| | Ugh, here we go again but I had to respond to a couple of things...
Bill wrote:
But he was very definitely biased, which is something that even he admitted in one of his posts. If a man concedes his own anti-Objectivist bias - if he states it explicitly - and then argues like it for all the world, then I think it's rational for me to conclude that he is biased.
This is what I wrote about my bias:
"Yes, I have a bias because reading Rand, I find I simply cannot accept many things - another thread sometime maybe. I admire the reason, logic, and many other elements, but strongly disagree with many of Rand's conclusions (and even premises)."
This is not a bias in the sense of not being rational as you have implied. It is based on my own, reasoned conclusions.
I am "biased" in a sense against Objectivists for the folowing reasons:
- I have concluded that a great deal of Objectivism is questionable at best, and often wrong/contradictory.
- I admire the central position of reason and logic in Objectivism. But what happens when the very same logic pokes huge holes in central tenets of the philosophy? The logic and reason so highly exalted, is quickly abandoned as illustrated very well in this thread.
- I think that the only force of argument left is the force of the "intellectual investment" that I think people like Bill have, and they compelled as a result to put their head in the sand and deny reality. This is the only reason I can think of that would explain how someone who I perceive to be intelligent like Bill would wallow in such futility. How else could such a clear case of begging the question be denied?
- Other reasons too, not enough time now...
Cal has done a great job in trouncing Bill's weak arguments. Often I get an emotional reaction to all of this when I suspect someone is being dishonest or deliberately evasive, but Cal doesn't do this. His arguments are more eloquent and his posts more level-headed than mine I admit, and he's absolutely right.
Cal wrote:
"If you look at Joseph's argument: If a thing is to have any determinate nature and character at all, there must be uniformity of action in different things of that character, or of the same thing on different like occasions. His supposition is that a thing has a determinate nature, and then he tells us that it under the same circumstances can only produce the same effect. Well, that is of course a classic example of begging the question: you suppose that its nature is deterministic and that supposedly "proves" that it does behave deterministically. And the argument of the Law of Identity is of course also fallacious: A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. This does not imply that it must behave deterministically, however, that is an extra assumption that is not contained in the definition of the Law of Identity. This is a big flaw in the Objectivist reasoning and no argument from authority or argument ad hominem can change that".
Fundamentally, this is what I have also concluded (and less eloquently argued) to be the truth, and have seen no plausible argument yet that refutes or even causes me to question these conclusions.
Bob
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