dream_weaver

Mystics do come in more than just a theistic 'flavor'.

I think it implies that most laymen are not keen as to how the two premises contradict one another. Most would not expect a Jaguar to materialize out of thin air in their garage, but do not associate asking where existence comes from as being a different form of basically the same expectation.

Most laymen would concur that nothing does not transmogrify into something. Many then turn around and almost immediately ask where the something comes from. The onus of proof comes to play on the one who asserts such an entityless event must have transpired.

Using Harrison's final point regarding life question it as a first level concept: Pointing at a live rabbit and a dead rabbit suggests that some thing can be alive or dead. Life is abstracted from living entities as an aspect they have in common contrasted with entities which are not alive.. Could it be that "life" is an axiomatic rather than a first level concept?

"Out of nothing?" Have you considered the geneology of a pencil?

While this won't provide feedback on your writing directly, Objective Communication might be one ARI course of interest to you. Writing your thoughts down, reviewing them for clarity and/or errors can be a process of "editing your thoughts". Reviewing the responses you receive from your questions with internal questions of your own such as: Did I get a clear answer to my question - i.e. did I frame my question clearly. if I did not, Was it the question that I asked? How can I ask it differently?

This thread strikes me as "reason reasoning about reason".

In ITOE, Miss. Rand identifies: "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." You know what it feels like when you are sad or get burnt. This are aspects of percepts integrated into concepts. The brain integrates the sight of an apple with its feel in the hand along with the sound of the crunch as you bite into it, the sweet taste and crunchy texture along with the smell, and automatically retains it. The sight of the fires flickering flame, the logs red glow, the crackling sounds associated with it, the burnt smell the warmth as you approach nearer, the burning sensation received by the touch, are integrated and automatically retained The recollections of the various aspects have to be isolated and integrated into the various terms we use of sweet, burnt, etc. Percepts assist us in this process. You perceive something. You recall it from a previous perception of it. You recall and consider something else that is similar or different. You decide to investigate by adding some more observations you think might be relevant. From the relevant percpets you can begin to abstract what you are trying to isolate for a further integration. Even "sad" need be isolated from other emotions and integrated. You were not born with knowing what sadness was. At some point along the line, it too had to be identified and integrated into a concept. The end of the earlier cited paragraph states: "The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery."

If the senses are aware of existence directly, does that translate into difficulties of a biopsychological phenomenon hitting conscious awareness directly? Is it not proper to say that you can sense that you can sense, you are aware that you are aware, you are conscous that you are conscious?

We aren't perfect? Hmmm. What would constitute a perfect human being? What aspect of reality would you suggest be rewritten (as if reality were rewritable - which, metaphysically, it is not)? After that, the section on Fallibility and Epistemology start to get fuzzy - vague approximations of what the issues are surrounding sound principles of thought analysis (i.e. the art of non-contradictory identificaion.) Before you can identify a mistake, you need a clear grasp of what a non-mistake is in order to recognise the mistake from what is not a mistake. Failure to bring that about would be a mistake. Miss. Take, Miss. Took, Miss. Understood, - sound like evil sea nymphs that wreaked havoc on unsuspecting sailors by enchanting them in the shroud of mist..

I put a math proof (1, 2) together for a three-hundred year old conjecture learning how to do it from scratch by my own research aided with some postive and negative feedback. If there is an error in it, it has not yet been brought to my attention.

The data of the processes of consciousness is the content reason seeks to identify and integrate. It would include that which one is aware of introspectively.

Now is providing proof of an error a P[r]opper form of criticism? edit: Darn emoticons

He suggested in a lecture sometime after The Metaphysics of Consciousness that he had erred in a previous lecture, inviting inquiry to the matter during the Q & A if anyone were interested. He mentioned it as an aside during the presentation. The question of the nature of the error was not raised. Perhaps he has augmented his position since then.

Per Dr. Harry Binswanger's June 5th's tweeted "It's called How We Know and it's at the typesetting stage. Will be ready in a month." "How We Know" Chapter Outlines

Both are examples of primacy of consciousness. Most people find a rain-dance amusing, but few believe there is any correlation between it and rain. This specific primacy of consciousness example is rejected in this case. The knowledge of the rain cycle supplants the rain-dance as an ancient superstitious novelty. The very question "Who created the universe?" presupposes that the universe was created by some form of consciousness. Here the primacy of consciousness example is accepted. The belief that everything must have a cause goes unexamined. The capacity to deal with abstractions relies on both the ability to concretize and the application of principles to specifics,

Conjectural per Merriam-Webster, is inference from defective or presumptive evidence. Objectivism uses the term knowledge as a relationship between the assertions and the evidence. Ironically, you assert that reading a book and understanding it is very different. Given your take on Objectivism's position about knowledge, it is conceptual consciousness that is fallible, not knowledge. A method to guide a fallible being in the quest for knowledge is what Objectivist Epistemology seeks to lay the groundwork for.

The title is taken from OPAR, chapter 1, page 23 The Metaphysically Given as Absolute The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable. All such facts are necessary. In Ayn Rand's words, the metaphysically given is absolute.

Think about it as a child discriminating entity, entity, entity, this entity again. The recognition this it is the same one, is the implicit concept "identity."

I wasn't aware that ITOE was written with that vein in mind. It's main thrust is unraveling concept formation, not refuting Popper. If you're interested in applying logic and the art of non-contradictory identification to Popper's negative approach or his criticisms of positive approaches, you would need to break it down to its premises and examine it in that light.

Interesting, regress had not occurred to me initially. As to the solution for a positive approach to identification, ITOE and OPAR both delve into it rather extensively. Trying to identify why a negative approach won't work, is at its essence, a negative approach. While studying what does not work may be benificial is some instances, studying what does work is only benificial in the instances it does work, which, incidently,makes it benificial in all instances.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to state that "You guess your view is that what you guess is thinking is ultimately done by guessing and criticism", although you would still have to guess at what guessing and criticism are?

Two (or more) individuals put their left hand in a bucket of ice water with their right hand in nearly scalding water for several minutes. Next they place both of their hands into a bucket of tepid water. The tepid water feels warm to the left hand and cool to the right. The form (sensation of warm/cool) of the object (bucket of warm water) does indeed depend on the the sensory apparatus (cold hand/warm hand). The form is experienced individually or personally,- such is the nature of awareness. Note that the relative temperature of the tepid water to the cool/warm hand is still ascertained to be warmer or cooler than the respective hands.

Imagine if Aristotle had invoked IP on the proper methods of using logic as he had discovered and developed it.

At the beginning of the chapter entitled "Abstraction from Abstractions" she writes: "Starting from the base of conceptual development—from the concepts that identify perceptual concretes—the process of cognition moves in two interacting directions: toward more extensive and more intensive knowledge, toward wider integrations and more precise differentiations. Following the process and in accordance with cognitive evidence, earlier-formed concepts are integrated into wider ones or subdivided into narrower ones." An axiomatic concept is the widest integration possible, or the most extensive knowledge available. On page 59 of ITOE2 she elaborates: "Since axiomatic concepts refer to facts of reality and are not a matter of "faith" or of man's arbitrary choice, there is a way to ascertain whether a given concept is axiomatic or not: one ascertains it by observing the fact that an axiomatic concept cannot be escaped, that it is implicit in all knowledge, that it has to be accepted and used even in the process of any attempt to deny it."