DavidOdden

I think you're forgetting that grammar is boring and neo-postmodernist deconstructionist critical theory is oh so much more interesting (cough), so there aren't any teachers left who know this stuff. This actually got started 30+ years ago with stream of consciousness writing, when the multiculturo-diversitologists were still... hmmm, undergraduates, first learning to become multiculturo-diversitologists.

I don't see how the difference between knowledge and sensation is in any way minor. Experiences certainly exist, but that doesn't make them knowledge. We can know any experiences (specifically, "know the nature of") but we cannot experience experiences other than our own. Snakes, leeches and copepods have nervous systems so they sense things, but they don't know things. There are huge numbers of things that are unexperienceable, and I have never seen anyone claim otherwise. The fundamental question is whether there are limits on knowledge. Unknowable and unexperienceable only have in common the word-parts un-, -able, and the fact that they are rooted in the brain.

French humor and conditional logic all in one -- that was brilliant. My hat is doffed in thy general direction, sirrah or madamah, as the case may be.

Mr. Who? Jeez, I gotta get a new rep. Also, I should brush up on this epsitemology stuff

If you're gonna raise such questions, I feel licensed to up the ante . Do you know anything about the Carvaka philosophers? I got the impression that they had at least some fundamentals in common with Objectivism.

I'd agree to something even stronger: I cannot access the experiences of my twin brother just by observing his actions. What is experienced by my twin is different from what is experienced by me, even under the exact same conditions. That's a fundamental difference. Comparing conceptual knowledge and experiences, even experiences of other humans, is even more fundamental, so unsurprisingly you'll get a higher degree of fundamentalism in the difference between what a human experiences and what a bat experiences. Saying that someone "knows what it's like to be deaf" does not mean that they are deaf. It mean like, as in "approximately". By observing bat-facts closely enough, we may be able to devise an apparatus that simulates what the bat experiences, giving us something like what the bat experiences, even though it is not identical to what the bat experiences. For a less sci-fi analog, you can experience what it's like, visually, to be exposed to about 60 years of high-density ultra-violet B, using certain somewhat brownish lenses. Like, but not the same as.

An interesting argument, but I don't quite see how this is supposed to be applied. Let's take an example. Article 1 section 1 states "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives". This means that there is legislative power invested in the Congress, and that they can pass laws. If the 10th amendment is to be read as stating that no laws can be passed except as are already contained in the Constitution itself, then of course Congress would have no power to pass any legislation. That would be an interesting result of such an interpretation of the 10th, but (from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constit...ment10/01.html) 'this provision was not conceived to be a yardstick for measuring the powers granted to the Federal Government or reserved to the States was firmly settled by the refusal of both Houses of Congress to insert the word ''expressly'' before the word ''delegated,'' ', ref. to Annals of Congress 767-68 (1789). Section 8, clause 1 grants Congress the power to tax, and to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". (Boy did that go wrong). Clause 3 lets them regulate interstate commerce (I'm not aware of the US government intruding on the business practices of any company or individual who conducts business entirely withing one state -- if there is any such company or individual: but of course it's really hard to keep track of all of their rights-violations in the economic sphere). Thus anti-trust and "general welfare" laws -- anti-drug, anti-porn, you name it -- are within the scope of the powers delegated to the US government. As SV Watson pointed out, until you get rid of the commerce clauses and the general welfare clauses, there's no point in arguing constitutionality.

No, it isn't a prposition at all. No knowledge can render it true, and no knowledge can render it false. For it to actually have a truth value, it would have to be an assertion, not a question. This does not mean that questions are automatically invalid; but the counterpart of invalidity for questions is where the question cannot reasonably result in a true or false statement.

And earlier you said: I'll leave aside the question of gun laws because there actually is an explicit statement about the right to bear arms. But there is nothing in the constitution that prohibits the government from acting to "promote the general welfare state" or words like that, and nothing in the constitution says that the government can't outlaw drugs and pour huge amounts of money into said war. There aren't amendments to allow this because -- and this is the key problem -- it is not required that the constitution directly and explicitly sanction whatever the government does. So indeed 90% of the laws on the books are clearly wrong, but constitutional anyhow. There aren't very many explicit limits on what the government can do except for certain things like outlawing criticism, willy-nilly seizure of property by the government (as distinct from systematic seizure in mid-April). This problem with drug laws and anti-trust and so on stems from the fact that the Constitution starts from the position of giving absolute power to the state -- in a prescribed manner -- and only retreats from that slowly, as when an amendment is added declaring that the government cannot prevent you from criticising it, and cannot torture you to death. The cure, as you note, is to make it not just harder to pass new laws, but to make it impossible to pass certain kinds of laws (such as anti-trust laws, coercive taxation laws, the draft...). Simply articulate what the proper function of of government is, and prohibit the government from acting in any fashion except as it is in accordance with that purpose. I don't know why you think that political appointees as judges makes things worse. What do you have in mind as an alternative? That the judiciary be directly elected? We do that in Ohio and lemme tell you that it's not the greatest system either. Having SCOTUS be filled with elected hacks would make things worse, not better. The problem with judges is not that they are appointed, but that have bad philosophies.

