DavidOdden

Okay, so first, your argument fails completely because it is based on the unsupported assertion that governmental force is the only way the movie is made possible and, second, you have failed to give evidence that the same argument does not extend to, say, the computer (including hardware and software). The research needed to create modern computers was paid for with governmentally extorted research dollars. Finally, you have failed to give any argument that even if Moore-thinking could only exist as the by-product of government coersion, that this justifies the theft of property from probably millions of people (note that Moore is not the only person who benefits from ticket sales). That is a complete corruption of the concept "theft" -- the kind of logic that the CD/DVD copyright violators use to rationalize their theft. Theft is any violation of the Trader Principle. You have taken a value -- apparently you value this movie, but have given nothing in exchange.

Yes; I think that's the essence of Fred's objection to certainty as a singular state. The emotional and the epistemological integrate at the point of founding that feeling of confidence in rational analysis of the facts. And unfortunately, it is perfectly correct to use the term in both ways. Referring to the emotion with a word such as "confidence" may help keep the concepts separate.

I didn't understand that you were speaking of combinatorics: I understood your claim to be about evidentiary weight. Of course with combinatorics, there is no issue of asymptoting -- the exact value can be computed, and notions of 99.9999% probability are nonsense. Are you now talking about "probability" in the sense of evidentiary weight? To draw on your earlier question -- "asymptotes to what?" -- the what does not have to exist, except as a concept of method. Analogously, infinity does not exist but many mathematical functions continue on "to infinity", of course never reaching it. Yes, in the sense of "confidence", but that test does not require you to use only reason, so for example an irrational fear could prevent you from undertaking an action that a rational person would recognise as beneficial.

You'd have to get around that native-born citizen restriction. Bsides, if you want to vote for a cadaver, vote for Al Gore.

It's funny how your statement is contextually true, relative to the past 10+ years. The internet is to be blamed, esp. the fact that through it any jerkweasel with a modem (old style) could disseminate ignorant lies for mere pennies. Well, that's life. In the old days (old-man mode kicking in....) the way you learned about Ayn Rand was to read what she wrote. That's no longer necessary. Sigh. Do you mean the quasi-rational criticisms, or the whining? As a recent emigrant from the sewer (HPO), I have to say that this place is Galt's Gulch. There really is no troll problem. Not worth mentioning. Okay, annoyances crop up, and they are dealt with very swiftly, effectively and justly. In my opinion, the following is an accurate description of this discussion board's purpose: "This board exists for the purpose of furthering discussion by Objectivists and those who admire Ayn Rand's ideas. Those who disagree with these ideas may of course also post for the purposes of civilized debate and discussion of Objectivism. Any posters who persistently abuse their posting privileges are subject to revocation of these privileges at the discretion of the moderator". These words are not entirely (or even mostly) my own. I understand how it might seem useful to put together a series of statements rebutting various smears of Rand's philosophy, but first, the number of such smears is immense. There is no catalog of anti-Objectivist lies and distortions, and compiling such a list would be of marginal use, IMO. Second, the distortions and misrepresentations do not deserve any attention. I think it would be more persuasive to those who are not fully familiar with Objectivism to simply observe and contrast rational discussion of Objectivism, vs. irrational smears. Rather than investing energy in pre-combatting trolling, it's best to apply the ultimate antidote, namely reason. This board is not a particularly rich resource for irrational smears, but it is very good for rational discussion. So perhaps when a newcomer gains a basic foundation in Objectivism, it might be a good idea to visit smearsville as a tourist.

The reductio ad absurdum, and it is absurd, of your position is that there is no private property, because everything in this modern world of ours has received something beneficial, directly or indirectly, from goverment theft. You pretend that Moore's work is somehow "public property", but you have not identified anything as being uncontaminated private proverty. All modern technology is by this reasoning "public property" -- indeed, Chomsky has used exactly this scurilous argument, that Microsoft uses "public funds" and thus should be taken over by The People. Name it: the steel industry, the Internet (Al Gore, registered trademark), computers, the stock market -- all have in some way had a comingling of "public" funds. To be consistent, one should steal anything that one sees and desires, because everything you see has been somehow touched by the government. The People's righteous vengeance is justified, and you have a right to "liberate" any product that you desire. Can you clearly identify any goods and services that are not the target of your planned program of theft?

