Ken Barclay

LOOLOOS FOR LEXOPHILES (LOVERS OF WORDS): 1. A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired. 2. A will is a dead giveaway. 3. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. 4. A backward poet writes inverse. 5. In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes. 6. A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion. 7. If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed. 8. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress. 9. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat miner. 10. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. 11. The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered. 12. A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulted in Linoleum Blownapart. 13. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it. 14. Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under. 15. He broke into song because he couldn't find the key. 16. A calendar's days are numbered. 17. A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine. 18. A boiled egg is hard to beat. 19. He had a photographic memory which was never developed. 20. A plateau is a high form of flattery. 21. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large. 22. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end. 23. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall. 24. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine. 25. When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye. 26. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis. 27. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses. 28. Acupuncture: a jab well done. 29. Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.

This thread started out with a "philosophic" joke. To bring it back on course: A farmer had a horse that could understand nearly anything. The story of the horse spread, and soon scientists showed up to study it. Sure enough, the horse learned everything that was presented to it, with one exception: geometry. The scientists were puzzled, but the old farmer knew the problem. They were putting Descartes before the horse!

A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was plodding through the Afghanistan desert when he saw something far off in the distance. Hoping to find water, he walked toward the object, only to find a little old Jewish man sitting at a card table with neckties laid out on it. The Arab asked, "My thirst is killing me. Do you have water?" The Jewish man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie? They are only $150. This one goes very nicely with your robes. " The Arab shouted, "Idiot! I do not need an overpriced tie. I need water!" "OK," said the old Jew, "it does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie. I will show you that you have not offended me. If you walk over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant. Go! Walk that way! The restaurant has all the water you need!" The Arab staggered away toward the hill and eventually disappeared. Four hours later the Arab came crawling back to where the Jewish man was sitting at his table. The Jew said, "I told you, about two miles over that hill. Could you not find it?" "I found it all right," rasped the Arab. "Your brother won't let me in without a tie!"

This is getting dogawful

This just in: Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.

A cool cat! I once had one that would play in the ocean breakers with me. He could let me know when he wanted to leap onto my shoulder, and all the response he needed was a slight lowering of that shoulder. The point is, could your cat have chosen *not* to be perceptually conscious? "Choosing," in the sense of selecting among alternatives, and "volition" are not equivalent. Animals have choice in the first sense (birds do it, bees do it, etc.). The thing about the perceptual level is, they cannot choose not to be conscious. Neither can we, on the strictly perceptual level. Our cats were/are conscious, no doubt. Volition, though, is about will. It is about deciding to be conscious -- conceptually conscious in man's case -- *or not*. On the perceptual level, we, and animals with consciousness, are at the mercy of our sensory environment. We can't, without bringing our conceptual consciousness up to speed, purposely ignore our sensory surroundings. Animals are stuck with their perceptual mode. They don't get to initiate it, to will it into operation. Or, if you think they can volitionally initiate their form of consciousness, again, you'd have to prove it to me. The fact of her fun behavior is not evidence that your cat "figured it out." Unless we're speaking metaphorically, figuring something out means thinking through a problem, which I don't think you mean to attribute to your talented cat (correct me if my mind-reading is wrong). I believe it's easy for us to get anthropomorphic about animals whose antics make us go, "Gee whiz." But when we do, we shortchange the possibilities of action on the perceptual level of consciousness. I once saw (on TV) a robot that would pick up and dispose of trash. Crumple some paper and throw it on the floor and the robot would roll over to it, pick it up and then deposit it in a trash bin. Would you infer volition from that? (That was rhetorical, of course.)

But, volition is an attribute of man's consciousness. He can, by an act of will, activate his (conceptual) consciousness at any given time, or not. In order to say that volition is also an attribute of animals' consciousness, one would have to show that they, too, can activate their (perceptual) consciousness at a given time, or not.

"Volition" is another axiomatic concept. From "Glossary of Objectivist Definitions," edited by Allison T. Kunze and Jean F. Moroney: "Man's volition is an attribute of his consciousness (of his rational faculty) and consists in the choice to perceive existence or to evade it. [Axiomatic concept; not a definition.] AR, 'The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made,' PWNI, 25. [same as 'free will.'...}" "Volition" does not mean "motivation." Strictly speaking, it does not mean choice of action in the face of alternatives, either. It has to do with man's form of consciousness. It means man is free to initiate a process of thought or not. Animals, are not free to do that. Animals make their choices based on their perceptual level functioning. Given the proper environment, those choices suffice to sustain life. Man, like the animals, can also make choices based on perceptual level functioning, but there is no environment in which he can sustain his life by doing so. He has to use his free will -- his volition -- to initiate conceptual thought in order to be able to sustain a life fitting for man. I don't know whether your cat "could not have done otherwise," but if you were to assert that it thought the matter over before acting, you would have to prove it to me.

