Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 2. Finding it so appealing, I almost slipped back into a state of blind obedience to the Objectivist philosophy (contradicting its very nature)Do do believe Objectivs encourages independent thinking? If yes, in what way?Be careful if you start to answer, Hazard, because Xray doesn't encourage independent thinking.Her thing is independent fishing... Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Coates Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 > something NBranden once said - he was surprised at just how little Rand had actually read. The truth seems to be *almost exactly the opposite*. Just read her essays with this issue in mind. In literature, she often mentions all the reading she had to do of the greats as "homework". And she gives many examples in her essays on esthetics. And in her non-fiction and fiction writing courses. So she is well-read in that area. Her reading/knowledge of history and economics are apparent from frequent references and comparisons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Coates Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 The same is true in many other fields. Where she seems to be 'light' in knowledge is math and science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 (edited) 2. Finding it so appealing, I almost slipped back into a state of blind obedience to the Objectivist philosophy (contradicting its very nature)Do do believe Objectivs encourages independent thinking? If yes, in what way?Be careful if you start to answer, Hazard, because Xray doesn't encourage independent thinking.Her thing is independent fishing... Michael If I didn't encourage independent thinking, I would hardy have asked the poster this question, Michael. My thing is independent fishing, you say? Yes indeed I'm fishing: for the truth. You and others are very welcome to help me fish, dig, hunt for it - I consider it as joint venture, not a lone ranger thing, even If I don't happen to agree with you on several issues. Edited June 10, 2009 by Xray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 (edited) 2. Finding it so appealing, I almost slipped back into a state of blind obedience to the Objectivist philosophy (contradicting its very nature)Do do believe Objectivs encourages independent thinking? If yes, in what way?Be careful if you start to answer, Hazard, because Xray doesn't encourage independent thinking.Her thing is independent fishing... Michael If I didn't encourage independent thinking, I would hardy have asked the poster this question, Michael. My thing is independent fishing, you say? Yes indeed I'm fishing; for the truth. You and others are very welcome to help me fish, dig, hunt for it - I consider it as joint venture, not a lone ranger thing, even If I don't happen to agree with you on several issues.Your truth, my truth, the other guy's truth. You've already got your "truth." Now you're just slumming. You are like Scarlet O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" and frankly, my dear ...--Brant Edited June 10, 2009 by Brant Gaede Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 "You and others are very welcome to help me fish, ..."My understanding is that even the mention of fishing creates hate for animals so you are also a hypocrite according to your own organization that you support. Following further on the premises of PETA, my understanding, since I receive their e-mails, of their position is that fish have "feelings" and experience horrible torment by being caught brutally by the "evil" human...Yes.Additionally, I assume that you are not a meat eater.If you answer is yes, do you believe that plants have feelings? Do plants experience or feel a drought? Do plants feel being pruned?Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Phil,Little reading doesn't mean no reading. So any controversy depends on how little people are willing to attribute to little. I do admit that Rand critics usually paint her quantity of reading incorrectly, drastically so, but that also applies to a certain type of Rand admirer.This link from the Objectivism Reference Center might be useful as a fact-based place to start in arriving at some standard other than "little" or "a lot."What Ayn Rand ReadFrom some people, this will be little reading for a lifetime, although the list is undoubtedly incomplete. For others it will be a lot.Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 (edited) "You and others are very welcome to help me fish, ..."My understanding is that even the mention of fishing creates hate for animals so you are also a hypocrite according to your own organization that you support. Following further on the premises of PETA, my understanding, since I receive their e-mails, of their position is that fish have "feelings" and experience horrible torment by being caught brutally by the "evil" human...Yes.We are talking so much about language here, about denotation and connotation - and you pretend never to have heard of "figurative speech", Selene? Additionally, I assume that you are not a meat eater.If you answer is yes, do you believe that plants have feelings? Do plants experience or feel a drought? Do plants feel being pruned?AdamPlants have no nervous system and no brain. How can one expect them to have any feelings even remotely comparable to ours or animals' feelings?That would have been a good question to ask Ayn Rand - since she even believed plants can "seek values". Edited June 10, 2009 by Xray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guyau Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Michael,Thanks for the link to “What Ayn Rand Read.” It is a worthy project, and I hope they stick with it.With regard to serious philosophers, I think the list is very incomplete. What Dialogues of Plato did Rand read? What of Aquinas? She mentioned in an interview reading some Schopenhauer at an early age. She approved Leonard Peikoff’s two lecture courses (Ancient and Modern) on the history of philosophy, which included, after a neutral presentation of a given philosopher, an evaluation of the philosopher’s ideas from the perspective of Objectivism. Might she have read a little philosophy with Peikoff (and with Gotthelf)? In making their essays for Objectivity, my writers and I certainly read a great deal of philosophy together, even if not together in person.In the “What Ayn Rand Read” list, I noticed Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine by Friedrich Paulsen. When I first read Rand’s essay “From the Horse’s Mouth” my own mouth dropped open figuratively speaking. I wondered if she did not understand the meaning of the colloquialism used for her title. If the horse being spoken of is Kant, then, under that colloquialism, it better be Kant’s own words. Yet there were no words of Kant in the essay. There was only a surrogate horse named Friedrich Paulsen, whose representations of Kant were partly right, but enormously wrong in putting Kant as a champion of the philosophy-is-the-handmaiden-of-theology