About
Content
Store
Forum

Rebirth of Reason
War
People
Archives
Objectivism

Post to this threadMark all messages in this thread as readMark all messages in this thread as unreadBack one pagePage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9Page 11Page 1Forward one pageLast Page


Post 220

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 9:01amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Robert C,
Whatever may be wrong with the Dennettite take on things, or the Popperian, they are not postmodern.
I don't claim they are.  As far as the methodologies of objective knowledge, Popper had insights that I have found to be useful.

Andy


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 221

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 1:05pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Robert C wrote:
>Whatever may be wrong with the Dennettite take on things, or the Popperian, they are not postmodern.

Andy replied:
>I don't claim they are. As far as the methodologies of objective knowledge, Popper had insights that I have found to be useful.

Hey Andy, what treatment do you use for all those suppurating boils, oozing pus, etc that sprung forth upon your aforesaid shameful capitulation to postmodernist evil?

;-)

- Daniel

Post 222

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 2:50pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Daniel,

Mostly by not worrying about whose camp I'm in.

Andy


Sanction: 18, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 18, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 18, No Sanction: 0
Post 223

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 3:02pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Robert Campbell wrote:
Bottom-up vs. top-down is part of the major issue emergence (which was discussed on a couple of threads at SOLO, back in July and August--one of them was a discussion of an article by Adam Reed). Emergence is simply not covered in Rand's writings. So, despite its crucial importance for biology and psychology, it can never be handled by Objectivism, i.e., by the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
I'm not so sure about this, Robert.

I agree that a positive account of emergence and top-down vs. bottom-up causality could not be part of the philosophy of Objectivism -- but this would be so, whether or not Rand was still alive. This is because emergence and the nature of various types of causality are scientific issues, not philosophical issues.

Where philosophy -- specifically, metaphysics -- can weigh in is to assess whether theories of emergence and causality are coherent and non-contradictory. Metaphysics has "veto power" over such theories, according to Rand, Peikoff, et al.

But this metaphysical "veto" is an application of metaphysics, not a part of metaphysics itself. And since we have been told that applications of Rand's ethics are not part of Objectivism proper, then wouldn't applications of her metaphysics -- such as vetoing theories of emergence and forms of causality -- also not be part of Objectivism proper?

In other words, why can't Objectivism be used to "handle" emergence? As long as no one asserts a positive theory of emergence to be part of Objectivism, or asserts his negative-veto critique of a version of emergence to be part of Objectivism, what is the problem?

Best regards,
Roger Bissell, Post-Randian musician/writer


Sanction: 9, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 9, No Sanction: 0
Post 224

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 6:04pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Hi Laj,

Before responding to your reply, I'm just curious: since you have such a unique and interesting name, where are you from and what is your background? You don't have to say, if you'd prefer not to. At least on this list, people give their real names (or at least, I'm assuming they do). On Diana Hsieh's blog, it is common for posters sympathetic to ARI to hide their identity by calling themselves "mysterious stranger," or by using only their initials. I wonder what that's all about!

Anyway, to address your remarks: I wrote, "I don't think that truth is contextual. I'm not even sure what that means. If an idea is true, then it corresponds to reality. Insofar as reality is what it is irrespective of context, an idea's correspondence to it is what it is irrespective of context. Truth does exclude other possibilities, because there is only one reality. The only possible alternative to the truth is falsehood; either an idea is true or it is false; there is no third alternative."

You replied, "I think that this view of the issue doesn't deal with many of the psychological and philosophical problems involved in apprehending the truth. It also leads to a dangerous bifurcation between truth and justification. These issues and the relevant problems for Objectivism have been discussed by a variety of critics, including George Smith, Bob Bass, Scott Ryan and Greg Nyquist."

I don't follow you, Laj. What psychological and philosophical problems are you referring to? In any case, I wasn't referring to the difficulties involved in ~apprehending~ or in ~justifying~ the truth, but only to the nature of truth itself.

I wrote, "But Objectivism rejects the idea that the truth value of an idea depends on the agreement of others, which is a form of collective subjectivism and, in Objectivist lingo, implies the primacy of consciousness. Furthermore, don't you see that you yourself are putting forward a philosophical ideology of sorts - an ideology that is not itself subject to the kind of "efficient testing" that you presumably have in mind. Yet you are quite willing to accept your own views as true and the views of those who disagree with you as false."

You replied, "And Objectivism is demonstrably wrong about this claim on a variety of issues, though I agree with the spirit of what Objectivism is trying to say. If I tell you that George Bush is the President of the United States, it can only be because many people in America agree to call him the President and grant him all the powers that a President has. Without that agreement, Bush couldn't be President."

Granted, without a sufficient mandate from the voters and their representatives, George Bush wouldn't be president. But it doesn't follow from that that the proposition "George Bush is president" ~is true~ only if a majority of Americans believe it to be true. Suppose people were misled into believing that John Kerry won the election. The fact that they held this erroneous belief wouldn't make a it true. Fifty million Frenchman - or Americans - *can* be wrong!

You continue, "In the same vein, there are many things that are true because of the similarity of human minds and brains - these truths depend on the similarity of our mental faculties and the fact that we use them in similar ways."

If "truth" is the correspondence of a proposition to reality, then whether or not the proposition is true has nothing whatever to do with how similar people's minds and brains are. It has only to do with whether or not the proposition correctly describes what it purports to describe.

You continue, "We agree that a hand shake is a greeting, we agree that a rose is a sign of endearment etc. Sometimes, some things are true because many people agree that they are. This doesn't make them any less subjective, but this makes these truths dependent on people's choices and minds."

Of course, there are certain conventions that people adopt and sustain by agreement. But truth is not a convention. A rose is a sign of endearment, because its significance depends on being recognized as such, but that doesn't mean that the proposition "A rose is a sign of endearment" is true only because people ~agree~ that it's true. Do you see the difference? The proposition cannot be true only because people agree that it's true, for in order to agree that it's true, they must first recognize its truth independently of such an agreement.

I wrote, "Many perspectives are compatible with the truth? Not if we are talking about the same object of belief. If you believe X and I believe non-X, at least one of us is mistaken, because two mutually exclusive ideas cannot both be true. You say that knowing what is wrong is far easier than knowing what is right. I'm not sure I follow you. Do you mean something like the following: A claim is made that cell phones cause brain cancer and that view is discredited. We discover that it's wrong, but we don't yet know what's right, i.e., what does cause brain cancer? I agree that it may be easier to discredit one idea than it is to validate another. But there's an obvious sense in which by discrediting one idea, we ~are~ validating another. Insofar as it is false that cell phones cause brain cancer, it is true that they do not cause brain cancer. In that sense, knowledge of what is false ~presupposes~ knowledge of what is true.

You replied, "Yes, at least one of us is mistaken, but we might both be mistaken [not if we believe mutually exclusive ideas], and even if one of us is right, it might not be in quite the fashion that he who is right has in mind."

