Leonid

Because it would contradict his professional duties which is an enforcement of the current law. He can perform only duties which are in accordance with his ethics. He may work for example in the homicide or anti-fraud department. But if he asked to arrest prostitutes or drug users, or to enforce any subjective law which violates man's rights, he should resign. Since a police officer usually cannot choose his line of work and acts under command, and most of the existing laws are subjective, I cannot see how he could keep his job.

Oh, really? Ever heard about Schrodinger's cat or Chinese room, Ayn Rand's robot or another dozen of thought experiments which prove a lot in physics and philosophy. This particular experiment is specifically designed in such a way that it will eliminate any bias. The only choice which is possible is the random one. An animal cannot do it, but humans can. Your point is that in the real life it's impossible to create such a situation, and you are most probably right. But this is a thought experiment, an exercise in the abstract thinking in order to highlight and to prove that man is capable to make random choices including the choice of standard of value and therefore possesses free will, which is different from the animal volition.

Volition is an ability to choose. If all values are equal, there is no need to choose and no need for volition.An animal automatically acts toward the preservation of life and this is the ultimate value. The rest of the values are means to this end and it hard wired to choose the most suitable one. The experiment creates a situation in which all values are equal and no choice is possible expect the random one. An animal is incapable of making random choices, its hierarchy of values is preprogramed. That why we don't think that animals have volition in the human sense and the poor ass is doomed. However man is able to make a random choices and could choose any standard of value on which the hierarchy of values depends. Therefore man's volition precedes the hierarchy of values.

If there is a contradiction between professional duty and one's morality, morality should prevail, otherwise such a person will live in the state of the constant moral guilt. Imagine an executor who morally objects the death punishment. An Objectivist cannot enforce the laws which are incompatible with Objectivist ethics and therefore cannot work as a police officer in the society ruled by subjective laws.

Suppose you place an hungry ass precisely midway between two stacks of hay, equal in every respect. Make sure that an ass perceives both stacks equally. According to the 14th century philosopher Jean Buridan the poor animal will die of starvation, unable to choose which stack to approach first. From this thought experiment we could learn first that animals could choose, and if volition is an ability to choose, then they have volition. Although this is hard wired, unconscious volition, it's volition nevertheless. Second, volition presupposes an hierarchy of values. if all values are equal, no choice is possible. Such an experiment could be easily modified for humans. However, man possesses self-awareness and conscious volition and therefore is able to make non-rational, random choices, which are not related to the hierarchy of values. In any case I'm pretty sure that man in such a situation will have no difficulty whatsoever to grab the bar of gold, or just a plate with spare ribs. Wouldn't that be a proof of existence of volitional consciousness?

Government exists in order to put a retaliatory force under strict control of the objective law. The question now who is a consumer of this service? If people are to delegate their right for self-defense, then a consumer is law enforcement agencies. Without such a law they would collide with each other, wouldn't be able to function properly to the satisfaction of their clients, will lose revenue and eventually will go out of business. Therefore this is in their interest to pay for governmental service. Observe that these agencies can function properly only under objective law. Nobody would pay for an abuse of rights. Therefore agencies will not support the abusive government and such a government will fall. However people would willingly pay for protection of their rights to the law-enforcing agencies as they pay today for security companies and these agencies will willingly pay for government services which provide them with objective framework.

this is a contradictory self-refuting statement. It says A is not A, an attempt to defeat the law of identity. Completely meaningless.

"If you could get away with stealing" -the short answer: you cannot. You will pay this way or another.

the problem with your critics is that they always confuse cooperation with coercion which is completely befits the statist mind

Looks very impressive. Is it any chance they will make a DVD?

laws of natures are in fact laws of causality which in fact law of identity applied to action. To change that one has to change an identity of an object involved.

Eternal doesn't mean very old, it means time without identity. There is no such a thing.

Definitely yes. We all do that. Only I wouldn't call it concepts. By definition concepts are integration of percepts. The difference is that concepts give us an ability to retain thousands of percepts in one single word and to apply it to the entities which we never perceived and never will, but which are exist nevertheless. If I say "tree" I mean all trees in existence. If I just retain a picture of tree in my memory I could refer only to this particular tree. Besides, from that picture i cannot build up the higher degree concepts, like a forest, plants, biosphere, life. The perceptual thinking stops with the percept.

With animals-it's not immoral, just disgusting. It's like to ask is it immoral to eat vomit? As for family members-no, it's not immoral. But a person who sleeps with his mother obviously has deep psychological problems.

you are welcome

Yes, that would. Obama betrayed America again.

Yes, it will be. Obama betrayed America again.

True. As Heine said " he is suspicious of ideas, calls it criticism." I n other words he denied the very concept of knowing anything with objective certainty. He wanted to perform an intellectual lobotomy to man. And if one looks on our modern culture and society, one may easily see that he succeeded.

Not creationist but man-made universe.

Heinrich Heine on Kant "What a strange contrast between the outward life of the man and his destructive, world-crushing thoughts! Truly, if the citizens of Koenigsberg had had any premonition of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt a far more terrifying dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, an executioner who merely executes people. But the good folk saw in him nothing but a professor of philosophy, and as he passed by at his customary hour, they gave him a friendly greeting and perhaps set their watches by him." “Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,” Heinrich Heine, Selected Works, trans. Helen M. Mustard (New York: Random House, Inc., 1973). http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/resources/files/On%20Kant.pdf And they said Ayn Rand was too harsh on Kant.

Toddlers are not animals. They are little human beings and possess human cognitive abilities. They develop self-awareness and therefore volition at the age of 18 months and able to conceptualize the moment they start to talk. To imply that these human faculties are inherent as result of evolution is to deny mind and free will.

Kant was a transcendental idealist. He believed in the primacy of existence but thought that real noumenal existence is unknown in principle. We only could know its phenomenal appearance, which is perception of noumenal world. "If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the term". [20] "But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be 'noumenon' in the positive sense of the term." [21] Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objects of experience. Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities; there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could not in the least apply to them. That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood as being such only in a negative sense. [23] "Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge".[25] "What our understanding acquires through this concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is to say, understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something". [26] Critique of Pure Reason A250/B307,P267(NKS) A250/B30,P2677(NKS) B309,P270(NKS) A253/B310 A256/B312,P273

I also don't think that choice to die is always immoral. For example if man accepts life as his standard of values and his life becomes its opposite, that is-an agony, then his choice to die would be a moral choice, a suicide will become an act of affirmation of life as a moral standard. Such a man knows what life is and refuses to accept an agony as its substitute.

Yes, without volition no choice is possible. Since ethics is a code of values accepted by choice, it is inherent to volition.

The immoral choice is the one which directly and negatively affects or hinders the course of man's life, Not every irrational choice is a such. For example a person who from time to time attends church services, but otherwise lives productive and rational life maybe guilty of holding mixed premises, but he's hardly immoral.