ashishin

I *think* I've got it now: Short thoughts good, long thoughts bad. You might call that l'esprit d'escalier. Have a good time amongst yourselves...don't get too caught up in that cult thing, now, ya here?

What "flawed theory of concepts" does your paragraph attempt to propound? Since it says nothing directly about this idea, it would seem not to propound anything, but to be an example of the flaw - an example that is meant to illustrate a very complicated, deceptive, and sophistical argument by exaggeration. It would seem to me to be nonsense. Nonsense used for a sensible point, but nonsense nonetheless. More importantly, who's flawed theory of concepts? Kant's? Mine? Rand's? No, no, no...I'm thinking of some Objectivists who patently *refuse* to read him because they encountered some difficulty, AND ALSO criticize him without having read him. Oftentimes, though not always, when people (not just Objectivists) denounce something as nonsense to steer others away from it, they speak merely from their own experience of difficulty which they take as an object case of why no one would understand it. And this is true of so-called "professional" philosophers as well as people who have no interest in the topic. They are whiners, yes, but the more important point, the one I really want to emphasize is that they are doing themselves and others an intellectual disservice. There is more than one post like that up above. I never claimed Kant was clear at all or that his obfuscation was necessary or any of the other things which people may have tried to pin on me. I am not a Kant apologist, nor am I one for unclearness, obfuscation, confusion, etc. I suppose that, in certain light, I was giving a counterexample - drawing upon my own experience of difficulty, which I later overcame, in understanding that damn book. "If I can do it, so can you", that cheesy sales phrase you hear all the time in infomercial ads, seems relevant here. That was a more than a little uncivil...my apologies. Well, the "atheism" and "realism" are philosophical beliefs which, from a general standpoint, align myself with most Objectivists, no? I was trying to establish why I might have some common ground with others on this board - in terms of belief, not civility, apparently. But the second phrase didn't really have anything to do with either of those beliefs - it was about ethical reasons I thought I had why torture is wrong. AND the fact that I don't think people who follow Ayn Rand's philosophy would really listen to them, because they haven't in the past when I've attempted to discuss these issues with them. Yes, because I thought that there were more examples of the same kind and didn't necessarily want to keep presenting them, which might have been considered boring, as I had already been mildly reproached for loving to type for it's own sake. The word "amuse" might come across as "playfulness for me, not for you" but *that* was not my intention. Okay, let's see if I can straighten myself out on this: Forget the debate about averages and ranges, which was a pointless discussion on my part. My point is that a)Peikoff and others seem to be basing their opinions about Kant on how he plays hard on the limits of our awareness, b)Peikoff seems to quantify those limits in terms of objects of short-term memory recall, and c)seems to be factually wrong. If this isn't the case, and the point of the section is only to grasp the conceptualizing move, minus the definite numbers, then why trot out the numbers to begin with and along with it, the crow example? If it isn't short term memory, then what IS he talking about? I'm pretty sure I didn't use the words "positive critique" to describe this, because it doesn't really pass as one. On the one hand, it's an attempt to correct what seemed to me to be a factual error, on the other, it is an assault on what seems to be a psychological ground for our estimation of the limits of our awareness. The reason why it seemed relevant to me is because we are speaking for or against reading (and understanding) a guy whose prose can torture the ability to grasp meaning. Whether we have a definite or vague criterion for conceptualization, intelligibility, perceptualization, etc., would you really recommend that someone read Kant if you're convinced that you shouldn't read someone who routinely passes beyond those limits, however you want to define them? I don't think you would. I'm denying the grounds for that recommendation... My real critique, strangely enough, is that I'm *not* interested in psychology. As I think most people here are not, either. However, it seems that Peikoff is. iouswuoibev mentioned rereading the section in question - I did so and then I pointed out a simple error, which has since become one of the foci of this thread. However, I believe I also said in that same post that I wasn't convinced that the science of psychology was the end-all, be-all of judgments about our mental life. And here is where the philosophy really would come in - but Peikoff doesn't say how or why it does. That is, he doesn't really make an argument for it. If anything strikes me as the huge philosophical issue in all of this, it is not psychology but mathematics. I don't deny that I can have meaningful intellectual discourse and intellectual exchange and change your mind just as I expect to have mine changed. But there are obviously limits to this, which anyone would be aware of. And let's be realistic - Objectivism is a philosophy for which any significant compromise, moral or philosophical, is not really an option left open. Is this not one of the roots of the Kelley/Peikoff split? Ayn Rand expounded this in many different places, right? I expect that there are some things that you just won't change on, just as *you* expect that people who follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand will not change on them.

