HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Date: 11 Nov 92 23:56:23 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| > I was referring to Rand's use of logic.  Logic is created 
| > by freezing or killing language so that it can be used
| > mechanically: that is, unlike almost anything in nature,
| > the same initial state will always yield the same result.  

mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas) writes:
|   ??! Are you actually saying that, in nature, that given
| the same initial condition and process you will not necessarily
| get the same result? This flies in the face of all of science!

On the contrary, one never gets quite the same result
(unless one has some means of covering over small-
scale variation.)

See _How_the_Laws_of_Physics_Lie_ by Nancy Cartwright.
Or, if that's too much trouble, consider observational
error, noise, and, of course, good old Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics.  The "Laws of Physics" are nothing
but abstractions from phenomena which seem useful.

gf:
| > The same premises will always yield the same conclusion.  
| > (This situation does not occur in normal language, which is 
| > fuzzy and flexible.)  In that sense, it is mechanistic.  

mike:
|   Is this a fault of nature or a fault in language? To say
| that language does not exactly model nature is obvious, and
| has to do with man not being omniscient. It does not alter
| the fact that nature is reproducible and "mechanical". 

It's not necessarily a fault; under some circumstances,
as when wants the same result to come up reliably every
time, it's a virtue.

gf:
| > In 
| > the Randian world, one is free to do as one wills but one 
| > is not free to believe as one wills.  For some, this is
| > obviously a pleasure, if not a blessed relief.  For
| > others, it would be a prison.
| 
|   To the extent that man cannot just dismiss nature because
| he "believes" or "wishes" it otherwise, this is true. A person
| who practices this sort of life plan is not long for the world
| though.   

I am not speaking of dismissing Nature, but of believing
passionately that it is mechanistic, logical.  That might
be as much of a deficit as believing in a number of
other improbable things.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc
From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 16:24:45 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1992Nov9.145307.9756@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:
>pn> Peter Nelson
>
>pn> All I assert is that no evidence has been presented that ethics DOES have
>    some objective reality.
>
>  However, it is fairly obvious from empirical grounds that certain ideas about
>  ethics have had more success than others. Since the test of an ethical idea
>  is whether or not it "works" in the real world, you cannot say that all ideas
>  about ethics have no connection to objective reality.


   Oh, no question about it.   But this idea is called "pragmatism"
   and Rand hated pragmatists.   Naturally, I'm a pragmatist.  

   The thing is that pragmatism doesn't have to be based on 
   people having rational beliefs.  In a highly religious
   society, for instance, the religion may serve the function
   of maintaining social order, transmitting values, resolving
   disputes, etc.  Such a society may "work better" in the
   sense of having less crime, less drug addiction, fewer
   marital breakups, and so forth, but this does not mean
   that the particular god(s) they worship are objectively
   real.  

   The other problem for the pragmatist, as I'll readily
   admit, is identifying causality.   If I look at a society
   in western Europe and note that they have fewer problems
   with drugs and crime, less endemic poverty, lower health
   care costs, and a much more elaborate social welfare sys-
   tem, I'm naturally curious to know if any of these are 
   related.   Since pragmatists are guided by RESULTS and 
   not philosophy, we need to demand a much more rigorous 
   mechanistic model than the social "sciences" can usually
   offer. 

   It is easy to note that, in general, societies sharing some
   characteristic tend to do better than those which to not.
   For instance, the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand,
   which inherited a mainly English culture have "done better"
   in terms of prosperity and political stability over the last
   century than, say, nations in South and Central America
   which inherited a Spanish culture.   But is this due to 
   particular features of the culture and value system, and if
   so which one(s)?  Or is it due to some other historical
   factors?    So it's not easy being a pragmatist.


---peter

   



Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:4768 talk.politics.misc:58689
From: gary@colossus.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand)
Subject: Re: Burning cats ... was Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: Climate and Global Dynamics Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 22:05:29 GMT

pq > Peter Quince
gs > Gary Strand
pbd> Paul Barton-Davis

pbd> The nasty thing about 'libertarianism' and its ilk, is that it takes a
     very complex system of interdependency between independently complex
     biological systems and reduces it to a set of conscious choices
     covering only explicit and immediate interactions between empowered
     individuals. 

gs > The nastiest thing about "statism" and its ilk (socialism, fascism, the 
     Republicans, Democrats, &c) is that they take a very complex system of 
     human interaction and interdependency and reduce it to a boot-stomp on 
     the face and a mace to the head, unless these individuals OBEY.

pq > The nasty thing about demagogues is that they tend or pretend to be in-
     capable of distinguishing ideologies.  To speak of 'fascism' and 'Repub-
     licans' as being of the same ilk not only mixes categories but demon-
     strates an overly simplistic perspective, no doubt in knee-jerk response
     to some perceived insult from Paul, who was doing his best to point up an
     inconsistency in libertarian ideology.

