Mindy

Actually, that's a deduction. "Motion" as the term is used in respect to time is broader than local motion. It is broader than spatial re-location. It includes any change of any quality also. So the bit about relationship isn't actually required. Mindy

whYNOT, post 316. Could you make plain what his "expansion" was? Mindy

Just a technical comment: You can't say a moment of time consisted of universal stillness. Mindy

I have a thought about what you bring up about principles. You credit principles with unit-economy ("crow") and with being able to anticipate the long-range effects, though the latter is conditioned by your concern for unit-economy again. I would argue that their role in letting us know in advance what the character of possible effects would be is the primary use and value of principles. Aware of the fact that there are side-effects and future effects of our actions would leave us in a quandry if we had no guidelines to follow. How can we possibly know all of what will happen and/or be prevented from happening due to our choice? Scientific principles generalize our experience with some particulars of a sort to new particulars of that sort. All of our productive efforts depend on this sort of knowledge. Moral principles especially are immensely valuable (of course.) Moral principles recognize human priorities, so they can assure us we won't "shoot yourself in the foot," while being otherwise efficacious in our efforts. Mindy

Anything automated is, of course, a difficulty to change. Assuming "you" have an evasion as part of your make-up, you have gone to a lot of trouble, mostly below your own introspective awareness, to strengthen the defenses around that evasion. However, evasions do show up in one's feelings. They are an odd, nonsensical, exagerrated, etc. emotion or "sense of things," that occur whenever your defenses go into effect. They are an emotional or attitudinal bump in the road, and you can notice them if you spend some time trying. Once you begin to detect these, you must practice "tough-love" on yourself, looking for the meaning of the emotion, then, the source of that irrational meaning. It takes great courage to ferret out a mistake in your thinking about yourself, life, the world, people, etc. Anything automatic will require, I firmly believe, bringing the roots into the light. Convincing oneself of what is true and appropriate, in contrast to the "evasion" will not do the trick. You have to understand it in all its specific meaning to you, put it into the situation in which it developed, and thus learn specifically, as concretely as possible, that it is all an error. I realize I am talking about a somewhat different scenario than you described. I do so because I believe it is this sort of experience that affects one's psycho-epistemology. You know people who say, "Well, I'm certainly not going to argue the point," in a huffy voice, as if it were poor manners to discuss serious ideas. That attitude toward such discussions is defensive. That person (sounds like a woman to me) realizes, at some level, that she cannot defend her beliefs. She disdains arguments of any sort, they make her nervous and insecure, but not just because she's not good at arguing, but because such discussions would reveal her guilty secrets, her dogmatic beliefs, her pretenses, etc. The only alternative type of psycho-epistemological variable I know of is when one accepts a premise that makes "you" a rationalist, intrinsicist, Platonist, nominalist, etc. These determine a style of thought that has, of course, serious limitations. It should be very useful to study each of these and related theories and become well-versed in recognizing errors of each sort. If you understand them, and recognize their manifestations, you should have no problem avoiding them in your own thinking. I was a little reluctant to respond to this thread, as it was "cold." I'm glad it proved still of interest. Mindy

Yes, whYNOT, you are responsible for fleshing out your claims. You said Kelley had made contributions to an objective philosophy. You used that point to make arguments. You are not required to enter into a debate about it, but you are required to name those contributions. Otherwise your whole discussion is arbitrary, akin to asserting green gremlins infest the chat room. Mindy

I am not psychologizing you. I am noticing that you do not address some of the significant problems put to you. The torpedoes of which I speak are not personal attacks, they are logical points that would "sink" your position. But we can't simply claim such results. When you say, for example, that there is no way for mere matter to act on its own, you are making a huge claim. Have you even tried to support it? Do you really think crystals grow because God wills them to? Gravity operates because God feels that way? Do radioactive materials decay because God frowns on them? No, matterial things interact. They interact from the beginning and always, by their natures. Your supposition that the "uncaused cause" causes events through volition was soundly refuted by a poster who noted you were supposing a consciousness conscious of nothing but itself, which is a contradiction. If you answered that argument, I missed it. But the whole idea that an uncaused cause needs something else in order to cause its effects, that it needs volition, is contradictory. You have identified it as a cause. If that is its nature, it causes effects just by being. Why posit volition? Most of all, do point out where you answered the accusation that your exempting God from being "caused" is arbitrary. If God can be uncaused, why can't the Universe be so? We know the Universe exists. Parsimony would prohibit positing a further entity... Mindy p.s. I went back to re-read your main post and its responses, and your first lengthy response to those. I wanted to be sure I hadn't over-stated my point. I find I under-stated it. There have been many good objections made which you did not respond to. What you claimed was a response was re-statement of your position.

I believe you have to identify the "messages" about yourself, life, the world of people, etc. that you were given by the abusive "parents." You need to be able to put into words how you felt about yourself and the world due to their oppressive treatment. Then you need to become very sensitive to when the feelings that those impressions arouse are current. That takes some days of paying attention to your innermost feelings. Just because those attitudes and feelings have become nearly constant, and very familiar, don't assume they are easily noticed. When you are noticing the feelings, add a conscious identification that this feeling is due to how "Father," etc., treated me. He made me feel... When you can do this, you are on the road to isolating and disintegrating the low self-esteem, discouragement, anger, etc. that your up-bringing tragically loaded on you. Keep noticing the emotions, and annotating them to yourself, "I feel this way because grandfather would..." You should probably start the day with this, and repeat it any time your mood goes south for no good reason. It takes quite specific identifications of how you were treated--what message you found in it--what emotions/moods/attitudes you commonly experience that are due to this, to make the process I'm describing realistic and effective. What happens is you isolate the unsound emotions, you recognize their cause, and you see, logically, that it isn't about you at all. Best wishes in your struggle with this. Mindy

