Boydstun

Tad, notwithstanding endless chorusing of ad hominem against judicial process in America today, the broad and firm circumstance is as Paine envisioned: in America, the Law is King. Ad hominem of acts of government or its agents is easy, and it is a refusal to face particulars of evidence and law by prejudiced preemption. The good news for Mr. Trump is that his attorneys will be contesting each bit of evidence on specific grounds and each application of law on specific ground. Name-calling gets the client nowhere in legal process. This thread will be good for noting and possibly discussing the particulars in the unfolding of the case, probably a case critical to the continuation of constitutional democratic process and republic form of America. Page 30 Pages 34–35 Effective defense includes undermining such particular evidence to an extent sufficient to persuade at least one juror that the charge to which the evidence goes has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Hollering that the Special Counsel or the Devil or "the establishment" or "the deep state" has it in for Defendant does not stand as warranting reasonable doubt.

Indictment

Philosophers have gotten themselves informed on the content of the sciences and on modern logic and the frontiers of mathematics. They then write about what methods they see those professionals using. C. S. Peirce found not only induction, but abduction. Philosophers continue to think about how these work and how they help deliver the spectacular successes of modern science, which is alive and well from Newton to now, notwithstanding pessimistic orations on science from the ignorant peanut gallery of humanities folk. Recent ongoing informed work by philosophers on science and its methods: The Material Theory of Induction by John D. Norton The Art of Abduction by Igor Douven The Inference that Makes Science by Ernan McMullin People making discoveries in the world use methods that may have not received so much close examination as later a philosopher might bring on it. I’m not aware of any such methods being improved by later explicit exposition and elucidation of the method by philosophers. But I haven’t heard of science or the other specialized rationally organized disciplines being held back either by advice from philosophers (largely ignored perhaps). Actually, there was a case in which a philosophical view calling for a certain constraint on good deductions yielded a mathematical proof that had been unsuccessfully aimed for (aimed for because the thesis was pretty obviously true) to that point. That man was a philosopher and a mathematician (and a priest) Bernard Bolzano. Following his own special advice on deductions, he found a proof of the mean value theorem. William Whewell in the century before last noticed a very effective sort of argumentation in natural science, which he called Consilience of Inductions. It may be valuable to make this method explicitly known, but without such explicit identification, it seems to me that even as far back as Aristotle the method was profitably in use, as when Aristotle mustered all the independent lines of evidence pointing to the result that the earth is in fact round. The result set by that consilience was so persuasive that it held in firm minds for about 500 years, both minds and the result crumbling finally with the onset of the Dark Ages. For a good while now, no philosophy of science is given serious attention by the professionals (or by me) if the characterizations of science are not backed up with precise illustration in actual episodes, actual cases, in the history of science. As I recall, the little book The Logical Leap – Induction in Physics, by David Harriman, marshals at least some illustrative history. Leonard Peikoff’s ideas on induction are presented and applied in that book. I don’t recall any claim that use of this method in physics would improve physics, such as a claim that if Newton had used this method (and a claim that he did not use it) he would have done a better job. That would have been a silly claim. I hope your suggestion that Objectivism logically entails such silliness is not your point. That would be a false point.

Do we have any Constitutional basis for barring States from setting up their public education systems (funded with State taxes and local property taxes and presently 7% federal funds)? With or without that barrier, we do have Constitutional bases for separation of Church and State in America. The Oklahoma Secretary of State (who, like the Governor, is a Republican) has maintained throughout that the Catholic charter school plan is unconstitutional by its violation of the separation of Church and State. New Development

