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2046

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  1. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    "Basically stating" is not demonstrating anything. We see that E1 and E2 have plans that conflict. Most people have ordinary experience of conflicting plans among people in life. So now you need to show how this is a "conflict of rational interests" in Rand's sense in the essay.
     
  2. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    Because her point is when you are being rational, you take 100% of the context in mind. Context refers to, she wants to say, the fact that you aren't living in a solipsistic way. So her point isn't about a given percentage or amount of time that any understanding of one's interests don't conflict but that they need not ever, when rightly understood (ie., are "rational.")
  3. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Existence, We   
    Once more I’d like to encourage anyone interested in seeing my fundamental paper “Existence, We” (EW), setting forth my metaphysical system and its relation to Rand’s and to others, to get your subscription to JARS at this time.
    I’ll post here a section of a paper that was to be a follow-on to EW and which—as the follow-on project has been redesigned—would no longer fit the follow-on paper.* This posted section is indeed built onto of the frame developed in EW. It gives a taste of some of what goes on in that fundamental paper. The material below uses that frame and some technical terminology introduced in EW (and some ordinary terms such as situation which as part of this framework have a specialized meaning specified in EW, where also are my proofs for axiomatic standing of such statements as “existence is situation”) that I’ll leave opaque here, which may further encourage readers here to get a subscription to JARS if you don’t have one.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    PRIMACIES OF EXISTENCE
    Ayn Rand spoke of the primacy of existence, and by this she meant primacy of existence over consciousness, which meant (i) the universe exists independently of any consciousness and (ii) things have natures independently of consciousness.[1] Identity is primary over Identification, and concretes are primary over abstractions. My metaphysics is of the primacy-of-existence genre, but more generally than Rand’s. My primacy of existence means primacy of existence over of-existence. This entails that concretes with their formalities are primary over abstractions. Actualities and potentials are primary over recognitions and possibilities. Necessity-that of existence is primary over the necessity-for in consciousness.[2] Then too, existence being primary over the of-existence that is living existence and the latter being (I say with Rand) the residence of all value, existence is primary over value.
    Rand’s primacy of existence to consciousness runs with Aristotle,[3] but for the countercurrent of his hierarchy of being in which formal structure is not only explanatory, but causal, and in which formal, teleological cause is ultimate being.[4] Primacy of existence runs against Descartes in first philosophy.[5] It runs against Descartes’ forebears Henry of Ghent and Bonaventure who took the first adequate object of the human intellect to be God. It runs with Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez who took that first object to be being or whatness (quiddity).[6] Primacy of existence runs also against Kant when he writes that “apperception, and with it thought, precedes all possible determinate arrangement of presentations” (KrV A289 B345).[7] Against Kant also, and in step with Aristotle, Rand writes: “‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind” (AS 1036). She means in context not only things as perceived by your mind so far, but as perceivable by your mind at any stage, and she means not only your mind, but any sound human mind. Rand’s primacy of existence to consciousness runs against all idealism, of course. It runs also against Husserl in his bracketing of “things in themselves” and against Sartre’s starting point (subjectivity) in his archaeology of being and against the adequacy of Quine’s “to be is to be the value of a bound variable.”[8]
    Rand spoke in that passage against Kant of “things as they are” and not of “things in themselves.” She was right to avoid the latter phrase because of the well-known shading of it. That latter phrase, down from Kant, intimates a systematic inaccessibility of mind-independent Existence with its Identities by our cognitive faculties. In the same vein, rightly she would reject talk of the transcendental object or talk of noumena and their comprehensive contrast to phenomena, the latter a foul concept when transplanted from its use in Newton—phenomena as physical patterns in observational data, where those specific patterns suit only a specific form in the character of their physical cause—to fundamental ontology and to subject-object relations.[9]
    Talk of “things in themselves” meaning things free of any situation is talk of nothing. “Things in themselves,” meaning merely all that they are, is a sound sense of the phrase and not Kant’s sense when he is contrasting things in themselves with those same things as they are in their external relations such as in their relation to human consciousness. Things in all that they are are what we know part of and know that our known is only part of the all there to be known. Further, existence of a thing is nothing more than—indeed, it is identically the same as—existence of all that a thing is.[10]
    Existence per se and in its totality is more fundamental than living existence or conscious existence. By experience and conception, we know that of-existents are not and cannot be the only type of existents. Primacy of existence in my philosophy departs from Rand’s primacy of existence in that I mean primacy of physical existence, which in our scientific comprehension is spacetime, mass-energy, angular momentum, molecules, heat, photosynthesis, synapses, and so forth all in play together. Further, it is in my system not only knowing physical existence as necessary requirement for consciousness of physical existents, but knowing we ourselves are physical existents and that that physical status is a necessary requirement for existence of our life and consciousness.
    The focal sense of existence is existence actual and concrete (and mind-independent, though susceptible to actions such as human discernment and utilization).[11] Existence actual and concrete endures, and enduring existence is all of enduring.[12] Existence in the focal sense is not without time and number and some formalities, and these accompaniments are in no way prior to existence.[13] As I mentioned in EW, all potential existents are attached to actual, concrete existents. Existence actual and concrete, in whole and in every part is ever with potentials. That is not to say every part of existence has causal powers; no potentials, only actualities, have causal powers, and potentials are part of existence, concretely so. Future existents, unlike past ones, are not yet actual, only potential. Future existents without present discernment of alternatives concerning them have no present causal power. Abstractions include recognitions of formalities of concretes. As with the concrete existents that are potentials, formal existents themselves or abstractions themselves have no causal powers.[14]
    Any concrete actual existent, with all its potentials and all its formalities, is actual by way of antecedent actualities and their potentials. The potential for a future actual concrete existent coming to be so is not a potential belonging to it, but to its antecedent actuals. Every concrete actual existent shy of the whole of existence is a contingent existent in its emergence from among potentials of prior actuals, but it is necessary in its possession of all its own potentials and formalities.
