False Dichotomies, Package Deals, and Karl Popper

Steve, I did not accuse you of advocating some type of authority other than epistemological. I did not accuse of of advocating political authority.

I said I don't think Rand is a friend of ANY type of authority. That includes epistemological. I don't know why you think otherwise.

Post 61

Monday, July 8, 2013 - 1:16pm

Elliot,

You said you didn't think Rand was a friend of ANY kind of authority and then YOU mentioned "political" (as well as epistemological).
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I asked to to give me some evidence, "Quote any sentence of mine that sanctions initiation of force in a political realm, or other than reason in an epistemological realm." [emphasis added] But you chose to just repeat the assertion without any evidence.

Clearly there is more to the word "authority" than just the way that you are using it. Wouldn't you say that Ayn Rand was an authority on Objectivism? Isn't it possible to say, "Yes" to that but still not relinquish one whit of your own authority to decide for yourself? You seem to have chosen to ignore my arguments as if I hadn't made them. I'll copy-paste those arguments on the word "authority" below in hopes that you will address it.

It's true that Objectivism is no friend of political authority that isn't based upon individual rights, but it is a friend of the authority of reason, the authority of property rights, etc.

Whether I say that I grant my knowledge a degree of authority because of my certainty of that knowledge being true, or I say that I feel or exercise more intellectual authority in an area because of the certainty I have in my knowledge of that area, it isn't the same as saying that I am now closed to information that might conflict with what I know. There are some areas where the amount of study and the depth of thinking I've done leave me feeling more like an authority in that area than in others. That authority, such as it is, is internal and rests with the knowledge.

Elliot, our entire difference here is more about time and sovereignty. When you are using the word "authority" you are thinking of a kind of sovereignty - an almost innate and unchangeable state, and you are thinking forever - or a long time. I might give someone the authority to enter my house while I'm out of town so that they can bring the mail in - they don't get to keep that authority forever, or even a long time, and it isn't a change in the ownership of the house. I think of this as a non-disagreement.[emphasis added]

Post 62

Monday, July 8, 2013 - 2:20pm

Steve,

It's true that Objectivism is no friend of political authority that isn't based upon individual rights, but it is a friend of the authority of reason, the authority of property rights, etc.

I am saying I don't think Rand would agree with this, and asking why you think she would agree with epistemological authority. I think she disagrees with all types of authority.

You misunderstood both my comment and my clarification.

Clearly there is more to the word "authority" than just the way that you are using it. Wouldn't you say that Ayn Rand was an authority on Objectivism?

You've discovered that in English many words have more than one meaning. The word authority can mean, from the dictionary, "a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert". That's fine. Some people have extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject. I'm not arguing about that.

But could you reply about the meaning of the word we were discussing? In your prior post, and the quote I give here, you were not using the word authority to mean "a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject; an expert"

Post 63

Monday, July 8, 2013 - 5:09pm

Elliot,

I can't drum up enough energy to continue this much further because I don't think you are making an honest effort to understand what I said.

I was very specific about saying that I could treat my current knowledge as having authority IF I HAD AN URGENT NEED TO ACT ON THAT CURRENT KNOWLEDGE and that does NOT mean it is going to be a permanent state. If new information comes along, I can examine it and revoke that authority. I believe that is a useful way to discuss this. I think it is an honest reflection of how we work as humans. I do NOT think it means that we will stay "frozen" forever - that's a totally separate choice. Treating a particular piece of knowledge as if it held authority, as long as you are always open to examining it, is rational. You don't seem to be open to what I'm saying.
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I think she [Ayn Rand] disagrees with all types of authority.

Not true.
Ayn Rand was not an anarchist. She believed in a government and she believed that the government held valid authority to act in defense of individual rights. She held that reason should be held as the authoritative source of knowledge rather than to attempt to grasp reality via faith or emotions. I don't know where you are getting your understanding of the meaning of authority, but you need to explain why my explanations are wrong.

Post 64

Monday, July 8, 2013 - 5:46pm

Steve,

I did not accuse you of permanent frozen authority here. You're getting mad and giving up due to your misreadings. I didn't say anything about frozen or permanent when asking you about authority. You're defending against ghosts.

