nealelehman

Hi John Dailey

Doesn't the skilled Crime Negotiator talk to the person holding the pointed gun and often

avoid a violent bloodbath? Maybe we could all learn from his methods and his example?

What do you think?

Neale Lehman

~ Pointlessly suicidally-accelerating for non-Muslims...

--- Like, who talks against a pointed gun/knife/explosive, other than for the purpose of stalling while attempting to outmaneuver? Only suicidal idiots...or cowards using others as shields.

Hi Galt et al

You state that " All humans have a volitional conceptual consciousness. Even devoutly religious people. All should be open to Reason {reality based rationality implied ?} ---despite upbringing"

My reading of "Epistemology" is that we all have the Faculty, the potential to develop true concepts, if and only if our concepts are based on perceptions of Reality, with correct differentiation, integration, unit formation and then proceeding to higher level concepts and their processing using valid rules of Logic.

Having this potential does not mean that any individual practices Rand's deductive system flawlessly.

She identifies many ways/fallacies by which men come to false concepts and hence can reason falsely. Shew also identifies how men can reach false conclusions from true starting premises by errors of Logic.

My lifelong dream has been to bring all the religious/atheist/agnostic/humanist leaders/gurus of the world together in one grand closed room to engage and debate until agreement on all issues and questions are resolved. No agreements to disagree. No cop outs. All discussion recorded and subject to rational inquiry.

I believe this could not happen until the participants first thrashed out agreement on Epistemological ground rules. I tbeleive such leaders should be invited to engage in this {mandatory?} beginning step.

What do you think? Could Objective Living initiate such a request? Could a formal Proposal be drafted for coordination with proper Agencies? Could a call for volunteers for a team to do so be issued? It would be an honor if I could help.

My best wishes to all

Neale Lehman

Ba'al,

Your Yoda saying betrays your pessimism. All humans have a volitional conceptual consciousness. Even devoutly religious people of any faith. All should be open to listening to reason and I have encountered more than one Christian who were open enough despite upbringing to listen to reason. One of them even considers me to be his own personal saviour for helping him see the light.

galt

About this thread

It seems to me that much consternation has arisen because some are referring to the real process

of dying and the disintegration of the body/brain that follows while others are referring to their personal concepts associated with Death. For those raised in a religious environment there are the stored memories

of the hope for again seeing lost loved ones and the end of pain and suffering. For some there is fear of judgement and punishment. For some it may be THE adventure. Terror, bliss, or nothingness. Who really knows what irrational hopes,fears or guiults may remain in our unconscious which influence our feelings and thoughts about the great unknown? There is a perspective from which all your comments make sense.

Studying this thread is an education for me about how we all come to misunderstand and then come to conflict with one another.

Neale Lehman

Michael,

Let's make this easy. I am not going to discuss me. If you want to keep up with this tirade, I will delete further installments. You got your tirade. It's on record. Time to move on.

Michael

Michael:

>"Come on. Everyone knows there are cases where 1+1=3."

After receiving the traditional "ridiculous," etc., I was challenged to provide one case where this was true. I replied:"Sex."

But this is a perfectly reasonable objection, at least prima facie, and one made by Popper himself against deductive logic,you willl be happy to know. Another one is putting 5 drops of water in a test tube, which makes 1+1+1+1+1=1!

But these do not in themselves invalidate logic. (arguments are required as well as examples) They only demonstrate that even logic itself - at least in the mathematical sense - is open to question and challenge.

But this is all quite beside the point.

Deductive logic is the rules for making valid inferences between statements. It's like the rules of a game, though obviously far more important, and like other human rule-bound games it has been subject to millenia of refinement to the point where, while not perfect, it's still damn useful. Now, using the game analogy, Hume is playing chess. Hume's problem is a chess problem. I have been talking about chess. The "other philosophers" Rand mentions are talking about chess. Now chess is not an "absolute." But I fail to see a. how Victor's solution succeeds as chess or b. why it would be any better if, as you suggest below, he is actually playing Scrabble!

