Pokarrin

Perhaps I interpreted point 16 incorrectly; did you mean, for instance, that if someone stole or defrauded me out of $10.00, he would then be liable, not only for returning the money he stole, but also subject to a $10.00 fine? I would be entirely happy with that, as it would be objective, proportional, and deterrent. I still worry that this wording seems to give government too much license to intrude into the private lives of business owners, even to the extent of resorting to entrapment. I would like to see something similar to a 'probable cause' provision restricting the ability of government to perform unreasonable searches of private property. I will concede this point, so long as it is understood that anyone who uses force for any reason must be prepared to stand trial and justify his actions as both rational and intended to prevent injustice. Perhaps you could add 'rational' or 'rational act' to your list of definitions, as that would likely be a point of contention in justice proceedings.

I would reword item 13 to read something along the lines of: "The proper function of government is to...". As it is, it sounds too authoritative, as if the government's job is to intrude into every aspect of a person's (or a business') life and regulate everything for the common good. While it's obvious that's not what you mean, I can promise that's how many would choose to interpret it. Come to think of it, it might be better also to explicitly state that government can only act to prevent or correct an Injustice upon receipt of a complaint and compelling evidence that said Injustice has been or is about to be committed. I see a potential contradiction between items 14 and 15; I might qualify item 14 to mean a person may use force to prevent an Injustice only when it is not reasonably practicable (for instance, an immediate danger to life, health, or property) to contact law enforcement in order to prevent the injustice. I don't like the implication in item 16 that correcting an Injustice results in a loss to the perpetrator of no more than was originally gained; this results in the risk of theft being worth the potential benefit, because, even if 90% of thefts are prosecuted, an average thief will still gain 10% of what he stole. A better system, in my opinion, would be to impose an additional penalty for each type of crime, the amount or severity of the penalty to be determined according to the cost to the government of investigating and prosecuting the crime, as well as the severity of the crime itself.

About seven years ago, my girlfriend and I were both active duty military. We had been dating for approximately one year, and she got orders for a one-year tour in Korea. At that point, neither of us was sure we wanted to do anything permanent, so we decided that we would keep in contact, but have no further obligation to one another. We both found (in my case, manufactured) ample opportunity for romance outside of our relationship, but neither of us found ourselves particularly interested. Four months after she left, we were planning the wedding. We have now been happily married for six years, and we have two beautiful sons. I don't know if this helps you at all, but it seemed relelvant.

A race of beings who were originally planet-bound, in order to visit our planet, would first have to devise some means of doing so. In order to do that, they would have to be able to observe their surroundings and form concepts regarding the laws of reality as a basis for the technological advance necessary to build a vehicle capable of traversing (at least) the galaxy in a reasonable period of time. In short, they would have to be rational animals. It is entirely possible that they would have developed a philosophy very similar to Objectivism as a result of that rational enquiry. The axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness don't change regardless of the specific identity of the rational being currently pondering them. They would still need to perceive reality and form concepts through measurement-omission, and the Objectivist virtues would also still apply, since that is the only way to successfully live. While they may be just as deluded as many humans are, it's also possible that a rational philosophy will have pervaded their entire culture. ... I think one of the ramifications of our becoming aware of the existence of a race extra-terrrestrial intelligent beings would be that we Objectivists would have to change our definition of Man to include planetary origin.

This is probably what you were thinking of; there is some similarity. Oddly enough, I have the quote, and I know Ayn Rand said it, but I don't know where it came from.

Have you read The Ethos Effect by L.E. Modessit Jr.? There are some interesting ethical discussions in that book, and I'm pretty sure the aliens are at least Objectivist-leaning.

I know this thread is pretty much dead, but I'm reading Leviathan right now, and I believe he at least partly answered your question for you: This was written in the context of Hobbes' nineteen laws that nature requires for maintaining peace in a human society. Note that in the first condition (no laws are enforced), it is not possible to live in any security whether or not you respect others' rights. In the second condition, failure to respect the rights of others deprives you of the security of living in a free society. Obviously, in this case, the individual who invented the gun has to sleep sometime; I would challenge you to come up with a case where this kind of absolute power is maintainable, or even desirable. Remember, a slave has no ability to improve his life, and therefore has no interest in using his mind except as is necessary for survival. That genius would be much wiser if he used his talents to develop better agricultural practices, so everyone can eat better and have more time to devote to improving their lives, which would be of much greater benefit to him than threatening a group of frightened, angry savages with superior firepower.

Video games can offer a substitute purpose, one which is easily achieved (relative to a rewarding career or academic success) and therefore offers a more certain guarantee of a feeling of achievement. I struggle with this myself when I'm taking a class I'm not really interested in; my addictive behavior re video games always gets worse and I have to carefully control it. The same could be said of purposelessly surfing the internet: it's goal-directed action that can give you a sense of achievement without the substance. As such, both behaviors are more a symptom than a problem in themselves, and should be recognized as such.

