I also agree with the first one.

I think there is a better video for the second speech, but I can't find it. It was in a similar setting to her GOP warning.

Have you seen the entire Mike Wallace interview?

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
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Everything about the War on Terro(ism) is aggravating.

I'm getting through it.

Here's the second part:


I agree with everything except the complete separation of state and economy. There are good and beneficial interventionalist economic policies that are fully justified for a greater society.


Here's the third:


I disagree with her statement that "all monopolies in history have come about with government help." They can arise by offering huge sums of money to buy out any and all competition. And I can't believe she said that all depressions are caused by government interference. Someone needs to tell her about the business cycle. Anarcho-capitalism isn't a truly rational economic system when all factors are accounted for.

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"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

--Murray Rothbard

Also, the same user who uploaded that interview uploaded a Phil Donahue interview as well.

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My enduring personal, original quote: Many mistake what should rightly be called "passivism" for pacifism. Pacifism and passivism are COMPLETELY different.
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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." --President George W. Bush.
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Everything about the War on Terro(ism) is aggravating.

I agree with everything but the emboldened sentences. We do use principles as a way of abstracting and simplifying our world to make it easier to analyse and act in. That doesn't mean the principles that we come up with are accurate or 'fundamentally true'. We make a lot of mistakes when choosing our principles. This means that although we may hold on to our principles forever, that in and of itself does not make them forever valid. Because principles are the result of our abstractions and observations and are used as guides to life, when we observe something new or abstract something else, this can and does radically change the context of our lives, and often changes our principles. Principles are fluid exactly because they are based on our sensory experience and mental power to abstract.

The chain of reasoning which ends in an ethical principle can be logical, as in, identified without contradictions, but that doesn't make it universally valid, or objectively true. Two people can come up with two radically different principles as a result of the same concrete experiences. There is not one valid principle that can be gleaned from an experience or a set of abstractions, because the validity of principles is subjective.

I don't agree with the subjectivist line that you put forth, I don't think it follows. I believe that reality is objectively knowable, and by reality I mean that which physically exists, whether we can sense it or not. (Darkmatter and subatomic particles exist, in other words) Truth and validity are not part of this firmament. Truth and validity are not things which physically exist, they are abstract mental constructs that human beings use to try to make tortured sense of their confusing world. There is no reason for me to lump them both in the same category which only allows for one sticker saying 'objective' or 'subjective'. Reality is objectively knowable, ethics is not. This doesn't seem a contradiction to me.

By that you mean it would be contrary to our nature if we would define an ethical code of values that had as its standard something other than our pain-pleasure mechanism. I don't agree. I think your pain-pleasure mechanism can tell you a lot about what you should be doing, but it certainly isn't a sufficient guide to life, and the reason humans are dominant is in part because of this. We are able to recognise the rewards of deferred pleasure. we may choose to help someone out now at our expense because we want to rely on that person in the future. This is in part the reason society works. Another is altruism. As human beings, we hold values beyond what gives us the most physical pleasure or least physical pain. The earth is red with the blood of religious and philosophical martyrs. Many also die to save their nation, or their family. There is no pleasure-pain reason to do so, but it happens because humans hold values that force them to act contrary to their pleasure-pain impulse. Whether you understand it or not is irrelevant (I often don't understand it myself). But by why are you calling it contrary to human nature?

What contributes to one's life is subjective. Many feel that dying for a cause is the best thing you can do with your life. Others feel that living it solely for the pursuit of physical gratification is best. Both seem equally valid to me.

I don't really understand why all interrelationships among concepts and ideas must be externally consistent and in a hierarchy of importance.

Like I said, what contributes to one's life is subjective. There is no reason for it to be exclusively dictated by the pleasure-pain principle, as you seem to be implying. We all want to live a good and happy life, clearly. Our definition of a happy life is radically different, whereas you seem to think that all us altruists or people working for the state would rather be living hedonistic lifestyles, but have been duped into not doing so out of a false sense of duty.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

This is a self-contradictory statement. The words "valid" and "true" specifically refer to the fact of having a non-contradictory relationship to physical existence. Every non-contradictory identification of a fact about existents or relationships among existents is inherently valid/true -- by definition.

As mental concepts, you are correct in saying that they do not exist as separate physical entities, because no concepts do. Concepts are never the same thing as their content. And yes, truth and validity are mental constructs, but their references are not arbitrary or created. They refer to a specific relationship between a human consciousness and physical existence. It is a relationship between a) an identification of (correspondence to) physical existence by means of an action by a physical existent (human being conceptualizing perceptions) and b) the actual nature (identity) of that physical existent which is identified. The existence of relationships between physical existents is as absolute and independent of our consciousness as the physical existents are themselves.

