Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Waging war against the government is illegal per the Constitution.

Not to mention you neglect Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951):

The obvious purpose of the statute is to protect existing Government, not from change by peaceable, lawful and constitutional means, but from change by violence, revolution and terrorism. That it is within the power of the Congress to protect the Government of the United States from armed rebellion is a proposition which requires little discussion. Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a “right” to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change. We reject any principle of governmental helplessness in the face of preparation for revolution, which principle, carried to its logical conclusion, must lead to anarchy. No one could conceive that it is not within the power of Congress to prohibit acts intended to overthrow the Government by force and violence. The question with which we are concerned here is not whether Congress has such power, but whether the means which it has employed conflict with the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

I’ll be making a reply to the points you raise, but probably in a new post, possibly as part of a second edition of this one. (I’ve wanted to get to a revision for some time now, and your objection provides cause for substantial new material, I think, making a revision even more tempting than it had been.)

Concept A: All planar figures with three sides.
Concept B: All planar figures with angle sum 180.

Those two concepts are logically connected and have the same referents, namley all triangles, but you could know the meaning of either one of them with out knowing this very fact.

http://angermanagement.mu.nu/archives/099072.html

Just writing to clarify two things. I explicitly admitted that I consider the status of past objects to be an unresolved problem in philosophy (as most philosophical problems are). I have a position on it but I think there are good and interesting points that can be made against my position. I was trying to see how you responded to the good and interesting points that I am aware of. There’s no need to take a strong stand on every philosophical issue that comes up. Indeed, it seems like one should not take a strong stand when one is not justified in doing so. But even if one is not justified in taking a strong stand, one can be justified in taking a weak stand and keeping the good points from all sides of the issue in mind (and on the table).

Also, we did communicate. I think I have a pretty good sense of what your position is. But this is due partly to the fact that I used to be an Objectivist. My comment about what you wouldn’t consider to be a property came as much from my knowledge that Objectivists talk about properties in that non-standard way as from this discussion. (Yet another term (“property”) that Objectivism seemingly unecessarily uses in a non-standard way…)

In response to your stuff about people changing their minds, I hope that some day you change yours as well. There’s a lot of truth out there that is inconsistent with Objectivism. This is merely one area where that is so.

There are a few specific points that I’d like to clarify. I’ll address those first, and then I’ll make some general comments on our discussion as such.

1. You write:

“You seemed to think that past and future entities were somehow metaphysically different than other things that don’t exist. I denied this, asserting the equal nonexistence of Abe Lincoln and a flying chartreuse dog-faced unicorn ballerina from Neptune.”

I think you misunderstand me. I agree that Abe Lincoln and a flying chartreuse dog-faced unicorn ballerina from Neptune are equally nonexistent. Neither exists. But there is stil SOME distinction to be made between them. Abe used to exist. The other thing didn’t. If you can’t see this distinction, I don’t know what else to say. (But that’s the only distinction that I am claiming is makable.)

When I read this, I immediately planned to reply that we agree completely. Indeed, I can see that there is some meaningful distinction to be made between simply nonexistent entities and past entities. In a previous comment I noted that the basis for this distinction is what I called the “causal legacy” of past entities that extends into the present. I had to check my enthusiasm for our apparent ontological detente when I read your second point, however.

2. It is difficult to see how a nonexistent thing can bear a relation to anything. It doesn’t exist. It has no properties. Therefore, it can’t have the property of bearing a relation to something else. (Why do I have the feeling that you’re going to say that that isn’t a property…?)

You’re right; I would say that things don’t “have the property of bearing a relation.” I think you anticipated that because, mirabile dictu, we’ve succeeded, to some degree at least, in communicating.

I think there are some good reasons to think that past objects bear relations to present objects. But I also take this as a reason to believe in some form of existence of past objects. In the end, though, I don’t think that past objects exist, so I don’t think that present objects bear any relation to them. At best, I think that our talk of inter-temporal relations is a useful fiction. That’s what I think now anyway.

You’re hedging here. It seems plain that you’re hedging because your views on this matter are undecided (from your point of view) and indeterminate (from mine). There’s no point in pressing you to come down definitively on one side or the other, but you were mistaken when you thought, under point 1, that I had misunderstood you. I understood you perfectly. Also, I hope it’s clear that, so long as your views on this particular matter are unsettled, there’s little I can do to persuade you on consequential points. As a matter of form, I suggest that it would be better to state plainly that your view is undecided than to assume aspects of conflicting views depending on context. Or perhaps it was only by means of our discussion that you’ve come to realize that your view on this matter is unsettled? Or am I even presuming too much to think that you do realize that your view is unsettled?

On ITOE and popularity: what I was getting at is not that ITOE doesn’t use a technical language; it does. Rather, my point was that ITOE (or, more broadly, Objectivism) does communicate effectively. I read it as a philosophical novice, and I understood it quite well. The fact that it didn’t use “meaning” in the same way as Joe Average was not an impediment to my understanding. I believe that ITOE teaches more people more real epistemology than any competitor, and a big part of why it succeeds in this is that it uses the language it uses, and not some other language, perhaps borrowed from academics.

To give you a clearer picture of what I mean here, consider this: if I am right about Objectivist epistemology being true, and if my refutation of the sense/reference distinction holds, what does that say about ITOE as a piece of writing? I can tell you that my essential understanding of Objectivist epistemology has remained the same since my initial reading, requiring no substantive modifications whatsoever. I can also tell you that at the time of my initial reading, I was what we have been calling an “ordinary person.” (I.e. I had essentially zero knowledge of the language or methods used in contemporary, professional Anglo-American-style philosophy.)

If I am right about Objectivist epistemology, and one “ordinary person’s” reading of ITOE was sufficient to communicate to me an understanding of meaning superior to any non-Objectivist’s, then, clearly, ITOE is a brilliant piece of writing, and a masterpiece of communication. I have no reason to believe that its masterful language has been any less successful in communicating, to a great number of its many readers, the same understanding that it so profitably communicated to me.

On points four, five, six, and your addendum: I’ll leave you with the last word.

On our discussion generally: I thank you, Luka, for raising the questions and objections you have. You’ve afforded me the opportunity to make some new integrations, and to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of some matters on the periphery of Ayn Rand’s theory of meaning. Also, I’ve gained a number of useful formulations which will make addressing future critics more efficient, if less stimulating.

Certainly, I would like to have persuaded you, not in the least because I would love to hear an insider’s account of being persuaded by rational argument, a journey more epic than any conventional katabasis. When we are persuaded by rational argument, it’s usually on a matter that we had no committed view on in the first place, or one that is of little consequence to us. In the extremely rare cases where one is persuaded to change his made-up mind, the persuading and the changing are usually two discrete events, separated by a long period of solitary reflection. To persuade someone of something substantive, and to witness the transformation of understanding first-hand, why that would be something else again. I keep believing it is possible, simply because we are human.