Ifat Glassman

What would be "fixation at some preliminary social stage of development"? Would you describe your attitude for such excellent students as "get a life"? The appropriate response to achievements is admiration. I could understand if such a person was your close friend and you would give them an advice on their personal life because you want them to be happy. But to generalize all students who invest a lot in their education as being wrong ("like, get a life dude <smashing beer can on my head>)" - that cannot be motivated by concern for their happiness. It is contempt for a lifestyle. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

LOL!! You went to study medicine because you have a need for immediate gratification?! Medicine is one of the most demanding fields that offer the least immediate gratification when you're a student! How did you go through the 7 (it is 7, right?) years of education, of studying the names of all the bones, muscles, diseases etc'? Just want to add one more thing, to what bobsponge said: I'm also an artist. But I don't do it primarily for the money, I do it percisely for the "spirit of it" as you called it. I am making money off of it, but that is not what I have in mind when I paint.

Just because some desires of man are determined metaphysically, doesn't mean he has no volition. If certain instincts (even though I do not believe instincts as you define them exist) are present, it does not contradict volition. For example: you can only have sexual desire for women (I'll assume that is true..). You have no choice about it: you cannot wake up one day and start having sexual desire for plants. You have no choice about what you find sexual (in this context): you are born with the blue-print to make you a man. To say that volition is the ability to change every single desire a man has is to ignore the nature and boundaries of volition. Volition is metaphysical just like the object of your sexual desire (in this context) is determined metaphysically. Both are a part of man's nature: They do not contradict. And hunterrose, I answered your question about reflexes vrs. brain control in that quote I gave from my book. Honestly, you just need to read it.

Ah, yeah... word slipped my mind. Thanks

Such a thing as "insanity" does exist, and it can result from psychiatric disorders. However, if someone does have such a disorder, I find it hard to believe it would abrupt just "all of a sudden" as the person is committing the crime. However, since an average person does not always have enough knowledge to identify a disorder in themselves, I believe there is room in the courthouse for the insanity plea. I can point out to one case of insanity. Quite a spooky story: about a man called Charles Whitman: until his 20's was normal and successful. At that time he started experiencing eruptions of rage, headaches and irrational thoughts. It slowly deteriorated until eventually he killed his mother, his beloved wife, and sniped 13 more people... It turned out he had a huge tumor in his brain pressing against his Amygdala, which is a region in the brain responsible for emotions. Check out his suicide letter, quite amazing: And another note: I'm sure there have been cases the insanity plea was misused. Can you provide us with a definition of "Insanity" from the perspective of the law? It would contribute a lot to the discussion. Oh yeah, and welcom to the forum, sorry if I spooked you with the story .

Good reasons for putting on clothes. I would like to add more: It is a way to make one look more pretty. Now I don't know if this is a feministic thing, but I get tremendous pleasure from picking something to wear, trying different variations, looking at myself in the mirror... Good clothes have the ability to emphasize one's appealing features. Clothes are for me, a way to celebrate life. On a happy day I would invest more in my appearance (usually dresses). On an important event I would pick something fancy to express how I feel about that event. If I have a romantic relationship I would enjoy wearing something pretty when hanging out with my boyfriend to celebrate our relationship. Nudity has a context-dependent meaning. If I am in the shower, it has the mere meaning of convenience. If I need to take off my clothes in front of strangers (locker-room) then it is also something of convenience. But if I take off my clothes in front of someone I care about, it does have a deeper meaning of exposing more of "myself" to them. It becomes a declaration of intimacy. A person's naked body also has the potential of revealing their character, by the way they stand and hold themselves. However, my own naked body (as I view it by myself) has an additional meaning, that I have not yet identified. It is important to me that it will look to my satisfaction, that's one thing. However, there is still a need to explain where these ideas are coming from. So there. This sums up my conclusions for now.

Lebanese president Lahoud harbored Nasrallah during part of the Lebanon War Very severe, if this is true.