>Well, that's that. Aristotelean logic is deductive logic. Period. There is no sense in arguing about it. Everyone is forced to agree on this point because it is that way by Aristotle's own definition. (Aside to Victor: Please take note of this. This is really, really important when discussing logic with someone philosophically knowledgeable outside of Objectivism.)But there is a little devil in these details, and it applies directly to Hume's problem and to the "man qua man" thingie that is driving this thread (going on the premise that it is OK to apply Aristotelean logic for both sides). The devilish little detail is the phrase "things supposed" or "premise." You see, deductive logic starts from a position of prior knowledge.

Yes, that is why even logic is not an absolute. But we have to agree we are playing chess, not Scrabble! And if we are playing chess, we have to play by the rules.

>There is another thing. Deductive logic needs at least two premises ("things supposed") in order to operate correctly....So with Hume's problem of deriving "ought" from "is," but excluding the reality of the agent, you are committing two errors within the methodology of deductive logic alone:

Not necessarily. You can introduce as many factual premises as you like. But at any rate, all you are saying here is that you can't logically derive an "ought" from an "is"!

I agree! Hume agrees! Victor doesn't! Rand doesn't! It seems apparent from her claim(ie from the fact that man is determines what he ought to do) she thinks she's solved it. She doesn't merely "dismiss" it as unsolveable.

>The point is that when you both use the term "logic," there is this fundamental difference that leads you to talk past each other. Both agree that the deductive logic part is included, but the Objectivist view adds something to it. It includes induction as a starting point, a premise of deduction so to speak, whereas your definition does not.

Look,we are not talking past each other. We are trying to solve a famous chess problem, if you like, and what is the point of considering an argument which so vague it might quite possibly be talking about Scrabble?(it is clearly incorrect as chess!) Plus, making an observation is not "induction". Let's get clear on that. Induction is a separate theory of truth from deduction. Induction is the attempt to predict the future based on past occurences.

-Addition by Neale- Provided that relevant condition are the same in both past and future occurrences.

And the problem is exactly that you can't have both! Induction is deductively false. The two methods clash. You can't just wave your hand and say it's magically "included". It's actually an either/or.

This is problem of induction: that you can't have your cake and eat it too!

>Yet the system of deductive reasoning allows for 2+2=4 only. So in order to align your observations with this kind of reasoning, you get 2+2=7,577.0387. And that sucks. Something has to give.

All that is required is not for logic to be some perfect method of knowing reality - it is not - but for people who want to use logic to, by the same token, have the strength to accept its conclusions, even when they conflict with their most dearly held beliefs.

galt,

I don't care for the ID explanation, but that video was dynamite in explaining how DNA is converted into protein for a layman. I intend to see it a few more times. Thank you for posting that.

I have a notion (I will not even call it an hypothesis) that there are principles specifically governing life and what I call mid-range forms and energies that stop being valid when their components are reduced to the subatomic level—and these principles are not derivable from the subatomic level. They are specific to mid-range. The DNA conversion mechanism is one such idea at a very small size level.

I would not say this process derives from a divine presence or even an "intelligent" presence, however. These things simply exist and we learn how they operate so we can mess around with them. I am certain that if there is a divine or intelligent superbeing behind all this, he will make himself known eventually. Until then, to be true to the minds we were born with, we cannot affirm as fact what we do not and cannot know.

To me, this is a win-win situation. If there is no divine or intelligent superbeing, we are correct. If one finally appears one day and says, "I created you," we will have honored Him by refusing to corrupt our minds (the ones He created) by accepting speculation as knowledge.

(EDIT - Our posts crossed.)

Michael

Hi Michael

About your idea of "principles that govern life". I suspect that this is a wrong notion going back to ancient Metaphysics: that the Universe and everything in it, including the so-called Laws of Science, are ruled,governed by Laws or Principles which are somehow separate, prior or superior to natural processes. A simpler perspective is that all such Laws and Principles are the concepts formed by the minds of men as they grasp the processes and formulate explicit Definitions or Descriptions. This perspective seems to be in accordance with Rand's Epistemology with all of man's concepts based on direct perceptions of reality processes. All we need to do is change the name of the highest-level scientific concept from Law to Description. What do you think? Neale