brian0918
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Posts posted by brian0918
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She's simply casting what others call 'god'. She is saying that objective reality (what defines everything) is beyond perception... same practical definition of god.
And also moot...if something is beyond perception than it, by definition, plays no role in the our 'real' domain. Something meta-physical is the same as a belief - it can't be perceived.
You are selectively evaluating Rand's philosophy in the context of a presumed mind-body dichotomy, which her philosophy clearly rejects. It would be like saying, "Rand was an advocate of morality, and since morality by definition comes from God, Rand was a theist." Your definition is simply wrong.
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That will teach him for impeding on Congress's turf.
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Here's an archived version: http://web.archive.o...nded_Finite.htm
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A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"
Unfortunately, their reason for rejecting his apology was not the right one:
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S. -
Morality ends where a gun begins. There is no moral obligation to act.
Regarding your second scenario - I assume that this is some situation constructed by a madman. Why should I believe that moving my finger will save those people, and not actually kill them? I cannot possibly trust the statements of the lunatic who constructed the scenario. Why would he go to all of that trouble of creating the scenario, and then give me such a simple way to save all those people? It just does not make sense. I would just try to get out of the situation and alert the authorities.
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Pre-rational experiences would be those that occur while you are still an infant or child. They may not simply be limited to certain events, but could also be environmental, or even affected by nutrition."Tabula rasa" is a term with a very specific meaning - we are born without any innate knowledge or values. That does not mean we are born without any tendencies or special abilities.Regarding your specific example of someone who likes blue/sweet - it may be partially genetic, and/or partially the result of past experiences (whether young or later). If someone's obsession with sweet foods leads him to become obese, he certainly has it in his power to change that, and unlearn his past temptation for sweet foods. But if it causing him no harm, there is little motivation on his part to change that. That doesn't mean it is beyond is ability to change it, though.What is meant by "pre-rational experiences?". Does the influence of genetics mean that man is not born in a state of tabula rasa? If an individual likes something blue or sweet, does it mean that they are genetically wired to respond positively to such aspects of reality, such that these preferences are outside the individual's ability to make a choice about?
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If you are not familiar with Objectivism, I would recommend checking out any of Rand's fiction or non-fiction. For starters, you could read the article The Objectivist Ethics. You may also benefit from Tara Smith's Viable Values or Craig Biddle's Loving Life.
A simple answer to your question is that all of Objectivism addresses this issue. Regarding traditional answers to the question of the "meaning of life" - Objectivism fundamentally identifies why questions that try to assign a "higher meaning" to life beyond the self are irrational and not based in reality.
Many of the answers (and questions) that philosophers have presented over the centuries in attempts to needlessly assign meaning to life (or take it away) are simply misguided or wrong. Tara Smith's book goes into a lot of detail on this.
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if we were all the same then we would lose our that which makes us unique and without us being unique we are no better than animals.
This doesn't get at the heart of the issue, and is just an ad hominem appeal to one's desire to be unique, or be better than an animal, rather than an appeal to one's reason.
There is a reason why people are unique in their personal preferences, and it is not because they actively want to be different from everyone else. Such a pursuit is also not consistent with Objectivism, as it is ultimately second handed - by taking others' personal preferences as the standard by which one determines one's own preferences.
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Regarding things like political views, people disagree because reason is not automatic. It is a process that one must initiate continually, and with unfettered focus, in order to properly understand and integrate the facts of reality and determine the best choices for his/her life.
As far as things like the "best job to hold", or favorite color or movie, that really comes down to the unique characteristics of the individual, including not only their individual skills and abilities, but also their early memories and experiences in life.
While many may believe that a truly "objective" philosophy must reject all personal "subjective" preferences, and assign the same set of values and desires to all individuals, Objectivism rejects this mind/body dichotomy, and recognizes the effect that genetics and pre-rational experiences can have on defining an individual.
Also - welcome to the forum!
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how being the editor of a jihadist magazine is akin to firing an assault rifle at US troops
If I published a magazine specifically targetted at terrorists, and the magazine included such articles as "how to build a bomb in your kitchen sink", you would not consider me to have a legitimate connection to terrorists and terrorism in general?
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The new forum seems to be very broken to me. On my laptop, in both Firefox and IE, pages take a long time to load the Quick Reply form, and if I click on a Reply link, or a Quote link, the following page also takes a long time to load.
And when it loads, it's filled with HTML paragraph tags.
On my much faster work computers, when I click on Quote for any of the replies, it just doesn't do anything, in Firefox or IE. Intermittently it will work, but usually it doesn't.
Before this upgrade, none of these problems existed.
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I'm not sure who "you all" is - I was agreeing with Zip.Love how you all ignored what Zip said.
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Instead, apparently people, including Objectivists, would just prefer the President be able to just say: He's making war. It's obvious. There's ample evidence, therefore we don't need to present any and follow the law. [?] No need to wait on such inconveniences.
I know you meant this as a criticism, but I completely agree. When "following the law" means that individual rights are threatened, i.e. when allowing an incompetent Congress to ignore the necessity to declare an act of war in order to protect individual rights, then it is proper to do what is necessary to protect individual rights.
Obviously, the President could misuse such powers, but Congress has done the same with their own powers.
