epistemologue
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Posts posted by epistemologue
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On 12/4/2017 at 11:09 PM, MisterSwig said:
Transitioning is the belief that you can change the sex or race with which you were born. This is not merely the idea that you can make yourself look very much like a different sex or a different race, which is certainly true. Rather, it is the full-blown delusion that the fake sex or race is the real sex or race, that the artificial one is the natural one, that the man-made thing is the metaphysical thing.
Many transition advocates are hard subjectivists who believe that reality is determined by their thoughts, i.e., wishing makes it so. In this view, if a white man believes that he is a black woman, then in truth he is an actual black woman, despite what anyone else says. Despite even what his own eyes tell him! He could look into a mirror and see a white man, yet still validly believe that he is a black woman, because, you know, he feels like a black woman, and he has always felt that way since childhood.
Still, there is always that pesky image in the mirror. And to resolve the clear conflict between body and mind, one of those things must be altered for the sake of personal integrity. This is where the man's subjectivism motivates him to change his body to reflect his mind, rather than change his mind to reflect his body. After all, it's much easier to let a doctor work on your flesh and bones than it is to question your own belief system. And so this mixed-up white man undergoes surgeries and hormone treatments to look like a black woman.
Very well said, and unfortunately we see exactly this sort of subjectivism even among prominent "Objectivists" like Diana Hsieh,
Quote...you can’t change the mind, but you can in fact alter the body. The question is what the heck is wrong with doing that? This is the way that people make themselves happy..."
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it’s not something that you can actually change, it’s not something that you actually have access to. Just because something is an emotion- even if it’s psychological, even if it’s based on certain premises- doesn’t mean that you can actually change it.
This view of one's own mind as an unintelligible black hole, an unreasonable force of emotions, is actually quite sad... Ayn Rand did a lot of work to describe the connection between reason and emotions (especially in The Romantic Manifesto, as well as in Atlas Shrugged). She taught how one can understand their own mind in just this respect, but it seems to have been lost on the likes of subjectivists like Diana Hsieh.
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On 12/3/2017 at 5:56 PM, 2046 said:
It is the social aspect too, that of cultural practices, rituals, widely accepted values, assignments of roles, duties, prescriptions, and institutions, rights, and choices, all that have no necessary intrinsic tie to fleshy appendages.
I would just like to make a point regarding aesthetic ideals and utilitarian optimization. You are trying to say that there is no meaningful connection between one's biology and one's behavior. I would say that is a form of nihilism and relativism in the realms of aesthetics and morality which is quite contrary to the philosophy of Objectivism.
Starting from the metaphysically given, in this case one's biological sex, there are going to be certain choices which are more or less consistent with the ideal aesthetic form and with the optimal utilitarian function for the person with said metaphysically given characteristics.
Let's just keep things superficial here and think only about a few of the statistically significant biological differences in the population of males vs. females to start with.
For men:
- Grip strength
- Height
- Preference for rough-and-tumble play
- Throwing ability
- Upper-body strength
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201711/the-truth-about-sex-differences
Now what do these traits imply as far as the ideal aesthetic form and the optimal utilitarian function of males as opposed to females?
Because of the differences in these metaphysically given characteristics in males, it is going to aesthetically consistent for them to choose to be physically big, strong, muscular, and physically fit (and it would be aesthetically inconsistent to choose otherwise), and because they have a competitive advantage in these functions, it's going to be more useful for them to be employed in these sort of roles in the home and in the economy.
As I said, this is just a superficial example, this analysis can be applied much more deeply to the differences between men and women by nature and therefore in the differences in aesthetic ideals and utilitarian optimization which follow, and from there ultimately the differences in choice which would rationally and morally follow from an objective standard.
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Now obviously these deterministic machines aren't acting with any libertarian free will like we know humans do, so to that extent there are going to be issues with applying human terms which rely on volition. But I'm not sure what to say about these terms beyond that...
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The materialist conceptions of concepts, learning, and so on, have a very limited meaning, and can only produce limited results for that reason. "Learning" is the accumulation of regularities, and statistical estimates from there. "Concepts" are bundles of correlated properties grouped together according to statistical or pragmatic standards.
