KurtColville
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Posts posted by KurtColville
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Is there a Latin name for the logical fallacy "Argumentun ad Closest Label Forces the Acceptance of Non-Shared Beliefs"?
It's pretty much a straw man. Close or distant, the essentials of the actual category and the labelled category clash.
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Actually the contents of this thread support Peikoff's claim that religion is the largest threat in politics today. Religion is not legitimate a foundation of capitalism; it is a logical foundation for statism though.
Yet, the driving force behind the nationalization of oil is egalitarianism (to bring down "greedy Big Oil") and environmentalism (to bring down man the user of natural resources), both more prominent hallmarks of the Left rather than the Right. Religion certainly is a logical foundation for statism, but only insofar as its tenets are consistently defended and put into action. Ideas don't implement themselves; it takes minds consistently adhering to them. The Right does not consistently put Christianity into political action, and is, in general, intellectually bankrupt, leaving the Left a vacuum which it is happy to fill with class warfare and scaremongering. Observe that the Right grudgingly offers for its Presidential nominee a man who, by its own standards, isn't nearly religious enough, and who infuriates most Christians by his unwillingness to give Christianity political legs and who threatened to jump to the Democratic Party just four years ago. The Left, on the other hand, offers a man who surprises even them with his passion for statism.
Religion may be a potent basis for statism, but it is not the only basis, and in America, Christianity is the dominant religion, and one which is so pragmatic and conflicted that it has no capacity to become the de facto force behind American fascism in the forseeable future. If you really want to worry about something, worry about the statist Left, Islam, and the pragmatic/anti-intellectual state of the culture.
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I have heard one horrifying phrase repeated over and over again by pundits and politicians debating oil nationalization: an issue of national security. They are trying to sell Americans on the idea that oil is something that is so basic to their needs that any threat to the affordability of oil is a matter of national security. That is the first cry on the road to fascism.
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For those of you who haven't read Apology, Crito, or Phaedo, to make a long story short Socrates could have avoided his death sentence but instead refused escape and willingly drank the poison hemlock, the method of his execution. He justified this, more or less, by saying that he had agreed to stand up for and live by the laws of Athens, and that it would be unseemly for him to try to run way when they no longer went in his favor. Thoughts? Could the death of Socrates be a demonstration on how the "social contract" justification for being law-abiding can be anti-life?
Absolutely. By abiding their death sentence, Socrates held compliance with the law to be a primary virtue, completely detached from the concept of justice. He failed to recognize that the law is not a primary, a list of rules to be obeyed blindly, but rather exists to codify the moral way to deal with a certain range of actions that involve a violation of one's rights. One cannot value life by putting it in the hands of arbitrary law.
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No, I can't, because Iraq wasn't a legitimate threat. Would it have been okay to attack Germany before WWI simply because it would eventually become Nazi Germany during WWII?
Saddam had developed, acquired, and used chemical and biological weapons, and lied to the civilized world about their existence. Upon agreeing to kid gloves terms ending the Gulf War, he immediately and substantially violated those terms, flying in No-Fly Zones, obstructing international inspectors, locking radar on and firing at our patrolling aircraft, stalling the release of prisoners of war, and on and on. He attempted to assassinate President G.H. Bush. He gave sanctuary to terrorists fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan. He set up a terrorist training camp near Baghdad. He rewarded families of jihadists with large sums of money. And more.
Each of these actions were acts of war aimed directly at the US. Iraq wasn't the biggest threat, but it definitely was a legitimate one.
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Strange. If Kant never argues for the existence of duties, then why does he talk about them at all to begin with? Your instructor unintentionally implies that he is begging the question:
In other words, he is arguing based on an assumption. Why does your instructor view Kant as the greatest philosopher ever, if he places the most important parts of his system in a logical fallacy? People cannot act on an arbitrary "If".
I expect that Kant uses this tactic all over the place, but this just screams that he views his philosophy as a way to trick people into assigning validity to the arbitrary. He's counting on people omitting the question, "Is it true?"
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Thats not self defense, that is revenge.
If you really care to examine the ideas in Objectivism, I'll echo others and say read Ayn Rand. Given your comments, I'd say an excellent start would be "The Virtue of Selfishness" or go straight to "Atlas Shrugged". There you'll find all your objections answered, but more importantly, you'll find the right ideas presented. If you're just on here to be a contrarian, you'll find that the better minds will not deal with you.
