Boy scouts, and i know that if i finish it out, that those morals, which are no longer mine, will follow me for the rest of my life. the reason why i want to finish is that i would be the first to do it in my family, and many benefits would ensue.
any suggestions?
As an Eagle Scout who disagrees with some of the values of Scouting as they are espoused now, my preference would still have been to finish.
When you say " those morals, which are no longer mine, will follow me for the rest of my life" what do you think you mean? The morals you choose come with you for the rest of your life. Take what is good of the experience, and believe me there is a lot that is good, and simply drop the rest off at the door.
Being an Eagle Scout is not endorsing a particular set of values for the rest of your life. It is a sign that you have completed a set of tests, most of which are indicators of character, leadership and independence.
Hurry up, get your ass in gear, and finish it.
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Another way of saying this is that the choice to live is what brings into existence the need for a code of morality. "Should" as in an ethical should only applies once the choice to live has been made. The choice to live is not the province of morality. It brings morality to the forefront as a necessity. In a statement such as "if you want to live, you require a code of morality," the phrase "if you want to live" is what is known as meta-ethical basis. That is, it is the reason upon which a code of morality is based. In Objectivism this meta-ethics is not based upon personal feelings or whim. It is based in the objective requirements of life. Only if you choose to live do you need morality. The choice to live therefore is "pre-ethical." There is not reason why you should choose to do so. It is only if you do choose, that the idea of a should comes into being.
If you choose not to live then you have no need of morality, as dying is an incredibly easy thing to do.
Also, choosing to live, and choosing not to die are not the same thing. Living is not the avoidance of death. Nor is it pulse maintenance, i.e. survival. Rand never said anything to the effect that our purpose is to survive.
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I think its a great piece of prose,
What makes it a great piece of prose?
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The title and the question are incongruous.
He invented a unique type of motor. Generally most normal average men do not innovate such things.
However, that has nothing to do with moral perfection nor moral perfectability.
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What is Objectivism and how do you know it?
Why we make it up of course!
Could you be a little more specific? Objectivism is a philosophy that Ayn Rand developed. I know it because I've read her works. But this doesn't seem like the answer you were looking for.
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Other ARIWatch articles make better critiques. Peikoff on Waco and Militias is on target. The Waco wackos were in no way a militia, and dismissing militias as private armies is an analysis based on a nonessential.
Except that as part of a concerted thesis about the nature of ARI, this carries very little water. Even we here have questioned Peikoff's statements about particular policy, but that is a very different thing from claiming systemic failure in ARI policy.
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I just took a quick look through it. It basically tries to "read the tea leaves" of Rand's writing, indicating what she would have thought as evidence against ARI. Inferences, and implications that are poorly substantiated at best. Anyone who associated with her, and discussed issues in detail would be in a far better position to understand the applications of her philosophy, yet it is not presented as this. In once case it actually claims Rand misapplied her own philosophy so that ARI's extension of it (support for Israel) is wrong.
It's junk in my estimation.
And of course there is not comment on C. Bradley Thompson's "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" which of course differentiates Objectivism from the school of neo-conservatism. Such an analysis would be crucial to the thesis of the site, which is that ARI is really a neo-con organization. No definition is given of neo-conservatism so it's used as more of a smear than a real definition.
The site seems to take a libertarian pacifist position a la Ron Paul. Almost all the criticisms are foreign policy related.
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Second-hand smoke like toxic gas is a scientifically-demonstrable killer and to use it indoors in public, infringes upon the rights of even other smokers.
a. that is a scientific claim that has very little backing, in context. TO claim that second hand smoke is like toxic gas, in any context, ignores the meaning of the word toxic. Dose, concentration, time exposure, etc are all relevant factors for the label. So no, second hand smoke is rarely like toxic gas. You'll find that most studies claiming danger from 2nd hand smoke require you to be co-habitating with a chain smoker for a good part of your life. To suggest that this applies in this context would be wholy context dropping. It simply is not true.
b. which rights are those? Is that your right to be in someone else's private establishment, in the environment that you deem appropriate? in public, is actually rarely in public.
Is it ok to let someone spray a toxic gas because the landlord allows it ?If you know that ahead of time, it sure is.
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I'll give that the answer it merits.
When one starts talking about merit, it would be advisable to make sure one's own work is up to snuff, and that they aren't in fact earning what they get themselves.
