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phibetakappa

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  1. I'm reading a detailed summary of the film found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/synopsis Here is a quote: The film has a 9 minute scene of raping and beating a woman. Ayn Rand has said, and I agree, that art is a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's fundamental premises; that the artists can choose to include any concrete depictions he wants, so one can judge their art work based on what the artists chooses to keep in and what they choose to leave out. The 'artist' of this film/screen play, given all the possible scenes they could use, chose to have 9 minutes (a large percent of the films total running time), spent recreating a woman being brutally raped and beaten. I am not sure if the film's overall theme warrants the scene, mainly because after reading the synopsis I'm not sure what the theme of the work is. Maybe the synopsis provides this in describing the final scene, which it states "Time destroys all things." If this is the intended theme, its hard to understand how brutally raping and beating a woman on film for 9 minutes concretetizes it. That it was the "time" passing that "destroyed" her, and not person choosing to beat and rape her. After reading another synopsis I now understand the "plot" of the film to be: Two men seeking revenge for the rape and beating of one of the two men's girlfriend, mistakenly bludgeon the wrong man to death while the real culprit watches amused.
  2. Yes, I understand your point about "individual rights." Ayn Rand in VOS, and CUI concludes her article on "Man's Rights" with this statement: Or in OPAR page 357 Peikoff states:
  3. If these people your speaking of were O'ists they would know that emotions like "enjoyment" are A-moral, and not subject to evaluation, because emotions occur automatically without volition. It is only the premises behind the emotions which can be judged as moral or immoral, pro-life and/or anti-life, because they are formed and held volitionally. Now, you state: My questions would be: *Why do you enjoy them? You state that you "take them for what they are?" *What does this mean? *What are they? Here is a snippet from Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto: "Art and Sense of Life" on the topic of esthetic judgment, which I think is relevant to the discussion: I guessing this last premise is what you have been sensing in other peoples reactions to certain works of "art," such as 'torture porn". I'm not sure what man's positive response to "torture porn" says about the essence of his character.
  4. I guess in an O'ist society such a statement would be assumed and/or not repeated often, but given mankind's history, and record of violating rights it is definitely necessary to explicitly remind society of what every individual man requires to live amongst other men. Europe for example has always explicitly practiced the opposite premise, i.e., that men's motives are to be prescribed to him by any other man and especially by other controlling groups of men. This is the premise behind the idea of "democracy," dictatorships, mixed economies, any other statist regime. In the US, especially in the last 100 years, congress (for the most part) has proceeded on the same premise that men's motives are to be prescribed to him by any other man and especially by other controlling groups of men, namely congress. Even in the microcosm of families, it is very common for them to proceed on the same premise, that men's motives are to be prescribed to him by any other man and especially by other controlling groups of men, namely our mini-dictatorial parents.
  5. As I've stated, I don't believe she or I am being "redundant." What is happening here is that knowledge is hierarchical, and more specific concepts inherit their attributes from their genetically related relatives. The principle of one's right to life is the most general statement of summarizing and/or subsuming the unitary total. Cognitively this allows us to hold all aspects of rights as one unit, reducing the cognitive load on our minds necessary for holding all the individual concrete rights and needs we have identified. Then if we require we can unpack or elaborate all the specific instances which were gathered, and condensed into the single, space saving principle. It must be remember that developmentally one does not start with the right to life then deduce the others. Rather the developmental process is the reverse, it is inductive. One starts at some point realizing it is a necessary condition for my life that I have a particular motive. One observes their own lives and the proper lives of others and realizes they all have something in common, that there is the common motive of pursuing one's values, i.e., pursuing one's happiness. Then when the context of living with others and the context of needing explicit rights arise, this observation of a common human motive becomes the right to the “pursuit of happiness.” It is in the same pattern the abstraction of the other rights follows. For example, we recognize the fact that our survival depends on producing certain goods/supplies. We observe and recognize ourselves protecting those goods from beasts and other men. We observe and recognize ourselves planning and taking steps to gain and/or keep/maintain all the things our life requires. It is only much later that we abstract these observations and form the concept property, and still later that we realize that such things need to be explicitly declared and protected from other men and government. Eventually, we have many different requirements collected. Eventually we will have a cognitive need to summarize and reduce all of them to a single unit, to make it easier for us to use and remember. It is then that the need arises to formulate all these individual observations into the single principle of the “right to life.” As people have been stating, all of the individual discoveries of what is required for living with others in society, becomes the necessary context on which the more condensed principled formulation of rights are formed. All the individual necessary conditions are the context, and/or the initial data, evidence which was initially required for inducing the more sophisticated abstract formulations of rights as such.
