Robert_Bumbalough

Hi Carol. Is Doug palsy-walsy with PM Justin I-Never-Met-A-Victim-Group-I-Couldn't-Exploit Trudeau? 

Whoa! More Winning. Supervisor is allowing me to get sample of wire the factory uses by the mile at like half price for a savings of at least $20K by EOY. 

Pow. Bada-Bing-Bada-Boom. Bola-Bola.  Being productive. Yeah! Baby!

New lumber vendor set up. First order about to be placed.

Crate it. Ship it. 

Call Dagney and set me up a box car on the siding spur line out back. Gotta love Taggert Transcontinental! 

I love the smell of productivity in the mornings.

---------------------------

A.B. Beverage Racks Up Productivity: Kudos to Doug Varadore V.P. & G.M. 

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By Bob Trebilcock · April 17, 2018

 

What do you get when you combine a warehouse redesign with a new rack system, voice recognition technology and a warehouse management system (WMS)? If you’re A.B. Beverage, a beer, wine and spirits distributor near Augusta, Ga., the answer is: a lot. The distributor saw a nearly 45% increase in picking productivity, from 225 to 330 cases per hour, along with better utilization of warehouse space to accommodate the increasing number of SKUs in the craft beer industry—the fastest-growing segment of the distributor’s business.

“Before this project, we were operating three shifts per day, had people working overtime and we still could barely get trucks built to leave on time in the morning,” says Doug Varnadore, vice president and general manager ofA.B. Beverage, which has been in the same family since the end of prohibition. “We’re now able to get our work done on two shifts, and we rarely have overtime.”

https://www.mmh.com/article/warehouse_system_report_a.b._beverage_racks_up_productivity

I love these types of stories of human success and achievement; there's plenty of other cool stuff in the current edition of Plastics News.  I exclaim, I love capitalism.  

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Bonita Springs, Fla. — Robert Ackley walked into Davis-Standard at age 17. Forty-six years later, he walked out as the president.

"It's the American dream," he said. "I don't know if anybody does that anymore. Who goes to work for a company for their lifetime now?"

It does sound old-fashioned. Ackley's story has an element of Horatio Alger. He was loyal. He worked hard. He dedicated his life to one company, going to school at night to chip away and earn two college degrees.

"I went to school nights for 20 years to get more education," he said.

Along the way, Ackley led Davis-Standard as the company diversified from a maker of machines to coat wire and cable, into a broad-line and global manufacturer of equipment, including extruders, blow molding machines, sheet lines, foam extrusion and extrusion coating and laminating lines.

Now he is going into the Plastics Hall of Fame. ..... 

http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180430/NEWS/180439992/ackleys-career-path-took-him-from-entry-level-to-president

In Atlas Shrugged part 2 chapter 6 the gang of looters lead by Wesley Mouch and Fred Kinnan discuss the eight points of directive 10-289 that assert draconian control over all business activity and severely limit personal freedoms. Did Ayn Rand's description of those eight points adhere to  the edicts issued by the Leninist Bolshevik rulers after their revolution and civil war victory? Did she fabricate that part of the story or was she writing from memory of her personal experience?

Then later in chapter 7 the scene where Rearden is walking to his new apartment after moving out of his house and starting divorce proceedings for Lillian and meets Ragnar who give Rearden a gold bar and explains his mission to eliminate the ideal of Robin Hood from the minds of men gave me pause to think. Ragnar asks Rearden what he looks forward to and for what does he live. Yikes! Slackers like me with little to no purpose in life other than keeping on to merely be keeping on for the sake of keeping on are challenged to find a crusade  and a mission. Well off I go to do something productive. 

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Fundamental principles are the most critical part of philosophy to get right since all inferences, deductions and applications of its principles depend on their truth, their defensibility, and their suitability as fundamentals. Unfortunately it is philosophy’s fundamentals that are often the most misunderstood or even the least developed, either because they have not been securely identified, their truth is taken for granted and therefore deemed unworthy of deeper attention, or they have been disfigured through filters foreign to that philosophy.

 In this blog Dawson discusses a comment by a reader asking how to distinguish between dream states and reality by use of Objectivism's basic metaphysic axioms.  I first learned of Objectivism from Dawson Bethrick's blog and have often found his writings useful in understanding Objectivism and the lack of justification for mythological beliefs.

http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/2018/04/existence-and-perception.html

On 4/17/2018 at 11:01 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

Welcome to OL.

