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HaloNoble6

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Posts posted by HaloNoble6

  1. I saw it a few weeks back so my thoughts on it are based on somewhat distant memories.

    I remember being touched by Crowe's relationship with his family. He came off as a strong valuer and a very principled man. I was once again impressed with Crowe's diversity of acting skill: old-school L.A. detective, Roman general, English seaman, and now early-American boxer.

    The overall theme seems to be a man's relentless fight to keep his values (his family) in an extremely principled manner. For example, I was also moved by the fact that he refused to take federal aid as a hand-out: he treated it as a loan. The man had dignity even when he went up to his former big-shot boxing friends to beg for money.

    Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  2. I think it was a battle between bad and worse. Clearly the South was an evil country with no right to exist due to slavery, and yet at the same time Lincoln was a tyrant in the truest sense of the word. He really set the stage for the loss of freedom that the country has seen ever since then.

    He arrested editors that criticised him, he waged war for months without congressional approval, he ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he had a draft system, suspended Habeus Corpus, he didn't free slaves that were owned in the North, and the list goes on and on.

    I tend to agree with this view. I think it's something of a disgrace that Lincoln is so glorified in this country as our savior.
  3. Virgin Galactic, the British company created by entrepreneur Richard Branson to send tourists into space, and New Mexico announced an agreement Tuesday for the state to build a $225 million spaceport. Virgin Galactic also revealed that up to 38,000 people from 126 countries have paid a deposit for a seat on one of its manned commercial flights, including a core group of 100 "founders" who have paid the initial $200,000 cost of a flight upfront. Virgin Galactic is planning to begin flights in late 2008 or early 2009.

    It's going to be a great time to be an Aerospace Engineer! Article here.

  4. This reminded me of a thought I had recently. On my plane ride down here to Nicaragua from Miami, my mind started to wander and I tried to think about what I would do in the following situation.

    The plane was flying down the Florida coastline and I thought, "What if we found a nuclear weapon on board?" Supposing the timer was setup that given the time of discovery, the choice was to either drop it on land-dwelling civilians and save the passangers and crew, or take the plane away from the coast as far as possible and drop it in the ocean, but then killing yourself since no escape from the blast is possible due to the shortage of time. So, either expose innocents on land to the bomb, or you and the plane (with certain death for you and everyone on board). Supposing you were in charge and had the choice, what would you do?

    After answering this, suppose your closest family were on board with you, say your wife and kids, what then?

    As for the original question, I think it's already been answered: as a moral philosopher AR prescribes broad general principles, that one must act to keep and/or attain the highest value possible, and that whether a thing is properly a value to you is determined by a proper method based on proper premises; however, proper moral philosophers don't prescribe moral rules to specific situations, they don't tell you specifically not to covet your neighbor's wife or whatever.

    It is in this sense that there is a difference between formal moral philosophy and its application. Its application is inherently dependent on the applyer, since not all men have the same value hierarchies. So, if you want to call the personal application of formal morality "personal morality," I suppose that's ok. Personally I would avoid this terminology, since it implies subjectivism in an unspecified manner.

    PS

    Should we give Burgess access to the premium forums, if we haven't already?

  5. Japan's NEC has developed a thin, foldable battery to be used in cards or clothes, leading to new possibilities such as people walking through ticket gates with fare passes in their pockets. The 0.3-millimeter (0.012-inch) thick battery can support tens of thousands of signal transmissions on a single charge and can be recharged in less than 30 seconds, NEC said.

