2046
-
Posts
2397 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
90
Posts posted by 2046
-
-
18 hours ago, Eiuol said:
I took the point to be that there are some senses which are meta-representational. Memory, for example, is entirely meta-representational. Having senses is enough to say that existence exists, but claiming direct realism is true requires some more reasoning.
Rand is absolutely clear when she says that awareness is an active process. Awareness, for her, is largely the act of perception, so when she says awareness is an active process, perception is too. The perceiver is interacting with the perceived. No, the perceiver and the perceived are not the same thing, but as perceptual acts are concerned, the perceived and the perceiver are nothing more than different perspectives on the same perceptual act. The perceptual act only exists because both the perceiver and the perceived are unified, and any separation of the 2 eliminates the perceptual act. In other words, they are part of the same thing in such a way that the thing (the perceptual act) exists because of both of them operating in unison.
I think this is good. I am a big fan of the priority of understanding the problem over any specific solution. And I am a big opponent of what I take to be a hand-wavy and strawman-y way of doing philosophy.
The connection between appearance and reality is a basic starting point and leads us to these themes of realism vs idealism, thus the accessibility of reality becomes a question. Once we start taking about perception, another basic theme that emerges is the question about the active or passive nature of the mind. If there is a mind-independent reality, one possible way of coming into contact with it is by being a passive recipient of information originating outside of it.
If we look at our best physiology and optics and so forth, and we start seeing that the mind is more more active, then we get the pushback against the passive model. It is now easy to caricature the view. And if then, on the other hand, minds have a much more active role, it’s easy to say that reality is then in some sense dependent on them. Then we extend that to saying our perceptual apparatus is not the only way that mind conditions reality, but our conceptual schemes as well. It’s not far to full blown idealism from there.
The question is partially whether any of that really follows from the initial premise. The question of primacy is a different, but related one that follows the accessibility issue. If there is no way to hook onto a mind-independent reality, in what way can it hold any prime significance in our schemes? And if we have to jettison our active picture of mind in the process, why hold onto an inaccessible something that can’t be checked?
Defeating direct realism becomes a matter of simply pointing to the activity of the mind and perception. Pointing out that direct realism does not imply the passive “bucket theory” of perception becomes important. But, it is to be stressed, that isn’t the same thing as saying direct realism is a product of some proof or deduction. It becomes more a question of how and how not to defend direct realism.
-
A is B, C, or D all the time, you silly person.
-
13 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
O'ist arguments against the primacy of consciousness can be divided into four classes:
Is this a good way of processing philosophical arguments? Only if this parallel piece of reasoning is also good:
Idealist arguments against the primacy of existence can be divided into … Idealists say… Some idealists appeal to So-and-so’s authority but we all know that’s a stupid fallacy… idealists often argue…
Where the ellipses are you can substitute some apparently dumb thing. Note how I never cite any idealist specifically, and never name anyone specific. If pressed I can just say “well that’s what I’ve heard them say” in conversations or online or something. What a great philosopher I am, it’s tough being such a good philosopher like me!
Note I don’t think there’s not a point to be made about Rand or Peikoff’s depth of treatment of any of these specific issues. Or of the “average objectivist” talk about idealism vs realism. But this isn’t anything more than blowing off steam and huffing about it.
-
22 hours ago, Frank said:
In Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Peikoff implied that challenges from science could not necessarily refute Objectivism, because even if science found something outlandish, like all things are puffs of meta energy, we still would be perceiving things made of this energy, and we're made of it, too. So, nothing changes for Objectivism.
That is not at all what that section of OPAR (45-6) is saying. He doesn’t say anything about anything’s being outlandish, that is not what “meta puffs” refer to, but a stand-in for whatever the fundamental particle or building blocks of matter is supposed to be.
