DavidOdden

There's a problem with your "if" -- employers won't (rationally) hire as many workers as they can afford. Rather, they will employ as few workers as they can to make as much money as possible. The ultimate goal is maximization of profit, not number of employees. If you dump unions from consideration entirely, this becomes easier to conceptualise. The companies ability to pay workers is not static: maybe by paying 20% higher wages, you get 40% higher productivity and correspondingly higher sales (ergo profits). If doubling a worker's pay manages to correspondingly increase their value to the company, the pay hike is no worse and possibly better than hiring twice as many cheaper employees. The issue shouldn't be framed in terms of what you pay per hour under the assumption that all worker output is the same. And you certainly shouldn't assume that workers who are paid at twice the rate give twice the output, though it might happen. Well, an increase in gas prices has not substantially lowered gas consumption, so your assumption doesn't work automatically: you have to have a decrease in demand, not price. Many companies can afford a form of welfare in the form of keeping employees on the payroll beyond the point where they are absolutely necessary this very week. A company engaging in "generous over-employing" would be most likely to engage in larger cuts in workforce. An increase in wages does not necessarily mean a decrease in the number of people employed, since there may be an uncompressible core of employees, i.e. we need at least a pipe-fitter, a welder, an electrician... the nature of the business may well determine that it is not possible, or is at least highly impractical, to cut the number of employees in half. So doubling wages could lead to only a trivial reduction in the size of the work force, the remainder to be paid for by reducing the profit margin.

That depends on what you mean by "abusive". A third and quite valid reason for banning a person is being repeatedly and flagrantly off-topic. There are plenty of places that a person can post anti-Objectivist, pro-communist propaganda. Way too many. What makes this forum extremely attractive is that you actually can have a sustained discussion of Objectivism without having to weed out 95% of the posts that show up because they are New Age nonsense. The problem with the "just ignore it" approach is that once the signal to noise ratio gets too low, it's more efficient to ignore the entire forum (this is the problem with HPO). Knee-jerk banning is not a good idea and an articulate outsider intellignetly challenging the ideas of Objectivism is a good thing: but banning is not an intrinsically bad thing. It can be vital to the healthy continuance of this forum. I don't think it's my place

Since I actually did do so, I'm puzzled why you would think that it is not possible for me to do something that I actually did, almost a month ago. Or are you disagreeing with the statement itself? If so, please explain your basis for rejecting my statement.

I don't think it's totally obvious, and it is a perfectly reasonable question. One fact is that the scenario requires something impossible: the ability to see the future. Moral evaluation is about the choices that a man makes, not about the "final" result of those choices. So if you chose to kill a person, it might be that the person would have otherwise been a hero and saved thousands of lives by inventing a wonder drug, or he might have otherwise been a mass murderer. The morality of your killing the person is not determined by the nature of unrealised, unknown events in the future. In othre words, the ends do not justify the means. You may hope that you won't get caught breaking into the bank, and you might hope that you wouldn't get tracked down and brought to justice, but that desired outcome is not guaranteed. If you recast your scenario not in terms of what does, hypothetically, turn out to happen (making the criminal very lucky), and restate it in terms of his wishes -- "He steals money, wishing that he would not be caught", then the prudent predator scenario does not seem at all "reasonable".

BTW, this is not altruism given Rand's definition of altruism as destruction of value. This is more like non-contractual investment. The "obligation" is optional, but a rational person would recognise the implicit trading nature of such assistance, given the chance that the tables might be turned.

By negotiation. Labor is a commodity just like pork bellies, and when demand is high and supply is low, the cost (wages) goes up. If in some town there are 50 people who know how to perform service X and a demand for 40 of these people, if you can persuade enough of the 50 to temporary not take jobs doing X, the law of supply and demand will result in higher wages. Obviously a far from foolproof system, for myriad reasons. In newly industrialised nations, they can serve as an educational tool, to remind the employer that they want something from the employee and that they have to negotiate. In a modern country like the US with very high wages, there is no benefit.

Water would boil at about 202F in Denver, and 2+2=11 in base 3 math. So it depends what you mean by "all conditions". Speaking in base 3 arithmetic is a bit peculiar, but then being at the altitude of Denver is also a bit peculiar, though less strange. The only profound difference between the two that I see is what kinds of contexts we are dealing with -- mental contexts vs. physical contexts. But it's much easier to mess with the boiling point of water by e.g. adding salt, changing the atmospheric pressure than it is to "mess with" math.

