Any conclusion of ours about reality cannot be KNOWN to be of actual reality. It very well may be, but we have no means to prove it absolutely. It’s not that we cannot perceive reality, but rather we cannot know the reality we perceive is as it really is. — Mww

How do you know a conclusion of reality cannot be known to be of actual reality if you don't know what actual reality actually is? Because you say that actual reality cannot be known.

Maybe you have some references to sustain that assertion, but I present these to deny it: — Mww

I don't know how those assertions deny that.

What if our conclusions actually are of reality and you're just being skeptical of them because you don't want to know reality; you would rather believe in something else than what is right in front of you.

My conclusion of reality says God doesn't exist because there is no proof, but I can't actually know reality, so God can still exist. What a bunch of nonsense.

I personally do not hold with an objective meaning *OF* life. Meanings IN, sure. Objective purpose to....I guess. The expression of moral code and all that. Meaning OF....not required. — Mww

I don't think the OP meant meaning of life in just that way. But what is the purpose of life? What should you do with your life? Why should you live this way?

It might well seem clear to you, but you have failed to provide a reasonable basis for believing that there's an objective purpose. You don't really put forward an argument, you just make a whole bunch of statements which are disconnected logically from your bald assertion that there's an objective purpose. I care about life and happiness, and I most likely share many of your values and priorities: reason being one of them. Reason helps people survive. A = A. Facts are facts. I don't believe in God either. I reject magical thinking. So bloody what? This doesn't reasonably support the belief that there's an objective purpose. — S

The purpose of life is life. Life does what it can to live. Planets get sunlight to live without thinking. Animals hunt to live based on instinct. Humans think to live.

You think to live, how do you live life without the facts? You can't pursue life if you don't use reason. That's an objective truth. How do you live without reason? You can't.

Do you think engineers consult with God to build a bridge?
You think doctors have mystical experiences on how to heal people?
You think businessmen just get lucky and have money fall into their hands?

Everything we do in life that propels us forward was started by a consciousness and one that could think and reason. It's not a matter of what you value.

So, the objective meaning of life is life. And the objective way to live life is reason. Rational self-interest. You cannot hold values outside of your rational self-interest if there is an objective meaning to life.

These kind of arguments seem kind of fruitless to me. People can and do live different lives from each other, can and do feel differently about things, can and do have different sets of values, and can and do order them differently in terms of priority. That's the case with you two. You don't have to see eye to on this, you know? It's not like there's an answer in the same way that there's an answer to what 2 + 2 equals or what planet we're on. — S

Disagree. There is living in accordance to reality and there is not living in accordance with reality. Mystics don't live in accordance to reality. They want to live in a way that is impossible. They want to live based on what they feel. Not based on the facts. They want to avoid reality and pretend in a fantasy. You can't pursue life if what you value is life if you are mystical. If you value death then by all means be mystical because death goes hand and hand with mysticism.

I explicitly said that I wasn’t talking about religious faith necessary. — praxis

What's the difference between religious faith and normal faith? They are both faith.

It is pointless to continue. I suggest, if it interests you, to study what religion is: how and why it may have developed and the role it plays in society. Then perhaps you’ll be able to untangle concepts like faith and mysticism from religion. — praxis

Religion is worthless.

When we say that A is B, aren't we either just calling it a different name or focusing on a different set of facts about it, a la morning and evening star? — Terrapin Station

I don't understand this.

Well actually you don't know if you'll go to hell or not, only I can know. But I can't prove it to you. But you should accept it blindly because apparently that leads to happiness and a good life.

But you were advocating for faith weren't you? Have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You'll go to hell if you don't you know.

I don't really know what you mean.

Are you saying that reality can contradict itself? That 5 = 8?

If A = 5
And B = 8
Does A = B?
Does 5 = 8?

No.

A = A
5 = 5
8 = 8

You can call something a different name, but that doesn't change what it actually is.

You can call me AppLeo or call me by something else, but the essence of me is still me.

Yeah.. let's laugh instead of providing arguments. Laughing at positions we disagree with is for the most philosophically and intellecutally inclined. We appear smart without making any effort.

Explain — Mww

Well Objectivism is called Objectivism because it's supposed to be objective.

The metaphysics of Objectivism is that reality is what it is. The world exists independently of man's consciousness. A = A. Fact are facts. Wishing for reality to be different won't make it different.

Epistemologically, Objectivism holds that the only way for a consciousness to know reality or a truth is with reason in accordance with logic. You cannot know something based on how you feel. You cannot magically know the right answer because God told you. There must be evidence and reasoning for you to actually know something.

