Rand's gender hierarchy

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray's grounds for subjective, "There is no value, no valuation without a valuer. No exceptions."

Once an agent is mentioned ("valuer"), the matter becomes 100% subjective for her.

My problem comes with a paraphrase, "There is no knowledge, no knowing without a knower. No exceptions."

That is a true statement. But the presence of an agent ("knower") also makes all facts subjective, that is in Xray-speak.

Which once again goes back to my not understanding what Xray means by objective.

Maybe it's 100% inconsistent usage on her part...

Michael

[Xray]

Dear god, I think X-Ray may have a point. I just picked up my Webster Dictionary. Definition of sacrifice: "To forfeit one thing for another thing thought to be of greater value." How the hell did these definitions get so mucked up?

The Webster's definition is in no way mucked up but precisely says what sacrifice IS.

If you believe the dictionary got it wrong, please provide examples of sacrifices to which in your opinion the definition does not apply.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Xray

[ginny]

X-Ray, I have to admit I'm beginning to enjoy you in a perverse sort of way. Tell us a bit about yourself. How does a nice Austrian Jungfrau know about such Americanism as "Trouble in River City."

[merjet]

Dear god, I think X-Ray may have a point. I just picked up my Webster Dictionary. Definition of sacrifice: "To forfeit one thing for another thing thought to be of greater value." How the hell did these definitions get so mucked up?

The Webster's definition is in no way mucked up but precisely says what sacrifice IS.

If you believe the dictionary got it wrong, please provide examples of sacrifices to which in your opinion the definition does not apply.

The Webster dictionary Ginny has doesn't match this one. Regardless, meaning v.t.2 is similar. To respond to Xray's challenge, I need not resort to my opinion. I only need to point to other meanings in the same dictionary -- v.t.1 or v.i.1 or and especially n.2. Note that these meanings of "sacrifice" include a victim. Indeed, meaning n.2 of "sacrifice" is the victim. In Xray's subjective effort to sustain her word game, a victim is "another topic altogether". To wit, Xray wrote: "You are shifting the focus on the victim, which is another topic altogether. The issue is about the sacrificer, the person pe[r]forming the sacrifice" (post #365).

Edited July 30, 2009 by Merlin Jetton

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

Way back in the beginning of the discussions, Xray made it clear that she does not agree with dictionaries having more than one meaning for a word.

Seriously.

Or more precisely, she does not agree with people using those different meanings. She made it very clear that a word in Xray-speak has one meaning and one meaning only. We did not discuss context, but from her responses to other observations, I believe such a meaning in Xray-speak is valid for all contexts.

(Unless she is making some other point, of course...)

Michael

[Xray]

Angela,

The Austrian model of preference, choice, and action to which you are subscribing (#395) is an incorrect model for real humans in their real lives. Nozick gets it right in his critique of this model in section III of "On Austrian Methodology." If you care to study that essay, it is available in the collection Socratic Puzzles (Harvard 1997).

Please quote my posts where have I said I'm subscribing to that model. (??)

[merjet]

Merlin,

Way back in the beginning of the discussions, Xray made it clear that she does not agree with dictionaries having more than one meaning for a word.

Seriously.

Or more precisely, she does not agree with people using those different meanings. She made it very clear that a word in Xray-speak has one meaning and one meaning only.

Oh, my! What according to Xray is the single, correct meaning of "hit"?

Why did she choose the username Xray, when it already has at least two meanings?

Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, my! What is the single, correct meaning of the German word "Zug"? :lol:

Edited July 30, 2009 by Merlin Jetton

[Dragonfly]

Oh my, I hardly can keep up with all the errors and endless confusion on the part of the Objectivists.

Human sacrifice has been practiced at various times and places in history. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or whatever. Do you really believe all the victims were exchanging a lesser value for a higher value?