Interruption time: no, these are really not the issues. The issue is whether the state has the right to suppress or promulgate religion. The only non-coersive and thus moral way to prevent fundamentalist educational institutions is to persuade all fundamentalists to abandon their irrational beliefs. As for point 1, there is no issue of evolving. Either people will abandon their silly religious beliefs, or they won't. If they don't, then it is highly likely, given the nature of those beliefs and if there are enough people who accept those beliefs, then they will create a school where the expression f those beliefs in the context of teaching is tolerated, or even required. The way to make sure that religious people don't have an opportunity to teach religion is to make sure that there are no religious people. As for point 2, the answer is simply "No". Standardization means that there should be no variation, and uniformity has no intrinsic value. There are specific things that would almost certainly be of value to anyone considering educating their children, such as teaching them how to read. Objective "standards" would emerge naturally because parents would recognise the value of e.g. reading and math. Whereas instruction in the history of the struggle of the lower classes for social justice would not be a value for more than a small handful of parents. On to points 3, 4: these are for the most part already answered. The teacher's rights and responsibilities are spelled out in an employment agreement between the employee and the employer. There are some details that would probably change from location to location and time to time, as they do already. For example, the rights of the teacher w.r.t. a disruptive child might include the right to whack his ass (or arse), or make him stand in the corner, or perhaps he gets sent to the principal's office. Schools would almost certainly differ in terms of whe way they deal with discipline problems, and this would be one f the bases for picking a particular school (just as right now, parents may send their child to a military academy of the child is badly behaved, or may send the child to some touchy-feely school without walls where intolerance is not tolerated, if the parents are badly behaved). Basically, human rights and responsibilities are already known, and if you want something specific such as a statement that teachers cannot assign homework, or that they must assign homework, then that is a matter for negotiation between the teacher and school on the one hand, and the school and the parent on the other. As well as my high school. The answer is, yes, unless there is a general law that prohibits any corporal punishment. There is nothing special about schools in this respect. Schools properly derive their authority over children from the explicit consent of the parent, and the rights of the school can never exceed the rights of the parent. Since paddling your children is legal in the UK, it would also be legal for a parent to permit schools to paddle the child; whereas if the UK enacts a Swedish-style law that prohibits any corporal punishment, then schools, of course, cannot spank. There are no specific issues regarding health or safety that are not already contianed in basic principles of private law. No specific regulations are required to guarantee that private schools do not deliberately infect children with hoof 'n mouth, because that requirement is already present in tort law. Now then, your questions have been answered. You haven't come up with anything that justifies delaying the full privatization of schools. No further guidelines are needed. Privatizing schools means making education fully a private matter, one governed by the principles of private law.

But you still seem to be conflating "standard" logic and formal logic. The former pertains to a particular set of relations, and the latter pertains to systematizing those relations as formal symbolic rules. The concept of validity pertains not to the specific relations, but to the "formal" aspect, namely "follows the rules". This is why the claim that induction is "not valid" is false. In a formal system that includes inductive generalization, induction is T-preserving. Special conditions can be stipulated so that inductive inferences can be declared "invalid", but that is only because of those stipulations, and not the concept of validity itself. Induction is formally valid, but non-standard (which is a sociological construct). I realize that: but in a formal Objectivist logic, you have to. This is one of the major differences between what constitutes a valid formal proof in "standard" formal logic and Objectivist logic, that "standard" formal logic puts no conditions on what statements can be used in a derivation. Well, it can be faulted on form, though not in the system you are operating under where unsound arguments are allowed as "valid". But more importantly, this highlighting of the "implications" of the major premise is false, because your garden variety FOPL does not highlight the implications of any actual premises. The assertion "All mice are black" actually implies that there exist mice -- at least one. But the standard formalization of that statement does not have that implication. So what a formal deduction is, is a system for deriving new strings of symbols from existing strings of symbols, but these strings of symbols have no necessary relationship to premises in an argument. But what I think deduction does give you is a tool for checking whether you have translated the premises correctly into predicate calculus. It's a pretty fallible tool, though. Also useless since the predicates themself end up being incorrectly treated as atoms. Facts are never "in": they simply "are". Fact refers to metaphysical state of affairs, and we have knowledge of some of these facts. I will henceforth substitute "evidence" which is what I believe you mean. The answer is, never. We are never omniscient, and omniscience is exactly what is required for all of the evidence to be in (known). I take issue with your assertion that new evidence invalidates old knowledge: it cannot (however, new evidence can invalidate a previous conclusion, and new evdence can show that a particular phrasing of your knowledge may be wrong). The main point is that certainty is not the same as "certainty without the metaphysical possibility of error". That is the standard that the skepto-nihilists demand for the concept "certainty", and the reason is that they wish to deny that there is knowledge (by degrading the concept of "knowledge" to "suspicion"). As you presumably know, if you adhere to that standard for certainty (sometimes known, quite confusingly, as epistemic certainty), you cannot be certain of anything at all, including deductive proofs.