Having thought about it, I don't see the argument. Assuming that by "absolute certainty" you mean "certainty with no metaphysical possibility of error", then you can say that such a thing does not exist. And at the same time you can say that your confidence in a proposition can be very high, like 99.9999%, that confidence asymptotes to 100% but can never actually reach 100%. So what is your argument?

There's a difference between "thinking a bad thought" and accepting a bad thought. Knowledge of an evil idea per se is not evil: what is evil is accepting an evil idea. Of course, moral condemnation is a continuum, so actually murdering a person is much wose than hypothetically accepting the idea of murdering a person (which is worse than passingly thinking "I'm gonna kill that idiot if he doesn't stop that"). The distinction between accepting an evil idea vs. actually performing the action is analogous to the threat of force vs. actually using force.

In fact, the US Solicitor General argued in the Supreme Court (in re the detainees at Guantanamo) that "citizenship is a foundation for a relationship between the nation and the individual…". Non-citizens do not have the right to vote (subject to change in California). It is well known that they have limited rights to hold jobs. Non-citizen rights are at will, and easily taken away without fear of a constitutional challenge. Most importantly in this context, they do not have the same rights to a lawyer and can easily be tossed out of the country without a trial. The latter is the relevant concern, and the reason why it is improper to turn an Arab-looking foreigner over to the state on a whim. That's why I cautioned against moving to get these guys improsoned unless he is certain that they do look like the accused al-Qaida members.

What is the value of "proving" that a false assertion is false? Zero. Since you haven't explained what you mean by "certain" (especially -- is certainty attainable by man? What can man be certain of?) your refusal to make a definitive decision about god strikes me as apathy at best, not actual rejection. Of course, if you had denounced the very question of the existence of god as irrational, that would have been a different matter. It's one thing to recognise, as a historical and academic matter, that some people have offered various denials of reality as justification for the position that they are rational beings and yet also believe in god. But your apologetics for the theists seems to go a little bit further than that: you are really not giving enough consideration to the fact that god, as typically defined, is inherently contradictory. The consequence of the standard apologists's view of god -- as "being nature" -- is that god has clear, definite limits. In other words, maybe god is just a large old white male living in a spaceship. Not really god, and mortal. And he never created the universe.

The exact limit on what the government has the right to do is protect the rights of individuals, in this case the child. The government absolutely should not tell you how to raise your child. But it is the nature of government to protect the rights of the individual, and citizens in a civilized society grant that prerogative, of using force to assure rights, to the government. Something that you should note is that the burden of proof is on the grandparents, to establish that the parental dictates are not reasonable. Nothing in what I've said can possibly be construed as supporting an absolute, context-free claim of grandparents on the lives of granchildren. Nope. Can't imagine how you got that from anything I said. The government has the right to protect the rights of the child. Well, I think that rational values are determined based on facts, in other words you can't just say "I wanna" and thus demonstrate that X is something that a rational person should want to keep, given their nature. This is a question that has to be answered in terms of fact -- what fact justifies the specific decision? Irrational spite? The desire to destroy another human? Are you asking, how does someone else determine that a person's values are rational? Really bad analogy. You do recall, don't you, that I said that the child must be willing? We are only talking about the question of when the parent's rights and prerogatives override the rights of the child. If the child says "no", then there is no debate at all. So the better analogy would be consider the heroin junky who wants drug treatment, but their parents refuse to allow it. Or, to be a whole lot less hypothetical, a child with a treatable disease who wants the treatment so that they can survive -- unfortunately, the child was born to Christian Scientist parents who would rather see the child die than allow any unholy medical treatment. When the parents are clearly acting irrationally and are not supporting the life (qua man) of the child. My question to you is, how do you justify the assumption that the parents are the only ones capable of an objective judgment of the interests of the child? What is the special talent that parents have that give them exclusive knowledge of when a minor is being irrational?

