Bowzer

I know that it's not a formal rule of this board, but if you expect people to read what you write you had better do your darnedest to speak to the point and to make your thoughts interesting to others. I find many posts on this board to often be lacking in both respects. The fault lies not with the reader in cases like this but with the writer.

One does not need a degree in music to know that Schoenberg and Cage are just plain awful and corrupt no matter how "complex" their arrangements may be.

Objectivism is a philosophy. Those are legal issues. Of course, philosophy is the regulator of the special sciences and Objectivism supports intellectual property rights but that's about as much as philosophy says.

I'm going to be short and sweet with the hopes of jarring readers into a non-mystical revelation: to say that "the propagation of the species" is an actual value to living organisms is an example of the fallacy of reification. Figure out why this is so and you will understand why only life can be the ultimate value.

Amen to that! Objectivism's answer to the "paradox" under discussion here is surely testament to fact that Objectivism is a philosophical revolution in the deepest sense (as opposed to just a philosophical or ethical revolution). I didn't gain a true appreciation of this fact until I studied philosophy at a university level. For those of you who haven't had the "pleasure" of taking philosophy courses in a university, it may be hard to fathom what is at stake here. This "paradox" isn't just some side issue that analytic philosophers dreamt up for fun. Entire systems of philosophy are built out of non-issues like this one! That is how Analytic philosophers work and it's disgusting. See the Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem entry in WikiPedia for illustration of this point.

Now why do you say that?

I'll just say this: the people who are on the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute are some of the best people you could ever hope to have grouped for a common purpose. To compare them to a "great big empty nothing" is anything but humorous, intentional or not.

What fact? That ARI has a board of directors???

I emphatically disagree with this point. Academic philosophers know about Objectivism, small following or not, and they are scared to death of it. Objectivism has made its way into university positions, academic journals, and Objectivism even has its own group in the American Philosophical Association, The Ayn Rand Society. Academics are threatened because they know we have a message and that it is a very powerful one. What scares them the most--at least the more honest among them if such even exist--is that subconsciously they know that we are right.

It does kind of look like ITOE, doesn't it?

To be accurate, philosophy is concerned only with man and his relation to the world. A discovery such as this would have no impact on philosophy whatsoever.

From OPAR:

Thank you for clarifying that. My comments have been directed at one specific claim of Hal's . Several quite different issues and examples have been brought up by Hal since then.

I don't engage in arguments that involve showing how arbitrary claims are inconsistent with Objectivism. I have been trying to focus these last few posts on some sort of positive claim about Objectivism. There is plenty of material written in Objectivism that disagrees with what you are saying. You say that there is nothing in the literature that sufficiently relates to what you are saying but this only points to your ignorance of Objectivism. You wonder why I think you have no interest in studying Objectivism but at the same time you demonstrate a false confidence of knowing Objectivism while simultaneously contradicting its most fundamental base. This has been brought up before yet you continue to evade this fact. If you truly want an explanation of why you're wrong, you should read "Objectivity As Volitional Adherence To Reality By The Method Of Logic " in Chapter 4 of OPAR. Perhaps you can do this and come back here with some questions for once.

I disagreed that they illustrate what you claim they do. So since it is both of our admitted interests in being consistent with Objectivism, perhaps you can point me to something in the Objectivist literature that supports your examples and this claim of yours?

How open are you to considering the viewpoint "A is not A?" As one matures philsophically, more and more statements become as clear in one's mind as this one. In this sense, philosophical maturity leads to "close mindedness."

I pointed out something specific that you said. So far your response has been to say nothing. No matter. I suspect you'll shrug and move on since you have demonstrated that you have no interest in learning Objectivism, thus, you have no personal interest in being consistent with the philosophy of Objectivism. As to why you continue to come here despite this disinterest, I think Stephen hit that nail right on the head.

Again, Hal, you are purveying a viewpoint that is completely antithetical to Objectivism. Or is it your claim that Objectivism holds that "false arguments can be put forward in support of something that is true?" If this is your claim, then please correct me by pointing to the Objectivist literature. I come here to learn more about Objectivism, not Hal-ism.

This is a fallacy of modern philosophy. It is not a tenet of Objectivism (which is the philosophy that this board is devoted to).

I just want to point out that this is a demand for proof of a negative. To learn more about this fallacy, see "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False" in OPAR, Chapter 5.

It's not every post here that makes me bang my head on the wall and I'm acutely aware that many here are interested in studying Objectivism. Indeed, much worthy of study is said on this BBS. But sometimes I just read things here that give me splitting headaches, that's all.

The argument would be that this represents a violation of the law of causality! The same entity under the same circumstances must act the same way. If it is absolutely random which direction the particle will swerve, then there is no necessity, no identity determining what will happen. See "Causality as a Corollary of Identity" in OPAR, Chapter 1. One cannot use the fact of volition to argue for non-deterministic behavior in nature. This is to steal the concept of "alternative" (which is only applicable to volitional actions).

(And I have been wondering to myself why I haven't been compelled to post on this forum as of late. The answer just struck me after reading this thread in the form of the above emoticon. Does anyone actually come here to discuss Objectivism?)

In addition to paying close attention to Stephen's words in this thread, one can learn more about this issue by listening to David Harriman's excellent lectures, The Crisis in Physics--and Its Cause and The Philosophic Corruption of Physics.

That's OK because you got my joke.