dougclayton

I'd like to add another point to the two points already made: even in saying, "I think, therefore I am", you have already relied on both existence and identity (and, of course, consciousness). If you exist, then there is an existence and you can tell what it is (namely, that it is you and not something else). This shows up in your statement: "The reality that I experience with my senses does not need to exist for 'the cogito' be true, any sort of reality might exist." You've already relied on the axioms, because to claim that reality's nature is different than your senses indicate is to claim that 1) there is a reality, and 2) it has a nature. This is why they are axioms--it is simply not possible to assert anything without implicitly relying on them. If you don't believe me, try it. By the way, the axioms do not state "what sort of reality" exists--just that it does exist. (Even "having identity" is not an additional constraint on existence--as Rand showed, identity is an inseparable aspect of existence.) It might not be so important to always point out if there weren't all kinds of people worried that they can't prove they exist, or demanding that you prove you exist.

There is no need to jump to conclusions and put words in my mouth. It means, very simply, that you yourself have proven it, and now you know it to be true. This does not mean other people do. It goes without saying in this forum that reality is independent and existence has primacy. I thought it went without saying that logic is not arbitrary, but apparently not. You know, it is very unfortunate that the notion of "true for you" has been corrupted to imply subjectivity, because so many people then adopt its converse and end up with intrinsicism, missing objectivity entirely. In a very real sense, you can only prove things for yourself. Suppose you come up with a new proof for some fact of reality. You can then show that proof to others, and they can prove it to themselves, of course. But until they do that, you remain the only one who understands the connection to reality, and thus the only one for whom it is proven. (In other words, there are some aspects of reality of which everyone else is still ignorant.) Again, it should go without saying that your new truth--let's say that gravity accelerates at 9.8 m/s^2--applies to everyone else whether or not they believe it. You can't do anyone else's thinking for them. All you can do is validate your thoughts to reality and try to help other people do that with theirs, but ultimately it is their own mind that will come to understand the truth of a proposition or not. This is what I meant when I said: That is why I was so bothered by this claim of yours: Debate on something is never superfluous, not as long as there are honest but confused people struggling to understand some truth. You may tire of the debate, but that is not what you said. I personally tired of the debate on whether 0.999~ = 1, so I didn't comment any longer. But that doesn't mean I expected everyone else to stop debating, just because I had become fully convinced. Well, perhaps your claim here was intended to say that mathematics was contextual; however, that is not what it seems like to me: (Emphasis mine.) If you meant "one thing and nothing else in a given context, I apologize for misunderstanding.

I see that David has beaten me to the punch with the example of "x". I thought of another example of context: the base that a number is written in. That implied context is what makes this joke funny: There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I find it ironic that you would state that there should be no more debate because "it is clear now that indeed in mathematics 0.999~ = 1" even as you follow by mentioning that you were wrong earlier. It may be clear to you now, but that doesn't mean it has become immediately clear for everyone. There have been several proofs offered in this thread, and still not everyone realizes the truth. Infinity is a tricky business. Isn't this ignoring the fact that proof is ojective--that it always requires someone to be doing the proof? You have proven it for yourself, but not for other people--unless you would like other people to take your satisfaction as their source of truth. Mathematics, as with nearly every other human endeavor, is contextual. This means that the same symbol can have different meaning in different contexts. One example is the x that means multiply can also mean cross product depending on whether it is in a scalar or vector context. Read some mathematics papers--they are always saying "let [symbol1] mean [some operation], and [symbol2] mean [some other operation]." There just aren't enough unique symbols for every purpose anyone has even come up with.

I agree with your dismal expectation, but forcing someone to put the imbalance in such terms is still beneficial. While it's not too blatant an evasion for the die-hard, it might make the immorality clear for those on the fence. PS: With all the proof-reading I did, you'd think I would have realized I misspelled "doubt" as "double" in the original post. Oops.

I double this will have any effect on "daniel's friend," but if he is so opposed to "corporate collusion," why are unions acceptable (even good)? They are nothing more than "collusions" of workers raising the price of their labor over what it would otherwise be.

Perhaps I misunderstood David but I think he was pointing out that, insofar as the court is concerned, all defendants are innocent of the accused crime until the trial is over.

