Kimmler

No. I produced a counter example. Induction looks like this. Conjunction of particulars -> universal proposition. What I did was universal proposition & counter example -> universal proposition false. The way to refute any universally quantified proposition is to produce a counter example (x)P(x) [for all x Px ] is falsified by -Pa for some particular individual Pa. Ba'al Chatzafr You have claimed that induction is invalid, not to have disproved the claim that no one has made, that all supposed instances of induction are valid. What premises do you have that weren't first at some point induced, Bob? God, Bob, do you profit nothing from Rand? The stolen concept is 101 level. Thus spake Rand: Induction and Deduction The process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction. The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 28. Source: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/induction_and_deduction.html Anyone got a problem with that? LOL From Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature : - The problem in question is the well-known problem of induction. Perhaps the most important problem in epistemology, it is also one that, in her own words, Rand never even began to think about. Thus for once Rand's legion of Little Sir Echoes have little or nothing to dutifully recite; for once, they have to formulate an original response to an important problem working by implication from Rand's work, rather than resorting to the usual pull quotes from Galt's speech. Even worse, the problem of induction is a clearcut logical one, and is thus subject to a set of objective rules, rather like mathematics. This makes it more difficult for Objectivism's usual verbalist legerdemain to function, though of course true believers would - and do - happily accept 1+1=5 if Rand says so in a suitably inspirational way. Further, it is problem that goes to the heart of epistemological certainty, a much touted brand differentiator for Rand's philosophy. It is after all the problem made famous by Objectivist hate-figure David Hume, and which inspired Rand's arch-enemy, Immanuel Kant. Surely Rand's philosophy must contain some kind of riposte. Finally, it has been a massively debated problem for the last 100 years, with almost every conceivable angle covered ad nauseum. If Objectivism is such a strikingly original philosophy in every respect, as its followers insist, then we could reasonably expect a strikingly original answer here. Sadly, original thinking is basically antithetical to Objectivist culture. This, along with the poverty of Rand's own style of argument meant that Objectivism's long promised answer to this famous philosophical problem would inevitably be an intellectual embarrassment. The signs were obvious for years, as Objectivists talked up Leonard Peikoff's supposedly revolutionary solution whilst Peikoff himself refused to actually publish it, opting instead to bury it somewhere in vast, outrageously expensive audio tape lectures only available from the Ayn Rand Institute. After a while, there was the threatened book; but that too never emerged. Finally Peikoff's solution - and it almost certainly will be Peikoff's handiwork at root - has timidly appeared under the auspices of Peikoff's colleague, David Harriman, in the new The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics. Yet clearly even after all this time, and his convoluted path to publishing, the only thing that's clear is that Peikoff has almost no confidence in his own solution; The McCaskey Objectischism is all about his hysterical overreaction to a mild-mannered, basically favourable critique on Amazon by long time ARI board member and fundraiser John McCaskey, with Peikoff simply pulling rank to shut down any and all such criticism. Since then it has spiralled out of control, resulting in defections from previously ARI-loyal publications such as the Objective Standard as well as numerous rank and file supporters. Neil Parille will detail when we post his latest update here at the ARCHNblog in a day or two. We here at the ARCHNblog will also review the book at some point, although at first glance it does look really, really terrible - a compendium of the most tired, old hat, long-debunked pro-inductive fallacies with a central argument that appears to be nothing more than "assume induction!", all varnished in leaden Objectivese just to add to its delights. If there's any idea that can't be found in say, Anthony O'Hear from 30 years ago I will be very surprised. In fact if there's anything even as modern as that I will be even more surprised. But that will have to wait for now. While there are no doubt underlying personality clashes and long standing enmities behind the scenes which will play out over time, for once the primary driver of the schism is a genuine philosophical problem - one that Objectivism has long been on a collision course with. And far from triumphantly flattening the dreaded Hume, this culmination of decades-long endeavour from Rand's vaunted New Intellectuals has crumpled like a wet paper bag on first contact. To make matters worse, Peikoff's telling sense of intellectual insecurity has driven to him to a desperate authoritarianism, which in turn has only maximised the debacle and created deep rifts within the movement. In short, Objectivism seems to have confronted its first real intellectual challenge, only to be immediately holed below the waterline.

