Karl

It's way off my route so I'm not going to get involved in the complexities of it. I leave the engine alone and drive the car epistemologically speaking. The wiring isn't at all interesting, only the tool itself. How a table functions from the perspective of its atomic structure and energetic components is uninteresting-the table is an existent, it has specific attributes and I can know them directly.

And rand on racism. It's only 10 minutes. See if we can see a pattern. :-) Naturally Ralis won't watch, but I like the bit where she said we must protect the racists and communists rights to free speech even though both are evil.

And for those that think differently, here is Rand saying in her own words exactly what I have said. That the law should have nothing to say about homosexuality between consenting adults and that she believed all anti gay/anti gay marriage laws should be repealed. I hadn't realised this was in one of her QandA sessions.

I wish people could grasp the difference between opinion and philosophy. The difference between adopting a position and having an entire philosophy which is not 'a position' in isolation. To grasp when something is philosophical and when it isn't. Rand wasn't omniscient and so objectivism and logic do not guarantee that you are always right. As far as I'm concerned Rand was wrong about homosexuality-I would argue that point if I had ever met her and objectivists often disagree on such issues. Objectivism isn't a dogmatic philosophy like Christianity, instead it accepts mans fallibility, but sees it as a necessity. Where Christianity professes to know what 'God' thinks and would condemn homosexuality on moral grounds, so, objectivism does not. It says that man must decide for himself what is good and bad by his prime value of his own life, that he must make these decisions using his mind and that he has to do so with reason and logic. That he must be entirely free to think and act in his own best interests with his life as purpose in and of itself. That he must allow other men that same latitude fir the same reason. Do you get that ? That Rand doesn't have a 'cult' that she wrote a philosophy of Liberty and of man as an end in himself, his own moral arbiter with all his possibilities of fallibility. She said 'think for yourself and no other'. Apply your mind to the problem in the best way you can, using everything you have learned and take pride in hard thought. It's difficult for people to see it, because they are used to adopting a position with a floating opinion and look to the state to put its thumb up or down like the ancient roman emperors at the coliseum and that this is then a concrete truth. Objectivism discards opinion, emperors or deities and puts the responsibility to decide on the individual. Rand asked no one to follow her, she told people to think that's all, to stop believing in the mysticism and dogmatism of states, stars, Kings, Gods and Ghosts. She laid out only how to think about a problem but left the decision in each individual's hands completely.

The thing to understand about Rand is that she is first and foremost a philosopher, but also a human being. Therefore she has opinions about smoking, wallpaper, cake and cuckoo clocks, that have zip all to do with her philosophy. She may very well conclude homosexuality to be an immoral perversion as an opinion, just as she might detest apple pie but love cherry cake. When asked specifically about homosexuality she had an opinion, she likely had one about gamblers, drug users, open relationship adulterers, but philosophically she had nothing at all to say. As peikoff said when asked: "philosophy has no view in regard to specific kinds of sex. A scientific study of sex, different kinds of sex, their motivations, and results would be required. There's nothing in philosophy that will tell you about this question. I once asked Ayn Rand -- I think I mentioned this in OPAR -- "What does philosophy have to say about sex?" She said, "Only one thing: that it’s good." [Transcription and emphasis mine.]" I don't think we should concern ourselves with the motivations of transvestites in exactly the same sense. We might well have an opinion of them as mentally unstable, or some other thing. Personally I will treat people as I find them and as they treat me. Whatever their motivation it does not impinge on my Liberty, life, justice, private property or the pursuit of happiness in any sense what so ever, just as wealthy people buying jet planes and palaces don't, or any of the billions upon billions of personal choices that every person makes. The caveat is of course that we all act peacefully no matter what our opinions, that we can reject anyone we disagree with on fundamental values. As soon as some individual or group attempts to impose its tolerance/intolerance on another individual or group they are participating in violent action and are initiating force. That is why right are negative and the law must judge everyone equally. "Who is/was initiating the violence"? is the only question. There are no 'excuses' or 'explanations'. It's cut and dry. The law might take into consideration the circumstances as a precursor to applying justice, but beyond that, guilty is guilty. On that question of morality and ethics objectivism has much to say.