But if one of us is right, he has to be right ~about something definite and specific~. If he is not right "in quite the fashion that he has in mind," then he is not right.

You continue, "Moreover, many people fail to note that we cannot be both completely in error, because every judgment has other judgments as components that have to be true."

But we can both be completely in error ~about the judgment at issue~.

You continue, "The claim that cell phones cause cancer requires us to agree with such propositions as "cell phones exist", "there is a disease called cancer" etc. A single error doesn't destroy all knowledge."

Of course. No one is saying that; at least I'm not.

You write, "One of the reasons I don't discuss philosophy as often as I used to is because without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments, I often consider philosophy a waste of time."

But is it not your ~philosophy~ that "without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments...philosophy is a waste of time"?! That is a philosophy, is it not?! The only question is: Is it true? How do you "check the ideas" if not through a procedure that is itself dependent on certain principles of evidence and verification? How do you confirm your experiments if not by a valid process of scientific induction, which depends on your philosophy of science, which in turn depends on your metaphysics and epistemology? It can't be done. Philosophy is not some pointless exercise in idle speculation. It is the queen of the sciences and an inescapable prerequisite of ethics and politics.

- Bill


Post 225

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 6:52pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Bill:
>But is it not your ~philosophy~ that "without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments...philosophy is a waste of time"?! That is a philosophy, is it not?!

I think Laj said he thought it was *often* a waste of time, not always.

- Daniel

Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 226

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 7:16pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Roger,

If I understand your overall direction correctly, you're saying that Rand didn't finish the job when she maintained that Objectivism shouldn't be trying to compete with physics and astronomy.  Objectivism should avoid cosmology across the board--it should not be putting forward philosophical ontologies of mind, knowledge and consciousness, any more than it should be offering philosophical theories of the Big Bang, superstrings, gravitation, or quantum fields.

OK.  But how much of Rand's existing philosophy would need to be cut loose if her rejection of cosmology were adopted across the board?

Most of the Peikoff/Kelley theory of perception would have to go, as would most of her theory of concepts--on the grounds that these topics are the rightful concern of psychology.

Would all of her ethics  remain, or would portions of it have to be conceded to the social sciences as well?  How about her political philosophy?

And where would the aesthetics go?

Robert Campbell


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 227

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 8:33pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
In reply to Laj's comment that philosophy is often a waste of time, I wrote, "But is it not your ~philosophy~ that "without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments...philosophy is a waste of time"?! That is a philosophy, is it not?!"

Dan, the man, replied, "I think Laj said he thought it was *often* a waste of time, not always."

Well...okay, but what is the point of saying that?? I mean, suppose I said that physics is often a waste of time. It's not a waste of time at all, if done properly. The same for philosophy. Of course, anything that's done improperly can be considered a waste of time.

- Bill


Sanction: 14, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 14, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 14, No Sanction: 0
Post 228

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 10:09pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Bob Campbell wrote:
If I understand your overall direction correctly, you're saying that Rand didn't finish the job when she maintained that Objectivism shouldn't be trying to compete with physics and astronomy.  Objectivism should avoid cosmology across the board--it should not be putting forward philosophical ontologies of mind, knowledge and consciousness, any more than it should be offering philosophical theories of the Big Bang, superstrings, gravitation, or quantum fields. OK.  But how much of Rand's existing philosophy would need to be cut loose if her rejection of cosmology were adopted across the board? Most of the Peikoff/Kelley theory of perception would have to go, as would most of her theory of concepts--on the grounds that these topics are the rightful concern of psychology.
I think that Rand would have agreed with this -- except, she left herself a loophole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

The loophole is this. The standard pattern has been for philosophy to subsume all knowledge at first, and then for sciences to split off and become distinct areas of study apart from philosophy. And although Objectivists acknowledge the fact that physics and astronomy have been firmly established sciences for several hundred years (using Galileo as the rough starting point), they also repeatedly make dismissive comments to the effect that psychology is "in its infancy," or in some sense not really a full-fledged science as yet.

So, you see, psychology can't yet be "trusted" with handling perception theory or concept-formation theory, because it's "not really" a science yet! So, while it's "growing up", the job of positive theory-formation needs to be shepherded along (i.e., aggrandized) by epistemology. But you can be sure that when the time is right, epistemology will let go the apron strings and draw back into merely exercising the negative, veto role that Rand already envisions for metaphysics. (Yeah, right.)

Bob also wrote:
Would all of her ethics  remain, or would portions of it have to be conceded to the social sciences as well?  How about her political philosophy? And where would the aesthetics go?
More good questions! I think that theory and application are so closely interwoven in Rand's ethical and political writings that it would be difficult consigning a given essay to philosophy vs. social science. As for aesthetics, I think that a similar problem of parsing would exist. I think, for instance, that her identification of the attributes of art as being subject, style, and theme applies across the board as part of general aesthetics theory -- but that her (flawed, incomplete) identification of the attributes of literature, for instance, would have to be considered an application and thus go into the philosophy of art (viz., philosophy of literature). Parts of the first three essays of The Romantic Manifesto qualify as aesthetics theory. But other parts of those essays, as well as the rest of TRM, is applications and philosophy of the various specific arts. Insofar as "the science of art" exists (or will someday exist) as a separate field of study, much of TRM will fall under that area of study -- while the most general principles of art will be available for casting vetoes over invalid theories of music, for instance. At least, that's how it seems the pattern would have to play out -- although I'm more than a little nervous about doing top-down aesthetics applications when the concept of "art" is supposedly arrived at inductively!

This entire issue deserves more attention. I think Bob's points in JARS and elsewhere, about Rand not being consistent in denying cosmology's input to Objectivist metaphysics but accepting cognitive psychology's input to Objectivist epistemology, are right on. Clearly drawing the boundaries of what is Objectivist philosophy and what is merely an application is a problem that won't go away.

Best regards,
Roger


Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Post 229

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 10:27pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Bill asked the excellent question:

>Well...okay, but what is the point of saying that??

Glad you asked. This touches on an very important point as to where we're coming from, so let's backtrack over what Laj said:

"One of the reasons I don't discuss philosophy as often as I used to is because *without a real problem* (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments, I often consider philosophy a waste of time." (emphasis DB)

Philosophy in general has a deserved reputation for pointless arguments and lack of progress. As you suggest, Objectivism considers itself exempt from that tradition, and stresses constantly that philosophy is *not* "some pointless exercise in idle speculation". That's the advertisement anyway. Yet in actual practice Objectivism seems to be just as rife in pointless arguments, and to be just as stymied in progress as the tradition it ostensibly rejects - possibly *more* so! (How long have we been hearing impassioned pleas for Objectivists to stop their bickering and get on with the important epistemological/ethical/political/scientific work Ayn Rand left to be done etc etc? And how much *longer* do we expect to hear it...?)

