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Post 20

Thursday, July 18, 2013 - 6:27pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,
... Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. ...  The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans.
And these are, indeed, objective, statistically valid studies.  All you offer is what you suppose is going on in your own head. 



But that's all I need to offer. This is like the Free Will debate. The determinists argue that all that the opposition has to offer is what goes on in their own lives (their own personal "experience" of being "free" when they attempt to "will" a thought or action). This criticism is itself suspect to the fallacy of the appeal to logical positivism, or the appeal to scientism -- which says that if it can't be proven in a lab, then it isn't true (or even relevant to truth).

Scientism, as such, ignores that there can be an object in the subject. People are presumed to be subjects, not objects -- but in a lab this reverses, and they are objects of study and in that context, they cease being subjects. Outwardly, behavioral scientists perform experiments and tally up behavioral responses to stimuli. Then they make a guess about inward forces that might have caused the outward behavior. They do this because they think that it is the only way that you can ever be objective about it and still learn about humans. They do not allow themselves to question whether it might be fruitful to perform introspection in order to understand what it means to be human.

They might think that they'll get it totally wrong -- arriving at conclusions that are erroneous. This is because they refuse to view their inner experience (as a human) as being anything that might be informative about what it means to be human. It's not scientific enough, therefore, it cannot lead to knowledge. No introspection can ever lead to any knowledge.

But this is wrong. Your inner experiences do tell you many things. You can add the inner data to the outer perceptions. JJ Gibson even talked about this. Even the experiment of cocking your head when you look at something can be utilized in order to gain extra knowledge about the external world. Perhaps the shift in angle reveals a depth in outline of the object you are looking at. Perhaps it reveals a hue, which goes back to the way it was as you move your head back to the way it was.

What changes when you cock your head to the side?

You.

Does the world change?

No.

What does that mean?

It means that you should pay attention to your inner experiences as well as to the outer world and, if you do, you will understand the outer world better.

So, by paying special attention to your inner environment, you can gain more knowledge of the world. In particular, you can gain more knowledge of what it means to be human. This is a reason why AI is so hard to accomplish. Getting a motherboard to tell you what it feels like to be human -- or, actually, what it feels like to even be intelligent -- is like pulling teeth. There is something really very special about being a being that is self-aware and introspective.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/18, 6:56pm)


Post 21

Thursday, July 18, 2013 - 6:43pmSanction this postReply
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Mike (part 3),

Our daughter was not yet one year old, barely walking and only beginning to vocalize intelligently.  I served dinner and she was about to touch the hot food.  "Whoa!" my wife and I both yelled.  She looked and saw the steam held her palm toward it and said "Bo!"  Fine... A day or so later, I was carrying her around the yard and at the fence, she held her palm to a barb and said, "Bo."  I think that offers a Popperian falsification to about half of ITOE.
I don't see any falsification there. Can you spell it out for me? What do you see that I can't? She was young enough to perform a crude association about harm -- maybe even a rudimentary concept about it -- and she coined it "Bo!"

[Presumably because she tried to say "Whoa!" -- accidentally pronounced it "Bo" -- and then you and your wife gave her body language that made her feel that her outburst was validated. This presumably led to her use of it later, in a context that you differentiated as being different from the one with the hot food, but that she felt was similar to the one with the hot food (for reasons outlined in ITOE).]

Ed


Post 22

Thursday, July 18, 2013 - 6:53pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,
Ayn Rand never had children.  Have you?
No. Though I would like to, someday. I have a ton of experience being a child, however. No, wait, that didn't come out right. What I meant to say is that I know what it is like to be a child, I know what it is like to think like a child -- because I once was one. There are no better data you could ask for. If, for instance, you were turned into a bat once (and then turned back into a human, but with the memory of what it was like to be a bat), then you -- beyond all other people -- would know what it is like to be a bat.

However, if you are a logical positivist punch-drunk with a bad case of scientism, then you will discard all of your experience as a bat -- because it wasn't performed in the traditional way that science is performed.

:-)

Ed


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Post 23

Thursday, July 18, 2013 - 9:45pmSanction this postReply
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Ayn Rand never had children. Have you?
For 5 years I worked at Los Angeles County Children's Services. Guess what? All of those people who abused their children (about 70,000 cases a year back then)... THEY all had children. Procreating doesn't confer wisdom. Some people are natural parents, some will never know anything about parenting, and most will learn - to some degree. It's about learning - that means conceptual and psychological processes, and it means that experience by itself doesn't cut it.

