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MinorityOfOne

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Everything posted by MinorityOfOne

  1. Whaaa? CF, am I understanding you right? You think people ought to be put in jail (or worse) for teaching the wrong ideas? Or people who are "knowing and willing beneficiaries of the use of force", i.e., just about any teacher at any school anywhere in the U.S.? I really hope I misunderstood you there, because that's nuts.
  2. Wouldn't surprise me. There are more & more Objectivists & Objectivist sympathizers in academia. Even if they're not teaching the classes, I wouldn't be surprised if their presence is enough to convince people that Rand is worth reading -- even if they still don't agree with her.
  3. What makes you think it's a possibility, though? You need evidence before you can declare something a possibility. If something were a possibility just because somebody said it was, then you'd have to worry about the possibility that some other religion is right and you'll burn in hell anyway. And no matter which one you picked, you'd still have to be really worried for the same reason.
  4. Hey guys, My girlfriend and I plan to go to the New York Heroes Society inaugural meeting on Feb. 1. Details at www.nyheroes.org. If anybody else plans to be there, let me know and we can make a point of meeting up. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.
  5. Well, it's stronger as an addition to the burden of proof issue. But I don't think that's different than the person who first identifies that there is a metaphysical contradiction in religious beliefs, and later discovers that there was no evidence for them in the first place. Maybe I'd understand what you're saying better if I knew what your standard of "strength" is. The way I understand it, the strength of an argument depends on how convincing it is. The only reason that the metaphysical contradiction arguments are in any way stronger than the burden of proof argument is because they show that there *could not* be any evidence for the conclusion. But given that there *isn't* any evidence, they both end up at the same point: one rejects the conclusion. And the fact that one can't show that there can't ever be evidence by use of the burden of proof principle doesn't leave open the response "well, it's possible that they'll find evidence for God tomorrow, right?" -- because that's arbitrary too. I take the proper cognitive result of an argument to be the standard of its strength. (Of course, that may vary depending on context -- but it ought to.) So I rank both as being equally strong, since they both result in discarding the conclusion. What's your standard?
  6. By the way, Pockets, I hope you don't take any of that as personal criticism. I was never religious, but I certainly held some major false beliefs in the past, and it took me a really long time to get over them. It sounds like you're on the right track. One thing that might help you think through this all is to try to identify exactly what it is that is keeping these ideas popping into your head. Is it some nagging doubt, like the creation issue, or something like that? Or is it an emotional issue -- maybe you really like the thought that there's an afterlife, and worry that your life would lose meaning without it? A lot of this could be subconscious, so it might be a long and difficult process. It's worth it. The last piece of advice I'll give you is extraordinarily important. As the Gulchers tell Dagny in Atlas: don't let our confidence become a replacement for your own independent judgment. If you try to repress your metaphysical doubts, they'll just sit there and bug you forever. You need to accept them as facts, though emphatically not as unalterable ones, before you can address them and resolve them. You shouldn't go into this with the attitude that you know in advance that you'll reject religion. Until you think it through fully, you *don't* know that. But you can go into it knowing this: if you think through these issues honestly, you will end up with the truth.
  7. That's amazing that you actually got an apology out of him. If you want to pursue formal study of Objectivism, look into the Objectivist Academic Center. (linked to from the aynrand.org website.) I've been taking classes there for a couple of years, as have some of the other people who post on this forum. It's great. Ash, I think that Amy hit the fundamental in her response. Sure, there are good reasons to have a positive disbelief in God, but the fundamental is really in epistemology. There's no evidence for God, for an afterlife, etc., and therefore one shouldn't believe in them. Giving positive arguments against it is optional: simply pointing out that religion depends on baseless assertions is sufficient. I just spent a few minutes trying to think of a context in which you'd be required to give positive arguments against an arbitrary claim. I can't think of any. If somebody attempts to give real arguments for religion and you have good reason to debate them on it, they can be useful. And the very fact of integrating them with a wider body of knowledge can give you a better understanding of your own true principles -- and a better understanding of why the false ones affect people and cultures as they do. For instance, you could just dismiss religion out of hand, and it would be entirely appropriate: but there's much to be gained from identifying that it is based in primacy of consciousness, because then you understand what underlies many of the more specific actions and beliefs of religionists. But all of this is still optional; without it, the case against religion would still be as strong. Why do you think that the burden of proof issue isn't enough?
