Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

The Ultimate Philosopher

Regulars
  • Posts

    3
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Previous Fields

  • Relationship status
    No Answer
  • State (US/Canadian)
    Not Specified
  • Country
    United States
  • Biography/Intro
    www.ultimatephilosopher.com
  • Experience with Objectivism
    15+ years. The books (multiple times), several Peikoff lecture courses.
  • Copyright
    Copyrighted
  • School or University
    Comprachico University
  • Occupation
    Philosopher

The Ultimate Philosopher's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/7)

0

Reputation

  1. [Reposted from <a href="http://www.ultimatephilosopher.com">The Ultimate Philosopher</a>.] The theme under consideration: That <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/philosophy.html">philosophy</a> is the driving force of a <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/culture.html">culture</a>. Some patterns already recognized/presupposed going into this analysis: (1) The more <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/02/ayn-rand-mini-guide.html">Ayn Rand's</a> (supremely <i>perfectivist</i>) philosophical ideas are exposed to the light of critical scrutiny, the more it turns out they hold up admirably and defeat their critics in the process. (2) The "liberal" Ivy League <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/intellectuals.html">intelligentsia</a> are at present utterly unequipped to deal with fact (1). (3) The "liberal" Ivy League intelligentsia supposedly have all the best intellectual resources on their side; so why are they so utterly <i>helpless</i> in waging the war of ideas against their "neanderthal-like" anti-intellectual opposition on the political Right? What's stopping them from making an all-out slam-dunk effort to prove their whole "progressive" worldview is so superior? I mean, it's so obvious how superior they believe it to be, isn't it? Couldn't they prove everything beyond a doubt in all their rigorously-peer-reviewed, Ivy-League-Press-published treatises, just like how peer-review helps ensure quality, thoroughness and <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivity.html">true authoritativeness</a> in the natural sciences? (4) The "liberals" seem utterly weak at <i>selling</i> their ideas to an <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/america.html">American</a> audience. And the act of selling is so darned . . . <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html">capitalistic</a> and <a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ar_money_making">entrepreneurial</a>, <a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html">innit</a>? (For more evidence, see the stark contrast between the success of "conservative" talk radio and the failure of "liberal" talk radio to connect with listeners. If we used "liberals" as the model of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html">reason</a>, it would <i>seem</i> that reason has no selling-power, that it is impotent to change minds, and that the failure here can only be <strike>rationalized away</strike> attributed to a <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/01/america-dumbed-down-plutocracy.html">dumbed-down plutocracy</a>. Also, note how this alleged model of reason illicitly smuggles in a neo-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure">Marxian</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus">materialist</a> explanation for cultural conditions, another byproduct of modern <a href="http://matus1976.com/eudaemonists/index.htm">Greek</a>-ignorant philosophizing. Time for the "reality-based" and yet in-denial "liberals" to <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/thought-thinking.html">check a few premises</a> and save themselves yet further embarrassment, perhaps? They might start by shifting their cognitive context away from the likes of Descartes/Hobbes/Hume/Marx/Rawls and toward true giants like Aristotle/Aquinas/Spinoza/Mises/Rand. It really works wonders, liberals! As an awesomely liberating, <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/production.html">productivity</a>-<a href="http://www.perfectivism.com">enhancing</a> bonus, you'll become much less pathologically fearful and ignobly ignorant of capitalism in the process.) (5) Neither the pro-Republican FOX News nor pro-Democrat MSNBC networks ever have any guests that you might term "serious philosophers." I mean, surely MSNBC could enlighten its audiences by have lots of university-professor guests who prove everything so well? Surely MSNBC's audiences would lap up the "manufacturing consent" theories of Noam Chomsky, if only this GE-owned subsidiary would have him on as a guest. Surely there's a whole coalition of Ivy League professors who could have broadcasted widely about the naked-emperor-like discrepancy between intellectual liberalism and MSNBC? Surely MSNBC could have them as guests to get the word out and enlighten the audience? (Surely, the professors are not too helpless and too un-enterprising to get the word out otherwise?) (6) As Exhibit A of how low the mainstream culture has descended in absence of a boldly and decisively Aristotelian influence: The leading "public intellectuals" at the present are mostly the New Atheists - Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett. Harris at present is <a href="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-moral-landscape/">trying</a> to ground ethics (well, <i>"morality"</i>) in biology, with a crucial element missing: <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/perfectivism-some-rough-ideas.html">Aristotelianism</a>. His context inherits, as a given, a <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/04/big-fat-anti-euphemism.html">Humean</a> style, with its unresolvable <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/is-ought_dichotomy.html">is/ought</a> (or <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/nature.html">nature</a>/<a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/good--the.html">goodness</a>) dualism. (Were Aristotle around <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/aristotle-and-modern-philosophy.html">today</a>, which philosopher - Sam Harris or Ayn Rand - do you think he'd be way, way, way more impressed by?) (7) Thinkers like Aristotle and Ayn Rand manage to cover their bases like f***. Their performances are analagous to super-grandmastery in chess. The common standard is <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/unit-economy.html">essentializing</a>-comprehensiveness, i.e., mastering the art of <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/marxism-rand-and-dialectics.html">dialectic</a>. (8) An adjective, "Aristotle-like," comes to mind when I think of a pattern of instances of highly-<a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/goal-directed_action.html">functional</a> human beings in this or that endeavor, such as the concretes listed in "About Me." Okay, now the test. Objection: If Rand's theory of philosophy's ruling power over a culture were correct, then our culture would be dominated by the basically <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">Rawlsian</a> views of the Ivy League intellectuals in political matters. In fact, Rawls is <a href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/of-the-12-modern-philosophers-which-are-most-likely-to-read-in-a-century.html">considered by the philosophy professors</a> to be the most important philosopher of the last half-century, and by a pretty wide margin. This is also borne out by <a href="http://blog.tommorris.org/day/2009/05/02">other data</a> which show just how much greater Rawls' influence among academic philosophers is than Rand's. These data are pretty good evidence that Rand isn't worth taking seriously as a philosopher, isn't it? Reply: Seriously, now? In American culture, what is more widely read: <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> by Ayn Rand, or <i>A Theory of Justice</i> by John Rawls? Moreover, while <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> has placed a distant second in polls of readers asked to name the book that influenced them most, what placed <i>first</i>? Moreover, in what <i>fundamental similar respect</i> are the top two choices in these polls so very unlike John Rawls's treatise? Consider: the impact of a comprehensive vision of man and existence as against a merely-political focus. (See also: the Ivy League intelligentsia's utter helplessness in the face of theocratic and militant Islamism.) Moreover, see point (4) in the list of patterns recognized. Moreover, see all the other patterns recognized. Moreover, the act of establishing the wider pattern among these patterns is one of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/independence.html">first-handed</a> <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/ayn-rand-on-human-perfection.html">thought</a> and <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/integration.html">integration</a>, and cannot be otherwise. (In this regard, Ayn Rand simply cannot be "taught" overnight, in talking-heads shouting matches, or undigested (or undigestible) soundbites; it requires something the ancients referred to as <a href="http://www.dianahsieh.com/docs/thoa.pdf">habituation</a>, and what Rand referred to as <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/automatization.html">automatization</a> of well-functioning <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/psycho-epistemology.html">cognitive</a> processes, which are <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/peikoff-binswanger-gotthelf.html">essentially Aristotelian</a> in nature. The modern revival of "virtue ethics" cannot be complete or understood by the community at large without the Aristotelian-Thomistic-Randian form of <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/ayn-rand-on-human-perfection.html">perfectivism</a>.) Unless or until you get this last part, you're pretty much out-of-it when it comes to understanding Ayn Rand's greatness - why she is, like <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/aristotle.html">Aristotle</a>, always and everywhere vindicated by any attempt to deny her. The stated Objection is an example of jumping into an analysis of ideas mid-stream, i.e., of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/context-dropping.html">dropping</a> <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/context.html">context</a>, thereby thoroughly failing to recognize the vast sum of integrated facts behind Rand's analysis of (in this instance) cultural causation. To <i>them</i> (the context-droppers), it would seem that Rand was - as they were themselves, in actual fact - jumping into cultural-causal analysis mid-stream, all arbitrary and dis-integrated. If ever there is an instance of psycho-epistemological <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection">projection</a> among Rand's out-of-it critics, this is it. (This is also why this psycho-epistemological deficiency needs to be systematically rooted out and discouraged among college students by the professors - but . . . you might see the <a href="http://xanthippaschamberpot.