HERTLE

Signs Your Objectivist Friend is Calling for Help.

Are there signs that have meaning to others that others may

respond to?

Ralph Hertle

On 4/18/2021 at 10:08 PM, HERTLE said:

 

BaalChatzaf

The AGGs called the specific type of arguments being dealt with here in these writings, RATIOS.

Where have I read that one of the AGG teachers asked of his students' homework, "Have you done your Ratios?" 

Additional to that, you bring forth a new way to state a definition for one fundamental type of Motion. The AGGs, especially Aristotle and Euclid, used two types of concepts for Motion, MOTION. and what 18th., Cent. Geometers called RECTILINEAL MOTION. To us modern geometers the older description is somewhat confusing. To the AGG the "MOTION" of "something" meant the EXISTENCE of the thing, and also the "ESSENCE" (Aris.) of the thing. In the context of the geometry of the AGGs the motion of an entity, or of a thing, meant the thing itself.

In the 18th. Cent. the term Rectilineal Motion appeared. to describe the existing thing that had particularizing attributes, hence those writers, wrote the term, Rectilineal Motion. That, to our way of thought, added an unnecessary degree of specificity to the term, Motion, that makes the term too particular for general scientific discussion. For example, not all "Motions" are Rectangular, or Lineal, and some attributes may refer to color, temperature, or to the possibility of being made into something specific.

However, "Existence" is a broad term that covers a lot of science, philosophy, and meaning. That type of "Motion" was named by an Ancient Greek word not here stated. Our modern term, "Motion" does not mean what was meant to the AGG. To understand the concept they knew we meed to use the term, "existant", or, as Ayn Rand said, "Thing". She granted that some things could be ideas, others physical existents, and some things could have still other types of attributes.   

Some things are different from other things, and they have properties and characteristics that are different from the others. 

One example of a characteristic of a selected existent may be its location relative to the locations of other things. Our modern term, that you wisely suggest, is "TRANSLATION", and that means a change of specified location from one exact place to another exact place; and the principle of the change is specified. The change may be along a straight or curved line, or may be in the same place, for example.

Given a thing having "Motion", the existing thing may also be functioning in accordance with a another principle, for example, it may be relocated from one point at the end of a straight line, to another end point at the ends of the straight line. Or, consider the circle. That is, the translation of the location of the entity on the curved line of a circle. Or it may be relocated from one position on the periphery of a circle to another point on the periphery of the circle, and the change of the location may be specified according to selected radial lines forming an angle of specified size located at the center of the circle. That is a specific or particular attribute if the thing or existent that has MOTION that is its basic attribute. 

The term you wisely suggest, TRANSLATIONAL MOTION, would refer to a particularizing attribute for the thing having basic MOTION or existence (1), and also, a particular attribute, for example, change of location (2). While Motion is the broadest possible term there may be other particular terms that may govern the functioning of the existent; and other terms may be used instead where different meanings are needed.

All things must have at least one attribute. and may have more. For example existents are existing.

The AGG's science of RATIOS is a study of the lengths and principles that govern the causes of the lengths They often used the term "Ratios" instead of "Geometry".

The basic matter of geometry is the science of Definitions. Here, the fundamentals are given by Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, Eudoxus, and Archimedes. Recall that Euclid was a strict Aristotelian in his use of Logic. All of our talk may get nowhere if there is no accurate science of definitions or demonstrated examples of the items being defined. Definitions require statements, proofs, and demonstrations in word concepts and in actuality. To the AGG more explanations need not be said.

While drawing demonstrations of the principles of traditional Geometry in drawings are useful, the graphic and text puzzles are not needed. The graphics provided for this discussion topic are excellent, and they speed the comprehension of the ideas being expressed.

Thank you.

Ralph Hertle

________________________________________________________________________

B:    

"Aristotle's wheel has a moving axis. In other words, there is translational motion and rotation. "

 RH:   

I would add that, "rotation" is a form of "Translational Motion,"  that is its a particular form of existence.   RH

Cartesian Coordinate System

Reply to merjet:

The Cartesian Coordinate system may have claimed to have been based upon Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Geometry, which is based on Aristotle's logic, however, we may find that the ideas of the Cartesian System are not based upon Aristotle's ideas, except for Aristotle's Logic.

The Cartesian System of geometry is borrowed from the geometry and measurement system of Pythagoras, in all of its basic premises, which is a development of a measurement system that has a three-dimensional grid centered upon the three dimensional straight lines that intersect at the origin point formed by the common center points of the lines, -X+X, -Y+Y, -Z+Z.  And...... that each of the three straight lines are copied in three +/- directions in each of three planes from the original three straight lines, at unit intervals, forming a matrix of  a selected number of adjacent cubes, each of which is one unit dimension on a side, placed in rows and planes. 

Pythagoras envisioned a greater matrix cube that was made of 10,000 times 10,000 times 10,000, times 8, unit-sized cubes. That is, that the total number of  unit cubes was equal to one Miriad cubed times 8. One Miriad units equals ten thousand units. Archimedes said when asked how many unit cubes that would be?, and also, what is the largest possible number?, and, I paraphrase, he said, "10,000 cubed times 8, and that is quite the largest number for anyone."

The so-called Cartesian Coordinate measurement system, of XYZ coordinates, is a copy of, or was handed down directly from the work of Pythagoras.

We may add, here, as additional information, that Pythagoras demonstrated as an extension of his system of measurement that a placement of a selected number of spheres, starting with radius = one unit, would start with the first sphere, and would have its origin at the center of the greater cube. Subsequent spheres of radius sizes, R=0, R=1, R=2, R=3, and so on, would be placed having the same center radius point as the greater cube.

Ralph Hertle

_________________________________________________________________________________

On 9/15/2017 at 5:20 AM, merjet said:

It doesn't satisfy me. In the math section he says "pure rotation," and his math is based on that.  "Pure rotation occurs when a body rotates about a fixed non-moving axis" (link).  Aristotle's wheel has a moving axis. In other words, there is translational motion and rotation. The author's math doesn't hold for the smaller wheel/circle, so his alleged proof is flawed. Moreover, Section 20.2 -- Constrained Motion: Translation and Rotation -- here shows mathematics for a rolling wheel. Note that it is way more complicated than the math in the alleged proof. It also uses Cartesian coordinates for the translation motion and polar coordinates for the motion about the center of the circle. The alleged proof uses only polar coordinate math!

 

BaalChatzaf

The AGGs called the specific type of arguments being dealt with here in these writings, RATIOS.

Where have I read that one of the AGG teachers asked of his students' homework, "Have you done your Ratios?" 

Additional to that, you bring forth a new way to state a definition for one fundamental type of Motion. The AGGs, especially Aristotle and Euclid, used two types of concepts for Motion, MOTION. and what 18th., Cent. Geometers called RECTILINEAL MOTION. To us modern geometers the older description is somewhat confusing. To the AGG the "MOTION" of "something" meant the EXISTENCE of the thing, and also the "ESSENCE" (Aris.) of the thing. In the context of the geometry of the AGGs the motion of an entity, or of a thing, meant the thing itself.

In the 18th. Cent. the term Rectilineal Motion appeared. to describe the existing thing that had particularizing attributes, hence those writers, wrote the term, Rectilineal Motion. That, to our way of thought, added an unnecessary degree of specificity to the term, Motion, that makes the term too particular for general scientific discussion. For example, not all "Motions" are Rectangular, or Lineal, and some attributes may refer to color, temperature, or to the possibility of being made into something specific.

