The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics


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Can we really conclude from Rand's margin notes not meant for publication in some given book she was reading what her considered judgment was of the author or the book beyond an initial gut reaction? Rand was an insightful cultural critic, if not always a nuanced one. That she did not publish something from her journals or her marginalia also says something. It says that she had a thought that she did not consider worthy of publication.

You mean, like her remarks about Kant, Hume, Russell or Emerson in her official publications?

Prescott has had a field day with Rand's Journals and other posthumous sources.

Don't blame the messenger, blame ARI and Mayhew (I can't help wondering how much Mayhew may have rewritten even Rand's marginalia, with that man you automatically suspect that they must have been even worse in the original version).

Why doesn't he get to the meat and consider her published arguments directly or indicate someone whose arguments, in totality, he finds more convincing?

But he does, elsewhere. For example here about Rand's "solution" of the is-ought problem.

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> You mean, like her remarks about Kant, Hume, Russell or Emerson in her official publications?

There is an urban myth perpetuated by libertarians like GHS and JR and others that Rand was wrong about these thinkers. Usually she was right in essentials - Hume was an epistemological skeptic is only one example. She doesn't deal with - and for her purposes doesn't have to - the occasions where the thinker said something contrary to or inconsistent with his main position. For example, Hume was a classical liberal. But that is a claim of certainty inconsistent with his withering skepticism.

Yet it's correct to label him as a skeptic. For a whole host of reasons.

If you understand that despite his politics, he can be labelled as an 'arch-skeptic'.

,,,,,,

I'm not sure what you are referring to in regard to Emerson and Russell - hardly first rank philosophers.

,,,,,

And, no, I don't want to swat down -- yet again -- all the claims that she got Kant's fundamental philosophy wrong. See my past posts on this...or, better, go read a good history of philosophy source.

And, no, you don't have to read the entirety of Kant in the original or spend a month with the Critique of Pure Reason. The basic worldviews of Kant, Hume, Plato, Atistotle -- what their views are -- are essentially uncontroversial in the field of philosophy or to those who, like myself, spent a lot of years studying the subject .

Edited by Philip Coates
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> You mean, like her remarks about Kant, Hume, Russell or Emerson in her official publications?

There is an urban myth perpetuated by libertarians like GHS and JR and others that Rand was wrong about these thinkers. Usually she was right in essentials - Hume was an epistemological skeptic is only one example. She doesn't deal with - and for her purposes doesn't have to - the occasions where the thinker said something contrary to or inconsistent with his main position. For example, Hume was a classical liberal. But that is a claim of certainty inconsistent with his withering skepticism.

Yet it's correct to label him as a skeptic. For a whole host of reasons.

It's not about calling him a skeptic or an arch-skeptic (a very honorable viewpoint by the way), but about calling him the most evil man in history, the man whose ideas supposedly led to Nazism and the holocaust and all other kinds of evil in the world.

I'm not sure what you are referring to in regard to Emerson and Russell - hardly first rank philosophers.

Whether they're first rank philosophers or not is not relevant here, we were talking about the fact that Rand wrote, let's say, rather loose comments about different writers and philosophers. Jim argued that we shouldn't forget that these "gut feeling" comments were not meant for publication, so I mentioned some examples where she did publish similar comments in official publications.

After quoting Emerson incorrectly, she called him "a very little mind", and about Russell she wrote: "As an illustration, observe what Bertrand Russell was able to perpetrate because people thought they “kinda knew” the meaning of the concept of “number” ..." (without any further clarification about what she meant with that murky and incomprehensible sentence). A lot of condemnation but no argument at all.

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Prescott has had a field day with Rand's Journals and other posthumous sources. Why doesn't he get to the meat and consider her published arguments directly or indicate someone whose arguments, in totality, he finds more convincing?

Jim,

It's been a while since I have communicated with Michael Prescott, but he once told me (online somewhere) that he has been overly-harsh on Rand, or something to that effect. The post you link to is from the that overly-harsh time.