A more Aristotelean or Objectivist conception of concepts or learning have a stronger meaning, and can produce much stronger results when implemented. Concepts are universals, which classify all units of a kind, and have a logical definition based on the rule of fundamentality. Learning is induction of universal concepts or propositions from particulars using the methods and within the limits of logic and non-contradictory identification.
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I think there is a valid concern here, but not in the way you're suggesting. I think there are practical, technological consequences to having a correct or incorrect philosophy. A philosophy based on materialist premises is going to imply a nominalist approach in epistemology, which as a technical approach, will lead to inappropriate forms of knowledge representation (e.g. Humean bundles of properties), and bad methods of inductive learning (e.g. cataloging statistical regularities).
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here you agreed with my characterization of you as a "positive utilitarian", despite having just said I don't anymore think that position is correct
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On 7/11/2017 at 6:24 AM, Boydstun said:
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Would Immortality Be Worth It? --Stephen Hicks (1992)
Can Art Exist without Death? --Kathleen Touchstone (1993)
Can you summarize the main point in these articles?
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@JASKN have you had any chance to look at PHPFreeChat? or anything I can do to help? I'd love to get a chat back up here on OO again. maybe we could even do a regularly scheduled chat meetup on Sunday nights or something like that.
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2 hours ago, Grames said:
Epistemolgue stakes out a definite position on a controversy he admits he does not understand. It is waste of time to engage with him.
This is one of the most dishonest, malevolent things I have ever read. You are a true representative of Objectivists these days.
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6 minutes ago, Plasmatic said:
If you do improve your knowledge you will find that its impossible that you could comprehend Ryan's argument for why "It makes any general knowledge or induction unjustifiable" if you don't even understand what "It" is.
For Ryan "It" (universals) are akin to what Plato call the Form. By agreeing with Ryan (knowingly, or not) you are actually claiming that in order to have knowledge we need some kind of Platonic world of ideals (entities) with bizarre abilities.
Does that sound like what you want to be accepting?
Plasmatic I comprehended the argument before I read Scott Ryan. The mini-critique of Oist epistemology in this thread was written before I'd ever heard of the book. Oist epistemology is broken and it's conclusions are unjustified.
I'll have to take whatever this necessarily commits me to, if it's Platonic Forms with "bizarre abilities" - then they aren't so bizarre, if they are necessary for the justification of knowledge, are they? But I have no idea if that sort of thing is in the cards or not.
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7 hours ago, Plasmatic said:
Epistemolouge have you read my response in this thread?
What about there being a metaphysical basis for similarity without a need for "strict Identity" makes the view of universality as epistemic problematic?
There is a factual basis for similarity and it doesn't include the metaphysical nonsense of bizarre entities occupying many places at once but rather a mind grasping individual identities that have common structure/architecture while remaining physically distinct individuals.
It makes any general knowledge or induction unjustifiable. I don't know if I can say much more than I already have, I haven't studied enough metaphysics. In my opinion, Objectivism has a fundamental problem in metaphysics, and it's a fracture which runs through and corrupts the entire philosophy. I agree with Scott Ryan on that. I am still in the midst of reading his book. I don't know how much else I agree with him on (it may be a lot or a little), he seems to be "Absolute Idealist", which is some kind of Hegelian thing that I simply don't understand.
I'm going to put forth a legitimate effort to study the field of metaphysics; I've bought a number of textbooks on the subject and will also consult various online articles and lectures. I want to improve my knowledge (virtually everyone in both threads keeps talking about universal "entities", I don't understand this at all), as well as improve my arguments, and refine my judgment on these matters and the individuals and philosophies involved.
The philosophical system as laid out by Rand and followed by Peikoff and other major Objectivist figures I believe to be fundamentally broken, from metaphysics on up - though of course I agree whole-heartedly with it's spirit of non-supernaturalism, free will, rationality, egoism, Rand's list of virtues and values, and capitalism, among many other things (I also love Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, I've read both 7 times each).The question at this point is whether to "reinvent" Objectivism from the ground up, keeping with Rand mostly only in spirit if not in philosophy, or else to abandon "Objectivism" entirely to the dust pile and work from some other, more suitable foundation, perhaps "Objective Idealism", as Scott Ryan calls it, or Brand Blanshard's "Absolute Idealism". or maybe something else entirely, or something new, I don't know.