You try to negatively assess whether I'm open to what you're saying. This is unfair. Due to your repeated misreadings, we haven't gotten very far yet, so I haven't explained my view yet. I'm trying to get your view clarified first before I decide one way or another. Yes I am coming into the discussion with a negative opinion of authority, but I'm making the effort to repeatedly try to get your position clarified and engage with you. Please calm down and go one step at a time.

Getting back to the issue, you claim "[Rand] held that reason should be held as the authoritative source of knowledge". And you advocated for "the authority of reason". Can you give quotes/sources for this? Also an explanation would help.

(As an aside, I don't think that not being an anarchist means being a "friend" of government authority, as you claimed. But let's forget about politics for now.)

Post 65

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - 1:49am

Elliot,

I'm not getting much out our recent exchanges. You seem to have become accusatory... saying I'm getting mad, that I'm misreading what you've written, that I'm "defending against ghosts", that I'm unfair, that I need to calm down.

You haven't bothered to reply to my questions or to respond to my arguments, so I'll leave things as they stand - I've written more than enough for anyone who seriously wanted to know my position.

Post 66

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - 6:06pm

Majesty, Kingdom, Authority

I accepted from the first that Elliot Temple meant "authority" in the sense he indicated: unargued primary status, unargued precedence.

Consider Francis Bacon's "Idols." He warned of the Idols fo the Marketplace. Would we condemn him as a anti-capitalist? Would we say that no idols on Wall Street - or being shown all the icons there, then argue that no one actually worships them, leaving burnt offerings and public prayers? Would it be productive to argue that Bacon's "Idols of the Cave" have no meaning because we do not live in caves?

Steve did not like Popper from the first and now he has reason to condemn the discussion on the "Mozart was a Red" theory of Objectivist forensics.

This is a perfect example of the subject line: a false dicthotomy. As Temple warned: you say X; he says not-X; you accept not-X as anti-X and argue that.

See my comments on "Ethnicities." I think that capitalism and communism were both Enlightenment philosophies that should have allied to defeat Islam back in 1980. I am generally inclusionar. When I meet new ideas, I fit them into whatever I already know. Sometimes, they replace what I thought I knew but did not.

"... A man will fight, he'll fight, to prove that what he does not know is so!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOd09a176T4

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 7/09, 6:09pm)

Post 67

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - 7:57pm

Michael,

Steve did not like Popper from the first and now he has reason to condemn the discussion on the "Mozart was a Red" theory of Objectivist forensics.

Actually, I like Popper - always have. Sometimes you are so fast off the block to attack a post of mine, Michael, that you get all tangled up in your assumptions and make an ass of yourself.

Popper started out as a Psychologist so I start out giving him not just the benefit of the doubt, but a certain degree of fondness.

He started out back when the field was beginning its first real intellectual explosion and he was at the heart of it at the University of Vienna. (Also the birth place of Austrian Economics which was flourishing there at the time).

He took his psychology degree under Karl Buhler (a famed contributor to Gestalt Psychology), and worked for Alfred Adler whose ideas edged beyond Freud's psychoanalytic theory and set the stage for theorists like Victor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Albert Ellis and even Nathaniel Branden. Carl Jung and Adler were part of Freud's inner circle. Popper's first published works were on cognitive psychology.

The University of Vienna, particularly from the earlier influence of Ernst Mach, the famous physicist, was a key force in turning Western Culture towards a more rational science - a stronger empirical base - and Popper, who left psychology for philosophy, became a strong critic of Freud's theories as he also turned against Marxism, which he had initially been attracted to. He fled Austria seeing where Nazism was going and moved to New Zealand.

There are some significant similarities between Rand's epistemology and Poppers. He was always a champion of reason. His politics started in the wrong place, but over time he moved towards classical liberal positions - almost libertarian. And Popper is one of the few hard core scientific empiricists to support free will. He was a close friend and admirer of Hayek.

Post 68

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - 8:22pm

Elliot,

"So, because ideas support other ideas" � your quote explained ideas are connected, but not that the connecting relationship is one of support. (It didn't even use the word "support").

