JARS V15 N2 - December 2015

[Roger Bissell]

True or false - the earth exerts gravitational force upon the sun?

True or false - a feather exerts gravitational force upon the earth?

True or false - a feather exerts gravitational force upon the sun?

If you answer incorrectly, may the Ghost of Sir Isaac Newton (whose day of birth we celebrate today) have mercy upon your soul.

REB

[Wolf DeVoon]

True or false - the earth exerts gravitational force upon the sun?

Context dropping. In fact, a complete change of topic. You claimed a sunburn would "interact" with the Sun.

You just have to get off the dime and admit that perception does not alter external material. It doesn't vanish if we look away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

[Roger Bissell]

I've never said that perception interacts with or affects other entities. I certainly didn't say a sunburn interacts with the Sun. Where do you get such looney notions??

I said that a conscious, perceiving entity (living organism) interacts with things in the world, and that the product of that interaction is the content of awareness by that perceiving entity of the perceived entity.

We, the sunburned organisms certainly do interact with the sun - both in being sunburned by it, and in being aware of its heat and light. Do you deny this? Of course not. And as Selene pointed out, we sunburned, perceiving organisms, in so interacting, are indeed doing something (remote control) to the sun: we are blocking a certain stream of its rays (i.e., a certain portion of its action) - just as the car at the front of the chain reaction pileup does something to the car in the rear who caused it, namely, blocks/absorbs/etc. some of that rear car's action (transmitted through the other cars). They enter into a *system* of interacting entities - the cars, the sun, rays, and organisms.

I know this is probably very difficult to understand, but please do try to wrap your mind around it.

However, it's no use trying to get my goat. I've already sold it.

REB

[anthony]

No sound -- silence. Sound and no hearing -- silence

You realize, I hope, that "sound and no hearing = silence" is Berkelean solipsism.

-- esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived)

Now why would you pick that option? I was imagining a). being out of range of the sound b). being deaf.

Tree in the forest and all that, it still makes a sound, independent of any hearing.

[Guyau]

The first of the following is from past discussion at OL of a related paper of Roger's. I'll repost it here and hope to address Roger's present paper joining this background down the road.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Roger Bissell details the relationship of his view of the objective to Rand’s in “Ayn Rand and ‘The Objective’” (JARS 2007). I thought it might be of interest to indicate some of his somewhat different relationship to Descartes (1596–1650).

Bissell notes that “medieval Scholastic philosophers defined the term ‘objective’: being an object before the mind. (‘Object’ is late Middle English from the medieval Latin objectum, meaning ‘thing presented to the mind’.)” Bissell’s variant of this notion is what he calls the existentially objective, “that which pertains to an aspect of existence insofar as it is held as the object of consciousness” (65). Descartes uses a variant of this notion of the objective in his third Meditation and in his first set of Replies. In the latter, he writes that “objective being in the intellect” means

the object’s being in the intellect in the way in which objects are normally there. By this I mean that the idea of the sun is the sun existing in the intellect—not of course formally existing, as it does in the heavens, but objectively existing, i.e. in the way in which objects are normally in the intellect. Now this mode of being is of course much less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside the intellect . . . . (102–3)

In the third Meditation, Descartes says we have two “ideas” (forms of awareness) of the sun in us. The perceptual one tells us the sun is small; the intellectual one, the one from astronomical reasoning, tells us the sun is very large, even larger than the earth (39). It is the intellectual one that counts for an objective reality.

Bissell applies the notion of the existentially objective not only to the sun as in the intellect, but to the sun as we perceive it (72–79). He holds to the Objectivist view that there are automatic cognitions we call perception, which are always true, unlike our perceptual judgments, which can be in error. Descartes held that view as well. He took it that the reason we err in judgment is that we let our will outrun or understanding. An example would be the judgment from perception that the sun is small in comparison to earthly things. The reason Descartes would not count our perception of the sun as an objective reality is not because our sensory perception of the sun (short of judgment) errs, but because the percept is obscure and confused, not clear and distinct. However the perception itself engages the formal reality of the sun—and it does in a feeble way—we do not attain objective reality of the sun in it (see further, Carriero 2009, 157–59). Rejecting that view of the percept, one can count the sun in the percept as an objective reality alongside the sun in the intellect.

In the Cartesian view, the objective realities in our minds must be cognitively caused by formal realities; the former signify the latter. Descartes’ view is brought around to Bissell’s by applying that principle not only to sun in the intellect, but in the percept (cf. Carriero 2009, 187–88).

With Aristotle in our background, we might expect something called a formal reality to be the form component of external objects, which is able to pass into the perceptual system, thence into intellect. But Descartes had cast out Aristotelian form-matter composites as well as the Aristotelian view of knowledge as assimilation of forms. He had dropped also the medieval view that external objects give off intelligible species for reception in the intellect. Nevertheless, like his notion and name objective realities, Descartes’ notion and name formal realities is descended from Scholasticism. The sun’s formal reality is the sun itself, and in Descartes’ view, particularly as interpreted and amplified by Arnauld (1612–94), formal realities are the target of objective realities. (See further Yolton 1984.)

