Rand's gender hierarchy

[Selene]

Above all to have freedom you have to know freedom and value a philosophy of freedom and do this as objectively as you can. A philosophy of freedom is a philosophy of individualism is a philosophy of self-interest is a philosophy of reason is a philosophy for reality looking backward to the goo we came out of.

--Brant

Brant:

Well said. Have you listened or seen the Big and Rich performance on Imus of The 8th of November?

Adam

No.

--Brant

The man with the ponytail at the end is the 19 year old in the song and one of the survivors of that engagement.

Adam

Edited August 19, 2009 by Selene

[Xray]

deleted by me

Edited August 19, 2009 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

NO! Deleted by ME!

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

(Michael) "Here is a thought for you. Xray and sympathizers consider the statement, "man is an end in himself," to be a value judgment, thus subjective (to them)."

I consider it a statement that makes no sense.

I have learned that anyone who preaches a master-slave relationship as the essence of life is either not interested in being the slave, or has a master in mind for everyone to serve—with said person being an insider spokeperson.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

(Michael) "Here is a thought for you. Xray and sympathizers consider the statement, "man is an end in himself," to be a value judgment, thus subjective (to them)."

I consider it a statement that makes no sense.

I have learned that anyone who preaches a master-slave relationship as the essence of life is either not interested in being the slave, or has a master in mind for everyone to serve—with said person being an insider spokeperson.

Michael

Well, Rand's statement is a literary and philosophical allusion and that's not the way Xray's mind works. You can't do anything with it unless you dress it out and she merely says you can't dress it out. You can if you read the rest of what Rand wrote about this and put it into that context. What you really did is throw her a bone and then explained her chewing on it for which you actually supplied no evidence instead of critiquing her analysis.

--Brant

[Selene]

suppose one is being attacked, the situation is by no means like in gangster movies or westerns, for in real life one often does not have the time to react fast enough to pull the gun, let alone the presence of mind to fire off an effective shot. Also, in a fight, a physically stronger assailant could easily wrestle the gun from one's hands.

You are lecturing a United States Army Special Forces combat veteran about firearms and fighting.

--Brant

I was not lecturing you about firearms, but pointing out that not every "layperson" carrying a gun may be able to handle them as intended in an emergency.

I will attempt it later.

Edited

Adam

Edited August 19, 2009 by Selene

[Xray]

NO! Deleted by ME!

--Brant

Pure wishful thinking on your part, Brant!

[Xray]

(To MSK)

There is also the question of what "the mind knowing its own nature" means and what that leads to. I rather suspect that what you would say on that subject, and what I would say on that subject, are rather different. (Hint: it relates to why I can not accept any form of egoism, rational or otherwise.) But that's a rather different topic.

Jeffrey,

your phrase "I cannot accept any form of egoism" caught my attention.

Are you an advocate of "altruism" then?

Edited August 19, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Well, Rand's statement is a literary and philosophical allusion...

Brant,

Allusion to what?

I don't buy this comment of yours.

"Man is an end in himself" means exactly what it says in plain English. I don't see one big word in that, either, so it is simple enough for any child to understand.

Hell, I even said in a neighboring post, "One lives to live and that's as far as it goes on the deepest level." What needs deciphering here from literary or philosophical analysis?

It's ugly when you take the covers off the BS and say "master-slave," ain't it? But that's what it is, irrespective of how one's mind works.

If you want to know what kind of ideas made the Third Reich possible, look underneath the words at the need for masters and slaves that such denial of normative objectivity demands.

Michael

[Xray]

......

Selene - I can't see any of those "posted images". Is it my PC or did you deliberately leave blank spaces there?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

You cannot post images from your email. They won't show up.

Michael

[Selene]

......

Selene - I can't see any of those "posted images". Is it my PC or did you deliberately leave blank spaces there?

Unfortunately. it was the stupidity of me not following the uploading that Michael explained to me the other day,

My blunder. I will attempt to correct it.

You may want to have a state appointed therapist handy as there are a lot of big bad weapons in the photos! lol

Adam

[Selene]

Edited August 19, 2009 by Selene

[Xray]

xray:

Thank you for answering my prior post.

Now, if you would be so kind, what political structure would be supported by a citizenry that accepted that all values are subjective?

Yes, it's time for final jeopardy.

Adam

Selene:

The social structure derived from the concept, subjective value, is explained in my post # 468. As presented therein, it's to each his own as long as initiation of force and coercion is left out of interpersonal relationships.

There is no one-size-fits-all ideology. All is left up to personal preference as long as imposing is excluded. Some individuals may choose a communal set up with shared resources and goods in whatever manner they choose. Other individuals may choose voting on this or that within the confines of non initiation of force and non coercion. Some may choose to draw straws, whatever. Freedom to make such non-imposing choices is the essence of the concept, subjective value. The very idea of laying out a list of living directives for all is an anathema to the concept of individualism and freedom.

