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Metaphysical Possibility: Does It Exist?

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DPW

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The "ice example" is interesting, because I think it encapsulates some of the problems that I am still grappling with in Objectivist Metaphysics and Epistemology.

I see that Don has already nicely answered much of the issue which "Reason's Ember" raised. I just want to make a general comment and then add a couple of additional points.

Personally, I consider Peikoff's The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy (A/S) to be the best and most important of his independent work. A good working principle is: when you think you have found an error in A/S, think again. A/S is a part of official Objectivism and, like the philosophical formulations of Ayn Rand, it is bullet-proof.

Note that Peikoff's later writings, those not endorsed by Ayn Rand, are not to be taken as official Objectivism. Such writings may reasonably be presented as being consistent with Objectivism, or as logical outgrowths of Objectivism, but they are not the Objectivism of Ayn Rand. (Which is, incidentally, why I was a bit perplexed to see LP's recent induction lectures listed as "the Objectivist solution" at the Ayn Rand Bookstore.) So, even OPAR, as excellent a presentation and integration of Objectivism as it is, is not the final source of Objectivism. For that, we go to the writings of Ayn Rand, and those writings she endorsed, which includes the The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy.

Regarding the "ice" issue: In A/S Peikoff several times underscores Ayn Rand's identification that a concept subsumes all of the characteristics of its referents, whether known or yet to be known. The fact that under certain specific conditions -- high enough pressures -- a new crystalline phase of water can be formed where the water molecules form a new structural framework, is not a contradiction of the structure of ice under normal conditions. Likewise, that this crystalline structure has the property that ice sinks in water, is also not a contradiction of ice floating in water under normal conditions.

Water is rather unusal in that its solid phase can float on its liquid phase, and this property is pretty well understood by reference to hydrogen bonding of the molecules. The structure of the very high-density amorphous ice which I referenced represents new scientific knowledge wich can lead to a better understanding of molecular bonding. This new discovery has widened our context of scientific knowledge.

And, this widened context applies exactly the same to our concept of ice. If we have first defined our concept of ice in terms of essential characteristics -- those characteristics upon which the greatest number of other characteristics depend -- then we can easily refine our concept as the context of our knowledge expands. This process is detailed in A/S as well as, of course, in Miss Rand's writings in ITOE. And as Peikoff so beautifully notes: "Conceptualization is a method of acquiring and retaining knowledge of that which exists, on a scale inaccessible to the perceptual level of consciousness.

Peikoff's point was that there is no evidence (at that time, to his knowledge) that ice could sink, and that the arbitrary positing of such a characteristic is part and parcel of the split of the analytic and the synthetic. The fact that man is not omniscient, and that the context of his knowledge continues to expand throughout his life, is something to be celebrated rather than taken as a fundamental limitiation on what we can truly know.

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Personally, I consider Peikoff's The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy (A/S) to be the best and most important of his independent work.  A good working principle is: when you think you have found an error in A/S, think again. A/S is a part of official Objectivism and, like the philosophical formulations of Ayn Rand, it is bullet-proof.

I just felt that this statement was important enough to get broken out separately so as not to get lost by the casual skimmer.

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Thank you all for the comments.  I will read more and come back to you. 

If you will permit a personal observation: I have noticed a gradual evolution from more confrontational (intellectually, not personally) posts to more open and exploratory posts on your part. I take that as a good thing. :angry:

I would also recommend Paul Boghossian's article on the Sokal Hoax that I linked to.

I would also like to recommend another paper of the Sokal Hoax for those with even a passing interest in both philosophy and science: "The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?," Physics Today, 51(9), pp. 29-34, September 1998.

I was just going to write a few of the things I had quoted from the article when it first came out some six years ago, but I just noticed it is available online at http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~boh.../sokalhoax.html

Great stuff. A "quantum theory of human affairs." Just amazing!

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If you will permit a personal observation: I have noticed a gradual evolution from more confrontational (intellectually, not personally) posts to more open and exploratory posts on your part. I take that as a good thing.

I'll will just say a few things on this topic, and then put them aside. I don’t expect or need a response. I just want to clarify.

Some of the people who claim Rand's mantle do not do justice to the level of philosophy being discussed on this forum. I have seen claims made by self-described Objectivists to the effect that all of the fundamental advances in physics since Newton have been based on philosophically unsound principles (i.e., that the assumed metaphysics or actual epistemology behind them was unsound, and that therefore the physics itself was in some way suspect as an intellectual achievement). Likewise, some of the things Rand says about Kant's philosophy--especially when she tracks its cultural influence--are so wide off the mark that I literally can't understand what was the intellectual motivation behind them.

