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2046

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    2046 reacted to Frank in Is direct realism tenable? Has it been successfully defended?   
    Yeah, after reading some more replies, I realized my position is too influenced by Theravada Buddhism, which, opposite of Mahayana, is strictly realist, and denies any and all agent in being. There is no experiencer in this understanding, hence, indirect realism is impossible. I understand, now, that this view is incompatible with Objectivism, which seems to hold consciousness a lot higher than Theravada Buddhism (not saying much, since Theravada breaks it down entirely to entirely empty phenomena with no doer even involved [Visuddhimagga XIX.20]), but a lot less than your average eternal soul believing religion. I need to read more about Objectivism. I realize now, that I was unconsciously, and wrongly, equating atheism with reductionism/mechanism thusly: If there is no soul, then there is no such thing as an experiencer. 
    Thank you for your mature, well written, and polite critique.
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    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Is direct realism tenable? Has it been successfully defended?   
    I would recommend the Huemer book too, just for its own sake. It's a good book in the way it provides a taxonomy and introduction for many of the different ways of viewing perception and the foundation of knowledge, and provides many good arguments against indirect realism and Cartesian-style skepticism. It's also clearly and concisely written, and provides ab example of good philosophy writing. 
    There are also some ways in which Huemer's account differs from, or would appear to differ from what might be Rand's account (taken that Rand didn't really have a developed account.) The major thing is that Huemer takes perceptual experience to be propositional and can contain representational (but non-conceptual) content that can either be true or false. It is this way that perception can serve as a foundation for knowledge via the principal of "phenomenal conservatism," that we are prima facie justified in taking what seems to be the case to be true, unless we have some reason to doubt it. In this way, Huemer is closer to Moore than a Rand or Aristotle.
    I think the difference in Rand would be that she takes perceptual states to be non-propositional and non-representational, and is thus infallible or inerrant, and can neither be true nor false. Huemer sees that, if it is non-propositional, there is a wonder at how it can then justify beliefs. Certainly more would need to be said about abstraction and concept formation than has been said.
     
