Grames

I don't know about Catwoman for the next movie in this series. In the first two films, Batman has saved the city in its entirety and saved it from a reign of terror by a madman. I have the impression that Catwoman is just a talented 'cat burglar', implying she doesn't pose enough of a threat to the city or any of its individual inhabitants to merit much attention. If anyone has a rationale for why she ought to be taken seriously, I'd like to hear it. My idea for the next film continues the Batman vs. Gotham idea that concluded The Dark Knight. Batman would expose and humiliate some particularly highly placed corrupt city official. Feeling threatened, other corrupt city officials appeal to Superman to restore order to Gotham by apprehending the Batman. Superman fails, in the process learning something about human nature. Ultimately the theme would be about how superpowers are morally irrelevant because people can't be compelled to do the right thing. Impatient with the long lonely road of leading Gothams morally lost citizens by example, Superman abandons Gotham to the care of its dark crusader.

I think someone who knows the basic literature and agrees with it is a beginner Objectivist. Learning how to be rational is harder because it is methodological and so takes time and practice. I recommend close study of Objectivist epistemology as essential to grasping the rational way of thought.

Existence exists. Existence is identity. Consciousness is identification. Consciousness has identity, therefore identification is finite and fallible. Volition is choosing when identification is complete (should be stopped), incomplete (should be continued), or less important than some new issue (should be neglected). In other words, volition directs consciousness' finite resources of time and attention. To accept volition is merely to aknowledge that such resource allocation decisions get made, and that the alternatives were real and could have been selected instead. In order to form a new concept, a man must be able to perceive the referents. Thus the context of a man's life, his time, place, the language he has available to him limits or makes possible the formation of certain ideas. It is no coincidence that Darwin was a well travelled naturalist when he put his theory of evolution to paper, the British navy and the scientific intellectual climate of Great Britian made a Darwin possible. Nor is it a coincidence that Ayn Rand, a classically educated fugitive from Bolshevik Russia who went almost straight to Hollywood thus witnessing widely divergent philosophical abstractions reduced to practice, was able to make new philosophical insights. It was not others with similar experiences but Darwin and Rand who came up with new ideas, and popularized them. They each had decided to fully explore certain issues that had presented themselves when so many others had not. These two are fine examples of how volition and circumstances together determine the course of a person's life.

This is false and ridiculous hyperbole. The earth is doing just fine. We, as a species, are pulling ourselves out of poverty and the resulting pollution in some locales is an acceptable tradeoff the people who live there are willing to make. If you want to see a cleaner planet then address people rationally about efficiency, health, quality of life, and property issues that can be addressed by reducing pollution. Scaremongering is demeaning to those who do it, and insults those to whom it is addressed.

The universe is described as eternal because of the impossibility of applying an external frame of reference. There is no place to stand with your stop watch while waiting to start it at the instant of the big bang. Projecting time backward to before the beginning makes as much sense as trying to get outside the universe by plotting a course through space. An unembodied mind is every bit as much of an abstraction as an 'abstract object'. An unembodied mind is an example of an 'abstract object'. An unembodied mind is causally impotent.

Be careful of moving from "context of knowledge" to "context of a statement", because I think this statement implies that there are several possible contexts and that one should be selected. If only one context is possible (the full context of one's knowledge), why would there be a need to specify it? So, using the terminology of English sentence structure which is subject-verb-object, is the context of a statement the context of the subject or the context of the object? When I say metaphysics doesn't have a context, that is context-of-the-object perspective and is valid because there is nothing outside of the universe to which there could be a relationship. When you say even metaphysical knowledge has a context, that is context-of-the-subject perspective, and is valid because knowledge implies a knower. But there is no contradiction between the two perspectives because they lead to statments about different things: the first is a statement about the relationship between "universe" and "context" while the second statement is about knowledge qua knowledge. The context of a statement can be either or both the context of the subject or the context of the object, and it is up to the writer to direct the reader's attention. I think you are saying context-of-the-object perspective necessarily leads to or is intrinsicism because it is not anthropocentric. I say understanding how objects relate to each other apart from man results in knowledge, knowledge known by man and therefore not alienated from the anthropocentric perspective of philosophy. Context refers to external relations of the object, not internal. The internal relations of an object are its identity. I hope its clear that any complaint I have is against a particular statement, not any posters. "The environment exists for man's benefit" is such a strong concentration of Objectivist mojo that I couldn't follow it, and I thought I was good at this stuff. I figured surely the OP wouldn't follow it, if he could he wouldn't have asked the question.

