Differences between rationality and objectivity?

[stephen_speicher]

I went back and checked what I originally wrote, and I now see where you are coming from.  You're right -- I meant one thing, but I didn't write it the way I meant it. 

Good. Acknowledging the facts shows honesty, instead of defensiveness. The former is definitely more preferable than the latter.

[Matt Miklautsch]

Reason's Ember

The problem with your whole "pigs with wings argument" is that it is entirely arbitrary. The are no facts in reality that would led you to believe that pigs have wings. Since your argument is not based on any facts it has no cognitive significance whatsoever. It should therefore be dismissed as if nothing had been said.

Further, you know what you know when you have reached enough evidence to verify it. The amount of evidence needed to be certain of different things would depend on the context, including the strengh of the evidence for what you are attempting to prove. There is a good example of this process in OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND by Leonard Peikoff, wherein Dr. Peikoff uses an example of a murder investigation.

Finally, you state that Dr. Peikoff and others influenced by Ayn Rand have made straw man arguments against modern philosophers, yet you fail to site any of these straw man arguments or which others influenced by Ayn Rand have made these arguments.

[Reason's Ember]

Ed., someone has pointed out to me that criticisms I make are identical to those made by someone named Gary Merrill http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/chris.holt/h...l.comments.html.

Finally, you state that Dr. Peikoff and others influenced by Ayn Rand have made straw man arguments against modern philosophers, yet you fail to site any of these straw man arguments or which others influenced by Ayn Rand have made these arguments.

The following example is taken from memory in my reading of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I unfortunately do not own the text, though I will soon. You can correct me if I am wrong:

Peikoff's article on the analytic-synthetic distinction implies that no one had questioned the distinction before Ayn Rand implicitly did so with her epistemology. He also implies that his article was appearing in a vacuum in which no contemporary philosophers were challenging the distinction. Note: he does not explicitly state these things. If you do not agree that he was implying these things, I cannot really debate the point.

If he was indeed implying what I am attributing to him, then I cannot see how he came up with his conclusions. The terminology of the distinction does go back to Kant, as Peikoff says. Peikoff also points out analogies with some distinctions made by Hume and Leibniz (however, it would be wrong to just assume that all of these philosophers used their different nominal distinctions to accomplish the same principled distinction. The more warranted assumption would be the opposite. They may all be equally wrong, but they were equally wrong in unique and wildly conflicting ways).

The distinction was most important to the movement of philosopher-scientists called Logical Positivists in the early 20 century, especially to Alfred Ayer. The book Ayer published, "Language, Truth, and Logic," in the 1930s was widely read and revolutionary in its effect. Continuing the changes that Frege, Bertrand Russell, Whitehead and G.E. Moore had wrought before him, Ayer's book transformed the nature of the way academic philosophy was practiced. The effect of the book was the chief impulse behind the trend towards an antiseptic, "analytic" style of philosophy that still dominates the academic departments of most major research universities in England and the US.

All these things are true, but Peikoff implies that this is the end of the story. Willard Quine, a pretty influential philosopher among academics, published "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in 1951 (http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html). Along with other trends like Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Quine's article really put a final nail in the coffin of the assumptions that had been driving Logical Positivist epistemology. I really can't believe that Peikoff, while teaching at the wonderful University I am attending this summer , did not know about Quine and his impact.

So why did he imply that all modern philosphers were guilty of assuming the analytic-synthetic distinction in the way that he attributed it to them? He could have named some of them, and they could have responded to his accusation.

As for your substantive point. . .

The problem with your whole "pigs with wings argument" is that it is entirely arbitrary. The are no facts in reality that would led you to believe that pigs have wings. Since your argument is not based on any facts it has no cognitive significance whatsoever. It should therefore be dismissed as if nothing had been said.

That's fine. I know my example was arbitrary, but that's what I meant when I said it was absurd. My point in using pigs-in-flight was to offer an entertaining example that is not subject to preconceptions. My point was also to clarify a question about knowledge: what justifies a stance of certainty towards a belief?

In the other example I presented, I had no reason to believe my computer had been taken out of the room. Yet, as it turns out, the computer had been taken out of the room. Was I justified in having certainty at the time? Was the Bush administration justified in its certainty that Saddam Hussein still possessed WMD?

No evidence from Iraq contradicted Bush's belief when he held it, but it has turned out to be wrong (most likely).

My point is that without omniscience there is no such thing as certainty about things that are not axioms like 2 + 2 = 4. "Certainty" here should be taken as an epistemological principle defining knowledge, rather than as a warranted psychological state, where it "certainly" can and should exist.

Sometimes this point is put this way: if an all-powerful God existed, then he could not change 2 + 2 = 4 even if he wanted to, whereas he could have created the flying pig I see in my mind right now. If a belief is God-proof, then it is reliable beyond all doubt; it is certain.