Rand's form of world on Plato's world of Forms

[dream_weaver]

I noticed this exchange in the Metaphysics of Death thread:

On 10/27/2016 at 8:46 PM, Harrison Danneskjold said:

The point is that "joy" and "exaltation" refer to certain kinds of experiences, which means that Egoism is ultimately a form of positive-utilitarianism (which, incidentally, is a very handy way of conceptualizing it).

 

On 10/28/2016 at 8:00 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

I'd avoid the term "utilitarianism" if I were you.  Look up the definition.... 

As for trying to respin Egoism as a type of anything else... why? Egoism says it all.

so I looked up a definition.

 

Quote

 

noun: utilitarianism

1. the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.

   • the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.

 

At first it reminded me of utilitarianism's connection to collectivism. Then this response followed, to which I extended the quote: 

22 hours ago, splitprimary said:

it can sound like Objectivism is positive utilitarianism from some of the quotes that have been referenced here:

"We exist for the sake of earning rewards", "live for the sake of such exalted moments as one may be able to achieve or experience", "basic motive is the desire to achieve values".

these have plural terms: "rewards", "moments", "values", that can seem to suggest a mere collection of disconnected pleasures. Objectivism goes beyond basic utilitarianism though and sees them as having an integration to them, there being a "one in the many" (Peikoff's I-type in DIM Hypothesis).

i think SL was getting at what unites them in talking about the experience of joy being tied to the flourishing *of a Man*. that's where these concepts of identity and integrity come into morality. it's expressed really well here (from Atlas Shrugged):

[E]very form of happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor—by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence—and every achievement is an expression of it. Look around you. Do you see how much is open to us here, on an unobstructed earth? Do you see how much I am free to do, to experience, to achieve? Do you see that all of it is part of what you are to me—as I am part of it for you? And if I'll see you smile with admiration at a new copper smelter that I built, it will be another form of what I felt when I lay in bed beside you.

Honing in on the plural terms, parallels the Utilitarian notion that the good is based on a plurality, the benefit of a majority, or the greatest good for the greatest number; splitprimary zeros in on the Ancient Greek notion of the "one in the many" which was often paired with the "many in the one".

After looking up the expanded quote from Atlas Shrugged, the bolded emphasis sparked a tangent thought about Plato's world of Forms. In her Letters To A Philosopher, I found this paragraph in a January 3, 1963 letter.

I disagree with your statement that Plato's views come close to the truth "after the metaphorical and allegorical elements are taken out." The same statement can be applied to any religion; most religions can be interpreted as containing a great deal of truth, if one decides to treat their doctrines as metaphors and allegories; but this would be a translation or an interpretation, and one could not equate it with the original doctrines. Would you treat Plato's world of Forms as a metaphor? Would you regard his epistemology (with abstractions as innate memories, with the ultimate mystic illumination that surpasses reason) as an allegory? If you did, what would be left of Plato, except broad generalities that would apply to any philosopher?

Whether it is Plato's views coming close to the truth "after the metaphorical and allegorical elements are taken out", or seeing Egoism as a form of positive-utilitarianism tends to blur the distinctions. Plato's world of Forms was an early attempt to understand what concepts were. The "one in the many" and the "many in the one" was another, which happens to be closer than Plato version to "the concept "man" includes all men who live at  present, who have ever lived or will ever live."

Similarities between various philosophies can serve as a basis to aide in comparison and ultimately assist understanding. Putting Plato's ethics next to Aristotle's ethics, etc., can help to grapple with what ethics deals with. It is, however, differentiating the crucial differences that ultimately sets them all apart.

Edited October 30, 2016 by dream_weaver
Changed Title

[New Buddha]

49 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Similarities between various philosophies can serve as a basis to aide in comparison and ultimately assist understanding. Putting Plato's ethics next to Aristotle's ethics, etc., can help to grapple with what ethics deals with. It is, however, differentiating the crucial differences that ultimately sets them all apart.

Well stated.

 

With regards to Utilitarianism, and specifically Bentham, the following is a good assessment:

"In place of vague "natural rights" or mystical "historical rights" [God or King], Bentham offered a "new science," the science of law, to justify his proposed changes.  He taught men to govern by the simple rule of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," which, in practice, could be discovered by a "felicific calculus."  Thus, he sought to establish an external standard, mathematically calculable, whereby to measure the legislator's accomplishement.  His contention was that he had made legislative reform a matter, not of "caprice" or unenlightened benevolence, but of logic. - J. Bronoswki, The Western Intellectual Tradition, p. 431.