    Potentials not only belong to present actuals, their potentiality consists only in their potential for future actualities from present ones.[15] Co-existing present potentials, furthermore, are often not jointly capable of future actualization. Potentials, I have said, are concretes, whether or not they become actuals. Moreover, I hold contra Avicenna, that potentials are not less existing than actualities.[16] Cognitive possibilities, I should reiterate, are subordinates of facts of existence, whether facts of actualities and their potentials, facts of concretes and their formalities, or facts of Entities and their passage, situation, and character.
    The primacy of existence over of-existence does not entail that existents not also of-existence are more existing than existents that are also of-existence. Passage, situation, and character are not more existing (or less existing) than experience or recognition of them. Concretes and their formalities are not more existing than experience of them or conceptual grasp of them.
    Now passage, situation, and character are no less reality than the Entities to which they belong. And formalities are no less reality of existence than the concretes to which they belong.
    As I said in EW, there is nothing common between existence and nonexistence; the latter is only a lack of standing in the former, a mere lack noted by us, by us in and of existence.[17] Further, A is A in the application nonexistence is nonexistence is only item-keeping in thought and makes nothing but nothing of the item. Any thought of a priority of existence, metaphysically most fundamental, over nonexistence or thought that the former is in some metaphysical sense greater than the latter is derailed thinking. Only within Existence is priority and the greater.
     
    Notes
    [1] Rand 1973, 24; Kelley 1986, 7–43; Peikoff 1991, 17–23, 243–48, 419–20.
    [2] Cf. Fine 1994.
    [3] On Aristotle’s primacy of existence, see Owens 1978, 133–35n108, 138. Rand rightly did not accept Aristotle’s conception of the mind as “becoming all things” and the mind’s doing so by assimilation of the forms of existents extracted from a metaphysical composition of form and matter constituting any existent. On infirmities in the primacy of existence in Roger Bacon and his Arab forebears, see Tachau 1988, 11–16. But for doctrines of faith, Blasius of Parma in 1385 leaned towards primacy of existence in constitution of human mind by arguing all human intellectual and moral states to depend on the human body (via prime matter) for their existence; see Pasnau 2011, 108–9.
    [4] Aristotle, Ph. 198a32–99b31; Metaph. 1041a25–b8, 1071b20–a21, 1074a35; Ferejohn 2013, 163–76.
    [5] Rand 1961, 28; 1973, 24; Kelley 1981; Peikoff 1991, 17–23; Gotthelf 2000, 39; Boydstun 2019.
    [6] Aertsen 2012.
    [7] Kant is represented rather differently in the Jäsche Logic in declaring (i) that general logic, though independent of its use in concreto, could only be found by observation of such use and (ii) that logic in application to a particular science would be futile without acquaintance with objects of the science (1800, 17–18).
    [8] Owens 1978, 133–35n108; Quine 1939; Armstrong 2004, 23–24; Crane 2012, 64–65; Koskinen 2012.
    [9] Newton’s theological conception of space as the sensorium of God joined other Christian theological pictures in drawing Kant to his grand division of reality into the phenomenal and the noumenal. On Kant, see Bird 2006, 335–38. Cf. Heidegger in Han-Pile 2005. Cf. Sher 2016, 166, 172, 181, 259–60.
    [10] See further, Baumgarten 1757, §§15, 37; Kant, KrV A324–27 B380–83. On Kant’s severance of “thing in itself” from its external relations to human consciousness, see B 69, A139 B178, A190 B235, B306–9.
    [11] Cf. focal meaning in Owen 1960, applied to substance (ousia) as focal meaning of being in the metaphysics of Aristotle; Owens 1978, 38n126, 119; Ferejohn 1980; Kirwan 1992, 80; Barnes 1995, 76–77; Lewis 2013, 90–92.
    [12] Descartes does not get that far, but he is correct when he writes: “Existence or duration in a thing which exists and endures—should be called not a quality or a mode, but an attribute” (1644, §56). A mode in his terminology here would be a modification of a substance, and a quality is at hand when a modification enables classification of a substance as a certain kind. With attribute he means our thinking of what is in a substance in a more general way. In fact Descartes thinks of duration as an attribute of all created substance, which are fundamentally two: thought and extension. (See further, Alice Sowaal’s entry ATTRIBUTE in Nolan 2016.)  Similarly, though with metaphysical substance expelled from our metaphysics, as well as the creation of all temporality and all existence, Rand with I could say enduring of an existent is not a modification of it or a quality of it.
    [13] Cf. Aristotle, Metaph. 1017b17–21; Avicenna 1027, I.2.24–29.
    [14] Contra Aristotle, essences or forms as causes or constraints not concrete is misconception. See Lewis 2013, 290.
    [15] Aristotle, Metaph. 1049b13–17.
    [16] Cf. Rand ITOE App. 284–86; 1968, 531, 534. Actualities have priorities over potentials on account of their patterns of dependency I have stated. Even were we to count these priories of actualities as amounting to actualities being “more existing” than potentials, I should not concur with Avicenna (1027, 4.2.34) that this priority is also a higher rank in metaphysical nobility or perfection. There are no such things applicable to general metaphysics; nobility and perfection can only pertain to existents that are living existents (include conscious existence) and only within that living mode of their existence.
    [17] Contra Kant 1782/83, 29:811; 1790/91, 28:543; 1794/95, 29:960. Cf. ITOE 58, 60–61; Branden c. 1968, 28.
    References
    Aertsen, J. A. 2012. Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. Leiden: Brill.
    Ameriks, K., and S. Naragon, translators, 1997. Immanuel Kant – Lectures on Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Aristotle c.348–322. B.C. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor (1984). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    Armstrong, D. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Avicenna 1027. The Metaphysics of The Healing. M. E. Marmura, translator (2005). Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
    Barnes, J. 1995. Metaphysics. In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Barnes, J., Schofield, M., and R. Sorabji, editors, 1979. Articles on Aristotle – 3. Metaphysics. London: Duckworth.
