StrictlyLogical

This also reminds me of the fact that even in the realm of tort law, rational people, be they juries or judges, may disagree as to the proper principles and/or their application to a specific case.  All agree in the interests of justice.  None have an overtly personal interest in the case.  Can such disagreement be cast as conflict of rational interests?  Should rational men be held to the same standard of Judges and Juries?  Must rational men render judgement the same whether they find themselves on one side of the fact situation or the other? 
Edit:  Do rational men seek anything other than justice in any legal matter?
I think something similar to this objective determination of justice is at play in the thinking and interests of rational men.

I mentioned this upstream, but thought I'd show more of it here, hoping to encourage more of the scholarly-inclined to get this book and make it one of our tributaries to discussions here. (I personally cannot imagine why or even how I would think and talk philosophy questions---at Rand's level of address or beyond---without places for written exchanges such as here and without finding out what other hard-study and hard-thinking minds have come to on the issue and its surrounding issues throughout the history of philosophy and the contemporary scene of professional philosophers. It's just that philosophy in my own head is tied to that community of mind across the centuries and across the world of minds today, like we're in this adventure together and are helps to each other. Different from making poetry in that way, I notice.)
Darryl Wright contributes Chapter 7 "'A Human Society' Rand's Social Philosophy" to the Blackwell A Companion to Ayn Rand. The subheadings to his paper are "The Trader Principle and Benevolence" / "Man as an End in Himself" / "The Question of Conflicts of Interest" / "Individual Rights"
I attach a portion of the section I put in red. This book is much rich thought and store of references for many of us interested in Rand's philosophy. 

For the New Intellectual
Three years after Atlas Shrugged was published, Rand penned the essay “For the New Intellectual.” It is interesting to compare and contrast the analysis of philosophical and psychological archetypes in Galt’s Speech—Mystics of Muscle/Mystics of Spirit—with the types Attilas/Witchdoctors in FNI. In the present note I’ll not take that on, and I’ll not take on their relation to the broad philosophical types Peikoff frames in his book DIM. Certainly, in FNI and in Atlas, Rand was affirming, against many philosophies, the equal reality and virtuous unity of mind and body.
There is much that is interesting and much that is suspect in Rand’s FNI story of the history of philosophy and in her account of how philosophic ideas move the world. That’s something else I can’t address just now.
I want to suggest in this note only that in FNI, Rand articulates one profound way in which her philosophy is a corrective to philosophies boosting Attila/Witchdoctor tendencies and in which her philosophy is a profound intellectual defense of humans as rational workers, producers, and traders. There is a cohort of that way, a second profound way of Rand contra Plato and Aristotle and contra much other philosophical thought to our own time, a second line in thorough defense of rational worker, producer, and trader. I want to notice that second way.
Rand’s first way is the Primacy of Existence.* By that phrase, she meant (i) the universe exists independently of any consciousness and (ii) things have natures independently of consciousness. Along with that idea is her Existence is Identity. This restriction contracts the Existence she would have as primary, contracts from traditional Being, where the latter comes in two forms qualified and unqualified. There is no such thing as the unqualified existent in Rand’s view of widest reality. So an older philosophy committed to primacy of being over mind (say, over over human mind anyway) could be very far from Rand’s picture of the primacy of existence over (any and all) consciousness.
The second way, of which, in my view, Rand does not make enough hay in her critique of the course of philosophy from the Greeks to today is her: Primacy of Physical Life over Value. (Bertrand Russell noted somewhere I cannot recall that philosophies can be divided between those giving primacy to value over existence—Plato and Kant for sure—and philosophies to the contrary, such as his own.) Rand realized explicitly that her positive proposal for the basis of value and her scheme of morality drafted upon that basis was ready for adoption by anyone coming to realize the primacy of existence with respect consciousness, including valuation-consciousness, human or divine. But when looking at classical philosophies in contrast to hers, I think there is rich work not yet done: explicitly laying out their contrast with her primacy of physical life over value.

