Eiuol

An anti-concept is specifically one that by its very nature obliterates another concept. That's not what the idea of God is meant to accomplish. All anti-concepts are invalid, but not all invalid concepts are anti-concepts. God is basically a proper noun, because the Christian idea of God is that God is a being. But like with any being that is supernatural, it's about what reason you have to say that it exists. The issue is that God is arbitrary, not that it's a broken concept or something like that.

This "article" is an amalgamation of posts from different conversations put into one undifferentiated mass. There is no coherent point, it is just rambling.

Certainly actions, relationships, and entities all exist. But this says nothing of the manner of their existence, in the same way that saying a tree lives and a dog lives doesn't say anything about the manner of their living. The way I understand it, "being at work" specifies the way that concretes exist, and the fact that actions, relationships, etc. are only exist because of concretes behaving and acting. I don't recall Aristotle using "being at work" in any context except referring to concretes or particulars. Especially important is how this applies to living things, where the activity of these things is what makes them alive. They aren't just active, but living out their full nature, fully enacting what makes them what they are. At least, even if you disagree that I interpreted "being at work" correctly, applying it to the domain of biology is valuable and quite illuminating.

I read the book that the thread is about, so this won't just be a tangent about Aristotle. Rather, I'm suggesting a biological basis of teleology from an Objectivist perspective is completely rooted in Aristotle, except some additions thanks to the theory of evolution. Especially the notion of "being at work". Existing is completely active, that is, what anything is in the most complete way is active. To be sure, existence includes relations which are not themselves active, but all entities act by virtue of existing. An entity that exists is always acting, and if it is not, well, it doesn't even exist. More than that, the relation that is not active is dependent on something already active; the primary thing is the entity, in the same way that under Objectivism causality is between entities. There is no divergence here between Aristotle and Rand. The phrase "being at work" adds precision because it adds clarity about entities, eliminating the ambiguity between abstractions that exist, and entities that exist. So, I don't think Aristotle is wrong here. The way the entities are at work all the time is how biology can be rooted in teleology. Living things are active in a specific way, moving in a direction, not simply as a reaction pushed forward by a stimulus. You seem to agree on that point based on what I read here, my thought is that "being at work" is a crucial idea. We just can't render the same phrase in English as a concept, which makes it tricky to work with.

Do you mean a false interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, or that this rendering of his metaphysics is a false account of reality?

If a gang is targeting you, treat it as such. Trying to figure out why or any reason for it would drive you mad. Such a thing can become paranoia, where the actual problem is ignored and you invent a reason that makes some sense in your head (i.e., the government is after you specifically even though you are rather unremarkable for them to even care) as opposed to a reason that seems to make no sense at all (i.e., that a gang finds it fun and victimized you arbitrarily).

Don't fool yourself though, all of a sudden posting about a mass attempt to ruin your life in every regard as if that many people would actually care about you enough to do all this sounds delusional. On the face of it, the most sensible thing for us who don't even know about you is also to say that you aren't as psychologically healthy as you think you are. Which is it, no reason, or because you are against altruism? Note that you didn't say you don't use these things. For all I know, like many people with a drug or alcohol problem, this is a rationalization.

I don't know really anything about you besides this forum, and I am always skeptical online about claims that anyone makes. I don't know what parts are carefully verified, or hypotheses about what's happening to you. Or if all these things are happening, if they are really happening for the reasons you think they are. But assuming it's all exactly as you say, the reality is, the gang has you cornered. It's doubtful that law enforcement would even care, but that's just my low opinion of cops in the US. Fleeing the country might be your only option.

I get the sense he felt uncomfortable after discovering death because he had to be dropped into it himself. Adults hid the truth from him, or didn't teach him important lessons, or anything like that. It wasn't the discovery of death per se that made him feel bad, but why he had to discover it this way. But as a child, he had no idea why he felt bad, just that he did. Something seemed betrayed, but he couldn't figure out what it was. This feeling is similar to the "diffused apprehension". He wasn't scared, because that means being scared of something, but he felt that something was wrong. Rand uses that theme of "something is wrong but I don't know what it is yet" quite a bit. The way I see it, she is thinking of the importance of clear thought and identification. This is not simply a question of logic; it effects your emotional experience of the world around you.

It's a weird example because it sounds like they were stuck anyway, and definitely dead.

Savage is not a philosophically precise word. But she is still talking about specific cultures with specific standards and methods of operation. Or lack of standards in this case, in her view. As your quotes show, she characterized different cultures as savage, such that they have no legitimate political claims. As far as concerns about borders, Rand's comments about Native Americans are all we have, most likely against people who said that Europeans "stole" land from the natives. But this doesn't at all get into people who are leaving the so-called savage culture into the more advanced culture politically speaking. Whatever she thought, incorrectly, about natives, she may give a completely different evaluation when talking to people seeking out the stronger and more developed country. Being an immigrant herself, almost certainly viewing Russia as savage politically, I don't think she would use the reasoning that "people choosing to leave savage cultures are more likely to be savage themselves". If anything, Rand would say that people choosing to remain within savage cultures are savage themselves. What Rand did is classify cultures as savage, whether she did that rightly or wrongly is another question. What you seem to be doing is classifying people as savage based on nothing but their country of origin. Maybe Rand would say that many people in Africa are savages when it comes to the way they treat politics and technology, but immigrating to the US or Western Europe for example usually indicates recognizing that there is something better and worthwhile. I think she would recognize this fact too.

She did seem to think that, in her view, irrational savages are people who are at such a primitive level that trade and rational interaction is impossible. There are problems with that view, but she was talking in the context of the first Europeans visiting North America, not the reverse where "primitive" people would visit the advanced civilization. And besides, the immigrants you are talking about, no one is thinking of them as primitive savages like tribes in the middle of the Amazon. Rational or not, immigrants south of the border in the US aren't even the kind of people Rand was talking about.

I remember the good old days in chat!

If the very nature of your method causes errors, then yes, you lose the ability to attain any kind of certainty. But Objectivism doesn't portray rationality as a matter of finding an absolute truth and anything short of that is an error. Certainty is instead about knowing you use a method that brings you closer to hitting the mark every time. Using an objective methodology doesn't cause errors, or at least, it's a method that doesn't take you further away from the truth or what is the case. If objectivity by nature caused errors, there would have to be something pervasive about human reasoning that completely prevents you from even getting closer to the truth. Say you wanted to make a cheese omelette. There is a basic method to it, with variations in technique and skill that lead to different qualities of omelettes, but there is nothing about the basic omelette making technique that by its very nature prevents you from making a successful omelette. You could apply the methods incorrectly, but that's not because the methods necessarily cause you to do it wrong. There are different wrong ways to do it though, that by nature will always make a failed omelette. You can't crack the eggs into boiling water to make an omelette, you're always going to end up with poached eggs. No matter how much you try, if you cook eggs that way, you will never make an omelette. You might make something that resembles one, but it will always be an "erroneous" omelette.

That's not the singular reason I gave. It was part of the reason. There were already other issues about Tucker, legal issues, and all that works pretty well for explaining things. By the way, the Murdochs own more of the company than anyone else. You can't lump everything else together as if they are a single entity with specific values. And big pharma doesn't own anything. Yeah, very vague statement here, nothing to agree or disagree with. People pressure other people to do different things. That's how markets work. I'm saying it's a terrible explanation, the timing is wrong.