Mindy

Yes, I think I do. It is improper to ask, "That is a pencil, but why does it exist?" It is not improper to ask how this graphite became embedded in this wood, or how the whole thing got itself painted yellow, or how it came to be on my desk. Those things are all interactions among existing things. That help? Mindy

I trust the "you," right above, refers to Claire, not me. Mindy

Mindy p.s. I formatted this incorrectly. My comments follow the lavendar quotes.

There are, indeed altered states of consciousness. Surely you've been so fatigued you couldn't think? Ever have an after-image? Day-dream? Reflect in deep abstraction so that you didn't hear your name called? Been hypnotized? Drunk? Ever see a diabetic start to go into an hypoglycemic state? These are systematic alterations of mental processing of cognitive stimuli (and emotional, in some cases.) Ever see a physician rub an unconscious patient's breast-bone with his knuckle? He's administering a deep-pain stimulus to see if that patient can be aroused. Ever undergone general anaesthesia? Notice the blurred consciousness, vague awareness of things as you "came out of it?" Comas are graded as to their depth of "unconsciousness." First you say you have experience trying to meditate, then you say you've talked to people who meditate. Then you state a generalization over "any proper meditation." Does your evidence support that generalization? Then you define all meditation as thinking. I doubt you can support that... If two people were trying to convince you of something, and one said, "I tried it, got nowhere, it is not worth the trouble," and the other said, "I tried it, it worked for me, I got very desirable results," who, would you say, had a better logical position? Do you also throw beer bottles onto playgrounds? Mindy

In fact, the word "evil" was applied in a post by DavidOdden. I would I could so blithely disdain the reality of evil in life. Do you consider the recent 'Honor Killings' just those two girls' father's "mistake?" Mindy

"Being a cause" is relational with respect to its effects. In order to be assigned the status of a cause, it had to be related to some number of specific effects. You can't boot-strap infinity into this relation, because you can't specify infinite effects. It seems to me that where relational properties can be said to be infinite, it is the abstractions that are infinite, while the properties remain finite. Mindy

Thanks, Softwarenerd, for that clarification. If I understand the situation correctly, the supervisor is paid by the government to oversee "perps'" community service time. His non-profit business probably just pays his own salary and some expenses. When he failed to supervise our friendly perp, he was cheating the court system with his lax over-sight. His outburst may well have been due to guilt at his own failure. I don't blame my horse for wandering away if I don't have a rope on her. It just seems that some are looking on this as if he promised someone something, then didn't deliver, but forced labor as punishment doesn't fit that scenario, does it? Mindy

You need the definition of an everyday term "argued for?" What sort of epistemology underlies that? Look it up in a simple dictionary, in the O.E.D., even. Facts don't need to be argued for. That is the way the word is defined. (See, de-fin-ed, how the word is identified, with an end, not indefinite, lacking an end.) So, you won't respect the conceptual meaning of the term, but you will impose on everybody else your technical, jargonized, operationalized, surjectivized definition? Earth to Aleph. The longer you put it off, the harder it gets. Mindy

anny, Bravo, well-done, you inspire me. Mindy

I get a very different impression of this poster. Seems sincere and honest, unusually so. The error of generalizing government's improper interferences to drivers' licenses is an easy one to make. (Of course, we didn't learn why his license was suspended in the first place.) The contractor for his court-decreed punishment is buying his labor to throw it away, isn't that what "community service" amounts to? The clean-up work wasn't a trade between our poster and the contractor. Not doing the work didn't short-change him. His fury at the laxity was because it dis-respected his personal "volunteerism" values. I think some of the responses went overboard. Mindy

A correction to my post, #106: I should have written that the range is contained in B.

No, I didn't ask you what the term means, I told you. I told you the meaning of "quantity" excluded the indeterminate, that "infinite quantity" is an oxymoron. Surely you noticed? I've been after you for a while to address the objection that the very meaning of the concept, "quantity," prevents its being modified by "infinite." I repeated that as late as yesterday. It doesn't seem to be of importance to you, but it is of the greatest importance. I don't believe you have read any mere assumptions from me that reality is finite. Injectivity only requires that the domain, A, is contained in B. I wrote f(n) = f(2n) in error. I meant to say f(n) = 2n, so that f(n') = 4n. Didn't you mean to say that my accute comprehension is damned inconvenient sometimes? I think you had better do just that, make convenient assumptions. You're stuck otherwise. Mindy

First, your silence on the issue of what the term means is deafening. Second, if the function maps n to 2n, f(n) doesn't equal f(2n) You had injectivity as soon as you said n -> 2n. Yet, injectivity doesn't prove an exhaustive one-to-one correspondence. Surjectivity shouldn't require the assumption f(n) = f(n'). What gives? What bars a one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and things in reality is the fact that reality is finite. Your "nothing bars" is question-begging, my friend. My consciousness may be the primary one, we'll see. Mindy

Try looking it up. Objectivism, and philosophy in general, don't enlighten us by re-defining things. Mindy