     
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    2046 reacted to Boydstun in KANT AND RAND – SOME THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY   
    In the early 1970's, Leonard Peikoff gave elaborate tape lecture courses on the history of philosophy. These are representations of that history with which Rand entirely agreed. Peikoff was no doubt the one who ultimately informed Rand of most of the history of philosophy she would come to know after writing ATLAS SHRUGGED. The view of Kant's theoretical philosophy expressed in Peikoff's lectures, lately come to be online here, would be what had come to be Rand's view also of Kant's theoretical philosophy by the time of the lectures. The lectures on Kant are the fullest reservoir of what Rand thought to be his philosophy and the correct comparison of her own philosophy to his.
    In those lectures, Leonard Peikoff remarks that Kant, Aristotle, and Plato are the philosophers most weighty and influential in the history of philosophy. Kant has an impact on all subsequent philosophy, he notes. That still goes, I should say. (In the broad arc, I note a polarity that goes Plato-Aristotle v. Descartes-Kant, notwithstanding all the criss-cross of affinities between these poles.) Concerning weight or stature of Kant, Peikoff says in his lectures: “Kant has one of the most ingenious, complex, integrated, comprehensive systems in the whole of philosophy.”
    In answer to an audience question, Peikoff had some recommendations for further reading concerning Kant’s philosophy as a whole:
    W. T. Jones – HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
    Gordon H. Clark – THALES TO DEWEY
    Wilhelm Windleband – HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
    Peikoff did not recommend jumping into THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON right off the bat. It is extremely hard to understand. In his own studies, he had been using the Kemp Smith translation into English. That is what I used also untill the 1990’s when two new translations appeared. Those are the translation by Werner S. Pluhar and the one by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. These translations are such that one can begin study of KrV straightaway with full profit if one wanted to undertake such a task or have KrV available for one’s reference. That is because of the plethora of helpful footnotes these two translations provide and their Introductions for this central work of Kant’s that one is undertaking.
    For a line-by-line English commentary on KrV, Peikoff recommended the 2-volume work by H. J. Paton – KANT’S METAPHYSICS OF EXPERIENCE. It covers roughly the first two-thirds of KrV, and Peikoff relied upon it. Today, I should recommend, for that sort of close commentary, Graham Bird – THE REVOLUTIONARY KANT (2006), which covers the entire text.
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    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Is direct realism tenable? Has it been successfully defended?   
    That's basically just reductionism.
    But in any case, your reasoning doesn't really get at defeating indirect realism. If the mystical version of the soul did exist, that doesn't necessarily exclude realism, and even if were just bags of meat (which sounds like your position) that doesn't necessarily exclude indirect realism.
    This would be something like indirect realism in terms of an analogy. If this image were presented to consciousness (to make the analogy work for conscious entities), that would mean that there is another layer of perception or interpretation between reality and consciousness. Direct realism would be like saying that there is no image in between, just going straight from reality to consciousness. There would be no need to create the photograph of reality. 
    Yes, there is a biological process of perception that results in awareness of reality in a specific form. But if an image or form is constructed, then interpreted, then brought to awareness, you would have indirect realism. 
  7. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Is direct realism tenable? Has it been successfully defended?   
    The link for the 2004 paper linked by 2046 is not working for me.
    Here is another link for that paper:
    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=485481E36BFC312084DDDB745A1AAF0E?doi=10.1.1.580.7126&rep=rep1&type=pdf
  8. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Is direct realism tenable? Has it been successfully defended?   
    If you're going to recap at least be accurate. I mean he said "soul theories" are responsible for indirect realism. 
    Also he started off saying "a lot of smart people" think indirect realism is true. So what is a lot? How many? And how does he know this? What is their main representative? What is their argument for it? We don't come away from his post knowing any of that.
    First it appeared indirect realism was his target, then it appeared Gilbert Ryle's "ghost in the machine" was his target, then it appeared the homunculus model was his target. Along with "soul theories," these are all different things. And they're not arguments. An argument has a minimum of 3 terms: 2 premises and a conclusion. Just staying something like "there is no little man watching a screen, no ghost in the machine!" peppered with random stuff isn't an argument, it's assuming and re-asserting the conclusion you were supposed to prove. That is bad philosophy.
    Next, in between all the "suit if armor with a camera" statements, it then seems like the person is trying to advance materialism or physicalism. It isn't clear why that would be the correct way to view things either, or how that connects to direct realism, or whether those two positions are disjunctive or not.
    Hypothesis: he watched a bunch of Daniel Dennett videos and thought he could solve everything by aping Dennett's style and throwing in copypasta from the Atlas Society. 
    Positive alternative: for an example of good philosophy writing, see Pierre Le Morvan's paper "Arguments against Direct Realism and How to Counter Them," American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (3):221 - 234 (2004) which you can get for free online:
    https://owd.tcnj.edu/~lemorvan/DR_web.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjgoK6n_Pf1AhV6KEQIHSFWDycQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2KdrBs5qoKySFeGsL__vI2
     
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    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Physics   
    Physics translated by Joe Sachs
    1 - Aristotle distinguishes what is clear by nature versus clear to us. Clear to us is what is clear in terms of how we come to understand the world, in the way that dog is known before animal, which is also messy and filled with many possible conceptual distinctions. What is clear by nature is what is clear in terms of logical structure, that is, in the way that after making distinctions, nature becomes more understandable.
    2 - There can be one and many at the same time in terms of potential and actual.
    3 - If being is caused by something, then the cause could not have been, because there was no something that was being. That is, in my wording, being would be caused ex nihilo.
    What is not is not something in particular.
    4 - To know something composite is to know how many things it is made of and what they are. 
    If no animal is infinite, then its parts are always finite. My understanding is that being can't be infinite because if all substances are finite, then any parts will be finite as well.
     
