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Boydstun

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Everything posted by Boydstun

  1. Better Capitalism – Jesus, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and MLK Jr. on Moving from Plantation to Partnership Economics (2022) Paul E Knowlton (Engineer, Attorney, Pastoral Counselor) and Aaron E. Hedges (MDiv, MBA) This book urges reformation of the current US economic system to what the authors name Partnership Economics. The reforms are mostly via private actions under guideline of the conception Partnership Economics. The particulars of that conception are vague, not very specific. They are a perspective and attitude in business behavior. I’ll display some of the authors' interpretations from the names in the subtitle of the book to show the authors' picture suggesting how those leading lights are consonant with Partnership Economics.
  2. Boydstun

    Win Some, Lose Some

    How about the US Supreme Court roll back to the States the criminal law on recreational drugs? If an opportune case should come before the present Court, I'll bet a Coke-a-Cola the Justices who overturned Roe will not overturn federal usurpation in this area of the law which is so politically favored by American conservatives.
  3. Rand on selfishness and altruism via Howard Roark. Nietzsche on selfishness, explored by John Richardson in his Nietzsche's Values (2020). (Click on image.)
  4. LAWS VI 772a “Boys and girls must dance together at an age when plausible occasions can be found for their doing so, in order that they may have a reasonable look at each other; and they should dance naked, provided sufficient modesty and restraint are displayed by all concerned.” –Plato
  5. Quantum Entanglement between Black Holes – another theoretical, mathematical-physics advance (nothing yet experimental) in black hole physics and quantum vacuum field theory physics (via Feynman path integrals, not string theory) “Black Holes, Wormholes and Entanglement” Ahmed Almheiri (Scientific American, Sept. 2022)
  6. The electromagnetic radiation from Sagittarius A* that we receive at earth today departed from Sagittarius A* when our ancestors were in the last of the Paleolithic (last of the Old Stone Age). They could do some weaving, make nets, and make ceramic pitchers. They could make figurative cave paintings and they could make figurines. They could not write. Perhaps they made music, for they made flutes.
  7. The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is in the constellation Sagittarius. It is about 27,000 light years from earth, its mass is four million times the mass of the sun, and the humans have taken a picture of it in 2022, shown here. This object is known as Sagittarius A* (Sagittarius A star). From earth it lies in the strip of sky known as Sagittarius A. The diameter of its event horizon is roughly equivalent to the planet Mercury's orbit around the sun. From earth that diameter is 52 micro arc seconds, which is as viewing from earth a donut lying on the moon. The event-horizon diameter matches what is predicted by general relativity for a black hole of that mass. Sagittarius A* is orbited by a diffuse gas of electrons and protons. That matter is being pulled from the atmospheres of stars orbiting it. Only 1% of the surrounding matter is being pulled into its event horizon in the era of its light reaching present earth. In that era, the brightness (luminance) of Sagittarius A* is only 100 times the brightness of the sun. There is evidence that as recently as 60 years ago, Sagittarius A* was not on a diet, but a feeding frenzy.
  8. Well Done! Ken Danagger asks Dagny Taggart: Dr. Chris Sciabarra is ending his long labor of love The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. He produced the journal for 22 years, which means a total of 44 issues of the journal. I list here some tidbit teasers from the first 10 years of the journal. V1N1 “But something changes. At the end of the book, Roark is no longer a seemingly isolated young man, alone with his thoughts in the depths of the countryside. He is just as individual as he was at the beginning, but now he stands at the heart of his country’s economic life, building its most conspicuous symbol, with the glad permission of his fellow citizens. Of the many inversions of perspective and expectation that are suggested by Roark’s dive into the sky, this is one of the most remarkable.” –Stephen Cox V1N2 “Although both Andrei and Wynand are men guilty of their own tragedy, Rand presents their falls more as the logical outcome of their mistakes than as the just desert of their sins. As in the Aristotelian tradition of tragic ‘hamorita’, theirs is a type of transgression that must be distinguished from pure evil, making their fatal ends deserving of respectful pity rather than righteous condemnation.” –Kirsti Minsaas V2N1 “You can live any way you choose within a regime of well-drawn non-conflictng individual rights. But again, to know what those rights are, to better be able to shape them coordinately, to limit all but procedural distinctions, we require minarchy.” –Murray Franck V2N2 “The character may be embroiled in highly implausible situations, but he must still ‘live and breathe before us’ as an actual human being, with motivations we find at least intellibible, else we cannot empathize with the character or imaginatively share his fate. There is much more to it than this, and I am greatly condensing the account. But when I presented it once to Rand she agreed with it, and was pleased by my Aristotelianism on this issue.” –John Hospers V3N1 “The data the sensations provide us with must come from somewhere, and this somewhere cannot be, as on the Cartesian account, from the physical objects. On pain of rendering incomprehensible why we all largely agree in our empirical beliefs, something that the formal agreement in geometrical belief cannot suffice to explain, there must be some common data source. Given the Kantian account of the physical world, this data source must be supra-physical.” –R. Kevin Hill V3N2 “It isn’t just Rand who stumbled over the implicit. It gets under psychologists, feet, too.” –Robert L. Campbell V4N1 “Indeed, I would argue that we can see Rand’s epistemology