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ayn-rand-the-comprachicos.pdf">vicious</a> cycle involved here. And if there ever was an instance of jumping in mid-stream - by Aristotelian, though not Humean, standards - while <i>appearing</i> to provide systematic foundations, it's Rawls's theory of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice.html">justice</a>. [see also <a href="http://www.reasonpapers.com/pdf/12/rp_12_1.pdf">here</a>.] <i>This</i> is held up as "great" philosophy by out-of-touch academics. Pseudo-foundational or <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/02/imperfection-as-insidious-example.html">insidiously</a> un-foundational, anti-<a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/search/label/context">context</a>, anti-<a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/hierarchy_of_knowledge.html">hierarchy</a> philosophizing is a characteristically "modern" technique - particularly in the <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/01/academic-analytic-philosophy-and.html">"analytic"</a> tradition, on which the whole Aristotelian-<a href="http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/totalfrdm/tftoc.htm">dialectical</a> tradition is lost - and so by no means does it originate with Rawls; Rawls is just the terminal cashing-in of the whole methodologically and cognitively <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/prior_certainty_of_consciousness.html">corrupt</a> style. The non-integration involved here feeds into a festering non-integration between abstract theory and real-world practice. Integrating with pattern (4), we find that this is a by-product of a systematic rooting-<i>out</i> of capitalistic memes and personality characteristics among the wordsmith-intellectuals. Capitalist-types can't <i>afford</i> to flout context in their endeavors, see; that the fashionable wordsmiths have failed to recognize this - much less to <i>understand</i> it all the way down to the Aristotelian <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/identity.html">self-identical</a> <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/metaphysics.html">explanatory</a> <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/causality.html">causal</a> <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fundamentality--rule_of.html">root</a> - is a result of their failure to grasp the capitalists' <a href="http://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=author&Id=280">context</a>. <a href="http://www.ultimatephilosopher.com">Checkmated</a>.) Finally, a <a href="http://www.perfectivism.com">better</a>, <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/01/6-billion-plan-to-fix-america-updated.html">widespread</a> <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2010/12/leonard-peikoff-understanding.html">understanding</a> of these points and their <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/spiral-progression-of-knowledge.html">logical</a> interconnections would lead to <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/singularity-reprise.html">great improvements</a> for <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-exceptionalism.html">American</a> culture. <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-i-am-ultimate-philosopher.html">Ain't</a> <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/search/label/integration">integration</a> <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/benevolent_universe_premise.html">fun</a><a href="http://www.ultimatephilosopher.com">?</a> <a href="http://www.singularityhq.com">:-)</a> [<b>ADDENDUM</b>: <a href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/kitcher-on-reconstruction-in-philosophy.html">The chickens' homecoming.</a> Remember, kids: <a href="http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/integration.html">Integrate!</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness">:-)</a>]
  2. The basic error here is a confusion between "faith" and "undeniability." The laws of logic cannot be denied; the evidence of the senses cannot be denied. They have to be presupposed in any act of cognition. I don't know what exactly you mean by "faith" - it means all kinds of things to all kinds of people - but I don't think there's a useful application of the term "faith" that renders reliance upon logic and the senses a matter of faith. The greatest of the philosophers, Aristotle, invoked a principle that we might call Affirmation Through Denial to establish the axiomatic status of logic. Anyone who purports to offer a challenge to the laws of logic or the evidence of the senses, must implicitly presuppose them. To deny logic as an irreducible presupposition of cognition is to deny that A rules out non-A (at the same time and same respect), which means to both affirm and to deny logic as an irreducible presupposition. It serves as a nice effective answer to sophists and skeptics, as well as to anyone confused about the axiomatic status of logic. I have no idea how the same defense could be performed for acts of faith. When it comes to free will, Rand did not claim to offer an argument for it, because she also thought it had, ultimately, an irreducibly axiomatic and undeniable status. Much like Aristotle's defense of the laws of logic, the "demonstration" here is a negative one, on the grounds that to deny free will is to affirm that one's denial was not a product of free choice, which means the denial is beyond rational consideration since everyone's affirmation or denial would be the product of forces ultimately beyond their control. That would make any affirmation or denial the product of something fundamentally distinct from the merits or reasons (or lack thereof) of belief in free will. On the irreducible presupposition that people are capable of changing their minds in the face of arguments and reasons, Objectivists affirm free will.
  3. In some way or other: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shawshank Redemption, Network, American Beauty, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Big Lebowski, Harold and Maude, Barry Lyndon, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut. Shawshank Redemption is the most obvious. I'd rank it as the greatest movie ever if it weren't for 2001. 2001 is a poetic representation of humanity becoming the "Superman," though it's easy to put it in a Randian rather than Nietzschean light. Kubrick was an awesome filmmaker and, much like Rand, misunderstood. The "odd one out" is Lebowski, but I just get a kick out of it as comedy.
×
×
  • Create New...