Once more I’d like to encourage anyone interested in seeing my fundamental paper “Existence, We” (EW), setting forth my metaphysical system and its relation to Rand’s and to others, to get your subscription to JARS at this time.
I’ll post here a section of a paper that was to be a follow-on to EW and which—as the follow-on project has been redesigned—would no longer fit the follow-on paper.* This posted section is indeed built onto of the frame developed in EW. It gives a taste of some of what goes on in that fundamental paper. The material below uses that frame and some technical terminology introduced in EW (and some ordinary terms such as situation which as part of this framework have a specialized meaning specified in EW, where also are my proofs for axiomatic standing of such statements as “existence is situation”) that I’ll leave opaque here, which may further encourage readers here to get a subscription to JARS if you don’t have one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PRIMACIES OF EXISTENCE
Ayn Rand spoke of the primacy of existence, and by this she meant primacy of existence over consciousness, which meant (i) the universe exists independently of any consciousness and (ii) things have natures independently of consciousness.[1] Identity is primary over Identification, and concretes are primary over abstractions. My metaphysics is of the primacy-of-existence genre, but more generally than Rand’s. My primacy of existence means primacy of existence over of-existence. This entails that concretes with their formalities are primary over abstractions. Actualities and potentials are primary over recognitions and possibilities. Necessity-that of existence is primary over the necessity-for in consciousness.[2] Then too, existence being primary over the of-existence that is living existence and the latter being (I say with Rand) the residence of all value, existence is primary over value.
Rand’s primacy of existence to consciousness runs with Aristotle,[3] but for the countercurrent of his hierarchy of being in which formal structure is not only explanatory, but causal, and in which formal, teleological cause is ultimate being.[4] Primacy of existence runs against Descartes in first philosophy.[5] It runs against Descartes’ forebears Henry of Ghent and Bonaventure who took the first adequate object of the human intellect to be God. It runs with Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez who took that first object to be being or whatness (quiddity).[6] Primacy of existence runs also against Kant when he writes that “apperception, and with it thought, precedes all possible determinate arrangement of presentations” (KrV A289 B345).[7] Against Kant also, and in step with Aristotle, Rand writes: “‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind” (AS 1036). She means in context not only things as perceived by your mind so far, but as perceivable by your mind at any stage, and she means not only your mind, but any sound human mind. Rand’s primacy of existence to consciousness runs against all idealism, of course. It runs also against Husserl in his bracketing of “things in themselves” and against Sartre’s starting point (subjectivity) in his archaeology of being and against the adequacy of Quine’s “to be is to be the value of a bound variable.”[8]
Rand spoke in that passage against Kant of “things as they are” and not of “things in themselves.” She was right to avoid the latter phrase because of the well-known shading of it. That latter phrase, down from Kant, intimates a systematic inaccessibility of mind-independent Existence with its Identities by our cognitive faculties. In the same vein, rightly she would reject talk of the transcendental object or talk of noumena and their comprehensive contrast to phenomena, the latter a foul concept when transplanted from its use in Newton—phenomena as physical patterns in observational data, where those specific patterns suit only a specific form in the character of their physical cause—to fundamental ontology and to subject-object relations.[9]
Talk of “things in themselves” meaning things free of any situation is talk of nothing. “Things in themselves,” meaning merely all that they are, is a sound sense of the phrase and not Kant’s sense when he is contrasting things in themselves with those same things as they are in their external relations such as in their relation to human consciousness. Things in all that they are are what we know part of and know that our known is only part of the all there to be known. Further, existence of a thing is nothing more than—indeed, it is identically the same as—existence of all that a thing is.[10]
Existence per se and in its totality is more fundamental than living existence or conscious existence. By experience and conception, we know that of-existents are not and cannot be the only type of existents. Primacy of existence in my philosophy departs from Rand’s primacy of existence in that I mean primacy of physical existence, which in our scientific comprehension is spacetime, mass-energy, angular momentum, molecules, heat, photosynthesis, synapses, and so forth all in play together. Further, it is in my system not only knowing physical existence as necessary requirement for consciousness of physical existents, but knowing we ourselves are physical existents and that that physical status is a necessary requirement for existence of our life and consciousness.
The focal sense of existence is existence actual and concrete (and mind-independent, though susceptible to actions such as human discernment and utilization).[11] Existence actual and concrete endures, and enduring existence is all of enduring.[12] Existence in the focal sense is not without time and number and some formalities, and these accompaniments are in no way prior to existence.[13] As I mentioned in EW, all potential existents are attached to actual, concrete existents. Existence actual and concrete, in whole and in every part is ever with potentials. That is not to say every part of existence has causal powers; no potentials, only actualities, have causal powers, and potentials are part of existence, concretely so. Future existents, unlike past ones, are not yet actual, only potential. Future existents without present discernment of alternatives concerning them have no present causal power. Abstractions include recognitions of formalities of concretes. As with the concrete existents that are potentials, formal existents themselves or abstractions themselves have no causal powers.[14]
Any concrete actual existent, with all its potentials and all its formalities, is actual by way of antecedent actualities and their potentials. The potential for a future actual concrete existent coming to be so is not a potential belonging to it, but to its antecedent actuals. Every concrete actual existent shy of the whole of existence is a contingent existent in its emergence from among potentials of prior actuals, but it is necessary in its possession of all its own potentials and formalities.
Potentials not only belong to present actuals, their potentiality consists only in their potential for future actualities from present ones.[15] Co-existing present potentials, furthermore, are often not jointly capable of future actualization. Potentials, I have said, are concretes, whether or not they become actuals. Moreover, I hold contra Avicenna, that potentials are not less existing than actualities.[16] Cognitive possibilities, I should reiterate, are subordinates of facts of existence, whether facts of actualities and their potentials, facts of concretes and their formalities, or facts of Entities and their passage, situation, and character.
The primacy of existence over of-existence does not entail that existents not also of-existence are more existing than existents that are also of-existence. Passage, situation, and character are not more existing (or less existing) than experience or recognition of them. Concretes and their formalities are not more existing than experience of them or conceptual grasp of them.
Now passage, situation, and character are no less reality than the Entities to which they belong. And formalities are no less reality of existence than the concretes to which they belong.
As I said in EW, there is nothing common between existence and nonexistence; the latter is only a lack of standing in the former, a mere lack noted by us, by us in and of existence.[17] Further, A is A in the application nonexistence is nonexistence is only item-keeping in thought and makes nothing but nothing of the item. Any thought of a priority of existence, metaphysically most fundamental, over nonexistence or thought that the former is in some metaphysical sense greater than the latter is derailed thinking. Only within Existence is priority and the greater.
 