Well, perhaps it might not seem that way to you, but keep in mind what "privatizing schools" really means. It means an end to state financial subsidy (plus, of course, booting Clarke out on the street to get a private job). So your caveats would involve increased state interference. While I am as far as a fan of fundamentalist religious education as you could imagine, your proposal to essential outlaw church schools would be a significant increase in state control, relative to what exists. Under current UK educational laws, it is allowed for there to be a divinity school at the University of Durham and by jove there is one. Churches do run schools. What exactly is your proposal, which would not outlaw such schools, and increase state interference? It is not radical Objectivism: garden variety libertarians and very many others even allow the possibility that free people with crazy ideas will be allowed to market those ideas in whatever way is consistent with basic capitalism. Well, I spent 6 months in Durham and did indeed use the trains, so I really don’t know what you mean by “failed abysmally”. I don’t know the details of how the privatization was carried out, but a comparison between education and railways is completely irrelevant, because that are not at all analogous. Privatizing education primary means removing education from the business of education, where they have undue influence. But non-state education exists! Whereas, the privatization of the rails involved a completely new area of business in the country, and it’s not reasonable to expect someone with zero experience in running railways to perfectly take over a new business instantly. BTW, the railways were never privatized in the UK, just as power production was never deregulated in California. It's a common leftist myth. Here's the test question: who owns the East Coast Line? Your only argument seems to be that it is self-evidently absurd to end government financing of schools immediately, and that when schools stop getting money from the government, they will cease to exist. I don’t see why that should be so. The only real question is the pay-back question. You are assuming, but not providing any evidence at all, that the parents have already paid for their children’s education. But that simply isn’t true. The parents have paid taxes which are used for road maintenance, police, medical care, public works projects, council housing, retirement, and all of the myriad other entitlements that people are accustomed to. That’s what the money has gone for. Not education: the money of rich peple is used to pay for education. [At least, this is according to my understanding of the fine-grained accounting details of who paid for what. Possibly there really is no clear record of who paid for what, and it’s bad reasoning to say that since a person has paid taxes, they have an unbounded right to the bounty doled out by the state -- and that right is not to be abridged by evertaking away free education], since they keep paying and if you take away the free education, they are paying for a service that they aren't even getting -- vastly worse than the present system. Suppose for fun I allow a transition period. Exactly how long is the leach entitled to such blood out of citizens? 10 years? 5? Specific details are really important. How about, 3 months?

You seem to be advocating a massive increase on state control over education. Because whereas the main goal of liberating education in the UK would be getting rid of state funding, you are advocating much more invasive control over schools. As far as I know, Catholic church schools are indeed allowed by law to open facilities in Muslim neighborhoods. As for corporate sponsorship, I do indeed want Coke and Pepsi supporting schools. Your comment about syllabi is puzzling but I could imagine that it's the kind of lie that Guardian would tell, that in US schools Coke dictates the syllabus. The point of freedom is that it isn't coercion, and if you find the presence of commercial products such as Coke so distasteful that you cannot stand to send your children to such a school, then you may send your children to a Pepsi school (if it's mere a brand thing) or to a Maoist school if you just want pure PC anti-capitalism. There isn't a single argument for a long drawn out "transition" period. Remember, the dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to melt away into freedom after a "transition period". Transition periods simply allow the dictators to become more firmly entrenched and reorganise their power.

