I still don't get it.......epistemology

[Xray]

The terminology used by Rand in ITOE is often confusing.

For example, she speaks of "contextual absolutes"; but isn't the characteristic of "absolute" that it is independent of context?

And doesn't her sentence "Consciousness is conscious" make as little sense as e. g. saying "Tiredness is tired"?

Edited December 11, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

The terminology used by Rand in ITOE is often confusing.

For example, she speaks of "contextual absolutes"; but isn't the characteristic of "absolute" that it is independent of context?

And doesn't her sentence "Consciousness is conscious" make as little sense as e. g. saying "Tiredness is tired"?

Ms. Xray:

A leopard would change it's spots sooner than you would stop disrespecting this forum with your parrotlike behavior. We got it.

If you ever had an original thought, it would die of loneliness.

Adam

[syrakusos]

Here is the basic idea

Objectivism holds true knowledge of things as they are is possible: I disagree but her problems with philosophy and epistemology are totally justified.

Objectivism holds true knowledge of things as they are is impossible: I agree, and don't see how her position is at odds with Kants noumenal and phenomenal distinction and skepticism.

Your first mistake was relying on a message board for your knowledge of what "Objectivism" holds as true. You also need to separate "Objectivism" from "Ayn Randism." However, Objectivism is the name that Ayn Rand gave to her personal philosophy and she wrote many books, based on many more articles, about that philosophy. Therefore, it is entirely possible to start with what Ayn Rand said. If you want to disagree with that because you have other facts or theories to explain those facts, then fine. But to go to a discussion board and find contradictions among the posters there and claim that Objectivism has a problem is to start off down a road that leads nowhere.

I enjoy learning from Bob Kolker (Baal), Dragonfly, and General Semanticist. They are intelligent. They are not Objectivists -- and they do not claim to be. In fact, they claim _not_ to be. But they do evidence many of the basic principles of Objectivism in their writing. So, they are welcome here by MSK, the owner of the board. You would need to read closely to understand why Ninth Doctor and Galtgulch are also not Objectivists. I claim to be. Others would argue with that claim.

If you want to know what Objectivism holds on epistemology, read Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology. Your public librarian can get it for you ILL (InterLibrary Loan) if they do not have it locally. You can buy it used for a few bucks. Having lived in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, I have a couple of used copies, one of which I marked up heavily. There is much within it that is arguable. But to argue, you need the facts. So far, all you have is other people's opinions.

[CJM]

Shane, I would NOT rely on Wikipedia for information on philosophies. For instance

Rand rejected epistemological skepticism as the skeptics claim knowledge "undistorted" by the form or the means of perception is impossible.

I haven't read anything in Rands work where she claims knowledge undistorted is possible. I have read attacks on skeptics and Kants, but they SEEM to stem from a misunderstanding of their positions. I can't rectify the Objectivist theory of epistemology and perceptions with Rands vehement disapproval of Kants Noumenal and Phenomenal distinction or the skeptics "no knowledge is certain" position.

Michael, I have read a lot of her work, and that's what lead me to this confusion, I am trying to get clarity on an issue that makes no sense. You, having read her work, know the style in which she deals with other philosophers(for instance, we shall take her negative mentions of Bertrand Russell which went unsubstantiated) , so to be honest it isn't much help. That combined with the fact she uses many words in different ways than their standard meanings make it seem almost impossible to disentangle her views.

Actually, your assessment is a pretty gross misrepresentation of what I have done. I didn't decide Objectivism or Rand had a problem by reading a damn message board, the posts I made their are simply related to my problem.

The terminology used by Rand in ITOE is often confusing.

For example, she speaks of "contextual absolutes"; but isn't the characteristic of "absolute" that it is independent of context?

And doesn't her sentence "Consciousness is conscious" make as little sense as e. g. saying "Tiredness is tired"?

Well saying existence exists is meaningless, and is in essence question begging, I would agree if that is what you are saying about those kind of statements.

Edited December 11, 2009 by CJM

[Mike Renzulli]

I will take a stab at this. While I am trying to hone my knowledge of Objectivist Epistemology, a book that was recommended via a review of it in one issue of The New Individualist is the book The Slightest Philosophy by Quee Nelson (http://queenelson.blogspot.com/).

