Betsy

Instead of supposing a market with 10 imaginary companies making unspecified X's, let's focus on reality. One real, actual, historical example will suffice.

Where do you live? I know Objectivists all over the world and love to arrange introductions. That's because, as long as you live in a semi-free country, the quality of your life most depends on the choices you make for yourself: your chosen career, friends, and romantic partner. That's where you spend your time and invest and seek values. Ayn Rand was right when she said, "He who fights for the future, lives in it today." Whether or not other people do the right thing affects THEIR lives more than it does ours. Reality is a great ally -- on OUR side.

Yes, in the "of value to whom and for what" sense.

You don't wait until they are thirteen. You communicate to them, and show them by example, that the relationship is normal, based on values, for adults, private, and important . You discuss sex when the subject comes up in the context of everyday life -- which it does quite often. When a child is a toddler you tell him that people cover some parts of their bodies in public, not because they are shameful, but because they are much too precious to share with just anybody. When a child is old enough to understand, you make sure he knows the biological facts and how to avoid bad consequences like pregnancy and disease. Once that is done, a parent should butt out and respect his child's privacy and judgement. The fact is, once a child is old enough for sex, there isn't much more a parent can do anyway.

I'm not complaining. As I write this, I am a "Junior Member." At my age, it's nice to be a junior anything.

Not if you define "causality" as an Objectivist (or Aristotle) does. The Objectivist view is that causality is the law of identity applied to actions and that the cause for an action is contained in the nature (identity) of the entity that acts. The cause of the oak tree is the acorn which had the potentiality to become an oak tree (under certain conditions). The Objectivist view of free will follows from that. The nature of human beings is that they have free will which consists only of the ability to self-regulate the conceptual functioning of their own minds. This conceptual functioning directs their other choices and actions. Thus, man's conceptual faculty CAUSES free will. For more details, read Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), especially the section "Human Actions, Mental and Physical, as Both Caused and Free" beginning on P. 62 and the discussions of existence, consciousness, identity, and causality in the preceding pages.

That is VERY important. One of the two main things I look for in assessing whether someone is Good Objectivist Material is whether or not he is VALUE ORIENTED. Is his primary motivation the things he loves and wants, or is he only concerned with the evil of other people, the difficulties and dangers of life, etc? That depends. Some people have an immoveable agenda unaffected by facts and that is bad. Others persist because their questions have not been answered to their satisfaction. Since I am often the court of last resort ("I give up. Betsy, YOU talk to him.), I persuade many an opponent by actually listening to him, finding out what his REAL issue is, and answering it. Of course, not everyone has the interest or patience to do that -- or ought to. My point is that many difficult, stubborn people are not hopeless. That is VERY BAD. That is something an honest person, no matter how screwed up, just doesn't do. My second criteria for Good Objectivist Material is being REALITY ORIENTED. Twisting facts indicates someone for whom there is something more important than reality. The chances of gaining values from such a person is doubtful and dealing with him may be risky. Personally, I do not like to watch someone being rebuked even if he's really a schmuck. I would rather see his false ideas challenged in a forum like this, and the personal assessments left to private e-mail between the affected parties. OO certainly is your forum and you don't owe anybody anything. If the latter, I would point them towards humanities.philosophy.objectivism instead.

I would say so, as far as my views are concerned, and I'll leave it to Tryptonique to speak for his. I do tend to interpret people's statements in the most charitable light assuming that, lacking evidence to the contrary, I am among friends here. I apologize to Tryptonique if my reply was harsh, but I really get bent out of shape if I think someone is being judged unfairly.

If you look at the thread so far, you'll see that JRoberts never said they did. He ASKED if they did. Even if ARI does screen what its employees say, it is entirely proper for management to exercise control over its employees, particularly if they deal in ideas. Observe how JRoberts dealt with his own lack of information. He began by asking "GC, why does ARI have to approve it?" That strikes me as the rational thing to do. He followed up with the question "So the board at ARI wanted to screen what their own employees say and possible "correct" things if need by?" and admitted "I'm still confused about this." JRoberts ASKED, he didn't conclude. The response JRoberts question got was "If you use some basic logic, you wouldn't come to the conclusion that ARI had anything to hide." I see absolutely no evidence that JRoberts had formed any conclusion whatever, and there is no evidence he believed that ARI had something to hide. Indeed! Ditto for unsupported conclusions about other peoples' views and motives. Proper judgement of others should be based on evidence.

Because there is evidence to support it and none to the contrary. That doesn't mean there is enough evidence for certainty. When there isn't, a rational person questions further. It isn't wasting MY time. I am happy to provide evidence to help someone confirm or disconfirm an hypothesis and reach a true and certain conclusion. I can't see any flaws in logic. In fact, I think it makes sense to hypothesize AND question. Hypothesizing and experimenting (questioning reality) is the scientific method for arriving at non-contradictory identifications of reality and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. It is the right approach even if you learn, as a result of questioning, that your hypothesis was false. All you need for a valid hypothesis is some evidence in support of a conclusion and none to the contrary.

You don't have to prove a negative. All you have to show is why human beings have rights. The fact that animals don't follows logically from that.

I like SOME of his music, especially his more dynamic and dramatic early compositions and I have even choreographed some dance numbers to his "Walkabout" and "The End of Summer." (See http://www.speicher.com/choreo.htm.) His more recent music is pleasant and good background music, but not as exciting. My very favorite contemporary composer is David Arkenstone for his wonderful melodies, drama, and his ingenious, complex, seamless integration of traditional and electronic instruments. If you like Yanni, give a listen to Arkenstone. The album "Chronicles" is a compilation of some of his best work and is a good place to start.

