dream_weaver

The fruit of compromise manifests itself quite clearly in this instance.

And all that is asked is that this you objectively establish that god(s) exist. That it cannot be objectively established is precisely why it is referred to as an invalid concept.

An infinite regress is contradictory. Why do you attempt desire to assign time to that which is outside of time does not apply (eternity)?

Where are you acquiring what Objectivism holds? The Journals of Ayn Rand 13 - Notes While Writing: 1947-1952: "Man's soul or spirit is his consciousness—here, now, on earth. The ruling element, the control, the free-will element of his consciousness is his reason." For The New Intellectual: "That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character." In Diana Hsieh's outline, if you scroll down to Dr. Harry Binswangers section in http://www.dianahsieh.com/docs/mio.pdf you will find some highlights from his lecture on "The Metaphysics of Consciousness" where he explains that consciousness is irreducible.

Where does Objectivism state that "knowledge presupposes free-will to choose between alternatives"?

There is nothing quite like admitting arbitrary assertions as 'evidence' in a court of law.

This just started last weekend. It is persistant. If I continue running the script, there are several memory errors, then it seems to run ok for several pages. After a half dozen or so, it has an issue with the OO tab and re-initiates the tab with a different error message which just flashes on the screen. This is the only site I've run into it on.

Recently the following pop-up has been appearing when I visit this forum, switch topics, or switch pages within the topic. Has the script been modified recently? Stop running this script? A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer maight become unresponsive. I am currently running IE8.0 on XP S.P. 3 Thanks.

That the majority of the earth's population consider themselves to be affiliated with thelogical beliefs does not necessitate they have pondered ex-nihilo creation in depth. Nor does it ensure they have a method of validating their knowledge, much less if the validation is via obejctive versus rationalistic criteria. This assertion does not render Black Wolf's post untrue.

From ITOE: "The units of the concepts "existence" and "identity" are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist." From "The Rights of Man": "Since there is no such entity as "society," since society is only a number of individual men..." Existence is an abstraction from abstractions, as such, itself is not an entity, rather entities are one aspect of the referents which existence is derived from.

Objectivism rejects the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. "1+1=2" is a fact, derived from the science of mathematics.

"The concept of proof presupposes the existence of axioms from which such proof is derived." - The Letters of Ayn Rand, The Later Years (1960-1981) The axioms being that existence exists, and only existence exists, that existence is identity, that consciousness is conscious, further that consciousness is identification. Proof presupposes the grasp of the primacy of existence. If one does not have this at the base of their conceptual knowledge, understanding how Rand responded to Playboy in 1964 will more difficult than understanding what is meant in Objectivist literature about the arbitrary. That being said, an observation in these threads, and from numerous conversations held personally along the same ilk: when what is being discussed does not exist in fact, it is understandable why it is so difficult to stay focused on the topic being discussed at hand.

The key to grasping something as arbitrary in the Objectivist context, is to contrast it against the non-arbitrary, established, fixed, deliberate, purposeful, thoughtful. What establishes an idea or proposition as true or false or arbitrary? Objectivism seeks to understand what makes a concept valid. What observed facts give rise to the necessity of the concept. Some concepts refer directly to observed objects. Other concepts build on more complex relationships of increasingly more complex concepts. The process of validating knowledge consists of discovering how it relates to what you observe. When an idea cannot be connected back to those observations, then what established the idea? Not being able to identify the deliberate, purposeful, thoughtful connections posits it as the arbitrary. Since grasping this position requires focus and effort to acheive, then to what does a 'default position' refer?

World's longest sea bridge opens in China "Chinese TV reports said the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and it, along with an undersea tunnel, would be opened for traffic today." Previous record-holder-Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. It is always good to see additions to the engineering triumphs of man-kind.

Your attention to and level of detail relative to the size of your selected medium reminded me of Randall Zadar's miniatures.

Let's say we somehow did perfect our understanding of the law of causality. Would we then be able to causaly instill that understanding and the ideas and principles in such a manner as to eradicate murder, poverty, sickness, etc.?

Does that include the 2008 Detroit Lions season?

Or an synonym for outgrow: grow beyond, leave behind, relinquish, discontinue, give up; see also abandon 1, discard.

Did you consider using the ®? Perhaps the Eye of Horas

In ITOE 2nd Edition, pg. 49, Rand states the following: The truth or falsehood of all of man's conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions. (The above applies only to valid concepts. There are such things as invalid concepts, i.e., words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions or false propositions, such as concepts originating in mysticism—or words without specific definitions, without referents, which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern "anti-concepts." Invalid concepts appear occasionally in men's languages, but are usually—though not necessarily—short-lived, since they lead to cognitive dead-ends. An invalid concept invalidates every proposition or process of thought in which it is used as a cognitive assertion.) Rand points out that invalid concepts, in essence, are simply invalid. Asking to find a passage where Rand addresses Swinburne's theology specifically, is another example of illustrating that you have not understood or grasped the ability to understand the distinction between an invalid concept, and the process of consciousness required to validate concepts in general. As in the previous thread, you will continue to end back at this point. On page 76, she points out: "most people hold concepts as loose approximations, without firm definitions, clear meanings or specific referents; and the greater a concept's distance from the perceptual level, the vaguer its content. Starting from the mental habit of learning words without grasping their meanings, people find it impossible to grasp higher abstractions, and their conceptual development consists of condensing fog into fog into thicker fog—until the hierarchical structure of concepts breaks down in their minds, losing all ties to reality" We can point you to various passages used, but we cannot grasp and comprehend them for you. We can point out that the concept "God" is a greater distance from the perceptual level than say "Man", and identify that an invalid concept is a concept which one cannot build a hierarchical structure to leading to the perceptual level, but you are the one that would need to discover and implement that process for yourself. Edited to add: Objectivism is not about refutation per se, but one of validation. That which is invalid cannot be validated. That which is invalid cannot be refuted directly, it is invalid because it simply cannot be validated. If the concept of "God" could be validated by the process discovered and identified by Miss Rand, "God" would not be considered as an invalid concept.

You helped to validate Harry Binswangers observation that most people are unable to understand Objectivism for me in this response. In the process of admitting of defeat, take the opportunity to examine the nature of principle you were faced with. Before you can 'defeat' Objectivism, you need to discover its identity. Only when you focus your consciousness to fully process its proper identification will you understand what you are dealing with and know how to proceed from there.

As Harry Binswanger pointed out on "Consciousness as Identification", you may thank the fact that "most people are unable to understand Objectivism" to “Why Johnny Can’t Think” by Leonard Peikoff. He traces the philosophical roots of the anti-conceptual mentalities that we are confronted with there.

Underscore.

Yes, you have identified what the root of the disagreement is. What are you going to appeal to in order to undermine an epistemology which is based on concepts that have been reduced to reality, i.e. data of sense? Data of non-sense? If you do not understand how to reduce a claim to the self-evident data of sense, you have again demonstrated that you do not understand how consciousness is identification. An epistemology which demands we begin with something other than the self-evident is obviously not self-evidently (contradictorily) anchored. So, in other words: we have to back off from an epistemology which has been induced from observations (data of sense) in order to make room for less stringent criteria (arbitrary assertion) to be given a foot-hold, bearing in mind that evidence is the data of sense. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that "God" exists, by reducing the concept to the data of sense. That theism could still follow from claims that seem true, serves to undermine your epistemology, not Objectivism's.