Greebo

Volition is a characteristic of a living being. Values are a characteristic of a living being. Living beings have causes. SO what caused God?

In such cases, the person is still a Human Being - they are essentially "broken" in some sense, but they still have the same basic rights any other human being possesses. A child is entitled to care, feeding and protection from their parents because the parents engaged in an action which resulted in the creation of a child and chose to bring that child into the world. At some point, that child would normally grow into an adult, at which time parental obligation ends, but there is never any guarantee that a child will be born healthy or with the potential to achieve independence. Nevertheless, they continue to be human beings, and continue to have a human beings rights. So if a child is born with a life long disability, the parents are responsible for the long term welfare of that child INCLUDING beyond their death (and there are plenty of mechanisms to support that need such as life insurance and trust funds). That responsibility, however, STOPS with the parents. If the parents are unwilling to provide, the rights of the child should be protected - enter Government. But Justice cannot be carried out by committing an injustice against others, so if parents cannot provide for the child, Government *can* help but morally they can only do so with funds collected voluntarily by a society that rationally believes Government is necessary for the protection of individual rights.

You would have been extremely wrong if you had.

No, actually, you can't, because that would pollute the air which would harm others and you don't have the right to do that. And no, I'm not really taking you seriously anymore because of the reasons stated previously. You WANT the conclusion to be X, and you'll say whatever it takes to get X to come out the end.

That's not altruism if it's a cause you believe in and wish to support.

Careful with your language, please. Having evolved to serve a purpose, like a stomach, or a liver, does not equate to having been intentionally evolved to have a purpose (ie deliberately designed as such). Nature did not "intend" man to be free - man IS free by his nature, which developed naturally, not with any intention. We could have evolved more like ants for all we know - in which case socialism would be rational for us.

Your position IS contradictory. You require the existence of a volition able to cause the very first action to occur, but do not require there to be a cause of that volition. You set aside the laws of causality as soon as you fill in the blank of causal requirement with God.

When philosophy comes to a conclusion which contradicts reality, guess which one loses?

Are you familiar with how to identify irrelevant concepts? Ah, no...I guess not.

Yeah? Got any video game consoles? I'll take those, thanks. They're not property, after all - they don't relate to your survival.

This is, in fact, exactly why patents are necessary. When you patent an idea, or copyright a book, or trademark a logo, what you're doing is obtaining recognition from Government (or in the case of Copyrights, where registration is optional, at least publicly declaring) that you are claiming your right to be the sole owner of that intellectual concept. This is why inventions have patent numbers, logos have ® symbols and books/music/software has © symbols - because it's a clear, public, recognized declaration that you are reserving your rights. Inventor didn't in your example actually specify to Patent-Breaker that the salt shaker was not to be copied - so he shared his idea without protecting his rights - thus he gave the idea away. But if I DID make P-B aware that he was retaining his right, then P-B should have been made to agree not to copy it BEFORE he saw it, thus I would be claiming his right clearly. Patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc are simply official recognition that you've claimed ownership of a concept which has a traceable ownership and which *is* a product, not just a concept, and that you're unwilling to sell that thing to anyone w/o their agreement not to reproduce it. It's a shortcut, nothing more, just like recording a deed or a marriage license, only with a bit more paperwork to ensure nobody else actually claimed it first.

Except of course that the monopoly on using retaliatory force belongs to Government - vigilantism isn't acceptable.

I think that the O'ist equivalent of humility is the the recognition that anyone can make a mistake, including ourselves. This is why one of our primary directives (that's the wrong word for it but I can't think of the right one) is to always check our premises.

Who said it was "wrong to argue"? Argument, when done properly, is a very important method of premise checking. What's wrong is that when presented with perfectly sound reasons why there are materials such as books, art, music, software, etc., which should be considered property, and why, you seem to agree with the specific points but you don't seem to like the conclusion so you ignore it and try to obfuscate the points with false premises, straw men, equivocation, context dropping, and other fallacies. Arguing isn't wrong - how YOU argue is. You WANT the conclusion to line up with what you wish to be true, so you say whatever you can to make the conclusion work.