That is important but most important is WHY they accept Marxist premises. When I was in school (and schools were much better then than they are now) my history teachers taught me "facts" that weren't true, but I respected them and believed them. I got involved with some leftist causes out of a sense of justice, benevolence, a desire to do the right thing. That all changed when I read Ayn Rand, but it didn't change immediately. It took a couple years for me to learn what really happened in history and to reintegrate my knowledge. The main way you can tell the difference between a student like me and a trolling Marxist -- and to treat each type justly -- is to avoid hasty judgements based on their emotional reactions or to yours. First ask WHY they believe what they do. If there are any factually wrong premises, politely say so and refer them to where they can verify what you say. Honest people will respond well to that approach and will eventually learn. Dishonest people won't and, at that point, you can escort them out.

Me too! Welcome to OO., Heather. Some of the Second Generation Objectivists (2GOs) I know are very impressive. One is just completing his first year of Grad School at Stanford in Physics and he's still 18. Two others (who happen to be cousins) both got perfect 1600's on the College Boards. I can hardly wait to see the 3GOs.

I see this as a false alternative. It is not the case that a person either sees the truth upon hearing a "magic phrase" or has "a myriad of intellectually-dishonest positions." It usually takes a lot more than "magic phrases" to educate and convince someone -- especially someone who is a careful, first-hand, independent thinker. I know that when I discovered Ayn Rand if you had asked me if I believed in God I would have said, "Yeah, I guess so. Why not?" and my politics were quite left of center. Ayn Rand's view of man, her sense of life, and her ethics completely won me over immediately. After she convinced me that pursuing noble moral values, which had always been the goal of my life, did not require faith, I became an atheist. Politics took much longer. I had assumed that what my teachers had taught me about history and economics was true. It took several years of reading and research before I was convinced my teachers were wrong. I would be extremely wary of making what could be unwarranted and unjust snap judgements about someone's intellectual honesty, sense of life, values, psycho-epistemology, or motivation based only on the positions he holds now or the results of a brief conversation.

I was agreeing with everything up until this. People most definitely CAN learn Objectivism and many other true and valuable ideas even if they currently hold goddawful ones now. One case in point is David Horowitz, former communist and author of Radical Son. I know. I have "converted" many people myself including ex-socialists and ex-theists. I have shown emotionalists why it is to their self-interest to stop and think before they act and how to do it. I have shown rationalists where they broke with reality and how to repair the break. As we live we can learn more and more about how to think, what is true, what is of value, and how to achieve values. Even someone who is irrational and has turned off his brain and tuned out reality can turn it back on. That's because people have free will and can choose to think or not anew every minute and second.

Considering the value of my pets to me, I would hope the penalty would be more severe than a mere "citation" but animals don't have rights and they are property. Men have rights -- certain freedoms of action -- because their survival as rational beings requires freedom. Why would a non-conceptual creature have -- or need -- rights?

No it's not. In addition to the difficulties of buying out all the people AisA mentioned, you have the fact that existing public rights of passage across the new owner's property to property owned by others cannot be restricted. If the old owners allowed unrestricted public access long enough, the public acquires an easement the new owner must respect.

All human beings have rights. The reason lower animals don't have rights is because they are not human. A fetus most definitely is human, but it doesn't have rights because it is not yet a being. As long as it is inside the mother's body and dependent on it, it does not exist separately as a separate entity. Once a baby is born, it is a separate human being with all the rights an adult has but exercised on his behalf by his parent or guardian. Of course he is a man -- who is brain dead. Assuming he was once a functioning human being, whatever provisions he made for his care when disabled must be honored. If he expressed a desire to be maintained in a vegetative state and left money for that purpose, his right to dispose of his property that way must be respected. This is the same principle by which people have the right to say how their bodies and property will be disposed of when they are dead. (Also, human beings usually have 46 chromosomes).

If they differ on a metaphysical or epistemological level, then they can't really share the same ethics and politics. Also, accepting the right things for the wrong reasons undermines the position of those who accept the right things for the right reasons.

Not any more! Most of the middle-aged and younger, middle class, professional Jews I know have switched from the Democrats to the Republicans in the past ten years. Jews used to be intellectual liberals of the Old Left. With the ascendancy of the New Left and its rabid anti-intellectualism and anti-Americanism, many Jewish intellectual leaders have become Neo-Conservatives.

If spaghetti sauce has less than 2% meat in it, they have to call it "meat flavored" sauce. TOC is Objectivism flavored philosophy. If jewelry has a thin layer of gold over a base metal, they have to call it "gold plated." TOC is Objectivism plated libertarianism.

Why take over the Libertarian Party when we can take over the REPUBLICAN party? There have been Objectivist-only Young Republican clubs. Objectivists and Objectivist sympathizers have run for office -- and gotten elected -- as Republicans. There have been Objectivists who took over as Educational Chairman of their local Republican organization. Objectivists have written for and even edited Republican publications. Who needs the Libertarians?

"Objectivism" isn't a concept. It is a proper noun like "The United States of America." It is one of a kind and not the integration of two or more similar units. Since it isn't a concept, it isn't defined. It is denoted. "I mean the (one and only) philosophy of Ayn Rand." "I mean the nation north of Mexico and south of Canada."

Oh yes. I'm definitely a woman who has to BE conquered. I hope not. Understanding a woman's point of view requires understanding the concept of a woman's sexual surrender (NOT submission!). Primarily, but as an integral part of personal identity, sexual identity has a delightful way of spilling over into non-romantic contexts. One minute I'm giving orders to someone at work and the next minute he's holding a door open for me. Not in the same, "I trust you completely, take my body and soul" sense that women are. That's understandable because a woman's sexual motivation is so different from a man's. Ask for my Femininity Essays (mailto:[email protected]) and maybe that will help.