Tiberious726

No, you see, that would only be a problem if the matter at hand was convincing me that objectivism was correct. I can assure that that is not what I am talking about here (and it's also not within the realm of possibilities, for reasons far outside the scope of this thread). I am asking you guys why you believe what you believe, in terms of how you understand it to be justified. (Additionally, objectivism is only an extension of Aristotle if by "extension" you mean that some parts are rejected too (In which case you could say that anything is an extension of anything) I will, however, grant you that it's methodologically the same: presenting statements, without argumentative support, as ineffable truth) I find it humorous that you take my request for information from someone with primary knowledge to be equivalent to a demand of secondary knowledge before inquiring. What I was after was not what you believe, but why you believe what you believe what you believe, something very different. That being said, I guess I'm not going to get any clear basis for your understanding, much less an actual discourse on how your views avoid/solve the skeptical and logical criticisms leveled at all other views, from you guys... I guess it was kinda silly of me to consider the alternative as a possibility. I'm out of here.

Nope. Not unless you can explain how something existing in us (our minds) is unreal. (see below) Wait, you are saying that space is a way we order things, therefore space must exist in the external world? What basis? Simply because it is doesn't contradict anything you know about the world? That's an ad ignorantiam logical fallacy. To pick an example we would both agree to be absurd, there existed a school of thought (dunno if they are around any more..) who argued that everything that happened from interactions of objects did so because God appeared and made it happen. This is a way to understand, to order, the world around us there is nothing in our perceptions that implies God, just like there is nothing in blobs of colour that implies space. Neither of these violate your principle of non-contradiction with reality. (Nothing contradicts God if we limit him solely to this role.) What makes the space one real and the God one false? You are horribly misreading Kant... He most certainly does not deny existence... I don't want to get into the variety of ways this interpretation is wrong... I think the root of it is your idea of him making a claim about "unreal-ness" which I address below. Meiklejohn is a fine translator, he is a real pain to read for an extended period of time if you are interested in Kant I would recommend checking out Norman Kemp Smith (He's a lot more clear). (Note to those overly concerned about the rules: Here I am not promulgating Kant's philosophy, I am merely recommending a translation, which you lot could very well use as a tool to attack him more accurately) Anyway, as for a different interpretation, just look at the text, he never accuses space and time to be unreal, he simply says that they are not elements of the external world. Notice that bit about space and time disappearing was the tail end of a conditional starting with "if we take away the subject". In order for something to disappear, it would have to be there in the first place, so Kant clearly thinks that as long as the subject is present space and time are real, he just puts them in a different place than you do. Questions outside the scope of reason, be it God, or the organization of reason itself. Things that reason definitionally (at least in the second case) can't address. ------ @Thomas No, I've read some of it, I just didn't find its explanations/reasons for its ideas satisfying (in the slightest... it was rather like Aristotle all over again in that sense, just less Greek (which, for me, is a very bad thing)). A lot of my questions are purely rhetorical... I know what objectivism's stance on them is, but the answer to them is relevant to some larger questions I have for you lot, and I don't want to be putting words in you guys' mouths. Ok, first off there is a big difference between inductive logic and non-contradiction with reality. Inductive /reasoning/ (it's not, in my experience, usually called logic) studies general trends of two things occurring together in the past, and predicts that they will occur together in the future. There is absolutely _no_ certainty in inductive reasoning (Hume provided a nice accounting of this) and it has nothing to do with ideas in your mind conforming to the outside world. How is this at all the same as your non-contradiction with the outside world idea? Additionally, claiming deductive logic to be based on inductive logic is absurd. Deductive reasoning is about what /must/ be true if other things are true. Inductive reasoning is about what has happened in the past... they are two entirely different things. You can't get logical necessity from observations.. (unless you are now proposing that you can some how see modu ponens (If so, let me know where to look)) Right, but here you are just substituting in another proposition that means the same thing, let's apply your own test to that claim. "The senses give us reality directly, the one and only reality, the one that is observed with the senses or logically derived in a non-contradictory manner from sensory evidence." Can you prove /this/ claim empirically? (Note: I am not talking about the observations themselves, but rather about the proposition relating them to reality) (Obviously you can't for circularity reasons) And since you can't empirically prove this claim, doesn't that make it every bit as "mystical" as Kant's metaphysics? (where your definition of mystical is not based on empirical observations) (BTW, of all this discussion, this is the question that has really peaked my interest (I'm just noting this, because you guys tend to only answer a few of my question, and if you are going keep doing that, pick this one as one of them))