Chapter 1 Based on my reading, the thesis of Section I of this chapter is that the Scots originated the concept of popular self-rule through their very democratic selection of ecclesiastical authorities and established the first truly widespread reading public in Europe because of the creation of Parish schools whose intent was to teach people to be able to read and understand the Bible. He describes how the spread of literacy had the unintentional effect of creating an interest, somewhat ironically, in secular thought as well. In section II, he describes the ill-fated first Scottish attempt to emulate English colonial expansion by founding a colony in Panama. It failed miserably because of a combination of poor planning and active hostility from the English and Spanish governments that led to resupply problems. The Darien colony is seen by the author as the catalyst for the first stirrings of Union sentiment, at least in Scotland. I'll come back tomorrow with some actual thoughts, but I thought it would be appropriate to start out with a quick synopsis to get things going.

I've read the book now; I'm ready to start discussion whenever we can agree on a time and format. May I suggest Friday to create a new thread and start on the first chapter? I say Friday because most people have more free time on the weekends, so we're likely to get more (and more substantial) involvement.

It absolutely does not. I would much rather hire someone to work for me than force him to, if I had the power to make that choice. A slave has no freedom of choice, therefore no ability to improve his life, therefore no reason to improve his abilities. An employee who voluntarily seeks employment is free to improve his life, and understands that the quality of his work directly impacts the quality of his life. It is much more advantageous to a business to employ people who want to do a good job because it serves their own interests (as in payraises and promotions) than to force people to work who seek only to do the job well enough to avoid punishment. Jobs will get done better, faster, and more efficiently, which is better for the bottom line.

I'm a little confused; has a book been decided on? I'd like to participate, but which books should I order so I can get them in time to start?

My take on this, which I believe is consistent with Objectivism, is that a union should only exist inasmuch as it is able to without government support, and should not under any circumstances have its actions curtailed by the government, except where it seeks to deprive someone of their rights (for instance by preventing others from seeking employment, or forcing an employee to be a member). This way, the only way a union could exist, and be worth its dues, is if working conditions were bad enough that others would be unwilling to replace the striking workers. If the employer really is that bad, then some form of unionization would be inevitable (or no one would work there at all, and the business would collapse). The only interest I could see a rational government having in union-employer relations is possibly in voluntary arbitration services, provided for a fee.

I am by no means an expert on the subject myself, but based on what my economics teacher told me, we set the value of gold at a certain dollar amount, refusing to change it for any reason. Other countries then started buying and selling gold, making huge sums of money trading in different markets because everyone else put a higher value on gold than we did. This severely depressed the value of our currency. I remember thinking when he was explaining it that we had been looking at it backwards: a dollar should be thought of as a certificate worth a certain amount of gold; an ounce of gold shouldn't be thought of as worth a certain number of dollars. For some reason I could never fully articulate, I felt that this was the real cause of the problem. I didn't bring any of this up in class because my teacher was an idiot, and I didn't feel like arguing with him. In any case, I'm fairly certain that his view is representative of the opinions of those who oppose the gold standard.

I anyone is interested, I have carried on my debate on the Monopoly on Reason website (he is known as 'TheTruth' there). As I have now sort of implicitly nominated myself as the resident Objectivist on the site, I would appreciate it if one of the moderators here would keep an eye on it for me and let me know if they think I am unintentionally misrepresenting the philosophy. I might still stand by my opinions, but I would be sure to state clearly that those are my own opinions, and not explicitly derived from Objectivism.

It may well be that our aims are similar, though I wouldn't say they are precisely the same. The difference is that a government formed according to Objectivist principles would, necessarily, have to be a government, in the sense that it gives certain people the exclusive authority to initiate force within a geographical boundary, and those people would consider themselves employees of the government, not of a particular individual or company. This is the only way to ensure an unbiased, objective police and court system. The only way to 'opt out' of the arrangement would be to choose to live elsewhere. The distinction I was trying to make, however, was in our means of acheiving a society in which individuals are free from coercive force. Based on all historical evidence I am aware of, when people are left without some form of government, they invariably create one, even if it's as simple as a tribal chief or gang leader who declares laws according to his whims. I don't see how it would be possible or advisable to try to not have a government; as soon as you abolish the current one, others will create a new one, often worse than the previous one, using exactly the means of conflict resolution you describe. They will create private security forces, and attempt to enforce whatever form of justice most appeals to them. Necessarily, there will be conflicts between groups with differing ideologies and differing conceptions of justice, which will at some point devolve into armed conflict. If, instead, we determine first what the best government would be (since there will be one, whether you like it or not) and do our best to convince others, we can eventually have a stable, free society that respects and protects individual rights, and finally show what human beings are capable of achieving.

