New Developments re Harriman Induction book

[PDS]

As a legal matter, it is generally not a good idea to voluntarily come into possession of communications, documents, or recordings that the recipient is aware of as being confidential and/or protected by contract.

Even if the underlying recording was legally made--many states require only that one participant to the conversation consent to the recording (i.e., the person doing the recording)--an awareness of an underlying confidentiality agreement might expose the recipient to the claim of having tortuously interfered with contract and/or business expectancies (here, the contract between OAC student Jones and the ARI/OAC outfit). This is a common law tort in just about every jurisdiction in the USA. By way of analogy, if Starbuckle comes into possession of the trade secrets of his competitor, and is aware of the confidentiality of those secrets (because of contractual protections or otherwise), he can be exposed legally by maintaining possession of those trade secrets. Food for thought. I am nobody's lawyer on this forum, yada, yada, yada, so take it for what its worth.

As a moral matter, this seems pretty close to a slam dunk: just because an OAC student violates the property rights of the ARI/OAC, this doesn't give others a moral license to do so as well, even if the curious would-be listener is once removed from the underlying property rights violation.

Edited November 10, 2010 by PDS

[kiaer.ts]

As a legal matter, it is generally not a good idea to voluntarily come into possession of communications, documents, or recordings that the recipient is aware of as being confidential and/or protected by contract.

Even if the underlying recording was legally made--many states require only that one participant to the conversation consent to the recording (i.e., the person doing the recording)--an awareness of an underlying confidentiality agreement might expose the recipient to the claim of having tortuously interfered with contract and/or business expectancies (here, the contract between OAC student Jones and the ARI/OAC outfit). This is a common law tort in just about every jurisdiction in the USA. By way of analogy, if Starbuckle comes into possession of the trade secrets of his competitor, and is aware of the confidentiality of those secrets (because of contractual protections or otherwise), he can be exposed legally by maintaining possession of those trade secrets. Food for thought. I am nobody's lawyer on this forum, yada, yada, yada, so take it for what its worth.

As a moral matter, this seems pretty close to a slam dunk: just because an OAC student violates the property rights of the ARI/OAC, this doesn't give others a moral license to do so as well, even if the curious would-be listener is once removed from the underlying property rights violation.

Well, yes, you can sue for damages over anything, so let them. But in what would they be claiming property here? What of value is being sold or offered, and in what way does sharing this information diminish its value? This seems far, far less like stealing the secret formula to Coca Cola and more like listening in on the church advising its bishops how to deflect questions about child abuse. Adam says above that it is a federal crime to "endeavor to knowingly disclose illegally intercepted information." I am not sure of his source, and am not sure how "information" is defined here. The issue of wiretap is easily dealt with by publishing a transcription, rather than a recording, is it not?

How does this gibe with the press revealing the content of Newt Gingrich's "overheard" phone conversations? If this were some course with some intellectual content being copyrighted and offered for sale, that would be one thing. But this is an ad hoc and ex cathedra religious argument as to why true believers should consent to the defamation of John McCaskey. How, for instance, would the courts look at the publication of a transcript of a meeting of Scientologists held to discuss a strategy for ostracizing the ex wives of Tom Cruise?

I reject any arguments based on the defamers' supposed moral rights here. We're not talking about secret information. We're talking about claims on the part of defamers to hide behind supposed rights to privacy and intentional strategies to damage known and yet to be identified Enemies of Objectivism.

Edited November 10, 2010 by Ted Keer

[PDS]

As a legal matter, it is generally not a good idea to voluntarily come into possession of communications, documents, or recordings that the recipient is aware of as being confidential and/or protected by contract.