Notes
[1] Rand 1973, 24; Kelley 1986, 7–43; Peikoff 1991, 17–23, 243–48, 419–20.
[2] Cf. Fine 1994.
[3] On Aristotle’s primacy of existence, see Owens 1978, 133–35n108, 138. Rand rightly did not accept Aristotle’s conception of the mind as “becoming all things” and the mind’s doing so by assimilation of the forms of existents extracted from a metaphysical composition of form and matter constituting any existent. On infirmities in the primacy of existence in Roger Bacon and his Arab forebears, see Tachau 1988, 11–16. But for doctrines of faith, Blasius of Parma in 1385 leaned towards primacy of existence in constitution of human mind by arguing all human intellectual and moral states to depend on the human body (via prime matter) for their existence; see Pasnau 2011, 108–9.
[4] Aristotle, Ph. 198a32–99b31; Metaph. 1041a25–b8, 1071b20–a21, 1074a35; Ferejohn 2013, 163–76.
[5] Rand 1961, 28; 1973, 24; Kelley 1981; Peikoff 1991, 17–23; Gotthelf 2000, 39; Boydstun 2019.
[6] Aertsen 2012.
[7] Kant is represented rather differently in the Jäsche Logic in declaring (i) that general logic, though independent of its use in concreto, could only be found by observation of such use and (ii) that logic in application to a particular science would be futile without acquaintance with objects of the science (1800, 17–18).
[8] Owens 1978, 133–35n108; Quine 1939; Armstrong 2004, 23–24; Crane 2012, 64–65; Koskinen 2012.
[9] Newton’s theological conception of space as the sensorium of God joined other Christian theological pictures in drawing Kant to his grand division of reality into the phenomenal and the noumenal. On Kant, see Bird 2006, 335–38. Cf. Heidegger in Han-Pile 2005. Cf. Sher 2016, 166, 172, 181, 259–60.
[10] See further, Baumgarten 1757, §§15, 37; Kant, KrV A324–27 B380–83. On Kant’s severance of “thing in itself” from its external relations to human consciousness, see B 69, A139 B178, A190 B235, B306–9.
[11] Cf. focal meaning in Owen 1960, applied to substance (ousia) as focal meaning of being in the metaphysics of Aristotle; Owens 1978, 38n126, 119; Ferejohn 1980; Kirwan 1992, 80; Barnes 1995, 76–77; Lewis 2013, 90–92.
[12] Descartes does not get that far, but he is correct when he writes: “Existence or duration in a thing which exists and endures—should be called not a quality or a mode, but an attribute” (1644, §56). A mode in his terminology here would be a modification of a substance, and a quality is at hand when a modification enables classification of a substance as a certain kind. With attribute he means our thinking of what is in a substance in a more general way. In fact Descartes thinks of duration as an attribute of all created substance, which are fundamentally two: thought and extension. (See further, Alice Sowaal’s entry ATTRIBUTE in Nolan 2016.)  Similarly, though with metaphysical substance expelled from our metaphysics, as well as the creation of all temporality and all existence, Rand with I could say enduring of an existent is not a modification of it or a quality of it.
[13] Cf. Aristotle, Metaph. 1017b17–21; Avicenna 1027, I.2.24–29.
[14] Contra Aristotle, essences or forms as causes or constraints not concrete is misconception. See Lewis 2013, 290.
[15] Aristotle, Metaph. 1049b13–17.
[16] Cf. Rand ITOE App. 284–86; 1968, 531, 534. Actualities have priorities over potentials on account of their patterns of dependency I have stated. Even were we to count these priories of actualities as amounting to actualities being “more existing” than potentials, I should not concur with Avicenna (1027, 4.2.34) that this priority is also a higher rank in metaphysical nobility or perfection. There are no such things applicable to general metaphysics; nobility and perfection can only pertain to existents that are living existents (include conscious existence) and only within that living mode of their existence.
[17] Contra Kant 1782/83, 29:811; 1790/91, 28:543; 1794/95, 29:960. Cf. ITOE 58, 60–61; Branden c. 1968, 28.
References
Aertsen, J. A. 2012. Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. Leiden: Brill.
Ameriks, K., and S. Naragon, translators, 1997. Immanuel Kant – Lectures on Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aristotle c.348–322. B.C. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor (1984). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Armstrong, D. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Avicenna 1027. The Metaphysics of The Healing. M. E. Marmura, translator (2005). Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
Barnes, J. 1995. Metaphysics. In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barnes, J., Schofield, M., and R. Sorabji, editors, 1979. Articles on Aristotle – 3. Metaphysics. London: Duckworth.
Baumgarten, A. 1757 [1739]. Metaphysics. 4th ed. In Fugate and Hymers 2013.
Bird, G. 2006. The Revolutionary Kant. Chicago: Open Court.
Boydstun, S. 2019. Foundational Frames – Descartes and Rand. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 19(1):1–37.
Branden, N. c.1968. The Basic Principles of Objectivism. In The Vision of Ayn Rand 2009. Gilbert: Cobden Press.
Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and D. Murdoch, translators, 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crane, T. 2012. Existence and Quantification Reconsidered. In Tahko 2012.
Descartes, R. 1644. Principles of Philosophy. In Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch 1985.
Dreyfus, H. L., and M. A. Wrathall, editors, 2005. A Companion to Heidegger. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Ferejohn, M. T. 1980. Aristotle on Focal Meaning and the Unity of Science. Phronesis 25(2):117–28.
Fine, K. 1994. Essence and Modality. Philosophical Perspectives 8:1–16.
Fugate, C. D., and J. Hymers 2013. Introduction to Metaphysics – A Critical Translation with Kant’s Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials. London: Bloomsbury.
Gotthelf, A. 2000. On Ayn Rand. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Haaparanta, L., and H. J. Koskinen, editors, 2012. Categories of Being – Essays on Metaphysics and Logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
Han-Pile, B. 2005. Early Heidegger’s Appropriation of Kant. In Dreyfus and Wrathall 2005.
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——. 1782/83. Metaphysik Mrongovius. In Ameriks and Naragon 1997 (AN).
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——. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses – A Realist Theory of Perception. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
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In "what you know to be true is mutable"
I think he is using "what you know to be true" to mean "what you think according to your knowledge (or assumed knowledge) to be true"
and not using "what you know to be true" (in this context) to mean that "the truth in reality of which I actually know".

