Dean, With Eva you are arguing with a subjectivist who does not consistently argue morality using the same ethical premises/using objectivist ethical premises. Resolve the premise first.
I don't see it from that direction. Assuming that Eva is as she says - a twenty year old college student (on the internet one never knows) - I'm struck with how incredibly knowlegable and fluent she is. The breadth and depth of her responses is, to me, quite stunning. But at the same time, I see a kind of superficiality and disconnectedness in her responses. I don't mean that in a negative way, because when we first acquire knowledge we are holding on to it in a superficial fashion. We haven't had time to plumb the depths, unravel the intricacies, and to make that new knowledge fully our own. In addition, it takes a lot of time to integrate knowledge. Over the course of time, we don't just get to know ourselves better, but to know our knowledge better. We stumble across the conflicts, the blank spots, the contradictions and we patch, repair, reintegrate and clarify what we know. I can only imagine what it is like to be her, at this stage of her life, with the excitement of consuming new information, new understandings at such a whirlwind pace. She has a strong drive to take more and more education. When I was in college I felt like I wanted to go in every direction, at full speed, all the time. It is the very breadth and depth of what she has already taken on board that spells out how much careful integration and parsing of things remains to be done. But at that age, and in that environment, that has to take second seat. No one I know of was better at integrating knowledge across the broadest of intellectual ranges than Rand. Eva will find her own place in the various disciplines as time passes. I'm enjoying attempting to offer her the kind of food for thought that will give her a kind of integration tool that I never encountered in my formal studies. There can be stages of knowledge acquisition, and when you are up to the armpits in taking it in, and loving every minute, it feels like there is nothing else. It is later, when the experience of knitting the different parts together as a more cohesive whole becomes such a joy. In the beginning it is the swallowing that feels good. Later it is using all that you took in to be a a more powerful, secure and serene person that feels good. Taking in knowledge feels like you are carrying more value - like more money in your pocket. As it becomes more and more integrated and more deeply understood, and lived with, it feels like YOU are of more value - you have more than money in the pocket, you have a capcity to generate more money at will. Looking back you are then able to see that it used to be other peoples money that you were very happy to receive, and now it is your money. I don't really expect Eva to change her opposition to what I'm saying in the various posts, because she is still working from a base of recently acquired beliefs that still need more time in her. Her defending her positions is natural, but you can't be really, really good at taking in new knowledge without also hearing and storing opposing ideas for later - maybe years later. To Eva if you are reading this, my apologies if if sounds condescending to your ears... It doesn't feel that way from this end. To you, being twenty is so much older than, say 15. But from my viewpoint of 66 years, the number of years you have had to work with the knowledge you've taken on board is scant, but that will change almost before you know it.
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