bmacwilliam

Rand: "At birth, a child’s mind is tabula rasa; he has the potential of awareness—the mechanism of a human consciousness—but no content." If we can equate content with knowledge then she defines this content as: "“Knowledge” is . . . a mental grasp of a fact(s) of reality, reached either by perceptual observation or by a process of reason based on perceptual observation." This is as fallacious as fallacious can be. Logic 101. Clear textbook fallacy. The conclusion of the first statement (no content) is ASSUMED in the premise (of definition) of that content because the newborn child has no observations yet. This is not a "chip", this is inexcusable nonsense. Objectivism is rife with this kind of crap on core, foundational issues. The "chip" dwarfs the Grand Canyon. Bob

I've been reading Penrose lately and it seems like he falls squarely into the Platonist camp at least as this relates to mathematics. I find his argument for deterministic non-algorithmic consciousness very interesting and convincing. If he's right, A.I. is kinda doomed before it really starts. If he's right, consciousness is stranger and more complex than we think it is. Have you read "The Emperor's New Mind" ? Bob

"Never ask people. Not about your work." Work, not life.

By what means do you identify “begging the question” as a fallacy? When knowledge is defined as being connected to experience for one. This assumes the conclusion in the premises.

Or..... The most obvious problem being that you'd need a pre-existing country of 'parents' in order to have enough basements for the Objectivists to move into... Bob

Aristotle didn't ignore facts. In fact quite the opposite. He concluded for example that moving bodies if left alone, will come to a stop. This is backed up by facts - well sort of - this is what he observed around him. The error is in the logic. The exact opposite is true - moving bodies if left alone will NOT come to a stop. " Take the idea that reason is man's only means of knowledge" This is quite clearly false, but revelation is not the only other way. The only way around it (and I've seen it argued) is to define knowledge in terms of reason and/or experience which is a textbook 'beg the question' fallacy. Bob

Cheri, In my opinion this question is very poorly answered in Objectivist terms (as you can see). It is very similar to the "prudent predator" problem - a rather glaring hole in Objectivist ethics. As Baal wrote "isn't that crypto altruism?" Certainly is. Bob

The problem is that your chances of being a world-shaper are miniscule. This is not an insult, just a simple fact based on probability. A better (more likely) career "choice" would be to plan to win the lottery. But assuming you're "the one", being really really good at something is a still very much a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite. Either way, you gotta put in serious time to get good at something. And if you don't have the magic combo of skill, luck, timing and whatever else, you still end up good at something and therefore most likely still have a realistic chance of lesser successes. To "buy the ticket" or "take a swing" at being a world shaper, you must have skill. Now, you can find something you really love and hope people will pay you for doing it, or you can find something other people thing you're good at and are willing to pay for it, then learn to love or at least like or tolerate it. THis is not selling out. The world owes you nothing. You want wealth? People pay for something they like, want or need. In a service economy "like" is more and more important. Wanna know what an employer thinks if they know this? Impulsive, entitled, unreliable whiner - stay away. That's what they think. Are your ailments legit? They don't care. They care what you can do for THEM. If you work hard, get good at what you do, you can expect a certain amount of loyalty from an employer, but that's very limited. But if you're good and you provide great service, someone else will almost always be willing to pay you. You don't have a privileged position to start from. This means you have to start small. Tough. Doing a great job (even if its a crappy job), plus self-inprovement is usually the best way to a better job - within or external to your current employer. Pity, or especially self-pity is useless. Sometimes this isn't enough, and you have to fail and learn a few times. The world ain't fair. I suggest you don't become an Objerktivist. Take the few limited nuggets of wisdom and run. Otherwise you'll have all the "true" and "proper" justification of how great you are while pondering the deep philosophical implications of poverty and homelessness. Bob

Done. Not sure what happened....

Worst. Advice. Ever.

I think you misunderstood. My comment was not about the argument, but what you said about it. Orrllllyy? You get all that from 'absurd'??? What's funny is, if I were to explain why it it indeed absurd, your previous comment is bang on correct. Bob

A great example of begging the question, a straw man, or argument by a-priori definition. Choose one or more. Exactly.

