eriatarka

As dancing it looks ok but it seems hard to take seriously as a martial art. I think capoeira looks a lot less camp though and I'd personally rather watch that when it comes to dance-fighting :

I was responding to Sophie's comment not yours. But even if he's a grad student the same applies - his main concern is going to be his research, with teaching just something he does either because its required by the college, or for extra income. You should be thankful that he's willing to spend extra time giving you so much individual attention despite your rudeness - I'd probably have stopped replying to you after about your 2nd email. He even gave you an opportunity to come meet him to discuss things face-to-face, which is a lot more than you seem to deserve.

No offence, but you may not be in a position to make that judgement since professors at good universities will generally have been hired for their research credentials rather than their teaching skills. Teaching undergrads is a burden n many cases - some people do enjoy it, but its rarely the main focus of their work. Unless you actually read their professional publications and have enough knowledge of the field to evaluate them then your judgement about their credentials is uninformed - undergrad teaching is probably the least important thing when it comes to assessing a professors merits (at the top uiniversities anyway, I imagine liberal arts colleges are different since theyre less research focused afaik). Money isnt everything. Most people choose the academic life because their primary concern is doing interesting work, even if that pays less than the corporate world.

I imagine most people smart enough to be a professor at a decent university could have made as much money as you if theyd really wanted to - comments like this smack of bitterness.

This seems a fairly strange statement since it applies to pretty much all long jury trials. Is he opposed to jury trials in general, or is there some compelling reason why the jury in this case would be less educated than the average jury? Also what does it mean to say that juries are reluctant to 'bite the hand that feeds them' - is he implying that juries are more likely to rule for the government than against it?

Unless theyve initiated force against you, why would you have the right to take either their life or their property? There are many 'uncivilized' people within our own society, but we do not infringe on their rights if they have not committed a crime.

He was devoutly religious - I think he dedicated all of his works to God,, not just the sacred music.

I would definitely avoid doing work which directly benefits the areas of government I most strongly oppose (domestic surveillence, narcotics enforcement, etc), but I wouldnt have any moral problems with trading government bonds or T-bills if I worked in finance. I think theres a spectrum here rather a binary moral/immoral choice - some parts of the government are just so disgustingly evil that I'd lose respect for someone who done business with them regardless of how 'profitable' it was, whereas others are slightly more tolerable and I think some interaction can be justified from the standpoint of personal gain.

Why does it even matter if you enjoy the piece the way that the creator 'meant' for you to enjoy it, as long as you still enjoy it? To take an example, I imagine that a lot of people who listen to Shostakovich symphonies miss the 'irony' that his biographers claim is present, and hence dont take the pieces the way he would probably have wanted them to - but if they still like the music then does this matter? Knowing the artist's intention can be interesting and it may inform your interpretation of the piece, but I'm not sure why agreeing with it is essential. Bach intended his music to be a hymn to God - does this mean that atheists cant fully appreciate it? Do we fail to understand Renaissance religious painting because we arent taking it the way that the creators wanted us to?

what?

Did you actually read his reply? I dont really see how anything in your last email addresses what he said (which seems perfectly reasonable to me except for the bit about never reaching conclusions). You should stop thinking that your professors are trying to 'convert' you to <whatever philosophical system> - they arent. I doubt he cares whether you accept Kant's arguments, that isnt the point at all.

This doesnt not seem compatible with the Objectivist stance on happiness. If one could be happy and irrational then there would be no point in being rational. However this is generally not the case - the reason why its wrong to pursue irrational aims isnt because it results in 'irrational happiness', its because it normally doesnt result in happiness at all.

Er no. The Bible is full of polemics against over-attachment to material goods and the hoarding of wealth at the expense of others. How is "I've got my money and I wont give it to anyone" even remotely compatible with the teachings of Jesus? And so on.

I disagree with this - if a person could be happy by accepting irrational values, then whats the point of being rational? It wont make me any happier, so why shoud I bother? No, happyness isnt an emotion - its a state of mind (a different thing entirely), and one which is much more likely to be enjoyed by people with rational and life-affirming values. People who have accepted horrible values generally dont seem to be happy.

