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Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 5:14pmSanction this postReply
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I came across this quote in the thread "Where Tracinksi Went Right" on SOLO-P, which was posted there by Jason Quintana, here in italics:

There is an outstanding quote from Rand that has always been one of my favorites because it describes the role of philosophy in a general very well and I think it also describes the role of philosophy in history. (The Art of Non Fiction pg. 27)

"First you need to grasp that there is no such thing as Objectivism or any other philosophy. Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of reality. "Fundamental" refers to a principle or truth which is present in a vast number of concretes. To say something is fundamental is to say that many truths depend on it. To say philosophy studies the fundamentals of reality means that it studies those facts presented in, and those principles applicable to, everything that exists.

Every abstraction, and thus every principle, is manifested in an incalculable number of concretes. It is what the concretes have in common -- but it does not exist apart from them. An abstraction is a form of human classification by which man integrates evidence provided by his senses. Man rises above the perceptual level by integrating his percepts into concepts, his concepts into principles, his principles into sciences, and all of his sciences into a philosophy. Abstractions are objective, ie., based on reality. But abstractions, including simple concepts of concretes, do not exist as such. What exists is only the material from which a concept is drawn."




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Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 5:40pmSanction this postReply
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Ted:

     Ve-d-d-d-y Int-e-dest-ing...

     Been a while since I read the book, and totally forgot that point of hers. Maybe I should re-read it for the full context, but, 'till then, am now unclear on what she means by "...exist as such." I'm sure that she didn't mean there are different 'types' of existence (or, meanings to her use of the term.) Yet...

     Further, she does speak of 'mental entities' elsewhere in the book, so, umm...guess I'll have to re-read the sucker, soon.

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 1/31, 5:49pm)


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Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 6:16pmSanction this postReply
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John, please do me a favor, and check the quote for accuracy and report it here. I read the book a few years back, found it refreshing, but was not on line amongst o'ists at the time. The book is in storage now, so I am unable to check it at the moment myself.

As for existing as such, I believe she means existing as concretes, or what I sometimes refer to as the physically (by which I mean in relation to the body) given.

The quote is a good curative to those who reify her theories while dismissing mere facts as concrete bound.

It's "Rand with all the Platonism removed."

:)

Ted

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Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 7:23pmSanction this postReply
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Next, we are going to find out that there is no such thing as "Ayn Rand."

Oh...


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Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 7:57pmSanction this postReply
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Come on Michael, she's a concrete, and you can find her in Valhalla, no disrespect intended.

BTW, I finished the Mary Doria Russell books. Quite good, not the absolute best, but certainly first rate material.

My hands are so full right now, I haven't the time to post all I want.

Ted

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Thursday, February 1, 2007 - 12:04amSanction this postReply
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There is no chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology,... . There is only the study of reality. You have chosen to study that part of reality we call living things. In order to do so, you have to understand how to apply Newton’s law to separate different components of a cell, x-ray diffraction to make guesses about a molecular structure and topography to know the strain in folded-up DNA.

 

 

My professor molecular biology after students complained there was too many “physics” and not enough “biology” in his lectures.


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Thursday, February 1, 2007 - 8:00amSanction this postReply
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Love your molecular biology professor! The division of disciplines is always somewhat arbitrary.

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Thursday, February 1, 2007 - 1:22pmSanction this postReply
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I hope that this quote is not interpreted as an endorsement of nominalism, and that is certainly not what Rand would have intended. It is simply a very strong restatement of the fact that concretes and only concretes are primaries and givens, and that they would still exist even if there were no minds to perceive them. Our concepts are human constructs which, however valid, have no primacy over concrete reality.

As to the independence of the sciences, these are bodies of knowledge, not things qua concretes. So while our concepts both in and of the sciences may be distinct, they are contextual, hierarchical, interrelated and ultimately inseparable.

The fact that a bird can fly, even though it is heavier than air, is not a refutation of any "laws of physics" such as gravity, but is simply a fact that we must understand as a special case to be explained under the "laws of physics."

While the axiomatic parts of human knowledge are in a sense privileged, because they cannot be refuted unless one accepts them implicitly in the act of attempting a refutation, the special branches of philosophy such as politics, ethics, and aesthetics are radically empirical - based on observation and induction at their roots. There are no axioms in these branches of philosophy in the same way that there are in epistemology. (Rand tried to base ethics on axioms, but abandoned this attempt, which one can see in her Journals.) There are fundamental principles which cannot be denied self-consistently, such as the absurdity of telling someone who does what he wishes, rather than what you wish, that he should desist because he is being "selfish." This sort of argument immediately fails when one asks in return, "So what you are saying is that I should accept your selfish desire for me to act they way you wish me to, but my own selfish desire is inappropriate by the mere fact that it is mine?"

But arguments that homosexuality is "suboptimal" or that a "real" woman should not wish to be president are not prior to facts, and in so far as they may contradict the facts, no matter how much they reflect anyone's preconceptions, if false they are merely that - preconceptions.

Ted Keer

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