Incidental
Uncategorized articles on various subjects.
- What and How to Learn
- Practical Freedom
- Knowledge
- Science Philosophy
- Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs
- The Subconscious Fallacy
- Religion's Fault
- The Sociable Animal
- Ordinary And Extraordinary
- The Only Path To Success And Happiness
- There Are No Shortcuts
- Feelings and Emotions
- Habituation
- Hated—The Individualist In a Collectivist World
- Morality Mistakes
- No Subconscious
- Magic Thinking
- Correct Thinking
- Two Moral Principles--Knowledge and Reason
- Silly Religion
- Integrity
- An Atheist's Defence of Christianity
- Dismal Economics
- Banality Verses Romanticism
- Amoral NAP
- Ethical Principles
- Values
- Morality and Freedom
- The Exceptional--Alma Deutscher
- NIP versus NAP
- Egoists and Anti-egoists
- Sentimental Journey
- Only Individuals
- Seriously
- Libertarianism, Economics, and Other Absurdities
- Bright Future
- The Nature of Consciousness
- The Nature of Life
- Ontology—A Brief Introduction
- Perception
- To My Skeptical Friends
- Gullibility and Skepticism
- Evolution
- Science
- A Priori
- Feelings
- Mind
- Instinct
- Objective Ethics for Freedom and Happiness
- What's Wrong With NAP
- Gullible 2—Critical Thinking
- Gullible
- What is Freedom?
- Be One's Best
- Individual Freedom
- What is Freedom (from government)?
- The Lowest Animal
- What Will You Do With Freedom?
The Lifetime Pursuit Of Knowledge
“If you are waiting for the government to change, or society to change, or for some program or movement to be successful to find freedom, you will never be free.” By, “practical freedom,” I mean identifying what it is you want to do and achieving the conditions in which you are free do it. Freedom means being able to do whatever you choose to do without the interference of any other individuals or human agencies, including government.
Knowledge
Will Bouwman’s Philosophy Now article, “Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)“is a wonderful illustration of what is wrong with philosophers attempting to identify what science is and how it ought to be done. For example: “In the middle of the twentieth century the philosophy of science was almost exclusively focussed on defining the scientific method. The assumption was that science is an objective ideal method independent of human foibles, and if we could just describe its characteristics then everyone would have a template for doing proper science.
And Other Psychobable
A review of Dr. Edit Packer's Lectures on Psychology
Moral Failure
Moral Failure
In much of today’s world of technology and wealth anyone who is moderately ambitious and willing to make an effort to achieve something of value can enjoy a life of luxury and convenience only dreamed of by ancient kings. Nevertheless, most of the people who live in countries where that kind of life and prosperity are possible do not enjoy their lives. They are always in some kind of trouble and have endless problems and complaints and never realize that all their suffering is their own fault.
Knowledge and Work
There are no shortcuts on the path to success and happiness
Their nature, significance, and importance
Developed Patterns Of Behavior
Heloise and Abelard—their letters If you choose to live your life as an independent individualist, holding your life and your love of it as your highest purpose, desiring and seeking nothing but the best in all things, unwilling to sacrifice any good to any evil, which means, unwilling to subordinate any aspect of your life to any other or any aspect of another’s life to yours, you will find yourself an alien in this world.
The purpose of living a moral life is to live a successful, fulfilled, and happy life. A moral life is one guided by ethical principles. The whole reason for ethics is to provide the principles by which you can make the right choices in everything you think, believe, and do which benefit you and avoid all choices and behavior that will harm you or interfere in your success or prevent you from being happy.
There Is Only Consciousness
Disastrous Substitutes For Correct Thinking
Basic principles of clear reasoning.
Since the purpose of moral principles, or ethics, is to guide human choice and behavior that will lead to success and happiness, rather than human failure and misery, it is important to understand why such principles are needed and the foundation of such principles. Mind and Morality It is the human mind that makes moral principles necessary and determines what moral principles are. The human mind consists of three interdependent faculties: volition, rationality, and intellect.
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world.
The Virtues Of The Moral Individual On an Objectivist forum one poster recently wrote: “Benjamin Franklin wanted to achieve moral perfection so he wrote in a journal and marked in his journal everytime he violated one of his virtues… I want to do something similar but with the Objectivist virtues …”. Objectivist Virtues Since the question concerns, Objectivist virtues, let’s examine what those might be. Ayn Rand made two lists of virtues, one published in The Virtue of Selfishness, the other unpublished in her Journal, in a section called, “The Moral Basis Of Individualism.