as an updating of the project that Abelard pursued over 800 years ago.” –Peter Saint-Andre V4N2 “There is the marked disparity between her popularity as a novelist and the number of articles of literary criticism written about her work, though this too is not without precedent. It took some time for John Steinbeck to achieve recognition by certain sectors of the critical establishment. His work was disdained for its popularity, sentimentality, and the fact that it is accessible even to high school students.” –Mimi Reisel Gladstein V5N1 “Considerations of self-esteem and self-esteem-based happiness THEMSELVES do not provide an agent with a reason that makes the difference in how he should act.” –Eric Mack V5N2 “Rand’s measurement-omission analysis of concepts could be correct even if her account of their genesis were incorrect.” –Stephen Boydstun V6N1 “Dr. Stadler’s complaint that he almost froze to death and numerous references to city-dwellers exposed to the elements for the first time in their lives [also] describe the first winters of Communist rule.” --Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal V6N2 “I find it tempting to believe that we can gain knowledge through the faculty of reason both in an a priori way and from experience. . . . These two ways could work together.” --Richard C. B. Johnsson V7N1 “Rand’s trader principle does not suffer from the problems of [Adam] Smith’s invisible hand principle because she explicitly grounds her defense of trade in an individual’s right to exist for his or her own sake. . . . I do not sacrifice my interests for your sake, and you do not sacrifice your interests for my sake.” --Robert White V7N2 “If you want a deconstructionist, go to the English Department. Philosophy departments in Anglophone countries are still predominantly homes for linguistic and logical analysis, the whole tone and tenor of which are very much in opposition to subjectivist nihilism. In fact, analytic philosophy of all styles began in self-conscious opposition to such German gobbledlygook.” --Max Hocutt V8N1 “That worry is precisely the worry that being unmarried ISN’T a necessary property of anything, prior to and apart from the convention in question. . . . It’s only qua bachelors that those entities are necessarily unmarried, and the worry is that what it is to be something qua bachelor is an artifact of the convention, not a fact about the world. / I believe this worry can be met, but that the way to meet it is to show that it can arise only from OUTSIDE the linguistic practice in question, and cannot coherently be raised from within it. No one who assents to the proposition that bachelors are necessarily unmarried (thereby participating in the practice) can consistently add “oh, but that’s not a fact about the world.” --Roderick T. Long V8N2 “To be fair, Objectivists do not deny the existence and importance of ‘spiritual’ qualities. Objectivists argue strongly against any sort of reductive materialism such as behaviorism or eliminativism. But, for Objectivists, material entities are the ultimate reality and conscious beings somehow supervene upon this underlying reality. Thus, the existence of any sort of supernatural entity, such as God, is ruled out.” --Stephen E. Parrish V9N1 “A human being is a coherent unity of mind and body, yet this way of stating the fact still leaves ‘mind’ and ‘body’ conceptually separate. The concept ORGANISM conceptually integrates these two facets of human nature in a graceful and unit-economical way.” --Andrew Schwartz V9N2 “Both see rationality as our distinctive means of avoiding threats and securing our survival, given our animal vulnerabilities. However, where MacIntyre diverges from Rand is in relation to the implications of this in respect of our ongoing dependence on others.” --Ron Beadle V10N1 “We do not believe there are untethered and dispositionless will acts made in complete freedom of antecedent conditions. . . . We endeavored to use notions of self-direction in ‘common-sense’ ways not packed with a lot of philosophical baggage, because we believed that ordinary usage (say, ordinary common law usage of choice and intent) were sufficient to complete the political argument.” --Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen V10N2 “He [Nietzsche] insists, as she does, that it is absurd to live for the sake of the collective (i.e., what he calls ‘’the majority’), but the reason he gives is not the one that she would give. Her reason would be that it is absurd to live FOR ANYONE [who is not oneself]. The answer he gives is the aristocratic one, that one should live for the best and the rarest. Even here, though, his position still overlaps with hers IN A WAY: for what he is saying here can be captured by a phrase that Rand sometimes applies to herself, namely, hero-worship. Nietzsche’s aristocratic hero-worship I think is the key to understanding the collectivist-sounding language in . . . .” --Lester Hunt
  9. Interview with Marsha Enright by David Kelley
  10. Additionally, “existence is identity” in mathematics means not only that any mathematical fact will be correct statement of an identity, but that the identity is the existence. Concerning concrete existence, “existence is identity” must include in that identity: specification of spatial and temporal relations, for it to be the case that the identity is the existence. If we add that all existence outside existence in mathematics (or in logic, e.g. Löenheim-Skolem Theorem) is existence in physical space and time, then the ontological argument, of Anselm and Descartes, for the existence of God fails with respect to non-mathematical existence. From a set of predicates not including specification of spatial and temporal relations, the existence of God cannot be inferred, and inclusion by fiat of Its spatial relations (everywhere) and temporal relations (everywhen) in a mere conception does amount to the existence of God in that usual intended sense of existence.* Whereas, Existence itself is not something concluded from a conception, but is simply there all around us and is the physical and epistemological context for any knowing of any existent or identity. * Cf. Christian August Crusius (1745) in Leibniz & Kant, Brandon C. Look, editor, (Oxford 2021), pp. 61–66.
