author: Søren Hindsholm

subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
Nick V. wrote:

Greece & Rome published a small book on Homer in a series called
surveys. It is a good place to begin.
I suggest on the Homeric Question: A.B. Lord: The Singer of Tales
(1960); G.S. Kirk: The Songs of Homer (1962); Milman Parry: The Making
of Homeric Verse. A very interesting book on the social and economic
world of Homer is M.I. Finley: The World of Odysseus (1977). On the
heroic code of life and how to interprete Homer as literature I suggest
J. Griffin: Homer on Life and Death (1980).

I would not dare to say that the Homeric question is a dead issue, but
it is a very difficult question to treat in a reasonable way, but of
course I do not know your background or classical training. Even though
I should think that something along the lines of Finley or Griffin would
prove more profitable to you.

Sï¿½ren Hindsholm
DK-9000 Aalborg


author: arsen

subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
"Nick V." <[email]> wrote in message news:<0oxg8.18777$[email]>...

Fuck you and do your job with yourself.


author: Nick V.

subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
Sure, that'll be great. Just post it here whenever you have the time.

Thank you,
Nick

"Raymond Brisebois" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
news:<0oxg8.18777$[email]>...
if
I


author: Joe Bernstein

subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
In article <[email]>, Edwin Menes
<[email]> wrote:

I recently looked at the <New Companion> at some length to see what it
had to say on this issue.

There are a number of essays that touch on the Homeric Question in one
way or another, but all fall carefully short of the central issue,
which is discussed by one of the editors in a chapter I found rather
more emphatic than I would have thought warranted.  Mind, the person
in question *does* cite other views, but also goes to the trouble to
debunk each of them.  The publication dates of said other views do not
persuade me that the Homeric Question has become a dead issue.

I also thought the actual theory of said editor was, well, somewhat
*odd*.  I hesitate to say more without the book in front of me, but
am positive that there's something in the theory that makes Ockham's
Razor start sharpening itself, and have a hunch I even remember what
it is.  Maybe tomorrow, if anyone cares.

But anyway, I would strongly recommend *against* taking the <New
Companion> as decisive-in-itself on the issue, and I'm not entirely
sure I'll settle for only such references as I can find in it, when
I get back to this Question myself.

Joe Bernstein


author: Odysseus

subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
Try this:
Homer: Readings and Images, 1992  Eds. C. Emlyn-Jones, L. Hardwick and J.
Purkis
ISBN 0 7156 2438 5, The Open University, London.

It has 15 essays on many aspects regarding Homer including
Essay 10; 'Reading the texts': archaeology and the Homeric question, by E.S.
Sherratt.

It's part of the OU's course on Homer but the book is available through good
book stores.

wondering
books.
I


subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
"Joe Bernstein" <[email]> wrote in message
news:3c89764e$0$64535$[email]...

I'd be interesting it hearing it.

Thanks,
Nick


subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
Joe Bernstein <[email]> wrote in message news:<3c89764e$0$64535$[email]>...

Fuck you. Why did you put your message in my damn name, son of the bitch.


subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
In article <Zgvi8.162614$[email]>,
Nick V. <[email]> wrote:

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to answer.  Here goes.

The essay is "Homer and Writing" by Barry B. Powell, pp. 3-32 of
<A New Companion to Homer> edited by Ian Morris and Barry Powell,
which is supplementum centesimum sexagesimum tertium to <Mnemosyne>,
Leiden [etc.]:  Brill, 1997.

The following attempts to summarise the essay at one sentence per
paragraph, one paragraph per section.  It ends with a single line
that reads "End of sentence-summary.", after which there's more from
me as a non-summariser.

Beginning of sentence-summary.

It's a "paradox" that the Homeric poems were written at practically
the same time as "the invention of the alphabet" (maybe a few
generations later).  There are two obvious and old solutions:  the
alphabet is earlier, or the writing of the poems is later.  But making
the writing of the poems later runs into huge problems - nothing in
their language, nor in their content, really allows them to be later
than 700 BC.  It's also untrue that the alphabet is earlier, [according
to Powell], and that's most of what this essay is about.

"The Nature and History of Writing".  We need to abandon preconceptions;
for example, it's hardly obvious that all writing is phonetic, since
English isn't.  Nor is writing "frozen speech":  mathematical formulae
or musical scores are written, but not spoken - this sort of "sign-
writing" is called *semasiography*.  Semasiography is the oldest form
of writing, at least in the Near East, but went on to *lexigraphy*
(writing that's related to speech), originally as *logography* (signs
that represent whole words).  Chinese writing is logographic; but in
the Near East, *phonography* followed, signs that represent sounds, and
especially *syllabography* (signs that represent syllables), a
development that tied writing systems to particular spoken languages
(as written Chinese is *not* tied to particular spoken languages).
The major systems of cuneiform and hieroglyphic were mixed, "logosyllabic",
with the effect that intelligibility required familiarity, hence
"Novelty of thought" was absent from these literatures.  But the
scribes never threw these systems away - and after all, they were
more "advanced" than the Chinese one.  "The first wholly phonographic
writings" showed up instead at the edges, in the Aegean and the Levant,
because in fact structural change is "unknown within the history of
writing" and so change always happens at the edges.  Linear B is the
first, and classical Cypriote the last, of the Aegean syllabaries.
The West Semitic scripts may have gotten the idea from Aegean traders
or invaders such as the Philistines, but certainly got the symbols from
Egypt.  Specifically, the 24 Egyptian phonograms (phonetic characters)
that represented syllables with only one consonant became the West
Semitic "writing" [Powell does *not* consider this, or modern Arabic
writing, to be alphabetic].  This was a single person's invention, and
another related invention was the local equivalent of the ABC song,
making West Semitic writing much easier to learn than earlier systems.

"What is an Alphabet?"  The Egyptian system was not an alphabet plus
some stuff, because the part that looks like an alphabet to us was
never used by itself.  [My best guess at the point of a very futile-
seeming paragraph.]  West Semitic writing is a syllabary, not an
alphabet, because it doesn't tell you how to pronounce what it
represents.  Also, you can't pronounce the individual consonants of
Greek, but there are several pronunciations of each West Semitic
syllable.  [More coherently], the phoneme as a concept is dependent
on alphabetic writing - does not exist in Chinese thought, for example -
and contrasts sharply with the ambiguity of West Semitic writing, as
in the words Daniel "interpreted" at Belshazzar's feast.  So the
Greek alphabet is a great invention, although it's certainly not
the only possible way to write.

"Monogenesis and the Adapter".  Why should Greek have happened how it did?
You don't *have* to write vowels, and you certainly don't have to give
them their own letters.  But somebody ruled otherwise for Greek:
"nowhere in early Greek inscriptions do we find haphazard use or
intentional omission of vowel signs".  The adapter's choice of signs
to handle the vowels was clearly arbitrary, although we can see some
hints of method.  Note that the Iberian script of Spain wound up
assigning vowels differently.  So the adapter was thinking consciously;
this is also shown in his adding the signs we know as phi, chi, and psi
(probably originally phi, khi, and qhi, using q for a far-back k-like
sound as is common in transcribing Semitic languages).  This doesn't
mean his work was perfect:  eventually omega was added, while the q
sounds, qoppa and psi, were dropped for new meaning (psi) or no use
of that sign (qoppa).  The sibilants were even worse - zeta, xi, san,
and sigma - and took time to settle down (in the process taking over
psi).  But the overall consistency of Greek writing is "only explicable
on a theory of monogenesis".

"When?"  Rhys Carpenter in the 1930s argued that the alphabet must
date to around 800 BC because otherwise we have to explain a period
of silence at the beginning which is not known from any other time
of Greek history; but note that this date still includes some decades
of silence to allow for accidents of survival.  Some Semiticists argue
that it's older, but they're wrong [to shorten a really turgid and
unproductive paragraph].

"Where?"  After 900 BC, Phoenicians were spreading out - still more after
the actual Assyrian conquest of Phoenicia in the 8th century - for
example to Cyprus and Crete, alongside Greeks in both places.  But
[Powell thinks] the adapter was probably Euboean:  Euboeans were
actively trading alongside the Phoenicians, at Al Mina, at Pithecusae,
and maybe even at Lefkandi on Euboea; and Herodotus records that writing
reached the Greeks via Boeotia and perhaps Euboea (5.57.1 - 5.58.2)
through people from Phoenicia.  See also Herodotus at 5.58.2-3 for
further evidence.

"Early Inscriptions".  We have really short inscriptions from Lefkandi,
Gabii, and slightly later from Pithecusae, which also produces the
first major inscription, the Cup of Nestor around 730 BC, which is
obviously recording a game at a symposium (banquet).  This refers
directly to a joke in Homer, so either it refers directly to the
<Iliad> or we profane Homer by thinking he could use a traditional
joke.  ["profane" is not Powell's word but might as well be; this sort
of indignant denial is a typical move of his when he doesn't have a
good argument and wants you not to notice, as when he's fulminating
against the idea that the Semites use an alphabet.]  The Dipylon Jug
from Athens is about as old and records something about to happen
to the best dancer.  This implies that dance contests and symposium
games were subjects for early writing; while one would assume business
was also a purpose for early writing, in fact we find no examples of
such until after 550 BC!

"The Legend of Palamedes".  Can we identify an inventor?  Stesichorus,
our oldest witness, says Palamedes, and "may have been right".  Palamedes
is a Great Inventor (arithmetic, dice, measurements, tactics, ... and
writing) known from the <Cypria> and the tragedies.  But Greeks already
had a trickster hero, Odysseus, and Palamedes was said to be his rival;
there was no need to invent him, but if he were Homer's contemporary,
it wouldn't be surprising if he were remembered and eventually assimilated
into legend.  And he was Euboean.