This book is a rebuttal to the post-modernist movement and their skeptical arguments to knowledge and reality in which post-modernists use many of the arguments by philosophers like Kant.

The author devotes a chapter or 2 to an overview of post-modernism and the state of philosophy in academia. She then devotes the rest of the book to rebutting post-modernists in the form of Q&A session between a college professor and student.

A really good book on epistemology that affirms objective reality while rebuking of skepticism in the form of Kant, Hume, Descarte, Wittgenstein, Popper and (surprisingly) John Locke.

Something exists in reality and our nervous systems abstract from it to produce "objects". Even though each of us abstracts uniquely there is enough invariance that we can communicate our abstractions to each other. The link between our abstractions and "reality" is similarity of structure. I believe it this structure that is referred to in objectivism theory of concept formation.

I agree with this, but that doesn't explain Rands huge problems with Kant and philosophy in general that came before her.

Using the above definition, and using the words objective and subjective in their general meaning, our knowledge isn't objective, it is subjective. That is to say it isn't an exact representation of reality, but a representation coloured by each of our own personal biases.

That's just representative realism. We don't(and can't know the world as it is objectively, in the true sense of the word) but can only know our interpretation of it.

The difference between "objects" and reality seems no different than the difference between phenomenon and noumenon to me. So where does the controversy come from?

Rand in her writings, sets herself entirely against the notions of skepticism and Kants previously mentioned distinction.

Yet her "Objective" knowledge is knowledge which is subjective(in the words true sense), and imperfect. This is what people like Kant and the skeptics held. So what was her big problems with their ideas?

My problem is that Rand slammed the likes of Kant, Hume, the skeptics etc. for arguing that true objective knowledge isn't possible, yet(at least according to OO) her philosophy holds the exact same thing. Namely that we cannot know reality as it is.

Edited January 16, 2010 by Mike Renzulli

[BaalChatzaf]

A really good book on epistemology that affirms objective reality while rebuking of skepticism in the form of Kant, Hume, Descarte, Wittgenstein, Popper and (surprisingly) John Locke.

Hume was 90 percent right. Kant tried to refute Hume, but (of course) he failed.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[jeffrey smith]

I'll try to explain the difference.

Kant claimed that because we can never directly know anything outside ourselves, we are never able to have certain knowledge of anything outside ourselves: the very conditions of perception (the famous Categories) defeat the attempt.

Rand's view was something like this: that while any individual instance of perception may be fallible, the human mind by continued interaction with things outside itself is able to form an accurate idea of those things and then by the process of forming concepts able to think about and investigate those things.

If I have that wrong, someone please correct me.

[BaalChatzaf]

Thats fine, but that doesn't tell us anything about our perceptions or whether they are accurate as a representation of reality, at all.

We don't have reality "as it is" since we only have it through our senses. The Objectivist response to that is that our senses are infallible, which is clearly not the case given the wealth of optical illusions that bedazzle and amuse us. Fortunately we have multiple senses and we can factor out some the trickery that the visual cortex plays on us in some circumstances. Our perceptions and the mental processing thereof cannot be separated entirely by a Bright Line.

The Objectivists simply cannot explain the Ames Room illusion. Even after it is completely known how and why the illusion happens, knowing it cannot make the illusion go away. The best we can do is be amused, but not fooled by the illusion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Thats fine, but that doesn't tell us anything about our perceptions or whether they are accurate as a representation of reality, at all.

We don't have reality "as it is" since we only have it through our senses. The Objectivist response to that is that our senses are infallible, which is clearly not the case given the wealth of optical illusions that bedazzle and amuse us. Fortunately we have multiple senses and we can factor out some the trickery that the visual cortex plays on us in some circumstances. Our perceptions and the mental processing thereof cannot be separated entirely by a Bright Line.

The Objectivists simply cannot explain the Ames Room illusion. Even after it is completely known how and why the illusion happens, knowing it cannot make the illusion go away. The best we can do is be amused, but not fooled by the illusion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Can somebody correctly explain the illusion? If so then that somebody is an Objectivist in-so-far as that goes.

--Brant

I don't need no stinkin' "illusion."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

We don't have reality "as it is" since we only have it through our senses.

I keep seeing this come up and it's just wrong.

What is it that passes "through our senses" if not reality "as it is"?

Reality "as it is not"?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

We don't have reality "as it is" since we only have it through our senses.

