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Nxixcxk

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Posts posted by Nxixcxk

  1. Even though I don't value Christianity, I still felt compelled to stand up today during church and admit that I believe in God.

    Felt compelled by what? Others? What would have happened if you didn't stand? What would have others thought? Would have they assumed you were no longer a Christian? And how would they have treated you based on that assumption? Would have one hundred people turned your way and gave you deriding looks? Would people who were of value to you disown you for your disobedience?

    What happens when you decide to play sports with others, but decide to invent your own rules? Do they get mad at you? What happens when you decide to enter a church, but then do not partake in the activities that are going on?

    What happens when a Christian praises Jesus and holds up the Bible to a group of one hundred atheists?

    I'm not sure what the situation was you were in, but sometimes it is wise to "go with the flow."

    And if you ask me, when John Galt made his monumental exit from the communist crowd crammed in the bleachers, he was lucky he got out alive.

  2. The purpose of my "emergency situation" was not to throw some impossible hypothetical into the air. The sole purpose of it was to illustrate someone unknowingly doing something harmful to others. Being entirely ignorant of our law and what constitutes negligence and what doesn't, I was hoping someone could help clarify things for me from an Objectivist standpoint.

    This point needs to be rephrased: who is acting morally, and who is acting immorally? I don't see that the child is acting immorally (and the cop certainly isn't).

    To make sure I understand, the child is doing nothing wrong, since he had no way of grasping what he was doing--in other words, a moral evaluation is inapplicable to a four year old. And the cop was acting morally since he was preventing someone from initiating force against others.

    Is it right to kill someone because you believe them unworthy of sleeping with the woman you love? No? In that case Rearden would be wrong to attempt to kill Francisco. However, Francisco knew that Rearden believed Francisco to be a worthless playboy because that was precisely the false image that Francisco was attempting to portray. I mean, imagine for a second that you're a man like Francisco, who holds his integrity as an absolute, and you've just received an appalling insult from a man who believes you have no integrity! Normally you'd respond viciously and immediately, however, the situation was not normal: Francisco was hiding his true self.

    :lol: Thanks, makes sense.

  3. After being slapped by Rearden, Francisco doesn't retaliate; instead, he says, "Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right." (pg 599, ~top of page) (This is when Rearden walks into the office that Francisco and Dagny are in. And if I remember right, Rearden thinks that Francisco is romantically involved with Dagny and thinks that this is a threat to Dagny and thus one of his most precious values)

    Probably not being able to see the entire context, I am somewhat confused by F's statement. I understand that knowledge is a contextual thing, and so is certainty. A child can be "right," or "correct," in defining a dog as a thing that barks, if it is the only animal he has perceived that has done so (there's probably more conditions as well, but I would bet the condition I've layed out is fairly significant). But how does one know the context of another person's knowledge? How does F know the context of R's knowledge, and if he does know it, doesn't Rearden have to be held responsible for a "limited extent" of knowledge, beyond what reality will give him? And if so, shouldn't Francisco at least slap Rearden back? No? What if Rearden's slap was instead an attack intended to kill. . .within the context of Rearden's knowledge, would he still have been right?

    Again, I could not be understanding the context fully, but let me give an example: If a four year old somehow manages to get a hold of an automatic weapon and go out and pull the trigger, as if he was in some video game, shooting up everything in sight, would it be right for a cop to shoot him?

    The child, within the extent of his knowledge, does not know it is wrong to do what he is doing, yet the cop knows he is endangering the lives of others as well as himself. So from the cop's perspective it is right to shoot the child, assuming there is no other rational and efficient way to disarm him. But from the child's perspective he hasn't done anything wrong.

    So I'm wondering how this doesn't lead to subjectivism or perspectivism in terms of determining who is right and who is wrong.

    Surely there are cases where a grown adult commits a crime, but within the context of his knowledge, it wasn't a crime. So is he still held responsible, and why? And what prevents someone from turning the "contextual knowledge" idea into the widely used plea of insanity (i.e. "I didn't mean to blow up 3,000 people, within the context of my knowledge, it was the right thing to do!)

    Thanks, and I'm sure my question here relates directly to the other topic I posed.

  4. Helpful responses. . .you guys seem to be able to understand and observe context much better than I can.

    My original response to HR was to laugh "at" him, but the laugh was entirely friendly--knowing that Rearden accepted the majority of my philosophy save a few aspects.

