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 unreadPage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Forward one pageLast Page


Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Post 0

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 9:35amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Let's starting chipping away at the review here and now. I'll go first (from Gordon's first page):

I do not suppose anyone will quarrel with this; nor does the second axiom, the fact of consciousness, occasion any misgiving. With commendable caution, Peikoff notes that the concept of existence "does not specify that a physical world exists" (p. 5). This seems reasonable: It does not follow from the fact that something exists that any physical objects exist. How one gets from one to the other is precisely the problem posed by Descartes at the beginning of modern philosophy. How does one know that anything besides one's sense-data and consciousness exists?

Peikoff is guilty of a slight sin of omission, however. Although he does not take the axiom of existence to imply a physical world, he later talks glibly about how perception takes place through the body's contact with external objects and rejects with contempt any skepticism about the senses. Yet he never offers the slightest argument that the physical world exists.
Gordon starts off on the wrong foot by pre-supposing the common, mistaken notion that axioms should actually add input -- actually add information! -- to a body of knowledge (like sense perception does); rather than to be used in order to organize and circumscribe a body of knowledge (to add understanding of how our already-known facts fit together, and of how they will have to be organized in a certain way in order for us to maintain correspondence to reality and avoid arbitrariness).

When Gordon said Peikoff is guilty of omission because Peikoff "glibly" talks how perception comes from contact with external objects -- and Peikoff does so, even though axioms don't, on their own, specify or otherwise prove the any certain, special existents exist -- then what he is really saying is that axioms should add information, rather than organize and circumscribe it.

Also, when Gordon said that Peikoff was in precisely the same epistemological dilemma as was Descartes: the "inside-out" dilemma of not knowing -- from one's mere "sense data" and one's mere, internal, mental machinations -- how it is that you can know that an external world exists, then  he is guilty of the fallacy of equivalence (a guilt by crude/vulgar association).

Peikoff, having recognized and acknowledged different irreducible primaries (and corresponding corollaries) than Descartes did, was in a different epistemological position than Descartes was -- even though Gordon is blind to that fact. What's so damning to Gordon's enterprise here -- so damning that it is almost laughable -- is that there is a specific entry (from 1961!) in the Ayn Rand Lexicon explaining that very fact:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/prior_certainty_of_consciousness.html

It has to be assumed that Gordon would have read For The New Intellectual, which refuted claims of equivalence between Descartes' dilemma and Objectivism -- but he must have not integrated that fact (in order for him to try to get away, with a straight face, with saying what he just did).

:-)

Ed

Post 1

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 9:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Idea:
Someone should register for, and attend, Gordon's classes on Objectivism and bring with them signs -- 24" x 36" -- that could held up in class to refute Gordon when he says stupid things like the above. In this case, the sign would read just like the entry in ARL (which does all the work of refuting him):

***************************************************

Prior Certainty of Consciousness

Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): “the prior certainty of consciousness,” the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one’s consciousness—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor’s blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations.

When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers’ rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of.

“For the New Intellectual,” For the New Intellectual, 173.
***************************************************
 
:-)
 
Ed


Post 2

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 12:57pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Thanks for your comments on my review of Leonard Peikoff's book, but I think that you have misunderstood me. I don't criticize Peikoff for failing to deduce the existence of the external world from consciousness. To the contrary, I say a few lines after the passage that you quote that David Kelley was perfectly reasonable to take the existence of the external world as a given, not in need of proof.

The passage to which you object is not a defense of Cartesianism, but a criticism of Peikoff's exposition. No doubt he does, like all other Objectivists, presuppose the existence of the external world. But he doesn't say this. Instead, he starts with an axiom that he, not I, says does not imply the existence of physical objects but then goes on to presume that they exist, without telling us that he presumes this. To reiterate, I don't object to his taking the external world as a given: I object to his failure to tell us that he has done so.

If someone wishes to hold up page numbers in my course to indicate errors in my account of Rand, that is all to the good. I would hope, though, that those in the course do not take as axiomatic that all criticism of Rand's thought is based on misunderstanding. If they do, though, that is up to them.

Post 3

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 5:05pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
QUOTE - "If someone wishes to hold up page numbers in my course to indicate errors in my account of Rand, that is all to the good. I would hope, though, that those in the course do not take as axiomatic that all criticism of Rand's thought is based on misunderstanding. If they do, though, that is up to them."




To David,
My personal understanding is; belief that 'existence exists' requires an assumption - sort of a leap of faith - that our perceptions of an 'external objective reality' do IN FACT exist.

That position is what I would call a 'faith in rationalism' or 'faith in the validity of my perceptions': as opposed to an isolated 'FAITH' which simply amounts to a form of gnosticism/mysticism/intuitionism/religion.

Who knows, perhaps we are nothing more than the philosophical concept of 'brain-in-a-vat': so, rationalism, materialism, and such will require an assumption - in effect, a leap of faith.

Post 4

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 4:00pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
William Dwyer says that I wrote a "bewildering critique" of logical positivism, but when I looked at his response, I found an excellent account of my argument. He seemed to understand me quite well: what did he find bewildering in what I said?
His criticism of me there is that meaningless propositions do not count as propositions at all. I should not therefore have allowed inferences that include them, and my attempt to show that the verification principle cannot eliminate meaningless propositions, which depends on inferences that allow them, fails.
This criticism is not to the point. The verification principle is supposed to be a criterion for meaningful propositions. If we already know which propositions are meaningless, we don't need a criterion. The supporter of the principle can't adopt Mr.Dwyer's suggestion, and his remarks about the argument are irrelevant.
The "bewildering" argument is of course not original with me. The positivists themselves recognized its force, and the dominant view in contemporary analytic philosophy is that this and other objections doom the criterion.




Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Post 5

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 10:30pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,

To reiterate, I don't object to his taking the external world as a given: I object to his failure to tell us that he has done so.
I disagree that Peikoff (1) takes the external world as a given (2) without telling us he has done so. Peikoff writes in OPAR (p. 4):
We begin as philosophers where we began as babies, at the only place there is to begin: by looking at the world. ... The first thing to say about that which is is simply: it is. As Parmenides in ancient Greece formulated the principle: what is, is.
Now, if you just read those 3 sentences to me, and you asked me whether (1) whether I think the author takes the external world as a given and (2) whether I think the author makes it obvious to the reader that he takes the external world as a given -- then I would say "yes" on both accounts.

In fact, I would go further. I would say that not only does this author take the external world as a given, and not only does he do so in a manner that is sufficiently transparent, but also that he does so with about as much force, and as shamelessly, as I've ever seen within the writings of man. There is no doubt in my mind that he takes the external world as a given. I cannot even conceive of having such a doubt (after reading those 3 sentences).

So that leaves me bewildered as to your response, which makes it seem like you think Peikoff is trying to pull something over on the reader with some kind of underhanded insinuation, innuendo, or whatever -- instead of being completely literal, bold, and sufficiently transparent. You continued:
I would hope, though, that those in the course do not take as axiomatic that all criticism of Rand's thought is based on misunderstanding.
I would hope so, too. If those in the course took it as axiomatic that all criticism of Rand's thought is based on misunderstanding, then you would have only passive, dogmatic thinkers pre-indoctrinated by propaganda -- which is terrible in a classroom.


Ed
[former instructor at a technical college]

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/15, 10:40pm)


Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Post 6

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 1:09pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Thanks, David, for your response. I see what you're saying. Interesting. I do think that a string of words must be meaningful in order to qualify as a statement or proposition. Do you disagree? If a string of words isn't meaningful, then there is nothing that it's stating or proposing.

But, as you point out, the logical positivist must view a meaningless string of words as a proposition, for if we already know which propositions are meaningless, we don't need a criterion. But in that case, his theory of meaning is even worse than I had imagined, for if a statement's verification depends on its meaning -- which it most assuredly does, otherwise what are you verifying? -- then its meaning cannot depend on its verification. Their theory is circular.



Post 7

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 12:35pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Ed,

I think that I see why you find my remarks bewildering, and I am entirely to blame. I didn't sufficiently make clear what I meant by "external world".

I'm now looking at a computer screen and responding to someone named Ed Thompson. One type of skeptic denies that I know that I'm doing these things. He doesn't deny that it now appears to me that I'm looking at a computer and responding to ET, but, he claims, I might be having these experiences even if my computer and ET were just ideas in my mind. This sort of skeptic need not claim that the computer and ET are nothing but ideas: he just denies that I know that they exist as physical objects with an independent existence from my own.

A skeptic of this kind would not take himself to be denying that existence exists. He would say the world is indeed what it is; but that it does not follow from this that the world consists of objects independent of my consciousness. To reiterate, this skeptic is not denying that we take ourselves to be looking at things, and in this way he acknowledges the existence of a world external to his acts of consciousness.

My claim in the review is that Peikoff has moved from this weaker sense of "external", i.e., external to my acts of consciousness, to a stronger sense, which is, to a near approximation, totally external to(my) consciousness, without making explicit that he has done so.The second sense denies that the object of my acts of consciousness could be mental, i.e., ideas or images. The passage that you quote does make clear that Peikoff takes the existence of external world for granted, but only in my weaker sense of "external."

I suspect that he, and you also, would respond to this by saying that my skeptic has made a mistake about the nature of consciousness. Consciousness must be directed outward at objects. To use Peikoff's example, the evidence that a real tomato exists is that I perceive a tomato. The tomato can't be just an image in my mind.

What I take to be the crucial point is that even if this view of consciousness is correct, it is a particular view of consciousness, not a direct implication from the hardly deniable assertion that something exists.

That said, I don't contend that it is wrong to take the existence of the world in my stronger sense as a given; I am not a skeptic. To the contrary, I take the existence of the external world, in both of my senses, to be what is called in the trade a Moorean fact, i.e. something so evident that we would take any argument against it to be mistaken, even if we could not specify the fallacy.

>>I would hope so, too. If those in the course took it as axiomatic that all criticism of Rand's thought is based on misunderstanding, then you would have only passive, dogmatic thinkers pre-indoctrinated by propaganda -- which is terrible in a classroom.

I'm very glad to hear this. I had the impression from your earlier post that you thought the point of an Obectivist's attending my course would be to expose my stupid mistakes about her views.

Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 12, No Sanction: 0
Post 8

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 2:42pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,

In your response to Ed, you wrote:
The passage to which you object is not a defense of Cartesianism, but a criticism of Peikoff's exposition. No doubt he does, like all other Objectivists, presuppose the existence of the external world. But he doesn't say this. Instead, he starts with an axiom that he, not I, says does not imply the existence of physical objects but then goes on to presume that they exist, without telling us that he presumes this. To reiterate, I don't object to his taking the external world as a given: I object to his failure to tell us that he has done so. (Emphasis added)
In your initial review, you quoted Peikoff correctly that the concept of existence "does not specify that a physical world exists." He didn't say that it doesn't "imply" it. In other words, the concept of 'existence' does not specify what exists. What exists -- an external, physical world vis-a-vis a perceiving consciousness -- is something that must be learned. An infant isn't aware that there is specifically a physical world as against a mental one, because he is not yet self-conscious, but he is aware of something "that exists." He later learns to identify the difference between an external, physical world and an internal mental one, as a physical world can only be understood in contradistinction to a mental world or a nonphysical consciousness. That's his point, which is spelled out in more detail in Rand's Intro. to Objectivist Epistemology, pages 245-251. That's what he means when he says that the concept of existence does not specify a physical world.