Wow... that's one weird definition of logic... And would definitely explain why so many objectivist claims seem so nonsensical to me. Why do you lot pick that definition? How is it any different than pure (non-logical (the traditional definition here)) empiricism? Also, two questions of it's implications: 1) Does this mean that you guys don't believe in what is traditionally called logic? 2) Would being a creature of pure logic, for you guys, be the same thing as possessing all knowledge in the universe? Also, lets say one of my peers decided to tint my glasses green while I was asleep one night, then I look at my wall the next morning, without knowing about my glasses new property, and say that it is green. Would that statement be illogical? If so, how do you know that any of your statements are ever /truly/ logical? (your definition of logical here) We could extend this to a whole population (living on some island), lets say everyone's eye's made things that look white to us, green to them. Are their observations illogical? If so, how would they know? Additionally, how do we know that our observations are not illogical? (btw... this definition of logical is just weird to use...) So are you saying we observe the objects in themselves with our senses? (implied by "Something is what it is and we observe that something with our senses") Aren't we simply observing the light bouncing off the reflective surface, not the surface itself? (this becomes a big issue with things like quantum mechanics, where bouncing electrons have sufficient energy to change things drastically.) If we only ever observe what bounces off the surface, how can we say we have any knowledge of the surface itself, other than how things tend to bounce off it? Ok, but can't this same criticism be turned back against you? Do you have any empirical (or "logical" to use your definition) reason to believe that only the empirical is valuable? Or is this an a priori, metaphysical belief that you accept without empirical proof? If you do have empirical proof to prove that only the empirical is valuable then please state it. (A heads up: This is impossible because in order to use empirical information to prove something you first have know that empirical information is valuable, thus to use empirical information to prove empirical information's value is begging the question (or to use Hume's imagery going in a circle.)) So, unless you have some clever way out of this (which I would be extremely interested in hearing), isn't your system just as "mystical" (again, your definition) as Kant's? So you guys are redefining mysticism too? Words have meaning by convention for a reason.... a really good one... namely communication... Anyway, is your conception of mysticism any different than the negation of your conception of logic? Also, is evil defined to be that which is illogical, or does evil have its own definition, and your definition of illogical falls under that definition of evil? (In more precise wording: is calling the illogical evil a tautology, or does it convey information?)

@Agrippa1: First off, thanks for the reply, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. How exactly does treating space and time as a priori conceptions make them unreal? They are the way we organize our knowledge, the way we understand our perceptions, for him they are very real. No, because within a perception, there is only the content of that perception. Within an infant's sight there are only blobs of colour, there is nothing he sees that is "space". Thus the idea of space cannot be a component of his perceptions. It is rather the way he orders his perceptions in order to understand them. Kant would entirely agree with that story you told about how an infant gets the idea of space, except he sees no reason to assume that "concepts which help him integrate the relationships between things" (as you put it) exist in the outside world. In fact, simply by virtue of them being concepts they have to exist solely in your mind. (The same applies to time.) So, on what basis do you lot hold these _concepts_ to be components of the world, instead of our understanding thereof? No... not at all... his thesis, at least in the first critique (which is what we have been talking about here) is to understand how how reason works, and what it's limits are. (Mostly this was a reply to Hume, who argued everything must consist solely of the principle of non-contradiction or empirical observation, Kant argued against this, and thus tried to save things like the theory of general relativity (obviously this wasn't around in his time, but its the kind of thing Hume would have been against)) Kant was most certainly _not_ a mystic, Mysticism is the belief that reality is really a indivisible whole, and that we, when trying to rationally apprehend it, break it up into chunks and thus make it something other than what it really is, and thus direct, irrational experience is the only way to truly know the world (F H Bradley is an example of this view). Kant argued that exact opposite, that in order to know anything we have to subsume it under one or more of the 12 categories of the understanding. He's as anti-mystic as it gets. Also, why do you think mysticism is evil? (I think you might being using evil in a different way than it is commonly used, could you explain it?)