However, "Existence" is a broad term that covers a lot of science, philosophy, and meaning. That type of "Motion" was named by an Ancient Greek word not here stated. Our modern term, "Motion" does not mean what was meant to the AGG. To understand the concept they knew we meed to use the term, "existant", or, as Ayn Rand said, "Thing". She granted that some things could be ideas, others physical existents, and some things could have still other types of attributes.   

Some things are different from other things, and they have properties and characteristics that are different from the others. 

One example of a characteristic of a selected existent may be its location relative to the locations of other things. Our modern term, that you wisely suggest, is "TRANSLATION", and that means a change of specified location from one exact place to another exact place; and the principle of the change is specified. The change may be along a straight or curved line, or may be in the same place, for example.

Given a thing having "Motion", the existing thing may also be functioning in accordance with a another principle, for example, it may be relocated from one point at the end of a straight line, to another end point at the ends of the straight line. Or, consider the circle. That is, the translation of the location of the entity on the curved line of a circle. Or it may be relocated from one position on the periphery of a circle to another point on the periphery of the circle, and the change of the location may be specified according to selected radial lines forming an angle of specified size located at the center of the circle. That is a specific or particular attribute if the thing or existent that has MOTION that is its basic attribute. 

The term you wisely suggest, TRANSLATIONAL MOTION, would refer to a particularizing attribute for the thing having basic MOTION or existence (1), and also, a particular attribute, for example, change of location (2). While Motion is the broadest possible term there may be other particular terms that may govern the functioning of the existent; and other terms may be used instead where different meanings are needed.

All things must have at least one attribute. and may have more. For example existents are existing.

The AGG's science of RATIOS is a study of the lengths and principles that govern the causes of the lengths They often used the term "Ratios" instead of "Geometry".

The basic matter of geometry is the science of Definitions. Here, the fundamentals are given by Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, Eudoxus, and Archimedes. Recall that Euclid was a strict Aristotelian in his use of Logic. All of our talk may get nowhere if there is no accurate science of definitions or demonstrated examples of the items being defined. Definitions require statements, proofs, and demonstrations in word concepts and in actuality. To the AGG more explanations need not be said.

While drawing demonstrations of the principles of traditional Geometry in drawings are useful, the graphic and text puzzles are not needed. The graphics provided for this discussion topic are excellent, and they speed the comprehension of the ideas being expressed.

Thank you.

Ralph Hertle

________________________________________________________________________

B:    

"Aristotle's wheel has a moving axis. In other words, there is translational motion and rotation. "

 RH:   

I would add that, "rotation" is a form of "Translational Motion,"  that is its a particular form of existence.   RH

OL

I don't claim to have practical, social, ethical, and moral causes practically working for me; and in my life; and I wish to have been able to have reversed every wrong or misdeed that I would have been responsible for. 

I want to be able to sell my works, specifically, my inventions, art, designs for manufactured products, and I have plenty of these; and even to set right other inaccuracies to others that I may have caused during my life. I wish to be able to return help to the others I know that deserved the help that I wish that I should have been able to have provided them when they asked me.

Current problems for me or against me are not all financial; they are the results of the evil pragmatism of others. These causes are morally the opposite of the principles of Objectivism. For example, non-judicial slavery to me, that are unknown to others, that are refused recognition by, Objectivists.  

Now. however, I find that I have no yacht, no mansion, no financial account, no items to sell, and no income stream.

There is no way I can afford the attorney fees of $450 per hour to reverse the immoral claims against me in court for the wrongs done by others to me. 

 Nor have Objectivists elected to ask me to be helped to create business enterprises based upon my innovations.

Nothing.

For me, in spite of the value potential of my creations, these days, the future is bleak. I still want to create new business enterprises, and to invite entrepreneurs to review my works .

What is the future for me and Objectivism?

Is There a future in Objectivism for me?

Where are the Objectivist entrepreneurs?

Do I give up?

Now, I ask, is Objectism out there?

I acknowledge and respect the writings on Objectivsim that I see being posted.

I have to offer what I offer.

Ralph Hertle

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 2/12/2021 at 2:06 PM, Peter said:

I had a few old letters from Ralph Hertle. Here are three. Trying to get rid of spaces I deleted some words and replaced them with dots. Peter

From: Ralph Hertle To: objectivism Subject: OWL: Re: Native Americans & un-owned US govt land Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 21:07:04 -0400 OWL: Prior to the arrival of the Europeans the population of the Native Americans reached as high as 500,000 to 2,000,000 persons. There were many tribes all across North America. Some tribes and persons were nomads, and most were not. The NAs of Central Illinois lived in wooden towns. The NAs of Ohio lived in houses and communities, and their system of representative government formed the basis for the US Congress. The Hopi people of the Southwestern US area lived in multi-storied apartment buildings.

Of course, the NAs had the concept of property, and to various extents there were various innovations, developments, and applications of it.

An acquaintance of mine told me that Ayn Rand said in her lecture at West Point, called, "Philosophy: Who Needs It", in the Q and A session, that the Native Americans have no property rights ..... because they were a bunch of nomads that did not have the "concept" of property rights.

The NAs were definitely not all nomads, and the facts clearly support that. Any claim the NAs were all nomads would involve the fallacy of over-generalization in that the characteristics of a part should not be extended to include all the other different parts.

Regarding property and property rights, I don't doubt that there were a number of different concepts of property as well as different arrangements for dividing land, usage rights, renting, and buying and selling goods or property, that were used by the various tribes. The Nas had nothing as sophisticated as the concepts of the Europeans, however. Any claim that the NAs did not have the concept of property is impossible to support by means of a reference to the facts. Surely, that if one NA did not have a concept of property rights, and that some did, such a claim would involve over-generalization.

I think the issue is not what concepts of property the NAs had, rather, that the Americans should have extended their concepts to the NAs as a gift. A gift of law, liberty, civilization, freedom of action, and productivity. American concepts of property should have been employed to identify and upgrade or enhance the concepts of property that were then in use by the NAs. For example, the Americans should have helped the NAs to find out where their tribe's, group's, or individual's land was, mark it out on the land, map it, register the deeds, and respect it. Lack of the English language would have prevented the NAs from registering deeds to their lands, and the Americans should have done it for them and talked them through the process.

The form of the land that was ultimately given to the NAs by American legislators was the prison reservation. The concept of property that was used by the nomadic American settlers to locate the NAs was the concentration camp.

The USA still uses concentration camps, e.g., to contain Japanese Americans during WWII, and also, to contain Caribbean immigrants and ex-Cuban prisoners during the 1970s & 80s (cite needed). WWII soldiers were POWs, and that was a different matter.

I would ask who's concepts of property were superior.

Except for the reservations, the NAs were eventually totally included into the fabric of America. They were surrounded, and there was nothing better for them to do than to work within the American system and to reap the benefits of the American society.

The opportunity continues to exist that America can formally extend its concepts of liberty, rights, and property to the descendants of the Native Americans.

The lands that are now being used for their natural resources, or as nature preserves, could, under NA ownership and management, become valuable places. Wealth could be generated in new ways that US government bureaucracies and curators could never imagine.

State governments could create programs similar to the Federal program. America could be the first nation in all history to become 100% privately owned.

I searched using the keywords, native american, native, and, Indian, and "The Objectivism Research CD-ROM", by Philip Oliver, and I was not able to locate any information regarding Ayn Rand's views for this thread. Nor was I able to locate Rand's West Point speech that includes a reference to Native Americans.