Ethically (and this is where it answers this threads questions: the objective meaning to life). Life's purpose is to live, to flourish, and to be happy. Everything has its own nature and it must do what is good for its nature. Plants need sunlight to eat. Animals need to hunt and gather to eat.

In order for man to live he must first choose life. Do you want to live or not? Most people say yes. And then of course he must hold reason as his absolute so he can deal with reality properly. If you go about life without seeing reality for what is it, you're basically committing suicide. How do you find the food you need without reason? You can't magically know where food is. You can't magically wish for food to appear in front of you. But the mystics and faith believers will tell you otherwise because reality is subjective. And interpreting reality is subjective. Life doesn't have to be life. Life doesn't need food to live. You don't need to know how to find food. Food can appear in front of you if you wish it. If you die from starvation, it won't matter because there's an afterlife anyway. If you resist death, you may fail God's test of having faith. And a bunch of other nonsense. This doesn't have to be with finding food, it could be any problem you have with your life. The question is, will you deal with it realistically, orr will you make something up?

I need to learn more about philosophy and read about other philosophers in depth, but what I know so far, every other philosopher denies that there is an objective reality. Except maybe Aristotle and maybe Aquinas to some degree. Especially ever since Immanuel Kant came about – he said that we cannot actually perceive reality. That reason and logic fail because our senses distort reality. So basically we're subjective. Any conclusion of reality cannot be of actual reality. So there is no objectivity. Obviously Ayn Rand disagrees.

Every other philosopher after Kant – Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidaggar is all similar in the sense that reason is faulty. They build off Kant in their own subjective way. Hegel says that Aristotelian logic and the individual is not good. It's okay to have contradictions in your thinking. The collective is more important than the individual. Marx just says the same thing. Kierkegaard says that you need a non-rational way to know the truth. Nietzsche just says this thing about the will to power. You just feel what is right with the use of instinct. And that using your mind and logic is for people who are afraid of an irrational reality.

Obviously people can decide for themselves about what is objective because I guess there is no objective, but it seems clear to me that there's an objective purpose to life if you care about life and happiness.

By taking away government power. How do you take away government power? Well the people decide that. But people nowadays have chosen to give the government control over their lives. They've decided to put the responsibility on government leaders instead of taking responsibility themselves. So if you want less government power you encourage people to be independent and responsible. To value their own lives as individuals.

Don't know much about Greenspan. Trump may have read Atlas Shrugged, but he his no objectivist. And it's weird that republicans like her considering that many of them are religious and she is atheist. They don't understand that she provided a philosophical framework for capitalism. She wasn't advocating capitalism for no reason; I wish they would understand that.

Rand is more popular among libertarians, I think.

If they did take her seriously she would destroy them, so it's no wonder.

And don't forget about the cronies. Businessmen pay off politicians to pass regulations to benefit them at the expense of their competitors. Which again is horrible and shouldn't happen. Which means you must take away the government's power to regulate if you want freedom and justice in the economy.

People should be free to make their own decisions about what it is they want to buy and sell. Nobody else should have that authority over you.

A government made up of people making decisions for the public is not only insulting to people because they are capable of making their own decisions, but people in the government don't care because it's not their lives. If they make a wrong regulation, or forget to make an important regulation, who suffers the consequences? Not them, the people do. Therefore the people should make the choices first hand.

There are countless examples of people reporting mystical experiences. I doubt any of these will be convincing for you. — praxis

If they have evidence.

If someone has a mystical experience with the Flying Spaghetti Monster why should I believe them if they can't prove it to me? Why should I have faith in them?

You are wrong on so many levels.

The Soviet Union and the Cultural Revolution in China killed MILLIONS of people. Free enterprise has never killed anyone in the millions. It has dramatically increased the quality of life for everybody. It's evident from history that free enterprise does so much good for the world. Any country that doesn't value economic freedom will stagnate and self-destruct. The 19th century was the greatest period of economic growth that America has ever seen. Thriving middle class and tons of inventions.

My point? Capitalism, Industrialism, National Socialism, Communism, Maoism--pick your poison--entail massive processes which end up crushing the individual. — Bitter Crank

Capitalism doesn't crush the individual. Do you know what capitalism is? Do you know what a free economy looks like? Individualism can only be compatible with a free system. Which means capitalism is the only system that values the individual. Individuals choose how to make a living. Individuals choose what to buy. Individuals deal with one another as individuals through the process of free trade.

quote="Bitter Crank;249261"]You don't like distributivism; I don't think economic freedom (unfettered free enterprise) is a good thing.[/quote]

Obviously.