Are you sure you aren't just avoiding the salient point that was made? Your whole line of reasoning misses the whole distinction between intellectual and political activism. Politically, no rational individual would, in the name of ideologicla purity, oust a member of a party, if in doing so, they made their political party irrelevant.
Spectre is a moderate republican because, surprise of surprises, he is from a swing state. A little cabal of right wing nuts can't oust him and he knows it. He simply switch parties to prevent a stupid blunder. If you want to change the ideological nature of the senator, you have to change the ideological nature of his state. You don't do that in the primaries. All you do there is put someone in for your party who is unelectable.
All I can say is that my inbox is filling up with notes from regular board members thanking me for calling you out. Really, go home.
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Actually, you should be annoyed with the Repubs and fighting made at the Dems.
At least the religion of the Republican'ts has some philosphical value (RM). They might respons to some support in the right direction and biteback if the go in the wrong direction, and aren't a quarter as bad as the active alternative. Also don't forget, for some 35 years, we have been a de facto part of the Right.
You're the only one who has been a de facto part of the right. Honestly this is more of the same nonsense from Space Patroller.
I am annoyed at Republicans and mad at the Democrats. So why on earth would I celebrate that a right wing fringe group in Spectre's state chose now to go on a quest of [questionable] ideological purity in the name of making the party politically irrelevant?
Honestly, SP, you are the farthest thing from an Objectivist, and more a complete right wing nutball. Go back to your NeoTech troll hole.
If the Republicans are not so bad, then now they are completely irrelevant. Why would anyone be happy about that.
...and nothing of value was lost. (or gained by the dems)That's right, while the Democrats burn and pillage, the Republicans still get to keep.... card check.
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Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Now if the GOP could just shed Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, it would go a long way to gaining integrity.
And losing it's filibuster. You think Snow and Collins are what's holding the GOP back, do you? Hardly.
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I'll ignore that ad homo..homie... Hamas...Arguent at the Person unless it's still here when I sober up.
My dear man, you've misunderstood me. It's not an ad hominem because I wasn't making an argument. It is simply a good old fashioned joke, at your expense.
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How do you think I got here?
I think K-mac is being far too generous.
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I thought you may be thinking along those lines, that's why I asked for clarification. This is a common question of Objectivism and, for me anyway, it was answered very quickly and to my satisfaction, so I figured we could get this one item off your understanding O'ism to-do list.
Zip and khaight pretty much said everything, but reading Virtue of Selfishness gave me a good understanding of this particular topic, and many others.
I think we need a wiki with questions that every newb asks.
1. What about roads, fire companies, and emergency rooms?
2. The free will vs. determinism merry-go-round yet again.
3. Family's and children's: isn't that sacrifice?
4. Masculinity, femininity, porn and polyamory.
5. How's the voluntary tax thing work again?
6. Aren't animals conceptual beings too?
7. Are you suuuure we don't need a little bit of regulation?
8. Contextual certainty? huh?
9. What about the genocide of the indians?
... and for those of you who love fantastic hypotheticals...
10. If there was a robot who was indescructible, but who could reproduce himself, yet napped twice on every fifth Thursday, but was constructed originally by man, but needed to forage for nuts and bolts to survive, but not really, who happened upon someone else's cabin full of bolts in a crazy snowstorm.... (you get the point)
Sorry to hijack. It's Friday and I'm feeling whimsical.
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I believe it's actually a very strong component of how the "common law" developed. That is, the idea of writing new laws, i.e. statutes or "statutory law" the way we think of it today, has a downside in that with the stroke of a pen, very well though out and proven principles can be erradicated. Precedent has a stabilizing effect on this, and is in fact how common law developed.
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In this sort of senario, how would you suggest man is to arrive at truth, at a right and proper way of behaving? How can he know that his particular thoughts actually do correspond with reality better than others, and that he's not still simply the product of atomic motions.
What is it about "going through the motions" of the search for truth that gives the outcome of that search any more validity than not? And how do you know that?
Oh Sorry, I meant this question, not the other one.
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Now that I've answered your question. I'd like an answer to mine.
My last cricism is that your reasoning is all very rationalistic, that is it seems like a set of floating abstractions. Do you actually understand why it is that objectivists would claim that without volition you can't have knowledge? Can you concretize that explanation for me? -
For me, that is fundamental different. Now suddenly the nature of an entity does not follow what it will do and multiple choices are permitted which not breaks the law of identity.