First this is "sacrifice" in a different meaning than we've been discussing so far, so this is an example of equivocation. Webster also mentions this as a separate meaning:

1: an act of offering to a deity something precious ; especially : the killing of a victim on an altar

2: something offered in sacrifice

3 a: destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else b: something given up or lost <the sacrifices made by parents>

This kind of "sacrifice", to appease gods, is not relevant to our discussion of choosing between higher and lower values, as the victim may have no particular value to the people who make the "sacrifice". And what the victims themselves think about values is completely irrelevant to this discussion. It may of course warrant a separate discussion about people's rights, but introducing that question here is only muddling things and has nothing to do with the question we're discussing here. Xray is quite right that this is another topic altogether. Xray's point is of course not that a word cannot have more than one meaning (ha ha ha, what are those posts funny), but that you should not arbitrarily switch between different meanings, committing the sin of equivocation.

Suppose a politician says to the taxpayer, you must pay higher taxes to support this higher cause, but it is an unworthy cause to the taxpayer. Then the politician succeeds in raising taxes to fund the higher cause. Who is the "sacrificer" in this case -- the politician or the taxpayer? Regardless, the taxpayer is not gaining a higher value.

No one is the "sacrificer" in this case. That the taxpayer is the victim of the action of the politician doesn't mean that the taxpayer makes a sacrifice, just as the victim of a religious "sacrifice" doesn't make a sacrifice. A sacrifice means voluntarily surrendering something of (great) value. Not to something of lesser value (to the sacrificer), because that is impossible, and therefore Rand's definition of "sacrifice" (“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue) is meaningless.

Let's have a look at some of the examples of "sacrifice" that Rand gives:

If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.

Now we should first eliminate the possibility of error or bad judgement: a mother might erroneously think that giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child wouldn't be bad or even fatal for her own child. Losing something of value by making errors of judgment is not a sacrifice, however. For being a matter of sacrifice, the mother should be fully conscious that by giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child will probably be fatal to her own child. But why should she do that? The only possibility is that there is a greater value to her in giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child than the survival of her own child, otherwise she wouldn't sacrifice [in the standard meaning] her own child. That we might think that it would be "proper" for her to value her own child more than that of the neighbor is not relevant as there is no objective criterion for determining what "proper" is. This is an example of a sacrifice in the standard meaning (giving up something of value for the sake of something else/for another thing thought to be of greater value). Rand's definition of "sacrifice" doesn't work however, as it arbitrarily assumes that the value of keeping the neighbor's baby alive "should" be lower to the mother than of keeping her own baby alive, but others cannot decide for the mother what has the greater value, that can be only done by her own evaluation.

If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is.

Note here the tendentious language: what exactly is a "worthless" stranger? Worthless to whom? Why does one give money to a stranger? There must be some reason, it might be that the giver thinks that that stranger needs the money badly and that he finds satisfaction in helping another human being, no matter how low he has sunk. That others may think that he's throwing away his money for an unworthy cause is not relevant. Again, it's of course possible that the giver commits an error and later regrets his action and realizes that he gave up something more valuable for something less valuable. But that's not relevant either, it's the intention and the expectation of the outcome that defines sacrifice. For example, the mother might give her child something of which she thinks that it's good for her child and it turns out that it on the contrary kills her child. That would be a great loss, but not a sacrifice as she didn't kill her child on purpose.

Now in these two examples Rand implies that there is an independent standard for judging values: a mother should value her own child more than that of a neighbor and a person shouldn't give money to "worthless" strangers, independent of the personal motivations. However, she is not consequent in this respect, as we can see in the following example:

If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty.

The independent standard has disappeared here and "sacrifice" is here defined in only terms of what the mother desires: while in the previous example it was a sacrifice to choose for a neighbor's child, starving her own child, it's suddenly no problem to starve her own child because she prefers a hat. Why is it OK to prefer a hat, but not the neighbor's child? Because she owns the hat and she doesn't own the neighbor's child? Is that a rational morality?