    Baumgarten, A. 1757 [1739]. Metaphysics. 4th ed. In Fugate and Hymers 2013.
    Bird, G. 2006. The Revolutionary Kant. Chicago: Open Court.
    Boydstun, S. 2019. Foundational Frames – Descartes and Rand. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 19(1):1–37.
    Branden, N. c.1968. The Basic Principles of Objectivism. In The Vision of Ayn Rand 2009. Gilbert: Cobden Press.
    Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and D. Murdoch, translators, 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Crane, T. 2012. Existence and Quantification Reconsidered. In Tahko 2012.
    Descartes, R. 1644. Principles of Philosophy. In Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch 1985.
    Dreyfus, H. L., and M. A. Wrathall, editors, 2005. A Companion to Heidegger. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
    Ferejohn, M. T. 1980. Aristotle on Focal Meaning and the Unity of Science. Phronesis 25(2):117–28.
    Fine, K. 1994. Essence and Modality. Philosophical Perspectives 8:1–16.
    Fugate, C. D., and J. Hymers 2013. Introduction to Metaphysics – A Critical Translation with Kant’s Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials. London: Bloomsbury.
    Gotthelf, A. 2000. On Ayn Rand. Belmont: Wadsworth.
    Haaparanta, L., and H. J. Koskinen, editors, 2012. Categories of Being – Essays on Metaphysics and Logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Han-Pile, B. 2005. Early Heidegger’s Appropriation of Kant. In Dreyfus and Wrathall 2005.
    Kant, I. 1781, 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. W. S. Pluhar, translator. 1996. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
    ——. 1782/83. Metaphysik Mrongovius. In Ameriks and Naragon 1997 (AN).
    ——. 1790/91. Metaphysik L2. AN.
    ——. 1794/95. Metaphysik Vigilantius. AN.
    ——. 1800. The Jäsche Logic. J. M. Young, translator. 1992. In Immanuel Kant – Lectures on Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Kelley, D. 1981. The Primacy of Existence. The Objectivist Forum 2(5):1–6, 2(6):1–6.
    ——. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses – A Realist Theory of Perception. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
    Kirwan, C., translator, 1993. Aristotle’s Metaphysics – Books Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Koskinen, H. J. 2012. Quine, Predication, and the Categories of Being. In Haaparanta and Koskinen 2012.
    Lewis, F. A., 2013. How Aristotle Gets By in Metaphysics Zeta. New York: Oxford.
    Nolan, L., editor, 2016. Descartes’ Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Owen, G. E. L. 1960. Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Aristotle. In Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji 1979.
    Owens, J. 1978 [1951]. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. 3rd ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
    Pasnau, R. 2011. Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Peikoff, L. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton.
    Quine, W. V. O. 1939. A Logistical Approach to the Ontological Problem. In The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. 1976. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House.
    ——. 1961. For the New Intellectual. New York: Signet.
    ——. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In Rand 1990.
    ——. 1968. Of Living Death. The Objectivist. October.
    ——. 1969–71. Epistemology Seminar Transcripts. In Rand 1990.
    ——. 1973. The Metaphysical versus the Man-Made. In Rand 1982.
    ——. 1982. Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Signet.
    ——. 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd ed. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian.
    Sher, G. 2016. Epistemic Friction – An Essay on Knowledge, Truth, and Logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Tachau, K. H. 1988. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Leiden: Brill.
    Tahko, T. E., editor, 2012. Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Conflicting Conclusions and therefore Conflict of Interest   
    Maybe this will actually help provide clarity. I don't think we're having a conflict of interest, at least not in Rand's sense. I take Rand's sense of interest from the VOS introduction and "The Objectivist Ethics" to refer to ones good as a human being. (Or more precisely, to refer to the scope of one's good.) I take this because she uses self-interest and selfishness interchangeably (or as selfishness as concern for ones own interest), and refers to them as "the values required for man's survival qua man."
    I don't think my good and Merlin's good are in conflict. We don't have to agree to pursue our good. This because we have different goods. If you think our natural or ultimate end is something like a "dominant end" where Merlin and 2046 are merely loci in such a good, then if we have different conclusions about what that is, we might be said to conflict. But if you think of our ultimate end as an "inclusive end" that is only made real through our individualized natures, it's possible to understand the form of my "survival qua man" and Merlin's "survival qua man" to be particularized in different ways. So Merlin and I don't have to agree to not be in goods-conflict. Opinion-conflict is distinct from that.
    Also, were not "interacting" strictly speaking. (interaction here, I mean act in some way whereby we must have some effect on the other.) And our disagreement over some thesis, or over what methods one should take in considering a thesis, has nothing to do whether or not I think, say Person A, B, or C is not a high-quality philosophy writer, or person in general. Or at least they are disjunctive with such things. And that is perfectly normal and healthy. In fact, I think 99% of the people that post on here are roughly as low-quality as Merlin's posts are. That's just part of internet intellectual junk-food. But I do think my posts about method can be helpful to some people, even if they don't like me or think I'm a jerk. Which is also perfectly reasonable.
    But I think this relates to the bit about "in a free society" that Swig brought up. She does seem to qualify the whole discussion, that her thesis only applies to a free society. I take it she means something like the following: Merlin and I can just dismiss each other, each one thinking the other is silly, in a free society. A free society is based on individual rights, including private property rights. And part of private property rights is that people aren't forced to interact, because they can draw a boundary around each. Respect for boundaries is a solution for conflict. Thus, in a free society, a solution to every potential goods-conflict exists: each person can ignore the other and go their own way (see last paragraph in the chapter.)
    What's interesting is she says "no interests are possible" in an unfree society. I'm not sure what she means by this. Presumably, the initiation of force makes human flourishing impossible, is her point in We the Living and so forth. But that's a really authoritarian regime? What about a semi-free society? She doesn't really address those questions. I think one could use examples of a limited kind of flourishing people are able to achieve in places like even gulags and prisons to argue against the idea that "no interests are possible." The case of Admiral James Stockdale provides an interesting example. But I take it that her point is that if Merlin and I were forced to interact, now we have a zero-sum game where our goods are both diminished, at least compared to us just going our own ways, or if one or the other just didn't exist.
