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Are Rand and Peikoff right about materialism?

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Both say that Objectivism isn't metaphysical materialism. Peikoff says that materialism is a good theory of physics, but not a good theory of metaphysics. Can someone explain why Objectivism can't be a philosophy of materialism? I understand that the reason is because they are drawing a distinction concerning consciousness, and are saying that the conscious mind is something more than the physical brain. But is this really against materialism? Insights please.

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You’ll find they use the term 'Materialism' to denote denial of free will. The mind is the product of random 'glandular squirtings' is how Peikoff (quite felicitously) characterized it at some point. This is different from the way many religious types use the term, derogatively, to describe anyone who claims the 'soul' dies with the body.

Edited by Ninth Doctor
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Where did you hear or read these opinions by Peikoff and Rand?  I'd like to re-read them for myself before attempting to respond.

 

Hi, Grames. I read a lot of various but not very detailed articles about their views. Here's a place to start.

 

http://www.philosophyinaction.com/blog/?p=559

 

I have been unable to find much in the way of primary sourcing from Rand or Peikoff, other than them being quoted. But the quotes I've seen so far by them aren't very detailed, and I suspect there's more in Peikoff's OPAR in Chapter One, but I haven't been able to read it yet.

Edited by secondhander
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Ninth Doctor gave a good response above.  Objectivism is against the kind of "reductive materialism" that would deny volition and minds exist.  The opposite position to reductive materialism, while remaining materialist, is strong emergence.  
 
There is a thread here "Weak vs. Strong Emergence" that gets into this in depth.  link to http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22062

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Do you think, then, that Hsieh is wrong to say that Objectivism doesn't endorse metaphysical materialism?

 

Or, for that matter, do you think Rand and Peikoff were wrong (or not clear and precise enough) in saying that Objectivism rejects materialism?

 

(I'll try to find citations).

 

These are excerpt's from Diana Hsieh's "Mind in Objectivism: A Survey of Objectivist Commentary on Philosophy of Mind." Found here: http://www.philosophyinaction.com/docs/mio.pdf

 

Hsieh has said that that paper is "outdated in some ways," but doesn't specify which ways. The citations of Piekoff and Rand, then, are secondary, not primary. But I don't have OPAR and haven't read it yet.

 

Leonard Peikoff's only discussion of the ontology of mind and body in his 1991 book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand occurs in a section entitled “Idealism and Materialism as the Rejection of Basic Axioms” (Peikoff 1991, 33-6).

 

Does he mean that Idealism and Materialism both reject basic axioms, and therefore are false?

 

After explaining the Objectivist rejection of the supernatural in the opening of this section, Peikoff turns his attention to the other half of the “false alternative of consciousness versus science,” namely materialism (Peikoff 1991, 33).
 
Does he mean that the philosophy of materialism is false because it is viewed as one half of a false dichotomy between science and consciousness? If so, is it proper to say that materialism holds that consciousness doesn't actually exist? Or is it that some types of materialism hold that position, and that Peikoff was over-generalizing by speaking of materialism as a whole?
 
 

In his discussion of the presumption of monism in philosophy of mind, Peikoff does explicitly deny that Objectivism endorses dualism. He writes: A philosophy that rejects the monism of idealism or materialism does not therefore become “dualist.” This term is associated with a Platonic or Cartesian metaphysics; it suggests the belief in two realities, in the mind-body opposition, and in the soul's independence of the body—all of which Ayn Rand denies (Peikoff 1991, 35).

 

Does this mean that materialism must hold to monism, or is it possible that materialism can affirm the kind of non-monism/non-dualism approach that Peikoff says Objectivism holds? And how is Objectivism not monist, but also not dualist?

 

There is more that Hsieh cites and discusses, but I think that's a starting point.

Edited by secondhander
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The primacy of existence over consciousness is denied by Idealism, and the unavoidable and undeniable fact that there is consciousness (an axiom of Objectivism) is denied by Materialists. The way these words are used are not novel to Rand or Peikoff. The Idealism/Materialism way of dividing thinkers is equivalent to finding which side of the mind/body dichotomy they favor. Objectivism rejects the mind/body dichotomy as false, but it does not do so by denying the existence of mind or body.

