imurray

"or your feelings and the stars should they be seen by you are only furnaces -- not pieces of crystal or magic your mother once told you they were" Dan, You're a very talented man. I enjoyed this poem very much, especially the lines I quoted above. Sincerely, Ian

JeanBean, LOL... You remind me of me... (Nowadays I go ahead and return them...) Michael Jean; You really should return them. One of the things I have done recently is reduce the amount of books I have from the library but I have more peace of mind. Hi JeanBean, glad to meet you. Thanks for reminding me of the stack of books I need to return ASAP! Ian

All right class. Name the logical fallacy! --Brant Brant: reply to me when you're not confused and have something to say. --Ian Insert irrelevant Brantism here for humorous effect. All right class. Is this the same or a different fallacy? Or both? --Brant Brant: put up or shut up. Either point out where you think I'm wrong and give me a chance to respond or don't bother. If you don't want to engage in a discussion, why point your browser to a discussion board? Leonid: While I respect that you took the time to find those quotes in Kant's work - I stand by my original comment. This is not the forum for an in depth discussion of Kant's moral and political theories. I will say that those particular quotes are part of a rather complex oeuvre and within the larger context they come to mean something other than what they appear to mean here. You'll find that he's not as far off from Rand (or she's not as far off from him) as she thought he was. I'll be blunt. The shoe is on the wrong foot. You've done an argumentum ad hominem twice on me and maybe something else too boot. I made a post and you've countered with nothing--but that. I thought you were trying to be funny. I didn't understand the benevolent explanation was the wrong explanation! Now go back to what I originally posted that started this (1012) and make at point criticisms or just fuck off! --Brant It seems that there have been a couple of misunderstanding on my part. I did intend what I said about you as a joke, but misunderstood your comeback as an attack on my substantive comments. The major misunderstanding came when I read your post. Because of the way it's formatted (or appears on my iPod) and because I hadn't paid much attention to Xray's post above yours - I thought your response included what I now see was actually written by Xray. Which expains why it read like it was written by a person with split personalities. I take responsibility for my errors and offer you my sincere apologies. Ian Duh?

All right class. Name the logical fallacy! --Brant Brant: reply to me when you're not confused and have something to say. --Ian Insert irrelevant Brantism here for humorous effect. All right class. Is this the same or a different fallacy? Or both? --Brant Brant: put up or shut up. Either point out where you think I'm wrong and give me a chance to respond or don't bother. If you don't want to engage in a discussion, why point your browser to a discussion board? Leonid: While I respect that you took the time to find those quotes in Kant's work - I stand by my original comment. This is not the forum for an in depth discussion of Kant's moral and political theories. I will say that those particular quotes are part of a rather complex oeuvre and within the larger context they come to mean something other than what they appear to mean here. You'll find that he's not as far off from Rand (or she's not as far off from him) as she thought he was.

All right class. Name the logical fallacy! --Brant Brant: reply to me when you're not confused and have something to say. --Ian Insert irrelevant Brantism here for humorous effect.

Dragonfly, No. The point is the mother changes her mind out of "duty" not because she rationally decided the child is more valuable and therefore her value is still immoral despite her actions. Your examples are not the same assuming that the individuals rationally decided to value their health more than smoking or being lazy and did not simply act out of "duty". Before you get into "thought crimes" you should be aware that no external authority is going to arrest the mother or label her immoral for feeding the baby (unless she goes around saying "boy I should have bought that hat instead of feeding my kid"). The example is merely to show the difference between acting out of duty and acting out of obligation to objective values.

Dragonfly: You keep writing the same thing, but have not taken on either George's or my arguments which address the problems you've created in Rand's example. Xray: George is correct. The right definition is context dependent. This is the same problem you're making for sacrifice - you're not using the right definition in the context of Rand's writing. You are inserting the wrong definition and that is what is leading to the confusion - hence the importance of contextually correct definitions. You are also, imo, misunderstanding what she means by family, friends, etc. are not primary. She is not saying they're not important, on the contrary in order for them to be of objective value/importance we must first hold primary objective values which allow for those kinds of relationships to begin with. Brant: Come back when you're not as confused. Ian

In what respect? Wasn't it naive of her to believe in unbridled capitalism? Child labor, sex slavery, drug trade all operate on capitalist principles, where tremendous profit are made. Or think of capitalist companies exploiting people via water privatization, where e. g. residents in the Bolivian town of Cochabamba had to pay up to 20 per cent of their income for water. For example, in calling the Second Law of Thermodynamcis a "story". "I never believed that story", Rearden says in AS. I just read your post on the other thread where you asked: It looks like the consequences of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in regard to the universe are a tough issue even for atheists. ;) Wolfgang Iser was one of the leading figures in the science of literature in the 1970s. I once attended a fascinating guest lecture he held on 'negativity' in Beckett's work. I'm quite surprised to see Iser attacked that harshly by S. Fish. Fish's criticism is justifed in case Iser actually declared these to be definitions (and not mere connotations and personal associations he (or the literary characters he analyzes) have with a term. For example, he might have written about a stream of consciousness-scene in a modern novel: "In character X, reality is reflected as a heterogenous flux ...". Iser was no epistemologist, whereas Rand saw herself as one, evidenced in her writing of ITOE. It was the argument I was referring to, not its validity in respect to Iser. I am personally a fan of Iser's work.

Ba'al, So far there has been no response that I know of from the administration that a number of state legislatures have sued for nullification of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” I expect that number of states involved will encourage other states to join them with nullification suits. It is a legitimate legal remedy although supporters of nullification in general are described as "extreme states rights" advocates. Thomas Jefferson was the original advocate of nullification of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The premise for its authenticity is that the sovereign states created the Federal government with enunciated powers, all other powers being reserved to the States, unless prohibited to the States by the original Constitution in Article 1 Section 9 e.g. only gold and silver coin are legal tender, or to the people. If the Federal government exceeds its Constitutional powers as spelled out explicitly than nullification is justified. In that way the States have superiority to the Supreme Court which often upholds the Constitutionality of a law using its devious use of sophistry. I recall reading Henry Mark Holzer's article in The Objectivist entitled: The Constitution and the Draft which revealed the depths to which the Supreme Court can sink to uphold unenumerated or forbidden powers for the Feds. Tyranny is certainly just over the horizon. If we stand still for this intrusion surely more will follow. Are you suggesting that we simply do as we are told by our Leader without so much as a whimper? And here I thought you were a fighter for your own freedom. Guess I was wrong about you now that push has come to shove! I am not suggesting taking up arms. Not yet. Nullification is legit if you can find a State representative willing to submit the appropriate paperwork and able to persuade his or her legislature. Thirteen other States have done it! www.campaignforliberty.com 231,097 Oh, and Ba'al, don't forget to buy gold! Galt usually is good about telling people that, unless he didn't think you deserved to know. Hahaha.

Sorry, Tony. You're right - I missed your point when I read your comment the first time. Thanks for the clarification. I was confused by your example. Hmmm, where have we witnessed that before? Haha. Ian

Leonid, George predicated his statement with "subjectively speaking." I also disagree with attributing our current condition to Kant. If I understand what you're intimating about Obama and his speeches it would be wrong to call his actions "Kantian" as they would most definitely be unethical according to Kant. The idea of an autonomous, rational, human will was important to Kant and to make another man an instrument against his will, i.e., to exploit him or 'mould' him was to fundamentally degrade him, to make him a slave, or to treat him as less than human. The only rules one 'must' follow as a rational human are those that are valid to all rational humans, i.e. rational values - the rest can be opted out of. This is not much different from Rand in this regard.

