Objectivism is an Individualist Philosophy

[James Heaps-Nelson]

James,

I agree totally with your post. In my mind, you belong in the small category of "genuinely nice Objectivists." I like to think I'm a member as well! I think the members of this category should post wherever the heck they want to. In terms of all the squabbles that go on, I think I've settled on the approach of just "going on record" as to my position (not that many people would care anyway), and then moving on.

Laure,

You put it better than I could have. I also know of many genuinely nice Objectivists who are never heard from because they don't want to deal with this stuff and I can hardly blame them. I think their number might be more than you think .

Jim

[Philip Coates]

> It's a little known fact in Objectivist circles that there is a flowering technology first adopter libertarian movement that has little to do with the CATO, Libertarian Party and other well-known elements of the libertarian establishment. This movement can be found in institutes such as the Foresight Institute, the Institute for Accelerating Change, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute and the Emerging Technologies Conferences at MIT. This technolibertarian first adopter culture should be prime territory for the spread of Objectivism, but it has barely been tapped.

Jim, I'm not sure I'm following this - or have heard of any of these dudes - or why they are prime territory. Perhaps you could start with what a "technolibertarian first adopter culture" is? I only understand the word culture in that phrase :-)

Thanks,

Phil

[James Heaps-Nelson]

> It's a little known fact in Objectivist circles that there is a flowering technology first adopter libertarian movement that has little to do with the CATO, Libertarian Party and other well-known elements of the libertarian establishment. This movement can be found in institutes such as the Foresight Institute, the Institute for Accelerating Change, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute and the Emerging Technologies Conferences at MIT. This technolibertarian first adopter culture should be prime territory for the spread of Objectivism, but it has barely been tapped.

Jim, I'm not sure I'm following this - or have heard of any of these dudes - or why they are prime territory. Perhaps you could start with what a "technolibertarian first adopter culture" is? I only understand the word culture in that phrase :-)

Thanks,

Phil

Phil,

In 1999 and 2000, Virginia Postrel had a couple of conferences in Silicon Valley called Dynamic Visions Conferences and she organized them under the umbrella of her book The Future and its Enemies. The theme of the conferences was the conlict between dynamists/stasists. Unfortunately those conferences didn't continue after that, but I met a whole bunch of high-achieving technical folks that were very receptive to hearing about Ayn Rand. The only Objectivist I saw there was Don Heath :-). Anyway, my point is that there is subculture within libertarianism that is primarily concerned with the newest advances in technology and I think that these people are particularly receptive to Objectivism.

Jim

[BaalChatzaf]

Phil,

In 1999 and 2000, Virginia Postrel had a couple of conferences in Silicon Valley called Dynamic Visions Conferences and she organized them under the umbrella of her book The Future and its Enemies. The theme of the conferences was the conlict between dynamists/stasists. Unfortunately those conferences didn't continue after that, but I met a whole bunch of high-achieving technical folks that were very receptive to hearing about Ayn Rand. The only Objectivist I saw there was Don Heath :-). Anyway, my point is that there is subculture within libertarianism that is primarily concerned with the newest advances in technology and I think that these people are particularly receptive to Objectivism.

Jim

Do these folks -remain- receptive to Objectivism when they read the Peikovian objections to quantum physics? How do they react to the orthodox Objectivist denigration of mathematics as -mere method-?

I speak as one who is not an Objectivist but who is very much interested in the kinds of issues and questions that Objectivists raise. Living in the Age of Post Modernism, it is refreshing to see folks who believe reality is real and not merely socially conditioned opinion. Even so, I find LP's pronouncements on physics as rather grating and annoying. He does not have the knowledge of either physics or mathematics to make such judgments. On other forums, I have seen similar assertions by folk who deem themselves to be True Objectivists. I will be very frank here. I am underwhelmed by both Ayn Rand's grasp of science and math and truly annoyed by LP who has an academic background and has shown less than sterling scholarship in the way he puts forth his views.

Discussions, si! Polemics, no!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Phil,

In 1999 and 2000, Virginia Postrel had a couple of conferences in Silicon Valley called Dynamic Visions Conferences and she organized them under the umbrella of her book The Future and its Enemies. The theme of the conferences was the conlict between dynamists/stasists. Unfortunately those conferences didn't continue after that, but I met a whole bunch of high-achieving technical folks that were very receptive to hearing about Ayn Rand. The only Objectivist I saw there was Don Heath :-). Anyway, my point is that there is subculture within libertarianism that is primarily concerned with the newest advances in technology and I think that these people are particularly receptive to Objectivism.

Jim

Do these folks -remain- receptive to Objectivism when they read the Peikovian objections to quantum physics? How do they react to the orthodox Objectivist denigration of mathematics as -mere method-?

I speak as one who is not an Objectivist but who is very much interested in the kinds of issues and questions that Objectivists raise. Living in the Age of Post Modernism, it is refreshing to see folks who believe reality is real and not merely socially conditioned opinion. Even so, I find LP's pronouncements on physics as rather grating and annoying. He does not have the knowledge of either physics or mathematics to make such judgments. On other forums, I have seen similar assertions by folk who deem themselves to be True Objectivists. I will be very frank here. I am underwhelmed by both Ayn Rand's grasp of science and math and truly annoyed by LP who has an academic background and has shown less than sterling scholarship in the way he puts forth his views.

Discussions, si! Polemics, no!

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

I couldn't agree more. Ayn Rand didn't say much about math and science and knew when to keep her mouth shut. Peikoff is another story.

Jim

[Chris Grieb]

"Peikoff is another story." And not a good one!

Edited May 30, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Steve Gagne]

"Peikoff is another story." And not a good one!

Well considering he's 74 that shouldn't be a concern too much longer. Who's going to be the intellectual heir to the "intellectual heir-head"?

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Well as of today, I'm officially engaged in a fab startup so my participation here and elsewhere over the next several months will limited. Good luck to everyone and good premises!

Jim

[Dragonfly]

I couldn't agree more. Ayn Rand didn't say much about math and science and knew when to keep her mouth shut. Peikoff is another story.

Indeed. Rand was in that regard much more cautious than Peikoff. Not only the Peikoff of the recent DIM course (see here) but also the Peikoff of The Ominous Parallels, which was written under close supervision of Rand. Peikoff didn't keep his mouth shut about science even then. See for example

here (scroll down to "Hoisted from Comments: Peikoff's Weird Science"). It is curious that Rand who must have sanctioned every sentence in TOP, including Peikoff's rants against modern science, was in her official publications much more reserved. The next quote is from Rand and could never have been written by Peikoff: "Cosmology" has to be thrown out of philosophy... If so, then philosophy is worse than a useless science, because it usurps the domain of physics and proposes to solve the problems of physics by some nonscientific, and therefore mystical, means. On this kind of view of philosophy, it is logical that philosophy has dangled on the strings of physics ever since the Renaissance and that every new discovery of physics has blasted philosophy sky-high, such as, for instance, the discovery of the nature of color giving a traumatic shock to philosophers, from which they have not yet recovered. In fact, this kind of view merely means: rationalizing from an arrested state of knowledge.

I wonder if Rand used Peikoff as a proxy for saying things she wouldn't take responsibility for herself while she felt she was on thin ice here. Peikoff certainly hasn't had reservations about adopting cosmology in philosophy, contrary to Rand's statement.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I wonder if Rand used Peikoff as a proxy for saying things she wouldn't take responsibility for herself while she felt she was on thin ice here. Peikoff certainly hasn't had reservations about adopting cosmology in philosophy, contrary to Rand's statement.

Dragonfly,

This is speculation (as is your question), but I really don't think so. I believe the things I linked to here regarding Dennett are the real explanation. When a person is focused on one thing, he misses many others within the range of awareness, even if he observes them later.

When Rand was focused on Peikoff, she had in mind that she was going to sanction him as an Objectivist author, so her focus was on getting him in shape and focused on his premises, not his examples. I think something like the cosmology thing escaped her awareness within that context.

If asked about it directly, I have no doubt she would have repeated her thought from the journals.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Jim; Good luck with all your endeavors. Have a good trip to Taiwan. We look forward to your return.

Edited May 30, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Dragonfly]

When Rand was focused on Peikoff, she had in mind that she was going to sanction him as an Objectivist author, so her focus was on getting him in shape and focused on his premises, not his examples. I think something like the cosmology thing escaped her awareness within that context.

