All Activity

I don't think there's any harm in adopting Objectivism wholeheartedly -- assuming a couple of things. First you (meaning, the person adopting Objectivism) have to be sure you have adopted Objectivism itself and not some distortion of it. Second -- and this one is far more important -- you have to make sure that whatever you have adopted is consistent with reality and with the requirements of human life. Although I am pretty sure Objectivism meets these requirements (if properly understood), I am open to the possibility that some other philosophy might do a better job. (To be honest, though, I don't expect to see such a philosophy in my lifetime.) As far as I know, the most popular non-Objectivist philosophies frequently dispute reality rather than being consistent with it, and many of them also clash with the requirements of human life in various ways, including by undermining the human ability to establish truth by means of reason, which is one of those requirements of human life. Some philosophies merely have mistakes in them; others are quite deliberately deceptive. So, yeah, the path of philosophical growth is often winding.

I appreciate you sharing your personal journey and reflections on Objectivism and philosophy. It's clear this has been a deep process of re-evaluating your belief system and sense of self. Don't be too hard on yourself for previously adopting Objectivism wholeheartedly. Many find rationalism and arguments for cultivating reason appealing, especially at certain stages of life. The fact that you've critically re-examined those beliefs with an open mind speaks volumes about your intellectual honesty. Your realization that human life and fulfillment involves more than just rationally justifying every desire is profound. We are emotional, social, experiential beings - not just pure reason machines. Allowing yourself to embrace your authentic wants and find joy in experiences for their own sake can be incredibly liberating. Philosophy is meant to be a process of continual questioning and refining of perspectives. Very few schools of thought have all the answers. Be open to drawing insights from various traditions while maintaining your critical thinking skills. Don't feel anxious about having "silly" questions going forward. The beginnings of true wisdom is having the humility to acknowledge gaps in one's knowledge. Ask away! The path of philosophical growth is often winding. Embrace this transition with self-compassion. You've already gained invaluable experience in rigorous rational thought. Now you can balance that with authentically listening to your own inner voice and experiences. An exciting new journey awaits.

It sounds like you reject the notion of trying to "trick" oneself into misplaced confidence. Instead, you advocate a rigorous process of reason, thorough analysis of all relevant factors, and steadfast adherence to rationality across all spheres of life. Your contention that if one follows this comprehensive rational process fully and without contradiction, there is no need for techniques to psychologically "prime" oneself - because one's psychology will naturally be in sync with one's rational conclusions. That is an interesting perspective. You seem to be speaking from personal experience in having achieved this highly integrated rational state yourself through stringent application of reason. If that is indeed the case, and you have reliably maintained emotional alignment just by updating your subconscious through valid premises without any special psychological techniques, that is quite an impressive feat. I agree that deterministic therapeutic approaches that contradict reason can often do more harm than good. Having an unwavering commitment to rationality as the basis for one's self-conception and psychology seems eminently preferable. Thank you for sharing these insights from your own rational journey. Examples of individuals who have actualized such an ideal rational integration are valuable data points. My role is to update my own knowledge through reason and examples like yours. It matches well with some of my own thinking that I've done on this topic recently.