Post 24

Friday, July 19, 2013 - 6:55pmSanction this postReply
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Right, Steve, truth comes from empirical evidence explained by rational theory, as it does by consistent theory supported by physical fact. 

Merely being a parent does not give a person special insight.  That same objective fact dictates that just pulling together an internally-consistent theory of knowledge does not give someone the ability to explain how (some) people develop rational faculties.

I would grant easily that your experience as a working psychologist qualifies you to suggest explanations for how mental acuity develops in childhood. 

Ed is among those who have only some suggestion of theory with no experiential evidence.  Ayn Rand was another.  ITOE is an important work, but its weakest elements were those where Ayn Rand attempted to explain how children form concepts.  Maybe she did it that way, but I know that I did not.  Rand never actually attempted any empirical investigation on the subject.  She only generalized in positive (versus normative) ways: This is how you should form a concept.

Well, I agree: it is the better way... but not how I formed my own first concepts. All roads lead to Rome... but they are different roads...


Post 25

Friday, July 19, 2013 - 6:57pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,
... Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. ...  The domains reviewed include visual perception, ....  And these are, indeed, objective, statistically valid studies.  All you offer is what you suppose is going on in your own head. 



But that's all I need to offer. This is like the Free Will debate...

Sorry.  I apologize for not being complete in my expressions.  I meant only that their peer-reviewed case studies miss some essentials, whereas your own introspections are also true for you, but not for me, or for others.

I meant that your own observations about your own internal states are valid, but not complete.


Post 26

Friday, July 19, 2013 - 7:05pmSanction this postReply
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Mike (part 3),

Our daughter was not yet one year old, barely walking and only beginning to vocalize intelligently.  I served dinner and .... 
I don't see any falsification there. Can you spell it out for me? What do you see that I can't? She was young enough to perform a crude association about harm -- maybe even a rudimentary concept about it -- and she coined it "Bo!"

[Presumably because she tried to say "Whoa!" -- accidentally pronounced it "Bo" -- and then you and your wife gave her body language that made her feel that her outburst ... 

To take the last point first as the least important.  B and W and V are similar in our phonology.  Habana is the capital of Cuba.  In Japanese, on the other hand, for example, F and H are similar: Mi-fune (Samurai movies actor Toshiro Mifune) can be pronounced Mi-hune.  The baby's tongue and palate were still soft: she was learning to speak, but those sounds are very similar to the ear.  It was not accidental babbling.

Selene evidenced what you would call "induction" by abstracting the concept of "danger" from two totally different experiences.  According to ITOE we would have had to show her three kinds of hot food and then three types of sharp object and then explain - without measurement - the essential distinguishing characteristic as "harm to her."

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 7/19, 7:07pm)


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Post 27

Saturday, July 20, 2013 - 7:55amSanction this postReply
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Steve:

For 5 years I worked at Los Angeles County Children's Services. Guess what? All of those people who abused their children (about 70,000 cases a year back then)... THEY all had children. Procreating doesn't confer wisdom. Some people are natural parents, some will never know anything about parenting, and most will learn - to some degree. It's about learning - that means conceptual and psychological processes, and it means that experience by itself doesn't cut it.


10,000 years of modern history; 500 generations...and each generation raised by rookie management. It's nothing short of a miracle, a tribute to how resilient children are in the hands of amateurs raising kids for the first time.

And just when you think you've made all the mistakes necessary for wisdom, have burned all the fingers necessary to be any good at it all, they kick you out of management and make you a grandparent.

Lather, rinse, repeat: mankind.

regards,
Fred







(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/20, 7:56am)


Post 28

Saturday, July 20, 2013 - 7:56amSanction this postReply
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Mike,
I would grant easily that your experience as a working psychologist qualifies you to suggest explanations for how mental acuity develops in childhood. 

Ed is among those who have only some suggestion of theory with no experiential evidence.
That's like an appeal to authority fallacy. More accurately, it is the appeal to special experience. There is general or common experience and there is special experience. Some issues cannot be decided via an appeal to general or common experience and they only can be decided via an appeal to special experience. However, a lot of the issues surrounding philosophy can be decided via an appeal to general or common experience. The question becomes this:

Is the development of mental acuity something placed so far from general or common experience that, in order to reason about it, you would have to get some special experience on the matter?