How could metaphysics have any context at all? If metaphysics is about the nature of the universe as a whole, then there is nothing outside the subject to serve as context. The word "exists", coupled with "for" which makes the existence of something (the environment) teleological. There was no biological or ethical argument being offered so it comes across as a metaphysical statement. Rather than describing how man creates meaning and purpose, it seems to describe the environment as having an embedded, inherent, intrinsic purpose of its own. The structure of the sentence is active voice as if the environment had intentionality, or was created as an artifact with an intended purpose.

Now thats funny.

Well, I disagree somewhat. This thread is about the Dark Knight, so I won't pursue this subject further here. It would happen when the presence of the crowd was a factor in creating your emotions. Emotions can be 'contagious', if everyone around you is smiling, happy and cheering it can be hard not to feel the same way. Exit the crowd and inappropriate emotions will dissipate, making it easier to think clearly.

That's much better! Long form explanations are appropriate answers when the questioner isn't familiar with Objectivism.

Batman tells Gordon he is going to save Rachel, but ends up with Dent. What happened? It was only between the 2nd and 3rd times I saw the movie that it hit me: the Joker lied about the addresses so that not only did Batman have to make an ugly choice but he lost his first choice anyway. The Joker is so breathtakingly evil and deceitful it is hard to comprehend in a single viewing.

(I'm going to post a lot about The Dark Knight. I'm going to write about this specific film treatment, Christopher Nolan's Bruce Wayne/Batman as depicted in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I do not address Tim Burton's Batman, not the old TV show or the animated series, or even the comics. I'm not familiar with it all, and there are differences.) Batman is highly principled in defending his city from criminality and lawlessness. He does not act out of a sense of duty or altruism, he has a passion for justice firmly and plausibly grounded in his personal childhood experience. Batman is not a vigilante, despite the fact that he is so described in the movie. The definition of vigilante is a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice. The Wikipedia version of vigilante is "a vigilante is a person who ignores due process of law and enacts their own form of justice in response to a perception of insufficient response by the authorities." Both of these sources agree that a vigilante dispenses justice and punishment, but that is exactly what Batman never does. Batman doesn't fine, imprison or kill the criminals he apprehends, he packages them up and turns them over to the police, sometimes also with the evidence of their crime if needed for a conviction. Batman is a rogue cop, a citizen making citizen arrests, but he never arrogates to himself a right to the retaliatory use of force if retaliatory force is understood as punishment. I think that what some people in the movie are actually condemning in Batman's 'vigilantism' is a perceived stand against moral relativism; Batman judges which people need to be captured and in moral relativism people, especially people not in an official uniform, should not judge other people. Batman's fight for justice in Gotham inspires people to reject the passivity of moral relativism, and the rejection of moral relativism is exactly the issue highlighted by the two ferries which the Joker put into a variation of a "Prisoner's Dilemma". The one thing he has done which was potentially problematic was kidnapping Mr. Lau from Hong Kong. However, China is a tyranny and has no extradition treaties, making it a criminal haven. Batman may well have provoked an international incident, but this is not automatically an immoral act. The Batman inhabits that space between the moral and the legal. Where a uniformed policeman is understood as an agent of the law, a suited up Batman is a personification of the moral. The law is supposed to serve a moral purpose and should be subordinate to moral considerations, so Batman is free to act where the law is not.