Flounce :-) I don't fail to understand your extremist narrative. Ayn Rand never said 'others be damned' she showed that it was the complete opposite. That, in fact it is the selfish viewpoint that is the only view point which agrees with reality and is pro-life. It is pro-peace and totally opposed to the initiation of force. The only ones that suffer in an objectivist universe are those trying to get on the backs of everyone else and cause the current mayhem. Where everybody is equal under the law and their right to life, liberty, private property and justice upheld there is no point in racism of any kind. Discrimination is purely by values held and not skin colour or sexuality. The merit of the individual has primacy and not the tribe/state/group.

Engage in laissez faire capitalism and seperate state from all business completely including banks and money. The European superstate would be entirely unnecessary as the currency would be decided by the market and not by fiat. Corporations could not beg the state for special privilege through regulation because the state would be powerless to help them. The market would decide which was the best technical specifications instead of the hotch potch of governments that have attempted to create technical barriers on behalf of the businesses that lobby them as forms of protectionism from foreign competition. We don't need a massive bureaucracy costing billions to create a European version and stuffing the money in its ample pockets. It's an unneeded, useless, costly monstrosity. Cobden and Bright would have agreed.

Strawman as usual. Funnily enough it is you that is acting in precisely the way that you say you decry. Let me make it plain. In Nazi Germany a few Jew haters imposed their will, through the state, on the rest of the population. What they were doing was social engineering. The state effectively removed ownership of private property and turned it over to the state. This is what the Jim Crow laws did. They told the people who they may associate with and who they may serve in their businesses. It made the state the owner of the business and the proprietor merely a manager carrying out the states orders. Is there any difference in the 1964 act ? No. The Government is telling businesses how they must operate and therefore denying ownership of private property. Your constitution states implicitly the rights everyone is accorded life, liberty, private property, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Rights are NEGATIVES they can only say what may not be done to you and not what should be done for you. If rights are stated POSITIVELY then they are not rights but PRIVILEGES and privileges are issuances by tyrannies. This of course is what you want Ralis, because you are a collectivist statist. You are a communist hiding under a cloak, just the same as every hateful anti-life collectivist that wants 'equality'. Your aim is actually 'conformity'. In a word 'control'. Rights must be for everyone equally, stated as negative. If a group cannot be discriminated against, then no group maybe discriminated against and that includes private business owners being told who they must serve by the state. It is clear discrimination. It denies freedom of association, it denies property ownership, it denies Liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. It tells individuals that neither their life, or property is truly their own, that it is in the control of the state and that is a great injustice. The law need apply equally also. It should recognise neither colour, race, sex, sexuality, religion or creed. It holds all men equal before it. It does not allow for acts of racist bullying or violence, neither should it allow acts of government racism or violence which are against the rights it must uphold. The Government should not be attempting social engineering neither by civil rights acts, nor by the Nazi final solution. One segues easily into the other. Where it's acceptable to do one, it is perfectly acceptable to extend it to the other. Ralis does not agree with private property unless it's for 'the public good' and by public good he means whatever the state decrees is a public good and that does not include property rights. That's what Hitler and Stalin most certainly agreed on, that the public good was whatever they decided it was. That's how easy it is to slip into tyranny on the back of what looks like a moral idea.

No, no. 'Society' has not 'stood up' at all. Instead a group of liberals have forced positive discrimination for a tiny minority onto the majority. Our experience in the UK is the violence against blacks is committed by other blacks and yet it is whites that are accused of racism. Crazy. Same as feminists that are moaning about transvestites using their toilets/changing rooms and feminist/diversity liberals welcoming immigrants now complaining of getting raped by immigrants. None of that is very suprising, even at college the Pakistanis were at war with the Indians and the Arabs targeted the Jews-Meanwhile Arabs and Black Muslims drop homosexuals out of buildings, rape children and stone women to death. The white western population are called bigots if the object to any of this going on in our own countries.

I wouldn't dispute 'circuits'. We do have reflex reactions, automatic sense integrating directly to precept, a propensity towards some skill, automatic biology, pleasure/pain detection. That's outside what I understand and is more for a biologist/scientist.

