curi

I'm not sure if you're trying to present a regress problem or something else. Could you clarify? If it's a regress problem, could you clarify what you think the solution is for positive approaches and why it won't work for a negative approach?

No. Our view is that thinking is ultimately done by guesses and criticism (evolution). You can guess that a particular thing is criticized, and see if you have any criticisms of that or not. So you can judge criticism in a critical way.

A Popperian idea is that while support doesn't work (there are many problems, some well known, that'd be a separate topic to get into), evidence and arguments can both be used in a "negative" capacity, rather than a "positive" or "supporting" capacity. You can refute ideas which contradict evidence. You can refute ideas with critical arguments. This rules out and sorts out bad ideas. But it does not establish the status or authority or justification of good ideas -- but that's not needed and actually an authoritarian mistake. Combining "support" and "evidence and argument" would be a package deal that should be separated out. I agree with you that whim and revelation are no good. I don't think that "criticism" or critical thinking is unpalatable to Objectivism, either. I actually think Objectivism and Popper have a lot in common. The individual is to act on the best ideas he has at the time he acts. I think we agree on that narrow point. But which ones should he act on, if he knows several ideas with a not-yet-resolved conflict? My answer here, I think, is actually less compromising or soft than Objectivism. Conflicts and contradictions must be resolved to act rationally. You need to create a situation where you have one single idea which is not refuted (by criticism), which you think is right *without conflict*, and act on that. (So to answer you directly: no don't adopt one with less support either. never judge by amount of support. resolve the contradiction!) If you have two ideas, which conflict, and you don't have a criticism of either one, then to judge by status ("more" support) is irrational. If this "more support" does not imply any criticisms -- if it doesn't tell you anything wrong with the less supported idea -- then it's no good as a way of choosing between ideas and really just amounts to judging by authority, not your own (critical) thinking. (On the other hand if in some case "more support" is for some reason which could be phrased as a criticism, then we're largely on the same page with different terminology, different emphasis, different perspective, but fundamentally the key thing is the same. But I think the "more support" camp uses it in *both cases* -- both when it could and could not be translated to a rational criticism.) If two competing ideas contradict, rational thinking must address the contradiction, not ignore it. Saying one idea has more support than the other does not address the contradiction. Criticism does resolve contradictions. In a contradiction, we know at most one of the ideas involved can be true. If we criticize all but one idea -- point out mistakes with them -- then (to the best of our knowledge) those criticized ideas are false, and the remaining idea may be true. The difficulty is resolved. There are some techniques for how this is always possible to resolve contradictions in the way of action (if you know the techniques, and use them rationally). And it can be done fast enough for scenarios with time pressure. I won't go into them immediately because I think it'd be too much information when we may well disagree about something I already said above. For what it's worth, I know this is a lot and I'm working on writing some more explanations. I wanted to give, in this reply, something of an outline of my position to clarify and see what you think of it.