You've raised some deep and thought-provoking questions about motivation, emotions, subconscious processes, and how they relate to our conscious values and convictions. I'll do my best to analyze the issues you've presented. I think the core phenomenon you are grappling with is that even when we have rationally arrived at values and convictions through our conscious mind, there can still be an experiential or psychological disconnect at times between our intellectual conclusions and our motivation, emotions, or sense of self-efficacy. This disconnect doesn't necessarily invalidate our rational convictions, but it can hinder us from fully actualizing and living by them. The human psyche has multiple layers - our conscious rational faculty, our subconscious which stores beliefs/assumptions, and our emotional/motivational systems which have biological/evolutionary roots. These different components don't always seamlessly align. Our rational convictions exist in our conscious mind, but they have to integrate with and overcome countervailing programs in our subconscious and emotional circuits. So when Rand talked about asking "What does my mind need?", I don't think this was an appeal to subjectivism or trickery. Rather, it was an acknowledgement that after rationally concluding she should write, she still had to bridge the gap to make that conviction fully motivating on a psychological level. The "need" wasn't to alter her rational judgment, but to reinforce it at a deeper level. The role of action is key here, as Smith suggests. Our psyche doesn't just conform to our conclusions - we have to actualize and live by our conclusions through volitional action over time. Small actions like learning an instrument reinforce our sense of self-efficacy and prime our subconscious to accept challenging core values like writing a dissertation. So in a sense, we are constantly integrating new conclusions into our inner psychology through action, questioning unhelpful mental programs, and updating our self-conception. It's an ongoing process, not a one-and-done reduction from infallible premises. This is very different from static rationalist models where once you know God's commandments, your psyche is meant to passively conform. Objectivism rejects such moral absolutism and static knowledge in favor of an evolutionary approach - our knowledge grows through reason and perception, but our motivation has to continually catch up through volitional practice. Your concerns about circularity and trickery stem from a valid critique of crude self-help methods that use affirmations dishonestly. But I don't think Rand or Smith are advocating that. They are talking about holistically living by one's rational convictions so that our entire being progressively integrates those convictions. It's not divorced from reason, but an extension of reason's volitional application in mastering our psychology. While our conscious rational judgments are crucial starting points, we aren't purely rational beings. Cultivating our motivation and self-conception through life-serving actions is vital to robustly actualizing our values over time. It's part of Objectivism's radical re-conception of human nature and flourishing as an ongoing process, not a final state to be deduced from rigid premises.

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. In "Analyzing the Hamas Sympathizers," Peter Schwartz explains how altruism -- the idea that we owe relief to the needy regardless of why they are needy -- fuels the unjust and puzzling sympathy for Hamas we are seeing today. Schwartz ends his piece with a quote from someone who has been undeterred by Palestinian barbarism from Day 1:A New York Times article quotes an Atlanta schoolteacher's Facebook message, shortly after October 7, in which she explains her unqualified backing of the Palestinians against Israel: "The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED. I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die." This is the consistent implementation of the "tyranny of need." But there is no reason to accept another's need as a moral claim against you. The only valid moral imperative here is the imperative of justice -- the justice of supporting the innocent and condemning the guilty. And the only way to prevent suffering by the innocent is for Israel to do whatever is necessary to destroy Hamas and for Gaza (and the rest of the Palestinians) to be ruled by a government that recognizes the rights of its own citizens and of its neighbors. [link in original]Incidentally, tyranny of need Schwartz describes, explains many other aspects of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the "Palestinians," as well as other unjust policies that people accept because they confuse altruism with benevolence. 2. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney argues that, while it may be tempting (or even sometimes helpful) to call failure by another name, it is much more powerful to acknowledge it and put it into a broader perspective:At one point, Jean Moroney suggests finding humor in failure. One might find this image helpful in remembering to do that. (Image by Mick Haupt, via Unsplash, license.)ometimes, thinking of a failure as a setback is counterproductive. If you review the setback and see no new information revealed, you are likely to conclude "the plan should have worked!" or "I just didn't try hard enough!" Then you will be tempted to just try the same approach, unchanged. They say insanity is trying the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. This is the moment when you really need the word "failure." Your plan FAILED! This is REAL! This is new information! Your plan is a plan that leads to FAILURE! Fully accepting this fact, including the implication that your plan has a fatal flaw in it, is critical to your eventual success. You need to see that you must have made a mistake somewhere. That's what gets you to step back and look for where you made a mistake.Notice that last sentence: The goal, or some part of it, or something very like it is probably still salvageable. Moroney later explores when a failure is significant, and suggests an approach to goal-setting that can inoculate against some of the more unpleasant conclusions and emotions that many people wrongly associate with failure. 3. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn calls for an end to the anti-freedom "equity" agenda:Canada is a clear illustration. Under the current government since 2015 economic freedom has declined. Investment has been fleeing the country, weakening the dollar, and increasing inflation. Consequently, productivity and economic growth have stagnated and job growth has stalled, keeping wages low and prices high. Not only investments but skilled workers are leaving Canada, most of them for the United Sates, where salaries are much higher (46% higher in the technology sector, according to a recent survey) and taxes lower. Those departing increasingly include recent immigrants disillusioned by the high cost of living, limited job opportunities, and comparatively low salaries. [links omitted]The fact that people are (currently) fleeing Canada for the United States does not, of course, mean that the same folly will work here. 4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger asks questions about a few "Unnoticed Contradictions," among them:We constantly hear that man can know nothing for certain, that truth is relative to the individual, that observations are "theory-laden" so cannot claim to be objective, that no scientific claim can be proved true, that we can say only it hasn't been refuted by the data so far. At the same time and from the same people, we hear that catastrophic climate change is beyond doubt, that those who question it are "deniers" who should be kicked out of any position of consequence. How does the same mind hold, "Nothing is certain" and "Climate catastrophe is certain"?The obviousness of such questions, along with the fact that most will probably not have seen them raised anywhere else should alarm anyone. -- CAVLink to Original