"Writing in Homer".  In general, Homer just doesn't talk about writing,
period.  In <Iliad> 7.170-192, note that the heroes' marks are *not*
writing, because only Aias can identify his mark.  The one real allusion
to writing is the story of Bellerophon betrayed by Anteia, <Iliad>
6.168-179, in which there are 'baneful signs written on a folding tablet,
many and deadly'.  But even here, Homer isn't really familiar with
writing; he's just citing a common eastern myth (as witness the story
of Uriah betrayed by Solomon), even siting it in eastern Lycia, and naming
a piece of technology, tablets, which he may have seen.

"Summary and Conclusions".  Old writing wasn't like our writing, in that
it didn't have much to do with spoken language.  Greek writing did, and
the adapter must have had some reason to want it to:  H. T. Wade-Gery
suggested as long ago as 1952 that he wanted it to so that he could
record hexametric poetry.  "The possessors of the early Greek alphabet
were evidently aristocrats and in their social life audience to Homeric
epic and Hesiodic wisdom" who would also trade, drink at Pithekoussai
(the Cup of Nestor), and compete at games (the Dipylon Jug).  The adapter
learned from a Phoenician and did specific stuff, some of which didn't
work; [the only thing of interest in that paragraph is the] note that
several sources record Palamedes as having added letters to the
alphabet when he brought it to Greek [these sources are Hyginus, <fabula>
277, Plutarch, <Quaest. conviv.> 9.2, this'll be somewhere in the <Moralia>,
and Pliny's <Natural History> 7.56, 192, per footnote 51].  Euboea was
the site of origin, and Euboean contact-points such as Athens are where
we find early inscriptions.  Euboeans of this time included very rich
men, doubtless, given all their trade, who could afford all the papyrus
needed.  While it's common to think of Homer as coming from near Turkey,
Euboeans were also Ionians, and there's indications in the epics of
local interest:  embarking from Aulis; Achilles as best, Agamemnon as
bad; Boeotia first and biggest in the Catalogue of Ships - beside which,
Boeotian Hesiod says he knew Homer.  And Homer's and Hesiod's scribe
"may well have been the adapter himself" - after all, he clearly
invented the alphabet to write down poetry, and so wouldn't this be
precisely the poetry he'd want to write down?  "In this way, from the
beginning, Homer and Hesiod became the educators of Greece."

End of sentence-summary.

So OK, here's my take on it.  I'm persuaded by Powell's arguments for
monogenesis, but only tentatively.  I note that that whole span of
his essay has very few references to anyone else's writing; I'd want
to see a serious attempt at refuting his claims before I was satisfied
that he was right, because I'm probably not going to make such an
attempt myself.

I'm utterly unpersuaded, however, by his arguments for the adapter
being also the recorder of Homer.

Note that the major inscriptions on which he rests his argument date
to around 730 BC, while the earliest known Greek writing dates to
at least 770 BC (the example from Gabii; I'm not sure whether that's
moved up since Powell wrote).  (Oh, also, in case the place names are
unfamiliar, Gabii is a site in Latium in Italy; Pithecusae is on an
island near Naples; and Al Mina is on the north Levantine coast, I
think probably in Turkey but maybe Syria.)  This is a large-ish gap
to be making assumptions about the Original Purpose Of Writing, in
my view, and so I have a *very* hard time accepting Powell's
reconstruction of a rich Euboean trader named Palamedes who personally
knew the authors of the <Iliad>, the <Odyssey>, and the <Theogony>,
as anything but an attractive hypothesis.

All of that said.  I was not quite right when I said that a bunch of
other essays in the book say *nothing* about the Homeric Question.

The essay *titled* "The Homeric Question" (Frank M. Turner, pp. 123-145)
is indeed a disappointment; it's an account of the history of the
question in classical scholarship, not of current views.

A number of other potentially relevant essays do in fact veer away
from trying to adjudicate anything of the sort; the most spectacular
example is "Homer and the Iron Age" by Ian Morris, pp. 535-559, in
which the other editor would have had every right to express an
opinion and doesn't.

But Michael Haslam's "Homeric Papyri and Transmission of the Text"
(pp. 55-100) *does* contain an exception, explicitly.

Pp. 79-81:

"To try to get further back involves us in The Homeric Question.  The
poems' transmission is very different, according as they attained
their monumental form in the 8th century or only in the 6th. ...
a comprehensive and impartial survey is impossible. ...  The matter
of writing makes perhaps the best entry-point into the maze.  One
theory holds that there were no written texts of the Homeric poems
until the middle of the 6th century [cites E. Heitsch in <Hermes>
96:  641-660, 1968, esp. p. 659; G. Nagy in <Poetry as Performance>
and elsewhere, see also R. Seaford, <Reciprocity and Ritual> pp. 152-154].
Another has the first writing down of the poems coincide with their
composition and/or performance by the poet [cites R. Janko, <The
Iliad:  A Commentary>, IV. 38, and elsewhere, and B. Powell, <Homer
and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet>, which by its title is probably
the longer version of the essay summarised above].  Both theories
associate written form with definitive form [which I've elided Haslam's
disagreement with].  ...  Against the latter theory [Powell's] may be
urged difficulties both practical and motivational, as well as its
arguable implication in a literacy-bound view of the conditions under
which great poems may be produced.  Even the most naively optimistic
scholar may feel uneasy when invited to believe that what he have
happens to be just what Homer sang, and it is a troubling presupposition
that 'Homer' is a theoretically identifiable individual to whom the
composition of the <Iliad> and/or the <Odyssey> is axiomatically to
be attributed, as if unitarian views can be validated by ex cathedro
pronouncements [cite to Janko in <Classical Antiquity> 9:  327-328,
1990, being per Haslam wrong-headed].  But where the former theory
[6th-century writing] founders, it seems to me, is in its inability
adequately to account for the early textual fixation implied by certain
details of the linguistic constitution of the poems.  Janko's comparative
statistical study of the incidence of a variety of older linguistic
features in early epic poems, enabling firm relative dating (<Iliad>,
<Odyssey>, Hesiod, in that order), shows that the Homeric poems'
linguistic evolution was arrested at a very early point [cite to
Janko's <Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns:  Diachronic Development in
Epic Diction>, 1982, which is taken by *many* authors in the <New
Companion> as Scientific Gospel; I've looked it up and found it too
technical for me to judge, but Haslam, uniquely so far as I've read,
*does* point to "a sceptical view", A. Ballabriga in <Revue des etudes
grecques> 103:  16-29 (1990), and maybe also M. L. West in "The Date
of the <Iliad>", <Museum Helveticum> 52:  203-219, 1995, pp. 204-205].

[Um, so Haslam just said the poems have really old linguistic features,
and goes on:]  It seems impossible to explain this arrest except in
terms of the fixity provided by writing.  We are free to postulate
rhapsodic performance of a memorized text, but unless this was controlled
by an invariant, i.e. a written text, some linguistic development would
have been inevitable.  If there is one thing that research into oral
traditions has shown, it is that they are inherently labile:  change,
however imperceptible to performers and audiences, does not stop.  Yet
it did stop, prior to Hesiod:  this can only be due to writing.  To
record in writing in the 8th century poems of the length of the <Iliad>
and the <Odyssey> would have been an enterprise so remarkable that it
is hard to credit; the difficulties which the hypothesis encounters
are not to be minimized.  But it seems that it was done.  The poet
himself would derive no advantage from having a script, nor would he
have the facilities to produce one; the initiative must have come from
a wealthy admirer.  With others, I see no alternative to dictation:
which may have resulted in the poems' being longer than hitherto."

And he goes on from there to talk about transmission in the early
centuries.

Kurt A. Raaflaub, early in his essay on "Homeric Society (pp. 624-648),
writes (p. 625):  "The question of the historicity of Homeric society
is related to two other much-debated problems:  the 'Homeric Question,'
dealing with the formation of the extant epics, and the 'Trojan War
Question,' ...  In this chapter I follow the conventional view that
the extant epics were produced, whether or not by the same poet, roughly
in the second half of the eighth century, the <Iliad> about a generation
before the <Odyssey>:  close enough to each other to be examined as a
unit."  This seems a fair representation of an "outsider's" take on
the issue; outsiders usually seem to be unaware of the current concerns
of insiders on a particular controversy (as witness the way that every
secondary source today talks about the J, P, and E sources of the
first four books of Moses, which have been largely discarded by the
current generation of people researching the history of the Biblical
text).  I'm not sure whether outsiders or insiders are thereby better
off:  if the current positions are merely intellectual adventures or
cynical tenure-getting moves, it's just as well to ignore them, but
if they in fact illuminate problems with the reigning orthodoxy, it
isn't.

Regardless, I think it's clear from the above that an insider's take
on the Homeric Question these days would be something like this:
To quote Turner, p. 123:  "Did the two epics have a single author?"
Side A says maybe, maybe not; side B says single authorship is
meaningless for texts handed down by long oral tradition.  "Under
what conditions were the epics composed?"  Side A says dictation
by their originator or soon thereafter; side B points to centuries
of oral handing-down.  "Was there an original core to the <Iliad>
or to the <Odyssey> upon which a later longer poem had been composed?"
Side A says not in any sense meaningful to us (most or all of our
epics is unitary); side B can take any position it wants (can be
either unitarian or analytical).  I think.  "What was the relationship
of the <Iliad> to the <Odyssey>?"  Side A says it's earlier and maybe
by the same poet; I have no clue what side B says.  Side A says Homer
lived (one author or two) probably in the later 8th century BC,
and the poems were written down then; side B says the whole idea of
Homer is pretty dubious, and the poems were written down at Athens
in the later 6th century BC.

But I'm going from a volume that's heavily biased towards side A,
and frankly I find the way side B people tend to write ranges from
difficult to unreadable, so I'm not at all sure I'm being fair to
them; which is a problem for me since I need, for my own research,
to make a decision, myself.

