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

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

I'd like to make a couple of observations on the debate in general, not in response to the last post.

One is that "contract" presupposes enforcement. You cannot rely on contracts to create reliable enforcement organizations.

Also, the very common references to "objective laws," "objective society," etc. represent a huge mistake about the meaning of "objective." When Rand talked about the importance of objective laws, she did not mean "Objectivist" laws, she just meant laws that were explicit, laws that were specific enough to be enforceable, that were permanent, and thus could be relied on by citizens. The laws themselves might be wrong-minded and still be fully objective in the relevant sense.

As an after-thought to that point, it amazes me that anyone can actually imagine a group of people could be vetted as "Objectivists," and they would represent an ideal, peaceful, right-thinking group requiring the intervention of enforcement agents very little if at all! Doesn't the history of the movement itself make you aware of how changeable, volatile, unpredictable, and contentious "Objectivists" are?

The Constitution is the heart and soul of a good government. An explicit statement of the rights of men, and of the due process by which those rights may be interfered with, along with provisions for checks and balances, etc. is sufficient to put people's interactions on a civilized footing.

Notice that due process is like objective, explicit law. Due process defines and makes explicit what law enforcement does in proving charges, sentencing a perpetrator, etc. It is the definition, the explicitness, the restrained processing of offenders, etc. that fosters justice. This quality of objectivity--of explicitness--cannot make up for a deficient constitution, but in combination with a right-minded one, such as ours, it serves well to institute peace and justice among men.

The problem of corrupt individuals in government is addressed, in part, by the requirements of due process. Due process itself works counter to subjectivity. It puts each case into a common frame, allowing fair comparison, and thus revealing arbitrary decisions or treatment.

A constitution, explicit laws, and due process are very much under-valued in most of the debate here, I find.

It can't be emphasized too much that the idea of contractual enforcement agencies puts the cart before the horse. A contract presupposes a governing institution. What is the force of a contract if breaking it has no consequences beyond the anger of the other party to that contract? This is a fatal flaw, and ignoring it leads to hopeless and hapless schemes without the proverbial snowball's chance...

--Mindy

I like the idea of being able to say "good post" to a good post, that was my only interest.

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

The clear expression of priorities here is worth noting. "Regardless of intellectual...ARI must have consistant...and ...command." This puts face above facts, and control above truth.

"ARI might be...right or wrong...but...no...official stance...wrong." Here, again, right, truth, and reason are subordinated to face, reputation, and appearance.

Ropoctl has it right. He speaks the sentiments expressed in Peikoff's letter as well as agreeing with them. But if reason is an absolute, reason never takes a back seat. And if ARI isn't about reason, it isn't about Ayn Rand.

Mindy

Oh yes, definitely. Stallman's position is basically that property rights do not apply to software because its duplication costs are trivial. On his view, property rights are a socially-convenient mechanism for adjudicating competing claims to scarce resources. Physical objects like toothbrushes are scarce in that only one of us can use them at a time. If I take the toothbrush, you can't have it, and vice versa, so we need some way to figure out which one of us gets it. Software and digital media aren't like that. If you have Photoshop, and I make a copy, you still have yours. It isn't scarce in the relevant sense -- there is no need to adjudicate access because we can both have it, ergo no need for property rights. On this line of thinking if I have a piece of digital media and I refuse to let you copy it, I'm guilty of 'software hoarding'.

This view of property rights is false and its consequences are pernicious. At OCON2010 GMU law professor Adam Mossoff traced this theory back to Bentham and the utilitarians and connected it to a variety of modern attacks on the very concept of intellectual property.

Eric Raymond's justification for "Open Source" is much more pragmatic. In effect he argues that for certain kinds of software all parties benefit from releasing their source code to the public. It's just a different model for creating value in the software industry. If an individual developer judges that his interests are best served by opening his source code, or by contributing to an open source project, then he should do so. If not, not. Open source is entirely compatible with egoism, as long as you understand that not all value trades are binary or monetary.

Also, isn't it the case that the quote: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." originated from James Madison in Federalist 51, not Alexander Hamilton?

