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New Buddha

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Everything posted by New Buddha

  1. Southie Speakeasy What you and others are failing to understand is that Trump's position on illegal immigration - specifically illegal immigration from Mexico - has all along been tied directly to the re-negotiation of NAFTA, which just started today. I would still like for JASKN (or someone) to try and explain what they think caused the dramatic and unprecedented increase in illegal immigration from Mexico under NAFTA? And while they are at it, also explain why poverty in Mexico hasn't budged an inch under NAFTA (still just over 50%). And for the record, I have a sister who lives in Mexico (married to a Mexican) and I do care deeply about the economic health of our southern neighbor - not only for personal reasons but because an economically strong Mexico is in the United States rational self-interest.
  2. The RAISE Act proposal is a merit based immigration system (similar to Canada's). And, it's in-line with the bigger picture he has wrt immigration.
  3. I agree. But if you ask yourself the question, Why did so many white (men and women) Democrats in the South and the Rust Belt vote for Trump after having voted for a black President twice AND if you ask yourself, Why did illegal immigration from Mexico soar under NAFTA -- then you might learn something about the current state of the economy. Trump also got more Black and Hispanic votes than both McCain and Romney in some key States. It is possible to be against open borders - as current governmental institutions and trade agreements exist - and not be a racist. However, the Left knowingly tries to reduce the immigration issue to a binary choice: Either you are for open borders OR you are a racist and/or Islamaphobe, homophobe, misogynist, anti-Free Trader (as if the Left is pro-Free Trade, lol) and so on.
  4. Lordy, who is engaging in "racists" rhetoric exactly?
  5. Maybe you should have. Do you think laws should be selectively enforced by the Executive and Judicial Branches of Government?
  6. I know that you are not. I was replying to this: Trump is enforcing the US immigration laws and court orders - nothing more. This is exactly what the Executive Branch is tasked with doing. I'm perfectly willing to discuss the value of completely wide-open borders, but until Congress changes the laws, there is nothing wrong with what he is doing.
  7. It's "ironic" that you focus on the word "funny" and not the idea. I'm pointing out the "irony" that many on the Left won't "condemn" Mexico and Canada for doing for years what the US is starting to do. Are you capable of understanding such irony?
  8. Don, When Trump was in Poland awhile back he gave a speech about national sovereignty and the importance of Western values - and he was roundly condemned by the Left and the MSM as giving a "racist" speech. The Left, under Obama, has so thoroughly embraced identity politics that the ideas of Locke, Paine, Jefferson, Rand, etc. are now seen as being "white" ideas. If you adhere to them, then you are a de facto racist. And to be fair to Hillary (someone I find truly despicable) she too was horrified by how far the Left took the election (read Shattered) and she was unable to bring it back to the center (largely due to her lack of character). There is nothing that Trump can say that the MSM and the far-Left won't interpret as being racists, Islamaphobic, anti-gay/lesbian/transgender/Mexican, etc., etc., etc. Rand completely saw this coming....
  9. The value of wide-open borders can be debated, but Trump (as head of the Executive Branch of government) is enforcing the laws passed by Congress. It's funny that in Mexico it is a felony to enter that country illegally. Mexico has seen a large decline in the number of people crossing illegally into Mexico along its southern border since the US began enforcing immigration laws - and Mexico happy about it (although they won't admit it). And in Canada, Trudeau recently had to do some major backpedaling due to the flood of illegal immigrants that have begun pouring into Canada over the summer after he "invited" them to do so. Trudeau is now saying that they too will have to obey Canada's immigration laws. Are both Mexico and Canada wrong to deport illegal immigrants too? http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/338561-trudeau-tweets-not-the-answer-to-canadas-refugee-issues Edit: Most of the illegal immigrants being rounded up in the US by ICE already have deportation orders issued by the Courts.
  10. NK cannot stand on its own two feet. It's being propped up by China (and a few other horrid States) as a tool.
  11. The current situation with NK should be viewed less as the US vs. NK and more the US vs. China - and trade has much to do with it. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/08/12/report-president-trump-to-announce-section-301-trade-investigations-against-china-on-monday/#more-137116
  12. This. Clinton gave nuclear reactors and billions of dollars to NK so that they would "not" develop nuclear weapons. And both Bush's and Obama's records were not much better. Not to mention that much of NK's missile technology has come from China -- funded by the billions of dollars that Obama gave Iran - who in turn is getting nuclear weapon technology from NK. We are going to see a nuclear weaponized Iran soon as well.
  13. I view is that fallibility had no role in Peirce's position on what he called perceptual judgements but rather, he was contending with the growing role that probability theory was starting to play in science (gas laws, thermodynamics, etc.). In my copy of his essay, The Fixation of Belief (1877), there is a very long footnote added in 1893 where he states among other things: "Many critics have told me that I misrepresent the a priori philosophers when I represent them as adopting whatever opinion there seems to be a natural inclination to adopt." (Descartes, Leibniz, Hume and Kant are the philosophers referenced directly in the footnote) He goes into greater detail explaining their position that something being universally true and necessarily true goes further than experience can warrant. And he says of himself "I may add that whatever is held to be precisely true goes further than experience can possibly warrant." The key word here is "precisely" - and it applies to the emerging role of probability theory in science. And, indeed, he devotes a great deal of thought to probability theory in his essays. He contrasts his position on preciseness (in the footnote) with Kant's wrt to mathematics and geometry. Peirce says of Kant in the footnote: "Accepting those criteria of the origins of ideas, Kant proceeds to reason as follows: Geometrical propositions are held to be universally true. Hence, they are not given by experience." In my Dover book on Peirce, Chapter 20 is called Perceptual Judgments he ties perceptual judgments to Abduction (which is tied to probability in his works): "Abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them; or, in other words, our first premises, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences, from which they differ in being absolutely beyond criticism. [...] On its side, the perceptive judgment is the result of a process, although of a process not sufficiently conscious to be controlled...." The integration of probability into science in the 19th Century was not straight forward and flew in the face of "a priori" ideas. And it even formed the basis of the mature (post-Mach) Einstein's disagreements with the QM of Bohr and Heisenberg in the early 20th Century. I don't see that Peirce was troubled with "fallibility." His "anti-intuitionist" stance was driven by thoughts regarding probability.
