punk
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Posts posted by punk
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Relief funds are cool to, in as much as the people who pay in aren't doing so out of some "social obligation" but because of some financial or personal interest.
If I owned an eastern travel company for instance, I would be investing at least moderately in the relief effort with New Orleans being the travel destination it is.
As for the tax money that's been extorted from me, I'm sad that I will pay for, at least in part, a house in Mississippi that I will never see.
For any community there are going to be disaster scenarios beyond its ability to prepare for, and since these disasters are highly unlikely, it would be a misuse of resources to prepare for them.
Every community is vulnerable to some sort of super-disaster beyond its resources. It happened to New Orleans this time, but it could just as much have happened to any of our communities.
This *is* precisely one of the reasons that communities gather together into larger units (nations). This allows all to pool resources to help out in the super-disasters, this is part of the implicit contract between communities participating in nations.
Thus since all American communities participate in *America*, they have an obligation to provide assistance to a disaster-area of this scale occurring in any other member community.
Think of it as a contractual obligation rather than a moral obligation.
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I'm a bit confused. I am getting my names from A World without Time by Palle Yourgrau. The direct quote is:
This is all under the chapter "Vienna: Logical Circles" which details Godel's relationship in the Vienna Cirle. The book seems to imply that these were members of the Circle, but does not state it out-right so you very well may be correct. But elsewhere Wittgenstein is mentioned as the very center-piece of the Vienna Circle, and mentions at least one time that he was amidst them so I take it he actually was a member.
Wittgenstein was invited to participate as a very honored guest (since the Vienna Circle especially admired the Tractatus). They later found he understood it rather differently from them and branded him a "mystic".
They also didn't like it much when he read some of Tagore's poetry to them.
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A collection of intellectuals that flowed through the University of Vienna before the Anschluss--probably the single greatest thing Hitler ever destroyed. Their ranks included Godel, Strauss, Freud, Mahler, Schoenberg, Klimt, Kokoschka, Popper, Wittgenstein, and Hitler. It was not just a tradition, but a society and an identity for those who took part in it. Some, like Godel, even refused to leave after the Anschluss, though he did decide to leave in 1940 (39? 41?) when he was nearly beaten by a pack of kids for looking Jewish. But it had long been suspected of "Jewish" tendencies in philosophy, physics, music, et. al. So Hitler thinned its ranks over the years after '38.
Oh please. Hitler was no intellectual and certainly not involved with the Vienna Circle. Especially since Hitler lived in Germany the entire time the Vienna Circle was active.
Why do people try to make Hitler into an intellectual? This is a man who when asked said that his favorite writer was Karl May.
Yes the Circle had problems with local Austrian Nazis, but I doubt Hitler had heard of them.
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Or analytic.
But this is one of the problems with positivism - it impoverishes language by trying to squeeze all statements into the 'declarative sentence' mould.
If someone wanted to hold that 'existence is identity' was a principle like Occams razor, used to choose between competiting explanations for our experiences, how could Ayer respond? It doesnt make sense to say that Occam's Razor is true or false - its a principle, not a proposition. I personally understand "existence is identity" by looking at the kind of things it is meant to rule out - metaphysical randomness, existing infinities, actions without entities, and so on.
Ayer would just say that all you are really doing is modifying the definitions of the words "existence" and "identity".
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Based on what I've read in Ayer's book and based on the discussion here, I suspect that the logical positivist and the Objectivist would be in agreement on plenty when it comes to these issues pertaining to existence. The difference seems to be mostly based on a semantic issue surrounding the term "metaphsysics."
In "Language Truth and Logic" the major disagreement I thought I had came mostly when it came to the ethics part. Things such as the is-ought dichotomy are maintained (as he seems to agree much with Hume on many other issues). Interestingly, his views on ethics are corollaries of his assertions on "the elimination of metaphysics." Basically, to him, all ethical propositions are meaningless because they are not conducive to verification. So, just as all metaphysical statements are meaningless, so are all ethical statements. I think I'm starting to understand why Objectivists criticize logical positivism as "concrete bound."
Oh there is a large gulf between postivists and objectivists.
