y_feldblum

They want a[n extension to] quantum theory in agreement with experiments. On the one hand, any theory being in agreement with experiments entails and implies Aristotelian logic et al, while on the other hand, this particular theory being in agreement with experiments seemingly contradicts Aristotelian logic et al. As an aside, and I have not read the paper, the principle of locality says that it is impossible for any object having mass to move as fast as or faster than the speed of light, and it is impossible for photons to move at any other speed than the speed of light. "Bell-type experiments", assuming locality, encounter a contradiction between quantum theory and logic. A "non-local extension to quantum theory" would mean a description of some newly-discovered physical phenomena which may move faster than the speed of light. The principle of locality is, I think, based on the interpretation of Einstein's special relativity theory offered by Minkowski, of a spacetime continuum, with space and time inextricably intertwined and, essentially, one and the same. Minkowski spacetime certainly makes the mathematical expression of relativity theory very elegant; it is also seemingly bizarre for meshing space and time so; and it also asserts locality.

The essential requirement of greatness is: reason. As Aristotle noticed, we all have it.

Were you invoking Peikoff's authority on me, or using Peikoff to prove my argument wrong? If the latter, observe that modern philosophy always dismisses the tautology as inconsequential, uninteresting, and utterly devoid of intellectual and conceptual content, whereas Ayn Rand always upheld identity as one of the most important facts there are, the most fundamental, the most full of intellectual and conceptual content. I agree that Peikoff was using scare quotes. Tautology is an anti-concept. It is the attempt to destroy the concept identity.

How do you use the term?

Tautology is an anti-concept: the nihilistic attempt to transform knowledge into non-knowledge. A is A is decidedly not a tautology; and if that isn't, then there isn't anything else in the world that is. A causal explanation is an explanation from the identities of the things involved. We have two means of gathering so-called supporting evidence. First, conceptual integration of the identities of the things involved. This is fundamentally the same thing as an outright causal explanation. Second, statistical correlation, or in the vulgar, seeing patterns. This is a nudge to the observer to go out and try to look for the identities of the things involved and come up with an outright causal explanation. But simply seeing patterns on its own does not, in any way whatsoever, imply certainty.

Don't elect a candidate on his individual hash of unorganized, unprincipled, pragmatic views. If anything, elect him on his principles. What are Ron Paul's principles?

What makes you think we want a presidential candidate with some of the right political conclusions? Objectivists influenced by Peikoff wnat a culture with all of the right metaphysical, epistemological, and moral premises.

As well as, according to Wikipedia, a past Libertarian Party candidate for the American presidency. We've got an overwhelming number of absurdly bad choices. It's hard to keep track of them all.

Al'Qaeda is not our enemy. The entire Islamic Totalitarian movement is.

Are there conservative Democrats? Are there right-wing liberal Democrats? There is no such thing as a moderate in politics, standard terminology notwithstanding. There are only principled politicians and pragmatic politicians.

Absolutely, absolutely false. Yaron Brook has a lecture, available for free on the Ayn Rand Institute's website, entitled Why do they Hate Us? You'll find an accurate portrayal of the facts there.

What is this phrase as a whole meant to convey? Why does it require the use of all three terms? To strike a blind, irrational fear into my heart?

Are [wo]men unique, among all existents, in having the power to confuse even the best among us? Is human consciousness, unlike everything else in the universe, not open to awareness and cognition? What is the nature of human consciousness which clouds any attempt to gather evidence of its properties and evaluate that evidence?

Of whom? I've never seen that fellow, nor seen any real evidence of him. Folks have been talking of him for years, without, like me, ever seeing him or seeing any evidence of him; the phenomenon seems to me somewhat strange. So, per Kant, do we all design our own universe? Or is this "God" fellow I've never seen someone special? Oh wait, why am I asking you, when you've never seen him either?

It is a horrible thought that government support any particular institution other than those required for the protection of individual rights. It is worst when the institutions government supports are the worst. The worst institutions are the religious ones, because they are religious. Not only do they follow unreason, but they are explicit advocates of unreason in fact and in name. Most other institutions such as progressive education and socialism pay lip service to reason, while negating it utterly; but they pay lip service to it.