If you read other works by Rand on music, when she uses descriptions like she used for Halley's music in AS, she was talking mostly about Russian romantics like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Music-wise, long tonal heroic-sounding melodies with nervous (in the good sense) and ever-changing elaborate accompaniment is the style I think she imagined. They really butchered this in the AS movies.

In Rand's artistic conception (see The Romantic Manifesto), she tried to portray a perfect man--a model so to speak. Others could then see what such a man would look like and act like (limited by her selectivity as an artist, of course). The purpose of this portrayal is supposed to give people emotional and spiritual fuel (i.e., sense of life fuel to use her jargon) for their own real-life struggles since, through such art, they can see their future visions in concrete forms in the present. Or something really similar. Thus they would know and feel their visions are achievable. And this would give them reassurance, especially when life drags them down.

(Art actually works like this sometimes, but this is too long a subject to get into for this post.)

Rand held that music had a direct channel to the emotions, so, using this proposition as foundation, music such as Halley's is about the emotions people feel if and when they see their future vision realized. That, and maybe a longing for their vision to become real.

Frankly, I don't understand your comment about the pity party. From my reading of AS, self-pity is not only the last emotion Dagny would ever feel, it's not even within her emotional makeup. It's not that she would fight it. It's that it's just not there. Pain and exhaustion are there at times. Longing is there. Nerves frayed to the breaking point are there, like when she had a cathartic cry after she confessed her affair with Rearden on the radio. But self-pity? Nah...  

Michael

Hi Mike. Nice day.  After finishing AS part 1 I watched the Atlas Shrugged Movie part 1. The movie is a pale bare outline of Ayn Rand's master piece although I thought the actors did a okay job. The editing and stage lighting are sub par, and some of the dialog is not found in the book, but it is entertaining. I wish John Aglialoro had chosen to use some method to emulate an all knowing narrator as Rand made herself in the novel. I've no clue how that could be done without resorting to a narrator describing the psychological states and conditions of the characters or presenting the characters thoughts as if the audience were clairvoyant mind readers.  How does a director and producer get the actors to exhibit the emotional and psychological states without seeming to be over acting? That would be hard. What do you think? 

1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

I'm basically on board with all that.

 

I'm not on board with Piketty being a serious influence in the world. He had his 15 minutes and didn't know how to goose that up into something longer.

In other words, David Gordon, who sometimes writes interesting things, wasted his time trying to debunk an economist nobody pays any attention to anymore. It's like Gordon woke up and thought, "I have too much time left over in my life. I need to piss some of it away. Oh, I know. Let me write about Piketty. That will make absolutely no impact on the world since Piketty no longer does, but the piss will feel good."

 

Michael

Hi Mike. All good. I agree. The guy who did the analysis leg work showed up Piketty's many errors, so the later's rehash of Das Kapital was a flop. Those darn lefties though don't care and still tout Piketty as if his stuff was the real deal. However, I probably should stay the heck off of Twitter. Too many trolls. My block list is as long  or longer than my following list. When my panties get into a wad, I spend too much time watching rebuttal vids or reading on mises.org instead of doing my yard work or something actually useful. 

But thanks for the clue about the AS movies. I ordered the dvd set this morning and started Part 2 of the novel last evening. I'm starting to think Ayn Rand was projecting her own sense of self into Dagny's character. But what the heck do I know; I'm nowhere close to being up to speed on her stuff, yet I hope that something of Rand is portrayed in the characters.  

Chat ya later.

Hi Pete, Mike. Ms Ayn Rand wrote her definition of happiness into the script of that darned ole Galt's speech. 

//Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.//

//Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction,//

It's not about having money or even earning money or possessing toys; she put an example in her character Rearden in dialog with the "Wet Nurse" character or Roark's defense at his trial. Both were talking individual creative achievement that was their intellectual property and source of their pride.  My design drafter job lets me approach that sort of an ideal, but I'm still far from it. My works are variations on a theme created by the company founder. After he passed, his kid took over. Lucky thing she's not some closet Marxist looking to turn a cash cow business into a charity, so maybe I'll get to be more inventive. If so, then I'll be in pursuit of happiness.  

