danielshrugged

Wow, I just completely missed that statement, but I think people still overreacted. I sounded to me like GWDS did not mean quite what people gathered from it. But then again, maybe he did.

I was hinting at the fact that morality is contextual. I agree with your interpretation, but it is also true that under a society based on the use of force, life can be a perpetual state of emergency.

www.amazon.com Get this. They actually SHIP the books to you.

GWDS, I am longer reading any of your posts, as you appear to be committed to theft. You are only slightly better than a bank robber. After all, how do they decide whether to rob a bank? They ask themselves whether they can get away with it. Same as you. But I will not let you get away with it. Nor will reality. EDIT: Please note in interpreting my comments that I don't think bank robbers are necessarily evil or horrible people. But bank robbery is definitely immoral. Also, I would personally welcome a private message from GWDS letting me know when he has paid for his book.

This is not a debate I want to get into on this forum, but here are some questions for you to consider on your own. What facts of living organisms support the view that they automatically pursue their own lives? What facts of living organisms suggest they pursue reproduction? Is it possible that organisms pursue both of these? If so, is one of them primary? (This issue is addressed in detail in Harry Binswanger's Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/store/pro...item=1&mitem=1) This has been addressed elsewhere on this forum. Even so, it is not essential to Ayn Rand's argument in VOS. There are a number of problems with this. Here are some questions to think about. Is material wealth the same thing as living successfully? The ancient societies you are referring to were collectivist, statist societies. Would Ayn Rand expect her morality to apply the same way in Ancient Egypt as she would expect it to apply in a free country? Finally, where did all the food in your ancient societies come from? Men had to invent methods of agriculture. Isn't that an achievement of reason?

Christ, people, what's wrong with looking for parallels with other philosophers? It's not as if he said it's an essential parallel! Now, granted, I think it's a false parallel, but take it easy. Also, GWDS, if indeed you are using an illegal version of Virtue of Selfishness, please go to the store and buy a copy. It will make you less of a thief.

It has come to my attention that sarcasm is not self-evident. So if you didn't get it, calling Ayn Rand "scripture" was sarcasm.

I agree that that can be funny, but what real Objectivist ever said such a thing? If you'll allow me to quote my scripture: "Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions over facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as a middle-man between your consciousness and your existence." --Ayn Rand

Neither of these characters ever "sinned." They are both perfectly moral. As for Eddie Willers, he was not killed off. Ayn Rand wrote the following in a letter to a fan: "Eddie Willers is not necessarily destined to die; in a free society, he will live happily and productively; in a collectivist society he will be the first to perish. He does not have the ability to create a new society of his own, but he is much too able and too honest ever to adjust himself to collectivism" (Letters of Ayn Rand, letter from May 1960). In real life, people like Kira may have managed to escape Russia, but such escapes are accidental. Literature essentializes; it does not present historical accidents. So here you're right; Ayn Rand was trying to show the consequences of collectivism to the individual. Or in Ayn Rand's own words: "The theme of We the Living is: the individual against the state, and, more specifically, the evil of statism. I present the theme by showing that the totalitarian state destroys the best people: in this case, a girl and the two men who love her" (Art of Fiction, chapter 3).

My knowledge of Mortimer Adler is based on a small amount of reading and on the fact that I go to St. John's College, the curriculum of which was influenced by Adler. So I am far from an expert on him. I like the guy. I think he was basically a Thomist, so it isn't surprising that some of his writing seems to have parallels with Objectivism. That said, like Aquinas, he had a number of inconsistencies. Sorry I can't be more specific without doing some research.

What is this class supposed to be on?

Uh oh, I never thought about that. Goodbye, graduate school. I wrote one of my college essays for my chosen college, St. John's, on Atlas Shrugged, and here I am attending St. John's. In fact, I've spoken to several people who wrote an Ayn Rand essay and were accepted here. It's not that the tutors (that is, our version of professors) like Objectivism--most of them, from what I can gather, don't know very much about it and don't care to learn. But most of them are decent people--as long as you don't sound like a fanatic or a zealot in your essay (you should probably take extra care not to give that impression), you're fine. The situation is likely worse at other colleges, though, especially ivy leagues and the sort.

