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There is a reason many people want philosophy to be like math with a few axioms and a complex abstract structure.

Jim,

Where is this different than what Kelley proposed? It sounds almost identical.

Michael

Michael,

I actually think Kelley has the right idea, but does not express it well in Truth and Toleration (and to be fair that was not the intent of T&T). Objectivism does have a logical structure, it is complex and abstract, but not equally open in its derivative aspects. In his logical structure course, Kelley used the analogy of a skyscraper with all of the superstructure built. There is still a lot of work to do, but it is more like building most of the rooms and decorating, rather than altering the architectural plans. In math, everything is derived from the axioms. In philosophy, new data is introduced and must fit in the skyscraper.

A fleshed out open system theory would detail the skyscaper so to speak, it's structure and give some indication as to what rooms need to be filled in. It would also have certain guidelines like new data would have to go through a door or a window and not a wall...

Jim

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Jim,

I only have one problem with the comparison to math and that is that human beings are vastly more complex than integers.

Where Objectivism is incomplete is its view of human nature, or more precisely, its definition of man and the derivation from there. You can define a human being as a "rational animal," develop an entire philosophy from axioms for the rational part and essentially forget about the animal part, but the problem is that those little suckers (human beings) just won't act right. Even in the realm of the cognitive, after your own familiarity with cognitive science, you must know that there are some fundamentals missing in the sensation-percept-concept formulation. And that's just one example.

I think the specific principles Kelley defined are the core ones and we build from there.

I see one main difference (among others) between ARI and TAS as being if you want to learn canonical Objectivism (minus a few authors), and even think for yourself but use canonical Objectivist premises, go to ARI. You will get some extensions from Peikoff and his inner circle, but basically they stay with canonical Objectivism. If you want to be encouraged to think for yourself about fundamentals but from an Objectivist lens, go to TAS.

Michael

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Jim,

I only have one problem with the comparison to math and that is that human beings are vastly more complex than integers.

Where Objectivism is incomplete is its view of human nature, or more precisely, its definition of man and the derivation from there. You can define a human being as a "rational animal," develop an entire philosophy from axioms for the rational part and essentially forget about the animal part, but the problem is that those little suckers (human beings) just won't act right. Even in the realm of the cognitive, after your own familiarity with cognitive science, you must know that there are some fundamentals missing in the sensation-percept-concept formulation. And that's just one example.

I think the specific principles Kelley defined are the core ones and we build from there.

I see one main difference (among others) between ARI and TAS as being if you want to learn canonical Objectivism (minus a few authors), and even think for yourself but use canonical Objectivist premises, go to ARI. You will get some extensions from Peikoff and his inner circle, but basically they stay with canonical Objectivism. If you want to be encouraged to think for yourself about fundamentals but from an Objectivist lens, go to TAS.

Michael

The overessentialized view of human nature is very important, but it goes deeper than that. Objectivism, both ARI and TAS have an overessentialized view of causality. Objectivism holds to entity action causality, but that doesn't say very much. Suppose people talk about free will. What does that mean and what are the limits? One of the most deterministic aspects of human beings is their DNA. If you have two human beings with identical DNA and similar backgrounds, they will act very similarly. The scope of free will is the degree to which they are able and inclined to act differently.

Hierarchical reductionism explains a lot of things and in a lot more detail than simple entity action causality. It's not as if we can explain human beings in terms of quarks, but in all areas of knowledge we go to the appropriate causal level and mechanism. In cognitive science, the new causal mechanisms are common cortical algorithm for neurons in the cortex, a 6-layer neocortex with horizontal layers and vertical columns schematically, modular neural circuitry in the prefrontal cortex and other specialized modules, and long term memory enabled by prion-like protein folding.

Now, entity-action causality is too broad a framework of causality to tell us anything useful except perhaps that Hume was wrong and locate causality within entities and even that is problematic.

Jim

Edited by James Heaps-Nelson
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Now, entity-action causality is too broad a framework of causality to tell us anything useful except perhaps that Hume was wrong and locate causality within entities and even that is problematic.