[Moderator: Ralph added in a subsequent message: "Greg Johnson pointed out to me the published source regarding Rand's West Point speech that has a reference to the Native Americans: He says that the speech in question was available as a CD from Second Renaissance books. Thanks Greg."]

While we are at it the concept and practice of the concentration camp should be banned by the Supreme Court under several principles of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Also, I think that a Presidential Proclamation could be ratified into law by the Congress, for example, in the same way as Lincoln created the Emancipation Proclamation. It would be ludicrous to call such entities as concentration camps property, especially in a free society. Congress needs to define the rights of all types of peoples, or groups that are confined, and what means or recourse of action that any such individuals would have in a court of law.

The argument that since virtually no American during the 18th and 19th centuries had a Birth Certificate, pedigree, or any sort of legal documentation, that they were not legal residents of the US. Hence they had no rights as citizens any more than did the Native Americans. The argument could be continued, however, the principle that in America all rights are inalienable, meaning the rights of all the people, will ultimately hold true.

Is there a lawyer somewhere in America who could bring the instant matters of government land and the Native Americans to the attention of the Supreme Court or to the President? Ralph Hertle

From: Ralph Hertle To: objectivism Subject: OWL: Re: Native Americans & un-owned US govt land Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 17:01:23 -0400 OWL: I was been told off-list that I had not described the concept of private property rights that any of the NAs held. Nor had I stated why the descendants of the NAs have any claim on the natural resources their descendants had no knowledge, of, e.g., oil and minerals. That is basically true. I think that it the property rights concept of the NAs is irrelevant. Also the mineral rights is not an issue since the rights to minerals are part of the land. In other words, the minerals that are part of the land are generally transferred with the land unless any discovered minerals or rights to same are transferred by means of contracts, e.g., by sale or lease.

A further explanation of my proposal to privatize all socialistic land in the US, and to, at the same time, formally extend the principles of American rights and Constitutional liberties to the NAs, which morally should have been done, and to their descendants follows.

............................

Readers may be interested in the earlier post that I made on, Mon., Oct. 22, 2001, 1:30a, that had the subject, line, "Re: Native Americans & un-owned US govt. land" This post is a further explanation to that earlier post. That post dealt with the "...American concept of inalienable rights...", and with a way to deal with the matter of creating new property rights where no sophisticated or continually existing rights of private property have been generally recognized.

The interesting concept of the proposal was that it permits the socialistic land of the USA to be converted to private property. The land would then become a productive part of the free-enterprise system. The land would be moved into the private ownership realm at no cost to any American, nor would existing mining, leases, rentals, and other land use contracts be discontinued.

Nor would the land be given away, sold or auctioned, to any special interest groups. The successor owners, that is the new owners (there not having been any owners according to popular property theory and modern non-NA preferences) would honor the existing contracts, e.g., leases or easements, by amending the appropriate papers, filings, licenses, and whatever. There would be costs to the creation and tracking of the new corporations, by government agencies or private contractors, of course. Capital Gains and income taxes could be waived for the one-time event. There would be stock underwriting and transfer and legal fees. No real estate sales would be initially involved, only a creation and identification of shares of stock.

Included in the land would be the rivers, lakes, and coastal waterways that lie upon US Government land as part of the government lands to identified anew as private lands. All these lands would be privatized by incorporation as the new assets of private stock companies, and by the acceptance by the distribution of shares in the incorporated companies equally to all descendants of Native Americans.  Thousands of corporations would exist that would reflect the great number of parcels. The parcels should be made as large as possible, however the task of identifying the individual pieces of land, and creating deeds, and registering the deeds with the appropriate state governments would be a significant task. Fortunately, the US is up to its top in the number of attorneys it has, and there are plenty enough to do the work. The record keeping necessary would be possible due the great advances made in computers, software, IT, RE management, and GIS technologies applications.

I will reiterate at this time that it makes no difference, whatsoever, what form of ownership the NAs had. The important legal theory would be that the legal domain of the liberties of America had been extended to encompass and embrace all the NAs and their descendants. The rights and principles of American liberty should be those that should have prevailed.

Nor is the principle of a claim relevant. Nor should the claim to any wealth, or to the wealth of others, especially the wealth that was considered to be wealth by the NAs, as expressed by Americans, and that was taken by the Americans, be considered to be valid. Claims imply the right to take, use, improve, and to own any property. But there must first be rightfully owned property. I will grant that many, if not most, settlers were as honest as the Nas in their desire to create a life from the land. The NAs had been purposefully using and developing the land to the benefit of creating a living since ever; and the property acquiring and owning settlers have been purposefully using and developing the land to the benefit of creating a living for themselves ever since. Measurement omission should prevail.

The sophistication of the possible concepts of property has grown considerably from the early days. The rationality of current corporation and real estate ownership laws, in general, is considerable.

The Americans claimed and took, and then they stopped taking. What they didn't take they didn't return or refuse. They made it into socialistic, e.g., institutionalized government owned and operated land preserves or government business entities.

What is important now is that the land which has not been so claimed, improved and taken by private Americans should be simply released to the descendants of the NAs, and that it should become deeded land that is privately owned for the first time in history. . . .  than the descendants of the NAs, has a claim on the untaken lands. The lands in question, insofar as private ownership in a free enterprise system, are untaken privately. The improvements made to such lands, e.g., the construction of an airport, should remain the property of the government, or leaseholders, for example, and it is the land that should be made private.

Non-NA private persons also have no claims to the ownership of the lands by merit of a de-facto non-taking of the land, and the US government has ensured that the land be continued as non-owned land. That is, in spite of the claims of the occupation of, working and improving the land, or specifically using the land, that the NAs had.

Rights to the natural resources should remain with the land. Leases, easements, contracts to create certain improvements, and other contractual rights to make and keep certain improvements that have been agreed by means of contracts between the party and the government or filed with the government, e.g., possibly some mining, travel, or water rights, should remain in effect. The government would have to create the deeds to any improvements that it created, or to make contracts with the new owners to continue certain types of uses.

Their would, no doubt, be numerous special claims, and the Courts would be busy. I haven't devised a scheme that would embrace the reservations that are owned by the NA tribes or nations. I suggest, provisionally, that stock corporations be created for the reservation entities, and that the shares be given to all residents who now or ever did reside on such reservations. Some Objective laws would need to be written, and possibly the NA tribes would have a totally different approach. Quite possibly the reservation lands should simply be given to the tribal managements in the form of stock companies, and they would become the directors of the companies. That is a possible exception to the general principle of the giving of all of the un-owned government lands to all of the descendants of the Native Americans. In that way the concepts of American liberties would be formally extended to include the all the reservations. The matter of Sovereignty would need to be discussed, and maybe some type of democratically renewable merged status could be devised. The privatization of all public lands would be accomplished in the same act of law that would enable all the descendants of Native Americans to be the participants in a new process, that of protected American Liberty, individual rights, and free-enterprise.

Giving is the wrong word. The process is the benevolent recognition and granting of American liberties to those who would have properly been the beneficiaries to such a recognition and granting, and to their descendants.

All Americans would benefit greatly by the new burst of productivity that would be created by the new corporate owners. The process has no relationship to the particular monetary or other values of any lands for any reason. Measurement omission applies. The shares would be evenly divided, and each descendant of a Native American would get one share, or an equal number of shares, in every corporation, and every corporation would own significant parcels or lands that would include all the un-owned government land. For the first time, the lands would be cared for and made productive by private individuals and their companies. The new owners would be responsible for the use, upkeep, and commercial development of their lands as they see proper.