This does not mean that Objectivists are materialists. Materialists—men such as Democritus, Hobbes, Marx, Skinner—champion nature but deny the reality or efficacy of consciousness. Consciousness, in this view, is either a myth or a useless byproduct of brain or other motions. In Objectivist terms, this amounts to the advocacy of existence without consciousness. It is the denial of man's faculty of cognition and therefore of all knowledge.

Ayn Rand describes materialists as "mystics of muscle"—"mystics" because, like idealists, they reject the faculty of reason. Man, they hold, is essentially a body without a mind. His conclusions, accordingly, reflect not the objective methodology of reason and logic, but the blind operation of physical factors, such as atomic dances in the cerebrum, glandular squirtings, S-R conditioning, or the tools of production moving in that weird, waltzlike contortion known as the dialectic process.

If one wants to deny the existence of the supernatural there is a tendency to want to call oneself a materialist, but then the history of philosophy lumps materialists into the camp of determinists, which Objectivism rejects. It is an issue where the Objectivist position is new and does not follow the historical divide within philosophy.

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Oh, and on the topic of Monism there is a lecture series "Unity in Epistemology and Ethics" where Dr. Peikoff classifies Objectivism as among the Monist philosophies.
 
From my Notes (link in my signature):

Ancients Greeks were the first civilization to set out to find unity by seeking "the one in the many". They are the source of the quest in both metaphysics and epistemology.
Thales vs. Anaxagoras is the first expression of monism vs. pluralism.
Thales: "Everything is water."
Anaxagoras: "Everything is unique."

Monism is construed broadly, the reduction of the many things that exist to the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water counts as a type of Monism because it is still a reduction from the vast diversity of particulars that is perceived. Monism need not be restricted to literally one.

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The primacy of existence over consciousness is denied by Idealism, and the unavoidable and undeniable fact that there is consciousness (an axiom of Objectivism) is denied by Materialists. The way these words are used are not novel to Rand or Peikoff. The Idealism/Materialism way of dividing thinkers is equivalent to finding which side of the mind/body dichotomy they favor. Objectivism rejects the mind/body dichotomy as false, but it does not do so by denying the existence of mind or body.

If one wants to deny the existence of the supernatural there is a tendency to want to call oneself a materialist, but then the history of philosophy lumps materialists into the camp of determinists, which Objectivism rejects. It is an issue where the Objectivist position is new and does not follow the historical divide within philosophy.

 

>>>the unavoidable and undeniable fact that there is consciousness (an axiom of Objectivism) is denied by Materialists.

 

It depends on the particular kind of materialism one accepts. Many materialists accept the existence of consciousness as an epiphenomenon; i.e., it is caused by physical factors in the brain and its attributes and functions are fully reducible to and explainable by those physical factors; but it is, nevertheless, non-material. However, though it is itself caused by these factors, PRECISELY BECAUSE IT IS NON-MATERIAL, it does not, and cannot, cause anything further. It's like a "heat sink" in electronics, a place where heat can be vented for the sake of dissipating itself; to the epiphenomenalist, consciousness is simply a non-material "sink" where physical activity emanating from the brain ultimately winds up and dissipates itself.

 

 

>>>Objectivism rejects the mind/body dichotomy as false, but it does not do so by denying the existence of mind or body.

 

I don't think that makes much sense. Mind is the non-material; body is the material. Obviously, they are NOT the same thing, so there's a dichotomy by definition. Living things (especially man) somehow combine these two things in a complementary way, but they are not "integrated" in the sense of being mixed or dissolved into one another. There's a dichotomy because both are distinct and identifiable, at least, subjectively by each individual.

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.

History of Materialism (1866 – 3 volumes)

Friedrich Albert Lange

 

Eliminative Materialism

 

RW, I don’t know if you have read Atlas Shrugged, but therein Rand criticizes the materialisms of Marx and of Skinner under her label “mystics of muscle,” and she tries to compose a unified relationship of body and mind, affirming each. Rand, and I too, would go for your integration-but-not-dissolving of mind and matter. Mind is a feature of living brain in Rand’s view, as are all other forms of consciousness lower than mind.

 

I am a non-reductive physicalist, and this may be consistent with Rand’s view of mind and matter (mind, brain, and physical world).* I think true the Union theory of mind and brain set forth by Ted Honderich,* though I think his inference of determinism from it is unsound.

