Ogg_Vorbis

You're saying I have to thumb through a massive tome containing Kant's writings for the correct source? I'm sure I used to do that, back in the day, before I realized it was a waste of time. I didn't see this process as a resource to use later. For quoting Kant, I got back "This is obscure; Kant was an evil obscurantist," and "What's the deal with the A and B?"

I'm sure they do. It's hard to go through life without thinking independently, to be always dependent on others for one's opinions and for advice. People can be quite independent in most areas of life, but they can be utterly subservient in others at the same time. The mind is very complex, and it's certainly not "all or nothing" as Rand believed. "All or nothing" thinking is a cognitive error well-known to psychologists. My observations of people over the years shows me that they can have all kinds of erroneous opinions on things, yet they get along just fine. They can even be completely dependent on Rand or Peikoff to give them philosophical knowledge, and not be affected at all by this by compartmentalizing areas of their lives. I don't believe Rand did any compartmentalizing of philosophy from daily existence. Everything for her had to be philosophically justified.

This quote is from an economic context, but it serves to illustrate Rand's attitude toward the willing self-blindedness of those who dared to disagree with her. From https://medium.com/illumination/unveiling-the-exasperating-contradictions-in-ayn-rands-philosophy-ff4e0c249a4a -

I always learn something from these conversations. It just so happens that I am used to addressing first generation Objectivists who were, on the whole, completely obsessed with Rand's philosophy. I'm aware that this attitude may have toned down with the new generation. But my primary experience with Objectivism is with the first generation, and they were quite shrill, I can assure you. And they still are, those that are still around anyway. For example, "But Kant said..." <BLOCKED> If you are a first-generation Objectivist with a more open mind, then I salute you.

You wrote: A minor quibble. I don't believe Kant would reject it. He would critique it by employing his transcendental method. He would show that A is A belongs to logic, not metaphysics. The only philosophy that Kant rejected, as far as I know, was ontology in general, the study of the nature of being per se.

I don't think this is as important an issue as Objectivists make it out to be. They may consult several expert sources with a financial question. But for philosophy, they are all "I BELIEVE RAND!" people, and refuse to look any further.

It's a "problem" that very few philosophers agree exist. Perhaps none of them believe it, except for Peikoff the chemist-philosopher. Rand's interpretation of Kant's ideas was pretty far out in left field. Rather than taking one person's word for it, and Peikoff's if you include his mimicry, it's always best to consult several sources - If the issue is important to you.

Did Ayn Rand try to teach people how to think? Or did she try to tell them what to think? One of the benefits of independence is having the right to think for yourself. This benefit, believe it or not, is a result of Cartesianism. Before DesCartes in European culture, people were almost entirely engaged in groupthink. They had little or no sense of individualism. HIs doubting encouraged, in principle, independent thinking. "I think, therefore, I am" places the emphasis on the self instead of the tribe. His mind-body dualism focused on mind. And while that may seem solipsistic, it encouraged further investigation into the mental attributes of humans. This was not brand new to Western civilization, but it hadn't existed to even a small extent since the ancient Greek philosophers. This started with Socrates who focused on individual reasoning powers and questioned authority. John Locke was a hero of Enlightenment individualism. He emphasized many if not all of the rights and freedoms we enjoy today, even as they are being slowly eroded: the rights to personal life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness through productive living. Locke wrote about natural morality, with happiness as the natural good central to his moral philosophy. While Locke didn't line out a list of values and virtues the way Ayn Rand did, he encouraged such virtues as tolerance toward others as long as their beliefs didn't intrude on the lives of others. Ayn Rand, however, provided a list of values and virtues for people to obey. They are the things you should do, according to Rand, in order to be happy - and obedient to her powers of reasoning.

Then she would be wrong. No thing-in-itself, no profit. No noumenon, no free-will. No free-will, no morality.

From the standpoint of Rand's introduction to epistemology, a percept is a mental integration and retention of sensory input. The mind for Rand contributes an integrating process. She didn't explore this process at length. But it should be possible to throw Space, Time and the Categories into the integrating process, as well as the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception. Lacking any exploration of this integrating process leaves the door wide open for whatever someone wants to fill the empty space with.

What Kantian and Randian ethics have in common: Focus on reason. Universality: ethics applies to everybody. Duty/obligation: Kant called it duty. Rand would call it obligation. Respect for individual autonomy. Respect for rights. Independence: The CI is a formula for individuals to use to make up their own minds about rational ethical principles. Specific ethical principles that Kant mentioned were examples. Strength of Will. Moral integrity.

I judged an argument that doesn't exist there, but I inferred it to exist this way, based on her other writings: But it really does look like she's just asserting "facts" that wouldn't pass an official peer review process conducted by her contemporaries in the field of philosophy. Unofficially, though, they rejected her assertions en masse, from what I've read. Rousseau seems more of a predecessor to modern philosophy than Kant, in my estimation. But that's a different topic. And I wouldn't expect people to accept it based on my authority. You wrote: Not Christianity. Christians of his time rejected his reducing of God to a mere Idea, and rightly so. It's unChristian. The noumenal can be used as a conceptual "space," and in fact I identified that usage myself over 20 years ago in a Yahoo Groups Kant forum. But that's only because we can't know what's "out there" without going outside of our senses. This creates a conceptual "space" for further possibilities than just empirical ones. The noumenal, or thing-in-itself, consists of furniture, planets, pets, humans - and potentially, supernatural entities. Free-will is also posited to exist in the noumenal conceptual realm. If, however, we limit our concepts to what can be known through the five senses, as Rand did, then this leaves no room for free-will. And that's a real problem for Objectivism.

-Ayn Rand (For the New Intellectual, 32; Kndl ed.) If the majority of philosophers rejected Kant's "noumenal" realm, they have left out an important aspect of his philosophy - the source of all phenomena. Because even if the noumenal is unknowable, it is, for Kant, the grounds for phenomena beyond the senses. It doesn't matter if the senses modify, what matters is that Kant posited the noumenal's existence. It is THIS that is the problem with modern philosophy - not the acceptance of Kant's philosophy, but its rejection of the ground of appearances (or phenomena). Logically, Rand committed the Fallacy of the Consequent in that quote. Because she focused on the alleged consequences of Kant's philosophy rather than specifically on the (incorrect) rejection of the noumenal realm by post-Kantian philosophers, which is my point. Despite the inherent unknowability of the noumenal, its positing serves as the foundation for understanding the empirical origins of phenomena, a notion often overlooked in contemporary philosophical discourse. The empiricist often confuses Kant's form of Idealism with those that infer the existence of an external world from the matter of appearances (mental states). But Kant did not infer it, he wholeheartedly accepted its existence. He only inferred the existence of the thing-in-itself (or noumenon), not the existence of external things, which he accepted. The noumenal is the ground of experience. Without it, there is no perception, nothing to perceive. Kant never denied the ground of perception, only that it is knowable in itself, that is, by somehow going outside of your consciousness to know it directly without your senses. The noumenal is posited to exist as the ground of perception, of something for the senses to sense. The only way to know it directly would be to somehow go outside of your senses. Simple as that.

.

.