William O

Stolen concept fallacies show up frequently in philosophy, but they are less common elsewhere for some reason. I'd like to use this thread to collect examples of stolen concept fallacies that don't involve philosophy. I think that doing this might help to illuminate the concept more. I have seen one example of the stolen concept fallacy that didn't involve philosophy. Two people on Reddit were discussing the concept of a superorganism, which is an interacting community of smaller organisms like a termite mound. One of posters in the discussion reasoned that every organism is really a superorganism, because every organism is composed of cells. This steals the concept of a superorganism, which was originally intended to distinguish communities of organisms from individual organisms composed of cells. When the term is used this way, the concept of a superorganism loses its original context and meaning. What are some examples of stolen concept fallacies that you've come across outside of philosophy?

I agree with this, as I've said previously. I think another tactic that would help is persuading people who have an influence on society to take Objectivism seriously. The credibility of the speaker is a big influence on whether an audience will agree with them. Within our own movement, when Peikoff makes an argument for something, I'm sure you've noticed that that has an influence on what Objectivists think. So, for example, when a politician mentions Ayn Rand in a positive light, I would imagine that that's helpful for Objectivism's image with people who like that politician. A variant of this is the influence that parents or older siblings often have on their children or younger siblings, respectively. This is why it could be worth mentioning Objectivism to your family members.

I appreciate both of your responses. It sounds like Peikoff would probably say that "tautology" is a valid category, but that it's a somewhat subjective distinction because ultimately all knowledge is tautological. He would also insist that tautologies say something substantial about reality. The latter is what distinguishes them from so called "analytic" propositions, which Kantians describe as empty. Objectivism would say that no true proposition is analytic in this sense, although every true proposition is ultimately tautological. I think I am reading a bit into Peikoff here, since he doesn't explicitly call the distinction subjective or distinguish them from analytic propositions in this way. I don't think Peikoff ever commented on this issue in his article on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy.

Personally, when it comes to philosophy, I prefer a clear, concise presentation of the argument over a "fun" presentation with cartoon characters or video game references. There may be other people like me. I still think this "fun" approach is worth trying, because it's likely that different approaches will work better or worse with different people, depending on their interests and personality traits.

Here is the first paragraph of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy entry on tautologies: Does Objectivism accept the concept of a tautology (that is, consider tautologies an objectively distinct category of proposition)? If so, what is the difference between the concept of a tautology and the concept of an analytic proposition?

Wikipedia defines and describes the social sciences as follows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science A while ago, I read The Psychology of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden, a work on psychology that Objectivists often approve of. The methodology used to establish claims in this book struck me as different from that of academic psychology, which aims to be experimental. I also know that Objectivists often approve of Mises' Austrian economics, which is more deductive and depends less on empirical studies than mainstream economics. With that in mind, I have two questions: 1. What is the Objectivist position on how claims in the social sciences should be justified? 2. What criticisms, if any, do Objectivists have of the way the social sciences are currently conducted in academia? Ideally, responses will refer to the Objectivist canon, secondary literature, or intellectuals like Peikoff who accept Objectivism.

I found a passage in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy that talks about self evidence in conjunction with the concept of "intuition." I quote from page 382: This suggests that there is a connection between self evidence, as academic philosophers think of it, and rationalism.

Yes, criminals develop their own moral codes to justify their actions. For example, a burglar breaking into someone's house usually has a moral "justification" of some sort for doing so. Many of them believe that it isn't morally wrong to commit burglary because the victims will be reimbursed by their insurance agency, overlooking the loss of peace of mind that they cause. Rapists are not a category that I have looked into, but I know that they also develop moral "justifications" for their actions.

I think this is probably the right solution. Perhaps this is not the right attitude to use when studying the history of philosophy. Evaluation of a philosopher's work should come after understanding it, not before.

This is either inaccurate or at least poorly phrased. Hume's view is that our belief in causality has no foundation in reason, not that the current accounts of causality are "problematic." He thinks we have a non-rational faculty distinct from reason, which he variously calls habit, custom, or instinct. At bottom, he would say that all of our beliefs are based on this non-rational faculty rather than on reason.

