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stephen_speicher

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  1. This view is, then, at odds with Objectivism, as voiced repeatedly by Ayn Rand and as echoed by Leonard Peikoff. Here is just one quote from each which illustrates the Objectivist view. --Ayn Rand, _The Objectivist Newsletter_, Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1965, "Check Your Premises: What Is Capitalism?." "The economic value of a man's work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand; it represents the total rejection of two vicious doctrines: the tribal premise and altruism. It represents the recognition of the fact that man is not the property nor the servant of the tribe, that a man works in order to support his own lifeā€”as, by his nature, he must-that he has to be guided by his own rational self-interest, and if he wants to trade with others, he cannot expect sacrificial victims, i.e., he cannot expect to receive values without trading commensurate values in return. The sole criterion of what is commensurate, in this context, is the free, voluntary, uncoerced judgment of the traders." --Leonard Peikoff, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand," p. 396. "Men create products and offer them for sale; this is supply. Other men offer their own products in exchange; this is demand. (The medium of exchange is money.) "Supply" and "demand," therefore, are two perspectives on a single fact: a man's supply is his demand; it is his only means of demanding another man's supply."
  2. "y_feldblum" wrote: "... what invisible, intangible, indetectable entities exist between two stars? What are some of these entities' observable attributes - these entities which no one yet has succeeded in observing?" Surely you are not implying that, literally, nothing exists between two stars? It is one thing to say that you do not know the nature of what exists, but another thing entirely to imply that there exists ... nothingness. "Nothing" is not a different kind of something. "Nothing" is the absence of something. It is, literally, no thing. What can be said scientifically in any given age is dependent on the details of the science and technology available at that time. Some years ago all we had were telescopes with which we observed in visible light. Now the Chandra X-ray telescope regularly provides spectacular images of energetic radiation which was was not visible to the naked eye. But, philosophy is not dependent on any particular scientific knowledge or technology, and it can properly assert that which is true of existence per se, in any age. More than two thousand years ago Parmenides recognized that the universe is a plenum -- there are no gaps of nothingness -- and that fact necessarily remains true today. The job of science is to identify the nature of that plenum, and it cannot ever validly question its existence.
  3. "buiq" asked: "IS creationism and Big Bang theory are similar?" Yes, and in more ways than the one you mentioned. For instance, the standard Big Bang theory does not say that the universe is expanding into some other part of existence, but rather that the expansion is of space itself. Such a concept is pure nonsense; the universe is ... all that is. This creation of space is nothing more than, literally, creation ex nihilo. The standard Big Bang theory is philosophically and scientifically corrupt on a multitude of levels. It is an attempt to integrate a broad variety of empirical data, data which, by itself, is a monument to the science and technology which has collected such voluminous physical evidence about the cosmos. The problem lies in the proper interpretation of such, and it is there that Big Bang theory fails, miserably.
  4. "Living Student" wrote: "... distance is not a relationship between two entities ..." Sure it is. Distance is a relationship between the location of two entities, i.e., a spatial relationship. We quantify that distance through a measurement process, either directly or indirectly. For instance, we may measure the spatial separation between the two entities by laying a fixed ruler between the two, or, knowing the speed of light, we may indirectly derive the spatial separation by measuring the time for light to travel from one entity to the other.
  5. A poster stated that, though he does not consider himself an Objectivist, he does admire a great deal of Ayn Rand's work and finds some commonality of such with his own philosophical views. In response, "Bearster" replied: [i couldn't think of a better way to set an Objectivist's teeth on edge.] No. A better way to set "an Objectivist's teeth on edge" was the harshness of the reply which "Bearster" made. The Objectivist philosophy embodies a benevolence towards men, and we do not automatically treat as the enemy someone who admires Ayn Rand but has not fully accepted her philosophy. "Bearster" took an innocent remark -- an expression of admiration and commonality of ideas -- and transformed it into a commonality of "superficial things" and likened the poster to "libertarians" who also "claim to have a lot in common." Personally, I have no idea if that person who admired Ayn Rand is a libertarian or not, nor do I know if the commonality he feels is for superficial things, but I do know, with complete and absolute surety, that such judgments are not contained in the words which "Bearster" responded to. In further response to the poster, "Bearster" also claimed [if one reads all about it, and adopts some pieces/parts, that is as anti-objectivist an approach as I could think of.] That would be a great surprise to Ayn Rand, who, though she disagreed with much of Aristotle's philosophy, admired and accepted "some pieces/parts," especially Aristotle's epistemology. The main point here is that, although it is certainly true that Objectivism is a completely integrated philosophy, not all people grasp all parts immediately, nor do they instantaneously integrate the philosophy as their own. Such people are not to be assumed to be our enemies, and they should not be automatically likened to libertarians or assumed to have only "superficial things" in common with Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophy devoted to life, reason and value, not a schoolmaster's rod to automatically reprimand any innocent soul who wanders into the school.
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