view. Quite the contrary. As had been so common, Paulsen was bending Kant towards his own, partly different agenda (cf. Frede). Kant made philosophy autonomous from theology, and he slew rational theology.Rand may have tried to read the Critique of Pure Reason in German, but that’s a pretty rough row, requires special old dictionaries, and so forth. She had available the same English translations as I had available at that time. For modern English, we had the Norman Kemp Smith translation. (Today we have these.) Perhaps she relied heavily on commentators such as H. J. Paton, whom Peikoff recommended in his History of Modern Philosophy lectures. Rand’s description of the Critique of Pure Reason in “An Untitled Letter” show—to one who has studied the tome many years—that she did not spend the effort required to get much from CPR directly. Her description in that paragraph is one appalling falsehood after another. Claiming that Kant did not define his terms in CPR is like saying the character Monk does not straighten things.Objectivist scholars after Rand have the time to study and do more and more on the profound differences between Kant and Rand in theoretical philosophy. There are more fronts than Rand knew of Kant’s theoretical philosophy where one should fight as if one were fighting for one’s life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 (edited) Your truth, my truth, the other guy's truth. You've already got your "truth."Truth has no owner. Or do you think truth is "owned" by anyone? Edited June 10, 2009 by Xray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Do you think truth is "owned" by anyone? Yes - next question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Do you think truth is "owned" by anyone? Yes - next question.Give me an example please of such ownership, naming the truth plus the owner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 If I release a penny in this gravity it will fall at 32 ft....etc - myself you etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 If I release a penny in this gravity it will fall at 32 ft....etc - myself you etcBut you don't "own" this truth. Stating a truth subject to proof/disproof is no relation of ownership. Scientists discussing the laws of gravity don't "own" the facts either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Yes they do.Next question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Own up to the facts?--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Knowing is owning.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Knowing is owning.--Brant :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: <<<< this would be another objective truth - these are three (3 ) cheersAt least a white male understood it, but you know that "Judge x-ray- Sotomayor is still a better judge of the truth than a white man because of her germanicness just like the Latina - good grief this is what is teaching and judging!Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Knowing is owning.--Brant :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: <<<< this would be another objective truth - these are three (3 ) cheersAt least a white male understood it, but you know that "Judge x-ray- Sotomayor is still a better judge of the truth than a white man because of her germanicness just like the Latina - good grief this is what is teaching and judging!AdamBorn in Arizona, I'm a native American.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Well man then - I went to school with a lady friend who was an AIM member Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 I'm also a white male, but not an albino.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiaer.ts Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 If I release a penny in this gravity it will fall at 32 ft....etc - myself you etcBut you don't "own" this truth. Stating a truth subject to proof/disproof is no relation of ownership. Scientists discussing the laws of gravity don't "own" the facts either.Any individual mind that fully grasps and integrates a truth owns it. Knowledge must be earned and can be earned only be individual effort. Why does this notion upset you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 If I release a penny in this gravity it will fall at 32 ft....etc - myself you etcBut you don't "own" this truth. Stating a truth subject to proof/disproof is no relation of ownership. Scientists discussing the laws of gravity don't "own" the facts either.Any individual mind that fully grasps and integrates a truth owns it. Knowledge must be earned and can be earned only be individual effort. Why does this notion upset you?It does not upset me - I pointed out its fallacy. You can gain and possess knowledge about facts, but the facts (defining truth here as something to be a fact), exist independently of whether you know about them or not. You don't "own" those facts anymore than you own the sky above you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 (edited) Knowing is owning.--Brant :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: <<<< this would be another objective truth - these are three (3 ) cheersAt least a white male understood it, but you know that "Judge x-ray- Sotomayor is still a better judge of the truth than a white man because of her germanicness just like the Latina - good grief this is what is teaching and judging!AdamYour posts offer ample material of the illusion of "categorial identity" while denying individual identiy. On several occasions, you (in denial of individual entity identity) have verbally (via innuendo) connected me to Hitler. Incorporating the illusion of "national identity", your "thinking" goes like this:Hitler was evil. Hitler was German.All Germans are evil.Xray is German.Xray is evil. If I applied your categorial identity "logic", I could come up with: For a long time, many "white Americans" owned black slaves. Selene is a "whiteAmerican", therefore, he approves of and is responsible for this slavery. President Andrew Jackson was a "white American." President Jackson regardedthe "Indians" as "less than human" with problem resolution extermination. Selene is a "white American" therefore, approves of and is responsible forregarding "Indians" as less then human and recommending their annihilation. Jackson's attitude toward the "Indians" was exactly the same as Hitler'sattitude toward the "Jews." Ergo, the mentality and attitude of Jackson,(white man) Hitler (white man) and Selene (white man) are the same. Would you like the fit of that categorial shoe? Of course you wouldn't, and rightly so. Don't you see, Selene, where all your "categorial identity" thinking leads? Please check your premises. Edited June 11, 2009 by Xray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Hitler was German.Xray,I am curious. This is a premise in a syllogism in your post.Is this statement an objective fact for you?Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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