Boydstun

I don't understand the desire of a human to bind their life to a same sex relationship.  But my understanding is irrelevant in this case.  The issue is liberty versus the initiation of force/fraud thru a representative government.  People who see their lives as happier in these relationships, some my friends, do not impose anything on me but a concept I cannot relate to.  I can't understand why a person would want to be a politician either.

Budd, I think it is quite relevant to the thread and a good thought. There is a history of success in physics, and in chemistry, geology, and biology too, of uncovering underlying unifying explanations of diverse phenomena. Sometimes, as with chaos theory and thermodynamics, we have found phenomena to which the theory with its equations apply that are different from the phenomena for which we first developed the theory. We get some explanation and some new unity in our understanding of the world in those successes.
 
We strive in addition for another, stronger sort of unity, and this one is the main arena under the tent so to speak. The standard model of the elementary particles, including their quantum mechanics and including the unified theory of the electric, magnetic, and weak and strong nuclear forces (such unity of those forces as we have so far) is a case of bringing a diverse range of phenomena under a single dynamical picture. This is not only a satisfaction of the intellect; this kind of unification increases what materials and devices we are able to invent. The strength-of-solids family of properties you listed is also a case in which we have achieved some amount of unified underlying explanation by atomic, solid-state physics. Similarly, with properties of gases and liquids: we have had some success with molecular underlying explanation of their properties through statistical mechanics. We have also unified various features of classical thermodynamics in its generality by underlying statistical mechanics.
 
However, those various properties of solids you mentioned remain phenomena just as different (and similar) as ever they were. Such phenomena are existential, and their existential differences do not get attenuated by our learning of underlying common causes of them. Two more “howevers” are these: I don’t see any advance assurance that we can always find such unifying dynamics as we pursue, for I don’t see any advance assurance that such a thing is there. We are gambling. Secondly, I don’t want to leave an impression that it is only through grasp of such underlying unities of dynamics that we are able to make any technological advances. People who first came up with ways of forming a bearing for a wheel on an axel, thereby inventing load-bearing wheels, would have had no such sophisticated understanding. 

Hi Jack. There is also a discussion here. I have a first degree in physics from back in those days, your days. And I had some courses in classical and quantum mechanics and in electrodynamics at the graduate level.
 
It has seemed to me that there is no need for Objectivist metaphysics to identify Rand’s basic category entity with only particles or particle-like things, when it comes to thinking about entities making up the entities that are baseballs, people, and living cells. An electron could be an entity having particle-like attributes in certain situations and wave-like attributes in other situations and links between the two, such as we learn from quantum mechanics. And offhand I also don’t see any reason to insist in the Objectivist metaphysics, which aims to be pretty minimalist, that relationships of the entities that are macroscopic objects to the entities (and relations) that are a vacuum space or field space in which those objects are situated must be the same relationships to be found between electrons and the physical spaces in which they are situated. Concerning the specific ways in which quantum indeterminacy enters mechanics and field theory, I think it requires modest adjustment in some of the Objectivist metaphysics in conception of identity and causality (as expressed by Rand and by Peikoff in coordination with Rand) for accommodation, but the categories of entity, attribute, relation, and action will still suffice, and the axiom “Existence is identity” will remain standing and working.

Budd,
 
There is no primacy of the formal over the existential. The boundaries of formal systems, such as incompleteness at some orders of logic (or completeness at other orders) has little-to-nothing to do with the existential structures and boundaries we have discovered. Arm-chairing does not cut it in physics. The math must be learned; the experiments and observations must be designed and analyzed.
 
The only parts of logic have I seen have possible special bearing in physics is over alternatives in De Morgan type rules in attempts to understand aspects of quantum mechanics. And that has nothing to do with semantic or syntactic paradoxes or with limiting-theorems on deduction in formal logical systems. The other is in work on quantum-assisted computability, which incorporates results on limitation theorems on computability. By far the greater implications for physics from formal structures and their internal constraints are from mathematics, not logic and not even, for example, the formalization of group theory in suitable mathematical predicate logic (chap. XII of Richard Epstein's Classical Mathematical Logic). We have found that what is germane from formal disciplines to our ever more penetrating physics is theory of partial differential equations and geometrical spaces and various mathematical categories such as groups, topological vector spaces, and Lie algebras.

SL,
 
I’m not yet to the bottom of those issues and the issues of the nature of truth in abstract algebraic and topological concepts and facts to our existential classifications and measurement. In general strokes, I expect that although our method of arriving at truth in pure mathematics, though different than our empirical experimental ways of gaining knowledge of existence, is ultimately based on our experience of fundamentals of the physical world. And similarly, I expect it goes for our methods of logic, such as which inferences do not derail truth.
 
