Free Capitalist

I don't think that statement can be supported. I grant you that it's important for the fundamental standard to be stated, but there are many more issues in ethics than just discovering the standard of value. For instance, one of the questions is what is happiness? In what way is pleasure different from happiness? ...is it? What is virtue? In what way does virtue contribute to happiness? Does it? Does maybe happiness contribute to virtue instead? Which is actually higher of the two? All of these questions are separate from 'what is a standard in ethics'. Even if life is the standard of value, maybe in some way happiness contributes to virtue and not the way around, and virtue is the highest goal. These questions are separate from knowing what the ethical standard is, and knowing just that one fact doesn't tell you a whole lot else (unless you believe that ethics are deductive). So there's a whole host of ethical questions, all of which are valid and important to pursue, aside from just that one question of the standard. Secondly, not stating a standard is a far cry from lacking one. Even a cursory familiarity with Aristotle's Ethics, or with Epictetus' Discourses, or with Seneca, will quickly convince one that life was the only standard any philosopher could conceive of at that time period. If Ayn Rand stated explicitly something that Aristotle integrated into his ethics implicitly, it is a credit to her statement but does it invalidate his principles? Not at all. What needs to be demonstrated is that those ethics were in some way anti-life, i.e. violating that implicit principle; and something I haven't been able to determine from the Ethics, and something I highly doubt anyone could. So all I'm saying is that I think a little bit more time needs to be given to considering what Aristotle had to say. He's not in competition with Ayn Rand, just as Tara Smith isn't. Everyone has slightly different expressions of the same principle, slightly different angles and different questions that they're interested in asking. If, unable to show that his Ethics were anti-life we still throw him out merely because he asked different questions, would mean throwing out Tara Smith's books as well, and is just a bad course overall. If Tara Smith's standard is life, I guarantee you so is Aristotle's.

This is actually extremely good advice, which I also took a long time to learn. For example, when I first saw my current girlfriend she was quite stunning, but as it turned out much later she was very nervous, and for a time before that had some real bad luck with men. If the most important thing for both men and women is for man to have lots of confidence, there are few things as conducive to that as the realization that this beautiful creature in front of you doesn't own the world, isn't about to shrug you off, but is probably as nervous as you are if not more. Also, as a secondary observation, I was told many times that beautiful women are often extremely lonely, which goes completely counter to everything we're led to think about them. Of course if it's a woman that frequents bars all the time, she'll have some plenty of superficial confidence and un-loneliness, and she's not the type of woman you want anyway. But deeply decent women who are beautiful, indeed are quite lonely. Just something to keep in mind. Tons of accurate factoids like that can really help with genuinely-based confidence in a difficult moment.

If Aristotle's writings on ethics are descriptive, as you say (and I might not disagree with you there), then how can they also be bad, subjective, and all those other bad things you say? Either the writing is normative, and therefore falling within the subject of judgment, or it's descriptive and all you have to do is be grateful for the observation and move on.

I think it's more accurate to say that eHarmony focuses on old-fashioned dating people, contrasted very strongly with Match.com which exists almost entirely for the purpose of hooking up. eHarmony discourages any sort of hooking up on the first or second date, and has a more traditional approach to relationships, which yes may attract the traditionally religious people, but would in general be appealing to any sort of person averse to the the hooking up method that's so disastrous nowadays. So I'd say you're definitely off to a good start (that is, if you want to find a girl to be with, and not just a hookup like many people). I have known half a dozen or so people who tried the Match.com thing and found plenty of willing women, who were psychological wrecks underneath each and every one. On the other hand, everyone I've hear of who tried eHarmony seems to have ended up with someone they'll get married to.

What'll they do next? http://cubo.cc/

Yes but even if the average brain, and average faculties, are perfectly suited for survival, what is remarkable is that highly-efficacious abilities are also there. It's not that we have our mediocre sight skills and that's that, but rather that we have extraordinary sight skills, which are in the course of the day toned-down just so the brain can keep up with living a life. That to me is a very impressive and inspiring thought. All of our faculties are extraordinary, and are merely toned-down for day-to-day life. That means "terabytes" of memory, perfect pitch, any perfection of faculty that you can name. All of that is with us.

It doesn't, because Haughtiness is not a synonym for Pride. It's a vice, which is often mistaken for pride because the two look so similar -- namely, assigning to oneself a large proportion of merit. Obviously haughtiness makes a mistake at some point, as you observe, but otherwise it wouldn't be a vice; of course it entails a mistake somewhere, namely assinging too much merit to oneself, or for wrong reasons. But it is regardless of whether this discussion takes place in an Objectivist crowd; I've seen many a student of Objectivism assign to themselves the role and moral stature of John Galt, and act in accordance with that role and its merits, rather than acting in accordance with their own character and the merit of that. In fact, a former friend of mine recently has acted in exactly this way, hence the "former". Haughtiness is indeed a problem, and if we realize that it doesn't fall too far from pride, we'll be careful in staying prideful but keeping ourselves from slipping into the vice nearby.

