Plasmatic
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Posts posted by Plasmatic
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Every “why” and “how” pressuposes a “what”....Entities are causal primaries...In both Existence and Consciousness. (axiomatic concepts)
Entity>action>relationships
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Easy truth, I take your comments as a form of what I coined as rhetoric mining. You say that you decided to try to:
On 7/5/2018 at 1:15 PM, Easy Truth said:"embarrass" him with his self-refuting statements.
I am curious if you actually decided consciously that pointing out this persons stolen concepts publicly would serve to embarrass him?
I have more thoughts but want to hear your response first.
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On 7/3/2018 at 11:26 PM, Easy Truth said:
A debate regarding truth is coming up
What debate are you referring to?
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On 7/7/2018 at 7:07 AM, StrictlyLogical said:
A valid concept of knowledge already excludes omniscience and infallibility.
Yes, and these two distinct concepts when taken as a package deal provide a handle in the minds of those who hear the arguments for “reasonable” compromise and “civility” amongst contradictory opposition.
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Thank you very much for digging those quotes up, Greg! They have done more good than you know....
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2 hours ago, Invictus2017 said:
You benefit no one with gratuitous insults. You also pretend to knowledge you do not have.
You have therefore earned a place in my ignore list. Bye.
Would be nice to know what insults you are referring to and what knowledge you claim to know I lack?
Language games have a historically philosophical history and in particular using quotes to neutrualize a concept within a context where your comment would make no sense given the addition of the quotes.
The philisopher David Stove wrote about this quite a bit...
For example “sacrifice” in scare quotes already means that you arent talking about giving up a higher value for a lesser one so there is nothing to “permit” as far as rational egoism goes.
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:
"Cornered"? From what I see, you gave me an answer without demonstrating in what way the facts you identify as entailing that academics in general "like to use it as an out of context innate trait they are seeking to cultivate in a would be revolutionary subject". If you don't want to talk about it, then just mention one academic. With the example you gave, it's really reaching and I think is a misreading of psychology literature. You did not actually identify someone who thinks risk tolerance is an innate trait (as opposed to a trait influenced by innate traits - a very different claim).
Not to say that either claim is necessarily justified or valid. The important thing for this conversation is that risk can be evaluated by rational methods, as opposed to some kind of "feeling" or subjective assessment.
I have already given you what you originally asked for.
I am fine with you interpreting that however you want. I comfortable with others drawing their own conclusion.
QuoteWhere? You brought up Peterson twice, so it would be useful for all of us here for you to expand on this. Leaving aside the validity of his claims that cultural Marxism is a real thing, his vocal opposition to it would suggest that he is something besides a leftist.
This is a non sequitur. Repudiating the type of socialism known as “cultural marxism” does not make one either a non-socialist, or a non leftist.
I am working on extensive demonstration of Peterson’s actual traditionally leftist rooted philosophy and anyone interested can see it when I finish.
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14 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
Kind of. I wouldn't use the word temperament at all, it makes for a muddy discussion and conceptual confusion.
Right, there are multiple definitions of risk. But this still all falls under economic decision-making. What you wrote about highly skilled athletes is along the lines of how academics (at least in psychology and economics) speak of risk. And some might consider risk tolerance out of context, which would be an error (I think that's Easy Truth's error). But the part where you added "seeking to cultivate it in a would be revolutionary subject" is what I'm disputing.
Then why did you say leftist academics if you were mainly referring to someone like Peterson?
This is why I find discussion with you useless. You reliably move the goal posts every time you are cornered. You clearly stated nothing about my comment on the goals of cultivation and explicitly asked:
”Who specifically sees risk tolerance as an innate trait” and stated “I mean I would like to read something about it”
Which is exactly what I responded to.
QuoteThen why did you say leftist academics if you were mainly referring to someone like Peterson?
Because that is exactly what he is. By his own words. The fact that many think he is not is a testament to the utter lack of understanding in the culture of his philosophical background.
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Regarding commensurablity and life as the standard:
Two humans A and B both are alive and have digestive systems. A has an ulcer and B has a normally functioning stomach.
A family dinner A and B are attending has only ulcer inflaming foods prepared.
Is this dinner equally good for both A and B’s life? Clearly not.
Both A and B equally require food to sustain life. But the means to which each individuals context of survival is different.
