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Ogg_Vorbis

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  1. Chomsky's theory is just a theory anyway. And it is under dispute from different angles which caused Chomsky to refine it several times. At any rate, it's problematic and not a subject for philosophy.
  2. Similar to Kant's concept of inherent structures shaping experience, you posit a universal "faculty of language" present in all humans. This innate ability lays the foundation for language acquisition and allows learners to internalize grammatical rules and form concepts. You highlighted the role of rules and structures in language, akin to Kant's emphasis on categories and schemata organizing our understanding. By learning a small set of "atoms" and rules, individuals can construct complex concepts and express them through language. You acknowledged the crucial role of concepts in language and emphasizes that "a faculty is a built-in ability to create a cognitive structure based on sensory input." This aligns with Kant's view of concepts being necessary for structuring our understanding of the world. However, you acknowledged limitations in learnability, suggesting that not all cognitive structures or rules are equally learnable, unlike Kant's emphasis on the uniformity of a priori categories. Your view is a relative form of tabula rasa. A new mind at least contains built-in faculties, abilities. This, as you perhaps know, lacks the a priori quality of the Kantian forms and categories. So while, in that view, one can be reasonably certain that causality is a law of nature, certainty itself is only a psychological state. It doesn't by itself guarantee that causality is in fact a law of nature or a corollary of existence. Furthermore, the requirement that one use the concept of causality in order to deny it does not, by itself, prove that causality is a law of any kind.
  3. Thankfully, Kant didn't say that people have built-in concepts. If they were built-in, they wouldn't be a priori concepts and would lack the necessary force of lawfulness or that of a natural order of things. And gathering concepts does not lend them the a priori necessity they require for lawfulness. Causality wouldn't be a law of nature. Principles and laws can't be derived by observation, no matter how many observations of causal events have been made. How did Rand discover that causality is a law of nature?
  4. In a letter to a fan circa 1965, Ayn Rand wrote - 'I sympathize with your problem, particularly in regard to modern dictionaries. Perhaps the older dictionaries (of about thirty years ago) may be somewhat more helpful.' Then I go back to The Fountainhead and read this: 'The error was caused by my reliance on a dictionary which gave such misleading definitions of these two words that "egotist" seemed closer to the meaning I intended (Webster's Daily Use Dictionary, 1933).' In other words, she advised a fan to look back to around 1935 for a decent dictionary -- and yet in the 1940s she had a problem with a dictionary published in 1933. So my question is: how far back do I need to go to find a trustworthy dictionary, one that's not "modern"? And why did she trust a Random House dictionary published in 1966? (See her article 'Credibility and Polarization.')
  5. You jumped too quickly, because that was pulled out of context. I have also compared them to the delimiting of Newtonian mechanics to its realm. I wrote that the senses are valid as far as they go, such as to reading this post. Another person claimed, in a post dated 2-17, that the ITOE was the answer to the problem of universals, and a few days later, in a post dated 2-24, claimed it wasn't even intended to be solved in the book. Was that an instance of the virtue of honesty, or evasion? But do you see me engaged in any finger-pointing accusations? Of course, there will be something in the exact wording of his posts that'll give him an out, as usual. Well, nice try at fingering the non-Objectivist, Marc, but your favorite author isn't getting off that easy. You weren't being intellectually dishonest, were you? After all, everything I wrote about the senses is right there on page 10 for you to read, including the part about delimiting their validity as Newtonian mechanics was delimited by Einsteinian relativity. Delimited, Marc, not falsified. The issue of percepts is just the tip of the iceberg. On the issue of percepts, ITOE should be banned for intellectual dishonesty, for Rand trying to have Direct Realism based on an Indirect Realist premise borrowed from science, not to mention the fact that the book assumes two premises by petitio, as I have proven, and she managed it in a single sentence. I'm awaiting your long response. If we keep our responses impersonal things will go much more politely here. If I wanted to personally attack Rand, I would bring up her old-fashioned 1920s hairdo, or something like that. Addressing philosophical arguments is not a personal attack, and since they are not even your arguments, since you didn't write ITOE, that would be even less a personal attack.