    5 - Opposites come into being from each other. 
    A house doesn’t come into being absolutely from nothing whatever but from parts and materials. 
    6 - Since two independent things can’t be derived from one another, there would need to be an underlying third thing.
    7 - A statue comes from bronze, not that bronze becomes a statue, because it comes from something that persists. Education comes from uneducation no longer persisting. 
    8 - Dogs come from dogs yet we don’t say that dogs come from animals, since animal persisted all along. The dog is animal incidentally, because animal is not a substance but a predicate in this case, which means apparently that the dog comes into being by the nature of the other dog. Animal is not a being itself, so it is not animal literally speaking that makes the dog come into being. 
    It's no wonder then that Aristotle does not use simply a handful of animals to investigate how animals generate other animals. It is specific animals that bring about their offspring, not some broad form from beyond that literally brings the new dog into being.
     
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    2046 got a reaction from chuff in Have any prominent Objectivists addressed this point II?   
    To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual. The whole mandatory vaccination position depends on a Parmenidean worldview in which all that exists is fully actual, combined with disregarding the need to obtain sufficient information to blame any one person for anything. It is the same fallacy employed by advocates of anti-immigration, gun control, and environmentalism. Thank you for helping to make that connection.
     
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    2046 got a reaction from dream_weaver in Have any prominent Objectivists addressed this point II?   
    To confuse risk of physical force with  initiation of physical force is to confuse a potential with an actual. The whole mandatory vaccination position depends on a Parmenidean worldview in which all that exists is fully actual, combined with disregarding the need to obtain sufficient information to blame any one person for anything. It is the same fallacy employed by advocates of anti-immigration, gun control, and environmentalism. Thank you for helping to make that connection.
     
  12. Thanks
    2046 got a reaction from Frank in Does objectivism offer a way to demonstrate that even the purport that nothing is real/the objective doesn't exist/antirealism/idealism/etc is self refuting or otherwise flawed from the start?   
    I've heard some people say, more than a few times, that the reason they don't believe in objectivity or that an external world exists is "because of quantum physics." But, as far as I can tell, this rests on some kind of confusion. 
    This doesn't sound like anything I've seen about quantum physics. But I think you have to go back to when the quantum revolution first dropped. Everybody was committed to a kind of implicit or explicit materialism in which the word was composed of these microphysical particles in which everything is deterministic and it's all bottom-up causality and so forth. So the quantum revolution hit and people were like oh it's not really like that at all, these things are not deterministic, these little objects don't have determinate positions, like wow, I guess there's no reality there at all then. 
    But you can see that that doesn't really follow, that is resulting from a sort of frustrated materialist ambition. A lot of the anti-realist stuff isn't even consistent or methodical anti-realist. Very few people think anything like that. But what it is is misplaced realistic goals with a sort of implicit anti-realist premises that results in people getting tripped up.
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    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Does objectivism offer a way to demonstrate that even the purport that nothing is real/the objective doesn't exist/antirealism/idealism/etc is self refuting or otherwise flawed from the start?   
    The key thing about realism is that it can't be demonstrated and the very attempt at trying it is what motivates the anti-realism.
  14. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Existence, We   
    My paper Existence, We which I worked on from 2014 to 2019 is now published.
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    2046 got a reaction from dream_weaver in Do animals have volition II?   
    I think that's basically the whole thread. People often subconsciously think a thing having an identity is just mechanical causality. So they think you have things acting according to their identities, but you also have free will, so how to make that work. But they're making something that is all bottom-up causality, like an artifact in the Aristotelian sense. 
    So they hear this Objectivist line about a new type of causality. Well there must be a new type of casualty, meaning a new mechanism. So they spend 6 pages looking around for a new mechanism, or seeing how they can change the wording just right. They don't ever get to just agent-cause vs event-cause.
  16. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in What is the External Indicator of Volition (choice)?   
    ET, to learn something, it's better to read than to listen to podcasts.* The better we learn, the better we can explain in the organic weave of a conversation. 
    I am one who prefers to communicate and exchange views in written text (such as this, or in print). With text, we can go deeper, notice our contradictions better, find gaps in our reasoning better, and make links to further drill-down literature. The written published work I mentioned in the ancestral thread to this one, the portion of he chapter by Ghate, with all its excerpts from and citations of earlier Objectivist writings on free will, is succinct and understandable. At least it is that to participants here, such as you.
    I do not agree that without adequate grasp of Aristotle "Objectivism is dead." Sure, for we endless scholars, we'll not find an adequate philosophy in what is set out in Galt's Speech without further study of philosophy and getting this new one set within them (and within some areas of psychology), and without filling its gaps and resolving its internal problems we notice by revisions or additions. Anyone with anything near the college-level interest in philosophy is in that boat.  But the idea that Rand's philosophy as presented therein, in merely Galt's Speech, would get nowhere in the minds and hearts of numerous readers without its further explication that has occurred in non-fiction writings (with various levels of philosophic sophistication) since then seems mighty dubious.
  17. Haha
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in What is the External Indicator of Volition (choice)?   
    Ain't gonna happen, Jack
     