A remarkably similar op-ed appeared in Caroline B. Glick's column of Sept. 10, titled, "The Image of the Truth." <http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CarolineGlick/cg20050910.shtml> In this case, the "image" was a photograph published in the N.Y. Times, also five years ago. The picture was purported to be of a Palestinian youth who had been beaten by an Israeli border guard, shown in the photo holding a baton. As it turned out, the youth was a Jewish student from Chicago. He had been pulled from a taxi by a Palestinian mob, beaten and stabbed. He had managed to run to the nearest Israeli security force he could find. The border guard with the baton in the photo was actually protecting the young man from the mob. Ms. Glick makes the point that the story told by that picture was actually "the story of the prejudice of the Times' photo-editor." She goes on to make a similar point about the images coming out of the Katrina aftermath being cast as evidence of racial prejudice Her further points concern the importance of images to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Like Gelernter, Ms. Glick also speaks of the necessity to uphold the truth in the face of "the barbarism of our enemies if we do not wish for their false images to become our reality."

In the "Glossary of Objectivist Definitions," Edited by Allison T. Kunze and Jean F. Moroney: "Infinity" denotes merely a potentiality of indefinite addition or subdivision. The reference given is: LP "Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms, OPAR, 31. I know so little of these matters from the standpoint of science that I probably have no business jumping in. However, the discussion is intriguing, so I'll jump anyway. What could possibly be meant by a "starting point," or to "travel in one direction" in a system where everything moves? And what would a "straight line" mean, in the context of traveling through the universe? For that matter, what could be the meaning of saying that "space is curved"? If you start off from earth, say, intending to travel in a "straight line" toward a distant star, both earth and star will have moved as soon as you left. Your "starting point" and your target are no longer "there."

To get back to serious matters: A blonde woman was speeding down the road in her little red sports car and was pulled over by a woman police officer (also a blonde). The cop asked to see the blonde's driver's license. The driver dug through her purse and was getting progressively more agitated. "What does it look like?" she finally asked the officer. The policewoman replied, "It's square and it has your picture on it." The driver finally found a small square mirror, looked at it, and handed it to the policewoman. "Here it is," she said. The blonde officer looked at the mirror, then handed it back saying, "Okay, you can go. I didn't realize you were a cop."

Stephen, I would appreciate knowing of any write-up, accessible to a layman, describing those cosmological structures. For that matter, I'd like to know of any writings on cosmological topics in general. Popularizers of science are a mixed bag, and because of worries about ingesting misinformation I stopped buying their books some time ago. Nevertheless, the field is fascinating to me, so I would like to find some trustworthy author who describes and/or explains what's happening in the study of the universe. Thank you for the glimpses you give in answering the questions of other laymen on this forum. We must try your patience.

In 1968, at the time of the break between Ayn Rand and the Brandens, I was a subscriber to The Objectivist. For some reason that I don't recall, my issues of the journal were arriving quite late that year. One day, instead of The Objectivist, a publication arrived from the Brandens. It was dated October 21, 1968. It contained an article by each of them giving their "side" of their conflict with AR This was the first I heard of any controversy within the highest reaches of Objectivism. The Brandens had used their access to the mailing list of The Objectivist to respond to "charges and accusations" made by AR (in the May issue, which I had not received). I was devastated. Since the early 1960's AR and Objectivism had been an intellectual lifeline for me. It was very disquieting to find that lifeline was fraying. And, I suppose I had indulged in fantasies about the (probably) admirable relationships of the principals. There followed insufficient information to form any but tentative conclusions about what had caused the rift, and, like many another, I suspect, I wondered about the circumstances in which it occurred. I was left on my own to sort out the various claims and counter-claims of those who took one side or the other. I found the publications of the Brandens' books disquieting. Even to one unacquainted with the circumstances, these books seemed to rely on innuendo and self-serving allegations; intent, not on presenting an objective portrait of AR's life, but evidence that she wasn't so great after all. What used to be called "damning with faint praise." With the latter-day publications of AR's letters and excerpts from her journals which revealed her mind at work, the long-ago break became less important to me. I nevertheless found myself pleased to learn, in January, that a book was offered through the Ayn Rand Bookstore that addresses the subject in depth and, hopefully, with more objectivity. The book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, by James Valliant, is finally out, and my copy arrived Friday. I'm looking forward to reading answers to questions that were so important nearly thirty-seven years ago.