A follow-up question is where to draw the line. In your quote above, you say that Steve's professional experience is 'enough' special experience to reason about the issue, and you state that you have been following me throughout my entire life and therefore are in a position to conclude that I have no experience (no experiential evidence).

Both these statements -- (1) that Steve's experience is "enough" and (2) that my experience is nil -- are unjustifiable opinions. Now, it's fine to have opinions about matters of opinion -- but the issue here is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. So, in this case, opinions won't be enough.

Ed


Post 29

Saturday, July 20, 2013 - 8:08amSanction this postReply
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Mike,
The baby's tongue and palate were still soft: she was learning to speak, but those sounds are very similar to the ear.  It was not accidental babbling.

Selene evidenced what you would call "induction" by abstracting the concept of "danger" from two totally different experiences.  According to ITOE we would have had to show her three kinds of hot food and then three types of sharp object and then explain - without measurement - the essential distinguishing characteristic as "harm to her."
But you are making some assumptions. One is about whether the infantile pronunciation of words -- which is at least subtly different than the adult pronunciation of those words -- is accidental or essential (and how to know which is which). Also, you are assuming a totally blank slate for Selene before she made the inductive generalization -- but this is a big mistake. This is the same criticism that positivists have with induction: They ignore all prior thought and re-state the generalization as if it comes without a background context of common human experience. Here is how they stupidly phrase things:

If all you knew was that all prior swans had been white ...

But that is a terrible way to view things. There is never (or hardly ever) a case where something new is seen that at least doesn't have an associated or related context. Life is more rich than that, and Selene didn't form a generalization ex nihilo -- solely from "two totally different experiences." Instead, Selene had had some experience with things before making that generalization. She had experiences that are common to mankind.

Ed


Post 30

Saturday, July 20, 2013 - 9:08amSanction this postReply
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Fred,
...they kick you out of management and make you a grandparent
I've heard that's a promotion :-)

Post 31

Sunday, July 21, 2013 - 9:14amSanction this postReply
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Ed asked: "Is the development of mental acuity something placed so far from general or common experience that, in order to reason about it, you would have to get some special experience on the matter?"

Yes.  Beyond repeating what you are told or copying what you have seen, it is essential that (1)  you first have an original idea and then (2) realize it and then (3) understand what happened.

Very few people have original ideas. Our social progress depends on our population size.  An ice age or two ago, a bright idea might have come along once in three generations.  Exceptional people are just that: exceptions.

If you read the autobiographies of Kary Mullis, Richard Feynman, and others, you realize that they dscribe their internal mental processes somewhat differently.  They all agree on the scientific method as the standard of proof.  However, the flash of insight, the moment of understanding, the brainstorm, or whatever, seems to be not the same from person to person.  And this is not surprising.

I have an irregular heatbeat.  I never considered it.  I knew that I had "murmur."  At one point in 2001, I had myself wired with a monitor to get data so that a cardiologist could begin a diagnosis.  However, I also then had an annual aviation medical and I mentioned it to the doctor who said, "Why bother?"  He said that he had college football players for patients with irregular hearts. It is something of a mechanistic fallacy to think that all hearts always beat at the same rate under the same circumstances. 

Since then, I learned even more that supports my acceptance of individualism.  Individualism is not just some political theory.  In The Same and Not the Same, Nobel laureate chemist Roald Hoffmann said that within your own body, no two hemoglobin molecules are chemically identical. Researching identical twins for a paper in criminology, I found that as startling as the similarities are, the differences are undeniable.  "Identical" twins are not.

I agree also, that no infant is born tabula rasa.  Learning begins in the womb.  Personality type is genetic (but not necessarily inherited). 
ET: "...you say that Steve's professional experience is 'enough' special experience to reason about the issue, and you ...  conclude that I have no experience (no experiential evidence)."

That is true by observation.  Steve is smarter than you, not because his IQ is higher but because he has had a wider range of experiences than you have.  In fact, that is why you cannot perceive it.  Steve offers examples from his life. You offer suppositions based on theories you read about. 

ET:   Life is more rich than that, and Selene didn't form a generalization ex nihilo -- solely from "two totally different experiences." Instead, Selene had had some experience with things before making that generalization. She had experiences that are common to mankind. 