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Second hander said:

"Does he mean that the philosophy of materialism is false because it is viewed as one half of a false dichotomy between science and consciousness? If so, is it proper to say that materialism holds that consciousness doesn't actually exist? Or is it that some types of materialism hold that position, and that Peikoff was over-generalizing by speaking of materialism as a whole?"

I agree with Hsieh on this. The kind of materialism Peikoff was talking about is not the only kind. I consider myself a materialist for reasons different than most who are on the traditional dichotomy between religon - atheism. For one, philosophically holding entities as causal primaries in metaphysics and using Oist epistemology consisitently one cannot accept the concept of "non-material" as a valid integration.

Those, including other smart Oist I know, who have taken the concept as valid have accepted instances of it from the special sciences that 1). Are corruptions of the actual concepts that were formed in their inductive context ( which pressuposed entities as causal primaries) 2). Have simply failed to apply Oist epistemology to reduce these concepts to their perceptual context and instead hold them as floating abstractions. As a third view, some maintain a type of inversion of hierarchy were the higher level concepts of physics ( rational or not, valid or not ) are able to somehow reach backwards to the foundation of Philosophy and dictate how we should look at certain "context" without using the same rules as we do for other context. I see this as a repudiation of Philosophy, though not explicitly.

Edited by Plasmatic
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Boydstun

I wrestle with deciding if physicalist is a more apt concept for my position. I have been compiling all the implicitly related statements I can find from lectures and the research CD to look at all the context I can to decide how exactly to categorize myself. Most physicalist Ive read deny volition so I have been simply saying Im a materialist of the sort that doesnt deny consciousness or volition without reifying those attributes as self contained.

Edit: Could you explicate what you mean by non- reductive? I hate to impute what others usually mean in this instance because there are so many different referents for the way many use it.

Edited by Plasmatic
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.

History of Materialism (1866 – 3 volumes)

Friedrich Albert Lange

 

Eliminative Materialism

 

RW, I don’t know if you have read Atlas Shrugged, but therein Rand criticizes the materialisms of Marx and of Skinner under her label “mystics of muscle,” and she tries to compose a unified relationship of body and mind, affirming each. Rand, and I too, would go for your integration-but-not-dissolving of mind and matter. Mind is a feature of living brain in Rand’s view, as are all other forms of consciousness lower than mind.

 

I am a non-reductive physicalist, and this may be consistent with Rand’s view of mind and matter (mind, brain, and physical world).* I think true the Union theory of mind and brain set forth by Ted Honderich,* though I think his inference of determinism from it is unsound.

 

>>>Mind is a feature of living brain . . . 

 

Nice assertion. How do you know it isn't the other way around, i.e., that a living brain is the physical complement of mind?

 

Sorry, but mind is not an "attribute" of a physical brain in the sense that "red" is an attribute of an apple, or "length" is an attribute of a pencil.

 

Read Aristotle on the relation between "attributes" and "substance."

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Second hander said:

"Does he mean that the philosophy of materialism is false because it is viewed as one half of a false dichotomy between science and consciousness? If so, is it proper to say that materialism holds that consciousness doesn't actually exist? Or is it that some types of materialism hold that position, and that Peikoff was over-generalizing by speaking of materialism as a whole?"

I agree with Hsieh on this. The kind of materialism Peikoff was talking about is not the only kind. I consider myself a materialist for reasons different than most who are on the traditional dichotomy between religon - atheism. For one, philosophically holding entities as causal primaries in metaphysics and using Oist epistemology consisitently one cannot accept the concept of "non-material" as a valid integration.

Those, including other smart Oist I know, who have taken the concept as valid have accepted instances of it from the special sciences that 1). Are corruptions of the actual concepts that were formed in their inductive context ( which pressuposed entities as causal primaries) 2). Have simply failed to apply Oist epistemology to reduce these concepts to their perceptual context and instead hold them as floating abstractions. As a third view, some maintain a type of inversion of hierarchy were the higher level concepts of physics ( rational or not, valid or not ) are able to somehow reach backwards to the foundation of Philosophy and dictate how we should look at certain "context" without using the same rules as we do for other context. I see this as a repudiation of Philosophy, though not explicitly.