I make no claims to having all the answers to all the possible consequential problems. I think that the disposal of, or the privatization of, all of the un-owned government lands should be accomplished with as strict adherence to, extension of, and application of, the principles of the domain of American Liberty, individual rights, private property, and free enterprise as is humanly possible. Ralph Hertle

 

 

From: Ralph Hertle To: objectivism Subject: OWL: Defn. of Scientific Experiment Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 21:10:48 -0500 OWL: On scientific experiments: I suggest that the purpose, and not the function, of an experiment is to isolate the phenomena, causes and principles of interest, and to remove from consideration all factors that are not integral with the causes, etc., that are of interest.

 

The principles, etc., that function may be directly observed, evaluated, identified and measured by means of the operation or functioning of the experiment. (It is interesting that the terms, operation and functioning, of existents and causes, are frequently found in Aristotle's scientific writings.)

 

An experiment is a demonstration in physical reality or in ideas pertaining to same, of actual or hypothesized principles regarding the functioning of metaphysical or epistemological existents.

 

A scientific experiment, and I think that the qualification scientific is necessary, may be differentiated from a demonstration, which is the genus, in that the all the factors involved are placed in and function within a planned logical structure, procedure of events, and system of proof, that governs the type and quality of results, and which may prove or measure the existence of the principles or properties being observed.

 

That sentence needs some work, however, the gist of a definition of the concept of scientific experiment is there. Scientific experiments may have subsidiary purposes, e.g., to show the principle or cause of a process, or to evaluate, discover, identify or measure the properties of the selected existents. A scientific experiment is a demonstration, which has a controlled logical causal structure, which control provides for the isolation or selected of facts to be observed for the purpose of the discovery, identification and validation of the causes of those facts.

...........................

Perhaps someone else has another way of conceptualizing a definition for scientific experiment.  Ralph Hertle

Peter,

I thank you for rediscovering and bringing forth those letters; I wanted to keep them.

Who are you? I fail to recall, and  I am pleased that you are there.

Ralph

[   ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

On 2/12/2021 at 2:20 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ralph,

I've read that claim ever since I first got into Rand back in the 1970's. It's a premise I eventually checked and thought through.

The way I've seen Rand use that claim, she mostly makes it a metaphor for emphasizing that serious thought went into devising her ideas. She does not make that claim as a cognitive identification of the mental and physical processes she used. I don't know about you, but I rarely see the tools of the scientific method--like trial and error--employed in the literature on Objectivism. And I have read almost all of Rand's works, including much of Peikoff, Branden, and other O-Land luminaries.

I don't even recall seeing the scientific method used in The Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. There might be something there, but I don't recall it off the top of my head (despite the algebra  ).

 

Starting Point and Memory

Instead, I normally see statements made as starting points, then extrapolation. (I've seen this snarkily described as reasoning by decree. And often it is.  )

Mostly these starting statements (propositions) are based on observation, but sometimes not. Here's a good example from ITOE. Rand claimed that sensations are not retained in memory. Why? Did she observe that? Did someone else tell her that? Is she aware of some research about it? Did this come from introspection (like much of her thinking did?) Crickets. But accepting that proposition, how are percepts retained in memory? More crickets.

If you want to stretch things a bit, you could say "differentiation" and "integration" are the secret memory sauce (since she used them as a description of the main things consciousness does). The stretch in this case is that in the Randian formulation, sensations are only differentiated and integrated when they are used to make up percepts, and percepts get differentiated and integrated into concepts, and concepts get differentiated and integrated into higher-level concepts, and both percepts and concepts are retained in memory. So, using a syllogism:

A. Sensations are not formed by differentiating and integrating other things, but percepts and concepts are.
B. Sensations are not retained in memory, but percepts and concepts are.
Therefore: Differentiation and integration are critical to memory as pertains to sensations, percepts and concepts.

But even so, how are differentiation and integration related to memory? Here, there aren't even any crickets because the topic never comes up.

(Memory is mostly a big hole in Objectivism.)

I'm not criticizing this as right or wrong, I'm merely saying this process is not science as science is practiced.

(I am sidestepping the modern corruption of science pertaining to things like manmade climate change, eugenics using whatever euphemisms are in vogue, the social sciences trainwreck, etc. as such corruption comes from things outside of philosophy or science, thus they are beyond the scope of what I am talking about.)  

So calling Objectivism a science is rhetoric, not a cognitive identification. In purely identification terms, Objectivism is a philosophy and often linked to great storytelling.

 

Science and the Noggin

btw - If you ever get interested, I can point you to a lot of sources on memory, emotions, brain processes, neurochemicals, and so forth, all with repeatable results, and almost all written in terms lay people can understand.

But there are big words if one wishes, too. Frankly, for someone like me, they took a lot of time and effort to get used to. For instance, now I can say, and know what the hell I am talking about, that I am fascinated by the myelination of synaptic chains, or dendrite and axon pathways in neural networks, sometimes called neural pathways, and how these differ in the cerebellum (where there is no "I," but where motor skills develop), as opposed to the cortex in general (where there is an "I"--at least in most of it).

Talk about integration. How does beefing up brain cell links and covering them all with the equivalent of a plastic coating sound?  That's just another way of partly saying what I said in the previous paragraph.

These lay-people-friendly books and lectures are all based on work that uses scientific methodology.

 

Back to Rand

Some of these ideas work with Rand's theories. Some do not. Where there is a difference, I go with where I can get repeatable results.

And, to repeat what I often say, I am not denigrating Rand here. (I admire her enormously.) I am merely identifying what is what based on my own observation and thinking.

Michael

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ralph,

In general, I get your drift about lockdowns. But why do you limit the target of oppression? If one fights for freedom against an oppressive government, shouldn't such freedom be for everyone and not just Objectivist individuals?

Michael

Michael,

This was not a medical lockdown of any type, no Covid-19 ,and no judicial or governmental reason or cause was involved.

The incarceration by JFK hospitals in New Jersey was for more than five and one-half months during 2019-2020, and more recently for four days, was not involved with any judicial or court action, cause, or medical consideration whatsoever, kept by JFK by force, no reasons for their actions against this person were given, and no contact with the outside was permitted, no access to work or employment, no way to earn money for my apartment rent and threats of eviction, except for one hour no outside walks, roughed up by JFK thugs, no contact with one's personal physician, friends, or attorney permitted, and no access to one's own computer or home, kept naked for one to two months without being allowed to bathe, kept in shackles for days at a time, and also in a wire cage for days, clothes and personal belongings stolen, and the list has more say. Three hours during the duration for guest visits were permitted. My friends thought I had died and didn't know what they could do to help. Other persons were also kept at the JFK facilities who had no idea why. I've been trying to write the story and that is really difficult. Local County authorities were unable to explain or offer help. You won't believe the outrageous amounts of moneys that were billed by JFK and their consultant doctors to the Insurance companies. I received nothing. After my release one attorney told me I had no way to  get any help, legal or otherwise, because I simply couldn't afford the fees. I don't know why all that happened to me, and it appears to be some type of slavery business. I'm out of it. If anyone wants to find out what was happening to me, they may contact me directly.  

Ralph Hertle

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Why are not supposed Objectivists taking actions to protect Objectivist individuals, and to release them from non-judicial enslavement and incarceration? Where are you people? Please help. Ralph Hertle

We in the USA are being lied to regarding just who or what people are the real Asians. A gigantic fallacy of logic is being perpetuated upon us, and the 'designators of racism' are lumping everyone together into a horrible misidentification of the facts of reality. Sure, there are geographic, ethnic, and political boundaries for this or that region or peoples depending upon the particular context of facts for a selected conversation; however, the evils of the misidentification of individuals have specific consequences, and these most often have to do with the gain of power over the lives of individual persons for the purposes and intentions of tyrants. 

