MisterSwig

In November of 1995, I traded a television set and a stereo system for a 386 computer system. I recall joking with someone in an internet-relay-chat room once that television contributed to developing a 3 to 5 second attention span. Mentioning that I had divested myself of the television set, I was asked if I missed it. I replied that I had missed it once, but I had gotten over it in about 5 seconds.
The big screen has been back since April 2010. Connected to a DVD player, it has only presented what has been placed into the player primarily for entertainment purposes. The news has been relegated to being collected via radio and internet. I can't claim to be up on all of the latest stories, but the ability to filter for relevant information on them is an ongoing process.

Trump, at Pence's suggestion, met with John Allison, who is a high-profile Objectivist businessman. So, clearly, the Objectivist conspiracy is happening.

Rand freed my mind from the clutches of religious belief. I had a friend from India in high school who was a very smart atheist, but I didn't really understand him. I was stuck on the notion of an all-seeing God in the Protestant sense. Then I went to college and gravitated toward the campus Objectivist group. By then I was able to see my mistake in choosing faith over reason. I think it was because I always treated life and ideas seriously, which is a virtue I got from my parents. My mom used to correct my grammar at the dinner table. My dad and school principal spanked me when I acted badly or lied. My grandparents went to all of my ballgames. These sorts of things instilled the idea that life is a serious thing, and what you do and say matters very much. And when it came time to decide whether Rand was right, I took the endeavor seriously and refused to evade troubling facts about my own views. She taught me to be rational.

Like Aristotle, Rand's philosophy will percolate through cultures with free speech until it develops a large enough root system to sustain another golden age of reason. Our job as individual roots in that system must first be to achieve our own happiness and be as great as we can possibly be at whatever we enjoy doing. We need more great Objectivists to figure out great ways to influence others and bring them to our side of the intellectual battle.

A further element of rationalism is "ideas over reality".  This is what "permits" or "requires" the evasion and willful blindness of evidence of the senses: when "appealing" ideas conflict with concrete reality, reality is rejected.

No. I think you're missing a crucial point which Ayn Rand, as well as some on this forum, have gone to great lengths to make repeatedly. Reason doesn't "set the context for all values." The individual's particular life sets the context for his values. And if someone's life is in such a foul state that their life itself is not a value anymore, then there are no values to pursue for that person. Not even reason, if that's even possible to them. 
Some people here want to discuss the moral status of actions like suicide. But they don't want to discuss particular kinds of suicide and the particular contexts in which people commit suicide. Perhaps they believe that a person's life is valuable regardless of the view of the person actually living that life.
Suicide is not always immoral, just like killing another person is not always immoral. Context is crucially important.

Yes everything you said MisterSwig, as well as mounting evidence that travel invigorates the brain, exercise creates brain fertilizer, getting up to a higher vantage point offers greater perspective, the map each of us holds in the mind becomes more detailed and rich with each experience.  The identification of the names of each mountain peak you see makes them more real, more tangible.  

I don't agree with this account of the Objectivist ethics. It is a good piece of advice, epistemologically, but I don't think it is the basis for the distinction between morality and immorality, because you can unintentionally form invalid concepts. For example, many people who believe in God are basically honest, even though God is an invalid concept. I continue to find invalid and unexamined assumptions in my thinking on occasion, even years after learning of Objectivism.
I'm not saying this is irrelevant to morality, it's just a really demanding standard to set. Almost everyone has some invalid concepts at work in their thinking.

I think it's easier to say that suicide is always wrong when you are not in terrible pain. This is one of my issues with Stoicism - the Stoic implicitly argues "I can practice virtue now, so I could practice virtue under any circumstances, even in terrible pain." In practice, this is not the case, because there is no mind body dichotomy. When the body is subjected to terrible pain over a long period of time, the mind is unable to continue to function rationally and gradually becomes more and more detached from reality.

Ah, a painful experience is a positive value (because all experience is a positive value)... just not the most positive value possible. Having your arm cut off is good (qua experience), just not so good as eating ice cream. Makes perfect sense.
If a person were slated to spend the rest of his life in a literal torture chamber, slowly having body parts cut off until he dies, he'd surely want to stick around for all of that -- hang on as long as possible -- for that sweet, sweet experience.
I think I'm a convert!

I have something to add which is not strictly relevant, but I make no apologies for it.
There is no need to apologize for participating in a discussion here (even if you'd considered yourself, or declared yourself, quit of it). I've seen this before -- this sense that asking a question or making an argument, or etc., somehow places a burden on the community or others. But that's exactly what the forum is here for; that's why these threads exist; and others participate, to the extent that they do, by choice.
When you add things to our conversation -- and especially relevant things -- it is a benefit you bestow. No apologies for that are necessary or warranted.

