dream_weaver

The colors (such as blue) and axiomatic concepts such as existence and identity.

A.G. :
Sounds like the growing pains of a potentially fine individual, to me.
It doesn't happen in one year, and at times your reach may exceed your grasp, but stay true to your values.
And resist comparing yourself to others, hard as that might be. That you have higher awareness than many of them, is a virtue you cannot compromise.

The state of the world? No, it's basically as it's always been, and you must design it around you.

(I hope that wasn't any more paternalistic than it needed to be, by the way.)

"Sacrifice" - from dictionary.com:



Rand defined sacrifice as the opposite of dictionary.com, ie trading a greater value for a lesser value. My question is why does Rand define sacrifice differently than the conventional definition? I understand that Rand would say the conventional definition is not a sacrifice it's a profit, and I'd agree its a profit but that still doesn't stop it being a sacrifice too.

For example, when a leader says "I need you to sacrifice to win this war" they mean its both a sacrifice (as per dictionary.com above) and also a profit (since freedom and winning the war is a greater value than whatever one is sacrificing).

All laws govern humans, not inanimate matter. Legal codes distinguish permissible from impermissible human behavior. The laws of physics and the laws of logic distinguish permissible from impermissible human methods of thought. Your thinking does not yet use the concept of objective differently from the intrinsic, and the problem with that is what is intrinsic is entirely apart from humans. Only particulars of existents and identity are intrinsic, or in other words existence is neither true not false it simply is. Human conceptual knowledge is always human, the appropriate standard is objective meaning derived from valid methods of thought that avoid falsehood, contradiction and the arbitrary.


These are merely examples of logical hierarchy. You do not know enough philosophy to properly argue your case, or understand the counter-arguments. A priori and innate knowledge are the slightly different perspectives on the same idea. See this article on Wikipedia A priori and a posteriori. Distinguishing between knowledge which is independent of experience from knowledge which is dependent on experience is the same as your "experience vs. explanation" distinction. It is the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. All of these distinctions, the a priori/a posteriori, the analytic/synthetic, and the necessary/contingent, run in parallel and are equally mistaken.

The refutation of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy is given in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., in the chapter "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy" by Leonard Peikoff. That is the correct place for that essay to appear because it is dependent on the theory of concepts and their meaning presented by Rand in that book. OPAR is a great presentation of Objectivism as a systematic whole, but it is no substitute for ITOE if you want to understand how to think.


This is terribly, terribly sloppy writing and thinking because there is no logic in the sentence "Existence exists." There are words and thus concepts, a subject and a verb. There is no syllogism, no premise, no conclusion. There is no logic. "Existence exists" is an assertion. The only thing that saves "Existence exists" from being a bald-faced ex-nihilo or ex-cathedra arbitrary assertion that can be immediately dismissed from consideration is that fact that it is implicit in every act of perception and every subsequent valid thought. "Existence exists" is ineluctable, true, and self-evident. "Existence exists" comes before all logic and is the basis of logic (one of the bases; logic requires several axioms before it can "get started"), therefore any attempt to logically argue for it is necessarily circular and invalid. "Existence exists" is demonstrated, not proven.

The causal basis of knowledge in perception is the foundation for conceptual knowledge. Conceptual knowledge is also causal but in a different way from perception, the difference is captured in the axiomatic concept of volition.

Although dated November 5, 2010, Dr. Peikoff just published a public statement on his website, including regarding the issue of damning McCaskey to hell.
http://www.peikoff.c...i-board-member/

1. Seeing a painting does make me believe that there is a painter. However, seeing a cloud does not make me believe that there is a cloud maker. Nor does seeing a mountain ridge make me believe that there is a guy who tenaciously chisels out mountain ridges. And the universe seems more like a cloud or a mountain ridge than a painting, in this respect.

2. It's a stolen concept fallacy. We form the concept "creation" by distinguishing between things that are created and things that are not. The argument argues from a specific creation, the painting, to the conclusion that everything is a creation. But if everything is a creation, then the context necessary to form the concept "creation" no longer exists.

