Eiuol

You are right in the sense that it is better to promote good ideas in general. But Oist ideas are the ideas that Rand wrote about. You can't promote Oist ideas completely divorced from her fiction, because those absolutely part of core understanding. That isn't to say the only correct way to talk about philosophy is to talk about Rand and no one else. What I'm saying is don't bother promoting "the philosophy", that's not what's important. Not everyone has to make a deep dive, and you can understand good ideas without reading a word of Rand. I don't think the analogy works, existentialism is pretty much against systematic philosophy. Still, if you want to understand existentialism, you can't get by with not reading Camus. If you don't want to do it, then you won't understand existentialism. Of course, an existentialist might promote what they think are good ideas, and they can recommend related literature about existentialism that would discuss these good ideas. But if they want to promote existentialism specifically, they have to promote Camus. Or at least, only by reading Camus would you be learning about existentialism (or any of the other existentialist philosophers who called themselves that). It really does sound weird to have an existentialist promoting Camus explicitly and as the only way to understand what is true. (Would an existential even say that truth is objective? Well, you get the idea!) In the same way, I think it's better to think about promoting philosophy in a way that doesn't involve mentioning Rand very much. I will certainly mention where I get my ideas from, but I don't actually mention Rand much. Promoting good ideas involves promoting many kinds of people.

Beginner like starting college studying game design, or getting more involved in that kind of work after being in another field? I'm pretty curious, what you mentioned is something I used to think a lot about when I was very new to Oism.

If by insurrection you mean where everybody involved is working together in a concerted effort in the same plot, then no, it was not. But no one was trying to claim it was a single concerted effort. If you want to get pedantic, then anyone who entered the capital was engaging in insurrectionary activity. But we don't need any kind of apologism, everyone who bothered to break in was doing something treasonous or insurrectionary to some degree. Of course, some people are more liable than others. Just don't fall for the trick where you get something like "it wasn't a giant organized effort led by Trump, so it really wasn't anything more than excited people".

What's the point of that argument anyway? Does it matter how "nice" some trespassers appear? Not really, the intent wasn't to just have a look around and nothing else. Does it matter if he was escorted or not? Not really, that doesn't mean the cop wasn't acting with bad intention (or not using his position of authority to support bad intentions). It's more fascinating that Tucker Carlson has tried to make a thing of it, after having it revealed that he is really all about ratings rather than truth with those publicly revealed text messages.

I don't know man, any Q-liever like yourself doesn't have very much ability to distinguish fact from fiction.

Okay, but I take that as humorous rhetorical flair, a style that I personally enjoy. I say this because in many of his lectures, he says things that are straight up hilarious that nevertheless make the point he's making very clear. Anyway, OPAR I don't think is the best example of analyzing the premoral choice other than presenting that viewpoint. Tara Smith goes on about in a much more in-depth way in Viable Values. Got any examples? I agree with you, but I don't know if any such camp exists in the first place. What or who are you arguing against? You seem to be arguing against something that isn't happening in the first place.

None, emotions themselves are not volitional. It's hard to answer your question because you aren't giving an example. In general, you are responsible for your emotions to the extent that you get yourself into situations where you feel particularly emotions, or to the extent that your rational judgments can lead to feeling different emotions (feeling fear is quite different than feeling sadness). Your thought experiment example is a matter of reflex, not really in emotion. Pain is not an emotion. If you feel social anxiety in a situation like your real life situation that you gave, it would be your own fault for putting yourself into the situation, and it is your own fault if you lack the skills to deal with social anxiety. You can say that your volition was compromised in some situations, similar to how people with addiction really do have their volition compromised. But sometimes it's your own fault for getting into that situation. There are almost always precautions that you can take. I mean, in some way someone with bipolar experiencing a manic episode spending their entire year's salary is not responsible. This is not what they do when they are in a stable state of mind. Perhaps if it is their first episode, they can be absolved to an extent. They didn't know they were bipolar, and bipolar is not something brought on by one's own actions. But there are precautions they can take in the future to prevent that from happening. Anything ranging from minimizing the symptoms of manic episodes with medication, or using hard spending limits for your credit card.

I mean, you made the thread about doubting some claims in Oist metaphysics, except I don't see what claims you are doubting. It seems that you want to say that you agree with idealism on some points in opposition to Oism, but are watering it down to say "well, it's not completely unhinged." When basically all your posts are about idealism, it's hard to see what your point is, especially when your so called disagreements are mostly addressing bad arguments against idealism. When I see bad arguments from Oists, I think it's usually because they don't get what Rand's position actually was. Rand seems to address idealism by saying that the fact cognition is active and perception as well to an extent, doesn't make it harder to "access" reality. In fact, that's what we would expect. Sure, it might look like her claims are nothing more than "your eyes work, therefore idealism is false, you stupid moron". And yes, I think she oversimplifies her hatred of Kant. But the meat of her ideas goes deeper than that, into the nature of perception being unified such that any disjunction in access to reality just isn't coherent.