This is a misunderstanding of the statement first. You inserted determinism into the first statement. Let me see if I can rephrase Peikoff to illustrate.
If it is a things nature to be volitional, then in a given context, the nature of it's identity will dictate what it will do. It will choose. Objectivism starts with identity, not with action.
You implicitly inserted prior action (i.e. determinism) into the mix. The only way you have a conflict of those two statements is if determinism = causality.
Determinism: aspects of a thing's nature are specified by prior causes.
Causality: A thing acts according to it's nature.
Causality is a broader concept. Determinism is a species of causality.
If you look backward through a deterministic chain of causes (say a series of billiard balls hitting each other), you will always arrive at a thing and it's nature. Those will be metaphysical primaries which you cannot explain by prior causes, because those prior causes will also have things with identities. To ask why a thing is what it is, can not be entirely explained by prior causes. This is the mistake that determinists make in thinking that prior causes are sufficient to explain what a thing is. Some part of the explanation relies and will always rely on the idea that "it just is." This is what the first axiom of existence implies. Existence is irreducible. It must be taken as ostensibly (not for granted) there. You cannot get to existence by going backward in a deterministic chain. You must start with things and their nature, and go forward from there.
Your train of thought does not integrate this axiom.
Determinists drop the context of identity because they implicitly assume that a thing's nature is entirely specified by prior action. Without reminding anyone that the prior action are in turn generated by things with specific natures.
Thinking of this another way. If we describe the naure of things through physics, and chemistry,etc, then it would be proper to say, it is in the nature of atoms to form molecules, of certain molecules to form proteins, of certain proteins to form cells, of certain cells to form nueral networks, and of those neural networks to exhibit volition. Why is this so? Because the atoms simply are what they are.
Neural networks, cells, proteins, molecules, and even atoms all exhibit properites that their consituent particles do not. To suggest that because CERTAIN properties of an atom are specified deterministically, that ALL properties of a constituent entity must also be, is the fallacy of composition. Causation will not tell you why an atom simply exists possessing the properties it has. Nor will it tell you that those atoms are not capable of forming an entity whose characteristic is that it is volitional.
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that also leaves a theoretical test. will a human always do the same as discribed above? if he does not, determinism is wrong and there is something in the human brain that is not deterministic and since the human brain is part of the universe means that the universe is not deterministic. that would have a _huge_ impact on science.
First this is an argument from necessity. Whether or not it has an impact does not affect whether it is true or not. That fact that an impact might be very messy is well, science's problem, isn't it.
Secondly, it actually doesn't have that big an impact on science. It only does if you take science's explanation of causality to mean determinism. If you have a system that is causal in a different way, then that does not now make every other system you've characterized suddenly behave randomly. It simply would say that some systems exhibit deterministic behavior, and others exhibit volitional behavior. It impacts the science of the study of human behavior. But then science has always had a bit of a problem getting human behavior to fit into a nice neat A -> B causality.
hmmm, I wonder why that is...
My last cricism is that your reasoning is all very rationalistic, that is it seems like a set of floating abstractions. Do you actually understand why it is that objectivists would claim that without volition you can't have knowledge. Can you concretize that explanation for me? If not, then I'd suggest that you don't actually understand the issue, and your arguments against it are going to miss the issue every time.
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I believe free will is an illusion, but a very smart one and one that must be dealt with. We _need_ that illusion to work, but we have to accept that it is a practical concept and not a fundamental physical one.
We should not throw it over board abandon all morals; we need the illusion to function in any way and that means that morals still have to work with free will, even if it is an illusion.
This is basically "soft determinism." The belief that man is determined but that he must still be held responsible as if he's not.
In this sort of senario, how would you suggest man is to arrive at truth, at a right and proper way of behaving? How can he know that his particular thoughts actually do correspond with reality better than others, and that he's not still simply the product of atomic motions.
What is it about "going through the motions" of the search for truth that gives the outcome of that search any more validity than not? And how do you know that?
If you can answer that question at all clearly I would be the answer you give leaves you a bit troubled.
I'm not going to debate this with you. I want you to state your position clearly. For a clear articulation of the Objectivist position I would urge you not to keep flitting around these threads. You will get an approximation at best. Peikoff, OPAR, on volition is the clearest statement of the issue.
Google Street View
in Questions about Objectivism
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The actual crime being trespassing, and not looking through your blinds.