  6. You might not agree, based on something Rand wrote, but then you have to agree based on something Rand wrote. And here's the problem: Rand tried to have it both ways, and in the same paragraph, so naturally everybody wants to say one thing and think another. Observe: 'A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of "direct perception" or "direct awareness," we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.' (ITOE, p. 5) Here you have it, and yes, Moivas, I believe the senses are valid for giving this as evidence. You have Rand stating that a percept is a group of sensations -- retained, yes -- but more importantly, integrated by the brain, the percept resulting which then gives "direct perception" of reality. This is impossible, simply impossible. Rand is trying to provide for or characterize it as Direct Realism on the basis of a theory (scientific or otherwise) that looks exactly like Indirect Realism. So you see, anybody can argue any which way they want here. I believe Rand wanted to provide for Direct Realism. But on the grounds she provided, it is simply not going to happen. And no, I haven't confused it with the memory of a percept, if that's what you're saying. What you said about the spherical shape of the ball was delved into on a webpage that I seem to have misplaced at the moment. I agree completely with your concerns, but they have been answered in some literature or other, and yes the perception has to go beyond what the eyes give which is only a convex shape. There is much, much more to perception than -- meets the eye. Your concern is well-placed.
  7. I know all that. You don't understand the nature of the petitio principii. One does not necessarily arrive at a petitio via an argument. It can be arrived at via the claim to self-evidence, as in Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," in which he wanted to make sure nobody thought the "ergo" implied an inference. So what are you telling me? It's an axiom! I have to stand up and salute! Peikoff tosses out that word "axiom" like he was tossing a salad full of them. Everybody will grant "A is A," or as Leibniz put it, "A is not non-A." I think you should know by now that I have ITOE fairly well memorized. And I have read Leibniz, who believed there wasn't a single question askable by reason that couldn't be answered by reason: that is the principle of sufficient reason, which, of course, is a petitio, and which took reasoning far beyond any subject involving Rand and her axiom of perception. So I have to ask: who had more respect for the vast power of reason, Rand or Leibniz? Who limited reason to the perceivable, and why? Rand, because she was Aristotelian. But I'm telling you that none of the scientific advances of the past 200 years would have been possible using Aristotelian empiricism or Objectivism. Because none of them, insofar as they involved paradigm shifts, were based in the senses, but were, indeed, paradigm shifts away from dependence upon the senses. It could even be argued that Euclidean geometry wasn't based on the senses, since the eyes give us two lines, like railroad tracks, meeting at a vanishing point in the distance and not remaining parallel according to the senses, so much for their validity. Reason must lift the mind beyond this faulty sensory evidence, which we know to be false not on the basis of the sensory evidence, but on the basis of reason, of rules of inference and the like. Copernicus could never have raised the human mind beyond the geocentricism implied when merely perceiving the cosmos around us, if his theory was based on what his senses told him about it. You will say that his sun-centered theory is based on his perception that the earth has a sun. Yes, but not the centeredness of it, and that's the theory that bypasses the senses entirely and in which reason goes on its own powers. And through the passage of centuries, even all evidence of the senses is forgotten, and the very idea of a cosmic center is abandoned by reason, perception being abandoned along with it. Perception brings evidence about which reason raises questions to be answered by reason, but not through the use of the evidence of the senses, not any more. However, I never said that 'existence exists' is false, or that the senses aren't valid, a petitio is not necessarily false, it is only "self-proving." The requirement is not a logical fallacy, I said that before to you regarding the need for logic to have something to churn out conclusions with. Remember? But the petitio involved in it is a logical fallacy, and this cannot be denied without denying the logic behind it. Furthermore, a petitio is a formal fallacy, not based in the senses but in the mere form of the inference or assertion itself. So you see, logic does not always rely on the evidence of the senses, that right there should clue you in to the very need for Objectivism to find an alternative to the axiom. Like I said before, get rid of the assumption at the basis of your logic, and you have eradicated the petitio which itself is not based on empirical facts but only logical form. The answer thus lies in reason, in its formal pursuits, not in the validity of the senses even granting their validity. What the senses give you is two railroad tracks meeting at a vanishing-point. Now drive your train down a length of the track, and you will find that the vanishing-point never changes, it always remains the same distance away. This is the world of perception that your senses give you. If reason was dependent upon this evidence, it would conclude - and rightly so - that this vanishing-point where the two tracks meet must be at a point an infinite distance away. The fact that the tracks aren't an infinite distance in length matters not to the senses, because the senses don't think, they only obey automatically, as you said, their physical form. Thank God or whoever that the validity of the senses is not axiomatic, not to be taken for granted, or else science would not have advanced one iota, even Euclidean geometry would have been impossible except as a fantasy and not the seemingly unquestionable theory that ruled science for over 2000 years. In the history of geometry, it was not the evidence of the senses that ruled out Euclideanism, but the mere logical form of its axioms which became questionable, their dependence versus independence, and this is a relationship existing, not between these axioms and reality, but between these axioms and themselves. The fifth postulate, being found independent, utterly vanquished Euclid's long reign, it was no longer axiomatic for reality only for itself, and it had absolutely nothing to do with their relationship with sensory reality or even non-sensory reality. Google the search string 'euclid fifth postulate independent.' As far as the senses are concerned, they are good for what they do within their realm, just as Newtonian mechanics is good enough in its own delimited realm, except when dealing with questions such as the retrograde motion of Mercury. And that question was not given by the senses, it was raised by reason based on gathering some sensory evidence, the answer given by reason and having nothing to do with any theory based in the senses. But here's the point: the evidence-gathering would not take place at all unless reason determined that it should take place, and then, in the long run, the answer was not "rational" at all, not in your Objectivist terms, because the answer was not based out of sensory evidence, but simply reason. We all know that the geometricians had to look at the Euclidean postulate in dispute, the fifth postulate. That is not the point. I am not asking that reason be blind to the senses, only that it question them. The senses are valid in terms of being able to see the fifth posulate in writing -- but that is as far as it goes, and that is far, far from enabling reason to solve the problem of its independence, and in this, reason had to go on its own powers.