  What you call an "inconsistency" and what he calls "simplistic" is what I
  call "diversity". Libertarians do not believe all interactions are made
  completely explicit. We do not believe all interactions are immediate in
  their consequences. We do not believe all individuals are exactly equal
  in all exchanges of value. If they were, exchanges wouldn't take place.
  
  The same cannot be said of statists. All interactions can be reduced to the
  use of raw physical force (appropriately, of course, or, at least, accord-
  ing to the laws and principles of the rulers), without consequence (of any
  importance), without regard for equality, and without any explicit state-
  ments about the use of force.

  BTW, you must have seen a different Republican convention than I did; I did
  note a great deal of neo-fascist ideas about feminism, homosexuals, the
  non-religious, &c. As for the debates, when the topic of drug legalization
  came up, I noticed that Bush, Clinton, and Perot all tried to out-fascist
  each other. I was surprised none of the three mentioned carpet-bombing the
  "drug lords".

--
Gary Strand                      Opinions stated herein are mine alone and are
strandwg@ncar.ucar.edu            not representative of NCAR, UCAR, or the NSF
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 04:50:42 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg) writes:
| Just a little protest to Gordon Fitch:
| 
| There are many who do not call themselves Randians that still
| have pretty much use for Objectivism. I am one, but probably
| not notable enough to you [yet]. Others are include Nozick,
| who is not exactly "middlebrow", and the "Rasmussens". On the
| Objectivist list of Jimbo, who probably has wisely departed
| from this list, there are more, including even a professional
| british neo-Platonist[!], who have interest in Rand. ...

It's okay with me if you dig up "respectable" philosophers 
who take Rand seriously.   I was defending Rand's 
middlebrowness, which I think valuable in the functioning 
of her philsophy, for the reasons I gave.  Many serious 
people have been interested in middlebrow or even vulgar
philosophy.  The New Testament, for example, can be called 
vulgar -- it makes simple assertions and tells simple 
stories.  The level of learnedness and complexity of a text 
has nothing to do with its ability to function in many 
environments or its beauty or its "truth."  Obviously.

| Next, the assertion that Objectivism embraces Determinism is
| simply false. This is seen from the Objectivist position on
| Free Will.

I was referring to Rand's use of logic.  Logic is created 
by freezing or killing language so that it can be used
mechanically: that is, unlike almost anything in nature,
the same initial state will always yield the same result.  
The same premises will always yield the same conclusion.  
(This situation does not occur in normal language, which is 
fuzzy and flexible.)  In that sense, it is mechanistic.  In 
the Randian world, one is free to do as one wills but one 
is not free to believe as one wills.  For some, this is
obviously a pleasure, if not a blessed relief.  For
others, it would be a prison.

| Though I am not to be called an Objectivist, and did some
| "Rand-bashing" in my unknowing youth [mostly due to a certain
| person who misrepresented Objectivism so that it looked like
| a real monster. He even called himself Objectivist!], I have
| long since found that Rand-bashing is not only stupidly
| childish, but also counterproductive. Rand has a lot of interesting
| ideas that would be worth a look into. If you do not agree, you
| will at least get to widen your perspective beyond the aqyired
| scepticism that is so prevalent among MIDDLEBROW academics.

I recommend reading Rand until you feel like reading
something else.  You will receive what you need.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 01:44:50 GMT

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch):
>First of all, let's dispense with the notion...that one philsophical text 
>can be determined in some objective or absolute way to be better or truer 
>than another. 

You're joking, yes?  You're *not* joking?

Of course there are objective criteria for comparing philosophical
texts.  We think less of one that is self-contradictory.  We think
less of one that is implicitly self-contradictory, by virtue of not
having worked through the implications of its arguments.  We think
less of one whose premises accord poorly with our observations of the
world around us.

