Grames

Its an organization of mixed premises. Freedom is good, going to war for other countries' freedom is altruist. Rand identified "isolationism" as an anti-concept.

There is no proof of existence. Proof assumes logic, evidence, identity and existence. Existence is validated simply by experiencing it via the senses. The way to respond to this is to attack the premises of the question. Where does the idea of a "head" come from? Where does the idea of an illusion come come from? An illusion so complete as to be identical with reality in every way is no longer an illusion, because an illusion is supposed to be somehow different than what actually is. The very idea of illusion assumes existence and appearance are real and distinguishable. Illusion without existence is a stolen concept.

I would like to address your objections without endorsing anything Altonhare may have written. No, the object's existence was a perceptual determination at every step. It is the object's identity as a solid and the object's identity as a liquid being causally related by time and heat that is rationally determined. Consciousness is identification. This is what I refer to as the "magic trick" argument. Present an object, put it through some transformation, present the changed object, then assert some ridiculous proposition based upon the sameness or the change that evades causality. "How'd you do that?" is an unanswerable mystery without identity and causality. This is schematically similar to the argument that a straight stick that appears bent in water shows the senses are unreliable because they report illusions. The argument is false because the conclusion that the stick bent is a rational determination (an incorrect one) based upon the uncensored and uninterpreted sensory report of how light bends as it crosses an air-water boundary. Man's perceptions are finite. He does not perceive everything, it is only possible to doubt the existence of objects that are not perceived. (1) and (2) do not apply to the same object at the same time. Of course you could insist on doubting the existence of an object that is in front of you, but that would merely demonstrate volition. Crudely equivocates the referent of the concept of "concept" with the referent of a different concept. Again, crudely equivocates the referent of the concept of "conceptual grouping" with the referent of a different concept. This is not a contradiction.

Notes on "Art of Thinking" by Dr. Leonard Peikoff applying Objectivist epistemology to one's own thinking topics covered intensively elsewhere (OPAR, Understanding Objectivism) omitted {from this course, not the Notes} Lecture I Volition as a means to clarity LectureII Thought as Integration - Hierarchy LectureIII Thought as Integration - Essentials LectureIV Thought as Integration - Principles LectureV Certainty LectureVI Thinking vs. Writing Lecture I Volition as a means to clarity Volition is exercised in the choice to focus Volition is also involved in changing the method of thought Merely perceiving new material does not blast out old contradictory material ex. Learning typing when you already have a long established 2-finger technique. Old technique is automatized, must bull through discomfort and disorientation while learning the better method. definition of Objectivity is "volitionally adhering to reality by following certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropriate to man's form of cognition" {from OPAR} This point then is an application of the principle of Objectivity. Clashing Contexts - when only one of two contradictory contexts can be active in the mind. After thoroughly learning and proving to oneself that only one of the contexts is correct, an act of will is/could still be required to banish previously automatized knowledge. Do not entertain or indulge doubts from an invalid context, when you know that context and the feelings of doubt are invalid. Disintegrate falsehoods while integrating truths. Feelings of plausibility can be wrong. When they are, suppress them (acknowledge then set aside, not repress which is refusal to acknowledge) ex. LP's grad school experience shuttling between pragmatist context of school and Objectivist context of Ayn Rand. ex. LP's ten years of saying "existence exists" before feeling the clarity of its refutation of Descarte's Cogito statement. ex. Student knew religion was irrational but had memories, experiences of concretes, emotional pull of interacting with religious people who were 'reasonable'. Counter: *method of proselytizing distinguished from content of doctrines *man is conceptual so arguments are required, even dictators have propaganda Then use will. This technique is an application of Objectivity, so it cannot be used to make yourself believe any old thing. This is not an attack on "Devil's Advocate" argumentation, which is a very useful method when still trying to reach complete understanding. One cannot achieve clarity on a new context by continually reviewing and attending to the old. One point/context can be proved even though neither/none are felt convincing. Suppress the wrong context until the correct context is automatized. Learning one new principle will not disable a prior context. Divided context is like a doctor treating himself. Don't let patient have equal time operating on the doctor. There is no neutral or earlier ground upon which to resolve the contradiction between contexts. Parallel: grieving for the dead. Reminders keep coming up because you automatically relate things to the now missing person. Fact of the death is not enough to stop your brain from working in that way. Free will is clinging to a known truth in the face of your own doubts, because of evidence. Faith is clinging to an idea in the face of your own doubts, lacking or in spite of evidence. Intrinsicist demands faith. Subjectivist is skeptic, indulges feelings of doubt. Objectivist willfully adheres to the truly known. Audience questions: Binswanger: Don't dismiss a question unless it comes from a wrong context. LP -When you have intellectual certainty you can identify the premises of a question. Locke: Application to psychotherapy. Not therapist's fault you don't drop your bad ideas and habits. LP - Deautomatization is a goal of therapy, achieved by disintegration. Some guy: Debating as learning? LP - Interact with other people holding the opposing context while gaining intellectual certainty, and after you have clarity. In the middle stage of shunning the false context, don't engage in debate. Applications: Origin and Edge of the Universe questions. Primaries. "Everybody hates primaries" Free will. "why did he choose that choice?" "Why?" can be asked incorrectly. "How do you know you aren't wrong?" Skepticism. Reiteration of correct context is necessary but not sufficient. Banishment of wrong context is required. Delayed gratification involved here. Achieving clarity can take time.

