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Yet you expect me to provide quotes and citations and etc? Based on experience, I fully expect my posts to be quickly buried, and that all my efforts to provide the citations that nobody will bother to look up to be a waste of precious time and energy.

I don't believe Kant said anything about life, only happiness. I interpret him to be saying that instinct automatically knows what to do to attain happiness, even if it's only short-lived, while reason has to work out the problem of happiness over a lifetime slowly and hypothetically, with hits and misses along the way.

I haven't gotten enough responses about the following: No, I won't offer up bazillions of citations slowly and meticulously gleaned from Kant's writings. You can't understand what a chore that is for me to thumb through Kant's massive tome. And I know from long experience that it would be a waste of my limited time and energy. So, along with Rand who never cited anybody but herself and who asserted as fact of reality everything she said as gospel, I am telling you, I am asserting, that the noumenal is nothing more but, as someone else noted, a conceptual space within which to place the inferred cause of sensation as well as other possibilities. Some of them may be supernatural possibilities, but one of them is free-will, which is necessary to make even Rand's moral theory work. I have also stated, in the past, that the noumenal is the realm (or domain) of conceptual possibilities. Kant believed, as did all others in his lifetime, that the only true form of geometry was Euclidean. But if appearances don't necessarily tell the truth, then it is possible that the geometry of the noumenal is non-Euclidean. And so it was. Eventually, it was discovered that the geometry of appearances wasn't Euclidean either. It is more like a projective form of geometry.

Sorry. I was referring to thumbing through the critique of pure reason for a citation to page 880 of the B edition, or whatever. By the time I find it, I forget what it was for.

The first thing I want to ask is if "the task of becoming a man" refers to women becoming women also. And if your observation that they can think for themselves refers to the female forum members also. Rand only referred to women in the context of her theory of romantic love. You may say that she meant "man" in the sense of humankind, but she didn't. She wrote "men," she said "men." And she meant "men," not women. Furthermore, the whole of her writing indicates that she meant "men of the mind," not those "brutes" who perform menial physical tasks whose methods were invented by others. Work, in Rand's context, was creative work done by thinking men, not brutes. D'anconia was excellent at insulting and stereotyping his miners who do all the physical labor of extracting the copper. Without his great mind, these "unthinking brutish blanks" would obviously be either extremely poor, or starved to death. Beyond that, my extensive experience with Objectivists indicates that they are apparently very anxious about taking any non-Objectivist philosophy seriously enough to discuss, lest Rand's anger be dealt upon them although she is long dead. On my forum (not this one), when a curious lurker asked about the science of pragmatics, he was instantly set upon by a pack of Rand's own version of the unthinking brute for daring to ask about Pragmatism in an Objectivist forum. I'm not saying anybody on this forum is Rand's version of the unthinking brute, but that she was a "witch doctor" who created a new variation on the "Atilla" with whom to surround herself. Perhaps they have evolved over time... Rand didn't know about the existence of "strikers" who, like Galt in most of AS, perform brute tasks for a living, but conserve their mental energy for thinking deep, creative thoughts. I once knew, for example, a bricklayer in London who was a master at mathematics. So you never know what those "brutes" may be thinking about while they get their hands dirty so their bosses can wear clean white shirts and dine in the finest restaurants. Some of them, very few perhaps, may be pondering the origins of the cosmos while transporting trash with a wheelbarrow all day. I daresay that Rand didn't get out of the house enough to find out what humanity is really all about, but preferred to remain comfortably locked inside of her own subjective idea of Man.

@Ogg_Vorbis In thinking about Rand's moral theory and its possible contradictions, it's good to actually deal with Rand's texts and show any contradictions in it. If there is something in the theory stating the nature of human being that is false, well that is also a kind of contradiction, a contradiction with reality, and that is a contradiction very worthwhile to articulate. So are contradictions within her writings. But neither sort of contradiction can be shown without quoting the pertinent exact text so people know you are talking seriously and can see what your charge comes to specifically. How Rand dealt with her competitors and what she thought about the history of philosophy is not her moral theory and its moral advice. Text: "Your life depends on your mind. . . Accept, as your moral ideal, the task of becoming a man. // Do not say that you're afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. . . . Live and act within the limits of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. . . . Your mind is fallible, but . . . an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. . . . Accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory." (1975, 1058) Again and again at this site and indeed overwhelmingly, whether they are agreeing with Rand or disagreeing with her, I've seen people at this sight thinking for themselves, as the preceding quotation recommends. They can think for themselves, they love to think for themselves, and they do.

