Cogito
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Posts posted by Cogito
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I think you're making the common mistake of confusing causality and identity with determinism. Determinism says that the actions of all particles in a given system are determined by their initial states, while causality says that a thing will act in line with its identity. It is the identity of the human consciousness such that it has the ability of free will, the ability to choose among alternatives (based on the initial choice of whether or not to focus). A man with free will is violating determinism but is not violating causality, as his mind is acting in line with its identity.
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Hi all! Due to a busy summer I haven't really been able to post much, but I thought I'd update you guys on my life.
My family found out around February that my father had to move to New York for work, and we eventually decided that it would be best for me (at the time a high school junior) to graduate early over the summer then go to New York in the fall and take college courses. So, I've been spending the summer taking online courses to finish high school, and I am signed up to take classes at Baruch College for at least fall semester next year (I plan to apply to the colleges I had planned on applying to anyway during the regular application pool in December, and I plan to apply as a Freshman, not a transfer). This is an amazing move on three levels. One, I will no longer have to go through anything Jewish (I went to a Jewish high school), in fact I will never again have any Jewish association. Two, I will be able to attend college courses at a much more challenging level than was avaliable at my highschool. Three, most relevant to those here and to the topic title, I will be living in Manhattan! I will be living on 20th St. NW between 5th and 6th avenues, and I can't wait. I know a few people here live in the city, and I would be very interested in meeting with you at some point, just to have an interaction with a rational person away from a computer screen.
Ok, my post is really long-winded already, and I'm waking up early tomorrow, so I'll finish this here.
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If I could save him I would do so and then leave. If I could not I would leave. A planet that takes away the freedom of my friend is not worh saving.
So you would doom the many for the actions of the few? And also, what if
by saving the planet you saved the friend, which is what happened in this movie?
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Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
I think this is key... If you have rationally found that something is a value, then the only way to "reprogram" your subconscious (i.e. your emotional reactions to your values) is to act on those values... If you sit there thinking "hard work is a value", you'll never really accept it unless you start working hard and getting results from it.
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I would cram freedom down their miserable throats no matter how hard they resisted"Oh, that?" said Dr. Pritchett. "But I believe I made it clear that I am in favor of it, because I am in favor of a free economy. A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free."
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and no boom-boxes.
Yes, those boom-boxes sure are a sign of primitivity...
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יום הולדת סמח!
the way my life have been, the way I want them to beבענגלית, המילה בישביל "חיים" היא יחידה
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To me, that would be hard for any person, philosophical genius or not, to debase.
You would think so... Unfortunately, those who debate it have a secret weapon: Deny reason (the method of debate, but they easily ignore that contradiction), and then you can't use reason to back up anything. Anything becomes supportable except a method which demands a rigorous use of logic.
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I'm sure there have been situations where a couple married, divorced, then got reengaged and remarried, but that is not a normal situation.
One of my uncles married and divorced the same woman twice
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Jen,
The "menage a trois" issue was just the topic Peikoff was dealing with when he brought up the issue of "Demoting" a relationship. I included the context for anyone who was trying to find his comments on the tape.
"Refer to the 'menage a trois' section of Peikoff's Q+A." I may be the only human being ever to use that combination of words.
--Dan Edge
So then my buddy Dan Edge said: "Refer to the 'menage a trois' section of Peikoff's Q+A."
Ooops.
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I'll need a lot more evidence to accept your claim that there is a competing referent for the term "Objectivism".
David, I don't think that that is his claim. He isn't claiming anything at all about Objectivism, he is claiming something about the assumptions of those new to Objectivism:
don't be surprised that people tend to apply conventional categories.He's basically saying that since most philosophies that are named after ideas or concepts instead of people are general categories of philosophies instead of a philosophy of a specific person (i.e. Dualism is not any single person's philosophy, it is a group of related philosophies), many people might assume that Objectivism is the same and it therefore isn't closed. He is not saying that those who assume that are correct in assuming it and he is not saying Objectivism is wrong in calling itself Objectivism. He is just saying that those new to the philosophy might make an understandable assumption and that Objectivists should be prepared to correct it. What bearing that observation had on the rest of the topic, I'm not sure.
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Sure, for physical models. What about other kinds of models?
If by physical model you mean a model of physical, actual reality, then an other kind of model would mean a model of non-reality, meaning a model of nothing. Sure, you can make a model of nothing you can use mathematics in isolation of everything.
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Video just isn't my medium of choice for scholarship, I guess. I have a hard time with audio too, so that might put me at odds with some authorities...
Anyway, the origins of PC have fascinated me for some time. If you want to pursue a print study, please consider these.
first, William Lind's remarks (which are no doubt the substance of the video):
Lind, William S. The Origins of Political Correctness: An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind. n.d. retrieved 29 May, 2007 http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html.
This seems to be a more complete treatment, however:
“Political Correctness:” A Short History of an Ideology. Edited by William S. Lind.
A Product of the Free Congress Foundation. November, 2004. retrieved 29 May, 2007
http://www.freecongress.org/PC_Essays/B_In...chapter_one.pdf.