I'll say this much: whatever concept of limit being used here, it does not seem to be Newton's, and I find it hard to see how any of that math applies to the real world. That said, I have not considered whether there might be some mathematical use for this. Edited to fix quote.

I didn't claim there was. I merely said that however long the string of numbers, you can determine the sum by whether there is an even or odd amount. As the amount of numbers approaches infinity, therefore, it approaches NEITHER 0 nor 1. Neither of those is the sum of the series at infinity.

But in the first case you have 6 numbers and in the second you have 7. You've stopped the two series at different times--that's why your claimed sum differs in each case. In other words, all you've said is that: 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 = 0 whereas 1 - 1 + 1 = 1 This isn't at all unusual. Obviously, if you keep going, you will have a sum of 0 if there are an even number of terms and a sum of 1 if there are an odd number, no matter how long a series one takes. ---- I still don't get the original riddle. It seems like in (A) one gets 9 additional dollars bills with each iteration, as opposed to 1 additional dollar bill with each iteration in (. Not a tough choice, if that's all that's going on. Edited: to change a smiley face into the letter B.

I still don't understand the riddle. Perhaps you could give an example of the first few iterations?

That's not entirely right. He thought, quite rightly, that Hume had plunged humanity back to the caves, and he thought, quite wrongly, that he had saved it (although it is possible that my judgment of his motivation can change as I gather more evidence). Still, I agree with you that good intentions do not justify Kant's philosophy, and Kant should have known better.

I should add that I think Kant must have been dishonest, at least to some extent. I'm just pointing out that, so far as I can tell, he may have had some good intentions.

Kant, you should note, would admit to denying reason access to things as they are; but what matters in life, he would say, are appearances. And he would take credit for answering David Hume's skepticism, thereby allowing us to find order amongst the appearances. Now, of course, Kant is wrong--yet I really can see, given the alleged problems posed by Hume, how a struggle to justify philosophy and natural science could lead Kant into thinking that he was actually rescuing reason and morality from attack.

I was merely explicating Kant as he was quoted. I completely disagree with him.

It's important to remember that secondary sources, to some extent, give one merely hypothetical knowledge. Be careful about reading a history of philosophy and going around showing off your knowledge of Kant; my general practice is, if I have not studied an author directly but have studied him indirectly, to preface my thoughts and words about the author with: "IF, as such-and-such a book reports, this philosophy argues X, THEN..." Now, although the knowledge is hypothetical in this respect, in another respect it is not. Reading secondary sources alone is enough to give one a basic idea of what other people have taken from Kant and, hence, to get a basic idea of Kant's influence.

The passage you're referring to certainly does have meaning, and it is easier to interpret than many other passages to be found within Kant. However, if what you mean is that the view in the passage is false, then obviously, I agree. The first philosopher of whom I am aware to develop the concept of "moral certainty" was Descartes. With that philosophic background, and with some basic knowledge of Kant's thought, the passage is easy to follow. We cannot prove the existence of God, of free will, or of an immortal soul by reason. But we CAN, Kant says, be morally certain of these things (by what Kant calls practical reason); just as Descartes, when he doubted even the existence of the world, could not simultaenously take his skepticism seriously and stay alive, so too does Kant think that one must grant God, freedom, and immortality if one is to allow for a moral life at all. (Freedom is the easiest to explain; if we were merely determined, we could not be blamed for evil or praised for good actions.) Notice that this view is actually common today. Many Christians believe that atheism implies amorality, that if one denies God, one must deny morality along with Him.

Peikoff never said or implied such a thing, in that essay or elsewhere; and I'm not even sure what you could be referring to.

One of my favorites that seems to get less attention is Rachmaninoff's Vespers. However, most of the recordings out there disappoint me. The one I own, which is the best I've found on CD, is from the Washington Choral Arts Society. It might be harder to find. (My favorite recording is only on record, so far as I know, and is an old one by the USSR chorus, I believe.)