From two somewhat different perspectives, Laj and I both consider Objectivism to be far more in the thrall of the time-wasting aspects of the main philosophic tradition than it knows - or wants to know. I approach it starting from Karl Popper's logical criticism of Aristotle's essentialist methodology, which I consider thoroughly devastating to the Big A. Popper's analysis shows that A's methodology leads not to the clarity it promises, but instead to *verbalism* - undue emphasis on problems which are merely verbal, and not real. As a result of Aristotle's (and Plato's) historical influence, much of philosophy is devoted to a basically scholastic style of argument. I argue that this is *esp*. true of Objectivism, given Rand's wholesale adoption of his method, albeit to different ends. (An excellent recent example of a typical philosophic word-game which is easily mistaken for a real problem is Andrew Bissell's "Is rape totally evil?" from the other day. It is also an excellent example of the typical consequences of it).

While Laj is probably more empirically inclined and I'm more metaphysical, we both share the same approach: what actual problem are you trying to solve? Is the way the question is put standing in the way of a solution? Is the problem merely a play on words that dissolves when the question is rephrased? Does the problem still exist if you try to turn it into a practical plan or proposition? Is it even *possible* to do this? And so forth. These simple questions alone dispose of a large number of pseudo-problems that preoccupy so many intelligent minds - including many Objectivists, sadly.( I consider it would be great to divert some of that massive intellectual capital into more gainful employment...;-))

That is actually what Laj means by considering much philosophic discussion "a waste of time".

regards
Daniel

PS I apologise for answering at length and perhaps repetitively if you've heard this before.




Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Post 230

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 10:34pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
In Post 131, Tom Rowland writes, "A philosophy, particularly one that claims to have an integrated view of the entire range of issues with which philosophy deals, is either true or false. A mistake in any one aspect affects the whole structure...

I don't quite know what this is supposed to mean - "A mistake in any one aspect ~affects the whole structure~." There is a sense in which this is trivially true, viz., if any aspect of a philosophic system is false, then considered as whole, it is false. If that is what is meant, then I don't know anyone who would disagree. What is not true, however, is that a mistake in any one aspect of a system falsifies every other aspect of the system.

"...and the first thing to go, if any of its propositions is false, is its claim to be a system."

This cannot be correct. If it were, then no philosophy in history could be considered a system, if even one its precepts were false. This commits what Rand referred to as "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction," which "consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs" - in this case, substituting a specific philosophical system (e.g., one that is perfectly integrated) for the wider abstraction of "philosophical system" as such.

Tom continues: "('"A is A" is false' implies '"Objectivism is a philosophical system" is false')."

This is not an especially good example, because anything follows from "'A is A' is false." Suppose, however, that Rand's definition of "truth" as "the recognition of reality" were false. Would that imply that Objectivism is no longer a philosophical system?! I don't think so.

- Bill


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 231

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 12:18amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I wrote, "Everyone is capable of error ~if~ he does not validate his beliefs - does not make sure that they're true by a process of sensory evidence and rational proof."

Dan replied, "Bill, here you claiming here that using a combination of sensory evidence and logic, I can be infallible ie:incapable of error. Firstly, can I ask *by what infallible means* you established the infallibility of this method in the first place? It seems to me that humans use logic and the evidence of their senses all the time, yet still err."

Right, but I don't think you can say that I ~could~ be in error if my logic is sound and my evidence conclusive, any more than you can say that I ~could~ be correct, if there is evidence to show that my belief is false. Obviously, there are some things that I cannot know and should not claim to know, but there are other things that I can know, because there is evidence sufficient to demonstrate their truth. In such cases, I am incapable of error. If you think that my evidence and logic are not enough to guarantee the truth of my claim to knowledge, then the onus is on you to justify your skepticism. You cannot claim it arbitrarily, any more than I can claim certainty arbitrarily.

You continue, "Secondly, this translates into a claim that if *everyone* simply used logic and sensory evidence, *all humans* would no longer make errors ie: become infallible. The saying "to err is human" would no longer be true. Do you believe this would be the case?"

If all humans used logic correctly and sensory evidence where appropriate, and did not make unjustified claims to knowledge, then their knowledge claims would not be in error. For example, I claim to know that 2+2=4. Could I be mistaken about this? No. I claim to know that I exist? Could I be mistaken about this? No. I claim to know that capitalism is better than socialism. Could I be mistaken about this? No. I claim to know that the case for God is fallacious. Could I be mistaken about this? No.

Suppose, however, that I were to accuse my employee of stealing money from me, even though I did not have sufficient evidence to make the accusation. Could I be mistaken about this? You bet I could. But let's say that I caught him with his hand in the til. Could I mistaken? No, because I would then have enough evidence to justify my accusation.

You write, "Thirdly, do you think admitting the possibility of error in judgement makes judgements themselves entirely useless? Some seem to, but I for one don't actually think it follows."

Well, it wouldn't make them useless, but why would you admit the possibility of error, if you didn't have any evidence of that possibility? On the other hand, if you had evidence that you could be mistaken, why would you insist on the judgment? Wouldn't you modify it to take account of that possibility? For example, suppose that you judge that "X is the case," but discover that you could be mistaken. Why wouldn't you alter your judgment to allow for that possibility by claiming that "X ~is probably~ the case," or that "X ~may~ be the case"? And if you did alter it, would you then say that you could be mistaken about the new judgment? I think you'd consider the new judgment to be certain, wouldn't you?

- Bill


Sanction: 7, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 7, No Sanction: 0
Post 232

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 4:54amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Bill,

I'm Nigerian. When I started posting on SOLO, I initially didn't use my real name partly because I have a couple of relatives who are hardcore Objectivists (ARI types) and also because my name is so foreign. Now I do use it, risks and all, and it's hilarious that The-Great-Infector who went bananas about my not giving my real name now goes bananas complaining that my real name is not my real name. I guess that I can't win.

You write: "I don't follow you, Laj. What psychological and philosophical problems are you referring to? In any case, I wasn't referring to the difficulties involved in ~apprehending~ or in ~justifying~ the truth, but only to the nature of truth itself."

Peikoff defended a view of truth in OPAR that those authors have criticized. James Heaps-Nelson also leveled a similar criticism here on SOLO. The problem with Peikoff's view, is that he seems to not understand why traditional philosophy considers "knowledge" to be "justified, true belief." The traditional definition doesn't make it any easier to apprehend truth, but it is helpful for analyzing some of the difficulties and paradoxes involved in apprehending truth (the Gettier problem).

It's a bit much to separate the issues related to justification from the issues related to the nature of truth. It's easy enough to say "what is true is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts, and what is not true is not true, if and only if it doesn't correspond to the facts", but what does "corresponding to the facts" say that we didn't know when we used the word "true"?

Can we call our beliefs knowledge without some justification for them?