  6. I found this interesting quote from Ayn Rand's Journals. It is in the chapter 10 on the Communism and HUAC. "This chapter begins with an open letter addressed "To All Innocent Fifth Columnists," which AR wrote in late 1940 or early 1941, when she was encouraging conservative intellectuals to form a national organization advocating individualism. I believe she wanted the letter to be issued by such an organization." She explicitly restates a bill of rights, including the right to the pursuit of happiness. I believe her statement her eloquently echoes what I've stated, and it is a rare formulation of man's basic rights and their purpose, in an interesting context. Also, when researching I found this interesting section from OPAR: Here he states, "To sustain his life, man needs to be governed by a certain motive—his purpose must be his own welfare. The right to the pursuit of happiness is the right to this motive; it is the right to live for one's own sake and fulfillment." He claims that the right to the pursuit of happiness is the right to a motive. His purpose must be his own welfare, and the explicit declaration this necessary condition for survival in a society is the explicit purpose of stating this right. It is possible to punish and harm men for holding and/or pursuing a particular motive. The prohibition of alcohol, cigarettes, sex, abortion, and certain words are all examples. Men have been murdered for having certain motives, and they have been murdered for being thought to have certain motives.
  7. If you said "it just is" I would scoff at you. I have not been telling you to say "it just is." Primary concepts are not about saying, "it just is." Other people do not set the "standards of proof". Proof has objective requirements. If you are in a university class if you want support that such attempted continuous justification, continuous definition necessarily leads to infinite regress, both Plato and Aristotle explain why knowledge is impossible with out a fixed starting point. Aristotle Posterior Analytics is almost entirely devoted to the question. In Plato, I can't remember the title but it is the dialog were he is teaching the child geometry, and eventually concludes that concepts must refer to "Ideas" in another detention in which we "remember." (Note: both works are the start of the Rationalist vs Empiricist clap trap that dominates philosophy classes.) If you we can not define "action" in terms of other concepts YOU CAN NOT. If that's your requirement, then you've been given an impossible assignment. If you are going to pander to the pressure the "their" so-called standards of proof, then don't bother trying contort O'ism to fit into your assignments, just make up stuff to pass the class and move on.
  8. Exactly. The right states, although somewhat indirectly, who the proper beneficiary of a man's actions is, himself. As I stated in my previous post, when it comes to governments and other people, the more clarification, elaboration the better. Any assumptions, ambiguity or potential loopholes can let the parasite in and can lead to the gradual enslavement/sacrifice of men, such as in the case of the income tax, business regulations, conscription, etc. etc. Or in the case of every dictatorship in history, such ambiguities, loopholes, and assumptions can lead to full enslavement and full sacrifice of the individual to the collective. The issue is absolutely securing the necessary conditions for man qua man to live properly in a society. I.e., making absolutely certain that society is subordinated to the moral law, i.e., that society is subordinated to the requirements for man to live on earth.
  9. I sounds like you really do not like primary concepts. Not every concept can be defined in terms of other concepts. Children do not need to have "action" defined in terms of other concepts to understand what action is. Trying to force this requirement on reality causes an infinite regress. Some objects are defined ostensibly by pointing. Perceptual knowledge is the base of conceptual knowledge (the knowledge of words). The perceptually given is the stopping point for the type of reduction you are attempting. Basic action (action of motion) is directly observable when observing directly perceivable objects such as balls, rocks, trees, or men. **"It is a change in an entity" A basic action is not a "change in an entity". The entity does not change, it stays the same, but it's position in space changes. Putting the point the "action is a change in an entity" takes you dangerously close to Heraclitus and his assertions that all there is, is change. As he put it, "we can never step into the same river twice." This philosophy leads to skepticism.
  10. Also, I wrote allot more than just clarifying your imprecise use of the word right. There is a difference between redundancy and elaboration, explication and clarification. The looters and the moochers in the US history have exploited every loophole they could find to abrogate man's pursuit of happiness, and you think making it explicit that the individual is sovereign and that it is HIS happiness which is inviolate is "superfluous." Not protecting every individuals right to pursue their own happiness makes every individual man redundant and superfluous.
