bluey

But God is supposedly an entity, not just a concept. So it may be concrete-bound but still rather appropriate.

That's not an argument for anything, it's an argument against the possibility of having any knowledge at all. It's a refusal to even use reason. That's why you can't argue with it.

The first thing is, there is no "we" in Objectivism. "We" are not putting anything forth. Second, all indications are that Objectivism is gaining ground - sales of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are way up, as one indicator. Why? Not because they're great summer reading - it's because they describe reality accurately, and a lot of people are smart enough to see that. Obviously the trend chasers and wannabes are not the people to look for evidence of pro-individualism. Also obviously, if there were quietly rising undercurrent of rationality across society, there would be a corresponding and loud backlash against it - so you can expect that. Especially at a bar full of students. As has been pointed out above, no one who's going to jump into Objectivism just because it seems friendly or trendy is going to bother understanding it and is not going to be a good representative of the philosophy anyway. It's far better to have people who are looking for reason find it on their own. Conversely, no one who actually understands and agrees with the philosophy is going to be held back just because it's unpopular. Third, do you have any examples of Objectivists earning this reputation for being condescending and derisive? Because you can be as "firm and kind" as you want to be, but if you're sending a message your audience is dead set against, they're still going to interpret your words as a personal attack. There's no way around that one. You can see Rand's appearances on Donahue (there are two on Youtube) for a demonstration of that. All you can do is say it like it is. You can't bribe people into agreeing with you by being likable, it's a losing battle, the socialists will always have the leg up since they are in the business of promising something for nothing. It's like pretending you can reason a two-year-old into choosing broccoli over candy. The difference is that we're talking about adults here and they are fully capable of choosing to think or not - pretending you can sweettalk them into choosing to think is simply neither reasonable nor responsible. You have to choose to interact with people on a rational level, and let them decide whether to live up to that or not.

The issue is when rights begin. Human rights are a specific thing - they are rights to actions chosen and carried out by a being whose only means of survival is reason. An embryo is not capable of taking even the limited self-sustaining action that a newborn infant takes. Its rights aren't being violated in any way if it is removed from the uterus and dies. That's why abortion isn't murder - because you're not preventing anyone from living. You're simply refusing to do all its living for it anymore. The simple fact that this is even possible makes the whole "a fetus is a human being with full human rights" argument moot. That distinction is why I got kicked in the abortion debate the last time I tried to participate, so I'm not going to get that involved in this one.

Ok, so the first is irrational and a waste of time to even discuss, so why are you discussing it? It is a contradiction of reality and of Objectivism to say "hey, here's this thing I imagined in my own brain with no imput from reality, I'm going to choose to belive that it's real". Creator, no creator, whatever: there are exactly two possibilities. Either something, at some point, came from nothing; or else there has just always been something. Do you have anther suggestion? Do you understand why Objectivism posits that the latter is the case, and that that "always-existing-something" could not possibly have been consciousness? If not then I'd suggest you look into it, it's spelled out pretty clearly in OPAR. Deism is not better than theism. Historically, sure, it's a step in the right direction; factually, not so much.

Yes. That. Pretty much all there is to say on the subject, when it comes right down to it. It's strange how religionists expect that if there is an answer, we must already know it somehow and just need to come to some consensus and stop asking. Nope ... there's obviously an answer, since here everything is, and if you want to know what it is then go fucking find it already, stop asking us, how the hell would we know? SCIENCE, people.

But you do know how you know, you just described it. You know a lot of stuff and your mind works really fast. What's the problem with that? You didn't consciously go through every single step from point A to point Z on this particular occasion, but that's because you have done all the separate steps in the past and no longer need to spell it all out in every single separate situation. Of course sometimes it may not work out so well, and then you may have to consciously go through each step to see where you've improperly integrated some fact or made some unwarranted assumption. You say you can't do that, but I'm sure that if you sat down and tried, you'd find that you can.

George doesn't know. You just should, dammit. Because/when you can, apparently.

There's a missing quote tag, so I'm not sure who I'm disagreeing with here. How can you be certain that "X's behave in <this particular way>, if you can never know an X when you see one? I mean, if you can never be sure that what you're looking at is an X, then you could never have studied any X's. How do you know you were studying X's and not Z's, and this time it really is an X, which explains the unexpected behaviour ... How did you get to know that X's do Y, if you can never know that what you're observing is an X?

No, existants are thinking. That's like saying your whole house is on fire when you turn the stove on.

