Karl

No, Kant did the opposite, but then you are effectively viewing the philosophy through a mirror so I can see why you would reach that conclusion. The axioms aren't abstract unless you view them from the position of the primacy of consciousness, then everything becomes a floating abstraction to which you glue a datum. I'm familiar with that argument, but its the stolen concept fallacy, which, I know you won't like either :-)

long winded but looks OK

You experience a dream. The reality is the experience of a dream. How do you know it's a dream ? Where did the concept of a dream arise ? The distinction was made that it wasn't reality. The dream is the real experience, but the content is not.

Pretty unfair Brian. I'm not a 'devout believer' it's just common sense. That was always the overriding impression- like discovering hidden Christmas presents, bang goes the fantasy. Actually I dispensed with the 'reversal' and happily posted that was the case. I admit when I have it wrong. Neither do I say I cannot be in error, I try and do my best to avoid it.

No, that's what you said. I just replied that it wouldn't be real, I didn't say you could experience it. Perception is conscious awareness. Consciousness must be conscious of something. Existence, consciousness and Identity are corollary axioms - A&P mentions that in his post. So, it doesn't make sense to talk about an experience disconnected from reality, you have got yourself into a loop of your own making. This is because you hold to the primacy of consciousness premise. It's exactly as I explained to Ralis initially. I don't need an anti-duality premise because I never had a duality premise-both these premise arise as a condition of accepting the primacy of consciousness. It's where the equation dumps out an anomaly and so I needs an anti-anomaly to correct it. Objectivism is compact, it doesn't have these anomalies, it integrates both mind/ body or spirit/ body or body/soul and the anomaly disappears.

I read through your post and it seemed to reflect objectivism pretty well to the extent I understood it, I can't say exactly because some of the terms you use are strange to me.

Yes, the version of capitalism that actually isn't capitalism. Hence I have to use laissez faire to prefix it, not that it helps :-/ Communism is of course totally impossible on so many levels it should even be considered, but that's Kant, Hegel and Marx plying their philosophical dead ends.

I worry about you Brian. You are using circular reasoning on yourself. If you didn't percieve it, then you didn't experience it.

Then it isn't real.

Emotions and feelings are not seperate to the concepts of them. We could not know we were scared, happy, excited, sad, or amused until we had developed those concepts which are congnitive and related directly to our perceptions of reality. As I have explained, there is no such thing as duality, so to suggest that there is a further anti-concept is ridiculous to me. Its like believing in Santa Clause then saying that there is an anti-santa clause concept. Im not sure what you mean by 'abandoning'. If Im writing on an emotive subject, particularly in fiction the I use my own feelings to create colourful wording. However, in philosophical discussions colourful wording gets in the way. We cannot express anything that isnt from the self-and the self as a contained, intergrated whole. If I gave you that impression, then that is incorrect. Real is real, it is what it is, X is X. What we perceive is real, as an automatic perception, how we interpret what we see conceptually is not an automatic process. Therefore concepts can be erronous, but perceptions are always real. Truth is fact. Facts are in the perception of reality and not its conception. We test what we think, by looking to see if its true. All abstracts need grounding to reality. As answered previously. If we experience something that has no basis in reality, then we are going to be dealing with floating abstractions. We cant carry out a conversation related to fact, without relating it reality. So, I need to know exactly what you mean and vica verca. We need to define the terms. Emotions as opposed to sensations are not automatic. They are not perceptual, they are programmed by us to reflect our value choice. We feel suffering when we lose a value and joy when we gain one. We mix sensation with emotion so these are what we loosely describe as feelings. If you were to develop a high level of introspection you can relate the emotion directly to the value.

No,hardly, as Im sure you know by now I dont support religions, races, nor any form of collectivism. Your last sentence finally explains it all. You are an anti-capitalist tribalist.

@sionnach. It's not 'wrong' to hold that opinion - I specifically made the subject white, male and heterosexual. I don't consider it wrong for you to hold the opinion that you hate Jews (to hold that opinion, not that I agree with the opinion), but you aren't sufficiently honest to make that admission, instead you are working below the surface to try an rationalise why you should hold that opinion and others should agree with it. Tribalism is exactly what it is, look at your reaction. if I had used Jews in the example, then you wouldn't have commented.

Depends on what we are trying to communicate. If I want to be creative then I speak differently, we call it expression. However, expression is really about the values we hold, the things which we fear and the things we love. To speak philosophically requires us to give up self expression and to think rationally. It means we work hard to define, differentiate and integrate concepts with regard to our direct perceptions. Darkness can be expressed as malevolence, ignorance, depression, fear etc, but this isn't defining it. We are born with the faculties of emotion and cognition. Eventually we come to conceptualise our sensations into emotional categories, but really it comes down to pleasure or pain, it is we who connect these to cognition. A sunset gives us pleasure and we refer to it as a beautiful sunset, then, if we communicate our feelings about the sunset we shift into expressive language.

LOL I like poetry, music and art RC. However we are talking philosophically not poetically. We can't live by feelings and emotions.