 

>>>For one, philosophically holding entities as causal primaries in metaphysics and using Oist epistemology consisitently one cannot accept the concept of "non-material" as a valid integration.

 

A nice way of arbitrarily defining away half of the universe.

 

Um, define for us, please, what you mean by the phrase "philosophically holding." If only "entities" (whatever they are!) exist, and if only entities therefore can cause effects, what sort of entities cause the effect you've just called "philosophically holding"? How can entities "philosophically hold" something? And isn't the "something" they hold itself composed of other entities?

 

And why should your entities in your physical material arrangements be called "right" and "true" and "correct" while other people's entities in their material arrangements be defined as "wrong", "false", and "incorrect'?

 

If you define away the idea of a non-material — i.e., existing independently of any possible kind of physical, material arrangement of entities — part of existence, then you simply do away with the idea of objective truth. By your lights, everyone has his own set of material, physical, entity-arrangements causing them to have certain ideas (the ideas are simply "effects" of those physical arrangements). Thus, there is no right, wrong, moral, immoral, true, untrue, etc. There is simply "my entity-arrangements", "his entity-arrangements", "your entity-arrangements", etc.

 

And pretending to defend this sort of naive materialism by saying, "but I justify it according to principles of Objectivist epistemology, so it HAS to be right!" is absurd, as well as self-serving. What arrangements do material entities make when leading to the phrase "principles of Objectivist epistemology"? and why should those material arrangements of entities be "better" or "more true" than someone else's material arrangements of entities leading to the phrase "principles of Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy"?

 

Sorry, but when looked at closely, ALL forms of materialism are simply absurd.

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Read Aristotle on the relation between "attributes" and "substance."

Read a little more carefully. Boydstun said feature, not attribute, and I suppose there is a reason for that. Further, he said the position is a unification of body and mind, so it's inaccurate to say Boydstun is saying the mind i an attribute in the sense that red is an attribute of an apple. All unification really means here is that mind and body is inseparable, and any experience of one's body *is* a mental experience. It is possible to discuss what someone means by body and mind as unique concepts, but a bodyless mind and a mindless body makes no sense, nor have I ever had a reason to suppose there are bodyless minds.

 

Also, you are talking about eliminative materialism. It seems to me all your arguments come from the idea that Objectivism would suppose "strong" views on materialism are correct. Well, no... they're quite wrong.

 

Do you by chance know what Aristotle said about hylomorphism?

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Red said:

"A nice way of arbitrarily defining away half of the universe."

Enough of this question begging! You are here in an Oist forum dedicated to persuit of Oism. If you want to oppose the epistemology of Objectivism, here, where it is assumed by those who are here because they are persuaded by it, YOU must present an argument against its epistemology particularly.

If you think Oist epistemology is arbitrary then start a thread were you lay out what in particular you think is wrong with it. Here you are the one who must do this. When you present more than assertions that Oism is wrong, or assumptions about others they dont hold, then I will have something to refute.

"Um, define for us, please, what you mean by the phrase "philosophically holding." If only "entities" (whatever they are!) exist, and if only entities therefore can cause effects, what sort of entities cause the effect you've just called "philosophically holding"? How can entities "philosophically hold" something? And isn't the "something" they hold itself composed of other entities?"

Um, I am the entitiy that holds the attribute of a conceptual consciousness. All the other questions pressupose your invalid assertion that concepts are entities.

Red said:

"And why should your entities in your physical material arrangements be called "right" and "true" and "correct" while other people's entities in their material arrangements be defined as "wrong", "false", and "incorrect'?"

Again, the criteria is correspondence between the mental and the mind independent. Again, concepts are not entities.

Red said:

"If you define away the idea of a non-material — i.e., existing independently of any possible kind of physical, material arrangement of entities — part of existence, then you simply do away with the idea of objective truth. By your lights, everyone has his own set of material, physical, entity-arrangements causing them to have certain ideas (the ideas are simply "effects" of those physical arrangements). Thus, there is no right, wrong, moral, immoral, true, untrue, etc. There is simply "my entity-arrangements", "his entity-arrangements", "your entity-arrangements", etc."

I have no idea where you get this nonsense from. You are the one who has "defined" into existence the concept "non- material". I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception. You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong.