Well, I suppose the nonsense is intentional and is supposed to somehow illustrate what it is that I'm *really* endorsing or saying. To hell with averages indeed! But I see that you're also missing the point of what it is that I'm saying. Shall we join hands and do a ring-around-the-rosy? And, my dear, this is a free country, people can practice whatever religion they want. Accordingly, I wouldn't dare get between a person and their dogma, Objectivist or not. I've done it before when I was a teenager and learned quickly. Its a situation best represented by this little man right here -> All that stuff is there for the practitioner to work out. However, I can correct facts and gross philosophical mistakes when they come near my orbit.

Yes, that's right, he's writing a philosophy book, which is precisely what makes me wonder how and why he just suddenly asserts, with no grounds, that this figure is the right one. Is it research or reflection? My surmise is that he is wrongly quoting a figure that comes out of empirical studies on short term memory recall. If he is not quoting this, then I would certainly like to know where he got the number from... It *is* a relevant part if he wishes to assert that a writer is "deliberately flouting crow-epistemology" because he overloads the capacity of our occurrent awareness. If he assesses this capacity in terms of "units", is wrong about the number of units our mind can contain at a time, and hence is wrong about our capacity for understanding, it would be a mistake worth noting, no? Would you care if a psychologist said that he could augment your mental capacity or that he threatened to trim it a little? What if you protested in the latter case and then he told you "Oh, come on, it's just one unit, it's not really that important". That's the difference here. More importantly: this is a factual matter, not even a philosophical one, as you've already pointed out. But the error is his, not mine. The error is that he thinks this is actually philosophical issue, when the real philosophical stuff is something that lies deeper. What counts as a "unit"? How is it that we have arrived (erroneously) at this number of them? Does describing the limits of occurrent awareness (and precribing, as a normative belief, that someone not transgress them) in scientific, psychological terms really help us to understand how this stuff works? I'm curious - where did I "assume" this? Did I not, in fact, speak out for clarity, even if a little weakly, in my previous post? All I've said about the obfuscation is that, well, along with other things that may prove to be frustrating, confusing, or derailing, it happens! Very well, let me say it directly now - obfuscation and lying ought to be avoided by writers. Also, complaints about inevitable things and refusals to read an author based on a highly preconditioned dislike or discrete but narrow standards of what counts as a proper reading experience are to be avoided as well. My grounds for "inevitability" in this case are a)6,000,000,000 living human beings and a larger number of dead ones on planet Earth that b)don't (or didn't) speak the same language, live in the same time period, or have the same level of education that I do.

Okay, fair enough. So the level of difficulty *wholly* resides in the German language or his style, as the case may be. It seems I hastily misestimated this, but I have some experience reading philosophy in other languages and it seems that one of the main, general problems is sensically translating complex, dependent clauses and whatnot - of which there are many in Kant. Here, I'm generalizing from my experience with Greek and Spanish. This seems to be a source of much confusion in reading English translations of works in other languages. (Probably *any* language.) This is compounded by the fact that a great deal of native English speakers don't know a lot about the grammar of their own language. They think (and this is what I was taught in 3rd grade) that you place a comma where a "pause" is supposed to go... But again, I fail to see how this difficulty is truly a serious evil or worth much philosophical mention - that is, if you agree with the other posts. I think the implication in it's strongest form, from Rand and others, is that "Kant wrote intentionally in a difficult manner to confuse people, obfuscate the truth, or to cover up the fact that he didn't know anything" - hence, you don't need to read it because its worthless to you anyway. People say things like this all the time when the grounds they have for saying it are really only their own personal experience of difficulty when reading it - which can come about for *any one* of a number of reasons. It is certainly no reason to avoid reading it. Don't get me wrong - I like clarity in philosophical writing, and you can rib Kant/Hegel/Heidegger for writing in a manner that doesn't lend itself to that, but that's what you're stuck with if you get acquainted with their stuff. I was unaware of the accusations against Norman Kemp Smith. Where could I find out more about that?