That is the whole premise behind why the state cannot serve the interest of the individuals composing its citizens.
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:
Who specifically sees risk tolerance as an innate trait?
Is “temperament” a skill?
I am not interested in discussing this issue with you beyond what I am posting here.
The SEP article on risk contains no less than 5 definitions of risk. (So much for “anything other than”) In that very article “risk perception” in the psychometric model is claimed to be better understood as influenced by “attitude” and cited with sjoberg 2004
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/sj.embor.7400258
However, I am largely thinking of psychologist’s like Peterson who use “temperament” as a sort of inbuilt predisposition for things like political philosophy and risk avoidance.
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On 6/27/2018 at 9:06 AM, Invictus2017 said:
If, at this point, one drops the context, ignores the value hierarchy, one can mistakenly see a mother's actions that benefits her child but cost her dearly, or a soldier's putting his life on the line and even losing it, as actions "for others", a sort of altruism that egoism supposedly rejects. But keeping the context, it's clear that the person who chooses motherhood also chooses the emotional bonding that requires that she "sacrifice". But she does so for the long-term benefits of motherhood, as she conceives them. Similarly for the soldier; if he chooses to defend his society, he also chooses the soldierly virtues that go with it, which may involve "sacrificing" his life.
Keeping the context, remembering that humans have a nature, and refusing to accept contradictions -- those are how and why Randian egoism, even though it requires that the beneficiary of one's actions be oneself, also permits and even requires acting for others, sometimes even "sacrificing" for others.
You benifit no one by doing this kind of word game. It only serves to needlesly muddy communication and provides a pretext for others to gain an “anchor” or handle to steer a conversation manipulatively. NLP practitioners look for this sort of linguistic opportunity often.
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9 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:
Plasmatic.. Easy Truth said that... not me.
Yeah, I think it said your username because I snipped it from your post quoting Easy Truth? I will just quote it generically to fix it.
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Easy Truth said:
“there is a rational complication with the issue of life qua man rather than "staying alive". It is in the case of "risk". One person wants to advance their life by knowingly doing something very dangerous ... but if it works, with great reward genuinely improving their life in every way.
The tallying in that case is highly influenced by personal temperament (risk tolerance) rather by some universal determination.”
Many have made issue with survival vs flourishing...
Highly skilled athletes performing dangerous tasks consider techical skill to mitigate risk such that someone performing the same action is at a much greater risk. The academic leftists who have infected much of the literature on risk like to use it as an out of context innate trait they are seeking to cultivate in a would be revolutionary subject...
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21 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
Isn't what "you want" both subjective and objective? Or are you defining self-interest as "what is good for you"?
I have not read the OP or anything beyond this page yet....
Rational self interest refers to the intentional benificiary of the individual performing the action. Though one can say “but the “individual” is the self”, that is an equivocation of the actor with the intentional object, or benificiary of action.
Do not confuse the object performing the action with the object of the action.
Objectivity is a relationship between subject and object. When one acts to persue ones own interests as the benificiary, in a way that accords with the nature of ones life and the nature of the existents instrumental to ones values as a means to sustaining and enhancing ones life, one is acting rationally and objectively in their self interest.
You could say, one object is instrumental to the object weilding the instrument.
People like Jordan Peterson have danced around the topic of self interest equivocating back and forth on this very issue. Oist need to take note of this. One in a rush to be “agreeable” will easily be manipulated by such nuance.
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On 4/6/2018 at 7:02 AM, William O said:
My understanding is that the New Humeans read him as a naturalist rather than a skeptic. That is, they think that Hume held that causality is real, and that we know that it is real, but that this knowledge is not based on reason but on another source ("instinct, habit, or custom"). If you're coming at this from an Objectivist point of view then it does sound as though he was a skeptic, because the Objectivist account of knowledge is dependent on reason.
It's been a while since I studied Hume, so I could be wrong.
Perception is the non propositional “base” of justification....I do realize that causality is identified explicitly, conceptually...
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On 4/4/2018 at 9:54 PM, 2046 said:
Reid reinstated foundationalism, that is, there must be noninferential justification. This is quite similar to Rand's conception of "verification," which is a wider genus to which "proof" belongs. The epistemologist doesn't start out by saying "prove existence and logic and consciousness, etc.," as in Descartes, rather the epistemologist starts out "we have knowledge, we know existence exists, we need to find the proper method."
