How does Objectivism counter skeptical doubt?

[Marc_K]

Why should we prefer the reality of the external world to a disembodied mind being acted upon by unknown forces?

Because one is true and the other is not.

One has the weight of all the gathered knowledge of the world as its proof. The other has not one shred of evidence to back it up.

As further evidence please note that whenever, in history, one of these premises has been the guiding ideology behind a culture – it has resulted in death and misery and destruction. While whenever the other premise has been implemented – life, production and advancement has been the result.

[Mephistopheles]

1. Is a newborn male infant a bachelor?

2. Suppose a man is married for 50 years, and dies in the hospital five minutes after his wife. Is he a bachelor during those five minutes?

3. Is a man in a permanent coma a bachelor?

4. How about a priest?

5. How about a man from a culture without the institution of marriage, who has a long-term mate to whom he is faithful. Do we call him a bachelor?

6. Suppose a rational species of aliens was discovered, and that these aliens possess an equivalent institution to marriage. Do we call unmarried instances of this species bachelors? Here is a case of ambiguity in the other direction.

All of these would be bachelors if it were defined solely as an “unmarried man”, although the connotations would be wildly inappropriate. I think that’s where the problem lies with this reasoning, that words often carry shades of meaning not made explicit in their definitions. That doesn’t mean that the concept can’t be represented by a definition, only that dictionaries are not always perfect and comprehensive.

Give me any reasonable definition of man, and I will be able to find an example of a man who lacks the defining characteristic you named.

I think this could be done by requiring substantial similarity to the human genetic code and possibly viability outside the womb depending on what status you afford fetuses.

It is also true that the negation of a “synthetic” truth is a contradiction. Let’s consider your assertion that “the entropic arrow of time could reverse”. This would mean, among other things, that objects could “fall up”, or be repelled by massive bodies.

Our concept of gravity, being purely inductive, is descriptive. I don’t think a description contradicts itself simply because the phenomenon it’s describing changes.

Skepticism presumes the axiomatic validity of formal deduction, while not accepting the validity of the axiomatic foundation of deduction.

But isn’t there a substantive epistemic difference between the two? A thing failing to be itself is incoherent and self-contradictory, but the force of gravity ceasing to function is merely unprecedented.

Continued discussion at this level would not be appropriate, given the purpose of the forum.

Okay. I don’t mean to intrude, feel free to lock this topic.

One has the weight of all the gathered knowledge of the world as its proof. The other has not one shred of evidence to back it up.

But isn’t all of this knowledge predicated on the assumption that the external world is real? How can understanding the world prove that the world exists?

As further evidence please note that whenever, in history, one of these premises has been the guiding ideology behind a culture – it has resulted in death and misery and destruction. While whenever the other premise has been implemented – life, production and advancement has been the result.

This seems like an appeal to consequences to me. Anyhow, what culture has been solipsist in orientation?

[mrocktor]

But isn’t all of this knowledge predicated on the assumption that the external world is real?

What does “real” mean to you? “Real” has no meaning other than “exists in the world you are denying”. Every concept you use for your mind games is dependent on what you call “external reality” - we just call it reality. This is all painfully obvious to us, and it will be to you as well once you have actually gone through the effort of learning Objectivist Epistemology.

[Olex]

Continued discussion at this level would not be appropriate, given the purpose of the forum.

Okay. I don’t mean to intrude, feel free to lock this topic.

It’s not intrusion that was pointed out. It’s that the argument has been completed. From now on, in this thread, it’s clear that your position here is a pure rationalist position, which is very opposite to Objectivism. So, all discussion between us will be going around in circles, and hitting the wall over and over again. And that’s not the purpose of this forum. (My own understanding, though, I’m not a moderator, but I believe I’m correct.)

If you say you wish to understand Objectivist approach, then you have to read the actual writing from Objectivism. I really doubt you can get any better answers here in this forum at this point in discussion. If above answers haven’t satisfied you or convinced you, then 10 more pages of this discussions aren’t going to do it. The forum has many examples of this.

This isn’t a statement about your intelligence or honesty. To put it simply, you can only expect so much effort from regular people on forums to explain you something. After that, you need to go the source and to the highest ability available - to the works of Ayn Rand and Leonard Piekoff.

[Kevin_Brown]

But isn’t all of this knowledge predicated on the assumption that the external world is real? How can understanding the world prove that the world exists?

Greetings to Mephistopheles and the forum regulars from Kevin Brown, a near complete newbie to objectivism. I too initially thought a priori knowledge was innate to a human mind by default. Descartes was wrong. The Cogito fails not only because of the missing premises, but because of the axiom of existence. Existence Exists means that reality is absolute. This is not question begging because the Axiom of Identity shows that which exists exists as something specific. The corollary Law of Causality indicates that existents conform to their specific nature. Dr. Michael Martin in his now famous TANG argument against the existence of God validated the Law of Identity by questioning how it could be that New Zealand could both be south of China and not south of China.(a) Since reality conforms to the Law of Identity and does so consistently as a brute fact of material existence, then the Axiom of Identity is validated.