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In this context it is relevant. It IS over-responding to do ANYTHING to a nation simply because it does some evil things. If our national security was involved, either because they made a direct threat or threatened one of our genuine allies, then it's not over responding.
It is also proper for a free nation to conquer and annex a slave pen, like Cuba, if the free nation's aim is to extend the protection of its citizens rights to the new land. Everyone wins. The citizens of the free nation now have more land to exercise their rights on and the citizens of the slave pen are now free. The key principle is, the decision to conquer an authoritarian state that is not a direct threat to you rests on whether it is in the free nation's rational self-interest, which means an extension of every citizen's rights to the new land.
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No, Mike hasn't ignored a fact of reality. Instead, Mike has chosen to give up his own right not to be sacrificed. Rights are two way streets - you must extend to others the same rights you require for yourself.
You may have meant it this way, but just a clarification: rights must be uniform. All men have the same rights, except for those men who have violated them. If you "require" fewer rights than others, that does not make it moral to violate certain rights of others that you regard as dispensible; likewise with you "requiring" more "rights" for yourself than you are entitled, like a job, healthcare, etc. Rights are objective, not subjective.
Well, not exactly. Because man is not omniscient, he may unwittingly act against a fact of reality, yet still act rationally. He may act on his best possible judgment and end up contradicting reality (such as a failed experiment, eating unhealthy food that you had every reason to believe was healthy, etc.). To act against one's reason is to act irrationally. Reality will tell you if need to add more data to your reason.To act against a fact of reality is to act irrationally, which man has the volitional ability to do. -
Does anybody have a reponse to his "problem" with Ayn Rand?
Philosophy is not "about thinking anew about difficult concepts". It is the study of the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. If reaching "substantive philosophical conclusions" is impossible, then philosophy serves no purpose. Why examine the nature of the world around you if you can never actually know anything about it, nevermind the contradiction of asserting that philosophy entails never reaching substantive philosophical conclusions.
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Yes. And then is there some moral principle that could be derived from this? And then is there some political principle that can be derived from that?
And in reality is there any possible benefit one could derive from murdering another?
Let us even say that by murdering someone you could acquire $40 million. Considering how you acquired that money, would it be of any value to you?
If you are rational, nothing can be a value to you if you obtain it by immoral means.
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See, your going in circles. Do you understand the value of a life?
The fact that someone in Tehran who's spent the past 15 years supporting their family just to see there kids go to college have their lives comepletly destroyed.
What about all the fucking children there for Christ's sake?
The only americans dying their are soildier fighting a fool's war for foolish causes.
Why dont you them in ways that dont lose lives, or at least not as many. Military outposts, nation treasure (maybe some... I dont know national park or something)
Nuke the outskirts of a town just to show them that you could.
The death of innocents is not on the hands of a nation retaliating in self-defense, but on the aggressor that made the retaliation necessary. Too bad for the innocents. I don't regard the majority of Iranians as all that innocent when, through active support or indifference, they propped up their Islamic dictatorship that threatens the West with annihilation. Even the handful of innocent Iranians would be immoral to hold their lives as a claim against Americans defending themselves. We are morally right to wipe them out, and I would nuke them out of existence and then nuke the craters.
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Neither lol. I come here for respite and to associsate with others who share my values - not have to exhaust more time and effort explaining them
Well, you don't have to answer them; you can ignore their posts, exhausting none of your time or effort. Even though "israel" should read Miss Rand's work, so he can get the philosophy straight from the source, I can sympathize with someone who asks questions which answers seem obvious to knowledgeable Objectivists. Because Miss Rand wrote with such an emphasis on abstract concepts, so that people could see the principles and not just a sampling of concretes, and because people typically have difficulty applying abstractions to concretes, it's understandable that novices would need additional explanation.
Remember, even though these ideas are consistent with reality, they are radical ideas. Most of man's history has run on ideas antithetical to Objectivism, and most people get their ideas from the culture around them, and our culture is plenty irrational. People demonstrating a genuine interest in examining these radical ideas, which a typically represent a serious threat to the comfort zone they've carved out for themselves, deserve a little leeway in sorting things out. If someone gets sick of explaining the errors in God or collectivism or taxation or abortion for the umpteenth time, the best thing is to leave it to those willing to spend time on it.