  8. Feldblum, You'd probably like After Forever too. It'd be worth your time to check them out. Also, if you haven't heard it, Metallica's S&M album is amazing.
  9. They cover very different material. Both are worth reading, though.
  10. I think the reason it wasn't available at Second Renaissance Books (the old name of Ayn Rand Bookstore) for a long time was because SRB was owned by Peter Schwartz, who had big personal beef with Reisman and therefore didn't want to support him. Probably not the best business decision, but hey, it's his bookstore. I don't know why it isn't available now. ARI dropped a lot of inventory when they acquired Ayn Rand Bookstore, presumably because of a change in policy regarding what the bookstore would carry now that it's under the ARI banner. I don't know what the new policies are, though. It's unfortunate that his book doesn't get more press. I haven't finished reading it, but what I've read has been thoroughly great.
  11. That's a decent list. To the epistemology part, I'd add "The Evidence of The Senses" by Kelley for a focus on the validity of sense perception -- it's good, if you can deal with his academic style. (I know a lot of Objectivists get turned off by it.) For mathematics, there isn't much, but you can check out some of Ron Pisaturo's stuff. (Binswanger's tape set on philosophy of science has some interesting stuff about geometry, too.) I'd also add Tara Smith's "Viable Values" as a good addition to The Virtue of Selfishness; it answers a lot of difficult questions in metaphysics. Again, it's more academic than a lot of Objectivist work, so if you're not accustomed to that style you should expect to spend some time on it. For physics, David Harriman is the man -- so I'm told anyway. I haven't actually listened to any of his lectures. Objectivescience.com has some articles on physics, and some Objectivists find Lewis Little's "Theory of Elemental Waves" to be a coherent answer to many problems in physics. (I don't know enough to evaluate it.) If you're going to read one Branden book, I'd say go with the early stuff; he's just been rehashing the same ideas for the last 30 or so years, and they've been watered down to some degree. The best one I've read is "Psychology of Self-Esteem." Lastly, George Reisman's tome "Capitalism" is totally awesome, and it's now available online for free. Check it out at www.capitalism.net. (He also has an *enormous* list of study questions on there, which is always handy if you really want to retain what you read.)
  12. I think she was a philosophy minor. You can find some of the things she read in the Marginalia book, though it's just a small sampling. (Some of her margin notes are really funny. Definitely worth a read.)
  13. CF, I agree with some parts of what you wrote and disagree with some. I'm not frankly sure what it's supposed to mean when people say that men and women have different minds. Maybe you can elaborate on it, but I can't see how this idea could not depend on innate ideas, if it's supposed to have relevance to the issue of homosexuality. I'm familiar with Rand's view of gender differences, and I'm definitely not in agreement with her. I'm curious: do you actually agree with her that it would be psychologically damaging for a woman to become president? Her view of femininity basically puts women in the role of a subordinate -- that they are to admire a man in a way that the man is not to admire them. That just strikes me as wrong. It certainly doesn't accord with my experiences in romantic relationships. I wish I could remember which was my favorite Bond woman, but it's been years since I watched most of the Bond flicks. I worked at a video rental store at the time, so I got free rentals whenever I wanted... I watched every Bond movie in existence (including weird ones like "Casino Royale" and the one about Ian Fleming) in a space of about two weeks. Loved them, but in retrospect they all kinda blend together...