3. The argument leads in principle to an infinite regress of creators.

Rand established the context in which she used the concept.

You dropped the context by selecting a different sense that sacrifice could be used as with your opening definition, and tried to equivocate her usage, substituting the definition you selected in its place.

"sacrifice", also from Dictionary.com:

5. a loss incurred in selling something below its value.
8. to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.
9. to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit.

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2. a ritual killing of a person or animal with the intention of propitiating or pleasing a deity
3. a symbolic offering of something to a deity
4. the person, animal, or object surrendered, destroyed, killed, or offered
5. a religious ceremony involving one or more sacrifices

6. loss entailed by giving up or selling something at less than its value

-----------------

Essentially all the other definitions contradict the one you cited.

Ayn Rand's definition is the conventional definition that corresponds to how it is thought of by religionists, which is where it originated. It just isn't Dictionary.com's first definition.

I see "floating abstraction" as the larger concept; "invalid concepts" are floating abstractions of a particular kind: they contradict reality at every turn, accept unreality as a basis, and a mind using them runs roughshod over the virtue of honesty; whereas the notion of floating abstraction is more generic and can include cases where only some of reality is evaded or contradicted.

Agree, a deductive approach establishes the fallacy of God, assuming Existence. And an inductive approach is necessary to imagine limit processes, such as Existence.

- ico

I'm going to assume that the major point of discussion now is that "A"- "An actual infinite cannot exist".

There are three options here:

Option 1: You agree that an actual infinite is impossible, but you don't agree that this necessitates an "uncaused cause" or "prime mover" or "necessary being". In this case, please point out what OTHER point of my argument you disagree with. ALSO, please aid me in convincing those in "option 3" of this position.

Option 2: You agree that an actual infinite is impossible and you agree that this necessitates an uncaused cause/prime mover/necessary being- but this is not necessarily "God". In this case, I will suspend discussion (for now) on proving that it is "God", until a decent amount of people arrive at this option (assuming any will)! ALSO, please aid me in convincing those in options 1 & 3 of this position.

Option 3: You disagree that an actual infinite is impossible.


****Please, Everyone who responds: Clarify where you stand! For the sake of taking this conversation seriously. If you stand at option 3, it's pretty obvious, but if you stand at either 1 or 2, please make it known, as this is not as obvious.

A small semantic point...


underline mine


Biddle made it clear that he is judging Peikoff's specific act as unjust. He is not attacking Peikoff's reputation, nor denying the importance or validity of Peikoff's work. In fact, as you quoted, he acknowledges Peikoff as his second-greatest intellectual/professional inspiration.

Indeed she said



So Rand thinks that most people have worse sins than cutting up a little girl? How horrifying that she views society to be so loathsome.

No more than I consider a programmed computer to be making decisions for itself ... the government has to stick to the script, it's not a producer and should not pretend to be.

Remember, government has the power to use deliberate force legally. That power is not consistent with making choices, and its use must be thoroughly proscribed -- the government does not have the law in its hands any more than I do; it's job is enforcement and mediation of rights, not determination, value judgments, nor interpretation.

- ico

Not sending someone to jail is not the equivalent of "accommodating" them. So no, an Objectivist state would not accommodate evil.

Robbing banks is illegal and evil, right? And yet, watch this:

I think bank robbery should be legal. Allowed. In fact it should be subsidized, and first born sons should be sacrificed to the gods for good luck in our efforts to rob banks.

That's a pretty outrageous, terrible thing to say, huh? And yet, no one was hurt. Every bank and child on the planet is fine, all their rights are intact. Why? Because speech, no matter how evil, does not harm anyone!!! There is no conflict between free speech and rights.


Like it's been pointed out many times before, no, an Objectivist state would not allow the imposition of socialism just because a majority somehow got convinced to vote for it. Objectivism does not support democracy, it supports a constitutionally limited government. So no, the scenario you describe could not happen in an Objectivist state. Not because the people advocating it would be hauled off to jail, but because they couldn't rise to power by convincing the majority to vote for them. That would be illegal, and anyone who tried it would be disqualified as a candidate for political office.