Its a valid idea, although your particular combination might have a small market. Polylingual song:

I agree with Thomas. Juxtaposing the Lexicon entries for Entity and Axiomatic Concepts leads me to conclude that "entity" is an axiomatic concept. The definition of entity must be ostensive, therefore entities as different things that can be pointed at are not necessarily commensurate with each other in their attributes. A proposed entity which is the sum of two disparate elements, such as the Eiffel Tower and a banana peel, cannot be pointed at so it is invalid. A collective noun such as the wind or a swarm (of bees) or flock (of birds) can be validated by pointing at it. A valid collective noun has elements that are causally related to each other but not themselves necessarily entities. The different kinds of casual relationships between a whole and its parts in a machine, an animal, a group of animals, a fluid, a hay bale or a stamp collection are incommensurate and no further conclusions can be drawn. If mereology is understood as trying to do exactly that then it is a dead end field. Mereology could be furthered by making a taxonomy of these types of causal relationships, making it a kind of meta-science or a part of the philosophy of science. edit: casually to causally in bold

For completeness, there should be a discussion on just when Finder's Keeper's is a valid doctrine. It is valid when exploring the unknown and there are no established property rights. It is valid for the establishing who can assert ownership over abandoned property. Intellectual achievements such as discovering new physical principles are credited to the first person to find the new truth (which is the only way possession can apply to a universal truth). Intellectual property such as patents and copyrights follow the pattern, with an interesting distinction. An inventor or author is the metaphysical creator of the new value while a discoverer does not metaphysically cause the discovery. A discoverer's labor creates value where there was none, and that is the source of his claim.

Not my wallet, so I would leave it. The owner would likely wander back this way looking for it. If the context (wilderness, whatever) was such that the owner would likely never see it again, I'd pick it up to see if it could be returned. I would expect the effort of returning it or letting the police handle it would be fairly trivial. Setting things right is satisfying, it keeps the world orderly and rational. edit: Application of justice to strangers, who have a default value well above zero.

There is a long history of plant patents based on cross-breeding the old-fashioned way, long before genes were even discovered. A patent is infringed when another makes use of the invention without permission of the patent holder. It doesn't matter how that situation comes about.

I've changed my mind about mereology. The subject matter is such a source of confusion that the positions on the topic can be brought together under a name. For example, there is a fallacy of composition and a fallacy of decomposition. One cannot logically deduce any of the attributes of the whole are attributes of the parts. But denying that deduction is an applicable method is not the same as denying causality. It must be the field for induction, I don't know of any other methods. Philosophers don't know how induction can be reliable, so its a stumbling block for them.

Woman has stroke, exhibits signs of brain damage.

That won't do, not at all. But Rand herself assigned one symbol to her philosophy, the word Objectivism. There is no reason another could not be also be associated with it, so long as it didn't duplicate the functions already served by a word. Art concretizes value judgments. Allegiance to an artwork would be superficial, but that is an error and not the only possible way to regard a symbol. The objective functions of art in fulfilling certain psycho-epistemological needs are common to all people, including the religious people. Thus, merely the fact that religious people do something is no argument against it. A craving for a token is not inherently intrinsicist. Exchanging wedding rings, getting a tattoo, and the giving of gifts in general are material demonstrations of regard. I started off scoffing at the idea of a symbol, but find I am arguing myself into accepting it.

