kesg

Well, now that I am a "junior member," I'm not as worked up about it as before.

Yes, you knew me. On HPO I used my real name (Ken Gardner). "kesg" is simply the first four letters of my real e-mail address.

Several things: 1. I do differentiate "belief" from "knowledge," using the conceptual common demoninator "products of psychological processes." What differentiates knowledge from opinion is a grasp -- which on the conceptual level means a full logical validation -- of a fact. A justified belief, even a justified belief that happens to be true, may be at least partially validated, but not yet fully validated. That's why we say we merely believe, or even have good reasons to believe, that some proposition is true, but do not yet know that it is true, even if it is true -- which is why it isn't yet knowledge! 2. You will not find this treatment of the difference between knowledge and belief in ITOE, and I never said or implied anything to the contrary. Nor did I intend to do so. 3. I went back and re-read my earlier posts, and in all fairness I don't think I implied that Ayn Rand had defined belief. As far as I know, she never did so in her writings -- but to the best of my knowledge, neither did she define knowledge as a "justified true belief" or suggest that a justified true belief is the same thing as a grasp of a fact. I don't think they are. I believe, but do not know with certainty, that she didn't think so, either.

I certainly remember you. This place is what HPO should be, but isn't and hasn't been for years, which is why I finally left. My only problem so far is the really inane system they have here for demeaning new members by calling them "newbies" and "novices."

I don't think that I have misused ITOE in any way. Maybe if you can point me to a cite in the actual text of ITOE -- or anywhere in the entire Objectivist literature -- that equates knowledge with justified true belief, I would appreciate it.

For what it's worth, I remember thinking like an Objectivist at about the age of five (or maybe sooner, but definitely no later than five), and then reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time when I was 12 (and reading Anthem around the same time) was something of a confirmation of everything I already knew. Seems like you had a similar experience.

Thanks. Also thanks for having this forum. Great job!

Actually, Ayn Rand touched on this issue in her essay Art and Cognition. Copeland does it in much more detail in his book, which I found to be fully consistent with my own experience (I very nearly became a professional musician myself, which is one of the reasons why I am so interested in this topic).

If you want the quick and easy version, try Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody. Other good Aristotle "companion" books I've read are A.E. Tayler's classic book called Aristotle and the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (edited by Jonathan Barnes). But there is no substitute for reading Aristotle himself, especially the Organon and his Metaphysics (especially Book IV, which Ragnar was reading at the end of Atlas Shrugged). I would also highly recommend Book I from his Ethics (which is a forerunner to portions of Rand's ethical theory), his Poetics, and his Rhetoric.

The difference between Yanni and the compositions I mentioned is one of intellectual and emotional depth and intensity of the music at all levels. Listening to any of these compositions, or the last movement of, say, Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata (No. 29) or his late string quartets is going to be much more intellectually and emotionally demanding -- but also much more rewarding -- than listening to easy music. I'm not saying that Yanni's music is always in the category of easy listening (although often it is), but as a whole it is much closer to the easy music category than the Hammerklavier category. There are technical explanations for why this is so, but understanding what they are requires a certain level of knowledge of music theory that most people don't have (but should -- it is easily taught) -- which is why good Objectivists and other rational people often feel that there are objective differences between good and great music, but are unable to explain what they are. Again, I have made this recommendation several times already, but I know of no better place to begin that Aaron Copeland's book What to Listen for in Music, which should be available at your local bookstore or on Amazon.

No it isn't! A belief is what you have when you haven't fully grasped a fact(s) of reality, either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason [logic] based on perceptual observation. ITOE, page 35. If there is some evidence to support the belief, and no known facts that contradict it, you may be justified in thinking that it may be true. The belief may even be true, but you still don't know enough to prove that it is true. You don't yet know it. It isn't yet knowledge because you haven't yet logically validated it to be true. For further details, see Chapters 4 and 5 of OPAR. To put it in ITOE terms, belief is not a conceptual common denominator, of which "knowledge" is a narrowing or subdivision. The CCD of knowledge and belief is "products of psychological processes." I had recently come across an excellent essay that explained this very point in a bit more detail: The Dead End of Modern Philosophy’s Search for Knowledge

It really isn't hard at all, provided that one learns how to do it correctly. In this regard, I know of no better practical guide than Aaron Copeland's What to Listen for in Music, which should be available in the music books section of any good bookstore such as Borders or Barnes & Noble. A good introduction to this book would be Ayn Rand's discussion of music in her article Art and Cognition.