Even without considering whether there are right philosophies and
wrong philosophies (there are certainly wrong ones), one can distinguish 
between good and shoddy philosophical workmanship.

>On the whole, I think philosophies should be judged on how well they 
>serve those who consume them, as judged by the consumer.  Not everyone 
>can metabolize Wittgenstein or Heidegger, nor should they.

If a philosophy purports to tell people how they should lead their
lives, I'd rather judge it on the quality of the advice -- and on
the quality of the lives of those who take that advice -- than on
the degree to which it flatters or pleases its adherents.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endless traine  -- Edmund Spenser
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: Precipitating Pendulums Postal Party Poopers
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 17:45:53 GMT

In article <9211071042.03@rgm.com> root@rgm.com (Ray Mendonsa) writes:
>The neat thing about 'libertarianism' and its ilk, is that it makes minimum
>assumptions or demands on the individuals within the world view.  

The nasty thing about 'libertarianism' and its ilk, is that it takes a
very complex system of interdependency between independently complex
biological systems and reduces it to a set of conscious choices
covering only explicit and immediate interractions between empowered
individuals. 

-- paul (never use a commenusurate diminutive when a long word will do)


-- 
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a
little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider
price only are this man's lawful prey.
						John Ruskin
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
From: gauegc@fnma.COM (eddie caplan)
Subject: Natural Law Party
Reply-To: gauegc@fnma.COM
Organization: Fannie Mae
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 21:14:23 GMT

Anybody out there interested in talking about the Natural Law Party?

---
eddie caplan                  internet: gauegc@fnma.com
fannie mae, 2h-5s                uunet: uunet!fnma.com!gauegc
3900 wisconsin avenue, nw        voice: (202) 752 8352
washington, dc 20016-2899          fax: (202) 752 3328

Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: Precipitating Pendulums Postal Party Poopers
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 17:58:14 GMT

In article <1992Nov13.004519.22065@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>| ...
>| Since it seems rather meaningless to use moral terms like
>| self-interest in the context of genotypic frequency, I suggest that we
>| drop this line of argument.
>
>I think it's a rather important line of theoretical
>investigation in politics.  Suppose the sociobiologists
>are at least partly right, and we have coding for
>altruism and also less pleasant forms of communal
>behavior in our genes:  a politics which does not
>deal with this coding [ ... ] is doomed to disaster.
>
>I suspect it is the intuitive apprehension of such
>emotions which leads people to believe that theories
>based on rational self-interest are naive or 
>irrelevant.

I didn't mean to imply that the notion of some social behaviour having
its root in biochemistry was irrelevant. I meant merely that
discussing it in terms of "the self-interest of the organism" was
pointless. Either talk about frequency in the genepool, or about
morality, but don't imagine that the two are equivalent, even if they
are, in fact, related.

-- paul
-- 
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a
little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider
price only are this man's lawful prey.
						John Ruskin
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 08:55:30 GMT

In article <9211071042.03@rgm.com> root@rgm.com (Ray Mendonsa) writes:
}This is true, there is a certain quality about Objectivist writing and
}discussion that lends an excessive certainty to its own conclusions.
}Anyone touting any philosophy must understand that their basic metaphysical
}assumptions ARE IN DISPUTE.  No one can ever agree or approve as fact the
}basic assumptions of the philosophy.

That's an anti-foundationalist position.  Foundationalists disagree.


Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Voltaire
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.anarchy,alt.cyberpunk,alt.industrial,alt.postmodern
From: mike@highlite.uucp (Mike Wiik)
Subject: Re: Singularity (was Re: Industrial Culture (or, Why...))
Organization: Gotham Communications Research
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 02:20:29 GMT

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
>| ...
>| Which leads me to think... perhaps "we" (the net) should have a go at
>| compiling a list of possible post-singularity states or trajectories. 

>While Mitchell's suggestion would be an amusing imaginative
>exercise, I can't help thinking that its productions would
>be very much like those visions of the future from the early
>part of this century that are now so profoundly dated. 