Jim

How was Hume wrong? -Necessary Connection- between events has never, ever, ever been observed. It is only -inferred-. Furthermore there is no guarantee that any inductive generalization holds everywhere and for all time. So Hume was right on the problem of induction.

Hume's only "sin" was that his critical skepticism begat Kant's philsophy.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Now, entity-action causality is too broad a framework of causality to tell us anything useful except perhaps that Hume was wrong and locate causality within entities and even that is problematic.

Jim

How was Hume wrong? -Necessary Connection- between events has never, ever, ever been observed. It is only -inferred-. Furthermore there is no guarantee that any inductive generalization holds everywhere and for all time. So Hume was right on the problem of induction.

Hume's only "sin" was that his critical skepticism begat Kant's philsophy.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Hume was right on induction? Not likely! Quoting from Lecture 1 of Peikoff's "Objectivism through Induction" (1997):

n a sense, Hume is correct. You simply do observe regularity or uniformity, that an entity acts in certain ways. There’s no little flag that comes out and says, “This has to happen.” You just observe it. Now, Hume wasn’t satisfied with that. That’s his problem....[T]he temptation that you have to overcome is the Humean one, which is, “Well, when I accumulate examples, I see that Causality is so, but I don’t see why.” That’s what Hume and Kant said. “And therefore, what you need is a proof to give you the necessity of the principle,” and then they said, “There is no such proof.” Now, that is wrong! A summary of the facts…you cannot expect, over and above that, some entity called “necessity.” You have to throw out the whole idea of the necessary versus the contingent....f you say to me, “But why does causality have to be true, just because it is?” There is no answer to that question. Causality is true, and you learn that by observing reality. Just as “A is A,” you could just as reasonably ask, “Why does A have to be A?”....If you don’t allow arbitrary “What ifs,” such as: “Well, what if a ball did turn into an ice cream cone when you pushed it? Or, what if we came across a type of radiation that was a wave and wasn’t at the same time,” which is what physicists say. If you don’t allow those arbitrary projections, you have no need for, a need of necessity over and above the facts. So, the real argument against Hume is not that he is attacking a “necessary truth,” the real thing is that he is blasting the total of our integration, because all of our knowledge is integrated into one total. So, if you attack one element of it, you’re wiping it all out, if it’s truly integrated. And that’s why he was a total skeptic.

REB

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I would like to thank all of you for clarifying who's-who and what's-what.

I probably would have been willing to totally embrace o'ism 30+ years ago if it had been an open system philosophy; N Branden's writings certainly filled in a lot of holes for me when I was doing some fundamental reevaluations at that time. Beyond TVOS and TOE, NB's "The Disowned Self" was crucial in enabling me to gain the understandings (and moral sanction) I needed to live my own life rather than to follow someone else's script.

Michael's observation of preachy-save-the-world types versus serious-scholar types probably holds more water than many think. With the preachy types being closer to AR. If you look at the premise of AS, of the "ideal man" withdrawing the "good people" from society, and allowing the world to collapse under its own evil, this is a motif stolen straight out of Darby's xian salvation heresy of "The Rapture" from 125 years before. So yeah, they're going to get preachy over it. Religion is a basic, essential human cultural activity, and this is one thing that o'ism has never addressed adequately. And part of that is an error on the part of Ayn Rand: she continually identified the errors of individuals with the expression of their ideas. This was a counterfeit argument, a fallacy: a classical ad-hominem attack. Why hasn't anyone noticed this? Why didn't anyone ever call her on it? And if she's stealing ideas from religious "mystics", aren't her own ideas subject to the same strictures she calls down upon them?

No matter how effective a tool of social control it is, I just hate hypocrisy, and it seems like the o'ist world is full of it. (Except here.)