You have insisted that all values are subjective and there is no such thing as an objective value. Do you hold the same for rational values? Are some values more rational (or irrational) than others? Or do you believe that using "rational" or "irrational" as an adjective for "values" is a category error, too?

Indeed, a value cannot be rational or irrational. Rationality refers to using efficient means to achieve a certain purpose. From the Wikipedia article about rationality:

In this concept of "rationality", the individual's goals or motives are taken for granted and not made subject to criticism, ethical or otherwise. Thus rationality simply refers to the success of goal attainment, whatever those goals may be.

No doubt "rational" will have a different meaning in Objectivish, something like "according to Objectivist principles", but I don't accept that kind of Humpty Dumpty definitions.

[Xray]

Oh, my! What according to Xray is the single, correct meaning of "hit"?

Why did she choose the username Xray, when it already has at least two meanings?

Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, my! What is the single, correct meaning of the German word "Zug"?

Lol all you want, you are merely muddying the waters.

The only thing which matters here is that you use a word or an expression unequivocally when communicating in language.

Edited August 2, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray,

Did you or did you not say you do not accept more than one meaning for a word?

(I will find the quotes should you have another of your memory issues.)

And did you or did you not make arguments about objective and sacrifice based on the word having more than one meaning?

(I will find the quotes should you have another of your memory issues.)

Where's the mud?

Or better, where's the clear water in the first place?

Michael

[Xray]

Oh my, I hardly can keep up with all the errors and endless confusion on the part of the Objectivists.

Human sacrifice has been practiced at various times and places in history. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or whatever. Do you really believe all the victims were exchanging a lesser value for a higher value?

First this is "sacrifice" in a different meaning than we've been discussing so far, so this is an example of equivocation. Webster also mentions this as a separate meaning:

1: an act of offering to a deity something precious ; especially : the killing of a victim on an altar

2: something offered in sacrifice

3 a: destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else b: something given up or lost <the sacrifices made by parents>

This kind of "sacrifice", to appease gods, is not relevant to our discussion of choosing between higher and lower values, as the victim may have no particular value to the people who make the "sacrifice". And what the victims themselves think about values is completely irrelevant to this discussion. It may of course warrant a separate discussion about people's rights, but introducing that question here is only muddling things and has nothing to do with the question we're discussing here. Xray is quite right that this is another topic altogether. Xray's point is of course not that a word cannot have more than one meaning (ha ha ha, what are those posts funny), but that you should not arbitrarily switch between different meanings, committing the sin of equivocation.

Suppose a politician says to the taxpayer, you must pay higher taxes to support this higher cause, but it is an unworthy cause to the taxpayer. Then the politician succeeds in raising taxes to fund the higher cause. Who is the "sacrificer" in this case -- the politician or the taxpayer? Regardless, the taxpayer is not gaining a higher value.

No one is the "sacrificer" in this case. That the taxpayer is the victim of the action of the politician doesn't mean that the taxpayer makes a sacrifice, just as the victim of a religious "sacrifice" doesn't make a sacrifice. A sacrifice means voluntarily surrendering something of (great) value. Not to something of lesser value (to the sacrificer), because that is impossible, and therefore Rand's definition of "sacrifice" (“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue) is meaningless.

Let's have a look at some of the examples of "sacrifice" that Rand gives:

If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.

Now we should first eliminate the possibility of error or bad judgement: a mother might erroneously think that giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child wouldn't be bad or even fatal for her own child. Losing something of value by making errors of judgment is not a sacrifice, however. For being a matter of sacrifice, the mother should be fully conscious that by giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child will probably be fatal to her own child. But why should she do that? The only possibility is that there is a greater value to her in giving the bottle of milk to the neighbor's child than the survival of her own child, otherwise she wouldn't sacrifice [in the standard meaning] her own child. That we might think that it would be "proper" for her to value her own child more than that of the neighbor is not relevant as there is no objective criterion for determining what "proper" is. This is an example of a sacrifice in the standard meaning (giving up something of value for the sake of something else/for another thing thought to be of greater value). Rand's definition of "sacrifice" doesn't work however, as it arbitrarily assumes that the value of keeping the neighbor's baby alive "should" be lower to the mother than of keeping her own baby alive, but others cannot decide for the mother what has the greater value, that can be only done by her own evaluation.