I find that difficult to believe. TOP was 14 years "forthcoming", which can only mean that Rand has relentlessly and endlessly scrutinized and criticized every word and that it has been rewritten many times (wouldn't it be interesting to see all the previous versions and her comments, I'm afraid Peikoff won't show them...). I can't imagine that Rand would have missed the tenor of that passage, it was long enough and not some small subordinate clause that might be missed (not that I think Rand would have missed even the smallest subordinate clause in Peikoff's work).

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

It is all speculation, of course. But I find the idea of Rand trying to sneak in some kind of irrational view of cosmology through Peikoff a bit strained. If her focus had been to bash the views of someone, OK, I can go along. But to say that she was indirectly positing an Objectivist cosmology, I find that difficult to imagine. I think she just wasn't aware of the implication that Peikoff's views implied an Objectivist cosmology.

Also, this directly flies in the face of her own view of what philosophy is, even later in life. The following is is from ITOE, expanded edition (2nd), p. 289-290.

Philosophic vs. Scientific Issues

Prof. B: Is the concept of "matter" a philosophical concept or a scientific one?

AR: In the way we are using it here, as a very broad abstraction, it is a philosophical concept. If by "matter" we mean "that of which all the things we perceive are made," that is a philosophical concept. But questions like: what are different things made of? what are the properties of matter? how can you break it down? etc.—those are scientific problems.

Philosophy by its nature has to be based only on that which is available to the knowledge of any man with a normal mental equipment. Philosophy is not dependent on the discoveries of science; the reverse is true.

So whenever you are in doubt about what is or is not a philosophical subject, ask yourself whether you need a specialized knowledge, beyond the knowledge available to you as a normal adult, unaided by any special knowledge or special instruments. And if the answer is possible to you on that basis alone, you are dealing with a philosophical question. If to answer it you would need training in physics, or psychology, or special equipment, etc., then you are dealing with a derivative or scientific field of knowledge, not philosophy.

Prof. B: I'd like to apply this to the "mind-brain" issue—that is, what is the relation of conscious activity to brain activity? That would be a scientific question.

AR: Yes.

Prof. B: With certain provisos from philosophy, such as that consciousness is causally efficacious and that free will is possible.

AR: Philosophy would have to define the terms of that question. In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts. But then actually to find the specific relationship, that's a scientific question.

Properties of the Ultimate Constituents

Prof. E: Could you argue, on metaphysical grounds, that all observed properties of an entity are ultimately explicable in terms of, or reducible back to, properties of their primary constituents?

AR: We'd have to be omniscient to know. The question in my mind would be: how can we [as philosophers] make conclusions about the ultimate constituents of the universe? For instance, we couldn't say: everything is material, if by "material" we mean that of which the physical objects on the perceptual level are made—"material" in the normal, perceptual meaning of the word. If this is what we mean by "material," then we do not have the knowledge to say that ultimately everything is sub-subatomic particles which in certain aggregates are matter. Because suppose scientists discovered that there are two different kinds of primary ingredients—or three, or more? We would be in the same position as the pre-Socratics who were trying to claim that everything was air, water, earth, and fire because that's all they knew.

Michael

[Daniel Barnes]

Ayn Rand: In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts.

Yes, those poor, dimwitted, mere scientists, who need Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff around to tell them what the words "mind" and "brain" mean!

[Brant Gaede]

Ayn Rand: In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts.

Yes, those poor, dimwitted, mere scientists, who need Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff around to tell them what the words "mind" and "brain" mean!

She was speaking from her context and perspective. Please quote a scientist who spoke to this matter from his.

BTW, if you despise and contemn Ayn Rand, why are you here?

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

Her statement was absurd and deserves scorn. Should philosophers tell scientists what the definitions of "atom", "electron", "DNA", "evolution" or "electromagnetic field" are? What a pretense!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Daniel and Dragonfly,

You guys misunderstand Rand's definition of philosophy.

Philosophy is nothing more than an instruction manual for understanding the world with normal mental equipment and sense organs. You have to do that before you can even have higher learning. Notice that all units of measurement start with something directly observable, often the general size of a body part.