I'll try to write a further note here in the future, on Descartes-Arnauld and Bissell’s “Mind, Introspection, and ‘The Objective’” (JARS 2008).

References

Carriero, J. 2009. Between Two Worlds – A Reading of Descartes’ Meditations. Princeton.

Descartes, R. 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy and Objections and Replies. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, translators. Cambridge.

Yolton, J. W. 1984. Perceptual Acquaintance – From Descartes to Reid. Minnesota.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

RELATED ALSO*

Rand’s direct realism in perception has in common with other contemporary proponents of direct realism that in a perception, one experiences not only the sensory qualities in the perception, but that the object is independent of oneself, the percipient subject. The independence, from perception, of the existence of the object is an element given within a sensory experience counting as perceptual.

The direct realist would want to distinguish between perceiving an object without sensory systems (we do not do that) and perceiving the object as it is independently of our perceptions, yet within our perception of it. With the latter meaning, we can say things about the perceived object as it is independently of the sensory forms in which we observe it. With this meaning, I apply Rand’s statement “‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind” (AS 1036) not only to perceptual judgments, but to perception itself.

Sensory forms are not all of one category. Some of the sensory forms are sensory qualities, and some are not. The significance of this, I will come to by the end of this note.

Reid had arrived at the thoroughly modern outlook that for every sensory quality in a perceptual experience of an object, there must be in truth a pair of qualities, one in the object itself, its partner as in our awareness. For some sensory qualities, we think of them firstly as in our sensory apparatus, secondly as in the object itself. For other qualities, such as hardness, it is the other way around. Reid would have experience of the set of qualities as they are in the perceptual object itself be inferred from the set of sensory qualities in our awareness. This is not direct realism. Reid was an indirect realist. (Rand teeters on indirectness when she writes that the task of the senses is to give man “the evidence of existence, whereas the task of identifying it belongs to his reason . . .” [AS 1016].)

In direct realism, it is not judgments upon sensory qualities that render a sensory experience a perception. Perception precedes perceptual judgment. Perceptions preceding perceptual judgments are already intentional; they are of objects. As with mere sensations, so with sensory qualities in a perception: of themselves they are not intentional. They are necessary constituents of a perception (AS 1035), they are essential to our direct acquaintance with the object, but they are not themselves the source of the intentionality that makes a sensory experience a perceptual one. Neither is a judgment upon them the source of that intentionality.

I do not think Reid was correct to insist that necessarily every sensory quality is diploid. Some sensory qualities may be the self-same as they are in the object itself as they are in an intentional, perceptual experience of the object. Be that as it may, some factors in perceptual form are not themselves sensory qualities. Moreover, as A. D. Smith has argued, it is by discerning the phenomenology of the intentionality in perception that we can uncover what features are self-same in the object and as in the experience of that feature in perception of the object.

In perceptions, Smith observes, we are offered further perspectives of the same object. The sensory qualities within our perception do not offer further perspectives. They are as with mere sensations. Sensations “have no further aspects that transcend our awareness of them. We can attend more fully to a sensation, but we cannot turn it over . . . .” Why is that? “A sensation has no hidden sides because we are not aware of it through the exercise of a sense organ spatially distinct from it” (The Problem of Perception, 135). That spatial distinction is part of what is in the perception.

Shadows and sounds have no hidden sides, but they do afford different perspectives on themselves. The element of spatiality—spatial distinctness from the sense organ—is a sufficient criterion to distinguish a perception from a sensation.

Smell, taste, thermal conductance, and radiant heat are experienced as at the sense organ. So although spatiality is a sufficient criterion for counting a sensory experience a perception, it seems it may not be a necessary one. There may be some other factor(s) of perception that support the intentionality of a perception.

To report “I have a bad taste in my mouth” is to report only a sensation; it has no object other than itself. “I’m tasting the mint in my mouth” is report of a perception, but only because one feels (or has lately felt) the minted object in one’s mouth. So it goes, too, for sensations of thermal conductance. The factor of spatiality is in play here, and that is sufficient.

Smith continues. A smell at the nose or radiant heat on the face is a perception, yet we are not aware of such perceptual objects by organs spatially distinct from them.

Let us pay attention to the way in which perception is integrated with movement—specifically, movement on the part of the perceiving subject. . . . Our discussion of spatiality has already provided a clue as to the kind of movement that is relevant here. For what we have so far seen to be of perceptual significance is the apparent three-dimensional locatedness of objects of perception in relation to a sense-organ. Hence, the kind of movement that is of perceptual significance is the movement of sense organs in relation to perceived objects. Not all such movements are relevant, however. For given that we are at present interested in how perceptual experience is to be distinguished from mere sensation qua experience, the movements in question must be ones of which the subject is aware. (141)

“The appreciation of a mobile sense-organ is (at least) ‘implicit’ in perceptual consciousness. / Such movement of a sense-organ in relation to an object of awareness is wholly absent from the level of mere sensation, for such movement again introduces perspectives” (142). Smells and radiant heat can be objects of perception because we can move in relation to them and be aware of that relative movement.

Visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sensations have no necessary intentionality. Without intentionality they are mere sensations; with intentionality they belong to perceptions. Without the spatiality structure or the relative-motion structure, sensation is not intentional, not component of a perception.

But wait. Is there not a third factor that sometimes yields the intentionality of perception? Do not sensations of touching a solid object “necessarily embody an awareness of solidity?” (151; cf. AS 1016). With spatiality or relative motion in play with the sensation of touch, the sensation can be intentional, can be a sensory perception. But those two factors are not the only ones that can make a sense of touch a perception. In touch there can be a check or impediment, a registration of the not-self. It is that registration “that introduces three-dimensional spatiality at all into haptic perception. It is only the experience of a collision, or at least a resistance, as the result of active bodily striving that opens up genuine spatiality for touch” (155).

We have then “three equiprimordial sources of perceptual consciousness” (158). These are the fundamental forms that perceptual consciousness can take, and each of them is a non-sensuous and yet non-conceptual dimension to perceptual consciousness. The three-dimensionality of the typical visual field

is a simple function of the senses, and is experientially manifest to us; and yet it is not ‘sensuous’, not a matter of the ‘quality’ of visual sensation. Something similar is found in the kinetic structuring of sensation that we find in our second basic perceptual phenomenon. A non-sensuous dimension is even more obvious, however, with the [checking by not-self], for here an object is presented to consciousness otherwise than by sensation . . . . Not only can such a check not be reduced to sensation—something that is equally true of the other two basic perceptual phenomena—sensation is, or may be, entirely absent in its customary role of being a subjective registration of the presence of an object to our senses. . . . . Pressure sensations are not . . . necessary for the experience of the [check by not-self]. We can feel such a check to our agency even if the relevant body part is anesthetized, or if we use some implement to feel the object’s renitent bulk. In both these cases, certain sensations will indeed be present. . . . Such sensations, however, do not occur where we feel the obstacle of our action. (159)

Smith stresses that although “it is necessary, in order for a sensory modality to be perceptual, that it feature such a non-sensuous dimension,” it is further necessary that the sensory modality possess the dimension “in such a way that we have a sense of encountering something independent of us” (164).

I grasp that proverbial baseball that Merlin or I (a, b) would firmly grasp. I force the ball, and the ball forces my hand. I am directly aware of the force the ball exerts against my grasping hand. There is a perceived command to the muscles, a sense of effort, estimating the stiffness of the ball. However variable (by fatigue or illness) my estimation of it, I am directly aware of the force of the ball itself opposing me, directly aware of the check by not-self.

Smith’s two other basic perceptual phenomena also cannot be reduced to sensation, but the way in which they give us a sense of something independent of us (which mere sensations cannot do) is by certain of the perceptual constancies (169–76). These constancies are ways of intentionality in perception, and they inform us that location, shape, size, and motion are in the world—as in perception and as in a world without perception (Galileo). In addition, by the check of exertion, we are informed that solidity/softness is in the world as within our perception.

This then would be a contemporary meaning of primary “qualities” in perception: the features delivered in the intentionality-dimensions of perception. Smell, taste, thermal conductance, and radiant heat are sensations rendered intentional in perception only through support by modes of perception having intentionality-dimensions (174). The intentionality of the former modes of perception is derivative (is secondary to) the intentionality of the latter modes. Comparison with the conception of primary/secondary qualities in David Kelley’s direct realism could be very interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PREVIOUSLY ALSO

I'll here retrace some of the course of Rand’s thinking about sensory perception, then her thinking about objectivity. For this short refreshment of our memories, I’ll rely only on texts Rand published. I will then suggest a distinct appropriate realm of application for Roger’s special senses of the objective, but this will be an application harmonious with the realm and role of Rand’s special senses of the objective.

Perception

Rand thought that higher animals are guided by percepts. The actions of such an animal “are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it” [Obj Ethics (1961) 19].

We should note, however, that “an animal has no critical faculty. . . . To an animal, whatever strikes his awareness is an absolute that corresponds to reality—or rather, it is a distinction he is incapable of making: reality, to him, is whatever he senses or feels” [FNI (1961) 17].

But when it comes to human beings, Rand observes, they for sure have an integrated perceptual awareness that includes the ability to identify perceptual illusions [AS (1957) 1041]. We can come to understand illusions in terms of veridical perceptual components of which they are composed. Moreover, we are capable, when awake and healthy, of identifying the phantasmagoria of dreams and hallucinations as occasions of consciousness not fastened upon reality. We can also tell the difference between our episodes of perception and our episodes of memory or imagination [ITOE (1966–67) 30]. In Rand’s view, all of those types of human consciousness have a content that “is some aspect of the external world (or is derivable from some aspect of the external world)” [ITOE 31].

Rand stressed the primary, foundational kind of consciousness we possess, which is the kind possessed in veridical perception. This essential sort of consciousness is given pride of place in much contemporary philosophy of perception. It is sometimes termed success consciousness. This fundamental sense of consciousness is what Rand articulates when she writes that consciousness is “the faculty of perceiving that which exists” and “if that which you claim to perceive does not exist, then what you possess is not consciousness” [AS 1015].