So what is the objectivist movement then? How do you expect it to develop and why, 53 years after Atlas Shrugged was published, is it still too early to tell? Sorry to ask you.

To a gas chamber go, Comrade. Ba'al Chatzaf I'll refrain from commenting...why does arguing on the internet always up looking like two bald men fighting over a comb?

I'm not just a pretty face...even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

Dude? DUDE! I prefer chap. Thanks. Btw...Adam and I just joshing. We are allowed to do that here, aren't we?

Kimmler, No. I read it. (That goes for others, too.) Anyway, what logic leads you to believe that Atlas Shrugged and the Objectvist movement are one and the same thing? You have a weird way of equivocating things... In other words, did you learn spin for nothing? Is it all in vain? [bYou wish! Michael From wikipedia "The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence." The book explores a number of philosophical themes that Rand would subsequently develop into the philosophy of Objectivism.[5][6] It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. In doing so it expresses many facets of Rand's philosophy, such as the advocacy of reason, individualism, the market economy and the failure of government coercion." I thought it was her magnum-opus...

Adam, If you are talking about NY...well far be it from me to cast aspersions on the morals of the ladies that inhabit NY, but I think that would be the least of your worries.

You also, to defend her ethics, need to be aware of the criticisms against her. I'd visit the website Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. That is a great place to start and will give you plenty of links to other sites critical of objectivism. I know it may not be wanted you wanted to hear but it would be re-miss of me not to point this out to you.

As far as I can tell there is only one Objectivist--me. --Brant got it right Ahh...imagine the scene...people coming out from the ruble after the strike is successful and standing up, like the Spartacus scene and with no PAIN FEAR or GUILT saying I am the Objectivist! Kinda brings a queasy feeling all over me! Adam Be sure to be there with a supply of candy bars and nylon stockings - a-la the Allied troops did in Berlin at the end of WWII. Remember what they got in return

Stay tuned... black-listing comes next!! ~ Shane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_list ^^Didn't Ayn Rand like them? From Wikipedia Rand became involved with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Hollywood anti-Communist group, and wrote articles on the group's behalf.[54] She also joined the anti-Communist American Writers Association.[55] In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee. Her testimony described the disparity between her personal experiences in the Soviet Union and the portrayal of it in the 1944 film Song of Russia.[56] Rand argued that the film grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as being much better and happier than it actually was.[57] When asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of the investigations after the hearings, Rand described the process as "futile".

Did Ayn Rand write Atlas Shrugged for nothing? Was it all in vain?

It's was over 50 years ago he wrote this review. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback# Will you guys ever let it go, will the wounds ever heal? He and Rand are both dead so who cares? He gave your favourite book a kicking so you have to pour scorn on the guy and assassinate his character? Isn't that what the scientologists do? Though 50+ years on perhaps the question that Chambers poses in his review maybe answered. In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as “looters.” This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates.This spares her the plaguey business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