 

The rejection of the "metaphysics" of the Church,and substituting in it's place the application of "science" was very much in the air at the time, and sparked much of the Positivism that was later to come. (And which Godel shot down. )

Edited October 30, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

In my notes, under philosophers, I have Logical Positivist/Logical Empiricism - positivism is a play off of Comte, empiricism tries to distance itself from Comte.

For Auguste Comte, I noted - Hume with a Romanticist twist. Positivist, Altruism - other-ism.

A Romanticist, referencing Peikoff's History of Philosophy is ultimately/essentially the appeal to emotion.

After Comte, I note: John Stewart Mills, Jeremy Bentham - Utilitarianism - Hedonic ethics applied to a hedonic majority?

I have summarized: David Hume - Skeptical nominalist

The next link back I tie into: Rene Descartes - Cartesian Doubt - Father of (modern) Skepticism. I can probably lose the parenthesis. But I also note that Descartes follows in the lecture series, St. Thomas Aquinas.

So no sooner does the Age of Enlightenment open with Aquinas, Descartes opens his system by using “error” and its synonyms or derivatives as “stolen concepts.”

Skepticism predates Plato with the Sophists, while Plato continues the doubt of the senses started by Heraclitus and
Parmenides. Via Galt's speech, Rand asserts that [t]he arguments of those who attack the senses are merely variants of the fallacy of the “stolen concept.”

 

Mind you, these are just my shorthand notes to jog my memory with regards to the various connections.

 

Do you care to share why you think Godel's relationship to Positivism circumvents the response given in the Gödel Escher Bach thread there rather than superposing it here? Other than that, I am having a difficult time understanding how your response correlates to the previous post here.

Edited October 30, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Other than that, I am having a difficult time understanding how your response correlates to the previous post here.

I was trying to add a little more meat to the bone of the definition of Utilitarianism that you presented.

No one can possibly confuse Objectivism with Utilitarianism per the quote I provided.

Edited October 30, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

Thank-you. Now the connection is clearer. While it was not the central thrust in this thread, it had stemmed, in part, from it.

Of course, what you point out is not what most people would pick up about Utilitarianism from the culture through bits and pieces of it that are scattered about, repackaged as brief references to Utilitarianism in articles to support the various type of claims that  Harrision was seduced into making from those influences.

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

I added the bit about Godel, not in response to your other post (which I didn't really see until you pointed it out in this thread) because there is a step-by-step connection between Bentham's " felicific  calculus" and the Verfictionism of Logical Positivism and Carnap's approach to Science.

(Edit:  I could have sworn that I saw a reference to "stolen concepts" with regards to either this post, or the others regarding Utilitarianism......  But it was late last night when I posted.)

Edited October 30, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

34 minutes ago, New Buddha said:

there is a step-by-step connection between Bentham's " felicific  calculus" and the Verfictionism of Logical Positivism and Carnap's approach to Science.

Circling back here, the Lexicon entry on inflation provides a lead that would be more along the lines of contrast between the Godel Esher Bach thread and this one.

The “wage-price spiral,” which is merely a consequence of inflation, is being blamed as its cause, thus deflecting the blame from the real culprit: the government.

As used relative to inflation, the spiral is used to divert attention from the real culprit. The spiral of knowledge works in other ways as well. Philosophy has often looked to math to develop further insights into philosophy. As one delves deeper into any subject, new insights gleaned can underscore and strengthen previous attained understandings.

In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand opens chapter 3 with this observation:

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.

Two interacting directions. One of the examples she uses is the concept of furniture. After discovering chairs, tables, beds, and baker's racks, these particulars (and omitted others) can be connected to the term furniture as absorbed from how others have used it. At the early stage of the game, it is not about coining new concepts, rather the focus is on developing the connections between the various perceptual concretes. (auditory sound chair with the physically observed chair, auditory sound furniture with the auditory sounds of chair, table, baker's rack, etc.)

Observe also that the concept "furniture" involves a relationship to another concept which is not one of its constituent units, but which has to be grasped before one can grasp the meaning of "furniture": the concept "habitation." This kind of interrelationship among concepts grows progressively more complex as the level of concept-formation grows farther away from perceptual concretes.

By the time comparisons are made between complex integrations as science, math, philosophy, politics, what happens to the more subtle interconnections, and in more cases than not, the implicit interconnection that are there, but have never been explicitly identified?