It says a lot about the kind of particle accelerators we must have for brains. A good thunder storm and we ought to be completely insane.

The expression "contextual certainty" is redundant: simply saying "certainty" suffices because the basis of certainty (knowledge) is always contextual (nobody is omniscient: we all have specific knowledge. In addition, statements are true of specific things). The difference between probability and certainty regards a crucial difference in knowledge. If a conclusion is merely "probable", that means that there is a lot of evidence for accepting the conclusion, but there is still some fact that casts doubt on the conclusion. Once you have dealt with that fact that seemed to cast doubt -- and therefore there remains no doubt -- then you are certain. "Certain" and "probable" are related, but they are not the same.

Yes and no. That is, "valid" is defined in terms of formal properties in a derivation, but what these properties are, are not given a priori. Within the realm of "deductive" logics, some derivations are valid in some systems, but not in other systems (hence certain proofs that are valid under garden variety predicate logic as they teach in Logic 101 are not valid for Brouwerians, namely the ones that depend on (AV^A). Inductive generalization is a rule of inference in some logics (esp. nonmonotonic logics) and thus in the sense you are using "valid", induction is valid. The syntactic concept of "valid" that you're thinking of does extend to normal reasoning. When I pointed out to you a short while ago that your notion of validity being restricted to "pure deduction" is circular, this is what I was referring to. From a formal POV, "deduction" simply refers to a specific set of rules of inference or axioms that convey properties about "ands" and "ors" and quantifiers, plus metarules pertaining to allowed and disallowed assumptions. But it is a completely arbitrary stipulation to allow a derivation that asserts a false premise, and disallows the rule of inductive generalization. It is just as natural -- no, more natural -- to requre that all derivations must be founded on true premises -- not false ones, and not arbitrary ones. In fact, that is a fundamental statement of logic in Objectivism: conclusions must be derived by applying logic to true statements -- to knowledge -- and not to false statements or arbitrary statements which are neither true nor false. This delimts what is a valid derivation -- your mouse example is invalid, because not all mice are black nor are all black things blind. So while I'm aware of the existence of types of formal logic that would label such a derivation "valid" and I grant you that this is the most common construal of the concept in academic studies on logic, it is not how ordinary logic works and is also is not the only variety of academic logic on the market. I'm also aware of (and practise) a different formal logic where such a derivation is invalid; and where inductive generalization is a rule of inference, so inductively based proofs are perfectly valid. In fact, they are pretty much the core of what a valid derivation is about. Setting aside the fact that all mice aren't black, you cannot stipulate that statement ex nihilo -- it is not axiomatically true. You cannot arbitrarily introduce an untrue statement and derive anything valid. So you would first have to prove the universally quantified claim, which has to be done inductively.

It does not say that. There are a number of places online where you could read about it, like in Wikipedia.

That would depend on the relevant facts, so there isn't a universal number like "100". A single observation suffices, if the conclusion non-contradictorily integrates with all knowledge. So as I say, what's the problem?

You're compressing too many problems into that objection. First, there is the question of parental responsibility: what obligation -- and rights -- does a parent have to prepare a child for a particular future? Should the parent have to pay for a university education -- all the way through graduate school? Are A-levels really necessary? Suppose Little Timmy has the potential to be a world-class concert pianist, but he needs extensive training to realize that potential. Do his parents have a responsibility to pay for this education? Fortunately for the child, generous benefactors often donate large sums of money to conservatories to support educating such truly gifted children. Second, voluntary charity would also be widely available for the truly mediocre child who has the terrible misfortune of being born to parents who have no interest at all in providing an education for their child. Since you see it as being in your own self-interest to make sure that the masses have at least some level of education, aren't you willing to translate that interest into charitable contributions? There may well be some irreducible core of irresponsible parents who just aren't willing to lift a finger for the benefit of their children's development, but that hardly justifies a massive coersive state bureaucracy to make sure that absolutely nobody falls through the cracks (especially since it doesn't make sure that absolutely nobody falls through the cracks). And third, education is vastly over-rated. It is not necessary to put kids in 12 year long day care to teach them "the basics". You do not need a Ph D in Art History to be a clerk at the local Sainsbury's and advanced mathematic is not necessary to learn how to draw a proper pint. Nor do you need a formal education to appreciate good art or bad politics.