So, although they do not exist as separate entities, that does not mean they have no physical existence. They are aspects of our bodies that exist as conditions of our brains that are the product of mental actions. And the relationship between such conditions and physical reality is real -- they either correspond or not. Such actions and resulting conditions constitute usable knowledge only when they originate as abstractions of sensory perceptions and only to the degree that they (and any subsequent chain of abstractions on which they depend) are logically (non-contradictorily) derived, i.e. to the degree that they represent an actual specific correspondence to physical reality.

Ethical principles identify necessary relationships between human actions and their consequences in terms of their value to human life.
So, if this statement is considered to mean that two people can come up with different evaluations of a particular kind of concrete human action in respect to its consequences to their lives, then yes they can, because they are volitional. But the actual value to a human life of any human action in a given context is not a matter of choice. Rather it is the standard which they must each discover and against which they must measure their two different principles.

So this statement is in that context false. The measure of an ethical principle is an either-or option: in any context in which it is applicable, it either will contribute to a human's life or it won't. It is either valid or it is not. There are no other possible options. Just don't confuse concretes with abstractions. The number of different concrete actions they could choose that would fulfill the requirements of an ethical principle are not different principles, they are different concretes. A principle only addresses the requirements that are common to them both as humans. Thus, if they define two different opposing principles to satisfy a common human requirement, they cannot both be valid. For instance, the alternative of choosing to think -- to exercise your rational capacity or not -- faces all men. To hold rationality as a human virtue (a kind of action that will contribute to a human life) is either valid or it is not. The subjectivist forfeits the framework within which to deliberate such a choice, forfeits the standard to judge it, and forfeits in the process the usefulness of his own ideas, which can never claim to be anything more than arbitrary.

I disagree. An ethical principle can follow a logical causation, (defined as one that is not inherently self-contradictory), thus:
-I live to gain what I want
-I want physical pleasure
-sex gives me physical pleasure
-women give me sex
-I will take women for sex.
The fact that in and of itself there is no logical contradiction here does not make it a valid ethical principle. It doesn't make it an invalid principle either, in any universal sense. My point is that 'universally valid' is not an adjective that can be ascribed to an ethical principle.


Here you seem to be saying that thoughts, including our thoughts on ethical concepts and our thoughts on such things as valdity and truth physically exist. This is obviously true, we do have synapses. What does this bring to the debate, though? All our thoughts correspond with physical reality by definition. They are part of the physical world. That does not mean that ethics is part of the physical world. The fact that thoughts are physical phenomena does not mean that ethical concepts are objectively provable. You have introduced yet another criterion by which to judge the validity of ethical precepts: 'the degree that they represent an actual specific correspondence to physical reality'. This criterion is also subjective.

So who has the authority or the brilliance to glean the actual (read objective) value actions have to human life? You say it isn't subjective, but you still haven't explained why not.

Why is it either valid or not? Not only do I challenge your assertion that those two options are mutually exclusive, I challenge your two options. Like I said above, the worth of human life is subjective. It means different things to different people, and there is no way to logically prove them wrong. You derive the validity of ethical principles from the ways in which they contribute to the worth of human life, so validity is subjective as well, and finally, ethical principles are also subjective.


There's no framework I feel I've forfeited. I forfeit not the standard to judge an ethical principle - there are many I abhor, but the authority to tell others that their beliefs are definitively and objectively wrong, without a doubt. Relativism does not mean an attitude of 'anything goes - what do I know anyways?' It is a humility of mind that realises that one can have opinions on many things but realises that ethical principles are personal and does not presume to impose his or her own on others.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

From your last comments I see that we need to back up from the objectivity of ethics to the more fundamental issue of objectivity itself, to settle that and then return to ethics. These two parts of the last comment are pertinent to the nature of our knowledge and how we use it:

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You started this with "Truth and validity are not things which physically exist, they are abstract mental constructs ..." Not knowing what you held abstractions to be, I merely started from scratch. After granting their obvious physical manifestation in our brain, however, you evaded the point of this second sentence by treating it as a redundancy -- that "correspondence to reality" meant correspondence with that internal manifestation within the brain. But that is not what I meant by this:

"Such actions and resulting conditions constitute usable knowledge only when they originate as abstractions of sensory perceptions and only to the degree that they (and any subsequent chain of abstractions on which they depend) are logically (non-contradictorily) derived, i.e. to the degree that they represent an actual specific correspondence to physical reality."


"correspondence to reality" refers to the specific relationship of the abstraction (being that which you agree is a particular manifestation in the brain) to that from which it was abstracted (being that which you have agreed is an inherently valid set of sensory perceptions of physical reality). The former (abstractions) are identifications of the latter (that from which they were abstracted), which have specific independent identities. Being volitional, we can form abstractions that are either accurate (correspond to their actual identities or inaccurate (contradict their actual identities). The former are valid. The latter are invalid.

