Trebor

Although I have not been active on this forum for a couple of months or so, I thought I would announce that I have started a blog to show some of my artwork: My "blog."

My name is John Shepard ("Trebor" is my middle name, Robert, spelled backwards.); I'm 57, and I live in Austin, Texas. I became interested in philosophy, explicitly, when my father handed me a copy of the Socratic Dialogs back when I was in high school, suggesting that I might enjoy reading it. I did not agree with the conclusions, but I saw how important and productive thinking could be. I already enjoyed drawing at the time. I was introduced and hooked on Miss Rand's fiction as well as her philosophy back in the Summer of 1976 when a girl, who I had barely known in a drawing class at Lamar University, went out of her way to visit me (I was then living in Rockport, Texas) and handed me a copy of The Fountainhead, saying that she thought that it was based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Anyway, if you take a look, I hope that you enjoy at least some of my works, mostly what I consider to be studies.

Some General Information about these works.

Here are the main posts (I started the blog the first of this month.):

First Blog Post - Some charcoal drawings (18" x 24")
A few more charcoal drawings (18" x 24")
Some small, 5 x 7, paintings:
Some small, 6 x 8, paintings:
Some small, 8 x 10, paintings:
Some 9 x 12 paintings:
And some 11 x 14 paintings:

I've posted a few things since those; you can see them if you want by going to the main page and browsing.

Although I have not been active on this forum for a couple of months or so, I thought I would announce that I have started a blog to show some of my artwork: My "blog."

My name is John Shepard ("Trebor" is my middle name, Robert, spelled backwards.); I'm 57, and I live in Austin, Texas. I became interested in philosophy, explicitly, when my father handed me a copy of the Socratic Dialogs back when I was in high school, suggesting that I might enjoy reading it. I did not agree with the conclusions, but I saw how important and productive thinking could be. I already enjoyed drawing at the time. I was introduced and hooked on Miss Rand's fiction as well as her philosophy back in the Summer of 1976 when a girl, who I had barely known in a drawing class at Lamar University, went out of her way to visit me (I was then living in Rockport, Texas) and handed me a copy of The Fountainhead, saying that she thought that it was based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Anyway, if you take a look, I hope that you enjoy at least some of my works, mostly what I consider to be studies.

Some General Information about these works.

Here are the main posts (I started the blog the first of this month.):

First Blog Post - Some charcoal drawings (18" x 24")
A few more charcoal drawings (18" x 24")
Some small, 5 x 7, paintings:
Some small, 6 x 8, paintings:
Some small, 8 x 10, paintings:
Some 9 x 12 paintings:
And some 11 x 14 paintings:

I've posted a few things since those; you can see them if you want by going to the main page and browsing.

Here's my earnest effort to identify Jacob86's metaphysics:

God exists (He is who and what he is; he is sui generis) and is conscious (without a brain or sense organs, etc. — his consciousness is not consciousness as we humans know it, awareness of things, external things primarily, but of ourselves secondarily, mediated via sense organs, brains, nerves, etc). 

Originally, or previously, before everything else existed (as the universe or all of existence is currently), only God existed, and God was conscious only of himself. If and when God "thought" — "thought" for God is not like thought for us humans — to himself, "Existence exists," the thought referred only to himself. He was all of existence and he was all that he was conscious of.

Eventually, some time previous to now, God created the rest of existence, all of existence which is not himself, and he created all that is not himself out of nothing, out of non-existence, bringing into existence that which had not existed, creating it out of nothing, from non-existence, "ex nihilo." (God's creation is not like any other creation; it is not the creation of something from something else, but of something from nothing.)

Given that existents (things or entities) can only act in two fundamental ways: volitionally (not caused by anything beyond itself) or reactively (caused by the actions of other existents), without an initial action, a beginning action, an action possible only to a conscious existent, in this case necessarily the eternally existing God, there would be no action beyond his own actions. God created the rest of existence and then set it into motion. And, presumably, God acts to keep the universe (all existence) moving. Without God, presumably, the universe, or that part of existence which is not God, would come to a halt. God keeps it all going, and God can take it all away. All but himself; God is eternal and indestructible. His ex nihilo creations he can surely destroy, making them all nothing once again.

Currently, given God's eventual creation of the rest of existence (existence that is non-God) ex nihilo, the axiom "Existence exists" refers to God's existence as well as the rest of existence which God created from nothing. "Existence exists" now refers to the eternal God and God's ex nihilo creations.