It is not a massive tome. It is simply this paper I linked for you: Kant v. Rand. It is easy to read, very clear and organized.

You're saying I have to thumb through a massive tome containing Kant's writings for the correct source? I'm sure I used to do that, back in the day, before I realized it was a waste of time. I didn't see this process as a resource to use later. For quoting Kant, I got back "This is obscure; Kant was an evil obscurantist," and "What's the deal with the A and B?"

I'm sure they do. It's hard to go through life without thinking independently, to be always dependent on others for one's opinions and for advice. People can be quite independent in most areas of life, but they can be utterly subservient in others at the same time. The mind is very complex, and it's certainly not "all or nothing" as Rand believed. "All or nothing" thinking is a cognitive error well-known to psychologists. My observations of people over the years shows me that they can have all kinds of erroneous opinions on things, yet they get along just fine. They can even be completely dependent on Rand or Peikoff to give them philosophical knowledge, and not be affected at all by this by compartmentalizing areas of their lives. I don't believe Rand did any compartmentalizing of philosophy from daily existence. Everything for her had to be philosophically justified.

This quote is from an economic context, but it serves to illustrate Rand's attitude toward the willing self-blindedness of those who dared to disagree with her. From https://medium.com/illumination/unveiling-the-exasperating-contradictions-in-ayn-rands-philosophy-ff4e0c249a4a -

I am technically not an Objectivist, since some of my points of disagreement with Rand are ones essential to her philosophy. But I have much sympathy and overlap with her philosophy, and I have always represented Rand's or anyone's philosophy as accurately as possible in discussions of it. I am elderly, though not first-generation, or anyway not zero-generation. There are some Objectivists today, of every age, who judge what's true by what Rand said on candidates for truth or at least what they think Rand would say on candidates. Sometimes that is innocent in that it is just a short way of finding out what implications of Rand's fundamental views there are, given that they have come to accept those fundamentals as true of reality, Rand's fundamental views. Other times it is intellectual laziness or modest intelligence. But many, old and young, think for themselves and well. There is a passage in Rand stating that that is what she hoped for in her readers, but right now, I have to go to sleep.

Read the entire composition very carefully. Everything is cited, and hopefully you go to Kant to know Kant. Metaphysical knowledge would have to be synthetic a priori. You know that, right? It is elementary Kant. There is no excuse, with the English translations available today, to make assertions about what Kant thought, without citations. Likewise, for Rand: quote exactly and give the citation. Show they say what you assert they say, and you will also be making a handy resource for you to return to for cites for your future re-readings of these thinkers Keep reading.

I always learn something from these conversations. It just so happens that I am used to addressing first generation Objectivists who were, on the whole, completely obsessed with Rand's philosophy. I'm aware that this attitude may have toned down with the new generation. But my primary experience with Objectivism is with the first generation, and they were quite shrill, I can assure you. And they still are, those that are still around anyway. For example, "But Kant said..." <BLOCKED> If you are a first-generation Objectivist with a more open mind, then I salute you.

That is false and you can easily know it is false.

You wrote: A minor quibble. I don't believe Kant would reject it. He would critique it by employing his transcendental method. He would show that A is A belongs to logic, not metaphysics. The only philosophy that Kant rejected, as far as I know, was ontology in general, the study of the nature of being per se.

If you actually bothered to read what people write here, you would see how flatly false is that generalization "all". But perhaps you presume nobody here has anything to say that you might learn from, you are going to bury your head in the sand about what they write, and you have only come here to enlighten these folks whom you presume to all be philosophical illiterates and have yet to discover thinking for themselves.