And the point he’s trying to make isn’t that whatever the fundamental particle turns out to be, it “doesn’t refute Objectivism,” he says it doesn’t have any philosophical significance. I think this is false if taken in the literal sense, because whether or not there even can be a fundamental building block of matter, and what matter is, is itself a question for philosophy of nature. But anyways, that’s not the point of that section “sensory qualities as real.”
But more to your question: what if the scientific consensus were such and such, would that be a problem, well only if you assume scientism were true. Scientism here meaning something in the neighborhood of “truth is just what the scientific consensus says it is.” If that’s not true, then it’s not a problem for any philosophy necessarily, not just Objectivism.
Anyways, in general what science even is and what methods it employs and question it should be addressed is also itself discussed in philosophy. So without answering those questions, the further downstream question of what is objectivism’s relationship to scientific consensus is not really helpful.
-
1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:
What is the definition of "ontology" here?
Hey hey no technical jargon here you elitist!
By the way, since this was a point under contention in this thread, I'd like to post ARs comments on this, from a letter to John Hospers:
QuoteYou write: “sometimes they (the teachers) seem to be concerned with minor or trivial points, especially when they employ technical language, as they must do to make progress in their particular field of knowledge.” You imply that this is what I would oppose. Far from it: I hold that no point is minor or trivial, in any field of knowledge—I hold that philosophers, above all, must be as meticulously precise as it is possible to be, and I am in favor of the most rigorous “hairsplitting,” where necessary—I hold that philosophy should be more precise than the strictest legal document, because much more is at stake—and I am in favor of the most technical language, to achieve such precision. But: I hold that minor or trivial points cannot be studied ahead of their major or basic antecedents—I hold that precision in the discussion of consequences is worthless, if it starts in midstream and leaves in a state of undefined, unidentified fogginess those matters which are known to be the causes of such consequences—and I hold that technical language is subject to the same rule as layman language, or slang, or anything that is to be defined as language, namely: that it must refer to reality and must denote something specific; if it does not, it is not language, but inarticulate sounds.
-
1 hour ago, Boydstun said:
Most of my non-professional philosophy friends cannot tell me the difference between Kant and Berkeley or between Kant and Descartes off the top of the head. (As I recall, your first language is not English; do you know phrases like "off the top of the head"?) And many Objectivist friends of mine have not read much of the classical philosophers (or Freud, . . .) themselves and know only Rand's or Peikoff's representations and criticisms of them.
Most objectivists are like most amateur philosophy hobbyists in general: they're roleplayers.
-
I do appreciate a good book summary. But as you may have guessed, I have different thoughts. I'm glad you brought up dogmatic philosophy as a technical term because that's part of what I mean here. You say at once that you don't care for such academic claptrap as using strict technical terms for things (my words.) You only are interested in philosophy insofar as it contributes lessons to living your life. But also your main thesis is what Objectivists think about Kant. They get him wrong! I wanna fix that!
I'm sorry but I do see a tension between those things. Don't get me wrong, pursue whatever your interested in. I think I get the motivation: suppose two people you're friends with are fighting. If only they realized how much they have in common. You want Randians to like German philosophers because that's what you like.
But if what you're interested in is what we call a reputational rehabilitation of Kant in a very specific philosophical circle, then precisely using specific technical terms (and in ways that appeal into that circle's framework) is going to be a huge part of that.
20 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:Examples of this affinity:
- The status of perceptual form
- The 'subjugation' of nature (production) as central to morality
- Retraining from the initiation of physical force, also central to morality
- Free will as compatible with lawful nature.
- The artwork as a world-in-miniature (not mentioned in my summary), beauty as the pleasure resulting from overcoming tension.I think this list is great. Any one of them could be its own fullblown topic. But we need references to the text, and explanations of the terms into mutual language, and argument as to how they are similar or different. Do they reach the same conclusions from different premises? If so why? Etc.
Here are some examples of his type of thing being done well. (And some are just blog posts.)