Philosophy is like the ABC's and grammar. Science is like literature. Rand had the greatest respect for science.

Peikoff apparently does what you guys do and promotes a silly war between philosophy and science. Stretching Rand's meaning to mean what she did not mean or confusing her with Peikoff is simply incorrect. If you want to criticize her, at least get the issues right.

When she mentioned mind and brain, she was talking about core concepts (and that is why she used the term "general"). If you don't know what an elephant is, how are you going to dissect one? Philosophy tells you how to identify elephants. Science tells you how they are made. The same with mind and brain.

Dayaamm! Is that so hard to understand?

What on earth is the value of misrepresenting someone?

Michael

[Guyau]

Circa 197O

Gotthelf: I'd like to apply this to the "mind-brain" issue—that is, what is the relation of conscious activity to brain activity? That would be a scientific question.

Rand: Yes.

Gotthelf: With certain provisos from philosophy, such as that consciousness is causally efficacious and that free will is possible.

Rand: Philosophy would have to define the terms of that question. In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts. But then actually to find the specific relationship, that's a scientific question.

1968

“Biology without Consciousness” in The Objectivist. In this essay, neuroscientist Robert Efron clarifies concepts in his science with help from Rand’s philosophy.

The statements above by Rand and Gotthelf are not deserving of scorn. Furthermore, we the readers here are not scientific ignoramuses standing in need of enlightenment from those whose diurnal song is denigration of Rand’s philosophy. “Nobler purposes we have I’m sure.”

2003

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 461 pages). This book is coauthored by M. R. Bennett, neuroscientist, and P. M. S. Hacker, philosopher.

For additional discussion of the book here, see #87 and #89 in the thread “Science and Philosophy?” in the OL sector Science and Mathematics (Jan 2007).

From the back cover:

"Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories, including those of Blakemore, Crick, Damasio, Edelman, Gazzaniga, Kandel, Kosslyn, LeDoux, Penrose, and Weiskrantz. They propose that conceptual confusions about how the brain relates to the mind affect the intelligibility of research carried out by neuroscientists, in terms of the questions they choose to address, the description and interpretation of results, and the conclusions they draw."

"The book forms both a critique of the practice of cognitive neuroscience and a conceptual handbook for students and researchers."

From the Table of Contents:

Part I - Philosophical Problems in Neuroscience: Their Historical and Conceptual Roots