Even if the underlying recording was legally made--many states require only that one participant to the conversation consent to the recording (i.e., the person doing the recording)--an awareness of an underlying confidentiality agreement might expose the recipient to the claim of having tortuously interfered with contract and/or business expectancies (here, the contract between OAC student Jones and the ARI/OAC outfit). This is a common law tort in just about every jurisdiction in the USA. By way of analogy, if Starbuckle comes into possession of the trade secrets of his competitor, and is aware of the confidentiality of those secrets (because of contractual protections or otherwise), he can be exposed legally by maintaining possession of those trade secrets. Food for thought. I am nobody's lawyer on this forum, yada, yada, yada, so take it for what its worth.

As a moral matter, this seems pretty close to a slam dunk: just because an OAC student violates the property rights of the ARI/OAC, this doesn't give others a moral license to do so as well, even if the curious would-be listener is once removed from the underlying property rights violation.

Well, yes, you can sue for damages over anything, so let them. But in what would they be claiming property here? What of value is being sold or offered, and in what way does sharing this information diminish its value? This seems far, far less like stealing the secret formula to Coca Cola and more like listening in on the church advising its bishops how to deflect questions about child abuse. Adam says above that it is a federal crime to "endeavor to knowingly disclose illegally intercepted information." I am not sure of his source, and am not sure how "information" is defined here. The issue of wiretap is easily dealt with by publishing a transcription, rather than a recording, is it not?

How does this gibe with the press revealing the content of Newt Gingrich's "overheard" phone conversations? If this were some course with some intellectual content being copyrighted and offered for sale, that would be one thing. But this is an ad hoc and ex cathedra religious argument as to why true believers should consent to the defamation of John McCaskey. How, for instance, would the courts look at the publication of a transcript of a meeting of Scientologists held to discuss a strategy for ostracizing the ex wives of Tom Cruise?

I reject any arguments based on the defamers' supposed moral rights here. We're not talking about secret information. We're talking about claims on the part of defamers to hide behind supposed rights to privacy and intentional strategies to damage known and yet to be identified Enemies of Objectivism.

Who has been defamed? How do we know there has been a defamation?

To me, this is as simple as "two wrongs don't make a right." If property rights matter, I see no reason why they don't matter here. Nobody is on a desert island, in a plane crash in the Andes, or in any other setting where the ethics of emergencies and concomitant disregard of property rights might apply.

As for your other comments, and being mindful that it is highly annoying to others when lawyers opine on topics in settings such as this (the Argument from Authority is always seemingly one notch removed from the conversation) I would just say: proceed at your own risk.

[kiaer.ts]

As a legal matter, it is generally not a good idea to voluntarily come into possession of communications, documents, or recordings that the recipient is aware of as being confidential and/or protected by contract.

Even if the underlying recording was legally made--many states require only that one participant to the conversation consent to the recording (i.e., the person doing the recording)--an awareness of an underlying confidentiality agreement might expose the recipient to the claim of having tortuously interfered with contract and/or business expectancies (here, the contract between OAC student Jones and the ARI/OAC outfit). This is a common law tort in just about every jurisdiction in the USA. By way of analogy, if Starbuckle comes into possession of the trade secrets of his competitor, and is aware of the confidentiality of those secrets (because of contractual protections or otherwise), he can be exposed legally by maintaining possession of those trade secrets. Food for thought. I am nobody's lawyer on this forum, yada, yada, yada, so take it for what its worth.

As a moral matter, this seems pretty close to a slam dunk: just because an OAC student violates the property rights of the ARI/OAC, this doesn't give others a moral license to do so as well, even if the curious would-be listener is once removed from the underlying property rights violation.

Well, yes, you can sue for damages over anything, so let them. But in what would they be claiming property here? What of value is being sold or offered, and in what way does sharing this information diminish its value? This seems far, far less like stealing the secret formula to Coca Cola and more like listening in on the church advising its bishops how to deflect questions about child abuse. Adam says above that it is a federal crime to "endeavor to knowingly disclose illegally intercepted information." I am not sure of his source, and am not sure how "information" is defined here. The issue of wiretap is easily dealt with by publishing a transcription, rather than a recording, is it not?