     

  18. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in What is the External Indicator of Volition (choice)?   
    Are you wondering how you can tell that something else is volitional?
    My best suggestion for now is to read De Anima by Aristotle, or part of it, or watch/read something about what he says. 
  19. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Interesting. Seems Aquinas was getting himself an additional layer of analogical thinking beyond Aristotle. Thanks for notice of Aquinas’ prime/functional distinction.
    I do not buy that potentiality can be a substratum of change. (And down from Galileo-Descartes and Newton [and Einstein’s version], I take inertial motion as brute, requiring no cause nor substrate, only matter [non-zero mass], actual matter, and spacetime.) Potentials belong to and are followers on actualities, and they are delimitations on alterations of actualities. The notion of form that I find useful from philosophy (mine—the paper coming in July) for most promising account of distinction between and relations of science, mathematics, and logic is not complement of actualities (as potentialities are complements to actualities). Let me put my hand on the table. The spaces between the fingers of my left hand are less than the number of fingers. That is a formality belonging to a concrete actuality, but it is not complement to actuality, rather to concreteness. That feature of multiple fingers or of musical staffs is a formality in the empirical world. They follow on concretes. Like potentials, they cause nothing (they're followers, not drivers.) Concrete actuals have the causal powers. We have other mathematical formalities not in the world independently of intelligence in the world, but as our toolkit improving our facility with the formalities belonging to the world, and these stand as analytic geometry to synthetic geometry.
    This is a big paradigm shift from Aristotle (or Kant). Alien to be sure outside my longtime shop.
    I’ll be studying much further the next couple of years the matter-form scheme of Aristotle, the descendant Arab and Scholastic schemes, and the matter-form scheme of Kant and how they treat science, mathematics, and logic within those schemes (within their complete theoretical philosophy schemes). I aim find out (follow-on paper) if better and how is mine for comprehensive frame for the modern age of the hard sciences, mathematics, and logic.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I leave in this post for future handiness a taxonomy of interpretations of the Aristotle texts pertaining to matter and substantial change, gotten from the 2018 dissertation by Ryan Miller (a taxonomy originated in a paper by others).
    (α) The persisting substratum of substantial change is something which has the nature of pure potency. This is ‘the standard prime matter reading,’ commonly associated with Aquinas.
    (β) The persisting substratum of substantial change is something which is not pure potency. (i) If the something is featureless and omni-potent, this is the ‘prime matter’ position of most late Scholastics, including Ockham, Scotus, and Suarez (with variations), now defended by Christopher Byrne. It is closely related to the Averroistic solution to the Problem of the Mixt, because it presumes that there can be sub-substantial subjects. (ii) If the something has no actual features, but a somehow specified potency, this is the position of Richard Rorty (1974) and (tentatively) John MacFarlane. (iii) If the something is what is actually generically true of the elements, which are not themselves composed, then this is the anti-prime-matter position of Hugh King and Robert Sokolowski. (iv) If the something is a relatively simple homoeomerous substance with normal properties or an assemblage thereof, this is the anti-prime-matter position of Daniel Graham and Christopher Shields. (v) If the something is a property, then this is the ‘Weak Revisionary Interpretation’ of Mary Louise Gill and Montgomery Furth. It is closely related to the Avicennian solution to the Problem of the Mixt, because it presumes that properties can transfer between substances.
    (γ)  The persisting substratum of substantial change is pure potency, not something. This is the position suggested by Aquinas in De Principiis Naturae and defended by Dermot O’Donoghue, Friedrich Solmsen, Joseph Owens, Patrick Suppes, Patrick Toner, and Anna Marmodoro. It is also the position taken by Richard Rorty in his dissertation, Christine Korsgaard in an unpublished paper, and with somewhat different auxiliary assumptions by Mary Krizan.
    (δ)  The substratum of substantial change does not persist through that change. This is the ‘Strong Revisionary Interpretation’ of Barrington Jones, William Charlton, Sarah Broadie, and Michael Rea.
    (ε)  Substantial change occurs without a substratum. This is the position that both Aristotle and the Eleatics regard as unintelligible.
    (ζ)  Substantial change does not occur. This is the Eleatic position in its Empedoclean guise.
  20. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Oh okay. Yeah the more I think about it, the more I think it would have to be matter-form composites as a whole applying to both mass and energy. Energy would have to be a way of conceiving of part of an already-enformed piece of matter, in other words a whole substance, in order to be a real thing capable of physical description. But really I don't know much about it. I'll check out the Handbook.
    The Oderberg book, Real Essentialism is something I've been reading, and had been influencing a lot of my understanding.
     