Hey Pete, you like my cat? He's a handsome dude. Oh but them claws!

On 4/21/2018 at 5:01 PM, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Yeah, #metoo. I wish I could be an O-ist, but I'm too mushy. I'm stuck in everyman status, like Eddie Willers. I wouldn't mind working for a super hot hard charger capitalist engineering babe like Dagny Taggert; the money the money the money, sorry but no honey, but a Hank Rearden or John Galt I'll never be. I'm working on my sales skills. Hey, I'm all ears. Tell about what it is that'll make you come out of this deal smelling like a rose! .... Well what a coincy-dink, it just so happens my offering fits you to a Tee. So would your pals think you're cooler with the sporty macho man package or the super black velvet sexy lady deal? Oh good choice sir, lips-hips-and-fingertips make the world go round. Gotta love the second handers. Their psycho-epistemological motivation to live for other's approval makes them good customers. Plus as an added bonus, there's always brownie points to be earned by giving em opportunity to sacrifice themselves to some faceless feel good warm and fuzzy "charity" (cough-cough-wink-nudge). After which their non-explicit guilt will compel them to go for the $50 buck comish for bringing in another sucker.  They're the gift that keeps on giving.

I finished Part 1 of AS and think the author's depiction of Dagny's interviews with Ivy Sterns, one of those who may have leads on the identity and location of the static electricity motor (John Galt), may be contender for most overt presentation of anti-Marxist collectivism. See Part 1 Chapter 10 page 322 of 35th Anniversary edition or location 7817 of the Kindle version. Dagny listened to the muddle headed Marxist mystic drone on about from each according to ability to each according to his need while she was breaking from burning incense, praying and worshiping Hindu deity figurines; meanwhile Dagny's sub-conscious mind was protesting she should pay attention and remember this "pure evil".  Good stuff. I love that Dagny, at least in part, represents part of Ayn Rand's own character and personality.  Holy Shiva Batman, it'd be cool to date a babe who thinks like Rand did.   

AS audio book on GooGtube CD 1 part 93a of 94 whereon Dagny's interview with Ivy Sterns is read: (important ideas in the Give me Liberty or Give me Death vein).

Yeah, #metoo. I wish I could be an O-ist, but I'm too mushy. I'm stuck in everyman status, like Eddie Willers. I wouldn't mind working for a super hot hard charger capitalist engineering babe like Dagny Taggert; the money the money the money, sorry but no honey, but a Hank Rearden or John Galt I'll never be. I'm working on my sales skills. Hey, I'm all ears. Tell about what it is that'll make you come out of this deal smelling like a rose! .... Well what a coincy-dink, it just so happens my offering fits you to a Tee. So would your pals think you're cooler with the sporty macho man package or the super black velvet sexy lady deal? Oh good choice sir, lips-hips-and-fingertips make the world go round. Gotta love the second handers. Their psycho-epistemological motivation to live for other's approval makes them good customers. Plus as an added bonus, there's always brownie points to be earned by giving em opportunity to sacrifice themselves to some faceless feel good warm and fuzzy "charity" (cough-cough-wink-nudge). After which their non-explicit guilt will compel them to go for the $50 buck comish for bringing in another sucker.  They're the gift that keeps on giving.

 Yaron Brook answers a question from Ben and speaks about Ayn Rand having solved  the is-ought chasm or gap.

"Sam Harris's foundation of objective morality is based on well-being do you find any relationship between your view and Sam's?"

https://www.mises.org/library/anti-piketty-capital-21st-century

David Gordon asked:

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The well-known demographer and economist Nicholas Eberstadt makes a related point.

Whatever may be said about economic inequalities in our epoch, material forces are quite obviously notworking relentlessly and universally to increase differences in living standards across humanity today. From the standpoint of length of life and years of education, indeed, the human condition is incontestably more equal today than it has ever been before. (p. 27)

How might Piketty respond? It is apparent from his book that what concerns him is the gap between rich and poor, more than the quality of life enjoyed by the poor. He would be likely to say, “Granted that the poor today do not for the most part live in abject circumstances. Still, the superrich have enormously more wealth than anyone else. That by itself suffices to justify corrective action by the government.”