HRSD, There was no need to originate her own definition or for her to do any tweaking to standard biology texts and their definitions in order to get on with the the philosophical project she could undertake upon that modern scientific knowledge. And she wanted her philosophy to be seamlessly integrated with firm science and ordinary experience. Concerning your second query in the quote above: Rand's philosophy so far as it concerns the arena of the living as topic can be set surely, I say, upon biological knowledge as was available at the time of Aristotle and Galen. That much biology was enough for the same definition, the same elementary conception of what the living is, including even that life is an end in itself. One wouldn't need to know that there is a nervous system, that organisms are cellular, that thought and emotions are not features belonging not to the heart, but the brain, or that the heart pumps blood through a returning circuit. There are other factors that would make it unlikely that Rand's ethics, a philosophy of human life, could have been conceived prior to the modern age. Like us, the ancients knew that humans die and are susceptible to various sorts of threats from nature and other humans. They knew also that humans needed to produce in order to survive. But they had no experience of the vast results of science and technology such as we have today (and the ways [[e.g. in electrodynamics] we use mathematics to bring those into existence). And they had no conception of the philosophies that would be arising between their time and the time of Rand. Like any philosopher with a big philosophy, Rand formulated her theory of value and ethics minded of all the intervening philosophy (and theology) and history of philosophic ideas available, and she knew that modern science and technology, as well as history of philosophical thought, were influences with her potential audience for her own different, positive proposals in philosophy.

By Rachel Laser Ms. Laser is the president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. NYT – 1 August 2023

Mathematics used to be called a science. Logic used to be called a science. Metaphysics was called a science by Kant and his German Rationalist predecessors. In more recent years, we call those by the super-ordinate of them and of science: rationally organized disciplines, but we no longer call them science. By "science" we do not mean what Aristotle or the early moderns meant by it. We mean only empirical science such as physics, chemistry, geology, or biology as they have developed in and after the Scientific Revolution. Rand took her definition of life as self-generated, self-sustaining action from biology books. (She gave a little longer definition in ITOE, also from biology book.) But what she did with the concept after stating it was not something one would find in a biology book. She put it to use in making a theory of value, and although one can draw on anthropology and child development concerning moral concepts from psychological research (of a scientific sort), theory of value and ethics has remained a topic in the job description of philosophy (or usually less rationally, of religion). A subdivision of philosophy, called natural philosophy, later became disciplines that are the various physical sciences today, as you probably know. Their methods and boundaries and overlaps are not set by philosophy, but internally by the scientific discipline and its history. Newton's method of using a certain equation of free fall at the earth's surface from Galileo in application to bits of orbits of planets whose shapes he showed also would necessarily vary according to various candidates for what is the strength of a central attractive force as a function of distance from the source of the force, and then showing the Kepler patterns capturing empirical observation results for orbits implies which of those central force candidates is the one true in the solar system, in the end demonstrating that the force causing free fall at the surface of the earth is identical to the central attractive force pulling satellites into their orbits (such as planetary orbits about the sun) IS NO METHOD HANDED DOWN FROM PHILOSOPHY NOR EVER CONCEIVED AS A ROUTE TO SOLID KNOWLEDGE BY PHILOSOPHY—not Aristotle, not F. Bacon, not Locke. Newton was doing some philosophizing in his later exchanges (through Samuel Clarke) with Leibniz, but none of THAT either had anything to do with the technique Newton employed to remake the world, which was a method devised by a mind deep into the science of mechanics and geometry up to his time. My description of what Newton did in the preceding is only off the top of my head and from memory across many years ago. (And I'm taking some issue with Rand on the historical and proper relations between philosophy and science, so far as I understand her [just the way you mentioned].) So for aid in exactitude, I would like to point to the great definitive explication, for possible needed adjustments to my representation: The Key to Newton's Dynamics (1995) by J. Bruce Brackenridge.

Infrabeat, They are quotes from my earlier composition that included my compilation of research done to the time of that compilation. I can chase down the original research papers and books going into the compilation if anyone is ever in need of that. And I probably have the larger cognitive development sequence I had compiled up to about age 3 from this modern research still stashed away somewhere, which was a handout I made for a presentation I made (I think in Boulder in 1998). The "one" is any human being whatever. Sometimes people use "you" that way. I generally prefer "one" to "you" because the latter can get misconstrued as carrying a sense of talking down to the audience as inferior to the writer. I'm glad you mentioned that use of "one" in this developmental context because it gives me a perch to say explicitly and with stress: This development applies to everyone. And that goes for all the philosophers who have ever speculated on child development. They themselves followed THIS course, whatever the Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Mill, or Rand may have set forth in the descriptive portions of their epistemologies or their other representation of human nature. I've encountered a few accomplished philosophers even in the last three decades who do not acknowledge that if they are going to write about the origin of concepts or philosophy of perception, they need to assimilate the related psychological and neuropsychological research; if they are going to write about metaphysics (beyond its history), they need to assimilate modern physics, including field theory; and if they are going to write any sort of biocentric sort of theory of value, including ethics, they need to assimilate biology and scientific anthropology. They need to do those assimilations even as they bring the philosophic mind to its special tasks and methods in those areas of philosophy in order to do the best job possible. In 1990 l started my (hardcopy) philosophy journal titled Objectivity, to which I gave the subtitle A Journal of Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Theory of Value Informed by Modern Science. By now the major part of the profession not doing history of philosophy have come around to holding themselves to that subtitle. I am pleased to say that yesterday I secured arrangements of the online facsimile of Objectivity known as Objectivity Archive, with its supplementary Indexes to be preserved online throughout the life of the generation after I die (and he says he is going to pass the responsibility to his son after that). So all of the links I have made in online discussions to works of people in that journal will remain valid for continued use by this subculture a long time after my time.