I keep seeing this come up and it's just wrong.

What is it that passes "through our senses" if not reality "as it is"?

Reality "as it is not"?

Michael

Yup. If you let white light ('reality') pass through a red filter ('our senses') it is no longer pure white light ('no longer reality as it is') as soon as it enters the filter. And in this analogy there is no way the white light can be observed directly, without the filter. We can only theorize about its existence, as it can explain in a consistent way the sensations we experience. And one shouldn't confuse the reality of the filtering process itself (which neither can be observed directly, only inferred from the information given by our senses) with the reality that is filtered by that specific process. It only means that this barrier is universal, there is no way to arrive at "reality itself", our theories can only be justified by their consistent behavior and correct predictions.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yup. If you let white light ('reality') pass through a red filter ('our senses') it is no longer pure white light ('no longer reality as it is') as soon as it enters the filter. And in this analogy there is no way the white light can be observed directly, without the filter. We can only theorize about its existence, as it can explain in a consistent way the sensations we experience. And one shouldn't confuse the reality of the filtering process itself (which neither can be observed directly, only inferred from the information given by our senses) with the reality that is filtered by that specific process. It only means that this barrier is universal, there is no way to arrive at "reality itself", our theories can only be justified by their consistent behavior and correct predictions.

Dragonfly,

Are you seriously saying that the sense organ that evolved to capture and process reality "as it is" is the very reason we do not process reality "as it is"?

Gimme a break.

If reality "as it is" does not get to the sense organ, there is nothing to process.

The sense organ evolved to deal with reality "as it is," not some silly word game. Organic things don't work perfectly all the time. So what? That's the nature of living things. Living things even die. That's no reason to say they are not reality "as it is" or other such.

Here is my principle: we are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe. Our sense organs correctly handle reality "as it is" is because they, too, are reality "as it is."

When you add one reality to another reality, you do not get anti-reality or reality "as it is not."

Michael

[tjohnson]

And one shouldn't confuse the reality of the filtering process itself (which neither can be observed directly, only inferred from the information given by our senses) with the reality that is filtered by that specific process.

I think this precisely what Korzybski meant when he said we must not confuse orders of abstraction. Our lower order abstractions are our perceptions, experiences, observations, etc. while our higher order abstractions are our descriptions, inferences, theories, etc. and we must not confuse them.

[tjohnson]

The sense organ evolved to deal with reality "as it is," not some silly word game.

Our eyes evolved to respond to light, correct, but when you look across the street and see a car you are creating the image of the car from the light. In other words, our eyes (and nervous system, visual cortex, etc.) have evolved to abstract information from the light. This is a more complex situation than "reality as it is".

[Dragonfly]

Are you seriously saying that the sense organ that evolved to capture and process reality "as it is" is the very reason we do not process reality "as it is"?

It didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", because that is impossible. It evolved to give us some information that is useful for being able to survive and to procreate. The general consistency of that information has induced us to hypothesize an invariant core that can explain the consistent information, and which we call "reality". But that "reality" is in fact an abstraction, no less than a line or a circle is an abstraction, an asymptotic extrapolation of the information that we can obtain using our senses.

If reality "as it is" does not get to the sense organ, there is nothing to process.

Again, you shouldn't confuse the reality {of the sense organ and the information that it processes} with the information that is processed by that particular sense organ. Light rays reflecting from some object can give us some information about that object, but that information is not the same as the object itself, not even before it reaches any sense organ (which can only degrade that information further). The reality of the light rays is not the reality of the object from which they originate.

[merjet]

The Objectivist response to that is that our senses are infallible, which is clearly not the case given the wealth of optical illusions that bedazzle and amuse us.

Where did you get this notion? Please cite your source. I did not find it in ITOE or OPAR.

The Objectivists simply cannot explain the Ames Room illusion. Even after it is completely known how and why the illusion happens, knowing it cannot make the illusion go away. The best we can do is be amused, but not fooled by the illusion.

Why can't an Objectivist explain it in the usual way? What is your source for saying Objectivists can't explain it?

[merjet]

It [the sense organ] didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", because that is impossible.

If it is impossible, then how do you proclaim to know reality "as it is"?

Edited January 17, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

In other words, you define reality "as it is" as excluding light waves?

