Karl

Reason, purpose, self esteem. :-) Rationality, productivity, pride. Where others choose humility over pride, the softer 'self-esteem' is a better description. They understand it better that people lack confidence in themselves and there abilities, that they have low esteem, low self worth and a need to self harm through these depressive tendencies. How many are on the streets today drinking cheap alcohol from litre bottles, jamming needles into their veins, meth up their noses, gambling or fucking their way to an early grave. Why ? Because they were taught that pride was wrong, that they must sacrifice for the sake of others, or that they should seek pleasure (hedonism) no matter what the cost. It's a sick philosophy that tells men to act that way.

The selfish pursuit of ones own whims you mean ? Hedonism as ethics ? No, no, no.

Right, but that's because you are mixing science with philosophy. One day we might discover all sorts of things about animal psychology and human consciousness, but this isn't any of the concerns of philosophy. We accept animals aren't unconscious robots, that they display intelligence and have limited problem solving ability and that they experience pain and joy. They are capable of autonomous or group actions and are therefore capable of tactical organisation. None of that is in much doubt. However, animals show no sign of conception, they cannot abstract to higher levels. An animal is aware of its self, it's feelings, its surroundings. To an animal the map IS the territory. It cannot conceive of anything beyond its direct perceptions. An animal sees the map as a scrap of something maleable, fragile, possibly dangerous, but it is incapable of making the connection between the conceptual abstraction represented by the map and the perceptual territory. An animal perceives a tree, it might, like a bird, otter or elephant utilise the tree for some purpose, but it cannot abstract to all kinds of tree, or a forest, or the universe of forests. It cannot see the tree as so many yards of lumber, a table, a roof beam, or as fuel for a fire. Animals can't even make fire, they sometimes use rudimentary tools, but these are perceptual, instinctive qualities. It may even be true that they are gaining conceptual faculties which may one day manifest themselves, but not today.

No it doesn't ignore instinct and refers to it, but you would need to read rather more than the brief synopsis to gain that to gain the full context. Some of it is contained in 101, but instead of answering the question directly it takes the longer philosophical route to cross all the tees and dot all the eyes. There is nothing in the text to say animals aren't self aware, but they are perceptually self aware. Conceptualisation is unique to man so far. Funnily enough my wife picked up on this several months ago, she had the same doubts, referring to her defence as 'looking after the underdog' :-) it took her several months until she accepted the difference. I did a thought experiment some year ago of a 3D person and a 2 D world -of course it's an impossibility, but it's a great exercise which helps to see just how wildly different are the faculties of perception and conception. I think of it like second order mathematical integration where you go from flat geometry to a solid object, but really it should be thought of as something far greater. I have had the same conversations with Stosh. He still doesn't accept that animals are perceptual creatures, but that's likely more to do with my poor argumentation.

I always knew something was wrong with the things we were taught. Like you I began to look for other inspirations and came across ancient and new age philosophies which seemed to speak to me, but left gaping holes and a feeling of disconnected dissatisfaction. Objectivism is the first philosophy that has presented life as I know it to be through introspection and extrospection. I didn't pick it up when I read her novel, it came across as a rather naive kind of libertarianism. It's only now, with the hindsight of the Trivium studies, that I see that I had missed all the subtle nuances and ideas that were contained within the story line.

Put cookies in cats bowl and it will sniff at them and walk away. Leave cookies on counter top and cat eats them. It must be something about the scavenger instinct. Anything in the bowl is provided in the same way a mother feeds its kittens, but everything else must be hunted, or scavenged, therefore it can be anything including vegetable, fruit, or cookies.

Might take several reads to fully understand what Rand is saying and why it is so important. I have tried to provide the greater context in objectivism 101, but had not begun to close on the real purpose of objectivism which is ethics. This is why objectivism is unique.

I have been trying to make the leap into classical music. I've always listened to it, I like many pieces and have several of the classics on CD/Vinyl, but I always drift back to my usual fare and the classical stuff gathers dust for months whilst I listen to prog, alt prog, prog metal, or some form of pop

You have time to learn to play something. I suggest focusing on the band member you tend to watch during a performance- drummer, bass player, rhythm, lead, keyboards, vocals and then learn to play that instrument. I self taught myself guitar. I'm not very good, but it's fun and creative to bash out a song that you like. My acoustic sits at the side of the couch and I play it daily. There are several free music apps with tab which make it very easy to learn a new song.