If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is.

Note here the tendentious language: what exactly is a "worthless" stranger? Worthless to whom? Why does one give money to a stranger? There must be some reason, it might be that the giver thinks that that stranger needs the money badly and that he finds satisfaction in helping another human being, no matter how low he has sunk. That others may think that he's throwing away his money for an unworthy cause is not relevant. Again, it's of course possible that the giver commits an error and later regrets his action and realizes that he gave up something more valuable for something less valuable. But that's not relevant either, it's the intention and the expectation of the outcome that defines sacrifice. For example, the mother might give her child something of which she thinks that it's good for her child and it turns out that it on the contrary kills her child. That would be a great loss, but not a sacrifice as she didn't kill her child on purpose.

Now in these two examples Rand implies that there is an independent standard for judging values: a mother should value her own child more than that of a neighbor and a person shouldn't give money to "worthless" strangers, independent of the personal motivations. However, she is not consequent in this respect, as we can see in the following example:

If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty.

The independent standard has disappeared here and "sacrifice" is here defined in only terms of what the mother desires: while in the previous example it was a sacrifice to choose for a neighbor's child, starving her own child, it's suddenly no problem to starve her own child because she prefers a hat. Why is it OK to prefer a hat, but not the neighbor's child? Because she owns the hat and she doesn't own the neighbor's child? Is that a rational morality?

You have insisted that all values are subjective and there is no such thing as an objective value. Do you hold the same for rational values? Are some values more rational (or irrational) than others? Or do you believe that using "rational" or "irrational" as an adjective for "values" is a category error, too?

Indeed, a value cannot be rational or irrational. Rationality refers to using efficient means to achieve a certain purpose. From the Wikipedia article about rationality:

In this concept of "rationality", the individual's goals or motives are taken for granted and not made subject to criticism, ethical or otherwise. Thus rationality simply refers to the success of goal attainment, whatever those goals may be.

No doubt "rational" will have a different meaning in Objectivish, something like "according to Objectivist principles", but I don't accept that kind of Humpty Dumpty definitions.

Great post Dragonfly, which addresses Obectivism's fallacies point per point.

Edited July 31, 2009 by Xray

[tjohnson]

Xray,

Did you or did you not say you do not accept more than one meaning for a word?

No one is saying words can't have multiple meanings. The issue, as DF pointed out, is switching meanings, ie, equivocating.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

No one is saying words can't have multiple meanings. The issue, as DF pointed out, is switching meanings, ie, equivocating.

GS,

Xray did.

Unequivocally.

(Look it up.)

That's someone.

And to top it off, she switches meanings when she feels like it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

Here:

You seem to hold the idea of variable "meanings" and insist I do the same. But the very notion of multiple definitions is a contradiction.

Then she backpedaled a bit with doublespeak even for Xray-speak:

... the issue is not about lexicon entries offering several 'meanings' for a chain of letters/chain of sounds (homophony). Or language offering a variety of sound chains/chain of letters for a meaning (synonymy). I have studied linguistics, so this is a no-brainer for me.

Imagine what a brainer would be...

I remember her discussing this elsewhere, too, but I could not find it (just like I could not find her gush at Brant when she mistakenly imagined he would abandon Objectivism—which leads me to believe in some creative editing at times).

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I think it's time to think more about maximizing value out of our many choices and to be less concerned about "sacrifice" unless it's a politician talking. It's not too hard to criticize or make fun out of some of Rand's formulations 40-50 or even more years after she made them, but we should be sensitive of the times and intellectual culture she wrote in.