And the answer is: Every context. An axiom is eternal in the sense of being timeless. Consciousness, being axiomatic, has an element of timelessness to it. The continuity of the sense of self is based on that. Thus the immortality of the soul is a doctrine which easily arises from the mistake of equivocating eternity of consciousness in the sense of timelessness, with eternity of consciousness in the sense of an infinitely large amount of time.

State control of the roads creates the power to set the terms of use of the roads. A simple drug prohibition is based on an assumed state power to set the terms of life. I object. As you say "We can't go around deeming people irrational without turning into thought police." This is a fatal problem for simple drug prohibitions. While using a drug that leaves traces is a behavior that is objective enough to craft a law around, it is not criminal. The scope of the law must be limited to defending rights and being reactive to actual acts. If the law can, in the absence of any special jurisdiction, preemptively coerce behavior that might lead to violation of rights, there is no limit to the scope of the law.

Doh! I blame Zip. Exploration is fine. Recall Rand's robot. Establishment is not. Criminal justice is about retribution for crimes. A condition for release sets up an indefinite amount of retribution for the crimes for which he was convicted. That would be nonobjective, and nonobjective law is immoral. Drugs do not cause people to commit crimes. A person need not be under the influence of a drug to act irrationally. Crimes are based on violations of rights, but it can be within one's rights to act irrationally. If it is not a crime to be irrational, it can't be a crime to take a drug that causes irrationality. The justification for DUI laws is that drivers are responsible for their decision to drink and drive. Without the driving aspect of the law it would be a simple rights-violating prohibition, just like Prohibition. One could have laws that penalize drug using in conjunction with crimes. That would be objective law. As for allowing a person to make choices, a person who is prevented from making choices is in prison. Outside of prison, it is his right to act and reap the consequences.

Here is a point to ponder. All knowledge is contextual. What is the context of knowledge in which an axiom is valid?

WTF? Then butt out. Reification is a type of fallacy. Our guest poster is asserting that sense data and perceptions are fallacies. Do you see the issue here yet?

Google Adsense put an ad up on when I was reading my gmail. There is a website selling the twelve success secrets of Ayn Rand. It has a list of people supposedly successful because of their Objectivism. It is simultaneously laughable, and cringe inducing. Ron Paul - Republican Congressman, Medical Doctor. David Paterson - Democratic Governor of New York. Clarence Thomas - Supreme Court Justice, bestselling author. Ronald Reagan - 40th President of the United States. Margaret Thatcher - former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Lou Holtz - Hall of Fame college football coach. Robert Ringer - multi-millionaire entrepreneur, bestselling author. Alan Greenspan - multi-millionaire economist, former Federal Reserve Chairman. So far as I can tell from viewing the page source code there are no other ads on the page, so its safe to look at it without financing further mischief. http://www.atlas12.com/

You can not draw a moral principal out of a fantastical hypothetical. Zip zeroed in on the error well enough with that response it suffices as a response to the entire post. A morality appropriate to the world of the Resident Evil series of games and films (where T-virus turns people into monsters) does not apply to real life.

Then don't. I know perfectly well what reification is. By asserting that the products of the senses are reified products of eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, our new poster is following the Kantian script to the "T". You don't really see things, because you see them.

Glad you found it helpful, but there are limits to what can be accomplished here. 1. It would be futile and stupid of me to try to argue against your statements of disagreement. First because it would be pointless to deny facts, second because I don't think you are literal-minded enough to exchange extensive correspondence with without me shortly giving up in exasperation. You come here with knowledge derived from prior study, perhaps years of study. There is no prospect of me arguing you into submission with a few sentences or paragraphs. If you wish to gain insight into Objectivism, follow the hard road that the rest of us here are traveling and grapple with the original texts. An internet discussion forum is a good place to thrash out one point at a time, it is no substitute for a long form presentation such as a book. I'm guessing you could handle plunging directly into Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology 2nd ed.. The weakness of that work is that it skips the metaphysics, but you can get the gist of that short subject here and in its links. You won't find ITOE immediately persuasive, but at least after reading it you could participate in a forum discussion without imposing the burden upon your correspondents of recapitulating the entire philosophy a few paragraphs at a time. 2 & 3. Without understanding the Objectivist account of what a concept is, the function of a definition, and the role of the chosen word that names a concept, I doubt you can come to any understanding of self, or any other conclusion in Objectivism. As a philosophy, Objectivism is a method, which results in a system and not just a collection of positions. We could go round and round and eventually reach some agreement, but then we would have to do it again on the next subject to come up. I have no interest in traversing the miles of the philosophy an inch at a time. And if you perceive Rand to be any kind of moderate-realist, you have not truly seen her. 4. The Law of Identity. A thing is whatever it is, but if you tear it into parts you no longer have the original thing. 4.1 Whatever the ultimate constituents of matter may be and their physical laws, they combine en masse obeying the remainder of the physical laws to produce the perceivably stable discrete objects of everyday life. "Reified"? I presume this is an attack on the validity of man's senses on the basis that he cannot perceive the true reality? Sounds Kantian. 4.1 (the 2nd) The combination of its parts, which is not a simple sum. The atoms of a rock or the pebbles in a heap are a simple sum. The material parts of a living body are related together in a specific structure and in motion. If you chop a man up into his constituent atoms you will not find a self or even a trace of life. If then you conclude the man was never alive to begin with, or never had a self, your materialist reductionism has led you to commit a logical fallacy and a murder. 4.2 I find this distinction incomprehensible. Happy reading.