Joe Bernstein


subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
In article <[email]>,
arsen <[email]> wrote, quoting a post of mine in
full:

On the chance that this poster is anything other than a troll
and actually has some sort of legitimate complaint, this followup.
I'd like to think that chance essentially zero, but have reason for
thinking it higher; see below.

I at no time have called for divine judgement on your name, as best
I know, just to make that clear; whether it's your "damn name" or
your "bless name" (which I suppose is the opposite) is none of my
concern.

More to the point, if I've ever put any message whatever "in" your
name in any meaningful sense at all, it's news to me.  This holds
particularly for the post you quoted, which was in the name I've
used for every post I've made to Usenet over the past six-plus
years, "Joe Bernstein".  That post didn't contain the word "arsen"
anywhere in it; I just checked.

Are you saying that you also go by the name "Joe Bernstein" and object
to that name appearing in posts that don't contain obscenities?  Since
you don't use that name in your online identity, frankly, I don't see
that you have any right to complain about my making you look better
than you are.

My mother entered hospital for cancer surgery today.  I have
concluded that you are fundamentally a scumbag of no worth whatever.
However, this is the second time in a few weeks that I've been accused
on this group of doing something that I didn't do (the previous time,
a *sane* poster accused me of sending her copies of my posts).  I'm
curious whether any sane participants in humanities.classics can
help me find out whether someone is forging my identity, or whether
it's just a run of bad luck in the false-accusations department.

Joe Bernstein

(Apologies to the original poster.  I haven't had a chance to post
with a copy of the <New Companion to Homer> in front of me for
verification yet, but do intend to do so this week.)


subject: Re: Homeric Question

text:
Thank you very much for this excellent info, Joe. It is very much
appreciated. Also, thanks for summarizing the portions of the texts for me.
They are clear and incredibly helpful and they get the point across quite
well. I'm sorry I don't have time for a more detailed response right now,
but once again, thank you for your assistance.

Cheers,
Nick

"Joe Bernstein" <[email]> wrote in message
news:3ca2a28f$0$64544$[email]...
"logosyllabic",
<Moralia>,


subject: United Nations

text:
One of the thorns in America's side is the United Nations.  America would be a
lot better off without the U N.  What would be the way to get America out of
the U N, and get the U N out of America, and let some other country host it?

There must be a philosophical remedy for the malady called United Nations.
Anyone know what it is?

jp
You belong to you; I belong to me.


author: Les Cargill

subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

I have it on pretty good authority that the Seventh Cavalry felt
very civilized while bayonnetting noncombatants at the "Battle" of
the Washita. There were similar instances of "cvilization" in Canada.

In history, there are only the will to power and the rationalizations of it
after the fact. No nation can claim to be "civilized", only victorious.


author: [redacted]

subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Les Cargill ([email]) wrote:

: "()" wrote:
: >
: >    The problem with the United Nations (UN) is that it includes nations
: > whose governments don't respect individual rights.  In other words,
: > nations that are not civilized.  Respect for individual rights is the
: > basis of civilization.  Hence my proposal: United Civilized Nations (UCN).
: >

: I have it on pretty good authority that the Seventh Cavalry felt
: very civilized while bayonnetting noncombatants at the "Battle" of
: the Washita. There were similar instances of "cvilization" in Canada.

: In history, there are only the will to power and the rationalizations of it
: after the fact. No nation can claim to be "civilized", only victorious.

  I have no interest in someone *feeling* civilized or *claiming* to be
civilized.  The UCN would have a constitution, perhaps somewhat similar to
the United States constitution but with improvements.  In this
constitution, 'civilized' would be DEFINED.  It would be connected to
respect for rights.  This would be DEFINED.  What constitutes proof of
respect and proof of disrespect would be laid out in detail.  If there is
doubt, there would be a standard procedure for resolving doubt.
  Feelings be damned.  Mere claims be damned.


author: Robert J. Kolker

subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

In none would qualify then why bother with the notion?

The FACT of the matter is that every nation which has
a government is an on going criminal organization if for
no other reason than taxation, which is theft.

The purpose of government is to plunder its subjects while
getting them to agree to be plundered at the same
time.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

A constitution is not worth the paper it is
written on if the people who ordained it
wont see to its proper enforcement and
if the government charged with its protection
betrays it.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Robert J. Kolker ([email]) wrote:

: "()" wrote:

: >    The problem with the United Nations (UN) is that it includes nations
: > whose governments don't respect individual rights.  In other words,
: > nations that are not civilized.  Respect for individual rights is the
: > basis of civilization.  Hence my proposal: United Civilized Nations (UCN).

: What makes you think the U.S. is civilized. Did you know that
:  [etc.]

 The UCN (United Civilized Nations) would have few members.  Most nations
would not qualify.  Perhaps none.
  The UN is supposed to be some sort of government governing nations.  To
have members who disrespect individual rights is roughly like having
Timothy McVeigh in a political office.  If the purpose of government is to
protect rights, it doesn't make sense to have someone in it who has no
respect for rights.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
The problem with the United Nations (UN) is that it includes nations
whose governments don't respect individual rights.  In other words,
nations that are not civilized.  Respect for individual rights is the
basis of civilization.  Hence my proposal: United Civilized Nations (UCN).


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

What makes you think the U.S. is civilized. Did you know that
the United States comitted acts of war against Serbian Civilians.
When it was clear the U.S. could not get a cheap victory over
the Serbs in Kosovo, Clinton ordered the bombing of civillians,
civillian property, power plants etc.etc. to force Milosovic to
pull his troops out of Kosovo. It worked. It is much easier to
make an undeclared war against civilians than against armed
forces. BTW, the Serbs did NOTHING of a warlike nature
against the U.S.. Nothing. It was pure power.

How civilized!

And before you weep tears of the Kosovari, just note the
the Kosovari militia are armed commie thugs who are
currently killing innocent people in Macedonia. The U.S.
in effect became the Kosovari Air Force. Is that what you
paid your taxes for?

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Easy.  We could withdraw from the UN.

I'm not sure we could kick them out of their headquarters.  The land was
donated to them by the Rockefeller family, I believe, and by treaty it's now
considered "international territory."  I suppose New York could cut off their
utilities.

However, if this were in the interests of the US, we'd have done this already.
As long as their is an organization like the UN which can facilitate
multi-lateral projects (such as sanctions, wars [aka "peace-keeping" mission],
and treaties), it's in the interests of the US to at least have a voice in the
process.  If we "throw out" the UN, chances are that the rest of the world
would retaliate.

The problem is that the US congress wants to turn the UN into a puppet of the
US government.  That's the LAST thing either the rest of the world or this
country needs.


author: Lordsutch

subject: Re: United Nations

text:
I thought any government IS Evil.
Didn't the founding fathers of the U.S. believe government was a necessary evil
that should be limited as much as possible?


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Lordsutch wrote:

Yes they did. I forgot which of the founders who
said that government was like fire, a useful servant
and a fearful master.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
A constitution is not worth the paper it is
written on if the people who ordained it
wont see to its proper enforcement and
if the government charged with its protection
betrays it.

Bob Kolker

I have to agree with Bob Kolker on this; as long as gov'ts violate individual
rights, no UN is possible.  And he is correct that the US gov't is not
civilized, either, because it violates individual rights; the UN that we have
is a fake, trying to make people believe that it is doing something, while in
reality, it is only a front for global gangsters.

We need to get out of the UN, and run it out of the country.  We need a
Declaration of Independence from the UN.

jp
You belong to you; I belong to me.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
There is a lot of chaos surrounding the definition of civilized; as you can see
by reading the post of "Kolker."  Our gov't deals with China as if it was
civil; so there is a definition that I would not endorse.  We treat criminals
as if they were actual humans; and THAT definition of civil is wrong in my
book.

For me, civil means polite, courteous, chivalrous, and gallant.  If that is
what you mean by "United Civilized Nations,"  then I am with you.  Is that what
you mean?

jp
You belong to you; I belong to me.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Bill Clington is not civilized, and his Presidency was cruel, not civil.
Everything Bill Clinton does is impolite, uncourteous, unchivalrous, and
ungallant, and he cannot be named as typical of US gov't.

Some of us think of the US as civilized, because there is a chance (admittedly
under attack by the Clintons, and others) here for privacy, which chance is
non-existent anywhere else on earth.

jp
You belong to you; I belong to me.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Selfish4 wrote:

Let us look at some typical U.S. Govt activity.  Aside from the
mass murder of children (Waco), there is the frequent busting
down of doors by the DEA. Then there is the FBI having a
very cozy relationship with a murdering gangster -- Whitey
Bulger and an instance of the FBI withholding evidence the
cost a man 30 years of his life unjustly imprisoned.

Then there are the thousands of seizures of property for
tax liens. That translates into people being tossed out of
their homes. Typical U.S. Govt. behavior.

Eventually you will catch on that our government is evil. Not
as evil as some others but evil.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
It sounds like you are saying that the U N is doing some good, and it therefore
should be continued.  But in fact the U N is the world's worst enemy against
humans!  Worse than Hitler, or Stalin, or cancer.  Human beings are rational
animals, and they require peace and freedom to survive, because reason is a
peaceful pursuit, and animals must be free to act for survival.  The U N has
contributed war to the world, and the steady loss of freedom; this means the U
N has produced war and slavery.

We need a philosophical remedy against the U N.

jp
You belong to you; I belong to me.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Selfish4 ([email]) wrote:
: >From: () [email]@unknown site

: >   The problem with the United Nations (UN) is that it includes nations
: >whose governments don't respect individual rights.  In other words,
: >nations that are not civilized.  Respect for individual rights is the
: >basis of civilization.  Hence my proposal: United Civilized Nations (UCN).
: >
: >--
: >       Jerry Story

: There is a lot of chaos surrounding the definition of civilized; as you c
: an see
: by reading the post of "Kolker."  Our gov't deals with China as if it was
: civil; so there is a definition that I would not endorse.  We treat criminals
: as if they were actual humans; and THAT definition of civil is wrong in my
: book.