Red said:

And pretending to defend this sort of naive materialism by saying, "but I justify it according to principles of Objectivist epistemology, so it HAS to be right!" is absurd, as well as self-serving. What arrangements do material entities make when leading to the phrase "principles of Objectivist epistemology"? and why should those material arrangements of entities be "better" or "more true" than someone else's material arrangements of entities leading to the phrase "principles of Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy"?"

More of the same. Oist serve themselves as a moral ideal. You are here at OO where, by the purpose of its owners, Oist epistemology is the standard. It is YOU who have something to lay out. Stop making nonsensical assumptions about what others hold and demonstrate why Oism is wrong in particular.

What about entities being causal primaries do you repudiate in particular and how is your view justified?

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Plas, in #12 I did not say the phrase I meant. I meant and should have said non-eliminative physicalism.

 

By non-eliminative physicalism, a non-eliminative reductionism, I mean only the general form as was accomplished when light was identified with electromagnetic radiation. It was learned that light was electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency range. Yet light did not then cease to be light, or become some sort of prior delusion now dispelled.

 

Similarly, we know that there are sensors in the skin that register the rate of heat flow out the surface into the environs. We feel that as coolness. My idea is only that if we someday fully understand the brain processing that culminates in the feeling of coolness from activation of the sensor, coolness will not have ceased to be coolness, or become some sort of delusion then dispelled.

 

Stephen

Edited by Boydstun
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Stephen said:

 

My idea is only that if we someday fully understand the brain processing that culminates in the feeling of coolness from activation of the sensor, coolness will not have ceased to be coolness, or become some sort of delusion then dispelled.

 

Indeed. Rejecting the sort of idea like, " The brain has electrical impulses when we think, therefore thoughts are nothing more than said impulses".

Edited by Plasmatic
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Read a little more carefully. Boydstun said feature, not attribute, and I suppose there is a reason for that. Further, he said the position is a unification of body and mind, so it's inaccurate to say Boydstun is saying the mind i an attribute in the sense that red is an attribute of an apple. All unification really means here is that mind and body is inseparable, and any experience of one's body *is* a mental experience. It is possible to discuss what someone means by body and mind as unique concepts, but a bodyless mind and a mindless body makes no sense, nor have I ever had a reason to suppose there are bodyless minds.

 

Also, you are talking about eliminative materialism. It seems to me all your arguments come from the idea that Objectivism would suppose "strong" views on materialism are correct. Well, no... they're quite wrong.

 

Do you by chance know what Aristotle said about hylomorphism?

 

 

>>>Read a little more carefully. Boydstun said feature, not attribute, and I suppose there is a reason for that. 

 

Boydstun's reason must be very idiosyncratic, so perhaps he'll share it with us. According to Apple Dictionary, the primary definition of "feature" is "a distinctive ATTRIBUTE…"; viz.,

 

feature |ˈfēCHər|

noun

1 a distinctive attribute or aspect of something . . .

 

>>>All unification really means here is that mind and body is inseparable,

 

But they're not inseparable. They are separable mentally (as distinct notions that need not rely on each other), and they are separable physically (non-living bodies appear not to have minds, as do certain kinds of bodies: plants, microbes, viruses). As to whether mind can exist physically apart from, I don't think anyone can answer that definitely — though Aristotle thought so, as do a number of researchers especially in the field of neuroscience. Sir John Eccles (Nobel Laureate in medicine) believed mind could exist apart from matter, to name just one.

 

No, you'll have to do better than "inseparable" in defining "unification" of mind and body, and neither "feature" nor "attribute" will work.

 

>>>but a bodyless mind and a mindless body makes no sense, 

 

Sure they do. First of all, you posted previously that plants are apparently teleological but have no consciousness, i.e., no MINDS. In your view, they are bodies without minds. Second, dead bodies are bodies without minds; third, since as an Objectivist you always mean "waking consciousness" when you use the word "mind," you'll have to explain what happens to the body and the mind when you're asleep or under general anesthesia or knocked unconscious in a boxing match.

 

>>>nor have I ever had a reason to suppose there are bodyless minds.

 

No doubt you've never experienced it and that's reason enough to discount it as the classic Objectivist accusation of "arbitrary assertion."