The use you have put it to is fine, but don't try to sell any knick-knacks of a capital phi. I found the following trademarks: 76565124 single greek letter PHI for handbags and such 76565152 single greek letter PHI for fragrances 76565153 single greek letter PHI for jewelry 76565150 single greek letter PHI for brochures about above PHI products Then there were these: (these are serial numbers, not registration marks) 76447920 PHI in a dark circle 75849560 PHI for screws nuts and bolts 75666773 PHI for computer hardware and integrated circuits 75085417 PHI and IOTA in a circle for screws and other hardware 73466920 PHI with snake wrapping on central stroke for medical apparatus 73420787 PHI as a hollow character for shoes boots footwear 73212510 PHI bold for Electron Energy Analyzers 73158198 PHI w/serifs nurse and patient medical training 73114963 PHI tilted for medicinal tablets 72362409 PHI white on dark rectangular background 72122460 PHI white on dark rectangular background, nested rectangles 72049371 PHI switches The circle with interior vertical bar, touching or not, is apparently wide open.

That the self exists is axiomatic in that there is no way to question its existence without assuming its existence; after all, who is asking the question? This axiom, like all axioms, is validated by reference to reality, and its definition is ostensive. Much can be said about self but the essentialized version of self from the Lexicon is "A man’s self is his mind—the faculty that perceives reality, forms judgments, chooses values." This is in no way to be understood as a denial or even a neglect of the body. Objectivism rejects the Mind-Body dichotomy. There is no special criteria for having a self other than existing, i.e. being alive. The self exists objectively. Realism vs. Nominalism are posed as the only two positions to take on the Problem of Universals but Objectivism rejects both. An entire book (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology) exists about the Objectivist theory of concept formation, but this entry in the Lexicon gives some idea of it. Answers to questions about the relationship of an entity to its parts must avoid the fallacy of composition and any materialist reductionism which denies the reality of an entity simply because it has parts. A man is an integrated being of mind and body and wholly destroying the mind or the body destroys the man. D is the only alternative that isn't immediately ruled out, but that doesn't say much. I hope that was helpful.

The rationalist understanding of a contradiction is an internal inconsistency. External inconsistency is a different matter, and is contingent upon particularities that could have been different. This internal versus external dichotomy is yet another instance of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. The concept of existence refers to existence and all of its properties known and unknown. Existence is identity and a contradiction is a statement contrary to that identity. All contradictions are contradictory for the same reason. Internal vs. external consistency is a distinction based upon a nonessential because there are not two kinds of identities, the known and unknown. Metaphysics and physics both refer to the same existence and have the same concept of existence. The difference is the method used to study the subject. Physics is about measurements, metaphysics omits all measurements. No amount of metaphysical reasoning can substitute for a measurement, but all actual values of measurements are metaphysically necessary because they are measurements of existence, the same existence that metaphysics studies. The concept of existence does contain within it the implication that heat must be mechanical. That is the identity of existence, the same invariant identity studied in different ways by physics and metaphysics.

"This is madness!" "THIS IS SPARTA!" Now it has similarity to a capital greek letter lambda, the first character of Lacedaemon the capitol city of Laconia. A large lambda was emblazoned on the red shields of the Spartan warriors. Speaking of greek letters, Φ (phi) is the first letter of the greek word for philosophy φιλοσοφία. Φ Not a problem unless it is already trademarked.