27 July 2023

Another 500 years of life with mind still cranking!

"The promise of centralized education took money out of local communities, funded a massive bureaucracy and gave back pennies on the dollar but with the authority to influence local policy through federal purse strings." He's got the United States confused with some other country. Here there was no such promise or vision of centralized education. There was the policy and practice of holding schools to the US Civil Rights Act if they receive federal funds. How K-12 Education is Funded Massive Resistance history here in my state. Virginia Avoidance of Desegregation – History that some parents want suppressed and other parents want sounded loud and clear. (And some of we non-parents who financially support these schools take these opposite sides also.)

Perhaps the better term for first day is cognition. I have written about those early days here before, and I'll copy that over to here (the multi-quote function is not working this morning). I find it rather challenging to try to divide what is going on in this early development between reason and instinct. From Early Development – Concepts and Quantities

Mia Patton – "Rise"

That is to say: You already asked that a few days ago, and I took some time to compose a response. Then you post as if the previous exchange never took place. How is this worthwhile? I'll not bother further with this trivia and "talking to hear your teeth rattle."

The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (1992) by Harry Binswanger ~Part 1~ In this work, Harry Binswanger rejects the idea that the ends-attaining actions of living things are the result of a kind of sui generis cause appearing in nature in living things and not derivative from the causes in play in inanimate nature. That is, he sets aside the vitalist view of living action; there is no vital force inexplicable in terms of complexes of inanimate forces. Actions in which there are ends-behaviors are indeed peculiar to living things. But at this stage of science, we profitably seek to explain these behaviors by physical and chemical processes in certain structures. The patterns of behaviors in living things—from unicellular organisms to plants and animals—that appear to be aimed at goals or ends such as survival or reproduction are, in Binswanger’s argument, to be conceived as emergent from inanimate processes. His general position, which I think correct, is aptly called emergentist teleologist. Binswanger affirms the reality of goal-directedness in living nature, even where no directing consciousness is in play. It is cognitively important, in Binswanger’s view, that vegetative teleological patterns of action be understood as causal, even though teleology in living nature (e.g. plant tropisms) is explicable in terms of inanimate forces of nature. “Explanation on the level of parts does not necessarily eliminate the need for explanation on the level of wholes, and vice versa” (23). Our understanding of some things under the form ‘A because B’ is without the ‘because’ being causal (Lange 2017). Let A be the fact that the three angles of any triangle in the Euclidean plane sum to two right angles (2R), and let B be all the circumstances invoked directly or indirectly in Euclid’s proof of the 2R theorem. No causal powers are essential to that ‘because’ and understanding. Binswanger is not making out vegetative ends-directedness, or vegetative teleology, to be a non-causal ‘because’, but a causal one. I’ll show how he does that in Part 3 of this study. (Earlier remarks on Binswanger’s book include Mozes 1995, Enright 2023, and here.) “Now the principles which cause motion in a natural way are two, of which one is not natural, as it has no principle of motion in itself. Of this kind is whatever causes movement, not being itself moved, such as that which is completely unchangeable, the primary reality, and the essence of a thing, i.e. the form; for this is the end or that for the sake of which. Hence since nature is for the sake of something, we must know this cause also. We must explain the ‘why’ in all the senses of the term, namely, that from this will necessarily result (‘from this’ either without qualification or for the most part); that this must be so if that is to be so (as the conclusion presupposes the premisses); that this was the essence of the thing; and because it is better thus (not without qualification, but with reference to the substance in each case).” (Aristotle, Ph. 198a36–198b9) (I’ll compare this translation to that of Joe Sachs when I receive the latter.) Form is the cause-for-the-sake-of-which in unmoved movers. One such mover would be essences of things. Against this Aristotelian view, Rand and Binswanger and I have it that there are no such movers outside situations in which there is mortal life. If essences have causal powers, it can be only by their connection with living mind. Aristotle’s conception of what power is had by essences directly is flatly wrong. On the Rand view, which I think correct, essential characteristic(s) of a thing explain other distinctive characteristics of a thing, and that explanation is sometimes causal. As we get to know the microstructure of a material it may deserve being taken as the essential characteristic of the material (and stand in the definition of the material for many contexts) in that that characteristic distinguishes the material from any other, but further, the microstructure, when well enough known, can provide a causal explanation of features of the material on its macroscopic scale. Such a profound dependence of essential characteristic on state of knowledge is not within Aristotle’s conception of an essence; anything added to an essence changes it to a different essence, and the essence of each thing is singular (Metaph. 1044a1, 1031b5). For him essences are substances without matter (Metaph. 1032b14). They are causes, and they are forms (Metaph. 983a27, 1032b2–14). We moderns by and large not only reject his notion of essence, but Aristotle’s distinctive notion of form as well and operation of final causality in an arena larger than the arena of concrete life (including human artifacts in the arena of concrete life). Aristotle’s essences and forms aside, his conception is correct that there are final causes at work in unintelligent life forms, final causes that are independent of any directing mind whatever (Bolton 2015). Binswanger aims to show this is so as modern biological knowledge is brought to the issue. For Aristotle, such final causes are not simply fallout from efficient causes, so I’ll be looking for how Binswanger’s analysis lands on this specific character of vegetative and sensitive final causes. Aristotle famously used ends and causes-for-the-sake-of-which (traditionally called final cause, but now often called teleological cause) in explanations for not only the survival and reproductive activities of plants and animals, but for the actions of simpler things, for the actions of elemental substances. Earthen things naturally move downward to the center of the cosmos, which center coincides with the center of the earth (Cael. 296b10–24). That is their deepest nature. The center is