Never go full Parmenides

Trying to understand that question. There seems to be two fundamental definitions of possibility, one that relates to the future and one that does not. Also found this article that I am looking at.
https://therealistguide.com/blog/f/metaphysical-possibility-vs-logical-possibility#:~:text=To summarize%2C metaphysical possibility is,real existence outside the mind.

whyNOT
Many legal born domestic Americans, which are spoiled, entitled, and lazy, are less "American" in the foundational and fundamental ways that matter, than are you. 
America is an idea, and they have lost it to the vices and weakness of childhood which they have not escaped... associated with the infantalization of the American adult.. leftism is a natural center of gravity for failed adults, manchildren, so the lurch to the left is almost no surprise.
In any case you, as indeed Rand herself was, are more American in spirit, than the many unamericans born within America's borders.

whyNOT
Many legal born domestic Americans, which are spoiled, entitled, and lazy, are less "American" in the foundational and fundamental ways that matter, than are you. 
America is an idea, and they have lost it to the vices and weakness of childhood which they have not escaped... associated with the infantalization of the American adult.. leftism is a natural center of gravity for failed adults, manchildren, so the lurch to the left is almost no surprise.
In any case you, as indeed Rand herself was, are more American in spirit, than the many unamericans born within America's borders.

whyNOT
Many legal born domestic Americans, which are spoiled, entitled, and lazy, are less "American" in the foundational and fundamental ways that matter, than are you. 
America is an idea, and they have lost it to the vices and weakness of childhood which they have not escaped... associated with the infantalization of the American adult.. leftism is a natural center of gravity for failed adults, manchildren, so the lurch to the left is almost no surprise.
In any case you, as indeed Rand herself was, are more American in spirit, than the many unamericans born within America's borders.

(Click on image.)
This image displays the title and subsection titles of my paper to be published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies this July. I developed the metaphysics debuted in this paper over a period of about five years, working on it in the morning hours of each day, beginning before sunrise. An apt name for the resulting philosophy would be Resonant Existence.
The image is a pre-dawn look out back at our place, a look to the east. On my way to coffee, I glance out as I’m saying to myself words from the Rig Veda: “So many days have not yet broken.” To those words, I import the meaning “What shall I yet create? What will humankind yet create?”
The new metaphysics is more indebted to the metaphysics of Ayn Rand than to any other. Mine is a transfiguration of hers at the deepest level. In this paper of over seventy pages, differences and commonalities of the new foundational framework with Rand’s are explicated and argued. Rand’s fundamentals and mine are set in their relation to others, from Plato/Aristotle to the present.
Anyone who would like read this work should get a subscription to JARS at this time.
The most basic differences from Rand’s system are my retuning the conception of consciousness, redrafting the definition of logic, addition to Rand’s fundamental axioms and corollaries, replacement of Rand’s contrast class for concretes, and replacement of Rand’s categoreal scheme, her entity/attribute/action/relationship. Those last two innovations promise new understanding of the dividing lines between and distinctive natures of logic, mathematics, empirical science, and philosophy—the continuation of this work I tackle each morning, for future publication, hopefully for years to come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ll return to some posting on Objectivism Online shortly.