So before you go off for a weekend of beach-frolicking, where is this essay?

Certainly not if the minor objects.

Sorry, I admit that I am occasionally evil. That's the Russian word for "citizen". Mea culpa maxima.

When you use the word "certain" as a synonym for "confident", you're right that you can say "I'm (more) certain" or "I'm not so certain". In that case, you're reporting a feeling, and relating it to a point on the continuum of evidence. Where does "certainty" begin for you? I presume (but am not certain) that it's before Peikoff's "no reason to doubt" point. You said earlier "we may consider ourselves certain of them (the evidence is strong and there is no contrary evidence), we don't quite yet fully trust them in all areas". This says that there can be some doubts (specifically: reasons to disbelieve), which given Peikoff's identification is prior to certainty. In your view, what identifies certainty, and distinguishes it from similar concepts like "probability"? Is there a difference between certainty and confidence? Don's point about "action concepts" is on the money: we need to distinguish the states of consciousness where there is a reason to not say "This is a fact", vs. those states where we do not have a reason to be skeptical (given the importance of identifying facts). If "certainty" isn't the correct term for making that distinction, I don't know what is. Of course you can be in the singular state of certainty -- no reason to doubt -- and still have varying amounts of evidence for the conclusion. I think the difference here is in whether you consider "certain" to be about conclusions or people. His complaint in the Attack on Objectivist Epistemology thread was totally off the wall, and nothing more than a complaint about phrasing in her definition of furniture. BTW I am frankly puzzled at the nature of my indecency and ingraciousness which you referred to -- it certainly was not my intent to snub you. I've learned much from reading your posts, and let me take this opportunity on this forum to acknowledge your contributions to my understanding of Objectivism. They are numerous enough that I can't list them (plus, I don't keep lists).

If you're speaking of a child who is irrational then of course the parents have to protect the child from dangerous decisions. But that's a marginal case. The purpose of the court in this case is to recognise the rights that the child has. If the parents' interest -- especially arising from the fact that they are made legally reponsible for the actions of their child -- is truly threatened by allowing grandparents visitation rights, then the court should consider that fact in deciding whether to allow the child the right to act according to his own hierarchy of values. There's a major difference between recognising a child's right to visit grandparents in a relevant context, and automatically, mindlessly granting permission to any grandparent. My support of grandparental visitation is not unconditional. Because allowing the child the right to visit a grandparent does not automatically cause damage to the parents, e.g. does not mean that the child will go out and become an axe murderer. If there is a fact that indicates that allowing this right would endanger the parents, of course the court must deny the child that right. If on the other hand the facts support it, the courts should grant visitation rights in particular if the grandparents represent a rational value. Consider for example a set of Objectivist grandparents whose children have gone bad and are involved in some self-destructive mystical cult, but whose behavior does not support fully terminating parental rights. Regular visits to such grandparents would obviously be quite beneficial to the child. Of course if the child is actually irrational, that is a different matter: but then the courts can make that decision objectively, by considering the facts, and legitimately use that as a basis for denying the child the right to visit with a grandparent.

For your reading pleasure, here is a brief quote from Peikoff's "Fact and Value" If you're interested is the rest of what Peikoff actually said, look here: Peikoff's Fact & Value

It would be clearly wrong if it were over the objections of the parents and the child. Assuming that your question is focused on what's morally right as opposed to legal issues, it is right for the courts to allow a child to visit a grandparent even if both parents object (with the usual caveat that the court has the responsibility to determine that allowing the child to do so will not cause harm to the child). Though if one takes the "child as property" viewpoint, then the child has no rights so of course the parents may do as thei please.

Can you elaborate on that? For example, "malamute" identifies the kind of dog I mean. So the fact of "identifying a type of" isn't primary (given that no doubt you would identify "malamute" as a concept). Are you claiming that just in case more that one units are identified by a transparent (compositional) expression using two or more words in a language, then the express is not a "concept"? And if so, why?