I seldom read book reviews, and would not have read the one entitled, “Suicide of the West,” if it had been written by anyone other than Theodore Dalrymple. The opening paragraph explains exactly what the three books reviewed are about: “That Western Europe suffers from a state of general paralysis is a truth too universally acknowledged to require much reiteration. Slow growth and high unemployment; an aging and shrinking population; scientific and cultural irrelevance to the rest of the world; a large, unassimilated alien population much of which is hostile to the very countries into which it has immigrated—these are just a few of the problems that Western Europe not only fails to solve, but even properly to recognize.
Thomas Carlyle called economics, “the dismal science.” Economics is not philosophy and it is certainly not science. What exactly economics studies is a good question, but there are plenty of academics and professors who provide magnificently turgid explanations of exactly what it might be. What exactly economics is good for is another good question. The answer may surprise you. It is extremely valuable to professors of economics, authors of books on economics, and those making their incomes promoting some version of economics.
Aisholpan—Breaking Free By banality I mean that view of life dominated by the prosaic and mundane, the view that sees life itself as a “problem”to be solved. In contrast to the banal, the romantic sees life as a grand adventure, an opportunity for achievement and accomplishment with his own success and happiness as his ideal. Why This Article? The contrast between the banal and romantic views of life was recently illustrated for me by responses I received to a comment I made to a recent article.
The non-aggression principle is not a moral principle
What ethical principles are and why all human success and happiness is dependent on them.
When someone asks a question like, “Are Humans More Valuable Than Animals?” (video of same) it is obvious the one asking the question has no idea what values are. In this case, the question is asked by Dennis Prager who happens to be Jewish, and though not orthodox, nevertheless believes in God and the teachings of the Tanakh (Christian Old Testament). This ignorance of the meaning of values, however, is not exclusive to Jews, no religious teaching, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, or Bahai, ever correctly identifies what values are.
Only a moral society is a free society.
It is not the common, “just like everyone else,” average members of society or, “the community,” that are significant in this world, and no scheme of education, social programming, community organization, empathy, teamwork, or politics will ever produce the only thing of true importance in this world, the exceptional individual. I’ve already explained why it is independent individualists who are the creators and innovators of the world responsible for every gain in human success, freedom, and prosperity, in the articles, “What Is an Individualist,” and, “Only Individuals.
Non-irrationalism principle
Any excuse for a picture of Hedy Lamarr
“A sentimentalist desires to enjoy the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” —Oscar Wilde “Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.” —George Bernard Shaw “The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped. But though an idea that is true is thus not likely to prevail, an idea that is attacked enjoys a great advantage.
The true creators.
I was once asked what I thought the difference between knowledge and wisdom is. At the time, I declined to answer. I know what knowledge is, but “wisdom” means so many different things to so many I was not sure the word could be adequately defined. I’m still of the opinion the word, as generally used, is mostly ambiguous. What Is Wisdom? Nevertheless, I think there is a kind of knowledge that might properly be called wisdom.
It is not generally very useful in philosophy to address every wrong or mistaken view of various philosophers that have gained acceptance or popularity, especially among those who style themselves intellectuals or academics. From the beginning, with the exception of a few bursts of brilliance, the history of philosophy has been plagued with sophism, mysticism, and baseless rationalism. It would take a lifetime to even begin to address all that has been wrong with philosophy.
I don’t make predictions, because no one can know the future, though the world is full of authorities and experts who are sure they do know it. I also don’t worry about the future, which makes politicians and so-called policy-makers crazy. If they cannot keep everyone in a constant paranoid frenzy they will never be able to put over all their schemes for controlling people and confiscating their money.
By consciousness I mean perception, which is the only kind of consciousness we or any other creature has. Physical existence is that existence we are directly conscious of, the world we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. By perception, I mean the seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting as well as interoception (the direct perception of internal states). Perception, as we experience it, is taken for granted. It is very much like looking at the garden through a window.