A world of masturbators and homosexuals? In Lectures on Ethics, Kant condemns "onanism" as an "abuse of the sexual faculty without any object," a practice that is "contrary to the ends of humanity and even opposed to animal nature. By it man sets aside his person and degrades himself below the level of animals." (Kant apparently never saw Chimpanzees in a zoo.) Kant's condemnation of homosexuality is similar. When there is "homogeneity instead of heterogeneity" in sex, "this practice too is contrary to the ends of humanity; for the end of humanity in respect of sexuality is to preserve the species without debasing the person...." This is way off topic, and deliberately so. The Obama qua Kenyan theory is a crock, and even if it were true, I wouldn't suggest anything be done about it. Any attempt to dethrone Obama on this basis would generate a constitutional crises of the first magnitude, especially given that he is the first black president, and it would only reinvigorate Obama's supporters. Let the guy hoist himself by his own petard via his policies and actions, not his supposed place of birth. That Constitutional provision is antiquated in any case, and should be amended out of existence. Ghs I haven't heard that in a while. For 'tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petar; and't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon. ~William Shakespeare Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4

Those of you looking for a new angle, let me help you out. This is an excerpt from a famous essay by Stanley Fish: "Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser" (in Doing What Comes Naturally, 1989). It's an elegant essay and, I think, you'll immediately see why your arguments reminded me of it. I think you can see how this, after swapping out a few terms, would work rather nicely with your arguments against Rand - if you can find the evidence to back it up. Ian

Galt, Do you even know what the term "Kantian nightmare" implies? Good luck. Ian

I posted this a while back: From http://aynrandlexico...icon/duty.html: "The meaning of the term “duty” is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest." From http://aynrandlexico...obligation.html "Accepting no mystic “duties” or unchosen obligations, he is the man who honors scrupulously the obligations which he chooses. The obligation to keep one’s promises is one of the most important elements in proper human relationships, the element that leads to mutual confidence and makes cooperation possible among men . . . . The acceptance of full responsibility for one’s own choices and actions (and their consequences) is such a demanding moral discipline that many men seek to escape it by surrendering to what they believe is the easy, automatic, unthinking safety of a morality of “duty.”" From http://aynrandlexico.../sacrifice.html "“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue... This applies to all choices, including one’s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible." Back to the 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." In the first instance she is "obligated" to feed the child because it is in keeping with her own rationally chosen hierarchy of values. In the second she has not chosen to feed her child out of an "obligation" to a rationally held value, she feed the child only because society tells her she must, i.e., out of duty. Therefore, the act of feeding the child is not immoral in and of itself, the irrational/subjective value the mother holds is what is immoral. Suppose she bought the hat instead of feeding the child. The act is not immoral based on the mother's actions (buying the hat instead of feeding the child). It is immoral because the chosen value is incommensurate with being a rational human. That is to say, valuing a hat more than a child is not a rationally held value because it would not support the continuation of life (in this case). Rand has purposefully separated actions from values in this example to illustrate the distinction between duty and obligation. You will continue to read the example incorrectly if you continue to conflate the two. I'd advocate for what some rhetoricians call a "generous reading." In this case that would mean assuming that she wasn't reprehensible enough to advocate that buying a hat is the moral thing to do if you value it more than a child. Come on people, really? You can't, with a straight face, tell me that she would have said this was a rationally held value and therefore moral. Ian WhYNOT, Your example further confuses the point, unfortunately. Belief in the afterlife cannot be an objective/rationally held value. It is strictly a matter of faith and faith does not require intellectual/rational assent. We must keep in mind the importance of the rational individual in Rand's philosophy. What others are arguing is that Rand is suggesting that simply by holding a value, any value, that it is moral to act upon it - that's nuts! I have problems with Rand's philosophy, no doubt. However, the arguments above that focus on this particular example and the definition of "sacrifice", in my opinion, can all be reduced to nothing more than misunderstandings of Rand's philosophy. Sorry.