You've already had this answered through the thread. These are leaving the realm of philosophy and moving into law. What philosophy can tell us is that there are products of the mind which are new and unique constructs of meaning (literature, art, music, software), as opposed to more physical constructs (buildings, crops, circuit boards, lawn mowers), and that those constructs have existence by deliberate creation, that the responsible party for that creation is identifiable, and thus that ownership of the construct belongs to the identified creator of that construct. Where exactly ownership begins and ends, and when it's no longer viable to maintain ownership rights, and even the specifics of what building blocks of the finished product CAN be owned (a word, a phrase, a paragraph, or a note, a theme, a composition, etc) - those are specifics that must be addressed as a matter of law.

No, we put it in the Property category because it is the product of the mind.

I am the son of a Lutheran Minister. I understand where you are coming from, and I struggled with these feelings for a long time myself in my 20's. So I'm not going to sugar coat anything - and I hope you'll take it as intended - not to be insulting, just to the point and honest. You can't believe in mysticism and be an Objectivist. Sorry. To be an Objectivist? Yes. To be a good person? No. You are not a bad person - just one with what we call an irrational belief - meaning that your belief isn't based on reality. Bear in mind, of course, that faith DEMANDS belief despite any evidence, so a person strong in faith is proud to be irrational - thus you really shouldn't take what I say as an insult *IF* you are truly faithful. But what you cannot do is both be truly rational AND faithful. And it's ok for you not to be, SO LONG as you don't attempt to inflict your idea's (or your faith's ideas) of how life should be on us against our will. Now - if you desire truly to be rational then you have two things to do: 1) Understand the reasoning behind why any mystic premises must be dropped as invalid. I'd suggest reading chapters 1-3 of OPAR SEVERAL times and carefully evaluating EACH AND EVERY statement made therein. If you understand the reasoning AND agree, then you will have your reasons WHY you must abandon this idea of God to be rational. 2) Knowing now why belief in God is irrational, you need to find out why this belief sustained you and carried you through difficult times such as addiction. I suspect you will find that it wasn't God, but your belief in the ability to make it through your addiction that got you through. If you could do all of that on your own conviction, then you can continue to make it through addiction (yes I know its a life long thing) on the conviction that you can, with the continuing support of other people who understand what you've been through. Your "higher power" doesn't have to be irrationally based - the higher power can be the power of reason itself, which isn't mystical at all. But you know what? IF you choose to believe in a God, as long as you don't also claim to be an O'ist, and as long as you follow the same ethical principals, we'll all get along just fine.

I don't think that's really the issue. Not in this thread anyway.

Shouldn't that be mc2=hv m=hv/c2 ?

If a photon is massless energy, then energy can be said to exist in itself. Its as meaningful as anything else we say about pre-expansion space.

Absolutely. Just pay us for it.

In the case of an artist, author, musician or software developer, a deliberately constructed unique or reasonably unique pattern of stimulus intended to convey a contextual meaning to the person observing the outcome. If you spend days, weeks, months, even years working on a book, a piece of art, a symphony, or an application - you have devoted deliberate constructive mental effort to forming these patterns of information. If we indulge your absolutely stupid comparison to making a baby, the difference between a book and a baby is the baby is the product of sex, the outcome itself is completely random based on the genetic material of two partners neither of whom have any control over their specific contribution. A book, however, is a constructed pattern of deliberately chosen linguistic terms which are intended to convey a specific, well formulated meaning. A painting is a constructed pattern of visually differentiable medium which again, are intended to convey a particular visual image. Music is not a randomly constructed mass of notes, it has rhythm, tempo, theme, harmony, melody, etc and is intended to evoke specific auditory responses in the listener. Software, even, is also deliberately, meticulously, line by line written out with the express purpose of causing a specific response by the computer.

How about partner with a large provider of capital who isn't already in the market and wants a share?

Property is ALL about living well - it's about the ability to produce for the long term, as opposed to simple sustenance farming/gathering.

I'm not sure if there's a maximum temperature at which photons can survive or not, but according to my layman's understanding of current Bang theory, in the earliest micromicromicroseconds, even photons may not have existed until the initial inflation of the universe had taken place. There was simply so much energy density in those earliest billionths of a second (if the models are correct) to allow anything to survive. But regardless, this is only furthering my point - we go back and back and then we hit a point where all of our understanding stops - it breaks down and we enter uncertainty land where NOTHING can be definitively known - not even the rules of physical existence. The difference between what I'm saying and what Jacob is saying is - I'm saying "this is theory - we cannot know - pretty much anything is possible beyond this point", while Jacob is saying "the rules still apply" while disregarding the simple fact that the rules themselves say they may not apply beyond a certain point.