Wait, stop here. What's the "reason" behind "as much as one reasonably can"? Is your morality an incomplete guideline, simply a suggestion? Why is there a point where your morality fails to inform your actions, after which you need some other "reason"? After your morality becomes "unreasonable" in a particular case, how do you know what to do then? In which cases is your morality "unreasonable" in your estimation, and why? It's not that you can't have a concern for others without sacrificing for them. One way that people have concern for others without ending up with sacrifice is to be simply benevolent and leave it out of the whole ethical realm - this way they can be nice when it seems to accomplish something or drop it when it doesn't, without having to force their "niceness" on others for the sake of their soul, or the other person's "own good", or steal from third parties when they run out of stuff to give away, or simply feel like a bad person when they have to let someone down. If it's a moral imperative, though, then people have to insist on being their brother's keeper, because we all know that the purpose of moral imperatives is to give you a standard to live up to, a way of knowing whether you're good enough to live in the world. Otherwise, what's the "imperative"? Which is why that standard has to be consistent with the actual, real requirements of living in the world. Again - it's not simple "other-concern", it's "other-concern" as a moral imperative. Please keep that distinction in mind in your future posts, I'd love to stop reiterating it now, but you seem to want to equivocate the two. I'm just going to have to ask you to read some Rand here, maybe OPAR would help. Since that is what this forum is about, after all - if you have a specific problem with her specific arguments, then we can go over that if we must. But I'm not going to reinvent the wheel or do all your research for you, I don't have the time. And again - not "other-concern", which generally comprises concepts like benevolence, love for family and friends, even focus on a client's needs, for example, as well as moral altruism. It is only moral altruism that is a problem - when you must be other-directed in your moral concerns, or otherwise evaluate yourself as "bad". You're so full of crap though. I know that I feel a desire that my family be fed and happy, and I know that I could care less about most other people. So clearly it is not the case that I feel that desire for my family only as an extension of my desire for absolutely everyone to be fed and happy - in fact it's the opposite; that I think it would be cool if everyone everywhere were well fed and happy, simply because my family and I are doing fine and I've got leftover goodwill. So unless you're going to tell me that I don't know what I think, I think that conclusively puts the lie to your little "everyone automatically wants the best for everyone and sees no distinction between themselves as an individual and the rest of the universe unless they are taught to" line.

First of all, if your definitions (1) and (2) don't include a moral imperative, then we don't have any issue here. The reason why we have an issue is precisely because you want to advocate not just an impersonal "concern" for others, just a general preference for being nice rather than being nasty, but because you want to make it a moral imperative that we do have concern for others. The reason why you are wrong that (1) and (2) are complimentary and innocent as moral principles, is that (2) is, in fact, in reality, as proven through history and demonstrated daily by actual events, impossible as a moral standard without the end result/demand of sacrificing one man to another. The only way to espouse a morality of altruism and not end up with sacrifice, is to clandestinely ignore your supposed moral principles and act like an egoist. Egoism does not lead to this inevitability, for the simple fact that it is never in one's rational, long-term interest to initiate force against another individual. If all you are saying is that most people have no desire to hurt other people, and even have a desire to help them out whenever it makes sense to do so, then that is correct - but that concept already has a name, and it is "benevolence". It is not a moral issue and it is not altruism. You can try to wave your magic wand and call it altruism, but then you're not actually accomplishing anything, and you're most definitely not doing the same thing that Rand did with the term "egoism", as you still seem to think. Again I repeat, if you are still under the impression that this is what you are doing, then it is you who does not understand the Objectivist position. If each individual is morally bound to be other-directed in his actions - even if it's just some of the time, even if everyone knows it's an impossible "ideal" - then you have a system of self-sacrifice. It's not a problem with the given definition of altruism - it's a problem with that very stance, that other-directedness is a moral issue, no matter what name you give to it. So continually asserting that "your" definition of altruism doesn't involve sacrifice isn't going to cut it - altruism, in the sense of a moral imperative to other-directedness, always and inevitably implies sacrifice. Why in the world would that be the case?? Are you saying that you can't have a desire to see your son or daughter, as particular individuals, be well-fed and happy, but that you can only have a general desire to see everyone in the world well-fed and happy? I mean, that's just plain false. To the rational intellect, that individual himself is, in practice, the center of the universe, so to speak, because he himself is the locale of all his experiences, all his intellect, all his desires and all his actions. The rational intellect doesn't resemble an omniscient, disembodied mind and there's no reason why that should be an ideal. I know that is what the Rationalist philosophical tradition would say, but it's simply not true.

