Karl

That suggests, if I'm following correctly that the apple would slow down as it approached the centre ? if it was, hypothetically speaking, a thing which contracted and expanded as it fell, then would it be contracting as it fell deeper, then stretch at the null point ? I was thinking soap bubbles are blown from the inside and surface tension holds them together, whereas a larger planetary mass is formed presumably from a hot gas that gradually cools into a solid. Which makes me wonder about hot gas giants but I don't want to get side tracked. I look at the planets, stars, but never really thought much beyond their form and position. Saturn is a beautiful thing to see through a telescope. Stunning.

We saw something similar to this in the UK. Crowds supposedly at different locations, for different candidates, but someone noticed that it was the same crowd just rearranged with a few accessory additions to clothing. It was easy to see that it was the same crowd at slightly different locations with different candidates substituted. Same with the killings in France. A big group of politicians looking like they were interacting with a crowd, but it was an empty street. Just this week Jeremy Corbyn was discovered to have pretended that he had to squat against the wall of a train carriage because of over crowding, yet footage emerged to show that he walked past loads of empty, unreserved seats. Then there are these 'tragic' children shown in the war zones. I look at most of it and I see weirdness. It all looks fake. I no longer believe anything I see on television or in the newspapers. We are being gamed.

Going too far now. I don't understand how a particle can have no mass, or substitute attractive/repulsive action.

I'm OK with it. Keep going.

If it's vibrating there must be an 'it' to vibrate ?

I know some things, but my conclusions aren't fixed at this point. I can grasp the idea that we have all these particles with forces. What are these forces exactly ? Presumably they exert there own fields, but they bond is far stronger than the Apple and the Earth. Why is that ? Why doesn't the apple just squash up into a homogenous conglomerate ? I'm struggling to understand the last paragraph. Do you mean the particles above its decent are now working to pull the apple back up. Why wouldn't the apple go sideways and stick to the wall ? A hollow planet ? I don't think I can get my head around something hollow which....Oh wait, I see, the apple would get attracted by all sides of the shell and rest at the null point inside the shell ? Have I got that right ? LOL that's quite funny, I was wondering how the hell the shell would stop itself being attracted to itself and thefore just collapse, but it wouldn't if it was of the same thickness and density, presumably it would have to be perfectly spherical in every sense, but that's not possible in reality with a massive sphere - or is it ?

It's not the product is the habitisation of flash cards. On which was written 'Apple'. Im going to have to think on this a bit, you have given me a lot of information with this and your last post. I assume a massless object is a contradiction in terms ?

I haven't any thoughts on the subject. It's a scientific question. It isn't a gotcha. Bloody hell dude you are suspicious of what is a straightforward request to understand at a level I'm comfortable with. I can ask questions and this has nothing at all to do with philosophy. You stay on your own side of the fence. ;-) The planet clearly is an object, so is the Apple. There is an acceleration we perceive it, there is an object with a nature we know it. I don't know what the nature of the object is I can only see causality in operation, the Apple accelerates in a direction, potentially towards the centre of the mass ? I have no way to confirm the centre of mass, or the objects trajectory, it hits the ground and that's all I see. It falls towards rather than away from, I see that. I've done the experiments that show the acceleration at 9.81 m/s/s. I know that it requires a very high velocity to escape the gravity well, much higher than the velocity of that Apple falling-that makes sense in a force equation way. Are there gravity wells in space without objects in them, or in reverse, objects with no gravity ? I don't know the answer, which is why I'm asking. I prefer an answer to a puzzle. I never liked puzzles much or those that design them.

should be the same, the acceleration would be greater of course, the maximum velocity close to the speed of light ?

This is a pleasant respite from the philosophy. :-) I await Brian's input as this is effectively the field thread I promised to create, but brought down to terms the layman can grasp :-)

Yes I get it in 3 D. It is effectively trying to orbit and moving in a spiral towards the centre. Like a decaying AC waveform but looking along the wave itself it is a spiral until it becomes a single point/straight line between the peak amplitudes.

Interesting. You think the velocity would stay constant right up to the centre and inertia would carry it beyond the centre- conservation of momentum in other words. If you look at the definition of a 'field' it says there are different numbers at every different point. In other words the field is 'strongest' at the centre. I only say that because that is implied in the definition, not necessarily because I agree with it. I quite like your conservation of momentum theory, I don't know if that's what would occur in a field of differing numbers though.

I suggest to you that they aren't.