GS, Of course they knew! But they realized that most people are ignorant of such things as details of the eligibility requirements of the Constitution for President. They know that Obama was a valuable person for their purposes. He was well educated and eloquent. He was intelligent and crafty. He shared the establishment premises and know how to cash in on them. They knew he was a more appealing candidate than Hilary and could easily beat McCain. They appointed many judges who would not hear challenges by using the lack of standing argument. Specious to be sure but it has worked so far. I can't believe you people. The bad guys in this game are truly evil and willing to use lies and deceit to achieve their goals. Why Obama is even willing to argue in public that his health plan will require individual mandates to raise the money to make it work. He has said in no uncertain terms that without such mandates it will not work. There are accepted mandates such as having auto insurance, compulsory public education, taxation for which there is evidently no actual law. They have us or most of us being compliant or in favor of their agenda. The media is in their pocket as are the courts and the public schools teachers and the university professors. The ideological foundation for their agenda is in place. They have been getting away with their interventions for decades with virtually no opposition of any strength. "electoral authorities!" Give me a break! The only individuals who are interested in the truth are a handful of individuals to whom the truth and the Constitution matters. I was kind of hoping there might be a few here on OL. I am not going to go to Washington D.C. to march although I will be there in spirit. One must choose one's battles. I will be watching closely. In the meantime I am submitting a Resolution to the House of Delegates of the Massachusetts Medical Society next week at their annual meeting to oppose Obamacare and to press the Attorney General and the State House to sue for nullification. I believe 38 other states are in some stage of advocacy of the nullification process. Not too late for you to take possession of gold and silver bullion coins. The rise in price of gold is just at the beginning of a long term bull market given the debt crisis in the world and Bernanke's inclination to respond by rolling the printing presses as he has been doing. SIlver will do better given its smaller market, enormous industrial demand, short supply and its role as money in addition to gold. Check out www.APMES.com to see what is available and to follow the prices. Beware of high premiums on rare coins rather stick to bullion coins. www.campaignforliberty.com 231,258 Succinct and accurate. I only wish we could wake up from this Kantian nightmare, but as you stated, we are living in era where they control the entire apparatus. How wholly unfortunate. Did you even read the article I linked to? It puts the natural born citizen argument raised here to bed and it was written way before this controversy - so it's free of a pro or anti Obama motive. It's just the facts - and they're very well referenced. If you want to keep your head in the echo chamber, be my guest. Before you start arguing with me about how evil Obama is - I'm only responding to the article you posted regarding Obama's eligibility to be president. I'm not debating you on health care reform or any issue. If this isn't enough and you want to argue that the author and everyone she referenced and the legal communty were all Pro-Obama in 1988 - it could be argued that because Obama Sr. had not divorced his first wife before taking a second then because of the bigamy law Pres. Obama was born in the US to a single parent who was a US citizen. This is just as far fetched as the argument above, I know - but you seem to like conspiracy theories. Ian

A new one just joined OL, I’ve known others, and then there’s Thomas Sowell, arguably the most distinguished libertarian writer today. I want to assume you intend this is a joke, but in the context you’re offering it…what the hell? What would Janeane Garafolo say? I’m lining up behind George, particularly his conclusion in this post: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8558&view=findpost&p=97733 Agreed. Ian

"Move on" Oh. My. God. That's a reference to moveon.org! The mask is slipping from Chris's face revealing his true loyalties. Hahaha. Ian