I have quoted in full the entire paragraph you reference: I don't see how this supports your contention that "at several points in the discussion the concern raised was that if it were conceded that the slate was not blank then that would imply that we were not truly free and morally responsible." Could you explain how TomL's claim that people want to rationalize their evasion amounts to "fear of the implications of a non-blank slate" on his part? As I see it, he is explaining people's tendency for defense mechanisms, not "deny[ing] a reality for fear of it's implications". That's a pretty hefty accusation.

Oddly, although you tangentially reference "several points," what you quote is not only the post directly above you, but it seems to come from someone who agrees with you. I've been reading this thread as it's been ongoing and don't recall anyone suggest that. Could you quote those posts that actually back up your statement?

You didn't? I certainly did, even as far back as fourth or fifth grade.

jrs, you say that post 29 contains your explanation that 'stolen concept' is not a fallacy (at least not a propositional fallacy)". Since that post is answering several people, I have extracted the portion that is most general. If there is a more clear explanation of your views, please let me know where that is. I am not entirely sure what you mean--at first I thought you meant that "stolen concept" means "valid concept," but now I think you are saying that the notion of a stolen concept is legitimate and not flawed. Do I understand correctly? This is overly general ("step" can mean many things), but Jennifer has done an admirable job demonstrating the flaws in this claim , so I won't comment further. Should I take it, then, that you agree that a stolen concept represents a contradiction in one's thinking? Or do you mean that the concept of "stolen concept" is itself contradictory (as later remarks seem to indicate)? It is true that often an argument will commit multiple errors, and one could even conceive an argument in which the stolen concept was only possible because of earlier arguments. But what of it? "Ad hominem" is a fallacy regardless of whether you commit other fallacies earlier. I'm sorry, but I do not see how it follows that calling the use of a stolen concept a "fallacy" violates the principle of non-contradiction. Could you explain to me the contradiction one accepts when demonstrating a stolen-concept fallacy? Or are you saying that it is contradictory to catch one contradiction while missing a deeper one?

But the reason the cops can (and should) break up the barroom brawl is both because it is occurring on someone else's property, who likely doesn't want the fight to occur, and because on the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that one person involved does not want to fight, but is forced to (or intoxicated). Rather than contrasting a barroom brawl with gladiator sports, contrast it to a boxing match: the match clearly has the owner's approval and is voluntary on the part of both participants, and thus the police do not interfere.

I have started a new thread on this claim, because I am curious to understand your point. I am creating a new topic because it warrants a separate thread, but posting here in case jrs (or any other member) didn't see it.

In "The Cult of Ayn Rand," jrs said: Could you elaborate on this claim? I for one am very interested in why this is not a fallacy, because all this time I have understood why it is one.

but... It is one thing to call Objectivism a "rational philosophy" but it is not acceptable to equate the two, as if Objectivism means "a true philosophy." It does not--it is one particular person's philosophy. If she made any fundamental mistakes it will not change what Objectivism refers to. This does not follow. For a pre-relativity scientist to call himself "Newtonian" does not mean either that he slavishly agrees with everything that Newton said, nor does it mean that he agrees with Newton's laws of mechanics because Newton said so. It means he has evaluated the Newtonian system and found it to be true, in all of its fundamental principles. If he then discovers facts that contradict it, he either qualifies his position ("Newtonianism is correct under these conditions") or abandons it entirely, depending on how deeply the contradiction runs. In no case, in the Newtonian situation I outlined, would anyone speak of him "losing his right to call himself a Newtonian" as if some panel of judges handed out titles. This is a common misunderstanding stemming from the false dichotomy of "create" vs. "discover" (which in turn comes from the epistemologies of subjectivism and intrincism, respectively). In fact there is a third alternative: "formulate." Aristotle, for instance, didn't create Aristotelianism, but he didn't discover it either: he created a philosophy that was in accordance with what he discovered about reality. Knowledge always includes both the object and the subject. Of course, the actual truth or falsity doesn't matter: Kant didn't create Kantianism nor did he discover it; he, too, formulated it. This demonstrates the error you are making most clearly. When Einstein expanded Newton's theory of gravity he did not call it Newton's or Newtonian. In fact, Newtonian has come to mean non-relativistic mechanics, because 1) it is so successful at low speeds, and 2) relativistic effects are the only known contradictions to it (caveat: I am not a scientist). If something similar happened to Objectivism, I expect you'd get exactly the same situation. In that case, it is far too early to worry about whether or not you call yourself an "Objectivist." Until you are experienced enough to know what her system is, and how it integrates or not with reality, it would be premature to announce that your understanding of reality matches hers (which is all being an "Objectivist" means). You could, however, call yourself a student of Objectivism, to indicate both that you are studying it because you have found it to have merit so far, and that you have not reached a full-enough understanding to judge the whole.

