Valtiel

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  • Birthday 05/27/1990

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    Ethan
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    please see my youtube profile: http://www.youtube.com/user/seanthedonconsidine

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  1. From Wikipedia: You may have noticed that Rand considers thinking to play a major role in the "causal account of a (human) organism's behavior." "Skinner's epistemology"? Oddly ehough, without thinking, there is no such thing as epistemology. 1. Surprise surprise, wikipedia is wrong. You would have known this if you had read anything by B. F. Skinner, or post-Skinnerian philosophers/psychologists. My recommendation is to start out with About Behaviorism by B. F. Skinner for a satisfactory, basic introduction to Skinner's philosophy. http://www.amazon.co...30887362&sr=8-1 I don’t think your insulting, incoherent, rambling diatribe deserves a response, but I will provide one anyway, just to put my position on the record. Here is what B.F. Skinner (and presumably Ravana) calls “thinking.” To twist words in such a way as to define thinking in terms of external behavior is to define it out of existence. And to wallow in the bowels of insanity. How in God’s name you think such bunk in any way relates to Objectivist epistemology is too much for my “mind” to comprehend. There is no such thing as “Skinner’s epistemology.” When you use the word “epistemology,” you obviously have no idea what the hell you are talking about. And BTW, as a Ph.D. in psychology, I am sorry to report that I have endured the dreadful torture of reading Skinner at great length. I have no intention of subjecting myself to further such torture by making any additional contributions to this inane thread. As I thought, you don't understand a word of Skinner's philosophy. To the rest who responded in a more courteous manner: thank you, but I'm done with this website. It's really just pointless to continue arguing this point, I've tried to explain Skinner to Objectivists in the past, but always with disappointing results. Unfortunately the difference in language used by Skinner and those influenced by him is, simply, an unassailable obstacle for Objectivists in understanding his work. Ah well, such is life. Farewell. - Ravana
  2. I assure you that Rand's view of empiricism had absolutely nothing to do with B.F. Skinner. Perhaps it is inaccurate for me to say that her view of Empiricists as solely influenced by Skinner, but I think it is accurate to say that Skinner was, in her view, a "token"/"archetype" Empiricist/Determinist. The critiques of him [as articulated in "The Stimulus and the Response"] were exemplary of those that she doled out to "Empiricism/Determinism" generally, e.g. "Denial of consciousness/logic", "Denial of man's mind", "Faux-science". From Wikipedia: You may have noticed that Rand considers thinking to play a major role in the "causal account of a (human) organism's behavior." "Skinner's epistemology"? Oddly ehough, without thinking, there is no such thing as epistemology. 1. Surprise surprise, wikipedia is wrong. You would have known this if you had read anything by B. F. Skinner, or post-Skinnerian philosophers/psychologists. My recommendation is to start out with "About Behaviorism" by B. F. Skinner for a satisfactory, basic introduction to Skinner's philosophy. http://www.amazon.co...30887362&sr=8-1 2. "Thinking", to Skinner, was not "denied", it was simply re-evaluated as a "Private behavior", observable only by the individual. This is one of the oldest confusions of Skinnerian Behaviorism: the confusion with Hull. Hull, another prominent Behaviorist, argued that "Thinking" and other private behaviors, were scientifically irrelevant [Contrary to colloquial view, there has never been a Behaviorist that has claimed that "Thinking" and other private behaviors are non-existent]. 2.5. "Thinking", as a "causal factor", was to Skinner simply re-evaluated as "Self-management". Self-influence is just one influence among others that the organism experiences. Skinner simply argued that the primary influence were various Environmental influences, that which he tacted: "Environmental history of the species [and biological life in general]" [iE biology], and "Environmental history of the organism", IE every influencing stimulus, from the chemical development in the womb, to the sight of these words on your computer screen. Rand herself admitted that knowledge is only gained by experiencing the outside world, Skinner just went a step further, removing the special-pleading of asserting that, apart from all other organisms, homo sapien is causally autonomous, and establishing a Probabilistically-Determinist, Empirical view of homo sapien, where the organism's self-influence [tacted by Skinner as "Self-management/control", tacted by Rand as "volition"] is one influence among many, and is ultimately, only possible because of environmental influences, whether due to the species' past, or the organism's past. Did he claim it was "non-causal"? No, he just argued that it was not the primary cause. Here I have a disagreement with Skinner, due to this reason: if the organism's self-influencing repertoire [iE volition] is not the "primary" influence of its current activity, because of that self-control repertoire was influenced by its eventual environmental history, then any stimulus from any other human organism is equally non-primarily casual, because their repertoire [which influences us] was eventually influenced by their environmental history, thus, one of the most frequently experienced primary influences of the environment, the public-social influence, is not actually the primary influence that Skinner claims it is. Here, I think, Skinner is inaccurate [iE logically inconsistent]. Skinner and post-Skinnerians would probably respond with either: 1. "The causes of behavior are those that are immediately observable." [in this case, how then could they argue that an organism is influenced by a stimulus they experienced 20 years ago?] or 2. "The causes of behavior are those are demonstrable to be currently influential to the behavior at hand, past or present" [in this case, the organism's response of self-influence, self-control, can be the most observably, currently influential to the behavior at hand!]