    Yet at the time, my laugh came w/o thought. Then I began to ask why I thought HR's response elicited my laughter, and the more I explained it to myself, the more I became infuriated with HR's response. It seemed to me that Rearden had had plenty of opportunities to understand what was going on. Hadn't Fransisco enlightened him some--or at least enough to where Rearden would be able to see the bigger picture? Granted, he works arduously long hours, but if he has time to go to Lillian's party, then he has time to introspect and philosophize.

    However. . .philosophizing, as all of us can attest, is no easy matter. And it is hard to see a hero like Rearden not understand how his hard and brilliant work is actually leading to his demise.

    I wish I could comment further, but the context has already seeped out of my memory.

  5. So I'm reading Atlas Shrugged for the second time and am to the part where Rearden meets Danneskjold for the first time.

    Danneskjold explains his philosophy to Rearden and why he wants to annihilate the Robin-Hood philosophy. After Danneskjold is done with his dissertation, Rearden says, "Take that gold and get away from here. I won't accept the help of a criminal." (pg 544, 4th paragraph).

    While reading this passage as the well as the relevant passages that preceded it, I was pretending as if I were Danneskjold. When I got to the above part, acting as Danneskjold, I respond to Rearden by wholeheartedly laughing at his hard-headedness. But according to the book, --Danneskjold's faced showed no expression.--

    Danneskjold responds to Rearden by saying, "I cannot force you to accept the gold, Mr. Rearden. But I will not take it back. You may leave it lying where it is, if you wish." This response substantiates the fact that Danneskjold showed no expression. The response leaves me to believe he acted very professionally, like a mortician would after someone just cracked a joke about death.

    So my question is this: Why is Danneskjold expressionless when Rearden says he won't help a criminal? After all the rational arguments Danneskjold has presented for his side, wouldn't he laugh at Rearden for not accepting his beliefs? And if not laughter--why not utter hatred towards Rearden? Had I been Danneskjold, if I didn't want to laugh at Rearden, I'd want to kill him.

    Thoughts?

  6. Okay thanks. And if I remember correctly, you're on your third year of law school--so in terms of finding out what area you want to practice/specialize in, is that something you experiment with while you're in law school. . .or should you have a general idea prior to attending?

    Thanks Groove

  7. I've had some interesting variations. A small private college I went to had a professor who had read some Rand. He said that her philosophy ultimately rested on the good of society, since what she professes ultimately leads to the common good. . .or something like that. It's hard for me to remember exactly what he said since it was years back. (nevertheless, I remembered it being an egregious interpretation of her philosophy)

    I have one philosophy professor who is an egoist---but I'd categorize him more as a "deterministic egoist." He believes that all voluntary actions are in our self-interest b/c we choose to do them. "Even mother theresa," he said, "is an egoist."

  8. I am considering law school and am wondering if anyone has a good resource that 1) lists all the fields of law one may study, 2) gives a brief description of what each fields consists of, 3) lists the average salary for each field, and 4) tells whether or not a particular field is in high demand.

    Thank you!

  9. The statement: "Knowledge does not exist," is quite obviously contradictory.

    Socrates said something like: "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything." Is this contradictory as well?

    It seems Socrates was trying to say one thing about knowledge, yet said two, an intimated a 3rd. 1) "The only thing I know" , 2) "I don't know anything," and 3) "I know that I know these things.

    So really, in saying that "the only thing I know is that I don't know anything," one is really saying three things. He knows that the only thing he knows is that he doens't know anything.

    Is this a way of refuting his statement? Or is it extraneous, because when I say that I know there's a computer infront of me, I also know that I know that there's a computer in front of me, ad infinitum.

    (or maybe I'm just not making sense altogether)

  10. If happiness is of value to one's self, however one defines happiness, then there is something incontrovertibly true here. That is, life qua life is a prerequisite of that happiness--whatever it may be. Where there is no life, there is no happiness. Therefore, if one values happiness, then one must, at a minimum, pursue values that sustain & preserve one's life.

  11. drewfactor, just my two cents:

    If you are able to imagine how Roark would act in a given situation, then you too know how you ought to act. Replay the incidents in your mind where you should have acted assertive. What did you do wrong? How could have you acted differently? Replace yourself with Roark. How's he acting? Now replace Roark with yourself. Visualize yourself being assertive in any given situation and that should help prepare you for actual assertiveness.

    That's what I do with things of that nature. Hope it helps.

    Good luck!

  12. I countered that if I initiated lying, stealing or the use of force that others would recipicate, thus it is not in my self interest to do so.

    This is a decent answer, but a quick objection would be, "What if you can get away with stealing, is it still in your self-interest?"

