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2046

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    2046 got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Immigration restrictions   
    Polygraphy is widely criticized.[15][16][17] Despite claims of 90% validity by polygraph advocates, the National Research Council has found no evidence of effectiveness.[16][18] The utility among sex offenders is also poor, with insufficient evidence to support accuracy or improved outcomes in this population.[19][20]
    But let us suppose your test is perfect and infallible. 
    Suppose I go to your house and ask you "Are you going to leave me alone?" You respond that you're not going to answer me and tell me to begone. I then go to your workplace and again pester you "Sir, are you or are you not going to leave me alone?!" Again you dismiss me. I go to your church, your kid's school, your wife while she's shopping. "If you don't answer me, I'll arrest you and deport you! Now are you or are you not going to leave me alone?!"
    There's something odd about this behavior I'm exibiting. I'm subjecting you to harassment in the name of making sure there's no harassment. You don't owe me an answer, you don't owe me anything, under a negative rights conception. You only owe me not to interfere with my life and property, which you are not, even when you are not answering my repeated questions. If I am to force you to answer me, I am thrusting a positive obligation onto you. This is not compatible with basic negative individual rights. 
    I refuse your test and your request for positive action on my behalf for your ends. What now? If your answer is to subject me to government force, then your demand has some problems. And it is a "demand" not an argument. "I think this is moral and proper" is an assertion, not an argument.
  2. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Immigration restrictions   
    The fact that there is a law about X says nothing about why there ought to be a law about X.
    I'm not trying to be snarky, by the way, but my comments are designed to show you that your arguments are greatly underdeveloped. You haven't really done anything other than state your opinion that those with "anti-American beliefs" (whatever that means) ought to be banned. An argument is something with a major and minor premise connected by necessity to a conclusion. You've given us a raw statement. 
    Suppose I gave the following argument:
    In my view an objective impoliteness is not an intrinsic impoliteness. So it would have to be identified in whatever context applied to your particular situation. In our current situation, I think we should screen immigrants moving from Brooklyn to Queens for objective impoliteness, to be determined if their are holding rude-beliefs. 
    I abstract away from your notions of "threat" and "distress" and "anti-American" to help you focus on the structure of the above argument. Notice how the premises are not supported at any point by argument? Notice too how the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises? Adding "contextual" and "objective" in front of certain words doesn't help either, it doesn't actually add or modify any content.
    Moreover it has many additional problems. It endorses prior restraint theory. Now before I can take an action, I have to prove to the government that I don't hold certain beliefs. This breaks the principle that the government has to prove that I acted wrongly before subjecting me to state action. Additionally who is the one to decide what beliefs count as anti-American? You and your gang? How are they to provide this "screening?" A standardized test? Can't the subject just answer "I love America" even if they held anti-American beliefs? What could your test accomplish? Would you then ban groups based on perceived identity? Again, then eugenics and propaganda, or childbirth must be controlled too, on those grounds. It's great that you recognize essentially "I want to ban people that hold beliefs that I don't like" but your viewpoint has a lot to answer for. And adding "they are objective threats" or "they cause me objective distress" doesn't to the reason-giving work you seem to think that it does.
  3. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Notes and Comments on "The Virtue of Nationalism"   
    For these and other reasons, strong institutions are established where the individuals involved identify the interests and the aims of the institution as their own. Think, for instance, of a soldier who takes up a rifle in the hope of establishing the independence of his people after a long history of persecution. Such individuals do not need to be coerced to fight, or to be well compensated for their services. The fact that they are fighting for the benefit of their people is enough for them to be willing to throw their lives into the balance for the sake of a collective such as a tribe or a nation, stirring up an ardor in their breasts that moves them to acts of bravery and self-sacrifice that no intimidation or promise of pay could elicit.
    (p. 63)
    Human beings constantly desire and actively pursue the health and prosperity of the family, clan, tribe, or nation to which they are tied by bonds of mutual loyalty: We have an intense need to seek the material success of the collective. We work to strengthen its internal integrity by ensuring that its members are loyal to one another in adversity, honor their elders and leaders, and conduct the inevitable competitions among them peaceably. And we toil to hand down the cultural inheritance of the collective, its language and religion, its laws and traditions, its historical perspective, and the unique manner in which it understands the world, to a new generation. 
     (p. 74).