God then is the primary, eternal existent, the eternally existent creator (being eternal, God did not create himself) of all else that exists, and God, of necessity, is the prime mover, the primary motive power of the universe. He is the prime mover of himself by his own volitional choice, and he is the prime mover of all the rest of the universe which he created ex nihilo by his own volitional choice as well. All else, beyond God, which God created ex nihilo, acts in reaction to God's primary and volitionally chosen action(s).

The universe as it were is metaphorically a billiard table with a fresh rack of billiard balls. God created the balls, the table, the cue sticks, etc. ex nihilo, and then God, by his own volitional choice, took the break shot with an all-powerful force that set the rest of existence into motion, a motion that is still going strong (which certainly lends credibility to God's awesome and all-powerful role as the prime mover of existence).

God's existence does not require an explanation because God is the eternal existent, the uncaused cause of all else, the primary existent that exists eternally. What God has created out of nothing, surely he has the power to destroy. If he were to choose to do so, he could revert the universe, existence, back to the state of being solely that of his own existence with him being once again conscious of nothing but himself. (More awesome testament to God's all-powerful power, and his appreciation of his ex nihilo creation(s), with which he is content, at least sufficiently enough, to permit to continue to exist and remain in motion.)

Though God requires no explanation, all the rest of existence, which God created from nothing, ex nihilo, does require an explanation. That explanation is God's volition. God's volition is the cause for all else (beyond God) which exists as well as the cause of all action in existence, God's own volitionally chosen actions of his consciousness and the actions of all of his ex nihilo creations.

At the beginning of all of existence beyond God and the actions of all existence including God, there is God's volitional choice(s) to set everything into motion, himself as well as his ex nihilo creations — everything that is not God.

God is all-powerful, and yet God cannot contradict the fundamental laws of existence: Identity, Causality and Consciousness.

However, God can create something from nothing, from non-existence, ex nihilo, and God is conscious without having a brain or material means of consciousness. His consciousness is not limited by means, and God is omniscient (although Jacob86 has not, to my knowledge, yet stated this, I assume he holds this view). God is conscious of existence — he is conscious of his own eternal existence, and he is conscious of all that he has created ex nihilo.

Every thing is what it is (Identity) and acts in accord with its identify (Causality). Consciousness is consciousness (awareness) of existence. These laws of existence are inherent in existence and universally apply. God cannot contradict these laws. God is who he is, the primary existent and primary motive power of existence (by his voluntary choice). Although God is all-powerful, God's power cannot contradict the laws of existence. He is what he is; he acts in accord with his identity; he is conscious of existence (of his own eternal existence as well as his ex nihilo creations).

The essential argument (validation) that necessitates this metaphysics, according to Jacob86, if I understand correctly, is his claim that there cannot be a series of actions (reactions) going back to infinity, that a series of actions presupposes a beginning, a first action. Without such a beginning, without a prime mover, we would have a claim of an infinite regress of actions, a logical impossibility. The beginning then of all series of actions (of all actions indeed), directly or indirectly, is God's primary choice to act: to be conscious and to create all the rest of existence (beyond himself) ex nihilo and to also set his creation(s) into action or motion. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ex nihilo creation, Jacob86 apparently does not consider to be a contradiction of existence. Consciousness without a brain he apparently also does not consider to be a contradiction of existence. A series of actions without a beginning, he does hold to be a contradiction of existence — there cannot exist a series of actions without a first action, and there cannot be a first action without it being the action of a consciousness.

God then, according to Jacob86, is the primary existent and the prime mover of all existence, himself as well as his ex nihilo creation(s).

You are welcome. Thank you as well.

Since I mentioned Scott Burdick and his presentation, "Banishment of Beauty," for convenience, here are direct links to the four parts of his presentation (about 1 hour total time):






Scott and his wife, Susan Lyon, are both artists. They share a web site: Scott Burdick and Susan Lyon

Some of the representational artists Scott Burdick mentioned or showed works of in his presentation:

John Singer Sargent
Anders Zorn
Edgar Payne
Richard Schmid
Jeremy Lipking
Daniel Gerhartz
Clive Aspevig
Scott Christensen
Morgan Weistling
Matt Smith
Albert Handell
Burton Silverman
Kevin Macpherson
Alexey Steele
Jacob Collins

You are welcome. Thank you as well.

