Flagg

Haven't read this yet, but I'm interested. System-building, although Robbins (in a lecture on his site about Rand) hates it, is what Clark is actually all about. Clark began with a system of axioms (the statements within the Bible) and went from there. There's a good reason why two books out of the small library at the Trinity site are about Rand, as well as one audio lecture, by two different authors. Before even knowing about this fact, I felt some sort of odd kinship for the poor old rationalist Clark listening to his lectures on Youtube, and it's because of this rare notion of axiomatic foundation. And the fact that Gordon Clark might be as close as possible to the exact logical negation of Objectivism, even moreso than Kant or Hume His much hated brethren, the more popular Van Tillian Presuppositionalists, really had problems all over the board, including putting some goofy "apparently contradictory" notions all over the Scriptures. They don't have any clear definitions like Clarkian Presuppositionalists do; they are (believe it or not) far more mystical. They are also more vocal in the field of apologetics, and don't (from my experience) harp on Rand proportionally as much; I think Clarkians, realizing the missile launched at TAG by Objectivism's presupposed foundation, have good reason apart from our bizarre kinship to go after us. In his lecture, Robbins indeed assaults politics, but the real danger is metaphysics and epistemology. I'm currently debating a Van Tillian on TAG. He can't himself account for the laws of logic from that point; Gordon Clark does it by simply asserting "logos" in John 1:1 is translated properly "logic." What an account: "In the Beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God." There's a mysticism for me!

So, what were your consquences? Most any child deserves better. --Brant I turned out fine; I tend to exaggerate when I joke around on the Internet. It's all in good fun. And your use of the word "palaver" called back up the Dark Tower series; I think I might flip through that again soon.

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;) There is an edit function. --Brant Thank you for pointing out the edit function, but unfortunately the effect of my nature and my nuture initiated a deterministic decision within my brain according to my biologically preferred desire to move on to additional arguments elsewhere for purposes of brain stimulation and learning, which, by the nurture of my rather messy mother, ended up higher in my neurological intuitionist priority than any desire related to fixing an improperly detailed document which, within context, would still yield effective and determined reasoning in a standard rational human being linking the previous quoted posts perfectly in order with the quoted posts following my analysis, collapsing any such actual editing of names into the second set into a useless tidying inferior to the information I otherwise gained during the seconds that task would have required for completion. However, the Rube Goldberg intuition pump in your mind, through nurture of a mom, dad, or legal guardian who probably didn't leave leftovers in the fridge until the molding point like mine did, resulted in an inversion of this value for your specific case. So much is your destined dedication to orderly documentation that the particles in your mind not only clicked and clacked and spit out the predestined thought that the nil-pragmatic meaning of the renaming was irrelevant to the issue, but it also dumped from your intuition well a rebuke upon me for the result from my own mind's clicking and clacking that stood in such opposition to your particular sum of prior experiences. With the determined result in your mind of hope in changing some lever or pully in my own mind to fix this error in the future with greater certainty than had you politely stated your brain's foreordained judgment instead of using such biting sarcasm, you have gained as a stimulus-reward the feeling of using a rare comeback (called "wit" in the human verbal behavior set) to hopefully more reliably cause my own mind to push the bowels and poo out a different result upon the next encounter (i.e. actually fixing the quote).