That was good RC. A bit stream of consciousness perhaps but it addressed many of the points. We shoukd make the distinction between tribalism (I'm deliberately avoiding the contentious racism tag which is only one way traffic) and discrimination. It is not tribalism to say that one hates whites, heterosexuals, or men. It becomes tribalism when you seek to do something about it. This doesn't apply, or shouldn't apply to your own property which is effectively an extension of the person -which includes private businesses. It's only in public spaces and in the light of political force that tribalism takes on its darker side. Forcing shop owners to accept heterosexual people, or forcing white people off a public bridge is tribalism. In a restaurant which does not distinguish between the colour of people's skin it is fine for a black person to ask for a table away from the white honkies, but it isn't fine for him to force the white people out of their seats because he wants segregation. It is fine to discriminate against white teens wearing hoodies and sporting tatoos and prison trousers, as long as they don't aggress then you have no right to impede their progress in a public thoroughfare, but you can, or should be able to ban them from your private business. There is nothing wrong with having a prejudice and speaking up about it-if your experience has led to the belief that certain skin colours, clothing wearers or groups are more liable to aggress, then there is no shame in saying so. Sionnach cannot be prevented from saying he dislikes, or distrust Jews, but neither will he be allowed to get away with implying that Jews should be disliked or mistrusted. We should speak freely, but we cannot be immune from the effects of doing so. We should ask ourselves in any refutation, if we are simply parroting political expediency, or communicating rationally. No one is racist because they don't like a particular group, but once they begin to cast indirect slurs, or curry hatred amongst others, then it looks very like tribalism to me.

@ sionnach-remember that the Ottoman Empire is really only the Eastern Roman Empire and slavery was also well established in Europe under Roman occupation. Slavery has been a feature of all empires.

I suppose I should have talked about tribalism rather than racism, but that's the common wording used today. Al religious ideologies are ultimately death cults of one kind or another. Some are not overtly violent, but the philosophies certainly contain the seeds of violence-even the most gentle such as Buddhism. Islam is the politicised collectivist ideological wing of Muslim religion. One grows out of the other. It's funny how no one refers to the relatively recent incident of Christian militia carrying out massacres in the Middle East. Christians don't want to think that their religion is anything other than peaceful and loving, which is exactly how Muslims see their religion. These less extremist Mystics are dumbfounded and appalled by the fundamentalists, they seek to distance themselves from the violent extremes without realising that they are supporting it. Christians can't condemn Muslims without condemning themselves, so they also play into the game by supporting 'peaceful' Islam. No one wants to say what needs saying- religion is evil.

When there are so many other problems in the world, the Clinton campaign focuses on a guy kissing a woman-that's what it amounts to. The sum total of everything they could find on Trump is that he made some lewd comments in private, but even then, note that he specifically said "they LET you do that when your a big star" and not that he actually did it. I find Trump boorish, a bit 'up himself' but not a mysogenist in any sense, not narcissistic, not an abuser of women. He's just one of those Alpha males that makes baboon noises, beats his chest and likes females around him. Shock horror -Trump is a red blooded heterosexual male that knows what he wants. He kisses women, he doesn't eat babies, or rape women, he hasn't chained up his wife and family, he doesn't beat his wife, or prevent her having her own life and career. He doesn't appear to be into nepotism, he builds things, he makes his own money. I would have lunch with Trump but not Clinton. I think they would both be interesting and charming, but I would never be able to get the thought out of my head that one day she might just decide to have me liquidated.

It's no wonder we get racists emerging when this kind of thing is going on. I've been reading in ZH how the university of Berkley have had some students forcing white students to walk through a stream instead of using a bridge. Then we have the vile racist Sad Can, the London Mayor spreading his propaganda in the USA - blaming all immigration problems on the host country for 'not doing enough to help immigrants'. What has education to do with religious worship ? This is more of the socialistic, integration bullshit that inevitably leads to race riots and bloodshed. The quickest way to inflame a population is to force them to accept other people's ideas.

...off topic, but isn't it also true that women have used their sexuality to get what they want from men for millennia ? Short skirts, low tops, padded bras and make up are not for the benefit of their girl friends. This woman he apparently 'kissed' was actually a porn star, but, that not withstanding, the whole 'shall I shall I not kiss her' thing has been an ever present part of the mating ritual. I can't quite imagine how it would work if you had to ask permission to kiss a woman - maybe get a signed contract stating how long the kiss will last, what pressure will be applied, where the hands should be, if the tongue is to be used etc etc. Who the hell can live with that ? It's this kind of thing that will result in men deciding that it's just too hazardous. Once that spontaneity is lost and there is a risk you will end up in court, well, frankly, why bother ? I can't imagine a porn star actress is shy about promoting herself - especially with a well connected wealthy guy like Trump. Perhaps I'm wrong, maybe I'm stereotyping ?

Does that include defining duality ? Otherwise you are defining a negative, an anti-concept is defining what something isn't. Trying to describe a rose by it's 'not being other flowers' is a grim kind of effort.

Darkness is a descriptive term we use to describe the inability to use our eyes to register certain frequencies and intensities of energy. It is a relative term we use to describe the lack of, or a low level of visible light.

LOL you know nothing about historical writing if you believe that. The point is to tell a story based on the evidence that exists. What you are suggesting is not to add any opinion and just list the facts. That's rather like being presented with a blank canvas with various amounts of paints on a pallet and expect people to draw the correct conclusion about the painting from which the paints were extracted. Past tense in regard to the native Indians. Second question requires context. However Rand was anti-mystic, anti-initiation of force, pro- individual, pro-defence. I can point you to her recorded lecture on tribalism if you want to understand it better. There is so much misinformation about Rand that I prefer not to add to it. Yesterday I came across a piece which said Rand had gone insane and comitted suicide........ Hard not to laugh.

I was in contact with him for a short while after he quit. He wasn't enjoying the to and fro of forum discussions.

A very specific piece of revisionist history which is currently rife on the Internet. If you wish to write a revisionist history, then do that, but you aren't going to do that by posting provocative subjects in a forum. I doubt there is anyone here who can shed any objective historical light on the subject. All you are going to get is exactly what you discovered - most of us don't want to pick at that particular scab and see your attempts to raise the subject as having an anti-semetic edge.