Who is propagating that type of label over individuals? Mostly the Liberal Left Press in the USA.

Almost no one in the Press is claiming only some Orientals to be Asians for the Press might have to read books to find out where these Oriental peoples actually live.  And, not all Orientals are Asians, for some are Aryans, Arabs, Karelians, and Indian Ayans, to name just some.

Maps:  It may be instructive to consult maps to find out where Asia is, or where some individuals or groups of Asian Peoples live, and to inform the Press. To get some idea where Asia is we may access the maps displayed on the Internet.

For example, to find just one of numerous locations and history maps visit the site:"  https://elgritosagrado11.blogspot.com/2018/05/25-new-asia-border-map.html ."

The "racist designators" may have to eat crow, for it is they who are the racists. 

Ralph Hertle

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ON THE MOTIONS OF THE SPHERES 

Taking another try at understanding the Ancient Greek concepts of MOTION and RECTILINEAR MOTION.

The Ancient Greeks, and the Ancient Greek Geometers (AGGs, astronomers or geometers) tried to understand the objects in the heavens or sky. Not a simple task.

To say that things exist in the "multitude" was not too easy an idea to come up with. The AGGs concluded after seeing a lot of stuff that the concept of the universe identified a "plurality" of things; the universe was not a single entity or thing. They saw many entities. The identification of a plurality could be easily proved. The things  or objects in the universe or sky were separate from one another.

And yet they were different from one another. Different in unique ways.

What ways?

Earth's Moon, Luna to us, arcs through the sky day and night; and it appears to be, and have been, speeding along according to principles quite different from those of Mars.

And the Stars, so many of them, seem to always be in one place all the time and to not translate their locations relative to one another. 

Other entities, meteors, comets, Earth and Sun, and so on, have identities that seem to be unique.

If one gathers up all the we can see about a selected one of those that is a single thing we may identify that it, or they, exist. The thing continues to exist, and it continues, continues, continues. I keeps existing.

To borrow a phrase from the AGs, they found that, "taken together" the plurality was everything that exists. For mental convenience, says Ayn Rand, we may call everything that exist by a single name, the "universe", even though there is always and only is the plurality.

All those existents could be identified separately.  

Changing gears for a minute we may listen to what Ayn Rand has said about the concept of A is A, or "Existence Exists", that in the long form of the idea, is, she said, "Existence is Existing". That existence, being everything, continues to exist, and just keeps continuing to exist. 

To the AGGs that continuation of existence was a type of "Motion". We might say, a type of Motion in place. That is, an existent exists where it exists, or, "that existent there" 

What is it that you are talking about? That. A type or form of being. Existents, referred to singly, are things that have "Motion', or existences. 

The Moon arcs across the sky. There is more to it than to point to that thing there; existing where it is, with nothing more to be said about it. One day it is over there in the sky, and on another day, or night, it is in another place. One could draw a line from a point where it was in the sky to where it is. The moon had a function that was actualized to cause it to be at one place and then continue over to a still different place in  the sky. And, it would do that day after day, day upon end. The AGGs saw that a unique characteristic was at work, One that was different from another, highly visible characteristic, that the Moon had the visible quality of having a white color. Most of the time, that is.

The unique qualities of the Moon, for example, that it traversed the sky from place to place, were given the geometrical name "Rectilinear Motion".

The AGGs saw universal identifications, the existence or being of a thing, to be its "Motion"; and also, the particular attributes of a thing's nature or functioning, to be its "Rectilinear Motion".

Comets came and went, and stars stayed where they are relative to one another and together they rotated across the sky.

The objects in the sky had existence, "Motion", and they had properties and characteristics, "Rectilinear Motion".

They all had universal existences, and they all had properties and functionings.

To the AGGs the stars were the most static and the acted from their most distant sphere as things that in their plurality had many unique characteristics. And, yet, they seemed to act together, for the most part, as if they were all in a distant eternal sphere.

The term, "Sphere" was the "Handle", to give it our modern name, for the concept of, the eternal characteristic, the "Motion" of each and every thing. The existences were always there, and the unique attributes of every thing were the knowable differences or characteristics of the things that made things what they are. 

Not that the AGGs knew everything about each and every thing, which they didn't. They knew that the entities of the universe existed, and, also, that they had essences or characteristics. These ideas to us in the science of identification are termed, "Universals" and "particulars".

May we say that everything has universal attributes and particular attributes?

RALPH HERTLE   

CO2 CONCRETE

Our polititians still fail to heed the facts about their lies concerning CO2 sequestration and their intentions to diminish industry and liberty.

Even the so-called business types, Republicans, free-traders, and the U.S Congress continue to keep a lid on the widely-known benefits and discoveries of CO2.

Following may be the first article in the popular press on the subject of CO2 Concrete.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bendable-concrete-other-co2-infused-175803665.html 

See the illustrations and diagrams in the piece.

The patents and related trade articles published in recent decades have said their piece. There will be more, for there is a gold mine in the sky. 

Our future world will have a huge percentage of CO2 Concrete products. The amount of CO2 taken from the atmosphere in future years could be enormous; so much that if they took 10% of the CO2 from the atmoshere [presumably so they could punish capitalists, free-enterprisers, and citizens of liberty]  the amount taken would make it difficult for plants to live on Earth.

The polititians fail to disclose the link between CO2 and plants. Plants use CO2 as the food that causes the structures of the plants to exist. Remove the plants, such that the Brazilian deforesters are doing, and there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere.

By the use of CO2 Concrete there will be less CO2 in the atmosphere and much more manufacturing of high strength products. By the practical use of CO2 in manufacturing there will be less smog, smoke, and ash in the air.

Notice that the U.S. Politicians have continued to blame free enterprise and capitalism, and they have not dealt with the beneficial aspects of the use of CO2. These politicians thrive on the hatred of the good; that is their motive.

They are more interested in the evil of the hatred they practice than in freely permitting businesses to create CO2-based products and a cleaner atmosphere.

CO2 use should be a factor in the platform of the future Republican Party.  

May algae grow on the multiple pens of the liberal polititians and swampy kickbackers.        RALPH HERTLE

Would you believe the slogans from Congress people, saying: "Fight Like Hell", and, "Fiight Fight". One can't help but be reminded of the book title, "Ta Ta Tan Tan", that quotes the Chinese Communist political statement or chant that means, "Talk Talk Fight Fight".

The Liberals in Congress have changed to "Socialists", which Karl Marx used to mean a synonym for the word, "Communists". Now they are rallying to the political cries of the Communists.

 Several of the people in the U.S. Congress have actually called out on the floor in their speeches for the deaths of their adversaries. Where are the Capital police to have those congress people arrested?

  Ralph Hertle

On 2/9/2021 at 4:01 PM, Strictlylogical said:

 

 

I'm not sure about making "a lot more" sense.

 

Conceptually, it is equally incorrect to claim that the universe, i.e. each and every entity which exists, is made of  "number", "magnitudes", and "scientific concepts" or "scientific principles".

Reification of conceptual content as external entities is the error.  Principles, quantity, magnitude, are concepts by which we conceive of, understand, and predict what we observe about entities in existence, they do not literally make up entities.

 

Things are no more "scientific principles" than they are "numbers". 