I can think of many activities that would be challenging and demanding skills: Such as being able to count the hairs on one's arm, being able to twist one's tongue inside the mouth, balancing a fork on one's nose, eating pieces of metal, and being a hooker. Almost every activity requires some amount of skill. That alone does not make it worthy as a career. Being a stripper does require skill, but if at the end of the day one's product is a bunch of aroused men, then one's job is bad, because the product is bad (sex divorced from mind). If on the other hand, the stripping club is something more like a place mainly for dancing (like the Vegas shows might be) then at the end of the day a dancer can say that the product they have created was art. Like I said, I have nothing against dancing naked, or even against sexual dance as long as it is primarily dancing. Now, I don't know, if you know some striping joints who put emphasis on dance and not on sex (where dancers are instructed to create art primarily and not arousal) then such place does allow a woman to use her mind in a good way. But if the strippers are required to put emphasis on arousing the clients, then that is a bad job. That said, notice that you responded to your own conclusion from the things I said and not to what I actually said. I never said that stripping does not require any skill. I did say that a worthy career should provide one with an opportunity to fulfil their potential, among other things. So you mean a woman should take pride in herself if she manages to bring men to sexual arousal using nothing more than her body? Explain to me why, please.

I want to explain first the background for this current discussion: According to Objectivism, definitions are statements of truth. This is because, according to Objectivism, definitions are statements of identification of a special kind: identifications of essentials of a concept (with genus and differentia). On the other hand, I too have formed my own definition of definitions, which is different from the definition that Objectivism has for definitions. I find some problems with the Objectivism definition of definition as I will explain later. According to my view, definition is a statement that attaches a symbol to a concept by providing a precise, full description of a concept (*). According to how I view definitions, a definition has 2 parts: 1 is the symbol, and the second is the description. When I said that definitions are the things that allow us to communicate I was relying on my definition of definition: If the meaning of symbols is not shared by people, they cannot communicate. They would interpret the symbol "man" in different ways. According to my view, a definition has tremendous significance, because it is a corner-stone that is used to form ideas in the form of verbal statements, and therefor a symbol must have a very precise meaning attached to it for the idea to be communicable. (*) A precise description of a concept may be achieved by pointing out to some mental integration that is known to be shared among humans (for example, the general attributes of a cat is something that is probably perceived in the same way by different people). In science when the things you discuss become less tangible (in the sense of being able to use our senses to directly perceive the concretes) the significance of providing a precise verbal description increases, since the concept cannot be describe by referring to some shared mental integration that can be achieved by directly perceiving it's concretes in the physical world. For convenience, I would define (according to definitionI) the two meanings of definitions, that I will use: DefinitionO would be the definition of Objectivism (and if you have anything to add to how I described it above, please do so). DefinitionI would be the meaning of definition that I have been using, as I described it above. I hope you don't mind me using these words, because this is the best way I can express myself. Notice also that according to definitionI, "definitionI" is a symbol, while according to definitionO, "definitionI" has to be a concept. You may ask, "but how do you know that the symbol "definitionI" represents the concept "definitionI"? The answer that definitionI gives is automatic, but the answer definitionO gives is: "I don't know, it was done is a process that is not a part of the process of defining something". I want to take this step by step to avoid misunderstandings, so for now I am just going to answer your post. Hold it right there. What would you call this process, of using the name 'f' to describe the property of that something? (me thinking...) Do you consider this to be an ostensive definition? Do you consider Ostensive definitions to be statements of truth, or just formal definitions to be statements of truth? How is it true to use the name 'f' to describe that something? (in other words, is "definitionI" a statement of truth?) Edit: a clarification about question3: The way I see is, an ostensive definition and definitionI are of the same type (name giving + description). So in fact question3 only kicks in if you give a positive answer to question2.