How does this gibe with the press revealing the content of Newt Gingrich's "overheard" phone conversations? If this were some course with some intellectual content being copyrighted and offered for sale, that would be one thing. But this is an ad hoc and ex cathedra religious argument as to why true believers should consent to the defamation of John McCaskey. How, for instance, would the courts look at the publication of a transcript of a meeting of Scientologists held to discuss a strategy for ostracizing the ex wives of Tom Cruise?

I reject any arguments based on the defamers' supposed moral rights here. We're not talking about secret information. We're talking about claims on the part of defamers to hide behind supposed rights to privacy and intentional strategies to damage known and yet to be identified Enemies of Objectivism.

Who has been defamed? How do we know there has been a defamation?

To me, this is as simple as "two wrongs don't make a right." If property rights matter, I see no reason why they don't matter here. Nobody is on a desert island, in a plane crash in the Andes, or in any other setting where the ethics of emergencies and concomitant disregard of property rights might apply.

As for your other comments, and being mindful that it is highly annoying to others when lawyers opine on topics in settings such as this (the Argument from Authority is always seemingly one notch removed from the conversation) I would just say: proceed at your own risk.

I am not a lawyer.

Laws are not out of context absolutes. If I call up your friend and slander you, I cannot claim as a property-right defense that the conversation was private. It becomes inherently non-private when it turns to making claims about a third party that will result in or are meant to result in real damages.

You say that two wrongs do not make a right. That is like saying force never solves anything. What is relevant here is who started this. With his moral denunciation and outright threats - expel him for being evil or lose my money - Peikoff has certainly defamed McCaskey, assuming you take a certain brand of Objectivism seriously, and has damaged several people, including, now, Craig Biddle.

This whole affair amounts to a conspiracy to defame and impair. Not video piracy or the theft of chattel. I can imagine that it may be illegal, depending on the jurisdiction, to distribute a recording of the conversation. There is certainly no clear cut law making revealing the substance of that conversation illegal. If there were, you can be sure that threat would have been made as boldly as the FBI and Interpol warnings on a DVD rental.

[Starbuckle]

Is it just me, or does Peikoff's "explanation" of the context for his ill treatment of McCasky (posted five days ago?) add absolutely nothing of substance to the discussion?

http://www.peikoff.com/peikoff-vs-an-ari-board-member/

A couple points that occurred to me:

1) Peikoff says that "others" have tried to turn this into a moral issue. What? So, his peremptory bad treatment of McCasky--or how any persons treat others or behave generally--has nothing to do in itself with morality? So much for that intimate connection of ALL "facts" with "values."

2) He admits he has a personal prejudice against McCasky; he dislikes him.

3) He admits that because of his personal prejudice, he never attempted to hash out any intellectual disagreements with his and Harriman's theses.

4) He offers no explanation whatever of what is so "damaging to Objectivism" in McCaskey's unanswered, undiscussed criticisms.

5) He says "God help Objectivism" if people with forums and podcasts are among his critics on this issue that "others" have turned into a moral one. It's a slam at Hsheih.

6) He pretends that letting McCaskey release the memo was his only available option as a public explanation of why he was forcing McCaskey off the ARI board. (Given the weakness of the supplementary "explanation," maybe he's right.)

7) He says McCaskey is a "braggart".... McCaskey? Don't know him. But all these Or-Ob muckamucks seem prone to arrogant prickitudinousness. Leonard, physician, heal thys...

Etc.

That seems like more than a couple. I meant seven. Seven points occurred to me.

Edited November 11, 2010 by Starbuckle

[Reidy]

"Magazine founders" would seem to be a swipe at Tracinski, though he didn't actually found his magazine, just the email newsletter.

[Starbuckle]

Reidy wrote: "'Magazine founders' would seem to be a swipe at Tracinski, though he didn't actually found his magazine, just the email newsletter."