Groups are a kind of mathematical category, as you may know. Not every structure of interest in pure mathematics is a category, but considering the elements of what constitutes a category—class of objects, set of morphisms on them, rule of associative composition of morphisms, and an identity morphism for all those morphisms—would I think be a good bunch to consider in thinking about what surface connections these elements have to our everyday experience and manipulations in the world. Beyond being a bare category, various specific further conditions are added to get the various kinds of categories we have found productive in physics, such as groups, algebras, vector spaces, topological spaces, and Hilbert spaces.
 
The ways in which Rand's somewhat expansive notion of identity is related to such abstract structures as mathematical category in its bare bones does not look offhand too different from what we would say about her identity concept in relation to logical inference and standard logical identity, to nature of concepts of existential things, and to theory of predication and definitions. Historical look of how we got our scientific concepts (e.g. energy) and how we got our mathematical concepts (e.g. derivative of a function) and the similarity and difference in how changes in those two classes of concepts have come about would likely help us in pursuit of specifying how mathematical concepts such as groups stand in relation to the concrete physical world.
 
Another window on groups would be in the mathematical symmetry aspect of it (which I presume depends crucially on the addition of an inverse function to mappings of sets into sets [where we have taken the objects for groups to be sets and the morphisms to be mappings]). I’d like to think about symmetry in groups in relation to our more usual symmetries.
 
I do not know, at least not yet, if Rand’s identity conception of all existents and causation, together with her measurement-values-suspended way of understanding concepts lead to any special insight into the degree to which mathematical symmetry has come to such salience as we get deeper into the fundamental physics of existence. The importance of invariant quantities under certain classes of transformations seems not to have been foretold by any philosophers, rather to have been arrived at by scientists, who, to be sure, get to think philosophically as they forge new tools. I do not know whether Rand’s teachings on identity and on measurement analysis of concepts has anything to bring to that grand tool or to understanding its success in fullest context.
 
The physicists I have known thought of mathematical structures as potential models for physical applications. Whether such abstractions are instantiated in physical reality is lead by observation and experiment. I imagine in doing theoretical physics, one may think mostly of implications in the theoretical structures, but everyone I knew understood that those were abstract structures and that physics is about that which is physically realized, that physics is profoundly experimental.
 
Thanks for the questions. Hope this ramble may have touched on your interests at least a bit. I’ll mention a couple of books of interest for some of this philosophical reflection, especially future:
 
Category Theory for the Sciences
D. I. Spivak
 
Symmetries in Physics – Philosophical Reflections
K. Brading and E. Castellani, editors (2003)
 
Robert Knapp’s book Mathematics is about the World has a final chapter “Abstract Groups and the Measurement of Symmetry.” It seems to introduce the mathematical area, but have little specific to Rand’s innovations by way of philosophical assimilation.

Neat to see these different personal stories. My first read was The Fountainhead, followed immediately by Atlas Shrugged, which had the fully developed philosophy. That was in 1967, when I was 18–19 years old.
 
Related Interest: How Many Times Have You Read Atlas Shrugged?

Eiuol, I have written about and integrated research from Carey’s book in my paper “Capturing Quantity” in Part 2 and Part 3, which you may find a boost.

From http://www.salon.com/2015/05/25/working_at_an_abortion_clinic_challenged_my_pro_choice_views_%E2%80%94_and_confirmed_them/'>Working at an abortion clinic challenged my pro-choice views

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“Philosophy, including Logic, is not primarily about language, but about the real world. … Formalism, i.e. the theory that Logic is just about symbols and not things, is false. Nevertheless, it is important to ‘formalise’ as much as we can, i.e. to state truths about things in a rigorous language with a known and explicit structure.”
–Arthur N. Prior*

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“Philosophy, including Logic, is not primarily about language, but about the real world. … Formalism, i.e. the theory that Logic is just about symbols and not things, is false. Nevertheless, it is important to ‘formalise’ as much as we can, i.e. to state truths about things in a rigorous language with a known and explicit structure.”
–Arthur N. Prior*

Peter’s distinction in #12 is one important to keep track of, but there are other things people mean by those expressions. To say that “A is A” means an object is itself has been agreed upon by thinkers who then go on to attach different meanings (narrow [this is only this and not any other] or broader including the narrow [this is only this and only what it is specifically]) to the principle that an object is itself. The expression “If A then not A” in a logic text of propositional logic would mean A to stand for propositions or statements. But in other contexts, we could use that conditional formula as shorthand for fact about objects, not the more reflective conditional about truth in our statements about objects. When I say “if this material is fissile, then it is not fissile,” then I know I’ve made a mistake about the material, about the material’s A is A, about its identity in the broader sense including not only A’s thatness, but A’s whatness. Identity, broad and narrow, is a fact of existence, of objects, we sensibly affirm as well as being a principle of order in our better thinking.
 