: For me, civil means polite, courteous, chivalrous, and gallant.  If that is
: what you mean by "United Civilized Nations,"  then I am with you.  Is tha
: t what
: you mean?

   By 'civilized' I mean simply respect for rights.  This is the basis of
civilization.  Any nation that does not respect rights has no place in a
civilized community of nations.


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

There is not a nation on the planet that consistently respects
rights. The nations that exist have governments which pass
out privileges on an expedient basis.

Nor has there EVER been a nation which consistently
respects rights. That is why history is a dirge of
conquest, rapine, slaughter and repression

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
Robert J. Kolker ([email]) wrote:

: "()" wrote:

: >
: >    By 'civilized' I mean simply respect for rights.  This is the basis of
: > civilization.  Any nation that does not respect rights has no place in a
: > civilized community of nations.

: There is not a nation on the planet that consistently respects
: rights. The nations that exist have governments which pass
: out privileges on an expedient basis.

: Nor has there EVER been a nation which consistently
: respects rights. That is why history is a dirge of
: conquest, rapine, slaughter and repression

   Can you suggest a better idea than UCN (United Civilized Nations)?
(It is very easy to be negative; can you be constructive?)


subject: Re: United Nations

text:
"()" wrote:

How about each nation ceasing to do evil and learning to do good?

We don't need no steenking badges and organizations to
be virtuous.

It is all very simple: Apply this rule rigorously -- What is hateful
and harmful to thee, do not do unto others.
and also the fundemental rule of Justice: --- What is thine is thine
and what is mine is mine.

Those two taken together will light the world up.

Bob Kolker


author: Malrassic Park

subject: Prediction

text:
Predictably, after the death of Karol Wojtyla there will be a usenet
group dedicated to attacking him as there was after Mother Theresa's
death at alt.sex.necrophilia.mother-theresa.


author: David Buchner

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
<[email]> wrote:

Deal is, as Walter E. Williams says to people who whine about how
expensive it is to raise their kids, why did you have them if you can't
afford to. I don't know about the 3rd World situation, but in America
there are a lot of people who, um, engage in reproductive activities
without any thought of whether they can afford the kids. And then it's
all too often regarded as a Sad Story requiring Government-Sponsored
charity when they can't buy back-to-school sneakers for the entire
brood.

How is this my problem?


author: Reggie Perrin

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
[email] wrote:

This is true for technologically developed and industrialised
societies. But in countries where the majority depend on subsistence
farming for a living, it's hard to see where the extra resources would
materialise from, at least in the short term. Sure, technology and
productivity are improving in the third world too, but at a rate that
can support unfettered population growth? I doubt it.


author: Benevolent Bully Boy

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:
bishops,
inalienable
could

I'm not saying it, but I wouldn't be surprised.

The fact that the "relatively benign form of catholicism" you describe
exists here in America is proof that the Vatican doesn't rule with the
iron fist it once did, and there's something to be said for that.

Just for the record, I am catholic (one of those "social" catholics
that coop referred to), and I do favor birth control, and agree that
the Church's policy toward it is absurdly shortsighted, given the
obvious problem of over-population.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Atlas Bugged wrote:

seven guys
OK

If only your analogy equating all religion with White Supremacy were
valid, you might have something there.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
[email] wrote:
thus,

Trying to refute the so-called "fallacy of limited resources" flies in
the face of common sense. There's only so much biomass on the earth,
and industrialized human consumption goes way beyond what would
naturally be the case, so I actually agree with Reggie, it's not
irrelevant.

how
increasing

I think this is the case because as people become more affluent, they
desire more free time, and view having children as an impediment. Also,
industrialized peoples may become aware of world overpopulation,
whereas the african still living in a hut in Zimbabwe may have
absolutely no concept of it.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Benevolent Bully Boy wrote:
that
in

But in actual fact it is irrelevant, flies-in-the-face or not.

Just for example look up sometime the increased yield productivity per
acre in grains over the last century or two, not to mention the
enormous decrease in human energy and time required to harvest it. It
is enormous. (It is why Malthusian predictions of mass starvation
always turn out to be completely false - except of course in primitive
or collectivist countries).

Known oil reserves never seem to change, no matter how much we use,
i.e. they keep discovering more and extractions methods become ever
more efficient. The Baku oil fields in the former Soviet Union
supposedly have as much potential as *the entire Mideast*. The problem
with oil is that it is unfortunately predominantly located in
politically unstable areas of the world.

birth

Again, this is part of women becoming liberated from household and
child-rearing drudgery. Women in primitive countries don't have vacuum
cleaners, washing machines, or microwave ovens.

Fred Weiss


author: John Alway

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Agent Cooper wrote:

[...]

  Exactly right, and this would fit well in another thread on this
forum.

  The population rates of third world societies is growing.  This is
not true of industrialized societies, where the birth rate is below or
close to the replacement rate (rate at which population stays static).

  ...John


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Agent Cooper wrote:
they
Also,

You don't have to get stroppy with me.

Actually, I just had one. "Kitten Toy" I call him, and soon, my
barefoot and kitchen-ridden wife will sire an entire army of Cat Toys
the likes of which the world has never seen!

Seriously though, we're stopping at one.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:

would

They're doing it in China. Now China does, I believe, have mandated
birth control, i.e. you are only allowed so many children. But they
wouldn't need that if they would simply see what is in front of their
eyes and completely unleash the forces of capitalism. As it is they are
experiencing one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world -
and producing squeals from all over the world because they are beating
the pants off of them in many product categories, especially textile
products.

Fred Weiss


author: Atlas Bugged

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Agent Cooper" <[email]> wrote in message
news:d32anm$a89$[email]...

A "Dear Bugged" letter!  Please send all lurid details and I will advise!


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:28:04 +0000 (UTC), Reggie Perrin
<[email]> wrote:

If only the HRC was against poverty. JPII showed no inclination toward
fighting poverty, but of finding the religious meaning in suffering of
any kind.

No, I am agreeing with the capitalist crowd.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:

It's really an irrelevant issue to poverty and only an issue to
socialists who regard the economic pie as fixed in quantity - and thus,
by their thinking, requiring dividing it up in smaller and smaller
amounts. Today, of course, it's an additional issue to them because
they are explicitly opposed to economic growth (and the more radical of
them want to actually go in reverse.)

The United States absorbed 10's of millions of immigrants along with
very high economic growth (much higher than today) and a steadily
rising standard of living.

As a personal issue, of course people should have the choice as to how
many children they have, if any. It's worth noting that with increasing
industrialization, which coincides with embracing "modernity", birth
rates tend to decline. (Probably because it liberates women.)

Fred Weiss


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 09:03:57 +0000 (UTC), [email] wrote:

It was a union, Walesa was a union leader, and it was just a matter of
time before the union "of the people" began to serve only itself. I
saw no reason to trust either Walesa or the commies.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 09:23:53 +0000 (UTC), Atlas Bugged
<[email]> wrote:

Let me put it this way then: the issue you brought up is like a speck
on the wall compared to the other one.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Malrassic Park wrote:

Bugged didn't bring up "sexual repression", as you have it. What he
brought up is the abject hypocrisy of JPII preaching about relieving
poverty while at the same time discouraging one of the most effective
mechanisms for poverty-relief, i.e. birth control. That's before we
even get to the disastrous repercussions on the AIDS crisis in the
developing world. These issues are certainly not "specks
on the wall".


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 19:44:22 +0000 (UTC), Reggie Perrin
<[email]> wrote:

Even if that one was among his complaints, it doesn't make sense.
Birth control is not an effective means of controlling poverty. Is it
that poor people have nothing better to do so they breed like rabbits?
I don't think Bugged really wants to start with an implicit premise
such as that. Besides, I would think that defeating communism would
be a much better way of fighting poverty.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:

Her closing statement is an indictment of out-of-line polich bishops,
not the pope himself: "Ironically,  the pope has said it best. On
January 1 of this year, he urged  world governments to allow
individuals to pursue freely their  beliefs and warned that when
religious and civil law are synonymous,  it "can stifle religious
freedom, even going so far as to  restrict or deny other inalienable
human rights." The Polish  bishops, who seek to honor the pope, could
do not better than  heed these words."

Yeah he sounds like a "living monster" to me.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Malrassic Park wrote:

"Even if"? Gimme a break. That quote again, sports fans:

"[JPII was] an animal who denounced poverty while robbing people
of any means to control their population."

Um, it helps poor people stop making more poor people. How is that
not an effective means of controlling poverty?

As though one has to choose between birth control and the end
of communism. Hmmm, perestroika or the Pill? Commies or condoms?
I jes can't make up my mind.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Benevolent Bully Boy wrote:

Talk is cheap. Are you trying to tell me that the Polish church was
acting independently of the Vatican? Furthermore, the policies that
the Polish church lobbies for are entirely consistent with JPII's own
statements about the proper role of women and so on.

I don't really think that he was as bad as the Muslim theocrats, but
the brand of social conservatism that he espoused is still ugly. And in
the context of AIDS and poverty, it is worse than ugly - it is
downright immoral and the cause of much human suffering.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Agent Cooper" <[email]> wrote in message
news:d30j4e$d6r$[email]...

I understand the concept of mixed morality just fine.  Remember that I was
only introduced to Objectivism and natural rights a mere decade ago, so I
was doing stuff like voting for Clinton and supporting European-style
democratic socialism.  And even now, although I won't go out and vote for a
monkey like Bush, I am nevertheless acutely aware that some of his policy
initiatives may be truly historic.