And common to girlkind as well...  Sure, she had been injured before, fallen down, etc., even been poked with a diaper pin once in a while.  It happens.  But - contrary to ITOE - she did not need several examples of hot food and several examples of barbed wire and several examples of this injury or that in order to integrate the integrations of concretes into abstracted concepts of abstractions.  She made a logical leap.

  
Yes, if you were exploring a new wilderness, cataloguing plants and animals into taxonomies, that epistemoligical formality would be crucial, essential to your work having any validity.  So, we WEIRD people make better material progress than our neighbors: as you say, the way we all "should" think.  But, again, as above, the flash of insight, the moment of realization, is not the same method we use for final proof to others.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 7/21, 9:35am)


Post 32

Sunday, July 21, 2013 - 10:13amSanction this postReply
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Mike M.,

Ed asked: "Is the development of mental acuity something placed so far from general or common experience that, in order to reason about it, you would have to get some special experience on the matter?"

Yes.  Beyond repeating what you are told or copying what you have seen, it is essential that (1)  you first have an original idea and then (2) realize it and then (3) understand what happened.

Very few people have original ideas.
Whoa, buddy. You just performed a switcheroo there. We were talking about developing discernment about the world, acuity, and then you switch to the subject of creative ideas that have a measure of originality, ideas which are unprecedented. But you're begging the question if you say that in order for someone to develop discernment about the world, then they have to do so in an unprecedented way. Why couldn't any 2 individuals, or even all human individuals, develop discernment about the world in a similar or same way? Here are some mere possibilities:

1) discern whether all things are good or bad based on their color alone
2) discern whether something is food or poison based on the sound of it after you throw it against a wall
3) discern whether it is going to rain or not based on whether a guy in a loin-cloth has performed 129 minutes of dancing or not
4) discern whether a carpet is alive or not based on whether it absorbs liquid into itself
5) discern whether altruism is a non-contradictory morality or not based on your gut feelings about it
6) discern whether dictators are cool or not based on their sex lives
7) discern whether the moon really exists, or is just a mirage, based on a poll taken among 4-year-olds

I agree with your other fun facts -- about ideas and ice ages, self-descriptions of flashes of unprecedented insights, heart rate variability, hemoglobin molecules, monozygotic twins, prenatal programming, and personality typology -- but don't see how they are relevant. The easiest case is hemoglobin. The molecules are not identical but they are similar enough to get the same -- i.e., identical -- job done. That is their natural function. The variation in form observed is not necessarily indicative of a variation in function -- but is rather so small that it doesn't matter.

Differences in the way humans develop discernment can be like that -- so small that it doesn't matter. I believe you are mix-mashing process with outcome. Thinking that witnessing different outcomes indicates the existence of different underlying processes -- which is true for the metaphysical, but not for the man-made (because of volition). Man is that special kind of entity which can have exactly the same (mental) processes and still produce a variety of outcomes.

Ed


Post 33

Sunday, July 21, 2013 - 5:38pmSanction this postReply
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We often separate out those who are exceptional... like Ayn Rand, or Aristotle, almost as if they were a different species. And the thrust of Michael's post reminds me of that. Individualism doesn't negate what makes us human, and creativity is part of that.

But we all have original ideas... every day. The difference is that they are not as fundamental, they will not have a great value to society, and they did not take the amount of effort or intellectual brilliance to achieve. But the similarity is that we constantly have creative thoughts.

Here's an example I've used before: You are driving to work taking the same route you always take, and you are stuck in the slow traffic on Main Street when you wonder if it would be faster to take Second Avenue even though it is adds more distance.

That doesn't measure up to the value provided by insights of Einstein or Rand, but it is about something that has never happened before - about you imagining taking a route you've never taken before. It is a human mind imagining something that has never been before and then reasoning about it. We do it constantly, this asking, "What if..." Many things are so minor we don't even formulate the questions explicitly, we just try something a little different because we "sense" that the old process needs improvement.