I think his reaction is typical to people who are Objectivists and become disillusioned. In Michael's case, he used to participate in some online Objectivist forum or other (I would have to look it up to tell you which, since this was before there were many), and he found that the general negativity and underachievement of those he interacted with--which he reflected in his own life--were holding him back from producing.

So he essentially declared his emancipation and threw the baby out with the bathwater in a gush of elation. He also went on to write some very good bestselling thrillers shortly thereafter. So, for him, this was a very good decision. And, as he is a reasonable person, the dust eventually settled from the rush of his Declaration of Independence, as I believe it will settle more over time.

I need to look Michael up again. He's a really good dude...

Michael

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[Rand's] attempted definition of a concept (I say "attempted" because it doesn't have a real genus, and Rand's approach to definitions requires it to have one) [...].

You don't consider "mental integration" a "real genus"? If not, is that because of the question of what on earth a "mental integration" *is* or from some other reason? I mean, couldn't there by other forms of "mental integration" with concepts being a sub-type?

Ellen

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More Bullshit: Rand as Ignoramus

...

If the sexes were reversed, I have to say penis envy. :rolleyes:

Why the descent into Perigoism? Neil expressed an opinion and asked a question, politely, then you butt in to psychologize and insult him. Bad Phil. Try some advice from religion, be it from Rabbi Hillel or Jesus: “Do unto others…”

sign-no-stones.jpg

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> Neil expressed an opinion and asked a question, politely, then you butt in to psychologize and insult him.

That wasn't about Neil but about NB's constant trying to cut Rand down to size. And any similar prolonged attempts by others. Whether on this board or outside or it.

And about the sum total of that.

Edited by Philip Coates
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> It's not about calling him [Hume] a skeptic or an arch-skeptic (a very honorable viewpoint by the way), but about calling him [Kant] the most evil man in history

DF, I thought you could tell from the context of my post talking about philosophical viewpoints that I was talking about her being right in essentials ...about philosophers qua philosophers. Not her moral evaluation of them.

Do I really have to put those kinds of addendums or qualifications on everything?

> [Rand said] "observe what Bertrand Russell was able to perpetrate because people thought they “kinda knew” the meaning of the concept of “number” ..." (without any further clarification about what she meant with that murky and incomprehensible sentence).

She's talking about his philosophy of mathematics and about Principia Mathematica..."an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic" - which is absurd.

> After quoting Emerson incorrectly, she called him "a very little mind"

Did you think he was a major, original philosopher? That transcendentalism makes sense or is original?

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There is an urban myth perpetuated by libertarians like GHS and JR and others that Rand was wrong about these thinkers. Usually she was right in essentials - Hume was an epistemological skeptic is only one example. She doesn't deal with - and for her purposes doesn't have to - the occasions where the thinker said something contrary to or inconsistent with his main position. For example, Hume was a classical liberal. But that is a claim of certainty inconsistent with his withering skepticism.

Yet it's correct to label him as a skeptic. For a whole host of reasons.

When did I ever deny that Hume was an epistemological skeptic? You must be confusing me with some other GHS.

Ghs

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Read the sentence you quoted: "Hume was an epistemological skeptic is only one example" of Rand being right in essentials. Not of what you just stated.

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If you understand that despite [Hume's] politics, he can be labelled as an 'arch-skeptic'.

If by "arch" you mean something like "extreme," then your statement is incorrect. It is uncontroversial to call Hume a "skeptic," since he applied this label to himself. For instance, in his "Abstract" to A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote: "By all that has been said the reader will easily perceive, that the philosophy contain'd in this book is very sceptical, and tends to give us a notion of the imperfections and narrow limits of human understanding" (Selby-Bigge 2nd ed., p. 657).

Hume explains his type of skepticism -- an approach that is often called "mitigated skepticism" -- in Section XII ("Of the academical or sceptical philosophy") in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Generally speaking, Hume defends Academic skepticism against the more extreme claims of Pyrrhonic skepicism. (These different traditions of Greek skepticism played major roles in the development of modern philosophy.)