“The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect” (Metaph. 1005b19–20). Under that formulation, Aristotle seems to be anchoring noncontradiction in fact of objects.

I haven’t opened my logic books on this, but under a conception of logic as the art of noncontradictory identification and as bound to the axioms existence exists, existence is identity, and consciousness is identification of existence, I think the standard rule in which a falsehood, say A, implies the truth anything we please should be rejected. In an Objectivist setting of logic, I should think “if A, then not-A” always false. (In tune with #5.)
 
It seems to me also that we suppose it to be false when we compose an indirect proof that A is false, wherein by assuming it true, then joining it to other premises we already accept as true, we deduce not-A as true conclusion. If the conjunction of the premise A and the conclusion not-A in such a proof is not taken as a falsehood, shall we throw out all our mathematical proofs of A’s that are false, where the proofs are by the indirect method? (I see this concern has occurred to others at the other site.)
 
Peter, in #4, what are the axioms and inference rules for arriving at that theorem?

Since I've joined Facebook, I've become a liking son-of-a-gun. I just used up my quota of likes for this day on this intelligent thread. I appreciate the discussion by all participants, and I'd like to add one more like, which is on #28.
 
A friend and co-worker once posed a bright question to me. "Why is freedom of speech not a value and policy in a private business?" That point has stayed with me as example of differences in the status of being an employee as opposed to being a citizen. The setting and purposes of the private business and the role of the employee in it is different than the background legal system and the citizens.
 
Smaller businesses I worked in had less in the way of formal written policies than the larger businesses I worked in. That makes sense to me as a matter of efficiency for the smaller business. An extreme example would be the absolute and just-me jurisdiction I held over my philosophy journal Objectivity. Only about one-fifth of the manuscripts submitted were both initially accepted and worked into a form to be finally accepted for publication. I had put about as rules for potential authors a few guidelines by stating broadly the range of subjects right for and wrong for the journal, but further specific decisions had to emerge case by case---decisions about topic and quality of information, reasoning, and presentation---without me trying to guess in advance what all might come up and writing up advance-notice rules about it. I communicated to authors whose work was rejected why so and to authors whose draft had possibilities what possible directions for development might lead to the right sort of paper. But everything was private, and my say-so was it. I needed that efficiency to accomplish the project at all given my time constraints. The results were pretty satisfying to me and to many subscribers. One subscriber, a stranger, wrote to me: "I hope you live forever."
 
Hoping this thread-drift will be repaid by this bit of connection.

Since I've joined Facebook, I've become a liking son-of-a-gun. I just used up my quota of likes for this day on this intelligent thread. I appreciate the discussion by all participants, and I'd like to add one more like, which is on #28.
 
A friend and co-worker once posed a bright question to me. "Why is freedom of speech not a value and policy in a private business?" That point has stayed with me as example of differences in the status of being an employee as opposed to being a citizen. The setting and purposes of the private business and the role of the employee in it is different than the background legal system and the citizens.
 
Smaller businesses I worked in had less in the way of formal written policies than the larger businesses I worked in. That makes sense to me as a matter of efficiency for the smaller business. An extreme example would be the absolute and just-me jurisdiction I held over my philosophy journal Objectivity. Only about one-fifth of the manuscripts submitted were both initially accepted and worked into a form to be finally accepted for publication. I had put about as rules for potential authors a few guidelines by stating broadly the range of subjects right for and wrong for the journal, but further specific decisions had to emerge case by case---decisions about topic and quality of information, reasoning, and presentation---without me trying to guess in advance what all might come up and writing up advance-notice rules about it. I communicated to authors whose work was rejected why so and to authors whose draft had possibilities what possible directions for development might lead to the right sort of paper. But everything was private, and my say-so was it. I needed that efficiency to accomplish the project at all given my time constraints. The results were pretty satisfying to me and to many subscribers. One subscriber, a stranger, wrote to me: "I hope you live forever."
 
Hoping this thread-drift will be repaid by this bit of connection.

It doesn't need to end in an evaluation of the person at all, actually. You could just address the nonsense at face value.
 
There are probably many cases where this is true. But, I don't believe some users need to go around for the "benefit" of other users proclaiming, "You're irrational!" You'll still need to explain why something is irrational, which you could have done without going after the person's character.
 