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;)

You are incorrect about Barbara's statement. She stated, "Free will is an axiom of consciousness and, like all axioms, it must be accepted in the very act of denying it." There's the contradiction. You use something to deny it. It doesn't get much clearer than that and that is not a simple claim like "X is a contradiction" is a simple claim. Do you want to see the impossibility of the syllogism? Premise: Free will is the ability to initiate a conscious choice. Premise: I have the free will to consciously choose to deny that free will exists. You don't get it. I'm not saying that free will (the ability to initiate choices) doesn't exist, only that it is not incompatible with a deterministic brain. No one has shown that this incompatibility exists. This equivocates on "the ability to initiate choices" - in the compatibilist context, this simply means man is the ultimate source of his actions. This is too broad an assertion, and pardon my Rand language here, but it package-deals "passive" within "ability to make choices." Rand's difference with compatibilism is that man actively chooses, and is not passive to his internal premises. Both Rand's version and the compatibilist version are correct in the broad assertion (and even libertarian free will is, but that old medieval notion places the ultimate means of choices at best to something akin to schizophrenia and at worst to the equivalent of a die roll, which not only wipes out man as the ultimate active chooser but also implies solipsism). What do you mean by predetermined outcomes delimited internally? The only limitation is by the amount of time and the available memory - and the same limitation holds for the human brain. An outcome doesn't have to be part of the program, it can be generated by the program, so the term "predetermined" is misleading. It seems you're thinking of "canned responses", but that is an unwarranted limitation. In a deterministic system every state of the system is determined by the state at a previous time, but if the system interacts with the external world, it is determined by its own state and that of the external world. We might feed it with random input, but for any given input the next state is still determined by its previous state. How is it determined by the previous state? What determines it? Your context and previous states would have to determine it; follow the chain back, and you are left with an infant with no previous context and nothing but remnant genetic instincts, like hunger and jerking one's knees when tapped in the right place. How, then, is an infant to build knowledge of separate perceptions? How can an infant grow to identify similar perceptions as things such as "rose" or "jumping" or higher concepts such as "love"? Since lit-up brain areas are the metaphysical, neurological component to our epistemic perceptions and concepts, the compatibilist is forced into the position that such ideas have been preprogrammed into our minds since birth, or at least the ability to conceptualize in reaction to outer stimuli must be present since birth (in an undamaged human). I'm sure you and I can dismiss the former, since we certainly preprogrammed with e.g. the preconceptual space compartmentalized for "internet." Try going back 40,000 years and seeing if that works for an aboriginal. The latter notion, that one has the ability to organize perceptions into concepts automatically (in proper accordance to one's IQ, granted) is easily answered by analysis of language. Study up, for instance, on how hard it is to translate ancient Greek from Biblical manuscripts and you'll learn what a task it is to transcribe the inerrant word of Jebus into words that aren't in a long-dead language. This whole idea of deterministic conceptualization is routed by the fact that human beings have drastic changes in conceptualizing (and subsequently in language) with little to no change in their culture. Perhaps it's a combination of nurture and nature, you might say? And within nurture, that it's a combination of (to use more Rand words) the metaphysically given and the man-"made" (more specifically, the parent- and society- taught)? Then by what means did the first learners of the changes in reality grasp these brand new concepts, since they by definition could not have themselves been taught? There's only one answer that consistently ties all of these together to make a case for compatibilism: claiming that God, creating all the future by His decree, implanted ideas in man's mind to cause them to do actions suited to His purpose, deterministically and absolutely, for His glory (i.e. Calvinism). There is no naturalistic, non God-of-the-Gaps means to wrap the difficulties of compatibilism all together. Listen. I know Dennett's case; I saw a Youtube video on it thinking he meant volition before finding out the old saw had been revived again. Dennett, as you pointed out, puts an intuition pump in our minds as a means for compatibilistic choice - but from where does this intuition pump draw its information? Where is the water in the pump's underlying well? This isn't touched upon, but it's implicit in everything discussed: it comes from outside ourselves, and we process our contents automatically and, in the context of our intellectual ability, perfectly, without error. The fact that I am late returning tests to my students is a perfect reasoning in the framework of my abilities according to a sum of all my previous states and the premises such states have spat out in my mind; deep within, I hate teaching, I hate my students, and I hate the Calculus I teach to my students. It wasn't a misstep of lazily skipping my value hierarchy for the immediate gratification of playing Final Fantasy III on the DS; it must reveal something more sinister, and if I don't delay my grading again it MUST mean I'm doing it for reasons higher than the aforementioned values in my hierarchy, i.e. I don't want to risk bad student reviews and lose my hated job and have no means for money, don't want to risk not being liked by people I