Different philosophers have tried to deal with this in different ways. Your approach seems to be along the lines of the correct one as far as you hold on to the Correspondence Theory of Truth, but so far, I think that you are underappreciating my view that the relevant problems surrounding "truth" are mostly empirical ones related to justification, not abstract philosophical ones.

In other words, I think that the hard work is in the apprehension and the justification, and that arguments over the nature of truth are good to begin with, but immediately their linguistic nature is realized or the fact that they don't resolve some practical problems is realized, it's time to move on to something constructive.



You write: "Granted, without a sufficient mandate from the voters and their representatives, George Bush wouldn't be president. But it doesn't follow from that that the proposition "George Bush is president" ~is true~ only if a majority of Americans believe it to be true. Suppose people were misled into believing that John Kerry won the election. The fact that they held this erroneous belief wouldn't make a it true. Fifty million Frenchman - or Americans - *can* be wrong!"

But that wasn't my proposition... my proposition was that George Bush's authority relies upon the fact that many people are willing to concede that authority to him - it depends upon the acceptance of others, and what is "the acceptance of others" if not ideas in the minds of individuals? If people were misled into believing that Kerry won the election and the powers of the Oval office were conferred upon Kerry, and it was later discovered that Bush won, Kerry would still be considered the President of America, no matter how illegitimate Kerry's authority was, because the process, which incorporates the judgment of Americans, have made it so.

You write: "If "truth" is the correspondence of a proposition to reality, then whether or not the proposition is true has nothing whatever to do with how similar people's minds and brains are. It has only to do with whether or not the proposition correctly describes what it purports to describe."

Yes, but how does that make my argument that some propositions are only true if they describe what people think, and that judgments about what people think, even when true or in error, are a part of reality? What people think can change, so the truth can change. This doesn't destroy objectivity, but it can make objectivity a much more complicated question for people who want to answer empirical questions.

However, let's say that your main problem with the way that I use the word "truth" is that it sounds like I am denying that there is an objective state of affairs independent to some degree of what I think about it (I cannot wish that state of affairs away). No, I'm not doing that, but on the other hand, aspects of how I think about that state of affairs may depend on my individual constitution, and those aspects seem incontrovertibly true to me given the epistemic tools I bring to the problem, even if from an wider epistemic perspective, they might not be true. And from my perspective, I see no need to revise them.

You write: "Of course, there are certain conventions that people adopt and sustain by agreement. But truth is not a convention. A rose is a sign of endearment, because its significance depends on being recognized as such, but that doesn't mean that the proposition "A rose is a sign of endearment" is true only because people ~agree~ that it's true. Do you see the difference? The proposition cannot be true only because people agree that it's true, for in order to agree that it's true, they must first recognize its truth independently of such an agreement."

I never said truth was convention, and if that is how you read my statements, I must be saying something wrong. I said that the truth value of some judgments depend on some conventions or some things subjective about individuals. And this is what many individuals refer to when they are talking about a statement being "true for them". You may decide that their language is loose, but I think that the idea that they are trying to convey (subjectivity can affect judgment) is sound. Some people apply it that idea unsoundly, but that doesn't destroy it.

You write: "But if one of us is right, he has to be right ~about something definite and specific~. If he is not right "in quite the fashion that he has in mind," then he is not right."

This is what the Gettier problem addresses. I may say that exactly one of the employees has a white car, but my basis for that judgment might be something misleading (I saw a man's wife drop him off in a car that I didn't realize was a car rental) but in the end, I am still right (another employee bought a white car yesterday).

You responded: "But we can both be completely in error ~about the judgment at issue~."

What's the difference between being "in error" and being "completely in error"? Doesn't this admit something that your arguments have been unwilling to cede so far, since you've argued in the past that something is either true or it isn't? Or is this just careless language?


You responded: "Of course. No one is saying that; at least I'm not."

Again, I am quite sympathetic to logical claims about true premises giving rise to true conclusions - I would never argue if I didn't believe that. On the other hand, one of the reasons I don't like to waste time arguing over issues like these on truth and justification is because they often *prove* little of practical value. You can come up with this argument that atoms are indivisible because an atom is something that is the smallest unit of matter, and if it wasn't the smallest unit of matter, it wouldn't be an atom, but that tells you nothing about the question of whether what you actually call an atom is divisible or not.

In the same vein, Objectivists like to beat their chests about contradictory premises, but that tells you nothing about whether two premises are contradictory or not. Particular facts need to be debated with evidence, and even if one thinks that I carry my empirically-motivated skepticism too far, I think that too many Objectivists are far too rationalist. They stop investigating an issue at the earliest sight of some perceived contradiction, and refuse to see that the purported contradiction is really a result of the difficulties presented by trying to make the theory coherent. In the end, on an empirical issue where the philosophical difficulties are not easily resolved, the scientist will often accept linguistic difficulties and apparent contradictions because there is genuine knowledge to be mined. Sometimes, the scientist may be quite wrong, but at least, he often isn't posturing as the infallible intellectual that many Objectivists pretend to be after introspectively validating facts with flimsy evidence. I am a big enemy of introspection that isn't tempered by rational skepticism and Popperian falsification.

You wrote: "But is it not your ~philosophy~ that "without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments...philosophy is a waste of time"?! That is a philosophy, is it not?! The only question is: Is it true? How do you "check the ideas" if not through a procedure that is itself dependent on certain principles of evidence and verification? How do you confirm your experiments if not by a valid process of scientific induction, which depends on your philosophy of science, which in turn depends on your metaphysics and epistemology? It can't be done. Philosophy is not some pointless exercise in idle speculation. It is the queen of the sciences and an inescapable prerequisite of ethics and politics."

Since Daniel Barnes has done a fine job of responding to this, then permit me to "wax lyrical".

Bill, believe it or not, many people who have never read a deep philosophical text on ethics and politics make moral and electoral decisions everyday (whether that is good or not is another story) - how inescapable is that? One of my ex-girlfriends was a pre-med student who loved to think, but she often wondered why I was so fascinated with philosophy when common sense was more than sufficient to get her to where she was and I had all the same problems that people who didn't study philosophy had (OK, I'm making her position sound a bit more intelligent than I thought it sounded at that time)!

Philosophy as a methodology for verifying ideas is something that child must have innately to some degree already, or he wouldn't believe that some ideas were true or others were false for some reason. Experiments on one-year olds show their amazement when they see some violation of their expectations based on logical/mathematical reasoning. Obviously, philosophy didn't escape them

In other words, philosophy in the sense you use it is not formal philosophy - it's good thinking, and no smart person is incapable of thinking well!

The biggest confirmation/verification/evidence for any idea is encapsulated in the following two words: "IT WORKS!" The rest, as they say, is philosophy (or economics, or some other field that just talks and talks and talks without creating avenues for testing and investigation). The best thing that reading philosophy has done for me is that it has helped me argue better (and it has also enabled me to appreciate the limitations of arguments even better).

I can imagine this conversation between an Objectivist and myself someday (in fact, something like this has probably occurred too often already).