What do you have to say though about doubting Oist metaphysics? You seemed to present yourself as diverging somehow, but I really don't see it.

I took the point to be that there are some senses which are meta-representational. Memory, for example, is entirely meta-representational. Having senses is enough to say that existence exists, but claiming direct realism is true requires some more reasoning. Rand is absolutely clear when she says that awareness is an active process. Awareness, for her, is largely the act of perception, so when she says awareness is an active process, perception is too. The perceiver is interacting with the perceived. No, the perceiver and the perceived are not the same thing, but as perceptual acts are concerned, the perceived and the perceiver are nothing more than different perspectives on the same perceptual act. The perceptual act only exists because both the perceiver and the perceived are unified, and any separation of the 2 eliminates the perceptual act. In other words, they are part of the same thing in such a way that the thing (the perceptual act) exists because of both of them operating in unison.

1. What do you mean by claim independence? If your point here is that some truths are independent of what somebody claims but are nonetheless dependent on something about their mind, that seems to be exactly what Rand thinks about emotions, and any kind of judgment that involves emotion. 2. Consistent with how Rand thinks knowledge ultimately comes from induction. 3. In what way would Rand disagree? I would not say she said anything explicit about this, but it looks fine. 4. Actually, even the claim about how consciousness is an axiomatic concept affirms how Rand sees introspection and extrospection as a form of sensing. 5. Sounds great, it's only a doubt to the extent that I don't think Rand said anything about this one way or the other. 6. I think that Oist review one perception is that percept and object is unified as far as the act of perception is concerned. That flows from the Aristotelian nature of what Rand says about perception. He was quite explicit about the unification of the perceiver and the object being perceived. 7. Not sure I see the objection. 8. Your doubts seem to be coming from a strawman by now. Yeah, you are trying to preempt an objection, but who would come up with that kind of objection? 9. Seems consistent with the way Rand argued against God. Just because reality coheres in a certain way doesn't mean that it had to come from a creator. I know that's not what you're addressing, but the form of the argument is the same. 10 & 11. These are the only doubts that I think even count as doubts. But it is such a minor doubt, it's more of a semantic disagreement. 12. This is the only substantial doubt you've listed. Most of it is stuff that is entirely consistent with Oism, and the people you're disagreeing with probably are not thoroughly versed in Oist epistemology. Then again, I find that there is some kind split about views on the nature of consciousness within the Oist community. The question "can AI ever become conscious?" shows it just about every time. It's not that the answer to the question itself is what makes a difference, but it's a quick way to get a sense of their underlying views.

Me.

Sure, I'm only getting at what primacy of consciousness means in the most extreme form, in the way that Rand means the idea. That's what Frank was asking about in large part, about a scientist who would say that "science proves that consciousness produces existence." There is nothing about the way she defines primacy of consciousness that has to do with making determinate claims about the operations of consciousness. It might, but it doesn't have to. Apophatic theology is still the notion that consciousness produces existence, but to such a logically consistent level that it will admit that there is a realm of nothing, and that nothing produces something. You are using primacy of consciousness as a synonym for idealism, which is incorrect if you are using terminology in the same way as Rand. It's not just to be mean to Kant, it's especially a critique of God and so much more religious mysticism.

This is fine, as long as you understand that it's an abstraction that only has validity in the way of expressing a logical relationship or the manner in which actual things change. The tree that an acorn might become doesn't exist yet, but you aren't trying to propose or imagine a "nonexistent tree". But the sort of nonexistence that God is, in the way that Aquinas and other Christian thinkers before him thought about God, really does reify 'nothing'. That realm is basically pure consciousness. I don't think it helps much anyway, "primacy of consciousness" is not simply a synonym for "idealism". In some ways idealism does fit primacy of consciousness, in some ways it does not. But I find the clearest way to consider primacy of consciousness is not the way idealism goes wrong, nor scientists suggesting that consciousness produces existence ex nihilio, but negative theology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology As for the stuff about scientific consensus and scientistism, I don't have anything different to add.

A contradiction is a type of statement, which exists, but a contradictory entity itself does not exist, and is not even conceivable. "A tree that is not a tree" does not even exist in your imagination, partly because by referencing anything at all, you are referring to existence. That's why the most intense believers in primacy of consciousness not only believe that there is a God with aspects beyond human comprehension, but that God himself has no form of existence except as pure action. Quite literally, they think that nonexistence is real.