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Post 60

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 2:49pmSanction this postReply
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George said about Jeanie:
his 358 post that are antithetical to nearly every tenet of objectvism
Even so, they amount to ideology differences. Are we now going to persecute people because of ideology differences? Isn't two thousand years of bloody persecution of people based on nothing else but race and ideology differences not enough?!

Somehow, I feel that the core of the issue may still be whether we consider the life Jeanine has been leading moral or not. I sensed that many here are not comfortable with her profession, and her presence on the forum is like a thorn to some.  THAT  I can understand, because I myself was not completely comfortable either. I am yet to work out the issue whether prostitution is moral or not.

However, we need to remember that beyond whatever life one may lead, beyond race, nationality, religion, ideology, even 'he' or 'she', there is a barest identity - a human being, just like you and me.

Got to run.


 

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 12/21, 5:52pm)


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Post 61

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 2:55pmSanction this postReply
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So much for not hijacking this thread . . .

What some here are essentially saying is that it is okay for others to passionately express their disagreement with your convictions, but it is not okay for you to passionately express your disagreement with theirs?  Furthermore, it is okay with others when other individuals express their disagreement with someone they also disagree with, but not okay when someone else expresses their disagreement with someone they agree with?

Confusing?  It should be, so let me break it down with a concrete example.  Jeanine disagrees with Objectivism, capitalism, and a culture of productive achievement.  George, John, and I disagree with Jeanine's hedonism, Paganism, and Objectivist-bashing.  Following the above logic, it is okay for her to criticize Objectivism with passion, but it is not okay for us to criticize her irrationality with equal or greater passion.  It is okay for her to throw a fit and call us names, but it is not okay for us to return her gibberish in kind.  What's worse, there are those who rise to her defense when we criticize her views, usually because they could care less about the things we think are important.  But when it comes to criticizing the things she considers important, we're criticized for criticizing her!  Does any of that make sense?  I am all about tolerance for different ideas, but are we expected to be Christians turning the other cheek now?

Now many will say that George's tone is cruel.  It is cruel, but so is calling someone evil and the cause of children committing suicide.  Not to mention some nonsense she sputtered about calling on the Furies.  Why?  Because we have the oh so controversial idea that sometimes parents may exercise restraint with their children out of love and a desire for their future success, or that maybe because sex is best in the province of romantic love, not a whim to be exercised with some random stranger.  Oh, gee, how evil.

(Edited by Byron Garcia on 12/21, 3:35pm)


Post 62

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 3:19pmSanction this postReply
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Can someone sort, or edit out the off topic posts from this discussion?  The Kant discussion is interesting and I would like to see it proceed without further interruptions.

 - Jason

BTW, as a regular reader of the SOLO discussions I am glad to see that the discussions will no longer be cluttered with nonsensical, non-objectivist, irrationalist rants by "Jeanine Ring".  However, cruel attacks that are directed towards other specific individuals with the purpose of causing emotional hurt are unacceptable.  "Jeanine Ring", to my knowledge did nothing to deserve such an attack. 


Post 63

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 5:43pmSanction this postReply
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After reading Perigo’s gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the departure of Jeanine, I must say he is a seriously unserious man.  I was the one who Jeanine cursed with the soul of every suicidal child on my head, because I had stated what should be the obvious Objectivist position on parenting.  I wasn’t offended by her curse.  How could I be?  Jeanine was not a person to be taken seriously.  She was hostile to everything Objectivism rests upon if not to it in name.  For her passion usurps reason, which led her to put forth the most odious claptrap about children and sex.  Finally, a fellow like Cordero says enough is enough.  But, who ends up on Perigo’s shit list?  The defender of Objectivism or the hedonistic dissenter?

 

With friends like Perigo, Objectivism needs no enemies.

 

R. Pukszta


Post 64

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 9:42pmSanction this postReply
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Out of courtesy to Manfred Schieder, I have created a new thread for us to discuss the Jeanine Ring/George Cordero/Prostitution thing.  Let's make all new posts to this topic here from now on:
http://www.solohq.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0317.shtml


Post 65

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 5:40amSanction this postReply
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Manfred,

Here is my earlier response to your post.


Manfred,

Not at all angry, and thanks for the sources.

Before I even look at the sources, I will tell you that no evolutionary scientist will tell you that the "senses evolved in accordance with reality" using "accordance with reality" in an epistemic fashion.  They will tell you that the senses evolved in order to handle and alert the species to the kinds of threats that one would face in the environments in which the specie lives.