This is an interesting comment, as imho it's both wrong and right,
though it depends on your definition. Post-singularity means *all*
bets are off. We can imagine certain things (i.e., the "powers" in
Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_, but even there Vinge only related to
how the "powers" interfaced with human/alien societies (limited as
it was by his "zones" concept)) but since Singularity (as defined by
Vinge, in, among other places, the new M2K User's Guide) involves
intelligences smarter than humans, I believe this entails things
our brains individually or collectively are simply incapable of
comprehending...

So you're right, anything we can think of is as obsolete as early
1900 scenarios seem to us. I've probably painted myself into a
corner here, since I guess I've said the post-singularity is by
definition undefinable to us...

>The future ain't what it used to be at all.

Yeah! It ain't even what it is now... ('cept maybe for the Q
on ST:TNG :)

>We might as
>well speculate on universes with different physical laws.

I prefer to think of them as program parameters... :)

	-Mike

-- 
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
From: hanus@epas.utoronto.ca (Peter John Hanus)
Subject: Re: The Two Faces of Ayn Rand
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 09:26:37 GMT

In article <BxoExA.1tq@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>  You are welcome to come out of the woodwork and try to make some
>  sense of her ideas or even to offer operational definitions of
>  her terms, specify what metrics we might use in measuring "rational",

While I know that I am not directly involved in this debate, and
neither am I a great fan of Rand's epistemology, but I believe when
Rand speaks of rationality she is speaking of the possession of the
faculty of reason: "Rationality is the recognition and acceptance of
reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values
and one's only guide to action" (The Virtue of Selfishness, p25).  She
views reason as the only thing separating man from animals, animals
react through biological preprogramming, man through his ability to
reason.  Her epistemology needs no measure of rationality to work at this
level, all she has to be capable of doing here is to prove whether man
possesses this faculty or not.  She follows that it is therefore
"immoral" to prevent man from being capable of using this faculty (she
doesn't seem to care how one uses it unless it intereferes with
another's capability to use it) as she believes this is what makes man
happy, and therefore anything that makes man unhappy is immoral.
This, as you point out below, is logically flawed.  She defines
morality as a code of values accepted by choice . . . therefore
denying man his rationality is immoral because it is immoral to deny
man his ratioanlity.  Her logic is just a "little" circular.

Let's just not let them get off by wasting our time arguing over a red herring
(i.e., how one measures rationality). 

>  In essence: her central terms terms are not defined either
>  operationally or in terms of anything which can be measured
>  mechanically.   Her theories are not testable or falsifiable.
>  She leaps from premise to conclusion with no intervening
>  logic (premise: man (man qua man) relies on his rationality
>  to survive.  Conclusion: to deny him this rationality (i.e.,
>  to deny him what he needs to survive) is immoral).   She has
>  pages of intervening words, or course, but ultimately nothing
>  that justifies the conclusion.  And of course she relies on 
>  tautology: a=a.

One wonders if very many objectivists have read the works of other
philosophers (esp. realists, eg Russell and Popper) or just Rand's
criticisms of them?  She just isn't taken all that seriously by
anybody who is an anybody in academics.




Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:20784 sci.skeptic:19290 alt.censorship:8722 alt.sex:35512
From: akbloom@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Keith Bloom)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Jesus is a Prophet, not Son of God
Date: 11 Nov 92 02:58:21 GMT
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University

lungtt@gus26.ecn.purdue.edu (Terence T. Lung) writes:

>It's too bad for this so-called *proven* theory that fragments of a copy
>of the Gospel of Mark have been dated *by scientific methods* as having
>been *copied* in *50* a.d.  In other words, the thing was well in
>circulation by that time period.  These fragments are in the custody
>of Professor Jose O'Callaghan at the Pontifical Biblical Institute
>in Rome.  You can go date the fragments yourself.

I have a hunch you've been misinformed.  The earliest known fragment
of the New Testament is the Rylands Fragment, which is a piece of the
Gospel of John.  It's been dated at about 125 A.D., but the date could
be off by a couple of decades either way.

If there is a fragment of Mark dated 50 A.D., it must be a very recent
discovery, and it's astonishing that the Biblical Archaeology Review
and, for that matter, the newspapers haven't reported it.  Most
scholars think Mark was written in the late 60's A.D., at the
earliest.

Do you have some reference for your statement?

>The existence of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Egypt
>(founded by John Mark himself well before 60 a.d.) is something 
>else you may want to address.

I wish *you* would address it.  How do you know when the Coptic church
was founded, or by whom?


Keith
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc