 The Required Change of Ethics
by Manfred F. Schieder
Ayn Rand, I, And the Universe, Part 5 (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 31, 2007 |
 Emotions and Reason
by Tibor R. Machan
One of the oldest topics in human thought is whether emotions drive us or are we guided by reason. The ancient Greeks thought reason will rule if we only engage it, while David Hume, one of the most influential modern philosophers, believed that reason is the slave of the passions. (Read more...)
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 Getting a Job you Want
by Dean Michael Gores
A young woman I ran into a few days ago has it pretty tough. She just got divorced, she has a year old child, and she has never worked or even graduated from high school. Below is a letter I wrote to her. Its Objectivism applied to getting a job. (Read more...)
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Visualizing the Complex Relationship Between Truth and Falsehood
by Paul Hibbert
This essay presents a possible alternative way of conceptualizing how truth and falsehood interact. Geographical information can be transmitted verbally but a map can do the same thing holistically and much more intuitively and efficiently. In much the same way, the relationship between true and false statements can be transmitted verbally but it is proposed that it might be possible to create a visual depiction of the same data. This concept is developed as an analogy of the Mandelbrot set — a mathematical construct that is integral to Chaos Theory. It would be possible to demonstrate, visually, that there are no so-called "grey areas" in the matter of truth and falsehood; moreover, Rand's dictum of "Examine your premises" can take on a new, graphical meaning. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 24, 2007 |
Ethics, East and West
by Tibor R. Machan
My title may suggest a sharp difference between East and West and that would be inaccurate. After all, we are all human beings, even though some of us grew up with different ideas from the others and over time these ideas may have divided us throughout the world, though by no means permanently or irrevocably. So, even ... (Read more...)
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In Defense of Discrimination
by William Scott Dwyer
Discrimination is bad! We hear it from the pulpit, from the media, from our moralists and especially from our "civil rights" leaders. But is discrimination the evil that everyone says it is? My answer is: No. It depends on the kind of discrimination one is talking about. In fact, discrimination can be a good thing, and even something worth promoting. (Read more...)
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Towards an Integrated Moral Standard
by Joseph Rowlands
The critical function of ethics is to provide a means of choosing between various choices. Morality is essentially a method of decision making. Morality is inescapable. Everyone must have some means of making choices. But not everyone identifies their method explicitly. They may end up with a hodgepodge of differe... (Read more...)
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 Canada Yields Rights to Northwest Passage
by Brett Holverstott
Results of a recent world summit on the ownership of the Northwest Passage. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 17, 2007 |
Atlas Shrugged & Ethics
by Tibor R. Machan
[This essay formed the basis of a talk at the Atlas Society celebration of the 50 th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in Washington, DC, on October 6, 2007] When Ayn Rand titled her collection of writings on ethics The Virtue of Selfishness, she also provided a clear clue to what... (Read more...)
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 Always Irrational
by Joseph Rowlands
Emotionalism is a policy of making decisions based on your feelings, and not on your rational judgment. Some people may choose it intentionally, thinking their emotions are some secret insight to the truth. Others may do it because they just don't want to resist their emotional responses. Like all irrational moral p... (Read more...)
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Our Capacity To Think
by Manfred F. Schieder
Ayn Rand, I, And the Universe, Part 4 (Read more...)
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Atlas and Economics
by Edward W. Younkins
Text of a talk delivered October 6, 2007 in Washington D.C., in celebration of Atlas Shrugged’s 50th Anniversary sponsored by the Atlas Society. Atlas Shrugged is widely recognized as a masterpiece of philosophy and of literature. However, not so widely recognized, but equally true, is that Atlas Shru... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 10, 2007 |
Federal Censorship of Children’s Book?
by Tibor R. Machan
Governments run the country’s schools and while some variation is still evident in how they are administered, there is a pretty strong movement toward a one-size-fits-all policy. Certainly, when the United States federal Congress can pass bills banning books from use in elementary schools, this does not bode well for educational pluralism and diversity. (Read more...)
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 Event-based Morality
by Joseph Rowlands
How do you judge a person's moral commitment? How do you tell whether someone is virtuous or not? The answer to these questions can change the way you see morality.
... (Read more...)
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Free Riders versus Forced Riders
by William Scott Dwyer
If voluntary government financing permits free riders -- those who refuse to pay for something they value at the price they are being charged -- then taxation requires forced riders -- those who are forced to pay for something they don't value at the price they are being charged. Are forced riders an acceptable solution to the problem of free riders? Read the article and find out! (Read more...)
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Altruism Corrupts Foreign Policy
by Joseph Rowlands
There's plenty of criticism of the US foreign policy. It doesn't seem to have any coherent principles guiding it. We need a foreign policy based on rational principles. One characteristic of a rational foreign policy would be the need to have clear goals and the need to stick with them. The choices would be guided ... (Read more...)
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The Structure of the Universe
by Manfred F. Schieder
Ayn Rand, I, and the Universe, Part 3 (Read more...)
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Wednesday
September 26, 2007 |
What Free Country?
by Tibor R. Machan
When I first arrived on these shores, back in 1956, the idea that America is a free country had at least some rhetorical currency, backed by frequent enough association between the country’s founding documents and the desirability and undesirability of various public policies. Just as Abraham Lincoln, so many others who addressed what kind of laws the country ought to have tended still to invoke the authority of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and ideas from the Founders and Framers. (Read more...)
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Tuesday
September 25, 2007 |
 My Soul is a Pack of Coyotes
by Ted Keer
My Soul is a Pack of Coyotes My soul is a pack of coyotes Trying to catch a rabbit In the field of my imagination. My heart is a flock of seagulls sleeping on water With fish going right under them In every direction Just like my bloodstream. My body is like an Encyclopedia of bones, ... (Read more...)
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Time and Value
by Joseph Rowlands
This was a speech given in 2003. (Read more...)
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Thursday
September 20, 2007 |
Respond-Sybil-Itty
by Luke Setzer
The student complied with the principal's edict exactly as spoken. He wrote his own definition of "responsibility" by filling the page from top to bottom. He started from the top of the page and spelled the words vertically down the page to the bottom, where he then returned to the top for another vertical line of words. (Read more...)
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Shoring Up the Nanny State
by Tibor R. Machan
Given how bad the arguments are for forced wealth redistribution, it is no great surprise that mainstream welfare statists are constantly revamping them. In the August 22, 2007, issue of the International Herald Tribune, the European paper that�s put out together by The New York Times, an editorial makes yet another attempt to help give the nanny state the moral advantage. Let us take a look at how this attempt is made. (Read more...)
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Erasing Impossibilities
by Manfred F. Schieder
Ayn Rand, I, and the Universe: Part 2 (Read more...)
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Thursday
September 13, 2007 |
The Omnipotence Premise
by Joseph Rowlands
Philosophy is a powerful tool for developing an integrated understanding of the world. It sheds an enormous amount of light on most topics. You learn to see connections, to think in fundamentals, and to recognize principles. Philosophy enables you to see past the specifics of a single situation in order to see the b... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
September 12, 2007 |
 Overcoming Akrasia
by Eric Rockwell
When we determine a plan of action that is in our long-range self interest, sometimes we see it through to completion and are happy with our success. But other times, we fail to follow through. This article examines the nature of such behavior. (Read more...)
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