Includes this quote most relevant to the question of origins:
"Just what is “Political Correctness?” “Political Correctness” is in fact cultural
Marxism – Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. The effort to translate
Marxism from economics into culture did not begin with the student rebellion of the
1960s. It goes back at least to the 1920s and the writings of the Italian Communist
Antonio Gramsci. In 1923, in Germany, a group of Marxists founded an institute devoted
to making the translation, the Institute of Social Research (later known as the Frankfurt
School). One of its founders, George Lukacs, stated its purpose as answering the
question, “Who shall save us from Western Civilization?” The Frankfurt School gained
profound influence in American universities after many of its leading lights fled to the
United States in the 1930s to escape National Socialism in Germany...."
However (which precipitated this pedantic little reply)....
JSPES [Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies], Vol. 27, No. 4 (Winter 2002 )
pp. 409-444
Political Correctness and the Ideological Struggle: From Lenin and Mao to Marcuse and Foucault
Frank Ellis
ABSTRACT:
The first use of the term political correctness can be traced to the period between 1895-1921 when Lenin was trying to achieve two goals: first, to secure ascendancy over his revolutionary peers; and second, after 1917, to consolidate the party's control over the new Soviet state. This article explores the Leninist origins of political correctness and its evolution since 1917. The author analyses the exceptional importance of "correctness" in the Maoist variant and, subsequently, through Maoism, its influence on the New Left and the contemporary manifestation of political correctness which emerged as a public issue in the West at the end of the 1980s.
ACCESS:
by subscription http://www.jspes.org/online.html, Proquest, or Wilson Select (libraries).
by interlibrary loan OCLC 39109338 [222 libraries subscribing]
being all about libraries...
Um... I don't think this belongs here.
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I interviewed prospective students at Durham when I was there, and I will say that not one of them ever had a real reason that they wanted to do linguistics, just a vague feeling (of the "Well, I gotta do something" kind).
I know this is off-topic, but hopefully it will stay as just one post (if not, it can be split). If any of the students had expressed a real reason, how would that have affected your recommendation in terms of admittance (assuming that's why you were interviewing)? Do you think that idea is common among college interviewers?
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Pedantry.
Nope, just relieving our busy moderators of one of their many duties. Of course, if such pedantry bothers you, I'm sure DavidOdden would be glad to tell you why grammatical rules such as the capitalization of proper nouns are more than simple pedantry. Or, you could respect the rules set down by those who set up the forum.
As a side note, given our current culture some would call use of the word "pedantry" an example of the very same.
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As to mathematicians being Platonists (and they are when they are doing mathematics)
I strongly disagree. Proper mathematics does result from the abstraction from reality, from concretes. The concepts of numbers came from abstracting away the things being numbered (i.e. I have 3 goats and 3 oranges, these groups are similar some how... that somehow is called a number). All good mathematics is either such an abstraction from concretes, an abstraction from abstractions, or abstractions from combinations of concretes and abstractions. Because we are dealing with a very simple factor in mathematics (that factor being units of measure), we can rigidly formalize and define our terms in ways that simply are not possible in other disciplines, but that doesn't mean those formalizatoins and definitions are arbitrary. You show me an example of an arbitrarily defined mathematical object and I'll show you a mathematical object that has absolutely no use in mathematics or in reality.
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even though all mathematicians that I know are damn Platonists [...]
Ouch. Using this statement as my axiom (because it is useful to do so), either a) you don't know me, b ) I'm not actually a mathematician, or c) I'm actually a Platonist. Since a and b can't be true, I must be a Platonist. Of course, once I amend my epistemology I'll have to stop being a mathematician...
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if it includes just P( a ), P( b ) and P( c ) with no contradictor, then Ax(P(x)) must be inferred.
What if it included just P( a ), and you had no b or c that applied to P in your knowledge context? If I see one Goldfish cracker (sorry, I'm eating) that's orange, can I say all crackers are orange if I've never seen another cracker?
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I understand that people with Down Syndrome are more resistant to many diseases and cancers, so it is not impossible for a person to rationally prefer a child with Down Syndrome, but it would take some pretty bizarre circumstances.
Really? Do you have any evidence?
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Proving once again that many, many objectivists [...]
Proving, once again, that many, many newcomers to this forum neglect the forum rules. Here, we capitalize our proper nouns, especially Objectivism and Objectivists. Also, just because DMR is posting to an Objectivist forum doesn't mean he is an Objectivist, so don't go making statements about one Objectivist, let alone many, many Objectivists.
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(Bold mine)As a -general rule- of inference enumerative (empirical) induction is not a valid mode of inference. If a predicate P applies to a proper subset of some domain D, it does not follow that it applies to the entire domain.How did you arrive at this general rule?
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In fact, induction is not antithetical to formal logic or "something else", and you very well know (because we have had these conversations before) that induction is formalizable.
Really? Could you give an example or a link?
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Um... Doesn't this movie come out in two days?
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Is it possible from an objectivist standpoint
Never heard of Minimalism, but a gentle reminder from the forum rules: Objectivism (and Objectivist) is a proper noun and should be capitalized.
Objectivism in your country
in Miscellaneous Topics
Posted
This is hardly a representative sample, but in my high school class of about 120 people myself and two others have read Rand, and a fourth is in the process.