By "choice" I mean that at some point in time you have the option of two different actions, which you have to choose between. Before I have made a choice, there is no solution to the problem of "what am I going to do?" I have to choose, I'm not just waiting passively to see which happens automatically. It's because you can only pick one option that you have to make a choice. That is what I observe, it's not just a feeling, it's clearly a fact that I have to make a choice between one or the other or both or neither, because I am the entity that is going to act on that choice and nothing makes me act other than my deciding to do so. I don't see why you have a problem with this. My observation is that: a) before taking an action, it appears that I have a choice between one or more actions, b ) that I do decide on an action and take it, c) after I have taken the action, I can still remember my options and evaluate the results of my actions in light of what I could have done, and d) I can remember to make the same or a different choice the next time I am faced with a similar decision. What part of this do you disagree with? And why? Do you just doubt your perceptions, or do you have some reason to think that they're wrong? What is left to be called "free will" in an ethical sense, if there is no free will in reality? You're saying that people don't have a choice of what their actions are, but because they feel like they do, they must be treated as if they actually do? But ... why??

Your first sentence makes no sense. Are you saying that you didn't have to choose chocolate, but you can't prove that you could have chosen anything else? Your scenario had you, in fact, choosing chocolate in that situation, and you said there was no reason after the fact to think that you could have ever chosen strawberry (in that same situation). I'm saying that the fact that you physically stood there and made a choice is all the evidence you need to conclude that you had a choice. The first basis for thinking that free will exists is that we seem to observe it. So what reason do I have to doubt that observation? Can you not observe yourself in any particular instant making "self-caused" actions? Why would self-causation be in conflict with causation? Mind is not like any other thing, you can't generalize about it by looking around at other things. You have to understand mind by studying mind itself, and the only mind you have access to is your own. Do you think you don't have a choice between replying to this thread or doing something else? I personally have a choice between replying to your post vs. doing laundry, at the moment, and I frigging hate doing laundry, it's the worst chore ever. So that's why I made this choice to put it off and post here instead. What other proof do you need of free will? What other proof could there possibly be??

After all that time deciding between the two, what makes you think you could never have chosen strawberry to begin with? If you could only have chosen chocolate, then why did it take you so long to make up your mind? It seems like you're saying that your mind is this impersonal, unconscious force that guides your actions without any input from "you", whatever that would be apart from your mind. What reason do you have, other than the possibility that our perception of choice could be mistaken, to say that it is, indeed mistaken? Why couldn't you have picked strawberry instead, or chosen a double-scoop so you could have both or something? There they both were, after all, there's no physical reason why you couldn't have chosen either way. "Your mind" doesn't come up with things and spit out the answers to you; "You" come up with things, using your mind. Just like your arms don't lift things, then you figure out what to do with them - you lift things, using your arms. This whole "free will might just be an illusion" thing makes me wonder - do you agree with the axiom of existence, but not of identity? That "something" surely exists, but that you have no capacity to figure out what it is?

Could you please state concisely what this inconsistency is supposed to be so I can work with it?? As far as I can tell it's just that you think Rand redefined "egoism" while neglecting to similarly reconsider "altruism", so you're trying to do that for her and make them both legitimate moral principles. If this is your point then you are not properly understanding the Objectivist position. Well, as I've pointed out, Rand did not change the definition of egoism. So I'm not sure why you insist on playing word games rather than getting to the point so we can come to some conclusion on this matter. No - as I've explained, "morality" is a specific thing with a specific purpose. It is real and has a basis within reality. It is, specifically, the set of rules or guidelines that tell one individual how he/she ought to act given the facts that he/she is alive and wishes to remain alive. Concepts of morality are derived directly from reality. Given that an individual can only have complete knowledge of his own interests, and given that only individuals are capable of taking actions, can you see how egoism ("I should determine my own interests and work towards them") can be derived from reality, whereas altruism ("it is moral to act in the assumed interests of others") is basically arbitrary? You're calling this distinction "information assymetry" as though it were a morally trivial aside to the main point of "benefit". Instead though it is completely central to the issue, since it is the difference between facts derived from reality and arbitrary conjecture. To quote myself on this point : You're saying that since Rand "appears to most people" to have redefined a term, you can go ahead and actually redefine a term and call that a parallel argument that we ought to accept because Rand did the same thing? Well first you would have to do what Rand actually did, and explain how the net result of altruism is anything other than sacrifice. I would say that it's because in reality, egoism works and altrusim doesn't. Besides, I wouldn't care if I did have some innate "tug" to do one thing, I would still want to know which I should do. Who cares why or if we evolved with a tendency? As soon as it's demonstrated that we can choose to act on that tendency or not, it becomes a moot issue. What appearance is it saving? I don't get it. Well, some things in the universe can't look after themselves. Lots of things die all the time, for example, and some people are really stupid. So it can't be that you aren't responsible, in practice, for looking after the other things in the universe just because they're doing fine on their own. Also, why are you now saying that you don't need to act to others' benefit, weren't you saying something different before? Are you supposed to be an altruist sometimes and an egoist sometimes? When your actual, known interests conflict with your assumptions of someone else's interests, how do you decide which to benefit? Do you have a moral principle that would inform you in that situation? So what the hell is the point of saying you "ought" to help other people anyway, even though you can't? What's moral or efficient about trying to do the impossible?