     
    His extension of self is one where the collective (the nation) is more important than the individual. It is altruistic in the Randian sense.
    I agree that it is utopian, but not through and through dangerous and bad; some classical liberal theory is essential to Rand (in particular a lot of concern for individual rights). Let's make it more accurate: collectivism is essential to Hazony's theory, where the stability of the nation requires collectivism. 
  4. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Notes and Comments on "The Virtue of Nationalism"   
    Fine, but a rant is neither rational nor persuasive nor interesting.
     
    If your frame of understanding and reference is Left versus Right, then there isn't much I can say. It really only ever came from the French Revolution to distinguish between those who supported the monarchy and those who did not (more or less). It wasn't that bad of a distinction for a while because so much of European political reality was monarchy. But by these days, it's all kinds of confusing. Not to mention Objectivism never tried to be a left or right philosophy (which is how it can actually have elements of leftist politics).
    Even if the article is wrong, nothing sought to support authoritarianism, control over lives, skepticism as a theory of knowledge, collectivism, things like that. Being critical of a theory does not tacitly support every single adversary of the theory.
     
  5. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Grames in Charles Tew   
    This may be a broader topic than what you guys are talking about, but I think this is all predicated on that there is such a thing as "the Objectivist movement" and that it has a clear and district meaning and purpose. What even is "the Objectivist movement" and what task or problem is it solving that requires its existence? Why does it have a health and what would this be that I can even know it? Can anyone point to any example of this movement, who is in it, what has it accomplished? Does it even need one? What is the difference between a philosopher working on Rand being in a movement versus not being in one? How would this work differ as "operating with a movement" versus not? What would just any old group of people doing whatever they do look like as "operating in The Objectivist movement" as versus doing the same exact things just as regular people doing whatever they're doing? Do we need to be in "the Objectivist movement" to discuss any set of topics or talk philosophy at all?
    Rand 1968 "A Statement of Policy" denies both the existence or need for any organized Objectivist movement (and of course raises many more confusing questions for what she even means.) Is there even enough content in her Objectivism to be a coherent ideology for a "movement" and does it even have a criteria of membership in said movement, or a program of action, or even a coherent and realistic single end for action? It's clear to me that the answer is no it does not. I realize this is a larger topic but that leads us to the following:
    Implicit in all of that is that (1) Tew even is an actual philosopher, and that he's saying anything substantial or has done any important and original philosophic work one can point to. And (2) that his YouTube videos are even significant, important, or relevant to this "movement" you speak of, whether in terms of substantial content or number of views and popularity. And it's also clear the answer to 1 and 2 is both no.
    Rather it seems to be, the whole idea that there even is "the Objectivist movement" is widely pathological, and leads to things like everyone condemning and "sanctioning" one another qua "representative of our movement" or "hurting our cause" (whatever that is) whereas normal folk just look and go, "What? Y'all are weird." Implicit in this is the assumption that the space is zero-sum, that engagement with Rand can only be done in that space, and that everyone must give moral sanction to everyone else or "they're out."
  6. Like
    2046 got a reaction from MisterSwig in Popular Scientist vs. Popular Comedian   
    NDT and the value of philosophy
    Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at CUNY who also has a PhD in biology.
  7. Like
    2046 reacted to merjet in Jordan Peterson interviews Stephen Hicks   
    Jordan Peterson interviewed Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks almost two years ago. In March he did so again.
    Links: video of first interview    audio of second interview
    They are long, about 1.5 hours each.
  8. Like
    2046 reacted to DonAthos in Immigration restrictions   
    Yes, and it was magnificent.
    Indeed. I don't know how else to square your responses in this thread. Do I really need to recap them? (Technically you should be able to read them over again for yourself, but I don't know that I can trust you to do that honestly, either.) You argued that people should not be allowed to advocate for socialism; I questioned whether that was consistent with Objectivism (or at least with Rand's views), and I provided quotes to demonstrate that Rand supported free speech, specifically including that for communists/socialists. In direct response, you claimed consistency with Rand and that you were not arguing against free speech.
