Dragonfly

Taser darts of course penetrate the skin, so a naked body is the ideal target.

Fascinating to what wild speculations online debates can lead. Don't worry, Ellen, I'm not playing any Turing test games. Ach, Du weißt Du bist nun einmal das Prügelmädchen hier... Of course when Rand talks about "man qua man" she's referring to a small subset of all human beings, namely those who exemplify Objectivist virtues, suggesting that only those represent the "true" human nature. The others must be subhumans, missing links, Untermenschen. "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?".

Such characteristics are just the equivalent of the melting point, boiling point, viscosity, density etc. of water. All very interesting of course, but they are ultimately the result of its molecular structure, which is the essential defining characteristic, even if we cannot in practice derive all those characteristics from first principles. The same for the human genome. "The rational animal" is not an essential characteristic, even if it is at the moment as far as we know a unique characteristic, but that is not the same.

Yes, other species don't have genomes. The essential characteristic of water is its molecular structure (H2O). Does that imply that other substances don't have a molecular structure?

Ha ha ha! It seems Jesus didn't like his statue and asked his father to do something about it...

See here and here.

The late Chris Grieb would probably have written: "Phil, tell us what you really think!"

The point is not that she agrees completely with Objectivism (if she does), but that she's fully endorsed by ARI, as is her book. That means that the odds that the book contains a positive reference to Nathaniel Branden are smaller than that we'll discover a manuscript by Rand in which she says that altruism isn't such a bad idea after all.

Not me, no sir.

I think Rand would have hated any pop song written after 1960 or so, even if it would have been based on Galt's speech.

It is meaningful to talk about a "purpose" of a system when its actions give results that cannot be explained by the combined effect of a random combination of its components and the laws of physics, i.e. if the probability of it happening is infinitesimally (in the colloquial sense, not in the mathematical sense) small. That means that such systems must be very complex and highly organized, in other words have a large Bennett's logical depth. We know that evolution can produce such systems, either directly or on a second level as the result of the design by an evolved system that has developed intelligence. Suppose that we find on some distant planet a "thing" that produces the first million digits of π in some binary representation (for example pulses of some kind). Then we could safely conclude that that "thing" must be the (most likely secondary) result of a biological evolution, and that it is the purpose to calculate the binary expansion of π. That means that it does have that particular, highly organized, structure to be able to do that (and perhaps other things as well, but that is not relevant here). I don't see why this notion of "purpose" wouldn't square with the use of the term as used for human beings. Why not? It's typically a product of large, complex and highly organized systems, just as roundness, redness and smoothness of a billiard ball are characteristics that can only emerge by the combination of a very large assembly of molecules that are themselves neither round, nor red nor smooth. Nevertheless the laws of mechanics are equally valid for the parts as for the whole, it is the structure that creates new possibilities, not some mysterious "purpose-field" or "roundness-force" as new physical entities. What is exactly non-necessitated ability? Living beings and humans in particular have evolved such abilities, the less successful versions haven't survived. Logical reasoning is a winning strategy, because it increases the odds of surviving. Creating a supersystem by many different brains and accumulating the knowledge of failures and successes makes it even better. That doesn't make humans perfect intelligent machines, but that isn't necessary to create a system that becomes progressively better in understanding and creating useful knowledge.

Thanks, Phil.

What kind of actions do we find? We can distinguish actions by non-living things from actions by living things. Binswanger is correct in stating that we can assign a purpose to actions of living things [i don't know if he does use that particular term, but I gather from Robert's post that that is what he means]. Those living things are machines that evolved. Such machines are not meaningless contraptions that just blink some lights or move some parts, they're machines with a purpose, namely to preserve the genes that form the basis for those machines (that's why those machines evolved in the first place). Part of that program is to ensure survival long enough to produce new machines that can take over the task, so therefore an important part of those machines is to ensure its own survival long enough, and the action that result can be called purposeful actions. In that regard metabolism isn't the essential part that determines whether we can speak of a purpose, a goal (although it may be of course necessary to help surviving those machines), the essential part is the procreation of the genes, that is what creates purpose (in contrast to a stone or a snow flake, that don't have a purpose). Even a Binswanger finds an acorn now and then. Now the machines that we call plants contain a relatively simple and fixed program, as do the simplest animals. But in general the program in animals becomes more extensive thanks to the possibility of locomotion, using sensors for acquiring more information about their environment. Whereas plants are severely limited in their options - they're rooted in place and with a few exceptions can only move by growing in certain directions -, animals can change their environment and thereby choosing a more favorable environment, which creates many more possibilities. Higher (i.e. more complex) animals do have brains that can store memories, which enables learning from past experiences, and human beings go still a step further by being able to make models of reality, so that different possible actions can be compared in advance without testing them in practice. So to be able to speak of a purpose or a goal, the essential differentiation is between non-living things and living things, but whether you define value to include automatic actions such as those of plants, or only for systems that depend on a more or less intelligent system that can choose between many different options by making an abstract projection of the results, is just a matter of convention.

I've no time now for an extensive reply, but perhaps you can remember this post?

I don't see what that has to do with that film.