want to have power over since I'm their teacher, etc. Perhaps I should choose (or, since I can't choose, be forced) to do another job instead that I secretly don't hate, or just beg for enough change to keep my DS going while slurping free sludge in the local soup kitchen. After all, even if it's epistemologically impossible to assess outcomes of situations, I'm metaphysically determined, and since one's mind cannot mold reality, this determinism - internal or external (compatibilism, as I have demonstrated, is necessarily external, whether external in the framework of your own experience or of the genetically inherited properties forged by your ancestor's experiences) - takes precedence, and a manipulative, sane serial killer deserves as much credit as a fighter of tyranny like Ghandi: zero. This leads to two choices: society must be egalitarian on the basis of metaphysics, even though it will fall apart due to the lack of means, by definition, of human beings to epistemologically perceive how their neighbors that rape their daughter did it deterministically (they must ultimately accept such explanation by faith), or continue on as we are, blaming each other for actions which we are all asked to take, again on faith, as metaphysically deterministic, i.e. living an illusion, i.e. living in ignorance to reality, i.e. doing as well as one who shrugs and stays upstairs drinking beer and watching the oncoming tornado while all his relatives are safe in the basement below. Humanity, under compatibilism, is in a state worse than moral relativism, which at least asserts some people's actions are consistent with reality even though they are fundamentally different from someone else's; it is a state of hopelessness, of a stasis between living a system which is by definition literally impossible to calculate in metaphysical specifics versus living in a system in which everyone believes an epistemological notion they know is metaphysically false. You either: (1) blame and praise people for actions in which they are not the initiator, but merely the source, and to live consistently one might as well thank the washing machine for a batch of clean clothes and imprison it for a week for a batch of dirty ones; or (2) do not blame or praise anyone for any action, knowing the general, but withholding that nagging frustration that the designer of an efficent, eco-friendly car is metaphysically just as determined as a man on a playground molesting children. This means: man cannot live in accordance with reality; he must either fake it metaphysically or epistemologically. These previous two paragraphs in no way disprove compatibilism (I think I began to address a disproof earlier in this post) but they do illustrate why this debate is *crucial.* Ever read "The Stimulus and the Response," Rand's commentary on Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity?" Well, I read the book itself, as my stepdad is a psychologist with this sitting plainly in his library in Mom's house. It's not pretty. Rand didn't cover the implications in full, and her bite doesn't snap off all of the implications of compatibilism. That book is reasonably close to the conclusion of compatabilist free will; read it and don't tell me that you, at least in a couple of places, pushed a little nagging consciousness back in the dark with the presupposition of being "progressive" and "scientific." NOTE: I don't mean to attack you personally on this. I've read some threads you've linked and find you to be insightful and capable. Please don't think any harsh tones are directed toward you as a person; even though you believe in compatibilism, you at least accept the "illusion solution," which is the better option (like taking a gunshot in the head as opposed to the stomach). Personally I think it's because you know we all choose, deep down inside, but if my assumption isn't true, I'd ask you to look at the consistency of your position and whether it matches up with reality.

Could this have been more accurate? Objectivism "is truth." ~ Shane No, that's just dogmatism. "Objectivism is true" or "truth" is only true inside the world of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism is four basic principles, two of them axiomatic, logically linked sequentially, the last two, ethics and politics containing many derivative statements many controversial or undemonstrated. I am not saying Objectivist epistemology is not controversial; I just don't go there personally. Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting. Rand formulated her philosophy by asking herself what her ideal man would need, not what humankind needed. Thus we have both a great overlapping and a great disconnect in realistic and desirable ethics and politics. If you are going to prescribe ethics you had better know people a lot better than she did, to put it mildly, and properly appreciate the genius of monotheistic religion, especially Christian, and come up with a real substitute and avoid the hubris of calling your own philosophy "true." --Brant Brant, thank you for your comments. I do already recognize one important thing about Objectivism: Rand's views on toleration (or at least the Orthodoxy take on them) are not true. I adopt, as a principle, to tolerate those who do not verifiably engage in (or support the use of) unreasonable physical or psychological force, government or not, and to those who return a like respect for my worldview and discussion of facts. For example, I will discuss rationally with a Christian so long as they don't advocate theonomy or, as some Calvinists do, express a hatred for my worldview right off the bat and act hostile/snobby. In fact, I have more discussion with Aristotle-minded "evidentialist" Christian scholars than I do with the so-called "brights," who often dismiss my words because I dare believe that some problems are solvable, that reality is knowable, and that men are not, in Rand's words, birdbrained deterministic creatures because such existed earlier in the evolutionary chain. Rand was wrong on many statements - one of my favorite examples is her usage