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Boydstun

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  1. Sad
    Boydstun reacted to EC in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    This is a ridiculous thread. My own grandfather died of COVID and I know plenty of people that have had it. It exists. 
  2. Thanks
    Boydstun got a reaction from necrovore in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand   
    This post is an hommage to Leonard Peikoff (b. 1933) for his contributions to the philosophy Objectivism. His biggest contribution of written work is his book OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. His second most important written contribution is his essay “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” (ASD). This was published in THE OBJECTIVIST, a journal edited by Rand (d.1982) and N. Branden, in five installments from May to September of 1967. Peikoff was 33. (Those were the nominal dates of those issues of the journal; at times the journal was behind its target dates for publication.) ADS followed immediately Rand’s series “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” in that journal. Three years before ASD, Peikoff had completed his PhD dissertation THE STATUS OF THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION IN CLASSIC LOGICAL ONTOLOGISM at NYU.
    The only substantial supplement to Rand’s theory of concepts since ADS (and two papers by David Kelley in psychology of abstraction in the 80's) is my paper “Universals and Measurement” (2004), which addresses magnitude structure all the world must have if Rand’s model of concept structure is indeed applicable to all term-concepts. https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php... I hope soon to complete an amplification and recasting of an issue raised within ASD: necessities in truths.
    I’d like here to recount my own personal sequence of events concerning Rand and Peikoff. I had been given THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED by a cousin-in-law S. Swift at Christmas 1966. I was a freshman in college. On the first page, the invitation page of ATLAS, beginning “What Moves the World?” Swift had written “Read The Fountainhead first.” On the title page for Part I of ATLAS, he had written “Let your actions be guided by rational choice", which was really good orientation I needed at that time. He had underlined the opening line of that novel. I carefully read them in the summer and fall of 1967. I was in a private mental hospital that summer I read THE FOUNTAINHEAD, and my doctor kept encouraging me to finish it. It saved my life, and thereafter I never again required psychiatric care.
    After those novels, I began reading Rand’s nonfiction books that were out at the time, and I read THE OBJECTIVIST, which was at my University library. Peikoff’s ASD introduced me to the Analytic-Synthetic distinction, and over my many years, I have studied its appearances in the history of philosophy and another distinction by that name in the history of mathematics.
    In second semester of my freshman year, I had my first course in philosophy, which was mainly an argued layout of all that is, by a Thomist professor, who was superb. He had been trained at the University of Cologne after WWII. But I did not learn of the A-S thread in philosophy until I read Peikoff’s essay on it. I continued to take philosophy courses in college—I minored in it—concluding in my final semester spring 1971 with a seminar on THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, under another superb professor, who was from India and who had been trained at the University of Gottingen. I pursued graduate studies three times in my life, once in physics, twice in philosophy. I had to withdraw for various reasons in all cases, but learned enormously from those studies. I am an independent and inveterate scholar.
    I had seen Ayn Rand on the Johnny Carson show at the home of my friend Swift. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... I did not see or hear Peikoff speak until about 1974, when I took a recorded lecture course of his on the history of modern philosophy. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... Very good. During that decade, I was working my way through Fredrick Copleston’s A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Completed. I took Peikoff’s 1976 recorded lecture course THE PHILOSOPHY OF OBJECTIVISM when it was presented in Evanston, north of Chicago. That greatly renewed my enthusiasm for the philosophy as one of much width and depth.
    I read Peikoff’s THE OMINOUS PARALLELS when it came out in 1982. Five years later, Peikoff published his intellectual memoir “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand” in THE OBJECTIVIST FORUM. I wrote him a letter thanking him for sharing that and telling him how eagerly I was looking forward to his book on Objectivism, stemming from his 1976 lectures, that he had been working on for some time. And how important I thought it was. He thanked me.
    In 1991 the book was issued—OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. It is very fine, accessible to the general educated public, and indeed it proved very important to setting out the philosophy of Ayn Rand in a systematic and comprehensive way, as the philosophy had been developed by the end of her life. That book put Rand’s thought as a comprehensive philosophy more decisively pinned on the map of philosophy. Life accomplishment “as difficult as it is rare.”
    (This photo is Peikoff and Rand early in their association.)

     

