DavidOdden

My suggestion is that for Objectivism to become the dominant political ideology, it needs to first become the dominant philosophy. OO provides ample evidence for the dominance of political questions as matters of interest to Objectivists, but political questions strongly tend to tainted with contradiction (mis-)management typified by contemporary US presidential elections. I am not entirely satisfied with the first philosophical stage because the edges of Objectivism are not clearly defined; and in the context of the present question, the dichotomy between primary and secondary philosophers is in my opinion questionable. For example, Aristotle had a theory of propositions, Rand did not: what does that imply for Objectivism? Is Frege’s theory within Aristotle’s framework? I don’t propose that anything is glaringly amiss in what counts as the foundational principles of Objectivism, but the first-wave applications in Metaphysics and Epistemology, and non-political Ethics, are still quite sparse. The key question which should be answered by university professors is, what Objectivist-influenced works do you incorporate into your syllabus (*crickets*)? Tomorrow’s high school teachers are taught by today’s university professors, who were trained by last decade’s university professors who were of course prepared by high school teachers of generations ago. Part of the problem is indeed a willingness to publicly engage the principles of Objectivism, but the other part of the problem is the stark lack of appropriate course materials. That’s the problem, from the “Objectivism as movement” perspective. The other perspective is the non-social ground-preparation stage, which is both essential and the hardest to carry out. I am generally speaking of ordinary conversation which evince a lack of reasoning and a reliance on emotion. Some years ago I started to pay attention not to what I thought people were trying to communicate, but how they were trying to communicate it. For example, many political topics are prefaced with unsupported emotional assertions like “We don’t want…” or “You don’t want…”, reducing politics to a simple principle – pander to people’s desires. Versions addressed to “you” are extremely presumptuous and trivial to refute by self-report, “we”-versions have a slight advantage that they include the speaker and it’s hard to refute a person’s report of their own emotions. When stated as “I don’t want…”, you can at least move the conversation off of the agent of wanting and on to the irrelevance of emotion for socio-political questions. An assertion “I don’t want homeless people to have to sleep in the park” can then be countered with a different desire: “I don’t want my taxes to increase” or “I don’t want my land to be confiscated”. It is vastly easier to just keep quiet and let people talk this way, thereby avoiding social conflict. This enables crippling diseases such as wokeism and the criminalization of “insensitivity” viz. non-conformity to the dominant ideology. I propose that there are two fundamental impediments, both needing to be addressed: course materials, and social interactions. I believe that these are related, in that most people do not have a conscious understanding of the difference between what words and sentences objectively mean, and how people manipulate language to achieve ends. I do not claim that attention in this area will solve all problems, I claim that this particular area of epistemology and psychology is in greatest need of dedicated attention.

Eh?? The entire point of the Bhagavad Gita is a justification of the Pāndava-Kaurava war as a struggle against evil. Krishna lectures Arjuna extensively on his moral obligation to engage in just war (dharmayuddha) which, needless to say, entails intentionally “doing harm” to the enemy. You must have in mind some other dharmic principle, danged if I know what.

The problem with this discussion is that it is about a floating abstraction. FYI, dharma refers to "moral conduct", and is not fundamentally different from "morality" (which too derives from mysticism). Many modern thinkers reject the concept of morality because it has been tainted by association with Christianity. The original Hindu idea is that morality is "inherent in the cosmos", that it is the things necessary for humans to do for an orderly universe. That's not wildly divergent from the Objectivist concept of morality as a code for men to conform to reality. A better attack would be on the specifics of the supposed dharmic principles. What principles? The Graeco-Roman concept of morality and ordering chaos into the universe is not only "very similar" to the Vedic concept, it is probably historically the exact same system of religious belief, which were certainly highly mystical. Ontogeny does not actually recapitulate phylogeny.