of insurance profits as an example of disaster being rare. Of course, insurance profits come from actuarial underwritings based on the statistics, not the other way around, but Rand said this as a rhetorical offhand comment, not as an absolute. She was a philosopher, not a mathematician as I am. Some other points of divergence: *I believe roads and road maintenance are ultimately the property of the government. Rand would disagree. *I believe some writers of different worldviews, e.g. Hunter S. Thompson, grasp and portray elements of truth that Orthodox Objectivism may not even consider; even if this portrayal is from a person with a dark, mystical worldview, they may author something from a proper viewpoint that they don't even realize. Take the normally malevolent writer Stephen King, for example: "Shawshank Redemption" is my favorite movie, and I think that Andy Dufresne, the uncompromising, self-confident character who not only never lets go of his values in a situation belying them but actually makes an impossible escape to realize them, could be the best example of "Objectivism" outside of Rand herself (and, *gulp*, perhaps as stark an example as John Galt himself, and his own escape from a crumbling world). *I believe that governments should play a minimal role in the market - very minimal - beyond the enforcing of legal contracts as Rand held, but yet governed by the overriding principle of government's proper function protecting its citizens from the use of force (implied or psychological, in this case). *My reading of Rand's epistemology recently, "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," leads me to the conclusion that this work was incomplete. I have a 99% hunch Rand would agree; it's an introduction, after all, and Rand had no chance to flesh it out. The Q&A section, as Binswanger admits, is mostly extemporaneous. Nonetheless it hits on much truth, more even than I recall from my Philosophy Class study of Wittgenstein. *Psychiatric conditions and their solutions with medication and therapy are necessary to recognize and treat for a self-esteemed individual (so long as such treatments are valid). For instance, it is proven objectively that a Texan moving in Alaska could be predisposed genetically to depression from pervasive darkness, an unchosen condition which could cloud one's otherwise active and happy worldview and ability. Proper medication and therapy in this case allow the restoration of one's faculty to act and choose as a normal human being. Such conditions are disabilities, which employers of jobs that are not impossible under these disabilities ought to (but should not legally be forced to!) recognize and adjust for especially if the individual excels at the job outside the context of the disability. And perhaps most controversially, *I believe that a Prime Mover and Prime Tuner *could* exist, and that such existence of a Being (or Beings) would not belie the primacy of existence. However, given that all proofs of such have logically failed, I am a so-called "negative" atheist in regards to such a God, and I am positive-atheist for sure in regards to the Christian and Muslim description according to their religious texts. *I believe that a baby begins to exist when its body (most importantly a human-status brain) is fully "human-active"; perhaps a good question would be whether the baby can medically survive outside of the womb and still grow to a normal human being without unusual technological age. This means: no late-trimester abortions. Therefore I fully am "pro-choice" before that time, but "pro-life" afterward. A good standard must be medically set to define this line, however, much the same as 18 as a standard for determining statutory rape (even though many men or women are psychologically sound for sex beforehand, this is an age which encompasses all possible development of normal human beings so that courts are not bogged down with extraordinarily complex issues while judging a case). *"Altruism" is all fine and dandy, but grossly misused. For instance, I teach *for the benefit of others*; else, there would be no teachers. I do this despite being in the position that I could take a job paying literally hundreds of thousands more in potential (teacher vs. actuary or cryptographer). BUT I DO NOT TEACH *ONLY* FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHERS. Teaching mathematics is my greatest ability, since I understand mathematics thoroughly and also since I understand how to relay these concepts well. And teaching for the benefit of others does two things: (1) makes the world a better place for me and the type of people I admire, since it will be filled with thousands of students with a better ability to think and reason on account of my ability; (2) most importantly, results in people who become a value to me due to their hard work, increased ability in rational thought, and thankfulness for their recognition that I have helped them to this position. Some of my best friends are former students. To me, this is worth more than the loss of salary I take from potential jobs that are too isolated and too boring. Plus, I also gain the benefit of interacting with people and improving my methods of communication. Rand might ultimately take a shaky agreement to this explanation of why I think "altruism" is misused (specifically, today's equivocation with my explanation to an actual loss or denial of one's values) but she would probably launch me down the stairs. ;) I certainly don't fall into dogmatism then. But I will say that what I have read of Rand so far is remarkably similar to my worldview, and her sharpness is incredible. She is the philosopher who reaches the truth closer than any other, despite her missteps. There are some points I share (or not) and I will NEVER give these up: *A universe outside my consciousness exists (I will not state this as "existence exists," since today's notion of such a statement is "all that exists exists," which is question-begging in the context of common knowledge, but I believe Rand's spirit is as I stated here). Objects exist outside