  8. I want to state first off that the basic percept idea was Moivas's, not mine. I merely agreed with it, and tried to interpret it a bit. If you disagree with my interpretation I'm ok with that. I disagree if he still thinks it has anything to do with Rand's idea of a percept. And I see you have dispensed with Rand's 'chaos of sensations' talk and moved on to talk about what we can know through our senses: percepts and attributes. I never thought that there was an identity between percept and entity, I thought your idea of a percept was not distinguishable from 'entity,' and cited Moivas as having the better definition of 'percept.' When you say that a percept provides evidence of an entity, that is Indirect Realism on the face of it. In that case they are not equivalent; if it were Direct Realism, then 'percept' and 'entity' would be equivalent terms. Not that I agree with that either, I sided with Moivas on this issue. Entity is the genera from which is distinguished 'percept', and for lack of a better term, 'non-percept'. You say 'percept' is the entity perceived, and 'non-percept' is any entity not in perceptual range, regarding a single moment or act of awareness. Moivas's idea has more to do with the range of human perception itself. Individual atoms constituting tables are not percepts, tables are. Maybe you're right about your definition of 'percept'; I could go either way, as long as it disputes Rand on this, but I can't go along with any form of Indirect Realism.
  9. Wikipedia has this to say on the subject of Descartes' cogito: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum 'Descartes felt that this phrase, which he had used in his earlier Discourse, had been misleading in its implication that he was appealing to an inference, so he changed it to "I am, I exist" (also often called "the first certainty") in order to avoid the term "cogito".' In other words, according to this article, not even Descartes wanted his Cogito to be confused with an inference, that is, an argument. And I've read that somewhere before too, which is where I got the idea before finding it on Wikipedia. The Cogito implies that, even if you doubt that you're thinking, the doubt itself is still a thought; therefore, you are thinking even in the act of doubting it. Does that remind you of a more modern version of the Cogito found in ITOE? Even if you intend to disprove the validity of the senses in doubting them, their validity must be taken for granted in the very effort of disproof, as their validity must be taken for granted in all instances of logical proof. That is just Descartes' Cogito petitio applied to the problem of the senses.
  10. The Philosopher's Toolkit gives an example of a petitio that's not an argument, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." It contains the word "therefore," but is it an argument? Upon closer examination, you will not find a single property to the statement by which one can attribute to it the form of an argument. It is simply asserted, and a petitio.