Harry Binswanger's The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts provides justification for claiming that my eyes exist for my benefit. It does not provide justification for claiming that the entire, largely inanimate universe exists for my benefit. Things which are biological but are not me, have their own purposes (in Binswanger's teleology) which are not mine. Inanimate things have no purposes at all. The anthropocentric context applies to ethics and epistemology, it cannot be applied to metaphysics. The primacy of existence principle forbids any variation of an attempt to reason that existence exists so that consiousness can be aware of it. The neutrality of the universe is described in Peikoff's description of the "benevolent universe" premise: Any argument that mankind has the right to interfere with the workings of nature should be grounded in ethics not metaphysics for precisely the reason that the anthropocentric perspective cannot be applied in metaphysics.

Light-hearted? There different kinds of humor and ways to laugh. Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Lucius Fox have some light-hearted dialogue, where they diminish the magnitude of their problems. Nothing the Joker does is light-hearted. The humor associated with the Joker is mocking, absurd, destructive. I found myself laughing along with the Joker only when it was destructive of something that deserved to be torn down. For example, thieves killing each other out of greed is funny, that performance was reductio ad absurdum made concrete. The Joker humiliating a thug with a pencil is funny. The Joker undermining his own terrifying reputation by putting on a nurses uniform and red wig is funny. On the other hand, during the interrogation scene the Joker's maniacal triumphant laughter while Batman beats the shit out of him is not funny, it is horrifying. So in a way I agree with you, in that I didn't find anything light-hearted in the Joker's humor either. But I would disagree that the Joker could not be funny at times, because humor doesn't always have to be light-hearted. It says that that audience is human. After all, emotional responses are automatic. Relying upon emotional responses as guides to action is where the danger lies. A person who can see through demogoguery as it happens is intelligent and well integrated, but not necessarily more moral than a man who shakes off the spell only after the rally is over.

Actually I meant it in the same way as you. Alternating between tension and release, sadness and smiles, excitement and relaxation is an elementary technique of seduction, rhetoric, and film because it works to hold interest and ward off boredom. This is seen in The Dark Knight in scenes that alternate between Batman and Joker, and even following the same character we have Batman then Bruce Wayne, or terrifying Joker followed by prankster/ridiculous Joker.

I have noticed that when I go to a sit-down restaurant and order coffee or hot tea, it is not served so hot as to be dangerous if I actually tried to drink it. Yet that was the case for many fast-food outlets. It may still be the case, I now know better than to order a hot beverage from a fast food outlet (unless its a Dunkin Donuts!, A dunked donut cannot be dangerously hot).

Wow. It really is futile to explain humor to people but I feel the need to reassure you that things aren't so bad that your theater experience can only be explained by an audience full of nihilists. This is a "matronly lady slips on banana peel" moment, in that a formidable mobster tough is surprisingly defeated by a mere pencil. It could be the surprise and shock value of that clever moment, and that mobster toughs aren't sympathetic characters. Regarding the hospital scene, it could also just be that the Joker in drag in broad daylight, with that funky walk, looks ridiculous. Then there was that stutter-step moment when the hospital bombs looked to be a dud, that was a deliberate play for some comedy by the director. I haven't laughed, but I have smiled at these moments. Batman is somber character and this is a serious film, these wry moments are needed to aid the pacing, timing, and contrast of the rest of the movie. Let not your heart be troubled sir.

I have the article, and I listened to the audio in case her additional remarks had additional value. I was not surprised. I can't imagine what you had in mind when citing this, except possibly the 'bio-centric' nature of philosophy. As an artifact, created for the purpose of helping men live life then of course philosophy is biocentric, even anthropocentric. That is not the same thing as saying the metphysical nature of reality is biocentric or anthropocentric.

