Another view of Leonard Peikoff

[Philip Coates]

Since the Holon Insurgency Suicide Bombers have taken over this thread --- I wonder if it would be possible for the 'Another View of Leonard Peikoff' thread to spin off somewhere and build it's own blast-resistant, incursion resistant wall?

[Paul Mawdsley]

Since the Holon Insurgency Suicide Bombers have taken over this thread --- I wonder if it would be possible for the 'Another View of Leonard Peikoff' thread to spin off somewhere and build it's own blast-resistant, incursion resistant wall?

Random mutation and natural selection have made Peikoff extinct. The View of Leonard Peikoff was too rigid to survive the forces of evolution, at least on this thread.

[Nicholas Dykes]

Since the Holon Insurgency Suicide Bombers have taken over this thread --- I wonder if it would be possible for the 'Another View of Leonard Peikoff' thread to spin off somewhere and build it's own blast-resistant, incursion resistant wall?

Random mutation and natural selection have made Peikoff extinct. The View of Leonard Peikoff was too rigid to survive the forces of evolution, at least on this thread.

Paul, did you see my post #338 above? It was addressed to you. Nicholas

[Mike Hardy]

One last proof that we do see atoms, or, okay, pairs of atoms here. Look at a cloud of of chlorine gas in a chemical flask under a hood. What is the green stuff that you see, if not atoms of Chlorine?

OK, so we can see _atoms_, but we cannot see _an_ atom. -- Mike Hardy

[Dragonfly]

One last proof that we do see atoms, or, okay, pairs of atoms here. Look at a cloud of of chlorine gas in a chemical flask under a hood. What is the green stuff that you see, if not atoms of Chlorine?

OK, so we can see _atoms_, but we cannot see _an_ atom. -- Mike Hardy

And that was of course what Bob meant: we cannot see individual atoms, but we infer their existence from observation, from which we create a model. After all Bob's previous sentence was:

We generally do not -perceive- the physical processes underlying the phenomena (the appearences). We infer them from observation and we hypothesize causes by abduction.

When we look at a green gas we do not perceive atoms, we perceive a green gas. We have to build a model based on experimental evidence to infer that this gas consists of atoms (well, molecules to be accurate). So in the context of his message Bob's meaning was perfectly clear and correct.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Nick,

Sorry, I missed your post.

BTW: a friend just sent me a birthday present of a T-shirt from The Old Nick (i.e. the old jail) on Danforth in TO. Do you know it by any chance?

LOL! No, I have no intimate knowledge of The Don but I do know The Danforth. I live about half an hour away by car, east on Danforth/Kingston Rd.

Thanks for pointing the way to open system, or radical, O'ists. I just received Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses and am waiting for delivery of Sciabarra's The Russian Radical. In alignment with the evolution of this thread, Sciabarra's dialectics strikes me as being very much top-down thinking. I would think it rubs bottom-up thinkers the wrong way because of difficulties with it making intuitive sense. I have to admit adopting this "top-down" lens requires some effort on my part but the view I have glimpsed is intriguing.

"Ayn Rand left us a magnificent system of ideas. But it is not a closed system. It is a powerful engine of integration. Let us not starve it of fuel by shutting our minds to what is good in other approaches. Let us test our ideas in open debate. If we are right, we have nothing to fear; if we are wrong, we have something to learn. Above all, let us encourage independent thought among ourselves. Let us welcome dissent, and the restless ways of the explorers among us. Nine out of ten new ideas will be mistakes, but the tenth will let in the light."

[...]

...practitioners of mutual respect...Now ~that~, to me, is the true spirit of Objectivism!

This, to me, is the spirit I find here on O-L. Otherwise I would still have nothing to do with the O'ist world.

Paul

[kiaer.ts]

One last proof that we do see atoms, or, okay, pairs of atoms here. Look at a cloud of of chlorine gas in a chemical flask under a hood. What is the green stuff that you see, if not atoms of Chlorine?

OK, so we can see _atoms_, but we cannot see _an_ atom. -- Mike Hardy

No, we do see individual atoms. We may see them as a gas, or as whatever they constitue, but not as little solar systems or fuzzy little quantum mechanical balls. But we see them. This is the hangup. People have a conceptual notion of atoms as little balls. It does not therefore follow that the way we should see atoms is as little balls. The way we see atoms is the way we see them, as all the material substances of existence. So far as one denies that we can see an atom, one is denying that we can see atoms, or things, and is ceding the field to the representationalists, and the idealists who, with kant, end up claiming that all we do see is our own ideas.