They are important to his philosophy, yes. They are a necessary part of the structure - to deny that would be insane. But the emphasis that he places upon them is different than the emphasis that they place upon them. Nietzsche's and Rand's respective criticisms of Kant make it sound like he's *really* super concerned with getting knowledge about them or that he's denying the real existence of things (I assume that his is what Rand means with the phrase "evasion of reality", although I might be formalizing it a bit), both of which are positions that he does not hold. I don't think I made this clear in my original post. Well, I went and read the piece. Never read it before. It doesn't seem like this is the case. To begin with, he seems to be concerned about the time, place, and decorum of refusing to pay taxes (more about this in a second), disobeying an order, or speaking out against church dogma; he's not suggesting that we just blindly do what we're told and then we can think whatever we wish on our own time. Furthermore, the kinds of criticisms he suggests as examples are indicative of a Republican bent, e.g. the one about taxation. More importantly - why would we speak out? To change things, maybe? I don't know whether you are an Objectivist or not, but even this emphasis on free thought and expression should be important (if you are). He also makes it clear that minds cannot operate under institutions that are unnecessarily coercive - Rand's (and most libertarians) stuff about the evils of the initiation of force seems relevant here. And there are other examples here and elsewhere. Look up "Kant Democracy" on any search engine and you will find plenty of other stuff that shows that he was definitely for liberal democracy. Now, he has other commitments - the royalty, religion, etc. - so the idea is confused in some cases, but it is definitely present.

Well, I type *enough* anyways, right? Or is it that I type too much with no point? Okay, so I'm re-reading this and a few neat, concise, unit-economic points arise: 1. First off, if Peikoff is describing the psychology of short-term memory, as I think he is, then he is *factually* inaccurate in the third paragraph of that section. The normal range of "items" that one can store in short-term memory is from 5 to 9, not 6 to 8, with the average being 7. Go look that up in any introductory psychology book; this has been empirically tested many times. 2. Along with the above, IF he is talking about the psychology of short term memory, then the notion of a "unit" is itself in question. By a process called "chunking", we seem to be able to store more information if we break it up into larger pieces. For instance, if the series of numbers (which could be a code or a serial number, if you need to be practical about it) "176 820 592" could be read off as individual digits or 3 3-digit chunks. This itself has limits I would imagine, but they are not discussed in Peikoff's work. And this is if you buy the idea that the science of psychology is the end-all, be-all of explanations for mental stuff. I don't. 3. More importantly: so what? Are we going to complain because the meaning of a sentence is complex or requires more than one reading? What, because it stretches the limits of our cognitive capacity to read this stuff? If that's it, I honestly don't understand the issue here. Read the first part of the first post I wrote up there. 4. Philosophy is about the *connections* between ideas, some of which occur between my memory and a present state or occur across time in general, etc. That we have new instances of concepts or new items that we could potentially add to our instances of one is simple evidence of this. All of this requires that we necessarily move outside of one instance of directly awareness. Again, I don't see what the problem with this is. If we do actually do this, then the point of whether or not a given writer's works stretches our cognitive limits is moot. In any case, I could go on and on, which probably wouldn't amuse you nearly as much as it would amuse me. Remember also - the fact that Kant does actually have all of the commas, subordinate clauses and weird grammatical construction is because we, you and I, read a translated version of it. This is what's in part responsible for its obfuscation, not his style.