 

>>>It seems to me all your arguments come from the idea that Objectivism would suppose "strong" views on materialism are correct. Well, no... they're quite wrong.

 

I'm confident that Objectivism doesn't hold "strong" views on materialism, just as I'm confident that, nevertheless, many self-styled Objectivists do.

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Plas, in #12 I did not say the phrase I meant. I meant and should have said non-eliminative physicalism.

 

By non-eliminative physicalism, a non-eliminative reductionism, I mean only the general form as was accomplished when light was identified with electromagnetic radiation. It was learned that light was electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency range. Yet light did not then cease to be light, or become some sort of prior delusion now dispelled.

 

Similarly, we know that there are sensors in the skin that register the rate of heat flow out the surface into the environs. We feel that as coolness. My idea is only that if we someday fully understand the brain processing that culminates in the feeling of coolness from activation of the sensor, coolness will not have ceased to be coolness, or become some sort of delusion then dispelled.

 

Stephen

 

>>>I mean only the general form as was accomplished when light was identified with electromagnetic radiation. It was learned that light was electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency range. Yet light did not then cease to be light, or become some sort of prior delusion now dispelled.

 

It's a common error committed often by Objectivists:  confusing identity with correlation.

 

Light is the name of a subjective experience (along with color). The experience is precisely that; an experience. The experience is not electromagnetic radiation (or quanta called photons). The experience we call "light" correlates with radiation in a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that's about it. Other things also correlate with that spectrum in different parts of it: heat at one end, cosmic rays at the other. Neither one is an experience we call "light."

 

"Light" (and color) as we know it exist only in the realm of subjective experience, i.e., the mind. Light correlates with electromagnetic radiation, and color correlates with wavelength, but there's no identity here.

 

"Identity" and "correlation" are opposites. Two things cannot be identified with each other and still be "two things."

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Red said:

"A nice way of arbitrarily defining away half of the universe."

Enough of this question begging! You are here in an Oist forum dedicated to persuit of Oism. If you want to oppose the epistemology of Objectivism, here, where it is assumed by those who are here because they are persuaded by it, YOU must present an argument against its epistemology particularly.

If you think Oist epistemology is arbitrary then start a thread were you lay out what in particular you think is wrong with it. Here you are the one who must do this. When you present more than assertions that Oism is wrong, or assumptions about others they dont hold, then I will have something to refute.

"Um, define for us, please, what you mean by the phrase "philosophically holding." If only "entities" (whatever they are!) exist, and if only entities therefore can cause effects, what sort of entities cause the effect you've just called "philosophically holding"? How can entities "philosophically hold" something? And isn't the "something" they hold itself composed of other entities?"

Um, I am the entitiy that holds the attribute of a conceptual consciousness. All the other questions pressupose your invalid assertion that concepts are entities.

Red said:

"And why should your entities in your physical material arrangements be called "right" and "true" and "correct" while other people's entities in their material arrangements be defined as "wrong", "false", and "incorrect'?"

Again, the criteria is correspondence between the mental and the mind independent. Again, concepts are not entities.

Red said:

"If you define away the idea of a non-material — i.e., existing independently of any possible kind of physical, material arrangement of entities — part of existence, then you simply do away with the idea of objective truth. By your lights, everyone has his own set of material, physical, entity-arrangements causing them to have certain ideas (the ideas are simply "effects" of those physical arrangements). Thus, there is no right, wrong, moral, immoral, true, untrue, etc. There is simply "my entity-arrangements", "his entity-arrangements", "your entity-arrangements", etc."

I have no idea where you get this nonsense from. You are the one who has "defined" into existence the concept "non- material". I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception. You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong.

Red said:

And pretending to defend this sort of naive materialism by saying, "but I justify it according to principles of Objectivist epistemology, so it HAS to be right!" is absurd, as well as self-serving. What arrangements do material entities make when leading to the phrase "principles of Objectivist epistemology"? and why should those material arrangements of entities be "better" or "more true" than someone else's material arrangements of entities leading to the phrase "principles of Kant's analytic-synthetic dichotomy"?"

More of the same. Oist serve themselves as a moral ideal. You are here at OO where, by the purpose of its owners, Oist epistemology is the standard. It is YOU who have something to lay out. Stop making nonsensical assumptions about what others hold and demonstrate why Oism is wrong in particular.