This argument is, perhaps, difficult. But it is necessary and true. Again, I refer to Kelley's Evidence of the Senses, which treats this at book length.

We do see individual atoms.

[Paul Mawdsley]

I get the distinct impression that L.P. "paints" his philosophical portraits "by the numbers". He comes to his conclusions in a rather mechanical fashion. There is more in heaven and earth than Rand dreamed of in her philosophy. By boxing himself into the (perceived) boundary of Rand's thinking, L.P. distorts and misunderstands several things, among which are science and mathematics. L.P. is basically a rather smart fellow, but he has locked his imagination in a cage of some sort. He has also turned Objectivism, as you have indicated, into some kind of a lock-box.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Can you imagine both fearing and loving a figure like Rand, and having her judgement and psychologizing stand over everything you do, while you strive for her approval and withdraw from being labeled a social metaphysician? Existing within Rand's philosophical box is not healthy. Healthy development would require breaking free!

Paul

[Brant Gaede]

One last proof that we do see atoms, or, okay, pairs of atoms here. Look at a cloud of of chlorine gas in a chemical flask under a hood. What is the green stuff that you see, if not atoms of Chlorine?

OK, so we can see _atoms_, but we cannot see _an_ atom. -- Mike Hardy

No, we do see individual atoms. We may see them as a gas, or as whatever they constitue, but not as little solar systems or fuzzy little quantum mechanical balls. But we see them. This is the hangup. People have a conceptual notion of atoms as little balls. It does not therefore follow that the way we should see atoms is as little balls. The way we see atoms is the way we see them, as all the material substances of existence. So far as one denies that we can see an atom, one is denying that we can see atoms, or things, and is ceding the field to the representationalists, and the idealists who, with kant, end up claiming that all we do see is our own ideas.

This argument is, perhaps, difficult. But it is necessary and true. Again, I refer to Kelley's Evidence of the Senses, which treats this at book length.

We do see individual atoms.

Oh, brother! Philosophy continues to over-reach itself. Why did it take so long to see them in the first place? I'm talking about 3-6 million years of human evolution and being. Oxygen wasn't "seen" until the 18th Century.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

Nick,

[....]

Thanks for pointing the way to open system, or radical, O'ists. I just received Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses and am waiting for delivery of Sciabarra's The Russian Radical. In alignment with the evolution of this thread, Sciabarra's dialectics strikes me as being very much top-down thinking. I would think it rubs bottom-up thinkers the wrong way because of difficulties with it making intuitive sense. I have to admit adopting this "top-down" lens requires some effort on my part but the view I have glimpsed is intriguing.

Paul, I first read "Russian Radical" in the summer of 1995, and it made ~perfect~ sense to me. I didn't think of it as "top-down." I just noted his thesis-statement -- Rand blasted invalid dichotomies over and over, seeing the partial truths in each of the historical false alternatives, and finding the more fundamental ("radical") truth about various issues in philosophy -- and then indulged him to reveal example after example of this process. It didn't take long for the mounting list of examples to convince me that he had a valid generalization.

I thought that it was intuitively obvious from the start, but I withheld judgment until the inductive process convinced me. That's why Sciabarra's book really didn't strike me as employing (or requiring of the reader) a top-down process.

I am aware of some critics who ~do~ think in a more rationalistic, top-down manner, who reacted to Sciabarra's book as though it were an invading virus, gave Sciabarra hell for using terminology that didn't fit their Objectivist glossaries (you know, very suspicious terms like "transcend" and "dialectical"), and they wouldn't back off until he had given rigorous, genus-differentia definitions for "methodological orientation" and other terms. (His original definitions were good enough, I thought, but they got even better from "Russian Radical" 1995 to "Total Freedom" 2000.)

I don't react to new ideas that way. I look at the overall system of thought: do the ideas connect to reality, and do they cohere as a system? If the ideas connect and cohere, I don't object to new terms being employed, even if they have some residual taint from their use by disreputable folk like Kant and Hegel. Aristotle used the term "dialectics," too, so why should we back off from it, if it helps in labeling a very real mental process. (Otherwise, we'd find ourselves abandoning very red-flag words like "capitalism," "selfishness," and "atheism," just because some people associated with the terms have actually been evil.)

