Christopher Hitchens has passed away - well he has the answer now...


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Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

Enlarge This Image 16hitchens2_337-articleInline-v2.jpg

Mark Mahaney for The New York Times

Christopher Hitchens in his home in Washington, D.C. in 2007.

Mark Mahaney for The New York Times

Christopher Hitchens at his Washington, D.C., home in 2007.

The cause was pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, said the magazine Vanity Fair, which announced the death. In recent days Mr. Hitchens had stopped treatment and entered hospice care at the Houston hospital. He learned he had cancer while on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir, “Hitch-22,” and began writing and, on television, speaking about his illness frequently.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62-obituary.html?emc=na

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Richard Dawkins Praises Hitchens for Proving that there are “Atheists in Foxholes”

Dawkins praised Hitchens for his continuance of atheism even in the face of death and for proving that there were indeed, “atheists in foxholes,”. . .

Hitchens, who had announced his battle with cancer in 2010, continued to advocate and hold on to his beliefs about science and reason throughout his sickness, despite beliefs by some that he would relent and turn to God.

“We have the same job we always had,” he told the crowd, “to say that there are no final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours.”

We can praise Hitchens for his brilliance and for his principled courage in the face of death, but, like so many secularists, he perpetrated an enormous and deadly philosophical error—skepticism. To equate religion with a belief in “absolute truth” is to concede that there is no objective reality—or else that we cannot know it. In other words, we have to choose between faith and certainty. Science cannot yield genuine knowledge. “Freedom of inquiry” never truly leads to anything approaching an ultimate grasp of the truth.

Human beings naturally crave certainty. They do not wish to live in a world of Heracletian flux. Historically, phases of philosophical skepticism have always led mankind back to religious dogmatism. And the pattern will hold until thinkers grasp that reason alone can provide a clear, accurate perception of an absolute reality.

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Richard Dawkins Praises Hitchens for Proving that there are “Atheists in Foxholes”

Dawkins praised Hitchens for his continuance of atheism even in the face of death and for proving that there were indeed, “atheists in foxholes,”. . .

Hitchens, who had announced his battle with cancer in 2010, continued to advocate and hold on to his beliefs about science and reason throughout his sickness, despite beliefs by some that he would relent and turn to God.

“We have the same job we always had,” he told the crowd, “to say that there are no final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours.”

We can praise Hitchens for his brilliance and for his principled courage in the face of death, but, like so many secularists, he perpetrated an enormous and deadly philosophical error—skepticism. To equate religion with a belief in “absolute truth” is to concede that there is no objective reality—or else that we cannot know it. In other words, we have to choose between faith and certainty. Science cannot yield genuine knowledge. “Freedom of inquiry” never truly leads to anything approaching an ultimate grasp of the truth.

Human beings naturally crave certainty. They do not wish to live in a world of Heracletian flux. Historically, phases of philosophical skepticism have always led mankind back to religious dogmatism. And the pattern will hold until thinkers grasp that reason alone can provide a clear, accurate perception of an absolute reality.

Dennis,

You might be misinterpreting Dawkins.

Remember that Dawkins is from the British Empiricist tradition. When a B.E. talks about "absolute truth" they typically mean what we Objectivists would call "intrinsic truth," i.e. the idea that knowledge is revealed and/or self-evident and/or acontextual and one need only open one's mental eyes to 'see' the truth.

The BE tradition targets (primarily) the Continental Rationalist tradition, which argued all truth could be deduced from a priori, innate, "self-evident" and "intuitive" first principles without any recourse to empirical evidence.

The CR tradition isn't always evil... it gave us Mises after all. However, and this is a very important point made by both Hayek and Karl Popper, every totalitarian movement of the modern era is based on Continental Rationalism to some extent. Marxism and Fascism are both products of the German Idealist tradition, which is a later mutation/development of Continental Rationalism.

Dawkins, when discussing "absolute truth" talks about "totalitarian solutions" and giving up freedom of inquiry and critical faculties. This indicates that Dawkins is not talking about the Objectivist theory of knowledge but rather about Intrinsicist theories of knowledge (and religions typically are Intrinsicist theories of knowledge).

