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The Individual

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  2. Value of Physical Beauty

    in Beauty

    Posted

    Physical beauty is a value. But are you asking if a man can love someone exclusively based on that value, even if all other contradict his own values? I can't imagine how that would be possible, it's usually other things that seal the deal. Physical beauty is just what tends to get men interested originally.

    Of course there are other values more important than physical beauty. I was just wondering whether physical beauty is a value.

  6. Romanticism and Realism, The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution

    in Aesthetics

    Posted

    Only in the narrowest, conventional usage I believe. As in the artists and poets listed here above who resented the men of science for 'removing the magic and mystery' from Nature, by observing and studying it.

    Keats' poem "Unweaving the Rainbow", was one such attack - on Isaac Newton - for identifying the light spectrum. A rainbow would never be the same again, he bemoaned.

    Richard Dawkins' book by the same title, is an excellent refutation of this: now that Man knows and understands far more, he posits, beauty and art will have even greater impact.

    I always enjoyed the quote by John Constable - (although a Naturalist painter) - "We see nothing, until we truly understand it."

    Almost O'ist !

    For me, Rand took back the word 'Romanticism' from art critics, to recover its complete meaning of what Man can, and should, be, at his highest capability. She has been called a Romantic Realist, but this sounds a little limiting; what about a "Rational Romanticist" ?

    I was thinking along the same line too. Why didn't Rand gave her brand of Romanticism another name? And I was thinking of "Rational Romanticist" too.

  7. How is reality objective?

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted

    The thread is basically over, but I just can't restrain myself from bitching about this awful reply.

    The OP needs clarification on what objectivity means, and how the perceptions of different people can be reconciled. This reply is not only a non-sequitur, the way it is stated is rationalistic appeal to dogma. Reality is not absolute because of anything anyone could possibly say or write, it just is. I post to a couple of places across the internet in threads about the new Rand books coming out, fighting the charge Rand's Objectivism is a cult, and then come back here to this. This is just embarrassing. :)

    Sorry about the bad reply. Still new and learning about Objectivism.

  9. How is reality objective?

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted

    So there is a higher existence that everyone perceives differently? Isn't that basically the same as saying everyone's reality is subjective?

    I don't get what you mean. What is "a higher existence that everyone perceives differently?"

    An absolute and objective reality means that reality is not subjected to wishes, whims, prayers, or miracles. If you want to change the world, you must act according to reality. Nothing else will affect reality. If you evade this fact, your actions will most likely not have their desired effects such as praying a bar of gold will drop from the sky.

  12. Anthony Flew

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted

    We are certain because of no evidence of a god. More fundamentally, because of the false Meta. premise discussed....

    "No conclusive evidence" suggests some evidence.

    Note that an atheist believes in no god primarily because of the philosophical contradictions. He does not hold that belief because he can prove there is no god.

    What is the false Meta?

  13. Romanticism and Realism, The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution

    in Aesthetics

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    From the Ayn Rand lexicon, "Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned—in the words of Aristotle—not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be."

    "What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values, an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, third- and fourth-hand (and rate) repetitions of the Classicists’ formula-copying. Values (and value-judgments) are the source of emotions; a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry.

    Such issues as the fact that the primacy of values in human life is not an irreducible primary, that it rests on man’s faculty of volition, and, therefore, that the Romanticists, philosophically, were the champions of volition (which is the root of values) and not of emotions (which are merely the consequences)—were issues to be defined by philosophers, who defaulted in regard to aesthetics as they did in regard to every other crucial aspect of the nineteenth century.

    The still deeper issue, the fact that the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition, was not known at the time, and the various theories of free will were for the most part of an anti-rational character, thus reinforcing the association of volition with mysticism."

    As far as I know, Romanticism stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. Romanticism is meant to reach beyond the rational into emotional isn't it? And therefore it can come across as unrealistic which is what the Realists opposed.

  15. Anthony Flew

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    I am still confused about Certainty. I keep re-reading the definition of it in the Lexicon.

    “Certain” represents an assessment of the evidence for a conclusion; it is usually contrasted with two other broad types of assessment: “possible” and “probable.”

    Idea X is “certain” if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative.

    You cannot challenge a claim to certainty by means of an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility, you cannot manufacture possibilities without evidence.

    All the main attacks on certainty depend on evading its contextual character.

    (Ayn Rand lexicon)

    I don't understand the the two terms "probable" and "possible". What is the difference?

    And what does "evidence for X is conclusive" mean? How conclusive must "conclusive" be?

    Does it mean if all evidence points to the penguins being flightless, it is certain (or probable/possible) then that penguins cannot fly?

  16. Romanticism and Realism, The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution

    in Aesthetics

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    "During the Industrial Revolution, an intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialization developed. This was known as the Romantic movement. Its major exponents in English included the artist and poet William Blake and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to "monstrous" machines and factories; the "Dark satanic mills" of Blake's poem."

    "It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature."

    "Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism."

    And Ayn Rand held Romanticism as the highest school of art despite all these? Can anyone explain why?

    Additionally, "The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism."

    "The term "romanticism", however, is often affiliated with emotionalism, to which Objectivism is completely opposed. Historically, many romantic artists were philosophically subjectivist. Most Objectivists who are also artists subscribe to what they call romantic realism, which is how Ayn Rand labeled her own work."

    (Wikipedia)

    Aren't Romanticism and Realism opposites?

  17. Anthony Flew

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    A universal conclusion about all penguins must be justified by an attribute or cause that applies universally to all penguins.

    How do we know that the attribute or cause applies universally to all penguins?

    If it is the penguin's wing structure that is the cause of its flightlessness, how do we know all penguins have that particular wing structure?

    So we do not actually know whether all penguins are flightless but we do know that under certain conditions (i.e. the penguin possessing some particular attribute) the penguin is flightless.

  18. Anthony Flew

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    If a penguin cannot fly, it doesn't mean all penguin cannot fly right?

    But I have seen thousands of penguins and they all cannot fly, it doesn't mean all penguins cannot fly but in such a context, it is reasonable to assume - to be certain - all penguins cannot fly until I have been proven otherwise. Is that the correct way of thinking about Certainty?

  19. Anthony Flew

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    The Certainty Concept is new to me and I'm trying to comprehend it.

    Take a pregnant woman for instance. According to the Certainty Concept, it would be reasonable if the woman expected her child would be born with two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, etc. But there have been occasions when a child is born with six fingers on a hand instead of five. What does that mean? Can one still be certain that a child is going to be born with two eyes, two ears, etc?

    As for the God argument, God doesn't exists because there has been consistently no proof about him and therefore we can be certain (or just about almost certain?) that God doesn't exist. Is that the correct train of thought?

    Dawkins, and other atheists, continue to go back on the idea that absolutes are dogmatic, and so they brand themselves as simply being close to atheism, but not willing to make any "religious" claim. It's quite annoying, and does not help the atheist movement at all.

    Dawkins doesn't help the Atheist movement? I have to disagree. I think Dawkins tipped more people into Atheism than Objectivism did, albeit using the wrong method I suppose. Isn't it taught in Science that nothing is absolute and therefore we have to be skeptical and question everything?

  20. The Nature of Rights

    in Political Philosophy

    Posted · Edited by The Individual

    That does not negate their rights in principle. A criminal loses ability to exercise rights as well; having inalienable rights does not mean one is necessarily always free to exercise them.

    My question is, since mentally disabled people are not free to exercise their rights, when they are violated, a party (legal guardian) should be exercising their rights on their behalf and confront the aggressor right?

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