Thank you all again.

steve

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Hume was right on induction? Not likely! Quoting from Lecture 1 of Peikoff's "Objectivism through Induction" (1997):
n a sense, Hume is correct. You simply do observe regularity or uniformity, that an entity acts in certain ways. There’s no little flag that comes out and says, “This has to happen.” You just observe it. Now, Hume wasn’t satisfied with that. That’s his problem....[T]he temptation that you have to overcome is the Humean one, which is, “Well, when I accumulate examples, I see that Causality is so, but I don’t see why.” That’s what Hume and Kant said. “And therefore, what you need is a proof to give you the necessity of the principle,” and then they said, “There is no such proof.” Now, that is wrong! A summary of the facts…you cannot expect, over and above that, some entity called “necessity.” You have to throw out the whole idea of the necessary versus the contingent....f you say to me, “But why does causality have to be true, just because it is?” There is no answer to that question. Causality is true, and you learn that by observing reality. Just as “A is A,” you could just as reasonably ask, “Why does A have to be A?”....If you don’t allow arbitrary “What ifs,” such as: “Well, what if a ball did turn into an ice cream cone when you pushed it? Or, what if we came across a type of radiation that was a wave and wasn’t at the same time,” which is what physicists say. If you don’t allow those arbitrary projections, you have no need for, a need of necessity over and above the facts. So, the real argument against Hume is not that he is attacking a “necessary truth,” the real thing is that he is blasting the total of our integration, because all of our knowledge is integrated into one total. So, if you attack one element of it, you’re wiping it all out, if it’s truly integrated. And that’s why he was a total skeptic.

REB

There is my problem with L.P. He simply does not understand what wave-particle duality is. Wave and particle are -aspects- of the underlying phenomena. Dirac reconciled the apparent incompatibility of the two aspects with a correct mathematical analysis. He is also dead wrong about Hume, who if taken literally (as I take him) was right on the mark. Necessity has never been perceived. Ever. It is inferred and hypothesized.

L.P. also does not accept that there are contingent truth statements. There are also contingent facts. Our universe happens to be the way it is. It is -logically- possible to have different universes with different laws (as long as they are consistent). It so happens we do not live in one of these other possible universes. Our burden is to come to terms with the universe that in fact is, rather than universes that possibly might have been but are not.

Hume was also right about induction. Induction is a heuristic for generating general statements from particular statements. It is not a guaranteed method for generating true generalities. There is no empirical way of establishing the truth of a general statement derived by induction from particulars (except in trivial cases). Consider this example: I infer all crows are black from my encounters with crows and never having seen any color but black. Now how would I -prove this- empirically. Answer: I cannot and neither can you. To show that the general statement is true by empirical means, one would have to look at every crow that was, is or ever will be. Clearly an impossibility. Hume was NOT a total skeptic. He had reservations concerning the necessity of causation and the validity of induction. I have the same reservations and I am not a total skeptic. I am cautious and critical in my thinking and I do not believe stuff without sufficient reason to. A total skeptic denies the possibility of knowledge. I would ask Mr. Radical Skeptic how he knows this to be the case. Debunking Radical Skepticism is like shooting fish in a barrel.

If we wish to learn from experience we must do induction and abduction, but these are not guaranteed to produce correct conclusions. On the other hand, if one assumes the law of non-contradiction, deductions from true premises are guaranteed to be true. Induction is a necessary, but it is not guaranteed valid method and it is the only way we can get from particular statements to general statements with our wits intact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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(Incidentally, I do not think the world is perishing. Mankind is one of the most biologically successful species on earth. I think he has done wonders and the only real danger is that he has developed means of mass destruction. Now that is a real danger, but certainly has nothing to do with orgies of perishing.)

I wish I could agree with you, Michael. But our greatest enemy is our own behaviour.

Ten years ago, there were 13 major fishing beds, of which 4 were dead and 5 were dying. Now 8 are dead and 2-3 more dying. This is primarily due to overfishing, and mass poisoning by environmentalists. The oceanic algae plumes are screwed up. This is due to chemical runoff from the land into the ocean, especially on our west coast and the east coast of Brazil. The deep sea cold water currents which regulate the whole world's climate are screwed up. This is due to the loss of glacial meltoff into the great lakes, the origin of ALL the world's deep sea cold water currents. And we're about to go through a MAJOR climate change far outside of the bounds of the 650-year cyclic one we've had since the the beginning of recorded history, maybe closer to the last ice age. And no, I am not blaming human beings for CAUSING it, only for AVOIDING FIXING it (or even delaying it). The thing is, the scenario is too much as if it were taken out of the script of the movie "Soylent Green", with all that that implies.