  11. All I can say is you are wrong. The US government has been proving you wrong for its entire history, especially in the 30's and today. The individuals right to pursue their own happiness is violated with every pay check by the income tax, which forces the most productive the pursue the desires of others as opposed to their own.
  12. I suppose that depends on what you mean by "other rights?" There are the basic rights: Right to one's life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness. Others? The concept of rights does not apply to men living alone on a desert island, but in a society. It is only when men consider what conditions are necessary for sustaining and/or enhancing their lives, if and when they live among other men that the need for the concept of rights arises. There is only one basic right, the right to life, and the other objective rights follow from it, because the other rights are only elaborations on the right to one's life. The basic right to one's life can be viewed as the over arching purpose and standard of defining a code of rights. If one is going to live among other men the most sacrosanct value one needs to explicitly protect is his own life. After laying out the most basic value, he can then elaborate what this means, which consists of defining the other basic rights. The right to life means that sustaining and/or enhancing one's life is a necessary condition for living in a society. The right to liberty/freedom means that the absence of force by others is a necessary condition for living in a society. The right to property means keeping/disposing of one's values is a necessary condition for living in a society. The pursuit of happiness means pursuing one's values is a necessary condition for living in a society. It is true that if a person in a society is not allowed (forced not to) to pursue his values, living in a society is not possible, therefore, harms/hinders his life, i.e., such action impinges on a man's ability to sustain and/or enhance his life in a society. That is one could view the pursuit of happens as subsumed under the right on one's life. It is subsumed under it, but it doesn't make it any less indispensible to defining it explicitly. It is also true that forcibly keeping men from pursuing their values could be viewed as being subsumed under the right to liberty/freedom. But I believe the explicit statement of the right to the pursuit of happiness, reaffirms that the individual is sovereign in a society of rights, and that it is the individual that must be left alone to choose his values and to choose the course of actions he thinks is necessary to obtain those values. The right to the pursuit of happiness explicit abrogates the use of force from individual men's objective, supreme purpose of their lives, which is to pursue their happiness. (See the "Virtue of Selfishness" where Ayn Rand distinguishes a purpose and a standard) When it comes to other men and their governments the more elaboration and explication the better. Mankind has had a sorry history of violating the rights of individuals. That's why it is absolutely indispensible to define who sets the terms of the individual in a society, i.e., who is sovereign. Horrible evils happen today because other men forcibly substitute their own loosely collectivized desires for those of individual men. One major instrument of such evils is the income tax. The individuals pursuit of happiness is not kept sacrosanct, his choice of values and only his choice of his values is not upheld, thus this indispensible right is not protected. Rather, some groups of men are allowed to force other individual men to fund those groups collective "happiness", thus the pursuit of the collective will or the collective soul is substituted for the pursuit of happiness.
  13. I think you are selling yourself short. I think you gave a good answer to his question. L.Peikoff defines action in OPAR on page 13: (note: by his own statement in several lectures, we know he intended the statement to be a definition because he put the word action in quotes.) If "entity" is an axiomatic concept (see ITOE), then "action" is one 'level' more abstract from the concept entity. There are "first level" concepts which are concepts naming entities, i.e., concrete objects we can perceive. Then there is what those first-level concepts "do" which is what we call basic action. It may be helpful to read what Ayn Rand calls "Concepts of Motion." It is on page 15 of ITOE where she is describing how her idea of measurement omission obtains in the formation of various basic concepts: It is in this sense of the word "action", which what I believe is the conceptual root from where other, more sophisticated and/or more general usages of the concept "action" are derived. E.g., eventually we will speak of "actions" of consciousness, and sub-atomic "actions;" but the base concept of action, the one which is closest to the perceptual level, and which is the closest to being perceptually self-evident, is this sense of the word action, i.e., a "concept of motion."