Now if you want to talk about what the statement "Existence exists" implies, it implies that "something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

"If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms; before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness." (Atlas Shrugged, p. 1015)

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/16, 2:57pm)


Post 9

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 3:23pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
William,

Thanks very much for your very helpful post. I think that a syntactically malformed string of words is meaningless and doesn't count as a proposition. I don't agree, though, that to count as meaningful a proposition must consist entirely of concepts that have properly formed in the way described in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

Your point that the verification principle is circular is excellent. Bertrand Russell also noted this problem with the verification principle.

Post 10

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 3:49pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
William,

I'm indebted to you for the distinction between "specify" and "imply" in Peikoff's text, which I had indeed missed. This is good evidence that I need you in my course.

If you have time, I'd be grateful if you would look at my second response to Ed, as it contains material relevant to what you say. In brief, I don't think that Rand is correct that to acknowledge that reality is what it is requires the view of consciousness that she states in the passage that you quote. Her comments fail to distinguish between an act of consciousness, e.g., my thinking of something, and the contents of consciousness. To deny that the object of consciousness can be an idea or image, or at least an idea or image that has not been abstracted from a non-mental percept, is to adopt a particular view of consciousness, that may or may not be correct. It is not to draw out an implication of acknowledging reality. Again, if one replies to this by saying that ideas must ultimately be derived by abstraction from a non-mental reality, that is a particular theory of concept-formation, not a consequence of acknowledging reality.

Of course, Rand is free to stipulate a sense of "existence exists" that does imply her view of consciousness; but then it becomes a contestable question, rather than an obvious truth, that existence exists. Precisely my criticism of Objectivists on this count is that they oscillate between a construal of "existence exists" that make it an obvious truth and another that incorporates disputable metaphysical baggage.

Post 11

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 5:45pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,
I had the impression from your earlier post that you thought the point of an Obectivist's attending my course would be to expose my stupid mistakes about her views.
When I remarked that something was "stupid", I was referring to this:
It does not follow from the fact that something exists that any physical objects exist. How one gets from one to the other is precisely the problem posed by Descartes at the beginning of modern philosophy. How does one know that anything besides one's sense-data and consciousness exists?
If someone asks that question, then it is reasonable to assume that the questioner operates under the "prior certainty of consciousness": the notion that the contents of consciousness (e.g., "sense-data") are self-evident, and are to be taken as a given; but that an external world isn't and shouldn't. This is what Wallace Matson refers to as "inside-out" epistemology. It is ... if you thoroughly think it through ... well ... stupid. The Ayn Rand Lexicon reference I gave was supposed to show that.

Now, you may now admit that you are not an "inside-outer" -- and that you just asked that inside-out question "tongue-in-cheek" because you thought it'd be a good thing to ask even if you, yourself, don't agree with the format of the question -- but then I'd politely ask you to be more straightforward and clear with questions after that.

I'd also say that I was sorry for calling what you said: "stupid." But that'd hinge on you admitting you don't agree with the question as you had formatted it, and then provide a small or short explanation on why you went ahead and asked such an "inside-out" question like you did, without any qualification whatsoever.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/16, 5:49pm)


Post 12

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 8:10pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Ed,

Thanks very much for your invitation to clarify what I said. I am not a supporter of "inside-outside" epistemology, in Matson's sense. I also agree with the passage from Rand you quoted earlier that an act of consciousness has to have an object. It wouldn't make sense for someone to say, "I'm thinking", or "I'm looking" and in response to the questions, "What are you thinking of?" or "what are you looking at?", to answer, "I'm not thinking of anything, or looking at anything".

I don't, though, and here I'm sure that I will get into trouble with you, regard the view that sense data can be the objects of consciousness as a stupid one. When I asked the inside-outside question, I wasn't writing tongue-in-cheek, even though I don't believe that one has to reason to the existence of the external world from sense data. I mentioned the inside-out view as an example to show that "physical objects exist" is a different claim from "something exists".

Post 13

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 9:54pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,

You are saying you believe that sense data can be the objects of consciousness, correct?

This is Rand, from Intro to Objectivist Epistemology, "Although, chronologically, man’s consciousness develops in three stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual—epistemologically, the base of all of man’s knowledge is the perceptual stage.

Sensations, as such, are not retained in man’s memory, nor is man able to experience a pure isolated sensation. As far as can be ascertained, an infant’s sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos. Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.

A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of “direct perception” or “direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery."


Is that what you are disagreeing with?

Rand also said that we start as infants with our 'awareness' being an undifferentiated chaos of sensations, and we learn to separate and integrate the individual sensations into perceptions. And that there is no way to go backwards - that once we became perceptual, we can never experience sensations in the undifferentiated fashion.


Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 6, No Sanction: 0
Post 14

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 12:38amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Following up on David Gordon’s review of OPAR, I would like to offer some additional comments on it. Warning: The following post is very lengthy.