    The implicit dishonesty involved in such a thing is just staggering. I don't know whether "Orwellian" or "Trumpian" would be more damning, but they both apply -- it is doublethink, pure and simple, on par with 1+1=3. A month on, fresh off of a vacation, and I'm still blown away by it. So I'll put it this way: perhaps it goes too far to say that you have zero respect for reason (how could I possibly know such a thing to such a degree?)... but if you do have any respect for it, that respect will drive you to understand your incredible error, and the disregard for reason and reality it conveys, make amends for it, and try to root it out from all future conversation -- because it is the kind of error that renders all such conversation worse than worthless (to say nothing of what it portends for your thinking).
  9. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Immigration restrictions   
    It's definitely part of the reason, but not the main reason. It is not a sufficient or necessary condition, but more people adds more weight for concern when there already is a concern. All I really care about is if there is a plan of action, not simply hope on their part. There might be an argument to stop them in terms of visiting the country (as in, their intent is "hit and run" propaganda), but I can't see why I should call something a threat if it isn't associated with imminent violence.
    Are you seriously missing how Hitler used violence to come to power? He toned it down a little bit after being imprisoned, but it's not like he came to power and then unleashed the violence. It wasn't anti-German belief that was ever the threat, it was the constant use of violence. Hitler basically got people to ignore the law (or rather, he got the right people to ignore the law), he didn't use the law of Germany to get his way.
  10. Like
    2046 reacted to DonAthos in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    Moral action depends on context, but this is no blank check on action in an "improper society." The question before us resolves into whether there is a right to restrict immigration. If there is no right to do it -- if, in fact, restricting immigration is the initiation of the use of force -- then that is immoral equally in a "proper society" or otherwise.
    The proper time to protect peoples' individual rights is immediately and always: not when "a proper society is set up," which we currently have scheduled for... well, sometime in the distant future, I continue to allow myself to hope.
    The checks you mention with respect to immigration? I agree that some sort of "checks and criteria" is warranted, and that action/restriction can happen there, too, according to the same criteria with which we would countenance retaliatory force domestically. Meaning: if we would rightly restrict the liberty of a US citizen for some reason, then we could rightly restrict border entry for that same reason. But otherwise, no. Otherwise, there's nothing special -- with respect to our recognition of individual rights -- to being born in Tijuana as opposed to San Diego.
    If immigrants plan on using the welfare state, that's the welfare state's problem, not mine. (And I have less than zero interest in restricting immigration so that the welfare state may better survive.) It doesn't warrant my telling someone that he may not move to a certain city, buy a certain house, take a certain job, etc. I believe in liberty, and more to the point that I do not have the right to initiate the use of force.
    Let's talk about this in concrete detail for a moment. You have a man in Tijuana who wishes to move to San Diego, to get a job there and rent an apartment, so that he and his family may have a better life. You're telling me that an Objectivist such as yourself believes you have the right to tell him that he may not do these things -- in the name of self defense?
    Well, why not? If we apply the principles given, I don't see why an Objectivist wouldn't support restraints on a person's freedom to leave. If the people who believe in freedom choose to leave the US, that might leave me just as poorly off as allowing an influx from countries with some poorer culture, right? So if I can restrict people and their actions on the one hand, so that I may have a more favorable political culture, why not on the other?
    (For what it's worth, I don't know that a person like Trump -- though quite far from an Objectivist -- is expert at drawing these sorts of distinctions. If he had his druthers, do you suppose he would make it illegal for certain businesses to leave the US and build their factories elsewhere? I do. So even if we're going to approach this from some "realpolitik"/pragmatic angle, I think there are good reasons for mistrusting walls, generally.)
  11. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    You seem to contradict yourself.
    First you say that IQ matters a lot for the health of a country. Moreover, you have gone over how you think that by nature black people have lower average IQ than white people. This means that having more black people will lower the average IQ. According to you, this is bad. In response, you could deport black people, withhold the right to vote, or deny them citizenship. If you do nothing, then you are allowing the country to weaken.
    Then at the same time, you clearly advocate for freedom of association. 
    But with freedom of association, without even discussing immigration yet, you are allowing racial groups to mix and therefore lower the average IQ.
    Something has to give. At least one of your beliefs has to change if you care about the consistency of your own beliefs. 
    This reflects why I wasn't going over individual rights. 2046 went over with you that individual rights are not based off a selfish nature. Nothing even about Objectivism supposes that people are selfish by nature, or tribal by nature. I only mentioned it for the convenience of other people reading the discussion.
