Plasmatic

Vik said: ITOE said: What is unclear about these unequivocal statements?

Vik said: But you are disputing that the primary-metaphysical status of the concept entity is objective. You just don't realize it yet. See my response in the "electron" thread.

Vik said: All meaning is based on perception! There is NO context were we divorce semantics from perceptual reduction. Vik said: Then you will have to create a philosophy of science that is NOT justified by Objectivist epistemology. ITOE said: Vik said: We have every philosophical right because "abstraction from abstraction" is a description of what human substantial entities DO and a concept of method is not a valid category for the science that discovers what KINDS of entities there are and how they act! (physics) Electrons are "theoretical entities" and that means we use concepts to explain hidden causes. WE do not then call these hidden causes "abstractions" ontologically. A realist philosophy of science does not hold that electrons are abstract constructs but a discovery of an existential cause via induction. Vik said: Objectivism holds to an "Entity based causation" Philosophy tells us that "to be is to be an entity" (where "be" is referring to metaphysical primaries).. Physics tells us what kinds of entities there are and how they act. The onus is on you to show me anywhere Mrs. Rand claims that there are actions, relationships, or processes that are not OF entities in the "primary" sense. You will also have to show me that you can use ANY concept meaningfully that is not derived from perception. Philosophers of science know this debate and have tried to find a semantics that can make "non material entity" meaningful. You cant do it with Oist semantic theory! You also cannot justify the current dualist view of light with an objectivist epistemology. Philosophy of science follows from philosophy generally. There is no special pass for concepts in physics to use a different semantic criteria. We do not run experiments to determine what "entity" means! That is settled in Philosophy where all the subject matter is ubiquitously present in every moment of cognition.. Can you get from identity to causality without the concept "entity" in the primary sense? Nope. Unless your theoretical entities are not in fact causal agents..... A non-sequiter, I know.

louie said: And I have dealt with this claim extensively when you did so. Object and entity are synonyms in both the "primary sense " and in the "derivative sense" the only two sense Oism holds to. Your failed to give a differentia for you supposed category distinction.

Vik said: Here again it seems that there is a category problem. All existents are entity dependent. There are no substances that are not instantiated by entities. There are no generalizations that are not attributable via reduction to entities. It's mandatory to focus on perceptible categories because all the concepts applied to imperceptibles are derived from perception. There is no class of predicates that are semantically excluded from this epistemic fact. Edit: I do realize that you said : "Whether or not the entities responsible for a specific effect are known, there is something acting in a certain manner. Any concept we form on the basis of concepts of entities can be applied to those kinds of entities going forward."

Vik said: Are you thinking that weight is not a species of action, attribute, or relationship?

It sounds like you are making the mistake of thinking that the relation of parts to wholes (mereology) is that parts are themselves categorically different. By that, I mean to say that all parts are themselves entities... You appear to be interested in the scientific realism debate. All theoretical objects, those hypothetical imperceptibles you call subtle causes, are still entities. Don't make too much out of the use of "perceptible" in the quote. Oism does not hold that to be an entity X must be perceptible.

Vik asked: Quantitative relationship of what? That is, it seems your question presupposes that there are entities with no qualities. That is, are you asking if the effect we experience called weight is an effect of the number of fundamental constituents in the substance and not the kind of entities the substance contains? The only difference being the number of entities? Think about the basis for both the conceptual and the mathematical.... All omitted measurements, the "more and less" that is the basis of class inclusion, are quantitative differences. The concept entity-1 is the base of both fields because it is the ontological bedrock metaphysically and epistemically. The "some but any" is a consequence of the irreducibility of the concept entity in terms of fundamental characteristics. ITOE said: Edit: Posted too soon However, since entities are their attributes how could the ontological-qualitative differences not be relevant? Likewise, without the qualitative differences we would have no differentia, no foil epistemically.

Vik asked: By this do you mean that color is an effect of a relational process?

Louie said: Yes, your analysis of "borders" is a mistaken notion of what Ms. Rand's view of objectivity is. Your borders are actually arbitrary. Vik's points are ontologically objective and your view is actually epistemically subjective. The quantitative relationships Vik mentions are "measurements"..... Louie said: Of course she didn't.... She new that object and entity are synonyms. She did, however, argue for an entity based causation very clearly. Edit: The ontological primacy of entities in Oism is the objective basis for the epistemic starting point of first level concepts... (which are all entities)

Vik I posted this paper in your other thread but it is relevant here too: I spend a lot of time on the topics you are addressing. Particularly the quantitative-qualitative distinction you are hovering over. Will have some input to come.