-Ayn Rand (For the New Intellectual, 32; Kndl ed.) If the majority of philosophers rejected Kant's "noumenal" realm, they have left out an important aspect of his philosophy - the source of all phenomena. Because even if the noumenal is unknowable, it is, for Kant, the grounds for phenomena beyond the senses. It doesn't matter if the senses modify, what matters is that Kant posited the noumenal's existence. It is THIS that is the problem with modern philosophy - not the acceptance of Kant's philosophy, but its rejection of the ground of appearances (or phenomena). Logically, Rand committed the Fallacy of the Consequent in that quote. Because she focused on the alleged consequences of Kant's philosophy rather than specifically on the (incorrect) rejection of the noumenal realm by post-Kantian philosophers, which is my point. Despite the inherent unknowability of the noumenal, its positing serves as the foundation for understanding the empirical origins of phenomena, a notion often overlooked in contemporary philosophical discourse. The empiricist often confuses Kant's form of Idealism with those that infer the existence of an external world from the matter of appearances (mental states). But Kant did not infer it, he wholeheartedly accepted its existence. He only inferred the existence of the thing-in-itself (or noumenon), not the existence of external things, which he accepted. The noumenal is the ground of experience. Without it, there is no perception, nothing to perceive. Kant never denied the ground of perception, only that it is knowable in itself, that is, by somehow going outside of your consciousness to know it directly without your senses. The noumenal is posited to exist as the ground of perception, of something for the senses to sense. The only way to know it directly would be to somehow go outside of your senses. Simple as that. Kant v. Rand

I don't think this is as important an issue as Objectivists make it out to be. They may consult several expert sources with a financial question. But for philosophy, they are all "I BELIEVE RAND!" people, and refuse to look any further.

Kant's Wrestle with Happiness and Life

It's a "problem" that very few philosophers agree exist. Perhaps none of them believe it, except for Peikoff the chemist-philosopher. Rand's interpretation of Kant's ideas was pretty far out in left field. Rather than taking one person's word for it, and Peikoff's if you include his mimicry, it's always best to consult several sources - If the issue is important to you.

Here's a good article from John Eastman, who represented Trump before the Supreme Court concerning the 2020 election, about some of the information he was given in the course of doing his job: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/most-secure-election-american-history-john-eastman Interesting read!

Did Ayn Rand try to teach people how to think? Or did she try to tell them what to think? One of the benefits of independence is having the right to think for yourself. This benefit, believe it or not, is a result of Cartesianism. Before DesCartes in European culture, people were almost entirely engaged in groupthink. They had little or no sense of individualism. HIs doubting encouraged, in principle, independent thinking. "I think, therefore, I am" places the emphasis on the self instead of the tribe. His mind-body dualism focused on mind. And while that may seem solipsistic, it encouraged further investigation into the mental attributes of humans. This was not brand new to Western civilization, but it hadn't existed to even a small extent since the ancient Greek philosophers. This started with Socrates who focused on individual reasoning powers and questioned authority. John Locke was a hero of Enlightenment individualism. He emphasized many if not all of the rights and freedoms we enjoy today, even as they are being slowly eroded: the rights to personal life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness through productive living. Locke wrote about natural morality, with happiness as the natural good central to his moral philosophy. While Locke didn't line out a list of values and virtues the way Ayn Rand did, he encouraged such virtues as tolerance toward others as long as their beliefs didn't intrude on the lives of others. Ayn Rand, however, provided a list of values and virtues for people to obey. They are the things you should do, according to Rand, in order to be happy - and obedient to her powers of reasoning.

Then she would be wrong. No thing-in-itself, no profit. No noumenon, no free-will. No free-will, no morality.

From the standpoint of Rand's introduction to epistemology, a percept is a mental integration and retention of sensory input. The mind for Rand contributes an integrating process. She didn't explore this process at length. But it should be possible to throw Space, Time and the Categories into the integrating process, as well as the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception. Lacking any exploration of this integrating process leaves the door wide open for whatever someone wants to fill the empty space with.

What Kantian and Randian ethics have in common: Focus on reason. Universality: ethics applies to everybody. Duty/obligation: Kant called it duty. Rand would call it obligation. Respect for individual autonomy. Respect for rights. Independence: The CI is a formula for individuals to use to make up their own minds about rational ethical principles. Specific ethical principles that Kant mentioned were examples. Strength of Will. Moral integrity.