People interested in how a leading religious (Jewish) conservative thinks can watch Dennis Prager chat with Craig Biddle. They cover some hard topics and find common ground. I hope more Objectivists get on more conservative shows like this.
 

Well, the successful and happy-seeming individuals I have ever known, I can't recall one who was an atheist. I've met maybe hundreds of businessmen/professionals, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, who were most enterprising people. Some very wealthy.
One can make the same rationalistic error that Binswanger made, like his referencing of some 12thC Pope's writing about how debased man is - that because the doctrine states X in the abstract, the believers practice X, concretely. Out of touch with present realities. Therefore, as HB would apparently argue, the religion has not undergone various changes and evolutions from its bloodthirsty past in Europe. Oh, I have no doubt that in principle, preaching and beliefs in OS and humility and guilt are in evidence, but even religious people obviously have made personal accomodations to and for reality, which indicates some rationality - that's the crux of primacy of consciousness. Mutability. 
You react, btw, as if I'm selling Christianity to you. Relax. This topic is its comparison with leftism, not my advocacy for religion. 
 Comes down to it, living in a society WITH Christians and their inherent amount of individualism (and self-responsibility, self-reliance), is and will be much better than living UNDER the power of collectivist-leftists. Power is what they must have, no one escapes their control. The religious aren't going away, and individually are often decent, likable and thoughtful people with good character qualities. IF, one can allow oneself to see past the dogma.

There is a lot to unpack here.
First we have to acknowledge that an image is subject to interpretation.  The meaning of something viewed in the form of a communication has context... in what it is affixed to, by whom it is presented, and to whom it is presented, all play a role in what it represents.
The star of David is NOT a hate symbol when displayed proudly by a Jewish person, but it is when applied to a Jewish person's clothing by a Nazi.  The image itself is not objectively anything other than simply what it looks like... what it represents is contextual.
A stereotype, to be recognized AS SUCH, requires the viewer to understand at least on some level that the representation is more than merely the concrete.  A logo of a black man committing a criminal act is NOT a stereo type... (unless you are a white supremacist) it is a depiction of an individual committing a crime.  Now in a specific context, perhaps on a pamphlet by a white supremacist organization, such a logo represents a vile stereotype.  Here it is not merely a depiction of a criminal who has what is in reality an irrelevant characteristic for judgment but it centrally depicts a characteristic which is intended to be the irrational and tribal basis upon which to judge the person... namely race.
A TV show with a student who excels at school is NOT depicting a stereo type if that student happens to be Asian.  IT's a fact some people excel at school, and a fact that some people are Asian, and sometimes these overlap.  It would be racist, or thinking through the racist lens, to AVOID portraying an Asian kid who excels at school.  Something about the context has to be more than mere depiction of a concrete, it has to indicate... somehow, usually contextually, "and this normal for a person such as X", or "and this is to be expected".
There needs to be something about the context to illustrate that the message to be communicated involves a sense of characterizing "the other" and that this typifies "them".
 
 
[slight aside
In a rare spark of genius, the importance of context is demonstrated well here:
]
A stereotype, good or bad, must involve more than the image AS SUCH presented.
As for whether positive racial stereotypes are bad... I do not think it can be said to be true as a blanket pronouncement.  Self-believed traditional Western European stereotypes of white persons being civilized, intelligent, virtuous, etc. was not inimical to the flourishing of a white person striving to be the best he or she could be.  The lack of such a positive stereotype applying to persons of ALL races .. is bad of course.
 
When it comes to historical stereotypes, it is clear that in history certain people felt or thought certain things about people based in erroneous generalizations.  These erroneous generalizations were exploited in communications, and yes some advertising.  But what we need to remember is that people's thoughts about others and their generalizations change.  Images lose their original meanings when what was communicated is no longer operative in the present day communicator nor in its recipient.
Mammy stereotypes were racial, and would be racial today if used as communication between persons who are consciously aware of it.. but a so called image of a "Mammy" is not always in and of itself a stereotype... an image of a overweight woman of color does not always imply a slave/servant/nanny of history.
An overweight woman of color should not give up her dream of becoming a chef just because of some old stereotype, and she should have no bones about plastering her image, AS a cook on her products.
Slavery being abolished, Mammy's are just are not a thing, and to the extent than anyone in the vast majority of the population is actually AWARE of what Mammies were, they would know that honest images of them would in no way be a negative reflection on who they were or how they lived their lives nor any negative reflection on the population of persons who happen to have the same skin color.  OF course such depiction would bring up the specter of slavery if the context were a strong enough indicator.
SEEING Aunt Jemima today, however, does not communicate "Mammy" to the vast majority of the population, nor is it intended to invoke any nostalgia surrounding historical slavery.
 
Aunt Jemima may have started out as a Mammy, but the modern brand was not communicated as such nor received as such by the vast majority of the population, both the brand and the public had evolved.  It had become a brand in its own right, a symbol unto itself, not an instance of another symbol.
 
My position is that as a brand Aunt Jemima may have started out as a Mammy but it had evolved into a friendly domestic face, that stood on its own, that was actually GOOD for race relations in the vast majority of the population.
 

I read the article.
People will see what they want.
 
To give the context this is what I said:
 
 
She was a cook for advertising purposes, as I have said, not a black person.
The conceptual and subconscious content of the brand which is effective, is not about race, unless you want to imagine the general modern population as literally being white supremacist (consciously, subconsciously, whether they know it or not) getting a kick out of the fantasy of having a black-slave cook.  This simply is NOT true, and I would suggest you stay away from the leftist identity politics Kool-aid for a while.
The brand IS effective, from a sales and marketing point of view because she is identifiable as a cook, with a recognizable face, which is friendly to boot.  Her race is irrelevant to the brand as it functions with regard to sales in the general public.  Race is not an OPERATIVE part of the brand, it's merely a part of who the mascot is, like the fact that she has a mouth and two eyes..
Her race does NOT function to ridicule, degrade, reduce, her character as regards to her "esteem" in the minds of the overwhelming majority of those who buy products with her on the label.  Moreover, she does not operate as a force to ridicule, degrade, reduce, black people in the world.  If my son sees that bottle of syrup, while our family is having brunch with one of our black friends, there is ZERO, I mean literally ZERO negativity being caused by that label towards our friend in my son's mind.
Were my son to grow up with Aunt Jemima, (which now he wont) the only result caused by it in his mind in adulthood towards black people, overweight people, and women... would be positive, nostalgic... and maybe a little bit sweet.  A bottle of syrup does not and cannot serve to DEFINE all of the overweight population, all people of color, nor all women, and insofar as it does instill any preconceived notions... they are positive and friendly.
Of course there are some white supremacists and some people of color who see the historical context more keenly, to the point that how they see it (or how people may have seen it many decades ago) becomes a reality for them:  and they cannot see that the brand simply IS not operative, as racist, in the vast majority of the population.  It is operative only in terms of trust and recognition. 
 
But people will see what they want... and that is the root of all the crazy out there now.  We would do well to try to attenuate rather than amplify the crazy.
 
We disagree.  Avoid the arrogance of assuming I have not informed myself just because I disagree with you.
 
The measure of someone else's being informed, is not to be gauged simply by the level with which you agree with them.
 

Social media, mainstream media, and the concentration of power in big data are creating a crazy left-wing suppression of anything ... well sane.
 
"Aunt Jemima" is no more.  The syrup itself will not change and will be just as delicious, but it will be sold under a new logo and name. (By the way, if sales TANK, this might turn out to be a perfect example of how brand name recognition actually... duh...  IS important)
 
Now buying Aunt Jemima in the past never meant I endorsed the so-called racial stereo type... if anything I liked the idea of a friendly smiling person providing me with trusted delicious syrup... and that was that.  I certainly don't care about the color, religion or occupation of The Quaker guy on my oatmeal box, the cream of wheat fellow, or Uncle Ben (these also may change... with the exception of possibly the white guy in the funny hat)... they do NOT represent to me or any consumer ANYTHING about politics, religion, or socioeconomics... they stand for what they appear to be... a familiar friendly face identifying a product I know, trust, and love... beckoning me to purchase or consume.  If anything these faces (with one exception) increased visibility of smiling benevolent people of color in the pantries and tables of the homes of mainstream suburban white families.  And now, they will disappear... to be replaced by what?  (white smiling faces? or better yet the mug of a strong white woman who wouldn't stoop to "serve" you your syrup but is nonetheless humble enough to agree to glare at you from the bottle?)
In any case, the products will not change, the syrup, the oatmeal, the cream of wheat, and the rice, will all be just as yummy, and the quality (assuming the "progressives" have not infiltrated the processing plants) should be just as good,  but the absence of the friendly face I knew will be all too apparent... as will the knowledge that the "producers" are pandering to imagined problems screeched about in the Twitverse of clown world.
The wallet is a very powerful tool, you trade for what is a higher value, but you also support individual players or actions within a complex interrelated economy, and affect, as with each purchase being a vote, the way the world is shaped on transaction at a time.
 
So is it in your interest to taste the same quality of foodstuff you know and once were comforted by... or do you give a different producer a try.. one who has not become part of the circus?  I think there are good arguments for both, but in the end it has to take into account the long term... and having a meal that tastes 5% better tomorrow, might not be worth losing your chance to vote with your wallet to live in a better world long range...
 
 

Impulsively , no. Examining every emotion, no matter how fleeting and superficial, would be a profound waste of time. To examine fleeting and superficial ones is not faking reality, but focusing on more important things.