  3. Like
    Boydstun reacted to AlexL in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    Here is what Bard AI bot says (I know, I know!):
    Q: Was the isolation, purification, and identification of SARS-CoV-2 documented? Where?
    Bard: 
    Having had bad previous experiences with AI bots, I insisted:
    Q: Please double check the above info.
    Bard: 
    Therefore, maybe - just maybe - there are records that document the isolation, purification, and identification of SARS-CoV-2.
    I also verified the existence of (2 out of 4) of the cited articles and they do exist indeed.
  4. Like
    Boydstun reacted to tadmjones in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    That blog post describes in general how viruses ‘work’ , even the mechanism by which the corona virus in question binds to the  human ACE2 receptor site. But it doesn’t explain how a virus from a bat that doesn’t use a bat ACE2 receptor site evolved so quickly and with such affinity to that site in humans. There was/is speculation that a chimera virus was assembled with the needed furin cleavage site to facilitate such affinity, but blogs posts suggesting those types of analysis would be more ‘in the weeds’ and not for the laymen as this blog example is expressly targeted.
    Intentionally released or not , it is obvious that Covid was the product of virus fuckery.
  5. Like
    Boydstun reacted to HowardRoarkSpaceDetective in Original Sham   
    In thinking about religion, especially as regards its social aspects, I'm continually surprised at how often I come back to conservatism as a nearly fundamental driving force, whether in epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics. The question always remains: conservative of what? The only plausible answer that I ever see put forward, especially concerning the origins of animism, is: belief in the afterlife as revealed in dreams/hallucinations. No doubt mystical experience has its roots in a very early, all-consuming intrinisicism, notably the kind exhibited by children, but what is the origin of that intrinsicism? Is it possible that mysticism is itself a kind of epistemological conservatism?
    For example:
    My father appears to me, alive and well, and asks me to bury him. Conclusion: Look, there's my father.
    Granted, my father died a week ago. However, it has always been the case that, when my father appears to me alive and well, it is because, naturally, there's my father. Conclusion: I was right all along. My father is indeed dead, and there he is, alive and well. One day, I too will be dead and alive. How can this be true? Better ask my father.
    Furthermore, is it possible that idealism itself has its roots in a kind of cosmic sociality? For children, I think there is often an implicit identification between parents and metaphysics. I think something similar happens when idealists/intrinsicists convert to materialism/subjectivism and adopt the myth of "the myth of scarcity" -- in other words, "capitalism creates poverty". On Marxist grounds, the Myth of Scarcity occupies the same metaphysical position as Original Sin: unavoidable yet not permanent (in the Marxists' case, we rise to grace rather than fall from it).
    This position, of course, stinks of social determinism, but I don't see why mysticism can't be an outgrowth of what, in primitive times, was a more or less tribalistic social determinism. We were social before we were rational, and irrationalism has a self-perpetuating nature. Is it the case that happy accidents were necessary in order for man to discover reason and individuality/selfhood? Are mysticism and authoritarianism really all that different? Of course, Rand didn't take the argument this far, but I think Objectivist epistemology seems to imply it.
    Also, I'm curious about what you mean when you say "holding in abeyance", mostly because I don't hear that phrase often. Am I to take it to mean some kind of evasion, in this case of mortality?
    This would all be a good start on a possible explanation for a problem which has been plaguing me: why perfection as an epistemological starting point? The story of the Garden of Eden sounds to me to be just a metaphor for childhood. In other words, mystics - of spirit or muscle - just don't want to grow up. In other other words, childhood is the sham in their eyes. There is no such thing as security or guiltless pleasure on Earth. Not ever since Abba Father made it that way. And I think it makes sense that this approach would be so persistent. I don't know any parents (personally) who would have a good answer to the question of how to teach children that that life after childhood (ignorance) isn't essentially a matter of sacrifice and pain.
    Seen this way, it is no wonder that Christian ethics is so ass-backwards. The metaphysics is rotten from the core (pun not intended).
    Ironically, this realization played no role in my own fall from theological grace. It was the denial of free will (via Wikipedia articles) that was my "fruit". I went on to have some existentialist-style "optimism" about life choices, but it took me a long time to see how in the world man could be viewed as heroic in any sense other than Byronic.
    Funny enough, one could re-construe the Garden of Eden as a warning against mysticism. If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life are taken as metaphors for beliefs in a utopian existence, which occur to one as effortlessly (and non-rationally) as eating a piece of fruit, then yes, leaving behind the peaceful modus operandi of cultivating a garden - a knowledge which is, as you say, superior - would be a fall from grace. And working to satisfy your now limitless desires would be painful indeed. It was Baconian obedience ("Nature, to be commanded...) that was the true virtue in the Garden.
    Perhaps Rand did misunderstand the story. Perhaps the authors of the Bible did as well. Max Muller's contention was that religion is a "disease of language" and that early mystics were more like poets than priests, using and abusing the power of metaphor. One theory I've been thinking over is that part of how religious beliefs develop (and how intrinsicism operates socially) is that ideas are communicated as metaphors and then understood as literal and that a sort of cycle is formed where beliefs are passed around between those with philosophical tendencies and those who preferred magic. Is it possible that there was rational wisdom in the Creation story that underwent this process? Surely, intrinsicism has never had a total monopoly over the mind. 
  6. Thanks
    Boydstun got a reaction from William Scott Scherk in Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?   
    The facts about Manning are physical facts of his surgery, hormone injections, and consequent changes in its body. Also, its facts of action as charged in his criminal conviction. The facts in the charges against Assange will be determined by a jury from the evidence. Those facts are whatever they are already, but they will not be accepted legally unless he is convicted. We have designed that legal determination process such that some guilty people will be judged Not Guilty even though the alleged facts of the case as brought by the prosecution are indeed the facts of reality; so that fewer innocent people will be wrongly found guilty.
    Persons who have their sex changed by surgery and hormones are not the same as someone who senses they are psychologically a different sex without such a physical-alteration project (I'm not entirely convinced there are any such things as male versus female sexual psychologies, such as put about by Rand and Branden, that are independent of brainwashing of the children by the culture, i.e., there may well be no such distinct psychologies that are purely an outcome of biological nature). In official government documents, I'd think the proper pronoun or salutation for them is just as for those us who don't feel that way. Manning is in a different category: the category of having undergone the medical, physical alteration, last I heard.
    There is a marble sculpture of old of an hermaphrodite, which turns my stomach. Also, I dislike drag queenery. But the circumstance that such matters are top political issues for voters grossed out by such sculpture or human behaviors is bad for the future of our country. Such cultural issues promoted to political hay have gotten way out of proportion in comparison to the circumstances that people are having to pay so much for groceries or are having their life savings stolen due to government-driven inflation or, as could come in the future if the federal budgets in the red are not stopped, police protection and armed forces can no longer be paid.
  7. Like
    Boydstun reacted to Gus Van Horn blog in Reblogged:Yet Another Wasted Election?   
    Donald Trump managed to eke out a win over Nikki Haley yesterday in New Hampshire. Haley is not dropping out of the GOP primary yet, but her battle is more uphill than I was hoping to learn from yesterday's vote.

