philosopher

I agree that a standard is something you measure against. And yes, value requires a "to whom" and "for what." I agree that choosing is a natural ability of man and thinking is a natural ability, but valuing and reasoning are not. Value is choosing + a standard, reason is thinking + a standard. And the the standards in both cases have to be discovered (we are not born with the knowledge). I think we're pretty much on the same page here. I don't disagree that pleasure/pain can get us to a concept of value. But once we're on the conceptual level we realize that anything that has a "to whom" and "for what" can also potentially serve as a standard. Then there's comes the question of proof of any given standard. And life is the only provable ultimate standard.

Occam's razor? It's the ability to initiate movement that is required, not thought. I'm no expert either, but they do definitely seem like a third category. I don't buy the whole setup, I'm just saying that even on your premises your theory only supports the existence of e.g. a space whale, not a God as we usually think of Him.

In theory it shouldn't matter if you're the only rational man left alive. As long as there is a proper form of government, where individual rights are the law, and voting is only about who implements them, you should be safe. Of course in reality voting gives far more power than that these days. Think what a massive use of force it is to take over an entire industry, is so much force used anywhere else but in wartime?

Ok. I would say there's 3 categories. Inanimate objects such as rocks which can not initiate any action on their own. Animate entities such as animals that can initiate their own movement but not their own thought, and volitional entities such as man which can initiate their own thought and action. What I'm saying is I don't see why their couldn't be big dumb non-volitional (but animate) space animals that just move around bumping in to things, such as inanimate objects. Certainly, based on our experiences on Earth, extrapolating animals out there would be less of a leap than a supernatural explanation.

I regard a standard of value as analogous to a standard of reason and men thought for years before logic was invented. To me a choice requires a reason, however fleeting, which serves as the cause of the choice (as in cause and effect), but does not necessarily require a standard. A standard is something more than a reason, it's something consistent where in the same situation again you would do the same thing. Due to our free will we're not forced to do that. It's not irrational to reject the pleasure/pain standard, sometimes exercise can hurt but be good for you, or recreational substances can feel good but rationally be bad for you. I think pleasure/pain is just where we get the basic idea that there could be a standard, but just like existence is the standard of reason, the choice of existence is the standard of value, not simple sensations. The equivalent standard in reason to pleasure/pain in ethics might be thinking something is true because it gives you the feeling of understanding, whether it is really true or not.

I disagree. Value presupposes a standard of value, but choice doesn't. The comment you quoted from Ayn Rand a few posts after this is about temporal discovery order of concepts, not about conceptual dependency as required to cause concept stealing. To grasp the idea of "choose" you need to grasp that you exist and the world exists and that you have actions and that you are in control of them, and in some sense be able to project multiple futures, but you need not understand the idea of measuring objects against some standard in order to guide your choice.

From what I read, you started your argument with "Every effect must have a Cause," which you took to be true by definition, and then went from there. I am objecting to starting an argument that way, instead of starting with observation. If instead you had said "Whenever I have seen an effect there has also been a cause," that would be fine. I think this is a valid objection. But we only know that because of what we know about the identity of billiard balls - what they are and are not capable of. You seem to be making this claim about every object in the universe. I don't know how you can do that without first cataloging them all. Without a catalog how do you eliminate the possibility that there are objects that have the identity of being prime movers, that are the cause of their own actions? That are eternal and have always just moved around the universe initiating action? Or are these objects what you would call Gods? More like: "Because that's their identity. Now we must learn specifically what about their identities is causing this."

Yes, sorry, I meant analytic. An analytic truth just follows from symbolic manipulation of whatever definitions you start with. It doesn't seem like the proper way to think to me, which is to look at the world and ponder it. That's all I was saying. Ok. Well cause and effect as motion/interaction between entities is certainly the mainstream definition. But in Objectivism, "cause" is just another name for "entity" and effect is just another name for "action" (they are the same referents seen from a slightly different perspective). We model cause and effect as between an entity and it's actions, not in-between entities. Even when one object bangs in to another, the actions of the object being hit are determined by its identity. Peikoff pointed out that a billiard ball hit by another billiard ball has a different action to an egg hit by one. So to get back on to your argument, with this metaphysics your statement "every effect has a cause" boils down to "every action has an entity," which we agree with, but the chain of cause and effect can stop there, there is no logical requirement for it to traverse back between entities back to a prime mover.

Even though I believe human beings have non-physical aspects (the existents of consciousness), I still don't agree with the claim that a purely physical being couldn't have free will. I believe it is possible for a thing made of 100% deterministic parts but itself be non-deterministic. This is because I think of "made of" as a relationship between the whole and the parts, both of which have separate existence and properties, rather than as meaning that they are a unity.