Dawkins is a "skeptic" in the soft, empirical sense, i.e. "show me evidence." He is not a skeptic in the sense of believing knowledge is impossible. Dawkins merely believes that all knowledge is tentative... a position which, may I add, Objectivism supports.

That said, Christopher Hitchens' passing is an extraordinarily sad moment. I found the man brilliant and hilarious, and whilst I do not agree with him on everything, I absolutely respect his championing of Enlightenment ideals.

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SD, I think your summary above is excellent. I've copied it for future reference. I've been heavily reading Popper lately -- I'd never read most of Popper's work, though of course he's referenced often in scientific discourse. My conclusion so far is that Popperians and Objectivists are much more in agreement than is generally recognized by either group, as you indicate here:

Dawkins is a "skeptic" in the soft, empirical sense, i.e. "show me evidence." He is not a skeptic in the sense of believing knowledge is impossible. Dawkins merely believes that all knowledge is tentative... a position which, may I add, Objectivism supports.

I think there is a difference, though. Popper -- unfortunately imo, since he undercuts his own case -- extends skepticism to *all* knowledge, accepting the possibility that non-realist metaphysics might be correct, though he was strongly convinced it wasn't. I'm thinking that this concession is the Achilles Heel of modern empiricism.

I haven't followed Hitchens and don't know if he, like Popper, acceded to the possibility of a non-realist metaphysics being correct. I'd be interested to hear if he rejected such ideas as "It might all be a dream."

I'm sad to hear of Hitchens' death, though I wasn't a follwer of his work. He sounds to me as if he was "on the right side," whatever differences I might have with his views if I were familiar with them. I don't want to deflect the thread from the subject of Hitchens' accomplishments. I just wanted to register that I think you've zeroed in on a very important difference between skeptics such as Popper, Hayek, Dawkins, and I suppose Hitchens and the sort of universal skeptics Rand excoriated.

Ellen

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SD, I think your summary above is excellent. I've copied it for future reference. I've been heavily reading Popper lately -- I'd never read most of Popper's work, though of course he's referenced often in scientific discourse. My conclusion so far is that Popperians and Objectivists are much more in agreement than is generally recognized by either group, as you indicate here:
Dawkins is a "skeptic" in the soft, empirical sense, i.e. "show me evidence." He is not a skeptic in the sense of believing knowledge is impossible. Dawkins merely believes that all knowledge is tentative... a position which, may I add, Objectivism supports.

I just wanted to register that I think you've zeroed in on a very important difference between skeptics such as Popper, Hayek, Dawkins, and I suppose Hitchens and the sort of universal skeptics Rand excoriated. Ellen

Ms Stuttle,

My sincere thanks.

I admit, it pains me to see how Objectivists can be so hostile to people like Hayek... Hayek was, after all, foremost a critic of the Continental Rationalist abuse of reason. He wasn't against reason-as-characterized-by-Rand. They actually have many similarities (some of which are briefly touched on in my Masters Thesis which you can find in the "Articles" section).

But yes, back on topic. Thanks again for your compliment.

Speaking of Hitchens, he (ironically) was a big fan of certain Continental Rationalists... specifically Spinoza (but Spinoza has some great points in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest so Spinoza isn't all bad). Plus, he was (in a very general sense) a kind of Marxist (or perhaps "influenced strongly by Marxism" would be a better way to put it).

Still, even in spite of that, the man was a brilliant advocate for atheism and a man I have nothing but respect for.

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This is sad news, though expected. How about some mirth? Here's a funny quote from the AP report:

Hitchens was an old-fashioned sensualist who abstained from clean living as if it were just another kind of church. In 2005, he would recall a trip to Aspen, Colo., and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.

"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition," he wrote. "What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case. `Sir, that would be inappropriate.' In what respect? `At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.' In that case, I said, make it a double."

Even better, here's his indepth linguistic and cultural analysis of fellatio:

http://www.vanityfai.../hitchens200607

This piece appears in his latest collection, Arguably. Typically, for the audiobook versions of his works, he did the reading. He had a great voice and delivery. Here, presumably because of his health, another reader, Simon Prebble, did the reading. Prebble has a proper British accent, and sounds, well, proper. That makes this piece all the funnier, very deadpan, but for now you'll just have to take my word for that and content yourself with reading it.