  11. Bit of history, from "How Kant Was Never a Wolffian" by Ursula Goldenbaum, in Leibniz & Kant (Oxford, 2021), Brandon Look, editor.
  12. Rand "is the cold, stony advocate of self-interest, the poet of the sociopath." That quotation is from the book AYN RAND AND THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA (2022) by Derek Offord. He goes straight to Rand's various representations and condemnations of altruism and collectivism and to her holding high ethical egoism and attendant inversions of traditional virtues, such as the displacement of humility with pride. He sees the audacity of Rand's vision of a guilt-free human life. The author sticks to the clashes between Rand’s ethics and the traditional, altruistic ones, secular or religious. He takes no notice of continuities of the old and the new and ways in which the latter took up the old with redefinition and placement in an orderly account of value per se. By sticking to only the stark clashes and by ignoring facets of the psychology of Rand’s protagonists—indeed conjecturing that such things as empathy and concern for others are entirely absent in those characters (and in their creator)— Offord makes it easy on himself to slide from Rand being the poet for personalities asocial, to antisocial, to sociopathical. Even the asocial is in full truth not fitting of Rand’s protagonists. This book is another distortion and smear of Rand’s philosophy. It is a smart one, by someone who actually has read Rand’s novels and The Virtue of Selfishness. He is of independent mind, not one repeating old critical reviews by others. From page at the University of Bristol:
  13. D, You might want to sign up in a large online hookup site and include in what you say about yourself something about what interests you in larger life and that you are open to forming a long-term relationship. I am an older gay person, the one to the right in the photo below with my husband. My first life-partner was a college friend who had the same level of interest in and like of Rand's literature and philosophy as I had. Over the years, we both developed further intellectually, and that entailed that in some areas of philosophy we became more different from each other than at the beginning. Having different views in some areas can be fine; at least the differences did not result in calling off the relationship. Five years after he died, I decided to devote some time to trying to make it all happen again. I did, though the way was very different from the first time. There were not yet the personal hookup sites online, but there were Personal sections in newspapers. You responded by writing and sending it by mail, which went to the newspaper, who then go it to the person placing the ad. His ad had included that he was open to forming a long-term relationship. He stated what he was looking for in bed and in attitude to life. I thought I fit the bill and wrote back a single-word response: Exciting. We met and learned the basics of each others lives. The sexual match was fantastic. Certain other likes and views we also had in common were love of classical music and opera and we were both atheists. All the other views on which we did not agree were never anywhere near sinking our ship. Financial compatibility is also probably an important necessary condition. The bed is extremely important to getting to sea. It can disappear altogether later when you get old, but the afterglow and the love and life you've made together can go on secure and wonderful as can be. I rather enjoy that not all our views on things coincide.
  14. Bravo! Japan is Returning to Nuclear Power (France and America Never Left It)
  15. To represent what the protagonists of Rand's novels are like, one needs to discuss how they are in the novels. Reading and reporting instead musings the novelist jots down in her journals about a future character she is working on does not get you a satisfactory grade in a literature class. But the point of this smear-article was not to read and report the literature or the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Behind all such personal attack-pieces like this one is simply the favor of politics or religion opposed to Rand-quarter positions concerning politics or religion. It is easier to vilify persons, such as Rand or her fictional protagonists, than to argue ideas. The latter would mean reading and accurately representing what were the ideas of Rand that she argued and that she illustrated in fictional stories. After accurate representation, one would go on to argue against those ideas, making counter-arguments in support of one's opposing views. (Which is what is in my writings concerning Rand or any other thinker I take up.) If someone is already in the church of the author of this personal-smear approach to morals and politics of Rand or libertarianism, one can get bolstering by reading this article. One does not get accurate information from it, only distortions. But there are readers who think that is fine, if only they get their church and political beliefs defended, however cheaply and slovenly. Precision respecting reality and life may not be their thing. But people who are after truth, including truth about what is Rand's philosophy, what is right in it and what is wrong with it, people like that read people like me.