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If the individual openly declares "war" on the US, in a very literal way, and if there is ample evidence that he has the means and connections to make good on his declaration, then I see no need to wait for our Congress to declare war back. I would have a problem with the government just deciding that someone is "at war" with the US, based on nothing but idealogical writings, for example. But I don't believe that is the case with this guy. If I'm wrong please correct me.Besides, if we can just open-endedly authorize the President to order assassinations of whoever can be said to "be at war" with the US and its interests, in the opinion of the President, don't you find problems with that?
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I think the article would stand better on its own if the subject focused on the fact that the rich are job creators, rather than just being a rebuttal. Throughout the piece, you can reference the other article - but it should never seem like the purpose of your writing is merely a rebuttal. It shouldn't remain confined to refuting *only* the content of the other article, but should also present the best arguments/counter-arguments you can think of, and present a broader foundation for analyzing such questions. Don't get too bogged down in trying to convince everyone, since that's not going to happen. Just get them interested in alternative ideas that they have never considered.
For good examples of this, I really like the writings of Yaron Brook and Don Watkins for Forbes.
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But based PURELY on the knowns, mentioned above, you can understand that CO2/O2 (and methane and other stuff of course) equilibria is incredibly important.
I don't see where this follows from what you stated. O2 gets converted to CO2 at one rate, and CO2 to O2 at a different rate. That much you've said. The rest is unknown. So you cannot go from those two facts to the conclusion that there is an "incredibly important" equilibrium that we must pay attention to.
And you can tell that we are generating it a LOT faster now.What does "a LOT" mean - a lot relative to what? Given that, as you state, we don't even have good models for how much increasing CO2 increases global temperature, you don't even have a reference point for how much is "a little" or "a lot".
So why the hell not address that?Address what? You have stated we don't know that there is a causal relationship between the increase in CO2 and global temperature, and you have stated that we don't even know how much CO2 should increase global temperature. If we don't know what (if any) human action causes global temperature increase, and whether or not a temperature increase is even BAD, then we can't possibly claim to know how to respond (if at all) to the problem (if it is a problem).
As for CO2's greenhouse effect on temperature - it levels out roughly logarithmically as CO2 increases, so each doubling of CO2 has less and less effect on temperature. The only way climate models have been able to show dramatic temperature increases is to assume a large positive feedback mechanism from water vapor. But it's not clear whether that feedback mechanism actually *is* positive, let alone how significant it is.
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If you are going to go through a bunch of effort to learn a philosophy that reveres reality, you should probably spend some time studying reality.
Rand certainly studied reality, including the vast history of human experience, to understand and explain human nature.
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"necessarily"? How do you know that
Because a valid explanation necessarily references existents. To explain something is to identify and describe its underlying nature. That description must necessarily reference existents - it must place new knowledge in the context of prior knowledge. Saying "God did it" is not a valid explanation, as "God" is a floating abstraction, not connected in any way to prior knowledge.
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Certainly the more means of perceiving the world, the better, as far as conceptualization goes. Given how important communication is for passing down concepts and building knowledge over generations, entities that could only sense smell or taste would have a much more difficult time communicating than those that can sense touch, sight, or sound.
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Meaning infinite regress of causes.....Again, you have real problems, then, with the laws of thermodynamics (such as entropy).
I would simply point out that physical laws are observed patterns of how the universe works. They are not "laws" in the sense of enforcing how the universe works in all contexts and at all times past/present/future. While it is definitely a goal of science to explain the universe through "laws" that are valid in all contexts and at all times, you cannot presume that we have reached that goal.
There may certainly have been a big bang 14 billion years ago, but it doesn't mean it was the "beginning of existence". It is simply another event to be explained; and if/when it is explained, that explanation will necessarily involve the interaction of existents to produce the observed effect.
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I still have a serious problem with the fact that Rand never seemed to have much of an education in science
That is simply because you still see science as more important to life than philosophy, disregarding the fact that science - as well as all other endeavors - *depends on* philosophy for its proper function and continued progress.
My first statement in this thread stands: Rand and Peikoff have a better understanding of what is necessary for proper science than many scientists (and indeed entire scientific fields), who implicitly accepted the philosophy that was handed down to them by their predecessors.
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All of the above. The viciousness, abusiveness and authoritarian self-importance is comical. It's very much like watching kids feeling powerful by banning others from their tree house.
Ultimately, though, it's "not all that important." Noted.
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I may consider either publicly posting excerpts in other forums
You mean like ObjectivistLiving? So which is it - are these "vicious" attacks, or are they "quite comical"? Are they "insulting and abusive", or "the equivalent of being banned from some kids' tree house"?
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If you can get the forum listed here and here as a safe haven for students wanting to start their own campus club, it could be an excellent growth opportunity. The Local Forums could be expanded to accommodate them, and moderation could be delegated as needed.
I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but there are already much better resources for starting clubs and organizing social events (FB, Meetup). From my experience, clubs only post on a forum when they have an event that they want to advertise - they do not use the forum as a place to discuss club activities or organize events.
Japan had to tell Obama NOT to apologize for Hiroshima/Nagasaki
in International Politics
Posted
Tyco: You'll recall from your history lessons that we gave the Japanese an ultimatum first, and when they ignored that, Hiroshima (a city of military importance) was chosen as a target. We then warned the Japanese about future attacks if they did not surrender. They chose not to surrender, and only then did we proceed to Nagasaki.
Obviously there were innocent people killed, and obviously that is the fault of the Japanese government.