Charles R. Anderson

PARC is Jim Valliant's book The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. Principally, he calls Barbara and Nathaniel Branden her critics. This is strange in that most of our society is more at variance with Ayn Rand's ideas than either of them is. In fact, I do not know of any valid principle of Objectivism that Barbara disagrees with. There is no question that she agrees with just about everything philosophically, though she has some strong reservations about some of Ayn Rand's pyschological ideas. Nathaniel is a bit more reasonably viewed as having some significant disagreements, but still the greater part of his ideas are consistent with Objectivism. PARC requires careful reading to unmask the faulty arguments, to keep track of the events which are frequently not taken in chronological order, to avoid taking a false conclusion as true simply because it repeated over and over, and generally to avoid undue influence of many rhetorical tricks and obfuscations. This book is rich in examples of failures of logic and would be very useful for teaching a course in logic. Personally, I would simply advise you to read such books as The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, The New Left and the Anti-Industrial Revolution, and David Kelley's books The Contested Legacy and Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence before spending time on PARC. Peikoff's books are more derivative, but are useful. You should also read PAR before PARC.

On the split between Peikoff and other ARI persons with David Kelley, David has written a short book on the important differences between them. The book is The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. David's viewpoint on the differences and on how one should approach the issues of: 1) Moral Judgment 2) Sanction 3) Error and Evil 4) Toleration 5) Objectivism, an Open or a Closed System? is in strong accord with my own. These are important issues and they beg for a great deal of thought by Objectivists or simply by anyone who lives in a society. Kelley's book is very thoughtful and very enlightening. He gives references to the writings of Peikoff and the ARI people which he takes to task, so you can also read them. Basically, I see a tendency on the part of many ARI folks toward dogmatism, over-simplification, excessive moral condemnations, a failure to appreciate the value of discussions with those who disagree with you, a lack of reasonable benevolence, a failure to appreciate the need to explore new ideas, and too little emphasis upon the role of Objectivism as a guide to living well and achieving happiness. Given these limitations, some of the people with these faults still have value. There are also some writers from ARI who are usually very good. Of course, I am a tolerant and benevolent man who sees value in many people who are not even Objectivists, much to the chagrin of some ARI people. I also do not think one really is an Objectivist if one does not examine one's own experience, carefully evaluate the arguments others have made, and try hard to formulate your own philosophy while using your independent reasoning faculty as fully as you can. Then, if you wind up agreeing with the essential principles of the Objectivist philosophy, you are an Objectivist. If you take on Objectivism as a dogma or a religion, then you are not an Objectivist, because you will not have the independent thinking skills to apply the principles well to living your life.

Mike, You work so hard to disagree with me! Pure mathematicians: A number theory professor at George Washington University, the wife of a physicist I have worked with. A professor I had at Brown from the Mathematics Dept. in the late 60s. These are the ones I have had personal interaction with. Usually, I just read books on math these days and usually to learn a particular technique so I can do a calculation. Of course I accept the use of math in economics and psychology and farming and other fields. Mathematics should rely heavily on induction for concept formation and in practice it usually does. But sometimes people have Platonic notions of the Ideal which they try very hard to divorce from reality. Sometimes one can take a valid concept arrived at from induction on observations of reality and couple it with arbitrary and unreal ideas and still have a kind of mathematics which will not explain anything in reality. If the realistic elements were thought out by other mathematicians, then a particular mathematician might take a set of valid concepts and wed them to further rules and concepts that have no relation to reality and deduce a series of results which will have no relation to reality. He may claim he is doing math. Look, I made it very clear earlier in this thread that mathematics as a rational field of investigation is very inductive.

Adding to Ed's comment: Benevolence toward another individual accomplishes many purposes of the rational man: 1) It recognizes that many people in a fairly rational, post Enlightenment society enhance our life by making many values available to us. Many of these come through free trade in the market, but many come from individual interactions with trade in other currency, such as simply learning from one another. In such a society one starts from the assumption that others are to be respected because they have values to trade. 2) If one opens an interaction with another individual under the assumption that they deserve respect, your prospects for finding values to trade with them go up dramatically. A genial approach encourages the exploration of what values each person has to offer the other. 3) It lowers everyone's anxieties and helps greatly to reduce the number of imagined wrongs and threats. It creates an atmosphere in which one does not have to gather up a gang of cohorts before taking a walk down the street. Being too wary of others costs us time and energy that can be put to better purposes. Usually when you treat others with respect, they try to deserve it. It has been too long since I read David's Unrugged Individualism to remember his particular arguments, but these were probably included in his far more extensive discussion. I certainly remember it as consistent with my essential perspective on benevolence and as a very wise assessment of benevolence at the personal and societal levels. I just picked up his book to regain a sense of how it was organized and some of the things he discusses. His discussion is very perceptive of the many facets of benevolence. The snatches I just re-read were very interesting. This is a topic I have written a number of essays on myself, long after I read his book. It has me wondering which ideas were independently mine and which stuck from reading his book without my remembering it as the source, which resulted from our discussions at Brown, and which I had before I met David. In any case, everyone in the world should read David's book, especially Objectivists. In fact, it would be great if David were to write an enhanced version of this book which did not assume so much that his readers were Objectivists. But as it is, it should be required reading for Objectivist bloggers! Charles

Some of which might be used for productive purposes, some simply for one's own pleasure, and some may be given to charities of one's choice.