But this would open Piketty to a further objection. Why is inequality bad? If you lead a good life but others are much better off, why do you have any cause for complaint, just because of the inequality? That is a fundamental question, but unfortunately it is not addressed in Anti-Piketty. In a densely written essay, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson say, “It may be difficult to maintain political institutions that create a dispersed distribution of political power for a wide cross section of people in a society in which a small number of families and individuals have become disproportionately rich.” (p. 174)

Taking their comment on its own terms, would not a better solution to the problem it poses be to reduce the power of the state rather than to confiscate wealth? But this is not the issue I wish now to address. This is the failure of the contributors to address the intrinsic justice of equality. Is equality good or bad in itself? Why or why not? The contributors leave this vital issue to the side.

Why do egalitarians such as Piketty hold that equality is somehow a virtue?

Craig Biddle discusses the distinction between altruism and second-handiness.

2 hours ago, Peter said:

I took that awkward phrasing to be because Francisco was Latino. Maybe he should have said, “Stifle it you moron. Gringo, you embarrass yourself.”

 

 

Speaking of the billionaire rich, I was watching “on demand” that J. Paul Getty movie that originally starred Kevin the molester, last night. It was riveting and I can’t imagine anyone better playing the elder J. Paul Getty than the guy who did. And speaking of Mexicans . . .    

 

 

Trump tweeted: "There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW!" end quote

 

 

I don’t think our President was joking about our National Guard soldiers on the border or in sanctuary cities meeting and marrying those pretty senoritas . . .  like our GI’s did after WWII when they brought home German and Japanese “war brides” (I mean sheesh, when the Romans sacked a city they laid claim to all the babes) . . . And how many times have you been embarrassed for those “of whatever ethnicity or breed” who can’t solve the Wheel of Fortune puzzle when all but one of the consonants is showing? “The _attle of the _ulge.” Ahhh? Pat, is it “The Rattle of the judge?”

 

 

I won’t give the questions but here are a few of the answers from The New York Times Sunday Puzzle, “World Capitalism” by Rich Norris: Kiev incline. Accra bats. Beijing beauty. Prague noses. Taipei personality. Minsk stoles. Cairo proctors. Seoul food. Kabul stones.

 

 

Good post. I asked Mike to give ya a reputation point. Very nice. 

13 hours ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Store an ax and ladder in your attic. Keep some food and water and so forth handy. 

 

Lindzen's classic lecture on climate sensitivity still has merit.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2czGg3fUUA

More NOAA surface temp falsehood and scientific fraud 

7 hours ago, Peter said:

 I have a plan to pull down the stairs from the hallway ceiling to get up into the attic, if I wake up to water in the house.     

Store an ax and ladder in your attic. Keep some food and water and so forth handy. 

Lindzen's classic lecture on climate sensitivity still has merit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2czGg3fUUA

1 hour ago, Peter said:

When people “get lost in the music” and are so tuned in they are nearly head banging is that un-objective? Looking at a rock concert though a camera or snapshot makes the people enjoying the music look like freaks. “We will, we will, rock you.”

Damn but Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” is great. I like it better than anything by Queen.

Hello Peter. I'm fond of Rush and if I had to pick a favorite song, that'd be the one.

In Atlas Shrugged part 1 chapter 5 there's a long flash back sequence where Dagny recalls her childhood sometimes playmate Francisco D'Aconia including a scene setting up contrast and conflict between D'Aconia and James Taggert with the later blathering on about socialism. Francisco tells James to buzz off. This seems like a post event foreshadowing Francisco setting up the socialist government of Mexico and Taggert with the fake copper mine that was nationalized  in chapter 4. This was a nifty literary device, so I can forgive Rand's clumsy dialog she put into the characters. She's been raked over the coals since the first edition, but it's the ideas that matter. She decided to have Francisco blow off James' appeal to socialism because collectivism is so stupid and vulnerable on many fronts.

This passage seems to be about politics, but I think it's somewhat to do with a rational sort of love. The theme between Dagny and Francisco is performance of excellent quality work in serving customers so that they gladly trade their money value for the product (copper) or service (freight hauling) that Rand through her characters identifies as the source of good stuff needed to live the good life.  Thus in Rand Land, loving one's own self means working well to satisfy one's customers.

Thanks for the comment.

1 hour ago, Peter said:

I wonder what rock and roll songs Rand's heroes would like? 