And yes, I realize, "You're irrational!" could *not* be an insult. Maybe there are some cases where it makes sense to allow banter like that to remain on the forum. That's where the forum rules get enforced differently, where different moderating teams maintain different forum standards of discourse.
 
At this point, to me it seems like we're discussing problems which do not exist on this forum. Like DA wrote earlier, if anything the forum has a lax standard of discourse (though I don't think a low standard).

Plasmatic makes an excellent point that posts are intended for everyone to read and consider, even in the case (and perhaps especially in the case) when responding to a particular posters comments, and their explicit and implicit reasoning.
 
If Descartes came here spouting off about "the cogito", and how "it's possible" Demons could be fooling me about 4 not being equal to 5, my responses to him would in part be motivated by an attempt to persuade him (although this would likely be a futile exercise) but more importantly, my responses would be motivated by the fact that a response to him shows others WHY he is wrong in his approach, WHY he is a rationalist and THAT it is very probable that he is motivated by mysticism. 
 
In some contexts, to be silent is tantamount to acceptance.  In a forum such as this one of Objectivists and near, and novice Objectivists responding with the firmness of rationality is in one's self-interest insofar as proper understanding of Objectivism by as many people as possible is in one's self-interest (which I think it eminently is).

I agree with you on several points, not the least of which being the importance of judging character.  I am not suggesting that people refrain from making such judgements.  Believe me, I have what I consider to be well-grounded opinions on the character of many of the members here.
 
But those opinions are almost never relevant to the subject matter of a given thread.  If we were discussing socialism, for instance, it would not particularly matter whether I thought you a decent person or a rotter, smart or stupid, or etc.  What would matter are my arguments regarding socialism, and my ability to critically evaluate the arguments that you put forward in return.
 
(To the extent that such "personal" judgements do matter, I could always elect to avoid talking to someone I cannot stand, or I could desist from continuing a conversation when I have exhausted my patience.  And I have made that decision on more than one occasion.)
 
On the question of whether rules are "Objectivist" or not, I'll say that what I believe we desire -- or what *I* desire, at any rate -- are objective rules which facilitate intelligent/reasonable conversation about Objectivism, and related matters.  I think civility is defensible, and even required, on those grounds.
 
 
To be frank, I don't care about anyone's evaluation of me.  (At least, not in the context of typical board conversation here.  There are a few specific people whose judgement I've come to value such that their opinion of me, personally, might carry more weight.)
 
What matters to me, again given a conversation about socialism, is: what are the arguments you can make for your position?  And what is your assessment of the arguments I put forward -- and what is your basis for those assessments?  Honestly, that's all I care to know.
 
On "ad hominem," I think it's important to recognize that many people construe that term to mean "insult."  But that's not all of what "ad hominem" means; it means "to the man," which is to say a comment directed not towards the argument at issue, but to the person making that argument.  Beyond talking about "moderation" on this board, or the rules as written, I think that reasonable people should seek to avoid "ad hominem" in the context of the kind of intelligent discussion this board seeks to foster, even without being told.  Directing one's comments towards the people rather than the ideas does not help anyone to better understand those ideas, and it does not facilitate a better discussion, but it does make things unpleasant, and as I have argued elsewhere, it does disincline some individuals from their best and fullest use of reason.
 
Here's a personal example of the kind of thing I have in mind.  I participate in a fiction writing workshop, where we critique one another's stories.  There are only a few rules governing the critiques we make in the workshop, but the primary one is that we "address the manuscript, not the author."  Which means that we do not talk about our opinions of the writer, per se, but only their stories.
 
Why should we have such a rule?  Because it helps to avoid the kind of personal warfare and sniping that sometimes destroys groups such at these, and it focuses us on the very thing we come together to discuss: fiction writing.  This rule has proven to be very successful over the years, and accordingly, so has our workshop.  (And let's note that it does not prevent any member from having any opinion he'd like about another writer, personally, or in any other context.  It is just that those opinions have no place in our critique sessions, and are moderated accordingly.)
 
Here, I would like us to be similarly focused on the discussion of Objectivism and related ideas.  And so, for this very same reason, I believe we ought to restrict ourselves to sharing our views, our reasoning, and our evidence on those matters, and not the character of the other users of this forum.

The moderators here do not "constantly remove posts," unless we're counting spam.  It does happen occasionally, usually during a long-standing argument (within a thread, or across several) where the tone has turned toxic and the comments are more directed at people than ideas.  Honestly there are probably only a handful of users that experience "moderation" of any kind -- though these users sometimes tend to incite the same situations, over and over, through their routine behavior (so the fact that some users have a disproportionate experience, and perspective, is to be expected).
 