  5. Like
    2046 got a reaction from StrictlyLogical in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    Never go full Parmenides
  6. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in 2020 election   
    That and the primary purpose of most of these people is to channel new converts into the Objectivist lecture/books/course/conference/membership ecosystem, which is the primary monetization enterprise, aside from convincing rich people to donate money to them. I'd just recommend steering clear of them altogether, there's only a few of them that are even good at what they do.
    Let's take a look at the following propositions that DO mentioned:
    1. The facts and logic always lead to only one conclusion
    2. If two people come to different conclusions, then one if them has betrayed reason
    1 and 2 are false. So the conclusion (one possible way to arrange it) that "you must agree with me" and (paraphrasing) "we can't tolerate disagreement in our ranks" (who is this "we" and what "ranks" are these?) are also false. 
    A lot of this discussion depends on taking these premises for granted, connected to the general idea that "two rational people are supposed to agree at all times." If 1 and 2 are not true, then that idea is also not true, if it's supposed to depend on 1 and 2. 
    What's a very brief reason to believe 1 and 2 are false? S' knowledge that p depends on S' belief that p be epistemically justified. One form of that is the propositional interpretation of justification. This is the idea that it's the belief that bears the primary epistemic justification. Justification modifies p, not S. Another form is the personalistic interpretation, the person is the primary bearer of justification. S bears the justification in believing or inferring that p (p can be said colloquially to be justified, but technically in a derivative sense.)
    If p and not S bears the justification, then the context of the knower holding or inferring p would be unrelated to the justification of p. This wouldn't make sense if knowledge is contextual and hierarchical, as well as held and achieved by an individual knower connecting his inferences to first-handed perception.
     
  7. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in HB v. AB: Is collectivism the greater evil?   
    There is much more integration (not just coherence, but mutual reinforcement and support) between modern conservatism and Marxism and postmodernism, than there is between Marxism and postmodernism.
    For just one of many examples, one of the current leading and most influential conservative philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre continues to argue, using Aristotelian and Thomistic methods that Bernstein blathering on about in peak Objectivist mode, that modernism (aka the Enlightenment) is a failed project precisely because of its liberal capitalism, scientific rationalism, and individualism, and to invoke Catholic social teaching (here and now, not 12 century) for a substantial collectivist vision that engages with key Marxist and Thomist concepts. Macintyre further argues that Marxism "achieved its unique position by adopting the content and function of Christianity."
    Again, this is one of the top living conservative philosophers (although I'm sure someone will spew some banality in order to avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.) Jordan Peterson taught them to say "postmodern neo-Marxism" in the same way the left was trained to use "white supremacists Nazi": it's a contentless stand in for "thing I don't like." 
    In the same way, Randians programmed each other to say "Thomas Aquinas" and "Enlightenment" and "rediscovery of Aristotle" as a filler for a wider manichean drama of the forces of light historically prevailing over the bad philosophers without ever having actually read anything about it.
  8. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    The two papers I posted treat different aspects of this. The first attempts to ground modal logic in the concepts of act and potency, arguing that a potency is a dispositional property and thus entails the existence of a possibility. The second is a part of a dissertation that criticizes the "logical possibility argument" that treats a possibility in terms of what can be imagined without contradiction.
  9. Like
    2046 reacted to Eiuol in Truth In Politics Youtube Channel   
    I highly recommend this paper by Tara Smith. 
    It is as an argument about anything we've discussed here, it's a paper about a conceptual cleanup regarding terms used when discussing freedom of speech.
    The Free Speech Vernacular: Conceptual Confusions in the Way We Speak About Speech
  10. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Entity and Ousia   
    Entity and Ousia
    Contrasting Roark with many other people, Mallory remarks to Dominique of those others: “At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been any entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass” (GW V, 485).
    Consider in Rand’s full metaphysics the finer structure in her conception of the law of identity: "Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute, or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A (AS 1016).
    Rand clearly intended here, in Galt’s Speech, that what is proposed for objects is to be generalized to entities. Every entity is of some kinds that are exclusive relative to other kinds of entity. Rand used the term entity in the paragraph preceding the object examples of leaf and stone. That is, she uses entity in the initial statement of her law of identity: “To exist is to be something, . . . it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes” (AS 1016). On that page, it is clear that she takes for entities not only what are ordinarily called objects such as leaf, stone, or table, but micro-objects such as living cells and atoms, and super-objects such as solar system and universe.
    Now we have a modest problem. If we say “to exist is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes,” we seem to say that attributes are either entities or are not existents. Consider for attributes “the shape of a pebble or the structure of the solar system” (AS 1016). To avoid the patent falsehood that the shape of a pebble does not exist, shall we say that not only the pebble is an entity, but its shape is an entity? Rand reaches a resolution by a refinement in her metaphysics nine years after her first presentation. In 1966 she writes “Entities are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of entities; motions are motions of entities; relationships are relationships among entities)” (ITOE 15). In Rand’s view then, we have that to exist is either (i) to be an entity consisting of particularities and specific attributes and a specific nature or (ii) to be some specific character in the nature of entities or among an entity’s particularities.
    Philosophers often use the term entity to mean any item whatever. That is one customary usage and perfectly all right. Rand decided to take entity into her technical vocabulary as something more restricted. She went on to name some fundamental categories that cannot exist without connection to entities: action, attributes, and relationships.[1] As with Aristotle’s substance (ousia), where there is any other category, there is entity to which it belongs.[2] Though Rand held entities to be “the only primary existents,” she did not suppose entities could ever exist without their incidents of action, attributes, and relationships. To trim away, in thought, all the internal traits of an existent as well as all its external relations should in right thought leave no existent. Out of step with Aristotle, Rand did not maintain there is such a thing as an entity that is a what, yet is without any specification by other categories of existents.[3]
    Entities have relations to other entities, but not the belonging-relation (inherence) had to entities by the categories not entity. The entity that is the sofa is in a region of the living room and it is in a force-relation with the floor. But it is not in anything in the way its shape and mass and stability and flammability are in it. Though she held actions, attributes, and relations to be incapable of existing without the entities of which they are incidents, Rand did not import to entity Aristotle’s concept of substance as somehow imparting existence from itself to the other fundamental categories.