Karl Popper is often misunderstood because he says the debates for several major philosophy issues involve a false dichotomy. The question is misconceived; both sides are wrong; a new way is needed. (Whether there are exactly two standard positions, or actually more in some cases, doesn't affect my point.) Popper's epistemology is the most innovative epistemology of note. By that I mean it changes more from prior epistemology than any of its rivals do. It's the most different. That makes it harder to understand. (Also, to be clear, Popper personally is not important. Like all philosophers, different people have read his books and interpreted him to be saying a variety of different things. I am interested here only in what I regard as the correct, best interpretation. This includes refinements by David Deutsch and myself.) What commonly happens is Popper (or a Popperian, or a person advocating a Popperian idea, whatever) says a particular epistemology idea is mistaken and tries to explain why. Then people usually interpret Popper as being on the other side of the dichotomy from them, because he's disagreeing with them. "If he says I'm wrong, he must be on the opposing side from me!" That's an easy conclusion to reach when you don't fully understand the point being made. But actually Popper is taking neither of the standard sides. It's hard conceiving of a new way of looking at an issue. That's harder than understanding that someone has an opposing position which you've heard before and have arguments about. The standard opponent is within your framework, which is easier to deal with. Look at it another way. For many issues, there are two sides which disagree but also have some points of agreement. For example, they agree on what the right question or dichotomy is, but give opposing answers to it. When popper says that not only is their answer wrong, but also their question is wrong, Popper is disagreeing with them more than their opponents do! So he could be misunderstood as an even more disagreeable version of their opponents, even though he isn't. This is relevant to Objectivism because Objectivists have misunderstood Popper, and their criticisms of Popper rely on misunderstanding his positions. There aren't any Objectivist refutations of the Popperian ideas I'm advocating. (Nor are there Objectivist answers to Popper's actual criticisms of some Objectivist positions, like induction). Popperian epistemology does not contradict all of Objectivist epistemology. There are many points in common, such as valuing clarity and accepting the possibility of humans attaining objective knowledge. But there are some major points of disagreement such as induction and self-evident axioms. Objectivists have the opportunity to learn something, and should be happy about that (just as, for example, Popperians could and should learn a lot from Objectivist morality and politics). Let's look at some example issues where there is a false dichotomy which Popper rejects: certainty and proof, induction, justification, support. Take certainty or proof: there is a false dichotomy between having certainty and not having knowledge. There is an assumption, shared by both sides, that certainty is a requirement of knowledge. Popperian epistemology rejects that package deal, and offers a new way: a non-authoritarian, fallibilist way to gain objective knowledge. Take induction: the two main positions both center around the problem of induction. One position is that we can solve the problem of induction (some claim they already did solve it, some expect it to be solved any decade now). Another position is that the lack of solution to the problem of induction presents a big problem for epistemology. The popperian position is that it's the wrong problem, the wrong question. Popper instead raised a different better question and solved it. Take justification: there is a false dichotomy between "yes we can justify our beliefs/ideas/knowledge" and "no we can't, justification fails due to regress [and several other arguments], therefore knowledge is impossible". The Popperian view is that both of these positions are wrong. They both agree on an incorrect concept of what justification is and why we need it. They package justification together with knowledge. Take support: consider the idea that we can support our beliefs with evidence and arguments. Some people say we can't, therefore our beliefs are irrational. Some people say we can, and it makes our beliefs rational. Both sides have accepted that we need to support our beliefs with evidence and argument for them to be rational. Popper disagrees with both standard sides. He says we don't have to support our beliefs with evidence and argument for them to be rational; that isn't actually how you get rational knowledge; but there is a different way of getting rational knowledge. There is a package deal combining rationality and support. And it creates a false dichotomy where either you have both rationality and support, or neither. Popperian epistemology is a complex subject requiring study to understand well. I cannot cover it all here. I'm going to talk about one example in more detail to give you a sample. Do we have to support our beliefs with evidence and arguments for them to be rational? Pretty much everyone agrees the answer is "yes". That includes both people who think we can do this and thereby get rational knowledge, and also people who think that our inability to do this prevents us from getting rational knowledge (skeptics). The Popperian view is that rationality is not about support. It is achieved by a different method. Rational ideas are ideas which are open to criticism. If there's no way to improve an idea, it's stuck, it's bad, it's irrational. If it's open to improvement via criticism – if it's open to reform, refinement, error correction – then it is rational. Whether ideas are open to error correction does not depend on how much support they have. That is not the issue. (And actually, sometimes when people say, "I've proved my case with all this supporting evidence," it can indicate they are not open to criticism.) Think, for a moment, about what we want to accomplish in epistemology. For example: we want to sort out good ideas from bad ideas. We want to improve our ideas. We want to get knowledge – ideas that are connected to reality and effective in reality. Trying to support ideas was a false goal. It's not really what we wanted. It was a way of getting something else. It had indirect value. It's important to identify this gap and separate the concepts. We can reject support but still find a different method to get the useful stuff support was intended to achieve. Supporting ideas is meant to sort out good ideas from bad ideas. The ones with more support are good. This method does not work. One unsolved problem with it is to define exactly when, why and how much any given idea supports any other ideas. A second problem is whether a less supported idea could be the best one. If it can, what does it really matter that it's less supported? However, a different method of sorting out good ideas does work: criticism. Ideas which are not refuted by criticism are sorted out from those which are refuted by criticism. (These critical classifications are always open to revision in the future as we learn more.)