No, he means Craig Biddle, publisher of Objective Standard; at his personal web site, Biddle made a statement objecting to Peikoff's treatment of McCaskey.

[Robert Campbell]

If Leonard Peikoff had had any sense remaining, he would have refrained from any further public comment on John McCaskey's departure from the ARI Board.

All he's doing is digging himself in deeper:

Ultimately, someone has to decide who is qualified to hold such positions [i.e., on the ARI Board] and where the line is to be drawn. An organization devoted to spreading an ideology is not compatible with "freedom" for its leadership to contradict or undermine that ideology. In theory. the best judge of such contradiction would be the person(s) , if he exists, who best understands and upholds the ideology, as evidenced objectively by his lifelong intellectual consistency, philosophic attainments, and practical results. In practice, the best judge would be the person, if he is still alive, who founded the organization and defined its purpose, in this case as a step in carrying out a mandate given him by Ayn Rand. On both counts, only one individual qualifies: me. (I have retired from books, classes, and official position, but not from perception and evaluation.)

McCaskey is free to advocate in any medium whatever he wishes and even to regard himself as an Objectivist, which indeed he may in some form be, for all I know; I have no interest in finding out. My interest is not to ferret out disagreements with Ayn Rand, but to strip them of the imprimatur of the Institute, and thus to diminish the practical consequences of such viewpoints. In other words, my role in this connection is to remove from the existential center of the movement any influence which I evaluate as harmful in practice to the spread of Objectivism. To sneer in a public setting at an epochal Objectivist book qualifies, in my judgment, as harm.

If he ever finishes that DIM volume, criticisms of it will be equated with criticisms of Rand herself.

Robert Campbell

[kiaer.ts]

If Leonard Peikoff had had any sense remaining, he would have refrained from any further public comment on John McCaskey's departure from the ARI Board.

All he's doing is digging himself in deeper:

Ultimately, someone has to decide who is qualified to hold such positions [i.e., on the ARI Board] and where the line is to be drawn. An organization devoted to spreading an ideology is not compatible with "freedom" for its leadership to contradict or undermine that ideology. In theory. the best judge of such contradiction would be the person(s) , if he exists, who best understands and upholds the ideology, as evidenced objectively by his lifelong intellectual consistency, philosophic attainments, and practical results. In practice, the best judge would be the person, if he is still alive, who founded the organization and defined its purpose, in this case as a step in carrying out a mandate given him by Ayn Rand. On both counts, only one individual qualifies: me. (I have retired from books, classes, and official position, but not from perception and evaluation.)

McCaskey is free to advocate in any medium whatever he wishes and even to regard himself as an Objectivist, which indeed he may in some form be, for all I know; I have no interest in finding out. My interest is not to ferret out disagreements with Ayn Rand, but to strip them of the imprimatur of the Institute, and thus to diminish the practical consequences of such viewpoints. In other words, my role in this connection is to remove from the existential center of the movement any influence which I evaluate as harmful in practice to the spread of Objectivism. To sneer in a public setting at an epochal Objectivist book qualifies, in my judgment, as harm.

If he ever finishes that DIM volume, criticisms of it will be equated with criticisms of Rand herself.

Robert Campbell

Maybe, since I think it is foolish to expect consistency of him at this point. But he did say emphatically that DIM was a hypothesis and was not part of Objectivism.

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] My interest is not to ferret out disagreements with Ayn Rand, but to strip them of the imprimatur of the Institute, and thus to diminish the practical consequences of such viewpoints. In other words, my role in this connection is to remove from the existential center of the movement any influence which I evaluate as harmful in practice to the spread of Objectivism. To sneer in a public setting at an epochal Objectivist book qualifies, in my judgment, as harm.

Oh, my GOD!!! Sorry, "God" is the only word big enough with something terrible. So disagreement with Leonard Peikoff's supposed (but not actual) extension of Rand's theory of concepts is disagreement with Rand. I was afraid he was going to do that. What an awful spot he puts ARIans in. What qualifies as enormous harm, in my judgment, is that book.