Objectivist: How do you know it works without having checked your premises? You're trying to escape the value of philosophy while using philosophy.
Laj: Some questions are not meant to be answered with arguments. You know that already, since you huff and puff whenever someone refuses to accept your axioms, but you seem to forget that when it's convenient for you to do so and you want to harass some unsuspecting soul who hasn't realized that you are harassing him over differences that don't matter.

And then I walk off into the sunset, knowing that the Objectivist should know what I mean, but realizing that it is another lost cause...

Sauntering into the sunset,
Laj.
(Edited by Abolaji Ogunshola
on 10/07, 4:56am)


Post 233

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 5:22amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
This is a bit linguistic but permit me to make a quick comments here.

Bill wrote:
"Well, it wouldn't make them useless, but why would you admit the possibility of error, if you didn't have any evidence of that possibility? On the other hand, if you had evidence that you could be mistaken, why would you insist on the judgment? Wouldn't you modify it to take account of that possibility? For example, suppose that you judge that "X is the case," but discover that you could be mistaken. Why wouldn't you alter your judgment to allow for that possibility by claiming that "X ~is probably~ the case," or that "X ~may~ be the case"? And if you did alter it, would you then say that you could be mistaken about the new judgment? I think you'd consider the new judgment to be certain, wouldn't you?"


Bill,

If you were certain, then what evidence could make you admit the possibility of error? There shouldn't be any such evidence that could, because you are certain. Isn't that what certainty is supposed to be mean - NO possibility of error? My point is this - what you consider evidence for your fallibility partly depends on to what degree you are looking for ways to show the fallibility of your theory. Skepticism sometimes requires active encouragement.

Here's an article by Gilbert Harman. When I first read it, I wanted to smash my computer screen. I now actually enjoy it.

http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/BonJour.html

By the way, even with his hand in the till, there are many scenarios under which your employee could not be stealing. There's just no good reason to consider most of them (your employee might have inadvertently left his own money in the till, for example).

Laj.
(Edited by Abolaji Ogunshola on 10/07, 9:23am)


Sanction: 8, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 8, No Sanction: 0
Post 234

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 11:31amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
In answer to my question about his background, Laj replied,

"I'm Nigerian. When I started posting on SOLO, I initially didn't use my real name partly because I have a couple of relatives who are hardcore Objectivists (ARI types) and also because my name is so foreign. Now I do use it, risks and all, and it's hilarious that The-Great-Infector who went bananas about my not giving my real name now goes bananas complaining that my real name is not my real name. I guess that I can't win."

Fascinating! How many Nigerian (or African) Objectivists do you think there are? It would be interesting to see the percentage of Objectivists in other countries. Most are probably in the U.S. But I'm always encouraged when I meet Objectivists (and libertarians) from other lands. Btw, who is The-Great-Infector?

I wrote: "If 'truth' is the correspondence of a proposition to reality, then whether or not the proposition is true has nothing whatever to do with how similar people's minds and brains are. It has only to do with whether or not the proposition correctly describes what it purports to describe."

You replied, "Yes, but how does that make my argument that some propositions are only true if they describe what people think, and that judgments about what people think, even when true or in error, are a part of reality? What people think can change, so the truth can change. This doesn't destroy objectivity, but it can make objectivity a much more complicated question for people who want to answer empirical questions.

"However, let's say that your main problem with the way that I use the word 'truth' is that it sounds like I am denying that there is an objective state of affairs independent to some degree of what I think about it (I cannot wish that state of affairs away). No, I'm not doing that, but on the other hand, aspects of how I think about that state of affairs may depend on my individual constitution, and those aspects seem incontrovertibly true to me given the epistemic tools I bring to the problem, even if from an wider epistemic perspective, they might not be true. And from my perspective, I see no need to revise them."

It seems to me that you're making truth a function of people's perspectives, when it's simply a function of whether or not a proposition conforms to the facts of reality.

I wrote: "Of course, there are certain conventions that people adopt and sustain by agreement. But truth is not a convention. A rose is a sign of endearment, because its significance depends on being recognized as such, but that doesn't mean that the proposition "A rose is a sign of endearment" is true only because people ~agree~ that it's true. Do you see the difference? The proposition cannot be true only because people agree that it's true, for in order to agree that it's true, they must first recognize its truth independently of such an agreement."

You replied, "I never said truth was convention, and if that is how you read my statements, I must be saying something wrong. I said that the truth value of some judgments depend on some conventions or some things subjective about individuals. And this is what many individuals refer to when they are talking about a statement being 'true for them'."

Oh, okay. If that's what you meant, fine. It wasn't clear to me that that's what you were saying.

I wrote, "But if one of us is right, he has to be right ~about something definite and specific~. If he is not right "in quite the fashion that he has in mind," then he is not right."

You replied, "This is what the Gettier problem addresses. I may say that exactly one of the employees has a white car, but my basis for that judgment might be something misleading (I saw a man's wife drop him off in a car that I didn't realize was a car rental) but in the end, I am still right (another employee bought a white car yesterday)."

But that's precisely the point. What are you right ~about~? You are right about the fact that one of the employees owns a white car, but you are not right about the fact that the employee whose wife dropped him off in a rental owns a white car.

In any case, Gettier is concerned with knowledge not with truth. As you indicate, he is critiquing the classical definition of knowledge as "justified, true belief." I read Gettier's essay several years ago and was not impressed! In his example, we are justified in believing a proposition that is true, we believe it is true, and it is true. But it turns out that the proposition is true for altogether different reasons than we suppose. Gettier then argues that although we have satisfied the conditions for the classical definition of knowledge - i.e., justified, true belief - we still cannot say that we possess knowledge, because we don't believe the proposition for the right reasons. But if, as he says, the proposition is true for altogether different reasons than we suppose, then we aren't really justified in believing it -- at least not in the sense of "justified" that is relevant to the classical definition. "Justified," in that definition, ~means~ "true FOR the reasons we believe."

That doesn't mean that I agree with the classical definition of knowledge. I too think that it comes up short, ~but for altogether different reasons~! ;-) Knowledge is not "justified, true belief," because knowledge is not belief. The objects of knowledge are facts, and one does not "believe in" facts; one "believes in" propositions or ideas, whereas one ~knows~ facts. In my view, the proper definition of knowledge is the one found in Objectivism.

In ITOE (p. 35), Rand refers to "knowledge" as "a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation." The "Glossary of Objectivist Definitions" published by Second Renaissance Books, an ARI affiliate, refers to this statement as her "definition" of knowledge. Unfortunately, Rand's statement, which includes only the distinguishing characteristics of the concept of knowledge, was not intended as a definition, since the latter requires both genus and differentia.

However, since Rand regards knowledge as a product of a psychological process (ITOE, 35), a good definition from her perspective, would be something like the following: "knowledge is a product of a psychological process involving a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation."