Just wanna let y'all know that I am leaving the forum and my academic life and going to join a nudist group. Actually, I feel more confused now than how I felt before I started this thread. The conclusions I've reached so far from all of the responses is that there is no true meaning for nakedness at all. Nudity has whatever meaning anyone wishes to attach to it, and that meaning is chosen according to one's lifestyle, society's conventions or in some arbitrary manner. Since I don't agree that the meaning of nudity for me be dictated by society, I am left with no guidelines on how to form my meaning of my own nakedness. I understand that I should interpret nakedness of other people according to their ideas of it, but how should I determine my own ideas about my own nakedness? Obviously there is a necessity to choose such a meaning, otherwise one does not know how to act on situations that involve nudity. Inspector, honestly, I was not thinking of what you do in the privacy of your own home. But thanks for the warning, I will make sure not to make that mistake How can emotions become a habit? I just don't understand what you mean by that. I have never experienced my emotions to be a result of a habit. They were always a result of my judgement of a certain situation in present time, and the result of the ideas I held. I don't think that if I start acting as if I love something, then eventually, with time, I will love it. If someone is able to understand all the facts, there is no reason why his subconscious would react to facts of a situation that occurred a year ago. Moreover, Why would I feel embraced by performing a social gaffe? I usually find those things amusing. Well unless somebody farts in public, then it is also embarrassing. But I think it's because in that case, it does disturb the people around in a physical manner. P.S. just kidding about the nudist group thing

Interesting story. I don't understand though how they were able to know which neurons encode what - this has been the major problem in this field. Usually a single neuron in the cortex is used to encode more than just one bit of information. What researchers in this field were trying to achieve for people paralyzed from the neck down was to "read their mind" - literally: to plant electrodes and by a computer, equipped with the program to interpret the electric signal, activate the patient's muscles. However, even after many experiments with monkeys, they were still not able to hack the exact code of the neurons. I suppose going to a lower level (nerve endings) should produce better results, because it is more simple, while the neurons in the cortex process information, the nerve endings that are connected to the muscles represent the result. But for paralyzed people those neurons are not active. Here is something interesting from the article: People with a limb often experience sensation in their none-existing arm upon touching their face. This is because the conscious sensation of the arm is represented in a deep region inside the brain, but the region receives it's stimuli from the cortex. Now what happens in the cortex is that the activity of neurons that stop being electrically active (because they are not stimulated, because the arm is gone) is overtaken by other neurons, that encode something else. If the neighboring neurons in the cortex are responsible for processing information from the face then eventually touching the face would make that person feel like their arm has been touched. The intriguing thing in this, for me, though, is what makes certain neurons' activity a conscious experience for us, while others process information that we are not conscious of? Another puzzle is: well suppose you do find these neurons that are responsible for a conscious sensation, and you explore their biochemistry, and find that what makes them unique is a certain molecule. Why the heck will this molecule, and not any other, be the cause for our experience? Why would the inflow of certain ions produce an experience at all? When the final outcome of a neuron activity is contraction of muscle - I can understand that. But when the final outcome is movement of ions, nothing more - why would it produce a "consciousness"? This is a real riddle, a great mystery. Just thinking aloud here...

Then you should let him know that. The problem is not with Ayn Rand's novels, but with this shortcut for self esteem that your boyfriend is making. The characters in the novel had a certain context for their decisions. He doesn't have the same context. What he is doing is quite similar to the way some teenagers try to imitate members of their favorite band... Unfortunately, I don't have any advice on possible ways to "reach out" to him. I know how frustrating it feels, especially because you knew him at a time when you found his mind to be functioning well. You keep on thinking that maybe if you try hard enough you would find some way through... But honestly, I don't know if such a change can come from anything you do. Give it some more thought: If you come up with the conclusion that you can't change it, learn to accept this fact: that you cannot change him. Only he can. I just feel sorry for you, I know how you must feel. I used to have a friend I really admired a few years ago. She went through some bad time and changed 180 degrees in character. The most painful thing about it was the process of realizing that it indeed happened, and the inability to understand how or why (she refused to talk to me about it, and in general). Yep. You just have to learn to accept that fact: You cannot do it yourself. The sooner you accept it the better you would feel.

I forgot to mention The A team. Smashing!! I like the show because of the creativity and intelligence of the plans that the A-team makes, because of how skillful they are in doing things (like building an armored car from zero ), I like the craziness and daring of their plans and their execution. I like "Murdock" the most - he's the crazy type, and also Hannibal, the "brains" of the group. That show brings a smile to my face every time I see it.

