h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1) Reality=existence.
2) Reason is dependent upon existence, conciousness, and identity.
3) "Existence exists" (as Ayn Rand would say), what is real, is real.

Existence exists, but reality is always interpreted. Hence my question about the "reality" of abstract social concepts. Which you didn't answer.

Noggin

Reality is what we percieve. Our perceptions are not interpretations, that is left to our conciousness. You must be working on a different premise than me. Abstract social concepts are real as they are applied to reality.

Au contraire; our perceptions are all interpreted. The string of impulses in your optic nerve is not in 3D, but you see in 3D. You understand language automatically; you don't have to consciously think out the meaning of each word; but it's purely an arbitrary sign; if the word is familiar it comes to your consciousness already interpreted.

Exactly. They are not IN reality. And we all apply them differently, especially other cultures' abstract concepts. Human social life simply is not objective in the required sense. Just because you don't catch yourself in the act of interpretation doesn't mean you're not interpreting.

Noggin

I'm sorry, but your good Mr. Hurd is arguing a position out of ignorance. Libertarianism is rooted in the philosophies of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, and more. It's based in liberal though... not liberal in the sense of wishy-washy democrats who think they know what's best for you, but liberal in the meaning that the word carried before it was high-jacked in the 1960s and came to mean something different in the US. Liberal as in giving people the freedom to make their own choices and their own mistakes. The philosophy that people can and will make the best choices for themselves, if left to their own devices, and the aggregate results make the nation stronger as a whole.

To apply one single religious or secular philosophy to a political movement is foolish, since to do so alienates everyone not of that philosophy. The purpose of a political party is to reach out to a broad spectrum of people with similar or compatible philosophies, since it only has power if it can bring people together en masse. And applying the objectivist philosophy to the party would open the party up to the criticisms of the objectivist philosophy.

I would not be a member of an objectivist party.