| | "The Omnipotent Fallacy or The Night of Randuary 16th"
"Every single field or discipline should be examined from the perspective of Objectivism. But that does NOT mean they are part of Objectivism. Just as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, or civil engineering are not part of Objectivism. Because a field is not part of philosophy doesn't mean contradictions with Objectivist Metaphysics or Epistemology are accepted. Knowledge is hierarchical and philosophy is the foundation, the base. The other fields build upon it. Some disciplines need major rewrites, other only a tiny bit of tweaking. It is because of the hierarchy that we can give priority to one layer over those built upon it."
Some hack Objectivists do think that all knowledge forms a subset of philosophy, and that Objectivism provides them with a "veto" of theories, such as the big bang, which they find objectionable for ideological reasons. This is a mistake. All human knowledge is coherent, and all human knowledge is subject in some way to the axiomatic concepts. But color theory is not a subset of logic, and biology is not a subfield of physics, nor is physics a bastard child of metaphysics. Philosophy deals with the three primary fields of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. But knowledge of the central concepts of, say, ethics, does not give one a full education in legal theory. Again, you will find plenty of armchair legalists among Objectivists. They find it easy to postulate all sorts of "rights" based on flimsy premises, and also tend to believe that such arguments are sufficient force to establish valid law. But law is an empirical matter, no matter how important philosophy is to keep it grounded. Philosophy can provide the principles, like directions to a party delivered by voice over the phone. But law must be based on experience, history, cultural practices. You can't get there without looking out the window and already knowing what a red light looks like as you drive. For example, one has to set some not arbitrary but rather conventional limits, such as an age of consent in criminal and civil law. The age can be any number within a range, but it must be some specific number. What number is chosen cannot be deduced from the NIoF principle alone. Such matters of convention and contingency must be explored within the context of an already large corpus of established legal thought and precedence.
Armchair philosophizing and philosophical omnipotence go hand in hand. But matters such as various the law, human sexuality, prescriptive linguistics, and dietary practices do not simply follow from philosophical principles. That notion that philosophy decides everything leads to such absurdities as anarcho-"capitalism," condemning female presidential candidates, and suggesting radical spelling reforms. Such fallacies of omnipotence are not unique to Objectivism. Look at the French Revolutionary Calendar. Today is neither le troisieme de Thermidor nor the Twenty-first of Randuary.
(Edited by Ted Keer on 8/03, 4:21am)
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