The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out


Robert Campbell

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Does he mention Heraclitus? Is there an index? Is there a reason Disintegration could only have begun after the enlightenment?

ND,

The book has an index. Actually, a pretty good one.

Heraclitus, so far as I can determine, is mentioned just once (on p. 196), as part of the historical background to Greek physics.

I can sort of see Peikoff starting the D clock with empiricist responses to the advent of modern science. But then David Hume should be a definite D1, if not a D2.

Such a late arrival for the Ds is a source of puzzlement...

Robert Campbell

Note added September 11: The index was compiled by Tore Boeckmann. I've been rough on Boeckmann in the past, but his index is good and thorough.

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My copy hasn't come yet. I get the explanation so far he's trying to explain what is what and why, not coming with better thinking going forward. Am I wrong?

--Brant

is DIM an attempt to get up to Rand-speed or could Rand have used this stuff or both?

is LP having a problem with essentialization?

bitter medicine?

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Brant,

Although Peikoff would not want to see his project identified this way, he seems to be trying to extend the old Attila vs. Witch Doctor model.

Attila-ism = Disintegration

Genuine rationality = Integration

Witchdoctory = Misintegration

However, Kant's position has been shifted in the classification, and new examples or case studies (e.g., Stoic physics, Newtonian physics) have been added.

Robert Campbell

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Although Peikoff would not want to see his project identified this way, he seems to be trying to extend the old Attila vs. Witch Doctor model.

Attila-ism = Disintegration

Genuine rationality = Integration

Witchdoctory = Misintegration

Robert,

I like it.

It's good to see Nathaniel Branden at the root of DIM. A precursor, in fact.

:)

(Just feelin' wicked... :) )

Michael

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Unh, that was Ayn, Michael. No?

--Brant

She credited Attila and Witchdoctor to NB. It's in FTNI.

Thx. I suspected it but my copy of the book is in storage.

LP owes his career more to NB than AR even. No NBI--?

It's not that he couldn't have been successful, but it would have been in many different possible ways

--Brant

and no break in '68?

if the Blumenthals hadn't split?

what he needed to do was under Hook, not Rand; under Hook he could have been his own man, philosopher and all and achieved respectable academic employment in the mid-60s

NB was so crazy brilliant he needed to be under Rand just to Gestalt through it all--then he was trapped but got busted out through his own humanity and nefaridity

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ND,

I spotted another allusion to Heraclitus, in the notes to Chapter 7 on Education:

In his collectivist aspect, Dewey may be said to endorse a One of sorts, a Heraclitean One, so to speak: a flux of peer groups that absorb the individual. (p. 355, n. 105)

Well before this point, The DIM Hypothesis has presented Dewey's ideas as a follow-on to Kant's.

Robert Campbell

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I just got the Kindle sample, but I'm not feeling drawn to it. I'll give it a try before long.

I mention Heraclitus because he seems like the earliest representative of disintegration, though I suppose we really don't have enough of his material to know his system. I referenced him in my Cato/Peikoff/Libertarianism video, like a motif representing change, then when I had to name my new YouTube channel, I had Heraclitus on the brain you might say. Hence, I'm HeraclitusPantaRei. Could be worse, I could have picked KantsDeontologicalEthics or HegelsTriad. Damn, the last one looks cool, like the perfect name for a thrash metal group.

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ND,

I suppose we'll be finding out soon enough, with John Allison saying one thing to the audience at OCON and quite another to the top people at Cato, just how many things are in flux.

In the Western tradition, Heraclitus does seem like the earliest known representative of what Peikoff is calling disintegration.

Peikoff gave the opposition between Heraclitus and Parmenides a fair amount of attention in his early 1970s lectures on the history of philosophy from Thales to Hume.

Robert Campbell

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I suppose we'll be finding out soon enough, with John Allison saying one thing to the audience at OCON and quite another to the top people at Cato, just how many things are in flux.

The most recent statement was the one to Cato, so it ought to get the most weight. If Andrew Bernstein said something like that he'd have to do the sackcloth and ashes routine again, to get back in good graces. I can't visualize Allison performing that ritual.

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A key passage:

The concepts of valid and invalid integration are epistemological. not evaluative; the difference between the two lies in the method of the integrator, not in the value of the product he creates. In most cases, to continue our example, Galileo's method does lead to truth, while Nostradamus's does not. But such a correlation is not invariable. A mystic can stumble into what others know to be a truth, and a scientist into an error. The lucky mystic, however, has still integrated invalidly, while the unfortunate scientist, though mistaken, has integrated validly.

An example of the latter can be found in the work of Kepler. Integrating facts he had observed with empirical knowledge earlier established by Gilbert and Brahe, he came to a false conclusion about the nature of the force exerted by the sun on the planets. His method of thought was rational, though its result was mistaken. His integration, therefore, was valid. Since fallibility is a human attribute, no norm, such as rationality—and no cognitive process, such as integration—can be defined in such a way as require infallibility. Error as such is not a breach of reason nor of any principle of cognition, unless it is error reached by a rejection of reason or of such principles. (p. 19)

Robert Campbell

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A key passage:

The concepts of valid and invalid integration are epistemological. not evaluative; the difference between the two lies in the method of the integrator, not in the value of the product he creates. In most cases, to continue our example, Galileo's method does lead to truth, while Nostradamus's does not. But such a correlation is not invariable. A mystic can stumble into what others know to be a truth, and a scientist into an error. The lucky mystic, however, has still integrated invalidly, while the unfortunate scientist, though mistaken, has integrated validly.