Objectivists hold that by reflecting on one's self and the world around one, one can reach basic conclusions, or "axioms" which hold as objectively true of the world, and based on which one can reach rational and true conclusions about the world. These truths lead to definite conclusions about such things as ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of law, philosophy of politics, etc.. So by reflection one can reason to far-ranging truths about us and the world.
Postivists hold that the only meaningful propositions about the world are empirically verifiable. Anything not empirically verifiable is meaningless (or analytic if you will). So things like ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of law, philosophy of politics have no real meaning to them. We can have preferences, but they have no basis other than our own whims.
As an aside, this is why Wittgenstein is *not* a postivist even though he is often classed with them. When the Vienna Circle was going through the Tractatus they kept describing it as "mysticism" which is to say he was saying the most important questions were precisely those the postivists wanted to reject as meaningless (questions of ethics, aesthetics, and so on). Postivists would call objectivists "mystics" as well.
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Pretty much. Its an extension of the idea that understanding a proposition involves knowing what would be the case if that proposition were true (or false) - ie what consequences does it have for the world, what states of affairs does it rule out, and so on.
Its worth pointing out that Objectivism has a _very_ sparse metaphysics in comparasion with traditional systems like those expoused by Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Heidegger etc. And a lot of Objectivists do use metaphysics to rule out certain empirical results - such as specific interpretations of quantum mechanics, or nativism in cognitive science, so you could argue that they do in fact have empirical consequences. However it would be more correct to say they are guidelines for interpretating observations, rather than being empirical predictions.
Well, to a positivist like Ayer, either those statements *themselves* are empirically testable, and thus meaningful, or they just get in the way.
If a philosophy has "metaphysical" propositions that lead to empirically testable solutions, then they aren't really "metaphysical" in Ayer's sense.
But I suppose the propositions you are considering aren't considered propositions in Ayer's sense, that is that one is open to them being refuted by empirical observation. That is that they are taken as unrefutable no matter what the empirical observations.
I think that Ayer would say that any statement taken as unrefutable by empirical data automatically becomes meaningless.
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Just an aside: a friend told me that the term "Metaphysics" used to describe contemplation of the nature of reality came about because of the order of Socrates (I think it was Socrates) major teachings . . . the penultimate book was the "Physics", and after that came a bunch of stuff that seemed related to the physics, but they didn't have a real word to describe what it was, so his students called it the "Metaphysics" . . . "after the physics".
This is quite probably apocryphal, though.
It was Aristotle and not Socrates.
Also that derivation for the word "metaphysics" is likely true. Aristotle never uses the word "metaphysics" to refer to the subject matter. He uses the phrase "first philosophy".
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Are you using prior/additional knowledge of Ayer to make that conclusion? I don't see how that can be gathered from what drewfactor paraphrased in this thread. If Ayer uses the word to mean "speculations that cannot be verified by sense-experience" (although these are drewfactor's words, the context seems to imply that this is what Ayer was addressing as well) then he certainly has a different definition of the word than Ayn Rand.
I've read Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic", and I'm also familiar with logical positivism (a school where calling something "metaphysics" is about the same as calling it "bullshit"). Ayer was rather enamored of the Vienna Circle when he wrote that work.
My recollection of "Language, Truth, and Logic" is that it espouses some form of verificationism. In overly simple terms that principle is:
The meaning of a proposition is its means of verification
The gist of this will be that only propositions which can be empiricially investigated have meaning.
Since it does not appear that a proposition like "Existence exists" lends itself to empiricial verification, in positivist terms it is meaningless. Similar reasoning will toss out most of what people call "metaphysics".
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How is it not logic in both the philosophical and the mathematical senses? And what do you mean by it being only 'vaguely' mathematical logic - surely it either is mathematical logic, or it isnt. Unless you want to say that 'mathematical logic' is a fuzzy set with fuzzy logic having a lower membership value than classical logic.
To answer that question we would need to get down to what the main point of logic is.
From a mathematical standpoint the purpose of logic is to insure that the truth values we apply to our whole set of mathematical propositions is consistent.
So fuzzy logic is a "logic" in the sense that it insures that all of our truth values (on a range 0 to 1) are applied consistently to our whole set of fuzzy propositions.
From a philosophical standpoint logic is used to infer new statements from existing statements. In this contexts generating new vague propositions from an existing set of vague propositions doesn't seem terribly useful, so one might begrudge it the label "logic".