There are several parts to this process:
  • A purpose arises (solving a problem, achieving a value, etc.),
  • An imagined future is created in the mind where something is different than the current reality,
  • Reasoning (or an emotional weighing) is performed on the pros and cons or possibility of that difference, and
  • A decision is made to do it, not do it, to think about it more, to think about something else, or to stop thinking.
That is the essence of what we all do - by nature of being human. This creative process applies to nearly everything: how people interact with each other ("Maybe if I let Sally talk first till she feels heard, we won't end up fighting over where we go on vacation") - to inventions ("If they had put the drain on the side, it could be used while the engine is running") to philosophy, to psychology... EVERYTHING.

In his book, The Coming Singularity, Ray Kurzweil recognizes that the more technology we have, the more take-off points there are for improving, expanding and leaping forward to the making of a totally new thing. (Hence, the growth of technology, historically, it is exponential, not linear). The cave man could look at a club and imagine a spear. His descendants could look at spears and imagine arrows. Look at all of the things we now have to look at! Nearly everything that comes before your senses, or enters your mind is fair game for playing "What if" with.

Edit note: Changed 'ancestors' to 'descendents' - thanks, Michael.
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 7/22, 9:14am)


Post 34

Monday, July 22, 2013 - 8:22amSanction this postReply
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Ed, I agree that humans are naturally smarter than just about everything else on the planet.  Our brains work automatically.  Even without epistemological morality and insight - the choice to think - most people get along fairly well in most times and places. What happens inside someone else's mind is not obvious by inspection.  Yes, well all stop for red lights regardless of how we perceive them, so we can assume that everyone else sees red pretty much like you do -- except people with Daltonism (colorblindness), of course, who nonetheless otherwise learn to navigate the world.  I believe that many other differences exist, but we have not measured them.  Realize that we call colorblindness "Daltonism" because of the 18th century scientist who had it and described it.  Did no one else for a million years?

In point of fact, it is an "empirical axiiom" (seen often; no exceptions so far) that no people (langugage group) develops words for brown and purple until after they have differentiated blue from green.  You might think that the majesty of mountains and the wonder of rainbows might be easy for anyone who can tell the trees from the sky.  However, you need to undestand how recent language is.  And how powerful.  

Also, I am sure that you will agree that the primary purpose of language is thinking: communicating with others comes after that.   But we learn language by communication with others, by listening before we can speak. 

Steve, I do not believe that you are either modest or obtuse.
"...   if it would be faster to take Second Avenue even though it is adds more distance.
That doesn't measure up to the value provided by insights of Einstein or Rand, but it is about something that has never happened before - about you imagining ...  That is the essence of what we all do - by nature of being human."
I agree that many of us do - and you certainly do.  Even though you have been a working psychologist, you only worked with other people from your cultural milieu who spoke to you about their feelings and thoughts.  But, again, as you know,professionally, one thing that I had to learn while in therapy or counseling was to differentiate "I feel" from :"I think."  (Really. And I consider myself an Objectivist.)  "I feel that my wife is being unfair." is incorrect.  I might feel hurt, angry, puzzled, amorous, or sleepy, but we do not "feel that... " rather, we "think that...."  Yet, well confuse the two processes every day in our common speech and no one questions it.

My point is that my perception of you through this admittedly filtered medium is that your own mind is not like "everyone else's."  You have insights. You wonder. You question. You test. You learn.  Most people do not.

My evidence for that is the stable toolset from homo habilis through Neantherthal.  (Granted that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers.  Makes you stop andt think....)  You wrote: "The cave man could look at a club and imagine a spear. His ancestors could look at spears and imagine arrows."  (You meant "descendents" not "ancestors" but I got that from context.)  Not just any cave man could do that.  For easily 100,000 years, maybe 250,000 or more, the hand axe was stable across time and place. 
In his book, The Coming Singularity, Ray Kurzweil recognizes that the more technology we have, the more take-off points there are for improving, expanding and leaping forward to the making of a totally new thing. (Hence, the growth of technology, historically, it is exponential, not linear). ...  Look at all of the things we now have to look at! Nearly everything that comes before your senses, or enters your mind is fair game for playing "What if" with.
Yes, for you and for me, and for Ray Kurzweil.  I work with a woman who often speaks isolated words.  Last night, I asked a supervisor a question and he answered a different question entirely, but his verbal tone was "It is not a problem" so I took that for the answer.  He thinks he communicated - and after a fashion he did.  You over-estimate the mental acuity of the large mass of humanity.  Progress comes from exceptional people.  The more of us that exist, the better off everyone else is.  They can copy. They can repeat. They can learn how to do.