  14. Boydstun, To what extent do you think Rand accepted modern "formal logic" as having a role in Objectivism? She is often critical of what she termed "linguistic analysts" in which I would lump Boole, Russell, Frege and Analytic Philosophy in general - along with Logical Positivism. Your use of the term "self-evident" in the above posts seems to fall exclusively within the domain of "formal logic," while ITOE is almost exclusively about induction and arriving at generalizations. Did she ever discuss or write about modern formal logic?
  15. There is an interesting quote from Peikoff, 1991: Ayn Rand regarded her theory of concepts as proved, but not as completed. There are, she thought, important similarities between concepts and mathematics still to be identified; and there is much to be learned about man’s mind by a proper study of man’s brain and nervous system. In her last years, Miss Rand was interested in following up on these ideas—in relating the field of conceptualization to two others: higher mathematics and neurology. Her ultimate goal was to integrate in one theory the branch of philosophy that studies man’s cognitive faculty with the science that reveals its essential method and the science that studies its physical organs. This is pretty much the current program of today's field, Cognitive Science. It's also important to realize that Rand developed her ideas at a time when linguistic analysis in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology were dominate. But the science behind the operation of sense organs, childhood development, etc. played a large role in helping her to develop the ideas in ITOE. Rand also says of Aesthetics: The esthetic principles which apply to all art, regardless of an individual artist’s philosophy, and which must guide an objective evaluation . . . are defined by the science of esthetics—a task at which modern philosophy has failed dismally. A "science of aesthetics" would be every bit as comprehensive as the "science of epistemology " as developed in the ITOE. She considers epistemology to be a science (and she's not just using the term "science" metaphorically): Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge. There would also be a significant overlap and interdependency between the sciences of epistemology and aesthetics - they are not mutually exclusive.
  16. This is correct. Yes. Rand classifies Architecture as one of the Visual Arts (along with painting and sculpture) while in my above post I classify Architecture as "Design" (which, along with Art, is subsumed under the broader concept Aesthetics). In addition to working in architecture (design) for 25 years, I also occasionally paint and draw (art). While there are existential differences in the mediums of all three fields, there are also existential cognitive similarities too. This is why it's unproblematic for me to subsume them under the broader concept, Aesthetics. Add edit: Working in architecture/interior design also includes the selection of furniture, window coverings, carpeting, etc.
  17. You've identified what you believe to be a problem, but you haven't proposed a solution - unless your solution is that all knowledge is subjective (which I don't think you believe).
  18. Then develop this line of argument. I have a pretty good understanding of the history of philosophy, and your position has been one the central positions taken by some Western philosophers down thru the ages. Maybe you have a unique approach to the problem, or maybe you follow some other philosopher. In my opinion, Rand is on the right track with ITOE. And while I do have some specific, technical disagreements with parts of ITOE, in the main I do accept her position.
  19. I'll add to this another quote from ITOE, p. 155. "The basic overall point would be always to keep in mind that this is a cognitive process, not an arbitrary process; it's a process of perceiving reality and is governed by the rules of reality [my add: including the reality of your brain's processes]. Nevertheless, it's our way of grasping reality; it isn't reality itself; it's only a method of acquiring knowledge, a method of cognition."
  20. I've pretty must lost track of the point that you are trying to make. As near as I can tell you think there is a fundamental and unbridgeable flaw in Rand's Epistemology as presented in ITOE. Is that correct?
  21. In order to understand what you incorrectly call "actual reality behind those appearances", it is necessary that we have an understanding of how "appearances" come to be. All knowledge is processed knowledge (not a priori, not nominalistic, not Divine Revelation, not linguistic analysis). To not understand the process by which the mind works can and has led to an infinite number of philosophical and scientific errors. The issue is not about being "infallible" (there is no such thing) but rather that the evidence of the senses is a given from which we start acquiring knowledge via percepts, concept formation, measurement omission, etc., as outlined in the ITOE. The fact that we see a bent pencil in water is reality. For you to ignore or dismiss this fact of reality as unimportant is misguided. You want to know how "reality" works without first understanding how your brain works.
  22. There is a certain looseness in terms in this thread, and to the extent that I might have contributed to it, let me try and clarify. There are sensations, percepts and concepts (both abstractions-from-concretes and abstractions-from-abstractions) and propositions. From the Lexicon [Man’s] senses do not provide him with automatic knowledge in separate snatches independent of context, but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate. . . . His senses cannot deceive him, . . . physical objects cannot act without causes, . . . his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort . . . the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives. Wrt sensations, the below image is not "fooling" you. The light is actually bent.
  23. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. 8 books in total, but well worth the read. I'm rereading it for the 3rd time right now.
  24. That's what the entirety of ITOE is for - to explain how we begin with the evidence of the senses and arrive at objective concepts, definitions, and complex propositions. Lol. I am "typing challenged".
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