Boydstun

In the present era, do parents have a moral responsibility to finance a child's college education? How much college? Is it morally irresponsible to have children if one is not assuming responsibility for financing the child's future college education, in the event that the child turns out to be college material?

As I recall across my lifetime, the candidates of the two parties spent most of their political campaigns sloganeering that the reason to voted for them was that they were not the other guy. The Democrats this time will surely be keeping the abortion issue salient, which is not a puffed-up issue, like which public restroom to go to, but a real one, coming down to metaphysics and theory of individual rights. Close to 20% of we voters, on either side, have taken it for our decisive issue in any Presidential or Senate race for decades, even when the Parties had not emphasized it in the general election. I surely wish one of the Presidential nominees would make a balanced federal budget their top issue in the 2024 campaign (and not in some plan for a mythical ten years down the road that never comes). We can be pretty sure, however, that most of the campaign money in the general election will be spent on smearing the opponent, and mostly with simply name-calling. It was not so long ago that there was intelligence on both sides in at least the Presidential television debates. In that, I think a really good debate would be between Nikki Haley and Elizabeth Warren. Wrong as either is, they are intelligent and good debaters. However much the leading candidates for the nominations at present would like to take steps towards dictatorship (or however much they simply turn a blind eye to the circumstance that their policies contribute to that drift), they and most of their followers qualify only as proto-fascist, not themselves would-be dictators. Proto-fascist was the term Ayn Rand applied to the George Wallace campaign for President in 1968, for specific reasons she spelled out, and it is the term right for the attitude and some positions bannered by Mr. Trump and some factions among his supporters. On the Democrats' Left side of American politics in recent years, their idea of socialist ideals (mostly mere slogans in the case of the Representative from Queens) is enormously scaled back from what left-socialism in America meant in the first seven decades of the last century. Today's watered-down "let's help suffering people and the environment and feel virtuous" (with other people's money, and truly not virtuous even if the money had been their own) is hardly the old American democratic socialism.*

Perhaps the reactionary outlawing of abortion and bootlicking the modern witchdoctors by Republican candidates had something to do with it. Trump blamed failure of anti-abortionists to show up to vote.* And he blamed their boosting of "extreme" anti-abortion measures at the State level for backlash additional to the overthrow of Roe. It is time (2024), as ever, to vote against any anti-abortionist candidates; at least don't vote for them.

AI Facilitating Mind-Reading This could become a way for paralyzed people to communicate. It might become a way for the government to get information from people (and obviate attempts to get information by torture). At present, the system requires not only our general knowledge of where things are typically thought in the brain, but knowledge of the brain operations of the specific individual, and this latter requires about 16 hours of investigation of the subject individual before successful mind reading. If this system could overcome that arduous preliminary learning and if the system could be shrunken down the size of a skull cap, perhaps hats would come back into fashion. A dating service might offer the hats to be worn for users of the dating service. It might be a sport to go on dates with these hats in which you get the low-down of what your date is really thinking about. When x-rays were first discovered, the newspapers entertained the possible future in which people could walk down the street wearing glasses through which you could see the bodies underneath the clothes. But that was a very long time ago, and nothing like peeping glasses has eventuated so far as I know.