Don't confuse the right to speech with the right to be a tyrant or rob a bank. There is a clearly difference between the two: one involves the initiation of physical force, the other does not. Writing laws and judging specific instances to differentiate between the two is not only possible, it has been put in practice well in the USA, in First Amendment cases. American laws and courts have no problem differentiating between speech and action, it's only other rights (mostly the right to property) that they are confused about.

Free speech is actually one of the few areas that's handled well already in the US, and needs to be left alone, not changed.

On the first issue, of “freeloaders of government,” the second thread SN linked to is long, but near the end it strikes at the heart of your question and features good posts from different perspectives. In brief, it appears Ayn Rand was asserting that government should maintain a link between payment received and services rendered in civil matters, and general access to the criminal justice system. If one did not pay for the government, one would not have recourse to the civil court system, one would be free to make contracts for example, but one's contracts go unprotected by government unless insured by payment of government services. Essentially, services follow from support, except in criminal justice.

Other Objectivists such as Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook uphold that irrational noncontributors or freeloaders can just be boycotted or ostracized by the otherwise rational people who recognize the importance of the government's functions.

On the matter of having one's property surrounded by someone else's property, there are several usual responses, to this phenomenon called “encirclement.” First, it is pertinent to point out that under the status quo (statist quo?) that is the exact reason, historically, (and despite the usual reasons provided to the contrary) that government has monopolized roads and highways in the first place: to surround our property with easy access for the government's agents, viz. tax collectors. Technically, we can't go anywhere without paying for it already, whether we want to or not, since these public thoroughfares are funded by taxes.

Which brings us to the second point, that in a totally private property society, the fact still remains that our property will always generally be surrounded by other private property. Perhaps not in the way you are thinking, as in a person literally cannot get off his land to go anywhere, but nonetheless the fact still remains that in this hypothetical private property society, every point in the country is privately owned by one or another individual person in such a way that every owner of a piece of the surface of the United States finds that his property is surrounded by the properties of other persons.

Now as to the meat of your question, let us suppose that someone is literally surrounded in such close quarters by one piece of property, such that it is like a small island. And let us further suppose that those individual(s) that own the property surrounding his are his personal enemies or otherwise particularly mean and spiteful people. Our poor victim is trapped literally under imposed isolation.

As in any conflict, we must ask, how did this situation come about? One conceivable answer would be that the access way was previously public property which was “privatized” into the hands of our villains, who then proceeded with their vendetta against the poor trapped man. An obvious solution then would be that we must make sure to guarantee a stake in ownership and access to adjacent public roads during the transition program, so as not to create any such situation.

Which brings us to the next point, that whenever a property changes hands, we have a “title search” to determine the relevant facts about the property, namely what kind of restrictions or allowance pertain to the use of the land, so therefore we would have an “access search” in regards to road usage to ensure access and egress.

Another thing, is that this cannot happen on any sort of wide scale, as it would be in the financial interest of road owners to attract customers, so usually this kind of objection belongs in the category of those kinds of objections that go much like: “What if private road owners never allowed anyone to use the roads and we all couldn't go anywhere?! Or, what if private road owners allowed destruction derbies on their roads and we all wrecked all the time?! Or, what if private road owners charged a million dollars to leave your house, we all would be stuck!” etc. For these objections we can only point to the fact that on the market such behavior would be nonexistent because prices are not arbitrary and such activities would have so high an opportunity cost as to render it impossible, especially for any profit-maximizing individual.

But let us proceed to your actual hypothetical. Suppose there is no such wild scheme at hand, and these are simply mean people who block a man's exit forth from his property (or a man might refuse to pay the price they set, or what have you) in a single isolated case. (Or perhaps he is one of the freeloaders who refuses to fund government and the people are boycotting him, or some such thing?) In this type of case, it may well be that they are entirely within their rights. Denying someone use of your property is not an initiation of force onto them, not an invasion of their property. Secondly, this does not constitute actual imprisonment because you do not have three dimensional control over the person, there are any number of ways he can get out, just not over the adjacent land. Actual hostile encirclement cannot be any kind of widespread practice any more than torturing animals or espousing disgusting and perverted behavior or being a mean personal in general or what have you because those who engage in it can simply be counter-boycotted or otherwise ignored by other people who judge their actions to be unjust.