No, jurisdiction is not ownership. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Objectivist account of government and rights, where the use of force is to be put under the objective control of law. So you are apparently asking about the initial formation of a rights-respecting society, the transition from barbarism and “man qua animal” to civilization, “man qua man”. The Y (“why”) that you seek is a society’s recognition of man’s nature and man’s proper means of survival. A government of laws is the fundamental instrument for embracing reality, which is why we now trade with the Mongols rather than fearing them as savage invaders. As with most philosophical – also scientific – issues, the answer is simple and not intended to recapitulate historical minutia. It is a historical accident that the concept of civilization was re-discovered (or transmitted by example) thousands or milions of times in human history. The ideal form of civilization has yet to be instantiated on Earth, it is a goal that men work towards, sometimes against. We have a very good historical understanding of why there are multiple jurisdictions in the US, and why the US is different from Canada or Mexico (also, not part of the UK); and, we understand why Washington is a distinct state from Oregon, New York distinct from New Jersey. Subdivisions into sub-jurisdictions (states) are not philosophically justified by reference to the concept “rights-protecting government”, it is just a historical artifact hard-encoded in our system of laws. There is no philosophical justification for the existence of Canada as a political entity, it is purely a historical and emotional matter. The most important fact is that people in a certain place, which constitutes a “society”, have made a choice to be a nation – or not. The people of Gibraltar choose to remain part of the UK, so they are not a separate nation and not part of Spain, likewise Quebec in relation to Canada. The people of South Sudan and East Timor, on the other hand, decided to form separate nations from Sudan and Indonesia. You can well ask “why” for each of these nations, and there are different specific answers, but we can say in general that “they chose”. Often, “superior force” is the explanation, for example how Chechnya became part of Russia and did not gain independence when the USSR collapsed. In the case of Russian aggression, this is an emotional issue of power-lust, that Putin wants to restore the USSR under the label “Russia”, hence his forceful incursions into Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova. Putin rejects the principle that the use of force should be under the objective control of law, he sees force as a mighty tool that he can use to magnify his glory. Hamas and Iran have the common goal of destroying Israel as a nation (despite a sect-internal religious conflict), but they differ slightly in their tactic for achieving their shared goal. Iran is generally a civilized nation but is currently controlled by an irrational cabal of mullahs, who nevertheless understand that they cannot get away with directly invading and destroying Israel, therefore they realize their goal via Hamas. Because nation-on-nation aggression is illegal pursuant to numerous international agreements, direct territorial wars are nearly a thing of the past, though Russia is doing its best to turn the clock back to the days of Hitler and Napoleon. Such wars have been replaced with diffuse ideological wars such as the world-wide attack on civilization by Islamicists (widely supported by various Islamic governments, resisted by some such as Morocco, Jordan and Turkey.

It is fairly simple. Within a nation, it is determined by the laws of the nation (allowing for jurisdictional subdivisions, for example in the US, ownership of land is mainly governed by state law). A Dutch guy can own property in North Dakota or Peru, and any limits on what he can do with the land are determined by what entity has jurisdiction over the land. The US does not “own” the US (nor does Turkey “own” Turkey), those governments have jurisdicion over their territory. However, the US (government) does own certain pieces of land in the US, just as individuals can own land. In addition, the feds “hold in trust” a larger chunk of land, for example most of Washington state (bastards!). On occasion, there are disputes between nations, for example the NW corner of Kenya known as Ilemi being the border with South Sudan is indeterminate. There is a rock between New Brunswick and Maine which is disputed. Jammu and Kashmir is a famous example. Again, these are not ownership disputes, they are jurisdiction disputes. Hatay province of Turkey is technically in dispute (Syria claims jurisdiction), but it is in fact in Turkey and not Syria, and there are very many people who own property there – under Turkish law. Syria’s claim is more window dressing and they have not pursued the matter in court (the usual way to solve these problems). The other way is to go to war, as in the Indo-Pakistani war, the Ogaden war, and the Russia-Ukraine war. Again, these are not questions of real estate ownership, they are disputes of national jurisdiction. Land ownership remains stable under changing jurisdiction (modulo change in property laws following a change in jurisdiction).