Gordon writes,
Peikoffs problems have just begun. One more axiom must be considered: the law of identity, A is A. Peikoff has a remarkable propensity to draw odd conclusions from this uncontestable truth. For one thing, we learn that in "any given set of circumstances ...there is only one action possible to an entity, the action expressive of its identity. This is the action it will take, the action that is caused and necessitated by its nature" (p. 14). But why does Peikoff assume that an entity's nature allows it to perform only one action in given conditions? What if several actions are consistent with the thing's nature?
Well, to say that “A causes B” means that “given A, B must happen.” If this were not the case, then on what grounds could one say that A is the cause of B? There would be no way to isolate causes, to determine what was responsible for what or what produced what? Causality, science and reasoning would all be eviscerated. Quoting H.W.B. Joseph in his book, An Introduction to Logic:

[I]f a thing is to have any determinate nature and character at all, there must be uniformity of action in different things of that character, or of the same thing on different like occasions. If a thing a under conditions c produces a change x in a subject s - if, for example, a light of certain wave-lengths, passing through the lense of a camera, produces a certain chemical change (which we call the taking of a photograph of Mount Everest) upon a photographic film - the way in which it acts must be regarded as a partial expression of what it is. It could only act differently, if it were different. As long therefore as it is a, and stands related under conditions c to a subject that is s, no other effect than x can be produced; and to say that the same thing acting on the same thing under the same conditions may yet produce a different effect, is to say that a thing need not be what it is. But this is in flat conflict with the Law of Identity. A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. To assert a causal connection between a and x implies that a acts as it does because it is what it is; because, in fact, it is a. So long therefore as it is a, it must act thus; and to assert that it may act otherwise on a subsequent occasion is to assert that what is a is something else than the a which it is declared to be. (pp. 407, 408)
Peikoff himself recognizes the point where human beings are concerned. "The law of causality affirms a necessary connection between entities and their actions. It does not however, specify any particular kind of entity or of action. ...[It] does not affirm or deny the reality of an irreducible choice" (p. 68). Thus, the law of identity allows only one action in given circumstances, except when Peikoff decides that it does not.
I think this is a good criticism of Peikoff, who anticipates it by stating that there is only one action possible to a volitional consciousness, the act of choice. Under any given set of conditions, a person must choose; he cannot avoid having to make that choice. But, still, according to him, one need not choose the same way under the same conditions. So it is somewhat misleading to say that only one action is possible to a human being.
By no means has Peikoff finished with A is A. "As soon as one says about any such [non-man-made] fact: 'It is '- just that much – the whole Objectivist metaphysics is implicit. .. . Such a fact has to be; no alternative to it is possible....'To be, 'accordingly, is 'to be necessary"' (p.24). But even if one grants Peikoffs interpretation of causality, this conclusion does not follow. According to Peikoff, given any (non-made-made) entity, it must act in a certain way. From this, Peikoff concludes that the fact that the entity so acts is necessary. But all that he is entitled to conclude is that if the entity in question exists, its action is necessary. Peikoff jumps from this to the claim that the existence of the entity itself is necessary. The earth, by its nature, rotates on its axis. But the fact that on November 22, 1963, the earth rotated on its axis might for all that Peikoff has shown have been false. What if the earth had not existed on that date?

