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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/04/15 in Posts

  1. Depends on what you mean by "recently". I'd pick the founding of the ARS/APA in 1987 as the symbolic date for her ascent into academic respectability. Some might question whether this was an ascent or not.
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  2. Truth and facts - Reasoner's OP laid out the path in it's first sentences. He recognized that truth and facts (based in existence and identity) exist independent of the evaluation of consciousness. So his question is worthy of evaluation and the silliness of "open" and "closed" issues between Rand and Branden become nonrelevent side issues. He then brings in the relationship between all existence and its notice by consciousness. He suggests that the fact of consciousness (more specifically perception as a form of consciousness) may, by its identity, modify the perception of the object and that, therefore, the result is subjective. REASONER- Find a reference for Peikoff's analysis of sense organs. Reasoner's question is a really good version of a common argument. I don't have time tonight to write a clear essay, but I can enumerate the metaphysical and epistemological issues needed for integration. REASONER: 1. Do you agree that truth and facts of reality are based in existence and identity independent of perception? 2. Do you agree that consciousness is an existent whose identity has a specific, eventually understandable nature? 3. Do you agree that human consciousness is composed of varied sense based data evaluated by a reason function that works by recognizing attributes of things in reality and can create independent (from their referents), cognitive ideas that integrate these facts into concepts? 4. Do the sense organs of conscious beings have a specific identity? 5. NOW, stop and think. The people who gave you the idea you proposed in this thread, are asking us to overcome skepticism by expecting A MYSTICAL PERCEPTION DEVOID OF IDENTITY. Stop and consider. They propose that perception is skeptical BECAUSE it has a specific nature. They propose that a perception that can be described and metaphysically identified, is subjective because of its identity. Think of biological evolution as the engine, and then ask yourself if this position makes any sense at all? So, subjective or objective becomes a matter of volition not metaphysics or epistemology. Did you get it right or not, based on the evidence of your senses and the evaluation of your reason? The objective value of Ayn Rand's thoughts are, curiously, wrapped up in the idea of human fallibility. Knowledge is not automatic or mystical, it is hierarchical through time based on the nature of discovery in a sense based environment enhanced by concept formation thru abstraction in the faculty of reason. Whatever your question - you can't go wrong if you start with the facts that existence is primary to consciousness and human consciousness is composed of sense organs providing data for a mental capacity, called reason, that can integrate seemingly incongruent identities into new cognitive ideas.
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