That is in direct contradiction to her own words: "If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a “sacrifice”: that term brands you as immoral. 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." This is a prime example of subjective values: whether the woman feeding the child instead of buying a hat is a "sacrifice" does according to Rand herself not depend on the objective values of "the life of her child" vs. "a new hat", but on what the woman prefers. One would suppose that if you're thinking of objective values, you'd rate the well-being of the child higher than a new hat. Not so according to Rand: if the woman feeds the child "from a sense of duty", it is a sacrifice in her terms, and brands the woman as immoral. Note that in that case that woman cannot act in a moral way: if she chooses the supposedly higher value, she's immoral because it is a sacrifice (as she does it from a sense of duty), but if the chooses the hat she's of course immoral because she offers the objectively higher value for a lower value. Heads I win, tails you lose. How can an action be immoral if you haven't any choice? Whatever she does, it is immoral, because she cannot force herself to value the child higher than the hat, the only thing she can force is her actions. If this isn't muddled thinking, I don't know what is. I've already addressed this numerous times above. As of now, nobody has rebutted my argument - only continued to assert their original argument. Ian

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/constitutional-law/natural%11born-citizen-clause-and-presidential-eligibility/ This was published in 1988 - so there is no chance that the author of this article was biased for or against Obama. Ian

I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value. In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven. Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation. So far I've stayed away from this debate over the meaning of "sacrifice," because I don't think it's especially relevant to the keys points Rand was making in "The Ethics of Emergencies." Moreover, I have my own problems with that essay, and I don't want to be trapped into defending all of it. Nevertheless, this business about the meaning of "sacrifice," as the giving up of a lesser value for a greater value, has gotten on my nerves, so I want to say a few words about it. Subjectively speaking, we always act on our "highest value" in any given action that involves choice. This is true virtually by definition, since if we didn't subjectively value X above other alternatives at a given point in time, we would not have acted to achieve X. Now, I suppose we could assume that Rand was so dense that she had no inkling of this truism, even though her definition of value ("that which one acts to gain and/or keep") clearly entails it. I suppose we could assume she was so irredeemably stupid that she could not grasp something so obvious that a child could understand it. This seems to be the assumption of some of Rand's critics on OL, who wouldn't give Rand the benefit of a sympathetic reading if their lives depended on it. Or we could take a different route. We could assume -- just for the sake of argument, of course -- that Rand had better than a room temperature IQ. And where might this assumption lead us? Well, it might -- just might -- cause us to explore the possibility that Rand was speaking of objective values rather than subjective values when she spoke of "sacrifice." And this investigation, in turn, might lead us to pay attention to passages such as the following in "The Ethics of Emergencies." After saying that we should never sacrifice a greater value for the sake of a lesser value, Rand continues: "This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible." Now, maybe -- just maybe -- there is a reason why Rand emphasizes rational values in explaining her views on sacrifice. Perhaps she did this in order to contrast the kind of value sacrifice she had in mind from mere subjective preferences, where one is always motivated by one's "highest value" at the time, even though that may not be a "rational" value from a moral point of view. It is with fear and trembling that I suggest that Ayn Rand was not a complete dunderhead. Ghs George, Sir Knight of Faith, I agree with you. I have been attempting to defend Rand's view of sacrifice (and the insignificance of the word itself) and concomitantly the importance of understanding the concept of rational values in her ethical theory over and over again myself. I was attempting to point out that Leonid's post had the potential to send us round and round in circles again instead of actually addressing Xray's argument - which I think we and others have done sufficiently already. In other words, I was preempting Xray's argument in an attempt to prevent it. (Sorry Xray, it's not only you making this argument. I just consider your argument to have been the strongest, therefore, by addressing your argument all similar and, in my opinion, weaker arguments also get addressed.) So it is with infinite resignation that I suggest we move on. Ian

Ian, I'm thinking of making a Beck Corner here on OL... Michael Haha. Who's stopping you?

I appreciate the biblical reference, but this in and of itself doesn't address Xray's argument that a sacrifice is always an act of giving up a lesser value for a higher value. In fact, it could be used to her advantage: giving up your earthly body is not self-abnegation in the Christian context - the earthly body is sacrificed in exchange for eternal spiritual life in heaven. Of course from the perspective of an atheist, this is the ultimate example of self-abnegation.

Sounds like Kierkegaard in a lot of ways - except he tried to keep God too.