  16. Wolff was a Lutheran, though an unusual one running full stride with reason: We should “give ear to our reason; namely our own Perfection, from which the Glory of God . . . cannot well be separated” (German Logic, 10.VI). Wolff defended the Leibnizian pre-established harmony, and together with Wolff’s wide scope of PSR, this could be stretched by others to support fatalism and removal of penalties for breaches of law, such as penalties for desertion from the Prussian military. Pietist faculty got the King to bar Wolff from university teaching, and Wolff was banished from Prussia in 1723 (if he was not gone within 48 hours, he would be hanged), which cemented Wolff’s status as intellectual celebrity of the Enlightenment throughout Europe. The serious Pietist philosopher Christian August Crusius (1715–75) rejected the full scope of Wolff’s PSR. Crusius was particularly concerned that PSR not overrun human free will, the truly originative agency of humans free to have chosen otherwise in a particular choice-circumstance. Crusius took it that humans are not subject to a PSR so strong as: nothing can be otherwise than it is (Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason, 1745, §84). Rand and Peikoff explicated Rand’s principle of causality (“All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements in the universe—from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life—are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved.") such that some human action can be freely chosen.
  17. "Existence exists, but there has to be a reason why it does; it's not sufficient to just state that it does. Existence must exist for a reason."* –EC Reasons presuppose possibilities presuppose potentials and actions presuppose existents, parts of Existence. Reasons presuppose Existence (by which latter, I mean not only existence per se and some existents, but as well, the totality of existents). From preceding post: "For Rand, rightly I’d say: PSR [Principle of Sufficient Reason] in the form “For every existent, there is a reason why it exists, rather than not” can apply at most to constituents or proper parts of Existence, not to that comprehensive standing Existence, the all, the whole comprising all actuals and their potentials, all those concrete objects and their concrete actions, attributes, and relationships.[18] PSR in the form “Nothing happens without a reason” applies only within Existence, not to that all-of-alls Existence, which is not a “happening.” PSR in the form “There must be a sufficient reason for every truth of fact” does not apply to the bare truth Existence exists. There is the reality of the fact that that truth acknowledges; there is nothing begetting that fact. Rand’s curtailment of PSR did not diminish one bit the intelligibility of Existence by human reason, I should mention."
  18. (click on photo) That is a poem I wrote last autumn. I think it is true. All people live under this shadow, which at some level they know. Long ago I came to think one way of looking at people is as walking philosophies. So in getting to know someone it is sensible to ask to oneself What philosophy is here being walked? I don't mean What philosophical heritage is here being walked? but what particular set of philosophical theses are here in this person, especially in their practices. Now I add for myself of each one How are they dealing with the fact of absolute mortality?
  19. To my last paragraph in the preceding post, I'd like to add that for concepts just a single level over the individuals they subsume it seems there will be some definitions of the concept, including some genus or other and some super-ordinate concept or other which will be a conceptual common denominator having magnitude and measurability as in Rand's conception of the character of concepts. And if that is so, then all concrete particulars stand in magnitude relations among other concrete particulars.
  20. Nemain, concept articulation can certainly be improved. We seem to know more about our concepts than first might be thought. We can come up with genus-species definitions of many of our concepts just thinking it over. When one has a genus for the definition of a concept, one has the conceptual common denominator, supposing there is one. That is, one has in such cases the dimension along which measure values may vary among species and among individual members within species under the concept. In my own view, we should start with formulating a genus-species definition. That articulation will be useful of itself. Then see if there is one or more magnitude dimensions shared at the genus level, that is, shared among all the species and their members. For the genus of a solid, we might take ability of a material to resist shearing stresses (fluids will not). Then specifying the different sorts of shearing stresses and how resistance to the various ones are measured, we get varieties of solids specified in terms of those sorts shearing-stress resistance. However, sometimes we have a genus, perfectly sensible, that does not seem to have one or more magnitude dimensions that can be Rand's conceptual common denominator spanning all the species under the genus and individuals under the species. Hardness, fatigue cycle limit, critical buckling stress, shear and bulk moduli, and tensile strength all fall under the superordinate concept strength of a solid. These various strengths of solids are all forms of resistance to degradations under stresses. That is their genus, but the variety of species seems so wide that there does not seem to be a conceptual common denominator in Rand's sense, though the concept with its wide range is useful in design engineering and in failure analysis.
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