Well, I'm sure that as a person who is not naive to the sorts of objections to Objectivism that there are out there, you are well acquainted with the "cult" label that has often been attached to it. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that diagnosis, but (I think) I see both sides of the issue - on the one hand, you have to stand up for what you, as an individual cognizer, think is true and just - I mean, what else can you do if you actually DO care about these things? More importantly, there are some people who *just don't get it* and it doesn't pay to argue with them or to see their way. Also, in order to understand the views of others, you may need to define them in terms of your own. This may indeed come off as being cultish or endemic somehow. It is definitely selfish, which is entirely in step with her philosophy. On the other hand: it seems like intellectual virtues which I am in favor of cannot be taught. These virtues include things like thoroughness of presentation, open-mindedness (to a point), and accuracy in representing the views of a person you wish to critique OR agree with. After awhile, perhaps in the course of studying philosophy or any subject, they just simply become necessary to the activity itself to proceed further. Much like responsibility, they can only be encouraged, and that final connecting step is made not by the teacher, but by the learner him or herself, which is the point. The only thing I can do, really, to convince you that merely representing the views of others only in relation to your own is a vice is to explain how it won't pay off in the end, which is precisely something I can't (and won't) do. I don't really think you can go either way with this - you can't exhort someone to be selfish about this stuff any more than you can tell them to be open-minded. It's just something that you learn along the way and I'm sufficiently convinced from my own experience (this is the key word here) that it's intrinsically necessary to philosophy to do this, even if it isn't readily apparent from the beginning. It's obvious that misrepresenting the views of others or only representing them in relation to your own can pay off in the end, even it actually doesn't. I think the argument about "whether it pays" misses the point. The closest I can come is to say that IF you have a commitment to truth, then I think you are obligated to represent the views of others as well as you can, even if you do disagree with them. However, attempting to exhort you or anyone else on this issue is impossible. Which of Rand's works have I read? I have read "Philosophy: Who Needs It", "The Virtue of Selfishness", "The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Peikoff's)", "Anthem", "Fountainhead", the book of marginalia that was released not too long ago, some of the Den Uyl and Dennis Rasmussen essays, lots of other books about her, favorable or not. I have a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" that I've been meaning to read, but I have plenty of other books in the way first. I also try to keep updated on each Institute's websites. I would like to go to a conference of some sort, to see what it's really all about, but I don't really have the time right now, as I am busy completing school. What I think is so great about Objectivists is that they are active and they are strongest at having taste, culture, and not being afraid to be intellectual, which are qualities that are hard to come by in the general populace. I find SOME of her ideas pretty refreshing, but the others are just plain wrong-headed and in some cases, morally reprehensible. I remember I read an Op-Ed that not only condoned but endorsed the torture of Iraqi personnel as the rationally selfish thing to do. This is no doubt true, but I have several pretty good reasons (which I don't think Objectivists would listen to) why this is a moral evil, none of which have anything to do with instrumental rationality.