  12. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    That's not accurate actually, the view is that individual rights are a necessity to a healthy and functioning society, not an end in itself. I mean, if you're talking about individual rights and then also other things to enhance that, sure. But you can't have individual rights if you propose specifically racist policies (judging people collectively according to their race). I mean, individual rights aren't some appeal to a platonic good, the whole idea is that it does in fact work better on a practical level and a moral level. If you accept individual rights as theoretically good, but in practice see them as a failure, you are actually rejecting the theory in the first place.
     
  13. Like
    2046 reacted to DonAthos in Notes and Comments on "The Virtue of Nationalism"   
    So you take Trump's actions generally as being supportive of free trade? Here's an opinion considering that analysis, among other possibilities.
    I don't know. I think it's possibly an error to consider Trump as being particularly principled in any direction -- except for the bedrock that is his own aggrandizement. But it certainly seems to me that he's not afraid to violate what I would otherwise consider to be free markets, or the individual rights which make free markets possible. If that's a "negotiating tool," I don't know that it makes it any better. I don't think he cares about things like "rights."
    In any event, how do you square your interpretation with Trump's threatening US businesses against moving overseas? For instance, here is a write-up of Trump's reaction to Harley-Davidson. This does not sound to me like a principled free-trader in action.
    Race has nothing to do with nationalism, either currently or historically? All right. I think there's possibly something arguable here, but I'll leave it for others, or for another time.
    Okay; I will look forward to that being addressed later.
    Do you also consider it a "valid and pertinent question" as to how it is proposed to enforce a preference for nationalism? Perhaps we have decided that the Quebecois and Basques, etc., should have states -- or perhaps not -- but how generally does the nationalist propose to preserve his culture against demographic shifts, immigration and emigration, influx of foreign media, etc.? Can this be done without violating individual rights?
  14. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Fred Miller   
    Most recently, from Prof. Miller:
    Aristotle - On the Soul and Other Psychological Works
    Notre Dame Review
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Peek into Fred Miller's paper at Ayn Rand Society Meeting 2005 here. 
    I expect this paper will be included in a planned volume on Aristotle and Rand in the series Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies.
  15. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Azrael Rand in Notes and Comments on "The Virtue of Nationalism"   
    That may be fine, but let me be clear on what my argument is. I'm saying transcendent and universal in form of argument, not transcendent and universal in geographic scope of its conclusion. We have already seen Hazony's favored nationalism³ requires deontic-like claims. It may be that for his nationalism², he is searching for some formal property of "liberalism" that will lead him to "we must have multiple states, and not one world government." But, as my argument above stresses, liberalism is a specific kind of solution ("basic, negative individual rights and private property") to a specific kind of problem ("what is government and why do men need it?" or more abstractly the problem of human community.) Thus, someone working from an inductive and largely Aristotelian-in-spirit framework doesn't require one truth to rule them all, or for norms that are deontic, or transcendent, or universal/universalizable, or that solve all political problems. We work in terms of principles where the fitness of said principles is determined by (a) what in reality gave rise to the need for them and (b) how well they solve those problems. Liberalism is one solution to one set of problems. Not-having-a-world-government (Hazony's nationalism²) is another (questions of centralization-decentralization in scope and structure.) For this reason we are not bothered by Hazony's "liberalism cannot justify dividing that function up over different parcels of land" problem.
  16. Like
    2046 reacted to Grames in Notes and Comments on "The Virtue of Nationalism"   
    You are way off topic here.  If this is a continuation of a disagreement originating in another thread then please take it back there.
  17. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    "Racist" describes your position, that is, advocating for specifically judging people based on their race rather than their individual characteristics, specifically for perceived threat and destabilization of your country. You were telling me about immigration policies you want in reference to race, you didn't mention anything about, say, only allowing people with a certain IQ to become citizens or immigrate (although wrong, not racist). Moreover, this isn't an implication of what you're saying, it is what you're saying, you seem to just want a nice word without the connotations. If you think it is offensive because it is inaccurate, and you don't want to judge people collectively according to their race, you should fix what you're saying about immigration. Otherwise, you should own up to the most accurate label you can, even if it is distasteful. 