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I just finished reading A.J. Ayer's book "Language Truth and Logic" and I had a question about what seems to be the basis of his whole argument: The elimination of metaphysics.
My interpretation is that by eliminating metaphysical speculations that cannot be verified by sense-experience, philosophy is emancipated from much of its unresolvable conflicts such as realism vs. idealism etc... I was wondering if Ayer means something different from Rand by the term "metaphysics" since the basis of Objectivism is: metaphysically - existence exists.
Ayer would hold that a statement like "existence exists" is fundamentally meaningless.
But to answer the question, both are using the term "metaphysics" in pretty much the same way.
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Bouwer was/is a follower of Kant, by the way. Look. intuitionism certainliy is a useful methodology, but it is not a useful philosophy of mathematics. A well ordering can clearly be placed on a set---it is not a mystical object. Since the set is a formalism, just imagine the formalism but in the correct order. Let's say you have a library of 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 out ouf place books. The fact that all of humankind working together could never put them in order does not mean that the idea of well ordered library of 20.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 books is inconsistent. In fact, if the first is possible, the latter must also be possible. In fact, the set could be arranged in any order.
Brouwer would agree that a well-ordering can always be placed on a finite set. The criticism was never that it would take *too long*.
Brouwer's criticism comes up when dealing with *infinite* sets. The point is that we cannot just assume a well-ordering exists for an infinite set, we have to come up with a procedure which generates the well-ordering.
For finite sets and problems intuitionism and conventional logic agree 100%. The disagreements only come up when considering infinite sets and problems.
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I should have said that I was talking about DEDUCTIVE logic here.
Induction is not expected to be exact, unlike deduction.
I have seen nothing in Fuzzy which claims to be or appears to be inductive, that is, it is not producing universals.
You are contradicting yourself. First you say that Fuzzy is not in competition with conventional logic. Then you say that it is.
Vagueness is reducible to uncertainty -- how likely is it that a vague thing will be considered to be in the set rather than outside it.
Notice that this fuzzy operator will still lead to NO tautologies; and thus no valid inferences are possible.
I'm starting to think you are being willfully obtuse.
Okay, lets construct a *very* simple fuzzy control system:
Lets have an engine and suppose we want to set the throttle based on the temperature and rpms.
Let X by the temperature value, Y be the rpm value, and Z be the throttle value (which for ease will set between 0 and 10).
Let us define a function f to map the temperature into a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. that gives the fuzzy truth value for the set "engine is too hot"):
f(x) = x/200 for 0 <= x <= 200
f(x) = 1 for x > 200
Let us define a function g to map the rpm into a value between 0 and 1
g(x) = x/500 for 0<= x <= 500
g(x) = 1 for x > 500
Let us finally define a function h to map from values between 0 and 1 to throttle values (i.e. takes a fuzzy truth value, or fuzzy control bit, as in put and generates a throttle value):
h(x) = 10*x
We can construct a fuzzy control system in which the throttle value is given by the observed temperature and rpm values as follows:
Z = h(AND(f(X),g(Y))
Recalling that AND is here defined as:
AND(x,y) = x*y
So as the engine's temperature and rpm measurements fuzzy inclusion in the sets/conditions "engine too hot", and "engine rpms too high" change the system adjusts by setting the throttle to different values.
This is the sort of problem fuzzy logic was intended to solve. That's it, right there, everything fuzzy logic is about. In fact if I write the last equation above in more purely mathematical form it is innocuous:
Z = h(f(X)*g(Y))
But the thinking behind the control system is much less obvious.
I didn't contradict myself. I was trying to make a distinction between logic as rules of inference and deduction, and logic as the basic structure which makes computers work. Hopefully this has made it clear that fuzzy logic is meant to be a logic in the sense of a basic structure which makes a machine work, and is not intended to operate as a set of rules of inference and deduction.
In fact all the mathematical definitions which underlie fuzzy logic make appeal to conventional logic in their definitions (the same way all mathematics does). Fuzzy logic is just a bunch of mathematical objects. Maybe it should really have been called "fuzzy control theory", and we wouldn't be having this discussion, but again the creators understood "logic" to refer to the NAND and NOR gates which underlie computer computation, so fuzzy logic is a logic in that sense.
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I forgot the part that makes it analogous to logic....