Rand called that genus validation not verification. You may be confusing her with Positivism....
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The methods of the Frankfurt School Marxist are very real and pervasive. Social Constructivism, which infects the education systems everywhere, is derived from their nonsense. You can hear the Frankfurt theorists in their own words in my playlist on this topic:
Many formerly self professed marxist hate to admit the extent to which this evil is present because they still want to hold on to the rebranded nonsense that is still in their thinking but by another name...
One can also read on this in The Dialectical Imagination by Martin and Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkiemer and Adorno.
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I havent read this thread but I have brought this up many times here. Ms. Rand is referring to "exist" in the primary sense when she says "abstractions as such do not exist". She uses "as such" in a few places in a way that seemed to signal that she was aware of a nuanced usage of language being deployed.
Concepts are "mental existents". They exists within the primary entities that possess abstract consciousness. They are held by the device of concrete substitution in language.
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On August 17, 2017 at 4:52 PM, Grames said:
But he did. The "problem" was that he did not take sides on this essentially leftist vs. leftist battle because he condemned both sides equally.
I suspect that merely because Trump is not black and not communist that some racists and fascists think that is inherently advantageous to them. Trump can't do anything about that, nor should he be expected to apologize for being white and against communism.
Trump should have responded to the frantic reporter who asked if he was putting the alt-left and the alt-right (the tiny racist minority therein) on equal moral footing, he should have said "ABSOLUTELY!"...
How many more commie idiots are at all these stupid protests waving red flags? How many times have these Marxist clowns been busted faking hate crimes, impersonating Nazi's? How many white supremacist idiots have tenure in american universities? How many Marxist's???
This chimera of "white supremacy" is a farce.
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10 hours ago, Laika said:
Feel free to pose any question you wish and I will answer it honestly. If you want me to provide detailed sources so you know I am telling what I believe to be the truth, I will.
I can't really say any more than that... *shrugs*
whether you are dealing with a Marxist or not, the evidence is still the basis of any rational judgement. Not simply the person saying it.
Laika, I'm sure NB's foolish comments lead you to think that I am questioning the veridity of your comments on Marxist doctrine (regardless of the doctrines falsity) but that is not at issue here, at all.
A agree with your last statement and thats why I object to the things I quoted that are contrary to it.
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1 hour ago, Grames said:
It is a controversial claim. Rational argumentation is the only way to reach truth, but there are people who value something else more than truth and for them other methods are appropriate. See for example the books authored by Robert Cialdini, a long list of books on salesmanship tactics including Donald Trump's own Art of the Deal, or the histories of each of the world's religions and how they spread.
So, because some irrational people don't value truth an Oist should use a non-rational method similar to the way religions spread, to "persuade" others????
OK, has anyone checked to see if Grames' account has been hacked?
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2 minutes ago, New Buddha said:
The reason I threw out the Thunderbolt Universe reference was to demonstrate that even intelligent people (and yes, I do think you are intelligent) can follow completely erroneous beliefs with the best of intentions.
You threw it out because you wanted to make a strawman without having to argue the merits of the actual discussion, or what ideas within the link may or may not have merit.
Do you have any idea how your last statement is dealt with in Oist philosophy and how it informs my question initially posed?
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49 minutes ago, New Buddha said:
Look Plasmatic, the only purpose of a philosophical forum is to engage those with whom one disagrees.
This is not just any philosophical forum and what you suggest is ridiculous. It may be your only reason for being here but there any number of reasons for folks to visit this Oist forum.
QuoteLaika has clearly come here because he is questioning Marxism. He is precisely the type of person that Objectivists should hope to come to this site....If someone doesn't agree with me I don't just castigate them as "people who hold evil beliefs."
Nowhere have I claimed that mere disagreement makes one guilty of "holding evil beliefs" nor have I claimed Laika is not questioning Marxism.
QuoteIf Objectivism is to have any influence in the wider reaches of society, then it will need to engage that society.
But not on their terms, conceding their errors as praiseworthy and without moral tolerationism.
Your clearly ignorant of the wider debate on this front.
QuoteNot everyone has the temperament to do that
Nor the understanding, clearly....
What is 'reason'?
in Questions about Objectivism
Posted
This tells more about your introspective skill, than Objectivist epistemology.