  14. CF, there's a lot I disagree with in your post. Some of it I believe to be wrong based on homosexuals I've known, other parts I find dubious but, since I'm straight, don't have the first-hand knowledge a response would require. So I can't respond to the whole thing adequately, but I'll do what I can. 1. Tenderness. Your comparison of "owner-child/dog" and "man-woman" is simply offensive and sexist. What makes you think that when men and women "pet" each other, the woman means something less than "I love you and I appreciate you for being the way you are. I care for your well-being."? If you're basing that on personal experience, I'd suggest finding better girlfriends. 2. Role of man and woman. Now, I can see why you'd think this. There's a popular image of homosexuals that they're either "butch" or "flaming", and there are a lot of homosexuals who mold themselves into this stereotype. While I can't say for sure that it doesn't show up somewhere in the relationship, since I've never been present for a moment of deep homosexual intimacy, I've seen gay couples for whom this stereotype did not appear to work. 3. Excitement of discovery. So what? I mean, you could argue on similar lines that women ought to be bisexual lest they lose out on the opportunity to know what a clitoris feels like on their tongue. I don't see how this implies any moral problem in homosexuality. 4. Self-respect? I knew a lesbian couple when I lived back in New Hampshire who were both the epitomy of femininity. Both were "beautiful, charming, lovely, cute, and attractive in a feminine way." And they looked for the same things in a lover, so they ended up together. Self-esteem comes primarily from being moral, not from happening to have attractive traits. And moral principles are not different because of one's gender. 5. As for the last, you seem to be just assuming that the jump to intimacy for a homosexual would always be a trivial matter. Again, having known gays for whom it was definitely NOT -- who agonized over matters of relationship just as a heterosexual would -- the only conclusion I can reach is, again. that you've uncritically accepted the stereotypical image of the homosexual. I don't expect the above to convince you, because I can't provide much hard evidence; like I said, only a homosexual could tell you what such a relationship is like from the inside. I can tell you that I've seen counterexamples to your points, but you'll probably find a way to explain it away. One last point, though: given what you write above, how the hell do you account for bisexuality? If homosexuality is caused by a fear of heterosexual relationships, which are supposed to be inherently better in every possible way, why would somebody be bisexual? By the way, I'm not arguing that homosexuality is always innate or anything like that. I have doubts about that (though I can't rule it out), and I would agree that the majority of homosexuals I've met have been deeply neurotic. But that's not enough to convince me that ALL of them are, particularly when I've met some who were, to the best of my knowledge, in fine psychological health. If you can come up with anything stronger, go for it -- but what you wrote above isn't nearly enough.
  15. GC, If the companies have an interest in whether a person is married to somebody of the same sex or somebody of the other sex, why not just ask? Making a whole new term for something which is fundamentally similar seems like a waste; rather, it makes more sense for people/companies just to ask for qualification in situations where such detail is necessary.
  16. I can't confirm it for sure, but it sounds familiar. I'd have to think it through further, but Rand makes an interesting case. Notice that she didn't say that draft dodgers shouldn't be granted amnesty -- just that they shouldn't be promised amnesty until the war is over. (And that it's inappropriate to discuss it when they're over there dying.) Now, remember Rand's general position on Vietnam. She said that we shouldn't have gone in, but that since we were in, we had to finish the job. Her biggest criticism of the way the war was carried out was that there was not enough support given to the troops. Basically, we put a bunch of Americans out in the jungle and left them to die. Now what effect would promising amnesty to draft dodgers have, while the other people who could not avoid the draft stayed in Vietnam and died? It would just compound the problem. Here's another point -- the more important one. If you read Rand's comments on civil disobedience, you'll see that she thought it was only proper when it one intended to go to court and challenge the law in question. So the civil disobedience in the civil rights movement was, at least for the most part, completely proper: it indicated a respect for the legislative and judicial process. You can't just reject a part of the legal system; to do so is to put yourself up as a higher legal authority, which is to reject the concept of government entirely and become an anarchist. (You can, of course, reject the whole thing; but that's only appropriate in a revolutionary context, and as bad as the U.S. may be in some respects, it's not revolution time.) So if a person is against the draft on principle and is willing to fight his way through the judiciary, he can rightly dodge the draft and then submit himself to to legal proceedings. What he can't do is say "I disagree with this law, so I want to be given permission to be above the law."
  17. If I recall correctly, Allan Gotthelf has suggested that there is some reason to think that Aristotle's view is much closer to the Objectivist view than many people have thought. I don't recall exactly where he said this, though, so I can't give a reference, and I don't think he gave any details anyway. If you happen to read this, Dr. Gotthelf -- since I've seen you post on here before -- any chance of a comment on this issue?