Therefore, on this view of evolution, what would not be important is whether the human eye sees "reality", but whether as it evolved from a part of the brain, it was more efficient for processing information relevant to aiding human survival in certain kinds of environments within which human beings lived.  To the degree that it did so, because eyes are believed to have evolved from rods and cones that were brain parts in more primitive animals, the eyes selected for have less to do with reality, but more to do with how well they aided survival as part of the nervous system of an animal.

If I am wrong about this, I will say so. But if the senses give more accurate perception of reality, it is more a result of improved information processing, which also involves the brain, and not just an argument about the senses.  Moreover, in evolutionary theory, it is less about "accordance with reality", but more about what survives.  This is my primary argument against your trying to bring in evolution as support for your claim.  You claim about the efficacy of the senses has little to do with evolutionary theory and I think that your concluding statement (which I have repeatedly quoted) has little to do with Kant's argument.

Why is this important?  Because Kant's argument, when most generously understood (as I took it when I heard it from Mises before reading more common interpretations), is an argument that our perception of reality, even to the degree it is objective, is not the same as reality (the dualism that you mock).  Therefore, Kant's argument, which was about ubiquity of the forms of perception in human nature, is not affected by evolutionary arguments, but might even get some defense from them, since it is quite conceivable that other animals will have representations of reality not as powerful as ours, but which do the job of sustaining them in their environments. 


The argument from evolution doesn't vitiate epistemic and psychophysical dualism (even Kant's form with all its problems).

(Edited by Next Level on 12/22, 7:04am)


Post 66

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 6:26amSanction this postReply
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Glenn,

In case I am on your list for criticizing Fred Seddon, note that I responded to your questions in post #6 of the thread "Kant Didn't." My response is post #52.

Michelle


Post 67

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 7:49amSanction this postReply
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Jeanine wrote:
P.S.  On 'sacred sex'; I hope I never meet Amy Hayden, because if I do I will not be able to restrain myself from slapping her until she bleeds.  How dare she appropriate that term in such an insulting manner.


Given Jeanine's threat to physically harm Ms. Hayden, I don't think those who attacked her verbally should be criticized. If Jeanine does not respect Ms. Hayden's freedom of speech, he/she cannot expect his/her different opinions to be respected.  Well, I said Hedonists are unlikely to respect other people's rights.


Post 68

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 8:04amSanction this postReply
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I just started reading the thread that Michelle referred to, and amazingly, Daniel Barnes had come to the same conclusions that I had about Kant and his arguments for the mental nature of our immediate perceptions - that evolution, by displacing the religious view of man, might just as well support Kant's dualism in its most general and objective form.

I first heard of Kant in detail when reading Mises, and I interpreted his argument about our perceptual faculties objectively (we all have similar perceptual faculties, but there is a distinction between what is and what we perceive, despite the fact we seem to experience what we perceive as if it is what is, "what is" being a part of external reality - therefore, perception is representational).

Of course, it was hard to maintain this view under the bombardment of Randian arguments that this wasn't what Kant meant, and there is an aspect of Kant's writing that undermines the objective interpretation of him (rather than phrasing it more strongly as reality to some degree influencing our minds for epistemic purposes, he phrased it as our minds shaping reality, which was a bit more subjectivist.)


Post 69

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 12:10amSanction this postReply
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Hello, Next Level,

 

In reply to your post (No. 45):

 

Bertrand Russell said in one of his books that all philosophies had to be discarded and the whole started anew since none took into consideration the discoveries of modern science. I stand by this statement. I don’t know if Russell had heard of Rand at the time he wrote it but I suppose he didn’t, else he would have had to mention Objectivism as the new philosophy. On the other hand he may have thought that it wasn’t “important”.

 

Kant couldn’t know of modern science in anything but particularly in what refers to modern biology, which started around 1950. As you defend Kant so much I must take it for granted that you are a Kantian. I could here easily produce a table of confrontation between Kant and Objectivism and will do so if required. For the time being it is sufficient to state that Kant was wrong.

 

Why? Because it was reality that triggered evolution, not the need for survival, for there was no need for “survival” at the time the structures that we now call “senses” developed. There was no hunter around from whom they had to protect themselves or against whom to survive. Life, one of the possible states matter can adopt, was still very, very far in the future. So the structures that were to come in handy, so to speak, for living matter at that much, much later time, developed because atoms reply to the physical-chemical laws of Nature and form molecules which become increasingly more complex through time. In this early period of Earth’s forming they were just molecular structures. Kornberg and Miller even produced them in the laboratory in the Fifties.