Dude, do your homework. I just answered this two posts ago. I ought to act in my interests, and it's in my interests to live in a world where life in general is a value and is protected. Therefore as a general rule I would do what I could to help in an emergency situation. Keep up.

So you know you don't have an actual disagreement to present, you're just seeing if you can piss everyone off? Yeah, I kinda thought so, which is why I stopped replying for a while. Oh well. I'm not sure there is a definition of altruism that doesn't entail, rather explicitly, putting another's interests ahead of one's own. You could say that definition itself doesn't necessarily imply sacrifice, but Rand's point is that as a moral principle it can't be followed consistently without leading to sacrifice or demands of sacrifice - as I'm sure you can observe is the result of following altruistic philosophies or religions or politics. Whereas egoism, while it does mean putting one's own interests ahead of another's, can be followed consistently without leading to sacrifice, which is what Rand pointed out. She didn't change the definition, she challenged the common misconception of the consequences of the concept. She wasn't being a jackass and just trying to screw with people. See the difference? Finally, Objectivism places benevolence as a sense of life issue rather than a moral issue. Think of it this way: "My Life" is my end goal, "ethics" is the sort of map that identifies which actions are in accordance with that goal and which aren't, "moral" actions are those that are and "immoral" actions are those that aren't, and lots of actions are simply irrelevant to that goal. That's the way I picture it all together, anyway. So benevolence isn't the root and foundation of morality, unless your version of morality is somehow derived from something other than real life. It's a side issue. Sure, from my own perspective, another person who is benevolent towards me could be "good" and someone who is a crotchety bastard could be "bad", but for that individual himself, the way he treats me is a side issue. I can just avoid him if I think he's trouble. See the difference?

Jeff - I agree with your position in this argument, but I think you have a problem in saying that the advantage to you is that you be free from guilt. Guilt is the result of an immoral action, so you're basically saying that you would do it because it's the right thing to do, which doesn't answer George's question. I think a more concise description of what you're talking about, is that you would do it because you value "humanity", "life", "safety", "living in a world where people appreciate life enough to value it in each other", etc. more than you value your suit. Because these abstract values (while not necessarily the particular stranger/child) are more important to you than the suit, you would feel guilty (i.e. be acting against your own interest, which is a world where people properly value life in general more than clothes in general) if you watched a child drown rather than get your suit wet. And George - I think the word for what you're advocating is "benevolence". Think about how that is different from altruism and see if that helps you clarify your thoughts on this point. No one is saying you should be callous towards your fellow humans; instead, because you are free to live your life and therefore to build a life you love and appreciate, you are also free to appreciate this capacity in others. In fact if you look at Rand's writings, she is very clear that it is the proper egoists who are consistently kinder and more charitable to other people. So what I'm saying is that if I understand you correctly, you're not advocating altruism at all, but the fact that you are naming this "vague concept" of yours "altruism" and then trying to defend it is just confusing everyone. Anyway, my 2c.