If I understand your argument, it's (paraphrasing): 1. Every effect must have a cause. 2. An infinite regress of causes is impossible 3. Therefore there must have been a first cause. It must have been alone at the start of the universe, therefore must have had the ability to choose and must have acted deliberately. I have 2 objections to this. First, the argument starts with a synthetic truth/truth by definition, as against a fact observed in the world. Therefore it can not prove anything about the world (such as the existence of God). My second objection is that even on the grounds of a purely synthetic argument I think it needs an additional premise that "everything in the universe is either a cause or an effect."

That's right, that's why the 3 axioms are existence, identity *and* consciousness. As an axiom, consciousness is there in all one's knowledge.

Not necessarily. There is only one (rational) standard of value, but when using that standard to decide if something is a value or not, there is always a "to whom" and a "for what." The "to whom" can change the answer, not just the "for what." But here is an analogy. Forget about morality for a minute, this is only rationality. Imagine if human beings were different in only one way: that our perceptions did not come automatically, that we had to choose it. If we do not choose to see/hear etc, then we spent our entire lives in darkness. Since reason is based on perception, it is inapplicable to this choice. So a person who chooses never to perceive, is choosing a-rationally not irrationally.

It's only a contradiction if you think Objectivist morality is absolute, but it's not, it's objective. The difference is: Absolute: an act has the same ethical status for everybody Subjective: the agent gets to choose the ethical status Objective: the agent does not get to choose the ethical status, but it is nevertheless agent relative. So it's possible for an action to be amoral from the (rational) perspective of the person performing it (even though they probably aren't rational), but immoral from the perspective of others. The reason objective morality must be agent-relative is that everyone has their own context of knowledge.

Cause and effect comes from identity, not physicality, and identity applies to all of existence (the physical and the non-physical), so supposing a non-physical aspect to man does not get us around the question of how cause and effect allows free will. The way to get around it (if I can put it that way) is to see that the regularity we observe in the universe is not coming from a set of rules being imposed on things (i.e. controlling the way they move), but is just part of their identity, like their color or weight. Therefore, since there are no rules, it is possible for a thing to exist that can go either of two ways at time t.

I think maybe they're not choosing death, but choosing between life as a slave if their side loses, vs a tiny chance of a normal life if they survive the battle. Because everyone believes that somehow they'll be different, they'll be the one to survive.

I don't think you can rationally choose between living and dying. Not for yourself anyway. For yourself, dying corresponds to non-existence, and there's no way to compare non-existence to existence. As Peikoff said, all your concepts/ideas you might use to make an argument exist in the context of existence, not a context where you're standing above both comparing.

Yes you have to be alive to act, but that doesn't make life an intrinsic value, because you don't yet know that acting (any acting) is valuable. It's only after you have a proof of the value of life, that acting becomes valuable, and therefore also the ability to act. But by that stage you already know life is valuable.

I don't see it as a problem if even the vast majority of people decide to while away their lives playing computer games. It's only a problem if you think people have a duty to the state to work (or something like that), but really they don't.

New Fox News video explains why Nazis were a type of leftism not capitalism: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3982487/live-free-or-die

That's an important point I think. The Index focuses on the link between economic freedom and prosperity, but there is also a link between economic freedom and military power. If the government has too many big social programs they can't afford a big military.

I think there are probably deep psychological reasons why we like what we do, and the current primitive state of psychology doesn't let us understand why. I think being good at something has something to do with it. Edit: philosophy will tell you the way to go about your desired career (rationally, honestly, etc) but won't tell you what it should be.

http://www.heritage.org/index/ Alarmingly, the US is no longer rated "Free" (the best category), but only "Mostly Free."

In logic class they teach you there are these things called "statements" (that come from God knows where) and knowledge consists of knowing for as many as possible, whether they are true or false. But knowledge is not a list of statements but an integration of facts, concepts, inductions and deductions. Knowledge is the whole, and you expand it by integrating new information at the "edges." If someone makes a claim not too far from what is known, it is possible to test it against similar things, and say if it is true or false and how certain you are. But if it is too far "out there" - miles from anything known - miles from the edge (such as claims about goblins on other planets) - there is just no way to proceed. You just have to say "Sorry, there is nothing I can do with that (mentally)."

Metaphysically excellent! (I wish I had a t-shirt that said that

I am from Australia but lived a while in the US, and I always tell Aussie people here how polite Americans are and they don't believe me!