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Well, actually he says that the phenomenal (which we can know) implies the noumenal, as one needs to have objects (the noumenal) before one can have relations between them (the phenomenal). So, he does have some basis for claiming this (I wouldn't agree with him, but for metaphysical reasons).

Additionally, one can claim that something is outside of knowledge without knowing it... actually that's kinda the point, if he did know the noumenal, then he could hardly claim it to be outside of knowledge. (An analogy (at a smaller scale than the entirety of knowledge so its easier to see the form of the claim): the beauty of a poet's words is outside the realm of logical knowledge (this is a logical piece of knowledge (in that it can be translated into a logical language)).)

Since no other point has come up, might as well pursue this one a bit. As an objectivist, you believe we can have objective knowledge of the world, that is knowledge of things-in-themselves (the noumenal), how exactly do we obtain this?

I get it!

So, I've been wondering this for a while, and having stumbled upon this forum, figured it would be a good place to ask it: What exactly is the reason objectivists dislike Kant so strongly?

A couple more things (some of the reasons I have found previous answers useless):
1) Please only answer this if you have /actually read/ Kant him, even something as simple as the Grounding (Groundwork) would probably do, if you have just read other people talking about him don't bother answering. Believe it or not, I can read, and I find the party line in your Lexicon unenlightening.

2) Don't just cite the conclusion's of Kant's arguments, I realise he reaches different conclusions than you lot do, what I want to know is where exactly in his process do you lot disagree, and why.

3) If you are going to call Kant anti-reason, have some serious support for that claim. (One of the primary criticisms of Kant in the history of philosophy is that he focuses on rationality far too much.)

4) If you are going to attack his claims regarding the noumenal, please present a working alternative.

Okay, let's see if I meet your qualifications...


I don't know what it means to /actually read/ Kant him, aber ich habe die meisten Werke von Kant im Original gelesen, which I suppose is a good substitute for what you are looking for.


Don't cite the conclusion's what? Or do you mean don't cite the conclusions? Anyway, don't worry, I won't cite anything.


So I take it you agree with the criticisms? If yes, you probably won't like any answer that includes "far too much" rational argumentation. No problem, I'll make sure to keep it on the level a three-year old can understand.


Okay, I'll stick to attacking his claims regarding the pheonomenal, if anything.

With that out of the way, back to your question:


His philosophy.

Hope that helps...

Hitchens is not really a leftist. He used to be, but he has gradually morphed into one of those people who is so intelligent and well-read as to defy the classic categories of political leanings.

This is a great question. I think Capitalism as a system of private property predates humanity. Animals understand private property within a pack and even sometimes value their creation.

There are no communist nations, my friend. Learn your communizms. The game looks really really good though.

If I owned a restaurant I would not permit people to smoke in it. The majority of modern day smokers seem to be lower class, week-willed, unkempt bludgers who would not be able to afford the high quality food I would sell and would only deter respectable customers, who either don't smoke or who can go two hours without lighting up, from dining at my establishment.

There are no communist nations, my friend. Learn your communizms. The game looks really really good though.

Join her!

What you have provided is not enough to pass any sort of moral judgment. Smoking pot is not necessarily wrong.

Craig,

I have subscribed to your publication, The Objective Standard, for the last four years. However, I will not renew my subscription on account of your recent denigration of Leonard Peikoff. Below I describe what I consider to be the more relevant facts which led me to this action. However, out of respect for this forum’s policies, I have edited out most of my analysis and all of my evaluations of those facts, which I suspect would get me punished or banned if I included them. If you, or anyone else, wants to see my full argument, you can contact me through my personal website.

1. Does Peikoff provide evidence to support his conclusion?

In your article, Justice for John P. McCaskey, you claim that:



I believe this is your main objection: that Peikoff fails to provide any evidence for his moral condemnation of McCaskey. However, in the email to Arline Mann, Peikoff emphasizes the point that while serving as a member of the ARI board of directors, McCaskey was simultaneously denouncing an ARI-sponsored book that is not only based on ideas formulated by the founder of ARI, but also approved of by him. This is a piece of evidence that Peikoff provides before his moral condemnation in the next paragraph, and immediately before his conclusion that either he goes or McCaskey goes. Yet it is the only substantive part of the email which you do not quote or mention in your article.