In short, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by "Russian Radical." You may find it much more intuition-friendly than some of its readers suggest. Happy reading!

REB

[Paul Mawdsley]

Thanks Roger!

[kiaer.ts]

Oh, brother! Philosophy continues to over-reach itself. Why did it take so long to see them in the first place? I'm talking about 3-6 million years of human evolution and being. Oxygen wasn't "seen" until the 18th Century.

--Brant

To see, to recognize, and to identify are different things. Oxygen was always seen, but only lately identified. There are many things that are seen and not recognized, or which many cannot identify. Can you identify monocots and dicots by sight? Can you identify different alloys by sight? Can you tell a mole from melanoma by sight? Does your inability to identify mean that you cannot see plants, metals, or disease? Perhaps you would tell an old friend whom you did not recognize that you "did not see him." Would that mean he was invisible? I could just as easily ask you how many millions of years it will take for you to understand the difference between seeing and identifying.

According to your understanding what would it mean to see an atom, since you know what it is that you deny? You cannot answer this without conceding my point. You continue to imagine your conception of an atom, and, because your perception of atoms does not match your imagined idea of a ball or a solar system, you deny that you see atoms. The problem is your conceptual understanding, not your eyes.

To be perceived is to be perceived in some form. We smell atoms as odors. We feel atoms as textures, and their motion as temperature. We hear atoms vibrate as sound. We see atoms as the colors and visual forms of substances and entities of everday experience.

My claim is orthodox. Read Kelley's book. There is no accepted refutation, Kelley is correct. I write for those who wish to understand, not those who take there own ability to scoff as proof.

We do see atoms. We see them in the way that they appear to us as humans with a certain form of awareness. Some of us simply do not fully understand or recognize what we see. I myself make no claim to be able to identify individual atoms. But we all see much more than we can identify.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I am aware of some critics who ~do~ think in a more rationalistic, top-down manner...

I just want to clarify that top-down thinking per se does not include rationalistic as a fundament. There is rational top-down thinking (based on observation, integration, concept formation, etc.) and there is rationalistic top-down thinking (trying to deduce reality from principles or affirmations that cannot be verified). There are also rational and rationalistic forms of bottom-up thinking.

When talking about the critics of Russian Radical having a top-down view, I see this in a social manner, not conceptual one: Ayn Rand is top of the dead and Leonard Peikoff is top of the living. All intellectual fundaments flow from those tops down to everyone else. Since Rand is dead, when in doubt take Peikoff's interpretation. If language is encountered about something that does not fit the jargon used by either, then the idea must be evil or, at best, flawed. And only hell awaits a person who writes about either and does not use their jargon and/or ideas in the form expressed by them as gospel.

However, that has very little to do with observing reality focusing on the principles of form (top-down thinking).

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

My claim is orthodox. Read Kelley's book. There is no accepted refutation, Kelley is correct. I write for those who wish to understand, not those who take there own ability to scoff as proof.

We do see atoms. We see them in the way that they appear to us as humans with a certain form of awareness. Some of us simply do not fully understand or recognize what we see. I myself make no claim to be able to identify individual atoms. But we all see much more than we can identify.

Just the other way around. We identify much more than we can see.

We can't see a gravitational field, but we can identify it. Result: the GPS. If you inferred that we can see atoms from reading Kelley's book, then read it again.

Atoms have a diameter several orders of magnitude less than the shortest wavelength the human retina can resolve. We -cannot- see individual atoms, even if they stood still which there do only under special circumstances (as in being in Penning trap). This is optics 101.

Our retinas react to photons emerging from atoms as the electrons fall from a higher energy state to lower energy state (primary quantum number) and emit photons. Light is photons that collide with the rhodopsin molecules in the rods and cone of the retina.