    The outcome likely means that too many Republicans are part of Donald Trump's personality cult for that party to nominate a serious candidate for President and that not enough independents appreciated the need to have a better choice than Trump or Biden in November.

    That is awful.

    The war for freedom is hardly over, but this particular battle appears to be lost, and we will almost certainly have one of Joe Biden or Donald Trump and -- if either drops dead while in office -- one of their Vice Presidents continuing to damage our country for another four years.

    This is both a bigger deal and a lesser concern than Oh well, I'll leave President blank again in the next election.

    Two articles do an excellent job of explaining why.

    On the bigger deal side is the first, which I learned about from the excellent Yaron Brook's Twitter feed. It's by Briton Dan Hannon, and its title is, "This Isn't About Trump Anymore -- It's About Whether America Is the Country It Always Was." The whole thing is worth a read, and ends as follows:In the short term, things look bleak. This election cycle and no matter who wins, we could be moving from a discussion of breathing room, of how much time we have to turn the ship around -- to wondering if we can politically further the cause of liberty at all, any time soon, in America.

    On the not as big a deal side of the ledger we have Ayn Rand's 1972 essay, "What Can One Do?", which I first encountered in Philosophy: Who Needs It:The essay was written with people concerned about the state of the world in mind, but it has a deeper meaning than is apparent, as is frequently the case with Rand's writings.

    The passage above is a reminder, frequently needed anyway, about the nature of current trends, particularly for people interested in improving the world around them: Politics is the end product of a long conceptual and causal chain. Philosophically, it arises from ethics, and the dominant form of politics (increasingly, collectivism today) derives from the dominant ethics in the culture, which is altruism.

    Until enough voices in the culture challenge altruism and its philosophical underpinnings (of mysticism and primacy-of-consciousness), our society will remain dominantly altruistic and political movements appealing to it -- be they leftist crusades to redistribute wealth or save "the planet" or right-wing crusades for nationalism or theocracy -- will always threaten to gain ground.

    Change the dominant philosophy and the politics will take care of itself.

    That's the easier part to see of a philosophical battle is a nuclear war. On a deeper level, one should ask, Why do I want to improve the world?

    My answer is because I live in it, and I would hope any fellow travelers are at least equally selfish in that regard. That is the only good reason to want to participate in an intellectual movement. One cannot improve anything without knowing how, and one cannot know how without knowing why, and having a solid grasp of facts.

    In the process of getting one's house in order and developing an active mind, one will consequently improve the quality of one's daily life by applying what one has learned.

    Rand shows that the battle to improve the culture is long-range, and -- barring a true cataclysm -- much bigger than any single election. But she also shows that it is a personal battle for self-betterment that is always within the grasp of anyone who seeks it.

    Speaking for myself: Short-term, while I might be unfortunate enough to be witness to the start of a dark time in American history, I'm glad I am doing so with open eyes, and am not deluded enough to see either of Donald Trump or Joe Biden as America's savior. I know that the constant media blare about Trump isn't worth too much of my time, and I can spend it on better things.

    Politics can help or hinder one's life, but it isn't the whole of one's life. Thank God for that, so to speak.

    -- CAVLink to Original
  8. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from Jim Henderson in Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?   
    The greatest threat to the future of America as a prosperous place and place of civil peace is continuation of the federal deficit budgets of the last 23 years. The federal government is stealing the life savings of Americans by inflation to cover the ongoing budgets in the red. Against continuation of that: vote for Haley against Trump. The choice between Haley and Biden or Phillips will be more difficult because the Democrats are squarely Pro-Choice. But the choice between Haley and Trump at this stage is easily Haley.  As Bastiat put it: Let us try freedom.
  9. Like
    Boydstun reacted to Gus Van Horn blog in Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?   
    New Hampshire holds its presidential primaries today. Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. (I'd wager, given his earlier pledge to save the GOP from Trump and his over-the-top pandering to the Trump base, he's hoping Trump's legal problems represent a reentry path later.)

    We thus have an early primary in a state that allows independent voters to participate in party primaries, and a two-person contest between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. This represents as good a chance as there is for a sane candidate to begin to break the stranglehold of Trump's personality cult on the Republican Party, and give Americans a real choice in the next election.

    According to a headline from the Boston Globe, it is unlikely that Haley will win, but buried at the end of the story is what I think will be the decisive factor:Haley isn't drawing big crowds -- and doesn't have me raving about her here -- because she keeps committing unforced errors. So she doesn't have people excited about her candidacy so far. (I think the excitement -- or at least noticeable support -- might come if she does well, and offers real hope of keeping Trump out of office.)

    The real question then, is How sick are independent voters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

    If they're annoyed enough, they don't have to like Haley to want to vote for her, and they will.

    I'd show up and vote for Haley if I lived there, but I don't know the answer to that question.

    Today, we will find out.