Of all the things I learned A.R. (After Rand,) one was a concept I'd never
even considered in the past, and this was the idea that you can be "human"
in all the usual cliched meanings, where you're fallible and so on, but you
*didn't ever have to be overtly evil.*

In other words, you understand that evil isn't just something everyone's
born with, or something only "saints" do without, but instead, every average
rational person can avoid serious evil without ever being some sort of
(consider common usage) "hero."  This notion that everyone is essentially
somewhat "evil" (perhaps the legacy of conceptual original sin) was
marvelously and gloriously demolished by Rand, as it eminently deserved to
be.

Basic libertarian ideas, and I mean *very* basic, are not rocket science;
don't steal, don't assault, what's the big fucking deal here?  So I hold the
vast bulk of people who are overtly non-lib to a standard of accountability.
Yes, even though it took me over a quarter-century to get a brain.  Yeah, I
get to be a dumbfuck for 25 years, and you don't.

Issues like birth control are, if anything, worse.  I was *never* *that*
stupid, and even goddam *Catholics* aren't *that* stupid, overwhelmingly
choosing to use birth control.  The Pope would like to see users of birth
control go to prison?  Well, that's fine, that little cocksucker can blow
me.  (And I believe there is no question that the Vatican took *political*
positions, not merely ethical advisories.)

It *is* great if you're anti-commie, but it doesn't mean you aren't a POS
for any number of other reasons, and Mr. Pope had a truckload of other
reasons.  It simply doesn't take that much to simply *not* assault, steal
and defraud, so the overall judgment on those who do, even if it's only
"sometimes," is thumbs-down, and, sorry, thumbs way, way down.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Benevolent Bully Boy" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

America has a White Supremacist movement which consists of about seven guys
most of whom are married to their own mothers.

They are totally ineffectual.  Does this mean they're now a bunch of OK
guys?


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Reggie Perrin" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]..

This time you do.  Just don't be an "axis" with me.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Agent Cooper" <[email]> wrote in message
news:d3227n$2jh$[email]...

Well, that's a little off-axis, but I suppose I should touch it for clarity.

[Excuse me for a moment, this Mal fellow is asking "What's clarity?" and
"Why should we want to touch it?"]

I am essentially bashing the Pope for *advocacy* of violence rather than
commission thereof.

This distinction needs to be understood.  Imagine a true Stalinist Communist
living in the USA.  He goes to vote one day, and although he regards Ted
Kennedy as impossibly conservative right-wing, he pulls the switch for Ted
using the [in]famous Ken Gardner reasoning of taking the lesser of two
evils.

Who's more guilty of malfeasance, our Stalinist, or Ted?  Or do we just
blame everything on Ken?  The answer is clearly Ted, because advocating
Communism is reprehensible but not criminal, even if you take your miserable
collectivist ass into a voting booth and try to make it real.  Ted Kennedy
should be prosecuted under a rational government, and not merely for his
piss-poor skills at getting his dates home safe and sound.

So it's true that the Pope is merely an advisor; if his legions are harmed
by his poor counsel, it is indeed their fault first and foremost.  But his
whole kaboodle is that he's a "moral authority."  If we're going to toss
this aspect of him, there goes credit for the Solidarity boost as well.

And our Stalinist friend remains a moral rotter, if not a civil/criminal
blight.  It matters that he advocates a world piled high with corpses, and
in the end, so too the Pope.

Well, that's the well-criticized libertarian view that nothing is wrong
unless someone is unjusifiably harmed by another against their will.  I
agree that's the basis to judge *criminality* and consequent use of
retaliatory force.  But a local KKK chapter that never initiates force
remains a blight.  I'm not begrudging Catholics their dirty little club, I'm
just calling a spade a spade.

It is what's left of an organization infamous through the centuries for
mass-murder and torture.  They maintain their philosophy and ideology, but
they've put operations on hold.  What shall I say of this?


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Atlas Bugged wrote:

Exactly. He opposed Communism in Poland because he wanted a
theocracy in its place. Remind you of anyone?


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Agent Cooper wrote:

Whoah there! A nervous Republican speaks, perhaps? ;-)
I was referring to Osama.


author: Robert Kolker

subject: Re: Prediction

text:
[email] wrote:

As the poet said, not with a bang, but a whimper. The Commie system
rotted out from the inside and fell prey to the economic pressures the
world exerts on any nation. With no internal integrity, it crumble,
flaked, chipped away and finally collapsed into a pile of shit. It took
the west nearly 45 years after WW2 to do the job, but the job was done.
It probably would have happened sooner if the West had not made
accomodations and compromises with the Commies. We were fortunate that
Mr. Gorbechev was sane and knew a losing hopeless position and we went
into oblivion quietly. Our biggest danger would have been a crei de cour
in which a maniac leader would have said, apres nous la Deluge. If we
go, everyone goes, a point of view I sympathize with, but I am glad the
Commies went quietly anyway. Now all we have to do is hope the Russian
Mafia doesn't sell all their nuclear material to the MoslemTerrorists.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:

But JPII was neither a shi'ite of sunni Catholic. He was just....
Polish. When JP asked God if there ever would be another Polish Prelite,
God responded -- "Not in My Lifetime".

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Reggie Perrin wrote:

Give us a break. There hasn't been a catholic theocracy in centuries --
in fact the modern church eschews getting heavily involved in politics
in the first place, which is why its against church policy to endorse a
political candidate.

Can't say the same for other protestant fundamentalist offshoots, but
we are talking about the catholic church.

What's amazing is that even Fred can find a redeeming quality in JPII,
whereas you and Bugged equivocate him with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden?

Put ... the bong ... down.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Benevolent Bully Boy wrote:

In point of fact, the late JPII forbad priests to run for or to hold
public office.

Bob Kolker


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Benevolent Bully Boy wrote:

Which tells us what, precisely, about JPII's intentions?

Oh, really? Read this and get back to me:
http://snipurl.com/duq0

I don't speak for Bugged, but I don't think anyone deserves praise
for stumbling on the right conclusion (communism = bad) for the wrong
reasons (communism = atheistic). It's just another example of how
flawed the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" doctrine is.

Read about Poland before you scoff, instead of lazily extrapolating
from the relatively benign form of Catholicism prevalent in the US.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Benevolent Bully Boy wrote:

JPII,
bin

It wouldn't be so amazing if you just grasped my evident high
intelligence and good breeding.

But what's with you and the English language? The word here is "equate"
not "equivocate".

Fred Weiss


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Atlas Bugged wrote:
the
and

I just say one harmless, itzy, bitzy little thing and I get dumped on
by you all-or-nothing, absolutist, dogmatic "wacked out libertarian
types".

I can see why your lady thinks you're an "Aryan terrorist" with
sympathies toward "Iran". :-)

Fred Weiss


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 22:11:19 +0000 (UTC), [email] wrote:

So what do you think of the old Solidarity movement.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 23:22:32 +0000 (UTC), Atlas Bugged
<[email]> wrote:

Sexual repression is bad, but as Phreed said, he was also
anti-Communist.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Malrassic Park wrote:

It was a major step in a series of steps that brought down communism.
What's not to like? Soon after the Berlin Wall came down.

Fred Weiss


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Malrassic Park" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

It's the firefighter who raped and killed.  "But Judge, what about the
thousands of lives I've saved?"  And Hamas runs a bunch of schools and
hospitals, aren't they great?  Phooey.


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
Malrassic Park wrote:

On a small (or perhaps not so small) positive note about him, I was
reminded just today that he was a contributing factor in the fall of
communism. You may recall that he was a visible and outspoken supporter
of Soldarity. Apparently the Soviets were concerned enough about his
activities that they attempted to  assassinate him.

Fred Weiss


subject: Re: Prediction

text:
"Malrassic Park" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Maybe that's because he was a living monster, an animal who denounced
poverty while robbing people of any means to control their population.  Has
it occurred to you that maybe it's just plain stupid, as in "dumb," to
oppose birth control?  Why don't you predict that lot's of people will
urinate wherever Saddam's body is buried?  Ya think?  Thanks for the fucking
prophecy.


author: David Ryan

subject: How do children fit into Objectivism?

text:
A question that often arises in debates about abortion, is the
question: "How do children fit into Objectivism?"

The typical argument goes something like this:

"God says abortion is wrong, so it is."
"Can you argue that without reference to God?"
"An embryo has a right to life."

The discussion the goes into the nature of rights and where they
derive from (i.e. the capacity to reason). This raises the question of
when an organism gains the capacity to reason. Which month? At birth?
After birth?

"An embryo is about as biologically complex as a rat during the first
trimester. We have no worries slaughtering toads, not to mention
goats, sheep and cows. If we do this, then surely a primitive embryo
has no rights."
"But an embryo is human."
"It contains human DNA, but it is not human in the sense that it can
reason. It is potentially rational -- but that is different from being
an actual rational being."
"What about retards? Or children at birth? They can't reason."
"Retards can, but to a lesser extent. They are still very rational
humans nonetheless. Besides, you shouldn't base your code of ethics on
a minor exception."

What about children? If an embryo has no right to violate the rights
of its host (i.e. if it has no right to "enslave" the mother into
giving birth), then what right does a child have to "enslave" its
mother?

If a woman has an inalienable right to her life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness (and as a derivative, the right to her own body), surely
a child has no right to claim anything against its mother?

Also, how do we know that a child IS a rational being at birth? If it
was, it should be able to support itself. But its survival depends
upon that which is given to it by its mother. In the same way a plant
automatically survives from the soil, without thought, or a baby
animal survives off the milk of its mother, so too a child requires
help in order to survive. Does it have the right to life? If so,
surely it has no right to "enslave" a person into serving it?

Of course, the prospect of children dying in the streets is disgusting
(and even more unlikely). What does Objectivism have to say on the
issue of children?


author: Jim Klein

subject: Re: How do children fit into Objectivism?

text:
Sorry, I missed this...

"Roger Dodger" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

[big snip]

I think Rand totally recognized this;  I doubt Dr. Laura does.