A bias? They're run by the intellectual mainstream of the day, as found in all establishments devoted to ideas.

Which single thing do you hold as your ultimate, highest standard of value - the standard which all other values either measure up to, or fall by the wayside of - yourself, active, comfortable, and flourishing over your entire lifespan? or the disease-ridden, mosquito-ridden, predator-ridden, chilly-dampness-ridden, misery-ridden, 20-year life-expectancy-ridden swamp? You cannot have both, because the two are in stark contradiction. You must choose. Which is it?

And when the sky turns pink with flecks of nylon and instead of appearing spread out over the entire range of vision not taken up by earth, appears contorted into the shape of an hourglass ... are you going to say "I always knew it was possible"? Both scenarios are impossible.

We no longer have a conservative movement which stands for a return to the past way of doing things, which just so happens to be what Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith taught. We have a compassionate conservative movement today which stands for outright religion and the socialist economic system which religion demands, and a neoconservative movement which stands for a watered-down socialism mixed with the deeply held values of religion. We no longer have a liberal movement. We have pragmatists on the left who don't stand for any deeply held core principles. A previous comment hit the nail on the head: which philosophers do the liberals revere today? Bush, without a moment's thought, named Jesus as his favorite philosopher. Both religion and socialism are devoted to the moral code of altruism. And both are the core convictions of the Republican party and of the two mainline camps in the conservative movement today.

I would argue that the concept "existent" - whose referents are everything - omits all measurements. "Nothing" is a concept of method.

Mr. Kolker, your comments pertain to the Church of the Renaissance and later. They do not pertain to the Church of the Dark Ages, which was the target of my previous comments.

I do not. I think theocracy implies all the same things that secular socialism implies, but on a far worse scale. And I think that whereas secular socialism must self-destruct, because it purports to be rational but its ideas are easily seen to be corrupt, theocracy will perpetuate itself on through history, because it purports to be irrational on principle. Christian conservatives will do all the same things that the Democrats are now doing and more, with the same speed and the same zeal as the very worst of the Democrats. As you can see, they are doing it now. Which Capitalist policies has our Christian conservative President championed? Which Capitalist policies have the Republican party championed when they held power in the Legislature? Do you say "tax cuts"? Tax cuts is not at all, not in any sense of the word, a Capitalist policy. Spending cuts is a Capitalist policy. Deregulation (actual deregulation) is a Capitalist policy. Instead, the Republicans have championed the ban on stem-cell research and on abortion, and on the spending of obscene amounts of money, and kill and injure tens of thousands of Americans, on one of the most ill-conceived wars of American history. Theocracy is the most immediate and, at the same time, the most long-term threat facing America. The Democrats are not threatening to do anything in particular. They used to be socialists, but they are no longer anything. They are threating only to obey the whim of the moment, with no particular direction and no particular agenda but to remain in power. The Republicans have an explicit direction and an explicit agenda: the complete domination of your mind.

The Catholic Church - the foremost historical marriage of religion and political power - kept Europe in the Dark Ages a thousand years. The Soviet Union - the foremost historical marriage of socialism and political power - could not keep Russia in a Dark Ages of its own for even a hundred, and not even with all the support the US has given it.

For a space (a mathematical abstraction, whose referents include the set of all potential spatiotemporal "places" in this universe), one of these conditions holds. 1. It is finite and it has a boundary all around, an edge. One can move within the universe up to the edge, but then one can go no further. An example is: a ball. 2. It is finite and it has no boundary. By the laws of mathematics, a finite space that has no boundary is itself a boundary of some other finite space. One can move as far as one like in any direction without coming up against any kind of edge, but after some time, one will simply wrap back around to where one has been. An example is: a sphere (the outside edge of a ball). 3. It is infinite and it has no boundary. One can move as far as one like in any direction. An example is: the Euclidean space of Newtonian physics.

As I said earlier, I am reporting what I heard her say in recorded lectures which the ARI has made available on its website. Ayn Rand made the observation a number of times that pragmatism has no principles and no ideology, that the left have gone to pragmatism, and that the left have no principles and no ideology. Oh, the Republicans have principles. As I said, they stand for god and for his kingdom on earth. (This is not a statement about all Republicans. It is a statement about the dominant trend among Republicans.)