1. To begin with, let's not forget that the Critique is a dated piece, written in another language. As I assume that most of us on here speak English, I think I can say this uncontroversially. German has a syntax that is different than English; 18th century German is different than modern German. Accordingly, when you read it (*IF* you read it) it will seem weird, pedantic, and difficult. All of this should be obvious, but it strikes at the heart of so many of the "difficult, obtuse, hard to read, etc." remarks. In my opinion, which is far from synoptic but is more informed than the average bear, he writes very much like ancient writers did: long, complex conditional sentences of a very thorough nature. (I say this not to brag, but if you read any ancient Greek philosophy in the original language, you will notice that a sentence can unproblematically go on for a page or more...if you've read Victor Hugo, one of Ayn Rand's literary heroes, you will notice this as well.) It seems strange that there are posts on here that are essentially knocking Kant's ideas, not primarily for their inconsistency or incorrectness, but for their opacity. I'm no hardass, but it sounds a lot like whining to me. Yes, it's damn difficult, particularly the stuff after the Transcendental Aesthetic when he talks about the Transcendental Unity of Apperception. I had to read that at least 30 times. It's pretty damn easy to knock someone's ideas for their being unclear, because all you have to do is throw up your hands and say "I don't get it; it must be crap!" It's much harder to put aside hubris and just get to understand the guy on his own terms and then work out from there. If you, like Rand, have not at least read a secondary source about the book or the author, then you have *no* business criticizing it. There are plenty of them out there. Even though I can't stand Roger Scruton, his books are a pretty good place to start. All the needlessly complex diction, the useless, vain neologisms, etc. that can be ascribed to Kant can just as easily be ascribed to Rand. Everytime I see something like "Rand's Razor", her supposed "innovative addition" to philosophy, I don't know whether to laugh or puke. 2. It was also written to solve particular problems that had arisen at the time in science and philosophy. *Of course* if we compare to modern views some of it sounds stupid, crazy or just plain wrong. Darwin happened; the transition from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometry happened; Nietzsche happened; Rand happened. The first misconception is that it was written primarily to respond to Hume's skepticism - WRONG! That is but the tip of the iceberg. He was well-acquainted with the problems of a strict, thorough-going empiricism before he read Hume; the fact that Hume was an f'ing brilliant writer is what woke him out of his "dogmatic slumber" and made him miss his daily walk. It's an attempt to reconcile the ideas of Hume, Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Newton and others. For Chrissakes, look at the title: "Critique of PURE REASON" - the "Pure Reason" he had in mind was that of Descartes and Leibniz. In general, it had to do with general notions about the surety of our judgments about the world, why we perceive things the way we do, and - here's the kicker - why the arguments for the existence of God FAILED. Yes, he himself is motivated by a need to save his faith - but to say this pervades, destroys, and annihilates every other part of his philosophy needs more than a little examination. More importantly, what distinguishes him from other philosophers is precisely his willingness to cede some aspects of his religious faith to rationality. In fact, this is what got him in trouble: he was basically told to stop writing about his views by the King of Germany precisely because they undermined religion. In Chile, among other places, his book was banned because it left the question of God's existence up in the air. When Nietzsche said "God is Dead", echoing Max Stirner, one of the main reasons for this is that Kant had killed him! No, he is not an atheist, but on the other hand, most of the atheism I read today is at least twice as dogmatic as Kant would be about religion. Like Rand's for instance. And I would point out here that I'M AN ATHEIST. 3. Everyone, EVERYONE, including Nietzsche, gets hung up on this little phrase and its contrary - "the thing-in-itself" and "appearances", respectively. The only reason why I think that this is such an issue is because people psychologically associate two things with Rand's realism which lead them to condemn Kant's Idealism: A) they associate Idealism with a lack of tenacity or a sort of intellectual akrasia and they think that Realism is a sort of de facto epistemic point of view that is perverted by this weakness, or religion or something else. Needless to say, READ THE BOOK, and you will find that this distinction is NOTHING LIKE Rand conceived it in her various attacks on Kant in notes, articles, etc. 4. Kant's views have historically lead to subjectivisms of various sorts, but Kant himself was far from being one. He believed in objectivity, that the categories were what they were for all human thinkers. He was, of course, concerned with the subject, the thinker, but tell me what philosopher isn't. The reason why things went subjective is because, lo and behold, European anthropologists discovered tribes who lived in jungles, whose visibility was limited to a few feet in front of them, had a different perception of space than people who lived on plains did. That is, we found limits to his supposed objectivity. Yikes! If we're going to get hung up on who started what historical chain of events that lead to certain intellectual points of view becoming fashionable, ask yourself one question - who is responsible for their being two mutually opposed camps that claim to carry on the intellectual heritage of Ayn Rand? Her, both of them, or David Kelley alone? More importantly, people influenced Kant - it's not like he's some historical singularity. Are we really going to say, like Karl Popper, that anti-liberalism starts with Heraclitus? Or do we take it all the way back to the gymnosophs of Diogenes Laertius? 5. Kant was a firm believer in democracy, particularly a republican form of it: rule of law, private property rights, limited government interference with business, etc. He in fact makes explicit reference to jurisprudence in the CPR. 6. Kant wrote many other far more interesting things, like "Critique of Judgment", which is, to some extent, a pre-Darwinian discussion about the role of design and purpose in nature. The CPR gets a lot of press because of its historical importance. In retrospect, it could have been much more easily spelled out. I have not read it, but from what I understand the "Prolegomena" was Kant's attempt to be better understood. (Maybe this is a good place for people to start...) What prevents him from doing this is the fact that Kant lived in 18th century Germany, with all it's pomp and circumstance, formality and personality, and I live in 21st century America which is crowded with concise, gifted philosophical writers that put their contemporary French (and some German) counterparts to shame. 7. I don't hold much sympathy for Kant's views. I am, for the most part, a realist and an atheist. The reason why I've been very polemical in the above paragraphs is because I think that it's a frigging intellectual travesty to criticize and trivialize views that one does not understand merely because they might conflict with an attitude. It is quite obvious that RAND DID IT ALL THE TIME AND SO DO HER FOLLOWERS. What's amazing is that she actually admits it! If you read "Philosophy: Who Needs It" she openly admits, in the beginning of one essay that she did not read "A Social Theory of Justice" (the John Rawls book) but then goes on to criticize it. What allows her to do this? From what I know, she had a superficial grasp on philosophy that, after awhile, was received solely from her circle. I'm pretty sure that I won't be well-received. I always hope for the best, but Happy Hunting!