Yeah.  That's why I think her many philosophical errors are forgivable;
she's still giving a lot of her listenership much better guidance than
they're accustomed to.

IOW I give her a bye on not recognizing the genuine goodness of many weird
people, since she does such a good job IMO of recognizing the badness of so
many "normal" people.

And that badness she sees, usually with respect to children, is really
really bad, and is truly the cause of many of our cultural problems today.
What drives me crazy about her though, is her insistent belief that this
badness arises from too much focus on one's self.  It should be obvious to
her of all people that it arises from an _irrational_ focus on one's self,
not the focussing on the self itself.

To hear her tell it--at least in principle if not in practice--the world
would be a nearly perfect place if everyone just thought about everyone else
and never about themselves.

Neat trick, that one!

Yes, generally.  What she has right is that it's through the indoctrination
of children's minds that future philosophy is formed, and that it's an
awfully ugly picture.  And I think she's right about the factors at home, in
schools and in the media that are causing this.  IOW I think she's got the
right guys in the black hats, so to speak.

Her error is in misunderstanding what _their_ errors are, and how they came
to be.  Sometimes I think it's a shame how she's got the right bad guys, but
not the foggiest idea of what's really going on philosophically.

But these are all old stories for any proponent of Rand's philosophy.  In
the end, I still think Dr. Laura is a radical improvement of thought, for
most of the people who give her a serious listen.

Of course at this stage of the game, I'd say that anyone who gives anyone
else any motivation to do any thinking in any manner...is likely causing an
improvement!

jk


author: Roger Dodger

text:
Jim Klein <[email]> wrote in message news:<eEurb.18333$Oo4.122
[email]>...

[Re Dr. Laura]

I asked that (rhetorical) question mainly because I wanted you
to be aware of these issues - which you seem to be.  I am not
an Objectivist myself, and I can't speak about you.  It did
sound strange for someone in an objectivist group to praise
Dr. Laura, so I wanted to bring up these issues.

Mystic - yes.  Tribalist - mostly yes.  However the tribe with
which she identifies happens to be one that values certain
freedoms.  Racist - no.  Homophobe - yes.

Good point.  She doesn't thump the Old Testament as much as
some objectivists thump "Atlas Shrugged".

Personal responsibility - yes.
Individualist in collectivist clothes - what you imply?

However, Dr. Laura seems to have bought into the conservative
mind set, puritanical about sex and self-expression.  She also
idolizes the clean-cut white-hat types.  (So did Rand, to a
certain extent.)

The real Roarks and Galts of the world are seldom so clean-cut.
But then again, very few of Dr. Laura's phone-in patients are
creative, productive individuals - so I can see where her "get
a job, suit, and haircut" attitude comes from.

Do you mean the dumbing-down of our culture?


author: James E. Prescott

text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Well, an axiom is an inescapable, directly experienced thing. It is a thing
known only by the direct apprehension of it and by nothing else, i.e., it is
not subject to any sort of proof or derivation. And it is a truth which must
be affirmed even in the process of trying to deny it. Merely denying it may
not seem self-contradictory, but in the process of applying or working
through his "system" of denial, a person will use and affirm the axiom
inevitably, contradicting himself. This is why I have said to you so often,
go ahead, just try to work through your system (instead of merely repeating
your denials over and over again) and see if you do not get into
contradicting yourself right away. I see you have done this, below. We'll
get there in just a minute.

Well, let's be clear. I did not assert that pleasurable-only is good. In
fact I said that things not pleasurable can also be good, so long as they
are means to an ultimate good, a good-in-itself, a thing that is
axiomatically good. The existence of any literal (as opposed to
metaphorical) good, whether it is pleasure or not, depends, I said, on there
being a "to whom and for what," and the "for what" refers to another good
being served or attained by the first good (unless the first good is itself
the end-in-itself good). So, while other things besides pleasures can
obviously be good, all goodness depends on the fact that there is an
ultimate goodness, an end-in-itself, being served by all other goods, all
lesser means-to-the-end.

And about ultimate ends (foundational, you say) I did say there is only one.
Pleasure. And there's the rub.

Again, that's not quite what I said. Let's be clear.

I am never one to shy away from a burden. It would suit the issue better if
you -- the person who is asserting the existence of another foundational
good besides pleasure -- would take up the challenge and at least attempt to
demonstrate its existence. This would do good for both you and me. For me, I
could then more easily discern just what exactly you are trying to say, and
more easily then point out to you the contradiction(s) in your particular
brand of denial. Your mere assertions are not useful. However, we can do it
your way if you insist.

As I have explained to you before, a moral system is an attempt to answer
the question, how ought a reasoning being act? A moral system does not
merely postulate that this over here is "good," and that over there is
"bad." Such a mere postulation, whether for a metaphorical or any other
purpose, does not answer the to-whom-and-for-what questions that one is
purporting to answer in proposing and defending a moral system (which I can
show you more clearly once when you get around to actually proposing and
defending one). Instead, a moral system demonstrates. It answers. It says,
you should, you ought to, or you really must do this, /because/...; and then
it fills in the blank. An example might be, you should honor your father and
your mother because this is one of the Ten Commandants handed down to Moses
by the Almighty God, and so if you violate it you will be rejecting His love
and earning His wrath. That is not right of course, but at least it is not
self-contradictory. At least it tries to answer the questions which one is
purportedly answering. At least it does not say in the exact same breath A)
"this is what you morally should do" and then say B) "but, of course, this
rests only on an arbitrary postulate and in reality there is really no
reason whatsoever why you should comply with this." A and B are
self-contradictory.

Proposing an ultimate good which cannot be reduced to an axiom, i.e., which
cannot be demonstrated to be truthful by pointing to it, is to commit this
logical contradiction. It is to propose a moral system as a mere postulate
without any justification, but since a moral system /is/ justification of
action, such an attempt is logically self-contradictory and fruitless. A
person who attempts it will very quickly take up an axiom -- sneak it into
his argument -- at some point early on. There is no other way. I will show
this happening to you yourself, just below.

She "seemed" to, yes. But she knew -- and said so in a footnote to the
Objectivist Ethics -- that life was not teleological except in a
metaphorical sense, and what she was really doing was trying to use life as
only a standard of value and not ever as a purpose of value. One's proper
purpose, she always agreed, was only happiness, and not mere life. This
generated a good deal of unnecessary confusion, even for her.

But let's get back to your particular brand of confusion...

Re-read your paragraph above, please. A couple times. Then re-read what I
wrote, above, about morality serving a purpose, needing a justification not
a mere postulation, and about a person sneaking in the axiom, early in his
argument, while purporting to deny it.

Again, merely asserting biochemistry as some sort of purported "postulated
foundational good" is simply self-contradictory because it does not address
what a person is purporting to address when the person proposes and defends
a moral system. It does not answer, /why/ is this good? (And it does not
because that question cannot be answered, ultimately, /except/ by pointing
to a directly experienced axiomatic good on which all the other purported
goods are based.) When this is pointed out, the answer is always, well, but,
it just "serves the purpose for me of moral deliberation" (or something of
that sort). Oh, yeah? And what purpose is that? Well, living pleasantly
among others, I guess. Really? And /why/ is that supposedly "good"? Well, it
just is, that's all. In other words, the axiom pleasurable-is-good is
inevitably affirmed, even in the very process of attempting to deny it.

So now it's semantics and customs rather than logic. Whatever. Hallowed
usage is not the issue here. Well, I take that back. In a way it is. There
is a reason for some hallowed usage, and here it is as I have explained it.
Moral systems purport to say how a person should act, and this means giving
a reason why some action is good and another is bad. Always, it's to whom
and for what. You cannot escape this particular hallowed usage no matter how
you may try, and trying is actually just self-contradiction.

That was not ad hominem. Ad hominem is of the form "bad person ergo bad
argument." In fact I think you are a very fine person, and I think I've even
indicated as much in this forum. All I'm saying here is that a lot of
argumentation is often a sign of a weak case, and nearly always so in
philosophical issues, which are the simplest of all. I mean no offense. I
would level the same charge of passionate rationalization at the venerable
Benthem and Mill, whom you obviously admire, and whom I happen to admire
greatly.

This does not mean I am predisposed to reject your arguments ahead of
reading and analyzing them.

Those people should spend their time addressing the truly complex issues in
the sciences and the professions rather than making philosophy seem complex
where it ought to be quite simple.

Precisely what I mean. Philosophy is not rocket science. Philosophy is the
study of the facts and principles that all men and women -- the dull as much
as the clever -- must know and apply in order to live a good life. If a
theory is complex and inaccessible to the common man then it is not
philosophy at all, or, if philosophy, it is bad philosophy. The Theory of
General Relativity is good science, and not philosophy. The Theory of
Categorical Imperatives is just horrible philosophy. Is your theory good
philosophy, or good science, or something else entirely. I'll need to see it
to know.

I wouldn't dream of it! Your description makes them sound quite interesting,
indeed. As I said, truly, I'll be looking forward to them. Thank you again.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


author: Bert Clanton

text:
In article <000a01c3a846$0cb10250$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Not the contemporary conventional usage of the term "axiom", and not my
usage. But no matter.

But I cheerfully admit that the pleasurableness of something is known
only by direct apprehension of it. What I don't agree with is that if a
thing is pleasurable, or a means to the pleasurable, then it is
necessarily good, and if a thing is good, or a means to the good, then
it is necessarily pleasurable.

...and this you have simply not shown, even by an informal argument.

If this is true, then you should be able to demonstrate that in fact I
affirm your "axiom" while trying to deny it. You haven't demonstrated
that.

I agree, except for that pesky word "axiom". I've said as much myself.

I'm sceptical about the necessity for the "to whom" part. To require a
"to whom" seems to me already to *assume* an egoistic, subjectivistic
framework for morality; and I deny that non-egoistic objectivistic
frameworks for morality are inherently self-contradictory.