My friend David Aaronovitch, a columnist in London, wrote of his embarrassment at being in the same room as his young daughter when the TV blared the news that the president of the United States had received oral sex in an Oval Office vestibule. He felt crucially better, but still shy, when the little girl asked him, “Daddy, what’s a vestibule?”

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Thus passes one of the Four Horsemen. He was the deadly enemy of Bullshit and Cant.

I will miss his wit.

Goodbye Christopher and Fight On.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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This is sad news, though expected. How about some mirth? Here's a funny quote from the AP report:

Hitchens was an old-fashioned sensualist who abstained from clean living as if it were just another kind of church. In 2005, he would recall a trip to Aspen, Colo., and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.

"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition," he wrote. "What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case. `Sir, that would be inappropriate.' In what respect? `At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.' In that case, I said, make it a double."

Even better, here's his indepth linguistic and cultural analysis of fellatio:

http://www.vanityfai.../hitchens200607

This piece appears in his latest collection, Arguably. Typically, for the audiobook versions of his works, he did the reading. He had a great voice and delivery. Here, presumably because of his health, another reader, Simon Prebble, did the reading. Prebble has a proper British accent, and sounds, well, proper. That makes this piece all the funnier, but you'll just have to take my word for that and content yourself with reading it.

My friend David Aaronovitch, a columnist in London, wrote of his embarrassment at being in the same room as his young daughter when the TV blared the news that the president of the United States had received oral sex in an Oval Office vestibule. He felt crucially better, but still shy, when the little girl asked him, “Daddy, what’s a vestibule?”

ND: couldn't agree more. And his memoir, Hitch 22, is well worth the read as well.

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I take strong exception to the subtitle used in the title of this thread, “well, he has the answer now....” It strongly implies, no doubt intended, that now that he is dead, he will know the Truth of God’s existence and of an afterlife.

From an Objectivist (and therefore, atheist) perspective, that - of course,- would not be true. A deceased Hitchens (or anyone else) will not “know” anything. There is no afterlife in which to “know,” in. The irrationality of the concept of God and of an afterlife should not need to be reiterated on an Objectivist-oriented website. But for those that need a refresher course, see Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith. Or Chapter Four, “The Concept of God,” in The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism (N. Branden, 2009).

As usual, some theists are rejoicing in the death of a non-believer. Unable to refute the arguments of a Hitchens or a Mencken, they trumpet that now that the blasphemers are dead, they will know the error of their ways. Some theists go on to relish in their fantasy of the deceased atheist subjected to eternal damnation and roasting in a hell. So much for the theists' elief in a compassionate forgiving god. These thoughts also gives the Believers some smug satisfaction and relieves them of the burden of refuting the atheist’s arguments. This reveals a lot more about their character than they would like.

The association or partnership or unholy alliance, if you will, between mysticism and suffering is too well known to need much proof. You have all heard such statements as: “Men need faith for consolation in their sorrow,” or “Only faith can help you in your hour of need,” or “There are no atheists in foxholes.” And not many people have thought about inquiring whether the gentlemen who offer you protection in such emergencies were the same ones who created the sorrow, the need, and the foxhole.

Of all the arguments advocating faith in God, this last, the one pertaining to the foxhole, is perhaps the most disgraceful. That argument alone would be sufficient to make one reject such faith. It implies that terror is the normal metaphysical condition of man’s existence, and that he should choose his philosophical convictions accordingly, that he should prepare himself not for the achievement of happiness, but for the position of being helplessly delivered to destruction—that the symbol of his existence is not a skyscraper or an industrial plant, but a shell-torn battlefield—and that he should be motivated not by any love for values, not by any desire to achieve them, but by fear of destruction and by the desire to escape it. (Branden, 2009, pp 116-117).

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We can praise Hitchens for his brilliance and for his principled courage in the face of death, but, like so many secularists, he perpetrated an enormous and deadly philosophical error—skepticism.

