Karl

Most of us are indoctrinated with those beliefs. We were never given any proof that they were true and discouraged from questioning. You have already begun :-) I broadly follow Ayn Rands objectivist philosophy but only after studying the Trivium and Misian Austrian economics-but that doesn't mean that is the right course of action for you. It would be the height of hypocrisy if I became yet another person that was unwittingly grasping your mental chains. Dorothy L Sayer had good advice here. "For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain" And John Seeley Brown " it's never enough just to tell someone about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes the power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way" I found that a course in Aristotlian logic by Leonard peikoff-it is a series of recorded lectures with a workbook downloadable for about $20 from his website-was very useful. I did 8 years of meditation, self inquiry and various other eastern practices. I trained as an NLP practitioner and coach with basic hypnotic trance induction, part of which was to go through the therapy myself. If these things appeal then you are free to try them, but you must make your own mind about their efficacy in producing permanent happiness. Remember this one thing 'Anything that offers temporary happiness isn't real'.

Little side swipe there eh Brian. You stay on those sidelines. Good boy.

Well it isn't against the law.

I get that and Inagree you are correct in the sense of being tuned into that terminology. I'm not keen to use mathematical language as it is an abstract. We didn't all grow up with Euclidean geometry either. we know certain words. Neither independent or identity are unknown, or difficult to define, but we, as a human race, have yet to get a more accurate system for communicating ideas. If we say 'tree' then we know to some extent what type of thing we are discussing. Do we really need a long list of specific mathematical terms that describes every facet of every type of tree from a million different shoe trees, family trees, biological trees ? The whole point of concepts is the way we can compress something into a word which encapsulates the concept. That said, a lot of what you said about holophtastic language went right over my head. I'm not a detail kind of person. I don't make watches, but could construct a sun dial. You would need to use this language yourself and you don't-which kind of days it all.

I think you will discover your philosophy predates mine. Objectivism is built on Aristotlian philosophy, but it's most definitely 20th century in regard to its progression. Your 'attempting to reach me' is the equivalent of a preacher with a Bible threatening hell and damnation if I reject your beliefs, so, no thanks on that, but by all means jump in. As for 'doing myself favours'. 'Big, nay, huge raspberry'. Get a life Brian and quit acting like a Guru. Not sure where I tried to use NLP on you-naughty if I did, but then I cannot claim I'm anything other than mortal.

In that sense absolutely. I meant independent identity not independence from other things or people. If I believed in being a hermit I'm not doing a very good job of it :-)

Pray enlighten me. Are you suggesting a more precise conceptual language for philosophic discussion than we currently use ? I did specifically state 'independent identity' and not a less precise 'independence' that is open to generalisation-though in the context of the discussion it should have been relatively obvious (but that I admit is only my assumption that my communication is sufficiently-perhaps it is not).

.....Ditto..... Close thread, make tea. I thought you wanted an open discussion and not confirmation ?

Let me repeat 'independent identity'-before this becomes a mass of equivocations about causality and sophism.

Self is self. A thing is a thing. Another person is a a thing also. Both are objective independent identities, in reality, existent and we are conscious of both self and others.

Not at all, why think like that ? I don't understand his argument, or him mine, and in order that we can continue we need a platform, a base from which we can agree on, otherwise we could be talking Apples vs Oranges.

There in lies the heart of the conflict. Maybe this is more semantics or definitions ? Subjective-meaning your understanding is influenced by your tastes and feeling. Does that apply to the laws of gravity, the laws of motion, thermodynamics, chemistry, biology, physics or your need for food and air for instance. Are all these things influenced by your tastes and feelings ?

But you said existence existed before you were born, or exists now. Then how do you know that to be true ? You have to begin with something. The bottom line. An axiomatic truth. I'm not asking you to prove existence (it can't be done, it's an axiom). So, if you begin with 'existence exists' then you know because you are conscious of existence. Consciousness is the axiomatic corollary to existence. One implies the other. If you insist that existence exists is only a subjective thought, then you are saying that it is consciousness that is primary. That is in conflict with your claim that existence existed before you existed. I'm not trying to prove you are wrong, I'm pointing out the conflict in your argument. When I ask you to account for the conflict you are unable to do so. You say it Buddhist which is ironic really. Do you, or do you not accept existence and consciousness as an axiomatic objective truths-as irreducible primaries ? Let's at least see if we can get agreement on that before jumping to the conclusion that it's 'screwed up' philosophy as you put it.

Eating nuts. Raw almonds at present .....or are they ?

I don't know anything about you MH accept you are an ex soldier of maturing years that lives as free a life as he can. However, you have presented an argument so I'm not mind reading, or guessing what your philosophy is. It's abundantly clear to me, even if it isn't to you. Don't mistake your lack of comprehension as being mine. If you present me with an argument 2+2=whatever whimsical number enters ones mind, then I have it figured. If you say 2+2=whatever the Dao, God, or the spaghetti monster says it does, then I get that too. And you do question 'everything' and that has become your mantra. How do you know existence exists ? How do you know that existence existed before you were born ? How can you know anything if you think it's subjective and therefore must be continually questioned ? It's the same as saying 'i can't know anything for certain'. If you say that you can know some things for certain then how can they be subjective ? Only if you believe everything is subjective. It's like you have a big blackboard on which you have written a long argument to prove proof. You work all the way down to the bottom and conclude that proof must be proven, so then you erase the argument and begin again. You cannot have proof of proof. It is pointless to become an extremist in questioning everything because by 'questioning everything' you are actually saying that nothing can be known, everything is subjective. The objectivist philosophy rejects materialism. Materialism is deterministic and subjectivist. As peikoff says 'as if the mind was just a series of glandular squirtings'.