If anyone's interested in studying the field of metaphysics and corresponding send me a message. Otherwise I'll try to come back these threads and the various issues involved at a later time.
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On 5/5/2017 at 2:01 AM, Grames said:
What exists, everything that is metaphysically given to us, needs to be accepted first. Existence has primacy; that means logical priority and semantic meaning moves in the direction from existence to consciousness. Existence exists, it needs no explanation to exist, no justification is required. Justification only applies to where choices are made. Existence has no choice, existence exists in the form it takes, its identity. There is no choice involved in existence existing. Justification can only be grounded in appealing to what exists and its identity. To ask for existence itself to have a justification is a logical fallacy because justification is logically dependent on existence and identity.
"If I can't understand it then it can't exist" is a form of subjectivism.
I'm not saying that everything metaphysically given to us needs explanation *in order to exist*... are you serious? I'm telling you that without some metaphysically real universality, any identity between two units of a concept is logically inconsistent with one's premises. That is, on the metaphysical premise that everything that exists is particular, there is no *shared* identity between particulars.
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9 minutes ago, JASKN said:
Those instructions are good for integrating the chat with IPS. But, Rocket Chat first requires a host, which the chat company will provide and configure for $50/month. Otherwise, we would need to set that up ourselves, and besides needing to figure out how to do so, it would require double the resources currently purchased monthly to host the main forum through Digital Ocean.
It's probably going to be hard to beat the $10/mo IPS was charging for their chat client.
ah I see. I'll look for another option.
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You either have to accept universals exist *metaphysically*, or else any similarity between concretes is inexplicable and unnecessary; any particular from one point in time to another can't even be justified as "the same", if *all* you believe is metaphysically basic is the particular itself, and nothing is metaphysically real on a higher order that guarantees identity between any two particulars, or between any "one particular" at one point of time and another.
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On 4/27/2017 at 11:06 AM, Grames said:
An abstraction that existed metaphysically would not be an abstraction, it would be just another concrete. In fact abstractions are concretes, they are attributes of the brains of those abstractors who have preformed that mental action. But as a product of human action such abstractions are not metaphysically-given, which is why they must be acknowledged as epistemological.
A metaphysically given abstraction is a contradiction in terms.
"Metaphysical" does not mean "material". Gravity exists metaphysically, but it's not "just another concrete". So you've got a fundamental problem here.
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Someone wrote: "It's possible [to integrate Rocket.Chat with IPS4] with Oauth plugin from Marketplace. A friend of mine already did it and it looks stunning."
Another person: "I have it integrated in my site. Pretty easy with this free plugin"
https://invisionpower.com/forums/topic/429968-oauth-server/#comment-2638024Here's how to configure the OAuth Server application to integrate IPS4 with Rocket.Chat.
Rocket.Chat
- Install and setup Rocket.Chat. A walkthrough is beyond the scope of this guide.
- Create an initial administrator user and password, then login as that administrator.
- Administration > OAuth > Add Custom OAuth button (at the very bottom). Enter a unique identifier for this integration (ex: ips4)
- Find the Custom OAuth: <IPS4> section and expand it. Make a note of the Callback URL, e.g. https://your.rocketchat.com/_oauth/ips4
IPS4 Site
- ACP > Community > OAuth Server > Applications > Add Application.
- Enter a unique name for the integration (e.g. Rocket.Chat) and the Callback URL you obtained from Rocket.Chat above.
- Click Save.
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Select the user groups you wish to be able to authenticate against IPS4 for this integration. Do not select Guest!
- Click Save.
- Click on the Edit pencil again and take note of the Client ID, Client Secret, and 3 integration URLs.
Rocket.Chat
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Change the following settings:
Enabled: True
URL: Top-level URL for your IPS4 site, such as https://your.ips4.com/. If your site is not installed at the root of the webserver, include any subdirectory here, such as https://mysite.com/ips4.
Token Path: applications/oauth2server/interface/token.php
Identity Path: applications/oauth2server/interface/me.php
Authorization Path: applications/oauth2server/interface/authorize.php
Token sent via: Payload or Header both work, it doesn't matter.