Jonathan, this is a response to only part of your inquiry.
I rather think that proceeding according to the principle that reason is the only source of knowledge and only proper guide to action entails contouring one’s hour-by-hour activities by one’s craft of one’s setting. We have deliberately decided not to have a smart phone. We don’t want that continual possibility for distraction, which we see among friends and family, and our stage of life (retirement) does not require we have one. My older sister, age 80, has opted to not introduce a computer into her life. We just write letters or talk on the phone.
Proceeding by reason alone entails knowing that reason is pilot of the full living system we are, and that includes knowing to include sex, social interaction, taking breaks, getting sleep, listening to or making music, getting exercise, and hobbies. I’d say, too, that some spontaneity is part of the good in life. There was some spontaneity that I turn to writing this note just now, taking a little break from this morning’s study of Hegel’s anti-foundational conception of method in philosophy. I can be continually aware of roughly how much time is passing, and what I am doing just now in the fuller context of the day and decade.
It seems a joy and a smart habit to always be cognizant or open to becoming cognizant of reasons for any action-impulses whatever. Then too, Rand once remarked that all thinking is a creative process. I think that correct and that rational thought itself requires internal spontaneity in the quest for reality and its connections.

When purported values are contradictory it is safe to say some or one of them is not a value.
Here we have a situation where there is a form of pleasure, and intellectual challenge, perhaps you could call it a hobby (I assume you are not an astronomer by profession), and importantly the subject of interest is reality itself, the hobby being understanding and gaining knowledge of an aspect of that reality.
Without debating the particulars, knowledge of reality always has at least some possibility of value even if one cannot understand how to use it at the time, this combined with the enjoyment of obtaining the knowledge leads to little inconsistency.
As long as you remember to pursue other values in order to sustain your life, contemplation of the wonders of actual reality is not a vice.
 
What direct value today's astronomy, physics, and astrophysics, may have to your decendants millennia from now and what wonders of technology and exploration they will produce due to the advances made now, and whether you care about that now... are hypothetical and very personal issues.  Certainly all new knowledge is built upon prior knowledge and the knowledge of today by definition is what will help to advance knowledge in the future.  If you love your decendants enough perhaps pondering their hypothetical future is a value to you now.

I feel that somehow it is possible that philosophers (professional or not) may believe the same thing about reality while perhaps using different language and attaching different importance to the namings, associations, meanings, and intuitions asssociated therewith.
 
It may be that, insofar as it corresponds with metaphysical reality, 
my saying: if some aspect of the past is truly forgotten and not present in the now, it simply no longer exists in any of the things in existence although it once may have...
is not so different from 
your saying: if some aspect of the past truly was, then no matter whether the now has truly and utterly forgotten it,  the fact of it having been still IS and hence is eternal...
only different accents on that aspect of the past, different ways of recognizing the same fact that
“it was”.
 
Thank you Boydstun for choosing to share.

Potentials as it use the concept are only potentials of particular actual things in actual situations. Actuals and their potentials are always at a certain time(s). The potential of an actual fetus developing from a particular blastomere at t1 will cease to be a potential for that blastomere if the blastomere fails to attach to the uterine wall and just flows on away and disintegrates. At t2 when the blastomere failed to attach, then and thereafter, it no longer had the potential to become a fetus (in the scenario I just described). It remains a fact that there was a potential for a fetus to develop from that blastomere at t1. This fact is part of the all of existence that is past existent. A past potential of a past actual. Not now a potential, supposing t2 was yesterday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Walsh: "If you talk about the glass merely in terms of the macroscopic level, then don't you need some concept of 'dispositions'?"
Ayn Rand: "In what way? How?"
Walsh: "Because the glass is not acting now, it's not breaking into pieces."
Leonard Peikoff: "Well, what's wrong with the Aristotelian concept of 'potentiality'? An entity has the capacity to act because of its nature."
Walsh: "Well, the reason I was bringing this up was because I thought that you rejected the concept of 'potentiality'."
Rand: "No. What made you think that? I have referred to actual and potential in any number of ways in any number of articles. Even if I didn't write on this subject directly, what would make you think that we reject the Aristotelian view on this?"
Walsh: "All I can say is that I have memory or a misremembrance of someone saying that Objectivism does not accept the Aristotelian concept of 'potentiality'."
Rand: "Specifically, that wasn't me. Unless it was in some context of what Aristotle makes of it, as in regard to his form-matter dichotomy."
Peikoff: "Or if 'potentiality' becomes the bare possibility of being something---as in his views on ultimate 'prime matter'. Most of Aristotle's usage of the concept of 'potentiality', so far as I understand, is quite rational."
Walsh: "He defines 'motion' entirely in terms of potentiality, as the passage from potentiality to actuality. Would you agree with him there?"
Rand: "No. But that's not disagreeing with the concept of potentiality, but only with its application to this particular instance."
(ITOE app. 285-86)
 
 
 

When your 12" cube is empty, none of the particles of reality which exist have attributes i.e. coordinates in space, which coincide with the innermost space of the 12" cube.
This does not, of course, in any way contradict with the fact that in times previous, many particles possessed such physical coordinates. Nor does it contradict the fact that presently, when empty, particles, systems, and energy outside possess the potential to cause, over time, some particles to again possess coordinates coinciding with the interior of the 12".
Stating that the cube is empty, in fact means, of those things which exist, none possess the attributes of position coinciding with inside the cube.  Stating that the cube is empty does not mean it is full of some kind of "nothing".  It is NOT full of anything, nor does it need be.
 