This is not to suggest that all belief is irrational or a matter of blind faith, for one can believe in true propositions for eminently rational reasons, nor is it to suggest that a belief that is both justified and true does not ~represent~ knowledge. But it is still ~propositions~ that one "believes in" and ~facts~ that one "knows."

I wrote, "But we can both be completely in error ~about the judgment at issue~."

You replied, "What's the difference between being "in error" and being "completely in error"? Doesn't this admit something that your arguments have been unwilling to cede so far, since you've argued in the past that something is either true or it isn't? Or is this just careless language?:

Excuse me, Laj, but "completely in error" was ~your~ term, not mine. I was simply accepting your language; I assumed that the modifier "completely" was one that you had added for emphasis. Of course, there ~is~ no difference between being "completely in error" and being"in error" with respect to a given statement.

I wrote: "But is it not your ~philosophy~ that "without a real problem (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments...philosophy is a waste of time"?! That is a philosophy, is it not?! The only question is: Is it true? How do you "check the ideas" if not through a procedure that is itself dependent on certain principles of evidence and verification? How do you confirm your experiments if not by a valid process of scientific induction, which depends on your philosophy of science, which in turn depends on your metaphysics and epistemology? It can't be done. Philosophy is not some pointless exercise in idle speculation. It is the queen of the sciences and an inescapable prerequisite of ethics and politics."

You replied, "Bill, believe it or not, many people who have never read a deep philosophical text on ethics and politics make moral and electoral decisions everyday (whether that is good or not is another story) - how inescapable is that?"

Of course, but their philosophy is implicit. The point I was making is that in order to ~justify~ one's ethical and political views, one requires a philosophical foundation. You don't disagree with that, do you?

You write, "The biggest confirmation/verification/evidence for any idea is encapsulated in the following two words: "IT WORKS!" The rest, as they say, is philosophy (or economics, or some other field that just talks and talks and talks without creating avenues for testing and investigation)."

Let me see if I understand you. The biggest confirmation/verification/evidence for the idea that the earth is round is that "IT WORKS"? The best evidence for the idea that the defendant is guilty is that "IT WORKS"? What could that possibly mean? Verification of an idea consists in showing that it conforms to the facts, not that it works. Of course, you can verify the idea that something works by showing that it does in fact work, but here you're process of verification consists simply in showing that the idea describes what it purports to describe.

Again, isn't your argument that philosophy is all talk and no real knowledge self-refuting? Aren't you implying that you have somehow confirmed and/or verified this philosophical fact, even as you claim that no such confirmation is possible? The idea that certain kinds of testing and investigation are required for verification is itself a philosophical idea. So how do you purport to justify it? By your criteria, you can't. But then on what grounds do you claim it as true?

You mention economics as not creating avenues for testing and investigation. But economics relies on certain directly observable facts of human nature, such as the fact that human action is goal-directed, that it is motivated, that incentives matter, that people tend to buy more at a lower price and to supply more at a higher price, etc. These principles are all empirically verifiable, both introspectively and extrospectively. So I don't see your argument. What am I missing?

- Bill

Post 235

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 12:31pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
William,

Before Linsey takes me off the roles, a brief comment. I do need to clarify.

"A is A" is Rand's shorthand for "a thing is what it is" Or "existence is identity" If it is false then it is true that "a thing is what it is not" or "existence is not identity" or "it is not the case that a thing is what it is".

If any of those propositions is true than, yes, perhaps trivially, all claims to knowledge are false and every philosophy and all of science collapses.

"Truth is the recognition of reality" is, in my understanding of Objectivism, a relational proposition identifying the product of the correct relationship between consciousness and existence. It says, at greater length, "truth is the correct identification of existence -- the facts of reality." If it is false then either the correct identification of the facts of reality does not produce truth or truth is the incorrect identification of the facts of reality or truth is the correct identification of non-reality. I see no other candidates. And so, if the proposition is false, every philosophical system collapses, there is no identifiable standard of truth. Note, please, that the doctrine is not the equivilant of the correspondence theory and does not exclude the coherance theory. Piekoff has opined on his own that "the truth is the whole" because reality it the whole. It is in that sense -- that if a philosophy claims to apply to all of reality, the failure of any part of it is a failure of identification and collapses the whole truth and the whole philosophy.

What's needed here, perhaps is a clearer distinction between the role of philosophy and the role of science.

Tom

Not corrected fro spllng. :-)


Post 236

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 2:36pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
 Bill,
You replied, "I never said truth was convention, and if that is how you read my statements, I must be saying something wrong. I said that the truth value of some judgments depend on some conventions or some things subjective about individuals. And this is what many individuals refer to when they are talking about a statement being 'true for them'."

Oh, okay. If that's what you meant, fine. It wasn't clear to me that that's what you were saying.

Since that is now clear, there is no point in my dealing with all the stuff that came before it.
I wrote, "But if one of us is right, he has to be right ~about something definite and specific~. If he is not right "in quite the fashion that he has in mind," then he is not right."

You replied, "This is what the Gettier problem addresses. I may say that exactly one of the employees has a white car, but my basis for that judgment might be something misleading (I saw a man's wife drop him off in a car that I didn't realize was a car rental) but in the end, I am still right (another employee bought a white car yesterday)."

But that's precisely the point. What are you right ~about~? You are right about the fact that one of the employees owns a white car, but you are not right about the fact that the employee whose wife dropped him off in a rental owns a white car.
No serious argument here.  However, I am right about the question that was posed in the first place, which was whether any of my employees had a white car. 

In any case, Gettier is concerned with knowledge not with truth. As you indicate, he is critiquing the classical definition of knowledge as "justified, true belief." I read Gettier's essay several years ago and was not impressed! In his example, we are justified in believing a proposition that is true, we believe it is true, and it is true. But it turns out that the proposition is true for altogether different reasons than we suppose. Gettier then argues that although we have satisfied the conditions for the classical definition of knowledge - i.e., justified, true belief - we still cannot say that we possess knowledge, because we don't believe the proposition for the right reasons. But if, as he says, the proposition is true for altogether different reasons than we suppose, then we aren't really justified in believing it -- at least not in the sense of "justified" that is relevant to the classical definition. "Justified," in that definition, ~means~ "true FOR the reasons we believe."

So you answer to Gettier is that my belief doesn't qualify as knowledge.  And my answer is that the belief will still serve me effectively in many contexts and I will not need to change it unless forced to by some relevant problem or question.

That doesn't mean that I agree with the classical definition of knowledge. I too think that it comes up short, ~but for altogether different reasons~! ;-) Knowledge is not "justified, true belief," because knowledge is not belief. The objects of knowledge are facts, and one does not "believe in" facts; one "believes in" propositions or ideas, whereas one ~knows~ facts. In my view, the proper definition of knowledge is the one found in Objectivism.

.....

