Do We Own Ourselves?


BaalChatzaf

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The use of this kind of moralistic, controlling jargon, so typical of Objectivism... The brutal fact about Ayn Rand is that she was essentially a control freak... As for real evil, I don't care to discuss it here.

This thread pertains to self-ownership, category Ethics. You mentioned 'control' twice. The idea of self-ownership is to earn control of your own life by thinking, instead of blanking-out or postponing the work of reasoned inquiry.

Objectivism is a simple philosophy. Define your terms. Contradictions are unreal and cannot exist. If you can show that Rand made a mistake or failed to explore an interesting topic, that's great. But no one is persuaded of anything by ducking a core question, saying 'I don't care to discuss it.'

It's very difficult for me to grok your point of view, because I can't find much of anything you've written except a few short posts. I assume you are a substantial individual with some knowledge of NBI and Rand's career.

Wolf DeVoon

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The use of this kind of moralistic, controlling jargon, so typical of Objectivism... The brutal fact about Ayn Rand is that she was essentially a control freak... As for real evil, I don't care to discuss it here.

This thread pertains to self-ownership, category Ethics. You mentioned 'control' twice. The idea of self-ownership is to earn control of your own life by thinking, instead of blanking-out or postponing the work of reasoned inquiry.

Objectivism is a simple philosophy. Define your terms. Contradictions are unreal and cannot exist. If you can show that Rand made a mistake or failed to explore an interesting topic, that's great. But no one is persuaded of anything by ducking a core question, saying 'I don't care to discuss it.'

It's very difficult for me to grok your point of view, because I can't find much of anything you've written except a few short posts. I assume you are a substantial individual with some knowledge of NBI and Rand's career.

Wolf DeVoon

The human mind turning away from a situation is not necessarily the refusal to think; it can be the consequence of thinking. I could have said "refuse," though, to make the same point, which was only to illustrate the need for human consciousness to power the situation from is to ought. I was not addressing the morality of it.

No one is asking you to leave, Wolf. I certainly don't want you to. As for understanding OL, the only thing I can say is that just positing basic Objectivist moralisms doesn't bring much to the discussion. However, I don't claim to be an Objectivist any more because of problems I have with it as such--especially because it's too much when it comes to human being and human action to say nothing of aesthetics or of the Orthodox types who are grossly embarrassing to the philosophy and human inquiry. These people represent the dead end of Rand's controlling, top-down approach to her philosophy which, no matter how justified in her own lifetime is now obsolete behavior.

--Brant

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MSK says: In the classic example: "I have observed several white swans, therefore all swans are white," is a misuse of induction. The correct use is: "I have observed several white swans, therefore white swans exist as a category of reality." This implies that other white swans exist and rests on an axiom (one I have not seen anywhere in my reading, yet) that if two or more existents are observed and identified as a group, other unobserved members of that group exist. Science actually rests on this axiom in addition to deduction.

Ba'al Responds:

You mean if I see two Bobbsy Twins I can expect to find a third Bobbsy Twin?

In general (meaning in all cases) seeing two of something identified as a group does not imply the existence of more elements for that group. If you want to show there are more go out and find them. Deducing a third, or a fourth, etc.. is simply not valid. Your principle, if taken literally, means that all of reality can be deduced from some fairly simple premise. It just ain't so. If it were so, it would have been done long ago.

By the way induction (in the Baconian sense) means positing a general statement on the basis of a finite set of examples or cases. This only works if one has exhausted the domain of discourse. Getting back to the swans, all finding a black swan means (other than that it is false that all swans are white) is that color is not an essential characteristic of the set of swans. It also suggests that the genome of the swan be sequenced to find out which gene on what chromosome (or chromosomes) produce the color of the beast.

Simple minded Baconian Induction is not a logical principle. It is a heuristic for generating general statements that can get one beyond a finite list of factual statements. Without at least one universally quantified postulate, one gets nowhere fast. The good news is that sometimes induction produces laws and hypotheses that explain a lot and have not yet been falsified. The bad news is that it is not a logically valid principle of inference. It is simply a practical trick (in other words, a heuristic) to get a general statement which might or might not be true as a general statement. It is also the case the various forms of induction are necessary parts of the learning process. That is how kids learn general concepts. An instance or two of burning one's fingers teaches that hot stuff (all hot stuff) can be dangerous and injurious.

Bob Kolker

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Bob,

I disagree with this. Your Bobbsy Twins example makes use of the stolen concept fallacy. And certainly another clone can be imagined (and maybe even produced).

My whole point with induction is that it is to be used with the other types of reasoning (deduction, concept formation, etc.), not stand-alone. No type of stand-alone reasoning works and it can only be validated (in terms) when a logical fallacy is used.

Michael

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Bob,

I disagree with this. Your Bobbsy Twins example makes use of the stolen concept fallacy. And, irrespective of this, certainly another clone can be imagined (and maybe even produced).

My whole point with induction is that it is to be used with the other types of reasoning (deduction, concept formation, etc.), not stand-alone. No type of stand-alone reasoning works and it can only be validated (in terms) when a logical fallacy is used.

Michael

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If this doesn’t scare the hell out of you coming from a presidential candidates’ mouth, maybe you ought to rethink your definition of freedom.

Giuliani Embraces George (Orwell and Bush)

Posted Aug 12th 2007 8:11AM by Phil Bailey

Filed under: President 2008, Republicans, Gaffes, Rudy Giuliani

Sometimes it's hard to decide who is more entertaining: John "Bomb" McCain, Mitt Doggie Romney, Fred Lobbyist Thompson or Rudy 9/11 Giuliani. But for today, we'll give Mitt the paid-for-win in Ames, Iowa but Rudy gets the 'I Can't Believe He Actually Said That' award. This doesn't eclipse the BS he handed out the other day about how he worked harder than anyone at Ground Zero (he had to apologize for that documented whopper) and now comes this

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

See, to be free you have to give up freedom. Just give it up to the authority (me) and we''ll take care of everything. This continues the line put out by Bush/Cheney and exemplifies how close to a totalitarian state we have come. However, Rudy's full record as mayor is going to come out, Mitt's going to continue to dig himself into one verbal hole after another and Fred Thompson isn't even in the race and his lobbying efforts and being a spy for Tricky Dicky are surfacing. If I were mired in the second tier of the Republican contenders I wouldn't give up too soon because the top tier is embarrassing themselves.

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