    But that's precisely what the early moderns did believe. And it's because if the atoms had any parts to them, they wouldn't be atoms. They serve to give substances their properties, so they can't themselves have properties or parts. They have to be simples to be the ultimate grounding for any other substances. Another consequence is that they couldn't have any potentialities, they have to be fully actual. 
    Since this is now hard to maintain, you might get something like a neo-Humean view that there are just certain regularities in the phenomena. Or you might get some sort of instrumentalist view, or some sort of "brute fact" type view. My point is that, if you think these are problematic and that scientists are observing electrons acting like electrons for a reason, you very quickly get to the view that we come to know material things only because they fall into a consistent natural kind knowable because of their causal powers. In other words: through their real essences.
  21. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Related materials, recently acquired:
    The Unity of the Concept of Matter in Aristotle by Ryan Miller (2018)
    Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation edited by Jansen and Sandstad (2021)
  22. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    Rand took up the challenge to show that with rational, objective interests for each individual they do not come into conflict between individuals in their rational interactions.
    One could take an approach in which one held up as an objective moral guideline that any sets of interests resulting in conflicts of interests between individuals shows that there are not-objective, wrong items among their interests. To get traction one would still need to look at the various sorts of purported conflicts of interest and show where they go wrong, that is, specifically where there is some defect in objectivity and rationality in the purported interests. That would be like Leibniz did in arguing that this is the best of all possible worlds. He knows already that it must be so, even with any of the many counterexamples put forth, because he knows already that God created the world and that God would not create a world in which the compossibilities of all individual possibles was not the best compossibility. Still, Leibniz goes on and addresses with particulars some of the categories of cases people raise against this being the best of all possible worlds, in order to help allay reservations others have over his abstract picture in which God has to be choosing the best because God is God.
    Rand did not take that rather top-down (plus more particular add-ons) approach. And I think that is good. She tackled some of the particular kinds of counterexamples directly and just tried to show that what might appear as a conflict of interests in them was really not so when all things pertinent to objective, rational interests in a social context are taken into account. 
    I notice that even if Rand is wrong in proposing that their are NO conflicts of interests that are fully objective and rational, it is no great advance of understanding to say merely "so she was wrong in that thesis" or merely "so some conflicts of interest, objective and rational, exist." Advance is to understand which kinds, if any, of conflicts of objective and rational interests do arise. (And as with moral theorizing generally, I wouldn't look to fanciful hypotheticals, but to cases at law and to ordinary life cases. Enough for the day are the complications thereof.)
     