That's why I asked if you thought this situation was inevitable ? I noticed you didn't answer that question. Mind you I find that happens a lot around here so it's hardly suprising ;-)

We are 'domesticated' by choice and civilisation does not need to be controlling. War is only necessary as defence against viable threats or direct attack. I'm not sure if you mean our current states and ruling elite, or you think it's all pre-determined.

I think you might be confused if you think love is gravity. We have much larger populations, fixed homes and industrial scale warfare. We long gave up hunting with spears and animal spirits which adorned the walls of caves, it's inevitable that the newest obsession would be depicted. We are competitive but also readily able to work in groups towards individual goals but with a negotiated purpose. We are all capable of violence if we are threatened, but that goes for any animal on the planet if it has to defend itself. I'm not sure quite where you are going ?

It registers the perception of its sensory apparatus and associates those sensations with an entity that it has become familiar with. This is still a perceptual development. It is the mother that feels love for the child and thus does what she can to make her child happy and therefore improves her own happiness as the child thrives. I don't want to mechanise the emotional experience here, but these are the roots in reality.

Infants can't. Even after they have formed a sense of identity they are still completely unaware of a concept such as love. They experience whatever they experience, warmth, food, cuddles, smells, kisses, noises, shapes, colours, movement. When they are hungry they cry, when they feel alone they cry, when they are too hot/cold/tired they cry. Their connection to the parent is an entity they recognise which takes away their discomfort and then they feel pleasure. You are an advanced battery designer if I remember rightly, so, if I said to you that I want you to put some energy in a container you would assume I meant a battery. However, imagine that you didn't know what a battery was, or how it worked and I came over and asked you to scoop up some energy and put it in a box. What would you have to ask ? You would need specific concretes with definitions, but if you asked me for those and I said that there was no need for you to know concretes because energy was just everywhere, in everything, so it should be pretty easy for you to find it and package it so I could use it to power my tricycle or give me a bit of a pep up on a morning when I was feeling tired. How woukd you react ?

If you have no concept of 'I' then you cannot say 'I love'. Love becomes a floating concept, just a noise backed by nothing but mental fog. It is the mothers love of the child that is the key to creating the concept of love in the child's mind. A good mother will give unlimited time to learning through play and keeping the child feeling safe in order that it can play and learn. Hence an orphan is deprived of a mother and her role as guardian and educator-a massive disadvantage to mental development. It is literally like being thrown to the wolves. Love is a concept and not a concrete. Love must be rooted in perceptual reality. So, to say an orphan is deprived of love isn't true, although we can choose to see it that way, love is what drives the mother to give the time, attention and protection to her child so that it can develop fully. A child has not yet developed an adults understanding of love. Instead a child is wholly dependent on its parents for everything, it feels pleasure and pain, it only knows it is at risk if it feels uncomfortable in some way and it knows that the entities (parents) are necessary to combat the discomfort and provide pleasure.

It isn't the kind of lie at all. People are trained to believe the exact opposite-that consumerism is 'a public good' that the standard of value is not ones life but whatever 'pleasure' can be extracted from the world. Our belief is in a society determined to have pleasure at almost any cost; that we can offset any sense of morality by giving over our responsibilities to a government who will decide what is right and collect taxes as if they were an atonement for our sin of consuming. One need only see the false paradigm of 'carbon sin' in which the wealthy pleasure seeker pays for the sin and discharges his guilt. It's all bollox.

