Eiuol

He doesn't have to pay, and if he doesn't, nothing happens to him. Rand was pretty explicit I think in saying that taxation is force and thus immoral. 100% voluntary funding. 0% forced funding.

This is not a good response really, since vigilantism and retaliation is not the only means of justice. That is only true if there is no private court system and no private police system (a government by definition has to have those systems, but anarchy may or may not have them). That would be unlikely, since people would want to pay for such systems. They wouldn't have a monopoly on force though, making them not governments. If you are arrested by a police system that you weren't a part of, it would either be a violation of rights or a kind of declaration of war. It probably wouldn't be war though, since the problem would probably be dealt with rationally, since no rational person would *want* war (just as you would hope that a proper government wouldn't one day simply expand its power like the US government has since its founding). A similar situation can still happen with a government, such as a case of kidnapping by a foreign government. Really the discussion should rest on the exact meaning of monopoly on force and what it means to enforce that. The line between a government that doesn't violate rights and a rights protection agency (it would simply make sense to bundle a police and court system together) that doesn't violate rights is pretty blurry to me, and I know I don't know where exactly draw the line because I do not know exactly what a monopoly on force really means.

Why would you *want* to act differently? On top of that, the question is pointless because it is not possible to time travel. If what you perceive IS reality, isn't that a representation of reality? And obviously that has nothing to do with how much about reality you know. Things don't exist *as* blurry, just as much as things don't exist *as* sharp. Those are concepts, which can be wrong/inaccurate/meaningless. But you do know the thing you are seeing exists. Because all you see IS reality as it is. Does objective reality mean to you reality with all its tangible objects and every single property of those objects, such as size and weight? Sure It's still an automatic process, though. You don't seem to have anything to say about my seismograph analogy.

From a dictionary: "the condition of believing what is not true: in error about the date. " I also mean this when I use the word "wrong" in my posts. You typed this before you read my whole post, obviously. I did not assume "perfect construction", either. No, I didn't. A property cannot be subjective. Redness is just a concept, really. What you call a "subjective property" seems to be more accurately described as a "concept about an object". Read the paragraph as a whole. Can a seismograph do anything OTHER THAN what it is told to do? "Wrongness" simply does not apply. If you used a different scale of measurement according to your mis-calibration, you would then say the seismograph is "right". To say a tool is wrong or right simply makes no sense, or at the very least, a poor way to describe what is happening. The only thing that is wrong is the person who calibrated the seismograph, because he made a mistake. What they see IS there and it is valid. The wavelength isn't altered. The wave enters your eye. Neurons react to the light. The neurons fire a signal to the brain. You see something. Up to this point, nothing was wrong in the *same way* a seismograph cannot be wrong. Next, you interpret what it is that is being seen. This is where being wrong is applicable. Have you read Intro. to Objectivist Epistemology? I think it would be best if you read that first before debating (Why is this in the Questions about Objectivism forum?). That way I can at least see if you simply disagree or if you just misunderstood what Rand wrote. I haven't read ITOE yet, so I don't really have much else to add. I'll take my own advice and read ITOE before I try to go any more in-depth in a discussion here in this thread.

They can't be in error because error simply cannot apply to a thing that is causally determined. It would be like saying a reflex is in error. A reflex can't be "wrong". Blurry eyesight doesn't mean what you're seeing is "wrong". A seismograph cannot be wrong, but it is possible that it is providing data other than the kind you want it to. Maybe you calibrated it in a way that provides meaningless information. So if the reading comes out as 1 but a properly calibrated seismograph is reading as 7, you would only say the 1 reading is "wrong" because it isn't operating as you want it to. But the seismograph isn't wrong, it is doing *exactly* what you told it to do. You specifically probably say being colorblind is an example of your sight operating wrongly. "Oh one person sees gray, another sees red, that means it's subjective!" But you're not seeing anything "in contrast to [some]thing as [it] exists". Red is not an intrinsic property, neither is gray. A colorblind person receives the same wavelengths as everyone else. And anything after that cannot be wrong for the same reasons a seismograph cannot be wrong. The only time any "wrongness" can occur is when you interpret what you're seeing. Also to address another question: "Why a rational person cannot hold a value to be of greater importance than their own life/ a certain type of life." You can. I'm using that wording *very* loosely here. You cannot talk about values apart from a person, apart from a context. What thing are we talking about? Whose values are we talking about? You can hold any value higher than your survival. For the value to be rational, it would have to contribute to your own flourishing in some way, though.

"Our physical systems are imperfect. Our senses, our physical actions, all of them." You said "If a picture is blurry, it is blurry. Seeing it as blurry is not inaccurate." The thing is there. It isn't anything other than reality as it is. It isn't an approximation of reality. Like I said before, you simply may not be able to make many conclusions from what you are seeing. When you say subjective, do you mean just "open to interpretation"? I also asked "How [do] senses being "physical" lead you to conclude they are subjective?" That is more important than anything else I asked, I think.