 

Reification is not what the Ancient Greek Geometers were trying to do when they made up the concepts of the "Celestial Spheres". They merely represented their idea with a drawing-type of gesture.  If they said "Sun" and drew a small circle in the air by hand to point out the hot yellow thing, or by a sweeping gesture by hand across and around the the sky from east to west they may have being trying to suggest the arc of the Sun's entity orbit that appears to cause night and day. Is that two "Spheres"? The stars and planets all had their own unique spheres that had many particular properties. Mars' orbit in the sky was in part a clear arc, however, they found that Mars' orbit also had kinks and squiggles in its line. Every entity had its own clear bubble, and the transparent imaginary and concentric "spheres" were similar to bubbles upon which one could draw features; all drawn in mind. The entities so drawn on their unique transparent bubbles also had different distances, speeds, and colors. The Spheres were visible and they were ways to collect many ideas from observation; and each entity, or celestial phenomenon, for example, a comet, was found to function, that is exist, and be expressed in its own space; in its own functional "Sphere". The Spheres were educational constructs meant to guide the student in understanding the nature of the entity or phenomenon being observed; they weren't intended to be or to directly represent physical beings or entities. Reification wasn't the intention; learning ideas in mind was.  RALPH HERTLE

On 2/9/2021 at 8:19 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ralph,

This is not jousting or snark. How many written courses in philosophy are you familiar with?

My question comes from my "cognitive before normative" approach in thinking. Before I use superlatives and other forms of evaluation, I try to identify correctly what I am talking about. 

If you are going to compare Peikoff's course against all the other courses out there and declare his as one of the best, shouldn't you know what the other courses are like? At least a few of them? If not, what is your standard for evaluating?

Serious question.

Michael

Mostly courses in Objectivism, a philosophy that is a science. And regular sciences and subdivisions. How many courses? Ten or more; and if I count books and text books on science and philosophy, possibly twenty books.  

For rather good definitions of the concepts of Cognitive and Normative see Wikipedia; and there is also a nice patter of discussion and explanation to be found. At least there is a lot of material for thought there that is written from a generally rational point of view. I don't claim that those materials are the end all; and there may be some good definitions of those concepts from other sources that I haven't seen. Whether these are useful concepts to say more than "mental process" for cognitive, and "types of methods" for normative, I cannot say. My thought is that these ideas are not opposites; and that they are wide generalities that catch many disparate ideas in selected contexts. Either way one had ought to explain what one is trying to say, provide examples, demonstrations, definitions, and proofs. 

On Peikoff's courses, I found that his course on the subject of Logic to be most demanding and rewarding. His lectures on the History of philosophy, ancient and modern, are great for perspective.

 RALPH HERTLE. 

Regarding Pythagoras' ideas;

Leonard Peikoff in his lecture on Pythagoras quotes the ancient teacher / geometer to say, "The universe is made of numbers." Pythagoras' statement when read in the Ancient Greek, that I can't quote right here, meant that the universe is made of "magnitudes". The Greek word "magnitude" meant to the Ancient Greek geometers, what we would read to be, "scientific concept." In one sense the 'Motion' of a thing could be used to name an entity's existence of a certain type. Pythagoras also meant that one special case of a scientific concept is number, and that other special cases are possible in geometry. To the geometers we may read that some magnitudes may be "all existents taken together", or "Motion", being a universal statement; or straight lines or even proofs of statements, being special cases of identities, properties, or functionings.  Universals and particulars.

Later mathematicians mis-translated "magnitude" to mean "measurement" and they even limited all "magnitudes" to be "number". Geometry to the Ancient Greek Geometers meant 'all science', and they narrowed the context in order to discuss selected classes of concepts or entities.

If you stay with the term "magnitudes" to mean "scientific concepts", or, "scientific principles", the mathematical sub-science of Ancient Greek geometry will make a lot more sense.

The so-called "celestial spheres" meant that certain objects in the sky function insofar as their existences, properties and rectilinear motions [meaning here, strictly, "particular properties and functionings"]. The term, "Motions", meaning the universal concept, "Existents", and "Rectilinear Motions" being particular cases or properties, for instance, straight lines. Objects in the sky were seen to have "Motion", meaning 'existence', and also "rectilinear motions", meaning having 'unique properties according to the contexts of their identities'. Each "Celestial Sphere" had a property, each had "Motion" and each "Sphere" described the functionings of entities that were particularly identified by their "Rectilinar Motions". There were no "spheres"; out there, there were only the "magnitudes" that could be used to identify the observed "things" selected. A sphere could have the Sun in it, and that existed with certain properties or functioned in accordance with certain principles. Mars had its own sphere, existence, unique properties and principles of operation. The "Spheres" were magnitudes and that helped to teach the existence, properties. and functions of entire systems of identities for celestial beings, or other things.  

To re-construct one of Pythagoras' lectures, find that the universe is a rich realm of concepts, and not just linear figures and measurements. 

Accurate translations are needed to keep one's ideas about Pythagoras' ideas on the straight and narrow, and that accuracy of identification is necessary in order to get to the discoveries of "Eudoxus" "Famous Theory of Equiproportionality" and Aristotle's systematization of the principles of Logic, for example. 

Ralph Hertle

See Leonard Peikoff's course on Objectivist Epistemology. What is the proper name of the course?

That course outlines Aristotle's, Ayn Rand's, and Leonard Peikoff's theory of knowledge, or epistemology, including logic, incorrect ideas, fallacies, definitions, hierarchy of concepts, and more.

Peikoff's course is one of the best courses in philosophy ever written.

Historians of logic may be interested to know that Eudoxus', author of his "Famous Theory of Equiproportionality", demonstrated the relationships of geometrical concepts and he provided the proofs. We know the short form of one of Eudoxus' statements to be  [  A=B:B=C:A=C, from the Egyptian priests, and the Greek geometers, Thales, Pythagoras, and Eudoxus .]  Eudoxus worked with the geometrical identities, relationships and lengths of lines [all called "magnitudes" in Greek in the day, meaning what we today would term 'scientific concepts' ]. Other types of concepts, for example, biological or ethical concepts were not in Eudoxus' proofs, only geometrical science concepts.

Aristotle, later created his hierarchical theory of concepts, and refined the system of definitions, e.g., accurately identifying the facts of existents with genus and differentia definitions. Aristotle's biological concepts, for example, could be or were substituted for, or integrated with, Eudoxus' geometry concepts. What Aristotle did was a major innovation in the history of ideas, and that was the use of correct concepts that properly identified the facts of existence and that were provable. When applied to Eudoxus' "Theory of Equiproportionality", Aristotle's hierarchical concepts created a properly systematized and science of logic that dealt with all types of concepts. Aristotle gave us the system of provable thought that may be all too simply stated;  Equiproportionality times hierarchical definitions of concepts equals the science of Logic.     RALPH HERTLE   Text copied over to O.L from a different location.

Michael, I totally agree.

I wish I had learned more about how to avoid being a victim, and to be productive in one's own behalf. Not to be conned.

Psychotherapists ask many questions, and I wish to have met one who would know how to get all the pieces together again, or to plan avoidance strategies.

I'm glad to hear what you say. Thank you. Ralph Hertle

Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are Indo-European languages while Finnish, Karelian, and Estonian are Finno-Ugrian.

I gather that possibly 10 or 20 percent of Finns speak Swedish.