Perhaps in reply Peikoff might claim that the earth exists because of the action of other entities; thus its existence is indeed necessary, since these entities had to act in the way they did. But this simply renews the problem: Did these entities have to exist?
Yes they did, in the sense that no alternative to them was possible. To say it’s possible for them not to have existed doesn’t make any sense. How could they not have existed? They were not created in the first place. They’re existentially primary.
And in any event, Peikoff does not claim that every entity is caused to exist. The universe, in particular, has no cause. Why then must the entities that form it exist?
To say that the ultimate constituents of the universe have no cause is to say that they’re primary. And since they’re primary, they could not not have existed.
The law of identity has more wonders in store. From it, we know that God does not exist. God is an infinite being, but '"[ilnfinite' does not mean large, it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every entity, accordingly,is finite" (p. 31). As Duns Scotus pointed out long ago, "infinite" when applied to God is an adverb: It modifies his attributes. If God is infinite in power, for example, his power is such that he can accomplish whatever he wishes that does not violate the laws of logic.
Then his power is not infinite, because it is limited by the laws of logic. The law of identity states that since a thing is what it is, it can only act according to its nature, which rules out miracles.
But God's power is perfectly definite in character: It is not, as Peikoff thinks, an indefinitely large quantity. To say that God has power over everything is not to say that his power is "without form and void." To make matters worse, Peikoff appeals for support here to Aristotle's argument that the actual infinite does not exist (pp. 31-34). But this argument refers to bodies extended in space and is irrelevant to Peikoff's purpose. As will soon become apparent, the history of philosophy is not one of Peikoff's strong points.
I still don’t think that you can say that God’s power is infinite if it is limited to what is possible.
How amazing is that simple principle, A is A! From its study we can derive not only facts about the world but appropriate attitudes toward them.
Objectivism doesn't "derive" facts from the law of identity; it simply recognizes them as being in accordance with the law of identity. The laws of logic are ontological. We cannot think contradictory propositions precisely because we see that a thing cannot at once have and not have the same character. The necessity of thought is really a grasp of necessity in the nature of things.
"Metaphysically given facts are reality. As such, they are not subject to anyone's appraisal; they must be accepted without evaluation. Facts of reality must be greeted not by approval or condemnation, praise or blame, but by a silent nod of acquiescence" (p. 25). Only the man-made can be evaluated; one can, however, evaluate "physical concretes in relation to a human goal" (p. 464, n. 16). I had never before realized how irrational I had been in admiring the Grand Canyon. And when Kant, that fountainhead of evil, said that the starry heavens above filled him with awe, what more might he have said to manifest his disordered mind! How acquiescence is supposed to follow the recognition of necessity, 1 entirely fail to see. Why should we confine our approval or disapproval to what we can alter?
Because approval and disapproval imply the possibility of choice.
But I had temporarily forgotten: A is A. T o disapprove of what exists is to rewrite reality (p. 27). If, for instance, a skeptic condemns "human knowledge as invalid because it rests on sensory data" (p. 27), he attempts to rewrite reality and has sinned grievously against reason. "But if knowledge does rest on sensory data, then it does so necessarily, and again no alternative can even be imagined" (p. 27). Once more Peikoff's point escapes me. The skeptic questions whether sensory data suffice for knowledge of the external world. How does it answer him to say that, necessarily, we rely on the senses?
I don’t think that Peikoff is attempting to give a full-fledged refutation of skepticism in this passage. He addresses that issue more directly by invoking the fallacy of the stolen concept.
A prime concern of Objectivist epistemology is the nature of our concepts. As one would expect from our author, he offers a clear and forthright position. All concepts are integrations of perceptual data, and "there can be no concepts apart from sense experience. There are no innate ideas, ideas in the mind at birth. Consciousness begins as a tabula rasa (a blank slate); all of its conceptual content is derived from the evidence of the senses" (p. 38). As we shall at once see, Rand, and Peikoff following her, have a good deal to say about the way in which we derive concepts. But Peikoff gives no arguments whatever for the position he has just stated. How does he know that innate ideas do not exist! He does not tell us: Perhaps this is supposed to be another corollary of that ubiquitous principle, A is A. I do not contend that we do have innate ideas; rather, it seems to me, theories about the formation of concepts require argument. Peikoff, I gather, dissents.
Peikoff would say that you can’t have knowledge of reality ahead of any contact with it.
Putting this issue to one side for a moment, how exactly do Rand and Peikoff think we acquire concepts! We do so by isolating a group of concrete entities and assessing their observed similarities. For example, a "child observes that a match, a pencil, and a stick have a common attribute, length" (p. 83). If the child integrates his observations in the correct way, he will acquire the concept of length.
And how is he to proceed?"Ayn Rand's seminal observation is that the similar concretes integrated by a concept differ from one another only quantitatively, only in the measurements of their characteristics. When we form a concept, therefore, our mental process consists in retaining the characteristics, but omitting their measurements'' (p. 83). To return to the child confronted by match, pencil, and stick, he must grasp that the objects have different quantities of the same unit in order to acquire the concept of length. This theory strikes me as a poor one. Measurement does not take place in a vacuum: One cannot just measure, but must measure something. And if someone is aware of what he measures, then he already has the concept that Peikoff thinks measurement will disclose to him.
Not the concept; he doesn’t need the concept to perform this process. He can observe the similarities of the three objects against a background of difference, which is how one forms concepts in the first place.
What does the child who perceives a quantitative similarity in the three objects take his perception to be of! Length, of course. Measurement presupposes concepts; it does not create them.
It does not presuppose concepts. You need more familiarity with Objectivist epistemology to understand the theory.
Further, even if my objection misfires, Peikoff as usual offers no argument to support his view of the way in which concepts are acquired.
Well, it’s not a book devoted exclusively to epistemology, so there has to be some limits on how much space he gives to various topics.
Peikoff lives up to the standards readers expect from him in his analysis of the purpose of concepts. Because the human mind is finite, it can grasp at one time only a limited number of units. To cope with large numbers of units, consciousness "must have the capacity to compress its content, i.e., to economize the units required to convey that content'' (p. 106). The child who has mastered the concept "length" need not keep in mind the dimensions of every object of his acquaintance. He has a means of referring to them all.