Every question rests upon an antecedent conclusion ("Do you still have your holiday apartment in Italy?")

In the absence of the antecedent conclusion established as fact, or an agreement on said antecedent conclusion, any dependent question is invalid. There is no such established fact, nor any agreement on this issue.

Your question appears to ask for an all-encompassing "plan for man" which is a denial of subjective value and a social structure derived therefrom. I have the impression that your question implicitly requests (assumes) that I abandon the concept, subjective value, and agree with your implied notion of one political system for all. Of course, I do not.

This brings the question full circle. ".... what political structure would be supported by a citizenry...." which denies subjective value? How does a one-size-fit-all "political structure" operate without the initiation of force and/or coercion?

Edited August 26, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

xray:

You should stop being so suspicious of people's motives in asking a question.

In the first society you referenced, group 1 is communal, group 2 is the voting town and group three agrees to the drawing straws town.

Does private property exist in each of these towns?

Adam

[Xray]

Re standards:

There are no "objective standards." No one ever discovered a standard. Some subjectively created standards such as standards of weight and measures referenced to the common, objective physical realm are very useful.

However, the notion of an "objective standard of values" directly contradicts the reality of individual subjective choice; hence,there are as many "standards of value" as there are individuals. Standards of weights and measure deal with what is, not valuation, or disvaluation of what is.

Edited August 20, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

(Michael) "Here is a thought for you. Xray and sympathizers consider the statement, "man is an end in himself," to be a value judgment, thus subjective (to them)."

I consider it a statement that makes no sense.

I have learned that anyone who preaches a master-slave relationship as the essence of life is either not interested in being the slave, or has a master in mind for everyone to serve—with said person being an insider spokeperson.

Michael

Well, Rand's statement is a literary and philosophical allusion and that's not the way Xray's mind works. You can't do anything with it unless you dress it out and she merely says you can't dress it out. You can if you read the rest of what Rand wrote about this and put it into that context. What you really did is throw her a bone and then explained her chewing on it for which you actually supplied no evidence instead of critiquing her analysis.

--Brant

Brant,

I found Michael's # 804 master/slave answer actually unconnected to what I had written in my # 797 post. I can't make head or tail of his answer here and too would have preferred Michael addressing my analysis instead.

Edited August 19, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Xray,

I only know how to analyze something using standards.

Since you refuse to admit that objective standards exist (especially for measuring values), we have no common language. I do not speak Xray-speak.

The master-slave thing is simple enough. If a person is not an end in himself, in other words, if a person does not own himself, that person is someone else's property to dispose of (or God's). Those are the only two alternatives. Reality does not provide a third alternative.

Master is the owner and slave is the owned. That's not rocket-science. Even Xray-speak should not be beyond understanding that point.

The USA's Founding Fathers considered man as in end in himself inside of Nature. That was their fudge (i.e., the view that God created Nature, then backed off and allowed natural laws to be the expression of His will.) Man is actually an end in himself with respect to the universe. But still, even within Nature confines, the radical idea of a human being owning himself led to the USA.

On the other hand, in classical German philosophy (what I know of it), man is always the end of something or someone else, whether it be a "will," a moral imperative, a God, a society, etc. Without an objective standard like individual life, someone like Hitler comes along and says, "I am the standard." People have no other standard to oppose that with except for empty words that don't really work in reality (in other words, subjective standards), so they accept that one. At least Hitler can bash skulls. A moral imperative or some formless "will" does nothing. They have been indoctrinated to be the property of something other than themselves. And off they go...

EDIT: You asked earlier, "What is 'the standard?' How did this 'standard' come into existence?"

Then you gave a bunch of people and God as possible sources. The standard (the one we are talking about) actually came into existence with the emergence of conditional existence, i.e., life. No one "attributes" that. You can only recognize it or not, just like with any fact. Your life simply is or you die. There is no other "attribution" (what a term for fact!) possible.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Well, Rand's statement is a literary and philosophical allusion...

Brant,

Allusion to what?

--to the moral philosophy of Objectivism

--to man's proper place in society

--to human freedom

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Not a simple statement of fact?

There's a premise here that needs checking...

"Man is an end in himself" is more fundamental than all three things you stated. Philosophy, society and freedom spring from factual premises like that. The premise is not merely an allusion to the results.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Not a simple statement of fact?

There's a premise here that needs checking...

"Man is an end in himself" is more fundamental than all three things you stated. Philosophy, society and freedom spring from factual premises like that. The premise is not merely an allusion to the results.