Rand’s view of perception is a realist view. A human being is able “to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses. . . . ‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind” [AS 1036]. The mind’s only access to reality is by means of its percepts [KvS (1970)]. “It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of ‘direct perception’ or ‘direct awareness’, we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident” [ITOE 5].

Objectivity

Rand’s most elementary sense of the concept objective is the sense of ordinary parlance. This is the sense she talks of when explaining why she has chosen Objectivism as the name of her philosophy. She credits Aristotle as the first to correctly define “the basic principle of a rational view of existence and of man’s consciousness: that there is only one reality, the one man perceives—that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes, or the feelings of any perceiver)” [FNI 22].

In 1965, as Roger has recounted, Rand published two refinements of her concept of objectivity. Early in the year, she distinguished a metaphysical from an epistemological aspect of objectivity [FAE 18]. Later that year, Rand refined her concept of objectivity further. She introduced her distinction of the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. This was in application to her theory of the good and its relationship to other theories of the good [WC 21–26].

By the following year, it was clear that Rand envisioned a broadened role for the intrinsicist-subjectivist-objectivist way of locating her philosophic theories in relation to others. She applied the tripartition to the theory of concepts and universals. Concepts, for Rand, can be objective and should be objective. Such concepts are “produced by man’s consciousness in accordance with the facts of reality, as mental integrations of factual data computed by man—as products of a cognitive method of classification whose processes must be formed by man, but whose content is dictated by reality” [ITOE 54]. Rand’s conception of concepts (and definitions and essence and . . .) and her conception of the good can be rightly characterized as (i) objective with Rand’s metaphysical-epistemological faces of the objective relation and, at the same time, as (ii) objective within Rand’s intrinsicist-subjectivist-objectivist tripartition.

At this time (1966–67), Rand thinks that (as Roger has stressed) “the dichotomy of ‘intrinsic or subjective’ has played havoc with this issue [of universals] as it has with every other issue involving the relationship of consciousness to existence” [ITOE 53]. That would certainly seem to include the relationship of sensory perception to existence. In what ways has the dichotomy of intrinsic-or-subjective played havoc in understanding the nature of perception? Should perception have the status objective in Rand’s tripartition? There is fertile ground here, waiting for growers.

An Objectivity in Perception

Rand’s metaphysical sense of objectivity proclaims the recognition of the mind-independence of existence in the relationship of existence and consciousness. Her epistemological sense of objectivity proclaims recognition of the mind’s dependence on logical identification and integration of the evidence of the senses to acquire knowledge of existence [FAE 18]. Both of these senses of objectivity proclaim epistemological and moral norms of volitional, conceptual consciousness.

Roger’s ontological and cognitive senses of the objective relation differ from Rand’s metaphysical and epistemological senses of objectivity in three ways. I’ll mention two of them.

Firstly, the forms of consciousness to which Roger’s ontological and cognitive aspects of the objective relation apply are wider. These aspects apply to all varieties of consciousness, whether or not they are volitional types of consciousness.

Secondly, Roger’s ontological and cognitive aspects of the objective are not necessarily norms for conscious rule-following. They are, however, related to norms in the more general engineering-performance sense. Any system having a function has performance norms. Human perception, pleasure and pain, memory, dreams (perhaps), imagination, judgment-level evaluations, and emotions all have functions and performance norms in the human being. Roger’s ontological and cognitive aspects of the objective figure into the performance norms of the volitional forms of consciousness, and they figure into the performance norms of perception, of pleasure-pain evaluations, of memories, and, perhaps, of dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PREVIOUSLY ALSO

Roger, here are some quick thoughts this morning . . . .

For an epistemological trichotomy parallel between Kant and Rand, the fit seems poor at the pole of the intrinsic: Kant has it that the noumenon has whatever character it has, and whatever that is, it is unknowable to us (benignly unknowable; false leads of cognition and consequences of them are all phenomenal). In Rand’s view, there is nothing unknowable to the human mind. Things as they are are as they are, and things as they are are knowable to us.

The fit seems poor at the pole of the subject: Kant has his forms of outer sense (space and time) and his form of inner sense (time) as coming from dark depths of the subject, whereas Rand takes them to be in existence available for apprehension in perception and conception. Kant would dispute the claim that in his view “the structure of the mind determines the content of knowledge.” He would say, “No, only the forms; the content comes from sensation.” The differences between Kant’s notion of forms of sensory intuition (bringing into account his distinction between sensory intuition and perception) and Rand’s notion of perceptual form (Kelley) needs to be sorted out. Similarly, the differences between Kant’s notion of forms of the understanding (categories and principles) and Rand’s notion of the conceptual form of awareness (Peikoff) needs to be sorted out. For this latter sorting, I would look into not only Kant’s general doctrine, but into his particular categories and principles of the understanding for comparison with Rand. I anticipate that some of them are from the side of Rand’s conceiving subject, but many are not (e.g. existence and causality).