 

There’s nothing “programmed” here in the evolutionary sense. It just happened because the laws of Nature (reality) applied, there being nothing that required any “survival value”, for there was nothing that could “prey” on these structures.

 

Later on, however, the incorporation or creation (mutation) of the light sensitive structures in the rudimentary cell changed this situation. Now and only now evolution appeared, for this rudimentary cell was now better equipped than others that hadn’t the rudimentary “eye”. This would decide who was to survive. But this evolution didn’t happen aside from reality but merely followed its conditions. The process always went along by the same “line of command”.

 

I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the finer details. The important part to stress is that all the existing structures that had formed developed because they just replied to the existing reality. With evolution it was just the same, the famous “survival factor” being just another word for “adapting to Nature’s laws”. Hence, “senses evolved in accordance with reality” is not an epistemic statement (is not a result of human reasoning) but a direct result of Nature’s conditions. The correspondence was 1 to 1, with no “intermediate filters”. The eye, developed in accordance to the rules of reality, doesn’t “act” on what it sees. It senses it and transmits what it senses to the brain, just as silicon sensors in elevators also don’t act on what they see but merely transmit the information to the mechanism that activates the doors. Hence, we see and sense reality (our surroundings, ourselves) as it really is, with no “intermediate filters”. Our brain, like every other living structure, developed in the same way.

 

Is this a deterministic point of view? When it comes to evolution up to us humans it is. But there it stops. Why?

 

I shall reduce it here to a nutshell: human beings are the paramount of evolution but evolution has, from there on, nothing else to add. It gave itself up to us. Why again? Because evolution developed a thinking brain which, as such, can decide. The most crucial decision it can take – Rand was able to “see” this as a genius that she was – is “Yes” and “No”. This stops determinism (which corresponds to the “Yes” part, i.e. “adapt or die”), for deciding is the exact opposition of determinism, of adapting to what is. It is the “No” that makes the overwhelming difference. It is the “No” that allows US to command nature to OUR requirements now. The whole process of reality had this “teleological” end, should you like to use such a word.

 

The foregoing reduces Kant to a sham, for it demonstrates that there is only one reality (and not one noumenical and another that is a blurred image as Kant and his mates would have had it).

 

In an apart: in what refers to Mises he was great in economics but not at all in philosophy. As a matter of fact he never gave his works any philosophical grounding and preferred to defend the mechanics of Capitalism, as I say of him and all the other defenders of Capitalist economy excepting the Objectivist ones, half a meter above ground. The foundation of Capitalism was given by Ayn Rand through the philosophy of Objectivism (or just “philosophy” to follow the words of an enemy of Objectivism who said that Objectivism is the only philosophy based on reason and since reason is at the base of what a philosophy must be, to say “Philosophy of Objectivism” is to become redundant). Hence, with due respect to Mises and all the other like Capitalist economists, I recommend you to rely of “Capitalism”, the book written by George Reisman, who was both a pupil and collaborator of Mises and a collaborator of Rand.

 

Best regards, Manfred

 


Post 70

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 3:24amSanction this postReply
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Manfred,

I'm not a fan of Kant, but I think that some of his ideas had some merit, even if they are not correct.

I think that the claim that knowledge and perception are *representational*or *dualistic* is correct, and that reality is not quite the same as our perception of it.

I think that is what Kant meant, and I think that you are misinterpreting him on that point.


Post 71

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 9:13amSanction this postReply
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Nick,

 

(Reply to Post 31): Sorry for the delay in replying. I never said that there is anywhere an object as such named “Universe”. Universe is an abstraction (derived from the whole amount of concepts which, in turn, relate directly to reality, See “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”). I could just as well have said “All”, which is a synonym of Universe. What exists is reality (I was very specific on this) and this can and is defined by ostensive definition, i.e. a sweep of the hand. Now, since “Universe” stands as a short-cut for all that exists (I mentioned this too in my article) it immediately results from it that “god” (Sorry, I’m an atheist, so I either never write “god” in capital letters or else mention it between quotation marks). cannot exist because the Universe is all that is and as it is being held that god made the world (another synonym for Universe) before it existed the resulting contradiction in terms eliminates such a possibility (Laplace replied to Napoleon, when he was asked why he didn’t mention “God” in his theory of the world, that he hadn’t felt any need for it).

 

In what refers to the limits of “all that exists” I’ve cleared this in my “Ayn Rand, I and the Universe” article which I haven’t offered SOLO because it is some 70 pages long but I give you two hints: Think why there is night – our planet turning away from the sun is NOT the reply – and why there could NOT be a Big Bang if there were no limits to all that exists which, as said before, we call Universe as a short-cut.