I'd suggest reading Popper's books Conjectures and Refutations, and Objective Knowledge.

The Popperian method involves no induction. And you don't have to think creatively in a "valid" way. You can think in any way. Arbitrariness is eliminated by criticism of ideas, not by a special method of thinking of ideas.

Induction doesn't mean thinking of any idea or guess by any method. It's a particular method of supposedly getting ideas. You reject "enumerative induction". OK. Can you please give an explanation of how the induction you want to advocate works, or a source? If you define "induction" as "any creative thinking" then it wouldn't be refuted -- and would no longer clash with Popper ... or have anything even resembling its standard meaning. If you're going to redefine it so it has nothing to do with induction, you should use a different word. I think the measurement omission issue is not important. I can concede it and it won't affect the rest of the discussion. I explained my position on it earlier: we do irrelevancy omission and not all irrelevant stuff is measurement. (So it's incomplete. Even if you take "measurement" non-literally as a bigger category, it's still incomplete.)

Popper does not object to "integrations" as such. Only package deals with integration plus something else like infallibilism or induction.

Popper isn't even in the index of that book. If you're going to give me a reference, please tell me where is the quality Objectivist answer to Popper? (E.g. to his criticisms of induction and justificationism)? Above you try to say Popper is scared of the word "Objective" before knowledge. I don't know why you say that. He titled a book "Objective Knowledge". The word "Objective" in the title is not in quotes. You mention David Stove. According to this review, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=D7A009A76B468E4AECF5BFAAD9FF861E.journals?fromPage=online&aid=7222460 Stove says that Popper would deny, "there has been a great accumulation of knowledge or growth of knowledge in the past four hundred years". Since that is not Popper's position (he'd take the opposite position), I'm concerned about the quality of Stove's position. On Amazon, Rafe writes: http://www.amazon.com/review/R31UWOS7LKZBHH/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0765800632&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag= Stove and his claque have completely missed the point of Popper's philosophy and the way that it has sidelined the long-running and pointless academic obsession with knowledge as "justified true belief". I've known Rafe for a long time and I've never seen him be significantly mistaken about this kind of issue. I would expect that if I read the book, I would reach a similar conclusion. But I am not interested in reading an attack on Popper which hasn't understood Popper. If you think it's good, please provide a little bit of evidence that this book (or you) has understood Popper's actual positions and critically addresses them. Or provide some other source, if there is one.

We can't rule out the possibility that one day someone will figure out how to save induction. So what? If that ever happens I'll change my mind then. We all know humans can think of ideas, guesses. That isn't problematic and requires no special theory.

This is closed minded. Many things have been thought self-evident and turned out to be mistaken. In Objective Knowledge, page 10, Popper discusses three examples: (I'm not sure how to disable that copyright symbol from showing up. It should be like [c] with parenthesis.) Each of these seemingly self-evident truths is false (at least in the sense it was originally intended and believed incontrovertible). The example of the sky is similar. Only recently have we had much idea of what a sky actually is, or what we were seeing that looked blue. That's a very error-prone, not self-evident, topic. (It seems to me a bit like claiming stars are self-evident. I can understand how someone might think that today, in the context of their complex scientific knowledge. But it's not really self-evident.) Your understanding of the sky relies on some of your modern scientific understanding. And that modern scientific understanding is complex and fallible! There is no harm in leaving things open to critical questioning (if it's really true, no critical questioning will succeed). And there is a lot of potential harm if we close our minds.

