Russell Hasan's Blog

Hello, I don't blog much anymore, but I have blogged about this topic in the past, so I feel that I owe it to my readers to keep them updated. I had gone back to eating meat, and have been for some time, but, recently, I had an experience where the McRib was in its "farewell tour" at McDonald's, and I bought a McRib, and, while eating the McRib, I started thinking about whether the pig I was eating had been tortured or abused while in captivity prior to slaughter, and that ruined the whole experience of eating meat for me, and I couldn't even finish the sandwich, I had to throw half of it out, and I have not eaten meat since. And the only reason to eat meat is that you enjoy eating meat, and it isn't fun for my anymore, so I expect not to eat meat again. The good news is that now I can be a good Jew, since now I can avoid pork and bacon and not mix meat and milk. I've been eating a lot of salad and rice and beans. I do hate that so many philosophy professo...

  On Free Will and Self-Esteem: The Philosopher’s Lament People with low self-esteem generally feel like “I’m not good enough.” And philosophy would ask: Why? What does that mean? Good enough according to whose judgment? Judged by what standards? For what reason? For what purpose? And according to what foundational premises? And, I think, (and I speak from personal experience), the premise is a faulty understanding, a misunderstanding, of the nature of free will. But the truth about free will is, in a way, very, very sad, so people don’t want to face the truth. But this short essay states that truth. And this truth, in a way, holds a great deal of wisdom. It is not, ultimately, within my control whether my philosophy has any effect upon the world, or how long it lasts. The readers control that. I do not have any control over that. You should write for fun, not for effect. If the readers reject you, that does not mean you “failed.” It isn’t necessarily true that always “doing more” ...

Consider this list of philosophies: Rationalism, Empiricism, Analytic philosophy, Existentialism, Phenomenology, German Idealism, Socialism, Anarcho-Socialism, State-Communism, Libertarianism, Moral Realism, Solipsism. Next, consider this list of philosophies: Platonism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, The philosophy of Nietzsche, The philosophy of Sartre, Aristotelianism, The philosophy of Wittgenstein, Marxism, The philosophy of John Locke. Each of these things are what ordinary people would call a "philosophy." But these are not one thing, these are two types of things, the first set of which, from the first list, is what I call a systematic philosophy, and the second set of which, from the second list set forth above, I would call an individual's philosophy. A systematic philosophy is a philosophical system comprised of a set of philosophical views, while an individual's philosophy is the philosophy of one individual philosopher. Note, however, that each systematic philo...

Reasoning works by means of thinking along a line of reasoning. A line of reasoning is a line where each point in the line is a reason-computation that takes the conclusions from the previous point as that point’s premises, reasons what must be true if all those premises are true, forms conclusions, and then hands off those conclusions to the next point in the line to be the premises for the next point. Lines of reasoning prove things, but lines of reasoning must have their premises checked, especially if the conclusion turns out to be false or to resolve to a contradiction. To check a line of reasoning, you start at the conclusion and work your way back up to the start, confirming that each premise which was reasoned from was correct, and a key task is to look for hidden premises, things which were assumed for the analysis without awareness or without conscious thought and deliberation choosing to accept those premises before they were adopted. Assumptions, or what you take for grante...

Thesis: A moral defense of capitalism. Premises: 1. Each thing is a thing. A thing is something, a thing is itself, and a thing is what it is. A thing is a thing in itself, a thing as such. Each thing has a nature, as what it is. The nature of a thing is the set of principles which explain how and why it is what it is and how and why it behaves as it does. Every thing has a nature, although the specific nature of a thing is subject to the specific domain to which it belongs, for example, science, math, history, philosophy, politics, psychology, etc. This understanding of the general nature of things is metaphysics. A thing’s nature can be studied and analyzed and known by reason and logic. The human mind observes things, and infers general principles from those things, and then applies those principles to other things, and, because knowledge is general and abstract and not limited to specifics, it covers cases outside of the immediate awareness or perception of the one who knows. This ...