Edit: I wrote a response too, hopefully it will help.

Anyways, Knaight is right, before you can write an constitution, you must have certain principles on which you are forming the government in the first place. This is what Rand dealt with, not the specific aspect of constitution-writing. Objectivism holds that man is a rational being of volitional consciousness, he has inalienable individual rights, and because man has free will, there will always exist those in society who survive not by reason, production, and creating values, but survive parasitically by expropriating values from others, the robbers, muggers, rapists, power-lusters, etc. This is the nature of man, the human condition, man then has a need for security and protection, therefore every society must figure out a way to deal with these people.

The men of reason in society then must form an agency to protect men from depredations upon their person and property. Because a man's right to life can only be violated by physical force, this agency must be tasked with restraining force-initiators. Because this involves the use of force, this agency must be limited in its actions by absolute objective law, that is, rationally-derived principles regulating the use of force to protect the innocent. Therefore a proper government would be a limited constitutional government consisting of nothing but the police, courts, and armed forces. Only a proper agency can use force, thus the Objectivist rejects anarchy or "no police" "no government" or "private law" "private justice" etc. The proper agency may not initiate force for any reason whatsoever, therefore it would not have the power to tax, seize property, redistribute wealth, or intervene in the society or economy in any way, except to execute criminal justice against force or fraud.

It must gain its revenue only by the voluntary consent of each man. It exists only at the permission of the men in society. The second it oversteps its limits, it is illegitimate, and the men of society may stop funding it, abolish it, and reform a new agency to protect their rights. The government's relationship to man is that of an agent, the man's relationship to the government involves the man who delegates his right of self-defense to this agency to protect him in society.

This, essentially confining the apparatus of coercion to retaliatory and defensive use only, and only according to strict regulations and limitations. This doesn't say “how to write a constitution” but only what writing the constitution must accomplish. This may be something more like the Articles with a Bill of Rights added than the Constitution, but ultimately different from both in that it is fully consistent with rational philosophical principles throughout in order to achieve a fully free society.

However, the Objectivist must generally reject “states rights” at any level, since only individual men have rights and it is just as possible for local governments to violate rights as centralized ones. The proper government must therefore simply have no apparatus for voting in the form of coercive decision-making over the individual man, thus confining governmental action only to a criminal justice system, a system of civil courts to arbitrate property disputes, and a (volunteer) military to defend men from external invasion. Thus, the Objectivist would generally disagree with Alexander Hamilton's philosophy regarding man and the State, but would agree in one regard: Objectivism is opposed to democracy. In fact, there are several aspects of monarchy (private ownership of government) that are superior to democracy (mob rule), but to achieve a proper relationship between man and government, the result would be something more like: "Each individual man is the monarch of his own life and private property." Thus the task of government is nothing more than to protect man's person and property against internal and external assaults and aggressions, i.e. to crack down on those who do not know how to behave and keep their hands to themselves. Other than that, the government itself must be limited in order to keep its own hands off and not to go beyond the physical restraint of rights-violating criminals, i.e. "laissez-faire."

So the quote: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." is a pretty succinct way to sum up the nature of man and his relationship to government.

Highly recommend reading some of those links, such as "Man's Rights" and "The Nature of Government" and also you might enjoy "Textbook of Americanism" written for a conservative/anti-communist publication (see attachment.)
Textbook of Americanism.pdf

I think the wider question of "does a performance such as dance qualify as art?" is more important here. Bullfighting is as much a performance as ballet, and given what I know about bullfighting, it is closer to dance than sport or pure entertainment. You should note that recreation of reality is a necessary but not sufficient factor in determining what is or is not art. What sort of metaphysical value judgment is present in dance? What sort of metaphysical value judgment is present in bullfighting? I question whether or not moving in a particular fashion could really ever qualify as a metaphysical value judgment of any sort. The presence of value expression is not what is meant here, what is meant is a value judgment of what the artist thinks reality is or is not and how one deals with reality. If any performance is to be art, it is bullfighting, because there involves more than just a conglomeration of movements merely to kill a bull. The matador moves in a particular way for a particular reason to quite literally command nature through the use of reason rather than brute force like the bull. Bravery or courage are not the primary things to take into consideration if you want to argue that bullfighting is art.