    -- CAVLink to Original
  10. Like
    Boydstun reacted to monart in Why Be Moral - The Real Reason - From Metaphysics to Morals   
    WHY BE MORAL - THE REAL REASON   Be Moral - To Live From Metaphysics to Morals Towards Self-Realization and Self-Betterment   [Presented as a syllogistic synopsis] ----   Reality exists - objectively, absolutely. To believe that reality doesn’t exist is to believe in contradictions. To believe in contradictions is to believe that something exists and doesn’t exist at the same time in the same respect. To believe that it is real that there is no reality, is to believe in contradictions, that existence doesn’t exist. To believe that reality is subjective is to believe that it is objective that reality is subjective – a contradiction. To believe that reality is relative is to believe that it is absolute that reality is relative – a contradiction. In reality, contradictions do not exist, cannot be real. Contradictions exist only in the mind. Minds perceive reality, do not create it. Minds with contradictions mis-perceive, mistake reality. Real minds think non-contradictory, logical thoughts. "Consciousness is Identification of Existence...Existence Exists. Existence is Identity." (Ayn Rand) In reality, each thing exists as a something, not as a nothing, not as an anything. Some things exist as living things, distinct from things that are non-living. Non-living things always exist, changing their forms, never ceasing to exist. Living things do not always live, they exist conditionally. Living things can die, cease to exist as life, leaving dead non-living matter. Living things face alternatives - life or death. Living things exist by acting to stay alive. To stay alive is to take actions to sustain one's life. To die is to fail to take actions that sustain one’s life. "Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action." (Ayn Rand) Living things need values, values "that which one acts to gain and/or keep" to sustain one’s life. (Ayn Rand) Values that further, enhance, or promote one's life are the good. Values that hinder, harm, or destroy one's life are the evil. Some living things pursue values automatically, instinctively, without choice. Some living, human, things pursue values by choice, by choosing to act for one’s life. "A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality" (Ayn Rand). To be moral is to choose to live and act by a code of values, for life. Being moral is being human - being logical, objective, absolute. Being moral is being real. Be moral - to live. -----   [Source: "The Objectivist Ethics", in The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand]
  11. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from Jim Henderson in Original Sham   
    Some handy helpful background:
    Original Sin –from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    Kant famously wrote: "out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated" (Idea for a Universal  History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, 1784, translation by Allen Wood). The context of this quote is an acknowledgement that formation and exercise of a political constitution for a society, is in human hands and minds, which means no constitution and its exercise can be perfect. The conclusion, I say, is fair enough truth, but the antecedent thought that humans are made of crooked timber—human nature is corrupt—seems very likely nothing original with Kant; rather, a common view, come down from the likes of Augustine and put about from Christian pulpits of Kant's era (and ours).
     
    Grace, Predestination, and Original Sin –from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
     
    Catholic Encyclopedia – ORIGINAL SIN
  12. Like
    Boydstun reacted to tadmjones in Original Sham   
    Thanks for a refresher on the Christian notion of sin , going through some of the linked material reveals I am /have been under a more comfortable apprehension of sin in the other Abrahamic traditions. Sin more as a failing as opposed to a corporeal state.
  13. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from tadmjones in Original Sham   
    Some handy helpful background:
    Original Sin –from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    Kant famously wrote: "out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated" (Idea for a Universal  History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, 1784, translation by Allen Wood). The context of this quote is an acknowledgement that formation and exercise of a political constitution for a society, is in human hands and minds, which means no constitution and its exercise can be perfect. The conclusion, I say, is fair enough truth, but the antecedent thought that humans are made of crooked timber—human nature is corrupt—seems very likely nothing original with Kant; rather, a common view, come down from the likes of Augustine and put about from Christian pulpits of Kant's era (and ours).
     
    Grace, Predestination, and Original Sin –from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
     
    Catholic Encyclopedia – ORIGINAL SIN
  14. Like
    Boydstun reacted to human_murda in Origins of Kashmir Conflict   
    Here is the gist of how the Kashmir conflict started in India:
    British India consisted of regions that were directly controlled by the British as well as ~500 kingdoms that were subsidiary to the British:

    Myanmar was separated from British India in 1937. When they left, the British partitioned the regions that were directly controlled by the them into a Muslim majority Pakistan and a secular India (mostly Hindu but also included non-Hindu, non-Muslim areas). The ~500 kingdoms were allowed to join India or Pakistan or remain independent. In some sense, British India was divided into ~500 countries. However, almost all of these 500 kingdoms chose to join India or Pakistan except a few:
    - Gwadar (controlled by Oman, annexed by Pakistan)
    - Khanate of Kalat (annexed by Pakistan)
    - Hyderabad State (remnant of Mughal Empire, annexed by India)
    - Junagadh (annexed by India)
    - Goa (Portuguese colony, annexed by India)
    - Puducherry (French colony, annexed by India)
    - Jammu and Kashmir

    I think there were other smaller kingdoms as well that didn't join India/Pakistan. I'm from a region which was the Kingdom of Travancore. We initially declared independence, but joined India after threats of assassination.
    Declaration of independence by the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was the most problematic, since it's located on the border between India and Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir (or just Kashmir) was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious kingdom. Overall, it was Muslim majority, but had a Hindu ruler (Hari Singh). Kashmir also had a significant Buddhist population in the Ladakh region. This is what the kingdom looks like now:

    When the partition of India along religious lines was announced, massacres of Hindus and Sikhs in "would be Pakistan" regions started (with the opposite happening in border regions in India). After Hindus and Sikhs were massacred in Rawalpindi, the news reached Jammu and led to the "Jammu massacres" in Jammu under the rule of the king (Hari Singh). Hearing news of this, Pakistani tribesmen invaded the kingdom, which resulted in the king, Hari Singh, acceding the kingdom to India. By the time Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, the kingdom had already lost a significant chunk of territory. The following regions are now controlled by Pakistan:
    - Azad Kashmir ("free" Kashmir) or AJK. Ethnically Pahari (similar to Punjabis)
    - Gilgit Baltistan or GB. Ethnically Balti (tibetic).
    These two regions are Muslim majority and want to be a part of Pakistan. However, Pakistan maintains them as semi-autonomous regions and claims that they support the Kashmiri independence movement and want to hold a plebiscite in the whole region (except the regions claimed by China). Since a lot of the other regions in Kashmir are Muslim majority, Pakistan also claims them as part of Pakistan. I think Pakistan also claims Jammu, even though it's Hindu majority.
    The rest of the kingdom became the semi-autonomous Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Since legally the kingdom acceded to India, India also claims the rest of the kingdom that was invaded by Pakistan as a part of India. The regions controlled by India are:
    - Jammu: Hindu majority. Ethnically Dogri.
    - Kashmir valley: Muslim majority. Ethnically Kashmiri, speak Koshur.
    - Ladakh: around 45% Muslim and 40% Buddhist. Ladakhis are tibetic.
    Most Jammuites and Ladakhis want to be a part of India. Kashmiris from the valley want to be an independent country (neither India nor Pakistan). However, if they became independent, Pakistan will almost definitely invade them (or turn them into a puppet state).
    There was another region that India controlled that was part of the kingdom called Aksai Chin. The North-Eastern part of Aksai Chin was bounded by the Ardagh–Johnson Line during British rule. India inherited this border with Tibet when the J&K kingdom acceded to India. The border was originally drawn when Tibet was a separate country. After China invaded Tibet and the CCP took over Xinjiang, China invaded India in 1962. China also doesn't recognize the McMahon Line which the British agreed as the border with Tibet. China invaded Tibet (and stopped recognizing agreements made by Tibet), the British left and India has inherited that border dispute. China now controls the following region which was part of the J&K kingdom:
    - Aksai Chin. Almost no one lives there.
    China also claims Ladakh as a part of Tibet and threatens to invade occasionally, most recently two weeks ago.
    After Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan started sending militants to Indian Kashmir to blow themselves up, which resulted in Indian Kashmir becoming increasingly militarized. This eventually led to an insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and increasing attacks on Kashmiri Hindus, who got kicked out in 1990. Recently (2019), India revoked Kashmir's autonomy, removing the separate constitution for Jammu and Kashmir guaranteed by Article 370 of India's Constitution. Kashmir and Ladakh were turned into Union Territories. Three weeks ago, India's supreme court upheld repeal of Kashmir's special status. This is a Scottish vlogger talking to a local Kashmiri Muslim who lived through most of this.
    India follows the Israel's West Bank model for governing Kashmir, to some extend. India bulldozes the houses of Kashmiris suspected to be terrorists. Reports of rape and torture by the Indian military are common. Mass graves (most likely of Kashmiri Muslims) were found in Kashmir that weren't identified or investigated. Local Kashmiri Hindus are still being killed by terrorists. The Indian government is subsidizing migrations of Hindus from poor states to Kashmir (some of these migrants are killed by terrorists).
    Insurgency in Kashmir is dying:

    Tourism and economic activity have picked up. Here is an interview of a former Kashmiri Muslim activist (Shehla Rashid used to be a "communist" student activist at JNU, but is now slightly more favorable to the Indian government). However, it's still the most militarized region on the planet. Pakistan and China are also involved and the issue isn't easily solvable, apart from recognizing the Line of Actual Control or LAC as the international border.
    Recognizing LAC is also not completely realistic. Pakistan's military controls their civilian government. Any civilian government that suggests the recognition of LAC as an international border gets "couped" by their military. Kashmiri independence also part of Pakistani nationalism and is a cause championed by Pakistan in international forums. The largest river in Pakistan (Indus/Sindhu) also flows through Indian Kashmir. China's belt and road initiative for Pakistan also goes through Pakistani Kashmir (so China is also interested in Indian/Pakistani Kashmir, apart from Aksai Chin and Ladakh).
  15. Like
    Boydstun reacted to necrovore in What are some counter-cultural rules you live by?   
    This point of view doesn't come out of the New Testament; it comes out of the Enlightenment.
    My understanding is that the first Puritan colonists almost died when they tried to take religion seriously, and only found success when they discovered productive work, an idea which developed into the "Protestant work ethic."
    John Locke and some other Enlightenment philosophers thought that reasoning, based on reality, would ultimately lead to God -- to their conception of God. They argued that, if God made reality, to study reality was to study God. So they thought that if things could be derived from reason and reality, that was the same as if they came from God, and they thought of individual rights that way (as coming from God because they come from reality and the conditions necessary for human survival). They had a lot of confidence in the idea that they could have both reason and religion, but it turned out to be wrong, making a choice necessary.
    There are still a great many Christians, especially in America, who discard logical consistency out of a desire to have it both ways. There are others who have decided that reason is error-prone, that reality is imperfect, and that both are corrupted by the Devil, so they side with religion (and the Bible) against reality. (Besides, if you can find out about God directly from reality, then "mistakes" in the Bible become evident, and the Bible itself becomes unnecessary, along with Christianity, and many Christians find that unacceptable. They'd rather say it's reality which is "mistaken.")
    Sometimes I think there are two distinct interpretations of Christianity. One says that "Jesus sacrificed himself so you don't have to," that it was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, and the other says, "Jesus sacrificed himself as an example, so you should sacrifice yourself, too." I suspect John Locke (and the whole American system, which is largely based on his thought) would have aligned more with the former than the latter, but the debate seems to rage on to this day. (Or maybe it doesn't; it looks like the "example" side has been mostly winning.)
  16. Like
    Boydstun reacted to DavidOdden in What are some counter-cultural rules you live by?   
    It is true that the roots of Objectivism can be traced back some three thousand years (not ten), but the soil that it is rooted in is found in Greece. Western philosophy has been influenced by numerous Asian streams, however Aristotle cannot be said to have been influenced by Christianity or Judaism. Centuries later, the Romans welded Plato and Jesus together to create a still-living hydra monster, but we cannot generalize these secondary developments as “Western philosophy” thereby tainting Objectivism with improper Christian underpinnings.
    It is also true that Objectivism has a normative trend – there are “rules”. Rules are not a recent invention, indeed they substantially predate the evolution of humans, or mammals. Obviously rules in the sense of explicit moral codes are the exclusive property of humans because only humans have language, the tool for encoding explicit moral codes, and we may presume that such rules have been around for over 100,000 years. Mostly they would have been in the form “Give me your stuff or I’ll kill you”, or “Touch my stuff and I’ll kill you”. The dominant putative authority for moral rules across the globe has been the supernatural, except that the ancient Greeks sought to devise moral rules deriving from nature (as did the Cārvāka of India, who vanished), and this is the essence of Aristotilean and Objectivist ethics.
    If Objectivism were a synthesis of 10 millenia of world philosophy, it would be incoherent as Christianity is, especially in its modern instantiations. It is very clear from the historical record that Rand eliminates millenia of prior “synthesis” to find the Aristolilean core, then developed and perfected it into Objectivism. Identifying that philosophical root is what makes Objectivism radical. I don’t deny that in the 60’s the leftist movement redefined the meaning of “radical”, but I also don’t care.
    The reason why we should not just look at outcomes is because inspection of outcomes is vastly inferior to an understanding of actual causation. We now have rampant outcome-based systems of pseudo-knowledge on our computers that threaten civilization because they are based in a neo-religious interest in superficial behavior (outcomes) rather than what causes behavior. Outcomes are just the raw data that we call on to understand causation.
    It is meaningful to ask what are the principles that define Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. We can even ask what distinguishes Calvinism from AME-ism. The fact that there is a difference between AME-ism and Syrian Orthodoxy does not invalidate the unity of Christianity as a body of religious principles. Even within a single church (literally, a building not an institution) individuals can disagree. Because man’s behavior of chosen and man is free to choose between alternatives, we face a real quandry in characterising any philosophy or other kind of volutional behavior by humans. The integrationist viewpoint looks for the underlying principles that guide men’s choices, the disintegrationist viewpoint emphasises the diversity of behaviors.
    In order to judge a culture, you have to first identify the culture, meaning that you have to know what its causal principles are, and what essential properties distinguish it from other cultures. It is not an essential property of Christianity that Shabbos is on Sunday, even though that is a property distinguishing SDA from other Christian sects. That is one sense in which Christianity “speaks with many voices”, and we can multiply Protestant disunity by noting many other non-essential differences such as abstinence from alcohol, abjuring homosexuality, belief in credobaptism, doctrines regarding sin, the essentiality of sacraments etc. The question should not be whether you can find differences between individuals, the question should be whether a particular concept is valid in the first place, and if so, what are its defining features.
    I am lightly skeptical about the validity of the concept “modern Judeo-Christian culture”, as opposed to “Jewish culture” and “Christian culture”. Rather than defining the unity in terms of religion, I would define that unity based on geography: western civilization. As it happens, Christianity spread along with other aspects of western civilization, and the Judeo-prefix is a recognition that western culture is not exclusively Christian in religion. I would prefer the label “Religious western culture”, which is distinct from “atheist western culture”, but still similar in being “western culture”. Then any reference to “modern Judeo-Christian culture” simply directs our attention to the religious aspects of western culture. By inspection of the texts and behavior, we can identity a certain “Judeo-Christian” unity, even thought here there are measurable differences that should be omitted.
    If there are professed (purported) Christians who act selfishly, you should not ask whether they believe in some part of the Bible that seems to teach selfishness, you should ask whether they simply reject the principles of their nominal religion without embracing that rejection. Crossing the line from agnosticism to atheism is extremely difficult, and I believe that many so-called Christians are only social Christians, who are unwilling to openly declare their atheism.
  17. Like
    Boydstun reacted to necrovore in Capacity for Philosophy   
    Knowledge is hierarchical: you have to crawl before you can walk, algebra comes before calculus, and you can't invent the transistor until after you have discovered electricity.
    The hierarchical nature of knowledge would also affect philosophy. Sometimes philosophers have to learn from their predecessors, including from the mistakes of their predecessors.
    Because the human lifespan is limited and the amount of thinking a human can do is limited, there is a limit to how far one human can go intellectually. It's easier to reach any point if, due to the work of previous intellectuals, you get to start out halfway there. (You still have to verify their work, but that is much easier than having to invent it from scratch.)
    Environment and society also make a difference; someone who comes up with a new idea will fare better in a free society than in a dictatorship, for example.
  18. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from StrictlyLogical in Ayn Rand and dualism   
    No. Although Rand may have had a view here or there that suggested dualism, her general metaphysics and biocentric ethics and psychology would not be consistent with dualism. At least not in the sense of dualism as usually meant: of some sort of fundamental dichotomy of the physical and the mental.
    Rand did not have a fundamental dichotomy between the inanimate and the animate, even though the latter has a profoundly different character than the former. Living systems can have even the feature of non-intentional, non-conscious teleological causes of individual life cycles, ways of life, and reproduction to continue the species, which is entirely absent in the inanimate components whose activities make possible that overall ends-pursuits of the living system. It would be untrue to all that reality to deny the existence of either the living things or the non-living things and their very deep differences in character (or the relationships in which they stand to each other). One does not have to choose between eliminative reduction of life to the inanimate on the one hand or dualism of the living things and the non-living things on the other.
    Similarly, conscious mind is not a biological feature that one must think of as either really just non-conscious living activities on the one hand or dualism on the other. Those alternatives are not the only ones under which one might comprehend the relation between conscious mind and the physical. Indeed they leave out the alternative relation that is the truth (for which one needs neuroscience and not only the philosopher's armchair).
  19. Like
    Boydstun reacted to Eiuol in Seeking insights on Objectivism: Benefits and misconceptions   
    Because of this link at the bottom, I'm quite confident that this is AI generated content. The response is wildly generic.
  20. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from Jim Henderson in In the Gathers of the World   
    Wooden Spool
    Mother had fashioned of thick thread
    a harness for the summer locust, 
    thread run through the hole of the empty spool,
    the locust to pull across the floor,
    the children to smile.
     