--Brant

Edited July 31, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[merjet]

First this is "sacrifice" in a different meaning than we've been discussing so far, so this is an example of equivocation.

It is different, but not equivocation. "Equivocate" usually means "to use ambiguous language with intent to deceive." I used the original, primary, dictionary meaning of "sacrifice" and haven't tried to deceive anybody. If you believe I have been deceitful, then try proving it.

I protested Xray's attempt to "rule out of court" any meaning of "sacrifice" other than her preferred one. Of course, I believe she wants to rule out any other meaning so she can sustain her word game and dodge facing up to the fact that sacrifice often involves victims and coercion.

This kind of "sacrifice", to appease gods, is not relevant to our discussion of choosing between higher and lower values, as the victim may have no particular value to the people who make the "sacrifice". And what the victims themselves think about values is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

Say "not relevant" all you want, but I don't care.

No one is the "sacrificer" in this case. That the taxpayer is the victim of the action of the politician doesn't mean that the taxpayer makes a sacrifice, just as the victim of a religious "sacrifice" doesn't make a sacrifice.

You are no more a dictator of meanings than Xray, and I disagree. The politician is the "sacrificer" akin to a priest or ruler or whatever who sacrifices victims on the altar, usually with preaching that it is the victim's duty to self-sacrifice for some "higher value", such as God, the state or society.

A sacrifice means voluntarily surrendering something of (great) value.

Tell that to the next victim you find.

You proceed to address some examples Rand used to illustrate (1) "sacrifice" to mean "ceding a higher value and obtaining a lower value or nonvalue" and (2) when there is no sacrifice in her view even though other people might disagree. Some of her examples aren't great in my opinion. However, those examples are not the only ones she gave about sacrifice, and none of them involve coercion or appeals to duty. So here are a few more:

"I am not a sacrifice on their altars." (Anthem)

"A mystic code of morality demanding self-sacrifice cannot be promulgated or propagated without a supreme ruler that becomes the collector of the sacrificing." (The Ayn Rand Letter)

"The Nazi amoralism declares: There are no moral principles to protect the individual, we can sacrifice anyone we choose—because the group we represent is above moral principles." (The Ayn Rand Letter)

"It is obvious that the ideological root of statism (or collectivism) is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases to whatever it deems to be its own 'good'." (CUI)

"[T]hey were not willing to doubt the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal, that he has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value." (FTNI)

"Nietzsche's rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself." (FTNI)

"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master." (FTNI, The Fountainhead)

I could cite many more, but there is no need for that. These few make it clear that Rand is not referring to such trivial cases as a mother choosing between a hat and some food, or who gets a bottle of milk, or somebody choosing between giving a small amount of money to a friend or a stranger. She is instead talking about something far more significant -- religion and politics and pervasive ideas that have enormous consequences. She is talking about societal leaders calling for other people to self-sacrifice, i.e. for victims.

Yet Xray and now you try to restrict the discussion to the trivial! You try to declare any talk about victims or some authority calling for other people to self-sacrifice as irrelevant.

Indeed, a value cannot be rational or irrational. Rationality refers to using efficient means to achieve a certain purpose. From the Wikipedia article about rationality:

In this concept of "rationality", the individual's goals or motives are taken for granted and not made subject to criticism, ethical or otherwise. Thus rationality simply refers to the success of goal attainment, whatever those goals may be.

Are you now trying to say that goals cannot be rationally judged? I deny that. How do you choose your goals? Whims, roll dice, or consult a fortune teller? Do you never subject your goals to criticism, ethical or otherwise?

[tjohnson]

So much arguing about words! Merlin, that is a very important point you made about people getting sucked in by politicians, priests, etc., notwithstanding whatever "sacrifice" means. On this I am in complete agreement except I approach the issue from a general semantic point of view which states that if people were trained in sanity they wouldn't be sucked in by our shamelessly ignorant leaders. In this regard I believe Korzybski and Rand thought quite similarly.