"Rand, Kant, and the Objectivity of Colour" Roderick T. Long
"Rand on Kant: Let’s Use This as a Teaching Moment" Jason Brennan
"Conceptualism in Abelard and Rand" Peter Saint-Andre
"Ayn Rand and Friedrich A. Hayek: A Side-by-Side Comparison" Edward W. Younkins
-
6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
Thank you, I was unsure what was going on there.
My comments will be limited to matters of interpretation (until the very end.) When you're doing something like this, there is always the danger of stretching things out too much. There is also the danger of verbal agreement or disagreement when people are using words out of historical context and applying them to different people. In other words, of a sort of anachronism and equivocation.
Example: Suppose set myself to claiming Aristotle was a libertarian on the issue of free will. And I just claim that in passing in a paper about some different topic. Is that okay? Well, is he a libertarian? It's hard to say. The controversies over free will and determinism postdate his writings, and he doesn't ever address that question. It's more accurate to talk about the various parts of the soul and the role they play in choosing, and what counts as a voluntary action to Aristotle. It might be possible to do a text search for everything he said and using surrounding context, that I might make a thesis about whether or not he was a libertarian, if I converted the language over, but that takes work and space of its own. If I want to gain that point, I have to put in the honest toil, I can't just beg the question in passing. At best I would have to say, grant me this extremely controversial point passing, for the purpose of the point I'm trying to make. That makes my work a lot weaker.
Kant's thesis was aimed at the proposal that there are certain a priori conditions of experience. This was meant to answer questions raised much earlier by Hume that brought about deep skepticism about causation, self, and the relationship of mind to reality. The philosophy of mind emerged later in the late 19th and early 20th century as a distinct sub-discipline dealing with the relationship of mind to body and reality in general. In the second half of the 20th century, it developed its own unique technical language to answer questions brought up earlier.
Rand and Peikoff weren't a part of these debates. Nor were these debates or their technical terms aimed specifically at answering "how does conscious arise" or "what causes change in consciousness."
So is Peikoff a physicalist? I doubt it. He's not answer the questions you are asking and he's not using the terms you use. Nowhere does he say those things ("it arises out of just physical objects impinging.") The only time he talks about impinging in OPAR is talking about sense perception, and he distinguishes that from consciousness per se.
Is he a physicalist in the sense of the contemporary use of the technical term? Absolutely not.
The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy entry on physicalism states:
Spoiler"Philosophy of science, philosophy of mind A refinement of materialism introduced because not all physical phenomena are material. Physicalism assumes that physical science can encompass everything in the world, and that ultimately everything in the world can be explained through physics. Itis possible to reduce any scientific predicate to a physical predicate. The word was introduced by the logical positivists for the claim that all scientific statements could be translated into statements about physical or observable objects. In this sense,physicalism is close to scientism, which claims that any language that can not be reduced to scientific language is defective. Carnap took physicalism as a synonym for behaviorism. However, the Australia n philosopher J. J. C. Smart contrasted physicalism with behaviorism, taking the former to be a scientific approach and the latter a linguistic approach. Smart’s physicalism is also called the identity theory of mind or central-state materialism, because its main thesis is that mental events are identical to brain events."
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy entry on physicalism states:
Spoiler"physicalism in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism in the philosophy of mind is an application of the general metaphysical thesis of physicalism, namely the claim that everything in the space-time world is physical. Concerning the sphere of the mental, then, physicalism claims that all the facts about minds and mentality are physical facts."
To me, paradigmatic physicalists are the ancient atomists, Hobbes, Marx, and people like Smart, Donald Davidson, and the Churchlands. Peikoff definitely isn't saying anything like that, or even remotely near that, and explicitly argues against materialism. So, in other words, for me, I'm saying 'no, that point is controversial, if you want to gain it by honest toil, I'm going to need a lot more.'
As to your main thesis: you started off making a really controversial claim about Rand and Kant, then shifted it to Schelling, then started asking and answering other questions without tying it back to the main thesis, or motivating it or signposting it. The whole thing just seems scatterbrained to me.