2. Should we assume that Peikoff has no evidence?

After claiming that Peikoff provides no evidence, you then write this:



If I understand correctly, here you assume to be true that which you admit cannot be known--because it only exists in Peikoff’s mind. Put another way, Peikoff has not revealed his evidence publicly, and he ignores your private emails, so therefore you are correct in concluding that no such evidence exists. And since, on this view, Peikoff is morally condemning McCaskey without possessing a shred of evidence, he must therefore be acting nonobjectively and unjustly. This is the assumption-based evaluation you make of the man who “fueled [your] intellectual development more than anyone except Ayn Rand.”

3. What does “good reason” mean?

You repeatedly use the phrase "good reason" as perhaps a synonym for evidence. I note that you only use this phrase when referring specifically to Peikoff's alleged non-evidence regarding his moral judgment of McCaskey. At other times in the article, mostly while making general statements, you prefer the word evidence.

For example, you make this general statement about arbitrary claims:



And then in the very next sentence, you make a similarly formulated statement, only it is applied specifically to Peikoff:



It appears that the word evidence suddenly becomes “good reason” when you denigrate Peikoff. Perhaps this is done only for stylistic purposes. But if that is the case, then it seems very strange that “good reason” is reserved solely for Peikoff and appears in none of the general statements.

Good bye,

Sean Green (aka William Swig)

It's more than just a denial of economics this author has, but a denial of reality.

He anthropomorphizes "society", saying that the wealthy "owe" society, because generations before that wealthy person has created certain medicines and technologies that the wealthy people of today may benefit from, so as a result, they have an obligation to.. some other people who have no relevance to the things they benefit from.

According to Objectivism, free will is “axiomatic,” which means (1) it’s “self-evident,” “fundamentally given and directly perceived”; and (2) the denial of free will is self-refuting. Let’s examine each of these claims.

(1) free will is self-evident. Here’s the “argument,” compliments of Leonard Peikoff:

How, then, do we know that man has volition? It is a self-evident fact, available to any act of introspection.

You the reader can perceive every potentiality I have been discussing simply by observing your own consciousness. The extent of your knowledge or intelligence is not relevant here, because the issue is whether you use whatever knowledge and intelligence you do possess. At this moment, for example, you can decide to read attentively and struggle to understand, judge, apply the material, or you can let your attention wander and the words wash over you, half-getting some points, then coming to for a few sentences, then lapsing again into partial focus. If something you read makes you feel fearful or uneasy, you can decide to follow the point anyway and consider it on its merits, or you can brush it aside by an act of evasion, while mumbling some rationalization to still any pangs of guilt. At each moment, you are deciding to think or not to think. The fact that you regularly make these kinds of choices is directly accessible to you, as it is to any volitional consciousness.

The principle of volition is a philosophic axiom, with all the features this involves…


Behind Peikoff’s argument is an important but unstated assumption. Peikoff is assuming that acts of introspection yield self-evident truth. Whatever a man observes through introspection is “fundamentally given and directly perceived” and, by implication, axiomatic. So if a man observed himself being controlled by forces not of his making, this would make the principle of determinism a self-evident fact worthy of being embalmed as an axiomatic truth.

Does introspection really yield self-evident facts? No, of course not. Nor is it an assumption that any Objectivist, from Rand down, would ever consistently adhere to. People observe through introspection, for example, unbidden emotions which they cannot control. They feel angry, sad, fretful, anxious, regardless of whether they wish to feel these things. As even Objectivism concedes, human beings do not have direct control over emotions. They experience, introspectively, emotions rising up within them, irrespective of any volition. So does this not mean that feelings are determined? Isn’t that the “self-evident” fact directly observed through introspection? But no, not at all. When it comes to emotions, Rand took an entirely different approach: “In the field of introspection,” she declared, “the two guiding questions are: ‘What do I feel?’ and ‘Why do I feel it?’” But wait a minute! Whatever happened to direct contact with the facts assumed by Peikoff in his argument about volition? By implication, Objectivism rejects the notion that emotions are beyond volitional control, even though this is how we experience them in introspection. So if our experience can mislead us in the case of emotions, why can’t it mislead us in reference to attention, focus, and thought? How can introspective observation be “self-evident” in one instance and not the other? This is left unexplained in Objectivism because neither Rand nor any of her disciples ever noticed the inconsistency.


(2) Determinism is self-refuting. Again Peikoff provides the argument:


When the determinist claims that man is determined, this applies to all of man’s ideas also, including his own advocacy of determinism. Given the factors operating on him, he believes, he had to become a determinist, just as his opponents had no alternative but to oppose him. How then can he know that his viewpoint is true? Are the factors that shape his brain infallible? Does he automatically follow reason and logic? Clearly not; if he did, error would be impossible to him….
If a determinist tried to assess his viewpoint as knowledge, he would have to say, in effect: “I am in control of my mind. I do have the power to decide to focus on reality. I do not merely submit spinelessly to whatever distortions happen to be decreed by some chain of forces stretching back to infinity. I am free, free to be objective, free to conclude — that I am not free.

