Karl

Funny old Pope.

Speak for yourself.

No. Because it's you-and only because it's you- I would require payment in cash for the exchange.

Prefer it to what ? You are either human or you are not. Its not a choice like life and death, between a white or blue shirt, or ice cream and fig rolls. You can choose to fully value your life or you can choose not to and cease trying to survive.

That would be your logic. Im suggesting a way to resolve your concerns without further suffering for everyone else. My logic is that my life is a value and therefore anyone that protects that vale is also a value, anyone who does not is a direct threat. As you suggested that the earth would be better off without humans-thus without me-then you are such a threat.

You should do the right thing then. I have a rope in my garage I can lend to, go to it.

They always try and sell the sport. The salesman cant quite get it when I say I dont watch any. "yes but you get to see the big footy matches" "I dont watch Sport" "we cover the wimbledon matches" "I dont watch sport" "the boxing" "I" "The Ashes" "dont" "Most of the olympics with special previews" "watch" "and all of the darts and snooker" "sports" "You get all of that at a vey low special price" "fuck off"

No need for Astral flights for me.

For some reason I'm now trying to visualise where you live. I have in mind a Clint Eastwood character in his older years, with a fairly remote, but well kept homestead. Dirt driveway. Picket fence with a nice garden and a long porch. Utility vehicle pickup parked next to the house. Garage full of carefully arranged tools with everything in its place. Ride on lawn mowe maybe. Old trail bike and some weights that don't see much use.

There isn't much point in the piece of paper they give you, or having to turn out a dissertation unless that floats your boat, but you shouldn't ever stop active learning....in my opinion of course ;-)

They aren't emotional opposites, they have just integrated in a very different way. Their experiences are also unique to them. Say that you were shown a spider by your mother and she let it run up and down her hand to show you it was nice and harmless, contrast that with the mother who runs shrieking and hysterically from the room leaving you alone with the spider. In the first case spiders are not to be feared, in the second they are the stuff of nightmares. I had the second experience :-) No one reads Kant, they just say they have. When someone says they are reading Kant, I will always reply 'neither am I'. I'm retired too-but early. Learned more in four years than my entire life and enjoyed every second of it. When I left work I applied to do a PPE degree (politics, philosophy and economics) which is the de rigeur qualification for political life. My wife pointed out my fundamental hatred of organised academic study, which I agreed with-she knows me very well. What's weird is that I then proceeded, completely unintentionally, to study all of those subjects.

'In my next life' I presume you meant it the way I'm reading it. In which case it was very funny.

Opposite way around sorta. Animals aren't moral. Morality is an abstract concept which is a product of a reasoning mind. Animals are not reasoning entities, they cannot conceptualise. If we look around we cannot see 'morals' or 'emotions' anywhere, they are a pure abstraction.

You have to place yourself where you deserve. I don't place all humans anywhere particularly. That they are capable does not mean they will choose to. In that respect they can be as irrational and dangerous as jungle creatures and must be treated as such. Emotions are learned, but sensations are part of the human faculty as is cognition. We are born having both faculties then we build a conceptual hierarchy. This is why we can choose to ignore our emotions. We can be frightened and still stand on the battlefield facing bullets and certain death. An animal cannot, the sensation danger is directly transferred into the instinct to fight or run, it cannot choose to die. Kant says this is a sense of duty in man. You really should start listening to Peikoffs lectures whilst you are gardening, building stuff and driving that pick up about :-)

I would say you were stating things objectively because to say you did so subjectively would be to trample into subjectivist territory. That does not mean your statement is free of error, but it's an objective statement of truth as far as you can know it. That's why, when people say 'in my opinion' or 'that's my view on it' this is a redundancy and is for politeness only. It is of course your opinion because why would you offer someone's else's without explicitly stating it ? . Being rational is good, rationalising is bad. The reason is that is the start of an error, it is a deliberate evasion of reality. Like the butterfly effect it creates new and more numerous irrationalities. These can be horrendously destructive like the two world wars and the atrocities carried out within them. You can rationalise a drink problem only so far as your liver gives out. You can rationalise drinking and driving as a necessity until you crash the car. Best to be as logical as possible and not go evading or rationalising error. A tree is a tree. ;-) You would make an excellent objectivist if you studied the philosophy. You could be the next Howard Roark :-)

I would probably go for the other thing, Samsung etc make. Can't remember the OS....robot on something. Windows has become one big back door to anyone who cares to step inside. It might as well be the Government OS

Not conceptual emotion, they are instinctive automatic creatures. It is the humans that are misinterpreting the actions. That's the problem with perception going to conception. Use logic to see the reality. This is what we have been talking about. It is why I said you are not an objectivist. An animal feels pleasure, pain etc, but it does not relate them to a conceptual awareness of an emotion because they are incapable of reason. It just does what feels good or moves away from what doesn't. It's why there cannot ever be animal rights, it's a contradiction. If animals are capable of emotion then we have to reevaluate our entire understanding of animals as rational creatures. Yet, like you see the tree, you know that it is a tree.

