Eiuol

There is a simple solution: the government buys the paper and pens from some private company. Same with guns. The way I see it, *all* government funding should only be through donations. There is no need for that nonsense about a National Orchestra or National Radio Station, in addition to all the functions you mentioned that are far beyond any proper role of government.

I do not think she is saying that a percept is in an entity, but rather, it is just the form in which you perceive an entity. Because of a conceptual process. Sensory data is automatically changed into a perceptual form, then through a process of reason, organized according to learned experiences. That process of organization is conceptual. As far as I know, gestalt theory does not define percepts in the same way that Rand does. Your brain doesn't automatically make sense of that garbled mess of characters, but by this point in your life, making sense of the them is an automatized subconscious process based on the percepts you've observed. Given the shape of the text, it is easier on a conceptual level to organize your percepts by grouping everything together horizontally. It does not occur automatically in the sense that it cannot be helped.

If there was better response time with this private security agency, why would you even need the cops then? That is, assuming all else is equal in the sense that they both operate through objective rules?

Welcome~ Are you more interested in the business side of things, or the clothing? Or are both equal in interest?

Morally speaking, yes it's wrong, but only because that would be, to some degree, sanctioning the ideas of religion. It's a poor choice of words on my part to flat out say "there is nothing wrong with building a mosque."

How does that even matter here? There is nothing wrong with building of a mosque. And sure, you should respect the property rights of people who build mosques in Iran, at least until there is an actual war going on there (note I am not suggesting the Iranian government hasn't ever done anything wrong). The context is entirely different here, as there is no "War on Muslims," nor should there be. Yes, you should oppose any Muslim ideologically, just as you should oppose any Christian ideologically, but I know of no reason to say that *this* mosque should not be built.

I understand this part, but could color possibly cause a physiological response before the emotional response? The evaluation of that response would then cause the emotion, which then makes a pretty much universal emotional response to certain colors (like how pain is almost universally viewed as a bad thing, except for people who for some reason get a feeling of pleasure out of pain). I'm not discussing specific associations, like "black and death," but more general things, like "cool color schemes evoke sadness". Can any aesthetic evaluation be made about the use of color besides how it may make certain objects stand out and other purely compositional aspects? Of course it wouldn't prove whether or not there are any universal judgments to make about color, but I would be interested to know of any culture where cool color schemes were associated with generally positive emotions.

It may be a little vague what I meant in these two sentences, so to clarify, I do not also mean "wrong" as in irrational/immoral.

It seems that nowadays anyone that is too far off the scale of "normal" is considered "disordered." Of course, one way to tell if someone has a problem is how they may function differently than others. The issue comes down to specifying what IS normal. Autism spectrum disorders come to mind here. As far as I know - and someone please correct me if I'm wrong - there isn't definitive answer to what is psychologically normal, or at least it's not something with a commonly accepted definition. From my understanding, there is indeed something "wrong" with a trans-sexual, in the sense they want to change some physical aspect of themselves. Similar to how there is something "wrong" with a person who is uncomfortable with their face and decides to get plastic surgery. There really isn't necessarily any mental problem involved, though. Would you call a person opting for facial plastic surgery disordered because they have altered a vital part of themselves by resorting to facial "mutilation"? I wouldn't. However, I also suspect that there is *something* physically wrong with a trans-sexual. There is probably some sort of biological cause to defining yourself as a particular sex, which would mean a trans-sexual simply has a problem with this biological mechanism. (You can't know if you can have a baby unless you also realize you are female, so there is a biological need to know what sex you are. But whether or not even that is learned as well is another question. If it is something learned, then trans-sexuality is most definitely not a disorder.) I have not 100% decided, but I'm leaning towards trans-sexualism not being a disorder, merely being different. Vik, since it pertains to this discussion about whether or not trans-sexualism is a disorder, what do you mean by a brain with very masculine traits?

What validity is there in saying certain colors always evoke particular emotions? I’m sure many will associate cool colors with sadness or emptiness and warm colors with energy and liveliness. It has also been documented, for instance, that being surrounded by red will cause a raise in blood pressure. However, can such effects be taken into account when evaluating the aesthetic quality of a piece of work, or when evaluating how effectively an artist (or designer) conveys an intended thought or emotion? Since any emotion is an automatic evaluation of something or some circumstance based upon previous conscious evaluation, it would seem that that even associating cool colors with sadness cannot be used to say something like “since that artist is using a lot of dark blue, it is clear he is trying to convey sadness”. It would be up to the individual observer to judge the source of the evoked emotion, but like music, there is no probably (existing) objective way of judging use of certain colors. Whichever color may make me happy may make another person sad. Physiological effects could be explained by the simple fact that any emotion has some corresponding physiological effect. Perhaps, though, certain colors *always* cause certain uncontrolled physiological responses, similar to pain and pleasure, which would explain why it seems that certain colors are nearly universally associated with certain emotions. As a side question that may be interesting to answer: Can a person’s favorite color reflect their sense of life, making it more than just a preference? This can help reveal to what degree color can be objectively evaluated.