Of course we can observe causality. The problem objectivism observes is that we observe causality with relationship to the nature and identity of objects. You mentioned the billiard balls, there is a tendency to remove the balls from the table and replace them with invisible arrows labelled causality. Thus the actual nature of objects acting and reacting becomes fuzzy. Physics taught us the abstraction. However there are real snooker balls, with individual identities and natures that are reacting, we cannot truly see beyond the angular momentum and vectors that we calculate, but we certainly see the action/ reaction. Just as in the bent stick we are seeing the balls and their actions perceptually accurately, it is our conception of the abstractions that leads us to reverse our understanding. Yes Kant was trying to overcome the materialists and restore the spiritualists to prominence. This has been a philosophical war that has raged for centuries now. There is no difference between the two mystic philosophies really. Sure they argue cat and dog, but they essentially refute the identity of consciousness. The war climaxed when both philosophies reached the same conclusion, but the method was essentially one of atheism vs religion. As I said, Kant killed reason and Hegel/Descartes killed God. The two philosophies have left man teetering on the edge of a new dark age. Kant told us there is no knowing reality, Hegel told us that the new reality was the human collective. We are told reality is whatever we think it is, that pragmatism is the name of the game, that might makes right, that we should simply seek pleasure and discard the values, we should do whatever we want, believe whatever we want and do so at any cost. That morals can be abandoned and the state, or anyone who holds the authority can arbitrarily specify morality and then change it a bit if it isn't working.

Kant was effectively killing reason to save religious altruism. That was his stated intention. It's not really necessary to argue the fundamental differences because Kants critique of reason really didn't care by which method he reached that conclusion. This is why Rand holds him as evil, he knew what he was doing he walked in on the enlightenment and proceeded to take a wrecking ball to it. I hold that view because I'm an objectivist first-if you grasp the difference-in that respect, but a thinker prior to an objectivist. I haven't the time, nor the inclination to read Kant, so, I accept that Rand/Peikoff might well have misread his work, but Rand was a far brighter spark than I am, so, as I completely grasp and agree with objectivism, then I will have to trust she knows what she is talking about. I'm mindful that this is something akin to blind faith and as I haven't read the critique of reason I shouldn't not really hold an opinion about it, but I see sufficient proof in the world of the operating philosophy-in microcosm here on the forum-that I'm disinclined to question her opinion. So, having got that out of the way; that's my blunt reply :-) I'm kicking Kants head in, 'cause my gang leader told me too :-) a bit of irrationalism on my own part, but re-inventing the wheel seems pointless. So, to your summation: Consciousness is the axiomatic corollary of existence and identity. There is no cognition without consciousness. Consciousness is not a passive non identified thing. Consciousness IS something. It therefore has an identity. It is an active faculty. It is grasping existence. It is true that conception is an abstractive process, however this is not true of perception. Perception is the direct experience of existent reality. Such is the oft repeated 'bent stick in the tumbler of water' thought experiment. Our conception might conclude that the stick is really physically bent, then our conception would require verification by resorting back to concrete existence to test the theory. We do that all the time so there is no mystery to it. The stick stays bent even after we have expanded our conceptions of the laws of light and diffraction of different liquids. That alone proves that we are not being deceived by our senses, the stick genuinely does look bent. If we saw the stick as straight, then we would be in trouble. Consciousness does not exist without being conscious of something, if you want to break that into cognition the perception I don't object, but it is a parallel consciousness and not a series one. Cognition is not occurring prior to the senses experiencing concrete perception. That should be obvious to anyone who has been a child. We are born tabula rasa, sans concrete perceptions of reality we would have no cognitive function we wouldn't even know we existed. Consciousness is actively enmeshed in both perception and conception as an active component. We can steer our awareness to new experiences that we then conceptualise. I never understand why subjectivists don't get this, it's exactly as we experience it, we don't need Kant telling us it's wrong. Objectivism only points out what we already know. Kant is like the magician that chops the lady in two and tells us that it's simply magic, whilst we know it's impossible, but we shouldn't walk out of the show claiming we have in fact seen magic. This is what Kant has done. He has convinced everyone that magic is possible and that they shouldn't bother their silly little heads in trying to disprove it. It's like watching people in a trance state, yet a cursory introspection and extrospection proves it isn't so. Objectivism only tells people what they should already know, it was Kant that was once again condemning those who would listen to ancient mysticism. He wasn't the only one, but he was the most influential.

Rand has never been tried by humans, we appear to prefer stealing, lying, cheating, polluting and killing each other. We tried communism, fascism, totalitarianism and democracy, but it's all pretty much the same. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and ...." Yes they had a culture of savagery.

Having an ego is fine by me. Those colours are what they seem, they are as you perceive them. It is our conception of them that can be refined through science. Reality is what we perceive. If you see a tree and another being is at atomic level and only sees the atomic structure, it would conceptualise a whole tree, just as we conceptualise the atomic structure. It about the relativity. We perceive the world as it is, we then must conceptualise what we see and this requires reason and logic. Seeing a stick appear bent in water, then realising that it is not bent and why does not make the stick appear straight. Show me the proof that you can alter the surroundings merely by thinking.