This is not to suggest that all belief is irrational or a matter of blind faith, for one can believe in true propositions for eminently rational reasons, nor is it to suggest that a belief that is both justified and true does not ~represent~ knowledge. But it is still ~propositions~ that one "believes in" and ~facts~ that one "knows."
And this is where I simply shake my head and ask: how does all this improve your ability to tell truths from falsehoods?  It sounds good, but how does it make you a better thinker?  It sounds to me like you are mostly complaining about how terms are defined.

Excuse me, Laj, but "completely in error" was ~your~ term, not mine. I was simply accepting your language; I assumed that the modifier "completely" was one that you had added for emphasis. Of course, there ~is~ no difference between being "completely in error" and being"in error" with respect to a given statement.
No - the modifier "completely" refers to the fact that all judgments/propositions are dependent on one's implicit acceptance of other judgments/propositions which are related.  In effect, all judgments are to some degree "theories".  I guess you didn't understand that and that's fine.  But I think that there's a big difference between "being in error" and being "completely in error".  I think that the latter is impossible because of the way I think that knowledge is structured.

These "theories" contain mixed premises, all with different levels of justification and all with some truth, some falsehood.  It's always important to see how far we can get with a particular theory, but we are not as concerned with whether the theory is true in any final sense, but whether theory works.  This is especially true because knowledge is most useful when it is predictive.
Of course, but their philosophy is implicit. The point I was making is that in order to ~justify~ one's ethical and political views, one requires a philosophical foundation. You don't disagree with that, do you?

So what is the difference between smart thinking and implicit philosophy? 

In order to justify one's ethical and political views, one needs to have reasons, because you need reasons to justify whatever you want to justify.  Philosophical foundation = reasons, right?  So again, what is the difference between philosophical foundation (implicit or explicit) and (good) reasons?

Let me see if I understand you. The biggest confirmation/verification/evidence for the idea that the earth is round is that "IT WORKS"? The best evidence for the idea that the defendant is guilty is that "IT WORKS"? What could that possibly mean? Verification of an idea consists in showing that it conforms to the facts, not that it works. Of course, you can verify the idea that something works by showing that it does in fact work, but here you're process of verification consists simply in showing that the idea describes what it purports to describe.

The point here is neither to deny nor to make a mockery of objectivity.  The point here is to stress that the usefulness or practical relevance of an idea is often more important than whether the idea is true or not.  

The first thing is that none of your examples are statements that make predictions, and prediction is what makes knowledge important. Useful knowledge ultimately boils down to a certain action having a certain consequence.

Ideas that solve problems work because they meet certain epistemic criteria, but again, even if ideas that work in one or more contexts were shown to be false, or to be inaccurate, many people wouldn't care because the implications for their own lives wouldn't matter as much as what practical value these thing/ideas brought to them.  In other words, the truth must have some verifiable implications for people to take it seriously. 

Some people still think of parts of the earth as if it is flat, and we can make such assumptions for practical reasons in science.  Even if the defendant is not guilty in this particular instance, the fact that the system that found him guilty is reliable in most instances is the reason why we do not throw out the system that makes erroneous arrests and convictions.  In other words, while an idea cannot work without having some truth to it (again, beware of my use of the words "some truth" lest you use them again), what most people care about more is that the idea works.

Truth is very important, but sometimes, it can be overrated.  Some trivial truths (trivial in that most people accept them - the devil is in the details) trumped up as grand philosophical observations do little good.
Again, isn't your argument that philosophy is all talk and no real knowledge self-refuting? Aren't you implying that you have somehow confirmed and/or verified this philosophical fact, even as you claim that no such confirmation is possible? The idea that certain kinds of testing and investigation are required for verification is itself a philosophical idea. So how do you purport to justify it? By your criteria, you can't. But then on what grounds do you claim it as true?
You don't even know what my criteria are, but I'm fairly certain that they'd be unacceptable to a man of Reason like you.  I think that the Harman article is a decent reference.  The main difference between both of us is that I don't have to claim I have strong reasons for believing a proposition is true to believe it, and I can moderate my beliefs in accordance with the evidence.  I can simply remain justified in believing it until something better comes along.  I can believe it strongly for both rational and non-rational reasons.  I can believe it because it feels comforting, though if I felt it was false, I would find it difficult to continue believing it.  I don't believe in arguing strenuously over differences that don't matter.  I think that you are philosophically justified in believing whatever you want to believe until a good reason comes along for you to believe that it is incompatible with other ideas you hold.  And if truth is the highest priority on your scale at that time, good.  Possession of the truth is not the only good thing in life.

Anyone who really wants to solve experimental problems and looks at what philosophy offers them in this regard (the exceptions are those philosophers who take hard looks at the data from the sciences and try to synthesize perspectives) will came away highly unimpressed.  They will be far better off studying mathematics (which many scientists do after realizing that many philosophers are often pompous people with little of groundbreaking importance to offer).

You mention economics as not creating avenues for testing and investigation. But economics relies on certain directly observable facts of human nature, such as the fact that human action is goal-directed, that it is motivated, that incentives matter, that people tend to buy more at a lower price and to supply more at a higher price, etc. These principles are all empirically verifiable, both introspectively and extrospectively. So I don't see your argument. What am I missing?
I like reading economics, so that is not my point.  You've picked many of the less controversial aspects of economics.  My point is that too many economists merge their political ideologies with their economics and fail to consider alternative interpretations for their data.  This stress on ideologies rather than solving problems or proposing solutions to problems is what leads me to consider often consider economics mostly ideology.  Not all economics is like this, in the same way that I accept that not all philosophy has little practical or scientific relevance.

Cheers,

Laj.



Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 237

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 3:09pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Laj wrote, "One of the reasons I don't discuss philosophy as often as I used to is because *without a real problem* (scientific/experimental) to fix the context and check the ideas with experiments, I often consider philosophy a waste of time." (emphasis DB)

Daniel Barnes added, "Philosophy in general has a deserved reputation for pointless arguments and lack of progress."

Philosophy may lack progress in terms of resolving philosophical issues, but I fail to see how its arguments are pointless. They would appear to be addressing issues that are of vital concern to people.

Dan continues, "As you suggest, Objectivism considers itself exempt from that tradition, and stresses constantly that philosophy is *not* "some pointless exercise in idle speculation". That's the advertisement anyway. Yet in actual practice Objectivism seems to be just as rife in pointless arguments, and to be just as stymied in progress as the tradition it ostensibly rejects - possibly *more* so! (How long have we been hearing impassioned pleas for Objectivists to stop their bickering and get on with the important epistemological/ethical/political/scientific work Ayn Rand left to be done etc etc? And how much *longer* do we expect to hear it...?)

I must say that I'm simply baffled by this line of criticism. What do you mean by "bickering"? If you're referring to disagreements over who is more Objectivist than thou, then that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of philosophy and its enterprise. It is strictly an issue of loyalty to a particular school of thought. Nor is this something that is unique to philosophy. The same thing occurs in the special sciences, as Thomas Kuhn points out in his _The Nature and Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. If Objectivists are neglecting important work in philosophy, that is certainly not the fault of philosophy; it is the fault of those who are neglecting its calling.