That’s an interesting question. A rational being holds that knowledge derives exclusively from reason, but Rand’s concept of reason include sense perception, as well as conceptualization and logic. Perception is non-volitional. A person may be for example physically incapable of hearing a sound above 12Khz in which case there is no question of “choosing to hear”. Or, you may hear but disregard, which is a volitional act. Reason acts on two things, the chosen and the un-chosen, the latter being direct sense perception. Reason is a human faculty, an ability that is part of the mind residing in the brain. Dogs and worms don’t have it, they have something else, even though they have sense perception. Concept formation is 100% volitional. I take that to be so self-evident that it needs no further discussion, but if you disagree, we can pursue that topic. Although logic is vastly more compact than concept formation, I would not claim that it is hard-wired into the human brain, I would claim that it is learned and volitional. Certainly one must choose to apply logic to sensations in deriving knowledge. As you presumably see, 2/3 of reason is volitional, therefore volitionality is a concomitant of rationality. I am satisfied with this as an answer to the question about man on Earth, but it would also be reasonable to ask about imaginary science fiction beings, such as Vulcans. Would we actually integrate other kinds of consciousness into the concept “rational”, if the content of their “faculty of reason” were hard-wired and non-volitional, and if all processing of sense data is automatic (not just bare sensation, but also concept formation and all other aspects of cognition). After all, we historically generalized the concepts “speech”, “arms” and “the press” to accommodate new existents. ChatBot very weakly directs our attention to other imaginable kinds of consciousness, ones where logic is built in and obligatory. Could any living being have a fixed and automatic conceptual faculty? I say no, that by definition, a cognitive system with a fixed and automatic set of concepts is not a conceptual system, it is in fact a fancy form of dog cognition, a closed list of mental groupings.

First a small correction, this is not a debate, it is a position statement. I am not satisfied with the definition of science as being the nature of a subject for a couple of reasons. First, it is based on what turns out to be a problematic concept, namely “a subject”. Second, the bar is set too low, at “study the nature of…”. There is one subject, and the possibility of selective focus thereunder – the universe. The action of studying is not what defines science, science is defined in terms of a goal, which is to gain conceptual knowledge of the subject. “Studying” is one way of talking about the actions that are part of science, but however you define science, it should be in terms of the ultimate goal, and not the means of reaching the goal. I also disagree with the statement that truth is impervious to denunciations or false praise. Why? Because truth is the grasping of the relationship between a proposition and reality, and a consciousness must choose to grasp that relation. Denunciations impede truth, i.e. the grasping of reality. Now, reality is not affected by denunciations and ignorance, and does not depend on there being any consciousness. One view of science is the social majority view: “scientist” is defined according to the criteria set by the majority of scientists. I won’t bother to discuss this since it is patently circular. The second is via analogy and ostensive definition, classically by pointing to chemists and physicists, and saying “and those who are similar”. The third, and I would say best approach, is via integration and differentiation – what specific actions do you want too include, and what do you want to exclude? Some classic problem cases are: mathematics, history, psychology, engineering. Social Justice Warriors and literary critics purport to be seeking the truth, but I would not call them scientists. A very large proportion (probably a majority) of actual scientists do not purport to be seeking the truth, thay are ___ (some other expression, for example “developing a model”, “contributing to knowledge”). In fact, I do not find it useful to focus on criteria for applying the label “scientist”, instead, I would focus on two things. First, the truth of a particular claim. Second, the reasons for accepting the claim. A scientist worth his salt should be not just able to discover a true proposition, they should be able to show that it is true, and superior to alternative propositions.

There is a famous refutation of behaviorism, “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior” (Language 35: 26-58, 1959) which appeared in what was at the time the premier scientific journal for linguistics, written by Noam Chomsky. What is relevant to the present issue is that the refutation is not based on advanced technical training and specialized investigations, it is not a scientific refutation, it is a philosophical refutation that the theory is not even wrong. True, there are also footnotes with references to technical scientific literature, but the review is entirely composed of a logical dissection. The essence of the review is a philosophical explication of how the book and the underlying theory is meaningless and unsupported gibberish. Usually, a professional attack on a scientific theory is based on competing science, occasionally as in the review of Verbal behavior, it is based on a philosophical determination that the emperor has no clothes. Being the target of a well-reasoned philosophical attack is shameful for a scientist, which is why such refutations are usually not required. Sometimes, though, they are required yet lacking, and that is when you know that a particular science has devolved into meaningless blather.

