Eiuol

Indeed, so why don't you provide a justification then? I may be a broken record here, but I really am curious.

Yes, but why must LEM contain meaninglessness? Why is having distinct infinities a problem any more than complex numbers, as Grames suggests? You keep saying there is an issue with this, but not why it is an issue for LEM. What is the meaninglessness you are referring to?

Presumably if LEM implies the existence of different cardinal infinities is problematic; you were saying rejection of LEM is proper because LEM leads to that conclusion. I get that much of your position. But... why is having different cardinality infinities a problem anyway? Maybe a formal definition of LEM would help here.

LEM isn't a tenet to Objectivism so much as it is crucial to logic. All LEM really says is that there is no third option for certain concepts. For Objectivism and its epistemology, the only implication really is that there is no third option for existing or not existing. What would the third option plausibly be? Beyond that, it's possible to use LEM wrong, and false dichotomies are examples of LEM being used wrong. Secondly, how does Cantor's theorem have any implication on the way I described LEM? I really don't know, so I'm asking you to spell it out.

Concrete as in perceivable entity as opposed to abstractions of those perceivable entities. Galaxies, cats, rocks, atoms, bananas, books, mountains - these are all examples of what I mean by concrete. We can discuss ways to classify these entities in terms of needing tools in order to perceive them, but the point I'm making is that these don't require abstraction to be able to observe. Existence by its very nature can't be grasped in this way, because it is an abstraction of everything. All measurements except mere existence is omitted, establishing the concept "existence". So what I'm saying about philosophy is that it deals with reaching wider abstractions and detailing the general "framework" of those abstractions. Science, on the other hand, is about getting into the specifics of reality, not trying to abstract per se - even if science involves a lot of abstraction. For example, science answers how consciousness works (the cognitive science fields), while philosophy abstracts in order to present a framework of just what consciousness is (philosophy of mind). Of course, both science and philosophy involve induction, but they are not identical. That could be a taxonomic question: if I see a new set of characteristics in a generation of lab-grown bacteria, then I'll figure out if it needs a specific classification. But what does evolution suggest about the idea of change? Are there just definite lines between everything that exists? This new species could actually be classified as that previous species in an important aspect, but what is an important aspect anyway? How can I take into account the newly evolved animal without obliterating how I understand the world? Answering that I'd say is philosophy, just used in a biology context! So, it is not strictly taxonomy. Actually, it even says a lot about how to approach Objectivist epistemology (borderline cases, essential characteristics, concepts aren't intrinsic or subjective, concepts as tools of understanding). These questions are quite different than asking what the specific causes of change are. I know this wasn't addressed at me, but this is important to expand on. Some ambiguity is fine, considering the conceptual limitations of all people. One-to-one concept-word correspondence is a lot of information to keep track of and remember. For the sake of conceptual economy, there needs to be some ambiguity, but fortunately, the human mind is really good at disambiguating word meanings. Not that accuracy is intrinsic, but a conceptual mind is good at this. If I say "I'm going to the bank to cash a check", do you think I'm going to a river bank, or a bank *building* filled with money? If I talk about a right to bear arms, do you think I'm talking about a right to the arms of a grizzly bear? These are all great examples of ambiguity, but they are not problematic most of the time. Those examples suggest your principle is unnecessary and probably makes language more difficult if you get rid of all words with more than one definition in favor of one concept and only one concept. What works better is no more than one word per concept. The concept of a large mammal that hibernates in winter (amongst other characteristics) is given the word "bear". But what about other languages? The concept of a bear is given the word "oso" in Spanish. Even my own principle is problematic. Rather than limiting how words can be used, maintaining an effective conceptual economy is important. Like unit economy for a basis to form concepts, I'm suggesting a conceptual economy as a basis for multiple concepts per word and even multiple words per concept in some cases. Regardless of what happens with words, though, concepts don't change. That's why "oso" makes just as much sense to me as "bear". I'm saying that the so-called communist postmodernists are just plain ol' postmodernists. They are categorically different from communists, even if some of the consequences are the same. Communists can be combated at least with evidence, and at least a communist would say you are wrong. A postmodernist would just say my truth is different than their truth. Nothing can be said to that. I point this out because it's important to understand one's enemy. (As an aside, I think the only way to combat postmodernism is to mock it with humor and the absurdities that it implies).