When posts are hidden, very often there is discussion between the mods about the propriety of their actions.  Sometimes there is disagreement, too.  But there are not, so far as I can tell, any "antics" that the mods are up to, except for trying to make this a place where ideas can be discussed with a reasonable amount of civility -- and as far as I can tell, that's fully consonant with the posted rules.*
 
Personally, I almost never hide posts -- I've maybe done it as many as... three times?  And I don't believe I've ever done so in the context of an argument in which I personally participated.  But hiding posts is a tool I would not take away from the others, or discourage them from using when they judge it to be the proper course of action.  Based on what I've witnessed thus far, I don't think they use it unreasonably (even if I sometimes disagree with a particular instance).
 
________
 
* Specifically, the rules read:
 
 
And
 
 
With respect to enforcing these rules, moderators here could be a lot more heavy-handed than they currently are.  Many users here are given a great deal of leeway to test the limits of "civilized interaction" before they are moderated in any official capacity.  Perhaps, at times, too much.

Deleting posts is just one way in which forum moderators try to maintain and respect the forum rules. The enforcement and interpretation of those rules, however, has changed over ten years under different sets of moderators. In members' post tone, for example, prior moderators might have had less tolerance than current moderators.
 
So:
 
1. The objective criteria should be the forum rules. Those rules are old and not followed close to "the letter,"and could be due for some updating.
 
2. Invision software deals with removed content in two ways: "hide" a post in-thread, where only moderators can see the offending content, and delete the post outright, where it no longer exists in-thread and then shows up in another moderator-only area. It's possible but not typical for moderators to permanently delete content from that area (posts exist from 2005), though after a while there isn't much point in keeping it around.
 
3. Naturally, moderators do not need all other moderators' approval to moderate. That would defeat the purpose of having multiple moderators. However, for especially controversial issues, all currently active moderators usually weigh in.
 
4. If the offense is ambiguous, a moderator will usually give a reason for removing content (there's a built-in box for this). If he doesn't, he may be asked for a reason later if the issue is ongoing.
 
5. Ultimately, if there would be such a serious offense in moderation, the forum's owner David Veksler would likely get involved. That doesn't happen often.
 
I think that the moderator team generally does a good job. Even in heated matters (which are not common), in the past it hasn't taken long for the team to cool down and put on a more objective hat even when judging one's own behavior and moderating decisions.

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Wouldn’t it make sense to speak of a choice between (i) pursuing more accurate measurements and (ii) obscuring measurements? Both seem to be abilities we have, and although the second ability is parasitic upon the first, I would hesitate to say it is nothing but the first or that choice in exercise of the two abilities is an instance of the first.
 
I like your connection of choice to individual knowledge and valuation. Aquinas had free will as a rational faculty, whose object is the good, and by which man determines his own course of action and choices between particular goods. Your thinking may be filling that out or it may be a reorganization of that or it may be a scuttling of that. Bears further thought.

I'd like to play devil's advocate for this one so here goes:
 
It simply boils down to choice being nothing more than the outcome of mere measurement. The point of measurement is to get closer to right or accuracy. Therefore if we are measuring, then we are just trying to be as accurate as we can be and that is what actually matters. The point is not to have options. Options are as irrelevant is the ability to have a ton of other less accurate measurements.
I contend the problem that keeps people from seeing it clearly is all the assumptions that get in the way because people are still looking at it wrong for the most part. And the questions that arise as a result of how that doesn't fit with how we conceptualize and experience reality are many, because we built our conceptual framework to assimilate (Piaget assimilation vs accomodation) our notion of free will.

By and large, I see it as choice is seen as valuable and important for its ability to give the best chance at getting things right, because the person most affected by the choice can often see possibilities and risks that others would not, and we could describe that the same way that we do for people who are "out of touch" with a social class, ect. So we value our ability to make choices, because the alternative is of high risk to not only our safety, but also our chance at getting the best. 

And safety isn't always part of that. We value what is right over what keeps us safe. That is why we can socially shame people into not being cowards in battle, and socially reward people into dying for their comrades, or for their faith.

Miles O’Brien lost most of his left arm in an accident last year. In this link to PBS Newshour (2/12/15), he visits the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and begins to learn how to control the world’s most sophisticated artificial hand by thinking the stuff by which we move our hands: Inspiring.