During the Viking days, the Swedes conquered into Finland and Russia. The Swedes founded the first organised Russian society with their trading empire that extended into the Russian rivers all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

My maternal side of the family, who were Finns, spoke Finnish. However, their family name was Lindroos. The Viking Swedes were known as the "Rus", and the Russians became known as the "Rus". My family on that side had the name "Lindroos", meaning 'Land of the Rus'. Or, possibly "one who came from Sweden or Russia", or who was one of them. My family name came from Sweden; however my nationalistic grandfather, Isaak Lindroos, just wouldn't hear being called a Swede; he was fervently and passionately a Finn.

Ralph Hertle

INDO-EUROPEAN BASICS AND THE BLACK SEA

The Indo-European languages have covered Europe and appear to have origins in the areas we know to be Iraq, India and Pakistan. The related languages traveled though Asia Minor into Europe and are widely spoken today. 

One competitor language to the Indo-European is the Finno-Ugrian language group and derivatives. Finno-Ugrian languages are spoken in Finland, Estonia, Karelia, Northern Russia and Leningrad and south to Hungary.

Finno-Ugrian is not related to Indo-European. 

The Finns and Hungarians originally came from the Black Sea area, basin, and shores. That is, prior to the filling of the Sea once and twice; and that displaced the peoples to higher ground, who went upstream along the Danube, Don, and Deneiper Rivers, and along the upper Volga. The Finno-Ugrian speaking peoples lived along the now submerged shores of the Black Sea, and they also lived along the Northern edge of Asia Minor. They were more shoreline peoples in about the years -7K to -5K before the flooding of the Black Sea.

My maternal grandfather, a Finn, said that a study of the Finnish language was done in Finland during the 1900s that traced Finno-Ugrian language spoken sounds all the way south to the Northern shore of Asia Minor, and that they surmised that their language had its origin in years -7K to -5K in what is now Turkey and the now submerged lower elevations of the Black Sea.

Inland in central Asia Minor -2K years later or so came the Hittites and they spoke Indo-European. However, Finno-Ugrian spellings and sounds apparently still exist in Asia Minor. and several countries in Europe and many towns in northern Russia including the area of Leninrad and north to Include Karelia and to the East of there in Russia, today speak Finno-Ugrian. The numbers of Russian Finno-Ugrian speakers is in decline. How far upstream along the Danube past what we know to be Hungary into the southern Germany area we don't know.

Ralph Hertle

INDO-EUROPEAN BASICS AND THE BLACK SEA

The Indo-European languages have covered Europe and appear to have origins in the areas we know to be Iraq, India and Pakistan. The related languages traveled though Asia Minor into Europe and are widely spoken today. 

One competitor language to the Indo-European is the Finno-Ugrian language group and derivatives. Finno-Ugrian languages are spoken in Finland, Estonia, Karelia, Northern Russia and Leningrad and south to Hungary.

Finno-Ugrian is not related to Indo-European. 

The Finns and Hungarians originally came from the Black Sea area, basin, and shores. That is, prior to the filling of the Sea once and twice; and that displaced the peoples to higher ground, who went upstream along the Danube, Don, and Deneiper Rivers, and along the upper Volga. The Finno-Ugrian speaking peoples lived along the now submerged shores of the Black Sea, and they also lived along the Northern edge of Asia Minor. They were more shoreline peoples in about the years -7K to -5K before the flooding of the Black Sea.

My maternal grandfather, a Finn, said that a study of the Finnish language was done in Finland during the 1900s that traced Finno-Ugrian language spoken sounds all the way south to the Northern shore of Asia Minor, and that they surmised that their language had its origin in years -7K to -5K in what is now Turkey and the now submerged lower elevations of the Black Sea.

Inland in central Asia Minor -2K years later or so came the Hittites and they spoke Indo-European. However, Finno-Ugrian spellings and sounds apparently still exist in Asia Minor. and several countries in Europe and many towns in northern Russia including the area of Leninrad and north to Include Karelia and to the East of there in Russia, today speak Finno-Ugrian. The numbers of Russian Finno-Ugrian speakers is in decline. How far upstream along the Danube past what we know to be Hungary into the southern Germany area we don't know.

Ralph Hertle

I resent the racists of every ilk who have nothing better to say than to harp on the merits and demerits of what they call systematic racism, an anti-concept that has no meaning. What should be the focus of attention when discussing liberty, individual rights, and liberty is the defunding of government-owned and/or operated education institutions. America needs to get rid of the Kantian-based philosophy that underlies Progressive education, the application of systematic Pragmatism that is the most evil philosophy and that is the basis of Progressive Education, Socialism, and Communism. What is the evil? The Kantians, Pragmatists and Progressives reject logic and reason in education and government, and to them, they say, "anything goes", and "whatever". They are Government owned and operated education and Progressive education is causing the destruction of America. Instead, America needs only private property, freedom of ideas, creativity, entrepreneurship, and free-enterprise in education. And will you racist designators please get rid of the systematic Pragmatism that is destroying America?     Ralph Hertle

CO2 LIES AND OBSFUCATIONS

CO2 reduction in the atmosphere is the primary target policy of the Leftists  and Liberals, who, using phony moralistic pleas and outright transparent lies, try to limit and destroy Capitalism, America, its Constitution, representative democratic institutions, and its basic laws, free trade, liberty, freedom of personal and economic action, ownership of private property, and individual rights.

They want to cancel free economic action of business and industry by shutting in oil wells, coal mines, and all fossil fuels. They want to kill American free enterprise and force industry and individuals to bow to their controls, slavery and inaction.

They want to replace the energy produced by the burning of fossil fuels with hydro-dynamic, wind, tides, infra-red light from space, and suspiciously,  with nuclear energy, which many Liberals sometimes think is as bad as fossil fuels, They don't have much, if anything, to say about the Communist's steadfast reliance upon slave produced energy.

Not to discuss the energy efficiencies of all types of energy production and consumption, we may limit this writing to the merits of energy production using fossil fuels, the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the several by-products of the use of CO2 in the manufacture of useful products.

Carbon Dioxide, or CO2, is a by-product of the burning of Carbon in an Oxygen environment, that is, commonly, in air. The Carbon is the main element in wood, coal, and petroleum, and that is oxidized by the addition of Oxygen.

What the politicians fail to realize is that the compound CO2 is highly useful in industry; and uncountable highly profitable products may be made from it.

Fossil fuel burning electricity-generating factories use large amounts of fuels containing Carbon, and the by-product of the burning is the exhaust or smoke produced, and that contains CO2, The CO2 gas is a rich resource of potential material for the manufacture of useful products.

The Liberal politicians want to primarily shut down liberty and industry; and their goal is not to capture CO2 for useful and profitable purposes; the want to gain the power to control human beings, and not to enhance the lives of people.

These Liberal power seekers shut down the energy producers, rather than to allow them to produce valuable forms of Carbon-based energy and products.     

Not to state that the Liberals want the public to have less electricity, that is a writing for another day, this writing is more limited to the failure, or intention, of the politicians to deprive the public of the valuable resource. They lie to the public to deprive the public of the valuable wealth and liberty of the pulbic.

Insofar as the value of CO2, and the acknowledgment of the possible beneficial consequences of the use of the material, and the restoration of liberty to the public, the politicians are silent. The Liberals and politicians have hoodwinked the public.

American inventors have patented several methods for the capture and use of CO2 for useful purposes. The main invention that we may discuss is the capture of CO2 from the exhaust from the burning of fossil fuels, for example; and then the bottling of the CO2 for transport to and use by industry. The CO2 is the exact same stuff that can be purchased at the grocery store in the form of bubbly carbonated soft drinks and carbonated water.