For conventional logic take 0 to be false and 1 to be true. Let us define a function CAND (conventional AND) so that we get the right answers for AND"
For function CAND(*,*) we take:
CAND(x,y) = x*y (here * is multiplication, above it was a placeholder, sorry)
We then can define a fuzzy AND (FAND) as:
FAND(x,y) = x*y
Except that where for CAND, the inputs could only be 0 or 1, for FAND the inputs are any number between 0 and 1 (including 0 and 1), so for x =0.5 and y =0.5
FAND(x,y) = 0.25
Similarly for other logical operators. (Note though, it has been a while so this might not be the conventional fuzzy definition of AND).
We then can track these fuzzy truth values through our fuzzy control diagram to determine what the system does for various truth values.
Again, the point of this is to make, say, a computer program operating a system more easy to program, understand, and debug, while controlling the system correctly. That is making the ENGINEERING more transparent.
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The purpose of logic is to identify valid inferences, that is, those ways of thinking which when given true premises will always yield true conclusions. Once you know how to do that, then you can safely calculate the consequences of your observations and plans.
Whatever "fuzzy logic" maybe, it is NOT logic. At best, it is a technique used in control theory. At worst, it is an attempt to destroy logic (and thus reason) by substituting an arbitrary and unreliable method for logic.
I think the people who promote "fuzzy logic" as a new improved logic are either charlatans trying to cheat people or intellectual vandals.
Imperfect information is the province of probability and statistics, not logic. They are quite capable of handling it without using "fuzzy logic".
This does not follow. "Fuzzy logic" is a stolen concept (in Jennifer Snow's sense: redefining an existing term using a derivative concept which conflicts with the original) and a contradiction of logic.
You should actually read a book on "fuzzy logic" before deciding what it is. It is a rigorous engineering discipline. It is logic in the sense of a control system making decisions. Think of it as being "logic" in the way a computer operates is "logic", rather than "logic" in the sense of the way we decide what is true or false of the world around us. That is the logic of a flow-diagram.
There may be models of probability theory able to handle the same problem, but there is also the issue of which system is more graceful and capable of handling complex situations in elegant ways. There are *always* going to be multiple ways to solve any engineering problem, the key is finding the one that handles it in a simple and robust way.
At the base of "fuzzy set theory" there is the issue to assigning the membership number of an element in a set in a consistent and systematic fashion (i.e. given an element which we are saying has 0.5 membership in set A, and 0.25 membership in set
. Any system which we give to assign these numbers will end up following the laws of conventional logic. So the very basis of "fuzzy set theory" requires conventional logic to be made systematic."Fuzzy logic" makes then doesn't use "true" or "false" (0 or 1 set membership), rather it uses a continuous scale from 0.00 to 1.00 to assign shades of "truth-hood".
The real issue is what a set/proposition is in "fuzzy logic" and conventional logic.
In conventional logic a set/proposition will be something like "brown dog" and the elements a bunch of dogs. A brown dog will have membership 1 and a dog of a different color will have membership 0.
In "fuzzy logic" a set/proposition will be something like "the engine is too hot", and the elements various states of the system. Now based on the degree of membership of the current state of the system in "the engine is too hot" and its membership in various states of a similar nature the system will make a decision to make certain will-defined changes to itself.
This isn't anything philosophical, it is just the logic of a flow-diagram which dictates what the machine will do when in certain states. The sets are those aspects of the system chosen because they are deemed important to control of the system by engineers.
The alternative using conventional logic for machine control would be to create a whole slew of sets/propositions like "the engine is between 100 and 150 degree", "the engine is between 150 and 200 degrees", etc. and have the state of the system be reflected in a strict true/false, 0/1 membership in these states. The machine then makes strict decisions based on these states.
The point of "fuzzy logic" is that it is less cumbersome than conventional logic for these sorts of things.
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First, a quick primer on 'Fuzzy Logic'
Lets say you have an apple. It is what it is ('A' is 'A').
Now take a bite out of it.
Is it still an apple? Yes.
Now continue eating it until it there is nothing left but the core.
is it still an apple? No, its just a core.
So here is the crux of how 'Fuzzy Logic' differs from traditional western logic. In traditional logic, the apple began as 'A', and at the end became 'not A'.