their natural place, and they fall so as to reach that place (Cael. 277a213–16; 295b16–96a22; 311a23–24). The natural motion of water is also downward (Cael. 269a17). This is a very thin sort of final causality in comparison to what Aristotle sees at work in complex things such as plants or animals which are composed of these elemental substances, and in Aristotle’s view, the final causes in living things are not due to this thin final causality in the elements composing living things (Gotthelf 2012, 65). Then too, the natural end of the falling rain is not success of the human project of growing grains (Ph. 198b18–20). It quickly occurs to us moderns that final causality is not employed in our Newtonian mechanics: accelerations require a causal explanation, and those causes are efficient, not teleological. We make use of the circumstance that in classical mechanics, nature acts such that certain patterns in dynamical variables come about (e.g. Hamilton’s Principle), but no final causality drawing nature to those patterns is required or invoked. So it goes, also, for thermal physics and for quantum theory and relativity. The falling of a body near the surface of the earth is not on account of tending to its natural place. Its intrinsic nature is to follow time-like geodesics in spacetime, which in this situation happens to be a certain curved spacetime. The falling body is not doing so and doing so in the way it does for the sake of staying on that geodesic. Aristotle was wrong in taking any sort of final causation to be at work in this physical situation. Let me digress just a bit to observe that in our physics of nature today there are also no formal causes. For my handsaw in the shop, there is a teleological cause of its existence (the human aim of cutting wood) and there is a formal cause of it (the design plan for it, with its having teeth, having a handle, and limits of the size of the saw). As Aristotle observed, correctly, my saw has a material cause also: to the purpose of cutting wood, the teeth of the blade shall be harder than wood; the saw of Aristotle’s tradesman and my saw have iron as their material cause (Ph. 200a7–14). For us moderns, when it comes to nature, rather than a human artifact, a plan of the natural object might be discerned, yet the plan, which is to say, Aristotelian form in his form-matter composite, is not something we take as an end-directing power of nature. In Aristotle’s final causality, which was identified with form in Aristotle’s matter-form amalgam, final causality had a priority in explanation over efficient and material causality. The latter were for implementing the ends in all material things. An artificial object such as a statue, a chair, a bed, or a saw have a form given them by their human makers. Such objects as such have no nature, in the view of Aristotle, only the natures of their natural materials. We moderns do not think that way, at least not after a certain childhood stage. We are as happy to go on about the nature of a tractor as of a working mule. Aristotle argues an account of “what sensible substance is, and in what sense it exists; either as matter, or as form and actuality, or thirdly as the combination of the two” (Metaph. 1043a27–28, H. Tredennick, translator). Explanation of substance (which is most fundamental thing among beings), for Aristotle, requires both matter and form in his sense. Like most all moderns, Rand and Peikoff reject Aristotle’s fundamental form/matter composition of all beings (Rand 1990 Appendix, 286; Further, “Aristotle’s Theory of Form” in Bostock 2006; Chapter 3 of Koslicki 2018; Frerejohn 2013; and Lennox 2015.) Koslicki 2018 defends Aristotle’s fundamental matter/form combination as right in our modern science and therewith opposes reductive physical efficient causation in biology. Binswanger returns mind-free teleological causes to biology without retreat to Aristotle’s hylomorphism (matter/form). Aristotle’s cluster of views on final causality (and formal causality) had flourished in the Scholastic era of the Latin West and earlier with Avicenna, Arab assimilator of Aristotle. I should note, however, that these theologically minded fellows actually failed to leave Aristotle’s notion of natural teleology in operation and replaced it with a regression to Plato, wherewith superintending intelligence directs the course of all things with ends in view; Aristotle’s notion of mind-free teleology was booted. Be all that as it may: today, the appearances of teleological behaviors in plants and low-level sensory behaviors of animals have been accounted for by the efficient-causal factors in biological evolution, originating with Darwin, and efficient-causal factors in molecular biology (Sarkar 2005). In Part 2, I’ll look at Aristotle’s teleological causality in vegetative and sensitive life and in the heavens. I’ll convey the rejection of such natural causality in Descartes and Spinoza, as well as its resurrection by Leibniz. Part 3 will present Binswanger’s post-Darwin analysis of teleological causality in vegetative and sensitive life and set Binswanger’s scheme into the prior history of philosophy covered in the first two Parts of this study. This study is worthwhile in itself, but I undertook it for background for addressing computation and representation in cognitive science today in connection with David Kelley’s way with direct perceptual realism in The Evidence of the Senses in the course of completing my study “David Kelley’s Kant” here at Objectivism Online. In the present study, I’ll particularly want to assess the implications of Binswanger’s scheme for Ayn Rand’s theory of value. (To be continued.) References Aristotle 2016 [c. 348–322 B.C.E.]. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. Physics. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, translators. In Barnes 1984. ——. On the Heavens. J.L. Stocks, translator. In Barnes 1984. Barnes, J. editor, 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bolton, R. 2015. Aristotle’s Natural Teleology in Physics II. In Leunissen 2015. Bostock, D. 2006. Space, Time, Matter, and Form – Essays on Aristotle’s Physics. New York: Oxford University Press. Enright, M. 2023. Life is not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life’s Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 23, Nos. 1–2, (2023), 218–79. Frerejohn, M.T. 2013. Formal Causes: Definition, Explanation, and Primacy in Socratic and Aristotelian Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.å Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelley, D. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses – A Realist Theory of Perception. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Lange, M. 2017. Because without Cause – Non-Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press. Lennox, J.G. 2015. Form as Cause and the Formal Cause. In Leunissen 2015. Leunissen, M. editor, 2015. Aristotle’s Physics – A Critical Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mozes, E. 1995. The Reality of Mind. Objectivity 2(1):93–107. Rand, A. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian. Sarkar, S. 2005. Molecular Models of Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