Civil law already takes a similar approach:
“Art. 693. Enclosed estate; voluntary act.


If an estate becomes enclosed as a result of a voluntary act or omission of its owner, the neighbors are not bound to furnish a passage to him or his successors.”

If all else fails, the individual can of course take his situation to a court of law and proceed to make his best argument for an easement or of some circumstance whereby the mean people have unjustly delimited his control over his own actual property by some fraudulent or indirectly invasive means. People would certainly be sure to guarantee access in contractual agreement when engaging in any kind of business regarding property relationships, therefore suing for fraud or breach of contract would always be an option in that kind of instance.

To wrap this post up, we must make clear that owning property rights in handcuffs does not grant you the right to go around and place them on someone else's hands at whim or arbitrarily. In short, in most cases, the isolated owner has already homesteaded access and egress to his property during the time that the government owned the public roads or otherwise and hostile encirclement of him would be a violation of his rights. The problem of enclosing others' property is not a new one only recently realized with Ayn Rand's political philosophy, but have been around as long as private property has been around and the law has found ways to deal with it objectively.

I can argue that a million handguns are not a threat. The threat comes from people, the large gun collection is just one sign out of many (a sign that does not constitute conclusive evidence of a crime). I think you're the one arguing that it is impossible to differentiate between objective threats and someone who owns a gun for self defense. You're wrong.

Owning legal handguns would not be illegal based on anyone's ideology, just as it isn't illegal now. If a Muslim cleric who lives in the US applied for a handgun permit, he would not be discriminated against based on his religion. And if he bought twenty AKs legally, he would still not be touched. Obviously, authorities would pay special attention to him, to make sure he's just a harmless gun collector, but his rights would be preserved. And, if he was planning a terrorist attack with those weapons, that would be the crime, not the ownership of the weapons, and he would be arrested for it.

In general, preventing non-criminals from owning handguns is a violation of rights (and an initiation of force), and it would not be done in a free society. Besides, it's a terrible crime fighting technique: the only people it would work on are innocents unwilling to just buy their guns in secret, off the black market. Just ask the residents of Chicago how their gun ban is working out.

yes good point
Whole the universe is surrounded by different gases.It can be understand by the following example
If you put down a footbal or tenis ball on the surface of the water it will float on the surface of the water on the other hand if you put a steel ball on the surface of water it will sink down .
Same is the case with earth and the moon all these are suspended in the universe according to their density and will never fuse or strike with each other.Thats why all the planets are moving and rotating in their orbits from the thousands of years.

The modern "concept" of numbers ignores context and conflates distinct concepts. Each class of numbers in modern use is a product of a specific process of accounting. Different accounting context cannot be dropped except in very special cases, e.g., when one is only interested in the quantity and not its units.

Counting leads to counting numbers. The unit is the type of entity counted.

Relating counting numbers leads to rational numbers. The unit is the denominator.

Solving for quantities to fit equations leads to algebraic numbers. The unit is predetermined and then abstracted out of the process -- but the domain of applicability of the equation determines the unit. Complex numbers are solutions of equations, no more, no less -- and labeling the solution to x*x=-1 as "imaginary" is facetious. There is nothing imaginary about the solution to this equation, and physical examples of its reality abound, e.g., electro-magnetics in the context of conductors where phase frequency is complex; or in quantum mechanics where the operators are complex, but the observable eigenvalues are potentially directly measurable, i.e., "real". Complex numbers cannot be directly measured or observed, duh, it would take at least two observations to pin down the real and imaginary components.