It is applied to all particular existents, to all of existence. If it were not applied to particular entites, it wouldn't be applied. Also, it gives us the most general, the most powerful physical knowledge, that of identity and its role in causation. If this seems nit-picking, I am just responding to the statements as written. Fundamentals in philosophy must be accurately worded. Put the wrong term in, or a term in the wrong place, and you have set up a premise that will "prove" a falsehood, or, more importantly, fail to prove the truth. Mindy Mindy

The word in question has long been defined. It would be very odd if it needed re-definition. Notice that a re-definition would disintegrate knowledge, as "characteristic" is a perfectly good, useful, well-defined term in the first place. It has been an important part of many important philosophical discussions and treatises. They would be rendered incomprehensible if the meaning of the term were changed. How atypical it would be for a thinker such as Rand to just take that term and re-define it. Her use of the term, "selfishness" is undoubtedly the most notable example of this. But even in that case, she actually returned to the roots of the term, and showed that it had become corrupted by ideologies attempting to blind men to their own self-interests. Mindy

I suggest your wording misleads. "...were never able to substantiate..." implies you asked for proof, or I tried to offer some... I did this extraordinary thing, I looked it up. I looked it up in many places. I looked up various forms. History of mathematics also substantiates this point. Numbers come from exhaustive one-to-one correspondences. No termination point, no correspondence. Measurement of part of something does not constitute measuring it. Infinite means indeterminate, not measured, not counted, not quantified. Mindy

Those are only nominally different contexts. "Characteristic" has the identical meaning in both, as an enduring partial identity of things. When we say, "It is characteristic of him to be late," we are using "characteristic" in a somewhat different sense than as a differentia, in your statements. Notice the difference between "It is a characteristic of him, being late." versus "It is characteristic of him..." Why do you assume "characteristic" means anything special in Objectivism? I read the posts, but the introductory one just assumes there is a special meaning. Mindy

Rand's classic and oft-repeated statement, Existence exists, and that means something exists of which one is aware, and you exist, being conscious that it is so, is surely the starting place to understand the import of that phrase. The foundational value lies in being able to begin any specific discussion with the reality of a world of things, and with conscious beings who are in touch with it, taken for granted. You don't want to find yourself being asked about your evidence for something, to prove that an event nobody witnessed indeed occurred. You say, "Existence exists," and pause leisurely to let them consider the wisdom of attempting to refute that. The primacy of existence and the efficacy of consciousness are incontestable (logically.) That doesn't stop people from contesting them. The statement, "Existence exists," is a concise "argument" for those two axioms and their interconnection. ("Argument" of axioms consists in pointing to their manifestations in reality.) You make the assertion as an ostensive summary, and no argument is needed (nor could there be one.) Dissenters are then in the position to try to refute all of existence (themselves included) and the possibility of knowledge (their own included.) Mindy

I assume this is your own statement, but either way: We do not differentiate men from wolves on the basis of their both being animals. That is what you say, "...we can differentiate only on the basis of a wider characteristic..." The wider characteristic is "animal," but clearly, we do not differentiate on that basis. If you mean that since they are all animals, we differentiate them on the basis of what kind of animals they are...just a guess, you are assuming the thing you wish to explain. Mindy

Aleph_0, post # 71 I pointed out that the very definition of "quantity" precludes the notion of an infinite quantity. That wasn't an opinion. Quantifying consists in determining a thing's quanitity. It must be measurable or countable. Those processes require a termination point. Being determinate is essential to being a quantity. In case I missed your specific response to this objection, please direct me to it. Mindy

By that standard, Scientology would best the Bible. Do you not suppose that priests preferred to live off the group rather than farm or hunt? And do you really think priests, etc., lived by the precepts of their religion? History is chock full of contradictions to your suppositions. Mindy

First, take the Doctor's prognosis with a grain of salt. It is a generalization over the whole bell-curve of the population of patients, and you know something about where in that bell-curve you fall in terms of general health, strength, determination, resourcefulness, etc. I would research each aspect of what brought this on, since it seems to have a special induction, and research arthritis, the mechanism, the metabolism, how drugs that treat it work, how physical therapy works, ancient remedies, foreign remedies, acupuncture, etc. Then, paint yourself the most optimistic picture that isn't pie-in-the-sky. Then set out to prove everybody wrong. Think of Beethoven composing though deaf. Think of that astonishing woman who was born, a Thalidimide baby, without arms, who cared for her home, had a baby and raised it, typed and embroidered with her toes, etc. (Anybody see the TV program about her?) She drove, shopped, did everything but play tennis. And, she had to suffer such appalling affronts as some woman in her grocery store who objected that she picked up produce with her foot! That said, I don't want to claim that I would have the strength. I hope I would. I pray I never have to find out. Don't give up in fear of what might come. Mindy

I think it would help to very clearly distinguish existence from time. An unchanging state of affairs has no time. Time doesn't pertain to that situation. As soon as something changes, time begins. So the beginning of time doesn't mean the beginning of existents. Before time, there was stasis. Mindy