When I was in college, I was constantly embroiled in discussions with socialists. Often the discussion would last hours and roam over many forms of the claim that someone's need required the government to tax everyone and provide the needy with welfare. I would refute this philosophically and point out the many problems caused by such welfare programs as well. I would explain that charity was fine and should be performed on an individual voluntary basis. I would point out that charity work had always been extensive in America and was actually degraded by the assumption that government would take care of problems now. Finally, I sometimes won a complete concession. Then the next day, the same person would return and say, "But what about the poor?" The lesson: People find it very difficult to change their views even when given perfectly good reason to do so. The parallel to the large lack of understanding of the significance of the fetus as a part of a pregnant woman's body and how that determines the fetus's status with regard to the right to life seems staggering to me. This thread has gone on without even addressing these issues of rights. The fetus is human and it lives. It is a part of a human mother and it lives because she lives and nourishes it as a part of herself. Because it is a part of the woman's body, she has the rights to its life as she has it to the rest of her body. There is no other hope of solving this abortion issue but by realizing this. If one does not, then we are doomed to perpetual warfare between the interests of the mother and the fetus, which has falsely been deemed to have rights to assert against the mother. So, you ask, "What about the poor fetus?' Ugh. Back to the start of the cycle, a perpetual motion cycle of argument.

It seems clear that Ayn Rand was pointing to the fact that the concept of God was not defined in a manner that allowed one to make a meaningful discussion of God. Barbara's comment that she needed a definition before it made sense for her to enter the discussion was her direct way of saying the same thing. The definition that Kat pulled from the American Heritage Dictionary is certainly one held widely by many Christians and essentially by Muslims and Jews too. As Victor has pointed out, this definition makes no sense. Einstein used to talk about God, but his god seemed to basically be reality, not any supernatural being. In fact he contributed a Foreward to Homer W. Smith's Man and His Gods in which he makes it very clear that he thinks that man invented the gods of the major religions, which is Homer Smith's thesis. This book is fascinating reading by the way. The Greeks had gods with more limited powers and they seemed to be very anthropomorphic. These gods and goddesses were much more conceivable than the Christian god is. One can imagine finding aliens who have some powers we do not have and who are much more intelligent than we are, and then debating whether we should think of them as gods. If we ever find such beings, one could have that debate. However, it seems clear that they would have to be very much more powerful and intelligent before they would satisfy the conditions for what most people seem to expect of a god today. I am an atheist because I am not a theist. Or we can say that I am an atheist because it is not the case that I believe in a god. Many people convince themselves that they believe in God, because they think that they can only find their values in those given to them by a God. They need values, so they invent God and invest him with the sole right to dispense values. This eases the strain on their minds to develop a defense of their values and it joins them to large numbers of other people who are similarly motivated. I create my own values by virtue of my own life and the choices I make in living it. Perhaps this means that I am my own God. However, I do not really find it necessary to reframe myself in that way. It is sufficient that I am a value seeker and a value creator. About the time I was 15, I had a religious experience. I had an event when I was swept up in a state of exhilaration in my admiration for the Good. I do not attribute this event to God laying his hand upon me. I attribute it to the power of my mind to love my values. I am sure that this event was purely internal to my consciousness, but I can see how others experiencing such an event might attribute it to God. One of my sisters seems to experience mental events which she assumes are acts of God, but which seem a lot like acts of her imagination to me. Of course, there is no way to fully evaluate the experience of someone else's mind. I am the authority on my own mind only. To date, I have no experience or knowledge that convinces me that there is a god. If he is as reclusive as many people say he is, perhaps this is not surprising. Somehow, despite the many difficulties of knowing such a god, many people claim to know of his existence. When I ask them how they know, few will offer a reason for their belief. Many of the few who do offer weak arguments. Some speak of their religious experience, which almost always takes place in their own mind. Then some say they were simply so lucky in some event that God must have protected them. I have been lucky, but it is not clear to me that it was because God protected me. In any case, if a being were worthy of being regarded as a god and if he did give us our wonderful minds by design, he would be expecting us to use his great gift. I think about the only thing that would make a real superior being upset with us would be to see that we had abused his gift by not using it to live as rationally as possible. Operationally, he will respect those of us who are atheists far more than the vast majority of the theists. I feel well prepared for Judgment Day, should there ever be one. I am happy to take Spinoza's bet.

Mike, Basically, my argument has been in agreement with your viewpoint, if you have followed it through the thread. I believe that mathematics should be a tool for understanding reality and as such it does depend upon inductive reasoning heavily. However, some pure mathematicians simply take a set of rules, which may or may not have a relationship to reality, and they play logical games with them. Some people who claim that mathematics is purely deductive have this approach in mind. Well, if that were all math was good for, then it is simply a game like chess and it actually has no explanatory capability with respect to the real world. When and where math gives insight to reality, it does so with a heavy dose of induction. Those who say the contrary are generally trying to remove the mathematician from reality and leave that as the exclusive field of physics. Personally, I like applied mathematics and those who practice it. There are some mathematicians who pride themselves in being pure mathematicians and they actually act as though thinking of math as a tool is demeaning to mathematics. I do not share this view, though I recognize that pure mathematicians can play games that are pretty divorced from reality if they really want to. Charles

I have read Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence and I think it is a great book. David Kelley presents the case for benevolence in a straightforward manner. His concept of benevolence is both practical and wise, which are traits often lacking among many Objectivists. Kelley does not suffer the frequent Objectivist problem of over-simplifying important and complex topics. He is an observant commentator on our society. He has written another book which also is very relevant to the topic of benevolence. A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State offers an insightful analysis of how our human desire to treat other's benevolently has been corrupted into the welfare state. He discusses benevolence and its proper function in a free society in this book. Again, I recommend the book. Charles R. Anderson