In any case, the absence of particles possessing coordinates inside the empty box, has no causative effect, does not constitute an imperative nor a logical necessity, making the "walls" of the empty cube possess the same spatial coordinates (definition of "in contact"). 
In fact, many physical tests could be performed to verify this.  Particles with definite momentum would take definite finite time to traverse from one wall to the other.  A particles at one wall and at another wall will feel different forces from a third particle.  If the first two were "in contact" they would feel the same forces from the third particle.
 
Coordinates specify relationships verifiable in terms of interaction and causation.  The mere fact that no particle has coordinates to cause an interaction that would otherwise be felt from the center of your cube (say a gravitational or electromagnetic pull), in other words no operative element of reality is at those coordinates (i.e. no interaction is felt from the center because no thing is there) does not in any way necessitate any conclusion about the absence.  I.e. there is no positive consequence of absence, only the absence of an otherwise expected positive consequence.
 
That which exists is the positive, all the possibilities are the background, not all of the possibilities are always occupied by that which exists.  This is the same for frequency, momentum, and position.
 
 

When your 12" cube is empty, none of the particles of reality which exist have attributes i.e. coordinates in space, which coincide with the innermost space of the 12" cube.
This does not, of course, in any way contradict with the fact that in times previous, many particles possessed such physical coordinates. Nor does it contradict the fact that presently, when empty, particles, systems, and energy outside possess the potential to cause, over time, some particles to again possess coordinates coinciding with the interior of the 12".
Stating that the cube is empty, in fact means, of those things which exist, none possess the attributes of position coinciding with inside the cube.  Stating that the cube is empty does not mean it is full of some kind of "nothing".  It is NOT full of anything, nor does it need be.
 
In any case, the absence of particles possessing coordinates inside the empty box, has no causative effect, does not constitute an imperative nor a logical necessity, making the "walls" of the empty cube possess the same spatial coordinates (definition of "in contact"). 
In fact, many physical tests could be performed to verify this.  Particles with definite momentum would take definite finite time to traverse from one wall to the other.  A particles at one wall and at another wall will feel different forces from a third particle.  If the first two were "in contact" they would feel the same forces from the third particle.
 
Coordinates specify relationships verifiable in terms of interaction and causation.  The mere fact that no particle has coordinates to cause an interaction that would otherwise be felt from the center of your cube (say a gravitational or electromagnetic pull), in other words no operative element of reality is at those coordinates (i.e. no interaction is felt from the center because no thing is there) does not in any way necessitate any conclusion about the absence.  I.e. there is no positive consequence of absence, only the absence of an otherwise expected positive consequence.
 
That which exists is the positive, all the possibilities are the background, not all of the possibilities are always occupied by that which exists.  This is the same for frequency, momentum, and position.
 
 

I don’t agree with this. Explaining why requires two distinctions.
- Dictatorial about government policy versus dictatorial to the USA’s people in general.
- A dictator personally versus a dictator institutionally.
Trump shows a strong desire to control government policy. However, his desire to control people in general doesn’t seem strong to me. Indeed, a prime counter-instance is the health insurance mandate. Obamacare made the mandate – that people in general (with a high enough income) must purchase health insurance, and they will be penalized (“taxed”) if they don’t. Trump got rid of the mandate, calling it the worst part of Obamacare.
Joe Biden shows little desire to be a dictator personally. However, it seems he has little reservation about having in his orbit others who are very dictatorial, e.g. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Kamala Harris. If elected, his cabinet appointments will be very revealing. Another reason I say this is his persistent desire for higher taxes, even more spending, and more regulations. Implicitly or explicitly, he views a better world coming from government activism. Trump does not.
On the campaign trail, he has touted the “public option” regarding health insurance. If elected, I would not be a bit surprised to see him flip-flop to backing some form of Medicare for All (advocated by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris when they pursued the presidential nomination). Biden explicitly proposes to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Of course, the transition will be forced via government intervention – regulations and subsidies.
How often have you heard Biden praise private industry or advocate individual liberty?

 

•  Trump has the right enemies. For example the Deep State – he is so repellent it’s existence has become widely known through its brazen attacks.
•  He saw the political expediency of bringing up the immigration issue in public.
•  He pointed out the bias in the news – “fake news.”  (Rand would have liked this one.)
•  He ended an Obama regulation that forced low-income housing onto suburbs.
•  He appointed Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch (founded by Larry Klayman), to a court oversight commission that can remove judges for misconduct.
•  He appointed three – count ’em, three – not-so-bad Supreme Court justices.  Can you imagine if Hillary ... but I don’t want to have nightmares.
•  His first Attorney General prosecuted elite child slavery rings. (I haven’t read anything about the current one, William Barr.)
hagmannreport.com/president-trump-zeros-in-on-elite-pedophiles
lizcrokin.com/uncategorized/trump-takes-two-dozen-elite-pedophiles-including-celebrities-politicians
•  He’s at least trying to prosecute those behind the Russiagate hoax (William Barr is dragging it out).
•  He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord.
•  He banned the indoctrination of federal government employees and contractors with critical race theory.
One could easily think of more but isn’t that enough?