Part I: The Train Wreck

Some years ago I decided to buy the DVD's of Jaws and Jaws2, after reading aal the raving reviews on the Amazon site, expecting to watch, if not a great film, at least a thrilling adventure. Boy, was that a disappointment... I've seldom seen such bad films, not thrilling at all, but boring, incredibly boring, endless, silly and predictable story, phony cliché characters. I've never understood why people can be so enthusiastic about those films, must be something in their DNA...

The first time I heard of Martin Gardner was when I was a student. Browsing the magazines in the university library I discovered the Scientific American and the Mathematical Games by Gardner, which became an addiction. Here I was introduced to Conway's game of life (for which I immediately wrote a program for the mainframe of the university, on paper tape and output on paper...), the programmed worms which traced fantastic figures (my first program for a plotter), the Mandelbrot set and fractals (emptying the ink tanks of a color plotter with thousands of colored dots...), the marvels of public key cryptography and much more. And of course the delightful and slightly crooked Dr. I.J. Matrix, who was a clever numerologist, with his attractive daughter Iva. Later I read several of his books, one of the best I found Science, Good, Bad and Bogus, in which made short shrift of all kinds of pseudo-scientists. It was by one of Gardner's articles that I learned that so-called rigorous proofs of paranormal phenomena were anything but. Thanks to Gardner I became interested in the Skeptic movement, books by Randi, Kurtz, Hansel (BTW, one of his books got a positive review in The Objectivist), Stenger and Edis (with whom I discussed the drafts of some of their books), and later I've myself done (on a small scale) some debunking of paranormal claims. I should also mention his Annotated Alice, which gives a lot of interesting information about Carroll's masterwork. Now when I write this, I realize now that Gardner has been an important influence in my life, even if I didn't always agree with his views (even if he introduced many new and daring notions in his articles, he could sometimes also have rather conservative scientific views). But he was a great debunker, together with James Randi (now in his eighties) and a wonderful writer about all kinds of puzzles, mathematical games and magic tricks.

Ah Dennett, at last a sensible philosopher. Anyone who has read Dennett knows that his metaphor of the library of Mendel is inspired on Borges' library of Babel, an abstract multidimensional space that nobody will confuse with a real library. It is isomorph with Dawkins' genetic space. Or are those poor philosophers also confused by the use of the word "space" for more than 3 dimensions or even infinite dimensions?

It is what Objectivists call contextually certain... Name, state, Italian origin, age, but the clincher is that from the day of his arrest his posts on OL abruptly stopped (and he was a very prolific poster). Nah, I don't believe in miracles...

Now, that's funny, Selene as an Objectivist con man! I'd already the impression that he did protest too much...

The term flip-flop is quite appropriate in Peikoff's case, because of the fanaticism of his earlier viewpoint. After all he claimed then that if you abstained from voting or voted Republican, you didn't understand Objectivism, making it in effect a Papal Bull. I don't think Rand ever gave political advice in such a fanatical manner, no matter how strongly she urged to vote a certain way. Therefore Peikoff cuts a rather foolish figure when he comes a short time later with the opposite advice. Flip-flop indeed!

That's the same thing as blaming Einstein for using the phrase "God doesn't play dice" by taking it literally, while it was obviously a metaphor. When Conway writes about the universe making decisions he means of course just that what happens in the universe at a certain event in space-time, whether that depends on the information of the past light cone of that event. Such anthropomorphizing terms are quite common in science, like particles that "see" something or atoms that "want" something, etc. Nothing to get excited about.

Sure. He discusses experiments with spin 1 particles, measuring the square of the spin component of the particles in a certain direction, where the assumption is that the choice of these directions by the experimenter is independent of the information available to him, the information in his past light cone (that is his definition of free will). He then proves that if that assumption is true, the response of those particles in the experiment is also independent of the information that is available to those particles, i.e. the information in the past light cone of those particles. By analogy of the independent decisions of the experimenter he calls that property of the particles then the "free will" of the particles. This is a purely physical definition that has nothing to do with treating particles as conscious entities. That is for example similar to use the term "design" in biology, which does not imply that biological structures are designed by some conscious entity (what the ID proponents of course claim, after all they use the term intelligent design). My problem with Rand is not that she uses her own definitions - everyone is free to give his own definitions - but her claim that these are the only true definitions, claiming that the arguments of people who don't use her definitions are therefore wrong. What is his sloppy use then? The fact that you don't agree with his definition? What is your definition of free will by the way? What Conway does is to show that if the experimenter has free will according to his definition, then the particles in those experiments also have free will (according to the same definition). Later in the article he even shows that this assumption is not needed for theories with arbitrary initial conditions (the free state theories). He prefers to use the term "free" over "indeterminate", because the behavior of those particles is not completely random, but that's just a semantic quibble.

Did you read the article? Speaking about particles that possess free will is no more nonsense than speaking about "the virtue of selfishness" or "the benevolent universe". But Rand is always excused when she uses her own ideosyncratic definitions, the argument being that as long as she gives a clear definition of her own terms, there's nothing wrong with it. So why not apply that same principle when mathematicians and physicists use their jargon with its typical definitions? If you can tell us why the conclusions in that article are wrong, using the definitions given in that article, then I'd like to hear that. When scientists talk about "no free lunch theorems", "cosmic censorship", "God playing or not playing dice", or "color", "flavor", "charm" when talking about quarks, you shouldn't interpret them literally in the everyday sense either.