A post you made post in another thread: You do know this is in contradiction to pretty much the whole Bible, right?

Well bisexuality is the most 'optimal' sexual orientation in the sense that you arent arbitrarily ruling out half the world's population in advance. And I think theres a reasonable amounf of evidence evidence (in the form of sexual orientations in other societies, and psychological studies such as Kinsey's) to support the claim that if people have a 'natural' sexual orientation independent of social conditioning then its quite likely to be bisexuality. So yeah, homosexuality is suboptimal sure - but so is heterosexuality. Yes, and theres something being denied to people who are only romantic with members of the opposite sex. Male-on-male love has been considered the most 'pure' type of love at several points in history (ancient Greece being the most obvious example, and its been relatively common among the upper classes/intelligentsia in several European countries) - your childhood predispositions are causing you to 'miss out' on just as much as the homosexual's. I think that objecively speaking, bisexuality is the 'best' sexual orientation - but since we only have a limited ability to 'choose' our orientations, most of us are stuck with what we have.

Why are you assuming your professor is a Kantian? Teaching philosophy to undergraduates mainly involves presenting the work of philosophers in a forceful way and trying to get them to think about it, perhaps by being provocative. It doesnt mean that the professor agrees with Kant or that he's trying to convert' you or anything, he probably just wants you to understand the material, engage with it, and perhaps come up with good arguments against it. You should check his professional research interests - chances are he wont even be a Kant scholar (although I may be wrong). I'd be pretty irritated by the tone of your emails if I was your tutor (although we're only seeing one side of the argument here and I dont know what hes actually like in class etc) .

I wasnt thinking of any quote in particular but yeah thats close to what I remember her views being, thanks. Well I dont like Pollock so dont feel comfortable defending his work. But to take the case of Kandinsky, I think a lot of his works do contain objects, albeit sharply-defined geometrical ones (such as in this painting or this). There obviously isnt any 'representation' in the traditional sense and none of the shapes are intended to correspond to anything in the real world, but an emotional effect is created by the interplay of geometrical forms and colours. I'm not sure if this constitutes 'intelligibility' though.

I dont have RM here so cant check :/ But Peikoff does mention "non-objective art" in his list of 'inherently dishonest ideas' in the Fact and Value essay linked earlier, although he doesnt say if he's referring to abstract ar or something else.

<this topic was split off from another thread by a moderator, I didnt create this thead> I dont have a copy of the Romantic Manifesto here but Im pretty sure I remember some attacks on abstract art in it, perhaps in the "Art and Cognition" chapter. But in any case, since art is an artist's "selective representation of reality" it would follow that non-representational works arent art. And you cant really say that Ayn Rands dislike of non-representational art is a just personal value judgement, because its a consequene of her belief about the nature of art, which I assume is part of Objectivism.

'Yes, because of Microsoft's sales strategies. Which only have a little to do with the quality of the product. Britney Speares sells more CD than Beethoven - how much does that tell you about the qualitty of the respective music, and how much does it tell you about the way that tastes are shaped by advertising? Yes I dont dispute this. The point is that the construction of the current situation - where people are more familiar with Windows than with other OS's, and buying a PC with linux isnt cheaper than buying it Windows, and Linux is seen as being 'hard' and obscure - is a direct result of Microsoft's sales and marketing strategies. Within the current context, most people are better off buying a windows PC than a linux one, but this entire context has been created by Microsoft and only has a little to do with the objective quality of its products. And its this context which constitutes Microsoft's monopoly - its not a coercive monopoly, its the fact that the whole system now ensures that people buy Microsoft products regardless of whether they are better than the alternatives, because the alternatives are 'not worth the time to learn' (since familiarity with Microsoft products is now woven into the fabric of society), or too different from what people use at work, or perceived as being 'for nerds', or not well enough advertised to let people know they even exist. Similar things occur in other fields - once a company's name is well-known, its products will sell because people who dont have the time to research which products are better will buy something from a brand-name which they recognise. And this is perfectly rational in context. But brand name recognition is something established by advertising dollars rather than pure quality of products - a company which makes genuinelly terrible products isnt likely to become a household name, but a company which makes average products backed up by a manipulative advertising campaign will generally outsell a company which makes good products with less marketing.