The CO2 gas at a manufacturing company is then compressed into a liquid and kept in a pressure vessel. The gas, when it is compressed into a state that is denser than the gas and not quite as dense as a liquid, or even possibly a solid, as in CO2 dry ice or CO2 snow. is called super-critical CO2. 

A pressure vessel, called an autoclave, large or small depending on the scale of the manufacturing set up, may contain air or water that are not of use, and the unused substances are removed, or pumped out, with a vacuum pump. The pressure vessel is then empty resulting in a partial vacuum, that at that stage of the manufacture of a product that uses CO2.

What products may be made using the super-critical CO2 process? The autoclave is used, for example, to manufacture high strength cast concrete products, and the castings are made nearby by casting concrete in molds. Admixtures of fly ash are captured from the exhaust chimneys that are also the source of the CO2 gas, are in the form of dust; and the fly ash is not released into the atmosphere or as smoke. The ash when mixed into the concrete to become chemically combined with the cement basic ingredient of the concrete is an excellent reinforcement for the concrete. The cast articles may be items of furniture or they be cast concrete beams used to build skyscrapers or highway bridges. While the mixed concrete is curing the cast items are paced into the autoclave that is pumped out to form a high vacuum, and sealed closed. The main items in the autoclave are the castings becoming solid and no surrounding gas. The cast items at that stage have all the ordinary strength and properties of regular concrete, of whatever composition that has been created. Plastics and other formed items may also be placed in the autoclave for processing using CO2. For now we may discuss just concrete.

The concrete articles in the autoclave are still wet with absorbed water that is chemically combined with the cement during the casting - to make concrete. The autoclave vessel that is often a large metal tank has a pipe leading into it from the pressure storage vessels for the super-critical CO2, and of course there is a complement of pipes, valves, and controls. When a valve from the CO2 storage tank is opened the super-critical CO2 semi-gaseous semi-liquid material  under pressure flows into the auto-clave partial vacuum environment. The cast concrete articles in their partial vacuum are then surrounded by the pressurized super-critical CO2 material that fills the partial vacuum in the autoclave tank. The CO2 is absorbed into the concrete, and which combines chemically with the concrete making a very high strength form of concrete that has many of the properties of metals. The resulting concrete is stronger than metals.

In this process all the CO2 and fly ash from the fossil fuel electricity generation process have become an integral part of the cast articles. None of the by product of the electricity generation is released into the atmosphere . Electricity is also generated, And the original CO2 and ash from the burning process may be sold.

The original gaseous CO2 and the fly ash from the burning process involved in generating the electricity are then not treated as a waste product and pumped underground to make them disappear as some politicians would have it. CO2 pumped underground doesn't disappear; it emerges to the surface of the Earth from volcanoes that have been the main source of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere since pre-history.

Our politicians and Liberals have prevented our American industries from profiting from the availability of super-critical CO2 materials and have deprived the public from the benefits of the consequential manufacture of useful products. We, our public and free-enterprise manufacturers and builders, are the losers in that we are being forced by the hoodwinking Liberal politicians.

The technology is out there in industry and libraries, the U.S. Patents have been published.

After the Liberals restrict CO2 production the beneficiaries may be the Communist and tyrannical countries, Kantians, and governmental systematic pragmatists, who will gain superior products and cleaner air, Thanks to our Liberal politicians Tyranny wins and America loses.

The Libertarian free-traders will no doubt help to transmit super-critical CO2 technology to the tyrannies.

And what about the Liberals who want to reduce CO2 emissions from the transportation industry? They hope to do that in part, by the forced reduction in the use of fracking technology, Fracking crumbles the sub-terranian rocks and makes possible the increased flows of petroleum gasses.  Who in the world will benefit by the fracking technology and the production and use of low cost petrochemicals and super-critical CO2 petrochemical manufacturing technologies. The tyrannies.

Our Liberals, Pragmatists, give-away politicians, systematic regulators and Libertarian free-traders will have shot the American public in our own economic foot.

 The Liberals in the USA will have reduced local amounts of CO2 and reduced the amounts of electricity produced by USA sources. World-wide production of CO2 will, however, be increased. The other countries in the world who use fracking technology will produce prodigious amounts of petroleum. And large amounts of CO2; that is, unless they use Super-critical CO2 - concrete [or plastic] manufacturing processes.

Lets keep our market and technology-controlling tyranny back-patting pseudo-free enterprising politicians out of it.

Let us have Super-critical CO2 in a free marketplace of ideas, rights, and technology.

_________________________________

Revisions:

Add phrase:  "To add that Pragmatism, Progressivism, Fascism, and Communism are all derivatives of Kant's anti-reason philosophy."

Add italics:  ....... "could be or were substituted for, or were integrated with, Eudoxus' geometry concepts"

Word 'and' omitted,  " systematized science of logic that dealt with all types of concepts."

Respelled ....... "equiproportionality"

Objectivist leaders:

Something has gone wrong when some Objectivist leaders accept the idea of supposed free trade that includes trade with tyrants, for example, trade with Kantians, Pragmatists, Muslim Iran, or Communist China.

There is no free trade with tyrants which operate according to the principle of force and not by the principle of individual rights.

Free trade, individual rights, and private property are not possible in dealings with tyrannical individuals or governments. Perhaps not even possible with Objectivist leaders who endorse trade with tyrants or advocates of same, including with sympathetic American politicians or claimed Objectivists.

The fundamental ethical principle of Objectivism is rights, including individual rights and property rights.

Objectivist leaders who support tyrannical governments by endorsing what the claimed Objectivists call free trade, including trade with tyrants, have lost the central ideas of of Objectivism. 

I am greatly disappointed to find that some Objectivist leaders have uncritically endorsed their support of tyrannies by means of what they claim to be free trade.

Free trade, incidentally, is the action demonstration of individual rights and property rights.

If you trade with those who oppose rights you yourself are denying rights. 

Shall I say more?

Ralph Hertle

See Leonard Peikoff's course on Objectivist Epistemology. What is the proper name of the course?

That course outlines Aristotle's, Ayn Rand's, and Leonard Peikoff's theory of knowledge, or epistemology, including  logic, incorrect ideas, fallacies, definitions, hierarchy of concepts, and more.

Peikoff's course is one of the best courses in philosophy ever written.

Historians of logic may be interested to know that Eudoxus', author of his "Famous Theory of Equiproportionality", demonstrated the relationships of geometrical concepts and he provided the proofs. We know the short form of one of Eudoxus' statements to be   [  A=B:B=C:A=C, from the Egyptian priests, and the Greek geometers, Thales, Pythagoras, and Eudoxus .]  Eudoxus worked with the geometrical identities, relationships and lengths of lines [all called "magnitudes" in Greek in the day, meaning what we today would term 'scientific concepts' ]. Other types of concepts, for example, biological or ethical concepts were not in Eudoxus' proofs, only geometrical science concepts.

Aristotle, later created his hierarchical theory of concepts, and refined the system of definitions, e.g., accurately identifying the facts of existents with genus and differentia definitions. Aristotle's biological concepts, for example, could be or were substituted for Eudoxus' geometry concepts. What Aristotle did was a major innovation in the history of ideas, and that was the use of correct concepts that properly identified the facts of existence and that were provable. When applied to Eudoxus' "Theory of Equiproportionality", Aristotle's hierarchical concepts created a properly systematized and science of logic that dealt with all types of concepts. Aristotle gave us the system of provable thought that may be all too simply stated;  Equiprportionality times hierarchical Definitions of concepts equals the science of Logic. 

RALPH HERTLE