At the culmination of concept acquisition stands definition, which "identifies a concept's units by specifying their essential characteristics" (p. 97). But even though the definition cannot list all the characteristics of the concept's units, the concept nevertheless refers to all of these. "A concept is not interchangeable with its definition - not even if the definition ...happens to be correct. ...[A] concept designates existents, including all their characteristics, whether definitional or not" (p. 102).
Thus for Peikoff meaning is pointing. The concept "red", for example, points to all red objects that exist, and, incredibly, all the characteristics of these objects. I say "incredibly" because each characteristic itself designates all the objects (and their characteristics) to which it applies. By continuing in this way to spell out the entire meaning of a concept, one will fairly quickly arrive at the result that every concept means everything that exists.
You can’t infer from Peikoff’s statements that every concept means everything that exists. The concept “red” refers only to red objects. Not everything that exists is red.
Part of "red's" meaning is "apple," and since apples grow on trees, then "growing on a tree" becomes part of the meaning of "red."
“Red” does not mean “growing on a tree”; there are obviously things growing on trees that are not red. However, it does mean (or refer to) every red object including those that grow on trees. Attributes are attributes of entities; they can be abstracted from entities, but they do not exist in isolation from them.
Peikoff also presents a distinctive account of volition. Commendably, he denies that human beings are inexorably determined by heredity and environment and endorses free choice. He supports a contro- versial but interesting argument that determinism, the denial of free choice, refutes itself: "When the determinist claims that man is determined, this applies to all man's ideas also, including his own advocacy of determinism. Given the factors operating on him, he believes, he had to become a determinist, just as his opponents had no alternative but to oppose him. How then can he know that his viewpoint is true?" (p. 71). Peikoff fails to mention any of the standard objections to this line of reasoning, which has generated an enormous literature.)
True, and as I've argued elsewhere, it is here that I think Peikoff is on shaky grounds. I don’t think his self-referential argument against determinism will hold up under criticism.
A further problem for the theory of concepts is this: If concepts are integrations of perceptual knowledge, how can they apply to entities that have not yet been perceived!
Well, they’re integrations of perceptual knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be extended to cover future instances of the concepts they’ve integrated.
But Peikoff touches no philosophical topic that he does not spoil. According to Objectivism, he states, the "primary choice, ...the one that makes conceptual activity possible, is the choice to focus one's consciousness" (p. 56). By "focusing" he means raising one's level of awareness. Since the choice to focus is basic, it cannot be explained. "[Ilt is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such 'why'. There is only the fact that a man chose: [H]e chose the effort of consciousness, or he chose non-effort and unconsciousness" (p. 60). We can exercise rational choice only if we focus; but focusing itself depends on choice. The circle is obvious: One cannot choose a condition that makes choice possible. Unless one were already focused, one could not choose to focus. Or can this choice proceed unawares? If so, why not other choices? Nor will it do in response to appeal to the alleged fact that the choice to focus is a "primary." Given the circle, this "reply" merely acknowledges irrationality, rather than attempting seriously to confront it.
True, but I think Peikoff has a way out. He could say that one is dimly aware of the choice to focus, because focusing does not mean going from a state of literal unawareness to awareness, but of raising one’s awareness from a lower level to a higher level, which one is therefore responsible for doing. Once focused, one can then engage in a process of reasoning – of making new connections and drawing the appropriate conclusions.
Peikoffs problem arises, 1 am inclined to think, from his unsupported claim that awareness must result from choice. Why must one choose to focus? Perhaps one's state of awareness is determined, for all Peikoff has said to the contrary. His anti-determinist argument does not rule out the possibility.
He would say that we are aware of the choice to raise our level of awareness, which we sometimes choose to do and sometimes do not.
The principles of Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology underlie the most famous part of Rand's philosophy: her egoistic ethics. Here, as always, "A is A" governs. In contrast to irrationalists like David Hume who profess to find a gap between facts and values, "Ayn Rand holds that facts -certain definite facts - do lead logically to values. What 'ought to be' can be validated objectively" (p. 207). This validation depends on the fact that the "realm of existence is the metaphysical fundamental; it is that which every concrete and every issue presupposes. According to Objectivism, this fact has a critical application to the field of values. The alternative of existence or nonexistence is the precondition of all values. If an entity were not confronted by this alternative, it would not pursue goals, not of any kind" (p. 209). In brief, Peikoff reasons as follows: A value is something that one acts to gain or keep. But only living beings can act. Unless, then, a being confronts the alternative of life or death, it cannot value. No doubt through insufficient grasp of the implications of "A is A". I entirely fail to see how the last step of this argument follows. Granted that one must be alive in order to choose, how does Peikoff obtain that "one must choose to be alive in order to choose?"
He’s not saying that one must choose to be alive in order to choose; he’s saying that unless one’s existence depends on certain actions, one cannot value.
Peikoff illustrates his contention with a thought experiment devised by Rand. He asks us to contemplate an "immortal robot . . . not facing the alternative of life or death, [which] requires no action to sustain itself" (p. 209). According to Peikoff, the robot could make no other choices. Pain, intellectual pleasure, and friendship would mean nothing to it, because it need not pursue values in order to exist (pp. 209-11). Unfortunately, Peikoff gives no argument for the conclusion: He simply reiterates his contention for each value he considers in relation to the robot. He has evidently taken to heart Lewis Carroll's line: "What I tell you three times is true."
Actually, I think that the robot example is a good one. It makes perfect sense to me. I don’t understand what you find inadequate or arbitrary about it.
Despite my criticisms of Peikoff, I must acknowledge that with this argument he has made a vital contribution to theology. Many religious believers think that after death they will either enjoy the eternal bliss of heaven or suffer the agonies of everlasting damnation. Thanks to Peikoff, they can end their concern. It does not matter whether one's destination is heaven or the lower climes. Both states are supposed to last forever: and to a being that cannot again die, nothing can matter. "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" portends nothing better or worse than "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
Oh, now I see why you don't find it convincing. It may help to realize that the essential point of the robot example is that values depend on having something to gain or lose by your actions. True, if heaven and hell existed, they would be enough to justify the existence of values to an immortal being. However, because they don’t exist and are mere religious fantasies, the reality is that values depend on the existence of life and on the happiness or suffering that results from actions that are beneficial or harmful to it.
The example of the immortal robot enables Peikoff to "reach the climax of Ayn Rand's argument. Only the alternative of life vs. death creates the context for value-oriented action, and it does so only if the entity's end is to preserve its life. By the very nature of 'value,' therefore, any code of values must hold life as the ultimate value" (p. 212). I once more confess to bafflement. How does Peikoff’s conclusion follow from the "fact" that only beings that face the choice of life or death can pursue values? Why must the necessary condition of value be the ultimate value! Once more, Peikoff offers no argument.
Well, it’s more than simply that life is the necessary condition of value. Values are connected to life-promoting action. That which is life promoting tends to give rise to pleasure or happiness, and that which is harmful tends to result in pain or suffering. The existence of value is strictly a function of biology -- of the organism's goal of self-preservation.
Peikoff apparently rejects the contention of Austrian economics that economic value is subjective. Quite the contrary, it is objective: "The economic value of goods and services is their price ...and prices on a free market are determined by the law of supply and demand. ... The market price of a product is determined by the conjunction of two evaluations, i.e., by the voluntary agreement of sellers and buyers" (p. 396). While Peikoff is entirely right that demand and supply determine price, price is not itself a value or preference; it is the outcome of the values that each buyer and seller places on a product. To arrive at his conclusion that economic value is objective, Peikoff has elided the distinction between preferences and their results.
I don’t think Peikoff would disagree with the Austrian’s subjective theory of value. He’s simply using ‘value’ here in a slightly different sense. After all, Rand defines a value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” In other words, a value in this sense, is simply an object of an action," which in essence is what the Austrians would call a "subjective theory of value."