First, the Bhopal accident was in 1984, what happens in 2014 is totally irrelevant. Second, the accident was at a Union Carbide plant, and Dow acquired UC only in 2001. Third, UC paid the contemporary equivalent of 100,000,000,000 cents for this. Fourth, the number of deaths in the immediate aftermath was 2,000, not your hallucinated 20,000. Finally, Paul Orrefice had no connection to the accident, at most Warren Anderson might, and in fact Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of the Indian company that was actually responsible, was arrested, tried and convicted for various crimes connected to the accident. Did someone pay you to write this fictitious denouncement of an American hero?

Good and evil pertain to choices by a rational consciousness, given a fundamental goal such as “to exist, qua man”. This uniquely refers to man, at least on Earth. Morality is a code guiding a rational consciousness, whereby one can reach one’s fundamental goal. Nature, i.e. “the universe”, is not a consciousness and does not make choices, so nature does not have a moral code. Morality derives from nature, specifically, the identity of a consciousness. The concept of “supranatural”, meaning “above the laws of nature”, is not even applicable to morality for humans. Gravity is a law of nature, you cannot chose to disobey it. Morality is clearly a choice, not a law of nature, and is not absolutely and instantly enforced as laws of nature are.

Should the fundamental principles of a philosophy be modified based on scientific evidence? Well, it depends on what you think the difference is between philosophy and science. Rand took a position on that question, one which I agree with but which does not exactly match how scientists and philosophers usually divided up the universe. Simply put, any claim which is not validatable based just on ordinary observation of the world and logic is not a proper philosophical proposition. For which reason, science is 99% irrelevant to philosophical argumentation. Needless to say, being the foundation for all science, scientific practice often fails at a principle which it has taken to be axiomatic, that scientific claims must be well-defined and falsifiable. Proceduralism has substantially subdued reasoning in many sciences: rather than conducting experiments with instruments that are unquestionably reliable, they are conducted with instruments that are widely used, at least in a narrowly-defined domain. The 1% exception is reserved for when philosophy mistakenly oversteps its bounds, by relying on something other than ordinary observation and logic. This misapplication of philosophy led to the postulation of celestial spheres, which is a factual falsehood. A factually-ignorant philosopher might then posit a principle of reasoning that in the mind, one first conceives of the actor then one conceives of their action, because in English we say “Cows moo”. The scientific error is ignorance of languages where verbs precede subjects. A brief moment of ordinary observation and reasoning will tell you that the order of words in English is not fixed, there is substantial variation, and no evidence that such variation reflects changing world view. In my opinion, “scientific insight” is way too low a bar even for science. If there is undeniable scientific proof of some claim, and if that claim contradicts Objectivism in some way, then there is room to discuss whether Objectivism is in fact false. So far, there are no even mildly plausible candidates for such counterexample status.

I'm familiar with that usage. We can can find very many such examples out there, indeed we can say that the writings of Ayn Rand are implicit in the grammar of English, and the writings of Immanuel Kant are implicit in the grammar of English. “…all arithmetic and all geometry are in us virtually, so that we can find them there if we consider attentively and set in order what we already have in the mind,” “Thus it is that ideas and truths are for us innate, as inclinations, dispositions, habits, or natural potentialities, and not as actions; although these potentialities are always accompanied by some actions, often insensible, which correspond to them” (Leibniz New Essays). The problem is that I find this to be an abuse of the meaning of "implicit", one that we find very common in social contract style ethical discussions which invoke the notion of "implied consent". Rather than say that all knowledge is implicit in the faculty of reason, we should say that all knowledge is created by using the faculty of reason. We can likewise arrive at valid concepts by contemplating the import of walking into walls for the concept of “solidity”. It is not valid to say that the concept of existence exclusively derives from sense perception: obviously, there is more to conceptualization that simple sense perception. Invoking the implicit obscures an important question: how exactly does one create or validate a concept? Stating the logical hierarchy is not the same as explaining the epistemological process of invention / discovery.