     
  18. Like
    2046 got a reaction from softwareNerd in The Case for Open Objectivism   
    Of all the meta-ethical theories floating around in philosophy, there are usually 4 types: god, society, reason, or nature. Usually attacks on Rand's views as a naturalist come from one of the other templates. A Kantian, for example, might claim Rand fails to attach moral claims to pure reason, a conventionalist might claim public agreement lends to more altruism than Rand wants to allow.
    You seem to want to challenge Rand's views from within the context of human nature, by pointing to some tribalistic aspects of human nature that we've ignored or failed to see. You mentioned a number of times bow, humans are led by emotions, humans are tribal, humans are inherently this or that.
    But it's not as if merely asserting this or that constitutes a reason to believe something. It's fine if you want to map out the territory, well if humans were inherently interested in only members of their own race, then some sort of racist ethical prescription might follow, but your posts in here suffer from serious "argument from assertion" fallacies. To simply assert is not to establish. It's as if your claims become their own mantra "I see what you're saying but, humans are inherently tribalistic, QED." Is this the proper way to do philosophy? Is this intellectual honesty or ethical discussion? There are many challenges to a neo-Aristotelian conception of human nature, a Randian could challenge, eg., A Nietzschean account by challenging Nietzsche's views of human nature. But just making assertions and repeating them as a mantra is sophism, not philosophy.
    Moreover, there are many conservative and communitarian critiques of liberty that point to a supposed inherent tribalism, and establish statism to arrange society in tribalistic patterns. MacIntyre, for example, argues against cosmopolitan liberalism from even a largely Aristotelian framework. But he does more than assert "humans are tribal" over and over. The right-Hegelians wished to establish a tribal society in the basis of racist scientific claims. In any event, your original post was about being an "open Objectivism" and revision of certain claims. It's not clear how, if one adopted the above views, one would be offering a divergence from, rather than new version of, Rand's views. If one is rejecting free will, the efficacy of reason, and open ended human sociality, and opposition to statism, this just comes across as petty opportunism or entryism, rather than being an honest conservative critic.
     
  19. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in The family cannot survive without duty.   
    I think this is an accurate description of Enlightenment thinkers. But Objectivism is not a philosophy based on Enlightenment philosophy. For some of its political philosophy, maybe, but not for ethics or anything else. There is no belief that reason is needed to overcome human flaws or irrational behaviors. It's more that reason is necessary to exist at all, going all the way back to Stone Age man and before. Reason isn't for the betterment of man; reason is a natural thing that we all must pursue individually and follow individually. 
    In this way, Objectivism is a Romantic philosophy. Individually, we are all good enough, and where we go is our responsibility. Although Rand would be unique among romantic philosophers in her emphasis of reason, she emphasizes heroic ideals, the power of the individual, the creative genius. These heroes are not people who overcame human flaws and irrational behavior. Rather, they use reason and personal pride to be their best self. They use great ability. If anything, irrationality is unnatural, an error - a mistake.
    Instead of saying the power of reason, I should have said the fundamental importance of reason. Not only is it important, we would be dead without it. 
    You're right then that Wells and Lenin both thought that, for whatever reason, they were more enlightened than the rest, as if they had a special gift of reason. They thought reason had power. But they didn't think that reason was fundamental to man's nature. The masses were stupid, or irrational, and that's how they always would be. That was my point. Reason had its uses, but only at an enlightened minority had this gift. 
    By the way, when I said Fascism, I was referring to Italy. Less about building a new world, but rebuilding the world into what it once was. A return to Roman ideals, and definitely some maintenance of Christian traditions. Fascism isn't really a hybrid of anything, it's a third way. To be sure, there were some radical origins. Still, it emphasized tradition and family values as intrinsically necessary and critical. Not just a respect for these things, but that these things even supersede reason.  
    The conservatism view you referred to is more like the Enlightenment ideal, but you temper it with a little bit of what I would call "pessimistic acceptance" that on average, people are hopelessly irrational and can't be shown the light. You might not emphasize the pessimistic part right now, but I think that's where your logic leads eventually. 
  20. Like
    2046 reacted to Reidy in Should this quote about your first glance at someone really be in the sidebar?   
    Regardless of who said it, and whether or not it’s true, the quote states a matter of profoundest conviction for Rand, and I think it’s a key to the enduring hold she has over her readers.