I do not recall Hitchens denying the possibility of any kind of knowledge or all knowledge. He was an anti-absolutist. And rightly so. Humans are error prone so their surest knowledge is open to modification as more facts become known. That last fact is not known and the last word has not been said.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I take strong exception to the subtitle used in the title of this thread, “well, he has the answer now....” It strongly implies, no doubt intended, that now that he is dead, he will know the Truth of God’s existence and of an afterlife.

Jerry:

The qualifier might have been confusing. It was almost 2 A.M. and I had a long day. However, I do not know what lies on the "other side" of life. I will not close my mind to any possibility.

However, I understand your taking exception with the qualifier.

Adam

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This one was more for the OO crowd:

Here’s material from Hitchens as relates to Ayn Rand and Objectivism. While his overall attitude was certainly negative, I feel he distinguished himself by not engaging in outright misrepresentation. If only all critics were as honest.

Here’s an article he wrote in 2001, featuring interview quotes from Nathaniel Branden and John McCaskey.

http://web.archive.o...3,16581,FF.html

Here are comments he made at a book-signing event in Miami.

http://www.objectivi...ndpost&p=101006

And here are some photos of him with some TAS people, from when he spoke at one of their events. I gather he wanted to include an essay by Rand (Requiem for Man?) in his collection of Atheist writings, and was not just refused, but was given some kind of wearisome runaround by the estate, leading him to have a lower opinion of, well you know, that group (ARI etc).

toc-dc-west21-B.jpg

Hitchens-02.jpg

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Dennis,

You might be misinterpreting Dawkins.

Remember that Dawkins is from the British Empiricist tradition. When a B.E. talks about "absolute truth" they typically mean what we Objectivists would call "intrinsic truth," i.e. the idea that knowledge is revealed and/or self-evident and/or acontextual and one need only open one's mental eyes to 'see' the truth.

The BE tradition targets (primarily) the Continental Rationalist tradition, which argued all truth could be deduced from a priori, innate, "self-evident" and "intuitive" first principles without any recourse to empirical evidence.

The CR tradition isn't always evil... it gave us Mises after all. However, and this is a very important point made by both Hayek and Karl Popper, every totalitarian movement of the modern era is based on Continental Rationalism to some extent. Marxism and Fascism are both products of the German Idealist tradition, which is a later mutation/development of Continental Rationalism.

Dawkins, when discussing "absolute truth" talks about "totalitarian solutions" and giving up freedom of inquiry and critical faculties. This indicates that Dawkins is not talking about the Objectivist theory of knowledge but rather about Intrinsicist theories of knowledge (and religions typically are Intrinsicist theories of knowledge).

Dawkins is a "skeptic" in the soft, empirical sense, i.e. "show me evidence." He is not a skeptic in the sense of believing knowledge is impossible. Dawkins merely believes that all knowledge is tentative... a position which, may I add, Objectivism supports.

That said, Christopher Hitchens' passing is an extraordinarily sad moment. I found the man brilliant and hilarious, and whilst I do not agree with him on everything, I absolutely respect his championing of Enlightenment ideals.

Andrew,

Please note that the quoted statement is from Hitchens, not Dawkins.

Like most skeptics, Hitchens considered “totalitarian” movements to be founded upon notions of “absolute truth,” as if the two were inextricably tied together. That’s the whole problem. The foundation of totalitarianism is the emotionalist assault on reason, of which religious faith is one type. The quasi-scientific mysticism which provided the basis for Nazism and Marxist-Leninism is another. The task of Objectivism is to show how “absolute truth” can only be attained through reason, and that reason requires political freedom in order to flourish.

It is most definitely not true, incidentally, that Objectivism supports the notion that all knowledge is “tentative.” Omigod! Ayn Rand would spin in her grave if she heard that. Objectivism holds that all knowledge is contextual. There’s a huge difference. David Harriman’s Logical Leap is all about this issue.

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We can praise Hitchens for his brilliance and for his principled courage in the face of death, but, like so many secularists, he perpetrated an enormous and deadly philosophical error—skepticism.