Taking the natural limits of sequences of rational numbers leads to the so-called real numbers. The unit is implicit in that the elements of the sequence must be commensurable. This allows one to model even the transcendentals. To my mind, the representation of numbers as limits of sequences, as used in constructing the real numbers, is the most general; but you can't just blithely manipulate sequences as if they were unitary numerals, esp. the non-terminating sequences become bothersome. And you don't get the complex numbers unless you use two sequences.

Thinking of the solution of x*x=-1 as the square root of -1 is just people mistaking formalism for fact. It is just a number defined by the fact that it solves the equation, and should have a disparate name such as "freddie" to make sure folk don't conflate it with observable, measurable quantity.

The problem goes deeper. The notion that -1 or +1 are numbers is false. They have distance and direction. They are vectors. The integers are naturally represented as pairs (x,y) with the equivalence relation (x,y)==(s,t) iff x-y==s-t, with normal vector addition used to construct a vector space from the equivalence classes under this relation across the set of pairs of counting numbers.

So, if -1 is represented as (0,1), and +1 by (1,0), then what sense does it make to take second power roots of either of these vectors?

multiply(-1,-1) = (0,1) * (0,1) = (1,0)

How does that make sense?

The conceptual flaw is that you can't get somewhere by going in the opposite direction, so scaling +1 by multiplying it with -2 has no basis in reality.

Cheers.

- ico

If the earths resources are limited, maybe you living for hundreds and hundreds of years will be at the expense of others.

Double post.

But addressing self defense: Being Rational is also not being Dogmatic, and in Ayn Rand's words, avoiding context dropping.

In a densely populated place under a decent government A.R. would not be pro self-defense as we are dealing with the context of Civilization.

In an Atlas Shrugged Scenario (most of the real world right now), in the Gulch, isolated from an oppresive Government, self defense would probably be the default way to go.
The above statement is not taken from any work by Ayn Rand and is not sanctioned by her estate.

If I fall in love with a girl it's not because of a decision it's because, well I just fall in love. There's no starting point, it just happends. I can't MAKE myself love everybody. No matter how hard i choose to think.

If I'm obese it can be because of genetic factors. Or eating habits established as a child. Or my reaction to a depression. Or because I just love food, I didn't one day wake up and decided to love food I just do. Or a bad habit I cannot break because I don't have whatever it takes, to break it. Or maybe, just maybe I CAN break that bad habit... well then it's because I DO have what it takes (but whatever that is, I didn't create so it's no thanks to me...)

If I prefer blondes to brunettes, it's not by choice, it's by preference. Did I create that preference? No. It's just there. In each and everyone of us. No matter if we're objectivists or not.

As we can see there's always a BEFORE reason, something BEFORE we make a decision proving that we dont make a decison ebcause the decision has already been made before us.

You will personally gain more or everyone will? If you just mean yourself, that's subjective. If the rule is generally applicable to people and there are exceptions, that is called intersubjectivity, not objectivity. Are you suggesting that there are no people who benefit more from a combination of work and theft than work alone?


If it's just a general rule and it's only true for some people, that's intersubjective.

I really want you to be right because I am frustrated when people use relativism to try and justify China's government. I'd like for it to be the case that you can derive a morality based on hard evidence/reason. Where am I going wrong here?

There seem to be objectivists who say it's not in a man's self-interest to steal (and therefore immoral, according to the objectivist).

In my subjective experience, it has held true that a sense of accomplishment is a remarkable feeling that cannot be replaced by other fraudulent feelings. I mentioned this idea to someone and he raised an interesting question I could not answer. He said a Christian could say he or she experiences something subjectively and this would not be good enough evidence to support the divinity of Jesus.

Is the belief that stealing makes everyone less happy than earning based on subjective whims? Do you have any objective evidence I can pass along to my friend? Are there fMRI-based studies or anything?

Yes We are Red Sox. Without the fans no team. The fans pays the bills, fill the seats.

It seems you are what you are and you do what you do because of genetics, environment and luck. Neither which is thanks to you. What else is there? How does one get around this in Objectivism? How do you deal with it and what are your conclusions? Is there such a thing as pride, knowing that whatever you did, you did because of you being you and you being you is not because of you.

Discuss.