    What I was trying to say earlier was that stealing breaches the necessary foundation for the creation of that which the stealer is trying to steal. When man A steals from man B, essentially what he's claiming is that man B has no right to his property. If that was the case, man B wouldn't have ever tried to create anything in the first place and thus man A wouldn't have anything to gain from him.

    Let me give one more example with man A & B.

    Let us pretend man B makes shoes with a hammer and a chisel. Man A trades food for man B's shoes. One day, Man A decides to surreptiously steal man B's hammer and chisel (for whatever reason). Soon enough, man A realizes this was a stupid decision because his shoes have worn out and he needs a new pair, but the source from which he used to trade his items for shoes no long makes shoes, since it was deprived of the necessary tools. Thus it wasn't in his self-interest to steal.

    EDIT: If you read the "Prudent Predator Thread," you'll notice there was much talk about the illegal downloading of music. Here's a rhetorical question to those college students who steal music: "How do you expect your favorite artists to continue to produce when they are robbed of that which allows them to create such wonderful music?. . .Don't complain when the world is left silent b/c you've stolen the musician's guitar, drum, and bass."

  13. Chris, see if this helps.

    If my ancient philosophy class, we have been discussing Gyges' Ring (a ring that grants the wearer power to do whatever he wants and not get caught. . .it is said, based on this, that a just man and an injust man would act no differently).

    So our class seem to have concluded that the only thing propelling one to be "just" was the fact that one is scared of being caught and reprimanded by his fellow men. . .if one isn't caught, it would be in his self-interest to steal, lie, cheat, etc.

    After thinking about this for a while, I've come up with some answers (I think).

    In order to create a society where one may benefit from another, rights must be implemented. If man A and man B constitute a society, in order from one to benefit from the other, they must accept (at least implicitly) that each has a right to his own property, to what he produces. If man A steals from man B, it woouldn't be in his self-interest b/c man B would no longer trade with him.

    And even if man B was "mysteriously" stolen from, so that he had no idea who thieved him, he still would be deprived of needed goods to continue producing--so there would be no trading amongst the two b/c B would have nothing to trade.

    I'll reply more later. . .sorry for this post's choppiness/incoherence, but this computer is about to kick me off so i had to type fast.

    In other words, theft undermines the foundation with which trade rests upon. Thieving goes against the value which one is trying to steal. . .more to come!

  14. The link to the first poetry didn't work softwarenerd, but I read the second and enjoyed it.

    Good analogy btw with the art museum.

    This has made me check out some poetry books from the library that were suggested in this thread. I'll get back to you of what I thought of them :)

  15. Isn't having the life, to begin with, meaningful?

    This question has been bothering me for some time. My answer is this, however: The concept of meaning cannot be applied to life since life precedes meaning; that is to say, life is what grants meaning.

    Thus life is not valuable nor valueless, it is the standard of value.

    But then this would lead me to believe that one cannot value life--which seems so counterintuitive. However, in general, when a man says, "I value life," I think he means not "life" per se, but that which life affords him (i.e. the chance to have pleasure, success, etc.)

    Hopefully this helps ;)

  16. The nature of a concept seems so much more clear to me than the nature of mathematics. Had someone said, "But love will always exist even if humans aren't around," it would almost be self-evident that he was wrong.

    But in terms of discovery, I don't think any sciences are discovered--at least not like man has discovered natural laws, such as gravity. So in other words, science (or mathematics) is invented to discover.

    Not really, its more a body of theorems and structure. The 'method' of mathematics has changed a lot over the last 3000 years, so it cant really be considered defining.

    I'm not sure I understood this. Would you elaborate?

    Also, in terms of "perfect triangles and perfect circles," how do we come about these concepts if they don't exist in reality--or maybe the question is, How does one come about the concept "perfection?"

    If I talk about the perfect basketball shot--it is perfect b/c however it was shot, it made the ball go directly through the hoop. But if I talk about a perfect circle, it is perfect not b/c it accomplishes some goal, but because each point on its circumference is equidistant from the circle's midpoint. (So it seems perfection is used in two senses here: 1) Something can be considered perfect if it brings about the desired end, and 2) I don't know. . .why would we say that a perfect circle is one who's curve is everywhere equidistant from the center--there must be some desired end we are trying to obtain with this definition of perfection, if not, I'm at a loss)

  17. Here is my main question:

    1) Was mathematics discovered or invented? (Some things to think about, was the pathagoreom theory discovered or invented? What about other mathematic forumalations?)

    sub-question:

    2) If math was invented, how did we come about mathematical theoroms? How do we know that a2+b2=c2.