I've lived here in what has been a charming little piece of Paradise in Florida, for nearly 14 years now, and in that time I've seen the crabs disappear, the birds disappear, the groves disappear, the anole lizards disappear, the skinks disappear, the snakes disappear, most armadillos disappear, some of the turtles disappear, and they've been replaces by mammal scavengers -- opossums and raccoons and wild boars. I'm not necessarily complaining about feeding the "kids" (although opossums are stupid & nasty, and the pigs will run out in front of you when you're doing 60 mph & wreck your car in the middle of the night), but the loss of diversity is just that -- a loss. One from which we may not recover.

I don't know how to combat these things.

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This is a scholar problem. We others only have to be concerned with the (objective) truth regarding philosophy. As for Rand herself, merely look at her original, published works and slough off the rest. What is Objectivism? 1)The philosophy of Ayn Rand. 2)The philosophy of truth--of what is and, since we be humans, what might if not should be. The basic problem with OPAR is it isn't a work of scholarship hence it should have been entitled, "Objectivism, the Philosophy of Leonard Peikoff." It is, isn't it? Or is it something other?

Brant,

I see three different issues here.

(1) What's the correct outlook on the world? That's a matter of objectivity, emphatically written with a small "o."

(2) What's the Objectivist outlook? Capital "O" this time... Now we've got a systems-and-theories issue, or a history of ideas issue. These are more for scholars.

I'm academic, and I was trained in Piagetian developmental psychology, so I'm always going to be doing the history of ideas thing. But getting your history straight doesn't tell you which philosophical viewpoint is right.

For me, there's a very simple rule that relates (1) to (2) here: If it's objective and not Objectivist, accept it. If it's Objectivist and not objective, reject it.

The closed-system advocates are saying, in essence, "If they come into conflict, Objectivist trumps objective." What the hell for?

(3) There's also what Kenneth Irvine (still hanging around SOLOP, for reasons I cannot fathom) once called the problem of the "Rand brand." Ayn Rand had, and still has, a mass audience that no academic philosopher is ever likely to command.

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Leonard Peikoff isn't going to sell as well as Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, even though truth in packaging would dictate the former title.

The Logical Structure of Objectivism: The Philosophy of David Kelley and Will Thomas won't sell as well as The Logical Structure of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Yet Kelley-Thomasism will probably turn out to be a better philosophy than Peikovianism (and its close relatives such as Smithism, Harrimanism, Ghateism, Biddleism, and Binswangerianism).

Robert Campbell

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Jim,

I take you to be saying that Objectivism isn't equally open in all respects. Some constraints are tighter than others. Changing some parts of the system will come at a higher cost than changing some other parts; and some parts cannot be changed at all, without making the entire thing incoherent or unrecognizable.

Objectivism does have a logical structure, it is complex and abstract, but not equally open in its derivative aspects. In his logical structure course, Kelley used the analogy of a skyscraper with all of the superstructure built. There is still a lot of work to do, but it is more like building most of the rooms and decorating, rather than altering the architectural plans. In math, everything is derived from the axioms. In philosophy, new data is introduced and must fit in the skyscraper.

If you consider what David Kelley actually believes, he would seem to agree with you. Overall, his actual philosophical disagreements with Leonard Peikoff are far narrower in scope than all of the partisan hullabaloo would tempt people to believe. (There are a number of issues where I disagree with both Kelley-Thomas and Peikoff, for largely the same reasons...)

It would, of course, help if he and Will Thomas got their Logical Structure done and published, so interested readers could see all of this for themselves.

Robert Campbell

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I get the impression that Ellen Stuttle (and her physicist husband) don't think much of Harriman's writing on the history of physics [...].

