jay

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About jay

  • Birthday 04/16/1973

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  • Interests
    I don't seem to be able to hold much interest in anything, outside of trying to understand how a given thing works. For example I am interested in economics, to the extent that I want to understand how a valid economic system works in practice because I see it to be to my benefit. As to just taking something and learning it because of an interest preceding my understanding, it doesn't work for me. I could only be attracted to some true part of something which for me is what makes me want to learn more.
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    burlington ontario canada

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  • Full Name
    Jason Knowles
  • Favorite Music, Artworks, Movies, Shows, etc.
    Music -Dream theater,Rush and like others.Shows-baseball, football, business news,South Park, simpsons

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  1. Great. That makes sense to me. And it sounds consistant with what peikoff is saying, except those above call it subjectivism, which I find confusing. Unless you mean that the above statement you made which uses the word knowledge cannot be valid if you used the word truth. 2+2=4 is knowledge/truth only to a thinking agent.
  2. Isn't he saying that it can be determined objectively IF a given person is using an objective method. 1) How DOES one determine something objectively? 2) Now, can a parrot do that (Question 1)?
  3. That's completely crazy. 2 + 2 = 4 is a true statement, also when uttered by a parrot that has no idea how to prove it (neither has Peikoff, I suspect, so if he says that 2 + 2 = 4 we should consider that an arbitrary statement...). Peikoff should call his philosophy subjectivism, as he thinks that the validity of a statement depends on who is making that statement, implying that it cannot be determined objectively. I am trying to understand this. Is truth not a epistemological concept? Does objectivism not deny that something can be true "in itself"(intrincism).When you think of something that is true, what goes through your mind. Is the word "truth" being used here the same way the word "reality" is used when someone says "reality exists independently of consciousness".Reality is not the same kind of concept as truth.
  4. Daniel I thought truth meant the correspondance between reality and an idea, backed by facts and excluded the arbitrary, in other words the mind has to be involved.( relationship between existance and conciousness)Which I guess does mean reason as the only claim to knowledge. If arbitrary guesses were alowed as sourses of truth. How could one ever claim certainty? The point is, one couldn't, and therefore certainty as contextual in the objectivist sense would be replaced by a kind of "absolute certainty" which as a concept would be meaningless because man cannot obtain it(which is how it is used today). People would then(rightly) conclude that certainty is imposible for man and this would open the door for people to claim that"absolute certainty" is possible only by some other means(ie) faith. If you want to be a little more generous toward peikoff, what he is trying to do is rescue the term certainty, by making it possible for someone to claim certainty within a context, while at the same time allowing for the fact that man can be in error. This grounds "certainty" in reality and stops people from using it as an anti-concept. This is what I like about objectivism, concepts refer to reality and are useful in reality. The fact that the rejection of the arbitrary is based on lack of evidence(if existed would be in reality) but this rejection IS overtured when evidence (again in reality) is then persented pretty much shows he is not searching for "true belief". Otherwise he wouldn't specifically say that the arbitrary in one context could become possible in a different context provided new evidence is given. If reason is not the only means to knowledge then THAT is what opens the door for "philosophers throughout the ages" to suggest a different "source of Justified True Belief." (I could accuse you of perhaps wanting that, since you did accuse peikoff of the same, but I wont) I've noticed this lately. Scepticism is actually religions biggest friend, because the scepticism is only amed at man's reasoning ability. The more reason is discredited by scepticism, the more religion as an alternative is hailed as a value because it dosen't follow a method that has a possibility for error. Yet people view scepticism as being against religion. So religion uses scepticism to promote its dogmatism by discrediting its enemy(reason).
  5. Truth is the relationship between an idea and reality. If an idea corresponds to reality it is true. Thus truth is not in reality itself, nor in the mind itself but in the relationship between the two. Its the same thing when people hear the term "objective reality" used in objectivism, they hear that there is only one reality, it exists independently of our consciousness(which is true), but then they place truth within this reality, thinking that objectivism believes that truth also exists independantly of our consciousness. Objectivity is an epistemological term, as Peikoff says "Existents are not objective, they simply are" Thus while the above guess that Ayn Rand is the author of Atlas is right , it is not a truth in so far as their is no "correspondence" going on between the mind and reality(the guess was arbitrary as you say). Now if you want to use truth that includes non correspondense situations, then fine. I think it would be more interesting to ask why Peikoff excludes them. jay