Sorry all, I have something else to add that is relevant.
 
Inefficacious Nothing
A claim to any existent with no causal consequences in reality is an assertion of the arbitrary which moreover is equivalent to attempting to assert the existence of "nothing" as a thing possessing identity.
 
Often whenever the subject of the arbitrary comes up in discussions, I am reminded of the extreme version of the illogical assertion of an existent in the absence of evidence:  the illogical assertion of an existent for which there COULD never be evidence.
E.g.  You are having a discussion about God, it turns to a discussion about a spaghetti monster in the sky, soon it turns into a discussion of a polka dot elephant which has no interaction what-so-ever with anything; with no particle, no field, no system, no natural portion or whole of reality "as we know it".  Let me be clear, this is a case not only for which the arbitrary alleged fact HAS no evidence (which is bad enough) it is a case for which the arbitrary alleged fact by definition COULD NEVER cause, produce, or be linked with any evidence for it.  This is the arbitrary, so to say, on a "whole 'nother level". 
In the former case, in the act of dismissing it (at the moment) out of hand, one "could" suspend a sort of "permanent infallible" skepticism, i.e. one could still retain in the back of one's mind that the current dismissal is required on an evidentiary basis, but should the fellow want to speak to you again claiming new evidence, it is not unreasonable to at least agree to hear it.
The complete incoherence of stating something "exists", for which there never could be any evidence is arbitrary not only beyond knowledge, i.e. what you personally know from evidence, but beyond existence, the universe, and everything (I know I don't need three terms for it but it sounds better) for eternity.  It actually borders on straining what it means to exist, not just what can be known from evidence.
If some ghost field, particle, or entity, had no effect on anything at all, what would it mean for it to exist?  The proponent arguing its existence might say well.. it has identity.  But what would that identity consist OF?  Would it have any attributes or properties?  Certainly none that affect reality, so no mass (as reality "knows it"), no position (as reality "knows it"), no charge (as reality "knows it") no color, etc, etc. We would never see any effect of it direct or indirect, and nothing in the universe would be any different whether or not it existed or did not exist... sounds a lot like an instance of "nothing" as an existent.  
A so called identity possessing non-causal attributes or properties making up its so called identity is divorced entirely from existence and might literally as well be nothing.  It's relevance, participation in, and its "being" to reality is exactly the same as nothing.  Using Rand's razor, it IS nothing, it is a zero, it is not an existent.
 
Inefficacious Consciousness
To assert that consciousness is causally inefficacious IS to assert the existence of an arbitrary non existent.  No evidence of it in reality could exist... it would be arbitrary to assert its existence BY DEFINITION.  We ourselves would not be able to know it, observe it, or speak of it, let alone make decisions based on it or say or write about it.
If there were some aspect or existent which was wholly non-casual, it could not affect my actions, as that would be an example of causality in the universe.  It could not affect my memories or my thoughts or my feelings or my knowledge or my intuitions because all of these affect my actions, I DECIDE to ACT BASED on them, and by definition there can be no causal link between its existence and reality.  Whatever non-causal existent it were it simply could not inform any part of my consciousness, and I never would have been able to identify it, think of it, nor speak of it.  It would wholly be of Kant's fictitious noumenal world - that which I know not.
 
By uttering the statement, X is causally inefficacious, one invalidates X as arbitrary and equivalent to "nothing". 
Any object we have thought about and discussed here, caused various glowing screens to light up with various words and sentences. Since we cannot trace the origin of ANY part of this discussion to that which is causally inefficacious, by discussing consciousness, introspection, clearly neither of these is causally inefficacious.
[Edit:  I think we have an instance of the of reaffirmation through denial: here the causal efficacy of ANY existing object under discussion cannot be denied as soon as one purports to discuss it.]
[As a last note "imagination" is real ... and it is causally efficacious... we have ample writings directed to the arbitrary as evidence for that...]

Like Aristotle, Rand's philosophy will percolate through cultures with free speech until it develops a large enough root system to sustain another golden age of reason. Our job as individual roots in that system must first be to achieve our own happiness and be as great as we can possibly be at whatever we enjoy doing. We need more great Objectivists to figure out great ways to influence others and bring them to our side of the intellectual battle.

Like Aristotle, Rand's philosophy will percolate through cultures with free speech until it develops a large enough root system to sustain another golden age of reason. Our job as individual roots in that system must first be to achieve our own happiness and be as great as we can possibly be at whatever we enjoy doing. We need more great Objectivists to figure out great ways to influence others and bring them to our side of the intellectual battle.

Like Aristotle, Rand's philosophy will percolate through cultures with free speech until it develops a large enough root system to sustain another golden age of reason. Our job as individual roots in that system must first be to achieve our own happiness and be as great as we can possibly be at whatever we enjoy doing. We need more great Objectivists to figure out great ways to influence others and bring them to our side of the intellectual battle.