I'm not sure what value this offers. Popper didn't advocate abduction. (And if he had, I would simply advocate neo-Popperism with the abduction removed, and want to discuss neo-Popperism.) The guy also says Claiming that he [Popper] says that "induction is a myth" is taking a word out of context, I believe. No, it's really not out of context. He said it clearly. He meant it. The thread goes on to talk about some of Popper's students. (Feyerabend, Lakatos). Let's not smear Popper with the ideas of others. It's like bringing up and attacking Branden in a discussion about Objectivism.

Mikee, as I understand Popper, he only criticizes enumerative induction, but doesn't appear to know or consider the theories of induction upheld by the likes of Bacon, Herschel, or Whewell. I think you should study Popper a bit more before making claims like this. For example, if you look in the Name Index in Conjectures and Refutations, you could find out that Popper does know about, consider, and answer Bacon. Also, if this is the standard of argument, where did Rand appear to know about or consider Popper's theories? But actually, serious question, if Popper is mistaken and Objectivism is better, then why are there no Objectivist refutations of Popper with reasonable quality? (I've read several attempts (like Dykes and Locke), but none of the authors actually understood Popper's positions. They kept attributing non-Popperian ideas to Popper and then arguing with those.)

Number two is easy. I agree. Popper agrees. Popper gives some reasons that discussion and so on are helpful (like you say). But he never says they are necessary. They aren't. One reason they are particular important is a sort of comparative advantage argument applied to the intellect. Suppose each person makes a thousand mistakes. But you and I make 500 of the same mistakes, and we also make 500 mistakes of our own. Then we each have 500 things we're right about, which the other guy is wrong about, so we could teach each other a lot. A similar comparative advantage argument could work with specialties. Maybe Bob is better at epistemology, and Sue is better at morality, so they can profit from discussion. (And it's even possible to profit from discussion if Bob is better at both, but the ratios of his skill at each are different than Sue's ratios.) Another way to look at it is that each person has some blind spots. They have some mistakes they are making that they are particularly blind to and have a really hard time identifying. Some of these mistakes are shared by over 99% of the population, so that's hard no matter what you do. But some are only shared by 90% of the population and some by 33% of the population. So in those cases if you talk to a variety of people, you may encounter someone who doesn't share that particular blind spot. Even if he has ten times as many blind spots as you in total, he could still help you on that particular issue. But despite all this value in discussion, you can think however you like. Popper offers no strict rules about it, only some optional suggestions and advice. This is not to say all ways of thinking are equally good. They are not. But you're welcome to try whatever you want, and be judged on the merits of the ideas you come up with, not on your methods of coming up with them. Thinking alone is a method and Popperians do not judge ideas by methods, only by content. (We may criticize methods. A method may be bad and waste a lot of your time and come up with a succession of bad ideas. However even if a method is very bad, this does not prove any particular idea created with that method is false.) As to number one, Popper overturned more standard doctrines than Rand did. He overturned induction! Induction is a standard doctrine which Rand accepted, but Popper went further. And Popperian epistemology cannot compromise on this. If it accepted induction, it would immediately have to throw out 80% of its content (not all directly, but there'd be many implications and ramifications). You could still learn some things here and there, but, big picture, Popper would be wrong. However, let's be careful about what induction is. Your statement is ambiguous and could be read as an incomplete version of Popper's epistemology. (A common thing I've run into in debates, btw, is that people trying to rescue induction from criticism change it to the point that they are advocating some subset of Popperian epistemology, without contradicting him, except they still want to call it "induction". You haven't done that yet but it's something to watch out for.) A big issue is how we generalize ideas. Induction traditionally says we generalize data sets to theories. It's trying to get knowledge directly from observation data. That does not work. What you talk about is different because the raw observation data gets mentally processed. The input to the generalizing is not raw anymore, it's been considered, interpreted, improved, etc... So far this is actually disagreeing with a lot of thinking about induction. Also, Popper has nothing against general concepts. General principles or theories are great. We should try to get them. The issue is how we get them. Not directly from data! And also not by "generalizing" which is too vague. Rather, the way to get general concepts is to guess them (using creative, imaginative thinking), not to infer them from anything. If "generalizing" refers to any kind of inferring general theories from less general theories, then that would be along inductive lines and Popper-incompatible, and refuted by Popper (because, among other things, whatever your are inferring from, it's always logical compatible with infinitely many more general conclusions. so there is a big problem of how to select a conclusion. to begin with that would have to be specified). (And I think that this is the kind of thing you meant, though it didn't specify it, so I'm not sure.) OK Back to Popper's approach: we can guess ideas that are more general than we have now. That's unproblematic as far as it goes (it's possible to do). The standard objection is that the guesses will be arbitrary, not knowledge. The solution to that is to use criticism to refute all arbitrary guesses, or any other kind of bad guess. That might sound inconvenient but, like Rand says, you can automate a lot of your thinking so it becomes lightning fast to deal with many cases. (And if someone disagrees, and you want to have a critical discussion, then you can slow down and consider it more carefully. But most of the time there is no problem, and no need to slow down.) So these Popperian guesses get a status of "not refuted, so far". They are fallible, conjectural knowledge. This raises many potential questions: is that good enough? is better possible? if we could do better, how exactly would it work and what would it be like? (Another standard claim of induction is that ideas created by induction have a high status. They are better than conjectural knowledge. I don't think claims like this hold up under scrutiny.) But I'll stop here for now. (As a minor note, I normally prefer the term "idea" over "theory". It doesn't especially matter, except that sometimes people attach some special status or authority to the term "theory" as opposed to merely an "idea". I do not intend that.)