6 Author Posted Tuesday at 07:09 PM Hello everyone. I know it sounds ridiculous but hear me me out if you will. How does Objectivism counter the proposition that existence is meaningless as an axiom. We know that it must be implicit in sense perception. We know existence cannot be derived from being the opposite of non-existence. Non-existence does not exist metaphysically, only epistemologically. We know existence can't be derived from being the opposite of mental delusion. Even the mind and everything in it exists. That is the question of reality in contrast to mind. We know existence can't be defined as it is a metaphysical primary. So where is it in sense perception? What makes it meaningful? I want to understand but I can't seem to answer it. From the OP , asking for explicit formulation of the ineffable, and me suggesting that a formulation will not be satisfactory unless the self is recognized as part of the ‘make up’ of the external world even when trying articulate a separation.

Vegetative Robots and Value *

Tomorrow – Kissing Robots? Beyond Tomorrow – French-Kissing Robots? At present talking robots engage jaw motions only. Hu sees the need to get robots to use lips as well if a human is to retain interest.

My position on this matter is identical to all of ARI's positions in every respect. And not because they said it but because I completely agree with everything that they have released and there is a ton of content on this subject released from them that goes explicitly into each position and issue involved. I'm not going to go over every aspect of every issue here which is what this would require from innocents in war, the history of the situation, what Justice requires, the list is endless and I know how the discussions on this forum on an issue like this goes with context constantly dropped (not accusing you of that) and random questions thrown out. ARI's many analysis videos and commentary on this subject from the very start of this context (and really since 9/11) match my own with me having arrived at the same conclusions for the same reasons but they answer everything explicitly and in the detail I wouldn't want to personally attempt here. But will state being against those supporting and/or engaging in terrorism is not in any way equivalent to being against any true innocents involved in the conflict (or any conflict for that matter). I just see zero reason to reargue what has been essentially near perfectly argued by them here and in this sort of an environment where I can predict how this sort of conversation will go and mostly by which members. There is no point in rearguing and explaining what is done over and over again in elegant manner by ARI and is freely available to all in this format which quickly becomes a crapshoot of essentially randomly thrown out questions when every question, answer, explanation, and moral principle is covered in that manner. I don't have the time or energy to do that here versus hostile individuals or groups and refer them to that mass of content that made every argument while covering essentially every possible objection already perfectly.

I'm familiar with that usage. We can can find very many such examples out there, indeed we can say that the writings of Ayn Rand are implicit in the grammar of English, and the writings of Immanuel Kant are implicit in the grammar of English. “…all arithmetic and all geometry are in us virtually, so that we can find them there if we consider attentively and set in order what we already have in the mind,” “Thus it is that ideas and truths are for us innate, as inclinations, dispositions, habits, or natural potentialities, and not as actions; although these potentialities are always accompanied by some actions, often insensible, which correspond to them” (Leibniz New Essays). The problem is that I find this to be an abuse of the meaning of "implicit", one that we find very common in social contract style ethical discussions which invoke the notion of "implied consent". Rather than say that all knowledge is implicit in the faculty of reason, we should say that all knowledge is created by using the faculty of reason. We can likewise arrive at valid concepts by contemplating the import of walking into walls for the concept of “solidity”. It is not valid to say that the concept of existence exclusively derives from sense perception: obviously, there is more to conceptualization that simple sense perception. Invoking the implicit obscures an important question: how exactly does one create or validate a concept? Stating the logical hierarchy is not the same as explaining the epistemological process of invention / discovery.

I fail to see why "implications" are not recognized around here. The slogan ~implies~ murderous intent. A free Palestine implies an UN-free Israel.