What about entities being causal primaries do you repudiate in particular and how is your view justified?

 

>>>I have no idea where you get this nonsense from.

 

I get it from having studied philosophy. In any case, you have nothing to complain about. Since you're a naive materialist who believes that consciousness is composed of entities, and that therefore, PRODUCTS of consciousness, such as ideas, premises, conclusions, arguments, theories, systems, etc., must also be composed of entities — and, in fact, these entities ARE the ideas — then it follows that my philosophical ideas are simply my arrangements of entities, just as your ideas are your arrangements of entities. Too bad for the poor naive materialist, but there's no way to judge which arrangements of entities are better, more true, less true, false, etc., without referring to an objective non-material notion of "judge." It has to be 1) objective, and 2) non-material. Because if it were material, the "judgment" would simply be another arrangement of physical entities in someone else's physical brain. And why should that arrangement have any more objectivity and higher truth-status than my arrangement of entities in my physical brain, or your physical arrangement of entities in your physical brain?

 

Too bad. Without the idea of the "non-material", there is no such thing as "objective truth", i.e., true for me, you, and everyone else.

 

>>>I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception.

 

I don't understand what the term "abstraction" can mean to a naive materialist, since an abstraction is itself an arrangement of particles, just as a percept is. And the process of performing the abstraction is itself just a stream of particles. For "abstraction" to mean anything would require, again, the notion of something that is NOT simply yet another arrangement of progressively smaller particles, but something truly "non-particle." You can call it an "entity" if you want, but it's a non-material entity.

 

When a materialist says, "I am a philosophical materialist," that statement presumably corresponds to a thought that is simply an arrangement of physical entities in his physical brain. If someone else says, "I am a philosophical idealist", that statement, too, (according to the materialist) corresponds to a thought, which, in turn, also corresponds to an arrangement of physical entities in joe physical brain. Clearly, the materialist prefers his own entity-arrangements to someone else's, just as the someone else prefers his own entity-arrangements to those of the materialist. Additionally, the materialist could not turn to a 3rd-party philosopher (e.g., Ayn Rand) and ask her (assuming she were alive) what the "truth" of the matter was, because by the materialist's own assumptions, Ayn Rand has a material brain, and the thoughts in that brain area also simply arrangements of physical entities. Why should her arrangements of entities insider her head have more "objectivity" or higher truth status than anyone else's physical entities? That's the problem with materialism: instead of referring to a non-material objective condition called "truth", you're forced to compare "arrangements of entities", as if you were touring a fancy suburb and comparing people's lawns (who has the "objectively truthful" lawn? The one whose grass makes the most objectively truthful arrangement? I don't know. Pick whichever one you want. It's an absurd question, because materialism is an absurd philosophical position.)

 

And in any case, what did you perceive FIRST that later allowed you to abstract the idea, "x^2 + y^2 = 1". For that matter, what did you perceive that later led to the idea, "1". (If you're going to say, "Well, Mr. Ugg, the caveman, perceived one stone and then abstracted the idea of "number...which must exist in some degree but may exist in any degree", then you'd be question-begging and concept-stealing, for in that case, Mr. Ugg, already possessed the idea of "1" and "number" and simply found a useful correspondence between his percept and his pre-existing idea. The question, however, was where did he get the idea of "1" from simply via perception?" It's utter gibberish-mysticism to suggest, as Rand appears to do, that the IDEA of "1", or "1-ness" is part of the percept itself, and that some abstracting power of the mind conveniently sifts it out for use. Dumb. Where would such "1-ness" be? Is it physically in the stone itself? No. Is "1-ness" in the light rays hitting the stone and reflecting off of it into Mr. Ugg's eyes? No. Is "1-ness" located physically in the retina? No. In the optic nerve? No. In the visual cortex? No. That's it for the material part of the process. After the visual cortex, the electro-chemical impulse gets dumped into the non-material part of the human called "the mind". How? No one knows. Does the non-material part of the mind "recognize" some non-material "1-ness" in the stone that accompanies it from light-rays, to retina, to optic nerve, to cortex? I doubt it. 

 

This is why Plato thought the idea of "1-ness" was already there, in the non-material mind, and the abstracting process in this case was really just matching what was already there to what was freshly perceived in an act of "recognition." I don't accept his theory, either, because I reject the notion of innate ideas, including mathematical ones.

