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No, that would be secondhanded, I did it to prevent myself from getting Covid and studied mRNA vaccines before taking the vaccines. This is ridiculous and I'm not taking part in this strange discussion anymore and will read to moderate it against arbitrary conspiracy theories and from those seeking to ignore reason, evidence, and proper epistemology.

Monart, here's a link to Brownstone Institute and their many articles https://brownstone.org/ the gold standard for all things pandemic, good science, optimal health and freedom-orientated, fronted by the heroic Jeffrey Tucker ("Liberty or Lockdown?"). They have been my bright reference point

INTERLUDE Three handy and highly informative articles pertinent to this present essay: The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction Carnap versus Quine on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and the [Quine's] Argument against Logical Empiricism

Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – Α A sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, propositions, and judgments had been important in the modern empiricist philosophy received by Quine. In the present Part and the next, I set out the relation of Quine’s opposition to the distinction in the 1950’s to the Peikoff-Rand opposition to the distinction in the following decade. I emphasize a major problem, tackled earlier by Kant, as reason the dichotomous distinction had been important. That is, I emphasize the problem it had been set to solve in a way not Kant’s. The characterization and responsibilities of analytic statements in sharp contrast to synthetic statements put forth in Logical Empiricism (also called Logical Positivism) constituted an alternative solution to that old problem, alternative to Kant’s solution. I shall step back in the next Part to more of Carnap and the response of Quine to him, and step back to the epistemological problem that had arisen in Kant. I’ll formulate a new solution, one in some affiliation with Rand’s theoretical philosophy and her theory of value. Form and necessity will enter, and I’ll assess Peikoff’s ASD against my layout.[1] “[Quine] is perhaps best known for his arguments against Logical Empiricism (in particular, against its use of the analytic-synthetic distinction). This argument, however, should be seen as part of a comprehensive world-view which makes no sharp distinction between philosophy and empirical science, and thus requires a wholesale reorientation of the subject” (Hylton and Kemp 2023) Quine held that the best science we have garnered is the best ultimate truth at present we have of the world. He did not see logical principles such as the law of excluded middle as arising from ontology, but as a principle of convenience pervasive in knowledge. I should say that dichotomy between those two candidate bases is false. I go with Rand’s picture of elementary logic, as a certain pervasive character of method in successful identifications of reality. Such existence-based logic infuses any higher logic naturally appropriate in attainment of ordinary and scientific knowledge. I add that excluded middle is a tooling formality for a living mind. It is not a formality belonging to concretes in their actuality and independently of the existence of living mind discerning them, by thought, in their concrete identities. Further, in my system (2023), alternatives of any sort do not exist in the universe at all until life enters the scene, and all alternatives, however high in the intellect, are descendants of the fundamental alternative that Rand exposed as uniquely facing the living: continuation of maintaining life or termination of life. We have mind, I say, capable of getting knowledge of concretes in part by use of principles of logic and mathematics tooled from formalities that belong to concretes. Identities of concretes—their characters, situations, and passages—can be formalities belonging to concrete existents, where discernment of those formalities is by thought engaged in elementary experience of ordinary objects in the world. Belonging-formalities such as a broad-form principle of identity “Existents have identity, and existence of the latter in full just is the former” can be assimilated and tooled by thought into further formalities tethered to belonging-formalities. The principle of excluded middle, for example, can have a tether to belonging-identities as well as to the high-powered human mind. In other words, we need not begin with logic, then use it in grasping the world, as Quine would have it. No, we begin with the world, including its identities in belonging-formalities, the world in ordinary human experience. When retaking the world in science, we wield formal tools with some tethers, by ancestry, from the world of ordinary experience. Which tooled formalities of logic and mathematics are best suited to which parts of the world is a further intellectual enterprise. Minkowski geometry can be weighed against 4D Euclidean geometry for most faithful and most effective tool for comprehending physical flat spacetime. Aristotle’s syllogistic and second-order logic can be weighed against Quine’s choice.[2] Quine aimed to integrate knowledge historical, knowledge scientific, including psychology, and knowledge philosophical. I notice, whole truth be told, he ended up smashing against early-childhood cognitive developmental psychology in the second half of the twentieth century, from his armchair. Elizabeth Spelke remarked: “Our research provides evidence, counter to the views of Quine (1960) and others, that the organization of the world into objects [in comprehension] precedes the development of language and thus does not depend upon it. I suspect, moreover, that language plays no important role in the spontaneous elaboration of physical knowledge” (Spelke 1989, 181). The reorientation between science and philosophy sought by Quine is wholesome, I should say. Ayn Rand remained in the old outlook from the philosopher’s chair. She took the sciences, including the modern hard sciences, to be in a one-way need of philosophy, especially in epistemology.