Not often I quote Hillary... but, yeah, she's right, Palestine could have maybe turned out well if Arafat implemented that 96% sovereignty deal in the West Bank which Israel offered. 96% was an excellent offer. Israel always looked for peace. The PA/PLO, as "rejectionist" as ever. Apparently they wanted all of Israel then, and they want it all now. Free Palestine!! Right. They wish for the entire territory for "Free". Hillary Clinton slams anti-Israel protests on college campuses, says students have been fed propaganda By Jacob Magid Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton tears into the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has swept across American colleges, calling them ignorant and lamenting that they’re being misinformed by propaganda on social media and in the classroom. “I have had many conversations with a lot of young people over the last many months. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country,” Clinton tells MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “With respect to the Middle East, they don’t know that under the bringing together of the Israelis and the Palestinians by my husband — then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat — an offer was made to the Palestinians for a state on 96% of the existing territory occupied by the Palestinians with 4% of Israel to be given to reach 100% of the amount of territory that was hoped for.” “This offer was made and if Yasser Arafat had accepted it there would have been a Palestinian state now for about 24 years. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say, ‘yes,'” Clinton laments.

Taking positions about a war always amounts to supporting the killing of someone. "Free Palestine!" is not taking positions about a war, because: "Free Palestine!" means suppressing an occupation, The current war is the one between Gaza government and Israel. During this war no occupation took place. Therefore "Free Palestine!" does not mean taking positions about a war. Your comment tries to whitewash SpookyKitty's "Free Palestine!" call, which is a call for murder, a call for genocide, more precisely. There exist, however, also a legitimate call "Free Palestine!".

I tend to side with the Israelis because they at least have a secular, pro-laissez-faire element, whereas the Palestinians have no such thing and want to establish an Islamic dictatorship. The political Left commonly thinks that crime is "justice" and actual justice is a crime; they treat business owners in the cities the same way they treat Israel. The Left also favors policies that encourage the use of human shields.

I've noticed your soft opinions on the PA, whose Palestinians I'd inform you have been polled recently to be heavily in favor of Hamas' actions in October. Have you not heard of Abbas' "pay for slay" program? It is not new. Murder civilian Jews or soldiers/policemen and go to prison - or best, be killed while being arrested, and your family receives cash benefits on a sliding scale. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://emetonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Pay4Slay_Fact-Sheet-FINAL.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjCouzm3oGGAxUvRvEDHfo9CYMQFnoECBIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw24sCFxIU0yLh396ZYsTgz7

Taking positions about a war always amounts to supporting the killing of someone. The entire thread is practically a demonstration in discourse that is not rational in any sense. I don't participate in this thread precisely because no one seems actually interested in figuring anything out. But there is at least a semblance of discourse, even if it goes nowhere.

Of course it is, don't allow them to be in any doubt. "Free Palestine" = "kill Israelis" (Or "Zionists" as such people try to hide behind.) They are either: a. useful idiots or b. complicit in an intended mass murder. And no other option. I am pleased to see you get to the core, however.

From a post I wrote at OL. "Hamas' political arm knows its audience. Capture hostages, commit murderous attacks. The threefold plan: 1. they know the Israelis are guaranteed to come in hard to rescue hostages. Good. The trap is set. 2. the hostages serve as protective shields 3. hostages can be negotiated as leverage for a ceasefire. Objective achieved: Plenty of their own Gazan civilians die and the world turns on Israel and pulls support, and they buy time to reorganize, re-equip and to do it again. I've seen it all before. I could not read much of Mr Unz's sophistry and inversions. Don't misunderstand these folk, they delight in seeing Israelis killed, the country brought low, and even eradicated as Hamas promises".

So, you are incapable of justifying any of your claims; in other words, you know nothing about the subject. Furthermore, you deny that it is your duty to justify your claims. I will report you—again!—to the moderators for not abiding by the rules of rational debate. Additionally, I will ask them to take a stance towards your "Free Palestine!" statement, which I consider a call for murder. @Pokyt @Eiuol @William O

So stop trying to simplify it. Post something and expand on it, get into the complexities.

Did you actually watch the video because that is not the argument at all, it is both much more complex and much simpler in other ways.

indeed, we definitely should completely ignore that Hamas and Palestine are different things, any support of Palestine is inherently support of Hamas. Palestine is obviously the same as Hamas. After all, it's easier to be a tribalist. If you don't support Israel, then you are part of the evil tribe. Very simple, reason not required.