You have me beat by one year. My mom introduced me to Atlas Shrugged when I was 12. Never too early to start.

"Flat" is a good word to describe it. "Superficial" is another. Do yourself a favor. Go get yourself a good recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or his last piano Sonata (No. 32) (actually you should get the entire set), or Dvorak's cello concerto, or Tschaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto (or his violin concerto), or Shubert's Unfinished Symphony, or Braham's Third Piano Quartet in C minor. Then you will understand.

I don't like his music, but he is a very good performer.

My theory is that Rand, for Hank Rearden, had in mind someone who looked like what Charlton Heston looked like during the 1950s. To the Gladiator dude, nice sig btw. A good rule to live by.

If you go by Rand's physical descriptions of Wesley Mouch in the book, the best actor may very well be someone like Kevin Spacey.

The key thing to remember here is what I regard as the most important sentence that Rand ever wrote: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. The grasp and validation of any conclusion about reality, including but not limited to fundamental Objectivist principles, is the process of grasping and then logically validating that the conclusion is a non-contradictary identification of a fact(s) of reality. In this process, the Objectivist literature is an invaluable guide, but ultimately a person must make the logical connections to the facts of reality, not to words in a book, article, essay, or recorded lecture even if Rand or Peikoff wrote or spoke these words.

For years Micheel Heumer was a regular or semi-regular participant on humanities.philosophy.objectivism (if you do a Google search, he went by the nickname "Owl"). To make a long story short, his misunderstandings were not limited to his essay.

This is a great observation. I have long believed that 9/11 fundamentally changed American politics, but I never made the explicit connection to TOC and its "tolerationist" approach to the opponents of Objectivism in what is ultimately a philosophical war. To be sure, I always knew on a general level that the TOC approach was doomed to failure and actually harmful to efforts to spread Objectivism. Exactly -- which is one of the reasons why TOC seems to be going down the tubes. Actually, this has always been their strategy. It isn't working. Had they read Ayn Rand a bit more carefully, they would have understood much more clearly why it wouldn't work. No kidding. You cannot oppose terroism by opposing every reasonable countermeasure against terrorists or by abandoning a proactive approach to identifying and then eliminating national security threats so that, e.g., our first responders are U.S. Marines kicking ass in Fallujah rather than firemen and policemen responding to a terrorist attack in New York City. The libertarian approach -- essentially identical to Dean's approach -- was to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

Besides Galt's speech, the best source I know of is Chapter 1 of OPAR, but also read the essays cited by the footnotes to that Chapter. You may also want to read Aristotle's Metaphysics, especially Book IV -- which is what Ragnar was reading at the end of Atlas Shrugged.

Probably because they merely skimmed Galt's speech and therefore missed the most important sentence: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. The rest is merely details and applications. This sentence states the core and essence of Objectivism. The full grasp of its meaning and importance separates the real dealers from the wannabes.

No one has so far mentioned Dagny Taggart or Equality 7-2521, so I will.

You should check out his cello concerto in B minor, if you don't already know it. I recently bought a recording on the Sony label with Yo Yo Ma and the New York Philharmonic. This recording is incredibly good. The concerto itself has a well-deserved reputation as one of the top five concertos of any type in classical music.

This statement isn't entirely accurate, although you are certainly correct in saying that the two are different. I have in mind a statement that I recently read somewhere -- I think in ITOE, but I'm not sure -- to the effect that intelligence is essentially the ability to deal with abstractions. The broader the range of abstractions, the greater the intelligence. Rationality enables one not only to deal with abstractions, but to do so correctly and to automatize their correct use in daily life. Intelligence expands as we identify, integrate, and automatize an ever expanding range of abstractions. In other words, anyone with a normal healthy brain can literally get smarter by practicing rational thinking methods and making them a permanent way of life.