There are at least two concepts, no matter what: "political" and "prisoner". The question is whether anyone could fail to form the concept "political prisoner", when they observe that collocation of words. It's important to understand that people can differ significantly as to the meaning of the concept, thus one person could consider a terrorist to be a political prisoner, so there is a lot of choice in the area of what is identified. Assuming that we're dealing with people who speak English well enough, I don't see how you could avoid forming the concept "political prisoner" in genus / speces fashion by recognising that a political prisoner is a type of prisoner, and that it represents more than one unit (measurement omission is thus satisfied). What kind of fact would indicate to you that a person hadn't formed a single concept from the parts?

In the Soviet days, the word would be "grazhdanin"

There's no strict relationship between words and concepts. Full sentences can represent concepts (example: "Mammals are warm-blooded"), and addition, single words can represent multiple concepts ("boil", "dog" etc.). Also, the word "God" (in the western sense) does not represent a concept at all.

Normally I don't do this, but in this case I feel strongly inspired, having read the post. Read the above post: for a very nice summary of the moral essentials of the employer-employee relationship. Good identifications.

As far as I know, I also hold the "singularity" POV, so while Stephen's the definitive authority on his understanding of the situation, I'm the definitive authority on my understanding of the situation. So I butt in. Also, Spearmint hasn't responded to my subtle and less than subtle requests for clarification about what he thinks certainty is, which bears on this question. To provide the background (and 'cuz as I read over this part a number of times, I can't put it better myself at least when talking to an Objectist), I will quote extensively from OPAR ch. 5, just to provide the basic reference point. Peikoff is speaking of the relationship between a conclusion and evidence (knowledge) supporting the conclusion. The evidential continuum is indeed a continuum, and it encompasses utter ignorance on the low end to certainty on the high end. But certainty is not the same as the evidentiary continuum -- you can't be in any degree "certain" that an arbitrary claim is true. And you dang well shouldn't claim that a merely "possible" claim is to some extent "certain". The singularity / sharpness of certainty comes from this: you are certain when "there is nothing to suggest even the possibility of another interpretation". The defining characteristic of certainty is "lack of reason to disbelieve" (emphasize reason with obvious grounding in observation ergo knowledge). If a reason to disbelieve a conclusion exists, the conclusion is not certain, it is merely "probable" (adjectival expressions like "very highly" could be added -- as you know, I'm not so interested in probable).

I think the question as you posed it really cedes a lot of ground that needs to be kept or abandoned depending on what exactly you're implying. Your first question implies that a person should vote for some candidate for a given office, unless there is a compelling reason to not vote for any candidate. I don't think the existing alternatives have to be actually demonstrably evil (like Hitler or Staline were) in order for a voter to say "I cannot give my sanction to either of these people". Let's put it this way: suppose you were informed that citizens would be required to memorize the philosophy of Karl Marx, or that of Immanuel Kant. Then in what way would making a specific choice betwixt the two be of any value to you? The question really should be, at what point is a candidate so good that you can vote for him? On the second question, there can't be any automatic easy answer. Especially in a massively sub-optimal political context like the present, what I may value isn't necessarily what you will value. That said, in the context of the current realities (in my neighborhood, and who knows about yours) non-voting has only a personal value. The existing choices I'm faced with for state rep, US rep, senator and so on are absolutely Tweedle Dum v. Tweedle Dee. It really does not make one tiny bit of difference, given the candidates, who becomes my next state rep (etc). I really envy Nevada for their choice of explicitly voting "none of the above" (if that option is still available), because that would at least have some potential impact, in terms of getting people to recognise that the mechanical act of voting is meaningless. So I personally can't force myself to vote for the smaller of two sphincters. If there is a candidate that you can actually support and is clearly the lesser of two evils or -- horrors -- even an actually halfway good option, then I would say that that's a value -- something worth keeping or gaining. If not, what is the value of voting?