Monopoly, You appear to be arguing that the best way to acheive individual freedom would be to allow individuals to voluntarily form their own collective arrangements for protection of their individual rights. In answer to the question of what would be the ethical principles upon which the rights to be protected are based, you seem to argue that free market forces would result in the most rational possible societies, in a sort of 'survival of the fittest' scenario. This sounds very compelling, but how is that different from the actual conditions that have existed since the beginning of civilization? I am by no means an expert on the subject, but based on my understanding of history and politics, it is first necessary to determine a rational form of government which clearly defines and delimits individual rights (laissez-faire capitalism), and then form a society based on that (or change the existing one). To move towards greater freedom cannot be a bad thing, but unless you clearly define the term 'freedom' to include only freedom from coercive force (and not, for instance, freedom from the need to sustain oneself by one's own effort, or freedom from being insulted), you risk constantly moving only further away from it, or at best sideways to it (as from Oligarchy to Socialist Republic to Theocracy; lather, rinse, repeat). Remember, also, that Objectivist ethics does not demand any action from anyone; it only requires that we refrain from acting to harm one another. Objectivist Politics expands on this, requiring that, in a rational society, there must logically be a central government whose sole purpose, and only power, is to prevent violence, fraud, and coercion (from within or without). Without that central government based on rational principles, there would be no basis for settling disputes or for discouraging the irrational behavior that inevitably leads to just the kinds of coercive -archy's you rightly deride. Once again, the only behaviors that would be discouraged are those that limit freedom; if the government's constitution is properly written, nothing else would be within that government's power. That is what the Founders of the United States tried to do, and they almost succeeded. That's my two cents; please correct me if I'm wrong about your basic assertions-I admit I may have misread your posts.

"Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist" by Tara Smith published by Cambridge University Press. Here is a link to it in the Ayn Rand Bookstore: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CS01B

You're right that I was begging the question, but I was actually begging the wrong question. I thought they were trying to say, based on the excerpt from ctrl y, that evolution did not provide us with a means of accurately perceiving and understanding reality. After reading the articles you suggested, I see that they are trying to refute the ability of modern psychology to accurately predict and understand human behavior. I still think it's foolish, though, to base any scientific argument (made by a human, I assume) on an assertion of the inherent unreliability of human cognition.

Ack! I just spotted the stolen concept. The author is trying to use his cognitive faculty and observations of reality to deny the validity of his cognitive faculty and power of observation. Are you talking about the fallibility of cognition? I think the error you are making here in equating the two is that Ayn Rand said you can be wrong if you don't form your concepts correctly, whereas the author of this work seems to think those concepts are somehow intrinsic to the faculty of cognition. Basically, he is trying to divorce volition from cognition, which is precisely the opposite of an argument against determinism.

I don't honestly know how 'an Objectivist' would answer this question, and neither is that particularly important, so long as you understand that this is absolute hogwash. The idiot who wrote this obviously didn't try to understand the theory of evolution before he (she?) tried to refute it. Yes, natural selection is based on random mutations, but the author fails to appreciate the amount of time available for the most advantageous mutations to come to the fore. We're talking about billions of years. Added to that fact, for long periods during that time, the earth wasn't particularly hospitable to life, which tends to speed up the process by more quickly weeding out the weakest (or even the not-quite-stronger-enough) mutations. This, and the evidence we have today (both from studying the chemical attributes of DNA, and from observing actual living things mutating to adapt to changing environments) should be sufficient proof that natural selection both actually happens and is effective in making organisms better able to survive. One of those adaptations was the ability to sense our environment beyond our immediate surroundings (sight, hearing, smell), thus enabling organisms to observe and avoid dangerous situations, and pursue favorable situations. The next logical step would have been a nervous system capable of remembering previous situations and anticipating future dangers and rewards based on immediate context. The next step after that would be the ability to conceptualize a more favorable situation and manipulate the environment to bring it about (this is human consciousness). At what point in this process would it not be advantageous for one's observations to be accurate (and therefore truthful)? The mistake the author seems to be making is in somehow separating advantageous behavior from accurate observations of reality. You simply can't have the former without the latter, at least not consistently. (I suppose, theoretically, you could have entirely inaccurate observations that would still lead to survival behavior, but an animal whose observations are more accurate would still have a distinct advantage). Another problem I see is the assumption that a series of random mutations will have a completely random result. This is known, I believe, as context-dropping. If random mutation is understood in the context of competition among animals for limited resources, the result will certainly not be random, as I explained above.

Based on your portrayal of the situation, your talent is being wasted. Without knowing what kind of art you do, it's hard to be specific, but have you considered working on a contractual basis only as far as your art is concerned? That would free you for the factory work you mentioned (I wouldn't recommend teaching, it's very time consuming if you intend to do a good job). You would also have time to find a company that deserves your skill, as factory work tends to be fairly predictable as far as hours. I would also, however, caution you to consider whether the grunt work you are doing is sharpening your skills (or keeping an important skill sharp) in a way that will help you in the future. In that case, it may be worth the aggravation. Additionally, simply having a job in your chosen field of interest might eventually net you some contacts that would lead you to a better job; you wouldn't have that possibility in a factory. Perhaps you need to focus your efforts a little more in that direction. As far as whether you are sacrificing your dignity, I would ask you how much is it worth to you and what are you getting in return for its loss? I don't think it's actually possible to lose your dignity, though, unless you have a different definition than I do.

Good luck with that-it's already been spent.

I would like to review your story-no one will see it but me and, possibly, my wife (though she's not likely to be interested). I promise not to steal your work. I'm writing a novel myself, and I understand your paranoia.