Since I mentioned Scott Burdick and his presentation, "Banishment of Beauty," for convenience, here are direct links to the four parts of his presentation (about 1 hour total time):






Scott and his wife, Susan Lyon, are both artists. They share a web site: Scott Burdick and Susan Lyon

Some of the representational artists Scott Burdick mentioned or showed works of in his presentation:

John Singer Sargent
Anders Zorn
Edgar Payne
Richard Schmid
Jeremy Lipking
Daniel Gerhartz
Clive Aspevig
Scott Christensen
Morgan Weistling
Matt Smith
Albert Handell
Burton Silverman
Kevin Macpherson
Alexey Steele
Jacob Collins

I just mentioned a couple of things (the article by Dr. Stephen Hicks: "Why Art Became Ugly" and the four-part YouTube video presentation by artist Scott Burdick, "Banishment of Beauty") on another thread, and I think they deserve their own thread to give them deserved attention.

Dr. Stephen Hicks' "Why Art Became Ugly"

Artist Scott Burdick's YouTube Channel (look for the four parts for "Banishment of Beauty")

Dr. Hicks has a similar article, "Post Postmodern Art" as well as a book, Explaining Postmodernism, on the subject.

I'm confused by your point. One is only a Muslim leader if one is leading the majority of Muslims?

Edit: Was bin Laden a leader in accord with Islam?

I just mentioned a couple of things (the article by Dr. Stephen Hicks: "Why Art Became Ugly" and the four-part YouTube video presentation by artist Scott Burdick, "Banishment of Beauty") on another thread, and I think they deserve their own thread to give them deserved attention.

Dr. Stephen Hicks' "Why Art Became Ugly"

Artist Scott Burdick's YouTube Channel (look for the four parts for "Banishment of Beauty")

Dr. Hicks has a similar article, "Post Postmodern Art" as well as a book, Explaining Postmodernism, on the subject.

The radicals are the movers, the moderates follow.


Islam is a total-state religion and does not recognize the propriety of a separation between church and state. If I understand your question, I'd say, again, that the moderates or the inconsistent majority give a "bad name" to the consistent ones.
I know that Dr. Peikoff gave an answer to a similar question in one of his podcasts, but I cannot find it right off. If I remember, he said that it's the radicals that set the course of history. Once they do, once they act, the moderates are irrelevant.

The "cosmological argument" or "argument from First Cause" is exactly one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God. It is an argument that Aristotle used, which Aquinas repeated in 4 variations in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Your accusations of straw man serves as a straw man for you to pretend "no serious theologian" ever used any of the arguments we've responded to because we do not accept their premises and conclusions, or that any given response doesn't directly respond to every theist argument ever advanced. Keep deluding yourself, but someone will be there to point it out.

I think this illustrates my point. They were "damaged" by the real sexual assault not the TSA pat down. Most people do not suffer years of sexual emotional trauma from a TSA pat down whereas people who are subjected to a real sexual assault often suffer years of emotional trauma.

Please understand the distinction that I'm not defending TSA or government involvement in airline security. Rather I"m making a distinction between a vicious, violent attack involving malice and an intent to hurt and defile from an administrative pat down for security reasons from a person who in all likelihood is not intending to hurt or defile, has no malice, and is not doing it for some twisted sexual gratification. I think the comparison undermines the seriousness of a real attack.

How are the non-political conflicts, the vying claims of knowledge, between theists and atheists, the claims that there is or that there is not a god (with the implications to the individual's life, to what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what he should or should not do, what should or should not be legal, etc.), to be resolved?

What is your answer?

Okay. Thank you for taking the time to explain your point. I think I understand now. (Though I need to think about it more.)

Edit to add: I retract my assertion, with apology to Mr. Rand, that Rand Paul is a hypocrite on the basis of his exchange with Ms. Hogan. I was wrong. I believe that he believes that abortion is murder, and I think that his challenge to Ms. Hogan was appropriate.

Wait, which point? That there are irrational people in the world? Or that we should overthrow the principle of private property because of it?



From reading your replies for years here I am quite certain that you don't have a malevolent view of the universe and though I am less familiar with Maximus I would be willing to bet he doesn't either and that's why I'd like you both to check your premises. I agree there are a few irrational property owners but QUITE a few? I don't think so and it does start to sound malevolent if you think they exist as any significant percentage of the population.

Further, I think the more property one owns, the less likely they are to be irrational. Thinking that a rich person is more likely to be irrational does not comport with reality or logic. In reality I find rich people to be more rational than poor people and this makes sense since rationality leads to the attainment of values while irrationality doesn't.