    Here

  6. Yes, but the rules say "accusations of irrationality or immorality. "
    I believe the key word here is "accusation." The other admins and mods can correct me if I'm wrong, but an accusation is a kind of assertion; that is, it is a leveling of a charge absent evidence. However, anybody who has followed this spectacle or the blogs associated with it, particularly if they caught the thread (now gone) that accused this forum of stealing and a blog post about sex crossposted to the Egosphere a few months back, it is not difficult to see that this is not an accusation: it is an identification of fact. I don't think there's anything wrong with calling a spade a spade, so long as it as it is clear and conclusive that a spade is a spade. This is my interpretation, anyway.
  7. Felipe, everything that exists is measurable. We may not be able to measure it, but that does not mean that it can not be measured. Things that are not currently measurable are called theories, and are certainly not self evident by nature.
    The rule you brought to the debate didn't seem to be a condition on existents, it seemed like a rule about concepts as such, since you made a statement about "phenomena" and "anti-concepts." For example, take the concept "differentiability" in mathematics. There is nothing directly measurable about this concept. Building the conceptual chain from the concept "identity" to "unit" to "variable" to "change" to "differentiability" one sees that, yes, this concept inevitably begins at sense-perception and satisfies measurability. I agree that all existents are measurable, but your rule didn't seem to be a condition on existents, it seemed to be a condition on concepts and, without specificity, direct measurability, without mentioning conceptual chains or the senses. That is all I'm getting at.

    Regardless, note that measurability is not axiomatic, that is, it is a sub-concept in the process of validation, which is a concept dependent on volition.

  8. No, capitalism is a social system, which encompasses both politics and economics.

    Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interest, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.

    If it were as you say, it'd make no sense to talk about rights and war and other such political issues as seen by capitalism, the political-economic system. Social encompasses both political and economic issues.

  9. Such optimism! How did it ever happen in Rome and in America at the time of its founding? Sheesh, I don't know, but it sure as hell won't happen again? This is what I mean by ignorance of history. Moral societies have existed in the past, there's no reason to believe they can't rise again.

  10. No, you haven't. You make it seem like a society that establishes laissez-faire can, on a whim, be susceptible to a few mega-rich immoral men (completely blanking out exactly what kind of culture is required for establishing such a system). Societies don't rise and fall in a vacuum, erected and destroyed by the money of a few rich men. Think about it, do you think, that if you transported the Founders and all their money (they were rich men, mostly) to Iran of today, that they'd be able to errect a republic? Similarly, do you think that if you transported Saddam and all his money, the Saudis and all their money, to the time of our founding, that they'd be able to establish a dictatorship?

  11. This is something I just wondered about. Say we had the glorious day when laissez-faire capitalism was established. Now, about 10 years later we see that the system once envisioned as granting everyone the same rights now offers special rights to certain companies due to corruption. That's the problem I see. That the legal system will be corrupted and bought and we end up having real exploitation.
    Your post is premised on the notion that a government-economic system can protect a society from its own moral deterioration. The truth is that neither constitution nor government can save a society that has relinquished the use of reason in the realm of ethics and politics.

    Consider this. Do you think that if, in the time of this nation's founding, there had existed the kind of intellectuals that preserve a society's moral character, and that if they in turn had left the moral defense of a culture to other competent hands to preserve the tradition of reason and the lessons of history (and to fight off Kant and his minions), that we'd see what we're seeing today in the U.S.?

    Nothing, in the immediate, can save a people from its own demise if it has already relinquished the use of reason. However, a gang of hard-nosed intellectuals within a culture of reason-based people can most assuredly establish and maintain a tradition of guardianship of the glory of man.

    Today, not only are people suffering from a massive case of bad epistemology, but they are utterly ignorant of history and the lessons it can teach us. Anyway, to address your point of inquiry, constitutional government is a consequence of the character of a people, not the other way around. Meaning, constitutional government isn’t and can’t be a people’s life preserver, only its intellectuals can be.

  12. I agree that there should be some standard beyond what we have now for determining what sorts of debates are allowable, and I agree with Mr. Laughlin's two suggested criteria. Perhaps later I will have more thoughts on what else, if anything, should be required.

    I also think that the proposed debate on free-will is sensless and a waste.