1 The Early Growth of Neuroscientific Knowledge: The Integrative Action of the Nervous System

2 The Cortex and the Mind in the Work of Sherrington and His Proteges

3 The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience

3.1 Mereological Confusions in Cognitive Neuroscience

3.3 On the Grounds for Ascribing Psychological Predicates to a Being

3.4 On the Grounds for Misascribing Psychological Predicates to an Inner Entity

3.5 The Inner

3.6 Introspection

3.7 Privileged Access: Direct and Indirect

3.8 Privacy or Subjectivity

3.9 The Meaning of Psychological Predicates and How They Are Learnt

Part II - Human Faculties and Contemporary Neuroscience: An Analysis

4 Sensation and Perception

4.1 Sensation

4.2 Perception

4.2.1 Perception as the Causation of Sensations: Primary and Secondary Qualities

4.2.2 Perception as Hypothesis Formation: Helmholtz

4.2.3 Visual Images and the Binding Problem

4.2.4 Perception as Information Processing: Marr

5 The Cognitive Powers

5.1 Knowledge and Its Kinship with Ability

5.2 Memory

6 The Cogitative Powers

6.1 Belief

6.2 Thinking

6.3 Imagination and Mental Images

6.3.1 The Logical Features of Mental Imagery

7 Emotion

8 Volition and Voluntary Movement

Part III - Consciousness and Contemporary Neuroscience: An Analysis

9 Intransitive and Transitive Consciousness

10 Conscious Experience, Mental States, and Qualia

11 Puzzles about Consciousness

11.2 On Reconciling Consciousness or Subjectivity with Our Conception of an Objective Reality

11.3 On the Question of How Physical Processes Can Give Rise to Conscious Experience

11.4 Of the Evolutionary Value of Consciousness

11.5 The Problem of Awareness

11.6 Other Minds and Other Animals

12 Self-Consciousness

Part IV - On Method

13 Reductionism

13.1 Ontological and Explanatory Reductionism

13.2 Reduction by Elimination

13.2.1 Are Our Ordinary Psychological Concepts Theoretical?

13.2.2 Are Everyday Generalizations about Human Psychology Laws of a Theory?

13.2.3 Eliminating All that Is Human

13.2.4 Sawing Off the Branch on which One Sits

14 Methodological Reflections

14.1 Linguistic Inertia and Conceptual Innovation

14.2 The 'Poverty of English' Argument

14.3 From Nonsense to Sense: The Proper Description of the Results of Commissurotomy

14.3.1 The Case of Blind-Sight: Misdescription and Illusory Explanation

14.4 Philosophy and Neuroscience

14.4.1 What Philosophy Can and What It Cannot Do

14.4.2 What Neuroscience Can and What It Cannot Do

Appendix 1 - Daniel Dennett

Appendix 2 - John Searle

[BaalChatzaf]

Ayn Rand: In asking what's the relationship between "mind" and "brain," scientists have to know what they mean by the two concepts. It's philosophy that would have to tell them the [general] definitions of those concepts.

Yes, those poor, dimwitted, mere scientists, who need Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff around to tell them what the words "mind" and "brain" mean!

She was speaking from her context and perspective. Please quote a scientist who spoke to this matter from his.

BTW, if you despise and contemn Ayn Rand, why are you here?

--Brant

It is possible to applaud Ayn Rand for her defense of capitalism and be quite annoyed with her presumptions in the matters of science and mathematics. I have learned to ignore every pronouncement Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikof have made concerning science and mathematics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Rodney]

"Furthermore, we the readers here are not scientific ignoramuses standing in need of enlightenment from those whose diurnal song is denigration of Rand’s philosophy."

Well put!

Watch your tone, please, gentlemen. And don't repeat the canards of the past as if they were reference points that we had overlooked.

[Brant Gaede]

Her statement was absurd and deserves scorn. Should philosophers tell scientists what the definitions of "atom", "electron", "DNA", "evolution" or "electromagnetic field" are? What a pretense!

It deserves discussion, at least to some small extent, since it was quoted here. You really don't get much rigor in that give-and-take in ITOE. It is worth noting, that while AR is quoted extensively in that appendix, those cannot be considered her actual statements, but Peikoff's, until we can see the original, unmodified, uncorrected material. For me, it's little more than garbage or ALL Peikoff. Note, that even if she was quoted accurately, if she had reviewed and edited her remarks for publication, she could well have thrown them away or come up with a statement more acceptable to you.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It is possible to applaud Ayn Rand for her defense of capitalism and be quite annoyed with her presumptions in the matters of science and mathematics. I have learned to ignore every pronouncement Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff have made concerning science and mathematics.

Bob,

I will not cover Peikoff here, but as to Rand, I presume that you are referring specifically to comments like the following:

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. IV, No. 1, October 1975, “From The Horse's Mouth”

Now observe the breach between the physical sciences and the humanities. Although the progress of theoretical science is slowing down (by reason of a flawed epistemology, among other things), the momentum of the Aristotelian past is so great that science is still moving forward, while the humanities are bankrupt.

Or maybe this:

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “What Is Capitalism?”, p. 11

The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious, process in the course of modern science.

Today's frantic development in the field of technology has a quality reminiscent of the days preceding the economic crash of 1929: riding on the momentum of the past, on the unacknowledged remnants of an Aristotelian epistemology, it is a hectic, feverish expansion, heedless of the fact that its theoretical account is long since overdrawn—that in the field of scientific theory, unable to integrate or interpret their own data, scientists are abetting the resurgence of a primitive mysticism. In the humanities, however, the crash is past, the depression has set in, and the collapse of science is all but complete.

If these kinds of statements are what you meant, I agree with you. But even within the same essay in CUI that had such a horrible beginning, one can still find other statements about science. Is the following worthy of being ignored (with the implication that it is nonsense)?