Like any rejection of a philosophic axiom, determinism is self-refuting.


This argument gratuitously assumes that the individual must be able to control his own mind in order to know anything. Yet what is the rationale for such an assumption? Why can’t the mind, operating on its own principles, gather in data from external existence, analyze it, and reach conclusions? There is nothing logically inconsistent in such a notion. That it seems a trifle strange does not constitute a self-refutation. It won’t do to confuse the strange or the paradoxical with the illogical. Computers, which are deterministic systems through and through, with no volition of their own, can reach conclusions from data fed to them. Why couldn’t the mind of the determinist behave in a similar fashion?

Even more objectionable, however, is the caricature of determinism in Peikoff’s argument. Determinism may be as implausible as you like, but it’s hardly the thin gruel of a doctrine presented by Peikoff. It comes in many different versions and brands, many of which are quite sophisticated and not so easily refuted. One could believe, for example, that while the intellect may be volitional, the will (i.e., Rand’s emotional mechanism) is determined, so that a man may control his mind but not his temper. All kinds of variants and mixtures are possible, most of which are not even broached by Peikoff’s argument.

The bottom line is this: the arguments essayed by Peikoff for free will and against determinism are both grossly inadequate and hardly rise to the level required by “self-evidence.”

I am happy and worn out to report that I have spent the past 6 weeks reading Kant's Critique of Judgment (for a class which I chose), so that I can finally contribute to discussions such as this. I have another couple of weeks of reading left, and then I will have read the whole book from cover to cover. Aside from this his third critique, I have also read portions of the Critique of Pure Reason (in preparation for the Critique of Judgment).

Thoyd Loki is 100% correct. Since I am reading Kant's work in which he discusses aesthetics, take this example. Ayn Rand called Kant the father of modern art; yet I am convinved that Kant would have hated Picasso, Pollock, and everything in between. I would not be all that surprised if he would have had problems even with impressionism. Obviously Ayn Rand did not, when reading Kant, come across some statement of his which approves of non-representational art. Philosophical detection is not so easy. What Ayn Rand DID do, I assume, is to focus on, as the essential, Kant's denial of any objective principle for evaluating beauty. Taken in this light, Kant's claims which might seem to exclude modern art do not matter, culturally.

I apologize if my writing has been negatively influenced by too much reading of Kant.

EDIT: I did not mean to say that Kant's denial of an objective standard of beauty is the ONLY important clue to Kant's role as father of modern art. It's also crucial to examine, for example, his comments on (artistic) geniuses [e.g., artistic genius is innate] and on interest in art as arising only in society.

I will have to agree with those who think that trying to come up with a symbol to represent Objectivism is an idle pursuit. However, if anyone wants to carry on with this idea, there are some aspects that should be firstly considered. In order to be functional, a symbol requires simplicity. It has to be easily readable and reproducible. The black and yellow image above has too many elements in it. Some of them are still incomprehensible to me, and nobody is going to stand in front of your symbol, staring at it and examining all of its little details. If you want it to be recognizable, the elements included have to be understandable at a quick glance. Otherwise, nobody is going to pay attention to it, and they will probably forget it a few minutes later. Take a look at some of the most well-known symbols, or famous logos from big brands. They all share simplicity. No one uses the Sistine Chapel ceiling as a symbol, when a red cross or a Nike Swoosh does the job. The last image is fine as it is. The other one looks like a ribbon awarded in a competition, or a text bubble from a comic book. Gradients are nice, but they are usually not advisable. Unless you want to invest all your money in full color impressions of a symbol with hundreds of inks, rather than just one or two, using gradients is probably not the best idea. The same applies to photographs. You must take into account its reproduction. There is no room for much detail or color when using certain physical formats, at least without suffering some type of distortion. The symbol should have a good size ratio, so that it can be still easily recognizable when it is reduced in size for smaller applications. I am curious about how far you are planning to take this, but the symbol has to be simple enough to fit in a pencil or in a golf ball. Also, you might like to add the word "Objectivism" to the illustration, so that people can start associating it with the symbol. The drawing by itself is not going to take you very far. You can drop the name when the symbol acquires enough recognition, but it is always necessary to include it at the beginning. Anyway, there is a lot more to take into consideration, but this should be enough for now.

I am looking for a more comprehensive assessment of objective truth from the objectivist point of view. Maybe it doesn't offer one?

