Grames

Trust. Confident expectation of future performance based upon past performance.

Please spell something out a bit more clearly. You think if you commit to your girlfriend or get married you are supposed to pretend other women do not exist by never flirting with or fantasizing about them ever again? Or do you mean you know you could never honor a commitment because you would find another woman/women to establish a relationship with and also have sex with?

How do you measure "one location"? What coordinate system, from which rest frame? Because for any frame in which you can say an object is motionless because it has only one location, I can find a frame in which it is in motion because it is changing locations. This is exactly the same issue as above where you said "Ironically in order to have 0 velocity relative to anything an object must have a finite velocity relative to something."

No it is not. If motionless is to have any meaning at all, it is the case of zero distance travelled over any time interval. If there is no time interval, then motion is by definition impossible and there is no way to apply the differentia of the definition of motion to distinguish between objects. It occurs to me that you are making exactly the same mistake as old Zeno in Zeno's Paradox, which "proved" that motion was impossible. Only in your version, you slice time up into ever smaller intervals and then say for a time interval of zero nothing can move. You are not so brave as Zeno to follow your logic to its forced conclusion that motion is impossible, but it has been done already in Zeno's fletcher's paradox: Refutation of Zeno is left as an exercise for the student. But if you count yourself as satisified to take Zeno's side in this dispute, I will refuse to correspond with you any further as you would have demonstrated yourself beyond the reach of reason.

You started talking while the class was still in progress and other people were trying to read? How rude. I take the side of the teacher.

This is the product of bitter experience. This skepticism is not quite the same thing as a philosophical conviction, but they ought to be related in the mind of any rational person. Alas, confidence in rationality is still lacking.

No, over a zero time interval the even words "static" and "motionless" are meaningless, as well as velocity. Over a zero time interval there is no measureable difference between any objects moving at any speed, or at no speed at all.

This is your mistake. Here you assert that a ratio of zero distance divided by zero time is equal to zero velocity. The proper answer is "does not compute", "undefined", ∞. "Static" and "motionless" have no meaning referenced to zero time.

Check against your own knowledge. Lab work is vital to learn physics and chemistry, history for humanities subjects. Check for internal consistency. Knowing logic and all the kinds of fallacies and rhetorical techniques enables this. Concept reduction is a specifically powerful Objectivist technique in applied epistemology integrating the two approaches above If you can't do any of these, quarantine it off until you can investigate it properly. I am both educated and experienced, and reccognize how news media completely botch reporting any mildy complicated topic when I have relevant knowledge. I drew the conclusion that new media cannot be trusted in general, beyond showing pictures of plane crashes and such. I do not have a television and rarely get newspapers, because I got tired of sorting out truth from lies. I consider most sources not credible until proven otherwise.

, and the fact that he's a very cognizant character (which is another plus for the film) it makes me see even more that his actions are in promotion of his (recently) identified values (which makes up the plot of the film). In addition, instead of having the Spaghetti-Western style of just taking out the bad guys (explicating the need for justice), there was something much more personal at stake, which was a bonus. I agree with this. This is a realistic ending for the movie, him charging into the gang's house like it was a North Korean machine gun nest would be stupid. And for the poster complaining about the character's racist banter, the phrase that comes to my mind is "bourgesoise pretentiousness".

Nothing wrong with that. Aside from chewing over "survive" and what that means, this is the gist of Objectivist ethics.

If you think Objectivism or objectivists have a monopoly on being able to perceive, conceptualize, and reason you are mistaken. Your idea of instantaneous velocity is also wrong. The method of dividing zero distance by zero time is naive, and unphysical. For a moving object, the principles of conservation of energy and momentum constrain the possible values for instantaneous velocity to a real and non-zero value. How to compute that value and avoid dividing zero by zero is what Newton and Leibniz figured out. Your lack of understanding of their mathematical innovation is not their failure, it is yours.

Also, quantities derived from veloccity such as energy and momentum are real and conserved, why would we need a conservation law for nonsense? How could general relativity work if at any given instant velocity was undefinable?

You assert ideas can't be physically protected, but concrete things can. But a patent system is precisely a method of protecting ideas about "types of things", so as a factual statement it is false. I think what you really mean is the normative sense of the statement: ideas about "types of things" should not be physically protected. But because intellectual products still retain the essential characteristic of being man-made they should be protected. Ah, the independent inventor problem. Perhaps we can repair the patent laws to prevent such a situation? For example, in these exerpts from U.S. law: Hypothetical example of application: Coca-Cola Inc. protects its formula for Coke as a trade secret. I later patent the method for making Coca-Cola. I cannot use my patent to destroy or take over the business of Coca-Cola because they have this independent inventor defense available to them. If the independent invention is less than one year earlier than the filing date of the patent, the independent inventor has simply lost the patent race.