my consciousness; they possess identity; their interaction with other identities define causation, even if it's weird, like in relativity or quantum mechanics. Period. Furthermore, this notion takes primacy over all else. Even more than that, I consider this statement wholly and literally impossible to change at this conceptual level - only in detail irrelevant to philosophy qua philosophy (i.e. physics). *My consciousness exists, i.e. it ultimately exists in reality with an identity, and its identity gives rise to its epistemological purposes. All epistemology is up for discussion in my view, but consciousness, like reality, is not, as are sense perceptions and volition precluding medical proof of a brain tumor or psychiatric condition. *Men MUST be self-reliant in a social context; even if one has a condition which would prevent this on a desert island (i.e. having no legs) one is still now in a reality which contains a social context in which he or she can **initiate action** to optimize self-reliance. *Morality is objective, i.e. grounded in the identity of man, meaning it is ultimately grounded in reality. I hate using the word "selfish," since it will never be removed from the same type of equivocation that "altruism" is rooted in today; "self-reliant" is better. Socially, the way man *is* means that one *ought* to recognize this in others; when questioned, ethicists tend to point out to me that they believe such an *ought* is not very persuasive, but it's even more persuasive than recognizing that one *ought* to get out of the path of a tornado - for, one is himself a man, and it is impossible to deny rights in others (barring the occasional misstep; we're all human here) while recognizing those rights in the self. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is about as right of a description as it gets, and is not self-sacrificial; not a soul on Earth I've met (who isn't criminal) would advocate accepting a gift from someone who doesn't see them as a value or potential value, and properly so. *Politics should be "libertarian," on the basis of the identity of man. Like morality and epistemology, the details are to be ironed out, but this is the principle that guides me in any political context. *Art as being primarily proper in expressing elements of this worldview (i.e. Shawshank Redemption) or, secondarily, evidence of the artist's ability so long as the work of art does not advocate a statement with a basis in political usage of force (i.e. Salvador Dali). *Outside of these notions, contextual knowledge of reality must force one to change one's positions at times on matters from the mundane to the crucially important. Even Rand advocated "contextual" certainty. Why, then, must her views be absolute? Her own "orthodox" followers deny this important thought from Rand; they can't be "orthodox" at all! I know this drifted off-subject, but I needed to put my current views out somewhere. ;)

Hello all, I would like to know the Objectivist understanding of free will. What does the choice of "focus" mean? Does it have anything to do with common notions of "compatibilist" and/or "libertarian" free-will? Example A: What of a man adhering to his primary value of life by turning down cocaine at a party versus irrationally accepting the risk for a decision to use it, provided sensational enjoyment is far lower on his actual hierarchy than the choice for life (not to mention the possibilities of being arrested and/or randomly drug tested)? Should he have the ability to still choose cocaine? If so, what would drive that ability? Is it ultimately arbitrary? Is it neither? Example B: To illustrate the above example, suppose a successful business man approaches a T-section at 8 AM, the right path being to his garage to take him right in on time for work, the left leading to a random neighborhood with nothing of interest. The man is cranking some Rush and thinking about a merger and turns right "without even thinking about it." Did he actually think about it and make this choice? Is this choice so overcome by his much higher chosen moral structure that it is literally or at least "virtually" compatibilist? Example C: A man is at a Thai restaurant examining ethnic food choices which he can do no more than evaluate pictures. Liking chicken, he narrows down the choices to two chicken dishes with rice noodles and an assortment of vegetables and spices that both appear perfectly suitable to him. He literally cannot make up his mind, so he "randomly" takes the picture on the left and orders that, or, even better, he takes a coin out and flips it to decide. Is this a random, libertarian freewill choice, or does the choice rest to flip the coin, driven by the compatibilist desires that got one to the choice of two plates and subsequently by different desires which forced him to use a coin so he can keep the line moving and not end up embarrassed or kicked out of the restaurant? Would a choice to coinflip be different or equivalent to an actual (at least "perceivably") random choice in which the individual chooses the left hand picture on "whim?" Example D: A man values his wife above any other person. However, in the past six months, this wife has started smoking heroin, cheating rampantly, stealing, lying, and doing all sorts of behavior completely belying all the reasons he values this person. The decision to "stand by your (wo)man" in this case would be improper under the Objectivist view: having originally placed (validly) this lady above all other people, this lady has changed the reasons for doing so, and has shown proof that it is not an arbitrary episode brought about by a solvable trouble and that it is not something she will change soon. The proper decision would be to dump her so you can be happy, stress-(relatively) free, and thus survive better through higher quality of work, better attention to ones deserving of value, and the adventure of finding a new (hopefully better) love that one may promote to the vacancy of "top value." This is an entire premise change - would doing the former case be possible but "improper" while