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, “What Is Capitalism?”, p. 15

A physical science would not permit itself (not yet, at least) to ignore or bypass the nature of its subject. Such an attempt would mean: a science of astronomy that gazed at the sky, but refused to study individual stars, planets, and satellites—or a science of medicine that studied disease, without any knowledge or criterion of health, and took, as its basic subject of study, a hospital as a whole, never focusing on individual patients.

I did a small search on the CDROM and I simply came up with too many quotes to ignore. In fact, if you wish to “ignore every pronouncement” on science and mathematics Rand ever made, you will be hard put to find anything left over to read.

I also admit that there are some controversial matters where Rand was too broad to be useful. But even in such cases, I do find some measure of truth to what she is saying. A good example is the following.

I recently read an article by Popper and, although he is not a Logical Positivist, I did find his rhetoric leaning in the direction of the two quotes from the opening essay in For the New Intellectual below. What is strange is that the essay I read ("Two Kinds of Definition" by Karl Popper, with link and comment by me in this post) does not bear up to the description Rand gives below (and I suspect this will be true of several science philosophers when I get to them), but many arguments I have read on the old SoloHQ epistemology threads and some of the ones here on OL, and at several other places, by people who hold to, er… let’s call it a direction insinuated in the rhetoric, actually have proposed the ideas Rand mentioned. Thus, although I have encountered one work by an actual heavy-weight that seemed to be that way but wasn’t, I have also found many arguments by lighter-weights put forth that actually are that way.

(In fact, the same can be said of Objectivism, that some of Rand’s admirers adhere to her rhetoric and not to the ideas.)

I don’t know if you really find the kind of comments below as worthy of being ignored or not (although you stated you did). I found them very useful in my own study and discussions. They present a clear categorization of one possibility to serve as a standard of evaluation, if nothing else. This has helped me when I have navigated the big words (which I almost always look up) and the dry (boring) writing style.

For the New Intellectual, “For the New Intellectual”

(p. 34-35)

The scientist was offered a slightly different version of philosophy. As a defense against the Witch-doctory of Hegel, who claimed universal omniscience, the scientist was offered the combined neo-mystic Witch-doctory and Attila-ism of the Logical Positivists. They assured him that such concepts as metaphysics or existence or reality or thing or matter or mind are meaningless—let the mystics care whether they exist or not, a scientist does not have to know it; the task of theoretical science is the manipulation of symbols, and scientists are the special elite whose symbols have the magic power of making reality conform to their will ("matter is that which fits mathematical equations"). Knowledge, they said, consists, not of facts, but of words, words unrelated to objects, words of an arbitrary social convention, as an irreducible primary; thus knowledge is merely a matter of manipulating language. The job of scientists, they said, is not the study of reality, but the creation of arbitrary constructs by means of arbitrary sounds, and any construct is as valid as another, since the criterion of validity is only "convenience" and the definition of science is "that which the scientists do." But this omnipotent power, surpassing the dreams of ancient numerologists or of medieval alchemists, was granted to the scientist by philosophical Atillaism on two conditions: a. that he never claim certainty for his knowledge, since certainty is unknowable to man, and that he claim, instead, "percentages of probability," not troubling himself with such questions as how one calculates percentages of the unknowable; b. that he claim as absolute knowledge the proposition that all values lie outside the sphere of science, that reason is impotent to deal with morality, that moral values are a matter of subjective choice, dictated by one's feelings, not one's mind.

. . .

(p. 44)

The last stand of Attila-ism, both in philosophy and in science, is the concerted assertion of all the neo-mystics that integration is impossible and unscientific. The escape from the conceptual level of consciousness, the progressive contraction of man's vision down to Attila's range, has now reached its ultimate climax. Withdrawing from reality and responsibility, the neo-mystics proclaim that no entities exist, only relationships, and that one may study relationships without anything to relate, and, simultaneously, that every datum is single and discrete, and no datum can ever be related to any other data—that context is irrelevant, that anything may be proved or disproved in midair and midstream, and the narrower the subject of study, the better—that myopia is the hallmark of a thinker or a scientist.