What gives you the right to distribute money. Why should anybody be entitled to money that they didn't earn? Why shouldn't people be free to spend their money however they want? Why should someone in power get to decide where money goes?

Why do you want to distribute money? What makes you think you can even distribute the money effectively? What makes you think you can raise someone's social class by giving them money? If you give a poor person money that they didn't earn, you're not raising their social class. They are the still the same person as they were before. They are still poor. And giving them money will only enable their bad behaviors. If people can get money for doing nothing, they'll never change themselves to get the money that they desire. Which means that when you give people money, you are essentially keeping them poor. You are widening the gap between the rich and the poor and destroying the middle class.

It just seems to me that democratic socialism, with its curbs and limits on corporate excess and individual greed offers more advantages for the future than another hundred years of predatory capitalism. — Bitter Crank

Democratic socialism is the antithesis to the individual. Democratic is mob rule. Socialism is collectivist. If you value the individual, if you are a defender of minorities (and the smallest minority is the individual), then you wouldn't advocate for democratic socialism.

Why would you want to limit corporate excess? These corporations provide services and jobs to the public. Limiting corporations hinders economic growth.

Individual greed???
You know what's greedy? People who want to take money from the rich even though the rich created their wealth through sheer productive ability and built major businesses that increased the quality of life for everybody.

What makes capitalism so predatory? Free trade is the opposite of predatory.

You know what's predatory. An all powerful government taking away your money when you've earned it. An all powerful government regulating what you can buy and sell. An all powerful government ruled by someone like you who has the audacity to think that he knows a better a way to create economic wealth than the complexity of millions of economic transactions that take place in a free market.

If you want better education for people, you let them be.

Oh please, you know what a ridiculous thing this is to say. We can't verify every truth claim we encounter everyday. — praxis

So because can't verify something, we should just fill the holes and hope we're right? I think it's intellectually lazy and destructive to claim a truth that you have no evidence for.

Mysticism can be experiential. Apparently you don't believe me when I make this claim. Being a person who claims to believe that accepting a truth without evidence is bad, I assume you will try to verify my claim before deciding which of us is right. — praxis

No it can't. Give an example of how it is.

So being faithful to your spouse, for instance, which may have nothing to do with religion, is undermining your minds value and judgment? Faith has an aspect of loyalty. — praxis

Well we aren't talking about the same kind of faith anymore.

Faithful in the sense in being loyal to someone is fine. Faith in terms of accepting truths without evidence is bad.

Mysticism and faith are not synonymous, you're conflating the two. Also, mysticism is experiential and may not need to be taken on faith. As for faith, I've alluded to its social qualities, without which it's difficult to imagine happiness or fulfillment, for me anyway. And I'm not talking about religious faith necessarily. — praxis

They are the same in the sense that they both accept truth without evidence.

Again, the value of mysticism is that it can relieve existential anxiety. This is important to a happy and fulfilled life. Can you not see that? — praxis

Disagree. People shouldn't place their happiness on something outside of themselves in the first place. To be faithful is to undermine the value and judgment of your own mind. How does faith, accepting something as truth without evidence lead to happiness or relieve anxiety? You relieve anxiety and find happiness when you find out what is true because there is evidence for it.

Objectivism by Ayn Rand provides an objective meaning to life.

This line of discussion started with your claim that "reason is our only means to knowing reality." I suggest that a better way of saying this is that with language people have the ability to share information or mental representations and in this way we may 'know reality' in a way that other mammals cannot, in addition to our own experience. — praxis

We're apparently able to form more complex concepts and mental simulations than other mammals, and this relates to 'knowing reality' in terms of making predictions and 'navigating through life', but all concepts are formed from experience. — praxis

Yeah, I agree.

Mysticism is based in experience. Though with the capacity of human reason people can fool other people into believing things that are not based in their personal experience in order to manipulate others. — praxis

Subjective experience that isn't objective. It's mysticism that fools people into believing things that are not real. If some guy says that he can talk to God, and God told him that you must sacrifice your children, you would want to know the evidence of this God and why God would ask you to do such a thing. Which means one must use reason not mysticism when they deal with other human beings.