If a perception is a valid representation of reality, what else can that be but an "objective perception"? What do you mean by objective? How can something that is subjective *be* a valid representation of reality? At best, it means perceptions may or may not be valid representations of reality. In which case you can't say perceptions *are* valid representations of reality. I think you're confusing interpretation with perception.

Rand defined "romanticism" in a different way than most people, as she did a lot of words. I don't know why she didn't just create a new term, though.

It wasn't an analogy, I just meant that when you look at anything, your eyes (which function entirely automatically and the actual process of light entering your eye cannot be controlled by you) see reality as it is. Now you might not be able to find much meaningful information from blurry eyesight, but that doesn't mean it is an approximation of reality. How you interpret what you see may be an approximation, though. I may *think* I'm seeing a cat, but it's actually a dog. You seem to agree, but you use different words. You said "seeing it blurry is not inaccurate". That's all I was trying to get across. When would seeing something be inaccurate?

It is clear that this is not your intention. "I don't believe in absolute or objective knowledge being held by machines or living organisms." Where did anyone say machines have knowledge? Accuracte is not the same as Valid. If a picture is blurry, is what you're seeing invalid? If not, why not? It is not accurate, that's for sure.

Huh? How does senses being "physical" lead you to conclude they are subjective? The only way it *could* be argued that the senses are subjective is if there is choice involved in the actual process of your eyes "seeing". You cannot choose not to feel, not to see, not to hear. If you close your eyes, there are just no more light waves passing into your eyeball. If you cover your ears, there are just no more sound waves entering your ear. I think Dante's post is really good. If you have a confusion/disagreement, address a specific point in his post.

Do you mean accurate as in "accurate to the 300th decimal place"? Or accurate as in reliable? If you have blurry vision you could say your vision is "less accurate", but what you see is valid. Can you elaborate on what you mean by ultimate value? Anyway to determine if a particular value is rational or not requires some thought. A value cannot be considered apart from one's life. So you'd need to analyze a particular value in a particular context in order to determine if it is rational. I was probably a little to ambiguous in my last post. "Free will", or more accurately, volition, is self-causation. Obviously, though, you're brain needs to be "turned on" before anything is caused. Any decisions made would be a result of a choice that is not caused by anything on the outside. This does not mean the *ability* to make a choice is also self-caused.

Your senses sense. Your interpretation of those sensations may or may not be accurate. Optical illusions are not a sensory malfunction. They are due to a poor interpretation of what you see. Because proper ethics are based upon one's life. Any other standard of value is irrational. This is pretty clearly stated in "Virtue of Selfishness". A rational person holding someone else as a higher value than themselves is a contradiction. Such a person would not be rational. I guess you're saying that if volition is causality and volition is also self-causation, then it's just circular. I don't really follow what you're saying, but I think I understood. No where is it suggested that volition is caused by or made possible by nothing. That would be mysticism. It is possible because of the structure of the brain.

I think he means that "it sounds like Rand is saying that man needs rights, therefore he has rights." Nothing else. Obviously, that doesn't prove anything. But it does suggest rights are good. That seems to be the primary issue. Ragingpanda, there is no social contract, so rights cannot derive from that. http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=17637 has a similar discussion.

Data collection is obviously a part of science, but that does not mean when someone collects data it is science or even is valid science. The existence of a submarines could not prove the hypothesis that all ravens are black unless you can confirm some causal relationship. To validate a hypothesis requires a causal relationship (that is, if two things are involved). The number of submarines observed will have no bearing on a hypothesis until you can confirm some sort of causal relationship. Nor would there even be a point of researching the two in relation to each other until you know some characteristic of submarines was also present in ravens.

I understand what you mean, but I'm just pointing out why the concept of masculinity/femininity to me is not an important concept. It only can tell you how much of a man/woman a person is in comparison to the rest of society. I don't think masculinity and femininity have any importance whatsoever on the nature of man (humans, to avoid any confusion on what I meant). Of course, that viewpoint stems from what I think masculinity/femininity even is, I've heard/seen nothing to suggest that it is a metaphysical characteristic.

I never felt any type of hero-worship for an athlete or anyone in particular; I hate sports. Does that make me less masculine? I don't think masculinity or femininity is an important concept at all, except to show how society loves to impose and pigeonhole roles onto individuals. If a girl was into sports, she probably would hero-worship to the same extent as a boy. But girls aren't encouraged to enjoy sports like boys are. I think that is more a characteristic of enjoying physical activity rather than any gender thing.

It would be up to some entrepreneur to develop a better method to deal with problems in the world. I don't mean it like "how do we reduce poverty in the world" but "there is a market of people that have a problem that needs addressing". You could start a business that focuses on cleft palates, finding the best in that field to quickly and efficiently fixing as many lips as possible. Maybe it will be taken care of automatically because it is part of the hospital's service. Maybe hospitals will work primarily on subscription plans from its customers. Maybe insurance will move away from the consumer and oriented towards hospitals themselves, the providers of health care. The point, though, is that as it stands now, the only solutions even considered are entirely regulatory-oriented, that congressmen seem to be the ones determining how the medical system works. If you want to fix a problem because it is "good for society", that is altruism, a self-sacrifice. If you want to fix a problem because you enjoy problem solving, profit, helping someone you know or all of the above, that is not a sacrifice by any means. Physical birth defects are bad things, but it happens. It is not possible to worry about *all* "suffering" without some sort of selflessness. Individuals should simply figure out what is most important to them, rather than what is "reducing happiness in the world".