I understand what you mean, but what sorts of capacities are actually lost? Would pruning of neurons necessarily mean the loss of capacity rather than an increase in efficiency? I would be curious as to any sorts of studies there are regarding how long it takes an adult or teenager to become fluent in a language in comparison to a child. I would suspect many people have not developed great methods of learning language. The experience most people seem to have with languages is in high school, where it is required and there are plenty of bad teachers, so it would seem that kids are simply better at learning language before they've even gone to school.

I don't think it's really true that a child's brain is more powerful than an adult's brain. I'd suspect that more *needs* to be processed as a baby in order to function independently, so it would seem that babies are just better at it. An adult's brain is only unlike a baby's brain to the extent I baby has almost nothing automatized. You are older and wiser now, so if anything, if you develop a rational method, you'll be able to become fluent in a language much faster than a kid. An immersion type process is good I think, because it *requires* you to learn what's going on, unless you are alright with simply hearing gibberish all day. Even then, a focused effort at grammar would help things a lot. (Japanese is the language I've put my effort towards studying)

A lot of context seems to be missing. Are we speaking of the exotic dancer type of stripper, or the kind who works at a trashy strip club? Stripping could be treated as performance art, which may or may not be trashy.

How can morality - according to the Objectivist conception of it - provide any understanding of what you should in a social context? All that matters in a social context is that you do not violate rights. Taking anything more than that into consideration would be deciding the right course of action based on how someone else would like you to act. The distinction you are trying to make COULD make sense if you accept that you should balance selfless and self-interested actions, but since the only right actions are self-interested ones, you do not need to take into consideration what custom says you should do.

It seems that you are arguing that ethics refers to what is "right" to do regarding social convention, which is not really important. I haven't heard of anyone who has ever used ethics to mean that unless they already labeled morality to be what is right regarding social convention as well. You'd be better off just making up a new word, since I see no reason to think that ethics is defined wrong.

This is about the legality, though.

It seems to me that you're suggesting that women approach romantic interests in a way that is completely different from men. It's rare for any person at all to be ready to have sex within 90 seconds of meeting someone, at least if we are not discussing people who only are looking for sex and nothing else. I'm sure plenty of guys make a decision within a minute of meeting someone too, though I think that is pretty irrational. There's no real reason for attraction and romance to revolve around animalistic (emotion based) mating rituals of the male making showy or flirty appeals to the female. Maybe your observations are true here, but I'm not sure how it'd be in your self-interest to be with someone who makes such important decisions with minimal or no thought. A "probably no" or "probably yes" are perfectly fine - you can get decent impression of someone based on how they portray themselves - as it implies that it really does matter what sort of ideas a person holds. So in the end, there is no real need to really think of any special way to attract people, because acting in a way other than "yourself" would only attract people who are probably as second-handed as you are acting.

How can one imagine or dream something if their mind is absent of any content? Sensations and percepts are necessary to form concepts and abstractions. Without those, you wouldn't have anything TO imagine in the first place.

I actually think this is probably a legitimate way to alter subconscious thinking, even psycho-epistemology. To an extent, I think I caused this in myself. Since art in the proper sense of the term is a concretization of an abstraction of an artist's metaphysical value judgments - amongst other things - it is possible to consciously focus on more at once, avoiding problem I'd suspect of your automatized thought processes integrating too much without conscious control. The more wide abstractions and you can consciously focus on conceptually, the more success I think anyone would have in overcoming problems of the subconscious. It almost sounds a little bizarre to say art can change a person, as though it is some sort of homeopathic therapy, but since psycho-epistemology involves integration, changing an improper psycho-epistemology would require some way of minimizing its use while still being able to integrate new knowledge.

I'm not sure why principles of romance pertaining to heterosexual love would or should be any different than any other kind of romantic love.