As I said last night, I don't know. I offered to look at some history today, and possibly conjecture on source(s) of those examples. I'm not sure now however, if you'd be interested in that. I've always assumed the knee-jerk counting was made up, like making up something by way of communicating some message in a fictional story, such as Rand making up a Board of Directors meeting in Atlas. Only in non-fiction, the made-up stuff is for ease of some of her readers and flair and interest-capture for her audience attracted to her writing style from reading her fiction. Of course, it is reasonable to guess that such elements in her non-fiction are also from time constraints and running out of energy for the library research necessary to find actual cases for what one is trying to convey from one's impressions. I take what I find valuable in all thinkers, regardless of their shortfalls in such things as their lack of references, which I have always been fanatic about in my own essays. Rand did write a piece about B.F. Skinner and a popular book of his that was out at the time. I'll leave it to you to chase that down (in Philosophy – Who Needs It) if you are that interested in the question you had posed to me. If you have read Atlas Shrugged, you likely recall her talk of "Mystics of Muscle" in the exposition of her vista (philosophy [and soft culture/psychology talk worthy of Nietzsche and, well, not me]) she gives in Galt's Speech. She indicated later in non-fiction (the essay on Skinner, if I recall correctly) that under MM she was talking not only of Marxism, but Behaviorism. I for one have always thought (e.g. 1990) that thinking of words as referring to concepts was a myopic view. Rather, words, in use, mark concepts, and concepts together with words in the use-situation refer.