Vik said: I wonder if you understand that this is a substantial claim in the Philosophy of Science: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042809004704

I'll probably enter this debate in the next 2 days. (no promises) For now I just wanted to point out a side issue that may change the perspective of some Don Anthos said: It does not follow that a person seeking to disprove what they believe is a false premise will be precluded from doing so in an intellectually honest manner. An honest person will recognize a valid challenge to their premises even if they intended to disprove anothers with assurance prior to the rational argument against their own false premise is presented.

Are these aristocrats elected?

Louie said: I find this to be characteristic of the kind of psycho-epistemology that would support an übermensch. The kind that treats independence as a type of willingness to persue their own whim "to hell with you if you dont like it" with no thought for rational warrant or principle. The kind that says "He is smarter than me, so I should listen even if I dont understand. I can pretend to understand. I'll never admit that I am ignorant because what matters is that the genuinely virtuous think I'm virtuous too". This is a maximization of pretense, not virtue. A society of actors-performers in a social drama. Your Nietzchean devil has no idea what independence means, or how productive acheivement requires volition. legislated virtue is an oxymoron for a truly independent mind. Duty and force are antithetical to productivity.

Louie said: The first thing I thought of after reading the OP was how charachteristically Nietzschean it was....

William O said: Aren't these both the same objection? The concepts in any deductive syllogism are inductively arrived at (the conceptual framework), in geometry or anywhere.

Ms. Rand only ever seemed to have referred to materialism as the denial of consciousness. (Eliminative materialism) She did not seem to make any wider distinctions on materialism. The definition of physics being "matter AND energy" presupposes the philosophy of physics that upholds the substantival interpretation of energy, which is not a given. Most Physicist don't even care to answer these ontological questions. Dr. Peikoff and Ms. Rand held that "energy" had not yet been defined in a way that would allow it to be considered an entity. It certainly did not begin that way in the history of science. Also the Oist view that entities are the only metaphysical primaries is technically a species of materialism. Feynman said:

Thanks for posting that SN! I have always held that a mini-series type production was the only way to do AS justice... Very interesting!

Reasoner, you seem motivated and somewhat new to Oism. I would challenge you to ask yourself how this AAA article corresponds to your experience and to Oist literature. I would also say that Kuhn's notion of a "paradigm shift" is pure irrationalist garbage and is the source of much nonsense in the philosophy of science. If you have read Kuhn and still think his work is good philosophy then something is amiss in your knowledge of epistemology. Most people though, have no idea what Kuhn actually said.

Faust said: Did you just say Eric Fromm the Fankfurt School Marxist led you to Objectivism??? Recommend this book on NeoConservativism: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1594518319/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1445880355&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70&keywords=neoconservatism+an+obituary+for+an+idea

DA said: Ok, I am about done. I haven't proposed an unknowable existent. You aren't even keeping track of your own hypotheticals. You introduced a question that included the possibility of part of existence being unidentifiable. I then asked you a direct question about what would constitute evidence of the non-identifiability of an existent, that you have not answered. Now you are claiming I am arguing for such a inaccessible existent. DA said: Your just reasserting the same invalid deduction while ignoring my responses to your prior claims.

For now... DA said: No, it doesn't. In fact the POE makes it clear that identity is not dependent on consciousness. Things are what they are whether a conscious being is around are not. That says nothing about the accessibility of all existents to consciousness.

I don't think this is quite right. What DA has done is actually said that X is implied by the axioms that is not. I'd be interested in your account of the Oist analysis of axiomatic corollaries as relates to your notion of rationalism above.

None of this follows. That consciousness is a capacity for identification does not mean all things are identifiable. Just as your capacity for vision is not exhausted by what you are seeing at any given moment,(to use an analogy from Greg Salimieri) the fact that there are unidentified existents does not negate that consciousness, the capacity/faculty of identifying existence, is a capacity for doing just that. By this logic you could assert that because round objects roll and rolling is a motion, therefore round objects are capable of any motion. To be capable of any motion does not imply the capacity for all motions. Its a non sequitur. Consciousness has identity. It has conditions that must be satisfied for identifications to refer. You are assuming that all of existence satisfies the specific relational context that identity requires. DA said: You are still ignoring my criticism of your "creator". You are smuggling it in to your "natural god-designer". Your concept of "creation" is invalid and is an equivocation on what is meant by what any man has done, or will do. The reduction of this concept to its referents will eliminate this discussion.