Consider

1. Logic is necessary to human understanding.

2. If it is true that you are a brain in a vat or a victim of the Cartesian Demon or a simulation in an advanced computer, then you live in a universe where anything goes and reality is not fixed.

3. If you live in a universe where anything goes and reality is not fixed, then all in the universe is contingent to your mad scientist. or your Demon, or your programmer, and nothing in the universe is necessary.

4. If (3) is true, then Logic cannot be necessary to human understanding. (from 2 and 3)

5. (3) is false. (from 1 and 4)

The validity of Logic and the Uniformity of Nature together are sufficient to validate the Axiom of Existence. But just to make sure, I will try to use my amazing psychic power to change my computer mouse’s position.

Here goes - grunt - moan - uugh! - strain - concentrate - focus - be the mouse - Mouse! - I command you to move! - sigh.

To no avail, my mouse did not move. Consciousness cannot move a mouse. Funny, I always get that same result when I try to do the bend the spoon thing too. Darn. Consciousness cannot modify, manipulate, or amend existence. I like Anton Thorn’s Objectivism web site since it focus’ on refuting theism and god belief. Thorn has this to say about consciousness.

"Consciousness is consciousness of existence, and is therefore dependent upon existence for three primary reasons: first, since consciousness is consciousness of objects, i.e., of existence, any act of consciousness presupposes existence cognitively in that it has an object(s) (i.e., there can be no consciousness without existence, without something to be conscious of); second, cosciousness presupposes existence biologically (the senses and perceptual integration, neurology, etc.), and therefore a physical body; third, consciousness presupposes existence teleologically in that it has a purpose, namely the survival activity of the organism possessing consciousness. " ( b )

If a person asserts that consciousness has metaphysical primacy over existence, that is called the fallacy of asserting the primacy of consciousness. Since consciousness is, at its most common denominative rung on the metaphorical ladder of complexity, awareness of existence, then existence must exist prior to and be necessary for consciousness to develop. I think that means that assertions of a priori knowledge along the lines of Descartes meditations or Kant’s critique make that fallacy. Certainly the god believers do this.

I’ve been using an argument I devised based on Ayn Rand’s quote from Galt’s speech in “For The New Intellectual” p.124.

"Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it . . . Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification." ©

Here is my argument against gods based on Rand’s quote just above. Christians run away when they read this.

1. To believe that a theistic creator deity exists and is responsible for existence, the believer must imagine their deity was in some timeless fashion akin to “before” existence alone in a non-spatial, void, without matter, energy, location, dimensions, fields, concepts, knowledge, symbols, perceptions, physical natural law, logic, or referents. And that their deity was a primordial consciousness that wished existence to instantiate.

2. Consciousness is an axiomatic irreducible primary that at the most common denominative rung on the ladder of complexity consists of awareness of existence.

3. Consciousness of consciousness necessarily requires primary consciousness to first obtain as awareness of existence.

4. Prior to existence there could not have been anything to be aware of.

5. Without anything to be aware of, there could not have been any awareness.

6. Without awareness there could not have been any consciousness.

7. From 4, 5, 6 there could not have been a primordial consciousness prior to existence.

8. Creator gods are defined as primordial consciousness.

9. From 8 and 9 Creator gods cannot exist.

Ha, LOL. So far no religious believer has successfully engaged this.

Do any of you think this sort of argument could be turned to deductively validate the axiom of existence? Could that be done despite the fact that existence is a blatantly obvious axiomatic primary needing no validation? Could that be done without making a stolen concept or some other fallacy?

Thanks for reading my first post to the forum. It is my hope to learn a thing or two by hanging out here.

Best Regards and Wishes

(a) http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mic…frame/tang.html

( b ) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/101…initions.htm#Co

© http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/consciousness.html

[Marc_K]

In researching a reply I came across this little gem in Wikipedia:

Solipsism is first recorded with the Greek presocratic sophist, Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) who is quoted by the Roman skeptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated:

Nothing exists;

Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and

Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.

Pretty much a direct denial of the three axioms of reality.

Enough said.

[Plasmatic]

Kevin Brown : Your argument is sound. I would add the false concepts of infinite existents such as “god”. I like to simply say the definition of god as such is a false concept. Nowhere to go because god is everywhere, and therfore theres only one place and so no place. Nothing to know because god knows everything and therfore theres only one [itself]. Nothing to do because to do something there must first be something not done by itself. All these things go along with the whole “if there was only one color could you see anything.” If theres only one thing theres nothing. The antidote to Platonic nonesense in a nut shell. Existence requires multiplicity and knowledge of said multiples requires counsciousness with valid ,entity differentiating senses.