From : QUESTIONS OF THE DAY No.3 MARX-MODERN HISTORY AND ECONOMICS It is characteristic of the new attacks on the labour theory of value, as it was of the older ones, that few of the critics have understood what the theory is. For example the latest of them, in The Times (2nd June 1992) charges Marxism with having said: “Workers were being cheated of the value of their labour by conniving profiteers. Only when theory turned to practice did it become clear that the value of people’s labour was a pure abstraction that did not exist outside of the conspiracy to rob them of it”. No-one reading this will appreciate that it was Marx who showed that:- “…the value of people’s labour was a pure abstraction”. For it was Marx who realised that his predecessors had been wrong in supposing that wages are paid for the “workers’ labour”. He put forward the quite different explanation that what the capitalist buys is the “workers’ labour power”. With his labour theory of value Marx showed that commodities that is articles and services produced for sale, have values proportionate to the amount of labour socially necessary to produce them; one needing ten hours having twice the value of one needing only five hours. He showed that Adam Smith and others who regarded wages as what the employer pays for the hours of labour the worker puts in were wrong. What the employer buys is the use of the workers’ mental and physical energies for the day or the week. This Marx called the workers’ “labour power” or “labouring-power”. Like other commodities the value of labour power is determined by the hours of labour required to produce it, that is to say, the amount of labour needed to provide for the maintenance of the worker and his family and to provide him with the skill appropriate to his occupation. The employer is able to make profit because the workers he employs create more value than the value equivalent to their wages. If, say, the workers create in three days of a five day week the equivalent of these, the remaining two days of unpaid labour yield to the employer what Marx called surplus value. Out of surplus value payment is made to the landlord for rented land and interest to the money-lending capitalist (Bankers) for borrowed money, leaving the remainder as industrial or commercial profit for the employer. Marx emphasised that the capitalist makes profit though he pays for labour power at its value. Marx also dealt with the relationship of value and price and in the text of Volume I of Capital, price and value are treated as being equal (more about this later). In earlier times, including the beginning of capitalist production, price and value were approximately the same, but with the development of techniques of production a new factor had to be taken into account, called by Marx changes in the composition of capital. Capitalists had to devote relatively less and less of their capital to buying labour-power (employing workers0 called by Marx “variable capital” because it is value creating, and more and more to plant and machinery, called “constant capital” because it merely transfers its value, the labour embodied in it, to the commodity; it does not add additional value, as does “variable capital”. Marx, in Capital Volume I (page 355 in the Kerr edition) gave an example relating to two businesses: a bakery, which, at that time, needed little plant and machinery and a relatively large number of workers compared with a textile business needing much plant and machinery and relatively few of workers. The bakery workers being more numerous than the textile workers would create more value. If the total capital of the two businesses were the same when their respective commodities each sold at value, then we would be in the impossible situation where, in Marx’s words, the textile company would “pocket less profit or surplus value than the bakery”. Marx was reminding readers that commodities do not sell at their value. In the real world the bakery’s commodities sold below value and the textile commodities sold above value. We come now to what is known as the “Great Contradiction”. After Marx’s death, Engels published Capital Vol. IIIwith its lengthy and detailed demonstration that in the developed capitalism of Marx’s day, commodities did not sell at value but at what Marx called “Price of Production”, so that some commodities sell permanently above value and the rest permanently below value. Price of Production (not to be confused with what the capitalists call their costs of production) was defined by Marx as being “equal to its cost price plus the average rate of profit” (Capital Vol. III Page 186). “Cost price” here means the value in Marx’s terms of the different ingredients which go into the production, i.e. the amount of socially necessary labour required. Marx showed that, taking into account the changed composition of capital, his “Price of Production” is strictly in accordance with his labour theory of value. But Marx’s critics, failing to understand Marx’s argument, would have none of it. Bohm-Bawerk declared “Marx’s third volume contradicts the first”. Bohm-Bawerk’s case against Marx was answered by, among others, Engels in his 1894 Preface to Capital Vol. III, by L. Boudin in his Theoretical Systems of Karl Marx and by Kautsky in his Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx. In addition to dealing with the arguments, Boudin neatly answered the charge that, between Volume I and Volume IIIof Capital, Marx changed his mind. Boudin pointed out (p. 133) that: “…most of the third volume, and particularly those portions of it which are supposed to modify the first volume, were actually written down by Marx in its present formbefore the publication of the first volume”. Politicians and economists have continued to attack Marx’s theory giving a variety of reasons for doing so. Some have gone on using the argument about the alleged “Great Contradiction”. One critic, Harold Laski, in his book Communism (Home University, 1926, pages 112 and 95) argued that the labour theory of value was “erroneous” and that what Marx was really trying to do was to “determine scientifically” how the workers “ought to be paid”. It is impossible to reconcile this with the fact that Marx stood for the abolition of the wages system. Professor F. W. Paish in Benham’s Economics (Pitman’s Paperback 1967, page 289) uses the following argument against Marx: “…how do we measure the quantity of labour? A Carot can dash off in a few hours a picture which will sell for much more than a picture that has taken a mediocre artist several months to produce. A working jeweller can earn two or three times as much in an hour as an unskilled worker. Why, simply because the products of a Corot or a working jeweller are more valuable”. Paish appears to have been unaware that Marx took the degree or skill into account. Marx wrote (Capital Vol. 1. Page 51): “…it is the expenditure of simple labour-power, i.e. of the labour power, which, on average, apart from any special development exists in the organism of every ordinary individual…Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled labour being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour”.