With six billion people on Earth, we have millions of artists and scientists.  Sixty million such people are one percent of the tribe.

Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivist Epistemology was flawed n many aspects, but largely remains an excellent and outstanding description of how to think effectively, efficiently,and creatively.  Other modalities exist, also, but ITOE is valuable and important on its own.  That said, Ayn Rand only described what she thought was the best way to think.  She did not describe how "most people" think ... and (I believe) not even how she herself actually thought until as an adult, she thought about thinking.


Post 35

Monday, July 22, 2013 - 9:32amSanction this postReply
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Michael, we disagree on several things.

I think you missed my entire point, which is that we create a picture or thought in our mind that is not of something that currently exists, then we cogitate on it in some fashion (raw emotionalism, neurotic defensiveness, stumbling reason, brilliant logic, whatever) and then we conclude in some fashion (deciding, not deciding). You think only a small portion of humans have this capacity, and they just copy. They couldn't copy without imagining some goal or desire or problem, then imagine them getting there, even if by copying and would imagine the form copying would take, then they 'test' it in their mind in some fashion, and then the accept it or reject it, and so forth. This is human nature.

You say I only worked as a psychologist with people from my own milieu. Hardly so. I worked with people of all ages and genders, and those who were high functioning to those unable to function because they were so tied up in the neurotic or psychotic patterns. I worked with people from other nations, other cultures, rich and poor. But who I worked with isn't going to tell you that my explanation is wrong.

You said I "...over-estimate the mental acuity of the large mass of humanity." No, I'm not describing how well they do something. Most do it very poorly. But they all do it. I'm describing the form, the steps, not how well they perform them.

I also disagree with your assessment of Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I think that your tendency to confuse the differences in people's effectiveness in thinking, and the variations in how they 'think' as meaning that Rand had some of her theory wrong, is an error on your part in understanding human nature in the area, and understanding what knowledge is.

Post 36

Monday, July 22, 2013 - 12:38pmSanction this postReply
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Steve, pardon my not benig more detailed. 

I accept that you worked with a nominally "wide" range of people -- all of them in your own world, by definition.  You might rightfully regard violent felons in prison or those clinically diagnosed as "retarded" and others as being very diiferent from you. At the same time, I also accept that you had closer contact and more continuous contact, whereas I have had nominally none.  It is not the kind of work I have done or would do.

What narrative and case studies, histories and documentaries I know tell me that not only to "those" people think differently - if at all - but that people in general have many different kinds processes (or the lack of them) in their brains. 

When Ayn Rand identified the choice to think, she did go into some detail to explain how someone like Boris Spassky could think about chess and apparent not think about politics.  We do not know.  Spassky probably kept his political opinions to himself. But to me that is qualitatively different from what does not happen in the brains of "most people."

Or so I believe.

Let me ask you, then, based on what you said above: "No, I'm not describing how well they do something. Most do it very poorly. But they all do it. I'm describing the form, the steps, not how well they perform them."  Do you think that given enough time, everyone could score genius level on a Mensa entrance exam?  Do you think that all it takes is practice, like hitting a baseball?


Post 37

Monday, July 22, 2013 - 2:39pmSanction this postReply
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Michael,
Do you think that given enough time, everyone could score genius level on a Mensa entrance exam? Do you think that all it takes is practice, like hitting a baseball?
No. And I don't believe anything I wrote would imply that.

Are you saying that average people are incapable of thinking about a different way to drive to work? And they could only drive a different route if someone else thinks of it, and lets them copy it?

Post 38

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 11:36amSanction this postReply
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> > > it is not a mistake to try to demand that the ideas of an epistemology meet the standards of human knowing

> > But what about when the debate is about what the standards of human knowing are? Just assuming the stuff being debated isn't going to work very well.

> Ayn Rand discovered the standards of human knowing

Infallibly? So you're refusing to have a debate about what the standards of knowing are, and you want to keep them as an unquested premise?

The Popperian position is that some standard ideas about what "knowledge" is are mistaken. To understand Popper you have to be willing to check more of your premises, not just reject everything that contradicts your premises.

Post 39

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 11:50amSanction this postReply
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To understand Popper you have to be willing to check more of your premises, not just reject everything that contradicts your premises.
To understand Ayn Rand you have to be willing to check more of your premises, not just reject everything that contradicts your premises.

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