Your impression is correct. But I'm not well enough at this time to elaborate.

A few factual errors in MSK's post #4 (there might be others which I missed):

When Rand finished Atlas Shrugged, she had no intention of writing nonfiction (or even any fiction anymore—she was devastated with the reception of AS). But her young lover, Nathaniel Branden, and his wife who was one of her disciples, wanted to open the way to present a structured version of her philosophy, and thus save the world from its perishing orgy. They started a nonfiction enterprise (NBI) and this ultimately enticed her to start writing nonfiction. Along the way, she declared that Nathaniel was her intellectual heir.

The wording is potentially misleading as to when she declared Nathaniel her intellectual heir. She did so in the original "About the Author" following the original edition of Atlas Shrugged. It wasn't "along the way" during the course of the development of NBI

However, the unstated condition on this title was that he continue to be her lover. Instead, his marriage to Barbara fell apart (there went the smokescreen) and he fell in love with someone his own age. [....]

Patrecia was 10 years his junior.

(Frank's sister Mimi Sutton was somewhat close because of her memories of Frank.)

Mimi Sutton was Frank's neice.

Ellen

___

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There has been a less skeptical reading of Hume in recent years. A good discussion is H. Noonan's recent book, Hume.

I don't deny the existence of causation or the principle that what has happened in the past is a good guide to what will happen in the future, but the solution to the "problem of induction" isn't as easy as Peikoff makes it out. That things have a specific identity (based on A is A) doesn't mean that I know enough about an entity's properties to predict what will happen. Stephen Parrish gives an example in the recent of JARS about protons. Maybe it is their nature to turn into electrons in 2010.

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I don't deny the existence of causation or the principle that what has happened in the past is a good guide to what will happen in the future, but the solution to the "problem of induction" isn't as easy as Peikoff makes it out. That things have a specific identity (based on A is A) doesn't mean that I know enough about an entity's properties to predict what will happen. Stephen Parrish gives an example in the recent of JARS about protons. Maybe it is their nature to turn into electrons in 2010.

Maybe...???!! Based on WHAT? Your imagination? Sorry, but that is not enough to make the faintest riffle in the accumulated observations and integrations of the past 4 centuries in the physical sciences.

Parrish's published remarks notwithstanding, unless you have SOME basis for such a speculation, it is a perfect example of the "arbitrary" and not any kind of challenge to induction or the reliability of our carefully acquired knowledge. Without some basis in logic or evidence, there is NO reason to entertain such a notion. Allowing such unfounded "what'if's" into your brain for even a moment -- unless you are writing a fantasy novel -- is a prescription for disintegration. (And please don't cite the example of black swans; there was nothing in the known nature of swans at the time only white ones were known about to rule out there being black ones. Nuclear theory is at least comparably well understood that we know protons and electrons are ~fundamentally~ different things.)

I'm also bothered that you think the single paragraph I quoted is Peikoff's "solution" to the problem of induction. It was simply his comments on Hume's objection about not being able to perceive "necessity," and on how entertaining arbitary "what-if's" (e.g., how do you know protons won't turn into electrons in 2010?) is not a valid epistemological process. He has put a great amount of time and effort into clarifying the nature of induction, its relation to our knowledge, and the way in which it operates in science and philosophy.

I would strongly urge people to listen to Peikoff's lectures on induction, particularly "Induction in Physics and Philosophy." He has done a lot of heavy lifting, and people ought to take advantage of his efforts, rather than dismissing them on brief acquaintance.

REB

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Roger,

I base my opinion of Peikoff as a philosopher not just on this quote, but on The Ominous Parallels and OPAR (both if which I've read in full). Peikoff discusses causality in some detail in OPAR. I think there are good reasons to reject skepticism on this and other issues, but I don't think it can be done based on Peikoff's empiricism.

His lectures on induction are $210 and his lecture series Objectivism Through Induction are $270. Having listened to his DIM series, my expectation is that they aren't worth this rather high price.