"a posteriori logic" is a self-contradictory term... Logical validity is about what is /necessarily/ true regardless of experience, thus it is definitionally a priori. It is about what propositions _must_ be true if certain other propositions are true. Saying that "Logic is the non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality as given by observation" would allow for things like the two statements "the grass is green" and "the sky is blue" to be considered logical. They aren't, they are just two propositions, floating out there. Logic is a system of relating propositions. Things like "All men are mortal" "Socrates is a man" therefore "Socrates is mortal" are logical systems. If you disagree with this, could you explain your view, and the reasons thereof more? (As a side question, where did you get your BA in philosophy you mentioned earlier? I'm not ripping on you or anything with this question, I'm just rather curious because most departments with which I am familiar (in the US and England at least) really tend to focus on logic a lot) Also, could you answer my first question in my previous post? I think that would definitely serve to elucidate you guys' stance for me. How objectivism responds Kantian philosophy is still about objectivism. The same way in a course on say, Rousseau, when you discuss how his ideas respond to Locke's ideas, you are still studying his ideas, and if anything gaining deeper insight into their particularities. Wow.... with insights as penetrating as that one, I don't see how you lot could possibly be viewed as a bunch of posturing adolescents who have no idea what they are talking about.

So it would be fair to say that you are making the Russell-eque claim that the world itself is really comprised of sense-data? Also, could you explain how your view is distinct from idealism (the philosophical school, not the whole optimistic thing)? Same way as Russell, or do you have a different mechanism? This is an appeal to unpalatable consequences, could you explain what exactly makes Kant's argument wrong, other than your disagreement with the conclusion? What exactly makes it wrong? (insisting the opposite is true, without support is really rather unconvincing btw) There is a difference between being rational and being empirical. Being empirical requires evidence in the form of real world observations. Being rational requires deduction from premises, which he does a lot, for example his categorical imperative is based on the law of non-contradiction and universality, both of which are incredibly important concepts to reason. (Dont misunderstand me, I disagree with his particular rational system, but I don't see how you can call it irrational, could you explain your claim some more?) Ok.... could you back up that interpretation? The way I, and the majority of the philosophical community, and Kant himself interpret what he was doing is an attempt to save things like scientific knowledge from being consigned to the flames, as suggested by Hume (specifically by the idea of a priori synthetic knowledge). Could you say, show where his system violates rationality?

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?

First off, please don't mis-quote me, you cant take things out of context and keep the same meaning, much less chop up a single sentence. That particular statement I made was limited in scope to the argument concerning the noumenal, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, as it's an epistemological concern. His claim (at least the one to which I was referring, I guess my statement could be kinda ambiguous) is, quickly summarized, that you can't know the noumenal from the phenomenal, and that the phenomenal is all we can know through the senses (definitionally). The form of this particular issue (the thing I was talking about when asking for an alternative) would be how can you know something in-itself? I'd be interested in you guy's answer to this question, but didn't ask it just because it's kinda tangential to my main question thus I don't really want to get into it here except as it relates to my primary question, and I didn't want to put words in you guy's mouths (that is, assuming you guys would make that claim). There really isn't much else discussed in regards to Kant other than his philosophy, I think it's fairly evident that that is what my question was about. I have read Rand, I just didn't find anything in her writings that satisfactorily explained to me why she felt the way she did about Kant, that's why I'm /asking/ you guys. Additionally I did read the rules, and I see no violation thereof in my post, if you have a concern, then could you be a bit more specific? Reason for Edit: Making the bbcode work

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.