So someone who owns many roads and highways, who has made a business of making money from providing travelways, would not survive as a businessman very long if he made it hard for people to travel on his roads. That is the context I'm thinking of.

I suppose there are other contexts you and Maximus are thinking of: What about the neighborhood where houses are close together and an individual wants to own just the 20 feet of road directly in front of his house and wants to prevent everyone else in the neighborhood from using that stretch of road? A proper government tasked with figuring out rights of way and other such property rights would be able to figure this out. Certainly one couldn't encircle someone else's house entirely and not let them cross your road as I acknowledge earlier to Maximus.

But no one has a right to a road to their favorite destination. If someone builds a house high in the mountains, they should not be able to demand that the government build them a road to it and charge the rest of us for it.

The point I'm making is that the principle of rights and of private property are good ones, they promote value not its destruction. And there is no reason to think that respecting people's property leads to chaos.

I watched the debate live at WYNC. I'm able to re-watch it now at NYC Debate 2 on the Ayn Rand Center site. (I assume it's available already, that I'm not playing it from cache.)

There is nothing, nothing more frightening to me than the thought of a really, really large comment (like perhaps, "Get out of my way, Earth!") heading towards our planet. It would spell, if the spelling is correct, and state, if the grammar is correct, our very demise.

Let up hope that should such a comment be discovered that we will be able to redirect it (perhaps to God's attention and reply), or at least respond in a way that demonstrates that it is in error. If the comment is shown to not actually be true, that it is incoherent or irrational, that itself should suffice in saving our planet.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!"

By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen?

War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart.

It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little.

Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

You really should finish reading the thread before replying, especially such a short thread. Objectivism has a precise reference for what is meant by "tabula rasa", and if you had read and understood the posts in this thread there would be no mystery warranting further exploration.

"Tabula rasa" is a metaphor in which the contents of consciousness have the same relation to consciousness as what is written upon a slate blackboard has to the blackboard. The assertion that the slate starts blank is not equivalent to an assertion that there is no slate and no chalk. Clearly there is a slate and chalk, a human nature and identity which is given. It is the same distinction as between having a memory and having the ability to remember. Memories cannot be inherited, but the ability to remember can be.

Okay. Thank you for taking the time to explain your point. I think I understand now. (Though I need to think about it more.)

Edit to add: I retract my assertion, with apology to Mr. Rand, that Rand Paul is a hypocrite on the basis of his exchange with Ms. Hogan. I was wrong. I believe that he believes that abortion is murder, and I think that his challenge to Ms. Hogan was appropriate.

I received this petition from someone as well and I would advise strongly against signing it without reading the whole thing.

I don't believe there was anything inappropriate in the article. The reporter is doing what reporters are supposed to do- he's reporting the news. He's reporting that these things are being said by people in the community associated with the perpetrators. Personally I wouldn't want the reporting of these attitudes by people in the community where the crime occurred to be whitewashed, censored out, whitewashed or otherwise ignored.

I suggest a careful read by anyone intending to sign this (maybe you'll feel different than I) but I've worked with rape victims and shared this with others who have or still do as well and so far they have been unwilling to sign it for the reasons I stated.

Two possible things (at least) can happen;

1) Should the intended victim choose so, he could seek charges for threatening bodily harm against the father should the appropriate jurisdiction(s) have an applicable law.

2) IF the father actually carries out the murder, he would have well established premeditation and malice aforethought by advertising his intent, and likely face capital punishment if such jurisdiction allows, assuming sufficient evidence is otherwise there for the charge/conviction.

IF he really intends to carry out such an act, he's really making the repercussions on himself potentially worse by being so vocal.

Binswanger is wrong. In what follows I'm dependent on Diana Hsieh's retelling of Binswanger's thoughts because I don't have the course mentioned.

Where he goes wrong is his analysis of what it means for something to be a philosophical primary. He keys off the word reducible such as in the definition "a primary is not reducible" and then commits himself to a view consciousness that cannot be physical lest it be found to have parts and be reducible after all. His general description of what it means to reduce something is correct but not appropriate to a logical analysis. A philosophical primary is an epistemological designation meaning that it is at the bottom of the knowledge hierarchy, a first level concept known directly and defined ostensively.