The point that you are missing is that deductive logic cannot be logically validated, in the unempirical fashion you have in mind. What constitutes "valid deductive logic" is determined by fiat (which is why there is a difference between Brouwerians and non-Brouwerians). Nothing in stipulative systems precludes a logic from including universal generalization as a valid rule of inferrence, just as nothing forces the Law of the Excluded Middle to be included.

If you were to explain exactly what you mean by "logical validity", I think you would discover that what you're thinking of is a stipulated circularity. Induction is a valid form of reasoning (and logic is the method of reasoning). I understand that isn't what you mean by "logically valid", but once you say exactly what you do mean, you'll probably discover that by "logically valid", you mean so-called deductive derivations. But that stipulates that inductive generalization is not "logically valid": deduction is simply logic minus induction, so the conclusion that induction is not "logically valid" is a classical example of question begging. Empirical considerations are valid in this argument, except insofar as you try to define a system of logic that precludes using facts. So in fact the "problem of induction" is, simply, that there is no problem.

"Economic system" refers to a specific aspect of a political system, the part that pertains to production of wealth. The right to criticise the government, for example is a not an economical question, but it is a political one. The right to sell beer is an economic one. The concepts are in the genus / species relationship.

Is this a matter that is up for a vote? Or just a Metro edict? (I strongly suspect the latter). I can't get a straight story and inquiring minds who aren't there anymore want to know.

This question actually confuses me, strangely enough. The answer is "obviously yes", so maybe I don't understand the implications of your question, or maybe this really is the "What should I do?" question. If you have a copy of "Philosophy: Who Needs It" you should look at the essay "What can one do?". Speaking very broadly, you should try to engage others in rational discussion. Exactly how to do that depends on your particular circumstances, but surely you interact with other humans and some of the time they say stupid things like "It would be better if those big heartless companies would just give a decent nonexplotive living wage to their workers". Rather than silently thinking "God, why do I even bother to know these people?", you should say something. The secret is, most people who babble these kinds of leftist platitudes don't actually believe this nonsense, they are just looking for a warm, fuzzy pat on the back and some psychological reinforcement. You can do miraculous things by simply gently opposing such nonsense, forcing them to check their assumptions. Nobody actually likes that nonsense, so it can be a positive thing to let them know that The Standard Nonsense is not believed by all. Now, to directly answer your question: don't use a shotgun to force people to talk to you.

I wish you were right, but I'm willing to bet that it would survive a court challenge ($100: I'm serious). There is actually a state law that requires the county to engage in this silliness / arbitrariness. My reading of the changes in the existing ordinances is that it is essentially incomprehensible, but not vague (for example, the definition of Category IV wetlands is hard to parse and it does require reference to governmentally dictated lists which are subject to change; but it doesn't seem vague). I don't know if there have been any successful legal challenges to zoning ordinances and the like, but a similar legal challenge by property owners in Snohomish county (just to the north) failed many moons ago, the result being that we essentially lost property via these "wetlands preservation" ordinances that prevented any use of the land. Still have to pay the damn taxes, though.

Since politicians speak of freedom from hunger (welfare), freedom of education (state supported education), freedom of expression (governmentally subsidised outlets for art) and freedom to take a vacation in a national part (more taxpayer subsidies), I think politicians use "freedom" to mean "coersively supported entitlement"). And of course there is freedom from sexual harassment, freedom from fear of being gunned down (aka gun control). Lord save me from all these freedoms. I don't think you'll find "liberty" used in the same kinds of extreme concept-twisting perversions. But more to the point, the meanings of "freedom" and "liberty" are not to be determined by the propaganda-mongers who inform us that freedom is slavery. Freedom and liberty refer to the same thing, and differ only in their etymological source.

Pick a conservative; it doesn't matter who, just find one. Rush Limbaugh, Brent Bozell, Ronald Reagan, whatever. Buckley is one of them. His main interest is being a Catholic. He is rather smart and has a sharp tongue, which is is main claim to fame. Some people out there claim he was "victorious" over Objectivism; at any rate, he was thoroughly anti-Objectivist.