I feel a strong bond to other living things. This is especially true for conscious animals, but it is also true for plants. Living things are fascinating and because they strive with a purpose to overcome obstacles, I have a kind of respect for all living things. They have an kind of sanctity, but this is not the same as having rights. There is still a hierarchy of values. Putting beef, pork, and chicken on the dinner table is worth the slaughter of the cow, pig, or chicken in my mind. They do not have the right to live, but it would be low of me or my agent to kill them for no purpose but the gruesome act of killing a living animal. Returning to the development of a fetus, as it becomes more and more developed, we naturally see it more and more as a human being. We think that all human beings have the right to life, so we tend to think that it is only natural to extend this right to as early a stage in the development of a human being as possible. But, there is a huge problem with this. The two most basic aspects of a right are: 1) The right holder cannot be subject to violence or its threatened use in order to prevent the right holder from attempting an action consistent with his right. 2) The right holder cannot impose an obligation to perform a positive act upon another as a means to exercise their right. Now, if one says a fetus has the right to life from the moment of a heart beat or of brain activity, Condition 1 is not violated. However, Condition 2 is violated whenever a pregnant women decides that she does not want to continue to nourish and maintain the fetus as a part of her body any longer. These acts do require a great effort on her part to maintain the life of the fetus, so the fetus cannot have the right to life. Of course, we humans generally do value and enjoy the prospect of a fetal part of a woman becoming a good and productive human being. We attribute a kind of sanctity to this form of life. The more developed it becomes, the more sanctity we grant it. But, it does not have the right to life. Because of this Objectivist concept of rights, many Objectivists argue that a born child does not have the right to demand care from a parent. I think this is true, though I think that parents who do not care for the children they have given birth to are disgusting. What a child does have a right to is the right not to be killed. He does not have the right to be fed, but he does have the right not to have his head bashed in or to be pushed down stairs. In a rights-honoring society, we depend heavily upon the fact that parents who have chosen to carry a child through pregnancy will make the committment to raise that child after birth. This, however, is a voluntary committment. When the parents fail to do this, we try to provide adoptions and foster care, because the child carries a very great sanctity of life for most of us. Again, this is properly a voluntary act on our part.

At times, Ayn Rand said that she worshipped the heroic and the best in man. What she missed was that a great many people who believe in god have tried to attribute the best characteristics of man to their god. No, actually, I think she sometimes did understand this, but perhaps her dramatic flair ran away from this realization more often than not. She was trying to replace religion with a better philosophy of life and wanted to emphasize the differences between religion and Objectivism as a part of marketing the philosophy. There were times when she did acknowledge that men were sometimes trying to elevate the best of man in their religious actions and thoughts. Children are taught that God is Good. I have often seen this equation offered with both God and Good capitalized. I think that many Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Muslims really do not have any actual knowledge of a god. In reality, for many of them it is not really all that important whether god exists or not as a being. I think that many of them are really just saying that they believe in what is good. They are saying that it is important to try to be good and to live a good life. This is not very sophisticated, but it is something good in people that they have such an aspiration. When I was 13 to 16, I was quite serious about the Christian religion. To be sure, the Chrisian religion of my parents and of the Rev. Gordon Stenning that I knew was a less irrational Christianity than many of its forms. What was important to me was that I had a concept of God that He was the embodiment of good. What I thought was good was pretty much what was good for man in this world. Aspiring to be good and to live well was important to me and I felt good when I was around other people who shared this belief. In fact, when I moved from Rhode Island to Oklahoma and left the Rev. Stenning's Christianity and exchanged it for that of a more normally doctrinal minister in Tulsa, who was also a martinet, I quickly began seeing that Christianity was not a rational elevation of the best of man. It was not long before I was thinking about whether god existed and at that time I read The Fountainhead and then Atlas Shrugged. What is important here is that I was not evil when I was 13 and 16. I had not figured many things out about Christianity yet, but I was not evil. I mostly did believe in the right principles for living. Now other people who believe in the major religions as adults have had more time to figure things out and maybe they should have done so. Nonetheless, many of them are mostly attributing good human characteristics to their god or trying to do so. They do run up against the religious hierarchies of each religion. Church leadership often develops doctrine to support their needs, rather than those of the worshippers who come to their churches. Many of the more irrational rules of life that the religions espouse are due to this. The membership itself really is largely looking to find out what the best in man is and to enjoy the fellowship of others with the same mindset. Church leaders commonly betray them. But, many church worshippers are not really more evil than I was when I was 13 or 16. They mostly have not figured out that there is something better to turn to than religion as a means to understand how to live a good life. Unfortunately, while Objectivism has great principles to offer, it has had too many leaders who are interpreting those principles badly, in order to serve their needs much as church leaders have done the same with many religious ideas. I believe there is reason to hope for more converts to Objectivism because The Atlas Society and Objectivist Living are offering people a more rational Objectivism without the religious hierarchy.