Many were savages. I know that there was such a thing as the civilised tribes, but I have no history of it. You are part Cherokee as I'm part Stone Age man, or part Norman conqueror. I don't get my knickers in a tangle because somebody calls my ancestors savages- they undoubtedly were.

You still aren't arguing sensibly. You bring up tribal Indian culture, have you considered what Rand thought of cavemen or those tribes that practised sacrifice of their tribes to Gods/spirits, what about those that went in for flesh eating or the kind of tortures that could only be thought up by the worst sadists. How about those that are today stretching necks and cutting of parts of women's genitalia. Maybe you have watched the Hollywood novels, but make no mistake, many of those Indian tribes were savage, violent brutes that would happily destroy another tribe then loot them. There was no conception of just law or property rights. You got your way with a knife, club, spear or bow. How is this Rand's legacy. The tribes living in tepees, killing their neighbours and scratching a living out of the ground has long gone and good riddance to it. Rand had nothing to do with it. She wasn't born that long ago guys.

You obviously haven't read it, because what you have now is what Rand predicted if the USA did not look at the original philosophy of the founding fathers. 'her entire organisation' ? Dude she's dead and there is an ARI institute which is tiny. It isn't wealthy or powerful. There is no legacy in terms of today's social/political mess, Rand simply doesn't figure in it. It's incredible that anyone thinks she had that kind of influence. If she had then you wouldn't have Obamacare, the Fed, wars on people who have not shown any interest in attacking the US, there would be no cronyism, minimum wage, regulations, or the Government involved in any way with commerce. I thought you were going to argue sensibly, but instead you are off balling in the street with your red flag and mud on your face. It's true because you feel it's true. Heaven help the rest of us.

There you go again, running off to your Marxist prayer book. What does capitalism mean ? Communism led to........? Fascism led to ..........? Totalitarianism leads to.......? Freedom leads to..........? Oligarchs and plutocrats are the result of political power. It is the use of political force to be imposed on the producers (the capitalists). The revolving door of corruption and cronyism allows the few to gain huge wealth. Even in the USSR this was true. The party elite lived like emperors in opulence whilst the people were sent to Gulaks or shot for dissenting, or worked for a pittance and were not free to do anything but what they were told. Have a look at the Besmenenov video. He makes it plain that supporters of communism, those who are anti-capitalist are the first against the wall. Once they discover it is only a utopia for a chosen few they begin to rebel. However, by then it's too late. Bezmenenov says that people will not believe it when facts and figures are presented, even when they are taken to the prison camps (this is the current level of psychological/philosophical inculcation). It's only when a soldiers boot contacts their balls that the reality becomes clear, but, by then it's too late.

If only you had capitalism eh ? You can't talk about something that you don't have Ralis. You might just as well say that communism is the reason that is concentrating the wealth in fewer hands-you don't have that either, but why not blame it anyway. It's funny that you think capitalism -and I mean here unfettered, free market laissez faire capitalism has any 'aim' in any sense. It essentially people trading value for value for the purpose of improving their situation. Most people prefer to have more of the values they choose, than less, so, in that sense everyone is trying to maximise their trade.

Err no she didn't. Is this another one of your feelings ? She made the argument that the industrial revolution saved us from the fate that befalls those who never experience it. She doesn't regard any person as 'stupid like animals'. No India isn't capitalist-when I say capitalist I mean laissez faire capitalism which shouldn't need saying, but unfortunately Marx and our modern corporate, facistic political class has meant that the distinction is necessary. India has some level of free markets, but it as yet not very wide and corporatism has taken hold, as it has across the entire West today. Corporatism isn't capitalism in any sense, but our politicians like to talk about free markets. I'm guessing you haven't read Atlas Shrugged or you would understand the difference between this crony corporatism and true capitalism.

Why do you think that ? What is it that makes you say 'this is the thinking that ruins the world'. I was watching a programme about some farmers in India who were deprived of water for their crops by a corrupt Government and the lack of property rights/ competition/ capital creation. These farmers could not manage to scrape together a living and instead they were throwing themselves in the near by river (off limits to them as a source of irrigation). Luckily capitalism, coupled with the industrial revolution has saved the West from this kind of life. We can look at the beauty of the world because we are wealthy enough to do so, meanwhile Indian farmers rotting corpses are extracted from the river at a rate of several per day.

A plan requires a planner. Who is this planner and where did they come from ? As you assume a planner, then who planned the planner and his plans for us ? All you get is an infinite regression, so, therefore there are no plans, we have free will, we got to manage best we can and extract as much happiness from our endeavours as we can. Our plans are our own, but they must first conform with reality or they will not function for us except in the case of some accident of coincidental error. Our planning is therefore our chosen principles by which we obtain the values that we require to survive (to serve the primary value that we hold of life itself), the obtaining of these values results in the feeling of happiness if it coincides with our chosen principles. A mans life is an end in itself.