In my understanding, light waves exist. So does their behavior.

We perceive light reflected from something instead of miraculously jamming the thing into our eyes, but so what? That light and reflection are still reality "as it is." Once again, they exist.

I think it is silly to say we distort reality or do not perceive reality "as it is" because we cannot jam, say, an elephant into our eyeballs and call that perception.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Why can't an Objectivist explain it in the usual way? What is your source for saying Objectivists can't explain it?

The assertion that the senses are infallible and the persistence of the illusion are contradictory. The only "explanation" (which the Objectivists reject) is that the visual sense is NOT infallible. Vision is very fallible, which is why camouflage ( for example) works as well as it does.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dragonfly]

It [the sense organ] didn't evolve to capture and process reality "as it is", because that is impossible.

If it is impossible, then how do you proclaim to know reality "as it is"?

I don't proclaim to know reality "as it is". The existence of an independent reality is a good hypothesis to explain our experiences, but we know that it an abstraction and as such not knowable "in itself". Nevertheless it is a useful abstraction, as it allows us to build models of that reality with the limited and necessarily imperfect information that we have, that enable us to thrive, so at least our models give some useful approximation of that reality that is also consistent with the existence of such a reality. Imperfect information is still information, not knowing all isn't the same as knowing nothing.

[Dragonfly]

In other words, you define reality "as it is" as excluding light waves?

In my understanding, light waves exist. So does their behavior.

I suggest you reread my post #40, especially the second part, and also GS's posts #38 and #39. Then you'll realize that nobody denies the reality of light waves.

[tjohnson]

I don't proclaim to know reality "as it is". The existence of an independent reality is a good hypothesis to explain our experiences, but we know that it an abstraction and as such not knowable "in itself". Nevertheless it is a useful abstraction, as it allows us to build models of that reality with the limited and necessarily imperfect information that we have, that enable us to thrive, so at least our models give some useful approximation of that reality that is also consistent with the existence of such a reality. Imperfect information is still information, not knowing all isn't the same as knowing nothing.

Very true. Also, if in fact we could know "reality as it is" then we would never have to update our knowledge. In that scenario, once you know something you know all about it and will never have to revise your knowledge of it. (see my signature )

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I realize you don't deny the existence of light waves. I just get irritated with the package concept of denigrating the mind by playing word games. I guess it sounds cool to say, "We can't even know reality "as it is..." (sighing with deep reflection)

That is totally imprecise since it is a gross oversimplification, as my nitpicking shows. But the message of belittling the mind is quite clear.

Why do you guys do that? I never have understood that.

It is precise to mention and describe our limitations. I have no problem with that. It is not precise to exaggerate the limitations with oversimplification, then make out like that is being courageous or something...

... and those who don't agree

are blind fools who cannot see.

I don't get it.

Why insist on the error when the correct thing is easy to understand and communicate?

Because the error sounds cool?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The assertion that the senses are infallible and the persistence of the illusion are contradictory.

Bob,

I don't know of a single Objectivist who denies the existence of optical illusions or the fact that sense organs get sick or old and don't work as well as before.

There are some premises that need to be checked if understanding (instead of bashing) is the goal. One of them is what is meant by infallible within the context presented.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I realize you don't deny the existence of light waves. I just get irritated with the package concept of denigrating the mind by playing word games. I guess it sounds cool to say, "We can't even know reality "as it is..." (sighing with deep reflection)

As if I'd give a damn whether it sounds "cool". It's just as it is. Saying that the mind isn't perfect and omniscient isn't "denigrating the mind", it's just acknowledging reality in contrast to adhering to some religious notion of "perfect" senses that perceive reality "directly".

That is totally imprecise since it is a gross oversimplification, as my nitpicking shows. But the message of belittling the mind is quite clear.

That "belittling of the mind" only exists in your mind... I think that a mind is a wonderful thing and as far as we know one of the most complex objects in the universe. But I'm above all a realist, and as such I see very well the unavoidable limitations of the brain and the distortions by the senses, no matter how sophisticated and efficient these are. I'm not into religious worship that fakes reality. Things don't have to be perfect to be great.

Why do you guys do that? I never have understood that.

Because we're pestered by Objectivists who make unwarranted claims of perfection, so we feel we have to set the record straight. Normally we wouldn't bother, as it is so obvious.