Michael, I agree that all of the major religions have very irrational premises and rules. I agree that many of the problems result from modern people trying to too literally live according to very old religions from times of great ignorance and primitive living conditions. While I think some of the differences have significance for some current international problems, I have no desire to undercut your or others efforts to transition Islam into a kinder and more gentle religion. Your point that the Muslims need more modern heroes who have an appreciation for freedom and modern life, is a very good one. One of the great problems is a sense of inferiority. They keep trying to overcome this sense of inferiority by force of arms against Israel, but they never succeed. It would be great if they were to set that effort aside and adopt an effort to become real contributors to progress in the modern world. If they did that, they would develop a sense of self-worth and might get over the foolishness of hating Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Western Civilization. One hopes. I worked closely with a Palestinian scientist for about 7 years. He was a good scientist, but he suffered badly from self-doubt. He imagined slights from everyone, which were not indended. He was constantly trying to prove his worth, and looking nervously about to gauge whether anyone else saw it. I do not think he is an unusual representative of his culture. I see many of the problems of the Muslim world as arising from similar insecurities and self-doubt. Dangerous people are most commonly those who wish to be thought worthy, but think they probably are not. It is not uncommon for such people to become angry with those who they think do not see them as they wish to be seen. Strangely enough, the religion that says that they are superior to non-believers fuels the problem because they do not really feel superior or even equal. So, yes they would be helped by having some more rational and efficacious modern heroes. I know that my interest in reading about the heroes of Western Civilization when I was a kid played a very positive role in my development. Most of my heroes were real heroes, but good fictional heroes are great also.

Michael, Your correction on the reason is honored phrase is understood. It is interesting to watch Muhammad's response to one of his followers pointing out a contradiction. Sometimes he constructed an argument to do away with the contradiction, though the argument was not always a good argument. Often, he then took care to have another revelation, which set the contradiction straight. So, yes, there was some interest in not having contradictory rulings. Now, of course the rulers of the world of 620 AD were able to take what they wanted. It is not surprising that a merchant turned warlord in Arabia at that time took as many wives as he wanted, robbed trading caravans, broke his word whenever convenient, consummated marriage with a 9-year old girl, told husbands it was their right to take their wives sexually whenever they wanted, held slaves, executed prisoners taken in battle by the hundreds, married the wife of a man he had tortured to death the same day as the husband's death, hid women behind veils, allowed husbands to abandon their wives, killed believers who became dis-believers, and finally came to preach that it was a Muslim's duty to kill non-believers. What is mind-boggling, is that any man in 2006 would take Muhammad as his moral guide. What is unbelievable is that anyone would wish to emulate the life of this man and would live as he did in the 21st Century. But, this is exactly the duty of every Muslim man today. The Golden Age of Knowledge among the Muslims is an interesting puzzle. It is very hard to believe that it could have happened with this religion, but it did. In that period, the Muslims did make many very important contributions to human knowledge. There are some Muslims who are making good contributions today. But, it is not very surprising that there are many who seem to yearn strongly to return to 620 AD Arabian life. It would be much easier to emulate Muhammad if they could really live today as they did then. This is why the Golden Age of the Muslims had to come to an end and why it has not re-occurred.

And what I found there about Syrian law was this: Legal system: based on Islamic law and civil law system; special religious courts; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction

Kat, Thanks for your post. I thought it well-thought out and I enjoyed having an ally here. It was good to hear a mother's perspective.

The creation of new human life is such a miracle that until recently all men assumed it was a miracle performed by God. Some still do. But we now understand that it is a miracle performed, at great effort, by women. Since the god-like power to create life is actually the power of being a woman, every woman is a goddess. Any man who does not realize this is being a bit simple. Danneskjold, this is not just a debate game. What is at stake is the well-being of women generally, mothers and fathers in particular, and the children who are born to them. These are important issues, especially when you propose creating a new, highly extended definition of murder and wish to apply it exclusively to women. In your Post #33, three quotes are given without attribution. The middle quote only is from my comments. Your response to my noting that your earlier comment that the fetus is living and therefore has the rights of a human being was inadequate justification because there are many other parts of a pregnant woman that are living also has not really addressed the issue of when the right to life takes hold. Yes, a fetus has the potential to become a human being, if the mother chooses to allow that part of her body to develop to the point that it is ready for birth. Until that time, the fetus may have a heart and may have a brain, but it is still an integral part of the woman. As I pointed out, her body becomes devoted to nourishing that fetus and her body undergoes extensive changes in order to do that. There are weight gains, hormonal changes, morning sickness, back pains, not infrequent mood changes, and much, much more. All this because a woman has chosen to allow her second heart and her second brain to develop to an eventual early stage human being at birth. There is no way to extend the right to life to this part of her body without imposing tyrannical obligations upon her. This attempt is a gross violation of the goddess principle. This error is also a parallel to the mind/body dichotomy. In this case, you are trying split her body into two parts and then setting the interests of each part against the other part. They are one, until the fetus is ready for birth. Do not split them asunder. In your Post #34 you again assert that a heart beat or brain activity make a fetus human and give it independent rights. Why do you think this is the case? Why do you not know which it is that is the critical event? Again in your Post #34, you allow that there will be problems of enforcement. Yes, they will be massive. You suggest outlawing the activity of the abortionists, which would of course follow from declaring abortions murder. In addition, it would follow that the pregnant woman having an abortion was a murderer and we have long tradtions for the punishment of murderers. Are you really prepared for society to carry out those traditions? Your comments on this suggest that that would be too much for you. This is good, but once you define the act of murder, the consequences will follow. This is a difficult matter. We all love human life and we all appreciate its potential. Once a fetus has overcome the natural obstacles of the first few weeks, we all recognize the potential of a new and exciting human life resulting from its continued development. It is our natural, evolution re-inforced, tendency to be pulling for its success. We are benevolent people. But, one person among us pays almost all the costs of this early development process and that is the woman who has made it a part of her body. She has the sole and exclusive property right to her body, to all of it. It should be up to her whether she will lavish her goddess-like powers upon the nurturing of the fetal part of her body. Alright, I am just a man. What do I know? But, I was aware of my mother being pregnant six times and successfully giving birth to three of my younger sisters and my brother. She had two miscarriages that I know of when I was aware that she was pregnant, one at about 5 or 6 months. That is very hard. Before I was born, she went full term and had still-born twins. Sometimes she was pregnant when my father was at sea with the Navy and I was the man of the house. I did what I could to help her, but it was always frustrating to see how hard it was on her and to be able to help so little. My wife Anna gave me three daughters, but the cost was very high. Our first daughter was born when we had a 14.5 % mortgage and nearly all of my pay went to paying the mortgage. Anna stopped working to raise Kirsten until she was old enough to go to daycare, but the cost of that was nearly equal to her pay. So, we decided she needed better pay than she could get as a medical research technician, so she started Pharmacy School. She took a year off to give birth to and take care of Karen, then another year off to give birth to and care for Katie. She had to deal with post-partum depression and permanent weight gains. Few people can imagine how difficult this made getting her Pharmacy degree. For years, we had two children in daycare at an expense nearly equal to our mortgage. But, Anna made the choice to do this and I will forever be grateful. If you are going to have children, it sure is best that two commited people have signed on as fully willing volunteers to take the raising of children upon themselves. If you have never been a parent, it is very hard to appreciate the effort involved. Having never been pregnant, it is clear that men will never know the costs and effort involved. Women rightly point this out. Let them set the agenda on pregnancy issues.

