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islander

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islander last won the day on December 20 2011

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  1. Attacking this from a slightly different perspective, all rights are human rights, whether moral rights (v. wrongs) or the political (individual) rights that are applications of moral rights to human interrelationships in a social context. They are a necessity imposed on us by our fundamental nature that we share with all other humans but (so far) with no other existents. Thus, no entity can be said to possess individual rights that is not human. Nevertheless, the OP asks if a manmade non-human entity, A1, could possibly have a nature that would impose an equivalent necessity on itself and human beings. To such an end, both A1’s existence and fulfillment of the potential of its own nature would have to be contingent on actions selected by it in the face of alternatives. Additionally, the means by which it identifies and evaluates existence and alternatives must share with our capacity for same the necessity for logical consistency that requires reciprocation with any other entity operating under this same set of conditions when claiming individual rights for itself. While this description obviously refers to equivalents of our own rational, volitional, moral, and emotional processes, defining the parameters sans those terms demands a narrower specificity. It also lessens the danger of entangling the discussion in their multitudinous implications with which Objectivists are way too familiar. Most important, it avoids precluding the achievement of equivalence by processes not exactly identical to our own, be that at all possible. In the long run, it is only necessary that this physically different kind of entity be subject to the same kinds of contingencies and necessities that are the basis for our own claim to individual rights and possess capacities to deal with them for its own sake.
  2. There is only one argument against taxation. It is immoral. And the only way to successfully demonstrate the truth of that accusation is to start at the beginning—at the derivation of the ethical necessity of liberty for all. As Rand pointed out, politics is a normative science that is a derivative from ethics. Specifically, politics is the application of individual ethics to a social context. Therefore, no political idea can be completely vindicated without tracing its derivation back to a demonstrably valid ethical root. I have recently been working on a condensed presentation of my understanding of the Objectivist derivation of radical laissez-faire capitalism from my understanding of the Objectivist ethics to shorten some of my longwinded, argumentative blog comments. Here is a current version: 1) The existence of living organisms is conditional on self-generated action in the face of alternatives. 2) The most fundamental of all alternatives for all living creatures is life or death. 3) Of all living creatures, only man can choose which alternative to pursue. 4) The choice (deliberate or implied in all other choices) to act in pursuit of life makes life one's most fundamental goal. 5) One's fundamental goal is implicitly the standard of measure for all values one acts to gain or keep in its pursuit. 6) Therefore, that which contributes to one's life (consistent with one's nature) is necessarily the good, and that which detracts from it is the bad. 7) The long run pursuit of life necessitates a hierarchical code of values in principle (= ethics) to guide (by programming emotions) one's spontaneous choices in any alternative faced, and it requires one to opt for the higher value per that code in lieu of the lower one (= morality of egoism). 8) Man's singular means to fulfill these requirements of his nature in the pursuit of life is by applying the product of his reason to his actions in the production and exchange of values needed to survive and flourish consistent with the nature of the human being he is. 9) The extension of individual ethics to the social context of an individual living in a society of other volitional (and therefore fallible) men requires that one seek to preserve one's own autonomy over the application of one's own reason to one's own action in the pursuit of one's own life (= freedom from the fallibility of others). 10) The only threat to a man's pursuit of his life in that context would be the initiation or threat of physical force by others to coerce certain choices of action against his will thus diminishing the above defined individual autonomy. 11) The single most fundamental political alternative is therefore: freedom vs. force (= liberty vs. coercion, autonomy vs. servitude). 12) The sole moral requirement for any government of a society of men must therefore be to remove the use or threat of force from human interactions and guarantee thereby that all human interrelationships shall be entered into and conducted voluntarily. (= Rand's radical capitalism in which every individual retains his morally justified autonomy). 13) A moral government must therefore guarantee that: No person shall initiate the use of physical force or threat thereof to take, withhold, damage or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange. It should be obvious that a government so charged would be precluded from taxing anyone for any purpose whatsoever. The first answer to someone who asks how could we finance that government, is, "in whatever way you want to, so long as it does not involve the use or threat of force." If a society cannot devise a way to fund a moral government voluntarily, it cannot have a moral government.
  3. islander

    Food Stamps?

    No, no ... the principle as Rand enunciated it and I applied it in my comment is the trader principle in spades: only those who oppose Government largesse have a right to receive it—accessories to theft forfeit the booty are direct descendants of it. At the end of the day he should be proud of himself for taking the stamps alone as an act of principle. He can then wear that pride on his sleeve and ignite with it fiery debates at dull parties in which he will discover his misjudgment of the intelligence and character of countless soon-to-be former best friends while baiting the lurking honest mind silently listening in the background—the one who approaches him in the hall several days later to say, "that was interesting, what you were saying about the food stamp thing Saturday ..."
  4. islander

    Food Stamps?