Would it be just as valid for you to say "As a woman, you need the experience of being able to stop back and say, 'I did that'" ?

Which concept(s) is Rand confusing with the concept value? All you said is that there is more than one sense to use the word value.

I'll try to be brief. Even tea has some psychological consequences, as does every action. Mind and body are inseparable. Consequences may be positive. I'm saying sex has greater consequences even in the positive sense because of the degree it is pleasurable, partly due to dopamine release and all that which *doesn't* happen with drinking tea. Greater consequences doesn't always mean bad consequences. I simply don't buy evolutionary psychology regarding sexual preferences though, so leave that out. It's a nonissue anyway, because we are specifically talking about how to evaluate sex and its consequences on life, not why some people are irrational.

This is begging the question. You are implying a fetus is a person, which is the whole part of abortion that is debated. Also, the practical effects aren't even the same - preventing something from coming into being isn't the same as ending the being of something.

No, evolutionary psychology hasn't shown that conclusively as far as I know, those are just taking presumptions of modern Western standards of beauty and making up some story where the standard promotes reproductive fitness. Furthermore, that is for sexual attraction and not necessarily attraction in a romantic sense, at least if you distinguish between the two. I wouldn't construe anything Rand said that would suggest that character qualities are all that's needed to establish attraction. At most they are necessary, but not sufficient. If a person lacks any good character qualities, they are not a person to start a relationship with. But then there are also character qualities that people value at different levels, values unique to individuals, or any assortment of other factors. The journal entry you mentioned seems like Rand was rationalizing her jealousy, but we're talking about jealousy and attraction basically, not to what degree Rand is being consistent with her own stated views. No two people will or even can have identical values, so it's not bad if there is difference. People vary in the value they "see" in one another. This is a lot to assume about a person. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, we can't ask her, so we won't know. I don't think Rand defined promiscuity really, so I think all she's saying is that sex should not be treated as simply as what to watch on TV at night. Tea and conversation doesn't really have any of the psychological consequences that sex does, and are two very different kinds of action. Pleasure is fine, but that isn't all one should use to judge if an action is beneficial to your life. Apparently heroin has a hell of a lot of pleasure to it, but other consequences must be taken into account since it causes addiction and medical problems. Tea and conversation doesn't have really much to consider as bad, unless you're doing it because your family told you to and you don't even want to go (which would be second-handed). These type of questions are why pleasure shouldn't be the guide to action, because possible impact on your life is just as important. Hedonistic utility is not the measure, even if pleasure is important to living a happy life. Sex clearly doesn't have the consequences as heroin, but it is not as straightforward as tea. More or less, all Rand implied is that if you have sex with someone, they ought to be really important to you, but I'm afraid that Rand didn't talk about *why* extensively except for one section of AS. I don't think this response has anything to do with jealousy actually. So, if you would like to talk about what makes for attraction and/or a discussion about casual sex, please make a new thread. You probably could do a search on either term and use an old thread.

I agree with what you say about jealousy. I do think Rand acted jealously given what I know, which is improper of her. I'm not sure what to add that's new, except perhaps that jealousy is an indicator of a lack of trust in another person. If you are concerned that someone is going to abandon you due to mistakes or failing to see the value in you, something is wrong with the relationship that needs to be fixed. Jealousy is primarily about a possible loss of a value, so this applies to even friendships. Someone acting in their own interests and spending time with people in addition to you is not a threat to you. Their good is your good, and does not indicate that you are worth any less. More or less, I do not think there is any rational basis to jealousy, unlike some emotions like fear or anger. Those emotions may have a rational basis sometimes. Not that it should be suppressed; jealousy is something to deal with and hopefully fix. Hmm the only sentence I see is this one, which I didn't know about: "that a right is the property of an individual". That doesn't make sense to me, and I don't know where else she implied that terminology. I'll discuss it in another thread if you want.