And there are many women who share Fran's strong feelings on this matter. There are many men who love these many women who will stand by them when the State comes to take them away as murderers. The loss of life will be terrible to behold. The proposal that the right to life should be extended to a fetus when its heart starts beating or it has its first neural interaction in its brain is both wrong and totally impossible to implement.

As is very often the case, the subject of abortion draws passionate responses. In this case the passion rose to such heights that the mother's living tissue of the fetus was placed only in comparison to her living hair, but not in comparison to her living ovaries, kidneys, heart, or brain. Choose to rephase an argument that the fetus is a part of her body into its only being her hair and you are off to the races with a straw man to knock down. Interesting though that we do not dictate hair styles to women or tell them that they cannot cut their hair, but we can tell them that they must nourish a fetus for 9 months or some such time. It is clear that a fetus is a part of a woman's body. That fact should not be ignored. It is interesting to note the many stages of development of a fetus on its path to becoming a human being. The times when the heart starts beating or when some brain functions become evident are important events in the development of the child's potential to become a human being. Of course, that moment when the egg is fertilized is also an important event. So are those moments when an infant can be sustained in life under intensive hospital care if it is born prematurely. Then there is also that glorious moment of birth when everything has gone well and a baby is born fully able to breathe and nurse at its mother's breasts. These are all stages of development and it really is rather arbitrary which of them becomes that moment when we attribute some extra measure of life to a fetus/baby. But the status of the fetus as a part of a woman's body is clear. That is of particular moment. But, for the moment, let us ignore this saliant fact. Let us say the fetus enjoys the right to life from the moment of brain function, just to choose what might be a popular moment in the development of human potential. Then, we declare that an abortion after this moment is murder. Now, in the real world, medically we do not know the precise date of conception. There is maybe a two week error in pinning that date down. So, what do we do? Let's say we decide to tack on a two week grace period to the average moment when brain activity starts. Now, in real terms, many women who have an abortion just under the legal wire have actually committed the moral sin of murder, but the law will ignore this. Now, let us suppose that some women still make up their minds to have an abortion just after the legal boundary, perhaps the father has just announced he is not yet ready to be a real father. Or, maybe the pregnancy self-aborts, as many do. A pregnancy-monitoring social worker swoops down to avenge the death of a human being in either case, not knowing how to determine is the abortion was natural or performed by some doctor or some quack. The once pregnant woman has no healthy, living fetus to use as evidence to defend herself, so she is convicted of murder and executed. Or is it to be merely life in prision? So, the more thoughtful women who might become pregnant will soon learn that it cannot be really proven that they were pregnant, if they avoided establishing a medical record of the fact. So, especially in those early weeks of pregnancy when many pregnancies self-abort, it becomes wise to avoid going to a doctor for any check-ups, for any medical reason. If no one knows you are pregnant, then you are safe from the avenging social workers. Or so you hope. But not for long, since soon the social workers propose a law that every woman of child-bearing age will have a manditory medical check-up every 4, 6, or 10 weeks. Then, imagine the wickedness that anyone who is unhappy with a woman can do by accusing her of having an abortion and requiring her to prove that she did not? Witch hunts will occur. OK, maybe the accuser has to provide the proof, but what is adequate proof? Some real problems will arise here. Ah, but you say these are just details. Yes, but they are difficult details and a human being's life depends upon them. You have been concerned with the potential of the fetus to become human, but we cannot forget that the mother is human. So, with the extension of the rights to life to fetuses who have brain activity, comes the requirement that society see that the fetus human being is not abused by the mother. Now, we have what should be a kind of ultimate dream for the Nanny State. The social worker bureaucracy will monitor the mother to be sure that she is getting their prescribed medical attention, they will issue her orders for diet and exercise, they will require her to get 8 hours of sleep every night, that she not smoke and not drink alcohol, and if the doctor orders complete bed rest, she will have to comply completely. Afterall, she is but the nourishing vessel in which the ward of the state lies. Of course, the responsibility to maintain the fetus in the best health is hers and if she does not, it is off to jail she goes! The Nanny State must protect the rights of the fetus to life. The decision has been made that it is not of critical importance that the fetus is a living part of a living woman, except insofar as it imposes obligations upon the living woman to the overweening rights of the fetus as a human being. Now, is the law declaring abortion after brain activity to be retroactive? Many laws in the last 20 years or so have been. If so, we will have to haul many a woman into the courts. I personally know a number of women who have had an abortion. Am I obligated by your law to turn them in? Am I abetting a crime if I do not? Many of those women later had a number of children and are very good mothers. Many of them lead very productive lives and are good people. Whether the law is retroactive or not, society will declare them the moral equivalent of a murderer. No, wait, that is too weak. Society will have declared them murderers who got away with murder on a technicality of the law. They wil be treated like O. J. Simpson, without the benefits of celebrity. You may try to argue that these will not be the consequences of your simple-minded inversion of the observation that when a born human being loses brain activity they die as justification for declaring that the right to life exists from the moment of fetal brain activity. I say that these must be the consequences logically of your declaration and its becoming law. Sure, these consequences will develop in time. We would not likely have to contend with them all immediately. I will also point out that if the rights of life starts with fetal brain activity or fetal heart beat, then there is no reason to grant exceptions for rape and even for the health of the mother. It is simply the case that the right to live of the fetus is equal to the right to live of the mother. NO, actually, as we have seen, the fetus has a greater right which imposes many obligations upon the mother to serve! The mother is but the servent of the fetus. No, this also is not strong enough. Involuntary servitude has a name and that name is slavery. I have known slavery. I was inducted into the Army out of graduate school and sent to Vietnam. I think it would be hugely savage to make every would-be mother enter motherhood as a slave. Just as the volunteer army is a much better army than a drafted army, a volunteer mother is a much better mother than a slave mother. It is difficult for a slave to love its master. A bad idea may have terrible consequences. Those who back this idea to enactment in law or even as simply being moral would be responsible for a great deal of harm to mothers, their born children, the men who love them, and to anyone who marvels at the joy of seeing a child come to parents who will love it and lovingly continue to cherish its development as an independently thinking and acting human being. Which, by the way, is a huge undertaking. I have 3 children and though the youngest is 19, I am still often busy with being their father. Not to mention that I hope to finish paying their college education bills before I die. Volunteering to have a child is a big deal. It is a good thing that I was able to do it as a volunteer, rather than as a slave. Nonetheless, it was sometiimes clear even so that the state, usually through the public school system, viewed me largely as a slave to them and what they thought I should be doing for my children. Basically that was that I should convince my children that the teachers and the school system were their perfect masters. This conflicted with my obligation to teach them to think independently, which was clearly contrary to the interests of the school system.