I do not recall Hitchens denying the possibility of any kind of knowledge or all knowledge. He was an anti-absolutist. And rightly so. Humans are error prone so their surest knowledge is open to modification as more facts become known. That last fact is not known and the last word has not been said.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

If you deny the possibility of "absolute knowledge" (or truth), you deny the possibility of knowledge. As I indicated to Andrew, knowledge is contextual, and therefore open to revision. At a given stage of available factual data, some knowledge is "absolute" (or beyond question) and some knowledge is largely hypothetical.

For instance: The fact that, now that Christopher Hitchens has died, he no longer exists, is absolute. Whether or not Elvis Presley is, in fact, dead, however, is purely hypothetical.

(That was a joke. But hopefully you get the point.)

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Great Hitchens moment:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HECI4QK_mXA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Awful Hitchens moment:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/An6CeNRCBvo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Love him or hate him, he was his own man.

That's a good thing and a fitting standard for a life well lived.

Rest in peace.

Michael

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If you deny the possibility of "absolute knowledge" (or truth), you deny the possibility of knowledge. As I indicated to Andrew, knowledge is contextual, and therefore open to revision. At a given stage of available factual data, some knowledge is "absolute" (or beyond question) and some knowledge is largely hypothetical.

Short of the law of non-contradiction which we require to keep our thinking bounded what absolute do you know of. We need the law of non-contradiction to maintain a distinction between what is true and what is false. If the law of non-contradiction does not hold, than any declarative sentence about the world is true.

Our best source of knowledge of the world is physical science. Not one theory currently supported by fact is believed to be absolutely true. The best one can of our most beloved theories is ---- not, so far, falsified by experiment.

If physics cannot come up with something absolutely true, what can? Philosophy? And what is that? Hot air and word-salad.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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If you deny the possibility of "absolute knowledge" (or truth), you deny the possibility of knowledge. As I indicated to Andrew, knowledge is contextual, and therefore open to revision. At a given stage of available factual data, some knowledge is "absolute" (or beyond question) and some knowledge is largely hypothetical.

Short of the law of non-contradiction which we require to keep our thinking bounded what absolute do you know of. We need the law of non-contradiction to maintain a distinction between what is true and what is false. If the law of non-contradiction does not hold, than any declarative sentence about the world is true.

Our best source of knowledge of the world is physical science. Not one theory currently supported by fact is believed to be absolutely true. The best one can of our most beloved theories is ---- not, so far, falsified by experiment.

If physics cannot come up with something absolutely true, what can? Philosophy? And what is that? Hot air and word-salad.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Science: reality, reason, truth

Objectivism: reality, reason, truth

It's not that there is no philosophy of science, only that you are purblind to it.

--Brant

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Dennis,

You might be misinterpreting Dawkins.

Remember that Dawkins is from the British Empiricist tradition. When a B.E. talks about "absolute truth" they typically mean what we Objectivists would call "intrinsic truth," i.e. the idea that knowledge is revealed and/or self-evident and/or acontextual and one need only open one's mental eyes to 'see' the truth.

The BE tradition targets (primarily) the Continental Rationalist tradition, which argued all truth could be deduced from a priori, innate, "self-evident" and "intuitive" first principles without any recourse to empirical evidence.

The CR tradition isn't always evil... it gave us Mises after all. However, and this is a very important point made by both Hayek and Karl Popper, every totalitarian movement of the modern era is based on Continental Rationalism to some extent. Marxism and Fascism are both products of the German Idealist tradition, which is a later mutation/development of Continental Rationalism.

Dawkins, when discussing "absolute truth" talks about "totalitarian solutions" and giving up freedom of inquiry and critical faculties. This indicates that Dawkins is not talking about the Objectivist theory of knowledge but rather about Intrinsicist theories of knowledge (and religions typically are Intrinsicist theories of knowledge).

Dawkins is a "skeptic" in the soft, empirical sense, i.e. "show me evidence." He is not a skeptic in the sense of believing knowledge is impossible. Dawkins merely believes that all knowledge is tentative... a position which, may I add, Objectivism supports.