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This is an invalid question, because it presupposes a class of answers that does not contain the actual answer. The value of any given action to human life is not determined by a "who". Note the fallacy of asking, "who determines the value of eating arsenic or not to human life?" ... and "who determines the value of choosing to think or not to human life?" It is determined by a "what", specifically by the nature of existents that are acting and being acted upon and any other existent that could affect the outcome in any way. If two thinking people reach opposite conclusions regarding those two questions, only one can be right on each, and reality will be the ultimate arbiter. If you ask how could we know which is right without having to take the time and/or risk of testing each, the answer would be by determining if the relationship of the abstractions that are the evidence given in support are or are not internally consistent in their integration and externally consistent with that from which they were abstracted.

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If you disagree with these conclusions, please supply your view of the relationship, if any, between abstractions and physical reality and anything else you can tell me about how we form them, hold them, use them, etc. (and, at this point, without using the words subjective or objective.)

I don't want to mix this into the discussion as it stands in the previous post. I just want to comment on this because it is a mistaken view of objectivity that lurks in the shadows of every one of your comments. It is your impression that a claim to objectivity is authoritarian. Exactly the opposite is true.

It is the objectivist who has the humility of mind to recognize existence as the supreme arbiter of truth and validity and actuality. It is the objectivist who submits to the demands of the nature of existence to define his ethics and politics with mandates to refrain from imposing his claim to objectivity onto others, demanding of them only reciprocity for that self-restraint. It is only the objectivist that can fully tolerate the differences and errors of others, because only the objectivist can validate the values of rationality (humility of mind in respect to existence), independence (restraint from the imposition of their ideas on others), and tolerance (recognition of our common nature).

As a relativist, without any means to validate your subjective values, you cannot even validate the value of your own humility of mind or your restraint from imposing your preferences on others. Thus you have no objective grounds to demand of others that they exercise the same humility and restraint. When the time arrives then, to make decisions on the policies by which a complex society of men will be managed, you are without any basis to demand that it not be authoritarian, favoring the subjective preferences of some over the preferences of others.

Every authoritarian and totalitarian regime in the history of man was the product of a philosophy that denied the possibility that ethical and political principles could be objectively validated.

Here you're saying that if two people reach different conclusions on an ethical question (your examples aren't of ethical questions, but I assume that you were using analogies), then reality will be the ultimate arbiter. But you presuppose that reality will give us an answer that is readily obvious and apparent. It is apparent that arsenic will kill humans if ingested. It is not apparent that social democracy is a superior system to communitarian socialism.

Here reality gives us uneasy answers, that are open to much interpretation, and here enters human subjectivity. Many would say that socialism hasn't worked in the past, and thus reality has passed the verdict on socialism, that it is objectively wrong. But many others will say that the conditions were not right for socialism, or that it was strongly opposed and not allowed to flourish, or that what was being practised was not true socialism at all. Reality may be the arbiter, but who is the arbiter of what reality says? This is why inductive logic, drawing conclusions based on past precedents, is never 100% incontrovertible, even in the case of scientific phenomena. In the case of socio-political phenomena, it is even less trustworthy.

Ok, I don't think we're going to reach a conclusion on this, and in any case, it's futile to assert which is more humble, objectivists, or subjectivists. Let's just let this one lie.


Again, I don't think you're understanding how relativists function. It is not 'anything goes, what do I know anyways'. When we argue, we argue not to prove that we are objectively, irrefutably right and to exclude and reject all other points of view, but to attempt to discover which solutions have the most relevance and the most to offer in any given context. When the time comes to make decisions and policies in a complex society of men, the relativist will be able to find the common ground between radically different point of view, will not alienate them in a pursuit of the one 'obvious' solution, and will be able to engage in politics. This as opposed to the objectivist resorting to the presumption of logic and objective fact hidden to anyone but himself, as the means to run society.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

It is precisely the objective fact that the answers are not always readily obvious and apparent from applying your concrete-bound thinking process that validates the ethical mandate that all fallible men shall be free to draw their own conclusions and act according to them and that they shall grant that same freedom to others for the same reason, i.e. laissez-faire capitalism. The very dilemma you pose is the only proof one needs that both social democracy and communitarian socialism are evil concoctions. There is no need to wait for the results. The only moral answer to your question, "who is the arbiter of what reality says" is you are in respect to your life and I am in respect to my life, etc. etc. throughout the human population of the universe.

It is the objective fact of reason enabling humans to know reality, and the objective fact of volition enabling them to err, that mandates the objective ethical ought of independence of intellect and action and its extension into a social context by means of an objective politics that maximizes individual liberty to secure that independence.

A life of uneasy answers and perpetual capitulation to the will of others is the price you will pay for clinging to subjectivity. You have forsaken your own life as the standard of your values in exchange for the common ground, because you insist on denying your mind's ability to know right from wrong. But right and wrong are the means by which you choose the actions of your life, each of which implies a choice between life and death. And the common ground between those is what?