The bottom line is this: We either have free will or we don't. In order to answer the question one way or the other, we have to be able to distinguish between feeling like we have free will and actually having it. Until we can tell the difference, everything else doesn't really matter (meaning the goofy arguments not based on evidence). The argument that I have free will because I decided to write this post from my own free will is absurd on its face. Bob

Dead wrong. Politicians paralyzed physics. Or call them what you like. The concept is the Medieval (or whatever) equivalent of people who exercise power. (Kinda like the impression you give off.) Scientists had to succeed in spite of them, not in spite of Aristotle. MichaelFrancis Bacon and other prominent figures of the Scientific Revolution frequently excluded Aristotle himself in their criticisms of Aristotelian physics, claiming that Aristotle would never have resisted the advance of scientific knowledge. Their criticisms were directed at the scholastics, i.e., those Aristotelian "schoolmen" who dominated many European universities and who would not permit change to disturb their feathered nests. As Dennis has pointed out, the same could be said today about the QM scholastics. Ghs And as usual, you leave out the most important point and that is, like, we don't know have anything that could remotely be described as conclusive evidence that they are wrong. Or perhaps you just 'know' they are wrong and that's good enough eh? Bob

"Which findings would those be?" For someone with such a strong background in the history of thought, I think you damn well know what these findings are. I think you also know very well about the Jesuit science underground of the time. I think you also damn well know about the Jesuit Giovan Paolo Lembo who not only confirmed Galileo's findings personally but also taught them in his classes in 1615-16. I think you also probably know that some Jupiter moon observations, mistakenly attributed to Galileo intitally turned out to be Jesuit in origin copied by Galileo. So they not only confirmed his observations, but actually contributed original research. Zero integrity, absolutely none. Bob

The point is that the church at the time dominated both science and philosophy. Your invective seems gratuitous. The following account shows that Galileo’s support from the Jesuits was half-hearted and short-lived. Nothing here is inconsistent with the quote George provided from A.C. Crombie. Galileo and the Jesuits – a revealing tale My point is that this explanation does NOT omit experimental confirmation of Galileo's findings by the church. Bob

George, That's a core point in how the progress of science works. I see it ignored a lot in these kinds of discussions. Michael Talk about dropping context.... What matters in the progress of science is not which ideas are right and which are wrong in a vacuum, but which ideas are ultimately influential to scientific progress or the lack thereof. Newton's fashion mistakes and Eintstein's bad haircuts may be mistakes too, but if they have no influence on their fields then there is no relevance. Aristotle's may have been a great guy, but his errors absolutely paralyzed physics. These physics greats above had to overcome his influence (either directly or by virtue of era) to succeed. They succeeded in spite of Aristotle, not because of him. Bob

Really? Well let's look at a couple of 'facts' that you conveniently leave out of your perpetual half-truths. Aristotle's views were intertwined with Church dogma - problem, and agreed. However, your view of the Church/Galileo interaction as stated here isn't even out of date, it's deliberately misleading. I'm sure you're aware, with your vast historical knowledge, that forces within the Church at the time were simultaneously arguably his strongest supporters . Who were among the first (or I think maybe were actually first) to repeat his observations and sympathize with his viewpoint? Jesuits. What happend on 13th of May 1611 at the Roman College? Big Jesuit Galileo party, that's what. Sure the Jesuits were pressured to tow the Church line, but the Church was simultaneously Galileo's foe and ally. Your simplistic view doesn't fly. Who refused to even look through the telescope because Galileo HAD to be wrong because it was anti-Aristotle (or perhaps an Identity violation)? Brain-dead philosophers, that's who. We don't have the simplistic 'Galileo the good vs. Aristotle's ideas polluted by Church' nonsense as you would have us believe. We have 'Galileo the correct vs the Aristotle-infected Church, the Aristotle-infected contemporary scientists, AND the Aristotle-infected Philosophers'. "Aristotle's naturalistic perspective, which left no room for theological explanations, has long been recognized by historians as a pivotal event in the development of modern science." Yes, however, it can still be true that his physics did immeasurable damage to the development of modern science. Basically, it comes down to whether or not what he did right was ultimately more important that what he did wrong. What do you think Galileo would say? I also strongly object to what I can only assume is your deliberate and calculated omissions. If your integrity was only the smallest fraction of the strength your historical knowledge. At least when I omit someting, I can legitmately blame ignorance... BobI thought we were talking about the medieval period. I was, at least. Of course there were various factions within the Catholic Church, some which supported Galileo and some which did not. (From its inception the Catholic Church was never a monolithic institution.) But in the final analysis Galileo still got raked over the coals. I don't have the quote in front of me, but at one point Galileo said that he would have committed all his writings to the flames, had he known the humiliation and hardships they would eventually cause him. Galileo didn't do himself any favors with how he handled Cardinal Barberini, who later became Pope Urban VIII. Galileo had some cordial converations about science with the Jesuit Barberini, but after Barberini became pope, Galileo put some of Barberini's fallacious arguments into the mouth of "Simplicio" in one of his dialogues. Barberini and the Jesuit Order turned on Galileo after that. You failed to mention this fact, so, following your own idiotic line of reasoning, you obviously lack integrity. What the hell do you expect me to do in a brief post? Cover the entire history of the relationship between the Catholic Church and science? Btw, you don't understand the telescope controversy. This issue has been discussed in detail by Koestler, Feyerabend, and other historians of science. As for another point you raised -- What Aristotle got right was much more important than what he got wrong. The same is true of Galileo, Kepler (who had a nutty cosmology), Newton, Einstein, and other great minds in western civilization. Science will progress so long as people are free to doubt and challenge orthodox theories and improve upon them. The Catholic Church was frequently -- though not always -- an obstacle to such progress. Had you lived in Aristotle's day, you would have been attempting to divine the future by examining the entrails of sheep, so give the guy a break. Ghs Well, I thought it was rather obvious that we're dealing with the influence of his ideas on science and not the man himself. After all, as we all know, Aristotle was long dead by Galileo's time. If Aristotle never existed, would a better physics have appeared? Who knows, obviously hypothetical, but what we do know is that we'd have had about 2000 years of possibilities. There's also a subtle but perhaps important distinction between Aristotle's physics, if you can call it that, and his other contributions to sciences like biology (which of course also contained errors). Positive contributions are easier to argue in the other areas notwithstanding the errors. The problem with his physics errors is that they are so fundamental. Absolutely impossible to move forward without killing them first. That's the difference. I'd like to see an analysis of how many "great minds of western civilization" had to explicitly or implicitly refute Aristotelian ideas as a necessary step to their success. I suspect the number is large if not close to unanimous. Bob