Maybe Rush "Tom Sawyer"

http://www.metrolyrics.com/tom-sawyer-lyrics-rush.html 

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Robert,

Welcome to OL.

If you read other works by Rand on music, when she uses descriptions like she used for Halley's music in AS, she was talking mostly about Russian romantics like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Music-wise, long tonal heroic-sounding melodies with nervous (in the good sense) and ever-changing elaborate accompaniment is the style I think she imagined. They really butchered this in the AS movies.

In Rand's artistic conception (see The Romantic Manifesto), she tried to portray a perfect man--a model so to speak. Others could then see what such a man would look like and act like (limited by her selectivity as an artist, of course). The purpose of this portrayal is supposed to give people emotional and spiritual fuel (i.e., sense of life fuel to use her jargon) for their own real-life struggles since, through such art, they can see their future visions in concrete forms in the present. Or something really similar. Thus they would know and feel their visions are achievable. And this would give them reassurance, especially when life drags them down.

(Art actually works like this sometimes, but this is too long a subject to get into for this post.)

Rand held that music had a direct channel to the emotions, so, using this proposition as foundation, music such as Halley's is about the emotions people feel if and when they see their future vision realized. That, and maybe a longing for their vision to become real.

Frankly, I don't understand your comment about the pity party. From my reading of AS, self-pity is not only the last emotion Dagny would ever feel, it's not even within her emotional makeup. It's not that she would fight it. It's that it's just not there. Pain and exhaustion are there at times. Longing is there. Nerves frayed to the breaking point are there, like when she had a cathartic cry after she confessed her affair with Rearden on the radio. But self-pity? Nah...  

Michael

Hi. Thanks for taking time to craft a thoughtful reply. (Please forgive my poor composition. I'll edit the text to remove the badly formed sentence.) I need to get a clue, so I'll move RM up to the top of the read list.

Hello OL; I'm reading A.S. (as I should have done forty years ago; hey I finally found a round-to-it.) and have a question about what Rand intended the reader to infer about Dagny's mental state depicted in chapter 4 section 1 where Dagny is worn out from work and in her apartment listening to Richard Halley concerto no.4 and becomes disturbed by reading a newspaper story regarding Francisco D'Aconia visiting New York.  Rand ended the scene with a metaphor "The great cords of Halley's music went on, filling the room, piercing the glass of the windows, streaming out over the city,. She was hearing the music. It was her quest, her cry."  Halley's music wasn't described earlier in the story other than indicating it was a catchy tune whistled by the brakeman on a train or that some opera fans really hated it but 19 years later a different lot loved it, but Rand used this metaphor to illustrate Dagny's mental state upon learning of her past boyfriend being back in town, but I don't get it because Rand didn't describe Halley's musical style and how that style related to the "Who is John Galt?" theme of don't ask useless questions.  So what's up with this scene?  

Rand wrote an interesting piece in ITOE about definitions. I thought these two passages particularly thought provoking in context of the big picture of saving the United States and Capitalism from the horde of young brain washed would be socialists who are hoping to pillage corporate America. For that reason those who grasp rational philosophy is the alternative to rule of the primatives by brute force have an interest in knowing how to argue against one of the main tools of the socialists, the analytic synthetic dichotomny.

Rand in ITOE 44 & 47

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A definition is not a description; it implies, but does not mention all the characteristics of a concept’s units. If a definition were to list all the characteristics, it would defeat its own purpose: it would provide an indiscriminate, undifferentiated and, in effect, pre-conceptual conglomeration of characteristics which would not serve to distinguish the units from all other existents, nor the concept from all other concepts. A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they are. But it is important to remember that a definition implies all the characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not their exhaustive, characteristics; since it designates existents, not their isolated aspects; and since it is a condensation of, not a substitute for, a wider knowledge of the existents involved.
......
Now observe, on the above example, the process of determining an essential characteristic: the rule of fundamentality. When a given group of existents has more than one characteristic distinguishing it from other existents, man must observe the relationships among these various characteristics and discover the one on which all the others (or the greatest number of others) depend, i.e., the fundamental characteristic without which the others would not be possible. This fundamental characteristic is the essential distinguishing characteristic of the existents involved, and the proper defining characteristic of the concept.

Metaphysically, a fundamental characteristic is that distinctive characteristic which makes the greatest number of others possible; epistemologically, it is the one that explains the greatest number of others.  