You are objective, not an objectivist, you don't have a fully integrated philosophy. You have a raw, direct practicality. A thing is a thing and to survive you know that you had better be sure that you know it from a logical point of view. I was never like that MH, I was always a dreamer. To me, a thing was only a thing to me, but it was different for everyone. That was the viewpoint. Thing is, being intrincisist, subjectivist or objectivist doesn't make a lot of difference to how we go about in the world. An intrincisist is never so intrincisist that he will await God putting food on his plate and neither will the subjectivist conjure food from his consciousness-but, both will rationalise their actions. One will say it was the will of God that produced the food, by Gods grace it came to him and for that he will say a prayer. The other will say that his consciousness demanded the food and that it's only the limitations of the illusion which prevent instantaneous gratification. Only the objectivist knows the truth. :-)

They are. You can name an emotion and that is a conceptual effort, otherwise it would be an unconnected sensation that at most would tell you hunger, mating, fight, fear, but not as specific concepts but as immediate instinctive reactions in the same way that switching a light switch illuminates a light-for an animal that's how it is. For a human the sensation has become entwined with abstract concepts. An animal cannot feel love or hate, because these are abstract conceptions. To find the source of an emotion, as opposed to just a sensation, to discover the thought process that is behind it, is a proper tour de force of effort. Most people do not have the ability to do it, their minds will wander off like bored puppies. It requires a diligence and an immense effort and discipline. First the mind must be trained to do what most people believe they do naturally-to think. Most have never thought in that way, instead they are using gathered concepts and memory. The times when thought has been active is learning a new skill, but then, any lapse of concentration is impossible, as it is often dangerous, it is also a loci of focus. Pure thought has no loci. There is no focus point.

Good summation. Very elequent. I see it as a subjectivists view of logic. If I morph into a subjectivist I can see why it works. The issue becomes one of a sliding definition because for the subjectivist, logic is purely a projection of consciousness. As an objectivist it is clear to me what that definition is, but that isn't the definition a subjectivist would give it. For an objectivist the primacy of existence reins supreme, for a subjectivist it is the primacy of consciousness. Ultimately the resolution lies in the battle between objectivism and subjectivism ( there is a similar battle between intrincisism and objectivism as there is between intrincisism and subjectivism). This is a very ancient philosophical battle ground and I'm certainly no Kant nor Aristotle. I like MHs workmanlike simplicity. He doesn't faff with reality and acts in the simple sense of an animal first then adds in the logic. That's a perfect fit for man as the rational animal. A subjectivist could not establish that definition with any certainty. Man, says the subjectivist, is a projection of consciousness and his rationality is predicated on that projection. Logic is just a part of a projection that makes sense of the projection. The world is only as real as the subjectivists consciousness makes it. Logic as a tool is useless in a subjective universe in which existence is predicated on consciousness. For the subjectivist an objectivist must appear like a flat earther that points to the ground and announces 'flat'. Logic looks like an attempt to underpin that flatness through consistent argument. Thing is, I can do both, because I spent several years as a hardline subjectivist, so I can understand. What I am unable to do is to argue the point. I'm objectivist and I can't see how a subjectivist doesn't understand it, except that I didn't either and I see nothing in particular that persuaded me. It was more like a switch in my mind that I wasn't aware of until on the other side of it. It's very easy to be a subjectivist, it's simple to make the arguments, a whole science and politic has grown up hinged on the philosophy so it is entirely self reinforcing. To question it makes one appear some form of strange Luddite.

It's an iPad 2 using safari browser. It's a bug. The last software download has been a disaster and the Internet is full of the people having the same issue. I have had enough of Apple. I won't be buying any more of their products.

Not quite. An object existed with a seperate identity and certain qualities of which your senses and consciousness perceived.. Each quality of the tree existed as a seperate concept which were also a result of perceptual experience such as colour, height, smell, identity, emotional response, uses, and the word tree. The tree then became another abstract quantity integrated with many other abstract qualities. The tree as a perceptual object in consciousness you percieve directly as I do. This how an animal sees it, but an animal does not conceive a tree as we do. It's like a dog is in a 2D world. A dog cannot abstract. It cannot think the tree is beautiful, green, good to climb. It has no kind of language to begin to describe it. For the dog it just is and nothing more. The constructivist thinks reality is subtlety different for everyone, the objectivist says reality is the same for everyone, but their abstract concepts vary to some extent. The constructivist is dabbling with the primacy of consciousness. The objectivist with the primacy of existence; existence exists A is A, a thing is a thing, something is something and not something else. Logic for the constructivist becomes subjective. Objectivism would refute that completely as an attempt to use a stolen concept. Refuting this properly means a long inquiry into concept formation. A strong subjectivist is a very Wiley opponent, usually very bright and good at manipulation- unsurprising if your philosophy is based on subjectivism. I'm likely being pedantic MH, it's just trying to get the terminology correct with respect to your own argument, which pretty much is objectivist anyway.

Unfortunately Apple no longer allows me to click links which is fairly frustrating. I have to copy down the link by pencil and then take it up to the office PC.....Apple you fucks.

What you see as extremism I see as men's rights. Those right can't be compromised otherwise they are no longer rights. This makes compromise evil. It is the action of being deliberately immoral and to rationalise it which lets evil grow. Compromise of rights is not in anyone's interests. The founding Fathers of the American understood this clearly. This is why America became a republic until it was hijacked it and subverted to a democracy. Notice here that I'm saying 'rights' cannot be compromised of they aren't rights anymore. Instead they are permissions. Some states allow long leashes, others are tyrannies. In a democracy it is the mob who holds power over the individual. It means that compromise is like a grease which oils the wheels ever more towards far fewer permissions and the end of any pretense of rights.

You don't have an 8" dobsonian telescope. There seems to be an awful lot of empty sky. Can't beat a dark sky site mind you just to lay back and stare at the vastness of it.