ID: your Client ID from IPS4 here
Secret: your Client Secret from IPS4 here
Login Style: I recommend Popup
Button settings as you wish. - You may have to restart the Rocket.Chat server at this point. I had to, but I cannot guarantee that is is mandatory.
- Logout as Administrator and use the new button to log in as an IPS4 user.
- Log back in as the Administrator user and give admin access to your IPS4 user (#general chat > people icon on the right > click on user > MAKE ADMIN).
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(Optional) Disable username/password login for Rocket.Chat: Administration > Accounts > Show Form-based Login set to False. WARNING: Do not do this until you have made at least one IPS4 user an administrator or you will lose admin access to your Rocket.Chat server!
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9 minutes ago, William O said:
Well, you seemed pretty committed to denying that universals are entities when we spoke in the chatroom and in the post I responded to. I think it clarifies the discussion to have a more substantial characterization of the universals you are defending.
What I'm asking is, what does this substantively add to the characterization? I haven't read the article you linked yet.
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7 hours ago, William O said:
Will you grant the point now? If you are a realist, you are defending the existence of a kind of entity.
I really don't understand the significance of this semantic distinction.
in other words, so what?
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20 hours ago, New Buddha said:
You might want to take a look at this post by John McCaskey, Induction without the Uniformity Principle.
Induction should be about Classification. The type of example that you give (all balls will roll) while very common when discussing induction is not, in fact, an example of induction.
Thanks.
From the article: "It’s not that you must presume uniformity in order to classify. It’s that you classify to find uniformities."
The whole problem with this is that you haven't "found" any more uniformity than you had to begin with! You're still in *exactly* the same position as he agreed with earlier in the article: "The Scholastics lamented (rightly) that unless you had surveyed all magnets or all animals, the inference was not certain"
"If you have good guidelines and follow them, you can be certain that someone absolutely cannot contract cholera unless exposed to the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, certain that all men are mortal, certain that the angles of all planar triangles sum to 180°, and certain that 2+3=5. And you don’t need any unjustifiable uniformity principle to do so."
No, you cannot be certain of any of those things without some kind of "uniformity principle". The author hasn't justified this at all, and it's contradictory on its face the way it's presented in this article.
"But soon the child learns the difference between truth and make-believe—and the difference between staying the same and changing... The child learns that you can’t rely on some global uniformity principle." - without relying on the existence of some uniformity principle, the child hasn't *learned* anything! Those "things that stay the same" are believed to *stay the same* on the basis of there being such a thing *as* uniformity, that is the very meaning of having such a "uniformity principle" in the first place! "The realization that some things stay the same and some don’t is what, he thought, makes induction possible and necessary" - how can any thing stay the same, by the nature of the thing - i.e. in *principle* - if there is no such thing as a principle of uniformity? That's just blatantly contradictory. He wants to find principles of uniformity while denying there are any principles of uniformity. Come on!
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21 hours ago, Eiuol said:
Isn't a bigger issue what allows for a universally united notion of some concept?
That's exactly the issue I'm addressing. "Rand believes we can form meaningful abstractions *without* such universals having a metaphysically basic existence in reality, which I believe is unjustifiable". That's exactly what you quoted.
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:I am not sure what metaphysically basic universals are supposed to be, or why they are needed.
Why they are needed I answered in my last post, under "Why are these supposed "universals" even necessary?".
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:Why not a universal-making metaphysically basic fact of all that exists?
What does that mean?
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:The way you propose a universal makes it sound like it is either an actual entity (you deny this) or a mental entity like a visualization.
Why does it sound that way?
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:Rand seems to say identity and existence are metaphysically basic facts, and that by virtue of having identity, a number of entities can share features.
Sometimes she says this (she relies on it while denying it, so she's inconsistent at different times), but she explicitly denies any intrinsic identity or metaphysical universality, and her justifications all eschew these principles, relying instead of subjective and/or pragmatic criteria, from which objective truth, knowledge, or success in induction cannot be justified.
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:From there, one creates a mental entity - a concept - based on those features. As man-made, the concept is epistemic, but refers to some metaphysically basic truth (identity) and the metaphysically given features of an entity.