    In Rand’s view, all of those categories have some instances in concrete existents. Actions, attributes, and relationships are not entities in Rand’s sense. To qualify as an entity, I say and think Rand could have been brought around to say, an entity has to do more than be able to stand as the subject of predication (or as the argument of a propositional function). Running or oscillation can be the subjects of predicates, but they can do so as actions, not entities. Fraction and containment can be the subjects of predicates, but they can do so as relations, not entities. Twill and vesicular quality can be subjects of predicates, but they can do so as attributes, not entities.
    Rand’s entity as primary existence parallels to some extent Aristotle’s ousia as primary being. Entity as subject of attributes, actions, and relationships parallels Aristotle’s ousia.[4] Substance has been the most common translation of Aristotle’s ousia, when used as the fundamental form of being. Joseph Owens argues that the traditional translation of Aristotle’s ousia is poorly conveyed by substance and is better expressed by entity.[5] Joe Sachs argues for the more Heideggerean translation thingness for ousia.[6] In whatever English translation, Aristotle’s full conception of ousia in his Metaphysics is far from Rand’s conception of entity.
    Entity does not stand as of-something. In that respect, it is like Aristotle’s ousia. Unlike his ousia in Metaphysics, entity as such is never the essence of something. Also contra Aristotle’s being that is ousia, the existents that are entity can have parts that are entity. Furthermore, as noticed earlier, unlike the accidents of Aristotle’s ousia in Metaphysics, the existence of incidents does not derive from the existence of entity.[7] Existents of the incidents are coordinate with existence of entities, not derivative from nor secondary to existence of entities.
    In contrast with Aristotle, Rand’s entity, primary form of existence, is only of this whole of existence, our spatial-temporal world, with both its actualities and its potentials, and our understanding over it. That is the all-encompassing reality. Contraction of being to existence includes a denial that there are metaphysical perfections and denial that there is such a thing as unqualified being. Such perfections, and unqualified stuff, when added together with existence per se constitute Aristotle’s being. Aristotle has Rand’s entities as occasions of ousia, at least prima facie, and these he calls natural ousia.[8] Aristotle’s primary ousia, fundamental form of being, I should add, is always an individual, a this something, though not always a concrete.[9] 
    “Substance is on the one hand, matter, on the other hand, form, that is, activity” (Metaph. 1043a27–28).[10] Shape, such as shape of a bronze statue, is not all Aristotle means here by form (mophê). That which explains the coming to be of the statue from unshaped bronze is here included as form; then too, form is here determining principle of which the bronze constitutes this statue rather than any other being. Bronze of itself is determinate matter, but as matter of this statue, it is this form’s matter in consideration of its potential to be another form’s matter. For Aristotle explanation of substance requires both matter and form. Like most all moderns, Rand and Peikoff reject Aristotle’s fundamental form/matter division of all beings.[11]
    Aristotle had ousia not only primary in account of the kinds of being, but prior in time to them.[12] In the shift from being to existence as most fundamental and in the shift from ousia to entity as most fundamental category of existence, we do not conceive of entity as temporally prior to attributes and relations. For the move from being to existence as most fundamental is move to existence already with identity.
    If existence is identity and most fundamentally concrete, then entity is identity and most fundamentally concrete. Let us say further that entity is identity, essential and inessential. Essential identity of an entity is identity without which the entity would not be the kind it is.[13] To say that entity is essential identity might seem close to Aristotle’s view that ousia and its essence are one.[14] Rand’s principle existence is identity has greater scope than Aristotle’s ousia is its essence. For her existence is identity has comprehensive scope: it spans not only entity and its essential attributes, but its entire suite of attributes, as well as its standings in actions and relations.
    For Aristotle capturing what is a specific ousia—where ousia is the primary form of being and the subject of attributes and alterations—requires formulating its definitions such that the essence expressed in the predicate (definiens) has a uniquely right necessary tie and has explanatory tie with the subject (definiendum). Without that essential trait, the ousia defined could not be the kind of ousia it is. Furthermore, if no such trait can be found, the subject is not an ousia, a what-it-is, but a depending quantity, quality, relation, time, location, configuration, possession, doing, or undergoing.[15]
    In Rand’s modern metaphysics, capturing best what is a specific entity requires formulating its definiens such that it has a right, necessary, and explanatory tie with the subject entity. The unity of essential characteristics with existence of the entity to which they belong are not absolute in the way Aristotle’s specific essence belongs to specific ousia. His is an ascription right independently of context of knowledge. Rand’s theory of essential characteristics for definitions allows for evolution as our knowledge context grows.[16] Furthermore, unlike Aristotle’s theory, the unity of the essential in definitions of existents is just as tight where those existents are attributes, actions, or other relations as when the existent being defined is an entity.
    The essence of Newtonian force is expressed in its definiens, with specific mathematical defining formula relating certain physical quantities. Special relativity recasts that fundamental defining equation of force, the old equation imbedded in a more elaborate one taking newly learned factors into the account of force.[17] Contrary Aristotle, existents not substance and not entity can have essential characteristics, and these are a function not only of what is so, but of what it is we know of what is so. Although Rand made essential characteristics dependent on context of knowledge, these characteristics are real, the dependencies (such as causal or mathematical) other characteristics have upon them are real, and the explanatory character of essential characteristics vis-à-vis other characteristics is objective.