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By definition, magic is the creation of an effect by supernatural means. The physical phenomena you name might be regarded as magic by savages, but it isn't magic, it's man harnessing the forces of nature. Similarly, if aliens landed and showed us unimaginably advanced technology, we would be wrong to label it "magic". Only a society that accepts the notion of the supernatural (and of man controlling the supernatural) accepts the notion of magic.Magic and the like do have basis in reality, they are real effects and observations with explanations exaggerated way out of proportion and extraneous nonsense mixed in. Magic is not made out of whole cloth, Kane: how would you, for instance, explain magnetic attraction and repulsion if you didn't have the benefit of the modern scientific mindset? Sympathetic vibration? Catalysis? Disinfection by heat and chemical? Modernity began when people started to think for themselves and examined the allegations made by magicians, alchemists, and astrologers. Some of them were themselves magicians, alchemists , and astrologers - men such as Galen, Geber, Kepler, and Newton. From their work, originating in analysis of the "magical", we now have physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, mathematics. Carl Sagan described Kepler as one of the first modern astronomers and last scientific astrologers, because he set the scene for the identification of astrology as bogus. What Clarke pointed out that some people's grips on reality may not be as strong as they should be and so these people regress to magical explanations when exposed to the sufficiently perplexing, being reverse-Kepleresque as it were - after all, that's how the idea of magic got started in the first place.JJM
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He's probably my favorite current actor. His roles are typically strong, reserved, confident men. He demonstrates a real passion for scientific and military heroes. My favorite role of his is as astronaut Ken Mattingly in "Apollo 13". He is one of very few out actors there with the ability to portray John Galt. His body language, manner, expression, and tone say quietly and certainly, "Can do." Gary is awesome.
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Welcome to the forum, Justas, and congratulations on discovering Ayn Rand. Rush was how I learned about her, too! They're still my favorite band.
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I used to be really gung-ho about using the Socratic Method, asking questions to get people to check their premises. In informal discussions, I still think it's the best way to guide someone's comprehension. But over time, I discovered that people used it as a weapon of skepticism. My question would be returned with one non sequitur, evasion, and blank out after another. I would think, "I'm not getting anywhere with this approach. I'm not getting my point across, because they're not willing to do their share of the work. They're not willing to think." Unless I can tell that the other person is honest and really interested in ideas, I tend to shelve the Socratic Method and state my position in clear, everyday language. It doesn't guarantee comprehension any more than the Socratic Method, but at least this way, the right position gets stated, as opposed to having to be discovered. If they're open to any intellectual investigation, they will be asking the question, "Is what this guy says true?" versus "Is what I think true?"
It's disappointing, because I would much rather guide people to discover the right ideas and see them identify the contradictions, rather than me just laying it out, but once I saw how prevalent premise-checking was turned into a vehicle for intellectual dishonesty, I had to take a different tack.
If you have frequent success with the Socratic Method, I tip my cap to you. You are definitely doing something right and talking to the right people!
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Any King Crimson fans on here?
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Regarding EC's ["Planck"] and eriatarka's posts, I wasn't aware that Dr. Smolin held those positions. Those are awful. I guess I really need to read the book now, to see just where he is. After reading reading through eriatarka's link, I came back to the thought that physicists could make a great start toward clearing up all their problems by recognizing the simple fact that the universe is the sum of everything that exists. If they want to talk about different, seemingly inaccessible regions of space, create another word; "universe" is taken.
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I'll echo Thales' comment. My understanding is that we're in the relative beginning of the warming part of a 15,000-year cycle, driven primarily by small, long-term variations in solar radiation. The amount of average temperature variation this produces on Earth over one cycle is only a few degrees. That's enough to affect considerable climate change over 15,000 years (ice ages), but it's nothing over the 50-100 years that everyone on our planet is in a panic over. Add to that the laughably small amount of man-made emissions compared to what is required to produce significant atmospheric change, and you've got an idea of just what a man-hating hoax global warming is. I went ahead and voted for the "no unusual change" option, since the current climatological changes aren't unusual.