PS – earlier helpful information In Kant’s view, our experience of space does not consist of separate disconnected bits nor of less than three dimensions. We experience spatial form directly and as a unified whole. The presentation that is space is an intuition. That presentation is one whose constituent parts are not prior their whole, not parts whose accumulation makes their whole, and not instances under a concept of that whole. Rather, the parts of intuitive presentations, such as the parts of space, are by limitations and divisions of a singular, unified whole. All objects encountered or even possible in sensory experience have their places in that unitary space. Our abstract geometric reasoning, Euclidean geometry, is not disconnected from the space of our sensory experience (KrV A22–30 B37–45; B162; A140–42 B180–82; A162–66 B202–7; A223–24 B271–72; A712–24 B740–52). Our experience of time, in Kant’s view, is also of a continuous unified whole. All objects, whether in sensory or inner experience, have their places in that one time. Physical things endure and have their motions in determinate ways obligating our perception of them in just those temporal and spatial ways (KrV A30–41 B46–58; A103–10; B136–40; B150–56; B162–63; A140–45 B181–85; A189–211 B232–56). Kant’s faculty of understanding is a part of what has traditionally been called reason. The power of understanding is the power of concepts. Our rational faculties beyond the understanding are two, which Kant called the faculties of judgment and reason. The powers of reason, in this narrower sense, are of inference and cognitive management (KrV A130–31 B169–70; A686–87 B714–15; A723–38 B751–76). The three higher faculties work together, and each is a grand cognitive unifier (A67–234 B93–294; A669–704 B697–732). Kant joined his philosophy of experience and understanding to fundamental physics (1786). He further elaborated our cognitive powers to enfold our esthetic capabilities (1790). In the power he called reason, he located the keys to morality. Between reason and morality, there is no divide (KrV A800–819 B828–47; 1785, 4:389–90, 403–4, 408, 411–13, 426–40, 446–48, 453–63; 1788, 5:15–16, 31, 42–57, 89–110, 119–21, 131–32, 134–48; 1797, 6:213–21, 375–78, 396–97). Yet, the reality of moral law, free will, and God largely transcend reality accessible by our intuition and understanding. Kant inherited entrenched problematic divides in philosophy. Older among them would be the divide between the material world of the senses and the immaterial realm of thought, soul, and God; the divide between inclination and moral obligation; and the divide between reason and faith. More recent among them would be the divide between the deterministic world of science and the inner world of freedom; the divide between the value-absent world of reason and the value-full world of action and feeling; and the divide between things and their effects on us. Where Kant attempted to smooth together those divisions, he succeeded little. Kant deepened and hardened the divide between inclination and moral obligation. However many ties he made between sensing and thinking, he deepened and hardened the divide between them. Moreover, he deepened and hardened the divide between things and their effects on us. His embrace and expansion of that divide entailed that all the unity and structure he would give to experience, understanding, and morality must come from the side of the subject. Space, time, objects, identity, causality, and moral reasons—all of them, systematically and fantastically, and seductively to many bright thinkers, must come from the constitution of an articulate subject striving for and touched by things as they are in themselves, things as they cannot be in our grasp, things with their own articulation unknowable to us. Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel would innovate their own further integrations to bridge or dissolve problematic divides as they stood in Kant’s philosophy, but their solutions further increased the crafting of reality by subjectivity and, of course, continued to make room for the supernatural. Leonard Peikoff was partly right, though in considerable exaggeration, to call Kant’s philosophy anti-integration (2012, 34–35). That was part of Kant’s endeavor, a result overachieved, alongside his achievements of integration. Rand’s world and ours is only one world. There is life, condition of consciousness and value. Human consciousness and valuation are open to human choice, within the one, natural world. In all the one world, existence is identity. Consciousness is identification, the grasp of what is and exclusion of what is not. Consciousness is an active process of differentiation and integration. We grasp the world in its given particulars, settings, dimensions, interactions, and magnitude structures. We detect and measure in perception, joined to the magnitude structures there in the world. Our concepts, at their best, rearticulate the world’s own articulation, including its magnitude structures. We are highly integrated in our cognitive powers and highly integrated with the only world, the one available for perception, comprehension, enjoyment, and action. References Kant, I. 1781, 1787. Critique of Pure Reason (KrV). W. S. Pluhar, translator. 1996. Hackett. ——. 1785. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. M. J. Gregor, translator. In Immanuel Kant – Practical Philosophy. 1996. Cambridge. ——. 1786. Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. M. Friedman, translator. In Immanuel Kant – Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. H. Allison and P. Heath, editors. 2002. Cambridge. ——. 1788. Critique of Practical Reason. M. J. Gregor, translator. In Practical Philosophy. 1996. Cambridge. ——. 1790. Critique of Judgment. W. S. Pluhar, translator. 1987. Hackett. ——. 1797. The Metaphysics of Morals. M. J. Gregor, translator. In Practical Philosophy. 1996. Cambridge. Peikoff, L. 2012. The DIM Hypothesis. NAL.

RF, where on earth did you get the position set out in your first paragraph? Do you have some text from some Objectivist writer that you could refer to for me to read or, better yet, that you could simply quote with citation here? That might show me that something like what you wrote in that paragraph is anything in Objectivist philosophy, and indeed clarify exactly what you are trying to say in that paragraph. I wondered also, What have you studied in the history of skepticism?

Thanks. Wonderful.

This is not a concerto, but it has always seemed to me to have the right spirit and contour.

Gnome07, welcome. Rand was clear that she thought we perceive things as they are and that this is by subsidiary processing by the nervous system making the perception possible. I don't think Objectivism should depart from that approach when it comes to doing human actions like opting to double-tie my shoe laces this evening. I choose to do the deed, I move my physical fingers rightly with the physical laces. That really happens. Also, there is the underlying nerve and muscle operations at work in doing all that, which we learn from the scientists, and this is not knowledge I put to work in getting the skill or in engaging it this evening. The directness in choosing and performing the act is real, and so are the subsidiary physiological processes. I do not see how entity-causation bars an infinite regress. If one buys that every alteration in the world requires an entity (meaning the entity-category of Rand's) causing it and every causing entity requires other entities bringing IT about, one is stuck in the usual, tired infinite regress. One should NOT accept that every alteration requires an entity to cause it (though it still needs entities to bear the alteration), for Galileo-Descartes-Newton made new thinking caps for us to put on: motion (an alteration of location) of a body requires no propelling cause if the motion is at constant speed and in an unchanging straight line (and without air resistance); every deviation from that sort of trajectory DOES require a causal explanation, that is, THESE deviation-alterations DO require causal explanations, and we will profit by looking for those causes. I'd balk at the idea that "entity" in Rand's sense is the only sort of thing that can cause anything to occur. What causes me to feel warmth of the sand on the beach or coolness of the water I'm splashing through is rate of heat flow into or out of my skin. We have receptors evolved to detect that feature of the action that is heat flow, namely the rate of the heat flow. Actions are a different category from entities in Rand's metaphysics. We may note that the heat transport is because one of two bodies is hotter than the other, but that does not change the fact that the living sensor is responding to rate of heat flow, that being the cause of its activation.