    None could know
    the invisible thread
    spool-full, the rough unwindings
    of tomorrows and dreams,
    tough rewindings, revisions.
     
    The older boy to marriage and break
    and poverty and roughneck
    and loss of one arm
    and women lost and wealth won
    and death by cancer at fifty-four.
     
    The younger boy to no woman,
    no child, to books and pen ablaze,
    to man life-love, from nineteen,
    same age, to that man’s death at forty-one.
    Orbits six more, to new man life-love.
     
    The young girl, alone Mother’s own child,
    to marriage, children, and theirs,
    to failed health, non-stop pain,
    and death at sixty-six.
     
    That summer, its locusts,
    that wooden spool a while more
    in the second boy alone
    still unwinding the invisible to visible.
  21. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from tadmjones in Seeking insights on Objectivism: Benefits and misconceptions   
    KE,
    Any advance in understanding the world and one's place in it as the human animal is part of a person, and in that broad sense of the personal, I'd say that for me Rand's drawing out of a thing I'd somehow known but not explicitly was beneficial: that life is the final end in itself. In terms of benefit to understanding, I'd say also Rand's discovery that and how life—focally, individual human life—is the arena and ultimate basis of any value or meaningfulness. Also of personal benefit, in the broad sense of the personal, for me, is Rand's main timbers for metaphysics: Existence is identity; consciousness is identification (focally, of existents). This is a good frame for examinations of other wide frameworks in which I for one have a life-long interest in knowing, from the Greeks to the present.
    In the narrower and more usual sense of the personal, for me, that benefit came when I was a young man, about five decades ago and continues to old age: mental health. In particular, learning that (i) rationality in one's thought, values, and action suffices for authentic value, and (ii) the goodness of loving oneself, esteeming oneself.
    Concerning misconceptions of Objectivism, two come to mind: that it is primarily a political viewpoint, and that it can be adopted simultaneously with holding onto some belief in the supernatural.
    These are good questions, and I'm looking forward to what others at this site have to say on them.
  22. Like
    Boydstun reacted to Gus Van Horn blog in Reblogged:Dem Voters Have New Hampshire Dilemma   
    Over at Jewish World Review, Carl Leubsdorf handicaps the early Republican primaries, and concludes that Nikki Haley is in a strong position to emerge as the main alternative to Donald Trump after Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

    I mostly agree with his analysis, but I think New Hampshire might be more interesting for Democrat voters and political junkies than Leubsdorf realizes. His take on New Hampshire:Important here is why the Democrats won't recognize that winner, and the name of that why is Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman who is challenging Biden in large part because of the President's age. Phillips is in that "Biden-less contest" and stands to get headlines as the winner, regardless of what his party does.

    Absent Phillips, what Democrats ought to do in New Hampshire is a no-brainer: Vote for Trump in the Republican primary since running against Trump again is Biden's best shot at getting reelected.

    But with Phillips? Any Democrat who shares Phillips's concern about Biden's age and wants to send a message to the DNC should seriously consider voting for Phillips, even if only to show other younger possible candidates -- like Gavin Newsom -- that Biden is vulnerable.

    Yes, this might narrow or outright derail a Trump victory, but that might not be a bad thing: After all, running against Biden is Trump's best shot at getting back into office, so maybe sticking with Slow Joe isn't a great idea...

    On top of that, and especially if Haley (or DeSantis) actually wins or does well in Iowa, Trump will have been shown to be vulnerable, and the Democrats will be looking at Biden running against a younger and less-disliked candidate than Trump.