"But is it really a sacrifice to ensure that no child lives with the horror of a cleft palate when our society has advanced to the point that the repair is trivial?" It is if you prefer to give money for some other cause. For me, it is a sacrifice, even if I had money. I'd rather give donations to places that affect me directly. Kids with cleft palates don't matter to me at all. At least, not beyond the level of acknowledging that cleft palates are bad. You seem to be focused on the fact that you'll get the money you need from donations or insurance. Creative solutions do exist, but unfortunately, only really in a free market. The way the US medical system works now is horrible so you can't really use the way things work as a reflection of how they could work.

1 / 3rd is .33333 repeating (1/3) * 3 = 1. (1/3) * 3 = 1 is the same as (1/3) + (1/3) + (1/3) which would logically be expressed as .999 repeating too though The problem to me is talking about fractions. To express a fraction as a decimal isn't exactly a fun thing to do and I'm not sure it can ever be 100% perfect (like Pi). I'm no (so please correct anything I just said if you are) math major but .999 repeating at best is an approximation, so it wouldn't be saying A = !A. 1 is the same as .9999999repeating, just like 1/3 is the same as .333333repeating. .999repeating itself cannot actually exist and be concrete, I believe, but conceptually it exists and it is the same as 1.

A rich person can only benefit from the poor being poor by using force. But it doesn't matter if you say that to a Marxist, since if they are ACTUALLY a Marxist, they're bound to say that becoming rich requires force in the first place. The claim would only be valid if the labor theory of value is valid, which it isn't.

To clarify, I was trying to say that the consequences of rights being merely social conventions would be the same if following one's self-interest. My confusion isn't really with what it means to have rights, but the fact that rights are a characteristic of man. That people are born with any rights.

But what about apart from society? Morality still exists apart from society, so that is more than a social convention. But can rights ever exist apart from society? I suppose that is the question I'm asking. For me to interact with another person it is necessary (and therefore rational) to not murder them, steal their property, etc (as in not violate rights). To me it's hard to understand where rights become a characteristic of man. Laws, for example, are not characteristics of man, but they are necessary for any rational interaction with people. I have trouble seeing where rights are anything besides "a proper legal standard". It is against my self-interest to make taxation legal, since I would also be permitting someone to take property of mine and use it as theirs. It would be wrong to initiate force because it is in that person's self-interest to protect themselves by any means. To prevent constant warfare, it would be important to establish laws that a group of people agree upon. This is what I mean by "social convention". But even without a law, it is still more rational not to kill (but without a mutual agreement, there is chaos). That's not the same thing as saying initiating force is wrong because it is "violating rights", though.

I do not have a complete understanding of rights, and Kevin's post seems to mention the exact problem I'm having. I understand that rights don't require an agreement, but that does not prove anything. "I assert rights are social conventions that people agree to honor in order to facilitate and ease living in association". What you said still allow "rights" to be "social conventions". But obviously without any particular moral meaning if those conventions are violated. It would be against my self-interest to violate the conventions because people would get mad. If I stole property, I would be claiming something that isn't mine. I would suggest that the "violation of rights" isn't the immoral act, but the "lying to myself" so to speak of what I possess. (I'll add more later if I don't have time to edit this post soon)

If he is actually a lone rider, he is exactly that. He would not be part of a group. A subculture is most definitely a group, and people of that group interact. Of course, that group doesn't even have to give itself a name. But what are the shared customs? That is an extremely important part. Having any culture where none of the members know each other is not possible. To have any common customs, you would necessarily need to observe customs and follow them. What Jake seems to be describing is more like a counterculture (which is a subculture still, though). But the values and beliefs of a subculture should be unique. *What* is valued isn't so important as *why* and *how* it is valued. If the way of valuing a particular value is unique and distinct from society at large, those values can be considered part of a subculture. Romantic art may be a common value with many Objectivists, but it isn't valued in a particularly special way. Name any subculture and I'm sure you can list at least one of their values and what is special about how they value it. This "specialness" would be what creates any customs within a subculture. I'm not sure how any subculture could be anything but collectivist, which is bad. It requires individuals have values of the group rather than their own (whether it be explicit or implicit). It is more than just "things in common". It's like those punk rock type kids that try to show individuality through nonconformity but only end up conforming to a smaller group anyway. Or insert any other stereotypical "rebel teenager". At best you can call Objectivism a community. A community does not necessarily require any customs and usually only a couple common values (i.e. a bunch of people are a fan of a particular musician, nothing more).