Desparingly,

Ellen

PS: Larry hasn't started to read it yet, and I haven't said anything "priming" him. He's been enjoying 100 Voices as dinner reading and is almost finished with that. Tomorrow I'll give him the copy of The Logical Leap which I bought for him, so he can write notes all over the margins of a different copy from my copy. I'm anticipating the explosions I'm going to start hearing as he reads the book. I noticed a couple places where I think Harriman picked something up from remarks of Larry's about a late-'90s course of Harriman's, remarks published in The Navigator. Harriman altered the way he presented Newton's "Hypotheses non fingo." Also he has a paragraph about the enormous success in practical pay-off of quantum theory which I think is very close to Larry's remarks on that subject -- I'd have to dig out the interview to be sure. But those two slight improvements are so overweighed by the detriments. And then there's Leonard's "foundational" theory........

[Rich Engle]

f he ever finishes that DIM volume, criticisms of it will be equated with criticisms of Rand herself.

I guess that's a great position for a writer to be in, if you come by it (or, in this case, create it). That is, a great position to be in if you could benefit from it and still be able to look at yourself in the mirror every day. You know, there's that whole annoying, stand-on-your-own-merits self-respect problem. For some people.

I don't like standing in shadows. Mushrooms grow best in dark places, not people.

rde

Edited November 11, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Rich Engle]

I came upon this quote from Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" and it made this situation come to mind (italics mine):

Superstar politicians and super-star quarterbacks have the same kind of delicate egos, and people who live on that level grow accustomed to very thin, rarified air. They have trouble breathing in the lower altitudes; and if they can't breathe right, they can't function.

[Xray]

In her book, Jennifer Burns mentions the "the nearly universal consensus among literary critics that she [AR] was a bad writer" (JB, Goddess of the Market, p. 2)

So in your opinion, all these literary critics understand "nothing at all" about 'good' writing?

Most literary critics, like most people, are incompetent at what they do. Is this actually news to you? You did say you were born before 1990, didn't you? I'm beginning to doubt it.

JR

It is indeed news to me that "most people are incompetent at what they do". How young or old I am plays no role here - it is actually a question of the attitude displayed toward one's fellow men, and it looks like yours differs considerably from mine here.

You did say you were born before 1990, didn't you? I'm beginning to doubt it.

Hmm, it looks like you you are somewhat prone to doubting.

Psst - don't tell anyone yet, but rumor has it that another groundbreaking work by the world-famous Ludwig von Drake (yes, THE Ludwig von Drake from Duckburg!!) is to be published soon, dealing in-depth with the question plaguing the doubter so much: "But is A really A?"

The book's title: Is what walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck really a duck? (Duckville University Press).

From von Drake's earlier works, we know that he does not duck away from tackling those hot duckosophical irons.

Drake's duckistemological take on whether a 'sitting duck' is a valid duck-cept or not unleashed what later came to be known as the infamous "duck dispute", during which the counterparties accused each other of being "duckosophical quacks", "duckological lame ducks" etc., and not even the cold duck served during the breaks could cool them one bit.

Things came to a head when one of Drake's fiercest opponents, Ducktor Quackoff - after Drake had called Quackoff's interpretation of induck-tion a "dead duck" - abruptly declined to continue the debate with von Drake. Before Quackoff rushed out of the coop, outraged and wildy flapping his wings, he quacked at Drake: "We'll see who quacks last here!!"

Are you now going to doubt again, Jeff, not believing that this is a satire? ;)

Edited November 11, 2010 by Xray

[Xray]

If people approached mate choosing in a rational way, my guess is mankind would be extinct by now. ;)

So, your efforts correcting this problem are motivated by environmental extremism?

--Brant

man qua woman qua woman qua man

I merely pointed out what IS. The premise that nature forbids the irrational is wrong.