  11. Some in this thread say the problem of universals isn't even in the book, some say it is. Some even contradict their previous statements, first saying the problem is answered by the whole book, and then denying that it's even in the book. Interesting. Here's another interesting point. Some say that Rand's statement regarding the stolen concept fallacy used in disproving the validity of the senses is Rand's argument for their validity, the discussion of their validity not being necessary 'since the arguments of those who attack the senses are merely variants of the fallacy of the "stolen concept".' (3) But that may or may not be her argument, and in either case, it is a petitio or circular to say, "You can't disprove their validity without relying on their validity, therefore we assume (even if only for purposes of that discussion) they are valid." And that is the implication of the statement on page 3. That is a petitio even on the face of it. In all the Rand literature I've read, which is the vast majority, I've never seen a single discussion about the validity of the senses that doesn't rely on this argument. Let's see what Peikoff has to say about this issue in OPAR: 'The validity of the senses is an axiom. Like the fact of consciousness, the axiom is outside the province of proof because it is a precondition of any proof.' (39) Circular. And I don't even want to delve into the fact that he then states that the axiom is a corollary -- axiom, corollary, which is it? Is "axiom" now identical with "corollary"? That is why I suggested to Moivas that I provide some quotes from that work, although, really, I want to save you all the intellectual embarrassment by not starting a new thread about it. I am not cruel. So moving on to the next relevant quote: 'The purpose is not to argue for the testimony of our eyes and ears, but to remove the groundless doubts about these organs that have accumulated through the centuries.' (39) Remove them? How? Blank-out. Unless Peikoff considers a petitio to be a valid argument form. The skeptic doesn't have to ground his doubts, all he has to do is ask for the proof, and then declare it a petitio. It doesn't even take a skeptic to do that, any empirically-grounded Aristotelian logician could do it, because Aristotle invented the idea of a petitio in the first place. No, she declared the discussion irrelevant to that context, because their validity, along with the axiom "existence exists," only needs to be assumed. And by definition of petitio, any such assumption is unwarranted, groundless, even if the conclusion from the assumed premise is true. It doesn't matter if ITOE was about the discussion, what matters is that ITOE assumes the premise. And so, I realize you asked me for a textbook description of a petitio. After all, perhaps I edited Wikipedia's petitio article to say what I wanted it to say, and then cited it here. Who knows? Or perhaps an Objectivist wrote the article. At any rate, what do you think of the book "The Philosopher's Toolkit"? It has a couple pages devoted to a discussion of "begging the question." And it pretty much reflects the wikipedia article, but using a different example. Here it is: 1. Violence against children is wrong. 2. Spanking is violence against children. (Assumption) 3. Therefore, spanking is wrong. As the Toolkit says, "It is the sort of argument that preaches only to those already converted," in this case, to the premise that spanking is violence against children. And in the case of ITOE, it is an obvious instance of preaching to the converted. Here's why. For Rand to state that the axiom "existence exists" must be remembered -- when it has never been discussed before in the book or the series -- is an obvious case of preaching to those who already know it and believe it, because anyone naive to Objectivism, in reading that Foreword, would be totally confused by the statement that he should remember something he's never heard of before ('and one must remember the axiom: Existence exists'). This is such an obvious petitio that I don't really need to consult a textbook -- Rand's ITOE is the textbook example of the fallacy of the petitio principii. And two examples in one sentence, that is not only textbook, that is a homerun -- no, it is a grandslam.
  12. Here's another interesting fact about the petitio. Even if Paul is telling the truth -- which would have to be validated using the senses -- the conclusion is true, yet the argument still commits a petitio. So mutatis mutandis, Objectivism's conclusion about the validity of the senses may be true, yet the argument toward the conclusion commits a petitio, that is, a logical fallacy -- even if there is no argument. A complete lack of argument, a base assertion, counts as a petitio too, even if the assertion is true.
  13. Here are two examples, embedded in a single statement, of what I am calling a petitio principii: "For the purposes of this series, the validity of the senses must be taken for granted—and one must remember the axiom: Existence exists." (ITOE, p. 3)
  14. I wasn't able to finish my reply last time, this edit window stopped allowing me to add further comments. It wouldn't even let me copy and paste after a certain point. So I never got a chance to give you an example of a petitio, when anyway the Objectivism claim about the senses is such an obvious example that it doesn't require a Ph.d. to figure it out. I think you should know first off that the idea was invented or discovered by Aristotle, who did everything right with logic but pretty much flubbed the rest of his philosophy and science. Here's a simple example for you from Wikipedia: Suppose Paul is not lying when he speaks. Paul is speaking. Therefore, Paul is telling the truth. In Objectivist logic, you are asking me to affirm the validity of the senses as an assumption, that is the supposition in the first premise of the wiki argument. I am not therefore asking Objectivism to divorce logic from reality, I am asking Objectivism to change its supposition, the assumption underlying its logic theory, into something that is not an assumption, thus eliminating the petitio.
  15. That is the whole question of truth: empiricism, or rationalism? There's no such thing as a pure rationalism out there anyway. And your own empirical intellectual certitude cannot have been gained from the senses, not if it is based in more than mere psychological confidence in the rational mind. I hope you don't mind my calling Objectivism empiricism, based as it is in the senses. The extreme forms of empiricism are simply into data gathering and number crunching, and I'm not saying that's Objectivism. Your logic is grounded in the senses, but your logical certainty about their validity cannot be grounded in them without committing petitio. So that foundation has to be somewhere else, it simply hasn't been discovered yet, it is implicit knowledge. As you say, there is a lot of work to do yet. Too bad I don't see anybody doing any work, just a few changes Peikoff made to the epistemology and a theory of induction.
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