New Anti-Kant
František Příhonský
S. Lapointe and C. Tolley, translators
 
The full title is New Anti-Kant, or Examination of the Critique of Pure Reason according to the Concepts Laid Down in Bolzano’s Theory of Science. This book was published in 1850. Its author was a student and friend of Bernard Bolzano.* New Anti-Kant and Bolzano’s Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 1837) came into full English translation only last year. Until I read these books and recent works of contemporary scholars concerning Bolzano’s philosophy, I had known of Bolzano only slightly, by the brief remarks of Frederick Copleston in A History of Philosophy; and I had known the name Bolzano-Weierstrass Theorem* from a text on Real Analysis I had studied decades past. In recent years, a critical edition of the entire body of Bolzano’s works has been underway, and his major works are being translated into French and English. Bernard Bolzano has, at last, become recognized as one of the great philosophers of the nineteenth century. Not great in influence. Great in vista.
 
My interest in Bolzano for my own book and philosophy caught fire when I noticed a certain closeness to Rand in his foundations of theoretical philosophy. I treat that logical kinship and its differences with Rand in my book. Of interest there is Bolzano’s conception of a general ground-consequence relation and its relations to deducibility and causality (and to Kant’s ground-consequence relation). I reform it for my own foundational work, closer to Rand’s. Of interest also for that project is Bolzano’s analysis, contra Kant, of the nature of concepts in relation to experience, the purely conceptual nature of pure mathematics, the nature of deduction, and the relations among logic, mathematics, and our empirical sciences. Logic and mathematics were known as science to Bolzano, and his monumental four-volume Theory of Science is importantly theory of logic in a broad sense.
 
New Anti-Kant was written by Příhonský in close collaboration with Bolzano in the last years of Bolzano’s life. It was published two years after Bolzano’s death. It is called New to distinguish it from an earlier, then-known (and inept) work titled Anti-Kant (1788*) and to indicate that the case against Kant’s first Critique in Příhonský’s book is a fresh one. New Anti-Kant did not receive much comment from scholars at the time. For me it is a help for further grasp of Bolzano’s views. In the present note, I’d like to mention some remarks of Příhonský concerning influence of Kant’s philosophy which resemble some views of Rand on Kant’s influence, a topic that will not fit in my own book. In his Preface, Příhonský pauses to forestall the impression one might get from the book’s title that he and Bolzano (not idealists of any stripe) thought Kant had done nothing good by his philosophic writings. Příhonský’s corrective to that possible presumption provides a window into how Kant was being viewed, and lauded, by some of his well-versed opponents as of 1850 in German lands. One laudation from Příhonský concerned ethics:
 
Rand wrote in 1960 “Kant’s expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base—and what it had to be saved from was reason” (FNI).
 
The extent to which Kant was undermining reason in Rand’s meaning of the term needs to be detailed by consideration of how Kant had characterized perception and its relations to concepts and how he had characterized (partly affirming and partly limiting the) powers of understanding, reason, and judgment.* Where Rand wrote “expressly stated purpose,” she likely meant the Kant passage in the Introduction to the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason (KrV) at Bxxx about knowledge and faith.* She slides from faith to Judeo-Christian morality. That slide is not too wrong, considering what Kant did subsequently in moral theory. His is not altruism, to be sure. His is a partial self-sacrifice at base, but that sacrifice, so far as it is in the base, is not for the sake of others. His base shadows the First Commandment. Kant’s moral ideal entails of course only self-authored self-sacrifice.
 
In his early formal education at Königsberg’s Collegium Fredericianum (from age 8 to 16), Kant would have memorized Luther’s Small Catechism and studied the Large. He would know Luther’s explication of the First Commandment. In the Lutheran doctrine, God is the source of goodness in the world. Every good in the world—health, wealth, and family—are gifts from God. Every right gift one might give to another or receive from another, must be seen as a gift from God. It is more than a pleasing coincidence that the words Gott and Güte are so similar. God commands that one’s heart and mind be set first and foremost on God. He will bring good things, temporal and eternal, to people who follow this commandment, and he will bring woe to people who put other goods in first place, higher than God. To keep the true God in first place, one must have the right heart and head, the right faith. Luther: “Believe in Christ and do your duty.”
 
In his secular construction of morality, Kant would give to a good will the role Luther had given to a right faith. Kant wants to keep with individual necessary reward and penalty for individual condition of will, and he thinks he can find this necessary connection right here in the constitution of human will and reason. Beyond the sure sanctions for a good will is the hope of happiness in this life and hereafter.*
 
Contradicting what Příhonský would say later, Schopenhauer (1839) had indicated a number of ways in which Kant’s ethics profoundly favors egoism, which Schopenhauer took to be a demerit of Kant’s theory. How much of this contradiction is surface and how much substantial, I’ll leave open in this remark. But I should enter a caution about Příhonský’s characterization of the condition of German ethical theory at mid-century. In his criticisms of the portions of Critique of Pure Reason outlining Kant’s ethics, we read some encouraging metaethical tenets of Bolzano-Příhonský. When common sense “determines the good nature or wickedness of an action to be performed, it usually weighs the advantages and disadvantages that can reasonably be expected from it, i.e. its influence on the welfare of the living” (Příhonský 1850, 128). Moreover:
 