Earlier you claimed that "Humans navigate with reason." How can humans navigate with reason if they are irrational? — praxis

People are not split into two groups of rationality and irrationality. We have a combination of rational and irrational thinking. What allows humans to live life and to not die is the rationality that they still have. The people that live more rationally than others will live happier and more prosperous lives. The ones that are more irrational live unhappy and destructive lives.

Because you have a simplistic understanding of faith and mysticism, quite frankly, and you overvalue reason. — praxis

No. It's because I want people to live the best life they can live, and the only way to do that is with reason, not faith or mysticism.

Karl Marx's ideas were tried, and what happened was death and destruction. Economic collapse and stagnation.

The solution isn't economic distribution. The solution is economic freedom. Free market laissez-faire capitalism. A just society is a free society. Not a society that aims to have perfect equality of outcome for everybody.

You're wrong on both counts, all mammals navigate through life with the same fundamental framework. 'Knowing' something essentially means being able to make predictions about that something and all mammals have this basic capacity. Humans can make more predictions about the world and more sophisticated predictions than other species. — praxis

Humans can think way bigger and deeper than any animal. Why do we kill wild animals that attack us instead of trying to have a civil discussion with them? Because they're dumb and instinctual.

As for humans navigating the world with reason, do I really need to point out how irrational people are??? — praxis

Yeah, people are irrational. Why do you think the world is falling apart? And why do think I keep advocating for reason over faith and mysticism? When people are irrational, they destroy their ability to live because they accept some things as truth without evidence or proof. Religious people are a perfect example of this.

No. They are not different forms of thinking. It's a matter of life or death. Reason is our only means of discovering the truth. Reason applies Aristotelian Logic. Mysticism is a bunch of nonsense. Mystical people claim to know the truth without any evidence or proof. They just know because they "feel" it from within. But our emotions do not reflect reality. The time period ruled by mysticism was the dark ages. The Renaissance was ruled by reason, where people actually focused on science and facts. Reason is the only form of objective communication. If you hold a piece of truth, you can communicate that to another person so that they know that truth. With mysticism, it is subjective. Which means you have no way of communicating what you know to another person. People must accept that what you say is true without evidence or a logical understanding. When men are reduced to such a lowly state, that they cannot communicate by objective means, it's only a matter of time before they result to violence to settle disagreements that cannot be settled objectively.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

I think anyone can handle any amount of suffering as long as there is purpose or something to gain from it. For example... Going through pain to finish a long novel. Going through pain to get a business off the ground. Going through pain during your work outs. Going through rejection to build relationships.

It's when people suffer constantly for no reason and there's no hope for a better future is when it becomes unbearable.

Well I guess no one really knows because no one has observed the entire universe to know if it's infinite or finite.

So what's your solution to this problem?

Animals can only know reality through observation. They navigate through life with their instinct.

Humans navigate with reason.

I've already explained my belief a bunch times earlier.

You forgot the other defintion.

"belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies."

Mysticism is the antithesis to reason. Reason is our only means to knowing reality.

It's also a fact that people value things that are not normally considered "good." For example, there are thousands of nuclear weapons in the world, so they must be valued in some way, but few people would say they are good things. Less dramatically, people who smoke, drink, and have a poor diet typically value their lives, yet they continue to consume these things regardless of how they negatively impact their health. — praxis

I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that to value life and to use reason is to be objective.

That's not what mysticism is. Please consult a dictionary. — praxis

That is what mysticism is.

Change is infinite, yes.

Everything that exists does not have an infinite nature. It is what it is. It doesn't go on forever.

Because life is good if you want to live. That's just a fact. How do you live life if you don't your life? And why would anyone not want to value their life? Makes no sense.

Mysticism is objectively bad because it's the acceptance of something as truth without evidence or proof. It's even worse when people accept something as truth when it contrasts with what is evident or proven already. Accepting truths without evidence is detrimental to one's life in all cases. It's not a matter of what you value.

Social class is determined by the value you can produce in the market, not your background. College doesn't necessarily determine your success or social class either.

No, it goes on for an eternity. What I'm saying is that existence is not infinite in size.

Mysticism and death is bad. I don't understand how they are good things. They are objectively bad. Why would we want to live in a world where humans don't value life, and pursue mysticism instead of reason to understand reality. People who don't value life and don't hold reason as an absolute are people who make the world worse, not only for themselves, but for everybody else. Your kind of thinking is the reason why people can justify doing horrible things. Because there is no right or wrong. Because there is no morality, people can do whatever it is they please because, "it's my values there is no right and wrong."

Everything that exists is everything that exists; it doesn't just go on forever.