necrovore

I suppose I should skip to the end: the whole purpose of "proof" is to establish truths for the purpose of guiding people's decisions, which presupposes that people make them. So without free will there is no need of "proof."

What does it mean to "establish" a fact or truth? As opposed to the fact or truth simply existing. Why does it matter whether a fact or a truth is "established" or not?

If there's no free will, how do you define "proof"?

Even though things like X-rays are out of the reach of our senses we can infer their existence from evidence. So what's the noumenal domain needed for? Sounds to me like it's nothing but a cover for bullshit.

I didn't say her principles were correct because she identified them. I said she showed how to derive them from objective fact.

Individualism does not equate to being able to rewrite reality. Ayn Rand did not hand out a set of "commandments," and even wrote that such a thing was offensive. She did identify principles of morality. She claimed that they were derivable from objective fact. She showed how to derive them. This is similar to the way Newton identified principles of physics. Newton is not opposed to individualism merely because he came up with Newton's Laws and then claimed they were universal and not subject to individual choice. Newton, like Rand, showed how he came up with his principles. The description of how is more important than the principles themselves, but his work would have been incomplete if he had merely described the "how" and left the principles themselves to implication. So it is with Rand. The identification of Newton's Laws was a major breakthrough in Enlightenment thought because it showed, on a scale never before seen at that time, the power of the mind to grasp reality. Ayn Rand's morality does the same thing (although historically later). Her principles are not meant for the kind of "blind obedience" that religionists encourage from people. If some people take her principles that way, it's because those people have probably grown up with religion and they don't know any other way to handle such principles. People new to Objectivism sometimes enthusiastically graft it onto what they already "know" without realizing that they're still acting on unidentified anti-Objectivist principles. (Then others observe their behavior and think it's Objectivist behavior when it isn't.) Newton was obviously not meant for blind obedience, either, and it was not the final word on physics. Future discoveries made Einstein possible (and necessary). The same thing is probably also true with Rand. There are probably moral principles yet to be discovered, that apply in situations Rand didn't consider, but they would still have to be validated by reference to reality and the requirements of human life. (Besides, applying the principles correctly, to your own circumstances, can require considerable amounts of "thinking for yourself.")

Hold it right there... Ayn Rand is not responsible for misunderstandings or misrepresentations of her views, even popular misunderstandings. Unfortunately it is fairly common for some people to misunderstand her views, and then for some others to hold that those misunderstandings are actually her views, when they are not. It is better not to accuse people of holding certain ideas unless you know what you are talking about.

As I said, I think the refutation of Kant is just a sideshow. Speaking for myself, I feel like I did my further-looking before discovering Objectivism. Kant, I suppose, had his chance. Objectivism isn't rooted in Rand, it's rooted in reality, or at least it's supposed to be. I suppose it is possible to claim that Objectivism is wrong about reality. Some Objectivists are wrong about reality from time to time. This occasional wrongness is actually normal, coming as it does out of human fallibility. I think the correct answers will come out in time. But that is not the same thing as claiming that reality is inaccessible (or that certain parts of it are inaccessible).

Here's a good article from John Eastman, who represented Trump before the Supreme Court concerning the 2020 election, about some of the information he was given in the course of doing his job: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/most-secure-election-american-history-john-eastman Interesting read!

PWNI doesn't mention Kant by name. It does illustrate the practical consequences of certain philosophical ideas -- if and to the extent that you take them seriously and try to apply them in a given situation. Even Kantians can somehow manage to make it to the store and buy groceries, even though their minds allegedly are incapable of understanding the store and the groceries as they really are, and can only understand them as they appear to be. In a sense the astronaut is an exaggeration just to make the point. In another sense, though, the whole problem with certain philosophical ideas is that you can't take them to their logical conclusions without causing disaster to ensue... and if that's the case, there must be something wrong with those ideas. I don't think that's "vilification." That's just calling attention to a problem. (Of course I don't think the real intention of those bad philosophical ideas is for people to go all-in with them -- rather, it's to use them as an excuse or an escape hatch whenever they want to do something irrational.)

I am not going to say that it is, because it would require a very large scale full-text search of both Rand and Kant. Peikoff did say that Kant had "occasional fig leaves," which means we can't say that Kant was wrong about everything. (I suppose a complete lie would be more easily rejected than one that verifiably tells the truth some of the time.) We can say that Kant was wrong about fundamental ideas -- like the whole division into noumenal and phenomenal worlds. On fundamental ideas, Rand and Kant are completely different. If Kant were right about something, his fundamentals would tend to undermine it (sort of like if someone were saying that 2+2=4 because of extraterrestrials). Rhetorically, at least, I'm sure there were places where Rand would take the other side of one of Kant's formulations. But if she were to say that 2+2=4 she would probably (rightly) leave Kant out of it, even if he said the same thing at some point or other.

In the above quote, Ayn Rand lists a series of facts, but she does not do any deduction, she does not apply any abstract principle, so there cannot be any "fallacy." Also, you won't get anywhere by starting with Kant. A valid argument starts with reality -- not in the middle of anyone's philosophy (Kant's or Rand's). My understanding is that Kant's noumenal realm was just a space that he intended to be filled with faith and Christianity. He himself claims there is no way to reach it from reality, which is why he thinks faith is necessary, but that need for faith is probably why more secular-minded philosophers rejected it. However, it doesn't matter, because Rand's philosophy doesn't depend on Kant at all. Her arguments against Kant are a sideshow made necessary only by the popularity of Kant; her philosophy stands on its own even without those arguments (and without Kant).

Productivity itself is context-laden, and in fact it is you who are taking it out of context. Something that causes a loss is not productive, it is counter-productive. False. There is no such thing as excessive pride. Arrogance is false pride, it's a pretense, because it doesn't have the reality to back it up. False. Emotional repression is false rationality, it's a pretense that consists of evading one's emotions. False. A workaholic lifestyle is a pretense, not an excess, and it does not lead to productivity.

All I have is my own history, which is only one data point. I was raised with Christianity, but ended up rejecting it. I went through seven or eight (philosophically) tumultuous years before discovering Objectivism, and I discovered Objectivism by accident. I never went through a phase where I thought the two were compatible. The lack of such a phase could have been in part because the flavor of Christianity I grew up with was fundamentalist; it guarded itself jealously against other flavors of Christianity; it rejected the other flavors as "people making up watered-down versions of Christianity in order to allow themselves to commit their favorite sins." So I could not entertain the idea of compromise. I had to be "in" or "out." I could not unsee the problems I saw, so I was out. I did try to hang on to the idea that God might exist, even if not the Christian conception of God -- until Objectivism showed me otherwise.

Technically, when a person dies, their remains continue fine, too! I think Galt is contrasting inanimate matter to life itself, not to animate matter. Living matter can die, but it is the life which goes out of existence, not the matter; the matter remains but is dead. Matter (or more precisely mass-energy) can change its forms but it cannot cease to exist. Matter can become part of a living organism or can become no-longer-part of a living organism. But a life can come into existence, e.g., when a person or animal is born, and it can go out of existence, when the person or animal dies.