Yet another day and another attack on Westerners in Germany. This time an explosion injuring 12 ( 3 seriously) at a musical festival. Attacker appears to be a Syrian asylum seeker. One more day day of tragedy in the marvellous EU. In other news it is now Portugese banks that are demanding a bailout from the public. So, neither financial or social stability. Bummer.

Mans world is full of change. Slavery has always been tolerated and no one could see how the world could function without it, until it did. The abolition of slavery, like Laissez Faire capitalism, isn't something requiring trial and error to see if it can work, instead you must understand- it is the only moral choice. Terrorists are motivated by many things. Jihadists believe they are doing Gods work. Nazi's believed in Aryan purity. Most of the recent 'so called' terrorist attacks were by drug addled individuals trying to generate some significance from their lives. They were irrational actors-very much wild animals unable to make reasoned moral choices. The question you should ask yourself is why does it appear these attacks are on the increase ? Is the answer simply to tolerate those reasons for the increases and the actions of the men that carry out the attacks ? Do you think that empathy is that right approach to Governments and people which are evading or ignorant of morals ? You are part of the problem Lerner. I don't 'preach communism, I advocate the discovery of morality and you sneer at it. 'Capitalism' means freedom from the initiation of force. The freedom to live and trade peacefully.

In other news Hamilton won the Hungarian GP, Frome won the Tour de France, Murray won Wimbledon and the last few days have been glorious. All of it down to Brexit. I find it interesting that the press think people are so thick and gullible that they are unaware of causality. That they would attempt to pass off a migrant issue that has been the cause of over a year of strife with miles of stranded HGV in operation stack. Yet this is construed as a Brexit issue ? Really. We have had these same Qs at UK airport pass port controls for several years now due to the Government refusing to fund more security people. It isn't Brexit, it's just shit Government policies, both foreign and domestic, particularly the EU which decided to let in millions of migrants from a 4th century culture. Another attack today in Southern Germany has managed to go unreported. Machete attack by a Syrian refugee killed one woman and badly injured two other people. Much more of this and the EU will want EUxit

Yeah keep crying into that spilt milk :-)

The word 'pathetic' is the only one which crosses my mind. A lot of straw men and ad hominem. Firstly capitalism requires the protection of private property rights and the application of justice by objective law. In simple terms it is the unhindered, peaceful, voluntary, consenting trading between men. Does that look like Somalia to you ? Any organised group requires rules (law) and justice. People can do whatever they wish as long as it does not impinge on the property and life of others. Justice is judgement, a blind weighing in the balance in which some compensation is shifted from one side to another. That's for a judge, court and law to decide. When you apply justice objectively, when you let men trade together voluntarily then reason is allowed to flourish. There are fewer that murder, get drunk, beat their partners. Most of the crimes in our society are because the philosophy we have is pragmatic and the Government we have is violent towards those it Governs and both condones and promotes irrational behaviour. Laissez Faire capitalism shouldn't be seen as something to be applied by the state, but as a right. Your answer appears to be that we should merrily tolerate irrational and violence. You make no effort to begin to understand why Laissez Faire capitalism is the best economic system and you repeatedly ignore the fact that law, justice and property rights are an integral part of that function. The reason we don't have, and have never had full laissez faire capitalism-although the USA was close in the 19th century-is that there is an assumption that wealth is aquired by conquest and theft. It has meant the entrepreneur has been demonised. The reason for this demonising is one single claim by a debauched philosophy, that Altruism is a fundamental good. No one has ever explained why, or how it can be such a thing, but as far as the general mass of people are concerned it is the alternative to the evil businessman who exploits and plunders at the expense of everyone else. This has been going on for so long that people just accept it as being true, they never apply reason to see that it is not only impossible-except through the use of violence-but that it is anti-reason, anti-life and wholly evil. It is the reason we are in such a fix today.

We remain ignorant of many things and how they function, but if we experience them, then that's all there is. A chair maybe a swirling cloud of jelly fish held together with cosmic crabs, but when I see the object called a chair, I perceive the fish and crabs even if I cannot see them within the structure. Later I apply a microscope and marvel at what I learned about the chair. Nothing changes except this new knowledge. The chair is still a chair and I perceive it exactly as it is moment by moment. Until it gets eaten into sawdust by wood worm it remains a chair. The sawdust contains the fish and crabs, I perceive this new composition and it's make up.

Ive always thought of you as the orange of mankind whilst MH is the orangutan of mankind.