Those propositions combined with one conception of the nature of life give later in the century the moral theory of Jean Marie Guyau;*\* more recently, with another conception of life, the moral theory of Ayn Rand; and with yet another conception of life, the theory of Richard Kraut.* With Bolzano-Příhonský, we get a leap from those quoted propositions straight away to still another moral theory, again an anti-Kantian one: utilitarianism, which they rate excellent for its unselfishness. Many earlier thinkers, though not all, connected utilitarianism with conscious or unconscious psychological egoism (Windelband 1901, II.513–18). Příhonský’s picture of ethical egoism as a dead theory in his era in German lands might well be an exaggeration, an aim at death by reporting death, or it might be the true situation and the truth about Kant’s role in bringing it about. I speculate the truth is somewhere in between. Devotees of the subjective egoism of Max Stirner there may have been, quietly, secretly. Modest currents of egoism from Aristotle, from Judaism, Spinoza, and Heine, and from Christian personalism surely continued in the culture. But until the last decade or so of the century, until the entry of Nietzsche into the melieu, there was evidently no forthright ethical egoism (anti-ethical in some moments) publicly squaring off against Christian and Kantian self-sacrifice as moral virtue and gaining at least some popular following, if not academic following.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Windelband writes:
 
Of Kant and his first Critique, Rand writes:
 
That sounds to me like someone who actually opened the book and gave it a try. Which translation would that have been? The best at that time in English would have been the one by Norman Kemp Smith. That was the translation of KrV in my hands 1971–1997. The book became a step less opaque with the new translations (plus copious notes and ample index), by Werner Pluhar in 1996 and by Paul Guyer in 1998. When I first read Rand’s remark that KrV rests on no definitions, I was taken aback a little. Kant defines analytic, concepts, contingency, empirical, experience, faith, freedom, happiness, and on and on through the alphabet. He has incorrect views, in my assessment, of empirical and philosophical definitions and conceptual change, views at odds with Rand’s, although these views held by Kant were perhaps unknown to her. Kant writes: “To define, as the term itself yields, is in fact intended to mean no more than to exhibit a thing’s comprehensive concept originally within its bounds” (A727 B755). To that statement, he attaches a footnote:
 
In the case of empirical concepts, Kant argues that with the growth of knowledge of an object some characteristics in the object’s concept may need to be removed, or new characteristics may need to be added. Therefore, the concept is never securely bounded. For philosophical concepts, which Kant thinks of as a priori concepts, such as substance, cause, or right, he argues:
 
Příhonský has important criticism of those views of Kant, starting with Kant’s notion of a priori concepts as independent of all experience (24–25). I’ll close with a lamentation of Příhonský over the effect of this section of KrV on German philosophy to the middle of the nineteenth century.
 
References
Bolzano, B. 1837. Theory of Science. P. Rusnock and R. George, translators. 2014. New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Copleston, F. A History of Philosophy. Vol. 7, Pt. 2. Garden City: Image.
 
Kant, I. 1781, 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. W. S. Pluhar, translator. 1996. Indianapolis: Hackett.
 
Příhonský, F. 1850. New Anti-Kant. S. Lapointe and C. Tolley, translators. 2014. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
 
Rand, A. 1960. For the New Intellectual. In collection by that title. New York: Signet.
——. 1973. Untitled Letter. In Philosophy: Who Needs It? 1982. New York: Signet.
 
Windelband, W. 1901. A History of Philosophy. Expanded edition. New York: Harper.

I see from a Facebook notice by James Peron that Martin Anderson has died. (See Huff Post.) Jim reports:

So, time to kick off this Advice thing.  If you have a question for me--specific and personal are best--throw it out there and I'll answer it as best I can (eventually).  I don't pretend to be an expert on anything in particular, so what's the point of this exercise, you may ask?  It's really for me to do my best to show *how* I arrive at my notions.  Why is this instructive or of any value?  Because the hardest part of answering any particular issue about life is in deciding what is and isn't *essential*.  You have to go from the particular (your problem) to the abstract (the essential principles involved) to the particular (the application of that principle).  This is a process that must be practiced.  A lot.  It is CRUCIAL to understanding and applying Objectivism because the connection between the particular and the abstract is THE fundamental, defining factor of the philosophy.  So the purpose, as I see it, of this advice forum is NOT the value of the SPECIFIC advice (although I do hope that anybody asking a question does at least get SOMETHING out of it), but by trying to illustrate this process of concretization and abstraction as much as possible.  So, our first question:

Dear Jenni

This year I turned 30, and loved it. Every year I feel better about myself and happier to keep on living. Each passing year seems to open up the world in broader ways than the year before -- I learn more, and inevitably recognize more how little I actually know, which has the effect of making the world seem more full of opportunity.