  23. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    True.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Rational Egoism
    – Function of Mind
    – Function of Ethics
    – Supported Choice to Live
    – Desire to Value
    – Altruism
    – Sacrifice
    – Value Out There
    – Visibility, Benevolence, and Egoism – a, b
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    My earliest writings were in the 1980's -- Political and moral philosophy, all published in the magazine Nomos.
    The Moral Value of Liberty (1984)
    Review of The Evolution of Cooperation (1985)
    Rights, Games, and Self-Realization (1988)
    Introduction / Part 1 - Rights against Personal Injury for Two in Isolation / Part 2 - Imperfect Rights in Land / Part 3 - The Just State / Freedom Followup to this 1988 on its method of government funding: here.
    Human Rights As Game Strategies (1988)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    As it worked out, my forthcoming essay “Existence, We” (JARS - summer 2021) sets out fundament metaphysics and conception of mind that silently but plainly calls for an ethical theory following on this framework. But so far as I can see, followup will first (because more urgent) continue in theoretical philosophy,* and I bet that takes a good while.
  24. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    The Stoics made a differentiation between what they called impressions and nature. The Sage (a hypothetical exemplar that is always perfectly rational and virtuous) never assents to impressions without using his intellect to assess the source of the impression. Giving assent to an impression without assessing it would open oneself up to living by misguided thoughts and appearances. Taking a wider point of view to nature is supposed to allow one to see how one is a part of the world and subject to cause and change, and living amongst other people, and thus not fall inadvertently into thinking the world revolves around you and being overtaken by the passions and irrational thoughts.
    So they would say things like: remind yourself throughout your day, that you didn't just want to go to the market. You wanted to go to the market plus live according to nature. And part of that is knowing that it rains sometimes, and rain collects into puddles, and one might sometime step into one. And part of nature is that there are other people in the world and these people are potentially not paying attention or ignorant, and thus apt to splash mud onto you. That way, one could control one's anger or whatever the case could be.
    In the essay Rand says (VOS ch. 4) in choosing your goals you don't treat the desire as an irreducible primary and so one could take this as not assenting to initial impressions (which can be passions or appearances) and trying to take a wider view of things. One revises one's thoughts and assents when one tries to assess the impressions by a given criteria.
  25. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    In evaluating a philosopher's conclusion or doctrine on something, you generally want to know what they mean when they say things. Otherwise it's a fallacy of equivocation. So if Merlin wants to say "well maybe on Rand's premises there aren't, but on my premises there are!" that is either completely uninteresting contribution to the discussion on Rand's philosophy, or it's a fallacy of equivocation. If Merlin is only playing around with his own premises, then he can do that without my participation. If he's making logical fallacies then he is unworthy of discourse. The question for everyone else is on Rand's premises, are there any conflicts of interest in the sense she means of conflicts, interests, and "among rational men" in the essay?
    ET is correct to point out that a lot rides on what she means by those terms. And if you read the essay you see that she wants to say the "rational" understanding as she calls it takes more of the context (or sometimes she says "interrelated considerations") into consideration when considering their interest. ET asks does this require omniscience? Well gee if only there were some place where one could find out what she means. Perhaps she even lists out four kinds of context in the actual essay? Unfortunately we may never know.
    Eiuol asks whether a conflict of wants is a conflict of interest. But specifically in the essay she states that to hold that one's interests are frustrated whenever a desire is thwarted is to hold a subjectivist view of interests, and this is something she doesn't hold. By this I take it she means in Euthyphroean terms, that something isn't an interest merely because it's wanted. So I don't know if she would countenance this "long term conflict vs short term conflict" distinction because she wouldn't say the mere wanting or something counts as a genuine interest. She does make a distinction between competition and conflict of interest, which does include some consideration of time.
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