Albert Ellis commented on another wrong Objectivist assumption:

Ellis [as quoted in L. A Rollins, The Myth of Natural Rights, p. 14] writes:

"Because man is supposedly a rational being, Miss Rand assumes that he cannot function succesfully under coercion. Actually, the more rational he is the more sucessfully he can function under almost any conditons, including coercion." (A. Ellis)

Edited November 11, 2010 by Xray

[Starbuckle]

Xray: "The premise that nature forbids the irrational is wrong."

What did Rand mean by it? The same thing as she meant by asserting that contradictions are impossible in nature. Not that people can't be contradictory in their thinking, but that you're not going to find any feathers behaving like boulders. She meant that the irrational is not going to work. Nature permits you to irrationally insist that 2+2=5--it's rational to recognize that people can be irrational--but nature doesn't permit you to act on that claim and get the same result you would get had you functioned as if 2+2=4. Another example: It's possible for people to misread Rand and then knock down a straw man, but nature forbids them from actually succeeding in refuting Rand by this kind of sloppiness or dishonesty.

As for Ellis, he too responds to something other than what was said and meant. Rand is talking about how coercion stops you from following the conclusions of your rational judgment, conclusions that you would have been able to follow in the absence of that coercion; and in some cases paralyzes your ability to think. Of course, to the extent that persons are not completely prevented from acting at all on their own behalf, they can often find ways around, e.g., various regulatory controls on the economy. But they are still stopped from taking what in their own considered view is the best course of action that they would have been able to take had they not been forced to expend time and energy on finding second-best alternatives. When coercion is utter and blanketing, as it is in a Nazi concentration camp, a person's capacity to reason may be of vanishingly small help, since he may have no opportunity whatever to exercise it. Judging from accounts of survivors like Victor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning, luck and personal strength are the kinds of factors that one has to depend on in such brutal circumstances. The scope for deliberatively improving one's fate is very narrow or nil. One's only real choice is to cling to the will to live or not.

Edited November 12, 2010 by Starbuckle

[BaalChatzaf]

^

|

Contradictions are trivial to assert. For example: I am and I am not sitting here typing away.

I just asserted a contradiction.

What cannot be asserted is a contradiction that is a true propositon.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Jonathan]

PS: Larry hasn't started to read it yet, and I haven't said anything "priming" him. He's been enjoying 100 Voices as dinner reading and is almost finished with that. Tomorrow I'll give him the copy of The Logical Leap which I bought for him, so he can write notes all over the margins of a different copy from my copy. I'm anticipating the explosions I'm going to start hearing as he reads the book.

Do you own or have access to a video camera that you could place on a tripod and record Larry reading the book? If you catch him spontaneously combusting, and maybe burning the chair and a portion of the room he's in, it would probably go viral on youtube.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Xray is burnishing her contradictions.

--Brant

this man just wants to have fun!

[Xray]

Xray: "The premise that nature forbids the irrational is wrong."

What did Rand mean by it? The same thing as she meant by asserting that contradictions are impossible in nature. Not that people can't be contradictory in their thinking, but that you're not going to find any feathers behaving like boulders. She meant that the irrational is not going to work. Nature permits you to irrationally insist that 2+2=5--it's rational to recognize that people can be irrational--but nature doesn't permit you to act on that claim and get the same result you would get had you functioned as if 2+2=4. Another example: It's possible for people to misread Rand and then knock down a straw man, but nature forbids them from actually succeeding in refuting Rand by this kind of sloppiness or dishonesty.

Nature "forbids" nothing in that field, since "nature" as such is completely indifferent to philosophical disputes. ;)

Also, humans are part of nature as well, and have survived for millenia with a world view based on errors and countless contradictions.

When coercion is utter and blanketing, as it is in a Nazi concentration camp, a person's capacity to reason may be of vanishingly small help, since he may have no opportunity whatever to exercise it. Judging from accounts of survivors like Victor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning, luck and personal strength are the kinds of factors that one has to depend on in such brutal circumstances. The scope for deliberatively improving one's fate is very narrow or nil. One's only real choice is to cling to the will to live or not.