    Yes, I was fully aware of this, and I stuck the "in theory" into the statement to clarify that the value is just an added layer of psychological justice. The principle itself is, in any colloquial context, so paradoxically quirky, with hidden layers of added significance, that I find it extremely useful in conveying to newbies and naysayers the awesome power of principles to take them where they imagine no other man has gone!
  5. islander

    Food Stamps?

    @Schtank, I disagree with your conclusion. While SapereAude's list of your potential contributions to welfare may be true, that contribution is so insignificant as to not be worth mentioning, while the value of the stamps could be a meaningful contribution to furthering your education. Additionally, there is the value in theory of taking the food from the mouths of those who think that their need is a claim on others. Rand does not mince words on this. If you oppose it in principle, you are the victim and those stamps are your restitution, while they who support it are the criminals and their accessories, who may not morally profit from their own booty.
  6. As I understand it, the "wager" was Pascal's tacit capitulation to and rationalization of Enlightenment dabbling in the denial of God ... i.e. "well, if we can't know for sure, it's safer to wager there is a God than there isn't." This is common in the extreme among the members of the doubting fringe in American Christianity. And that is essentially what deists do. My rewrite of Pascal's wager is intended to jolt vulnerable theists of any sort into considering the alternate preposterous speculation of a God that intentionally withholds all evidence of His existence ... "I gave you reason, now use it or be damned!" I agree with whyYNOT that many crossing the gorge between religion and atheism are on a fragile footbridge. My wager is a gentle joke that frays the ropes on the theist side. I only posted it here, because it occasionally draws in response that it is just a deist challenge in an Objectivist disguise.
  7. Sorry you didn't get it. That's OK. It's just a fable for deists. Maybe if you pretend you're a deist and read it again ...
  8. Now that Ayn Rand has finally demonstrated the efficacy of Reason to man in the 20th century, a new speculation about God has emerged as a revision of Blaise Pascal's 17th c. thought that it is safer to "wager" that God does exist than that He doesn't, as follows: The existence of God cannot be established through Reason. Though all men are free to "wager" as though God does exist, they should take into account that Reason would have to be God's crowning creation and gift to man. It endows man with the capacity to grasp everything that exists in the universe that God wants man to be able to know and the capacity to use that knowledge to perfect the life God gave him. They should consider also the distinct possibility that God would not want to be known by man, but rather would prefer to observe from afar what men can achieve on their own by means of the capacities with which He endowed them. After all, God would not have given man Reason if he did not want man to use it in accordance with its designed function. Furthermore, any rejection of Reason, such as the arbitrary replacement of it by the Satanic anti-capacity of Mysticism to fabricate false ideas of God's universe, or worst of all, false ideas of the nature or will of God Himself, would most certainly constitute the most damnable sin. Thus, in that case, man would be subject to only one commandment: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt falsify neither other gods before Me, nor the nature of Me Myself nor the nature of My creations. Thus, in that case, there would be only one mortal sin: the rejection of God's Reason in favor of Satan's Mysticism. Thus, in that case, in the end, Heaven would necessarily be occupied only by God and around Him all of the rational atheists who ever existed. Thus, in that case, all who abused the rational minds God gave them and stubbornly clung with nothing more than Faith to religions that worshiped some allegedly revealed God would necessarily go to reside with Satan in the fires of Hell for eternity. Thus, in that case, it would perhaps be better not to "wager" on the existence of God after all.
  9. ukelelemasta, Objectivists would not "throw a criminal away." A prison system should punish rights violators by extracting from them the greatest value they are capable of producing in order to 1) cover some or all of their capture, court and imprisonment costs; 2) reimburse their victims; and 3) rehabilitate them to enable them to be productive and self-sufficient after incarceration. Private companies could compete to devise the right combination of incentives and disincentives to achieve the maximum in value from a prison population of widely differing capacities. Though violators of rights have forfeited all their rights, punishments would nevertheless be defined to fit the severity of the crime for the sake of all innocent persons who might be imprisoned in error.