InfraBeat, likely this would be part of it. I know questionnaires are still used for things like making correlations between certain sorts of people and happiness. Long ago I recall them being used to show that homosexuals were less happy than other folks. More recently showing financially successful folk are not the happiest of people. The American Journal of Psychology is probably still a good place to look for experimental methods in psychology today. I used to dig into that at libraries, although not so much as I dug into Cognition and other journals on early cognitive development. In those measuring things like looking times are productive under more recent models (of infant behaviors tied to perceptions and cognitions), but Rand/Branden did not write about this sort of research (nor Piaget) underway in their era, and this area and its methods have continued to expand since then. I have a good book on history of psychology, which I'll try to locate tomorrow, to see if there is more one can surmise on what Rand had in mind in this criticism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/methodological-individualism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-hayek/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/ Ayn Rand 1966:

The Freedom Conservatism declaration surely reads as if a group drafted it, with so much generality-talk and often the first and second sentence of a plank being in tension with each other. Put me to wondering what that other document looks like these days. It's quite a bit more specific and perhaps fairly consistent all the same. Marks that it is a compromise among a group remain, of course. (I don't entirely agree with either declaration.) 1.0 PERSONAL LIBERTY Individuals are inherently free to make choices for themselves and must accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. No individual, group, or government may rightly initiate force against any other individual, group, or government. Libertarians reject the notion that groups have inherent rights. We support the rights of the smallest minority, the individual. 1.1 Self-Ownership Individuals own their bodies and have rights over them that other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate. Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life. 1.2 Expression and Communication We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation, or control of communications media and technology. Language that is perceived to be offensive to certain groups or individuals is not a cause for any legal action. Speech that is not literally a threat of aggression or violence is not in itself aggression or violence and can never be used to justify aggression or violence. Individuals are responsible for their own reactions to speech. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions that either aid or attack any religion. 1.3 Privacy Libertarians advocate individual privacy and government transparency. We are committed to ending government’s practice of spying on everyone. We support the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, property, and communications. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure should include records held by third parties, such as email, medical, and library records. 1.4 Personal Relationships Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration, or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, promote, license, or restrict personal relationships, regardless of the number of participants. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Until such time as the government stops its illegitimate practice of marriage licensing, such licenses must be granted to all consenting adults who apply. 1.5 Parental Rights Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs, provided that the rights of children to be free from abuse and neglect are also protected. 1.6 Adult Rights and Responsibilities Once individuals are presumed to have adequate judgment to vote and serve on a jury or in the military, they should also be presumed to have sufficient judgment to decide their own purchase and use of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, cannabis, and engage in other activities currently restricted by government due to age. 1.7 Crime and Justice Government force must be limited to the protection of the rights of individuals to life, liberty, and property, and governments must never be permitted to violate these rights. Laws should be limited in their application to violations of the rights of others through force or fraud, or to deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm. Therefore, we favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as gambling, the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, and consensual transactions involving sexual services. We support restitution to the victim to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer. The constitutional rights of the criminally accused, including due process, a speedy trial, legal counsel, trial by jury, and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, must be preserved. We assert the common-law right of juries to judge not only the facts but also the justice of the law. We oppose the prosecutorial practice of “over-charging” in criminal prosecutions so as to avoid jury trials by intimidating defendants into accepting plea bargains. Additionally, we support the abolition of qualified immunity so that law enforcement and prosecutors would be held legally accountable for misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions or other acts of injustice. 1.8 Death Penalty We oppose the administration of the death penalty by the state. 1.9 Self-Defense The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the individual right recognized by the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. Private property owners should be free to establish their own conditions regarding the presence of personal defense weapons on their own property. We oppose all laws at any level of government restricting, registering, or monitoring the ownership, manufacture, or transfer of firearms, ammunition, or firearm accessories. 2.0 ECONOMIC LIBERTY Libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society. 2.1 Aggression, Property, and Contract Aggression is the use, trespass against, or invasion of the borders of another person’s owned resource (property) without the owner’s consent; or the threat thereof. We oppose all acts of aggression as illegitimate and unjust, whether committed by private actors or the state. Each person is the presumptive owner of his or her own body (self-ownership), which right may be forfeited only as a consequence of committing an act of aggression. Property rights in external, scarce resources are determined in accordance with the principles of original appropriation or homesteading (whereby a person becomes an owner of an unowned resource by first use and transformation), contract (whereby the owner consensually transfers ownership to another person), and rectification (whereby an owner’s property rights in certain resources are transferred to a victim of the owner’s tort, trespass, or aggression to compensate the victim). As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) are abridgements of such fundamental rights. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties should be free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable. 2.2 Environment Competitive free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources. Governments are unaccountable for damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection. Protecting the environment requires a clear definition and enforcement of individual rights and responsibilities regarding resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Where damages can be proven and quantified in a court of law, restitution to the injured parties must be required. 2.3 Energy and Resources While energy is needed to fuel a modern society, government should not be subsidizing any particular form of energy. We oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production. 