Free Capitalist

But this part is deductive: "Round things don't have any flat parts to stop them from rolling. "Round" is the same as not flat. Therefore, round things roll because they are round."

Yes, I double second ( ) Thucydides. I don't think he wrote anything else besides his history of the Pelopponnesian War, so I'm not entirely sure what Eran is referring to. Thucydides was one of the Athenian generals during the war, and witnessed the entire thing firsthand. He then wrote the entire war down in an objective and scientific style, which nonetheless has a passionate narrative and some very moving and memorable passages. His mix of objectivity and passion has caused later generations to call him the greatest historian, ever, and he deserves it fully. If you're interested in specific men of Ancient times, and would like to learn more about the colorful personalities of Ancient Greek history, you should check out Plutarch, a Greek historian of 1st century AD, and also of very high quality. His aim is different from that of most historians, however, for he has a strong philosophical angle. His whole aim in studying (and teaching) history is to study (and teach) men's characters, their virtues, their vices, and how those abstract notions play out in the real world, how they affect the person's own happiness and success in life, and also how they affect the life of everyone around them (sometimes affecting them in very drastic ways). There are lots of moral lessons one can learn from Alcibiades' life, for example, as you probably realized already. Anyway, the title of his entire work is called Lives, and it's split into particular Lives, i.e. Life of Alcibiades, or Life of Nicias, etc. Plutarch also writes about lives of great Romans (i.e. Life of Crassus), and then has a third part, where he draws parallels between famous Greek men and their famous Roman counterparts (both men related in some way), to compare the two, and underline the value one can derive by examining their choices and actions. So, for example, Nicias is compared to Crassus. Alcibiades is compared to a very colorful and memorable ancient Roman, Coriolanus. For the last two, both were equally impetuous beyond restraint, both were unbeatable generals and warriors (Alcibiades was an Olympic champion), both were betrayed by their country, and both betrayed that country in return, leading the armies of its greatest enemy and single-handedly bringing their (previously invincible) native city to the brink of destruction.

From my logic class, I learned that induction works exactly by the scheme primemover described, namely, premise1, premise2, premise3, premise4 ----------- conclusion This is different from the deductive syllogism in a number of ways. Well, actually now that I think about it, I don't know a lot about how inductive syllogism (sic) works, but I can see at least one difference. In an inductive syllogism, all premises can be particulars for the conclusion to be valid, whereas in the deductive syllogism one has to be a universal. Also, there can't be more than two premises in a deductive syllogism, and the way the two premises are linked together is through the Middle. Again, either I forgot my lessons, or (most likely) they simply didn't teach me induction cus they know very little about it. But from cursory thinking, I don't think induction has a required Middle to link all premises together. Etc, there are other differences. But every logical argument has some premises, and some conclusion, regardless of inductive or deductive. Primemover, as you probably know, understanding of induction is very rare, as practically no discovery in that area has been done since Aristotle gave it a try 2,500 years ago. Dr. Peikoff, however, apparently has stepped on the path, and one of the results of his thinking is that he's produced a set of monumental lectures, where he proves the whole of Objectivism inductively. Moreover, he says that anyone who tries to do it deductively must necessarily be misunderstanding the philosophy. I'd recommend you get those tapes, if you're really interested, I heard they're very profound.

Kellymeg, sounds like that "Oist" friend of yours is the one who needs to be taught some lessons, if he throws around "Oist" curse words. Recommend him this site, where I expect he will receive some serious trouncing from more integrated users here. Notice the macho bravado in what I said, though it wasn't even implying that I'd be the one doing the trouncing. If you guys are right about men being more aggressive in debates, then this is the case where it's shown to be true, but for a good cause. Aggressive debating with people who need to be taught a lesson or two is highly valuable. So, let him "bring it" - I get seriously upset at people who twist Oism to their petty malicious purposes, and am always willing to engage them in (often) hostile and confrontational arguments. The interesting thing about people like that is that they usually lose extremely quickly, if challenged in the right way, since they are most of the time major rationalists (see the related thread on this forum). So whereas, as a girl or a woman, you may simply be feeling "blah" about him, to just leave him alone to his own devices, I'm prone to confront him. I bet some guys here feel the same way.

To the person using the "John Galt" username - aren't you being just a tiny bit presumptious?

I'm from the NYC metro area See my Personal Message.

... Which proves my point. That's why I used this example.

But Dr. Speicher, not all drugs "dull your senses". As Don's excellent post indicates, some drugs sharpen your senses. Some even sharpen your thinking capacity (at least temporarily) - don't forget that Sherlock Holmes was a frequent user of cocaine, and for a reason. Also, ironically (or is it?), he was a big smoker, the image of him with his pipe in the mouth being known around the world.

Why would they be wearing 40-50's clothing? Why would movie have to be set in that time frame? Even if its set in ours it could work - railroads and steel mills are not irrelevant to us.

Ok, what if I just do it for pleasure and relaxation? And what risks are there if in my hypothetical example, the person consumes a small, teeny weeny portion of heroin once a week? I know of the usefulness of opiates, and other drugs, for the purposes of staving off pain - practically anything and everything that can lessen pain is ok to be used in that situation. So there's no disagreement about the use of drugs for negative purposes (to ward off pain, etc). My question is, is it ok to use heroin for positive purposes, just as you said it's ok to use nicotine for positive purposes? Assume the conditions are the same, where you ingest a very small amount, with negligible health risks, for the purposes of pleasure and relaxation.

Let'say for the same reasons you mentioned earlier, "pleasure, relaxation, the positive effects of sharpening awareness"

Hi Betsy, What would you say to a person who does a little bit of heroin, once a month, just a teeny bit?

This is somewhat outside of this thread, but you should read some of the recent posts by Dr. Binswanger on HBL, Ash. He addressed the subject of what the proper definition of knowledge should be, and why today's popular "justified true belief" is wholly inadequate. And I know you're on HBL, 'cause I saw you post there, unless you cancelled your membership recently.

In what way? We've spoken on CapForum, jrshep, and while I too may disagree with some things you say, I am simply astounded at this negative judgment you've made of yourself. My first reaction when I saw you say that was, "Oh come on! "

I think what Dr. Speicher asks for is not that a person is disabled from editing until 60 minutes elapse, after which they can edit all they want, but the opposite, where they can edit for up to, say, 10 minutes after posting, and never thereafter.

So far there's been a distinction made between being a regular/heavy smoker, and a casual/light smoker, where the latter smokes, say, 4 cigarettes a day. Dr. Speicher says that small amount poses no health risks, and I agree. But the same argument can be made for heroin - if you ingest a tiny amount of heroin once in a while, and it has negligible effects on your physical health (i.e. no brain damage), is it okay to do it? If it's not ok to consume ANY heroin, or ANY cocaine, why is it ok to consume nicotine and arsenic (two of the many ingredients in cigarettes)? I understand Fred Weiss' point that cigarettes are pleasurable, but I don't see that as an appropriate standard. A psychologically healthy person can expect that things they find pleasurable will be healthy and okay for them to consume, but that doesn't mean that simply stating something as pleasurable necessarily implies it is healthy and okay to consume. In a debate with themselves that person can validly link the two, due to their ability to introspect, but in an explicit debate with other people, some other standard needs to be used than it simply being fun.