. My view of this phenomena is this: Rand and Skinner are, ironically, very similar characters. From generalizable [iE similar] Epistemologies, they come to two slightly different conclusions: Rand arguing that the organism's self-influence is the primary influence of behavior while not denying the Environment's influence, and Skinner arguing that the Environment is the primary influence of behavior while not denying the organism's influence. As evidenced by their writings, both were somewhat reactionary philosophers, in my view, responding too aversively to various disagreeing views, each portraying their opposition as "mystical". While neither one are perfect [obviously], both are influences that would have quite a functional influence upon everyone [iE everyone should experience]. I suppose the request to avoid debate is rather absurd, as, well, here I am debating. The reason I often attempt to avoid debate is I know that, instead of posting online, I could be reading, or writing, but as I have just said, debating can have a functional consequence as well as reading and writing, as it [potentially] exercises my philosophic repertoire. It is not always functionally consequential, unfortunately, as debating Christians, Peikoffians, or Solipsists is, frequently, a frustrating waste of time. For what reason do I continue to post? For the above mentioned reason: the exercising of my philosophic repertoire, and, to be quite honest, functional proselytization. About 3 years ago, I had experienced a radical philosophical change [iE lost my faith in god], and was philosophically void. Predictably, I was initially influenced by Marxism, as, ironically for poor Marx, the ethics and politics of Jesus and Karl Marx are generalizable [iE similar]. One day, an individual posted a comment on my youtube page: "I see you've posted videos on The Communist Manifesto. A person I've learned a lot from is Ayn Rand, I would highly recommend reading some of her works." A few days later, I watched Ayn Rand's interview with Mike Wallace on youtube. That interview changed my life. Why do I continue to post on this website? Because I would like to live in a world in which its individuals are influenced by Skinner, as I have been. Whether he was observant of this or not, I suspect that this was the reason of the young man who recommended Ayn Rand to me on my youtube channel. - Ravana
  3. Could you please post some "strawmans of probabilistic Empiricism" in Peikoff's work here? TIA. I would just like to post at the outset that I am not going to engage any Objectivists in debate, as I have found such an activity to be a fruitless endeavor [this is due to my past experience with Peikoffians]. I will not be shocked if any of you take offense to that previous statement, but I will ignore any aversive responses. To briefly answer your inquiry, here's a prime example: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, page 112. Leonard Peikoff's essay "Synthetic Analytic Dichotomy". First paragraph: "Throughout its history, philosophy has been torn by the conflict between the rationalists and the empiricists. The former stress the role of logic in man's acquisition of knowledge, while minimizing the role of experience; the latter claim that experience is the source of man's knowledge, while minimizing the role of logic." This is just one example of Peikoff's [and Rand's, unfortunately] strawman of Empiricists, which I've always found strange because Randian philosophy is quite Empirically-based. I think this strawman of Empiricism is based in Rand's fundamental misunderstanding of B. F. Skinner, as observed in her essay "The Stimulus and the Response". Like the vast majority of Skinner's critics [and Rand's critics], they either: 1. didn't understand his ideas, 2. equivocated his Behaviorism with the Behaviorists of psychology's past [e.g. Hull, Pavlov, Watson], 3. maliciously maligned him deliberately to destroy him [i am not accusing any Objectivists of this, I would however wager that some of his fellow Psychologists did this, I don't have any links for this however, long conversation, and can't be explained here]. Noam Chomsky infamously fashioned a career from maligning Skinner, and unfortunately Rand herself quotes Chomsky in her essay regarding Skinner [which is explicit, basic, simple evidence that she didn't understand Skinner, anybody who does understand Skinner knows that Chomsky's "critique" of Skinner was extremely inaccurate, and only applicable to the psychology of Hull or Watson, Skinner changed the game entirely]. I'd recommend reading "About Behaviorism" by B. F. Skinner, if you'd like an extremely basic introduction to Skinnerian Probabilistic Empiricism. Oddly enough, as I'm reading ItOE, Rand's epistemology and Skinner's epistemology are remarkably generalizable, while differing in several specifics [free will, among them], and I think everyone who is interested in Ayn Rand's epistemology would most certainly benefit from studying Skinner. Well I've proselytized enough, back to reading ItOE. I finished "Analyitic Synthetic Dichotomy" yesterday, and found it immediately interesting, but eventually redundant and even incorrectly assertive in the conclusion [he poorly generalizes some of his points earlier made with Rand's ethics, which aren't even mentioned until in the conclusion he asserts that "Altruism is the penalizing of good for being good", which anyone unfamiliar with Rand's work will find shocking and absurd. This isn't too egregious of a fault, I suppose, as this was printed originally in an Objectivist publication, and so the audience was familiar with Rand's work, but I digress]. I am simply adoring the appendix: the discussions between Rand and the various professors. - Ravana
  4. It's really quite incredible that you post this, as I noticed the exact same by the second page. The metaphorical writing style is nearly exactly hers. I wasn't surprised in the least to observe this, as Peikoff has made an entire career from aping Rand, so why should he not derive the most important essay of his career from her as well? Of course, Peikoff's own nauseating touch is not absent from this work [so far], as there are plenty of oversimplifications and strawmans of probabilistic Empiricism [not that Rand or any other philosopher never committed that error, but Peikoff has shown a special affinity for it]. That said, it is an enjoyable read so far; however, I attribute this tolerability to Rand's influence, not Peikoff's pen. - Ravana
  5. I'll try to keep this relatively brief: Hello, I'm relatively new to posting on this website, quite familiar to browsing this website, and extremely endeared to Ayn Rand. I'm going through her written works, and am currently enjoying the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I have arrived to the portion of the book that contains Peikoff's work "Analytic Synthetic Dichotomy". Long story short: I despise Peikoff [as I am well aware of the damage that he has done to her and her legacy], and I passionately, desperately don't want to endure approximately 30 pages of Peikoff. My question is, am I missing out on an important document by skipping this? Or is the essay as philosophically insignificant as its author? Thanks. -Ravana