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To: Kyrie
If contradiction is evidence of serious flaws in one domain, it should be evidence of serious flaws in another domain, regardless of the means used to settle differences.

I'd say that the contradictions I see as evidence of serious flaws in religious domains is NOT evidence of serious flaws in non-religious domains.

If Randian and Aristotelian rational ethics contradict each other (or any other rational ethics systems) logical consistency would require you to either modify your assertion above, or confess to serious flaws in rational ethics in general.

I've written before that Rand built upon Aristotle's simplistic rational ethics. In so doing, Rand presented a unified, non-contradictory rational ethics in a 144 page document titled "The virtue of selfishness."

I'd like to know if any other philosopher has presented any logical, rational ethics that contradicts Rand's work.

53 posted on 08/31/2002 4:37:32 PM PDT by thinktwice
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To: thinktwice
I'd say that the contradictions I see as evidence of serious flaws in religious domains is NOT evidence of serious flaws in non-religious domains.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion; however, if you want anyone to agree with you, you have more explaining to do. Why is one domain singled out for a higher standard than any other? This smacks of bias, and unless your reader already shares your bias, this will require more argument.

And here's what she wrote about things like Tarski's bad definition of "truth."

I am having difficulty seeing how the quotes you used address Tarski's definition of truth. I doubt she had anything like Tarski's work in mind when she wrote that. Tarski certainly did not consider the definition of truth to be arbitrary. In the context in which he worked, in fact, it was so non-arbitrary that none of the definitions tried before had given satisfactory results. If the definition had been an arbitrary one, then any of the earlier definitions would have been just as good. They weren't. In fact, the more I examine your samples of Rand's thinking, the more I am inclined to believe that she would approve of Tarski's work. So, since I can't see Rand calling Tarski's definition of truth "bad" it must be you calling it a "bad" definition. This is actually easier to deal with, because while Rand is unavailable for discussion, I can ask you to explain what is so "bad" about Tarski's definition of truth. Would you, please?

Considering Tarski's "snow is white" as "a good definition of truth" with reference to the above paragraph, would you consider whiteness to be an essential defining charisteristic for snow?

First, note that Tarski was defining truth, not snow. That is, what does it mean for an assertion (in general) to be true? And his answer (ignoring the necessary distinctions between the language and the metalanguage) was that if snow really is white (in the real world) then the sentence "snow is white" is true, and conversely. In other words, in order for a sentence about the real world to be true, the real world must actually be as the sentence asserts. I'm not sure why you think Rand would dispute this.

Now as far as whiteness being a defining characteristic of snow, I would venture to say, no. To define snow, I would simply say that snow is the result of water vapor freezing into crystals in the atmosphere. The observed whiteness of snow is a derived characteristic based upon the way that light scatters through it, and may be observed in shaved ice. However, if snow is illuminated with monochromatic light, such as laser light, instead of polychromatic sunlight, the snow will not be white.

But back to the definition of truth. If I point to snow in the real world and say, "That snow is white right now," then the truth (or falsehood) of my assertion is to be found in the real world: is the snow white, or not? It does not need to be a defining characteristic; just keep it simple: is the snow white, or not? If it is, then my assertion is true. If it is not, then my assertion is false.

Bear in mind that the groundbreaking nature of Tarski's work was not the observations that I have made above. Rather, it was the careful application of this seemingly self-evident definition to mathematical logic and model theory (in a way that correctly separated the language from the metalanguage so as to avoid the famous "liar paradox") that made Tarski's work so notable.

P.S. As much as I could glean from the quotes you gave, I believe that I would agree with Rand on the matter of definitions. But that leaves me far from being a Randian.

59 posted on 08/31/2002 8:55:04 PM PDT by Kyrie
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To: thinktwice
I'd like to know if any other philosopher has presented any logical, rational ethics that contradicts Rand's work.

Try Marx.

75 posted on 08/31/2002 10:56:12 PM PDT by yendu bwam
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