I am strongly inclined to argue that a fetus is a living part of a woman's body. The fact that a fetus is alive is not the same as saying it is an independent and separate human being. When the fetus becomes a baby by birth or when it is separated from the mother by an operation which the mother consents to, then one has an independent being with the independent right to life. Prior to that, its right to life is as a part of its mother, which gives her a very wide latitude to chose whether she will sustain the development of the fetus as a part of her body. She has the same rights to the fetal part of her body as she has to the other living parts of her body. The fact that her hair lives is not sufficient reason to deny her a hair cut. The fact that her ear lives is not sufficient reason to say she cannot pierce her ear. She might even choose to remove her ovaries, her fallopian tubes, her tonsules, her gall bladder, a kidney, or other living body parts and this we recognize as her right. But an independent human being who loses the operation of their heart or their brain ceases to live. We turn this around and we say the fetus lives because at a certain time the heart starts beating or there is an intiitation of brain activity, so the fetus both lives and is an independent human being. Well, no, the fetus is not independent. It taps into its mother's nutrient supply and oxygen supply. It lives inside a protected cocoon provided by the mother. It is supplied with heat by the mother. The fetus lives not independently, but as a part of its mother. Having an abortion is not to be taken lightly. It is a very serious decision. It has been shown to haunt many women and many have regretted it. Being the oldest of six children, I helped raise several of my younger sisters and my brother. I greatly enjoyed that. The highest few events of my life certainly include each of the births of my three daughters. It was a marvel to observe and participate in their development as independent, thinking human beings. Those of you who have not yet had a child, I beg you to study their early development and understand the miracles of learning they do from day to day. All this proceeds from the potential of the fetus. But, we should grant that that potential is realized and initially developed as a part of the body of the fetus' mother. This is another reason why we should respect the mother and hold that she makes the decision about whether she will nourish her fetus to full development and bring it into this world. Honor thy mother and every mother. This criterion for an independent right to life does not remove all sticky issues with respect to abortion, but it does leave us with many fewer than if we decree that the right to life begins with brain activity. In addition, I recognize that my argument need not fly if one believes in God and believes that God grants the right to life. That problem remains out there in our society, but is not a great one among Objectivists. In addition, those of you who want to tie the responsibility of giving birth around the necks of those who would enjoy sex, either do not have a proper appreciation for the heaven on earth that sex can be or you have soaked up too much of the Christian culture's wish to limit earthly pleasures in order to enhance the call to serve God as the means to leave earth's veil of tears behind for the promise of heaven.