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Anyone interested in String Theory should read Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics.
I have only an undergraduate knowledge of physics, but I've always been bugged by some of the ideas and methods of string theorists. Smolin's book is a great case against String Theory and the process by which it was constructed. The stories of his personal interactions with some string theorists reminded of some of Ayn Rand's comments about irrational trends in Physics (I wish I could remember where she discussed this).
Jake, it's very gratifying to see Dr. Smolin recognized for his excellent work, especially on an Objectivist board. I had the privilege of studying under Dr. Smolin as a Physics major at Syracuse University. He is brilliant -- borderline genius. I didn't fully appreciate how truly insightful he was then, but over time I have gleaned some measure of just how much nonsense he has had to filter out from his colleagues who peddle non-locality, multiple universes, string/M theory, and the rest of the menagerie of modern physics. His commitment to describing the laws of nature objectively, without falling for the customary temptation to impose fanciful schemes or "elegant mathematics" on reality, is tremendous. I haven't read "The Trouble With Physics" yet (I aim to soon), but I've heard from very reputable physicists that it is excellent. Kudos to you for citing it!
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And he doesn't even mean he's actually blank. He'd happily keep Objectivists off his screen. Reason and morality stand no chance of being incorporated into his programming. He just says stuff like this so that he sounds "inclusive" and like someone with whom people can "find common ground", because after all, that's what America today is all about. And he wants to feel this way about himself. So he will dance for the Left and dance for the Right, and measure and calculate the passions of the electorate, and sweep contradictions and scandals under the rug with a shrug and a grin and an empty slogan and a rationalization packaged in modern skepticism, pragmatism, and emotionalism. And he'll get away with it, too, because Americans don't care to think.
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Well, you're most welcome.
I'm glad to hear that it's helped. Hopefully, getting matters like this clarified in principles will act as a springboard for an even greater grasp of Objectivism. It sure did for me, when I was first learning it, and still does! -
I am curious though, what about outbreaks of disease? In order to contain the disease, how would we deal with such an outbreak? Would the government be in charge of quarantines? What about vaccinations to prevent an outbreak of the disease?
I'm assuming that the government, in its interest in protecting peoples rights would quarantine the infected population.
If someone carries a contagious disease that poses an imminent and significant threat to others, that is a violation of their rights, and the government is right to quarantine them. But a distinction must be made between relatively harmless contagions and severely harmful ones. Someone carrying the common cold does not represent an objective, imminent threat against the general public. Catching a cold from someone does not constitute a violation of your rights (in most cases, it would be hard to identify the source, anyway).
Vaccinations are the responsibility of individuals, not government. If a disease breaks out, and quarantine is either impossible or improper or too late, it's up to individuals to vaccinate themselves, as their health is their responsibility alone. The government's role in a disease outbreak is to administer legal justice, just as it is in any circumstance.
Need some advice for an argument (about Environmentalism)
in Questions about Objectivism
Posted
Not to sound cynical, but I think you're wasting your time trying to persuade this bureaucrat. Nonetheless, for the benefit of your own thinking, I'll offer the following thoughts:
- Government has no role in altering market directions. Government's role is to preserve the freedom (ultimately, rights) that makes a market possible. Individuals alone have the right to respond to market actions, not government.
- If businesses somehow violate an individual's rights with pollution or some other sort of emission, it is up to the individual to take that business to court, and it is up to the government to establish objective laws to protect all individuals rights, including both protection from harmful pollution and from garbage lawsuits in the name of "the environment."
- The government has no place offering an opinion, much less taking action, on undesirable directions in the economy (the market). If the market responds "too late" to some commercial trend, those individuals who responded too late will suffer the consequences, as they should. But the bureaucrat wants you to think that the consequences are somehow unfair, and that it's he and other bureaucrats that must step in and bar other individuals from dealing with each other voluntarily.
- Whether or not companies care about carbon emissions is not for him to determine. His only proper concern is the protection of rights.
I should add, because it's worth a lot to one's own epistemology, that even though one often encounters people like this bureaucrat who won't listen to reason, one is bound to run into someone who will. For that reason, and for one's own edification, it's worth getting one's thoughts straight.