UncleJim

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About UncleJim

  • Birthday 10/22/1941

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  • Interests
    Discovering the truth.
  • Location
    Okemos, MI

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  • Full Name
    James W. Peterson
  • Description
    Retired GMC engineer. Author of "The Mind of God."

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  1. I think she means that values are chosen subjectively, so we are free to value whatever we want. I think it is not a question of what the value "is". For example, I'm sure she won't argue that food exists but whether or not it is considered valuable depends on the individual case. If the value of food is subject to the the whim of personal choice then starving to death is a rational consequence of trying to live without it.
  2. The next time you come to a conclusion, will it be value based?
  3. A human being is a specific kind of living organism. As such a human being has no alternative but to live in accordance with his identity or suffer the consequences of not doing so. Since you are a human being; then, that determines what you must do to be considered a properly functioning human being. Your values are determined by the kind of living organism you are. Since this is the case; then, your values and mine and theirs are the same. Our values are the same as every human who has ever lived, all human now living and all humans who will ever live. "qua man" means "in accordance with human identity."
  4. Xray is a lady? Missed that part. Thanks for the correction.
  5. That is his claim - Does not make much sense does it.
  6. The subject in the quote you provided is life - not man.
  7. We are in fact not ignorant (ha ha ha) at all. Our complexity, which enables our amazing technological advances, is also our achilles' heel. When physical circumstances become really bad, the complex organism of a mammal is much more vulnerable than the relatively simple organism of an insect, let alone a bacterium. For example, it has been demonstrated that insects are much more resistant to radioactive radiation than mammals. 65 million years ago something struck the earth, killing most of the "higher" animals, including the until then highly successful dinosaurs. No problem for the insects or the bacteria. Sure, we have the advantage over the dinosaurs by our intelligence and our technology. But that won't save us from really bad disasters (there is for example no way to divert a really big asteroid), and you can be sure that in the next billion years some very bad things are going to happen. Look in a mirror - you are a human-being. Sure we are different from ants - so what?
  8. Natural Selection favors those characteristics which promote reproductive success. Intelligence has little to do with this. The ants, bees and cockroaches are much more effective reproducers than are humans. Long after humans are extinct, there will be ants, bees, wasps, termites and cockroaches. Ba'al Chatzaf What resource did you use to make this claim - ignorance?
  9. Not to mention their essential role in quantum mechanics, without which Uncle Jim wouldn't have had a computer to type on. They are useful when trying to explain reality. They do not, are not intended to, represent a real something.
  10. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number#Applications Complex numbers which are a combination of real numbers and multiples of the imaginary unit are handy for representing phases of cyclic processes. They are very important in engineering, physics and signal processing. Ba'al Chatzaf So you don't actually know? When I talk about 1-horse I can actually demonstrate what it is I am talking about.
  11. I was asked to participate in a debate about capitalism with a couple of Marxist socialists. Holly crap!
  12. That depends on whether Kant knew what it was he was talking about. In other words: Did he have an actual sensual experience which translated into the conscious existence of a brain-image or was he hallucinating? Note: An imaginary number is just that - imaginary! So is an integer. Look the wide world over and never an integer shall you find. Just an aside. It turns out the field (division ring) of complex numbers is isomorphic to the set of 2x2 matrices: First row: a, -b second row: b, a all such matrices in which no both a and b are zero has a inverse matrix which corresponds to the reciprocal. The isomorphism is between the set of such matrices with matrix multiplication and matrix addition and the set complex numbers. The matrix: First row : 0, - 1 Second row:-1, 0 corresponds to i, the imaginary unit. If you square this matrix by matrix multiplication you get the matrix first row : -1, 0 second row: 0, -1 which is the negation of the unit matrix that corresponds to good old 1. So while imaginary numbers and all other numbers are abstractions which have no physical existence in the real world, as mathematical entities imaginary numbers are no harder to deal with than matrices of real numbers. Another way of getting to the complex numbers is to take the polynomial ring R[x] of polyomials with real co-efficients module the ideal generated by the polynomial x^2 + 1. This is the splitting field for the polynomial and it is what you get when you adjoin a root of x^2 + 1 = 0 to the real numbers. The two roots are i and -i. Again, it is no major brain exercise. There is nothing mystical, mysterious or magic about complex numbers and the imaginary unit. They are called "imaginary" for purely historical reasons, since when they were first encountered in the 16th century by Cardano and Tartaglia, neither of these worthy algebraists quite know what to make of them. So they called them imaginary or fantastic and such like sobriquets. After a while mathematicians grew accustomed and learned how to fit them in the context of other mathematics. Philosophers did not have the least idea of how to proceed, but that did not stop the mathematicians. Ba'al Chatzaf The issue is not have imaginary numbers been made-up, the issue is what do they represent. When I talk about a horse (for example) it exists as an actual physical something the existence of which is mathematically designated with the symbol - 1. What does the symbole -1 designate the existence of?
  13. That depends on whether Kant knew what it was he was talking about. In other words: Did he have an actual sensual experience which translated into the conscious existence of a brain-image or was he hallucinating? Note: An imaginary number is just that - imaginary!
  14. In my view catagory contains that which concept explains the existence of.
  15. Xray, I want to get away from your repeated opinions about what is subjective or not, and get to agreeing on meanings. After the meanings are agreed upon will those opinions have any real intellectual value as ideas. Until then, they are merely repeated opinions. Since you agree that there is an objective referent, do you also hold that the causality involved in the referent's actions is objectively known? Michael Notice how evil can exist only in reference to the existence of good. Further that good can exist only in reference to the existence of life. In each case there must be (and is) a standard to judge it by. That standard must be (and is) the same for every person who has ever lived, for all persons now living and for all persons who will ever live at any time in the future. In other words the standard must actually (i.e., physically) exist and one must know that it does exist prior to being able to apply it.