    Additional likeness and difference in the metaphysics of Rand and Aristotle are the following. In the metaphysics of Aristotle, when we grasp the essence of ousia, we become that essence; such an assimilator is what is a mind.[18] In Rand’s metaphysics, our grasp of an essence is an identification of an identity; such an identifier of identity is what is a mind, although essence is not the only identity of the existent determining mind, and as mentioned, entity is not the only category in which there are essential aspects. Furthermore, unlike the metaphysics of Rand and other moderns, the metaphysics of Aristotle has it that essence is only in kinds of ousia (kinds of substance/entity) such as the kind man. The essence of man—rational animal—exhausts the kind man. Aristotle recognizes, naturally, that the individual man is more in particulars and specifics, more than the essence and ousia. Rand has it rather that the kind is only a class of individuals, each with all their identity, and essential characteristic(s) of the class concern causal and other explanatory relations, identities that are categories not only the category entity.
    Rather than her loose and overlapping categories of action, attribute, and relation, Rand could have conceived of them as mutually exclusive categories by confining attributes to traits not essentially in relation to other things and by confining relations to features not monadic and not action. It would remain, however, for her selection of fundamental categories that electric current, for example, could be (a) an attribute of an active conducting wire, manifest by shock or by resistance heating of the wire, and (b) a flow of electrons within the wire and (c) a source of the magnetic field around the wire. Assignment to a Randian category, unlike an Aristotelian one, should, I think, remain dependent on the physical situation under consideration. In the present example: (a) attribute, (b) action, (c) entity. In Rand’s fully developed theoretical philosophy, as I mentioned, essential characteristics, though factual, are functions of the human context of knowledge.[19] If we extend functional dependence of essential characteristic to context of consideration, then multiple highest genera of an existent is not problematic, unlike the circumstance for Aristotle with his metaphysically absolute essences, ever the same whatever our level of knowledge and context of consideration.
    Notes
    [1] AS 1016; ITOE 7, appx. 264–79.
    [2] ITOE appx. 157, 264; Aristotle, Cat. 2b3–6; Metaph. 1028a10–30. Aristotle maintained two sorts of substance, primary and secondary. The former would be an individual such as the individual man Parmenides; the latter would be the species or genus of such an individual. Rand’s entity is always only a concrete individual.
    [3] Aristotle, Metaph. 1028a30–b3. See further, Pasnau 2011, 99–102.
    [4] ITOE 15; Aristotle, Cat. 2a14–19; Cael. 298a26–b3; Metaph. 1028a10–b7.
    [5] Owens 1978, 137–54; see also Gotthelf 2012, 8n11. What is traditionally translated as being in Aristotle, is sometimes translated as existence; Barnes 1995, 72–77. Here again, we must not let that dull us to the differences between Aristotle and Rand on the concept in play.
    [6] Sachs 1999, xxxvi–xxxix.
    [7] Aristotle, Metaph. 1045b27–33; Lewis 2013, 13–15, 91.
    [8] Cael. 298a26–b3; Metaph. 1017b10–15, 1028b9–32, 1040b5–10, 1042a7–11.
    [9] Cat. 3b10–23; Metaph. 1028a12, 25–30.
    [10] A. Kossman, translator.
    [11] ITOE appx. 286. Koslicki 2018 offers a modern defense of Aristotle’s hylomorphism.
    [12] Aristotle, Metaph. 1028a32–33.
    [13] Top. 101b37; Metaph. 1025b11, 1029b14–16 ; ITOE 42, 45, 52.
    [14] Metaph. 1031a28–1032a5; see also Top. 135a9–12; further, Witt 1989
    [15] Cat. 1b25–2a; Top. 103b20–25; Metaph. 1028b1–3.
    [16] ITOE 40–52.
    [17] What force is in our contemporary physics is also informed by the setting of force in relation to Hamiltonian mechanics, a more general classical mechanics having natural joins with quantum mechanics. Newton’s gravitational force, whose definition requires its fundamental equation, is also recast by situating it in the deeper successful theory that is general relativity.
    [18] Aristotle, De An. 429a10–430a26.
    [19] ITOE 43–47, 52.
    References
    Aristotle c.348–322. B.C. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor (1984). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    Barnes, J. 1995. Metaphysics. In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Koslicki, K. 2018. Form, Matter, Substance. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Owens, J. 1978 [1951]. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. 3rd ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
    Pasnau, R. 2011. Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Rand, A. 1943. The Fountainhead. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
    ——. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House.
    ——. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. In Rand 1990.
    ——. 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd ed. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian.
    Sachs, J., translator, 1999. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Santa Fe: Green Lion Press.
    Witt, C. 1989. Substance and Essence in Aristotle. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  11. Like
    2046 reacted to Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Thanks. I'm copying out all your posts on this and pasting into a word processing file I'm keeping on this area, just to be double sure it is preserved for full followup as part of my work in progress (which should take a couple more years to complete to publication level). I have obtained the book by Bostock you mentioned, and I expect to be reading it in close parallel with Jean De Groot's Aristotle's Empiricism - Experience and Mechanics in the 4th Century BC and with the metaphysical portions of G. R. Lear's Happy Lives and the Highest Good. 
  12. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Is form just "relation"? At first glance, I'd say no. In order for something to have a relationship with something else, it has to be that specific thing having that specific relationship with this specific other thing, ie., it has to have matter. Betweeness in the examples you have is a relationship between form-matter composites.
    But, that's not to say that it's entirely unrelated. The categories trace the way in which form and matter relate to substances and predicates, insofar as predication is our way of signifying different modes of being, and form and matter are two fundamental aspects of being. So the question of what relation "relation" has to form and matter is a valid one, and there must be some mode of being corresponding to each way of predication.
    The only passage I know of is in Aquinas' commentary on the Metaphysics where he says "quantity" flows from the matter, "quality" from the form. "Relation" is something different because it is not a consideration of the predicate "being in a subject," but a subject "with reference to something else" (V.9.890.) 