Actually, I just think it needs to be pointed out, evolutionary psychology is flawed in many ways, most of all because we don't have any observations of primitive humans. That would be impossible without a time machine. At least in this context, people have such considerable control over behavior due to cognition that speaking of desires in the same way as say, chimpanzees, is not applicable to the same degree.

Well it makes no difference in that context, "woman" in place of "morally good female". I'll just place "woman" in place of that *each time* I say morally good female. You said Ayn Rand is a woman thinks like a man more or less, and said it's rare. You explain how a man thinks rationally and objectively, therefore Ayn Rand thinks like a man. Basically, I'll phrase it this way: How does a woman think? You said rationally and objectively. Okay... is there any difference from how men think, then? If so, what is the difference? If there is no difference, then "Ayn Rand thinks like a man" is a meaningless phrase. I know you didn't say what you bolded, but it is implicit in what you are saying, whether or not you realize it.

That doesn't make any more sense than saying than asking if the Internet can operate without objective rules to its operation. The Internet has protocols and all that without a central, monopolized agency. In some sense there is a market, but little deviation exists precisely because no one would get along. That would especially be applicable to violence - people don't *want* to be killed, unless we want to presume a Hobbesian world. Rules can and do exist without a central agency, so certainly police agencies/courts/laws are reasonable. If anything, this is how the world works right now. Multiple governments means multiple standards of law and of course a variety of people wielding force, and some governments wielding force wrongly. I see no difference from just saying "anarcho capitalist private agency" and "government". At least today, in 2013. My point is not that I think anarcho-capitalism is right, but that your arguments are bad. If you want to really demonstrate how government should be distinguished from private agencies, go through an example of it in practice. An thought experiment I like is consider how a "slave contract" would be dealt with. Suppose I decided to sell myself to you for you to control my life, doing this with a contract. People may think I'm crazy to do that, but hey, it's my choice I'll claim. Would this contract by respected in any sense, and if not, what would be done about it?

I saw this mentioned in a class I'm taking, and since I'm basically involved with libraries, data storage like this is pretty cool to me. The first thing I thought of was something from the scifi book Count Zero (William Gibson!) called biochips. The biochips are used for extremely advanced computing, but the DNA storage here is like a primitive version of those. Even if primitive, clearly it's the beginning of biologically-compatible data. If I really want to get wild, DNA storage can supplement human memory or perhaps extract information right out of someone's brain! Or if someone invented a "DNA drive" for a computer, then that may totally alter computer architecture as we know it. Really, a scifi imagination can go many places with this. Of course, this has to be put in perspective. I read the actual paper, and not even that mentioned how long decoding took. If Bluecherry hadn't mentioned that link, I would not have found that it took "more than two weeks". Thinking back to 1960 that's probably not too bad, but 739 kilobytes in 2+ weeks is very slow compared to what any of us are used to. A 50kb document of mine would probably take a day and a half to load, while my computer loads it within seconds. The article said two weeks to read the data, and it probably took longer for the whole process. They had to mail the test tube of data to Germany, and then of course time to prep the equipment. I'm a bit confused by the wording, so I'll have to see what the total time was. What the scientists did sounds like it was mainly a trial shot that worked out pretty nicely. Quadruple layers of error-checking is definitely taking the safe route. Although, one of the pieces of data couldn't be decoded, so the scientists had to figure out what was missing and reinsert the data themselves to complete an accurate decoding. But hey, at least we know DNA storage can work. That's what counts right now.

Opinion without objective analysis of facts. So, definitely not worth much attention. Even if you agree that this law is wrong, supporting people who aren't citing actual evidence *should* be ignored.

Can you narrow your question down? Do you want to talk about casual sex, or the emotion of jealousy? I agree though that jealousy is very bad for various reasons, but I wouldn't call it rational or irrational. Of course, resulting behavior may be irrational. Jealousy may suggest insecurity with one's values. By the way, Rand never really argued for self-ownership, and I think that concept is not a valid one.