Okay, Elliot. Let me take "a Mulligan" on that first attempt. Here is trial #2:

Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind ...
...
Man�s mind is his basic means of survival�and of self-protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man�s own mind, and its product�truth�makes him inflexible, intransigent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for any purpose by anyone who wants to bother.
...
The conflict of reason versus mysticism is the issue of life or death�of freedom or slavery�of progress or stagnant brutality. Or, to put it another way, it is the conflict of consciousness versus unconsciousness.
...
I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.

In reverse order, the bottom quotes shows that the idea of reason supports the idea of egoism, which supports the idea of capitalism.

Next up shows that reason supports freedom and consciousness and that mysticism supports slavery and unconsciousness.

Next up shows that reason supports rational selfishness and humanity, itself -- and that depriving man of accessing reason would make him subhuman (because "humanity" is supported by "reason").

Last up shows that the idea of reason, via tying us to reality, supports the idea of objectivity (making it possible for us to meaningfully talk to each other).

Ed

Source:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html

Post 69

Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - 4:27pm

Steve, I stand corrected. Thank you.

Post 70

Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - 5:50pm

You're welcome.

Thursday, July 11, 2013 - 7:04pm

Alright, I admit it: That -- i.e., Steve and Mike getting along well -- gave me 'goose-bumps.' It makes me think that, with good people, all problems are solvable.

Ed

p.s., If I were my old, heart-on-the-sleeve, liberal self, I would be calling for a 'group' hug right about now.

Post 72

Thursday, July 11, 2013 - 8:11pm

"If there's no way to improve an idea, it's stuck, it's bad, it's irrational. If it's open to improvement via criticism � if it's open to reform, refinement, error correction � then it is rational."

That sounds like the rationale of the horrors who redesigned Cortlandt.

Post 73

Friday, July 12, 2013 - 5:59am

Michael:

Your life primarily belongs to you and not primarily others; some who would like to change that and claim primary tribal dominion over every aspect of our lives would like to 'improve' that idea.

When someone has a vice-like grip on their wallet at the carnival, the huckster's first job is to loosen that grip.

So, too, with our very lives.

The analogy to rape is, relax, because the idea that one doesn't want to be raped is a frozen idea that can always be improved upon.

Because what is worse? To be raped, or to be regarded as an infallabilist by a rapist? (As always, depends on context; in the Ivy League, the latter, for sure.)

Having a 'frozen mind' about the absolute 'anything' is the only True Absolutist's Sin..infallibly so.

No exceptions.

Exceptions, you see, are strictly verbotten, because that would spoil the purity of the vision.

regards,
Fred

Post 74

Friday, July 12, 2013 - 7:26am

it's the removal of possibilities, rather than a process from arbitrary to possible to probable to certain. Add to that the separation of logic from reality and a social philosophy that admonishes us to replace the substantive traditional question: "Who shall be the rulers?" with the procedural question: "How can we tame them?" Popper�s conception and defence of liberty is limited to law and politics, and even then only to their mechanics.

Post 75

Friday, July 12, 2013 - 9:53pm

In reverse order, the bottom quotes shows that the idea of reason supports the idea of egoism, which supports the idea of capitalism.

Next up shows that reason supports freedom and consciousness and that mysticism supports slavery and unconsciousness.

Next up shows that reason supports rational selfishness and humanity, itself -- and that depriving man of accessing reason would make him subhuman (because "humanity" is supported by "reason").

Last up shows that the idea of reason, via tying us to reality, supports the idea of objectivity (making it possible for us to meaningfully talk to each other).

Ed

I think you're analyzing arguments according to how your epistemology says to, and then concluding that my epistemology is false because it analyzes them in a different way.

I agree with you that there are connections between reason, egoism, capitalism and more. There are relationships there. And Ayn Rand has good arguments about it. But I do not agree these connections are epistemic positive support. If you want to convince me I think you'll have to talk more about what epistemic positive support is, how to tell when it's present or not, why it matters, what difference it makes to have it, etc, before going over an example.

However, keep in mind that I'm already familiar with standard claims about this and have refutations. To persuade me you'd have to say something new to me. But the situation we're in is that I know a lot more about your epistemology than vice versa. So it'll be hard for you. I think you'd have to learn more about my position before being very effective at arguing with it.

