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Atlas51184

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Everything posted by Atlas51184

  1. Yes. Also, the functions of the parts of his body differ from those of other animals. In cases of the mentally handicapped, the function of such a person's brain remains similar, though his brain is failing to perform its function. As Grames pointed out in the other thread, this problem is unique to biological contexts; there's no such thing as a broken electron. The problem also highlights what happens when causal contexts clash. When we speak of healthy adults, we say they are essentially rational because rationality explains more about what they do than anything else unique to them. But rationality is itself caused by a man's physiology and genetics. In normal everyday contexts, "rationality" does the job. But contexts change; in some contexts rationality best serves the function of an essence, in other contexts it is another fact about men (say genetics and historical origin (being formed from the sperm and egg of humans)). Remember, Objectivism is not Aristotle; Objectivism doesn't believe in real essences.
  2. Tara Smith recently presented a paper at George Mason's Workshop in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The workshop website as a link to a copy. There is also a link to Objectivist Brian Simpson's paper on Keynes.
  3. I really hope you're not teaching anyone ITOE, because you've got it wrong. A unit is not the "similar characteristic." From page 6: "A unit is an existence regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members." A little later on page 7: "units do not exist qua units, what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships." The units are the things, viewed a certain way, but they're still the things. Everyone should read Gotthelf's paper (linked to in my previous post). It's good, and relevant, and supports a lot of what Grames has been saying.
  4. Allan Gotthelf's paper on concepts, for those who haven't seen it: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/metaphysicsofscie...rs/gotthelf.pdf The paper is going to be the first chapter of his book on epistemology, or so says his CV.
  5. ewv, you don't seem to be familiar with the basics of the Objectivist theory of concepts, and you seem perfectly happy to use that ignorance to condescend to the other people in the thread, who do know what they are talking about. Enjoy being further confused by Steven Speicher. Conversation over.
  6. Yes, he does. "An entity lacking a rational faculty, or, as is the case for a newborn, the potential for a rational faculty, strictly speaking, would not be man." Following this, a severely retarded man is not a man. But he is. Speicher's position amounts to (implies!) equating a concept with a definition. You say "essential" means essential. We'll, I don't know what that is supposed to mean. Essence is epistemological, not metaphysical. The "essence" is just that feature which best picks out the referents at a given stage of knowledge. We group things together as "men" because they are importantly similar to each other, rationality being the most important attribute in most contexts. As Don points out in his essay, there are cases in which that most-useful-for-classifying characteristic is absent, but the other existing similarities still warrant grouping the things together as a concept. In the instance of a severely retarded man, his genetic constitution and biological origin is sufficiently similar to yours and mine to make necessary his grouping together under one concept, "man," along with us. Speicher thinks this isn't a problem, because he wants to stubbornly deny that men without a rational faculty aren't "strictly speaking" men. Well, this is like me saying, "The defining characteristic of being a bird is feather-having, so plucked chickens aren't strictly speaking birds." If I said something like that, I wouldn't know what I was talking about, either.
  7. Speicher equates a concept with its definition in this post. By implication, therefore, he supports ASD. In this post, he complains about qualified instances of a concept, and thus misses Don's whole point. A qualified instance of a concept is still an instance of the more general concept; a severely retarded man is still a man. Hence Don's problem: in some cases, an instance of a concept can lack the (currently) defining attribute of units of that concept. (As Grames said, this issue only seems to arise only in biological context (I can't think of a non-biological example). So maybe the importance of Don's paper is exagerated. Even if it is only an issue for philosophy of biology, it's still a problem). Speicher doesn't know what he is talking about. Argumentum ad Randium.
  8. DPW's article is interesting; thanks for reminding me it existed. Most of the objections raised on the Forum are pretty bad, though. It'd be nice to see an Objectivist who knows what he's talking about critique it.
  9. Rawls, did you happen to get that "Ethical Egoism Proof" from here: http://andrej.com/objectivism/ ? You know that is a parody of Objectivism, right? Rand never wrote any of that stuff.