My point is that what you are talking about isn’t knowledge, it is potential knowledge. You might say that some people have that knowledge and others should get their act together to actually have it, and pursuing philosophical discussions here is one way to gain such knowledge. The central question in this thread is about knowledge (not metaphysics), and specifically about validating knowledge. I’m not objecting to your mode of expression, I’m objecting to what seems to be your idea, that people have “implicit knowledge”, knowledge that is not chosen. As I noted, knowledge of personal experience via senses is automatic (indeed, axiomatic), but conceptual knowledge is not automatic. Applied to abstract concept like “entity” or “existence”, you cannot automatically know these concepts. But you can discover them by applying reason to the axiomatic, such as the sensation of bumping into a door jam. Can discover, potentially, if you choose to. Until you do, you do not have a concept “existence”, you just have sensory knowledge that you heard a word “existence”. Before getting to the proper concept of “existence”, you might mistakenly think that delusions, contradictions and God do not exist. They do, as mental states, not a real things. Mental things exist, a fact that eludes many people. Which is why discussion of bare existence without including discussion of identity is a shortcut to intellectual hell.

“Implicit knowledge” is a form of mysticism, based on a premise of a magical automatic reason machine in the human mind. Only a very small amount of one’s knowledge is automatic, namely if you sense something, you have that concrete perceptual knowledge of an event for instance that you cut yourself or that the phone rang. You do not automatically gain high level conceptual knowledge explaining the causal relationship between the sharp object slicing your skin and the sensation that follows, even though that knowledge is “implicit” in cutting yourself. Knowledge must be chosen, it is not handed to you by a brain homunculus. One of the small set of things that are legitimate automatic knowledge – things that you sense and that you register the fact of sensing – is basic words in your language. All people who speak English know that there is a word pronounced “person” because they have experienced it. Most people do not know that there is a word pronounced “zymurgy” because they have never experienced it. Most people probably know that there exists a word pronounced “existence”, and most people likely have an arbitrary incorrect definition of the word. Having a concept means having the unification of units subsumed under the label “person” or “existence”. One has the potential to explicitly validate the concept of existence through experience, but the potential and the actual are not the same. If you haven’t validated the concept, the concept isn’t validated. There may be some confusion over the proper limits on "implicit" knowledge, which relates to a person supplying actual knowledge that is not explicitly stated. If I tell you that you can use my hammer, I probably don't explicitly say that you have to return it in a short time, than you cannot destroy it, that you cannot hit me with it – these are implicit facts about what I say or would have said. This is what "context" is about. You don't have to explicitly state everything when you are communicating with someone, you don't have to announce your definition of "hammer", and so on. You may assume that your interlocutor shares with you a concept of "existence", or "rights", but as we know, the number of people who correctly grasp the concepts of "rights" is way smaller than the set of people who wield the word.

I am trying to figure out how to restate what you don’t know (and therefore are asking about) in terms that I can understand. I presume that you are stuck on validating a claim, and the fact that all knowledge derives from application of reason to perception. I also presume that you understand and accept the hierarchical nature of knowledge, for example you cannot grasp “existence” if you do not grasp “exist”. Even “exist” is far from a first-level concept. It is more productive to focus on lower-level concepts like “perceive”. For example, how do you validate the concept “dog”, and how do you validate the concept “cat”, likewise “table”, “chair”, “animal” and “furniture”? On the assumption that you can do this, then you can set to validating some much more abstract concepts like “entity”, “attribute”, “action”. My initial six examples are all examples of “entity” and not “action” or “attribute”. Eventually, we will get to the point of conceptualizing other intangible abstractions like “delusion”, “deception”, “truth”. How do you validate these concepts? The final product of this process is that you can validate the concept “universe”, which is another name for “existence”. I strongly disagree with the claim that every sane adult has an explicit concept of existence – this is kind of a “true Scotsman” fallacy. You are not insane if you don’t have an actual concept “existence”, you’re just (___ fill in the blank: lazy? lax in your thinking? focused on things other than philosophy?). Most people do not have an explicit concept of existence, they simply know the word (if they are fluent English speakers), but there are thousands of words that people commonly know without knowing the true meaning of the word. If instead you focus on “exist”, most English speakers have some defined concept “exist”, but their definition is usually wrong (typically, only real entities are thought to “exist”). I also reject the notion of “implicit acceptance” as a contradiction in terms – it’s like Peikoff’s parrot squawking sounds that resemble an English sentence, but which is not an instance of “truth”.