I understand how the phrase "objective truth" can be redundant.

How can their be no objective truths? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Objectivist Epistemology hinge on "A is A". Isn't this objectively true?

I've always sought to find objective truth, and what I mean by this is truth that is objective of the mind, of interpretation of perception - therefore making it objectively true. This can tie into "A is A", I think, as in it is what it is.

Does this make sense?

I don't think you can claim truth simply as facts corresponding with reality, or "A is A" - a bit vague and not to hard to skirt around.

For a start, perhaps you'll find the online Ayn Rand Lexicon by Harry Binswanger helpful:

Truth

Follow the links at the end of that entry for more.

Yeah, I've read all of those quotes and books. That is about "truth" not "objective truth".

Isn't it in my self-interest to do so?

Hey yall, having trouble googling an answer for myself, because I'm apparently not getting the right mix of search terms (or maybe such a term doesn't exist).

I was wondering if there is a name/term for an argument/debate technique in which someone is trying to prove the cause of something and they do not bring all the possible causes into the debate.

As a simple example, let's say we are trying to figure out how a glass was broken. Let's say there are three possible causes: the dog jumped up on the table and knocked it over, an earthquake knocked it off the table, or a child set it teetering on the edge and it fell off.

Let's say the reality is the dog did it, but Person A for whatever reason wants the cause to be an earthquake. So when he presents his argument he says, "The glass is broken. The possible causes are an earthquake or a child. Let the debate begin." By doing so he is trying to eliminate the possibility that someone might argue that the dog did it.

This is, of course, completely absurd and an evasion of reality. I was just wondering if there is a term for when a person does this? Thanks!

Yeah, I was going to hypothesize about the possible meaning of "Greenspan," but then I remembered that he's not fictional.

Galt/Gault is a proper noun for an archaeological clay layer in England, derived from Norw. "gald" meaning "hard ground."

But this is much better.

And thanks for "The Driver." I got an email from Mises.org a few months ago asking "Who is Garet Garrett?" I had no idea, and I never had a chance to read the piece. BTW, the novel is available on mises.org in pdf format here.

I'm looking at this somewhat differently. I think Rand made a mistake in taking words and tweaking their commonly-used definition.

The MErriam-Webster definition of selfish is:
1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others <a selfish act>

While Rand spoke out for self-interest, she did not indicate that one must have no regard for others.

So, when someone hogs all the shrimp at a party and is called selfish, that's perfectly correct. That person has no consideration and is rude. There's no need to find another word. The dictionary already has a perfectly good one.

Rand did the same with sacrifice: Here are definitions I found:


a. The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person.
b. A victim offered in this way.
2.
a. Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim.
b. Something so forfeited.

All definitions I found include the offering to deity. Several (as above) give the definition of forfeiting something to get a GREATER value.

These definitions are not about giving up that which is precious for something less precious (although this is included in some minor definitions).

As far as I can see, playing with common definitions has led to totally needless discussions, arguments and word-salad. (Just take a look at any objectivist forum) By changing the common usage of words and substituting her own, Rand only made things more confusing.

I recall several years ago, on some objectivist forum, a young man was describing an argument he had in a bar with some stranger (already plenty of red flags there!). Seems the bar-mate was a tad liberal. As the "liberal" started to leave, the young objectivist poster, according to his own words, yelled after him: "You're an altruist!" Talk about confusing those present. The objectivist was using (without even defining, in this instance) a word commonly used as a positive and slinging it as an insult.

Anyway, I consider playing these word games a mistake which invariably leads to misunderstanding. Just take a look at some of the posts here. So many deal with definitions instead of getting to an actual idea. If you can't even agree on what a word means, there's a problem. And tweaking definitions and using them in a way the rest of the population doesn't doesn't facilitate understanding. Only arguments.

Mindy,

Wow... you have managed in a very short time stir an incredible amount of drama here and with people with whom many of us have been interacting for years and greatly respect.

If you want to defend what DavidOdden said, please do so. If you wish his actions weren't open to reasonable criticism, your complaint is with him.

Which posts and which arguments should I not have made? What was wrong with them?

Mindy

This forum has had moderators for all of the 6+ years that I have participated here, thus the word "advent" is factually wrong.Then you will have established, for all to see, that you are a conceptual savage, living at a purely concrete level, incapable of concept-formation or any other form of generalization. You are simply wrong, in an embarassing fashion, about the import of my suggestion that your unorganized bullet points should be about something.You ought to work on your reasoning and reading skills. (Note to self: I wonder if he will misinterpret this as another threat against his inalienable right to freedom of pointless speech?).