I'm inclined to agree with this, but in what way could you really realize when your subconscious way of thinking, your psycho-epistemology, is proper or not? You could consciously decide to think according to principles of reason, and still operate like an emotionalist because you are on some level automatically integrating improperly. You may consciously do many things right when you are trying to consciously focus on a particular idea, but subconsciously misintegrate on parts of that idea you are not focusing on. If some of your psycho-epistemology is not entirely proper, implications of complex ideas could also create issues when you're trying to consider a wide context and you can only focus on so much at a time. I'm sure with enough practice you'd notice when false or misintegrated conclusions are made, but I'm not sure how exactly you could check if your psycho-epistemology is any good.

I'm trying to acquire a better understanding of what psycho-epistemology is. From what I understand, one's psycho-epistemology is one's subconscious cognitive habits. It is similar to the concept of sense of life, except this relates to methods of cognition. It is clear from experience that everyone has their own way of thinking, in the sense they many approach questions and answers in a certain way. The issue I'm having is thinking about cognitive habits. Is there anything more to it than the extent in which someone has automatized the use of reason? More specifically, are the "kinds" of psycho-epistemology parallel to one's explicit method of cognition, like emotionalism, for example? Also, if one has automatized a method of cognition, could it really ever be undone? Once you've automatized such an important process as cognition, it would seem to me that you are forever stuck with that method of cognition. How could one acquire knowledge of an alternative means of cognition - and eventually change their psycho-epistemology - if they subconsciously acquire knowledge in an improper way in the first place?

But will those reasons of hers even be rational? Maybe you should explain more what a feeling of jealousy is. Jealousy is a pretty negative emotion and a fear of losing a value (or potential high value), and may make some act in desperation. What sort of context would that be rational in? Not only that, the goal here seems to be flat out manipulation. And why do you think that is? Probably because you'd obviously be acting manipulative in the worst of ways: toying with someone's emotions. Definitely not something in your self-interest. Are you really suggesting you should make another person be jealous, but you yourself should not be jealous? Isn't that hypocritical? It is a very bad idea to advocate because you would be suggesting it is fine for the person you are pursuing to be doing something you yourself think is bad in the same context.

There is so much context missing it is hard to really debate it. In any normal circumstance, say, if you were living in the US today, the only way you'd be in a situation where the only options truly are death or stealing is if you've lived life as a parasite consistently, such that no rational employer would want to hire them and give them a paycheck. If you redeemed yourself, then there is potential to make a non-monetary trade even if you had no money. There are always options - unless you decide to live as an intellectual dependent upon others. That is why reason is a primary, not an ethical rule like "do not initiate force." The right thing to do is what is in your selfish interest, which implies not initiating force in this example. Another possible context is a dictatorship. Since we're talking about a hypothetical, consider the book "We The Living." I recall a scene where Kira stole a loaf of bread. This context is different because Soviet Russia was a sort of emergency situation where any normal conditions - conditions where using your own mind to achieve your own chosen course of action and thus life is possible - did not exist. The standard upon which morality in Objectivist thought is based off is one's own life, and when the means of living life is made literally impossible, there is no basis on which to discuss right or wrong. Initiation of force denies a person the ability to use reason, their means of survival, which is the whole point of the quote "morality ends at the barrel of a gun" (I think I butchered the quote, but I imagine you know which one I'm referring to). Thus is the evil of statism in general. You must always keep in mind the context, and I would say the utter annihilation of individual rights is the only context in which stealing is permissible (again, that is not to suggest that we can even apply morality in such a situation).

This does imply "absolute" rationality, though. Rationality involves recognition of one's full context of existence, including what is required of living. Completely eliminating yummy foods would be irrational if they are part of your flourishing as an individual. But of course, one must recognize that consumption of such foods could lead to death in the long-term context. "Absolute" rationality is required to determine if "giving up" all (or some of) your favorite yummy foods will add to or detract from your flourishing. It would not be rational to consider life to be just maximizing heartbeats; it is redundant to label an action as "rationally moral." An action is either rational or it is not. Any rational choice is morally good. No qualifier is required. If you are designed to live, that is just determinism, because it would be to say you have no choice in the matter. It is true that virtually no one chooses death the first time such a choice is made, so it may be better to suggest that feelings of pleasure are what lead to the choice to live when you are first born. Still, there is nothing "built-in" about that. A choice still must be made, even if the choice is seemingly easy to make. Jeez, where did you hear that? Anyway, you seem to be suggesting that one has reason and emotions, and that reason can supersede emotion. To be compelled to find pleasure is an emotion, to be compelled to achieve "genetic dominance" (whatever that is supposed to be) is an emotion, so you can't suggest either of these are biological mechanisms like reflexes. Use (or improper use in this case) of reason is what determines what emotions you have. It is not a matter of subordination, but of causality.