 

As I read your comment I got the impression that you seem to confuse an epistemological abstraction with a concept (which defines given parts - for example: table - from all that really exists and that has certain defining characteristics). Please read “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” where Ayn Rand explained this.

 

Believe me: I am thoroughly within Objectivism and what I said is another way of stating what Nathaniel Branden already said in his article “Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is God?” (The Objectivist Newsletter – May 1962).


Post 72

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 8:44pmSanction this postReply
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George, I'll answer you on the new thread set up by Pete.

Barbara

Post 73

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 7:34amSanction this postReply
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Michelle said:
In case I am on your list for criticizing Fred Seddon, note that I responded to your questions in post #6 of the thread "Kant Didn't." My response is post #52.

I read your response to my question.  Thanks.
Glenn


Post 74

Monday, May 9, 2005 - 2:01amSanction this postReply
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Critique of "Kant And The New Tactics To Destroy Objectivism"
First edition (heh).

 

This has happened many times (not this kind of response, but the kind of thing to which I'm thereof responding).

Actually, it is pretty easy to misunderstand Immanuel Kant. I mean it this way, because one can read his work and, without any prejudices, miscomprehend it (terrifically). Given what I know of Rand's interpretation of Kant, this is what I think to be exactly what happened in her case— no malice aforethought(sp.?— or whatever), etcetera, on her part.

Demonstrating this is pretty easy, too, though. It just involves (as far as for disproving the charge that Kant believed sense perception to be invalid) quoting him with a (sort of) key passage from the Critique of Pure Reason first, and then a discussion of what Kant was talking about with words like "noumena" and "phenomena."

So...

On pg. 82 of my copy of the Critique of Pure Reason (Second edition), Kant says the following: "It is quite possible that one may propose a species of præformation-system of pure reason — a middle way between the two [other such systems] — to wit, that the categories are neither innate and first a priori principles of cognition, nor derived from experience, but are merely subjective aptitudes for thought implanted in us contemporaneously with our existence, which were so ordered and disposed by our Creator, that their excercise perfectly harmonizes with the laws of nature that regulate experience. Now, not to mention that with such a hypothesis it is impossible to say at what point we must stop in the employment of predetermined aptitudes, the fact that the categories would entirely lose that character of necessity which is essentially involved in the very conception of them, is a conclusive objection to it. The conception of cause, for example, which expresses the necessity of an effect under a presupposed condition, would be false, if it rested only upon an arbitrary subjective necessity of uniting certain empirical representations according to the rule of relation. I could not then say — 'The effect is connected with its cause in the object (that is, necessarily),' but only, 'I am so constituted that I can think this representation as so connected, and not otherwise.' Now this is just what the skeptic wants [emphasis added]. For in this case, all our knowledge, depending on the supposed objective validity of our judgment, is nothing but mere illusion; nor would there be wanting people who would deny any such subjective necessity in respect to themselves, though they must feel it. At all events, we could not dispute with any one on that which merely depends on the manner in which his subject is organized."

Taking this, then, by all appearances ("phenomena," heh) hereof, Kant did not think that our perception was invalid as such.

But, noting that, of the "phenomena," is crucial, in a respect. The division between phenomena, or objects in appearance, and noumena, objects "intelligible" (also between "things as they appear to us" and "things in themselves") is a likely suspect for most confusing domain of Kantian terminology. An excellent starting point for explaining it is a simple delineation of "noumena," to be found on pg. 168—169 of my version of the Critique of Pure Reason: "If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition, thus making abstraction of our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the word. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition, we in this case assume a peculiar mode of intuition, an intellectual intuition, to wit, which does not, however, belong to us, of the very possibility of which we have no notion — and this is a noumenon in the positive sense." Kant in his way, as a matter more or less of course, goes on and on a lot more than this, before and after (it is all in a section on the distinction between things in appearance and things in themselves). Elsewhere (pg. 171) Kant talks about an "unknown something," but in a similar vein to the above, so there is not much of a problem. Altogether, for Kant, phenomena are truly real, and while our minds have a limitation in a certain way, this does not mean that they are helpless to deal with reality (for that is their main object).

 

On to something else: While Kant is not claiming that sense perception is invalid, something that he is in fact pointedly claiming (I do not want, right now, to cite every time he does this) is that the entire scheme of conceptualizing without any experiential ground (e.g., Platonism/Rationalism) is mistaken. There is therefore no ultimate logic (as such) in saying that Kant's philosophy is a descendent of Plato's. Of course, simultaneously Kant rejected empiricism as the correct route for philosophy, and Kant viewed Aristotle as an empiricist, so it doesn't follow from Aristotle, either (but that isn't what is being argued, so this is just an aside...).