2.4 Government Finance and Spending Since all persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor, we oppose all government activity that consists of the forcible collection of money or goods from individuals in violation of their individual rights and strive for the eventual repeal of all taxation. To further that end, we call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. We support any initiative to reduce or abolish any tax, and oppose any increase on any tax for any reason. To the extent possible, we advocate that all public services be funded or allowed to be provided in a voluntary manner. 2.5 Government Debt Government should not incur debt, which burdens future generations without their consent. We support the passage of a “Balanced Budget Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes. 2.6 Government Employees We favor repealing any requirement that one must join or pay dues to a union as a condition of government employment. We advocate replacing defined-benefit pensions with defined-contribution plans, as are commonly offered in the private sector, so as not to impose debt on future generations without their consent. 2.7 Money and Financial Markets We favor free-market banking, with unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types. Markets are not actually free unless fraud is vigorously combated. Those who enjoy the possibility of profits must not impose risks of losses upon others, such as through government guarantees or bailouts. We support ending federal student loan guarantees and special treatment of student loan debt in bankruptcy proceedings. Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies and unconstitutional legal tender laws. 2.8 Marketplace Freedom Libertarians support free markets. We defend the right of individuals to form commercial enterprises based on voluntary association. We oppose all forms of government subsidies and bailouts to business, labor, or any other special interest. Government should not compete with private enterprise. We reject government charter of corporations. We call for a separation of business and state. 2.9 Licensing Libertarians support the right of every person to earn an honest and peaceful living through the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. Accordingly, we oppose occupational and other licensing laws that infringe on this right or treat it as a state-granted privilege. We encourage certifications by voluntary associations of professionals. 2.10 Sex Work The Libertarian Party supports the decriminalization of prostitution. We assert the right of consenting adults to provide sexual services to clients for compensation, and the right of clients to purchase sexual services from consenting sex workers. 2.11 Labor Markets Employment and compensation agreements between private employers and employees are outside the scope of government, and these contracts should not be encumbered by government-mandated benefits or social engineering. We support the right of private employers and employees to choose whether or not to bargain with each other through a labor union. Bargaining should be free of government interference, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain. 2.12 Education Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability, and efficiency with more diversity of choice. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we would restore authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents should have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children’s education. 2.13 Health Care We favor a free market health care system. Medical facilities, medical providers, and medical products (including drugs) must be freely available in the marketplace without government restrictions or licenses. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health insurance they want (if any), the level of health care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions. People should be free to purchase health insurance across state lines. We oppose governments either mandating, or restricting voluntary access to, medical treatments or procedures including vaccines. 2.14 Retirement and Income Security Retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Libertarians would phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private voluntary system. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become even more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its activity in this realm. 3.0 SECURING LIBERTY In the United States, constitutional limits on government were intended to prevent the infringement of individual rights by those in power. The only proper purpose of government, should it exist, is the protection of individual rights. The principle of non-initiation of force should guide relationships between governments. 3.1 National Defense We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world. We oppose any form of compulsory national service. 3.2 Internal Security and Individual Rights Individual rights shall not be curtailed, whether based on circumstances of war, epidemic, natural disaster or emergency, or any other pretense. Intelligence agencies that legitimately seek to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency. We oppose the government’s use of secret classifications to keep from the public information that it should have, especially that which shows that the government has violated the law. We oppose the use of torture and other cruel and unusual punishments, without exception. 3.3 International Affairs American foreign policy should emphasize peace with all nations, entangling alliances with none. We would end the current U.S. government policies of foreign intervention including military and economic aid; tariffs; economic sanctions; and regime change. We recognize the right of all people to resist tyranny and defend themselves and their rights. We condemn the use of force, and especially the use of terrorism, against the innocent, regardless of whether such acts are committed by governments or by political or revolutionary groups. 3.4 Free Trade and Migration We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. 3.5 Rights and Discrimination Libertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that “right.” We uphold and defend the rights of every person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any other aspect of their identity. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference, or sexual orientation. Members of private organizations retain their rights to set whatever standards of association they deem appropriate, and individuals are free to respond with ostracism, boycotts, and other free market solutions. 3.6 Representative Government We staunchly defend the rights to petition the government for redress of grievances and to express dissent. These rights are thwarted when government acts behind closed doors. We support election systems that are more representative of the electorate at the federal, state, and local levels, such as proportional representation, alternative voting systems, and explicit inclusion of “none of the above” on all ballots. As private voluntary groups, political parties should be free to establish their own rules for nomination procedures, primaries and conventions. We call for an end to any tax-financed subsidies to candidates or parties and the repeal of all laws that restrict voluntary financing of election campaigns. We oppose laws that effectively exclude alternative candidates and parties, deny ballot access, gerrymander districts, or deny the voters their right to consider all alternatives. We advocate initiative, referendum, recall, repeal, and oppose any effort to deny these options when used as popular checks on government. 3.7 Self-Determination Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the right of the people to alter, abolish, or withdraw from it, and to agree to such new governance, or none, as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty. We recognize the right to political self-determination, including secession. Exercise of this right does not require permission from others.