The direction is two-fold at each step of the way. One continues to ascend upwards toward greater conceptual clarity by continuous identifications of the relevant interconnections. The other descends into fog that deepens with every step.

 

Now back to the same Letters to a Philosopher referenced in the OP, she writes:

It is in their concept of what constitutes "verifiability," in their basic premise and approach (which is implicit in their specific, individual theories) that logical positivists become most mystical. You say: "One must be careful not to condemn it (the Verifiability Principle), en masse in all its forms'—because there have been many different formulations of it. Your statement implies that the Verifiability Principle is sound in essence, qua principle, and that it is only with its various formulations that one can legitimately quarrel. But what I challenge, oppose and condemn is the essence of that principle and of the method it proposes, in all and any of its variations. (I do not believe that "propositions" have to be "verified"; I believe that they have to be "validated"—it is a night-and-day difference.)

Let me wrap up by asking, do you think Bentham's "felicific  calculus", Verificationism of Logical Positivism, and Carnap's approach to Science are on an upward or downward bound escalator?

[New Buddha]

2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Let me wrap up by asking, do you think Bentham's "felicific  calculus", Verificationism of Logical Positivism, and Carnap's approach to Science are on an upward or downward bound escalator?

Because they are so mired in the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy (which of course pre-dates Kant and is perhaps the singular common theme running through Western Philosophy, going back to Plato and beyond), it's incorrect to try and assess them from the standpoint of Objectitvist Epistemology.  So as they relate to Objectivist Epistemology, they are neither "upward" nor "downward".

They are derived from various dialectics between "theory vs. practice", "analytic vs. synthetic", "necessary vs. contingent", "rational vs. empirical", "noumenon vs. phenomenon", "subject vs. object", etc.

Objectivist Epistemology, on the other hand, is based on a naturalistic, psychology/physiology approach to knowledge, and rejects the types of un-bridgeable gaps as noted above.

And this does carry over into mathematics.  In one of the other posts, I gave a link to a book by George Laykoff (Where Mathematics Comes From), which also tries to give a psychology-based account of mathematics, without any appeal to "pure reason" (of the type mentioned in the Russell quote in the same post).  Is Laykoff right?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  But he is asking the right questions.

I think Objectivism could make a meaningful contributions to mathematical foundationalism (and might have with the works of Corvini and Knapp).

A reposting of the Russell quote:

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

(The above quote could have been written by Robert Stadler, from Atlas Shrugged.)

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

2 hours ago, New Buddha said:

it's incorrect to try and assess them from the standpoint of Objectitvist Epistemology

What standard would you suggest using in its stead?

[dream_weaver]

6 hours ago, New Buddha said:

(Edit:  I could have sworn that I saw a reference to "stolen concepts" with regards to either this post, or the others regarding Utilitarianism......  But it was late last night when I posted.)

They were in the post outlining the philosophic family tree of Utilitarianism, taken from my notes which outline the names sequence and categorizations along with a very brief take away on what I considered the essential synopsis. The links are embedded deeper down in their respective roots.

Edited October 30, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

What standard would you suggest using in its stead?

Asses was probably a poorly chosen word.  What I was trying to convey, is that it's necessary to understand the historical and epistemic premises with which each were working - which are very different from those of Objectivism.

Bentham was, all things considered, trying to be "scientific", and if I had to chose between the infallibility of the Pope or the Divine Right of Kings I'd take his Utilitarianism any day of the week.  Fortunately, we had Jefferson.

Edited October 31, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

37 minutes ago, New Buddha said:

What I was trying to convey, is that it's necessary to understand the historical and epistemic premises with which each were working - which are very different from those of Objectivism.

What I was asking was — if Objectivist epistemology is the incorrect epistemology to use in analyzing historical epistemic premises, what would be the correct epistemology to employ?

[New Buddha]

3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

What I was asking was — if Objectivist epistemology is the incorrect epistemology to use in analyzing historical epistemic premises, what would be the correct epistemology to employ?

It's impossible for you to not analyze the ideas of past philosophers from an Objectivist epistemology once you've learned it.  That's just not an option.

But to understand them, you need to ask, "Why did they reach the conclusions that they did?"  The old saw is that "Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it."

As an example, Ernst Mach questioned, What where the ideas led Newton to posit an Absolute Time and Space?  And then Einstein questioned, What were the ideas that led Mach to question Newton?  And this led to Relativity.

This is how knowledge advances.  By basically asking, What do I know now, that they did not know then?

As Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

Edited October 31, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

44 minutes ago, New Buddha said:

But to understand them, you need to ask, "Why did they reach the conclusions that they did?" The old saw is that "Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it."

The simpler answer is their failure to employ a proper method of validating their conclusions. The more complex approach recognizes that most people are not willing to abscond with faith in their 'gods' unless they have something else to replace it with.

A proposed corollary to the old saw you've cited here might be: "Those who do not understand philosophy are most helplessly in its power." Whether 'doomed' or 'condemned' to repeat a history that is not grasped reeks of an implicit malevolent universe premise. Francisco's response conveys this more neutrally to the woman who had large diamond earrings and a flabby, nervous face: "Don't you believe in the operation of the moral law, madame? . . . I do."

 

Edited October 31, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

The simpler answer is their failure to employ a proper method of validating their conclusions. The more complex approach recognizes that most people are not willing to abscond with faith in their 'gods' unless they have something else to replace it with.

Can you explain this with regards to Newton?  Had the Michelson-Morely experiments taken place in Newton's time?  Why not?  Because he failed "to employ a proper method?"  And what about the contributions of Farady, Maxwell, Lorentz and Plank?  Did Newton also fail because he didn't do their work? 

You make it sound like you could reconcile GR with QM tomorrow.

To be very clear about this, Newton didn't "fail" at anything.  And it's hard to believe that you would even suggest such a thing.  Are you for real?

Add Edit:  In addition to the above, what actually turned out to be one of Newton's hang-ups is that he was still weighed down by Aristotelian Causality.

Edited October 31, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

Yes, I can explain my response with regard to Newton. It was because I broad-brushed my specific answer to the groups of similars you packaged together.

Edited October 31, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

On 10/31/2016 at 3:11 AM, dream_weaver said:

Yes, I can explain my response with regard to Newton. It was because I broad-brushed my specific answer to the groups of similars you packaged together.

But in the same way that one studies Rand's Journals and Letters to gain insight as to the reasoning behind her conclusions, the same needs to be done to Bentham, Hume, Descartes, Newton, etc.

In science and engineering you don't just take as a given the equations developed by others.  You have to derive them as well, to understand them.  Philosophy is no different.  Just assuming that they "failed to employ a proper method of validating their conclusions" is to commit the very same failure that you are accusing them of.

 

On 10/30/2016 at 9:10 PM, dream_weaver said:

Whether 'doomed' or 'condemned' to repeat a history that is not grasped reeks of an implicit malevolent universe premise.

No.  The need to learn from experience (either your own or others) does not imply a "malevolent universe".  Just the opposite.

If you burn yourself on a hot stove, do you continue touching it in hopes that a "benevolent universe' will step in and "cause" the stove to not burn you in the future?

There is another old saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different out come." 

Edited November 2, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

7 hours ago, New Buddha said:

But in the same way that one studies Rand's Journals and Letters to gain insight as to the reasoning behind her conclusions, the same needs to be done to Bentham, Hume, Descartes, Newton, etc.

In science and engineering you don't just take as a given the equations developed by others.  You have to derive them as well, to understand them.  Philosophy is no different.  Just assuming that they "failed to employ a proper method of validating their conclusions" is to commit the very same failure that you are accusing them of.

Is it? Disregarding Newton from your group here, Bentham, Hume and Descartes all derive their philosophic approach from a similar root. Paralleling a further excerpt from Rand's Letters from a Philosopher:

To answer your remark on a philosophical level, I will say that there are over three hundred sects of Christianity, all of which interpret the Bible differently and all of which claim to be the only true version of Christianity. Since I reject the basic premises of the Bible and of Christianity as untenable, I do not consider it incumbent upon me to discuss or refute (or even to study) the particular interpretation of every one of the three-hundred-some sects. And if I were to discuss the issue with a philosophically-minded Christian, it is the basic premises that I would discuss.

Hume's philosophic roots are established on Heraclitus and Parmenides while Descartes takes a variation on a theme, rooting the "potential" error on the epistemic mind, rather than directly on the senses. 

You say: In science and engineering you don't just take as a given the equations developed by others.  You have to derive them as well, to understand them.

No, I don't have to derive an equation developed by others. I might have to grasp the relevance of an equation derived by another, but this is not the same a deriving it for myself. And I would agree that it is true that philosophy is no different. If I am able to derive the induction of a relevant point, be it in engineering or philosophy, then I am not up against 300 sects of Christianity, all claiming to be the true version.

 

 

Edited November 2, 2016 by dream_weaver