[3] “Philosophy is a necessity for a rational being: philosophy is the foundation of science, the organizer of man’s mind, the integrator of his knowledge, . . .” (Rand 1975, 82; also ITOE 74). “Science was born as a result and consequences of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base” (Rand 1961, 44; also 26–27). Rand acknowledged that scientific biology informed her concept of the general nature of life that she employed in her theory of ethics. (More generally, on the influence of biology on philosophy, see Smith 2017.) A bit of measurement theory informed Rand’s theory of concepts. A bit of Helmholtz, her thoughts on music. Rand acknowledges no cases in which science begat or informed philosophy in metaphysics or epistemology. I disagree. Harmonics, geometry, and astronomy existed before Aristotle, before his metaphysics or his theory of science or his organization of logical deduction. Aristotle’s empiricism was a boost to sciences (De Groot 2014), but harmonics, geometry, and astronomy were not inaugurated by systematic explicit philosophy (see e.g. Graham 2013). The idea of a physical law mathematical in expression was not invented by philosophers. Nor the need to look for certain symmetries and symmetry breaking in comprehending parts of physical reality (see Schwichtenberg 2018 [2015]; Healey 2007). From Plato-Aristotle to the present, where theoretical philosophy flourished, it was shaped by received mathematics and science (Netz 1999; Bochner 1966). Concerning science in our own time, contra Rand, it has not declined in comparison to advances in the nineteenth century, which Rand had maintained in support of the idea that bad strains of modern philosophy have led to a decline in scientific achievements (Rand 1975, 78). Modern hard sciences have continued their stampede to the present time, and cognitive developmental psychology arising in the second half of the twentieth century continues bringing new light to the present. To be sure, scientists operate within a general metaphysics they hold, and as Michael Friedman has illustrated, this may be especially useful for resolutions during a time of fundamental innovations in the course of science (2001, chap. 4). Scientists have also been innovators in methods of investigation, theoretical, observational, and experimental. In that we might say they have on a philosophical hat. But I object to the picture that full-tilt philosophers come up with valid methods of rational scientific inquiry independently of existing science, methods not already in the heads and hands of scientists rolling back the darkness. (To be continued.) Notes [1] Recall that “Resonant Existence” is my own philosophy, whose fundamentals in theoretical philosophy are set out in my paper “Existence, We.” The overlap between my philosophy and Rand’s theoretical philosophy and her theory of value are extensive, although, the differences are substantial. [2] Bivalent, first-order https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-firstorder-emergence/ predicate logic with identity [such has been proven complete]) for best truth-preserving tool in science. I might add, it seems fine tooling-form logical structure of natural-language thought on the world, at least when this much classical logic is bound additionally to existence by relevance logic. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-relevance/ [3] But consider Sciabarra 2013 [1995], 121–23. References Bochner, S. 1966. The Role of Mathematics in the Rise of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boydstun, S. 2021. Existence, We. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 21(1):65–104. Friedman, M. 2001. Dynamics of Reason. Stanford: CSLI. De Groot, J. 2014. Aristotle’s Empiricism. Las Vegas: Parmenides. Graham, D.W. 2013. Science before Socrates. New York: Oxford University Press. Healey, R. 2007. Gauging What’s Real – The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Gauge Theories. New York: Oxford University Press. Hylton, P. and G. Kemp 2023. Willard Van Orman Quine. Online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Netz, R. 1999. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics – A Study in Cognitive History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rand, A. 1961. For the New Intellectual. New York: Signet. ——. 1975. From the Horse’s Mouth. In Rand 1982. ——. 1982. Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Signet. ——. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. Meridian. Schwichtenberg, J. 2018 [2015]. Physics from Symmetry. 2nd edition. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Sciabarra, C. 2013 [1995]. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. 2nd edition. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Smith, D.L., editor, 2017. How Biology Shapes Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Spelke, E. 1989. The Origins of Physical Knowledge. In Weiskrantz 1989. Weiskrantz, L. editor, 1989. Thought without Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Just to add to the above, my grandparents on my Dad's side who took me to church from toddler age until I made my own decision to stop going at about 9 or so where originally from Arkansas and were Southern Baptists who took me to Baptist churches, but right away at 4, 5, 6 years of age I immediately had what I now know were extreme moral issues with the idea of a being/God requiring sacrifices, first in animals and then of actual people (which even then I knew made zero sense whatsoever and was evil). Then there were all the contradictions such as a "trinity" that is one, magical stuff like people walking on water, being magically turned to salt, being swallowed by whales and living, dying and magically coming back from the dead, etc. Things that are impossible and people just randomly believing it all without even thinking or demanding proof in any manner. Then there was the way people acted there that literally scared the crap out of me, made no sense, or was boring to the point I'd just fall asleep. Kids my age being rewarded for randomly citing the books of the Bible at like age 6 when the assignment was actually to cite a specific assigned verse in the children's class while acting like mindless zombies, being in the main service with my Grandparents and people randomly yelling out hallelujah like crazy lunatics, the list could go on and on. It was just a scary, contradictory, nonsensical experience at nearly all times. The singing and things like listening to stories that even then I knew were just myths was OK but overall I considered it an extremely negative experience and since the purpose of it all was to stop rational thought and encourage conformity in outlandish ideas that would get people sent properly to a psychiatrist for if they claimed them in the present I quickly realized that it was a form of child abuse to continue in any manner past about 8 or 9.