No, that's intrinsicism. You can't go around explicitly *denying* metaphysical essences or universals, denying that such a thing as "manness" or "roseness" exists, justifying your definitions on such grounds as utility, brevity, and differentiation within one's particular context of knowledge at a given time, etc., and then try to tell me that the epistemology *does* refers to metaphysically basic universal identities.
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:You seem to begin with a universal as a mental entity, pre-formed, before explaining how one may sense such an entity.
You're contradicting what I just said above, "Don't metaphysical essences imply that we acquire concepts "by no means"?" I said in that section, "I don't have any general problem with the empirical practice of observation, differentiation and integration, measurement omission, or the process of concept formation in general... in general, this is the normal way humans form concepts".
21 hours ago, Eiuol said:You haven't addressed how Rand thinks meaning comes from an entity.
Well as I've said, Rand inconsistently maintains both an intrinsicist view, when she says things about how concepts are abstract and there is a real *kind* of thing in reality to which they refer, while also maintaining a nominalist view - which is what all of her justifications depend on, as I've described here: http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/30636-subjectivity-and-pragmatism-in-objectivist-epistemology/
Universal meaning (as in conceptual knowledge or general propositions) is based on the definitions of the concepts, which are defined according to subjective and pragmatic criteria in her epistemology as opposed to being grounded in metaphysical essences / natural kinds / some metaphysically basic universal, and thus don't have any real meaning or any real truth, outside of the observations of the particular concretes which have been previously observed and the nominalistic categories and descriptions derived from there.
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On 4/30/2017 at 8:58 AM, William O said:
epistemologue, what is it that attracts you to this position?
From what you've said, it seems like your issue is that you don't see how concepts formed according to Rand's theory of measurement omission could have something to correspond to unless there were metaphysically real universals. Is that the only issue, or are there others?
I would just like to clarify a few of points.
Are "metaphysically real universals" some kind of supernatural entities, located in another dimension?
"Metaphysically real universals" does not imply that there are supernatural "entities" floating around in some other dimension. "Metaphysical" simply means that something is in the nature of reality, it's in the nature of our universe for something to be a certain way.
As for "universal", take for example the proposition that "all balls will roll" (taking for granted any characteristics you want to use to specify that so that it comes out to being an absolute and universal claim). So it's not just a claim about particular balls, it's a claim about all balls. So there is some metaphysical meaning and necessity to what a "ball" is. There is something, some term somewhere in the nature of this universe, corresponding to "ball" in general, at least in so much as *all* balls will roll. If it's not contingent on other facts of the matter, if it really is universal, then there is something about it in the nature of reality (i.e. "ball", the abstraction, "ballness", has metaphysical meaning).I am not positing any kind of supernatural "entity" or any "other dimension", that sort of thing is not intrinsically a part of this claim, even if some philosophers in the past may have taken it that way.
Don't metaphysical essences imply that we acquire concepts "by no means", that consciousness has no identity?
The fact of universals existing in an ontologically basic way does not imply that we acquire them "by no means", or that consciousness has no identity, or anything like that. I don't have any general problem with the empirical practice of observation, differentiation and integration, measurement omission, or the process of concept formation in general. I have a number of issues with Rand's account of this process, but in general, this is the normal way humans form concepts, and that is perfectly consistent with there being a real meaning *out in reality* of the universals to which our concepts refer. (again, this sort of thing is not intrinsically a part of this claim, even if some philosophers in the past may have taken it that way)
Why are these supposed "universals" even necessary?
Metaphysically real universals are absolutely necessary to an objective philosophy. The whole issue at stake here is that Rand believes we can form meaningful abstractions *without* such universals having a metaphysically basic existence in reality, which I believe is unjustifiable. Without something real to which abstractions can refer, we are left with a process of forming abstractions guided by subjective and pragmatic concerns, with the end result being nominalist categories that are incapable of any universal meaning, and therefore with induction (and ultimately, rationality itself), being impossible.
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welcome, drop into the chat sometime! http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/chat/
The Law of Identity
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted
Again, they could only be "perfectly entitled" to those things on the premise of nihilism and relativism in aesthetics and morality.
If instead, these norms follow from their metaphysical base, then nobody who doesn't have that biological foundation could legitimately claim any of the norms which follow from it.