Radical problems for Kant at those poles renders his and Rand’s conception of the objective substantially different. In what ways concepts generally, as well as philosophic categories (entity, action, attribute, relation) and philosophic axioms, are objective according to Rand can be compared to the way Kant thinks his categories and principles are objective. If you dig into this further, I would recommend letting go of Kemp Smith and getting the Pluhar (or Guyer) translation, with its very helpful index and translation notes.

Caspar Theobald Tourtual (1802–1865) was a visual physiologist and psychologist. He was a perceptual realist, not a transcendental idealist. He regarded his major work (1827) “as a physiological contribution to Kantian theory of the senses” (quoted in Hatfield 1990, 143). Tourtual divided theory of the human senses into two parts: physiological and transcendental. The latter did not coincide with Kant’s concept transcendental, but had as common general concern the side of the subject. Tourtual means by transcendental, as quoted by Gary Hatfield: “metaphysical consideration of the content of our sensory representations, insofar as this content is preformed in [the faculty of] sensibility, through the generation and development of life, preceding all external influence” (145). I’m unsure how Tourtual would assimilate the finding in our own time that without appropriate sensory experience during critical periods of development, the visual system (in kittens, but surely in us too) will not develop, and the animal will be blind. But I wanted to give Tourtual’s picture of what he was doing in the transcendental wing of his work, for the sake of the following excerpt from Hatfield’s The Natural and the Normative. (Substitute intrinsic for objective; substitute objective for middle.)

The second relevant piece of Tourtual’s “transcendental” ruminations pertains to his general orientation toward the metaphysics and epistemology of sensory perception. Tourtual himself identified three basic positions in the history of philosophical consideration of the senses—the objective, subjective, and “middle” standpoints—which he identified with three metaphysical theories of truth (xxxiii-xl). The objective standpoint he identified with empiricism, which he characterized as the view that objects directly cause sensory representations and are thereby presented immediately to the mind without any significant contribution on the part of the knowing subject. The subjective standpoint he identified with rationalism, which he characterized as the view that the mind constructs the world; he placed Kant’s transcendental idealism under this rubric. The middle way, which Tourtual claimed for his own, gives a role to both subject and object in the production of sensory representations. (145–46)

I don’t want to leave the impression that Tourtual’s middle position coincides, when studied in more of its specifics, with a Randian objective status of perception in a trichotomy of perceptual theories. And I don’t want to leave the impression that Tourtual had an adequate understanding of Kant. I have displayed only that Tourtual came explicitly to an epistemic trichotomy in broad terms parallel what could pass for a Randian one when hers is applied to perception (counter her theory in one cleavable respect, as you stress). If Kant’s theory of sensory perception and intuition is to be placed in the trichotomy, it is I expect to be placed where Tourtual placed it. I would suggest that all the forms of idealism (Berkelean and German [& subsequent British] idealism; with question of subjective classification of Rationalists left open for decision under class formula) should be studied, supposed as in the subjective class, and should guide one’s making formula for classifying theories of perception as subjective (meaning from the side of the subject), therewith reaching most basic and precise criteria for a triple division historically, informing possibilities and fine distinctions for best craft of a triple division analytically.

[merjet]

Roger has a knack for twisting words to try to make a point. First, as Stephen noted he misquoted Groarke -- substituting "knowledge" for "induction".

Merlin then juxtaposed *part* of the quote from Groarke with a quote from Rand, highlighting a single word which supposedly makes his case. (link)

I did not include the whole quote because a reader can easily see the rest in post #4. My putting only "impose" in bold was to highlight the similarity. More fully the similarity is that a mind imposes itself on the world, but that phrase doesn't appear verbatim in either citation (from Groarke and Rand). But it is clearly what Groarke said and very Kantian. Stephen agreed.

Roger moves on to Kelley and Peikoff regarding perception (not induction or concepts). Somehow he manages to interpret what they said about perception as like what Groarke said about induction (or a priori concepts?). Despite the fact that Kelley and Peikoff did not use "impose" in what Roger cites, he pulls a switcheroo and insinuates they did, as if "interacting" entails or is equivalent to "imposing". The two words aren't even synonyms. Yet he somehow construes Kelley's and Peikoff's claims to be Kantian. Oh, my!

Stephen - Merlin? Would one of you like to make a *rational* response to my post? (link)

Roger insinuates that his response was rational and Stephen's and mine were not. LOL. It is much more the reverse.

[Brant Gaede]

Roger has a knack for twisting words to try to make a point. First, as Stephen noted he misquoted Groarke -- substituting "knowledge" for "induction".

Merlin then juxtaposed *part* of the quote from Groarke with a quote from Rand, highlighting a single word which supposedly makes his case. (link)

I did not include the whole quote because a reader can easily see the rest in post #4. My putting only "impose" in bold was to highlight the similarity. More fully the similarity is that a mind imposes itself on the world, but that phrase doesn't appear verbatim in either citation (from Groarke and Rand). But it is clearly what Groarke said and very Kantian. Stephen agreed.