Like Aristotle, Rand's philosophy will percolate through cultures with free speech until it develops a large enough root system to sustain another golden age of reason. Our job as individual roots in that system must first be to achieve our own happiness and be as great as we can possibly be at whatever we enjoy doing. We need more great Objectivists to figure out great ways to influence others and bring them to our side of the intellectual battle.

Except for the bees. They don't have no parents. That's why they be non-parasitical.

The fact is, we experience will as a causative act specifically from our view of it.  This does not mean that some mental weather prediction machine could not say while watching our neural storms and currents that "he will decide x" an instant before we take outward action.  Causation that the machine sees would be utterly incomprehensible to us... subtle patterns of unfathomable complexity changing ceaselessly and faster than the blink of an eye.  Causation we experience might be "this qualifies as that which implies p so I decide x".  Is this some kind of dichotomy? Is it problematic that we have the unique point of view to allow us to see causality happen from an intelligible framework rather than a hopelessly complex one?  Electrons and nuclei of atoms are fundamental to low and high pressure systems but we don't need to dismiss the idea that rain is caused by low and high pressure systems(with humidity as needed).  It would be a mistake to say either pressure systems or particles are the cause.  Reality and causation are not schizophrenic.  
Your mind causes, and it is arranged such that thoughts ARE causative.  We don't need to see proof in the hopelessly complex brain all we need to do is introspect and act.  Atoms do not think, they make it possible for us to think.  

I love these sorts of questions. I think future historians will say that human societies clung to collectivistic philosophies because they were too ignorant to properly integrate individualism with government. Why are we, as a species, still so ignorant? Perhaps we lack the psychological tools required to make individualism universally obvious, like the telescope and space travel made the solar system universally obvious to even moronic onlookers. Perhaps we gave up on enlightened monarchy too early. Perhaps we should have developed individualism more before designing a new rights-based constitutional Republic. Perhaps we are suffering the inevitable consequences of institutionalizing even a little bit of irrationality in making rights God-given and government part-statist.

I love these sorts of questions. I think future historians will say that human societies clung to collectivistic philosophies because they were too ignorant to properly integrate individualism with government. Why are we, as a species, still so ignorant? Perhaps we lack the psychological tools required to make individualism universally obvious, like the telescope and space travel made the solar system universally obvious to even moronic onlookers. Perhaps we gave up on enlightened monarchy too early. Perhaps we should have developed individualism more before designing a new rights-based constitutional Republic. Perhaps we are suffering the inevitable consequences of institutionalizing even a little bit of irrationality in making rights God-given and government part-statist.

Before carrying on with this discussion, I wonder if anyone in the audience essentially agrees with my position, which so far I believe to be basically a rehashing of Rand's understanding of the mental realm. In particular, I draw your attention to ITOE, pages 153-158 ("Concepts as Mental Existents") and pages 264-274 ("Entities and Their Makeup"). I have obviously phrased her points in some of my own style, but where have I clearly departed from her view? Not only does she argue that volition is "a type of causation" (p. 110), she also admits that her view of mental entities is "somewhat Platonic" (p. 156). But we are talking about fine details of an admittedly primitive knowledge of consciousness. Her view is not substantially Platonic. It merely resembles an element of Plato's theory of concepts. Plato extended his misunderstanding to the level of great fantasy. Rand stopped at the edge of the unknown.

I haven't much to say about Dr. Hurd.
I would more interested to see links, content, blog entreis etc. from ARI or TOS... than content from the likes of Dr. Hurd, but that's just me, and there may be very good reasons why its not the case.

Disagree with the above said. I think the concept of evil, does not depend on the concept of good; rather both the concepts, depend on -- the standard of life. 
I understand when you say there is no such "thing" as nothing. But there are indeed fraudsters, thieves, plunderers, murders, dictators. The concept of "evil" has referents in reality. The concept of "nothing" -- does not. 

LET US adopt the convention that the following:
X says/said "fdkjf kdj lkdjf lkdjf"
Is posted ONLY when whaterver is inside the quotes is ACTUALLY what X says/said, and not merely a restatement or paraphrase authored by the poster.
Seem reasonable?

Can we consider gravity and magnetism for a second? How do you see these things fitting in with your theory?
To me, these are the kinds of things that bind, or keep entities together. Gravity and magnetism are actual forces of nature which form objects. Whereas Identity and Causality are merely laws.
Causality does not act upon anything. It's an axiomatic concept that states an irrefutable truth about nature: that entities act in accordance with their natures. This doesn't mean that the concept in our head exists in some form out in nature. Acting entities exist. But the law is only our conception of how they act.
Are you mistaking a law of nature for a force of nature?