[Xray]

GS,

Here:

You seem to hold the idea of variable "meanings" and insist I do the same. But the very notion of multiple definitions is a contradiction.

Then she backpedaled a bit with doublespeak even for Xray-speak:

... the issue is not about lexicon entries offering several 'meanings' for a chain of letters/chain of sounds (homophony). Or language offering a variety of sound chains/chain of letters for a meaning (synonymy). I have studied linguistics, so this is a no-brainer for me.

Imagine what a brainer would be...

I remember her discussing this elsewhere, too, but I could not find it (just like I could not find her gush at Brant when she mistakenly imagined he would abandon Objectivism—which leads me to believe in some creative editing at times).

Michael

Again, Michael, you missed the point. The issue is about a precise unequivocal definition for a term, not about linguistic phenomena like homonymy, polysemy, connotation, etc.

Take the audiovisual symobl "pupil" for example, which is quite obviously a homonym, with two different 'meanings' attached to it.

But as for the actual definition for each separate lexicon entry, (one for of pupil/student; one for pupil/part of the eye), it is these definitions which have to be in themselves consistent, unambiguous and contradiction-free in order to assure communication, and I have to USE them in this sense in order to avoid misunderstandings of ultimate magnitude.

So e.g. in "pupil" referring to a specific part of the eye, the definition has to be such that the reader knows what is meant, that is, after absorbing the definition, no doubt has to be left as to what it refers to. Entity identity is required.

For the communication to work, I can't use "pupil" when meaning "ear", or I can't say "pupil" when I mean "teacher."

As for a word being used in an ironic sense (i. e. word is used to convey the exact contrary), this belongs to language usage and is NOT a definition issue.

For example, suppose Mrs X says to a rude bully: "You are a true gentleman!", it is usually unequivocally clear that the exact opposite is meant.

But as for the lexicon entry, "gentleman" does NOT have as "multiple definitions":

a: a well-mannered man

b: an ill-mannered man.

That's what it is about: non-ambiguity and non-contradiction, principles which Rand, using muddled termimology, violates.

Example is her calling Peter Keating a "selfless man, a ruthless egotist".

Rand's label 'selfless' for Keating was not meant to be understood ironically.

She arbitrarily decided to attach a meaning to "selfless" in complete opposition to the actual definition of the term.

It's like using "black" and meaning "white".

Suppose we all decided to attach as we please our subjective meanings to words and tried to put it to work.

The result would be total communication breakdown.

Edited August 1, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

I waive consecutive translation.

Adam

[Xray]

I waive consecutive translation.

Adam

Where do you have difficulty in understanding what I wrote?

Edited July 31, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

X-Ray, I have to admit I'm beginning to enjoy you in a perverse sort of way. Tell us a bit about yourself. How does a nice Austrian Jungfrau know about such Americanism as "Trouble in River City."

"Austrian Jungfrau" - lol! [German "Jungfrau" = 'virgin' in English ]

Ginny, much as I'd like to help you, but how am I supposed to answer that question?

For I really have no idea if any Austrian virgins are posting here.

Edited July 31, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

I waive consecutive translation.

Adam

Where do you have difficulty in understanding what I wrote?

Can you give me some examples of people having "difficulty" in "understanding" what someone wrote?

Please include all possible definitions of "difficulty" and "understanding"...

Adam

[Jonathan]

Jonathan, regarding #387:

For my own part, I would say one can be objective and still end up holding a false proposition as true. One will continue to be fallible even if objective, though one’s chance of getting it right improves if one is objective. I don’t know of any Objectivist views to the contrary of this ordinary way of looking at it. Descartes thought that we make errors only because our will outruns our understanding. Wrong. There are other possible sources of error. Where there is intelligence, there is possible error. An infallible mind would not be intelligent, would have no knowledge, and would require no objectivity.