Roger moves on to Kelley and Peikoff regarding perception (not induction or concepts). Somehow he manages to interpret what they said about perception as like what Groarke said about induction (or a priori concepts?). Despite the fact that Kelley and Peikoff did not use "impose" in what Roger cites, he pulls a switcheroo and insinuates they did, as if "interacting" entails or is equivalent to "imposing". The two words aren't even synonyms. Yet he somehow construes Kelley's and Peikoff's claims to be Kantian. Oh, my!

Stephen - Merlin? Would one of you like to make a *rational* response to my post? (link)

Roger insinuates that his response was rational and Stephen's and mine were not. LOL. It is much more the reverse.

Rand embraced The Westerner, but poetically:

The world was made when I was born

And the world is mine to win.

--Brant

Rand the Kantian?

[Guyau]

Brant, the question should be "Rand the Emersonian?" Emerson is the source of that idea, and though he was enamored significantly with Kant, so far as he understood him, this idea is not from Kant. I can't know if Rand or the author of The Westerner got it from Emerson, for they could have started with anticipations of it in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or they could have gotten it more from scratch. Be the inheritance as it may, the idea is not Kantian, but Emersonian.

I think, Merlin, that when Roger made that entreaty to us in #11 concerning his post #7, it was Wolf’s post #8 he was alluding to as irrational. But they have followed up with perhaps some clarification of where Roger is coming from and how it squares with the really quite sensible points Wolf has raised. It reminds of when you begin to explain Newtonian mechanics to the novice saying “A body continues at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by a force.” And the novice sensibly asks, “Well if that’s the way it works, how come a picture on the wall falls to the floor even though it was subject to the same force of gravity while at rest on the wall and while moving to the floor?” Newton’s scheme will be gotten for it with some further explanation.

The following will be discouraging to some OL readers, but I hope it will encourage others to subscribe to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and to read Roger’s two-part treatise What’s in Your File Folder?

Part One is in V14N2, and its outline is:

Concepts and Propositions

—Identity and Cognition

—A Proposed Expansion of Rand’s Model of Concepts

—The Implications of This Expansion for Understanding Categorical Propositions

—Identity and Truth in Propositions

The Nature and Necessity of Standard Propositional Form

—Level 1 – A New Rationale and Necessity of Standard Propositional Form

—Level 2 – The Necessity of Predicating Wholes of Wholes

—Level 3 – The Fundamental Unity of Existence and Subject-Predicate Propositions

Propositions about Nonexistent Subjects

—When Is a “Contradiction” Not a Contradiction?

—Did Aristotle Goof––Or Has He Been Misinterpreted by Modern Logicians?

—When Is “Nonsense” Not Meaningless?

Propositions that Predicate Existence

—How and How Not to Predicate “Existence”

—Application: How and How Not to Predicate “Incompetence”

—If Existence Is a Predicate but Not a Property, Just What Kind of Thing Is It?

—Much Ado about Everything

Axioms, Axiomatic Concepts, and the Cognitive Role of Propositions

—But What about Randian Gobbledygook?

—Clarifying the Cognitive Division of Labor between Axioms and Axiomatic Concepts

—But Why Even Discuss the Axioms?

—Clarifying the Division of Labor between Propositions and Concepts

Part Two is in V15N2, and its outline is:

The Dual-Aspect Nature of “The Objective” as an Essential Characteristic of Rand’s Epistemology

The Role of the Dual-Aspect “Objective” in Direct Awareness

—Object, Subject, Content, Form: Identifying the Poles of Perception

—Object vs. Content, Subject (and Act) vs. Form: Exploring the Poles of Perception

—Some Brief Comments on the Poles of Introspection

Concepts and the Dual-Aspect “Objective”

—The Dual-Aspect Nature of Conceptual Units, “Simplex” Units, Concepts, Classes

—What’s in Their File Folder? The Nature of Conceptual Contents

—Identifying Dual-Aspect Objective in Concrete (Individual and Collective) Concepts

Propositions and the Dual-Aspect “Objective”

—Duplex Units, File Folders, “The Objective” in Propositions

—Duplex Units, Facts (Existence and Identity), Truth as Dual-Aspect

—Implications: Agent-Centered Truth, Truth vs. Facts, “Accidental” Truth, and “Good Guesses”

—Syllogisms and the Dual-Aspect “Objective”

—Identity, Existence, Cause, and Effect in a Three-Level Ontology of Existence, Facts, and Reasons

—Triplex Units, File Folders, Reasons (Causes and Effects), “The Objective” in Syllogisms

—Implications: Soundness vs. Validity, Triplex Units, Junk Truth, and False Syllogisms

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aristotle remarked “Philosophy begins in wonder.”

To which Nozick added “It never ends.”

[merjet]

I think, Merlin, that when Roger made that entreaty to us in #11 concerning his post #7, it was Wolf’s post #8 he was alluding to as irrational.

Okay, I can buy that. I took it the way I did because he used our names, not Wolf’s.

[Brant Gaede]

Actions, reactions, interactions.

That's all these words are about.

What happened (to the discussion)?