Part 14 differentiation and integration as the means to a unit-perspective. The concept 'existent' has 3 stages of development: 1. A child's awareness of things or objects, representing the implicit concept of 'entity'. 2. Whilst still at the perceptual level the child distinguishes specific entities as different from one another. This is the concept 'identity'. 3. Finally they undergo a final conceptual stage by grasping the 'relationships among the entities, as similarities and differences' The first two stages have a parallel in the animal kingdom, but the third is unique to humans. At the third stage the child no longer views the objects as animals do: merely as distinct existents, each different from the other. Now, he regards objects as related by their resemblances. As an example: if you direct your own attention, say, to a person seated near you, you grasp not just entity, and not just this entity vs that one seated over there, but: this man, this entity in relation to all the others like him and in contrast to the other kinds of entities you know. You grasp this entity as a member of a group of similar members. The implicit concept represented here is: 'unit' as "an existent regarded as a seperate member of a group of two or more similar members". This is the key to mans conceptual consciousness. This ability to recognise entities as units is mans distinctive method of cognition. An animal cannot organise is perceptual field. It observes and reacts to objects in whatever order they strike it's consciousness. Man, by contrast can break up the perceptual chaos by classifying concretes according to resemblances. Even though cats, tree, roads, houses, people and cars are all jumbled up in reality, a man can see the similarities as to be able to segregate them mentally. He continues to regard each person as a seperate entity, but not as an unrelated entity but as a group of similars-as a unit. This is an entirely new scale of cognitive ability. It is of the order of a 2D world vs a 3D world. Given the unit perspective, man can pursue knowledge purposefully. He can focus his attention and specialise intellectually. He treats the segregated groups as units of a single concept, he can then apply all the knowledge he gains by studying a comparative handful (assuming correct concept formation); he is then capable of induction. It is important to understand that in the world apart from man there are no units; there are only existents-seperate, individual things with their properties and actions. To view things as units is to adopt a human perspective-which does not mean a subjective perspective. Rand writes on the concept 'unit' : ...this method permits any number of classifications or cross classifications...but the criterion of classification is not invented, it is perceived in reality. Thus the concept 'unit' is a bridge between metaphysics and epistemology: units do not exist qua units , what exists are things, but units are things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships. Without the implicit concept of 'unit', man could not reach the conceptual method of knowledge. He could not count, measure, identify quantitative relationships; he could not enter mathematics. Thus the same (implicit) concept is the base of two fields: the conceptual and the mathematical. This suggests that concept formation is a mathematical process. There are two main processes involved and are also essential to consciousness on the perceptual level: analysis and synthesis, or differentiation and integration. Differentiation is the process of grasping differences between objects in awareness and integration is the process of uniting elements into a whole. In order to move from the stage of sensation we have to first discriminate certain sensory qualities, separating them out of the initial chaos. Then our brain integrates these qualities into entities. The same process occurs in the movement from precept to concept, but with one vital difference-it is not automatic. Concept formation begins with isolating a group of concretes. We do this by observed similarities distinguishing those concepts from the rest of our perceptual field. The similarities that make possible the initial differentiations are 'observed'; they are available to our senses without the need for conceptual knowledge. We can look at a ball, consider what we might use it for, then check the ball with our senses again to see if it's suitable for our needs. At a higher stage of development, concepts are often necessary to identify similarities between philosophies, or political systems, but they are entirely based on perceptual givens, available to both animals (not all) and men. The distinctly human element is the ability to abstract such similarities from the differences in which they are embedded. Example: we recognise a table despite the differences in colour, shape, texture or size. Abstraction is the power of selective focus and treatment; the power to mentally seperate and make cognitive use of an aspect of reality than cannot exist seperately. An animal does not have this power. An animal perceives the whole object, including some similarities and differences (it knows a mouse from a snake), but it can't isolate or unite a group of concretes; it can't do anything cognitively with the relationships it perceives. To an animals consciousness, noting similarities is a dead end. Man CAN do something: he makes such data the basis of a method of cognitive organisation. The first step is to mentally isolate a group of similars. But an isolated perceptual group is not yet a concept. Mere isolation achieves nothing, we must procede to integrate. Integrating precepts is the process of blending all the relevant ones (the precept of tables)into an inseparable whole. Such a whole is an entirely new entity, a mental entity (the concept 'table'), which functions as a single, enduring unit. The entity stands for an unlimited number of concretes, both observed and unobserved. It subsumed all instances belonging to the group, past, present and future. Here we see a similarity to mathematics. An equation has no value in itself, it is a representation of all instances of all quantities ( and always some quantity) and it is entirely open ended. The root that makes this kind of integration possible is language. A word is the only form in which mans mind is able to retain such a sum of concretes. It's important to explain that it need not be a specific language, it could be a grunt in the mind of a man, or some symbol. Without words man woukd be incapable of integration. A word is a symbol that denotes a concept; it is a concrete, perceptually graspable symbol. It transforms a sum of similars, and the resolve to treat them together, into a single (mental) concrete. Only concretes exist. If a concept is to exist, it must exist in some way as a concrete. Language is a code of visual or auditory symbols (tactile for the deaf, or even eye movements or facial expressions) that converts concepts into the mental equivalent of concretes. Words (including every form tactile or otherwise) are not necessarily primarily for fommunication, but they are essential to the process of conceptualisation and thus to all human thought. They are also necessary in the privacy of mans mind in a public forum; on a desert island, or in a crowded hall. The word constitutes the completion of the integration stage (interestingly the Bible seems to touch on this during the 'creation' but I'm not suggesting this is exactly what it meant, but it's possible to pull out a different view). Using the soul-body terminology, we may say the word is the body, and the consciousness perspective involved is the soul. The two form a unity which is inseparable. A concept without a word is at best an ephemeral resolve; a word without a concept is noise. Words transform concepts into mental entities, definitions provide them with identity. I shall skip the philosophical discussion regarding the relationship between concepts and existents, but can add it it if anyone is concerned vis a vis the Mystics. We have been using concepts to reach the truth. We must now turn to the precondition of this use and face the fundamental problem of epistemology. We must ground concepts themselves in the nature of reality.