That's science not philosophy. Now, I could be in error about any number of things. The spec of dust I see might be a teeny space ship, but I see it never the less, the error is in the conception. This is the difficult part to explain to a mystic who is used to his own absolutes in terms of everything being non-absolute. You are asking how I can be certain that a thing is the thing I conceive, but I can't be sure that it is what I conceive. However I can be sure that it is the thing I percieve and if it proves to be a spaceship, or dust, then it is what it is and it is no other thing.

Like you, he is making the argument whilst denying that any argument is valid. If there is no I, then there is no hot plate, nor hand on which to place it. There are no morals because there is apparently no standard on which they can be based because nothing is certain. I'm not closed to his ideas, he is saying, like you, that he has no basis for any ideas, or any certainty about any ideas he claims he cannot have. How can I possibly converse with a ghost, or a zombie ? What ideas can we discuss ? None. A ghost has no body in which a mind could function and a zombie is a body without a mind. Neither of these things exist, but you claim that this is your state of being whilst simultaneously denying that you can prove anything at all. Why would I enter into a discourse with something I know does not exist ?

LOL the ultimate irony is that you accuse me of faith. A man who doubts his senses and his mind, who denies he can know reality, that shirks proof and instead, blindly accepts what he sees whilst denying he sees it ? If that isn't faith what else can it be ?

Man created the concept of mathematics in order to describe the universe. There is no such thing as an entity called mathematics it's a conceptual abstraction as are words.

What does proof reply upon ? Seriously, this isn't about 'answers that I'm prepared to accept', it is you who are telling me that you have no answers because no proof is possible. It is then obvious that you won't see ethics as any different, at least, from that perspective you are consistent. There is no uncertainty at all, I know that what I perceive is reality. It is only you that keeps telling me that nothing you see is real and that you can't know anything for certain. What can I make of you when you say such foolishness as if it was proven fact and yet deny there are such things as facts or proof? It is you that asserts you don't know anything, when clearly you are making an absolute statement that you KNOW that you don't know anything. I asked if you could answer the questions: where am I and how do I know it ? Yet you refuse to know where you are. This is mental evasion like a child that hides under the bed clothes to evade an imaginary monster. There is no monster and if there was, hiding under the duvet wouldn't help. :-)

There is an I which is making the assumptions, do you deny it. I won't answer your first question because only you can answer it and until you can answer 'where am I and how do I know it' then the study of ethics is beyond your comprehension.

"I" ;-) I implies an existent you that can think/say. Where am I ? Presupposes that there is an I to be some where. Mystics seek to to scuttle the idea that consciousness has identity, that it is something. That they cannot is a source of great annoyance to them.

You don't think you have free will ? Are you a determinist at the whim of some intergalactic puppeteer ? Let's first determine if you know where you are and how you know it. If you cannot, then it is pointless to move onto ethics (what should I do).

This is your skeptic mind set. You hold it to be true then you deny that you can know it to be true. A loaf of bread is a loaf of bread, it has a nature, it acts and reacts in a certain way. Part of that nature is to turn mouldy in a particular environment, or to be sliced and eaten. The loaf is gone at that point, it is now a different thing, but this difference is equally valid in its new firm as it was in a previous form. There is nothing magic about the impermanence of an object, it is also a concept, as is 'deterioration' 'fading' 'destruction'. This is incorporated into the absolutes of existence. That things decay, are swallowed, get crushed are all absolutes. So, we can know perceptually exactly what something is, because part of its nature, it's identity is to transform into something else. You are still hooked up on the idea that we can't know anything because everything is changing, but I put it to you that we DO KNOW that things are changing. What you are actually saying is that we don't know things are changing because things are always changing. You have nothing solid to stand upon if you take follow your sophist philosophy. Yet you rule yourself out of having anything pertinent to say by continuing to hold it. Surely this is becoming an increasingly untenable posion for you to remain. You can either agree that you can know something for certain, or remain ignorant and unable to argue from the point of view that there is no certainty and even that view is similarly uncertain- that you can no nothing at all, even cannot even say that with any certainty. You cannot get in a ring that you aren't sure is there with a you that you aren't sure exists to meet the phantom you aren't certain is me. You must stop evading if you wish to progress: where am I ? How do I know it ? What should I do ? If you cannot answer those questions you must cease to argue, sow up your mouth, find a cave and seal it up so no light or sound can enter, because that is the path you are taking. You cannot see because you have eyes, you cannot hear because you have ears and you cannot think because you have a mind. All these things have become a burden that you cannot trust and you appear to wish you were rid of them.