Really? Well let's look at a couple of 'facts' that you conveniently leave out of your perpetual half-truths. Aristotle's views were intertwined with Church dogma - problem, and agreed. However, your view of the Church/Galileo interaction as stated here isn't even out of date, it's deliberately misleading. I'm sure you're aware, with your vast historical knowledge, that forces within the Church at the time were simultaneously arguably his strongest supporters . Who were among the first (or I think maybe were actually first) to repeat his observations and sympathize with his viewpoint? Jesuits. What happend on 13th of May 1611 at the Roman College? Big Jesuit Galileo party, that's what. Sure the Jesuits were pressured to tow the Church line, but the Church was simultaneously Galileo's foe and ally. Your simplistic view doesn't fly. Who refused to even look through the telescope because Galileo HAD to be wrong because it was anti-Aristotle (or perhaps an Identity violation)? Brain-dead philosophers, that's who. We don't have the simplistic 'Galileo the good vs. Aristotle's ideas polluted by Church' nonsense as you would have us believe. We have 'Galileo the correct vs the Aristotle-infected Church, the Aristotle-infected contemporary scientists, AND the Aristotle-infected Philosophers'. "Aristotle's naturalistic perspective, which left no room for theological explanations, has long been recognized by historians as a pivotal event in the development of modern science." Yes, however, it can still be true that his physics did immeasurable damage to the development of modern science. Basically, it comes down to whether or not what he did right was ultimately more important that what he did wrong. What do you think Galileo would say? I also strongly object to what I can only assume is your deliberate and calculated omissions. If your integrity was only the smallest fraction of the strength your historical knowledge. At least when I omit someting, I can legitmately blame ignorance... Bob

Aristotle's mistaken ideas killed progress in physics (the most basic of the sciences) for a couple of millenia. This is a fact, not an opinion. Rather ironic because it's you who is clearly claiming the 'canonical' grip on logic and what 'makes sense'. All I'm doing is suspecting that there is likely a mistake somewhere in the logic or axiom(s) or both. You claim the "one true logic" (now of Aristotle of all people), yet accuse me of "a religious frame of mind". Talk about not making sense... Bob

It's an exciting time in the physics world and sometimes I wish I was more plugged in and up to date in this area. If SR fails, then the replacement theory then of course must include the SR's nice correlation with observation and also non-local phenomena too right? I must admit, that while I do have a good grasp of SR, that's about as far as it goes. Trying to begin to understand how a theory could possibly explain SR and the current neutrino results is beyond my current ability to even contemplate in a meaningful way right now. Any reading suggestions for someone with a (dusty) physics education? The mass-market books are useless without the math, and the journal articles are too heavy for me. Bob