I wasn't expecting that objectivity would have to be an infallible process, but I would think that there would have to be at least some sort of minimal threshold limiting what could be called a proper application of objectivity. If objectivity is the process of "consciously choosing to adhere to reality via logic and reason," I think we can reasonably assume that not much effort, if any at all, was put into consciously choosing to adhere to reality if someone states that "2 + 3 = 4" or "Men cannot survive by initiating force against their fellow men and making them serve as their slaves."

The act of putting in the most minimal effort of logic and reason reveals that those statements are not true. In fact, they sound as if they should be used as examples of Rand's concept of "subjective" -- they are "unrelated to the facts of reality," they sound rather "arbitrary," and they seem to be much closer to "irrational" and "blindly emotional" than to attempts at carefully adhering to reality.

I don’t recall Rand ever saying that in a given context, only one answer is true...

I was quoting Rand from post #344, in which MSK quoted her as saying, "This means that although reality is immutable and, in any given context, only one answer is true..."

I have answered the question about concepts here. From the first link there: “What Rand had called nominalism would now be called predicate nominalism. What she had called conceptualism would now be called concept nominalism.” My characterization of those positions and my arguments against them in that link show real live positions today that are closest to what Rand was characterizing and rejecting.

From what I gather, you seem to be the opposite of Dragonfly in that where he would say that any attempt to determine "how to live a moral life" is subjective, you seem to believe that any attempt might be objective -- one could say that Rand and others have presented objective defenses of capitalist minarchism, and that others have presented objective defenses of Marxism, or of mixed economies, or of anarchism. In effect, a variety of differing ethical/political systems might be just as objective as Rand's. Is that your viewpoint?

J

Edited July 31, 2009 by Jonathan

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Again, Michael, you missed the point. The issue is about a precise unequivocal definition for a term...

Xray,

Blah blah blah.

This sounds nice, but it has nothing to do with your behavior on these threads.

If this really were your standard, you would realize that Rand gives a precise definition to certain words and uses them with that meaning consistently.

Michael

[Xray]

xray:

Do you wish to address a central tenet of Objectivism which is the refusal to initiate physical force?

I noticed since I greeted you at OL that you have not addressed this tenet, or, I have missed it.

Adam

I have addressed it several times by e. g. pointing out that

Rand's heros violate this central tenet.

Roark for example initiates physical force in the rape scene

and when dynamiting the building;

D'Anconia and Rearden initiate physical force as well.

Randists, in their attempt to justify the heros' actions, often resort to

"rationalizing" them by repeating Rand's odd "explanations".

Roark was justified in blowing up the building, they say in all seriousness,

because of "breach of conctract".

Such 'justfication' is both crazy and dangerous imo.

Given the many breaches of contract which happen in the world,

if physical violence were permitted each time as areaction against

the breaches, can you imagine how such a world would look like?

There's the scene in ATLAS SHRUGGED where Hank Rearden, after being

confronted by his wife Lilian about it,finally admits that Dagny Taggart

is his mistress.

Adultery is clearly a breach of contract too, but Lilian is

not given the "right" by Rand to sanction the "contract breacher"

in any way.

Quite the contrary: instead the contract breacher Rearden threatens his wife

Lilian to "beat her up" should she dare to even mention Dagny's name again.

AS, p. 530/531:

"Lilian, he said, in an unstressed voice that did not grant her reven

the the honor of anger, "you are not to speak of her to me. If you ever

do it again, I will answer you as I would answer a hoodlum: I will beat

you up. Neither you nor anyone else is to discuss her." (end quote)

Now there's some "hero". Rearden sounds like an emotionally impaired

psychopath.

In short, Rand gave her heros the "right" to act as they

please, and those she disapproved of were denied that right.

This is exemplary of a core contradiction that many Randists never seem to

see.

The breach of contract is "justified" by "I say" and not to be discussed.

Although her works are presented as "highly intellectual", there is the

constant underlying coercive physical element of blowing up a building or

threatening to do bodily harm to anyone who goes against his wishes.

That's just plain dictatorship.

Edited July 31, 2009 by Xray