David, in some usages of "implicit knowledge", there is nothing mystical or magical. There is a sense of implicit useful in cognitive-development research literature (viz., Gelman and Meck 1983, 344). The child is said to have implicit knowledge of the counting principles if she engages in behavior that is systematically governed by those principles, even though she cannot state them. The child has gone far beyond learning first words (roughly months 12 to 18) by the time she is learning to count. By 30 months, the basic linguistic system has become established and is fairly stable (Nelson 1996, 106). Not until around 36 months or beyond does the child have an implicit grasp of the elementary principles of counting: assign one-label-for-one-item, keep stable the order of number labels recited, assign final recited number as the number of items in the counted collection, realize that any sort of items can be counted, and realize that the order in which the items are counted is irrelevant (Gelman and Meck 1983; Butterworth 1999, 109–16). Gelman and Meck liken this implicitness of the counting principles at this stage of cognitive development to the way in which we are able to conform to certain rules of syntax when speaking correctly without being able to state those rules. That much seems right, but there is a further distinction I should make. The child’s implicit counting principles are being learned (and taught) as an integral part of learning to properly count aggregations explicitly, expressly. In contrast, we can (or anyway, my preliterate Choctaw ancestors centuries past could) live out our lives, speaking fine in our mother tongue, following right rules of syntax, yet without being able to state those rules; indeed, without even knowing any of the terminology of syntax. Our learning of tacit rules of syntax is not for the sake of becoming able to follow them explicitly, only tacitly. Another sense of implicit is in more common use. That is the logicomathematical sense. It is in that sense that we say a certain theorem is implicit in a set of axioms; Hertz’ wave equation for propagation of electromagnetic radiation is implicit in Maxwell’s field equations; an inverse-cube central force law is implicit in a spiral orbit; dimension reductions are implicit in Kolmogorov superposition-based neural networks; certain measure relations are implicit in any similarity discerned in perception; or certain measure relations are implicit in a concept class. Cf. Rand (1969, 159–62); Campbell (2002, 294–96, 300–10); Boydstun (1996, 201–2). In addition to using "implicit" in her theory of the genesis of measurements-omitted concepts (which I suppose for the concept existence requires suspension of particular measure-values along all the measure-dimensions possessed by all the kinds of existents there are), Rand used "implicit" in describing a cognitive growth in our infant comprehension from existence to identity to unit.* References Boydstun, Stephen. 1996. Volitional synapses (Part 3). Objectivity 2(4):183–204. Butterworth, Brian. 1999. What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math. New York: Free Press. Campbell, Robert L. 2002. Goals, values, and the implicit: Explorations in psychological ontology. Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 3(2):289–327. Gelman, Rochel, and Elizabeth Meck. 1983. Preschoolers’ counting: Principles before skill. Cognition 13:343–59. Nelson, Katherine. 1996. Language in Cognitive Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rand, Ayn. [1969] 1990. Transcripts from Ayn Rand’s epistemology seminar. Edited by L. Peikoff and H. Binswanger. Appendix to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian.

My point is that what you are talking about isn’t knowledge, it is potential knowledge. You might say that some people have that knowledge and others should get their act together to actually have it, and pursuing philosophical discussions here is one way to gain such knowledge. The central question in this thread is about knowledge (not metaphysics), and specifically about validating knowledge. I’m not objecting to your mode of expression, I’m objecting to what seems to be your idea, that people have “implicit knowledge”, knowledge that is not chosen. As I noted, knowledge of personal experience via senses is automatic (indeed, axiomatic), but conceptual knowledge is not automatic. Applied to abstract concept like “entity” or “existence”, you cannot automatically know these concepts. But you can discover them by applying reason to the axiomatic, such as the sensation of bumping into a door jam. Can discover, potentially, if you choose to. Until you do, you do not have a concept “existence”, you just have sensory knowledge that you heard a word “existence”. Before getting to the proper concept of “existence”, you might mistakenly think that delusions, contradictions and God do not exist. They do, as mental states, not a real things. Mental things exist, a fact that eludes many people. Which is why discussion of bare existence without including discussion of identity is a shortcut to intellectual hell.

So I should have said passive acceptance or recognition? ( I didn't use the word knowledge, so a little confused as to your point)