Wynand asked Dominique to marry him while she was married to Keating--he didn't wait for her to be "free." I think her complications are her business, but since you know about it, you should keep an eye on what progress she reports. Mindy

Most of those cows would never have been born, if not to be raised and slaughtered for meat. We need a new restaurant: The Grateful Cow. Mindy

whYNOT: You address that long post to me (and Marc.) I don't get why. I did ask what, specifically, you learned from Kelley. Could you give an example in definite terms? Thanks. Mindy

The biggie in terms of psycho-epistemological corruption is the need to "service" your past evasions, self-delusions, quilt, shame, etc. Every such false item must be protected from awareness, must be separated, disintegrated from any- and everything that is logically related to it, because the mind will tend to bring it up in connection with its logical connections. Take a piece of fabric and cut a few circles out of it, then try to make a garment out of it so that none of those holes is in an important place... You may find yourself constantly tugging on your clothes, walking backwards so noone sees what your backside looks like, etc. This cognitive avoidance is a greater and greater burden, turning you into a rigid-thinker, with certain "safe" issues and pat answers to them. It is obviously a huge impedence to the open-eyed, come-what-may, where's the beef attitude toward the whole world that is necessary to maximize one's reasoning.

You asked for help with this issue. You need to take pains to understand what people are writing. If you just wanted to debate, to defend your position, you would have had a little more leeway to damn the torpedos. Mindy

I'm snippy? You said you were closing out the discussion... To be honest...sigh, how good it feels to write that, to be honest, you don't seem to have any idea of what my argument has been. (Yes I do! no you don't! yes I do!...) Mindy

There is a certain amount of integration that goes on behind the (conscious) scenes. It may be that you are in need of down-time to take care of that. There is a psychological phenomenon of "steady-state" that interferes with attention to a single subject, if sustained too long. (In perception, the object actually disappears from view.) Also, from Hutchinson's most excellent book about creativity, a period of thorough analysis preceeds much of creative thought. But once that has been carried out, a period of substitute activity is necessary. Perhaps you're experiencing that. Mindy

You ask posters not to make replies that just "second" another post. Voting the post "up" is another way to do something when you are very favorably impressed. But I always am told I have used up my daily allotment of votes...what gives? Mindy

Jacob, you seem not to have "heard" what people are saying about where "cause" might apply and where is cannot. A thing doesn't have to have a cause. An event does. Things are not effects, though motions and changes and alterations of and in things are. You must argue for your claim that existing things are all effects but one. That does not, on the face of it, make sense. It violates the applicability of the term "effect." An additional point: you say "there must be one existent that does not fall in the category of an effect-- thus being uncaused," which is exactly the old cosmological argument, and deserves the same old reply: that it is an arbitrary assertion. If everything needs a precursor, so does God. If God doesn't, why does the universe? -- Mindy

Thinking in fundamentals is just thinking towards the trunk of the tree representing the hierarchy of knowledge. When we think about man and values, we go back to man's being a living thing. When we think about political structure, we go back to man's being a thinking being. -- Mindy

"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you..." Kipling. I say, go for it. Both the hobbyist and the lover are successful at finding enduring values. Yes, make whatever is most important to you the most important thing in your life! And be proud of doing so. -- Mindy

It comes down to exploitation, seems to me.

This is perhaps a digression, but exactly what have you learned from Kelley that couldn't have been learned from Rand, Peikoff, or philosophy in general? -- Mindy

You missed Epicazpensador's point. Things exist. When they act, they cause. The Universe exists, with much action/motion. The Universe doesn't cause anything, and didn't require a cause. -- Mindy

Yes, I can't make you understand my points.

Surely there is an error in this--a typo? The differentia ("rational" in "rational animal,") is not shared both by the concretes we are isolating and by the concretes from which we are isolating them! This seems to say we differentiate man from wolves by their both being animals... -- Mindy

Aleph_0, in post 105: "I can deny it--it's intended, here, to understand why they should be identified with each other in mathematics. I chose the phrase "suggestive notation" because we use the phrase all the time in mathematics, such as when we discuss some particular field like integers modulo 5, and denote 0 as the additive identity and 1 as the multiplicative identity. Even though we are not dealing with the usual 0 and 1, we suggest that they share a kinship because when you "add" the "0-element" of the system to any other element, your operation just returns the other element. Here the notation suggests that .999... (where this is understood as the limit of a sequence) can be approximated by arbitrarily many decimals, and that the limit of a particular sequence is 1. There is nothing sneaky about it." 1)"Sneaky" : Who needed enlightenment as to the math of limits of sequences? And was this example the best way to begin the discussion? 2) You are admitting that "suggestive notation" is required because there is a difference, "not dealing with the usual 0 and 1," they are not the same. 3) If the limit of the sequence .9, .99, .999, ... is 1, it doesn't need approximation. You allow yourself to say that .999... is the limit of this sequence, and that 1 is its limit. If .999... is a name for the limit of the sequence .9, .99, .999, ..., why the approximation, we don't need to approximate names, signs, and symbols, only quantities. I understand that the notational conventions are to set them equal. Here, precision isn't necessary in math (despite its mis-placed vanity,) but when you set out to discuss things, you do have to be precise enough to get your meaning across. Unless, of course, your purpose isn't to get your meaning across. Still looks to me like a trick, putting it up here. -- Mindy