That said, Christopher Hitchens' passing is an extraordinarily sad moment. I found the man brilliant and hilarious, and whilst I do not agree with him on everything, I absolutely respect his championing of Enlightenment ideals.

Andrew,

Please note that the quoted statement is from Hitchens, not Dawkins.

Thanks for the clarification.

Like most skeptics, Hitchens considered “totalitarian” movements to be founded upon notions of “absolute truth,” as if the two were inextricably tied together. That’s the whole problem.

And I still stand by the fact that when Hitchens talks about "absolute truth" he is talking about what we Objectivists would call "intrinsic truth." He singles out religion and totalitarianism as examples, and in both cases they are based on intrinsicism.

The foundation of totalitarianism is the emotionalist assault on reason, of which religious faith is one type. The quasi-scientific mysticism which provided the basis for Nazism and Marxist-Leninism is another.

I never said that totalitarianism was against reason. It is. What I said was that philosophically speaking Totalitarian philosophies are typically descended from Continental Rationalism, which is epistemologically intrinsicist.

The task of Objectivism is to show how “absolute truth” can only be attained through reason, and that reason requires political freedom in order to flourish.

"Reason" in Objectivism is very very different from "reason" as understood by Continental Rationalists. And "absolute truth" in Objectivism means something much softer than "absolute truth" as understood by Continental Rationalists.

You're assuming that Hitchens etc. is using the same definitions as Objectivism does. He isn't. Trust me, I've completed several philosophy courses; there is a massive language barrier between Objectivese and Academese.

And the refusal of some Objectivists to phrase arguments in Academese is one of the primary reasons that people keep misinterpreting Objectivism as a form of Continental Rationalism.

not true, incidentally, that Objectivism supports the notion that all knowledge is “tentative.” Omigod! Ayn Rand would spin in her grave if she heard that. Objectivism holds that all knowledge is contextual. There’s a huge difference.

If abstract knowledge is permanently open to expansion, revision, recontextualization, and correction, then it is tentative by the definition I've heard and it is clearly tentative in the scientific sense of the term. Maybe other Objectivists have harsher definitions of "tentative" but by the one I'm aware of, Objectivism does argue knowledge is tentative.

If you want to play the "More Oist Than Thou game with me, go ahead. Go through my Masters Thesis and try to find any instances where I've "perverted" Objectivism.

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.

You're assuming that Hitchens etc. is using the same definitions as Objectivism does. He isn't. Trust me, I've completed several philosophy courses; there is a massive language barrier between Objectivese and Academese.

There is a massive language barrier between Objectivists and the rest of the world. I have suggested that a dollar sign "$" should be prefixed to all Objectivist neologisms. Hence $Intrinist, $Logic, and such like.

The real problem comes when Objectivists insist that anyone who uses words differently than they do are clearly in the wrong.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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If abstract knowledge is permanently open to expansion, revision, recontextualization, and correction, then it is tentative by the definition I've heard and it is clearly tentative in the scientific sense of the term. Maybe other Objectivists have harsher definitions of "tentative" but by the one I'm aware of, Objectivism does argue knowledge is tentative.

If you want to play the "More Oist Than Thou game with me, go ahead. Go through my Masters Thesis and try to find any instances where I've "perverted" Objectivism.

Andrew,

If you believe that Objectivism endorses the view that all knowledge is tentative, you could not be more wrong. By pointing that out to you, I'm not playing a "game." Ludwig Wittgenstein might call this sort of dispute a "game." Objectivists, myself included, absolutely do not.

Religion does view truth as "intrinsic" in the sense of being valid without regard to evidence or context. But when skeptics argue against that notion, they throw the baby out with the bath water by claiming that, because knowledge is contextual, we can never attain "absolute truth"--i.e., certainty that something is true beyond all doubt. You (and Hitchens) are doing the exact same thing.

Here is the Objectivist view as explained by Peikoff in one of his podcasts:

What is a contextual absolute?

The question is: "What exactly is a contextual absolute? I’ve heard critics say that this is just another way of saying ‘definitely maybe.” Can you explain why this is not true?"