An example of the latter can be found in the work of Kepler. Integrating facts he had observed with empirical knowledge earlier established by Gilbert and Brahe, he came to a false conclusion about the nature of the force exerted by the sun on the planets. His method of thought was rational, though its result was mistaken. His integration, therefore, was valid. Since fallibility is a human attribute, no norm, such as rationality—and no cognitive process, such as integration—can be defined in such a way as require infallibility. Error as such is not a breach of reason nor of any principle of cognition, unless it is error reached by a rejection of reason or of such principles. (p. 19)

Robert Campbell

Robert:

A question that unfortunately needs to be asked: based upon your reading, does it look like LP knows what he's talking about?

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Thanks for asking that PDS. Having already urged Robert to read faster, I did not want to nag him.

I will claim the Regular's Privilege of quoting myself and repeat that by outline this looks like a sequel -"Why the Parallels are Really, Really Ominous."

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See also p. 101, where Peikoff repeats an old swipe: "it will come as no surprise that the father of Modernist art is generally recognized to be Kant through the Critique of Judgment, his treatise on art." But no more than half of the Critique of Judgment is about art, and Kant's actual aesthetic theory, in "The Analytic of the Beautiful," has nothing to do with Modernism. No need to refine, correct, or improve anything.

Does Peikoff offer anything to support his opinions?

The claim that Kant is "generally recognized" to be the father of Modernist art is laughable. In fact, I think that no one other than Rand, Peikoff and few of her other followers believe that to be true.

Does Peikoff give any quotes from the Critique of Judgment, or any specific analysis of what he takes to be Kant's views, or are his accusations as vague and meaningless as Rand's?

J

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Jonathan,

Peikoff doesn't quote from the Critique of Judgment. Since he's made no use of it in any of his other writing, I have to wonder whether he's read it. He seems to be reprising Rand's old accusation.

Robert Campbell

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The claim that Kant is "generally recognized" to be the father of Modernist art is laughable. In fact, I think that no one other than Rand, Peikoff and few of her other followers believe that to be true.

Somehow this quote seems relevant:

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

Karl Kraus

With a little tweaking it’s adaptable to the situation at hand.

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Returning to the passage I quoted above, from page 19 of The DIM Hypothesis, I see Peikoff contending with some fundamental difficulties.

The book appears to presuppose the truth of epistemological theories previously presented in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, such as validationism (the theory of truth as the product of a valid cognitive process), contextual certainty, and the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion.

Yet none of these views is explicitly presented anywhere in The DIM Hypothesis. For instance, the word "arbitrary" appears regularly, and such epithets as "floating" and "detached from reality" duly make their appearance, but nowhere does Peikoff say (in this book) that what is asserted arbitrarily is neither true nor false.

Meanwhile, Peikoff seems to be trying to avoid the conclusion that any proposition that results from disintegrated or misintegrated thinking must either be false or arbitrary (and, in the latter case, lacking a truth value). He seems to be trying avoid concluding that whatever results from properly integrated thinking must therefore be true.

A mystic can stumble into what others know to be a truth, and a scientist into an error. The lucky mystic, however, has still integrated invalidly, while the unfortunate scientist, though mistaken, has integrated validly.

Note the qualification: "what others know."

Peikoff won't grant, in this passage, that misintegrated thinking can ever produce a true conclusion—because when a misintegrated thinker asserts such a conclusion, it will be arbitrary. Another thinker, who is more inclined toward proper integration, may be able to assert the very same conclusion truly. For Peikoff, arbitrariness is a function, not merely of the content of the assertion, but of the person who made it.

An example of the latter can be found in the work of Kepler. Integrating facts he had observed with empirical knowledge earlier established by Gilbert and Brahe, he came to a false conclusion about the nature of the force exerted by the sun on the planets. His method of thought was rational, though its result was mistaken. His integration, therefore, was valid.

But if Kepler's integration was valid, how from Peikoff's point of view, can his conclusion not have been valid?

And, how, in turn, could it not have been true? (Peikoff goes on to say that Kepler was able to come up with the correct conclusion a little later on. But wasn't Kepler entitled to contextual certainty that his previous conclusion was true? At least until he came up with his new, improved conclusion.)

Here validationism is rubbing up against the correspondence theory of truth, with rope burns likely to ensue. But in The DIM Hypothesis, Peikoff is not stating his underlying validationism—nor is he actually stating most of the other distinctive features of Peikovian epistemology. Instead, he works from a very quick net-out of Ayn Rand's theory of concepts and an even quicker net-out of Peikovian proof (pp. 7-10).

More in a little while about the Peikovian proof part...

Robert Campbell

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