  10. OK, I am ready to summarize my conclusions from this discussion. The awkwardness in your answer about how to describe the event in question just solidifies my position further. It is that all Objectivists have a firm grip on the fact that animals and plants are not volitional, or they would not qualify to be called Objectivists. A multitude of non-Objectivists are equally committed to that fact. That notwithstanding, I assert that an overwhelming majority of those who know that persist in engaging in contextual or metaphorical language that personifies the actions of animals and plants as if there were no distinction between volition and instinct. "This plant likes lots of water" ... That plant hates sunlight" ... "given a choice between tuna or beef, my cat will choose the tuna every time" ... or this melange of volitional/instinctual choices: We do this because volition and instinct are both invisible and taken for granted. Observing a cat or dog opting for one food over another is just like watching a child do the same thing. So many actions of animals mirror our own that most of us treat animals as members of an extended family. Using borrowed descriptions of human actions for animals is universally a common practice. And, until and unless someone relies on such borrowed usage to assert human instincts or animal volition in a philosophical debate, that practice is intellectually harmless.
  11. This only addresses the subject of alternatives as potential actions in an epistemological context, and I agree with it 100%. Can I not also use the word "alternative" to refer to one of two or more possible objects of an action? Are the sight and smell of the bowl of water and the plate of food not two components of the animal's perception, only one of which will be acted upon as programmed by its nature? My primary question is about how we describe the resulting event we experience when the animal drinks from the bowl of water instead of eating from the plate of food. Are statements that the animal "chooses", "prefers", "selects", "wants", or "decides for" one instead of the other strictly metaphorical? Or are they merely contextually distinct from the same statement about a human initiated event? Or are they invalid usage in all instances. Or what?
  12. My statement that animals perceive the existents that are alternatives is not necessarily a claim that they can perceive the concept "alternative". Place a plate of food and a bowl of water in front of an animal. It perceives the food and it perceives the water. It cannot eat and drink and do nothing or something else simultaneously. A choice must be made. It can partake of one then the other or just one or neither. The action it takes, if any, will be determined by its nature in the service of its life. But the result of that action will still be that a choice was made among possible alternatives. It is in fact the proposal I am making that the choices of humans are made with the awareness of the alternatives themselves and of the fact that they can initiate any action in respect to them they want. The choices animals make are made with the awareness of the alternatives themselves but without any awareness of the process that will automatically initiate their action. Thus the word choice refers in both cases to a process of distinguishing, selecting, preferring, etc. among alternatives, but the nature of the processes are different. So, the word "choice" is being used in two separate contexts that give it slightly different meanings.
  13. David is right, but if you just change "information" to "stimuli" his complaint will go away. All along, I have been comfortable with animals choosing but not with plants. And reading David's comment prompted me to recognize that there is a difference in the processing systems of plants and animals that might support that. Animals are conscious sentient beings. They perceive their alternatives. They are aware of their alternatives. The only alternative of a plant is to act when in contact with that which furthers their life (water, nourishment, sunlight, etc.) or to not act when it isn't. Its automatic system is not aware of and cannot evaluate other alternatives like animals can. The automatic system of an animal causes it to select from an array of alternatives of which it is aware at any given moment. This is why I am ok with saying "the animal chooses" until and unless someone can provide better reasons not to be. The only important issue attached to this is determinism vs. free will. The question of whether an animal can "choose" is relevant, because it is today common usage on the street, in related industries, and in an array of scientific fields. If we conclude that this usage constitutes an inherent contradiction that implies a backdoor support for determinism, we will face a battle up a hill far steeper than the one to correct the meaning of "selfish." And what could our language or discourse gain from it? Nothing. The better solution is perhaps to leave them be and just warn the determinist inclined that meanings are contextual. In the question, "Do you choose your pet, or does it choose you?", the word choose has two separate and distinct meanings. This is not a philosophical question.
  14. I am on this page, but the answer to the other question I was provoking is not. Google "animal chooses" and among the results are many phrases like, "if the animal chooses path A over path B...", "how the animal chooses its mate...", and "when the animal chooses its territory...". Are these statements all nonsense, because animals do not ever "choose"? Or is "choose" merely being used in a different context in which it refers to the choice that is the result of the animal's action rather than the unchosen cause of it?
  15. This is perhaps just a matter of perspective involving two different aspects of one event — a "choice". I place two plates of food before you on the table and two plates of food on the floor before your cat. Each of you chooses to eat from one plate or the other first. From the aspect of my experience of the event, each of you makes a choice. But from the causal aspect, my knowledge of your different natures tells me that you initiated your choice, while the action of the cat that resulted in it's choice was caused solely by its nature and hence, was unchosen. In other words: the choices we see animals make are not optional.
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