Your comments are correct if we limit our interest to the body of knowledge only, but as you point out, the practice of mathematics often involves an integration of math and physics. When the mathematian sets out to develop a new mathematical area for research, he usually wishes to develop a mathematics that has the applicability to the real world that is required for it to have the ability to prove anything. He has to build that in, or at least try to. When that area of mathematical investigation results in some proofs about some modeled aspect of the real world, one still wants to check observations and see if the proof is consistent with the observation. Yes, you can theoretically say the mathematician does only the deductive calculations and reasonings, but if he really does only that, then he may as well be playing chess or some other game. Generally, he draws a salary and has some responsibility to do something useful. Often, he teaches, but why should anyone study math if it has no applications? So, in general mathematians try to develop rules and results that do have some applicability to explaining the world about us. Of course, one could develop rules and apply them mathematically with no interest and no regard for reality and it could be said that you were doing mathematics. But, it would be rather like saying someone was a scientist because they were constantly proposing hypotheses and testing them against reality even though every test showed every hypothesis was false and one was left scratching one's head wondering why anyone would ever even have thought that these hypotheses were worth testing. So the question is this: Does mathematics contain within its field concern for its usefulness or do we assume that the field should have no responsibility and no interest in its usefulness? Should a university have mathematicians who only play arbitrary deductive games and a physics department which points out when their results chance to be useful and when they are useless? I am willing to allow mathematicians to be concerned with the usefulness of their field of study and even develop proofs of physics in the process. I would also allow the physicists and engineers to use their results and even contribute to the field of mathematics as they wish. But in that case it isn't the mathematics that is inductive, but the physics. For example, if I want to know what the geometry of space is, I'll have to do experiments to test whether Euclidean geometry gives the best description or another geometry. But a geometry itself like Euclid's system is a completely deductive system, although Euclid may have arrived at his system inductively by observing things in the real world that seem to be well described by his abstract system. There is always an interaction between physics and mathematics, where physical observations may be the inspiration for mathematical theories which get a life of their own, and which (sometimes much later) may give useful new results to be used in physical theories. But mathematics, whether pure or applied is a deductive system; it is the question what kind of mathematical model or theory fits our physical world best that asks for inductive reasoning.

Robert, I was aware of the Syrian regime being Baathist and that they were more secular than Muslim societies usually are. I was hoping the Syrian engineer would explain in what ways Syrian laws paralleled Sharia and where they deviated. That he chose to avoid the issue was somewhat interesting. Thanks for reminding me about the Alawites and of Hama. That background I had read about a long time ago and had forgotten. From what I have read, it is not universally agreed among Muslims that Muhammad cannot be pictured. Images of him are published with little or no problem in some Islamic countries. Another of the peculiar requirements of Islamic law arose from the claims of 3 men that Muhammad's favorite wife Aisha had commited adultery with one of Muhammad's soldiers. Because her conveyance in the troop caravan was so thickly veiled, it was picked up and carried away in the belief she was in it. She was not and was left behind. Of course this could have been deadly for her. An officier later came along who was trying to catch up with the troop caravan and rescued her. Three plotters against Muhammad accused them of adultery and Muhammad apparently agonized over whether to believe them. He then had a revelation that 4 male witnesses were needed to prove adultery. Muhammad had an adopted son who was a commoner and who he arranged to marry a woman from a rather aristocratic family, who was also a beauty. The marriage was unhappy and the adopted son left his wife Zaynab against Muhammad's wishes. The wife apparently fancied Muhammed. Soon enough, when Muhammad was with Aisha he had one of his many fainting spells and awoke with news of a new revelation: Allah had married Zaynab to Muhammad. Apparently, Allah just could not do enough for his prophet Muhammad. Or, more cynically, one might suspect that Muhammad put words in Allah's mouth as he found it convenient to do so.

Michael, Just to be very clear, I agree with you that most Muslims probably do not want to spread Islam by literally becoming soldiers for that purpose themselves. I am also sure that there are large numbers of Muslims who would very much like to ease much of the violence of Muhammad out of the religion by putting more emphasis on those of his revelations which were more peaceful and more reasonable. But, I can now much better understand how those who want to maintain the Muslim culture under the pressures of triumphant Western Civilization can easily justify the use of great violence in a Jihad war against the West with a legitimate claim that they are doing so in the name of their religion. However many denominations there are, it seems that the basic text gives ample justification to those who turn to violence. This is a very real problem, with long-term and scary implications. The claim that Muslims honor reason is a dubious one. It is more like they claim that reason is simply consistent with all of Muhammad's claims, because it must be. Muhammad claimed reason as his, just as he claimed that the Jews knew he was the prophet that the Koran said would be coming. If it is consistent with Islam, then it is rational, seems to be the definition. For a long time, this is pretty much what the Catholic Church maintained. When the Renaissance and the Enlightenment made that farce difficult to maintain, there was a rise in the currency of utter, blind faith and God as one who works in mysterious ways. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment have yet to arrive in the Muslim cultures. I wish those who want to live in peace the best, but they really have their work cut out for them.