--Brant

Edited December 26, 2015 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, the question should be "Rand the Emersonian?" Emerson is the source of that idea, and though he was enamored significantly with Kant, so far as he understood him, this idea is not from Kant. I can't know if Rand or the author of The Westerner got it from Emerson, for they could have started with anticipations of it in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or they could have gotten it more from scratch. Be the inheritance as it may, the idea is not Kantian, but Emersonian.

I think, Merlin, that when Roger made that entreaty to us in #11 concerning his post #7, it was Wolf’s post #8 he was alluding to as irrational. But they have followed up with perhaps some clarification of where Roger is coming from and how it squares with the really quite sensible points Wolf has raised. It reminds of when you begin to explain Newtonian mechanics to the novice saying “A body continues at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by a force.” And the novice sensibly asks, “Well if that’s the way it works, how come a picture on the wall falls to the floor even though it was subject to the same force of gravity while at rest on the wall and while moving to the floor?” Newton’s scheme will be gotten for it with some further explanation.

Between you and Roger and Merlin, I'm really in over my head here. I don't feel adequate for the dense writing of the discussion. For instance, I'll never try to read Kant.

I don't dig the epistemology of metaphysics the way you guys do.

For me it's reason applied to reality, just like science is suppose to do it.

Bring in the data; let's get to work: science, ethics, politics, etc.

ITOE clarifies scientific methodology already in action, but adds nothing to it insofar as I understand. That's good for science because so many scientists are backsliding these days. I do not recall in my reading of it, though, any references to it as such.

I think Rand and Objectivism and Objectivists have come up short with science, reason, critical thinking, etc., and I think the reason is the threat to the philosophical edifice on which Rand had expended so much work, now ready to teach as good and right though in some ways not complete. Atlas Shrugged as revelation and Objectivism as salvation. See it, think it, know it, be it. Conform or be destroyed; that's the blessing of reading the sacred texts. The philosophy "is its own avenger." (Rand, "To Whom it May Concern," The Objectivist, May, 1968 [published in the early fall].) But one acts on a philosophy as a primary while the philosophy acts on oneself as a secondary and it's all in one's head. The same when we observe the sun and feel its heat. We don't affect the sun nor the philosophy. We should be able (and permitted) to affect the philosophy but aren't allowed. That's classical Objectivism. We can't affect the sun. The philosophy is epistemology, the sun pure metaphysics. The interactions are between the two, but the contradictions appear when we attempt to cleave apart one from the other by some sort of dubious equation. Axiomatically, that's a no-no. So we have what I see as stupid arguments, except, as I said, I'm in over my head here and likely confused about something important.

--Brant

"The truth? You [not you] can't handle the truth!"

[Wolf DeVoon]

Actions, reactions, interactions.

That's all all these words are about.

What happened (to the discussion)?

--Brant

It became a technical discussion of theories pertaining to perception vs sensation. You and I were on the same page.

"Interaction" is dubious because the action of the first actor, call it the sun (or stimulus), may interact with the receiver, a man, but the man's action in return is not a stimulus back to the sun.

[Jonathan]

I've never said that perception interacts with or affects other entities. I certainly didn't say a sunburn interacts with the Sun. Where do you get such looney notions??

I said that a conscious, perceiving entity (living organism) interacts with things in the world, and that the product of that interaction is the content of awareness by that perceiving entity of the perceived entity.

We, the sunburned organisms certainly do interact with the sun - both in being sunburned by it, and in being aware of its heat and light. Do you deny this? Of course not. And as Selene pointed out, we sunburned, perceiving organisms, in so interacting, are indeed doing something (remote control) to the sun: we are blocking a certain stream of its rays (i.e., a certain portion of its action) - just as the car at the front of the chain reaction pileup does something to the car in the rear who caused it, namely, blocks/absorbs/etc. some of that rear car's action (transmitted through the other cars). They enter into a *system* of interacting entities - the cars, the sun, rays, and organisms.

I know this is probably very difficult to understand, but please do try to wrap your mind around it.

However, it's no use trying to get my goat. I've already sold it.

REB

Oops, there's angry Roger indulging in the initiation of ridiculing, smearing and name calling again! Now prepare for him to whine when someone responds to him in kind, and be ready for him to throw tantrums and delete others' posts, and to pout and take his ball and go home! Why, he won't tolerate such disrespect! There's no place for it, except for when he indulges in it!

J

[Jonathan]

Btw, it's fun watching people like Roger and Stephen argue with others when they (Roger and Stephen) actually know their stuff. They bring it! They produce evidence and make rational arguments. And they're sharp and persistent. It's quite a contrast to the methods that they use when they don't know their stuff: whining, evasion, deleting others' posts, dodging, complaining that they're not being respected, running away and resenting others' persistence.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Oops, there's angry Roger indulging in the initiation of ridiculing, smearing and name calling again! Now prepare for him to whine when someone responds to him in kind, and be ready for him to throw tantrums and delete others' posts, and to pout and take his ball and go home! Why, he won't tolerate such disrespect! There's no place for it, except for when he indulges in it!