Now, Kant's philosophy is something that I do know a lot about, as I do about the more general history of ideas. I think that when read in the right way–including the ethics!–Kant’s philosophy is a powerful tool for advancing Enlightened and benevolent thought about the nature of reality and the power of the human mind to comprehend it (undoubtedly a topic for a future debate on this message board). Likewise, Descartes may have been in error about the axiomatic validity of the senses, but the man who produced analytic geometry, who dared to doubt the existence of God in print in the middle of Europe’s worst wars of religion (albeit in what he took to be a counterfactual fashion :);) ), and who deflated the air of meaningfulness from some empty Scholastic concepts is definitely someone who had a good influence on extending the influence of reason in our culture. Finally, Plato may have given us the notion of a mythical Platonic heaven where he believed the fundamental forms of reality reside (above and beyond the reach of sense perception), but he also gave us the literary character of Socrates. And as a scholarly note, he never explicitly formulated a Platonic Theory of Forms, which is something later commentators–many with their own agendas (especially the Stoics and the Patrician Fathers of the early Christian Church)--constructed out of the words of various characters in his later dialogues (especially the Timaeus).

All of this is to say: it is not only possible but extremely productive to read central and even essential aspects of the philosophies of Plato, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, and other major Western philosophers in a way that is sympathetic, much in the way Rand read Aristotle. I know this for certain ;), and I will attempt to elaborate this more in the future.

I also noticed a tendency, which I despise, for some self-described Objectivists to psychologize the source of someone's philosophical beliefs (a la Nietzsche, except he always maintained an aura of “serious irony” in what he was doing). For example, if someone claimed to be a "fallibilist" in epistemology, then an Objectivist would immediately connect the statement to the fact that this person was a weak-kneed, government-grant-loving academic with no capacity for self-reliant judgment or independent intellectual achievement. Such ad hominem attacks may be a fun way of scoring entertainment points in debate, but they have a tendency to attract people who enjoy intellectual combat for its own sake rather than as a means for advancing human understanding.

Consequently, my first instinct was to assume that something other than the soundness of the ideas is the driving force behind Objectivism's wide popularity (as far secular philosophical movements go in our culture). My instinct was extended when I saw that a lot of the people Rand beat up on in her published writings were second-rate op-ed writers, rather than the supposed philosophical originators of the obviously hackneyed opinions expressed by these op-ed writers. In other words, she would engage a strawman.

However, some of my best friends are Objectivists ;) . And I also don't want to lose any allies in the confrontation with post-modernism or the more vulgar forms of anti-realism, which has ruined wide swaths of the humanities. So I'm here to learn, as well as to point out that the view Rand took of certain philosophers is unjustified, whatever the source of the error.

Well, I guess I had more than just a few things to say on the topic.

Just one more side note. Harry Frankfurt’s gem of an essay, “On Bullshit,” is essential reading in the battle against post-modernism (don’t be fooled by the prima facie playfulness, it is quite deep: http://www.jelks.nu/misc/articles/bs.html ).

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Reason's Ember,

In all the "what ifs" you cited -- really, every single one of them -- there was reason to doubt the popularly held paradigms.  There was either some evidence that did not fit into the predictions of the current theory (for example, the photoelectric effect is very strange if light is purely wave-like) or there were some conclusions to be drawn from the theory that seemed contradictory, or at least counter-intuitive.

In all those cases, from the POV of the scientist you mentioned, it was possible (by erandror's definition) that the popular paradigm was incorrect.  Upon further investigation, it was found in many of those cases that the suspicion was well-founded, and science advanced.

This doesn't disprove objectivism's account of possibility -- rather, it bolsters its viability.

Isaac

http://isaac.beigetower.org

EDIT:

What if the earth is not flat? thought Columbus.

That's a myth.  In Columbus's day, anyone with a halfway decent education (including, certainly, the Spanish royalty, Chris, most of his crew, and all the people who claimed that he would certainly fail) knew that the earth was round.  The debate was over the earth's size, not its shape.  Plato had actually measured the Earth's size using simple geometry, but Columbus thought it was much smaller.

Columbus was wrong.  Plato was within a couple hundred miles of the actual diameter.  Columbus did not hit the East Indies.

What about the first ape like human that picked up a stick for a weapon, what evidence did he have or prior knowledge for that to work did he have. Pure conceptual thinking no science involved.

he was also the first scientist, after he picked up the stick, to prove his theory.

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