Thanks for your posts in this thread, Boydstun. You have been very helpful. A word of clarification: The points I listed in the OP were my own summary, and do not appear in that form in Audi's book.

This isn't true. If someone cares about being right and is paying attention, it matters how good your evidence is. The problem is establishing credibility with someone so that they will pay attention to what you have to say, as well as engaging their emotions at appropriate points. As Aristotle said, ethos, pathos, and logos are the key elements.

This part has been cleared up, I would say: However, this part could use clarification, since it seems like a version of the analytic - synthetic dichotomy:

I think I thought that propositions can be self evident for Rand because I was under the impression that axioms like "existence exists" and "A is A" are regarded as self evident in Objectivism. I can find a lot of blogs and websites by non-scholars saying that online, but it's difficult to find a place in the primary sources where Rand actually says that. (The other reason is that, well, these propositions do seem self evident, and I would expect - rightly or wrongly - that Rand would agree with me about that.)

When you talk about a computer malfunctioning or producing an error, what you are doing is imposing a mathematical model on the behavior of the computer and pointing out that the behavior of the computer diverges from the model. The word "malfunction" contains the word "function" right in it - it's a mathematical concept in the context of computer science. Unless you are telling me that the computer fails to correspond to its correlate in Plato's intelligible realm of mathematics, there is no such thing as a computer error apart from the interpretation of a rational observer.

The page number for the fallacy of retroactive self evidence is 157.

That's a good distinction, I'm glad you posted this. I need to figure why I thought that and whether I had any evidence for it.

It appears that propositions are only self evident in a derivative sense, for Rand. By contrast, academic philosophers, in my experience, only regard propositions as self evident (e.g. 1+1=2). Dr. Binswanger identified a fallacy in How We Know called the fallacy of retroactive self evidence, which is basically when we get so used to a claim that we start to call it self evident even though it wasn't originally. The discussion so far in this thread, then, seems to have a striking implication: If Rand is right, then every usage of the term "self evident" in contemporary academic philosophy commits the fallacy of retroactive self evidence. What are your thoughts on my reasoning here?

Objectivism holds that the denial of any true proposition is self contradictory. Read Peikoff's essay on "The Analytic - Synthetic Dichotomy."

That's a great quote, thanks.

Maybe I need to clarify the goals of this thread. Goal 1: Clearly identify how Ayn Rand thought about self evidence, using primary sources. Goal 2: Clearly identify how most academic philosophers think about self evidence, using reputable secondary sources. Goal 3: Compare the two and identify similarities and differences. That is all I am trying to do in this thread. I would appreciate any help from knowledgeable forum members.

Can you clarify what you mean? I don't mean to be rude, but I would think it obvious that Rand accepted the concept of the self evident. At the very least, if you're going to interpret her that way then you need to explain how you interpret passages like those quoted in the Lexicon under "self evident." aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-evident.html Also, haven't you essentially reinvented the analytic - synthetic dichotomy here?

Okay, but how is that relevant in the current context? We are comparing Rand's concept of self evidence to the contemporary academic concept. Thanks, that's helpful. I don't know what he means by contemporary. He mentions Mill, so a reasonable assumption would be that he means since 1800.

Regarding the claim that 20% of Objectivism be removed, wouldn't that completely gut Objectivism if carried out consistently? For example, if Objectivism made some allowance for forcible taxation in order to help the poor, we would have to give up the non-initiation of force principle and the trader principle. Further, the non-initiation of force principle and the trader principle are based on the Objectivist ethics, so we would have to give up the Objectivist ethics. Rand regarded Objectivism as an integrated system. It is not a bunch of independent parts with no connection to each other that you can freely tinker with.

This is something you would need studies to establish. The work I've seen done on public opinion seems to indicate that it generally acts sensibly, although there are different theories about why this is. The public pays attention to the arguments politicians and public figures make and responds to them. If people were so stupid that they couldn't grasp critical, life saving ideas and vote based on them, democracy would have crashed and burned centuries ago.