    When we meet a character in one of her novels, we get a physical description as we do in just about any novel. We come across Roark immediately in The Fountainhead and James Taggart and Dagny Taggart very early on in Atlas Shrugged. Rand’s descriptions are largely in terms of acquired, character-revealing traits such as facial expression, carriage, posture or eye focus. The impersonal narrator makes these matters of fact like hair color or eye color. On a few occasions we get this indirectly, through the words or thoughts of a character recollecting a first sight (Rearden’s first sight of Dagny Taggart, Galt’s first sight of Rearden). What these descriptions and the many others like them have in common is that they are never wrong. Rand’s characters turn out to be just what they first seemed to be. Sheryl’s first impression of James Taggart doesn’t fit this pattern, and she misjudges him disastrously, but: (a) she sizes him up on the strength of his name, not of his visible air; (b) we first saw him a couple of pages into the book, and he has amply lived up to the expectations that his appearance gave him.
    In her theory of art Rand spoke of eliminating the inessential: in life, one ignores the unimportant; in art, one omits it. False visual clues are among those forgettable contingencies that have no place in her art. In the Randian universe, our first impressions are correct. People don’t let us down in this respect.
    This habit spilled over into her personal life. In her obituary for Marilyn Monroe, she says Monroe had “the radiantly benevolent sense of life, which cannot be faked”. Readers have quoted this remark many times over the years, more times, I venture, than Rand expected. Yet I’ve never seen anyone ask why it can’t be faked. Monroe was an actress. Faking what she didn’t feel was her job. Elsewhere in the same column Rand says she “brilliantly talented” at it, but here she says Monroe couldn’t act. She wanted MM to be the person she saw up on the screen, and convinced herself that she was.
    Rand herself and her biographers have told various stories of how often this acquaintance or that public figure “disappointed” her. She wanted people to live up to her expectations, and their failures to do so were a personal hurt. We’ve all known this feeling, and we’ve all been glad to meet somebody finally who is what we hoped, but it doesn’t loom as large for most of us.
    Barbara Branden tells a story of Rand’s girlhood once in her 1962 biography and again in 1986. Young Alisa admired a schoolmate and wanted to get to know her. She asked, point-blank, what is the most important thing in the world to you? She replied, My mother, and Rand walked away in disappointment. That was the end of that.  In her earlier telling, BB makes this the other girl’s fault for not being was Alisa wanted her to be. In the later version, she says it’s typical of Rand’s failure to consider other people’s context before judging them. This failure on her part, and her idealism, may be closer than we realized.
  21. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Objectivism in Academia   
    Tibor Machan died this past week, at age 77. In 2011 a festschrift to honor his life work in ideas was issued under the title Reality, Reason, and Rights.*
    At the end of the twentieth century, Tibor delivered a paper in Boston to the APA session of the Ayn Rand Society. The theme of the session was “Teaching Ayn Rand in Introductory Courses.” Allan Gotthelf delivered a paper on teaching Rand on free will, and Tibor Machan’s was on teaching Rand’s ethical egoism. Tibor’s paper was published in 2001 in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (V3N1). See also on his layout of Rand’s ethics Chapter 3 of his book Ayn Rand (1999). The dedication page says “For Kate.” My deepest sympathy to Kate and Erin and Thomas and all who loved and admired Tibor. 
    In 1975 I studied Tibor’s fine book Human Rights and Human Liberties.* Lately I’ve gotten his Individuals and Their Rights (1989) and his Objectivity – Recovering Determinate Reality in Philosophy, Science, and Everyday Life (2004). I’ve more to learn from him in the days not yet broken.
    Chapter 2 of Tibor's Ayn Rand had appeared in my journal Objectivity (V1N4) in 1992. The essay title is "Evidence of Necessary Existence."* (Abstract) 
    From the Introduction of Tibor’s Ayn Rand (1999):
    “In addition there have been specialized journals, such as Objectivity—edited by Stephen C. Boydstun—in which Rand’s work is the animating idea for most papers, while others such as Reason Papers—edited by myself—pay frequent attention to works that develop or criticize Rand’s ideas. Any serious student of Rand needs to take a look at the wide array of topics with which the authors of Objectivity grapple, as well as at some of the study groups in cyberspace that regularly conduct extensive seminars and produce substantial papers on or inspired by Rand’s work.
    . . .