-
3 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:
Because this is the number one thing L. Peikoff will bring up when arguing for physicalism. He'll say that you can't control the features of your own consciousness. Then he'll conflate 'consciousness has identity' with physicalism
What, in your words, do you take physicalism to be?
-
That is a good example of why Objectivism needed the concept of substantial form.
-
-
12 hours ago, Grames said:
I confess, I think sluts are hilarious. Sluts and drunks (similar mentality) ought to be ridiculed at every opportunity. Not just because ridicule can be entertaining but it can be persuasive to get people to change their behavior.
When you are this much of a miserable old man, your ridicule is of no value. It's similar to knowing Bill O'Reilly is out there shaking his fist at you on TV.
-
2 hours ago, Craig24 said:
I'm guessing they differentiate between a broken bone and a living thing (the unborn). Fixing a broken bone doesn't result in the death of a living thing, abortion does. That's the prolife view.
People find it hard often to hold two different things in their mind. They don't often see when they are shifting the goalposts or moving one criticism to cover up another. The best advocates will say "yes we are forcing you to labor because we think it's murder." That's quite a different thing than "you're not taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions" or "no one's forcing you to undergo some sort of labor." But it is common to retreat from one criticism into another.
-
I voluntarily had a person on bike relationship which sometimes can result in breaking ones arm. Damn it I guess I can't go to the doctor and get a splint now because who am I to skirt the consequences of my actions.
They're either this dumb or they think you are.
-
1 hour ago, Grames said:
I never understood this "forced labor" angle.
The inability to understand something is not necessarily a comment on the something.
-
One thing I've noticed among the pro-Russian right wingers is that they spend a lot of effort telling you about all this stuff about the US/NATO expansion, leaked phone calls, Azov, etc. to keep focus on the US/NATO as the "bad guys" in their current programming. But very few of them (?) either (a.) continue to say that since the US/NATO did all this stuff that therefore Russia's invasion is justified and amounts to self defense on the part of the Russians, or (b.) continue to say that nonetheless Russia's invasion is not justified and in fact they are committing a grave injustice worthy of resistance on the part of the Ukrainians.
Question: why is that?
Possible answer: They're not interested in the typical philosophical questions surrounding the issue. Finding out what one ought to do about a given situation in accordance with some set of general principles. (I mean in a Socratic sense that "care for one's own soul" would lead one to make sure one wasn't supporting or condoning or excusing injustice.) The interest here isn't even philosophical or practical at all. There is no truth one is trying to get at. One's goal is something else, like promoting one's self being an exciting contrarian "maybe I can make myself look like a really cool transgressive thinker." It's kind of a role play in one's head.
The use of one's faculties is not aimed at guiding action, but is rhetorical in nature, as if to say "don't look there!" To remind one "we're bad too!" is designed to shift the focus of the listener and leave the rest to implication.
Counter proposal: Putin/the Russian government does not have a legitimate security interest in NATO not expanding eastward or in the Ukraine wanting to be part of Europe. The reason is very simple: Putin is not a legitimate ruler and the Russian government is not morally legitimate. Putin has no right to rule at all, not over Ukraine and not even over Moscow. Indeed I, 2046 have more of a right to rule over Russia because at least I haven't violated anyone's rights or liberties and would immediately resign. It may or may not be strategically prudent to not upset Putin, to include tactical deception about one's intentions to join NATO, but he has no moral claim to keep NATO from his doorstep.
-
Another possibility: it could be made into this or that coherent position, if fleshed out and clarified. But that's probably not it, it's probably just bullshit (in the Frankfurtian sense.)
-
2 hours ago, necrovore said:
Technically a right to production and trade could also be upheld in such a manner (although probably not by this Court.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York
Alito actually mentions Lochner v NY in the opinion and explicitly calls it "freewheeling" and "discredited."