 

So the answer is, I don't know. Neither did Ayn Rand, Neither do you. Neither does anyone.

 

 

>>>You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong.

 

I've already shown why Objectivist epistemology is nuts in another thread. You were too busy spitting out popcorn watching "Iron Man 3" to pay attention.

 

And no, to criticize someone else's philosophy, one need not also proffer a replacement or an alternative. If you're a lawyer in a court of law defending your client (who is innocent, of course), you don't have to proffer an alternative crime scenario to the prosecution, the judge, or the jury. You merely have to point out why the prosecutor's argument is full of holes and unworthy of serious consideration. Same with philosophical argumentation. You don't have to specify what is right in order to point out why someone else's nonsense is wrong.

 

Suffice it to say that no one really understands what concepts are, how they are formed, and how the mind grasps them. It's enough to say, however, that Rand's arbitrary assertion that just as "1 gram is one unit" and "one meter is one unit" that therefore "one stone is one unit" is gibberish. Read my previous post on the subject.

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RW,

 

No. I did not mean light in that sense. I meant light as in optics, a purely physical science, a very old one. In the nineteenth century, electromagnetism was comprehended sufficiently well that physicists were able to discover that light in the physical sense was electromagnetic radiation. This is a matter of physical identity. I can still remember the day over four decades ago when my physics professor demonstrated on the blackboard at the end of a long derivation that a ratio of a certain electrical and a certain magnetic property of the vacuum equals exactly the velocity of electromagnetic waves propagating in vacuum. The electrical and the magnetic characteristics of the vacuum are measurable to high accuracy, more and more as we go along, and from that we can calculate the velocity of electromagnetic propagation in vacuum. The velocity of light is measurable to high accuracy, higher and higher as we go along. The equality of the velocity of light with the computed velocity of the propagation of electromagnetic waves has been demonstrated by measurement of the velocity of light and measurement of the electrical and the magnetic characteristics of the vacuum. That is why one knows today that light---physical light absorbed by the retina, which signals receipt along the optic nerve to the thalmus---is electromagnetic radiation.

 

In my coolness example, I was indeed referring to our subjective sensation. The conjectured neuronal processes to which some, including I, expect it is non-eliminatively identical has not yet been discovered so far as I know, at least not with the kind of specificity we need for confirming identity.

 

As Eiuol surmised, I did deliberately chose feature instead of attribute. That was only to skirt the tendency of many to think of a simple property for example of an attribute. Many typically think of sonar as a feature of the the bat and color as a property of the bat. Me too. By feature I meant that sort of more complex attribute. My first philosophy professor was a Thomist, so like you, I do use attribute for both simple ones (properties) and more complex ones (features). Consciousness is a feature of some animals. Rand assumed it a feature of even insects (ITOE). Today, the neuroscientist Christoff Koch (an associate of Robert Efron, who was an associate of Ayn Rand and wrote an essay about reductionism for her journal) still thinks of them as having that feature, but that has become a minority view in the profession. I think the dominate view is that without cerebral cortex, there is no consciousness. That is not to say subcortical structures and their processes connected to cortex are not required for consciousness. 

 

Stephen

Edited by Boydstun
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No doubt you've never experienced it and that's reason enough to discount it as the classic Objectivist accusation of "arbitrary assertion."

I misspoke, this is right. But still, bodyless mind... I'm just saying unless you have a *plausible* reason that there are bodyless minds, I don't see what the use is arguing against it. I don't need to prove that there are not invisible gnomes in my closet. Just because you can come up with some reply doesn't mean it is actually possible any more than imagining unicorns means it's valid to start theorizing about how to raise a healthy unicorn. I know Eccles' reasoning, and I think it's bad science, for various reasons. And Aristotle at least said the human mind couldn't be separated and exist apart from a human body, even though he posited a bodyless mind could exist.

Edited by Eiuol
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I've already shown why Objectivist epistemology is nuts in another thread. You were too busy spitting out popcorn watching "Iron Man 3" to pay attention.

 

I'd love to read that. Why don't you provide a link to that demonstration, that is, if you can manage to do it without further displaying your 10 year old petulance.

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