Some indeterminable bite of the apple made it pass precipitously from one absolute, to another.
In 'Fuzzy Logic' the statement 'this object is an apple' would have a degree of truth to it, as opposed to a binary truth value. In practice, this means that as each bite is taken out of the apple, the truth value is a continuous variable.
Proponents of Fuzzy Logic cast it as a challenge to western logic. They point out that while traditional formal logic systems declare, at an axiomatic level, that the essence of contradition is to say "A and not A". Whereas in fuzzy logic, a value can in essence, be both true and not true. In the example above, once you've eaten roughly half the apple, it is, by degrees, both true and not true that the object is an apple.
For those familiar with logic formalism, it defies the law of the 'excluded middle', in a rather seductive way.
And so, I was curious what the objectivist position on Fuzzy Logic might be.
"Fuzzy logic" is a rigorously defined mathematical structure.
An important application of "fuzzy logic" is in control theory. That is the mathematics of creating a system able to respond to outside perturbation to maintain a stable system.
So an application of "fuzzy logic" would be in creating the "brain" to run an automated aircraft in stable flight.
"Fuzzy logic" is built on "fuzzy set theory" (much as logic can be modelled on set theory). In this conventional set theory an item is either in a set or not. In fuzzy set theory the membership of an item in a set is ranked on some scale (conventionally 0 to 1). So if the membership of an object in a set is "1" it can be thought of as 100% belonging to the set. A membership of "0" has the object not belonging to the set. A membership of "0.5" would have the object belonging 50% to the set. One constructs a rigorous system on this.
Basically it is a logic of making decisions by weighing the information available and is not intended as an alternative to conventional logic.
Put in other terms, fuzzy logic is about answering the question "What should I do given the information I have right now?" At a deeper level fuzzy logic is founded on conventional logic, so it doesn't contradict it.
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I've looked into this....
I can find no evidence for my recollection of a boycott, nor for any instruction from KPD leadership for its base to vote NSDAP.
What I did find was that the KPD and NSDAP deputies did vote together on several issues before the parliament (Reichstag) that can be construed as destructive to the Weimar Republic, and they may have coordinated in regards to a strike.
It looks to me like Ms. Rand confused parliamentary votes by KPD deputies with electoral votes by the KPD base.
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Here is a link to election results:
http://facultystaff.vwc.edu/~dgraf/weim.htm
Between the second to last and last election the net is:
total deputies go up by 63 (to 647)
KPD deputies go down by 19 (to 81)
NSDAP deputies go up by 92 (to 288)
DVP deputies go down by 9 (to 2)
Everywhere else the changes are smaller.
The number of deputies is based on a formula of a party getting one deputy for every 60 000 votes received.
KPD still has heavy support, though it has lost a number of votes (consistent with my memory of parts of the KPD calling for a boycott). NSDAP has gained many votes but is still short of a majority. DVP was another right wing party so its loss of deputies is consistent with voters switching from them to NSDAP.
NSDAP appears to have gained most of the votes of new voters who didn't vote in the previous election.
I would say this is consistent with a partial boycott by KPD voters.
I haven't seen any historical evidence for calls by KPD for its voters to vote NSDAP, so I still dont think that is true. There was too much bad blood and violence between KPD and NSDAP members. Also the KPD knew full well that one reason the establishment was making common cause with NSDAP was to counter the power of KPD.
I still go with the scenario of one wing of KPD calling for a boycott, the rest continuing to vote KPD.
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The problem with environmentalists is that they want to preserve nature for the sake of preserving nature. At the extreme end of this are those that view humanity as something that can be expended for the preservation of nature.
Nature can get along just fine without us.
A very real possibility is that we can damage the environment enough that the continued existence of us (humanity) becomes questionable.
An "objectivist environmentalist" would, I suppose, advocate respecting the environment for the sake of preserving humanity. If the environment is damaged enough humanity is gone.
There is a saying: In order command nature you have to obey it.
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Bold Standard stated on Mat 31 that "In fact, members of the Communist Party living in Germany were ordered to vote for Hitler. "
So it would appear that those doing the "ordering" had absolutely no influence over the Communist Party hierarchy itself or over the millions who voted their ticket. Otherwise, the number of Communist candidates in the elections of the early 1930s would have been zero. (We can only wonder if these "orders" were coming ultimately from the office of Dr. Goebbels!)
