brian0918

Bill Moyers is a staunch advocate of altruism, so this shouldn't be a surprise. Nor should it be surprising that he would misrepresent the Alan Greenspan of the last few decades as an advocate of Rand's philosophy, and pretend that the financial sector has ever had anything close to a free market. I'm ashamed to admit that I thought Moyer's show was great back in my liberal days. Trying to watch it now, I feel like I'm in a sermon.

That's interesting given that the dad in is the director of the new Atlas Shrugged movie. What actually got me interested again in Rand (after reading TF in college with little effect) was a reference in 7th Heaven (my ex liked that show, despite the heavy religious tone).

See Steve's reply. They made it work, at least in theory.

For those who think some of the dialog sounds weird, don't forget how often they hack up lines for trailers.

But isn't that only because the US government has banned drilling for oil locally? Is it justifiable to support a dictatorial regime, out of convenience, as a result of our own rights violations? I do agree that a theocracy like Iran would be worse for us.

He certainly has to cite the sources before he can post them on here. Notice I said "cite", not "prove". Please try to grasp why the law is not relevant to my request for a citation so that I can personally verify that someone else's work is not being used without permission.

That's circular reasoning. How does one know it is in the public domain without confirming with the original source? I'm coming from a background as a Wikipedia admin, so I'm used to people claiming PD when it's not necessarily the case. But in this case I am not too concerned, as long as it is not embedded on this site without clear citation.

You don't link or cite the originals, so there's no way to verify.

They are nice, but you should get consent from the copyright holders before you start using and distributing their work.

Before asking a new question, please see if someone has already provided an answer. Also feel free to reply to any of these threads with more specific questions. If you do not find your question here, please use the forum's Search function to see if it has already been asked. Or, you can try using Google to search this forum. Metaphysics What is meant by "Existence exists"? Isn't that just a tautology? Epistemology Is free will an illusion? If we are made up of particles, how can we make choices? How does one validate volition? (threads: 1, 2, 3, 4) (keywords: volition, determinism) Is induction a valid means to knowledge? (threads: 1, 2) How does the choice to focus occur? What is a law of nature? Ethics How can you derive an ought from an is? Why not steal if you can get away with it? (prudent predator, threads 1 2) Politics Do babies have rights? Is forced taxation wrong? How would government function without forced taxation? (threads: 1, 2, 3) How would the Constitution be rewritten from an Objectivist perspective? How would roads be handled if all land is privately owned? How would a water supply be handled if not by a city government? How could lakes and seas be privatized? How should criminals and punishment be handled by a proper government? How would prisons work in a free society? Is intellectual property actually property? Is preemptive war justified? (interventionism) What is wrong with anarchy/competing governments? Science Does quantum mechanics violate identity or causality? (1, 2, 3) What is space, and in what sense does it exist? Is global warming or "climate change" really occurring? What effect are humans having on global temperature? (see also: One Minute Case Against Climate Alarmism) Economics Are we moving towards greater inflation, hyperinflation, deflation, or something else? (1, 2, 3) What effect will the "quantitative easing" of the Federal Reserve have on the economy? If anyone would like to add to this list, or if there are better topics to link the above questions to, please leave a reply.

Thanks to the new forum registration question about "Experience with Objectivism", now you can find out! Oh, and welcome to OO.net phareign.

How do you discern whether or not a moral standard is "good", except by way of another moral standard? And if you have already assumed another moral system, on what is that moral system founded?

I believe you are simply misunderstanding how the term infinity is being used. Whatever the content of the universe - the amount of matter - it must be a specific amount, however there is no restriction for the upper limit of that amount. So the universe is finite but unbounded. An "infinity" cannot actually exist as an attribute of a thing - such a notion is contrary to identity. Color is an abstract concept. As with all concepts, it is created out of necessity for understanding and communication. If an English-speaking person is raised from childhood, and told that the color of the sky is "red", and the color of a stop sign is "green" - that person will not have any problem living his life... until he tries to communicate with someone else, and quickly finds out that he has been taught differently all those years. In short, the situation cannot exist in which someone "sees red instead of blue" - the word we use for a color refers to objects of that color. The meaning of a concept is its referents. Now, some people don't see colors, and so are deficient in distinguishing that conceptual common denominator. Other people see numbers with different colors (due to synesthesia) - their perceptual level is providing false information (as a spectrometer will reveal) - but because the false information is consistent (i.e. "1" is always green, "2" is always blue), synesthetes are able to use this fact to perform mathematical feats that normal humans cannot. Certainly, because color is an abstract concept requiring a perceiver. Without such a perceiver, the light would still be bouncing around - but without any photoreceptors or consciousness to receive the light and turn it into information, "color" is meaningless. This may seem contradictory - but it is only because you are asking us to simultaneously *have* knowledge of colors, without having the means to have obtained that knowledge. There are people who are color blind, who can observe varying light intensity, but cannot differentiate varying wavelengths of light. So they are already seeing the world without color. They simply lack the ability to directly determine certain information about reality. My bad - I wrote more than I planned for the first two questions, and don't have enough time for the third question.

It certainly does, however the individual you are talking to is not an Objectivist, and has been going in circles debating others for the last 40 pages. Do not take the content of his posts as indicative of the content you should expect from others.

New website for part 1: http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/

Don't read too much into what I said - I meant that the ending followed logically from what was written before, not that it was obvious from the beginning.

I believe that "someone" was the original poster - maybe you intended your post that way. He probably needed a new paperweight that would hold down his next massive proposal.

Very nice. BTW - regarding the highly controversial line, I understood it the first time. I was expecting it to end like that, but the way you stated it was concise yet comprehensive.

Also see this thread, which has some replies related to your question.

I agree with Eiuol. Binswanger's quote may be being taken out of context - e.g. as Eiuol says, "full focus" versus "focus". I have always thought of the choice to focus as a choice to "activate your conceptual faculty". You can let your mind wander in a daydream where pictures and words float around disjointedly, or you can actively process information and integrate it into your conceptual hierarchy.

"Libertarian" in the UK doesn't have the same connotation as it does in the US, where the Libertarian Party - and all of its failings - are prominent. Rand and Objectivists have no problem with "liberty", or with advocates of liberty, who could generically be called "libertarian". The problem is specifically with Libertarians who have co-opted her political ideas for their own ends, while disregarding the rest of the philosophy.

I believe you have already retracted this point, but Rand's commentary regarding Social Security (and theft in general) is relevant to this:

Reason.com posted a popular piece defending Rand's receiving Social Security, and points out that Rand explained the position herself very clearly.

This is absolutely wrong. It is convenient that you ignore my reference to the Apollo 15 demonstration on the moon, which you can view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk. Because the Earth, Moon, and Sun did not start out *motionless*. The planetary nebula was in motion, rotating around the Sun. As the material coalesced into planets, those planets continued rotating around the Sun. When a meteor struck the Earth and broke off material, some of that material fell back to the Earth, while the material that was in a stable orbit around the Earth formed the moon, which maintained the solar-orbital-trajectory of the Earth. This is all due to the conservation of angular momentum. Orbital mechanics is well understood - there is absolutely no room for debate.

Both of your statements are incorrect. Increasing density does not increase gravitational pull. The gravitational pull between two objects is proportional to the mass of each object, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Nowhere in that statement does density enter into the equation. To illustrate: if the Sun were replaced with an extremely dense blackhole of the *same mass* as our Sun, the Earth's orbit would not be changed. Galileo demonstrated this fact at the leaning tower of Pisa. Commander David Scott also demonstrated it on the moon with a hammer and feather, which have very different densities.