On 7/22/2017 at 9:21 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

Definitions give meaning to the words in a sentence except at the lowest semantic level when to define a word one needs to point to something in the world.  Definitions are meaning indicators.  Once we know what a sentence (proposition) says we can determine if it is true or false or indeterminate.   At the lowest semantic level words are labels for things or actions that we can perceive.

Example:  a bachelor (by definition) is a male of marriageable age who has never been married.   That is a definition.    The sentence "Jack is a bachelor"  is a proposition whose truth or falsity is determined by what we find out about Jack.   To do that we have to look.   We cannot infer the truth or falsity by a priori means. 

Hello BC; Thank you for replying to my message and allowing me to interact with your comments.  Doing so is produtive for me in that it enables me to review Piekoff's ASD essay published in ITOE.  It's been at least ten years since I last read it.  The point made by BC fails to validate the ASD when the ASD is restated in what I think could be a contra-positive formulation as did LP in his essay, and which I'm quoting.

Quote

Another restatement of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy is the view that opposes the “logically” possible and the “empirically” possible.

If the proposition that a given phenomenon exists is not self-contradictory, then that phenomenon, it is claimed, is “logically” possible; if the proposition is self-contradictory, then the phenomenon is “logically” impossible. Certain phenomena, however, although logically possible, are contrary to the “contingent” laws of nature that men discover by experience; these phenomena are “empirically” —but not “logically”—impossible. Thus, a married bachelor is “logically” impossible; but a bachelor who can fly to the moon by means of flapping his arms is merely “empirically” impossible (i.e., the proposition that such a bachelor exists is not self-contradictory, but such a bachelor is not in accordance with the laws that happen to govern the universe).

The metaphysical basis of this dichotomy is the premise that a violation of the laws of nature would not involve a contradiction. But as we have seen, the laws of nature are inherent in the identities of the entities that exist. A violation of the laws of nature would require that an entity act in contradiction to its identity; i.e., it would require the existence of a contradiction. To project such a violation is to endorse the “miraculous” view of the universe, as already discussed.

The epistemological basis of this dichotomy is the view that a concept consists only of its definition. According to the dichotomy, it is logically impermissible to contradict the definition of a concept; what one asserts by this means is “logically” impossible. But to contradict any of the nondefining characteristics of a concept’s referents, is regarded as logically permissible; what one asserts in such a case is merely “empirically” impossible. Thus, a “married bachelor” contradicts the definition of “bachelor” and hence is regarded as “logically” impossible. But a “bachelor who can fly to the moon by means of flapping his arms” is regarded as “logically” possible, because the definition of “bachelor” (“an unmarried man”) does not specify his means of locomotion. What is ignored here is the fact that the concept “bachelor” is a  subcategory of the concept “man,” that as such it includes all the characteristics of the entity “man,” and that these exclude the ability to fly by flapping his arms. Only by reducing a concept to its definition and by evading all the other characteristics of its referents can one claim that such projections do not involve a self-contradiction. 

By reformulating the ASD into its logically possible vs empirically possible form and then applying it to the bachelor example, the reducto ad absurdum is revealed.

On 7/15/2017 at 8:36 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

the difference between analytical statements and synthetic statements.  The first kind are true by definition and for the second  the truth must be determined by observation. 

I think BC incorrect and disagree. Definitions can't make a statement true. If a definition is an instance of the pure self reference fallacy, then it can't have truth content or infer truth. An example would be the statement "God exists." There is no evidence of God so nothing can function as a fact from which a valid concept of God can be integrated, but the statement is claimed by religious charlatans to be true by definition.   Valid concepts integrated from actual states of affairs properly related by correct syntax form true statements.  Other analytic statements involving valid concepts are themselves higher order concepts and thus open ended so that new previously unknown data can be integrated. And synthetic statements are also concepts that are also open ended awaiting integration of newly discovered data. Since both A & S statements can be modelled as open ended concepts awaiting integration of new data, there is no dichotomny except in regards to degrees of probablity of certainty.

The communists and socialists, our enemies, wish us to ignore this so they can claim Marx's and Engles' statements are true because they say the definitions of the terms used make labor theory of value and exploitation theory "ture", so they can motivate their followers to seize your money and means of production.