Red said:
“A nice way of arbitrarily defining away half of the universe.”
Enough of this question begging! You are here in an Oist forum dedicated to persuit of Oism. If you want to oppose the epistemology of Objectivism, here, where it is assumed by those who are here because they are persuaded by it, YOU must present an argument against its epistemology particularly.
If you think Oist epistemology is arbitrary then start a thread were you lay out what in particular you think is wrong with it. Here you are the one who must do this. When you present more than assertions that Oism is wrong, or assumptions about others they dont hold, then I will have something to refute.
“Um, define for us, please, what you mean by the phrase “philosophically holding.” If only “entities” (whatever they are!) exist, and if only entities therefore can cause effects, what sort of entities cause the effect you’ve just called “philosophically holding”? How can entities “philosophically hold” something? And isn’t the “something” they hold itself composed of other entities?”
Um, I am the entitiy that holds the attribute of a conceptual consciousness. All the other questions pressupose your invalid assertion that concepts are entities.
Red said:
"And why should your entities in your physical material arrangements be called “right” and “true” and “correct” while other people’s entities in their material arrangements be defined as “wrong”, “false”, and “incorrect’?”
Again, the criteria is correspondence between the mental and the mind independent. Again, concepts are not entities.
Red said:
“If you define away the idea of a non-material — i.e., existing independently of any possible kind of physical, material arrangement of entities — part of existence, then you simply do away with the idea of objective truth. By your lights, everyone has his own set of material, physical, entity-arrangements causing them to have certain ideas (the ideas are simply “effects” of those physical arrangements). Thus, there is no right, wrong, moral, immoral, true, untrue, etc. There is simply “my entity-arrangements”, “his entity-arrangements”, “your entity-arrangements”, etc.”
I have no idea where you get this nonsense from. You are the one who has “defined” into existence the concept “non- material”. I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception. You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong.
Red said:
"
And pretending to defend this sort of naive materialism by saying, “but I justify it according to principles of Objectivist epistemology, so it HAS to be right!” is absurd, as well as self-serving. What arrangements do material entities make when leading to the phrase “principles of Objectivist epistemology”? and why should those material arrangements of entities be “better” or “more true” than someone else’s material arrangements of entities leading to the phrase “principles of Kant’s analytic-synthetic dichotomy”?"
More of the same. Oist serve themselves as a moral ideal. You are here at OO where, by the purpose of its owners, Oist epistemology is the standard. It is YOU who have something to lay out. Stop making nonsensical assumptions about what others hold and demonstrate why Oism is wrong in particular.
What about entities being causal primaries do you repudiate in particular and how is your view justified?
>>>I have no idea where you get this nonsense from.
I get it from having studied philosophy. In any case, you have nothing to complain about. Since you’re a naive materialist who believes that consciousness is composed of entities, and that therefore, PRODUCTS of consciousness, such as ideas, premises, conclusions, arguments, theories, systems, etc., must also be composed of entities — and, in fact, these entities ARE the ideas — then it follows that my philosophical ideas are simply my arrangements of entities, just as your ideas are your arrangements of entities. Too bad for the poor naive materialist, but there’s no way to judge which arrangements of entities are better, more true, less true, false, etc., without referring to an objective non-material notion of " judge." It has to be 1) objective, and 2) non-material. Because if it were material, the “judgment” would simply be another arrangement of physical entities in someone else’s physical brain. And why should that arrangement have any more objectivity and higher truth-status than my arrangement of entities in my physical brain, or your physical arrangement of entities in your physical brain?
Too bad. Without the idea of the “non-material”, there is no such thing as “objective truth”, i.e., true for me, you, and everyone else.
>>>I cannot define away what I have not asserted to have abstracted from perception.
I don’t understand what the term “abstraction” can mean to a naive materialist, since an abstraction is itself an arrangement of particles, just as a percept is. And the process of performing the abstraction is itself just a stream of particles. For “abstraction” to mean anything would require, again, the notion of something that is NOT simply yet another arrangement of progressively smaller particles, but something truly “non-particle.” You can call it an “entity” if you want, but it’s a non-material entity.