You realise this is just another version of subjectivism ? That you actually accept what you described as BS, but you just don't happen to like that particular version because it didn't make sense to you. So you found one that you preferred. If you doubt you can know, then by inference you can't know. You have closed out the question, by begging the question. This is because you asked 'why?' Before 'what?' The why is in consciousness, the what is existence. In other words you have created a loop in which it is actually the primacy of consciousness that powers your philosophy, but you have chosen not to see it that way. You believe existence exists but you don't believe you can know it. Therefore you do not believe what you claim to believe. You cannot prove to yourself beyond all doubt that existence is primary, because you don't believe you have the faculty to know. That is pure faith and not reason. Yours is the hardest of prisons, the highest and thickest of all walls.

If you capable of proving it, then you can prove it. If you believe everything is subjective then you have denied you ever had, or ever will have that faculty. You are therefore an agnostic at best-Unable to prove and unable to believe you can prove.

I can answer from an objectivist perspective. If you live your life as a sacrificial human being that believes in duty and obligation to his fellow man, purely for its own sake, then conflict will follow, and with it, a deep unhappiness. For it is not 'that which men think of you' which troubles you. It's that you behave in a way which is contrary to independent existence. Of course it's conditioned by a philosophy which believes in self sacrifice to a greater good. That a man should be his brothers keeper. That pride is evil and humility is good. That selfishness is bad and altruism is good. That man must be punished for his inherent evilness, that he cannot know reality and therefore must bow before a greater authority-God, State, or Society. If one begins life with these beliefs, then one will inevitably let his mind-and therefore his body-be enslaved to others. First change the philosophy from the ground up based on axioms. Accept responsibility for yourself first and that your mind is your only tool of survival and happiness. If you allow it to be enslaved to other men you will live in perpetual fear of their wrath and criticism. This is what paralyses. That you live your life by their determination and not your own is the quintessential essence of slavery. However, you only enslaved yourself. The choice remains with you to be free, but only you can choose that.

We are ourselves. We have free will and the capacity to reason. Some things are absolutes and some things we can choose. We have all got the same faculties of sense and consciousness. We live in an existent world of concretes and can know them directly. We develop rules to deal with this concrete world in order that we can take actions to improve or hold our current condition relating to our happiness/survival. Our happiness is best achieved by mutual, voluntary cooperation. In order that we do that, then those we cooperate with must share our values to a lesser or greater extent. It is no good to pair an honest man with a thief, only a thief voluntary cooperates effectively with another thief.

Its an objective concept that is perceived even if it is erroneous. You cannot possibly hold a subjective concept otherwise it wouldn't be a concept at all. You would have rejected it. Either it is something or it isn't. There is no doubt about it. First you must know a rope and a snake in order that you could mistake one for the other. That rope and snake exist as objective concepts. You do not hold that a woman is subjectively beautiful, she is beautiful to you and you must hold certain concepts relating to beauty first before you could identify a beautiful woman. I struggled with this for several months it isn't easy. The last remnants of subjective philosophy are hard to wash away. We are, individually, the most significant thing in the totality of the universe. We have free will and we have the faculty of reasoning.

I'm giving you the subjectivist view not mine which is firmly objectivist. Do you disagree that there are certain things such as symmetry and proportion which are commonly regarded as beautiful ? That perhaps you prefer a contrasting sky than one which is dull and monotone, that a field of emerald grass looks prettier than one of uniform Tarmac ?

Even that is objective. Beauty has specifics and it is an objective truth that you find the tree beautiful and everyone else agrees that you find the tree beautiful. From that I deny subjectivity completely. The subjective we are talking about here is philosophical. Existence itself is in doubt and not simply the aesthetics of personal choice. Reality cannot be known as it is in flux so no identity is possible. Consciousness is the generator of reality so it's all illusion.

I did attempt to lay out the differences between the subjective and the objective philosophical view points.

If you can explain where you think reification occurred ? I will probably just repeat myself here, so if this doesn't answer your question it would help to narrow down the specific area. Existence and consciousness are axiomatic corollaries. Without consciousness existence cannot be perceived, without existence there can be nothing for consciousness to be conscious of. This is why existence defines identity and consciousness defines identification. It's worth pointing out that this does not mean the concepts generated from the perceptions are necessarily free of error. Reason and logic are required to get as close as possible to the truth, sometimes our reasoning is faulty, but this doesn't mean our perceptions are wrong, it's our understanding that is faulty.

Obviously I don't believe the BS :-) Subjectivists don't accept the premise that we can know existence and believe that identity is an illusion of consciousness. There are so many forms of this that it can masquerade as everything from religion to science. Empiricism and nominalism are two forms of subjectivism that aren't immediately apparent. In politics it is facism and socialism, both forms of collectivism which deny the individual indent its for a greater good -state, society or King it doesn't really matter.