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Roger,

I base my opinion of Peikoff as a philosopher not just on this quote, but on The Ominous Parallels and OPAR (both if which I've read in full). Peikoff discusses causality in some detail in OPAR. I think there are good reasons to reject skepticism on this and other issues, but I don't think it can be done based on Peikoff's empiricism.

His lectures on induction are $210 and his lecture series Objectivism Through Induction are $270. Having listened to his DIM series, my expectation is that they aren't worth this rather high price.

I wish we'd had this discussion before you spent good money on the DIM series. I would have strongly urged you to get the "Induction in Physics and Philosophy" series. But then, I was more intrigued by DIM and less so by IPP, until I heard them both myself. Timing, I guess.

IPP is probably the best overview I have seen of how induction works in building up massive systems of knowledge, whether in science or philosophy, and I think it is some of Peikoff's best work to date. It is at least 12 years more recent than any comments on induction that he made in OPAR, not to mention Ominous Parallels. If I could spare the time to whip up a paraphrased presentation of his IPP lectures, I would, because I think it would be of enormous benefit to anyone interested in the subject. But I've got too much on my plate already.

DIM as you know is his template for analyzing cultural influences in various fields. It's probably his most original work, and it's not so bad (certainly not so bad as some make it out to be), but I hope he puts a lot of elbow grease into the re-writes before letting it be published. But it's a philosophically guided tour of the culture, by means of a pedagogical tool (the set of 5 DIM categories), not an overall elucidation of the basic method of human knowledge that is induction.

My suggestion: since the IPP lectures are too pricey, stay tuned for Harriman's volume on IPP, which he is in the process of writing. (Some material has already appeared in print in The Objective Standard.) Surely, it will fit your budget, and it will be a much easier target for our feverish discussions of science and knowledge. :-) In the meantime, since the material ~is~ there, and you don't want to avail yourself of its pricey version, maybe you should reserve judgment on the strength of his views on induction until you've actually seen them?

REB

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Roger,

Actually, I heard the DIM lectures when they were free on the ARI's website. (For all they know, they still are.)

Rand was a creative thinker, and I'm willing to cut her some slack given that her training in philosophy wasn't too substantial (not much more than an undergraduate degree from what I recall). But as far as Peikoff goes, I'm not impressed. For example, was it fair for him to attack Cassier in The Ominous Parallels in some snide remark, but not tell his readers that he was anti-Nazi and left for the US after Hitler took over?

That being said, I have heard many people whom I respect speak highly of his tape series.

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Roger,

I'm interested in what Leonard Peikoff has to say in "Induction in Physics and Philosophy." But I have to give priority to what Dr. Peikoff has chosen to publish, not what he is leaving in an audio medium at a price that will appeal only to extreme specialists, or to true believers.

Do you realize that I was able to buy the complete harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti--on 34 CDs--for less than ARI is charging for IPP? You can get 104+ Haydn symphonies, performed by an excellent orchestra, for just over half of what IPP costs.

David Harriman's book may take years to complete, if it is ever done at all. His articles in The Objective Standard are another matter--I will go get these promptly.

But as far as Dr. Peikoff is concerned, I'm sticking with his statements about proof for propositions in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. That's what he's seen fit to print. (And he writes in OPAR as though Ayn Rand has already solved all the problems and nothing of significance is lacking.)

Robert Campbell

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Robert;

Your point about Peikoff's lectures is well taken. It is one of the reasons I am getting fewer things from ARI bookstore.

Another item is there is always some great work coming down the pike. Mary Ann Sures said in the late 60ths that she was going to bring forth her Esthetics course as a book.

Given Peikoff's age and health problems I have great doubts that DIM will ever be published.

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I would emphasize what Robert and Chris said.

For example, Peikoff's induction course is $205. It looks to be 14 hours long. I can purchase an 18 hour Teaching Company course for $70. (If I get the download, it's only $50.) In fact the von Mises Institute has all its lectures free.

If Peikoff has solved the problem of induction and validated human reason as the blurb claims, he should try to publish these epoch-making findings, or at least make them more accesible. (And, if I recall correctly, Kripke's Naming and Necessity are transcripts of lectures he gave.)