Post 15

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 7:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Awesome post, Bill. At the risk of sounding obsequious, I always enjoy reading your posts because you have an amazing grasp of the philosophy and know exactly how to respond to criticisms. I hope you keep it up!

Post 16

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 12:11pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Thanks, Jon!


Post 17

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 6:50pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,

I don't, though, and here I'm sure that I will get into trouble with you, regard the view that sense data can be the objects of consciousness as a stupid one.

As you may have ascertained, I'm a direct-perceptionist / direct-realist. This means I don't acknowledge the concept of "sense-data" (as outlined by "sense-data" theorists -- the people who ask you to buy into their notion of "sense-data").

In 1984, an article was written by Stephen Wilcox and Stuart Katz and published in the journal: Philosophy of the Social Sciences. In it, the notion of "sense-data" was demonstrated to be "ridiculous" and "ultimately paradoxical." While my original web-link to the abstract ( www.igs.net/~pballan/W&K(1984).htm ) has gone dead, I saved some excerpts:

"The psychological experimenter has his apparatus of lamps, tuning forks, and chronoscope, and an observer on whose sensations he is experimenting. Now the experimenter by hypothesis... knows his apparatus immediately, and he manipulates it: whereas the observer... knows only his own 'sensations', is confined... to transactions within his skull."

"But after time the two men exchange places: he who was the experimenter is now suddenly shut up within the range of his 'sensations', he has now only [p. 153] 'representative' knowledge of the apparatus; whereas he who was the observer forthwith enjoys a windfall of omniscience. He now has an immediate experience of everything around him, and is no longer confined to the sensations within his skull. Yet, of course, the mere exchange of activities has not altered the knowing process in either person. The representative theory has become ridiculous...."

"In plain fact the experience of both experimenter and observer is at all times immediate. The real objects, and no 'sensations' thereof, are their two experiences. When the observer says that he has a 'sensation' of so-and-so, he means merely that it is so-and-so much, certain portion, and not another, of the objects that lie about him at the moment, which is in his experience.... In short, there is no sensation of an object. Experience presents no object once as outer and again as inner fact, and no content of knowledge that is other than its object...."

"the psychologist is now juggling with two epistemologies, not one: an indirect realism for the perceiver who cannot know the world directly, and a direct realism for himself who can. This has two important consequences. First, it refutes the thesis that indirect realism is an empirical matter, and second, it shows that the thesis is ultimately paradoxical"

A substitute for indirect ("sense-data") realism is the direct realism of J.J. Gibson and Ayn Rand (and, of course, David Kelley: "Evidence of the Senses"). And yes, you are in trouble with me (the really "big doo-doo" kind of trouble) if -- after reviewing the above -- if you don't begin to regard the view that "sense data can be the objects of consciousness", as a stupid one.

:-)

Ed

Reference:
Can Indirect Realism be Demonstrated in the Psychological Laboratory? (1984) Wilcox & Katz. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 14 (2):149-157

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/17, 6:54pm)


Post 18

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 8:31pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
William,

I'm very grateful to you for your detailed comments on my review, and I second Jon Trager's comment that your post is awesome. I have comments on many of your comments, but owing to the length of your post, some of my remarks will be very compressed. Please let me know if you would like me to say more about any of these. (I haven't yet figured out how to highlight what you say in gray in what follows.)

>>Well, to say that “A causes B” means that “given A, B must happen.”

Yes, but this is nomic or physical necessity, not metaphysical or (God help us) logical necessity. Objectivists collapse the distinctions between the necessary, the possible, and the actual. "The actual world is the only possible world" is a metaphysical thesis, in my view a wrong one, not a consequence of the Law of Identity

>>But this is in flat conflict with the Law of Identity. A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. To assert a causal connection between a and x implies that a acts as it does because it is what it is; because, in fact, it is a. So long therefore as it is a, it must act thus; and to assert that it may act otherwise on a subsequent occasion is to assert that what is a is something else than the a which it is declared to be. (pp. 407, 408)

I think highly of H.W. B. Joseph, who was one of the greatest of all philosophical critics, but here he wrongly assumes that an object's nature allows it to act in only one way. Why assume this? If, as you recognize in what you say about my criticism of Peikoff, it makes sense to say that a human being need not always choose the same way in the same conditions, why must non-human entities always operate in the same way?

>>Yes they did, in the sense that no alternative to them was possible. To say it’s possible for them not to have existed doesn’t make any sense. How could they not have existed? They were not created in the first place. They’re existentially primary.

You are just restating the Objectivist view that the entities that exist have to exist, not offering an argument. What is supposed to be the contradiction in thinking that other entities than the ones that in fact exist could have existed? If someone says that a round square could exist, we can readily grasp why what he says is contradictory. But to say that the entities that actually exist might not have existed is contradictory only if the entities that now exist could not have failed to exist. But that thesis is just what I am questioning. To appeal to it in order to refute me blatantly begs the question.

>>Then his power is not infinite, because it is limited by the laws of logic. The law of identity states that since a thing is what it is, it can only act according to its nature, which rules out miracles.
>>I still don’t think that you can say that God’s power is infinite if it is limited to what is possible.

There have been people who have claimed that God can violate the laws of logic---I think that Descartes held this. But it has certainly not been the dominant opinion among the Scholastics, or among Jews and Christians generally. Peikoff's short proof of atheism isn't worth much if it addresses a concept of God different from that held by orthodox believers.