  10. Galt's Gulch is a device of fiction in AS, which has the purpose of dramatizing the trader principle (it does other things, too). We should read AS with an eye towards distinguishing between the concrete literary expression of a principle, and the principle itself. If we don’t, we'll run the risk of winding up like those 60's weirdoes who dyed their hair orange and went to architecture school. By reading AS as a bible to be followed in all concrete details, they make the same mistake as our less careful critics who accuse us of dogmatism.
  11. Charity ≠ altruism, so your inference doesn't go through. Are you willing to maintain that there are no selfish reason to run/work for a non-profit (no monetary profits) organization?
  12. A few more: Shoshana Knapp's Rand biography (possibly two volumes). Darryl Wright's book on ethics. Pat Corvini's book on math. Harriman's OTHER physics and philosophy book. Vol 1 of the biography is almost done, iirc. I don't know at what stages the others are. A long standing complaint Objectivists have had is the lack of printed secondary material. Now our problem is going to be too much good stuff to read. That's a good problem, I think!
  13. Adding to Kyle's list: Allan Gotthelf's CV lists a book on epistemology, co-authored by him, Onkar Ghate, Jim Lennox, and Greg Salmieri. It's title is "Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Ayn Rand's "New Approach to Epistemology."" It is listed as "under consideration. If that is published by a major academic press (hopefully Oxford) it will be HUGE, insofar as it will improve AR's reputation in academic philosophy. Even if not published by a major press it is still very important. Gotthelf's CV: http://www.pitt.edu/~hpsdept/people/fac_pages/gotthelf.html EDIT: Gotthelf's CV also shows the titles of his chapters in the Ayn Rand Companion book, as well as the ARS volume. Worth checking out.
  14. He was going to write that book, but turned it over to Harriman. Some of sections of the chapters have appeared in The Objective Standard as stand alone essays.
  15. Book website. Available for pre-order on Amazon.
  16. Here's the book's website. It looks like this will be Harriman's book on Peikoff's theory of induction, and not the other book on the historical influence of philosophy on physics.
  17. The new one is LONG. I'm about 20% in and it is solid so far. Judging by the footnotes, she makes more explicit use of Objectivist epistemology than in the last article. I'll write more when I'm done reading it, since some people might want to know more about its content before investing time in a 50 page paper.
  18. I haven't seen this mentioned in any of the usual places. Copies are available for $10 from Amazon. I found a free copy here, but I'm not sure if it is online legit or not. It looks like a sequel to her last article, also on Originalism.
  19. I am the person who started the meetup group referenced above. We started in fall 2007. I left the area at the end of summer 2008 and so far as I know the group gradually disbanded. If anyone is interested in reviving a Philadelphia group I could pass on some contact info. I'll be in the area from now until Jan 18 if anyone would like to meet in person. While I was involved there was actually a good bit of interest; some meetings had 7 or 8 people! We had a list of about 30 people, and that was without any real advertising (I never posted a notice on HBL, and at the time community groups weren't given space on ARI's website). I believe the Philly area has potential for a very good group if someone has both the motivation and (most important) TIME to lead and organizae it.
  20. Workshop on Perception, Consciousness, & Reference Cool! Also includes links to some of the papers.
  21. I too was very encouraged to find out that Schiff is pro-choice. I gave him $25 because of it. I'd like to know what he thinks about the anarchist element within libertarianism and the neo-confederates who populate the Mises Institute. I'm optimistic about Schiff but still cautious.
  22. Jeez if anyone thinks that attitude is unique to Ayn Rand fans, they must be living in another universe. That's the thought that goes through the head of every alienated high schooler, Rand or not!
  23. Can someone explain why this is thought to be an Ayn Rand or OCON reference? I just see stick figures on a train. What am I missing? Ohhh, never mind. I didn't follow what "roll over the image" meant.
  24. Boss of so called "Objectivist Party" on Ayn Rand.
  25. FYI, there is a fantastic essay by Greg Salmieri in the book Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem about the importance of the concept 'I.'
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