Harrison Danneskjold, in your first paragraph alone, you omitted five different measurements I omitted infinitely many things. Measurements are a common type of thing. Sure I omitted a lot of measurements. Also other things, like God and altruism. I'm not sure we actually disagree that much here, and wasn't really looking to argue about this. Ummmm. . . Would you be so kind as to define 'induction' for me? You are the one who says it works, so I think it would make more sense if you defined what thing you wish to defend. There are actually many different definitions of induction, with some common themes but also some variation. Here is David Deutsch's (a Popperian) definition from his book The Beginning of Infinity: But I don't think this is quite what you wanted to defend. Typical elements of induction include: * A non sequitur from some data set (multiple observations) to some particular theory (infinitely many theories are logically consistent with the data set. why is this particular one chosen? blank out. or several answers have been attempted, like a version of Occam's razor, but they don't work) * A claim that the resulting theory is supported and has high status (authority). (What difference that authority actually makes is typically left vague.) This actually comes up a lot that people defend induction but don't seem to know quite what it is. If you don't know what it is, why defend it? I don't think you should be defending induction unless you can define it and explain how the entire thing works, start to finish. If you don't have firsthand knowledge of the full idea, and its correctness, then why defend it? By the way, don't feel too bad about being unable to fully defend induction. Rand couldn't either (nor anyone else). From ITOE 2nd edition: I believe Rand assumed induction would work, even though she didn't have a full understanding of how it could work, because she didn't know any alternatives to reach the same goals and conclusions she was after. Those goals are things like knowledge being possible to man. I think she figured that since man does acquire knowledge, then induction must work, and some day someone would figure out the details. That's OK as far as it goes. But Popper did figure out the details. And the details are: we can get the same stuff (e.g. that knowledge is possible to man), but by a different method that turned out not to be induction. So what?

Eiuol, One person's failure at explaining how to induce doesn't mean no method exists. What "one person"? I've talked to many people and am familiar with the literature. where does the explanation and criticism come from? Creative thinking. The power of the human mind, which is our glory. Omitting things due to irrelevance *is* measurement omission. What is the measurement involved when I don't mention God or altruism? I'm omitting irrelevant topics, not particular measurements of the things I'm talking about. If what she really meant is omitting anything, then it's fine, if maybe not named very well. Thinking conceptually involves being selective about what's important. Popper said something like that too. But I don't think that's quite what Rand meant about "measurement omission".

