1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:
This does not follow.
I was not claiming that this was an argument for Objectivism. I was claiming that this was why history had worked out so badly.
If anyone proves that there are lots of flaws in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, or in Einstein’s theory of relativity, or in the theory of chemical bonds in its modern form, or in the theory of evolution as formulated by modern biologists, then whatever has been proven to be flawed will have to be reworked or replaced. We shouldn’t treat this as a serious possibility unless there is strong enough evidence for the existence of such a proof,
>If anyone proves that there are lots of flaws in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism,
It’s up to Objectivists to prove they are right, and not to make arbitrary, unsupported assertions and demand everyone else prove they are wrong. Objectivists – beginning with Miss Rand herself – haven’t done this because 1) they tolerate no serious criticism from within their ranks, and 2) they refuse to debate people on fundamental issue from outside their ranks.
That is why since Rand’s death, Objectivists have splintered into myriad subgroups, each one claiming to be the true inheritors of her teachings. It’s most clearly shown – though not limited to – the split between Peikoff (“Objectivism is a closed system; there’s nothing else fundamentally in philosophy to discover”) and Kelley (“Objectivism is an open system, a system basically of inquiry; i.e., stimulating questions, not a system of pre-digested answers that “students of Objectivism” should merely memorize and spit back out”.) So Peikoff (as well as Yaron Brook) is an Objectivist Fundamentalist, reverting to texts that are taken to be “inerrant”; while Kelley (the apostate!) is the leader of the Objectivist Reformation Movement, paying due respect to the texts but also stressing the importance of the individual’s conscience to assess and interpret those texts in ways that might differ, one from the other.
>or in Einstein’s theory of relativity,
You’re a Newbie at this. Note well: Einstein’s theory of relativity is a *scientific theory* that can be tested experimentally and therefore, falsified in principle. As a matter of fact, the theory has been extensively tested experimentally since the 1930s and no experiment to date has succeeded in falsifying the theory’s predictions. Same with quantum mechanics, by the way. Conversely, Objectivism is a philosophical system – not a scientific theory – so it’s not amenable to experimental falsification. That you suggested finding flaws in a philosophical system as being the same kind of activity as finding flaws in a scientific theory proves what I said above: you’re a newbie.
Needless to say, the same goes for your statement regarding “the theory of evolution as formulated by modern biologists”, as if there’s a monolithic bloc called “modern biologists” who collectively formulated a “theory of evolution.” Modern biologists, especially in the field of biochemistry, pay scant attention to any theory, or hypothesis, of evolution because such ideas generally cannot be tested experimentally, instead relying on imagined scenarios of what might or might not have occurred, unobserved by anyone, billions of years ago. What modern biology – especially modern biochemistry – has shown is that 1) the gap between non-living/non-self-replicating molecules and even a primitive, living, self-replicating cell (something with a genetic code capable of passing on information about the structure of the organism so that the progeny cell is similar to the parent cell) is so wide – with so many malevolent natural forces (chemical and physical) arrayed against it, that it cannot be accomplished by pure dumb luck in the mere 14x[10^9] years allotted for its completion. I got that insight from Sir Francis Crick, a Nobel Laureate as the co-discoverer of the structure and function of DNA. He’s the one who said that. Assuming that “non-living/non-self-replicating” predates “living/self-replicating” (an assumption), then the gap was closed with the help of something that could bypass the pure-dumb-luck processes of chemistry and physics always ready to demolish structures that might have been constructed. This is why tornadoes demolish barns, turning them into piles of wooden rubble, rather than turning piles of wooden rubble into barns…despite the fact that no physicist denies that no natural laws or constants are violated by the latter process. Richard Feynman was clear about that in one of his videotaped lectures at Cornell University in the 1960s. You can find them online.
I mention this because many modern biologists remain resolutely quiet about Darwinian evolution and abiogenesis (“chemical evolution”) because most of the recent findings in their field flatly contradict the basic assumptions of a purely undirected, material, random, hypothesis regarding the origin of life, let alone the origin of diverse species of life.
Some of these modern biologists are good, card-carrying atheists, just like Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. For starters, read “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century” by James Shapiro (professor, University of Chicago).
But I digress.
Finding flaws in a philosophy is categorically different from finding flaws in a scientific theory.