It seems to me the problem here stems from talking about "knowing experiences". I have experiences, and if I were in cognitive scientist mode I might (wish to) know the cause and consequence of a particular experience, but I don't know what it would mean for me to "know" my own experiences, much less that of a bat. You can know that the object which the bat detects is a moth: but the bat does not know that it detects a moth (because bats don't know anything). You can know how they detect the moth (sonar) and eventually may know the auditory-neural mechanisms that enable the bat to detect a moth. Eventually you may even be able to directly experience something akin to what the bat experiences; but you of course you cannot experience it as a bat and "know" that experience, because you'd have to be a bat, and bats do not know (and you're not a bat). Dave Odden

I'm not a lawyer but I have a passing (and increasing) interest in law, so I'll hope that you have something to say if and when I post some of those burning questions about Objectivist legal theory. It seems that SV Watson is a lawyer; Charles Novins might maybe migrate here. Dave Odden

In both cases, you have a choice. For the French businessman, the choices are (non-exhaustively) to emigrate to a freer nation where their right to work without such a restriction is respected; or to honestly and openly defy the law and take the consequences in the (probably misguided) hope of a Rearden / Roark type trial, leading to a change in the law; or they can protest the law, perhaps challenging it in court. One other thing they can do is obey the law, and simply stop producing after 35 hours a week. The latter is not capitulation, it is delaying gratification. A law that says that a man should not work more that 35 hours a week ignores reality (that not everybody enjoys a 10 hour a day schedule of partying, going to the opera, and sniffing aromatic cheeses; and, that the cool stuff of life does not appear magically, you have to work for it). It might take a while -- decades, I would assume -- but such work limits will eventually suck the life out of France and any nation with laws like that. This will obviously feed into the first-mentioned right to emigrate. As for abortion, this simply requires that you go to Canada (if Roe v. Wade is negated) or England (for the Irish), one of those somewhat freer nations at least as far as this one point is concerned. The bottom line with any law is that it has consequences (duh!), and violating the law is an attempt to evade the reality of that law. People should be made to suffer for their actions, and that would include the action of empowering control-freak Relaxation Nazis to legislate how many hours a week you can work. The formation of the EU is a recent example of people evading reality on a mass scale and volunteering for slavery. Dave Odden

What does that follow from? The fact that he should obey the law even though the law is wrong in no way entails that you should turn him in to the state. Such an action does not rationally benefit your life, so why would you do it?

I am basically sympathetic to this position as a statement of fact, also your earlier statement However I want to raise the objection that the law should not be a suicide pact. I raise and discard the (imaginable) objection that a law prohibiting a law-abiding person from entering the US is wrong. There are many things that are wrong about how the government restricts our lives, so unless you reject all laws, you have to live with the possibility of a wrong law. The vast majority of illegal immigrants seek a life better than is possible under whatever government and economic system they are subject to, so my objection only applies to a very few cases, given the general immigration policy of the US when it comes to refugees from dictatorships. The problem with strict obedience to the law for all immigration cases is that it may entail suicide. I assume you do not argue for strict obedience to the law if obedience entails death, as when a person is trying to escape from a murderous dictatorship such as exists in North Korea, Cuba, Iran or Zimbabwe. Thanks to the rational policy in the US of generally granting asylum to refugees from these worst of nations, we do not typically legally require suicide by law (I can't say that I know for a fact that we have a decent policy when it comes to Zimbabwe). But since the US government does not always correct recognise the nature of murderous dictatorships (for example, Iran under the Shah), it will not necessarily extend the protection to an immigrant which it should. I argue that just in case the choice is actual death, vs. violating a wrong law, that it is not wrong for one to violate the law. Dave Odden

I suggest that you rethink that idea a bit more critically. Given that the universe is "the totality of what is", the implication of "a universe in a grain of sand" is a contradiction because it implies that "everything" can be contained in something that is only a part of everything. It's also pretty easy to show that the solar system is not one millimeter of thread: pick up any object 1 mm or larger and you can see that it isn't the same size as the whole solar system. Okay, maybe you didn't mean that literally, but your statement is kind of confusing since then I don't know what you did mean. Perhaps simply that there is great complexity to the universe at all scales? Zooming in on a grain of sand and revealing a complex solar system contained therein makes for great special effects, but in reality, there isn't enough mass in a grain of sand to have sustained nuclear fusion. Whether or not one finds the universe-in-sand idea to be cool, the important question is, is it real? The answer is, no. Especially for someone with an interest in physics, I would urge you to concentrate on what actually is. Why does this make sense to you? Which part makes sense to you? I'm perfectly willing to imagine that there are sentient beings in some other solar system, although that is purely imaginary. But there is, in my opinion, not the least smattering of evidence for any such outer space aliens (much less aliens who can communicate with humans, even much less so ones with the knowledge of some terrible secret of the universe that drives man insane to year it). Imagination is a great thing; but you shouldn't let it overpower reason. I suspect you don't really believe in space aliens who come to earth and drive men mad by revealing the answer to the fundamental question. If you really do, would you care to justify that belief here? If not, what was that statement intended to stand in for -- something that you actually believe? The answer to the fundamental question, btw, is "Existence exists". Dave Odden

The most important change that might affect your thinking would be to have a closer relationship between words and concepts. Since language changes, words tend to refer to more than one thing and you have to figure out which thing somebody is referring to when they are talking (this may slow you down). This makes very little difference to your own thinking since you probably aren't confused about what sense of "file" you meant when you said "I can't find that new file", but it matters for understanding other people (and misunderstandings are a monumental waste of time). Word ambiguity isn't something that you can effectively change, and even if you invent new words for the four senses of "file", in a year somebody will metaphorically mutilate some other word. I think that what you do with the language is more important. Speak literally, if your purpose is to communicate an idea (via non-fiction -- being non-literal is perfectly fine for art).

This isn't a substantive post: I just thought I'd give a try at saying hi (hey Don, Betsy, Stephen). I'm thinking of a permanent change of address where the signal to noise ratio is higher. Dave Odden