I agree with you here. But did Rand only have these extreme cases of coercion in mind?

As for Ellis, he too responds to something other than what was said and meant. Rand is talking about how coercion stops you from following the conclusions of your rational judgment, conclusions that you would have been able to follow in the absence of that coercion; and in some cases paralyzes your ability to think.

Of course, to the extent that persons are not completely prevented from acting at all on their own behalf, they can often find ways around, e.g., various regulatory controls on the economy. But they are still stopped from taking what in their own considered view is the best course of action that they would have been able to take had they not been forced to expend time and energy on finding second-best alternatives.

A question for clarification: Would you call every law "coercive" as well?

Also, there is the problem that rejecting A does not automatically establish its contrary as functioning better.

In other words: if it is claimed that any form of coercion stops humans from following the conclusion of their rational judgment, one cannot draw the inference that in the absence of coercion, humans would act more rationally.

Xray is burnishing her contradictions.

I'm not burnishing anything. Instead, I'm using a razor: Rollins's razor. For what L. A. Rollins accomplishes in a book of a mere 50 pages is amazing: he debunks the idea of 'natural rights' as a myth by checking the premises of its advocates.

My thanks to George H. Smith for mentioning this book, in which Rollins also comments on Smith's idea of a "rational morality", which Rollins correctly identifies as "neither an absolute nor a universal morality, but being merely a personal morality." (The Myth of Natural Rights, p. 10)

I would even go one step further and say that what G.H. Smith calls "rational morality" is no morality at all - it is more about evaluating and choosing suitable means conducive to achieving a goal ("happiness", offered by Smith here as "a hypothetical goal").

The philosophical problem in offering "happiness" as a goal is obvious: For what makes person X happy can make person Y unhappy, which can lead to conflict in many cases.

--Brant

this man just wants to have fun!

Your ability to see the comical side of things lightens up those discussions here considerably.

Edited November 12, 2010 by Xray

[Starbuckle]

Xray: "Nature 'forbids' nothing in that field, since 'nature' as such is completely indifferent to philosophical disputes. Also, humans are part of nature as well, and have survived for millenia with a world view based on errors and countless contradictions. [etc.]"

You're being dishonest. If you have a substantive objection, make it.

[Xray]

Xray: "Nature 'forbids' nothing in that field, since 'nature' as such is completely indifferent to philosophical disputes. Also, humans are part of nature as well, and have survived for millenia with a world view based on errors and countless contradictions. [etc.]"

You're being dishonest.

What please is "dishonest" in the statements I made?

If you have a substantive objection, make it.

In my # 894 post, I asked you two substantive questions to which you did not reply.

1) Do you think Rand [when speaking of coercion] only had these extreme cases in mind? [like e. g. coercion in concentration camps]

1) Would you call every law "coercive" as well?

I get the impression of evasion on your part. Since a simple "yes" or "no" would have sufficed, I draw the inference (from your not-answering) that a "yes" (or "no") reply to either question would put you in a difficult position, which you wanted to avoid.

Nature permits you to irrationally insist that 2+2=5--it's rational to recognize that people can be irrational--but nature doesn't permit you to act on that claim and get the same result you would get had you functioned as if 2+2=4.

But it is also possible to act on irrational claims and get the same result. For example, a believer who acts kindly toward a dog because he believes in the irrational religious dogma claiming he will be reborn as a dog if he doesn't, will reach the same result with the dog as an atheist member of an animal welfare organization acting kinldy toward the dog.

Not that people can't be contradictory in their thinking, but that you're not going to find any feathers behaving like boulders.

Correct.

But while it is not in the nature of pigs that they can fly, it is in the nature of "man" to e. g. violently interfere with the freedom of others. Just watch kids playing in the sandbox and you will get the picture of how strong that impulse is.