The problem with accepting fallible induction is that induction doesn't work at all. It doesn't fallibly work; it's a myth; it's impossible to do. There is no method of induction, it's never been used and could not be used. Why? Because the only way to get general ideas using observations is to think about explanations and use criticism to improve them (the Popperian method). All other methods, like induction, involve a non sequitur between observations and general theories. You are told to "induce" to "generalize" but never told how. Without being told how, you cannot follow that instruction. (So what ends up happening is people use the Popperian method. But many are confused and think they used induction.) Put another way: given some data set, which general theory should be induced? There are infinitely many compatible with the data set. What are the rules or method to follow to decide what to induce? And why is the result any good? And what difference does it make that it was induced rather than guessed? This is a problem induction has never been able to deal with. (There are quite a few other arguments refuting induction as well. Not refuting it's infallibility, but it's possibility.)

What's wrong with measurement omission, IMO, is that it's not as universal as Rand said. It's a good technique to do sometimes, it's worth knowing about, but I think she overrated it. I also think it overemphasizes measurement. It's a specific type of generalizing, but we can also omit things when generalizing for other reasons besides it being a measurement, such as omitting things due to irrelevance. For concept formation, it has some induction mixed in which isn't right. Again I think it's a pretty good idea. The idea of integrating lots of ideas into some more general purpose ideas is a good way to think about it. The criticism of manifest truth, in short, is that the truth is not manifest. It's always pretty easy to make mistakes or not think of some truth. We have to work at it to find truths, and that effort is fallible, and should always be potentially open to criticism. What does it mean to regard sense observation as "self-evident"? Does it mean it is infallible? It is not. People often make mistaken observations. Does it mean it's not open to critical thinking, interpretation, etc? That would be bad. For definitions, Popper does not reject definitions entirely. Rather, they are overrated, misused, and fallible. Here is an explanation I sent to an Objectivist a while back: Karl Popper wrote about definitions. He pointed out that it's impossible to have 100% precise definitions. A definition always uses other words. Those words either have their own definitions or they are undefined. If they have their own definitions, then there are more words which need defining too. It is an infinite regress to try to define everything, you have use words which need to be defined, and when you try to define them you use more words, and so on. The only way out is to make a circular argument where you use A to define B, B to define C, C to define D, and D to define A again. Or you just don't define all the words you use. It's usually not a great idea to start discussions by defining your terms. You don't know really know what terms you'll have misunderstandings about until after you start talking and run into some problem to address by clarifying. Unlimited precision in one's discussion isn't a virtue. It's important to figure out what isn't being understood and clarify that. if something is understood then it doesn't need more precision yet. Here are some other things I wrote about definitions, with additional points: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fabric-of-Reality/message/15183 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CriticalRationalism/message/14306 (requires joining the group to view, not so important, but available if you want. the link above is fully public) I think that's enough for now. If you appreciate these, we could do essentialism and foundations later.

If there already exists a criticism of a category of ideas, and an idea in that category is thought of, and it doesn't address the pre-existing criticism, then it's already refuted. For example: All conspiracy theories can be refuted by criticism of conspiracy theories in general. The whole category is flawed. (Any individual conspiracy theory can try to explain why the general problems don't apply to it. Good luck with that... If it has no such defense, then it's no good.) Criticism need not be empirical. Here is criticism of conspiracy theories as a category: http://www.settingtheworldtorights.com/node/202 Yes, Popper's process is negative in some senses. However it allows for developing ideas, making connections, etc... There is nothing wrong with that. It's a good way to work out ideas. Yes, it's also piecemeal or incremental: you improve your ideas and you keep improving them and most improvements will be small and they add up. It's possible to sometimes have a big breakthrough all at once, but the common case is gradual progress (like evolution). The difference is in whether creating an idea using certain positive methods is thought to make that idea true or probably true, justified, give it authority, etc... None of that works. If we have a criticism of an idea -- if we find a hole in it -- then it doesn't really matter that we created the idea with some super amazing positive process. We shouldn't ignore the criticism. On the other hand, if we create the idea in a silly way, but we can't find any holes in it, then that idea is pretty good, as far as we know. No Popper did not reject all untestable ideas. He said they are not scientific. They may still be good philosophy. Popper also said we should try to make our ideas as easy to criticize as possible, so we can best discover errors in them.