I've grown up in Canada, and previous to visiting Cuba, I had little appreciation for the then seemingly over-the-top-bright, intensely saturated colour palettes seen commonly in art produced by artists who live/work near the equator. While I was in Cuba, the second day there, I walked down to the water on the beach at the resort I was staying at, and was astonished to see a sun-blazing, over-the-top-bright, intensely saturated landscape of natural and manmade objects, and in that moment, I thought immediately of all of the paintings that I just didn't 'get' until I had personally experienced the light of the environment from/within which they were created.

After that, I revisited myriad paintings and began sourcing photographs of the regions they were meant to depict and/or where they were created. My whole visual scope of appreciation was blown wide open, and I wondered how in all the time I'd studied art, there had not been one mention of this, that every professor, teacher and artist I'd encountered had not mentioned or even given full attention to something so important as this.

Being from Canada, the necessity for traveling to really 'see' might be overlooked because the country is so large and most people probably do see much of it, without seeing much of a light change from coast to coast, and if most people don't leave altogether, they might not even know. I used to live in the southern-most part and now live in the far north, not quite as north as possible, but close.

I don't associate cool colours with negative emotion at all; the light here is usually cool. I do associate cool colours with a peaceful or serene feeling though, like the strangely audible silence during the long winter; it's peaceful and rejuvenating, not sad or depressing, or negative at all. We do have bright warm colours too, but they are always in contrast with the coolness of everything else. This is the distinct beauty of the north, I think.

I rely heavily on the content of a painting to convey the intended emotions. Perhaps I have a glitch in my brain that I don't seem to have automatic emotional responses to colours. I do find some colours physiologically irritating on their own and/or in combination, but this doesn't seem to me to be emotional. I can usually enjoy those colours in small doses in the right context.

This is a complex topic.

If you want to defend what DavidOdden said, please do so. If you wish his actions weren't open to reasonable criticism, your complaint is with him.

Which posts and which arguments should I not have made? What was wrong with them?

Mindy

Thanks for the information.

I certainly know of the conflict of positions between myself and one or more members in mod. or admin. positions. I did not think such disagreement reflected on the "job" of moderating. That's an explanation, not a question, and not in need of an answer.

Mindy

This is abuse, pure and simple. It is an effort to intimidate, and this is not the first time David has treated people this way.



If he is wrong, it would be natural to say what your comment did intend to communicate.




Again, this is pure abuse, personal attack, and attempt to intimidate. I suggest that posts like this prove that DavidOdden ought not be a moderator at all.

Mindy

This is abuse, pure and simple. It is an effort to intimidate, and this is not the first time David has treated people this way.



If he is wrong, it would be natural to say what your comment did intend to communicate.




Again, this is pure abuse, personal attack, and attempt to intimidate. I suggest that posts like this prove that DavidOdden ought not be a moderator at all.

Mindy

If all anyone ever did was search, no one would ever post anything, yes. Anything that is completely unnecessary, out of place, already discussed, and it would decrease a good number of overly redundant and unnecessarily repeated topics just because of the OP's laziness or unwillingness to use the search function, as in JacobGalts case, which happens to be all the time. Anyway, I never said that using it is all anyone should do, but it should be done at least before posting a new topic.

You have read but not yet understood.
Feelings are not epistemologically objective, but one can as objectively distinguish between grief and regret as between blue and cyan.
Colors are not epistemologically subjective, but a color-blind man and a normal man will perceive the same colored entities in different forms.

Vision Simulator: How Things Look to People with Colorblindness or Cataracts

Thanks for the information.

I certainly know of the conflict of positions between myself and one or more members in mod. or admin. positions. I did not think such disagreement reflected on the "job" of moderating. That's an explanation, not a question, and not in need of an answer.

Mindy

Do you moderators consider yourself editors? Or almost? That's not a satisfactory arrangement to me. Isn't it a violation of copyright for you to do editing on people's posts?