Hold your horsies... I was talking about getting sexual pleasure from sex divorced from mind. Strippers don't get sexual pleasure from being strippers, they get money for it. Which is another thing. Moreover, I didn't say that strippers are stupid, or that even their costumers are stupid. If you're going to claim I said something, please quote ME. I don't appreciate words being shoved into my mouth. Now, if we are talking about stripping as a career, I have two things to say: A career should be the means for someone to fulfil their ability and potential, to allow them to take pride in themselves, and pleasure from the job itself. Stripping is not a job that calls upon a woman's creativity or intellectual ability (unless they also dance, and then it might require very little creativity). So choosing it as a career is immoral. (* See my remark below) Generally sex and money should not be traded. The appropriate payment for sexual pleasure should be virtues. (*) If a woman has no choice but to work as a stripper to survive, and it is temporary, then it would be OK, but only as a temporary job. Or, if a woman gets naked as part of some dance (not the kind of strip-clubs), and it is artistic, and she is doing it for the artistic value (for the pleasure of the dance and the creativity it takes) then it is okay as well.

Malevolent universe premise big time! Do you think that those are the only women that exist in the world? And this is also a second handish premise: Just because some women do something immoral does not make other women good, regardless of what they do (value by comparison). And the reason why gratifying one's sexual needs by visiting a hooker is bad is because of what allows you to get pleasure from it in the first-place. The problem is not with the trade, but in the values that trigger that desire to begin with, and the evasion involved. Treating human beings as physical objects rather than thinking beings is evading reality. Human beings ARE NOT physical objects to be used like a sex-toy.

I disagree. There are plenty of things that I can do that are not harmful to me. This does not mean that I should do everything that is not harmful to me, and then consider which habits to stop only if they are harmful. A man should only do things to gain/keep values. As for appearance and body hair: There are two possible reasons why one would go through the shaving process: to enjoy their own looks, or to conform to social conventions in order to keep certain values. My view is that unless not conforming to those social conventions is going to get you arrested/unemployed/uneducated you should not follow them, but seek the company of people who look for what is beyond conventions. In the case of body hair, no one is going to fire you if you don't shave your legs (as oppose to showing up naked to work), so in this case I would say you should only do what brings you pleasure. I personally like those habits of shaving legs, nurturing my hair, face etc'. Same thing goes from dressing up (this is really fun to do). I think the meaning of nakedness that you implicitly mentioned in your post, JMeganSnow, is beauty, and appealingness to one's partner, only in reverse: It seems like the meaning of nakedness that your house-mate has, is one of convenience. And clothes have the opposite meaning of granting a gift to his romantic partner. I can only amuse myself with the thought of what happens when two people who hold the opinions of your house-mate and of Inspector's, have a romantic relationship: One takes off their clothes, preparing to give the other a wonderful gift, and the other looks at them and says "put on some clothes you slob". Olex, I will just ask this: if using the symbol "gifish" and not the symbol "man" to denote the concept "man" is not arbitrary, then can you give me one logical reason for why one symbol fits better than the other? And, I would also like to know: Would you shake hands with someone after closing a deal with them? why?

I disagree: A truly moral Objectivist would go to a hooker in pursuit of sexual pleasure, according to your logic. Your idea is blatantly "the good is what I desire". It would be the same mistake as saying that one would be immoral to not-steal something because one wants that object, and selfishness is moral. You have to consider the nature of the desire in the first-place and the way to gratify it: both have to be rational. Both have to be moral. Sexual pleasure gained from another person, for a rational person with understanding of morality, should be from that person's mind primarily.

Just noticed the mix-up in my last post. I'd appreciate it if a moderator erased it, I am writing a new, corrected one: Olex, The reason why the concept of (what we now know as) "man" is denoted by the symbol "man" and not by the symbol "gifish" is arbitrary. The choice between certain (comfortable to use) symbols over other (comfortable to use) symbols is arbitrary. But if you reject all choice of symbols, you end up with no language. I think this is what Inspector was trying to point out here. And some social conventions also serve as a part of a "language" like shaking hands.