  13. I am very tired, indescribably tired, of the senselessness occurring in this thread. The utter madness of demanding that free-will be "proved," that there is little evidence to back it up, blanking out the nature of proof altogether. Please read below (note: I'm not sure what the limits are for quoting texts, so if I've gone over them please someone delete my post). I post this directly rather than my own words because I think he makes the point very clear.

    So far, I have been identifying the nature of man's power of choice, according to the Objectivist theory. But how is this theory validated? Can one prove that the choice to think is real, and not, as determinists would say, an illusion caused by our ignorance of the forces determining us? Can one prove that man's consciousness does not function automatically?

    If man's consciousness were automatic, if it did react deterministically to outer or inner forces acting upon it, then, by definition, a man would have no choice in regard to his mental content; he would accept whatever he had to accept, whatever ideas the determining forces engendering in him. In such a case, one could not prescribe methods to guide a man’s thought or ask him to justify his ideas; the subject of epistemology would be inapplicable. One cannot ask a person to alter or justify the mentally inescapable, any more than, in physical terms, one can ask him to alter or justify his patellar reflex. In regard to the involuntary, there is no alternative but to submit--to do what one must, whatever it is.

    The concept of "volition" is one of the roots of the concept "validation" (and of its subdivisions, such as "proof"). A validation of ideas is necessary and possible only because man's consciousness is volitional. This applies to any idea, including the advocacy of free will: to ask for its proof is to presuppose the reality of free will.

    Once again, we have reached a principle at the foundation of human knowledge, a principle that antecedes all argument and proof. How, then, do we know that man has volition? It is self-evident fact, available to any act of introspection.

    ...

    Like any rejection of a philosophic axiom, determinism is self-refuting. Just as one must accept existence or consciousness in order to deny it, so one must accept volition in order to deny it. A philosophic axiom cannot be proved, because it is one of the bases of proof. But for the same reason it cannot be escaped, either. By its nature, it is impregnable.

    I pray that the relationship betwen proof and axiomatic concepts is clear now. So, please no more demands for "proof" of free-will. So, ask yourself how fully do you understand why one of the roots of validation is volition. Can one speak of validation outside of, without, in absence of volition? Can one speak of using a method of knowledge, that is, an epistemology, for discovering the nature of anything without presupposing that man has a choice with regard to method as such?

  14. Actively shaping one's surroundings in the image of one's values and sense of life is very healthy and very worthwhile. For me, sometimes I do it to such an extent that I lose sight of the ugliness of "the outside world," only to be slammed down when I read some stupid article or listen to some stupid politician. Little things like what you did here add up to a nice sum at the end of the day, so keep it up! Just because the majority of the population doesn't value the things you might or as passionately as you might, doesn't mean you should subject your daily life to their point of view. Surround yourself with art, with friends, with history, with products of the mind--that is, if you want to keep your sanity. :)

  15. Yes, that debate will not proceed with such a 'rule.' Perhaps the debate should be about the notion of "self-evidency" as such rather than volition, since volition is one form of a self-evident fact. That is, perhaps it should be on the validity of axiomatic concepts and the nature of knowledge. Donnywithana appears to be trying to rewrite reality by demanding that "all concepts be based on phenomena that are measurable," whatever that means. There are plenty of higher-level concepts that aren't "measurable phenomena," though inevidably they lead via a conceptual chain to sense-perception and thus measurability.

  16. Definable events have roots in "gradual periods of time." That is, everything is contextual. Just because certain gradual periods led up to specific, unique climaxes occurring at singular points in time, doesn't erase this fact. That is, events don't occur in a vacuum.

    Why not have all of America's greatest achievements, whether they are remembered as singular moments, or gradual periods?

    1.) The coalescing of the Founders into a force for freedom.

  17. This is senseless--not only is this forum not a medium for airing out dirty laundry, but by the nature of the claim at hand there isn't any evidence that can be provided with confidence for anyone to judge accurately who is what and why. Andrew has handled the situation appropriately, but the matter ends now.

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