It’s not maybe because ‘maybe’ means uncertainty and a contextual absolute is certain. It is certainty within what we know, within the context of evidence that is available. Some preponderance of evidence within the totality as explained in OPAR. It is absolute even though our knowledge is limited because it can never be overthrown by future knowledge—not if it was reached properly on the basis of the evidence, because the evidence which led to it by that very fact delimits its applicability. So if Newton studies the speeds accessible to us and draws conclusions about those speeds (other than the speed of light), and then Einstein discovers differences with the speed of light, that does not refute Newton.

Everything that Newton found out about terrestrial speeds within the framework of his observations was absolutely correct and remains true. Newton’s observations made industrial civilization possible. So if Einstein should later discover a special case that is an exception, that would not refute Newton. If your conclusion is reached by a proper method and within your limited context of evidence, it will never be refuted. That’s what we mean when we say something is a contextual absolute.

The alternative is to assert an unchangeable certainty as true without evidence and without context—like a mystical revelation—in which case you’re talking about a belief with no evidence, and that puts you outside the realm of any rational discussion.

(NOTE: I did some minor rephrasing of Peikoff's extemporaneous remarks for clarity.)

The 'mystical revelation' Peikoff refers to is what you call "intrinsic truth," and, to repeat, you are right that this is how religionists view "absolute truth." The problem with you and Hitchens is that you don't understand that "absolute truth" (in the sense of absolutely certain knowledge) can be attained contextually. The fact that absolute certainty can be acquired through reason--in other words, that man's mind can know reality--is the epistemological foundation of Objectivism.

To call the importance of that distinction a "game" is to undermine Objectivism and everything Ayn Rand stood for.

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We can praise Hitchens for his brilliance and for his principled courage in the face of death, but, like so many secularists, he perpetrated an enormous and deadly philosophical error—skepticism. To equate religion with a belief in “absolute truth” is to concede that there is no objective reality—or else that we cannot know it. In other words, we have to choose between faith and certainty. Science cannot yield genuine knowledge. “Freedom of inquiry” never truly leads to anything approaching an ultimate grasp of the truth. Human beings naturally crave certainty. They do not wish to live in a world of Heracletian flux. Historically, phases of philosophical skepticism have always led mankind back to religious dogmatism. And the pattern will hold until thinkers grasp that reason alone can provide a clear, accurate perception of an absolute reality.

I think what Hitchens attacked is religion's claim to possess absolute truth.

It is a non-sequitur to infer from this justified criticism that the critic thereby concedes that there is no objective reality.

For skepticism about a specific issue is not the same as skepticism about everything.

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As per a request by Bob Kolker, Michael started another thread called "Scientific Certainty."

See post #14 of that thread for a brief reply disagreeing with Dennis' statement in post #15:

It is most definitely not true, incidentally, that Objectivism supports the notion that all knowledge is "tentative."  Omigod!  Ayn Rand would spin in her grave if she heard that.  Objectivism holds that all knowledge is contextual.  There's a huge difference. David Harriman's Logical Leap is all about this issue.
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The 'mystical revelation' Peikoff refers to is what you call "intrinsic truth," and, to repeat, you are right that this is how religionists view "absolute truth." The problem with you and Hitchens is that you don't understand that "absolute truth" (in the sense of absolutely certain knowledge) can be attained contextually. The fact that absolute certainty can be acquired through reason--in other words, that man's mind can know reality--is the epistemological foundation of Objectivism.

The point I am making is that Hitchens (and the British Empiricist tradition broadly) also accepts the Religionist's definition of "absolute truth" (i.e. "absolute truth" = "intrinsic truth").

I do accept that reason can reach (contextually) absolute truth. But to someone like Hitchens a "contextual absolute" is a contradiction in terms. To put it in Objectivist terms, a "contextual absolute" reads as "Contextually Acontextual."

This doesn't mean that Hitchens believes reason is useless. He's a very strong advocate of human reason (even if, on technical details, he probably has some differences with Objectivism in describing how reason operates). He simply believes that one must always be open to new evidence and never take any empirical statement for granted.

Again, you're assuming that Hitchens is using Objectivese when he isn't.

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