Definitions: Faith: The absence of doubts and questions, or the condition in which doubts and questions are not allowed. Skepticism: The condition in which doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed, or the process by which a position is subjected to questions or doubts, but this is also the name of the belief that knowledge is impossible, as such. Knowledge: a position or belief which is held with the belief that it cannot be wrong or that its truth is the one and only possibility. Faith-based knowledge: knowledge that is held without doubt, without question, without testing, without evidence. Rational knowledge: knowledge that is held, and which is asserted or claimed to be known, but which is, or can be, doubted, questioned, tested, while still maintaining its status as knowledge, or knowledge which exists in a condition where doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed. The tradition position holds that you must choose between faith-based knowledge or rationa...

The two metaphors of emotional capitalism: 1. Forgiveness as moral bankruptcy: that to forgive someone is to forgive the moral debts that they owe to you, and to forgive yourself works the same way. 2. Trust and love before it has been earned or before you know that someone deserves it, in other words, faith, as a loan of emotional capital: that, to begin a relationship, you give someone a loan, without knowing whether they deserve it, without knowing whether they will ever pay it back, but in the hope that you will be rewarded for it long-term, and this loan is made of emotions, love, trust, hope, friendship, spending time with the other person, talking to them, etc. Definitions: Emotional capital: love, trust, respect, politeness, being nice and friendly and cheerful and loving A loan: to give something to someone not knowing if or when you will ever be paid back for it, in the hopes that the loan might mature into something worth having, which is then repayment with interest. Forgiv...

Romance as Sex plus Love (an Emotional Connection):  Platonic Love as an Emotional Connection without Sex,  Hookups and Friends with Benefits and Being with people who are not your partner while in an open relationship as Sex without Love.  Level of lust and being horny as intensity of sexual desire, level of loneliness and desire for a partner and best friend and to fall in love as romantic desire, desire for romance as a function of sexual desire times romantic desire.  If you have one, or the other, or none, but not both, then you do not have romance, instead you have either sex without love, or love without sex, or neither sex nor love. Something can be either disgusting or nice. Sex is disgusting, love is nice, romance is nice. It’s like body, soul, and soul in body. Body is disgusting, soul is nice, soul in body is nice.  And in love, there is a great belief, a misconception, dating back to Plato himself, that you can either choose someone who makes you ho...

Although abortion has been much in the news lately, I have decided to stop making arguments about it, and to not argue further about whether a fetus is a human life, or whether abortion is murder, or whether a woman has the right to have an abortion, because I have reached the conclusion that both the pro-abortion and anti-abortion movements are motivated 100% by psychological and emotional factors, and 0% by reason and logic, such that reason and logic and argument have absolute zero ability to change anyone's minds on this issue. The anti-abortion people feel the emotional biological impulse, hard-wired by evolution into our animal brains, which is called "the maternal instinct" or "the paternal instinct," to protect the young from threats and dangers, and they feel this towards the fetuses in other women's wombs. Logic and reason would not change such people's minds, because their minds were never decided by logic or reason to begin with. Then, among ...

In my book "Everything is Something," I set about to accomplish many things, one of which was to refute Bertrand Russell's Paradox. After finishing the book, and publishing it, I realize that I could have phrased my account of his paradox differently, and more accurately. In the book, I describe his paradox as "a set that is not a member of itself." In retrospect, it would have been more accurate for me to have described it as "the set of all sets that are not members of themselves." His logic actually makes far more sense in the second description, than in the first, which I had said. However, in "Everything is Something," I prove, and demonstrate using logic, that every set is a member of itself. A set is the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to all of its members, and all of its members are within the set, therefore the set is within the set, therefore the set...