I agree, except that IMHO those ultimate goodnesses are plural and
logically independent of one another, not singular. And pleasure is
only one of them.

Exactly. And that's where you're mistaken, IMHO.

I insist that your statement is by no means self-evidently true, even
though it is foundational. It is not evident to me that it is true, and
it is not evident to any objectivist (small-o) moral theorist that it
is true--e.g., Rand herself. Moreover, I insist as well that the denial
of your statement is not self-contradictory: one does *not* affirm that
pleasurableness is the only foundational moral good when one denies
that it is.

Agreed. You agreed with me that things which are means to good things
are also good.  I stand corrected.

Survival exists. The question is, is the survival of moral patients a
reasonable candidate to be a foundational moral good? I say yes. You
say that it is not, because it is not an immediately apprehended
quality in subjective experience. I say that your belief, that *only*
an immediately apprehended quality in subjective experience can be a
foundational good for a moral system, is simply a belief that is *not*
self-evidently true, and a belief whose denial is *not*
self-contradictory. In other words, it's a postulate, not an axiom,
even by your own definition of "axiom".

I agree.

I agree.

I believe that my own particular postulation, that the survival of
moral patients is a foundational moral good, "does" answer the question
"for what".

I agree. It's the matter of what can qualify as a reasonable
"because"-clause that you and I disagree about. We disagree about what
can reasonably "fill in the blank". And for what it's worth, you
disagre not only with me, but also apparently with Rand herself.

But B is not what I assert. I believe that the postulate that objective
survival is a foundational moral good is not at all arbitrary. In fact,
I'd insist that the survival of an organism is a necessary
pre-condition for its experiencing of pleasure. I'd insist as well that
experiencing of pleasure by an organism is*not* a necessary
pre-condition for its survival. Hence there's a sense in which survival
is even more fundamental than pleasure.

But that is *not* a logical contradiction!

But I insist again that *every* moral system, including yours, rests on
foundational suppositions that *cannot* be justified *within* the
system and indeed *need* not be justified within the system. Any
justification for adopting any particular foundational assumption has
to be carried out outside the system. This is just as true of your
assumption of pleasurableness as the only foundational good as it is of
my assumption of survival as an additional foundational good. If I
understand you correctly, you say that pleasurableness is the only
candidate for foundational goodness which is a directly apprehended
quality of experience, and that only a directly apprehended quality of
experience can qualify as a foundational moral good. It seems
transparently obvious to me that both of these assertions are
*assumptions*: IMHO neither is self-evidently true, and IMHO the second
one is flat-out *false*.

As I understand you, your justification for your assumption is that it
is "axiomatic", that it is uniquely a self-evidently true assumption,
in my language. Your further justification is that even to contradict
this assumption assumes that it is correct.  IMHO neither of these
justifications is true.

My justification for the assumptions that I make is my belief that to
assume them and live by them will most effectively promote the survival
and well-being of people in general. This belief best represents what I
believe that morality "is for". In my view, morality is not "for"
promoting the happiness of the moral agent.

Then she's as mistaken as you are.

I read it. No effect.

This is simply one point of view, and one which I don't share. I simply
deny that only directly experienced qualities of subjective experience
can qualify as foundationally good.

Leaving aside the non-axiomatic character of that assertion, I do *not*
deny that pleasurableness is *a* foundational good for a moral system.
That's what *I* keep saying that *you* seem to keep forgetting.

Quite so.

That particular hallowed usage seems hallowed only by Rand's accordance
with it. And I don't exactly regard her as the equivalent of the Pope.
It's basically a subjectivistic, egoistic usage from the git-go, and
I'm neither a moral subjectivist nor a moral egoist. I accept the "for
what" part, just not the "to whom" part.

Wow.

Anyhow, what you'll find in what I send you is a lot more definitions
than arguments.

Good. And even though I'm HPO's resident collectivist thug (or so Jim
Klein tells me) there are some aspects of *Rand's* accomplishments that
I admire.

Wow again. Even Rand (Peikoff?) noticed that there were some fairly
complex epistemological issues to be tackled before her ethical theory
could make much sense to educated laymen.

Wow some more.

Hopefully, you will soon.

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Remember you said that. My "definition" is that pleasure is axiomatically
good, but, given this and because of this, it becomes logically valid to
call some things good which are not pleasurable in themselves if they are
necessary to the attainment of things that are. You'll recall, "If for C, B
is good and A is necessary for B, then A is good, to C, for B." The goodness
of A (say, working 9 to 5) is not that it is pleasurable but that it is
necessary for attaining things (say, a vacation in Scotland) which are
pleasurable. The former is not pleasurable-in-itself; the latter is. Without
the latter, you would not have a logically coherent theory of goodness. If
you do not have something that is good-in-itself then you cannot have things
that are good as a means to it. An infinite series of means leading to no
final end is -- I think you'd agree; you said so yourself -- incoherent.

Well, yeah. I've only said so a few dozen times.

It is.

Wrong. It is a directly experienced fact that pleasure is good. It is
literally impossible to experience pleasure or to experience pain/suffering
and remain neutral as to their value to oneself. You /know/ the goodness of
pleasure directly, whenever you feel pleasure, and you /know/ the badness of
pain whenever you feel pain. There is no "supposition" here; there is no
"postulating" of anything. This is an axiom not a postulate. When you look
and see a chair you are directly experiencing its presence, axiomatically.
The exact same holds true of the experience of pleasure and pain. You know
it. You cannot escape it. It is the axiomatic, end-in-itself, good, in the
case of pleasure, and bad, in the case of pain.

This is your cue to say again, yes, but I say there are /others/. Well, you
say a falsehood. There are not. That is impossible. You -- nor anyone nor
anything -- cannot directly experience the goodness of anything other than
pleasure. That's why when you suppose "life is good," I have merely to ask
you "to whom is it? and for what?" in order to expose the logical fallacy
there.

Survival is not an end-in-itself except metaphorically speaking. You can
postulate it, yes, and you can talk about things which are "good" for a
living entity's survival or "bad" for it, but that's a metaphor and an
arbitrary postulation. I could just as easily postulate that death -- say,
stillness, lifelessness, entropy, a uniform dispersion of energy -- is the
ultimate end-in-itself toward which all action is a means. What "benefits"
from this, you ask? Why, the thing itself benefits, of course, because I
have merely defined its death as being what is "good"  for it. Like death,
though, since its goodness -- while it might be supposed, be "postulated"
for the sake of a manner of speaking --  is not directly experienced in the
manner of an axiom, survival (nor death) is therefore not /literally/ good
unless it is good /for/ something, which means (not to have an endless
series of means to no end) for something that is inescapably, intrinsically,
axiomatically good-in-itself. And there is only one such thing in the
universe. Pleasure.

Boy, is this confused! By mere chemical activity, I meant as opposed to the
experience of things, as in awareness and pleasure/pain. I thought this was
obvious.

But surviving and dying are merely changes in chemical activity. They do no
good or harm in themselves. To suppose that they are good one must logically
answer "to whom are they good?" and "for what purpose are they good?" Yes,
you can use them as ends-in-themselves (use either one, survival or death!)
for the sake of just a manner of speaking, a metaphor. But they do not
qualify as good axiomatically the way pleasure is good axiomatically (as a
directly experienced fact and not an arbitrary supposition for a
metaphorical purpose). Taking the metaphor as if it were a literal fact is,
and leads to, contradiction. As...

Of course experience is different from mere biochemical activity. If you
suppose otherwise, then where do you end up? Here perhaps...

Strange, wouldn't you say?, to suddenly find yourself calling life a
functional modality of a living organism. And then to say this "functional
modality" (not the organism, but its living; not the being experiencing, but
its experience) can be benefited or harmed. That does not make any sense. It
is logically incoherent. Try to make sense of it if you can, but...

That's a nearly sure-fire sign that what I'll be dealing with is a whole
'nother passionate rationalization -- a /lot/ of trying to think oneself
around the plain facts to get to a desired conclusion. But I could be
mistaken. You may just be verbose, as I am myself sometimes. I can take
three or four pages to say something one day, and then the next day say the
same thing even better in just a sentence of two. We'll see.

I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. The fewer functional modalities and
the like, the better. Language can obscure as much as it can illuminate. And
that's bad of course (unless your intention is to obscure!). I trust your
final product will be well crafted and clear.

I'll be looking forward to it. Be happy in your work!

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


text:
In article <001801c3a779$591cb1c0$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Absolutely.

We are at an impasse. By your own definition, as I understand it, an
axiom is a proposition the denial of which is self-contradictory. The
denial of your foundational proposition that good is pleasurableness-
*only* is simply *not* delf-contradictory, no matter how many times you
assert that it is. It contradicts your viewpoint, but it doesn't
contradict itself.

I'll go along with that, and have never denied it.

Okay.

There is a hidden supposition here, as it relates to the rest of what
you've said: that only things which are directly experienced as
pleasurable are good.

OK, though I reject the term "axiomatically" in this context.

I have always agreed with you to the extent that I take pleasurableness
to be *one* foundational good. If you say, "Pleasurableness is *an*
end-in-itself good", I have absolutely no quarrel with you. I *still*
assert that you have not shown that any self-contradiction results from
holding that there are other foundational goods in *addition* to
pleasurableness. And I *still* say that the burden of demonstrating
such a self-contradiction rests with you, who assert that the
self-contradiction exists.

Again, your hidden supposition that only directly experienced qualities
can be foundationally good. I simply see no reason whatsoever to
suppose that that's the case.

While that exposes the fact that my point of view contradicts yours, in
that we define "good" differently, it does not exhibit a
self-contradiction in my point of view, such that my point of view is
equivalent to "Both A and not-A".
.

Survival is an end-in-itself to anyone who answers the question "For
what?" by saying "survival!".

I insist that it is not a metaphor, and while a postulation, not an
arbitrary one. No less a person than Rand herself seems to agree with
me.