Mind you, from what I've read of Aristotle he didn't state that you happen upon the virtue by avoiding the extremes. And in any case, that's not how I approach it. You're right, you have to know the definition of that something in the middle, before you know how to steer towards it. But that still doesn't negate Aristotle's quantitative observation that virtues lie in the mean. I don't think he advocates looking for the mean as a guide to virtue, and in any case I don't advocate it, but nevertheless virtues do lie in the middle, such as with this discussion about haughtiness being an extension of pride. And it's not a mathematical middle, because Aristotle again says that most virtues lie closer to one of the extremes than the other; e.g. Courage is so much like Recklessness as to often be mistaken for it, while Cowardice lies far on the other side and is a clear antithesis.

This wasn't clear to me. In what way is haughtiness not a 'realization and acknowledgment of of one's worth'? It is that, but it assigns too many things on the side of personal worth rather than what is appropriate. You've seen images of puffed up personages, filled with their own self-importance -- they assign too much to themselves than is their due, and 'acknowledgement of their own worth' is not something they lack.

Sure I do. Realization and acknowledgment of one's worth. Haughtiness is that principle, taken too far and applied incorrectly.

Why not? It's called haughtiness.

I've heard from one of Dr. Peikoff's lectures that he believes Aristotle got some things very right, and some very wrong. The right things were of course in the metaphysics and the epistemology, but that he was wrong in ethics with the notion of the Golden Mean. I don't remember him clarifying what he meant in that lecture.

What book of the Ethics?

Some additional Roman paintings have come to light on the BBC website, from a museum collection that is now making rounds around Europe: Theseus Discovered in mid-18th century near Pompeii, recovered in an almost pristine condition and is "compared to the paintings of the Renaissance master Raphael". Io and Argus Women of Pompeii

The enormous Hadron particle collider that's being put into operation this summer has some scientists edgy. It's claimed it may create a black hole right here on Earth! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/...amp;oref=slogin

Yes well apparently I was told that I was Jewish, when David sent me a private insult about Betsy and I privately replied that he's a nutjob.

Petrarch, founder of the Renaissance during 1300s AD (Middle Ages), first humanist etc, writes:

Let me just point out concerning what was said earlier, that last I checked Israel was a free country and not an enslaved one, so let them have nukes and no one should stop them. Making some sort of moral equation between Iraq and Israel is just one more of the appalling gaffes in judgment that DP here has demonstrated.

bborg, even if the universe is somehow in an infinite regress (say as a form of energy), that still wouldn't mean it didn't have definite properties, or was not conceptually graspable, because again we think of a river as continuous and not discrete without that impeding our conceptual grasp of it in the least. There's a difference here between continuous, and undefinable as per modern quantum physics.

bborg, why does a 'specific nature' necessitate discreet particles? A fluid river has a specific nature, and easily identifiable conceptual reference, but we don't think of it in terms of billions of flowing little atoms. It looks continuous, indistinguishible, and we still have it easily conceptually identifiable in our brains.

No there's a difference here -- ancient Rome was not a totalitarian society but freest at the time, and they aimed at celebrating civilization and law amidst a barbarian world, not a grandeur of a totalitarian society and subjection of the human individual. But that's indeed what Hitler did try to emphasize by upstaging the Olympic games and trying to demonstrate the superiority of Aryan athletes (and failing); that's also what China is trying to celebrate today, by showing that no expense or human cost will bar it from projecting its outward shiny lustre to the outside world. Notice the exactly opposite attitude of the United States -- outward shiny lustre be damned, it's more important that people and sanctity of life be respected. As a result, in the West the lustre becomes both outward and inward.

More news of China's path into the modern age. MIT Review takes a look at China's multimillion dollar project to control 2008 Olympics weather, a totalitarian PR move calculated to show itself in a good light, on the backs of millions of its own citizens: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20463/ In other news, not only has China cruelly cracked down on Tibetan rebels, its army agents in fact posed as those rebels in the first place, so as to to allow the military to have an excuse to come in and violently squash down any potentially dissenting voices: http://www.infowars.com/?p=1085

Happy B-Day, Ed!

This just in: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2...08/03/27/129236 Just a word of caution, Paul... two major problems were found with Safari, one of which could allow a hacker to gain complete access to the computer Safari is running on. So far there's no update.

That's incredible... thanks for the find.