And as we all know, this impulse to violently interfere is by no means restricted to children.

Goodson and Longinotti stated: [as quoted in L. A. Rollins The Myth of Natural Rights, p. 28]

John A. Goodson and David M. Longinotti, "Those 'Natural' Rights Aren't", Reason, September 1977, p. 53:

"The point is that an organism's nature is what is, or can be. It is not within an elephant's nature to fly - it is within man's nature to steal."

Therefore "non-interference" is the result of a learning process having impulse control as a goal. But the impulse as such to violently interfere is as much part of human nature as is cooperation with others, due to the fact of us humans being mammals living in groups. Just watch chimpanzees in the zoo for a while and you will see attempts to 'violenty interfere' together with actions of cooperation like e. g. 'grooming'.

We can't survive without the group, which is why so-called 'altruistic acts' like serving others first are part of human nature too.

So when Jane offers to help her colleague Sue with a task, Rand's claim that Jane has to "value" Sue in order to act 'morally correct' merely illustrates Rand's arbitrary idea of a "moral" act, just as Kant's idea of a "moral" act (which is the exact opposite of Rand's) is entirely arbitrary as well.

Imo Rand's and Kant's idea of morality are a classic case of one fallacy opposing another.

For Jane neither has to "value" Sue (the Randian criterion necessary for qualifying Jane's helping Sue as a "moral" act) - nor does Jane have to regard it as her "duty" to help Sue (even if she should detest her) (the Kantian criterion necessary for qualifying Jane's helping Sue as a "moral" act).

Jane has her reasons for helping Sue, that one can be certain of. For her action is evidence that she in this situation (for whatevever reason), values helping over not helping and in every action we take, without exception this is the operating principle at work.

As to whether the action taken meets a philosoper's moral code - since every moral philosopher has his/her own code, the claim of "objective morality" has no philosophical leg to stand on anyway.

Humans always decide on what they believe to be the best solutionin a specific situation.

Which is why my philosophical position is that there exists no such thing as an "ultimate value", for what is deemed to be of superior value always depends on the situation the valuer find himself/herself in.

I'll give you an example: if "man's life" is claimed to be the "ultimate value", then people's 'living will' decisions to have their lives ended under certain medical cirumstances clearly contradicts a "life as the ultimate value" position.

Edited November 13, 2010 by Xray

[9thdoctor]

Oh to be a fly-on-the wall for today's conference call!

It seems it happened last week, and there was dirty work afoot. Meet the newest unperson:

http://blog.shealevy.com/2010/11/07/my-treatment-in-last-tuesdays-oac-call/

A couple of the comments suggest that Comrade Sonia has also been unpersoned.

It's quite literally like the game of telephone. I bet a recording will emerge, and become available through backchannels.

Oh to be a fly-on-the wall for today's conference call!

Apparently someone recorded it and is willing to provide an mp3 file of it:

link

It seems this didn't work out so well for the blogger who posted the link.

http://blog.shealevy.com/2010/11/15/update-on-the-oac-phone-call-post/

Did anyone hear it? He's taken down the link, but that doesn't mean that the file isn't still available. It looks like an anonymous host.

[9thdoctor]

Fresh grist for the mill, or will it be gristle to get stuck in your teeth?

I have been accused of presenting an “unconventional” history of science.

...

I am proud to be guilty as charged.

http://www.thelogicalleap.com/

This may be a totally lame observation, but have you noticed the similarity between The Logical Leap and Theological Creep?

Edited November 19, 2010 by Ninth Doctor

[Starbuckle]

Ninth says: "This may be a totally lame observation, but have you noticed the similarity between The Logical Leap and Theological Creep?"

I had not noticed. Good God, that's lame. Weak. It is lame and it is weak.

[9thdoctor]

I had not noticed. Good God, that's lame. Weak. It is lame and it is weak.

Next time I'm at the store I'll be sure to stock up on Cheesy Poofs.