The difficulty is that Ayn Rand normally wrote in a way where her value judgements were presented as objective conclusions based on her philosophical premises. Its not like she just gave value judgements and left it at that - they were normally backed up by philosophical arguments. The style of writing that she used to argue 'value judgements' such as abstract art being non-objective, or homoseuality being immoral, or women being unsuited for presidency, is pretty much the same as her style when arguing that socialism is evil and suchlike - they are all derivations based on fundamental premises, backed up by arguments. So it's difficult to separate her 'value judgements' from her philosophy without essentially saying "I think Ayn Rands value judgements are the things she wrote which I happen to disagree with" or something equally arbitrary. The examples you give are good for highlighting the problem - Rand's views on homosexuals and women presidents follow logically from her views on the nature of masculinity and feminity, to the extent where if you agree with her views on the nature of men/women then youre pretty much compelled to agree that homosexuality is wrong, and that women are less suited for positions of power. Are her views on masculinity/feminitity part of her philosophy rather than a personal value judgements? I think she thought so. So if a person believes that her construction of masculinity is wrong, are they being dishonest in identifying themself as an Objectivist?

I meant highest selling at a particular price point. Microsoft products are ok but nowhere near good eough to justify what Microsoft charge then theres free alternatives. Vista is a horrible operating system for example (even compared to windows XP) and its still selling lots of units. Most people are still using internet explorer as their web-browser despite it being vastly inferior to firefox/opera. And so on. Consumers normally arent well-informed, and companies exploit this. Macs arent really a good counterargument given that theyre the epitome of style/gimmicks over function (and very overpriced) For the price of any Bose speaker you could almost certainly get a better non-Bose speaker. I wasnt really talking about high-end audio When it comes to lower priced products, when consumers dont want to spend time researching which product is best, theyll often just buy a product from a brand theyve heard of (even if its more expensive). This is why big companies often spend more money advertising the brand-name itself than any of their products. I'm not saying there should be more regulation or anything like that, but claiming that the best products 'win' or that people generally make rational buying decisions seems a bit naive.

Because a) many/most vendors wont give you money off a prebuilt PC if you ask to get it without Windows because of the deals they have with Microsoft, most people are more familiar with Microsoft products because theyre likely to be using them at their office due to the deals that their company has with Microsoft, and c) Windows is widely perceived as being better/more reliable/easier-to-use than other operating systems even when this is not the case, due to the large amount of money Microsoft have spent promoting their brand name.

This is very idealistic. In many fields, the best selling products arent those with the highest quality - theyre the ones backed by corporations with large advertising budgets and 'clever' sales/marketing strategies. Microsoft's domination of the PC market is a good example of this, as are most electronic goods (well known companies such as Sony/Panasonic/Bose generally make poorer quality goods than smaller companies, but get better sales because of their advertising campaigns. I think Bose are the best selling brand of speakers, but noone who has a clue about hifi is going to go anywhere near them). This is generally true, but not always. Once a company has control over a field, theres a lot of tactics it can use to keep sales high even when its products are grossly overpriced compared to alternatives. Microsoft is the classic example of this - theres no way that $300 for windows vista+MS office could be justified over the free alternative of ubuntu/open-office based on the quality of the products alone, but the reason Microsoft is able to sell high volumes of products is through a clever-but-dubious sales strategy which involves things like forcing vendors to sell Windows with all their computers or have their licences revoked, continually breaking compatibility so that people are forced to upgrade, and so on. Windows Vista is obviously a terrible product compared to most other modern operating systems (including XP) yet microsoft are still managing to sell millions of copies because of the way they interact with vendors and businesses.