You are equivocating on two meanings of the word "right". In one sense there are rights related to a specific institution, such as stockholders of a corporation have a right to vote on a board of directors because the company made the rules that way. A right to vote in this context implies a similar meaning. At the very least, we probably can agree that some people are granted a right to vote in relation to their connection with a government. Some people have claimed property is a valid criterion for granting a person a right to vote, similar to how stock owners are given a right to vote on a board of directors. Careful of cognitive bias: just because Kate disagrees with you doesn't mean it *has* to be egalitarian liberalism. I think MeganSnow made a similar point anyway, except Kate gave a more particular reason. If a person does rely on charity and unfortunately no property as land, should they have no say in the government? Why should property be the voting constraint?

The words "affair" or "infidelity" don't apply though, I see no reason they should apply. Those imply lack of consent, but there was consent. As you said though, that doesn't mean everything was hunky dory.

To be specific, the axiom of existence is an abstract concept, and even existence is abstract to the degree it is impossible to perceive all of existence at once. One would have to be outside of existence or be everywhere in existence to be able to see it as a concrete. So, that's where philosophy comes in. Abstraction is what philosophy deals with, taking basic concepts wider and wider. Even with ethics, or philosophy of science, the effort is towards abstracting to apply certain ideas to as many contexts as possible. Metaphysics is as wide as it goes. I acknowledge that philosophy has concrete referents, but that's different than what philosophy sets out to do. Even in this discussion, we are extremely abstract, because our effort is to define some words on a very fundamental level. Another way to consider my thought is that philosophy is the "what" of existence. Science I am only suggesting is a type of concretization of abstract principles, particular with questions about how the world works. Art and Mathematics are both distinct fields of thought as well. Still, when focusing on how things work, that does not involve abstracting in the same way as philosophy. If I want to study biology, I need to dive deeper and specify what cells do, which genes they have, mechanisms that allow for reproduction. Naming the processes and identifying them would be abstraction, although it heavily involves detailing the "how". In other words, I'd be looking for specifics on the mechanisms of biology. Philosophy of biology would consider "what" questions, like what does evolution imply for how the world is classified if entities are changing all the time? I think my distinction is clearer now. What I meant by "related to" is that when thinking about economics, the concern is largely with human behavior in trade. Human behavior of any sort isn't far from ethics, but isn't strictly looking to find what one's pursuit in life should be. Economics is quite informative to how to make the most economical decisions which maximize an individual's behaviors. Economic principles are normative to the degree that there are judgments of "best" involved, but doesn't study the same aspects as ethics, although there is plenty of crossover with rationality. All knowledge is at least connected indirectly, so my argument here isn't an attempt to disprove any connection. If anything, I imagine you'll use the previous point to expand on your "philosophy is science" idea, so I look forward to seeing what you say. I agree that Postmodernism is destructive, I just think Postmodern-Communist is an impossibility on ideological grounds. Postmodernism certainly is the logical conclusion of all the Hegelians, and is more dangerous than communism ever was. Not only is there a destructive element to it of denying any truth whatsoever, there are no leaders to it. I question actually that it has taken hold. That aforementioned postmodern professor I had, most students thought he wasn't really anything to take seriously. You're welcome for the link!

Actually, I would say it's a dangerous mentality for a person to feel offended at seeing ideas they have no interest in accepting. No one can presume to learn anything if they decide at the outset that they won't accept or at least look into ideas different than their own. A rational person can entertain an idea without accepting the idea. If the idea ends up to be true, it should be accepted. On the other hand, even if I've thought a lot about an idea and rejected it, I am usually glad to teach what I know, and in the process I can perhaps learn about things I had not considered before. I think civility and intellectual honesty is an important part of discussion, and you come across as a very civil and honest person.

I can't continue the discussion, since you abandoned reason for faith. "It just does" doesn't cut it on a philosophy forum.

I dunno, I asked you the same thing. Indeed, how does that happen?

How though? How does your mind possibly interact with your body if they are separate? The mind is wholly immaterial according to you, so how can an immaterial thing cause material consequences?

How is it that anxiety causes physical symptoms?