the latter would be the "proper" way (as in Ex. A) or if one actually felt as described would the latter be compatibilist-automatic? If not, wouldn't the libertarian decision between the two options be essentially baseless at its core? =========== Thoughts =========== Determinism - I do not accept absolute determinism; it does not explain how desires, feelings, etc., are causally connected, more or less where those notions which prompt these feelings came from in the first place. It is a total denial of man's identity as I see it, even given my minor confusions on free-will. Whatever man's will has as its nature, lack of at least internal causation flies in the face of direct, everyday observation. Compatibilist Free-Will - One would have to wonder where desires came from, and how they were organized into a hierarchy in the first place. Additionally, if one always does what one "truly" desires, this makes men literally infallible in their own context of mind, and incapable of making errors, for they simply were determined by "nature" (how?), "nurture," (how did ancestors learn or obtain these genetic ethical notions?), or even worse, "God" (i.e. Calvinistic theology, which denies free choice in order to prevent man from choosing God on his own so he can follow Calvin's outline of man either receiving Christ or not, solely dependent on God's pre-eternal decision). And isn't it question-begging to assume that factors that cause (or, namely, directly determine) a decision actually cause the decision itself independently of conscious control? If one is governed by libertarian free will, where does our "fake" perception of choice-ability come from? Libertarian Free Will - A "totally free" requirement on all decision (equivalent to the libertarian determination of Example C) would obviously make man schizophrenic, but I think we mean the ability to choose between two disparate choices both based on reasoning and preworked judgment and organization of the hierarchy of one's values. Even then, is the choice between Decision A and Decision B itself free of influences, even if both decisions have intellectual backing (even assuming that the vast majority of the time at least one is placing a lower value as higher than one's actual structure, or, as explained, redoing one's structure of values itself properly or choosing to remain stagnant in error)? And for critics of libertarian free will (under the second view, not the first schizo view) wouldn't declaring all "non-compatibilist" (i.e. non inwardly-determined) free will as equivalent to chance due to our resultant inability to guess the actions of others be essentially assigning solipsism to other people, since we would simply perceive ourselves as making a nonrandom choice between two intellectually-backed decisions yet deny this same effect in other men by calling their choice "random"? Life as the ultimate choice (moral question) - Objectivism seems to have trouble with it - once one reaches life, there is nothing higher in regards to morality, so serious reports like Tara Smith's "Viable Values" assert that the choice for life is simply "an ultimate choice." But if one is alive, then provided one's condition isn't in a state akin to painful cancer or impending inescapable Taliban torture and death, ought one choose to be alive? Shouldn't *that* be the stopping point instead of leaving the choice for life rather naked and somewhat arbitrary? And who is one who chooses death? The 9/11 hijackers at least equivocated an afterlife of virgins with actual life - they went for that mode of existence. Would the Columbine shooters represent those who choose non-life? Would a Machiavellian King? Would the Joker from the recent Batman flick represent this choice? They are described as people who literally render the concepts of morality and ethics inapplicable - truly a diabolical gamebreaker, but, thinking about it, if one chooses death, doesn't this ultimately mean one's death is the top standard and that one's only but ultimate course of action - in fact, one's sole "ought" and moral choice - should be to end their life in as swiftly and in as much of a guaranteed fashion (in the sense of successful execution and prevention from others to stop him) as possible? Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, is *any* decision perfectly able to be reversed if the same circumstances are repeated? Thanks for pondering these questions - open your thoughts and minds! Looking forward to clarifications in the responses ... D.

Hello. I'm Darrin, and I'm a graduate student, mathematics instructor, and stormchaser living in Ames, Iowa. I'm in the middle of recovering from a long, dark period of my life, but I've rediscovered Objectivism recently in participating in (rationally controlled) theological discussion. The more I listen to philosophers and scientists develop their arguments for nontheism and the typical pragmatic worldview they think gives rise to it, the more I'm beginning to think "maybe I was wrong about Objectivism." The most emotionally cool Christian philosophers are winning, not because their view is true, but because their view at least has logical structure based on premises. The "side of science" does not. See on Youtube for a perfect example on how poorly taking science as one's entire philosophy holds up to any logical and philosophical structure. I am not Christian, but I'm abandoning science as an entire philosophy, and recognizing its true, valid use. What, then, to hold? I've been dodging the question for too long. Before now, I never was able to call myself an Objectivist because of some lingering questions I had that I was a bit too scared to ask (including questions on why Objectivism was structured so that I would be scared to ask such questions in the first place) so I'm relieved to find a forum where I can seek answers from people who consider it an open system. I am off to Texas for a few days, but I wanted to place an initial post to make sure I establish interest in using my account on this forum in the near future. I'm looking forward to my membership here.