Please explain how the metaphysically given actually exists for the sake of the benefit of man. This is very poorly phrased shorthand, it sounds like an anthropocentric metaphysics (a variation on primacy of consciousness) which is not Objectivist. The environment we live in doesn't exist for the sake of anything, even for itself. It simply exists. "Ruin" is a value judgement created by a person, so a layman non-objectivist non-econut will only interpret a denial of ruin as either "no one can disagree" or "any and all amounts of pollution are equally valuable", neither of which makes sense.

That would be great if possible, but that abstract seemed to implicate the same protein in several other processes making side effects a possible show stopper.

This is one of the greatest movies ever made. It does demand your full attention. This is no movie to relax and have fun with, the pacing is relentless and the plot just keeps going and going because the Joker is a mad genius 3 steps ahead of everyone and the audience. Every frame is essential and multiple viewings are necessary to pick up all that is going on. I will post more later, I've seen it twice today and am exhausted.

A decision, considered as an event, does not exist as an entity. Only entities exist. Causality in the Objectivist version only applies to entities. It is literally the axiom of Identity (A is A) applied to the actions of entities in a dynamic sense, as opposed to their attributes in a static sense. Thus we do not ever have events causing other events, only entities acting in accordance with their natures, possibly impinging upon other entities. Now whether you consider the fundamental level of analysis of decision making to be atoms, molecules, or neurons, those units begin in one state and transition to another state. Once the problem has been correctly restated in terms of these units, there is no way to deduce from the deterministic nature of each unit a deterministic nature for the whole person. We know each unit and the whole person must operate in accordance with causality because causality is an axiomatic metaphysical principle which applies to all entities directly and equally, of any and all levels of complexity, bypassing the problem presented by the distributive fallacies. But causality is more general than determinism. For any given state of a unit and its input, determinism requires a single possible subsequent state. Causality merely requires that starting from a given state an entity must act in accordance with its nature, leaving open the possibility of an entity which selects one alternative of several possible subsequent states. Although bricks, car engines, and computers are deterministic one cannot generalize from inanimate entities to biological entities having a conceptual consciousness. Thus there is no way to logically prove volition is impossible. None of the above is the same as validating volition, for that a separate appeal to your perception is necessary and sufficient. Now I guess that what you really want (because I want it also) is a general theory of consciousness and volition, some kind of story to displace the deterministic story which has such large explanatory power over the inanimate world. This story would perhaps be stated in information theoretic terms, specifying minimum requirements for computing power, memory capacity, bandwidth of the senses, and turn upon a holographic theory of brain function. But no such theory yet exists. The ancient greeks proved on a theoretical basis that the world was round and composed of atoms, but thousands of years passed before the globe was circumnavigated and the atom split, finally reducing theory to practice and abstraction to perception. We'll have to wait.

Since perceptual commensurability is given, someone who thinks metaphysical commensurability needs to be explained is someone who doubts the validity of the senses. If we were not perceiving reality as such but only the universals, that would explain metaphysical commensurability. Since Objectivists take the validity of the senses to be axiomatic, we see no need to explain metaphysical commensurability. The senses do not deceive us, if we see commensurabilty it is because it is metaphysically given. The metaphysically given does not need to be validated. ThomasF, the things you say about Huemer, Ryan et al and how they have come to their own idea of the problem of universals may be true. Your argument about existence being a metaphysical plenum may address flaws in their understanding of the problem, only they can say. Perhaps you should try it out on them?

Just found this excellent article on Reason.com Hollywood's Missing Movies Why American films have ignored life under communism. Just as it is not paranoia when they really are out to get you, it is not nitpicking when Hollywood really is out to poison your mind.

There is still opportunity for new discoveries in physics. For the first time a non-trivial boundary condition has been used in conjunction with a Casimir force measurement. Reduction of an surface area by 50% only resulting in a 30-40% reduction of the Casimir force, less than anticipated and requires a new method to calculate Casimir forces. Nonuniform Casimir forces are required to create at least small, MEMS scale power sources and engines. Casimir force links at the Next Big Future blog.