Four Oath Keepers Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy Related to U.S. Capitol Breach Jury Convicts Four Leaders of the Proud Boys of Seditious Conspiracy Related to U.S. Capitol Breach

My new paper published: Kant versus Rand – Much No to Walsh and Miller

Measuring Civilization (by Jay Friedenberg and other bright lights) I think the Morris book he takes up is THE MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION: HOW SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT DECIDES THE FATE OF NATIONS. Jay is a friend of mine. Another friend David Potts has introduced me to the thought of Joseph Henrich, whose book THE WEIRDEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD – HOW THE WEST BECAME PSYCHOLOGICALLY PECULIAR AND PARTICULARLY PROSPEROUS complements the one by Ian Morris.

30 years ago, I placed the following quotation at the front of Objectivity V1N6. “Avoiding obstacles is easy in 68-dimensional space.” –Hinton, Plaut, and Shallice I had taken that sentence from an article the authors published that year in Scientific American, titled “Simulating Brain Damage.” The teaser reads: “Adults with brain damage make some bizarre errors when reading words. If a network of simulated neurons is trained to read and then is damaged, it produces strikingly similar behavior.” From the New York Times 5/1/23 “The Godfather of A. I.” Hinton finally became alarmed, and has now resigned his job at Google so he can sound the alarm. As the systems began to use larger amounts of data, it got scary. He still thinks that the systems are inferior to the human brain in some ways, but in other ways, maybe what is going on in these systems “is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain.” In the near term, his concern is that the internet will become flooded with false pictures, videos, and text. The average person will no longer be able to know what is true. In the longer term, his concern is that individuals and companies will allow the systems to not only generate computer code, but to actually run the code on their own. Truly autonomous weapons could become a reality, and unlike nuclear weapons, global regulation (detection) of their development will not be feasible.

A recent fine composition from Marc Champagne: Kantian Humility and Randian Hubris?

Conclusion Kant and Rand are completely opposed concerning what counts as rational metaphysics. Walsh errs in representing the two as closer than they are. Kant’s method for arriving at metaphysical conclusions is not Rand’s. Kant takes the status of metaphysical knowledge to be synthetic and a priori, Rand denies that metaphysical knowledge (or any knowledge) is a priori. Walsh is right, though, that Rand’s representation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is generally incorrect. The concerns in Kant’s theoretical philosophy are not Rand’s concerns. Kant’s question of how metaphysics is possible, though not a central question of Rand’s, is answered in her theoretical philosophy. Rand’s inattention to Kant’s question of how geometry is possible is a gap in her empirical epistemology. The differences between Rand’s metaphysics and the metaphysics of the German Rationalists of Kant’s time make Rand’s view impervious to Kant’s critique of those Rationalist systems. Miller’s defense of Rand’s system as against Kant’s is based on mistakenly attributing to Kant a coherence theory of truth. Kant, I argue, has a correspondence theory of truth. While Rand and Kant do not differ about that, Rand invokes many more correspondences to empirical reality than does Kant in their accounts of metaphysical knowledge and of conceptual, discursive knowledge in general.

Paper and Comment at 1992 session of the Ayn Rand Society: my assessment of them.

Kant versus Rand: Much No to Walsh and Miller (pages 71–96) ~Kant’s Big Questions Are Not Rand’s ~Misdiagnoses of Kant’s Fundamental Errors ~The Springs of Form

A Festschrift for Fred D. Miller, Jr.

Another book pertinent to this thread: The Tyranny of Need by Peter Schwartz

2020 Rand's Misunderstood Position on Altruism

Link in initial post did not take. Here it is again: 2024 United States Senate Elections

In Virginia, my State, Tim Kaine will be up for re-election. If the Republicans field a candidate committed to outlawing abortion, I'll vote for Kaine to do my bit against such a Republican candidate (as is likely – sigh!).

2024 US Senate Elections

SEP – Thomas Kuhn

Where the deed was done.