As Ayn Rand wrote, the question isn’t: Who will let me? The question is: Who will stop me? And how can anyone stop me?  You Can Choose to Accept or Reject Any Racial, Cultural, Religious, or Social Identity that You are Born Into.  I was born the son of a white Jewish mother and a brown Muslim father, so I was essentially given a choice, choose to be Jewish and white, or choose to be Muslim and a person of color. And I chose: neither. I chose to be an Objectivist and a Libertarian and LGBTQ, and to embrace those cultures, those works of literature, that music, instead of either of the two cultures I was born into. And perhaps it was easier for me, because, as someone who could have belonged to both, I fully belonged to neither, but I firmly believe that anyone can do this. People just blindly accept the culture they are born into, because their family is that and their community is that and everyone they know is that and they told that is what they are and they have no choice ...

Here is a point that I have tried to get at in my previous essays, but I don't think I phrased it in quite the right way, so I attempt to here: Data is counterintuitive. This is the reason why empirical logic is preferrable to spiritual intuition. Oftentimes, a surprisingly high number of times, in fact, you will make an assumption, and hold a belief, that you know is right, and you hold this belief for days, for months, for years, or maybe even for decades, but then, when you actually look at the research, and see the data, and see what the science says, you find out that you were wrong, and the data said something completely other than what you and your intuitions had assumed, even though your assumption seems like it was likely to be right, and what the data says is counterintuitive and unexpected, maybe even strange and odd and unlikely. And it can be embarrassing, to be honest, that you were convinced you were right, and then someone else, or maybe even your own research, poin...

Russell Hasan has published the following open letter to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth philosophy departments: Philosophy departments should achieve diversity and inclusion in philosophy, with more women and minorities in philosophy, so that the list of famous philosophers is not merely a list of old white men. Please let me put forward a suggestion for how to help: begin to teach the philosophy of Objectivism in the classroom. Assign “Atlas Shrugged” in your introductory philosophy classes, and offer seminars devoted to Objectivism. Ayn Rand was a woman, and an immigrant from Russia to the United States. I myself, Russell Hasan, am a contemporary Objectivist philosopher. I am openly LGBTQ and of mixed race. What prevents you from doing this? Mischaracterizations of Objectivism: (1) Objectivism is an ideology, not a philosophy. When you consider this statement, it does not make any sense, and is intended to insult Objectivism, not to convey tr...

Contemporary academic psychologists and neurobiologists, as well as contemporary academic philosophers, if they want to sound trendy and give the impression and appearance of being sophisticated, like to talk about how the human brain creates experience, and the various biases that manifest in this creation.  But we, as Objectivists, must ask the real questions: The human brain creates experience... from what? From magic? From fairy dust? From thin air? If the human brain creates experience from a source in the external objective world, but what we ourselves experience is merely created by our brains, then how could we, as thinkers, ever gain knowledge of the external world, since we would have no direct access to it? But, if experience is not created from a source in the external world, then from what source is it created? Where does your brain exist, if not in the external world, and, if you have knowledge of your brain itself being in the external world, then from where did this...

Favorite Color: Yellow Favorite Food: Sushi Favorite Movies: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix Favorite Novels: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Catch-22 Favorite Album: The Castlevania Symphony of the Night soundtrack Favorite Composer: Tchaikovsky Favorite Band: Radiohead Favorite Video Game: Super Mario World Favorite Computer Game: League of Legends Favorite Beer: I don't drink! Favorite way to smoke 420: I don't smoke! Favorite Exercise: Weightlifting Favorite Season: Summer Favorite Drink: Coffee (black, with Splenda)

(1) The Logical Positivists held that everything which cannot be verified by science has no meaning. My position is precisely the reverse: that everything which has a meaning can be verified by science. (2) Nietzsche once said: "Every philosopher must be forgiven for his first followers." I have a similar motto: every writer must be forgiven for their first book. (3) Nietzsche said, or meant, in gist, something similar to this: "We hold the greatness of geniuses a safe distance above ourselves for the purpose of considering ourselves unable to reach it." Similarly, people who choose to be stupid look up to smart people in order to relieve themselves from the burden of having to think. (4) What is a Libertarian? A Libertarian is someone who doesn't obey the rules. But then how do they know what to do, if they don't follow rules? You would have to think for yourself. Precisely. (5) The history of philosophy, summarized in one paragraph: Pre-Kant, there were th...