Logically speaking, this would be a possibility. Existentially
speaking, you wouldn't get many takers for that point of view. Most
people would probably say something like, "Whoa! I'm trying to figure
out how to live, and how to live pleasantly, in harmony with other
people. That's the purpose of moral deliberation for me. Taking the
increase of entropy as a foundational goal doesn't contribute to
achieving that purpose. So I reject that brand of morality".

Logically, you can postulate any definition that is not
self-contradictory. Semantically, what most people use the term
"benefit" to designate is an enhancement of some life-condition, not a
degradation of it. I follow that hallowed usage.

I could almost agree with every word of that paragraph except the part
that says, "And there is only one such thing in the universe.
Pleasure."

If that's what you mean, then I say again, you simply *assume* that
*only* a directly apprehended quality of experience can be a
foundational good for a system of moral deliberation. No matter how
many times you assert this, you *haven't* shown that to deny it is
self-contradictory.

A definition of "good" and "harm" with which I disagree.

And of course our basic disagreement, in part, is about whether this
*is* just a "manner of speaking", a metaphor.

Again, you simply *assert* your subjectivist *assumption* that only a
directly experienced quality can be foundational for a moral system. I
deny that assumption. And an assumption it is.

They are different. For our purpose: so what?

And if you think that's what I say, I haven't expressed my self clearly.

An organism can have its biochemical functioning affected in either of
two ways which are IMHO morally relevant. First, that biochemical
functioning can be affected in such a way that the survival-chances of
the organism are increased. I call that "objective benefit". Second,
that biochemical functioning, in its neurological aspect, can be
affected in such a way that the organism experiences pleasure. I call
that "subjective benefit". Both biochemical effects are IMHO equally
appropriate as foundational goods for a system of moral deliberation.

Wow! An argumentum ad hominem ever before you've read what I think! You
*are* a true Objectivist!

Some systems of ideas can't be expressed very well in a few simple
sentences. Those that can may not appeal very much to people who can
entertain complex ideas.

Please express the Theory of General Relativity in just a sentence or
two.

You choose your terminology, and I'll choose mine.

One reason why what I'll be sending you is long is that I try to start
out from first principles. The first of three essays is about what a
subject-matter is, what concepts are and the kinds of concepts there
are, what suppositions are and the kinds of suppositions there are, and
how valuing fits into all this. The second essay is about language:
what terms are and the kinds of terms there are, what utterances are
and the kinds of utterances there are, and how emotive and motivative
utterances fit into all this. When and only when I've stated all this
preliminary stuff, I can finally talk about the logical structure of
normative systems, which is what I do in the third essay, and which is
what you and I have been disputing about, but IMHO in a very simplistic
way.

If you're not willing to put yourself through all this, I see no point
in further discussion with you here. Say the word and I won't burden
you with my essays. Whatever your response to them turns out to be, my
efforts will have been worth while to *me*.

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
In article <000c01c3a6ba$d091cd90$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Now you're trying to tell me how to define my terms. That won't wash.
In fact, it seems to me that you have this unpleasant habit of
labelling *your* definitions as axioms, and rejecting *my* definitions
as logically incoherent withour specifying what the logical
contradiction is.

I mean that. But that's not all that I mean.

Right. We aren't.

Yup. That's how it works.

Then we totally disagree about what constitutes an argument.

You claim that there is a contradiction in what I have written. Exhibit
the contradiction, or cease asserting it. Put up or shut up.

If my definition of moral good is self-contradictory, then you should
be able to say something like the following to me:

"Bert, your definition of the good includes or implies the assertion A
*and* includes or implies the assertion B. But your assertion A is
logically equivalent to the denial of your assertion B. And your
assertion A is "..." and your assertion B is "...""

So far, you have not presented an argument of this form. And if you
have not presented an argument of this form, then you have not
demonstrated the incoherence of my definition.

I fully grant you that my *definition* of the foundational good for
ethics contradicts your *definition" of the foundational good for
ethics. But *neither* definition is an axiom, under *your* definition
of the term "axiom".

I certainly admit that my point of view contradicts your definition of
goodness as pleasurableness-only. You seem to be under the impression
that your definition is some kind of axiom. It is not. It is a
postulated definition, nothing more, just as is my partial definition
of goodness as survival. There are moral theorists who accept your
definition of goodness. Even *I* accept is as a definition of *one* of
the things that I would label "good". But an axiom it is not. And there
are plenty of moral theorists who reject it.

Right.

I do not agree that survival is "mere chemical activity", any more than
I agree that the experience of pleasure is "mere chemical activity".
Both are modes of functioning of material systems called "organisms".
Organisms experience pleasure or suffering. Organisms also survive or
die.

That's a lot more complicated than what I'm saying. I'm just saying
that the person who asserts a proposition is the person who has the
burden of demonstrating that the proposition is true. If you assert a
proposition, e.g., "Your point of view is incoherent", I don't accept
the notion that it's up to me to prove you wrong. But I will say this:
if you can demonstrate by even an informal argument that my definition
of the moral good includes or implies both "A" and "not-A", I'll
cheerfully admit that you've been right all along. But the fact that my
definition of the moral good clashes with yours doesn't necessarily
imply that it clashes with itself.

But you have *not* exhibited a logical contradiction. What you have
exhibited is the fact that your *definition* of goodness as
pleasurableness-only contradicts my *definition* of goodness as
survival-plus-pleasurableness-plus-some other stuff, with survival
having higher priority than pleasurableness. I admit this "external"
contradiction, but it is not an "internal" logical incoherence.

No. It denies *your* particular *definition* of what a moral system
is--an egoistic definition that is shared by few moral theorists.

I agree.

I agree, except that I regard pleasure and pain as merely *two* of
*several* foundations.

But you seem to think that the experiencing of pleasure and pain are
something other than "chemical activity" in the same sense that
surviving is "chemical activity". I think you're mistaken. Both are
functional modalities of materially-based living organisms. Both can be
enhanced (benefitted) or interfered with (harmed) by the chosen actions
of moral agents.

So far you have done no more than *assert* your viewpoint to me.

You're still waiting because in order to present my point of view
adequately, I will have to send you an essay which will porobably
occupy the equivalent of a hundred typewritten pages. I've actually
spent about six hours already assembling it from pre-existing essays,
and making the terminology more conventional for your benefit.

The resulting essay will be going into my point of view to a depth much
greater than you'll probably be willing to explore; but I'd rather that
you set it aside unread than that it be a superficial presentation of
my point of view. So I'm going to let whatever boredom you might
experience with it be *your* problem. Whether you read it through or
not, I consider my exercise in editing it to be well worth while.

I think I'll let my essay be all that I have to say to you in future on
the subjects that we've been discussing. Expect it in a week or two.

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
Roger Dodger <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Sort of, yes, and absolutely not.  She spouts the cliches of altruism like many
people, but she's quite focussed on the benefactor of that altruism being the
actor.  You might say she's an egoist in very bright altruist clothing.

Mystic she is, but that too is because of her sincere belief that being so
helps
the individual.  She's wrong, of course, but not totally out to lunch on the
point.  If she were really a dyed-in-the-wool mystic, she wouldn't be nearly as
tolerant of other sorts of mystics.  Firmly faith-based mystics, like so-called
Orthodox Objectivists, are never so tolerant of the beliefs of others.

I don't think she's a collectivist at all, in any sort of fundamental way.
While those two previous beliefs lead her to many of the same places that
outright collectivism does, she strikes me as fully in tune with the fact t
hat a
person is ultimately an individual and has control over only his own action
s and
not those of others.

I could write at length about her many philosophical errors.  But far more
important is what she has _right_, and IMO she has a better understanding than
nearly anyone in the public eye about the factors which have caused...how s
hould
I say...the diminishment of rational values throughout our culture.

Anyone even _thinking_ of becoming a parent would do well to listen to her
show;
just keep in mind that you have to separate the wheat from the chaffe.

jk


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

That is neither benefit nor harm.

Right. So say it like that.

If, for C, B is good and A is necessary to B, then A is good to C, for B.
What you "suggest" is that for a thing to be called good you must have
answers to the questions to whom and for what. That's just the truth that we
began with. Again I welcome the agreement, but we are not getting anywhere.

Is that how it works? Gee.

I have argued. You have not.

Yes, there is. It's self-contradictory. A moral system is a code of values
and principles to guide the choices of a reasoning being. Survival is mere
chemical activity, which you yourself asserted (correctly for once) cannot
be benefited or harmed. You are supposing this teacup (this other undefended
foundational good) dangles somewhere out-of-sight above your head because it
pleases you to imagine it so, or because, as you yourself admitted, you fear
some undefined bad consequences from not believing in it, and you ask me to
prove to you that it does not exist. Well, all I can do is what I have done.
All I can do is to point out to you again and again the logical
contradiction you are committing. It is up to you to open your eyes and to
look.

Yes, I have. It is logically a self-contradiction because it denies the very
meaning of what a moral system is. Moral is "of a reason-guided purpose."
Heck, even pleasure and pain -- the foundations of it -- are not yet moral
matters until a reasoning being is faced with having to make a choice
between values or actions. To found a moral system in chemical activity that
is not a benefit nor a harm and that cannot be benefited and cannot be
harmed is to indulged oneself in a flight of irrational fancy. Again, I can
do no more than point this out to you.

And I am still waiting! I wonder why.

You will get value, I think, if you take my advice and you actually try to
construct and defend with argument a logically coherent system of
universalist or altruist morality instead of just asserting over and over
that it can be done despite being logically incoherent as I have explained.
Or, you can just send me the arguments that you claim already exist (as you
have said you would do) and I will cheerfully pick them apart for you. If
you are unable or unwilling to do these things, then, well, obviously, there
is absolutely no value to you in continuing these discussions. As for value
to me, well, you can let me worry about that one.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.