System-building—the integration of knowledge into a coherent sum and a consistent view of reality—is denounced by all the Attila-ists as irrational, mystical and unscientific. This is Attila's perennial way of surrendering to the Witch Doctor—and it explains why so many scientists are turning to God or to such flights of mysticism of their own as would make even an old-fashioned Witch Doctor blush. No consciousness can accept disintegration as a normal and permanent state. Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy;, it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

I hate to say it, but I have even encountered the following kinds of arguments proposed in all seriousness, almost in the same terms. (Well, the second usually comes with a bit of sugar to help it go down, but when pressed for clarity, this has been the essence.) Do you think Rand was off base to present these views in such a critical light?

Atlas Shrugged, p, 318 (quoting the book, Why Do You Think You Think?)

"The giants of the intellect, whom you admire so much, once taught you that the earth was flat and that the atom was the smallest particle of matter. The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies, not of achievements."

Atlas Shrugged, p, 863 (Dr. Robert Stadler, radio broadcast announcing the cyclotron)

An enlightened citizenry should abandon the superstitious worship of logic and the outmoded reliance on reason. Just as laymen leave medicine to doctors and electronics to engineers, so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking to the experts and have faith in the experts' higher authority. Only experts are able to understand the discoveries of modern science, which have proved that thought is an illusion and that the mind is a myth.

Let’s look at math. Do you really find the following statements by Rand worthy of being ignored (thus insinuating that they are nonsense)?

Atlas Shrugged, p, 54 (talking about Dagny)

She felt the same emotion in school, in classes of mathematics, the only lessons she liked. She felt the excitement of solving problems, the insolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to meet another, harder test. She felt, at the same time, a growing respect for the adversary, for a science that was so clean, so strict, so luminously rational. Studying mathematics, she felt, quite simply and at once: "How great that men have done this" and "How wonderful that I'm so good at it."

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “Cognition and Measurement,” p. 8

Mathematics is the science of measurement.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts,” pp. 63-64

The essence, therefore, of man's incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units—which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty. And the principle of unit-economy is one of that faculty's essential guiding principles.

Observe the operation of that principle in the field of mathematics. If the above described experiment were performed on a man, instead of on crows, he would be able to count and thus to remember a large number of men crossing the clearing (how large a number, would depend on the time available to perceive them all and to count).

A "number" is a mental symbol that integrates units into a single larger unit (or subdivides a unit into fractions) with reference to the basic number of "one," which is the basic mental symbol of "unit." Thus "5" stands for |||||. (Metaphysically, the referents of "5" are any five existents of a specified kind; epistemologically, they are represented by a single symbol.)

Counting is an automatized, lightning-like process of reducing the number of mental units one has to hold. In the process of counting—"one, two, three, four, etc."—a man's consciousness holds only one mental unit at any one moment, the particular mental unit that represents the sum he has identified in reality (without having to retain the perceptual image of the existents composing that sum). If he reaches, say, the sum of 25 (or 250), it is still a single unit, easy to remember and to deal with. But project the state of your own consciousness, if I now proceeded to give you that sum by means of perceptual units, thus: |||||||||| ... etc.

Observe the principle of unit-economy in the structure of the decimal system, which demands of man's mind that it hold only ten symbols (including the zero) and one simple rule of notation for larger numbers or fractions. Observe the algebraic methods by which pages of complex calculations are reduced to a simple, single equation. Mathematics is a science of method (the science of measurement i.e., of establishing quantitative relationships), a cognitive method that enables man to perform an unlimited series of integrations. Mathematics indicates the pattern of the cognitive role of concepts and the psycho-epistemological need they fulfill.

Back to science, here is a small handful of random quotes by Rand. I find them to be correct and often inspirational. Do they really deserve to be ignored as if they were nonsense? I apologize for not providing more. There were just too many.

Atlas Shrugged, p, 178 (conversation between Dr. Stadler and Dagny)

"There are other issues involved, besides questions of fact."

She asked, not quite believing that she had heard him right, "What other issues is science concerned with, besides questions of fact?"

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “Concepts of Consciousness,” p. 35

It is important to note that these concepts are not the equivalent of their existential content—and that they belong to the category of epistemological concepts, with their metaphysical component regarded as their content. For instance, the concept "the science of physics" is not the same thing as the physical phenomena which are the content of the science. The phenomena exist independent of man's knowledge; the science is an organized body of knowledge about these phenomena, acquired by and communicable to a human consciousness. The phenomena would continue to exist, even if no human consciousness remained in existence; the science would not.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 8, January 17, 1972, “The Stimulus...”