    In that case, telling the DNC to dump Biden while there's still a chance to do so might be a compelling reason to vote for Phillips, who has other strong points, as I wrote earlier at the link above.

    And the fun doesn't stop there. With RFK, Jr. in the general, there is high protest vote potential that can go any number of ways. If Biden is in the general, RFK, Jr. is leftist-enough to attract dissatisfied Democrats. (I hear that he's a hit with younger voters.) If Haley (or, less likely, DeSantis) is in the general, RFK, Jr. -- as an anti-vax conspiracy nut -- is kooky enough to draw support from a significant number of disgruntled hard-core Trump supporters.

    Either prospect could motivate Democrats in New Hampshire to vote for Phillips in their own (unofficial) primary or for the best non-Trump alternative in the Republican primary.

    -- CAVLink to Original
  23. Like
    Boydstun reacted to tadmjones in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Stephen 
    You understand that the importance placed on the existence of the tunnels and the threat they project is what I am calling propaganda.
    The breach of the world’s most secure perimeter monitoring system wasn’t achieved by dint of surprise of time and place , the 50 th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war along a section of the Gaza border, alone.
    I am sure you aware of the calls for investigating and justifying the draw down of forces in that immediate area?
    The documented barbarity and brutality gives license to Israel’s response , which in turn gives license and talk in the West of relocating the Gazans entoto , weird how that falls in place. Those damn tunnels.
  24. Like
    Boydstun reacted to necrovore in What are some counter-cultural rules you live by?   
    "Judeo-Christianity" doesn't root itself in reality, it roots itself in divine revelation. It's essentially believing that abstractions come from God, that God handed the correct abstractions to Adam and Eve, and that those ideas have been passed down through the generations ever since.
    Maybe long ago there were a bunch of elite high priests who thought that if they passed off their rational conclusions as divine revelations, and encouraged the little people to obey them blindly without asking pesky questions, then everything would work better. (There are people in Washington DC who think that way today.) However, things do not work better that way: society fares better if everybody knows how to think, just like it fares better if everybody knows how to read. The high priests often end up not being any better than anybody else, and sometimes they are worse (because criminals are attracted to positions of power).
    Divine revelation can succeed through plain Darwinian evolution: if your civilization's divinely revealed ideas just happen to be correct, your civilization will last longer, and be able to spread more, than if they are wrong. However, if you root your ideas in divine revelation, the correctness of those ideas cannot be checked and is just a matter of chance, and bad or mixed ideas can be "enforced" just as easily as good ones. Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's right; the bad ideas may survive as parasites on the good ones, and very old civilizations can still have bad old ideas which cause unnecessary problems, but religious societies will refuse to change bad ideas, even if reality shows them as such, unless a divine revelation comes along that they will accept.
    The idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality has existed in the West in various forms ever since Aristotle. At some level people need it in order to survive, but sometimes it is counted on without ever being formulated as an idea at all. (I suppose in that case it is not deliberate...) When it is formulated, it is apparent that it is not really a religious idea, and in most periods of history it has been unpopular and derided, especially as a means of working out highly abstract ideas (which are the most important). The most common objection seems to be that people are too stupid to figure out reality on their own and therefore should give up the attempt and trust the high priests.
    This is where Objectivism is radical: it takes the idea of deliberately basing conclusions on reality to its logical conclusion.
  25. Like
    Boydstun got a reaction from tadmjones in How To Be Happy   
    KP— Rand was continually and deeply at odds with Nietzsche, as shown in my Nietzsche v. Rand series. And surely any kinship in feeling she had with his outlooks went flat as she developed her philosophy. I have a favorite passage in Z, Before Sunrise, though only when I've stricken or bent some of that text. I read Nietzsche though I don't have any kinship to his spirit. Once I had studied him far enough, my overall feeling toward him was revulsion. In that I've some likeness with Rand's spirit. Indeed, I've much affection for her spirit.
    My feeling towards the spirit of Schopenhauer is some warmth. I see now that "Counsels and Maxims" is contained within my copy of volume II of his Parega and Paralipomena, which I've yet to study. What I've studied of him pretty well thus far are The Four-Fold Root of Sufficient Reason, On the Basis of Morality, and The World as Will and Presentation. I thought that he agreed with Kant in thinking that happiness and morality are regularly at odds, though he disagreed with Kant on what was the basis and content of right morality. I thought Nietzsche came to be at odds with Schopenhaur concerning the nature of the will and evaluation of the will. Certainly Nietzsche came to sharp disagreement with Schopenhauer on the rightness of indulging in empathy, compassion, and pity (starting at least by the time of Daybreak 133). He put Schopenhauer among those secularists still clinging to Christian virtues, which should be discarded, at least the ones distinctive of that religion. It's hard to think of Nietzsche thinking highly of happiness, his sights of blessedness being conflict and beings higher than we humans from which they, the higher, might emerge.
    Rand made enjoyment of life the purpose of morality (for genius and common person alike), unlike Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it seems. Where Schopenhauer has the sensible goal for humans to be painlessness and not pleasure, Rand would spit, I'd think. And communion with Idea, Schopenhauer's redemption from life in art, is opposite the metaphysical import Rand sees in art. In quick sum, so far, I'm thinking you've got too much commonality among these three philosophers, at least in their mature views.
    Delicious topic. Stimulating. Thanks for sharing this. 
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