-
7 hours ago, Boydstun said:
The mystical metaphysics is with the voters who voted for Republican candidates in state-wide races or for the Presidency in the these last decades because they favored overturning Roe and outlawing pre-viability abortions. The Justices appointed by G. W. Bush and by Donald Trump were candidates for appointment because they satisfied the requirement of being in step with that electoral constituency.
After reading the leaked draft, this is indeed the main line of reasoning presented: the argument from democracy. Highly contentious moral views ought to be decided by the people, this is one, therefore this ought to be decided by the people.
A second line of reasoning in the draft is an appeal to history or tradition. He argues that if a freestanding individual right to bodily autonomy is appealed to, well there's no historical basis for that, and after all it would lead to legalization of drugs and prostitution and that would just be crazy.
-
In this view, I'm saying honesty is a principled commitment to never distort, fake, evade, misrepresent, or pretend things are other than what they are. I think that's a pretty straightforward reading of what Rand is saying in both the fiction and the non. Call it the knowledge acquisition view of honesty, or aspect of honesty, as opposed to the conventional "don't deceive others" view or aspect.
A commonplace example might be a person in a relationship that feels bad vibes or more distant behavior from their partner that has been building for a while, but doesn't investigate its source and keeps pretending everything is fine.
This has nothing to do with the fact that the person may not actually achieve knowledge even after discharge of one's epistemic obligations. But neither does it have to do with refusing to deceive deceiving others. It has more to do with practicing self-deception. The person isn't really seeking correspondence with reality, or if they are, only up to a point. As a result, the ability to acquire knowledge about the relationship or why the person feels a nagging anxiety will be hindered; their wellbeing and happiness will be hindered.
Keep in mind what we're discussing here: whether honesty is just about "not deceiving others" or whether it is an intellectual virtue about one's own relationship towards facts in guiding one's own knowledge acquisition that derives its status as a virtue from the value of knowledge to the virtuous agent. This personal aspect of honesty as I'm highlighting it does not utilize the usual type of arguments about not about damaging reputation or relationships with others or about ill-gotten gains, not being able to get away with it, or any of the social reprocussions, but about making sure your own mind is active and you're not bullshitting yourself ("the unreal can have no value.")
-
1 hour ago, Grames said:
2046, is there an inappropriate way to seek correspondence with reality? What is referent of that idea?
I continue to hold that distinguishing between the objects of the virtuous actions is helpful.
The concept to be placed opposite is seeking correspondence in the appropriate ways as opposed to just having correspondence. I do think there is a concept of seeking correspondence (a long winded way of saying seeking truth) in inappropriate ways. An example might be phlogiston, a substance thought to be released during combustion. They early chemists really were trying to understand something, had various reasons for why they postulated this, and began to abandon the concept after it became clear that there was no such thing and the reasons were methodically bad.
-
It is broad, but the relationship in the relevant sense is of "not faking reality in any manner" (VOS 28 my emphasis), and "loyalty to reality" (Journals 648.) The import of loyalty and not faking carries more weight more than just correspondence, but is about seeking correspondence in appropriate ways. That does not require others to apply.
-
That is not really what the virtues are for, so it sounds like you're talking about something different right now.
-
1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:
No, you still must produce what you need.
You must be honest for yourself, you must be rational for yourself, etc. All of these have the "for yourself" elements. But being in a Robinson Crusoe type scenario isn't a stable pattern of flourishing, the vast bulk productivity takes place in society and with friendships and relationships and trade is paramount.
Can the Objectivist view on free-will be considered a form of agent-causation?
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted
If you’re not familiar with it, you should probably not completely make something up about it.
Agent is from the Latin agens which just refers to the subject of action. Agent causation refers to change caused by an agent rather than event. Agents can be rocks, birds, a match being lit, ice melting, or people acting. Some theorists use agent for humans specifically, or for any particular substance that persists through time.