    I don't know if there's very much work on how the categories relate to hylemorphism, but there's a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Aristotle (Studtmann, "Aristotle's Categorical Scheme") where he claims there's discrepancies between the two theories. The categories were developed early on when Aristotle was interested in logic, and still under Plato's influence for the concept form to an extent, but then hylemorphism came after he was interested in natural philosophy and gained a much more specific usage. In effect, the extreme view is that categorialism and hylemorphism represent two different theories of substances, and the latter was developed in response to the inadequacies of the first. It is only on what he calls the medieval approach that the two are made whole.
  13. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    To continue our discussion on the ways form and matter might be understood to apply to philosophical problems, there is another way you can see these abstract, technical theories undergird pop or folk philosophies of nature. One recent example is the dialogue between Prager and Biddle. (If you don't know who these people are, or are uninterested in them, the point I'm making isn't really about them. If you want to debate about different aspects of their interaction, please ignore this post.) 
    There is something in political discourse called "horseshoe theory," according to which different versions are claiming different, mostly spurious, things, but there is a plausible version that says often times what are perceived as fundamentally opposing viewpoints actually share some more fundamental premises, and that these premises are what give rise to and motivate the opposition in the first place, which upon further inspection, turns out to be surface. An example from OPAR (146) that people might be familiar with is that subjectivism is ultimately intrinsicism and intrinsicism is ultimately subjectivism. An historical example is Nazi and Communists in Weimar Germany. There are various reasons to why this might be, but not important here.
    Next, we must understand the Prager Argument. Prager's method is to proceed as follows (all actual Prager-quotes at various times which I have done my best to reconstruct into a syllogism):
    If you're an atheist, you're a materialist.
    If we are only matter, I am the product, and everything I do is the product, of [the matter.]
    But where am I in this equation?
    That's just insane!
    Therefore god exists.
    Biddle's unfortunate response was to not reply that there are material and formal causes, but there is matter and consciousness (and that's not something even that materialists necessarily have to deny), and to juxtapose those two as "separate things," which can lead one to assume he is endorsing (or that Ayn Rand endorsed) substance dualism.
    Later Prager makes an intelligent design-type argument appealing to "complexity." He is amazed that animals urinate. He is amazed about the universe and life and the planets. How can you not believe in God? Do you think this all just happens randomly? No of course not, that's inconceivable. This is his primary "evidence" (as opposed to proof.) This type of argument is ancient, but most influentially the watchmaker analogy of William Paley is employed to argue that design implies a designer.
    So we have two primary means of moving forward: materialism bad, intelligent design good. But notice the problem here. In this whole scheme of things, in both materialism and theistic design-type arguments, there is the underlying notion that whatever whole were talking about is always emerging just from the parts. The relationship between the parts and whole is that the parts give rise to the whole (reductionism) particularly their position and motion (mechanism.)
    Take this paradigmatic quote from Carl Sagan, a noted atheist and materialist:
    "I am a collection of water, calcium, and organic molecules called Carl Sagan."
    This is not very different from the watchmaker analogy of Paley, who was trying to invoke God as the cause of the universe on the basis of the complexity of the beings arranged therein. If you were to stumble upon a watch in the forest, you would have to say oh clearly there's a watchmaker, look at this complex assembly of parts into a functioning system. The main difference between Sagan and Paley is who is whether there is a conscious being that is a watchmaker, or is the watch assembled "randomly" (in Prager's words), thus obviously the clear deduction is theism.
    But in both cases, from the standpoint of Aristotelian concepts of form and matter, as we were discussing at the beginning of this thread, the notion of an artifact is there. For Paley/Prager, the world to include the "I" that is Prager himself, is an Aristotelian artifact assembled by God, and to Sagan it is not (perhaps operating through the "blind watchmaker" of evolution.) For Descartes, similarly, the laws imparting motion to the corpuscles were provided by Divine providence.
    The Paley-style appeal to complexity and intelligent design is a theistic reductionistic mechanism, but a reductionistic mechanism nonetheless, with the main point that nature is viewed as an artifact. Both the materialist and mechanistic theist share a commitment to concerning natural substances. All natural substances are mechanical things whose parts ultimately explain the whole. The objection of the theist is not any of these things, but that "randomness" is too inadequate to explain the matter in motion.
    But the Aristotelian would not think this way, and Aristotelian hylemorphic theists do not endorse these kinds of arguments for theism. Under this type of view, there is a lot to say, and a lot more than just in this post, but the bottom line is the distinction between an artifact and a substance. An artifact has "accidental form," whereas a genuine natural substance like a bacterium, or a giraffe, or a person has "substantial form" and the latter is the principle of unity. The substantial form actualizes the whole, including each part of the whole, and so explains the unity of the substance. Aristotle starts using these concepts to explain change, but in Physics 1.7-8 he employs the concepts of form and matter also in explaining how we are able to distinguish a mere aggregates of parts from a unified whole, like living organisms.
     
     
  14. Thanks
    2046 got a reaction from Easy Truth in Form v. Matter   
    The dominant views in 20th century philosophy of science has been backed by materialism and nominalism. We are familiar with that views challenges to cognition, intentionality, free will, personal identity, and normativity. That view however has been seriously challenged by failures and inability to integrate with new discoveries in the quantum revolution and biology.
    Another branch of philosophy that the concepts of matter and form can illuminate is philosophy of mind. The two main dominant views in philosophy of mind have been some form of materialism and dualism. But they both have principal objections that have proven intractable.
    Materialists say that what is real is nothing but matter. What we call mind is just a way that some matter somehow behaves, and different types of materialists take that "somehow" to be or imply different things. The dualists from whom the materialists took matter to be the first substance, say that in addition there's a second kind of substance called that has different mind-y properties. Different types of dualists break out over what those substances turn out to be.
    The main problem* with materialism is the causation problem. Once you get down to the quantum level, things look less deterministic and mechanistic. The idea of irreducible fundamental particles don't have the same kind of explanatory power they were supposed to have, in addition to being unable to explain the phenomenology of conscious experience. The main problem with dualism is the interaction problem. If the mind is a self-subsisting object (what a substance is supposed to be) that is immaterial and unextended, has no size, mass, motion, etc., How then does mind act on, or get acted on by the body?