  14. Your question amounts to: "Truth who needs it?" "Truth what's it good for?" "Truth what good is it?" I.e., what is the connection between truth and value? Is truth a necessary condition for man's life and/or the enhancement of his life? What is the connection between truth and successful action, i.e., the achievement of values, i.e., the sustainment and/or the enhancement of one's life? The connection is that man must have true reasons for his actions, and true plans based on those reasons to be successful. A plan of action must be true for it to succeed. A plan of action is a necessary condition for the achievement of any given value. Successfully completing a plan of action to achieve some goal requires that the plan(s) is true. Example of a simple plan (with a huge margin for error, and low level of risk): Goal: Going to a new doctor. If your directions to the doctor are not true, you will not make it there without course correction, if at all. If your beliefs about what's required to get there are not true, such as how much gas you have in your car; or how much time is required given your belief about the traffic patterns; then you may also fail. As the context of the goal changes, i.e., the circumstances and/or conditions relating to all factors involved with the goal; then the margin for error could decrease and/or the risk to your life could increase. E.g., if you are hiking and your directions for your path are not true, you could get lost. Or if your estimations of your ability (beliefs of yourself), do not correspond to the terrain and/or circumstances as they really are (your beliefs about the context involved with the goal), your plan may be very flawed (contain false conclusions or lack requirements), could endanger your life or reduce your margin for error. E.g., Depending on where you are hiking and what time of the year, you could have a very limited time to course correct (get help etc). E.g., if your general life plan does not correspond to the requirements of your life as you've chosen your goals, .e.g., you want to keep your job and improve your position by leading your boss to the conclusion that you are dependable (maybe because you want to be a manager). You careless life plan may be responsible for you over sleeping, not giving yourself enough time for traffic, and or misplacing your keys etc. The life plan is not true, given the out come you desire, i.e., conveying that one is dependable can not be achieved if one is habitually late, forgetful, disorganized, and/or careless. Thus we could say one's plan (or lack there of) does not correspond to the factual requirements necessitated by one's desired results. The plan is not true. The truth of your beliefs mean if they correspond to the facts, factors, context, circumstances involved with your goal. A small mistake in a plan and/or the antecedents for the plan can cost you time or it could cost you your life. Again this can be as trivial as misplacing your keys, and being late to work, or it could be mistakenly venturing into a hostile environment such as a bad neighborhood. We could put these points this way: Success requires truth. I.e., one must know what they are doing and why. One must know where they are and why? Truth keeps one's actions corresponding to fact. Man's life requires he knows where he is and what he is doing at all times, which means his life requires those beliefs are true.
  15. Knock yourself out: http://humanitas-international.org/showcas...hes-hitler.html http://www.hitler.org/speeches/
  16. A clue to answer this so-called "conundrum" is that it asks us to take as unquestionable that objects of the conundrum exist; that there are complex objects and complex contexts of objects such as vats, brains, laboratories, scientists, electrodes, and all the scientific knowledge such as bio-psychology, optics, neurology etc. etc. as necessary to "plausibly" construct the BIV. Why suppose those objects exist? How did the authors of the BIV scenario get the information about brains, scientists, laboratories, vats, electrodes, bio-psychology, etc? We are supposed to take those assertions about the existence of those things as "knowledge"; knowledge which is supposedly "certain" enough to undermine our knowledge provided by our direct awareness of objects? We are supposed to doubt the simple information provided by our 5 senses; but supposed to take undoubtable complex derivative knowledge such as laboratories, scientist, brains, vats, electrodes, and bio-psychology? The answer is the authors of these BIV scenarios depend on and rely upon the existence of objects; their assertions, conclusions and proposed knowledge rests on and completely depends upon the existence of objects. Not only do their assertions depend on the existence of objects, they depend on complex derivative knowledge which took thousands of years to develop using techniques which all depended on the existence of objects and the validity of our sense organs. At the same time they assert we must doubt the existence of simple objects, and the knowledge we have gathered about the existence of those objects using our direct awareness of objects given by our senses. The BIV scenarios are self-contradictory.
  17. Given the number of people who honestly ask the same question, I don't think it is either laughable or unreasonable.
  18. I personally know people who both hear voices and/or see objects that other people don't, and regularly see a psychiatrist for medication. I was serious, not trying to be rude. Sometimes a question is a question, it is not a means to "intimate". Schizophrenia and manic depression can cause these symptoms.
  19. Do you go to a psychiatrist, and/or take any medications for delusions and/or schizophrenia? Do you see objects or hear voices other people cannot see/hear? If you have a normal, healthy brain than if you are "seeing" objects then those objects your perceptual organs are giving you are "out there," they really do exist. There is nothing about your sense-organs, which give them the ability to "construct" an external world.