You continue, "From two somewhat different perspectives, Laj and I both consider Objectivism to be far more in the thrall of the time-wasting aspects of the main philosophic tradition than it knows - or wants to know. I approach it starting from Karl Popper's logical criticism of Aristotle's essentialist methodology, which I consider thoroughly devastating to the Big A. Popper's analysis shows that A's methodology leads not to the clarity it promises, but instead to *verbalism* - undue emphasis on problems which are merely verbal, and not real. As a result of Aristotle's (and Plato's) historical influence, much of philosophy is devoted to a basically scholastic style of argument. I argue that this is *esp*. true of Objectivism, given Rand's wholesale adoption of his method, albeit to different ends. (An excellent recent example of a typical philosophic word-game which is easily mistaken for a real problem is Andrew Bissell's "Is rape totally evil?" from the other day. It is also an excellent example of the typical consequences of it)."

Dan, what I see here are your conclusions. Would you mind presenting an argument for those conclusions, rather than simply cite Popper's critique of Aristotle, et al.? You also cite Andrew Bissell's post "Is rape totally evil?" In what thread was this written? I have yet to see it. And what are the "pseudo-problems" that you belittle philosophers and Objectivists for wasting time on? In short, could you state your arguments up front (with examples). Doing so would make it much easier for me to address them.

Thanks!

- Bill



Sanction: 25, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 25, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 25, No Sanction: 0
Post 238

Saturday, October 8, 2005 - 9:48amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
My post #195, above, has elicited heated commentary on the blog of an ARI-affiliated individual, whose full name I don't know.

Check it out here:

http://passingthoughts.blogsome.com/2005/10/05/63/

The author quoted my post and put in his own comments in brackets.  Here are two paragraphs to give you a taste:

I’m well aware that ARI encourages some Rand scholarship. My concern is what the net effect is, once you factor in the organization’s vigorously ongoing efforts to discourage all other Rand scholarship. [if by “discourage” he means “ignore” and by “Rand scholarship” he means “arbitrary gibberish disguised by lots of footnotes and citations about Ayn Rand that those with loose standards of good scholarship refer to as scholarship,” then yes]


 
I was naive enough to think that when Andrew Bernstein agreed to publish a (very short) reply to a review in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, perhaps ARI was beginning to show greater openness to Rand scholarship undertaken by persons not affiliated with the organization and its leaderhip . [translation: ARI won’t do business with those who actively attack it, boo hoo!] Instead, as soon as the article appeared in print, Bernstein had to make public penance in sackcloth and ashes. [blah blah witty phrasing designed to make Bernstein’s apology look like the product of some covert conspiracy blah blah] Adding to the insult was his face-saving but obviously false assertion that he didn’t know what kind of journal JARS was, [obvious? OBVIOUS? tsk tsk, are our standards of evidence so low?] or which authors had published in the journal in the recent past. These days, JARS is totally off limits to writers and scholars affiliated with ARI. [or ARI scholars now know better than to publish in a journal edited by the guy who wrote this post, or what you said, either one] Merely communicating with anyone on the JARS editorial board appears to be professionally risky for them. [I guess. Surely if you had evidence of this you’d make it public? or is it easier to spread lies and rumor cloaked in vague language with the hope that some naive dupe will be sucked in?] I hope someone will have the guts to defy the interdict, but I am not expecting anything like it any time soon. [Who oh who will have the courage to publish an article in the National Enquirer of Rand scholarship? I sure wish I had the poor judgment to be that brave]




There's a lot more where this came from, and there's more to be said about it.

For the moment, though, I'll confine myself to two remarks:

(1) I never cease to be amazed at the capacity of those in ARI-land for confirming the worst things that others say about ARI, in the very process of attempting to deny them.

Case in point: What is the basis for the author's indictment of (apparently) every article that's been published in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies since its inaugural issue in 1999?  And that isn't the end of it.  Because every other book or article concerning Rand's ideas that has not enjoyed the blessing of the Ayn Rand Intitute appears to be encompassed in this succinct dismissal.  Is the author using first-hand knowledge of any of this material here?  Yet he appears certain that it isn't merely dull, or obtuse, or unoriginal, or badly argued--no, every last smidgeon of it is "arbitrary gibberish," though he concedes it may be compliant with the usual footnoting conventions.

(2) I don't say these kinds of things about scholarly work that has come out of ARI.  In my opinion, some scholars affiliated with ARI do excellent work.  I just think they would be a lot better off in a less (better be careful in my choice of terms here... don't dare use anything that could be interpreted as metaphorical...  toxic?  nope; unhealthful?  better not; authoritarian? that's going to need another post already... OK, OK, I'll settle for a term with a single meaning in Objectivist parlance...) dogmatic environment, where they might be able to interact with the rest of the scholarly world without fear of reprisals.

(And, I guess I'd better say while we're on metaphor alert here, I don't mean physical reprisals.  Any more than the ARIans mean that people like me are using fists or guns when we make our "attacks" on ARI, or that the Nathaniel and Barbara Branden pounded down the gate and rushed in with maces and cudgels to make their "attacks" on Ayn Rand.) 

I must apologize to the author for withholding specifics about those individuals who don't want their commmunications with members of the JARS editorial board publicly known.  But I have no intention of "outing" any ARI-affiliated scholars and bringing about their expulsion from that organization.  And given the content and tone of what the author has written about JARS in his entry, it's a reasonable inference that if he knew who they were, he and his allies would waste no efforts getting them kicked out of ARI.

Robert Campbell

PS added in the second round of editing:  If you read farther down in the author's comments section, you can now see him announcing he has read two books by ARI-unapproved scholars (The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand, edited by Den Uyl and Rasmussen, and The Russian Radical by Sciabarra).  He blasts the weakest chapter in the Philosophic Thought book (it was by Antony Flew), writes off unspecific articles or chapters by Eric Mack as "rationalistic," opines that Rasmussen and Den Uyl aren't completely worthless but goes no further, and ventures no comment at all on Sciabarra.  By his own admission, he has never read a single article from the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 10/08, 9:51am)

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 10/08, 8:38pm)


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 239

Saturday, October 8, 2005 - 10:17amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Thanks for that, Robert.  My favorite part was this exchange in the comments:

1.   Are there any articles written by non-ARI scholars concerning Ayn Rand that you consider to be accurate and informative? If so, which ones?

Comment by Steve Jackson — October 8, 2005 @ 1:57 pm

2.   Steve,

What’s your purpose in asking that question?

Comment by Don Watkins — October 8, 2005 @ 2:22 pm

Glenn


Post to this threadBack one pagePage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9Page 11Page 1Forward one pageLast Page


User ID Password or create a free account.