    On the Aristotelian view there isn't a kind of causation problem because since a substance is a composite of form and matter, there can be fundamental causal powers at the level of whole organisms that are not reducible to primitive physical simples. And there isn't the kind of interaction problem because you don't really have two separate substances interacting, you have a whole human being with an essence and identity.
    Bringing back in the concepts of matter and form to human beings in ways that can avoid some of these problems. Roughly, we can treat them the same way we treat other theories in science, like say, "quark" or "gravitational field." Their value is based on their ability to integrate and explain the perceptual data.
    *In saying these are main problems, I am putting forth a condensation of common threads within an array of common objections. There are many possible objections and counter-objections, I am here merely describing what I take to be the main ones.
  15. Thanks
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    That's because any sarcasm was accidental and not essential to our discussion on hylemorphism. While we're on the subject of Gotthelf, his festschrift Lennox and Bolton (2010) is also a good source of information about teleology, namely the first chapter by Sedley. This brings up a great point: that there is not even one "thing" called teleology. There are all sorts of versions and interpretations of it, and even in Aristotle he does not always consistently speak of teleology or the causes or form in the same way.
    Another good source on the connection between the four causes and hylemorphism is Bostock (2006) Space, Matter, Time, and Form. He goes through the text parsing out a lot of different ways Aristotle uses each of these concepts, not always in coherent ways. But in the chapter on form, he spends a bit of time talking about the connection between form and the concept of a telos: getting to a goal is a way of explaining fulfilling some standard, and form is the principle that aims, or directs, what any sort of end would count as (Physics II.8 spends a lot of time on this.) In other words, achieving a purpose is the actualizing a form. This is also the basis of a notion of perfections of being, that you were talking about earlier.
  16. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    Indeed, even inanimate things like mineral substances have final causes in Aristotle's physics. Anything with form and matter, act and potency, has final causes. In the case of rocks, its final cause may be something from an intelligent agent like to be kicked or picked up and thrown, or it may be due to external, but non-intelligent, agency like its participation in the rock cycle or its undergoing lithification. Or it may be due to its own internal nature, like achieving a relative position of stability like sitting on the ground or sinking to the bottom of a lake, which Aristotle (300a28-31, 300b6-8) calls its achieving rest in its natural place.
  17. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Eiuol in HB v. AB: Is collectivism the greater evil?   
    There is much more integration (not just coherence, but mutual reinforcement and support) between modern conservatism and Marxism and postmodernism, than there is between Marxism and postmodernism.
    For just one of many examples, one of the current leading and most influential conservative philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre continues to argue, using Aristotelian and Thomistic methods that Bernstein blathering on about in peak Objectivist mode, that modernism (aka the Enlightenment) is a failed project precisely because of its liberal capitalism, scientific rationalism, and individualism, and to invoke Catholic social teaching (here and now, not 12 century) for a substantial collectivist vision that engages with key Marxist and Thomist concepts. Macintyre further argues that Marxism "achieved its unique position by adopting the content and function of Christianity."
    Again, this is one of the top living conservative philosophers (although I'm sure someone will spew some banality in order to avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.) Jordan Peterson taught them to say "postmodern neo-Marxism" in the same way the left was trained to use "white supremacists Nazi": it's a contentless stand in for "thing I don't like." 
    In the same way, Randians programmed each other to say "Thomas Aquinas" and "Enlightenment" and "rediscovery of Aristotle" as a filler for a wider manichean drama of the forces of light historically prevailing over the bad philosophers without ever having actually read anything about it.
  18. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Form v. Matter   
    There are two main arguments for hylemorphism: the argument from change and the argument from limitation. (And a whole bunch of secondary arguments around these.)
    The argument from change follows this basic form:
    If change is real, then matter and form are real.
    Change is real.
    Thus matter and form are real.
    The argument from limitation is much more complicated, but is more similar to what Peikoff describes in that passage. It follows from the more general act-potency distinction applied to unity and multiplicity. Any universal pattern like roundness is only made actual by being limited in a specific way, and that by virtue of which a circle is limited and remains in potency is its matter, and that by which the potency is made actual is its form. Peikoff provides a good description of how we can come to know the matter and form as limitation by contemplating and separating out the unity in the structure. Thus the grasping of concept is the grasping of form, and the formal cause relates specifically to its nature and actives, especially those internal to the kind of thing it is.
    The form-matter distinction is necessary for a lot of other positions Rand wants to hold dear. For example, formal cause determines final cause. To conceive of a final cause in ethics that relates to a things nature, one needs form and matter.
  19. Haha
    2046 got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
  20. Like
    2046 got a reaction from JASKN in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
  21. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Tu Quoque   
    Correct. Which is why it's not, strictly speaking, hypocrisy. Their principle isn't "rioting is bad." Their principle is "what do we have to do to get what we want."
  22. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 
    Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details.
    So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.
  23. Like
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    [Note: quote is necro, not Eiuol]
     
    This is a Human version of possibility. A proposition is possible if its assertion is not logically contradictory. This sort of argument is also taken to explain why propositions about facts cannot be necessary truths. They are contingent since the contrary of any matter of fact is always logically conceivable and therefore always possible.
    This is not Peikoff's view of the arbitrary, nor the view of the Aristotelian metaphysical and epistemological tradition, wherein something's mere logical conceivability does not confer possibility. 
    Moreover, "X happened in the past, therefore X is the case now" is not only not evidence, it's a logical fallacy of appeal to tradition.
  24. Haha
    2046 got a reaction from Boydstun in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    There are many schools of anarchism. Most of them are shamefully dumb as hell. However, none of them are devoted to keeping an incumbent president in power.
  25. Like
    2046 got a reaction from JASKN in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 
    Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details.
    So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.
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