Michael

It's a simple staement of fact because we already know what she means. Xray refuses to know because it doesn't fit her slice and dice critique technique. Or worse, she knows. She has stated effectively that she doesn't even value freedom subjectively. "Freedom of mind" is by itself hog-wash.

And that it's more fundamental doesn't mean what I said was wrong. You can run the chain of reasoning up or down, backward or forward.

--Brant

[Selene]

x-ray:

I ran across this while looking up some of Ayn's statements on art and aesthetics for another thread, as I have always thought she was nuts in her explanation of art.

What is your critique, if any, of the following. It is written by a person who is a French Libertarian,* so it has an underlying gestalt, just wanted the reader to be aware of it.

"Before examining Rand's view of aesthetics, however, let us begin with her epistemology. Rand believed that her philosophy was a fully integrated system, that all its elements -- aesthetics, ethics, epistemology -- were interrelated, and Rand's epistemology is the foundation of her aesthetics.

In her epistemology, Rand draws our attention to the fact that we humans obtain our information about reality through a process of integration. We integrate from a lower level of awareness to a higher one: from senses into percepts and from percepts into concepts. The very first information we glean about our world comes to us through our senses: an object is either hot or cold, light or dark, big or small. At this level, we function not unlike animals. But where animals can go no further, humans can. Humans can identify sensory data as objects and can put a name on them, i.e., humans can form percepts (these green and tall objects out there are trees, and "tree" is a percept), and then we can progress by integrating two or more single isolated percepts into a concept (these trees form a forest). Even if I cannot see the forest (for instance, it may extend for miles and I am not in a helicopter), I still know by process of abstraction that all these trees form something that I, and all of us, can identify as a forest.

Now, to make things a bit more complex, Rand differentiates between two types of concepts: one type states the facts of reality: a forest, an orchestra... These are cognitive abstractions. They tell us what is. The other type deals with what ought (or ought not) to be. These are normative abstractions, for instance 'beauty', 'truth', 'good', 'evil'. This is precisely what ethics is concerned with. Normative concepts are what we use to guide us in our actions and to set ourselves goals.

All of these concepts are integrated into metaphysical value judgements. True value judgements maintain unity and coherence in a man's life. Rand poetically labels this inner personal coherence 'A theme song of a person's life.'"

Adam

* http://libertarianal...n-the-guardian/

[Xray]

xray:

You should stop being so suspicious of people's motives in asking a question.

In the first society you referenced, group 1 is communal, group 2 is the voting town and group three agrees to the drawing straws town.

Does private property exist in each of these towns?

Adam

Selene:

Where does any suspicion come in? I was merely poiting out that your question appeared to ask for an all-encompassing "plan for man" which is a denial of subjective value and a social structure derived therefrom. I have the impression that your question implicitly assumes that I abandon the concept, subjective value, and agree with your implied notion of one political system for all. This not the case.

"In the first society you referenced, group 1 is communal, group 2 is the voting town and group three agrees to the drawing straws town."

First, I did not say "is" in any of the instances. I did not presume to make choices for others. I merely pointed out some options without inserting my personal preference or the assuming preferences of anyone else.

Does private property exist in each of these towns?"

Who said anything about towns? You are asking for a yes or no answer in contradiction of the position stated my post. You're asking me to lay out a

"plan for man", which, as already stated, is not done in the concept, subjective value. As stated and emphasized, how some, or all, deal with the

issue of property of any other issue is a matter of personal choice as long as initiation of force and/or coercion is excluded. Ergo, the question of private property, or communal property has already been answered. It's a matter of non imposing choice and non imposing actions.

You either leave others to their non imposing choices, or you don't. Freedom and a "plan for man" are mutually exclusive. Do you have a "plan for man?" If so, on what rationale? Do you have something against the exclusion of initiation of force and/or coercion?

Edited August 20, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

x-ray:

I ran across this while looking up some of Ayn's statements on art and aesthetics for another thread, as I have always thought she was nuts in her explanation of art.

Selene:

Rand's view on art is just another example of her thinking that one "ought to" value what she subjectively preferred.

One of the artists dismissed by her as being "essentially without value" was Rembrandt.

Bach, Haendel, Mozart, Beethoven were dismissed too - because of their "psychological and pseudo-epistemological errors in their tastes". Impressive collection of geniuses I must say who did not pass the entrance exam into Objectvism.

"Rand's Razor" relentlessly removed them from the hall of fame and put them in the hall of 'hall of blame' instead.

(I'll address the article quoted in your # 822 post later).

Edited August 19, 2009 by Xray

[ginny]

"First, I did not say "is" in any of the instances"

Oh god, X-Ray is now debating the word "is." Ugly pictures of Bill Clinton and a spotted dress come to mind. This is getting sooo bad.

Ginny