Another point... Something I read in this article of Mr. Schieder's (I've been reading it sort of in bits): It is about parallel universes, and it is frustrating, because many scientists— or in many ways scientifically-oriented persons, such as myself— speaking of these universes, are/am not speaking of something apart from existence, at least as well as I understand the concepts. We are speaking about spatial (and maybe temporal, following one source of my parallel universes information— Gregory Benford's Cosm) fields that do not coincide in space or time more broadly, except, mainly, as much as they all exist together. For this, the term "universe" encompasses a particular spatial/spatiotemporal field, so that there can be many such fields, and thus many such universes (at least in terms of the concept, if not in actual fact as such). So, then, "parallel universes" as such are not fantasies— I mean, they may be in the sense that it is learned that they are not, or cannot, be real (and going on the little evidence for them, that they are just, at present, imaginary constructs), but they are not fantastic in the sense that thinking of them thereof negates the concept of existence and is hence self-refuting. Moreover, someone (take me for example), when talking about the "universe," may not be talking about "existence," while someone else may be (redundancy?).

Anyway, kind of again, I don't blame (in an ethical-intellectual way) Ayn Rand (or Mr. Schieder, either), for misunderstanding Kant. I won't even blame anyone whose beliefs about Kant more or less coincide with these persons', as they are (or, with Rand, more that as they were), if they tell me they've read this bit of a critique and still agree with the Ayn Rand-styled position. Terminological problems are horribly, horribly... Problematic. And, hey. Maybe I'm wrong? Yeah, it is a thought. Not a really bad thought, either. I've had my share of errors over time.


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Post 75

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 8:20amSanction this postReply
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To Kristian G. Berry:

Yes, you are wrong and should, thus, read Ayn Rand again, as well as Nataniel Branden's article "Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is God?" in the May 1962 issue of "The Objectivist Newsletter". This article sums up in a cute nutshell what relates to one-and-only-one universe. So much in what refers to the uniqueness of the universe.

As to Kant:
Kantians (the way you defend him obliges me to understand that you side with him) should, at least, keep a pretense of posture and not try to obtain an acceptance from Objectivists they will never get.

Kant's philosophy, like every other "philosophy" excepting Objectivism, is not just flawed but in total error. This is so from the very start since his "philosophy" rejects the absolutism of reality and, as Kant himself confessed, pushes reason way back to make room for religious beliefs. As a matter of fact, no "philosophy" deserves to be named as such, excepting Objectivism, as even an enemy of it (John W. Robbins) clearly indicated when he said that only a philosophy totally based on reason and devoid of any kind of mysticism deserves to be called philosophy. This automatically disables all other "philosophies" that either totally or even partially are based on mysticism, religiousness, superstition, whims, caprices, wishes and the like.

So, please, spare me the usual request of "reading between the lines" because Objectivists don't understand Kant for he didn't mean what he wrote but something different. The continued insistence that Kant (or whoever else) is not well understood shows all the deceit contained in such a claim. If he wrote what he wrote he meant it. If he didn't he should have written what he meant. If he was unable to do so he was either a coward (fear of being persecuted - as a matter of fact Kant, being a professor, was rebuked once by king Friedrich Wilhelm's secretary of culture Wollner and he had to give in for professors are state employees in Germany, even today) or a schizophrenic who covered intentions even shoddier than the ones he voiced. Still worse, if such a person is unable to word its thoughts correctly, it must be considered to be incompetent. If Kant wanted to defend whatever it may have been that he wanted to defend (irrationality, for example) nobody would have stopped him, but then, please, he should not have hidden under a cloak of respectability. Just as well does this relate to Kantians. If they want to defend Kant - I said so expressly in my article - let them go ahead and do it... but not under the pretense of being Objectivists.

Kant proved in his writings the evilness of his proposals. Of course, this was immediately recognized by all those who wanted and still want to establish tyranny and dictatorships. The Dantons, Roberspierres, Marx, Stalins, Hitlers, Mussolinis, Maos, Castros and the like took his "ideas" up and turned them into all the sufferings they poured over the general population.

It is a truly sad scene to see apparent adherents to Objectivism coming out in Kant's defense.


Post 76

Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 8:48amSanction this postReply
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I don't think any enemy can destory Objectivism. But it can destory itself.


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