Ayn Rand has the best moral philosophy ever invented. Karl Popper has the most important breakthrough in epistemology. Most Objectivists seem to think that Popper and Rand are incompatible, and Popper is an enemy of reason. They have not understood him. These lists are intended to help explain my motivation for integrating Rand and Popper, and also to help highlight many similarities they already have. Points Popperian epistemology and Objectivist epistemology have in common. In Popperian epistemology I include additions and improvements by David Deutsch and myself: - opposition to subjectivism and relativism - fallibilism - says that objective knowledge is attainable (in practice by fallible humans) - realism: says reality is objective - connected to reality: we have to observe reality, keep our ideas connected to reality - asserts there is objective truth - attention to context ("problem situation" or sometimes "problem" is the common Popperian term meaning context. E.g. a Popperian will ask "What is the problem this is addressing?" and be asking about context.) - pro-science - opposition to positivism - opposition to the language analysis school of philosophy - say that most professional philosophers are rather crap - opposition to both skeptical and authoritarian schools of epistemology - keeps our concepts "open-end[ed]" (ITOE). That means: possible to improve in the future as we learn more. - says that there are objective moral truths - does not seek a "frozen, arrested state of knowledge" (ITOE) - written clearly and understandably, unlike much philosophy - says epistemology is useful and valuable to real people; it matters to life; it's practical - you can't force an idea on someone. they can choose to accept it or not - you can't implant an idea in someone. you can't pour it in, stick it in with surgery, make them absorb it, etc. they get to think, interpret, choose. - free will - people are not born with some unchangeable nature and innate ideas. we can be self-made men. we can learn, change, improve, progress - emphasis on active use of one's mind, active learning - no inherent conflicts due to objective truth - understanding of unconscious and inexplicit ideas - if two ideas contradict, at least one is false - integration of epistemology with morality, politics, and more - rejection of authority - full rejection of idealism, solipsism - strong emphasis on clarity - rejection of limits on human minds - reject probabilistic approaches to epistemology - looks at man as rational and capable - value of critical thinking including self-criticism Strengths of Objectivist epistemology: - stolen concept - package deal - check your premises - ideas about integrating all one's knowledge and removing all contradictions - measurement omission and concept formation ideas both worthwhile, though flawed - good criticisms of many opponents of reason - good understanding of essentials vs non-essentials, e.g. for definitions - idea about automating some thinking - good explanation of what objectivity is - Judge, and be prepared to be judged Strengths of Popperian epistemology: - evolution creates knowledge - conjectures and refutations method - piecemeal, incremental method. value of every little improvement - identification of, and solution to, justificationism - addresses induction - conjectural, fallible, objective knowledge - idea that we progress from misconception to better misconception - myth of the framework - value of culture clash - emphasis on bold highly-criticizable claims, sticking your neck out to learn more - no shame in mistakes - value of criticism. criticism is a gift - understanding of rationality as being about error correction - unimportance of starting points. you can start anywhere, improve from there - criticism of definitions - criticism of foundations, bases - criticism of essentialism - criticism of manifest truth (and self-evidence, obviousness, etc) - static and dynamic memes - structural epistemology - coercion and common preferences - understanding of conflict and symmetry - applications to parenting, education, relationships - understanding of tradition - explanation of value of external criticism (if everyone has some blind spots, but some people have different blind spots then each other, then it's productive to share criticism with each other. a little like comparative advantage) - emphasis on critical method, criticism (ideas stand unless refuted) - let our ideas die in our stead Some of you are now wondering about details. I know. But it's so much! Let's do it like this: if you are interested in one of the topics, ask about it and I can elaborate. If you would preference a reference to existing material on the topic, that's fine too.

http://www.curi.us/1578-critical-review-of-ayn-rand-contra-human-nature Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature is a book attacking Ayn Rand. I criticize it extensively.