When a materialist says, “I am a philosophical materialist,” that statement presumably corresponds to a thought that is simply an arrangement of physical entities in his physical brain. If someone else says, “I am a philosophical idealist”, that statement, too, (according to the materialist) corresponds to a thought, which, in turn, also corresponds to an arrangement of physical entities in joe physical brain. Clearly, the materialist prefers his own entity-arrangements to someone else’s, just as the someone else prefers his own entity-arrangements to those of the materialist. Additionally, the materialist could not turn to a 3rd-party philosopher (e.g., Ayn Rand) and ask her (assuming she were alive) what the “truth” of the matter was, because by the materialist’s own assumptions, Ayn Rand has a material brain, and the thoughts in that brain area also simply arrangements of physical entities. Why should her arrangements of entities insider her head have more “objectivity” or higher truth status than anyone else’s physical entities? That’s the problem with materialism: instead of referring to a non-material objective condition called “truth”, you’re forced to compare “arrangements of entities”, as if you were touring a fancy suburb and comparing people’s lawns (who has the “objectively truthful” lawn? The one whose grass makes the most objectively truthful arrangement? I don’t know. Pick whichever one you want. It’s an absurd question, because materialism is an absurd philosophical position.)
And in any case, what did you perceive FIRST that later allowed you to abstract the idea, “x^2 + y^2 = 1”. For that matter, what did you perceive that later led to the idea, “1”. (If you’re going to say, “Well, Mr. Ugg, the caveman, perceived one stone and then abstracted the idea of “number…which must exist in some degree but may exist in any degree”, then you’d be question-begging and concept-stealing, for in that case, Mr. Ugg, already possessed the idea of “1” and “number” and simply found a useful correspondence between his percept and his pre-existing idea. The question, however, was where did he get the idea of “1” from simply via perception?” It’s utter gibberish-mysticism to suggest, as Rand appears to do, that the IDEA of “1”, or “1-ness” is part of the percept itself, and that some abstracting power of the mind conveniently sifts it out for use. Dumb. Where would such “1-ness” be? Is it physically in the stone itself? No. Is “1-ness” in the light rays hitting the stone and reflecting off of it into Mr. Ugg’s eyes? No. Is “1-ness” located physically in the retina? No. In the optic nerve? No. In the visual cortex? No. That’s it for the material part of the process. After the visual cortex, the electro-chemical impulse gets dumped into the non-material part of the human called “the mind”. How? No one knows. Does the non-material part of the mind “recognize” some non-material “1-ness” in the stone that accompanies it from light-rays, to retina, to optic nerve, to cortex? I doubt it.
This is why Plato thought the idea of “1-ness” was already there, in the non-material mind, and the abstracting process in this case was really just matching what was already there to what was freshly perceived in an act of “recognition.” I don’t accept his theory, either, because I reject the notion of innate ideas, including mathematical ones.
So the answer is, I don’t know. Neither did Ayn Rand, Neither do you. Neither does anyone.
>>>You see, the onus is on you. Lay out your theory of concept formation and show why Oism is wrong.
I’ve already shown why Objectivist epistemology is nuts in another thread. You were too busy spitting out popcorn watching “Iron Man 3” to pay attention.
And no, to criticize someone else’s philosophy, one need not also proffer a replacement or an alternative. If you’re a lawyer in a court of law defending your client (who is innocent, of course), you don’t have to proffer an alternative crime scenario to the prosecution, the judge, or the jury. You merely have to point out why the prosecutor’s argument is full of holes and unworthy of serious consideration. Same with philosophical argumentation. You don’t have to specify what is right in order to point out why someone else’s nonsense is wrong.
Suffice it to say that no one really understands what concepts are, how they are formed, and how the mind grasps them. It’s enough to say, however, that Rand’s arbitrary assertion that just as “1 gram is one unit” and “one meter is one unit” that therefore “one stone is one unit” is gibberish. Read my previous post on the subject.