J

Roger can't so delete. It's not his Corner.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Oops, there's angry Roger indulging in the initiation of ridiculing, smearing and name calling again! Now prepare for him to whine when someone responds to him in kind, and be ready for him to throw tantrums and delete others' posts, and to pout and take his ball and go home! Why, he won't tolerate such disrespect! There's no place for it, except for when he indulges in it!

J

Roger can't so delete. It's not his Corner.

--Brant

We don't know that for sure. Angry, wimpy Roger has had some moderator powers here on OL in the past, and it's possible that he may have the power to act as a sort of surrogate chickenshit and delete posts in Sciabarra's "corner."

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] it's possible that [Roger] may have the power to act as a sort of surrogate chickenshit and delete posts in Sciabarra's "corner."

I've taken the precaution of copying all the posts (minus links) made thus far in this thread in case.

Ellen

[anthony]

hey, some of us are trying to learn something here! Predict the thread's demise, its demise it will be.

[Brant Gaede]

Oops, there's angry Roger indulging in the initiation of ridiculing, smearing and name calling again! Now prepare for him to whine when someone responds to him in kind, and be ready for him to throw tantrums and delete others' posts, and to pout and take his ball and go home! Why, he won't tolerate such disrespect! There's no place for it, except for when he indulges in it!

J

Roger can't so delete. It's not his Corner.

--Brant

We don't know that for sure. Angry, wimpy Roger has had some moderator powers here on OL in the past, and it's possible that he may have the power to act as a sort of surrogate chickenshit and delete posts in Sciabarra's "corner."

J

If the thread he deleted was not out of his own Corner he has the power to lock and/or delete any thread and has abused that power. If not, it must simply be a left over power from OL's early days for he is a moderator on "All Forums." I asked Michael about this last night and he's looking into it. I think he started the deleted thread. That wouldn't make him a bad guy on this. It's a confusing and very un-lucid situation.

--Brant

but if I could have that ~power~ I'd really clean up this joint! (hint, hint)

[Roger Bissell]

It's good to know that Ellen Stuttle is on the ball, taking precautions in case I act like a sort of surrogate chickenshit. Together, she and Jonathan and Wolf make an unbeatable team against the queers and dick-lickers and wimpy pussies and frauds.

[Wolf DeVoon]

It's good to know that Ellen Stuttle is on the ball, taking precautions in case I act like a sort of surrogate chickenshit. Together, she and Jonathan and Wolf make an unbeatable team against the queers and dick-lickers and wimpy pussies and frauds.

How is this meaningful content?

[Brant Gaede]

It's good to know that Ellen Stuttle is on the ball, taking precautions in case I act like a sort of surrogate chickenshit. Together, she and Jonathan and Wolf make an unbeatable team against the queers and dick-lickers and wimpy pussies and frauds.

How is this meaningful content?

Ellen over-reacted a little bit. Then Roger over-reacted more. It's like watching billiard balls hitting each other.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

It's good to know that Ellen Stuttle is on the ball, taking precautions in case I act like a sort of surrogate chickenshit. Together, she and Jonathan and Wolf make an unbeatable team against the queers and dick-lickers and wimpy pussies and frauds.

How is this meaningful content?

It's not. The issue is that Roger believes that he is owed respect and adulation from us little peasants. He sees himself as a serious, published, intellectual giant whose ideas are not to be criticized or challenged, and he is not to receive in turn what he dishes out. He may ridicule and name-call us, but we must not do the same to His Royal Published Majesty.

J

[Guyau]

Oops!

We managed to have some discussion of the content of JARS V15N2, Roger's contribution in particular, for about two pages of this thread, and now, for the last ten posts or so, we wandered off into the usual junk. When a visitor to the site now clicks on the most recent post to this thread there on the OL front page, what they get is this junk (and my talk of junk, which more junk-talk), a full page of it. For reasons unknown to me, this sort of personal nastiness does not increase number of reads at these sites the way it did ten years ago. Perhaps Facebook is part of the change. (I didn't see Ellen's remark or effort as nasty, rather, something positive and in good faith, given the opacity there had been on the editorial capabilities of co-leaders of various Corners [and for that matter, opacity on the editorial capabilities anywhere on the site of persons designated VIP].)

[Roger Bissell]

Michael has encouraged me to discuss the things important to me in my Corner, rather than elsewhere (like here). And since I really would like to encourage a discussion with Stephen on this material, and if I had the nefarious super-powers with which I cannot be trusted, I would simply move this thread to my Corner and prune (an editorial function granted to the privileged few) the garbage from it.

But by using ordinary mortal powers of Copy and Paste, I will do the next best thing and start a new thread in my own Corner - sort of a mega quote (which function does not work for me, nor do most of the emoticons). (Even to do the C&P, I first have to shunt the material into a text file, then again shunt it into an OL text window. Design flaw of some sort going on here.)

Not to fear, though - all the material, including the trash, will remain right here in Chris Sciabarra's Corner. (As always, my "initiating" of nastiness against anyone here on OL will be confined to retaliating against those who do it to me first.)