How about this as a contemporary model: In fact, members of the Republican Party were ordered to vote for Kerry, since Kerry represented the culmination of a failing socialist order. The fact that some Republicans voted for Bush anyway just proves there are "wings to the party representing diverse views."
Of course, demanding any information about exactly who is doing this ordering produces a complete blank out.
I didn't really follow any of that. What are you saying?
My account is based on my memory of reading history books on the coming to power of the Nazis in the Weimar republic several years ago. If parts of the account are historically wrong, then I will admit so when confronted with historical data. I have never had a high opinion of Peikoff (a low opinion which I derived from reading "Ominous Parallels" actually), so I don't really consider that a source.
From what little I think I understood of your post though, it seems like you are trying to get theory to trump actual data, and when data disagrees with theory, to throw data out.
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Then why was the German Communist Party bothering to field its own candidates and winning elections? In 1930 the Communists received 4.5 million votes and took 77 seats in the Reichstag. If the Communists had thrown their support to the Nazis, Hitler would have had a majority in the Reichstag and could have come to power three years earlier. So why were the German Communists voting for Communists when they could have voted for what "represented the culmination of a failing capitalist order"?
As with all political parties, there are wings to the party representing diverse views. One wing believed they could work through parliament and take over, another wing believed they had to let the Marxist dialectic work to its conclusion.
While the Nazis were an outsider party like the Communists without any support from the German political establishment, the first wing was generally in control of the Communists and they continued to run against the Nazis. At a certain point though the German political establishment decided they would take the Nazis under their wing and use them to consolidate parliamentary control (which of course ended up being a big mistake for the German political establishment, but that was later). The Communists perceived this alliance between the establishment (i.e. capital) and the Nazis as a sign that the establishment had made a fundamental change in its intentions and methods. It is at this point that the second wing becomes dominant, and they essentially boycott the parliament.
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I disagree. The Nazis were always explicitly anti-Capitalist. They were as vehement in their comments against Capitalism as they were in their comments against the Jews.
I believe that the German Communists voted for the Nazi party because they didn't want to divide the vote. They believed that they and the Nazi's were fighting a common enemy- Capitalism. They thought the Nazi's were more likely to win, so they supported them. I think they believed that once Capitalism was defeated by the Nazis, they would be able to sway the vote back to themselves.
But the difference between Nazism and Communism is in method, not intention or fundamental ideology. The Nazis wanted the German public to believe that they were working *with* ("tolerating") private businesses somewhat, instead of obviously and explicitly seizing absolute control. But the Communists knew what the Nazis true intention was.
The issue isn't what you think the Nazis were, nor what the Nazis thought the Nazis were. The issue is what the *German Communists* thought the Nazis were.
In Marxist-Leninist thought, the ultimate stage of capitalism is imperialism. Imperialism involves the oppression of the population at the behest of the ruling class (the owners of capital) so that the ruling class (capital) can plunder abroad to keep profits at acceptible levels.
Under this system of thought the Nazis can be seen as the beginning of imperialism, and since in Marxist-Leninist thought things have to happen in a certain order, they would see it as a good thing to let the imperialists run their course fore-doomed to failure.
Also, the Communists never voted for the Nazis. They simply refrained from voting at all. They were going to let the inevitable happen after which they were going to triumph.
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Why wouldn't Communists vote for their own Communist Party candidates? They were gaining on the Nazis in every election leading up to 1933. Fear of a Communist electoral victory is why Von Papen struck a bargain with Hitler, opening the way for Hitler to become Chancellor.
The German Communists felt that National Socialism represented the culmination of a failing capitalist order. After this last hurrah's attempts to maintain capitalism inspite of its collapse, the oppressed proletariat would rise up and overthrow it and impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Of course without allied occupation of Germany after the war, this is probably what would have happened.
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Here is another quotation which seems to echo the idea of Germans having philosophy in their packs:
Yes, it was a different war and slightly richer subject matter, but only slightly different in both cases. I don't consider Zarathustra to be light reading.
Germany in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a much more intellectual culture than contemporary America. A working class German was much more likely to be reading and discussing literary works of merit than their contemporary American counterparts. So they might be reading Nietzsche, Goethe, Thomas Mann or the like whereas the American counterpart is more likely to be reading Stephen King, or some "Left Behind" novel.