The reason why the concept of (what we now know as) "man" is denoted by the symbol "man" and not by the symbol "gifish" is arbitrary. The choice between certain (comfortable to use) symbols over other (comfortable to use) symbols is arbitrary. But if you reject all choice of symbols, you end up with no language. I think this is what Inspector was trying to point out here.

I really don't have the time to go deeply into this subject today and tomorrow, but just a quick response: We must keep a clear separation between one's own meaning of nudity and the reasons why or why not someone chooses to take off their clothes, as your question demonstrates. One may have a certain meaning to nudity, but will choose to stay dressed not because of that meaning, but to not outcast themselves (because it would mean greater loss of value). The problem is: if there is no rational reason for why people outcast people who get undressed in public - where is the line of what irrationalities one has to conform to in order to not lose other values? I mean... if my Professor's reasons for finding my nudity bad, irrational, and I make sure to stay clothed to not be thrown out of class, then what is the next step? Where is the fine line that separates justified conformity to irrationality and unjustified conformity to irrationality? In all these cases conformity is needed in order to keep a value and not to gain one. In communist Russia I would conform to communism (externally), to not lose my life. The last case is an initiation of force (against me) but outcasting me is not, so I'm not sure if those two cases belong together... So now we have 2 questions: 1) What is the meaning of nudity, to you? and Why? 2) What are the reasons (other than your meaning of nudity) for keeping your clothes on? From what you say, sNerd, it sounds like you do consider Nudity to be private, but perhaps you have not completely formulated why. It is implied from your emotional response to locker-room scene: Notice that you never mentioned any additional reason that made you change your emotions. The conclusion is that emotions are determined by habits rather than ideas. Which means more introspection is due. I agree that once somebody changes their ideas, it takes time for their emotional responses to change as well, but in this case you saw nothing wrong with nudity to begin with, which is why it is strange that you felt embarrassed by getting undressed... Oh, GOOD point! This reminds me of a photo of somebody I know without a shirt on (oh yuck! in his case). It makes you look at the significance of clothes in a whooollle different way... Two last thing: Inspector, you seem to be missing the point that my question about suffering heat vrs. being nude is a hypothetical one. So either you have something against hypothetical questions, or you missed the point that it is hypothetical. I agree with Sophia's point about breasts being sexual organs, for the reasons she stated. I also think that genitals are metaphysically sexual (except for some unfortunate cases).

In the words of Al Bandy: There is nothing more relaxing than watching plastically-surgicaled breasts sway to odd music while drinking a beer. (or was it "sway oddly to bad music"?) Truly, a deep aesthetic and artistic experience.

So if it is rational to keep the parts of your body that are "directly related" to sex concealed, so that one may give them as a present to that one person that they cherish in that way, then the rational conclusion from this is that I should wear a veil, since, for me, one of the most sexual body parts of a person is their head (well their face, but a face is not a body part). So maybe I should also conceal my face as much as possible according to this logic. This just doesn't add up. I used to have this exact same thought ("keep it as a gift", "one has to earn it") but it makes no sense when I try to apply this idea seriously.

So what makes breasts into a sexual organ, that is more sexual than the ankles? I take "directly related" to mean the organs that are specifically used in the physical act of sex (and not in other activities). Breasts are not such an organ more than the arms, tummy, legs, etc' are. Are they just chosen arbitrarily as "sexual"?

Yeah, please clarify what you mean. Well, how would you advise her to communicate with someone who refuses to communicate? Should she chase after him and talk to him as he walks away? Or maybe to talk to him while hoping that maybe this time he would not disappear at any given moment, if he feels like it? (bold emphasis mine) She also said that she did make tremendous efforts to communicate, but no efforts were made by him: Unless the guy completely changes his attitude, I don't see how any further attempts to remedy the situation can do any good.

So how much would you be willing to pay for the ability to give your loved one this exclusive gift? The discomfort of 35C (degrees Celsius)? 41C (getting really uncomfortable here)? 45C (oh my god, somebody bring me a fan)? Moreover, what makes some parts of your body worthy of being treated as an "exclusive gift" but others can be a gift for everyone (your arms, face, ankles and neck)?