Now you might just understand the difference between philosophy and science. In science, one deals with the -details-. God and the Devil are in the details. In philosophy one spews at the pen and mouth and waves one's hands (so to speak) grandly making the kind of claims for which Aristotle is infamous (like more massive bodies fall faster than less massive bodies (generally false)).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

Also, in science we have a habit of postulating entities that we cannot see (immediately apprehend), for example, bacteria were postulated before they were ever seen. It is imperative that we understand the different status of a concept by postulation and a concept by intuition (due to Northrop)

Northrop’s major contribution to philosophy is in the area of epistemology, specifically his theory of concepts. He divides all concepts into two kinds: intuition and postulation. For Northrop, the source of the meaning of the concept is the source of its difference. This can be seen from the definitions of these concepts. A concept by intuition is one which denotes, and the complete meaning of which is given by, something which is immediately apprehended. Northrop gives blue in "the sense of the sensed color" as an example of a concept by intuition. (The Logic of Science and Humanities, p. 82.)

The other kind is concepts by postulation. A concept by postulation is one the meaning of which in whole or in part is designated by the postulates of the deductive theory in which it occurs. Blue in the sense of the frequency or wavelength in electromagnetic theory is a concept by postulation. (The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities, p. 83.)

.....There remains one crucial notion: what is the relationship between postulation and intuition. For Northrop the relation is epistemic correlation. Northrop provides the following definition:

An epistemic correlation is a relation joining an unobserved component of anything designated by a concept by postulation to its directly inspected component denoted by a concept by intuition.

(The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities, p. 119.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

It sounds like what Northrop calls "concept by intuition" is what Rand calls "percept."

Here is a good case of a concept being the same (or very similar) in the work of two different writers, but the words expressing it being different.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Atoms have a diameter several orders of magnitude less than the shortest wavelength the human retina can resolve. We -cannot- see individual atoms, even if they stood still which there do only under special circumstances (as in being in Penning trap). This is optics 101.

Quite so. This is another example of Objectivists giving a new meaning to a word and claiming that this is the only "correct" meaning. When people say that they can see the bricks of a building, they mean that they can distinguish the positions, forms and colors of individual bricks and not that they see a building made of bricks, when the building is too far away to distinguish individual bricks.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As I never tire of saying, all dictionaries give more than one meaning for each word. Assigning a meaning to a word is not a monopoly of Objectivists.

Does it really matter which meaning is used, so long as the meaning is understood by all discussing the issue at the time?

Or is semantics more important than ideas?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

As I never tire of saying, all dictionaries give more than one meaning for each word. Assigning a meaning to a word is not a monopoly of Objectivists.

Does it really matter which meaning is used, so long as the meaning is understood by all discussing the issue at the time?

Or is semantics more important than ideas?

Michael

It is very difficult to share ideas without semantics. If ideas are the ends, then semantics is one of the means.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

Or is semantics more important than ideas?

If I reword this to "are words (and symbols) more important than visualizations" it becomes clearer what we are talking about, IMO. I wouldn't say they are more important but as Bob indicates, we can't express our visualizations, experience, feelings, desires, etc. without them.

[Dragonfly]

Does it really matter which meaning is used, so long as the meaning is understood by all discussing the issue at the time?

Yes, just introducing a new meaning without any good reason can only be confusing, as its meaning is not understood by everyone. Especially when the new meaning is pushed as the "correct" one instead of the generally accepted meaning.

Or is semantics more important than ideas?

Without semantics no communication of ideas is possible.

[Brant Gaede]

Epistemological theory is fine but until it can travel into scientific methodology--improve it--there is no return on the investment. It may be good for the epistemologicalists, not for me. I'm interested in rigorous, logical thinking and intuitive grasping.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Nobody believes dictionaries exist?

Dayaamm!

Here is the message I hear coming through loud and clear from in between the lines.

Nobody is interested in understanding another unless his specific jargon is used and declared to be the one true meaning for the word used (not even the idea).

That's a really weird message for an intellectual discussion.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Nobody believes dictionaries exist?

Dayaamm!

Here is the message I hear coming through loud and clear from in between the lines.

Nobody is interested in understanding another unless his specific jargon is used and declared to be the one true meaning for the word used (not even the idea).

That's a really weird message for an intellectual discussion.

Well, I can't find "Dayaamm" in any dictionary, so what am I to do?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Well, I can't find "Dayaamm" in any dictionary, so what am I to do?

Brant,

LOL...

Lemma tellya'.

I don't even know what that means. (There is more than one, though, when it finally gets figgerd out.)

Michael