  20. Precisely! Great way to put it. We do see objects, not images. That what it means to "see" an object. :-)
  21. First, I wanted to point out, that you chose to use the term "re-construction", which obviously means "to construct again." Given the context of what you are describing, the implication is that "construction of the external world" had already taken place and then whatever you meant by "mental" has constructed the external world again. The implication of the external world being previously constructed, has many bizarre consequences. Hopefully you did not intend imply that the external world was somehow first constructed then our body/mind somehow constructs it again. Your question: Our body's organs which provide use with sense-perception, and the method and/or mechanism of how they provide us with sense perceptions are deterministic, i.e., non-volitional, and operate via the law of identity. The sense-perception organs provide us with sensory information in a particular "form". If we had different perceptual organs, we would perceive the objects of the world in different "forms". But, the "object" we perceive is still the object, no matter by what "form" it is perceived. Thus all forms of perception are valid.
  22. Grames the non-sense you are rambling about has very little if any relationship to O'ism as I've studied it for the last 20 years. You seem to pick O'ist ideas a random then weave them into something else. You'd be wise to read ITOE a few times, then actually do the work to understand Objectivism first hand. You seem to post here a great deal, I hope you are not trying to pass yourself off as an expert of O'ism, because you are not. For everyone else, Caveat emptor Regards,
  23. Nice argument. So you won't dismiss "virtue ethics" as bogus because you want to retain a bogus classification in economics. Yes, you have managed to put the thread back on the rail to nowhere. Enjoy.
  24. Given this statement I'm sure you do not understand my argument. I never made the claim that some actions are not ethical. That is not what I'm arguing. Furthermore, the phrase "universality of ethics" is a term you asserted, and that you are now baselessly asserting as a necessary condition for some argument of your own, unrelated to what I've been saying.
  25. We have not been talking about what is and is not within the realm of being judged and/or evaluated by any given ethics. We have been talking about what *is* and is not a included in the concept ethics, i.e., what are the proper units subsumed under the concept "ethics." I just stated that your description includes ALL subjects involving man and man's actions. If what you stated was true, all the subjects I named would be subdivisions of ethics, but they are not. Your description does not in anyway tell us what ethics *is* and how it can be differentiated from its closest relative. It includes nearly everything and excludes next to nothing. To quote Ayn Rand, Again, any man made object and any action of man can and should be evaluated, and thus is in the realm of being "ethics" in the sense that it can be "evaluated" by a given standard of values defined by a valid ethical system. Being able to evaluate a given object, presupposes an ethics and/or a standard of value. But the fact that nearly everything can be judged/evaluated by a given valid ethics, does not make everything a form of ethics. Again we have not been talking about were a given subject applies, but how to differentiate what does and does not qualify as a given kind of object. subsumes means "to take up into a more inclusive classification." dictionary.com. E.g., the class "animal" subsumes rabbits, snakes, birds, fish, men, etc., i.e., all these objects are a certain kind of animal. (while the class excludes objects such as rocks, dirty, trees, plants shrubs etc) the class furniture subsumes tables, chairs, lamps, beds, bookcases etc, i.e.e., all these objects are a certain kind of furniture. (while the class excludes objects such as clothes, appliances, drapery, toilets etc. ) the class philosophy does not subsume: history, economics, business, applied engineering, anthropology, psychology, construction and all vocational arts, i.e., all these objects are not a certain kind of philosophy. History is not a certain kind of philosophy. Psychology is not a certain kind of philosophy. Economics is not a certain kind of philosophy. etc. etc. All those fields I named are not distinctive forms and/or kinds of philosophy. If we were defining any of those fields we would not say their genus is philosophy. There is a difference in saying a.) men are guided fundamentally by philosophy, and b.) that all fields are a kind of philosophy. Or in your case that all these fields are a kind of ethics, given that you stated ethics is the subject of all men and all mens actions. The question is what are the proper units of the concept ethics, i.e., what cognitive purpose does it serve, what does it integrate into the concept, and what does it differentiate, i.e., what does not qualify as a member of the concept? Just because Kant is a man, and he wrote and/or spoke about something (writing and/or speaking being actions), does not make what he wrote and/or spoke about a certain kind of ethics. Nor does the fact that Kant's work can be evaluated by any given ethical code make his works a certain kind of ethics.
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