Secondly, (with disregard for my prime project of enamoring myself with the powers that be...) Your parallel between deleted posts and "trash around the house" lacks one critical basis, which is that the trash can in your kitchen contains whatever has been deliberately thrown away. You, as a moderator, on the other hand, are trashing what someone intended to keep, and which they value. The resulting error your metaphor reveals, from this, bears an odor of officiousness that offends me.

Mindy

Do you moderators consider yourself editors? Or almost? That's not a satisfactory arrangement to me. Isn't it a violation of copyright for you to do editing on people's posts?

Secondly, (with disregard for my prime project of enamoring myself with the powers that be...) Your parallel between deleted posts and "trash around the house" lacks one critical basis, which is that the trash can in your kitchen contains whatever has been deliberately thrown away. You, as a moderator, on the other hand, are trashing what someone intended to keep, and which they value. The resulting error your metaphor reveals, from this, bears an odor of officiousness that offends me.

Mindy

.
I find this argument interesting. The principle of property rights is formulated so that whatever a person produces is his, independent of anyone else's appraisal of its value or benefit. One's purposes, goals, tastes, and existential context contribute to the desirability, the valuation, the fact of and the degree of benefit of what one produces. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

When the violation of property rights is defended because someone has decided the creator cannot obtain any benefit from his product, principles are being broken in favor of someone's presumed omniscience as to what the inventor/creator might presently, or in any future scenario, find of use in his own product. Whatever the poster's purposes, this argument is an attack on principles per se.

Mindy

The problem is that Rand is the source of most Objectivists' knowledge of philosophy. They don't know if she is the source of the ideas themselves until they study philosophy itself.

Mindy

All but two of these points are not part of Objectivism. They're not philosophical principles, they're at most applications of philosophical principles to concretes, and more often they're matters of personal emotional or aesthetic response. The exceptions are the (implied) support of anarchism and the question of the 'is-ought' relation -- and the latter is so vaguely put that I'm not sure it's actually in conflict with Objectivism.


In such an essentialized definition a lot of vitally important stuff is left out. As I recall in the same summary she describes the ethics as "self-interest" but never mentions virtue. Does that mean she thinks the virtues aren't part of Objectivism? Obviously not. She views the virtues as implied by self-interest -- they are the necessary means by which one's self-interest is defined and pursued. Similarly, defining politics in terms of capitalism implies government -- capitalism is the system of individual rights and government (in Rand's view) is a necessary means for protecting them. Does that connection require a defense? Obviously, just as the connection between self-interest and the virtues requires a defense. But the fact that she didn't include that defense while standing on one foot doesn't mean that she views government as unimportant or anarchism as compatible with Objectivism.

Okay, I understand now. Then the list is Dwayne, Eiuol, & CapitalistSwine as being proposed for chat-mods.
BTW, for those who have not noticed, since this thread, one forum member has volunteered to be forum-moderator and has been made one: Sapere Aude. Thanks for volunteering.

The same principle would apply. Loan is just one possible concrete of many.

Let me recast the question in a more concrete way. Someone claims to possess a sense mode that you do not have; on the basis of that new sense mode they claim to perceive things you do not. Should you believe them? The basic claim here is the possession of a new sense mode. What evidence do they present for its existence? Can they explain how it works? What physical basis does it have? Can the things they claim to perceive be integrated with the things you perceive with your senses, or do they contradict your perceptions? Etc.

If I'm blind, and you come to me and say you possess a sense mode -- vision -- that I don't, why should I believe you? You can present lots of evidence in terms I can understand that vision exists. I can touch the sense organ from which vision arises. I can grasp the concept of ambient energy in the environment as similar to sound waves and heat, and vision can be explained as a response to a form of that ambient energy. You can use your vision to identify objects too far away to touch, describe them and I can validate some of their characteristics like shape using my own senses. That provides a solid basis for my accepting that vision is real, even though I don't have it myself.

But if someone says they possess a new sense mode, but they can't or won't provide any evidence or explanation, then they're just asserting a claim arbitrarily. Demand the proof.