We can analyze consciousness into its parts, but it requires a scientific context and a third-person perspective. We cannot reach the scientific level without first learning to be logical. We cannot learn to be logical without relying at least implicitly (and preferably explicitly) upon the axiomatic concepts existence, identity and consciousness and the axioms employing them. We don't need to look deeper because the referents of existence, identity and consciousness are givens.

Binswanger is in error to argue that an epistemological primary must also be an existential primary that cannot be analyzed scientifically. His statement that connsciousness “can never be shown to exist—at any scale—of subactions that are themselves non-conscious” commits the fallacy of division. All sorts of things are composed of other things of a radically different type: chairs are composed of atoms, mammals are composed of cells. Consciousness is the action and relationship of awareness and is composed of both the body and the object it is aware of.

Reductionism, when it results in denying that the thing reduced still exists, is an error. Binswanger seems particularly interested in refuting reductionism that would deny the mind exists. His method of going about it is wrong. Binswanger really should have checked himself when he was led to the conclusion that “a new force of nature”, i.e. “the physical force exerted by consciousness on its own brain” will eventually be discovered by scientists. That's just plain embarrassing. This is the kind of thing appropriate to the Coast to Coast AM radio show.

Mind is an attribute of a brain, attributes are existents, so mind and brain are distinguishable but not separable existents. That much is right. His claim to being a dualist could be chalked up to rhetorical "cuteness" if he had not also posited novel physics.

The Binswanger/Searle argument against AI is that consciousness assigns the meanings to the 1s and 0s of computers. It has nothing to say about an AI technique which is a non-computational awareness, where there is no a priori assignment of meaning to certain bits.

Marc K:

"Every living entity is vincible, there has never existed any other kind of living entity"

But we discuss here the artificial, man-made organism. Nothing at least in theory prohibits its creation. Observe that skyscrapers and space shuttles also never existed before .

"First of all, this entire reply is based on a stolen concept which I tried to point out to you earlier and your continued use of such really damages your credibility. To see your error define "pleasure" or "satisfaction" down to their roots, reduce them back to perception and you will see that you haven't a leg to stand on"

With pleasure. " Pleasure" is inherent perceptual mechanism on which the concept of "value" is based. In Ayn Rand's words " Now in what manner does human being discover the concept of "value"? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of "good or evil" in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensation of pleasure and pain...The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man's body, it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it..." (VOS;7 pb17)

If I'm guilty of the fallacy of stolen concept, then so is Ayn Rand. There are no roots of pleasure. On the contrary, pleasure-pain mechanism is the root of the concept of "value". Happiness which is pleasure of the sapient being " is that state of consciousness which proceeds from achievement of one values" (GS). True, a piece of bread may represent such a value, but also discovery of Crab Nebula or new metal.As you yourself observed, survival is not an issue anymore in industrial society, " most of us will survive without too much effort. But is that it? Is just surviving enough? Not for most of us. We want to LIVE. And what is truly LIVING? What are the indications of having a full life? When do you feel truly alive? What makes life worth living? HAPPINESS.

And this is exactly my point. Happiness, reason, productivity and self-esteem man could and should pursue without necessity to face life-death alternative.

Well take Section 2 as it is today, without the underlined changes. It can clearly be read to allow a father to kill someone who is going to harm his child. Now, add in the clarification that this covers an unborn child. Clearly, the father can now kill someone who is going to harm his unborn child. Nothing in that section says that such harm must be illegal. This is not an oversight, because this bill has been debated in committee and Democrats raised this objection. The Republicans could easily have added simple clarifying language. In fact, according to ABC News 'South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley told Jensen that he might want to consider adding the words "that is unlawful and" after the words "to a degree."
Overreacting? Well, yes and no. After failing at more radical attempts, anti-choice groups have adopted an explicit strategy of making small moves on abortion: by slowing firming up various laws to treat a fetus more and more like a person, or to make special laws to restrict what minor pregnant girls may do, or to make laws that restrict the freedom of clinics under the pretext of health and safety. This is their slow-boiled frog approach. The pro-choice groups realize this. Of course this bill is not going to create a rash of killings because South Dakota has managed to throttle back things so that people mostly go out of state for abortions: in other words there are hardly any South Dakotan doctors to be killed anyway. On the other hand, pro-choice advocates realize that this bill is simply one more small step in a larger plan to deprive women of their right to an abortion. So, that explains their attempts to stop each small step: it is the right thing to do.



What really matters is for intent to be expressed in the words of the law, for instance using language that the S.D. attorney general has suggested.

Term limits terminate Terminator!