Pretty nice. One misrepresentation: "But the core of her belief system is quite simple: Individuals are inherently "heroic," while governments only restrict human freedom, potential and happiness." No. The core of her philosophy, even the human-value part of it, is not anything political. And within the political, it is false that Rand held that all governments "only restrict human freedom, potential and happiness." That is someone else's political view, not Rand's. On this point the author was doing the usual of distorting Rand's views to suit his own or his boss.

Historical Background to Reductionism in Biology – Philosophical and Scientific https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reduction-biology/#HistBackPhilScie

Religion in Human Evolution – From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age Robert N. Bellah (Harvard 2017) https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975347&content=toc Start with chapter 7 for your interest in Ancient Greeks and their prelude. Jump back to earlier material in the book for needed wider layout and the terminology (use Index). The Beginnings of Western Science – The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 David C. Lindberg (Chicago 2007, 2nd edition) https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo5550077.html 1. SCIENCE BEFORE THE GREEKS What Is Science? Prehistoric Attitudes toward Nature The Beginnings of Science in Egypt and Mesopotamia 2. THE GREEKS AND THE COSMOS The World of Homer and Hesiod The First Greek Philosophers The Milesians and the Question of Underlying Reality The Question of Change The Problem of Knowledge Plato’s World of Forms Plato’s Cosmology The Achievement of Early Greek Philosophy 3. ARISTOTLE’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE Life and Works Metaphysics and Epistemology Nature and Change Cosmology Motion, Terrestrial and Celestial Aristotle as a Biologist Aristotle’s Achievement . . .

A straight line (also, humor) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3510975262474684&set=p.3510975262474684&type=3