My problem is with an over-abundance of what can only be described as philosophical arrogance. The universe is not compelled to comply with our common sense, and in fact demonstrably does not in many instances. I said nothing about "common sense." I was talking about intelligibility, i.e., a proposition and/or theory that can be understood. If a physicist says, Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, then he has the cognitive responsibility to explain what he means in intelligible terms. It will not do for him to reply, "Well, I am a physicist, so the rules of intelligibility do not apply to me. I am a physicist, so I don't need to make sense." You are here equivocating on the meaning of time. The Law of Identity specifies at the same time and in the same respect -- a crucial qualification that you conveniently snipped when quoting me. In this case, "in the same respect" would mean from the same perspective. Ghs What is true and false at the same time and in the same respect applies if the Philosopher is asserting that time is absolute, while not being asserted now, this certainly was in the past. So, instead, the Philosopher is saying "Well, time isn't absolute I guess, but my idea of what I call causality still is unassailable." Seems to me that's a contradiction. It's seems rather obvious and rather likely that causality in reality is far from what Philosophy says it is. You wrote: "I am a physicist, so I don't need to make sense." This is the arrogance I refer to. What you really mean and clearly imply is "I'm a Philosopher, my logic must be correct". Well, we've been down that road before haven't we? But no, the physicist is saying "The world is not complying to what we would might expect to make "sense". I know this because I have data. Here's a theory that seems wacky, but it works (predicts accurately) so we must accept it until it is broken". However, there are attempts to explain these strange things in more conventional terms and maybe they'll prove to bear some fruit with data some time soon, but in the meantime arrogance is not a logical stance. BobIt's very strange that you would call the insistence that physicists make sense "arrogance," and that you would say that my defense of logic "is not a logical stance." Seems to me that's a contradiction, you say. I ask, so what's wrong with a contradiction, if we throw out the Law of Identity? After all, a corollary of the Law of Identity is the Law of Non-Contradiction, viz: A proposition cannot be both true and not-true at the same time and in the same respect. Thus, if we dispense with these arrogant rules of logic, contradictions are fine and dandy. George, I illustrated with a historical reference I might add, quite clearly that things that were once though to be contradictory are no longer so. The arrogance comes from (and I'm quite sure you understand this) the a priori dismissal of a theory or a model based on what philosopher's decision of what the logic must be. We should damn well know by now that reality can throw us a curve ball, and what we once thought was all nice and logical and air-tight can turn out to be wrong. It's not necessarily the case that the logic is wrong per se (perhaps incomplete), but often the argument is wrong because an axiom simply isn't true. So a simple axiom like the standard causality axiom is highly suspect and in my opinion, as currently stated, is most likely wrong. This comes from a Physics undergrad education (but maybe I've been poisoned by sloppy physics thought), and enough study of QM to understand how fundamentally freaky it is. The standard causality axiom, and Physics (or at least so far) cannot both be correct. Problem is, it's Physics making accurate predictions all the while philosophers dismissing it as nonsense. But hey, you're in good company. Aristotle did this and only held up science for a couple thousand years with this approach, so no biggie. Bob

My problem is with an over-abundance of what can only be described as philosophical arrogance. The universe is not compelled to comply with our common sense, and in fact demonstrably does not in many instances. I said nothing about "common sense." I was talking about intelligibility, i.e., a proposition and/or theory that can be understood. If a physicist says, Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, then he has the cognitive responsibility to explain what he means in intelligible terms. It will not do for him to reply, "Well, I am a physicist, so the rules of intelligibility do not apply to me. I am a physicist, so I don't need to make sense." You are here equivocating on the meaning of time. The Law of Identity specifies at the same time and in the same respect -- a crucial qualification that you conveniently snipped when quoting me. In this case, "in the same respect" would mean from the same perspective. Ghs What is true and false at the same time and in the same respect applies if the Philosopher is asserting that time is absolute, while not being asserted now, this certainly was in the past. So, instead, the Philosopher is saying "Well, time isn't absolute I guess, but my idea of what I call causality still is unassailable." Seems to me that's a contradiction. It's seems rather obvious and rather likely that causality in reality is far from what Philosophy says it is. You wrote: "I am a physicist, so I don't need to make sense." This is the arrogance I refer to. What you really mean and clearly imply is "I'm a Philosopher, my logic must be correct". Well, we've been down that road before haven't we? But no, the physicist is saying "The world is not complying to what we would might expect to make "sense". I know this because I have data. Here's a theory that seems wacky, but it works (predicts accurately) so we must accept it until it is broken". However, there are attempts to explain these strange things in more conventional terms and maybe they'll prove to bear some fruit with data some time soon, but in the meantime arrogance is not a logical stance. Bob

My problem is with an over-abundance of what can only be described as philosophical arrogance. The universe is not compelled to comply with our common sense, and in fact demonstrably does not in many instances. "Similarly, if a theory can supposedly mean x and non-X at the same time" Well, two events can indeed both happen at the same time, and not at the same time. That much is more or less certain. If philosophy disagrees with this, it's philosophy that's wrong, not physics. Bob

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using mathematical models and techniques that yield accurate predictions. But as I have argued many times before on OL, it is another thing entirely to extrapolate from mathematical models and arrive at a physical cosmology that, in the final analysis, is incoherent. Ghs Well, perhaps, but a physical cosmology based on the ever-so-elegant A=A is pretty much guaranteed to be incoherent. Bob