And abstractions are not caused? Why would you stress the word CAUSAL unless you think that causation does not apply to concepts?

Put up or shut up.

The notion you advanced was that ideas qua abstractions can't be property because they don't have particular identities. Are you familiar with the Objectivist theory of concept formation? Concepts are formed by omitting particularities of the referents of the concept, which is called measurement omission. The concept of a siberian husky type dog is formed from a group of actual dogs (concretes) by noting their similarities to each other and differences from other dogs, omitting all of the particular measurements of their size, coat, teeth, or whatever. Same for rhodesian ridgebacks. The concept dog is formed by omitting differences between siberian huskies and rhodesian ridgebacks, instead noting the similarities and differences between dogs and other types of animals. A particular dog had an identity, the idea of a "siberian husky type dog" had an identity, the idea "dog" had an identity. "A siberian husky type dog is not the same as a rhodesian ridgeback type dog", is exactly the same kind of statement as that "a dog is not a cat". Identity does not only apply to concretes only, but also to concepts. The difference betwween THAT dog and A dog is omitted measurements. The difference between THAT gadget and A gadget is omitted measurements. It is not the case that the concept of property can be applied to "THAT gadget", but not "A gadget" because "A gadget" somehow lacks the requisite kind of identity. The kind of identity required in property is "caused by man", or man-made. An abstraction of property such as a patented invention has that property attribute, it was not omitted. edit- changed property to attribute

You can treat the two as if they are the same thing. It makes no difference whatsoever how abstract A might be, A is A.

And being derivatively identifiable is somehow not as good as being ostensively identifiable? A derivative identity is unreal? Concepts are unreliable as a means of knowledge, we are only permitted to point and grunt?

It cannot be that shape precedes location because shape is simply a description of the locations of the parts an entity. Are you seriously proposing that the first law of motion is wrong? Instantaneous velocity is undefined? What is wrong with defining it as the ratio of distance traveled per time interval in the limit as the time interval approaches zero? Are we all deceived by our calculus texts? As for "infinite extent" of objects, if in one's philosophy the Universe is finite then the extent is not infinite.

Well then you can have the illusion 'your' opening so long as you don't interfere with other's games.

No potential is involved, only actuals. Every particle is spread out over all space. That is what fills the "full plenum". Fully consistent application of the metaphysical principle that there are no actual infinities leads to the following reasoning. An electron can be considered a point particle on the basis that it has no detectable internal structure and at large enough distances the away from it both the mass and charge are equivalent to a point source. But this is an approximation of convenience. It can't possibly actually be a point particle because it would have an infinite mass density and charge density. Therefore an electron must have an extent in space. This principle also applies to the boundary of an electron. A sharp rigid boundary would also be an infinitesimally thin space with a fixed amount of mass or charge within it. This is another infinity that cannot exist. In mathematical terms there can be no discontinuity in the first derivative of the mass or charge distribution. So not only must an electron have a non-zero extension, its mass and charge must shade off toward zero only gradually. At great distances the mass and charge can only approach zero asymptotically and never quite reach it, or there would again be a discontinuity. This reasoning produces a picture in agreement with experiment and the quantum theory.

Space defined as the nothingness between the things that exist is incorrect. Metaphysically, every entity is finite. This implies borders and boundaries. If the entity on one side of the border is real then there must be an existential quality to what lies beyond the border or else there could be no border. If no border can be defined then this also leads to the idea that there is no place where there is nothing. Physically, subatomic particles have a property of extension through space that can only be measured as a probability to find the particle at different places. What appears to us as empty space is actually a place where the vast numbers of particles that exist in the universe all have an overlapping near-zero probability to be located. No matter how arbitrarily close to zero that probability may be measured at a particular location, so long as it is non-zero that location has an existential quality. This is a restatement of the 'full plenum' idea.

Put away your tin foil hats, says the hacker who enabled multitouch on a G1. And while the form of the headphone port is old, bidirectional signal passing of audio signals in one direction and simultaneously control signals in the other direction is not so old. Also for your research on this general topic: Mossoff, Adam, Is Copyright Property? A Comment on Richard Epstein's Liberty Vs. Property. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 29, 2005. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=491466

Alright then, back to basics. Property is caused by the action of creating or maintaining it. A chess game is created by the players involved, not a remote theoretician. The players in a sport are not following a script as do the actors in a play.