At the physical level, life is manifest as a process. Every action of the purely physical (non-living) must be started and stopped in relationship to other physical existents (including internal components of machines, for example). The life process differentiates living organisms from the merely physical, because it is self-generated and self-sustained, that is, nothing outside the life process itself starts it or sustains it. Life is a quality that differentiates between those entities we call organisms, and all other entities.
The nature of material existence
Knowledge begins with consciousness. I do not mean that consciousness is itself knowledge, but that if we are to know anything we must first be conscious of it. It is not enough just to be conscious, however, if it is to be capable of providing us knowledge. If what we are conscious of is not totally reliable and valid, no knowledge is possible. The history of philosophy is largely the history of an assault on the validity of reason and knowledge.
In my previous article, “Gullibility and Skepticism,“I wrote: “Most knowledge is simple and absolute. The cat is either in the closet or it isn’t. Looking in the closet provides absolute knowledge of which it is. It was this kind of idea that Da Vinci probably had in mind when he said, ‘to see is to know.’” We become so accustomed to such, “obvious,” knowledge it is not even considered knowledge.
(This article is the first of two in reference to responses to my article, “Know Nothing?.” The other article is “To My Skeptical Friends”) I have to admit I am a bit disappointed that more skeptics did not respond to my article, which is really research on the question of why so many people hold what seems to me to be an extreme skeptical or cynical view, to the extent that they say, “nothing can be known for certain,” or, “nothing can be proved true.
It might be correct, but it isn't science
Things called science
The knowledge you learn by not knowing anything
I briefly addressed the nature of feelings (emotions) in my previous article, “Mind.” My purpose in that article was to make the distinction between feelings (which are often mistakenly thought of as an aspect of the mind) from the nature of the mind and the relationship between them. My purpose here is a different one. One of the least well understood aspects of human nature are the emotions, yet the feelings are terribly important.
Mind
What Is Instinct? Instinct is the automatic pattern of behavior with which all animals are endowed except human beings. An animal does not need to discover how to live, its instinct guarantees that its behavior will fulfill the requirements of its nature. An animal automatically seeks the kind of food it needs and evades that which would be harmful to it. An animal automatically performs the actions its nature requires, crawling, running, digging holes or burrowing, foraging, grazing, flying, building nests, and all other behavior necessary for its survival and success as the kind of animal it is.
The Is-Ought Fallacy
The same thing that is wrong with the Ten Commandments.
“If you are waiting for the government to change, or society to change, or for some program or movement to be successful to find freedom, you will never be free.” In my previous article, “Gullible,” I explained some of the ways so-called freedom-oriented individuals, such as libertarians, Objectivists, various flavors of self-styled anarchists, anti-staters, egoists, and voluntaryists tend to be very gullible about the real nature of freedom. This article deals with only one concept by which, not only the freedom-oriented, but almost everyone who is interested in what is true and right, has been taken in—the so-called concept of, “critical thinking.
“If you are waiting for the government to change, or society to change, or for some program or movement to be successful to find freedom, you will never be free.” One of the most baffling phenomena in the modern world is the gullibility of that small class of people who regard themselves as “freedom-oriented:” the libertarians, the Objectivists, the various flavors of self-styled anarchists, the anti-staters, the egoists, and voluntaryists.
“If you are waiting for the government to change, or society to change, or for some program or movement to be successful to find freedom, you will never be free.” I was recently criticized for not accepting Ayn Rand’s definition of freedom. The criticism is correct. I do not accept Ayn Rand’s definition of freedom, and neither does anyone else, because she never provided one. She wrote a great deal about freedom and one might glean a definition from that, I suppose, but there is no specific definition.
“If you are waiting for the government to change, or society to change, or for some program or movement to be successful to find freedom, you will never be free.” What Are Principles Principles describe or explain aspects of reality that are universal and absolute. Universal means they are true in all cases where the principles apply. Absolute means they are invariable and not contingent on anything else. Most principles are stated as propositions, but can be put into other forms, such as the periodic table of chemistry, which is an excellent example of principles.
Your freedom is for you.
This article was originally published circa 2004. It discusses freedom in the context of government, which is not really possible, but it does describe the true nature of freedom. I have for a long time been convinced, though most people claim to embrace and desire freedom, they do not really know what freedom is, and mean something different by it than I mean, or America’s founding father’s, meant by it.
by Mark Twain I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?