Actually, a voluntary agreement in which death is offered for pay is euthanasia. Assassination is murder--it violates the right of the assassinated. For assassination to be a proper analogy, we would have to be talking about "rape-for-hire of famous people," not prostitution.

Very well said. (Or, as they say on Slashdot, "mod parent up! +1 insightful.")

Very nice. I confess that I got about 1/3 through it before my mind started to wander and I thought, "Why is this so dense?" Then I looked at the topic and figured out what you were doing.

This is irrelevant. He is not writing a psychology book; he is writing a philosophy book. To argue his philosophical points are wrong because the range is 5-9 instead of 6-8 is utterly absurd. Would you throw out what he wrote about the analytic/synthetic dichotomy (in ITOE) because 2L of water + 2L of alchol make (say) 3.7L of fluid, not 3.4L (or whatever) as he said? If a writer wants to be understood, he has to write to be understood. This is his burden. Similarly, if a reader wants to understand, he has to exercise his mind while he reads. However, this does not mean, as you seem to assume, that any amount of obfuscation on the part of the writer is acceptable.

I think you could conceivably form "animal" first, but it would require unusual circumstances (similar to the furniture-store thought experiment). If you lived in a zoo with exactly one of each type of mammal, you might form the concept of, say, "moving, breathing thing." But this requires that you not see several cats at once, because the similarities between cats are far greater than the similarity between mammals. In other words, if you lived around 20 cats, 20 dogs, 20 horses, 20 cows and 20 mice, you could not possibly see the similarities between all of them before you saw the differences. The human mind just doesn't work that way. In support of this point, I remember when my little sister was having difficulties with the way "person" is related to "boy" and "girl" when she was three years old. She kept telling me I could not be a person because I was a boy.

Yes, but the truth of that statement requires the study of the elements involved: namely, the temperature of the air and earth around the lake, the chemical properties of the water, etc. This is also true for a statement like "water boils at 100C at 1 atmosphere." It is true that this doesn't involve any particular geography, but it still requires experience to know (more experience, in fact, than the temperature of Lake Michigan). Once you have learned that water boils at 100C you can validate "water boils at 100C" without any further observation, but of course once you have learned that Lake Michigan is frozen right now, you can validate "Lake Michigan is frozen right now" without any further observation. I think what you are trying to express is more like this: "water is H2O" vs "water boils at 100C". The first is part of the definition of water; the second is not. But a statement is about concepts, not definitions, and a concept means all of the things referred to by a concept, not just its defining characteristics.

Thanks, but I don't think I can quit my day job just yet.

Let me offer a different interpretation than those already offered. It is possible he is elaborating on what existents are: namely, they are "separate, individual things [entities], [along] with their properties [attributes?] and actions." From this point of view, he is saying that existents are entities, properties and actions--not that existents are just entities. Otherwise, why would he add "with their properties and actions" to that sentence? Why not just say "separate individual things" and be done with it? One reason for stating it the way he does is to highlight that entities are primary--but because there are entities, there are also necessarily properties and actions "along for the ride," so to speak.

I believe the point Gabriel is making is that you can't learn concepts in just any order. If concept A logicaly depends on B and C, you can't learn A before B and C. You can memorize the definition of A but you can't really understand it. Furthermore, using it will almost certainly result in the fallacy of the stolen concept, because you will use A while denying B or C without realizing it. Of course there is plenty of variation in the order you learn things, but there is a broad order as well. Mathematics gives a very good example, in that you must learn how to count before learning multiplication or (god forbid) set theory.

Excellent example, Gabriel. This shows how running is very close to a first-level concept. In reality, no one has any difficulty understanding the referents of "running," which is why people understand the meaning of that sentence. Agreed again. I think your examples might be a little tough for first exercises, though. A better model would be Peikoff's example of reducing "friend." Friend is abstract enough for the reduction to be worthwhile, yet concrete enough that you can do it without going too far astray.