Post 76

Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 10:01am

Fred wrote: "I'm hoping you are making a joke when you say that rape is complicated and/or subject to nuanced debate. Because, when not said as part of some dark humor, it just ... illuminates."

Can't help but think of the scene in WATCHMEN (the movie and the book), at the end, where the mother and daughter discuss the daughter's being a child of rape, and why the mother wasn't mad at the nihilist rapist "hero": "Because he gave me you." Something of the "broken window" argument in economics.

"You Asked My Why I Wasn't Mad at Him": Sexual Violence, Rape and Love in WATCHMEN"

This was a product of the mind of writer Alan Moore, who also a story for a 9-11 comic that insists there are no good or bad guys, and that we all just need to understsand each other. Elsewhere, he claimed that "There are some people who seek evil-I don't think there is such a thing as evil...". He takes a dialectical, pacifist, yin-yang, relativist approach...unless he's talking about Hollywood or Margaret Thatcher or capitalism; then he gets suddenly righteous...but rape's forgivable. (snicker)

No wonder Rorschach is the character that got away from him and stole the story.

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/13, 10:19am)

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/13, 4:40pm)

Post 77

Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 10:02am

duplicate deleted
(Edited by Joe Maurone on 7/13, 10:12am)

Post 78

Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 11:28am

Ha! Nuanced, but not confusing; works of safe fantasy aside, I'm yet not conflicted in the least about the subject of rape.

Your example is for sure an example of a celebration of life(even if it is a work of fiction, that is the idea); but I doubt it can be interpreted as a celebration of the act of rape. Life is sometimes a consequence, but the act and the consequence are orthogonal concepts. I don't confuse them, not even a little bit.

If you intend to offer that fictional example up as a suggestion that we should equate on any level acts of consensual procreation -- even, inadvertent, accidental acts of consensual procreation -- with the act of forced association we understand as 'rape' -- or even, be somewhat conflicted or give pause to the ideas, well, not buying it, not even a little bit.

I'm certain about that, and folks are free to regard me as an infallabilist on that, without consequence to any of us.

In other areas of my life, that might even keep me out of certain nuanced clubs, or alternatively -- who among us can be certain? -- that might also keep me from tripping over a peer's attempt at amateur leglifting, perhaps in the latest tribal example of an attempt to have the parking of one's soul/essence/philosophy validated as the One True Tribal Truth. My personal pet fav truth is Truths, plural, in most regards relating to religion/philosophy, not 'the Singular Truth. However, it requires no tribal validation, and none is sought. Not about to start a club with a bouncer at the door...

And so, my fear of being rejected by nuanced clubs is non-existing.

But that is something I've since recognized as an unappreciated aspect of having gone to Princeton and M.I.T.; I am with complete certainty certain that the entire concept of 'nuanced clubs' is complete and utter total bullshit, and I've never wasted 10 milliseconds of my adult life worrying about admittance to nuanced clubs. [There was a moment in Jr. High, but I quickly got over it and moved on.) So when it shows up in a peers arguments ('all rational people believe...[what I believe]') the leglifting is obvious. We all sometimes do it, and when we do, we sometimes even recognize it, even in ourselves.

Not anything you've done here, but it is part of a recent continuing theme (for centuries.)

However, the fictional example celebrating a life that was a result of a past act of rape is, well...

It would be a little like pointing at Monticello and then suggesting that maybe we should be nuanced and reconsider our absolute aversion to the institution of human slavery.

Except that, Monticello actually exists.

Are we confused in the least about human slavery because Monticello is a beautiful, historic site overlooking TJ's UVa and its scholarly Lawn? (BTW: MITs Killian Courtyard is a concrete replica/imitation of UVa's Lawn, including the domed Rotunda. Many other colleges as well. MIT was founded by a UVa professor...)

Look at all that beautiful academic architecture, ultimately the results of slavery in Charlotesville, VA. So should I be distracted by all the columns and beauty an be conflicted about the concept of slavery?

I am not. I'm certain about that.

regards,
Fred

Post 79

Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 11:57am