This seems to be an American problem rather than Germany being exceptional. I recall hearing that in the 70's and 80's you could go into bars in Latin America and easily strike up a conversation about the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez with strangers. I don't see anything like that happening in most American bars.
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Here is one source.
On Heidegger's Nazism and Philosophy
by Tom Rockmore
University of California Press, 1992
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Among these prophets, Heidegger was perhaps the most unlikely candidate to influence. But his influence was far-reaching, far wider than his philosophical seminar at the University of Marburg, far wider than might seem possible in light of his inordinately obscure book, Sein und Zeit of 1927, far wider than Heidegger himself, with his carefully cultivated solitude and unconcealed contempt for other philosophers, appeared to wish. Yet, as one of Heidegger's most perceptive critics, Paul Hühnerfeld, has said: ***"These books, whose meaning was barely decipherable when they appeared, were devoured. And the young German soldiers in the Second World War who died somewhere in Russia or Africa with the writings of Hödlerlin and Heidegger in their knapsacks can never be counted."... ****
What Heidegger did was to give philosophical seriousness, professorial respectability, to the love affair with unreason and death that dominated so many Germans in this hard time... And Heidegger's life -- his isolation, his peasant-like appearance, his deliberate provincialism, his hatred of the city -- seemed to confirm his philosophy, which was a disdainful rejection of modern urban rationalist civilization, an eruptive nihilism.
... When the Nazis came to power, Heidegger displayed what many have since thought unfitting servility to his new masters -- did he not omit from prints of Sein und Zeit appearing in the Nazi era his dedication to the philosopher [Edmund] Husserl, to whom he owed so much but who was, inconveniently enough, a Jew?
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, the Outsider as Insider, Harper Torchbook, 1970, pp. 81-83.
I think Leonard Peikoff wrote that it is a common fallacy that reason is the faculty of supermen. In the original German, I bet Heidegger was actually pretty straightforward. I realized that he writes very logically and clearly. I do not take Huhnerfeld's "...can never be counted" as a deliberate vaguery but as a statement that these works were well known to be widely read by this population. It might be comparable to the way Chomsky and Zinn are read in America. This characterization by Huhnerfeld does not conflict with my understanding of what was once called "The Nation of Philosophers."
Heidegger is absolutely *not* straightforward in the German. I've read "Sein und Zeit" in the German, and it is written in that horrible style that characterizes German academic philosophy. On top of this Heidegger gives words idiosyncratic technical meanings as well as basing quite a bit of his reasoning on German word etymologies. Heidegger makes Hegel look like a font of literary clarity (I've read him in German too). For that matter Heidegger makes Kant look like Shakespeare (again, I've read Kant in German).
Perhaps a better comparison to Heidegger in English might be James Joyce, there is something of the the feeling of stream-of-consciousness in Heidegger.
If you would contend that it is just the German language which invites this philosophical style, a simple reading of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer would show what clearly written German philosophy can be like (I've read them in German too).
Heidegger was probably familiar to quite a few people at the time though. German culture has a tradition of the prince among the German philosophy professors who becomes something of a popular cultural figure (the current holder of this position is Habermas). People were probably familiar with him through word-of-mouth accounts of his thought, and some of his lighter material (essays and such) which were very specific on topic and don't range much over his general theory, as well as transcripts of his lectures (you will notice that quite a bit of the Heidegger corpus is transcripts of lectures on this or that topic). I really doubt "Sein und Zeit" was well read popularly.
Objectivist Response To Katrina
in Hurricane Katrina
Posted
Number 1:
Insurance has *nothing* to do with search and rescue and providing for displaced people in the time it takes for the insurance industry to formulate an adequate response.
What good is insurance going to do someone starving to death on an overpass?
Number 2:
A sufficiently large disaster will bankrupt the insurance industry. A insurer has only so much liquid assets to respond with.
The *only* way insurance can deal with this is to cap responses and say outright that if the disaster is too large it falls outside the scope of the insurance. That is realistically the insurance industry *must* say that if the disaster is too bad...tough luck.
The *only* reason this isn't the case now is that the insurance industry can expect government assistence in such a scenario.