But, starting around age 28, my body began making me notice it. Jump off a 3ft.-something, and there's a sharp pain back there, which doesn't go away for four days. Aren't sleeping tonight? Good luck recovering from that in less than a week. Wtf is this splitting pain in my skull? Oh, sure glad that went away as mysteriously as it appeared... six weeks later. Etc.

Now I have this conflict and dichotomy where I'm increasingly excited about living, while growing more and more uneasy (legitimately afraid?) about my apparent impending body breakdown. Ironically, I was born with a gimp heart which needed two operations. But, it never impeded my life, so I never thought of myself as deficient -- until The Pains started coming two years ago.

Is my fear realistic? Should I accept or even be glad for my uneasiness about it? I don't feel glad about it. I think there's something I'm missing in my view of mortality, or something else?
 
--JASKN
 
So, to start us off, I'm going to summarize this question as essentially asking: "This aging and death thing, how should one feel about it?"  In my experience, everyone has awareness of mortality more or less forced on them at some point in their lives.  How exactly this happens (heart operations, physical pains, in my case a horrible movie I saw when I was 11) may have some personal importance but isn't really essential to the overall issue at hand, which amounts to a realization that the decay and end of one's existence, while inevitable, isn't exactly something that anyone could realistically anticipate with any enjoyment. This is an interesting question (and, I think, a good one to kick this off) because fear or dread of mortality is something that I have a rich (if that term applies to something so unpleasant) and varied experience with.  I'll get to my more poetic expressions that I find the most helpful in dark moments in favor of a more analytical approach at first, in keeping with my ideas for this "Ask Jenni" business.
 
So, the very first thing to do when applying one's analytical powers to a subject should always be to ask, what are the facts of the matter?  Which is always a great excuse to produce a list.  Note that this is not intended to be an *exhaustive* list, just an *illustrative* one.  So, some facts on aging/death (which JASKN has pretty much already supplied):
 
1.  It's inevitable.
 
2.  It diminishes or even completely removes one's capacities for action.
 
3.  Much of one's joie de vivre is dependent upon one's capacity for action.
 
Well, put that way, it sounds kind of grim, but I want to submit a fourth (and, I think, significant) fact for your consideration:
 
4.  Fretting oneself about things one can't change only has the effect of destroying the capacities and enjoyments one still has, making one grumpy, crotchety, miserable, unpleasant, and possibly even hastening said inevitable decay and demise.
 
So, in short, the principle this falls under is basically: "you can't do anything (ultimately) about it, fretting makes it worse, so the only thing to do is to toss it out of your list of things to worry about and get on with your life".
 
So, there's the analytical bit taken care of.  Clearly I have fixed everything.  Well, no, because an important factor remains that affects one's life but that the analytical bit *doesn't* dispense with, because fretting about something is an *emotional* response, and like all emotional responses cannot simply be turned off--not even if you know they're ridiculous.  Maybe even especially if you know they're ridiculous.  You can toss it out again and again (getting madder and madder at yourself each time), but until you resolve the underlying conflict it's going to pop right back up again.  Of course, this is also where things start getting kind of fuzzy.  But here's (some of) my perspective, and I hope it helps:
 
I suspect this kind of anxiety ultimately derives from a subtle mental habit of viewing life and death (or youth and age) as a trade-off, as if they were options on a bargaining table.  If you're viewing them (even very slightly) in that way, getting older seems like one heck of a lousy deal.  Youth gets all the good stuff, and old age gets maybe that wisdom thing.  Unless, of course you go senile.  In reality, though, that is *not* the trade that life offers to you.  It's not a question of "I can be young and awesome, or I can be old and suck", but between "I can get older and enjoy it as best I can, or I can just die now and miss out on something awesome".  Staying young isn't on the table.  Not dying at all isn't on the table. To view things with equanimity, whenever that feeling of worry or dread comes up, remember the deal that is *really* on the table, not the one you would *like* to be on the table.  It won't fix everything instantly.  You may never *entirely* reach some kind of Buddha-like state where the anxiety never impinges on you again, but what happens is that you develop practice at facing the fear head-on, seeing it for what it really is, and letting it go so you can hurry up and get back to the awesome.  And, like anything, practice makes it easier.