>>Because approval and disapproval imply the possibility of choice

On the Objectivist view, a value is something that one acts to gain or keep. If approval and disapproval are tied to this notion of value, then one can't approve or disapprove of what can't be altered. But why should one think that approval and disapproval are limited to what we can value, in terms of the Objectivist concept of value? You have a surpassing knowledge of Objectivist philosophy, based on what is obviously a great many years of careful study and thought; but I must say that you seem to find it difficult to think outside the Objectivist framework. Your response to an objection is often to repeat the thesis that is being challenged.

>>Peikoff would say that you can’t have knowledge of reality ahead of any contact with it.

In other words, there aren't innate ideas because there aren't innate ideas. Again, you respond to a question on why an Objectivist view is true by reiterating the Objectivist view.

>>Not the concept; he doesn’t need the concept to perform this process. He can observe the similarities of the three objects against a background of difference, which is how one forms concepts in the first place.
>>It does not presuppose concepts. You need more familiarity with Objectivist epistemology to understand the theory.

I have no doubt that my knowledge of Objectivist epistemology is deficient, but I'm not here making the mistake of thinking that Objectivists think that observing similarities requires concepts. Rather, I'm denying, or at least questioning, that one could observe similarities in the absence of concepts. This is a very common criticism of abstractionist theories of concept formation, raised by Jerry Fodor and Peter Geach, among others.

>>Red” does not mean “growing on a tree”; there are obviously things growing on trees that are not red. However, it does mean (or refer to) every red object including those that grow on trees. Attributes are attributes of entities; they can be abstracted from entities, but they do not exist in isolation from them.

Yes, you are certainly right that "red" does not mean "growing on a tree". But then you can't say, as Peikoff does, that "[A] concept designates existents, including all their characteristics, whether definitional or not" "Red" designates all red objects. Some of these red objects have the property of growing on trees, i.e.,this is one of the characteristics of these red objects. But then by Peikoff's statement, these characteristics become part of the designation of "red". One can then ask,what does "growing on a tree" designate? Here one must fill in the designations of "growing" and "tree": the process that Peikoff describes is recursive. It is in this way that you will soon get that most concepts refer to most things that exist. I am perhaps being unfair here in taking Peikoff's sentence to mean exactly what it says.

>>Well, they’re integrations of perceptual knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be extended to cover future instances of the concepts they’ve integrated.

Here I suggest that you are guilty of the fallacy of the stolen concept, in that what you say is perfectly true of our ordinary language concept of "concept", but you carry this over without justification to the Objectivist theory of concepts. In the ordinary language concept of "concept", a concept has a definition that give a sense, not a reference. Here, anything that meets the terms of the definition falls under the concept. But on the Objectivist view, as Peikoff states it, a concept is an abstraction, derived by "measurement omission" from concretes, and it designates the concretes from which it has been abstracted. A new concrete would then demand a new concept, because by hypothesis the new concrete is not part of the designation of the original concept

>>He’s not saying that one must choose to be alive in order to choose; he’s saying that unless one’s existence depends on certain actions, one cannot value.
>>It may help to realize that the essential point of the robot example is that values depend on having something to gain or lose by your actions. True, if heaven and hell existed, they would be enough to justify the existence of values to an immortal being. However, because they don’t exist and are mere religious fantasies, the reality is that values depend on the existence of life and on the happiness or suffering that results from actions that are beneficial or harmful to it.

But the point here isn't whether heaven and hell exist: it's rather that if you agree with the conclusion of my thought experiment, then it's wrong that the concept of value conceptually depends on the possibility that one can choose between life and death. It doesn't, for these immortal beings; and if you accept what I say, then you have rejected the conclusion that Rand and Peikoff draw from the immortal robot story. If you now say,"But it does depend on this choice for beings like us", I would respond, why? Why does what matters to us rest on the possibility that we can cease to exist?

>>Values are connected to life-promoting action. That which is life promoting tends to give rise to pleasure or happiness, and that which is harmful tends to result in pain or suffering. The existence of value is strictly a function of biology -- of the organism's goal of self-preservation.

This strikes me as true of many values, but I don't see why having a tendency to promote life is a necessary condition for pleasure. Why can't some pleasurable activities be neutral in their effect on life? Eating ice cream in moderation can be very pleasurable; but although, I don't think it is harmful, it is hardly life enhancing.

Thanks once more for your comments: I really appreciate them. If I may say so, I'm also grateful for your calm and matter-of-fact tone in responding to my very negative comments on Peikoff's book. My review gives in part a misleading impression, in that someone reading it alone would be likely to think that my attitude toward Objectivism is much more negative than it in fact is. Whether rightly or wrongly, I formed a very unfavorable impression of Peikoff, and my animus in the review is directed toward him rather than Objectivism as such. I have reviewed other Objectivist philosophers and Objectivist sympathizers much more positively.

One question in conclusion. You said in your original post that my philosophy was "rationalistic". Other Objectivists have also said this about me, but I don't have a good grasp of what is meant by this. I'd be grateful if you would say something more about this.




Post 19

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 5:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
David,

One question in conclusion. You said in your original post that my philosophy was "rationalistic". Other Objectivists have also said this about me, but I don't have a good grasp of what is meant by this. I'd be grateful if you would say something more about this.
I'm sure Bill will have his own answer, but I also thought you were rationalistic. When you asked the "inside-out" question:
How does one know that anything besides one's sense-data and consciousness exists?
... then you are being a rationalist, like Descartes was. Rand outlined it this way:
[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists).
FTNI, 30

Ed

p.s. As Wallace Matson put it in his chapter of the book: The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand [paraphrased]:
Hume showed that if you start from the inside of your head only, and you don't cheat, then you can never get to the outside world. And Kant failed to refute him on that.


Post to this threadPage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Forward one pageLast Page


User ID Password or create a free account.