That's an inversion of reality. Man loves something only if he can say 'I' love. That is primary. One does not receive love like a plant needing water. Instead we hold values that are predicated on our life as the primary value. When we find something that gives us a value then we love it. If it takes a value we hate it. We receive values from the things we love, but we must first feel worthy of love. Violence is the opposite end of love. This is when we have things that remove values from us and we dislike that. Where those things are other humans then we act to defend those values by the use of force. It's notable that those who have received values dishonestly, or as gifts/winnings, are far less concerned about the losses than those who have toiled hard and honestly with no one on which to rely. Those that have hidden their true selves from others in order to pretend there is love, those people never feel it. If they feel unworthy then they never accept themselves and are incapable of love. Therefore we are inherently wired to love and hate because we are inherently wired to feel pleasure and pain. It's our conceptual reasoning that terms the experience love and hate on a sliding scale.

That's somewhat of a confusing reply. I get the sense that you hold a position, but that it conflicts with what you know to be true. I'm not going to push it though as that's likely counter productive.

In what context MH? I'm confused by your use of the word 'above'. We are certainly the apex predator on this planet and no other animal or object is capable of manipulating the environment as man does in order to improve his survival and happiness. From an individual perspective we must choose to place our life above the life of every other life, that's a necessity regardless of whether our lives are above, or below the value of any other kind of thing.

I replied before I saw your recent reply. I agree it's genetic propensity, but it's not a program. If you can drop 'programme'-which is clearly something consciously cognitive, then we can move forward.

People have problems because I question their assertions and definition, mostly for clarity as in this case. What this boils down to isn't a 'program' running, but a genetically inherited propensity. As you have just proven-everyone is unique and different, be it pups in a litter or babies in a family. No issue with that. Twins share common genetics and shared the same womb for 9 months so they share similar features and mannerisms up to a certain age, then change. There is no mental code running. The genetics will make a person more likely to be artistic like a parent/ancestor or to have a mathematical aptitude if that's in the family. However, a child cannot automatically be an artist or a mathematician. At birth he can't even see very well and the world is a chaos of colours, movement, shapes, sounds, smells and sensations that are not yet cognitively banked. The child has to create all concepts from precepts. He must learn for instance that a ball rolls, but a book doesn't move. He will drop an item over and over again discovering the result is the same, he learns causality (not yet as a concept) but as a perception; he learns perspective that small objects, held closer, look bigger than large objects further away. He has to learn all this before he can begin to become an artist or mathematician. He will perhaps begin drawing what he sees and then experience a particular pleasure in doing it and want to do more of it, or a pleasure counting and understanding ratios of things and gets pleasure from the understanding.

A propensity to limp due to a physical problem , or have some mental slowness, I would agree. Even then they are only flaws in context. I have a spot on my face that would be a flaw in a beauty contest, but not whilst I'm reading a book. Nungali is saying its a mental 'program' we are born with which has flaws. Yet adds that these can be eliminated.

All I see is a beautiful star. It looks stunning. Light years away, it may already have expired.