  18. There's also the secondary economic effects which would lessen the necessary government budget, most of which are hard to predict and probably impossible to quantify. Get rid of taxes, and you lower the overhead for companies, which leads to a number of things like more R&D, lower production costs, higher-quality goods, etc. All of this translates into cheaper costs for defense and domestic law enforcement. As for the courts, simply getting rid of all the crap laws would cut the costs to a fraction of what they are right now. (Hell, just getting rid of the drug war would do that in a second.) Now consider that all of the above has tertiary effects across the whole economy. That's why it's impossible to say right now exactly what a free economy would look like, or what the costs of a proper government would be. Taking the budget currently dedicated to proper functions is a dramatic overstatement of what the budget would be in a free country; but just how much of an overstatement, I don't think one can say. This is one of the reasons that I think you have to pretty much accept the principle of not initiating force in its application to government and not worry too much about the details at this point. It's not possible to understand it in concrete terms, because there are so overwhelmingly many concretes involved and they're all interrelated. You have to understand them in principle. And the principle amounts to: a free economy is a productive economy, and that would make government a hell of a lot cheaper. While budgets are outside the realm of speculation, methods are, I think, properly up for debate. I think there are serious problems with the idea of a government lottery... for example, there'd be no grounds on which to rule out private lotteries, and they'd (arguably) be likely to give better payouts. Compare state lottos with Vegas casinos, for example. The only thing they have going for them is a monopoly in most regions. The idea of contract fees is better, and it has the advantage of permitting flexibility in case of fluctuating budget needs. Voluntary donations aren't implausible either, but I think they'd be a bit too unreliable. Anyone have any other ideas?
  19. I'll be writing a term paper on induction for my philosophy of science class very soon. If anybody is interested, remind me and I'll post it (in full or in part, and only if I'm pleased with the results.)
  20. There are basically two factors involved in debate strategy: is your opponent open to argument or not, and do you have an audience or not? Depending on which sort of debate this particular argument comes up in, different approaches may be appropriate. I don't think a person who brings up this argument can really be convinced out of it. Either they're lying, or they're delusional. Neither of those really permits much discussion. So if you don't have an audience, the best thing to do is just to end the conversation and find a better way to spend your time. If you do, though, you can just point out that even if their "experiences" were sufficient to convince them of their conclusion, they're not admissable as evidence to others. It's as if they were saying "I have access to this secret shrine where God shows up and performs miracles all the time. No, I won't take you there. Believe me yet?" Even if you grant them they assumption that it's not an arbitrary claim *for them*, it's still arbitrary for anybody else, because by the nature of the claim it's not something they can demonstrate. There's one thing you could try, though, if you really think the person is having some weird experience that they're honestly trying to understand. Even in the case of perception, the identification of what one is seeing/hearing/etc. depends on its conceptualization. That one is experiencing something is given in any direct perception (which, as a form of introspection or whatever, their experience qualifies as); WHAT one is experiencing is something that isn't automatically determined. So you could point out some of the reasons to think that God doesn't exist, and suggest that they give further thought to rational explanations of their experiences. This might be more the answer you were looking for... I toss it in as more of an aside, though, because I think it'd be a rare case where this would actually work.
  21. By the way, I don't think it's correct to equate the common sense (?) with the perceptual level. What Aristotle means by common sensibles is those characteristics which are perceivable by means of more than one sense. So, for example, shape is a common sensible because we can perceive it by means of both sight and touch; color is not, because we can only perceive color with our eyes. I don't think Aristotle really had a significant theory of sensations as against perceptions. Feel free to correct me though... it's been a while since I read De Anima, and I was focusing mostly on other parts of it.
  22. A warning in advance though: be pretty skeptical of some of the interpretations in there. I could be wrong about this, but as I recall, there was a commentary section in there which had some good background info that might help you discern the good parts from bad. There's also a collection of essays, edited (I think) by Martha Nussbaum, on De Anima. I haven't looked through this in much detail, but I've heard some good things about it. If you're looking for overall commentary, though, the stuff that's already been mentioned is probably best; this book probably focuses on problems in understanding very particular aspects of the text.
  23. "Two Greek Commentators..." is the volume with Themisteus and Alexander of Aphrodesias, right? That one's very useful.
  24. Please don't tell me anyone here dislikes Monsters Inc., or any Pixar movie for that matter. C'mon, guys. They really didn't put a BIG grin on your face? I can see criticizing them, in part, for their themes. Actually, I think you're misunderstanding Monsters Inc. if you accuse it of socialist themes. I can definitely understand it in Finding Nemo. But still... they were so damned GOOD. Political messages in movies are secondary, provided that they don't take over the movie; and with Pixar, they never do.
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