And Chris is correct - we've been told for years that various books will come out.

Edited by Neil Parille
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Ellen,

Thanks for the corrections. I will repeat the excerpts below with the corrections included because I want to highlight one thing. My utter contempt for the schism culture. This is mainly at the feet of those who keep this flame alive today with excommunications, etc., but I also have no respect for it even when promoted by Rand. That was what I was trying to convey and it is still valid (as will be seen by the excerpts with the corrected details).

When Rand finished Atlas Shrugged, she had no intention of writing nonfiction (and she could not even get herself to write fiction anymore—she was devastated with the reception of AS). But her young lover, Nathaniel Branden, and his wife who was one of her disciples, wanted to open the way to present a structured version of her philosophy, and thus save the world from its perishing orgy. They started a nonfiction enterprise (NBI) and this ultimately enticed her to start writing nonfiction. She had declared that Nathaniel was her intellectual heir.

One point I should mention. I corrected the part about Rand not wanting to write fiction anymore (I received a note to this effect). Rand actually had a contract to write another fiction novel on finishing Atlas. But she was still devastated with the reception of AS.

However, the unstated condition on this title was that he continue to be her lover. Instead, his marriage to Barbara fell apart (there went the smokescreen) and he fell in love with a younger woman. [....]
(Frank's niece Mimi Sutton was somewhat close because of her memories of Frank.)

That previous post was written off the top of my head and in a lot of pain (a toothache - the tooth was just extracted). I stand by the spirit of that post, if not some of the details.

I spent over 30 years distant from the Objectivist culture and one of the reasons was so I could make sure I was worthy of interaction with these people when I finally met them. But when I finally jumped into the subculture, I found pettiness and schisms. Very little that was heroic or rational. It was a major disappointment. Big time.

Michael

EDIT: As you suggested, I made the corrections in the original post.

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I would emphasize what Robert and Chris said.

For example, Peikoff's induction course is $205. It looks to be 14 hours long. I can purchase an 18 hour Teaching Company course for $70. (If I get the download, it's only $50.) In fact the von Mises Institute has all its lectures free.

If Peikoff has solved the problem of induction and validated human reason as the blurb claims, he should try to publish these epoch-making findings, or at least make them more accesible. (And, if I recall correctly, Kripke's Naming and Necessity are transcripts of lectures he gave.)

And Chris is correct - we've been told for years that various books will come out.

As Master Yoda says: Do not your breath hold, else blue turn you will.

By the way, the induction problem is solved. It is impossible to verify a universally quantified statement over an infinite domain by checking the individual cases. In particular an empirical -proof- of a generalization arrived at by induction is not possible. However a -disproof- is. All you need is a single counterexample.

Induction is a necessary thing for getting from particulars to general statements. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that an induction is correct. We can't learn without induction, but we cannot rely on the validity of induction either.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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However a -disproof- is. All you need is a single counterexample.

Bob,

Just curious. Does that statement hold as a "universally quantified statement over an infinite domain"? After all, the only thing we have is individual cases of checking so far.

Michael

My very point. Which is why (except in trivial cases) we cannot show our inductions to be valid. There is no way to prove the inductive generalization all crows are black which is induced from a finite set of instances of crows which are black and no instances (yet observed) of crows which are not black. To prove this generalization empirically one would have to examine every crow that was, this is and that ever will be. Clearly this is impossible.

In mathematics we can infer universal statements from other universal statements. Euclid's Elements are an example of how this is done. All of the geometric postulates are universally quantified (implicitly and explicitly).

From these universally quantified postulates we can infer universally quantified assertions such as for all triangles the sum of the angles is a straight angle.

In physics, the laws of nature are general (universally quantified) statements. For example, Newton's Law of Gravitation. Given any two point masses m1 and m2 at any non zero distance d, the force that one exerts on the other is equal to G*m1*m2/d^2, where G is the gravitational constant.

We can't do science with just singular assertions. At some point we -must- generalize even at the risk of being in error.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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