    “In choosing a given person for consideration when that person isn’t hailed by one’s culture, the author reveals his own esteem or respect for that person. The charge often follows that objective treatment of the person is impossible.
    “Yet to think this way, to deny objectivity when it is coupled with respect or even admiration, is to confuse objectivity with neutrality or nonpartisanship. A doctor needn’t be neutral about a patient’s ailment in order to be objective in deciding what treatment it requires.”

  22. Like
    2046 got a reaction from itsjames in I am a bit confused...   
    In Socratic fashion, in order to know how to normatively apply a concept, we have to know what your definition and meaning of those terms are. Socrates, being accused of impiety, asks Euthyphro "What is piety?" To which he responds (summarizing here), "That which pleases the gods," Socrates responds, "The gods disagree..." To which Euthyphro responds "That which pleases all the gods..." Socrates then says well that doesn't tell us what it is, and then gets some basic definition to work from.
    Rand has this idea of hierarchy and context, that you start off with a paradigmatic case and then develop a meaning based off that, then you obserbve other problematic cases or integrate it with your other beliefs, then you go backwards and refine it as needed. Again, summarizing here.
    So what facts of reality gives rise to the need for these concepts, what knowledge is already presumed by the time you get "honor," "pride," "traditions," and "cultural identity," and what context are you attending to when you apply it in the propositions like "I'm proud of my cultural identity." So we can start off with some initial meaning and then refine it from there.
    My initial thoughts are that honor and pride are proper virtues when applied to individualistic human flourishing, and not the nation-state as a whole. I think one can be proud of, or take pride in one's cultural identity insofar as that identity promotes the proper values that one has formed, in the general sense of "I'm glad we're doing this right," or "our polis (so to speak) is right for living in reality and functioning properly. This is good that it exists, and I am in it, as opposed to a different city." 
    The honorable man then, is one that defends his city, but only insofar as it is right and promotes human flourishing. To the extent it doesn't, I would be inclined to say the honorable man is the critic, the reformer, the protestor. 
    In the same way, I think there's invalid uses of this concept. If you're on a baseball team and the other members of the team make skilled plays that facilitate winning, you'd be "proud of them" in some sense. But you're not going to say something like "we have the same color jersey on, therefore I get credit for his good plays." It doesn't make sense to claim "pride for x" when you didn't contribute to or aren't a part of x, or on the basis of some nonessential, like "he is virtuous, he is tall, I am tall, therefore I am virtuous." Likewise, just simply being born in one human community versus another isn't a source of honor or pride, since they'd have to be achieved by your own character development and discipline.
  23. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in "Egoism and Others" by Merlin Jetton   
    ... By reading comprehension? I don't know what you are expecting me to say. No one seems to understand why you think that in one quote that the meaning of the sentence actively excluded the benefit of other people rather than simply not mentioning the benefit of other people that may go on. And throughout this whole thread I even talked about how you could maintain that you as an individual must gain the most benefit without also implying that the benefit of others must be minimized or zero. 
    If you think 2046 was attempting an ad hominem argument and failed, it's probably because he wasn't even attempting one. The point he was making is that not mentioning something doesn't mean someone was saying anything about the excluded stuff. If you want a complete literal explanation, you should not introduce added subjects...
    Anyway, if you link your paper here, maybe I would take the time to look over and offer a more complete criticism of you. I'm hoping that your criticism of Rand's egoism isn't based on this one quote.
  24. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Grames in What is 'reason'?   
    Also, in Rand's epistemology, it's not the sensations that are being conceptually united by the process of reason, one does not experience sensations in most normal circumstances (ie., unless you have diminished mental capacity, are in a sensory deprivation experiment, etc.) The process of integrating sensations into perception is physiological, not rational (as in Kant), one experiences a united perceptual field, rather than sensations. The process of reason proceeds, under this theory, by abstracting from the field of perception, and then integrating the units conceptually as you described.
  25. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in What is 'reason'?   
    You seem to think that the "Objectivist method" is some thing, like an actual sui generis "method," apart from a philosophic explanation of the scientific method of observation and experimentation and why it works. In a sense, we start out from knowing that we have knowledge, we know that we have useful ideas, epistemology is then going back and saying "what was the method that I used and how does that work?" And yeah like Eiuol said, I'm not sure how formal logic and probability theory are opposed to, say, the world of Bacon or Mill or a Rand.
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