Correct, but in a laisezz-faire economy, the choice for each player is only benefit or sacifice as measured by their chosen standard; or to walk away. If each player acts rationally and has sufficient information, they will only either both benefit or no transaction will occur. This is pretty basic stuff.

Yes transactions will occur (because of insufficient information and education) where players will act irrationally. If you have a solution for this I'm all ears. But Kant's morality will demonstrably fail. I don't know how else to explain this. Look at what the progressives are doing. It's not random.

Why will no one else give their requirements for rational thought?

Another quick thought I just had...

Knowledge without a rational morality is madness. This is why property rights (specifically IP law) is such an important construct for men, especially in a laissez-fairre economy.

Okay. So can you tell me where your views diverge from hers?
Because then you are not acting like a true friend. I claimed that one of the requirements of true friendship is that you accept your friends ends as worthy of fulfillment. That means that when you are deciding what action to take, you don't only only look at the cost and benefit to yourself, but also to your friend. However, that implies that you will sometimes do things that greatly benefit your friend, but cost you.
Unfortunately for you, you define irrationality such that it ends up being positively correlated with education in philosophy. At this point it is becoming clearer that you have some basic anti-intellectual attitudes.
It's too bad that you don't realize why this is problematic. Your level of confidence in your own abilities is astounding, especially because it is so unjustified.

If evidence and reason are not required, then why are you bothering to post about your views on a science, math, and philosophy forum?

It is not random at all. It is very common for young men to first be exposed to philosophy by reading Ayn Rand. If they stop their philosophical investigations there, they might never move on, but typically if they actually go on to study philosophy they eventually let her go, more or less wistfully.

You have studiously avoided using either science or reason to show anything in this thread.

You are not qualified to judge whether reading and understanding Kant is a waste of time as you've neither read nor understood him.

I think you need to consider whether you want to discuss politics or philosophy...

We don't live in a laissez-faire economy, so are your claims about morality purely hypothetical? However, the point is not whether they'll benefit, but whether their actions are optimal. Sometimes we can individually benefit more by not acting in our own self-interest.


This is not an issue of irrationality. We are assuming that both prisoners are rational.

And yep, like a Pavlovian response you can't help but continue showing your ignorance about Kant.

I think you can tell everytime you say something like "rand said blah blah but you don't agree" and I say correct. Why is that not sufficient?


More Kantian morality. My "true friend" can never know my thoughts. He can only judge me on my metaphysical actions. He can then judge me and my intent based on his own standards (to the degree of rationality he holds). I don't live in your fantasy land. What am I supposed to say?

Correct. And not anti-intellectual, but intellectual attitudes.

Back at you.

Yet you think you can be my "true friend." Give me a ****ing break, dude.

Because the basis of my ****ing morality is my self interest. I can only determine my self-interested action through reason. I have to have typed this 10 ways by now. I think this is directly related to the degree to which your entire frame of morality is impossible in reality.

Sadly true.

What do you mean? I've pointing at the world and screaming through my keyboard this entire time!

NEITHER HAVE YOU! It's impossible dude. Why are you trying to frame your entire reality around a dead guys conscious thoughts, especially when those ideas have been refuted through reason. Throw off your ****ing chains and make something for YOURSELF.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Why have you bought this ****. You can never know another person's optimal action, that would require omniscience. Basing your morality around this is only going to fill your head with hatred for your fellow man. For ****s sake stop believing this ****.

T-money,

I enjoy Ayn Rand's writings as well, only she was arrogant in calling herself a philosopher, when there is much of that field that she was clearly ignorant of. No biggie though, she was human just like all of us.

I think her observations on social structure are quite useful though: emotional vs rational archetypes, how emotional people use the value that rational people create, how emotional people tend to lie/manipulate/emotionally abuse, and how rational people solve problems/curb pain/create innovations, how emotional types gain self-esteem from how others perceive them, and how the rational gain it from using their intellect.