You should read Hume's discussion to understand why it is highly misleading at best to dub Hume an "arch-skeptic," but I wouldn't want your head to explode.

Ghs

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Read the sentence you quoted: "Hume was an epistemological skeptic is only one example" of Rand being right in essentials. Not of what you just stated.

So the "urban myth perpetuated by libertarians like GHS and JR" had nothing to do with the rest of your paragraph? Okay, if you say so, but maybe you should brush up on your Strunk and White.

Ghs

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> Neil expressed an opinion and asked a question, politely, then you butt in to psychologize and insult him.

That wasn't about Neil but about NB's constant trying to cut Rand down to size. And any similar prolonged attempts by others. Whether on this board or outside or it.

And about the sum total of that.

Neil said he didn't remember if it were religion or mysticism. You left that off your quote. I explained why it was probably mysticism because that's what NB's been saying in public.

You've got this Ayn Rand balloon floating over your head, afraid someone might prick it.

And how about that quote* you attributed to me which I didn't say? Sloppy.

--Brant

*post 19 on the Adam Selene thread

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Prescott has had a field day with Rand's Journals and other posthumous sources. Why doesn't he get to the meat and consider her published arguments directly or indicate someone whose arguments, in totality, he finds more convincing?

Jim,

It's been a while since I have communicated with Michael Prescott, but he once told me (online somewhere) that he has been overly-harsh on Rand, or something to that effect. The post you link to is from the that overly-harsh time.

I think his reaction is typical to people who are Objectivists and become disillusioned. In Michael's case, he used to participate in some online Objectivist forum or other (I would have to look it up to tell you which, since this was before there were many), and he found that the general negativity and underachievement of those he interacted with--which he reflected in his own life--were holding him back from producing.

So he essentially declared his emancipation and threw the baby out with the bathwater in a gush of elation. He also went on to write some very good bestselling thrillers shortly thereafter. So, for him, this was a very good decision. And, as he is a reasonable person, the dust eventually settled from the rush of his Declaration of Independence, as I believe it will settle more over time.

I need to look Michael up again. He's a really good dude...

Michael

Michael,

I don't doubt that Michael Prescott and I would get along fine over a couple of beers (preferably Guinness :-)), but he sure went on a tear out the back door of Objectivism. I've seen a lot of things I haven't liked in my 23 years with the philosophy, but the quality of the intellects from Rand to Branden to Kelley and many others (my philosophy professor Darryl Wright emphatically included) and my sense of the basic soundness of the system have kept me around. I don't know how people suddenly throw the switch where A is not A and suddenly everything they thought so fervently is now complete garbage. Objectivism is an individual journey. If there's been groups that I didn't find nourishing, I left, but I chose the philosophy long before I belonged to any group.

Jim

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> I don't know how people suddenly throw the switch where A is not A and suddenly everything they thought so fervently is now complete garbage. [Jim]

Because they never understood it in the first place. Never took the Oist courses or spent the years trying to think it through carefully.

Applying it in a Randroid way is only one form of that. That's why you see so many loud 'super-Objectivists' who accept everything unquestioningly and without integration, and in some cases defend opinion Rand ever had suddenly reject everything unquestioningly and without integration and in some cases conclude Rand was a monster.

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> I don't know how people suddenly throw the switch where A is not A and suddenly everything they thought so fervently is now complete garbage. [Jim]

Because they never understood it in the first place. Never took the Oist courses or spent the years trying to think it through carefully.

Applying it in a Randroid way is only one form of that. That's why you see so many loud 'super-Objectivists' who accept everything unquestioningly and without integration, and in some cases defend opinion Rand ever had suddenly reject everything unquestioningly and without integration and in some cases conclude Rand was a monster.

I wish every Objectivist would get that the philosophy is first and foremost about your relationship to reality. To use the terrific Northwestern motto Quaecumque sunt vera, whatsoever things are true. If you disagree with something, think about it and speak up. It is through this process of engagement that your understanding will deepen.