Which members of the cast are you likely to meet if you attend this event? I've checked the website but no names are listed. Just who is going to be there to meet and greet the punters?

The follow passage is from "The Birth and Rebirth of Monetarism," by David Ramsay Steele. From Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance, Winter, 1980. Steele, a former member of the the Socialist Party of Great Britain who became a free-market libertarian, is the author of From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation . Ghs As you are no doubt aware D R Steele was a member of the SPGB in the 1960’s. He became acquainted with the US Libertarianism of the Austrian School of Economics, particularly a student of von Mises called Murray Rothbard. D R Steele took on board Mises’s Rational Economic Calculation thesis and claimed the SPGB had no answer to it. He then disappeared to the US to a Libertairian anarchist sect and wrote From Marx to Mises. Like all opponents of Marx’s theory of value he only asserts it is a fallacy but does not prove it. When defenders of the market are pushed they claim their refutation of Marx rests with Bohm Bawerk although they ignore the Marxist response. We (the SPGB) debated with the Libertarian alliance twice and found it a waste of time because they claim the society in which we live is not capitalist because the state and national boundaries exist. There are as many positions (libertarian) as there are anarchists.

???? !!!! ???? What do you have against Eddie Willers? Was he eager to diminish? Interested in spittle exchanges or speculations about people's drinking habits? In what way was Eddie Willers less than the Roarks and Ayn Rand and the Dagnys? I thought he was Rand's example of a moral, conscientious, loyal man of lesser ability. Now he's the label for tearing down others? ???? !!!! ???? Startled and dismayed, REB I have nothing against Eddie Willers. Let's just say he was more middle of the pack than front of the pack. That's my point. I hope they change the ending of the final film of this trilogy and let Eddie into Galts gulch.

Women in prison movies? I think we better draw a discreet veil over that. Whatever gets you through the night I suppose.

http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/edu%20keyn%20marx.shtml Excellent article here, debunking monetarism, from a socialist viewpoint not a left-wing one. Two completely different things.

Does that happen often? You going to a store expecting to purchase a gallon of milk for less than two dollars and finding it's on sale for $3.50? Why would you have gone to the store expecting only to pay $2? So, if you didn't buy your milk there as it was too much how would this be comparable to a pay dispute? No one here has mentioned going on strike. Is that something objectivists would never ever do?

Correct. And, Steve [Kimmler], is either smart enough to know this and is just being a philosophical pest, or he is not smart enough and should be patiently patted on the head and told to lay down in the corner and be decorative. Adam Adam, A question is just a question. What harm does it do to ask? No one is forced to answer here. It's not like Chile was when Friedman was advising the government there; a dictatorship. Kimmler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Chancellor#Bismarck.27s_social_legislation No suprise there then. "The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country." - Bismarck This was written in 1884! Seems that the welfare state is a conservative and not a socialist invention.

Lucky she did see this one too... http://www.cordair.com/bokor/beginnings.php

But do you think he will (eventually) end up there with the greats? I'm talking about Nixon, Ford, Reagan & Bush (Snr. & Jnr.)?

Say an objectivist employer sat down with his employee, who was also an objectivist, and stated that this years pay rise was going to be 5%. Yet the employee rejected this as he was rationally convinced that he/she was worth a 7% pay rise. Yet their employer was equally rationally convinced that all they were worth was an extra 5%. How would this one be resolved? Would they compromise and settle on 6%. I understand that in objectivism to compromise is a cardinal sin. So if both parties in this dispute checked their premises and were convinced that they were correct in what they were either offering or asking how would this one be resolved?