Of course these are crude descriptions of people, and are only true in a general sense, but I think they are somewhat accurate looking at alot of the common themes in main-stream America:

-keep up with the joneses attitude
-dishonesty in advertisement
-young population where the NFL gets more attention than education
-reality tv where person to person "drama" is the highlight of the show
-arbitrary laws
-unstable economy
-news stations that don't spend more than 3 minutes on a given topic
-celebrity gossip

I know that I'm glad that I've read her stuff, since I'm one who is predisposed to rational thought; it helped me to understand and cope with other people's behavior that used to cause me a great deal of emotional discomfort.

Oh, and Original Position = John Galt

That articulates a lot of the feelings I was having. Thank you.

Agreed.

Please tell me IYE this has kept up with the amount of knowledge you gain.

I don't understand? I thought Galt was a hero in the book?

Based on your first paragraph, I guess the only effective means of communication will be to show them, huh? At least that sounds like fun.

Considered, and since politics are a natural derivative of my philosphy, the answer is both.

I was trying to imply that he was the voice of reason, ldo.

OK

T_Money, you're clearly a smart guy that read Rand's work and thought it was amazing and you agreed with her, just because you had no former knowledge about philosophy.

If you did you would probably still enjoy it but disagree with most points she tried to make. Please take the time to read something like the history of western philosophy and hopefully you will understand why.

Rand's work was my first book I read about philosophy and I also agreed with it, but not for long as I got interested in real and acknowledged philosophy.

How do you logically derive morals?

I think you disagree with her because of your former knowledge about philosphy. If someone can tell me how to logically derive morality, I'll explain further.

You need at least one normative axiom, then it's no big deal. If your axioms do not include a normative premise, you won't be able to derive any ought-statements.

I gotta ask... are you intentionally misspelling philosophy?

I mean, not to be a nit or anything, but once or twice and I think it is just a typo and ignore it, but after a dozen times, I start to wonder if you have a prop bet for how many times you can misspell it before someone asks...

This the definition of normative we're dealing with:

From wiki:

"In philosophy, normative statements affirm how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, which actions are right or wrong. Normative is usually contrasted with positive (i.e. descriptive, explanatory, or constative) when describing types of theories, beliefs, or propositions. Positive statements are factual statements that attempt to describe reality."

LOL, I've noticed it several times but every time I type it, that's the way it comes out and I never notice till the 3rd or 4th (or never) time I read it.

So if I claim the normative axiom of reality's existence (Kant claims God's existence right?), what do I need to derive identity, and what do I need to derive consciousness from identity?

Or looked at another, is it a normative axiom to say man's reason is limited?

I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Obviously I disagree with you about both the content and correctness of my own views on these issues. However, since the point of this thread was to ask you questions, I'm not sure there's much point in going on. I've asked some questions and I think you've answered them to the best of your current abilities. My continuing dissatisfaction with your answers says equally as much about me as you.

I would attempt an answer to your question about how to derive morality from reason, but since we disagree so strongly about more basic issues such as the nature of reason or the goal of epistemology or whether to be charitable to those we are reading, I don't think it would accomplish much.

Just google "is-ought" and see for yourself. I don't really understand what you're trying to say with any of these terms (consciousness, identity, reason..)

Definitions from wiki:

Philosophy: “is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.”

Existence: “existence is the world of which we are aware through our senses and persists independently without them.”

Identity: “whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from entities of a different type.”

Consciousness: “subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind.”

Reason: “a human mental faculty that is able to generate conclusions from assumptions or premises”

According to the definition of philosophy, it is only useful for identifying problems. Therefore, solutions are outside of philosophy and lie in the realm of reason. If you’ve developed a problem and the optimal solution for the problem has already been developed through reason, it is no longer in the realm of philosophy. So how do you judge a philosophy in the normative sense?


Good so far?

No, not really...

You are relying on terse definitions and taking them as "truth", which is unhelpful.

And this claim:

Is not supported by the definition you quoted.

The definition pretty clearly says that philosophy is the "study of ... problems" not the "process of identifying problems". And I'm not sure what would be the point of trying to distinguish analysis done by 'reason' from 'philosophy'.