Jim

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> You should read Hume's discussion..but I wouldn't want your head to explode. [GHS]

I've got duct tape wrapped around it from front to back and above the ears. So I should be okay.

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> I don't know how people suddenly throw the switch where A is not A and suddenly everything they thought so fervently is now complete garbage. [Jim]

Because they never understood it in the first place. Never took the Oist courses or spent the years trying to think it through carefully.

Applying it in a Randroid way is only one form of that. That's why you see so many loud 'super-Objectivists' who accept everything unquestioningly and without integration, and in some cases defend opinion Rand ever had suddenly reject everything unquestioningly and without integration and in some cases conclude Rand was a monster.

I wish every Objectivist would get that the philosophy is first and foremost about your relationship to reality.

I think the problem is that after Rand opens up people's minds, gives them a hell of a lot of value and inspires them, they naturally put a lot of trust in her.

Then they step out into the real world, come face to face with people who are experts in the relevant fields that Rand never studied, or that she studied very little, and they discover that they were wrong to trust her. They've made loudmouthed fools of themselves by repeating some of her uninformed opinions as if they were brilliant new revelations of pure objective truth, and any value that they had hoped to share with others is then tainted. They don't know how to recover and explain that they and Rand are not complete idiots, and that there is value in her ideas, while people are laughing at them for having said something stupid (and having said it with an air of intellectual superiority).

I think it's understandable that those who have been burned by Rand are angry, and that they then go back and pick her ideas apart. It's really too bad that the anger has to be involved, but I think it's a natural reaction, and it's much more healthy than what True Objectivists do, which is to blind themselves to their and Rand's mistakes, and to condemn those who point them out.

To use the terrific Northwestern motto Quaecumque sunt vera, whatsoever things are true. If you disagree with something, think about it and speak up. It is through this process of engagement that your understanding will deepen.

Unfortunately, that's not the mindset of Objectivists in general. Disagreeing, thinking and speaking up is often not tolerated. I've been banned from SOLOP and placed on moderation at RoR and for doing it. I've been asked not to do it at Noodlefood. Multiple times I've been censored at OO for doing it (sometimes for simply and politely reporting what Rand's actual view was on a position that those at OO were mistakenly opposing). OL is the first forum that I'm aware of which bills itself as Objectivist and actually encourages independent thinking.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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Back to this thread's initial topic. I had heard that the Harriman book was promoted as containing groundbreaking new solutions to age-old philosophical problems. Was that total bullshit?

J

How much do you expect from a book on physics with only four equations?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Back to this thread's initial topic. I had heard that the Harriman book was promoted as containing groundbreaking new solutions to age-old philosophical problems. Was that total bullshit?

J

How much do you expect from a book on physics with only four equations?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ha, Ha! Bob. I'm guessing it's not heavy on quantitative examples and fleshing out areas like quantum mechanics, radioactive decay and chaotic dynamics where induction proves tricky. No examples of Lyapunov instability? I'll wait for Glenn Fletcher's review to decide if there's something that is worth looking at in preference to some of my current neuroscience interests.

Jim

Edited by James Heaps-Nelson
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Rand also believed that love can be 'measured'; she seemed to think that terms like 'affection', 'tenderness' etc. had comparable objective quality as degrees have on a measuring scale.

Wrong. Rand specifically states that she is talking about ordinal, not cardinal, measurement. In this case, ordinal measurement is a matter of intensity, of more or less. (See ITOE, pp. 33-34.)

Ghs

Doesn't make much difference if it was to measure intensity. For one could also say e. g. for a temperature measuring scale that the higher the degrees, the more intense is the warmth.

Ordinal numbers applied don't necessarily indicate degrees of 'intensity'. The first, second, third car standing behind at at traffic light - intensity plays no role here.

I said, "In this case, ordinal measurement is a matter of intensity, of more or less." Ordinal numbers are used to rank or grade on a scale, and there are different kinds of scales. No one -- certainly not Rand -- ever said that there is only one kind of ordinal measurement.

You should give these matters more than a nanosecond of thought before posting your profound objections.

Ghs

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