Michael, My above comment was written while you were posting your last comment and was not a comment on your last comment. I hope that you, and others who attempt to do what you have in mind, will prove effective in diminishing the scale of the problem. Of course, there are many quotes in the Qur'an that sound more reasonable and one would like to see their status elevated. The Christian religion has generally become more gentle in its practice over hundreds of years, especially since the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, there are so many calls for the use of violence in the Qur'an and the several important books on the life of Muhammad, that it is going to be much harder to mellow out Islam than it was Christianity. It seems that Christianity was pretty violent itself from about 315 to about 1700 CE. Because so much more violence is an integral part of Islam, one wonders if it can be mellowed at all. In the end, I think its believers will have to stop believing. As they do, we will see less violence.

I have been reading Robert Spencer's book, The Truth about Muhammad, Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion for the last couple of weeks at a pace of a few minutes a day. As a result, I have read 102 pages of the 194 pages of main body text. I am finding it a fascinating read. It is well written and well argued. What I am finding most remarkable is the degree to which Islam was a religion of personal convenience to Muhammad. It seems a particularly transparent case of the religion evolving not over hundreds of years as Christianity and the Hebrew religions did to meet the changing needs of the Jewish tribe, then their kings, and then the church authorities, but one which very quickly and on a dime changed to accommodate the changing needs of Muhammad. If he has a spat with one of his wives, Allah tells him that he is right and the wife must accommodate him or be instantly divorced. When he concludes that he is not making headway in converting the Jewish bands, who were widespread in Arabia at the time, then he suddenly has a revelation that Allah is angry that the Jews have not seen that he is the prophet described in the Torah and that Muhammad's followers will now pray toward Mecca, rather than Jerusalem as they had been doing prior to this. When he sends a band out to spy on the caravans of the Quraysh, the people he came from, and they raid a caravan at Nakhla and kill the Quraysh on the last day of the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting is forbidden, he first is angry and refuses his share of the spoils, but then has a revelation and is allowed to take the spoils. When he has four wives, which is the limit that a revelation said a man can have, and he wants more, Allah reveals that he is an exception and may take as many wives as he wants. All of the religions I know about appear to be man-made, but none is so transparent as Islam. What is scary for the non-believers of Islam is that the good is what is good for the Muslims, while evil is anything that harms them. To some degree, this was true of the Jewish religion, whose god is a very tribal god, but the Jews never had enough power to take a very aggressive stand against others and seem to have mellowed in their moral condemnations. They also were little inclined to bring non-tribal members into the religion. The Muslims were repeatedly enjoined by Muhammad to use force to spread their religion among others and he became quite incensed that the largely pagan Quraysh and other such tribes did not convert quickly to Islam and that the Jewish tribes did not accept him either. This resulted in revelations in which Allah expressed his anger at the non-believers and justified the use of force against them. The Christians, as supposed followers of a gentle Jesus, committed many atrocities in the name of their religion against non-believers and against those who got it a bit wrong. If followers of a gentle and loving man were so long so violent, what can we expect from the followers of Muhammad, a warlord of the early 600s in Arabia, when they attempt to emulate him, as their religion requires them to do? Of course, most followers of Islam are rather half-hearted when it comes to taking on the full measure of the life depredations of war that the religion calls for. But, it is clear that the true followers are not those who believe in peace in a world which still has many non-believers in it. Peace is what is supposed to follow when everyone believes in Muhammad as the last prophet of Allah. So yes, the Muslims believe in peace, but it is one without non-believers. The fervent believers of Islam are not acting contrary to the religion. They are the true believers. They are many and they are readily inclined to deny that others, who we think of as being Muslims, are so wrong that they are not true Muslims. Hence Sunnis and Shiites often think there is little wrong in killing one another, let alone in killing Christians, Jews, Hindus, and atheists. This understanding of the religion is most unsettling. We can fully expect to live with Muslim generated violence for decades and perhaps for hundreds of years. It is not going to be possible to ignore this problem.

Michael, I found your article to be very interesting. Thanks. A short while ago, a Syrian engineer contacted me about working on a technical problem. I replied that I do not work with Syrians, Iranians, or North Koreans on technical problems. His response was that I have been misinformed by the media and that Syria is a democracy and a peaceful country with no crime on the streets, unlike Europe and the USA. He says he lived here for a time and has a sister who lives in the US. Well, we exchanged a few notes on our respective viewpoints subsequently. Of course, he probably cannot agree with me on many issues, unless he wishes to expose himself to torture. So, it is not clear that he would comment at length on my comments even if he wants to. A question on my part about what extent Syrian law is Sharia, is answered only as Christians, Jews, and Muslims all have the same law in Syria. Syria is a democracy, but Jews are not allowed to vote in the Presidential elections owing to the history of Jews. Questions about individual rights and the Rights of Man, all get the response that he does not understand such political theory, so we should only talk about the culture. True Muslims do not believe in violence, he asserts. He is working to make Syria a peaceful place. But, he has nothing more to say about the violence other than to vaguely allege that Israel and the US are equally violent. On despots, no despot is so bad that any Muslim country will benefit from or want help from the outside. Leave it to them to handle any problems they may have. My attempts to discuss any aspect of Islam with him are ignored. What impresses me is that this engineer is relatively well educated, but he thinks and responds almost entirely at the slogan level. That level is generally one of adamant faith in Islam, though a version which supposedly does not favor violence, that democracy is good and it exists in Syria, that safety from street thugs is all-important, that Western media has convinced the West that they are at war with Islam and, he is convinced, only at war with Islamic terrorists. He has a revulsion for American culture and thinks America is imposing it on Syria and Iraq or wants to do so. I suspect that his views are pretty common in the Middle East.