    The rest of my post sort of serves as a context for the two questions, but isn't too important--so feel free not to read it.

    During my a discussion in my ancient philosophy class, I said that concepts weren't created by the subject w/o reality, and that they simply coudn't exist solely in the object. . .to which another student replied saying that 2+2 will always equal four, regardless if humans existed or not.

    So I said that 2+2 only equals 4 because we said that when we saw two similar objects and combined them with two more similar objects, we said that the result is 4. . .but we could have said the result is five. 2 and 4 are merely names we ascribe to the objects being counted.

    I don't think math was *discovered*--it's not like we lifted up some rock and there in the sand was written: 2+2=4.

    If math is the science of measurement, then there must be osmething to measure before math exists. . .but I still don't see how this relates to math theories and perfect circles/sqs/triangles and what not.

    (ps I am pretty ignorant with math, so if you respond in hopes of making sense to me, please keep it layman-like, thanks!)

  18. In my logic class we are discussing induction/deduction, but the professor makes it seem like deduction is the only sound way to arrive at a conclusion. So my question is, if that is true, then how did we come about the knowledge to deduct if not through induction? (the professor said induction wasn't capable of certainty)

    Maybe I am misinterpreting what induction/deduction is. Are there any books specifically on logic that have an Objectivist's perspective?

    Thanks

    OH, and also, according to the author of the book we are using for logic, he claims that for deduction, once the logical form is known, the subject matter no longer is relevant in terms of finding out if the premises lead to the conclusion. At face value that seems pretty odd--thoughts?

  19. I am going to try and start an Objectivism Club at my college. In order to be recognized by the college, I must have a faculty member as my Primary Advisor. So I asked the Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy of the college if he would be interested. A few days later he replied by saying that he was looking for "a sympathetic faculty member" who might be interested.

    I was immediately curious, mildly angry, and humorous. Why did he use the word "sympathetic" here? I laughed when I read it, and thought that he meant that he'd be hardpressed to find any Philosophy Faculty Member who agreed with Objectivism YET would still support my club with their own pity for my predicament.

    Anyhow, thoughts on what one can infer from his use of the word 'sympathetic'?

    (PS, I guess I'll go to the multiculturalism faculty, surely THEY will have sympathy for me :thumbsup: )

  20. what I had in mind was the way Roark acts when he is in the company of others.

    How would you describe the way Roark acts in the company of others?

    What I am more interested in is how this will manifest itself in a person's psychology.

    This may be a question based on subjective inference, but are you interested in how independence effects a person's way of socializing? (or how an independent person socializes?)

    It's never a sign of aggression (by itself). It reveals a certain state of mind, where you are in control. You are in control because your thought does not break. If you lock eyes on a stranger, what you think determines how long you can hold their gaze. When someone is looking at you, they are measuring you. You can either try to blank that out (which requires that you avert your gaze), or instead focus on measuring them. Eventually this will be automatized and you won't even realise you're doing it.

    Is the sustainment of eye contact a sign of anything by itself? And how does it reveal a certain state of mind? In other words, how do you come to find that out?

    And how does what one think determine how long one will hold someone else's gaze? I can hold someone else's gaze while my mind is absent of thought. (or when you said 'think,' were you also using this concept to subsume the absence of thought?)

    And what about the assertion that a man is measuring you simply by looking at you? What did you mean by "look" in this instance?

  21. I never understood why an Objectivist would be against Libertarianism since in the political field they seemed to match. However, after attending a local informal meeting regarding Libertarianism, I believe I see why Objectivism would disagree.

    I asked the members what the principles of Libertarianism were, and they responded by saying, "Minimize government, maximize individual rights." But beyond these 'principles,' there was nothing--no foundation whatsoever.

    At the meeting I was handed a Libertarian newspaper that was published once a month. I was dismayed when I found an article titled, "Was Jesus a Libertarianism?" At that moment I realized Libertarian's didn't care how their "principles" were reached, just so long as they were.

    It didn't matter if you believed in God, or Budda, or witchcraft, just so long as you wanted to minimize government and maximize individual rights.

    To completely lack principles and hope that your enacted ideas stay in place is futile. It appeared as though the Libertarians wanted their branch to stay alive without watering the roots--a party based solely on concept theft. Even if, by some improbable chance, the Libertarian party became the dominant force in the political realm, it could not last for long since there aren't any principles.

    Believing in minimum government and maximum individual rights for the sake of both...and I thought it was so much more :(.

    Consider any affiliation I had with the party permanently revoked. Amen.

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