I think the official term is "asshole"

Yikes. First of all, I can imagine a lot of things that are impossible. Second, you're the one who set up the conditions of "infinite empty space" where god then created "matter and energy and life". So you yourself said that god is not alive, not made up of anything, and is not anywhere (since empty space is space that doesn't have anything in it). In other words, god is nothing. So no, I definitely cannot imagine a being that is both something and nothing. I can use the words, but I can't imagine that being. Can you? And some "different dimension" is not an explanation; it would still have to be made of something and exist by some means. Again, using your own description, he doesn't. But you're not positing order created out of chaos. You're positing something created out of nothing. Do you have an example of that happening? I have answered that, in detail. See my earlier replies to you. My god man, are you serious? Yes, 100% of the professional magicians out there use "tricks", illusions, to make you think they are doing magic, and some of them make money by telling gullible people that it's real. Did you think that quarter really came out of your ear?? Are you 10?? No, I'm saying that if you're interested in the answers to scientific questions, you should GO FIND THEM. Thinking hard is not going to tell you how the universe originated. A few more years of good hard scientific investigation might. If I put the time in to investigate something, then it's because I do have an intended use for that information. I clearly do not think that knowledge of the origins of the universe is useless knowledge, since I have repeatedly advised you to go collect that knowledge if you want it. The fact that you are here thinking you're going to find that information, tells me you wouldn't know how to use the knowledge if you had it. The scientific details of the origins of the universe are not part of the philosophical branch of metaphysics. You are talking out of your bottom on a good many points and I and others are doing our best to demonstrate that to you, since we are kindly assuming that you don't already know. Actually it's more like this: We have tons of direct and historical evidence to prove that God is a story that unknowing thinkers made up to explain the unexplainable. That in itself is plenty of evidence that god does not exist. Think "Santa Claus". Ok, read that carefully again. Is he claiming that science can currently explain the origin of the universe? Think about what you're saying here. Is it possible that we're so complex that something even more complex must exist that made us? Obviously we could not ever come to that conclusion based simply on complexity. It would also not answer anything. Also, any conclusion about the origin of life could not be discovered or proved through "logical argument". It's a scientific question, requiring scientific evidence. I'm going to second what JeffS and D'kian have recommended, that you do some more studying.

Yes!! See Jake's post above.

Ok, you're right. What I was trying to get at is that knowledge is dependent on the contents of the knower's consciousness, it refers to what is being held in that consciousness, and while "untrue knowledge" is not knowledge, neither is a "correct" string of words if they are not understood or are random. Gurugeorge's point, I think, is that whatever characteristics there are of an object are there, in the object, in reality, and have nothing to do with whether we know about them or not. Which is true, of course, but has nothing to do with "knowledge" which refers completely to consciousness. As for truth, sure, if it's a meaningless string of words then it's neither true nor false. But if I tell you "Friends comes on at 8:00", without having any idea whether it does or not, then that statement is either true or false. I know the meaning of "Friends", of "8:00", and of "comes on at" in the context of television. It's not meaningless and is either true or false, regardless of what I think, in accordance with reality. That's all I meant by truth being "out there", that it refers to facts of reality. Knowledge on the other hand refers to to the contents of consciousness, which is why that statement can be true or false, and I can know it or not, but those two facts about my statement are not both saying the same thing. If the parrot doesn't know, then in what sense is it knowledge?? Again, and for the last time .... "knowledge" and "truth" are NOT interchangeable terms, they do not mean the same thing! If the parrot knows, then it has knowledge. Maybe someone else knows, then they have knowledge. You can't have knowledge that no one knows. Knowledge refers to the content of a consciousness.

I'll make this quick, and say no more about it because these posts are just going to keep getting longer unless you try to understand the Objectivist position correctly. If we have a piece of knowledge, it IS because we have made an effort to obtain it (or because we obtained it in the course of an effort in some other direction). It is not true because we know it; it is true because it is so, in reality, which is how we observed it in the first place and how we obtained the knowledge about it. We don't observe random things that have no basis in reality. We don't know something just because it's true - we know something because we have learned it. What we do does, specifically, make the knowledge we hold "knowledge", rather than conjecture. You're still confusing the concepts of knowledge and truth, so you have to get that sorted out if you're going to get anywhere with this. "Truth" is whatever reality is and we may or may not know it. "Knowledge" is what we hold in our minds and have individually validated through observation or reason. The "logical necessity" is that if the labels we give an object do not correspond to the actual (true) identity of the object, then we do not have knowledge of the object. It is logically necessary that we come to conclusions based on observation, since the alternative is to ignore our observations as invalid. People can't understand you because you keep putting direct contradictions right next to each other. Things like "we can know things, although the nature of knowledge means that we can't know anything" (a paraphrase from an earlier post that I responded to, to which you replied that your position is that you can indeed have knowledge - without retracting or explaining the very next sentence where you claimed that knowledge is impossible). In this paragraph above you very explicitly state that knowledge both is and is not a result of human action undertaken to gain it. Again, you're confusing knowledge with truth and this is keeping you from understanding the Objectivist position and also keeping your posts from making a whole lot of sense.