Mr. Skinner points out scornfully that primitive men, who were unable to see the difference between living beings and inanimate objects, ascribed the objects' motions to conscious gods or demons, and that science could not begin until this belief was discarded. In the name of science, Mr. Skinner switches defiantly to the other side of the same basic coin: accepting the belief that consciousness is supernatural, he refuses to accept the existence of man's mind.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 8, January 14, 1974, “Philosophy: Who Needs It”

In your own profession, in military science, you know the importance of keeping track of the enemy's weapons, strategy and tactics—and of being prepared to counter them.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, No. 12, March 12, 1973, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made”

For example, two hundred years ago, men would have said that it is impossible to hear a human voice at a distance of 238,000 miles. It is as impossible today as it was then. But if we are able to hear an astronaut's voice coming from the moon, it is by means of the science of electronics, which discovered certain natural phenomena and enabled men to build the kind of equipment that picks up the vibrations of that voice, transmits them, and reproduces them on earth. Without this knowledge and this equipment, centuries of wishing, praying, screaming and foot-stamping would not make a man's voice heard at the distance of ten miles.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “Concept-Formation,” p. 13-14

Another example of implicit measurement can be seen in the process of forming concepts of colors. Man forms such concepts by observing that the various shades of blue are similar, as against the shades of red, and thus differentiating the range of blue from the range of red, of yellow, etc. Centuries passed before science discovered the unit by which colors could actually be measured: the wavelengths of light—a discovery that supported, in terms of mathematical proof, the differentiations that men were and are making in terms of visual similarities.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, No. 13, March 26, 1973, “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made--Part II” (analyzing the Serenity Prayer used in AA meetings)

In regard to nature, "to accept what I cannot change" means to accept the metaphysically given; "to change what I can" means to strive to rearrange the given by acquiring knowledge—as science and technology (e.g., medicine) are doing; "to know the difference" means to know that one cannot rebel against nature and, when no action is possible, one must accept nature serenely.

For the New Intellectual, p. 24

The Renaissance—the rebirth of man's mind—blasted the rule of the Witch Doctor sky-high, setting the earth free of his power. The liberation was not total, nor was it immediate: the convulsions lasted for centuries, but the cultural influence of mysticism—of avowed mysticism—was broken. Men could no longer be told to reject their mind as an impotent tool, when the proof of its potency was so magnificently evident that the lowest perceptual-level mentality was not able fully to evade it: men were seeing the achievements of science.

We strongly disagree if I take you at your word about the worth of Rand's comments on science and math. To me, Rand is so much more than her misfires.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

"Mathematics is the science of measurement"?

I'm no math guy, but that seems really strange--incomplete at least. Does algebra measure?

--Brant

[Daniel Barnes]

Brant:

>BTW, if you despise and contemn Ayn Rand, why are you here?

I'm interested in challenging the quality of her theories - just how true are they? While I do mock some of her and Peikoff's more absurd contentions, such as the above, ultimately I'm interested in why what I view as quite an initially promising philosophy, and certainly one with vastly more publicity than any I can recall short of the Bible, ain't gone nowhere for half a century. I blame Aristotle...;-)

[BaalChatzaf]

"Mathematics is the science of measurement"?

I'm no math guy, but that seems really strange--incomplete at least. Does algebra measure?

--Brant

Some algebraic systems pertain to numeric quantities. Many do not. Algebra is primarily about structures and relationships.

The mathematical field of Algebra includes Groups, Semigroups, , Lattices, Rings, Modules, Vector Spaces, Measure Spaces, Relational Systems and many more topics of interest. The most abstract version of Algebra is Category Theory.

Historically, Mathematics started with counting, reckoning land measurement and distance measurement. But in its mature form mathematics is about abstract structures and relation systems which include numerical systems (real and complex numbers, for example) as special cases.

Ayn Rand's knowledge of mathematics would have corresponded to that of a well schooled high school or gymnasium student of the late 19-th or early 20-th century which is just the schooling she would have received in the Czarist Russia. In terms of where mathematics was at -that time- it was about one hundred years behind the curve.

Ba'al Chatzaf